Mike’s AGU Trick
By Steve McIntyre
There has been considerable recent discussion of the fact that observations have been running cooler than models – see, for example, Lucia’s discussion of IPCC AR5 SOD Figure 9.8 (see here). However, Michael Mann at AGU took an entirely different line. Mann asserted that observations were running as hot or hotter than models. Mann’s assertion was taken even further by Naomi Oreskes, who asserted that climate models were under-estimating relative to observations. Oreskes squarely placed the blame for the supposed underestimates on climate skeptics.
In today’s post, I’ll look closely at the illustration in Mann’s AGU presentation, an illustration that gave an entirely different impression than the figure in the IPCC draft report. The reason for the difference can be traced to what I’ve termed here as “Mike’s AGU Trick”.
The IPCC AR5 SOD Graphic
An excerpt from IPCC AR5 SOD Figure 9.8 is shown below, clearly showing that the multimodel ensemble (red) is running noticeably hotter than observations (black). In my opinion, the difference is not merely “noticeable” but “statistically significant”, but that’s a story for a different day.
Figure 1. Excerpt from IPCC AR5 SOD Figure 9.8, comparing model ensemble to observations.
Mann’s AGU Presentation
However, Mann at AGU asserted that observations were running as hot or hotter than models. Mann’s model comparandum was Hansen’s Scenario B, which is widely regarded as the most reasonable scenario to use to interpret Hansen’s “forecast” – see past CA points on this issue.
Figure 2. Mann’s AGU slide comparing observations to Hansen’s 1988 Scenario B projection.
I took the photo with a new phone, with which I was then unfamiliar and unfortunately can only provide a muddy zoom on the graphic. Despite the muddiness, you can see that observations (red) appear to cohere with Hansen’s 1988 forecast (blue). In the loop below, I’ve overplotted data for models and observations to show more clearly what was shown to the AGU audience. (There was a bit of detective work in figuring this out – see below.) Click on the figure below for a loop illustrating the components of the zoomed figure). (Note: see below for Mann’s use of his AGU Trick to hide the divergence in a presentation a few months earlier at Rutgers).
Figure 3. Blowup of Mann’s slide comparing Hansen’s Scenario B to observations. Blue – Hansen’s Scenario B; red – “observations”.
Mann’s AGU slide obviously has a completely different rhetorical impression than the IPCC graphic. Whereas the discrepancy between observations and models was immediately noticeable in the IPCC graphic, Mann’s AGU graphic showed no such discrepancy. There were two reasons for the difference, the combination of which I’ll call “Mike’s AGU Trick” and will analyse below.
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Read the full post here: http://climateaudit.org/2013/03/02/mikes-agu-trick/
Reading the comments is also entertaining, particularly in watching Nick Stokes trying to defend the Mann, while McIntyre wipes the floor with his argument.
Comical. Just change the data….
I’m glad Mann does not work in pharmaceuticals. With the way he blatantly changes data, he could wind up killing more people than smallpox…
What is it with these guys – why are they determined to undermine anyone who says the world is NOT heading for global catastrophe?
Surely any sensible thinking person would be relieved that the doomsday projections of the past are not going to be realised yet these people persist in their pathetic excuse for notoriety.
Mann, Gleick, Oreskes, Lewandowsky…… the AGU has been reduced to a parade of clowns.
What a disgrace!
Steve at his best!
But he seems surprised that the likes of Mann et al would plummet to such depths of chicanery and deceptions when it has been their operating mode since the get go.
We should actually expect much more such behaviour from The Team. As their 15 minutes of fame fades away, as the global attention they invented and so desperately crave wanes, as their careers, once so shiny and precious, accelerate down the slippery slope of academic malfeasance and invented hysteria, their desperation will know no bounds.
History will be very cruel to these pretenders to academic excellence, very, very cruel. They will leave a tainted, putrid personal and institutional record for future studies of how and why they could be so wrong, for so long.
Hmm, again creative accountancy and the miracle of figures who lie.
Charlatan.
I believe it is important to note that the “actual” anomalies, plotted here against the model outputs, are based on “adjusted” numbers, rather than actual DATA; and, thus, are likely to be closer to the model outputs than the underlying data would have been. If Anthony’s recent draft paper (Watts et al 2012) is correct, the difference could be as much as a factor of two.
I object to the use of the term “observations” to refer to “adjusted” numbers, rather than to the DATA. The term “obscurations” might be more appropriate for the “adjusted” numbers.
I looked at the meta data of your picture Steve and I see it is a iphone 4s. Setting the pixels setting to the maximum will get you the best image that you can then crop later, as the digital zoom does not improve image quality.
one thing i have always found fascinating about these “prediction” plots is why to they jog around so much?? is it to give the illusion that they have accounted for natural variability? for example, in the IPCC figure, what is it that causes the jumping up and down in say, the light green line? are they predictng a volcano for that year? an el nino event? iguess if their prediction was a straight line it wouldnt be that impressive.
Perhaps you are a traditional scientist, stuck in the lab gathering data the old fashioned way, envious of those high flying Climatologists. The one’s who seem to cook their numbers with such ease. While they earn green beaufication, you sit green with envy, wishing you had such success. Well, wish NO MORE ! ! !
With the amazing, new WRONGO PROXY CROCK can cook your numbers with ease. You can now sit around buffing your nails and soaking your fine hand washables while your Proxy Crock does ALL the work. Wrongco can’t promise every scientist a Nobel Prize or an Academy Award winning documentary film, but we can eliminate those ancient and burdensome hypothesis-data-proof cycles of yore.
Amazing ! New ! Wrongco’s Proxy Crock ! ! !
WARNINGS & LIMITATIONS: The Proxy Crock is intended for use only among those who are untutored in science. If demonstrated before those who have been adequately trained in science and have existed for an extended period of time outside the government-academia echo chamber, then there is the risk of accidental disclosure of the proxy secret. At some point, these individuals may stand up and yell “THAT’S A CROCK!” This would be using the term ‘crock’ in a second defination of that term that would NOT be considered an endorsement.
If used properly the Proxy Crock will deliver years of cooked data with satisfaction conforing with the motto for all our company products:
YOU CAN’T GO WRONG….WITH WRONGCO ! ! !
[full article posted at Canada Free Press archive]
Fred from Canuckistan says:
March 3, 2013 at 7:19 am
History will be very cruel to these pretenders to academic excellence, very, very cruel. They will leave a tainted, putrid personal and institutional record for future studies of how and why they could be so wrong, for so long.
_____________________
You are counting your chickens… what difference has the truth made, so far?
Now what does Flim-Flam rhyme with?
Ed Reid says:
March 3, 2013 at 7:32 am
I object to the use of the term “observations” to refer to “adjusted” numbers, rather than to the DATA.
========
agree 100%
“Figures don’t lie, but liars figure”
We have to bear in mind that, as much as we can see the fallacy and chicanery at work here (and in most of the Team’s work), opinion formers in education and the media cannot. Politicians cannot – and will not. There is too much money and reputation invested in their preferred outcome.
We can talk to one another on WUWT day in day out – but convincing those who form policy to to take the science seriously is still an uphill task which has hardly begun. The people who need to listen will still not read WUWT nor the other sceptical blogs; they believe the Team’s propaganda.
Hansen updates his 1988 prediction track semi-regularly on his own website. 2012 is included now.
http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/Temperature/T_moreFigs/PNAS_GTCh_Fig2.gif
Something else we need to bear in mind is that schools nowadays don’t teach kids how to read a graph, and probably haven’t for many years. I went to Grammar School in the 1960s and have no problems in this respect, nor in following the basic science since I studied maths, biology, physics and chemistry to ‘O’ level standard. Much of the ability to follow climate science rests on the ability to read graphs.
Children in much of the world are no longer given the tools to follow complex arguments of this kind – and then become environmental activists or journalists spouting all the rubbish they were taught [or indoctrinated with] in their turn.
Happy to see this cross posted here. These are intentional efforts to mislead by the climate science community. They need lots of exposure. Somehow a good portion of the public finds Michael Mann and his cronies to be credible. Amazing.
Janama says
‘
Life as a debunked doomsday prophet isn’t likely to be a bed of roses. And if you have an ego the size of a small galaxy (or Zaphod Beeblebrox) you need to keep your ever-dwindling band of faithful acolytes still needing your pronouncements.
‘Come and hear Jim Hansen and Mike Mann – discredited one-time soothsayers’ will not generate the adulation they crave.
I have always suspected that Mr. Mann was more than a one-trick pony. Perhaps his next field could be Magic.
Ed Reid says:
March 3, 2013 at 7:32 am
I believe it is important to note that the “actual” anomalies, plotted here against the model outputs, are based on “adjusted” numbers, rather than actual DATA
============
True. And Mann’s graph showed GISS Land Temp only. Ignoring the facts that land only makes up 30% of the surface, and is mostly in the Northern Hemisphere. While the models are projecting land and sea temps combined.
Isn’t science supposed to present both sides of the argument in an objective fashion? At what point does cherry picking become scientific fraud?
Mann is speaking at the University of Victoria on Monday. This will likely be the same presentation.
University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.
I’ll repeat a comment I made at ClimateAudit:
Steve writes: “Mann and Kump used Land-Only data (which runs hotter)…”
They definitely would not have wanted to present a sea surface temperature model-data comparison. During the satellite era, the simulated warming rate of CMIP5-modeled sea surface temperatures are almost twice the observed warming rate:
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/05-global.png
The graph is from my most recent model-data sea surface temperature comparison:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2013/02/28/cmip5-model-data-comparison-satellite-era-sea-surface-temperature-anomalies/
Regards
“Mike’s AGU Trick”. – I love it! But there are 3 elements, not 2.
Kudos to the indefatigable Steve McIntyre for pointing out yet again how deceptive Mann can be.
Any casual observer can see that actual temps most closely match Hansen’s Scenario C, while emissions have been higher than Scenario A (1.9% annual Anthropogenic CO2 increase vs. 1.5%). From Hansen et al 1988, “Scenario B has decreasing trace gas growth rates, such that the annual increase of the greenhouse climate forcing remains constant at the [1988] level.” Instead, siince 1988, human GHG emissions have grown > 50%! Clearly, Scenario B didn’t happen.
Scenario C corresponds to a CESSATION of additional CO2 forcing post 2000 (which Hansen himself said was highly unlikely).
So comparing “actual temperatures” with B instead of A is a third element of the trick. Likely, the ever-flexible aerosols will be hand-waved into arguing why forcing due to CO2 was different than envisaged. But he shouldn’t be allowed to get away with this, as Hansen accounted for aerosols (using 1958-1985 measurements as a baseline for the future). One has to show measurements of increased aerosols beyond that baseline.
I wonder what Hansen, Pierrehumbert and Muller will say about Mann’s presentation. Remember Muller lambasted Mann for pasting actual temperatures onto proxy reconstructions. Orestes is a cheerleader for the cause and thus provides essentially only comic relief.
The wall of consensus is crumbling – Mann’s presentation is a desperate effort to paste in new mortar while nobody is looking.
At best, Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity is 1/2 of Hansen’s model (which called for 4.2ndeg C warming per doubling of CO2), but it’s quite probably lower — even much lower.
Kurt in Switzerland
This has to be illegal somehow. Lord Monckton should look into this!
All Ph.D. candidates who seek a career in research should be required to attain at least a Master’s level amount of coursework in statistics. Even better, should be required to hold a BS in statistics. I have two masters degrees and was not required to take a statistics math course in either one. So I crashed a master’s level math course at Oregon State University in statistics with the professor’s invitation of course (and thank you by the way for allowing me to sit in on your class). Got no grade for it. Took all the tests anyway. Did all the required coursework. Got an A but it never appeared on my transcripts because it was not on the “Education” menu. Even better, I didn’t have to pay for it. Good thing. I was dirt poor and already had a full course load.
So why would this little no-account, bottom rung on the ladder, pee-on take it upon herself to gain a level of understanding of statistics so that she can report data to parents that is valid and reliable, but the idiot Ph.D. mann apparently thinks he can attempt to influence governments with “air-brushed” statistics that clearly are not valid or reliable? Have Ph.D. dissertation committees become that bad at weeding out this kind of riff raff?
If one uses adjusted data and compares it to speculative ‘models’, you can can demonstrate just about anything. But it means absolutely nothing.
Pamela Gray @ March 3, 2013 at 8:12 am
“Have Ph.D. dissertation committees become that bad at weeding out this kind of riff raff?”
Surely you are not suggesting this is another incarnation of “pal review”!
Bob Tisdale says:
March 3, 2013 at 7:59 am
Somehow a good portion of the public finds Michael Mann and his cronies to be credible.
=============
Mann and Co have taken advantage of some twisted reasoning that comes out of applying political correctness to the environmental movement.
Most people would agree that:
fossil fuels = air pollution = bad
Political Correctness prevents critical examination of the above equation.
Therefore, once you consider history:
fossil fuels = low cost production = end to poverty
From this we get,
end of poverty = low cost production = air pollution = bad
Therefore
end of poverty = bad
Conclusion:
no end of poverty = no air pollution = good
Kurt in Switzerland says:
March 3, 2013 at 8:11 am
I wonder what Hansen, Pierrehumbert and Muller will say about Mann’s presentation. Remember Muller lambasted Mann for pasting actual temperatures onto proxy reconstructions. Orestes is a cheerleader for the cause and thus provides essentially only comic relief.
________________
Many agree with your assessment.
Muller stands alone in that group and shows signs of coming awake. The rest… the word ‘maddening’ comes to mind, or ‘sickening’, when one considers how much press they are given with so little questioning or afterthought.
Pamela Gray says:
March 3, 2013 at 8:12 am
“So why would this little no-account, bottom rung on the ladder, pee-on take it upon herself to gain a level of understanding of statistics so that she can report data to parents that is valid and reliable, but the idiot Ph.D. mann apparently thinks he can attempt to influence governments with “air-brushed” statistics that clearly are not valid or reliable? Have Ph.D. dissertation committees become that bad at weeding out this kind of riff raff?”
===============================================
I believe the words your searching for is “ETHICAL BEHAVIOR”
Something Mann has no clue about…
There is a politically incorrect way to describe the Nobel Peace Prize winner we all know and love.
A Spiv- a purveyor of shoddy and counterfeit goods- a con-artist.
Mike (Mann) if you are reading this, I am calling you a liar. Please feel free to sue.
“Naomi Oreskes is an American science historian, and Professor of History and Science Studies at the University of California San Diego.”
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Oreskes )
It’s good to see that finally the Global Warming Consensus Movement accepts that laypeople, even without any mathematical education, are entitled to partake in the discussion about the allegedly catastrophic CO2 greenhouse effect.
ferdberple says:
March 3, 2013 at 8:44 am
“no end of poverty = no air pollution = good”
A neat summation.
That really is how they think but they suppress the inconvenient truth by asserting that renewable energy can immminently be made more cost effective than continuing fossil fuel use.
Emotions rather than facts are in control and whenever that has happened in human history death and destruction soon follow.
I pray that this time it might be different but am not confident.
At McIntyre’s site (link above), he references Oreskes and Pielke Jr’s article about her. Oreskes published an article in which she argued that “climate scientists” had begun pulling their punches to avoid the criticism of being drama queens. Now that we have McIntyre’s article on Mann, I am thinking that Oreskes had in mind exactly the kind of “tricks” that Mann continues to use. If so, she has joined Lewandowsky in the gutter.
Maybe we could give Mann the nickname “Tricky Mickey”.
The 7 year itch?
I thought academia had enough of Mann made warming. Apparently not. GK
I’m surprised no one has pointed out that comparisons to Hansen’s B scenario are disingenuous – part 2 of Mann’s trick so to speak.
In scenario B, CO2 concentration increased until 2000 then leveled off – this did not happen. Rather, the fair comparison is to scenario A in which CO2 continued increasing at the same rate as before. In fact, what actually transpired was that CO2 increased *faster* after 2000 (until the recession of course).
Ed Reid at 7:32 am. Agree. I have never understood adjustments. In the best case it could mean that additional factors influence the observations. In that case you make the factors explicit in your analysis. This is the common scientific procedure. Altering the observations, usually in a way nobody can check, is data fraud. Perhaps you are too kind.
The larger question is……….Why was Dr. Mann allowed to present ANYTHING? His current literature is so bad, I fear the poor feller has suffered numerous strokes.
Apologies to KiS. I guess I should have read the rest of the comments before posting mine. In my defense, I started it much earlier then had to do something else.
One thing is certain. The “models” did not predict the 17 years of no warming, and they do not include any adjustments to the model which incorporate the non warming.
Double strike for the models.
MattN says:
March 3, 2013 at 7:16 am
I’m glad Mann does not work in pharmaceuticals. With the way he blatantly changes data, he could wind up killing more people than smallpox…
OR Engineering for Cars, planes, trains, bridges, baby strollers. He might be OK in the BOMB design business, they all blow up eventually!
Luther Wu says:
March 3, 2013 at 9:00 am
“Orestes is a cheerleader for the cause and thus provides essentially only comic relief.”
In Greek mythology, Orestes was the son of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon. It seems to me that Oreskes is more of a mythical drama queen than Orestes. 🙂
Bob Tisdale says:
March 3, 2013 at 7:59 am
Somehow a good portion of the public finds Michael Mann and his cronies to be credible.
———————————————-
Most of the population haven’t even heard of them. It’s easy to forget when you spend time on climate blogs that most people don’t.
They’ve never heard of Mann, Hansen, Jones, Briffa etc etc. They’ve heard of Gore because of the extra publicity due to his his former occupation.
Most people eg in the UK hear the drip, drip of climate change mentions in half the output of the BBC. Some, but a smallier proportion, see some of the hysteria in the print media but most flick over such articles.
Most either take no notice of CAGW , assume it’s true because “everyone” says it is but still do little or nothing about it or look at the weather, shrug, and think it’s bollocks. Very few are interested enough to be either raving eco-nuts or read WUWT. or Bishop Hill.
I suspect that the majority of scientists are barely more interested unless it directly affects their field (to the extend of having to include “in relation to climate change” in any grant application).
I suspect that most scientists know so little about climate “science” that they assume it’s run properly and that anyone sceptical is an anti-science crazy.
I suspect that most politicians wouldn’t care less if it a) wasn’t useful to them and b) they weren’t being badgered by NGOs with their snout in the trough and delusions of grandeur.
Part of the problem we have I think is that few people are really that interested unless they have an axe to grind. Of course if companies close through carbon taxes, people go bankrupt or die because of rising fuel bills and especially if the lights go out then maybe there will be an impetus for people to take notice.
Camburn says:
The larger question is……….Why was Dr. Mann allowed to present ANYTHING? His current literature is so bad, I fear the poor feller has suffered numerous strokes.
More professional malfeasance.
To judge by how many of the the hundreds of delegates the attend AGU fall conference Mann managed to “pack” into this small conference room, it looks like not many are listening to him any more.
It seems that AGW scientists not only have tenure of position but also protection from criminal prosecution . The ultimate death knell of a scientist is when no one takes you seriously any more.
The attendance here looks like the funeral service attendance for an old lady with no relatives.
Mindert Eiting @March 3, 2013 at 9:47 am
It seems that the climate science community views itself as the modern day, real world incarnation of Rumpelstiltskin, not only able to spin straw (bad data) into gold (good data), but also able to spin nothing (missing data) into gold (good data) as well. That suggests to me that the current state of climate science is “Grimm”.
“In scenario B, CO2 concentration increased until 2000 then leveled off”
I think that is scenario C.
Can anyone state what each of the scenarios had CO2 levels at for 2012?
Ref Pamela Gray’s (as ever, pertinent) remarks on statistics above:
It was reading an online critique some years back by a Prof of Statistics, of the lack of any ‘Team’ comprehension of that discipline revealed by the Climategate emails, which finally convinced me none of them had the slightest clue what they were doing.
I can’t find the exact link right now (I have too many saved!); but for relative newcomers here is a pretty good crib for Climategate with references inter alia to the Team’s misuse of statistics. The Prof’s in-depth critique demonstrated that this misuse might be just as much from incomprehension (leading to schoolboy errors in the handling of data) as it was from deliberate chicanery – the discussion of the Team’s use of statistics begins about halfway down the page.
Pratt’s overview also includes chapter and verse on the grossest manipulations of peer review and similar matters:
http://davidpratt.info/climategate.htm
PS To the above – Pratt, the author of the Climategate link I cited in my post above, is not of course the Prof of Statistics whose work on the Climategate emails was so revealing – just to make this clear, since it’s not from my original post.
Al Gore has released a statement for the record:
“Dr. Mann is my man, no man like my man mann.”
artwest says:
…Most of the population haven’t even heard of them. It’s easy to forget when you spend time on climate blogs that most people don’t….
———————–
I think you’re right in everything you mention in your post here. It’s easy to forget when something’s important to you and you take the trouble to learn about it that many others don’t feel the same way. I particularly agree with you about your view of scientists not in the field. I’ve spoken with engineers who haven’t looked into AGW and they seem startled that I don’t simply swallow the ‘conventional wisdom’ like we do with virtually any other science. For those poor souls who aren’t paying very close attention, it’s an effective scam the IPCC is running here.
Some years from now, the use of “fudge” regarding fake data will be replaced with,
Man,, you Mann’d that to your advantage, watts in it for you.
– – – – – – –
I attended an Oreskes talk at the 2012 Fall AGU Meeting in SF.
Steve is right about Oreskes’ message. In my notes taken during her talk I commented that she stressed the IPCC is much too conservative in assessing AGW by CO2; she advocated that the warming is much worse than they are saying.
If the most radical CAGW proponents, like Oreskes, are trying to build a new frenzy with their worn out tactics then it is like some 70+ year old hippies chanting ’60s slogans in 2012.
Oreskes is saying the IPCC is wrong . . . poor John Cook and his devotees, their authority figure (IPCC) is being severely attacked by the fringe of extreme radicals on the CAGW side.
It looks like CAGW folks are starting to cannibalize their own kind.
John
Unfortunately, Mann and McIntyre are debating before a mostly innumerate audience.
[An innumerate, or a enumerate, audience? Mod]
In the comments over at Climate Audit, it is amusing but sad to see poor Nick Stokes trying to salvage Mann’s butt on this one. One can imagine the Rapid Response Team drawing straws to see who gets to be cannon fodder defending Mann at his most egregious. Charge of the light brigade comes to mind.
Bill H says:
March 3, 2013 at 9:01 am
Nailed it: ETHICAL BEHAVIOR
We have a huge problem with a significant segment of our “educated” individuals in our society who think they are so smart and that no one will realize that their clever explanations will be interpreted as pure BS by so many who are just as intelligent as they are.
Another example on Meet the Press recently.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/sperling-admits-obama-misled-debate-president-did-propose-sequester_705015.html
It’s as valid as the dog ate my homework, that a child would give. !!
It’s a good thing Mann does not work designing spaceships or aircraft. That might sound a little funny but what’s even more dangerous is the number of people who die or suffer as a result of government policies based on these Calamatologists’ speculations. Food to fuel, fuel poverty, cold weather deaths, Baotou Mongolian toxic lake, lack of funding into preventable diseases, etc.
I’m sure somebody will correct me if I’m wrong. It’s my understanding some are claiming that some scientist are underestimating the rise in global temperature. Maybe it’s to hide they have missed their targets 20 of the last 30-40 years? Trenberth has 10 years of missing heat & Hansen has admitted to the 10 year recent lull. So how can they claim they been underestimating temps? If they were underestimating they would be no missing heat or lull..correct? At least not 20 years worth.
The whole CAGW theory is looking increasingly like the Phlogiston theory that held sway for around 50 years until disproved in 1753 but not finally let go of for some years more.
The key difference is that supporting Phlogiston theory didn’t require bankrupting the known world which is what 50 years of this would cause.
I love these graphs –“all data centered on 1958 -1977” – wasn’t this “centered” on the Last Climate Change Panic, fear of a new ICE age…?
Catcracking says:
March 3, 2013 at 11:22 am
Bill H says:
March 3, 2013 at 9:01 am
Nailed it: ETHICAL BEHAVIOR
We have a huge problem with a significant segment of our “educated” individuals in our society who think they are so smart and that no one will realize that their clever explanations will be interpreted as pure BS by so many who are just as intelligent as they are.
______________________
Take care around the hip and the cool and those ever so above it all. When they’re confronted with truth, the knives come out.
John Whitman says:
March 3, 2013 at 11:13 am
“…it is like some 70+ year old hippies chanting ’60s slogans in 2012.”
————————————————————————-
fobdangerclose says:
March 3, 2013 at 11:03 am
Al Gore has released a statement for the record:
Hey man,“Dr. Mann is my man, no man like my man Mann, man.”
________________________
There…
Luther Wu says:
March 3, 2013 at 7:45 am
Fred from Canuckistan says:
March 3, 2013 at 7:19 am
History will be very cruel to these pretenders to academic excellence, very, very cruel. They will leave a tainted, putrid personal and institutional record for future studies of how and why they could be so wrong, for so long.
_____________________
You are counting your chickens… what difference has the truth made, so far?
*
Actually, the truth has made quite a bit of difference. Think of a world without WUWT. Think of a world without skeptics. Do you think the alarmists would be sweating by now without real scientists willing to inconveniently correct them? No. Think of the policies that would already be in place without argument. As unwanted observations appear, they would merely tweak the past, call it “weather” or, hey, just not report it.
The truth is kicking their a$$e$ and they can’t escape it.
Dr. McIntyre, I noticed a very similar graph in Mann’s June 2012 presentation in Anaheim, California at the Orange County Water Summit. It was on Slide 12 of his presentation.
The impression given the audience was that the models have matched the observations.
Anthony covered that presentation here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/26/mann-at-orange-county-water-conference/
It is nice to know how Mann accomplished this “model-matching.”
Luther Wu says:
March 3, 2013 at 9:00 am
Kurt in Switzerland says:
March 3, 2013 at 8:11 am
I wonder what Hansen, Pierrehumbert and Muller will say about Mann’s presentation. Remember Muller lambasted Mann for pasting actual temperatures onto proxy reconstructions. Orestes is a cheerleader for the cause and thus provides essentially only comic relief.
________________
Many agree with your assessment.
Muller stands alone in that group and shows signs of coming awake. The rest… the word ‘maddening’ comes to mind, or ‘sickening’, when one considers how much press they are given with so little questioning or afterthought.
____________
____________
Many [on this blog and other skeptical sites] agree with my assessment, but alas, too few of the general public (who passively or actively support the “damnation of carbon” and “climate-friendly” initiatives) give much thought to anything behind the façade. These boys must be praying for a steep temperature rise in the next five years.
Kurt in Switzerland
I’m cheering for the mann, he is the gift that keeps on giving.
As there is no erasing the past ,yet, his words will live on to haunt climatology.
Climate scientist will become fixed in the public mind, as witch doctors of the late 20th century.
A strange deviancy of crowd madness.
Even flat earthers will get more respect.
Perhaps someone could/should pose the question to Pierrehumbert, Gavin and co. over at RealClimate: so boys, what’s your opinion of Mike’s AGW trick? Would his chart pass peer review by you?
Kurt in Switzerland
DaveG said:
He might be OK in the BOMB design business, they all blow up eventually!
Speaking as a qualified bomb aimer, I’d be loathe to use any bomb designed by Mann – it would blow up too soon.
You should have included the loop graphic in figure 6 of the Climate Audit post. It makes for a particularly concise and devastating summary.
Nick claims that Mann is simply presenting an older graph and didn’t want to update for various reasons . This is total BS. My grad advisor and his peers always presented the most up to date data. He would go to a conference and we were back in the lab collecting data and making graphs. We would fed-ex them overnight for his talk. Sometimes we would fax. Once I was at an ACS conference and a speaker was at the podium and from off of stage right an attendant brought a fax and the speaker said proudly with much delight “oh yes. This data was just collected minutes ago! Can’t get fresher than that!!!”
Such was life in Physical Chemistry academic research.
I meant to add to my post above that the only reason that Mann stopped the trend at 2005 is because it doesn’t help his story. Any other excuse is total BS.
As some commenters have already said (but I feel needs repeating and shoving in the warmists faces at any given opportunity):
Real-world CO2 emissions have gone way past Hansen’s Scenario A projections/predictions, so real-world temps should be matching or higher than the Scenario A temps. But they haven’t, they’re nowhere near it. So Hansen was wrong in a major way, Mann’s chatting sh*t, and Naomi’s a clown.
Or have I got it wrong? Am I missing something? (a genuine question – if I need to be corrected, tell me)
G Karst says: “Mann made warming”.
That really says it all.
ferdberple says:
March 3, 2013 at 8:44 am
“From this we get, end of poverty = low cost production = air pollution = bad
Therefore end of poverty = bad
Conclusion: no end of poverty = no air pollution = good”
I would like to make a slight addition:
end of poverty = bad for government control
no end of poverty = good for government control
The majority of people need to understand that the government has a vested interest in keeping them poor (relative to each nation of course). Using climate change scare tactics to convince the average person to back carbon trading is just the latest scheme in accomplishing more control.
Actually Oreskes is the bigger clown here, she claims climatologists are intimidated into modifying their results.
Now this time she claims it due to those mean sceptics bullying the wee babies, but if they were so susceptible to intimidation? Who but a “Team Member” would know.
Now as an insider, why would she smear the ethics, integrity and credibility of her team members?
Does she have past experience to go on?
Nice own goal though.
Andy Wilkins says:
March 3, 2013 at 1:39 pm
As some commenters have already said (but I feel needs repeating and shoving in the warmists faces at any given opportunity):
Real-world CO2 emissions have gone way past Hansen’s Scenario A projections/predictions, so real-world temps should be matching or higher than the Scenario A temps. But they haven’t, they’re nowhere near it. So Hansen was wrong in a major way, Mann’s chatting sh*t, and Naomi’s a clown.
Or have I got it wrong? Am I missing something? (a genuine question – if I need to be corrected, tell me)
______________________
Exactly as I see it. Another commenter at Climate Audit (ZT) asked Steve McIntyre the same question yesterday. Steve says he covered the subject in detail on his blog a few years ago.
Not having been a regular reader of CA, I put in my two bits. http://climateaudit.org/2013/03/02/mikes-agu-trick/#comment-402697
Kurt in Switzerland
Think about what Mann and Oreskes are doing in their AGU presentations. They are implying that the IPCC is listening to and accepting some of what ‘skeptics’ are saying. Both of them find that possibility disturbing.
It looks to me like Mann and Oreskes are redoubling their efforts on CAGW to nip in the bud what they think is a dangerous skeptical infiltration into the climate science community.
They see a skeptic behind every bush. Looks like paranoia.
John
A.D. Everard says:
March 3, 2013 at 12:15 pm
“The truth is kicking their a$$e$ and they can’t escape it.”
_________________________
You know that, we know that and often, even they know that.
Do the “low- information” voters know that? Would it matter if they did?
Who decides policy for the US?
Sure enough, we are making a bit of a difference, but overall, we amount to bugs on their windshield and a flat tire on a dually in their convoy.
—————————————-
“…over the last four years, our emissions of the dangerous carbon pollution that threatens our planet have actually fallen.
But for the sake of our children and our future, we must do more to combat climate change. Yes, it’s true that no single event makes a trend. But the fact is, the 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15. Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and floods – all are now more frequent and intense. We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence. Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science – and act before it’s too late.
– Barack Obama, POTUS, 2013 State Of The Union Address
—————————————–
– 23 Feb., 2013… US Congress renews $12 Billion tax credit for Wind Energy
– 9 January, 2013… Georgia Power shutting 15 Power plants due to EPA
etc, etc, etc
This fellow really needs to be fired. How can the University possibly keep him employed as a scientist?? Penn State University I believe?
@Mosher , why aren’t you contributing to this thread ??? Your faith/expertise is needed, I can’t understand you silence !!
Naomi Oreskes: “Mr Mann, we need warp speed propaganda right now or we’re all dead.”
Mann: “Captain, the models are running hot. The propaganda canna go to warp…”
Naomi Oreskes: “Our funding is in jeopardy and Obama might approve Keystone”
Mann: “Aye captain, its worse than we thought, Al Gore is dead”
Al Gore: “I’m not dead yet, it’s just a flesh wound”
It is disturbing to imagine this man teaching young students at an university.
@Mosher, you did weight in eloquently on the side of ethical behavior at climateaudit.org, kudos for that !!
Its equally disturbing that the AGU invites him to speak.
Eliza@3:30 and Manfred @4:19, you clearly don’t live in the US. Prof. Mann is a decent honest fellow by the standards of Penn State. Google Jerry Sandusky – Penn State to read about a major national scandal and how the Penn adminstration dealt with a genuine felon.
Here is another trick which shows ice data to 2010 only LOL
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seasonal.extent.1900-2010.png
There’s a nutty post tonight by Mann on his Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/MichaelMannScientist
Among other things he totally misses (or ignores) the actual main points made by Steve McIntyre’s article while elaborating in irrelevant detail on the publication history of his Mann and Kump (2008) book. He also fails to grasp that WUWT has re-posted SM’s actual article, with Steve’s name at top as author, so when Mann says that Anthony is “parroting” SM it is simply another failed attempt at a silly smear.
Many [on this blog and other skeptical sites] agree with my assessment, but alas, too few of the general public (who passively or actively support the “damnation of carbon” and “climate-friendly” initiatives) give much thought to anything behind the façade. These boys must be praying for a steep temperature rise in the next five years.
Kurt in Switzerland
Kurt here in Australia, they think they have it all sewn up, take a hot day desert reading, smear it all over the continent and declare an “Off the Charts; Extreme Australian summer heat” i.e create a myth of steep temperature rise by cherry picking and official collusion, under the approving gaze of the Australian Gillard Government who are taxing the life out of the Australian Economy and borrowing like crazy. The recent reports by their politically appointed Climate Commission, Will Steffen Commisioner and the efforts of Professor Matthew England and Professor David Karoly in support will be lauded as a wake up call as the government needs the money poste haste to waste on helping itself to get re-elected rather than being wiped out.
Take an adjusted (downwards of course) historical temperature record, play down the magical methodology, then shift heat by averaging, next thing take desert day time heat in the Sahara, (you only need one hot site) and smear it over the world instant global warming!. And there is your “convenient heat” along with charts for cherry picked time periods like Mikes AGU trick. When will real scientists stand up to these fraudulent methods. Too many tricks too much distortion, too much propaganda masquerading as science.
@ John Whitman says: March 3, 2013 at 11:13 am
“It looks like CAGW folks are starting to cannibalize their own kind.”
Seems to have reached that point. And your choice of the word “cannibalize” couldn’t be more apt given the developmental status of these beings both culturally and as organisms.
Some look to be making the first movements towards positioning themselves as “reasonable” people. Others, either further out on a limb or so consumed by their impulse as to be unable to sniff the wind, are hurling themselves unthinkingly into oblivion. Yet others are trying to re-frame the terms of reference.
We can expect all these things to intensify over the next 18 months, because that is all the time they have.
Further to my last comment,Joanne Nova has a very good post on how the Australian BOM accomplished their media event.
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/03/mystery-black-box-method-used-to-make-all-new-australian-hottest-ever-records/
Seems trickery and media PR for political gain replaces science in Meteorology, sadly!
@ Tom in what happened to global warming this week Florida says: March 3, 2013 at 2:20
“end of poverty = bad for government control
no end of poverty = good for government control”
Very true.
It is (or should be) astonishing that such a large section of society seems to have forgotten something that was not a mystery 100 years ago. That the degree to which have a viable standard of living based on their independent efforts and decisions is the degree to which they people do not need to, and will not, look to Authority in the form of Prince or Government to provide it.
Left off above comment:
…And that therefore the degree to which any Government seeks to have structural control over these issues is the degree to which this will always result in those dependent on it remaining dependent, and the requirement to generate conditions that maintain and enhance this as much as possible.
It is inherent to its nature.
[snip]
Time to bail out of the AGU.
Mann asserted that observations were running as hot or hotter than models. Mann’s assertion was taken even further by Naomi Oreskes, who asserted that climate models were under-estimating relative to observations.
=============
So both Mann and Oreskes agree that the climate models are wrong!! Newsflash, sun will rise tomorrow. AGU = modern slang for “dumb as a bag of hammers”
jc says:
March 3, 2013 at 8:35 pm
…And that therefore the degree to which any Government
===========
No parasite ever wishes the host to be cured of the parasite. Unfortunately, not all parasites recognized that in eating too much they risk killing the host. Even if the host survives, if the parasite is too aggressive the host may be so weakened as to die for exterior threats.
The growth of government is a parasite upon the host economy that threatens all that rely on the economy for their survival. No government yet invented has even shown itself able to support “We The People” without a healthy economy. Any government that kills the economy kills the people. As has been shown time and time again throughout history.
This is a very important point often overlooked. No government has ever show itself able to feed and clothe the population of any nation. Food and clothing is the product of the people that build the economy. Food and clothing are not something produced by government. Food and clothing are a products CONSUMED by government in competition with the people. The more the government takes, the higher the costs to “We The People”.
What is truly amazing is that Americans do not appear to understand the importance of their own heritage. They owe their freedom to a small group of patriots 300+ years ago that recognized that government is not the friend of the people. That given half a chance government will enslave the people to the benefit of those in power.
The nation in which millions died to end slavery still sees itself guilt for slavery it did not start. Rather this was inherited from colonial masters. This guilt and the associated political correctness prevents a critical examination of government policy. While the government enslaves the whole nation through debt to the Federal Reserve – a privately held corporation. Without even passing a budget to approve the debt. If you did this in a private corporation you would go to jail. In American, you receive accolades and a pension for life.
@ ferd berple says: March 3, 2013 at 10:22 pm
Agree with your general thrust in above two comments.
But I think this also goes to very specific and observable things.
For example, recently in the news there has been a good bit about murder and disfunction in Chicago, focused in black communities. These people were the actual people Obama himself cut his teeth on apparently. After what, 40 years?, government “support” of the contemporary kind has resulted in (probably) a chosen few enhancing their lives whilst these communities, on a basic level of human function, have from all reports gone backwards over that time.
This is NOT an accident. It is REQUIRED even if this happens on an instinctual level for those influencing and implementing it.
As to the level of awareness now, of basic realities apparent to those 300 years ago, well, that is the problem isn’t it?
Rant alert!
In the aftermath of the fall of the Twin Towers, perhaps the loudest message sent was the silence of Muslim clerics around the world, who failed to distance themselves, their faith, and their followers from the evil of that act by condemning it.
It has often been suggested that the persistence of this horrifically costly mess called CAGW Science, so well characterized by Mann’s mendacity, is all the Globalist Left’s fault, or all the MSM’s fault, or all Public Education’s fault. No, it is all Science’s fault. If the immune system of Science is too weak or too confused or too complicit to respond to such an obvious hostile invader with deadly effect, Science is doomed and deserves to be. Silence is guilt. It is high time for Science to abandon this decrepit ship, hurling condemnations as they go, or go down with it and good riddance. Truth-seeking lower-case science will be the better for it, as will the good people worldwide who by lifetimes of honest labor make lives for themselves, their families, and their communities. And we might even get around to learning something true about climate in the process.
MattN says: “I’m glad Mann does not work in pharmaceuticals. With the way he blatantly changes data, he could wind up killing more people than smallpox…”
20,000 people die each winter in the UK. In one of the coldest years that was estimated to be around 40,000. In the third world people die because predictable short-term weather impacts DO NOT HAVE THE RESEARCH THEY NEED because the idoarty who run climate/weather research funding don’t care a damn about real lives that could be saved and instead waste it trying to prevent warming & CO2 which appears so far to be overwhelmingly beneficial. (EVEN STERN AGREES that 1°C warming is beneficial).
So, let’s work out just how many lives are at stake. 20,000 over the next century is 2 million in the UK alone. Multiply that by the number of northern nations. So how many additional lives will be lost because Mann and is evil ilk have raised fuel costs for the most vulnerable?
Now let’s look at the lives that could have been saved in the last decade if the same effort had gone into protecting lives from short-term weather in the developing world rather than paying huge skip-loads of dosh to the evil wind developers.
No … it’s too depressing even to contemplate the death toll directly attributable to Mann.
RE: which is closer to real-world emissions since 1988, Hansen’s Scenario A or his Scenario B?
Steve McIntyre at Climate Audit addressed this question five years ago:
http://climateaudit.org/2013/03/02/mikes-agu-trick/#comment-402771
Steve’s argument is, essentially, that under Scenario A, the effects of CFC and Other Trace Gases (OTG) far outweigh those from CO2 (especially the further you move to the right).
However, none of the trace particulate emissions (or atmospheric concentrations) are anywhere near Scenario A implied levels.
However, I am confused on a couple of aspects from Steve’s January 24 1988 posting with respect to CO2, specifically the following:
1) “Sixth, none of these calculations deal with feedbacks. So the sort of numbers that result from these calculations are in the range of 1.2 deg C for doubling CO2…”
– Hansen refers to a feedback of 4.2 deg C in his 1988 report. This doesn’t tie in with the 1.2 deg C mentioned above.
2) Under Figure 2 from http://climateaudit.org/2008/01/24/hansen-1988-details-of-forcing-projections/ (also posted at the bottom of the July update): http://climateaudit.org/2008/07/28/hansen-update/ — the CO2 forcing stays approximately constant for Scenario A through 2050, whereas it rises constantly for Scenario B.
– The greater CO2 effect for Scenario B vs. Scenario A makes absolutely no sense.
So if the discussion is about CO2 emissions, Scenario A is a clear underestimate. If it’s about all GHG emissions, somewhere between Scenario A and Scenario B (closer to B, apparently) is the best estimate.
The general public is NOT being told this, however (nor is it apparent in a straightforward read of Hansen et al 1988). One wonders whether this was made clear to the AGU audience during Mann’s Dec. 2012 presentation.
(I posted a similar comment at CA — awaiting moderation currently).
Kurt in Switzerland
The forcing that Hansen used in Scenario B is almost bang on the actual forcing which occurred. Or at least, that is the actual forcing that the IPCC will be using in their upcoming report (change from the starting point in 1984 which is what Hansen says was the last year of real data he used).
So, Scenario B is what really happened. Hansen’s temp projection for 2012 under Scenario B: +1.065C. GIStemp in 2012: +0.56C.
http://www.realclimate.org/data/H88_scenarios_eff.dat
http://www.realclimate.org/data/scen_ABC_temp.data
http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~mmalte/rcps/data/RCP6_MIDYEAR_RADFORCING.DAT
More on Scenarios A & B from Hansen et al 1988 vs actual emissions and the actual temperature record:
Gavin Schmidt at RealClimate covered the subject last month:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/02/2012-updates-to-model-observation-comparions/
His graph (bottom of post) is certainly more honest than Mann’s AGU presentation (since it includes the most recent data, the purpose of the post), but it fails to address the fact that human CO2 emissions are >25% above those envisaged in Scenario A and/or that CFC & OTG emission rates are not rising as foreseen in Scenario A (and the effect this would have on the temperature predictions per the model). He does summarize the numbers: Scenario B predicted about 0.29 ºC+/- 0.4ºC decade. Actuals (since 1985) have been just over half that (0.17-0.18ºC / decade for the data sets he chose).
FWIW, I believe other data sets show 0.15-0.16ºC / decade. Of course, that trend is declining with every year of failure to show increased warming. Given the apparent approximate 60 year cycle in global mean temperatures (based on the record for the past 150 y), the steepest sustained warming rate of 0.3ºC / decade from the 1920s not having been exceeded, current temperatures appear not to show a “man-made” trajectory, IPCC claims notwithstanding. Claims of a further rise beyond 1.0-1.5ºC by 2100 are looking more and more improbable.
Gavin goes on to make the following summary statement.
“The conclusion is the same as in each of the past few years; the models are on the low side of some changes, and on the high side of others, but despite short-term ups and downs, global warming continues much as predicted.”
For the reasons stated above, I consider Gavin’s comments regarding Hansen et al 1988 extremely weak. He is propping up a house of cards (and probably knows it). But at least he presented a reasonably honest graph on Hansen et al 1988 vs. actual temperatures). I’ll refrain comment on the rest of his post.
Kurt in Switzerland
Pamela Gray Says: ““Have Ph.D. dissertation committees become that bad at weeding out this kind of riff raff?”
Mann got where he is by serving a purpose that all started during his PhD dissertation, namely giving the graphic that showed climate was stable before the invention of the SUV. The funny thing is he believes all the crap he has been putting out there. That is why he was the perfect Useful Idiot from day one. Most scientists that are competent and with some conscience, would have realized what they had done and had a Mea Culpa moment.
Mann-designed bombs would only go up. Therefore never hitting the target. I guess Mann’s bombs would be SAMs instead.
Just a thought.
If someone mocked up a press release of this, stating the facts and calling deceit/dissembling/fraud, it could be around all the news media outlets tomorrow. PRNewswire is the best (and most expensive), and a release will cost about $700 for the US or $900 for US and UK.
.
@ Mike Haseler says: March 4, 2013 at 1:38 am
“No … it’s too depressing even to contemplate the death toll directly attributable to Mann.”
Depressing it is, but it should also be lighting a fire in people. It is time that the true costs of this right back to its genesis are quantified in terms in human life and misery, and displayed to the world. There are individuals in this who have been very aware of the basis or otherwise for what has been occurring. They must be held to account. Fully.
As this fails, there will increasingly be the refrain that “we”, meaning everyone, made a mistake. There is no “we” here.
@ Glacierman says: March 4, 2013 at 6:20 am
“Most scientists that are competent and with some conscience, would have realized what they had done and had a Mea Culpa moment.”
Self – deception can be extreme but does have its limits. At some point it becomes deliberate. Mann is past any “justifying” limits.
There is a logically important distinction to be made between a prediction (aka forecast) and a projection which, however, is not observed by either Dr. Mann in his AGU presentation or by Mr. McIntire in this article. When this distinction is not observed, a consequence is for a misleading argument to be made in reference to the methodology of the research.
I like that you have the brass neck to run with this story on the same day you publish this graphic.
[Reply: your chart reflects U.S. temperatures. — mod.]
Sam the First – Regarding your first comment *March 3, 2013 at 7:52 am).
I have given a great deal of thought as to why both US Parties of Congress, with one Party much more than the other, fully embracing the CAGW scare despite solid evidence to the contrary. When trying to understand the motivation of politicians and their large political machines, I have found it useful to follow the money.
I first considered which Party has historically benefited from oil lobbyists. Shortly after, I came to the conclusion that the Government subsidizing (propping up) green energy is the other Party’s answer to tapping into ‘big energy’s’ financial resources/political contributions.
In other words, one Party’s campaign structure has financially benefited from green energy to counter the other Party’s historical source of major funding from oil (I’ll leave it to the reader to determine which Party is which).
I can think of no other answer as to why certain individual politicians, primarily in one Party, persist in embracing the illusion of CAGW when data (untampered/unadjusted) clearly refutes that premise.
Taking my theory a step further, it should be clear to any independent thinker, which Party the current major media outlets support. Considering this reality makes it all the clearer why the establishment media is hesitant to present both sides of the CAGW debate.
Other than some sort of epidemic-scaled Don Quixote/Chicken Little complex, I can find no other reason than the above as to why any politician, media outlet or scientific organization would continue to give Mike Mann the time of day, much less a platform to present his debauchery of the scientific method/science.
In short — Petroleum envy?