Showing posts with label Michael Mann. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Michael Mann. Show all posts
Friday, September 13, 2013
September 13, 2013
Superior Court of the District of Columbia
Moving forward to the discovery stage of Michael Mann's defamation lawsuit against the National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute was expedited when District of Columbia Superior Court judge Weisberg on September 12 denied yet another motion by the defendants that would have created a procedural delay. If the defendants' are hoping that having a new judge on the case will bring a very different viewpoint, his first procedural ruling doesn't support it.
Text of the judge's ruling: Order Denying Defendants' Joint Motion for Interlocutory Certification of the Court's July 19, 2013 Orders under D.C. Code § 11-721
Excerpt:
Although this case undoubtedly involves complex and important issues at the intersection of the First Amendment and the common law of defamation as applied to public figures, there is not "a substantial ground for a difference of opinion" on the controlling questions of law. The [Court's July 19, 2013, order denying defendants' motion to dismiss] represents an application of relatively settled law to the facts as articulated in the complaint, and a conclusion that plaintiff has alleged enough to move his case forward to the discovery stage.
Judge Weisberg also prodded the case along with this footnote:
3 As an aside, the court observes that the litigation of this matter will be as expensive as the parties choose to make it. It appears that most of the relevant facts are well known. If the parties can get through the discovery stage with a minimum of acrimony, they should be able to advance the case to the summary judgment phase in relatively short order.
So, let's see what the discovery stage brings out.
Earlier CSW posts on this case:
Sorry, can't copy from the site, here's the link: http://www.bloomberg.com/infographics/2013-09-04/ten-most-influential-thinkers.html
Friday, August 30, 2013
Superior Court of the District of Columbia
"The Court finds that there is sufficient evidence in the record to demonstrate that Plaintiff is likely to succeed on the merits," said a DC Superior Court judge in her latest procedural ruling in the defamation case of Michael Mann v. National Review, et al. "The evidence before the Court indicates the likelihood that 'actual malice' is present in the [National Review's] conduct."
On August 30 the Court denied the Defendants' Motion for Reconsideration of the Court's July 19 order, which had affirmed Prof. Mann's right to proceed in his defamation lawsuit. The text of the August 30 Court Order is here in PDF.
Some excerpts from the Court Order denying Defendants' Motion for Reconsideration:
Defamation
... The Court finds that there is sufficient evidence in the record to demonstrate that Plaintiff is likely to succeed on the merits. As the Court stated in its previous Order, the NR Defendants’ reference to Plaintiff “as the man behind the fraudulent climate change ‘hockey stick’ graph” was essentially an allegation of fraud by Plaintiff. ...
The Court clearly recognizes that some members involved in the climate-change discussions and debates employ harsh words. The NR Defendants are reputed to use this manner of speech; however there is a line between rhetorical hyperbole and defamation. In this case, the evidence before the Court demonstrates that something more than mere rhetorical hyperbole is, at least at this stage present. Accusations of fraud, especially where such accusations are made frequently through the continuous usage of words such as “whitewashed,” “intellectually bogus,” “ringmaster of the tree-ring circus” and “cover-up” amount to more than rhetorical hyperbole. ...
The evidence before the Court indicates the likelihood that “actual malice” is present in the NR Defendants’ conduct. ...
Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress ("IIED")
... The Court finds that Plaintiff’s claim for IIED is similar to that for defamation. There is sufficient evidence before the Court to indicate “actual malice.” The NR Defendants have frequently accused Plaintiff of academic fraud regardless of their awareness that Plaintiff has been investigated by several bodies and his work found to be proper. The NR Defendant’s persistence despite the findings of the investigative bodies could be likened to a witch hunt. In fact, Plaintiff had nothing to do with the Sandusky case yet the NR Defendants seized upon that criminal act by a pedophile and did more, this Court finds, than simply comment on another article.
The Court agrees with the arguments advanced by Plaintiff. To place Plaintiff’s name in the same sentence with Sandusky (a convicted pedophile) is clearly outrageous.
Stay tuned.
Earlier posts of documents in the case:
August 19: Michael Mann v. National Review et al. defamation lawsuit - new Plaintiff's briefs
July 19: DC Court affirms Michael Mann's right to proceed in defamation lawsuit against National Review and CEI
http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/2013/08/30/judge-denies-national-reviews-motion-to-reconsider-in-mann-defamation-case/
Monday, August 19, 2013
by Joe Romm, Climate Progress, August 18, 2013
Temperature change over past 11,300 years (in blue, via Science, 2013) plus projected warming over the next century on humanity’s current emissions path (in red, via recent literature, much of which is reviewed in the new IPCC report.)
The Fifth — and hopefully final — Assessment Report (AR5) from the UN Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC) is due next month. The leaks are already here:
Drafts seen by Reuters of the study by the UN panel of experts, due to be published next month, say it is at least 95% likely that human activities – chiefly the burning of fossil fuels – are the main cause of warming since the 1950s.That is up from at least 90% in the last report in 2007, 66% in 2001, and just over 50% in 1995, steadily squeezing out the arguments by a small minority of scientists that natural variations in the climate might be to blame.
This is a doubly impressive story since, as we’ve reported, Reuters has slashed climate coverage and pressured reporters to include false balance. Leading climatologists who have seen drafts of the report confirm this story’s accuracy.
Of course, nothing in the report should be a surprise to readers of Climate Progress, since the AR5 is just a (partial) review of the scientific literature (see my 12/11 post, It’s “Extremely Likely That at Least 74% of Observed Warming Since 1950″ Was Manmade; It’s Highly Likely All of It Was). The draft AR5 confirms that natural forces played a very small role in warming since 1950, which again means that human activity is highly likely be a source of virtually all of the recent warming.
I say the AR5 is a “partial” review that is “hopefully” the last because, like every IPCC report, it is an instantly out-of-date snapshot that lowballs future warming because it continues to ignore large parts of the recent literature and omit what it can’t model. For instance, we have known for years that perhaps the single most important carbon-cycle feedback is the thawing of the northern permafrost. The IPCC’s Fifth Assessment climate models completely ignore it, thereby lowballing likely warming this century.
No doubt some in the media will continue to focus on the largely irrelevant finding that the equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) may be a tad lower than expected.
In terms of real world warming and its impact on humans, the ECS is a mostly theoretical and oversimplified construct — like the so-called spherical cow. The ECS tells you how much warming you would get IF we started slashing emissions asap and stabilized carbon dioxide concentrations in the air around 550 parts per million (they are currently at 400 ppm, rising over 2 ppm a year, and accelerating) — AND IF there were no slow feedbacks like the defrosting permafrost.
The climate however is not a spherical cow. Every climate scientist I’ve spoken to has said we will blow past 550 ppm if we continue to put off action. Indeed, we’re on track for well past 800 ppm. And a 2012 study found that the carbon feedback from the thawing permafrost alone will likely add 0.4 °F–1.5 °F to total global warming by 2100.
So the alarming disruption in our previously stable, civilization-supporting climate depicted in the top figure is our future. On our current emissions path, the main question the ECS answers is whether 9 °F warming happens closer to 2080, 2100, or 2120 — hardly a cause for any celebration. Quite the reverse. Warming beyond 7 °F is “incompatible with organized global community, is likely to be beyond ‘adaptation’, is devastating to the majority of ecosystems & has a high probability of not being stable (i.e., 4 °C [7 °F] would be an interim temperature on the way to a much higher equilibrium level,” as climate expert Kevin Anderson explains here.
Dr. Michael Mann emailed me:
The report is simply an exclamation mark on what we already knew: Climate change is real and it continues unabated, the primary cause is fossil fuel burning, and if we don’t do something to reduce carbon emissions we can expect far more dangerous and potentially irreversible impacts on us and our environment in the decades to come.
As for the seeming slowdown in global warming, that turns out to be only true if one looks narrowly at surface air temperatures, where only a small fraction of warming ends up. Arctic sea ice melt has accelerated. Disintegration of the great ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica has sped up. The rate of sea level rise has doubled from last century.
Finally, very recent studies of the ocean, which has absorbed the vast majority of the heat, also show global warming has accelerated in the past 15 years. Sadly, the AR5 appears to have stopped considering new scientific findings before the publication of this research.
Ocean Heat Content from 0 to 300 meters (grey), 700 m (blue), and total depth (violet) from Ocean Reanalysis System 4.
Reuters notes that climate scientists are “finding it harder than expected to predict the impact in specific regions in coming decades.” This regional uncertainty is not surprising but still quite alarming. Indeed, it is a key reason adaptation to climate change is so much more difficult and expensive than simply reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
After all, if you don’t know where the next super-storm or super-heatwave is going to hit, you pretty much have to prepare everywhere. As a major 2011 study by Sandia National Laboratory concluded, “It is the uncertainty associated with climate change that validates the need to act protectively and proactively.” That study found because of “climate uncertainty as it pertains to rainfall alone, the U.S. economy is at risk of losing” a trillion dollars and 7 million American jobs over the next several decades.
On this point, climatologist Kevin Trenberth e-mailed me:
“We can confidently say that the risk of drought and heat waves has gone up and the odds of a hot spot somewhere on the planet have increased but the hotspot moves around and the location is not very predictable. This year perhaps it is East Asia: China, or earlier Siberia? It has been much wetter and cooler in the US (except for SW), whereas last year the hot spot was the US. Earlier this year it was Australia (Tasmania etc) in January (southern summer). We can name spots for all summers going back quite a few years: Australia in 2009, the Russian heat wave in 2010, Texas in 2011, etc.Similarly with risk of high rains and floods: They are occurring but the location moves.”
The point is, we know that many kinds of off-the-charts extreme weather events will get more intense, longer lasting, and more frequent — in fact, they already are. But we don’t know exactly where and when they will hit, which means adaptation requires pretty much everybody, everywhere to plan the worst-case. Just when you think the Jersey shore is very unlikely to be hit by a superstorm, along comes Sandy.
I very much doubt the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report will move the needle on climate action because of its inadequacies; because the media has scaled back climate coverage and let go of its best climate reporters; and because the fossil fuel funded disinformation campaign will try to exploit those first two problems to make it seem like this report gives us less to worry about, when it simply underscores what we have known for a quarter-century. Continued inaction on climate change risks the end of modern civilization as we know it.
Thursday, August 8, 2013
Climate change letter was personal attack
To the Editor, Times-Dispatch, August 5, 2013
Charlie Battig did a grave disservice to your readers by spreading falsehoods about me personally and about climate science in general in his recent letter, “McAuliffe sways left and right on coal.” Battig parroted discredited denialist talking points, e.g., “the globe hasn’t warmed over the past 16 years” (the past decade, in fact, was the warmest recorded).
To the Editor, Times-Dispatch, August 5, 2013
Charlie Battig did a grave disservice to your readers by spreading falsehoods about me personally and about climate science in general in his recent letter, “McAuliffe sways left and right on coal.” Battig parroted discredited denialist talking points, e.g., “the globe hasn’t warmed over the past 16 years” (the past decade, in fact, was the warmest recorded).
Much of the letter, however, revolved around Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s 2009 attempt to subpoena my personal U.Va. emails with dozens of other climate scientists. Cuccinelli is a climate-change denier, and his efforts were widely viewed as a fishing expedition intended to find something embarrassing that he could use to discredit my scientific research on climate change. His actions were blasted as a “witch hunt” by The Washington Post, while this paper editorialized on them as a “search warrant without probable cause (that) might be kosher in totalitarian states.” The state Supreme Court rejected Cuccinelli’s subpoena with prejudice last year.
Battig attempts to defend Cuccinelli’s attacks based on discredited allegations and innuendo arising from the industry-funded “climategate” smear campaign, where thousands of scientists’ emails were stolen and then misrepresented by climate-change deniers in an effort to call into question the evidence for human-caused climate change. Battig conveniently fails to acknowledge that nine investigations in the U.S. and Europe found there was no evidence of impropriety in any of these emails and that the National Science Foundation’s inspector general investigated and thoroughly dismissed all allegations of misconduct made against me personally.
It is precisely these sorts of attacks by climate-change deniers that led me to write my recent book, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, where I discuss my experiences as a reluctant figure in the climate-change debate.
Michael E. Mann, Distinguished Professor, Department of Meterology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pa.
Friday, August 2, 2013
by tamino, Open Mind blog, August 2, 2013
One of my favorite movies is Apollo 13, the tale of the fateful mission of astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, and Jack Swigert. Their hopes to land on the moon were dashed when an on-board explosion crippled the spacecraft, so that only the most extreme measures, the best of human ingenuity and determination, enabled them to survive. At one point they have to turn off their navigation computer because they simply don’t have enough power to leave it turned on. When they do, Lovell says “We just put Sir Isaac Newton in the driver’s seat.”
He was referring to the fact that in order to survive, they were depending on Newton’s law of gravity. If it was right, they might get home alive. It sure seems right, in fact it did enable them to get home alive. These days, we can launch a spacecraft toward Mars (millions of miles away) and, using Newton’s law of gravity, hit our target with stunning precision. We’re so confident in it, and it’s so useful, we still call is “Newton’s law.”
But nobody ever succeeded in proving Newton’s law of gravity. In fact you can’t, in fact we’ve learned enough about the subject that we can prove it’s wrong! Despite its incorrectness, it’s good enough to enable us to get to the moon and back — alive.
Nowadays we could talk about “Einstein’s law of gravity” and how it’s different from, and better than, Newton’s. Maybe it’s even right — but we can’t prove it. Maybe, someday, we’ll manage to prove that it’s wrong.
That’s the nature of science. “Proof” is for mathematical theorems and alcoholic beverages, not for science.
The best we can get are credible theories, those that explain the facts with such precision that they might enable us to do something useful, like navigate in space or build a skyscraper or eradicate the scourge of smallpox … or minimize planet-wide chaos from man-made climate change.
Michael Mann understands this. He understands science.
Rich Trzupek does not. When Mann correctly stated that “Proof is for mathematical theorems and alcoholic beverages. It’s not for science,” Trzupek had a conniption fit. Trzupek so severely fails to understand science, that he accuses a real scientist of his own failure. Trzupek’s criticism is nothing more than a cheap ad hominem attack, an attempt to discredit climate science by discrediting a climate scientist. Worse yet, it’s a pathetic attempt.
Trzupek actually says “When I was going to school to earn my degree in chemistry, we were taught that science was indeed all about absolute truth and proofs at the end of the day.” If they really taught him that then he should ask for his money back, because this is an appalling misrepresentation of science. In fact it’s one of the horrible, but commonplace, misconceptions that real scientists have to work hard to correct. Yet Trzupek makes it the foundation of his criticism of climate science and of Michael Mann.
Trzupek makes a lot of other mistaken (or perhaps just dishonest) claims in his article. I considered taking the time to dissect them, but sometimes it’s better to reserve one’s efforts to criticize scientific claims which come from real scientists … or at least from those who have an inkling of what science is really about.
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2013/08/02/michael-mann-understands-science/
One of my favorite movies is Apollo 13, the tale of the fateful mission of astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, and Jack Swigert. Their hopes to land on the moon were dashed when an on-board explosion crippled the spacecraft, so that only the most extreme measures, the best of human ingenuity and determination, enabled them to survive. At one point they have to turn off their navigation computer because they simply don’t have enough power to leave it turned on. When they do, Lovell says “We just put Sir Isaac Newton in the driver’s seat.”
He was referring to the fact that in order to survive, they were depending on Newton’s law of gravity. If it was right, they might get home alive. It sure seems right, in fact it did enable them to get home alive. These days, we can launch a spacecraft toward Mars (millions of miles away) and, using Newton’s law of gravity, hit our target with stunning precision. We’re so confident in it, and it’s so useful, we still call is “Newton’s law.”
But nobody ever succeeded in proving Newton’s law of gravity. In fact you can’t, in fact we’ve learned enough about the subject that we can prove it’s wrong! Despite its incorrectness, it’s good enough to enable us to get to the moon and back — alive.
Nowadays we could talk about “Einstein’s law of gravity” and how it’s different from, and better than, Newton’s. Maybe it’s even right — but we can’t prove it. Maybe, someday, we’ll manage to prove that it’s wrong.
That’s the nature of science. “Proof” is for mathematical theorems and alcoholic beverages, not for science.
The best we can get are credible theories, those that explain the facts with such precision that they might enable us to do something useful, like navigate in space or build a skyscraper or eradicate the scourge of smallpox … or minimize planet-wide chaos from man-made climate change.
Michael Mann understands this. He understands science.
Rich Trzupek does not. When Mann correctly stated that “Proof is for mathematical theorems and alcoholic beverages. It’s not for science,” Trzupek had a conniption fit. Trzupek so severely fails to understand science, that he accuses a real scientist of his own failure. Trzupek’s criticism is nothing more than a cheap ad hominem attack, an attempt to discredit climate science by discrediting a climate scientist. Worse yet, it’s a pathetic attempt.
Trzupek actually says “When I was going to school to earn my degree in chemistry, we were taught that science was indeed all about absolute truth and proofs at the end of the day.” If they really taught him that then he should ask for his money back, because this is an appalling misrepresentation of science. In fact it’s one of the horrible, but commonplace, misconceptions that real scientists have to work hard to correct. Yet Trzupek makes it the foundation of his criticism of climate science and of Michael Mann.
Trzupek makes a lot of other mistaken (or perhaps just dishonest) claims in his article. I considered taking the time to dissect them, but sometimes it’s better to reserve one’s efforts to criticize scientific claims which come from real scientists … or at least from those who have an inkling of what science is really about.
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2013/08/02/michael-mann-understands-science/
Monday, July 29, 2013
by Peter Sinclair, Climate Denial Crock of the Week, July 29, 2013
Further underlining Climate Change’s maturation as a potent political issue – a new ad in the Virginia Governor's race features GOP candidate Ken Cuccinelli’s crazed fixation on persecution of climate scientist Mike Mann.
Washington Post:
Dr. Mann discussed the episode in his Chapman lecture here.
http://climatecrocks.com/2013/07/29/new-politcal-ad-cuccinellis-witch-hunt/
Further underlining Climate Change’s maturation as a potent political issue – a new ad in the Virginia Governor's race features GOP candidate Ken Cuccinelli’s crazed fixation on persecution of climate scientist Mike Mann.
Washington Post:
RICHMOND — The newest TV ad in the Virginia governor’s race focuses on Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II’s legal battle with a University of Virginia climate scientist.
Titled “Witch Hunt,” the commercial recalls a two-year effort by Cuccinelli, the GOP nominee for governor and a climate change skeptic, to obtain records from Michael Mann, then a U-Va. researcher.
The campaign of Terry McAuliffe, Cuccinelli’s Democratic rival, released the ad Monday. It declined to say where it will run and for how long.
“It’s been called ‘Cuccinelli’s witch hunt.’ ‘Designed to intimidate and suppress,’ ” a narrator for the 30-second spot says, quoting newspaper editorials from the time.
“Ken Cuccinelli used taxpayer funds to investigate a U-Va. professor whose research on climate change Cuccinelli opposed. Cuccinelli, a climate change denier, forced the university to spend over half a million dollars defending itself against its own attorney general. Ken Cuccinelli — he’s focused on his own agenda, not us.”
The ad is part of McAuliffe’s broader strategy to portray himself as a business-oriented moderate and Cuccinelli as someone outside the mainstream on a range of cultural issues. The opening image of the ad shows McAuliffe sitting at table, having a seemingly productive discussion with others gathered there.
In 2010, Cuccinelli issued a civil investigative demand — essentially a subpoena — for grant applications and correspondence exchanged among Mann, research assistants, and scientists around the country. He based that demand on a 2002 state law designed to combat government employees defrauding the public of tax dollars. Cuccinelli said he was trying to investigate if Mann had, while seeking grants to study climate change, had used manipulated data to show that there has been a recent spike rise in the Earth’s temperature.The story became national news as part of a broad campaign by right wing science denial groups to intimidate, spy on, and persecute scientists whose research ran counter to fossil fuel and other corporate interests.
Dr. Mann discussed the episode in his Chapman lecture here.
http://climatecrocks.com/2013/07/29/new-politcal-ad-cuccinellis-witch-hunt/
Friday, July 19, 2013
Superior Court of the District of Columbia (Photo: Wikipedia Commons)
from Climate Science Watch, July 19, 2013
Two decisions handed down in DC Superior Court affirmed climate scientist Michael Mann’s right to proceed in his defamation lawsuit against the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the National Review Online for their statements accusing him of data manipulation and fraud. The Court is not buying the Defendants arguments in their Motion to Dismiss that their statements are protected speech under the First Amendment, mere “opinion,” “rhetorical hyperbole,” or “fair comment.”
Full text of the decisions:
We quote below several excerpts from the CEI decision (underlining added):
“Defendants argue that the accusation that Plaintiff’s work is fraudulent may not necessarily be taken as based in fact because the writers for the publication are tasked with and posed to view work critically and interpose (brutally) honest commentary. In this case, however, the evidence before the Court, at this stage, demonstrates something more and different that honest or even brutally honest commentary.” [at 14-15]
“Given the dictionary definition as well as the common readers’ thought about the use of these words (fraud and fraudulent) the Court finds that these statement taken in context must be viewed as more than honest commentary—particularly when investigations have found otherwise. Considering the numerous articles that characterize Plaintiff’s work as fraudulent, combined with the assertions of fraud and data manipulation, the CEI Defendants have essentially made conclusions based on facts.” [at 15]
The definition of “bogus” in the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, inter alia, is “not genuine . . . sham.” BOGUS, MERRIAM-WEBSTER: ONLINE DICTIONARY AND THESAURUS, http://www.merriam-webster.
“Having been investigated by almost one dozen bodies due to accusations of fraud, and none of those investigations having found Plaintiff’s work to be fraudulent, it must be concluded that the accusations are provably false. Reference to Plaintiff, as a fraud is a misstatement of fact.” [at 19]
“Plaintiff has been investigated several times and his work has been found to be accurate. In fact, some of these investigations have been due to the accusations made by the CEI Defendants. It follows that if anyone should be aware of the accuracy (or findings that the work of Plaintiff is sound), it would be the CEI Defendants. Thus, it is fair to say that the CEI Defendants continue to criticize Plaintiff due to a reckless disregard for truth. Criticism of Plaintiff’s work may be fair and he and his work may be put to the test. Where, however the CEI Defendants consistently claim that Plaintiff’s work is inaccurate (despite being proven as accurate) then there is a strong probability that the CEI Defendants disregarded the falsity of their statements and did so with reckless disregard.” [at 21]
The record demonstrates that the CEI Defendants have criticized Plaintiff harshly for years; some might say, the name calling, accusations and jeering have amounted to a witchhunt, particularly because the CEI Defendants appear to take any opportunity to question Plaintiff’s integrity and the accuracy of his work despite the numerous findings that Plaintiff’s work is sound. At this stage, the evidence before the Court does not amount to a showing of clear and convincing as to “actual malice,” however there is sufficient evidence to find that further discovery may uncover evidence of “actual malice.” It is therefore premature to make a determination as to whether the CEI Defendants did not act with “actual malice.” [at 21]
“There is sufficient evidence presented that is indicative of “actual malice.” The CEI Defendants have consistently accused Plaintiff of fraud and inaccurate theories, despite Plaintiff’s work having been investigated several times and found to be proper. The CEI Defendants’ persistence despite the EPA and other investigative bodies’ conclusion that Plaintiff’s work is accurate (or that there is no evidence of data manipulation) is equal to a blatant disregard for the falsity of their statements. Thus, given the evidence presented the Court finds that Plaintiff could prove “actual malice.”” [at 23]
Thursday, July 18, 2013
by John Abraham, Skeptical Science, July 15, 2013
I hate to talk about myself, so this first part will be short. A little biography is necessary to set the stage for this post. A few years ago, I heard well-known climate contrarian Christopher Monckton speak on human-caused climate change. Monckton has been a favorite hero of the anti-science movement and, for the rest of us, a source of amusement as he travels the world reciting basic scientific errors and misrepresenting his own credentials.
After hearing Monckton's lecture, I posted a detailed rebuttal online showcasing his mischaracterization of the science and his obvious and elementary errors. In response, my university and I received a 99-page complaint letter, which ended with a request to pay $110,000 to the United States Association of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. This was followed by attacks against me by Marc Morano, who was kind enough to publicly post my contact information on his website. Monckton went on to encourage listeners of the radical Alex Jones show to write to my university administration to "investigate" me.
What ever happened to that whole episode? Not much. A few hate messages that appear in my mailbox from time to time. They are easy to spot because they never have a return address and their speeling and punctuation,,, is just terrble! And has Monckton ever followed through with his promised? Nope… I am still waiting. This whole event, as a colleague told me, was the bite of a toothless Chihuahua. It helped that my University stood beside me and was not bullied by this sideshow.
My colleagues, however, have endured far worse attacks by the anti-science crowd. Take, for instance, Dr. Ben Santer and the attacks leveled against him in The Wall Street Journal. Or how about the numerous attacks against Dr. Michael Mann? He has been viciously attacked on blogs and in far right-wing media as his work on paleoclimate has been held up as the face of climate change.
But Dr. Mann has not only been attacked on blogs, television, and in print; he has been attacked in court. For instance, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli tried to force Dr. Mann to release private emails and other documents from his research work at the University of Virginia. He demanded correspondence between Dr. Mann and a number of other scientists in a style that echoed back to McCarthyism. Mr. Cuccinelli failed in his misguided attack. The total cost to the University of Virginia for this fishing expedition? Just $350,000. Now Mr. Cuccinelli is running to be the next governor of Virginia.
For Dr. Mann, the outcome is that he has wasted time and money fighting against these attacks. On the other hand, his science, which is perhaps the most scrutinized in the world's history, has emerged victorious. The "hockey-stick graph" is now one of the most trusted and widely recognized graphs in all of science. To his colleagues, Dr. Mann is a hero.
Dr. Mann aptly uses the phrase "Serengeti strategy" to describe this attack strategy. Isolate and run down individual scientists. By attacking and trying to discredit one scientist at a time, they are able to discredit all scientists by profession. And, if they cannot discredit the scientist – then just make up facts about them and put those facts online and in print.
What is concerning is how young, upcoming scientists will view this environment. People go into science because of a curiosity about the world, not because they want to fight endless FOIA requests or have lies told about them in the media.
Will the hostility that this environment presents dissuade our best and brightest from even entering science? I hope not, for their sake and the sake of all of us.
Another concern is the cost (financial and time) that defending against the attacks requires. To this end, my friend and colleague, Professor Scott Mandia, along with Joshua Wolfe, have founded the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund (CSLDF). CSLDF was established to let scientists conduct research without the threat of politically motivated attacks. Not only does this group raise money to help cover legal fees, they provide training materials to both young and seasoned scientists. CSLDF is a project of the non-profit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) so donations are tax-deductible. Perhaps the best description is from Professor Mandia himself, "The Climate Science Legal Defense Fund was established to make sure that legal actions are not viewed as an attack against one scientist or institution but as attacks against the scientific endeavor as a whole. Our goal is simple: let scientists conduct research without the threat of politically motivated attacks."
We really don't think this is the best environment for science, but when the issue is as polarizing as climate change, perhaps the present situation is inevitable. On the other hand, over the past few years scientists have learned that the Serengeti Strategy only works when the predators are able to isolate their prey from the larger herd. Scientists have learned that protection of one is protection of all. We have also learned that good science will always win in the end. When the history books are written, I'll sit down with my daughters and tell them the story. It has clowns, hockey sticks, and witches – a real thriller. Let's hope it ends with truth and an emerging plan to believe the real scientists and disregard their attackers. The history books are being written right now.
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
by Greg Laden, Greg Laden's Blog, June 19, 2013
Science is good at seeing things that you can’t really see. For example, science can provide an accurate three dimensional model of a critically important molecule even though no one has ever directly seen what this molecule looks like. That three-dimensional model of the molecule can be used to understand things such as (a) how life works and (b) how to address some important disease.
Science can measure the exact proportions of each of several elements that are invisible that make up the air. We can sense the air but we can’t see Nitrogen vs. Oxygen vs. CO2 in the air, while Science can. Science can ascertain the invisible and the unpalpable. The actions and effects of those elements in the air are critically important. Were it not for Science’s ability to “see” them we would understand very little about some very important things.
There is a neat device some biology teachers use to get this point across. It is called The Ob=Scertainer. It is a device that demands that a student make the leap from thinking that if you can’t see something you can’t “see” it, to understanding that we can “see” what we can’t “see” if we are just a little smart about it. Or more accurately, if something does not leap to full realization of your usual senses, it can’t be understood and no conclusions can be reached about it.
Before I describe that device, a small digression.
Years ago I was teaching a seminar in which we read a paper written by someone who would fit well into the modern “skeptics” community (I don’t mean science denialist here, but rather, regular skeptic) and by that I don’t mean in a good way, but rather, in the hyperskeptical sense. The paper was about a certain skeleton found at a certain site, a very important one. Everybody thought this skeleton was a burial, where a dead guy was put in the ground and covered over. The author argued that you could not say this. Every tiny bit of evidence that the skeleton was a burial was examined by the author and discounted. At the end there was not one stitch of evidence left uncriticized, unquestioned, in this paper. The students in the seminar all agreed that this set of bones was not a burial, and indeed, may not have even been a skeleton.
One example of the critique involved the measurement of the distance between bones that normally adjoin in the human body. In most cases the distances between articular surfaces was outside the range found in normal humans, suggesting that the “skeleton” may not be “articulated.” In my view, all of these arguments were irrelevant. The bones were all in approximately the right place, the individuals was in a fetal position, sort of, and although it was not clear that there was a hole dug (the nature of the excavation did not allow this) there was a scattering of stones on top of the bones, which were then in turn buried over 60,000 years or so of accumulation of sediment above the skeleton.
In other words, the skeleton was clearly a burial, and the students had all been talked out of thinking this by a hypercritical, almost post-modern attack on the original conception.
So, I did this. I told the students that I was going to buy a beer for everyone in the room except the one person who was under 21, and she would have a non-alcoholic beverage of her choice. But only under one condition. Everyone was to write on the index cards I was passing out whether or not they thought this skeleton was a burial (write “burial”) or not (write “not burial”), without anyone else seeing their card. If everyone had the same exact opinion, everyone got a drink. Otherwise, nobody got a drink.
The cards were distributed, stuff written on them, and collected. The decision was unanimous. When push came to shove, when something very important (a beer) was at stake, each student decided that the burial was a burial.
Because (a) it was a burial and (b) the scales had cleared from the eyes of the students.
Now, back to this device that biology teachers use sometimes.
The Ob-Scertainer.
It is a box with a certain shape inside. The space inside the box has various little walls or pegs or whatever inside the hollow area. Inside the box is a ball bearing that can move freely around in two dimensions. By tilting the box this way and that one can get a sense for what sorts of obstructions are inside the box, and attempt to draw a map of the interior space.
The students are in this way challenged to draw a two-dimensional model of something they can’t see using indirect (and admittedly fuzzy) evidence. It takes time, there are sometimes errors, but they manage.
Anne Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, and Rush Limbaugh are in a boat. They are in the middle of a deep, cold lake. If the boat sinks they will die of hyperthermia and their corpses will sink to the bottom. There is a device in the boat that will sink it instantly, or alternatively, propel the boat to the safety of the shoreline where there are three martinis waiting for them, but it all depends on all three of them correctly answering a question. Notice that this is different from the scenario above, where the students only had to all agree. The students in my seminar were in fact interested in the truth, while the three people in this boat in this lake are not. So getting it right is the thing.
The question is, “Is global warming real, human caused, and important, yes or no.”
They don’t know who is asking the question. It could be the Heritage Institute, it could be Michael Mann with his finger on a remote that operates the device. But they are told that the best available science will be used to determine if they are wrong or right.
They will all answer “yes.”
Scientists know that greenhouse gases, mainly CO2, are increasing in the atmosphere. They know that this increases the amount of sunlight that gets converted to heat, staying around on the Earth longer, as opposed to going into outer space. They know that this heat is distributed among several parts of the earth approximately as follows:
- Ocean 93.4%
- Atmosphere 2.3%
- Everything else 4.3%
Everything else includes the land surface of the earth and various ice sheets and so on.
Over the last several decades the overall temperature of the atmosphere, that 2.3% part of the equation, has gone up on average. Given any reasonable time period, i.e., 10 or 15 years, it really has never gone down, though it has failed to go up very much now and then. The overall trend is up.
However, we have really good measurements (for the last several decades) for the Atmosphere, and for the surface of (but not the deeper parts of) the Ocean. This means that when the heat goes up more than expected in the Atmosphere, which it has done now and then, we can guess that this involves less heat going into the Ocean or to those other things. Conversely, when the temperature goes up less in the atmosphere than expected, we can guess that the “missing” heat went into the Ocean or one of the other places heat might go. For example, the heat in the atmosphere has not gone up over the last few years as much as predicted by drawing a straight line covering the last few decades, but instead,
- Greenland ice cap has lost a lot of ice (which takes up heat).
- The Arctic sea has lost a lot of ice (which takes up heat).
- The few measurements in the deep ocean that we have show that it has gained a lot of heat.
It all makes sense and pretty much fits together, but there are many who claim that “global warming has plateaued” or that there is a “hiatus” in global warming.
See the extra heat going into the ocean? From Balmeseda, Trenberth and Kallen, 2013. Distinctive climate signals in reanalysis of global ocean heat content. Geophysical Research Letters, 40(1-6).
OK here’s an analogy. You make $50,000 a year. You pay out 10,000 in taxes. Then, suddenly, taxes go up and now you are paying $20,000 a year in taxes. Would you claim that $10,000 a year has disappeared into thin air? No. The money still exists. Its just not YOUR pocket (you are the Atmosphere), it is now in the Government’s pocket (the Government is the Ocean). And, in fact, since you are so small and the Government is so big, this shift in heat, er, money, will be noticed by you (the person) a lot, but very little by the big giant government.
People can see or feel when it is hot and cold, to a lesser extend they can know when there is drought, when there are major storms, when there are fires, and if they are paying attention they can observe when the sea rises up and eats part of New Jersey. But they can’t see when the surface of the earth, the ground, below your feet, goes up a half a degree, or when the ocean at depth gets a tiny bit warmer. They can see, on the news, the melting of the Arctic ice, but they may not “see” (as in “get”) the connection whereby Arctic ice melts and sucks energy out of the atmosphere that might otherwise have been a heat wave in Paramus.
But Science can see that!
There is not a hiatus in global warming. There is not a plateau in global warming. Global warming has not stopped. However, climate change (including and especially global warming) is one or two orders of magnitude more complex that, say, the plot of this book:
Global warming is slightly more complicated than this, despite the usual commentary by conservative columnists in The Economist, the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere, who apparently can’t find their belly buttons.
But you wouldn’t know that from what we often see in the press, among commenters who demand that global warming be simple, or at least, exploit the belief that it is simple to misconstrue the meaning of any evidence of complexity. Shame on them.
The Ob-Scertainer requires that a student admit that she or he can know something unseeable. Modern medicine does that too. As does every electronic device you use, pretty much. And so does understanding climate change.
We don’t have time any more to mess around with denialism, false balance, and willful ignorance. Get on board or get a D, or even an F.
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Graph of global temperatures from HERE.
Graph of global temperatures from HERE.
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