ClimateBites Tom Smerling writes:
…I would have preferred that Mann had stopped with the quote above, but he added
“I will call people who deny the science ‘deniers.’ I won’t be deterred by the fact that they don’t like the use of that term and no doubt that just endears me to them further. It’s frustrating of course because a lot of us would like to get past this nonsensical debate and on to the real debate to be had about what to do.”
And he adds his own opinion:
While sharing Mann’s frustration, we now avoid using the term “denier” at ClimateBites. Though accurate and concise, labeling people “deniers” simply shuts many more doors — and minds — than it opens. I have heard several anecdotes about partially open-minded skeptics, including meteorologists, taking offense at the label, which they associated with Holocaust denial. No doubt, at least some undecided onlookers feel the same way, and that’s our real audience. Bottom line: In most situations, the costs of branding people “deniers” simply outweighs the benefits.
He’s right, the label is offensive, and I believe Dr. Mann uses it for spite and to denigrate his opponents. Dr. Mann doesn’t want debate at all, and that’s not the behavior of a scientist, but rather, an advocate.
h/t to Tom Nelson
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What Mann doesn’t seem to understand is that the sceptics aren’t the ‘deniers of science’, it’s the observational data that is the ‘denier of Mann’. So the title of this piece should really be “Climate: ∞ Mann: 0”.
I posted this on another forum;
“Denier” is meant to be a humiliating, derogatory, insulting, denigrating, demeaning term used to describe somebody who does not believe in the ideology and dogma of the committed climate change / global warmer or convert. [ “convert”;as in to the global warming meme. They seem to be a very rare species ]
However much more is revealed about the “user” of the term, “denier” than is supposedly revealed about the recipient.
Think about it a little;
The “user” of the extreme descriptive term “Denier” with it’s supposed underlying association with those who deny the “Holcaust”, quite openly reveals his / her total intolerance for other’s views.
The “users” of the term, “denier” are extremely self righteous and are often or are usually quite ignorant of the actual science so their standard refrain is to appeal to authority.
They are extremely hypocritical in that they want to be able to express their beliefs any time, anywhere but will do their utmost to prevent those who do not subscribe to their beliefs from doing likewise.
They are often / usually quite thuggish and bullying in their reactions to those who dare to differ from their beliefs.
They often seem to have very few scruples left in attempting to suppress any alternative views to their ideology and dogma.
Judith Curry, Climate Etc; had a post on this not so long ago.
There are five attributes of Ideologues
1 / Absence of doubt
2 / Intolerance of debate
3 / Appeal to authority
4 / A desire to convince others of the Ideological “truth”.
5 / A willingness to punish those who don’t concur.
And she notes; Note each of these characteristics is an anathema to science.
Have you seen this?.. http://climatesciencedefensefund.org/ it is a fund for legal defence against any charges made against climate scientists. I would have though that anyone in such a certain position as to be able to call others deniers wouldn’t need such a fund.
I’ve taken to calling the CAGW crowd ‘Collaborators’ as in those people who collaborated with the Nazis. Seems an appropriate term. Climate Collaborators.
Could not resist:
“Left-wing zealots have often been prepared to ride roughshod over due process and basic considerations of fairness when they think they can get away with it. For them the ends always seems to justify the means. That is precisely how their predecessors came to create the gulag.” — Margaret Thatcher, P. 273
Mann is a man who discovered, invented, named, described and totally misunderstood the AMO.
Now I managed to outMANNeuver Mann himself and have reconstructed the AMO going back to early 1700s. 🙂
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/AMO-R.htm
Ironically, the whole essence of the hockey stick is climate change denial. It seeks to show that there was no significant climate change before the 20th Century.
.
Of course, there’s another irony: people sceptical of AGW are labelled ‘climate change deniers’. In reality, a major sceptical argument is that the climate is always changing. Whatever else they may be, sceptics certainly can’t be labelled as ‘climate change deniers’.
Chris
Yes its curious to see where the denial lies, for those that liberally sprinkled this term around also try to smear others with accusations,but increasingly they end up with egg on their face, as their own denials and transgressions are exposed. Mann himself along with his cohorts “fit the model” of a denier so well from, hiding data, hiding from open debate with those that question what was once their kingdom, but a kingdom built like a house of cards and the truth of wind and weather tore their house of cards apart exposed, as a lie, just like that mythical consensus.
Mann, Trenberth and their cronies are yesterdays one trick ponies, a blight on science – takes real scientists to stand up and admit they got it wrong. His lot will always deny and hide the truth.
“lot of us would like to get past this nonsensical debate and on to the real debate to be had about what to do.” Pretty smart guys. I believe “what to do” involves their ability to control the climate. Some might deny they have this ability, but only those of little faith. How could anyone snipe at those powerful enough to control such things?
Of course I’m a little skeptical, having heard repeated skeers on the coming climatic disasters for decades and not seeing any of those disasters occur.
I’m going to keep saying it until he starts to realise the legacy he is leaving, History Mr Mann especially with the interweb recording everything you do and say is not going to show you as an open minded advancer of science but rather a nasty, closed minded fool.
Then again if that is what you where aiming for no one does it better .
This term, Denier or Climate Change Denier has never bothered me personally, I have been called far worse. However, I fully sympathize with those affected by the Holocaust and their descendants that must really get PO’d when it is casually thrown around by these brain-dead greenies and socialists.
The reason I dislike this whole argument though is completely different than most. It has to do with the upside down hypocrisy that is displayed when a eco-nut uses the term against someone other than themselves.
The only logical target of the term Climate Change Denier would be the eco-fools themselves. You see, *they* are actually the deniers as they deny climate change with their every breath …
‘The climate is always naturally changing’ :: this is what I and most sane people say
‘When the climate changes it is unprecedented and our fault’ :: this is what the eco-tards say
So are the actual deniers? The hypocritical fools are! It is stunning that the word ‘denier’ would even cross their lips. Attacking them for their insensitivity to the Holocaust (read Mann above) is fine and all, but they also need to be kicked in the shins for hypocrisy and the complete reversal of logic and the clear meaning of words.
Mann is a special case. Mann cherry picked tree ring data (finding trees in a region where precipitation is reduced when the planet is warmer and increased when it is cooler, so tree rings width for the trees in that region is inversely proportional to temperature) and then used a analysis technique enables the cherry picked incorrect data to make the cyclic warming and cooling go away.
The climategate memos indicate Mann and others are working to push an ideological agenda. There is no global warming crisis based on the science. The science does not support the extreme AGW paradigm. The planet warms and cools in cycles. The warming and cooling cycles show up in the climate record in both the interglacial periods and in the glacial periods. The warming and cooling cycles correlate to long term solar magnetic cycle changes. That is a scientific fact, an observation. It is obvious from the correlation of cosmogenic isotopes with long term climate change cycles (warming followed by cooling and in some cases abrupt cooling) that the sun forcing the cycle. The scientific questions are how and why is the sun changing and how do those changes cause the cyclic climate changes.
The earth’s response to a change in forcing is negative (clouds increase or decrease in tropics to resist the forcing change) rather than positive (planet amplifies forcing changes). If the planet’s response is negative a doubling of atmospheric CO2 will result in less than 1C warming, not 3C to 5C. The IPCC computer models have assumed the planet response to the CO2 forcing change is highly positive which amplifies the CO2 forcing change to create the extreme warming prediction.
http://www.leif.org/EOS/2009GL039628-pip.pdf
“On the determination of climate feedbacks from ERBE data
Richard S. Lindzen and Yong-Sang Choi
Program in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Climate feedbacks are estimated from fluctuations in the outgoing radiation budget from the latest version of Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) nonscanner data. It appears, for the entire tropics, the observed outgoing radiation fluxes increase with the increase in sea surface temperatures (SSTs). The observed behavior of radiation fluxes implies negative feedback processes associated with relatively low climate sensitivity. This is the opposite of the behavior of 11 atmospheric models forced by the same SSTs. Therefore, the models display much higher climate sensitivity than is inferred from ERBE…
1) The models display much higher climate sensitivity than is inferred from ERBE.
2) The (negative) feedback in ERBE is mostly from SW while the (positive) feedback in
the models is mostly from OLR.
Finally, it should be noted that our analysis has only considered the tropics. Following Lindzen et al. [2001], allowing for sharing this tropical feedback with neutral higher latitudes could reduce the negative feedback factor by about a factor of two. This would lead to an equilibrium sensitivity that is 2/3 rather than 1/2 of the non-feedback value. This, of course, is still a small sensitivity.”
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2002/2000PA000571.shtml
“On the 1470-year pacing of Dansgaard-Oeschger warm events
The oxygen isotope record from the Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 (GISP2) ice core was reanalyzed in the frequency and time domains. The prominent 1470-year spectral peak, which has been associated with the occurrence of Dansgaard-Oeschger interstadial events, is solely caused by Dansgaard-Oeschger events 5, 6, and 7. This result emphasizes the nonstationary character of the oxygen isotope time series. Nevertheless, a fundamental pacing period of ∼1470 years seems to control the timing of the onset of the Dansgaard-Oeschger events. A trapezoidal time series model is introduced which provides a template for the pacing of the Dansgaard-Oeschger events. Statistical analysis indicates only a ≤3% probability that the number of matches between observed and template-derived onsets of Dansgaard-Oeschger events between 13 and 46 kyr B.P. resulted by chance. During this interval the spacing of the Dansgaard-Oeschger onsets varied by ±20% around the fundamental 1470-year period and multiples thereof. The pacing seems unaffected by variations in the strength of North Atlantic Deep Water formation, suggesting that the thermohaline circulation was not the primary controlling factor of the pacing period.”
Mann’s book climate science on the front lines and Hansen’s book storms of my grandchildren is propaganda to push the ideological agenda. The irony is that Mann, Hansen, and their cohorts have not considered the true consequences of their propaganda and campaign. Western countries are spending billions of dollars of scams (such as carbon trading, wind farms, conversion of food to biofuel) which will not significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions. “Green” energy is a scam, the deficit spending on “green” energy scams by the Western countries will lead to either financial collapse of Western countries due to the deficits and the higher and higher energy costs or a burst of the scam bubble.
If he wants to refer to us as Climate ‘deniers’ then what’s wrong with us referring to his ilk as ‘abusers’? Or ‘believers’? Or ‘adjusters’? Or ‘profiteers’?
They ‘adjust’ the study results to agree with their ‘belief’ that this is necessary to allow them to ‘abuse’ any opposition that might interrupt the ‘profitability’ of their new religion.
Mr. Mann is poorly named.
Mann is front and center in the climategate fiasco. The extreme AGW paradigm is based on a lie.
http://assassinationscience.com/climategate/cg.pdf
Why Climategate is so distressing to scientists
by John P. Costella | December 10, 2009
The most difficult thing for a scientist in the era of Climategate is trying to explain to family and friends why it is so distressing to scientists. Most people don’t know how science really works: there are no popular television shows, movies, or books that really depict the everyday lives of real scientists; it just isn’t exciting enough. I’m not talking here about the major discoveries of science—which are well-described in documentaries, popular science series, and magazines—but rather how the process of science (often called the “scientific method”) actually works.
The best analogy that I have been able to come up with, in recent weeks, is the criminal justice system—which is (rightly or wrongly) abundantly depicted in the popular media. Everyone knows what happens if police obtain evidence by illegal means: the evidence is ruled inadmissible; and, if a case rests on that tainted evidence, it is thrown out of court. The justice system is not saying that the accused is necessarily innocent; rather, that determining the truth is impossible if evidence is not protected from tampering or fabrication.
The same is true in science: scientists assume that the rules of the scientific method have been followed, at least in any discipline that publishes its results for public consumption. It is that trust in the process that allows me, for example, to believe that the human genome has been mapped—despite my knowing nothing about that field of science at all. That same trust has allowed scientists at large to similarly believe in the results of climate science.
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/McKitrick-hockeystick.pdf
What is the ‘Hockey Stick’ Debate About?
The hockey stick debate is about two things. At a technical level it concerns a well-known study that characterized the state of the Earth’s climate over the past thousand years and seemed to prove a recent and unprecedented global warming. I will explain how the study got the results it did, examine some key flaws in the methodology and explain why the conclusions are unsupported by the data. 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 process. In view of the massive global influence of IPCC Reports, there is an urgent need to bias-proof future assessments in order to put climate policy onto a new foundation that will better serve the public interest
Figure 4. World Climate History after AD1,000 according to ground borehole evidence. Vertical axis: average anomalies in oC, with range indicating Bayesian probability boundaries. Source: Huang et al. (1998); data supplied by Huang. Huang
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.
Another extension to our analysis concerned the claims of statistical significance in Mann’s papers. We found that meaningless red noise could yield hockey stick-like proxy PCs. This allowed us to generate a “Monte Carlo” benchmark for statistical significance. The idea is that if you fit a model using random numbers you can see how well they do at “explaining” the data. Then the “real world” data, if they are actually informative about the climate, have to outperform the random numbers. We calculated significance benchmarks for the hockey stick algorithm and showed that the hockey stick did not achieve statistical significance, at least in the pre-1450 segment where all the controversy is. In other words, MBH98 and MBH99 present results that are no more informative about the millennial climate history than random numbers. …
I deny that there is enough scientific evidence to support the case that continuing to produce anthropognic CO2 will be dangerous to humankind, in fact I’ve not seen any such evidence and I have been looking for years. I do believe that it is self evident that to not continue to most effectively utilise the earth’s resources will slow human progress.
I do not deny that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. I do not deny that H2O and methane are greenhouse gases. I do not deny that there has been a slight increase in global diurnal average temperature in the last century because of anthropogenic CO2. I do not deny that ocean energy has risen very slightly in the last 100 years though by much less than expected by highly respected scientists. I do not deny that there is no increase in hurricanes in the last 100 years. I do not deny that climate models have been shown to be woefully inadequate in predicting the flattening of global temperatures in the last 10-15 years. I do not deny the evidence that cosmic rays can modulate cloud formation. I do not deny that the world’s constantly changing climate is chaotic, multicyclical and influenced by natural phenomena like the Pacific decadal oscillation and the Atlantic oscillation, the moon, changes in orbit and albedo, jet stream movement…..
I do not deny that books have been written predicting the earth burning, flooding of biblical proportions, polar bears dying, plague, pestillence, extinctions, droughts and wars caused because of anthropogenic CO2, but they are not scientific predictions. I do not deny that there is evidence that there has been a dishonest collusion, evidenced by Climategate in such items as ‘hide the decline’, conspiracy to prevent papers being published, deliberate refusal to publish data for validation. I do not deny that upside down data and subsets of data, conveniently spliced with temperature data, when not conforming to belief in AGW, have been used to create a, now discredited, hockey stick shaped graph as a posterchild for the IPCC message. I do not deny that IPCC was seriously predicting Himalayan Glaciers would be gone by 2035, and only after repeated attempts by sceptics, despite being accused of voodoo science, was the prediction removed.
I enjoyed that.
And am I a Denier or a Sceptic?
Kurt in Switzerland says:
May 18, 2012 at 12:22 am
“Dr. Mann (or anyone using the term “deniers”) needs to stipulate just what he thinks people are denying. ”
Most likely he is afraid we will be denying his funding.
Intergrity Score – ClimateBites 1, Mann 0, Anthony Watts -1
He’s right, the label is offensive, and I believe Dr. Mann uses it for spite and to denigrate his opponents.
So it’s ok to post Monckton doing the same thing in reverse, by linking consensus (and by extention AGW proponents) with WWII and the death camps?
The Versailles consensus of 1918 imposed reparations on the defeated Germany, so that the conference that ended the First World War (15 million dead) sowed the seeds of the Second. The eugenics consensus of the 1920s that led directly to the dismal rail-yards of Oswiecim and Treblinka (6 million dead). The appeasement consensus of the 1930s that provoked Hitler to start World War II (60 million dead).
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/10/moncktons-schenectady-showdown/
It’s probably not a view shared by many people on the climate realist side, but I consider such people to be real assets in our struggle. The number of ordinary people they can totally alienate with their wild claims is extraordinary, not to mention the rather guilty pleasure I take in watching their own supporter’s sharp intake of breath, every time one of them gets anywhere near a public podium. You can nearly read their thoughts – “Oh God, what are they going to say now.” I think of them as liabilities best left in place, to wreak the damage, which both their egos and personalities will inevitably compel them to do.
ie Michael Mann
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2012/05/18/climate-alarmism-and-the-prat-principle/
Pointman
It has been my contention for some time that Mann is a bully. If you attack viciously at the smallest slight or question, you reduce the questions going forward.
You can see this in the Climategate emails with his interactions with the other players and in their discussions about him.
This is why the legal process for his emails in Virginia is important. This will be the playground “punch in the nose” that bullys deserve.
Mann is the true denier…he denies the observable scientific evidence in favor of models and fantasy theories.
Daveo says:
May 18, 2012 at 4:52 am
“So it’s ok to post Monckton doing the same thing in reverse, by linking consensus (and by extention AGW proponents) with WWII and the death camps?”
Enviro-Alarmism has a long tradition that cannot be denied.
http://motls.blogspot.com/2011/02/nazi-father-of-global-warming.html
The quote that Climatebites likes from Mann (and get’s a “Bravo”) is “When it comes to climate change, true skepticism is two-sided. One-sided skepticism is no skepticism at all.” and then he adds the bit about deniers.
What exactly does that mean? Skepticism can only exist if both sides are skeptical, otherwise it’s denial? So if I talk to my friends that believe in Bigfoot, and I say that I am skeptical of the evidence, since they aren’t skeptical of the evidence then I’m not a true skeptic but rather a Bigfoot denier?
Tucci78 (May 18, 2012 at 1:08 am)
Patrick (May 18, 2012 at 1:12 am)
Thank you for your input. Yes, Mann states that “deniers” are those who deny “the science” (whatever that means). But as you pointed out, Anthropogenic Global Warming, AGW, CAGW, or Anthropogenic Climate Change, ACC, CACC (or whatever) are not established facts of “science”. Indeed, much is the realm of conjecture.
Sure, all things being equal, additional CO2 should result in some additional warming. The problem is the extent of such warming (as well as its supposed irreversibility and its supposed ability to overwhelm natural oscillations). The problem here is in actually carrying out an experiment (or separating the anthropogenic “signal” from the natural signal). We shouldn’t forget that Climate Science is a very young discipline. All the doomsday projections about excessive heating / flooding / drought / etc. on earth result from computer models which have to date not been accurate in their short- to mid- term projections.
I am not satisfied with the assertion that IPCC proclamations (e.g., that late 20th C warming is > 90% probability due to mankind) reflect “science”, nor, IMHO, are many in the W. World –(incidentally, the only countries which are scrambling to “do something” about runaway climate catastrophe are Western. All others pay lip service only, and/or participate solely for the purpose of obtaining handouts).
So a level-headed debate is needed, establishing what is “science” and what is extrapolation / guesswork / conjecture. This needs to take place with mutual respect between the opponents. If the protagonists of CAGW can’t field some hard questions, they most definitely do not represent “SCIENCE.” For that matter, what is the value of “Peer Review” if the hard questions are withheld?
Kurt in Switzerland
Roger says:
May 18, 2012 at 4:12 am
If he wants to refer to us as Climate ‘deniers’ then what’s wrong with us referring to his ilk as ‘abusers’? Or ‘believers’? Or ‘adjusters’? Or ‘profiteers’?
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++=
It’s wrong because every time a realist stoops to name-calling, his superior interpretation of data gets lost and the debate shifts from whose science is best to who is the more smart alecky.
When I became interested in this subject, the realist voices were few and hard to hear. Because of that, and to make themselves heard, those speaking out for the good guys had to rigorously stay on topic. And because they did stay on topic and left the ad homs and other nastiness to the warmists, they seized the high ground and eventually the message got through.
Sadly, I now see, because the realist cause is in the ascendancy, the same smart-arse, smug, know-all attitude – the sort of thing we used to hate the warmists for – creeping into realist rhetoric. It’s the sort of attitude that could lose the war.
Believe me, this is a political fight. Politicians aren’t particularly interested in gold-plated scientific truth. If they were, the warmists would have been vanquished years ago. Politicians are merely looking for an excuse to levy taxes and play the saviour. To do that they have to be able to sell their programme to the majority, who have no fixed belief either way, by showing that they’re on the side of the angels.
Keep slinging mud at the warmists and you’ll turn them into victims; downtrodden, misunderstood servants of mankind.
Treat them as fellow human beings who just happen to be totally astray in their thinking and they’ll have to rely totally on their findings – which, as we know, are complete bollocks.
It can’t be stressed enough – that Heartland billboard was an own goal of galactic proportions. It was the equivalent of two years of good news down the drain.