Climate of cat-ostro(v)e

[Please note Update below -hro]

And now for something completely – but differently – alarming. At least to me.

As some of you may know, my feline companion, Amber, has a mind of her own (I know, I know … what cat doesn’t?!) and is very vocal.

So I became somewhat alarmed yesterday when she became very, very quiet. I was even more alarmed, today, when I realized that she had not eaten for two days – and had been very quiet throughout, while leaving no evidence of any typically expected litter-box behaviours.

Invoking the Precautionary Principle, I decided to call the vet – who summoned us to his office. One and a half hours (and $250) later, we don’t know what the problem is.

But when we returned home … after an infusion of H₂O as well as other tests, extractions and injections, Amber appeared to be (and sounded!) more like her “normal” self:

Not a happy cat … but far more responsive than any Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) cats

But speaking of non-responsive CAGW cats, be sure to take a look at IPCC Lead Author and BC Green Party candidate and Deputy Leader, Andrew Weaver‘s recent whines ‘n whoop ‘em ups via Canadian PR hack Jim Hoggan’s high falutin’ newly constituted all Canadian SmearBlog. And with an endorsement from Dirty Old Man, David Suzuki, how could Hoggan be wrong, eh?!

Bottom line for me: I’m far more concerned about what the vet will tell me about the results of Amber’s blood tests than I am about any CAGW alarmist hype.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be. But I am.

UPDATE: 02/8/2013 12:37 AM PST My thanks to all who have enquired about Amber’s progress. As I noted in an update to a comment below, there are significant indications that she is finally on the road to recovery.

Science consensus: mass ­official craziness in policymaking

Yesterday’s edition of the Financial Post has two items of note. There’s a new book by retired historian, Harvey Levenstein: in Fear of Food: A History of Why We Worry About What We Eat.

First an excerpt from Adam McDowell’s April 20th review (all emphases below are mine -hro):

Levenstein demonstrates in Fear of Food: A History of Why We Worry About What We Eat, it is much easier to make North Americans afraid of food than comfortable with eating it. We are frightened of cheeseburgers, and only after a large helping of time and soothing information could we ever eat them again without guilt. And by then, we’d be afraid of something else.

Fear of Food lays out a century of American nutritional beliefs as a succession of contradictory orthodoxies, always hysterical and typically fleeting. One wrong idea gives way to the next, both supported by surprisingly meagre evidence.

[...]

At the same time, certain influential scientists have been quick to jump to conclusions about what food does to us once we’ve eaten it. They’re equally slow to admit there is plenty we don’t know about nutrition. A century ago, no one had ever heard of a vitamin. Scientists scolded the poor for wasting their money on fresh fruits and vegetables, which Levenstein notes “were said to be composed of little more than water” (which is true, as far as it goes).

Ignorance — about where the items on our plate come from, and about what food is best for us — leads to bad advice. It also nourishes fear.

One damn fear after another! The parallels to “climate science” are amazing.

Terence Corcoran offered some commentary, yesterday. “How to create ­science consensus” is definitely a must read! Some excerpts:

New book recounts mass ­official craziness in policymaking

Right in the opening chapter of Harvey Levenstein’s entertaining and eye-opening book, Fear of Food: A History of Why We Worry About What We Eat, the absurdities of official health policy based on grossly misguided claims of cause and effect are horrifyingly on display. In 1912, tests of cats’ whiskers and fur in Chicago revealed the presence of large numbers of bacteria. In response, the Chicago Board of Health declared cats to be “extremely dangerous to humanity.” In Topeka, Kan., the health board ordered all cats be “sheared or killed.” After a child polio outbreak in New York City in 1916, cats were blamed and, over a three-week period in July that year, more than 80,000 pets were sent to the SPCA to be gassed. About 10% were dogs.

Not much has changed in the last 100 years. In 2012, the science of cats, dogs and flies is a lot better. But the political and regulatory practices in place today around food and science seem all too similar to the obviously flawed and ignorant patterns of official behaviour Mr. Levenstein documents. New York’s recent ban on large soda pop bottles follows the pattern perfectly. A Walt Disney decision last week to launch its own anti-junk food campaign, endorsed by First Lady Michelle Obama, is today’s version of similar events that have marked the history of food fears going back 100 years. Mass official craziness seems to be built into North American political systems when it comes to dealing with food and health.

[...]

Fear of Food is not a science book. Mr. Levenstein is professor emeritus of history at McMaster University in Hamilton. Two of his earlier books — Revolution at the Table and Paradox of Plenty — relate the history of American food tastes and habits back to the 1880s. I have not read those books, but I can report that Fear of Food is a fine piece of work that for the most part lets the absurdity and collective loopiness of scientists, government regulators, politicians and corporate players reveal itself through detail and the flow of events over time. Mr. Levenstein obviously has his opinions — including an aside on one of the latest food concerns. “As I write,” he says in his introduction, “there is a burgeoning concern over salt in the diet. As with all such scares, experts are trying to frighten an entire nation.”

[...]

With a wagonload of official support from regulators, government officials, major media, NGOs, philanthropic agencies, institutes, corporate interests, surgeons-general and politicians, the war on fat began with theories that proved wrong but survive to this day.

All readers can learn much from Mr. Levenstein’s lively and often stunning reconstruction of the history of American food fears and beliefs. So could today’s policymakers, regulators, politicians, journalists and corporate executives. The great value in Fear of Food, however, is likely the realization that poor science never seriously undermined official dogma. After all, they had a consensus! How could all these smart and powerful people — including Nobel Prize winners — be wrong?

And here are a few excerpts from the book excerpt:

Lipophobia and the bad science diet

How a now-discredited diet theory became a national mania

The most striking thing about North America’s fear of food is how markedly ideas about food’s healthfulness have changed over the years. Chemical preservatives went from being triumphs of modern science to poisons. Whole milk has swung back and forth like a pendulum. Yogurt experienced boom, bust and revival. Margarine went from “heart-healthy” to artery-clogging. And now we are told that salt, historically regarded as absolutely essential to human existence, is swinging the grim reaper’s scythe.

And then there’s the story of fat. One wonders what would have happened if the fats in our food and blood streams had been called by their scientific name, lipids. Would avoiding the off-putting term “fat,” with its connotation of obesity, have mitigated much of the fear of fats in food? Perhaps, but probably not. In retrospect, the wave of lipophobia — fear of dietary fat — that has swept over middle-class Americans since the 1950s was simply too powerful to overcome.

As with many other fears, fear of dietary fat originated in alarm over a supposed epidemic — in this case, of coronary heart disease. The best known advocate of this theory was Ancel Keys, a physiologist at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

Levenstein chronicles various twists, turns and about-faces and also notes:

Equally important in the triumph of lipophobia was a new force in creating food scares: non-profit health advocacy groups. Often begun by well-meaning people seeking to raise money to cure diseases, they could easily mutate into slick machines staffed by professional fundraisers whose hefty salaries depended on alarming the public about the dangers posed by their particular illness.

This is exactly what happened to the American Heart Association (AHA). Originally formed in the 1920s by heart specialists to exchange ideas about their field, by 1945 it was raising a modest US$100,000 a year to subsidize conferences and fund some research. Meanwhile, the March of Dimes, founded in 1938 to combat polio, was collecting US$20-million annually. This could not have been far from the minds of the new leaders who took over the AHA and set out to arouse public concern about the “coronary plague.” They hired Rome Betts, a former fundraiser for the American Bible Society, to create a professional fundraising apparatus.

[...]

The lipophobes, however, proved to be remarkably adept at bobbing, weaving and altering their message in the face of the challenges. The American Heart Association continued to find new ways to prosper from lipophobia. In 1988 it deleted the provision in its charter prohibiting product endorsements and began offering, for a fee, to endorse any food products that met its guidelines for fat, cholesterol and sodium. In final form, the AHA campaign sold the right to use a “Heart Check” symbol and say “Meets American Heart Association food criteria for saturated fat, cholesterol and whole grains for healthy people over age two.” For this, it charged fees ranging from the US$2,500 it cost Kellogg’s for each of the more than 50 of its products that qualified (including such nutritional dazzlers as Fruity Marshmallow Krispies) to the $200,000 that Florida citrus fruit producers paid for exclusive rights to the symbol, cutting out their competitors in California. The Florida producers now ran ads saying, “Fight Heart Disease. Drink Florida Grapefruit Juice.” In 1992–93 ConAgra, the hydra-headed giant involved in practically every stage of food production, gave $3.5-million to the AHA, ostensibly to make a television program on nutrition.

“Heart Check” … “environmentally friendly” … “carbon credits” … Seems that someone’s always profiting from “mass official craziness in policymaking”, eh?!

Climate science … sows’ ears and silk purses

Laura Kelly at the Silk Road Gourmet recently observed:

The phrase, “You can’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear,” was coined by Johnathan Swift’s punster Mr. Neverout in A Complete Collection of Polite and Ingenious Conversation In Several Dialogues published in 1738. When quill touched cotton, the phrase was used to refer to the strange character of Sir John. Mr. Neverout uses it to proclaim that Sir John, being of low birth, is not a proper Duke and deftly goes on to disparage his character. Although this turn of the phrase is still in play, it has over the years also been used to discourage ingenuity and inventiveness or to encourage people to accept things as they are – in other words, to not rock the boat.

[other commentary and a delicious sounding recipe]

It seems that in 1921, Massachusetts industrialist Arthur D. Little was tired of hearing Mr. Neverout’s discouraging phrase, and set out to prove him wrong. He instructed the scientists and engineers working for him to make a silk purse out of “pork by-products”. From a meat-packer they obtained a form of glue made from the skin and gristle of sows’ ears. Taking an amount roughly equivalent to one sow’s ear, he had it filtered and forced through a spinneret into a mixture of formaldehyde and acetone. This glue emerged as 16 fine, colorless streams that hardened and then combined to form a single composite fiber. Little soaked the fiber in dyed glycerin. Then he wove the resulting thread into cloth on a handloom-and fashioned the cloth into the elegant purse shown here, the kind of item carried by Medieval ladies.

[emphases added -hro]

YMMV, but I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to consider that there is something about “climate science” (and/or climate scientists) and “irrelevant” – if Myles Allen is to be believed – Hockey stick icons that is analogous to the parts of the above that I’ve highlighted.

Sows Ear to Silk Purse (SETSP):

Mr. Neverout uses it to proclaim that Sir John, being of low birth, is not a proper Duke and deftly goes on to disparage his character

Climate Scientists (CS):

Michael Mann (and other hockey-stick apologists) uses it to proclaim that (for example) Steve McIntyre, being an “amateur”, is not a proper Climate Scientist and deftly goes on to disparage his character – and that of any who might disagree with The Great Mann.

SETSP (Kelly interpretation):

it has over the years also been used to discourage ingenuity and inventiveness

CS:

It has over the years also been used to discourage application of the scientific method (i.e. reproduce the claimed results). The (foggy) science is settled because … well, because we climate scientists are the experts and we said so

SETSP:

encourage people to accept things as they are – in other words, to not rock the boat.

CS:

Thou shall not question the Mighty Mann’s Magnificent Models – or his mind-boggling misrepresentations and manipulations of the English language

SETSP:

[Little] instructed the scientists and engineers … to make a silk purse out of “pork by-products”….they obtained a form of glue made from the skin and gristle of sows’ ears. Taking an amount roughly equivalent to one sow’s ear, he had it filtered and forced through a spinneret into a mixture … [which] emerged as 16 fine, colorless streams that hardened and then combined to form a single composite fiber … Then he wove the resulting thread into cloth on a handloom-and fashioned the cloth into the elegant purse.

CS:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) instructed the climate scientists to make a new improved “hockey stick” … so Gergis et al obtained some new (old) proxies from top-secret colleagues. Taking selected tree-ring proxies roughly equivalent to … well, something or other, they filtered and forced them through a spinneret into a mixture which emerged as “research“. Then they wove the resulting “threads” into a cloth which was carefully examined by unnamed peer reviewers at a prestigious journal. Whereupon it was declared – with great fanfare around the world – that this was an elegant hockey stick, suitable for framing in the next IPCC report.

Alas, much to Gergis et al‘s (silent but presumed) dismay, McIntyre – the Great Mann’s nemesis – and his fellow statistical experts began examining the “threads” of this “silk purse”. And they found that the glue was not quite, well, kosher.

When Gergis and her co-authors (who happened to include well-seasoned IPCC “Review Editor”, David Karoly) could not find a quick-fix which would countermand – and enable them to dismiss – the discoveries made by McIntyre et al, after quietly removing as much evidence of their faux pas as they could, they had to eat some humble pie, and acknowledge that their sows ears mixture was not quite ready for a prime time silk purse.

In short … it would appear that these noble climate scientists, in the interest of furthering their “cause”, have attempted to foist on the world yet another Hockey Stick Illusion.

Climatic licence

The matter of “global warming” aka “climate change” first crossed my radar a little under two and a half years ago. When I began my exercise in due diligence – apart from the then standard appeal to the authority of “thousands of scientists” who cannot possibly be wrong – the very first element of doubt that crept into my mind was learning that much, if not most, of what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) “climate scientists” have been telling us is derived from what they believe the output from computer simulations is telling us.

Another early eye-opening experience related to the much-vaunted “peer review” of the scientific literature (well, not all of it, of course) on which the IPCC bases its assessments – and the so-called “consensus“. My mind positively boggled when I learned that the process of peer review does not include any verification of the underlying data or methodology. Not to mention that some “climate scientists” depend on … wait for it … intuition when conducting peer review. But I digress …

Don’t get me wrong, I’m no Luddite and I love computers! I certainly couldn’t imagine my life today without one – or even without the three in my possession that are currently functioning … not to mention my very recently acquired (much to the shock of some of my friends!) iPad which has a fabulous app for practicing and improving my Bridge-playing skills:-)

I mean, imagine trying to create a visual representation such as:

The jolly green sustainable hockey stick ... Eat your heart out, Michael Mann!

as I did to supplement my recent post on the phenomenal growth of non-governmental organizations (NGOs aka “civil society” in UN-speak) accredited with “consultative status” by the United Nations.

I could not have created that graph without the aid of a computer! Nor could Michael Mann have created his work of art. As Dr. Judith Curry noted in a post today:

When people say that the hockey stick and paleoclimate analysis of the last 1000 years isn’t an important part of the climate change argument, well it should be. We have been seduced by the relatively flat blade of the hockey stick into thinking that natural internal variability isn’t important. With improved proxies and analysis methods, we may find out that natural internal variability is significantly larger than is indicated by the Mann et al. reconstructions. [emphasis added -hro]

And speaking of seduction … thanks to a virtual army of mainstream media commentators, I think we may have also been “seduced” by their unrelenting repetition of hype – aided and abetted, of course, by hypsters such as Al Gore. He began his hyping twenty-three years ago. But simple hype wasn’t enough for Gore; he gave himself licence to inappropriately and appallingly invoke memory of – and word-images from – the Holocaust [h/t Richard Drake via Climate Audit]:

An Ecological Kristallnacht. Listen.

By Albert Gore; Albert Gore Jr., a Democrat, is Senator from Tennessee
Published: March 19, 1989

Humankind has suddenly entered into a brand new relationship with our planet.

Unless we quickly and profoundly change the course of our civilization, we face an immediate and grave danger of destroying the worldwide ecological system that sustains life as we know it.

It is time to confront this danger.

In 1939, as clouds of war gathered over Europe, many refused to recognize what was about to happen. No one could imagine a Holocaust, even after shattered glass had filled the streets on Kristallnacht. World leaders waffled and waited, hoping that Hitler was not what he seemed, that world war could be avoided. Later, when aerial photographs revealed death camps, many pretended not to see. Even now, many fail to acknowledge that our victory was not only over Nazism but also over dark forces deep within us.

In 1989, clouds of a different sort signal an environmental holocaust without precedent. Once again, world leaders waffle, hoping the danger will dissipate. Yet today the evidence is as clear as the sounds of glass shattering in Berlin.

Twenty-three years ago, folks! And in the intervening years, billions of dollars have been spent and countless “peer-reviewed” papers have been written; all touting the glory of green – and the gory stories of projected gloom and doom.

In the interim, we have had to learn to, well, acclimatize ourselves to “climate scientists” who give themselves licence to redefine commonly understood words in the English language; words such as “trick“, “decline”, “fudge” – and even “experiments”

And in twenty-three years, regardless of medium, the message has not changed:

Humanity is at a crossroads. Social, economic and environmental crises that have played out in recent years offer a unique opportunity for a step change in the way humanity does business. Although the concept of the ‘green economy’ was introduced to address today’s challenges, its continued dependence on traditional – and questionable – trickle-down economic growth theory has rendered it inadequate. A fast-growing population, rapidly diminishing resources and planetary boundaries are forcing humanity to find innovative ways to use resources more efficiently, to work within the limits of the Earth’s natural capital, and to make fundamental changes to our economic systems. This policy brief sets out the guidelines for the social and technological transformations needed for a new economic system, as well as the new ways in which we will need to measure and monitor this system.[emphasis added -hro]

Where did that come from, you might well ask?! In case you hadn’t heard, in addition to various and sundry panels, pronouncements and preparatory papers peddling the “must act now” mantra all emanating from the UN en route to Rio+20, next week there will be yet another “international” confab with the ominous theme of “Planet Under Pressure”**. The text I quoted above was excerpted from one of their nine “policy briefs“.

[** For a more thorough discussion of the background (and self-licensed foreground, under the auspices of the U.K.'s Royal Society, a co-sponsor) of this conference, please see Donna Laframboise's recent post, Fairy Tales on the Road to Rio]

If you’ve done any reading lately, you will perhaps have recognized that the emphasis seems to be shifting away from “global warming” aka “climate change” and towards the more fashionable “sustainability” – which covers a multitude of our “sins”, not just production of the dreaded human-generated CO₂.

I could be wrong, but it seems to me that we’re probably in for yet another outpouring of “science” that is nothing more – and nothing less – than computer generated simulations designed to support the conclusions and mantras of the day. But you don’t have to take my word for the rather dubious nature of the output from the “climate scientists’” computer modelling exercises; Bishop Hill has a very enlightening post (with comments from those who are far more knowledgeable than I) that is well worth reading: Mathematical models for newbies.

And consider the following from Wikipedia

Artistic licence (also known as dramatic license, historical license, poetic license, narrative license, licentia poetica, or simply license) is a colloquial term, sometimes euphemism, used to denote the distortion of fact, alteration of the conventions of grammar or language, or rewording of pre-existing text made by an artist to improve a piece of art.

The artistic license may also refer to the ability of an artist to apply smaller distortions, such as a poet ignoring some of the minor requirements of grammar for poetic effect.
[...]

In summary, artistic license is:

• Entirely at the artist’s discretion
• Intended to be tolerated by the viewer (cf. “willing suspension of disbelief“)
• Useful for filling in gaps, whether they be factual, compositional, historical or other gaps
• Used consciously or unconsciously, intentionally or unintentionally or in tandem

[emphasis added -hro]

YMMV, but it seems to me that climatic licence is another form of “artistic licence” that falls well within the criteria listed in the summary above. At the very least, that with which the hypsters and “climate scientists” have been regaling us for so many years does require a “willing suspension of disbelief”.

Sunday shocker: Michael Mann misrepresents … again

March 9, 2011: Please note updates at the end of this post -hro

“They’re street fighters and we’re Cub Scouts,” says [Michael] Mann. “The Cub Scouts are going to lose this fight if we don’t become more wily.” [Source]

In Dr. Judith Curry’s week in review, she notes and asks:

The climate wars have continued this week, aided and abetted by the Gleick affair.

Climate warriors

[...]

The LA Times has a lengthy article on Michael Mann’s new book: The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars. Has anyone read this yet? I read the 2+ chapters available for free at amazon.com. [Much of the] LA Times review reads like it could have been written by Michael Mann himself [...] [emphasis added -hro]

Unlike Peter Gleick, my ethics do not permit me to “review” a book I have not read. But in the interest of full disclosure, I must confess that I did read the sample available via Kindle; but I only looked, I did not buy – either the book or Mann’s self-serving BS. A few things jumped out at me, though.

The first paragraph of the Prologue to Mann’s exercise in creative writing begins:

On the morning of November 17, 2009, I awoke to learn that my private e-mail correspondence with fellow scientists had been hacked from a climate research center at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom and selectively posted on the Internet for all to see. Words and and phrases … from thousands of E-mail messages [...]“

Setting aside the fact that his E-mail correspondence is not “private” merely because he says so, I find it quite astounding that Mann should have learned all this when he ‘awoke on Nov. 17, 2009″, considering that:

• After more than two years, the Norfolk Constabulary have failed to establish – let alone confirm – whether or not the E-mail disclosures were the result of a “hack”, a leak by an insider or made available for the plucking
• None of the actual content of the emails was posted until November 19, 2009.
• Even poor Phil didn’t know the actual content of the emails on Nov. 20. So how Mann could have known on Nov. 17 is quite a mystery! Not to mention that …
• On Nov. 23, 2009 Mann’s buddy, Gavin’s Schmidt’s story began:

   

  At around 6.20am (EST) Nov 17th, somebody hacked into the RC server from an IP address associated with a computer somewhere in Turkey, disabled access from the legitimate users, and uploaded a file FOIA.zip to our server. They then created a draft post that would have been posted announcing the data to the world that was identical in content of the comment posted on The Air Vent later that day. They were intercepted before this could be posted on the blog. This archive appears to be identical to the one posted on the Russian server except for the name change. Curiously, and unnoticed by anyone else so far, the first comment posted on this subject was not at the Air Vent, but actually at ClimateAudit (comment 49 on a thread related to stripbark trees, dated Nov 17 5.24am (Central Time I think)). The username of the commenter was linked to the FOIA.zip file at realclimate.org. Four downloads occurred from that link while the file was still there (it no longer is) [...]

Phil Jones’ story of Nov. 20 indicates:

[Q] “Have you alerted police”

[Jones' answer] “Not yet. We were not aware of what had been taken.”

Jones says he was first tipped off to the security breach by colleagues at the website RealClimate.

[Jones] “Real Climate were given information, but took it down off their site and told me they would send it across to me. They didn’t do that. I only found out it had been released five minutes ago.”

So whose version of the gospel should one believe? Mann’s, Schmidt’s or Poor Phil’s? And how – on the morning of Nov. 17 – did Mann know that there were “thousands of E-mail messages”? In fact, there were considerably fewer than two thousand emails in that release.

Oh, well, perhaps Mann’s precious (or remarkably precocious) tree-rings were able to tell him so ;-)

I had previously seen comments from Steve Mosher indicating that in his book, Mann was attempting to point the finger of responsibility for Climategate at Steve McIntyre. One could certainly infer such a blatant attempt from Gavin’s gospel, but I don’t recall seeing such a contemporaneous “assay” from Mann. Perhaps Mann has lifted his fingering from Schmidt’s Nov. 23 keyboarding.

I’ve also seen comments which indicate that – to his further discredit – Mann makes no acknowledgement in his book of Andrew Montford’s excellent The Hockey Stick Illusion. One might well wonder why Mann does not want his readers to know of the existence of Montford’s work. But I digress …

In response to Dr. Curry’s question, AMac, one of the “denizens” of ClimateEtc and a very knowledgeable commentator on Mann’s silly Tiljander “tricks”™, noted that another denizen, Brandon Shollenberger, had read the book and had kindly chalked up his observations on Lucia’s Blackboard – while many may have been somewhat preoccupied with l’affaire Gleick. I know I certainly was!

So my mouse and I followed AMac’s pointer to Brandon’s beginning and followed the Brandon-brick road! It was a journey of enlightenment that took a few jaw-dropping hours. As I remarked on Dr. Curry’s blog:

As I was reading Brandon’s posts, I began to lose track of the number of times the thought occurred to me that Mann is well on his way to becoming known as the David Irving of climate science.

For those who may not be familiar with his name – or his record – Irving is probably the most prolific and prominent Holocaust denier in the English speaking world. His favourite mode of “doing history” includes “add a word here, change a word there”, citing sources (in the hope that few, if any, will bother to check) which completely fail to substantiate his assertions – along with manipulation of data and obfuscation in presentation.

And those are the least of his “scholarship” sins. Mann also seems to share with Irving an arrogant – and unwarranted – high opinion of himself.

In fact, I’ve often wondered if the myth of the “big oil funded lobby” was a derivation of Irving’s outlandish fantasies of a “big Jewish/Zionist lobby”. But I digress ..

The most ironic thought that was running through my mind, as I read Brandon’s posts, was that much of the “content” of Gleick’s notorious “review” of Donna Laframboise’s The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert could quite aptly – and accurately – reflect an honest – albeit brief and equally unsubstantiated – review of Mann’s latest opus.

Perhaps Gleick – not the most careful of posters – had mistakenly pasted in his impressions of a draft of Mann’s work. This would certainly explain his inability to substantiate his claims regarding TDT, don’t you think?!

Seems to me that – just as the German publisher of Irving’s Dresden opus had added the subtitle, “A Novel”, to their publication – perhaps, in the interest of truth in publishing, this work of the “wily Cub Scout” wannabe should be re-titled Portrait of the Artist as an Aggrieved Mann: A Novel

======

In a subsequent comment, Brandon Shollenberger wrote:

I’ve been working off and on collecting (some of) what I posted into a single document, and just a few hours ago, I finished it. It’s not a “masterpiece,” and I left out a lot of stuff, but I think it’s still a pretty good read. My biggest regret is I couldn’t find a way to include any of the technical stuff in it. I’ve actually written up part of a technical section, but there just didn’t seem to be a way to make it work, so I’ve left it out. Because of that, a lot of issues get missed, including the Tiljander one.

I’m not really sure what to do with it, but for anyone interested in reading it, here’s a link. For anyone wanting to know my what to expect, here’s a sentence from my opening paragraph:

The book contains many mistakes, contradictions, fabrications, nonsensical statements and even a libelous claim based on an obvious misrepresentation.

Pretty much everything else is a discussion of that claim.

Brandon is too modest by far! His review is an excellent and absolute MUST read. It’s only 15 pages, so it won’t take too much of your time; but it will be time far better spent than reading a single page of Mann’s self-serving opus.

Here’s an excerpt (pp 8-9) which I’ve reformatted:

Fabrications

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

-Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda for the Nazi government

While much of what Michael Mann says in his book is untrue, only a small amount of it is totally fabricated. This is good, as misrepresenting something is far more forgivable than just making something up.

Unfortunately, Mann does do both.

The Spreadsheet

The most telling example is in Chapter 8′s note #45, partially covered in the previous section:

those claims were false, resulting from their misunderstanding of the format of a spreadsheet version of the dataset they had specifically requested from my associate, Scott Rutherford. None of the problems they cited were present in the raw, publicly available version of our dataset…

This claim is absolutely untrue. Even worse, when the claim was first made, McIntyre and McKitrick responded by posting the correspondence between them and Mann (and co-authors), proving they never asked for a spreadsheet. Despite this, Mann has repeated the claim, both here in the book, and in his testimony for the Penn State inquiry looking into possible wrong-doing:

The issue of an “incorrect version” of the data came about because Dr. McIntyre had requested the data (which were already available on the FTP site) in spreadsheet format, and Dr. Rutherford, early on, had unintentionally sent an incorrectly formatted spreadsheet.

No effort was made to verify his claim by the inquiry, so while there is no reasonable explanation for why Mann would be make this claim, it seems one thing is clear: If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.

Climategate and Time Travel

Mann begins his discussion of Climategate with a bang (page 207):

The most malicious of the assaults on climate science would be timed for maximum impact: the run-up to the Copenhagen climate change summit of December 2009, a historic, much anticipated opportunity for a meaningful global climate change agreement.¹ The episode began with a crime committed by highly skilled computer hackers…

No police investigation has ever determined how the e-mails were released, yet Mann says it was the work of “highly skilled computer hackers.” Not just one hacker. Not even just one very skilled hacker. No, Mann claims to know there were multiple hackers with great skill. How he could possibly know this when the police don’t is a mystery as his note #1 doesn’t address the issue. Instead, it offers yet another fabrication:

The hackers had access to the materials in early October 2009, but held off releasing them until mid-November 2009, apparently to inflict maximum damage to the Copenhagen climate summit in early December 2009.

In fairness to Mann, he does offer a reference for his claim. It’s a newspaper article by Ben Webster that doesn’t explain how it reached its conclusion. [...]

As I said above, this is a MUST read. Here’s Brandon’s link again, and if you’re not fond of mediafire, it’s also available here.

UPDATE: 03/4/2012 02:28 PM PST – In a Guest Post at Steve McIntyre’s Climate Audit, Hu McCulloch documents yet another example of the “revisionist scholarship” that can be found in Mann’s opus: Mann on Irreproducible Results in Thompson (PNAS 2006)

UPDATE: 03/9/2012 04:36 PM PST – Brandon has now made available a summary of his critique of the “technical” aspects of Mann’s work. It’s another 15 pages which he concludes as follows:

The hockey stick was originally accepted without anyone verifying it. That was a mistake. Newer hockey sticks were accepted without anyone verifying them. That was a mistake. Will the same mistake be made with Mann’s book?

More porkies ‘n propaganda from Pachauri

Accuracy, consistency and transparency are not attributes that come to mind when one considers the many pronouncements of Rajendra K. Pachauri, Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

In a March 1, 2012 TreeHugger.com interview with Jacob Gordon [h/t IPCC Coordinating* Lead Author, Richard Betts via Twitter] Pachauri remains true to form.

[* 03/3/2012 04:28 PM PST Richard has advised me that he is a Lead Author, not a Coordinating Lead Author. Fortunately, unlike the IPCC, I am able to make this correction without convening a committee to approve ;-)]

Some excerpts from the transcript (all emphases are mine -hro):

TreeHugger: Explain for people what the IPCC is, what it does, how far it reaches.

Rajendra Pachauri: The IPCC was established in 1988 to carry out a scientific assessment of all aspects of climate change. It’s a body that’s truly intergovernmental in character, and all the decisions that are taken are essentially through consensus. That means every country that’s represented in the IPCC has to agree to decisions that are taken on behalf of the panel.

We mobilize the best scientists from all over the world to carry out our assessments. Just to give you an indication, in the fifth assessment report, which is currently in hand and we are working on it right now, we invited nominations from all the governments and several other organizations across the globe. We received about 3,000 nominations with the CVs of outstanding scientists from which we selected 831 who would be the lead authors as well as what we call review editors for the assessment.

And these teams of researchers and scientists work together. We carry out our assessment on the basis of published literature. So in other words, the IPCC is not doing any research of its own; it looks at the best published literature that’s available and then carries out an assessment and puts reports together. In the business of writing up these reports, each single draft which is written has to be peer reviewed. It’s sent out to expert reviewers and they provide a whole set of comments. To give you an indication from the fourth assessment report, it was completed in 2007 and had something like 90,000 different comments, and each one of these has to be taken on board by the authors.

If they accept or don’t accept the comment, they have to give reasons why it’s not accepted and that has to be put on the website. Now, I’m explaining all this because this is a totally transparent and completely objective exercise, [...]

TH: Are you able to speak about any of the findings from the fifth assessment?

Pachauri: Well, the outline of the report which has to be approved by all the governments as well, and it’s put together with a great deal of care and thoughtfulness. In fact, we have typically what we call scoping meetings where about 200 scientists, government officials, and others who have some knowledge of the subject get together and draw up the outline of the report, which is approved by the entire panel, all the governments of the world.

All the governments of the world? Hmmm … I’ve heard that myth before. Until the IPCC is prepared – in the interest of transparency – to prominently display attendance records for the sessions/meetings at which such decisions are taken, I, for one, will take this claim with a very hefty grain of salt.

When asked about Gleickgate, Pachauri ducks and invokes the myth of “97% of scientists”:

TH: This has been a very action packed month for climate debating. First the “No Need to Panic about Global Warming” letter ran in The Wall Street Journal follow by the rebutting letter. Then we had this whole scandal with the Heartland Institute: Peter Gleick, the president of the Pacific Institute, used a fake name to get documents from the Heartland Institute about its programs to discredit manmade climate change. Do you have any thoughts on this sort of warfare?

Pachauri: Well, I really don’t know enough to be able to comment on this. But since you mentioned these happenings, let me say there’s also been an assessment which clearly shows that 97 percent of the scientists who have worked on any aspect of the climate change are fully convinced that the changing climate we see, particularly since the last century, is largely the result of human action. So on the other issue, to be quite honest, I don’t know enough about it. When I do, I’d be happy to write my comments.

You’d think he would have made it his business to “inform” himself. Oh, well, perhaps UNEP honcho, Achim Steiner, hasn’t yet told him what he’s supposed to say about the increasingly disgraceful and desperate acts of the “climate concerned” and their media stooges partners. The interview continues:

TreeHugger: As the chairman of the IPCC you aren’t allowed to make any prescriptive statements, or at least the IPCC isn’t. However, there’s been criticism both from those who support the IPCC and from those who don’t. People like Andy Revkin of The New York Times has said that your personal opinion tends to shine through too much, to a degree where it opens the IPCC up for criticism. What’s it like being the face of the organization yet still being a human being and having your own opinions about what to do with the implications of the science?

Rajendra Pachauri: Whenever I’m expressing opinion which is not directly drawn from the reports of the IPCC, I’ve always qualified it by saying that I’m saying it purely in my personal capacity. And I don’t want to comment on Andrew Revkin’s writings either recently or earlier. I know him very well and I’d much rather not comment on that. He holds his opinion. I don’t agree with his opinion. But he’s entitled to hold his opinion as I’m entitled to mine.

The findings of the IPCC reports, particularly the fourth assessment report, often get questioned in terms of: “Give us an example.” When we talk about mitigation actions we assess what these actions are and naturally, in the course of a discussion, a media person would ask, “Okay, well, give us an example.” And one has to give real life practical examples, and those may not be entirely in the letter of our reports but they very much flow out of the assessment that’s carried out.

So you know, I’m afraid this is an issue of interpretation of what I’ve been putting forward. Perhaps some people say it is policy prescriptive, but I can say this very clearly: I’ve never said anything which is policy prescriptive. And when you’re talking about generally global issues, you’re really not pinning down any particular society by prescribing any kind of policy actions.

I’ll just give you an example. If we want to stabilize temperature increase to around two degrees Celsius, the forth assessment report clearly says that if that has to be done at least cost, then global CO2 emissions must peak no later than 2015. Now, that’s not policy prescriptive in my view, that’s something that people must accept and base their policies on. So you know, these are things that often get misinterpreted either because there’s some ambiguity in the understanding of those interpreting them. Or in some cases, without ascribing any reasons, I will say that people have made up their minds that they see something like this as policy prescriptive. But I’m generally very careful about that, and I am prepared to get into a discussion with anyone who thinks that what I’m saying or have said has been policy prescriptive.

It is worth noting that at the conclusion of this interview, Pachauri succeeds in weaving in and echoing the latest and greatest buzzwords from the “sustainable development” crowd:

I think we should be aware of the fact that our actions, both with respect to consumption and production, can have major impacts on the ecosystems of this planet and the global commons. The atmosphere certainly can be counted as a global common, and if we’re increasing the concentration of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, certainly it has an impact and I think science has established that. That’s why in the fourth assessment report we said, “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal.”

Now if we accept these realities, then when we carry out our own activities, when we lead our own lives, we should become a little more responsible in seeing that simple things like when moving from one room to the other, you should shut off the light if you don’t need it. If you have to travel someplace, if you’re going a quarter of a mile, don’t jump into a car and drive there. If you can walk, do so. If you can bicycle, do that. And if you have to buy a car, buy a fuel-efficient car. And where you got good public transport, please use that rather than using your own car. And when you buy products, please look at the labeling. Household appliances, for example. Use one which is more efficient. In most of these cases, even if there’s a slight increase in upfront cost, it pays back in a very short period of time.

In the fourth assessment report we have identified that by 2030 there will be six gigatons of CO2 equivalent of mitigation potential, which will be available at negative cost. In other words, if we were to do some of those things, we would actually be able to enhance your income and global income and global prosperity.

I think we just need to reflect on these truths. And this doesn’t mean that we have to change our lifestyle to go back and live in caves or wrap ourselves in sheepskin. I think we can do all the good things in life but do them in a manner that uses the Earth’s natural resources efficiently and protects the ecosystems of this planet, which are the only things that we survive on. You just need that realization, and I think that if we can do that, each one of us could make a difference.

And the beat goes on.

Of principles, presidents and pretense … the descent of the Royal Society

Nullius in verba is the motto of the London (U.K.) Royal Society which as the history page of their website notes in a sidebar:

“roughly translates as ‘take nobody’s word for it’. It is an expression of the determination of Fellows to withstand the domination of authority and to verify all statements by an appeal to facts determined by experiment.”

On this same history page, one learns that the full-name of The Royal Society (RS), which celebrated its 350th anniversary last year, is ‘The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge’. It says nothing about advocacy; and strangely enough, nullius in verba is nowhere to be found anywhere else on the RS website – except a lonely fragment thereof:

‘In Verba’ – the Science Policy Centre’s blog – provides updates about our work on providing scientific advice to policymakers.

The RS “Science Policy Centre” claims to provide:

independent, timely and authoritative scientific advice to UK, European and international decision makers.

We champion the contribution that science and innovation can make to economic prosperity, quality of life and environmental sustainability and we are a hub for debate about science, society and public policy [emphasis added -hro]

That’s certainly a tall order isn’t it?! One might ask: how did this noble organization venture so far from its chartered roots of ‘withstanding the domination of authority‘ to one with an acquired mandate of providing ‘authoritative scientific advice’?

The answer to this question lies in a very timely and well-written report, from the U.K.’s Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), entitled Nullius in Verba – On the Word of No One: The Royal Society and Climate Change (or Nullius in Verba, for short).

This report was written by Andrew Montford, author of the increasingly influential The Hockey Stick Illusion, as well as the GWPF’s 2010 critique of The Climategate Inquiries – and the more recent self-published Conspiracy in Green, an exposé of the collusion by “environmentalists and BBC journalists [in the subversion of] the corporation’s output, [and the exclusion of] global warming sceptics from the airwaves”.

As Dr. Richard Lindzen notes in his Foreword to Nullius in Verba:

Andrew Montford provides a straightforward and unembellished chronology of the perversion not only of The Royal Society but of science itself, wherein the legitimate role of science as a powerful mode of inquiry is replaced by the pretence of science to a position of political authority.

[...]

[T]here are certain peculiarities of The Royal Society’s behavior that are perhaps worth noting. The presidents involved with this issue ([Robert] May, [Martin] Rees and [current President, Paul] Nurse) are all profoundly ignorant of climate science. Their alleged authority stems from their positions in the RS rather than from scientific expertise. [emphasis added -hro]

And as Montford notes in his introductory summary:

For 300 years after its foundation, the Royal Society adopted a position of aloofness from political debates, refusing to become embroiled in the controversies of the day. This position was encapsulated in the Society’s journal, The Philosophical Transactions, which carried a notice that ‘It is neither necessary nor desirable for the Society to give an official ruling on scientific issues, for these are settled far more conclusively in the laboratory than in the committee room’. In the 1960s, the society began to become increasingly involved at the interface of science and political policymaking.
[...]
Immense damage has been done to the reputation of the Society by its last three presidents. While the fellows’ rebellion has improved matters considerably, the continuing desire of the Society’s leadership to engage in political controversies represents a serious ongoing risk to the Society’s reputation and an abandonment of its principles. [emphasis added -hro]

If you are new to the “climate wars” (as I still consider myself to be, even after more than two years on the battlefield), Montford’s chronology provides considerable context and background which, although specific to the RS, is echoed in the pre- (and post-) Climategate activities of other high profile and supposedly “independent” organizations.

As one who has spent many years in the non-profit (and primarily) government-funded sector, I know from experience that change does not often happen unless driven from the top (and is frequently suggested by senior staff, rather than by the membership or even the senior voluntary leadership). Government funding provides an additional wrinkle: he who pays the lion’s share to the piper usually calls the tune. Here’s how the RS describes its funding sources:

The Royal Society has a variety of funding sources in order to ensure its independence.

• 68.2% from Parliamentary Grant for specific projects and programmes.
• 13.1% from companies and trusts.
• 9.5% from trading (e.g. journal sales, venue hire).
• 8.1% from investments and endowments.
• 0.8% from other public bodies.
• 0.3% from membership contributions from Fellows.

Seems to me that the only “independence” that is being ensured is that of the President and upper echelons from the Fellows, as Montford confirms (p. 37):

In the 50 years since Lord Adrian warned of the dangers that a flood of government money represented to the Royal Society, all of his worst fears have come true. Despite repeated claims that the Society is independent of government, the reality is rather different. Although the fellows still have to pay subscriptions to the Society, the total raised in this way is dwarfed by sums routed through the Society by government [...] [emphasis added -hro]

But … nullius in verba (least of all mine!)… read the whole report. At 40 pages, it is not a long read, but it is a very enlightening – and alarming – read.

UPDATE: 02/10/2012 01:36 PM PST Post has been amended to reflect new link to Nullius in verba report (
http://www.thegwpf.org/images/stories/gwpf-reports/montford-royal_society.pdf
)

Desperately seeking humility and nuance in climate science

In October 2011, Dr. Judith Curry had a lengthy and interesting post regarding the Draft Strategic Plan (2012 -2021) of the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP). In her commentary, Dr. Curry shared with her readers some conclusions that she had conveyed during the course of a related panel discussion:

If we as scientists are not humble about the uncertainties and areas of ignorance, we have an enormous capacity to mislead decision makers and point them in the direction of poor policies. Uncertainty is essential information for decision makers.

Climate scientists have this very naive understanding of the policy process, which is aptly described by the A+B=C model in the context of the precautionary principle. This naive understanding is reflected in the palpable frustration of many climate scientists at the failure of the “truth” as they “know” it to influence global and national energy and climate policy. This frustration has degenerated into using to word “denier” to refer to anyone who disagrees with them on either the science or the policy solution.

Today’s issue of Nature includes a “World View” column authored by Ryan Meyer, science integration fellow at the California Ocean Science Trust in Oakland, on this very same plan:

Finding the true value of US climate science

A new strategy for addressing climate change takes a realistic approach to the challenge of making science useful, says Ryan Meyer

08 February 2012

[...]

Is it possible to be realistic and nuanced about the limited role that science often has, but still to offer a compelling case for public support? The US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) will shortly release a strategic plan that does just that.

Over the past two decades, the USGCRP, which coordinates 13 federal agencies and departments, has spent more than $30 billion on climate-change research. In doing so, it has improved our understanding of climate systems. But, as the National Research Council pointed out in 2009, when it comes to fulfilling its legal mandate of supporting decision makers with useful information, the USGCRP has been a disappointment.

[...]

There was no coherent plan (let alone resources) to implement the concepts, and the central goals of the programme remained entirely focused on advancing knowledge. The USGCRP did not provide any coherent account of how doing science in this way would be different from what had gone before, or how science institutions would need to change in order to deliver better value to society.

What, then, is different this time? In its 2012 report, the USGCRP has expressed a more nuanced and humble account of the role of science in society’s responses to climate change.

[...]

The latest plan also acknowledges difficult but crucial science-policy trade-offs. For example, it discusses the “dynamic tension” between increasing model complexity and policy-makers’ needs for simplicity and tractability. For a government science programme to explicitly recognize these choices as a proper concern of science management is a new and welcome step.

Will this bold vision be realized? The USGCRP does not yet have a strong mechanism for allocating funds among its new priorities. Some in the research community will surely lobby against trade-offs that seem to threaten the status quo. And, as it has in the past, the National Research Council reviewed this plan with a critical eye, pointing out that the USGCRP will need more resources and greater leverage over agency budgets and priorities to make it happen. Without these ingredients, the idea will probably run into the sand. [emphasis added -hro]

Speaking of those who perceive threats to the status quo … I wonder what Trenberth and his gang of 37 (who seem to think that “panic” is the preferred option) might have to say about all this?!

As someone once said, we live in interesting times!

Phil Jones keeps peer-review process humming … by using “intuition”

During the course of his 2010 testimony to the U.K. parliament’s Science and Technology Committee, UEA’s renowned Director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU), Phil Jones, responded to a question regarding the peer-review process by indicating that he had never been asked to provide data and code for any of his contributions to the peer-reviewed literature when such papers were under review.

One might reasonably infer from this that when Jones is a reviewer of a paper, he doesn’t ask to see data or code either. I recently came across a Climategate E-mail [2486.txt] from Jones which would confirm that this is a reasonable inference.

Jones was responding to a Jan. 28/2004 observation from Peter Gleick (who has a penchant for reviewing books he’s given no indication of having read, and for failing to substantiate his accusations about others).

In this instance, the thread title was, “MBH Submission (fwd)”, and Gleick’s observation was:

I find Reviewer A’s email a pretty convincing indication of what CC and Mann will face if the code isn’t released.

Yuck.

The timing suggests that “Reviewer A” may well have been Steve McIntyre who, recounted the following, shortly after Schneider died in 2010:

[Schneider] asked me to review a 2004 submission to Climatic Change by Mann et al responding to MM2003 – consistent with his public representations. It seemed to me that there was an inherent conflict of interest in such a review but this was obviously known to Schneider and I attempted to separate out my interests as a disputant from my obligations as a reviewer as much as possible.

[...] my approach was informed by ideas of due diligence that were not then characteristic of academic peer reviewing. In my capacity as a reviewer, I asked to see supporting data for Mann’s supposed rebuttal to MM2003 – the topic of his submission – and to see source code to document his allegations that we’d supposedly made grievous mistakes in implementing his methodology – again an important aspect of his submission. [...]

Schneider replied that he had been editor of Climatic Change for 28 years and, during that time, nobody had ever requested supporting data, let alone source code, and he therefore required a policy from his editorial board approving his requesting such information from an author.

But I digress …

Jones’s Jan. 29 reply was addressed to many recipients, including Gleick and Stephen Schneider – founder and editor of the journal Climatic Change [CC] [text reformatted and emphasis added -hro]:

Steve, Peter et al,

I totally agree with Peter on Yuck. The tone of the email from Reviewer A indicates the sorts of issues we would be in. Here are my thoughts:

If you accede to this request the whole peer-review process goes down the tubes.

Reviewers will be able to request the earth from authors. If we all started doing this the number of reviews we could do would dramatically reduce. I currently do about 20-30 reviews a year. If I began asking for this sort of information from journals (AMS, AGU, RMS etc) I would be laughed out of court. I guess it would stop the papers to review coming.

The whole system would grind to a halt. I’ve never requested data/codes to do a review and I don’t think others should either. I do many of my reviews on travel. I have a feel for whether something is wrong – call it intuition. If analyses don’t seem right, look right or feel right, I say so. Some of my reviews for CC could be called into question!
[...]

Well, now I understand the intricacies of this much-vaunted “peer-review” process. “Intuition” and Because! I! Said! So! will trump due diligence, every time – otherwise the whole process would go “down the tubes”.

Amazing. Simply amazing.

Nature says: Face up to fraud

Interesting editorial in today’s issue of Nature. Some excerpts:

Face up to fraud

Many people in science would rather not talk about the problem of research misconduct, much less act on it. After all, who directly involved would benefit from a serious crackdown? Certainly not the institutions at which the misconduct takes place — they are nominally responsible, but can face legal repercussions, embarrassing headlines and a public-relations disaster if they expose cheating academics.
[...]
A big part of the problem is the lack of perceived risk associated with misconduct. Some fraudulent researchers might be sociopaths who don’t care about the rules, but many others simply believe that they can anticipate the outcome of a research project, and see no downside to fabricating the required results to save time, or tweaking results to achieve a stronger signal. Either way, stronger action and punishments are needed to discourage such misbehaviour.
[...]
Could publications such as this one do more to deter cheats? Unfortunately, we are often in no position to flag up even proven cases of misconduct, and thereby highlight the risks that miscreants run with their careers. Yes, it is a journal’s primary job to clean up the literature, but when papers are retracted owing to misconduct, the libel laws (again) often prevent our editors from saying so. We know that this leaves the affected communities frustrated and in the dark. It leaves us frustrated, too.
[...]

They don’t specifically mention “climate science” – but they don’t excuse it, either! And I’m not convinced that “publications such as [Nature]” could not do more to restore integrity to science.

Read the whole article.