Steve McIntyre writes:
The Mann libel case has been attracting increasing commentary, including from people outside the climate community. Integral to Mann’s litigation are representations that he was “investigated” by 6-9 investigations, all of which supposedly gave him “exonerations” on wide-ranging counts, including “scientific misconduct”, “fraud”, “academic fraud”, “data falsification”, “statistical manipulation”, “manipulation of data” and even supposed findings that his work was “properly conducted an fairly presented”. Mann also represented that these investigations were widely covered in international and national media and thus known to Steyn and the other defendants.
In today’s post, I’ll look closely at the Oxburgh panel, one of the investigations cited in Mann’s pleadings. However, contrary to the claims in Mann’s litigation, not only did the Oxburgh panel not exonerate Mann, at their press conference, Oxburgh panelist David Hand, then President of the Royal Statistical Society, made very disparaging and critical comments about Mann’s work, describing it as based on “inappropriate” statistics that led to “exaggerated” results. These comments were widely reported in international media, later covered in a CEI article that, in turn, was reported by National Review. Moreover, information obtained from FOI in the UK a couple of years ago shows that Mann objected vehemently to criticism from an Oxburgh panelist, which he characterized as a “rogue opinion” and unsuccessfully sought a public apology.
Mann’s claim that the Oxburgh panel “exonerated” Mann on counts ranging from scientific misconduct to statistical manipulation to proper conduct and fair presentation of results has no more validity than his claim to have been awarded a Nobel prize for his supposedly seminal work “document[ing] the steady rise in surface temperatures during the 20th Century and the steep increase in measured temperatures since the 1950s.”
Read it all here:
jai mitchell says:
February 19, 2014 at 12:33 pm
Are you kidding me? Where did you get that idea? I would guess that you haven’t read the Marcott paper or at best not understood what you did read because the analysis has to do with error bounds over the entire series.
The lack of robustness is a separate issue having to do with an inability to relate the reconstruction properly to the modern temperature record. I love the logic in your statement: if someone tells you that part of something is terrible, that must automatically imply that the remainder must be excellent! Is that what one learns in climate science school? 🙂
OMG. Dufus just called the validation period (at which tree rings failed) a nit pick and a red herring!
Well, given that state sponsored political activists alter the historical instrument record at will, how much more so is it embarassing that the paleo camp and the instrument camp can’t get their lies to match up in the overlap?
so remember, even if the .2% to .5% is not robust, that means that 99.5% to 99.8% of the proxy record IS,/b> robust!
roflmao
Keep up the good work jai, I’m sure your comrades @ur momisugly sks pulling their hair out. (perhaps to empathize with mikey)
RomanM
I have read it, you bring up a non-issue when compared with the error range provided by the authors. Again, you are nitpicking. Your undue concern about this region of the graph, when it is well-contained within the error bounds of the results, is a method of substituting the idea of “uncertainty” with that of “doubt”. You are concern trolling and exaggerating the impact of this issue, as Dr. Marcott’s glib response to your query clearly shows. Since we now know what the range of temperatures are for the 11,300 years of global history is, with error bars that completely contain your issue with the content,, we know what the comparison with modern, and projected future, temperature increases will looks like.
Your argument, in this case, is a gross attempt to generate a false controversy, using exaggerated claims, to attempt to discredit another independent reconstruction of Holocene temperatures. You have to do this because, if you don’t, then the MANN hockey stick curve is further verified and the entirety of your “skeptic” argument is completely invalidated.
jai mitchell says:February 17, 2014 at 7:48 pm
“not to mention the plethora of subsequent studies using a multiplicity of other proxy sources and data that all reproduce the hockey stick curve.”
—————————————————
You left out the part about the input of random numbers also reproducing the hockey stick curve…
A Swing And A Miss…
jai mitchell says:
February 19, 2014 at 2:31 pm
This is probably the biggest pile of unscientific BS I have been unfortunate enough to witness. You have demonstrated neither sufficient knowledge to understand what the issues are here nor to understand their implications. Imagine a considerably less smooth reconstruction. Imagine a powder blue area in your linked image that could have a width of perhaps three times what it is now. That would be the result of making the changes that I have indicated.
Have I missed something? What “glib response” from Dr. Marcott are you talking about? As far as I am concerned, these are technical issues with the paper that need to be addressed since they are a reasonably serious invalidation of the main results.
I googled your name this afternoon and I ran across this particular quote in the first link:
http://wottsupwiththatblog.wordpress.com/2013/07/18/watt-about-global-warming-climate-change/
Did you write that yourself? Seems like this might be a bit of an exaggeration…
Mods: How come I keep getting put into moderation?
(posted several hours ago – still in moderation)
jai mitchell says:
February 19, 2014 at 2:31 pm
This is probably the biggest pile of unscientific BS I have been unfortunate enough to witness. You have demonstrated neither sufficient knowledge to understand what the issues are here nor to understand their implications. Imagine a considerably less smooth reconstruction. Imagine a powder blue area in your linked image that could have a width of perhaps three times what it is now. That would be the result of making the changes that I have indicated.
Have I missed something? What “glib response” from Dr. Marcott are you talking about? As far as I am concerned, these are technical issues with the paper that need to be addressed since they are a reasonably serious invalidation of the main results.
I googled your name this afternoon and I ran across this particular quote in the first link:
But really, it’s because if you want to know the problems with this Ed Hoskins post all you really need to do is look through the comments and search for those written by Jai Mitchell. Whoever Jai Mitchell is, they seem to actually understand the science very well and typically write comments that make sense and attempt to, quite politely, discuss the science and related data analysis.
http://wottsupwiththatblog.wordpress.com/2013/07/18/watt-about-global-warming-climate-change/
Did you write that yourself? Seems like this might be a bit of an exaggeration…
Could you please remove my last two comments (the one asking about moderation and the duplicate of the previously moderated comment) along with this one? Thanks.
RomanM
No, I did not write it, I don’t have any idea who that is.
I do know, however, that your supposed tripling of the error uncertainty for the marcott monte carlo series, because of proxy drop at the last 0.2% of the series, is beyond a gross exaggeration.
The raw data was made available to the public, They passed peer review. They have verified the original Mann series as well as many others. These are all individual points of reference. They come from varied proxy records including seafloor and lakebed core data, ice core data, coral records and tree ring density data. They come from varied locations all over the globe.
They ALL match, without significant deviation.
The modern temperature record is clear, the science is settled. We are on the edge of a massive shift in the climate. The amount of heat energy that has warmed the upper 2000M of the earth’s oceans in the last 8 years is enough to warm the earth’s TOTAL ATMOSPHERE by 38 degrees Fahrenheit. (10×10^22 joules)
This rate of measured ocean heat accumulation is growing at an exponential rate.
A doubling every 10 years or so.
There will be no adaption without significant mitigation efforts on a global scale.
jai m doesn’t seem to absorb what has been repeatedly said here, that the ‘plethora of subsequent studies’ supposedly confirming the hockey stick have an unholy dependence upon upside down varves and split bark pines. Let’s hope Mann’s legal team stays just as much in the dark.
This is a desperate and incorrect meme, the deconstruction of which further exposes the fraud.
=============
jai mitchell says:
“The modern temperature record is clear, the science is settled. We are on the edge of a massive shift in the climate.”
jai, have you saved any money? Say, ten thousand dollars?
If so, are you a betting man? There is a site called Long Bets that takes wagers. The winner gets his money back, and the loser’s money goes to the winner’s charity, with the winner getting the tax deduction.
See where I’m going with this? You say we’re on the edge of a massive climatic shift. That means by next year at this time, if you’re right global temperatures will surely have skyrocketed. Maybe by as much as 1ºC.
So, how about it? Are you willing to put your money where your mouth is?
Because I am.
jai mitchell says:
February 19, 2014 at 6:53 pm
You still don’t get it. The errors apply to the entire reconstruction and not just to any particular portion. Try reading what I wrote in the CA post linked to earlier.
Many of the people who write climate science papers lack the necessary skills to fully appreciate the nuances of the statistical procedures they use when they are analyzing their data. Peer review is no guarantee of the quality of a paper since it often is these same people who are doing the reviewing. Rather than blindly accepting anything that fits your alarmist viewpoint, you should be encouraging people to ensure that the published results are scientifically correct. To understand the true state of the world, we need good science not ideologically directed propaganda.
I understand that the current standard units for heat measurement in climate science are Hiroshimas (63×10^12 joules). 10^23 joules would then translate to 1587301587 H. That is so much more impressive.
I could us a bit of that to get rid of some of the enormous piles of snow around my home. 😉
Steyn posted his Response to Mann Amended complaint at
http://www.steynonline.com/documents/6109.pdf
Skip the boilerplate and jump to paragraphs #25, #103, then #111 and on.
He list 14 Affirmative Defenses and 2 Counter Claims.