Discovery can be a bitch - Michael Mann

| No Comments
Michael Mann is the Penn State researcher whose political hit piece 'research' came up with the hockey stick of global temperature over time that documents the incredible global warming we are now experiencing while simultaneously leaving out the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age -- historically documented events. Dr. Mann has filed a libel law suit to defend his professional reputation, and he now threatens to launch another. He has engaged as council the same lawyer who defended Joe Camel in a case filed by the Federal Trade Commission. From Forbes:
ClimateGate Star Michael Mann Courts Legal Disaster
The climate crisis parade�s leading drum major may have led his band down a dangerous legal road. Claiming exoneration by previous scientific conduct investigations, Dr. Michael Mann, of ClimateGate fame, subsequently filed a libel law suit to defend his professional reputation, and he now threatens to launch another. Many believe he got a free pass from perfunctory earlier hearings, and they welcome these new opportunities to have him face the music of serious inquiry.

The first law suit was filed against Canadian climate scientist Timothy Ball who humorously commented in an interview published by the Frontier Center for Public Policy, a Winnipeg think tank, that Penn State researcher Mann should, instead, be in the state pen. Then, when Mann threatened to sue National Review editor Rich Lowry for printing a post by Mark Steyn for calling the beleaguered scientist�s infamous �hockey stick� graph �fraudulent�, Lowry�s response was succinct��Get lost!�

Lowry said that he welcomes such a suit, and is willing to go to the mat and use the discovery process to unearth every last jot and tittle of deception by Mann and his partners in fraud. As reported in Investor�s Business Daily, Lowry went on to say that Mann�s �� going to go to great trouble and expense to embark on a losing cause that will expose more of his methods and maneuverings to the world�In short, he risks making an ass of himself. But that hasn�t stopped him before.�
About the hockey stick -- some more:
The hockey stick graph at the center of this dispute was based heavily upon data taken from trees on the Yamal Peninsula in Siberia. Created by Mann and his colleagues, it supposedly proved that air temperatures had been stable for 900 years until the 20th century, and then suddenly rocketed off the charts (attributing this to human-caused greenhouse gas emissions). That image was featured to support urgency of a cap on carbon dioxide through the Kyoto Protocol which was being pushed at the time by Al Gore and the United Nations. It prominently and repeatedly appeared in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports.

But there were some problems with that graph and the research behind it. Some very big problems. One was that the Medieval Warm Period which occurred between about AD 800 and 1100 along with the Little Ice Age (not a true Ice Age) which occurred between about AD 1350-1850 somehow turned up missing. And as for those Yamal tree samples, they came from only 12 specimens of 252 in the data set� while a larger data set of 34 trees from the same vicinity that weren�t used showed no dramatic recent warming, and warmer temperatures in the Middle Ages.
The article talks about the ClimateGate email leak and then goes on to talk about the ClimateGate II email leak last Fall:
Then, in November 2011, another raft of ClimateGate e-mails was released which revealed that certain researchers believed well-intentioned ideology trumped objective science. Some scientists candidly criticized Mann�s research competency and objectivity. John Mitchell of the U.K. Hadley Center�s Met Office rhetorically asked: �Is the PCA [principal components analysis] approach robust? Are the results statistically significant? It seems in the case of MBH [one of the key hockey stick articles authored by Mann, Raymond S. Bradley, and Malcolm K. Hughes] the answer in each is no.�

Even Raymond Bradley, Mann�s co-author for his hockey stick paper, took issue with another article jointly published by Mann and Jones, stating: �I�m sure you agree�The Mann/Jones GRL [Geophysical Research Letters] paper was truly pathetic and should never have been published. I don�t want to be associated with that 2000 year reconstruction.� Rutgers University scientist G.H. Cook commented: �I am afraid that Mike [Mann] is defending something that increasingly cannot be defended. He is investing too much personal stuff in this and not letting the science move ahead.�
Heh - Dr. Mann is about to discover what discovery really means and it will be wonderful to see -- Mann has not been open to requests for his source data. The research is Federally funded therefore us taxpayers have every right to all the results including raw data. Laying in a few pounds of popcorn for this one...

Leave a comment

October 2022

Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
            1
2 3 4 5 6 7 8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20 21 22
23 24 25 26 27 28 29
30 31          

Environment and Climate
AccuWeather
Cliff Mass Weather Blog
Climate Depot
Ice Age Now
ICECAP
Jennifer Marohasy
Solar Cycle 24
Space Weather
Watts Up With That?


Science and Medicine
Junk Science
Life in the Fast Lane
Luboš Motl
Medgadget
Next Big Future
PhysOrg.com


Geek Stuff
Ars Technica
Boing Boing
Don Lancaster's Guru's Lair
Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories
FAIL Blog
Hack a Day
Kevin Kelly - Cool Tools
Neatorama
Slashdot: News for nerds
The Register
The Daily WTF


Comics
Achewood
The Argyle Sweater
Chip Bok
Broadside Cartoons
Day by Day
Dilbert
Medium Large
Michael Ramirez
Prickly City
Tundra
User Friendly
Vexarr
What The Duck
Wondermark
xkcd


NO WAI! WTF?¿?¿
Awkward Family Photos
Cake Wrecks
Not Always Right
Sober in a Nightclub
You Drive What?


Business and Economics
The Austrian Economists
Carpe Diem
Coyote Blog


Photography and Art
Digital Photography Review
DIYPhotography
James Gurney
Joe McNally's Blog
PetaPixel
photo.net
Shorpy
Strobist
The Online Photographer


Blogrolling
A Western Heart
AMCGLTD.COM
American Digest
The AnarchAngel
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler
Babalu Blog
Belmont Club
Bayou Renaissance Man
Classical Values
Cobb
Cold Fury
David Limbaugh
Defense Technology
Doug Ross @ Journal
Grouchy Old Cripple
Instapundit
iowahawk
Irons in the Fire
James Lileks
Lowering the Bar
Maggie's Farm
Marginal Revolution
Michael J. Totten
Mostly Cajun
Neanderpundit
neo-neocon
Power Line
ProfessorBainbridge.com
Questions and Observations
Rachel Lucas
Roger L. Simon
Samizdata.net
Sense of Events
Sound Politics
The Strata-Sphere
The Smallest Minority
The Volokh Conspiracy
Tim Blair
Velociworld
Weasel Zippers
WILLisms.com
Wizbang


Gone but not Forgotten...
A Coyote at the Dog Show
Bad Eagle
Steven DenBeste
democrats give conservatives indigestion
Allah
BigPictureSmallOffice
Cox and Forkum
The Diplomad
Priorities & Frivolities
Gut Rumbles
Mean Mr. Mustard 2.0
MegaPundit
Masamune
Neptunus Lex
Other Side of Kim
Publicola
Ramblings' Journal
Sgt. Stryker
shining full plate and a good broadsword
A Physicist's Perspective
The Daily Demarche
Wayne's Online Newsletter

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by DaveH published on September 19, 2012 8:16 PM.

Obama and the Military was the previous entry in this blog.

Back when we still had a pair - and owned up to it is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

Monthly Archives

Pages

OpenID accepted here Learn more about OpenID
Powered by Movable Type 5.2.9