Frequent PJ Contributor Christopher Horner and the American Tradition Institute have prevailed in a Freedom of Information lawsuit against the University of Virginia to force the release of retained emails from Dr Michael Mann.
Mann, currently at the University of Pennsylvania, was the primary author of the famous “hockey stick” report on paleoclimate data. The conclusion that Mann’s data indicates unprecedented anthropogenic warming has now been largely discredited by a National Science Foundation report.
The "hockey stick"
The “hockey stick” was called by many a “smoking gun” proving that CO2-forced anthropogenic global warming was the primary cause of climate change observed over the last 1000 years. The chart is featured prominently in the Al Gore film, book, and presentation “An Inconvenient Truth.”
Which is why they’re whining about FOIA:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/may/25/freedom-information-laws-harass-scientists
Glastnost for thee, not for me…
Somehow you got this completely backwards. The Mann study has now been vindicated so many times that it is mind boggling that Horner keeps this up.
You have linked to the Wegman Report which was a lot of plagiarized nonsense and Wegman is under investigation by his university where he is trying to throw his former grad student under the bus and make her take all the blame, but she ain’t goin’.
The score is more like Mann 100, Horner 0.
Yawn.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you had actually read ANY of the reports and articles you’re deriding?
Sorry, the Wegman report isn’t the same as the Said et al paper, the “plagiarism” in Said et al was poorly footnoting what she believed was common knowledge, and in fact the full NSF report wasn’t authored by Wegman and concluded that Mann’s results were overstated. That’s why Mann’s report is no longer cited by the IPCC as of AR4.
“The Mann study has now been vindicated so many times”
There’s one born every minute.
Oh, and preemptively: the rules about ad hominems and off-topic comments will be ruthlessly applied. Yes, AP, this means you.
The Nameless Climate Scientists and Al Gore, lazy copy and paste news editors and politicians promising to lower the seas and make the weather colder by taxing the air, are my shepherds; I shall not think.
They maketh me lie down in Greenzi pastures:
They leadeth me beside the still-freezing waters.
They selleth my soul for the Nameless Climate Scientists and Al Gore, lazy copy and paste news editors and politicians promising to lower the seas and make the weather colder by taxing the air, and condemn my children to a death by CO2 for not turning the G.D. lights off more often.
They leadeth me in the paths of self-righteousness for their own sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of reason,
I will fear no logic: for they art with me and thinking for me;
The Nameless Climate Scientists quest to study the effects of something that hasn’t happened instead of the causes of something that hasn‘t happened, well, they comfort me.
They preparest a PR and mainscream media campaign and call it peer reviewed, in the presence of contradictory evidence.
They anointest mine head with nonsense; my fear runneth over.
Surely blind faith and hysteria shall follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Nameless Climate Scientists and Al Gore, lazy copy and paste news editors and politicians making it look like they are doing something for us forever.
There is something of a delicious irony in the fact that you use a figure from IPCC AR4 to illustrate the ‘hockey stick’ while at the same time claiming that Mann’s work was not used in AR4. Similarly, claiming that the figure shows that no studies have replicated the basic MBH results would seem to be undermined by the fact that other studies shown in the figure show the same basic results.
That you get U. Penn and Penn State confused, as well as the National Acadamies and NSF, and misstate the nature of the Wegman report (it was nothing to do with the National Acadamies or NSF or the NRC, does not fill this reader with confidence. Wegman is of course in trouble for resorting to wikipedia to bolster his lack of expertise, but in this case it is a tactic you might have profitably adopted.
Fact Checker is spot on about the unending cluelessness of Horner et al.
From the NRC paper cited:
“The basic conclusion of Mann et al. (1998, 1999) was that the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1,000 years. This conclusion has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence that includes both additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions and pronounced changes in a variety of local proxy indicators, such as melting on icecaps and the retreat of glaciers around the world, which in many cases appear to be unprecedented during at least the last 2,000 years.”
Yeah, that’s certainly a stinging rebuke.
I say Horner should move on to Obama’s birth certificate. More promising territory for his skill set.
Please, Mann’s continued use of foxtails/strip barks, with the odd upside down proxy thrown in, is well known, run them through a computer, with the appropriate weighting applied(who cares if it’s upside down, it does not matter) and just like magic, a hockey stick.
In his 2008 paper, he used over 100 oak cores as temp proxy’s, even using some of those gathered by Professor Mike Baillie, from Queen’s, Belfast, who stated, “Baillie says his data won’t help either way in this argument. Last year he and his Belfast colleague Ana Garcia-Suarez, published a study showing that Irish oaks record summer rainfall well, but not temperature. “Keenan is the only person in the world claiming that our oak-ring patterns are temperature records,” Baillie told the Guardian.” http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/apr/20/climate-sceptic-wins-data-victory
Well, Doug Keenan is not the only person claiming that, Mike Mann is claiming the exact same thing, using that sort of data, in fact 3 of the oak series in Mann 2008 are Baillie’s.
It’s good to see fact-based posters like Tenney Naumer, Greenman3610, and Fact Checker all noticed what the graph that Charlie posted *really* showed … and what the NSF review *really* said …
… multiple independent studies have confirmed that Mann’s hockey stick was right.
This is good. Even in cases where “the cold equations” challenge us severely … fact-driven, science-driven conservatism always prospers in the long run.
Denialism-driven conservatism … not so much.