ATI Statement on Results from Today’s Hearing in Freedom of Information Act Case Against U. of Virginia
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, September 16, 2011
Contact: Paul Chesser, paul.chesser@atinstitute.org
Today in Prince William County court Judge Gaylord Finch delayed arguments and the scheduled production of documents in American Tradition Institute’s Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the University of Virginia. A brief hearing was held to discuss a Motion to Intervene in the case by lawyers for former UVA professor Michael Mann, whose records that were created while employed there are what ATI seeks. Judge Finch, recognizing the important precedent-setting potential of the case, said he wanted to schedule a longer hearing — two hours — to hear arguments about whether to allow Dr. Mann, now at Pennsylvania State University, to enter the case.
Judge Finch granted ATI a sur reply in the case, which allows ATI Environmental Law Center director David Schnare to place additional materials before the court as Judge Finch considers whether to allow Dr. Mann to intervene. The two-hour hearing is scheduled for Nov. 1.
Statement by ATI Environmental Law Center director Dr. David Schnare about today’s developments:
“If it wasn’t clear before, it should now be clear to everybody. This is an extremely important case, and we appreciate Judge Finch’s careful attention to detail as we proceed.”
See case documents, press releases, media coverage, commentary, broadcast interviews, etc. pertaining to ATI v. University of Virginia by clicking here: http://bit.ly/mLZLXC
h/t to Bob Ferguson
Jesse Fell;
JesseFell says:
September 18, 2011 at 2:26 pm
davidmhoffer,
How were McIntyre and McKitrick able to debunk Mann’s hockey stick computer program if this is one of the things that Mann is hiding>>>
Are you being deliberately obtuse? Which part of already in the public record versus not in the public record are you having difficulty understanding? M&M demonstrated that any combination of climate data would result in Mann’s computer program drawing almost exactly the same graph, and they did so for a congressional inquiry. WE ALREADY KNOW THAT.
Which has NOTHING to do with WHAT ELSE Mann is hiding.
barry;
No one is interested in demanding ATI release the unprotected emails. How about you?>>>>
As several people have explained to you numerous times barry, ATI is barred by law from releasing anything. Why would I demand of them something that they are fighting to do in the first place, which is get them released? Once the judge gives them pwermission, if they don’t release them, I’ll be raising the issue, as will many others. but demand of them something they clearly can’t do without breaking the law? Nonsense.
JesseFell;
The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. >>>
Yup. It is ALMOST significant. Which would be the same as….insignificant. BTW, his number of .12 degrees per decade?
1. The temperature record is based on instruments that don’t even come close to measuring .1 degrees, let along .01. The error rates are several times the claimed measurement!
2. Based on the same temperature record, the warming BEFORE CO2 started to increase by any measurable amount in 1920 was…almost exacty the same.
So pick your poison. If you imagine that the temperature record is accurate enough to spot 1/10 of 1 degree of warming over a one decade period, then you have to explain how it is that the rate of warming before CO2 started increasing and the rate of warming after are nearly identical. Or you can suggest that the temperature record isn’t accurate and that is why you the earlier versus later temps seem to have the same slope…but then you would by definition be admitting that the temp record is useless.
Jesse Fell;
The Wegman commission “allowed only that despite the completely fraudulent nature of Mann’s hockey stick program, that AGW was likely real.” So, if AGW is likely real, how can it matter whether Mann’s hockey stick program is fraudulent? And, in what way could the program be fraudulent, if it came to conclusions that those accusing it of fraudulent admit to be likely true?>>>
Again, are you trying to not understand, or do you REALLY just not understand?
AGW likely being real doesn’t mean that Man’s hockey stick is accurate. If Mann’s hockey stick was real, the earth’s temp would have gone up SEVERAL:degrees in the last ten years or so since Mann first produced it. But, as per your quote of Phil Jones, we’ve gone up PERHAPS one tenth of one degree…in a decade..
Wegman concluding that there is some merit to the AGW hypothesis says nothing about Mann’s hockey stick graph. AGW could very well be real. But the evidence clearly suggests that if it is, the magnitude is SO SMALL that it can’t even be measured accurately.
“davidmhoffer says:
September 18, 2011 at 6:20 pm
But, as per your quote of Phil Jones, we’ve gone up PERHAPS one tenth of one degree…in a decade.. ”
One quote was made for 15 years, but the other one for 8 years was as follows:
“C – Do you agree that from January 2002 to the present there has been statistically significant global cooling?
No. This period is even shorter than 1995-2009. The trend this time is negative (-0.12C per decade), but this trend is not statistically significant. ”
But keep in mind this was made Feb. 13, 2010. Nothing has changed except we can now say that HADCRUT3 shows a drop over the last 10 years. See the bar graph for HADCRUT3 at:
http://www.climate4you.com/GlobalTemperatures.htm#Global%20temperature%20trends
P.S. for Jesse and Barry: About the hockey stick graph, there was a reason it was removed from the 2007 IPCC report.
“It has now been removed from the latest 2007 IPCC report for policymakers because it has become too much of an embarrassment for the IPCC to include it.” See:
http://www.global-warming-and-the-climate.com/mann%27s-hockey-stick-climate-graph.htm
So why was it an embarrassment and why is anyone still defending it?
It’s my understanding that the code for creating the MBH98 hockey stick still has not been officially released. MM found it by accident by trolling public FTP sites Mann used. The code was found in a folder entitled CENSORED. But, running the code produced exactly the output in MBH98. That was how MM found that Mann’s statistical methods were extremely odd, and outside the statistical norm.
If you know differently, I’d love to see the evidence.
Jeff,
McIntyre found that the statistical methods used in Mann’s hockey stick were “extremely odd and outside the statistical norm”, but the National Academy of Sciences found no reason to believe that the original hockey stick was “the result of ‘programming errors’, or was ‘not reproducible’, or there was some scientific misconduct involved.” But, apparently, the word of McIntyre is “evidence”, while the word of the NAS is persiflage.
Why all this faith in Steve McIntyre? He is not a climate scientist himself. He is diligent and has rooted out errors of detail in NASA’s data, and Mann’s — apart from that, he is remarkable only for his determination to discredit the work of trained climate scientists.
davidmhoffer,
You wrote: “It is ALMOST significant. Which would be the same as….insignificant.” If almost significant is really the same as insignificant, I’ll mention this to my doctor, who wants me to lose weight became I am “almost” diabetic. Maybe he’ll let me have mashed potatoes and gravy again.
And, “BTW, his number of .12 degrees per decade?” Part of the bad news is that small changes in temperature appear to be able to trigger large changes in climate. This is borne out by the changes in solar radiation received at the high northern latitudes, in the cycle discovered by Malenkovic; the changes are in themselves small, but they correlate closely with the coming and going of ices ages.
david,
Incorrect on two counts, and they’re easy to verify
(1) Only one person made that argument (temp), not “several”.
(2) Temp stopped replying when I showed they were wrong. ATI specifically states that the data received by Aug 22 under court order is unprotected – that was the 3800 pages they received on hard disk.
Also, you are wrong to assert I “jumped into the thread” on the MWP issue. I first joined in to discuss the topic of the the thread. When you can’t even get simple points right, when all is you have to do to get them right is scroll and read, the pointlessness of broaching more complicated matters with you is reinforced.
3800 pages of emails that ATI are holding when they are free to disseminate them. Only temp has the integrity to say that if that is the case then ATI should be lobbied to release them immediately. For everyone else, the apathy or hostility to that notion reveals the true measure of their interest.
I’ve written ATI twice on this. I urge anyone sincere about public access to UVA emails to ask them to release the unprotected material immediately. This is their latest press release, and you can make your request in the comments section there.
Werner,
there are spaghetti graphs in AR4 that include the Mann 99 millennial reconstruction as well as newer work – check chapter 6 and the technical summary. There is no reason why IPCC should make the Mann 99 graph their sole and primary millennial temperature graph 5 years later in the next report (AR4) when there was newer and better work. Plenty of graphs from the TAR didn’t get reproduced in AR4. Science progresses, but some people remain stuck in 2001.
Werner,
re your link. The author there states in the first paragraph of the article:
The graph is in fact the thousand-year reconstruction from Mann et al 1999. The MBH98 reconstruction starts in 1400, not 1000AD. The author shortly thereafter describes the graph as an “embarrassment”. What delicious irony. 🙂
Jesse Fell says:
September 18, 2011 at 1:45 am
“Historical evidence is also part of the hockey stick. So if you throw away your hockey stick, you have to give up on your medieval warming period.”
The two are not compatible, so they can’t both be kept. You got your logic backwards.
“… but since it appears to have been confined to the lands around the north Atlantic, and maybe the west coast of norther Africa, it can’t be called an instance of “global” warming.”
Ah, you did your studies over at Climate Brief didn’t you. Welcome to WUWT.
Fell the troll: “Why all this faith in Steve McIntyre? He is not a climate scientist himself”
Quite right. McIntyre is a REAL scientist – he isn’t a “climate scientist”. He follows the Scientific Method and makes his data, computer codes, and algorithms available for anyone, so they can replicate his work.
The Lysenkoist frauds you cite here are in no way, shape or form, scientists. Their data and methods are secrets – as you well know. They engage in blatant scientific fraud – to YOUR approval.
What you have demonstrated here is that YOU are not interested in facts or honest debate based on the Scientific Method. You’re a troll and have beclowned yourself with every posting.
barry, jesse,
Your barrage of nit picking tiny little details in the face of major points in typical of those who are promoting and agenda and don’t give a hoot for the actual science.
1. Mann’s hockey stick: Read the M&M paper for yourself and the Wegner report as well. they are both public, I’ve read them both, and I’mnot going to take the time to answer every little misguided and misrepresented detail you bring up to set the record straight. you can read them for yourselves, AND SO CAN ANYONE ELSE WHO IS INTERESTED IN THE FACTS INSTEAD OF ENDLESS NITPICKING ABOUT WHICH EXACT VERSION SHOWED UP WHERE.
2. Almost significant: Almost being diabetic means 90%+ of the way there. Almost significant tempereature change means less than 5%. Your analogy is not only wrong, it is (I suspect) deliberately misleading.
3. Mann’s emails: If the ATI has the emails and is in a position to release them, then there would be no reason for Mann to go to court to prevent his emails from being released, would there? Now stop trying to distract the attention away from what ATI has and let’s look at what Mann is attempting to ensure that they (and nobody else for that matter) ever gets, and why.
4. Sensitivity: This is the stake in the heart of CAGW and it is laughable that promotors of the CAGW story have the audacity to bring it up at all. If sensitivity is HIGH, as you claim, then with CO2 having risen 40% since 1920 we should have seen MAJOR climate changes. We have not. We’ve seen nit picking about which years are the higest temperature on record, but they are highest by such a small amount that they are…. insignificant. The high end of the sensisitivy range predicted by the IPCC is that we will see 4.5 degrees C temperature change for CO2 doubling. Given that this is a logarithmic function (hence the reference to the word “doubling” that translates into a temperature change since 1920 of 3.1 degrees. You can do the calculations yourself. IPCC AR4 is clear as to what the estimated range of sensitivity is, as well as the fact that it is logarithmic. So grab a calculator and do ln2*4.5 to get the number that the IPCC claims we should be seeing based on their estimate of sensitivity. Have we seen 3.1 degrees? No. We’ve seen 0.6 degrees. That’s LESS than the LOWEST sensitivity that the IPCC says we should expect.
Neither is Mann. So your point is?
Jesse said:
“You wrote: “It is ALMOST significant. Which would be the same as….insignificant.” If almost significant is really the same as insignificant, I’ll mention this to my doctor, who wants me to lose weight became I am “almost” diabetic. Maybe he’ll let me have mashed potatoes and gravy again.”
Dear Jesse, “almost significant” is like “almost a goal”, you still lose.
Come on dude, your confidence in your matter-of-fact statements is slightly out of tune with your show of intelligence. You’re brighter than you look (right now), I know it!! you can do it! Stick around, read, learn…..less big talk more listening…
All the best,
Wijnand
It’s obvious that Jesse Fell is not up to speed on any of these subjects. No doubt he gets his incorrect, alarmist talking points from blogs like Skeptical Pseudo-Science, and then tries to peddle them here.
Fell brags about his perfect spelling [“And, please note the correct spelling: anomalous”], yet he badly mangles Milankovitch, spelling it “Malenkovic.” He’s just parroting his talking points. There have been numerous articles here on Milankovitch cycles, and anyone who is up to speed on the subject would certainly be able to spell the name correctly – especially someone like Fell who brags about his spelling prowess. Thus, Fell is a sock puppet for the alarmist contingent, or he’s not up to speed so he’s winging it. We get fake experts like that here off and on.
Fell claims: “Michael Mann has been vindicated by every investigation into this conduct and scientific methods…” & etc. Preposterous. Michael Mann has never been subjected to a real investigation. Never. A real investigation is adversarial, with wide latitude allowed in questioning. But Mann’s kissy-face pals have never asked him the pertinent questions, and worse yet, Mann was allowed to have a hand in which questions would be asked! I don’t really think Jesse Fell believes that Mann was ‘exonerated’ of anything; he’s just carrying water for Mann. If Fell truly believes that Mann was subjected to honest investigations in an adversarial setting and exonerated, then Jesse Fell is a credulous lunatic. He can’t be that naive, can he?
Fell claims that “Steve McIntyre found a mistake in Mann’s data, which Mann acknowledged, and which did not require him to turn his hockey stick into a pool cue.” That is such a blinkered, twisted version of events that it is obvious Fell knows nothing about the background. Spending a half dozen hours at Climate Audit searching and reading the posts for “Mann”, “MBH98″, Mann08”, “Tiljander”, etc. would at least show Fell the basic misconduct – which much more serious than what Fell claims. McIntyre and McKittrick uncovered plenty of scientific misconduct over the past 13 years, and Michael Mann is at the center of all of it.
Jesse Fell has been seriously debunked by others here regarding every significant claim that he has made. Amazingly, Fell still repeats the debunked Mann canard that the MWP was a local event. Mann tried to sell that horse manure in MBH98, and he was so thoroughly refuted that the IPCC can no longer use Mann’s original Hokey Stick chart. Fell lamely adds: “It’s worth noting that Mann’s is not the only hockey stick going. There are others, using different sets of proxy data, and variations on Mann’s methodologies. The result is always a hockey stick.” Wrong. Heck, it’s not even wrong; it’s a complete failure to understand what is deliberately being done to make routine charts appear alarming.
When a mendacious zero y-axis is used in place of the gradually rising temperature uptrend from the LIA, it only looks like a hockey stick. In reality, it is a devious and improper use of a zero line on the chart. When the natural warming trend from the LIA is used, there is no hockey stick.
Jesse Fell’s talking points have been deconstructed, one after another. He is either brainwashed by ubiquitous alarmist claptrap, or he is deliberately spreading alarmist misinformation. Based on his egregious misspelling of Milankovitch, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he gets his talking points from censoring alarmist blogs that spoon feed him alarmist BS and never let him see the truth. WUWT is the internet’s “Best Science” site because there is no censorship, and facts that withstand falsification are the only facts left standing. Alarmist blogs are afraid to allow different points of view. That should tell Jesse Fell all he needs to know about their complete lack of credibility.
“Jesse Fell says:
September 19, 2011 at 1:37 am
And, “BTW, his number of .12 degrees per decade?” Part of the bad news is that small changes in temperature appear to be able to trigger large changes in climate.”
I do not accept this statement to be true, but just for discussion sake, let us assume it is true. Did you know this number came up twice? Once for warming (15 years) and once for cooling (8years)?
So in which direction will the larger changes occur?
See:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511670.stm
B – Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming
Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.
C – Do you agree that from January 2002 to the present there has been statistically significant global cooling?
No. This period is even shorter than 1995-2009. The trend this time is negative (-0.12C per decade), but this trend is not statistically significant.
(P.S. Thank you David for the reply to Barry in #1.)
David,
There are two papers by Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick. Which one did you read? I’ve read them both (and returned to them many times), as well as the Wegman report, and the lately retracted Said et al on social systems, which was based on the Wegman report. I’ve also read von Storch and Zorita, Wahl and Amman and a few other papers specifically on MBH98 and the PC issue. I’ve also read numerous blog pages on the matter at climateaudit and at realclimate, as well as a couple here. I’ve read the NSA report on the matter. Furthermore, I’ve read a score or so of papers on NH and global millennial temperature reconstructions based on various proxy sets including bore holes, sediment, coral, tree rings, stalagmites etc, as well as the purely statistical paper of McShane and Wyner. I’ve read Lamb 65, the likely origin of the IPCC 1990 millennial graph. I’ve been at this for 4 years – but as a layman. I know my limits.
Oh yes, I’ve read MBH98 and 99. It’s surprising how few critics have. It’s why they can’t spot glaring errors – like mistaking one paper for the other. Which is most definitely not a nitpick to point out. An error like that strongly suggests that the author has not read the source material. Accuracy is a premium in science, not something to be waved away when mistakes are made. Rhetoric is the province of politics.
This whole enterprise of suing UVA for emails has nothing to do with science, and everything to do with rummaging around personal correspondence for a political weapon, a smoking gun. If it was actually about the science, this email fiasco would be moot, because even if MBH98 and 99 were discounted, the understanding of millennial temperatures would remain the same. The preponderance of studies in the scientific literature (most, not all) indicate that the global or Northern Hemispheric temperatures of the last few decades are likely warmer than comparable multidecadal periods of the last 1200 years. If you struck ALL of Mann’s work from the literature, the scientific understanding of millennial temps would remain essentially unchanged.
You’d need to have read the literature broadly to know that, of course. Here is a good reference page for starters. It is by no means complete.
http://agwobserver.wordpress.com/2009/11/17/papers-on-reconstructions-of-modern-temperatures/
Here’s another from the same site
http://agwobserver.wordpress.com/2010/02/24/papers-on-temperature-reconstructions-from-boreholes/
Happy reading.
Smokey,
Thank you for correcting my anomalous spelling of “Milankovitch”. You hoist me on my own pedantic petard.
I DO read WUWT, because I want to find out what the critics of the mainstream view of AGW/Climate Change are saying. If WUWT could change my mind, I would wince about having been wrong, and then be glad that the human race has not after all gotten itself into one hell of a jam, as I believe now.
I am also reading the following books:
— “The Warming Papers: The Scientific Foundation for the Climate Change Forecast”, an anthology of papers on scientific issues related to climate change by scientists such as Joseph Fourier, John Tyndall, Svante Arrhenius, G.S. Callendar, Charles Keeling, Roger Revelle — as well as a few by your favorites such as Michael Mann and James Hansen. If this anthology proves nothing else, it shows that the “alarmist” view has roots in scientific discoveries going back to the early 19th century — it was not something cooked up meretriciously in the age of grantsmanship.
— “Principles of Atmospheric Science”, by John E. Frederick, which is non-tendentious and touches on climate change only in passing. It’s the place to go if you want to learn all about the dry adiabatic lapse rate. (Great for cocktail party conversation.)
I also like Emanuel Kerry’s “What We Know About Climate Change.” Kerry (a professor of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Science at MIT) thinks that we’ve got ourselves into a serious jam, but he didn’t come to this conclusion quickly. He looked over the science and the various claims based on the science for several years before taking a stand. It’s worth noting the Kerry is a self-described political conservative who almost always votes Republican, has chided the environmental movement for its opposition to nuclear power, has criticized the scientific methods of the “nuclear winter” research group, and is active in an academic organization that opposes campus speech codes, affirmative action, deconstruction, and other “horrors mostly perpetrated by the left.”
But, I will remain a faithful reader of WUWT. It’s, well, entertaining.
Jesse Fell,
You should add to your reading list: The Hockey Stick Illusion, available on the right side bar. Here’s a taste from the same author, A.W. Montford:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/8/11/caspar-and-the-jesus-paper.html
Smokey,
I’ll read the book you suggest if you read at least one of the books I suggest. Deal?
Jesse said:
” If WUWT could change my mind, I would wince about having been wrong, and then be glad that the human race has not after all gotten itself into one hell of a jam, as I believe now.”
Hi Jesse,
If you believe that we are in a hell of a jam (I presume you think because of the risk of high temps caused by high CO2 concentration), I (sincerely!) wonder what you think of the following graph:
http://1.2.3.11/bmi/www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/PageMill_Images/image277.gif
(not sure if this graph will show up, so also see:
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html , graph “Global Temperature and Atmospheric CO2 over Geologic Time”)
For me two notable time periods:
– the Late Ordovician Period: an Ice Age while at the same time CO2 concentrations then were nearly 12 times higher than today– 4400 ppm
– the jurassic period: teeming with life, while CO2 concentrations were 1800 ppm.
This tells me that CO2 is not the bad guy, never was, never will.
I would be interested in your thoughts.
All the best,
Wijnand
Before wasting your money since your mind seems to be closed, take the free way out and read the link Smokey posted. Wont cost you a cent.
PhilJourdan,
I will check out the link, if you read one of the books. Kerry Emanuel’s would be a good one — its exceptionally clear, and not much longer than a magazine article.
Otherwise, no deal — and you are passing up a chance to save my intellectual soul.
Wijnand,
If the hockey stick is unreliable because evidence from the remote past is dicey, how can we be so sure about the amount of atmospheric C02 back when my childhood idols, Tyrannosaurus Rex and Triceratops, were ruling the Earth? I would be interested to learn where these estimates of truly ancient CO2 concentrations come from. This is a question, not a challenge — I’m curious.
A couple of summers ago when I was visiting family in Columbus Ohio, I had a chance to talk with Lonnie Thompson, a professor of glaciology at the Byrd Polar Research Center of Ohio State University. For the past 30 years, Thompson has been collecting ice cores from mountain glaciers in the Andes, principally Peru. He packs the cores up and ships them back to OSU for analysis under strict laboratory conditions to avoid contamination. He sections the ice cores and then analyzes the make-up of gas bubbles in each section, which he can date using standard dating techniques. His ice cores begin with layers laid down centuries ago. During that time, he has found that the amount of atmospheric CO2 has varied only slightly from decade to decade — and then started to jump up around 40 years ago. During the time that Thompson has been working in the Andes — he has clocked more hours in the high altitude “death zone” than any other human being — he has seen the Andean glaciers melt and the moss on which alpacas live dry up and disappear. He has seen several of the hydroelectric plants on which Peru relies for power cut back to 20 per cent of capacity, for lack of glacial runoff. It’s worth noting that Thompson’s interests in glaciers predates the current debate over global warming — he has been driven by curiosity about how glaciers work and what they contain from the beginning.
When nature’s practice conforms to scientists’ theories, I start to take the theories seriously.