This is hilarious, I finally got a retraction out of Dr. Michael Mann.
The AGW proponents must be reeling from McIntyre’s takedown of Marcott et al, because I watched the most hilarious smear genesis unfold this morning a few minutes after a note about McIntyre’s analysis was sent to Joe Romm of Climate Progress.
First, I sent this note to Romm this morning at 6:40AM PST. It was a little good-natured ribbing over Romm’s extrapolation of the Marcott hockey stick (in red):
I sent a one line note with a link to McIntyre’s latest:
I got his back almost immediately from Romm at 6:45AM PST:
Now you are denying the instrumental record, too?
This made me laugh, because neither Romm’s graph, nor Marcott’s, has the instrumental record in it, only Marcott’s reconstructed temperature and Romm’s red line “projected” add on. Plus, as McIntyre points out, Marcott et al did NOT splice on the instrumental record:
I have consistently discouraged speculation that the Marcott uptick arose from splicing Mannian data or temperature data. I trust that the above demonstration showing a Marcottian uptick merely using proxy data will put an end to such speculation.
Ten minutes later, at 6:55AM PST, this appeared on Dr. Mann’s Twitter feed:
Wait, what?
Coincidence? Maybe, but I don’t think so. Note Mann says “News Alert” and “now denying”, which implies immediacy. Of course since I am blocked by Mann on Twitter (as are dozens if not hundreds of people), I’m not allowed to post a response, so I have to do it here.
For the record, I don’t “deny” the instrumental record, but I do study it intently. For example, via this peer reviewed paper published in JGR Atmospheres of which I am a co-author:
Fall, S., Watts, A., Nielsen‐Gammon, J. Jones, E. Niyogi, D. Christy, J. and Pielke, R.A. Sr., 2011, Analysis of the impacts of station exposure on the U.S. Historical Climatology Network temperatures and temperature trends, Journal of Geophysical Research, 116, D14120, doi:10.1029/2010JD015146, 2011
Certainly it has gotten warmer in the last 100 years.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1912/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1912/trend
It also hasn’t warmed significantly in the past 15+ years, much like that period post 1945 to the late 1970s in the graph above:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1997/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1997/trend
My view of the instrumental record is that it is clearly showing some warming, but as I point out many times, some of that warming trend is due to siting biases and adjustments.
Following the initial conversation, over the space of an hour, while starting to write this post, I communicated in several emails to Romm how his characterization of my “denial” of the surface temperature record was wrong, and how the Marcott et al graph he posted on Climate Progress had no instrumental record in it at all, only proxy data and projection:
And, “somehow” this must have been communicated to Dr. Mann, (and If Joe Romm sent my email along, I thank him) because up until this blog post there has been no public discussion here of my supposed “denial of the instrumental record”. Shortly after my last email to Romm at 8:35AM, Dr. Michael Mann, to his credit, tweeted this rare retraction at 8:58AM PST, though he just couldn’t resist getting another jab in:
Watching the reverse denial now of Marcott et al failings, I think we have entered the era of climate satire.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
The current issue of United Airlines’ Hemispheres has an article on a couple of Napa Valley wine makers. Now what does this have to do with the subject at hand? One of the families likes to sit on the porch in the late afternoon with a glass of chardonnay and (drum roll for the connection) have some popcorn with truffle butter. So take delivery on those popcorn futures, fire up the popper, send the pig out to dig up some truffles, melt the butter (in your solar powered furnace) and enjoy the show.
But wait a minute! I thought we’d been taught NOT to believe in the instrumental record!?
All those weather stations placed on asphalt, dodgy adjustments by imaginative “scientists” trying to make it look as if the world’s warming, and speculative extrapolations across wide open spaces.
Or is it just when the graphs are on the up that we get the seed drills out to sow doubt and confusion?
‘The ladder of denial’ has a nice biblical ring to it. I couldn’t think of anything suitable so these (the next best thing) will have to do.
‘And that the ladder of law has no top and no bottom
…
Bury the rag deep in your face
For now’s the time for your tears’
and
‘May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung
May you stay forever young’
Keep up the good work Anthony, lang may yer lum reek!
mikemUK says:
March 18, 2013 at 2:13 pm
“Decline and fall of the Romm-Mann Empire”.
I like it!
I call it a linguistic hockey stick, to conflate AGW with climate change or even worse with climate. Orwellian at its best. Even AGW is not right, the alleged problem is actually ACO2GW. Words have power.
I comment only rarely here as I am but a lowly practical engineer and enjoy reading and absorbing science. It is with interest for me that my mind has wandered and come to terms with the post normal political science of Mann and Romm et al.
My poor brain has wandered back to the classics and wondered if these people ever had a real education, it is indeed a serious undertaking to defy the weather gods, those of Greece or the Vikings. These people have not only defied them but told the gods what the weather should be.
Thus I have learned to love CAGW as the first chapters of a Greek tragedy, it is not man that will bring the end to these characters, it is the weather gods, for they will not be commanded. The fate of these people is in their own hands, their mistakes can be shown to them but they will not listen, for they, like all demigods believe they are omnipotent.
The last word and the final chapters of this tragedy will come like all Greek epics, as a surprise, and not be kind to those usurpers of the real weather gods.
Waiting with bated breathe for the final chapter, as the weather gods are being a little contrary to the teams projections.
JustAnotherPoster
I really hope at some point the serious science community, computing, engineering, physics,maths,atmospheric physics…. will realise the damage that “climate science” and the “work” they are undertaking is damaging the reputation of science as a whole.
I couldn’t agree more that that should be the case. but the unfortunate truth is, that quite the opposite is happening. We’re seeing more and more popular – celebrity – scientists on TV extolling the virtues of these brave “scientists”. They seem to be rallying around, not distancing themselves. There is move afoot in the uk where scientists are demanding that they, and their arguments, be given special protection from criticism and that only scientists be allowed to challenge orthodoxy – and they close ranks if anyone from outside that community dare challenge it. This is very scary, as science is nothing more than a combination of method and knowledge. You don’t need a PhD to do it. It might give you a head start but that is all – if you’ve got the ability, skill and time you can become an expert on just about anything and that does not necessitate a qualification.
Do you mean to tell me that after the little ice age it warmed up. I and shocked. by the way it warmed up at the end of each bond event.
Mann’s tweets get funnier and funnier:
https://twitter.com/MichaelEMann/status/313718436167557122
Denying the 20th century uptick in the #ExtendedHockeyStick equivalent to denying the instrumental evidence for #globalwarming. Just sayin..
ExtendedHockeyStick=Marcott et al.
@ur momisugly vigilantfish, regarding eugenics
—
Thanks for your reply.
Your comparison of eugenics and the current climate craze makes sense to me with respect to shared elements like scare tactics, overreaching application of misunderstood science and general hysteria. However, what I still maintain distinguishes the current crisis from that previous one is the current profound corruption of science itself.
In climate science, there is an endless parade of papers that continue to appear in the most influential and prestigious journals, containing nothing but recycled potions of fabricated evidence.
The proper analogy in genetics would be a scientific paper claiming to show Mendelian inheritance of intelligence and of wealth. Can you show me such papers from the period? If you can, I will concede.
“Does Michael Mann do any actual work ? He seems to be on Twitter 24/7.”
Like politics. climate science has become show biz. We live in the age of the celebrity climate scientist!
Joe Ryan…..I cannot see anywhere preceding your comment where anyone told you or triedt o tell you anything about “what its like to have kids”.
What are you mumbling about?
Michael Palmer….without being specific, what comes to mind are Galtons “research” papers indicating the correlation of physiognomy and “character types”.
The uptick in the Hockey Stick is the nervous tic of the climate science shtick.
– – – – – – – –
Jimmy Haigh & mikemUK,
I love it.
In it we will have Gavin Schmidt of NASA GISS chronicled as their faithful gopher ( go for ).
John
@ur momisugly Michael Palmer,
I just diverted a certain amount of time from needed obligations to find a quick answer and have to run off to give a lecture in a few minutes. To answer you, the first scientist to hold the Galton Chair Of Eugenics at University College, London, wrote a number of articles and books exploring the issue of human heredity and statistics, and human heredity and Mendelian genetics once he had accepted that theory. He also founded the Biometrics Laboratory to explore links between inheritance and physical and mental traits. Some of his books include:
Karl Pearson, The groundwork of eugenics (1909)
Karl Pearson, The problem of practical eugenics(1909)
Karl Pearson and Gustav A. Jaederholm, Mendelism and the problem of mental defect (1914)
Karl Pearson, The science of man: its needs and its prospects (London, 1920)
Karl Pearson, Side lights on the evolution of man (London, 1921)
Pearson did not promote the crass eugenics practices I described above, but did want to purify the human race and help it to evolve. He certainly lent eugenics a high degree of scientific respectability.
Hope this gives you enough evidence. I am a historian of biology and have given courses on Darwinism, the theory of evolution, genetics and their social repercussions. Sorry about the briefness of this reply.
@Jennifer Hubbard: Thank you again.
These references are interesting. However, just from the book titles, I’m not persuaded that Pearson committed any scientific errors, not to mention intentional frauds, in his promotion of eugenics.
I just looked at my university’s library catalogue. It doesn’t offer any of the works by Pearson but some historicists’ monographs on the subject. I’ll go through some of those once the term is over.
My name is Joseph Jenius Romm,
I bid you be Green, and Shalom.
There are no TIDES, in my affairs,
I really believe, the climate scares.
With apologies to the Masters at Balliol: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balliol_rhyme
@ur momisugly Michael Palmer,
The best introductory book on the subject of eugenics as a science is Daniel Kevles In the Name of Eugenics . I’ve not taught a course on Darwinism since the late 1990s and so am not up-to-date on the latest literature, hence this morning’s scramble to find something to answer your question. I don’t have this book at my office (it’s at my home office) which would have made answering this question easier. I have never before encountered a question as to whether eugenicists actually included biologists working on Mendelian genetics and human intelligence! (good question!) Of course the question is complicated by the fact that eugenics developed separately from Mendelism, and had to incorporate Mendelian genetics into its explanations of human heredity once Mendelian genetics began to be more widely accepted in the 1910s (following its ‘rediscovery’ in 1900).
In further elaboration, the very basis of Hogben’s and Huxley’s and others’ criticisms of eugenics was its misapplication of Mendelian genetics to the understanding of human intelligence and other behavioural traits. They could cite the work of TH Morgan and others that was indicating already in the 1920s that more than one gene pair might be involved in the inheritance of certain specific physical traits. However, even if few geneticists defended human intelligence as a Mendelian trait, another parallel with the alarmist climate science of our times is the fact that few qualified biologists were critical of eugenics, and membership levels by biologists (and doctors) in eugenics societies were very high. Most biologists, including some of the main figures from in my own area (i.e. history of fisheries science), belonged to the eugenics societies founded in the 1910s and 1920s.
Hopefully your university has historians’ monographs, not those of ‘historicists’! The latter, according to one of the several mutually contradictory meanings of the word, implies determinism and includes Karl Marx as an example of a historicist. (I’ve had to look up the meaning of ‘historicism’, and all I can say is that ‘historian’ is a far less controversial label for what most of us do.)
Cheers!
@Jennifer Hubbard – I meant to say historian, not historicist; my bad (not a native English speaker). I’ve made a note of your book recommendation – it’s available here. Many thanks, and best wishes, Michael
Uhh, Anthony, MM is STILL calling you a Climate Change Denier!!!! I hadn’t realized you denied that Climate Changes!!!!
I guess Mann has something to teach me after all!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
So you’re not an “instrumental record” denier, just a “climate change” denier.
Mann – what a maroon.
“Retraction for Dummies”, completely sold out online.
Funny, the only real climate change denier is Michael Mann and some of his ilk.. He has been trying to change the climate of the past so may times, he obviously doesn’t agree with it.
Mann – The real climate change denier.
It’s not ‘Real Climate’ it’s ‘Real Climate Change Deniers’
Why not mention global warming denier? Answer – because there has be no warming for many years and climate change can literally mean anything. So can verbal this rubbish in thinking anybody doesn’t agree with what it even is?
Michael Mann actually say the truth in this for once and imply what you and your ilk mean, He/we are apparently a denier because there will not be a 6c rise in global temperatures and billions won’t die from it. You can’t say this because it would speak volumes who is the fool.
vigilantfish says:
March 18, 2013 at 8:58 pm
“DirkH says:
March 18, 2013 at 2:11 pm
Agreed. It’s the Eugenics of our time.
—
False analogy. Eugenics has a sound scientific basis; at its core, it is nothing else but the application of the principle of selective breeding to the human race. This latter principle has been used widely and successfully to with domestic animals and crop plants, and I have not seen any scientific argument why this should not work with humans. The objections that keep us from using it are ethical in nature, not scientific.”
Eugenics drew sweeping conclusions from obvious inheritance of intelligence (Humans are more intelligent than monkey because of genes, so there, it’s obvious as long as you accept the existence of genes.).
CO2AGW draws sweeping conclusions from an obvious pressure broadening of CO2 absorption/re.emission lines.
Both movements have nasty political consequences.