Foreword: The title is an understatement. As I heard the verdict yesterday, like many of you, my heart sank. I wondered if truth and sanity would ever prevail. The execrable Mann squeaked by again. But there is hope courtesy of this report. Excerpt, bold mine. – Anthony
In a statement, a spokesperson for Steyn said the $1 damages award proves the jury found Mann didn’t suffer any losses.
“We always said that Mann never suffered any actual injury from the statement at issue. And today, after twelve years, the jury awarded him one dollar in compensatory damages,” said Steyn’s manager, Melissa Howes. “The punitive damage award of one million dollars will have to face due process scrutiny under U.S. Supreme Court precedent.”
The U.S. Supreme Court has indicated that punitive damages awards 10 times greater than compensatory damages awards are generally unconstitutional.
https://tnc.news/2024/02/08/mann-defamation-lawsuit-steyn-simberg3/
A BITTERLY DISAPPOINTING VERDICT
By John Hinderaker, Powerline Blog
Today the jury returned its verdict in the defamation trial of Michael Mann v. Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn. The verdict was disappointing to those of us who followed the case and thought that Michael Mann presented a pathetically inadequate case. The jury actually agreed: it found that the defendants had defamed Mann, but awarded only a token $1 in damages, since Mann had failed to prove any. But it found that both Simberg and Steyn acted with actual malice–they didn’t actually believe what they said about Mann–and awarded punitive damages in the amount of $1,000 against Simberg, and $1 million against Steyn.
In a sane world, this case never would have gone to the jury. The legal standard is actual malice, which means the defendants must have thought, subjectively, that what they said wasn’t likely true. In this case, there was no evidence whatever that Steyn and Simberg didn’t sincerely believe that what they said was true. Indeed, as Mark pointed out in closing argument, he has been saying the same things about Mann’s hockey stick for something like 21 years, and even wrote a book about it.
Where do we go from here? The trial judge was openly skeptical of Mann’s case, and seemed to take seriously the defendants’ motions for a directed verdict. Those motions presumably were renewed at the close of evidence, and the court might now take them up. It requires a brave judge to take away a jury verdict, but Judge Irving, presiding in this case, was low-key but seemed, if pushed too far, to have a backbone. So who knows, he might do the right thing.
In any event, the case is destined for more years in the appellate courts. In John Williams’ closing argument on behalf of Mann, he said that the jury should award punitive damages so that in the future, no one will dare engage in “climate denialism”–whatever that is–just as Donald Trump’s “election denialism” needs to be suppressed. In 41 years of trying cases to juries, I never heard such an outrageously improper appeal. John Williams should be ashamed of himself, but he won’t be, because this jury apparently bought his argument: they want to make Mark Steyn pay $1 million out of his own pocket, to a plaintiff who suffered no damages but only made an ideological argument, so that no one will, ever again, try to challenge the regime’s global warming narrative. However false that narrative may be.
Ironically, the case may have come full circle. Mark always wanted to try this case as a free speech issue. But that didn’t quite work, since defamation has always been an exception to the First Amendment, or whatever free speech principles may apply. But now Michael Mann’s lawyer has made it explicit: impose an arbitrary seven figure penalty on Mark Steyn, not to compensate the plaintiff Michael Mann, who didn’t suffer any damages whatsoever, but rather to deter anyone from ever again arguing that climate change alarmists are wrong, however flawed their science may be.
It is hard to imagine anything more anti-scientific or anti-American. Let’s hope that somewhere in the federal court system, there are judges who realize what is at stake.
From another post that references https://www.jordancoyne.com/district-of-columbia/2012/03/06/defendants-still-need-beware-punitive-damages-district-columbia/ :
More recently, the D.C. Court of Appeals upheld a punitive damages award of $42,677.50 compared to compensatory damages of $1.00 in Howard University v. Wilkins, 22 A.3d 774 (D.C. 2011). In that case, the Court found that the ratio of 42,677:1 was justified because of the small compensatory damages award, as well as the District of Columbia’s “strong interest in deterring [D.C. Human Rights Act] violations . . .” Id. at 783-784. Additionally, the Court noted that had the jury awarded $42,677.00 in compensatory damages, that verdict would be seen as reasonable. Id. At 784. Further, the Court noted that reducing the jury’s punitive award to a single-digit multiplier would result in a punitive award of approximately ten dollars, which would “utterly fail the traditional purposes underlying an award of punitive damages, which are to punish and deter.” Id. (internal citations omitted).
Their trying to teach us a lesson through the courts to not question the narrative is a giant leap forward toward total control.
Yes, people with other opinions really suck, huh? Clinging to their own narrative?
Haven’t you got a home to go to?
Climate crisis, trashed it.
Didn’t you read that bit?
It was in bold font so idiots would get the message
By the looks of it, they didn’t! We need another label to go next the the post name, similar to ‘Editor’, ‘Author’ or ‘Moderator in green. I propose that they should be in brown and simply read ‘Troll’ – anyone that gets more than 50 downvotes for a single post earns the label?
Still a staunch advocate of free speech I see, Richard.
Absolutely. I do not see that anything I have written has, will have or could have any impact on the free speech of any commenter on this site, troll or not – which you should clearly appreciate as you still post here. Labelling a commenter that has made posts attracting large numbers of downvotes would just make you easier to identify and ignore, whilst still allowing your freedom to say whatever you wanted, however vile and senseless it frequently is.
What you describe closely resembles defamation.
Truth is, or at least used to be, an absolute defense against defamation.
Defamation of an anonymous bot.
Well, I guess that’s where we’re headed if the far-left have their way.
draw us a picture so we all know what defamation looks like…
Then sue me – you should have a strong case based on the Mann v Steyn precedent, you won’t even need evidence!
According to at least 2 of our trolls, insulting someone is a violation of free speech.
On the other hand, outright banning someone, as most climate alarmist sites do, is not a violation of free speech.
Why do you want to label someone as a troll? Surely the readers of articles on WUWT are intelligent enough to work out that for themselves. Then it is up to them if they want to reply to the people who make such comments. However, there is a bigger issue. People who disagree with the majority of WUWT commenters are too frequently labelled as trolls. Readers of WUWT articles should be able to accept contrary opinions without resorting to labels such as trolls. I’m sure that supporters of WUWT would not want to be labelled as trolls if they put comments on climate alarmist websites.
They want it both ways.
Pot, meet Kettle. It is the alarmist camp that doesn’t even permit dissenting views to be posted on their echo chamber sites.
Climate alarmists sites don’t label people as trolls. They just ban them.
I see that like our other trolls, you have no idea what free speech means.
One hint, it doesn’t mean that nobody is allowed to criticize you.
Pot meet kettle!
William’s closing defamatory comments on behalf of poor derided Mann, seemed to suggest that the cult wants to close down free speech.
But in the words of Journey – “Don’t Stop Belivin”
You haven’t been locked out yet, have you? So, nobody is stopping your opinions. Please tell us your qualifications regarding climate science. Not that everyone should have to do that- only those who pontificate.
I don’t think anyone needs to do that.
They just need to present an argument that’s more than acceptance of dogma, and isn’t endlessly tone-deaf regarding all the holes in their belief system.
Your comments just prove us right. It’s genuinely ironic how those presenting diverse viewpoints find themselves getting ganged up on and harassed.
Mr. raka: Who is “us”? Are you here to present reason, or dogma?
P.S.: If you want to play concern troll, you need to goad AGW (or whomever you target) into saying something personal before you grab for the pearls.
P.P.S.: Your “close to defamation” claim” was too far off target to be a mere “diverse viewpoint”. So we knew before your last punctuation point.
Being harrassed is when somebody demonstrates that you are wrong.
Ganged up on, more than one person demonstrates that you are wrong.
That is correct, climate alarmists, like leftists in general, believe it should be illegal for others to hold differing opinions.
All important point: The award is specifically and provably about suppression of true speech and nothing about any damage from false statements. Appealable all the way to the Supreme Court thanks to Mann’s lawyer.
As long as Steyn fights and doesn’t pay, I’ll buy his stuff in support and call it a win-win
Yes. Steyn is almost ideally set up. Excessive punitive damages to supress free speech is not going to fly at SCOTUS.
SCOTUS is picky about the cases it decides to accept. Many, many cases of injustice (IMO) are simply not taken up by the court.
Yes, but I would think that one involving a clear attempt to trample rights memorialized in the First Amendment to the Constitution would bear sufficient status to be considered.
As I said in the other thread, the defense’s argument that Mann managed to withstand their very best efforts to use contemptuous lies to destroy him professionally may indeed mean that the jury found the material damages were limited, but I’m not sure that that’s a compelling vindication of Steyn’s heinous actions, moreso a tribute to Mann’s resilience.
Telling a lie for a very long time does not in the slightest indicate that the person lying believes the lie to be true. It beggars belief to suppose that Steyn, who did not present himself as an idiot at trial (maybe that would have been a more effect defense?), was simply unaware that the things he was saying had been completely disproven time and again, through peer reviewed papers and a multitude of independent investigations.
This is a good and just result. Special interests groups have been for too long employing the tactic of baselessly smearing the personal reputation of climate scientists via heinous lies to further their political and financial agendas and to baselessly erode public trust in science. This tactic only works when no one stands up to oppose it. The next time an oil funded cretin decides to embark on a smear campaign against scientists by publishing flagrant defamatory lies about them, this verdict might cause them to think twice.
No one cares what you rant and rave about.
I care because he is 100% right especially “This is a good and just result.” You lose again Monte.
Who cares what the data is?
Who cares what the law says?
As long as Simon’s side wins, it’s good.
Oh come on Mark. Manns work has been repeated using different data so many times. The only remarkable thing is how accurate he was all those years ago.
AAAAAAAAAAha ha ha ha ha ha.
Wider tree rings are a very poor indicator of higher temperatures. You can have higher temps with drought = narrower tree rings, you can have colder temps with higher rainfall = wider tree rings, you can have colder temps with drought = narrower tree rings and you can have higher temps with higher rainfall = wider tree rings.
I have witnessed all of the above first hand. Mann’s work is complete and utter nonsense. It varies within 0.5 degrees over a thousand years. Please grow up.
Yawn…..
Fascinating how little reality means to you.
Trees are not temperature proxies, and anyone who knows anything about biology knows this.
🤣 😂 😂 🤣 🤣 😂 🤣 😂 🤣 🤣 😂 🤣 😂 🤣 🤣 😂 🤣 🤣 😂
Dr. Wyner destroyed the Hockeystick and all of the alleged replications and Mann;s cross examination of Wyner failed to shake his testimony.
Dr. Wyner was the expert Statistician witness.
Not according to the jury.
What the jury thought, if anything, will not be the final word in this case. The judge has to decide whether to keep the jury verdict, overturn it, or even dismiss the case entirely – these options are still available to him, as is the option to reduce damages. And that is before anyone decides to appeal.
Richard,
Steyn is bound to lose. With his endless legal skirmishes and deteriorating physical health, it’s almost adorable to entertain any notion of a different outcome.
What are the odds that a DC judge will do anything but let the verdict stand? Close to zero in my opinion. That leaves appeal which I believe would need to focus on procedural issues, if there are any.
I think it’ll go to appeal based on the ridiculous and unwarranted punitive damages.
Galileo was out of line according to the expert opinion of the Inquisition too, you know.
No, Galileo was out of line with the scientific consensus of his day. His big mistake was to assert as fact something that, at that time, was only a theory.
No. He was out of line with a powerful and all-encompassing church.
Campsie
Bang on. It was the consensus of Ptolemaic System thinking. The church only taught what had been the consensus for over 1500 years. Prior to Ptolemy philosophers thought the Earth was round, and moved through the heavens.
His big mistake wasn’t to assert it as fact, though it was used to constrain him. The mistake he made was to ridicule a Cardinal as he entered a room at a party. He was quite the acerbic party guy and humiliated this man so badly it became his mission to get revenge, which he did. Facts don’t matter much in such circumstances – as with the MBH98 paper. It’s obvious claims are fact free and it should have been withdrawn in 2003 when M&M published their dissection of Mann’s filtering, loading and incompetent statistical treatment.
The hockey stick wasn’t on trial.
Unfortunate; it should have been.
Ah, so you believe that non-scientists are the experts in these matters?
No. They were just a jury of our peers, adhering to the principles of fairness and justice as the Constitution intends.
No they weren’t. What they did had nothing to do with the US Constitution, fairness or justice. They made a decision based on political tribalism and punishing disagreement.
LOL
What’s the newest conspiracy theory in town? Did the so-called ‘jury of their peers’ turn out to be aliens in disguise? Perhaps Joe Biden personally handpicked them from Area 51? Or maybe they were just holograms in a grand theatrical production, not real people at all?
So you completely agree with me that their decision had nothing to do with the evidence. Good.
Richard, a consultation with a doctor might be in order; your brain’s operating system appears to be glitching. Alternatively, perhaps your allegiance to ideology has blinded you to the point where you celebrate feeble arguments against your constructed straw men as a grand triumph.
LOL.
Do you think they saw this as a a group of evil, well-funded denialists attempting to destroy a poor little goodie who was all on his own? David and Goliath?
Can you prove your claim of ‘political tribalism’?
Not according to the facts, that are on record now!
Apparently facts are a real problem with alarmists. Real facts, not their adjusted or modeled facts.
Typical and pathetic.
Actually yes.
Different data? No, there’s a variety of ways of handling time series that result in hockey-stick shaped graphs. I mean, are you actually going to argue that typical proxy series have that shape? That’s certainly not the case…
Using the same cherry picked data and the same disproven methods in order to get the same results, is not as impressive as you want to believe.
Prove it.
I don’t have to, real scientists and professional statisticians have already done so.
That wouldn’t have anything to do with random input data producing the same result would it?
Nope they have used a multitude of different techniques and data.
Nobody in their right mind cares. What you do or do not care about is of no interest to me, as is your uninformed and perverted sense of the legal system.
Good on ya soldier…..But you cared enough to write a comment.
I wouldn’t crow too much about this or it may prove your petard.
Whilst Mann gets $1, farmers across Europe just gave the EU a kicking and EV’s are in trouble.
The wheels are coming off whether Mann was defamed or not.
Nope, actually he is very wrong. Read the jury verdict through carefully – they only found 2 of Steyn’s and 2 of Simbergs statements ‘defamatory’, the ones where they make an analogy to the Sandusky investigation. The jury did NOT find either defendant liable for calling the hockey stick fraudulent, nor for saying that Mann engaged in dodgy data manipulation. If you agree with that part of the jury verdict then you must agree that the hockey stick is a fraud and Mann did, indeed, use bad methodology to get the hockey stick shape.
So Mann shamelessly cherry picking data, and using a program that produces a hockey stick from red noise is Climate Science?
Mann did not cherry pick or use a program that produced hockey sticks from trendless red noise. You’re repeating elements of the lies told about them, neatly demonstrating why such lies are damaging to science, although I expect that was not your intent.
AlanJ: “Mann did not cherry pick or use a program that produced hockey sticks from trendless red noise”
McIntyre & McKitrick (2005):
“Applying the MBH98 decentered PC method to trendless red noise with persistence properties of the North American tree ring network (modeled as fractional processes), in 10,000 simulations we found that the 1902–1980 mean differed from the 1400–1980 mean by more than 1 σ over 99% of the time,…
“… it is evident that the de-centering process preferentially selects series with hockey-stick shapes…”
“… the PC algorithm … nearly always produces a hockey-stick shaped PC1 even from persistent red noise...”
“We have reported that this algorithm nearly always yields hockey-stick shaped series from persistent red noise networks...”
Things will go better for you when you know what you’re talking about.
The decentered PC used by MBH has a very slight tendency to elevate hockey stick shapes in PC1 (it does not create them out of thin air, which I think it the implication you all desperately want to believe), but this has almost no effect on the final reconstruction, because using M&M’s centering, the hockey stick is simply present in PC4, which is retained by standard selection procedures used by MBH98. Here is a comparison of MBH98 with and without short centering:
Yes, keep repeating that mantra to yourself, it won’t always be like this, if you just keep up with your studying.
In fact, M&M show exactly the same thing in the paper you’ve linked:
Here’s the same M&M (2005) Figure 1 but now including dashed lines at zero. In (c), the 15th century is now clearly “warmer” than the 20th. Your Figure 2 reproduction very evidently did not capture the reality of the comparison.
“the 15th century is now clearly “warmer” than the 20th”
Yes. But only achieved by the crude device of arbitrarily removing the Gaspe cedars 1400-1450.That puts a peak in early 15th century, where everyone now agrees that this was well into the LIA. It was in the decades before 1400 that the Norse froze in Greenland.
The key thing from McIntyre’s graph is that changing the centering (with removal of Gaspe cedars) makes absolutely no difference to the reconstruction after 1700. These were years when Mann’s methods were supposed to be creating an artificial hockey stick.
That is the thing about the auditor’s approach. He makes up a rule which he says allows him to remove a data set. He isn’t interested in that information it contains. And so he gets a peak, not interested in the fact that no-one thinks there should be one there. Fans of MWP/LIA all agree that that time is in the LIA.
“Yes. But only achieved by the crude device of arbitrarily removing the Gaspe cedars 1400-1450.”
You know that’s not true, Nick. Why would you post a knowing untruth?
From M&M05 (my emphasis throughout: The top panel of Figure 1 shows their emulation of MBH98,
The second panel shows the effect of using the Gaspé series as “archived at WDCP, rather than the version as modified by MBH98,” The modification involved extrapolating the Gaspe series back four years — effectively inventing data from thin air.
The modified version of Gaspé used by Mann, Bradley, and Hughes 98 artefactually but conveniently (oh, my!) depressed the intensity of the 15th century.
Quoting more extensively: “Under MBH98 methods, a series had to be present at the start of a calculation step in order to be included in the interval roster. In only one case in the entire MBH98 corpus was this rule broken – where the Gaspé series was extrapolated in its early portion, with the convenient result of depressing early 15th century results.
“This extrapolation was not disclosed in MBH98, although it is now acknowledged in the Corrigendum [Mann et al., 2004c].
“In MBH98, the start date of this series was misrepresented; we discovered the unique extrapolation only by comparing data as used to archived data. There are other considerations making this unique extrapolation singularly questionable.
“The Gaspé series is already included in the NOAMER principal components network (as cana036) and thus appears twice in the MBH98 data set, and the extrapolation, curiously is only applied to one of the columns.”
So there we have it. MBH98 used the Gaspé series twice, one use cryptic (inside cana036), and the undisguised Gaspé series manipulated to reduce the intensity of the 15th century — making the 20th century look “warmer” in comparison.
Were the multiple abuses of method happenstantial? Was the convenient outcome a surprise? Let the readers decide.
“makes absolutely no difference to the reconstruction after 1700.”
Which is very exciting indeed after one realizes that the entire “proxy” reconstruction prior to 1902 has no distinct physical meaning, and the 1902-1995 “actual data” section reveals nothing about the rate or magnitude of climate warming.
As everybody who knows anything about biology knews, tree rings are not proxies for temperature.
The fact that you have to whine about removing a series that should never have been there in the first place is just more evidence that you don’t care about the truth.
That is patently false. In fact, the truth is the exact opposite. As everybody who knows anything about biology knows, tree ring growth rates are modulated by temperature.
Great evasion, bdgwx. To nail your point, provide a valid physical theory that converts any tree ring metric into Celsius.
Let me get this straight so one can claim I’m putting words in your mouth. Are you, like MarkW, challenging the fact that temperatures modulate tree ring growth? Yes or No?
Another evasion, excellent gaslight job.
“Yes or No?”
Another evasion.
I asked you to provide a valid physical theory that converts any tree ring metric into Celsius.
No Pat. It is not evasion. My response was the exact opposite of evasion. MarkW says tree rings don’t tell you anything about temperature. I point out that he’s wrong. I addressed his statement directly and succinctly. My response could not have been more relevant. You then can came to his defense. You are the one being evasive. At this point I have no choice but to accept that you don’t think tree ring growth rates are modulated by temperature which now casts your invocation of MM2005, which not only accepts that they do but also converts them into global average temperature anomalies in units of Celsius, into a much different light.
Here’s the exchange, bdgwx, You quoted: “MarkW: As everybody who knows anything about biology knews, tree rings are not proxies for temperature.”
And you replied: “That is patently false.”
And what are you declaring patently false? Why, MarkW’s “tree rings are not proxies for temperature.”
Your denial made a positive claim, bdgwx, namely that tree rings are indeed proxies for temperature.
I followed up with a fair question: provide a valid physical theory that converts any tree ring metric into Celsius.
Your subsequent, “modulated by temperature.” does not capture your claim that tree rings are proxies for temperature.
You couldn’t provide a valid physical theory that converts any tree ring metric into Celsius. No one can do.
Your faith in, and claim for, tree rings as temperature proxies was exposed as groundless. In response, you attempted a misdirection.
You shifted your ground from ‘proxy for’ to ‘modulated by.’ An obvious evasion.
You know it, I know it. Everyone reading knows it.
MarkW’s statement.
Exactly. That’s because they are.
It’s already been provided ad-nauseum. That’s what this whole post is about. And until your knee-jerk challenge of this I presumed you already knew of a physical theory and even advocated for it based on your defense of MM05.
That is a bold and odd claim especially considering you are defending McIntyre and McKitrick’s work. Make that makes sense.
It’s the same thing or at least two sides of the same coin. And it’s no different than say a LiG. Mercury’s volume is modulated by temperature therefore it acts as a proxy for temperature. This is not a statement that either tree rings or Mercury are only modulated by temperature. It’s not a statement that tree rings or Mercury can perfectly proxify temperatures. It’s not a statement that there aren’t problems in using tree rings or Mercury to proxify temperatures. It’s not a statement that the uncertainty of the temperature measurements derived from tree rings or Mercury is zero. It’s not a lot of the absurd strawmen you want to create and expect me to defend. I’m going to tell you the same thing I tell everyone else. I’m not going to defend your arguments especially when they are absurd.
‘And it’s no different than say a LiG.’
Oh, please! There’s solid theory behind the expansion of fluids (like mercury) with rising temperature. And by sealing mercury in glass, one can isolate it’s reaction to temperature from other variables, i.e., pressure. Can you say that with a straight face about tree rings?
If the insinuation behind the question is whether tree rings are as good as LiGs then my answer is a profound no. But I think you’re going to get a more interesting response if you pose to the question to Pat instead of me. He’s the one feigning incredulity while simultaneously defending MM05. Ask him to make that make sense.
“Your denial made a positive claim, bdgwx, namely that tree rings are indeed proxies for temperature.”
“Exactly. That’s because they are.”
Provide the physical theory converting tree ring metrics into Celsius.
“It’s already been provided ad-nauseum.”
From evasive to lying. Neither you nor anyone else has provided, or can provide, a physical theory converting tree ring metrics to Celsius,
There is no such theory.
“Mercury’s volume is modulated by temperature…”
No. The density of mercury changes with kinetic energy. Thermometry is rooted in thermodynamics.
Temperature is a direct indicator of the exchange of heat energy between an object (a mercury thermometer) and the environment.
Temperature is directly calculated using the pressure-volume-temperature equation of state (pdf) for mercury (or ethanol).
Thermometers are not temperature proxies. They are temperature measurement devices.
Trees are not temperature measurement devices, Their growth rings are used as temperature proxies — except they’re not temperature proxies.
Equating mercury thermometers and tree rings as equivalently a temperature proxy is wrong on every possible level.
So let me get this straight. You defend the work of MM05, which converts tree ring metrics to Celsius, but you don’t think a physical theory describing the relationship between temperature and tree ring metrics exists? Yes or No?
You literally jump from one absurd statement to another. Not only did you challenge the fact that tree rings can act as a proxy for temperature, but you’re now mansplaing your challenge that mercury can as well by saying it’s behavior is modulated by density and kinetic energy. I can’t tell if you are now questioning the relationship between temperature and kinetic energy or the relationship between density and volume.
Except…I didn’t say they were equivalent. You were the first to use the word equivalent in this very post almost certainly as an insinuation that LiGs and tree rings are equal in their ability to determine temperature. This is your modus-operandi. You create an absurd strawmen to deflect and divert the conversation away from the other absurd strawmen you create and hope I’ll take the bait on it. It’s not going to happen. I’m not going to defend your absurd arguments.
And this all got started because you were so offended that I had the nerve to correct MarkW’s patently false statement that tree rings really are modulated by temperature that you called it evasion.
“MM05, which converts tree ring metrics to Celsius,” … No, it doesn’t.
“mansplaing” … bdgwx-speak for discussion of science.
“I can’t tell …” finally, an honest admission of expertise.
“Except…I didn’t say they were equivalent.” Evidently, you did.
Viz.: “tree ring growth rates are modulated by temperature”
“That’s because [tree rings are a proxy for temperature]”
“And it’s no different than say a LiG. Mercury’s volume is modulated by temperature therefore it acts as a proxy for temperature.”
“I had the nerve to correct MarkW’s patently false statement that tree rings really are modulated by temperature”
Another misdirection. MarkW’s statement wasn’t about modulation.
MarkW commented about tree rings as a T-proxy: “As everybody who knows anything about biology knews, tree rings are not proxies for temperature.”
You objected to the proxy statement, not to one about modulation, and MarkW is correct.
Finally, and once again, LiG thermometers do not act as a proxy for temperature. They measure temperature. Trees do not.
MM05 produced 10000 reconstructions of the temperature with units in C. See MM05a. And the graph you posted here from MM05b also shows the temperature in units of C.
Absolutely. Like I said I can’t tell if you are challenging the relationship between temperature and kinetic energy or the relationship between density and volume.
Yes it is. He said and I quote “tree rings are not proxies for temperature”. Temperatures modulate the growth characteristics of tree rings therefore tree rings are proxies for temperature. It’s that simple.
I know. And he’s dead wrong. Even the publication you defended in this blog post was able to not only use tree rings as a proxy for temperature, but aggregate many of them into a global average temperature.
Yeah. I’m definitely objecting to MarkW’s statement that tree rings cannot act as proxies for temperature. I’m objecting to it because it is unequivocal and indisputable that temperature modulates the growth characteristics of tree rings. Again…the publication you defended in this blog post used tree rings as a proxy for the global average temperature. They were able to do so because temperature modulates tree ring growth characteristics. BTW…that’s your physical basis that you say does not exist.
This is absurd. If something can measure the temperature then it is definitely acting as a proxy for it. Remember, there is no device that measures temperature directly. They all do so in some form of proxification. It can be by measuring the expansion of a liquid first and then mapping it to a temperature. Or it can be by measuring resistance, tree ring growth, the ratio of 16O to 18O, pollen counts, etc. first.
I think part of what is going on here is that you realized you made a absurd challenge and are now trying to cover for it by changing the topic to one of semantics. Though the continued challenges does still make me think you still harbor some belief that tree rings really aren’t a proxy for temperature.
And what were the uncertainties of these reconstructions?
The question you will always run away from.
Blowing smoke trying to cover your pseudoscience…
“MM05 produced 10000 reconstructions”
Not one of them used a physical theory to produce a conversion to Celsius.
Modulation = proxy. “It’s that simple.” Simple-minded, it is.
“Even [MM03] was able to not only use tree rings as a proxy for temperature…” No, it was not.
Attaching numbers to tree ring series does not make a proxy. Even if the series is spliced onto the end of a measurement record. “It’s that simple.”
“indisputable that temperature modulates the growth characteristics of tree rings”
Provide the physical theory that converts tree ring metrics to Celsius.
“BTW…that’s your physical basis that you say does not exist.”
Post or link the physical theory that converts tree ring mm or gm/cc to Celsius.
Your hand-waving doesn’t cut it.
“If something can measure the temperature then it is definitely acting as a proxy for it.”
One can only laugh. No, it doesn’t. Proxies consistently correlate. Instruments measure. Tree rings do neither.
“Remember, there is no device that measures temperature directly.”
Thermometers do. Evidence suggests you have no training in any physical science. And yet you presume to declaim upon it.
“It can be by measuring the expansion of a liquid first and then mapping it to a temperature”
Truly lovely. How is the temperature measured? So as to do your mapping, I mean.
“I think...” A vast overstatement.
Let me make sure I have this straight so that I’m not accused of putting words in your mouth.
You’re sticking to the argument that tree rings cannot tell us anything about temperature? Yes or No?
You’re sticking to the argument that McIntyre and McKitrick did not reconstruct the global average temperature in units of C so that it could be compared to MBH98/99? Yes or No?
You’re sticking to the argument that there is no physical theory that relates tree ring growth characteristics to temperature? Yes or No?
You’re sticking to the argument that LiGs measure temperature not by using the distance the liquid travels up/down the cuvette in response to temperature changes but by somehow causing the liquid to move to the correct etching that matches the temperature value it read from the molecules in the vicinity of the cuvette directly? Yes or No?
Liar. This is YOUR nonsense.
Let’s keep things on the up-and-up, shall we? No more ambiguous language or shifting of ground.
1) “tree rings” are not a temperature proxy.
2a) Given 1), M&M “did not reconstruct the global average air temperature in units of C” (Celsius) or in any other unit.
2b) Just to be utterly clear, MBH98 “did not reconstruct the global average air temperature in units of C,” either.
3) “there is no physical theory” that converts tree ring metrics into Celsius.
4) Is too ludicrous for words. See my prior comment about temperature.
Thank you for your response. If I can’t convince you in a few posts that tree ring growth rates are effected by temperature, that tree rings can act as proxies for temperature, that MM did indeed construct a global average temperature from tree rings, and that LiGs work by measuring the change in distance of a liquid up/down the cuvette as opposed to magically reading the temperature attribute (which does not actually exist) directly from the molecules in the vicinity of the cuvette then I’m probably not going to have any better luck with additional posts. I’ll grant you the last word.
Doubling-down on your nonsense.
“are [affected] by temperature,”
And by what else? The scientific rub that seems invisible to you.
“that tree rings can act as proxies for temperature”
Undemonstrated by any science.
“that MM did indeed construct a global average temperature from tree rings”
A statistically spliced tree ring series is not a temperature series. Pseudo-science is not science.
“LiGs work by measuring the change in distance of a liquid up/down the cuvette”
No, they don’t. And the glass barrel of a LiG thermometer is not a cuvette.
The evidence is that you have no training in any physical science.
Thanks for finally revealing that you are just another Hockey Stick Hoax defender.
‘…the hockey stick is simply present in PC4, which is retained by standard selection procedures used by MBH98’
That’s odd. The whole point of PC analysis is to REDUCE the ‘dimensionality’ of noisy data in order to determine meaningful insights.
How much additional variance did Mann ‘explain’ by retaining PC4 vs. cutting off his analysis at PC3?
You should probably refer to the relevant literature 😉 Mann conducted standard selection procedures to inform how many PCs should be retained in the analysis. Using M&M’s approach, those procedures indicate that 5 should be retained. Using Mann’s short centering, the selection indicates fewer PCs should be retained. So McIntyre argues that, if you only retain the number of PCs indicated by Mann’s short centering approach using M&M’s centered PC, you get a different result, but he never says that his approach changes the results of the selection.
You also have to be careful not to throw out useful information. That’s why statisticians have developed these kinds of procedures to determine how many PCs to retain.
The funny thing about the whole M&M debate is that McIntyre tries to avoid ever discussing the impacts of his criticisms on the actual results of the analysis, and that’s because they’re essentially negligible when they’re true. His only criticisms that ever would have a measurable impact are wildly wrong. It’s kind of the whole downside to this “nit pick auditing” approach to doing science. It’s like, yeah, you’ve found a nit to pick, now how does it change our understanding of climate history? Steve never wants to say.
My question was “[h]ow much additional variance did Mann ‘explain’ by retaining PC4 vs. cutting off his analysis at PC3?”.
Actually, since you’re an expert on this, just let me know what the total data variance was and how much variance is explained by each of PCs 1 through 4. Thanks!
And my answer is that you should refer to the relevant literature (start with MBH98, perhaps?). And you misunderstand, Mann’s method puts most of the “hockey stickishness” of the reconstruction in PC1, M&M’s move it down to PC4, and M&M say “look at how different our PC1 is compared to Mann’s,” without ever disclosing that the very same selection process that Mann used now dictates retaining the first 5 PCs. So you get a hockey stick whether you use MBH’s method or M&M’s.
Again, this is why M&M03 never says, “look at the impact of this choice on the reconstruction,” they only say, “look at the impact of this choice on PC1,” because, as noted above, the impact on the full reconstruction is negligible.
Thanks. I’ll take your unresponsive answers to infer that none of Mann’s PCs, nor those of M&M for that matter since they also use Mann’s useless tree ring proxies, explain anything relevant to climate. This should make sense given that there are a number of available proxies that actually do show evidence of the MWP and LIA, etc.
Plus there’s PHYSICAL EVIDENCE that tells us prior warm periods were warmer. Tree lines were closer to the poles in the past for a reason, and it’s not because the past warm periods were colder.
Recorded histories and Chinese diaries also show that the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than today. Grapes grew right up to the Scottish border and in China citrus grew further north than they do today.
The width of tree rings are affected by many factors. They are weak proxies for climate.
Yup! But recorded human history be damned, they have a lousy “proxy” reconstruction that falsifies its own veracity where it overlaps with the instrument record that says different.
But they *know* their chicken entrails, er tree ring studies, are the “right” answer. Because they’re “scientists.”/sarc
Not true. The paper states that PCA was used to even out the spatial distribution of the tree ring data. Centering has no effect on this.
Of course, we now know that Mann used six PCs, not two. He lied about this the whole time for whatever reason. The undisclosed Mannian PCs were released in the Climategate hack and can be downloaded here:
https://sealevel.info/FOIA/2009/FOIA/documents/mbh98-osborn/TREE/ITRDB/NOAMER/BACKTO_1400/
PCA is indeed used to reduce the dimensionality of large datasets. I’m unclear how you think this contradicts anything I’ve said above. The centering at the, well, center of much of the M&M controversy is that MBH centered the tree ring data over the 20th century calibration period. M&M claim that one should center over the entire record. The choice in centering changes the number of important Principal Components that should be retained (but not the information that those PCs contain). M&M get a result that differs from MBH because they did not follow standard selection procedures, and retained the same number of PCs that MBH did, despite changing the standardization convention.
The link contains no context to corroborate your claim, but it is certain, and unobjectionable, that MBH calculated more PCs than were retained for the analysis. This is a standard part of PCA.
According to the paper, the number of retained PCs depends on the spatial extent and size of the data. Since these things are independent of the different centerings, so is the number of retained PCs.
It’s reverse engineered here: https://climateaudit.org/2023/11/26/mbh98-weights-an-update/
Mann said he retained two PCs as a result of applying Preisendorfer’s rule. He tricked everyone.
The passage you cite is not referring to PCs retained in the reconstruction, they’re talking about the numbers of PCs used to represent some tree ring datasets in the proxy network. Many of the tree ring samples were taken at very closely spaced sites, and rather than using all of the individual samples, which would essentially result in oversampling, they use PCA to reduce them.
What’s the trick? What impact does this have on the results of the analysis?
Those are the same thing.
Mann made up a retention rule that would result in a hockey stick regardless of centering, then lied to everyone (including Nature) about having used this rule in MBH98. That’s the trick.
Michael “Tricky” Mann.
“The funny thing about the whole M&M debate is that McIntyre tries to avoid ever discussing the impacts of his criticisms on the actual results of the analysis…”
To be charitable, you apparently have not read their work
The graphic below is Figure 6 of M&M03 — their first paper assessing MBH98. I have added dashed lines through zero.
Having corrected the Mann, et al., errors (panel 4), the 20th century has nothing special to recommend it.
The full proxy reproduction is nearly identical to the incorrectly calculated PC1.
Of course, this graph shows only the M&M PC1.As noted, using M&M’s centering, the “hockey stick” drops to PC4, but using standard selection techniques, the first five PCs should be retained using M&M centering. When the first five are retained, the reconstruction is identical to MBH.
What are the PC weighting coefficients?
“When the first five are retained, the reconstruction is identical to MBH.”
No, it’s not.
You show no knowledge of the papers.
Here M&M are not merely showing their PC1 recomputed using centered PCA, they are showing their PC1 recomputed with a bunch of data revisions made. And they don’t show a full reconstruction here, just their PC1. As noted, if you simply use M&M’s centered PCAs, you get exactly the same result as MBH, the PCs are just reordered, but now the selection procedure indicates retaining the first 5.
“data revisions made”
Reducing the inclusion of the Gaspé series to a single instance, and removing the padding MBH added, which had the convenient effect of reducing the intensity of the 15th century. See here.
“Of course, this graph shows only the M&M PC1.”
Not correct.
In the above, “(a)” is the MBH reconstruction; “(b)” is MBH PC1; “(c)” is M&M replication of MBH PC1, and; “(d)” M&M replication of the MBH reconstruction, but using correct centering and corrected proxies.
The final result is not “identical to MBH.”
“The funny thing about the whole M&M debate is that McIntyre tries to avoid ever discussing the impacts of his criticisms on the actual results of the analysis…”
Just to be absolutely clear. M&M03 Figure 8:
See above, where I said:
M&M do not include PC4 in their reconstruction which would be indicated by standard selection procedures. Invalidating their reconstruction.
I’m also fairly certain that M&M arbitrarily drop some data from their reconstruction, but they imply that the only difference is changing the centering (which isn’t supposed to affect the handle of the HS).
M&M excluded the bristlecone pine proxy because it is artefactual.
It’s also good practice to perform sensitivity analysis by repeating the calculations for each subset obtained by excluding 1 series at a time.
If nothing else, it can highlight those series which warrant further investigation.
Well, no, M&M accidentally exclude roughly 70% of the pre-1600s proxy data via incorrect application of MBH’s methodology.
MM03: “Four MBH98 cells contained no observations in the CRU data and were excluded from all calculations.”
MM05: “If de-centered PC calculation is carried out (as in MBH98), then MM-type results still occur regardless of the presence or absence of the PC4 if the bristlecone pine sites are excluded, while MBH-type results occur if bristlecone pine sites (and PC4) are included.” (my bold throughout)
MM05: “MBH98 did not report the results adverse to their conclusions from calculations excluding bristlecone pines (contained in the BACKTO_1400-CENSORED directory).
“• For steps prior to 1820, MBH98 did not report verification statistics other than the RE statistic.
…
“• MBH98 did not report results from calculations using archived Gaspé tree ring data (which did not contain the extrapolation of early values).
…
“• MBH98 incorrectly stated that conventional PC methods were used, which necessarily means centered calculations.
…
“• The aggressive claims that MBH98 methods were “robust” (see discussion above) are extremely problematic. As noted above, Mann et al. had carried out a sensitivity study on the exclusion of the bristlecone pines and knew that their 15th century results were not robust to these sites.
“We also believe that they knew the instability regarding the Gaspé series (or else they wouldn’t have done the extrapolation.) We find it difficult to understand how the claims to robustness could have made under these circumstances.
“We are also struck by the extremely limited extent of due diligence involved in peer review as carried out by paleoclimate journals,…“
“M&M do not include PC4 in their reconstruction”
Yes, they do. However, M&M properly excluded the White Mountains stripbark bristlecone pine proxy.
The late 20th century uptick in that proxy is a growth artefact.
Guess what, “(d) Authors’ TPC1 using MBH98 methods but with data corrected as outlined in text.” means.
From M&M05: “The PC4 in a centered calculation only accounts for only about 8% of the total variance,…”
Excluding the bristlecone pine proxy leaves PC4 nearly bereft of significance.
Their PC reconstruction didn’t include a padded or double-counted Gaspé.
Another trendology hockey stick graph without uncertainty limits — FAIL.
Just special for you, karlomonte, here is MBH98 plotted with the 2σ uncertainty:
If the modern tree ring data does not accurately measure the extant temperature anomaly, please tell us how accurate temperature anomalies with uncertainty to two sigmas were determined going back 600 years?
Sounds suspiciously like Nick’s logic that attempts to deal with the cognitive dissonance presented by the fact that there is no evidence in the paleoclimate record of CO2 driving the Earth’s temperature – “just because CO2 wasn’t driving temperature in the past doesn’t mean it’s not driving it now.”
In this case “just because tree rings don’t accurately indicate recent temperatures doesn’t mean they didn’t in the past.”
LMFAO. This is apparently what passes for “logic” in the chicken entrail studies laughingly called “climate science.” 😆
So tree-ring “thermometers” are good to ±50mK? Thanks for affirming you haven’t the slightest clue about real metrology and measurement uncertainty.
Still nothing but a clown.
I work with wood, have done for 50 years, old stuff and new stuff to make some nice fine detailed things, the grain and tree rings are important as part of the design as well, as the type of tree.
Do tree rings correlate directly to CO2 level ? not in my book and I have some wonderful explicit examples to show its related far more strongly to other influences.
oh p.s. I also monitor CO2 levels on an irregular regular basis when requested
I laugh at the hockey stick
Somehow supposedly intelligent educated people can’t understand this.
“Do tree rings correlate directly to CO2 level ? not in my book”
Who says they do? Well, they might when CO2 rises rapidly. But before 1900 for at least a millenium, CO2 was stable.
Remind me, what is the divergence problem again?
The temperature numbers on the proxy part of your plot are a fraud, and the uncertainty bound throughout is mere delusion.
🤣 😂 🤣 😂 🤣 😂 🤣 😂 🤣 😂 🤣 😂 🤣 😂 🤣 😂 🤣
90% hockey stick results, even using random number data sets.
Pat, it’s no use – everything he disagrees with is automatically a ‘lie’, he has no understanding and a mind so closed it is a brick. He has been lied to and subjected to disinformation for so long that he is incapable of seeing what is actually true and what is false any more. He has become a Green Zombie for ‘the cause’.
Thanks, Richard. You’re right. But I mostly post for any lurkers.
You are clearly a doyen of climate science, but sadly, I fear, not of human nature.
The vast majority of people in the ‘educated’ and ‘informed’ middle classes would be reduced to speechlessness if they followed your advice…
More like a self-educated sh*t disturber Leo. But I take your point. If the consensus people actually hewed to standard scientific practice, they’d have nothing to talk about.
And no need for continued funding!
What flavor was Mann’s KoolAid?
None sense. It is very clear from the Climategate material that Mann et. al. were responding to skeptics of the global warming narrative arguing that the climate change historical record of warming and cooling climate such as the Minoan, Roman and Medieval warm periods and the Little Ice Age showed that the post industrial warming was not unusual or unnatural and that the climate had been warmer many times in the last few millennia. Their objective in the creation of the “hockey stick” was to erase the record or warming and cooling that showed modern warming was far from unprecedented. By splicing the post 1960 instrumental record onto the selected and highly massaged proxy data they succeeded in producing a result that appeared to support the IPCC anthropogenic catastrophic warming narrative. In the process they also eliminated the problem of their tree ring temperature proxy showing a decline in temperatures while the instrumental record was showing and increase. This “hide the decline” effort was necessary as revealing it would bring the entire “tree-mometer” concept into question. The entire endeavor was and exercise in trying to discredit a convincing and persuasive skeptical argument. The whole thing was an exercise in political propaganda and not science.
Correct:
Excerpt from “Climategate” emails
(copied from “WUWT — The Battle for Science — The First Ten Years”)
From: Phil Jones
To: ray bradley ,mann@xxxxx.xxx, mhughes@xxxx.xxx
Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000
Cc: k.briffa@xxx.xx.xx,t.osborn@xxxx.xxx
Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,
Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or first thing tomorrow.
I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. …
Cheers
Phil
Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) xxxxx
School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) xxxx
University of East Anglia
Norwich Email p.jones@xxxx.xxx
NR4 7TJ
UK …
From: Jonathan Overpeck
To: “Michael E. Mann”
Subject: letter to Senate
Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 16:49:31 -0700
Cc: Caspar M Ammann , Raymond Bradley , Keith Briffa , Tom Crowley , Malcolm Hughes , Phil Jones , mann@xxxxx.xxx, jto@xxxxx.xx.xxx, omichael@xxxxx.xxx, Tim Osborn , Kevin Trenberth , Tom Wigley
Hi all – I’m not too comfortable with this, … I think it would be more appropriate for the AGU or some other scientific org to do this – … I’m not sure we want to go down this path. It would be much better for the AGU etc to do it. …
Cheers, Peck …”
(Quoted by Anthony Watts)
[Ed. There is a thorough, but not exhaustive, “Climategate” page on WUWT (See navigation bar at top of Home page) here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/climategate/ where you can find links to WUWT Climategate articles. There are many WUWT articles tagged with the subject “Climategate” which are not included. To find these, type “climategate” in the WUWT Search box (upper right margin of any WUWT page). I will not be including most of the Climategate posts in this anthology.]
[Source for above:
(http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/19/breaking-news-story-hadley-cru-has-apparently-been-hacked-hundreds-of-files-released/ )]
Comments
[Ed. There were 1,616 of them.] …”
Some or all of these criticisms of Mann were brought up at the trial. Apparently the jury found them less significant than you do.
These comments unmistakably expose the true defenders of free speech. The WUWT flying monkeys are currently throwing a tantrum because of their frustration over their fallen hero and Michael Mann’s triumph. It appears that reason has taken a back seat to their seething anger.
Apparently not in a court of law with jurors.
Apparently, the jury understood the evidence and arguments less well than I do.
I guess you must be infallible in that case, Janice.
But it’s still a jury of peers, so it’s neither heresy nor does it have anything to do with the Constitution. Simply a difference of opinion. There is usually a wide range of opinions among a jury. That’s why they use an exhaustive amount of time to make their decision.
Amazing how fraud is so well tolerated by the climate alarmist crowd.
It’s been demonstrated over and over again that Mann not only cherry picked his data, but he fine tuned his method to make sure that the result was what he wanted to see.
Science is supposed to be about the pursuit of truth, no matter where it leads. If you lead a donkey to water, you will be able to make him drink…
It’s also fairly interesting that those who control which papers and publications actually get published, are dictated by those scientists who are paid to do the research and allow and promote publications that fit the narrative for which their research is FUNDED. Amazing how that works.
As a scientist, you have to propose a hypothesis based on data, and you can then test the hypothesis against additional new data. You can/should also seek to do all that you can to find other reasons/data that would disprove your hypothesis, so you can be more confident that your hypothesis is TRUE. Another novel concept.
There is a saying “donkeys are easily led”. Your cap fits.
Why then did Tom Wigley write this email?
“I have just read the M&M stuff criticising MBH. A lot of it seems valid to me. At the very least MBH is a very sloppy piece of work – an opinion I have held for some time” (Climategate The Crutape Letters p 9)
Forgive me for engaging in rampant speculation here, but I think Wigley wrote the email because he:
Am I going too far, there? Somebody stop me if I am.
So you were lying when you claimed it was obvious that the HockeyStick was good science?
Joanne Nova posted a graph of the increase in U.S. Postal Rates over time that correlates BETTER with the rise in the Global Mean Temperature.
If you think DELETING data and substituting data from another time period to HIDE one decline and CREATE A FALSE ONE later on is good work, you are no scientist…and not an intellectually honest person.
This was as “fair and just” a decision as the Dred Scott decision….prove me wrong.
“You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.” ~ Obi-Wan Kenobi
It’s not a terribly good fit, is it? Also, it stops quite some time ago.
This Joanne Nova, is she published in the scientific literature? Is this chart from one of her papers?
It fits better than CO2 does.
Not according to the jury, AlanJ – they did NOT find either defendant liable for saying that the hockey stick was fraudulent nor that Mann engaged in dodgy and bad data manipulation. The only statements they found ‘defamatory’ were all to do with the Sandusky analogy. And before you call this a ‘lie’ like you always seem to, read through the actual jury verdict – it’s a public record now.
Almost right you left of the ™ – as in Climate Science™. It is the special brand of THe Science™ that is protected by the government class. Climate Science™ has its own special branch of fisics that can do whatever they want.
Steyn faced an uphill battle in DC and the jury proved that his brand of persuasive argument was not going to sway them from the government agenda. Mann’s lawyer even played the Triump card in his closing. That sends fear into the government class like no other word. There was very little chance any denier aligned with Trump would win a jury trial in DC. Steyn’s best hope was for the judge to dismiss the case before it went to the jury..
Referring to Mark Steyn as an “oil funded cretin” certainly invalidates anything you might say.
I think it comes from the Michael Mann book of quick wit and repartee 😉
A very short book
His follow-up book ‘Michael Mann – how to lie and deceive like a Boss’ was a 6 volume work!
Certainly on the list of The World’s Shortest Books.
>> to baselessly erode public trust in science.
I do agree strongly that science is a very important good! One of the most important things we have as a civilization
Wyner is not a much better statistician than Mann and the hockey stick debate is in the end a statistics question!
A summary of Wyners finding ( from here https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/02/04/trial-of-mann-v-steyn-part-iii-more-on-damages-simberg-and-steyns-first-witness/ ))
“””The key opinions offered by Wyner — that Mann had “manipulated” the data in creating his Hockey Stick graph, and that the graph was “misleading” — had already come out on Wednesday. The direct testimony on Thursday was devoted to going into the details of the basis for those opinions. There was much technical detail in the presentation; however, the gist was that the uncertainties inherent in the data were far greater than what Mann had presented. As a result, Wyner testified, the error range shown on Mann’s Hockey Stick graphs from several papers was much too narrow. And thus, contrary to Mann’s graph, it was not possible to say from the data that time periods hundreds of years ago definitively were cooler than the present.”””
Once we all can accept that Wyner clearly shows that Mann´s behavior (p-hacking as Wyner calls it) erodes trust in science and Simberg and Steyn rightfully called him out on that, so just switch the names in that statement of yours according to the known facts, many here will agree with you!
Wyner’s “greater” uncertainty than Mann yields a result of an 80% chance that the first decade of the 21st century was the warmest in the past 1000 years. So, even if everything Wyner said is right, Wyner endorses a hockey stick that says the modern era is extremely warm and warming rapidly. However, the conclusions of his analysis differed from Mann’s almost entirely because Wyner didn’t know how to filter out unusable proxy records (not surprising – he’s not a climate scientist!) and retained too many PCs, resulting in statistical overfitting. Filtering out those unusable records and retaining fewer PCs as indicated by pseudoproxy analysis (again, not something Wyner would know anything about, not being a climate scientist) yields a 99% chance.
Well, we shouldn’t accept falsehoods.
Mann is a tweeter or is that an Xer
He’s no scientist nor statistician
Incorrect.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_E._Mann
Appeal to authority. How convincing!
Scarecrow,
No. I responded to:
He has a degree and the qualifications; that makes him a scientist. I would put forth a picture of his degree if it were available.
Mann is an activist with a degree. He is not doing science, but advocacy.
He got his degree because of his activism.
I’m guessing that you have no idea what an “appeal to authority” is.
Regardless, even if Wikipedia were trustworthy (which it isn’t) your excerpt does not demonstrate that Mann is either a scientist or a statistician.
I’m guessing you have no idea what I’m actually arguing, Mark. You should go see a doctor.
And like the rest of the trolls, I see that you are unable to back up your lies.
When a ‘scientists’ falsifies their results, they no longer deserve the title. Science is about extending our knowledge, through theory to observational proof.
A true scientist, should be happy to be proven wrong, as much as proven right. Even research, that proves to be wrong, is just as valuable, as valid research, as it eliminates the misleading paths.
Mann is nothing more than an egotist, and as such his abuse of his degree, is an insult to those who taught him.
So he has a degree? I’m glad we’re on the same page.
Same page?!!!!
You’re not even reading the same book.
I doubt he’s in the same library.
😂
Having a degree makes one a scientist? With every post you demonstrate that like the rest of the alarmists, you have no idea what science is.
Mann may have a PhD but not in statistics, so you’re wrong on the second account.
Mann may (mis)used statistics but he is not a statistician.
Agreed?
and he has no proof that tree rings can give us the planet’s temperature for the past 1,000 years- never mind the fancy statistics
A degree, no matter the level or subject, does not make one a scientist. Only rigorous adherence to the scientific method makes one a scientist. Willis Eschenbach is a scientist, Michael E. Mann is an activist with a PhD.
Having a piece of paper with his name on it does not make him a scientist. Following the data, following the s ientific method does make somebody a scie tist. Mann fails the most basic criteria – he manipulated the data to fit a theory, not the actions of a scientist.
strativarius states that Mann is “no scientist”; gh()stly points to Mann’s very impressive scientific credentials. Scarecrow Repair describes this as an ‘appeal to authority”?
What does Scarecrow Repair make of strativarius’s comments, I wonder; an ‘appeal to ignorance of the facts’? Is he okay with that? Apparetly so.
It’s called cognitive dissonance, TheFinalNail.
You should know.
NOT scientific credentials, ghastly merely mentioned his academic credentials – they are not the same.
People with very impressive credentials have shredded Mann’s work.
Can you name them?
DYOFHW
Is that your made-up language?
They’ve all been mentioned repeatedly in this discussion and one of them showed his stuff during the trial. I’m not surprised that you didn’t know that.
It’s a simple question. Can you name them all or not?
Weaponizing ‘The Science’
By Kip Hansen
“Impressive credentials”
Climategate e-mails showed that Mann and Jones agrees to nominate each other to their respective national societies (e.g. the Royal Society of “pals”).
1) Wikipedia? Really?
2) Your data does not address, much less refute the claim.
Mark,
Is his degree fake?
That he has a technical degree only DAMNS Mann further. lol
You all really like to fight with straw men, huh?
He has several mathematical and scientific degrees. So, you’re now saying that having an education is to be damned?
That would fit with other commenters I see daily on this site.
It’s becoming pitiful.
“So, you’re now saying that having an education is to be damned?”
Well that would make sense given some of the contributions here.
They really are in a bad mood, Simon!
I can’t imagine why. Maybe it was the years of writing comments like. “I can’t wait for this court case to see Mann once and for all proved a fraud.”
Yours chief amongst them.
Nope – you’re saying that. What we’re saying is that his academic qualifications are completely irrelevant, you have utterly failed to show he has any scientific credentials.
People with actual degrees in statistics have shredded Mann’s work.
Why is it that degrees only matter to you when it’s your idol who has them?
Like most low intelligence trolls ghosty is only able to make one lame argument at a time, and he will keep repeating that argument over and over again, until his handlers give him a new one.
Yes. Actually, all these trolls do the cause of data-driven science a favor:
with their poor reading comprehension (for instance FN’s misunderstanding my remark about Mann’s having a technical degree making him even more culpable)
along with weak arguments and shallow ad hominems,
they make it ABUNDANTLY clear that those promoting AGW are
stupid.
Janice, feel free to unleash your opinions in this echo-chamber of a right-wing website. We’re not the ones who needed convincing; it was the jury. Oh, wait, did the trial not unfold as you rehearsed in your passionate rants? That must sting a bit.
LOL
If this place was an echo chamber, you and the other trolls would have been banned long ago.
Is there anything that you know, that is actually true?
Mark, you attack people who disagree with your views.
So he has a degree- so what? Nobody with a degree is ever wrong?
It doesn’t say much for the institution that issued that degree either.
Perhaps not, but his Nobel Prize is.
What Nobel Prize?
Check the Nobel site, his name is not there.
The president of the Nobel Commission even wrote and signed a letter to that fact.
And the “Prize” he claimed for himself was not a science prize – it was the Nobel PEACE Prize. (My tennis buddy got the same letter from the IPCC President thanking him, among many others, for his contribution.)
One can get a degree for many reasons. These days one of the most common is for being politically convenient.
BTW, it takes a lot more than having a degree, to be a scientist.
No, gh()stly – Michael Mann’s degree is not fake, and neither was Ted Bundy’s or Ted Kaczynsky’s – both university graduates with degrees equally valid as his own.
Quite probably.
I love how you actually believe having a degree makes one a scientist.
On the other hand, people who actually have degrees in statistics, which is something Mann has never had, have shredded Mann’s work.
“Pioneered techniques to FIND PATTERNS”
In other words, he started with his conclusion and applied “techniques” to “find” exactly what he was looking for.
“Confirmation Bias” anyone?!
Even the idiots who lick his boots can’t avoid the “tell” about his malfeasance.
Wikipedia?
Get serious
He was also elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences
He’s also a member of the American Geophysical Union & the American Meteorological Society.
wow, he’s a member of an organization- big deal
Does he have degrees in any of those fields?
He was also a member of the Mickey Mouse Club – are you going to appeal to authority on that as well?
..and he hangs out with Leonardi Di Caprio… ! Wow! He’s a celebrity climate scientist. A member of the national academy of arts and climate scientists!!
that proves nothing
20 years ago, that meant something.
Today it just means that he has been politically convenient.
That statement is false – Mann’s ONLY contribution to the MBH 98 & 99 research, by his own sworn testimony under oath, was the statistical analysis. This makes him an amateur statistician, but NOT a climate scientist. Bradley and Hughes did all of the fieldwork, sampling and scientific analysis and, so, can claim to be climate scientists. Just because I used to work with an intelligence analyst, can I now claim to be one as well? No; this is stolen valour, once again, just like trying to falsely claim he was a Nobel Laureate because he once worked for an organisation that was awarded half of a Nobel Peace Prize.
Richard,
Here’s all of his publications. MBH98 & 99 are far from the only reasons.
https://michaelmann.net/content/published-articles
😂 🤣 😂 🤣 😂 🤣 😂 🤣 😂 🤣 😂 🤣 😂 🤣 😂
Holding degrees, holding positions in academia and conducting data torturing do not make one a scientist.
Pursuing knowledge about the real world through observation and experiment is what a scientist does, and by that measure Mann is the antithesis of a scientist.
The objective at the time Mann published was to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period. Some of Wyners results indicate a Medieval Warming Period.
You haven’t understood Wyner’s point. Selecting the PCs to use in the analysis are illogically contaminated by the result that the author wants. Wyner made that very clear. If the objective of the study is to try and recover of the historic temperatures then how do you know where to start?
Wyners scattering of historical temperatures shows just how weak the method Mann employed was. You might as well bin them all.
Was Mann a climate scientist when he produced the 1998-9 papers?
Well, no, Wyner’s scattering of historical temperatures shows that there was an 80% chance that the first decade of the 21st century was the warmest in 1000 years. Wyner produced his own hockey stick. And, of course, he made some methodological errors, all of which cause his estimate of peak medieval warmth to be too high.
https://michaelmann.net/sites/default/files/articles/SMR_AOASDiscussion11.pdf
Of course, as were his co-authors.
You still haven’t understood. Wyner’s point in his analysis was that he could come up with any shape of temperature graph dependent on which components you select – and then, moving on – how does the fair-meaning analyst make the ‘correct’ selection of what the temperature variation was, and by correct I mean that the prediction of what really did occur. There’s a risk that you will just select components that confirm your assumptions.
Wyner’s paper makes no such point. Nor does it say anything about the objectivity of the PC selection criteria, Wyner only meekly raised this point in response to Mann’s rebuttal of his paper, but he doesn’t offer an alternative, nor does just justify his choice of using 10 PCs. And this is only one of several issues with Wyner’s paper, which still produces a hockey stick showing that the 21st century is anomalously warm compared to the last 1000 years.
Wyner made that point in court. Wyner went so far as to say that the PC method was inappropriate to the task Mann was exploring.
That’s an odd statement considering MBH98/9 data clearly shows both the LIA and MWP. See figure 1 in [Mann et al. 2002].
All of Mann’s results indicate a MWP.
>> Well, we shouldn’t accept falsehoods.
Very well stated and I couldn’t agree more (ignoring the part of the post not related to reconstructions for the moment!)
Can we agree that the hockey stick method is a statistical question and Wyner is uniquely suited to answer it and Mann is not?
From there it is a matter of well recorded facts that Mann published a couple of “falsehoods” and Wyner did a good job of pointing them out.
“Wyner is not a much better statistician than Mann and the hockey stick debate is in the end a statistics question!”
Doesn’t it also have much to do with the infinitely stupid idea that tree rings are thermometers? As a forester for 50 years, it’s my opinion that they are not.
Oops! Great catch!
“””Wyner is not a much better statistician than Mann and the hockey stick debate is in the end a statistics question!”””
I meant to say
Wyner IS indeed a much better statistician than Mann and the hockey stick debate is in the end a statistics question!!!
I am really sorry about that!
>> Doesn’t it also have much to do with the infinitely stupid idea that tree rings are thermometers?
Well that is where Wyner shines (and McShane), they point out vin their rejoinder that
“””
[..]Consequently, the application of ad hoc methods to screen and exclude data increases model uncertainty in ways that are ummeasurable and uncorrectable.[..]
“””
I understand this that it is absolutely okay to use anything as thermometer as long as you factor in the uncertainty of doing so and the lack of doing so discredits your effort completely!
>> As a forester for 50 years, it’s my opinion that they are not.
Mann says they are, but he fails to answer how much they are and Wyner rightfully criticizes Mann for that!
I think I fail to write very clearly, but it is really not complicated at all..
(and ANY publication not having the uncertainty figured in must be withdrawn!)
“”Special interests groups””
Throw enough mud….
Funny how, in the “minds” of climate alarmists, everyone else is a special interest group. However those who support them are never given such labels.
Is that you, Michael?
Hard to believe there are more than two people out there not agreeing with the herd?
One of the hallmarks of enviro-activist troll accounts is their appearance of using multiple people within an alleged ‘single user’ account. This comment account elsewhere, for example, has posted an average of just short of 24 comments per day, seven days per week, for the last 9½ years non-stop, while routinely alternating between American and UK spellings of words. Are the ‘not-agreeing-with-the-herd‘ commenters here potentially multi-user fake accounts and/or employed within troll operations posing as a single person? It is plausible.
Mr. Cook: I suspect our friend AlanJ is just a sock puppet, but at least he can spell a name. With a name as clever as this one, MyUsername, his password “MyPassword” is real clever, but not very secure.
“With a name as clever as this one, MyUsername, . . .”
Perhaps that just reflects his herd mentality?
so you are saying that the climate alarmists don’t believe what they have been saying for the past 40+ years – well we don’t either
This response supports the point that Athony Watts makes.
This leaves Mann free to keep on making abusive and defamatory statements about any scientist that does not follow the climate science ‘consensus’.
Is that you, Little Mikey?
You seem to have quite the aversion to those with differing opinions, don’t you?
You like financially destroying people who disagree with you, don’t you.
Climate alarmists are so clueless.
They are winners though aye Mark. You remember winning don’t you?
There was no way a DC jury would have ever found differently.
Let’s wait to see what happens at the appellate and SC levels.
So, Simon, what has he ‘won’? His backers spent between $18-$20 million over 12 years to financially ruin 2 self-funded minor bloggers, completely missing the targets they aimed at, have broken the US 1st amendment and created a climate of fear, oh and gained (subject to judicial review) a little over $1 million. Was it worth it, Simon? Was the damage to the US constitution and free speech really worth it? You’re a fool Simon.
“Was it worth it, Simon? “
Are you serious? Absolutely. 110%. Truth facts and data, triumphed over misrepresentation and an arrogant man who thought he could demean a person just because he didn’t like the outcome of his work. Oh happy day……
Are you kidding me? Michael Mann started this case to go after 2 publishers, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the National Review, the publishers of the Steyn and Simberg articles. He completely failed in that and, more through luck than skill, has (so far) just prevailed against 2 very minor bloggers who made very tame comments about Mann. You’re an even bigger fool than I first thought, Simon.
Silencing critics of the party is always worth the cost.
He works very, very hard at being a fool.
what did you win?
Well for a start, had the verdict gone Steyn’s way, the crowing here would have been olympic level. It would have been vindication that climate change was a hoax and that Mann was the devil. So at a very basic level we are spared that. On a personal level my world still makes sense. The good guys won. Good triumphed over evil. I could go on, but you get the idea.
Indeed. Black is white, up is down, bad is good. I could go on, but you get the idea.
You will be so embarrassed when you read the full jury verdict, Simon. Whilst they found 2 statements from both defendants ‘defamatory’ when using an analogy to the Sandusky investigation, they did NOT find either defendant liable for calling the hockey stick fraudulent or stating that Mann engaged in bad data manipulation and data ‘torture’.
Climate change IS a hoax, Simon, built on a fraud, from your own post and the jury verdict.
Mr. Simon: So, a win for you is that you are spared the crowing here? After your win is thrown out, there may be some crowing here. Any ideas on how you can spare yourself from crowing here on a permanent basis?
There is no oil funding. It is Mann who had his legal expenses paid for him.
Much like his idol Mann, AJ feels the need to constantly lie about those who disagree with him.
hypocrite.
Where have I ever told lies?
And no, disagreeing with you is not the definition of a lie.
You said the average temperature of the last 10,000 years was warmer than today. That was a lie.
No, it was disagreement, not a lie. As has been stated before, disagreeing with you is not a lie.
“No, it was disagreement, not a lie.”
Nope it’s a falsehood, a lie, a mistruth… bollocks at best and not surprisingly easily moved to the trash. Now if you have something, anything, put it on the table, otherwise slink back into your hole.
https://scitechdaily.com/global-temperature-reconstruction-over-last-24000-years-show-todays-warming-unprecedented/
My God! Its even worse than we thought. What should we all do? — Send the link to Xi Jinping. I’m sure he’s followed the Mann case closely! — lol!!
That is a scientific study, since debunked. A scientific study is still just an opinion, Simon, it is in no way to be considered fact – so, not a lie. Your turn to do what you suggested, I think.
Debunked you say???? Well let’s see the peer reviewed article that debunked it?
M&M debunked it in a peer reviewed paper.
As McIntyre and McKitrick both testified at the trial, alleged attempts to debunk their paper simply reiterated their findings, then made the specious claim of debunking.
Dr. Wyner debunked Mann’s paper, under oath, in multiple approaches. Cross examination failed to debunk any of Wyner’s testimony and findings.
Truth for Simon is determined by whether it supports what he wants to believe.
I see that Simon is still convinced that anything that disagrees with the sacred consensus is a lie.
Just more evidence that Simon has no desire, or ability, to think for himself.
The consensus here really seems to be a flashpoint at WUWT; it’s such a flashpoint that there appears to be a ‘sacred consensus’ here. The irony is hard to miss.
Mr. raka: Nice try. Nothing sacred here. Not even science. You’re really gonna halfta up your game.
Since it is true, it is not a lie.
Proof then Mark? Easy to find if true. It seems being a slimeball comes without any guilt for you.
anything he disagrees with is a lie.
Haha yep!!!! Mark is the ultimate hypocrite. He should constantly carry a mirror. He is forever calling out others for the sins he is guilty of.
It’s nice that my personal troll still loves me.
Been presented, hundreds of times.
I see you are still trying to claim that telling the truth about someone you like ought to be illegal.
Climate Gate denier!
So AlanJ,
“… Mann managed to withstand their very best efforts to use contemptuous lies to destroy him professionally ….”
It appears that you are saying that the defendants were intent on the ruin Mann professionally; that was the goal. Then you go on to imply that the defendants were baselessly smearing Mann’s personal reputation. Then you imply that Steyn is an oil funded cretin.
… and then you go on to say that a verdict such as this may hopefully cause someone to think twice about flagrant defamatory lies …. Really?
I would enjoy discussing this in person. Let me know when you will be on the west coast. I think I have some upcoming work in Louisiana … maybe you are in that region? Let me know.
Don, I’m not near either of those places, but would always be happy to sit down for a beer to discuss, my treat. Keep me appraised and I’ll let you know if you’re ever nearby.
What lie did Steyn tell? Can you prove that Steyn didn’t believe everything he claimed about Mann and his belief that Mann was a Fraud?
Do you believe that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects speech that may be repugnant to some people?
As I understand it, in my limited way, reckless disregard for the facts is sufficient for a jury to award punitive damages. Steyn was reckless in his regard to the facts, according to the jury in this trial – unanimously.
Steyn can ‘believe’ whatever the hell he wants; belief in things doesn’t make them true in reality nor in courts of law.
Long may that continue.
You understand incorrectly.
The plaintiff must prove that they knew the truth, according to Mann.
The plaintiff must prove they were malicious.
The plaintiff must prove damages.
Mann failed to prove anything.
The judge even chastised Mann’s lawyers because Mann’s first two witnesses did nothing but waste the court’s time.
Then Mann’s third witness, Dr. Abraham, actually testified that he waited years for climategate to die down before he invited Mann to participate on a paper.
Mann’s lawyers used incorrect damage information to claim damages. The defense counsel caught it and started the bruhaha about which number of Mann’s is correct.
7 of the 13 alleged missed grants were wildly incorrect. One was stated to be over $9 million dollars and was corrected to $112,000 dollars.
Mann provided zero witnesses to back up his scribbled page of grant damages.
Both Simberg and Steyn proved their blog comments explicitly referred to the investigation as the items compared, not pedophilia.
To these facts they deposed the investigators and Spanier the President of Penn State and showed the depositions to the audience.
The investigators admitted they ignored the first three alleged improprieties and only addressed the fourth, Mann’s unprofessionalism. They were ready to recommend censoring Mann until Spanier read a draft of their report and weighed in effectively whitewashing Mann.
Mann was NOT investigated as independent investigators would have performed the investigation.
The plaintiff rested with none of the requirements met.
Just the fact that Bill Nye was yukking it up with the jurors before trial and telling them what great buddies Mann and Nye are is enough to appeal.
Comparing climate deniers to Trump election deniers is grounds for an appeal.
Telling the journey that they must punish the defendants in order to send a message to climate deniers is grounds for an appeal.
No; but apparently a “reckless disregard for” CONSENSIS is now unlawful, at least in DC.
Congrats on setting some kind of record in gathering down votes. Meanwhile ….
Set all your ‘science’ citation evidence aside for a bit, and instead prove to this audience that any such ‘cretin‘ exists anywhere on this side. But don’t just point us to entire websites, books, documentary movies, the hapless “Richard Greene” WUWT commenter, etc., pretend we have zero search skills and you are the grand master at it — provide this reading audience with the actual physical evidence (full context document scans, undercover video/audio transcripts, leaked emails, money-transfer receipts, etc.) within any of the above places you might otherwise lazily refer to which proves anybody on our side was paid to fabricate demonstratively false science papers, reports, assessments or viewpoints — material which could stand up in a courtroom evidentiary hearing proving a pay-for-performance arrangement exists between those skeptics and industry executives, in other words.
Stand and deliver on that challenge, all eyes on you now. But if you cannot, don’t feel bad, folks will simply never turn to you as an authority on such drive-by meritless accusations.
“Congrats on setting some kind of record in gathering down votes.”
Hey hold up. Now that is fraud. I have way more…..
No, no – it’s not fraud but remember inflammatory is now the new defamatory! I think Alan set a new record for a single post just for making a truly, monumentally stupid post recently. But, not to worry Simon, you’ll still get your ‘lifetimes achievement in the field of stupid comments’ – that still appears to be safe, even though the new trolls do appear to be dumber than a bag of rocks.
Dumber than a bag of Simon’s perhaps?
“The next time an oil funded cretin decides to embark on a smear campaign against scientists by publishing flagrant defamatory lies about them, this verdict might cause them to think twice.” This cuts both ways, precedent has been set.
Oh god, no, now people can’t defame each other as much any more? Whatever shall we do?
If someone falsely accuses you of defamation, what are you going to do? The bar has been lowered to the point where false accusations win court cases and evidence of innocence is ignored.
I can now take you to court for something you said about me as long as I say I was hurt, upset and lost work because of it, confident that I’ll win and you’ll owe me money. Ker-Ching.
Alan J-
The Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels has nothing on you. You can B.S. with the best of them.
Bit low, CD?
TFN,
As I write this, your comment at 6:48 AM to which I replied has a total of 167 down votes. If that isn’t a record here at WUWT, it has to be awful darn close to one. I find it difficult to believe you have a sound case in support of Mann here when you attract that many down votes.
Whether I’m hitting too low or not is a matter of opinion. I will leave it to all the other commentors here to decide for themselves.
The current record AFAIK:
Wow, 246. Thank you karlomonte. I stand corrected.
It’s hard to get lower than you and AJ. Though the other trolls are having a mud match over rights to the bottom spot.
Just try making such a retard troll comment over at the Skeptical Science website.
Can’t be done.
Did you read Mark’s book, A Disgrace to the Profession?
It consists ENTIRELY of direct quotes from other Climate scientists.
Your posts tent to be content free; just plain [****] stirring.
Essentially, this Jury is imposing a SLAPP, assisting Mann and his shadow backers in trying to silence debate.
a crime.
maybe the Jury should also have found that Mann needs to pay Tim Ball’s widow the money he owes her.
Yup, that is how I see it: The courts are now in the business of being complicit with this fraud.
Maybe it’s time to prosecute the original judge for denying Steyn’s constitutional rights under the color of law. Unfortunately, the DOJ is very unlikely to prosecute.
This law suit is the archetype of a SLAPP lawfare case. The plaintive is clearly a public figure. The plaintive has the law suit entirely funded by politically motivated others. The plaintive is not above reproach as he has dished out vitriol equivalent to what he received. Mann flaunted the law in not paying Dr.Tim Ball the damages awarded in a separate law suit. The jury found negligible damages to Mann but sought to punish Mann’s critics for daring to attack Mann’s “science” and climate “science” in general. Big money was involved but it did not come from “big oil” and the largess clearly did not rain on the defendants.
The minute Mann’s attorney declared that the jury needs to send a message to anyone who disagrees with the climate orthodoxy, the judge should have declared a mistrial.
The judge should have dismissed the trial when Mann rested without proving the requirements of libel.
But, you are correct since the judge decided the trial should continue that purposeful claim by Mann’s lawyer in his rebuttal; the judge should have declared a mistrial right then. Mr. Williams tied climate to the trial and told the jury about sending a severe message via punitive damages.
I agree. A very disappointing verdict. Alan J, your takes are terrible. I wish you would stop endlessly repeating the same mistaken point over and over again. My post from the other thread.
The hockey stick is the heart of the case, not the form of words that Steyn chose to use when he talked about it. Steyn said the stick was fraudulent, thereby implying that hockey stick choices had been made with the intent to deceive. He dressed his claim in a 270-word blog post in which he compared the investigation into Mann with the investigation into Sandusky. But none of that matters. The investigators were not the plaintiffs. And the fight also wasn’t about whether Steyn called Mann a child molester. He clearly did not.
The key issues were (1) whether Mann had in fact made hockey stick choices with the intent to deceive or (2) whether instead Mann had not done so and Steyn secretly knew that he had not done so or that there was at least a high degree of probability that he had not done so.
Amongst the evidence offered were statements by McIntyre and McKittrick to the effect that they believed that proper practice would have been to report an alternative construction that they said had been done without bristlecones (that did not yield a hockey stick) and to have calculated and then reported the terrible R2 result that they had calculated. It’s a subjective test. It is not what Steyn should have believed. It is whether Steyn in fact secretly believed that such choices (as he honestly believed had been made) were at least highly probable to have been made for legitimate scientific reasons rather than with the intent to overstate the reliability of the reconstruction and thereby mislead people. It’s a science case through and through and it’s a massive blow to free speech.
What if someone believes that the choice of IPCC authors to present model spread as a measure of model reliability is intentionally misleading, can they safely say publicly that the choice to do so is “fraudulent”? What if one believes that authors of the UN’s latest disaster report intentionally conflated the number of reported disasters with the number of actual disasters in order to give the appearance of a rising trend. Can that be called fraudulent, after the Mann case? Where is the line? It’s a scary case in my view, given the evidence offered and the fact that Steyn appeared very clearly to believe what he had asserted. He challenged the jury to say he had been acting for 20-some-odd years as he stuck to his guns. The jury apparently either misunderstood their instructions, believed that he had in fact been acting, or just didn’t care.
Yes, this is why Steyn’s defense failed. He was not able to demonstrate compellingly to the jury that he was simply ignorant of the literal years of studies affirming and vindicating Mann’s work, the numerous rebuttals of the work of his critics which showed that the choices they criticize had no material impact on Mann’s results, or the numerous independent inquiries completely absolving Mann of any misconduct. Steyn knew about all of these, so it simply beggars belief to suppose that he made the false and defamatory statements out of simply ignorance.
Instead of standing on ignorance and pretending like he simply didn’t know what he was talking about, which might have played well, Steyn opted for insisting that he knew intimately every facet of the debate that had unfolded over these years, meaning that he was intentionally lying. Maybe he should not have chosen to represent himself, after all.
It is weird to see someone make so many false claims in a single short post. More importantly, I don’t think you believe what you wrote. I think you know that Steyn believes his claim (it does not “beggar belief” that he does as you say), but you just don’t give a shit. You don’t like Steyn or his views and so you think he should be punished for them whether he believes what he is saying or not. I find your meanness very off-putting.
gc: When he first showed up, his comments were all nicey-nice, then he revealed himself as a classic concern troll, then he turned to gaslighting commenters here. Very predictable that he would descend to pure nasty lies. I’ll make no reply to him after he explained that us lying contrarians are not worthy of debate. Your intelligent comment was wasted on him, but thanks for posting it.
I think a potential problem with that defense is how Steyn doubled down on his claims of fraud in front of the jury even when evidence was presented that criticism of MBH98 and MBH99 were based on the correctness and/or robustness of the methodology and not on whether the methodology was intentionally deceptive. In other words, the witnesses that the defense selected (as best I can tell) did not believe MBH98 and/or MBH99 were fraudulent; only that they contained mistakes and/or were not robust enough. That combined with Bradley’s (coauthor) testimony in which no indication of the intent to deceive was presented justify reasonable doubt that fraud, whether criminal or otherwise, occurred. This may explain why the punitive damages from Steyn far exceeded those from Simberg even though Steyn’s defamatory statements were arguably less inflammatory than Simberg’s. The jurors may have inferred a level of malice based on his behavior in the courtroom in 2023 above and beyond what he wrote in 2012.
If only there was edit button…2023 is of course a typo and should have been 2024.
There is an edit button. Hover your mouse over the lower right corner of your post.
It’s not there forever, You only have something like 15 or 20 minutes to make your edit.
There *is* an edit button now. Check the lower right corner of your next comment.
If you were spending your waking hours commenting here, like many of the rest, then you would have known that the edit was returned to service.
It’s almost as if you have above ground **** to do!
Thank you bdgwx. You are obviously a smart person. But it is people like you who scare me. You think that if Steyn’s beliefs were not “reasonable” he should be punished. That is frightening in my opinion. The legal test is not whether Steyn’s beliefs were reasonable as you suggest. It is whether Steyn knew his accusation was false, or thought it was very likely false, but levelled it nonetheless. Plus, you suggest that McIntyre and McKittrick didn’t think Mann intended to deceive. Why do you say that? That is a very strange assessment of their testimony. They weren’t allowed to give an opinion on whether they believed Mann intended to deceive, but I am quite sure that if you asked them privately they would say that. Why would McIntyre have expressed shock about Mann’s failure to report his calculation without bristlecones or his failure to report the R2 statistic unless he thought that Mann was intentionally hiding those things. You, like Alan J, think that punishment is in order for people who do not believe things you believe “reasonable” people should believe. You should be ashamed of yourself.
I think you may have me confused me with someone else. I’ve never said that Steyn should be punished. I will say that I harbor concerns over the fact that he was especially to the degree that occurred in this trial mainly because I don’t think Steyn (and other bloggers) should be held to the same standard of decorum that scientists should be held to. My point is only that restating a claim that fraud occurred and equating it to child abuse while also throwing in a few ad-hominem attacks at the end of the trial in which no evidence was shown that either Bradley, Hughes, and mostly importantly Mann published MBH98 and MBH99 with the intent to deceive was probably at least part of the reason the jury came down so harshly on him. Was it right? I don’t know.
What color is the sky in bozo-xyz world?
Steyn made it VERY clear that the comparison was to the Penn State white wash engineered by the President and not to the specific acts!
Yep.
This guy bgwxyz makes a big production about how he is not interested in politics, but his real side inevitably leaks through.
For the first week or two, AJ tried to pretend that he was a conservative. But his real politics shown through in short order.
Mr. W: I saw it, too, you’re on it.
And now bdgwx has outed himself as just another Hockey Stick Fake Data proponent, claiming there is all sorts of “replication” of Mickey’s data Mannipulations.
Not answering for bdgwx, but I don’t know where you’re getting that from?
It’s not a question of who believed what; it’s a question of reckless disregard for the truth of a statement.
Steyn having certain ‘beliefs’ about Mann is one thing; publishing them without proper foundation is unreasonable, as he now knows.
Under cross examination, McIntyre was asked why he didn’t label the hockeystick as “fraud” in his posts.
McIntyre responded that he prefers to keep the tenor of his posts and comments above such negative words. He also admitted that when a commenter uses atrocious language he deletes their comments ruthlessly.
It is what was formerly known as “being a gentleman.” Something unknown to Mann, alarmists and many democrats.
I think that he does not. I think that he said things, things specifically intended to damage Mann’s reputation and career and personal life, that he knew were not based on any factual evidence, things he knew, in fact, were directly contradicted by all known evidence. He knew that Mann had been vindicated by numerous independent inquiries, knew that Mann’s work had been replicated numerous time by independent studies, knew that criticisms of Mann’s work suggesting foul play had been rebutted numerous times in the peer reviewed literature and in scientific discourse. He knew all of this, and still made the false statements anyway. Specifically, intentionally, pointedly, to try to damage Mann’s career and reputation.
The alternative explanation is that Steyn is a fool, and I don’t think anyone here believes that. It certainly isn’t a defense Steyn himself tried to make.
Gosh, you must be pretty offended by Steyn’s columns, then. He literally makes his living being mean. His closing argument was a tirade of ugly personal insults.
“Correct results” from bad statistical methods and suspect science is and will always be “bad science”. Alleged replication of results does not vindicate Mannian methods.
That my friend is a very good summation of the case. Steyn knew, but still said it.
— Well at least you got one….. here….
Steyn and Simberg reiterated many times during the trial that everything they’ve read before during and since the hockey stick appearance that the hockeystick is bogus.
They and their witnesses proved that fact
I think it’s weird that they didn’t read a single publication in the list I posted here.
And you know this to be true, how exactly?
If they had read them, they would now agree with the rest of the climate alarmists. Isn’t it obvious?
Must be time for a climate skeptic psychological intervention…
If they had gone through them, as I did, they would have realised, as I did, that all of the papers on bdgwx’s list used different timelines, different data, different proxies and different methods. Not a single one can be viewed as replicating MBH 98 & 99.
All of them replicate MHB98 and/or MBH99. Using different data, different proxies, and different methods is a good thing. It shows the robustness of the hockey-stick. And FWIW you can always refer to [Wahl 2004], [Huybers 2005], and [McShane 2011] for examples that use the same proxies and same methodology.
A) Using statistics and code that produce hockeysticks 99% of the time?
B) Dr. Wyner pointed out that none of them were replications because they all involved Mann in their work, thus they are NOT independent.
It was actually 0.99%. This was determined only after it was discovered as part of the investigation into Wegman’s plagiarism that the 99% figure came from a set of 100 that had been culled from the 10000 simulations that they actually did. So it was actually 99/10000 and not 99/100. BTW…I’m curious…do you think hiding that fact was fraudulent?
That is a bold claim. Can you post evidence that says Mann was responsible for each publication I presented below?
Here we have bozo-x promoting science by majority.
Free hint: this isn’t science.
So now you’ve become just another gaslighter for Mann and his Fake Data?
Pathetic, but not unexpected.
And the key question you will always run away from as fast as possible:
What is the real measurement uncertainty associated with these “proxies”?
Totally wrong, as usual.
Check Steyn’s “A Disgrace to the Profession” for names and quotes of the scientists involved.
Dr. Wyner also pointed out that none of them were:
A) Independent
B) reach identical results
Regarding A…that is a bold claim. Can you post evidence that says Mann was responsible for each publication I presented below?
Regarding B…that is patently false. Not a single one of them reached an identical result. Can you post a link to quote where he said this?
Still running away from the cold hard facts and questions.
The hockey stick papers are badly made. I find Mann’s mathematical skill to be high enough that he is likely aware of his fake results. I don’t know that though I just think it is likely.
Jeff Id,
Great to hear a voice from a veteran of the hockey stick, climategate era. Indeed, it is far-fetched to believe that Mann did not understand that uncentred principle components analysis was, to be charitable, “unconventional” and suspiciously, seemed to be designed to reach a forgone conclusion.
It is implausible to believe Mann didn’t intend his little “Nature trick of adding temperatures… .”
Mann gets an “C” (since it was very, very, easy to spot) in “Obfuscation 101”
and
an “F” in “Accuracy 101.”
Especially when you consider that he was told it wasn’t a good idea by others of the Hockey Team but did it anyway. Of course he knew.
I’ve always said this – since he keeps repeating the same mistakes, one can draw one of two conclusions. 1. He’s deliberately trying to deceive; or 2. He’s an idiot.
Regardless of which one, he’s certainly not worth listening to.
Mr. Id: Mann certainly knows enough math to know what happens when “non-conforming” data is excluded. But you are wise to leave it “unknowable”.
As if Rush Limbaugh’s routine fill in host could get a fair trial in DC?
Or any other Democrat run city.
That is disappointing! But an even more important case is being decided by the U.S. Supreme Court now: whether Colorado can remove Trump from the ballot. If that case also goes the wrong way then we will know that the “Land of the free’ is no more and our beautiful free country has been replaced by a tyranny of the worst sort.
I listened to every word of the hearing at the SCOTUS yesterday, and I can tell you, there is no chance whatsoever that the SCOTUS will find for the plaintiff in this case.
It will very likely be 9-0 or 8-1 to overturn the Colorado ruling.
I sincerely hope you’re right. But most of us thought Mann would lose this case. Unfortunately we were wrong.
Key distinction: a layperson jury and the Supreme Court of the United States.
(Also, the subject matter: technical question given to non-technical jury members and a question of basic Constitutional Law)
In other words: Fear not! 🙂
Amy K. Mitchell published on SteynOnline“
Think this is just rhetoric? Consider, Mark Steyn is a member of the media. As such, he is supposedly afforded First Amendment protections. If a member of the media is no longer protected, what do you think that means for every day citizens? And it doesn’t matter if you are in DC or Montana — anyone can file in the jurisdiction of his or her choosing.
If SCOTUS does review this case, this is likely to be the standard for the conservatives on the court.
The Feds rely on the 14A to suppress States ‘rights’, hence there’s no way Colorado wins and, most likely, the ruling could even be unanimous. Note that this result is completely consistent with how justice was subverted in the DC courts to find against Steyn and Simberg, as well as how DJT is currently being treated in the same system.
As I said earlier on another thread, I was gobsmacked at the verdict.
The I recalled something I’d heard about Bill Nye having been caught chatting with the members of the jury
Any info on that – Nye is obviously a climate chum
There was this from a couple of weeks ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vH45KDowb-s
“Bill Nye may face improper jury contact charges in Michael Mann climategate libel trial in DC” – Capitol Intel Group
But I have seen nothing siunce.
Figures
The judge was very lax on the jurors, witnesses, lawyers and plaintiff throughout the trial.
He let the jurors arrive late.
He allowed the jurors to go home every day.
He allowed Mann’s lawyers to ask improper questions. Even though he struck them afterwards, the damage to the jurors was done.
He should’ve declared a mistrial several times.
He should have dismissed the case after Mann failed to prove anything.
He should have dismissed the case after the defense proved their case.
He should have declared a mistrial after Mann’s lawyer told the jurors to send a message to climate deniers with punitive damages.
He should have explicitly warned the jurors to disregard all struck testimony and to focus solely on the published comments whether they were malicious libel by people who believed in the hockeystick.
The whole handling of the case is a travesty.
A rational appeal at the circuit appeals court should reverse this decision and dismiss the case.
Further appeal to SCOTUS should affirm the appeals court.
He was caught talking to jury members during or just after jury selection. Whether he meant to influence the jury or not, it’s still jury tampering.
Well, maybe Simberg and, especially, Steyn can “turn the tables” on Mann and his attorneys and now spend the next twenty or so years appealing this verdict before having to pay out a dime for “damages” or court costs.
One look by SCOTUS’s Alito and this verdict would be overturned. He seems to be the First Amendment watchdog. The jury for good reason was not charged to adjudicate a scientific argument, nor is it charged with protecting whatever silly claims will come out of trougher climateering scientists in the future.
Most climate scientists are mediocre talents or no talents compared to the greats that brought civilization to a pinnacle- now being degraded by the no-talents.
WAPO account via Anchorage Daily News: https://www.adn.com/nation-world/2024/02/09/famed-climate-scientist-wins-million-dollar-verdict-against-right-wing-bloggers/
From the article: “Climate scientists are still regularly targeted by climate deniers, even though the science is quite clear at this point,” she added.
Once again, the “climate denier” designation, a direct descendant of the “holocaust denier” appellation, is used to describe those who disagree with what amounts to an opinion. In fact, the term doesn’t make any sense. Nobody is denying climate change, what’s being denied is the basis for a jillion dollar fraud. The case could be made that Steyn and Simberg bringing attention to Mann positively affected his reputation among the climate anxious and increased the profits of his books, public appearances and university salary. In a judicial system based on tort, the plaintiff should have been able to show that his income and wealth was decreased by illegal actions of the defendants. That’s probably not the case.
change of venue would have been appropriate – no conservative can ever get a fair trial in DC
This is the true crux of the matter.
In DC or NYC, no conservative can get a fair trial.
Period.
Mann’s lawyers clearly ‘venue shopped’ to get a favorable environment for this case. No one involved int case, neither Mann, Steyn, nor Simberg were residents of the District of Columbia nor were they in DC at the time of the publications at issue. And the fact that it was allowed by DC judges to drag on for a dozen years is a condemnation of our ‘justice’ system.
CEI where the comments were published is based in L Street DC. While National Review is Manhattan based that would be any better than DC , so likely the case was combined in DC only
Yes, there seems to be a discrepancy in how folks attending a prayer vigil are treated in DC compared to those who commit arson.
That’s what happens when a jury is faced with making a decision around technical terms they don’t understand. You get “expert” witnesses on both sides and they understand neither.
It is as much a matter of jury selection for ignorant, prejudiced people. The OJ Simpson trial result was a combination of the wrong venue and jury selection.
How could the OJ trial not be in LA , where the wife was murdered ?
The trial should have been in Brentwood, not downtown. Different districts.
The superior courts in LA are organised with the larger LA County-City. The small municipalities dont run their own superior courts , so no ‘different districts’, Brentwood is of course in City of Los Angeles
“ It is the only court for the County of Los Angeles, an area which encompasses 88 cites, 125 unincorporated areas and more than 90 law enforcement agencies. It serves a population of over 10 million, an increase of almost 500,000 since 2000. The Court includes 36 courthouses located in 12 judicial districts throughout the county’s 4,084 square miles.”
The local courthouses maybe were too small for large public interest in the case
The DA wanted to avoid claims of racism by not holding the trial in Brentwood’s district, a violation of vicinage. Simpson’s neighbors had the legal right to try crimes in their district. It is usually the defense seeking a change of venue.
Story tip – https://www.zerohedge.com/political/canadian-mp-wants-criminalize-speech-endorses-fossil-fuels
Kevin Bloody Wilson told us you can’t say cxnt in Canada. Now it seems you won’t be able to say a whole lot more.
The climate change narrative will ultimately be defeated by the immense cost and ineffectiveness of the measures taken to supposedly mitigate it. It has come to this.
Compensatory damage awards are based on somewhat objective criteria. The punitive awards are a free for all and is where the DC voter attitude came out.
Incredible.
Presenting false evidence works in the USA. Having your own witness spilling the beans that the thing which caused harm was something else rather than what is being argued in court supports your case.
On the bright side we can all apparently make a huge income from people calling us “loser” and use getting a mean look in a supermarket as proof of damages.
The 9 million dollar Mann will be insufferable now.
DC and, by extension, America have become the laughingstock and butt of jokes around the world. Russian oligarch’s will share jokes with each other, saying that ‘DC Justice’ means ‘corruption’, that America has become more corrupt than Russia. Venezuela will ask to ‘twin’ it’s capital with Washington and ‘DC’ should be changed to ‘BR’ for ‘Banana Republic’.
Loser, fraud… I’m waiting for the letter from your lawyers….LOL!!!
It is a well written post Anthony. This is all about supression of speech. Censorship of the same kind that has been expanding for the last decade.
This is my take:https://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2024/02/09/my-question-is-finally-answered-michael-mann-is-not-a-fraud/
Steyn should have won, but his courtroom antics favored comedy over winning. A lawyer would have delivered a dry, technical case without all the flourish. The last thing you want to do in front of a DC jury is insult the person you are being accused of insulting. They’re sympathetic to Mann.
This is the perfect example of, “A Man Who Is His Own Lawyer Has a Fool for a Client.”
I heard Steyn’s closing argument on the ‘Climate Change on Trial’ re-enactment. His arguments were brilliant and I don’t think any lawyer in the land could’ve done better. That the jury only awarded $1 in compensatory damage speaks to that. The $1mil in punitive damage speaks to the jury wishing to punish ‘climate deniers’ in general.
Quite the opposite. The $1 compensatory shows that Mann failed to prove damages, while the $1 mil punitive shows the jury felt Steyn was guilty of acting with malice.
Mann was/is required to prove Steyn wrote with malice.
Mann’s team failed to even come close to showing that, unproven.
It is entirely possible the judge may vacate the jury award.
Or the case may be reversed on appeal, although it may have to go to the SCOTUS to get that result.
Let’s hope Steyn manages to stick it out if it comes to that.
This is a free speech issue if nothing else.
And then Steyn could always do what Mann has done re the judgement in the Tim Ball case: Just do not pay it.
Maybe Steyn and Mann’s heirs can work something out in that regard to make it all legal, if all else fails.
There is zero evidence of defamation, so the correct result is for this award to be vacated.
Oops, meant to say Tim Ball’s heirs, not “Mann’s”.
Scandalous is the only word that comes to mind – I watched parts of the trial and was amazed at how ill-prepared Mann and his buddies were – it was also surprising how hesitant they were in their presentation. A few adjusted (several times) numbers on the back of a fag packet doesn’t strike me as evidence from a supposed professional.
… and talking of supposed professionals, Williams’ parting shots were low blows from a lowlife – the fact that the plaintiff gets the last word is bad enough but to be allowed to openly insult the defendants with a similar alleged defamation is a clear reflection of the man and his client!
If you see the “Hockey Puck” Mann….do not give him a “hard” look….or else….you may be in jeopardy.
Disappointed? Please. Given the venue being a DC-satellite kangaroo court, did you really expect the jury to consider the evidence. Naive in the extreme.
Hope is not naivete. It is simply hope. And hope can be disappointed.
Here in the UK jury deliberations are secret and in fact it is an offence for a juror to reveal anything that takes place in the jury room other than the verdict, but it does not appear to be the case in the US; I have seen jurors giving interviews where they discussed motivations for the verdict, something that would be of great interest in this case.
If it’s any consolation, the British judicial is equally nuts
Really? Ours is a bit nuts at times but DC seems to be totally bonkers.
That should have been grounds for an immediate mistrial motion.