Appropriate cite in this thread of Mann. Mann’s absurd discredited “hockey stick,” even though it was promulgated by a self-declared Nobel Prize winner who will sue you and lose if you say otherwise, who will sue you and lose if you submit peer-reviewed alternative scientific examinations–sue, mind you–or citing it without even noting that a mountain of evidence from non-conspiracy non-crazy non-Republicans, including the evidence brought out (partly in court, which adds irony to Mann’s patent venality)–is evidence of absurdly arbitrary data gathering and graph forcing, and is perhaps the most egregious case of the wreckage of public discourse with scientists, most especially such a flawed one as Mann.
^^^
Leo, I can’t tell if there is supposed to be a serious point here or not, or if this is some kind of incomprehensible attempt at sarcasm. If there is a serious point, could you please state it in plain English so I can respond to it.
Mann has published papers which are academically fraudulent and have been shown to be so by many sources.
Mann has sued in court those who challenge his scientific findings, rather than rebut them or answer outstanding questions in the normal avenues of scientific discourse.
He does not respond to the discrete scientific evidence brought to the scientific community relative to his methodology and conclusions.
His hockey stick has been shown to be as close to scientific fraud as near possible. It is barely, barely not fraudulent once the details his cherry picked data is factored in. However, the data is arbitrary both as to source date and statistical validity which makes it useless. And it is fraudulent, in fact, because those data sources were not presented, and then the famous graphical representation is on a bizarrely modified axis.
Your cite (I believe it was, but it didnt’/doesn’t matter) I considered worthwhile because it’s the favorite cite of laymen (like myself) who claim to undertand scientific validity but don’t (not like myself).
The fact that he is a venal prick, and has initiated a law suit against a magazine and the author of an article about his hockey stick, no less has cost the defendants huge amounts of money, and despite each loss Mann pursues another avenue to restore what’s left of his name for the few supporters he has by perpetuating his claims.
His actions against a publisher and author are contemptible for a scientist, and more important, for any citizen. Which is why the array of amicus curiae of the defendant is the largest and somewhat oddest and impressive group likely scene in a 1st Amendment case. And I repeat, one where the matter, is the plaintiff’s desire to have a judge or jury rule in favor of his scientific results.
The best part of the whole lawsuit deal is he always claimed he was a Nobel Laureate, and added that in his suit to back himself up, and everyone got a good laugh when the court was informed otherwise by Stockholm.
So, my saying in my originating has post that “citing Mann” is a worthwhile addition to this thread is not sarcasm. Whoever cited him has announced, to the benefit of the OP topic, one of the issues that must be considered when even attempting to answer the discrete question asked in the subject header.
I, for one, have no interest in pursuing further here the case of that little boil on science and society. More information is readily available.
But not accessed or assimilated, however, by the legions of politically driven people who take great strength in wielding their “Nobel Prize Winner’s Memorable Icon.”
Hmmm. Could you give a citation of a specific paper by Mann that you consider “academically fraudulent”, along with a cite for the claim that it has been “shown to be so”?
Again, could you give a cite so we can be sure what lawsuit(s) you’re talking about? I’m aware only of Mann’s defamation lawsuit against the Competitive Enterprise Institute and National Review for blog allegations calling him “fraudulent”, which of course is not the same thing as “challenging his scientific findings”.
Cite for a source of this criticism, describing in detail (preferably in a peer-reviewed scientific publication) the claims of “near” fraud?
Cite for the alleged “loss”? AFAICT Mann’s defamation lawsuit is still ongoing as of this writing, despite numerous failed attempts by the defendants to get it dismissed.
again. AFAICT, the amicus brief is arguing that the accusations of fraud against Mann aren’t actionable because they’re constitutionally protected under the First Amendment as expressions of opinion. Which is not exactly a ringing endorsement of their scientific merit as “challenges to his scientific findings”.
Triple . Mann is a contributor to the IPCC reports on climate change for which the IPCC was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize jointly with Al Gore, and was individually acknowledged (along with each of the other contributing scientists) by the IPCC as a joint honoree. So if Al Gore counts as a “Nobel Laureate”, then arguably Mann and all the other IPCC contributors do too. Are you suggesting that Mann has falsely claimed Nobel Laureate status in some other context?
:dubious: Hmmmm. Does that mean I’m not going to get those cites I asked for? Because when I went looking for “readily available” information on the subject, what I came up with suggested the above queries about your assertions.
So it would be a kindness on your part to point out where the information you’re actually talking about is in fact “readily available”.
Ah, I suppose writing “Mann could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science” is “normal scientific discourse.”
I asked for clarification because I genuinely didn’t know whether you were serious. I guess you are, but what you’ve posted is stream-of-consciousness bullshit that is so absurd as to not be worth responding to. I see that Kimstu has already asked you to substantiate it.
I’ll ask you for a cite for the above. I already know that any cite you could provide for any of it would be entirely disreputable, but I’ll ask anyway just for fun to see what you come up with.
For the information of those with a serious interest in this aspect of the science, the attacks against Michael Mann, one of the world’s foremost climate scientists, are generally associated with the publication in 1998 of a 1000-year temperature reconstruction that showed a dramatic “hockey stick” spike in global temperatures in the post-industrial era, followed by an expanded reconstruction published in 1999, both with Mann as lead author and with Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes as collaborators, papers now often referred to in the literature as MBH98 and MBH99.
These were landmark advances in paleoclimatology and would normally have been uncontroversially acknowledged as major contributions to climate science, except that the clear evidence that there was something very unusual happening in the modern climate prompted a vicious reaction from the denialist camp, and an ensuing drama of baseless personal attacks against Mann, the kind we’ve just seen in Leo’s post. The earliest of these was probably a paper by the McIntyre and McKitrick pair I mentioned earlier, one of them a statistician and the other a former mining engineer, both fervent climate change deniers and neither of them with any knowledge of climate science. They managed to get a flawed paper published in Nature, but after they and their paper were discredited they pretty much resorted to blogging.
The attacks against the paper were based on two main factors, Mann’s use of a statistical technique called decentered principal component analysis (PCA), and questioning the validity of some of the temperature proxies that were used, particularly the tree ring proxies from bristlecone pines.
The short version of it all is this. Congress got involved when Sherwood Boehlert, chairman of the Committee on Science, asked the National Academy of Sciences to investigate the overall question of the 2000-year temperature record, partly in response to all the ruckus that had been raised particularly when Texas oilman and Congressman Joe Barton (R, Texas) – who had been openly hostile to climate science and personally threatening to climate scientists like Mann – had commissioned his own report criticizing Mann’s paper.
The result of all the ruckus was a powerful vindication of Michael Mann and his work in the subsequent years which greatly elevated his stature in the scientific community, and he is now regarded as one of the leading climate scientists in the world today. The first major development was the release of the National Academy assessment of his work. The report, released in 2006, was produced by the National Research Council of the National Academy and titled Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years (ISBN: 0-309-66264-8, National Academies Press, 2006). With regard to the use of decentered PCA, the report stated that “reconstructions performed without using principal component analysis are qualitatively similar to the original curves presented by Mann et al.” Having essentially vindicated all of Mann’s conclusions, they also noted that he was among the first to describe reconstructions with an uncertainty envelope (although they expressed the view that MBH98 probably underestimated the uncertainties).
The following year, an important paper – Wahl and Ammann (2007) [PDF] – further vindicated Mann’s results. They showed, among many other things, that criticisms of the variability modes that may have been influenced by PCA were baseless because Mann’s results still stood regardless. They also showed that the bristlecone proxies had not substantially influenced the data, and indeed Mann himself presented reconstructions with and without tree ring chronologies of any kind, and showed that results were substantially the same and post-industrial warmth unprecedented in at least 1300 years.
Since then, many other groups using many other proxy sets have shown the same, and there have been dozens of long-term paleoclimate temperature reconstructions since as early as 2007, with the release of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. The entire Chapter 6 of the Fourth Assessment Report deals with paleoclimate temperature reconstructions, and offers a very thorough and frank analysis of the subject, including the areas of uncertainty and where there is debate and lack of consensus, and again fully exonerates Michael Mann and his pioneering work.
The biggest reason, in my observation, is because they are a superior good. That’s reason enough for many people.
Cite 4 reputable scientific papers by 4 different authors that “show” this, please. Four being the traditional threshold for “many”.
No, Mann’s sued those who *libeled *him.
The NAS says different.
Is that your *scientific *assessment?
Yes, he *was * a bit of an idiot about the Nobel thing. But he certainly isn’t *still *calling himself a laureate (I’m taking you at your word that he used to) and, more importantly, it has exactly the intersection of fuck and all to do with the scientific validity of his work.
Which losses would those be? All I’ve seen are how the increasingly desperate attempts to get the lawsuit dismissed have been slapped down. Hard.
Just going to drop your* ad hominem* turd in the GQ punchpowl and dash, eh?
And yet not provided.
[snip]
Others replied well to those “points”, but I will report on how the ones pushing contrarian information out there are the ones committing the actual fraud. For example, Mann did publish proper research, he did respond to discrete evidence, his data was not arbitrary, and the critics already where criticized themselves as wolfpup noted already.
http://www.rap.ucar.edu/projects/rc4a/millennium/refs/Wahl_ClimChange2007.pdf (PDF file)
IOW: normal avenues of scientific discourse already did vindicate Mann’s conclusions, by this time one has to declare sources like McIntyre and McKitrick, Fred Singer, Willie Soon, Roy Spencer, groups like the AEI, most of the influential American conservatives and virtually all other famous contrarians that show up on TV (and not in avenues of scientific discourse) to be demagogues for continuing to mislead others.
Ahem.
“His data WERE not arbitrary.”
Thus are you refuted.
Anthropogenic Global Climate Change has been proven a hoax. Let the rejoicing begin throughout the land.
:dubious:
Could I trouble you to provide some data upon which I might base an analysis of the emphasized assertion?
You know, I was going to thank you a lot for the correction, but there is a surprising catch:
So, in today’s agendum, I have to give you a mild thanks. 
Only if you confirm that you know what a superior good is.
Well, yes, but it goes back to my point - that a scientist may have very good technical knowledge of his field - biology, climate, physics, or engineering - but unless they have related learning and study things carefully, their knowledge of other fields is only slightly better than the guy in the corner coffee shop. (As, IIRC, Linus Pauling proved with vitamin C; or consider the cold fusion debate). Nobel laureates have been misled into eugenics or IQ debates just as much as anyone else.; perhaps worse, as some have the blindness born of arrogance. This is something the politicians certainly need to keep in mind when selecting advisors.
Climate change science on both sides is full of denial and band-wagon know-nothings, perhaps as much represented by educated people as know-nots. There is a general feeling that anyone who disputes the tenets of the climate change faith will not get grants or honest peer reviews. This is unfortunate, because it shows honest evaluation has been replaced by dogma; and the true limits and progress of climate change needs careful analysis to determine what is really happening. Headline-grabbing cries of doom need to be balanced with serious analysis.
Plus, Mother Nature is far more capricious than mere mortals. The next ice age could start tomorrow or in 5,000 years. The current much less active sunspot cycle(s) could herald a new Little ice Age, or it could be a blip. The stupidity with which we treat our planet could mean we cancel out any of these effects should they actually occur. Who knows? At the rate we are going, time will tell.
Got you covered on that one, science writer Peter Hadfield already took on people that indeed do not know what they are talking about, but the reality is that the apparent “dogma” of the 50-60’s was shown to be wrong.
Yes, wrong, but not as contrarians think, sorry to burst many bubbles. 
You see, back then it was “known” for many years that CO2 was a warming gas, but that nature was doing a good job of taking off the megatons of CO2 humans were adding to the atmosphere and that the way CO2 contained heat was understood properly.
What happened then in the 50-60s was that scientists like Plass and others showed then and later that, no, nature was not taking the extra human released CO2 from the atmosphere so effectively, and that how the atmosphere absorbed the heat coming from the sun was not really know properly until then. So double oops, and then (only after indeed dropping a dogma such as thinking that nature or god was going to save us) we got the prediction that most scientists reported: that we were likely to expect in the near future an increase in CO2 that was going to warm the planet as it was know for ages. The difference is that from the 50’s on it was discovered that the natural sinks of CO2 were not as effective as thought, and how the heat actually reacted to CO2 in different layers of the atmosphere were not doing enough to prevent higher levels of increase in heat.
Not likely at all:
Already looked at, not enough to counter the warming and the worst is that we could be in a worse increase in heat if the sun spot activity was a normal one.
Well, I defer to the scientists, they know what the evidence says for a long time already, no faith or dogma needed.
Well, see, this is what I mean. The study you link to claiming that the ice age has been postponed is one study. Plus, it also explains new (?) the causes for the ice age, which to some extent is still debatable. Are CO2 levels a driver or effect of ice ages? I have no doubt whatever we have already done to the world climate has profound effects, and most likely has cancelled the next ice age for the next few hundred years to millennia, but - the climate is vastly unpredictable, and millennia-long trends even more so. Everything beyond the fact that we have truly screwed up the earth is somewhat debatable. There’s room for plenty more studies, some pro- some con- before we can be sure how reliable this sort of data is. The sunspot article simply mentions that global warming is related to CO2 levels not sun output. I don’t think I’ve seen anything solid explaining how the various sunspot cycles - Maunder minimum, Sporer, Oort, Wolff - cause cool climate; and the current low activity sunspot cycle came as a complete surprise to scientists. The short answer is - we know a lot less than we think; but I’ll agree with you that that is no reason to ignore the obvious problems we are creating.
“Knowledge of other fields” is irrelevant, as the purpose of organizations like the National Academies and the IPCC (for example) is to bring the best expertise in the relevant areas to bear in advising policymakers. To this end, both organizations have historically enlisted the input of experts from a broad array of disciplines. While clearly on matters of climate science one will tend to solicit the input of practicing climate scientists with pertinent areas of specialization, in related areas like impacts and mitigation the IPCC lead and contributing authors have been experts from a broad array of other fields, like biology and economics.
Thus I don’t really see the point of your criticism. Besides, not that it matters, but in my experience scientists tend to have better critical thinking skills than the average person and a better appreciation for the scientific method.
That simply isn’t true. The flagrant climate change denier Willie Soon has no problem being employed by the Harvard-Smithsonian and attracting external grants (much of it from the oil and coal industry), and neither did his denialist colleague Sallie Baliunas, now retired. Richard Lindzen had no problem attracting grants, and was employed by no less prestigious an institution than MIT. Roy Spencer, another flagrant denialist and libertarian ideologue, continues to be employed as a research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville where he also runs the satellite radiometric temperature sensing center. There are many others. And shortly after Mann et al. published the landmark paper on temperature reconstructions in 1998, the deniers McIntyre and McKitrick were able to publish a criticism of it in the prestigious journal Nature, despite neither of them having any background in climate science.
The idea that deniers are being “silenced” is a very common meme in denialist circles that I see all the time, and aside from being an empty argument I suspect it arises from the climate deniers’ perception that their favorite players are frequently ridiculed and deprived of a platform in the best journals. But to the extent that they are, it’s because their research is so awful, their data and methods so appallingly bad in an effort to twist them into preconceived conclusions. That’s where the dogma is, not in evidence-based science.
No, it couldn’t. For more than a million years, glaciation cycles have always been associated with low CO2 levels with a remarkable degree of precision and consistency, with levels falling to about 180 ppm at the peak of each ice age, and then rising again to between 280 and 300 ppm (never higher) at the peak of interglacials. Please explain how we’re going to get an ice age when CO2 levels are presently at over 400 ppm and rising so fast that we may hit 800 ppm by the end of the century. We’re in an entirely new climate regime that has never been seen in the history of the species homo sapiens, or indeed ever before. It’s not just an age of anthropogenic global warming, but a new regime that many are calling the Anthropocene – the Climate of Man – that may have permanently displaced the Holocene. To the extent that your “who knows?” comment is correct, who knows, indeed, just how badly we’ve disrupted the climate system. Time will tell whether we’re on track to destroying the entire thermohaline circulation and precipitating runaway melt of the polar ice cover.
As I said - there’s only one way to find out, and we’re about to find out. The real question is - how bad will it be? What will be the final climate patterns? Will excess heat result in excess cloud cover (cyclic negative feedback) and massive rainfalls, regular flooding? Or will the result be positive feed back and a desert world?
All the educated guesses in the world are just that - guesses. We have no idea what exactly will happen except that it’s a good bet things will be severely disrupted one way or another.
Nope, there was an early one made in 2013 and was mentioned by Cecil:
The study you claimed that it was just “one study” was not that, and I have seen other science groups agreeing with that.
It does both.
[snip]
Uh, not really to that “we know a lot less than we think”, while we don’t know all, we do know enough to know that we have to mitigate the expected effects and to reduce our carbon emissions.
[QUOTE] It's true that Earth's a massive jigsaw puzzle, with lots of pieces intricately fitting together. But, Richard Alley argues, we already know enough to see the Big Picture. The missing pieces of scientific understanding - exactly how clouds work, how extreme weather will change with global warming - are important, but we can already see how Earth works. [/QUOTE]