On the Climate Audit thread, The Vergano FOI Request the irascible Nick Stokes provokes another commenter “mpaul”, to lay out all the history in a simple summary that even Nick might understand. I thought it was worth repeating here for readers who have not followed the twists and turns in detail, and also in the hope that Dr. Michael Mann might read it and get a clue. Obstruction doesn’t pay.
From this Climate Audit comment:
mpaul
But I don’t think snooping through people’s private emails is a dignified activity.
Nick, I’ll turn the sarcasm off for a moment. I agree with you on this point. I have been an advocate for Cuccinelli CID process. Say what you will about Cuccinelli’s motives, but the American justice system provides protections for the accused and standards of procedure that do not exist in the court of public opinion.
We have arrived at this point in history along the following path:
(1) Steve wanted to replicate MBH98 and asked for data. Mann initially complied, but then began to obstruct.
(2) Steve successfully obtained the needed data and demonstrated serious flaws in Mann’s approach.
(3) Mann defended his work by saying that other Hockey Stick reconstructions validated his method and his conclusions.
(4) Attention turned to replicating the other reconstructions. By now, the Team had become extremely defensive and a sort of bunker mentality took over. Years of obstruction followed.
(5) Those seeking the data and methods used in the HS reconstructions became more and more aggressive, eventually turning to FOIA as a tool to pry loose the information.
(6) Then “a miracle happened’. A file containing materials and emails requested under FOIA turned up on the internet. Most everyone would agree that the contents of the emails warranted an investigation. The only investigation that specifically looked into Mann’s conduct was undertaken by Penn State. Penn State cleared Mann noting that Mann stated:
(a) he had never falsified any data, nor had he had ever manipulated data to serve a given predetermined outcome;
(b) he never used inappropriate influence in reviewing papers by other scientists who disagreed with the conclusions of his science;
(c) he never deleted emails at the behest of any other scientist, specifically including Dr. Phil Jones, and that he never withheld data with the intention of obstructing science; and
(d) he never engaged in activities or behaviors that were inconsistent with accepted academic practices.
(7) Critics have charged that the Penn State investigation was inadequate. Michael Mann has subsequently stated that he did, in fact, participate in an orchestrated effort to delete emails covered under FOIA, raising questions about the veracity of statements he made to the Penn State investigators. Penn State seems untroubled by this.
A real, independent investigation, subject to rules of evidence and judicial procedures, is needed. Such an investigation is the only way to put and end to Climategate and is the only way to restore the tattered reputation of climate science. I think both Virginia and Pennsylvania should conduct an investigation. However, if UVa continues to obstruct the CID, then FOIA is the only option and Mann will be afforded no protection of his privacy.
Mann and UVa are playing a losing game. Its sheer folly to attempt to frustrate a State AG in a law enforcement investigation. Cuccinelli has nuclear weapons at his disposal and UVa has water pistols. If Cuccinelli loses the CID battle, he will simply file a lawsuit and obtain the materials through discovery. Or, if UVa really pisses him off, he will convene a Grand Jury. For Mann personally, this would be catastrophic. Mann and UVa should cooperate with the CID process.
It’s sad that we have arrived at this place. But at every juncture in this journey, Mann has chosen the wrong path.
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I used to work for a major mining company. I had a filing cabinet with all my correspondence in it. When I left the company the filing cabinet and its contents stayed. I don’t know if anyone ever went through it and where all that correspondence went but I wouldn’t see it as snooping.
The problem with emails is that people see them as their personal property. They are off guard when they write them and they are less carefully crafted than printed correspondence. This is what makes them even more valuable as the CRU emails proved.
The obstruction by MM and others is a clear indication that they see their research as belonging to them and not the public.
When you quit a job and it’s time to clear your desk, you take your favorite pen, coffee cup and the family photos. But who owns the data, the correspondence, the emails?
Maybe in a university it’s different but I certainly didn’t take a copy of my emails, I didn’t photocopy my filing cabinet and I didn’t take away any company data on DVDs.
Icarus says:
“Have any subsequent papers presented a substantial challenge to the findings of MBH98…?
The journal Nature admitted that Mann’s Hokey Stick was erroneous.
Ha! Kinda like a vampire telling the townspeople to put away their crosses.
Or like the kickoff receiver in the end-zone calling a fair catch as the opposing team close in.
Godwin’s law created by liberals for protecting liberals, a convenient component of Political Correctness. Designed to shield proto-Nazis from being compared to historical Nazis. Very similar to Commies crying McCarthyism, which was another convenient component of Political Correctness.
Unfortunately for the liberal neo-communist democratic socialist the jig is up. Such tactics will only work on the terminally politically correct, and there are a lot less of them around these days as the new peer-to-peer media replaces the tired old mainstream media. “Don’t call me out” carries very little weight in a world that is finally awakening from its slumber. People will once again call a spade a spade.
In short, you are a member of an endangered species, and you don’t even realize it. Kyoto, CO2 fearmongering, Carbon credits, Windmill farms, drowning cities, boiling hot Earth, ‘warming is bad, y’all are so far down this rabbit hole that Jules Verne couldn’t extricate you.
Nick Stokes argues (irrelevantly, I agree) that the “Big Lie” quote lacks good provenance. His starting that argument is, arguably, a tactic in furtherance of the general “Big Lie” strategy: which is all about misdirection, confusion, distraction –clogging of the audience’s bandwidth so that it can’t focus on the real issue and cannot separate truth from lie.
For what it’s worth, Wikipedia says this about the “Big Lie” as developed and applied, with such tragic success, in Nazi Germany. The gist of the description is entirely in keeping with the point that Richard Courtney was making when he introduced the idea into the discussion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Lie
“sceptical says:
June 2, 2011 at 7:44 pm
How bizarre that so many people still can’t move beyond a reconstruction from the late 1990′s which has been validated numerous times since.”
Pure delusional thinking.
For one thing.It is a NORTHERN HEMISPHERE reconstruction paper.Not a global temperature paper.Thus it is incomplete from the start.
Secondly,it contradicts decades of well established research in several fields.Such as History,Archaeology,Botany,Biology and of course climate science.Research that TO THIS DAY still insist that the MWP and LIA existed and was widespread.
Thirdly,there are many published science papers attesting to the existence of the MWP :
Medieval Warm Period Project
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php
You need to wake up to reality.
Nick Stokes, sceptical, et. al, seem to be confident that the hockey stick has been validated. But not a single reference. Would it be too much to ask for a link to a coherent, fully documented, validation of MBH98 that handles the LIA and preferably MWP as well reasonably, and is robust to the removal of bristlecone pine data? I’ve spent some time a few miles down the road from bristlecone country. The region is quite warm and very dry in Summer. IMO, the bristlecones are very likely to be better precipitation proxies than temperature proxies.
It shocks me that anyone even others to try arguing with the “true believers” such as sceptical and stokes. Really guys, don`t waste your time on them.
Nick Stokes:
I write to offer you some friendly advice.
The above item (which is the subject of this thread) concludes by saying;
“It’s sad that we have arrived at this place. But at every juncture in this journey, Mann has chosen the wrong path.”
I suggest that conclusion is correct and it seems you are incapable or unwilling to learn from it.
Not content with your attempts to defend and excuse the behaviour of Michael Mann, you make another serious error when at June 3, 2011 at 4:00 am and again at June 3, 2011 at 4:35 am you attempt to deny a comment of Joseph Goebbles.
At very least, this denial provides doubt to your judgement on whom to defend. And your attempts at defending Mann and defending Goebbles are both doomed to failure. Indeed, nobody needs to – or will – address your defence of Goebbles because few would want to be associated with such a discussion.
So, my advice to you is that you should reconsider whom you want to defend because others could think your support for them indicates you have an afinity with them and that you support what they have done.
Simply, I beg you – in your own interest – to consider that, like Mann, you have chosen the wrong path.
Richard
Huh Mr Stokes? Please don’t play literalism games. Read your own post above, against the overall thrust of its argument was my response.
A real enquiry/inquiry is where the natural questions that arise out of the contents of the emails and their implications are adequately raised, verified and cross-checked.
Did any of these happen in the PSU ‘inquiry’? It clearly did not – you can take Dick Lindzen’s word for it, if you don’t like mine.
Your falsehood consists in representing this non-inquiry as though it was an onerous imposition that was placed on Mann where his very motives and honesty were under attack, and as a result of which he deserves sympathy from reasonable people. He is very much a man who has been through much in your book, isn’t he?
He is not. Certainly w.r.t to the fake PSU inquiry he did not go through anything. In fact, Mann is yet to recieve a ‘proportionate response’.
If Nick thinks Mann simply subtracting a mean from the wrong period is all that is wrong with MBH98 then I have grossly overestimated his actual knowledge of the subject matter.
Mark
Smokey says:
Unfortunately, all that link shows is how incredibly deceptive your sources at Heartland are! That they spin a corrigendum (http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/shared/articles/MBH98-corrigendum04.pdf) that just makes some corrections to the listing of the proxy data sets in the supplementary information (which were used and which weren’t and what the start dates were) and expands the discussion of the methological details as showing the Mann hockey stick was erroneous especially when the last line says, “None of these errors affect our previously published results” is just an implicit acknowledgment that they don’t have any real arguments to make.
Nick Answers
Don,
1) A mean for the wrong period was subtracted
2) Wegman noted this, as did M&M
3) No, the paper should not be withdrawn. There were some other data handling errors, and an erratum was issued noting this, and saying that . A similar erratum might have been appropriate here. But it’s a bit redundant now.
So answer to
Q1- MBH98 statistics were incorrect
Q2 – Wegman proved they were incorrect
Q3 – Yet Nick says, despite 1 and 2, that the results were unaffected.
This addresses the nub of the arguement, wrong statistics, right answer.
However I’m afraid you can’t have it both ways. If the methodology is incorrect (and it was not just the statistics), then the answer, by definition, cannot be relied on.
The point is not redundant, because MBH98 is still being used to “prove” AGW and drive insane economic policies. The paper must be withdrawn.
Phil, I think you are sadly mistaken about how open and honest Mann and climate scientists needs to be. When one is using the results of their public funded research in order to justify massive changes in the world society and impose massive tax increases and lowered standard of living on everyone, except those invested in the rediculous carbon trading scheme, then the bar for transparency and proof is much higher than say… publishing a scientific paper on black holes.
“But I don’t think snooping through people’s private emails is a dignified activity.”
I am sure Richard Nixon felt the same about oval office recordings. Nasty, unpleasant duty, but someone had to do it! GK
Lies are long and the truth is short. Has all the requested information been released? No. Is there any reason not to release it? No. Is there any reason to release it? Yes. Your attempt to compare science with auditing is crap. In a process that involves so many steps from input to results, you compare methods and results at each step for confirmation/consistency.
Your most telling statement though is when you complain that no one appointed Steve the auditor of this material. While it’s not surprising to see that coming from a defender of The Team, in the real world where people are held responsible for their work and their results, we don’t get to ‘appoint’ our own reviewers. Anyone and everyone who thinks they can do a better job is welcome to try and prove that themselves. Steve has proven himself.
To your point of proportionality, while I have no idea what Mann’s opinions are and don’t much care, his work and the work of his colleagues has and is being used by a bunch of people who are politically and economically retarded and dead set on decimating the accumulated capital structure that has allowed us to live relatively better lives over time. Even if you agree with the alarmists, the idea that we are better able to deal with the consequences by crippling our economies is pure idiocy. That in and of itself is reason enough to nit pick the hell out of every study such people champion.
If you’re going to take public money to do work which will influence public policy and the public’s current and future prospects for a better life, you’d better be ready to put all your cards on the table. If you’re not, shut up and ‘study’ something of lesser consequence. It’s really that simple, and you can’t have it both ways; you’re either a scientist and you lay out everything for scrutiny, or you’re a magician and you keep the chosen secrets to yourself with the implicit understanding that you’re at least partially bullshitting people about the results.
The whole story would have gone differently for Mann if he had simply made a friend of Steve McIntyre. In fact, if Mann had befriended rather than antagonized Steve, it’s highly likely that CAGW would not have unraveled as it has now.
Imagine this. Imagine Mann complies fully with Steve. Mann knows that Steve will likely find errors, so he expresses extreme interest in knowing what Steve finds. Mann attempts to make a colleague out of McIntyre. Steve, being a nice guy, shares his results with Mann before publishing anything. Mann, knowing he’s likely been caught out, agrees with Steve’s results and now having established a rapport, asks to for help on a new project.
With no mystery, there’s no climateaudit.org website. With no climateaudit, there’s no crowds of internet saavy users prowling temperature records, no dogged investigations into other papers that “confirm” the hockeystick, and more importantly no critical eye turned towards the IPCC process because one of the IPCC bigwigs is working with the internet population to improve his reports.
And of course, the CAGW bandwagon would be churning along at full steam. California would be following Spain (though they didn’t need more regulations to do that apparently). Copenhagen would had a much better chance at being a political success for all parties. Windmills would be replacing farms. Coal plants would be shutting down., etc..etc..
All undone by the pride of one man and his pride in his miniscule contribution to science at large.
ShrNfr says:
June 2, 2011 at 1:35 pm
You are right about lying to an officer. That jeopardy exists — if he lied to Federal officials. However. That requires that AG Holder wants to prosecute the warmistas for their crime. That is a long long wait.
as for lying to the state officials, it requires that cuccinelli gets Mann under Oath, in VA. You know Pennsylvania will rally around their precious State U metereology dept. He will be stuck in harrisburg arguing the need to get this crook to Virginia
Icarus says:
June 3, 2011 at 5:24 am
I have a simple question on this issue:
Have any subsequent papers presented a substantial challenge to the findings of MBH98, and if so, what does that tell us about anthropogenic global warming?
======================================================
The first part of your question was answered by Smokey. Go here, http://climateaudit.org/, to find many smack-downs of Mann98 and subsequent variants of the same stick.
As to the second part of the question, “…..what does that tell us about anthropogenic global warming?, it tells us plenty.
First, is tells us it is very probable the MWP and LIA weren’t confined to NW Europe…….. Other observations confirm this. So, while it doesn’t specifically address AGW, it does tell us the earth’s climate does change, in extremes, by itself, without mankind’s influence. So, it is entirely possible that the changes we’re observing today are nothing more than naturally occurring changes……….. but I think you knew that already.
Nick wrote: “I think the PCA issue was a simple programming error, with small consequence and unlikely to be repeated, and should have been acknowledged as such. But how this gets to a “nuclear” response is beyond me.”
The Six Million Dollar Mann is co-author on another “simple programming error”, whose co-author Steig secretly became reviewer of the skeptical article which eventually exposed the “error”:
http://faculty.washington.edu/steig/nature09data/cover_nature.jpg
Doesn’t that count as showing a pattern of repeat “errors” and of pal instead of peer review?
Smokey says:
June 3, 2011 at 5:40 am
From Smokey’s Link:
—
Theory Losing Support
Mann, an assistant professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, had ferociously defended his hockey stick papers and had launched several personal attacks on McIntyre and McKitrick. The corrigendum listed five references but did not cite the paper by McIntyre and McKitrick (“Corrections to the Mann et al. (1998) Proxy Data Base and Northern Hemisphere Average Temperature Series,” Energy and Environment 14(6)) that first drew attention to the mistakes in the original “hockey stick” article.
—
And who can forget this climategate e-mail…
From: Phil Jones
To: mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Subject: Fwd: John L. Daly dead
Date: Thu Jan 29 14:17:01 2004
Mike,
In an odd way this is cheering news ! One other thing about the CC paper – just found
another email – is that McKittrick says it is standard practice in Econometrics journals
to give all the data and codes !! According to legal advice IPR overrides this.
Cheers
Phil
—
[my bolding]
I believe IPR stands for “Intellectual Property Rights”…
Welcome to Transparency in Science!
Here’s another climategate e-mail documenting the openness and transparency that is the hallmark of climate science…
From: Phil Jones
To: “Michael E. Mann”
Subject: Re: Fw: Law Dome O18
Date: Mon Feb 9 15:50:09 2004
Mike,
These were two simple ones to provide. Also Tas told him I had one of them. I guess
these are the ones that aren’t available on web sites. Anyway, it is done now. If he starts asking for them in dribs and drabs, I’ll baulk at that. Ben waded in with very positive comments re the CC issue. Steve’s going to find it very hard to ask you to send the code. Those that say on the CC board that you should send the code, have little idea what is involved. Most are on the social science side.
Cheers
Phil
At 10:19 09/02/2004 -0500, you wrote:
HI Phil,
Personally, I wouldn’t send him anything. I have no idea what he’s up to, but you can be sure it falls into the “no good” category.
There are a few series from our ’03 paper that he won’t have–these include the latest
Jacoby and D’Arrigo, which I digitized from their publication (they haven’t made it
publicly available) and the extended western North American series, which they wouldn’t be able to reproduce without following exactly the procedure described in our ’99 GRL paper to remove the estimated non-climatic component.
I would not give them *anything*. I would not respond or even acknowledge receipt of their emails. There is no reason to give them any data, in my opinion, and I think we do so at our own peril!
talk to you later,
mike
At 02:46 PM 2/9/2004 +0000, Phil Jones wrote:
Mike,
FYI. Sent him the two series – the as received versions. Wonder what he’s up to?
Why these two series ? Used a lot more in the 1998 paper. Didn’t want the Alerce
series. Must already have the Tassy series from Ed. I know Ed has a more recent series than we used in 1998. Got this for the 2003 work.
Cheers
Phil
From: “Steve McIntyre”
To: “Phil Jones”
Subject: Fw: Law Dome O18
Date: Mon, 9 Feb 2004 08:05:23 -0500
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1158
X-Authentication-Info: Submitted using SMTP AUTH LOGIN at
fep04-mail.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com from [65.49.25.138] using ID
at Mon, 9 Feb 2004 08:02:13 -0500
Dear Phil,
Tas van Ommen has refered me to you for the version of his dataset that you used in
Jones et al Holocene 1998 and I would appreicate a copy. I would also appreciate a copy of the Lenca series used in this study. Regards, Steve McIntyre
—
Note Steve McIntyre’s outrageous e-mail request… /sarc
—
I’ll stop here…
Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090
School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784
University of East Anglia
Norwich Email p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
NR4 7TJ
UK
—————————————————————————-
As far as I can see, the only thing Nature published was a few minor corrections to citations etc. in MBH98 that had no effect on the results. Correct?
@ur momisugly Jabba the Cat:
I like the sequel to that also very much:
@ur momisuglysceptical (June 2, 2011 at 7:23 pm)
You forgot /sarc
@ur momisuglyAnthony and Steve:
This post is one of the best imho in the endgame on the definite destroying of the HS-lies and cover-ups. I’ve bookmarked some comments of you to be used later, when some CAGW-believers need to know what it is all about.
@ur momisuglyNick Stokes
How you can defend the undefendable is beyond me. Yet it is freightening in the sense that you show how far CAGW-believers will go in order to save the image of an infallible theory and dito science, where it has all the signs of a religion.
Religion is not science. You are free to believe what you want, but not seeing what is wrong with a secular scientific approach by the HS-teammembers just shows that you’ve lost the ability to be objective. And that proofs to me that you apparently need the CAGW-cult for some sort of religious reasons. But you are being deceived by the people that you so convulsive defend. The truth will set you free.
And to everyone who needs a break:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx-t9k7epIk&feature=related M4GW rule!
James Sexton:
So would it be correct to say that there are no published papers substantially contradicting any of the findings of MBH98?
Mann says: “There is no reason to give them any data, in my opinion, and I think we do so at our own peril!”
This gets to motive and the motive is fear that the methods and data are wanting and that exposure will sink the ship.
Of course, Nick will spin it differently. But the intent is clear: they don’t want people to have a full understanding of how they came to their conclusions. If they did, they would have released everything requested a long time ago.
If Mann doesn’t want to be accused of being party to the greatest hoax of our age, he better open up the safe.