Guest post by John A
It’s always a difficult place for me to deal with interviews with Michael Mann, because on previous occasions Mann gets to say ridiculous things and get praised for them by fawning interviewers. One of the great mysteries of climate science is why Mann never gets interviewed by an informed and intelligent interviewer in command of the facts – or maybe it isn’t such a mystery after all.
Today’s journalistic pulpit was provided by “Faye Flam” and published on Philly.com
For openers, Mann hasn’t lost his touch for the paranoid conspiracy theory:
Though he has been accused of dodging the press, Mann, 44, agreed readily to an interview on a bitterly cold day last week. The campus was deserted, as almost everyone was away for winter break. Mann was affable and calm as he answered the assertions of his critics.
The hardest part for him, he said, is having his integrity questioned. Scientists, he said, are “not trained to deal with these kinds of attacks.”
“My suspicion is, this has been orchestrated at a high level,” he said of the hacking.
What? Where? This is Michael Mann, famous for questioning the integrity of others (especially if their surname begins with “Mc”) in the most lurid terms yet when he’s caught out orchestrating boycotts of scientific journals, journalists and scientists who dare peek at his data and methodology, undermining and subverting the whole scientific process, it’s all a big conspiracy.
Now I have to reach for the Mylanta:
Mann points out that the hockey stick is not widely seen as a smoking gun implicating human activity in global warming. And it was not the giant graph used in Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. That was a graph of the carbon dioxide component of our atmosphere – which also is rising sharply.
Erm. The Hockey Stick was shown on AIT but misrepresented by Gore as “Dr Thompson’s Thermometer”.
All of this was worked out in November 2007 on Climate Audit but for some reason “Faye Flam” can’t get a clue. What do you expect from journalists? Background research? Basic checking?
Here’s Steve McIntyre’s replication of the AIT graph using the Hockey Stick, the CRU temperature record and some free software:
Look similar, Faye?
Another gulp of antacid, please:
The paper that contained the first hockey stick appeared in 1998, with a more complete reconstruction in 1999. Mann said he was surprised it got so much news coverage. After the first paper, he said, he was asked by the Clinton administration to advise the president on climate change for the 1999 State of the Union address.
He was just shocked, shocked when he phone started ringing off the hook. Yeah, right.
That’s when Mann said he realized the hockey stick had taken on a life of its own.
In 2006, U.S. Rep. Joe Barton (R., Texas), a global-warming skeptic, commissioned an investigation into the hockey stick papers, led by statistician Edward Wegman of George Mason University.
Woah! Woah Faye! Back off a little! In between 1999 and 2006 Mann was Lead Author of the key chapter on paleoclimate of the IPCC Third Assessment Report which featured the Hockey Stick no less than SIX TIMES. Why is he surprised at the reaction to the Hockey Stick, Faye? Helloooo?
Wegman said Mann made a mistake in the way he centered the data in the graph. He suggested that Mann and his colleagues were brash young researchers who should have gotten more help on their math.
Now here’s where I get most annoyed – the willingness of journalists to selectively misquote and misrepresent historical documents or allow their interviewees to misrepresent them. Nowhere did Wegman suggest that the Hockey Team were “brash young researchers who should have gotten more help with their math”. What he actually said and put into the Congressional record was this:
While the work of Michael Mann and colleagues presents what appears to be compelling evidence of global temperature change, the criticisms of McIntyre and McKitrick, as well as those of other authors mentioned are indeed valid.
“Where we have commonality, I believe our report and the [NAS] panel essentially agree. We believe that our discussion together with the discussion from the NRC report should take the ‘centering’ issue off the table. [Mann’s] decentred methodology is simply incorrect mathematics …. I am baffled by the claim that the incorrect method doesn’t matter because the answer is correct anyway.
Method Wrong + Answer Correct = Bad Science.
and furthermore Wegman’s Team did a stand-up job showing that the peer-review process was likely to have been short-circuited:
It is important to note the isolation of the paleoclimate community; even though they rely heavily on statistical methods they do not seem to be interacting with the statistical community. Additionally, we judge that the sharing of research materials, data and results was haphazardly and grudgingly done. In this case we judge that there was too much reliance on peer review, which was not necessarily independent.
Of course, now we know that such short-circuiting was entirely deliberate – it was subverted by Mann and his friends in Rocky Mountain High places. Did you read the emails, Faye? No.
Mann’s friends certainly like to rally to the cause, demonstrating that some people have no shame:
A different picture is painted by statistician Douglas Nychka, who examined Mann’s work as part of a similar panel assembled by the National Academy of Sciences, also in 2006. “There are some things that he could have done better, but there’s no fatal flaw,” said Nychka. “There’s nothing that would make you discount the whole analysis.”
Hey Doug! Did you read the Wegman Report? He said the Mann Analysis was “bad science” and “incorrect mathematics” so which part of that didn’t you understand?
Nychka, who works for the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., said the paper became so controversial because it was misinterpreted as proof that humans cause global warming.
Now, where did we get that idea? Who could have misinterpreted it and why didn’t Mann warn them? Think, think…
And Nychka manages to re-saddle several hobby-horses and send them stampeding:
Nychka said he would like to see Wegman and Mann’s other critics create their own graphs of past climates: “Why don’t they come back with a positive contribution, put some alternative forward?”
Of course, spotting that Mann misused statistics in a horrible way cannot be seen as positive – positive for the integrity of the scientific method, yes – but not positive by people surprised at the publicity of their own badly calculated statistical nonsense portrayed over and over.
I wonder if Hwang woo Suk tried that line with the bloggers who exposed his lies – did he ask them to produce their own stem cell lines before they could criticise him?
But I digress…
The data are all easily available at several sites, said Nychka. Mann, for example, has posted his data leading to the “hockey stick” online through the National Climatic Data Center.
Yes, NOW the data is online. But the methodology and the identification of that data certainly wasn’t because Mann claimed that as his personal property and it took a Congressional Committee to pry it from him. But then you didn’t do any of the background did you Faye?
Since 1998, other people have made their own “paleoclimate” reconstructions. Putting those together, the National Academy report in 2006 created what has been called the spaghetti plot – a chart that superimposes different researchers’ graphs of global temperatures over the last 1,000 years. The spaghetti strands curve up and down, but all rise dramatically in the 20th century. The overall pattern, notes Nychka, is the same.
I think we should let Wegman shoot this lame nag through the head:
Based on the literature we have reviewed, there is no overarching consensus on [Mann’s work]. As analyzed in our social network, there is a tightly knit group of individuals who passionately believe in their thesis. However, our perception is that this group has a self-reinforcing feedback mechanism and, moreover, the work has been sufficiently politicized that they can hardly reassess their public positions without losing credibility.
It is clear that many of the proxies are re-used in most of the papers. It is not surprising that the papers would obtain similar results and so cannot really claim to be independent verifications.
Different researchers, but all of them connected directly to Mann and used the same proxies over and over. It’s not independence as we know it, Doug.
And then to Climategate. Faye is obviously well out of her depth and sinking fast
Mann recalls a Friday night when a colleague alerted him that the hackers had tried to expose the e-mails on RealClimate, the blog he founded with another climatologist.
Over the ensuing weeks, pundits have shifted their focus from one set of e-mail exchanges to another, dubbing the issue “climategate.” First, the spotlight shone on an exchange between two other researchers referring to a “trick” Mann had used in plotting his data.
But not even Mann’s critics can cite any evidence of deception in the now doubly investigated hockey stick papers. The term trick, said Mann, described a technique he used to display his data.
Again this fascination with deception, but I’m willing to bet this is Mann misrepresenting what actually happened with a journalist too lazy to check facts.
Other pundits criticized Mann and colleagues for agreeing to shun the journal Climate Research after it published work by climate-change skeptics. Mann said the particular article was bad science and was “polluting” the journal.
Pundits, Faye? They were scientists including the editor of the journal.
The article finishes with a tear-jerker:
There is still much debate over how big a role human activity plays in the current warming trend, and how the future will be affected. Climate science – and earth science in general – is not expected to make the kinds of sharp predictions that chemists and physicists can make with repeated experiments. “It would be nice if we could do controlled experiments,” Mann said. “But we have only one Earth.”
Yes, and all of these nasty questions make baby Jesus cry.
I wonder why newspapers are sinking fast into the mud of history and then Faye Flam arrives to remove the wonder.
Looks like another CAGW set up with a tame journo in place to let one of the arch Climategate cabal members try to defend his poor science and even poorer ethics!
Why does this old Professor William Hughes Mearns nonsense poem spring to mind?
As I was walking down the stair,
I saw a man who wasn’t there.
He wasn’t there again today…
I wish, I wish he’d go away!
My friend Lonnie Thompson, he is my Han Solo.
My mentor Roger Revelle. He was my Obi Wan. He trained me to become the perfect master, Lord protector of the universe and prophet of the future. I paint such a romantic picture of us in my documentary.
When I refer to these people I make sure San Franciscans believe they are like my family and that I have inherited vast scientific knowledge from them.
Anyway, Revelle was a senile retard. I say that because he stopped believing in catastrophic anthropogenic global warming before he died.
Al Gore’s Holy Hologram
Faye assumed that ClimateGate was the result of hacking, but everything points towards a whistle blower.
What a turd of an article, Faye.
Faye Flam? Are you sure this interview was not conducted by her brother, Flim?
I hope you e-mailed a copy of this retort to Ms Flam.
“Bread and circuses”, provided by a willing and complicit media …
.
.
Lol, good stuff John A
And well done for having the stomach to read that guff, I clicked away after a few seconds when I ran across it the other day. Post your appraisal to the people conducting the Mann investigation, and demand a response.
Unbelievable!
This is what is known as “preaching to the choir”. It is an article designed lift the spirits of the “believers” whose faith may have taken quite a hit recently. I wouldn’t worry much about it. The thinking people of their readership will see it for what it is and the influence of the paper will wane further because of it.
Ms Flam is also a sex columnist, for what it is worth.
http://www.fayeflam.com/
What is CAGW? I know what AGW, but what’s the C?
[Catastrophic]
When I picked up this article I did not know who is Faye Flam. Google gave me the following summaries, “… science writer, sex columnist and author of The Score” and again, “a science reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, charts this carnal quest in “The Score: How the Quest for Sex Has Shaped the …”
By the time I had read the article, my first thought was “Flim-flam” (boom, boom).
Mann is the consummate mannipulator. Mannipulate the data, mannipulate the media. This interviewer was as carefully selected as those who interview Al Gore. He is pretending to be the victim. We know better.
Faye’s brother is Flim, I presume?
John A.
You, sir – are a hoot!
And in a time of general gloom and foreboding – your sarcasm is just the ticket.
That and some great analysis of that interview.
I’ve moved beyond the Mylanta phase and now reach for the Vasotec.
John —
Great article, but one thing you neglected to mention is Flam’s assertion that Barton was the first to criticize the HS. She’s apparently unaware of the MM papers.
Also, while it’s true that the giant graph in AIT was of CO2, Mann’s HS was, as you point out, also depicted, but misrepresented as “Dr. Thompson’s Thermometer”, and indeed put forward “as a smoking gun implicating human activity in global warming,” to use Flam’s words.
However, it’s not possible that Mann was unaware of this substitution, since on Jan 11, 2008, when Lonnie Thompson admitted in response to a question that he had noticed it right away (see CA, “Gore science ‘advisor’ says that he has ‘no responsibility”>, he also mentioned that he immediately notified Mann and that they had a good chuckle over it.
Nice job. I read the article this morning and could barely finish it. It’s difficult being lied to when you can just click on something else.
It’s another leftist paper in its death throes.
I’ve heard that it’s *always* sunny in Philadelphia! That might explain Faye’s bias toward purveyors of statistics that prove AGW is real.
John A: Your post is an excellent.
You wonder why none of Mann’s interviewers are sufficiently informed to probe his work and involvement in Cimategate. The answer seems to be rather obvious. Mann will only submit to interviews by friendly and like minded journalists. What we need is a stealth journalist or double agent to do an ambush interview.
Orchestrated at the highest level, eh? Highest level of what?? I guess he’s referring to the vast right wing conspiracy…of course as Mann’s self-destructing with every publication and interview, we took him off our agenda months ago.
I read the Flim Flam article – it was particularly gut churning. Thanks for articulating my response!
I’d say that Mann is getting this whitewash press coverage because he’s under investigation. He’s spinning the public against writing their legislators in support of the investigation. This had to have been set up by his attorney.
Thanks for that concise summary of events. You have to laugh at Mann’s version of history. It is amazing that no help was sought from statisticians but then I suppose you could’t come up with natty cut and paste data series if you consulted them.
If Mann is being investigated, should he be doing these interviews?
REPLY: He’s taking the “Blago” approach, apparently – Anthony
So the best interview Mann can get is with a part-time sex advice columnist for the dead-tree media? What next, a cameo appearance on Saturday Night Live?
Phillip Bratby (12:33:20) : edit
“If Mann is being investigated, should he be doing these interviews?”
Good question. IMHO, and I’m not a lawyer, his attorney would only be trying to spin the local (philly) populations opinion if he thought there was a good chance that a criminal prosecution would result from the investigation, though his university may just be organizing it to help preserve alumni donations. Take your pick
PaulH (12:34:41) : edit
“So the best interview Mann can get is with a part-time sex advice columnist for the dead-tree media? What next, a cameo appearance on Saturday Night Live?”
LOL good catch. Why would a sex advice columnist be assigned this story? Maybe she was the only one for sale?
In the investigative trade, this story would be termed a “plant”. It’s been published for something other than its news value; it is there to be referred to at a later date. Mark my words!
Anthony: Thanks; I had to look Blago up on Wiki (of all places). Not a recommended course of action in the UK to talk to all and sundry when being investigated.
Les Johnson (11:45:59) :
Faye Flam? Are you sure this interview was not conducted by her brother, Flim?
I hope you e-mailed a copy of this retort to Ms Flam.
Having a unique background that included working in the media for 15 years, and as a promoter of GHG verification (which ironically led to my AGW de-programming), I have made it my mission to “enlighten” writers and editors of every piece of shoddy AGW journalism I come across as a professional courtesy.
Ms. Flam will not be the last.
“REPLY: He’s taking the “Blago” approach, apparently – Anthony”
But he won’t land a shampoo deal.
Slitgh;y OT but for us Brits is ?Mylanta? and antacid brand or some kind of sedative?
Or do I misinterpret?
Kindest Regards
Ah, Mann. Ignores critics, bullies and dominates colleagues while trying to take control of his profession, sticks to interviews with a fawning media, alters the real truth and even makes things up so the big picture looks pretty, and continues to make a career out of recycling the same basic material with small changes, minor revisions, and the occasional big extravagant masterpiece. Plus if you have questions about his work, well, you are not qualified to comment as you are not in the business, and/or just not intelligent enough to understand and accept the obvious sheer brilliance of it all. Just the behavior one would expect from a big hotshot Hollywood producer.
After all, just witness his magnificent seminal work, Miami Vice.
(Yes, I am starting to wonder if somewhere inside his brain there is some sort of short-circuit making that association. Same name, so why shouldn’t there be the same power and glory?)
The [snip] are too dumb to real-lies that monopolies, duopolies and bad science lies are driving their audience away from the rags.
Advertising revenue drying up puts hacks’ backs to the wall. Mass unemployment follows.
I suppose they were worse off during Stalinism as they had a blindfold on and had to hang around with lawyers also. (Sorry FB and Roger – exceptions prove the rule)
What amazes me , apart from Mann’s mendacity and Ms Flam’s willingness to swallow it , are some of the comments following the interview . While the comments (I didn’t read them all) seemed to be somewhat balanced , the vitriol coming from the warmists never ceases . When will people who obviously have no idea what they’re talking about stop accusing those who disagree with them of ignorance ? Why do people, whose idea of a rebuttal is to shout down – or shut down – opposing opinions , turn around and accuse their opponents of the same thing , especially when someone calmly points out a glaring flaw in their argument ? How much longer will it be before reasonable people get sick of the whole thing ?
One of the real solid results of the Internet revolution is now we are no longer in thrall to bad journalism but can actually strike back by highlighting it for the world to see.
Left-wing, right wing, liberal, conservative or whatever, bad journalism is a menace to a free society.
Re: manfredkintop (Jan 10 12:46),
Thank you so much.
Cathy (12:12:57) : “I’ve moved beyond the Mylanta™ phase and now reach for the Vasotec™.”
Me, I go right for the Dramamine™ but keep my plastic wastebasket handy.
One bright spot, John:
“There is still much debate over how big a role human activity plays in the current warming trend, and how the future will be affected. ”
At least one of the scientifically illiterate and hopelessly biased journalists has finally admitted the most important point: that the science just ain’t settled. She’s way ahead of a lot of other journalists, even though she still has a lot to learn.
It is actually comical to me to watch these folks scurry around trying to put the spin on such a clear proof of bad science (to be kind). No matter how hard the MSM tries, they will never sweep this under the rug. It’s just too big and important. Even though Climategate, BY ITSELF, doesn’t disprove the AGW hypothesis, it definitely DOES open a big window for the world to see how much corruption has been associated with one of the most influential parts of the “science.” It also will result in broadcasting all of Steve Mc and other “skeptics” to thousands more people who would not have paid any attention, if it were not for Climategate. The AGW alarmists are SCREWED, IMHO!
[snip – sorry, off color]
Correction. I meant “Hung by a Hockey Stick”
Apologies for typo.
Sorry moderator just couldn’t resist. Thanks for deleting.
Could it be that Flam was selected for this soft fluff piece, because “sex” sells and therefore it will have more people read it?
It is amazing that Mann is trying to downplay the importance that the hockey stick holds for the whole AGW hypothesis. It forms one of the main pillars of support. But to now say something like “hockey stick is not widely seen as a smoking gun implicating human activity in global warming.”
Why, it would be as if the Pope were to suddenly say that the resurection is not widely seen as the main platform of Christianity. (However, I could imagine the dopey Arch Bishop of Canterbury saying something like that.)
The other issue I did’nt spot here is “hide the decline” Am I correct in saying that this is where the proxy data, did not show the modern increase, so the modern temperature date was included instead. Also does the same apply to the later spaghetti graph?
John A – please can you provide a reference for where Wegman says this?:
“Method Wrong + Answer Correct = Bad Science.”
I searched the .pdf you linked for “method” and did not find it.
BBC Radio 2 – Michael Ball presents his Sunday Brunch. Eve Pollard takes a look at the papers. 17 minutes in, global warming gets a mention………..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00ps61x
To be fair, he was talking only of the hacking, not of the critiques. And I suspect he may have inside knowledge of how the hacking investigation is proceeding. I don’t think that he and many other key warmists would be voicing this suspicion of an outside hack unless they had something to go on, or they’d look foolishly “paranoid” down the road. I think China had the means and the motive to do such a hack, and that in addition there is a bit of circumstantial evidence pointing in that direction.
I hope the author, John A, posts this piece in the comments section.
Computer Models
“Modellers have an inbuilt bias towards forced climate change because the causes and effect are clear.”
“General circulation modelling of Holocene climate variability”,
by Gavin Schmidt, Drew Shindell, Ron Miller, Michael Mann and David Rind,
published in Quaternary Science Review in 2004.)
http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/shared/articles/Schmidtetal-QSR04.pdf
I kept reading the journalist’s name as “Flim Flam”. Perhaps my brain just connects the definition with Mann.
To see how Mann thinks about MM and the Wegman committee this
http://assassinationscience.com/climategate/
is an absolutely indispensable resource. It’s the best thing I’ve seen published for the uninitiated, and needs to be cited more widely.
Yes she has a sex column but she also does science writing. This is from UCSC’s science writing program website.
Faye Flam (’88) B.S., geophysics, Caltech; internships: The Economist (London), Science News; jobs: news office, National Institute of Standards and Technology; Washington, D.C., bureau chief, ChemWeek; staff writer, Science; now science writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Author of The Score: How the Quest for Sex Has Shaped the Modern Man (Penguin, 2008).
Analogy: Suppose there’d been a “Kinseygate” in the 50s that had exposed his team’s intramural shenanigans. It wouldn’t have disproved the basics of his science (i.e., that there are a lot more weirdos out there than are letting on to it, including you, one way or another, hypocrite lecteur), but it would have cast considerable doubt on his objectivity and thus on the reliability of his statistics, which were considerably exaggerated due to (very) poor science (selection bias).
Excellant post John A.
Are you a demolition contractor?
Mann appears to be more politician than scientist. However it is his “science” that needs to be attacked not his post rationalisation and duplicity.
The climategate emails demonstrated that a group of unprofessional scientists took over the core of the IPPC.
It does not matter what Mann or any of them say they are condemned by their own words and deeds.
Journalism majors are usually in the back of the class with the education majors. Why did you expect she would know what she was talking about?
Michael Mann’s Mann-erisms? Funny, but has anybody filed a class-action suit against this [alleged ~dbs] criminal yet? The scientific community’s integrity has been severely damaged by this clown. The fact that no individual or group within the community has seen fit to file a lawsuit against Michael Mann and his colleagues speaks volume about their commitment to integrity, in my opinion. Scientific journals like Nature should be up in arms. Where is the outrage?
Now that climate science’s reputation has been driven into the gutter by a handful of miscreants, I find it hard to trust biologists, physicists, astronomers, chemists, archaeologists, etc. All right, I’m exaggerating a little but if integrity actually meant something in society as it once did, Mr. Mann would be minding his Mann-erisms and questioning his Mann-hood behind bars by now.
Oohh, I’ve just noticed “The Matrix” code behind Mann. I know this photo has been featured here before; perhaps I noticed it subliminally: http://diggingintheclay.blogspot.com/2009/11/gistemp-reloaded.html
I’m sick of this antics and I’m sure a lot of dedicated scientists are too. Trouble is those very same scientists are partly to blame for Mann’s continual freedom to say what he likes. It’s time all dedicated scientists to come out as one voice and drown Mann out of the scientific debate. It’s not only the right thing to do, it’s their duty to do so to rid of scientists who claim to be telling the truth when it has been proven scientifically over and over again that he is not, and is in fact committing fraud. Isn’t it time for the proper authorities to have Mann charged with fraud?
Did anybody else notice the walkback?
Don’t think so. He fought tooth-and-nail for over a decade precisely because it was such a centerpiece of AR3. I think we can expect a lot more walking back like this. Nothing involved in Climategate was really important. Which raises the obvious question: if none of these things are that important, why are they featured so prominently?
She should change her first name to “Flim” and then switch to the cuisine beat at the paper.
Then we’d have Flim Flam writing about “puff” pastry.
Go to wikipedia, search for “Faye Flam”. she appears as a source a hundred times. Wikipedia is not a valid source. Wikipedia bigwhigs like Connolley require citation of sources. Once Mann’s Mannerisms are printed on dead trees, Connolley can cite as source Faye Flam and it becomes valid. A smart way to get your content into the wikipedia.
I think the journalist’s name is actually Faye Flan, ‘cuz that piece was pure baking.
Mostly unrelated:
So, when I read scientific papers, they almost always reference one of Mann’s papers for their paleoclimate data. A whole lot of them reference Mann’s original HS paper, etc. What is to think of all of the mountains of work that has been built off of all of Mann’s now-debunked work? Do we have to cast it all aside? Or do we have to re-evaluate their conclusions?
Yikes.
Being a Southern NJ resident, I have been following the agw agenda of Faye Flam for a while in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
In this latest story by her involving the embattled Michael Mann, there is not a single mention of McIntyre or McKitrick and their work which has exposed his Hockey Stick for the fraud that it is.
Accordingly, I have a question:
Is there one convenient location listing the names of the ‘gatekeepers’ like Faye Flam in the legacy media, their ‘go-to’ click of agw scientists like Michael Mann feeding at the trough of public grant money, and all those reaping fortunes on this fraud like Maurice Strong and Al Gore? This list would be handy when the reformation of journalism and science gets into high gear and these peddlers of doom are exposed and receive the public ridicule they richly deserve.
This one-sided, vacuous issue of CO2 caused agw (the flea on the elephant’s ass) will eventually be replaced with ALL the true contributors to climate change including, but not limited to, planetary mechanics, cyclical solar influences, cyclical lunar influences, Milankovich cycles, ocean circulations, galactic cosmic rays, underwater volcanism, magnetic reversals (the elephant in the room). We are all responsible to make this so.
I agree with the others that probably this interviewer was carefully chosen to give him sympathetic and favorable coverage; and that he would refuse to submit to skeptical or hostile questionning.
mikelorrey (12:41:16) :
“LOL good catch. Why would a sex advice columnist be assigned this story? Maybe she was the only one for sale?”
Maybe because mike ‘The Mann’ always gets wood on camera?…
This is an interesting thread, with its illustration of the depth of angst stemming from Michael Mann’s biased selection and then manipulation of data to reinforce his apparent world view on the negative environmental impact of the Western World. What seems to be to be so serious about this apparent bending of the scientific method by Mann and others in the publication of the “hockey stick” time-temperature diagram is the gargantuan political momentum it has set off world wide – with this momentum now having the potential to materially degrade our standard of living.
Because of the potentially very serious nature of this momentum, a listing of the specific scientific transgressions perpetrated by Mann, would help us latecomers now querying the role of anthropogenic CO2 as a potent GHG driving AGW (and as an ocean “acidifier”, although its role as such must be negligible). I feel that we need to quantify the basis of our criticisms of Mann’s apaprent misuse of the science so that we can present them robustly in public discussion and debate.
Incidentally, I have a background in geochemical mass transfer modelling and its supporting thermodynamics, and this background has helped my transition into a healthy sceptic of AGW.
“Dr. Bob (14:35:41) :
[…]
What is to think of all of the mountains of work that has been built off of all of Mann’s now-debunked work? Do we have to cast it all aside? Or do we have to re-evaluate their conclusions?”
Yes. Just like when Hansen cites himself. They build their ivory tower up and it all crashes down when you remove the thing at the bottom.
It would be nice to have a website with a dependency graph, that would make the cleaning up more efficient as soon as a “seminal” paper is debunked.
The interview with Dr, Mann is not surprising because the media always cover for their favorites. Global warming has given them something write and broadcast about without doing any homework. They have taken the easy way by interviewing the “pundants” who tell them what they want to hear and by allowing alamists statements to go unchallanged.
My concern is not this incident in the wake of many other incidents where a journalist throws softballs in an interview, but the notion that is growing among the public that the scientific community can no longer be trusted to tell the truth. If we end up being marginalized or discredited by the media on the climate issue, then the media will be able to control who is to be believed about climate science. They already have their favorites. The number of degrees or papers published won’t stop them from tauting the scientists they hope to promote. The only consensus the media need is their agenda. When scientists speak with one voice, even in doubt or in debate, no one in the media can discredit their positions, However, science speaks less and less with one voice when research dollars are at stake. Too many scientists seek an advantage by attempting to discredit those who differ with them and thereby destroying sciencific integrity. They sound more like a bunch of politicians. Then the media’s science agenda becomes truth because science has lost its truth-telling.
We need this blog and others in the blogosphere to enable us to defend and discredit any efforts to undermine sciencific inegrity and to provide a forum to discuss and to debate what ideas we diagree on in climate science. We can also hope that some media outlets will provide scientists with a vehicle to express their view of truth. We need to continue to remind the media that the behaviors of CRU and IPCC group of scientists were not representative of rhe majority most scientists and what they did violated the tenants of sciencific honesty and cooperation. The group of scientist under CRU and IPCC were very unethical and sought individual power over the truth about the climate.
Here’s a real hockey stick.
We can expect the influence of CO2, in the form of carbon taxes, carbon credits, carbon offsets, biofuel subsidies, wind farm subsidies, drilling restrictions, etc., to ensure a continued upward trajectory.
The only thing funnier than Mann’s swan song is this:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1242011/DAVID-ROSE-The-mini-ice-age-starts-here.html
MSM is flipping back to the iceage, seamlessly.
The Manniac and his band of manniacs are so full of it.
Theya re not used to having *their* integrity quesitoned?
When they spend so much time condemning others?
What a maroon.
What an utter, blithering, poser of a maroon.
Speaking of the current state of the climate, a picture is worth a thousand words, or in this case, a thousand models:
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/New%20Image.GIF
While the Climate Hijack backpeddles and stutters, Mother Nature is busy leaving footprints up our backside. An obviously icy footprint.
“”The term trick, said Mann, described a technique he used to display his data.””
Yes, ‘trick’ meant ‘technique.’
Mann used a technique to “hide the decline.” You must be proud to have gotten to the bottom of that one, Faye.
Keep running mann!! karma is not far behind and it’s gaining.
Anthony have you saeen this interview with Aynsley Kellow. He’s professor and head of the School of Government at the University of Tasmania. Aynsley was also involved in the United Nations IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change fourth report as one of their expert reviewers. It is quite damning of Michael Mann and Schmidt. The trabscript can be viewed at
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/counterpoint/stories/2009/2757619.htm
This was on ABC which like the BBC is wedded to AGW.
cheers Gerard
slow to follow (13:18:38) :
Oh, I can find that. Umm. Not so easy. It looks like there are multiple versions of the report and that line isn’t in the versions on the web.
In particular, that quote appears in http://climateaudit.org/2007/11/06/the-wegman-and-north-reports-for-newbies/ with a reference to http://climateaudit.files.wordpress.com/2007/11/07142006_wegman_report.pdf but it’s not there.
It is at the top of page 3 of http://www.amstat-online.org/sections/envr/ssenews/ENVR_9_1.pdf (the top two lines should be reversed).
Aha – it looks like the comment was part of testimony. Look at http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=109_house_hearings&docid=f:31362.wais
I believe the calls for “science” to “speak with one voice” are a mistake. Science speaking with one voice on alleged CAGW was a mistake. Science must be open to constant experimentation and theorizing including when previously held beliefs are challenged and proven to be incomplete or incorrect.
“DirkH: Yes. Just like when Hansen cites himself. They build their ivory tower up and it all crashes down when you remove the thing at the bottom.
It would be nice to have a website with a dependency graph, that would make the cleaning up more efficient as soon as a “seminal” paper is debunked.”
–
Ohh, that sounds like a good project for a *nix script programmer. You could feed it PDFs and it could pull out the date that the paper was published and then catalog all of the references at the end. I bet some really embarrassing graphics could be generated that show the circular process of climate science peer review. Like you mentioned about Hansen citing himself, etc. That’d be a really neat little project!
“…I’m willing to bet this is Mann misrepresenting what actually happened with a journalist too lazy to check facts.”
This is too kind. Me, I’m willing to bet this is Mann misrepresenting what actually happened with a journalist whom he knows to be ‘on message.’
A new posting dated 1/10/2010 written response about climategate written by John P. Costella a scientist regarding the episode “Why Climategate is so distressing to scientists”……..very interesting…..John….
http://assassinationscience.com/climategate/cg.pdf
Curious comment on the article from a whistleblower law firm:
http://i47.tinypic.com/2dlqgz8.jpg
Ric Werne: Thanks for filling in the gaps. I was writing the thing late last night and didn’t get all of the references.
“There is still much debate over how big a role human activity plays in the current warming trend”
Apparently, that figure is 100% if you take into consideration the human manipulation of the data. What warming trend?
1- Very fawning interview with Micheal Mann. That Micheal Mann has not yet been put under proper journalistic scrutiny in the seven weeks since the climategate story broke out is an embarrassment to the entire American news media.
2- It is worth noting that Mann recently complained to Chris Mooney of not receiving much help from the larger scientific community since the climategate story broke out. It seems not many of his collagues, apart from the usual suspects at Real Climate, has come out in his support:
3- Great post by John A. Thanks. I quite like the new photoshop that came with the post. A hurricane instead of tree rings. The defining new image of Micheal Mann.
Her brother, Flim, must have been the editor because they certainly didn’ t bother with fact checking!
Mr. Watts, excellent post!
If 60 Minutes did half as good a job exposing Mann’s schtick, global baloney would be just a melting snowman in the Sun.
But the baloney reaches high and deep.
Who controls the media — the owners that’s what.
Corrupt practices are neither Liberal nor Conservative.
Independent minded people who ask questions and don’t accept BS are the first to see through it.
Now is the time to educate the rest — people who are willing to look at the evidence — put the peddle to the metal…
As a geologist, every time I see that picture of Mann surrounded by his tree rings I roll my eyes and shake my head. No way do I believe you can make a hockey stick from tree rings. No way.
And speaking of support for a fellow scientist, the day after it was announced that there was a breakin at the Hadley CRU, I sent a hand-written letter to Mann saying, in part, that his career was over–he should find someplace to flip burgers or clean lavatories. And I believe my letter is still correct because of the damage he has done to science in general. Throw the bum out.
URL below for an article by Lawrence Soloman in the National Post discussing a research paper by University of Waterloo professor Qin-bin Lu. Lu says global warming was caused by CFC but now the warming is over and we’re going to cool. Trouble is he base his research on temperature data frm CRU.
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2010/01/09/the-ozone-hole-did-it.aspx
The image was by Anthony, not me. I’m too busy being cynical about the media.
REPLY: Yes, I created it for this post where he fancies himself to be a hurricane frequency expert: Mann hockey-sticks hurricanes: Hurricanes in the Atlantic are more frequent than at any time in the last 1,000 years – Anthony
Faye Flam
Michael Mann,
Dim damn
Total sham.
Hockey Stick
Divergence Trick
Too slick
What a Dick.
Spencer Weart wrote a book “The discovery of global warming” in 2003 (revised and updated edition, 2008).
Now we need a book “The invention of global warming” hopefully by Dr. Weart. Or he can revise his book again with the title of “The “Discovery” of global warming.”
Mann got the word on ClimateGate on Friday evening?
Had he been keeping an eye on WUWT he would have known by Thursday evening at the latest. I remember that evening well. It was one of the most fun evenings of a long and event filled life.
Can we apply Mann’s hockey stick formula to the deposits in my bank account? Off topic, but just sayin’, it would be nice…
Okay, who got at the picture of Mann at the top? His tree rings (well, the ones he borrowed) seem to have got a little “mixed up in the data”
My one regret over the past couple of years is that we should have all kept a copy of legitimate posts we made on Real Climate (sic) only to have the moderator in chief delete them. I have often thought the site to be the most censored in the whole debate (though the BBC and Guardian newspaper run a close second!).
The moderators on the site took on the dictator role with relish and I find it refreshing that the “delete” is not used with the same relish on the critical sites. I would love to see what so got under their skin!
So . . the AGW crowd changed from Global Warming to climate change because the facts didn’t fit too well with the warming thing . . .
Now we are changing our attack from AGW to Catastrophic AGW . . .
Come on people, have we become so insecure we have to build parachutes “just in case” ?
Great exposé! Well said.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
There is still something bothering me.
Briffa used tree cores, cylindrical samples cut out of the tree trunk, with coring done so they do not kill the tree. Why is Mann having himself pictured with cross-sectional slabs of trunks? Were they laying around in storage somewhere? Did he stop at a lumber mill and have them cut off a few for props?
kadaka (22:17:40) :
It’s not that easy to use a coring tool to hit the center of the tree. Ordinarily one doesn’t need to, but it is nice to be able to report how old the tree is. If the tree is being logged, and if there’s space, having a slab from the tree is nice, as you’re guaranteed to have the first tree ring. The full cross section shows stress issues, fire and bug attacks, and make much better props than a core.
Even sites about corers have photos of slabs!
http://web.utk.edu/~grissino/archtools.htm
Of course Mann assumes that Climategate was an orchestrated attack on himself. He has perpetrators knowledge that such things are done …
As Mann was sitting in his chair,
He knew the legs just weren’t there;
Nor seat nor back, but still he sat,
Ignoring little things like that.
Adaptation of original nonsense poem by Prof. William Hughes Mearns.
thethinkingman (21:41:26)
Give it up.
{The hardest part for him, he said, is having his integrity questioned. Scientists, he said, are “not trained to deal with these kinds of attacks.”}
Poor, poor Mikey, if only you had a better appreciation for history other than constantly trying to rewrite it.
‘it’s not easy bein’ green’ is it?
That line is now nearly 40 years old.
Phillip Bratby (12:33:20) :
If Mann is being investigated, should he be doing these interviews?
REPLY: He’s taking the “Blago” approach, apparently – Anthony
I think most Illinoisians not on the Chicago payroll (ie, those funding the Chicago payroll) are starting to wish they had “Blago” back.
Excellent article! The mainstream media is, in the UK at least, beginning to show some cracks in its solid adherance to CAGW, including an interviewer recently grilling the CEO of the Met Office over its inability to forecast this snowy Dec-Jan until it was upon us, when commercial forecasters got it right months ago. As an aside, it is interesting to note that the CEO of the UK Met office is a former UK head of the WWF!
Keep up the good work, the truth will ultimately be recognised by a majority of citizens. Sadly, mainstream political parties here are still joined at the hip with warmist loonies; I guess the chance to invent ‘green’ taxes which will disappear into the black hole that the UK economy has become is too good for them to want to recognise truth and sanity.
JohnA, great post. Instead of reaching for the Mylanta, maybe you need some of that calcium carbonate from the echinoderms. Sorry, Anthony. Lol!
Flim Flam
http://blowerwhistle.com
A whistleblower is a person who raises a concern about wrong doing occurring in an organization or body of people
Sharon (12:25:15) :
I’ve heard that it’s *always* sunny in Philadelphia! That might explain Faye’s bias toward purveyors of statistics that prove AGW is real.
She must have had a hard time denying the snowstorm in mid October.
“Early (Earliest) Snow – October 15-16, 2009
A very heavy and wet snow fell across Central Pennsylvania during the daytime on Thursday the 15th and all night into Friday the 16th of October, 2009.
This storm was noteworthy for two reasons:
1) This storm made the earliest measurable snow of any winter season on record in many places.
2) This storm produced a large amount of damage to trees (which also downed power and telephone lines) across much of the northern mountains and even down into State College.”
Andy (13:40:14) :
“Journalism majors are usually in the back of the class with the education majors. Why did you expect she would know what she was talking about?”
According to another commentator she has these credentials:
“Faye Flam (’88) B.S., geophysics, Caltech”
That means she is either very lazy or an outright liar. Either way she should be called on it. I for one am getting sick of being fed lies by the MSM, especially lies designed to strip my wealth from me and give it to billionaires, and that is what CAGW is all about.
thethinkingman (21:41:26) :
“So . . the AGW crowd changed from Global Warming to climate change because the facts didn’t fit too well with the warming thing . . .
Now we are changing our attack from AGW to Catastrophic AGW . . .
Come on people, have we become so insecure we have to build parachutes “just in case” ?”
Finally some one has noticed.
This is an example of what I refer to as rope ladders. These are devices which are employed to give the fraudulent scientists an escape root. Much the same way as concentrating on temperature has done. If we destroy the greenhouse gas theory and show conclusively that CO2 does not trap heat, which of course it does not, then we remove all escape routes and all those who have helped AGW fraud along the way will be caught in the headlights, pants down.
These people do not deserve an escape route, they have shown themselves to be far too dangerous. The time has come to come clean about CO2 and accept that it does not trap heat. Once we take this step we will finally be able to draw a line under AGW fraud.
Blago Shampoo deal? “I’m gonna wash that Mann right out of my hair?”
This is one of those cases where if they’d just kept everything open and aboveboard the entire time… it would not even be an issue, and would have never gotten this far.
Where is my post?
[Reply: You just posted it one minute ago. It’ been approved now. ~dbs, mod.]
Anthony,
Send a copy of this post to her and especially her editor and point out that corrections to the article are required. It’s not much, but enough of these things will put her competence and credibility in doubt with the boss. That’s the only way to get better reporting.
What’s with the name? Faye Flam reminds me of names like Scoop McCoy from the early movies.
This Flim, I mean Faye Flam is just like mann. She had her answers before she did the math because they were “correct”.
Wrong Wrong + Answer “Correct” = Bad Journalism.
Maybe someone should photoshop a tin foil hat onto the picture of Mann at the top. 😉
Cuz it’s a high level conspiracy. Maybe even aliens involved!
Interesting article from 2007:
http://www.phillymag.com/articles/science_al_gore_is_a_greenhouse_gasbag/
Eric @ 07:28:16
I wonder if Mann uses an Anti Radiation Safety Enhancing Wideband Insulating Phone Extender for the same reason..
http://blort.meepzorp.com/fenestration/arsewipe.jpg
Eric @ 07:28:16
Or maybe Mann has yet to be abducted by aliens and needs to join Non-Abductees Anonymous
When Michael was very young, his mother said to him, “Michael, if you keep on telling lies like that, you will grow up to be a climate scientist!”
Actually, we are just too naive. We believe that people will detect Mann’s evasions and diversions. His approach has served him well so far, he is very unlikely to stop now.
Mann is a doofus only interested in the psychology of the MSM. Jones doesn’t know what is going on anymore and doesn’t understand the math. Hansen is only a political figure now. I actually believe that Gavin may be smart. Which makes me think that he knows the truth. Seeing RC though, makes me doubt that he would ever roll over.
Politicians cost lives (05:36:01)
The time has come to come clean about CO2 and accept that it does not trap heat
You have touched an interesting issue: Indeed CO2 it is endothermic (sucks in heat) only when reacting, as when forming a carbonate, and this means that IT TRAPS HEAT WHEN “SEQUESTERED”!!! (precisely what money’s counterfeiters want: to print money out of nothing, paying carbon credits for a penny and selling them for a million to carbon polluters, a variation of the “plastic money” scheme-making money without going to jail-)
Well, now the whole damned world knows what kind of crap we suffer in the Delaware Valley in lieu of a legitimate big-city newspaper. The Philadelphia Inquirer and its tabloid North Broad Street stablemate, The Philadelphia Daily News, have been spiking the Climategate story with stakhanovite enthusiasm from the moment it broke in November.
Big suppressio veri, suggestio falsi in Center City.
Not at all surprisingly, the reader responses on the papers’ Web site – Philly.com – have been overwhelmingly condemnatory of Ms. Flam’s Mann-slurping article and of these rags’ general editorial denial of the AGW fraud in general.
You’d think these ex-journalism school jerkwads could buy a clue, couldn’t you?
JonesII (08:44:12) :
There’s that ladder I was talking about.
NO SUBSTANCE CAN TRAP HEAT.
On another thread, R. Courtney has been arguing for the need to propose adaptation measures as a means to let politicians back away from AGW gracefully. But it looks to me that the theory in this paper would do a better job of getting them off the hook.
Oops–I indented the last paragraph instead of de-indenting it.
Since RC got a heads-up on these e-mails a few days earlier than our side, Mann might have been expected to have had even earlier warning.
Looking at this from a different perspective, it appears that Dr. Mann is following in the illustrious footsteps of Major Hubert-Joseph Henry (the French Intelligence officer who manufactured evidence to frame Captain Dreyfus), Senator Christopher Dodd, Sr. (caught stealing campaign funds for personal use), Michael Bellesiles (who doctored many of the sources in his book, Arming America, so he could claim that guns were a rarity along the US frontier), Louise Woodward (an au pair accused of slamming her young charge against the side of his crib, causing serious head injuries), and of course O. J. Simpson.
What all these characters have in common is that none of them will ever admit to any wrongdoing. The tactic seems to be to keep fencing against your opponents until they are worn out or lose interest. Working in their own defense, these people can perform feats that probably few of us could match (both Dodd and Woodward gave spell-binding performances, one in the US Senate chambers, the other on the witness stand). Now, Michael Mann appears intent on demonstrating that he is quite up to the high standards of his predecessors.
Unfortunately, I haven’t come up with a good name for this particular species of humankind (and since I don’t feel like sitting on this comment until I think of one, I’ve decided not to try any longer). I did think of Artists of Deceit and Artists of Disimulation, but these strike me as too broad. If anyone else has a better idea, I’d be interest to hear it.
MMGW now stands for “Mann Made Global Warming”
This dogged denial is a key characteristic of narcissism, often along with a certain charisma. These people are 150% invested in a fictional script about their wonderful selves as inherently incapable of any flaw,
A whistleblower is a person who raises a concern about wrong doing occurring in an organization or body of people
http://blowerwhistle.com/whistleblowers-3.html
http://a-whistle-blower-policy.blogspot.com
http://whistleblowerlaws.wordpress.com