Kos asks about Michael Mann – hero or zero?

“…trolls…from the deniers….”
When your argument can’t stand on its own merit, invoke the name calling. Sign of a true scientist.

Does a hero manipulate scientific data to push an agenda that will result in trillions of dollars been spent on boondoggles? Mann obviously cherry picked tree ring data and used an specific analysis technique that forced a large data set to track the cherry picked tree ring data. Truth and unbiased analysis is the foundation of science. Mann and his cohorts over at Realclimate will be definitively proven incorrect (on a suite of bad science, such as whether the planet’s response to a change in forcing is positive – amplifies the change- or negative -resists the change- ) when the planet cools. It will be interesting to listen to the back pedaling and inventive explanations until they capitulate.
What mechanism caused the past cyclic warming and cooling? Why were there cosmogenic isotope changes at each and every one of the past cyclic warming and cooling changes?
The cyclic warming and cooling can be seen in the Greenland Ice sheet data. (See this link, “The Big picture, figure 3 in the attached which is an excerpt from Richard Alley’s paper.)
http://www.climate4you.com/
I would highly recommend this short read as a succinct summary of the hockey stick issue.
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/McKitrick-hockeystick.pdf
What is the ‘Hockey Stick’ Debate About?
… At the political level the emerging debate is about whether the enormous international trust that has been placed in the IPCC was betrayed. The hockey stick story reveals that the IPCC allowed a deeply flawed study to dominate the Third Assessment Report, which suggests the possibility of bias in the Report-writing…
…The result is in the bottom panel of Figure 6 (“Censored”). It shows what happens when Mann’s PC algorithm is applied to the NOAMER data after removing 20 bristlecone pine series. Without these hockey stick shapes to mine for, the Mann method generates a result just like that from a conventional PC algorithm, and shows the dominant pattern is not hockey stick-shaped at all. Without the bristlecone pines the overall MBH98 results would not have a hockey stick shape, instead it would have a pronounced peak in the 15th century.
Of crucial importance here: the data for the bottom panel of Figure 6 is from a folder called CENSORED on Mann’s FTP site. He did this very experiment himself and discovered that the PCs lose their hockey stick shape when the Graybill-Idso series are removed. In so doing he discovered that the hockey stick is not a global pattern, it is driven by a flawed group of US proxies that experts do not consider valid as climate indicators. But he did not disclose this fatal weakness of his results, and it only came to light because of Stephen McIntyre’s laborious efforts. …
This is one of many papers predicting cooling. Note the Greenland Ice core data shows cycles of warming and cooling, with some of the cooling phases abrupt.
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/amet/aip/543146.pdf
Solar activity and Svalbard temperatures
The long temperature series at Svalbard (Longyearbyen) show large variations and a positive trend since its start in 1912. During this period solar activity has increased, as indicated by shorter solar cycles. The temperature at Svalbard is negatively correlated with the length of the solar cycle. The strongest negative correlation is found with lags 10–12 years. The relations between the length of a solar cycle and the mean temperature in the following cycle are used to model Svalbard annual mean temperature and seasonal temperature variations. These models can be applied as forecasting models. We predict an annual mean temperature decrease for Svalbard of 3.5 to 2⁰C from solar cycle 23 to solar cycle 24 (2009–‐20) and a decrease in the winter temperature of ≈6⁰ C.
http://sheridan.geog.kent.edu/geog41066/7-Overpeck.pdf
ABRUPT CHANGE IN EARTH’S CLIMATE SYSTEM
“The earliest Holocene abrupt climate changes occurred at 12,800, 8200, 5200, and 4200 B.P. . . .” The 8200 B.P. event, “lasted four hundred years (6400-6000 B.C.) and, like the Younger Dryas, generated abrupt aridification and cooling in the North Atlantic and North America, Africa, and Asia (Alley et al. 1997; Barber et al. 1999; Hu et al. 1999; Street-Perrot and Perrot 1990).
http://www.geo.arizona.edu/palynology/geos462/8200yrevent.html
The 8200-year Climate Event
This figure shows snow accumulation and isotopically inferred temperature records in the Greenland GISP2 ice core and a temperature record derived from oxygen isotope measurements of fossil shells in the sediments of Lake Ammersee, southern Germany. These records all show a major climatic instability event which occurred around 8200 years ago, during the Holocene. The event was large both in magnitude, as reflected by a temperature signal in Greenland of order 5 C, and in its geographical extent, as indicated by the close correlation of the signal in these two locations. The dramatic event is also seen in the methane record from Greenland (not shown here) indicating possible major shifts in hydrology and land cover in lower latitudes. source: Von Grafenstein et al (1998) Climate Dynamics, 14, 73-81.
Abrupt tropical cooling ~8,000 years ago
“We drilled a sequence of exceptionally large, well-preserved Porites corals within an uplifted palaeo-reef in Alor, Indonesia, with Th-230 ages spanning the period 8400 to 7600 calendar years before present (Figure 2). The corals lie within the Western Pacific Warm Pool, which at present has the highest mean annual temperature in the world’s ocean. Measurements of coral Sr/Ca and oxygen 18 isotopes at 5-year sampling increments for five of the fossil corals (310 annual growth increments) have yielded a semi-continuous record spanning the 8.2 ka event. The measurements (Figure 2) show that sea-surface temperatures were essentially the same as today from 8400 to 8100 years ago, followed by an abrupt ~3C cooling over a period of ~100 years, reaching a minimum ~8000 years ago. The cooling calculated from coral oxygen 18 isotopes is similar to that derived from Sr/Ca. The exact timing of the termination of the cooling event is not yet known, but a coral dated as 7600 years shows sea-surface temperatures similar to those of today.”
http://www.ann-geophys.net/20/115/2002/angeo-20-115-2002.pdf
The 2400-year cycle in atmospheric radiocarbon concentration: bispectrum of 14C data over the last 8000 years
We have carried out power spectrum, time-spectrum and bispectrum analyses of the long-term series of the radiocarbon concentrations deduced from measurements of the radiocarbon content in tree rings for the last 8000 years. Classical harmonic analysis of this time series shows a number of periods: 2400, 940, 710, 570, 500, 420, 360, 230, 210 and 190 years. A principle feature of the time series is the long period of 2400 years, which is well known. The lines with periods of 710, 420 and 210 years are found to be the primary secular components of power spectrum. The complicated structure of the observed power spectrum is the result of 2400-year modulation of primary secular components. The modulation induces the appearance of two side lines for every primary one, namely lines with periods of 940 and 570 years, of 500 and 360 years, and 230 and 190 years. The bispectral analysis shows that the parameters of carbon exchange system varied with the _2400-year period during the last 8000 years. Variations of these parameters appear to be a climate effect on the rate of transfer of 14C between the atmosphere and the ocean. Time comparison of the epochs of high and low solar activity with climate alteration led to the conclusion that the cause of the approx. 2400-year cycle, both in the 14C concentration and in climate of the Earth, appears to be of a solar nature (Dergachev and Chistyakov, 1995).
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2003SPD….34.0603S
Solar Activity Heading for a Maunder Minimum?
My colleagues and I have developed some understanding for how these methods work and have expanded the prediction methods using “solar dynamo precursor” methods, notably a “SODA” index (SOlar Dynamo Amplitude). These methods are now based upon an understanding of the Sun’s dynamo processes- to explain a connection between how the Sun’s fields are generated and how the Sun broadcasts its future activity levels to Earth. This has led to better monitoring of the Sun’s dynamo fields and is leading to more accurate prediction techniques. Related to the Sun’s polar and toroidal magnetic fields, we explain how these methods work, past predictions, the current cycle, and predictions of future of solar activity levels for the next few solar cycles.
The surprising result of these long-range predictions is a rapid decline in solar activity, starting with cycle #24. If this trend continues, we may see the Sun heading towards a “Maunder” type of solar activity minimum – an extensive period of reduced levels of solar activity. For the solar physicists, who enjoy studying solar activity, we hope this isn’t so, but for NASA, which must place and maintain satellites in low earth orbit (LEO), it may help with reboost problems. Space debris, and other aspects of objects in LEO will also be affected.

“There are too few heroes among the scientific community…..Or at least, they have not been for a long time.  Galileo comes to mind……” mikulecky.
The only way Mann will ever have anything in common with Galileo will be if he ends up in jail.