Michael Mann's Lecture at URI and the "blogger who must not be named"

Darn. I couldn’t hear much. My machine, or the poor quality of the recording, or both. Anyone able to give a concise recap?

I note he doesn’t attack Ross McKitrick because he can’t tie him to the oil industry or call him a blogger.

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.

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”

Part B: I’m sure Steve McIntyre will like cartoon of an “angry lobbyist” breaking of a dozen hockey sticks.

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.

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]

This is how we know that Mann doesn’t really have it together.

How do these people keep their jobs?

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.

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/

I missed the memo–when did “believe in” become an important part of science.
Outside of Kansas, I mean

And Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi…

I wish I could show the plot.
The total Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) – 107 Year Graph
http://www.forecast-chart.com/historical-dow-industrial.html
is highly correlated with the rise of temperature.
It is clear that temperature is driving the DOW, becaus the rise of the El Nino happens after 2000.
Seems to me we have a very good proxy for temperature here. Mann should take note and desert tree rings. Even the recent stasis is there, and the cold periods in the 40s and 70s.
🙂 🙂 ;).
Well Maybe the Dow drives the temperatures since the 1929 peak only appear in 1930 or so in the temperatures. [laughing out loud]

“…as for the crooked pseudo-scientists who invented the hockey stick, supported it, and continue to parade it in the mendacious documents of theIPCC, no journalist would dare to ask any of them the questions that would expose their self-seeking corruption for what it is. These evil pseudo-scientists, through the falsity of their statistical manipulations, have already killed far more people through starvation than ‘global warming will ever kill. They should now be indicted and should stand trial alongside Radovan Karadzic for nothing less than high crimes against humanity: for, in their callous disregard for the fatal consequences of their corrupt falsification of science, they are no less guilty of genocide than he.”
The Right Honourable 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley. who is apparently keen not to be thought of as a ‘potty peer’.

In today’s news – Filament bulbs banned by the EU.
Or the alternative headline – Europe decides carbon more harmful than mercury.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/3174452/Traditional-lightbulbs-banned-by-EU.html

Well, we all know who is going to be taking over when Hansen retires.
Al Gore, as the coming Climate Czar, will be sure to apppoint Mann as successor.
My question is: How are they going to manage hiding growing sea ice should cooling continue?
They’re gonna have to take Stalinist control over all weather and climate records. I can see it right now:
Warning – Annual Sea Ice Data!
Government Property!
Top Secret!!
Classified!!
No Trespassing!! Keep Out!
Authorized Personnel Only!
Violators face $100,000 fine and 15 years of prison.
Interstingly, people who show facts and data to dispute AGW are termed fringe bloggers and amateurs. That ought to scare anyone.

Pierre (07:21:30) Pretty positively, Pierre, Palin prepares.
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Pete. “High Cloud = -1.85C (but very uncertain)”
Good he have altered the previous position here, but still water vapor is by (in my opinion fraudulent) Mann is regarded as a positive feedback, which it’s not due to the results from Aqua.

Hey, leave Mississip outta this, Jef.
Robert E. Lee, his ownself, couldn’t sell that AGW stuff down here.

Hi Anthony
reference the EU banning incandescent bulbs from 2010 could you run this topic to discover whether others have found that the long life bulbs lose output after 3 or 4 months and have to be replaced to save eyestrain? We are on our third bulb this year, and guess what? – we replaced with a 100w incandescent! What a load of crap to save 30 million tons of plant food.

Do we understand the full manufacturing and disposal processes/impacts of the new bulbs? Do they still have mercury? Are there other obscure materials that might have raw material and/or disposal environmental impacts? What about any impacts on human functioning like occurred with some people with the old fluorescents that flashed on/off at 60 cycles per second?
I’d love to see an objective life cycle cost and human and environmental impact analysis of incandescent vs. fluorescent vs. other high tech bulbs to understand the true impact.
I don’t necessarily think that the new bulbs aren’t better, but given recent history on other topics, I suspect that the magnitude of any benefit is greatly exaggerated. As a result, we will likely not be be making an optimal decision, because emotion, preconceived notions, and zealotrous interests will dominant are collective decision making. Humans are given the gift of reason and what do we do with it?

BTW. I think Mann said something to the effect that up to 2 degrees warming we could deal with but beyond that we’d be in trouble.
Here’s my conspiracy correlation theory of the day:
The Team already has a good estimate for the negative cloud feedback and they also have some preliminary estimates on Svensmarks cosmic ray cloud formation experiments. They have run the models with these negative feedbacks and the warming is about 1C with a doubling of CO2. They will then be ready the day before Svensmark announcing his findings to reveal their latest model runs.
They will also readjust the CO2 numbers by saying the Carbon cap & trade programs and voluntary citizen actions will reduce the expected CO2 doubling to perhaps only maxing out at the actual measured 1820 and 1940s CO2 level of about 440PPM. By then carbon cap and trade taxation will be in full swing so they will have met their objectives of throttling modern civilization and making money at the same time.
They’ll figure the cap and trade will last until the next major election cycles and they’ll be able to retire in comfort by then and possibly even be prepared to short any public cap and trade companies from their beech front retreats. Gore will retire from his UK carbon trading company but not before opening a US branch to take advantage of the carbon trading tax credits that the US Senate added to the Wall Street bailout bill. The company will then go public and the Team will all short the stock for a potential retirement bonanza.
Mann’s 2 degree # is just greasing the skids for the pre-Svensmark “Catastrophic Anthropogenic CO2 induced Global Warming is solved look at the latest models” press conference.

reference the EU banning incandescent bulbs from 2010 could you run this topic to discover whether others have found that the long life bulbs lose output after 3 or 4 months and have to be replaced to save eyestrain? We are on our third bulb this year, and guess what? – we replaced with a 100w incandescent! What a load of crap to save 30 million tons of plant food.

That hasn’t been my experience with them. I’ve been using the same bulbs around my computer desk for over 2 years, no noticeable reduction in output that I can see. Maybe you’re buying off brands?

Given the company I’m keeping on this site…
I’m proud to be a fringe blogger and amateur!
Go Blogs and amateurs! The professionals have sold out!

Jeff (09:17:50) You know, I kind of feel sorry for them. They have a fragile and untenable paradigm to defend which appears doomed. How about the latest from Livermore about the tropospheric temperatures? Is it just more data manipulation and inappropriate statistics?
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I think it would be good if Anthony started a thread for discussion on the compact fluorescent bulbs – sorry to suggest more work! When we bought our previous house back in 1987 there was a Philips Compact in one of the lights, I suspect it was made in Holland. It was still going when we sold the house in 2007, 20 years on. Admittedly it was in a room where it didn’t get everyday use, but 20 years is still pretty good. A couple of years back I started to replace other lights in the house with the newer CF fittings but had all sorts of trouble with them, a number just snapped off at the glass/plastic interface at the base. Others just gave up the ghost. These fittings are no being made in their billions in China and I don’t think the technology or quality has really advanced that much, if anything they’ve gone backwards. I think its a bit of a racket to get people to buy expensive bulbs that I’m not convinced will give people much more extended life over incandescent globes which is supposedly one of their biggest plus points. I think the quality is very poor these days. End of rant.
I’m with Pete and Pompous Git on this.

Neil,
I am a pragmatic environmentalist (I even used to donate to NRDC) and what amazes about environmental extremists is that they bought so quickly into the “energy saving benefit is greater than the environmental and human health risk” cost/benefit/risk trade off for fluorescent bulbs. Actually, I have a sneaking suspicion that they didn’t even think about such a trade off, and this may be a good illustration of how rational thought does not apply. Environmentalism is a religion.
I just did a quick google search on “fluorescent MSDS” and low and behold, phosphor dust, mercury vapor, safe handling for broken bulbs and procedures for disposal as a hazardous material. One advised that in large quantities the concerns were greater. What happens now when no individual disposes of in large quantities, but collectively, the land fills and any municipal incinerators start getting many small ‘deposits’ that end up turning into the need for an Environmental Street bailout.
Also, I’m not saying that fluorescent bulbs are not a reasonable trade off, and, yes, some of the new ones are getting better but I’d like to see an objective analysis done to support their use. In a similar manner, I think it would be interesting to develop the carbon cap and trade (tax) need with an objective cost/benefit/risk assessment.

The scary part is the applause Mann received from the audience.Are students getting educated or merely degreed? Then again maybe most of the audience is made up of true believers anyway.I am glad someone questioned him.
Most definitely the skeptics must debate these alarmists, but it seems that the alarmists are the ones avoiding the debate.
Me thinks global warming alarmism is taking on the characteristics of a psuedoscience, with the high priest calling for decertification of credentials of the skeptics, the bringing of lawsuits and treason charges, and okaying of vandalism and civil or uncivil disobedience to “protect the planet”
In the words of John Paul Jones, “I have yet to begun to fight’ as the motto to be adopted by the skeptics.

This pushback by Mann, to continue to pretend there was no Medieval warming period, and that his so-called hockey stick is credible is just part and parcel with the echo-chamber AGW creates.
The promoters of the apocalypse now are smoothing out the differences between the troposphere temps and their models, to creat the impression that their models have accuracy.
As mentioned up thread, we are seeing an entire science getting higjacked by apocalyptic prophecy.

John (14:14:19) I suspect Steve is hard at work on this. Your simple assertion that the data was not manipulated nor statistics applied inappropriately is not convincing. I don’t buy their explanation for reworking the data and am not competent to evaluate their statistics, but someone is. Furthermore, this study just partly explained the discrepancy.
Also, the globe is cooling, for how long, even kim doesn’t know. The horse this study wants to ride is out of the barn already.
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John (14:14:19) and others. In particular, see Cliff’s comment #499 on the 5/1/08 Douglass thread at climateaudit.org
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In the second link from John Philip “data manipulation and inappropriate statistics” which states:
“”The bottom line is that we obtained results strikingly different from those of Douglass et al. The “robust statistical test” that they used to compare models and observations had at least one serious flaw – its failure to account for any uncertainty in the “signal component” of observed temperature trends (see QUESTION 7). This flaw led them to reach incorrect conclusions. We showed this by applying their test to randomly generated data with the same statistical properties as the observed temperature data, but without any underlying “signal trend”. In this “synthetic data” case, we knew that significant differences in temperature trends could occur by chance only, and thus would happen infrequently. When we applied the Douglass et al. test, however, we found that even randomly generated data showed statistically significant trend differences much more frequently than we would expect on the basis of chance alone.””
Well SMcI has shown this for MBH9X and yet Climate science still considers these works of Mann to be great science, and MM worthy of your snide remark. Obviously, the problem is that Douglass et al are not part of the team. Different teams … different rules. Perhaps, you, John Philip, can help with this, or even explain this since you posted it. And please note that Wegman agreed with the criticisms directed at MBH.

Kim,
Puzzled. Of the global mean temperature datasets produced by various agencies UAH shows the lowest rate of warming. However even the linear trends in this data for 120, 240 and 360 months are +0.11, +0.18 and +0.13C / decade respectively (in line with IPCC projections). So on what evidence do you conclude that the globe is cooling?
JP

John Philip (16:15:56) Nobody much doubts that the earth warmed for the last quarter of the last century. It is this century that the temperature flattened out and has now started dropping. I maintain that the warming of the last part of the last century was from the PDO in its warming phase and now that the PDO has flipped, we’ll cool for another 20-30 years. If the sun is going into a Grand or Lesser Minimum, we may cool for 50-100 years. Whence: We are cooling; for how long, even kim doesn’t know.
In my opinion, the natural warming of the last quarter of the last century co-incided with the rise in CO2. That the warming has been blamed on CO2 is simply the grandest example ever of the Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc logical fallacy ever. Note that temperature is dropping while the CO2 keeps rising. Watt’s Up With That?
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John (16:15:56) Also, the Arctic is freezing back up. Maximum melt was two summer’s ago. Last summer ended with 10% greater ice extent than the year before and ice extent is rising rapidly, right now. I don’t really expect a freeze-up this year as dramatic as last year’s winter because of van Loon’s prediction of a mild winter, but with the resurgence of the La Nina next year, I don’t expect next year’s melt to even reach this year’s let alone last year’s.
Whence, the Arctic is freezing back up, because the globe is cooling. For how long, even kim doesn’t know.
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Professor Wegman ripped this duckhead apart only a couple of years ago. Us australians emit lots of carbon dioxide making stuff like steel and aluminium. If this fool ever holidays downunder he better not mention what he does. We do not like our boys out of work.