Professor Michael Mann, if you see something, say something – or maybe just keep your mouth shut
Guest essay by Dr. Fred Singer
Professor Michael Mann, the inventor of the Hockeystick temperature graph, had a contentious editorial essay in the January 17th issue of the New York Times. [The Hockeystick graph purports to show that temperatures of the last thousand years declined steadily — until the 20th century, when there was a sudden large rise.]
I am using the word “inventor” on purpose, since the Hockeystick is a manufactured item and does not correspond to well-established historic reality. It does not show the generally beneficial Medieval Warm Period (MWP) at around 1000AD, or the calamitous Little Ice Age (LIA) between about 1400 and 1800. In the absence of any thermometers during most of this period, the Hockeystick is based on an analysis of so-called proxy data, mostly tree rings, from before 1000AD to 1980, at which point the proxy temperature suddenly stops and a rapidly rising thermometer record is joined on.
Since its publication in 1998 and 1999, the hockeystick graph has had a turbulent history. It was adopted by the IPCC (UN-Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) in its 3rd Assessment Report (2001) to support the claim of a major anthropogenic global warming (AGW) during the 20th century. Since then, the IPCC has distanced itself from the graph, which has been completely discredited. It not disagrees not only with much historic evidence that shows a MWP and LIA, but also with other analyses of proxy data. Most of the criticism has come from the work of two Canadian statisticians, Steven McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, who have uncovered a misuse of data, a biased calibration procedure, and fundamental errors in the statistical methods.
McKitrick, an econometrician at Guelph University in Canada, has a pungent comment on Mann’s op-ed, which had been titled “If you see something, say something.”
“OK, I see a second-rate scientist carrying on like a jackass and making a public nuisance of himself.”
I have added my own comment as follows: “OK, I want to say something too: I see an ideologue, desperately trying to support a hypothesis that’s been falsified by observations. While the majority of climate alarmists are trying to discover a physical reason that might just save the AGW hypothesis, Mann simply ignores the ‘inconvenient truth’ that the global climate has not warmed significantly for at least the past 15 years — while emissions of greenhouse gases have surged globally.”
Of course, this is not the first time that “hide the decline” Mike has done this. Remember his “Nature trick” — so much admired by his ‘Climategate team’ mates? [For those who don’t remember the 2009 Climategate scandal: It consisted of a leak of some thousands of emails from the University of East Anglia, involving mainly Michael Mann and several of his English colleagues, documenting their completely unethical attempts to suppress any contrary opinions and publications from climate skeptics by misusing the peer-review process and by pressuring editors of scientific journals– unfortunately, with some success.]
We don’t quite know yet what the “Nature trick” refers to — until we get Michael Mann to tell us why he has refused to reveal his never-published post-1980 proxy data. We may have to wait until we have him on the witness stand and under oath. But I strongly suspect that it has to do with absence of any temperature increase after 1980; its publication would have created a conflict with the reported (and problematic) thermometer data and with the assertion by the IPCC that humans are responsible for such a temperature rise.
In actuality, we now have adequate proxy data from other sources, most particularly from Fredrick Ljungqvist and David Anderson. Their separate publications agree that there has been little if any temperature rise since about 1940! However, there was a real temperature increase between 1920 and 1940, which can be seen also in all the various proxy as well as thermometer data.
Anti-Science
Michael Mann saw something he didn’t like in the Senate testimony (Jan 16, 2014) of fiercely independent climate scientist and blogger, Georgia Tech professor Judith Curry; so he decided to say something in his NYT op-ed. He forgot that often it is better to say nothing than to accuse Curry of peddling anti-science.
Curry has lost no time in taking Mann’s challenge and turning the tables on him:
http://judithcurry.com/2014/01/18/mann-on-advocacy-and-responsibility/#more-14347
“Since you have publicly accused my Congressional testimony of being ‘anti-science,’ I expect you to (publicly) document and rebut any statement in my testimony that is factually inaccurate or where my conclusions are not supported by the evidence that I provide.
During the Hearing, Senator Whitehouse asked me a question about why people refer to me as a ‘contrarian.’ I said something like the following: Skepticism is one of the norms of science. We build confidence in our theories as they are able to withstand skeptical challenges. If instead, scientists defend their theories by calling their opponents names, well that is a sign that their theories are in trouble.
Curry’s final message to Mann: “If you want to avoid yourself being labeled as ‘anti-science’, I suggest that you are obligated to respond to my challenge.”
War on Coal
It is interesting that Mann now plays the role of the victim in purported persecution by powerful interests, darkly identified as the fossil-fuel industry. Actually, the reverse may be the case. Mann has become a strong proponent of emission controls on carbon dioxide, which fits in very nicely with the ongoing War on Coal conducted by the EPA and the White House – and with the editorial policies of the NY Times — coal being the most prolific source of CO2.
It is ironic that while coal use is increasing rapidly in China and India, it is also increasing in Europe where governments have been anti-CO2 fanatics in the past but have decided to stop nuclear power, which emits no CO2 whatsoever.
In the United States, requirements are being set up to capture CO2 from smoke stacks of power plants and store it underground. Carbon Capture and Sequestration is a difficult and costly undertaking, and has never been demonstrated on a commercial scale. There have even been calls for sucking CO2 out of the global atmosphere, which sounds like an impossible task — and in any case, would be very, very expensive.
And to what purpose? As pointed out many times, CO2 is beneficial for agriculture. As a natural fertilizer, it accelerates the growth of crops. Czech physicist Lubos Motl has calculated that if it were indeed possible to reduce CO2 levels to their pre-industrial value, global agriculture would suffer a strong decline and billions of people would starve to death.
But perhaps this level of population control is what the climate fanatics are really after. They have always maintained that the Earth suffers from over-population and that the number of people needs to be reduced to protect natural values –a truly misanthropic scheme. In 1974, the ‘Club of Rome’ group published a detailed study, predicting that a billion people would die of starvation, beginning in the 1980s and peaking in 2010. One of the proponents of this thesis is now the White House science adviser.
******************************************************************
S. Fred Singer is professor emeritus at the University of Virginia and director of the Science & Environmental Policy Project. His specialty is atmospheric and space physics. An expert in remote sensing and satellites, he served as the founding director of the US Weather Satellite Service and, more recently, as vice chair of the US National Advisory Committee on Oceans & Atmosphere. He is a senior fellow of the Heartland Institute and the Independent Institute. He co-authored the NY Times best-seller Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 years. In 2007, he founded and has since chaired the NIPCC (Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change), which has released several scientific reports [See www.NIPCCreport.org]. For recent writings, see http://www.americanthinker.com/s_fred_singer/ and also Google Scholar.
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Alexander Feht says:
January 22, 2014 at 1:04 am
“If in a country, such as the United States, 300 million people can “support all the activities which lead to good living” (even if they agree to your definition of “good living,” and even if most of them agree that they have a “good living,” which they do not), then there is no need for much more people in order to achieve the same level of the quality of life.”
The siren call of autarky. Ask North Korea how that works out.
We would not be nearly as well off without trade with the rest of the world. Look around you and ask how many of the items you see which make your life comfortable came from foreign lands.
“Intellectual and entrepreneurial achievements of the relatively few people (tens of thousands, perhaps) resulted on the technological progress that allows billions of people to survive, even in the post uneducated, corrupt and enslaved societies.”
A) Those people are a given percentage of the population – reduce the population, and you reduce their number proportionately
B) They couldn’t have done what they did without the time afforded them to do so by others taking care of mundane necessities
Your claim that “the global climate has not warmed significantly for at least the past 15 years” need to be corrected. The “15 years ago” was the last major El Niño event in 1998 when the Earth was at the peak of a natural warming cycle, it can only be compared to the next major El Niño event when it comes around again.
Furthermore, the fact that a non-El Niño year, i.e. 15 years after the last major El Niño event, has the same temperature as the major El Niño event is in itself terrifying; humanity has warmed the Earth to the point that not even the power of the Pacific Ocean can return Global Temperatures to their norm.
The fact that a non-El Niño year has the same, or minutely higher, temperature as a year 15 years ago that was a major El Niño event, is global climate warming significantly not the opposite.
Population is a pyramid. Those at the peak can only reach as high as the base allows. Remove the base, and the summit topples.
TheLastDemocrat says: @ur momisugly January 22, 2014 at 7:43 am
A very nice summary. Thanks.
It’s not impossible, I have a friend who pulls tons of CO2 out of thin air every week and then sells it as dry ice. But it is very, very expensive.
It isn’t even very expensive. I have these things called “plants” on my property that pull pounds of CO_2 out of thin air every week and turn it into complex carbohydrates and proteins, at least during the spring and summer. Fortunately, a really significant fraction of the Earth’s surface is covered with these CO_2 removing devices, and still more of them thrive in the upper surface layer of the ocean. Furthermore, they have a natural tendency to ramp up their production of sequestered CO_2 in response to its bioavailability — basically concentration in the atmosphere. While they do give some of that CO_2 back on an annualized basis, some fraction of it falls to the ocean bottom or is turned into houses or is otherwise sequestered for a longer term.
The problem comes from doing it with something OTHER than plants, especially when it is being demanded by people who don’t understand basic thermodynamics and chemistry. CO_2 is a byproduct of combustion that is quite stable, the low-free-energy result of burning/oxidizing high-free-energy carbon or hydrocarbons. That burning releases energy, some comparatively small fraction of which is typically put to human use as organized work or transiently useful forms of junk energy e.g. electric light. To reverse this reaction and turn the CO_2 back into carbon and oxygen (for example) requires even more energy than was released in the burning process as it too never proceeds perfectly efficiently.
Other means of “sequestering” CO_2 without chemically transforming it are almost without exception going to cost more energy than was released by burning it in the first place as well. Burning a metric ton of coal produces three and a half metric tons of CO_2, and transforms a solid chunk with a volume of roughly one cubic meter to a gas with an STP volume thousands of times greater. The work done compressing the gas back down to order of one cubic meter again very likely exceeds the useful work obtained from burning the coal once a double penalty of efficiency is assessed. You might get enough energy burning a ton of coal to successfully compress the CO_2 it produces back down to a cubic meter of volume (assuming you could store it safely at the enormous pressure this would entail) but there wouldn’t be much, if any, leftover energy to use.
A slightly better idea would be to sequester plant fibers, letting the Sun provide the energy required. But in that case it would make still better sense to burn the plant fiber directly instead of mining coal and e.g. refilling the mines with wood.
The BEST idea is to find and develop economically competitive carbon-free energy resources and completely ignore coal burning in the meantime. You want to eliminate coal-based energy? No problem. Develop less expensive nuclear energy alternatives. Develop less expensive solar energy alternatives. Develop less expensive alternatives of any sort that you like and then stand back and wait for the free market to elect to use the least expensive energy resource because it saves money.
For this to work, of course, coal-based power has to be sold at an unsubsidized rate and forced to confront and pay hidden costs associated with its use such as producing soot, sulfuric acid rain, widespread dissemination of aerosolized mercury, and the human costs of mining coal. But by and large, that sort of thing has already happened — coal power plants have never been cleaner.
CO_2, however, is not a pollutant, and its long time “cost/benefit” is very much open to doubt (and controversial, as there are undeniable benefits that have to be balanced against the undeniable costs, if anybody ever successfully determines what both of these are at a level that might be called “undeniable”). Time, no doubt, will tell, but in the meantime trying to demand that coal burning plants accomplish the impossible, especially when it may not ever be necessary, will benefit no one.
rgb
rgbatduke says:
January 22, 2014 at 11:00 am
…”as there are undeniable benefits that have to be balanced against the undeniable costs, if anybody ever successfully determines what both of these are at a level that might be called “undeniable”
i.e.,
“…as there are undeniable benefits that have to be balanced against the speculative costs…”
Concision is a virtue.
Kuni Leml says:
January 22, 2014 at 10:47 am
“Furthermore, the fact that a non-El Niño year, i.e. 15 years after the last major El Niño event, has the same temperature as the major El Niño event…”
Wrong.
“Overpopulation” is just the ruse to get us to go along with all of this. But it is actually classism, all the way down.
Or, maybe, perhaps, overpopulation is a very real, very serious problem in parts of the world. I grew up in India, and my father worked for Ford Foundation, whom you bad-mouthed, creating the Green Revolution that has saved more people’s lives and improved more people’s economic status than you will save or improve if you live to be a thousand. I have visited India again more recently, and seen how the people who were living on the street when I was 10 have had children, grandchildren and great grandchildren in the meantime living on the same stretch of sidewalk.
India’s problem with overpopulation isn’t imaginary, and isn’t classist. There are just far too many people for the resources available at the time. Indeed, overpopulation and over-reproduction maintains the poverty cycle there and in China, which is why both of the governments of these countries have taken (very different) steps to try to interrupt the cycle, in both cases with significant success. As people break out of the poverty cycle, they generally self-limit reproduction, as they don’t need to have ten children to ensure that three or four survive to care for them in their old age, a process that is greatly aided by developing a social network that means that your own children are not your sole form of “social security”.
Worldwide, I generally agree that the Malthusian disaster has been averted because we have developed technology and agriculture even faster than the population has grown, although it has come at a significant expense. I would even agree that the best possible solution to the overpopulation problem that we do, really, have is to break the cycle of poverty and ignorance that produces it and perpetuates it. But dude, before you go around asserting that there is no such thing as an overpopulation IN THE SAME BREATH that you condemn as “Marxism” any steps that even might be taken to help people who live in crowded warrens in Mexico, in India, in Africa, in China, you might try visiting, say, Mumbai in India and taking a drive through town. Then you can consider just how you are going to help them move from the four story tenement built of bamboo and tin roof that has “organically” grown up between two tall buildings, housing maybe ten thousand people, all served by a single tap of water and a single large field that is their communal bathroom. Oh, and bear in mind — all of the property and land worth cultivating belongs to somebody already, and in any event just giving them something for free paid for by tax dollars or guilt-donations — isn’t that “Marxism”?
Sure, the planet itself has more than enough theoretical holding capacity for its 7 billion people, largely thanks to those evil Marxists in the Ford and Rockefeller foundations back in the 60’s, to US AID, to the advances in technology and science and agriculture that sustain them — hell, it can probably hold several times that and maintain a decent standard of living in principle — but those seven billion people are not uniformly distributed relative to the economically and ecologically sustainable levels of the environment, and somebody either owns everything already or else a resource is in the commons, openly inviting the Tragedy of the Commons if you permit its unlimited exploitation. So you can’t just go and move people and reorder society so that real overpopulation turns into the theoretically possible underpopulation that might ensue if you were king of the world and could make it so.
Or maybe one can — Lenin and Marx thought so. Jesus thought so, I guess (hard to know what, or if, Jesus thought about anything, except by complex chains of mythologized hearsay). But you aren’t going to make the overpopulated warrens of the world disappear by shouting that they don’t really exist and that any claim that they do is closet racism or classism.
rgb
rgbatduke says:
January 22, 2014 at 11:31 am
It’s not that overpopulation isn’t a problem, it’s that many of the proffered “cures” are worse than the disease, and infused with a “we must destroy the village to save it” mentality.
Thank you to all of the commenters who pointed out that I was talking nonsense regarding sucking CO2 out of the air. You are right, it is generated as a by-product of another process. As my friend said – “it’s only 400 ppm in the atmosphere”.
That’s how science works – an opinion is given, better-educated experts knock it down, and the numpty that opened his mouth learns something useful.
Once again, thank you.
rgbatduke – regarding India: I have not been there. Your expertise supercedes mine on what Mumbai urban areas look like.
However, here is the sickening deal: India has gone whole-hog over this population control-through-abortion-and-birth-control fantasy.
It was introduced and brought about by a planned campaign from the West. This is documented all over the place. A couple of leading places include: Connelly’s 2008 “Fatal Misconception,” and Hvistendahl’s 2011 “Unnatural Selection.”
This has led to the “missing” women in India, where the male-female birth ration has been thrown out of whack. Leadingly by the middle and upper classes who are paying for the abortions.
Your beloved India has a successful economic engine. They could have long ago begun addressing the welfare of the poverty classes, but have chosen not to.
For the leading portrayal of India in this “Population Catastrophe” scare, read what was read by millions in 1968: Paul Ehrlich’ Population Bomb. The opening of the book is Ehrlich describing a walk through urban India, as you describe. It drips with racism.
Where on earth might you rather expect a prosperous nation? I believe it is a toss-up between India and Mexico. Both have wonderful, industrious, intelligent people, have ample land for crops and for grazing, have snow-melt-based surface and spring water, have easy access year-round to warm-water ports reaching both the Atlantic and Pacific, sight-seeing destinations including archaeological sites, and both have amazing mineral wealth. India may exceed the natural wealth setting of Mexico by having navigable rivers crossing a greater portion of its land.
Yet the most poor in each country are far worse than in the United States.
My opinion is that it is all in the governance. The educated industrious middle-class Indians know they can come here to the States and do better than they could in India. And they do.
Along with my reading on this issue, I know and have talked with many Indians and Indian-Americans.
I don’t think the UN and Ford Foundation and Gates Foundation pushing more birth control and more abortion will make things better. But hey go for it.
There are easy and economical ways to sequester CO2 from the atmosphere and many people do so. Narrurally the committed green fanatics at their esconsed and secure high paying sinecures in the EPA, don’t recognize it. It has been going on for 10,000 years and it is called Agriculture, Silviculture and Ranching.
Despite the attempts to ignore and disregard the pioneering work done by a team of peer reviewed scientists working at Prnceton University at the turn of the 21st Century, the fact remains that the Western Hemisphere, and North America in particular, is the greatest CO2 Carbon Sink in the world.
They measured at showed that Air blowing in on the westerlies from Eurasia is heavily loaded with elevated CO2. As it reaches the shores of N. A., the California cities add a little to it, but California farmers remove lots of the CO2. But as is moves across the USA CO2 levels decline significantly, as it is sequestered in Pacific coastal forests, ranchland grasses, and then Midwestern Corn and Wheat fields. The CO2 levels rise a bit in the American Ruhr where so much heavy industry in concentrated, but then the level declines again, until it reaches the East Coast cities where it climbs a bit.
But it is highly depleted in CO2 levels as the Air exits into the Atlantic Ocean. The EPA green Fanatics refuse to acknowledge these facts. since they haven’t yet managed to coerce the mighty Oak and Pine to report the SEQUESTRATION on the “OFFICIAL EPA REPORTING FORMS”. So of course that Sequestration never happened. (Aren’t bureaucrats wonderful?)
The fact remain that American farmers, ranchers, husbandry men and loggers sequester more CO2 than anywhere in the world, and more than three times the Amazon Rainforests of South America. All documented in the Princeton peer-reviewed and published, scientific papers.
These Americans also grow wealthy doing so, and providing large portions of the Earth with food and fiber.
BTW, do you know that only America, a country that never recognized Kyoto, has reduced its CO2 emissions to 1990 levels urged by the IPCC and the good Doctor Paul Hansen, before he went completely round the bend? So by that treaty terms we can stop trying to do more, We have finished the job.
Bart says:
January 22, 2014 at 11:13 am
Wrong.
Then you should have no problem posting the link to the ocean heat content numbers also.
What? You thought that only land and sea surface temperatures were the only numbers? Or you thought that you could get away with pretending that land and sea surface temperatures were the only numbers?
Correction to my above post. Bart is right.
I should have originally said: The fact that a current non El Nino year has a very slightly lower surface temperature compared to a strong El Nino year only proves that we are warming the planet.
If one is rounding to the tenths of a degree there is no difference, but if one rounds to the hundredths of a degree 1998 is around 0.02 degrees warmer.
Kuni says:
January 22, 2014 at 4:11 pm
“Then you should have no problem posting the link to the ocean heat content numbers also.”
Pffttt! Ocean heat content. The Immaculate Convection rears its head again. The dog ate my homework becomes the ocean ate my heat. It is a flail of desperation.
Kuni says:
January 22, 2014 at 4:19 pm
Give it, Kuni. Godot isn’t coming. Temperatures have started the downward slide of the current natural cycle. AGW is toast.
Jimbo says:
January 21, 2014 at 4:15 pm
Janice Moore says:
January 21, 2014 at 4:05 pm
……………
(and don’t worry about repeating — we need to be reminded and, also, there are new readers all the time)
New readers is exactly why I repeat. 😉 Many missed these shocking facts as they have been fed garbage and lies for many years.
=====================================================
Well, as long as we’re throwing in a few re-runs for new readers…
Gunga Din says:
May 9, 2012 at 5:35 pm
Stopping by Yamal One Snowing Evening.
by Mikey Mann
What tree this is, I think I know.
It grew in Yamal some time ago.
Yamal 06 I’m placing here
In hopes a hockey stick will grow.
But McIntyre did think it queer
No tree, the stick did disappear!
Desparate measures I did take
To make that stick reappear.
There were some corings from a lake.
And other data I could bake.
I’ll tweek my model more until
Another hockey stick I’ll make!
I changed a line into a hill!
I can’t say how I was thrilled!
Then Climategate. I’m feeling ill.
Then Climategate. I’m feeling ill.
Kuni Leml says:
January 22, 2014 at 10:47 am
+++++++++
Just reading your opening comment, tells me that it is not possible for anyone to explain to you the meaning of things. But I will make this statement. “The IPCC, NASA and NOAA, are trying to understand why Global Warming stopped. All of the skeptics (read that as everyone else) already know that when we say the warming stopped, we mean that there has been no warming trend starting from today going back some years.
I have a new word for people like you –Refuser. I think I will trademark the name since it’s not been claimed by any other definition, but it’s pretty obvious what it means. You are truly on the fringes.
– – – – – – – – –
Michael Mann,
And the converse is “If you say nothing of substance, there is nothing to see in it.”
Also, please don’t act like a coward wrt the intellectual duel that Judith Curry directly challenged you too. Show some backbone Mikey .
John
Bart says:
January 22, 2014 at 10:42 am
A) Those people are a given percentage of the population – reduce the population, and you reduce their number proportionately
Aha! That’s why they had only one Mozart in 18th century, and now there are so many Mozarts that we all get to listen to Lady Gaga. Or, as old Soviet joke goes: “Under the repressive tsarist regime, there was only one writer in Toula region, Leo Tolstoy. And now, in the progressive socialist society, there are 242 productive full members of the Sovite Writers’ Union in the same region alone!” That’s the level of your “logic,” Bart.
B) They couldn’t have done what they did without the time afforded them to do so by others taking care of mundane necessities
Aha! That’s why most of the geniuses, inventors, and pioneers of all kinds were persecuted, mocked, and driven to poverty and madness throughout history. Because others supported them, took upon themselves all the menial responsibilities, and selflessly devoted their lives to create free time for those prodigies, so they could continue their groundbreaking work and creation of beauty. Squeeze up, Rembrandt, Galileo, Beethoven, Michelangelo, Champollion, Tesla and Schubert! You didn’t build what you created! What could you do without all the others (who poisoned every second of your tormented lives)?
That’s the level of your intellect, Bart.
MM: “If you see something, say something.”
JC: “I see no wolf.”
Alexander Feht says: @ur momisugly January 22, 2014 at 9:55 pm
And that is why I said we need to defund science and Universities. We normally are only funding the mediocre, the team players, the entrenched and not the genuises who are seen as a threat by established academia.
“Science progresses funeral by funeral.” ~ Max Planck
Kuni Leml says:
January 22, 2014 at 10:47 am
‘ … Your claim that “the global climate has not warmed significantly for at least the past 15 years” need to be corrected” …’
—-l
Just to clarify – do you claim that the global climate has warmed significantly for the past 15 years ?
– – – – – – – – –
Gail Combs,
Einstein said, “The only thing that you absolutely have to know, is the location of the library.”
I tend to agree with your original comment way upthread about defunding science and universities if you are implying that the fundamental pursuit of human knowledge should not be so dominantly dependent on political funding processes or subject to the fashionable ideologies of government bureaucracies.
John
Yamal was Briffa. Not Mann.
Fail.