All I can say is “ouch”! Mann of course will be sending his usual letter to the editor whining about unfair treatment. He’s really just misunderstood you see.
Excerpts from the review by Anne Jolis:
The book’s climax is a recounting of the 2009 leak or hack of emails and other documents written by Mr. Mann and his associates (and funneled through the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit). The correspondence, along with a second trove released in 2011, highlighted the patchwork behind IPCC science. The leading lights of publicly funded climatology appeared to be brainstorming to pressure journals and review boards to suppress work that challenged their theories, trading tips on how to avoid public-information requests and planning how to present their findings so as to best further “the cause.”
In his book, Mr. Mann dubs the unauthorized release of his emails a “crime” and claims that the ensuing “witch hunt” constituted “the most malicious” of “attack after vitriolic attack against us” by the “corporate-funded denial machine.”
Yet for all his caviling about “smear campaigns,” “conspiracy theorists” and “character assassination,” Mr. Mann is happy to employ similar tactics against his opponents. Patrick Michaels, former president of the American Association of State Climatologists and a past program chair of the American Meteorological Society’s Committee on Applied Climatology, is introduced as “a prominent climate change contrarian at the University of Virginia primarily known for his advocacy for the fossil fuel industry.” (Nowhere does Mr. Mann explain why a scientist might be more easily corrupted by a check from, say, a coal company than by one from a politically controlled institution.)
Just this February, Mr. Mann took to the Daily Kos to praise the theft of internal documents from the free-market Heartland Institute for offering “a peek behind the curtain of industry-funded climate change denial.” It was revelatory, but not in the way he thought. Hours after Mr. Mann posted his online musings, the much-decorated hydroclimatologist Peter Gleick (2003 MacArthur fellow, adviser to the EPA and, until recently, chairman of the American Geophysical Union’s task force on scientific ethics) confessed to the Heartland theft. Apologizing for his actions, he wrote that he had been “blinded by my frustration with the ongoing efforts—often anonymous, well-funded, and coordinated—to attack climate science and scientists.”
Mr. Mann closes “The Hockey Stick” with a passionate call for more scientists to join him “on the front lines of the climate wars.” “Scientific truth alone,” Mr. Mann writes, “is not enough to carry the day in the court of public opinion.” It would be “irresponsible,” he says, “for us to silently stand by while industry-funded climate change deniers succeed in confusing and distracting the public and dissuading our policy makers from taking appropriate actions.” These are unfortunate conclusions for a scientist-turned-climate-warrior whose greatest weakness has always been a low estimation of the public intellect.
=========
Full review here
Also related:
Shollenberger’s Technical Review of Mann’s recent book
Josh on Mann’s Jurassic Moment
Gleick declares in Mann’s book review (after phishing Heartland) – “there IS a war on”
Justifiable mannhandling.
Mann says in the opening paragraph of his book’s prologue:
Michael Mann said one thing in that opening paragraph that rings true, he has indeed been humiliated, but in my opinion he does not realize how bad it is yet; time will only increase his humiliation. The problem with his confession of the humiliation is that the rest of the paragraph shows he did not learn the lesson that his humiliation necessarily and directly followed from his lack integrity and openness on central aspects of his research that were critically and continuously brought up by the climate science public.
The rest of the paragraph is an example of a person whose reasoning lacks balance and whose self-esteem’s survival is myopically focused on impugning the motives of anyone who would question his false ‘a priori’ premise; that ‘a priori’ premise has fundamentally biased his science. The ‘team’, as shown by CG1/CG2, all shared the false ‘a priori’ premise so Mann need not feel alone in his humiliation. The cause is based on a common falsity.
John
Jimbo says:
March 15, 2012 at 11:07 am
…Propaganda is expensive, the truth is cheap…
*
I would love that on a T-shirt.
Dear God!
“Scientific truth alone is not enough to carry the day”
How can anyone rational trust anything this man says after a statement like that?
Dear fellow WUWTians,
It is absurd generalizing, with trite stereotyping categorizations done arbitrarily, on the inability/ability of the people in our society to understand the problems of IPCC centric CAGW climate “science”. Angels dancing on pins . . . .? It is a conceit of pseudo-intellectuals to presume the intelligence level of the people in the area of detecting climate science baloney.
My personal experience talking with all the people I have become acquainted with is that the interested independent public does know the books have been cooked in the CAGW centered IPCC supported science . . . . it is only the believers in the ’cause’ who disagree with the cooking.
The more we spread the independent assessment of the pseudo-science of IPCC centric CAGWism to the general independent public, then even more of the independent public will become knowledgeable of the CAGW climate science cooking.
Talking publically about Mann’s book is a good vehicle to spread the problems of his ’cause’ focused science. : )
John
Oh dear. The poor, hard done by, insulted and assaulted climate warrior.
Perhaps he should find a nice warm cosy lunatic asy… er… retirement ho…. er … safe haven, lock the door behind him and toss the key back over the walls. Llife appears far too egregious and punishing for such a delicate and innocent soul.
This is the second time, I have read the word “dissuading”, the first time in faked Heartland memo in the most notorious sentence.
This appears to be a “high entropy” word, and therefore, the faker’s use of that language may have been inspired by Mann’s book. Interesting question, if Gleick, who wrote a review, wouldn’t have done what he did, if he hadn’t read this book…
John Whitman wrote:
This reminds me of the Paris Hilton sex tape. As I recall, her father made some sort of public statement that she was “forced” or “coerced” or maybe “fooled” into making that video. I have examined that video quite thoroughly, and can assure any who wonder that the video was made without coercion or force. Or clothes.
In another world, or another age, the release of such a video would have driven a young woman completely out of public life, where she would change her name, her hair, her looks. In today’s world, it’s just made her more famous. And she’s not even really all that good at it. See the parallel? To the believers, Climategate is actually MORE evidence that their heroes are gods and deserving of fame!
Does anyone remember in the early days of YouTube, there was a girl that pretty much everyone knew, “Emmalina”. She was on YouTube regularly, talking about life, giving her opinions, and was one of the reasons anyone even started paying attention to the site. Unfortunately for her, someone released a whole folder full of racy and explicit pictures that they had either “hacked” from her computer (her claim) or that she had been sending (more likely). She disappeared in humiliation and shame.
Apparently my upbringing and background makes me incapable of being a Climate Scientist. If it had been MY emails demonstrating a complete lack of ethics and scientific integrity, I’d walk away.
hope for him yet.
Laurie says:
March 15, 2012 at 6:36 pm
Did Dr. Mann happen to mention in his book about how mean his “Team” was about his hockey stick?
3373.txt: Raymond Bradley: “ Furthermore, the model output is very much determined by the time series of forcing that is selected, and the model sensitivity which essentially scales the range. Mike only likes these because they seem to match his idea of what went on in the last millennium, whereas he would savage them if they did not. Also–& I’m sure you agree–the Mann/Jones GRL paper was truly pathetic and should never have been published. I don’t want to be associated with that 2000 year “reconstruction”. ” This refers to a 2003 paper “Global surface temperatures over the past two millennia” by Mann and Jones, that shows ‘hockey stick’ temperature graphs and was used by the IPCC in its 2007 report.
0435.txt: Ed Cook, on the same Mann & Jones paper: “ I am afraid the Mike and Phil are too personally invested in things now (i.e. the 2003 GRL paper that is probably the worst paper Phil has ever been involved in – Bradley hates it as well), ”
1527.txt: Dendrochronologist Rob Wilson writes: “ There has been criticism by Macintyre of Mann’s sole reliance on RE, and I am now starting to believe the accusations. ”
4241.txt: Rob Wilson again: “ The whole Macintyre issue got me thinking…I first generated 1000 random time-series in Excel … The reconstructions clearly show a ‘hockey-stick’ trend. I guess this is precisely the phenomenon that Macintyre has been going on about. ”
4369.txt: Tim Osborn says “ This completely removes most of Mike’s arguments… ” and Ed Cook replies “I am afraid that Mike is defending something that increasingly can not be defended. He is investing too much personal stuff in this and not letting the science move ahead.”
4758.txt: Tim Osborn: “ Because how can we be critical of Crowley for throwing out 40-years in the middle of his calibration, when we’re throwing out all post-1960 data ‘cos the MXD has a non-temperature signal in it, and also all pre-1881 or pre-1871 data ‘cos the temperature data may have a non-temperature signal in it! “
2346.txt: Osborn: “ Also, we set all post-1960 values to missing in the MXD data set (due to decline), and the method will infill these, estimating them from the real temperatures – another way of “correcting” for the decline, though may be
not defensible! ”
2009.txt: Keith Briffa: “ I find myself in the strange position of being very skeptical of the quality of all present reconstructions, yet sounding like a pro greenhouse zealot here! ”
3994.txt: John Mitchell (Met Office) commenting on draft IPCC report: “ Is the PCA approach robust? Are the results statistically significant? It seems to me that in the case of MBH the answer in each is no. ”
1104.txt: Heinz Wanner: “ I was a reviewer of the IPCC-TAR report 2001. In my review which I can not find again in its
precise wording I critcized the fact that the whole Mann hockeytick is being printed in its full length in the IPCC-TAR report. In 1999 I made the following comments:
1. The spatial, temporal (tree-ring data in the midlatitudes mainly contain “summer information”) and spectral coverage and behaviour of the data is questionable, mainly before 1500-1600 AD.
2. It is in my opinion not appropriate already to make statements for the southern hemisphere and for the period prior to 1500 AD.
My review was classified “unsignificant” ”
0497.txt: Jones to Mann in 1999: “ Keith didn’t mention in his Science piece but both of us think that you’re on very dodgy ground with this long-term decline in temperatures on the 1000 year timescale. What the real world has done over the last 6000 years and what it ought to have done given our understandding of Milankovic forcing are two very different things. ”
0562.txt: Simon Tett (Met Office), discussing revising a paper: “ No justification for regional reconstructions rather than what Mann et al did (I don’t think we can say we didn’t do Mann et al because we think it is crap!) ”.
2383.txt: Tim Barnett in 2004: “ maybe someone(s) ought to have another look at Mann’s paper. His statistics were suspect as i remember… ”
1656.txt: Douglas Maraun (UEA): “ I think, that “our” reaction on the errors found in Mike Mann’s work were not
especially honest. ”
4005.txt: Osborn: “ Also we have applied a completely artificial adjustment to the data after 1960, so they look closer to observed temperatures than the tree-ring data actually were ”
4133.txt: David Rind (NASA GISS): “ what Mike Mann continually fails to understand, and no amount of references will solve, is that there is practically no reliable tropical data for most of the time period, and without knowing the tropical sensitivity, we have no way of knowing how cold (or warm) the globe actually got. ”
1738.txt: Tree expert Rod Savidge writes: “ What troubles me even more than the inexactness attending chronological estimates is how much absolute nonsense — really nothing but imaginative speculation — about the environment of the past is being deduced from tree rings and published in dendrochronology journals. ”
3219.txt: Savidge again: “ As a tree physiologist who has devoted his career to understanding how trees make wood, I have made sufficient observations on tree rings and cambial growth to know that dendrochronology is not at all an exact science. Indeed, its activities include subjective interpretations of what does and what does not constitute an annual ring, statistical manipulation of data to fulfill subjective expectations, and discarding of perfectly good data sets when they contradict other data sets that have already been accepted. ”
http://junkscience.com/2011/12/06/team-knew-hockey-stick-reconstruction-was-wrong/
What did it for me was the 1% difference in DNA between humans and chimpanzees; there isn’t any possible way they could be ‘related’ by even distant heredity.
No, wait … does that support my assertion?
(/sarc)
Let Mann keep talking, he will equal the Gore effect
Gail Combs says:
March 15, 2012 at 2:19 pm
———————————
Then Gail, why is it not 85% plus of the people believing in cagw?
i increased the size of this poem by one stanza — the middle stanza.
The Hockey Stick
There was a crooked Mann
Who played a crooked trick
And had a crooked plan
To make a crooked stick
By using crooked math
By writing crooked lines
Lysenko’s crooked path
Led thru the crooked pines
And all his crooked friends
Applaud what crooked seems
But all that crooked ends
Derives from crooked means
I am comtemplating challenging Shakespeare next by writing a poem entitled —
“What a piece of work is Mann”.
Eugene WR Gallun
Expecting a display of Gail’s ‘long suit’ in the rationality department via an answer?
Do you have the facilities, materials for ‘packing a lunch’?
.
I have read ~50% of Mann’s new book. I am reading it by jumping around to read various chapters; not in sequential order.
Three things strike me so far:
1) it is primarily autobiographical in nature
2) Also, it is secondarily a brief on his science and related IPCC science. It has scientific treatment only at the level one would expect from a popular MSM magazine or newspaper article.
3) MOST INTERESTING to me is that the author Mann is trying to construct a hero based mythological narrative; right out of Joseph Campbell’s mono-myth structure as explained in Campbell’s book ‘Hero with a Thousand Faces’. Mann is awkwardly trying to project in himself as a person with reluctant heroic righteousness against all those critical of the IPCC’s CAGWism. I kid you not.
Finally, I am philosophically unsympathetic to Mann’s references to Climate War. I am unresponsive of either the IPCC CAGW ’cause’ supporters or any independent thinkers (aka skeptics) using a military conflict (war) context to discuss the ongoing dialog in climate science and the related in ideological environmental extremism/fanaticism. Using military context is misleading to dialog. I find the relevant fruitful context is (as it should be) an discourse in an open market place of ideas (finally); a totally unrestricted dialog with the final residue being better balance in and understanding of our scientific incompleteness wrt the Earth-atmosphere system. The free market place of ideas was very stifled for ~20 yrs by authoritarian elements in the scientific community, NGO’s, political groups and the political body of mostly pseudo-science NGO members that is the IPCC. The climate science dialog is opening up and we still have a long way to go to see it finally being totally open and unfettered from the authoritarian elements that are the nemesis of the scientific process.
John
Laurie @7:17 pm above…Thanks for that compilation of quotes. Quite a different picture when team members feel free to speak the truth and behave like scientists off the leash.
Looks like the Mann of Magic Moonbat Money Melting Mechanisms
has been D.E.N.I.E.D.
(Channeling the tone of that now near-ancient America On Line ad, where the man says,
“YoU’vE got MAIL!!”)
“You got deNIED!!!!”
Thank you.
[REPLY: Da Nada. -REP]
Mickey Reno says:
March 15, 2012 at 5:18 am
“Michael Mann is to science what Michael Moore is to documentary film making. Both know how to use a little bit of truth to tell a whopper.”
Gosh, I suppose I conflated them. Until this moment I thought they were the same man.
Except that poodles and pekes can interbreed, hence are not separate species. Same for thoroughbreds, fell ponies, and arabians. The whole concept of species turns out to be very shady, with indistinct lines. E.g.; it is suspected, though AFAIK not proven, that humans and chimps could interbreed …
As for Mann’s humiliation, it hasn’t succeeded yet; more is needed!
Power tends to stupefy, and absolute power stupefies absolutely. The referenced study found that humiliation of the error-prone powerful was the only cure.
the only place for this book is in the toilet and you can guess what you can use it for