Oh how quickly they forget. Last month, scientist David Karoly was thanking Steve McIntyre for spotting the error that led to the retraction of the Gergis et al paper:
“We would like to thank you and the participants at the ClimateAudit blog for your scrutiny of our study, which also identified this data processing issue.
Thanks, David Karoly”
Source: http://climateaudit.org/2012/06/08/gergis-et-al-put-on-hold/
This month, Karoly is writing a pal book review for Michael Mann’s Climate Wars, and its like that never happened: (bold mine)
Commentators with no scientific expertise, ranging from politicians such as Republican congressman Joe Barton from Texas, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, or Republican Senator James Inhofe from Oklahoma, to blog writers Stephen McIntyre and Marc Morano, have repeatedly promulgated misinformation and sought to launch formal investigations into Mann’s research, claiming professional misconduct or worse, even though it had been peer reviewed and confirmed by other scientists.
McIntyre has no scientific expertise? Well he had enough expertise to find what peer reviewers missed, and with that knowledge, knocked your paper out of the running, and back to square one. If that isn’t expertise I don’t know what is.
McIntyre notices over at CA that Karoly has a peculiar personal message in a public appearance, and writes in comments: Posted Jul 10, 2012 at 9:58 PM | Permalink
Here is a picture of Karoly at the opening of the Hepburn Community Wind Farm in Victoria, Australia on November 5, 2011. The slogan on his shirt was the slogan of the radical group, the Weather Underground, in the late 1960s when I was at university. Their manifesto is here. Lots of stuff about pigs and imperialists.
McIntyre adds:
Posted Jul 10, 2012 at 10:22 PM | Permalink
Maybe it’s age-specific. For someone who grew up in the period, the phrase and the radical movement were inseparably linked. Wikipedia has an interesting article on the faction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Underground.
I still have my vinyl Dylan album with Subterranean Homesick Blues on it.
My counter corollary would be: “you don’t need a climatologist to tell you which way the grants flow”.
The team smear from Karoly is the signature of scientific defeat, having nothing to add of scientific content, and after all Steve had the gaul to ask gergis and her fellow travellers for the data and her smart retort boomeranged back on her. Of course Karoly was not shown as the lead author, but was gergis simply in that position to avoid suggestions he would be pushing his own paper inside the IPCC……….they really do themselves a disservice by attempting the big smear. Of course time is running out and they are getting anxious poor things.
Regarding “which way the wind blows,” have the prevailing winds as averaged decadally actually changed anywhere in the world between any recent decades? –AGF
Baa Humbug says: July 11, 2012 at 4:33 am
Not to be picky, but – according to his own bio – activist Karoly was:
In principle (although conspicuously absent in practice), the role of “Review Editor” is to ensure that any concerns expressed by “reviewers” have been taken into account and properly addressed by the “author team”. Not that the “author team” is required to pay any attention to either the reviewers or the Review Editor. But I digress …
Karoly’s sycophantic “book review” of Mann’s self-serving opus (which, IMHO, should more accurately be titled, Portrait of the Artist as an Aggrieved Mann: A Novel) can only lead one to conclude that he lacks the requisite critical thinking and “assessment” skills to even begin fulfill the responsibilities of such an important role.
Nonetheless, the powers that be at the IPCC – who have never been known to let mediocrity (and/or lack of qualifications) stand in the way of declaring that an individual is an “expert” – have seen fit to designate Karoly as a Review Editor for WG II, Ch. 25 in AR5.
To coin a phrase … with Review Editors like these, who needs expertise!
Quite astounding to think that there are some who fail to understand why the IPCC’s credibility rating is rapidly approaching zero! And this descent seems to be happening, well, faster than we thought!
agfosterjr,
I looked for a historical chart of wind speeds that I had saved, but my link returned a 404. I had this, though:
http://hint.fm/wind
Wind speeds in real time [hold the cursor over a location].
Karoly is employed by a University whose once prestigious reputation is in tatters.
Failure to cut him loose, has had a significant impact on enrollments.
[Moderator’s Note: A little supporting detail would be nice. -REP]
David, UK says:
July 11, 2012 at 3:10 pm
Someone did, depends how you read them…
Perfectly palindromic.
Lucy Skywalker says:
July 11, 2012 at 11:43 am
You don’t need to have bought this particular book at Amazon to qualify for voting – any Amazon book purchase will do.
I hope you’re not advocating reviewing a book I’ve not read.
I have principles!
DaveE.
hro001 suggests “can only lead one to conclude that he lacks the requisite critical thinking and “assessment” skills to even begin fulfill the responsibilities of such an important role”. Sadly you are being too generous, scientifically minded and perhaps, alas, naive. These flat-earthers DO have the requisite skills they simply choose not to use them when their “faith” demands otherwise. Facts will never, ever change the minds of those who see themselves as latter day Messiahs. Jonestown is nothing compared to this lot!
Heh! 🙂
Just tried the link to Karoly’s article to see what comments have been made. It is no longer available. I’m getting the error “404 – Article #1063 not found”. Articles on the main page prompt you to subscribe to read them, so it is unlikely they just moved it behind the paywall.
I guess it has been “put on hold”. Sort of like Gergis et al.
ClimateAudit has collected together mathematically and statistically-inclined enthusiasts who try their hand at one of the issues of our day: the anthropogenic contribution to climate change. Credit goes to Steve McI as the leader and exemplar of this emergent team. Without Steve’s tireless years-long work and high technical and ethical standards, JeanS’s finding would never have seen the light of day.
Karoly and Gergis must know that climate science redefined “pal review” is lame and insufficient. When Steve started his examination of Gergis’s paper, I imagine there was great anxiety in Oz, and frequent refreshing to see what he and his contributors came up with. A clean review by Climate Audit is now the crucible and the touchstone. As every comment came in, I imagine Gergis and Karoly carefully and finally reviewing their own paper to see how it stood up. Peer review in real time! The moment JeanS found the fault, Steve and the CA Irregulars pounced. One can just imagine the panicked emails flying between Gergis and Karoly, and the sinking gut-check realization that the jig was up.
It may be that Gergis and Karoly found the fault just before JeanS did, but it was only because Steve McI and the CA Irregulars were doing the job that Real Climate Scientists refuse to do. JeanS’s comment in came in at 438 PM (iirc). That makes 12PM in Oz. I reckon that Gergis got to the office that morning, and found 10 warning e-mails from the Team that the He Who Must Not Be Named, the Dark Lord of Industry Shills, was on the hunt. She started trolling the comments, and suddenly alarm bells went off. “They’re assuming I did stuff based on what I wrote that I didn’t actually do, Oops oops oops.”
David, UK says:
July 11, 2012 at 3:10 pm
The models don’t work, an’ the vandals all wear sandals.
Sorry, I’ve just got in from the pub – that’s my excuse. But I’m sure some bright spark could re-write the entire lyric to Subterranean Homesick Sceptic Blues!
——————————–
Harry readme’s in the basement
Looking at the fudgement
Mann’s deleting emails
Covering up the paper trail
Temp won’t budge
Even with the fudge
Warming’s a dud
Better switch to floods
Solar flares
No one cares
Drowning Polar Bears
Really scare
Look out kid
It’s happening again
Gore wants eleven carbon credits
You only got ten
Heat waves
New craze
Don’t forget earthquakes
Wildfires, McIntyres
Pesky deniers
Temps still won’t go higher
Hide the decline, kid
So they never can find it
Tornadoes
Ice floes
You don’t need a weatherman
To know which way the funding flows
Funding from the DOE
No one knows but you and me
Grow yourself a goatee
Grab yourself a Yamal tree
And let’s go proxy
Orders from the DA
Dodging all those FOIA’s
Look out kid
You better act quick
Use Mike’s Nature trick
Grab a bunch tree rings
and build yourself a hockey stick
We’ve already won
It never was the sun
The science is done
Where did all the lobsters come from
cross-posting from CA if I may, in response to Bob Koss comment:
Bob Koch, this is bizarre, it definitely looks like it’s been removed from the site, because yesterday it was on the main page for the current issues right under the first review of the book on Murdoch:
https://www.australianbookreview.com.au/
ABR JULY–AUGUST 2012, NO. 343
Now it’s gone!! It’s not just some link problem, because the Home Page shows up fine and I know that yesterday that review article by Karoly on Mann was just below the one on Rupert Murdoch. Strange things happen when Karoly, Mann, Gergis et al are around.
Also, when I search for “Karoly” on the site I get a glimpse of YOUR comment on the review, in the list of search results, but then when I click on your comment I get the ‘404’ error for the review itself.
To take a wild guess, maybe either ABR or Karoly himself is intensely embarrassed by the reaction to the review? I’ve never seen a published book review seemingly “withdrawn” like this before. Maybe Karoly did submit it before the fuss with Gergis et al (2012), maybe didn’t even think about it again, and now is intensely embarrassed?? I don’t know but this is bizarre to see the review vanish like this.
oops Bob Koss, sorry!
At this moment (9:53 pm EST) when you search on the name “Karoly” in the ABR search box at upper right of the home page…..
https://www.australianbookreview.com.au/
ABR JULY–AUGUST 2012, NO. 343
…. you get a list of 3 search results:
1) listing the contents of this current JULY-AUGUST 2012, NO. 343 issue
2) Index for 2011: Nos 328-337
and
3) “Not just another war story”
“I find it strange David Karoly includes Stephen McIntyre in a list of “Commentators with no scientific expertise …” when just one month ago he closed an email to McIntyre by saying … “We would like …”
[my emphasis]
That 3rd item is the title of the Karoly review on Mann, and the comment is the beginning of what Bob Koss wrote in his comment….. so it seems that the server is still updating, there is some info that the review and comments were there, but one cannot access the review itself (when I click on that comment I get the ‘404’ error message).
More Orwellian behavior from “The Team”?? Or did the ABR itself decide to pull the review?
btw, not to say this affected it (I’m sure they may have gotten negative feedback from people whose opinions they value a lot more than mine), but I wrote a comment to ABR which was never posted (so far as I saw, even though a comment submitted after mine got posted) which argued that Karoly was too conflicted and biased to be the sole reviewer of Mann’s book on ABR. I hoped at least to convince them to invite an alternate review for comparison — book reviews occastionally publish more than one review for controversial or important books. Again, not claiming they listened to me, but they may be considering such a step one would hope? I think it might be embarrassing for ABR to realize they had slipped in such a “pal review” without critical reflection, but then people in the CAGW cult are often pretty shameless, so who knows?
Not meaning to flood the thread (last post for now I promise) but Steve Mc just said on CA that he had submitted a complaint to Karoly and to his Dean of Research, so that probably had some wheels turning….. also, Steve posted a link to a web cache version of the Karoly review for anyone wondering what this is all about:
Web cache page of Karoly review of Mann’s book
Disco troop:
An awful lot more happened with penicillin after Fleming’s ‘complete accident in the lab’.
A team at Oxford, led by Australian scientist Howard Florey, saw the potential that Fleming didn’t, and worked for years on a shoestring to do the research to bring it to the stage where it could be used to save many thousands of lives .
Florey took penicillin spores to the US where help was available to bring it to the stage of mass production needed for use in infection from war injuries.
Australia was the first country to make it available for civilian use.
Karoly is an embarrassment to us.
Here’s another view of the Karoly t-shirt.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hepburnwind/6316852879/
cba says:
July 11, 2012 at 3:51 pm
Didn’t ayers lose his girlfriend to an incompetent bomb making effort?
Diana Oughton. She was one of the trio wrapping nails around several assembled, fuzed bombs to be used at Ft. Dix and in the Columbia Library.
I have been regularly going to the weather underground website since it was part of the University of Michigan educational site in the early 1990’s in the very early days of the web. I have noticed one big change already since the Weather channel bought them. Almost all of their advertising is now from left wing related political or advocacy sites. I wonder how long it will be before their revenue tanks.
One other thing about that site is that it got some of its big initial funding from earmarks put into place by Albert Gore when he was vice president through his allies in the Senate through either the NOAA or NASA budget.
John Brookes says | July 11, 2012 at 4:05 am
Is there some reason why Steve McIntyre can’t both spot errors and promulgate misinformation?
—————————-
You like getting your butt kicked, eh Brooksie ? As if the kicking you get at Jo’s blog isn’t enough.
you dont need to many brain cells to know its better to be hot than cold . thay all need to have electric shock treatment to get through to the numbskuls that the world is cooling
I’m just so shocked to see John Brookes get up the courage and nerve to post at WUWT. He certainly won’t do it at Climate Audit. Sniping from the sidelines is more his thing, certainly not going mano a mano with Steve McIntyre or Anthony Watts.
Good. Now go to the Amazon page and peek-read the Contents, Prologue and first chapter beginning. There is quite enough material there to deal with the book itself, to estimate whether the thumbs-down on the existing one-star reviews are fair.
This was my point, to give the one-star lots of thumbs-up where appropriate – not to write more reviews. It’s not that difficult to sass out which one-star reviews deserve support.
David Karoly believes that “commentators with no scientific expertise” should keep away from climate issues. The implication is that climate scientists are always (or nearly always) authoritative on climate issues, whereas “commentators” are always (or nearly always) wrong.
The recent Gergis / Karoly paper disproves this. It is not just the “t” significance test AND the selection bias that undermines this paper. It is much more basic flaws and errors. Like 27 proxies are not sufficient to establish that the 1990s was the warmest decade of the millennium over 5-10% of the earth’s surface, when proxies at the same or similar locations have huge variations. Or that a temperature reconstruction of Australasia that has no proxies from the sub-continental landmass of Australia (nearly 3m sq miles), but two from Vostok Antarctica (the coldest place on earth) and two from the corals off the tiny island of Rarotonga (26 sq miles and > 1000 miles outside the area) is in anyway a representative sample.
On other words, you do not need to be a scientist, or a statistician to see that some of the work of climate scientists is of a very poor quality, and quite fundamentally flawed. Karoly’s (and others) maintenance of the separation of climate scientists from lesser mortals seems to be more a ploy to avoid substantiating their claims, like a prosecutor in a court of law, or a pharmaceutical company on the efficacy of its products.
I try to list the errors in the Gergis / Karoly paper at:-
http://manicbeancounter.com/2012/06/27/gergis-2012-mark-2-hurdles-to-overcome/
If there are others, please comment.
Reg Nelson says:
July 11, 2012 at 6:26 pm
Haha! That’s really excellent, thank you!
Karoly: a legend in his own mind. In which he devoutly Believes. All sceptics will be relentlessly excoriated! So there!