Readers may recall: The question put to Dr. Mann at Disneyland today where WUWT regular Roger Sowell was one of the rare skeptics that got to ask Dr. Mann a question.
The video is now online of the event.
Sowell’s question starts at around 59:35 minutes, Mann’s answer ends about 1:03:10
UPDATE:
Dr. Mann’s slide presentation is available at this link. Note the polar bear on the ice floe.
http://www.ocwatersummit.com/ backup link: MichaelMann_OCWS (PDF 24mb)
I find it fascinating that Mann is still pushing the now long debunked claims about the Snows of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Even Mann’s buddies Lonnie Thompson and Phil Jones privately admit the issue is local deforestation/evapotranspiration and not “climate change”. It is mind blowing he’s still pushing this.
Note point 3 in this image in his last slide:
A DIVERGENCE PROBLEM USED TO HIDE A DECLINE
Kudos to Roger Sowell for taking the debate to Mann. Lesson learned is that Michael Mann knows his subject and is able and articulate in defending his thesis. It looks to me that Mann did admit that the “divergence problem” only “might” be understood.
Quote:
“And there are various factors that scientists think might be responsible [for the divergence], including pollution. Other limiting conditions that are now taking control of tree growth that are unrelated to temperature.”
This seems to be an admission that data that did not fit the thesis was disregarded with uncertain and poor justification. In fact, it’s out and out bias against data that doesn’t confirm the hypothesis. It seems to me that when one undertakes this kind of speculation about what has caused a divergence in data, if you are going to be fair-minded you must open the arena to the possibility of a multitude of factors controlling tree ring patterns: water, disease, pollution, fertility, cloud cover, weather incidents, species differences, vagaries of the influence of past seasons on future seasons, and on and on. In other words, Mann himself is arguing that tree rings aren’t that good a proxy for past temperature.
In Mann’s own words … there are other limiting conditions that can take control of tree growth unrelated to temperature. This is just my question. Just how good a proxy are tree rings for past termperatures?
It could be the elephants and giraffes that a disappearing, and Mann isn’t referring to the snows at all!
WOW! Those reading Steve McIntyre’s blog and following the hockey stick drama since 2005 know Mann’s response is complete psychobabble.
[SNIP: This thread is about Michael Mann and his appearance at Disneyland, not poloar bears and it is certainly not a venue for to advertise your Polar Bear Awareness Week. You can submit this to our Tips and Notes page or wait for an appropriate thread about polar bears. You might also want to learn a little more about polar bears. -REP
NOTE TO MODS
I can’t submit a comment on the ‘We don’t believe the ice cores can be interpreted purely as a signal of temperature’ post.
Fill in the form, click Post Comment, nothing happens.
Try flushing your browser cache and enabling cookies
Was Roger Sowell’s question poorly worded? It was.
Now if anyone thinks that a carefully worded, to the specific point, with no room for misinterpretation or obfuscation, would have resulted in anything else from Dr Mann, they are mistaken. There have been cases where the question got the specific issue correct, the specific paper, and the response comes back along the line of some obscure reference in some obscure footnote that supposedly explains everything. By the time one actually can get the paper, find the obscure reference in the obscrure footnote, which leads to a quote in another paper, equally obscure, that isn’t even about that specific issue (but does mention the issue, except it refers to another paper still)…. ooops, it is days later, the room is empty, and Mann has gone his merry way without a scratch upon him.
The lost city of Pompeii? Have we lost it again then? He can’t even get that right, sheesh
Pompeii is lost? C’mon guys! Own up! Where have you hidden it? You guys are such kidders. You haven’t hidden it under 100 feet of Gauloise ends again have you? Sheesh.
Although the question, as Mann put it, “conflated two completely unrelated things”, it did force him to admit some things in public:
Referring to Briffa’s paper (published in Nature in 1998) “…where in the particular type of tree ring data that they used in their study, which we did not use in our study…”
Easily checkable and can be proven true or false. Look at each, and see if the same data appears in both.
Second, was this: “…And so their original paper was actually about how that particular type of data can not be used to depict temperature trends in recent centuries, because of the enigmatic change in the response of trees…”
Remember, it was EXACTLY this conclusion his MBH98 paper used – that you CAN depict temperature trends in recent centuries using tree data.
If follow-up questions were allowed, ask how, if these trees cannot accurately respond to RECENT trends, how can they be certain they’re accurately responding to PAST trends? Why did this uncertainty only start with data after 1960 (“…particular data exhibit this enigmatic decline in the response to temperatures after 1960…”)?
And third: “…And there are various factors that scientists think might be responsible, including pollution, other limiting conditions that are now taking control of tree growth that are unrelated to temperature…”
Once again, how can they be certain that PAST conditions didn’t “control” tree growth?
Next round of questions lining up. Where’s the next stop on his “Magical Mystery Tour”?
Al Gore’s Warming – Proof that not every solution has a problem…
Wait, wasn’t Pompeii buried under ash? Shouldn’t he really be referring to Atlantis?
Mann evaded the question very skillfully. Probably he has to do that a lot since 1998.
You’ve had a secular state for more than 230 years. I’m pretty sure that its been ratified as legitimate a long time ago.
Mann seems to be depending upon Hansen’s projection that were presented to congress,
I would like to see new graph showing the comparison to latest temperature. And not on such small graph. And reminder of the A,B, and C scenarios as Hansen explained them when he presented them.
I don’t where Mann is getting the idea human emission has been reduced to the levels Hansen advocated them to be.
He stupefyed the audience.
He’s no James Hansen. Which is what the PR boys on the energy/wall street payroll are looking for. James Hansen was the “face” of the global warming movement, and acted in the role very well. But he committed the deep, damaging sin of attesting that cap and trade was a scam, not really intended to reduce CO2 emissions. And he did so loudly and brashly. This had the immediate effect of exiling him from any big pr face-time productions, and now he is basically limited to speaking up at 350.org type ultra-crank groups.
Sowell blew it. Victory to Mann on this one. That’s the nature of debate. You must get you facts right.
And the golden toad.
I just listen from 59 min to 1h04.
The question is excellent and the answer of Mann is typical of what we call in french ‘la langue de bois’. He just does not answer to the question and at the end you even don’t know what was your question.
This guy is a politician !!!
Mann said, “But there isn’t a worthy debate to be had any more about the reality of human caused climate change.”
======================================================
Maybe I missed something. Could one of the Mann defenders (or anyone else) please tell when Mann ever had a debate about “human caused climate change” back when there was a need for one and who it was with?
Was it back when he still called it “global warming” instead of “climate change”?
Mann said, “But there isn’t a worthy debate to be had any more about the reality of human caused climate change.”
What is it that Adam Savage says on MythBusters? “I reject your reality and substitute my own.” Did he get that from Mann?
John A says:
June 26, 2012 at 10:18 am
The operative word here is “socialist”–consequently, there is little or no similarity between the two political systems your statements describe.
(I’m glad there are other subtopics on this thread to discuss–the main topic is worth reading about, I suppose, *yawn*, but (except for this small blurb) unworthy of written comment.)
How’s that for a Big Mann Skewer?
Michael Mann is a very smooth talker – if nothing else and there you go – lone scientists who are skeptics (even if there are many thousands of them) do not count.
The tragedy is, as far as I can see, is that “surface warming” by GHGs is as impossible as it is to mix two pots of liquids of different temperatures say one of 16 °C and one of 8 °C and then expect to end up with one large pot of liquid that is warmer than 16 °C.
Mann responded to the question like a politician. I doubt it would have mattered what Sowell asked, Mann would not have given a clear answer. Mann considers that human influence on the climate is no longer worthy of debate. Any evidence that falsifies his scientific results he characterises as attacks meant to discredit his work. He considers his results immune from the scientific method.
He knew what Sowell was asking, because he said, “I think you’re referring to the paper that we published in Nature in 1998, myself, Ray Bradley and Malcolm Hughes.”
But in the next breath he decided to focus on Briffa’s paper by saying: “The study you’re actually referring to is a study by Keith Briffa and colleagues that I was not part of…..”
Mann knew that the question was about his MBH98 paper and hockey stick graph as Sowell had asked him why he chose “to not use tree core data after 1960 and instead to splice in the instrumental temperature record. In effect to hide the decline of the trees after 1960.…” But he decided to ignore this and pretend that the question was about Briffa’s paper.
Mann claimed that Briffa’s paper was about the ‘divergence problem’ whereby he states that data which didn’t fit the rising temperature scenario must have been affected by pollution or some unknown enigmatic limiting factors. But this was simply a red herring to divert attention from the valid criticisms of his MBH98 paper as highlighted by Stephen McIntyre and Ross Mckitrick in their paper:
“CORRECTIONS TO THE MANN et. al. (1998)
PROXY DATA BASE AND NORTHERN HEMISPHERIC
AVERAGE TEMPERATURE SERIES
The data set of proxies of past climate used in Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998,
“MBH98” hereafter) for the estimation of temperatures from 1400 to 1980 contains
collation errors, unjustifiable truncation or extrapolation of source data, obsolete data,
geographical location errors, incorrect calculation of principal components and other
quality control defects.”
http://www.multi-science.co.uk/mcintyre-mckitrick.pdf
Mann concludes by plugging his book and claiming that there is no debate about human caused climate change, because he wants the debate to move away from science and into politics.
Sowell asked a perfectly good question:
“How do you respond to the charge that the tree ring data was cherry picked to show a desired result and that Mr Steve McIntyre has falsified your work by showing that the premise of a hockey stick falls apart when all the data is used?”
There was no conflation. Sowell knew exactly what he was asking and so did Mann. Except that Mann used a well known debating trick by ignoring the fact that the question related to his paper and responding to a ‘straw man’ question about Briffa’s paper.
Mann has morphed into an activist politican and like a politician answered the question he wanted to answer, regardless of whether or not he was addressing the precise point of the actual question.
I would like to take Mike the Mangler to Death Valley in winter and let him experience how fast temp drops and how cold it gets after sunset . Here he will learn that water vapor in the only true greehouse gas.