UPDATES below – some confusion afoot by differing newspaper versions has been discovered. The print version appears to be online.
=================================
Letters to the editor are one of the oldest free speech venues for public opinion in the United States. They go back to the times of the revolutionary war. The Chicago Tribune aptly calls Letters to the Editor “Voice of the people“.
This morning my interest in a letter to the editor was piqued when I read at Tom Nelson’s website, this headline: Remember when it was really important to leave Michael Mann alone to concentrate on his climate hoax research? Now he’s got time to write a rant for the Vail Daily
Dr. Michael Mann’s letter to the editor, a response to a previous letter by Dr. Martin Hertzberg, at the Vail Daily is online here. Excerpts:
It’s hard to imagine anyone packing more lies and distortions into a single commentary. Mr. Hertzberg uses libelous language in characterizing the so-called “hockey stick” — work of my own published more than a decade ago showing that recent warming is unusual over at least the past 1,000 years — as “fraudulent,” and claiming that it “it was fabricated from carefully selected tree-ring measurements with a phony computer program.”
…
Mr. Hertzberg then continues the smear by lying again about my work, claiming that “when those same tree-ring data actually showed a decline in temperature for the past several decades, Mann and his co-authors simply ‘hid the decline’ by grafting direct measurements (inadequately corrected for the urban heat island and other effects) to his flat tree-ring line.”
So I wanted to see what got Dr. Mann into such a tizzy, because sentences like the ones quoted in the paragraphs above are all over the Internet, especially after Climategate broke. I wanted to see the full context in Dr. Hertzberg’s letter.
So I Googled the offending phrase Dr. Mann cites, and got this result:
Imagine my shock when I discovered that the Google link goes nowhere. Dr. Hertzberg’s letter has been deleted from the newspaper.
Wow.
Dr. Hertzberg’s letter appeared on Friday, September 30th, and Dr. Mann’s letter appeared the next day, quite a turnaround:
One wonders if the address given for Dr. Mann is a typo, or a geographic misrepresentation to help get the letter published. Either way, the Vail Daily editor looks pretty darn sloppy since this appears in the last line of Dr. Mann’s letter:
Michael E. Mann is a professor in the Department of Meterology at Penn State University and director of Penn State Earth System Science Center.
Dr. Hertzberg does in fact live near Vail, in Copper Mountain, CO. and he would presumably be served by the newspaper of record for that area, which is why the letter appeared in that newspaper. As far as we know, Dr. Mann does not live in Vail or nearby.
The policy and online form for submission and publication of Letters to the Editor at the Vail Daily is worth noting:
Letter to the Editor
Guidelines
Before you use the online form below to submit a letter or guest column to the editor, please read the guidelines below.
The decision to print any submission is completely at the discretion of the Vail Daily editor. Letters and columns must include the author’s name, hometown, affiliation (if any) and phone number (for verification of authorship only). Form letters and letters considered libelous, obscene or in bad taste will not be printed. Anonymous letters will not be printed. The Vail Daily reserves the right to edit all letters. Because of space constraints, please limit your letters to 500 words. Thank you/kudos letters are limited to 150 words and letters containing long lists of names will not be printed.
So, apparently, the letter from Dr. Hertzberg passed the newspaper’s tests for “letters considered libelous, obscene or in bad taste” and was in fact printed, but when Dr. Mann sends a rebuttal, all of the sudden Dr. Hertzberg’s letter no longer passes those tests? I suspect that maybe Dr. Mann may have offered some legalese in some form to go with that letter, and the editor caved to censorship demands rather than upholding free speech.
The Wikipedia definition for freedom of speech:
Freedom of speech is the freedom to speak freely without censorship. The term freedom of expression is sometimes used synonymously, but includes any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used. In practice, the right to freedom of speech is not absolute in any country and the right is commonly subject to limitations, such as on libel, slander, obscenity, incitement to commit a crime, etc.
It may be possible that libel was committed by Dr. Hertzberg (whose credential Dr. Mann doesn’t even acknowledge in his rebuttal letter), but without the original letter from Dr. Hertzberg, how would any independent observer be able to judge?
And, in choosing the headline for the rebuttal: Vail Valley Voices: Global warming denier’s claims are falsehoods did the Vail Daily in turn libel Dr. Hertzberg by labeling him a “global warming denier”?
Clearly then, this is a matter best settled by the courts.
I encourage Dr. Mann to file a lawsuit, so that we can finally get complete discovery (something not done by the “independent reviews” Dr. Mann cites frequently) and find out once and for all if Dr. Mann’s work holds up when all of the data, math, methods, and correspondence are laid bare for scrutiny.
Likewise, Dr. Hertzberg may have a court case for denial of free speech, along with libel by the use of “global warming denier”.
The questions of “who libeled who?”, and “was free speech denied?”, can only be answered in a court of law.
UPDATE: As we all know from vast experience, the Internet has a memory. I’ve discovered what appears to be Dr. Hertzberg’s letter to the editor on a website called “pastebin” which you can see and read here. Dr. Hertzberg’s letter was apparently a response to a previous letter, five days earlier:
Since I am a long-time denier of human-caused global warming and have been described as an “inaccurate” and “irresponsible” “fool” by Scott Glasser’s commentary in Monday’s Vail Daily, I feel compelled to respond.
Since Dr. Hertzberg describes himself as a “doubter” (in the original I saw) it seems the bias of the Vail Daily editor in choosing “denier” for the headline was in fact an editorial decision.
I wonder how long the letter will exist on “pastebin”.
UPDATE#2: It appears that at the same time as I was writing this essay, the Vail Daily decided to reinstate the letter from Dr. Hertzberg. Note the out of sequence date at time for the title:
From this page: http://www.vaildaily.com/SECTION/&profile=1065
Before I made this story I did quite a bit of checking, and the removal was also noted by other websites, for example:
Rabbet Run: Ethon flew in from Colorado with news from one of the bunnies. It appears that the Vail Valley Daily had published a now defunct letter from one Dr. Martin Hertzberg, who appears to live thereabouts. The article which, as the saying goes is no longer to be found, must have been a doozy,
And I looked for it myself by searching the Vail Daily website. I could not find it. For example, it does not show up in search:
UPDATE3: The plot thickens. It appears the restored version on Vail Daily here:
http://www.vaildaily.com/article/20110930/EDITS/111009984/1021&parentprofile=1065
Is missing some key sentences found in the version on pastebin here:
The name of Dr. Mann has been scrubbed from the letter as are the sentences Dr. Mann objected to in his rebuttal letter.
There’s no mention of this edit in the restored version of the letter. It is still dated Sept 30th. Perhaps Dr. Hertzberg was told to revise it?
Now he claims he’s a “denier” where before he says doubter? Strange things going on.
UPDATE4: Larry (Hotrod) points out in comments that the original print version is still archived by the newspaper here.
UPDATE5: It appears we are witnessing the real time editing of this article in online archives. The original with the phrases Dr. Mannobjected to are disappearing from the main web page and archives and are being replaced with edited versions.
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I guess it’s very difficult , after demonizing Dr Mann for so long, to understand why he could be upset by the Dr. Hertzbergs inaccurate characterizations and inflammatory language.
Mann has adopted the righteous rage of the 19th century, when scientists would say about anything to maintain their privilege of being right. But back then they had balls of iron (not steel yet) and could take as well as receive. MM has a lifelong career of reestablishing his reputation and savaging his critics. It is an appropriate close to a less-than-illustrious debut.
Anthony,
The Veil Daily [sic] has — in cowardly fashion — republished a heavily redacted version of the original letter. The following paragraph (which Comrade Mann whined about) has been entirely deleted:
“Glasser, who calls me a fool, really tips his hand by defending the notoriously fraudulent “hockey stick” curve of Professor Mann. That curve has the shape of a hockey stick, flat for the past 1,000 years with a sharp rise during the past few decades. It was fabricated from carefully selected tree-ring measurements with a phony computer program.”
The next paragraph was also altered. There may be more. That’s just what immediately jumped out at me.
Compare the two versions of the letter:
http://pastebin.com/L288rdZ7
http://www.vaildaily.com/article/20110930/EDITS/111009984/1021
SBVOR says:
October 2, 2011 at 1:52 pm
This link here;
http://sbvor.blogspot.com/2008/04/is-co2-primary-driver-of-climate-change.html
I have read that Fisher et.al. paper. Hertzberg is correct. Fisher et.al. says CO2 lags temperature.
Which, as far as I could see, Al Gore didnt show in his movie, The Inconvenient truth.
Very inconvenient, indeed. The curves in Al Gore’s The inconvenient Truth are shown in the movie as proof of “Be afraid”. Be very afraid. For children in schools.
But we cannot see the lag…..
And if this introduce some sceptisism, you are a “denier”. Denier of what? Lag?
@kwik,
Yes, and…
Fisher, et.al. is just one of four papers I directly cited and directly linked to. As I said, I have never yet found any published science suggesting that temperature historically lagged CO2.
Doug Proctor says:
October 2, 2011 at 2:29 pm
[ . . . ] MM has a lifelong career of reestablishing his reputation and savaging his critics. It is an appropriate close to a less-than-illustrious debut. [emphasis by JW]
—————-
Doug Proctor,
Nice.
John
“The greenhouse effect violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics? LOL!”
Both sides are not without their embarrassments…
PaulH said: I am certainly no fan of Mr. Mann and his fellow travelers, but one has to be very careful when using terms like “fraudulent”. Fraud has a rather exact legal definition, …
Legal fraud has an exact definition; fraud does not. Whether hackles are raised is immaterial. If Mann truly thinks the term is libel he can sue this book’s publishers and authors —including Hertzberg— who claim “willful fakery and outright incompetence” or “crooked climate scientists fake climate temperature numbers”, in addition to “fraud” and “fraudulent”.
There is a good reason Mann has not and will not sue; Mann has deceived and misrepresented, commonly called fraud. In addition, Hertzberg is a seasoned, experienced, expert witness and no stranger to the courts; Mann would be a fool to actually initiate legal action versus scaring editors with the prospect of it.
A Bear said: “I don’t think the free speech argument works in this case.”
Sure it does. If the newspaper was a private forum like a church basement, that speech —perhaps opposing the church’s core beliefs— can be suppressed or denied. Speech in private forums is only as ‘free’ as the owners allow. Conversely only the governments of the US are legally and constitutionally prohibited from censoring speech.
But even though it is privately owned, the newspaper offers a public forum and has targeted Hertzberg’s letter for censorship. What the paper did is not illegal or unconstitutional, but it is clearly censoring Hertzberg’s free speech.
Laurie says:
October 2, 2011 at 1:43 pm
==========================
Because Laurie, referencing Afghanistan and Iraq when addressing global warming makes Hertzberg sound like a whiner rather than an expert (Phd in science, meteorologist etc). What does he know about the war in Iraq? It’s almost a subject version of an ad hominem attack. The science of global warming is fraudulent, just like the American invasion of Iraq. Hertzberg labeling himself as a democrat means nothing either. What would you say if he presented factual information on global warming and then went on to suggest that the health risks of tobacco smoke were over-stated as well?
In his 2008 “The Lynching of Carbon Dioxide” Hertzberg does a much better job. The link was already provided in this thread.
http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/hertzberg.pdf
Hugh Pepper says:
October 2, 2011 at 2:25 pm
I guess it’s very difficult , after demonizing Dr Mann for so long, to understand why he could be upset by the Dr. Hertzbergs inaccurate characterizations and inflammatory language.
We should stop picking on Dr. Mann. We should stop pointing out things he says and twisting them to mean something else, even if any other meaning is difficult to support. Dr. Mann is one of the few “real climate scientists” and we should accept what his studies show instead of asking about his data and methods. Any scientist not recognized by Dr. Mann as a “real climate scientist” should know his/her place and never consider alternative views and certainly not in public. Anyone, scientist or not, who thinks Dr. Mann has published some “golly whoppers” and lists reasons for believing they are, in fact, untruths, should be threatened with lawsuits, although those lawsuits will never materialize. All criticisms of Dr. Mann have been thoroughly and independently investigated and they didn’t need information from those bringing the charges to make their findings. Finally, policy makers need to believe this famous and highly compensated scientist and implement his recommendations immediately. It’s almost too late!
Do I correctly characterize your point of view, Hugh?
I am certainly no fan of Mr. Mann and his fellow travellers, but one has to be very careful when using terms like “fraudulent”.
Indeed.
One should be careful to apply such terms only to those who have in fact committed fraud.
In other words, only to people like Michael Mann.
Michael Mann owns realclimate and censors comments he doesn’t like. Mann uses Gavin Schmidt to also censor comments. Schmidt is paid with public tax money, so it is actually censorship. Schmidt posts comments throughout the work day, which IMHO is misappropriation of government funds.
I can see why Mann is upset with Dr Hertzberger, because Hertzberger tells the truth about him. Check out this link, courtesy of Ferd Berple upthread.
Ahem. Nobody mentioned The Esteemed Dr. Michael Mann v. Dr. Tim Ball, it seems.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/08/help-asked-for-dr-tim-ball-in-legal-battle-with-dr-mann/
Maybe that Vail Valley newspaper wanted to avoid having to purge their servers; so they filter letters for the term “Mann”, and got an alarm when the term showed up.
Tom T
I am from Stowe and know of what you speak, the editor of the Reporter is an and preaches at the warmest alter. He is reasonable, yet blind from MSM, I believe it comes from being from a political family by the name of Duke.
Dr Herzberg has written one of the most succinct, accurate, clear summaries of the bad science of AGW that I’ve seen.
SBVOR says: October 2, 2011 at 1:25 pm
In my opinion, Michael Mann ranks among the top five most corrupt scientists in the entire history of humanity — right up there with the charlatan who committed outright fraud in falsely linking vaccines to autism
Now here’s something that saddens me here. While generally agreeing re. remarks on AGW, I often find uncontested remarks in other contentious areas that are similar to those we rightly decry here – remarks that appear to originate with disinformation / propaganda sources that present shoddy science as “what science says” and aim to discredit researchers of integrity who challenge it.
I did a lot of research around this subject – having personal interest. While MMR was not problematic in itself, a preservative that was used in some vaccines was very clearly the rogue, and there was considerable effort expended to cover this up. The preservative is thimerosal (thio-mer-sal) a mercury compound which should never even have been considered for use, certainly not used on infants. I got the impression that Dr Wakefield suffered grievous misrepresentation. I’d compare his situation to that of Dr Tim Ball.
ferd berple says:
October 2, 2011 at 2:19 pm
All experiments are subject to experimenter bias, which is why controls and double blind techniques are required. What is missing in Climate Science is Peer Review of experimental design. If anything, Climate Science appears to ignore experimental controls and Peer Review ignores the problem.
=========================
Ferd, this cuts both ways. When the original temperature profile appeared in the IPCC report (showing a medieval warming) were there any skeptics to challenge it? Did anyone verify its accuracy? To me that graph looks like a doodle sketch and not a scientifically derived data set.
Mann can cite peer review in all his papers. He was vindicated by independent panels. Most climate scientists agree with his work. You have to invoke a conspiracy theory (or collective incompetence) to explain how Mann could be wrong.
I prefer the collective incompetence theory whereby most scientists get to where they are by hard work and a lot of patience. The work doesn’t have to be right, but by design, if you don’t really know what you are doing, how can you disagree with others in your field? In this way your field ends up being dominated by a few who have their way, surrounded by a large group of second raters who are ready to publish follow-up papers confirming your work, happy to feed at the trough. In this world Peer Review doesn’t ignore the problem, it isn’t aware there is a problem.
Smokey – it’s Hertzberg. But do carry on, I am enjoying this uncritical and open-armed embracing of a scientific numpty immensely.
ferd berple says:
October 2, 2011 at 1:49 pm
“If AGW is correct, then we don’t need solar panels or wind farms. The very large down welling IR is all the power we need. Since glass reflects IR, then if AGW is correct, the IR from the atmosphere can be focused with glass mirrors and used to generate almost unlimited green energy, because according to climate science this IR exceeds the energy received from the sun.
So why is Mann, Gore and the IPCC not leading the charge to generate clean energy from all this IR energy?”
As IR is available day and night, albeit in lower intensity than sunlight, this is actually being researched. The idea is to collect IR photons with antennas; so if you want to collect, say 10 micrometer wavelength photons you need an antenna of that size. The difficulty is to collect the output of billions of these antennae. See
http://www.brighthub.com/environment/renewable-energy/articles/82996.aspx
Anthony deemed my opinion “over the top”:
“In my opinion, [snip and that opinion is over the top per site policy] – Anthony]”
I do not dispute Anthony’s right to his opinion or his right to moderate his blog as he sees fit. To the contrary, I thank him for the opportunity to express those opinions he does not find to be “over the top”.
But, so as to defend his assertion that my opinion is “over the top”, I would respectfully request that Anthony cite five scientists throughout the history of humanity whom he finds to be bigger frauds than Michael Mann.
I’ll start the list with two examples:
Dr. Andrew Wakefield:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/01/05/autism.vaccines/index.html
Trofim Lysenko:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_Lysenko
Alternatively, Anthony could — if he chooses — suggest that Mann has done nothing which rises to the dictionary definition of fraud:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fraud
Or, he could (as is his right) decline to publish this comment.
[REPLY: You are entitled to your opinion. Anthony’s position has always been to not attribute malice to where incompetence will suffice. If you have concrete evidence of fraud, we’ll post it. If it is your considered opinion…. well… -REP]
I can’t say if it’s the original, but Google Cache still has a version “as it appeared on Sep 30, 2011 06:19:25 GMT”.
I keep the following JavaScript in my bookmarks (Safari on Mac OS X, although I don’t know if that matters):
javascript:location.href=%22http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:%22+encodeURIComponent(location.href)
So when I want to see the cached version of a page, I can hit that button on my bookmarks bar and, if Google has a cached version, immediately see it (and, of course, archive it).
Steve from Rockwood:
Paragraph 2 from your link:
“Shocking isn’t it? You might ask, how can a lifelong Democrat
like myself reject my party’s position on global warming and join the
camp of the skeptics, virtually all of whom are Republicans or neocons.”
He is preempting the anticipated stereotype (for himself, at least) that he’s a war-mongering, uneducated, conspiracy theorist, neocon and probably a cigarette smoker, too. I don’t think it’s a bad thing to point out when the piece is intended for consumption by the general public. It is also helpful when a scientist (truthfully) says he’s never received a dime from “Big Oil”. You do know that’s what the AGWers say about skeptics.
Steve from Rockwood says:
October 2, 2011 at 3:20 pm
“I prefer the collective incompetence theory whereby most scientists get to where they are by hard work and a lot of patience. The work doesn’t have to be right, but by design, if you don’t really know what you are doing, how can you disagree with others in your field? In this way your field ends up being dominated by a few who have their way, surrounded by a large group of second raters who are ready to publish follow-up papers confirming your work, happy to feed at the trough.”
No, that’s not how it works. In my master thesis I implemented and compared a dozen edge detection algorithms (image processing) from published papers. Most of the papers were a waste of time – I had the impression that somebody believed to have a smart idea, tested his idea on one or two images and published. Nearly none of them performed well on a simple circular shape.
Sturgeon’s Law applies. When asked why 95% of SF novels are crap, he answered “95% of everything is crap”. And that’s true for published science as well. Science progresses by mercylessly weeding out the crap. Mann’s work belongs to the 95%. And his first hockey stick has already been weeded out; thanks to a gardener called McIntyre. Mann produces more versions of it and those will be weeded out as well.
It takes time.
Lucy Skywalker says:
“While MMR was not problematic in itself, a preservative that was used in some vaccines was very clearly the rogue”
The CDC says:
“Three U.S. health agencies (The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH)) have reviewed the published research on thimerosal and found it to be a safe product to use in vaccines. Three independent organizations [The National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine, Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP)] reviewed the published research and also found thimerosal to be a safe product to use in vaccines. The medical community supports the use of thimerosal in influenza vaccines to protect against potential bacterial contamination of multi–dose vials.”
“Numerous studies have found no association between thimerosal exposure and autism.”
http://www.cdc.gov/flu/protect/vaccine/thimerosal.htm
CNN got this one right:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/01/05/autism.vaccines/index.html
Philip Clarke says: October 2, 2011 at 3:31 pm
… I am enjoying this uncritical and open-armed embracing of a scientific numpty immensely.
I took the trouble to read Dr Hertzberg’s letter in toto, and was delighted with all his points, all of which I have researched and arrived at essentially identical conclusions and emphasis. I used to be a warmist, and thanks to websites like Skeptical Science which I had absorbed in detail, I had to do a lot of deconstructing of a lot of issues when finally I realized that there was serious evidence challenging the warmist thesis.
Who’s really uncritical here? Who’s truly a numpty? What’s your evidence?
Lucy Skywalker,
Postscript to my previous comment…
Just because a vaccine contains trace amounts of mercury does not necessarily mean it is harmful. In fact, although unproven in this case, the phenomena of a biphasic dose response (aka Hormesis) suggests that small doses might even be beneficial:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2248601/
What is clear is that:
“Numerous studies have found no association between thimerosal exposure and autism.”
http://www.cdc.gov/flu/protect/vaccine/thimerosal.htm