Update On Michael Mann v. Mark Steyn Litigation

Further furthermore, when this crap goes on as long as this, it doesn’t affect your life any more, so you don’t have to feel sorry for the great Mr. Steyn (and I doubt that he wants your sympathy anyway as he selects his baseball bat – metaphorically speaking, of course). You just get on with your life until the next motion requires some thought. Then deal with it, rinse and repeat. I had 10 years of it, but wised up before the 2 year mark.

I was also in a European Patent Opposition and it’s Appeal. That lasted 4 or 5 years, but did we knock back some Reisling in Munich. I even have fond memories of a lot of both of those episodes.

“toilet paper in used toilet paper out” Fixed it for you.

Aaaaaah yes, Brownian Motion …. another unaccounted for variable.

We can speculate about Mann’s inner thoughts and feelings until the cows come home, what kind of documented evidence exists?

Well there’s no documented evidence of amicus filings for Mann, because there were NONE.

(all those co-authors, all of Al Gore, all the climategate cabal – not one of them thought enough of M. Mann to write a reference letter for him. Bernie Madoff garnered more support from the people he fleeced ffs)

Kind of like if your brother-in-law was an complete ass and was accused of child molestation but stated that he was with relatives at a playground at the time as an alibi. Would you run to the courthouse to verify his statement?

Documented evidence includes that Mann testified before Congress that he never calculated a verification r^2 for his 1400 reconstruction step.

But his BACK TO 1400 CENSORED directory showed that he in fact did calculate that r^2 and knew for a fact that the step failed verification.

But he published anyway, and wrote his paper in so obscurantist a way as to hide the analytical truth.

Steve McIntyre has documented all that in detail.

There’s also no way a mathematically astute Michael Mann mistakenly used short-centering in his PC analysis. The only rational interence is that he did it deliberately, knowing the method would raise the White Mt. bristlecone ring series into PC1.

Plotically motivated people won’t care about any of that, because Mann’s output is expedient window-dressing for their power-grabbing end.

Mann did not testify to congress that he did not calculate the R2 statistic, he testified that he did not rely on the statistic as a verification test. That he did not rely on the R2 statistic as a verification test is, of course, perfectly valid, because the R2 statistic is not a measure of a statistical model’s skill.

It has been shown innumerable times that the hockey stick shape of MBH98 is not an artifact of the centering process. But, of course, that’s irrelevant, because whether or not the correct centering was used in the PCA analysis, your description of Mann’s inner motiviations is pure, unsubstantiated fantasy. Nothing but speculation. Where is the documented proof that he did something “deliberately” wrong?

Mickey? Hello? You in there?

Mann’s words, after denying he calculated the 1400 verification r^2, was that doing so would have been a silly and wrong thing to do.

That short centering was the source of Mann’s hockey stick is so far beyond dispute, that finding cause for dispure may require dimensional access to another universe. Or delusion.

That other hockey sticks were constructed, most notably by recourse to a single tree cored at Yamal, is also notoriously true.

I wrote nothing about Mann’s inner intent, W-r. I wrote that no rational person could observe the evidence and doubt chicanery.

Your mistaken claim about what I wrote demonstrates your own lack of observational mastery. What’s the cause of that? Are you a trans-dimensional alien, is it? Or merely subject to a banal delusion.

None of the proxy paleo-temperature reconstructions rise above pseudo-science.

Blog post here.

Again, Mann did not deny calculating the R2 statistic, he explicitly stated that it wasn’t used as a verification:

The Committee inquires about the calculation of the R2 statistic for temperature reconstruction, especially for the 15th Century proxy calculations. In order to answer this question it is important to clarify that I assume that what is meant by the “R2” statistic is the squared Pearson dot-moment correlation, or r2 (i.e., the square of the simple linear correlation coefficient between two time series) over the 1856-1901 “verification” interval for our reconstruction. My colleagues and I did not rely on this statistic in our assessments of “skill” (i.e., the reliability of a statistical model, based on the ability of a statistical model to match data not used in constructing the model) because, in our view, and in the view of other reputable scientists in the field, it is not an adequate measure of “skill.” The statistic used by Mann et al. 1998, the reduction of error, or “RE” statistic, is generally favored by scientists in the field. See, e.g., Luterbacher, J.D., et al., European Seasonal and Annual Temperature Variability, Trends and Extremes Since 1500, Science 303, 1499-1503 (2004).

So, first, the claim that Mann denied calculating this statistic is blatantly false. And, second, Mann’s justification for not relying on this statistic to validate the reconstruction is completely valid.

You did write, explicitly, about what you believed to be Mann’s inner motiviation:

The only rational interence is that he did it deliberately, knowing the method would raise the White Mt. bristlecone ring series into PC1.

This passage undeniably imputes an inner motivation to Mann’s actions. Flagrantly contradicting yourself comment to comment is not an effective form of argumentation, Pat.You have presented no evidence, none whatsoever, that Mann deliberately chose this method to raise a specific series into a specific PC. If Steyn relies on arguments like yours to support his truth defense, he is in a a great deal of trouble indeed.

“This passage undeniably imputes an inner motivation to Mann’s actions.”

Wrong again, W-r. The passage says nothing about intent. It remarks only on behavior. Maybe Mann’s intent was to impress his mom. We don’t know.

What we do know is that the evidence indicates that he indulged a fraud.

“blatantly false.” From Steve McIntyre’s climate audit: “(Anticipating my report on Mann’s presentation a little, I’ll mention that one of the panelists asked him what the verification r2 statistic was for the 15th century. Mann said that they did not calculate the r2 statistic -” that would be silly.“) Given that MBH98 mentioned the term “r2” on no fewer than 7 occasions and even has a map showing the verification r2 statistic for the AD1820 step, you’d expect his nose to grow when he said this, but that’s a story for another day.”

Also here: “One of the panelists asked Mann about the verification r2 statistic: Mann said that “he did not calculate the verification r2 statistic – that would be a silly and incorrect thing to do”. The statement that the verification r2 was not calculated was untrue and the panel had evidence of this. The panel did not agree that this would be “silly and incorrect” since they endorsed the use of the closely related CE statistic for estimation of confidence intervals.

“However, they did not grasp the nettle of whether the adverse verification r2 statistics had been calculated and withheld.”

You clearly don’t know whereof you post, W-r.

“ We don’t know.”

Excellent. I’m glad we both agree that there is no evidence whatsoever that Mann had any intent to deceive or defraud anyone. This feels like progress. I hope Mr. Steyn is reading and taking notes.

Having failed to substantiate your allegation that Mann perjured himself to congress, you’ve now deftly pivoted to quoting a completely unverifiable claim by McIntyre that Mann made a comment to an NAS panel. This is certainly a lesser charge, but also one unaccompanied by evidence. Do you have a verified transcript of the panel where Mann purportedly made the remark McIntyre presents as an exact quotation?

“I’m glad we both agree that there is no evidence whatsoever that Mann had any intent to deceive or defraud anyone.”

A deliberate misrepresentation. Note I’m not ascribing intent here, W-r. Just noting your disingenuity.

Steve McIntyre was present at the panel. His report is here. SM relates, “Christy did ask Mann: “Did you calculate R2?” ‘? Mann’s answer was: “We didn’t calculate it. That would be silly and incorrect reasoning.” Whenever I hear this statement in my mind, the following phrase runs through my mind: “I did not have r2 with that statistic, Miss Lewinsky”.”

There’s your denial, W-r, by direct eyewitness testimony.

In fact you are imputing intent. You’ve tacked the word “deliberate” onto your allegation. If there was misrepresentation with no intent behind it then the misrepresentation would not be deliberate. You agree that there is no evidence whatsoever of intent in Mann’s case. If (big “if”) there was an incorrect application of centering in his PCA analysis there is no evidence (that you or anyone else has presented) that it was deliberate.

There’s your denial, W-r, by direct eyewitness testimony.

I don’t deny that this is McIntyre’s recollection of the exchange (after all we cannot impute intent to his actions without documented evidence that he has intentionally tried to deceive us). What I want to see is verifiable documentation, or even corroboration, that the exchange took place as he relays it, and that the context is fully apparent from his recounting.

After all, we see in the official transcript from Mann’s congressional testimony that he did not deny having calculated the R2 statistic, yet in your summary of his testimony, you recollected that he did deny it. If I didn’t have the written testimony to fall back on, I might have been mislead by you.

You seem to find all this trivial, but making an accusation of scientific fraud is not a trivial thing, and nowhere has anyone in this thread remotely met any standard of evidence for proving such a thing. You can’t even provide any expert testimony stating that Mann committed fraud (e.g. from Steve McIntyre, whose work forms the primary basis of your belief in the fraud).

Deliberated action can be driven by any one of multiple intents, W-r. You display flabby usage.

Steve McIntyre took notes during Mann’s presentation. Notes are not recollection.

You obviously did not follow up on any of the links I provided before making your judgment, W-r; your obviously wrong judgment.

Short centering PCA, denial of a verification r^2 that he had calculated, representing a numerical PC as physically meaningful are all evidence of incompetence in an honest worker.

Their adherence to an otherwise expert worker calls for a different judgment.

My judgment rests on the evidence described. Steve McIntyre has been superb in extracting that evidence into public view.

Mann’s denial of having calculated the r^2 is not itself evidence of fraud, but merely of lying. The fact that he calculated the r^2, knew the verification step failed, and published anyway, is evidence of fraud.

Deliberated action can be driven by any one of multiple intents, W-r. You display flabby usage.

I agree with this, of course, and nothing I’ve said contradicts it. You acknowledge you have no idea what Mann’s intent was beyond speculation.

My judgment rests on the evidence described. Steve McIntyre has been superb in extracting that evidence into public view.

Yet Steve McIntyre has never accused Mann of committing fraud.

The fact that he calculated the r^2, knew the verification step failed, and published anyway, is evidence of fraud.

As I’ve stated multiple times (and as I’ve walked folks through numerous times in other threads on WUWT), the R2 statistic does not assess the skill of a statistical model, so even if he did not report that the reconstruction “failed” (not sure how something can fail an R2, but I digress) the R2 statistic, that would not be evidence of fraud.

The only evidence of any wrongdoing in this scenario you could possibly produce would be Mann deliberately lying about whether or not it was calculated. You’ve failed to prove that he perjured himself to congress, and the best secondary allegation you can come up with are Steve McIntyre’s uncorroborated, contextless notes from an NAS panel discussion. Again, if this is the level of argument Steyn is planning to forward for his truth defense, he’s in a tight spot.

More on Mann’s denial of the r^2 statistic from Steve McIntyre: “Perhaps the most surprising aspect of his presentation was his response to a question about the verification r2 statistic, in which he denied ever calculating the statistic as that would have been “silly and incorrect reasoning”. Given that we’d presented specific evidence that he had calculated this statistic, this seemed to me to be an unpromising line of defence for him.”

Also Steve McIntyre on the “crock” that is Mannian science after showing how Mann cherry picked data to impose a conclusion in MBH98: “This is the analysis. I kid you not. Let’s suppose that a 3rd year student handed in this analysis – what grade would it get just as statistics? You probably wouldn’t fail a phys ed student in a state university who was taking a required statistics course, especially if he played on the basketball team. How about a Ph. D. student at an Ivy League university?“

Apparently this earth shattering tome has as many relevant citations as your disturbing, disruptive, 2019 paper….

When did scientific verity require citations?

Maybe in bob-world, where factual truth is defined by subscription of the people bob prefers.

Back in 2001, I published work on the Fe-Mo-S cofactor of Nitrogenase. That paper solved a 20-year problem in the field, and reconciled all the prior published data that had until then been unexplained.

It also showed that the solution chemistry of FeMoco was far more complicated than had been realized. Certain research projects elsewhere were unlikely to succeed, and so were evidently abandoned.

The paper has had few citations since then, after it put an end to a small research industry. People left the field after that paper.

The 2019 paper on the unreliability of CMIP5 models not only ends a huge research industry, but shoots down in flames multiple careers.

The urge of those folks — owners of disproven research and blasted careers — to embrace denial is probably overwhelming.

Lack of citations is not unexpected when science refutes the storyline of embedded politics; especially when it’s a politically approved pseudo-scientific storyline.

Why would anyone think that astrologers would cite the astronomy that obliterates their income?

So it is for climate modelers, after 06 September 2019. Their silence is a deafening confirmation.

Consider, bob, the further absence of a peer-reviewed and published falsification of my work. Guess what that means.

“So it is for climate modelers, after 06 September 2019. Their silence is a deafening confirmation.”

Their “silence” is them moving on, satisfied (as am I) that your ramblings are being cited as often as required. But I’m glad that you still have a government funded sinecure and that you can podcast to your fellow left behinders….

You’ve repeatedly demonstrated that you don’t know what you talk about here, bob.

The same litany demonstrates a lack of sense to be modest when ignorant.

The combination is not pretty. Arrogant blowhardery.

If fraud trials depended on finding ‘documentary evidence’then there would be very few convictions for obvious reasons the fraudsters do not tend to leave it around. Instead the law tries to find attempts to conceal or mislead which is far easier to find and equally constitutes evidence. Mann’s ‘hiding the decline’ would be a good starting point.
Of course if it is not a jury trial but one composed of ‘experts’ then who knows what the verdict might be. The point of trial by jury which has served the english-speaking world for some seven hundred years was to banish these ‘experts’ in favour of ordinary people. It has generally proved to be more satisfactory.

The pervert identified at the park as Mickey by a hundred excellent professional observers was not proven to be Mickey? Gotcha! What’s he doing to that tree?

Of course. I also believe some legitimate issues were raised about some of the methodology (also some completely illegitimate issues were raised about the methodology, but that’s a digression). I have seen no evidence whatsoever that Mann committed scientific fraud. Not even the people who identified the legitimate methodological issues have alleged that. That will be Steyn’s biggest difficulty in trying to argue to the court that his allegations of fraud are true.

Mann’s manipulations reveal his defamation case for what it is: not a defense against Steyn’s statements, but yet another platform from which Mann can try to trumpet the validity of his own statistical modeling and stifle his critics. But the undisputed material facts demonstrate that Mann’s graph is deceptive and misleading. The “truth” of Steyn’s post, as shown by Defendants’ experts Drs. Judith Curry and Abraham Wyner—whose opinions are supported by a substantial body of peer-reviewed literature and multiple Congressional reports—is that Mann’s graph, as Steyn suggested, is not what it purports to be.

First, nobody cares nor does the case depend on your wilful ignorance of the evidence.

None are so blind as those who refuse to see.

second, you either willfully or ignorantly misstate Steyne’s “biggest difficulty.” Steyne has no legal burden to argue that the allegations are true.

That appears to be exactly what he’s trying to do in his motion for summary judgement. He does not have a legal burden to argue this, but appears to have adopted it as a legal strategy.

Is that you Michael?

“That will be Steyn’s biggest difficulty in trying to argue to the court that his allegations of fraud are true.”

Fraud meaning: a person or thing intended to deceive others, typically by unjustifiably claiming or being credited with accomplishments or qualities.

Mike’s Nature trick for starters and if his supporters want to engage in semantics around the word ‘trick’ then clearly Steyn is entitled to the same about the use of ‘fraud’ wouldn’t you say?

Carlo, to W-r: “You believe the hockey stick chart is valid science?”

W-r: “Of course.”

One can only laugh. And you presume to criticize science.

Where’s the valid physical theory that converts a paleo-proxy into air temperature, W-r? Any paleo-proxy.

Maybe try life without the ideological blinders for a while. You don’t seem to be seeing very much.

Proxies have never been proven to be reliable instruments of that which they are supposedly trying to measure. Proxies are heuristic not deterministic. Therefore they are not mathematically valid. Proxies are not instruments that can be calibrated in the range within which they are supposedly measuring temperature. Mann had and has the burden of showing that the instrumentation he is relying on is accurate. He ASSUMES accuracy. He cannot demonstrate it. The decline after 1960 is a HUGE red flag as it raises this very issue. He concealed it. Concealment is generally considered to be an element of fraud.

The decline after 1960 is present only in the latewood density of certain species of high northern latitude trees. The divergence problem is not present in the latewood density of southern forests, and not present in many species, or many other types of dendro-proxies, which is a strong indication that it is a limited issue.

But, of course, Mann never concealed any such thing. His 98 study did not show the divergence issue, partly because he used very few latewood density records from those trees, but also because his was a multiproxy reconstruction.

This is one, among many, aspects of the fraud that Steyn is alleging that is simply false.

Thank you for proving my point. Had he made the points you made in your first paragraph, there would have been no concealment. Yet, he concealed. QED

P.S. Your claim that he didn’t “hide the decline” is unsupported.

These points have been made since 1995, when the issue was first identified, by Mann and other experts in the field. Briffa published an entire paper specifically about this issue in 1998. It’s discussed at length in the IPCC FAR.

So, it appears, by your own reasoning, that Mann did not conceal anything.

Nice try. Grafting instrumental temperatures on to a graph of proxy temperatures to “hide the decline” is misconduct. It happened. They got caught.

Mann never “grafted” the instrumental record onto his reconstruction. The two series wer plotted alongside each other, the purpose was to bring the temperatures up to them (at the time) present day, since the proxy records ended in 1980. The figure caption clearly explained this, and the two series were plotted using different line styles to differentiate them.

You might be conflating Mann’s work with the graphic prepared by Phil Jones for the WMO report, which plotted the instrumental temperatures and reconstructions as a single line. That graphic was certainly arguably misleading, but it wasn’t Mann’s work.

“Mann never “grafted” the instrumental record onto his reconstruction.”

More Mann Grafting

Doing the research really helps prevent false assertions, W-r.

Thanks for providing additional evidence that Mann has not grafted the instrumental record onto his reconstruction. The two series are clearly differentiated by different colors. It’s also a tad bit late to be claiming he has grafted anything, since this documented was published 17 years after MBH98.

“The two series are clearly differentiated by different colors.”

You’ve reached a whole new level of fatuous, W-r.

Surely you must understand why from my perspective it seems like McIntyre is grasping for straws here.

I grasp from your stated perspective, W-r, that you insist upon the wrong and the irrational.

“Mann and other experts in the field.”

Experts at pseudo-science.

See also Proxy Science and Proxy Pseudo-science.

Michael Mann hasn’t published any science since his work on lanthanide ceramics in the early 1990s.

Mann’s actual hokey graph sows we’d be at +0.6°C anomaly by year 2000:

Yet we were at a -0.4°C anomaly in 2000 per UAH:

https://www.nsstc.uah.edu/climate/

The baseline 0° 40-year averages were different… but neither proclaims what the actual zero °C is. Was it 13 or 14 or 15 degrees… or what?

Mann used 1961-1990 average temp… northern hemisphere.. which is 14.6°C:

[Jones et al. (1999) report the 1961-1990 reference period means for the globe, northern hemisphere, and southern hemisphere as 14.0°C, 14.6°C, and 13.4°C, respectively.]

The hokey graph actually shows +0.7° which would be 15.3°C.
We have never reached that high! Fraud?

Here is the link, which didn’t show, to Steyn’s application for lifting stay on discovery, which includes the original order. The application was denied, and the stay is still in force.

https://www.steynonline.com/documents/7531.pdf

Nick, you would do much credibly better as an actually licensed US lawyer. You aren’t. I am.

OK, produce some evidence that Steyn underwent discovery. Or that Mann refused. Or that CEI has been released from the case.

Did you try telling the judge “Easy. Ask Steyn virtually.”?

Mickey mann CANNOT ALLOW FULL DISCOVERY.. period.

Can you provide verifiable documentation of any of this? None of it is outlined in the judgement from the BC court.

Yes it is. Now you’re just lying.

It’s not just now that the troll you are responding to is lying, he’s been lying since word one. It’s what trolls like him do.

These aren’t accusations of fraud. Maybe your search needed more than 5 minutes?

English isn’t your first language, is it?

Please cite a relevant passage from the book wherein Steve McIntyre accuses Mann of committing fraud.

Read it and you will have that particular joy of discovery. Do not ask another to do something that you are too scared to do yourself. Do some original research for once in your life – it might change your whole outlook.

If you can’t cite the passage, a simple “I can’t substantiate my position” will suffice, just for future reference.

Steve walked up and introduced himself to Mann at a conference, and Mikey Fraudpants apparently became Mikey Needsachangeofpants.

Nick Stokes’ attempted foray into barristerhood ended ignominiously, but also fortunately rather quickly.
I don’t know if Weakly-Rise is a lawyer but if he is he is from the baffle-them-with-bluffs-when-arguing-a-losing-hand school of mouthpiecing.
“Fraud” in this case need merely demonstrate deception by Mann since Steyn was not referring to either civil or criminal fraud but scientific misconduct. To deny that Mann has been deceptive in his data manipulations and archiving is the work of either a fool or a crook. They have been well and often documented as the foregoing links demonstrate. Whether McIntyre or anyone else accused Mann of fraud is as smelly a red herring as has been drawn across a trail in many moons.
The two main and most common defenses to a claim of defamation are privileged speech and the truth of the assertion which is an absolute defense. Consequently it would be irresponsible of Steyn’s attorneys not to use that available defense, especially since as they demonstrate in their summary judgment brief that Mann had in fact “molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science”. it’s worth noting W-R doesn’t attack the motion for summary judgment’s claims but only peripheral and largely irrelevant ones.
In a defamation case the defendant in effect does have the burden of proof and Steyn has made his case in his brief. If Weakly wants to play mouthpiece then his job is to pick that brief apart not lead people down a hundred pointless rabbit trails regarding people and statements not related to the case.
Mann as a public figure also has the essentially insurmountable malice standard as produced by the Sullivan decision, as he knew when he filed it. But the purpose was to harm others with the prosecution itself not win. As far as I know Mann has never paid Tim Ball the money the Canadian court ordered him to pay so Weakly is not only defending a fraud who will eventually lose every one of these suits he has filed but a cheap, underhanded creep as well.

Really great analysis, Brian.

As “climate emergency” is unprovable in court, and the court has to operate based on evidence, i think that is how this must be appealed, force the scientologists into the open.
I think they would be terrified of such a thing, and i think the SC stepped way over the line, opening up a possiblity of a case.

Well it goes both ways doesn’t it so yes I’m good with that (Mann showing what he’s got).

mickey mann will continue to run and hide and slither around in avoidance (like you do when asked to provide evidence)

little mickey CANNOT ALLOW DISCOVERY under any circumstance…

It would DESTROY him.

Many of the stories were vague at best and some have even decided they wanted to withdraw their sworn testimonies.

vague at best

OK, now I know you are pushing an agenda and are willing to lie and twist in order to sell it.

I watched hours and hours of the state committee hearings and those people were certainly not “vague”.

Did you watch the one with Melissa Carone?

How much of your payday are you willing to fork over for the Watermelon Green Raw Deal?

The moment I first saw her I knew what the next SNL cold open would look like and who would play her.

Phil. What ever way your team try to cut it, Powell is is deep shite. She lied and is now trying to weasel her way out of being held accountable. Her only saving here is if she can convince the court she is somehow protected because it was opinion not fact she was stating. If you want a clear breakdown of this and what lies ahead for her and the case read this
https://verdict.justia.com/2021/03/31/sidney-powell-files-a-brief-embracing-fact-free-politics

Stop trying to change the subject. I made NO statements about the merits of her case. Please retract your accusation.

Phil. Now come on…. Where did I say you were one of the gullible? This is exactly what I wrote:
“I can’t imagine how I would feel if I was one of the gullible who swallowed her “kraken” BS then read what her ‘lawyers” wrote.”

I’m confused, are you saying you “are” one of the gullible coz I never did?

Cute,but trollish.

You say the nicest things.

That article certainly puts a creative spin on things. We will watch this space with interest.

OK so I googles the authors name (Tracy Beanz). Turns out she is a Qanon nutbar. Who would have thought?

What is Qanon?

And who is Tracy Beanz? The by-line indicates the author as Mackenzie Bettle. Do you work for Eric Coomer?

Tracy Beanz was the first name popped up when I read the websites about page. Once I say Qanon I stopped reading and so should anyone.

You lied (again)—this Tracy person was not the author.

Maybe you should be joining AlAnon.

An honest error. She is an author for the extreme right website you pointed us to. Just not of that article. But like I said we will just have to wait and see how this plays out. Be interesting to see what happens to Matt Getz from here too.

Gaetz