Dr. Michael Mann gives a lecture on his work at the University of Rhode Island.
People send me stuff, and for that I’m always grateful, and happy to oblige posting relevant comments and content for the wide distribution WUWT now enjoys. Gary Boden writes:
I video taped Mann’s lecture at the University of Rhode Island last month and finally was able to get it converted to digital format and uploaded to Photobucket. The quality isn’t great, but not so bad considering it was shot with a handheld mini-DV camcorder from the balcony.
Here are the links to the several parts (I had to split it up for size-constraints). The lecture is in parts A – E and there are two questions and answers. The very last item (Q and A part 2) is Mann being asked to respond to Steve McIntyre’s criticisms – and Mann’s comments about Steve.
Here is the event description from URI:
September 23 — Scientific Evidence of Global Climate Change — Michael E. Mann, director, Earth System Science Center at Penn State. Click here for more information. Please Note: change of venue from Chafee 271 to Edwards Auditorium.
While Dr. Mann certainly seems committed to his work, and his work is important to many, the lack of courtesy for even basic recognition to other professionals whom have also worked equally hard is troubling. You can watch the videos (at the links below) of his entire lecture, and judge the content for yourself.
Each of these videos will open in a new full sized window, you can then resize the window to your liking.
Darn. I couldn’t hear much. My machine, or the poor quality of the recording, or both. Anyone able to give a concise recap?
[…] http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/10/10/michael-manns-lecture-at-uri-and-the-blogger-who-must-not-be-n… […]
Volume was fine here
Well, his first response in the Q&A – in citing Kilimanjaro – was completely misinformed. He should have been more equivocal about ice sheet loss and his case cite of Kilimanjaro indicates to me he’s dug in far too deep and hasn’t kept abreast of the most recent studies. Case in point is Kilimanjaro: The decline of Kilimanjaro’s ice fields has been due to other factors like soot deposition and loss of arboreal microclimate precipitation. That in conjunction with natural ongoing sublimation and changes in circulation in the Indian Ocean rim probably unrelated to direct global warming but possibly rather more related to “brown cloud” aerosol pollution.
The magnitude of the effects from the notorious “Asian Brown Cloud” is stunning and has been the focus of some excellent climatologists like V. Ramanathan who themselves believe in Mann’s work. I wouldn’t be so sanguine, however.
I note he doesn’t attack Ross McKitrick because he can’t tie him to the oil industry or call him a blogger.
I ran across an excellent article in The Oct 9th issue ot the Economist:
Publish and be wrong
Oct 9th 2008
From The Economist print edition
One group of researchers thinks headline-grabbing scientific reports are the most likely to turn out to be wrong
Here’s a link http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?source=hptextfeature&story_id=12376658
Hmmmm. Is that a fact?
Thanks very much for all that you do for us interested amateurs.
Tomba
Funny, Mann says McIntyre makes ad hominem attacks against him and the team, then goes on to make ad hom attacks on McIntyre. And he’s not an amateur statistician, which is what he’s calling into question, Mann’s use of statistics.
What a joke. As a bald man I feel insulted by this idiot.
In 1st video he suggests that skeptics might not believe in the Greenhouse effect.
He says, “…so if you have a skeptical Uncle who tells you he doesn’t believe in the greenhouse effect you can tell him, well how does he explain the fact that the earth is not a solid frozen object.”
Has anyone ever said they don’t believe in the Greenhouse effect?
Water vapor is only “a very potent greenhouse gas”. Could have been a bit more demonstrative there. “High cloud negative feedback is very uncertain…have to make assumptions…”
His warming numbers for a doubling of CO2 from the 1880 level of 280PPM:
Doubled Co2 = +1.25C in about 4 decades.
Water vapor feedback = +2.5C
Ice albedo (melting) = + .6C
High Cloud = -1.85C (but very uncertain)
Total = +2.5C “..but we now think it is closer to 3… dangerous impacts”
Q and A part 2 – my impression: An amazing distortion of the facts (if not actual fabrication & evasion), seems he’s getting quite good at this now 🙁 .
First quote “… I think that I’ve demonstrated that when we put all of the natural factors into the models, and we don’t include CO2, you cannot reproduce the warming that has been seen. When you put the CO2 increases in the models, you do reproduce the warming that has been seen. So basically it is only the increase in CO2 that can explain the observation record. …”
(The obvious response would be, when the incomplete/faulty models have been tweaked & tweaked to show observed warming using an exaggerated CO2 response, well, *of course* leaving CO2 out will stop them showing the observed warming! The modellers couldn’t possibly admit that they don’t know what is really causing the warming, not least since that isn’t good for funding.)
Second quote, answering a question that mentions McIntyre & McKitrick: “… Now as for the idea that, the gentleman referred to a fossil-fuel industry funded amateur who has a website that basically vilifies all the scientists in my field, often by names in a very ad-hominen manner. The idea that this individual has somehow discredited the hockey stick that I showed you, was rejected by the National Academy of Sciences, was rejected last year by the IPCC – which in fact not only confirmed the conclusion that we had drawn ten years ago, based on far fewer data & more elementary methods, but in fact in the most recent IPCC report the conclusion is now drawn that the recent warming is not anomalous in just the past 1000 years, it is probably at least the last 1300 years, and there is some evidence even longer. So no, I don’t think there is by any stretch if the imagination our work has been discredited in legitimate scientific circles, perhaps on some fringe web sites in the bloggosphere people might think it has been.”
(well, I leave this up to you guys to respond to, but the entire quote boggles my mind on many levels.)
Part B: I’m sure Steve McIntyre will like cartoon of an “angry lobbyist” breaking of a dozen hockey sticks.
The tale of the hockey stick …. again … but the model is consistent …stock market melted
Dee Norris: .. I do not know USA laws … to exercise as father …
I wonder. Eloise, to witness such an event?
I actually read his new paper. I was suprised to see his graphs. It’s clear that the proxies with first manipulation do not match the CRU temperature data since 1850. In fact there was a -0.15 to +0.15 temperature change since 1850 to present (ie: no change). He then used the EIV formula to change the data point at present from -0.15 to +0.40 (check the graphs). He also noted that many proxies, not just tree rings, showed the divergence problem. This would falsify Briffa’s suggestion that ozone changes are the cause for divergence. But I really couldn’t believe that the National Academy of Science let him use 66% to 90% as his confidence level for statisical significance. This is burried in the paper and there is no mention of it in either the abstract or the summary. In other words, even after questionable manipulation of the data, his conclusions did NOT reach the level of statisical signifificance (95%) expected for scientific research.
It would be interesting to see the GCMs run with the CO2 at 280 PPM… I have a feeling there would be major tweaking before publication however…
from Wiki’s page on Ross McKitrick.
A panel convened by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) endorsed, with a few reservations, the MBH paper. One of the panel’s reservations was that “…a statistical method used in the 1999 study was not the best and that some uncertainties in the work ‘have been underestimated,’ and it particularly challenged the authors’ conclusion that the decade of the 1990s was probably the warmest in a millennium.” However, they also said that “‘an array of evidence’ supported the main thrust of the paper”, leading to even more confusion on the situation.[4]
A subsequent investigation, undertaken at the request of Republican Senator Joe Barton and headed by prominent statistics professor and NAS member Edward Wegman of George Mason University [5] supported the statistical criticisms by McKitrick and McIntyre, saying “It is not clear that Dr. Mann and his associates even realized that their methodology was faulty at the time of writing the paper. We found MBH98 and MBH99 to be somewhat obscure and incomplete and the criticisms of MM03/05a/05b to be valid and compelling.”[6]
He ends with War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death and he’s so calm and relaxed about it. Very believable if you were just driving by
This is how we know that Mann doesn’t really have it together.
A new branch of “science”has emerged called anecdotal science, where observation and speculation supersede factual evidence, and the various theories are verified by computer models constructed to produce an output that corresponds with the “scientific” observation and specultion and resulting anecdote.
How do these people keep their jobs?
I missed the memo–when did “believe in” become an important part of science.
Outside of Kansas, I mean.
Thank you Gary Boden.
This is the only way I’m likely to see Dr. Mann in his natural niche. The video and audio quality are quite acceptable for me.
The contrast of Mann’s response (to the McIntyre question) to the words of the Wegman report on the Hockey Stick shows the extent of either Mann’s delusion or his conscious decision to lie his way out of his predicament.
I just finished a post which uses the same PCA methods Mann uses to make hockey sticks. Quite a bit less math this time, but the result is amazing.
I have been studying his math and learning for the last two months. It is no coincidence that every method he uses does the same thing, find patterns where none exist.
Only one difference from his work to mine though is that I looked for all kinds of patterns. I actually found a better correlation to a negative temperature slope in his own data than his Mann08 paper had for positive slopes.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2008/10/11/will-the-real-hockey-stick-please-stand-up/
Darn, I didn’t mean PCA, I meant CPS. I was reading about PCA. sorry
And Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi…