AN ASSAULT ON SCIENCE

Wild, I tellya! Far out, Man! Righteous! Peace and Love, Brother. Keep on truckin.

It's guys like him who give science a bad name.

Steyn divides his work into 12 chapters which contain, in total, 120 testimony segments. Almost all focus on damning observations about Mann’s methods, conclusions, and harassment of dissenting scientists—many of whom are still in the anthropogenic global warming camp.

Probably 5% of Steyn’s extended “brief” against Mann, et al. consists of extended resumes of Mann’s critics—a procedure designed to show that scholars like MIT’s Richard Lindzen, NASA’s Roy Spencer, and renowned physicist Freeman Dyson are, indeed, expert witnesses and not the scientific JV team.

Steyn’s book documents the problems with the hockey stick, its use by the IPCC without proper peer review or validation, and the attempt to cover up its problems. It does this artfully using the words of the scientists, both “alarmists” and “deniers” and those in between. The list of quoted scientists is huge and includes Mann’s co-authors and others who supported him even after the paper and his hockey stick were shown to be wrong and perhaps, fraudulent.

They showed that using the statistical technique invented by Michael Mann even random number series (persistent trendless red noise, see M&M Figure 1) will generate a hockey stick. Basically, Mann had mined many series of numbers looking for hockey stick shapes and gave each series that had the shape he wanted a much higher weight, up to a weighting factor of 392! This was truly a case of selecting a desired conclusion and then molding the data to fit it.

Many prominent scientists in the IPCC knew the hockey stick was “crap” to quote Professor Simon Tett, Chair of Earth System Dynamics, University of Edinburgh, formerly with Met Offices Hadley Climate Research Unit or CRU. And they knew it as early as 2001, but no one said anything. And, as we know from “climategate” emails, even though they knew it was “crap” they colluded to block Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick’s paper challenging the hockey stick.

More than two dozen reconstructions, using various statistical methods and combinations of proxy records, have supported the broad consensus shown in the original 1998 hockey-stick graph, with variations in how flat the pre-20th century "shaft" appears.[12][13] The 2007 IPCC Fourth Assessment Report cited 14 reconstructions, 10 of which covered 1,000 years or longer, to support its strengthened conclusion that it was likely that Northern Hemisphere temperatures during the 20th century were the highest in at least the past 1,300 years.[14] Over a dozen subsequent reconstructions, including Mann et al. 2008 and PAGES 2k Consortium 2013, have supported these general conclusions.

Since then many other studies have been done that confirm Mann's numbers

At this point, it is fair to ask what Dr. Mann and his colleagues have to say about all of this. The book does go there in some detail. Dr. Mann claims that his hockey stick has been replicated by others and this is true. But, they not only used the same data or similar data, but they used the same statistical techniques that have been shown to be critically flawed.

One case in point is fairly typical of the others. Karoly and Gergis, in 2012, published their own hockey stick to rave reviews in the public media, especially in Australia. It claimed 95% certainty that the recent decades in Australasia were the warmest in 1000 years. They used similar proxies as Dr. Mann and used the same statistical techniques. Steven McIntyre went to work and blew it up in less than three weeks. He sent his statistical analysis to the authors. Dr. Karoly and Dr. Gergis, to their credit, recognized their error and withdrew their paper, even after the mainstream media praise. As Joanne Nova wrote, “In May it was all over the papers, in June it was shown to be badly flawed. By October, it quietly gets withdrawn.”

So anywhere from 12 to 24 papers have confirmed Mann's hockey stick

Quote:

Regarding the Hockey Stick of IPCC 2001 evidence now indicates, in my view, that an IPCC Lead Author working with a small cohort of scientists, misrepresented the temperature record of the past 1000 years by (a) promoting his own result as the best estimate, (b) neglecting studies that contradicted his, and (c) amputating another’s result so as to eliminate conflicting data and limit any serious attempt to expose the real uncertainties of these data. – John Christy

John Christy has a unique perspective on how the hockey stick became the icon of the TAR – he served as a Lead Author (along with Michael Mann) on Chapter 2 Observed Climate Variability and Change. Relevant excerpts from Christy’s testimony:

Quote:

My experience as Lead Author in the IPCC TAR, Chapter 2 “Observed Climate Variability and Change”, allowed me to observe how a key section of this chapter, which produced the famous Hockey Stick icon, was developed. My own topic was upper air temperature changes that eventually drew little attention...

First, note these key points about the IPCC process: the L.A. [Lead Author] is allowed (a) to have essentially complete control over the text, (b) sit in judgment of his/her own work as well as that of his/her critics and (c) to have the option of arbitrarily dismissing reviewer comments since he/she is granted the position of “authority” (unlike peer-review.)... In essence, the L.A.s have virtually total control over the material and, as demonstrated below, behave in ways that can prevent full disclosure of the information that contradicts their own pet findings and which has serious implications for policy in the sections they author. While the L.A.s must solicit input for several contributors and respond to reviewer comments, they truly have the final say.

I will not debate the quality of the Hockey Stick – that has been effectively done elsewhere (and indeed there is voluminous discussion on this issue), so, whatever one might think of the Hockey Stick, one can readily understand that its promotion by the IPCC was problematic given the process outlined above. Indeed, with the evidence contained in the Climategate emails, we have a fairly clear picture of how this part of the IPCC TAR went awry. For a more detailed account of this incident with documentation, see http://climateaudit.org/2009/12/10/ipcc-and-the-trick/.

...at this point, data which contradicted the Hockey Stick, whose creator was the L.A., had been eliminated. No one seemed to be alarmed (or in my case aware) that this had been done...

So, to summarize, an L.A. was given final say over a section which included as its (and the IPCC’s) featured product, his very own chart, and which allowed him to leave out not only entire studies that presented contrary evidence, but even to use another strategically edited data set that had originally displayed contrary evidence. This led to problems that have only recently been exposed. This process, in my opinion, illustrates that the IPCC did not provide policymakers with an unbiased evaluation of the science.

Christy’s assessment, when combined with the UEA emails, provides substantial insight into how this hockey stick travesty occurred. My main unanswered question is: How did Michael Mann become a Lead Author on the TAR? He received his Ph.D. in 1998, and presumably he was nominated or selected before the ink was dry on his Ph.D.

February 2010

Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of Information requests....Professor Jones told the BBC yesterday... that his record keeping is ‘not as good as it should be’. The data is crucial to the famous ‘hockey stick graph’ used by climate change advocates to support the theory.

And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.

Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now

Professor Jones has been in the spotlight since he stepped down as director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit after the leaking of emails that sceptics claim show scientists were manipulating data.

The raw data, collected from hundreds of weather stations around the world and analysed by his unit, has been used for years to bolster efforts by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to press governments to cut carbon dioxide emissions.

Because Mann had refused to provide other researchers with the computer code necessary to verify his work, because the credibility of the science surrounding the hockey stick had become a cause célèbre, and because federal government funds had financed the hockey stick study, the Energy and Commerce committee had decided in 2005 to hold hearings into the matter. The committee commissioned a study by Edward Wegman, arguably America’s top statistician (Wegman was the National Academy of Sciences’s own Chair of its Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics), and arranged for him to testify in July, 2006.

The hockey-stick graph, used prominently in the IPCC 2001 report as evidence of unprecedented global warming, became in 2005-2006 the subject of investigations by two high-level scientific panels commissioned by the US National Academy of Sciences and the U.S. House of Representatives.

The latter, chaired by Edward Wegman, unequivocally determined the hockey stick to be based on shoddy science, and thus failed to provide any evidence to uphold beliefs that recent global warming is "unprecedented". When testifying before Congress under oath, North and his statistician agreed with the findings of the Wegman panel.

But meanwhile, the NAS decided to produce a competing study into the Mann controversy, with North as its chair. The North report for the NAS was published in June 2006...The worldwide press understandably reported that Mann had been vindicated.

But when North and other panel members, less than one month later, were required to testify under oath, they reveal something seriously different:

Quote:

CHAIRMAN BARTON. Dr. North, do you dispute the conclusions or the methodology of Dr. Wegman's report?

DR. NORTH. No, we don't. We don't disagree with their criticism. In fact, pretty much the same thing is said in our report.

CHAIRMAN BARTON. Yes, and not be substantiated by what you purport to be the facts but have we established–we know that Dr. Wegman has said that Dr. Mann's methodology is incorrect. Do you agree with that?...that Dr. Mann's methodology cannot be documented and cannot be verified by independent review.

DR. NORTH. Do you mind if he [his expert statistician, Bloomfield] speaks?

CHAIRMAN BARTON. Yes, if he would like to come to the microphone.

MR. BLOOMFIELD. Thank you. Yes, Peter Bloomfield. Our committee reviewed the methodology used by Dr. Mann and his coworkers and we felt that some of the choices they made were inappropriate. We had much the same misgivings about his work that was documented at much greater length by Dr. Wegman.

What was going on? North’s NAS panel confirmed, without stating so clearly, that Mann’s science was shoddy, and that Mann’s conclusions, on their own, could not be trusted....North’s panel believed that man-made global warming exists and they had lots of evidence, by other scientists, to support their belief. Therefore, the NAS panel concluded, Mann was right in his ultimate conclusion that man causes global warming, even if Mann’s study provided no basis for that conclusion.

Even the National Academy of Sciences could not support Mann's use of statistics. But they praised Mann's efforts and clearly still believed in unprecedented global warming, although the Hockey Stick's evidence for this had been declared invalid. The press can be forgiven for believing that the NAS panel chaired by North had vindicated the evidence that depended on the science behind the hockey stick graph, when it had actually not done so.

Saying that the modern spike is unique is tantamount to endorsing the idea of anthropogenic warming.

You don't really care about facts, do you? You like posting things that are the same as "some guy in the internet says the earth is flat."

Here is a fairly comprehensive article that includes links to at least 3 studies since Mann that have confirmed his analysis. Not only that, the CRU temperature readings since Mann's 2001 paper show the hockey stick in the actual observations.
https://www.skepticalscience.com/broken-hockey-stick.htm

An independent assessment of Mann's hockey stick was conducted by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (Wahl 2007)...Their results found slightly different temperatures in the early 15th Century. However, they confirmed the principal results of the original hockey stick - that the warming trend and temperatures over the last few decades are unprecedented over at least the last 600 years.

Of course, these examples only go back around 500 years - this doesn't even cover the Medieval Warm Period.

"There have been dozens of other climate reconstructions, all very similar to ours," said Mann. "They are based on different data and different approaches,

After that, they present a graph with about a dozen different lines on it. If you pay any attention, one of those lines is for "Mann, et al, 1998). That very graph REFUTES Mann's claim (in 1998), that temperature were then higher than at any time in the last 1000 (or did he say 2000) years. But you present it as "confirmation" of Mann. Figures, sho nuff.

Are you SERIOUSLY still claiming that the graph and methods of Mann are accepted by science today?

Who should we believe? Some guy on the internet that posts an article about another guy that says the earth is flat or the actual scientific papers that have been published under peer review? I'll stick with peer review

Are you SERIOUSLY still claiming that the graph and methods of Mann are accepted by science today?

Are you SERIOUSLY still claiming that the graph and methods of Mann are accepted by science today?

Mann used such statistical "techniques" as giving 400 times as much weight to evidence which supported his desired conclusions as that which didn't.