In the thread Intelligence and the hockey stick commenter “Robert” challenged a well known quote about the MWP from 2006 by Dr. David Deming in his statement before the Senate EPW committee which is the title of this post.
I thought it was worth spending some time setting the record straight on what the original quote actually was and point out that it has been paraphrased, but the meaning remains the same.
Robert says:
The quote is a fabrication. Jonathan Overpeck’s exact words are:
“I get the sense that I’m not the only one who would like to deal a mortal blow to the misuse of supposed warm period terms and myths in the literature.”
Christopher Monckton, like Andrew Montford before him, alters the text to instead read:
“We have to abolish the medieval warm period.”
My reply:
I checked for a citation, and the quote you state is correct:
http://di2.nu/foia/1105670738.txt
From: Jonathan Overpeck
To: Keith Briffa , t.osborn@uea.ac.uk
Subject: the new “warm period myths” box
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2005 21:45:38 -0700
Cc: Eystein Jansen , Valerie Masson-Delmotte
Hi Keith and Tim – since you’re off the 6.2.2 hook until Eystein hangs you back up on it, you have more time to focus on that new Box. In reading Valerie’s Holocene section, I get the sense that I’m not the only one who would like to deal a mortal blow to the misuse of supposed warm period terms and myths in the literature. The sceptics and uninformed love to cite these periods as natural analogs for current warming too – pure rubbish.
So, pls DO try hard to follow up on my advice provided in previous email. No need to go into details on any but the MWP, but good to mention the others in the same dismissive effort. “Holocene Thermal Maximum” is another one that should only be used with care, and with the explicit knowledge that it was a time-transgressive event totally unlike the recent global warming.
Thanks for doing this on – if you have a cool figure idea, include it.
Best, peck
–
Jonathan T. Overpeck
Director, Institute for the Study of Planet Earth
Professor, Department of Geosciences
Professor, Department of Atmospheric Sciences
Mail and Fedex Address:
Institute for the Study of Planet Earth
715 N. Park Ave. 2nd Floor
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721
As to this being a fabrication (as Robert claims), no, it’s a summation or a paraphrase of a long quote, something that happens a lot in history. Monckton and Montford aren’t specifically at fault in this, as the summed up quote has been around for a long, long, time and it appears to have originated with Dr. David Deming’s statement to the Senate. (see update, it goes back further than that- Anthony)
The conversion to a paraphrase maintains the meaning. “Mortal blow” certainly equates to “get rid of” (as it is often said) or “abolish” as you (and Monckton/Montford) state it, and “we” equates to “I’m not the only one”.
The most important point is that Overpeck thinks the MWP (misuse) should be gotten rid of so that people that don’t agree with his view can’t use it (as citations).
And that, is the real travesty.
[Added] And, by eliminating citations, he effective kills the the existence of the MWP in science, relegating it to an unsubstantiated claim. As we see in related links below, that has not happened.
UPDATE: The room is often smarter than me, and many have more historical experience than I, and for that I am grateful. Dr. Tim Ball points out (as does David Holland) in comments:
With the publication of the article in Science [in 1995], I gained significant credibility in the community of scientists working on climate change. They thought I was one of them, someone who would pervert science in the service of social and political causes. So one of them let his guard down. A major person working in the area of climate change and global warming sent me an astonishing email that said “We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.”
He later reiterated this in his presentation to the Senate on 12/06/2006 here
http://www.epw.senate.gov/hearing_statements.cfm?id=266543
Notice he didn’t say who sent the email, but rumours developed that it was Jonathan Overpeck.
As I recall Overpeck denied being the author of the e-mail , which precipitated extensive commentary by Steve McIntyre;
http://climateaudit.org/2010/04/08/dealing-a-mortal-blow-to-the-mwp/
Steve McIntyre points out in his article:
Be that as it may, while Overpeck was concerned that Deming might produce a “fake email” purporting to show Overpeck seeking to “get rid of the MWP”, Overpeck hasn’t challenged the authenticity of the Climategate email in which he aspires to “deal a mortal blow” to the MWP.
Related articles
- Intelligence and the hockey stick (wattsupwiththat.com)
- New paper shows Medieval Warm Period was global in scope (wattsupwiththat.com)
- BREAKING NEWS: CRU’s Jones admits climate data problems, and Medieval Warm Period (briefingroom.typepad.com)
- ScienceMag: Medieval Warm Period global, 0.65 °C warmer than present: ‘The largest ocean was 2 °C warmer than today when ancient civilizations exploded’ (climatedepot.com)
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If only Heartland would give Deming $2000 to pay his ISP to pull that e-mail off its backup tapes and send it to him!
‘Robert says:
December 8, 2013 at 9:50 am
The quote is a fabrication. Jonathan Overpeck’s exact words are:
“I get the sense that I’m not the only one who would like to deal a mortal blow to the misuse of supposed warm period terms and myths in the literature.”
Christopher Monckton, like Andrew Montford before him, alters the text to instead read:
“We have to abolish the medieval warm period.” ‘
The debate over this claim has focused on meanings. That is a useful thing to do. However, it has overlooked a clear intention to censor and a clear expression of a desire to silence those who disagree with the warmist position. Yes, Overpeck might actually believe that claims to the effect that the MWP was warmer than today are myths. But he does not express a desire to expose the myths as falsehoods. Acting on that desire would be entirely admirable. Instead, he expresses a desire to do away with the terminology altogether. That is a desire for censorship in a scientific debate. As John Stuart Mill explained, a scientist can stoop no lower.
Fascinating discussion about the exact wording of the conspiracy to abolish the MWP…of course the concrete proof that this conspiracy took place the complete absence of the MWP on Warmist graphs!
The graph is a great example of scale exageration to make whatever point one is spinning. Stretch the time (X) axis out a little and start the temperature (Y) axis out at zero and the lesser informed better understand that very little change which has occured in temperature over the past 2000 years ( about 0.6 of one degree C from max to min). Not that this is unimportant.
However, searching the literature, it is very difficult to find anything about what a one or two degree DECREASE in average annual temperature would do to crop yields in Canada, Russia and China for example. Northern crop growing areas suffer quickly from colder weather. Of course all weather is regional and average annual global temps may have greater or lesser effects in a given area particularly with changes in precipitation, etc. which may also occur.
davidmhoffer says:
December 8, 2013 at 11:06 am
Overpeck’s fear of refuting the statement combined with his mind bogglingly lame excuse tells any rational person what they need to know.
================
agreed. Overpeck makes a number of statements:
1. “I assume it is possible that I emailed w/ him long ago,..”
2. “…he’s taking the quote out of context…”
3. “…this Deeming guy could then produce a fake email”
4. “…he’s not your average university professor… to put it lightly”
Overpeck is apparently reluctant to refute something that is untrue about him. The reasons he (Overpeck) gives are that Deming would engage in improper behavior, either quoting out of context or faking an email.
Yet, Overpeck has no reason to think Deming would engage in improper behavior. Indeed Overpeck goes on to say of Deming “not your average university professor”. So why would Overpeck think that Deming would do something improper?
Is it possible that Overpeck suspects that Deming would act as he (Deming) would act? In which case disappearing the MWP is “normal” behavior, consistent with quoting out of context or faking emails. Doesn’t the cheating husband suspect his wife, because that is what he would do?
correction mods:
Is it possible that Overpeck suspects that Deming would act as he (Overpeck) would act?
Mr. Courtney
Hope your dad is OK, he normally is very active on CO2 and coal subjects, but has not contributed recently. All the best to the old passionate and enthusiastic combatant.
I don’t know why it is so hard to get these things right. Misquoting and misattribution is so prevalent that no-one knows who said what any more.
Lord M was not referring to the 2005 email. He was referring to the comment made by Deming some time after the 1995 Science article, and mentioned in later Senate testimony. But that reference is thoroughly inaccurate in that Deming never attributed the statement to Overpeck (nor did he produce the email). And Overpeck says he didn’t say it.
And as said here, the statement from the Overpeck CRU email is not a paraphrase of “abolish the MWP”, nor did Lord M claim it as such. Overpeck wants to deal a mortal blow to “misuse”. Well, who wouldn’t?
Getting it right is not just a civic duty. It saves time.
I also failed to notice you had started a new thread on Deming and will repeat a couple of points here.
First, remember that Fred Pearce corroborated the idea that the ‘team’ were definitely looking for a ‘hockey stick’ in 1996.
Secondly this is not a trivial matter as later Climategate emails show and if you look at all the evidence. Overpeck more than anyone organised the survival of of the Wahl and Ammann 2007 paper and made the decision, or more exactly approved Solomon and Manning’s decision not to formally record and forward Steve McIntyre’s entirely valid detailed response requesting the citation of the Wegman and the NRC Reports in the critical section of AR4 WGI Chapter 6 where WA 2007 was used to cast doubt upon McIntyre and McKitrick’s papers. I have little doubt that my request to see the responses to the July 2006 WGI TSU PublicationDeadline email, is what caused Phil to ask Mike to delete his emails re AR4 and to say that Keith would do the same. FOIA probably had no idea what this was about but may have thought it looked a bit too dodgy.
Chris Horner has obtained emails that show that Overpeck told Eugene Wahl to contact Stephen Schneider long after WA 2007 had missed the 16 December 2005 cut off date. Overpeck told Wahl that Schneider “knew the drill”. Then on 28 February 2006 – the cut off date for final pre-prints – Wahl emailed Overpeck suggesting he might contact Schneider to get his paper declared ‘in press’ in time to distribute pre-prints to the expert reviewers. Schneider did so at the 11th hour but then Wahl and Ammann ‘forgot’ to give the TSU the ‘in press’ version to post on the WGI website.
The Deming matter is part of the tome of evidence of the team’s chicanery and the IPCC’s total lack of any fitness for purpose.
Judge the AGW promoters by their actinos and it is clear they sought to get rid of the MWP. Even now they seek to deny it was large scale. The promoters ignore the multiple lines of evidence of the MWP because they know it is a severe counter fact to their apocalyptic claptrap.
Notice that Overbrook simply asserts that today is significantly different from the MWP and the other well documented warming periods. He provides no evidence.
The AGW faithful are disputing the accuracy of the quote as a way to ignore the meaning of the quote
The AGW faithful are like any other group of faith-based believers- theywould rather discuss the text of the scripture in a way that allows them to control the conversation than to deal with the issues raised.
I enjoyed your piece recently on the great big hole Dana Nuccitelli has been digging for himself with his refusal to accept his error about Roger Pielke, jr.
I’m sorry to see you’ve got the shovel out and seem determined to head in the same direction as Nuccitelli, even if the error is someone else’s and not your own.
What Monckton wrote is this:
“We have to abolish the medieval warm period.”
I’m sure you noticed those quotation marks. Once quotation marks are used there is no possibility, as you so lamely suggest, that we are dealing with summation or paraphrase.
Misquotation is not something to be taken lightly. Once caught misquoting, the only legitimate response is to apologise and promise to be more careful in the future.
Summation is a very different thing from quotation and yet you use the phrase ‘summed up quote’. Is this a coinage of your own? If it is, you should be ashamed of such an abominable misuse of language.
Who cares what the exact form of words was?
It’s the old common-sense case of:
“I heard what you said but I know what you meant.”
What did he mean by his criticism of the MWP as only a “time-transgressive event”?
It’s the “supposed”, not the “misused” that is gives the game away. He himself either considers the MWP as a “myth” (implying that he discards the data) or he presses the notion that the MWP ought to be presented as a myth to lower its significance. Both constitute intellectual dishonesty.
BUT TOM’S MIGHT HELP THERE, AND
CERTAINLY WITH NON-PALEO SCIENTISTS AND POLICY
FOLKS.
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=3718.txt&search=overpeck
We have to get rid of the influence of carbohydrates on physiology, and just blame dietary cholesterol, said now rich doctors, as many still say to this day, deceptively, as they poison patients with statins.
“I get the sense that I’m not the only one who would like to deal a mortal blow to the misuse of supposed warm period terms and myths in the literature. The sceptics and uninformed love to cite these periods as natural analogs for current warming too – pure rubbish.”
The pure rubbish originated in the mainstream and was adopted by sceptics without question. And that was thinking that temperatures in Greenland move in the same direction as the mid latitudes. The word from climate science is that the Minoan warm period was 1500-1200 BC, history shows that the Minoans flourished from 2700-1500 BC, their demise was around 1300-1200 BC, when Greenland was at its warmest, while the mid latitudes were at their coldest: And at around 2200 BC there was a cold period in the mid latitudes that caused widespread cultural collapse, which again was a notably warmer period in Greenland. http://www.usgcrp.gov/usgcrp/seminars/980217DD.html
So the truth about the medieval warm period is hardly going to be confirmed by the warm period in Greenland around 1000 AD: http://snag.gy/BztF1.jpg
People can’t do “inductive quoting” to turn the Deming statement into an Overpeck quotation. It is not a documented direct quotation of Overpeck.
If someone wants to directly quote Overpeck, they should directly quote Overpeck! Use the stolen/leaked email then, including the word “misuse”. You can’t ‘paraphrase’ that word out while still using quotation marks.
Nick shares a load of crap with
What was claimed as being misused, Nick? Read it again – look specifically for “supposed warm periods”. He is claiming we (skeptics and the uninformed) are misusing supposed warm periods meaning warm periods that don’t exist. The complete sentence says he wants to deal a mortal blow, that is, to end, terminate, misusing non-existing warm periods (presumably an invention of the skeptics and uninformed) [and other myths]. The problem for his is those warm periods did exist.
But you are right about our civic duty – save us all some time, next time, and get it right and also completely right.
“Nick Stokes says:
December 8, 2013 at 1:49 pm
And as said here, the statement from the Overpeck CRU email is not a paraphrase of “abolish the MWP”, nor did Lord M claim it as such. Overpeck wants to deal a mortal blow to “misuse”. Well, who wouldn’t?
Getting it right is not just a civic duty. It saves time.”
You did not get it right. The relevant quotation reads:
“In reading Valerie’s Holocene section, I get the sense that I’m not the only one who would like to deal a mortal blow to the misuse of supposed warm period terms and myths in the literature. The sceptics and uninformed love to cite these periods as natural analogs for current warming too – pure rubbish.”
He wants to shut up the sceptics. He wants to end discussion of the MWP as a natural analog for current warming. As regards the word ‘misuse’, it is his responsibility to explain the misuse and give rational reasons for rejecting it. He did not even consider it. This is a call for censorship in scientific debate.
Ed Zuiderwijk says: December 8, 2013 at 2:04 pm
“It’s the “supposed”, not the “misused” that is gives the game away. He himself either considers the MWP as a “myth” (implying that he discards the data) or he presses the notion that the MWP ought to be presented as a myth to lower its significance. Both constitute intellectual dishonesty.”
This is the problem here – a single sentence is abstracted from which people think something can be made (with effort), and single words get parsed to convey some hidden meaning. But Overpeck had plenty else to say about the MWP and how it should be presented. In the CRU email quoted above by clipe, he says, in caps:
“I **ABSOLUTELY** AGREE THAT WE MUST AVOID ANY BIAS OR PERCEPTION OF BIAS. MY COMMENT ON “NAILING” WAS MADE TO MEAN THAT ININFORMED PEOPLE KEEPING COMING BACK TO THE MWP, AND DESCRIBING IT FOR WHAT I BELIEVE IT WASN’T.
OUR JOB IS TO MAKE IT CLEAR WHAT IT WAS WITHIN THE LIMITS OF THE DATA. IF THE DATA ARE NOT CLEAR, THEN WE HAVE TO BE NOT CLEAR. THAT SAID, I THINK TOM’S FIGURE CAPTURED WHAT I HAVE SENSED IS THE MWP FOR A LONG TIME, AND BASED ON OTHER SOURCES OF INFO – INCLUDING KEITH’S PROSE. THE IDEA OF A FIGURE, IS THAT FIGURES CAN BE MORE COMPELLING AND CONNECT BETTER THAN TEXT. ALSO, THERE ARE MANY WAYS TO LOOK AT THE MWP, AND AS LONG AS WE DON’T INTRODUCE BIAS OR ANYTHING ELSE THAT WILL DILUTE THE MESSAGE IN THE END, THE IDEA IS TO SHOW THE MWP IN MORE WAYS THAN TWO (THAT IS, THE EXISTING FIGS IN THE TEXT THAT KEITH AND TIM MADE).”
Maybe his evaluation of the MWP doesn’t coincide with yours. But he’s not trying to abolish it.
The context after the fact of the who, what, when, where, and how of the exact wording of the quote is what is relevant here. There is no question that several members of the AGW science club wanted to downplay the use of the MWP by sceptics to show equivalent historical periods with warming. There were probably group discussions off the record about the relevance of that period to modern warming. We will never know the exact wording of those off the record discussions. We only have the aftermath. Therefore I think it can be concluded that the MWP was slated to be downgraded in importance so that current warming could stand in the kind of light they wanted: a unique circumstance. It was then a much easier leap to anthropogenic sources. Everything else is mincing words and splitting the hair on the ass of a gnat.
Theo Goodwin says: December 8, 2013 at 2:54 pm
“You did not get it right.”
I did:
“As regards the word ‘misuse’, it is his responsibility to explain the misuse and give rational reasons for rejecting it.”
He’s not writing to you. He’s writing a private email to colleagues, and they have work to do. His responsibility is to them.
But he says “to deal a mortal blow to the misuse of supposed warm period terms and myths in the literature”. “warm period” is an adjectival phrase. He wants to stop misuse of terms and myths. Most people do; they may disagree about the facts of what is misuse.
As I said in my comment above, in those same private emails, he had plenty to say about what the right thing to do is in presenting MWP, and if you actually try to find what he is really saying, it’s fine.
@TBraunlich
“What did he mean by his criticism of the MWP as only a “time-transgressive event”?”
I understand it to mean that the changes in temperature were slow and gradually varied up or down, thus to be interpreted as changes that necessarily take time if they are natural.
They were planning to sell the ‘rapid rise’ of temperatures as ‘proof’ that it was ‘unnatural’ which is exactly what was claimed later. To assist this, older temps were edited downwards and modern temps were padded with warming. Still, it did not rise as fast in the 80’s as in the 20’s.
So the intent was to make it appear that only AG CO2 could possibly account for the recent rate of rise – as was later claimed. Problems were many, including the cessation of any increase in global temperature from about 1997. For the CONUS it is much longer. In fact there has been some claims that there was a solar change in 1992 with delayed consequences. Let’s see how that plays out because it is mostly the sun in the first place.
“The paraphrasing was close enough in context to justify itself, and so what if Deming did not save a copy of the original email, as the actions of the CAGW crowd speak for themselves – the MWP did “disappear” from their storyline.
Mosher – I am glad that your posts always keep us on our feet, but this time you are off base with your statement that this subject matter needs to be verified or retracted. Deming admits that he did not retain/archive the email. I once witnessed two antelope jumping a barb-wired fence (for those who are not familiar with antelope, that was a one-in-a-billion sighting, for antelope run under fences). Can I verify it? Nope! But it sure as hell happened.”
########################
Deming actually wrote me and backed away from his claim. But I misplaced the email.
you buy that of course?
This is pretty simple. When warmists claim they get death threats we demand to see the mail.
Deming doesnt have the mail. We have nothing but hearsay. The monktopus is pretending
that this is not hearsay. And none of you skeptics have the balls to call him on it. A real skeptic keeps his standards of evidence straight: we demand to see the mail when somebody whines about a death threat. we should demand to see the deming mail. If deming didnt keep the mail, then too fricking bad, all we have is hearsay. More importantly the climategate record is the better source than demings hearsay.