Can anyone in Colorado attend this tomorrow?

Holy Sh…………! I wish i could attend, but I’m about to revert to Kurd Status. What amazes me the seemingly obvious allusion to (Shall I paraphrase) Mann’s ability to attract pal review and all of its accoutrements. Talk about blindered! “This would have been impossible had his activities in reporting his work been outside of accepted practices in his field” Oh really? I’d love to ask a few questions!

With all due respect, I wouldn’t walk across the street to listen to Brune. (What might one expect to hear from the guy who hired Mann?)
The Alice-in-Wonderland text of the conclusions reached by the Penn State “inquiry” was more than I could stomach. The fix was in from the beginning of that pathetic whitewash. It’s a shame that Brune (and the others who “investigated” Mann) are too biased by their own self-interest to understand the severe damage they’ve done to the reputation of Penn State.

so like find someone that has no opinion to collect the data …surley someone has a better camera than a phone that could set up and push record ….peace

I’m intrigued that some folks here, without actually coming out and saying
it, seem to consider Mike Mann’s work on the “Hockey Stick” solution to be
nothing more than part of the foundation and probably the corner stone of
what’s turned into a giant, camouflaged scientific Ponzi scheme.
Those emails from Mann’s time at the University of Virginia are still just
hanging there, like a girl whose petticoats we’d like to count and get a peek
at what’s underneath.
Mann’s friends like William Brune of Penn State seem horrified that the
crowd outside the Team’s clique might get a glimpse of stocking,
The Climategate emails were just a tease…

Here’s one for Mr B, hot off the Bishophill Press.
Another review of Montford’s “Hockey Stick Illusion” has been published – this time in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Here’s a couple of clips they put together.
Clip 1:
“The book provides a fascinating and engaging level of detail, which brings scientific, statistical and even political procedures vividly to life, a feature which elevates this book into an important source of historical insight”
Clip 2:
“This book is an impressive and important work, one that could be an eye-opener for students of statistics, but also an inspiration for them as they see the power of careful and conscientious attention to detail in pursuing complex data analyses… But more importantly, in the near future, the book should be an eye-opener for politicians, and an encouragement for them to insist on thorough and independent investigation of claims published in scientific journals when these are used to underpin extremely important policy decisions.”
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2011/10/4/another-review.html#comments
I await with pleasure the response of the above Mr B at Colorado almost as much as that from the worthies at RealClimate!

I intend to be there.

Getting into the Boulder labs for a seminar can sometimes be a bit tricky. Once I waited at the guard gate for 45 minutes to get clearance, and by the time I did the talk was half over, so I left. Here’s some info from the ESRL web site:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/csd/seminars/
The Visitors Center and entrance to the Boulder Department of Commerce facilities are located on Broadway at Rayleigh Road. All seminar attendees, including pedestrians and bike riders, are required to check in at the Visitors Center at the Security Checkpoint to receive a visitor badge. Seminar attendees need to present a valid photo ID and mention the seminar title or the speaker’s name to obtain a visitor badge. If security personnel asks for a point of contact please list Ru-Shan Gao (x5431), Mary Gutierrez (x3429), or Jeanne Waters (x3134). If you are a foreign national without permanent residency, please contact Ru-Shan Gao or Owen Cooper so security can be notified in advance.
As for me, I’m not sure I can get to Boulder tomorrow.

Madoff is an apt analogy for these hucksters. In 2009, I told a number of warmistas that CAGW would be exposed sooner or later, much like those financial cdo’s.

In the Ivory Tower it is a game of scratching each other’s back. Especially since they sit on each other’s granting committees. Schmooze or lose.

RE: Toto says:
October 4, 2011 at 2:45 pm
“What did he see in Mann to bring him to Penn State?”
From the man himself:
“This level of success in . . . obtaining funding to conduct it, . . .”
Follow the money . . . that’s what it’s about.
-barn

I particularly like this passage, as it’s quite revealing:

This level of success in proposing research, and obtaining funding to conduct it, clearly places Dr. Mann among the most respected scientists in his field.

I don’t think he was supposed to say that!

As the meeting is in Colorado there might be a report in the Vail Daily! I’d be interested to read Dr Hertzberg’s take on what’s said.

I am @ the seminar, and the speaker has requested no recordings. Sigh.

Yes, took notes. They are cryptic, and I must get to other responsibilities now, but they mutt be useful, so here they are:
Bill Brune NOAA/Penn State
Just the facts, Ma’am.
Penn State Admin’s point of view.
Coal is background Penn State
Hired Mann 6 years ago
Got barraged with emails, profanity calls about Mann
Pressure
How to handle accusation of fraud? Follow Penn State process.
RA-10
Admin inquiry. Bill Easterling, Dean.
Whitewash? Follow process.
Extract emails with Mann’s name.
How to frame questions?
Interview with MM in 2 hours.
Read philos. Of Sci.
“Very much the scientist.”
Firing not “according to the process.”
Initial value problem= both weather and climate.
First 3Q’s invalid. No data falsification.
Investigative committee. Will Castleman.
Read blogs too. Focus on Academic Conduct.
Easterling recused himself.
Interviewed MM and Richard Lindzen.
Pass on preprint? Not according to standards???—-irrelevant
Committee limited to only 3rd Q.
Summary: nothing to see here.
Sharing of codes? Not 10 years ago. Still not? Move toward that standard.
Nothing on reporting. Explicit permission.
No substance to allegation.
Proposing, conducting, reporting research were all OK. 
NSF whitewashed. Nothing here to see.
Mike on sabbatical. How to communicate climate science.
Not just an extension of weather.
Joe Bastardi denounced PS and dissolved ties.
Sceptical scientists
Nothing about belief… That’s religion
“If you know Dick Lindzen… He can stand for any number of people..” (against Brune…)
A very politicized environment.
It’s where the money comes from.
Emails been hacked.
Chairman of meeting: “Went down very well this time.”

Interviewed MM and Richard Lindzen.

Brune was consultant to the Inquiry Committee which did not interview Lindzen. They interviewed Gerald North and Donald Kennedy (former editor of Science) about the emails. North has said elsewhere that he did not read the emails out of “professional courtesy” but did not view that as disqualifying him as an expert. It was the Inquiry Committee that decided not to pursue the major counts. The Investigation Committee did not investigate the major issues and told Lindzen that they were not talking to him about deletion of emails, the trick etc.
As always, one has to watch the pea under the thimble with these guys.

…[Brune]… —SORRY.
[It’s also “McIntyre.” ~dbs, mod.]

@OrenOlson, yes, Brune “appeared” a bit uncomfortable with the question about McIntyre, which bouldersolar got to ask. bouldersolar and myself had a bit of a conversation on the way into the meeting. We are both airplane pilots. bouldersolar was one of the few people who were allowed to ask two questions.
The security gauntlet at a supposedly open scientific research center was daunting, surprising, and most unwelcome. Fortunately, I came about a half hour early so as to be there early enough to set up for recording, which turned out to be disallowed, so I was happy that I had time to run the gauntlet, which was pretty much exactly equivalent to the security imposed by the TSA. I’ve worked at federal facilities before, and this was far and away the most intrusive and unwelcome security I have ever experienced.
One possibly irrelevant note: the NOAA research center is named for former congressperson from Boulder, David Skaggs, who I ran against in 1996 as a Libertarian. On the way in, someone questioned the tastefulness of naming such a place for a still-living person. But I guess anyone who diverted so much Federal money to Boulder deserves his name on the building.
An overview: The room was packed SRO, which Brune appeared to be surprised about, since he expected a very small seminar with only a few interested scientists. Brune opened with a backgrounder about the history of Penn State and his department within Penn State. He noted that Pennsylvania was a coal-mining state. He described hiring Michael Mann 6 years ago. Brune was very annoyed to get a lot of offensive emails and phone calls about Michael Mann when Climategate revealed Mann to be one of the primary foci of the “hacked” emails.
Brune spent several minutes ruminating about the possible problems of using email for a “conversation”. I’m not sure this is just the opinion of someone brought up in the landline phone age or someone worried about revealing the internal “sausage” of science in the making. One of the questioners asked whether or not all emails between scientists should be encrypted. Brune thought that was a very good question, but didn’t necessarily agree that all emails should be encrypted.
Like all good academic bureaucrats, when faced with a messy political problem, Brune turned to “the process”, which at Penn State has a name: RA-10. He said that he decided to use that process to handle the problem. He noted that there was no *internal* request for inquiry from within Penn State itself, so they had to “construct” questions to put to Mann from inquiries from outside the University. He seemed a bit huffy that he had to deal with “outside” inquirers, as if the only “real” problems would surface from within Penn State itself, and any controversy imposed from outside was somehow just an annoyance. {/editorial on} Talk about Ivory Towers. Reminds me of the Falwlty ones. {/editorial off}
The first step was an Administrative Inquiry, led by Bill Easterling, the Dean. Brune himself, being department chair, and the guy who hired Mann, was considered only a “consultant” to this initial Administrative Inquiry. They constructed four questions for this inquiry, which they put to Mann himself. He was exonerated regarding the first three (sorry I didn’t get the details of those questions, but since Lindzen objected to Mann’s exoneration on those first three, they must be available somewhere). The only remaining question was whether Mann had somehow played fast and loose with a paper out for review in preprint, which seemed to me to be an entirely irrelevant question.
Brune emphasized that Mann was a great student of the Philosophy of Science, and that he was “very much the scientist.”
The second stage of RA-10, called an “Investigative Committee”, which included Will Castleman and token “denier”, Richard Lindzen, got to look at only the fourth question. Lindzen was nonplussed to note that the first three questions had been deemed non-questions, and was ignored subsequently. Brune made an interesting remark to a questioner about Richard Lindzen, asking the questioner, “Do you know Richard Lindzen?” The questioner said he didn’t. Brune said that “Richard Lindzen can stand for any number of people.” I took that to mean that he could stand for just about all the deniers “out there.” But I may have misunderstood Brune.
Brune emphasized that “in summary,” nothing was found against Michael Mann, and that the whole inquiry process wasted hundreds of hours of very productive academic time.
In closing his lecture, Brune noted that climate is not just an extension of the weather, and that people like Joe Bastardi, who insist on this point, have cut all ties with Penn State and excoriated Mann and Penn State for their bad behavior. Brune appeared to carry it as a badge of honor that Bastardi no longer supports Penn State. When someone asked whether donations to Penn State had dropped off because of the Mann inquiry, Brune said he wasn’t aware of any such decrease.
I enjoyed hearing Brune emphasize that scientists *should* be skeptics, and that they should never take anything on faith, since to do so would be “religion.” I wish some of his colleagues would take that admonition to heart.
Brune ruminated on the necessity for publicizing all code, noting that 10 years ago, this wouldn’t have been good practice, nor necessary. He said that it appears that the new standard in research is to reveal all your data for replication, and that code probably should also be revealed, although he waffled a bit on that one.
Brune agonized about the “politicized environment” that produced the whole controversy around Michael Mann, and then opened the floor for questions.
None of bouldersolar’s questions got asked. He appears to have gotten them from Steve McIntyre’s site, so I’ll let him post them here if he wishes. I got to ask one question: Since so much of science now relies on computer codes, isn’t the whole project of modeling a hypercomplex non-linear chaotic system in an attempt to make psychic prognostications 50 or 100 years out a bit hubristic? Brune’s answer was that I should take his course in climatology once it comes online. I said I would love to do so. There was a bit of a titter as I asked the question, but not much of a one for that answer.
I got to “dialog” with a “dynamics” modeler after the session who explained that there’s a difference between engineers like McIntyre and “scientists” doing modeling and other scientific work. Science is a lot less exact, while engineers expect perfection. I countered by asking him to state exactly what the measured human contribution to the current CO2 concentration was. He rambled on about how this can be done with isotopes. I said yes, that is one way. Tell me what the measured percentage is. He had no answer. I asked him about the 50X sink of CO2 in the oceans, and he said that had already been covered, and by implication, dismissed.
I left the room with the impression that nobody had asked the “elephant” question. Had the money that Mann brought to Penn State from Federal sources caused him to bend his research to fit the requirements of his Federal funders? To ask such a question on the grounds of a Federal research facility might have been a bit too brash.

@Steve McIntyre
True, Lindzen was not a member of the Investigative Committee. But he was interviewed by the committee. My mistake to say he was “included.”
Thanks for the references on the questions.