Twenty years ago today: The infamous “hockey stick” graph that crystalized global warming and ignited the climate wars was published, and became known as MBH98. The science in it was so bad, it is credited with spawning the modern climate skeptic movement.
Michael E. Mann writes in the formerly Scientific American:
Two decades ago this week a pair of colleagues and I published the original “hockey stick” graph in Nature, which happened to coincide with the Earth Day 1998 observances. The graph showed Earth’s temperature, relatively stable for 500 years, had spiked upward during the 20th century. A year later we would extend the graph back in time to A.D. 1000, demonstrating this rise was unprecedented over at least the past millennium—as far back as we could go with the data we had.
Although I didn’t realize it at the time, publishing the hockey stick would change my life in a fundamental way. I was thrust suddenly into the spotlight. Nearly every major newspaper and television news networkcovered our study. The widespread attention was exhilarating, if not intimidating for a science nerd with little or no experience—or frankly, inclination at the time—in communicating with the public.
Nothing in my training as a scientist could have prepared me for the very public battles I would soon face. The hockey stick told a simple story: There is something unprecedented about the warming we are experiencing today and, by implication, it has something to do with us and our profligate burning of fossil fuels. The story was a threat to companies that profited from fossil fuels, and government officials doing their bidding, all of whom opposed efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As the vulnerable junior first author of the article (I was a postdoctoral researcher), I found myself in the crosshairs of industry-funded attack dogs looking to discredit the iconic symbol of the human impact on our climate…by discrediting me personally.
In my 2013 book, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines, I gave a name to this modus operandi of science critics: the Serengeti strategy. The term describes how industry special interests and their facilitators single out individual researchers to attack, in much the same way lions of the Serengeti single out an individual zebra from the herd. In numbers there is strength; individuals are far more vulnerable.
The purpose of this strategy, still in force today, is twofold: to undermine the credibility of the science community, thus impairing scientists as messengers and communicators; and to discourage other researchers from raising their heads above the parapet and engaging in public discourse over policy-relevant science. If the aggressors are successful, as I have argued before, we all lose out—in the form of policies that favor special interests over our interests.
Read the rest of Dr. Mann’s “poor me” pleading here (or not)
In the meantime, Climategate happened in November 2009, along with “Mike’s Nature Trick”
So far one of the most circulated e-mails from the CRU hack is the following from Phil Jones to the original hockey stick authors – Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley, and Malcolm Hughes.
From: Phil Jones
To: ray bradley ,mann@xxxxx.xxx, mhughes@xxxx.xxx
Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000
Cc: k.briffa@xxx.xx.xx,t.osborn@xxxx.xxx
Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,
Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or
first thing tomorrow.
I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps
to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from
1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual
land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land
N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999
for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with
data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.
Thanks for the comments, Ray.
Cheers
Phil
Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) xxxxx
School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) xxxx
University of East Anglia
Norwich Email p.jones@xxxx.xxx
NR4 7TJ
UK
The e-mail is about WMO statement on the status of the global climate in 1999 -report, or more specifically, about its cover image.
Back in December 2004 John Finn asked about “the divergence” in Myth vs. Fact Regarding the “Hockey Stick” -thread of RealClimate.org.
Whatever the reason for the divergence, it would seem to suggest that the practice of grafting the thermometer record onto a proxy temperature record – as I believe was done in the case of the ‘hockey stick’ – is dubious to say the least.
Mike’s response speaks for itself.
No researchers in this field have ever, to our knowledge, “grafted the thermometer record onto” any reconstrution. It is somewhat disappointing to find this specious claim (which we usually find originating from industry-funded climate disinformation websites) appearing in this forum.
But there is an interesting twist here: grafting the thermometer onto a reconstruction is not actually the original “Mike’s Nature trick”! Mann did not fully graft the thermometer on a reconstruction, but he stopped the smoothed series in their end years. The trick is more sophisticated, and was uncovered by UC over here.
When smoothing these time series, the Team had a problem: actual reconstructions “diverge” from the instrumental series in the last part of 20th century. For instance, in the original hockey stick (ending 1980) the last 30-40 years of data points slightly downwards. In order to smooth those time series one needs to “pad” the series beyond the end time, and no matter what method one uses, this leads to a smoothed graph pointing downwards in the end whereas the smoothed instrumental series is pointing upwards — a divergence. So Mann’s solution was to use the instrumental record for padding, which changes the smoothed series to point upwards as clearly seen in UC’s figure (violet original, green without “Mike’s Nature trick”).
TGIF-magazine has already asked Jones about the e-mail, and he denied misleading anyone but did remember grafting.
“No, that’s completely wrong. In the sense that they’re talking about two different things here. They’re talking about the instrumental data which is unaltered – but they’re talking about proxy data going further back in time, a thousand years, and it’s just about how you add on the last few years, because when you get proxy data you sample things like tree rings and ice cores, and they don’t always have the last few years. So one way is to add on the instrumental data for the last few years.”
Jones told TGIF he had no idea what me meant by using the words “hide the decline”.
“That was an email from ten years ago. Can you remember the exact context of what you wrote ten years ago?”
Maybe it helps Dr. Jones’s recollection of the exact context, if he inspects UC’s figure carefully. We here at CA are more than pleased to be able to help such nice persons in these matters.
Nature’s famous “Mann Trick”. The Climate-gate emails revealed that the usual suspects used to joke about it with each other, such was their contempt for Science. Worse still, it encouraged a younger generation to think it was OK to do this sort of thing.
Which reminds me. How is Dr. Mann’s litigation against Mark Steyn et al going in The Federal Court in Washington,D.C.?
I must re-read “ Steyn’s “ A Disgrace to the Profession”.
I wonder who will front for Mann to defend the legitimacy of the Hockey Stick in court?
My guess is that Mann saw an opportunity to become famous, go down in history. It is one reason why some get into science. They dream of being an Einstein, Darwin, Galileo, etc. They are looking for a form of immortality. UN-IPCC reports were in the second edition but not selling too well if I remember correctly. A “pretty, simple picture” showing how dire AGW is what was needed in Mann’s mind. Something all the news media would run with and plaster all over. I doubt the media that ran it at the time ever even asked what an anomaly was or noticed that even if you believed Mann’s hockey stick that it was only talking about a little more than half a degree. They certainly didn’t ask how one determine temperature of the Earth from a tree ring.
IMO, you are correct. Mann is a small man with a poor grasp of how science works. He will get his fame, however, right up there with the Piltdown hoax, as a total disgrace to his chosen profession. It is ironic that he hails from Penn State….
Here is what is being taught to our kids. Arg!, https://www3.epa.gov/climatechange//kids/documents/tree-rings.pdf
Seems pretty reasonable.
The unreasonable part is disentangling the precipitation and the other conditions.
The hockey stick is the result of multiple mathematical errors that are not well recognized in the social sciences.
The most significant error is “tree ring calibration”. This is better known as “selecting on the dependent variable”.
The problem is that a statistics rely on a sample being random. But when you calibrate tree rings you no longer have a random sample.
As a result your statistical methods return bogus results. this amplified the instrument signal post 1850 and amplified the noise pre 1850, resulting in a hockey stick shape regardless of the proxy data.
It didn’t matter what data you used. Tree rings or any random garbage numbers. If you calibrate you end up with a hockey stick shape.
Mann had to make sure they didn’t ‘dilute the message’, ‘provide fodder for skeptics’, hand over data ‘so they could find something wrong with it’, and if they did it would result in ‘pure scientific fraud’.
Some more candy for the kids. I am sick. How is it possible to stop this indoctrination?
https://climatekids.nasa.gov/climate-change-evidence/
Have you read it? Hard to argue with any of it I would have thought.
This is an error.
Have a look at what the real temperatures from the UK MET Office.
Although NASA are correct when tey say that the wotrld has warmed since teh end of the LIA adn thus t s warmer now than then.
But that is not what NASA says here:
Hard to agree with any of that from a reality-based point of view.
If you had nothing else to go on, no other evidence, I can see why you might look at tree rings. But there is other evidence, so why oh why was Manns nonsense ever given the weight it was ? why was the more substantial evidence submerged ?
Easy, because he gave the IPCC what they needed to get the pols on board. There is ample evidence that the MWP and LIA happened and were not isolated instances. That was all I needed to spot a bogus graph. But it was reassuring that McIntyre and McKitrick
showed up the maths as being hinky.
Because he gave “climate science” what its voodoo practitioners wanted, ie to “get rid of the Medieval Warm Period”, which, with the Roman, Minoan and Holocene Optimum WPs, were all hotter than the Modern WP, without benefit of current CO2 levels.
The NASA kids education page has always made me sick.
Start ’em early, keep ’em stupid, and enlist ’em to get more funding, when they grow up.
And they say science self-corrects.
Only a statistically illiterate reviewer would have ignored the sudden reduction of variability of this signal (sigma/mean) during the hockey stick. Now after spending trillions of dollars, this obvious massaged data will be put to fake cemetery. Yet the instigator, just like Harvey Weinstein, is roaming free, claiming innocence and laughing at our gullibility.
I would dearly love someone expose the names of these now infamous reviewers. May they rot in hell.
It is quite possible climate researchers like Jones were selected to do the review and were simply out of their depth to spot the problems in the math.
I have met many people over the years that cannot for the life of them follow why calibration is a problem mathematically.
Two years ago there was another temperature reconstruction that again used a form of calibration.
People have a very hard time grasping the problem. And even when they do they fail to recognizes that they have managed to create another variation of the problem in their own work.
it would not surprise me at all to find that the reviews were done in good faith. Incompetence is much more common than malice.
“it would not surprise me at all to find that the reviews were done in good faith. Incompetence is much more common than malice.”
Yes, I agree, but when the error is pointed out by so many and in such easily-understood language, the honest incompetent is likely to backpedal and admit his error. This is where the malice creeps in; Mann is totally convinced of his rightness and righteousness. He is unlikely ever to admit he made a boo-boo. When he is cornered he lashes out with a vigor usually reserved for cornered Wolverines or Badgers….
The problem with tree ring calibration is that the error is counter intuitive. It seems like a good idea to give some tree ring greater weighting than others. Based on how reliably they appear to follow temperature.
Similarly it seems like a good idea to give those patients that took the medicine greater weighting than those that didn’t.
The problem is the patients may not be responding to the medicine and the trees may not be responding to temperature.
By excluding the negative cases and only including the positive cases there is no way to know.
Some of the greatest blunders in science have resulted from this error, because it yields false positives/negatives to almost every hypothesis. yet it sees so logical.
random numbers fed into that program would yield a hockey stick every time…….
random numbers
=========
Exactly. Which M&M verified.
Most people drink water shortly before they die. Therefore water kills most people.
Do Michael Mann and Hillary Clinton give each other tips on how to be the biggest BS artist and worst pitiful losers in the history of the universe?
I don’t agree with some of the things Mann has said, and he tends to focus on his sob story too much. I don’t think he’s a good representative of scientists. I think if there were errors in the hockey stick graph he should have come out and admit them. He was just a postdoc at the time, so it’s not like his life would have been ruined, but on the other hand the graph was so widely publicized, it would be hard to admit. Errors are one thing, fraud is another. Since the graph has been reproduced with many data sets since, it’s not really a big deal if there were mistakes in the first. Then again, presumably the investigators went through that, too. I’m not fully convinced there errors, even though I’ve read McKitrick (2014). That paper ended,
“I suspect that the whole episode has wider social significance as an indicator of a rather defective aspect of early 21st century scientific culture.”
and to me this makes the whole assessment suspect. Anyone who makes a statement based on one incident is intentionally spreading an opinion that has no basis in fact, but at the end of a scientific paper it has the veneer of authority. This is an abuse of the authority of science no less that it would be for a Jones or a Mann or a Schmitt to say at the end of one of their research papers, “I think my analysis of the Soon research shows that contrarian scientists are all in the pocket of Big Oil.” It is not appropriate, nor is it right, and neither was McKitrick’s comment. It also talked about interviews and testimony, characterizing one excerpt thusly:
“Translation: … Yes. When we removed them the graph collapsed and the statistical scores went to zero.”
Yeah, sure. That’s what he said. This is a “translation” of a short excerpt from a long comment. In English.
……………………………………………
To me it seems as if the skeptic community is so bent on believing the mainstream scientific community is corrupt, they won’t believe the evidence otherwise. The fact that 8 investigations all cleared CRU of scientific misconduct means nothing. Too many believe someone’s interpretation of email excerpts rather than wonder what the full story is. They believe the superficial rather than the deep.
I don’t know the full story. I’m not enough of a statistician to assess that argument. I agree that there was poor handling of data and source code (although things were different then, and part of the problem was evidently about someone else’s intellectual property rights, and i can understand getting frustrated handling endless requests…the whole department wasn’t set up well to deal with requests), but the good thing is that it led to the wide, easy availability of other data.
This happened 20 years ago. One incident. There is no reason to believe it’s indicative of general corruption. Although there have plenty of accusations of fraud and corruption since, there is nothing to support them. They come from outside the mainstream climate science community and are never proved, never published, and in my experience rely on poor understanding of background research and scientific rationale.
It’s one thing to have reservations about model projections, and a whole different issue believing scientists are generally not trustworthy and have little integrity – and that it applies only to scientists who support CAGW theory. That’s just not a reasonable, evidence-based stance.
Kristi, you are an idiot! The Hockey Team is as corrupt as they come and giving any of them the benefit of the doubt is foolish. I fail to understand why you continue to troll this website. If I were in charge, you would have been black-listed a long time ago. You add nothing to the conversation, you insist that the rest of us are in error, and you refuse to back down, no matter how many rebuttals you get. This is two martians talking but I do believe I would say the same without their help!
pameladragon,
I am not an idiot. I am trying to use reason. I’m admitting I don’t know some things, which to me makes me the opposite of an idiot – idiots don’t know their limitations.
I don’t insist the rest of you are in error. That’s not what I’m trying to get across at all. My main message is that many here are being influenced toward an extremely biased view of things, and they don’t realize it.
I don’t have to imagine some conspiracy, I see the evidence here every day. I don’t think it’s right.
I care about America. There is a terrible gulf between “us” and “them,” and I don’t think it’s healthy for our nation. Nor is it healthy to lose trust in the scientific community. I want to be able to do something about it, and the only way I can think of is to put a seed of skepticism in people’s minds by urging them to be aware l of the ideas they are exposed to, the assumptions and misinterpretations. I don’t do it very well, I guess.
You would have blacklisted me.
Anthony hasn’t, and I appreciate that. It’s a good value. I’m trying to talk to him, too. I would like him to make the site more welcoming to alternative views; the main writers tend to nurture fanaticism through their annotations and comments. But it’s his site, so I don’t really expect to have an influence.
I come here to learn. I follow up, explore the evidence – I read McKitrick, and Willis’s article he submitted. Almost all my knowledge of climate and the debate has been through participating here and at Breitbart…and that has only made me more cognizant of the influences at work, on both sides.
I’m not diplomatic, I know. But I’m not a troll.
And I’m certainly no idiot, pameladragon.
pameladragon
I thought her response (unlike yours) was quite thoughtful and respectful. Kristi is quite correct I think. Many have tried to disprove the hockey stick all have failed. Yes there were errors, but the basic premise was right. Recent warming is significant. And as you will know Mann’s work has been reproduced many times. Probably the most famous was the work done by BEST. You will remember that was the study skeptics were going to accept irrespective of what it threw up. Up popped another hockey stick and suddenly the BEST team were the enemy.
Anyway all this is kind of irrelevant (although historically interesting) given the earth has shown a steep warming lately, the ice is still melting and the sea is rising.
Kristi Silber April 23, 2018 at 11:32 pm
“I care about America. There is a terrible gulf between “us” and “them,” and I don’t think it’s healthy for our nation. Nor is it healthy to lose trust in the scientific community.”
Good luck with that. What sort of nation puts a guy like Scott Pruitt in charge of the EPA (Environmental Pollution Agency). Probably the most corrupt politician around at the moment.
[???? .mod]
“Nor is it healthy to lose trust in the scientific community. I want to be able to do something about it”
if that is true, what you can do about it is to stop ignoring and/or defending the malfeasance in the scientific community that has lead to that distrust and start holding those in the scientific community accountable for their actions and insist that pal reviews, gatekeeping, hiding declines, refusing to release data and methods, etc is not acceptable.
Kristi; if you do not know the full story then you should stop commenting. Many, many people over the last 20 years have dug deeply into the processes and procedures used by Mann and others. This was not some post-doc mistake. This was deliberate fraud that continue to be propagated and defended by naive and uninformed people such as yourself. These people have hoisted themselves on their petards. The actions over the last 30 years and their words define them as fraudsters who should be prosecuted by their Universities and government funders.
Tim F,
You don’t know the full story, either, and you are naive to think you do.
Sure, many have said they’ve found terrible misconduct. But do they also tell you that Mann and co. were trying to address a problem of ethics in the scientific community that involved skeptic scientists? One that ended in the resignation of two journal editors? Or is that an incident that was twisted around to make it look like Mann was silencing skeptics? Have you really looked into it?
I’m not here to defend Mann. I’m sick of people using this incident as an excuse to say science is full of fraud.
[???? .mod]
Kristi, there you go again.
Nobody uses this one incident as proof that the science is a fraud.
We have hundreds of examples that prove that.
“this incident”, while certainly the most (in)famous, is merely the tip of the corrupt iceberg.
Kristi Silber wrote, “Mann and co. were trying to address a problem of ethics in the scientific community that involved skeptic scientists? One that ended in the resignation of two journal editors?”
The problem wasn’t ethics, the problem was apostasy.
In 2003, after Soon and Baliunas published a skeptical paper, Mann sought retribution against them, and against the journal editors who allowed their paper to be published.
Then, in 2005, McIntyre & McKitrick published “the paper that busted Mann’s Hockey Stick,” Hockey Sticks, Principal Components and Spurious Significance, Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 32, No. 3, L03710. doi:10.1029/2004GL021750.
Here Wigley says if GRL Editor James Saiers is a skeptic they should get him ousted:
http://www.sealevel.info/FOIA/1106322460.txt
After Saiers stepped down, Mann says the GRL “leak” is “plugged.”
http://www.sealevel.info/FOIA/1132094873.txt
Michael Mann also demonstrated his concern for ethics with his praise for Fakegate forger Dr. Peter Gleick, whom Mann recently called “one of the most respected scientists in the country.” Here’s Mann’s tweet:
https://mobile.twitter.com/MichaelEMann/status/937042789006761985
Note: if you can’t view Mann’s tweet because he’s blocked you on Twitter, then right-click the link and “open link in incognito window” or “open link in new private window” or “open in new InPrivate window,” or similar.
https://twitter.com/MichaelEMann/status/937042789006761985
Well, that’s interesting. Apparently WordPress will in-line tweets if they’re referenced using the non-mobile URL, but not if they’re referenced with the mobile URL.
Kristi Silber April 23, 2018 at 11:43 pm
Kristi, as usual you are long on accusations and short on links, facts, names, support, or anything to back up your accusations.
I assume you are talking about the case of Chris de Freitas. For those who are interested in facts rather than your puerile claims, you can read about it here.
Of course, given the typically fact-free nature of your vapid attack, you may be talking about something else entirely …
w.
Willis, I’ve tried to be civil to you. At one point I even enjoyed exchanges with you. But your continued “puerile” insults of me are wearing thin. You are a bully.
I’ve been reading the climategate emails.
Then I go to the link you give me. There’s an excerpt, then, “The first point to note is their concern is as much about the impact upon policy as it is about the science.”
THIS is the reason I have so little respect for your movement. You people can’t keep politics out of science, and you attribute political motives to scientists in order to cast doubt on the integrity of their research. It’s reprehensible.
As I said, I have been reading the emails. I find this group of scientists talking about the purity of science, the quality of science. They believe it’s their professional duty to be whistleblowers. It’s not something they wanted to do. It’s interesting seeing these others on the same subject, but a different subset. They are interpreted in ways that are simply irresponsible, biased, imaginative, and meaningless. Read the emails, not the interpretations. Read them as typed, without the stress added. You probably have, and you want to see in them evil designs. Reason will get me nowhere because you are so filled with anger, or whatever it is, I don’t know.
I read your whole email interaction about the FOIAs, too. I want to find out if skeptic complaints are justified. Still looking.
I don’t give a d— what you think about me, so you can insult me all you want – it just shows me the kind of person you are.
Kristi, you keep deferring to the eight enquiries. As Judith Curry said (as best I recall) the enquiries were like calling the fire brigade because your house is on fire, but they look only in the basement, assert ‘no fire here’ and leave you to it. The various enquiries were Yes Minister parodies – seems impossible, I know, but that’s what we have. For a complete forensic deconstruction, see
https://www.thegwpf.org/images/stories/gwpf-reports/Climategate-Inquiries.pdf
DaleC,
Do you really believe that report is going to give an accurate assessment of the depth of the investigations? See, that’s a problem right there. If you can’t identify the sources of bias and learn to be SKEPTICAL of THEM, you will never find the truth.
” If you can’t identify the sources of bias and learn to be SKEPTICAL of THEM, you will never find the truth”
Says the person showing a complete lack of skepticism over the entire issue. Try practicing what you preach sister
And another thing, being skeptical of a source of bias does not require dismissing the message as you do – that’s attacking the messenger because you can’t handle the message. Everyone has biases, even Mr Mann whom you are rushing to defend like a white knight. Having a bias does not necessarily mean ones message is wrong. One should evaluate the message based on its merits or lack thereof something you clearly have shown you don’t do.
Kristi, once again you make the assumption that those who disagree with you are either incompetent or evil.
Those of us who graduated more than a year or two ago, have actually read the entire report of the investigations and have reached our conclusions based on all the data.
And yes, the Dale’s summation is accurate.
In one investigation, they interviewed the accused, and when he declared his innocence, they wrapped up the investigation.
They were white washes designed to quickly clear the name of someone who was bringing lots of money into the university.
Kristi,
The main British inquiry was asked, by a reporter, about the deleted emails and the the lead investigator admitted that they never asked Jones et al about them. You seem incredibly ignorant on this topic.
Reg,
Yup, you showed it right there – incredibly ignorant is me.
Who’s Jones again?
That you are ignorant of who Phil Jones is, speaks volumes of your ignorance on this subject.
Couple of Phil Jones earlier papers on SO Index and hemisphere surface temperatures.
https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0493(1987)115%3C2161%3AAEOTTS%3E2.0.CO%3B2
https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0442%281994%29007%3C1794%3AHSATVA%3E2.0.CO%3B2
Kristi, Dr. Phil Jones is one of the three or four most famous alarmist climatologists in the world. He was Director or Co-Director of the UEA CRU for over seventeen years.
Go here:
https://www.sealevel.info/FOIA/
…and type Ctrl-F (or ⌘-F on a Mac), and search for “Jones”
UEA Climate Research Unit Directors:
● Hubert Lamb 1972 (founding) to 1977 (five years)
● Tom Wigley 1978 to 1993 (fifteen years)
● Trevor Davies 1993 to 1998 (five years)
● Jean Palutikof & Phil Jones (jointly) 1998 to 2004 (six years)
● Phil Jones 2004 to 2016 (twelve additional years)
●Tim Osborn 2017 to present (one year)
John Endicott
Of course I know who Jones is. I was playing the part of the ignorance of which I was accused.
“” If you can’t identify the sources of bias and learn to be SKEPTICAL of THEM, you will never find the truth”
“Says the person showing a complete lack of skepticism over the entire issue. Try practicing what you preach sister”
Baloney. You have no idea what I think. And you aren’t getting it. I’m saying, be aware of the influences on you that are biased, and be skeptical of their message. I’m not hanging out in a playground of bias confirmation. I am challenged by the ideas and evidence of others, and I do not ignore them, I explore them. I know them far better and more thoroughly than I do CAGW arguments.
>>>Most of what I’ve learned about the debate and about skeptics and the skeptic movement has come through interacting with skeptics themselves.<<<
But that has also led me to sites that address influences on skeptics. I can see why emotionally people are reluctant to dig too deep, but from the standpoint of reason and truth-seeking people should know how others tried to manipulate them. It may not be a coincidence that the messages industry chose to instill 20 years ago are the same ones used by the skeptic community today, despite the advances in science.
Skepticism is good, but if non-experts are going to make a choice, at some point he will have to trust someone on authority. Laymen like me don't have the ability to personally evaluate all the science involved. I trust in the mainstream scientific community partly because I seen no proof that I shouldn't, even after reading plenty of articles saying I should. Whenever I dig deeper, I find that people have twisted words, perverted meanings, and that is reason not to trust the skeptic side. Also, the science of the skeptics is weak. I have reasons as well as bias.
daveburton
Thanks, I'd been reading the emails already.
Kristi,
As Feynman famously said, “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts”. In the case of CACA, it’s actually easy for a layman to know that the Team has got it all wrong. To cite but one readily understood instance, where is their evidence that positive water vapor feedback triples the greenhouse effect of CO2? Without that unphysical, evidence-free assumption, ECS is only around one degree C per doubling of CO2, hence nothing at all about which to be concerned, but welcomed, with the obvious benefits from more plant food in the air.
Had you trusted the experts in 1540, you’d believe that the sun goes around the earth. In 1780 that combustion owes to phlogiston. In 1850 that God made every species and that humors cause disease. In 1900 that earth is only tens of millions of years old and that space and time are absolute and gravity instantaneous. In 1950, that continents don’t drift. In 1980, that bacteria don’t cause ulcers. To name but a few such instances. The consensus is always wrong.
“He was just a postdoc at the time, so it’s not like his life would have been ruined, but on the other hand the graph was so widely publicized, it would be hard to admit”
Admit you are wrong and you are just another post-doc back with the rest of the field and the glory, tv interviews, adulation and eco-warrior conferences are gone. No more sharing the stage with Algore etc
Hard to give it all up
Twenty years on, and this mook (love that!) is still the celebrated “climate scientist”. His work was utterly debunked more than ten years back, it remains for some one in the press to expose it.
It’s easy to look back with amusement now that we’re all dead
Any scientific publication is devalued by giving space to Mann. His musings belong in the Fairy Tale section like so much other nonsense that is published on so-named Climate Science and run-whenever-they-like electric power generators.
Lying liar mendacious Mickey Mann sold his worse than worthless soul for less than a mess of pottage.
His career has prospered, but posterity will remember him as far more felonious than the perpetrator of the Piltdown Man ho@x. He has blood of millions of victims on his hands, just like eugenics enablers of the N@zis, and is responsible for humanity squandering trillions due to charlatans feathering their own nests at the expense of billions of people.
He and those of his ilk should be hauled up on charges of grand theft and mass murder.
Now there’s the voice of reason.
It really is funny how Kristi can dish it out, but gets so daintily offended when it’s dished back at those she worships.
Kristi, please take the time to watch the videos of Steve McIntyre and Richard Mueller, and to review the comments above: The IPCC ‘researchers’ were corrupt. The Climategate emails show they were on a mission to document catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW). To that end, they conspired to get rid of well documented periods that didn’t support CAGW (the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age, and the ‘1940’s warm blip’), and to get rid accomplish this they used a questionable proxy (tree growth in response to climate), discarded unsupporting data, and tortured the remaining data using an unreliable variant of PCA to produce the desired result (the now infamous ‘Hockey Stick’ graph). When the original graph wasn’t dramatic enough, they deleted a part of it (that showed an apparent decline in temperatures after ~1960) and spliced historical temperature readings into that section of the PCA. When questioned about their work, they refused to share their data and methods, conspired to their delete data and methods, and additionally conspired to delete their emails if necessary to prevent people from finding out the truth.
These people are NOT scientists in any way, shape, or form. They are corrupt liars who conspired to twist science in an effort to create a false narrative for politicians. That is the definition of a witch doctor.
Kristi: please watch (and listen to!) Richard Feynman explain the Scientific Method (easily found on Youtube) and come back when/if you have some understanding of the topic.
It’s really funny how MarkW has a fantasy Kristi he likes to talk about who shares so few similarities with me besides a name.
Louis,
I know about the things you mention. I have a different view. The evidence you cite is the same I’ve seen, but without the “skeptic” spin. I’ve read some of the “science” posted at ClimateAudit refuting Mann’s work as well as the work itself.
I don’t claim to be able to assess the science itself, but I find the skeptic work so riddled with policy, advocacy, opinion, and insult that it doesn’t have even the veneer of professionalism.
There is more than enough evidence of incidents of wrongdoing among skeptic scientists to balance those alleged among mainstream scientists. I don’t back up my claims with evidence simply because it takes time and I don’t think it would make any difference. Not to those who are certain their ideas are right.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking I’m ignorant of skeptics’ claims, though.
“Kristi, please take the time to watch the videos of Steve McIntyre and Richard Mueller, WHY? DO THEY HAVE NEW EVIDENCE? and to review the comments above: The IPCC ‘researchers’ were corrupt. SO SOME SAY. IF TRUE, THE WORLD WOULD HAVE RESPONDED. TOO MUCH RIDING ON THIS. The Climategate emails show they were on a mission to document catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW). To that end, they conspired to get rid of well documented periods that didn’t support CAGW (the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age, and the ‘1940’s warm blip’), THOSE ARE ACKNOWLEDGED; THEY MAKE NO DIFFERENCE TO CAGW. DO YOU MEAN MANN’S COMMENT ABOUT “CONTAIN”? CITE THE EMAILS and to get rid accomplish this they used a questionable proxy (tree growth in response to climate), TREE RING, ICE CORES, ICE MELT, EXTENDED RECORD discarded unsupporting data, ??? and tortured the remaining data using an unreliable variant of PCA to produce the desired result (the now infamous ‘Hockey Stick’ graph) I’M NOT CONVINCED EITHER WAY ABOUT THIS . When the original graph wasn’t dramatic enough, they deleted a part of it (that showed an apparent decline in temperatures after ~1960) THIS WAS LEGITIMATE. THE DECLINE HAD ALREADY BEEN DOCUMENTED ELSEWHERE AS A WIDESPREAD ARTIFACT, AND WASN’T PRESENT IN THE INSTRUMENTAL RECORD. THE PROBLEMS WERE, AS I UNDERSTAND IT, IN THE IPCC GRAPH, NOT THE ORIGINAL PUBLICATION and spliced historical temperature readings into that section of the PCA. When questioned about their work, they refused to share their data and methods, conspired to their delete data and methods, and additionally conspired to delete their emails if necessary to prevent people from finding out the truth.” THE FOIA RESPONSES WERE UNPROFESSIONAL, TRUE, AND IT DOESN’T EXONERATE CRU TO NOTE THAT THE REQUESTS WERE SOMETIMES UNPROFESSIONAL AS WELL. FOR EXAMPLE, MULTIPLE PEOPLE FROM CLIMATEAUDIT WERE MAKING FOIA REQUESTS AT THE SAME TIME, AND THERE IS NO JUSTIFICATION FOR THAT. CRU FELT IT WAS HARASSMENT.
STILL, I’M NOT DEFENDING CRU, MANN OR ANYONE ELSE, I’M JUST TRYING TO SEE THIS RATIONALLY AND SHOW ANOTHER SIDE TO THE STORY. People started saying I was defending Mann before I said anything about him! I don’t even really like the guy.
NorwegianSkeptic,
I know the scientific method. I also know there are plenty of variations on the standard scientific method that are valid. The methodology – the philosophy and reasoning behind the methods – is more important than the method per se.
Experimental design and use of the correct statistics are vital.
Models have long been standard, accepted scientific tools. Tree ring interpretation is not straightforward, but it, too, is an accepted tool.
What’s your point?
Kristi,
Yes, it is reasonable to blame the mendacious, rent-seeking, nest-feathering, trough-feeding, cr!minal CACA Team of charlatans for the squandering of trillions in treasure and millions, if not tens of millions, of lives. Not to mention the massacre of billions of birds and bats.
[in reply to Louis Hooffstetter pleading, “Kristi, please take the time to watch the videos of Steve McIntyre and Richard Mueller”] Kristi wrote, “WHY? DO THEY HAVE NEW EVIDENCE?”
Yes, some of what they explain will almost certainly be “new evidence” to you.
I’m certain you will learn from watching those videos. I say that because I learned quite a lot from watching them (especially the McIntyre video), and I think I’ve been chasing this rabbit down its hole longer and farther than you have.
Here’s the link for the videos:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/04/23/flashback-twenty-years-ago-today-the-infamous-hockey-stick-was-published-in-nature/#comment-2798081
Since they are on youtube you can easily speed them up to save time:
http://sealevel.info/youtube_playback_speed2.png
Chimp – what will you say if it does get warmer? They broke the rules of collaboration and cross checking in science so I guess it doesn’t matter.
Meteorologist,
The gatekeepers will make sure that it keeps warming in their cooked books for as long as possible. But eventually Mama Gaia will have her say.
If in objective physical reality, however, it does indeed keep (or start) warming relentlessly for the rest of the century, as in the GIGO models, then I’ll have to say I was wrong. But I’m unlikely to make it past 2050, when I would turn 100.
If I’m still alive in 20 years however, and Earth in reality has warmed since now until then, I’d say that I was wrong.
As I recall when Mc &Mc broke the scandal, they had an approximation of Mann’s “model”. Also recall, that even random numbers entered would produce a “Hockey Stick”, which is mentioned in an above post.
The chuckle I get when describing the offense to science is that “Even if you put in baseball scores the ‘model’ would print a ‘Hockey Stick'”.
Too bad the climate crowd didn’t heed this sign twenty years ago when Mann published his hockey stick! “Mann Road – Dead End” (sarc – spotted sign in southern Oregon).
http://i65.tinypic.com/wufb6d.jpg
Hoax,
Some people fall for a hoax.
Some people like a hoax if they can make money off of it. The hoax was not only Michael Mann’s hockey stick but the whole climate change CO2 global warming theory.
When the hoax allows people to keep making money, decades later, they continue to propaganize it in as many ways as possible to keep the income going.
Eventually, human nature results in “believers” and the hoax gets bigger and bigger and becomes a following that includes lots of people and involves lots of money.
One day, as much as centuries later, the hoax eventually dies or the worst result happens, in that it continues to grow into a religion.
The final story is still not told yet. Your grandchildren may be altar servants in the new following.
Bill,
The difference is that this ho@x is falsifiable, in ways that the Second Coming and other millenarian cults aren’t.
Maybe I’m too optimistic about human nature, but IMO there will come an ignominious end to this ho@x as to eugenics, which wasn’t so much a ho@x as an impaired understanding of natural selection, crossed with various unwarranted prejudices.
But you’re right that it’s a ho@x which has been seized upon by Leftists intent on signalling their virtue.
Still missing comments from two people here………
They still try …………
https://climateaudit.org/2017/07/11/pages2017-new-cherry-pie/
I have given several skeptical man made climate change presentations to fellow engineers. I show the hockey stick graph early in the presentation and ask if my fellow engineers see something strange in the graph. Runaway man made global warming is well under way by the year 2000. Look at the graph again. We are in the year 2018 and there are no runaway temperatures. That usually convinces engineers that something is not right about the theory. If we engineers had conducted a study and missed a prediction by this much we would hang our heads in shame, not try to make excuses and justify what we had done.
But to be clear, the first anti-science shot across the bow was Ben Santer’s human finger-print attribution fraud he committed in 1995 on the Second AR WG 1 report. He committed his act of scinetific malfeasance after his colleagues had departed the Madrid coordination meeting. That Mr Santer is still drawing government paycheck as a climate modeller is a travesty on all science.