Saturday, January 11, 2014

The Hockey Stick and The Climate Wars

For a time now a good friend and I have been exchanging notes dealing with the ongoing climate change debate.  He supports the UN IPCC position that human activity is at the heart of global warming.  I take the opposite view.  During the course of our exchanges he provided me Dr. Michael E. Mann's book The Hockey Stick and The Climate Wars.  Dr. Mann is a central player on the global warming side of the debate.  My friend wanted me to read Mann's book since it represents his point of view.  This is my response to him slightly altered by the removal of personal comments meant for him.

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I found Mann to be a bit too full of himself.  His self defensive approach in laying out the book gave me a sense that he was not being completely forthright.  He cited much scientific data that was hard for me to follow and consequently to challenge.  Not being a scientist I wouldn't anyway.  His self assured presentation was in my mind, however, far too overdone.  His sarcasm bites.  He seems intent on making sure the reader does not question anything he says - he is the expert so keep any doubts to yourself.  His attitude seems to be "if he says it, it is so".  That to me exposes his considerable arrogance and perhaps his own deep rooted doubts.  This tone carried throughout the book.

He portrays himself as a victim at the hands of those mean old "deniers".  He routinely uses demeaning terms when talking about his detractors but obviously feels that it is okay for him to denigrate them.  Many of those scientists have just as many academic credentials as he.  He was really upbeat throughout Chapter 15 as he recited all the apparent vindications he and his side have enjoyed.  His attitude came across as "boy, did we put those guys in their place".  In short he seems to believe he is always right while his detractors are not only wrong but dishonest and incompetent to boot.  Without doing extensive research I cannot challenge the veracity of his claims in this chapter or for that matter throughout the entire book.  But I harbor doubts as to his forthrightness.  Not saying he is out-and-out lying just that given his personality when dealing with himself and his cause he likely paints the best possible picture and ignores the parts he does not like. 

Another notable flaw in my view is Mann's constant recitation of the "deniers" association with big oil and their money.  The implication being that their scientific findings are clearly tainted - and they may well be.  The obverse is that "alarmist" findings are free of such contamination.  That however is false (more later).  Note the findings at this link:  http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/19/the-well-funded-climate-business-follow-the-money/  Here is a short quote derived from a 2009 Climate Money study by Joanne Nova that reveals "that the federal Government has a near-monopoly on climate science funding."  Another quote:  "The Congressional Research Service estimates that since 2008 the federal government has spent nearly $70 billion on 'climate change activities.'”  The obvious question is why is the government handing over so much of taxpayer's money to climate alarmists?  The government has an agenda and the alarmists scientists know that their funds will slow to a trickle if they do not meet the government's "alarmist" expectations.  

While the extent of the matter can be debated there is no question that governments seek to exploit "climate change" for political and wealth redistribution purposes.  I cannot vouch for the validity of all the information provided by this obvious "denier" (below linked document dated 12/28/13)  but this quote presents affirmable information.  It provides a sense of the UN's approach to climate change notwithstanding recurring challenges to its veracity. "Have they decided to reevaluate their conclusions in response to all this new information? The answer is no. And the reason is that concern over preserving the environment is merely a smokescreen intended to hide the real agenda. As FOX news reported on September 8, 2010, the UN's Secretary General and his staff met to discuss ways of reasserting the UN's influence on the world stage, including:
    "how to restore 'climate change' as a top global priority after the fiasco of last year's Copenhagen summit"
    "how to continue to try to make global redistribution of wealth the real basis of that climate agenda, and widen
    the discussion further to encompass the idea of 'global public goods'"
So 'climate change' is simply seen as a convenient tool to be used to extract wealth from producer countries and redistribute it to the non-producers. And since that goal remains unaffected by any revelations of the anti-scientific foundations underlying climate research, there is no need to change course."

The full  document can be found here:  http://go-galt.org/climategate.html#CONCLUSIONS

In addition to above thoughts I noted that an assumption the "alarmist" seem to make, and not developed in the book, is that since the earth's slight warming trend coincides with the onset of the industrial revolution human activity is the most obvious cause.  So it seems that their science starts with that assumption.  Is their scientific data conclusive or simply coincidental?  Scientific data supporting warming is quite possibly a natural outcome of natural climate events outside man's control.  Were that the case maybe the warming trend just happened to align with the onset of the industrial revolution.  It may be but it could just as easily not be.  I certainly don't know but Mann does not really deal with that potentiality...seems odd to me, it may be a convenient oversight.  To me that suggests that the alarmists' assumption that man-made CO2 pollution is the cause or at least a major contributor to global warming is neither provable nor unprovable.  I have read many accounts written by those he calls deniers that acknowledge human activity is a contributor but the question alarmist don't want to answer is "how much".  They cannot recreate events that do so - their conclusions are therefore inferential at best.  They are certainly not conclusive.

To my way of thinking scientists too sure of themselves are to be viewed with skepticism.  The basis of that remark is derived from an interesting booklet entitled On Being A Scientist:  Responsible Conduct in Research, National Academy Press, 1995.  Some time ago I was in the midst of researching an entirely different subject when I ran across it.  Here is a quote:  "Scientific results are inherently provisional. Scientists can never prove conclusively that they have described some aspect of the natural or physical world with complete accuracy. In that sense all scientific results must be treated as susceptible to error."  The on-line booklet can be found at:  http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=4917&page=15.   I did note that in several places in his book and in the Epilogue Mann alludes to this fact.  His characterization of his work, however, seems to vacate the point.  His attitude suggests that there can be no doubt that he and his like minded colleagues are right in their determinations.

Another quote in this vein I found interesting (on yet another research effort) comes from the book The Limitations of Scientific Truth by Dr. Nigel Brush.  Chapter 5 opens with this sentence:  "The primary obstacle to harmonizing religious truth with scientific truth is that scientific truth is constantly changing.  Addressing why scientific truth changes he writes that:  "An answer can be found by examining the logical limitations of the modern scientific method."  The chapter develops this point and ends with this question: "Indeed, if all scientific theories are equally unprovable, what distinguishes scientific truth from metaphysical truth...or even religious truth?"

To add to rationale that supports my own man-made global warming skepticism I found a most interesting article published in the 13 Dec 2014 edition of the Weekly Standard.  The article, written by Ethan Epstein, reports on his interaction with Richard Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan emeritus professor of meteorology at MIT.  Lindzen is a climate change denier.  Here is what Epstein says of him:  "Lindzen is no shrinking violet. A pioneering climate scientist with decades at Harvard and MIT, Lindzen sees his discipline as being deeply compromised by political pressure, data fudging, out-and-out guesswork, and wholly unwarranted alarmism. In a shot across the bow of what many insist is indisputable scientific truth, Lindzen characterizes global warming as 'small and .  .  . nothing to be alarmed about.'”

Here are a few more quotes I found interesting.  This one regards the UN IPCC Report.  "'For one thing, he says that the Summary for Policymakers is an inherently problematic document. The IPCC report itself, weighing in at thousands of pages, is 'not terrible. It’s not unbiased, but the bias [is] more or less to limit your criticism of models,' he says. The Summary for Policymakers, on the other hand—the only part of the report that the media and the politicians pay any attention to—'rips out doubts to a large extent. .  .  . [Furthermore], government representatives have the final say on the summary.' Thus, while the full IPPC report demonstrates a significant amount of doubt among scientists, the essentially political Summary for Policymakers filters it out." 

"If Lindzen is right about this and global warming is nothing to worry about, why do so many climate scientists, many with résumés just as impressive as his, preach imminent doom? He says it mostly comes down to the money—to the incentive structure of academic research funded by government grants. Almost all funding for climate research comes from the government, which, he says, makes scientists essentially vassals of the state. And generating fear, Lindzen contends, is now the best way to ensure that policymakers keep the spigot open." 

"Lindzen also says that the 'consensus'—the oft-heard contention that 'virtually all' climate scientists believe in catastrophic, anthropogenic global warming—is overblown, primarily for structural reasons. 'When you have an issue that is somewhat bogus, the opposition is always scattered and without resources,' he explains. 'But the environmental movement is highly organized. There are hundreds of NGOs. To coordinate these hundreds, they quickly organized the Climate Action Network, the central body on climate. There would be, I think, actual meetings to tell them what the party line is for the year, and so on.' Skeptics, on the other hand, are more scattered across disciplines and continents. As such, they have a much harder time getting their message across."

"Lindzen,...can’t be dismissed. Nor, of course, is he the only skeptic with serious scientific credentials. Judith Curry, the chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech, William Happer, professor of physics at Princeton, John Christy, a climate scientist honored by NASA, now at the University of Alabama, and the famed physicist Freeman Dyson are among dozens of scientists who have gone on record questioning various aspects of the IPCC’s line on climate change. Lindzen, for his part, has said that scientists have called him privately to thank him for the work he’s doing." 

Here is the full Lindzen article:   http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/what-catastrophe_773268.html?page=3

After I completed my above remarks I went on Amazon.com and scanned the reviews of the book rendered by others.  Most supported Mann and his work.  A large percentage did not provide substantive reasons justifying their support but did offer derogatory remarks directed towards his detractors.  Most of those that obviously critiqued Mann's work provided cogent thoughts.  A few did not.  One reviewer, Dr. Stephen A. Short, provided this remark:  "As a practicising earth scientist of 35 years with over 100 mainstream peer reviewed papers and book chapters I can say that there is strictly no need for conspiracy theories in a context where this new book by (Dr) Michael Mann of Hockey Stick fame is one [of] the worst pieces of devious, lying, dissembling re-writing of modern events I have read in a very long time."

Below are some other items which, in my mind, present credible counter-points to those presented by Mann and his fellow scientists.

George Burns

http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/01/how_leftists_account_for_climate_stability.html

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/367132/coercing-conformity-andrew-c-mccarthy

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/01/water_is_the_weather_wildcard.html



Global Warming: The Science and the Pseudoscience

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