I’ve been writing letters to my local newspaper to try to calm some of the eco-worriers and zealots that think AGW is the end-all for the Earth and demand “action now”. Of course, there’s always a couple that provide entertainment beyond my wildest dreams. One guy, “Jorge Smirnoff” provides the most hilarious rebuttal ever.
Pro tip: If you are going to laud Michael Mann as a “world class climatological expert”, you should at least spell his name right. Mann’s ego can’t handle such things.
This appeared in today’s Chico Enterprise-Record. Link here. Seriously, it’s my best birthday present evar. In fact, I’d go so far as to call it “unprecedented”.
Letter: Choose reliable sources on global warming
I am certain Martha Claudio was being facetious when she wrote “Seeking more info on weather highs and lows” Aug. 3.
Martha clearly understands that asking Anthony Watts to expound on MMGW (Man Made Global Warming) is like asking a fox the best way to guard a chicken coop.
Readers interested in obtaining the real story on MMGW ought to seek out information from world class climatological experts like Michael E.Man, director of the Earth System Science center at Penn State University at: https://time.com/6088531/ipcc-climate-report-hockey-stick-curve/
or James E.Hansen a retired 30 year NASA Scientist and currently a professor at Columbia University’s Department of Earth and Environment Sciences at: https://www.earth.columbia.edu/users/profile/james-e-hansen
Another way of obtaining accurate MMGW information from reliable sources is to Google, renowned institutions of higher learning or well-known scientific establishments followed by the words “Global Warming”
Examples:
Google “Stanford Global warming” – “MIT Global warming” – “NASA Global warming”- “Woods Hole Global Warming” etc.
Do not rely on pseudoscientific blogs, they spread disinformation and are the least reliable sources of the latest information on the greatest existential threat facing our planet today.
— Jorge Smirnoff, Chico
The poor guy suffers from the belief that climate scientists are pure and infallible. Of course, we all know better; particularly where Mann is involved.
I’ll leave it to my readers to either offer their most hilarious rebuttals in comments, and/or if you wish, submit your own to letters@chicoer.com (250 word limit)
I’ll share my own rebuttal here soon, replete with scientific integrity tales of air conditioner follies in the hearing room in June 1988, the “underwater” West Side Highway, plus data stories of “upside down Mann” and “hide the decline”.
Enjoy!
UPDATE: I just sent Jorge a gift wrapped copy of Mark Steyns excellent book, A Disgrace to the Profession
Michael Mann has not done any science since his work on lanthanide ceramics back in the early 1990’s. And has been greatly rewarded for it.
His work on climate models: not science.
His work on proxy paleo-temperature reconstructions: pseudo-science.
His work on the global air temperature record: ersatz (see “Systematic Errors in Climate Measurements.”)
The whole field ofconsesus climatology is a monument to the everlasting shame of the science establishment.
And, in this regard, let’s not overlook the fact that the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) elected Michael Mann to its membership in April 2020.
There can be no finer an example of a once-respectable organization buying a pig-in-a-poke.
Except it wasn’t in a poke, Gorden. The pig was fully in view.
You’re right about the NAS. It has politicized itself into total incompetence. The NAS is become destructive.
Why stop there?
2020 Elected to National Academy of Sciences
2019 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement
2018 Climate Communication Prize, American Geophysical Union (AGU)
2018 Elected Fellow of the Geological Society of America (GSA)
2018 Award for Public Engagement with Science, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
2015 Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
2014- Named Highly Cited Researcher, Institute for Scientific Information (ISI)
2014 Article [Mann, M.E. et al, Northern Hemisphere Temperatures During the Past Millennium: Inferences, Uncertainties, and Limitations, Geophysical Research Letters, 26, 759-762, 1999] selected by American Geophysical Union for inclusion in GRL 40th anniversary collection.
2013 Appointed Distinguished Professor, Pennsylvania State University
2013 Elected Fellow of the American Meteorological Society
2012 Hans Oeschger Medal, European Geosciences Union
2012 Elected Fellow of the American Geophysical Union
Truly, it’s a YUGE conspiracy!
https://michaelmann.net/about/cv
Oh, you’re a fanboi!
John Phillips, thank you for providing the long list of “honors” received by Michael Mann . . . not that such means anything to me.
However, since you did such, you would do well to hear what a truly-distinguished, honest-to-the-core, and non-vainglorious Nobel Prize-winning scientist has to say about receiving honors:
—Richard Feynman “I don’t like honors”
“John Phillips, thank you for providing the long list of “honors” received by Michael Mann”
You are welcome. It is actually just a subset of his achievements. A very large number of expert and practising scientists seem to believe his contribution is worthy of recognition, even if it is lost on denizens here.
Hey, John, is that a crack I’m seeing in your amazing adoration of Michael Mann? Careful there, you fellow denizen.
Your list isn’t of achievements, but of awards, John. Two orthogonal categories.
Michael Mann has perhaps achieved the record for quantity of pseudo-science delivered. That’s about it.
“Michael Mann has perhaps achieved the record for quantity of pseudo-science delivered. That’s about it.”
I certainly agree abut the pseudo-science characterization, but cannot agree that’s all he has achieved. He has achieved the “success” that is possible within the Grand Origen Story evolution meta theory that is now “consensus science”, it seems to me. Which is to say a few decades of mostly pleasant times, and some security against mostly unpleasant times, while one can experience anything at all.
On GOS evolution, as the logicians say, “succeeding” through promoting pseudo-science, is no different than an Anglerfish succeeding through tricking smaller fish with a false display of food into coming close enough to be goggled up. On GOS evolution humans are just another permutation of what “achieves” success.
And, it should be no surprise, it seems to me, that as that GOS evolution “belief system” becomes more widespread, the number of people who see whatever discomfort they might experience due to what we call a “guilty conscience” will just be factored into to an equation of sorts, with the goal of experiencing mostly pleasant times and the minimalizing of mostly unpleasant times in mind.
If “fame and fortune”, seems achievable through some form of deception, the believer in GOS evolution will just factor in some guilt pangs, if they experience such things, which some people don’t, and proceed in a perfectly logical manner to achieve the only “success” available, on GOS evolution.
Mr. Mann has achieved “fame and fortune”, and has no logical reason, on GOS evolution, to do other than enjoy his success, and do what he can to insure it continues. (same an Anglerfish ; )
These are all climatologist acclaims. Good for him! It is amazing to me, especially that there was no doctorate awarded, nor was there a major in climatology, before about 1990s when the scam of AGW was invented by these clever salesmen. One lies and the other swears to it! It is a recently invented discipline, this “climatology”. These are folks who were unable to major in a hard science like mathematics, physics or chemistry (like me). It is too hard and requires mental acumen. It must be nice to go to a party school and come out “Doctah Mann”. They are blissfully unaware, or intentionally dismiss, natural climate cycles. They are NCC deniers! (Natural Climate Cycles).
I’ve been reading a bit of Bayesian statistics in pursuit of a project in a different field, and ran across the prosecutor’s fallacy, which has direct relevance to the global warming narrative.
The fallacy is, If ‘A is true, given B‘ then, ‘B is true, given A.’ In fact, the second conditional doesn’t necessarily follow from the first at all. One might say the logic is rather anti-Hermetian.
A criminal prosecutor has a model of the crime. Guilt is assigned if the suspect fits the model. But turning the logic around, how many who are innocent of the crime will nevertheless fit the model? Non-appraisal of the second possibility is to commit the prosecutor’s fallacy.
Applied to AGW the prosecutor’s fallacy is that, atmospheric CO2 rises given an increase in global air temperature therefore global air temperature has risen given the increase in atmospheric CO2.
That false equation drives the IPCC and the entire AGW community.
I do not understand why Michael Mann has not been downgraded to “negligible.” He rose to fame on an obvious fraud, which he continues to maintain at all costs, he is the ringleader of a cult of personality, he is a brittle and contentious personality in a profession that requires collegiality, he is thin-skinned and takes criticism very poorly, his science is sloppy to the point of amateurish. He is a narcissist, a serial litigator, and a bully. Here is a guy so disliked by his peers that over a hundred of them were willing to critique him, some quite harshly, ON THE RECORD, in Disgrace to the Profession, which ought to be required reading to anyone who follows climate issues. Per his ongoing suit against the author of that book, Mark Steyn, dozens of persons and entities submitted amicus curiae briefs in support of Steyn, but not one for Mann.
In a just world, this guy would have been sent packing long ago.
Michael E.Man
Wiley E. Coyote
Same person?
Alfred E Neuman?
…the “underwater” West Side Highway, plus data stories of “upside down Mann” and “hide the decline”.”
Ah, the oldie but goldies.
So rather than engage with Jim Hansen’s body of scientific work, we’re going to focus in on an off-the-cuff remark to a journalist. Okey-dokey.
Bob Reiss interviewed Dr Hansen for his book ‘The Coming Storm’ at Hansen’s office in 1988, during the interview Reiss asked Dr Hansen to speculate how the view from the office might change in 40 years, assuming CO2 had doubled. In his answer Hansen speculated that the West Side Highway would be underwater, amongst other things (I believe it has been rebuilt since 1988?).
Some people piled on when in an interview in 2001 Reiss misremembered the number of years as 20. anyhow, we can evaluate Hansen’s prescience when the condition of doubled CO2 (560ppm) is met.
Nothing significant depends on Hansen’s interview.
Michael Mann put a proxy in upside down. What a numpty!
My take on Tiljander is … the proxy is valid for most of its duration, but recent contamination ‘flipped’ the correlation during the calibration period. The team basically had two choices – put the proxy in in the orientation the algorithm indicates (you don’t get to selectively reverse the sign, the Auditor would be all over you) while noting potential issues, or exclude it. As good scientists they did both, they noted the issues with Tiljander in the SI and they performed the reconstruction with and without it (and a handful of other potentially questionable proxies). You can see the result in Fig S8 of the SI. Of course it is different, it could hardly be otherwise, but as they note dropping Tiljander does not effect the conclusion of anomalous modern warmth.
Nothing significant depends on Tiljander.
Thousands of words have been written about ‘Hide the decline’ so I won’t dive down that rabbit hole. The phrase originated with Phil Jones and again, was not about anything in the canonical literature, it relates to the cover art for a WMO report. A cover that attracted precisely zero interest prior to 2010.
Nothing significant depends on ‘Hide the Decline’
Well that’s your opinion, even if it is wrong.
I am more concerned with Hansen’s responsibility for the 2008 GISSTEMP series of blunders – to be the one responsible for an agency that publishes – and loudly announces with fanfare – such an obvious data blunder (publishing temp data for Sept, but giving it October dating – resulting in huge anomalies), then attempting to correct the data, but still getting it wrong, correcting it a *third* time before finally getting numbers that were not glaring in their obvious errors …
is *that* James Hansen’s “body of scientific work” that you refer to?
“As many people will have read there was a glitch in the surface temperature record reporting for October. For many Russian stations (and some others), September temperatures were apparently copied over into October, giving an erroneous positive anomaly. The error appears to have been made somewhere between the reporting by the National Weather Services and NOAA’s collation of the GHCN database. GISS, which produces one of the more visible analyses of this raw data, processed the input data as normal and ended up with an October anomaly that was too high. That analysis has now been pulled (in under 24 hours) while they await a correction of input data from NOAA”
Mountains and Molehills
Really? That’s it? A data processing error – not actually by GISS – that led to incorrect information being published for a massive 24 hours?
I was thinking more about this
An oldie.
Forgive me putting it up again.
Stopping by Yamal one Snowing Evening
What tree this is, I think I know.
It grew in Yamal some time ago.
Yamal 06 I’m placing here
In hopes a hockey stick will grow.
But McIntyre did think it queer
No tree, the stick did disappear!
Desperate measures I did take
To make that stick reappear.
There were some coring’s from a lake.
And other data I could bake.
I’ll tweak my model more until
Another hockey stick I’ll make!
I changed a line into a hill!
I can’t say how I was thrilled!
Then Climategate. I’m feeling ill.
Then Climategate. I’m feeling ill
The main reason agenda science con games continue in climate science is that climate change has taken on monumental importance for tax and spend political agendas and wealth redistribution at both the country level and NGO international level. Those political aims pull in the media groups in the process as tools. Science quality and legitimate fact checking is held in a lock box somewhere out of public consciousness at this point and it took a politician like Al Gore to declare debate has ended to further differentiate this process from science. You can’t even question politician charades of science at this point. The lust for other people’s money is driving the train.
Happy birthday, Anthony. And I suspect that Jorge Smirnoff may have been sampling a lot of his eponymous product.
I almost missed that it was your Birthday.
Have a happy one and many more!
The average person in the western world expects income which can provide food ,power and accommodation , you know , its what we call normal life and do it every week for our families worrying about the climate is the least of our concerns
When the CCP , China says nothing to do with us .
They are probably 1/2 right , but so much of the western world has gone hard left and 100% wrong .
Whatever you do, don’t go to the Reference Pages at Watts Up With That. You will be brainwashed with actual data and charts from all the world’s leading datasets on climate phenomenon, most from “renowned institutions of higher learning or well-known scientific establishments,” consolidated in one place to peruse so you can see the current era in its historical context. Strangely, those temperature plots and paleoclimate proxy charts don’t have hockey sticks.
But if you aren’t into measurements and observations and boring trends that it’s hard to get excited about you can check any of those other “global warming” websites so you can see their cherry-picked data and read their articles about an imminent apocalypse found only in their specially-baked climate model projections. Spoiler alert: the IPCC and other scientists have compared the climate models to observations and found they grossly exaggerate, but you can choose to believe the projections if you want. Lots of people do. Fantasy is so much more alarming than reality.
Sometimes, we should be able to give an article six stars.
Five stars for the story plus a bonus star for trolling Manniacal.
The book will be wasted on him; nonetheless, good on you!
Having lost all hope of engaging the Climate Nutters with science, I’ve crafted a one-line response to their dogmatic insanity.
“We’re All Going to Die,” episode 9,937.
I encourage everyone to get on the “We’re All Going to Die” train.
Anthony, I sent this to Brother Smirnoff yesterday:
Sir,
You seem blissfully aware that ‘world class climatological expert’ Michael E.Man [sic] is a scoundrel who steadfastly refused to provide his r2 data to the judge in a case where he sued Dr Tim Ball for defamation. If this data had been trustworthy Mann might have won his case, but his cowardice and continual refusal to engage in the judicial process (presumably in fear of being exposed as a cheat) forced the court case to drag on for 9 years until the judge eventually threw it out and awarded a 7 figure sum to Tim Ball.
As for James Hansen of NASA, his work was publicly called out by 49 retired NASA scientists/astronauts as being unsubstantiated and at odds with data covering thousands of years of climate change. Hansen’s NASA tenure was further marred in scientific terms by his falsification of data to reverse sixty-year cooling trends (of 1C) at 6 major Paraguay weather stations, turning them (without explanation) into sixty-year warming trends of 1C. A deplorable act and a stain on the reputation of climate science. The stations were located at Puerto Casado, Pilar, Concepcion, Asuncion/Aero, Encarnacion, and San Juan Baut.
If you think Mann and Hansen are capable of providing ‘the real story on MMGW’ you have seriously deficient powers of thought.
Anthony Robb
“You seem blissfully aware that ‘world class climatological expert’ Michael E.Man [sic] is a scoundrel who steadfastly refused to provide his r2 data to the judge in a case where he sued Dr Tim Ball for defamation.”
You seem blissfully unaware that this never happened.
Aww isn’t it sweet to see the fanboi sticking up for his celebrity crush!
Is Mark Steyn a climate expert?
I know that it’s irrelevant but this guy aint going to understand.
Mark Steyn never claimed climate expertise.
His book is about many of Mann’s climate superiors and peers, plus the criticisms they have of Mann’s work.
Not often I agree with Brandon, but
For whatever reasons, a lot of people will love Steyn’s book no matter what. They will continue to love the idea of him providing 120 quotations from “experts” they can use as talking points, no matter what. It won’t matter that some of the quotes weren’t in reference to Michael Mann, his work or anything related to it. It won’t matter that many of the quotes have their meanings distorted due to being heavily quoted mined. It won’t even matter that by my current count, 71 of those 120 quotations qualify as misquotations.
Izuru
Mann is at the wrong Penn State…
Having read through the Comments below: In the beginning was… the science and indeed the math to frame the science and guide its unrolling. And the First Mathematician wrote a differential equation in the sand, then the boundary conditions defined and, initial condition set, flipped the switch for the Biggest Bang. Oh my, what a beautiful trip!! Now that is the creationism menu, no à la carte since the first day.
“UPDATE: I just sent Jorge a gift wrapped copy of Mark Steyns excellent book, A Disgrace to the Profession”
Excellent response.
While I doubt Jorge will read it, you just know he’ll be fuming about it.