Michael Mann — the ghost of climate past
Following is a series of articles updating the Mann Hockey Stick fiasco, with sources provided per each post.
Michael Mann
Source: PJ Media
People who have been following the climate debate closely know that one of the most controversial and key elements of the controversy is the so-called “hockey stick” — a graph of supposed global temperature over the past centuries that ostensibly shows a dramatic increase in average temperature in the last century or so (the upward swoop of the graph at that point is the business end of the stick, with regard to the puck). It vaulted its inventor, Michael Mann of Penn State University, to climate stardom, with associated acclaim and government grants, when he first presented it in the late ’90s. It was the visual basis of much of the hysteria in recent years, from Al Gore’s Oscar-winning crockumentary to bogus reports from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Unfortunately for those promoting the theory (and the potentially economically catastrophic policy recommendations supposedly supported by it), recent events indicate that the last basis of scientific support for the hockey stick may be crumbling. But to understand this, a little background is necessary.
Ultimately, in addition to Mann’s claim for the dramatic recent uptick (which we are supposed to presume was a result of the late industrial revolution and equally dramatic increase in carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as a result of the liberation of carbon from burning long-buried fossil fuels), Keith Briffa of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in England controversially declared, based on Eurasian data, that the well-documented Medieval Warm Period (MWP), from around 950 to 1250 CE — the European Middle Ages — didn’t actually exist.
The theory has continued to take blows over the years since it was first presented. About a decade ago, a paper was published by Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunis claiming that there was good evidence that both the (still extant) MWP and current warming were driven by solar activity rather than carbon emissions. But these initial attacks were beaten back by the climate mafia (as we now know from the leaked emails between Mann and his partners in crime in East Anglia from two and a half years ago). The real damage came when a retired Canadian mining engineer, Steve McIntyre, and a professor at the University of Guelph, Ross McKitrick, started digging into Mann’s methodology, and found flaws in both his statistical analysis and data interpretation, and published a paper describing them in Geophysical Research Letters in 2005. They showed that Mann’s methodology would generate a hockey stick almost independently of the data input, by feeding it spectral noise. Later, Internet satirist (and apparent statistician by day) Iowahawk provided a primer on how to create a hockey stick at home, using a standard spreadsheet program.
Defenders of the theory have long claimed that even if there are problems with Mann’s method or data set, we have independent results from other research, such as that at the CRU, that confirm it. But this was a point of contention. In addition to the unscientific behavior in attempting to silence critics and keep them from publishing, we also know that the climate “scientists” had been withholding data that would help to resolve the controversy (more unscientific behavior, because it makes it difficult or impossible to replicate claimed results, and behavior that continues to the present day by the University of Virginia), even in the face of numerous Freedom of Information requests, on both sides of the Atlantic.
To no avail, McIntyre had been requesting data for years from Briffa, who had claimed to have independent Eurasian tree-ring analysis that confirmed Mann’s results, from a data set called the Polar Urals (Mann’s work was based on ancient California bristlecone pine trees). Unfortunately, paleoclimatologists had discovered that the Polar Urals data didn’t actually support the disappearance of the MWP, so they were in search of another Eurasian data set that would, and they found one called Yamal, gathered and published in 2002 by two Russian scientists.
McIntyre had wanted to see it for years, and in 2008, utilizing a bylaw of the Royal Society, he enlisted their aid in forcing Briffa to finally start to release the data. Unfortunately, he still didn’t get enough, at least initially, to make any sense of it. But he did notice that, first, it had sparse data for the twentieth century and second, that it, unlike the typical treatment of such data sets, was not supplemented by any regional data — Briffa was using it by itself. When McIntyre did such a supplementation himself using other data (reluctantly) provided by Briffa, the twentieth-century hockey-stick blade completely disappeared.
That was where things stood in 2009, just before the so-called Climate-gate email and model leak. After that, the CRU actually started to pull down data that had been previously available for years. It was clear from the emails that Briffa had been telling one story publicly and another privately as to his reasons for not including the devastating data, but the tide finally turned last month, when the University of East Anglia was finally forced by the British Information Commissioner to at least tell McIntyre which data sets were used in its results. Let’s let blogger “Bishop Hill” (aka Andrew Montford, who has written the book on the subject) tell the rest of the story (and read the whole thing for a detailed description of the deception):
The list of 17 sites that was finally sent to McIntyre represented complete vindication. The presence of Yamal and Polar Urals had already been obvious from the Climategate emails, but the list showed that Briffa had also incorporated the Polar Urals update (which, as we saw above, did not have a hockey stick shape, and which Briffa claimed he had not looked at since 1995) and the Khadtya River site, McIntyre’s use of which the RealClimate authors had ridiculed.
Although the chronology itself was not yet available, the list of sites was sufficient for McIntyre to calculate the numbers himself, and the results were breathtaking. Firstly, the URALS regional chronology had vastly more data behind it than the Yamal-only figures presented in Briffa’s paper
But what was worse, the regional chronology did not have a hockey stick shape — the twentieth century uptick that Briffa had got from the handful of trees in the Yamal-only series had completely disappeared.
Direct comparison of the chronology that Briffa chose to publish against the full chronology that he withheld makes the point clear:
It seems clear then that the URALS chronology Briffa prepared to go alongside the others he put together for the 2008 paper gave a message that did not comply with the message that he wanted to convey — one of unprecedented warmth at the end of the twentieth century. In essence the URALS regional chronology was suffering from the divergence problem — the widely noted failure of some tree ring series to pick up the recent warming seen in instrumental temperature records, which led to the infamous ‘hide the decline’ episode.
Remarkably, however, Briffa did allude to the divergence problem in his paper:
These [regional chronologies] show no evidence of a recent breakdown in [the association between tree growth and temperature] as has been found at other high-latitude Northern Hemisphere locations.
The reason for dropping the URALS chronology looks abundantly clear. It would not have supported this message.
His emphasis.
And new results are coming out almost by the day. Earlier this week, McIntyre reportedly received new Yamal data, which continued to confirm that there is no blade to the stick
What does this all mean? First, let’s state what it doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean that we know that the planet isn’t warming, and it doesn’t mean that if it is, that we can be sure that it is not due to human activity.
But at a minimum it should be the final blow to the hockey stick, and perhaps to the very notion that bristlecone pines and larches are accurate thermometers. It should also be a final blow to the credibility of many of the leading lights of climate “science,” but based on history, it probably won’t be, at least among the political class. What it really should be is the beginning of the major housecleaning necessary if the field is to have any scientific credibility, but that may have to await a general reformation of academia itself. It would help, though, if we get a new government next year that cuts off funding to such charlatans, and the institutions that whitewash their unscientific behavior.
I’m referring to another cover up and whitewash that occurred there two years ago, before we learned how rotten and corrupt the culture at the university was. But now that we know how bad it was, perhaps it’s time that we revisit the Michael Mann affair, particularly given how much we’ve also learned about his and others’ hockey-stick deceptions since. Mann could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except that instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science that could have dire economic consequences for the nation and planet.
Not sure I’d have extended that metaphor all the way into the locker-room showers with quite the zeal Mr Simberg does, but he has a point. Michael Mann was the man behind the fraudulent climate-change “hockey-stick” graph, the very ringmaster of the tree-ring circus. And, when the East Anglia emails came out, Penn State felt obliged to “investigate” Professor Mann. Graham Spanier, the Penn State president forced to resign over Sandusky, was the same cove who investigated Mann. And, as with Sandusky and Paterno, the college declined to find one of its star names guilty of any wrongdoing.
If an institution is prepared to cover up systemic statutory rape of minors, what won’t it cover up? Whether or not he’s “the Jerry Sandusky of climate change”, he remains the Michael Mann of climate change, in part because his “investigation” by a deeply corrupt administration was a joke.
**********************
Source: Steyn Online
Bluff means never having to say you’re sorry
Since Dr Michael Mann announced his intention to sue over my Corner post, I’ve had a few queries on this and that aspect of the case:
1) Several readers have asked if there’s a legal defense fund to which they can contribute. No, but, if you want to help out, you could always send a few bucks National Review’s way. Since Dr Mann’s lawyer, John “I don’t bluff” Williams, has assured us he doesn’t bluff, it seems prudent to budget for a full-length trial.You can donate to NR here. Or better yet, subscribe to the magazine, and enjoy a fortnightly frolic with yours truly plus Rob Long, Jay Nordlinger, Jonah Goldberg and the rest of the gang.
2) Other readers have asked questions about the principal subject of my post – the Penn State inquiry into Dr Mann. If you want to read the full report, you can find it here. Alternatively, you can read this assessment of it from that notorious right-wing nest of climate-change denialists at The Atlantic Monthly.* This excerpt from the conclusion is especially choice:
This level of success in proposing research, and obtaining funding to conduct it, clearly places Dr. Mann among the most respected scientists in his field. Such success would not have been possible had he not met or exceeded the highest standards of his profession for proposing research…
Had Dr. Mann’s conduct of his research been outside the range of accepted practices, it would have been impossible for him to receive so many awards and recognitions…
Why, it’s simply “impossible” to suggest that a person of such eminently eminent eminence could ever behave improperly! The very notion is nearly as fantastical as suggesting that, say, the NCAA’s most respected football coach, a man who has received even more awards and recognition than Dr Mann, might ever behave improperly.
3) Finally, some readers have wondered what restrictions Dr Mann’s threat of a law suit imposes on me. Among other things, there’s this, from his Big Oil lawyer’s letter:
We further demand that you take all steps to preserve any and all documents relating to these publications and to Dr. Mann.
Oh, don’t worry. We’re preserving all documentation with the same care and diligence as the Climatic Research Unit:
OH F–K THIS. It’s Sunday evening, I’ve worked all weekend, and just when I thought it was done I’m hitting yet another problem that’s based on the hopeless state of our databases.
Hope they did a better job filing all those awards.
*UPDATE: Laura Rosen Cohen has also been prowling through Penn State’s “exoneration” of Mann: Three Strikes You’re Out?
************************
The response from NRO’s attorney to Dr. Mann’s attorney is here (PDF)
August 22, 2012
By e-mail and first-class mail
John B. Williams, Esq.
Cozen 0′ Connor
1627 I Street, NW, Suite 1100
Washington, D.C. 20006-4007
Re: Demand Letter to The National Review
Dear John:
I write to respond to your July 20, 2012 demand letter to National Review regarding the blog post “Football and Hockey” by Mark Steyn. Our review reveals that the magazine has published statements that are fully protected under the First Amendment. There is no need for National Review to remove or retract the post.
Dr. Mann complains about two statements: 1) that as “the man behind the fraudulent climate-change ‘hockey-stick’ graph,” he is “the very ringmaster of the three-ring circus” on climate change; and 2) that he “could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except that instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science that could have dire economic consequences for the nation and planet.” Neither of these statements is actionable. Moreover, if Dr. Mann decides to pursue this matter, he and his research would be subjected to a very extensive discovery of materials that he has fought so hard to protect in other proceedings. Such materials would be required for National Review to defend itself.
Dr. Mann is unquestionably a public figure who has placed himself squarely in the middle of the heated scientific debate over climate change. The appellate courts have consistently held that scientists who inject themselves into public controversies over “scientific and political debates” are public figures. See, e.g., Reuber v. Food Chemical News, Inc., 925 F.2d 703,706 (4th Cir. 1991) (researcher who “voluntarily injected himself into public controversy” over use of malathion, a potential carcinogen, in Medfly outbreak found to be public figure); see also Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323,345 (1974) (public figures are those who have “thrust themselves to the forefront of particular public controversies in order to influence the resolution of the issues involved” and who “invite attention and comment”). In fact, Dr. Mann describes himself as a “public figure” on his Facebook page. See Michael E. Mann, Facebook, https:/lwww.facebook.com/MichaeIMannScientist?sk=wall.
Moreover, Dr. Mann has frequently spoken to the press and published opinions and letters in prominent newspapers (including The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal) about his research. See, e.g., Opinion, Michael E. Mann, “Get the anti-science bent out of politics,” Wash. Post, Oct. 8, 2010; Letter, Michael E. Mann, “Climate Contrarians Ignore Overwhelming Evidence,” Wall. St. J., Dec. 5, 2011. In fact, he quite literally wrote the book on the climate change controversy. See Michael Mann, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches/rom the Front Lines, Columbia University Press 2012; see also Michael E. Mann and Lee R. Kump, Dire Predictions: Understanding Global Warming, DK Publishing 2008. He thus has adequate “access to channels of effective communication” to rebut any accusations he believes to be false. Reuber, 925 F.2d at 708-09 (scientist who testified before Congress on well-known controversy, gave an interview, and published numerous papers had sufficient access to channels of communication to be public figure) (citing Fitzgerald v. Penthouse Int’l, 691 F.2d 666,668 (4th Cir. 1982)).
Dr. Mann is thus a public figure who would be required to prove by clear and convincing evidence that National Review published a provably false statement with actual malice; that is, “with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.” New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 280 (1964); see also St. Amant v. Thompson, 390 U.S. 727, 731 (1968) (reckless disregard refers to state of mind in which a defendant “in fact entertained serious doubts as to the truth of his publication”). Dr. Mann could never meet such a daunting burden.
In discussing Dr. Mann and his work, National Review weighed in on an impassioned scientific debate over climate change and Dr. Mann’s infamous “hockey stick” graph. The federal courts have given considerable breathing room in cases involving scientific controversies with “serious public impact.” See Reuber, 925 F.2d at 715. For example, in reversing a defamation judgment for the plaintiff in Reuber the Fourth Circuit held:
In the hurly burly of political and scientific debate, some false (or arguably false) allegations fly. The press, however, in covering these debates, cannot be made to warrant that every allegation that it prints is true. If this burden were imposed through the law of defamation, news organizations would become ever more officious referees in the ring of robust debate, and the free exchange of views would be diminished to the public detriment. Prior censorship by the press of every conceivably false charge in the course of an intense public controversy also possesses dangers to the values protected by the First Amendment -dangers which in some particulars parallel those of censorship by the state.
Id. at 717 (citations omitted).
This dispute over the science behind climate change is precisely the type of vigorous scientific debate that the First Amendment protects. As Dr. Mann has acknowledged, his climate research has continued to come under fire even after he was “exonerated” by Penn State and other organizations. See Opinion, Michael E. Mann, “Get the anti-science bent out of politics,” Washington Post, Oct. 8, 2010. Not only did Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli attempt to investigate the University of Virginia, Dr. Mann’s former employer, regarding his research, members of the United States Congress have called for an investigation into the validity of his research. Id.
Politicians, scientists and journalists have also continued to question Dr. Mann’s tactics in defending the “hockey stick” graph, particularly in light of the thousands of leaked e-mails about the controversy that have painted him in a less than flattering light. See, e.g., Andrew Montford, The Hockey Stick Illusion: Climategate and the Corruption o/Science, Stacey International, 2010; James Delingpole, Opinion, “Climategate 2.0,” Wall St. J., Nov. 28, 2011. In referencing the “Climategate” e-mails, Congressman Darrell Issa did not mince words: “[I]t’s very clear that those people played fast and loose with both the truth and our money.” Darren Goode, “Issa calls for ‘relook’ at climate science,” The Hill, Sept. 23, 2010. Mr. Simberg and Mr. Steyn have simply come to the same conclusion that many others have in the past decade – that Dr. Mann’s research may not be scientifically viable.
The statements of which Dr. Mann complains are not actionable. The statement identifying Dr. Mann as “the man behind the fraudulent climate-change ‘hockey-stick’ graph, the very ringmaster of the three-ring circus,” is both substantially true and classic rhetorical hyperbole that is protected under the First Amendment. See Orr v. Argus-Press Co., 586 F.2d 1108, 1112 (6th Cir. 1978) (use of the term “fraud” was “accurate and appropriate” in the context in which it was used); see also Greenbelt Cooperative Pub. Ass ‘n v. Bresler, 398 US. 6, 14 (1970) (statement that plaintiff engaged in “blackmail” was “no more than rhetorical hyperbole, a vigorous epithet used by those who considered [his] negotiating position extremely unreasonable”). Here, “even the most careless reader must have perceived” that Mr. Steyn’s use of the term “fraudulent” did not accuse Dr. Mann of fraud in the criminal sense, but rather was used to call out his conclusions on climate science as intellectually suspect. Id.
Indeed, it is clear from his writings that Dr. Mann is no stranger to rhetorical hyperbole. In his most recent book, he repeatedly accused members of Congress including Issa and James Sensenbrenner of engaging in or threatening “McCarthyist” tactics in the climate change debate. See Michael Mann, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines, Columbia University Press 2012, at 245-48,256 (“Several of the usual suspects, including Darrell Issa and James Sensenbrenner, promised they would once again pursue inquisitions against climate scientists …. I think their hesitance was a result of … the worry they’d stir up a hornet’s nest if they actually pursued McCarthyist tactics against scientists.”)
The First Amendment protects Mr. Steyn’s statements just as it would protect those made by Dr. Mann.
Furthermore, no reasonable individual reading the blog post would have concluded, as a factual matter, that Dr. Mann committed any of the deplorable acts for which Mr. Sandusky was convicted or anything remotely similar. The post made a highly rhetorical comparison between the Penn State cover-up of the Sandusky scandal under former President Graham Spanier and the possibility of a similar whitewashing at the same institution by the same leadership of inconsistencies in Dr. Mann’s research. This comparison is neither “extreme nor outrageous” such that it would form the basis for a viable claim of intentional infliction of emotional distress. See, e.g., Green v. American Broadcasting Cos., 647 F. Supp. 1359, 1362 (D.D.C. 1986) (intentional infliction of emotional distress “consists of ‘extreme and outrageous’ conduct, which ‘intentionally or recklessly’ causes the plaintiff ‘severe emotional distress’ (citations and quotations omitted)). In addition, because Dr. Mann’s claim of intentional infliction of emotional distress would arise from National Review’s exercise of free speech, he could not recover “without showing in addition that the publication contains a false statement of fact which was made with ‘actual malice.’” Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell, 485 U.S. 46, 56 (1988). This he cannot do.
Yours very truly,
Bruce D. Brown
cc: Jack Fowler
Rich Lowry
David B. Rivkin, Jr., Esq.
*************************
Source: Steyn Online
Stick It Where the Global Warming Don’t Shine
When last we heard from Michael Mann, his chest-thumping lawyer was bellowing, “I don’t bluff.” As Jonathan Adler writes today at the Volokh Conspiracy lawyers’ blog:
I think the folks at NR just called it.
Indeed. You can get the general line of NR’s response to Dr Mann from the headline:
Get Lost.
Watts Up With That calls it “the best Michael Mann headline evah“. But read the rest of Rich Lowry’s reply, too – especially the bits related to discovery, or, as Aussie Climate Madness calls it, “Mann’s risky path“. Red State also weighs in, and a sharp post by Powerline’s Steven Hayward concludes:
By the way, hasn’t Mann heard of the track record of people who haul Mark Steyn into court? It isn’t pretty.
Actually, I’ll bet Michael Mann had never heard of me when he blew his gasket, and I’ll wager his high-priced counsel never bothered doing two minutes of Googling. If they had, they’d have known that once they start this thing they’d better be prepared to go the distance.
For my part, although I’ve been dismissive of Mann’s “hockey stick” for over a decade, I’d never paid much attention to him personally. All I’d say is he seems strangely insecure for a person of such eminence. I wonder what he’ll be like on the witness stand. And I’ll be interested to see whether his page links to NR’s lawyer’s letter the way my page linked to his lawyer’s.
Hockey sticks akimbo, baby!
By the way, if you’ve ever thought of donating to National Review, or better yet subscribing, there’s never been a better time.
In a related development, a big pile of documents were very belatedly released yesterday under the Freedom of Information Act. Among them, an email from one of Dr Mann’s fellow scientists complaining about being “hit on the head with a hockey stick“.
(For previous posts, see here. Original lawsuit-provoking defamatory slanderous libel here.)
[UPDATE: More on what Climate Depot calls Bluffgate from The Other McCain]
****************
Source: Powerline
Michael Mann
Climate High-Sticking: The Unmanly Mann
Oh this is going to be fun. Michael Mann—he of the iconic climate change “hockey stick” that purports to prove man-made climate change by displaying how global temperature is at its highest level in 2000 years (somehow making the Medieval warm period disappear)—is threatening to sue National Review and Mark Steyn (and perhaps Peter Wood of the National Association of Scholars) for libel for questioning whether Penn State’s exoneration of Mann over the “Climategate” scandal was as self-serving as their investigation of Jerry Sandusky. Rand Simberg wrote in a blogpost post that “Mann could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except that instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science that could have dire economic consequences for the nation and planet.”
The editor of Simberg’s blog subsequently removed this sentence from the post, but it lives on in a post of Steyn’s, to which Steyn added:
Not sure I’d have extended that metaphor all the way into the locker-room showers with quite the zeal Mr Simberg does, but he has a point. Michael Mann was the man behind the fraudulent climate-change “hockey-stick” graph, the very ringmaster of the tree-ring circus. And, when the East Anglia emails came out, Penn State felt obliged to “investigate” Professor Mann. Graham Spanier, the Penn State president forced to resign over Sandusky, was the same cove who investigated Mann. And, as with Sandusky and Paterno, the college declined to find one of its star names guilty of any wrongdoing.
If an institution is prepared to cover up systemic statutory rape of minors, what won’t it cover up? Whether or not he’s “the Jerry Sandusky of climate change”, he remains the Michael Mann of climate change, in part because his “investigation” by a deeply corrupt administration was a joke.
Now, Mann claims that Steyn’s use of the term “fraudulent” is libelous. I’m not a libel lawyer, but I strongly doubt it. But even without getting into the legal fine points of whether opinion about a public figure can be libelous, I want to note the irony of the situation. Cast your mind back to 2002, when the environmental left (but I repeat. . . oh, never mind—you know the rest) was in a snit about Bjorn Lomborg. An official government body in Denmark with the Orwellian title Committees on Scientific Dishonesty (I’m sure it sounds better in the original German Danish) found that Lomborg was guilty of “scientific dishonesty,” though they never correctly cited a single fact (or alleged error or distortion) in support of this conclusion, which was, incidentally, subsequently overturned after everybody recognized it as a purely political hatchet job. Other scientists used the word “scam” (a synonym for “fraud,” no?) in describing Lomborg’s findings in his book The Skeptical Environmentalist. There was never a hint from Lomborg or anyone that such language was libelous. (Nor did he press charges after being assaulted more than once.) As I wrote about the persecution of Lomborg ten years ago, “The level of vituperation directed at Lomborg belies either a disturbing self-righteousness that brooks no criticism or a lack of confidence that supposedly superior science can win out in a sustained debate.”
As we see now with Mann, people from his scientific circle can dish it out to people like Lomborg, but can’t take it.
National Review’s editor, Rich Lowry, has today posted a public answer to Mann: “Get lost.” Here’s the most relevant paragraph of the piece in my mind:
Usually, you don’t welcome a nuisance lawsuit, because it’s a nuisance. It consumes time. It costs money. But this is a different matter in light of one word: discovery. If Mann sues us, the materials we will need to mount a full defense will be extremely wide-ranging. So if he files a complaint, we will be doing more than fighting a nuisance lawsuit; we will be embarking on a journalistic project of great interest to us and our readers.
This is where the fun will begin. First off, Mann has been stonewalling on legal requests to turn over his own emails and other private documents in suits against his former employer, the University of Virginia. Now he’ll have to cough those up. But second, I’ll enjoy reading depositions of some of his scientific colleagues, many of whom, while agreeing with Mann generally about climate change, nonetheless find Mann to be an insufferable jerk. In my long review of the “Climategate” email cache, I came across repeated complaints about Mann’s ego, along with doubts about his hockey stick. (So much for an iron-clad “consensus.’) Here’s the relevant part of my long Weekly Standard article about Climategate in 2009 that deals with Mann:
CRU scientist Keith Briffa, whose work on tree rings in Siberia has been subject to its own controversies, emailed Edward Cook of Columbia University: “I am sick to death of Mann stating his reconstruction represents the tropical area just because it contains a few (poorly temperature representative) tropical series,” adding that he was tired of “the increasing trend of self-opinionated verbiage [Mann] has produced over the last few years .??.??. and (better say no more).”
Cook replied: “I agree with you. We both know the probable flaws in Mike’s recon[struction], particularly as it relates to the tropical stuff. Your response is also why I chose not to read the published version of his letter. It would be too aggravating. .??.??. It is puzzling to me that a guy as bright as Mike would be so unwilling to evaluate his own work a bit more objectively.”
In yet another revealing email, Cook told Briffa: “Of course [Bradley] and other members of the MBH [Mann, Bradley, Hughes] camp have a fundamental dislike for the very concept of the MWP, so I tend to view their evaluations as starting out from a somewhat biased perspective, i.e. the cup is not only ‘half-empty’; it is demonstrably ‘broken’. I come more from the ‘cup half-full’ camp when it comes to the MWP, maybe yes, maybe no, but it is too early to say what it is.”
Even as the IPCC was picking up Mann’s hockey stick with enthusiasm, Briffa sent Mann a note of caution about “the possibility of expressing an impression of more consensus than might actually exist. I suppose the earlier talk implying that we should not ‘muddy the waters’ by including contradictory evidence worried me. IPCC is supposed to represent consensus but also areas of uncertainty in the evidence.” Briffa had previously dissented from the hockey stick reconstruction in a 1999 email to Mann and Phil Jones: “I believe that the recent warmth was probably matched about 1000 years ago.” Even Malcolm Hughes, one of the original hockey stick coauthors, privately expressed reservations about overreliance on their invention, writing to Cook, Mann and others in 2002:
“All of our attempts, so far, to estimate hemisphere-scale temperatures for the period around 1000 years ago are based on far fewer data than any of us would like. None of the datasets used so far has anything like the geographical distribution that experience with recent centuries indicates we need, and no one has yet found a convincing way of validating the lower-frequency components of them against independent data. As Ed [Cook] wrote, in the tree-ring records that form the backbone of most of the published estimates, the problem of poor replication near the beginnings of records is particularly acute, and ubiquitous. .??.??. Therefore, I accept that everything we are doing is preliminary, and should be treated with considerable caution.”
Mann didn’t react well to these hesitations from his colleagues. Even Ray Bradley, a coauthor of the hockey stick article, felt compelled to send a message to Briffa after one of Mann’s self-serving emails with the single line: “Excuse me while I puke.” One extended thread grew increasingly acrimonious as Mann lashed out at his colleagues. He wrote to Briffa, Jones, and seven others in a fury over their favorable remarks about a Science magazine article that offered a temperature history that differed from the hockey stick: “Sadly, your piece on the Esper et al paper is more flawed than even the paper itself. .??.??. There is a lot of damage control that needs to be done and, in my opinion, you’ve done a disservice to the honest discussions we had all had in the past, because you’ve misrepresented the evidence.”
To Briffa in particular Mann wrote: “Hopefully, you know that I respect you quite a bit as a scientist! But in this case, I think you were sloppy. And the sloppiness had a real cost.” Mann’s bad manners prompted Bradley to reply: “I wish to disassociate myself with Mike’s comments, or at least the tone of them. I do not consider myself the final arbiter of what Science should publish, nor do I consider what you did to signify the end of civilization as we know it.” Tempers got so out of hand that Tom Crowley of Duke University intervened: “I am concerned about the stressed tone of some of the words being circulated lately. .??.??. I think you are all fine fellows and very good scientists and that it is time to smoke the peace pipe on all this and put a temporary moratorium on more email messages until tempers cool down a bit.” Mann responded with his best imitation of Don Corleone: “This is ultimately about the science, it’s not personal.” If the CRU circle treat each other this way, it is no wonder they treat skeptics even more rudely.
As I say, deposing this entire happy band of climateers will be great fun.
Mann has a history of running to the courtroom. He sued Canada’s Tim Ball for saying that Mann belongs in the state pen rather than Penn State. Methinks maybe Ball got it wrong. Mann may be headed for a padded cell somewhere. By the way, hasn’t Mann heard of the track record of people who haul Mark Steyn into court? It isn’t pretty.
*************
Source: SPPI
Misc. past SPPI papers related to the climategate scandal
Understanding the Climategate Inquiries
Comments on the 8th Report of Session ’09-’10 of UK’s House of Commons Select Cmt. on Sci. & Tech.
How To Manufacture A Climate Consensus
Climategate: This Time Al Gore Lied
Understanding Climate-Gate’s Hidden Decline
Climate Change: This is the Worst Scientific Scandal of Our Generation
A Simple Proof that Global Warming is not Man-made
Climategate: Is Peer-Review in Need of Change?
Climategate: Caught Green-Handed!
Tags: climategate, climategate whitewash, Hockeystick graph, Keith Briffa, Mark Steyn, Michael Mann, Steve McIntyre