Mike’s AGU Trick
By Steve McIntyre
There has been considerable recent discussion of the fact that observations have been running cooler than models – see, for example, Lucia’s discussion of IPCC AR5 SOD Figure 9.8 (see here). However, Michael Mann at AGU took an entirely different line. Mann asserted that observations were running as hot or hotter than models. Mann’s assertion was taken even further by Naomi Oreskes, who asserted that climate models were under-estimating relative to observations. Oreskes squarely placed the blame for the supposed underestimates on climate skeptics.
In today’s post, I’ll look closely at the illustration in Mann’s AGU presentation, an illustration that gave an entirely different impression than the figure in the IPCC draft report. The reason for the difference can be traced to what I’ve termed here as “Mike’s AGU Trick”.
The IPCC AR5 SOD Graphic
An excerpt from IPCC AR5 SOD Figure 9.8 is shown below, clearly showing that the multimodel ensemble (red) is running noticeably hotter than observations (black). In my opinion, the difference is not merely “noticeable” but “statistically significant”, but that’s a story for a different day.
Figure 1. Excerpt from IPCC AR5 SOD Figure 9.8, comparing model ensemble to observations.
Mann’s AGU Presentation
However, Mann at AGU asserted that observations were running as hot or hotter than models. Mann’s model comparandum was Hansen’s Scenario B, which is widely regarded as the most reasonable scenario to use to interpret Hansen’s “forecast” – see past CA points on this issue.
Figure 2. Mann’s AGU slide comparing observations to Hansen’s 1988 Scenario B projection.
I took the photo with a new phone, with which I was then unfamiliar and unfortunately can only provide a muddy zoom on the graphic. Despite the muddiness, you can see that observations (red) appear to cohere with Hansen’s 1988 forecast (blue). In the loop below, I’ve overplotted data for models and observations to show more clearly what was shown to the AGU audience. (There was a bit of detective work in figuring this out – see below.) Click on the figure below for a loop illustrating the components of the zoomed figure). (Note: see below for Mann’s use of his AGU Trick to hide the divergence in a presentation a few months earlier at Rutgers).
Figure 3. Blowup of Mann’s slide comparing Hansen’s Scenario B to observations. Blue – Hansen’s Scenario B; red – “observations”.
Mann’s AGU slide obviously has a completely different rhetorical impression than the IPCC graphic. Whereas the discrepancy between observations and models was immediately noticeable in the IPCC graphic, Mann’s AGU graphic showed no such discrepancy. There were two reasons for the difference, the combination of which I’ll call “Mike’s AGU Trick” and will analyse below.
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Read the full post here: http://climateaudit.org/2013/03/02/mikes-agu-trick/
Reading the comments is also entertaining, particularly in watching Nick Stokes trying to defend the Mann, while McIntyre wipes the floor with his argument.
Ref Pamela Gray’s (as ever, pertinent) remarks on statistics above:
It was reading an online critique some years back by a Prof of Statistics, of the lack of any ‘Team’ comprehension of that discipline revealed by the Climategate emails, which finally convinced me none of them had the slightest clue what they were doing.
I can’t find the exact link right now (I have too many saved!); but for relative newcomers here is a pretty good crib for Climategate with references inter alia to the Team’s misuse of statistics. The Prof’s in-depth critique demonstrated that this misuse might be just as much from incomprehension (leading to schoolboy errors in the handling of data) as it was from deliberate chicanery – the discussion of the Team’s use of statistics begins about halfway down the page.
Pratt’s overview also includes chapter and verse on the grossest manipulations of peer review and similar matters:
http://davidpratt.info/climategate.htm
PS To the above – Pratt, the author of the Climategate link I cited in my post above, is not of course the Prof of Statistics whose work on the Climategate emails was so revealing – just to make this clear, since it’s not from my original post.
Al Gore has released a statement for the record:
“Dr. Mann is my man, no man like my man mann.”
artwest says:
…Most of the population haven’t even heard of them. It’s easy to forget when you spend time on climate blogs that most people don’t….
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I think you’re right in everything you mention in your post here. It’s easy to forget when something’s important to you and you take the trouble to learn about it that many others don’t feel the same way. I particularly agree with you about your view of scientists not in the field. I’ve spoken with engineers who haven’t looked into AGW and they seem startled that I don’t simply swallow the ‘conventional wisdom’ like we do with virtually any other science. For those poor souls who aren’t paying very close attention, it’s an effective scam the IPCC is running here.
Some years from now, the use of “fudge” regarding fake data will be replaced with,
Man,, you Mann’d that to your advantage, watts in it for you.
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I attended an Oreskes talk at the 2012 Fall AGU Meeting in SF.
Steve is right about Oreskes’ message. In my notes taken during her talk I commented that she stressed the IPCC is much too conservative in assessing AGW by CO2; she advocated that the warming is much worse than they are saying.
If the most radical CAGW proponents, like Oreskes, are trying to build a new frenzy with their worn out tactics then it is like some 70+ year old hippies chanting ’60s slogans in 2012.
Oreskes is saying the IPCC is wrong . . . poor John Cook and his devotees, their authority figure (IPCC) is being severely attacked by the fringe of extreme radicals on the CAGW side.
It looks like CAGW folks are starting to cannibalize their own kind.
John
Unfortunately, Mann and McIntyre are debating before a mostly innumerate audience.
[An innumerate, or a enumerate, audience? Mod]
In the comments over at Climate Audit, it is amusing but sad to see poor Nick Stokes trying to salvage Mann’s butt on this one. One can imagine the Rapid Response Team drawing straws to see who gets to be cannon fodder defending Mann at his most egregious. Charge of the light brigade comes to mind.
Bill H says:
March 3, 2013 at 9:01 am
Nailed it: ETHICAL BEHAVIOR
We have a huge problem with a significant segment of our “educated” individuals in our society who think they are so smart and that no one will realize that their clever explanations will be interpreted as pure BS by so many who are just as intelligent as they are.
Another example on Meet the Press recently.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/sperling-admits-obama-misled-debate-president-did-propose-sequester_705015.html
It’s as valid as the dog ate my homework, that a child would give. !!
It’s a good thing Mann does not work designing spaceships or aircraft. That might sound a little funny but what’s even more dangerous is the number of people who die or suffer as a result of government policies based on these Calamatologists’ speculations. Food to fuel, fuel poverty, cold weather deaths, Baotou Mongolian toxic lake, lack of funding into preventable diseases, etc.
I’m sure somebody will correct me if I’m wrong. It’s my understanding some are claiming that some scientist are underestimating the rise in global temperature. Maybe it’s to hide they have missed their targets 20 of the last 30-40 years? Trenberth has 10 years of missing heat & Hansen has admitted to the 10 year recent lull. So how can they claim they been underestimating temps? If they were underestimating they would be no missing heat or lull..correct? At least not 20 years worth.
The whole CAGW theory is looking increasingly like the Phlogiston theory that held sway for around 50 years until disproved in 1753 but not finally let go of for some years more.
The key difference is that supporting Phlogiston theory didn’t require bankrupting the known world which is what 50 years of this would cause.
I love these graphs –“all data centered on 1958 -1977” – wasn’t this “centered” on the Last Climate Change Panic, fear of a new ICE age…?
Catcracking says:
March 3, 2013 at 11:22 am
Bill H says:
March 3, 2013 at 9:01 am
Nailed it: ETHICAL BEHAVIOR
We have a huge problem with a significant segment of our “educated” individuals in our society who think they are so smart and that no one will realize that their clever explanations will be interpreted as pure BS by so many who are just as intelligent as they are.
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Take care around the hip and the cool and those ever so above it all. When they’re confronted with truth, the knives come out.
John Whitman says:
March 3, 2013 at 11:13 am
“…it is like some 70+ year old hippies chanting ’60s slogans in 2012.”
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fobdangerclose says:
March 3, 2013 at 11:03 am
Al Gore has released a statement for the record:
Hey man,“Dr. Mann is my man, no man like my man Mann, man.”
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There…
Luther Wu says:
March 3, 2013 at 7:45 am
Fred from Canuckistan says:
March 3, 2013 at 7:19 am
History will be very cruel to these pretenders to academic excellence, very, very cruel. They will leave a tainted, putrid personal and institutional record for future studies of how and why they could be so wrong, for so long.
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You are counting your chickens… what difference has the truth made, so far?
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Actually, the truth has made quite a bit of difference. Think of a world without WUWT. Think of a world without skeptics. Do you think the alarmists would be sweating by now without real scientists willing to inconveniently correct them? No. Think of the policies that would already be in place without argument. As unwanted observations appear, they would merely tweak the past, call it “weather” or, hey, just not report it.
The truth is kicking their a$$e$ and they can’t escape it.
Dr. McIntyre, I noticed a very similar graph in Mann’s June 2012 presentation in Anaheim, California at the Orange County Water Summit. It was on Slide 12 of his presentation.
The impression given the audience was that the models have matched the observations.
Anthony covered that presentation here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/26/mann-at-orange-county-water-conference/
It is nice to know how Mann accomplished this “model-matching.”
Luther Wu says:
March 3, 2013 at 9:00 am
Kurt in Switzerland says:
March 3, 2013 at 8:11 am
I wonder what Hansen, Pierrehumbert and Muller will say about Mann’s presentation. Remember Muller lambasted Mann for pasting actual temperatures onto proxy reconstructions. Orestes is a cheerleader for the cause and thus provides essentially only comic relief.
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Many agree with your assessment.
Muller stands alone in that group and shows signs of coming awake. The rest… the word ‘maddening’ comes to mind, or ‘sickening’, when one considers how much press they are given with so little questioning or afterthought.
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Many [on this blog and other skeptical sites] agree with my assessment, but alas, too few of the general public (who passively or actively support the “damnation of carbon” and “climate-friendly” initiatives) give much thought to anything behind the façade. These boys must be praying for a steep temperature rise in the next five years.
Kurt in Switzerland
I’m cheering for the mann, he is the gift that keeps on giving.
As there is no erasing the past ,yet, his words will live on to haunt climatology.
Climate scientist will become fixed in the public mind, as witch doctors of the late 20th century.
A strange deviancy of crowd madness.
Even flat earthers will get more respect.
Perhaps someone could/should pose the question to Pierrehumbert, Gavin and co. over at RealClimate: so boys, what’s your opinion of Mike’s AGW trick? Would his chart pass peer review by you?
Kurt in Switzerland
DaveG said:
He might be OK in the BOMB design business, they all blow up eventually!
Speaking as a qualified bomb aimer, I’d be loathe to use any bomb designed by Mann – it would blow up too soon.
You should have included the loop graphic in figure 6 of the Climate Audit post. It makes for a particularly concise and devastating summary.
Nick claims that Mann is simply presenting an older graph and didn’t want to update for various reasons . This is total BS. My grad advisor and his peers always presented the most up to date data. He would go to a conference and we were back in the lab collecting data and making graphs. We would fed-ex them overnight for his talk. Sometimes we would fax. Once I was at an ACS conference and a speaker was at the podium and from off of stage right an attendant brought a fax and the speaker said proudly with much delight “oh yes. This data was just collected minutes ago! Can’t get fresher than that!!!”
Such was life in Physical Chemistry academic research.
I meant to add to my post above that the only reason that Mann stopped the trend at 2005 is because it doesn’t help his story. Any other excuse is total BS.
As some commenters have already said (but I feel needs repeating and shoving in the warmists faces at any given opportunity):
Real-world CO2 emissions have gone way past Hansen’s Scenario A projections/predictions, so real-world temps should be matching or higher than the Scenario A temps. But they haven’t, they’re nowhere near it. So Hansen was wrong in a major way, Mann’s chatting sh*t, and Naomi’s a clown.
Or have I got it wrong? Am I missing something? (a genuine question – if I need to be corrected, tell me)