Thursday
Mar222012
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Mann cuttings
Mar 22, 2012 Books Climate: Mann A couple of Mann-related bits and pieces.
Simon Lewis, the scientist who is perhaps best known for pursuing a complaint against EU Referendum through the Press Complaints Commission, has written a review of Mann's book. It's reproduced on Mann's Facebook page.
Meanwhile, Mann himself has a letter in the Wall Street Journal complaining about Anne Jolis' review.
Reader Comments (24)
Josh:
On the subject of early graphic representations of climatologists:
there’s a Greek vase (c300BC) at Syracuse University showing two portly men with paunches, goatee beards and exaggerated hockeystick-shaped members. A third man is seated between them attempting to tweak the data by playing a flute (Mike’s Snake-charming trick?). I can’t find a photo, but this is another version of the same theme.
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/image?img=Perseus:image:1990.05.0187
The single only good thing I got from ploughing through the book is to enjoy watching how the faithful will engineer any spin, or endure any cognitive contortion, to make the book sound appealing. :)
Just put this on Mann's FB page.
"Dr Mann, you are coming across as being somewhat paranoid, with your allegations that all those who produce doubts that some of your methodology, data & statistical analyses are unsound, are "Fossil Fuel Company Shills". Let's see the full data, computer codes & all statistical analyses published for MBH98 &99. Let's see you advocate full archiving of data used."
Any bets that it is rapidly removed?
I can't help but think that Mann is being abandoned by his coworkers. They may return to his aid if his flailing about looks like it might harm them, but right now he seems to be standing very close to the edge of the bus lanes. He comes across to me as a bit of a Walter Mitty character, albeit more abrasive and touchy than the original.
The story of how all these scientific academies came 'on board' is well worthy of detailed investigation, and seems likely to be a result of their leaderships deciding to act in ways which their histories and many, perhaps most, of their members would not care to support if it were brought to their attention. The Bish's Nullius report, as well as his Conspiracy in Green report, are very relevant here and I hope they will inspire further analysis of say, the American Chemical Society, to name but one.
The fact is that climate variation and its causes has long been just a tiny area of academic interest until political activists spotted a use for it. Other scientists I think have assumed that their high standards were also dominant in that field, a field they had possibly never even heard of, and paid it little heed. Others, like filmstars and singers and most of the rest of us, I suppose never gave the notion that climate changes much heed either, and the speculations about CO2 came as a bit of a bombshell only because they were confounded with the notion that climate changes. The OMG! reaction has been exploited well enough by such as the IPCC, and so we come to the sorry pass of the present in which just about every 'prediction/extrapolation/inference/projection' pushed, hinted at, or headlined by opportunistic alarmists has been refuted or undermined both by what has been happening or not in the climate system, by the insights of atmospheric scientists of the highest integrity such as Lindzen, and by other scientists forced to look up from their own studies by the hue and cry they can no longer ignore in the political street.
The speculation that the increased levels of CO2 must have a very large effect on climate remains a very weak one, unsupported by observational evidence, and disputed from various angles by experts from those who argue that the effect will be weak and hard to detect, to those who argue that the whole idea contains fundamental mistakes about the physics and/or about climate dynamics.
The pass is a 'sorry' one however, because of the huge political success of opportunistic alarmism. We have had a wholesale infiltration of alarm and deliberate scaremongering over CO2 into schools, and into organisations such as Oxfam and WWF - all changing out of all recognition in my lifetime by the poison of this alarmism. We have also had major and tragic distortions in agriculture and food production brought about by government fiats about bio-fuels. We have the Climate Change Act in the UK, a monumental stupidity if ever there was one, and one from which consequent harms continue to follow, not least the expenditures on windfarms.
Meanwhile, Michael Mann is getting agitated because others fail to see him in the same light as he sees himself, as expounded I presume in his new book. Burns wrote about this a bit in his poem 'To a Louse', which ends as follows:
O wad some Power the gift tae gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An foolish notion:
What airs in dress an gait wad lea'e us,
An ev'n devotion!
I read this far in the WSJ letter:
And communicating scientific facts is not what Mann is doing in the letter. Think how different the two recent pieces from Lindzen and friends were. They simplified but they paid readers the respect of explaining what the key scientific issues are: sensitivity to a doubling of CO2, measurements of atmospheric concentrations of GHGs, global averaged temperature anomalies, the standstill in the latter since 95, how models didn't see that coming and the link or otherwise between any of this and extreme weather events.
Mann is being radicalised by experiences he interprets as persecution and is seeking to radicalise in turn fellow climate scientists and everyone else - radicalise in the sense it's used in Holocaust studies. The demonisation of anyone with whom Mann does not agree is intense and growing. Steve McIntyre has called Mann deranged (over claims that Steve and Ross broke into his server in 2003) and he's not wrong. He could usefully be a lot less influential than he is.
The Madness of Mann illustrates the Madness of Man. So be it.
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The comments on Mann's WSJ letter are tangible evidence of the mood of the public as the evidence of the AGW scam has unrolled.
At present the emperor is only naked and the butt of all our jokes, within a short time he and his mates will be on the dole queue.
The WSJ kindly published my letter re Mann's Big Oil narrative as well:
http://on.wsj.com/GDa6iL
Harold, you and Tom Fuller are two of my most inspiring heroes.
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Update, my comment has been disappeared! What a surprise.
When does MM find the time to do that sciency stuff?
I wonder that too Geckko. I also wonder if he was head-hunted to be a fall-guy for the hockey-stick by someone who knew the tricks to get that shape, saw it would be very very useful for the IPCC, but didn't want his name on it for posterity because, as has happened, the analysis would surely be debunked as soon as any statistician took a thorough look at it. It certainly worked, the IPCC and others made whoopee with the stick for a few years, and now they ignore it. They moved on, after having benefitted from a huge boost from the stick. Poor old Michael has been left holding the shattered remains of it and of his reputation. His book is a desperate attempt to recover some shreds of dignity from the mess, but it looks like it is backfiring in intelligent lay quarters such as might be represented by the readership of the WSJ. Idle speculations for the moment, but who knows who might be inspired to dig deeper. I get the impression that more and more very sharp people are experiencing scales falling from their eyes, and fury building in their breasts at the outrageous impact and methods of such as the IPCC. Hope springs eternal.
Re: geoffchambers, the "hockey-stick" shaped peckers --
That's quite a remarkable painting. Love those chicken-heads! Josh, here's your chance for an R-rated cartoon!
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/image?img=Perseus:image:1990.05.0187
A perfectly polite comment I posted on Mann's Facebook page has been deleted.
Not happy with comments that are not fawning or that do not complain about "deniers"?
does anyone know anything about the Rob Honeycutt who appears on the facebook thread and also as a a very persistent attacker of anyone who posts a negative critique of Mann's book on Amazon?
diogenes
http://notrickszone.com/2011/01/06/know-your-opponent-climate-bet-warmist-believes-in-the-hockey-stick/
thanks Pharos...the link keeps timing out but you expect these people to lurk at Tamino's site, to applaud Moses when he has just delivered a great slice of cherry-picked and misrepresented data - eg caerbannog and Dhogaza and Jeremy Bowers (aka Norman Wisdom). Honeycutt was unknown to me but he is remarkably persistent and yet, unfailingly, stupid.
diogenes
No Tricks Zone seems to be down right now, although it was working earlier.
Pharos...I find it amusing that Glecick anc co talk about the "playbook" of the "sceptics/deniers", when it is so obvious that they have a playbook of theiir own, and theat sceptics are not at all organised. A playbook created by the incredibly stupid and ineffectual Scott Mandia.
One term - Stalinist Football Club
John Shade said:
I can't help but think that Mann is being abandoned by his coworkers.
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Yes, as time goes by, Mann appears to be cast as the 'Lone Gunman'.
The rest of the team seem to have told him that they would be over on the grassy knoll, ready to back him up.
I found this photo on Mann's Facebook page.
It's taken at the Ecology Club members at Bishop O'Connell high school in Arlington VA
The comments are quite funny
e.g
Perhaps some sensitivity analysis is required?
"Perhaps some sensitivity analysis is required?"
Perhaps it wasn't just the dendro record which was truncated.....
Perhaps some sensitivity analysis is required?
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Once Mann has finished running the height figures for the class through an appropriate model, it will be clearly shown that Mann is at least 6' 3", with a trend that shows him increasing in height by 0.5" per year over the next 30 years.