Monday, March 17, 2014

All of a Sudden the World Famous Attorney May Realize He Is In Over His Head


UPDATE:  Rick Piltz has posted the motion over at Climate Science Watch

Eli pretty much has gone into popcorn mode on Mann vs. Steyn, kind of enjoying the thrashing about of the bunnies favorite pro se litigant.  It is a bit cruel watching someone demonstrate how unclear on the concept he is as Mark Steyn, but what the hey.  OK, now and then Eli throws a firecracker into the various on line clown shows, but really, nothing much has happened and won't until the other defendants, CEI, Simberg (but Eli repeats himself) and National Review and Mann and the judge seriously get to discovery.  That is not to say that several have not been jumping up and down in glee at how Steyn in his counter complaint has put it to the judge and Mann. 

Well, never let it be said that Michael Mann and his lawyers, Williams, Fontaine,  Reilly and Grimm want to leave everyone sitting on the couch filling out their NCAA bracket.  Today they filed their own motion to dismiss Steyn's counterclaims, and oh yes, by the way, they asked for costs and fees under the DC Anti-SLAPP Statute.
Finally, this Court should award Mann his costs and attorneys’ fees in responding to Steyn’s counterclaims as provided in the Anti-SLAPP Act. Steyn’s counterclaims lack any merit whatsoever, and his assertion of these claims in the face of this Court’s previous rulings is yet another manifestation of his disdain for this Court and its processes. Shortly before this Court denied the defendants’ motions to dismiss the amended complaint, Steyn filed a motion to vacate the Court’s July 19 orders—which was nothing other than an extended diatribe against this Court, accusing it of “improper”, “grotesque”, and “zombie-like” behavior. See Mot. to Vacate Order, dated January 21, 2014 at ¶ 8, 10, 12. This conduct should not be sanctioned, and attorneys’ fees should be awarded
Eli and the bunnies have quite enjoyed Steyn's full bore crazy act.  Almost as good as Richard Tol on Frank Ackerman, but there are other styles and Mann's lawyers prefer the drier way.  The anti-SLAPP statute applies only to issues being of public interest and, well what do you know
Mann can also make a prima facie showing under the Anti-SLAPP Act because Steyn is undoubtedly a public figure. The Anti-SLAPP Act defines an “issue of public interest” to include “an issue related to health or safety; environmental, economic, or community well-being” or “a public figure”. D.C. Code § 16-5501(3). There can be no question that Steyn should be deemed a public figure under the Anti-SLAPP Act. Steyn’s Counterclaims essentially concede the point, providing this Court with a litany of his public activities: 
  • Steyn says that he is a self-described “popular writer and columnist on matters of public interest.” 
  • Steyn says that he is the author of two “international bestselling books.” 
  • Steyn says that he has been “published over the years by the leading newspapers and magazines throughout the English-speaking world, including The Wall Street Journal, The Times of London, The National Post of Canada, The Australian, The Irish Times, The Jerusalem Post, The Spectator, Maclean’s, and The Atlantic Monthly.” 
  • Steyn says that he is a “human rights activist whose efforts on behalf of freedom of speech have been recognized by the Canadian Committee for World Press Freedom, by the Danish Free Press Society, and by the repeal in 2013 of Canada’s Section 13 censorship law.”
Depending on the judge's need to get control of Mr. Steyn, this could indeed be an interesting development.  Eli must go have some fun.


181 comments:

  1. Did Eli happen to see the report on major newspapers joining the lawsuit on the side of Steyn.

    Apparently the news business relies on prompt docile cooperation by universities and other public agencies to comply with FOIA law, and they are willing to go to court to insure that happens.

    I would think that would make for a sad day at the bunny ranch, but here you are celebrating.

    Maybe Eli just hasn't heard the news yet.

    Here's a link with a clue for u.

    http://www.cjr.org/the_observatory/michael_mann_versus_the_press.php?page=all

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  2. papertiger needs to work on his or her reading comprehension.

    No newspapers are "joining the lawsuit on the side of Steyn". The Columbia Review of Journalism article is about a different lawsuit not involving Steyn. The news organizations have become involved as 'friends of the court,' essentially interested third parties submitting a brief, in this case one arguing for a broad interpretation of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act.

    A fairly obvious outcome of this may be that, to avoid harassing and time-wasting FOI searches, researchers who are not legally bound to use official employer-provided email systems may well decide to use personal email accounts for much of their correspondence in future.

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  3. The amicus brief papertiger mentions also argues in favor of a "deliberative process" exemption for documents that are interim documents/internal communications used to develop an idea. See the brief at p. 13.

    I'm familiar with deliberative process exemptions, and they should work to cut down on the burden these requests have.

    Regardless though, these issues are technical aspects of Virginia
    FOIA law, not part of the grander issue of denialists outraged and not being able to defame people.

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  4. Eli, do you have a pdf of the just-filed motion to dismiss Steyn's counterclaims. Can you link or post it to Scribd?

    Also the news orgs' brief in the UVA case was filed in November and reported at the time

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  5. How can Mann now invoke SLAPP?

    And how exactly are they arguing that Steyn's complaint is intended to inhibit public participation?

    Whining that he is being mean to the guy who sued him in the first place or I sufficiently cowed by a judge who couldn't even tell the defendants apart doesn't work.

    Steyn is running up their legal bills and clearly happy to spend the next couple of years litigating this if need be. In fact Steyn seems to be enjoying this now, is Mann?

    Pretty funny calling people denialists with iimplied comparison to Holocaust deniers and then accusing them of defamation...

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  6. Pretty funny how Anonymous with one fell swoop denies AIDS denialists, evolution denialists, climate science denialists and all the other denialists in the world.

    Time for all the denialists of the world to rise up and protest denialists who deny the majority of denialists!

    ReplyDelete
  7. John Mashey18/3/14 2:25 AM

    Sou:
    But why would one ever read anything posted by Anonymous, as they either cannot read Eli's request or are sufficiently anti-social to ignore it and waste people's time.
    (you may recall my note a HotWhopper.)

    I simply suggest: do not ever read or respond to any comment by Anonymous.

    ReplyDelete
  8. let's hear from an attorney who is experienced in Anti-Slapp litigation:

    http://faithhopeandcharity.blogspot.com/2014/03/mann-v-steyn-attack-on-free-speech.html

    "...The second issue one should understand is Anti-Slapp law. I have personal experience with this one ,having been the victim of a SLAPP suit and having been awarded the somewhat modest sum of $5,000 in attorney fees and costs for having to go to the trouble of getting it thrown out.

    'So a recap. What Judge Weisberg should have done in writing his decision was address the following questions in the following order. First, is this a case arising from an act in furtherance of the right of advocacy on issues of public interest? If the answer to the first question is yes, he should have proceeded to the second question, has the plaintiff (Michael Mann) demonstrated that his claim is likely to succeed on the merits. Proving that your claim is likely to succeed on the merits is a question of both fact and law. Questions of fact are decided based on evidence. Such evidence can be submitted in the form of sworn declarations as CBS did in the case I described above.

    'Judge Weisberg, in his decision denying Steyn’s Anti-Slapp motion, based his conclusions entirely on the allegations of the complaint. You can read Judge Weisberg’s order here. No evidence was cited in his decision showing that the allegations of the complaint were true other than a reference to the fact that many people agree with Michael Mann about global warning. None. He did not even address the intent issue which is critical in a defamation claim against a public figure. He did not decide whether Michael Mann is a public figure. He did not decide whether Michael Mann had any evidence to support his claim that Steyn acted with reckless disregard for the truth.

    'What he did was a major error, in my view. He decided the motion as if it were a motion to dismiss for failure to state a cause of action. He stated explicitly in his order that he was assuming that all of the facts alleged by the plaintiff were true. He said "Viewing the alleged facts in the light most favorable to plaintiff, as the court must on a motion to dismiss, a reasonable jury is likely to find the statement that Dr. Mann "molested and tortured data" was false, was published with knowledge of its falsity or reckless disregard of whether it was false or not, and is actionable as a matter of law irrespective of special harm." emphasis added. He mistook an Anti-Slapp motion to dismiss for an ordinary motion to dismiss.

    'That is a basic and egregious error. If Anti-Slapp motions are judged on the same basis as ordinary motions to dismiss, what is the point of having an Anti-Slapp statute?"


    it is important to remember that Weisberg's order dismissing the Anti-Slapp motion is being appealed. It looks like there's a very good chance it could get overturned.

    ...which is unfortunate, because this case really needs a thorough discovery phase, to resolve all the issues of mann's ALLEGED (see that? I threw all you mann sycophants a bone) dishonesty and fraud.

    I want to see this case go all the way through trial. I want to see the controversy of the hockey stick resolved once and for all.

    ReplyDelete
  9. "A fairly obvious outcome of this may be that, to avoid harassing and time-wasting FOI searches, researchers who are not legally bound to use official employer-provided email systems may well decide to use personal email accounts for much of their correspondence in future."

    I suspect that this already happens. Scientists are a quick-to-learn bunch.


    "I want to see this case go all the way through trial. I want to see the controversy of the hockey stick resolved once and for all."

    This might be the first thing that rspung has said, with which I concur - although from a completely opposite motivation I suspect.

    I've been hoping for years that a denialist would try in court the climatology of global warming. This would be a courtroom drama worth watching.

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  10. Steyn has become a nice crank magnet for our host. He could get more carrots with a bit of advertisement. For example ads for serious lawyer offices :]

    Bratisla

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  11. @ David Sanger: Steyn has posted a copy of Mann's motions on his website. I hope you don't mind that I won't link to it on the principle of depriving him of casual page hits.

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  12. Interesting that the lawyer whose blog rspung links to writes:

    "It can be oral (slander) or written (defamation)"

    In fact, as even many non-lawyers will know, defamation comprises spoken (slander) and written (libel) forms.

    An odd slip for an experienced litigator.

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  13. Denial of a motion to dismiss isn't immediately appealable, but denial of an anti-SLAPP motion is, so there's an immediate difference.

    I haven't seen anything indicating that defendants submitted evidentiary affidavits along with their motion that the judge refused to consider. So if there was an error (and I'm not sure about that) then that error would be the defendant's fault, and not subject to appeal.

    Regarding use of private email for official business - in California it's still subject to the California version of FOIA, and it may also be the same elsewhere.

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  14. Hmmm, that was me at 18/3/14 4:13 AM.

    Not sure why my name didn't stick - I typed it in.

    ReplyDelete
  15. "I've been hoping for years that a denialist would try in court the climatology of global warming."

    that's the biggest misunderstanding of this case and it has been the cause of 99% of the vitriol between the pro-mann and anti-mann crowd.

    mann does NOT equal agw. the hockey stick does NOT prove or disprove agw. if mann is exposed as a bad actor who was dishonest and corrupt, it should have zero effect of the concept of agw.

    agw can stand on its own easily, if the science is there, without any contribution from mann. that's why I am so puzzled at the fanatical backing of mann from commenters on this site (and other sites). if he's flawed, you guys should be as disgusted with him as us skeptics. after all, he gave a bad face to the work you're doing. throwing him under the bus would not weaken the agw theory at all. in fact, it has the potential to strengthen it, assuming the rest of the evidence is valid.

    mann's tactics have been poisonous to the level of discussion between the two sides of the agw discussion. he is now insulting and maligning several scientists who don't necessarily disagree with agw, simply because they had the balls to admit and agree with the valid criticism of his work.

    why are you defending a sinking ship? cut him loose!

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  16. @magma thanks . Interesting reading

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  17. I want to see the controversy of the hockey stick resolved once and for all.

    That's what creationists said before the Dover trial - they wanted to get "evolution on the stand" etc. They lost, but they are still out there building museums and wittering about "teaching the controversy".

    A dozen or so investigations have shown Mann has no case to answer, but his detractors are still muttering in corners. No judicial verdict will possibly dent their prejudice, to them there is only one possible result that will meet their approval.

    And, for the nth time, the reality of climate change does not depend on the hockey stick. That is denier myth. Nor did the Dred Scott verdict make slavery right. Science is decided by scientists, not lawyers.

    Toby

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    Replies
    1. Very few "deniers" are arguing against climate change. Most of us are merely skeptical of the catastrophic, fix-the-world-NAOW aspect of it. Creatures like Mann and his hockey stick merely muddy the waters on the actual issues.

      Delete
  18. "mann does NOT equal agw. the hockey stick does NOT prove or disprove agw. if mann is exposed as a bad actor who was dishonest and corrupt, it should have zero effect of the concept of agw."

    That's not how the folks who get paid to prevent AGW risks from being translated into policy that negatively influences their paymasters' bottom line (or white middle-aged male "free" market fundamentalism).

    These paid professionals and their band of useful idiots know they can't wipe AGW risks off the table (they have already been forced to admit that it's warming and that human activities probably have something to do with it), and so they resort to the thriteenth rule from the Rules for Radicals:

    Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

    They picked Mann and several others as a proxy, to confuse the public by stimulating conspiracy theories with regards to AGW. Like you said, the science isn't influenced a bit by the whole manufactured hockey stick controversy. So why would they keep at it for so long?

    Because they are dishonest and have no qualms about rendering someone's life miserable, as long as it serves their goals. It's despicable, really, and I hope everyone involved gets what they deserve.

    "why are you defending a sinking ship? cut him loose! "

    Why are you supporting a propaganda operation? The risks are too high. Stop it!

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  19. "A dozen or so investigations have shown Mann has no case to answer"

    that is not true. most of the investigations mann cites didn't even focus on his work. most of the rest of them focused on his involvement with climategate but not the hockey stick.

    one investigation conducted by the nas focused on his hockey stick and it ripped it apart. the details are here:

    http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2011/03/there-he-goes-again-mann-claims-his.html

    The NAS agreed with the M&M assertion that the hockey stick had no statistical significance, and was no more informative about the distant past than a table of random numbers. The NAS found that Mann's methods had no validation (CE) skill significantly different from zero.

    The NAS panel agreed that the hockey stick relied for its shape on the inclusion of a small set of invalid proxy data (called bristlecone, or “strip-bark” records). If they are removed, the conclusion that the 20th century is unusually warm compared to the pre-1450 interval is reversed. The NAS panel said Mann’s results are “strongly dependent” on the strip-bark data (pp. 106-107), and they went further, warning that strip-bark data should not be used in this type of research (p. 50).

    The NAS said "Mann et al. used a type of principal component analysis that tends to bias the shape of the reconstructions", i.e. produce hockey sticks from baseball statistics, telephone book numbers, and monte carlo random numbers.

    The NAS said Mann downplayed the "uncertainties of the published reconstructions".

    Gerald North, the chairman of the NAS panel, agreed with a report chaired by Edward Wegman that totally destroyed the credibility of the ‘hockey stick’ and devastatingly ripped apart Mann’s methodology as ‘bad mathematics’.

    In addition, Dr. Bloomfield, Head of the Royal Statistical Society and Mr. Wallace of the American Statistical Association, both agreed with Wegman and the NAS report.

    As you can see, you are completely wrong about mann's "multiple exonerations".

    "And, for the nth time, the reality of climate change does not depend on the hockey stick"

    this is exactly what I just said in the post above yours, which makes your defense of an obvious fraud even more strange.

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  20. Looked around this anonymous attorney's web sites. It's wingnut all the way down. I'd say she's entirely detached from reality, except that she does seem to have had the good sense to abandon her active Palin for President advocacy. As for being "experienced" in anti-SLAPP, involvement in a single case isn't a basis for such a claim.

    But of course there is no evidence that will persuade a stool pigeon like rspung to change views.

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  21. Another post of slavishly regurgitated propaganda. If AGW risks are real, then why do you keep doing this?

    Edward Wegman's credibility is practically zero, as the report he custom-made for BP Barton was full of plagiarism and an uncritical copy of McKittrick and McIntyre's nitpicking fixations. And no, the NAS report didn't agree like you said it agreed. Reality is much more nuanced than fantasy.

    Despite alleged statistical flaws Mann's work was confirmed by subsequent studies that used different methods. How is this possible if it all just a fraud? And why keep harping about this after over 15 years? Especially if climate science is robust, and thus AGW could have serious consequences?

    Stop supporting this propaganda operation. Unless you're paid for it, of course.

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  22. "But of course there is no evidence that will persuade a stool pigeon like rspung to change views."

    fuck you, asshole. who she backs for president, city council or dog catcher has nothing to do with her legal education and experience. she won an anti-slap case. how many have you won?

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  23. "Edward Wegman's credibility is practically zero, as the report he custom-made for BP Barton was full of plagiarism"

    lol, there was no plagiarism in Wegman's report. the plagiarism complaint was about a different project and had no merit, as it was found to have originated with someone else, not Wegman.

    "And no, the NAS report didn't agree like you said it agreed."

    yes it did. prove me wrong with exact quotations from the report or shut up.

    you are the one with no credibility.

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  24. "lol, there was no plagiarism in Wegman's report."

    Thanks for confirming you're not serious, even though you might think you are.

    Good luck with supporting this propaganda operation, helping spread lies, and thus maximizing AGW's potential consequences.

    I'm done feeding this troll.

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  25. Creatures like Mann and his hockey stick merely muddy the waters on the actual issues.

    Reality is like that. Maybe some good Gaelic chants will help you make it all go away! It could work!

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  26. "agw can stand on its own easily, if the science is there, without any contribution from mann. that's why I am so puzzled at the fanatical backing of mann from commenters on this site (and other sites). if he's flawed, you guys should be as disgusted with him as us skeptics."

    How would that work? Professor Mann's work is well known and his reputation is excellent, and deservedly so. This is yet another denialist tactics, to breathlessly arrive on the scene as though for the first time, make a proclamation of some kind, something long ago set aside, debunked, or proven absurd. The hope is some passerby will be so naive as to take it seriously, like using the world's most unpalatable lure to catch some big dumb fish.

    You'll have better linux pick with actual fishing, why not go and try that?

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  27. Very few "deniers" are arguing against climate change.

    If this were really true, if they weren't arguing against climate change, then they wouldn't be interested in the controversy that paid lobbyists are trying to manufacture around their target Mann.

    The lobbyist's idea is that if they can create the illusion that Mann somehow behaved in a scientifically fraudulent way, then the whole AGW house of cards comes tumbling down.

    Never mind the tens of thousands of other scientists involved in climate science, never mind all the lines of evidence besides palaeclimatology (that has confirmed that recent warming is unprecedented since the Holocene Climatic Optimum), never mind the melting of glaciers and sea ice.

    It's very simple. If you let yourself be suck(er)ed into this tactical fixation on Mann, it's because you're actually really arguing against AGW, even if you say you're not. You think that the risk that AGW could have serious consequences is zero. And therefore the witch hunt on Mann, that has been on now for 10 years, is justified.

    Don't lie to people and/or yourself. And don't spread lies for free, while the people inventing the lies (Horner, Morano, Watts, Singer, Idso, etc., etc.), are getting amply rewarded.

    ReplyDelete
  28. rspung said: ...... [oh whatever drivel he managed this time] .....

    Note - idioti like rspung always give away the game with their links. Invariably they link to denialist sites. They have to take their bullet points prepackaged because they can't be bothered to actually read the originals and think for themselves.

    Here's a link to the full NAS/NRC/North Report: Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years

    Likewise, if you want to read what Gerald North actually had to say about the subject, why not read a Q&A he had on the Chronicle of Higher Education website shortly after the report was issued.

    Among the questions and answers were these two:

    Question from Dick Schneider, Wake Forest University:
    I am not a scientist. I teach law. I'm wondering whether the technical objections to the hockey stick really affect the ultimate conclusions with respect to U.S. policy. That is, are the objections substantial enough to give comfort to those who either deny or minimize the likelihood of anthropogenically-driven climate change?

    Gerald North:
    The minor technical objections serve as a weapon for those special interests who want to delay any action on GW. In politics it is not what is true that matters, but rather what is perceived to be true by the broader public. Most scientists are not 'lawyers' representing a client. They are not accustomed to these kinds of tactics and do not often do a good job with them. But many of our representatives and their staffs are very skilled in that position of serving a client.

    Question from Joel McDade, bystander:
    Greetings Dr. North: I am curious what you thought of the primary part of the Wegman Report, that dealing with the statistical issues in Mann, et al. Specifically, the statement (or similar), "Incorrect mathematics + correct result = bad science." I must say that the NAS Report appeared, to me, to find fault with the Mann methodology but then went on to seemingly endorse the result. The later was the media's take, anyway. TIA

    Gerald North:
    There is a long history of making an inference from data using pretty crude methods and coming up with the right answer. Most of the great discoveries have been made this way. The Mann et al., results were not 'wrong' and the science was not 'bad'. They simply made choices in their analysis which were not precisely the ones we (in hindsight) might have made. It turns out that their choices led them to essentially the right answer (at least as compared with later studies which used perhaps better choices).

    Got that rspung?

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  29. I knew that rspung was lying, but couldn't remember the facts, and didn't want to invest the time to find them again. Thanks for making the effort, Kevin O'Neill!

    rspung, you could thank Kevin as well, and apologize for inadvertently having spread disinformation.

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  30. When ever Eli or Brian posts an update on Mann vs Steyn you can always count on rspung to get all bent out of shape, swear at someone or other, and drool foam and spittle all over himself as he rants incoherently.

    And sure enough....

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  31. Basically, rsprung has been eating from the denier shit trough and whatever he regurgitates will be more of the same with added wide-eyed gullibility provided by rsprung.

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  32. Rspung must have made the Dean's List at one of the institutions celebrated by The Chronicle Of Lower Education

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  33. Thank you Kevin, Eli managed to miss the CHR interview, but it is very consistent with what North has said int he past.

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  34. Thanks to climatewatch for bringing the motion to dismiss.
    Now I let other bunnies compare Steyn's and Mann attorney's documents. It is ... quite enlightening, even for a layman.

    and excesian obviously has the same thoughts I had. Glad to see I'm not alone :]

    bratisla

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  35. The problem with urban kip dear Russell, is not what it tastes like but what it tasted before you tasted it.

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  36. John Mashey18/3/14 10:32 PM

    People may have forgotten how awful it was, but FOIA Facts series sunmarized the mess, including fact that Wegman claimed the WR was pro bono, but he used $ from an unconnected Army Research Office grant and Said $ from an NIAAA alcoholism postdoc. Attached there is:
    http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/STRANGE.SCHOLARSHIP.V1.02.pdf
    Plus appendices added later.

    Pp42-43 points at talk by Gerry North, in which he shreds the WR.
    Pp49-63 collects various comments, see especially Grace Wahba's and Noel Cressie's ...

    Of course, more came to light later, mostly written in the FOIA Facts series, although not all.

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  37. I have to say whenever I read comments like those from @rspung I am duly skeptical and right away seek to go to the source.

    I wonder, Mr. Spung, if you ever read the NAS report or if you are simply gullible and taking someone else's online comments without checking them out for yourself.

    Finding the NAS report was easy and a few searches .

    Looking over the report I can see right away that it simply does not reach the conclusions you think (or have read) that it does

    "As part of their statistical methods, Mann et al. used a type of principal component analysis that tends to bias the shape of the reconstructions...In practice, this method, though not recommended, does not appear to unduly influence reconstructions of hemispheric mean temperature; reconstructions performed without using principal component analysis are qualitatively similar to the original curves presented by Mann et al. (Crowley and Lowery 2000, Huybers 2005, D’Arrigo et al. 2006, Hegerl et al. 2006, Wahl and Ammann in press)."

    "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 pro- nounced changes in a variety of local proxy indicators, such as melting on ice caps and the retreat of glaciers around the world, which in many cases appear to be unprecedented during at least the last 2,000 years."

    In fact, @rspung, I can only conclude you've been "had". You really should check your sources before jumping to conclusions.

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  38. I said:

    "I've been hoping for years that a denialist would try in court the climatology of global warming."

    and rspung said:

    "that's the biggest misunderstanding of this case and it has been the cause of 99% of the vitriol between the pro-mann and anti-mann crowd."

    Now, I'm not saying that rspung misunderstood my point, but if he thinks that I believe that Mann vs. Steyn is about the validity of climatology, he should revist my post, and especially the bit where I said:

    "This would be a courtroom drama worth watching."

    with an emphasis on "would" - as in I don't ascribe a trial of climatology to the current suit.

    The commenter rspung seems to revel in straw men.

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  39. Having read the bottom half of thie comments to date I have to ask - rspung, did Mann run over your poodle?

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  40. Eli, has your last comment flown the coop from the March 18 thread?

    Though I would not touch a hair on the head of a Central Park hare, the Cambridge turkeys look tempting.

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  41. from the nas report:

    (p. 52) Further evidence comes from a recent review of data for mature trees in four climatic zones, which concluded that pine growth at the treeline is limited by factors other than carbon (Körner 2003). While “strip-bark” samples should be avoided for temperature reconstructions, attention should also be paid to the confounding effects of anthropogenic nitrogen deposition (Vitousek et al. 1997), since the nutrient conditions of the soil determine wood growth response to increased atmospheric CO2 (Kostiainen et al. 2004).

    (p. 130) Based on the analyses presented in the original papers by Mann et al. and this
    newer supporting evidence, the committee finds it plausible that the Northern Hemisphere was warmer during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period over the preceding millennium. The substantial uncertainties currently present in the quantitative assessment of large-scale surface temperature changes
    prior to about A.D. 1600 lower our confidence in this conclusion compared to the high level of confidence we place in the Little Ice Age cooling and 20th century warming. Even less confidence can be placed in the original conclusions by Mann et al. (1999)
    that “the 1990s are likely the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, in at least
    a millennium” because the uncertainties inherent in temperature reconstructions for
    individual years and decades are larger than those for longer time periods, and because not all of the available proxies record temperature information on such short timescales.


    (p. 95) An ideal validation procedure would measure skill at different timescales, or in different frequency bands using wavelet or power spectrum calculations. Unfortunately, the
    paucity of validation data places severe limits on their sensitivity. For instance, a focus
    on variations of decadal or longer timescales with the 45 years of validation data used
    by Mann et al. (1998) would give statistics with just (2 × 45 ÷ 10) = 9 degrees of freedom, too few to adequately quantify skill.

    with regards to Russell, fuck you. I graduated from the highest ranked undergraduate engineering school in America.

    from the CHE Q&A:

    Gerald North: The strip-bark forms in the bristlecones do seem to be influenced by the recent rise in CO2 and are therefore not suitable for use in the reconstructions over the last 150 years.

    nothing in the CHE Q&A disputes the following quotations from the House Committee hearings:

    CHAIRMAN BARTON: Dr. North, do you dispute the conclusions or the methodology of Dr. Wegman’s report?

    DR. NORTH [Head of the NAS panel]: No, we don’t. We don’t disagree with their criticism. In fact, pretty much the same thing is said in our report.

    DR. BLOOMFIELD [Head of the Royal Statistical Society]: Our committee reviewed the methodology used by Dr. Mann and his co-workers and we felt that some of the choices they made were inappropriate. We had much the same misgivings about his work that was documented at much greater length by Dr. Wegman.

    WALLACE [of the American Statistical Association]: ‘the two reports [Wegman's and NAS] were complementary, and to the extent that they overlapped, the conclusions were quite consistent.’

    ReplyDelete
  42. Citing Wegman's report is the kiss of death for any scholarly work.

    So by all means, cite it.

    ReplyDelete
  43. Some people never learn. RSpung will cling to his fake skepticism as the ship goes down.

    The total lack of curiosity about what real science is doing is a giveaway. I suggest a careful reading of Mann's book, and the thorough airing of Marcott and Shakun's extension of the work as well

    What is happening with temperature is nothing to play with. Facts are stubborn things, they win in the end.

    ReplyDelete
  44. Forgot to mention, best place for original material on extended discussion about Marcott and Shaken is RealClimate. Of course you can find the usual suspects providing amateur distortions, and DotEarth hosting a series of nasty Mac attacks, but these are not doing science, only PR for their "side". The climate has an inhuman disregard for opinion and politics, and it's quite unlikely that it will conform to blind preference.

    ReplyDelete
  45. "What is happening with temperature is nothing to play with. Facts are stubborn things, they win in the end."

    lol, according to rss tlt data, the avg global temp has not increased in the last seventeen years, six months. yup, facts are stubborn things, all right.

    RSS TLT monthly data

    ReplyDelete
  46. Bernard J.19/3/14 3:35 AM

    " I graduated from the highest ranked undergraduate engineering school in America."

    So what? Cats can publish in low temperature physics.

    ReplyDelete
  47. And the sun has not been seen in the east for the last seventeen hours and six minutes , so this must surely be the end of days...

    ReplyDelete
  48. rspung said: " I graduated from the highest ranked undergraduate engineering school in America."

    No. You didn't. And the fact you don't volunteer the qualifier says a lot.

    You graduated from the highest ranked engineering program that doesn't offer a PhD. There's a big difference.

    Rose-Hulman is not MIT, or Stanford, or Cal Tech, etc.

    ReplyDelete
  49. What is it about engineers?

    Please engineers, I respect you for building bridges etc, and I know not all of you get ideas above your station, but you've got past form here and it doesn't look good.

    Danger Mouse

    (weird - the captchatext is "salem". I think that computers are becoming sentient.)

    ReplyDelete
  50. Do we have a link to that Wallace quote?

    While we wait, here's another one by Jerry:

    > Personally, I was not impressed by the social network analysis in the Wegman report, nor did I agree with most of the report’s conclusions on this subject.

    http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-109hhrg31362/html/CHRG-109hhrg31362.htm

    ReplyDelete
  51. Gerald North referring to Mann et al and the hockeystick: "The minor technical objections serve as a weapon for those special interests who want to delay any action on GW."

    rsprung doesn't even recognize himself as a water-carrier in this picture. He is oblivious.

    But he's a Rose-Hulman graduate so we should all bow to his intellect. Of course his intellect is displayed for all to judge in every post he writes. No diploma hanging on a wall can paper over a hole that large.



    ReplyDelete
  52. Richard C. Spung's bibliography is a short read indeed: zero peer reviewed journal articles and one appearance as a patent coauthor.

    Still, Google Scholar gets points for existential relevance in fathoming the Spungian condition: a spung is an enclosed wet depressionin a postglacial landscape , as in


    Cold‐climate origin of the enclosed depressions and wetlands ('spungs') of the Pine Barrens, southern New Jersey

    ReplyDelete
  53. This is indeed hilarious. You seem to be saying that because Steyn belongs in a category in which SLAPP would be applicable, therefore it *is* applicable to him, but I guess not to Mann.

    That's quite a non-sequitur. Did you really pass the bar? Maybe you should stick to eating carrots. That seems to be more your speed.

    ReplyDelete
  54. rspung: continually demonstrating his overreaching ignorance one post at a time.

    ReplyDelete
  55. Russell: "And the sun has not been seen in the east..."

    meaningless. the fact that rss tlt data shows a pause of 17 years, six months invalidates every climate temperature prediction model. for a group of people who swear up and down "the science is settled!!1!1", that's a pretty piss-poor track record of proving it.

    even phil jones said "any period without temp increase over 15 years would certainly cause me to reconsider my conclusions about agw".

    are you saying that fact that all your models are failures means your agw hypothesis doesn't need any re-evaluation? if so, then you are the real denialists here.

    Bernard J: "It's a shame that Jolly Good Undergraduate School of yours didn't learn you some basic understanding of signal and noise, or of statistics."

    evidently, I understand a lot more about statistics than you do. notice that every climate temperature prediction model failed to include the current pause within their prediction cones.

    notice also that the pause I referenced started before 1998 (see, that's what 1996 means), thereby rendering your 1998!!1! cherry picking argument useless.

    notice furthermore, that the entire agw industry is guilty of cherry-picking by using the late 1970s (which just happen, by miraculous co-incidence, to be the bottoming of a multi-decade global temperature DROP) as a starting point for its predictions of doom.

    Kevin: "No. You didn't. And the fact you don't volunteer the qualifier says a lot."

    yes, I did. "undergraduate" means it doesn't have a graduate program. anybody who claims to be as intelligent as you should have known that. evidently, you're not nearly as smart as you think.

    Kevin, read and learn

    Russell: "Still, Google Scholar gets points for existential relevance in fathoming the Spungian condition..."

    awesome. first you make fun of my education and get proved wrong, then you result to making fun of my name. you're a tower of pure, cold, raw intellect. a warrior of words.

    it's a shame you can't debate the facts of what I said. evidently, you're not able to, so you substitute lame attempts at insult instead. yes, that certainly makes you the smart one in this exchange!

    the problem with all of you is this- you are so insulated in your little ivory tower circle-jerk club that you cannot understand how flawed your agw religion is. you misunderstand anyone who dares to point out inconvenient facts as being either a paid oil industry shill, a political hack or a hopelessly uneducated rube.

    nothing could be further from the truth. skeptics recognize that, theoretically, co2 is a greenhouse gas. skeptics recognize that global temperatures are currently at the top end of a long, long historical range. skeptics recognize that man's co2 output is capable of having SOME effect on the climate.

    however, skeptics also recognize that your crowd has done a miserable job of quantifying the current agw theory, that it is full of holes and oversimplifications, that is does not match the data, that it overemphasizes the contribution of co2 to temperature swings and most of all, that...

    when challenged, you freak out like a bunch of grade-school children and scream DENIER!!1!, instead of calmly acknowledging that yes, agw is a work in progress and needs to be refined in order to more accurately fit the emerging data.

    honestly, walking around saying THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED and WE'RE SMARTER THAN YOU SO JUST SHUT UP isn't working for you. public opinion has never swung over to your side and it never will, as long as you keep acting like a bunch of jackasses.

    ReplyDelete
  56. Ian Forrester20/3/14 9:42 PM

    rspung hasn't checked his facts. RSS data have been showing a divergence (colder) with UAH for some time. Even well known denier Roy Spencer admits that rss data are showing very low anomalies. He attributes it to the fact that UAH are using a new satellite (NASA Aqua AMSU) for their data and rss is using an old satellite (NOAA-15) "which has a decaying orbit, to which they are then applying a diurnal cycle drift correction based upon a climate model, which does not quite match reality".

    http://www.drroyspencer.com/2011/07/on-the-divergence-between-the-uah-and-rss-global-temperature-records/

    It pays to fact check before spouting nonsense. All other temperature data bases show warming over the past 15, 16 or 17 years. That was a rotten cherry you picked there rspung, better spit it out in case it gives you food poisoning.

    ReplyDelete
  57. lol, your article is three years old. other temp data bases agree with the rss data. the met office, using HadCRUT4 data, agrees with me. the current UAH data agrees with me. note the links below.

    and fuck you for accusing me of spouting nonsense. next time, get your facts straight first so you don't look like a fool.

    UAH says no warming from early 1998 until early 2014

    Met says no warming from mid 1997 until at least late 2013

    ReplyDelete
  58. rsprung -- Rose-Hulman DOES NOT have the highest ranked undergraduate engineering program.

    It has the highest ranked undergraduate engineering program of university's that do not offer graduate degrees.

    Obviously RH did not have a very good English program - or you failed to take the courses because your comprehension of English is poor.

    Do you think MIT, Stanford, Purdue, Cal Tech et al do not offer undergraduate degrees? Do you believe Rose-Hulman's undergraduate program is rated higher than theirs? You are truly unbelievably moronic.

    ReplyDelete
  59. "You are truly unbelievably moronic."

    Some things are so obviously true that their mere explicit saying is sufficient to induce laughing aloud.

    I guffawed.

    ReplyDelete
  60. Ian Forrester21/3/14 1:00 AM

    rspung is spouting more nonsense or is he deliberately spreading lies and misinformation?

    That link that he provided does not show zero trend since 1998.

    Here are the trend from UAH as provided by woodfortrees:

    1996 - 0.11K/decade
    1997 - 0.07K/decade
    1998 - 0.05K/decade
    1999 - 0.13K/decade

    Thus any intelligent person can see how rotten rspung's cherry pick is. It also shows how dishonest he is. I just don't understand how deniers can tell so blatant lies when they are so easy to prove wrong.

    ReplyDelete
  61. Bernard J.21/3/14 1:47 AM

    I'm wondering... rspung, are you the 'richard' who ran out of puff on the ocean acidity thread?

    The same high industrial grade of fallacious thinking and distorted understanding seem to pervade the minds (and I use the term loosely) of both posters.

    ReplyDelete
  62. lol...

    Kevin- you can't even read simple English when I stick your nose in it. the U.S. News and World Report clearly states that Rose-Hulman has the best undergraduate engineering degree program. my claim was A DIRECT QUOTE FROM THEIR SITE. IT IS THEIR CLAIM, NOT MINE.

    you produced ZERO evidence of any third-party ranking that puts ANY undergraduate engineering school above my alma mater.

    and here's the funniest thing of all- you list cal tech as a school better than rose-hulman. the survey disagrees with you, giving them a ranking of 3.8, verses rose's ranking of 4.4 so not only are you too fucking stupid to read simple English, you're... too fucking stupid to read simple English! and if that makes you angry, take it out on them, not me.

    Bernard j: "When did I "cherry pick..." 1998?"

    um, when you linked to this post?

    http://tamino.wordpress.com/2014/01/30/global-temperature-the-post-1998-surprise/

    lol... there are none so blind as those who refuse to see.

    "What pause?"

    the pause I described by linking to three different data sets quantifying same. are you incapable of reading simple text, or do you just refuse to acknowledge anything that upsets your little world-view fantasy?

    rss tlt, hadcrut4 and uah all explicitly illustrate a pause in global temperature rise starting in the last 1990s and continuing through today.

    if you disagree with that, you are not disagreeing with me. you are disagreeing with the Met Office, UAH and the RSS project. they produced and illustrated the data, not me.

    Anonymous Ian Forrester: "Here are the trend from UAH as provided by woodfortrees"

    Sorry, Ian. I went to woodfortrees and plotted uah temps from 1998.3 to 2014.1 and got a slope of 0.006 degrees K per year (0.06 degrees K per decade). I have no idea what you are talking about when you claim the slope is ten times that much.

    "It also shows how dishonest he is. I just don't understand how deniers can tell so blatant lies when they are so easy to prove wrong."

    lol, pot meet kettle.

    like I said, all of you are too busy patting yourselves on the back for your imagined intellectual prowess to bother doing the smallest amount of reading comprehension, critical thinking and research.

    you put more effort into throwing insults than you do understanding the science you claim to be masters of. that's truly pathetic.

    no wonder the world is passing you by.

    P.S. "I'm wondering... rspung, are you the 'richard' who ran out of puff on the ocean acidity thread?"

    no. I always post under the same name.

    ReplyDelete
  63. oops, scratch the comment about uah slope. I misplaced a period. news flash, rspung makes mistake! anyway, it's close enough to zero slope for me to quantify it by rounding it down to zero.

    are you really going to claim 0.05 (or 0.06) does not equal zero? lol, good luck with that.

    ReplyDelete
  64. news flash, rspung makes mistake!

    That's not a news flash. More like those ticker tapes you see on news channels.

    But I'm sure it's a news flash to you. Hope it didn't hurt your swollen ego too much.

    ReplyDelete
  65. Bernard J.21/3/14 7:31 AM

    Rspung.

    You are determined to avoid the physics and the statistics, and run with Dunningly Krugered filtration of the facts.

    So let me put it this way - when did the planet stop warming, and why?

    ReplyDelete
  66. I am focusing on the data. the agw crowd used temperature records to conclude the planet was warming, so it is logical and permissible to use temperature records to conclude the planet has (for the time being) stopped (or significantly slowed) warming.

    there is no logical fallacy in that. what is good for the goose is good for the gander.

    I do not presume to have the answers to why this pause has occurred, how long it will last or if it invalidates agw.

    the agw theory could still be valid, but need tweaking to lower the sensitivity of co2 forcing and/or raise the contribution of other factors, such as the water vapor cycle or the sun's energy fluctuations.

    the point I have been trying (unsuccessfully, evidently) is that the science is NOT settled, and we are still working towards a complete understanding of how all the various inputs affect temperature patterns.

    this makes me a skeptic, not a denier. denier is a juvenile, inaccurate, lazy term coined by people too insecure or immature or convinced of their own superiority to bother exploring WHY skeptics think the way they do.

    as an engineer, I am real-world data driven. I cannot tell you the number of times I've heard researchers and theorists tell me something SHOULD work, only to discover after I installed and started up the system/unit/equipment that they did not consider all the factors that affect the operation of the system.

    as someone with decades of maintenance/project management experience, I can tell you with absolute authority that retrofitting a concept once it hits the field is a CERTAINTY.

    things NEVER work exactly the way they are drawn up. that is why the words "the science is settled" are nothing more than a hilarious joke to everyone in my profession.

    ReplyDelete
  67. Ian Forrester21/3/14 10:04 AM

    rspung said:

    "as someone with decades of maintenance/project management experience"

    Please please I hope he puts his name in large letters on all projects he is or was associated with so I can give them a wide berth if I encounter them. If he is as dishonest and sloppy in his real work as he is on the various threads here he is a disaster waiting to happen.

    ReplyDelete
  68. I repeat, when did the planet stop warming, and why?

    As an engineer, you should know that if you don't know the answer, you shouldn't be telling people who have a better clue than you that they know less than you pretend to.

    ReplyDelete
  69. ian, go fuck yourself. you have absolutely no clue.

    Bernard, identifying IF something has occurred and identifying WHY something has occurred are two different things and you know it. stop pretending the two different questions are one and the same. that's dishonest and just plain ignorant.

    I KNOW that the rate of warming has slowed to a virtual crawl. there is no question about that. I DON'T KNOW why and I NEVER pretended to, so don't accuse me of something I have not done.

    I think we can now both agree that it has, in fact, slowed and/or stopped warming, at least temporarily. hopefully you can stop arguing long enough to accept that fact.

    I am under ZERO obligation to come up with a reason why or how it has slowed, because, as I have repeatedly said, THE SCIENCE IS NOT SETTLED.

    for Christ's sake, there have been over half a dozen different theories floated in the past year or so as to why the pause occurred. if that doesn't convince you the science isn't settled, then nothing will.

    and for god's sake, relax. this isn't mortal intellectual combat. it's merely a discussion about climate. it doesn't have to be a fucking cage death match. it's just an exchange of information and ideas.

    you guys on this blog are so uptight about your agw religion-like beliefs. any time someone dares to question any aspect of it, or point out any evidence that conflicts with it, you all get hysterical and start rioting.

    get a grip. it's just theoretical science. we are allowed to have different opinions when the evidence contradicts the models and the theories.

    ReplyDelete
  70. Bernard, the "when" should be obvious. according to the three data sets I showed you, the warming stopped right around the end of the 1990s.

    why would you even ask me that? I gave you three independent temperature data sets that all said essentially the same thing.

    you saw them. why act like you didn't?

    ReplyDelete
  71. Readers enjoying this discussion my find something similar over at my Amazon review if Murry Salby's book.. That got 200+ comments, as RG Reynolds (aerospace engineer) and Morgan Wright (retired optometrist who runs a disc golf course battle with Gavin Cawley, complete with insults of varioud sorts. Towards the end, MW places his undergraduate BA Biology (from a good liberal arts school that has no grad school), extols his math/science expertise (although curiously, the math seemed limited to equivalent of high school AP calculus, with no evidence of differential equations, rather relevant to Salby's book). When I suggested that he might want to redact the part that displayed his SSN, the reaction was not positive, and RGR suggested MW should talk to lawyer.

    ReplyDelete
  72. Ian Forrester21/3/14 12:40 PM

    rspung's a hoot:

    "and for god's sake, relax."

    He is the one who is frothing at the mouth and hurling insults and potty mouth comments one might expect from a 10 year old kid not someone who professes (I'm not convinced) to have professional qualifications. I'm sure his clients would not be amused if they could see the filth and lies he shows on this board.

    Maybe some one has stolen his identity. If not, then I recommend that he starts taking his meds or if he is not taking any perhaps he should book an appointment with a professional helper.

    Maybe this is the result of eating too many of these rotten cherries he keeps picking, fungal metabolites can do funny things to the brain.

    ReplyDelete
  73. Those who have never before heard of Rose-Hullman now know why.

    ReplyDelete
  74. Russell, no one can top that.

    I'll just add that r appears to have become unspung.

    ReplyDelete
  75. Hi RSpung,

    You mention "the 'when' should be obvious. according to the three data sets I showed you, the warming stopped right around the end of the 1990s."

    Here Tamino compares temperatures pre and post 1998. Very interesting read - especially if you think the warming stopped around there: http://tamino.wordpress.com/2014/01/30/global-temperature-the-post-1998-surprise/

    Layzej

    ReplyDelete
  76. rsprung doesn't even read his own links. Surprising? No. He pointed to:

    http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/engineering-no-doctorate

    Geez - doesn't the link itself give us a clue? Hmmm.... what could "no doctorate" possibly mean??? Rose-Hulman #1, Harvey Mudd #2. Harvey Mudd???

    Hey, but you keep on believing that dear old RH is better than MIT, Cal Tech, Stanford, Purdue, etc. But watch out - Harvey Mudd is gunning for you.

    ReplyDelete
  77. When arguing with an ignorant fool like r you will inevitably be dragged down to their level, where upon their experience gives them the advantage.

    Just. Don't. Do. It.

    ReplyDelete
  78. kevin: "Hmmm.... what could "no doctorate" possibly mean???"

    it means "undergraduate", moron. see, we already established that.

    Rose is the highest ranked UNDERGRADUATE college in America, as I have already stated repeatedly. UNDERGRADUATE means colleges without a PhD program, as the link stated.

    kevin: "Hey, but you keep on believing that dear old RH is better than MIT, Cal Tech, Stanford, Purdue, etc."

    hey moron, I never said Rose is better than ANY college that offers PhDs. why are you lying?

    ReplyDelete
  79. rspung, if the defendants show that video, Richard Muller will be instantly fucked, and the defendants with him.

    You see, Muller falsely accuses Mann of doing something he didn't do, makes numerous additional mistakes, and in essence makes an arse out of himself.

    And you want that repeated in court...

    ReplyDelete
  80. please elaborate. I would like to know more details about what you mean.

    ReplyDelete
  81. No you don't want to know that, rspung, or you'd already have known it. It's not that hard to find the mistakes Muller made. You'd only need to search Skeptical Science's article database (hint: Muller Misinformation #1, with the comments adding some extra information on the mistakes by McIntyre in the failed attempts of Brandon Shollenberger to claim, well, something - Tom Curtis puts him straight numerous times, but it doesn't seem to register with Brandon) or Peter Sinclair's wonderful collection of videos.

    ReplyDelete
  82. a_ray_in_dilbert_space23/3/14 4:17 PM

    rspung is proof that an idiot can graduate from an undergraduate institution--even a decent one. RH isn't a bad school. It doesn't change the fact that rspung is an idiot.

    ReplyDelete
  83. a_ray, go fuck yourself.

    marco, did Mueller ever recant the comments he made in his video? and jones ever say that he was wrong when he said mann hid the decline? those are the two crucial pieces of information to focus on.

    because here's mann's problem: in order to win his case, he has to prove that all the defendants KNOW Mueller's video was not true. and he also has to prove that all the defendants KNOW jones was not telling the truth when he said mann used "a trick to hide the decline".

    the standard in the case doesn't require mann to prove Mueller, jones and all of mann's other critics were wrong. the standard requires mann to prove the defendants KNOW Mueller, jones and all of mann's other critics are wrong.

    and that is an impossible hurdle to clear. that's the reason why public figures almost never win defamation trials.

    ReplyDelete
  84. Rspung, what is being hidden when Jones said Mann hid the decline? I.e., hid the decline in what?

    Rib Smokin' bunny

    ReplyDelete
  85. The proxies Mann used up until 1961 (I think that was the year) showed declines in temperature after 1961. Mann decided to stop using them at that point and replace them with temperature readings. Which produced a wildly different result.

    ...which makes any objective observer wonder- if Mann decided the proxies were no good after 1961, how could he justify using them prior to 1961?

    Watch the video. Mueller explains it very clearly.

    ReplyDelete
  86. Rspung, Did Mann decide to stop using proxies because they went down in 1961? Or because they do not match the thermometer record?

    Your question, how could scientists justify using the proxies (only one type in the northern hemisphere) prior to 1961 is addressed by the fact that the second question indicates the reason why. You are holding the hockey stick by the wrong end.

    The real objective observer should wonder: what do I need to know to judge decisions by experts working in a technical field? Ability to read technical papers? Or the ability to find a blog on the internet that makes claims?

    Perhaps I should read some 9-11 truther claims about engineering making it impossible for the towers to collapse. I have a PhD, that should be enough. Not.

    Rib Smokin' bunny

    ReplyDelete
  87. Kevin''s elision of Harvey Mudd and Richard Spung's alma mater seems statistically unwarranted.

    While the Mudd bloods accept less than one applicant in five to their elitist institution, Rose-Hulman upholds the democratic ideal by admitting two out of three.

    Spung seems to take his lead from Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniel's Rose-Hulman commencement speech :

    "...It is asserted that the earth is warming; that this warming would have negative rather than positive consequences; that the warming is man-made rather than natural...

    Well. All these contentions may be correct. It may be that they will all be borne out over the coming decades. But the average citizen has no way to be sure of that for now. Although there are scientists, and scientific studies, that are deeply skeptical of all these claims, they are rarely heard in what passes for public debate. The debate, so far, has been dominated by “experts” from the University of Hollywood and the P.C. Institute of Technology.

    Joining this discussion will require more than technical competence; it will take courage, too. In what has become less a scientific than a theological argument, anyone raising a contrary viewpoint or even a challenging question is often subjected to vicious personal criticism. Any dissident voice is likely to be the target of a fatwa issued by one Alatollah or another of the climate change theocracy, branding the dissenter as a “denier” for refusing to bow down to the “scientific consensus.”

    ReplyDelete
  88. rspung, you're trying to shift the goalposts ever so slightly. It does not matter that Muller has not retracted his claims, they are still wrong. He won't want to appear in court, because he'd be slaughtered. To add injury to insult, Mann's lawyers could point out that even *if* Muller were right on all of his claims, Muller still did not argue there was fraud in Mann's analysis.

    Phil Jones has good reasons to keep a distance: he is already an unwilling participant in the climate wars (try to find how many times he featured in the media prior to 2007-2008, you'll be hard pressed to find any articles - and he's been doing climate science for decades already).

    Now, you make the same mistake as Muller and many others by claiming Jones said Mann hid the decline. He didn't. He said he (=Phil Jones) used a smart trick from Mann's paper (actually mistaking what Mann did) to 'hide' the decline in the data from Briffa. There was no such decline in Mann's data. You would have known this, if you'd truly be interested in finding out what Muller had wrong (I did give you some pointers where to look). However, as I also already noted, and thus got confirmed, is that you are not interested in finding this out. You are just interested in maintaining a faux debate.

    ReplyDelete
  89. Marco, ok, I understand now. I didn't realize Jones was hiding the decline. My apologies.

    ReplyDelete
  90. I know that you *know* you are miserably supporting a fraud. How do I know this? Mann & Co. showed their cheating hand so clearly in 2013 that now anybody can fully understand it in but a single undeniable glance:
    http://s6.postimg.org/jb6qe15rl/Marcott_2013_Eye_Candy.jpg

    Show that to any jury. Case over.

    -=NikFromNYC=-, Ph.D. in carbon chemistry (Columbia/Harvard)

    ReplyDelete
  91. I think that link and post qualifies as spambot blog advertising.

    ReplyDelete
  92. John Mashey25/3/14 11:03 AM

    Thomas:
    Well, it is additional data, useful for my current report in progress, helping further calibrate him as dismissive, as per Yale/GMU Six Americas. I can add the PhD assertion to my report.

    NikFromNYC only showed up once in the SalbyStorm, but his comment at WUWT was a gem,
    within a day of the post, before Macquarie responded, or before Salby's long fraudulent history and harmful behavior were exposed:

    'NikFromNYC says:
    July 9, 2013 at 2:21 am

    He is Rosa Parks. He is Timothy Leary. He is Murry Salby.'

    Of the various quotes from the Salby blog storm, that's one of my favorites. Give thanks to NikFromNYC for amusement!

    In real science, as one finds at AGU meetings, hockeysticks (many) do just fine, it is only otherwise in the world of those accept McIntyre's fraudulent 100:1 cherry-pick atop bad statistics as absolute truth, along with his false citations and reliance on dog astrology journal.

    ReplyDelete
  93. rspung,

    I didn't realize I had followed you here.
    How are you doing? you seem more anxious than over at Barry's blog.
    I sympathize with your feeling persecuted, since you claim to be taking a rational position and being skeptical not a denier.
    the problem is that you always only seem to link to denier blogs, and you don't seem to accept different views that make valid points.
    even something a squabbling as your alam mater.
    Unless you school's undergraduate engineering program is indeed better than any school that has a graduate program, then your comment was just flat out wrong, . Not immediately acknowledging that makes you a target for ridicule.
    unfortunate but true.then you post about the quotes from those denier blogs about the comments about Mann from senate testimony, but you do not acknowledge when someone gives you further testimony form the same person that very clearly says there was no indication of fraud in Mann's work whatsoever.
    again non one here has said anything remotely contending that the 1998 paper was perfect or that the mistakes found by McIntyre were not valid issues for what they are worth.
    but the POINT is that those issues are not substantial when looking at the point of the research. That is clearly what all the non denier scientists familiar with the paper and Mann's work all say.
    It is ONLY deniers that accuse Mann of fraud.
    how can you not expect people to ridicule your contention of being a skeptic, when you ONLY post links form denier sites and you brush away valid counters to those arguments.
    I consider myself a skeptic, and I do not "beleive" ACC is real. I do not think that the "pause" has been well explained and I am sure there are likely to be some mitigating factors that are either unknown or underrepresented.
    I am also pretty sure that there are exacerbating factors that are underrepresented as well.
    I look at the explanations for the "pause", which as we know is just surface temps, and they are make logical scientific sense to me. I do not know enough science to know how valid they are, and I have to take the word of numerous scientists who do understand the math and the physics.
    yet I DO know enough that when they explain their hypotheses in simple english, that they are reasonable and fit with my general knowledge of physics an chemistry.
    I also have enough basic knowledge to understand that there is no other competing theory that can explain so much of the empirical evidence that we have, and that the arguments of the most knowledgeable contrarian scientists may have some validity but they have been unable to come up with any sort of rigorous theory that can be tested. and that the hypothesize that have been put out there have been either shown to be wrong, incomplete or unknown.
    ou seem to evince no skepticism of denier arguments and you seem to be uninterested in actually assessing what the likelihood's are of their being a valid competing theory.
    as such to me and apparently to most people here, you come across as no different from acclimate change deniers who is guided by ideology with no interest in understanding the reality of climate change as well as it can be understood at the moment

    ReplyDelete
  94. eli, my webmaster instituted a replacement for captcha that has me add a number to another one to get a correct answer. I sometimes get these captcha's wrong and that is frustrating ( as I then wonder if I am actually a pam-bot).
    Biut really I am just posting this because that means I get to be the 100th comment :-)

    ReplyDelete
  95. "Unless you school's undergraduate engineering program is indeed better than any school that has a graduate program, then your comment was just flat out wrong, ."

    which comment? I thought I was being 100% accurate when I said I graduated from the best undergraduate engineering school in the country.

    I never claimed to graduate from the "best engineering" school in the country. I was accepted to Purdue and the University of Illinois at the same time I was accepted to Rose in 1977. I knew they had graduate programs and Rose didn't back then.

    (I picked Rose because it was the only school with a 100% placement rate.)

    With regards to my defensiveness, the abuse rate over here is much higher than at Barry's blog. People seem much less interested in reasonable discussion. They prefer instead to throw insults and claim intellectual superiority.

    It gets old fast. With regards to your labeling Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre as "deniers", nothing could be further from the truth.

    As a matter of fact, EVERY skeptic blog is labeled by agw believers as a "denier" blog. EVERY skeptic is labeled by agw believers as a "denier".

    With them, there is no middle ground. Either you drink the Kool-Aid, or you are a heretic and must be burned at the discussionary stake.

    "It is ONLY deniers that accuse Mann of fraud."

    There is absolutely no truth to that statement. Richard Mueller is not a denier. Neither are Judith Curry, Steve McIntyre, Anthony Watts, Richard Lindzen, Gerald North or dozens of leading climate scientists. Mann's methodology has been criticized abundantly from many sources, for a variety of reasons.

    "I look at the explanations for the "pause", which as we know is just surface temps..."

    This is not true. As I linked to earlier, there has been a pause of roughly 16-17 years in RSS TLT, UAH, and HadCRUT4 temps. The first two are satellite data sets.

    Here is an example of the insanity here: I was yelled at because I categorized the UAH temperature record as falsely showing a "pause". My crime? Rounding off a slope of 0.05 degrees K/year to zero.

    That's the kind of absurdity that permeates most of Eli's commenters' mindsets.

    "as such to me and apparently to most people here, you come across as no different from acclimate change deniers who is guided by ideology with no interest in understanding the reality of climate change as well as it can be understood at the moment"

    Nope. Earlier on this comment thread I wrote:

    I do not presume to have the answers to why this pause has occurred, how long it will last or if it invalidates agw.

    the agw theory could still be valid, but need tweaking to lower the sensitivity of co2 forcing and/or raise the contribution of other factors, such as the water vapor cycle or the sun's energy fluctuations.

    the point I have been trying (unsuccessfully, evidently) is that the science is NOT settled, and we are still working towards a complete understanding of how all the various inputs affect temperature patterns.

    this makes me a skeptic, not a denier. denier is a juvenile, inaccurate, lazy term coined by people too insecure or immature or convinced of their own superiority to bother exploring WHY skeptics think the way they do.


    I don't see I could have made it any clearer.

    ReplyDelete
  96. Correction: Instead of rounding off a slope of 0.05 degrees K/YEAR to zero, I rounded off a slope of 0.05 degrees K/DECADE to zero.

    See what I mean? Here it is a capital crime to quantify a rise of 0.005 degrees K/year as a "pause".

    ReplyDelete
  97. Ian Forrester25/3/14 6:03 PM

    As I said on an earlier post, rspung is a hoot. He says:

    "I don't see I could have made it any clearer."

    Yes indeed, you cannot make it any clearer that you are an AGW denier, the more you deny it the more obvious it is that you are an AGW denier. Your support for some of the most obvious and well known deniers says it all plus the nonsense you post showing your ignorance of climate science.

    I guess they didn't give courses in logical thinking at the place you supposedly got a degree.

    By the way, ocean acidification is just as much a problem as temperature rise, what are your views on the fact that the oceans are becoming more acidic? Does that not give us a second reason for lowering CO2 emissions?

    ReplyDelete
  98. Thomas Lee Elfitz

    Far from being spam , Spung's link demonstrates that he is a gift that keeps on giving

    Tony Learns may find this edifying .

    ReplyDelete
  99. Ian: "Your support for some of the most obvious and well known deniers says it all plus the nonsense you post showing your ignorance of climate science."

    See what I mean? With these clowns, there is no in-between. There is no such thing as a skeptic. It's so pathetic it's funny. They're like Nazis defending their "scientific proof" of Jewish "inferiority". No matter how much evidence proves that CO2's contribution to climate change is vastly overstated, they still cling desperately to their rigid and inflexible doctrine.

    According to them, the IPCC must be "deniers" as well, because it lowered the climate sensitivity estimates of CO2.

    And Russell is the crown prince of conceit. He is too busy trashing me to (a) realize that I wasn't the commenter who linked the Marcott study, and (b) his link to his totally awesome contribution to Taki magazine is dead. But hey, he's still convinced that he's the smartest guy in the room.

    ReplyDelete
  100. Tom Elfitz : Make that two hare braned visitors to lagomorphland.

    And many thanks to Mandolyna Theodoracopulos for fixing the link

    ReplyDelete
  101. Rspung,

    you just pretty much confirmed my assertions about you.. You give no appearance of interest in the actual reality, but only in presenting your version as the only valid one. You asserted that you "graduated from the highest ranked undergraduate engineering school in America."
    If there is ANY other school that has an undergraduate program that is ranked better than your school, then your comment is just flat out wrong. I just looked at a list of top engineering colleges and it was not even mentioned in the top 10 in any list, except the one you propose. Even the US news site lists Hulme as being the best where a higher degree is NOT offered, and lists many other schools, all of them rather famous for having extremely high academic standards.
    if you had written the best ONLY undergraduate engineering program, that would have been accurate, but again, what is the point of making such a claim? What if there were only one school that didn't offer higher degrees. Yours could be the actual worst engineering undergraduate program in the country.
    this link doesn't even have it in the top 50 http://www.businessinsider.com/the-worlds-best-engineering-schools-2012-6#1-california-institute-of-technology-50, although there are a few from outside the US on this list . See what I did there, I made a caveat to make it clear I am presenting an honest assessments and am aware of an argument you could make against my point.
    your position on this meaningless point is completely indefensible, and yet you argue it, instead of saying that it is ( I assume) a very good undergraduate engineering school, you increase conflict by maintaining a ridiculous position.
    this is exactly the type of tactic that deniers use in order to confuse issues and give then the perception that they have "won" some sort of debate.
    Your defensiveness does not appear to me to be due to a lack of reasonableness on the part of others, but obstinance on your part. you have made many unsupported or distorted statements that I consider to be based on the perspectives of people who have proven to be so biased as to not be considered worthwhile sources of information on the subject.
    You also ignore valid points that are made that undercut your argument.
    you make a broad generalization that people "prefer instead to throw insults and claim intellectual superiority.". Well some of them are doing that, but they are ALSO presenting you with valid counters to your points, and you are often just dismissing them or arguing about trivial issues ( like your college).

    ReplyDelete
  102. And I am proof positive that they do not treat everyone who does not drink the cool aid as a denier. I am skeptical of all viewpoints on this issue. I am well aware of the limitations of our knowledge, the complexity of the mind boggling number of factors involved in understanding climate change, Yet I have never been insulted or treated disrespectfully here, or At Barry's or Tamino, or Skeptical Science or Realclimate when I have asked questions or brought up issues that I thought were not being addressed. Of course i don't have the competence to argue on very technical matters, and the answers I have received have almost always increased my knowledge of an issue in ways that has made me trust the commenters on a number of issues where I don't have the competence.
    So what is the main difference between your treatment and mine? I think it is that I am very skeptical of claims from denier blogs. I am also skeptical of claims from the blogs of say, Curry, or Pilke, jr, or Lomborg or Tol, who are clearly not deniers of ACC theory, but who have a strong agenda of undermining it. I am also quite critical of people like Hansen, Lovejoy, and McKibben when they make unsubstantiated claims. Or people now who insist that climate calamity is irreversible and the end of civilization is neigh, or that methane calthrates release is about to become astronomical. or arctic ice is going to be gone by 2013.

    so while you claim from your words that you are not a denier your actual commets put you in the same category.
    After I stated that only deniers accuse Mann of fraud you state that Muller, etc are not climate deniers, and that "Mann's methodology has been criticized abundantly from many sources, for a variety of reasons.". yet no one at all has denied that the methodology was flawed or at best not the most appropriate. you do not post ANYONE who is not a denier accusing Mann of fraud. You ignore that McIntyre has specifically refused to call his mistakes fraud. As we know from the video you posted and subsequent independent research Muller has verified the most important element of Mann's research that has been verified over and over again from other sources. Muller's response to "hide the decline" is just flat out wrong and misleading in the video, either from ignorance or contentiousness it doesn't really matter.
    then you distort my point about the "pause" only being surface temps, by making the silly distinction of satellite and ground based readings, when what I meant was the oceans. Was that a genuine misunderstanding? It seems odd that you would think I was unaware of the satellite record's correspondance with land based ones, since we have interacted enough for you to know my general state of knowledge.

    aAd the argument about the pause you had was rather pointless, I grant you that but it is not the "type of absurdity that permeates most of Eli's commenters' mindsets." That is your exaggeration of their mindset. and in spite of your thoughtful assertion of your true beliefs and motives, you do not actually communicate issues in a way that supports your considering yourself a skeptic.
    We still do not know what the sensitivity is, so your suggestion that it needs to be lowered is premature, though plausible. Your other points are shared by most if not all of the other commenters here, so it seems odd that you would be in constant conflict with them and myself if you really did act on those assumptions.
    the only superiority I see here is commenters belief of their superiority over you and the validity of your comments
    so far you have not given me any reason to consider you views to not be immediately suspect for the reasons I have pointed out here and over at Barry's. But I am always open to have my assessment changed.

    ReplyDelete
  103. "You asserted that you 'graduated from the highest ranked undergraduate engineering school in America.'"

    That's because the U.S. News and World Report ranks Rose-Hulman as having the best undergraduate engineering program in the country.

    "Even the US news site lists Hulman as being the best where a higher degree is NOT offered..."

    Of course it does. I stated that in the very beginning. I have always referred to Rose as an undergraduate college because it does not offer PhDs.

    "If there is ANY other school that has an undergraduate program that is ranked better than your school, then your comment is just flat out wrong."

    No, it isn't. The U.S. News and World Report article makes clear (as I always have) that its rankings include ONLY colleges that DO NOT offer PhDs. I have ALWAYS used their definition when referring to Rose.

    What did I tell you in my previous post?

    I never claimed to graduate from the "best engineering" school in the country

    I have taken great pains to differentiate Rose from colleges that offer PhDs. In fact, I've mentioned that in every comment in which I refer to Rose-Hulman.

    "I think it is that I am very skeptical of claims from denier blogs."

    What is a denial blog? What denial blogs have I used as reference?

    "then you distort my point about the "pause" only being surface temps, by making the silly distinction of satellite and ground based readings, when what I meant was the oceans."

    If you meant it, why didn't you say it? I can't read your mind. Satellite temperature readings are not surface temperature readings.

    "...we have interacted enough for you to know my general state of knowledge."

    What are you talking about? I have no idea who you are or what your knowledge base is. And we have never interacted before yesterday.

    "...you state that Muller, etc are not climate deniers"

    That's because they aren't. In the video, Mueller says he believes in global warming.

    "Muller's response to "hide the decline" is just flat out wrong and misleading"

    How? He quoted directly from the investigating panel's report in the video. He was accurate about how unethical and misleading it was.

    "you do not post ANYONE who is not a denier accusing Mann of fraud."

    McIntyre, Watts, Richard Lindzen and Judith Curry are all skeptics and all have documented Mann's dishonesty, his use of unsuitable data and the hockey stick's non-robustness and unverifiability. Those actions are, by definition, fraud.

    "That is your exaggeration of their mindset"

    You obviously haven't been paying attention. I was called a stool pigeon for quoting an attorney's views of anti-slap case law. The attorney was experienced with anti-slap case law and won an anti-slap case.

    When I corrected commenters on another thread about the legal definition of malice, I was called all kinds of names. Even when I quoted from the presiding judge's order, I was called a liar. Like I said, you have no idea of the history here.

    "you do not actually communicate issues in a way that supports your considering yourself a skeptic."

    Show me a single example where I said global warming hasn't happened. Show me a single example where I said it is impossible for CO2 to cause warming.

    ReplyDelete
  104. That isn't a link to Marcott, that's blog spam advertising another blog. I used to permit comments on my blog but I was also immediately verbally assaulted by denier and deluded nutcases, and so I shut them off. As such, I am delighted with the gracious opportunity to comment with my own denier nutcase and deluded thoughts here. My own motives are probably not worth discussing much. Human reality is what happens when you give an immature species access to large quantities of easily accessible stored energy. Solar is much more diffuse and so I predict a better result.

    ReplyDelete
  105. "Mann's dishonesty, his use of unsuitable data and the hockey stick's non-robustness and unverifiability. Those actions are, by definition, fraud."

    Nope. Wrong. None of these actions are by definition fraud.

    And if you *do* accept those as being evidence of fraud, how then do you rate your own false claim about "unverifiability"?
    You see, the hockey stick *has* been verified with the same data and same methods, and even with other, supposedly better, methods (see Wahl & Amman 2007).

    Surely, your dishonesty, use of unsuitable data, and the non-rebustness and unverifiability, make your claim about the hockey stick being unverifiable a fraudulent claim, if you were to accept your own apparent definition of what constitutes fraud?

    ReplyDelete
  106. rspung just fell asleep during basic set theory. Universities that offer undergraduate degrees includes MIT, Stanford, Purdue, Rose-Hulman, et al.

    Universities that *do not* offer graduate degrees excludes many of them - in fact the *best* are usually excluded.

    Big fish, small pond comes to mind.

    ReplyDelete
  107. TonyLearns, this is blogger and Eli (AFAEK) does not control the capchas. RR can turns them off and that is about it.

    ReplyDelete
  108. Marco:

    dishonesty = fraud.
    hiding what should have been disclosed = fraud.

    http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/fraud

    "Fraud is commonly understood as dishonesty calculated for advantage. A person who is dishonest may be called a fraud."

    ReplyDelete
  109. "You see, the hockey stick *has* been verified with the same data and same methods, and even with other, supposedly better, methods (see Wahl & Amman 2007)."

    Lol, the data and the methodology are precisely what makes the hockey stick fraudulent.

    Saying someone else did the same thing and got the same result is not a defense, it's an indictment.

    ReplyDelete
  110. Lotharsson26/3/14 9:22 AM

    "I graduated from the highest ranked undergraduate engineering school in America."

    Apart from the rank disingenuous of that statement - as tonylearns says, if one filters out schools that offer doctorates it's not saying much to say that one is the best of what's left, especially since the best schools tend to offer graduate degrees - there's still more. It turns out that he was accepted into that program in 1977.

    That means that citing a 2013 ranking in relation to his own degree participation somewhere around the late 1970s is ... well, deeply irrelevant at best and (apparently) intentionally misleading.

    (Wait, wait, what's the right word for it again? "hiding what should have been disclosed = fraud". Ah, that's it - fraud! ;-)

    Then again, citing it in the first place doesn't help his arguments anyway. (And I say that as someone who trumps his undergrad engineering degree with an engineering Ph.D. ;-)

    Yes, rspung, I am satirising your stance. My degrees aren't relevant to whether my claims are correct or not either.

    ReplyDelete
  111. Lotharsson26/3/14 9:24 AM

    Lol, the data and the methodology are precisely what makes the hockey stick fraudulent.

    rspung fails English comprehension and/or set theory again.

    The comment he replied to indicated other methods - and still other papers have done it with different data, which someone genuinely interested in the issue rather than spouting denialist memes would already know.

    ReplyDelete
  112. "It turns out that he was accepted into that program in 1977."

    That's right. And the reason why I brought this up in the first place (not yesterday, not last week, but a long time ago on another comment thread entirely) was because people here were calling me uneducated.

    As you can see, I listed my educational background IN RESPONSE TO COMMENTS FROM OTHERS. So go fuck yourself.

    "The comment he replied to indicated other methods - and still other papers have done it with different data, which someone genuinely interested in the issue rather than spouting denialist memes would already know."

    Here's the actual comment I replied to:

    "You see, the hockey stick *has* been verified with the same data and same methods, and even with other, supposedly better, methods (see Wahl & Amman 2007)"

    Nice try, loser.

    The hockey stick has been definitely debunked, because
    numerous experts pointed out repeatedly that Mann:

    a) used data he knew couldn’t accurately reconstruct temperatures,
    b) cherry picked data so he only used data that formed a hockey stick shape,
    c) knew his work was not validated and robust,
    d) hid the fact that his work was not validated and robust,
    e) grafted temperature readings onto proxy data, which dramatically altered the shape of his graph,
    f) lied about his work being rewarded with a nobel prize,
    g) lied about his work being exonerated by various investigations (so far he’s been caught doing this red-handed five times), and
    h) refused to release his data and emails so others could check his work.

    ReplyDelete
  113. Clearly another climate revisionist is 'rspung', with slightly more smoke screens than the rest.

    The end is always the same. Dirty slander.

    http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/pcn/pcn.html
    You may go now.

    ReplyDelete
  114. "As you can see, I listed my educational background IN RESPONSE TO COMMENTS FROM OTHERS. So go fuck yourself."

    And despite fucking myself as requested, my point still stands. Your "RESPONSE TO COMMENTS FROM OTHERS" remains disingenuous. You appear to have been caught - what's the word you bandy about? - fraudulently trying to inflate the credentials of your alma mater as they relate to your decades old engineering degree by citing a 2013 survey, and your response to me doesn't refute that in any way.

    "Here's the actual comment I replied to:

    "You see, the hockey stick *has* been verified with the same data and same methods, and even with other, supposedly better, methods (see Wahl & Amman 2007)"

    Nice try, loser.


    Yes, loser or not, I'm already completely aware that's the comment you were responding to. Its content formed the basis of half of my comment - a fact that apparently escaped you and your self-touted education. See that bit in the quote you so helpfully provided that says "even with other, supposedly better, methods"? (And if the light begins to dawn with respect to that bit, see the other part of my comment that refers to "different data"?)

    And you want people to think you aren't a denialist?! Good luck with that!

    (The rest of your comment contains many of the usual denialist distortions and falsehoods - including what appears to be a conflation of at least two different pieces of research work - but most readers here know that already. I'd point out that it contains claims that are potentially libellous, but I suspect that won't sink in either.)

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  115. Kampen: Thank you for pointing out the refutation of the hockey stick. The data at the link restores both the MWP and the LIA. Both were missing in Mann's fraudulent hockey stick.

    L: "You appear to have been caught - what's the word you bandy about? - fraudulently trying to inflate the credentials of your alma mater"

    Lol, I was never "caught". I ALWAYS cited the US News and World Report site as confirmation. The US News and World Report has ranked Rose as number since when I was there. See, dumbass, that's why I picked Rose 30 plus years ago. It was number one then and it is number one now. And I ALWAYS used the exact language that the US News and World Report site used.

    Your failure to read and understand plain English is not my problem. And in case you were too thick to understand what I said, I even went further than quoting the US News and World Report site. I've made the following comment many times here:

    I never claimed to graduate from the "best engineering" school in the country

    Again, your rank stupidity and lack of even the most basic of reading comprehension skills is YOUR problem, not mine. If you don't like the findings of the US News and World Report, take it up with them, not me.

    "even with other, supposedly better, methods"

    Supposedly? Wow, that's a ringing endorsement. I can't imagine why I overlooked such a definitive phrase. Maybe because... I stick to facts?

    As for your claim that I was supposed to magically divine that somewhere out there, someone supposedly reconstructed Mann's hockey stick with different data, so what? It is not my responsibility to do your research and citations for you.

    If you have something you want me to look at, don't project it using your super-duper ESP and expect me to instantly grasp it.

    Cite it or shut the fuck up.

    All these claims of other climate scientists reproducing Mann's hockey stick are completely irrelevant to whether Mann committed fraud. It's like saying other people added 2 and 2 and got 5, so the first guy who did it can't be wrong.

    As I said before, it has been thoroughly documented that Mann:

    a) used data he knew couldn’t accurately reconstruct temperatures,
    b) cherry picked data so he only used data that formed a hockey stick shape,
    c) knew his work was not validated and robust,
    d) hid the fact that his work was not validated and robust,
    e) grafted temperature readings onto proxy data, which dramatically altered the shape of his graph,
    f) lied about his work being rewarded with a nobel prize,
    g) lied about his work being exonerated by various investigations (so far he’s been caught doing this red-handed five times), and
    h) refused to release his data and emails so others could check his work.

    And that is most definitely a textbook definition of fraud. And all of your anger and hysteria and name-calling won't change the fact that Steyn had ample documentation on his side when he called Mann a fraud, so it will be impossible for Mann to prove malice.

    Case closed.

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  116. Really, rspung?
    http://www.realclimate.org/HockeyStickOverview_html_6623cbd6.png

    Classic troll again - "The data at the link restores both the MWP and the LIA."

    Really? Did you really think those tiny swings called the MWP and LIA were 'restored'? Oh, well: tiny, mate. Tiny.

    The reason you are badgering someone on credentials is also because you have no climate science in your head.

    Repeated slander remains slander.


    ReplyDelete
  117. Kampen, you linked this page:

    http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/pcn/pcn.html

    The image at the top of the page you linked is this image:

    http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/pcn/fig6-10b.png

    As you can see from the image you linked, the swings are not "tiny". In fact, several of them are above the 1961-1990 baseline. And the difference between the highs and lows is twice the difference between the right end of the graph and the baseline.

    By any definition, the MWP is restored in the image at the top of the link you gave me.

    Compare that image to the hockey stick. They didn't call it the hockey stick for nothing. The pre-20th century line was as straight as an arrow.

    And I am not badgering anyone on credentials. I am defending myself against repeated attacks by multiple individuals. Two completely different things.

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  118. rspung adds injury to his already insulting inability to understand basic science by ignoring that Wahl & Ammann also used other, supposedly better, methods and got essentially the same result.

    Then he claims "numerous" experts have claimed he knew the data he used was inappropriate (showing he did not read the papers, which discuss the inherent issues with some of the data). Also all the other claims are false, which suggests that rspung's "experts" are actually "ideologues with an axe to grind, and thus not caring on whether they are telling the truth". And rspung of course laps these lies up like a thirsty dog. Skeptic? Nope, rspung clearly is not a skeptic. And his engineering alma mater should feel shame in failing to teach rspung the ability to read scientific papers, understand what they say, and then make an informed judgment. I sure hope they don't teach their students "forget the actual science, listen to whatever person tells you what you like to hear".

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  119. rspung, did you register 'MBH 1999' in that link?

    Nice to refer to the 1961-1990 baseline. In my time of studying meteo/climatology, end of eighties/beginning of nineties, the LIA and MWP swings still were 'impressive'. Only a quarter century of detonating warming changed that.

    Besides, the hockeystick is outdated - since we have the Wheelchair. That shows the detonation proper.

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  120. "Your failure to read and understand plain English is not my problem."

    ROFL! I understand plain English just fine. Your failure to write it, which looks like a preference for being disingenuous, is your problem, for example:

    "the U.S. News and World Report clearly states that Rose-Hulman has the best undergraduate engineering degree program. my claim was A DIRECT QUOTE FROM THEIR SITE"

    "That's because the U.S. News and World Report ranks Rose-Hulman as having the best undergraduate engineering program in the country."


    Despite your subsequent bluster, neither of those indicate in Plain English(TM) that you were citing ratings from the 1970s. The use of the present tense in Plain English(TM) and the reference to "their site", which did not exist in the 1970s, indicates that you were citing their present ratings. Now I'm quite happy to concede that you may have intended to cite their ratings from the 1970s, but if so the failure to communicate is on your side.

    ReplyDelete
  121. Supposedly? Well, by god, that proves it!

    Lol...

    It is common knowledge that strip-bark data is unsuitable for temperature reconstruction.

    It is common knowledge that Mann's hockey stick was NOT robust and had ZERO validity.

    It is also common knowledge that Mann hid his r2 calculations and denied (falsely) ever doing them.

    And like it or not, McIntyre, Mueller, Gerald North, the head of the Royal Statistical Society and the head of the American Statistical association (and the rest of the witnesses that will testify for Steyn) ARE experts.

    You are talking out your ass and it is a pathetic sight to behold. Not only do I know how to write technical papers, but as part of my patent application (which was accepted), I WROTE THEM.

    ReplyDelete
  122. "Both were missing in Mann's fraudulent hockey stick."

    Apparently you've never heard of "confidence intervals", and never looked at the size they are on the original hockey stick and how much of an "MWP" or LIA they would accomodate,...

    "The pre-20th century line was as straight as an arrow."

    ...and you're also stupid enough to repeat a blatant propagandistic falsehood that anyone with access to Google can verify in under five seconds.

    Impressive!

    (You're also apparently unaware that there was very little to no confidence in the "MWP" being a global or even hemispherical phenomena prior to the Hockey Stick because there was very little data thus the term "restoring" it is implicitly making an almost entirely unsupported assertion - and is preferring that largely unsupported assertion to subsequent and much better supported reconstructions. A skeptic would be far more skeptical of the claim with the far weaker evidence behind it.)

    "As for your claim that I was supposed to magically divine that somewhere out there, someone supposedly reconstructed Mann's hockey stick with different data, so what?"

    Your lack of comprehension strikes again! That wasn't my claim but nevertheless I thank you proving my point: you haven't even bothered to find out what research has been done that either validates or invalidates "the hockey stick", but you are quite confident that it simply cannot be relevant to the confident pronouncements you make.

    "All these claims of other climate scientists reproducing Mann's hockey stick are completely irrelevant to whether Mann committed fraud. "

    Oh, my! It's time to ask your university for your money back, because you even fail basic logic. If other research validates Mann's "hockey stick", then you're pushing crap uphill trying to argue that he perpetrated academic fraud when he wrote his paper. Do you honestly think he faked his results, but got very lucky so that his faked results were entirely consistent with what future valid research would find? Or are you simply widening the conspiracy to include a dozen or so other papers by various research groups?! (Scratch most denialists and you find a rank conspiracy theorist.)

    ReplyDelete
  123. "Only a quarter century of detonating warming changed that."

    It couldn't have detonated them that much. Avg global temps have not increased in over 17 years and the graph you linked clearly shows the MWP/LIA swings were twice as much as the 90s swings.

    Sorry, buddy, you've been had by your own citations.

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  124. 'Compare that image to the hockey stick. They didn't call it the hockey stick for nothing. The pre-20th century line was as straight as an arrow.'

    Note to all tempted to go a hunting with rspung - use your own arrows or starve.

    ReplyDelete
  125. " Not only do I know how to write technical papers, but as part of my patent application (which was accepted), I WROTE THEM."

    Well, well, that's really quite interesting.

    See, I also know how to write technical papers, as my Ph.D. attests!

    And see, I also know how to write patents as I've a couple of dozen or more to my name and still more in the works, a bunch of which I helped draft. Not only that, but I have been responsible for reviewing and improving patent applications made on behalf of other people too!

    But beyond that, I know that neither of these skills are the same as writing a scientific paper, and I know that my possession of these skills does not have ANY bearing on whether my arguments about (say) scientific matters are valid or not. Accordingly, I don't cite them to try and make out that I should be believed because I'm some kind of authority. I'm not, and the validity (or otherwise) of my arguments is determined by the evidence.

    ReplyDelete
  126. "Note to all tempted to go a hunting with rspung - use your own arrows or starve."

    Lionel wins one Intertoobz.

    ReplyDelete
  127. "If other research validates Mann's "hockey stick", then you're pushing crap uphill trying to argue that he perpetrated academic fraud when he wrote his paper."

    Lol, so what you're saying is if Mann cheated on a test and got the right answer, it's ok?

    No, it isn't. Mann's data selection, treatment and methodology were all heavily criticized by a number of organizations, climate experts and statistical experts. He:

    a) used data (strip-bark data) he knew couldn’t accurately reconstruct temperatures,
    b) cherry picked data so he only used data that formed a hockey stick shape,
    c) knew his work was not validated and robust,
    d) hid the fact that his work was not validated and robust,
    e) grafted temperature readings onto proxy data, which dramatically altered the shape of his graph,
    f) lied about his work being rewarded with a nobel prize,
    g) lied about his work being exonerated by various investigations (so far he’s been caught doing this red-handed five times), and
    h) refused to release his data and emails so others could check his work.

    "You're also apparently unaware that there was very little to no confidence in the "MWP" being a global or even hemispherical phenomena prior to the Hockey Stick because there was very little data"

    Lol... there are hundreds of studies by hundreds of climate scientists that confirm the MWP was a world-wide phenomenon.

    Here is a repository of many of the studies that confirm the MWP occurred all over the globe.

    Do you honestly think the fact that Vikings settled and farmed in Greenland and Great Britain had a thriving wine industry (two things that still can't happen today, due to low temperatures in those areas) wouldn't show up elsewhere in the world? Lol, that's the height of denial.

    Go home, loser. You're hopelessly lost in la-la land.

    ReplyDelete

  128. "And all of your anger and hysteria and name-calling won't change the fact that Steyn had ample documentation on his side when he called Mann a fraud, so it will be impossible for Mann to prove malice."

    Dude, I'm not angry or hysterical. That's you imagining my state of mind. And you're the one bandying about names like "loser" and telling other people to go fuck themselves so a mirror might be useful at this point.

    But I am looking forward to Steyn's lawyer explaining, perhaps with the aid of some of those experts you cited, how Mann fraudulently constructed his graph so it would be validated by future work. I'm assuming some form of time travel will be suggested? And of course the fact that there's no evidence of any kind of time travel machine is simply evidence of how deep the conspiracy runs! Or failing that, maybe his lawyer will explain how all of these other research papers using ever increasing and varied data sets conspired to fraudulently produce much the same result as Mann's original work rather than what their data actually show, but have hidden their fraud so well that not a single scientific paper pointing out the data doesn't support their work has been published.

    ReplyDelete
  129. "Accordingly, I don't cite them to try and make out that I should be believed because I'm some kind of authority."

    Neither do I, and you will never find evidence of me doing that (other than in your wildly delusional head).

    ReplyDelete
  130. Lotharsson26/3/14 1:04 PM

    "Mann's data selection, treatment and methodology were all heavily criticized by a number of organizations, climate experts and statistical experts. "

    And in Plain English(TM), which I am beginning to think you are struggling with, "heavily criticised" does not demonstrate "fraud". And some of those criticisms were valid, some only due to hindsight and some were outright wrong.

    The fact that criticisms were made does not mean that they were sustained. Criticisms and the testing of criticisms are essential parts of the scientific process and are routinely applied to huge swathes of scientific work without anyone thinking that said criticisms are evidence of fraud.

    ReplyDelete
  131. Lotharsson26/3/14 1:05 PM

    "there are hundreds of studies by hundreds of climate scientists that confirm the MWP was a world-wide phenomenon"

    No, they do not, despite that rank denialism site positioning them as doing so to their audience, who they hope will be unskilled and uninformed enough not to see through their misrepresentation.

    The citations from that site prior to the Hockey Stick paper weren't known to be globally synchronous. Prior to MBH98 no one had attempted to put enough data together to get a hemispheric reconstruction, which is a prerequisite for making a well supported claim that there was a (hemispherical) MWP.

    "Do you honestly think the fact that Vikings settled and farmed in Greenland and Great Britain had a thriving wine industry (two things that still can't happen today, due to low temperatures in those areas) wouldn't show up elsewhere in the world?"

    Oh, my! I don't know if you're wilfully ignorant or simply in flat-out denial. Or perhaps both.

    For one thing, as your engineering training should indicate to you, warm conditions in one part of the globe can be offset by cool conditions in another part whilst the average temperature remains the same. Or to put it in succinct engineering terms, it is invalid to extrapolate from the local to the global as you are doing. The fact that you advocate this egregious violation of engineering principles whilst accusing Mann of fraud and calling me and others "losers" has detonated my latest irony meter. I must see if I can get hold a military grade model.

    ReplyDelete
  132. Lotharsson26/3/14 1:09 PM

    "and you will never find evidence of me doing that (other than in your wildly delusional head)."

    Ah, so you just happened to cite your patent after citing other people as experts and then telling someone here they were talking out of their arse for...what, no reason at all?

    Or perhaps this is just a case of you having trouble writing plain English? Perhaps you could enlighten us as to why you mentioned it in that context (along with a whole bunch of other required clarifications that are queueing up...)

    ReplyDelete
  133. "And in Plain English(TM), which I am beginning to think you are struggling with, "heavily criticised" does not demonstrate "fraud". "

    As I stated earlier:

    dishonesty = fraud.
    hiding what should have been disclosed = fraud.

    http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/fraud

    "Fraud is commonly understood as dishonesty calculated for advantage. A person who is dishonest may be called a fraud."


    The criticisms of Mann specifically centered on his dishonest use of data (one blatant example was his use of strip-bark data) and him hiding information that would discredit the hockey stick, such as the r2 scores, the emails and the raw data. Also, the fact that his hockey stick was proven to be non-robust and unable to be validated also points to his dishonesty in representing the hockey as properly constructed.

    "For one thing, as your engineering training should indicate to you, warm conditions in one part of the globe can be offset by cool conditions in another part whilst the average temperature remains the same."

    And yet, there are hundreds of published, peer-reviewed studies that prove the MWP was global.

    I find it amusing that you dismiss the work of hundreds of climate scientists as the work of "deniers", while simultaneously claiming to "educated".

    interesting dichotomy.

    Gee, look at this! Looks pretty straight to me! Not perfectly straight, but close enough...

    ReplyDelete
  134. "Ah, so you just happened to cite your patent "

    No. If you had been following along, you would have seen I only brought it up as an example of my experience reading and writing technical papers. And that was only done IN RESPONSE TO SOMEONE ACCUSING ME OF NOT BEING ABLE TO DO SO.

    So as you can see, I only bring up my educational history and background IN RESPONSE TO ATTACKS FROM OTHERS.

    Understand? I am DEFENDING MYSELF, not preaching or offering anything.

    You need to calm down and stop obsessing. A good start would be to stop attacking me non-stop. Ever thought of that?

    How about just letting me express my opinion about something without constantly jumping down my throat? Do you think you might be able to do that?

    Do you realize every one of your comments is an attack on me, and every one of my comments is defending my opinion about the mann case and my education?

    What the fuck is wrong with you?

    ReplyDelete
  135. Ian Forrester26/3/14 1:31 PM

    More dishonest lies from rspung:

    "I find it amusing that you dismiss the work of hundreds of climate scientists as the work of 'deniers'"

    Either admit that that is a blatant lie or list the "hundreds of climate scientists" you refer to.

    You have absolutely no idea about science in general or climate science in particular. You are just an ignorant and dishonest troll.

    ReplyDelete
  136. You feed rspung some facts, and he's sure to twist it into a falsehood. Maybe we should feed him some falsehoods...? Oh, wait, he actually manages to repeat those when they fit his delusions.

    ReplyDelete
  137. Jesus Christ, Ian, I just linked to it. *sigh*

    Is it too much to ask for you to pay attention before flaming me?

    http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php

    And fuck you, Marco. Get a life and leave me alone.

    ReplyDelete
  138. "Sorry, buddy, you've been had by your own citations." - rspung, pushed into the water and yelling those on the side got wet and he didn't.

    I wonder why you didn't inquire into the Wheelchair. You'd have found your MWP, LIA, hell, even a real ice age, and, of course, said detonation. Apparently you are quite familiar with that graph. So why troll on?

    ReplyDelete
  139. And, Lionel A, that advice - bring your own arrows - holds also when duelling rspung...

    ReplyDelete
  140. Ian Forrester26/3/14 2:11 PM

    More dishonest lies from rspung:

    "Jesus Christ, Ian, I just linked to it."

    No you didn't you listed a long list of peoples' names very few of whom are "climate scientists". I see quite a few archeologists and palaeontologists but you have to provide a list of "climate scientists".

    Spend a day or a couple of days using "Google Scholar" then come back and tell us how many on your list are actually climate scientists. You are capable of using Google scholar aren't you and your coveted degree will allow you to know what climate science means? Somehow I don't think you will be a real "skeptic" and accept my challenge of actually confirming information.

    Why are deniers so dishonest, stupid and arrogant?

    ReplyDelete
  141. "Great Britain had a thriving wine industry (two things that still can't happen today, due to low temperatures in those areas)" - rspung.

    Even in the LIA and learn some google.

    "When Henry VIII came into power in 1509, 139 vineyards were recorded, 11 of which produced as Royal vineyards, dedicated to the monarchy.

    In the 1660s Lady Batten, wife of Sir William Batten, Surveyor of the Navy, had a vineyard at their estate at Walthamstow; Samuel Pepys thought the wine (which was red) "very good"."

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_from_the_United_Kingdom#History

    Check out the Scots' try.
    Btw first time ever is this century's Swedish wine.
    Growing industry in Holland, where I reside, too.

    ReplyDelete
  142. "No you didn't you listed a long list of peoples' names very few of whom are "climate scientists"."

    Bullshit. There's no way you researched the backgrounds of hundreds of authors of climate papers in a few minutes. Stop being an ass.

    "Why are deniers so dishonest, stupid and arrogant?"

    Based on that description, you are definitely a "denier".

    ReplyDelete
  143. Ian Forrester26/3/14 2:56 PM

    rspung, there are two reasons I know your list of "climate scientists" is bogus. Firstly, it was put out by a well known dishonest denier and linked by another dishonest denier (you).

    Secondly, I picked a few names at random, checked with Google Scholar and found a ratio of approximately 3 to 1 non climate scientist to climate scientist. Here is a quote from a paper from one of those I would classify as a climate scientist:

    "These two intervals are respectively followed by ice retreat coincident with the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and contemporary warming, and together correspond with millennial-scale variations recognized in the North Atlantic".

    So even climate scientists on that list do not claim a "Global Medieval Warm Period".

    http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921818107000203

    This shows that your comment:

    "Here is a repository of many of the studies that confirm the MWP occurred all over the globe" is also wrong, but you probably already knew that therefore your comment is dishonest since simple checking other sources would have shown your remark to be wrong. This proves you are a denier and not a "skeptic".

    You are the one who claims that list is of "climate scientists" who claim a global medieval warm period, if you were honest and capable of understanding science you would realize that it is up to you, as the provider of the list, to prove its accuracy and provenance.

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  144. Ian, you picked a handful of papers and passed judgment on hundreds of them based on the fact that you found a few scientists who didn't have a climate background.

    So what? First of all, you have no idea about who wrote 98% of the papers I linked. Secondly, you have no reason to believe the few non-climate scientists you found were in error about their conclusions.

    Thirdly, you blindly and ignorantly condemned the work of hundreds of scientists because their papers were linked to by a site you don't like.

    That's a textbook definition of unscientific research and prejudging an outcome.

    "So even climate scientists on that list do not claim a "Global Medieval Warm Period"."

    No, ONE paper on that list that only studied A PART of the globe concluded CORRECTLY that the results of the study were only valid for the area in which was researched.

    Good Lord, that's the craziest bunch of closed-minded, evidence-free, generalizing, biased conclusions I've seen in a long time.

    Like I said, you definitely fit your own description of a "denier".

    "if you were honest and capable of understanding science you would realize that it is up to you, as the provider of the list, to prove its accuracy and provenance."

    What you just said is descriptive of YOU! If you were honest and capable of understanding science you would realize that it is up to you, as the provider of the BLANKET CRITICISMS OF THE ENTIRE LIST, to prove the accuracy and provenance of the WIDELY GENERALIZED AND COMPLETELY UNSUBSTANTIATED CLAIMS you just made.

    See how easy that was? Look in the mirror, Ian. You are who you demonize.

    ReplyDelete
  145. Ian Forrester26/3/14 4:10 PM

    rspung quit with the lies and dishonesty. Anyone who has spent any time reading up on climate science knows how dishonest the link you quoted is. They are a well known family of deniers and their nonsense has been discussed many many times here and elsewhere. The fact that you have never ever once cited a reputable source just confirms to everyone how dishonest and ignorant you are. I just looked at a few so I could throw them back at you, I already knew that they were not what you claim them to be. So get over it, try and behave like a professional engineer should (if in fact you are one) since you are only diminishing the standing of other professionals by your arrogant and dishonest nonsense you keep on posting.

    ReplyDelete
  146. So rspung:

    what sources have you used to investigate this large field of 'climate science'? The inverted commas are used to highlight the fact that many many branches of science inform us that the climate is now changing more rapidly than in any time of recorded history and much before that because of the well supported area of palaeoclimatology.

    How long have you been delving into this topic, many of your statements suggest not very long, certainly not long enough to absorb information from reliable sources and also to have grasped the long, decades long history of the push back, from vested interests, against the sciences and the scientists.

    When I read papers based on data gathered over many years in extreme climates by scientists, at all levels, risking their lives and well being being rubbished by armchair pundits then is it not I that should be enraged, and those scientists?

    Also that a study which relies upon cherry picked information from cherry picked papers promoted by the likes of those at CO2 Science should be taken as seriously as you have demonstrates that you have big holes in your knowledge of both climate science and the history of denial.

    It is unfortunate that commentators such as Williwatts, Delingpole and Montford could not be as restrained in their language as most scientists have been, and I call foul on Climategate so you can scratch that gerrymandered brouhaha off your list of rhetorical weapons. Shame that seeing as your arrows are so bent.

    ReplyDelete
  147. rsprung is back with links to his denialist sites? LOL. He already shat all over himself on this topic in another thread, but he's back for more? LOL.

    Regarding his grand MWP repository of papers I opined on the first paper I read from his grand suppository (Coldair Cave):

    rsprung - yes, the *paper* is accurate - in fact I linked to it (more than either you or the CO2 Science site did, perhaps because I actually read it). The interpretation of it - by you and the CO2 Science website - is inaccurate.

    The thesis of a global MWP is not supported by one spike at 900 AD followed by decreasing temperatures for several centuries. As I pointed out some sources don't even *start* the MWP until 950 AD. For those using the wikipedia definition the 900 AD spike isn't even relevant.

    One paper out of one. CO2S (and you by proxy) are batting 1000 in the disinformation game. Do you want me to pick another? What do you think the odds are I'll find the same game being played. I'm guessing the probability is 100%.

    Overlay the CET graph for the MWP and the Coldair Cave graph and tell me the correlation.


    He (of course) never replied nor provided the numbers showing a (lack of) correlation.

    He cannot learn. He cannot read the original research. He regurgitates links from denialist sites and quote-mines abstracts. Then he's surprised when the papers he has cited don't actually back his (or the denialist camp's) assertions.

    Same old, same old. C'mon rpsrung, didn't they teach you anything at dear old R-H? Just overlay the data, crunch the numbers, and give us the correlation. Should take you a half hour max.

    But you *can't* do it - can you? There's a thousand and one reasons why not. But chief among them is you might *LEARN* something that flies directly in the face of your stated beliefs. That would be disastrous! Where would it lead? If you actually performed the calculation and knew for a fact that there IS NO CORRELATION, then you'd either have to admit you've been peddling lies for forever or just disappear. No, no, much better to remain ignorant and soldier on.

    We will, of course, sit in bemusement at someone who considers himself so smart, so ably trained in engineering, yet is unable to use a spreadsheet to run a simple correlation. But like I said, what stops you from doing it isn't lack of ability - it's because you already know that the answer will give lie to everything you claim to believe.

    Of course we know this too - which is what makes it so amusing.

    ReplyDelete
  148. SHALL WE RAISE A SUBSCRIPTION TO BUY HIM A COMIC SANS FONT ?

    ReplyDelete
  149. Dear Russell,
    Dear, dear Russell.
    With the video comment age so very nearly upon us, perhaps comic clown shoes might be more appropriate?

    ReplyDelete
  150. Of course it's simply shocking - shocking I tell you - that neither rsprung nor CO2Science link to recent research such as Temperature variability over Africa during the last 2000 years, Nicholson et al, The Holocene August 2013 vol. 23 no. 8,
    doi: 10.1177/0959683613483618. Where we find this statement: "The few long high-resolution proxy records that extend into the late 20th century indicate that average annual temperatures were 1–2°C higher in the last few decades than during the MCA."

    ReplyDelete
  151. rspung: You claim that there is a pause in global temperature rise. As a self-professed 'skeptic' presumably you compared recent global temperatures with those expected if temperatures had continued to rise at the rate of earlier decades. How did you do it and what were your results? What P values did you get? I ask because I am unaware of anyone who has demonstrated a significant change in the slope.

    Regarding wine-growing in Britain - there are now considerably more commercial vineyards that at any time in the past. That in itself does not prove anything regarding climate change but does suggest you tend to be rather gullible about accepting 'information' from denialist sites.

    Richard Simons

    ReplyDelete
  152. " Also, the fact that his hockey stick was proven to be non-robust and unable to be validated ..."

    Well, except that it was scientifically validated by a dozen subsequent studies...(including several that did not incorporate "strip bark" proxies, thus suggesting that its inclusion was not the fraud you claim it is).

    As an aside, you don't seem to understand what the term "scientific fraud" means, which is a key term in these legal proceedings.

    ReplyDelete
  153. "Do you realize every one of your comments is an attack on me, ..."

    No.

    Because that's a lie.

    Most of my comments are about the claims you make that appear to be unsupported by the evidence - and that you tend to reiterate even after you've been shown they do not stand up to scrutiny.

    If you - erroneously - think any disagreement with a claim that you make is an "attack on you", that's a problem for you to work on.

    ReplyDelete
  154. "I only brought it up as an example of my experience reading and writing technical papers. And that was only done IN RESPONSE TO SOMEONE ACCUSING ME OF NOT BEING ABLE TO DO SO."

    So you admit that you brought it up in order to claim that your ability to write a patent means you can reliably read and understand a scientific paper. Thanks for proving my point!

    Speaking of your inability to understand the import of a scientific paper or a hundred of them, as the comment you were responding to was:

    "And yet, there are hundreds of published, peer-reviewed studies that prove the MWP was global."

    And yet, this is plainly false, and demonstrates that your patent experience does not guarantee that you can read and understand a scientific paper. What part of "these 'hundreds' of papers do not demonstrate a global synchronous warm period" do you not understand? What part of "to demonstrate global synchronous warm periods, one must create a global synchronised temperature reconstruction" is beyond your logical abilities? What part of "this had not been performed before 'The Hockey Stick' paper tried it" escapes your finely patent-honed technical understanding skills?

    "I find it amusing that you dismiss the work of hundreds of climate scientists as the work of "deniers", while simultaneously claiming to "educated"."

    Sigh. Another plain English comprehension fail! I do not dismiss their work. I dismiss the false claims about their work that you are unskeptically repeating, and continue repeating even after the key point underlying your error has been pointed out to you by multiple commenters.

    ReplyDelete
  155. John Mashey26/3/14 10:38 PM

    Vineyards:
    the classic books (I own both) are thsoe of Richard Selley at Winelands of Britain, except this map is little out of date, because some vineyards are already N of his 2050 line, which is ~Sheffield. The books are worthy and interesting, albeit hard to get outside UK.

    While vineyards in UK are not a perfect temperature proxy (those in the Okanagan are better for recent years), Selley totally destroys the idiotic UK grapes meme, clearly designed for the gullible ignorant of both history and geography. and unable to use Google. ("English winemaking").

    See North, 18 vineyards mostly North of Selley's estimate.

    I cannot attest to the quality of grapes, but since my wife is from Yorkshire, the next time we visit, we will sample, and from experience in the Okanagan (which is a little further South, but then has continental climate, no Gulf Stream), I suspect something will be drinkable. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  156. Good morning, everyone! How's life? Hope your day is going well. I was wondering if you all could do me a favor- could you define the terms "skeptic" and "denier"? And be specific, please.

    I would like to know where one stops and the other starts. What is the difference between the two?

    Also, if you find yourselves to be in a generous mood, could you provide examples of "skeptic" blogs? Again, I am curious to learn the difference between a "skeptic blog" and a "denier blog".

    Hope this finds you well, and I would appreciate any feedback you might care to offer.

    ReplyDelete
  157. Ian Forrester27/3/14 12:05 PM

    Well rspung that last comment just shows how little you understand science. All honest scientists are skeptics, all "skeptics" are deniers. Real skeptics are always chasing down references, usually in the peer reviewed scientific literature but not necessarily always. You deniers, or "skeptics", clutch onto anything which supports your ideological or political viewpoints. That is not how real science is done.

    Anytime you cite something it is always to a dishonest denier site. Just remember that 97% of climate science related papers do not dispute how increased CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are causing rapid temperature rise.

    If 97 doctors told you that you had to have early intervention to save your life would you believe 3 quacks who told you not to worry, everything would be OK?

    ReplyDelete
  158. Awesome. Instead of answering my question, you decided to be an asshole. Thanks a lot.

    Would anyone else like to give me a definition of the terms "skeptic" and "denier"? I was hoping for specific parameters, such as "a skeptic believes a, b, and c; while a denier believes x, y and z".

    Just remember that 97% of climate science related papers do not dispute how increased CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are causing rapid temperature rise.

    This is laughable. The survey you are referring to looked at 12,280 papers. Over 8,000 of them (67%) DID NOT ADDRESS OR MENTION THE CAUSE OF GLOBAL WARMING (John Cook's words, not mine). Almost 3,000 of them (25%) IMPLIED, BUT DID NOT EXPLICITLY STATE human-produced CO2 causes global warming.

    So, 92% of these climate science related papers DID NOT TAKE A POSITION on how increased CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are causing rapid temperature rise.

    Here are John Cook's classifications of the papers

    Here are the number of papers in each category:

    Category No. of Papers
    1 65
    2 934
    3 2934
    4 8269
    5 53
    6 15
    7 10
    Total 12280

    ReplyDelete
  159. Rspung,
    My goodness I walk away for a couple of days and things just explode.

    But you just gave a very good indication of what a denier is.

    You take one element in Cooks paper and IN ALL CAPS to "point out" that 92% of papers do not take a position on ACC.

    that is DENIER reasoning. It is taking a piece of information and makes an implication that that info undermines the argument you disapprove of.

    By the same reasoning I am quite sure that we would discover that 99.9% of astronomy papers do NOT TAKE A POSITION on whether the earth revolving around the sun!!
    just the fact that ACC is the consensus position makes it extremely likely that papers that do not mention it implicitly support it.

    Both the fact that you twist this piece of information into meaning the opposite of what it likely means, and then that you TRUMPET it as if it is a devastating point are strong indications of being a denier.

    Now, I hate to upset you, but use of the word denier is not a universally agreed upon practice. People use it in different ways that are not all mutually compatible,.
    But in general, I use the word to describe someone who has a strong ideological agenda to show that ACC is either not happening or is not a serious problems. A denier tries to find ways to undermine the arguments for ACC by being selective on the information that they accept and by using incorrect, distorted or just wrong information to counter it.
    They almost always only present information and perspectives that undermine ACC, and they ignore or deflect valid information that supports ACC.
    They also usually claiming that they are just skeptics.

    Now in defense of your post, I disagree with Mr. Forrester that 97% of climate scientist support the idea of ACC causing RAPID temperature rise. I would guess it is closer to 90% just from my informal experience. 97% probably support that CO2 is a very significant factor in global temperature, but some of those probably have a much more conservative view of the effect than people like Eli, and the commenters on here.

    I consider myself a skeptic, and while I agree with Mr. Forrester that scientists are skeptics, the issues has been extremely politicized and that probably distorts some scientists perspective.

    The other issue I think is vitally important is that being a skeptic about issues of crucial importance has it's drawbacks. One could be an extreme skeptic about climate change and insist on a level of proof that would satisfy a completely rigorous understanding of the entire climate system, which could lead to disaster.

    ReplyDelete
  160. "You take one element in Cooks paper and IN ALL CAPS to "point out" that 92% of papers do not take a position on ACC."

    No, I reviewed ALL of John Cook's results, not just one element. Then I repeated EXACTLY what John Cook wrote in his results. John Cook stated in his results that 92% of the papers he reviewed did not state that human-produced CO2 causes global warming.

    If you have a problem with that statement, take it up with John Cook, not me. All I did was repeat what he wrote. If you can't handle the truth, that's your problem, not mine.

    ReplyDelete
  161. rspung,

    Thanks, I haven't laughed out loud like that in a few days.

    Here I was trying to be nice to you as you have been having a hard time here. and I will try to continue, especially if you manage to be this entertaining. (I cannot promise to refrain from sarcasm or facetiousness however, that would be asking too much)

    So, you are doing an excellent job of responding the way my definition of a denier would respond.

    I said nothing about what you had "reviewed", and in my comment I did not in any way indicate that you had NOT repeated "EXACTLY" what Cook wrote. That has nothing to do with my showing how ridiculous your comment was.

    Clearly I have no problem with that quote or the paper regarding this issue.
    I clearly explained WHY that quote or info in no way undermines the argument that 97% support ACC theory.

    You totally ignore my point,
    and then somehow try to turn it around as if I am the one that is being irrational.
    My explanation is reasonable and totally logical and makes much more sense than your implication that the 97% figure MUST be meaningless because 92% of papers do not explicitly say that ACC theory is correct.

    Also I am a little pissed at you that you did not thank me for answering your question about what a denier is.
    Personally I think that is rather rude, and I am a little hurt as well.

    ReplyDelete
  162. a_ray_in_dilbert_space27/3/14 5:38 PM

    rspung,
    Fine, let us eliminate the disputed category, for which we cannot tell the position on anthropogenic warming. That leaves 75 papers that explicitly or implicitly reject AGW and 3933 that accept it--or a >98% acceptance level. This is consistent with the levels of support from Anderegg, Oreskes and all the other authors that have looked at the level of consensus.

    Add to this the fact that there is not one National Academy of Sciences or professional organization of scientists that rejects the consensus position (and all but 2 explicitly endorse it), and I think you have a very difficult time "teaching the controversy".

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  163. "I said nothing about what you had "reviewed", and in my comment I did not in any way indicate that you had NOT repeated "EXACTLY" what Cook wrote."

    I never said you did. What you said, as I clearly pointed out, was "You take one element in Cooks paper..."

    I didn't take one element. I took all his results. I took all his classification totals and all his classification descriptions.

    "I clearly explained WHY that quote or info in no way undermines the argument that 97% support ACC theory."

    Who cares what you "clearly explained"? The issue was never what percentage of anything "support ACC theory".

    As a matter of fact, I wasn't talking to you anyway. Why did you decide to butt in and start trashing me? Don't you have a life to lead somewhere else? I don't recall making accusations against you or calling you names. Why are you bothering me, anyway?

    You can claim whatever you want, and you can make whatever assumptions you want, but that doesn't change the fact that John Cook stated in his results that 92% of the papers he reviewed did not state that human-produced CO2 causes global warming.

    I don't care if you think "they didn't have to put it in there, because they were all thinking it anyway". I don't care what your theories or justifications or assumptions or guesses are.

    Here's an idea- why don't you leave me alone?

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  164. a_ray, I think it is a little dodgy to count papers that imply either acceptance or rejection.

    I accept the fact that most professional organizations are pro-agw.

    But the level at which human-generated CO2 is responsible for global warming can vary from a little, to a somewhat significant amount, to a major factor, to the overwhelming cause.

    That was the point I was trying to make when I was fishing for a differentiation between "skeptic" and "denier".

    A lot of climate professionals who get labeled "deniers" admit that human-generated CO2 can cause SOME global warming.

    However, I think the relative contribution of human-added CO2 should be weighed against other factors like solar intensity, the water vapor feedback loop, ocean events like the PDO and AMO, etc.

    The twin facts of (a) the ~17 year pause, and (b) the failure of virtually all climate models to account for it, makes me think there's a lot more uncertainty in the agw theory than many of its proponents admit to.

    And every time I bring that up here, I get flamed relentlessly for stating what should be an obvious fact to anyone interested in climate science.

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  165. Ian Forrester27/3/14 6:49 PM

    rspung, you don't seem to understand what the "O" in PDO and AMO stands for. It means "oscillation". Do you know what that means? From the poor quality of your arguments it doesn't look like you do. So to improve your education (didn't they cover that when you supposedly got your degree or is it only covered in graduate classes?) here is the definition of "oscillation":

    oscillation (ˌɒsɪˈleɪʃən)
    n
    1. (General Physics) physics statistics
    a. regular fluctuation in value, position, or state about a mean value, such as the variation in an alternating current or the regular swinging of a pendulum

    Do you understand what a "mean value" implies? It means that neither PDO or AMO can be responsible for long term warming (such as the warming we have been experiencing for the past 100 years or so) but can lead to variation in the short term rates of warming (such as we have seen with lower rates of warming over the past 15 years or so). So, no hiatus but a lowering of warming rates which may be caused by such things as PDO or AMO.

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  166. rsprung says: "Would anyone else like to give me a definition of the terms "skeptic" and "denier"?"

    It's very easy in the context of climate change. A 'denier' is simply someone that refuses to acknowledge the weight of the evidence. And, as has been pointed out in many places, most 'skeptics' are actually pseudo-skeptics - deniers by another name.

    True skeptics are as unwilling to side with A as they are to side with B until the overwhelming evidence supports one position.

    A case in point; your link to CO2S and the claim that an entire repository of papers supported the position that the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) aka Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA) was global in scope.

    A denier accepts the CO2Science claim on its face. A pseudoskeptic does the same. A true skeptic - or anyone that wants to verify the claim for themselves - just takes the data and analyzes it. Or searches the literature for scientists who have already done the work.

    I've asked you twice now to tell me the correlation between the Coldair Cave temperature record and the CET for the duration of the MWP. A high correlation would support the theory the MWP was global in nature. CO2S *claims* the paper supports the theory, but nothing in the paper actually does. If you were truly skeptical you wouldn't take their claim at face value - you'd run the correlation analysis and prove the Coldair Cave temperature record supports the theory. But you don't. You won't. Because the answer would not be to your liking.

    It's a very simple proposition. You can determine the truth for yourself, or remain ignorant of it and simply soldier on. I'm firmly in the camp that believes you will never run the correlation, because you're a denier.


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  167. rspung,
    this is getting to be fun. what I like with deniers that have some intelligence is that I am often surprised by the bizarre unexpected ways they twist things in order to keep from admitting they are wrong about something. So you can devolve a worthwhile conversation into a meaningless argument about insignificant points to try to confuse the issue.

    "I didn't take one element. I took all his results. I took all his classification totals and all his classification descriptions."

    but you DId take one element. That is the element where 92% of the papers do not indicate ACC either way.
    that IS an element. but you make this an issue somehow so that we can avoid the relevant issue. I wonder is this something you do on purpose or is it some sort of subconscious defensive mechanism?

    Why did I decide to "butt in and start trashing you". well wrong on both counts. I have commented 4 times before on this post and you have not responded reasonably to any of them. SO I am not "butting in" and have not trashed you personally just your denier style responses.

    ALSO you wrote "Would ANYONE else like to give me a definition of the terms "skeptic" and "denier"?
    and just recently
    "I was wondering if you ALL could do me a favor- could you define the terms "skeptic" and "denier"? And be specific, please."
    somehow the part where you wrote "except tonydunc" must have gotten deleted.
    Please make sure that is included when you don't want me to respond to a comment of yours.

    I have not called you any names. The worst I have done is note that your responses are , in my opinion, very much like responses that ACC deniers give. and I engage in sarcasm at the extant that they seem irrational to me.

    and of course you don't care what I think and of course you say silly things like "The issue was never what percentage of anything "support ACC theory".
    I understand completely. You graduated from the top ranked non-graduate-level- offering undergraduate engineering school in the country and have written a patent.
    I am a 4 time college dropout. It must be embarrassing to not be able to respond rationally to my valid reasonable critiques of your assertions.

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  168. rspung,

    I know I have not given you enough time to add "except tonydunc" to your comments, so I apologize before hand for responding to your above one. won't happen again, without permission, I promise.

    So Here you are sounding reasonable.
    Yes, you are correct that we do not know that actual effect that CO2 will have on global temps and on the consequences. It IS possible that sensitivity is low, or that other mitigating factors could or are coming into play.

    and you are of course right that the effect of CO2 showed be weighed against other influences on global temps in order to gain a better understanding of the very complicated interactions.

    As a skeptic myself, I absolutely agree with all of that. I would ad numerous other factors that have uncertainty. I personally believe that there might be biological feedbacks that could limit the practical climate sensitivity of CO2. Effects of clouds are not completely clear by any means,. and hell, why not add in cosmic rays and cloud production. And there are probably other factors that impact as well that I am unaware of and maybe scientists are unaware of.

    and the 17 year pause COULD very well be evidence of some of those mitigating factors.

    I don't see anyone attacking you for saying those things. I certainly won't and I will defend you against anyone that does attack you for saying those types of things

    If you note Kevin and Ian's responses, they do not attack those aspects of your comment.

    but then you make assertions that are not valid. regardng the 17 year “pause” - " the failure of virtually all climate models to account for it," you are making the assumption that climate models are able to predict short term effects. Climate models do NOT make what are casually understood as predictions. they show trends, if they exist. There is no way for a climate model at this time to know when there will be large ENSO changes. No way to know about volcanos, no way to know exact solar insolation, AND models all have limitations. Saying they have all "failed" is a useless perspective. ALL models or complex system are "wrong" because they are just representation.
    and in this case there are numerous explanation for why the data have models at the low range of the surface temperatures. Deniers portray these explanations as ad hoc after the fact rationalizations, but they sound extremely reasonable to me and do not make ACC theory any less valid. If it were like adding epicycles to planetary motion It would support that argument. but we have data that show increased ocean temps. We have been in a La Niña dominated ENSO, solar activity was extremely low this cycle, volcanic activity and asian pollution could be limiting insolation. those are all very valid and non distorting factors. and, in my view, they likely should have caused a significant lowering of global temps, if CO2 effect was minimal.

    and there are numerous empirical data that support ACC, certainly the Arctic summer SIE is extremely supportive OF ACC. Night temps increasing faster than day temps, and other indications of ACC being valid.

    so you are not being flamed for bringing up reasonable skeptical arguments. you are flamed for making assertions that are only supported by links to denier sites, and by arguing in irrational ways, and by ignoring valid arguments that are supported by real science that undermine your arguments

    and look, no sarcasm., except for the first paragraph (but , honestly, how could I not have put that there?)

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  169. Peer-reviewed paper by climate scientists shows MWP was warmer in South America
    Peer-reviewed paper by climate scientists shows MWP was warmer in entire Northern Hemisphere
    Peer-reviewed paper by climate scientists shows MWP was warmer in China
    Ditto, for Tibet
    Ditto, for Japan
    Ditto, again for China
    Ditto, for Antarctica

    All peer-reviewed, all written by climate scientists, all confirming MWP was warmer than now, all confirming MWP existed outside Europe/North America.

    Just the tip of the iceberg. There are hundreds more. Face it- the evidence is overwhelming.

    You are wrong about there not being a ~17 year pause, you are wrong about the MWP not existing worldwide, you are wrong about the MWP having temps equivalent to today and you are wrong about the phantom 97% figure.

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  170. Unfortunately they were all different MWPs.

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  171. rsprung - do you even bother to read these papers you link to? Neukom et al only covers southern South America. It shows the temperatures in this region widely varied during the MWP. Around 1150 AD the temperatures were as much as 1.5C colder than the baseline.

    While the temperatures were generally above the baseline from ca 1170 to 1370, even during this timeframe there are periods where individual regions within the SSA were below the baseline - so there's not even uniformity within the SSA.

    Furthermore - nowhere do the authors state this is evidence for a global MWP. I assume you made that conclusion yourself; can you provide us with the correlation coefficients you came up with when you compared these SSA values to the CET to reach your conclusion?

    BTW, still waiting on the correlation coefficients for the Coldair Cave temperature record and the CET.

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  172. From 21/3/14 7:41 AM:

    "I KNOW that the rate of warming has slowed to a virtual crawl. there is no question about that. I DON'T KNOW why and I NEVER pretended to, so don't accuse me of something I have not done."

    I will press you on this since you haven't yet addressed it yourself.

    When did warming stop? And if you don't know when it stopped, or why it stopped, then how do you know that it did in fact stop?

    "I am under ZERO obligation to come up with a reason why or how it has slowed,"

    Erm, not so.

    If you can't demonstrate that you understand the physics and statistics that pertain to the signal and the noise of the global temperature record, then you can't be expected to have any credibility when you make unevidenced comments about it, and especially about how warming has stopped.

    So... when did it stop warming, why did it stop warming, and how have you ascertained that it stopped warming?

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  173. Eli, I think you're the only one who disagrees with me and doesn't call me names or insults.

    Just wanted to let you know that I really appreciate that and I have a lot of respect for you.

    Thanks.

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  174. Lotharsson28/3/14 1:32 AM

    It's rather interesting that rspung is essentially reiterating a blatant and serious scientific - what's the word he uses again? Ah, that's it - fraud by asserting that a bunch of papers disparate in region and time show that there was a global synchronous MWP, without bothering to do the careful scientific work to stitch them together into a global reconstruction and publish it in a peer reviewed journal for peer scrutiny. His position relies on the assertion that a non-reconstruction is more robust evidentiary basis than a reconstruction. (And that's disregarding the "fraud" of claiming that the Hockey Stick doesn't show an MWP, when "an MWP" is quite compatible with the published confidence intervals.)

    (I suppose it's also possible that he is using "the MWP" to describe something that was not global and synchronous, but that would be blatant fraud of another kind, given that we're talking about the global climate.)

    I suspect he doesn't realise that his position constitutes a far more serious "fraud" than what he has accused Mann of (even if we were to simply allow the accusations against Mann to stand without bothering to skeptically scrutinise them).

    This failing has now been pointed out to him in several ways by several different people on multiple threads, and he has not rebutted the critique preferring rather unskeptically to simply reiterate his claim. It's also interesting to note the many and varied critiques of other claims he has made that have been simply ignored.

    Methinks the projection is strong in this one (and Messrs Dunning and Kruger might have a professional interest as well).

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  175. Eli,

    I don't think rspung is being fair.
    I have never called him names, and I have tried REALLY hard not to insult him. My last post was extremely polite. And I make my living being funny so the sarcasm should get a pass.
    AND he was REALLY mean to me for no good reason in his last comment to me.
    He has not replied reasonably to any of my comments, and now he appears to be ignoring me.

    So I was wondering……... if it gets to that point………….and you have any control over it……………...
    Could you hold up in moderation, for a little while, any comments, to give me chance to be #200?

    And not to be outdone, I respect you AND think you are very handsome.

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  176. In denning FOIA requests, Climate Scientists are simply following the example of their leaders:

    http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/03/29/obama-freedom-information-act-nsa-fbi-cia-column/6793825/

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  177. People who are following the legal pleadings in the Mann vs. Styne case may be interested in the recent Styne response at http://www.steynonline.com/documents/6231.pdf

    Geoff

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