Josh Mann overboard - Josh 157
Mar 21, 2012 Books Climate: Mann Hockey Stick Josh 
With Mike Mann's book still getting good coverage in various corners of the media I felt another cartoon was needed. Especially as another Mike, Mike Daisey, gave us such a brilliant quote: "I stand by it as a theatrical work" speaking of his made up story about the conditions at a Chinese factory which makes Apple products ( you can read the whole retraction here).
Mike Mann is not totally happy with all the PR, though, as we know from his Twitter reaction to reviews by Anne Jolis and Miranda Devine. He is probably going to be really teed off when he see this poll on the Daily Kos.
;)
Click for a larger image
The article's title is 'Michael Mann is a Modern Hero and we need to acknowledge that!'. To date around 97% of readers do not agree and think he is either distorting evidence or should be fired from the University. That number sounds like a consensus to me.
And 'Game of Thrones'? It's an HBO blockbuster of a series based on George R R Martin's books 'A Song of Fire and Ice'. If you haven't seen the series you might not have the foggiest clue what I am referring to... but, never mind, even the title 'A Song of Fire and Ice' couldn't be more apt. And guess what the show's slogan is: "Winter is coming".
Reader Comments (33)
Simon Lewis reviews Michael Mann's book
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v483/n7390/full/483402a.html
Apparently we are in a street fight and not a war.
Superb! The show even has sky-dragons to slay :D:D
"Winter is coming" is an excellent alarmist bating phrase.
A quote that has zero relevance to Michael Mann and a poll that allows people to vote repeatedly simply by keeping your finger on the Return key. Impressive stuff.
On previous threads about Mann, many commenters noted the astonishing resemblance between Mann, Gavin Schmidt, Richard Black, and Ricky Gervais (who will play all three in a forthcoming film, possibly in the style of the Python “Knight who says Ni”).
I was further struck by the resemblance between all four and the comic slave in the Greek Middle Comedy, as portrayed on Greek vases from Southern Italy. (See e.g.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Phlyax_scene_Hoppin_Painter_Louvre_K18.jpg
or google “phlyax”)
The character is typically cunning, devious, and given to self-agrandissement. He also possesses an exaggeratedly long member which frequently turns up at the end. Odd.
@ The PoX
I note that the few that wished to praise MM couldn't even be bothered to keep their finger on the return key.
Mann just posted the full text of the Nature review into his Facebook page.
I read the Simon Lewis piece. Of all the people in the climate science debate, it is the scientsts whom I have come to have least respect for. They are the most ignorant, and most arrogant of the whole bunch.
Good one, Josh! And I love the fact that at first glance Mann seems to be "overcome" by the effect of his own purple prose ;-)
Times Up Dr Mann
"You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time" - Abraham Lincoln
I noticed that the Daily Kos poll indicated a 97% consensus.
Shub
It'll cost me $32 to read the Nature Review. Can you give us the best of?
@TPoX
Short of some quotes are we?
Try this:
"I’m sure you agree–the Mann/Jones [Geophysics Research Letter] paper was truly pathetic and should never have been published. I don’t want to be associated with that 2000 year “reconstruction”."
Ray Bradley (Mann's stick fabrication team mate)
Given the loathing expressed even by former co-authors, I reckon the Kos poll exaggerates Mann's popularity.
They know him for what he is and what he does.
97% ?? you could vote that he distorted and you could also vote for him to be sent packing. You cannot add the percentages of the two choices and derive any significance.
Maybe Mannian maths are contagious.
J Ferguson... the consensus has spoken ;-)
geoff
One main reason I was irked by this piece was that, Nature magazine by way of Lewis, wants to perpetuate the cycle of aggression and falsehood all the while mumbling pieties about 'science communication'.
According to Lewis, Mann is apparently one of the 'one of the most harassed scientists in the United States', and to him, Mann's book becomes riveting when Mann starts telling the story of MBH. It was exactly the opposite with me - the early parts when Mann recounts his childhood days are possibly the only scant few pages in the book that are free from Mann's hyper-politicized artifacts.
This is Lewis' summary of the hockey stick debate:
The review portion of the article lurches forward briefly before petering out to rest on Mann's characterization of the climate debate as 'war'. Lewis says that the climate debate is not a war, but a street fight. (Nice way to suck up to Nature, prof). Calling it a war could create widespread polarization. whereas, he is possibly implying, that calling it a street fight means that you call your opponents thugs and disorganized unscrupulous crooks. (expected participants in a 'street fight' , whatever that means).
In the middle, there is an absolutely meaningless paragraph about the BEST temperature study. The cluelessness of Muller and his daughter, and Muller's faceteousness is simply lost on Lewis.
Nature magazine is the perpetrator of the hockey stick, the Chinese urban cool island and the Antarctic warming fiasco. It is a proud, upstanding component of British global warming establishment. People like Lewis lend support to its cause, and only make obvious where their alleigances lie.
@Shub Mar 21, 2012 at 9:28 PM
Indeed. And Nature has already begun to roll onto the "sustainability" bandwagon.
can someone please tell me who were these lobby groups who attacked the hockey stick? can anyone cite evidence of their attacks?
As far as I know, the attacks came from disinterested individuals - and Steve McIntyre has said on numerous occasions that he thinks that agw is/might be happening...he just does not want shonky maths to be the deciding factor in the debate about what to do.
Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.
Mark Twain
Sorry, I should have posted the link to Mann's cut and paste of the Nature review, which is here
I would buy anything between 71 percent and 97 percent as representing a substantial concensus of negative opinions regarding Mann's performance in the "hockey stick" affair.
Very nice, Josh. The throne looks to my eyes like a turkey.
Bish
The contact link isn't working tonight (at least for me).
Mann has a Letter to the Editor on the Opinion Page of the WSJ responding to Jolis:
Climate Wars Continue With More Heat Than Light.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304724404577291600175012584.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLEThirdBucket#articleTabs%3Dcomments
Cute cartoon... but readers should bear in mind that every national science institute on the planet accepts the science about climate change.
Here's just one -- the American Physical Society, represening a few thousand physicists.
"Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth's climate. Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide as well as methane, nitrous oxide and other gases. They are emitted from fossil fuel combustion and a range of industrial and agricultural processes.
The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring."
It's OK to have a bit of fun at Mann's expense, but don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. Climate science is much wider than a single graph of surface temps. Think ocean temps (rising), sea levels (rising), ice sheets/glaciers (melting), ocean acidicification (rising), permafrost (thawing), surface temps (rising).
Gillian
We’re not having a bit of fun at Mann’s expense. We’re having a laugh at Josh’s excellent cartoon; but we’re not having fun at all. Rather, it’s Mann who is having fun at our expense.
As is Simon Lewis, a professor of Geography whose review of Mann in “Nature” ($30 to non-subscribers) makes it very clear where he thinks the sun shines out of.
Thanks Shub and Andy Scrase. Lewis’s review gives a whole new meaning to te heliocentric theory.
Gillian - much of what you say is true. The question is whether this is man-made - remember we are coming out of the little ice age of 300 years ago and it was warmer in the medieval warming period than it is now. Mann tried to downplay and hide these facts using erroneous statistics to make the present look uniquely warm. He is an unscientific fraud. Even if there is a human-induced effect, the hysteria over a possible 1-2 degree change in temperatures is excessive.
Problem is he's fooled most of the people most of the time
Think of Mann as a key member of a group whose task has been to maintain fictional CAGW, which science was debunked in 1997 when it was shown that CO2 rose after T at the end of ice ages. This meant CO2 climate sensitivity had to be calibrated against modern warming and the ‘hockey stick’ fraudulently airbrushed the MWP from History.
It is highly likely they believe the propaganda because the models apparently justify the concept. So, the hockey stick has taken on to them the substance of reality because it should be there if they look hard enough. However, the modelling is also under threat.
A key intellectual plank has been the belief in ‘back radiation’, taken as proof of GHG warming. It has been an interesting intellectual exercise taking on the true believers.
The pyrgeometer creates an imaginary signal, the Prevost exchange term from the atmosphere to the internal black body. It can do no thermodynamic work but they claim it enters the earth’s surface and is recycled as black body radiation. This is then used to calibrate the heat flows in the rest of the modelling. It ends up increasing the energy absorbed by the atmosphere by a factor of 4.3.
However, experiment shows you need ~100° before radiative heat transfer exceeds natural convection from a horizontal surface. Climate science is, in Roy Spencer’s words, a cargo cult, fake dogma used to facilitate the worship of an imaginary threat which can only be countered by making windmills and PV panels the major source of power.
Hi Gillian, I like your list but rather than just repeat what you have read can we start with say your first one on the list and go from there you state;-
ocean temps (rising),
Please provide what source you are using to show this. we can move down the list from there.
Thanks again an intrested party.
It's hiding in the deep,
A gift of value for to keep.
Or radiated back to space
Lost forever, oh, my Grace.
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I'm astonished that a Kos poll should produce such a result. Last time I was there, and expressed a few mildly sceptical opinions, I was more or less stood up against a wall and interrogated. But that was 3 or 4 years ago.
Frank Davis,
The review of Mann's book was so ill-informed that it may have been embarrassing even to the Kos regulars.
Currently (18:25 GMT, 22/03/2012) the sum of the final 2 categories is 97.9% (or 97% if you believe in KosMaths.)
(4038 oo 4123.) Not sure if it's still live ...
Currently (18:25 GMT, 22/03/2012) the sum of the final 2 categories is 97.9% (or 97% if you believe in KosMaths.)
(4038 oo 4123.) Not sure if it's still live ...