Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Michael Mann, inventor of the infamous climate “Hockey Stick”, has written an article to promote his book, and to promote the idea that scientists are rebelling against the new Trump administration.
Climate change denial is not dead
BY MICHAEL E. MANN, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR – 01/31/17 12:10 PM EST
The era of climate change denial is over. Rejection of the unequivocal scientific evidence that carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are warming the planet and changing our climate is no longer socially acceptable. Only the most fringe of politicians now disputes the overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is real and human-caused, and they are largely ignored.
So why dignify the notion of climate change denial by writing about it?
Such was the criticism I received from many well-meaning fellow climate scientists last fall after I published my latest book, “The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy,” co-authored with Washington Post editorial cartoonist Tom Toles.
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It is difficult to keep up with this dizzying ongoing assault on science.
Indeed, that assault was enough to motivate my fellow climate scientists and me to participate in a rally at the annual meeting of the largest Earth Science organization in the country, the American Geophysical Union, last December. And now there is a much larger plan afoot for a scientists’ march on Washington next month.
We scientists are, in general, a reticent lot who would much rather spend our time in the lab, out in the field, teaching and doing research. It is only the most unusual of circumstances that gets us marching in the streets. Trump’s assault on science is just such a circumstance. And we are seeing a rebellion continue to mount.
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The obvious next step in this rebellion is mass resignation, to show the Trump administration that climate scientists cannot continue taking tainted money from a government whom they accuse of subverting science.
I look forward to reporting about all the heroic, principled climate scientists who rejected their secure academic tenure and fat government grants. No doubt Dr. Michael Mann will lead by example.
Until Mann makes his raw data and all algorithms for manipulating it into the hockey stick available to other researchers, what he is doing isn’t science, and he is not a scientist. Instead, he just makes an assertion, and then attempts by all means necessary (including life-ruining lawsuits) to shut down anyone who dares question those assertions. I’m sorry if this offends anyone, but the Catholic Church did the same thing with the Spanish Inquisition and the persecution of Galileo.
Two things. I am biased on this subject, and my mother told me that if I did not have anything nice to say, to not say anything at all.
After the warming accelerated a bit in the 1980,/90’s, we were told that the “science is serried” and “the debate is over”.
Then we went into a pause or hiatus in the warming……some might have called it a slowdown but there was widespread agreement for numerous years on the less warming for at least 15 years.
Then we found out that the temperatures during the hiatus that we tracked for 15+ years, needed to be adjusted and suddenly, just like the Medieval Warm Period was adjusted out of climate history with the hockey stick graph, new, updated temperature graphs showed there never really was a slowdown in warming.
Good thing the gate keepers of temperature data and records know how to adjust temperatures to correct all those errors we get from using raw data (-:
One of these days he will have all the time in the world to march in the streets, that and stand in the unemployment line.
The picture of this guy can’t be real . No one has a pointed head like that .
Glad it’s warming though .
Well, to his credit, never let it be said that Mann is not dedicated to “recycling”. He used this very same depiction more than three years ago, when he was defending Stocker’s choice:
Source: <a href="https://hro001.wordpress.com/2013/11/06/reticent-mann-skates-onto-melting-ice-reinforces-stockers-choice/ title="Reticent Mann skates onto melting ice, reinforces Stocker’s 'choice'"
Perhaps, the corollary to this is: “Once we’ve arrived at a conclusion – regardless of its “strength” – we’re never gonna back down”.
OTOH, I suppose it is possible that – in true climateering fashion – Mann has … uh ,,, redefined “reticence” and we must now add this word to the ever-growing “language laundry” list – along with “trick”, “decline”, “projection” etc. 😉
His theory was disproven by readings over the last 13 years.
Hilarious that he has the gall to open his yapper and talk about “extremists” that got it all wrong..