Michael Mann Appeals to, Then Ignores Scientific Consensus on 60 Minutes

By James Taylor from Climaterealism.com

Prominent scientist and climate activist Michael Mann appealed to an asserted scientific consensus to chastise President Donald Trump on CBS’s 60 Minutes program last night. Ironically, Mann himself ignored clear scientific consensus in order to promote his own, out-of-the-mainstream climate change theories.

While interviewing Mann, CBS’s Scott Pelley said, “There have always been fires in the West. There have always been hurricanes in the East. How do we know that climate change is involved in this?” Pelley followed up with, “The president says about climate change, ‘Science doesn’t know.’”

Replied Mann, “The president doesn’t know, and he should know better. He should know that the world’s leading scientific organizations, our own U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and national academies of every major industrial nation, every scientific society in the United States that’s weighed in on the matter. This is a scientific consensus. There’s about as much scientific consensus about human-caused climate change as there is about gravity.”

Mann’s description of the conclusions of the “scientific consensus” however, is exactly the opposite of what scientific bodies report.

As documented in Climate at a Glance: Hurricanes, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) expresses “low confidence” in any connection between climate change and changes in hurricane activity.

Similarly, as documented in Climate at a Glance: U.S. Wildfires, U.S. wildfires are much less frequent and severe than they were in the first half of the 20th century – 100 years of global warming ago. Moreover, the IPCC reports a decrease in drought conditions – which is the primary climate factor regarding wildfires – in the global region including the U.S. West. Moreover, the IPCC finds no evidence of an increase in drought globally, either.

Ultimately, data, evidence, and scientific facts are far more indicative of scientific truth than a real or imagined consensus of scientists. Yet, to the extent Michael Mann wishes to invoke consensus as a scientific argument, the clear consensus of scientists is that Mann is promoting extreme climate theories that have no basis in reality.

0 0 votes
Article Rating

Discover more from Watts Up With That?

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

72 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
October 5, 2020 12:06 pm

Mr. Taylor’s comments are correct. If you wish to see the actual science on the topics of global warming and wildfires/hurricanes, please go here: http://www.mikesmithenterprisesblog.com/2020/10/when-it-comes-to-global-warming.html

Bill Powers
October 5, 2020 12:11 pm

“…our own U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and national academies of every major industrial nation, every scientific society in the United States that’s weighed in on the matter. ”

These organizations have something more intimately in common than a consensus. Government Funding. Without a problem, funding goes away. Jobs are in jeopardy.

Therefore, I consent because I want to keep my job so yeah Global warm…ahh climate change. Just tell me what you need me to say today. This popularity contest called consensus is no more complicated than government purchased affirmations.

John
Reply to  Bill Powers
October 5, 2020 2:45 pm

reminds me of “Peer Review” where it has been proven you can toss $100 to a board, and get “Peer Reviewed” tagged to whatever you want to publish, regardless of how inaccurate or simply wrong they may be.

Bill Powers
Reply to  John
October 6, 2020 11:49 am

Unless you wish to publish real science that contradicts the narrative John. Throwing money at a paper that contradicts the narrative of: “Man Bad because fossil fuel. CO2 causing end of days maybe in 12 years possible 50 years. Need Government to stop evil man and save planet. Stop.” But to you point, what an absolute joke a once valid scientific review process has become.

If you back real science with a bribe to a peer review process the GovMint will just double your bribe to hide the truth. I have to laugh every time a Soros troll sitting on comment boards jumps on with “Oh Yeah! Peer Review.” What a joke. I would put more trust in Mad Magazine than I would in the nebulous government funded “Peer Review Process”

ResourceGuy
October 5, 2020 12:29 pm

Thanks you for the follow up information and perspective. I love this site.

October 5, 2020 12:39 pm

The problem is Mikey Mann is their “go to guy”. He always delivers alarmist soundbites, is always confident, and is willing to sling mud at opponents (especially Trump). He’s Bill Nye without a bow tie.
So they will always turn to him when they need to hit the alarm button. That
he is a poor scientist, a petty litigious child, and a liar matters not a whit.

Reply to  Mumbles McGuirck
October 5, 2020 2:47 pm

He’s Bill Nye without a bow tie.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
Good one!

Greg
Reply to  Steve Case
October 5, 2020 3:10 pm

Bill Nye ( the science lie ) is NOTHING without the tie. He’s a clown, a childrens’ TV caricature of a scientist.

The oddball bow tie is meant to suggest that he’s a bit eccentric and thus a “real” madcap professor.

Apparently children find him “entertaining”.

Carlton Yee
Reply to  Greg
October 5, 2020 8:56 pm

I learned when a young squirt that I should never trust a man who wears a bow tie. He is a certifiable nut case.

Sara
Reply to  Mumbles McGuirck
October 5, 2020 3:10 pm

He needs to get the beard back on his mug. Seriously, it does make a difference when he doesn’t have it.

And he’s coming off as being whiny about the whole climate science thing, since he doesn’t have any real targets to attack. So he goes after dTrump. That’s just kind of lame.

Doug Huffman
Reply to  Sara
October 5, 2020 4:14 pm

That’s not a beard on his mug but a misplaced merkin.

Our dear Shakespearean English is so depauperate bland since the SJW SJNetwsorks.

Sara
Reply to  Sara
October 6, 2020 5:28 pm

Oh, don’t give up! Just because they haven’t gotten out of kindergarten by the age of 18 doesn’t mean you have to mingle with them, you know. To them, someone using words of more than one syllable is a space alien. But not all of them are like that. I do know a few whose brains are fastened in properly and whose minds are not shredded by being told to conform.

October 5, 2020 12:41 pm

Seems that climate change, accounting for those devastating forest fires, is only occurring in CA, OR, and WA.

The other forests located throughout the other 47 states are successfully avoiding climate change !!!

Lance Flake
Reply to  Ronald Stein
October 5, 2020 2:39 pm

The media doesn’t want to cover the other states but I can assure you Colorado is having a big fire season as well. And just like on the West coast, natural climate change has little to do with it compared to government policies like decades of fire suppresion.

leowaj
Reply to  Ronald Stein
October 5, 2020 8:47 pm

Interestingly, the DNR where I live (in the Midwest) just did it’s brush clearing pass over the last 4 days in all the forests and timber along the trails. It’s amazing how far you can see into a forest when the dry dead underbrush is cleared away.

October 5, 2020 12:46 pm

The 60 Minutes piece was very shallow too. That there were big wildfires this year and an active Hurricane season plus two years ago one high temperature reading tied an old record and it’s Thermageddon. Doesn’t take much these days to make an ‘existential threat’s.

niceguy
October 5, 2020 12:49 pm

He seems decrepit, used. He aged decades!

Scarface
Reply to  niceguy
October 5, 2020 2:07 pm

He sure is getting old very quickly. Probably because of global warming.
The picture of him for this item, on the homepage, made me think of Gollum!

‘My precious’, would that be a hockey stick? lol

Reply to  Scarface
October 5, 2020 2:37 pm

There was some discussion of this on another thread this past weekend and the ….. wait for it ….. consensus was for Grima Wormtongue.

Derg
Reply to  Scarface
October 5, 2020 2:57 pm

I always thought Mosh was Gollum clutching his temp data crying “my precious.”

Then he moved on to contract tracing.

Reply to  Derg
October 5, 2020 5:07 pm

The instructive part was that Gollum was necessary for destroying the ring

Just like Mann will one day be the death of alarmism as he is such a sewer sleazeball

Loving Steyn’s book

Gary Ashe
October 5, 2020 12:53 pm

Thats how Marxists roll, they infiltrate and infest all reputable organisations fast track their fellow journey men to the top ranks and make the organisation worthless, they speak on behalf of their members without even trying to gauge opinion because most of their members will not agree with their marxist anti capitalist view points or consensus as they lie to call it.

They cover all their bases by expelling anyone who dares to openly differ from them, its a bullet-less war, and in ways more destructive than armed conflict, just loo at the WHO and the lefts drive to fill the care homes full of corona virus so that it had maximum impact on lives lost, how is that any different than shooting or bombing people.

People like Mann .. you now the really really nice people are scum….. deadly scum at that.

October 5, 2020 1:04 pm

Wow! Michael Mann, the proven liar, lies again. I’m shocked.

Zigmaster
October 5, 2020 1:05 pm

When it comes to alarmism I believe in Mann made up climate theory but not in man made climate theory.

Tom in Florida
October 5, 2020 1:08 pm

I saw that James Hansen was going to be on. I didn’t watch because I didn’t want to blow my aortic dilation out. Was he on this same program?

Tom Abbott
Reply to  Tom in Florida
October 6, 2020 6:03 am

Yes, Hansen was also interviewed on the program He spouted the same old BS (Bad Science).

Hansen and Mann think forest fires in California and hurricanes in the Atlantic are proof that humans are changing the climate with their burning of fossil fuels. The only problem with that argument is there were forest fires in California and hurricanes in the Atlantic long before humans started burning fossil fuels.

It’s Mother Nature driving the Earth’s climate, until proven otherwise, and Hansen and Mann and the other alarmists have not proven anything. Everything they say is speculation and hyperbole with the aim of selling their Human-caused climate change narrative.

And they both looked so sincere in spreading this disinformation. I don’t know about Mann, he may just be stupid enough to believe his own lies, but Hansen ought to know better, so I think he is a deliberate liar.

After all, it’s Hansen’s US surface temperature chart I use:

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_07/

all the time to show it was just as warm in the 1930’s as it is today, and Hansen has to acknowledge this fact, but then he goes off and claims the global temperature profile is completely different from the Hansen 1999 US chart. You can compare the differences in the link above. The US surface temperature chart is on the left and the Bogus, Bastardized Modern-era Hockey Stick global temperature chart is on the right.

He has to know this doesn’t make sense. If the whole globe is warming, then it will warm every place on the globe including the United States. But the U.S. is in a temperature downtrend, and has been for decades, so in order to sell his narrative he claims the regional U.S. chart is different from the global surface temperature chart.

He is right in the sense that the global temperature chart is different from the regional U.S. temperature chart. The global chart is also different from regional temperature charts from around the world, which all look like the U.S. chart, not the Bogux, Bastardized Modern-era Hockey Stick global surface temperature chart. The Hockey Stick chart is the only chart in the world that shows a “Hotter and hotter and hotter” temperature profile. All the regional charts show the same profile as the Hansen 1999 chart where it was just as warm in the Early Twentieth Century as it is today. The Hockey Stick chart is the only chart that doesn’t agree with that temperature profile.

The reason the Hockey Stick chart doesn’t resemble regional temperature charts is because the Climategate Charlatans and their Spawn realized that in order to sell their Human-Caused Climate Change narrative they had to get rid of the warm Early Twentieth Century. If they didn’t do that, then they couldn’t claim that we are currently experiencing unprecedented warming today and they couldn’t blame CO2 for this unprecedented warming because there is no unprecedented warming.

But if it was just as warm in the Early Twentieth Century as it is today, then they couldn’t make the claim that we are experiencing unprecedented warming today, and they couldn’t blame the temperatures on CO2 because we would have more CO2 in the atmosphere today, but it would be no warmer than when there was a lot less CO2 in the atmosphere back in the 1930’s.

The Early Twentieth Century warming destroys the Human-caused Climate Change claims and so the Climategate Charlatans and their Spawn decided the only thing they could do was create a computer-generated global surface temperature record that distorted the true temperature profile of all the regional charts and turned them into a Bogux, Bastadized global surface temperature chart which makes it appear that the Earth has been getting hotter and hotter and hotter for decade after decade and we are now at the hottest time in human history.

And it’s all a BIG LIE. All unmodified regional charts from around the world have the same temperature profile as the US surface temperature profile, where it was just as warm in the 1930’s as it is today. None of them show unprecedented warming.

If all regional surface temperature charts from around the world show the same temperature profile, then that *is* the global temperature profile.

The computer-generated Hockey Stick chart is a lie that is wreaking terrible damage around the world.

One day there will be a consensus that the Hockey Stick chart was a lie.

October 5, 2020 1:12 pm

Come on mann…you know the thing…..that hockey puck graph of yours was mann-ufactured….mann up and stop this nonsense.

Reply to  T. C. Clark
October 5, 2020 2:02 pm

Not to mention mann-ipulated.

Gary Ashe
Reply to  jorgekafkazar
October 5, 2020 2:34 pm

You mean Mann-splained.

Reply to  T. C. Clark
October 5, 2020 4:23 pm

FYI: “Marlarkey” is Dementia Joe’s go to word there for nonsense.

Reply to  Joel O'Bryan
October 5, 2020 4:27 pm

“malarkey”, sigh spell-check doesn’t work on that word.

October 5, 2020 1:13 pm

Funny how climate change is always worst in an election year.

rah
Reply to  Thomas
October 5, 2020 1:43 pm

And homeless vets usually reappear in the news about this time. Their problem is that the Trump administration has really made great strides with the quality and quantity of care for veterans and they don’t want to go there.

Reply to  rah
October 5, 2020 2:10 pm

Too bad the People’s Republic of Massachusetts hasn’t done so well with vets. They run a home for vets in Holyoke where a very high percentage have died from Covid. The guy running the place, like most with state jobs, was a political hack with zero medical experience! They did everything wrong there. I believe it had about the worst record of any such place in the nation. The governor tried to fire the guy- but the court system said only the board of directors could do so- so he’s now off duty with full pay. This state is so f****d up!

Reply to  Joseph Zorzin
October 5, 2020 4:20 pm

2 indicted for handling of virus outbreak at Massachusetts veterans home where 76 died
“Two former leaders of a Massachusetts home for aging veterans where nearly 80 people sickened by the coronavirus died have been criminally charged for their handling of the outbreak, the state’s attorney general said Friday. Former Holyoke Soldiers’ Home Superintendent Bennett Walsh and former Medical Director David Clinton were indicted by a grand jury, Attorney General Maura Healey told reporters.
Each is charged with 10 counts – five counts of criminal neglect five counts of serious bodily injury.”

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-holyoke-soldiers-home-deaths-2-charged/

Abolition Man
Reply to  Joel O'Bryan
October 5, 2020 6:05 pm

Joel,
Hopefully just the first of many such indictments, with some for well deserving governors and mayors!
I’m hoping President Trump spent a lot of time during his three day visit to Walter Reed researching what the rest of the world has done to handle the ChiCom virus and he will now push Fauxi to the sidelines and let Dr. Atlas start aggressively pushing back the madness of the US response so far!

Bruce Cobb
October 5, 2020 1:19 pm

Yeesh, if those eyes were any beadier, you could string a necklace with them.

Bruce Ranta
October 5, 2020 1:30 pm

Mann is a numbskull. Full stop. BTW, Canada’s communist broadcasting corporation (CBC) turns to him for opinion as well.

westcoaster
October 5, 2020 1:34 pm

Well then Mikey maybe you could then give us an explanation of gravity, and while there tie it into quantum theory.

Reply to  westcoaster
October 5, 2020 3:35 pm

“Man made CO2 weakens Gravity. That’s why so much of what I’ve said is still afloat. (Well, there is another reason why it might still float but that’s not up for debate. The Science has settled! … er … uh … and I’m on top!)”

Reply to  Gunga Din
October 5, 2020 7:28 pm

Whether it floats or not depends on what he’s eaten.

Editor
October 5, 2020 1:48 pm

Michael Mann Appeals to…..NO ONE.

Stay safe and healthy, all.

Regards,
Bob

PS: That’s as far as I got in the headline.

October 5, 2020 1:59 pm

Off subject (sorry again)- but I just watched David Attenborough’s latest film on Netflix, “A Life on Our Planet”. I’d like to see a review of it here. I’m no scientist but I see a lot of errors in it. It includes some brief clips from earlier films by him- including the sea lions falling off cliffs!

Fres
October 5, 2020 2:04 pm

Funny how Anthony has time to post all these articles over the last 8 years but still doesn’t have time to get his UHI paper peer-reviewed like he promised his followers he would do.

maurizio rovati
October 5, 2020 2:21 pm

it seems that Manny has lost weight lately… Because of climate change I suppose.

ResourceGuy
October 5, 2020 2:26 pm

The 60 Minutes viewers don’t know any better and they don’t question anything.

Gandhi
Reply to  ResourceGuy
October 5, 2020 3:30 pm

I was a PR director for a national company when Sixty Minutes decided they were going to “go after” our company. They made up stuff and pretty much created fake news before fake news was cool. I have never watched Sixty Minutes since…because I know they’re journalistically DISHONEST.

October 5, 2020 2:48 pm

Michael Mann is not a scientist. He long ago abandoned that for a career as a fear porn hustler.

Brian Johnston
October 5, 2020 2:53 pm

The driver of climate change alarmism is a New World Order.
The question that needs to be asked is,
Where does Mann stand on the NWO

October 5, 2020 3:14 pm

Mann has the warmist dogma deep within him….he must bark it forth…consensus…consensus….you must listen and obey…..I am Scientist.

Gandhi
October 5, 2020 3:28 pm

I can’t help it, but every time I see Michael Mann, I laugh out loud. He’s such a funny-looking fellow. He reminds me of a comedian who used to be on TV in Cleveland, Ohio named “Little John.” He was part of “Big Chuck and Little John” and they did local comedy skits on Friday night TV. So “Little Michael” could be Little John’s brother…and I have to chuckle every time I see Michael Mann…he really needs a pie in the face to complete the skit!

Verified by MonsterInsights