Some days you have to wonder how supposedly rational and intelligent people who are considered professional scientists allow themselves to behave like this.
From Dr. Mann’s Twitter feed:
Source: http://twitter.com/MichaelEMann/status/316260453770723328
A simple “no” would suffice, but Dr. Mann seems determined to denigrate people that have different views than him such as Dr. Spencer’s Christian faith. How unprofessional.
It is yet another example of Climate Ugliness that pervades the mindset of AGW proponents.
UPDATE: In comments, “Jimbo” shows how Dr. Mann can easily accept the opinion of one person of faith, while denigrating another.
“Jimbo” Submitted on 2013/03/25 at 3:00 pm
Let me demonstrate now easy it is to denigrate. Care for an ad hominem dessert?
EXHIBIT 1
We have Dr. Spencer’s Christian faith. (A climatologist, Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and the U.S. Science Team leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR-E) on NASA’s Aqua satellite. He has served as Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. He is known for his satellite-based temperature monitoring work, for which he was awarded the American Meteorological Society’s Special Award.)
EXHIBIT 2
We have John Cook’s Christian faith. (Cartoonist & part time fairytale proponent who tinkers with physics. “The second reason is my faith. I’m a Christian and find myself strongly challenged by passages in the Bible like Amos 5 and Matthew 25. I believe in a God who has a heart for the poor and expects Christians to feel the same way”).
I wonder, what would Dr. Mann say about Sir Issac Newton’s religious views were he alive today and question the AGW narrative?
[snip. Persona non grata. — mod.]
The chicken says what now?
pokerguy says:
March 25, 2013 at 1:40 pm
Right. Agreed. And yet that looks bad for Dr. Roy if he in fact has trouble accepting evolution. Fair or not, it does not reflect well (again if true) on his scientific objectivity. This is not to say the man is not entitled to his beliefs.
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And why exactly should it reflect on scientific objectivity?? Evolution is one of those fields where it’s proponents have shut down debate and yet I see no scientific evidence (via scientific method) that it is a valid theory. It has been riddled with fraud as per CAGW theory, it is full of ad hominems.
Uhm -funny how CAGW parallels evolution.
As a professional scientist, I take offense that anyone could could consider Michael Mann a professional scientist.
Of course Mann would never dream of debating a well informed sceptic, as he knows all too well his ‘science’ would just be sliced and diced, thus exposing him for the charlatan he is.
Three years ago I wrote on a national newspaper comment wanting answers to the climate questions. I had just read Ian Plimer’s book.
My suggestion was that a series of key questions be formulated and sent to the various professors in the local debate in Australia and they have their Phd students answer them.
This was in the context that a Senator had asked the Australian scientific community, especially at ANU,a series of questions, and had been told he could not understand the answers and should enroll in a number of courses to find understanding and the answer. A sort of intellectual put down.
Once the answers were published the ‘other side’ would comment,again published. Then both sides would be allowed to publish their summary and rebuttal if any.
My suggestion did not itself get published.
Even at this stage a debate, written so there is no rigged audience, could still be worked on.
This site could ask recognised people to submit answers to a series of questions in this manner and publish the responses.Alternatively it could ask an academic institution eg Oxford, to do so, but in writing.
poker guy,
You need to read Dr. Spencer’s thoughts on evolution before deciding that they make him “look bad”.
You can find his arguments about evolution here : http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/roy-spencer-on-intelligent-design/ .
I would like to read your point by point criticisms of his arguments.
I believe Dr Spencer doesn’t rule out intelligent design which is the stated position of most ‘enlightened’ religions such as the Catholic Church. Which by the way, does not question evolutionary theory. Rather, it leaves open the possibility of a guiding hand. How could an intelligent religion not take such a position?
You can sum Mann up in two words. No class.
My question for Dr. Mann — Is his behavior towards appropriate for an adult human being?
Follow up: Does Dr. Mann;s behavior indicate some deep emotional and personal issues?
Isn’t Mann a, er, ‘creationist’ himself?
Do we really have to bring the adoration of Yahweh in to this?
A Sancho PONZI sanchismo for @MichaelEmann; “Al buen callar llaman Sancho.” Literal translation: The good silence is called Sancho.
Meaning/use: Recommends prudence and moderation in talk.
“News” Network
Note the inverted commas.
Mann is a thoroughly political animal. If Fox News takes a different political viewpoint to him, he thinks that makes them wrong.
That, more than anything else, surely makes his “scientific” judgements extremely suspect.
Science depends upon observations confirming our theories of how the world works. We see micro-evolution, but not macro-evolution. It is delivered to us via textbooks, yet a decent, convincing rally of evidence is really quite laborious to go through, and ends up being not very convincing.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/horses/horse_evol.html
-There is a fairly succinct summary of the supposed evolutionary tree of the horse.
Note how the common horse emerges in its present day state right at the dawn of human recorded history. And so it is for all of the animals we see. Nothing has been observed except existing species carrying on, and species going extinct.
Believing in evolution takes a bit of faith. Hardly any WUWT readers are as familiar with any species familiy tree as this horse tree. I used to keep up with primatology and the human famiyl tree, since the mid-1980s. I took an advanced class, from a guy studying this for his dissertation. At least he was able to declare that hte human family tree of descent as currently perceived was convincing, but sure to be upset and changed as time passed by. As I followed this topic in various science popular press articles, I found out he was correct.
Am Sci ran a human tree of descent article, and things were quite different fomr my first good look at this topic 20 yrs ago.
So, evolutionists have it wrong, and know it, but still acknowledge that the macro-evolution view is correct.
All I see as I get older and wiser is that the Bible keeps coming up roses. Sci Am ran an article in recent years declaring that some cosmologists are thinking that the universe may ultimately be composed of information. To me, just another way of saying God spoke and the universe came into existence.
A recent Sci Am story reported the idea that reality may be a Matrix-like stimulation – partly resting on th eobservation that at the smallest level, things are quantum, and making the analogy to pixel resolution – the quantum jumps are the pixel resolution. In Revelation, the world as we know it supposedly will eventually disappear and we will be in some new reality. No more earth, stars, etc. So, it is not too surprising for me to learn that cosmologists are finally catching up.
In Genesis, God declares, at one point, that no one will live past 120 years of age.
Well, guess what:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_verified_oldest_people
Given 2 significant digits, we can allow vairance up to 124 years. One verified claim beyond 120, and many just below.
In Ecclesiastes, a quip is made abt enjoying our four score and ten on this planet. Not six score.
Well, guess what the avg life span is? Yep: four score and ten.
Ecclesiastes also says man will never be able to predict the next day’s weather.
check.
It also says we won’t know when a specific human life begins. check. Quite a matter of consternation for couples trying to get pregnant and tracking early morning temps, LH, etc.
Check.
Science requires that we accept a uniform, law-driven, unvarying physical universe. There is no definitive proof that the universe is this way. It sure looks it, for the most part. But it is a “given,” otherwise there is no value in studying nature, and science has no appeal. This concept, a uniform, unvarying universe, has to be accepted as a working proposition just to move along a bit, or has to be accepted on faith.
So, both Christians and scientists have faith as the basis of the world-view.
If evolution is actually true, evolutionary theory will only be advanced by clever creationists pointing out various little challenges, such as -how do you ADD one gene, one three-base-pair unit, into a strand of DNA? We don’t only accrue errors, we each (each species) has a discreet number of genes, at three base-pairs each. I have not yet heard a convincing explanation.
How does a new chromosome pair get added? Or subtracted? We are at 23 pairs. Did we have a continuous string, and it broke down into 23 over time?
This is how science could advance. However, there is a propaganda war against Christianity. It is marxist based. It involves making Christians be perceived as dumb, insensitive, brutish, stingey, uncaring, and uncharitable. From the view in my pew, and when I read my Bible, all of this is patently ridiculous, but I guess you can trot out a few counter-examples here and there.
So, carry on with laughing at creationists, instead of assuredly firming up the ideas and evidence, and thus making evolutionary science as robust as we can get it to be.
Because if scientists fail, then they are not worthy, like Nimrod, to stand in for the non-existent god.
And someone else will get ot play god, what with all of that control-the-weather stuff and all.
To be a bit sympathetic with Mann, by now he sees himself as a victim of the evil forces of reaction and himself as hero battling these forces. He has come to this state over the past 10 years or so, during which he has been vilified as the symbol of all that is wrong with the climate movement. Even some of his collaborators clearly don’t like dealing with him, as we see from the ClimateGate emails. No doubt he has brought much of this on himself, but not all of it. Nevertheless the bottom line is that he has become an embarassment for the climate community and continues to reduce its already low level of prestige.
For those saying that Spencer’s beliefs on evolution may also impact his judgement regarding climate change, I really don’t think that one thing has impact on the other. Someone has already cited Newton, which was a deeply religious man *and* one of the greatest scientific minds in all History; and I would also cite the personal experience regarding my advisor from my graduate student times, who was a genius in his field (Robotics), with many, many published papers, and clearly way more intelligent than myself, and at the same time questioned evolution and tended to believe in Intelligent Design.
@TANSTAAFL : I can vouch for that, I was cured. Same as tectonic plates which were ignored when I was reading geology in the ’60s. At that time too, Science was settled and Wegener was a maverick.
WTF wrote of Darwin “While not ever denying the existence of God he none the less tried to see science as an extension of his faith. ” But of course he didn’t turn away from his own brilliant insight because it seemed to called the Old Testament into question. And I applaud Darwin’s effort to come to some sort of synthesis. It seems reasonable to me to say, well yes, there is evolution but it was set in motion by God.
But to deny overwhelming scientific evidence on the basis of nothing but fundamentalist theology does not look good for a scientist. Mann has a point here, for one of the few times in his detestable life. Of course, I have my own point of view (basically I’m a wise guy, agnostic Jew), and I realize others think differently.
Oh Jesus, I’m not actually religious (see what I did there?) but I know that the theory of evolution is just that: a THEORY.
But why would I waste my breath explaining to an AGW’er why one cannot “deny” a theory? Or waste my breath explaining why putting one’s FAITH into one single unproven theory is as much a religion as Christianity?
Richard Sharpe says:
March 25, 2013 at 2:00 pm
Perhaps it’s a good thing that Isaac Newton is dead as well. Otherwise, Mann would refuse to believe in Gravity.
Gravity? Are you crazy? Of course it doesn’t exist. Newton was an alchemist. He was also an alumnus of my university college so what the hell do I know either!
Keep him twittering, he is so successful an agent of scepticism, that if he did not exist, we would need to invent him.
But observe how successfully the, ” bash the christian idiot” ploy works even here.
A scientists opinion amounts to squat. What can we verify and replicate?
One of these Drs uses the scientific method, the other uses slander, slime and evasion.
Dr Spencer is a scientist, The mann is someone who offends all who search for truth.
As such he promotes the spreading scepticism over the teams conjecture/fantasy that manmadeCO2 = Warming world.
Yeah but if you can’t answer the questions or debate the issues you can at least shoot the messenger. Guess that is as professional as some can get.
So belief in evolution is a threshold requirement is it. Pity that so few fields – scientific or otherwise – are really dependent on that belief. BTW, I also believe in evolution but it makes me wild that so many people are so damned rigid about something that really has very little impact on most of human accomplishment and knowledge.
Well, as much as I despise Mann, I have no time for people who deny the scientific evidence for evolution (just as Mann may deny the scientific evidence for non-catastrophic global warming).
Dear Mr. Mann only a nasty person could produce such a constant flow of in the gutter remarks as your emails and twitty little tweets show, but we have been privileged to witness that since you first invented that wonderful piece of adjusted fiction the Hockeystick – You and your fellow CAGW climate crowd do not pass the science based stink test of today think how the History books of tomorrow will judge you. Well done Mike hope you have enjoyed your 12 pieces of silver!
To Dr. Spencer. Thank you sir for your noble contribution to truth and science.