People send me stuff. Readers will surely recall ‘I’m Michael E. Mann, Distinguished Professor of Meteorology at Penn State, Ask Me Almost Anything!’. A reader who does not wish to be named writes about the questions he posed. Readers probably won’t be surprised at the outcome. – Anthony
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I gave it quite a lot of thought, and asked three questions of Michael Mann during his Ask Me Anything on Reddit:
- Given the Oxburgh Panel’s criticism on your use of statistical methods and McShane and Wyner 2010 finding significant statistical lapses in Mann et al 2008, do you foresee consulting with statisticians before publishing future papers?
- Do you regret the splicing of instrumental data with proxy data in your Nature study, something that Phil Jones referred to as “Mike’s Nature trick?”
- Darrell Kaufman issued a correction after he discovered that your orientation of the Tiljander data set was upside down in Mann et al 2008. Do you regret reversing this orientation, and why have you not issued a similar correction?
Unfortunately, Michael Mann saw none of these questions.
And it’s not that that the questions showed up but were down-voted into oblivion by the users (seems to be a safe zone for alarmists). I half-expected that! What transpired instead was that the moderator blocked my comments from appearing entirely. Which was weird, because the only reason they should not have shown up is if I was posting spam.
The questions: (click to enlarge)
I contacted the moderator to inquire and his response was that my questions were “inappropriate” for Michael Mann.
The moderator action: (click to enlarge)
So when the moderator specified that “hard questions are allowed” for Dr. Mann, I guess what he really meant was that “hard questions are definitely not allowed”. And as to “inappropriate”, I can hardly imagine more appropriate questions!
What Michael Mann took part in was more along the lines of a puff piece or a public relations show than anything like an “Ask Me Anything.” I’m disappointed, but not surprised. And if Dr. Mann ever reads this, I imagine there are a lot of us who would love the answers to those 3 questions. And about a hundred others after that.
It boggles my mind that apparently intelligent individuals keep proffering opportunities for ridicule and derision on the twit…I guess it’s called hubris.
Mike McMillan says:
February 25, 2014 at 12:11 pm
What techniques or methods did you use to separate out the temperature component from the effects of precipitation variation and increasing CO2?
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The technique used is called “selection on the dependent variable”. Look for it on google.
What he did is select trees (dependent) based on temperature (independent). He called this calibration, and to those without a statistics background (read climate scientists) it all sounds perfectly reasonable.
However, if you have a mathematics background, which as I recall Mann does, then there is no mystery at all as to what the results will be. You are cooking the books in a fashion that the layman will not see. To the layman it looks perfectly reasonable. But to a statistician it is forbidden practice.
For the layman, the problem is best described as circular reasoning. If you give medicine to sick people and they get better, did the medicine cure them? You cannot be sure. The same problem with calibrating tree rings. The trees you didn’t study tell you more than the ones you did.
There’s nothing surprising here. nallen has no objectivity on this or any related issue and he’s the pawn of whatever instrument guides and pays frequent poster “pnewell”. The moderators in the science reddit are supposed to keep out stuff that isn’t directly related to new, peer-reviewed publications, but pnewell repeatedly violates these rules, and nallen lets him get away with it.
Maybe someone can explain to me why tree rings are significant proof. They use it in archaeological research, but it indicates the growth pattern of a tree it doesn’t predict climate forecasts. And it can’t be used as a generalization of all tree species growth around the world.
A tree will not grow if the temperatures and/or rain fall are not sufficient to maintain growth, like for deciduous trees in winter during a dormant state. Pines are evergreen of course, but they don’t grow in winter either. The mind boggles. Where did he conduct his research, in California, why not Alaska, ha, ha.
Courtesy of taxpayer funding, Mann has conspired to subvert FOIA requests & peer review. He hides, deletes and splices data/proxies that falsify his theories. His models contrast with reality to a degree that is breathtaking and are easily falsified by observation as well as historical records. There is nothing about this charlatan that bears a remote resemblance to science.
Yet not only is manbearpig still feeding from the trough supplied by US families, he remains a cudgel used to extract 10’s of billions of bucks a year to fight something that has not occurred for decades and, more ominously, to define breathing as pollution.
Not only has Mann et al severely damaged the credibility of any science related to climate, they have cast doubt on the motivations of any scientist that quietly sits back and allows this to occur.
Still waiting for the list of scientists that have NOT received taxpayer funding that DO believe in CAGW…
@bushbunny,
It’s even worse than you think. If your theory is that CO2 levels drive temperatures and you are using tree rings or any other plant based proxy to measure temperatures how do you get passed the fact that C02 directly affects plant growth?
Bill Yarber
Do you know how Master Graham Spanier is doing these days ? He was the “head” resident of my dorm house at Iowa State University back in the early 70s. The circumstances of his departure from PSU are no surprise.
Reddit’s so-called science forum has banned the anti-AGW viewpoint.
I think it’s time for reddit participants to look for a more honest forum, at least on science topics.
CO2 is a gas that trees transpire, and most living organism like human require too to live, the more plant life and humans we need nitrogen, water as well as oxygen and CO2. So how can he judge whether this relates to low atmospheric temperatures and during dormancy. Generally this is done at night time anyway regarding plants. As I asked where did he conduct his research? Where did the trees come from and what species was chosen, if they were Bristle cone pines, well (?) There was good research done years ago as These trees registered an influx of C.14 and C.13 (at times) that throws out Carbon dating so that’s why we have + and – on reports. Also there was an increase when they conducted atmospheric atom bomb blasts. It does not relate to CO2. Correct me if I am wrong assuming this.
@psion: …nallen has no objectivity on this or any related issue and he’s the pawn of whatever instrument guides and pays frequent poster “pnewell”…
Well, r/science mod Nathan Allen works for Dow Chemical, while AGW-spammer Philip Newell works for Climate Nexus (a Rockefeller-funded NGO).
Funny: On his Facebook page he’s complaining
“There appears to be a coordinated attack right now to bring down the rating (like vs dislike) of my recent @Reddit AMA:”
He doesn’t like to be disliked.
Michael “Porkroll” Mann is on the morning menu. Would you like fries with that?
Read much? Anth_ny reported questions posed by an unnamed reader.
Bill Yarber says:
February 25, 2014 at 9:11 am
I suggest you send these questions to the new President at Penn State and demand answers or the resignation of Dr Mann. If you won’t, I will.
Bill Yarber
PSU – AeroSp Engr
BS – ’69
MS – ’71
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Love that attitude from a Penn Stater. Right now, they can quietly count the grant money Mann has brought them. A little more transparency is in order, starting with publicly addressing legitimate questions affecting the University that Mann won’t address.
Reddit, L.A. Times – Is anyone, anywhere, keeping a running list of newspapers, bulletin boards, and blogs where “deniers” cannot post their stupid, inconvenient questions? This would seem to be a LINK worthy item for the side-bar for WUWT, among many other blogs.
“CENSORSED” AGW queries? Both anti-rational and anti-science entertainment for all!
We all ought to know that the Nazi’s policy of “Gleichschaltung” – or forced conformity of beliefs – has been resurrected by political correctness in today’s Institute of State “Science” policy.
richard says:
February 25, 2014 at 4:06 pm “”””
Damn!
However…..
AUDIENCE
Median Age: 31.2
Media HHI: $71,432
M/F: 55/45
(Source: Nielsen @plan rel 3 2011)
smells like fish (I also like the typo)
The skeptics from reddit are essentially blocked by nallen (Nathan Allan) and his band of echo-chronies from posting anything in the science subreddit. Anything that goes against the party line is removed ESPECIALLY if it has devastating evidence. Someone claims “superstorm” sandy’s storm surge was made much worse by sea level rise…they’ll delete your post showing the relevant tide gage. They specifically forbid any mention of “the pause” unless the article is specifically about the pause…so if someone claims warming over the last 10 years did X, the paper stands even though it is a verifiable fact that there has been no surface warming.
Originally nallen lied, saying there was no plot to remove all skeptical posts…but later he admitted in an op-ed piece that they had been systematically censoring skeptics for years. Oh, and one of the most prolific posters of climate alarmism is a self identified mouthpiece for a green propaganda group, climate nexus…with the blessing of nallen of course.
[snip – nope. The story is about Michael Mann and the questions posed by a person that got deleted. Your comments isn’t about those questions or situation, but snarky insults of our host – mod]
Let’s see if this gets through.
To the person who asked the questions: Good questions. But don’t ask Dr. Mann what he regrets. Clearly he has megalomaniacal tendencies, and appears to regret nothing.
Instead, ask him “can you scientifically defend the making of statistical claims based on the reverse Tiljander data?”, and “can you scientifically defend the grafting of actual temperature data onto proxy reconstructions while omitting contradictory proxy data for the instrument period?”
Your questions will sound less polemical and less emotionally challenging, and put the burden of science back onto the alleged scientist.
Hmm–I’m seeing a pattern here.
Mann oh Mann.
Is it just me? Or does this character and his sycophants seem to have emerged, whole cloth, from a Gilbert & Sullivan musical?
“i am the very model of a modern major mumbler?”
Like I keep snickering, flatter this mann, keep him talking, lights camera, blather on…
Is he really on side with the Great Cause?
Or is he ours?
As Pointman insinuates.
“Well, r/science mod Nathan Allen works for Dow Chemical.”
The leftist, progressive, Obama type response would be to hit up the various Dow Chemical websites and facebook pages asking if Dow Chemical does science the say way Nathan Allen does. Not that us super well funded skeptics would ever stoop that low.
This phenomenon of selectively answering questions has been around for eons. Most who don’t attend events such as this regularly won’t see it or understand how it happens.
We’re taught to believe that people in general are fair and even handed. That’s a nice grade school notion but hardly the truth as we age. I believed that until I attended university and went to sessions with various “famous” people. The question and answer sessions at the end were heavily moderated and questions were all pre-screened. There were and are never any hard questions. There are never any questions allowed that might diminish the appearance of intelligence and integrity of the speaker.
The funny thing about the internet is that it’s supposed to be a place of free exchange of ideas, seemingly unburdened by the biases of “those in power”. Nothing could be further from the truth. It appears Reddit is nothing more than a place for dissemination of “fun” ideas. Anything that is complex or could prove controversial will be sanitized. And that’s pretty terrifying in its own right.
I just sent my letter to the President-Elect Dr Barrow containing these three questions and wishing him good luck in his new position. I encourage everyone on this board to do the same.
Bill
jauntycyclist linked to a “Democracy Now” video and wrote, “to be fair muller did change his mind.”
Not really, JC.
Democracy Now is an openly “progressive” channel, and Amy Goodman slavishly toes the Party Line. She begins that report with a whopper of a lie: at seven seconds into the video she calls Muller “one of the country’s most prominent global warming skeptics.”
But Muller was never a global warming skeptic at all, let along one of the most prominent. In fact, in his lecture about Mann’s fraud Muller says Mann’s was the group he (Muller) “trusted the most” (until the Climategate revelations). Those are not the words of a “global warming skeptic.”
The only “global warming skeptical” thing Muller that ever did was denounce Michael Mann’s fraud, and to my knowledge Muller has never retracted that denouncement.
Even after learning of Mann’s fraud, Muller didn’t say that he believed that the alarmists conclusions were wrong, only that he was appalled at Mann’s scientific misconduct, and didn’t trust their work.