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.
*******************************************************
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
And another fail.
Bristlecones = Mann
Yamal Mann
@Jeff – we all know of your expertise on tree ring samples. However the posts you keep “failing” are using what is commonly referred to as a “poetic license”. So the only fail is yours. For not understanding what the subject is.
Alexander Feht says:
January 22, 2014 at 9:55 pm
“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.”
Taste in music is a very subjective thing, but there are many, many accomplished composers in various milieus today. If things were so great in the 18th century, how did Antoine Salieri rise to the pinnacle of the music establishment? Do you have any idea what kind of music the common people were listening to in the 18th century? It wasn’t Le Nozze di Figaro.
You seem to be putting forth a theory that, the fewer people there are, the smarter they will be. That is rather crackpot.
“That’s why most of the geniuses, inventors, and pioneers of all kinds were persecuted, mocked, and driven to poverty and madness throughout history.”
Most? Cite, please? Leonardo and Michelangelo were the toast of the Vatican. Newton was president of the Royal Society. Bach was Kapellmeister to Leopold. Mozart, himself, had a very good gig going at the court of Salzburg.
Just because some had some rough patches, often of their own making, does not mean all or even most did. Besides, these were the times in which there was a small population such as you desire.
“That’s the level of your intellect, Bart.”
Ah, so the argument’s boiled down to ad hom, eh? Well, I guess we’ve reached the end of it, then.
John Whitman says:
January 23, 2014 at 6:44 am
“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.”
That would be ideal, but probably not practical. But, the process is self-limiting, even if it takes a long time for corrective action to kick in. One of the salutary effects of the Climate Fiasco, I hope, will be a more rigorous adherence to the scientific method, and less willingness to accept personal opinions of authority figures as established fact.
And, a greater understanding that computers are dumb machines which do not produce information, but merely manipulate it to be interpreted from a different perspective. Garbage in, Garbage out. Value in, value out.
If you see something, say something… Related to science this is sub-primates standard. Science means: If you see something, think, say something. A principle that you even can find (rudimentary) in the behavior of chimpanzees.
John Whitman says….
What I am saying is that if the wealth is left in the hands of the individual instead of taken as taxes then the individual can allocate funding as he sees fit. Most people including me give part of their income to charities and universities. Bureaucracies not only play favorites but waste most of the tax dollars. Actually our $$$ only go towards paying down the debt at this point. Our debit according to the debt clock is $54,424.28 per citizen.
We as a country can not afford to continue throwing money away so some academic can sit on his fat rear behind a computer simulating frog populations in the amazon under the threat of global warming.
If I want to take my share of federally allocated grant funds and toss it at thorium nuclear reactors then I should have that right and no green activist masquerading as a bureaucrat should be allowed to divert the funds into HIS favorite navel gazing cause.
The idea that the federal government should fund research is actually quite recent. This is not surprising because a reliable source of taxes was not available prior to 1913.
– – – – – – – – – –
Bart,
Thanks for your comment.
I think your thrust is based on your introduction into the dialog of a concept of ‘ideal’.
It looks like your context might possibly be that a pragmatic view is more realistic / rational, although you did not use the word pragmatic but instead used the word practical.
I am interested in any additional expansion of your context and conception ‘ideal’ along with any other concepts to which you might contrast it.
John
toWhere 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.
Probably a bit late to answer, but I prefer to view India as a country 1/3 of the US, less than 1/3 of which is at all arable or inhabitable, with a population 3x that of the US. Much of India is de facto desert for at least six months of the year, and what rain it gets it gets all at once during monsoon, where it is often destructive as much as constructive. During the dry season dust storms blow that are so dense that you cannot see more than a couple of hundred feet in them, reminiscent of what the US only has experienced during the Great Dust Bowl. In India that is business as usual, every year. Then there are the days that the sky overhead is clouded with locusts. Yes, I mean real locusts — oversized grasshoppers around the size of your middle finger — in numbers so great that they darken the sky. Hungry locusts. Finally, many of your “navigable rivers” are highly conditionally navigable. Even the mighty Ganges only flows in its deepest parts in April and May, and some years into June depending on the monsoon of the year (sometimes there isn’t much of one, sometimes it is so wet that the river floods the surrounding countryside meters deep, both equal disasters).
You might take a gander at things like this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/humanplanetexplorer/seasons/dry_season#p009bb3d
instead of visualizing a nice, damp countryside with deepwater channels all the way up to New Delhi and beyond open all year round. I’ve seen the Jumna river so dry you could nearly step across it. The Ganges proper does not usually completely dry, but most of the smaller tributaries can be shrunk to a trickle by the hordes of people who live along their banks, all thirsty for water where there is no water, none at all having fallen from the sky for six months straight and with temperatures soaring up to 40 C/104 F.
Finally, I have to say you have some sort of a bug associated with birth control and/or abortion. Are you a Catholic, by any chance? Is there some good reason to have ten children or abstain from sex entirely? Is there some particular reason to want the population of India to grow even faster than it currently is, having basically tripled in population since the 60s when I lived there? I’ll say it bluntly. India has 2 to 3 times more people living in than it “should”, if those people want to live a comfortable middle class life in balance with their water supply and reasonably spread out across its landscape. With sufficient wealth, perhaps they could engineer vast lakes in the middle of the continent, fill them during the monsoon, and hope that they would eventually moderate the climate of the entire subcontinent, perhaps they could desalinate the oceans and make the rivers flow backwards, but at the moment, those things do not exist and if you keep adding more people you are asking for disasters akin to the famous famines and droughts of the past — a stretch of 2 to 5 years where the monsoon fails is already going to be a death sentence to millions unless a miracle happens. And such stretches happen — with or without climate change, the monsoon is an uncertain thing and there is plenty of evidence of its past failures (often accompanied by enormous human misery).
And don’t you dare accuse me of racism. India is my second country and I love it. Its people are intelligent and capable, although that is true of all the people in the world or none of them as there aren’t really huge racial or national differences in the distribution of things like intelligence. But solving its population problem isn’t going to be simple, and it definitely isn’t going to be simplistic or just a matter of waving a magic wand and settling all the people on the streets of Kalicut or Mumbai out in the countryside someplace where nobody is already farming — because one can’t farm there, there simply is no water to farm with, too many months of the year. Wherever people can make a living in India, they already do, often at population densities too high for anybody to be making a comfortable or secure living.
Things are improving. Wealth, energy, technology, manufacturing, global services are all creating an upwardly mobile, mostly urban middle class. But this middle class is miniscule compared to the population, and little of this reaches out into the villages and rural areas, many of which are indistinguishable now from what they might have been in the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries.
rgb