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?
Oh I don’t know. I can see how some people might think that scientific knowledge and understanding advances through the clash of ideas, and the openness of the process to falsification.
I’m sure that Mann doesn’t want to debate anyone who is a professional in the field. His work is so porous that even I could point out the flaws. But with another climate Phd he wouldn’t be able to use the “from authority” argument.
I did see Roy debate Kevin Trenberth in front of a congressional committee. It was the same kind of thing. Trenberth had nothing but personal attacks.
I wonder if people realize how much integrity it takes to follow the path that Roy has taken when there is so much pressure in his peer group to follow the political line. Both he and John Christy at UAH deserve our appreciation. We need to remember that for those months when Roy brings us data points that we don’t necessarily like.
I mean the, er, ‘evolution’ of Mann has ceased. Let us revisit the paleoclimatehockeystick era, for example.
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”).
Anthony, what makes you thing that Mann is either rational, intelligent or a professional scientist?
I have not yet seen any evidence of these.
Perhaps you can explain this theory? Is it based on a model?
Colin Gartner says:
March 25, 2013 at 1:40 pm
“Mann really is a small, petty, ugly man.”
In addition, he is downright mean.
You know, it is just too bad that faith so inhibited the brains of people like Pascal and Newton that they were never able to do any cogent work in math or science. After all it is unthinkable that someone might have faith and be really good at something else. Just can’t happen.
The arrogance, the blind spots that exceed the scope of vision and the utter contempt for people of faith is just amazing from some who visit and comment here. The scope of people who believe in some kind of creative force runs the gamut from the 6,000 year old earth crew to those who, like Thomas Jefferson believe in the ‘something that spun the top and walked away’. Oh! And Jefferson is another one of those who couldn’t possibly had a rational thought in regard to science.
Are some of you, in the Mannley spirit of the Ghost of Big Jim Cooley, so sure of what you have never seen and cannot reproduce in a laboratory, that you have elevated yourself to godlike status, sitting in judgement of your fellow humans. That you would not even have the courtesy to speak civilly to Newton, or Pascal, or Jefferson. Are your manners so lacking, your upbringing so poor, and your self confidence so lacking that you can say with a straight face about Dr. Spencer’s faith that “it does not reflect well on his scientific objectivity” and put yourself in the Mann Camp to turn up your nose against those who don’t see the world as you do?
There is only one question to answer in regards to origins. By what means did matter come into existence from nothing? Until we get that answer, why not respect the work and stop attacking the worker. Unless of course you have achieved perfection, in which case you would be god and the argument would be settled. Not just that you think you are god, because we’ve had way too much of that already.
The Ghost of Big Jim Cooley says:
March 25, 2013 at 1:57 pm
———————————————————————————————————-
I’ve said it before that this site should focus on scientific work and try to refrain from politics and religion. I understand that both of these realms some times come into play in policy-making but this site operates best when based on scientific principles. With that said, I find it ironic that The Ghost argues against a not insignificant scientific body that holds up scientific conclusions which are often based on theory and modeling – the very thing a lot of us question here, and yet insists that scientific beliefs/conclusions as the only sure way to make one’s way through life. It is fruitless to denigrate religious value here when the criteria of faith and science are two different fruits entirely. One man’s existentialism is another man’s free will and who’s to say the empirical results should be observable within an expected time frame or one’s expectations. The Ghost of Big Jim Cooley I’m afraid falls victim to the same type of closed-mindedness that pervades the AGW crowd.
[snip – while I disagree with Dr. Mann, there is no need for that – Anthony]
When Mann falls we will surprised to see how many on his own side line up to kick him on the way down , such is the ‘quality’ of the man .
Colin Gartner says:
March 25, 2013 at 1:40 pm
Mann really is a small, petty, ugly man. Not ugly in the physical sense, the man’s character is utterly [self-snip]
It really is a shame that you feel a need to self-snip…but without a doubt, you are correct. Mann really takes the cake. Here is someone, touted as being the top in his field, secretly pleading for more validation. Something tells me that he recognizes his inadequacy but is dearth to expose it in truth…and, takes the easiest, cheapest flight of fancy: ad hominem for the lowest common denominator. Bleccch.
Whatever they believed about how the Moon got there had (and has) nothing to do with the application of the known scientific principles that enabled us to land a man on the Moon or send Curiosity to Mars.
Whatever Dr. Spenser believes about our Beginning has nothing to do with his application of the known scientific principles that enable us to understand “Climate” (to the extent we can) or, at least, to see where someone else who claims to understand it is full sh*t.
No one should ever have the luxury of being on permanent sabbatical. Mr. Mann should be forced to do janitorial services to earn his fair share of Climate spoils.
The Ghost of Big Jim Cooley says:
March 25, 2013 at 1:57 pm
Whilst I am one of the last people to ever defend Mr Mann, religious belief is irrational and illogical. To have a ‘religious’ faith is a mental illness or a problem with the brain – temporal lobe epilepsy. I fully realise that many will have a problem with this, but that’s how it actually is.
I’m agnostic and have a really hard time with this comment.
First, I don’t think Big Jim has any support that being religious or having faith is a mental illness. In fact, it’s likely that “having faith” is a hard-wired evolutionary trait accompanying our big brain. When early man, at the dawn of human consciousness, first started to question things and the world around him, he created Gods to explain what he didn’t understand. Over thousands of years, that propensity may very well be hard-wired into the brain. It’s not easy to prove, but considering that almost every known culture past and present seems to have two things in common, religion and some sort of music, I suspect that both have some inherited component of some sort.
Second, Big Jim needs to do some reading on epilepsy. My sister has temporal lobe epilepsy. There may be a few people who have “Seen God” as a result of the condition, but the experience varies. My sister just kind of experienced what we used to call trances.
Third, And Then There Were Three was a good album… But Duke was better!!! 🙂
On Mann…. He just has to get his little digs in. The most important aspect of climate science is not whether this or that person subscribes to evolution and denies God, it’s whether or not the numbers add up. Period.
Oh Christ! God help us!
Strike 1
Katharine Hayhoe: Evangelical Christian, Climate Scientist
Strike 2
Full List of Participants to the BBC CMEP Seminar on 26 January 2006
Claire Foster, Church of England
Strike 3
Climate Wishlist: What an Evangelical Climate Scientist and an Interfaith Renewable Energy Organizer Want for 2013.
The Ghost of Big Jim Cooley says (March 25, 2013 at 1:57 pm): “You can believe something is real if you have fact-based evidence, but to believe something is real when you have zero evidence is frankly absurd. We should be progressing on fact-based truth. Instead, we daily have to put up with childish nonsensical statements based on pure belief. ”
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Well put, and this fully applies both to evolution and global warming.
I suggest you read Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life” and then explain, what it has to do with science. Can be easily found on the internet, you do not need to pay for it.
Or you can start just with the title and realize that he mixed up species and races. You know, you can create a new dog race by selection, but never another species. This idea of his was simply unscientific crap, and it was known for thousands of years.
Anthony, seeing you have put my comment as an UPDATE can you make a typo correction
“Let me demonstrate how easy it is to denigrate. Care for an ad hominem dessert?”
Sorry, creationism is a total strike-out.
Gareth: Do you know who Erwin Shrodinger is? Real dummy right? Here are a couple of quotes from him:
“I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is very deficient. It gives a lot of factual information, puts all our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity.
Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously.”
“Whence came I, whither go I? Science cannot tell us a word about why music delights us, of why and how an old song can move us to tears.
Science is reticent too when it is a question of the great Unity – the One of Parmenides – of which we all somehow form part, to which we belong. The most popular name for it in our time is God – with a capital ‘G’.
Whence come I and whither go I? That is the great unfathomable question, the same for every one of us. Science has no answer to it.”
I have no religion myself, but my point here is that there is no connection between religion and the ability to do science. Shroedinger was certainly a spiritual man, and his intelligence was far beyond that of Michael Mann.
Another theory re. Mann’s behavior. He’s a cornered rat.
P Wilson says: March 25, 2013 at 2:02 pm wrote:
“I’ve posed this question before. Is Michael Mann a buffoon pretending to be a scientist, or a scientist pretending to be a buffoon?
My answer is: neither. Mann is a buffoon pretending (and doing a very good job) to be a bigger buffoon.
YFNWG says:
March 25, 2013 at 1:55 pm
“It’s not only creationist Christians who have doubts about Darwinistic evolution:
http://life.nationalpost.com/2013/03/23/what-has-gotten-into-thomas-nagel-leading-atheist-branded-a-heretic-for-daring-to-question-darwinism/”
Thomas Nagel is just one of many first-rate philosophers who criticize Darwin’s account of human evolution. Sounds like Nagel is being bullied by Dennett who has his own very unscientific account of Darwin. Criticizing Darwin is not the same thing as criticizing Mendel or Crick and Watson. And Darwin can be criticized on purely scientific grounds without appeal to creationism.
Scientists debate in the peer-reviewed literature–not sure what the point would be to an oral debate. Many Christians, including the Pope, believe in evolution. Anyone who rejects evolution is denying the best supported most important science known to man. As a biologist, I know that evolution has stood the test of time over the last 160 years in literally 100s of thousands of scientific studies and every important test. On the other hand, intelligent design and creationism have zero scientific support.
Talking of John Cook’s Christian faith and “heart for the poor” how does his heart feel towards the over 1BILLION people without access to electricity? Does John Cook have access to electricity? Does he have a “heart” towards the 75% of Kenyans who have no access to electricity despite there wonderful sunshine for solar? Great mountains for wind. BLOODY F’ING HYPOCRITE.
It’s actually worse than we thought.
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.ELC.ACCS.ZS
I am surprised Michael Mann didn’t accuse Roy Spenser of being an @racist or an @misogynist or an @homophobe etc etc etc….
Michael Mann lives in a coward’s castle built of stones made of adhominem.