Rick Piltz of Climate Science Watch has taken the time to transcribe what may be the most important and revealing part of my Michael Mann Point of Inquiry interview–the end. It’s the part where, among other things, Mann refers to the “asymmetric warfare” between trained skeptics and scientists as “literally like a battle between a Marine and a Cub Scout.” And there is much more there. For those who enjoy reading rather than listening, check it out.
March 10th, 2010 at 8:41 am
This holds for anyone making any argument in today’s society: As long as you think that you are on the side of truth just ‘getting the word out’, while the other side is a well-funded, well-connected, PR-savvy group of contrarians only out to maintain the status quo, the logjam will continue and you will constantly be surprised.
March 10th, 2010 at 8:50 am
There’s a great post from David Frum over at his blog recently entitled “Backing the GOP into a Paranoid Corner” that says a lot about how the conservative movement works:
It seems to me that a lot of these dynamics apply to the conservative climate change denialist movement, in spades.
It’s a variation of the arguments that Sam Tanenhaus has been making for a couple years, and it dates back to the 80′s when Sidney Blumenthal actually coined the term “Counterestablishment” (I wonder if Frum is discretely telegraphing something by including this term in this post? It’s a bit shock that he uses it because I believe Blumenthal is kind of a mortal enemy of the GOP.)
March 10th, 2010 at 8:51 am
OMG. You guys are still here beating the dead horse?
March 10th, 2010 at 10:02 am
Dead, decaying, and well on its way to becoming nutrient-rich compost, to be exact.
News Flash – Accused maintains that he is innocent. Supporters of accused support his assertion, while detractors of the accused deny said assertion.
March 10th, 2010 at 10:21 am
Moptop, you’re the poster child for the anti-science movement type. When you’re not doing half-baked rants about some obscure detail in the science with no impact on the overall AGW picture, you’re ranting about big government. It’s like those issues are two sides of the same coin for you.
You’ve even gushed here about Scott Brown.
As I’ve said, the pro-science internet in recent years has been trying to defend science from politics. The recent anti-science conservative internet has obviously been trying to defend their politics from science.
March 10th, 2010 at 11:00 am
“As I’ve said, the pro-science internet in recent years has been trying to defend science from politics.” (Namely, George Bush’s politics.)
March 10th, 2010 at 11:13 am
Wow, stuck in moderator perdition for quite some time now.
March 10th, 2010 at 11:29 am
90 minutes and counting. Did I say something untrue in my original post?
March 10th, 2010 at 11:41 am
Plugging the parent site here, all should read this new interview, both with Michael Mann and with Judith Curry:
http://discovermagazine.com/2010/apr/10-it.s-gettin-hot-in-here-big-battle-over-climate-science
Read, rant, repeat.
March 10th, 2010 at 1:07 pm
That’s right. It’s a “vast right-wing conspiracy.” I keep forgetting. Anyway, whatever Jon.
March 10th, 2010 at 1:56 pm
@moptop,
More like it’s a well-known, right-wing agenda to deny global warming has a human cause and that we need to act to prevent dangerous future warming.
Most conspirators do a better job of hiding their plans and keeping their real motives a secret. It’s no secret that the right-wing is where most of the denial camp resides and it’s mostly for selfish reasons involving their ties to the fossil fuel industry.
March 10th, 2010 at 3:26 pm
Guy,
I have no ties to the fossil fuel industry. Hypothesis falsified.
March 10th, 2010 at 3:45 pm
@Nullius,
Did I say it was all inclusive? Of course there are cranks that are not right-wing and have nothing at all to do with the fossil fuel industry, but they are still cranks nonetheless.
March 10th, 2010 at 4:30 pm
Guy,
Quite so. And there are cranks who believe in a right wing conspiracy that is good at hiding its plans and motives, and that acts mostly for selfish reasons involving their ties to the fossil fuel industry. It doesn’t mean that all believers in CAGW are cranks, though.
I’m pretty sure that there are people in the fossil fuel industry, as there are in most industries, who are sceptical. But it doesn’t have to involve a conspiracy, and they may be sceptical for reasons that have nothing to do with their employment. Most people, though, have nothing to do with it.
Generally speaking, conspiracy theories and similar ad hominem arguments do the side using them the most harm, so if I was simply interested in winning the debate politically, I’d encourage it. But in the longer run, it ends up discrediting scientists totally, when they are seen to have obsessively thrown the “crank” term at anyone who disagrees with them and have then turned out to be wrong. I’d prefer to avoid that.
March 10th, 2010 at 4:32 pm
touché
March 10th, 2010 at 6:04 pm
Funny, I thought CAGW was a well known Left Wing conspiracy to frighten everyone into allowing more gov’t control of our lives?
Politicians lie, cheat, and steal to get more money, power, and advance their political agenda no matter what side they are on. Dem or Rep, if you think your party isn’t doing it you are a mindless lemming!
The truth is always somewhere in between…
March 10th, 2010 at 6:42 pm
“ore like it’s a well-known, right-wing agenda to deny global warming has a human cause and that we need to act to prevent dangerous future warming.”
Amazing that this stuff works on you guys every time. Worked for Hillary, it’s working for Chris, except, per Abe Lincoln’s famous aphorism , it is working on fewer and fewer all the time.
Piece of advice, argue science not motives. When you argue motives it looks like you don’t have the science on your side. Only true believers are buying this well funded, all powerful, but mostly invisible conspiracy stuff, and, as you could easily see by the polls, there are fewer and fewer of you all the time.
Climategate was an insider leak. Think about it. It would have been an easy leak, and an incredibly difficult hack. Oh that’s right, the black helicopter guys got into the CRU.
March 10th, 2010 at 7:56 pm
Re Nullius in Verba
Of course there’s no right wing conspiracy. Just because the Heartland Institute and the George Marshall foundation are supported by the energy companies and numerous far right wing foundations, like the Richard Mellon Scaithe Foundation doesn’t mean that those companies are conspiring to lie about AGW. Of course not, perish the thought. End snark.
March 10th, 2010 at 8:07 pm
I think “conspiracy” is the wrong word. Paul Krugman’s phase: “a highly cohesive set of interlocking institutions” is much better.
If the Competitive Enterprise Institute digs up some dirt, even if it isn’t very significant, they know Fox News will be a ready ally in propagating it. Likewise, if ClimateAudit comes up with something, Wattsupwiththat and Planet Gore will publicize it. These institutions are kind of factories manufacturing conservative outrage, for the most part without a check from other institutions. Sometimes, if they make enough of a stink, they can get mainstream media to promote their stories, and that’s when they know they have success. (The rest of the time they work the refs by vociferously complaining that their arguments aren’t aired by the mainstream.)
Since often the patrons for this stuff are fossil fuel funders (in the case of the websites and the think tanks) or jingoistic GOP-base viewers (in the case of Fox News), the standards for publishing are not traditional standards, but ideological ones. Climateaudit won’t ever move into the AGW camp, because then they’d violate their patrons’ *ideological* standards. (As opposed to the *professional* standards, of say, Mann’s University of Pennsylvania.)
And what are those ideological standards? There is a consistency, and a lot of it has to do with a deep and marketable “paranoia” (to use the word from David Frum’s post) that was originally promoted decades ago by conservative intellectuals “who argued that the “managerial elite” (James Burnham), the “liberal establishment” (William Buckley), or the “new class” (Irving Kristol) had seized control of American politics and later our society” (Sam Tanenhaus’s words.)
March 10th, 2010 at 8:31 pm
RE moptop
O Rly? Where’s your evidence? Why would a CRU insider hack into RealClimate?
I hope the “skeptics” who comment here have readThe Republican War on Science. There are ties among business groups, right wing think tanks and Republican politicians. Maintaining the status quo is a big undertaking.
March 10th, 2010 at 8:32 pm
Jon, don’t forget Drudge.
March 10th, 2010 at 9:16 pm
By the way, Tanenhaus’s best, clearest statement of his thesis is here, from before the last presidential election:
http://www.aei.org/audio/100158
A bit long, but a fantastic lecture (now more than two years old). Listen closely where he mentions the “new class,” and the “conservative new class.” We definitely have a conservative new class these days, and I would argue a decidedly reactionary, anti-science new class.
March 11th, 2010 at 5:33 am
“Why would a CRU insider hack into RealClimate?”
There was no “hack” of RealClimate. What happened was that the leaker tried to post the files there. RealClimate, being moderated and heavily censored found the link in moderation and declined to publish it. If you call that a hack, I am not sure you know what the word means.
March 11th, 2010 at 1:13 pm
What happened was that the leaker tried to post the files there.
There is no evidence that anyone “leaked” the CRU emails. By their very nature, very few people even at CRU itself would have been able to leak emails. Only someone who was a recipient of all the emails himself could have conceivably “leaked” them.
By all indications, this was a hack. It’s absurd to argue otherwise, even if you think the hack was legitimate. If you know otherwise, let’s hear some proof.
March 11th, 2010 at 1:31 pm
Why would someone want to leak emails that contained no evidence of falsified data?
March 11th, 2010 at 1:39 pm
18. SLC Says:
March 10th, 2010 at 7:56 pm
Re Nullius in Verba
Of course there’s no right wing conspiracy. Just because the Heartland Institute and the George Marshall foundation are supported by the energy companies and numerous far right wing foundations, like the Richard Mellon Scaithe Foundation doesn’t mean that those companies are conspiring to lie about AGW. Of course not, perish the thought. End snark.
Seriously, you must know that the George C. Marshall Foundation is dedicated to preserving, protecting and promoting the legacy of George C. Marshall without any interest whatsoever in denying or confirming global warming. They debate that engages you requires accuracy. Making mistakes discredits your argument, whichever side you are on.
March 11th, 2010 at 2:11 pm
“Of course there’s no right wing conspiracy. Just because the Heartland Institute and the George Marshall foundation are supported by the energy companies and numerous far right wing foundations, like the Richard Mellon Scaithe Foundation doesn’t mean that those companies are conspiring to lie about AGW. Of course not, perish the thought. End snark.”
You’re indulging in the association fallacy. You are assuming that because lots of right wing foundations happen to be sceptical, that this can only happen as a result of organisation, and with the aid of funding, and that the politics and funding are the cause of the scepticism, and that all scepticism must be from this source. That’s quite a lot of logical gaps in your argument; many bits that are missing.
There is no need for conspiracy where there is a common interest, or commonly available information that can lead many people to come to the same conclusion independently. Most sceptics are interested amateurs, with no funding, no backers, nobody telling them what to believe. People do not hold conservative (or liberal) beliefs because they’re told to, or even because they’re paid to. They hold conservative (or liberal) beliefs because they think they’re right. And those conservatives (or liberals) who happen to belong to foundations and think tanks will believe the same way for the same reasons. It doesn’t require any organising to achieve. It doesn’t require anybody to lie.
It’s fairly common knowledge that RealClimate (for example) is an operation run by a company called Environmental Media Services, which are a subsidiary of Fenton Communications; a political advertising and corporate image management outfit, who count various prominent left-wing powers like George Soros amongst their clients. If you want to play that game, then it’s easy to show that a lot of the media coverage on climate threats is sourced from Environmentalist groups reliant on alarm about the natural world for contributions, financiers involved in climate credit markets and renewable energy companies, politicians interested in raising taxes and extending regulation, and others seeking a slice of the Green subsidy pie. Even big oil are in on it.
Does that mean that statements by RealClimate, Greenpeace, the WWF, Al Gore, and so on are suspect? Are they a part of a left-wing conspiracy of think tanks and vested interests, organising “grass roots” activism using taxpayers money, pumping out huge volumes of alarmist propaganda and press releases, lobbying policy makers, keeping the tempo of the campaign high? And getting hugely rich as a result?
Some people think so. But personally, I don’t think it’s at all useful to use that argument, because firstly it delves into conspiracy theory territory, which gives a bad impression to the superficial glance, and more importantly because it’s an ad hominem fallacy with regard to the most important question of whether it is true. Even though Al Gore is making millions off Global Warming policy, that doesn’t imply that he’s not right.
The only way you can tell if he’s right is to examine the science, the arguments, the evidence. And it seems to me more productive to go direct to that than have to divert through all the funding stuff, and then explain why you’re not being a conspiracy kook. Moreover, smearing the sources is the sort of thing people do when they don’t have any good technical arguments, and that’s not a good impression to give. It does work very well when preaching to the choir, but it’s frequently highly unpersuasive to the smarter outsiders.
But I can’t stop you shooting yourselves in the foot. While we’re arguing science, and you’re ranting about conspiracies of secret right-wing societies (and insisting it’s fine to do so because it’s all really true!!!), we are going to win. My only concern is that you don’t bring public respect for Science itself down, too.
March 11th, 2010 at 2:31 pm
Seriously, you must know that the George C. Marshall Foundation is dedicated to preserving, protecting and promoting the legacy of George C. Marshall without any interest whatsoever in denying or confirming global warming.
This is from the George C. Marshall Institute’s website:
Naomi Oreskes has more details on the Marshall Institute’s role on climate change in this talk:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/02/oreskes_on_the_american_denial.php
March 11th, 2010 at 2:33 pm
Seriously, you must know that the George C. Marshall Foundation is dedicated to preserving, protecting and promoting the legacy of George C. Marshall without any interest whatsoever in denying or confirming global warming.
This is from the George C. Marshall Institute’s website:
Naomi Oreskes has more details on the Marshall Institute’s role on climate change in this talk:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/02/oreskes_on_the_american_denial.php
March 11th, 2010 at 5:07 pm
Folks, the George C. Marshall Foundation and the George C. Marshall Institute are different organizations with vastly different missions. The Marshall Foundation is the keeper of the flame. The Marshall Institute trades on George Marshall’s good name and sterling reputation.
If you don’t know or don’t believe me, go to http://www.marshallfoundation.org. Send me an email when you get there.
March 11th, 2010 at 8:11 pm
Rick Drake:Folks, the George C. Marshall Foundation and the George C. Marshall Institute are different organizations with vastly different missions.
OK, so noted.
Nullius in Verba: You’re indulging in the association fallacy. You are assuming that because lots of right wing foundations happen to be sceptical, that this can only happen as a result of organisation, and with the aid of funding, and that the politics and funding are the cause of the scepticism, and that all scepticism must be from this source.
The aid of funding, and a fairly complete independence from mainstream institutions, means that the institutions we are talking about are very different from their counterparts, in terms of what their standards are, and what they’re capable of (because of their implicit mission, focus and scale of activities).
For instance, the Competitive Enterprise Institute has one set of standards, Michael Mann’s University of Pennsylvania has another. And the capabilities are different. As Michael Mann says, it’s like a girl scout going up against a marine. The University of Pennsylvania is not in the business of public relations, managing a news cycle, distributing talking points etc (and shouldn’t be). The Competitive Enterprise Institute on the other hand is heavily geared toward such activities, and the professional accuracy of the information it puts out in the media is of secondary value to the info’s political effectiveness. CEI’s political viewpoint is primary, scientific standards are secondary.
And CEI as an institution doesn’t stand alone. There’s AEI, Heartland, Heritage, just to name a few off the top of my head. And they have propaganda-ready media at their service as well. Fox, Washington Times, WSJ Editorial Page, Weekly Standard, etc etc. See the Wikipedia entry for Echo Chamber.
Are there liberal counterparts to these? Sure. But it’s not the same in terms of scale, standards, etc. The Washington Times is in a fundamentally different business than the New York Times. And as I said above, UPenn is in a fundamentally different business than the CEI.
And the Center for American Progress is just a baby, and was developed really in response to the “highly cohesive interlocking institutions” problem coming from the right. And already, someone is throwing money at creating a CAP counterpart.
March 11th, 2010 at 8:30 pm
Re Nullius in Verba
But I can’t stop you shooting yourselves in the foot. While we’re arguing science, and you’re ranting about conspiracies of secret right-wing societies (and insisting it’s fine to do so because it’s all really true!!!), we are going to win. My only concern is that you don’t bring public respect for Science itself down, too.
Mr. Verba, the Heartland Institute, and the George Marshall Institute don’t argue science. They are in business to, just like the tobacco companies were to spread lies and propaganda (by the way, the Heartland Institute was originally founded by the tobacco companies for the purpose of lying about the relationship between smoking and lung cancer). They don’t argue science for the very simple reason that there is no science supporting the climate change denialists. There are only talking points promulgated by paid shills like Marc Morano, that have no basis in reality.
By the way, I must apologize for confusing the George Marshall Foundation with the George Marshall Institute. I agree wholeheartedly with Mr. Jon and Mr. Rick Drake. It is disgraceful for the name of a great public servant like General Marshall, a man who Harry Truman called the greatest American of first half of the 20th century, to have his name associated with with a piece of crap like the George Marshall Institute. It’s too bad there is no way to force that perfidious outfit to change their name.
In addition, it is Mr. Verba who is tearing down public respect for science by associating himself with right wing smear artists like Marc Morano. And he is not going to “win”, anymore then Peter Duesbergs’ camnpaign for HIV/AIDS denial is going to win, or William Dumbskis’ campaign for evolution denial is going to win.or Fred Singers campaign for CFCs/ozone depletion denial is going to win.
March 12th, 2010 at 7:00 am
“Only someone who was a recipient of all the emails himself could have conceivably “leaked” them.”
This is why following Chris’s advice to not look at the files yourself is stupid. You make statements from ignorance like the above. The files were contained in a master file called FOIA.zip (That would be freedom of information act) were gathered together from many sources, some of the most damaging stuff was not even in the form of emails, viz “harry read me.”
You tell me how a hacker could put together 1300 emails, hundreds of programmer files and other documents, etc, and kept them all focused on a single thread? There were no personal emails in there, no mails regarding other subjects.
The reality is that the file was collected in response to an outstanding FOIA request in the UK, which the CRU at the last minute denied.
I can go on if you want. But there are plenty of deniers on your side too.
March 12th, 2010 at 8:34 am
Jon, SLC, et al–thanks. help us spread the good word about George C. Marshall.
March 12th, 2010 at 1:24 pm
This is why following Chris’s advice to not look at the files yourself is stupid. You make statements from ignorance like the above.
I make statements from ignorance. You’ve declared with virtual certainty that the CRU emails were leaked by someone on the inside. Who is that person? What is your evidence?
You accept without question material posted with the explicit intention of attacking global warming science, despite having no clue who that source is. And you accept without question that they have given you a complete and uncensored record.
March 12th, 2010 at 3:47 pm
Jon,
In comparing the University of Pennsylvania to CEI, you’re not comparing like to like. You need to compare CEI to Greenpeace, WWF, FOE, and Al Gore – all of who are very well-funded ‘marines’. You need to compare it to every government busy producing leaflets on climate change, putting on TV adverts about drowning puppies, and all the environmental journalists in TV and newspapers. They’re very good at it.
You assert that they’re not as good at it, but from my perspective they seem very successful, having brought the world to the brink of deals like Copenhagen. You assert that they’re on a smaller scale, but from my perspective they appear to have at least three orders of magnitude more funding. Can you name a prominent sceptic who controls as much money as Al Gore, who on his own announced a $300m advertising campaign? That buys a lot of advertising expertise!
SLC,
I’m afraid that’s not an argument, it’s just a continued assertion of the same conspiracy theories – talking points without content. A lot of it is simply untrue, and even if it were true, would not prove a thing. You can only determine the truth from the content of the arguments and evidence, not from who is doing the arguing. By continually repeating the ad hominems, and not discussing the scientific evidence, you give every appearance of being on the anti-science side you condemn.
I don’t associate myself with anyone. All I do is ask questions about the science – how do you mathematically justify decentered PCA? Why would a climate scientist want to dismiss a critical paper out of hand even though the maths appeared to be correct? How can a climate model possibly solve the Navier-Stokes equation taking cloud thermodynamics into account using a grid resolution of 100s of kilometres? How do a small number of trees measure the mean global temperature – oceans, deserts, and poles included – to an accuracy of a few tenths of a degree? How do you eliminate the possibility of spurious regression in stochastic data when you don’t know what statistical model to use? And so on, and so on.
Nobody is paying me to ask the questions. I’ve got nothing to do with any oil companies. I have no more stake in it than any other tax-payer or citizen of the world. And I’m fed up with people who won’t answer the science questions going on and on about how I must be in league with evil corporations, and it’s all a right-wing conspiracy, and there’s no science to support scepticism. It’s totally unconvincing, because in my case I know that it isn’t true. I know that ad hominem argument, like argument from authority, is anti-scientific fallacy. I know that my doubts are not the result of slick advertising.
So why do you think this line of argument might work? Is it really why you believe?
March 12th, 2010 at 5:31 pm
Re Nullius in Verba
One has to laugh at Mr. Nullius who repeats a list of talking points that he got from a denialist web site. However, here’s a couple of simple observations that don’t depend on computer modeling.
1. It is a know fact that 7 of the 8 hottest years on record have occurred since 2000.
2. The Northwest Passage was ice free and open to shipping in the summer of 2008 for the first time in recorded history.
Both of these observations certainly seem to indicate that, at a minimum, GW is true. In fact, many of the AGW denialists now accept GW (e.g. Pat Michaels) but deny that human activities and CO(2) are responsible. Just another example of the Racehorse Haynes strategy.
March 12th, 2010 at 10:06 pm
You need to compare CEI to Greenpeace, WWF, FOE, and Al Gore – all of who are very well-funded ‘marines’.
I don’t think CEI is that worried about that crowd. They’ve already been pulverized by decades of the culture war, turned into “dirty hippies”, etc. And you’d think Al Gore was Emmanuel Goldstein with all the fire directed against him, so he can be easily overcharacterized in the public square.
So those are comparatively under control… Who the CEI is concerned about, are the *establishment* figures, like Michael Mann at UPenn, because he’s got the whole weight of the scientific establishment behind him, and the argument that his research is really a secret plot to grow big government sounds pretty silly and weak. (BTW, you don’t like Michael Mann? There are plenty of other lines of research to consider that don’t even have anything to do with Mann’s work, “>even in the field of paleoclimatology.) So I would argue that CEI would consider someone like Michael Mann as its biggest threat.
You can only determine the truth from the content of the arguments and evidence, not from who is doing the arguing.
I kind of doubt we’re going to have a serious argument about the research on this page:
http://tinyurl.com/heatisonline
March 13th, 2010 at 9:44 am
“One has to laugh at Mr. Nullius who repeats a list of talking points that he got from a denialist web site.”
Again, it’s hard to see why you would think this a convincing argument. First, I happen to know that I didn’t. Second, there is no possible way that you can have any evidence, one way or the other, for that assertion – so you must have just made it up. That doesn’t speak well for the rest of your argument. And third, even if it was true, it wouldn’t imply that the points were wrong.
Neither of your other two arguments work either, although I applaud them for not being ad hominem.
The first is a true statement, but because the reliable record is so short, not a particularly significant one. The climate in any one place will rise and fall by larger amounts over periods of 50-100 years, quite naturally. The Central England Temperature series goes back to the 1600s, and there was a period from about 1680 to 1730 during which the temperature rose further and faster than it has during the 20th century, peaking only a fraction of a degree behind the modern peak.
Episodes of warming and cooling are nothing unusual. It’s not known whether they extended globally or not. That there has been 20th century warming in no way implies that it not a part of normal climate variation, let alone that it was CO2 that caused it. So you are making a true statement, but it only implies what you seem to think it implies if you apply a form of common but fallacious reasoning.
Certain people put the fact out there, knowing that a lot of the general public will jump to the desired conclusion.
Your second ‘fact’ isn’t even true. The North West passage is often open, and has been previously traversed in 1906, 1940, 1944, 1957, 1969, 1977, 1986, 2000, 2001, and 2003. Bearing in mind that traversal requires it to be open for an extended period, and not many people are up there to make the attempt, it’s probably been open more often than that without anybody noticing.
Furthermore, the recent reduction in Arctic sea ice is a consequence of changing wind patterns blowing pack ice south into warmer waters. It isn’t even a consequence of warming. You are taking a few years of not very unusual windy weather over less than 3% of the Earth’s surface and extrapolating it to the entire global climate.
But this is the way it is supposed to go. Looking at the science: the arguments and the data.
Jon,
“That crowd” are still taken seriously enough to get cited by the IPCC, but I won’t argue.
“I kind of doubt we’re going to have a serious argument about the research on this page:”
Actually, yes we are. One of my questions was regarding the non-standard decentered PCA used in Mann, Bradley, Hughes 98. How is it mathematically justified?
The page itself does not contain any argument, only citations and the assertion of conclusions. The arguments in the papers themselves are in my view incomplete. But since you cited it, presumably having read and checked the papers and been convinced by their arguments, and since it’s relevant to a post about Mann, perhaps you’d like to answer the question? PCA is normally done by subtracting the mean of the entire dataset, but when Mann was forced to publish his code, it was revealed that he had only subtracted the mean for the 20th century calibration period; a small subset. It seems mathematically obvious to me that this will bias the result, and there seems no logical justification for the procedure, but I’d be interested to know if there’s something I missed. Can you tell me how it is justified mathematically?
March 13th, 2010 at 1:21 pm
Even if “the non-standard decentered PCA used in Mann, Bradley, Hughes 98 was not mathematically justified,” there are plenty of other paleoclimate studies that reach the same conclusions by other means. And most of these aren’t over 10 years old. Also paleoclimate isn’t even the most important sets of evidence supporting AGW…
So why are we arguing over a moot question?
What I would say is that in a lot of cases people are simply creating the *appearance* of a heated argument, the more technical and incomprehensible to the public the better, with the science itself of secondary value. This was what was done with tobacco.
March 13th, 2010 at 3:04 pm
Jon,
If the response had been to acknowledge that MBH98 was incorrect, remove it and all the papers that used it as input from play, and then say “we’ve got plenty of other studies that reach the same conclusions by corrected methods, which you can check”, that would be perfectly OK. Laudable, even.
But they didn’t. MBH98 is still displayed in the latest IPCC report. It still appears in AGW literature, and has been a central foundation in the publicity that has convinced many of the general public. It still appears in Al Gore’s movie, shown in science class to thousands of kids. It isn’t a moot question.
It has never been withdrawn. The errors remain unacknowledged. It is still commonly defended as part of “climate science”, by Mann especially. You yourself just linked to a site listing “the evidence” that included it without any warning about the problems. And while it is itself still quite significant, there is an even more significant question that the issue raises: why did nobody spot it in any of the multiple layers of review, and why even after it was spotted will nobody (officially) acknowledge it now?
So if you want to concede the point on the correctness of MBH98 methods, then I’ll salute your outstanding demonstration of scientific integrity and we’ll move onto that one.
On the other hand, if you’re seriously putting forward the idea that using erroneous methods doesn’t matter so long as the answer is “right”, we’ll dive right into some scientific philosophy.
March 13th, 2010 at 3:56 pm
Re Nullius in Verba
Your second ‘fact’ isn’t even true. The North West passage is often open, and has been previously traversed in 1906, 1940, 1944, 1957, 1969, 1977, 1986, 2000, 2001, and 2003.
Mr. Nullius apparently has a reading comprehension problem. What I said was that the Northwest Passage was ice free during the summer of 2008. Previous transverses of the passage required that the ships be accompanied by ice breakers.
The first is a true statement, but because the reliable record is so short, not a particularly significant one. The climate in any one place will rise and fall by larger amounts over periods of 50-100 years, quite naturally. The Central England Temperature series goes back to the 1600s, and there was a period from about 1680 to 1730 during which the temperature rose further and faster than it has during the 20th century, peaking only a fraction of a degree behind the modern peak.
What has the Central England Temperature got to do with anything? The measurements taken over the last several years are world wide average temperatures. The fact that some regions will be hotter then average and other regions will be cooler then average in no way shape, form, or regard says anything about the average world wide temperature. For instance, last summer, the Northeast and Mid Atlantic regions of the US were cooler then normal. However, the temperatures in the Northwest US were hotter then normal.
Furthermore, the recent reduction in Arctic sea ice is a consequence of changing wind patterns blowing pack ice south into warmer waters. It isn’t even a consequence of warming. You are taking a few years of not very unusual windy weather over less than 3% of the Earth’s surface and extrapolating it to the entire global climate.
Citation?.
March 13th, 2010 at 5:51 pm
Jon,
How many times do I have to point out to you that the “blade” in those reconstructions you continually tout are grafted on temperature records at the end that diverge from all of the proxies? In other words, they show that those proxies are all incorrect for the last twenty years, and correct for the past thousand? I am just trying to get my mind wrapped around this.
March 13th, 2010 at 6:20 pm
“What I said was that the Northwest Passage was ice free during the summer of 2008. Previous transverses of the passage required that the ships be accompanied by ice breakers.”
Not every such journey was accompanied by ice breakers in the past. And that doesn’t answer any of the more important points. The North West passage is often very close to ice free, and a slightly freer year doesn’t mean anything. It’s a local weather fluctuation, and as stated, was due to a change in the wind.
“What has the Central England Temperature got to do with anything?”
It is the longest continuous temperature series in the world, and hence a valuable source of information on regional variability over longer periods of time. Since regional climate is all that life at any one location is exposed to, it’s very relevant.
I’d like to be able to tell you about the global average in 1730, but there’s no data. But if you want to know about changes in climate operating on a 50-100 year time scale, local data is all we’ve got. And as far as local records go, such longer term trends are nothing unusual.
“The fact that some regions will be hotter then average and other regions will be cooler then average in no way shape, form, or regard says anything about the average world wide temperature.”
True. And vice versa, of course.
But if this is so, why did you cite weather in the Arctic as evidence of GW?
March 13th, 2010 at 7:50 pm
Moptop– We’ve already established in previous threads that you have some significant holes in your knowledge of statistics.
If the problem with those proxy studies is that they used statistical approximations to approach the real temperatures in previous eras, then in the modern era they used real temperatures (because they are available and more precise), I don’t see what the problem is.
If you look at the hockey stick diagram on this page, there are no error bars in recent decades (because we have the real temperatures), more error bars early in the last century and before, then significant error bars before 1600.
So what?
March 14th, 2010 at 7:13 am
Wow Jon. Standing by “Mike’s Nature trick” to the end.
I will tell you so what. Without grafting those temperatures onto the recent proxy, there is no hockey stick. The proxies don’t show one. So, just to get this straight, you claim that the relatively flat temperatures the proxies showed in the past were actually flat, and that the relatively flat temperatures that the proxies show today are in fact meaningless because we have the actual temperatures?
Even Dr Phil Jones of the CRU (whose statistics are better than mine) has admitted that he can’t prove that it is warmer today than in the MWP, and he has full access to Mann’s work and methods, he just rejects it for some reason…
Your graph in no way shows an independent reconstruction of Mann’s work, and graphs which do show the MWP are conveniently truncated at 500 years, even though they go back for more. The GRIP core goes back thousands of years. It is a very interesting graph, why doesn’t your link show it?
Here is the raw data, maybe you could graph it yourself in Excel?
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/greenland/summit/gisp2/isotopes/gisp2_temp_accum_alley2000.txt
Oh look, somebody has already graphed it:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/09/hockey-stick-observed-in-noaa-ice-core-data/
I strongly suggest that anybody who thinks that Jon has a point, just look at the pictures, and you can check the data yourself from NOAA. It is a text file, so you can easily randomly check some dates to make sure that the graphing was properly done.
BTW, there are historical reports of strawberries in January during the middle ages in Germany.
March 14th, 2010 at 7:33 am
Here is the link for Strawberries, it wasn’t January, it was Christmas, in the year 1289
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12098-freak-winter-is-europes-warmest-for-700-years.html
March 14th, 2010 at 10:18 am
If the response had been to acknowledge that MBH98 was incorrect, remove it and all the papers that used it as input from play, and then say “we’ve got plenty of other studies that reach the same conclusions by corrected methods, which you can check”, that would be perfectly OK. Laudable, even.
MBH98 was not “incorrect”. The study stands up quite well over time. And your suggestion that any paper that cited MBH98 needs to be removed from the literature is absurd.
March 14th, 2010 at 12:20 pm
“MBH98 was not “incorrect”. The study stands up quite well over time.”
Excellent! So you can answer the question. How can decentered PCA be justified mathematically?
You must already know the answer, to have been able to boldly state that MBH98 was not incorrect. The easiest course of action now is to simply set out the maths. Why temporize?
Oh, and I didn’t say that any paper citing MBH98 should be removed, I said that any paper that used it as input data should be, because its results could not be relied upon. I would, obviously, except any papers studying the impact of the errors.
March 14th, 2010 at 1:53 pm
Nullis– Have you read this discussion of the problem?
March 14th, 2010 at 2:16 pm
Your logic is pretty sloppy, moptop. You conflate temperatures in *regions* with global temperatures, and very long term trends with recent trends–which need to be considered separately. Take a look at this article.
March 14th, 2010 at 2:28 pm
Without grafting those temperatures onto the recent proxy, there is no hockey stick.
The top of the stick would be noiser, more “pixelated”, but that’s not a conflict with the discernible trend we see in the instrumental data.
March 14th, 2010 at 2:51 pm
Wow Jon. Standing by “Mike’s Nature trick” to the end.
Try this search on Google Scholar:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=%22the+*+trick%22
You come up with tens of thousands of colloquial uses of the word “trick” in published works of mathematics, statistics, the use of statistics in science, etc.
March 14th, 2010 at 2:55 pm
(The comment broke the link. Try this one instead: http://tinyurl.com/PublishedTricks )
March 14th, 2010 at 3:37 pm
Jon,
“Nullis– Have you read this discussion of the problem?”
Yes. I looked at it shortly after it first came out, when Ian Jolliffe objected to being falsely cited in support of “a piece of dubious statistics”. (http://climateaudit.org/2008/09/08/ian-jolliffe-comments-at-tamino/)
But that doesn’t matter. I would first like to thank and congratulate you on being the first to attempt to answer the question! That’s really excellent! Now we can make some progress.
So, to the argument.
“Wegman’s right about this much: a non-standard centering convention will indeed emphasize the variation of the mean, which turns out to be the main difference between the 20th century and the rest of the time span. What he fails to realize is that that’s the point. He’s also right that the changes associated with it will become more prominent in the PCA analysis, causing those changes to “move up” the PCA list. Again, that’s the point.”
So, first of all, we’re agreed that this is what Mann did, and that it has the effect of preferentially selecting hockeystick shapes out of whatever data it is provided with. He is also correct to say that PCA simply aligns your coordinates to the major axes of variation in the data as measured from your selected origin, whatever those might be. (So if you pick an origin significantly above or below the lake surface, more of your variation will be vertical, towards the lake.)
His argument might be summed up as “we know temperature has a hockeystick shape, so we use a method that preferentially outputs hockeysticks in order to more accurately reproduce the temperature.” He goes on to show how artificial data with a hockeystick-shaped base differs in the two cases. Using centred PCA, most of the variance is the result of the noise, and the hockeystick appears in a lesser coordinate. (Note, the bias doesn’t just re-order the PCs, the hockeystick is a different hockeystick to the one you get from the centred method. It changes the early history in the ‘handle’.)
The problem is, it does this too even if temperature doesn’t have a hockeystick shape. And since that’s the thing we’re trying to test, it seems an unwise assumption to make. That’s what McIntyre and McKittrick showed, that applying the method to artificial red noise that doesn’t have such a trend still produced hockeysticks 95% of the time. It appears to be an intentional feature. As Tamino says, “that’s the point”.
If the method is biased to produce hockeysticks whether they’re really there or not, then the fact that the output is a hockeystick doesn’t tell you so much about the input. It means that if there’s a “acid rain fertilisation” signal, or a “CO2 fertilisation” signal, or a “stripbark-induced growth spurt” signal in the data, the method will still pull it out. And to figure this is temperature just because it shows a 20th century rise seems to be trying to deduce too much from a rather suspect correlation. It distorts the signal in the past, before the 20th century rise, which is the bit we’re really interested in. It’s an interesting attempt, but it tends to confirm what I already thought.
But my most sincere thanks for your contribution – which does seek to answer the question with a mathematical argument rather than one based on reputations. It’s a great improvement, and what I’d like to think an intelligent science debate ought to be about.
Please, keep it up.
March 14th, 2010 at 3:48 pm
Jon,
“You conflate temperatures in *regions* with global temperatures, and very long term trends with recent trends–which need to be considered separately.”
A good point. The problem is, we don’t know what the global temperatures were prior to about 1900, if then.
Can we agree that locally, the variations of the past (where we know them) are comparable to the present, and the question over the global temperature is therefore whether these local changes were synchronised?
March 15th, 2010 at 8:47 am
Jon,
So that is your argument? That Michael Mann was right, and to prove it, you go back to Michael Mann? I thought there was all kinds of independent validation?
If you look at Mann’s “reconstruction”, it shows Europe as colder than today during Medieval times. The historical record says it wasn’t. Mann’s fuzzy math says it was. I am going with contemporaneous historical writings. Sorry. Dr Jones doesn’t even agree with Mann. In fact, Jones and Briffa make a joke about Mann and his hockey sticks in the emails.
I suggest you go back to that link in New Scientist and read about the kinds of things that went on Mann’s icy Medieval central Europe. Phenomena of warming the likes of which we have yet to see in modern times despite “intense global warming.”
March 15th, 2010 at 8:58 am
BTW, Mann 2009 was peer reviewed prior to Climategate, when it became apparent that Jones and unspecified friends used their positions to remove editors from journals who disagreed with them, and applied pressure to other journals to damage their reputations if they published any articles that took any kind of skeptical position.
March 15th, 2010 at 9:03 am
You can see where Craig Loehle 2007 used only proxies that had been previously established, unlike tree rings, and temperature proxies independently in the literature.
http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/11/craig-loehle-medieval-warm-period-is.html
No matter how much lipstick you try to put on the pig, tacking measured temps onto proxies is illegitimate. So illegitimate that Dr. Phil Jones of the CRU actually denied that any climate scientist would do such a thing.
March 15th, 2010 at 9:16 am
From Mann 2009
So, once again, he is using GCMs to ‘prove stuff’
And feeding the models garbage:
The National Academy of Sciences already discredited the hockey stick technique, but Mann stubbornly sticks to it, as if none of this had ever happened.
Somebody is going to have to independently verify Mann’s hockey stick reconstructs using some other technique before it carries any weight.
Jon,
You just keep serving up the same hockey stick math and models as if they are self proving, which is fine, at one level. But then you make the claim that they have been independently verified. A claim you haven’t supported.
March 15th, 2010 at 9:28 am
Mann Published a correction based on an egregious error he made in Mann 2009, he used one proxy series *upside down*, and looky here, http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/supplements/MultiproxyMeans07/NHcps_no7_v_orig_Nov2009.pdf
He splices the temp data on to make a stick, and without that splice which is a fat line laid on top and red to obliterate as much underneath it as possible, it looks,… can it be??? that it was probably warmer in Medieval times!
Anxiously awaiting your reply,
-moptop
March 15th, 2010 at 11:09 am
As a sane layman, I do not follow every single twist and turn of the hockey stick obsessives. If you want that debate, you’ll have to find it elsewhere.
I think this guy is right that for the sane layman “one way hash arguments” are a waste of time.
(And remember, the hockey stick is not even the primary evidence for AGW.)
Somewhat related, Nullius above was downplaying the importance of reputation. I disagree that reputation isn’t important. When you see someone who is “often in error and never in doubt”, you take note of that, because there is something wrong with the way that person thinks. For instance, moptop has shown himself to make telling mistakes about basic statistics, gush about Scott Brown, rant about big government, link to bloggers who make misleading claims supported by graphs built out of data that doesn’t belong together, etc etc.
So reputation matters. Consequently, I don’t take moptop seriously. And I encourage others to do likewise.
Now Nullius, before I linked to the counter argument for what you were saying about decentered PCA. As a sane layman, do I feel competent to argue for or against decentered PCA? No, I don’t. Frankly, it’s not my bailiwick.
But I do know a couple things:
1. The University of Pennsylvania found nothing wrong with Mann’s use of statistics, and as far as I know, his colleagues have not discredited his work. (There are certain people who are “often in error and never in doubt” who I don’t consider his colleagues.)
2. Mann’s use of that technique in that particular case, is just one case. How many other studies are there that don’t use that method and reach the same results? Also, paleoclimatology is just one study that supports AGW. There are others, and as I said, if you completely discounted Mann’s work, it would not affect the case for AGW in any serious way.
March 15th, 2010 at 11:57 am
“As a sane layman, I do not follow every single twist and turn of the hockey stick obsessives. … “So reputation matters. Consequently, I don’t take moptop seriously. And I encourage others to do likewise.” – Jon
OK, this is what it always boils down to. Jon is an anti intellectual who comes on to this blog spouting off about things of which he knows little. Jon brought up hockey stick argument after hockey stick argument. They have all been knocked down over time. That last one, where he ‘showed’ that the MWP was regional, where Mann turned one of the proxies *upside down* so that it showed cooling instead of warming, which is what you would need to do to get the result Mann wanted before he even sat down to do “science”, was too rich. I don’t obsess over this stuff, it is just that it appears clearly wrong, and I would like to understand it. I chased down link after link of Jon’s in that quest. Seriously.
Reputation does matter. That is why Climategate has been a disaster. The days of climate scientists making unquestioned pronouncements from their ivory tower are over. Deny it all you want.
March 15th, 2010 at 12:00 pm
“The University of Pennsylvania found nothing wrong with Mann’s use of statistics, and as far as I know, his colleagues have not discredited his work.” -Jon
The NAS took issue with Mann’s use of statistics.
The PSU did not investigate his use of statistics, as they clearly state in their findings, if you would bother reading the primary source.
“How many other studies are there that don’t use that method and reach the same results? ” – Jon
You keep saying this, but you haven’t shown one yet. Just more Mann.
March 15th, 2010 at 12:06 pm
” if you completely discounted Mann’s work, it would not affect the case for AGW in any serious way.”
So if current temperatures fall within the range of normal, that does not affect the case? What would affect the case?
I know, you are going to say I would have to show that CO2 does not absorb long wave radiation. It does. It is the *size* of the effect that matters. If the effect is too small to take us out of normal temperature ranges, maybe we ought to think twice before sinking so much treasure into preventing it?
Judgements about the size of the effect of AGW are heavily based on Mann’s work. Models are “validated” against his reconstructions for sensitivity.
Do you know anything other than your faith that this small cabal of scientists and their throng of enablers in the press are always right?
March 15th, 2010 at 12:08 pm
Jon is an anti intellectual who comes on to this blog spouting off about things of which he knows little.
Anyone who reads what I post here knows this is a joke.
March 15th, 2010 at 12:24 pm
And I made no claims that there were no problems at all with Mann’s work. I just said it hadn’t been discredited.
Do you know anything other than your faith that this small cabal of scientists and their throng of enablers in the press are always right?
Yes, those elites. If they say something you don’t like, it’s always a conspiracy.
March 15th, 2010 at 1:16 pm
Jon, what do you think anti intellectual means?
Or are you using the other definition of “anti-intellectual”, you know, the one where anybody who disagrees with you is one? Is that your definition?
March 15th, 2010 at 1:28 pm
You’ve got to love a comment that begins like this:
Jon is an anti intellectual who comes on to this blog spouting off about things of which he knows little.
And ends like this:
The days of climate scientists making unquestioned pronouncements from their ivory tower are over.
March 15th, 2010 at 1:30 pm
Here is what the NAS said about Mann
Since all of the controversy is about the period before 400 years ago, I can’t see how you can find any of this supportive, and Mann’s 2009 purports to use the same methods to go back 1500 years. I would say that those have been discredited, and the others are under a cloud, and the most recent 400 years? Not that much argument.
March 15th, 2010 at 1:32 pm
Jinchi,
You really believe that it is anti intellectual to be skeptical of the claims of intellectuals?
Wow.
March 15th, 2010 at 1:49 pm
Here is what the NAS said about Mann
That isn’t what the NAS said about Mann. It was a 2006 press release describing the state of the science. There was significant data to characterize the last 400 years. The farther you look back in time, the fewer proxies were available. Note that all of this is explicitly stated in Mann’s papers themselves.
In other words, the NAS didn’t refute his work. They state that more data are required.
That’s exactly what Mann 2009 did.
The fact that you can read a press release titled ‘High Confidence’ That Planet Is Warmest in 400 Years and interpret it as a rebuke of Mann’s work is strange.
What’s stranger still is that you’re constantly attacking Mann for truncating his reconstructions at 500 years, even though they go back for more. Mann trucated his reconstructions because he didn’t have the data available to make definite conclusions for longer time spans.
March 15th, 2010 at 1:51 pm
You really believe that it is anti intellectual to be skeptical of the claims of intellectuals?
No.
I believe that anyone who writes about climate scientists making pronouncements from ivory towers is an anti-intellectual.
March 15th, 2010 at 1:53 pm
“Yes, those elites. If they say something you don’t like, it’s always a conspiracy.”
I am just drawing conclusions from the publicly available climategate emails. You guys refuse to read them, so there is no point going in to citations, but by all means, check them out, in my opinion, they show that my use of the words “cabal” and “enablers” is justified.
March 15th, 2010 at 2:14 pm
I am just drawing conclusions from the publicly available climategate emails.
Yes we know.
The problem is, when the CRU emails were hacked and published online, we were told that this was the skeptic’s holy grail. We would finally know where all the bodies were buried. We’d have access to codes and internal deliberations that proved Mann, Jones, Briffa etc. had doctored data, falsified results etc. It should have been trivial for the educated skeptics (the Lubos Motls of the world) to track down the evidence and bring the whole thing crashing down.
Instead, I learn that climatologists hate McItrick, occasionally talk trash with each other and try to keep junk science papers from being published. This is not a convincing counter argument.
What’s happened since then? We’ve seen Phil Jones repeatedly misquoted. Statistical nonsense spouted as evidence against the established science and a full-court press on politically charged outlets like FOX news and the WSJ.
Give us a call when your guys get around to doing something with “the data” that they were constantly demanding.
March 15th, 2010 at 3:11 pm
Here is what the NAS said about Mann…
But the confidence intervals with regard to that data is expressed in the infamous “hockey stick” chart itself. The NAS isn’t saying anything that Mann isn’t saying himself in his study.
March 15th, 2010 at 3:35 pm
“Somewhat related, Nullius above was downplaying the importance of reputation. I disagree that reputation isn’t important.”
I need to clarify that. I am saying that reputation isn’t important on scientific questions, when one seeks to assert scientific backing for an opinion. If you’re not claiming to be supported by science, (or rigorous logic,) then you can use whatever means you wish to select and support your opinions; up to and including correlation implying causation, authority, reputation, or political preconceptions. Non-rigorous heuristics work often enough to justify their use. So long as you clearly state it to be your personal opinion rather than a scientific truth, I have no objection. (I disagree, but I don’t object. Everyone has a right to their opinions.)
Other people of course will have different personal opinions, for equally unscientific reasons, and we can all merrily debate their competing merits, as we do for any other topic. There’s more to life than science.
“Now Nullius, before I linked to the counter argument for what you were saying about decentered PCA. As a sane layman, do I feel competent to argue for or against decentered PCA? No, I don’t. Frankly, it’s not my bailiwick.”
That’s fair enough. If people are not qualified to come to a conclusion, it’s best usually to come to no conclusion, and say so. I wouldn’t mind if people said that their non-scientific opinion was that AGW science is probably right, but couldn’t say for sure. That’s fair comment, and impossible to contradict. What irritates me is when people try to say it’s an unarguable scientific truth and anyone who disagrees is anti-science/insane/stupid/corrupt/criminal/deceived by a conspiracy of deniers/whatever, especially without themselves knowing the science in enough detail to be able to say. Disagree, and argue, by all means – but recognise it as a difference of opinion in which the opposition deserve a modicum of respect. Just like you, most non-believers are non-scientists, and so must use non-scientific methods like reputation and authority in coming to their opinions, albeit with a different assessment of who is reputable and authoritative. A few non-believers are scientists – it is by no means impossible – whether you listen to what they say is up to you.
“1. The University of Pennsylvania found nothing wrong with Mann’s use of statistics, and as far as I know, his colleagues have not discredited his work.”
If you’re talking about the recent inquiry, they didn’t examine Mann’s use of statistics. They defined the scope so as to exclude it. I’m not saying they excluded it deliberately to avoid trouble – it’s quite common for inquiries to have limited scope in that way. It’s often done so that they can present a conclusion quickly – either to save money or to meet a deadline.
As for his colleagues, you can take their word for it if you like. But I’d like to direct your attention to the context of Ed Cook’s remark “It won’t be easy to dismiss out of hand as the math appears to be correct theoretically”. I believe (in a non-scientific sense) that it sums up their attitude to criticisms of the orthodoxy quite nicely.
“2. Mann’s use of that technique in that particular case, is just one case. How many other studies are there that don’t use that method and reach the same results? Also, paleoclimatology is just one study that supports AGW. There are others, and as I said, if you completely discounted Mann’s work, it would not affect the case for AGW in any serious way.”
As I said before, if one was to remove MBH98 and all its works from consideration, and then say this, it would be a fair argument. There is a difficulty in that a lot of those other studies use the same data, similar methods, or have other problems. Perhaps in a show of solidarity, many of the other researchers incorporated the MBH98 result as one of their inputs, perhaps as a way to demonstrate their confidence in their beleaguered colleague. Wegman had a diagram showing the inter-relationships. But it could be done.
But the bigger issue is not what this says about the science, but what it says about the scientific process. Mann published the result, it was put into the IPCC report (by Mann, who was editing that chapter), and it was promoted to one of the most memorable headline diagrams in all the publicity, all without anybody going back and checking Mann’s calculations. If that can get through, what else did? (I would grant you that peer review is not actually intended to apply that level of scrutiny, except that it has been sold to the public as if it does.) And the subsequent reaction of the IPCC community is even more significant. Like I said, if they had quickly withdrawn the graph and done it again more carefully, nobody would be able to criticise. (At least, not with any justification.) But instead they choose to die in a ditch defending it, because while it isn’t essential to the science, it is critical to the non-scientific advocacy. It’s that business of “reputation” again.
I would tend to agree that AGW does not entirely stand or fall on this one issue, although its credibility would be severely weakened if it were to turn out that the Medieval Warm Period, or the Roman Warm Period had been globally warmer. However, Michael Mann had little to do with those bits that try to make the case for attribution, and I was making some small attempt to keep on topic.
And for what it’s worth, I do think that many aspects of the science are correct. There is such a thing as the greenhouse effect, (although it does not work in the way it is commonly described in most material for the layman,) and it does lead (other things held constant) to about a 1C rise in surface temperature for each doubling of CO2 (based on some questionable but not outrageous assumptions). Since CO2 has risen about 40% over the 20th century, we would expect a 0.5C rise, which in combination with ocean, solar, UHI, and other effects would fit with the 0.8C +/- 0.5C observed. On this basis, and assuming a continued exponential rise in emissions one would perhaps expect a similar 0.5C over the next century.
Where I have the greatest difficulty is where they simultaneously posit a large positive feedback which magnifies the effect hugely, and simultaneously posit large masking and time-delay effects which have cancelled it all out to explain why we haven’t seen it. Most of this is (in my view) simply ad hoc speculation and hypothesis, with very little empirical evidence to support it. We don’t even know if the feedback is positive. If it’s negative, we would get less than 0.5C per century, and more of that 0.8C must be natural, which given what little we know of past climate (and this is where Mann’s result comes in) seems eminently possible.
It’s a young and very difficult subject that even scientists struggle with, and the layman should not be expected to be able to adjudicate. The political polarisation is most unfortunate.
March 15th, 2010 at 3:56 pm
“Instead, I learn that climatologists hate McItrick, occasionally talk trash with each other and try to keep junk science papers from being published. This is not a convincing counter argument.”
You meant McIntyre, of course. Is the phrase “It won’t be easy to dismiss out of hand as the math appears to be correct theoretically” what you meant by keeping junk science papers from being published? And what is your view on Tom Wigley’s statements on the Wang/Jones/Keenan affair, in which scientific fraud was alleged and no counter-evidence publicly presented? (1188557698.txt and 1241415427.txt)
March 15th, 2010 at 4:41 pm
Is the phrase “It won’t be easy to dismiss out of hand as the math appears to be correct theoretically” what you meant by keeping junk science papers from being published?
Nullius, this is your quote @41 re MBH98:
That entire comment is little more than an argument that the paper should have been rejected in peer review and that all papers which cite it are inherently deficient. How is that any different from comments by climatologists that papers they consider garbage be rejected?
As to your references (1188557698.txt and 1241415427.txt), I have no more interest in divining your interpretation of fragments of email conversations, than I would in divining your interpretation of Bible verses. Why don’t you tell me in your own words what you think the controversy is and we can take it from there.
March 15th, 2010 at 5:38 pm
“How is that any different from comments by climatologists that papers they consider garbage be rejected?”
The difference is in the reason why they think them garbage. If they discover a paper contains an error, then it should be removed. If a theory is falsified by new evidence, it should be removed. Sceptical or orthodox.
But if they think a paper should be removed because its conclusions would do some damage to their pet theory, even though they believe the maths in it to be correct, then it’s a somewhat different matter wouldn’t you say?
The problem is not that they try to remove papers they consider to be garbage, but that they judge “garbage” principally on whether it agrees with the orthodoxy or not.
As to my references, I’m sufficiently satisfied by your confirmation that you don’t know the contents and context of the Climategate emails, which is why you have come to the conclusion about them you have. ‘Kafka at Albany’ is a long and complex story, and I don’t foresee any point.
March 15th, 2010 at 6:14 pm
If they discover a paper contains an error, then it should be removed.
Scientific papers don’t get “removed” from the literature unless there is evidence of fraud or falsification of data. Certainly not simply because a theory is falsified. Lamark has not been expunged from history. Neither has Kelvin’s statement on the age of the Earth.
[I]f they think a paper should be removed because its conclusions would do some damage to their pet theory, even though they believe the maths in it to be correct.
You haven’t shown me evidence that a paper was rejected without cause. By my reading, the comment you cited is evidence that a climatologist was not going to reject a paper on the basis of the math, even though he disagreed with the paper itself. Looking for other scientific criteria to reject a paper is not out of line and is quite common even for non-controversial subjects. (BTW, What is this paper? Was it published? What was the subject? These seem like relevant questions, don’t you think?)
I’m sufficiently satisfied by your confirmation that you don’t know the contents and context of the Climategate emails, which is why you have come to the conclusion about them you have.
Your standards for accepting the Climategate emails are far less stringent than your standards for accepting peer reviewed research. I’m amazed by the number of skeptics who can quote me chapter and verse on a collection of hacked emails, and assign motives to the players involved, particularly when most of them can’t quote me a single detail of a published study pro or con.
March 15th, 2010 at 6:53 pm
The problem is not that they try to remove papers they consider to be garbage, but that they judge “garbage” principally on whether it agrees with the orthodoxy or not.
If this is true, where are the *heterodox* scientists? I should think we’d have them shouting out. (And not just from sinecures at think tanks, etc.) \
March 15th, 2010 at 7:52 pm
Looking for other scientific criteria to reject a paper is not out of line and is quite common even for non-controversial subjects.
For example. Imagine that the rejected paper was actually Lubos Motl’s recent post “No statistically significant warming since 1995″, since I know we’re both familiar with that one.
Is the argument mathematically correct? In the most simple terms, yes, Lubos’s numbers are correct.
Would I reject the paper if it were sent to me for review? Absolutely.
Why?
1.) He’s pretending to have discovered something that is already well known and widely published in the climate literature. In fact, it’s the reason climatologists don’t make claims about global climate based on short term trends even when those trends would bolster their argument.
2.) He is making claims using those same short term trends. (He claims that the globe isn’t warming fast enough for us to care).
3.) He does that, despite the fact that the result is exactly what we’d expect.
4.) He is conflating the term “not significant at the 95% level” with “insignificant” which are not synonymous, but easily misunderstood by those without statistical training. (e.g. moptop’s original iterpretation was that there was only a 5% chance that the globe had been warming over the last 15 years).
5.) His thesis is refuted by using a single additional data point. In other words, he’s cherry picking his data.
6.) He knows that he’s cherry picking.
March 16th, 2010 at 6:04 am
Jinchi,
The point is that the warming we have experienced is barely statistically significant, meanwhile, we have alarmists out there shouting that there will be 20 meters of sea level rise over the next century, when, say what you will about the regional nature of the GRIP ice core, referenced above, one thing they show undoubtedly is that Greenland’s glaciers have survived thousands of years of temps significantly warmer than today.
The inference to be drawn from this is that CO2 is not *the overpowering force* driving climate.
March 16th, 2010 at 8:50 am
“5.) His thesis is refuted by using a single additional data point. In other words, he’s cherry picking his data.”
You should talk to Dr Mann then. You see, he has a similar issue with tree rings during the MWP. If he chose any trees but the ones he did for the MWP, it comes back, instead of going away.
March 16th, 2010 at 9:25 am
The point is that the warming we have experienced is barely statistically significant
I don’t know how many times we need to tell you this moptop. What isn’t “statistically significant” is the number of years used in the estimate, not the warming that occurred. Even years with record heat, record drought, and famine are not individually going to be statistically significant proof that the climate is changing. The effects are quite significant, however.
March 16th, 2010 at 9:33 am
say what you will about the regional nature of the GRIP ice core, referenced above, one thing they show undoubtedly is that Greenland’s glaciers have survived thousands of years of temps significantly warmer than today.
I’m glad that you’re aware that the GRIP data are regional. But more significantly, the last point in the data series is from 1909. The globe has warmed a full 1C since then and the Northern hemisphere has warmed by about 1.2 C. Add that to your GRIP record and we are now at or hotter than that region was during the MWP.
And of course, we’re predicted to get much hotter.
March 16th, 2010 at 10:38 am
I conceded ad arguendum that the GRIP is regional to make a point that Greenland hasn’t melted and is highly unlikely to do so.
1909 to today, we are still recovering from the Little Ice Age.
“Add that to your GRIP record and we are now at or hotter than that region was during the MWP.”
This is just stupid, I know you are not stupid, you should read the thread again if you believe this.
“What isn’t “statistically significant” is the number of years used in the estimate, not the warming that occurred.”
I don’t think you are right here. I promised to look at this, and I will have some free time this afternoon to do it. I will get back to you on it. Now I am really getting curious about this. If your interpretation is right, mine is wrong. I actually do care about stuff like that.
March 16th, 2010 at 2:45 pm
“Scientific papers don’t get “removed” from the literature unless there is evidence of fraud or falsification of data. Certainly not simply because a theory is falsified.”
Ummm… where on Earth did I say that papers were to be removed from the literature?
I said they should be removed from play. Removed from consideration. No longer included approvingly as one of the “many lines” of evidence by the IPCC.
“You haven’t shown me evidence that a paper was rejected without cause. By my reading, the comment you cited is evidence that a climatologist was not going to reject a paper on the basis of the math, even though he disagreed with the paper itself.”
I have shown you evidence that a climate scientist wanted to reject a paper without cause. And intended to go to great lengths to try to make that happen. I suspect that if he had simply said “we reject this for no reason we care to explain”, even pro-AGW journals would have baulked. So he was casting around for something he could use to stop it.
They would not have gone to such lengths for a supportive paper. They didn’t go to such lengths for MBH98, for example.
If an AGW-sceptical scientist had written to a colleague asking for help to discredit a pro-AGW paper (using a private back channel to get ‘for sceptics only’ unpublished data to replicate the study, because it couldn’t be replicated with publicly available data), because he couldn’t find anything wrong with it and it would do some damage if published, would you be as charitable? Seriously?
Because I wouldn’t.
“Your standards for accepting the Climategate emails are far less stringent than your standards for accepting peer reviewed research.”
The Climategate email is perfectly clear, if you’re not desperately trying to find any excuse to dismiss it. They were trying to find a reason to reject a paper that didn’t appear to have anything wrong with it, because they didn’t like the conclusions.
Just like you’re trying to find a reason to reject a damning email, because you don’t like the conclusions. Aren’t you?
“I’m amazed by the number of skeptics who can quote me chapter and verse on a collection of hacked emails, and assign motives to the players involved, particularly when most of them can’t quote me a single detail of a published study pro or con.”
Well, yes. I’ve been likewise amazed at the number of people who constantly claim there is incontrovertible evidence for catastrophic man made global warming, and yet are unable to say what that evidence is, discuss the contents of those published studies, or even explain how the greenhouse effect really works.
You get a lot of soundbites about glaciers and the melting poles, or Katrina and floods and wildfires, or other local weather events. But none of them seem to even know what the IPCC says the empirical evidence for attribution to CO2 actually is, nor their projections of catastrophe, let alone understand any of the reasons for possible doubt. They can quote Al Gore or the latest pop-science magazine article with facility, but wouldn’t know an adiabatic lapse rate from an inversion.
While lay sceptics often don’t know the science, what they can often spot is bad argument. They can frequently tell if an argument actually supports the conclusions it is claimed to, and they can see the arguments of the climate scientists fall short. That’s not to say that there aren’t some good arguments buried in the technical literature somewhere, but most people never get to see them. They’re never told about them, or what they’re about. They’re told “Shut up. It’s obvious. Trust us, we’re experts.” And even a scientific illiterate can spot the problem with that.
I can certainly understand most people not knowing what the evidence for AGW is. What I can’t figure out is why none of them seem to have noticed that they don’t know what it is. It’s a peculiar effect.
March 18th, 2010 at 8:41 am
Jinchi,
If what you mean to say is that 15 years is not a long enough sample to get a statistically significant trend, you are wrong. Barely or not, the trend was not “statistically significant” in the normal usage sense of the term.
Secondly. Your null hypothesis seems to be that absent CO2, there would be zero trend in the climate. This has never been true, and is unlikely to be true now. There is always some trend in the climate. Most of the time since the Little Ice Age, the trend has been up. Your assertion that the trend was “just barely below” statistical significance assumes away everything we know about climate history in order to obtain a mathematically true, but misleading and without physical basis, talking point.
That is the whole scare technique of AGW alarmists in a nutshell.
March 18th, 2010 at 11:05 am
“What I can’t figure out is why none of them seem to have noticed that they don’t know what it is.” – NIV
That is the mystery of the age, except, I think they know they don’t know. Look at Jon. He argued thread after thread defending Mann until he finally conceded in this thread that he didn’t really follow the issues all that closely and was trusting Mann purely on the basis of “reputation.” He knew that all along, but he also knew it would look bad in an argument.