The scientist behind the controversial ‘hockey stick’ graph has said it was ‘somewhat misplaced’ to make his work an ‘icon of the climate change debate’.
From the Telegraph, By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent
Professor Michael Mann plotted a graph in the late 1990s that showed global temperatures for the last 1,000 years. It showed a sharp rise in temperature over the last 100 years as man made carbon emissions also increased, creating the shape of a hockey stick.
The graph was used by Al Gore in his film ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ and was cited by the United Nations body the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as evidence of the link between fossil fuel use and global warming.
But the graph was questioned by sceptics who pointed out that is it impossible to know for certain the global temperature going back beyond modern times because there were no accurate readings.
The issue became a central argument in the climate change debate and was dragged into the ‘climategate’ scandal, as the sceptics accused Prof Mann and his supporters of exaggerating the extent of global warming.
However, speaking to the BBC recently, Prof Mann, a climatologist at Pennsylvania State University, said he had always made clear there were “uncertainties” in his work.
“I always thought it was somewhat misplaced to make it a central icon of the climate change debate,” he said.
…
Professor John Christy, an atmospheric scientist from the University of Huntsville in Alabama, said just a quarter of the current warming is caused by man made emissions. He said that 10 to 30 per cent of scientists agree with him and are fairly sceptical about the extent of man made global warming.
==========
full story here
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
However, speaking to the BBC recently, Prof Mann, a climatologist at Pennsylvania State University, said he had always made clear there were “uncertainties” in his work.
Are we hearing the distinct sound of backtracking here?
Yeah I’m sure that Mann didn’t object to the IPCC:s usage of his graph, his role in the “climate research” got bumped up after that I imagine. It’s his own fault for doing the dodgy science that the “air castles” of the climate models later got built upon.
say what?
I guess “uncertainties” is as close to “flat out wrong” or “lying” as you can get out of him.
But uncertainties will do, uncertainties makes it completely invalid.
I think this is related;
WE HAVE A NEW “TIPPING POINT” !!!
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/scientists-expect-climate-tipping-point-by-2200-2012967.html
Does this mean Gordon Browns “Tipping Point” is “Un-Robust” now?
Will those scientists who moved the Tipping Point be added to the BlackList?
Are they “Deniers” of “The Tipping Point”?
“I always thought it was somewhat misplaced to make it a central icon of the climate change debate,” he said.
**************************************************************************
Funny that this is the first disclaimer we have heard from Da’ Mann to this effect. He’s only had 10 years to decry that his work was not worthy of Icon Status. As he produced the work, and holds the intellectual property rights to it, could he not have asked that it not be used in all of those other papers and reports and things that made it so famous?
Pull the other one, Mike. It has bells on it.
Topic of interest.
Cryosat-2 focuses on ice target
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10450425.stm
Looks like the European Space Agency sat is in a proper orbit and the instrumentation working as planned. Note that there is still some interpretation of data to extrapolate physical properties.
Prior to Mann and his ‘walking stick’, the CET chart produced by climatologist H. Lamb was the middle ages temp’s bible, it was even used by IPCC in the couple of their early issues.
Here it is again this time compared to the total solar irradiance TSI and the Earth’s magnetic field in the areas that (I speculate) may affect Gulf Stream, decisive factor in the CETs.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CETlmt.htm
But I do notice that Mann did not say that when he was the darling of the team and getting all kinds of “good” publicity.
Too much sax and violins on TV…nevermind.
Ah yes – Louise Gray “the Queen of the Press Release”. What a job she does! It must be tough slaving all day at her computer, forwarding press releases from Greenpeace or rehashed stories from warmist news organisations (this time the BBC) straight to the Telegraph printroom.
[sarcasm on]
Well, I’m so glad he cleared that up! [sarcasm off]
He also testified that the MWP was hotter than today. Under oath I assume.
That graph looks suspiciously hockey stick like.
At some point the tipping point will be reached where the great band of CAGW believers realize that there just are not going to be any catastrophes in the foreseeable future and that their public posture needs a change.
I describe what will happen as the great pirouette. Like Dr. Mann, the science will get less settled. The uncertainties will be discovered. The possibility of important climate variables other than CO2 will get funding and become areas of interest.
In just a few short years, the same folks will glide over to the ice age prevention theme and CAGW will not be a topic for discussion in polite company.
Hide the Decline is joined by Hide the Uncertainties.
Now he wants to Hide under a Rock.
And to think that his series were better than that of Briffa… if Mann’s series are crap, those of Briffa were super-crap.
Steve Keohane-Where are the error bars? Um, that’s what the gray fuzz. They don’t seem to be calculated quite right, but they are error bars.
It is always best to speak the truth before you get on the stand. Any surprise in court is alwasy a bad thing. Anticipate the questions, publish the responses, deny the prosecution the ability to surprise the listener.
Do you swear…
Steve Keohane says:
June 29, 2010 at 6:58 am
Mann is full of it. If there are ‘uncertainties’, where are the error bars? The Y-axis would have to be increased by orders of magnitude to show them, and then one couldn’t see a hockey-stick. Anyone who uses a small fraction of their data to skew the weight of their entire ‘study’ isn’t doing science, it is fraud.
************
Aren’t the error bars clearly displayed in the graph?
The actual paper does discuss the uncertainties involved with the methods….
Will Mann be added to the Blacklist now?
Over a hundred years ago Hilaire Belloc described a (firm, but fair) British Imperialist,
besieged on a hillock by hordes of sceptical natives, saying under his breath:
‘Whatever happens, we have got
the Maxim gun, and they have not.’
I imagine the modern would-be world ruling Warmists have altered this to read:
‘Whatever happens, we have got
the Hockey-Stick, and they have not.’
Of course, the 10-30% of the warming being discussed is assuming that one buys into there being warming and that CO2 can alter the climate.
It might be useful to access and actually understand the recent elegant work by Miskolczi and Zagoni that describes the interaction between water vapor and CO2 such that one replaces the other to result in a relatively constant effect. As CO2 goes up absolute water vapor goes down. And, since CO2 is not as strong a heat-trapping gas as water vapor, then rising CO2 could slightly cool the climate.
As it appears that warming has been rather constant over the last 200+ years, at about 0.5 deg C per century, then one cannot make any attribution to a contribution to warming by man’s emissions.
Mr. Christy is generous to discuss man’s contribution (to warming) but, in the process, he validates the adulteration and upward-biased adjustment of the temperature records (to create a manmade on paper global warming) which has become a cottage industry in climate science.
Does this mean that another paper is poised to come out further damaging the stick, and Mann is simply trying to get ahead of it?????
It is getting obvious that “professor” Mann is “misplaced” too
“However, speaking to the BBC recently, Prof Mann, a climatologist at Pennsylvania State University, said he had always made clear there were “uncertainties” in his work.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2010/06/whats_up_with_the_weather.html
Prof Manns comments to the BBC can be found in the second clip in the above link.
Chaps
Surely we should not be quite so quick to poke fun at poor Michael. We should wait until Real Climate has told the true believers what to think about his statement and how it actually strengthens their case. So far there has been no word from the Keepers of the True Flame. Maybe Gav is on hols.
Until they are told how to react the warmists are probably all confused and demoralised and stuff and we shouldn’t pile into their intellectual misery just for our own satisfaction.
But, on second thoughts……… 🙂
I don’t know what surprises me more, the fact that there are only 62 responses so far or that Michael Mann actually said this.
I hear comments like this all the time on Skeptic Science and other warmist blogs.
I still don’t understand why people say Jones work and the Mann hockey stick are misplaced as Icons in ACGW.
They are the very focal points of the IPCC, and other publications which Government policy makers look at.
In fact the hockey stick paper was such a focal point that during the AR4 the writers and editor of chapter 6 violated several policies and regulations regarding review, process and timelines to try to throw in a supposedly peer reviewed article backing up the hockey stick. If it’s not such an integral piece of ACGW then why did scientists who were formally respected throw away all vestige of decency, fairplay, and honesty with The Amman et al. paper for chapter 6 in the AR4?