It Must Be The Neighborhood

Ethon flew in from Colorado with news from one of the bunnies. It appears that the Vail Valley Daily had published a now defunct letter from one Dr. Martin Hertzberg, who appears to live thereabouts. The article which, as the saying goes is no longer to be found, must have been a doozy, because Mike Mann responded, and oh yeah, there are now no Hertzberg liver bits to be found with the smell of lawyer letter on fire filling the air

An individual named Martin Hertzberg did a grave disservice to your readers by making false and defamatory statements about me and my climate scientist colleagues in his recent commentary in your paper.

It's hard to imagine anyone packing more lies and distortions into a single commentary. Mr. Hertzberg uses libelous language in characterizing the so-called “hockey stick” -- work of my own published more than a decade ago showing that recent warming is unusual over at least the past 1,000 years -- as “fraudulent,” and claiming that it “it was fabricated from carefully selected tree-ring measurements with a phony computer program.”

These are just lies, regurgitation of dishonest smears that have been manufactured by fossil fuel industry-funded climate change deniers, and those who do their bidding by lying to the public about the science.

The highest scientific body in the nation, the National Academy of Sciences affirmed my research findings in an exhaustive independent review published in June 2006 (see e.g. “Science Panel Backs Study on Warming Climate,” New York Times, June 22, 2006, among many others).

Dozens of independent groups of scientists have independently reproduced and confirmed our findings, and more recent work by several groups shows that recent warmth is unusual over an even longer time frame.

Mr. Hertzberg then continues the smear by lying again about my work, claiming that “when those same tree-ring data actually showed a decline in temperature for the past several decades, Mann and his co-authors simply ‘hid the decline' by grafting direct measurements (inadequately corrected for the urban heat island and other effects) to his flat tree-ring line.”

That is, once again, a string of lies tied together. This statement falsely equates my work, which was not based on tree rings but rather a diverse network of different types of “proxy” climate data, with tree-ring work by an entirely different scientist, Keith Briffa of the University of East Anglia.

And it is is a highly dishonest characterization of his Briffa's work, as well, since the “decline” was a well-known problem with those particular data that Briffa was the first to describe and attempt to deal with, in the scientific literature.

Mr. Hertzberg's lies are pernicious. Their intent appears to be to do convince you that there is no harm in our continued unfettered release of carbon into the atmosphere.

But whom, whom, the little ones ask is Martin Hertzberg. Well, Marty is one of the authors in the Judith Curry book club but one whom even Madam Uncertainty has some doubts.

As with Part I, I am not going to write a review here. But this one is much simpler than Claes Johnson’s chapter, the only equations are algebraic. And it has a painful misunderstanding of Kirchoff’s Law. But it was published, albeit in Energy & Environment, a journal that is quite erratic editorially (this isn’t to say that the don’t sometimes publish worthwhile papers). So lets give it some attention.

I dismissed reviewing Hertzberg’s chapter in the Dragon book, entitled “History of Encounters with the Sky Dragon.” The chapter stars with a rambling personal history of his encounters, with ample “fear mongering hysteria” etc. It goes on for 30 pages or so, no science.

Moderation note: this is a technical thread, moderated for relevance. Make your general comments on the Part III thread.

You can read the thread for giggles, and even Hertzberg's ramble, and he pops up occasionally at Curry's and elsewhere, but the bottom line is that he does not realize (or he does and won't admit it) that emissivity is a function of wavelength and has not very damn much to do with reflectivity. From sad experience with doctoral rejectionists (and Hertzberg has one, he has even published early on with Donald Rapp, how is that for a circle of self satisfied jerks) this knowledge appears to decline with age, and maybe Eli will go that way in a couple of years. If so, shoot him.

See also caerbannog