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?
Some perspective: today at work we are going to observe a minute’s silence for the Nice victims. All I can do as a simple citizen is to channel the anger I feel into doubling my efforts to unmask frauds like Mann and his kind.
Test
“Fittingly, my testimony was just one day before record heat struck Phoenix.”
Anyone who refers to “heat” when they mean temperature is automatically ignored.
Almost as bad as “forcing”!
SimonJ
Michael Mann, (not related to Thomas or Heinrich, they are truly writers of FICTION which they happily acknowledged) writes: “we can see the impacts of climate change playing out in real time on our television screens in the 24 hour news cycle.”
The 24 hour cycles and aggregating them for week to week, month to month even, year to year IS NOT CLIMATE. What he speaks of is WEATHER. Simply. To tell people, that weather “anomalies” (is – or are – there a standard/s/ EVERYWHERE, for millenia, or what???) are climate and that it is ill-conceived (by humans!!) and evil (??) is more than lies. It is religion, or not even that. Simple superstition.
Mann, Michael, and all the others will shine in the history book of humanity, though. As those, who inspired REAL scientists and “helped” to realise what are the REAL problems and how to solve them.
Some might say that he’s doing a pretty good job destroying himself.
Right Wing Denial Machine
Interesting phrase, is this Michael Mann admitting he is a leftwing tool.
Anybody who points to wildfires in Western North America as evidence of CAGW is a shaman and an abject fraud.
And this can be demonstrated in very short order using only the simplest of terms to anybody who cares to listen.
That party meeting he attended and testified to in Phoenix is the real power play that runs the country and the Nexis of political climate science. Everything else is just the usual personality nonsense of American elections as far as the media hype goes. We also need a cost analysis of those party planks.
Would anyone in the party audience have a clue what to fact check on Micheal Mann, or is fact checking even allowed?
He was just sucking up to Hillary with the right wing conspiracy language. What job is he looking for now?
“I am a climate scientist and have spent much of my career with my head buried….”
Couldnt resist.