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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I will repeat this theme again, and again, and AGAIN!
The language Mr. Mann (please note the change in title) has used in public publications refering to other INDIVIDUALS would be CAUSE FOR DISMISSAL in almost every private industry situation. HR departments, for all their flaws, have certain “behavioral” standards which are enforced these days. Mann’s writings and allowing these statements to be published would violate these standards and he would be dismissed. What this demonstrates is a moral bankruptcy of the highest kind.
Max
Private industry: 30 years experience.
Steptoe Fan;
i want nothing less than a judgement at Nuremberg.>>>
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davidmhoffer says:
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.
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We have not reached the end of the game plan yet. However we do know that those who support CAGW and Global Governance generally support the idea that there are too many people on the earth. Do not forget that the whole idea behind the carbon tax was a way to directly fund the UN. http://www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/afrec/vol15no4/154finan.htm
As far as not plotting deaths, there is the whole complicated mess of Bio-fuel, WTO, the corporate land grab, and food speculation by the likes of Goldman Sachs. By 2008 US grain reserves were exhausted, prices spiked and there were food riots in 23 countries. In 2008, nearly 9 million children died before they reached their fifth birthday. One third of these deaths are due directly or indirectly to hunger and malnutrition
“the man-made Bengal Famine of 1943/1944, …. killed 4 million people (it is similar in death toll magnitude to the WW2 Jewish Holocaust) but has been largely deleted from British historiography….Body count” documents the similarly non-reported avoidable death of 1.3 billion people since 1950….. Even the starvation of Ukrainans by Stalin was http://www.ukemonde.com/news/rferl.html“>covered-up by the news sources.
Less than 10% of the land in Africa is covered by title documents leaving the native people wide open to the type of land theft we saw in Anthony’s They had to burn the village to save it from global warming NAFTA forced 75% of the farmers off the land in Mexico, compliance with WTO and tons of bureaucratic red tape are doing the same to farmers in other countries.
Clinton acknowledged the WTO as part of the cause of the food riots.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/23/world/main4542268.shtml
http://www.pacificfreepress.com/news/1/5934-bill-clintons-empty-mea-culpa-on-ruining-haitis-agriculture-sector.html
Meanwhile George Soros, Lord Rothschild, and other investors are snaping up the arable land from the farmers who were bankrupted……
http://money.cnn.com/2009/06/08/retirement/betting_the_farm.fortune/index.htm
Famine has always been a tool of war and now CAGW can take the blame.
richard telford says:
October 6, 2011 at 1:05 am
‘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.’
Yamal, Mr Telford?
richard telford says:
October 6, 2011 at 1:05 am
Can you say “Yamal”? If so, you’re point is even worse–using just a bunch of trees (and maybe just one) to prove climate trends is far worse than “a single small country”. All one has to do is piss or poop at the base of a tree or two and you’ve changed climate forever. Now we’re talking fool or a fraud.
But back to Mann–the current fool or fraud–he’s a loose canon. He’s going down, that’s what I see. And he knows it.
loose cannon
n. Slang
One that is uncontrolled and therefore poses danger: “[His] bloopers in the White House seem to make him . . . a political loose cannon” (Tom Morgenthau).
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/loose+cannon
And this is what the Editor of the Vail Daily News had to say:
richard telford says:
October 6, 2011 at 1:05 am
“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…..
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The whole subject was discussed here at WUWT on November 29, 2009 http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/29/the-medieval-warm-period-a-global-phenonmena-unprecedented-warming-or-unprecedented-data-manipulation/
Interesting. My career has been in electronics/physics/instrumentation but one of my hobbies has been history. I read the sagas of Snorri Sturluson which detail Icelandic history. I read about the settlement of Greenland. I studied Medieval English history. I also studied a bit of Chinese history. Although I didn’t know to call it the Little Ice Age, I was well aware that there was a cooling of the climate that caused famine and misery in Europe and China.
I was also willing to believe that CO2 could cause global warming. Then came the hockey stick and I quit believing in AGW. Sorry Richard. I know physics and I know history and, in this case, documentary and archaeological evidence trump Mann’s tree rings. You have to think more deeply before you disparage mere ‘documentary’ evidence. It makes you look arrogant and clueless.
@richard Telford: Yamal? (‘…only a fool or a fraud would argue that natural climate variability in a single small country represents natural variability over the whole globe.’)
Advice to Richard Telford, admit your mistake (re: Yamal) and move on, you’re hosed – Anthony
Max Hugoson says:
October 6, 2011 at 7:35 am
I will repeat this theme again, and again, and AGAIN!
The language Mr. Mann (please note the change in title) has used in public publications refering to other INDIVIDUALS would be CAUSE FOR DISMISSAL in almost every private industry situation. HR departments, for all their flaws, have certain “behavioral” standards which are enforced these days. Mann’s writings and allowing these statements to be published would violate these standards and he would be dismissed. What this demonstrates is a moral bankruptcy of the highest kind.
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Very Very true Max. Since he as speaking/writing as Dr. Mann, known climatologist of Penn, what he says and how he acts reflects directly on the university.
Most teacher’s contracts still have a “moral turpitude” clause, some schools have even used the clause to get rid of teachers who stop and have a drink in a local bar. A teacher is held to a higher standard of conduct because he is considered an example for our children.
Do we want Mr. Mann as an example or do we want Dr. Hertzberg as an example? I do not have to be a scientist to know who I would choose, all I have to be is a parent.
Thankyou Dr. Hertzberg for setting such a fine example for our youth.
Nice try Dr. Hertzberg. Unfortunately the “Vail Daily News” is beyond help, as is Herr Doktor Mann. At least, fortunately for all the world, there is WUWT to set the record straight and reach a more educated audience. “Pick your battles and your battlefields” is a good rule of thumb for winning; I think a little emperor from France said that some two hundred years ago, or so. Beware of Germans bearing Hockey Schticks, they play dirty.
Dr. Hertzberg,
Thank you for not falling for his bluff. For it is a bluff. If Mann were to follow his anger with a lawsuit, then the defence is to show, in court, reasonable grounds for the Hockey Stick being disingenuous at best, and fraudulent at worst. Since they dropped the additional tree ring data to “hide the decline”, and removed the MWP and LIA that was there before and has since been returned to its rightful place, with the Climategate e-mails as backing, it would be/is easy to see that the temp record was adjusted, at least, in the direction that served the Green side better. Perhaps the Team was caught up in their cause – my belief for 60% of what they were doing – just as Mendel fudged his genetics results to demonstrate what he knew was correct (and was). Any jury would see reasonable grounds to conclude that one was without malice in saying what you – and hundreds of others – have.
One day Mann will be that fellow in the professors’ lounge who sits by himself and is pointed out by his younger replacements as “that fellow of the Global Warming scandal”. How sad that will be.
Dr. Hertzberg,
Thank you for bringing your measured response to Michael Mann here to WUWT.
John
Mr Mann sees Karma in his rear view window – panic has set in.
Mr. Mann sees karma in his rear view mirror. Panic has set in.
Dear Moderators,
My comment of a few minutes ago did not go into the normal ‘Waiting for Moderation’ mode.
It just disappeared.
Perhaps the WordPress nether gods grabbed it for membership in their nether kingdom?
John
Stevo uses the phrase:
“our prevailing understanding of the effect of infrared absorption on the energy balance of the atmosphere”
Actually, ‘our’ prevailing understanding is that doubling CO2 produces at most a degree of warming. It’s you alarmists who have to prove otherwise.
You see, unlike your cargo-cult ‘science’,
in real science as conducted by grown-ups, there is this handy idea of ‘
THE NULL HYPOTHESIS
which in this case is that there is nothing to worry about.
AGW must proceed by first disproving the non-alarmist scenario.
Simply assuming at the outset that you’re right is a giant no-no.
Vail publishes it… http://www.vaildaily.com/ARTICLE/20111005/LETTER/111009946/
Note they had to add this:
When he says “support” he of course meant “back” not “replicate”.
/snarc-off
Steve from Rockwood says:
“I wasn’t aware that the climategate emails revealed a reference to Daly’s death as ‘cheering news’. What a bunch of schmucks.”
This short email exchange shows the impotence of Phil Jones, and it is probably one reason why Jones practically stood up and cheered upon hearing the news of the great John Daly’s passing:
http://www.john-daly.com/cru/emails.htm
Smokey & Jim Masterson re: the ‘CO2science’ MWP project.
It’s deeply flawed. Not all the graphs on the map are of temperature, eg Zhang et al 2003 was primarily precipitation, and while all the graphs show a peak, they are not synchronised in time for example, Johnsen et al. 2001 shows the Greenland summit unusually warm in 1000AD, while Wilson et al 1979 show New Zealand temperatures peaking 3-400 years later. Also they continue to use old studies when more recent findings are less supportive of the case, eg they cite Loehle 2007, but ignore it’s 2008 update.
As a whole, they demonstrate no evidence for a period when the whole globe was warmer than the present at the same time. All nicely documented here with further examples of misrepresentation.
I hope it is not boorish to point out that to qualify as a sceptic one has to actually be sceptical.
Oh PS re: Yamal. The Yamal chronology is part of just 4 out of 12 reconstructions in IPCC AR4 and is not used in the MBH ‘hockey stick’ study.
Just for the record:
By 1995, in his book Climate, History and the Modern World, Lamb was able to cite data from both Europe and North American (west coast) to support the MWP concept. At the time he was not sure that it included the Far East, although more recent work indicates that it did in fact occur there also. At least in this work, the “documentary evidence” he cites includes tree-ring proxies.
Phil Clarke’s cognitive dissonance on display:
Regarding the amply documented MWP, Clarke claims there is “no evidence for a period when the whole globe was warmer than the present at the same time.”
Wrong. But then Clarke gets his misinformation from this pseudo-science blog.
Clarke needs to get educated:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/23/study-on-paleo-rainfall-records-clearly-shows-existence-of-mwp-and-lia-in-southern-hemisphere
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/24/easterbrook-on-the-magnitude-of-greenland-gisp2-ice-core-data
http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/MedievalWarmPeriod.html
Brune apparently mentioned in his Seminar yesterday that Mann is on sabbatical from PSU for researching climate science communication. (this info is thankfully from Brune seminar attendee and CA commenter ‘Dave Bufalo, P.E.’ who posted on the CA Brune thread @ur momisugly Oct 5, 2011 at 9:49 PM)
So, are the recent Mann communications, like his response to Dr. Hertzberg’s letter to the editor of the Vail Daily News, the fruit of Mann’s research into climate science communication?
It sounds like Mann’s sabbatical research into climate science communication is even more flawed than is infamous his ‘Hockey Stick’ products.
To me it is more likely Mann is instead using this ‘research sabbatical’ for full time legal offense and legal defense PR. Well, I guess that could, in a PNS sense, be twisted to mean ‘research on climate science communications’. :^)
John
Phil Clarke says:
October 6, 2011 at 10:51 am
‘Oh PS re: Yamal. The Yamal chronology is part of just 4 out of 12 reconstructions in IPCC AR4 and is not used in the MBH ‘hockey stick’ study.’
And the Bristlecones? How wide an area did they cover? C’mon….you’re ‘avin’ a larf!
Phil Clarke says (October 6, 2011 at 10:51 am): “Oh PS re: Yamal. The Yamal chronology is part of just 4 out of 12 reconstructions in IPCC AR4 and is not used in the MBH ‘hockey stick’ study.”
As I recall, Steve McIntyre has shown that every “hockey stick” temperature reconstruction uses Yamal, bristlecone pines, or the Tiljander sediments (upside down). They’re all suspect.