UPDATE: 12:55PM Dr. Mann ducks a TV station reporter who requested an interview afterwards, see below.
Steve McIntyre recently published a new graph on his website Climate Audit.
Alerted to the fact that Dr. Mann would be speaking at the OC Water Summit, I was asked to submit a question, but I could not make it there in time given the short notice. A suitable proxy, our friend Roger Sowell, was kind enough to attend and ask a question. Here’s what I sent him in way of a primer, I don’t know the actual question he asked, but we hope to have a video presentation later as I was told it was recorded.
Figure 1. Yamal Chronologies. Green – from Hantemirov _liv.rwl dataset; red- from Briffa et al 2008.
How interesting it is that the Hantemirov data in green, diverges from the CRU 2008 “Hockey Team” data in red. This is due to a larger data sample. One tree core, YAD061 is responsible for most of the difference, when a small set of tree core data is used.
This graph demonstrates how trees simply don’t show a hockey stick shape when all of the data is used.
In MBH98, your paper Dr. Mann, has a similar problem to the Briffa data. Your solution was to not use tree core data after 1960 and to splice on the instrumental temperature record to in effect “hide the decline” of the trees after 1960.
How do you respond to the charge that the tree ring data was cherry picked to show a desired result, and that Mr. McIntyre has falsified your work by showing that the premise of a hockey stick falls apart when all of the data is used?
===========================================================
Roger Sowell was in the audience this morning (thank you for responding on short notice). I received this answer via text from Roger Sowell, to a question he asked:
He responded that it was Bradley as coauthor, and his (MBH98) work did not use the Briffa data.
Said the decline or divergence is well known but not understood, so is being studied.
Basically dodged the question; called it “specious”.
He said the warming is real and he addressed all this in his book.
It was hoped that Steve McIntyre would have provided a question for submission, but there was no email response from him in time.
Roger Sowell has done some excellent work in climate skepticism, I urge readers to read his recent presentation, here’s the primer:
The following is the presentation I made on April 17, 2012, to the Southern California Section of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), at their monthly dinner meeting held at Long Beach, California. The title for the presentation is “What if the Warmists are Wrong? Is Catastrophic Cooling Coming? Implications.” My heartfelt thanks to Mr. Alan Benson, chair of the Southern California Section, for the invitation to speak. I also appreciate those who attended, and especially for their questions. As always, it is an honor to address AIChE members.
The presentation was approximately one hour, followed by another hour of questions and answers. The presentation is in three parts, as suggested by the title: 1) Are the Warmists Wrong? 2) Is Catastrophic Cooling Coming? and 3) Implications.
Background: this topic could easily require a week to present the many aspects and interesting details. With a mere hour at my disposal, this presentation necessarily hits only the major points. My purpose here, firstly, was to inform the audience of what has transpired in the climate science arena in part 1, primarily as to the quality of the data and the climate models. It is important to note the scarcity of agreement between the model projections and actual data. Secondly, my purpose was to present the case for imminent global cooling in part 2. Thirdly, my purpose was to describe a few of the many and serious implications for imminent global cooling in part 3, tying this in to what engineers can expect. Engineers are problem-solvers, and this presents a great many problems to solve. I also described a few of the legal ramifications of imminent global cooling.
Full presentation here, well worth bookmarking.
============================================================
UPDATE: 11:40AM I’m told via telephone that a local TV station is going to be interviewing Dr. Mann, and also Mr. Sowell due to his question. He promises more details later. Stay tuned.
UPDATE2 11:55PM: I wrote to Roger Sowell, after getting the above message, he reports Mann ducked the interview with KOCE-TV, the PBS station in Southern California. When Mann can’t even appear on warm-friendly PBS, you know he’s on the run.
On Friday, May 18, 2012, Anthony wrote:
Dear Roger,Thank you most sincerely for taking time out of your busy schedule to do this, I am in your debt. Anthony,
He replied:
My pleasure. This has been noteworthy.
Dr Mann refused the interview, and according to the reporter, he was extremely rude about it.
My interview went ok, I believe.
Roger
I’ll post that interview if it becomes available online.
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Thank you Roger, and good comments Smokey and Gail.
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The problem is that the extreme left has adopted Global Warming as a sacred “Cause”, to be defended by their brown-shirts with vehemence and violence against all intellectual challenges.
The history of eco-extremism is capably described in this essay by Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace. It is no accident that Moore wrote this in 1994, five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
http://www.greenspirit.com/key_issues/the_log.cfm?booknum=12&page=3
The scientific failure of the global warming alarmists’ case is evidenced by the utter failure of their predictive record. Not one of their very-scary global warming predictions has materialized. There has been no net global warming for 10-15 years, but this does not deter the global warming fanatics – the shepherds just change their story, and the sheep just follow.
“Catastrophic Humanmade Global Warming” morphed into “Climate Change” and is now mutating into “Sustainability”, but it is still the same old Cause – a scheme to gain economic and political advantage by scaring the gullible pubic, and then promising to “deliver them from evil”, if they will only follow the self-serving dictates of the high priests of the Cause.
In the last few decades, advocates of the Cause have squandered a trillion dollars (a million-million dollars), mostly on failed “Green Energy” schemes that consume more energy than they ever generate, and are detrimental to humanity AND the environment.
In the last few decades, this trillion dollars, properly allocated, could have provided clean drinking water and sanitation to the Third World. Since the beginning of global warming mania, tens of millions of children have died from drinking contaminated water, a multitude similar to ALL those killed in World War 2.
This carnage, apparently, is the ultimate objective of the high priests of the Cause:
Extremist green campaigning group WWF – endorsed by no less a body than the European Space Agency – has stated that economic growth should be abandoned, that citizens of the world’s wealthy nations should prepare for poverty and that all the human race’s energy should be produced as renewable electricity within 38 years from now. Most astonishingly of all, the green hardliners demand that the enormous numbers of wind farms, tidal barriers and solar power plants required under their plans should somehow be built while at the same time severely rationing supplies of concrete, steel, copper and glass. –Lewis Page, The Register, 18 May 2012
It’s not just resources that are limited, in the WWF’s view: human potential itself is up against a hard limit beyond which the race cannot ever advance. Even progress thus far, as seen in the wealthy nations, has been achieved only by an unfair and wasteful over-use of precious resources: we rich Westerners are already beyond the practical limits that humans should ever aspire to achieve in terms of health, wealth – and even of education. That’s not economics – that’s religion. And not very nice religion either. –Lewis Page, The Register, 18 May 2012
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/16/wwf_living_planet_report/
otter17;
It isn’t an argument, but a challenge. Can you actually put together a formal body of research and submit it through the scientific process?>>>>>
The scientific process and journal publications are not the same thing, which you seem to attempting to assert. Journals are simply an attempt to document science and expose it to scrutiny.
otter17;
The way the scientific process has worked since the days of Isaac Newton >>>>>
Really? How many journal articles did Henry Ford publish? How about Alexander Graham Bell? The list of towering accomplishments in human history that never went through the journal system is extensive. But where your position really falls apart is that regardless of how science progressed through (in part) the journal system, that was then, this is NOW. In the current state of affairs, journal editors are under extreme pressure to block the papers of skeptic scientists, and we have, in the here and NOW, one journal editor who was fired for not buckling under pressure, and another who resigned claiming that he’s erred in allowing a skeptic paper to be published though he couldn’t say exactly what the problem was that should have prevented the paper from being published. Then he apologized to Kevin Trenberth (whom, as it turned out, was in a position to scuttle that editor’s personal research funding) despite not being able to cite a single problem with the paper!
This is science? No otter17, it is not.
The main problem I see with Mann is his attempt to rewrite history. I have been fascinated with the ‘paleo’ world since 1960. What Mann proposes is a complete fabrication, and overturns all previous decades of paleo-climatology work. But it is not presented that way. It is presented as if there was no previous work, and there is to be no discussion, ‘the science is settled’, by consensus. Complete crap.
davidmhoffer says:
May 19, 2012 at 6:53 am
“So I awoke this morning to see if Seth, Otter17 or DR_UK had the cahonies to answer my question. Of the three, only Seth responded:”
____________________________________
Sigh, your question didn’t seem to have much of a point, but sure, I’ll bite too. If the supposed disaster was a few days away, I would quickly release the data to the various members of the appropriate scientific community such that it isn’t interpreted incorrectly, and to check my results. Thus, we would quickly confirm the nature of the threat, then warn the appropriate national security officials. Then, full release of data in a ticker tape parade fashion. I’m not sure what this shows.
Smokey says:
May 19, 2012 at 4:57 am
“Peer review is not important”.
____________________________________
No, it is part of the scientific process, and it is important. And yes, data and methods are important, too. The original Mann work has been reviewed and confirmed by other scientists with different methods; also reviewed by IPCC, NAS, etc. Those scientists used the scientific process, and there were some modifications on error bars, again science at work. Quite a bit of data is available; some is held by entities outside of the scientists themselves and requires due diligence to go to the original data holder. Some data is even available online, at the link below for example.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/data.html
And you say I am a “lemming of Mann’s alarmist narrative”. Your choice of words does not make you sound tough or correct, only immature. The accusation game is useless in both ways; maybe you are a lemming of a “shoot the messenger” narrative, who knows.
The real issue is, we have a set of evidence that has been put through the paces of the scientific process, including data shared with a large number of other scientists. On the other hand, we have non-peer reviewed information. Yes, this new information has a slight chance of being valid, but as a lay person, it is not very skeptical to uncritically accept the work that hasn’t gone through the scientific process, while deriding the work that has.
otter17;
Sigh, your question didn’t seem to have much of a point, but sure, I’ll bite too. If the supposed disaster was a few days away, I would quickly release the data to the various members of the appropriate scientific community such that it isn’t interpreted incorrectly, and to check my results. Thus, we would quickly confirm the nature of the threat, then warn the appropriate national security officials. Then, full release of data in a ticker tape parade fashion. I’m not sure what this shows.>>>>
That being the case, how do you excuse your heroic Dr Mann from his behaviour? He insists that a huge disaster awaits us, just a few years down the road unless we take steps that will cast billions into abject poverty and push those already in poverty into starvation. Yet he refuses to release his data and methods. Why is that?
otter17;
it is not very skeptical to uncritically accept the work that hasn’t gone through the scientific process, while deriding the work that has.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
You cannot define science as being conducted exclusively in journals and retain any credibility. Journals are not only hopelessly corrupt, they are, like the newspaper, obsolete. You’re trying to assert candles being superior to light bulbs because they have a longer history and better documentation and there were millions of candle makers and only a few manufacturers of light bulbs. The millions of candle makers have spoken, there is a consensus, and the light bulb doesn’t work, the science behind it hasn’t even been published in a peer reviewed journal, so it must be a lie. The science of candles and light is settled. No point installing light bulbs in your house, there is a consensus, a peer reviewed, published in journals, consensus.
Stop being ludicrous.
davidmhoffer says:
The scientific process and journal publications are not the same thing, which you seem to attempting to assert. Journals are simply an attempt to document science and expose it to scrutiny.
How many journal articles did Henry Ford publish? How about Alexander Graham Bell?
_____________________________
The journals provide framework for the scientific process, yes. The blogs, on the other hand, present information that isn’t reviewed by the scientific community, but is almost exclusively put in the public lay man’s eye. In order to get respect from truly skeptical people, submit information to the scientific community for some real evaluation. Also, you are conflating engineering discoveries with scientific discoveries.
Furthermore, you may be victim of a narrative fallacy. You see a handful of recent high-profile incidences with peer review journals, and extrapolate that to a far-fetched notion that “the entire system is broken”. The rational view is that certain papers are rejected due to their errors and inability to counter a larger body of proven papers. The irrational view jumps to the conclusion that widespread corruption has taken hold to spread an agenda. If all these scientific academies and journals are so demonstratively corrupt, then where is the huge Congressional inquiry? Where are the investigative reporters blowing the doors off this? Why hasn’t the media picked up this potentially huge story? Headline news: “Corruption Found in Every Journal and Scientific Academy Related to Climate Change”. From the outside looking in, learning more about the subject of climate change, this incredibly broad accusation of corruption seems far-fetched considering the lack of an equally broad base of investigations and evidence. I’m quite skeptical of this notion.
Re: the above debate regarding peer reviewed journals
I believe the peer review system was designed with good intentions to reinforce the scientific method and to provide a way to ensure research is credible.
The problem, however, is that when the topic of research is highly controversial and subject to extreme political pressures, such as the case of AGW, then the system fails miserably. What was intended to serve as a gatekeeping mechanism for weeding out “good” research from “bad” research, becomes a gatekeepering mechanism for blocking any research not in agreement with the side of the gatekeepers
That is why I cringe every time I see an argument like what is coming from Seth and Otter17. There is a danger in putting blind faith in a what a says journal simply because it claims to use peer review.
frankly, considering the well documented evidence of scientific malpractic and downright fraud coming from a certain “team”, I consider an internet blog (that does not use hall monitors to block dissenting opinions), to be more credible than certain journals which under “occupation” by these criminals.
polistra says: May 19, 2012 at 2:54 am
I was unaware that the head of the Italian neutrino project got fired. I’ll take your word for it that the reason he got fired was as you stated. If true, it’s a sad day for science–hell, it’s a sad day for mankind. I guess the new Italian motto is “Political Correctness Uber Alles”–or is that the new German motto? It’s hard to tell in the new homogenized Europe.
davidmhoffer says:
May 19, 2012 at 8:58 am
The science of candles and light is settled. No point installing light bulbs in your house, there is a consensus, a peer reviewed, published in journals, consensus.
Stop being ludicrous.
________________________________
So, first you assert a notion that journals are obsolete (blogs to replace them I guess?). Then you make a faulty analogy demonstrating your initial assertion, claiming that there is some fictional scientific consensus that candles are better than light bulbs. Finally, you project that faulty analogy onto me, and claim that I am ludicrous.
All this seems like a cop out, to believe what you want to believe, while ignoring the scientific process and the existing framework (which is superior to blogs). If peer-review is obsolete, then why have there been successful attempts in the past to submit to peer review publications, such as the BEST collaboration, or Fall, et al, 2011? Why not forget about that entirely and stick to the blogs?
Furthermore, why are you so sure that we must “… take steps that will cast billions into abject poverty and push those already in poverty into starvation”? Even Chevron, who has every interest to discredit the established science, quotes the IPCC indicating that it is very likely that a significant level of warming is due to human activity. Then they lay out a measured plan to approach the issue while still helping people. Unless you have some evidence for that statement, it seems you are displaying unfounded alarmism concerning solutions, and it does not help the policy debate.
http://www.chevron.com/globalissues/climatechange/sevenprinciples/
otter17, you have no idea what you’re going on about. None. Instead of wasting everyone’s time here, you should spend the next sevral weeks reading the WUWT archives. Learn something for a change, instead of emitting your free-association ramblings.
I think peer review was designed with good intentions and is very effective as long as there is no political pressure to favor one particular side. Unfortunately, with the topic of AGW, peer review went from serving as a gate for seperating good science from bad science, to a gate that just blocks research not in agreement with the gatekeepers.
There is a great danger in making the mistake of putting blind faith in peer reviewed
journals, without also considering the politics at play.
Considering the well documented evidence of scientific malpractice and downright fraud on the part of a certain “team”, I consider a blog (at least on that doesn’t use hall monitors to block dissenting opinions) to be more credible the certain peer reviewed journals.
otter17;
Nice diatribe. Now once again:
How do you excuse Michael Mann insisting we take dramatic action while refusing to disclose the methods and data upon which his recommendations are based?
davidmhoffer says:
May 19, 2012 at 10:15 am
“Nice diatribe. Now once again:
How do you excuse Michael Mann insisting we take dramatic action while refusing to disclose the methods and data upon which his recommendations are based?”
____________________________________________________
Not a diatribe, I was asking some tough questions, that seemingly go unanswered, or the answers provide a very minimal standard of evidence. All these assertions that blogs would be better than journals ignore that blogs are rife with political speech and ideology. There are plenty of blog articles that indicate climate change mitigation is impossible, which is a belief that is potentially in direct conflict with a body of evidence that indicates a need for an appropriate and rational risk mitigation strategy.
I provided a link to data that is freely available online, if you look for Mann under reconstructions you will find him. Mann has given data and methods, allowing a lot of other scientists and the NAS to review his work (all corroborating, though with caveats). Other scientists have used different data and methods and have come up with similar results. What specific piece of data is he supposedly hiding, such that I can learn about it?
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/data.html
I can’t stress enough my skepticism of the notion that there is a vast failing in nearly every journal, scientific organization, and among a vast majority of practicing climate scientists. I am also equally skeptical that a handful of blogs that also discuss political issues, will somehow have all the right answers. There are anti-evolution blogs that employ similar tactics.
Mann et al’s “hokey-stick” papers attempted to eliminate from the historic record the reality of the Medieval Warm Period. Why? Because the MWP was warmer than today, and proves that there is NOTHING unusual happening in today’s climate. There IS NO humanmade global warming crisis.
One of the global warming conspirators even wrote in a 1995 email that “We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period”. Here is some of the evidence, in testimony to the US Senate:
The first of Mann’s hokey-stick papers appeared soon thereafter, in 1998. Sure enough, the Medieval Warm Period AND Little Ice Age were GONE, vanished from the historical record!
No doubt the widespread famines of ~1700 during the Maunder Minimum, and the freezing cold of Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow in 1812 during the Dalton Minimum never really happened – these were all fabrications of “climate deniers”, all employed by BIG OIL (sarc off).
The ClimateGate1&2 emails confirmed the reprehensible character and odious behaviour of the Global Warming cabal. There is no need to debate these facts.
Meanwhile, the very-scary predictions of the IPCC and other global warming alarmists have ALL failed to materialize – the warmists predictive track record is abysmal – it is 100% FALSE.
Despite increases in atmospheric CO2, there has been NO net global warming for 10-15 years.
Mann-made global warming is the mantra of scoundrels and imbeciles.
otter17
I will leave it as an exercise for the student to deconstruct what is wrong with that sentence. One can start by focusing on “indicates a need” vs “indicate … is impossible”.
I “indicate a need” for a raise to my boss all the time…
otter17;
Mann has given data and methods>>>>
Your ignorance knows no bounds. Take Smokey’s advice and do some research. Your only argument is that Mann’s work appears in journals, so it is science and criticism of him that doesn’t appear in journals is not science. You can find no excuse to justify Mann’s refusal to release the data and methods upon which his conclusions are based, so you engage in misdirection and obfuscation. You haven’t said a word one way or the other about the science itself, most likely because you are incapable of doing so, and rely instead on the opinions of others. That’s called arguing from authority, and it really doen’t mean much in the face of actual facts. Stop whining. If you cannot discuss the science directly, you are by default incapable of judjing the science for yourself one way or the other, and your reliance on argument by authority is just an excuse for being intellectualy lazy.
davidmhoffer says:
May 19, 2012 at 11:58 am
“You can find no excuse to justify Mann’s refusal to release the data and methods upon which his conclusions are based, so you engage in misdirection and obfuscation.”
_____________________________
I gave a link where he has data shared. He has shared his methods and data with a number of other scientists and the NAS. Which particular piece of data is he hiding? It would be nice to know.
I understand the science fairly well for a layman, but since I don’t do direct research in climate science I can’t make up my own value judgments based simply on my common sense (as some are prone to do on blogs). This is why we have a scientific process of journals, peer review, rebuttals, etc, to ascertain knowledge (which eventually makes it into science textbooks by the way). Pointing to research that has gone through that process is not argument from authority any more than citing a textbook, since there is no one particular authority referenced, except for the scientific process itself and the multitude of viewpoints and research that went into that process. An argument from authority is thinking that a single piece of research on a blog is correct, while it has yet to start through the established scientific process. An argument from authority is thinking that blogs can now supercede journals, when blogs have no track record whatsoever in ANY field of science.
Otter17: “…blogs are rife with political speech and ideology. “.
So are journals. The difference is that the journals ideology is hidden from public view. Fortunately, someone leaked several years of emails allowing us to see the malicious behavior going on behind the curtains.
otter17;
since I don’t do direct research in climate science I can’t make up my own value judgments >>>
Well that has become painfully obvious.
otter17;
This is why we have a scientific process of journals, peer review, rebuttals>>>
And, having admitted that you are incapable of judging the science for yourself, you have no means to determine if what you are reading is credible or not. You’ve accepted the authority of the journal system, and you cite the journal system as backing your position, despite having admitted that you don’t understand any of the science presented in the journals, nor the criticism of it. Since you understand neither by your own admission, STFU.
“…can’t make up my own value judgments…”
That’s your whole problem right there. If you have is what the “authority” says, you really have nothing. Learn to think for yourself.
Just some guy says:
May 19, 2012 at 1:25 pm
“…blogs are rife with political speech and ideology. “.
“So are journals. The difference is that the journals ideology is hidden from public view. Fortunately, someone leaked several years of emails allowing us to see the malicious behavior going on behind the curtains.”
____________________________
That wasn’t from a journal, but emails between scientists. Many in the media/blogs took a good chunk of those emails out of context. Out of about 1000 stolen, only a handful had anything resembling malpractice. Something like six independent investigations looked into the context of the emails and found no major malpractice. I have seen a couple of the investigation reports and a handful of the emails. They were rational analyses of the incident.
davidmhoffer says:
May 19, 2012 at 1:28 pm
You’ve accepted the authority of the journal system, and you cite the journal system as backing your position, despite having admitted that you don’t understand any of the science presented in the journals, nor the criticism of it. Since you understand neither by your own admission, STFU.
____________________________
My analysis of sources is where my critical thinking and capabilities lie primarily within climate science. I have the mathematical and scientific analysis capabilities of a grad-school level engineer with some experience, so I have some capability to understand science. Nevertheless, I am not going to think that I can hold an intellectually robust view that is contrary to a piece of science that has been confirmed several times (such as Mann’s work). That would be quite presumptuous of me. Thus, I think it is completely reasonable to be skeptical of a piece of work that has not gone through the same process. This is healthy skepticism.
otter17;
I have seen a couple of the investigation reports and a handful of the emails.>>>>
Since you admit you do not understand the science in the journals, nor the criticism of it, how can you possibly judge the quality of the quality of the invesigative reports? And, wow, we’re really impressed that you read a “handful” of the emails. Many people on this blog have read hundreds, and we’ve researched their context. Further Mr Argument from Authority, you would be shocked how many people commenting on this blog have PhD’s and do research directly relevant to climate issues. You admit you know nothing about the issue, yet babble on making an even bigger fool of yourself with each additional comment. Go read a few hundred emails, go read a few papers and when you hit terms and concepts you don’t understand, look them up and read about them until you understand them and then the paper itself.
But for goodness sakes, cease being the fool who opens his mouth and leaves no doubt.
otter17: “That wasn’t from a journal, but emails between scientists. Many in the media/blogs took a good chunk of those emails out of context. Out of about 1000 stolen, only a handful had anything resembling malpractice. Something like six independent investigations looked into the context of the emails and found no major malpractice. I have seen a couple of the investigation reports and a handful of the emails. They were rational analyses of the incident.”
Spoken like a true sheep. Have you actually read any of the emails? Or is this another case of just repeating the talking points used by an “authority”?
Climate scientists review journal submissions and influence what gets published and what does not. They are part of the peer review process and every respect an integral part of what goes on behind the scenes in journals. Here is one of many examples:
“We will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!” , Phil Jones to Michael Mann.