Guest post by Brandon Shollenberger
Words cannot describe the humor of Michael Mann’s latest post:
As professional climate change deniers become increasingly irrelevant and desperate, so do their distraction and smear efforts. These are mostly just noise in the background these days, as the media increasingly appears to be recognizing the intellectual bankruptcy of the industry-funded climate change denial effort and those who do its bidding. Occasionally, though, I will debunk the most egregious of the smears and falsehoods, both to set the record straight, and to arm readers w/ the information necessary to evaluate the credibility of the various actors in the climate change denial campaign…At that point I will be updating my lecture slides, many of which are indeed somewhat out of date.
Thus starts the latest crazy posting in the climate blog world, unsurprisingly written by Michael Mann. Snickers abound when Mann talks about “credibility,” but no words exist for the reaction this post should garner. Specifically, Michael Mann refers to a recent posting from (the long missed) Steve McIntyre, saying:
…it seems remarkable that Mr. McIntyre couldn’t figure this out, and instead chose to invent an entire conspiracy theory involving not just me, but multiple scientists, the AGU, IPCC, etc.
Steve McIntyre has gathered a great deal of respect, including respect from people who don’t agree with him. He has made many points even his critics accept are true. How can anyone believe he is some conspiracy nut? I don’t know, but it can’t be because of anything he wrote in that post.
The term AGU is used approximately 30 times in McIntyre’s post. In every case, it is used in a sense like “Mann at AGU,” “Mann’s AGU graphic” or “the AGU audience.” Not a single case of McIntyre saying the AGU did anything exists. The same is true for the term IPCC, which gets used 10 times. In fact, the only person (other than Mann) the post refers to as doing anything is Naomi Oreskes, who McIntyre says “appears to have [been] wrongfooted” by Mann.
Put simply, Steve McIntyre blamed everything in this post on Michael Mann. Mann interprets this as:
…an apparent effort to manufacture a nefarious plot out of whole cloth [where] Mr. McIntyre (parroted by Mr. Watts) imagines a great conspiracy.
While this is arguably a new low for Michael Mann, many people won’t be surprised at him saying things that make him appear delusional. However, some may be surprised to see John Cook, proprietor of Skeptical Science, agreed, saying (in a comment):
I find it interesting that Steve McIntyre automatically lunges towards a conspiratorial explanation of events. Stephan Lewandowsky published a paper last year showing a significant association between climate denial and conspiratorial thinking. The response to the research from climate deniers was a host of new conspiracy theories. We document the originators of these conspiracy theories in the paper Recursive fury: Conspiracist ideation in the blogosphere in response to research on conspiracist ideation: http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/Lewandowsky_2013_Recursive_Fury.pdf. The chief originator of conspiracy theories? Steve McIntyre.
That’s right, the founder of Skeptical Science, a man who works with people like Stephan Lewandowsky to claim skeptics are conspiracy nuts, promotes this as an example of their conspiratorial ideation. A man who publishes papers claiming to find conspiracy theorists finds blaming everything on Mann to be a conspiracy theory involving an unknown number of people.
Be careful folks. Blame Michael Mann for anything, and you may be fabricating a conspiracy involving intergovernmental bodies, scientific communities and “multiple scientists.”
Or so global warming advocates will say.
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See Steve McIntyre’s observations on Dr. Mann’s graphic shortcomings here
Related articles
- Mike’s AGU Trick (climateaudit.org)
- Michael Mann’s new ‘trick’, pulled off at the American Geophysical Union Convention – exposed by McIntyre (wattsupwiththat.com)
- John Cook: Conspiracy Theorists Respond to Evidence They’re Conspiracy Theorists With More Conspiracy Theories (huffingtonpost.com)
- Friday Funny – John Cook’s withdrawal symptoms (wattsupwiththat.com)
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He’s deleting all the comments. I asked simply where this industry funding was coming from he mentioned, as I wanted to put my name down for some. Free speech? Nah.
Mann’s response is notable only for his complete inability to refute McIntyre’s criticisms of his AGU presentation. He admits McIntyre is correct on one point and then says, “Unfortunately, little else Mr. McIntyre has to say is correct.” I was expecting some specifics at that point, but none were forthcoming. He does not quote McIntyre but rather misdirects the reader away from his specific criticisms.
All the rest is innuendo, name-calling and character assassination. No engagement on the actual issues, while admitting his slides are woefully out of date.
Mike, let me put it to you straight. Your presentation was very misleading. Please update your slides and the presentation to reflect current reality. I know the past when all your stars were aligned correctly was a wonderful place to be, but a new reality has crept into the climate picture. It doesn’t square with “It’s worse than we thought.” Please adjust accordingly.
You are apparently giving a presentation tonight at the University of Victoria in the Engineering Comp Science Building at 8 pm. I’m interested to see how you handle this.
Michael is pretty rapid on the delete button for any unfavorable comments… there were a few there, but they have all gone now! I guess he prefers sycophancy to discussion.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=499532486769625&set=a.221233134599563.54502.221222081267335&type=1
Michael is pretty rapid on the delete button for any unfavorable comments… there were a few there, but they have all gone now! I guess he prefers sycophancy to discussion.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=000000000000000&set=a.000000000000000.54502.000000000000000&type=1
Mike Mangan says: “Who’s going to call him out?”
Mother earth already has!
Yet he even tries to argue she is wrong.
Too funny, all critical or questioning comments are deleted now, except for one that Mikey deigns to answer in this trite, tedious, and predictable way (to one acolyte who had the temerity to suggest that Mann concentrate on scientific work and avoid this kind of posting):
This one might have stung a little. At the very least it would appear some of Mann’s colleagues enjoy asking him to explain!:
“…Michael E. Mann: Sorry to differ w/ you on this Daniel, but no–sometimes we need to correct the record. In this case, a number of colleagues were asking me about this, and I felt a response was necessary….”
At that point I will be updating my lecture slides, many of which are indeed somewhat out of date.
I suppose there is a possibility that some of the opinion brokers (Andrew Revkin, perhaps; members of the AGU) will read the original post by Steve McIntyre and realize that Mann has here conceded McIntyre’s point.
“As professional climate change deniers become increasingly irrelevant and desperate, so do their distraction and smear efforts. These are mostly just noise in the background these days, as the media increasingly appears to be recognizing the intellectual bankruptcy of the industry-funded climate change denial effort and those who do its bidding. Occasionally, though, I will debunk the most egregious of the smears and falsehoods, both to set the record straight, and to arm readers w/ the information necessary to evaluate the credibility of the various actors in the climate change denial campaign…At that point I will be updating my lecture slides, many of which are indeed somewhat out of date.”
And who’s the conspiracy theorist? WOW!
Mann has updated his Facebook post. I couldn’t read it. It made me feel dirty.
My last comment got et. Is quoting Mann’s paragraph sending comments to spam?
[certain words and phrases trigger the spam filter automatically – restored above – mod]
RockyRoad writes: “I’m beginning to see Mr. Mann’s behavior presenting as schizophrenic. I’ve personally dealt with several such people, clinically diagnosed, in my extended family and the similarities are striking”.
I’ve worked with schizophrenics and have studied the literature extensively. Michael Mann is not psychotic, or if he is he’s one of the highest functioning schizophrenics on the planet. But he is character disordered, which is worse in its way given that there’s no help for such a condition.
For those not convinced that Michael Mann of PSU has a bizarre fixation on there being conspiracies against him, you need only to read his book.
It comes across as a study guide to the manifestations of paranoia.
Can a person be rational and express the idea, as Mann does in his book, that critics of his scientific work are out to get him personally and out to discredit his support of dangerous / alarming AGW by CO2?
Read the book and quote it often. It is Mann’s Achilles heel, in a psychological sense.
One cannot retract a book, like one can retract a scientific paper.
John
Emotional activists are necessary. Without them, reasonable people could follow their causes without questioning. I don’t know any balanced individual who would want to be associated with an extremist like this.
I guess coincidences should simply remain coincidences…
For instance when Mike MacCracken suddenly appears out of no where and starts pontificating on a fringe Yahoo group of skeptics, quoting wikipedia (i.e. Connolley’s domain) as a reference on Wegman and its critics… We should all be grateful he did not quote directly Deep Climate and his guitarist shouldn’t we?
So let’s see where this coincidence man comes from:
– He is the Director of the Climate Institute http://www.climate.org/about/bod.html
– The Chairman of this organization is no other than Tom Wigley’s “snake” character, Sir Crispin Tickell, also a Board Member of Thomson Reuters International whose coverage of the climate issue has been of the utmost bias as can be attested through their flagship newspaper in Canada, the Globe & Mail – for instance, it took them over 2 weeks to even mention climategate in 2009 and without counting the Suzuki, Weaver and other green mongers political scientists whose supposed expertise peppered the issues-. Tickell’s reputation as a green cardinal has been enhanced thanks to climategate 1 and 2 (the Wigley quote) and the connections between Monbiot, The Guardian and Tickells’ offsprings are known.
– For those unfamiliar with The Climate Institute: “In the over 25 years since its founding in 1986 as the first environmental organization on Earth focused on climate protection the Climate Institute has been instrumental in moving climate protection onto the international agenda, (…) and creating the Tickell Interactive Climate Network to create grass roots climate education on climate change and large scale empowerment of individuals to be climate problem solvers.”
– The Climate Institute was therefore a forbearer of the IPCC and of the Maurice Strong agenda. All this of course implies philanthropic people such as The Rockefeller Brothers, the Bullitt Foundation among others, including our tax dollars through Environment Canada for instance…
– Here is how the same foundations are playing their green cards in Canada: http://fairquestions.typepad.com/rethink_campaigns/vancouver-mayor-gregor-robertson-and-nrdc.html
– http://fairquestions.typepad.com/rethink_campaigns/usa-foundations-paid-tides-canada-nearly-57-million.html
So when MacCracken smooth talking suddenly condescends to honor an obscure group, these people should feel honored that the great Director is spending time with them, away from the rigorous agenda of the institute he so brilliantly leads.
How lucky!
“People tend to believe evil is something external to them, yet it is a projection of the shadow onto others…it is to the degree that one condemns others and finds evil in others, that one is unconscious of the same thing within oneself…It is a projection of one’s own shadow.” — Carl Jung
http://phong.com/journal/category/quotation/ [unsourced, but possibly found in Answer to Job, 1952 ]
The only pig with mud on him is Michael E. Mann. He’s also the only one throwing dirt, and it’s so obvious, everybody can see it.
That’s why I think he’s mentally deranged–anybody with a grip on reality wouldn’t act like that.
[…]the media increasingly appears to be recognizing the intellectual bankruptcy of the industry-funded climate change denial effort and those who do its bidding.[…]
Stephan Lewandowsky published a paper last year showing a significant association between climate denial and conspiratorial thinking.
Clearly John.
It is claimed that “97% of scientist believe in Climate Change”…mmmm. What they imply is of course AGW….But survey’s carriied out in the real world suggest pro AGW about a third…the rest against.
The failure to find the hot spots in 2002 was followed by the IPCC deliberately changing “Global Warming” to “Climate Change” in 2004. It is an all enmbracing catch phrase implying that all weather events are caused by excess CO2. The CRU emails even caught two IPCC half wits agreeing that “Global Warming Freezing” would not go down well with the media.
So let us examine the 97%….
In the USA 31,000 scientists have signed the Oregon Petition against Kyoto…and they have left their names and qualifications. With “deniers” being only 3% it means that the 31,000 divided by 3 will give us 1%…just over 10,000. Therefore multiply by 100 will give us 100%……1 million.
As the 3% from our side of the fence accounts for around 30,000 it means that the pro AGW scientists must number 970,000 (and that is just for this exercise).
Therefore would the IPCC, BBC, Guardian, Independent, New York Times…Oh..and Michael Mann please publish their names…and qualifications?
If what we are told is correct….only 77 were asked whatever the question was….and 75 agreed.
Over to you Michael…..just where are your mates…all 970,000 of them?
For somebody with supposedly so much influence, Mann’s facebook post has had remarkably little support.
Only 65 ‘recommends’ and 8 supportive comments in 16 hours *
And Steve McIntyre’s blog shows a photo of Mann delivering his pitch at AGU and there were plenty of empty chairs. A few years ago it would have been standing room only for such a well-known figure
These statistics do not speak to me of a top scientist at the height of his powers. But of a man of waning influence, and a declining circle of ‘friends’
* And notable absentees from the comments are any of his Hockey Team – especially onetime RC sidekick and ‘attack dog’ Schmidt! Or Mikey’s tame poodle Phil Jones
If anyone here has ANY respect for Mike Mann and his Mann-made global warming dreck….raise my hand.
He is the one who has become irrelevent.
I predict that within 10 years he will be one of those warning of a return of the ice age due to human use of fossile fuels….He is too young to have been one of those who made the cold/warm switch since the 1970’s, but he should be right there in the front row when actual climate makes these gravy train former scientists jump on the north bound express.
Espen says:
March 4, 2013 at 6:36 am
I discovered the questionable scientific standards in climate science through the statistics abuse of mr. Mann as exposed by mr. McIntyre. It doesn’t really surprise me that he thinks he can get away with (or just thinks it’s fine, I don’t really know if he’s genuinely dishonest or just a bad scientist) using outdated misguiding charts – the simplest form of statistics abuse.”….
I knew Mr. Mann in graduate school. I honestly don’t believe he’s a genuinely dishonest person…he’s just a bad scientist that believes his theories with a religious fervor that clouds his judgement. He’s also one that is prone to believe in conspiracies. He would have all sorts of conspiracy theories about everyday things. Made for very amusing discussions over dinner.
I don’t believe Mann is deranged in the normal sence…I believe he is so egocentric that he has been chosen for the sacrifice.
In time all will see that his scientific value is nil due to his rediculous statements but he, perhaps, is not bright enough to see that when theBIG” gang” determins the time and climate is suited for a regime change to man caused global cooling he will be one of those thrown under the bus. “Poor Micheal, he went a little too far overboard and lost credibility”
Is there really any question that the basis of all this foolishness is an attempt by extremists to force the world off the oil standard? Not in my mind.
@fellow grad student
Thanks for further insight into the Mann, but what was the recreational drug of choice?
Obviously its one my children should know to avoid.
As I had noted
aboutexactly a year ago, following publication of the opus he’s still flogging far and wide:“Mann is well on his way to becoming known as the David Irving of climate science.
“For those who may not be familiar with his name – or his record – Irving is probably the most prolific and prominent Holocaust denier in the English speaking world. His favourite mode of “doing history” includes “add a word here, change a word there”, citing sources (in the hope that few, if any, will bother to check) which completely fail to substantiate his assertions – along with manipulation of data and obfuscation in presentation.
“And those are the least of his “scholarship” sins. Mann also seems to share with Irving an arrogant – and unwarranted – high opinion of himself.
“In fact, I’ve often wondered if the myth of the “big oil funded lobby” was a derivation of Irving’s outlandish fantasies of a ‘big Jewish/Zionist lobby’.
And I had concluded:
“Seems to me that – just as the German publisher of Irving’s Dresden opus had added the subtitle, ‘A Novel’, to their publication – perhaps, in the interest of truth in publishing, this work of the “wily Cub Scout” wannabe should be re-titled Portrait of the Artist as an Aggrieved Mann: A Novel