Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Michael Mann, inventor of the “hockey stick”, wants to reassure us that we still need his climate research, even though a few weeks ago he said climate “tools” are “increasingly unnecessary”.
How the Right Wing Denial Machine Distorts the Climate Change Discourse
Several weeks ago, on June 17, I provided testimony about the threat of human-caused climate change to the Democratic Party Platform drafting committee in Phoenix, Arizona. Fittingly, my testimony was just one day before record heat struck Phoenix.
I am a climate scientist and have spent much of my career with my head buried in climate model output and observational climate data, trying to tease out the signal of human-caused climate change.
What is disconcerting to me and so many of my colleagues is that these tools that we’ve spent years developing increasingly are unnecessary because we can see the impacts of climate change playing out in real time on our television screens in the 24 hour news cycle.
…
My point—that we don’t need sophisticated techniques to identify the human fingerprint present in e.g. the doubling of extreme heat or the tripling (in fact) of western wildfire that we have seen in the U.S. in recent decades, ought to be clear to any honest observer.
It would be absurd to conclude that I was arguing that climate models and climate data are no longer necessary in climate science, especially given that they continue to form the bread and butter of my own scientific research (I’ve published over a dozen scientific articles using climate models and climate data during the past year alone).
So you can imagine my shock—yes, shock—that climate change deniers and conservative media outlets that serve as mouthpieces for them, would seek to convince their readers of just that.
…
What is the take-home message here?
As we head into the 2016 presidential election, it is clear that polluting interests and other bad actors are mobilized. They are doing their best to continue the attacks on science and scientists whose findings threaten their bottom line, to distract the public, to promote climate change denial propaganda and to support politicians who will support their agenda of denial and inaction.
The best defense is to study the positions of the candidates and make sure that climate action is at the top of your agenda when you go to the voting booth this fall.
Read more: http://www.ecowatch.com/right-wing-denial-machine-distorts-climate-change-discourse-1924120031.html
I cut out the boring part, the bulk of Mann’s article which details his theory that there is a vast right wing conspiracy which is trying to destroy him.
While it is true that right wing (and left wing) people have criticised Mann’s research, the reality is that some of Mann’s strongest critics were his fellow climate researchers, people on his own team.
The following comments from 2002 were written by CRU Professor Keith Briffa, who worked closely with Mann on his tree ring proxy climate reconstructions. The subject of the email appears to be the need to tiptoe around Mann’s ego when “setting the record straight”. The recipient of the email was Edward Cook of Columbia University.
Climategate email 2119.txt
… My overall opinion is that you are just about right in balancing firm response to get the record straight with a need to keep composure and preserving the probability of continuing constructive interaction with Mann (and his diminishing support). Perhaps the one point I would make though, is that you underplay the questionable nature of much of Mann’s verbiage ,in as much it is a response to imagined rather than real conflict between your Science paper and his reconstruction. Most of his comments I feel are addressing what he imagines (rightly or wrongly ) the greenhouse sceptics will say about recent warming after reading your paper , not what you actually say. … Mike could be a lot more open about the real uncertainty of his early temperature estimates (as we discussed in our first perspectives piece). …
Why would anyone need to mount a vast “right wing conspiracy” against Michael Mann, when there is public record that some of Mann’s closest colleagues seem to think much of what he says is questionable?
“How the Right Wing Denial Machine Distorts the Climate Change Discourse”
Shouldn’t this be
“How the Left Wing Denial Machine Distorts the Climate Science Discourse”
Why limit his description to being, “inventor of the ‘hockey stick?'”
He also invented the claim that he won the Nobel Peace Prize!
Okay. Now I’m really impressed! ;o)
(Good one, Michael.)
Par for the course for Michael “Carpet” Mann.
Type II diabetes with neuralgic disease.
“I am a climate scientist and have spent much of my career with my head buried in climate model output and observational climate data, trying to tease out the signal of human-caused climate change.”
The above states volumes and creates a great opportunity to “read between the lines”…….
1) He has spent much of his career with his head buried in output from his skewed data
2) He is desperately trying to find something – that is – too “tease out” any signal that I can stick on humanity
to prove the nonsense I spew to justify my continued funding over what I’ve told you is already
unnecessary.
Type II diabetes with neurologic degenerative disease.
“or the tripling (in fact) of western wildfire that we have seen in the U.S. in recent decades, ought to be clear to any honest observer.”
Is the frequency of forests burning down, regrowing and burning down again increasing? Is increased CO2 causing faster growth of forests and other greenery? How do these clever climate scientists distinguish between heat cause and greening cause?
They don’t.
or take account of poor forest management.. (controlled burns for example)
Forest fires increased because for decades the Forest Service suppressed fires, allowing huge fuel loads and underbrush to accumulate, then stopped supression and allowed it to burn. Both contributing to the problem.
And it was often done to protect the habitat of some critter that didn’t live there anymore anyway.
(I once saw a picture of a spotted owl protecting the nest it had built in a Walmart sign.
“We must protect old growth Walmart signs!”
http://www.fs.fed.us/ne/delaware/biotrends/trends33.JPG
http://www.fs.fed.us/research/docs/rpa/2000/rpaasses.pdf
Why only look at data through 2001? The data through 2015 is not nearly so supportive of your position:
Chris, why point out 2015 when the 1930s were running five times what 2015 is? Looks like pre-CAGW was MUCH worse. The 2015 figure is only a blip in comparison.
Jason, in the 1930s modern fire fighting equipment and procedures did not exist. No helicopters to drop in smokejumpers, no infrared systems to detect hot spots early on, no tankers to drop water or flame retardant. Smoke jumpers and fire observation towers were put in place by the early 1940s,which coincides with a sharp decline in acres burned. So it is entirely logical that the acres that burned would decline over the period from the 1930s to the 1960s. Why do you think the number of acres burning annually has gone up in recent years?
Why an increase? Probably there are many factors. If better fire fighting methods led to a decrease, maybe the funding cuts that were made to the Forst Service firefighting programs explains the increase.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/03/25/drought-wildfires-forest-service/2019743/
Budget cuts instead of the headline of the very article you posted? “Dry conditions have persisted in many of the areas ravaged by fires last year and bark beetles have invaded millions of acres in western forests, creating a tinderbox of dead wood.” Increased temperatures in the West mean drier conditions in the soil, which leads to trees which burn more readily. Bark beetles have spread because nighttime lows in the wintertime no longer kill off the larvae, causing the number of survivors to skyrocket.
Michael Mann produced the “hockey stick” which purported to show that the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age did not exist. His dubious statistical analysis of tree ring data was presented without a single word of discussion as to how (very well documented) historical and archaeological evidence about climatic changes through the last thousand years could possibly be reinterpreted. That’s not good science – if you are trying to refute well-grounded and widely held historical concepts, you need to address the evidence that led to those concepts being well grounded and widely held.
Instead, he was basically saying “my data show this, and everything that points elsewhere can be ignored”. It’s not really science, it’s polemicism. Although I believe that he managed to deceive himself before attempting to deceive others. And now finds it impossible to undeceive himself without destroying his self-image. Really, a very tragic figure, I can’t help feeling sorry for him.
The “right wing conspiracy” bothers me. I’m a born sceptic (probably not born, I must have learned it while studying sciences). Anyone who thinks of me as right-wing doesn’t know me, and I’m sure I’m not the only left-of-centre climate sceptic. “Conservative democratic socialist” is not a recognised term, but I would bet that there’s a lot of people who fit that label. We just don’t cohere into movements or parties. Or rather, the parties that could attract our support just don’t exist. I voted liberal in the last Canadian election only because they promised to legalise marijuana. I bet they don’t.
Smart Rock: “I can’t help feeling sorry for him [Michael Mann].” In the extremely unlikely event that I ever get so much as a hint of a twinge of “feeling sorry for Michael (squirrel-mouth) Mann”, could I borrow some sorrow from you?
“…Really, a very tragic figure, I can’t help feeling sorry for him…”
Pfffft. Check out the lawsuits he started and get back to me.
I use “Kennedy Democrat & Reagan Republican independant Libertarian”… as all three are roughly the same… and not like either the current Progressive Socialist Democrats nor the Crony Corporatist Republican Establishment…
I’ll take Bernie over Hillary OR Trump over {any establishment republican}. Does that make me socialist, conservative right wingnut, or just Pro-American Populist?
Mostly I’m just fed up with the D.C. Ripoff…
“I’ll take Bernie, etc…” — first time I’ve ever seen you write something foolish, E.M.
Here’s a Russian proverb:
“It would be absurd to conclude that I was arguing that climate models and climate data are no longer necessary in climate science, …”
YEP, and pigs will fly
http://www.mostpooh.com/uploads/Piglet-Mask_2.jpg
Hey now, Piglet and MM are not in the same league. Piglet has much more credibility.
Agree, any resemblance is purely coincidental
He didn’t set-out to make that argument, but he sure as hell made it.
‘over a dozen scientific articles using climate models and climate data during the past year alone.’
well that explains why all the court cases are getting no where , he busy pushing out epic levels of BS , as normal.
Nice to know Mann is feeling the burn, he must be a bit of a joke among most scientists in private. CRU were not fond of him to say the least.
Being dishonest and devious is not going to win you any friends, especially if you are a hack, you end up with other hacks, Schmidt and Mann don’t only think alike, both cast from the same mold if you ask me, both try lying their way out of being wrong, something I learned not to do at a very young age
>>polluting interests and other bad actors are mobilised.
I am still waiting for that Exxon cheque.
Is it in the post?
Ralph
Of course we need models. A model is an extended physical equation. It is a hypothesis of the behavior of a system. A good model with good data gives the output values that match measurements of the reality.
Climate modeling is in its infancy. Sun, ocean currents, clouds and water vapor are not well understood. Data is temporally and spatially deficient. Computers can’t have enough computing power for example to handle small but important things like tornadoes.
We can use models to test our assumptions and reject bad conjectures and keep the ones that match with the observations. No model averages but keep the Russian model and trash the GISS if data shows that.
Some things are fundamentally unsuited to computational modeling. Chaotic systems with ill defined starting parameters and divergent evolution, for example. Like weather and climate…
I ran a Cray Supercomputer center doing plastic flow modeling for a half dozen years. Using only ONE well defined fluid, at KNOWN temperature, injected into a precisely defined mold at SPECIFIED conditions of themperature et al; we still had 10% failures of the resultant dies and needed rework. That after about a 10 hour run and full convergence.
Now make it three fluids (air, water, watervapor / cloud) poorly characterized (salinity, mineralization, aerosols, humidity), add phase changes (ice, water, evaporation), have no real clue of the starting values nor how key parts work (clouds, water vapor, lunar tidal effects, etc), over ill defined surfaces for key parameters (roughness, thermal conductivity, evaporation, specific heat, permeability, etc), and leave out key bits (tidal and wind ocean mixing, solar variation of UV, etc.) and it is just a hopeless computerized fantasy.
And I’ve only listed a few of the problems…
True hence why even with all the computing power they have and all the education they go through they cannot predict the weather worth a dam more than 24 hours ahead .
In reality climate ‘science’ is full no unknowns, poorly knows and not well understood with the added factor of a level and accuracy of measurement, especially in the historic sense , that in other sciences would cause great concern and mean claims of ‘settled science’ would never be made .
But when your practising ‘heads you lose tails I win ‘ and your career depends on you given the ‘right ‘ not honest results , then you can see why none of that matters at all. And given all in the areas do the same and you see if fraud being rewarded and honoured, as in Lew paper , why change ?
EM,
Yes, attempting to simulate at that level of detail requires so much information to get right, it’s nearly hopeless. However; the LTE behavior of the climate in response to change, that is, the result after all the chaos if the state transition has averaged out, is much more predictable and dictated by basic thermodynamic laws. For example, in your fluid flow example, it’s trivial to predict what comes out one end of a pipe based on what goes in the other, but calculating the trajectory of each individual water molecule along the way from one end to the other and then summing up all the molecules to see how much comes out the other side is not.
Models are a good way of testing our understanding of chaotic systems where simple causal relationships do not work. Statistical correlations are not meaningful. The truth is that we don’t understand the climate system. We are are nowhere near to that.
Even though I agree with you about the problems. some of the models might be useful, interesting. A simple model with only a few parameters could tell for example is the cloud feedback negative or positive. Probable answer is that it depends which helps in further studies.
In forecasting the global temperature in 2100 I would start with a simple model that says that it is the current temperature.
I cut out the boring part, the bulk of Mann’s article which details his theory that there is a vast right wing conspiracy which is trying to destroy him.
OMG! Mr. Mann could be the perfect running mate for Hillary Clinton! The are both fighting a great right-wing conspiracy. (does that make both of them “conspiracy theorists”?)
As a bonus, neither is known for their integrity. What a match.
We Skeptics are tragically, grieviously, and hideously handicapped in our inability to see climate change, either with the help of sophisticated climate tools, or by simply turning on the tv, or looking out the window. I’ve been using the zen trick of studying a leaf, allowing my mind to go blank, to get in touch with my “inner climate”.
So far, I’ve been unable to, but I will keep at it, and report back.
This is the first poem I wrote about the “climate liars”. An oldie but a goodie.
Michael Mann
The Hockey Stick
There was a crooked Mann
Who played a crooked trick
And had a crooked plan
To make a crooked stick
By using crooked math
That favored crooked lines
Lysenko’s crooked path
Led through the crooked pines
And all his crooked friends
Applaud what crooked seems
But all that crooked ends
Derives from crooked means
Eugene WR Gallun
“I am a climate scientist and have spent much of my career with my head buried in climate model output” -now ain’t that the truth.
“I am a climate scientist and have spent much of my career with my head buried in …….. a place where the Sun does not shine?
It is true that a vast right wing conspiracy is trying to destroy him but that distinction exists only because the vast left wing conspiracists are ignoring his dull blathering. Conspiracies are not by default unfounded. – especially so in climate science where science is seldom practiced.
climate “tools” are “increasingly unnecessary”.
Maybe right, who needs climate science when Michael Manns Attorneys General settle the science.
“trying to tease out the signal of human-caused climate change”.
If he has to work hard to try to tease out the human caused signal, doesn’t that mean that there are other more easily detectable causes of a changing climate? And is he therefor implying that humans are not the biggest contributors to climate change? 😉
“The best defense is to study the positions of the candidates and make sure that climate action is at the top of your agenda when you go to the voting booth this fall.”
– Best evidence Manns position is political, science is but boilerplate.
This is no surprise as climate science hasn’t obeyed the rules of science since before the IPCC was formed. Once the IPCC was fomed, they canonized the idea that the rules of science need not be obeyed since the ends justify the means when its for the ‘greater good’.
That would require a vote for Trump.
Why spend all this money on Climate Models when you can get better results using Lord Monckton’s spreadsheet model? If you want to predict the weather, why not just buy the Old Farmer’s Almanac.
I am reminded of Justice Potter Stewart’s definition of pornography – I can’t tell you what it is but I know it when I see it.
Same with Michael Mann’s claim that we can see “Climate Change”. He can’t tell you what it is going to be, but he will know it when he sees it (or doesn’t see it).
Apparently the models that Dr. Mann has been using are all wrong and hence his research findings have been all wrong as well. What he needs to find are correct models that he yet does not have. There is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and Dr. Mann has yet to find any such evidence because it does not exist. A good measure of the insulating properties of the troposphere is the natural lapse rate which is unaffected by the LWIR absorption properties of CO2. Apparently Dr. Mann has ignored all the scientific rational that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is really very close to zero which is why there is no real evidence in the paleoclimate record that CO2 has any effect on climate.
willhass,
There is solid theoretical evidence that CO2 emissions have a finite effect on the climate. What is completely unproven and unjustified by either physical laws or measurements is the size of the effect claimed by the IPCC. While they claim a 3C +/- 1.5C effect from doubling CO2, most skeptics are in the range of 1C +/- 0.3C. Since seasonal variability can exceed 12C per hemisphere and natural variability in the global averages can vary by more than 1C from year to year, the few tenths of a degree in warming we can attribute to CO2 since the 19’th century is difficult to pull out of the data, especially since its only been in the last couple of decades that we can even attempt to make global measurements with enough precision, moreover; there is certain to be some natural long term trend in the data as the climate is always changing in one direction or the other (for example, entering and leaving the LIA is a natural change) and the average rate of change we see in long term averages extracted from ice cores and sediment cores often exceeds the rate of change observed in contemporary short term averages, including all the bogus adjustments.
There is no solid theoretical evidence, only partial science speculation. From first principals it can be shown that the convective greenhouse effect, which is a function of the heat capacity of the atmosphere and the pressure gradient is responsible for all 33 degrees C that the Earth’s surface is warmer because of the atmosphere. An additional radiant greenhouse effect has yet to be detected. Without a radiant greenhouse effect the AGW conjecture is nothing. For those that still believe in a radiant greenhouse effect caused by the LWIR absorption properties of so called greenhouse gases, I read a recent article that showed that the original calculations of the climate sensitivity of CO2 were too great by a factor of 20. Those that made the calculation forgot to include the fact that adding CO2 to the atmosphere causes the dry lapse rate to decrease which is a cooling and not a warming effect. Then there is the issue of feedbacks. Those that believe in the AGW conjecture have forgotten that besides being the primary greenhouse gas, H2O is a primary coolant in the Earth’s atmosphere moving heat energy from the surface to where clouds form via the heat of vaporization. According to some models, more heat energy is moved by H2O via the heat of vaporization then by both convection and LWIR absorption band radiation combined. H2O provides negative feedbacks not positive. These feedbacks have to be negative for the climate to have been as stable as it has been over at least the past 500 million years, enough for life to have evolved because we are here. A real greenhouse does not stay farm because of the heat trapping properties of greenhouse gases. A real greenhouse stays warm because the glass reduces heat loss by convection. There is no radiant greenhouse effect anywhere in the solar system including in greenhouses. If CO2 were such a good insulator then there should be some applications where such is the case but there are none. Theory that CO2 promotes warming is based on incomplete science and hence is science fiction.
Willhaas,
It’s only a radiative effect. GHG molecules absorb specific frequency photons, either emitted by the surface, other GHG molecules or clouds and then either spontaneously, consequential to capturing another photon or upon a collision, will likely re-emit another photon. The emitted photon can have a slightly higher or slightly lower energy than the original, where the difference is added to or removed from the linear kinetic energy of the GHG molecule in motion. It’s equally probably that the emitted photons are slightly higher or lower in energy, thus the NET effect on the velocity of molecules is approximately zero.
The photon can be emitted in any direction and most of those photons will be captured by another GHG molecule until one is lucky enough to get all the way to space contributing to the radiation emitted by the planet or all the way back to the surface which they do in roughly even proportions . The energy returned to the surface combined with solar energy sets the LTE surface emissions and the consequential temperature which will be larger than what solar power can do alone and the required emissions will increase by the amount of power returned to the surface by GHG’s (and clouds). The difference between GHG’s and clouds is that GHG’s are narrow band absorbers/emitters while clouds are broad band absorbers and emitters.
The reason convection is irrelevant is because it represents energy transported by matter, rather than by photons and only photons can leave the planet (rockets excluded). Energy transported by matter can only be converted into photons by BB radiation and for the emitting matter to be in equilibrium, it must be absorbing the same amount of energy as it’s emitting or else perpetually warm or cool. The energy transported by matter that enters the atmosphere can only be returned to the surface, thus this is another zero sum effect. Don’t let Trenberth confuse you as he conflates the energy transported by photons with that transported by matter.
O2/N2 emit nothing, thus have little influence on the radiative balance or the sensitivity, nor do they interact at the photon frequencies emitted by GHG’s. Only aerosols and atmospheric water (clouds) can emit BB radiation. GHG’s, including water vapor, emit photons in their absorption/emission bands which while not BB radiation, contributes equally to the equivalent temperatures (atmosphere/surface) on a joule by joule basis.
In the lower troposphere, the mean time between a CO2 molecule absorbing an LWIR absorption band photon and then re radiating it is about .2S. In that tine that same CO2 molecule will undergo roughly a billion encounters with other molecules exchanging energy with each encounter. In the lower troposphere, energy transport by convection and conduction dominate over energy transport by LWIR absorption radiation. At the top of the troposphere and beyond, energy transport by radiation becomes more important and much of that radiation makes it to space with an extremely low probability of it being absorbed directly by the surface. And yes you are right that clouds enhance radiation to space. If more CO2 really contributed to the insulation provided for by the atmosphere then one would expect that the increase in CO2 over the past 30 years would have caused at least a noticeable increase in the natural lapse rate in the troposphere but that has not happened.
Why hasn’t Michael Mann been indicted yet? Oh that’s right, the he’s been protected by the Church.
Mann has probably received “grants” from the Clinton Foundation.
Nahhhh… the Clintons don’t part with any of their loot, Steve. Their “foundation” is actually a collection basket.