From Dr. Michael Mann’s Twitter feed today:
What is he mad about? Probably the same thing a bunch of the same people were mad about last year when I was interviewed on PBS. How DARE they let somebody who has skeptical views speak? The comments from Joe Bastardi in Mann’s Twitter feed were ignored.
Here is Dr. Curry’s interview, it is well worth a read/listen.
While the Obama administration presses forward with plans to deal with climate change, Congress remains steadfast against taking action. It’s not easy to find a scientist who will agree with that point of view. But Republicans have found an ally in a climate scientist by the name of Judith Curry.
Curry actually entered the public eye in 2005, with a paper in Science magazine warning that hurricanes were likely to become more intense as a result of climate change. But in the years since then, she’s soured on the scientific consensus about climate change. Her mantra now is, “We just don’t know.”
More here: http://www.capradio.org/news/npr/story?storyid=213894792
h/t to Dr. Ryan Maue
So, NPR’s policy is what, balance today’s rationality with rampant stupidity tomorrow??
3-4 years ago I was a liberal (with 1 or 2 conservative opinions) who was sure Global Warming was true. Why not? -everyone said it was.
I was at someone’s house and bored so I looked at one of their coffee table books. It sold itself as a book for ordinary people to read, explaining the science behind GW. It had high production values.
At that point in my life I had never been exposed to any skeptical material. Never heard any names. Nothing.
I leafed through the book. It was gibberish. I could hardly believe it. They were supposed to be the smart people. After maybe ten minutes of looking for something straightforward my experience in life kicked in: that someone who writes gibberish likely does not understand the topic as well as he thinks he does.
It was after that I started reading material about the climate. I had decided to make up my own mind.
Of course recently I went back to see what book it had been. I saw the front cover again and laughed. It was by Michael Mann! (the book “Dire Predictions: Understanding Global Warming”).
My point is, Mann senses people have a low opinion of him, and he thinks its because he is slandered by people he thinks of as denialists. Uh, no. I came to a low opinion of him just by looking at his book. He is such a clown he started me in the opposite direction he intended.
@Joe Kirklin Bastardi –
I’d call it hard tyranny, not soft, The CAGW crowd are intent on much more than just winning an argument, more even than silencing skeptics. The argument itself is only the cover for the left’s agenda to destroy the Western economy and do away with civil liberties.
The NPR commenters’ demands that the NPR not report stories on skeptics is an indicator of these people’s mindset.
As for Michael Mann vs. Judith Curry, I would say that Mann’s comments paint a rather unsavory portrait of him.
Curry may be establishment controlled opposition, her goal appears to be to ally herself with the conservatives, make the misleading claim that humans are partly responsible (the better term is indiscernible in the natural noise and/or negligible) and represent the skeptics as people that admit the warmists are partly right but don’t think it’s worth losing our car upgrade.
One should view her with suspicion as the data shows no discernible human input and CO2 has no net positive feedback when one takes into account the increase in OLR with increased surface temperature, the lack of a hotspot, the fact that CO2 radiates a significant amount of heat back into space from incoming solar rays, not to mention the lack of warming in the past 17 years with rising CO2 and increased human contribution.
Anyone that claims to be a luke warmist must provide evidence that humans have influenced the climate in the data. If they can isolate it from the natural noise and explain the stall in warming that would be an achievement.
The last few sentences of the Curry article seem to take a shot at her while insisting more must be done.
By now, of course, Curry has strayed far from science and deep into public policy. But like all of us, she does have a personal point of view. And hers, at root, is not about science; it’s about individualism.
“I walk to work, I drive a Prius, I’m a fanatic about turning lights off and keeping air conditioning high and heating low, so I try to personally minimize my own carbon footprint. But in terms of telling other people what to do, I don’t have any big answers.”
But leaving climate change actions to individuals will not solve the problem. You can’t affect global warming simply by buying a Prius and adjusting the thermostat. And there’s no uncertainty about that.
Mann was interviewed last year by Ira Flatlow on Science Friday and it is very revealing. http://www.npr.org/2012/03/02/147815862/michael-mann-from-the-trenches-of-the-climate-war
Mann went on about how Heartland wasn’t playing by fair rules and trying to “discredit the science” and it appeared Mann’s interview was part of an orchestrated attempt to hype the “leaked” Heartland papers ( but it was soon revealed that is comrade Dr. Peter Gleick had forged the leaks and it was the CO2 advocates not playing by the rules). But most revealing was Mann’s response to the first caller named David. David said he believed in climate change but that thought it was natural and then accurately described the well established temperature changes in GISP2 ice core. Mann’s reply?
“Yeah. Unfortunately, the gentleman has his facts just about all wrong!”
Denying the GISP2 record would make Mann both a science denier as well as a Natural Variation Denier.
THE HOCKEY STICK
There was a crooked Mann
Who played a crooked trick
And had a crooked plan
To make a crooked stick
By using crooked math
That favored crooked lines
Lysenko’s crooked path
Led thru the crooked pines
And all his crooked friends
Applaud what crooked seems
But all that crooked ends
Derives from crooked means
Eugene WR Gallun
I think you all misunderstand Mann. Just as white collar criminals know what they are — Mann knows what he is. White collar criminals behave criminally because they believe they can get away with it. Mann once believed he could get away with what he has been pedaling. But there comes the time of the (climate) audit and what seemed such a blissful surefire scheme suddenly displays all its holes. The reality is that Michael Mann is sweating his ass off. Better than anyone he sees what the future holds for him. And what is doubly funny is that when end game comes Michael Mann is going to suddenly realize that he does not have a single friend in the world.
Eugene WR Gallun
@Joe Kirklin Bastardi “All I want is to see him debate his ideas with other people that have published reputable papers, that can find no such hockey stick.”
I agree that any scientist, who’s life work, status and funding depends on their hypothesis being right, will not act like Feynman’s good scientist trying to prove himself wrong as quickly as possible, but will act to defend their work by any means necessary. Unfortunately the science has devolved into “intellectual drive-by shootings” instead of respectful debate.
A public debate would indeed be enlightening for all, but Mann and Trenberth have further defiled the science by refusing to debate because as Trenberth said “it gives credibility to alternative views”. To refuse to debate and then argue the debate is over, defiles the scientific process. Mann now tries to argue any questioning against his hypotheses is an attack on science itself, and his fearful followers repeat that mantra. Long gone are the days of Newton and the Royal Society scientific motto ” Nullius in Verba” or “Take nobody’s word for it.” Mann’s high hubris believes his word is science. We shaky authority is challenged, then all challengers become infidels, heretics or deniers.
So sad what happens when little sandbox tyrants grow up without getting smacked on the way.
Eh? You’ve defined what is and what isn’t a ‘luke warmer’? That is rather impudent on your part.
I don’t buy your attempt at minimizing Dr. Curry’s work along with the work, attention and interest of so many other luke warmers. Dr. Curry made the leap and become more aligned with the skeptics against the climate bully ‘team’ and their consensus insistence; and she performed this action during some of the darkest times of climate science when the doom shriekers actively sought to ruin lives and careers. Dr. Curry deserves her position and is entitled to her interpretation of science.
I am a luke warmer. It is my understanding that a luke warmer believes in the physics of CO2. Whether man’s contribution of CO2 really makes much of a temperature difference is for the scientists to prove. A task which they’ve failed to accomplish to date. CO2 physics is still there, but what the climastrologists keep overlooking is the ghg gorilla in the atmosphere, water vapor.
Poor little Mann.
He had his brief shining moment in the sun in 2001 (a Spaced out Odyssey?!) But in the intervening years, he has failed to learn that (apart from his sidekick, Schmidt and various and sundry dedicated groupies, e.g. the TreeHut gang at SkS) most of the the rest of us live on a planet that does not revolve around Mann and his mindless mantras.
@ZootCadillac August 22, 2013 at 7:24 pm
You can’t be considered a fully paid up member of the denier club unless you’ve been blocked by Mann’s twitter feed 😉
As I said before once Mann falls , and his own ego will lead him there , we will surprised to see who lines up to kick him on the way down . Such is the ‘quality’ of the man, the self appointed ‘god ‘ of AGW.
When all this falls apart, most of the people responsible will have long fled. Mann is one of the few that will be made to pay. His fear is real.
There should be a link here to Judith’s comments about the interview.
Mann must not have time to read Climate Etc. because he is so busy twiting.
http://judithcurry.com/2013/08/22/jc-on-npr/
The reason debating skeptics gives credibility to alternative views is that the warmists get their butts kicked in any such debates. Trenberth is wise, if disingenuous, to avoid them.
TomL says at August 22, 2013 at 7:43 pm
At first glance that seems incredibly harsh.
But there is an element of truth in that. He has been hawking the same debunked nonsense for a decade.
How much longer can he keep it up without debaitng his critics?
He’ll never “debait” his critics; they have an unending supply of valid taunts to bait him with.
That’s why he won’t debate them.
Michael Mann’s worst nightmare is slowly enveloping his reality. He is being drawn inexorably into the vortex of reality that emanates from the black hole that resides at the sphincter of his own fraud.
Bye, byyye Mike ….. we’ll see you on the ooootthheeer siiiide. NOT. (nyuk,nyuk, nyuk)
If you haven’t already, you should read Judith Curry’s own comments about the interview, to which Toto above helpfully posted a link.
Basically, Richard Harris (NPR) conducted approximately 8 hours of direct one-on-one interviews with Judith Curry (on her vacation!) over two days and condensed it into an approximately 7 minute audio segment.
There’s an old joke about a distinguished scientist who is asked to give an in-depth presentation on his specialty before an influential audience. The scientist offers three options: the all day presentation, the half day presentation and the one hour presentation. When asked what the difference would be the scientist replies: “well, the all day lecture I can give any time. The half day lecture takes a couple of days to prepare. But the one hour lecture takes two weeks to prepare.”
If you could spend 8 hours with JC discussing the current state of the science in climate research to distil that into a 1,200 word article, wouldn’t you be in a cold sweat? It is a phenomenally difficult thing to do — to condense the thoughts of an already highly knowledgeable and articulate person and present them to a lay audience.
So back to RIchard Harris’ challenge in reducing 8 hours of conversation into 7 minutes of audio for an NPR audience: he can be forgiven for leaving things out or skimping on essential detail. However, JC recalls:
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Harris had his interview written before he ever spoke with JC; he just needed some actual words of hers to drop into his narrative. In other words, he reported what he thought and believed, not what the putative subject of his interview tried to express.
People on this blog often express frustration with how the press reports climate issues, noting they do an exceptionally bad job of it. I believe rather their performance on the climate debate is no worse than on any other subject they cover; they are this bad on everything. At least that has been my experience whenever I read about any topic on which I have significant first-hand knowledge.
ATheoK says:
August 22, 2013 at 11:04 pm
It is my understanding that a luke warmer believes in the physics of CO2. Whether man’s contribution of CO2 really makes much of a temperature difference is for the scientists to prove.
You’ve pretty much defined the basic position of all skeptics or climate realists. We know that C02 is a ghg, and has a warming effect, although that effect is logarithmic. We also know that nature doesn’t behave like a laboratory. There are far too many variables and unknowns. Clouds, for example, are a huge unknown. And yes, scientists need to show that man’s C02 is indeed having an effect on climate. They have not done that, though they claim to.
My understanding of the lukewarm position is that it’s nothing more than fence-sitting. It’s a cop-out, really from the null hypothesis, which is that natural variation is driving climate. Unless and until it can be shown that man is having a discernible effect on climate, it is all just positioning and hand-waving. Admirable though JC may be, she is simply playing politics.
I read in the above post:
Which reminded me of these great quotes from the celebrated physicist Dr. Richard Feynman
Yet there is a consensus and we must tow the IPCC line. History will remember the likes of Hansen, Mann, The Royal Society et. al. in a very bad light.
Joseph Bastardi says:
August 22, 2013 at 8:17 pm
I tweeted that because I can not believe that Dr Mann is attacking the CHAIR of a prominent university’s dept, because of what: she wrote something that many believe hit the nail on the head? Look, I understand why Dr. Mann would be sensitive to the attacks on his work. Suppose you worked at something for as long as he did, believe its right, and are under attack. Just put yourself in his shoes.
*******************************************************************************************************************
I don’t agree with this analysis. The IPCC wanted to get rid of the MWP, they found a patsy in MM and he agreed to it. What Mann didn’t realize was that he was used and abused and instead of backing down he is being an attack dog. He knows his work is 3rd rate, heck he wouldn’t share his data or methods so he know it was shonky and when M&M finally got their hands on it they found it badly wanting.
This is from one of mann’s little poodles.
Dana Nuccitelli @dana1981 10 h
@MichaelEMann I just depuffed the @NPR Judith Curry glorification http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2013/aug/23/climate-change-greatest-risk-management-failure …
Retweeté par Ryan Maue
If it looks like a twit, acts like a twit and talks like a twit then it must be that obnoxious twitterer Michel Mann, Junk and Junkett scientist. A Walter Mitty character who believes he is in the front line?