Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Dear Dr. Mann:
I just read your piece in the Washington Post.
First, let me say that I disagree entirely with Cuccinelli’s legalistic approach. It doesn’t seem like the right way to achieve the desired result, that of shining the merciless light of publicity on your actions.
Figure 1. The Merciless Light of Publicity
On the other hand, your opinion piece published in the Washington Post contains a number of omissions, misrepresentations, exaggerations, and misstatements of fact.
[As a digression, for those who don’t know who Dr. Michael Mann is, he is the man who wrote the paper that established the “Hockey Stick” as the icon of misguided climate science. He then used his position on the IPCC to promote his own work, and suppressed contrary views. In one swipe he threw out all evidence that there were warmer periods in the past. No Medieval Warm Period. No Little Ice Age. Here’s that famous and most bogus of graphs, which has been reproduced hundreds of thousands of times …
Figure 2. The “Hockeystick” graph.
Unfortunately, his math was wrong, and the method he used mines for “hockey stick” shapes and will pull them out of random data, so the graph turned out to be both meaningless and totally misleading. End of digression]
So without further ado, Dr. Mann, here are my comments on your opinion piece. I have put your entire article from the Washington Post, without deletions, in bold italic.
Get the anti-science bent out of politics
As a scientist, I shouldn’t have a stake in the upcoming midterm elections, but unfortunately, it seems that I — and indeed all my fellow climate scientists — do.
If this is a surprise to you, it should not be, and not just for climate scientists. Cast your mind back President Eisenhower’s farewell speech in 1960, wherein he said (emphasis mine):
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present — and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
You are funded by the government, and are a salaried member of that scientific-technological elite that Eisenhower warned us about. Why on earth would you think that you would not have a stake in the election? The problem is the opposite – you have far too large a stake in the election, since climate science funding comes solely because the government is willing to back your ideas. As a result, a change in administrations might dry up your funding. You have a huge stake in the elections, and it is curious you want to claim otherwise. You are fighting like mad to keep the funding coming, so don’t pretend that you “shouldn’t have a stake” in the elections.
And regarding the elections, you have a huge political problem. Your science is so shabby and weak, and your claims are so apocalyptic, shrill, and far-fetched, that the people are no longer buying your line of patter. Climate change is at the very bottom of things that the electorate thinks are important … which seems to drive you guys nuts. Because of this, you and other climate scientists like Jim Hansen have become political activists, fighting like crazy to make sure the right people are elected to keep the money spigots turned wide open … just like Eisenhower warned.
So please, spare us the vapors about scientists having a stake in politics. You are in it up to your ears.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has threatened that, if he becomes chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, he will launch what would be a hostile investigation of climate science. The focus would be on e-mails stolen from scientists at the University of East Anglia in Britain last fall that climate-change deniers have falsely claimed demonstrate wrongdoing by scientists, including me. Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) may do the same if he takes over a committee on climate change and energy security.
Deniers? Anyone who is still using that emotion-laden, infantile term is deliberately being antagonistic. In any case, we have very real reasons to suspect you of wrongdoing. You don’t exactly show so well in things like the Climategate emails … see below.
My employer, Penn State University, exonerated me after a thorough investigation of my e-mails in the East Anglia archive. Five independent investigations in Britain and the United States, and a thorough recent review by the Environmental Protection Agency, also have cleared the scientists of accusations of impropriety.
Forgive my bluntness, but that is absolute hogwash. Hand-picked groups of your myopic friends have gotten together, consulted the auguries, studiously looked away, and declared you and Phil and Gene and the rest to be pure as the driven snow. But not one of the “thorough investigations” has spoken to one single person other than you and your friends and supporters. How thorough is a “thorough investigation” that only interviews your friends? “Exonerated”? Don’t make me laugh. You haven’t even been investigated, much less exonerated.
Nonetheless, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is investigating my previous employer, the University of Virginia, based on the stolen e-mails. A judge rejected his initial subpoena, finding that Cuccinelli had failed to provide objective evidence of wrongdoing. Undeterred, Cuccinelli appealed the decision to the Virginia Supreme Court and this week issued a new civil subpoena.
What could Issa, Sensenbrenner and Cuccinelli possibly think they might uncover now, a year after the e-mails were published?
Well, they might uncover the truth contained in the emails that haven’t been published. For example, you stand accused of conspiring to delete emails that showed you and your friends trying to prevent IPCC Review Comments from being made public.
Did you delete those emails? We may never know, since your good buddies in the “thorough investigation” DIDN’T EVEN LOOK TO SEE IF THE ACCUSATION WAS TRUE. They never looked through either your emails, or the CRU emails, to see if you had deleted emails as you were asked to do by Phil Jones. They never looked for your answer to Gene.
As you may not want to recall, in the Climategate emails, Phil wrote to you about the AR4 review emails, as follows:
Phil Jones wrote:
Mike,
Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis.
Can you also email Gene [Wahl] and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address.
We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.
I see that CA claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper!!
Cheers
Phil
Those emails, Dr. Mann, were the subject of a Freedom of Information Act request. You replied:
Hi Phil,
laughable that CA would claim to have discovered the problem. They would have run off to the Wall Street Journal for an exclusive were that to have been true.
I’ll contact Gene [Wahl] about this ASAP. His new email is: xxxx@yahoo.com
talk to you later,
mike
Now you may have a reasonable innocuous explanation for that interchange. I don’t see one. I see Phil advising you to break the law and delete emails that were the subject of an FOI request, and you saying “I’ll contact Gene about this ASAP”. When your friends were doing their “thorough investigation”, it is curious that they NEVER ASKED TO SEE the other emails in the chain. Like for example the email you said you would send to Gene to tell him to delete the emails. Did you send it?
And did you delete your emails? The “thorough investigation” never investigated that either, they didn’t even try to answer that important question.
So please don’t give us your sanctimonious posing as though you were shown to be innocent. The “thorough investigations” run by your friends have not determined your innocence, or the lack thereof – since they haven’t even tried to look at the evidence, how could they determine anything? So the jury is still out on the question.
But the facts we do have do not look good for you in the slightest.
If you had any actual evidence that you were innocent, I’m sure you would have given it to the investigators … funny how none of the five investigations have come up with a single fact or email or document to exonerate you in this question. As far as we know, you didn’t write back to Phil later and say something like “I can’t delete emails, that would be unethical and possibly illegal”. You wrote back to say that you would pass on the email deletion order to Gene … and you want us to believe that your hands are clean? Sorry, my friend, I’m like the Red Queen, I can believe six impossible things before breakfast, but that one is just too big to swallow.
The truth is that they don’t expect to uncover anything. Instead, they want to continue a 20-year assault on climate research, questioning basic science and promoting doubt where there is none.
The truth is, your objections have nothing to do with climate research. You are simply worried what an inquiry might find out, otherwise the idea of an investigation wouldn’t bother you a bit. But since all the indications are that you and others conspired to subvert the IPCC process , and then conspired (as shown in the Climategate emails) to cover it up, I can understand your all-pervading unease …
Cuccinelli, in fact, rests his case largely on discredited claims that Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.) made during hearings in 2005 at which he attacked me and my fellow researchers. Then-Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.) had the courage and character to challenge Barton’s attacks. We need more political leaders like him today.
Discredited claims? A bit more specificity would go a long way here, although I don’t expect it of you. What claims were “discredited”? As a close observer at the time, I did not see that a single claim against you was “discredited”. Quite the opposite, several of your claims were discredited, and McIntyre’s claims were totally upheld.
We have lived through the pseudo-science that questioned the link between smoking cigarettes and lung cancer, and the false claims questioning the science of acid rain and the hole in the ozone layer. The same dynamics and many of the same players are still hard at work, questioning the reality of climate change.
I’m not sure what your point is here. You seem to be saying that there have been false claims made by shady scientists in the past, and so that makes you right. How does that work again?
The basic physics and chemistry of how carbon dioxide and other human-produced greenhouse gases trap heat in the lower atmosphere have been understood for nearly two centuries. Overloading the atmosphere with carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is heating the planet, shrinking the Arctic ice cap, melting glaciers and raising sea levels. It is leading to more widespread drought, more frequent heat waves and more powerful hurricanes. Even without my work, or that of the entire sub-field of studying past climates, scientists are in broad agreement on the reality of these changes and their near-certain link to human activity.
Scientists are in broad agreement that the earth has been slowly warming for about three centuries. We don’t know why, which should give us a clue about the depth of our understanding of the climate.
More to the point, there is no agreement about such basic, rudimentary, fundamental, all-important questions as the sign and size of the cloud feedbacks. A change of 2% in cloud cover would wipe out any CO2 effect. Since we don’t understand the clouds, that most basic and critically important part of climate science, the idea that we understand why the earth is currently warming, or the idea that we can forecast climate a hundred years in advance, is hubris of the first order. We don’t know why it warmed in Medieval times. We don’t know why it warmed in Roman times. We don’t know why it has warmed since the “Little Ice Age”. We don’t understand the climate, and you folks’ claims that you do understand it well enough to make century-long forecasts just makes rational, reasonable people point and laugh.
Burying our heads in the sand would leave future generations at the mercy of potentially dangerous changes in our climate. The only sure way to mitigate these threats is to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions dramatically over the next few decades. But even if we don’t reduce emissions, the reality of adapting to climate change will require responses from government at all levels.
And you know this how? You guys have got some serious coconuts, to think that you can predict what kind of “potentially dangerous changes in our climate” will be the lot of people living a hundred years from now. Let me say it again. There is no agreement on the SIGN, much less the size, of cloud feedback. And if you don’t understand cloud feedback, you don’t understand the climate well enough to forecast it for a decade, much less for a century.
Next, you say “even if we don’t reduce emissions” as though there is a cost-effective way to reduce temperature through emission cuts. The Kyoto Protocol (if its adherents had been able to fulfill their targets, which they didn’t) was estimated by its proponents to have the potential to cool the earth by six hundredths of a degree by 2050. The EPA just estimated that their current plan of regulating CO2 as a “dangerous pollutant” will cool the earth by somewhere around three hundredths of a degree by 2030. Those are the estimates of the proponents of the plans, opponents say less.
So you are pushing us to spend billions and billions of dollars and radically reshaping the global economy, and all for a trivial, unmeasurably small reward of a few hundredths of a degree … and then you think people who are against your cockamamie ideas are “anti-science”??? Where is the science in spending billions and billions of dollars for a possible, not guaranteed but only possible, temperature reduction so small we can’t even detect it? That’s so dumb and so far from science that I can’t begin to characterize it.
Challenges to policy proposals for how to deal with this problem should be welcome — indeed, a good-faith debate is essential for wise public policymaking.
But the attacks against the science must stop. They are not good-faith questioning of scientific research. They are anti-science.
The questions that you have been asked from the beginning have been the most fundamental of good-faith questions. We simply asked you to show us your data and your work. We requested you to abide by the most bozo requirements of the scientific method. Show us your data, show us your work, the same thing my high school science teacher taught me.
But no, in February of ’05 you went to the Wall Street Journal to make the extraordinary claim:
Giving them [McIntyre and McKitrick] the algorithm would be giving in to the intimidation tactics that these people are engaged in
For you to claim that such basic scientific questions were not in good faith, for you to say that merely (and politely) asking you to show your work is “intimidation”, is the opposite of science. For you to refuse to respond to those requests stops science in its tracks. We just wanted to see how you had come up with such an unusual and unexpected result as your total eradication of the Medieval Warm Period from the landscape. (It turned out that when you were finally forced to reveal your methods, your novel result could be seen to came from a stupid mathematical error combined with using bristlecone pines, known to be an invalid temperature proxy. That made your work meaningless and misleading … but I digress.)
How can I assure young researchers in climate science that if they make a breakthrough in our understanding about how human activity is altering our climate that they, too, will not be dragged through a show trial at a congressional hearing?
How can you assure them? It’s very simple. Dr. Mann, do you think you were picked at random to testify at a Congressional hearing? If you want to assure young researchers that they will not be dragged in front of Congress, tell them not to do the things you have done.
Tell them not to hide adverse results in a folder marked “BACKTO_1400-CENSORED“. Tell them not to make stupid mathematical mistakes and then refuse to show their work. Tell them not to hang around with people who delete emails that are the subject of a Freedom of Information act. Tell them not to subvert the IPCC process to advance their point of view.
And above all, tell them to be open about their data and their work. Why is it so hard for you to understand and practice this most basic of scientific tenets, total transparency and openness? You got hauled before Congress, not because of your scientific views, but because you tried to con people with your bogus math and bad proxies. And when we didn’t buy it, when we asked how you got your results, you refused to explain your methods, claiming it was “intimidation” to even ask, so we should just take it on faith that you were right …
Tell your students that scientists who do those things may have to face either the consequences, or Congress, or both …
America has led the world in science for decades. It has benefited our culture, our economy and our understanding of the world.
My fellow scientists and I must be ready to stand up to blatant abuse from politicians who seek to mislead and distract the public. They are hurting American science. And their failure to accept the reality of climate change will hurt our children and grandchildren, too.
My friend, the problem is not blatant abuse from politicians. The problem is your blatant abuse of the scientific method. If you and other climate scientists stopped trying to scare us with your doomsday fantasies, if you and other climate scientists were honest and open and forthright about what we do understand and what we don’t understand, if you and other climate scientists fully disclosed your data and your methods, if you and other climate scientists stopped trying to subvert the IPCC into serving as your propaganda mouthpiece, we could have a rational discussion.
But you are like a junkie who jumps up and down and screams “Police abuse” every time the cops question him. Asking you scientific questions is not abuse, Dr. Mann, no matter how many times you try to claim it is. And your investigations are the just rewards of your own anti-scientific and unethical actions. As my momma used to say, “Scorch around, and you’ll get burnt.”
Now, if you’d care to disagree with any of the things that I have said above, I am certain that Anthony Watts would be more than happy to publish your reply. So the opportunity is yours to make your case about the math, and the bristlecones, and the IPCC AR4 review comments, and all the rest. Heck, publish your emails that show that you didn’t conspire with Wahl and Amman and Jones to delete emails regarding what you had done to subvert AR4 … I offer you the chance to set the record straight.
My conclusions? I strongly support the fullest further investigation of the Climategate scandals, and your own role in them. Not via the legal system like Cuccinelli, however. I want an independent, outside scientific/academic investigation that talks to both your friends and those who disagree with your actions and claims. I want to bring in full sunlight, and put this matter to rest. I would like to know if you did delete the emails, and if you asked your pal Gene to do the same … you know, the stuff your precious “thorough investigations” never investigated in the slightest.
And as a result, it is perfectly clear to me why you have gone to the Washington Post to complain about the possibility that people might find out exactly what you did and didn’t do. And I have to say, I sympathize with you in that regard.
Because from the looks of things, if I were you … I wouldn’t want someone bringing in the sunlight so folks could find out what went on, either.
Sincerely,
Willis Eschenbach
Independent Climate Researcher
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Climate “science” vs. Economic “science”
If you were to ask most scientists whether economics is a science, the answer would be an almost unanimous NO! But if you were to ask them about the climate, the answer would be at least a: “it should be”.
Why?
Why is it that people think that climate “science” is a science and economics is not? When you look at economics and the global climate there are a lot of similarities in the problem of prediction:
1. A few main variables: temperature/GDP.
2. An incredibly complex system.
3. A system that is largely incapable of being scientifically “experimented upon” (the fundamental requirement of science), and which the experts can only watch, observe and pontificate.
4. A system constantly under change. Technology, population growth, changes in resource supply fraught any chance of ever seeing the world economy respond to the same input stimulus more than once with the same starting conditions. Likewise, changes in air/water circulation, changes in solar activity, changes in land use, even on longer scales: changes in magnetic north and its shielding effect and changes in continental positions, all mean that the climate never experiences the same conditions more than once.
But, isn’t it a “science” because it can be measured “scientifically”?
This is the real con of climate “science”. Because they use instrumentation and not accounts, because they measure things in a way the public associate with “science and are not measuring things in just as scientific a way by measuring “money” through accountants rather than instruments, somehow climate “science” gets lumped in with real science, whilst the similarly scientific subject of “economics” does not.
But they use physical models … they must be science
What’s the difference between homoeopathy, and real medicine? They both measure, they both have doctors wearing white coats? They both (largely) share the same physical models of the human. The real difference is that unlike even economics, you don’t have to prove anything in homoeopathy.
Climate “science” is much the same as homoeopathy. The “fact” that homoeopathy “works”, is very much the same as “the Medieval warm period was cooler than today”, or even “mankind is heating the climate”. The two subjects share the same sense that things can be “so” despite the lack of any evidence and certainly any proof that shows it to be so. Just because two subjects look the same, it doesn’t mean they are unless they share the same basic philosophy regarding “truth”.
One could even take the analogy further. We’ve all heard the “tigers teeth are good for indigestion, are an aphrodisiac and stop flees”, kind of rubbish by “herbalists”. The simple truth is that at best this is anecdotal coincidental one-off things that someone thought had been caused, at worst it is utter claptrap made up by those involved. Well, it’s much the same with predictions regarding the affects of “climate change”. Just as the traditional herbalist is free (out with western law) to claim any kind of effects that their gullible climates might believe without a shred of evidence, so the climate “science” has indulged in the same kind of push-to-the limit anything that their gullible audience will believe claims of effects.
There are many contending views in economics: There’s only one school in climate science
The biggest difference between economics and climate “science”, is not that one or the other is/isn’t scientific. In my view, there is little to differentiate between the two in terms of scientific credibility. Indeed, many economists are far more scientific than someone like Mann (shooting a fish in a barrel!). The big difference, is that we have contending views on the economy that allow us to compare and contrast the merits and (failure to) predictions of each school – we can see that economics is as much “opinion” as accurate measurement. In contrast, in climate science, we (as yet) do not have this diversity of views. Largely I suspect, because they have been able to delude themselves that they can predict the climate. But, sure as bad eggs are bad eggs, and climate “science” isn’t a science, these charlatans will embarrass the whole of real science when their predictions get shown to be as credible as (x UK PM) Brown’s “end to boom and bust”.
Summary: In terms of scientific credibility and scientific method – there really isn’t much difference at all between economic “science” and climate “science”.
James Sexton: All the anti-science stances within the Tea Party (unless you’re a member, then your personal beliefs aren’t relevant to that statement) I listed can be easily confirmed by web searches; I’m not going to spoon feed you that. Plus, everyone knows Palin’s and O’Donnel’s attitude towards evolution and stem cell research.
I understand that some scientists are also religious to varying extents, I work with some, whose science I respect. I guess I just can’t understand how people can suspend their scientific way of looking at things when it comes to the superatural. What I meant was that fundamentalist belief (the belief, not the believer necessarily), which always insists that it already has all the answers and blind faith is a virtue, is incompatible with scientific inquiry.
Listing quotes by famous people borders on argument from authority (aside from the fact that Einstein repeatedly asserted his disbelief in God; and quoting scientists from an age where belief in God was the norm, let alone atheism a crime, does not mean much today; science tended to progress despite, not because of faith).
What I find interesting is that now some of the opposition to the theory of AGW comes from a misunderstanding of anthropocentrism: humans through their numbers and extended phenotype have indeed been capable of altering the land, ocean, atmosphere and biosphere significantly, today on a massive scale.
Re davidmhoffer says: October 11, 2010 at 6:48 pm
Regarding mail server non-investigations..
You, I and many others know this. McManus and others still seem to think Jones et al have been vindicated during these inquiries, even though it’s clear from the Muir Russell review, the servers were never actually examined. I linked the report from the forensic expert which contained some oddities, like suggesting –
An analysis, against selected terms or combinations of author and recipient will require the deployment of specialist software with more sophisticated searching facilities than are available in regular email software. Almost certainly there would need to be conversion of the “Thunderbird” archives into a format that the specialist analysis software requires; together with the “published” emails.
Which is a somewhat curious statement given Thunderbird’s archives, along with most POP/IMAP clients tend to use simpler plaintext file formats rather than MS’s more cumbersome Exchange database system. So grep or some Perl would usually answer the basics. None of this was examined though.
There are other oddities regarding archival though. From Iain Reeman’s reply to Jim Norton-
Within the Unix email service “inbox” and “sentitems” are single files. Fourteen versions of “Inbox” is backed up (normally 2 weeks) and “Sentitems” is backed up for 4 weeks. Once an email has been deleted it will be retained for 60 days. The exception to these rules is for users that have configured POP to delete the emails from the server. For these users the only copy is on the PC where the email was downloaded and they will need to ensure the data is secured.
Yet the leak contained emails dating back much further than 4 weeks or 60 days, so a hacker would have needed to extract emails from multiple archive files to cover the timeframe. Or UEA’s IT people missed other archival rules that logged from EXIM/Dovecot, or archived staff’s folders from their ‘personal’ machines. Lots of questions which the inquiries provided no real answers to.
Actually there may be, which may explain why the messages chosen for release were selected highlights and some more random results thrown in to salt the output. One curious feature of the release was the way the emails were edited to remove or redact some personal information. Why would a hacker bother to do that? Redacting parts of the email may be nice to prevent spam harvesting, but why strip the headers, which would have added authenticity?
One possible answer is bcc: If you use that, the sender and main recipient will see the To: From: simple headers, but not the Bcc: recipient. They’ll have the To/From in their simple headers, but their own name won’t appear. So it would look at first glance that they weren’t included in the conversation, and ‘must have hacked someone elses mailbox’, or the server. Instead, it could have come from a single person’s ‘CYA’ mailbox.
Simple questions to answer, but again none of the inquiries have bothered to investigate the detail. While the server and copy is safely immune from FOI while it’s with the police, we can’t expect answers to those questions either. What we do know though is there’s still 7.77GB of emails potentially FOI’able, once the server and copy is released.
Re: James Sexton says: October 11, 2010 at 6:51 pm
I’m not a lawyer, but UK FOI is a bit of a mess given the statute barring time limit. It does have some conspiracy elements, but generally I think the US version is stronger, plus other US conspiracy laws. EIR may be a better/stronger law to use for climate related information in the UK as well as there are fewer expemptions and more obligations to disclose.
On conspiracy and intent though, you mentioned Wahl’s Yahoo address. Some of the other Team members have also talked about using Gmail or similar purely to avoid FOI. What they don’t seem to realise is that doesn’t work. There is usually no such thing as private or personal correspondence if it’s done on taxpayer funded systems and on taxpayer funded time. Using ‘private’ email accounts to discuss work and avoid FOI seems pretty clear intent to break those laws. Yahoo or Gmail content is still FOI’able, if it’s work related.
It sounds like you have been drinking too much. Watch for clues like seeing double, falling down, drooling and complete reversal of logic and reason.
I am surprised the mods let that ad hominem slip through, as it is as offensive as the frowned upon D-Words.
Anyway, TEA Parties. Taxed Enough Already. Which one of those words do you not understand? So ginckgo, what did you pay in taxes this past year? State? Federal? Or are you still living in mommy’s basement. Are you not Taxed Enough Already?
But your vitriol fails to hide your nervousness. That light you see in the distance is a freight train headed your way. The mob of taxpayers is onboard and it is scaring the [self-snip] out of you.
Trying to do anything to change the subject and go off topic I see. FAIL. But I won’t take the bait since this is Anthony’s house. Enjoy your prejudice and bigotry.
You are so full of it. It figures you would get this as ass-backwards as you would the AGW fiasco. I personally prefer to leave political parties out of it but since you stepped into this: It is the Congress + President that matters most. If Congress is controlled by liberals we’re financially screwed. If Congress + President is controlled by liberals we’re FUBAR (like now). And one more thing, Bubba Clinton had to be dragged kicking and screaming away from Lewinsky to sign Republican balanced budgets.
Hurry back and give an apology to any folks here that your LIE may have offended.
Sorry, my earlier link was wrong…if you want to hear The Hockey Stick Blues, click here:
http://www.gather.com/viewVideo.action?id=11821949021914758
Blade says:
October 12, 2010 at 1:41 am
(…)
But for now I am, in part, financing this pop-science extravaganza. And I am asking that you cease and desist from standing in between myself and accountability.
————-Reply
I’d like to give a strong second to Blade’s comment, particularly as he takes Willis to task for his first comment wherein Wills disagrees with Cucinelli’s legalistic approach (What–would you have Cucinelli refute the SCIENCE??)
Indeed, what on earth is wrong with all you Cuccinelli whiners (Fuller, Mosher, McIntyre, Willis, etc)??
Don’t you understand politics? Don’t you understand the rule of law?
Don’t you understand the taxpayer is getting screwed?
Apparently not!
“Climate Science” has become nothing more than a subversive arm of degenerative politics. It is used to drive horrible domestic policy that will reverse civilization’s progress if implemented completely.
Or are you Cucinelli whiners (Fuller, Mosher, McIntyre, Willis, etc.) so stuck on the “science” you don’t see the big picture?
ginckgo says:
October 12, 2010 at 3:12 am
James Sexton: All the anti-science stances within the Tea Party (unless you’re a member, then your personal beliefs aren’t relevant to that statement) I listed can be easily confirmed by web searches; I’m not going to spoon feed you that. Plus, everyone knows Palin’s and O’Donnel’s attitude towards evolution and stem cell research.
Let’s be a little more precise, shall we? Human embryonic stem cell research is what they find objectionable. They find it objectionable for 2 reasons. One, believing in the sanctity of life and that life begins at inception, in their view, we are destroying life when we engage in human embryonic stem cell research. The other reason, is knowing that this will bring about a myriad off ethical dilemmas and moral choices. They believe humanity may not be capable of making the right choices and its better to avoid the slippery slope altogether. Yeh, total nut jobs. I can’t understand how someone could think like that. BTW, you do know the Tea Party existed before Palin and O’Donnel? They are no more representative of Tea Partiers than Pelosi and Frank are of Democrats.
Listing quotes by famous people borders on argument from authority (aside from the fact that Einstein repeatedly asserted his disbelief in God; and quoting scientists from an age where belief in God was the norm, let alone atheism a crime, does not mean much today; science tended to progress despite, not because of faith).
Sad that you didn’t read all of the quotes or their sources. The list covered quite a bit of the time line of science. A few of the ones I quoted were of the modern variety. You asserted fundamental Christianity is incompatible with science. I simply listed many who were fundamental Christians or at least adhered to one of the base tenets, the belief in God. Somehow, amazingly, they were all able to make significant scientific contributions. It wasn’t arguing from authority, it was showing you that you were wrong. Science and scientists have made significant progress in parallel with Christianity. How else could the listed scientists have made their contributions?
What I find interesting is that now some of the opposition to the theory of AGW comes from a misunderstanding of anthropocentrism: humans through their numbers and extended phenotype have indeed been capable of altering the land, ocean, atmosphere and biosphere significantly, today on a massive scale.
That statement is what I find interesting. If we all suddenly died tomorrow, the earth will continue to rotate, warm, cool, rain, dry, ect…. No, we haven’t significantly changed the earth, no we can’t. It stems from a scientific tenet. We can’t create matter. The elements are still the elements(double entendre). With or without mankind.
Willis, why did not you include the following statement of Michael in your article?
“There is no reason to give them any data, in my opinion, and I think we do
so at our own peril!”
http://bit.ly/927jQy
By the way, what does he mean by “AT OUR OWN PERIL”????????
After making such statement, it is surprising that he still tries to convince the world of man-made global warming.
Atomic Hairdryer;
Once an email has been deleted it will be retained for 60 days. The exception to these rules is for users that have configured POP to delete the emails from the server. For these users the only copy is on the PC where the email was downloaded and they will need to ensure the data is secured.>>
Wasn’t aware of this information, but it does add some possibilities. That’s a very odd way to run an email server, but one of the side effects is that users who configured their personal computer as POP with “delete on server” enabled, would not necessarily have been aware that logging in remotely and deleting an email would not remove it from the server. They may possibly have believed they deleted something not understanding that the rules were different for remote access versus being in the office.
As to the use of “bcc”, I don’t see that as practical. The hacker would still have had to have access to each and every user account to set themselves up as a “bcc” recipient by default in order to get copies of the emails. Access to the server or backup tapes would require a fraction of the effort.
Now here is an excuse I also wasn’t aware of:
“Almost certainly there would need to be conversion of the “Thunderbird” archives into a format that the specialist analysis software requires; together with the “published” emails.”>>
Yeah right. Analysis software that doesn’t understand standard unix file formats. How long did they have to search to find analysis software that bad? Every intelligence agency on the planet not to mention most police forces have commerical software that does exactly this sort of analysis. Even if they didn’t, exporting to another format isn’t a big deal for anyone with basic unix and email server skills.
As for stripping the headers, no idea. It would be a simple way of removing personal email addresses and such wholesale, that’s for certain. If the researchers had claimed the emails were forged or edited, having the headers would have been important, but they didn’t do that. Again, a hacker with access to the server could have set it up to forward email to an outside IP address (a case where a system wide bcc would work, but you still need access to the server to do it). If that is what they did, then there would be information in the headers that could well be used to track down the hacker, so another reason to redact them.
In any event, the fact that a forensic audiot of the email system hasn’t been done (or at least not publicaly admitted to) and that the excuses for not doing it are flimsey at best, suggests once again two possibilities in regard to this matter. Either gross incompetance or a deliberate attempt to keep certain information out of the public domain.
Willis Eschenbach says:
October 12, 2010 at 1:01 am
You have divined my intention exactly, and expressed it more powerfully and concisely than I have. My thanks.
w.
————
James Sexton,
Thank you for that statement on why legal action is necessary because science itself did not take timely care of a problem that they should have taken more timely care of (especially when that science was funded by public money).
Science is beyond their pale; they are accountable to the public for due diligence and fiscal responsibility. Other professions like medicine, law, engineering, computer software/hardware, or any business are all held accountable.
Scientists are not privileged . . . . especially when they think they are saving the world so the end justifies the means while using public money.
John
Where does he get “nearly two centuries from”
Apologies in advance for my ignorance.
Agree with Mike Haseler 2.07 am on hockey pseudo science…
The spin doctors of climateology
Deny any bias
In their tricky methodology! 🙂
————–
RockyRoad,
Within an idealistic view of the processes of the scientific community, I can understand why some scientists are objecting to Cuccinelli’s legal actions. They want science to police itself. I respect their dedication to the honor of their profession. To that extent I agree and support them.
Therefore, I have a sincere request to those (“Cucinelli whiners”) scientists. I want to know what science is formally or informally doing about the Mann (& Team) situation. Give me a summary of your plan to deal with it. Show me the basic investigative process, the key milestones you will meet and the key players to be involved. PLEASE! I will stop supporting Cucinelli’s legal actions if you show me your actions.
If scientists want legal actions to stop then they must act in an open, convincing timely manner. They must show the public their stuff on dealing with issues regarding Mann ( & Team).
So, until I see explicit evidence that science is policing itself, I do not agree with those scientists that think Cuccinelli’s legal actions are inappropriate or misguided. Pending science policing itself, I encourage legal bodies, within the bounds of the law, to go forth to finally do an independent review of what the heck is going on with my money.
John
alexandriu doru says:
October 11, 2010 at 10:17 am
“A change of 2% in clouds will offset the CO2 warming”
This is not true.
Low altitude clouds have ~30 W/m^2 albedo effect and ~25W/m^2 greenhouse
effect.
You need doubling them to offset the 4 W/m^2 of the CO2.
And the bad news is that they are, in fact ,decreasing.
You are quoting assumptions used in the GCMs. Observational evidence from satellites actually shows that these figures are incorrect.
for examples see:
Potential Biases in Feedback Diagnosis from Observational Data: A Simple Model Demonstration
Roy W. Spencer and William D. Braswell
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2008JCLI2253.1
Cloud and radiation budget changes associated with tropical
intraseasonal oscillations
Roy W. Spencer, William D. Braswell, John R. Christy, and Justin Hnilo
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 34, L15707, doi:10.1029/2007GL029698, 2007
Does the Earth Have an Adaptive Infrared Iris?
Richard S. Lindzen, Ming-Dah Chou, and Arthur Y. Hou
there are many others.
The impact of clouds on climate appears to be less well understood by climate ‘scientists’ than it is by sunbathers.
Stacey says:
October 12, 2010 at 5:55 am
Where does he get “nearly two centuries from”
Apologies in advance for my ignorance.
========================================================
No need to apologize, apparently, it isn’t widely known that climatologists routinely make numbers up. (See Hansen’s interpolation techniques.) Arrhenius’s hypothesis wasn’t articulated until 1896, so he’s only off twofold, which is pretty good for him!
On an aside, Arrhenius probably was the climatologist to have the first of a multitude of “oops” moments. After arguing over the climates sensitivity to CO2 with Knut Angstrom for years, in 1906 he reevaluated and revised his estimates downward by about 3 fold. So you see, Mann has historical precedent of idiocy on his side.
[snip- personal attack on Dr. Mann ~mod]
Thank you Bruckner8 for this very important statement-it’s a shame that most “climate scientist ” and a few physicists like Michael Mann did not learn the basics of the “scientific method” When physicists like Dr. Harold Lewis, Dr. Charles Anderson, Gerlich & Tscheuschner, Dipl-Ing Heinz Thieme , R.W. Wood , the work of Angstrom and many others tell us with well thought thru documents that the “ghg effect ‘ does not exist. There is no “creditable experimental data that proves that the ‘greenhouse gas effect ‘exists.
Its worth repeating -the Scientific Method.
Bruckner8 says:
October 11, 2010 at 12:17 pm
My 6th grade science teacher had us use the Scientific Method all year. Every 6 weeks, we had to turn in a steno pad, the first page of which had to be a Hypothesis. The following pages were supposed to be our thoughts about WHY we had come to the Hypothesis (Observations). Then we would document any and all experiments/tests/activities. The activities could even be interviewing real scientists about what they thought about our idea!
We also had to state (ie, think about!) why others might find fault with our Hypothesis. Further, before we turned them in, we’d spend two days reading each others’ Hypos, writing in their stenos about what we thought was wrong! On the final day, we were allowed to rebut the rebuttals!
The rebuttal process was done in private (as if we were writing to each other…no emails!), not in real-time back-and-forth discussion…that was later, only twice per year. At the end of each semester, the class would vote on a project or two that would go under further scrutiny, with teams “taking sides.” It didn’t matter if you really believed in the Hypothesis not…your job was defend your side using sound principles. You had to prepare a “statement” and give it aloud to a panel of other science and math teachers.
It was perfectly fine to turn in a project where you found out that your Hypothesis was false! You just had to be sure to stick to the entire method, showing your work.
From this, my appreciation for science, math and logic was formed.
In 6th grade.
My disgust with all things in modern day “politico-science” is that every one of those steps is somehow missed by the experts. The steps I learned in 6th grade.
Everything I’ve learned about Climate Science, I’ve learned as a result of this site. I’m no expert on it. All of my contributions (as few as they are) have been along the lines of “cost assessment of risk/reward” and failures of the Scientific Method. My first post asked “How can all of these world-wide thermometers be calibrated properly, and known to be of the same vintage? [common error margins, accuracy]”
One needn’t be an expert in Scientific Fact Knowledge to spot flaws in a process.
I’m not skeptical of Climate Change. I’m skeptical of the processes followed by the people in which we’ve put our trust! (And to me, that’s worse than Climate Change.)
Willis, I knew (from your past writings) that you leaned more liberal than I, and therefore your rebuttal of Mann is that much more powerful. Putting principal ahead of partisanship is rare these days. Mann may be liberal or just a leech on the back of the public trough, but your stand against his poor science speaks volumes for your integrity.
I enjoyed your entire post until I got to the part about Cuccinelli. But then with James Sexton’s restatement, and your endorsement of his interpretation, I am glad to say I fully endorse your entire article. Very well written, and an excellent rebuttal. A shame that the press is not as competent and ethical as you.
to James Sexton : To answer your question on the almost 200 year old hypothersis ,here is the abstract from G&T with a little of the history:The atmospheric greenhouse e ect, an idea that many authors trace back to the
traditional works of Fourier (1824), Tyndall (1861), and Arrhenius (1896), and which
is still supported in global climatology, essentially describes a fictitious mechanism, in
which a planetary atmosphere acts as a heat pump driven by an environment that is
radiatively interacting with but radiatively equilibrated to the atmospheric system. According to the second law of thermodynamics such a planetary machine can never exist.
Nevertheless, in almost all texts of global climatology and in a widespread secondary
literature it is taken for granted that such mechanism is real and stands on a firm sci-
entifc foundation. In this paper the popular conjecture is analyzed and the underlying
physical principles are clarifed. By showing that (a) there are no common physical laws
between the warming phenomenon in glass houses and the fictitious atmospheric greenhouse effects, (b) there are no calculations to determine an average surface temperatureof a planet, (c) the frequently mentioned difference of 33 C is a meaningless number calculated wrongly, (d) the formulas of cavity radiation are used inappropriately, (e) the assumption of a radiative balance is unphysical, (f) thermal conductivity and friction must not be set to zero, the atmospheric greenhouse conjecture is falsifed.
Electronic version of an article published as International Journal of Modern Physics
B, Vol. 23, No. 3 (2009) 275{364 , DOI No: 10.1142/S021797920904984X,
c World
Scienti c Publishing Company, http://www.worldscinet.com/ijmpb.
When Michel Mann is finally brought to court ,will he take the Fifth Amendment?
—————
cleanwater2,
When you said that I had an immediate mental image of him plea bargaining away is associates . . . . in a fit of righteousness.
John
Correction to my comment ‘John Whitman, October 12, 2010 at 4:07 pm’
. . . plea bargaining away his associates . .
John
ginckgo:
“The misguided views on scientific issues of of the Tea Party are highly destructive to society, and the majority of Republicans are embracing them. ”
It must be wonderful going through life swimming in a sea of absurd stereotypes designed to feed your ego. I’m a Republican that makes his living building spacecraft and space launch vehicles. Most of my coworkers, who do the same thing, are also Republicans. I’m not a Christian and I discarded religion when I was 15. You keep iterating this idea that Republicans are anti-science and the only shred of evidence that you provide is that some are against government funding of stem cell research. But their reason for being against it has nothing at all to do with their believe in the science of stem cell research. For example, science would tell you that you could raise the collective IQ of mankind by requiring that all men and women with an IQ below 120 be sterilized. So why don’t we do it? Because we have decided that there are cases where morality trumps science. Of course morality can never be explained scientifically. And the truth is that leftists have just as many anti-scientific positions that are based on their particular morality as anyone else. Their anti nuclear position would be an example. Their anti Alaskan pipe line (because it will destroy the caribou) position would be another. When you think about it, the position of the left, that something magical happens to a fetus, such that it is not human 10 seconds before it passes through the birth canal, and then suddenly, 10 seconds later it has aquired this fabulous characteristic of humanness that entitles it to all kinds of rights and priviledges, is about as anti-scientific as you can get.
ginckgo:
“And any scientist should indeed be fearful that a Republican party under the thrall of the Tea Party wackos should dictate public policy; you don’t get much more anti-science that that mob of nutjobs.”
An actual scientist would observe that it is instead mainly the Democrat Obama Progressives who are in the complete thrall of the unscientific ipcc Climate Science CO2CAGW dogma and Propaganda Op., which seeks to loot and control as many people as possible. And if anyone is really looking for a bunch of Evolutionary Throwbacks [Totalitarians]….harrumpth….their example is quite unrivaled!