Press Release from FME Law
July 3, 2018
Arizona Appellate Court Decides Hockey Stick Emails Must Be Released Despite the University’s Appeal.
One thousand seven hundred and sixty-three days ago, on behalf of its client, the Free Market Environmental Law Clinic, PLLC (FME Law) asked the University of Arizona to hand over public records that would expose to the world the genesis of what some consider the most influential scientific publication of that decade – the Mann-Bradley-Hughes temperature reconstruction that looks like a hockey stick.
The University refused.
On February 26th of this year, and after submissions of legal briefings that now fill two banker’s boxes, and three trips to the Appellate Court, the trial court ordered release of the documents, giving the University 90 days to disclose the documents in a word-searchable form. Three days before the deadline, the University filed a motion asking the trial court to “stay” the disclosure of the public records while they appealed the case. In a 13 word decision, the trial court found “the requested relief is not warranted.”
The University then asked the Appellate Court for a stay, arguing that once the documents were released, “that genie could not be put back in the bottle,” in the event the trial court’s decision was reversed.
Yesterday, a mere six days after filing of the final legal brief on the motion for a stay, the Appellate Court issued a seven-word decision:
“Motion for Stay Pending Appeal is DENIED.”
The Appellate Court gave no explanation as to why it denied its motion, but it would likely be one of the reasons offered by FME Law in its brief to the court. A Copy of that brief is attached to this news release. Among other things, this order means the Appellate Court could not conclude that the University would have probable success on the merits of their argument. Nor could they conclude there were “serious questions” remaining to be addressed.
“This decision by the Appellate Court is much more than a small procedural action,” said Dr. David Schnare, the member-manager of the Free Market Environmental Law Clinic, PLLC, who is prosecuting this case. “We asked for the full history of the hockey stick graph and much more. We sought the history of the fourth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report and the discussions among the scientists as they discussed climate papers and the then burgeoning antagonism between climate scientists not of like mind.” Chaim Mandelbaum, Executive Director of FME Law explains, “This case is not over, but we appear to be at the beginning of the end.”
The University may wish to now appeal to the Arizona Supreme Court for a stay, an effort attorneys familiar with the case believe would not change the outcome. “This decision does not end the appeal, however,” Mr. Mandelbaum stated.
Dr. Schnare described the status of this case and its importance. “We did not take this case only to obtain the history of a very controversial period of time in the climate wars. We also took this case to cast sunlight on how public universities work, how they contribute to the formation of public policy, and how professors behave within the policy arena. Core legal issues remain before the court – particularly about how to protect the research process while still allowing the public to learn how this sector of the government works. The University’s appellate brief is due on July 30th, our answering brief is due on September 7th and any reply from the University comes after that. We won’t have a final appeals court decision on the merits of this case until late in the year, and then it will be on to the Arizona Supreme Court.”
In the meantime, the documents will have to be handed over. Dr. Schnare and his staff will take the first look at those documents. With a doctorate in environmental management and decades of experience in policy formation, he, with the assistance of FME Law staff, will sort these documents, organize them for use by the public and prepare a report on what they contain – so to speak, a chronical of that historic time, based not on cherry picked emails but on the full history as available in the public record. They will then turn over the public records and their report to their client who is expected to make them available to the public.
FME Law is a 501(c)(3) public charity dedicated to be an honest, pro-environmental legal presence that represents clients seeking to hold state and federal governments to the ethical and legal requirements that protect and enhance free market environmentalism. For further information, Contact Chaim Mandelbaum (703) 577-9973, Executive Director of FME Law; or, Dr. Schnare (571) 243-7975, Member-Manager of FME Law, PLLC.
PDF Attachment: PR and court decision: FME Law Press Release July 3, 2018
Has anyone established yet that these proxies can be used to reconstruct temperatures? The proof of that in the eyes of The Team appears to be that several “independent” reconstructions give similar answers, but all those reconstructions use the same data.
Is it possible for this issue to be resolved with scientific integrity?
It’s well-established that various proxies can be used to reconstruct rough approximations of past temperatures.
The problem occurs when they splice instrumental temperatures onto the end of proxy reconstructions. In the private sector, this is called “fraud.” In government and academic climate “science” this is called Mike’s Nature Trick, “nothing more than a statistical method used to bring two or more different kinds of data sets together in a legitimate fashion by a technique that has been reviewed by a broad array of peers in the field.”
Dave, can you give me an example of where in the private sector they spliced instrumental temperatures onto the end of proxy reconstructions? To my knowledge the private sector does not do this kind of splicing .
It was Mann who first devised the ‘trick’ of splicing in the thermometer record, which was eagerly copied by Phil Jones. And as Jones admits, it was very much a ‘trick’, designed to fool goverments, the media and the people.
.
From: Phil Jones
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000
Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,
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) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.
Cheers
Phil
But ralfellis, where in the private sector do they splice proxies with temp records? You know, what Davie is calling “fraud?”
Correct. There isn’t a direct comparison.
I was referring to the practice of splicing a high frequency signal onto the end of a a low frequency signal and calling it an anomaly.
So, using the word “fraud” is incorrect?
I would think the word “invalid” would be more appropriate.
It’s fraud if the intent is to deceive.
That is true. Unfortunately you have no evidence of intent, so your use of the term is speculative.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/07/03/winning-arizona-appellate-court-decides-hockey-stick-emails-must-be-released/#comment-2395168
The purpose of Mike’s Nature Trick was to “hide the decline.” The white-washers don’t see a problem with deleting the data in red and substituting the instrumental record:
They hid the decline to In order to 1) make the late 20th Century appear anomalous, 2) give the false impression that Mann’s Hockey Stick had been confirmed.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/26/mcintyre-data-from-the-hide-the-decline/
In the private sector practices analogous to this are called fraud. In government and academic climate “science” this is called Mike’s Nature Trick, “nothing more than a statistical method used to bring two or more different kinds of data sets together in a legitimate fashion by a technique that has been reviewed by a broad array of peers in the field.”
I think the problem is that David and others here are confusing “hiding a decline” in the reliability of the tree ring record as a proxy for temperature, and “hiding a decline” in temperature.
The “divergence problem” was well-known by the time of the graphs in question. It refers to the fact that temperature estimates from high-latitude tree rings started to diverge from the temperature record around 1960. This was discussed in the literature by 1995 (https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/95GB00321) and expanded on by Briffa in 1998, including this graph:
Caption: “Twenty-year smoothed plots of tree-ring width (dashed line) and tree-ring density (thick solid line), averaged across a network of mid-northern latitude boreal forest sites and compared with equivalent-area averages of mean April to September temperature anomalies (thin solid line)”
Obviously, this divergence was not hidden by the scientific community. So the question was, what to do about it when graphing temperature estimates. Would it have been more honest to include the tree ring data post-1960? Maybe, but why do so in the first place if the data were wrong? Mann et al. 1998 chose to instead leave out the proxy record after 1960 and splice the instrument-measured temperature record with the proxy record going back to 1902.
Although it’s hard to make out, the instrument record did seem to follow the proxy record during the first half of the 20th C.
The Independent Climate Change Email Review criticized the figure:
“[T]he figure supplied for the WMO Report was misleading. We do not find that it is misleading to curtail reconstructions at some point per se, or to splice data, but we believe that both of these procedures should have been made plain — ideally in the figure but certainly clearly described in either the caption or the text. [1.3.2]”
The graph reproduced in the IPCC TAR based on Mann et al. 1999 included a more visible representation of the overlap in the instrument and proxy records. If the instrument record simply replaced the suspect data that might be considered “grafting,” but this is not what they did. They spliced it with the proxy record using a statistical “trick.”
Also in the TAR was a discussion of high latitude tree ring density, expanded on in AR4.
David: “The purpose of Mike’s Nature Trick was to “hide the decline.” The white-washers don’t see a problem with deleting the data in red and substituting the instrumental record”
No, they didn’t just substitute, they spliced the records.
“In the private sector practices analogous to this are called fraud.”
Unless you can find an analogous example, this is pure speculation. Why would the elimination of faulty data from a graph be fraud? Keep in mind that results from Mann et al. have been independently verified (e.g. http://www.rap.ucar.edu/projects/rc4a/millennium/refs/Wahl_ClimChange2007.pdf)
Did Mann and others make mistakes? Yes (they admit some mistakes here http://www.meteo.psu.edu/holocene/public_html/shared/articles/MBH98-corrigendum04.pdf). Did they intentionally mislead? I think that depends on how one wants to interpret the email. If you think “hide the decline” means hiding part of the temperature record, sure they did. If you think it means not including spurious data in their graph, I don’t think so.
Disregarding the email, if one takes a graph as a stand-alone representation of research, the fact that more detailed information was not presented could be considered misleading, but whether that was intentional is debatable. The graph is a visual representation of research, and I would argue that it wasn’t meant to stand alone. The media (and perhaps the IPCC) are at least as much to blame for over-simplifying the message by taking it out of context.
At any rate, it strikes me as desperate that the skeptic community keeps raising this issue, something that happened 20 years ago, as evidence that all climate science is dubious. Even more so is the consistent interpretation of “climategate” emails to cast them in the worst possible light regardless of the overall picture. But that is just my opinion.
My my….!
So, Kristi Silber, where do you stand on refusal to show your data or code…?
Is the name “Kristi Silber” perhaps a nom-de-plume for “Michael Mann”?
You go on: “…the consistent interpretation of “climategate” emails to cast them in the worst possible light…”
Phil Jones’ words (paraphrased): “…why should we hand over our data to you, just so that you can try to find something wrong with it…?”
What could be more “in the worst possible light” than a scientist uttering such a statement?
“Finding errors in another scientist’s work is exactly what science is about”
That YOU can ry to defend that, demonstrates your bias; and your dishonesty…
keep drinking that kool aid kristi.try not to burp out the co2 it contains though 😉
Thus the FOI request and order….
The intent is there in the email for all to see. As long as you can read and comprehend, you will see it too.
What do you think their intention was? ”Hide the decline” was the intention. Certainly sounds like an act of deliberate deception.
It all depends on what your definition of “deception” is, but at this point, what difference does it make. /sarc
Keith Sketchley – You seem to be having difficulty understanding that if anyone in the private sector did that it would be called “fraud”. No-one ever said that anyone in the private sector had actualy done that specific thing. I am tempted to think that you are deliberately obfuscating. At least that’s not fraud (well, I don’t think it is, but it comes perilously close).
ralfellis quoted Phil Jones’s 16 Nov 1999 email to Bradley, Mann, Hughes, Briffa & Osborn, in which Jones wrote, “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.”
Keith Sketchley wrote, “Unfortunately you have no evidence of intent.”
The intent was clearly stated: it was “to hide” the decline.
The American Heritage Dictionary says:
The intent was to hide the decline in proxy-derived temperatures, where they overlapped the instrumental temperature records, during 20-year and 40-year periods when the real temperatures were rising but the proxy-derived temperatures were falling. The problem was that if they didn’t hide the declines in the proxies, it would have shown that their tree ring-based temperature reconstruction methodology was unreliable, spoiled the hockey-stick shape of the graph, and undermined the narrative of alarming global warming.
The graph they were talking about was for the cover of this 1999 WMO Climate Statement (brief report):
http://www.sealevel.info/wmo913.pdf
Here’s the graph (I added the picture of a hockey stick below it):
Note that Jones even rounded the three splice points, to hide them from readers.
Here’s a brief video Richard Muller explaining it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BQpciw8suk
Here’s a much more thorough explanation from Steve McIntyre (highly recommended!!!):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqzcA7SsqSA
That infamous email, and the rest of the Climategate files, can be found here:
http://sealevel.info/FOIA/
Layperson here. I just watched a video of Mike Mann ‘Mannsplaining’ the word ‘trick’ and what was meant by ‘hide the decline’ in the email. It immediately jumped out at me that if the proxies didn’t match for the period that they overlapped with instrumental readings, then how could they assume that the other proxy temperatures were correct?? Am I missing something that appears so obviously scientifically dodgy that it’s laughable? It’s amazing that the public is not aware of this; it’s something the average person can easily grasp, and most are familiar with the graph. As he’s the one offering the explanation – straight from the horse’s mouth – I don’t see how he can wriggle out of it or claim his words have been taken ‘out of context’?
Exactly. That’s why so many of us have been so angry about this for so long. The conclusions of these reconstructions are basically dog’s testicles.
dog’sPoint – set – match!
‘Unfortunately you have no evidence of intent’ If the intent was to receive more government research money it’s call fraud.
@Kieth Sketchley You don’t see it in the private sector because if they did it, they likely would wind up in jail. So, rather than being clever as you seem to think, you’re making David Middleton’s argument for him.
Sounds a lot like Nick Stokes defending the indefensible with lame questions.
Keith Sketchley,
You reply to David Middleton having said
“It’s fraud if the intent is to deceive.”
by saying,
“That is true. Unfortunately you have no evidence of intent, so your use of the term is speculative.”
No, the evidence is clear and is in the forms of Mann’s own words and actions that he provided in an email which was later leaked as part of Climategate.
The invalid graphical practice we are discussing is clearly stated by David Middleton; i.e., it is invalid to provide a graph that splices parts of graphs that show data with different temporal smoothing. And Climategate revealed that Michael Mann had made a threat against me for having pointed that out within days of the publication of his first hockeystick graph. The leaked email containing that threat dates from and is reported here https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/12/a-mann-uva-email-not-discussed-here-before-claims-by-mann-spliced-and-diced/,
Mann’s email of 18 July 2000 was released by Climategate years later.
(a) It did not include me in its circulation list,
(b) it refutes my accurate statement that his hockeystick graph is constructed by improperly splicing parts of dissimilat data sets, and
(c) it threatens me for pointing out that impropriety.
Mann’s lie about the graph is prima facie evidence that his intent was to deceive.
Richard
So,WHO is going to jail first?
“…you have no evidence of intent…”
This is also untrue. When a scientist refuses to show his data or his work, his “intent” is clear – he intends to hide the data, because they don’t support his claim. He hides the data, because they show how he hid “the decline” in temperature…
You call it whatever you want! When it’s “invalid” and you know that, and you publish it and don’t disclose that, it’s goddamn well fraud!
GOOD FRACKING GRIEF!!!
Phil Jones’s email is in plain FRACKING English…
Drax the Destroyer of Guardians of the Galaxy could even grasp this.
But can you “prove” he really meant to say what he “said”? /sarc
Stop the sarc comments please this is a serious issue
Hiding something means you have something to hide.
Attaching a high frequency thermometer record to a low frequency paleo record is defacto invalid. Any first year student knows that.
There are two possibilities.
They knew it was fraudulent, but went ahead anyway.
They were so utterly incompetent that they didn’t know it was invalid.
Attention Moderator: Someone is posting under my name. It’s not the first time it happened at WUWT. What can be done to prevent this?
Ralph Dave Westfall,
In this thread David Middleton wrote,
“It’s well-established that various proxies can be used to reconstruct rough approximations of past temperatures.
The problem occurs when they splice instrumental temperatures onto the end of proxy reconstructions. In the private sector, this is called “fraud.” In government and academic climate “science” this is called Mike’s Nature Trick, “nothing more than a statistical method used to bring two or more different kinds of data sets together in a legitimate fashion by a technique that has been reviewed by a broad array of peers in the field.”
And he later clarified that by writing,
“I was referring to the practice of splicing a high frequency signal onto the end of a a low frequency signal and calling it an anomaly.”
You have asked about that,
“2) Prove they “knew” it was invalid”
I answer,
WE KNOW THEY “KNEW” ABOUT IT BECAUSE IN A CLIMATEGATE EMAIL MICHAEL MANN LIED ABOUT IT AND MADE A THREAT TOWARDS ME FOR HAVING POINTED IT OUT.
see https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/12/a-mann-uva-email-not-discussed-here-before-claims-by-mann-spliced-and-diced/
Richard
Mann’s reply to you Richard ,clearly shows a disregard for the truth and a clear intent to hide his fraud. Shocking that this didnt get him fired from the University. He must have the Chancellor in his back pocket.
Alan Tomalty,
I agree that Mann’s response to my email “shows a disregard for the truth and a clear intent to hide his fr@ud”. Indeed, the clarity of his intent is why I have (repeatedly) drawn attention to the matter here.
However, that response was not a reply to me. I did not know of that response until it was leaked as part of Climategate years later.
One of Mann’d followers forwarded to Mann the email from me. Mann could have been expected to copy to me his response to his follower if he meant its contents. He did not copy it to me and and I only learned of it as a result of Climategate.
Richard
Join the discussion…Leaving out the littlr ica age ,and the hot period when Icelanders habited Greenland,is fraud.
No – the fraud was committed deliberately to deceive the public. This fact is supported as we see the group REFUSING to hand over the data on which the graph was constructed. This is a clear violation of the scientific method; and of scientific integrity.
Then we see Michael Mann, in several interviews, claiming that the e-mail words were taken out of context – and the interviewer doesn’t bring up the e-mail to verify Mann’s claim. Anyone who’s read the e-mails knows that Mann is lying, yet he’s never challenged…
Rob Manzoni,
You say,
“Then we see Michael Mann, in several interviews, claiming that the e-mail words were taken out of context ”
The context of his lie about what he did is the series of emails that led up to his ‘explanation’ which is this falsehood,
“Our method, as you know, doesn’t include any “splicing of two different datasets”-
The documented fact that he lied about his “method” is prima facie evidence that he knew what he had done was wrong, and the “context” of his lie is that he was denying an observation of what he had done.
Please note that Michael Mann s email which includes that lie is dated 18 July 2000 which is long before any investigations of his “method”.
The “context” of his lie is that he was refuting my having written,
“Dear Chick:
You say;
”As to Michael Mann’s “hocky stick” paleo-temperature graph, I realize why many attack it for it puts the nail in the coffen of the argument that
recent natural variability is as large as what has been observed in the 20th century.”
No ! People attack the ‘hockey stick’ because it is uses an improper
procedure to assess inadequate data as a method to provide a desired result.
I have defended Mann et al. from accusations of scientific “fraud” because I am willing to accept that this was done in naive stupidity, but I am not willing to accept that is good science. As you say, “people like Mann, Briffa, Jones, etc.” have conducted “careful work”, but doing the wrong thing carefully does not make it right.
The ‘hockey stick’ is obtained by splicing two different data sets. Similar
data to the earlier data set exists for up to near the present and could have been spliced on, but this would not show the ‘hockey stick’ and was not done.”
Every word I wrote is true and is the “context” of Mann’s response to it .
His response was to lie by saying,
“Our method, as you know, doesn’t include any “splicing of two different datasets” ”
which he emphasises saying,
“This is intentional misrepresentation. ”
Then Mann’s email adds insult and bluster which includes this threat to me,
“For his sake, I hope does not go public w/ such comments!”
Richard
Considering the background of Steve McIntyre why don’t you think about the potential of data splicing in the mining sector? As Mark Twain said, “A gold mine is a hole in the ground with a liar standing next to it.” I’m not suggesting McIntyre is a data splicer himself. I’m suggesting he has probably had experience looking at doctored data in the mining sector.
HankHenry,
You say,
“Considering the background of Steve McIntyre why don’t you think about the potential of data splicing in the mining sector? As Mark Twain said, “A gold mine is a hole in the ground with a liar standing next to it.” I’m not suggesting McIntyre is a data splicer himself. I’m suggesting he has probably had experience looking at doctored data in the mining sector.”
Yes, all you say of the excellent and detailed work of Steve McIntyre, and his work on the data processing did put the final and conclusive nail in the coffin of Mann’s ‘hockeystick’. However, we are not discussing that.
Here we are discussing the splicing of parts of graphs that display the data to create a graph that provides a misleading indication from the data, viz the MBH ‘hockeystick’..
The invalid graphical practice we are discussing is clearly stated by David Middleton above, and Climategate revealed that Michael Mann had made a threat against me for having pointed it out long before Steve McIntyre started his excellent work on the data splicing.
see https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/12/a-mann-uva-email-not-discussed-here-before-claims-by-mann-spliced-and-diced/
Richard
McIntyre’s familiarity with the Bre-X fraud was a significant factor in exposing the Hockey Stick
fraudmistake…https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB110834031507653590
they spliced instrumental temperatures onto the end of proxy reconstructions?
The moment I realised they had done that, I immediately realised something fishy was going on. If a first year student produced a graph slowly descending (using method 1) and the graph then suddenly shot up (using method 2) the student’s supervisor would immediately give them advice on the need to validate what they had done.
there are plenty examples of impropriety in the financial sector where high risk products were “spliced” into packages of mid to low risk products and sold on for profit. i believe people do go to jail for that.
It’s also a problem when you hide the decline in one proxy data set as soon as it goes against the trend you want, but burying its end under a mess of spaghetti.
By for but.
??
Really, David?
It’s well established, with verifiable proof?
That tree cores can ignore rainfall, snowmelt, sunlight, animal fertilizer, CO₂ and everything else a tree may experience during their growing cycle; then respond only to temperatures?
Yeah, right…
https://youtu.be/AihvuZiDhsg
Try quoting what I actually posted…
The “various proxies” have to be used appropriately. Tree ring chronologies, like plant stomata chronologies for CO2, have to be controlled for other environmental factors and generally anchored to lower frequency proxies for context.
Tree rings can be very useful for the high frequency component of a temperature reconstruction. But, they are worse than useless if they aren’t controlled for other factors and not anchored to a low frequency signal, like d18O data from sediment and ice cores.
Mann’s first hockey stick over-weighted tree ring chronologies from Northern California that were clearly the product of CO2 fertilization, not temperature. It failed to preserve the low frequency signal and failed to control for other environmental factors.
Tree rings can establish warmer/wetter – cooler/drier.
They can’t establish temperature.
No proxy can do that. There is no physical theory that allows conversion of tree ring metrics into degrees Kelvin. Nor spleothems, nor coral dO18.
Even an ice-core dO18 record has fatal problems because of unknown monsoon tracks and possible isotopic rain-out.
Splicing a proxy series into a temperature record produces nothing more than pseudo-scientific crock.
Mann’s first hockey-stick also assigned physical meaning to a numerical construct — a principal component. That is a fatal error. Principal components have no particular physical meaning.
McIntyre and McKitrick showed that Mann also used a statistically false short centering trick to produce the hockey stick. There is no doubt that he knew exactly what he was about. And what it was about wasn’t associated with professional integrity.
Pat says: “Mann’s first hockey-stick also assigned physical meaning to a numerical construct — a principal component.”
..
It did not, and your statement shows you do not know what PCA is.
..
Start here to learn about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal_component_analysis
Explain the physical meaning of a numerical principal component, Keith.
From MBH98: “We isolate the dominant patterns of the instrumental surface temperature data through principal component analysis.”
Guess what that means, Keith.
Wikipedia is the last place to look for info on climate. Too much control by a certain person.
“No proxy can do that.”
..
If what you say is true, then you have just removed the MWP, the Roman warming and the Minoan warming periods from any/all discussion.
I forgot to add that the LIA disappears also.
Only massive ignorance of basic science and math or fraud could do that.
Not correct, David Dirkse.
Warmer/wetter — cooler/drier does not remove knowledge of warmer or cooler climates. Proxies do not allow calculation of physical temperatures.
A proxy series should never have degrees K as an ordinate, unless a physical theory is available to make the conversion.
Yep… At best a delta-C or delta-K.
No proxy can establish the absolute temperature. They approximate relative changes in temperature.
No, they do not. They indicate warmer/wetter — cooler/drier.
Statistically scaling EOFs or principal components to physical temperature series does not produce physical temperatures. Or relative temperatures. Or temperature anomalies.
Statistics is not a substitute for physics, no matter the long-time acceptance of that abuse of method in proxy climatology.
The past climate can be compared to the present by use of a consistent proxy series. But the only available information is warmer/wetter — cooler/drier.
And even that is rendered a bit uncertain by ignorance about unknown confounding variables, such as the episodic aeolian deposition of nutrients.
1) “The past climate can be compared to the present by use of a consistent proxy series.”
..
2) “They can’t establish temperature. No proxy can do that.”
Make up your mind, you are not logically consistent.
David, the sad thing is that you appear to believe that the two statements are incompatible.
But I am David. Climate is not temperature.
By equating those two as you do, it is you who is inconsistent, both logically and scientifically.
Without a doubt, there’s a great deal of uncertainty. Few proxies yield a direct numerical relationship.
No proxies do so, David, when the numbers are purported temperature degrees.
yes, skeptics routinely attack the very evidence they use later.
If you argue that this year is particularly warm, they will point
to proxy records of the MWP.
If you are discussing proxy records, they will Then attack the very records they used to make their case against unprecidented warmth.
The reaosn they do this is that they are not doing science. They are doing
theatre, where the only thing that matters is defeating the current argument.
So if the current argument ( Its warmer today ) is in play, They point at some proxy of some sort for the MWP or roman period.
if on another day the discussion is proxies, then they will attck proxies.
because their goal isnt finding the truth. Their goal is raising doubt.
ANY doubt will do. Doubt A on tuesday, because of X. On thursday
doubt X.
“yes, skeptics routinely attack the very evidence they use later.
If you argue that this year is particularly warm, they will point
to proxy records of the MWP”
I point to Hansen 1999, no proxy required:
1934 was particularly warm. It was about 0.4C hotter than 2016, according to Hansen 1999/UAH, which also makes it hotter than this year.
The UAH satellite chart:
Not really anything you can say that’s on topic here, is there Steven?
Can you defend tree ring temperature correlations? Can you defend Mann’s Hockey Stick graph? Can you defend his math? Can you state that the LIA didn’t exist? Can you state that the medieval Warm Period didn’t exist?
Apologist for an anti-human scientific fraud factory.
“they,” “they,” “they.” So says Steve Mosher.
Your vague and undocumented generalist complaint is irrelevant to the specified debate Steve.
Once again, Steven takes what is common practice amongst the alarmists and claims, without evidence, that all skeptics are doing it.
Then again, covering backsides has been Steven’s priority mission for several years now.
According to Steven’s latest attempt at relevance. If you dispute any proxy, that is proof that you believe all proxies are bad.
Likewise, if you accept one proxy, you must accept all proxies or you are a hypocrite.
“”you really should treat people better than this, Steven.”
Vash the Stampede.
Tarring everyone with the same brush, when many are genuine skeptics, for reasons you should very well be aware of, is not very nice.
Steven Mosher, your fields are literature and philosophy. So what qualifies you to explain the science to those of us with science backgrounds?
Not at all, since we have actual physical evidence of these events from contemporaneous written accounts to archaeological evidence.
Where the Vikings farmed in Greenland cannot be farmed today not withstanding that we now have tractors, heavy machinery and diggers, and of course greenhouses/poly tunnels which we can of course pump in warm CO2 enriched air.
Even though we now have genetically engineered vines, we still cannot grow vines as far north in the UK where we know they were grown during the MWP.
We know the route that Hannibal took. Even if we were to fit elephants with crampons, they still could not, today, pass over the Alps.
Then of course, we have this type of evidence, from the Mendenhall Glacier, which if I recall correctly the tree was dated to around the Minoan Warm Period.
And:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/Mendenhall-Glacier-tree-stumps.jpg
Pat Frank wrote, “Tree rings… can’t establish temperature. No proxy can do that.”
I agreed that Mike’s Nature Trick is fraud. But “No proxy?”
What about the variation of tree lines with altitude? They don’t tell you about year-to-year temperature changes, but they do give you good clues about century-long trends.
You’re right about the tree lines, Dave, most especially relevant to the northern tree line.
But those data do not yield physical temperatures. And that’s my point.
People use statistics to purport physical temperatures from proxies, absent any physical theory available to make the conversion.
I am so with you!!
I’d suggest that if the proxies were valid proxies, there wouldn’t have been a decline to hide.
“The proof of that in the eyes of The Team appears to be that several “independent” reconstructions give similar answers, ”
Yes, “independant”reconstructions using goat entrails annd tea leaves do give similar answers. As do the staggering footsteps of a drunk, when processed using Michael Mann’s unique statistical method.
The non-hockey stick reconstructions do yield similar results over most of the past 2,000 years, only diverging over the instrumental era.
But most importantly, as you have previously pointed out, these are only rough approximations. This limits their suitability for analyses which require higher precision.
Absolutely. It’s also why the practice of splicing instrumental data onto proxy reconstructions is fraudulent. The instrumental data can be used to calibrate the reconstruction… But a direct comparison of instrumental data to a proxy reconstruction requires that the resolution of the instrumental data be degraded to that of the proxy reconstruction. Here’s a simple example:
ODP-1019d is a temperature reconstruction from d18O data from a marine sediment core. Grants Pass is a nearby instrumental record. What would you get if you spliced Grants Pass onto ODP-1019d? You would get a hockey stick:
What happens if you degrade Grants Pass the the resolution of ODP-1019d? Your grant money dries up.
The Grants Pass/ODP-1019D area has been warming at a fairly steady rate for 6,500 years.
“he practice of splicing instrumental data onto proxy reconstructions is fraudulent”
..
Absent proof of intent, “fraudulent” is not applicable. Your choice of words betrays your bias.
Keith,
When someone’s long term income, and reputation, is based on a self described trick to hide something, and that big stinky something is contrary to their base of work, and you are unable to recognize any evidence/proof of intent, your bias is also showing.
It was not contrary to his base of work. Oh, and please tell us all about the “long term income.”
http://michaelkelly.artofeurope.com/cru.htm
1061625894A paper by Mann and CRU's Phil Jones in GRL [Geophysical Research Letters, the journal of the American Geophysical Union] is attacked. They sneer at their opponents but are forced to admit they identify at least one pertinent problem. Their reconstructions from tree proxies have not factored for increased CO2 as well as warming driving tree growth. 'While I am confident that you are correct, and that this is not a crucial factor, I think one should be careful about denying its existence,' says Wigley. Mann concedes, 'In retrospect, Phil and I should have included this analysis in the GRL article, but its always hard to know what specifics the contrarians are going to target in their attacks.' And of course one must never under any circumstances admit to uncertainties needlessly.
Another problem their opponents have pointed out is that: 'The globe only becomes warmer in the 20th century when its measured temperatures are substituted for its reconstructed temperatures. This approach is clearly unacceptable; it is like comparing apples and oranges.'
Now here's fun. Here is a proverbial cordite-smelling revolver. Here is something interesting Jeremy Paxman apparently didn't find. 1062592331. Edward Cook of Columbia to Keith Briffa, proposing some kind of multi-author meta-study of uncertainties with and differences between the key temperature reconstructions. Describes the latest Mann and Jones one as 'a mess'. Suggests they be excluded: 'I am afraid the Mike and Phil are too personally invested in things now (i.e. the 2003 GRL paper that is probably the worst paper Phil has ever been involved in - Bradley hates it as well), but I am willing to offer to include them if they can contribute without just defending their past work - this is the key to having anyone involved. Be honest.'
Says they should 'Publish, retire, and don't leave a forwarding address.' Because,
Without trying to prejudice this work, but also because of what I almost think I know to be the case, the results of this study will show that we can probably say a fair bit about 100 year variability was like with any certainty (i.e. we know with certainty that we know fuck-all).
My bold, obviously, and I think it's worth it; in fact when we the people rise up it ought to be tattooed on every one of these two-faced bastards' foreheads, and that of every journalist who has betrayed his profession and got down on his knees and serviced them.
He continues: 'I think this is exactly the kind of study that needs to be done before the next IPCC assessment. But to give it credibility, it has to have a reasonably broad spectrum of authors to avoid looking like a biased attack paper, i.e. like Soon and Balliunas.' [There's the problem: those from outside the gang who point out flaws and problems in the science are dismissed as biased, bought, oil-industry shills and professional contrarians. Those inside the gang ... daren't point them out, for fear of being excluded from the gang and/or missing out on the global-panic funding.] If you don't want to do it, just say so and I will drop the whole idea like a hot potato. I honestly don't want to do it without your participation.'
In the next, 1062618881, Tim Osborn has picked this idea up, sort of;...
The purpose was to “hide the decline” in Briffa’s reconstruction. That is an intent to deceive.
[SNIP – fake email, using somebody else’s name, using a faked IP address, we are onto you Dave -MOD]
That’s a nice Wikipedia explanation for why they committed fraud.
[SNIP – fake email, using somebody else’s name, using a faked IP address, we are onto you Dave -MOD]
By not discussing why they used Mike’s Nature Trick to hide the decline in the IPCC report. If I thought a production plot was wrong, even for very good reason, and just subsituted something else in an 8k or 10k filing after conspiring with others in private emails… We all get perp-walked.
For that FRACKING matter… I wouldn’t have been able to commit a Mike’s Nature Trick because our reserve auditers wouldn’t have signed off on it.
Google the word “analogy”… Or look it up in a dictionary. Do you know what a dictionary is?
While you are at it look up “fraud” also.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fraud
Even if the fraudsters were not trying to induce the world to “part with something of value or to surrender a legal right,” they committed fraud, apart from the acadenic/government climate science exemption.
Clearly… Because in academia, fraud is “nothing more than a statistical method used to bring two or more different kinds of data sets together in a legitimate fashion by a technique that has been reviewed by a broad array of peers in the field.”
David, how exactly do you take the quoted e-mail out of context.
Please provide us with this magical context that makes the quote not proof of fraud.
Your statement is STUPID since it is the ENTIRE e-mail is clearly shown here:
“From: Phil Jones
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000
Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,
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) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.
Cheers
Phil”
Will someone look up the IP address of this troll who is impersonating me? Please?
For that matter… Cite some evidence that MBH 98/99 was adjusted for a divergence issue before the divergence issue was identified. MBH 98/99 was wrong because it over-weighted N. California bristlecone pine tree ring chronologies and misattributed them to temperature changes that didn’t exist in nearby contemporary instrumenta records.
The hid the decline to make Briffa’s reconstruction consistent with MBH 98/99.
Secondly, my comment said thaT *if* the intent was to deceive, it’s fraud. That said…
Do I actually need to diagram the senstences for you?
In the private sector analogous behavior is fraud.
It would literally require an IQ of minus 70 trillion to think that I was referring to the private sector doing exactly the same thing to Briffa’s reconstruction that the UEA Climategat CRU did.
A criminal conviction requires proof of intent. A description of a series the series of events only requires the ability to read English.
The quoted e-mail provides more than enough evidence of intent.
And you simply lack the ability to read plain English and comprehend basic logic.
Allow myself to repeat myself…
GOOD FRACKING GRIEF!!!
Phil Jones’s email is in plain FRACKING English…
Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,
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) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.
Cheers
Phil
Drax the Destroyer of Guardians of the Galaxy could even grasp this.
I POSTED THE WHOLE FRACKING EMAIL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
David,
Take a pill.
Ralph is playing you like a violin.
Trolls love doing that.
Good post btw.
MOD: Some troll has posted over 20 items here under my name.(It’s just one more example of the dishonesty of the CAGW crowd.) I didn’t write any of them. What can be done to stop this faker? Can you find the IP address and email it to me?
Thank you for your consideration.
(He also has your blog link too, he has posted 154 times, I will place all of them in Moderation shortly) MOD
Ralph,
Are you done impersonating two short thick planks nailed together. It’s getting pretty tedious.
The email cited is part of a large series of leaked documents that very clearly establishes intent to deceive on the part of those involved.
So glaringly clear in fact, that they contributed to cratering the 2009 Copenhagen climate confab.
Given your performance so far, you’ll be telling us it wasn’t a leak but a hack.
Don’t. That would put awfully close to trolldom.
Ralph Dave Westfall,
You say,
“3) You still have offered no proof of “intent” for calling it “fraud””
I have (repeatedly) reported above.
In a Climategate email commenting on what I had written, Mann lied about what he had done and threatened me for pointing it out.
That is prima facie evidence of intent to deceive.
Richard
Ooops. I should have again posted the link to the email and discussion
see https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/12/a-mann-uva-email-not-discussed-here-before-claims-by-mann-spliced-and-diced/
Richard
Oh Ralphie, the old “it’s your opinion” line that liars love to roll out when they don’t know how to use logic, or they know the implication of admitting what is obviously true.
See, we’re intelligent and honest on this site, unlike most who visit and disagree because they have to obfuscate and use mental gymnastics, then when that fails resort to ad hominem. It’s a painful exercise in futility that we must endure watching. Like a train wreck but where the conductor refuses to put on the brakes because the bridge is out miles ahead.
If Trump had emails mentioning “Ivana’s polling trick” that “hides the decline” referencing what came out to be voter fraud we all know you’d foam at the mouth with glee
“3) You still have offered no proof of “intent”
The email does say “hide”. That sounds like intent to me. He wouldn’t want me on his jury.
Google the word “analogy”… Then read my first comment in this thread.
Good fracking grief! Are you simply BLIND?
They hid the decline to In order to 1) make the late 20th Century appear anomalous, 2) give the false impression that Mann’s Hockey Stick had been confirmed.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/26/mcintyre-data-from-the-hide-the-decline/
“Hide the decline” specifically refers to Briffa’s reconstruction.
LEARN HOW TO FRACKING READ!!!!
“Keith’s” refers to Keith Briffa’s climate reconstruction.
Ralph, the divergence is IN the reconstructions, that’s why it’s a problem. Even though the temps are warming, the proxies are saying it is getting cooler, which casts great amounts of doubt as to the accuracy of the reconstruction as a whole.
“Mike’s nature trick” was to delete the diverging parts of the Briffa reconstruction and to substitute the instrumental record.
Here’s a couple of simple questions; Is the Briffa result as quoted and used in the Mann paper a true, complete and accurate account of the Briffa results? If not, why not?
““Mike’s nature trick” was to delete the diverging parts of the Briffa reconstruction and to substitute the instrumental record.”
Short and sweet. Thanks for the precise overview.
That happens every now and then. It’s the second time I’ve been suckered in to arguing with an impostor.
(It is being dealt with, will let Anthony know about it) MOD
It’s the temperature anomaly in degrees C.
“… If they did not adjust for divergence, the blade of the stick would be even steeper…”
Much the opposite. Is this a flat-out lie, or are you just this ignorant?
For starters, the blade was going to be the blade because of the instrumental record’s use. “Adjusting for divergence” allowed them to keep the handle flat/past cooler. They then could claim that lower and decreasing proxy temps in the past are representative of temperature but that 20th century lower and decreasing proxy temps are not representative of temperature.
Ralph Dave Westfall,
The Climategate email where Mann denies that he spliced parts of “apples and oranges” graphs to create a misleading graph has the emails leading to it attached.
see https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/12/a-mann-uva-email-not-discussed-here-before-claims-by-mann-spliced-and-diced/
Those attached emails are the context of his lie that he did not splice parts of dissimilar graphs.
Please explain why he lied about what he did if you think that what he did was honest.
Richard
In your production scenario:
if your original sensor recorded one every minute and had an accuracy of +-1C but towards the end of its life it became intermittent with an accuracy of +-2C, and you then purchased a new sensor accurate to +-0.1C recording every second. which readings would be invalid.
if your production process was plastic moulding would you discard years of data from the old sensor and only use new data requiring a new learning process. Or would it be more sensible to plot both on a graph and use 10 years of history and 1 month of new data to use an engineering judgement to adjust your production process to give maximum yield.
Would you not adjust the old readings to agree with the new?
Would you adjust the new readings to agree with the old?
thefordprefect,
You ask,
“Would you not adjust the old readings to agree with the new?
Would you adjust the new readings to agree with the old?”
The answer is neither.
Scientists report data together with its determined confidence (i.e. accuracy, precision and reliability) and use it as the confidence allows.
Scientists do NOT alter data to agree with anything. Such an alteration is called scientific fr@ud.
Richard
Nice to see you posting, Richard. 🙂
I would have to clearly identify the adjustments and clearly explain them.
I was specifically referring to oil production. If my company’s oil production suddenly declined due to a hurricane, right before we had to issue a 10k and a group of us said, “Hey, let’s just hide the decline by substituting a production graph of how the wells are supposed to be performing”… We go to jail
thefordprefect: Unless you have run both sensors side by side for sufficient time to calibrate how the two sensors react to all combinations of environmental conditions, than adjusting either to match the other is invalid.
PS: If in your analogy of a sensor getting worse over time, the urge to “adjust” becomes even more invalid. How did the sensor degrade, just saying that your confidence levels are greater is meaningless.
David Middleton and Attention Moderator: Someone is posting under my name. It’s not the first time it happened at WUWT. What can be done to prevent this?
Ralph Dave Westfall wrote, “Mr. Middleton, please tell us how this would ‘deceive’ anyone?”
Here’s a zoom-in on the splice points in their fraudulent graph, on the cover of the 1999 WMO Climate Statement (which is the graph that they were talking about):
Note how Phil Jones used identical colors for the instrument data and the proxy reconstruction data, and note how he rounded the three splice points to hide them.
He even “bent” the bottom of the blue instrument trace out to the left a bit, to connect it with the blue (Mann) proxy trace. Remember: despite the graph labels which claim that the three traces are proxies, from 1981 on all three traces are the actually real (instrument) temperature data (and the green trace is real temperature data from 1961 on). Yet the three traces of the same instrument data aren’t quite identical, because, to hide the splice points, Jones had to bend the traces a bit, to make them line up with the three proxy traces.
If you don’t think that’s deceptive, I can’t imagine what you think would be.
Thank you MOD for pulling all the stuff posted under my name by this fraud, including the one Dave Burton replied to above. It’s sad that people have to stoop this low to promote their agenda, but it’s not surprising.
Thank you MOD for pulling all the stuff posted under my name by this fraud. It’s sad that people have to stoop this low to promote their agenda, but it’s not surprising.
(You are welcome Mr. Westfall, glad you brought it up while I had not yet figured out what was wrong about the trolling style of comments the fraud was making, until you mentioned the IP address differences, DOH!) MOD
There is no valid, scientific reason to splice together two such dissimilar data sets. Therefore fraud is the only conclusion left.
This isn’t a FRACKING mistake…
From: Phil Jones
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000
Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,
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) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.
Cheers
Phil
Will someone look up the IP address of this troll who is impersonating me? Please? And post it here? Thank you.
Exactly! ala; Sherlock Holmes. When all other possibilities have been eliminated, what is left must be true.!
They did it intentionally, as the quoted e-mail made clear.
Ralph, I looked up the definition of “mistake.” It says, “Ralph Dave Westfall.” Now what?
Your wilful blindness betrays your own bias.
The alternative is incompetent, Keith. Will you agree to that?
And, here is another example. Mount Read, Tasmania. Tree ring temperature reconstruction, along with measured temps(on the end).
Southern Hemisphere hockey stick? Must be the Coriolis effect… /Sarc
Until Mann et. al. come out and proclaim that they deliberately committed fraud, the acolytes will continue to invent even more fanciful excuses for the fraud.
They’ll still deny it or try to explain it away.
They refuse to acknowledge the deception because the Hockey Stick is the only thing they have to hang their CAGW hat on.
So this is the difficulty when interacting with these types: they are cult followers. Brainwashed, childish, zealous, liars. Not just the supposed scientists on board, not just media, politicians, but the actual people are genuinely self deceivers and purposefully lying to you because they know the implication, just like building 7 and the ridiculously fake modeling whose data was never released by NIST for “national security reasons” riiiiiight.
Their fantasy house of cards crumbles once they admit the truth and what that implies prevents them from furthering their agenda
“The instrumental data can be used to calibrate the reconstruction.”
Pure pseudo-science.
You’re assuming the proxy record has a one-to-one correlation with true physical temperature; that it displays the same amplitude as physical temperature, but just has an offset.
That assumption is exactly what the centigrade ordinate asserts, and what use of the notion of calibration claims.
It’s a crock. There is no reason — repeat NO reason — to accept that assumption.
The ODP proxy allows a conclusion of warming, with the caveat about the assumption that dO18 has consistently followed temperature alone over the entire period (does anyone know that it has done?).
However, ODP does not allow assignment or calculation of true physical temperatures.
To employ a centigrade ordinate is to mislead, even if innocently.
The proxy data don’t have to have 1:1 relationship, they almost never do have a 1:1 relationship.
They just have to have a physical relationship to be useful.
Scaling proxies into temperature series and calling them degrees K exactly assumes a 1:1 relationship, David.
There is no known direct relationship between temperature and proxy that is not confounded by other important variables such as precipitation (tree rings) or isotopic rain-out (dO18).
Apart from dO18, there is no physical theory that converts any proxy into temperature degrees.
And dO18 suffers from unknown changes in paleo-monsoon tracks and isotopic rain-out.
The whole field falsely extrudes quantitative results out of qualitative judgments. Doing so is pseudoscience, and nothing else.
See my “proxy science and proxy pseudo-science” on WUWT here.
That post, by the way, presents the first, and still only, graphic of Keigwin’s Sargasso Sea dO-18 proxy paleo-temperature series with physically valid uncertainty bars.
A belated thanks for your insights here and at your link Pat. I’m interested to point to a paper with that graphic in that past post for possible future reference.
Glad you found that post useful, Mike.
Which graphic would you like? A couple were extracted from papers and modified, but all of them were unique to that post.
Oh good grief! I can not believe we (who are supposedly intelligent independent-minded people) waste so many column-inches arguing over what the definition of “is” is! Can we all make a gentleman’s agreement to ignore the trolls? Since they seem to feed off replies (of any sort, kind of like, “…if you wish to opt out of this newsletter click here…” will guarantee a flood of spam since the click was intended only to verify a valid email address) maybe they’ll evaporate eventually if no one ever replies?
“The proof of that in the eyes of The Team appears to be that several “independent” reconstructions give similar answers, ”
But even more studies show something different.
Medieval Warm Period Project:
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php
Qualitative temperature differentials:
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/qualitative.php
List of scientists whose work they sited:
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/scientists.php
List of Research Institutions Associated with the work:
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/institutions.php
@Louis Hooffstetter It’s even worse than that. The “independent” reconstructions used the exact same proxy data, that were found by MacIntyre and McKitrick’s deconstruction of MBH98 as not fit for purpose, and tried again to hammer the data into confessing! Not independent. Not a verification.
Largely unnoticed is the fundamental statistical problem of “tree ring calibration” that underlies the proxies and climate science.
Calibration is mathematically forbidden because it removes the random sample assumption underlying statistics. Formally it is a fatal flaw known by the obscure phrase “selecting on the dependent variable. ”
Basically it means that you can statistically prove anything you want with calibrated tree ring proxies. True=false. Up=down. No problem.
Temp = func(tree rings)
The above equation underlies the controversy. This equation is what climate science is trying to analyse.
What calibration does is change this to
Temp = func(tree rings, temp)
This is a recursive problem that has not been recognized let alone solved by climate science. Basically calibration renders tree rings useless for analysis statistically.
That’s a really astute point, Ferd, and very concisely formulated.
Keith Briffa himself (who did the studies on bristlecone pines) warned Michael Mann that his data were unsuited as proxies for temperature reconstructions.
Popcorn.
In a way, it’s too bad that the appeal didn’t get kicked up to the Supremes. Had they ruled against the U, then UVA would also have to fork over Mann’s emails.
Nope, this is within the Arizona court system not the federal court system. I don’t see how SCOTUS would have any jurisdiction in this case at least at this point. I could however see the University appealing the Arizona Supreme’s ruling if they fail. In states with sunshine laws this would have been over before it started.
I assumed that the UAZ would keep appealing.
We do have one (actually, several different statutes that add up to the same thing, but covering records, meetings, etc. separately).
What the U of A is pursuing as their legal obstruction is the “proprietary or third party data” exemption – which is in almost every other “sunshine” statute around the country. A reasonable exemption, but also a loophole that lets them play the whole matter out, hopefully until it no longer makes a difference. Or they can have a semi-plausible “oops” – which we have seen used fairly often among the corrupt (not just in climate “science”).
Absolutely right. I can see no cause for federal jurisdiction. I am amazed that it has taken this long to resolve a fairly straightforward FOI question.
Had VA still had a GOP AG when its state Supreme Court ruled on Mann’s emails, he would have appealed to the USSC. Whether they would have taken the case, I can’t say, of course.
Too bad that Cuccinelli wasn’t still in office when the verdict came down.
Federal grants paid for these charlatans’ “work”, which they now, like their “data”, want to keep secret.
The University of Arizona must have an awful lot to hide and cover up.
Must be Damning if
The University then asked the Appellate Court for a stay, arguing that once the documents were released, “that genie could not be put back in the bottle,” in the event the trial court’s decision was reversed.
There is a Genie involved and one that ‘Can’t be put back in the bottle”
In the Koran a Genie or Gin is a dust-devil. Same with the New Testiment devils, which are called pneuma, or winds. And it is very difficult to put a dust-devil back into a bottle…!
Dr. Overpeck left UA and went to UMichigan last year. Most of those emails will include his mail.arizona. edu address.
Probably didn’t want to be around when the contents are revealed.
True, but at the time (1999) of MBH M was at UVA and H was at Arizona. Don’t think Overpe knwas in play on the original hockey stick.
And yet he’s allegedly the guy who said, “We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period”.
Overpeck was a coordinating editor of AR4 WG1 report. See above, they want those emails. I suspect they believe there is a smoking gun in them.
Joel
There is a legal concept called adverse inference which says exactly what you say. Withholding the emails is pretty damning on its own and, in the context of climategate it is outright incriminating.
Still looking forward to Mann’s Virginia e-mails.
yep
Yes. But is anybody still trying to get them?
is there a Santa Claus?
This is good.
A couple of questions (which may, once again, display my ignorance):
1. Are these the same or some of the same emails UVa refused to release?
2. Was one of Mann’s “et.al”s at the University of Arizona? That’s why Arizona is involved?
Dr Jonathan Overpeck
https://tucson.com/news/local/education/college/renowned-climate-scientist-jonathan-overpeck-leaving-university-of-arizona/article_494768bb-e865-5e10-b28a-a2f4cd82234b.amp.html
http://seas.umich.edu/research/faculty/jonathan_overpeck
Short answers. 1Yes. 2. Yes. Hughes was at Arizona while Mann was at UVA at the time (1999).
So this is sort of a backdoor to get to UVA?
It could be viewed that way. You know how thread drift can be in an e-mail chain; no telling where things may go when you’re in the middle. It’s anyone’s guess how much of Mann’s correspondence with U of A overlaps that with others at other institutions.
The cabal of conspirators were largely all copied on the emails plotting to thwart science, as shown by the UAE trove.
Very convenient! 🙂
An inconvenient truth for the conspirators.
Thanks to all for answering my questions.
(I’m sure I’m not the only one that had similar questions.)
Hughes was a Prof at Arizona.
Any bets on how long it takes for the requested information to actually be handed over?
It could be housed on a server in a building that “ACCIDENTALLY” catches fire and destroys the servers rendering the information unrecoverable.
Now that would really Byte
Don’t give them ideas! This IS fire country, we’ve had no monsoon rains as of yet, AND the Fourth is tomorrow. (We have the average percentage of idiots around here – maybe slightly more than the average.)
We’ll send you some cold rain if you send up some Summer!
Balmy 45F here right now…
I hear that the general IQ (Idiot Quantity) increases relative to the proximity to UA and UEA
Keep Comey and Hillary away from them!
They have a legal responsibility to safeguard that data until the case is over, one way or the other. So multiple backups, including off-site would be prudent. The court takes a dim view of litigants that don’t protect such records.
My guess is that many have been deleted already and can be blamed on unknown ex-employees, damage in storage, deterioration of storage media, etc.
Those that do make it out unscathed…the latest trend seems to be to claim that posts and emails were doctored after-the-fact or fabricated by someone else.
“The court takes a dim view….” Well, yes but progressives take a dim view of anyone who fails to understand that rules about preserving stuff only apply to opponents of progressives. And since progs are for all the right things, any judge who would order them to produce info embarrassing to progs would of course be a raci$t. The judge would be denounced, and destruction of the evidence would be justified to fight raci$t deniali$m, for the cause. St. Hillary showed them the way, destroy it right out in the open, like the mafia leaves the gun.
I consider that what Michael M@nn found, when the divergence issue arose, was that the adjusted thermometer reconstruction record is not a good proxy for temperature. Hence the divergence between it and the tree rings.
Obviously the divergence issue meant either (i) tree rings are not a good proxy for temperature, or (ii) if tree rings are a good proxy for temperature, then the adjusted thermometer record is not a good proxy for temperature, or (iii) it is a mixture of both of those.
If M@nn was a genuine scientist having found the divergence issue, his paper ought to have addressed the divergence issue head on, and it would have devoted several sections dealing with the divergence issue, and the possible causes, and which cause the author favoured as explaining and lying behind the divergence issue, together with the author’s reasoning.
Further, his result was extraordinary, overturning what had been the long held view that the MWP was a real Northern Hemisphere event, and that there were significant changes in Northern Hemisphere temperatures these past 800 to 1000 years. M@nn’s claim was extraordinary and would require extraordinary evidence to displace everything we though that we knew about past climate history of the Northern Hemisphere. His paper ought to have addressed that issue and looked very critically upon his own study, and whether the data was really robust and were there other proxy supports backing up his claim.
I consider that what Michael M@nn found, when the divergence issue arose, was that the adjusted thermometer reconstruction record is not a good proxy for temperature. Hence the divergence between it and the tree rings.
It was Briffa who studied the divergence issue not Mann et al.
If M@nn was a genuine scientist having found the divergence issue, his paper ought to have addressed the divergence issue head on, and it would have devoted several sections dealing with the divergence issue, and the possible causes, and which cause the author favoured as explaining and lying behind the divergence issue, together with the author’s reasoning.
Which is what Briffa did.
Though extraordinary, his claim fit too well into the belief systems of that day to require any explanation. Man is destroying the Earth and M@nn just proved it. What else is needed?
Bingo, after all the adjustments, the instrumental record is not an accurate representation of temperatures. That’s a concise way to put it.
The better the data, the fewer the adjustments, the less warming is observed. Why else would USCRN flatline as CO2 levels continue their unrelenting climb?
Whenever Warmists announce they’ve found another hockey stick at the bottom of an ocean or the top of a mountain where nobody ever tried looking before, my BS detector goes off.
Ouch!
That is going to cause an atmospheric disturbance of epochal dimensions!
The Sun will implode! The clouds will weep Billions and Billions of gallons of cloud tears!! Dogs and cats will be living together!
I can hear the heads exploding now!
I’ll pop some popcorn and have it at the ready.
they’ll need to re-name this epoch the Boofheadocene
Another fan of the first Ghostbusters. 🙂
How do we know they actually handed over the documents (this is the future past tense)? I’m seeing obstruction of justice happening…
That’ll be the next round of litigation.
That is called contempt of court, actually. In that case, the court has the authority to start jailing people. That tends to turn on the document spigot.
The main problem is that tree rings are very poor thermometers, and even worse chronographers.
The main governor of tree ring growth is moisture, followed by nutrients, canopy competition, and pests. And finally, after all those factors, we have temperature. So a burst of thick tree rings probably denotes a decade with good rainfall, not high temperatures – and the temperature analysis by Mann is a complete travesty.
Add to that, we have many microclimates, which will give different tree-ring results even in relatively nearby locations. And finally, the rings in a tree are not even symmetric within one tree. Take a look at the following image, where a core taken from the 8 oclock position will show warm temperatures, but a core in the 2 oclock position will demonstrate cool temperatures. So what was the climate at this time – Warm or cold? Wet or dry? Pestilant or healthy? Forested or open? Manured or barren?
So how can you develop a global temperature from tree rings – that are actually showing rainfall, nutrient, pest, and competition rates for the trees in specific locations (ie: not globaly)..?
And the same goes for dendrochronology.
How can you compare a tree-ring sample from England, with a reference sample that came from Ireland or America? Not only are the micro and macro climates very different in each location, but the tree being sampled may have had a blight for 10 years, or a drought for ten years, and show very thin rings for that time. A blight or drought that the reference trees never experienced. So how can you compare sample-tree-ring-apples, with reference-tree-ring-oranges – and derive a date…? The whole of dendrochronology is based upon a complete fantasy.
Image: Tree rings are not consistant, even within one tree.
Was the “disturbance in the farce” at about 110 degrees Climatgate?
My guess would be a branch.
Even if you could control for all the other factors, many species of tree have an optimal growth temperature. The growth response falls off on either side of the peak. Let’s say the peak growth rate is at 78°F. On either side of that peak, how would you tell the difference, for example, between 72°F and 84°F, assuming a symmetrical curve?
To turn the tree-mometers into actual thermometers u need a bottle of Mickey M@nns snake oil magic sauce which can be purchased at any IPCC meeting.
Thank you Ralfellis. This needs to be said over and over. It’s soil moisture that is the factor that most effects a trees growth.
Having recently planted some trees, I can attest to that. They didn’t so well at first, but then I installed a drip watering system and this year they are going gangbusters.
ralfellis
Thank you.
That is a brilliant illustration of the complexities involved in the science. Too many variables to have simply one selected as the smoking gun.
You describe a complex subject in layman’s terms, and as a layman, I believe that’s what a scientists job is.
In addition, Mann may also have used a damaged tree for his “rings”. The growth was irregular. Steve McIntyre commented on this.
Dendrochronology does not have all the problems that Dendroclimatology does. For most hardwood and softwood trees (but not palms), each year produces a distinct growth ring adjacent to the cambrium. So find any old live tree anywhere and core them in year X. Count back toward the center, one ring per year. Thickness does not matter. Chronology. Now the tricky part. Find some adjacent older dead trees. Try to match their old outer rings to the livimg trees inner rings. The tricky part is ‘matching’ for other growth conditions in the time splice zone. Then keep counting back toward the core of the dead tree. Rinse and repeat. In the American Southwest, the lodgepole pines used to roof kivas can take you very reliably back to about 1000bce without radiocarbon dating. So you know the ‘exact’ year the pines were cut to build the kiva. Acts as a nice control to finetune radiocarbon dating. Similarly in European peat bogs, dendrochronology can drive ‘exact’ dating back several thousand years because the wood is so well preserved. In Japan, the well preserved Shinto shrine beams can take you back to about 800.
Surely the MWP was worldwide not just NH?
They tried to get rid of the MWP. AND FAILED.
Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas published a paper which reviewed proxy data worldwide and concluded that the MWP was indeed, global.
This so incensed some of the main players that they attempted to retaliate against the editor of the journal who allowed the paper to be published. This became known as the “Von Storch” affair. Much of this was revealed in the ClimateGate emails.
Coeur de Lion
Frankly, who cares.
The point of identifying the MWP in the context of climate change is that humankind in the NH can not only survive, but flourish in warmer temperatures.
The denial of that period, global or otherwise, does mankind a disservice. Whether the rest of the world endured a hotter climate or not during the MWP is entirely irrelevant in my opinion. The fact is, it was good for those who enjoyed it.
Which leads me to two conclusions:
1. We know that cooler global temperatures are nigh on catastrophic for mankind.
2. We know that mankind can profit from higher temperatures.
The AGW scientific community is always keen to point out localised studies like hurricanes, droughts, floods etc. which to them represent a global phenomenon. But somehow, the MWP is denied that characteristic. It seems it’s either only significant if it’s global and therefore lost in the noise, or it’s worthless because it’s local, although demonstrable, and extended.
Winning again!
Someone deserves a medal, not because they are pro or con AGW theory, but because they care that we the people will never even begin to solve any problems without the facts.
What is the chance he sees jail time for accessory to mass murder for what global energy policy has done, mostly based off what appears to be fraudulent science? I’m really hoping we see damning evidence in these emails that at the very least is sufficient to remove him from his position, with my ultimate hope for setting up groundwork for more releases and eventually jail time for crimes against humanity.
This isn’t libel either because I didn’t make any claims just questions and hopes
Just like I’m wondering if he will look good in prison garb. Maybe next to his “Nobel Prize”.
You know, the one he “won” for lying.
I really look forward to the summary of the e-mails. As the University of Arizona spent probably a million dollars over a 5 year period to deny the FOI request, there must be something there to hide. If not, this is a prime example of why one does not want to donate hard earned money to any university. They simply do not know how to spend it wisely if they waste this much legal effort on blocking what should be publicly available information.
Most Excellent!
Buy popcorn shares now!
5-4-3-2- Manniacal screams!
Maybe Manniacal will hit up his hidden sponsor for funds to petition the appellate court?
All of this legal aid Manniacal gets should be counted as income.
I’m not holding my breath, but I’m remaining hopeful this “genie” will be sufficient to undo the climate thugs conspiracy against humanity. I’m hoping for the beginning of massive jail sentences for many of the world’s “scientists” and politicians who have knowingly colluded on this monumental hoax. Mann, a fella can dream
I dream of genie on the loose. Things change within the blink of an eye!
So let it be written for all time that the climate change policy crusades were based on hidden communications, motivations, and detailed methods that were withheld from public view repeatedly by academic institutions. Such action does not comport with global emergencies based on any real and credible science. It does fit with the routine of advocacy activities and interactions with compromised political groups.
Free the Genie!!
These companies who keep getting ‘hacked’ and releasing our personal data ought to take an information security lesson from the University of Arizona or Penn State. Nobody has been able to hack their climate change emails (which is a shame in my book).
Wouldn’t one think that if the future of the earth and all life on it does indeed hang in the balance, that these scientists (Mann, Overpeck for example) would WANT their university climate emails publicly exposed to provide more proof that the earth is in dire need of saving?
They have no hockey sticks from the Roman Warm Period or the Medieval Warm Period, so the pretend that these warm periods did not exist. However, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
There are no hockey sticks in the Roman Period because the Romans did not play hockey – how could they have created an ice? Also the Thames did not freeze over during the Roman Warm Period. No ice hockey in the Medieval Warm Period either.
No data before 1400? As the man said -the greatest lie is omission.
too late, too late.
Did they send United States Marshalls to seize all this data? If not they will shred and bleach bit it all.
I will believe it when I see it. Like liars and others with something to hide, they will do whatever it takes to avoid the truth from being revealed. They just will not release them. Stall long enough and the judge will retire or die of old age. Perhaps they will rustle up a huge bribe with help from George Soros.
The truth is the mortal enemy of those with something to hide. It is quite possible that the entire house of cards will collapse if the emails are released. Heads will roll- “why did you lie for so long when you knew it was a load of fabricated rubbish from day one? Why didn’t you speak up when suicidal economic decisions based on this garbage were made?” Yes, the People will not be very happy when they eventually find out how they had been lied to for so long, especially as there were opportunities to back away from the lies.
Heads will roll. But only if we keep the pressure on and make ever more severe punishments for those who refuse to obey rule of law. Perhaps life in prison until the emails are handed over. Shut down the university. Chuck thousands out of their propaganda-spreading “jobs” , leave thousands of brainwashed students with half baked degrees and massive debt. The punishments must get more and more severe until they have to release. When there are protests about it, make the punishments even more severe. Jail the leftist protesters, maybe shoot the Antifa Brownshirts on sight.
Think I am a bit draconian? Think again- what if we continue to allow the lies about climate to destroy our energy based civilization? The planet supported around 7 million, not 7 billion humans before the advent of human technology. Thus, 99.9% of humans will perish if we do NOT pursue the truth and continue to believe the lies. The human species could even become extinct by imploding itself by refusing to let go of the lies. What a massive price to pay because we don’t want to be seen to be “too cruel” to the little snowflakes.
The University of Arizona just wants to delay releasing the emails… until everyone currently alive is dead.
For those contributors who may have missed them
there are several really excellent and well written discussions on both
the hockey Stick and the Yamal Tree Rings of Briffa on the
Bishop Hill Blog,
http://www.bishop-hill.net/the-yamal-deception
These add exceptional depth to understanding of what took place, and how it was done.
There used to be free versions around, then they became “books” and there now appears to be a charge.
I wonder how many of the electronic documents will be eaten by a proverbial “computer bug”? I have zero faith in these administrators not to continue to hide the truth. Oh, or the copies will be corrupt… Or they deleted those YEARS ago… They will try something.
The NSA has them.
all of them ?
Let me guess…they just discovered the dog ate their server? Or a passing Russian hooded crow walked on somebody’s keyboard causing all the relevant emails to be deleted?
Maybe they got hold of the cloth that Hillary used to wipe her server?
I could have saved the Planet trillions of dollars by getting a highly trained spider with a different coloured ink on each leg and let is run across a page.
One can only be amused by threads involving Michael Mann. In almost every one, trolls not active in any other threads suddenly appear to muddy the waters. They want to know how the emails show fraud, or intent, or at the mention of what would happen if similar strategies were used in the private sector, demand to know when that has ever happened. Look at the first few comments in this thread for example, with trolls diverting attention from obvious conclusions by polluting the thread with arguments so stupid that Dave Middleton is reduced to asking the trolls if they can read. Lots of scrolling to get to any coherent discussion of facts and events.
Well I’d like to thank the trolls. They are, frankly, evidence that a well funded campaign to distract attention from what Mann and Co did is real and in operation. No, I’m no conspiracy theorist. But this behaviour in Mann related threads has gotten both old and repetitive. No other climate scientist that I am aware of gets defended in this manner in this forum, and I’ve been following it for a long time.
Yes indeed David I too have been watching much the same patterns of behaviour evolving over the years. Every time this subject comes up in forums across the internet I see a tribe of creationist-like people show up with the same bizarre arguments about how is it possible to know what was in the minds of the Climategaters when they wrote what they did and attempting to change the meaning and context of plain English.
This dedicated band of misanthropes are the active wing of the quasi-religious cult of carbon dioxide and they will never stop. They may be utterly irrelevant but they will never stop and moreover they form a significant part of the body of evidence supporting the hypothesis that what we are dealing with here is a virulent cult which has nothing whatsoever to do with scientific enquiry or the search for truth.
Maybe one of the lawyers that are conversant with document production can answer this.
How would the court know if UA turned over the “Mildly embarrassing but we can deal with it” emails.
But deleted the “We know AGW is a crock but we are still going to push it” emails?
That would be extremely difficult to accomplish. These emails are a tangled mess of email lists, replies, reply alls, forwards, bcc’s and on an on. You can’t delete one single email without also deleting all the various emails associated with it. If you did, giant gaps would exist in the records that are easy to spot and raise questions. Imagine a damning email that has been sent to six people, all of whom hit reply all, three of which forwarded it to other people, and then all of those recipients hit reply all and/or forward it. Each step in that expanding chain would have the original damning content embedded in the email string. Not saying it is impossible, but it would take a LOT of work, and if even ONE email chain has a hole in it, it will draw the attention of investigators, essentially telling them exactly where to look and point it out in court. The perpetrators at that point would be looking at jail time if the court got nasty about it. Further, even if you did accomplish the task of killing all those webs of email chatter, you’d be exposed by the simple fact that if even one recipient came forward and said hey, I’ve got this email from Michael Mann I was cc’d on and it isn’t in the list provided to the court, the jig would be up. Then on top of that, you most likely have the search being done by qualified IT professionals who will not only have to go through the email server itself, but also through backup copies of the data that are taken on daily and weekly basis and stored off site. So to make all the incriminating emails disappear, you’d need not only the silence of all the people who exchanged email with Mann, but also the IT department, who also aren’t interested in going to jail. All you need is one whistle blower.
Not saying it can’t be done. The IRS under the last administration made a whole whack of email disappear. I attribute that to weak investigative journalism because anyone with any knowledge of enterprise email systems knew that the excuses given were bullsh*t. In this case a court is demanding the emails, and it is not a friendly court at this point. If the university thought they could make the emails quietly disappear, they most likely would have instead of getting into a drawn out legal battle. My guess is they fought because making the emails disappear is a real problem for them.
But at day’s end, who knows what stupid excuse they might come up with and the court will accept. I just think its a pretty tall order to just make a few incriminating email disappear without leaving some obvious holes in the record.
In fact, they may double down. They’ll produce massive amounts of email that are technically responsive to the request but have nothing to do with anything. They’ll try and drown everyone with volume, the incriminating emails buried in the mess. Plus, they’l be pulling up obscure emails and trying to muddy the waters. Yes he said X over here, but if you look at Y over there, he was really responding to Z and so X doesn’t actually mean X. Just look at the top of this thread where trolls defending Mann have so twisted the conversation that Middleton wound up asking them if they could read. The trolls won. They muddied the waters and only dedicated readers are going to read far enough down in the comments to get past their drivel and see what anyone else has to say.
Hanlon’s razor – Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.