Readers may recall the strange series of events leading up to the post facto revisionism at the Vail Daily News when Dr. Michael Mann sent an angry reply letter to the newspaper and then the original letter from Dr. Hertzberg disappeared then reappeared sans a couple of paragraphs that Dr. Mann didn’t like.
Dr. Hertzberg sent this letter to me today, while at the same time sending it to the Vail Daily News. I reproduce it here in entirety, with no edits or changes of any kind.
Response to Michael Mann
When Scott Glasser’s comment of 9/26/11 referred to me indirectly as an “inaccurate” and “irresponsible” “fool” for challenging the theory that human carbon dioxide emission was causing “global warming / climate change”, I felt compelled to respond. My 9/30/11 comment cited the facts and the data that supported my challenge to the theory. In that article, Glasser defended what has been come to be known as the Mann “hockey stick” curve. I responded in my article with the well documented criticism of it from a large number of scientists who carefully reviewed his claims. Also, the so-called “climategate” e-mails revealed an appalling lack of scientific integrity and manipulations by a cabal of advocates of that theory. Mann responded on 10/1/11 accusing me of “false and defamatory statements” packed with “lies and distortions”; of “lying to the public about science”; of a “string of lies tied together”. He stated my “lies are pernicious” and that I am a “charleton”.
In his response, Mann uses an ad-hominem overkill accusing me of lies and lying some six times! Methinks he doth protest too much.
When I am engaged in a scientific dispute with an adversary, and that opponent instead of citing the facts or the data that might support his argument, instead directs an intense barrage of ad-hominem slurs toward me, I am fully confident that I am winning the argument.
My response now is to cite the data. The IPCC report of 1990 prior to Mann’s publication of his “hockey stick” showed a Medieval Warm Period considerably warmer than today with its peak temperature in about 1250 AD. That was followed by a Little Ice Age considerably colder than today with its coldest average temperature in about 1700. Mann’s “hockey stick” curve shows a flat line temperature during those same periods. It finally got rid of the embarrassing Medieval Warm Period that the “climategate” cabal hated so much because it showed a higher temperature than today at a time when the human emission of carbon dioxide was trivial. The more recent and reliable reconstruction for the same time period using 18 other different temperature proxies that are much more reliable than tree rings, reaffirm the 1990 IPCC report. The pesky Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age that Mann obliterated with his “hockey stick” are still there!
For a detailed look at that data and much more, go to www.youtube.com and enter “climategate” and “hertzberg” in the search column. For a more detailed discussion of the “hide the decline” issue, go to Prof. Richard Muller’s talk on the subject at www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BQpciw8suk.
In any case, don’t take the word of someone like me who Mann characterized as a “charleton”. Here is the much earlier opinion of a distinguished Australian scientist, John Daly:
“The evidence is overwhelming from all corners of the world, the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age clearly show up in a variety of proxy indicators, proxies more representative of temperature than inadequate tree ring data.”
“What is disquieting about the hockey stick is not its original publication. As with any paper, it would sink into oblivion if found to be flawed. Rather it was the reaction of the greenhouse industry to it – the chorus of approval, the complete lack of critical evaluation of the theory, the blind acceptance of evidence that was so flimsy. The industry embraced the theory for one reason and one reason only – it told them exactly what they wanted to hear.”
Not long after those comments were written, John Daly died. In one of the climategate e-mails, his death is mentioned as a kind of fortunate occurrence, some “cheering news” that removed one of their adversaries.
So much for scientific integrity!
Dr. Martin Hertzberg
Ph. D. Stanford, 1959
www.explosionexpert.com
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Excelent…Well said.
Congratulations on an appropriate response to an inappropriate (but all too common) attack on free speech and fact-based discourse.
Dr. Mann surely must know the pain that potentially libelous statements like his ‘lies and liars’ accusations cause, after all, he threatened to sue Dr. Tim Ball for hinting that he (Dr. Mann) was less than totally forthcoming, though I do not recollect Dr. Ball ever using the ‘L’ word and certainly not in the ranting diatribe that Dr. Mann let loose.
It certainly makes one ponder the meaning of standards. of conduct… as practiced by the Warming Industry’s leading lights.
it is so terribly frustrating that the AGW – hide the warming – it must be CO2, what else could it be ?, types can never be forced into an open venue where all the current climate science could be introduced and the Manns forced to respond, fully, before the media, the administration and the country.
it is a case of ‘missing exposure’ – where is the missing ‘heat’ that these rogues should have to feel ?
i want nothing less than a judgement at Nuremberg.
So, will the Vail Daily News print this response? “The World Wonders.”*
*a historical reference, for anyone interested.
Methinks Mann is rapidly losing whatever marbles he once had. He is showing disturbing signs of desperation, throwing tantrums in all directions, just like a 2-year old. He needs careful watching.
Stout fellow you are Dr Hertzberg. Well done!
When two people disagree about something and one of them resorts to insults and falsehoods, then that person has lost the argument. When the loser compounds this loss with legal action to prevent the data he used to support his argument, being made public and therefore subject to scrutiny by the winner, then it is 100% certain that he is lying through his teeth.
Any organisation that can rejoice the death of an opponent because their views on a scientific subject differ from theirs, also call into question the validity of that organisation’s claims.
Religious fervour is how it all looks to me, not science
still can’t post on tips’n’notes, sorry. this is quickly getting up on the MSM:
5 Oct: Vancouver Sun: Randy Boswell: Climate change eradicating Arctic’s oldest ice
In reports issued this week by NASA and the associated National Snow and Ice Data Center, the respective teams of U.S. scientists offered end-of-season overviews of the state of the northern cryosphere that emphasized not only the severe shrinkage of the ice cover for the fifth straight year, but also the widespread replacement of the Arctic’s most mature ice masses by much younger, thinner and weaker sheets of ice…
“The oldest, thickest ice (five or more years old), has continued to decline,” states the report from the Colorado-based NSIDC, which points to the Beaufort Sea north of the Yukon-Alaska boundary as a prime area for the loss of old-growth ice. “In essence, what was once a refuge for older ice has become a graveyard.”…
http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Climate+change+eradicating+Arctic+oldest/5507384/story.html
I offer a well deserved THANK YOU to the Vail Daily News!
Without their fumbled attempt at censorship and history revision, this letter would probably have never reached a readership that dwarfs their subscription size and is fully global in scope.
My sincerest appreciation.
Steptoe Fan;
i want nothing less than a judgement at Nuremberg.>>>
I’m mad as you know what about the corruption in climate science, but comparing that to the Nuremberg trials is over the top. The Michaell Mann’s of the world may have been guilty of promoting falsehoods in the name of science, but that hardly compares to the plotting and carrying out of plans to herd millions of people into death camps and systematically murder them.
It is a standard tactic in politics, particularly on the Left, that whatever dubious activity you doing, accuse your opponent of doing it.
With the current rather dismal state of the media the accusation gets more publicity than the fact of your dubious activity. Because printing the accusation requires much less effort than investigating the facts.
Mann’s letter illustrates the degree to which climate science has become politicized.
We should be calling Mann a Climate Politician.
Just curious – what is the circulation of the Vail Daily News vs. WUWT?
Answer: 15,000 (in Vail) vs. 90,487,564 (world-wide).
Gotta figure some of that 15,000 is bird-cage liner.
Whoops…
T.C. – I deeply appreciate WUWT, but your analysis is slightly flawed. The 90 million figure for WUWT is from its inception (x years, y months) (please correct me if I am wrong). The 15 thousand figure for the Vail Daily News is a daily circulation number (assuming that the “Daily” in the name actually means daily publication). You have to multiply that daily circulation by the number of days it has been in circulation for a life time comparison or by the same number of days that WUWT has been in existence to make a relevant comparison with a like to like time dimension included.
Of course out of the 15,000 number, how many are actually read compared to being unread and recycled for some more useful purpose (like bird-cage liner).
Needs a study. Send money.
Mann is a fraud. No original research. Merely the tinkering with other people’s data in the most biased way.
Robert E. Phelan says:
October 5, 2011 at 11:14 pm
I think Mann will require more than TF34 in the long run.
T.C.,
M. Mann must think the circulation is large enough. He not only became aware of the mention of his name he also was compelled to respond.
It’s a Trenberthsty.
Mann seems as cavalier with his spelling as with his facts. I draw your attention to charleton, which as any person with one iota of education knows; the word is charlatan. Dr. Martin Hertzberg nails it well with his use of quotation marks around the offensive utterance.
As spellcheckers are ubiquitous, Mann’s distain to use basic technology, is yet more evidence that he believes he is endowed with a Pope’s infallibility on such religious matters as AGW.
What a plonker!
@davidmhoffer says: October 5, 2011 at 11:34 pm
I agree that a Nuremberg trial has the wrong resonances. But I think there is an overwhelming case for a properly constituted Tribunal of Inquiry under a senior judge, to look into both the “science” of cAGW, the policy implications (particularly the Climate Change Act 2008), the selection of activists as Government “Scientific Advisors”, the role of DECC and its Secretaries of State (Milipede and BuffHuhne) and, of course Climategate and the subsequent whitewashes.
I have to admit that not all Tribunals of Inquiry have come up to the mark. But that into the 1966 Aberfan Disaster did a first rate job.
http://www.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/politics/aberfan/tri.htm
Don’t hold your breath that we will get one, however.
Do we really have to call Michael Mann a doctor? The only thing he doctored was the temperatures from his hockey stick graph. I think there should be a strong movement to remove the titles of all disgraced climate scientists who put funding and emotion over research and scientific method so these people cannot be taken seriously again when the next “global warming evidence” shows up.
“The IPCC report of 1990 prior to Mann’s publication of his “hockey stick” showed a Medieval Warm Period considerably warmer than today with its peak temperature in about 1250 AD. ”
This canard again! Anybody still repeating this is either clueless or disingenuous as source of this figure, and the reasons why is a poor estimate of the global mean have been explained many many times.
The figure in the 1990 report is a schematic showing an estimate of English temperatures developed by HH Lamb, based largely on documentary evidence. Just as only a fool would try to prove (or more likely disprove) that global warming was occurring with data from a single small country, only a fool or a fraud would argue that natural climate variability in a single small country represents natural variability over the whole globe.
richard telford,
It is you who is mendaciously spreading the ‘no MWP’ canard. The MWP is a thoroughly documented, world-wide event. Denying the world wide existence of the MWP [and the LIA] is an alarmist desperation tactic. I for one am getting tired of providing numerous links proving the existence of the MWP.
Richard Telford, you are a fool who believes in rhe climate charlatan Michael Mann’s debunked horse manure that there was no MWP or LIA. Wise up, chump. You credulous climate alarmist fools accuse honest scientific skeptics of ‘denying’ climate change, when it is the alarmist crowd that denies [natural] climate change.
The alarmist crowd has lost every argument. CO2 is harmless and beneficial. More is better. There will be no 20-meter sea level rises due to the rise in natural, beneficial “carbon.” The Arctic and Antarctic are simply going through their natural cycles. Nothing out out of the ordinary is occurring. Nothing! So the fact that you and your ilk are trying to falsely scream “Fire!” in a crowded theater makes you despicable false alarmists. When the truth is known, you and your ilk will be standing in the dock, accused and convicted of false alarmism.
richard telford says:
‘Just as only a fool would try to prove (or more likely disprove) that global warming was occurring with data from a single small country, only a fool or a fraud would argue that natural climate variability in a single small country represents natural variability over the whole globe.’
However as a small island on the western side of the 2nd largest ocean it is actually a very good proxy for at least a significant proportion of the NH.
>>
richard telford says:
October 6, 2011 at 1:05 am
This canard again!
Just as only a fool would try to prove (or more likely disprove) that global warming was occurring with data from a single small country, only a fool or a fraud would argue that natural climate variability in a single small country represents natural variability over the whole globe.
<<
I guess canards, like beauty, are in the eye of the beholder. CO2 Science has an on-going project to document MWP studies all over the world. Their conclusions would give support to the idea that you are the one spreading the canard.
Jim
“Steeptown says:
October 5, 2011 at 11:20 pm
Methinks Mann is rapidly losing whatever marbles he once had. He is showing disturbing signs of desperation, throwing tantrums in all directions, just like a 2-year old. He needs careful watching.”
My thoughts exactly