Manns rea?

Things seem to be hotting up on the Michael Mann front, not least because Steve McIntyre seems to have returned to blogging with a vengeance, assisted as always by his trusty band of followers. Today, the climate auditors have turned up another rather embarrassing problem with Michael Mann's legal submission. This document claims that Mann had nothing to do with the infamous cover graphic for the WMO report of 1999, of hide the decline notoriety. Unfortunately, the claim is directly contradicted by Mann's own CV.

I found myself thinking about another of Mann's claims this morning. This was prompted by a comment on David Friedman's blog about Mann's claim in MBH98 that he had used "conventional" principal components analysis. The author of the comment wondered if this could in fact be true. But readers of the Hockey Stick Illusion will recall that the claim of "conventional" was actually only made about Mann's processing of temperature data. Regarding the tree ring data we were only led to understand that PCA had been used.

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Manndacity, integrity and Amazon reviews

Via Tom Nelson we learn that Michael Mann is misbehaving again. This time he's soliciting favourable Amazon reviews of his execrable book and he's also soliciting unfavourable ones of The Hockey Stick Illusion.

He doesn't seem to have got much of a response so far, which I suppose is fair enough given that it will take people a while to read the book. In fact, only one Mann fan appears to have been disreputable enough to write a review without actually reading the book (leaving aside Guardian columnist Dana Nuccitelli, who did so a few years ago, but without any prompting from the Hockeystickmeister).

The author of the new comment, one Alexandre Araújo Costa, turns out to be a Brazilian climatologist. Let me say to my friends working in the area: you really do need to deal with the rot in your profession.

[Postscript: I notice an earlier review by one Dave Kiehl from California, who says that the Hockey Stick Illusion "gave too much credit to such well-known (and documented) climate deniers and liars, James Inhofe and Joe Barton". This is, shall we say, a little odd since the book doesn't give Barton any credit for anything, simply recording his actions at the time. Inhofe is not mentioned at all. Another reviewer who was able to do his stuff without actually bothering with the book itself]

Krugman homeopath

Paul Krugman is considering Michael Mann this morning. Amazingly, the great man is trying to resurrect the Hockey Stick.

Mann, as some of you may know, is a hard-working scientist who used indirect evidence from tree rings and ice cores in an attempt to create a long-run climate record. His result was the famous “hockey stick” of sharply rising temperatures in the age of industrialization and fossil fuel consumption. His reward for that hard work was not simply assertions that he was wrong — which he wasn’t — but a concerted effort to destroy his life and career with accusations of professional malpractice, involving the usual suspects on the right but also public officials, like the former Attorney General of Virginia.

He wasn't wrong? Like our friend Anders, Mr Krugman could really do with getting himself a copy of The Hockey Stick Illusion. Like Anders, I don't suppose he will.

Mr Krugman, you really do need to centre your data if you are going to do principal components analysis. Really you do. There is not a reputable statistician who has ever looked at this question and concluded that Mann got it right. I wonder if Mr Krugman is a fan of the Mann view that not centring your data properly is "modern" (and therefore OK) or whether he favours the Gerald North view that you can use a biased method and inappropriate data and still arrive at the right answer.

Homeopathy has nothing on climate science.

Thingummydoodle noodle

Brandon Shollenberger has a lovely post up looking at some recent comments by Skeptical Science insider Tom Curtis and Anders Thingummydoodle from the "And Then There's Physics" blog. Readers will remember Anders as the chap who berated me about one of my posts on Doug Keenan's work, saying that it was a physical model you needed in order to understand what was causing global warming. This despite my having said almost precisely that in the blog post.

Anyway, Anders has been sounding off about the Hockey Stick, accusing McIntyre and McKitrick of all manner of sins and demonstrating in the process that he has absolutely no idea of how Mann got from his raw data through to his final reconstruction. His allegations are therefore completely and utterly wrong.

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NRO's brief goes online

The National Review's opening gambit in the Mann libel case has been published. It's a useful reference document, presenting a very accessible summary of the case and the legal issues. It's not flawless - the "hide the decline" data truncation is ascribed directly to Mann, and while there is a case to be made that he played a part in the similar shenanigans prior to the Third Assessment Report, it was Phil Jones who prepared the cover of the WMO report.

"A paltry $250"

Is this justice? Who can explain why Mann's emails need not be released by the University of Virginia, but those of Pat Michaels could be? Does the size of the award make any difference to the principle?

http://www.climatechangedispatch.com/virginia-supreme-court-awards-a-paltry-250-dollars-to-michael-mann.html

Mann's green lizards

Michael Mann has a splendidly bonkers article in the Huffington Post, hammering on the theme that he is being got at by green lizards from Alpha Centauri.

Or something like that.

The Kochs, Scaifes & others have used their billions to construct a vast "Potemkin Village" (in the words of science historian Naomi Oreskes) of denialism, by funding groups like "Americans For Prosperity", the "Heartland Institute", the "Competitive Enterprise Institute" and a whole cadre of other front groups, organizations, and hired guns implicated in the campaign to discredit climate science and climate scientists. I should know since, as I describe in my book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, I found myself at the center of that campaign more than a decade ago because of my scientific work establishing the unprecedented nature of recent global warming.

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The layman's guide to Mann vs Steyn

Legal blogger Jonathan Adler has written an excellent layman's summary of the state of play on the Mann vs Steyn and Steyn vs Mann cases. For those following these things closely there is unlikely to be anything new, but for those who need to be brought up to speed this is the place to go.

The climate policy debate is quite heated.  Partisans hurl charges against each others with impunity, challenging the honesty, intelligence, and integrity of those on the other side.  So it’s understandable that many environmentalists hope Mann will win.  Yet should he prevail, many on his side may come to rue this result.  Should Mann win, it will not be long before defamation suits are filed in the other direction.  Every time an environmental activist suggests someone on the other side is “bought” by fossil fuel interests, they had better be able to substantiate their claim, or they will be inviting a lawsuit.

The alternative Mannian oscillation

Nic Lewis has a new, long and rather technical post up at Climate Audit. He's looking at Michael Mann's latest paper in GRL which claims that the standard way of calculating the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation is flawed. In short, Nic has shown that Mann is wrong. What follows here is an attempt at a layman's summary for those who fear to negotiate the longer version.

The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) is an ongoing series fluctuations in the mean sea surface temperature of the North Atlantic ocean. Both northern hemisphere and global temperatures are correlated with the AMO, and around a third of the global warming since the mid 1970s might be due to the strengthening AMO rather than to the increase in greenhouse gases.

Mann's new paper in GRL claims that the normal way of calculating the AMO - by removing the trend from the sea temperature records - is flawed. But his results turn out to depend on a series of clever tricks. He defines the AMO as, in essence, the smoothed difference between model simulations and observations. Of course this isn’t true, because we know that the models aren’t perfect and the difference must therefore also be a function of all the things the models don’t simulate correctly as well. But by ignoring these factors Mann is able to explain away a multitude of sins. So the hiatus in surface temperature rises since the end of the last century is explained by the AMO going negative (in Mann’s estimation at least). And in the final decades of the twentieth century, when surface temperature rises were relatively rapid, in line with the models, the AMO was, by Mann’s definition, broadly neutral. The possibility that the models were wrong but that this was hidden by a positive AMO is brushed under the carpet.

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The wisdom of Michael Mann

Michael Mann thinks Richard Lindzen, Matt Ridley, Steve McIntyre, Ross McKitrick, Richard Tol, Roy Spencer, John Christy, Judith Curry, Richard Muller, the Koch brothers, Ken Cuccinelli, Mark Steyn, Rand Simberg, Nate Silver, David Rose, Marc Morano, Christopher Booker and Anthony Watts are poo heads. He also thinks that Fox News, the Mail on Sunday, the Telegraph, the National Review, the GWPF, and the Heartland Institute are a bunch of poo heads.

I don't think he's keen on me either.

In his latest article in the Huffington Post we learn, among other things, that he thinks that Mike Hulme and Lennart Bengtsson are poo heads too.

Wouldn't it be easier if he wrote his article like this?

Hulme and Bengtsson too.

Ye olde techniques - Josh 273

 

I thought the National Review article, posted here of course, was worth a cartoon. H/t Rick Cina in the comments for the peer-reviewed critiques of Mann's hockey sticks.

Cartoons by Josh

The climate inquisitor

The National Review has done a long and in-depth article on Michael Mann and freedom of speech entitled The Climate Inquisitor.

Secure as he appears to be in his convictions, Mann has nonetheless taken it upon himself to try to suppress debate and to silence some of the “irrational” and “virulent” critics, who he claims have nothing of substance to say. To this end, Mann has filed a lawsuit against National Review. Our offense? Daring to publish commentary critical of his hockey-stick graph and disapproving of his hectoring mien.

The Hockey Stick Illusion gets a mention too.

Celebrating bad science

When the House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee considered the Fifth Assessment Report a few months ago I was surprised when chairman Tim Yeo asked witnesses about the Hockey Stick. Although central to the Third Assessment and still relevant to the Fourth, I was of the view that its importance had now waned as all but the activist parts of the climatological community seem to have quietly accepted its methodological...ahem...peculiarities.

Like so many of his colleagues, Brian Hoskins seemed unable to say clearly that the Hockey Stick was wrong but, with a wonderful sirhumphreyish circumlocution, allowed the committee to understand that this was in fact the case:

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Fire up the document shredder

As expected, the Virginia Supreme Court has today issued its opinion on the Mann emails FOI case. It has decided that the emails of the university are indeed deemed "proprietary" and therefore not subject to disclosure.

130934 American Tradition Inst. v. Rector and Visitors 04/17/2014 The circuit court was correct in denying a request for disclosure of certain documents under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act. The purpose of the higher education research exemption under Code § 2.2-3705.4(4) for "information of a proprietary nature" is to avoid competitive harm, not limited to financial matters.

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Virginian decision

The Supreme Court of the state of Virginia is currently considering the case of Michael Mann's emails and it may be that an opinion will be offered tomorrow, as this Virginia FOI blog explains:

Later this week, probably on Thursday, April 17th, the Supreme Court of Virginia will release its next batch of opinions.  The Court hears cases in sessions, which happen about every 6-8 weeks.  By tradition, the Court releases all published opinions in cases argued at the previous session on the last day of the next session.  The Court isn’t required to follow that schedule; it can take as long as it wants.  But month in and month out, the Court follows its traditional schedule in all manner of cases, complicated and simple, controversial and not.

It is cause for raised eyebrows therefore that the Court missed its usual timeframe on one case (record no. 130934) argued in January: the entity formerly known as the American Tradition Institute (ATI) and Virginia Delegate (and Congressional candidate) Bob Marshall v. the University of Virginia and former UVA professor Michael Mann.  This is pure speculation, but there may be multiple opinions or close questions where the Court wanted to write carefully.  For our purposes, the key points are that a FOIA case has reached Virginia’s top court, with significant implications for all Virginia citizens.