I was surprised to see this essay and poll on the Daily Kos tonight.
Don Mikulecky writes:
Michael Mann is a Modern Hero and we need to acknowledge that!
I have been both a scientist and a political activist for most of my 76 years. But the situation regarding Michael Mann is very different. I just finished a very moving experience reading The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines and I have lots more to say than I can fit in a single diary. So I will devote this diary to trying to convince you that this Mann is a hero. There are too few heroes among the scientific community because of the nature of what we do.
Michael Mann was not someone who chose his role. Military persons can anticipate the possibility of being in situations where acts of heroism are called for. Scientists are certainly not in the same situation. Or at least, they have not been for a long time. Galileo comes to mind and it was the Church then that made his life one of great sacrifice. In these times the situation has deteriorated so rapidly that few of us have had a chance to evaluate the impact of what is going on. Science is a threat to the dark forces that are moving to control us all. People like Carl Sagan and Stephen jay Gould were out there early on fighting against these dark forces. They did a lot for us. Rachael Carlson and many others were on the front lines.
Yet the situation with Professor Mann is something beyond all that. He has become a symbol for what our future is all about and he did not chose his role. No sane person would have. Read on below and I will try to paint a broad picture of how much is at stake and give you a perspective on how this one Mann has focused on the threat to all of us.
…
The full essay is here:
And, there is a poll at the end which has some surprising choices.
Update 3/14: One of the comments there is by somebody who posts here regularly, John Sully. He writes:
Anthony Watts posted about this over at his site and told the trolls to come and freep the poll. This is why year after year his site gets voted “Best Science Blog” or whatever.
Mr. Sully please point out exactly where in the 35 words I wrote (the rest are from Kos) in this essay I have “…told the trolls to come and freep the poll.” Otherwise sir, you are a liar. – Anthony
Poll is still accessible – I just voted.
Mann is many things hero is not one of them. His actions while unethical or questionable may be interpreted as heroic by some. These are either people who share his “True Belief” or who’s interests, mostly economic, are served by it. He does not even quality as an antihero. Antiheroes do the right thing in spite of themselves. It is quite clear he has transformed his expertise from science to cognitive dissonance. I think everyone is giving far to much importance to the irrelevance and sophistry of his book.
The science icon that comes to mind for me, is Copernicus, for advancing science with his theory of heliocentrism against great non science related pressure. However the modern day example of that is not Mann, it is Henrik Svensmark. His strongly opposed research at CERN has been relentlessly confirming at each stage, his very solid theory that cosmic rays shower muons down to catalyze the particular moisture rich and very white, solar reflective clouds, at the 2000 to 3000 foot level, that can block lots of sun from getting to the surface of Earth and create cooling. The cosmic rays have the big gate of our heliosphere to get through. The geologic record of carbon 14, and the analysis of oxygen content of certain little sea creature shells and other indicators all line up to confirm cosmic ray abundance means colder climate. It’s not our climate that drives the clouds, it’s the clouds that drive our climate. During solar system epochs in which cosmic rays were very sparse due to our location in the galaxy the polar ice caps melted. During times when cosmic rays were overwhelming we had a “snowball Earth”. During this time we are used to, in the galactic arm “Orion” we have 60 to 70 percent cloud cover and the solar magnetic cycles that give us a stronger or a weaker heliosphere defense against cosmic rays then also swings our climate, as we either get denser solar reflective clouds or a reduction. Ocean and atmospheric streams move this way and that and move things around a bit, but the basic driver of Earth climate is the sun, the clouds, and cosmic rays. As one scientist put it so poetically, “clouds drive our climate and the stars give our clouds their orders”. Unfortunately the top Russian space and solar science expert (Abdussamatov) tells us we are facing a long weak cycle for solar magnetic output. He predicts a similar event to the “Little Ice Age” for 200 years that will start very soon. He has so far predicted it to start in 2014 and peak about 2055.
hmm, I think they will have to adjust the raw data to remove unqualified respondents. By the morning the results should be in: “97% of readers agree that Mann is an outstanding scientists”.
[+emphasis]
In the interest of pedantic exactitude the bolded name should be Rachel Carson if referring to the author of Silent Spring. So nice that Mr. Mikulecky know how to spell his heroine’s name.
And the comparison to Galileo is just plain ludicrous. MMWB [makes me wanna barf]
2154 Mountain Time: positive choices 3/0/4/15, negative choices 670/236.
So positives are 22/928 or 2.3%. Kos probably didn’t expect it to be quite that lop-sided.
Couldn’t happen to a nicer buhch!
expect them to run a second poll.
And now we enter the adjustment phase, where data that doesn’t match the model is “corrected and homogenized”. Prepare to witness the commissioned result Ladies and Gentlemen, which will be revealed momentarily.
Hint: Get your screenshots now.
Well since the little poll did not offer my preferred option….. MM “is a vicious dishonest sanctimonious gasbag”….. I had to settle for the last of the options, fire him please:
Michael Mann
did not choose to became a symbol
0% 3 votes
has been attacked in many of the same ways that the President and John Kerry were
0% 0 votes
Is an outstanding scientist and human being
0% 4 votes
all of the above
1% 15 votes
is distorting evidence to prove his point
72% 687 votes
should be fired from the university
25% 243 votes
I weary of the game — the “for votes have not changed. I smell a set-up.
Good night.
Like 950 votes that he is distorting or should be fired and still the same 25 or so votes that he is groovy.
Very few of those Kos yowlers is are actual scientists. A lot of us are. Eventually, that will have an impact, because ultimately, the reasoning scientific mind discovers–and communicates–truth.
Many PhDs buy the globaloney crap, but it is not actually supported by science, (using the word correctly), so other scientists disagree. The weight of actual evidence and argument is on our side. It will take us a while to overcome all the NSF billions, but we will do it.
As to Mann, he should be fired on the grounds that a “scientist” who mangles statistics is no scientist at all. To be fair to Mikey, though–it took one of the best statisticians in the world to refute him.
Hats off to the true hero–Steve McIntyre!
I agree with Larry
This is a bogus poll
Stop gloating and patting yourselves on the back.
It’s a rediculous result from a kos site
Opa50
The poll, like Mann, is not scientific.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news but unless you know the relative humidity, you don’t know the heat content of the air.
Has Mann et al found a tree that gives wet bulb temperatures?
Yeah, only Gleick’s 15 friends and a few accounts they hacked voted positive
Now over 1000 responses.
97% unfavorable — isn’t that the majic number for a settled science concensus?
Summary from 19:21 to 21:14 PDT. (screen shots on file.)
19:21: (2, 0, 4, 15) (favorable),
241 distorts evidence, 80 should be fired; Total 342.
19:25: (2, 0, 4, 15) (favorable),
256 distorts evidence, 82 should be fired; Total 359.
19:27: (2, 0, 4, 15) (favorable),
267 distorts evidence, 84 should be fired; Total 372.
19:30: (2, 0, 4, 15) (favorable),
283 distorts evidence, 91 should be fired; Total 395. Now 94% disapprove.
19:39: (2, 0, 4, 15) (favorable),
336 distorts evidence, 109 should be fired; Total 466.
19:51: (2, 0, 4, 15) (favorable),
390 distorts evidence, 123 should be fired; Total 534
20:00: (2, 0, 4, 15) (favorable),
445 distorts evidence, 140 should be fired; Total 606
20:12 (3, 0, 4, 15) (favorable),
504 distorts evidence, 156 should be fired; Total 682
20:31 (3, 0, 4, 15) (favorable),
590 distorts evidence, 191 should be fired; Total 803
20:51 (3, 0, 4, 15) (favorable),
665 distorts evidence, 229 should be fired; Total 916
21:02 (3, 0, 4, 15) (favorable),
693 distorts evidence, 246 should be fired; Total 961
21:14 (3, 0, 4, 15) (favorable),
743 distorts evidence, 258 should be fired; Total 1023
Disapproval 97% – the majic value for a settled science concensus
Reductio ad Hitlerum was raised part way through the tirade.
Enough said.
I’m not surprised there are people who consider Mann a hero. Even Jeffrey Dahmer has fans, there’s even a tour of his old haunts.
I can hear the cries of outrage already, and I freely admit it’s not a fair comparison. Dahmer brutally killed at least 17 known victims. The money wasted on Mann’s whipped-up CAGW hysteria could have already saved millions worldwide, millions more will die horrible deaths in poverty and sickness before it winds down, and there are also those who have died and will die from energy poverty due to soaring prices from various Green initiatives and taxes, even here in the “developed world”.
Nope, not a fair comparison at all.
Latest poll:
Michael Mann
did not choose to became a symbol
0% 3 votes
has been attacked in many of the same ways that the President and John Kerry were
0% 0 votes
Is an outstanding scientist and human being
0% 4 votes
all of the above
1% 15 votes
is distorting evidence to prove his point
72% 732 votes
should be fired from the university
25% 256 votes
I guess we have a 97% consensus that Mann is a fraud.
POLL
Michael Mann
did not choose to became a symbol
0% 3 votes
has been attacked in many of the same ways that the President and John Kerry were
0% 0 votes
Is an outstanding scientist and human being
0% 4 votes
all of the above
1% 15 votes
is distorting evidence to prove his point
72% 724 votes
should be fired from the university
25% 251 votes
Just voted for the “distorting” option. Sort of felt good. Just waiting along with thousands of steelworkers and coalminers here in Australia to vote against the lying carbon dioxide taxing government of Juliar Gillard. Dontcha just love a vote? Thanks for the tip
it’s evident and proven that Michael Mann distorted evidence to prove his point.
I like that ‘we’ didn’t personalise the issue by baying for blood.
w martin (the oz variety) ((oops!))
97.8% for distorting science or being fired out of 1042 total votes.
I think what this is mainly proving is that no one reading Kos bothers reading Mikulecky’s ‘diary’. He seems to have a following of about 22 people. I think people who read this site just upped his click-rate by a factor of 50.
Let’s see … he just read Mann’s book and believed everything Mann wrote. Mann wrote that he is a hero. Therefore Mann is a hero.
That’s pretty wierd logic.
98% on the bottom two right now.
A consensus?