Mann vs. National Review and CEI pleadings
As promised, here are Michael Mann's (well his lawyers) responses to pleadings for dismissal by CEI and National Review
Opposition to National Review Motion to Dismiss
Opposition to CEI Motion to Dismiss
John Mashey and Deep Climate get a footnote
30. John R. Mashey, “Strange Scholarship in the Wegman Report (SSWR): A Façade for the Climate Anti-Campaign”, available http://deepclimate.org/2010/09/26/strange-scholarship-wegmanreport/.The motions to dismiss
For Failure to State a Claim
Under the DC Anti-SLAPP Act
The original complaint
UPDATE: To those coming in here is a clear explanation about why climate change can have catastrophic effects
If you only have to read one (they are repetitive and actually bunnies don't HAVE to read any) the CEI one has a bit more information
Posts
72 comments:
Some, not Bob for sure, might suspect the Mann lawyers forgot McShane and Wyner when they say, " Subsequently, every peer-reviewed studythat has examined McIntyre and McKitrick’s claims has found them to be inaccurate." When are bunnies going to stop defending charlatans.
Most legal pleadings are as dry as sawdust -- not this one.
One of my favorite excerpts (so far):
Rather than defendingthe falsity of their words, because they cannot, Defendantsattemptto hide behind the “opinion defense’’—the last bastion of the apprehended liar.
I suspect that the last time that a plaintiff's legal team had so much fun was Kitzmiller v. Dover.
This definitely rates a solid 4 out of 5 bags of popcorn on the popcorn-o-meter.
--caerbannog the popcorn-munching anonybunny
I don't like this bit at all:
"NRO then went on to state that its real purpose in publishing this article was
to call Dr. Mann’s research “bogus,” which is another distinction without a difference: “bogus”
being a synonym for fraud"
No it's not. Everybody agreed on that during the Simon Singh case, and a very good thing it was. Someone please tell the lawyer to get rid of this silliness.
"Bogus" isn't simply a synonym for "false."
Definition of bogus
adjective
not genuine or true (used in a disapproving manner when deception has been attempted)
from
http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/bogus
Note that Ebell and CEI go way back in recruiting attacks on climate science in general, and the hockey stick in particular. See Strange Scholarship..., pp.27-32.
that got most of it, although I have long wondered how Myron Ebell happened to invite McKitrick to speak for Congressional folks Oct 2001. A likely connection has appeared, as Christopher Essex apparently invited Fred Singer to speak in March 2001 at U Western Ontario, and Essex and McKitrick talk about this in the 2nd Edition of their book. Of course, Fred is always recruiting. So is Essex, with the Viscount himself in 2012.
So much for daring Mann to bring it on.
Any news on the Tim Ball suit?
CM
A new Hockey Stick: McShane and Wyner 2010
"Using our model, we calculate that there is a 36% posterior probability that 1998 was the warmest year over the past thousand. If we consider rolling decades, 1997-2006 is the warmest on record; our model gives an 80% chance that it was the warmest in the past thousand years."
Subesequently...
Simon Singh vs this case: bogus in and of itself does not imply intent to deceive others, fraud, however is a word where the intent to deceive is explicit in the normal usage.
Rib Smokin' bunny
When I look up synonyms for "bogus" online, I get:
Synonyms: artificial, dummy, ersatz, fake, false, fictitious, forged, fraudulent, imitation, not what it is cracked up to be, phony, pretended, pseudo, sham, simulated, spurious
You guys know Mann's lawyers looked it up before putting it in their response. And you can be sure the judge will do the same. There is no way you can interpret the word to mean anything else other than this.
I'm thinking, right about this time NRO realizes they have trouble on their hands. My hope is that this is a pivotal case and the judge awards very large damages, and that it will have wide reaching ramifications in how the climate debate moves forward.
Anonybunny #1 might not want to go there. Even Eduardo Zorita, no fan of Mann, wasn't too happy that McShane and Wyner incorrectly described MBH's methodology ('twas as if they got their information from blogs, not the actual paper). He also pointed out some further questionable issues in their own approach. As he nicely pointed out, they should have considered the vice versa of their advice to involve statisticians in paleoclimatological research...
Marco
"So much for daring Mann to bring it on."
um, the motion to dismiss is completely consistent with "bring it on". did you bother to read what nr said?
before mann filed, the nr said their speech was opinion.
rspung, resorting to an anti-SLAPP motion in this instance smacks of desperation.
John, just a reminder that the pottyness of peers these days is such that we need to start specifying which Viscount we mean. :)
"rspung, resorting to an anti-SLAPP motion in this instance smacks of desperation."
lol, that's a ridiculous thing to say.
the first thing any attorney looks at in a legal dispute is whether the law applies.
that hurdle has to be met before anything else even matters. and the ONLY reason why mann filed this case is because he didn't have to pay the legal fees.
his attorneys are being paid for by someone else. you knew that, right?
Neither here nor there on my point, rspung. Re payment, ultimately I expect it will be the defendants doing that.
as i said, the first thing any attorney looks at is whether the law applies.
and the first thing an attorney does before spending a lot of time and money researching a case that doesn't even meet the threshold of the law is to have it dismissed.
you must not have much experience with the law.
the first motion to be filed in every questionable case is always a motion for dismissal.
Anti-SLAPP isn't an ordinary motion for dismissal. In any case, my point wasn't that I was surprised that they filed it but that it's a loser.
Page 5:
"Defendants also make the lame assertion that they really did not intend to accuse Dr.Mann of fraud. They now claim that they were just having some “hurly burly,” good ol’boy,name-calling fun; and that, in any event, their readers (or at least their reasonable readers) did not construe their statements to be factual assertions of fraud. These arguments are not only factually unsupported, they are flatly contradicted by the evidence. Defendants’ own subsequentstatements make it clear that they intended to—and did—accuse Dr. Mann of fraud. In response to Dr. Mann’s request for a retraction, Defendant NRO published another article in which they said that they did not mean to accuse Dr. Mann of fraud in the “criminal” sense. We do not know exactly what that means, but whether they meant to accuse Dr. Mann of fraud in the “criminal sense,”or fraud in the “civil sense,”is meaningless in this case. Both allegations are defamatory per se. NRO then went on to state that its real purpose in publishing this article was to call Dr. Mann’s research “bogus,” which is another distinction without a difference: “bogus” being a synonym for fraud."
"before mann filed, the nr said their speech was opinion."
But Mann was accused of fraud, corruption and deceit, which can be seen as accusations of his breaking the law and not just opinions on the credibility of his work.
As I said in your last post on this topic, you would be wise to stop defending Mann. Just back away slowly, it's not that hard.
He does bad science, which you can plainly see if you investigate what he's done and know something about the field. It's not just the hard core deniers who doubt him now, it's (many) other scientists, especially the tree ring analysts.
That's why he has become increasingly critical of them when they disagree with his methods and conclusions. But with them, he doesn't have the easy out of accusing them of being "deniers" or "shills of the fossil fuel industry"--his standard tactic for "non-scientists". This would certainly sink his credibility with them instantly, so he therefore hides behind the excuse of "legitimate debate between scientists" in his comments at RealClimate.
Well, that's bullshit, as his recent exchange with an army of them responding to his Nature Geoscience piece shows. It's not legitimate scientific debate if you fail to examine and acknowledge the existing literature on the most fundamental of your claims, or report results favorable to your conclusion when you've only used a certain set of parameters that will do so, and not others, i.e. failing to carry out the fundamental scientific process of examining the sensitivity of your methods.
It is by no means certain that he is not in fact knowingly misrepresenting the full suite of available evidence on climatic changes over the last millennium. A simpler explanation however, is that he combines a lack of understanding on certain crucial analytical issues with an inability to admit mistakes, and a kind of paranoia. Pretty bad combination of traits for a scientist.
And you didn't answer my question about who it was who asked you to "comment" on the lawsuit issue.
Which leads me to presume it was Mann himself, which is another characteristic of his behavior--asking/expecting others to defend him to make it appear that he has more support than he actually does.
Did Anonymous Bossy Boots hire a ghost writer?
"By contrast, I would argue that one important source of strength and conviction among the opposition has been the perception of bad practice among the mainstream."
Such as, for example, arguing that volcanic explosions are not detected by tree rings, implying thereby that they are insensitive recorders of low temperatures, and in turn that temperatures inferred from tree rings may have been over-estimated in times past, from which one supposes to support one's arguments that current temperatures exceed any of the last millennium. And instead of examining one's underlying assumptions, then proceeding to find "supporting evidence" for such logic by use of climate and growth models whose outputs are entirely dependent on the assumptions embedded in the chosen set of parameters used.
Just one example.
"climate and growth models whose outputs are entirely dependent on the assumptions embedded in the chosen set of parameters used."
Name such a climate model. Thanks in advance.
Anonytroll,
You have a very unhealthy obsession with Mike Mann. Perhaps it is YOU who should back away--for the sake your own fragile mental health. Mike doesn't need defending. On the Nat. Geosciences article he is either right or wrong, and it is too early to say either way.
His '98 paper is now old news, but he does deserve credit for at least pointing the direction toward multi-proxy reconstructions, and I would point out that the subsequent reconstructions support the basis conclusions of his work--as do a variety of other techniques, from boreholes to speleothermal studies.
While you are obsessing on a paper that is now of only historical interest, the science has passed you by, and you are ever more inconsequential.
"Mike doesn't need defending"
Really? Then why did Wahl and Ammann feel the need to do so? And why did Gavin write the RealClimate piece regarding the Nature Geoscience letter, instead of Mann himself? And why did Mann respond to McIntyre and McKitrick at all? And I also know a few more things about him--quite a few actually--that you do not.
So let me rephrase that for you: "Mike doesn't need defending, for those of us who've bought into his storyline, because we've decided to overlook the problems with his science"
Bowers: Read the paper if you want to know which models he used. Obviously you haven't, so you're not going to understand anything about the problems with it.
Dilbert, do try to pay attention OK? I'm not the one posting articles about Mann and his lawsuits. And nobody, other than you, mentioned anything about his 1998 paper. As for the jury being out on the Nat Geoscience paper, there are 23 of the world's leading tree ring scientists, plus me, who disagree with you. If you'd like to know why, you can read the paper and the letter, which you apparently have not.
"Defendants also make the lame assertion that they really did not intend to accuse Dr.Mann of fraud. They now claim that they were just having some “hurly burly,”
As in burlesque , or are Hurly and Burly fig leaf brand names ?
Oh my, we've touched an anonytroll nerve! Gee are there only 23 dendrochronologists? Mann has raised some interesting questions. If he is wrong, so what? There are worse things than being wrong...obsessing over 15 year old papers, for one thing...
One can recover from being wrong. Being bitter and obsessive is fatal.
Anonymous, did you mean this Wahl and Ammann?: "Robustness of the Mann, Bradley, Hughes reconstruction
of Northern Hemisphere surface temperatures:
Examination of criticisms based on the nature and
processing of proxy climate evidence
Eugene R. Wahl · Caspar M. Ammann
Received: 11 May 2005 / Accepted: 1 March 2006 / Published online: 31 August 2007
C Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2007
Abstract The Mann et al. (1998) Northern Hemisphere annual temperature reconstruction
over 1400–1980 is examined in light of recent criticisms concerning the nature and processing of included climate proxy data. A systematic sequence of analyses is presented that
examine issues concerning the proxy evidence, utilizing both indirect analyses via exclusion
of proxies and processing steps subject to criticism, and direct analyses of principal component (PC) processing methods in question. Altogether new reconstructions over 1400–1980
are developed in both the indirect and direct analyses, which demonstrate that the Mann et
al. reconstruction is robust against the proxy-based criticisms addressed. In particular, reconstructed hemispheric temperatures are demonstrated to be largely unaffected by the use
or non-use of PCs to summarize proxy evidence from the data-rich North American region.
When proxy PCs are employed, neither the time period used to “center” the data before PC
calculation nor the way the PC calculations are performed significantly affects the results,
as long as the full extent of the climate information actually in the proxy data is represented
by the PC time series. Clear convergence of the resulting climate reconstructions is a strong
indicator for achieving this criterion."
Let me translate: Mann's results are basically correct, and teh auditors were doing it wrong.
As to why, the auditors got their klueless kvetching published in JGR. Twice.
Rib Smokin' bunny
"Mann has raised some interesting questions. If he is wrong, so what? There are worse things than being wrong..."
Youre right Dilbert, there are worse things than "being wrong" in science. I must've had a brain cramp to ever think differently.
For example, one is to not do a basic, undergraduate-level literature review before asserting a completely wrong premise and basing an entire study upon it. A second, as I already mentioned, is failing to analyze the sensitivity of one's models, to the parameters used. Another is expecting other people to cover for you instead of doing it yourself. A fourth is not accepting that 23 people more expert in the technical aspects of your analysis than you yourself are, think you've gotten some things very badly wrong, to the point that they don't know where to start in addressing them in a limited space. A fifth is in taking NSF grant money for such work and blowing off the problmes because it should "promote discussion". Yeah it will promote discussion all right, much of it unprintable.
But do tell more Dilbert this is interestgin. And try to get through your brain once again, that I'm not talking about the hockey stick in this conversation.
@ Anonymous Bossy Boots
You mean climate models used in MBH98?
One more point Dilbert. Do you think this was just any old set of 23 tree ring experts? Do you know who these people are? Do you know who Jan Esper is? Do you know who Ed Cook is? Keith Briffa? David Frank? Rosanne D'Arrigo? Eugene Vaganov? Rob Wilson?
Surely you're aware that Mann's tree ring expert on the 1998/99 papers, Malcolm Hughes, is one of the 23, right?
And do you know that there is another manuscript in the review process, by Esper et al, rebutting Mann's claims, and possibly a third in process.
No, you don't. You don't know any of that. You just know that you need to defend Mann, for some psychological reason that you yourself are not even aware of. He can't be wrong, it would hurt too much. He's one of your heros, it won't do for him to be wrong.
> I must've had a brain cramp to ever think differently.
This is both a simple statement and a rhetorical device.
***
> I'm not talking about the hockey stick in this conversation.
Of course not. Here are 141 words one could say about the Hockey Stick:
> Gee, let’s try to avoid drifting into a Climategate discussion, too. I’ll limit my response to the 141 words you just spent on the topic. First, they tried to get a journal editor fired for the sin of daring to publish papers that were full of intentional and unintentional errors. Second, everybody agrees that the “decline” caption was inadequate. Third, it did become way too personal for them…though I don’t know if I wouldn’t react the same way if I had discovered that our entire civilization was in danger and others were using dirty tricks to convince people that it wasn’t. My biggest complaint was their unwillingness to share data. Meanwhile, though, we have the PCMDI archive, where every model run from the IPCC is publicly available to download and analyze. So don’t tar and feather the entire discipline.
http://neverendingaudit.tumblr.com/post/39845081323
Notice NG's "tarring and feathering", which seems appropriate to designate what this conversation is all about.
I'm noticing lots of claims by the anonymous person without any actual links to, you know, evidence and stuff to back them up. Maybe in their ivory tower they have it all printed off and they can sit rubbing their hands together with glee contemplating how wrong Mann is, but they havn't even provided us with a photo of them doing so.
Not that it is actually the subject of this thread, but
The extra-tropical Northern Hemisphere temperature in the last
two millennia: reconstructions of low-frequency variability
B. Christiansen and F. C. Ljungqvist
Clim. Past, 8, 765–786, 2012
www.clim-past.net/8/765/2012/
doi:10.5194/cp-8-765-2012
certainly has a northern hemisphere MWP about 1000---1100 CE.
I see the penny has finally dropped and the cry for help is about to go out. Posing as Peter Gleick pretending to be Geoffrey from Rainbow, I was able to obtain an advance copy of this fundraiser appeal. "I think we're going to need a bigger boat" indeed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt2Zlj2U4T0
Anonymous clownshoe, If you were not utterly obsessed with Mann, you would have noticed that I am not defending him. I am not defending his latest work. I don't really care all that much. See, I have a life.
Yeah Willard, I notice NG's "tarring and feathering" comment...specifically that it's followed by the phrase "the entire discipline".
I'm not tarring and feathering the entire discipline. I'm talking about ONE person here, hombre. And that's because Eli felt the need to talk about that one person in two different posts. So get your facts and your analogies straight.
People can go on defending Mann if they like, up to them. And without question, they are going to do exactly that. But it might help if they actually knew something about the topics he studies.
guthrie,
What is it about the reference to the Nature Geoscience study, and the response by the group of 23 that I referred to, that you don't understand. Let me take a wild guess, you haven't read it either have you?
Yeah OK Dilbert, you're not defending Mann in between all the name-calling. You're just saying that "Mann has raised some interesting questions. If he is wrong, so what?"
Yeah, what the hell, it's just a little science, get it right, get it kinda wrong, whatever man. Just raise some interesting questions and it's all good!
Some people think otherwise. Get a fricking clue brother. And take a damn stand on something.
Anon Troll --- My 4:40 pm comment indicated a recent paper which is possibly an improvement over Mann's so-called hockey stick.
Science progresses.
It's interesting that the denialist rabble never went after e.g. Wally Broecker for having been wrong about a potential THC shutdown, a rather larger issue than the exact degree of climate variability in the late Holocene. There are dozens if not hundreds of similar examples of climate science findings that later on turned out to be significantly wrong.
Regarding the 23 dendros (and note how the framing of this above is so very similar to that of the German scientists against Einstein), whole fields of climate scientists are frequently wrong about important issues, a few recent examples being permafrost, sea ice and ice sheets. And what about the current dispute between Trenberth and Francis re the no-doubt-about-it-big-deal issue of Arctic sea ice destabilizing NH atmospheric circulation? Must one of them be necessarily consciously fabricating things?
So tell me, why does Mann get singled out?
Oh BTW, all the material you implied I and others here must not be familar with? I knew about everything you mentioned, and I'm sure that's true for many others here.
Steve Bloom --- Wally Broecker was too subtle for the denialists, unlike the so-called hockey stick.
The anonymous troller is rather demanding. Making people search for the evidence is a bit stupid, rather than just linking it themselves.
Besides, searching for nature geoscience and 23 dendrochronologists doesn't bring up anything particularly useful. Maybe you can be more, ummm, scientific? Just a paper title perhaps?
Anony-clownshoe,
Science deals just fine with "wrong". It corrects it, and that is for the elephants to fight out. I'll sit back and watch, as I am not an elephant in that venue.
However, as soon as it gets personal, it ceases being science. Do you honestly think that with your attitude toward Mann that you could objectively assess anything he wrote--up to and including his signature? Given your animus against him, why should your opinion carry any weight at all?
Mann has been much smarter than you in that regard--he really says little about his opponents, at least publicly. That is the only way to win in a quarrel in science--don't engage to the point where it is personal. That is why Mike Mann has been successful and you an utter failure.
guthrie,
The paper with 23 tree-ring researchers is K.J. Anchukaitis, P. Breitenmoser, K.R. Briffa, A. Buchwal, U. Büntgen, E.R. Cook, R.D. D'Arrigo, J. Esper, M.N. Evans, D. Frank, H. Grudd, B.E. Gunnarson, M.K. Hughes, A.V. Kirdyanov, C. Körner, P.J. Krusic, B. Luckman, T.M. Melvin, M.W. Salzer, A.V. Shashkin, C. Timmreck, E.A. Vaganov, and R.J.S. Wilson, "Tree rings and volcanic cooling", Nature Geoscience, vol. 5, pp. 836-837, 2012.
I can't get that journal, so I am just going to wait and see how it develops. So far anony-troll seems to think that its existence is a conclusive rebuttal.
Rib Smokin' bunny
anonytroll:"Yeah, what the hell, it's just a little science, get it right, get it kinda wrong, whatever man. Just raise some interesting questions and it's all good!"
Einstein was wrong about quantum mechanics, but had many interesting papers such as EPR paradox. Going the other way, Einstein realized that people should be looking a unified field theory, even though his attempts were hopeless. It is quite obvious that anonytroll is no Einstein.
Rib Smokin' bunny
'Tree rings and volcanic cooling' PDF, including Mann et al's response, courtesy of St. Andrew's.
Frolicsome bunny,
You say:
> I'm not tarring and feathering the entire discipline. I'm talking about ONE person here, hombre. And that's because Eli felt the need to talk about that one person in two different posts. So get your facts and your analogies straight.
There is no contradiction between talking about one Mann and tarring and feathering an entire discipline.
The need to talk about an entire discipline would contradict the very idea of tarring and feathering.
Also, please note that Eli did not talk about Mann's science, but about Mann's lawsuit. I'm sure you can find a way to coatrack YesButMike in every past, present, and future posts at Eli's. This might be a central conjecture to the auditing sciences.
***
There are two important to notice, folks.
The first is that any mention of "Mann" will attract comments like the ones of the frolicsome bunny. What we are witnessing is some kind of intellectual blackmail. Something like: "if you ever dare to mention Mike, I will place auditing brands and produces".
The second is that this serves to poison the well, or, as auditors would say, to make all the comment threads look the same.
Anon:
Let me get this straight.
Mann and buddies were sitting around drinking beer and eating nachos and found a problem to be examined. After further reflection and another 6 pack, they proposed a possible solution and put it out for scrutiny.
Another bunch os scientists , who needed a full case of beer said we don't think you are right but we don't have a better answer.
From this example of science working as desired, you conclude that a 14 year old paper using different criteria and examining a different subject was fraudulant.
Is this your reasoning?
You need to come up with some new putdowns Dilbert, variety is the spice of life, and besides you need to be able to keep up with the others here, including your ringleader.
"That is why Mike Mann has been successful and you an utter failure."
Oh yeah, he's been successful allright, just not in the way you think, as is evident from the worship-full comments here. You don't know him OK? So, have whatever opinion your psyche is capable of holding, it's irrelevant to the reality of the situation, and serves as nothing but an indicator of how people in this debate are fooled by his tactics. Oh yeah, he's smart, smart in the ways of gaming the system to fool people.
"I'll sit back and watch, as I am not an elephant in that venue."
Let me fix that for you Dilb:
"I'll sit back and watch, as I don't have the ability, nor the initiative, to understand the actual issues invovled."
Anonyclownshoe,
Shall we try ignorant foodtube? Or perhaps turd fondler? Imbecile is nice--good, solid, old-world ring to it, and it translates into Romance languages well.
I'm perfectly comfortable having some areas outside my realm of expertise. Were I not, I would not have developed an expertise of my own. The debate over dendrochronology is interesting at some level. I enjoy listening to what the experts say. And it is distinctly possible that Mann has overreached. Again, that is not a mortal sin in science. Bitterness and allowing quarrels to get personal are. They are the reason why you accomplish nothing...why your entire life is wasted.
Steve Bloom:
I'm not interested in whether you're "aware" of the issues or not, I'm interested in whether you *understand* them or not. So let me ask you a couple of questions in that regard.
1. What studies have addressed Mann's contention regarding tree rings' abilities to detect volcanically induced cooling events? And who are the authors on them?
2. What is the evidence for Mann's claim that tree rings will be misdated when a missing ring arises? Have dendrochronologists addressed this issue with techniques to account for it, and if so, what is it, and how long ago did they do that? And how many practicing tree ring experts would be unaware of the answers to those questions?
3. If it turned out to be true that a general insensitivity to cool temperatures in boreal/subalpine trees were real, what effect might that have on relative estimates of recent vs paleo temperatures, as estimated by tree rings, and whose career-long postulations on same would be supported the most? Think carefully about this one.
4. On what scientific basis would one look for the cause of a supposed observational result by linking together two models, both largely untested (and parameter-choice senstitive, as always), and then valuing the output from it above that obtained by exploring simpler and less uncertain explanations on which many people--but not you yourself--are experts?
Floor's yours, tear it up.
"Shall we try ignorant foodtube? Or perhaps turd fondler? Imbecile is nice..."
There you go Dilb, I knew you had it in you, you just weren't trying hard enough! God knows it wasn't from being out of recent practice.
"Also, please note that Eli did not talk about Mann's science, but about Mann's lawsuit."
The lawsuit document discusses his science Willard. In fact, it forms a principal basis for the accusations, as Eli himself noted in his piece. Nor do I feel the need to adhere to your rules on what can and can't be said about him, especially when you don't know anything about the science issues.
Unconcerned by anyone's interests but his, our frolicsome bunny now resorts to tough talk, as if his questioning had any scientific relevance.
"I can't get that journal, so I am just going to wait and see how it develops. So far anony-troll seems to think that its existence is a conclusive rebuttal."
Let me fix that one as well:
"So far, anony-troll *knows* that he is going to trust 23 of the world's leading tree ring experts in technical matters of tree growth response over somebody who apparently doesn't know even the first thing about it, yet who has a long history of grabbing extensive, publically archived data and slapping various suspect analyses on them anyway."
At the same time, we can listen to Eli complain that it is McIntyre who is a "rent seeker" because he uses other peoples' data in his analyses.
> [Mann's science] forms a principal basis for the accusations,
The first sentence of the complaint shows this to be false.
Our frolicsome bunny would owe us an explanation as to why he believes that fraud and rape are related to science, if he played by some fair rules of conversation, something we have no reason to surmise.
> as Eli himself noted in his piece
If our frolicsome bunny is referring to the one with the title **Mann vs. National Review and CEI pleadings**, this is false. A citation needed here too to have an idea what he has in mind.
"It's interesting that the denialist rabble never went after e.g. Wally Broecker for having been wrong about a potential THC shutdown, a rather larger issue than the exact degree of climate variability in the late Holocene. There are dozens if not hundreds of similar examples of climate science findings that later on turned out to be significantly wrong."
Well that's an encouraging red herring!
If there are that many mistakes happening over an extended period of time, it's going to be kind of hard for people to bring them all to light isn't it?
There are lots of crimes in the world and we can't solve them all, so why don't we just give up on attempts at solving any of them?
I think I understand now.
Because Mann may be wrong on his hypothesis about tree rings and volcanic events, it means he's a fraud, cheat, liar and all the other slurs against him.
This is rather an odd thing to do or say. Following on from this precedent we should be insulting prosecutors who fail to convict because they are obviously liars and charlatans. Or maybe students who don't pass exams should be insulted for failing to get the questions right.
Even more interestingly, it appears that the slurs against Mann were not, despite the insinuations of anonymous the hater, because he annoyed a powerful cabal of dendrochronologists. No, it was in fact because the people who used insulting language were obsessed by hockey sticks.
So basically anonymous the moron is saying that because the hockey stick graph isn't perfectly correct, although the basic conclusions are still solid, Mann is a fraud and deserves to be insulted from here to next year?
Tell us anonymous, where did you learn your ethics or science from?
> It's interesting that the denialist rabble never went after e.g. Wally Broecker for having been wrong about a potential THC shutdown [...]
Is that supposed to be a quote to back up the claim that Eli noted that Mann's lawsuit was about Mann's science?
> There are lots of crimes in the world and we can't solve them all, so why don't we just give up on attempts at solving any of them?
Is our frolicsome bunny really saying that Mann committed a crime, or is it just good ol' calumny?
Comparative lichurchur enthusiasts might appreciate the similarity between our frolicsome bunny the the epic scam of Don Don on Vaughan's death thread at Judy's:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/12/04/multidecadal-climate-to-within-a-millikelvin/
The avatar of Callicles seems alive and kicking at many places at almost the same time.
Data socialists
Anonymous - dumb but determined.
Rent-seeking might not be the most precise term.
Ecologists might argue that we need a term that expresses a more asymetric relationship.
Finance knights might come with terms like reverse takeover.
The auditor has some experience with reverse takeover:
> One public mineral exploration company with which I was involved underwent a reverse takeover and became an oil exploration company (when I ceased to be an officer and director of the company.)
http://climateaudit.org/blog-rules-and-road-map/
Anonytroll doesn't get the rent-seeking concept. The rent seekers want others to do their work for them, not use public data. As for suspect analyses, anonytroll's assertion appears to be based on something he read on the internet.
Anonytroll also thinks Mann knows nothing of technical matters in tree growth response, a prima facie silly argument, given the fact Mann has worked with tree ring experts for almost two decades.
As far as who is more likely to be right, "right" is rather complicated by the fact that there are several issues:
I can't see the Anchukaitis correspondence being their last word after Mann et als reply. Which is why I advocate - wait for it.
Rib Smokin' bunny
Sorry, frolicsome anonytroll, you don't get to evade my one question and then insist I address your subsequent ones first.
Just to note, the stance of denialists toward Mann has rather a lot in common with "we have always been at war with Eastasia."
Steve Bloom - especially since they seem to like AMO as an explanation for everything!
anonymous,
I fully admit to not being qualified to make a judgement on the rights and wrongs of Mann's paper about volcanoes and tree rings. Furthermore, given the credentials of the 23 scientists who are objecting to Mann's claims I think it entirely possible that they will be proved right on this question and Mann proved wrong, although I see no particular reason to believe that an anonymous blog commenter agreeing with them lends any extra weight to their arguments.
But the point is that whoever is right it will be determined through the normal scientific process, via the published literature - the best argument will win out and hopefully our understanding of the issue will be enhanced in the process. That's what "matters".
And let's say Mann is proved wrong. Does that mean his paper was published in bad faith, that his intentions were dishonest, that he was only interested in pushing an agenda? Of course not, there is no reason to believe that he does not honestly believe his paper is valid. But that's what those against whom he is taking legal action are accusing him of WRT his earlier work - don't you think there's a difference between that and just saying "Mann is wrong on this issue"? And that's why the ability of people here to understand the detailed technical issues relating to his recent paper (although I'm sure some of them do) is not really the point.
Ah, but you're forgetting, aadams, that Anonymous knows things about Mann that you don't. He doesn't tell us what these things are, of course, but he knows them. So we can forget all about this "advance of science" nonsense, with such a juicy ad hom dangled just out of reach.
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