NOTE: in conjunction with this essay, may I suggest that readers also visit Climate Audit and read Steve McIntyre’s careful evisceration of the “copygate issue”. – Anthony
Guest post by Thomas Fuller
The double handful of climate hysteria weblogs have tailed off in both output and popularity since the events of Climategate and Copenhagen. The Joe Romms, Michael Tobises, Tim Lamberts, the Desmog Blogs, Deep Climates and William Connellys of the world have been largely reduced to recycling whining points and venting splenetically against the sad fact that the world is turning away from their point of view.
This is an extremely positive happenstance for those of us Lukewarmers who believe that climate change does need to be addressed, as the alarmists continually turn people into skeptics with their outrageous and unscientific claims and their rigid insistence on conformity to the religious truth. It probably doesn’t bother many skeptics, either.
But just when you thought it was safe to go into the water, the useful idiots of climate change have been reinforced by one-shot attacks on specific skeptics.
The mudslinging trio of Mashey, Angliss and Prall have taken the same game plan and used it to orchestrate pseudo-scientific attacks on figures from the anti-hysteria League of Sanity.
Prall managed to corral the late Stephen Schneider into putting his name on a ludicrously poor explication of how skeptics don’t have as many publications as those siding with James Hansen. The paper is, to be charitable, not destined for posterity, being full of the shoddiest work on data collection, analysis and presentation–so bad that Spencer Weart, author of The History of Global Warming, dismissed it as unpublishable on the day it was released.
Angliss went after Andrew Montford, author of The Hockey Stick Illusion, seeking to convince the world not to read the book because he could mathematically prove that the Climategate emails were not a statistically significant percentage of the emails on CRU’s servers. And I’m not making that up. He took his own advice, sadly, not bothering to read Montford’s book or the Climategate emails, and his work shows the lack of scholarship.
And we’ve all read recently about Mashey’s attack on Edward Wegman, accusing him of plagiarism in a 250 page document that is straight out of the movie Conspiracy Theory, with color-coded themes and memes, and an outrageous accusation that Steve McIntyre was recruited, trained and funded by the George Marshall Institute–something I hope Mashey can back up.
It’s very much as if these lone cowboys decided that the hysteria blogs needed some support.
Something like a citizen scientist, as though they wanted to become the new anti-McIntyre, the anti-Montford, the anti-Wegman, by pulling down the false idols.
Sadly, they didn’t do what McIntyre did. They didn’t do what Montford did. They didn’t do what Wegman did.
They didn’t start with the data. Mashey started with his conspiracy theory, detailed in another document titled (and I’m not making this up), “Crescendo to Climategate Cacophony’. He had the theory sewn up, so he didn’t need any data.
Angliss rejected the data, refusing to read the book he criticized or the emails that prompted the book.
Prall got the data all wrong, misspelling names, not counting publications correctly, searching only in English, using Google Scholar instead of an academic database.
But, although they tried to make their work look sciency, it is not and never was intended to be science.
They are malicious attacks on those they oppose, taking up the cudgel for the deflating weblogs they used to comment on, trying to rekindle the flame that Climategate and Copenhagen extinguished.
They failed.
Thomas Fuller http://www.redbubble.com/people/hfuller
Thomas Fuller href=”http://www.redbubble.com/people/hfuller
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Excellent post. Thank you.
Tom, the only mention of Montford in the post you link to is a quote from Gavin Schmidt, and there are no (zero) mentions of “The Hockey Stick Illusion.” The only mentions of Montford outside the Schmidt quote are in the comments, one of which references the Schmidt quote and two of which take you to task for relying too much on Montford’s book. There aren’t any mentions of HSI in the comments anywhere. And all of this is verifiable with a simple “find text” search in any browser.
Furthermore, the post that contains the statistical analysis you want is not the one you link to (which is a criticism of you, Mosher, McIntyre, et al), but rather this one, a point I’ve made to you at least twice in the last few days. However, it also fails to mention Montford in either the post or the comments (except for a pingback) and there are no mentions of HSI either, again verifiable with a “find text” in your browser of choice.
REPLY: Actually that’s my editing error, not Tom’s. I’ll fix it. Thank you for bringing it to my attention. – Anthony
A small correction about the Hockey Stick Illusion. You wrote “Angliss rejected the data, refusing to read the book he criticized or the emails that prompted the book.” But the emails didn’t prompt the book; the (majority of the) book was written before the emails surfaced. Despite the book’s subtitle (“Climategate and the corruption of science”), HSI contains only a brief discussion of the emails added very late in the game.
Having just survived a cardiac problem, the last thing I need is a belly laugh at the expense of the trio – les -savants – idotique, so I’ll snigger in a low, heart friendly manner.
Well done Tom.
Get better soon Louis.
Nice work Tom. Those guys remind me of the Spruce Goose, if evidence were pistons.. 😉
After reading all this stuff now for far to long. Steve McIntyre’s being the best of the lot. It is simple and straight forward. Get it before a judge and see if plagiarism can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. I think it should be at the complaints expense if not found guilty however.
Just ignore them, Tom, just ignore them. I’m guessing they’ve gotten more press due to your posts at WUWT than all the other publicity they’ve had combined . . .
Can someone please help Steve McIntyre with his style sheets if possible? I prefer to read off dead trees (bristlecones?) because of my myopia. It’s a bit of a pain to paste into Word. Thanks.
Hmmmm … now let’s see … about 7 hours ago, I had posted the following at CA in Steve McIntyre’s Copygate thread:
I drop in here for a nightcap, and what do I find as the top post?!
Plagiarism! Plagiarism!
/Masheymode off
But while I’m here and since we’re speaking of flailing … TNR gives Bill McKibben airtime for what might be called a “companion” piece to Mann’s latest whine. It’s yet another sneer ‘n smear ‘n scare article. Dated Oct. 6, it’s interesting to see how he “revisionizes” 350.org’s involvement with 10:10:
http://www.tnr.com/print/article/environment-energy/magazine/78208/gop-global-warming-denial-insanity
But, on the brighter (righter?!) side … Monday’s Washington Times had an editorial that begins:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/oct/11/the-climate-crackup/
Tom:
You neglect to mention the fact the that Wegman report was neither 1) independent nor 2) peer-reviewed, two claims which were prominently paraded in both the Wegman report and the Congressional testimony. The obvious plagiarism (which Steve M. doesn’t deny, by the way) is evidence of poor researching and writing skills, which cast the conclusions of the whole report in some pretty bad light. The main issues:
“Indepedent”: Wegman and/or Said were fed reams of “material” by Peter Spencer, one of Barton’s staffers. See the 2007 talk by Said which was strangely pulled earlier this year from the GMU website.
“Peer-Reviewed”: The only people who *actually* “reviewed” the Wegman report were, somewhat ironically, given the analysis of social networks, part of Wegman’s social network. In a 2006 talk at Texas A&M, Dr. Gerald North paraphrases an email from one of the reviewers (Dr. Grace Wahba) thusly: “Hey they used my name and they said I was a referee. He sent it to me about 3 days beforehand and I sent him a bunch of criticisms which they didn‘t take into account.” The reviews of Dr. Noel Cressie were similarly disregarded.
Do you still “very much respect” the Wegman report Tom?
I agree Tom, this is all Epic Fail. I can’t for the life of me work out the reasoning for why people are so apparently impressed with this latest ‘report’ of Masheys. Where is the content?? It all just has to be a game. Those black helicopters… OMG- you can SEE the STRINGS…
I think I’ve gone off potatoes.
Brian–gee, I’m sorry if I got it wrong about The Hockey Stick Illusion. Hmm, was there maybe another book about Climategate that you trashed without reading it? Maybe that was the source of my confusion… My sincere apologies.
Jose: Yes.
As one still with one foot (I hope) in the outside world, I’d just remark that these recent debates are beginning to look very bizarre and very childish. Games of
and
should stay in the school playground where they belong.
Mashey’s extraordinary piece of conspiracy and plagiarism nonsense has probably put the seal on any outside observer thinking that all participants (on all sides) are losing their perspective and possibly their sanity. Their response will be Shakespearean ‘A plague on both their houses’
I strongly suggest that we all take the good advice offered by Eric Andersen above and stop feeding the trolls. Let them wander off to the Planet Bizarre and mutter incoherently to themselves. No need for us to join them there.
(For the pedants:
The quote is from Romeo And Juliet Act 3, scene 1, 90–92. Attributed to the character Mercutio as he lay dying. The play was by William Shakespeare, an English playwright of Tudor times, whose exact identity has sometimes been disputed.
The expression ‘to rearrange deckchairs….’ is in common British usage and nobody claims prior authorship
No animals were harmed in the preparation of this piece. But I did stroke Benjie, our Dachsund.
The opinion above is all my own work and AFAIK none of the striking phrases used have been written by me elsewhere.
Happy now, pedants?)
Now thar Anthony has posted a link to a site for the purchase of the Hockey Stick Illusion, critics of the book, who come to this site, can no longer claim that they did not read it, because they could not find it in their local book shop.
As sales of the book have risen, in a somewhat Hockey Stick Graph sort of way, recently, it is going to become more difficult to criticise the book, without having read it, and get away with it.
I look forward to reading a proper criticism of the book, by a global warmist, technical point, by technical point, proving that Montford has his assessment wrong, that he has misread the e mails, his sequence of events is wrong etc. Any scientist who believes in AGW should be able to do this, especially if they are close to the Hockey Team. Thnk of the prestige awaiting you. You would probablybe rewarded with grant funding aswell. How about it Brian?
AlanG says:
October 12, 2010 at 11:20 pm
Can someone please help Steve McIntyre with his style sheets if possible? I prefer to read off dead trees (bristlecones?) because of my myopia. It’s a bit of a pain to paste into Word. Thanks.
==========
Alan, when you paste into Word, try using “Paste special” then choose either “Formatted Text (RTF)” or “Unformatted Text” .
However, if you’re ever in a tree-preserving mood, you can increase the size of the font in (most) web-browsers by holding down the Ctrl key and rolling forward your mouse’s scroller.
Brian is at it again
“Mosher also said that we know enough context to prove that there was a widespread breakdown in scientific ethics among climate researchers. In addition, Mosher claims that both he and his co-author Tom Fuller feel that the emails revealed nothing that alters the conclusions of climate disruption research to date”
FALSE AND A LIE. Interested readers can see my exchange with brian in email, below. BEFORE he wrote his piece.
I think I’ve been pretty clear that the breakdown was local and confined. In fact I pretty sure Tom and wrote that in the book.
You see brian, folks here have listened to me make very specific charges.
Jones wrote a mail to mann requesting that mann delete mails.
What context makes that mail disappear.? Really, what context can you supply that could possibly make the message in that mail vanish.
Here is what we said about that mail. We said it was related to Holland’s FOIA request.
Here is what Muir Russell “found”
“There seems clear incitement to delete emails, although we have seen no evidence of any attempt to delete information in respect of a request already made. Two e-mails from Jones to Mann on 2nd February 2005 (1107454306.txt) and 29th May 2008 (in 1212063122.txt) relate to deletion:
2nd February 2005: ―The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone”.
29th May 2008: ―Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis. Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address. We will be getting Caspar to do likewise”.
So, to make my point. All I had what the mails to go by. Which you argue is not enough context. I claim the mails show that this request was related to the Holland FOIA request. got it? I claim the mail says what it says and means what it means.
Muir Russel had the benefit of interviewing Jones and Palmer. he concluded it had NOTHING to do with the Holland FOIA request.
Lets see: Everyone who has read the mails knows holland had an FOIA in play at the time. An FIOA directed at correspondence.
Hell, the damn subject of the deletion request tells you that it was related to an FOI request
From: Phil Jones
To: “Michael E. Mann”
Subject: IPCC & FOI
Date: Thu May 29 11:04:11 2008
Mike,
Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis.
Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address.
#####
So, there was enough context to draw all the conclusions that we drew. And Muir russell misses this
As I wrote to you before you did you hatchet job:
“To your specific question. For the issues that the mails raise, issues like the evolution of a bunker mentality there was enough context. Jones confirmed my reading in interviews, after the publication of the book. For issues like Jones’ sloppy work, which we documented, there was enough context and Jones confirmed our conclusion. For every issue we raised there was enough context to draw the conclusions we did. To be sure there are some additional bits and pieces were more context would have helped, but not to make the picture any better for them. For example, in mails where Jones discusses that he is going to talk to the IPCC secretariate about FOIA, we don’t know what Jones suggested to him. Context here would be important, but Osborn is dead wrong if he thinks that context around this question will make Jones look better. In every case where there was some question about what was being said, more context would be helpful. But in all those cases more context would just help readers decide between a “bad” case for the scientists and a “worse” case. There isnt any context which can make it better. If there was, they would produce it.
To put the emails in a full context in every case would require one thing. Somebody with knowledge of the mails sitting down with Jones, Briffa, Osborn and others to ask them
a few simple questions.”
Does lacking access to all these mails, limit what we can say? Only in the most trivial way. It does not limit what we can say about the handling of Holland’s FOIA. It did not limit was the ICO said. It does not limit us in saying that Jones did not tell to the truth to parliament when he said it was standard practice not to share data. The mails show us that Jones did share data with Rutherford in 2005. He shared data that he knew was covered by confidentiality agreements. And in the same mail he said that if he was compelled to share this data under FOIA that he would delete it first. Now, could I find more wrong doing if I had access to more mails? Most likely.
As a defense the appeal to missing context is laughable. Imagine the account who authorizes the issuance of millions of checks over a lifetime of service. Imagine finding one which he writes to himself embezzling a million dollars. can he appeal to the millions of good checks he wrote to divert attention from the bogus one? Nixon spoke many words that were never recorded. Those few that were recorded cost him his job. The husband’s letter to his mistress also comes to mind.
AND NOW, about your claim that, that I said it was widespread.
here is your email question to me and my response. PLease correct your web site
[Brian] 2. From what you wrote below, it appears that you feel that there’s enough context contained within the emails to answer certain limited questions and draw limited conclusions, but not necessarily draw broad conclusions. Is that a fair paraphrase of your responses below, and if not, could you clarify for me?
[steve]
The whole premise of our book was to discuss only those issues where we could draw conclusions. For example, we argued that Dr. Mann was instrumental in fostering a bunker mentality amongst his fellow scientists. This is clear from the mails. Jones confirmed part of this conclusion after the fact. What we charged in our book was a case of Noble cause corruption. Not fraud. But a slow and steady erosion of scientific ethics. A corruption of processes and personalities, that is dangerous if left unchecked. To date we see no evidence in the mails that this corruption has seriously impacted the science. As we argue, nothing in the mails changes the fundamental science. But that verdict of not guilty should not be taken as an endorsement of the actions of Jones and others. Throughout the book we were very specific in our charges. We wrote the book because we were unhappy with the sweeping generalizations. On the skeptic side charges of “fraud” were tossed out far too easily. On the CRU defenders side, the response was equally lame. “the mails are not in context, or the science is still right.” For us, the key issue was getting the EXACT charges right. What exactly did they do? The mails, as we argued cannot change the science. They are mails. What they show, is the erosion of scientific ethics and scientific practices. These faults need to be admitted. They need to be addressed and trust needs to be restored.
The short answer? The mails provide enough context to answer questions about specific incidents of misconduct. Those incidents have been largely ignored because there is no defense for what was done. Instead, they have defended themselves against vague charges.
I dont think I can be any clearer. NOT widespread. Focused on the team. A few specific incidents .
Time for you to do a retraction.
Now, if Brian read the book he would see that what he wrote on his blog is false.
he wrote that I claimed the problem was ‘widespread’. Brian’s lying, he know’s he lying.
He wrote this on the heels of doing an interview with me where I argued a very narrow case. Specific men. specific problems. And still he lies. weird. He writes a mail saying ” if I read you correctly you are saying that you can only make a limited case”
They I tell him, yes. Specific cases against specific guys. But Brian cant make hash out of that, so he lies.
Anyways, if he read the intro to the book he would find this:
“We have taken sides in this analysis. Our critics will say that we took sides before we started, and although we are confident we have approached this objectively, there may be a little truth to that.
But—and it’s a big but—although we are harsh in our criticism of the actions of this group of climate scientists and paleoclimatologists known as The Team, readers need to understand two things:
1. Our criticism does not extend to criticism of the theory of global warming. Both your authors believe global warming exists, is a problem and needs to be addressed. We just don’t think it poses a catastrophic threat to civilization. We explain in detail below.
2. Our criticism should not be construed as criticism of the majority of scientists
investigating our climate, its effects and possible changes to it in the future. We have
communicated with a large number of climate scientists, and they are not at all like The Team in either attitude or behavior.
We are tough on the scientists we call The Team, and we think deservedly so. But we want to stress from the outset that we do not for one minute believe there is any evidence of a long-term conspiracy to defraud the public about global warming, by The Team or anyone else. What we find evidence of on a much smaller scale is a small group of scientists too close to each other, protecting themselves and their careers, and unintentionally having a dramatic, if unintended, effect on a global debate.
You’ve very much got to the nub of the issue:
*Global warmers start with their opinions, they then look for the “facts” to support that opinion and then dress up those loose facts to look like science.
*Sceptics start with the facts, they then apply their knowledge of science to assess those facts and they come to their opinions based on those conclusions.
Steven Mosher says:
October 13, 2010 at 12:22 am
Brian is at it again
“Mosher also said that we know enough context to prove that there was a widespread breakdown in scientific ethics among climate researchers. In addition, Mosher claims that both he and his co-author Tom Fuller feel that the emails revealed nothing that alters the conclusions of climate disruption research to date”
Climate disruption research to date? What climate disruption research? The alarmists only made up this new name for the hoax a few weeks ago. There simply hasn’t been time for anyone to incorporate the new spin into a peer reviewed paper. I for one am still getting up to speed on the information that we have always been at war with Oceania…Who is this Brian character? Winston Smith under an assumed name?
“Konrad says:
October 13, 2010 at 1:55 am
Who is this Brian character? Winston Smith under an assumed name?”
He’s not Winston Smith (The Messiah), he’s a very naughty boy!
“Angliss rejected the data, refusing to read the book he criticized or the emails that prompted the book.”
Fuller obviously haven’t read the book either.
It was a mistake by Montford’s publisher to include the word “climategate” in the subtitle. The book is much more important than a book about climategate. It was written before climategate happened.
Now that Anthony have a link to The Hockey Stick Illusion, perhaps he have read it?
1. Steven Mosher says:
October 13, 2010 at 12:35 am
“We are tough on the scientists we call The Team, and we think deservedly so. But we want to stress from the outset that we do not for one minute believe there is any evidence of a long-term conspiracy to defraud the public about global warming, by The Team or anyone else. What we find evidence of on a much smaller scale is a small group of scientists too close to each other, protecting themselves and their careers, and unintentionally having a dramatic, if unintended, effect on a global debate”
In light of this comment Mr. Mosher I would be interested in your opinion on the Climategate email from Mann 31/10/03 –
“Thanks very much Tim,
I was hoping that the revisions would ally concerns people had.
I’ll look forward to your comments on this latest draft. I agree w/ Malcolm on the need to be careful w/ the wording in the first paragraph. The first paragraph is a bit of relic of a much earlier draft, and maybe we need to rethink it a bit. Takinig the high road is probably very important here. If *others* want to say that their actions represent scientific fraud, intellectual dishonesty, etc. (as I think we all suspect they do), lets let *them* make these charges for us!
Lets let our supporters in higher places use our scientific response to push the broader case against MM. So I look forward to peoples attempts to revise the first par. particular. I took the liberty of forwarding the previous draft to a handfull of our closet colleagues, just so they would have a sense of approximately what we’ll be releasing later today–i.e., a heads up as to
how MM achieved their result… look forward to us finalizing something a bit later–I still think we need to get this out
ASAP…
mike”
Jo Nova is attracting a lot of flack these days as well. Could it be that having failed the science and now failing the PR the warmers are reduced to attacking the sceptical one by one? Nature is doing a great job on our behalf by the way. On the East Coast of Aus we are having a lovely spring. No heat waves so far when the past few years we were having 40C days in late August. The poor old BoM must we working overtime to make 2010 the hottest ever.
BBC told to shape up on the topic
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/8060211/BBC-told-to-ensure-balance-on-climate-change.html
‘“The BBC must be inclusive, consider the broad perspective, and ensure that the existence of a range of views is appropriately reflected,” said BBC trustee Alison Hastings. ‘
Not holding my breath (oh God, the CO2, the CO2!)
Thomas Fuller,
The Wegman Report shows many examples of plagiarism that Mashey has clearly highlighted. As a writer, I am very surprised that you are defending Wegman. To those of us in the academic community, plagiarism represents laziness, incompetence, and dishonesty. It appears that you do not respect that viewpoint.
Any document that has been plagiarized cannot be taken seriously nor any person who defends such document.