Sunday, September 17, 2017

#C) Examining Investors Business Daily’s malicious libel against Dr. Mann (10-14)


“No, Michael Mann, Global Warming Didn't Cause Hurricane Harvey's Devastation”  (8/31/2017 - Investor's Business Daily at investors.com) Written by someone unwilling to put their name on this libelous cowardly act of defamation.
I have no idea who's behind Investor's Business Daily or this editorial, but I know fraud and libel when I see it and I will be spending the next few days dissecting this particular example of calumny crossing over into what seems to me felonious  criminal vandalism on Professor Mann’s professional reputation - not to mention the citizen's right and need to honestly hear about what climate scientists are learning!

To spell out my case I will be quoting the entire editorial (nothing left out, nothing added) talking point by talking point, in chronological order.  Though broken down into bite-sized chunks, here we examine Points of Contention 10 to 14, Investors Business Daily quotes are in Courier font

Message to interested readers, I'm just an outside life long observer and my writing is done in fits and starts with constant short and long interrupts, thus it never surpasses the 'grandma moses' level.  But, my information is solid and my reasoning is solid and I welcome anyone with more time and focus, to take anything at WUWTW and use it as a starting point for better efforts that reach more people.  

Of course, if anyone were interested in helping me work on this, my obvious passion, to see what I could accomplish with the luxury of full-time focus on my side, please do let me know.  Thank you, Peter aka citizenschallenge

P.O.Box 56 - Durango, Colorado, 81302 - citizenschallenge at gmail
______________________________________________________________
Investor's Business Daily POC#10 - “Ironically, Mann published his hockey-stick paper in 1998,” 
_______________________________
Yet more ironically, his detractors never mention this part of that paper:




Global-scale temperature patterns and climate forcing over the past six centuries
Michael E. Mann, Raymond S. Bradley & Malcolm K. Hughes

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Northern Hemisphere Temperature During the Past Millennium: 
Inferences, Uncertainties, and Limitations
Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley, Malcom Hughes
March 15, 1999
______________________________________________________________
Investor's Business Daily POC#11 - “after which satellite temperature data — the most complete and accurate weather data we have"
_______________________________
This opens up quite the can of worms, but if Investor’s Daily wants to go there so be it.  

The notion that satellite data are some sort of gold standard thermometer in the sky is patently false.  It’s a very complicated process involving various "models" with all the pitfalls of any computer model, requiring detailed attention and ongoing adjustments.  But don’t take my word for it, here's an expert,

Professor Andrew Dessler - YaleClimateConnections



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Revamped satellite data shows no pause in global warming
March 4, 2016 by Seth Borenstein

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

A revealing interview with top contrarian climate scientists
John Christy and Roy Spencer are pro-fossil fuel and anti-scientific consensus
Dana Nuccitelli - April 6, 2015


"In 1990, University of Alabama at Huntsville scientists Roy Spencer and John Christy created a data set that estimates the temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere by using instruments on satellites (microwave sounding units) that measure microwave radiation in the atmosphere. According to their latest estimates, the Earth’s lower atmosphere has warmed significantly since satellite measurements began in 1979, but not quite as fast as thermometer measurements of temperatures at the Earth’s surface.

Spencer and Christy have also long disputed the degree to which humans are contributing to that warming, and have thus often been called to testify before Congress by policymakers seeking justification to oppose climate legislation. On the 25th anniversary of their satellite data set, Alabama.com interviewed the pair to discuss their science and climate contrarianism. The resulting discussion was quite revealing. …"
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Scurvy Story: Why You Should Believe 97% Of Climate Scientists, Not Long-Wrong John Christy
Joe Romm - February 21, 2014

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

New study questions the accuracy of satellite atmospheric temperature estimates
A new study finds that satellites may be underestimating the warming of the lower atmosphere
John Abraham - November 7, 2014 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Satellite climate data at 33 years: questioning shaky claims that downplay global warming
By Andrew Freedman, December 20, 2011

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Posted on 12 June 2011 by dana1981

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Of course once people get caught up in a spiral of cascading deceptions, there's no telling the truly bizarre places they can wind up.  Consider,

Did Spencer and/or Christy Stage the UAH Shooting?

Posted by Christopher Keating - April 27, 2017 - Dialogues On Global Warming

“… The building was the National Space Science and Technology Center (NSSTC) building and two of the people with offices in the building are Roy Spencer and John Christy, both noted anti-science, climate change deniers. As it turned out, the March for Science was also conducted over the weekend and started on campus. So, Spencer and Christy have made the claim that the shooting targeted them because a peaceful march opposed to their fake science marched a few blocks away earlier in the weekend. I laughed when I heard that. 'With the evidence they have, they could just have easily concluded Spencer or Christy shot the building themselves,' I thought.

Then, the bells went off.

In fact, the evidence does support the conclusion that Spencer and/or Christy staged the shooting themselves. They are the two people who stand to gain the most from this incident. Let's look. …”
______________________________________________________________
Investor's Business Daily POC#12 - “show virtually no statistically significant change in global temperatures."
_______________________________

Perhaps not statistically significant if your goal is to make Frog Soup, 
but on a global scale given the slightest appreciation for the hydrological cycle and how our biosphere maintains itself, it is most definitely statistically significant.

Earth's Long-Term Warming Trend, 1880-2015
______________________________________________________________

Investor's Business Daily POC#13 - “Worse still, Canadian statisticians Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick discovered that Mann's statistical manipulations of the raw data were mathematically questionable at best and dishonest at worst.” 
_______________________________

After the dust settled on McIntyre and McKitrick’s hyper inflated claims, turns out they were the one’s involved in questionable and dishonest behavior, specially for people pretending to be interesting in constructive scientific progress.  It get’s complex and out of my depth so I’ll allow experts to explain:

For instance Michael Mann himself wrote a detailed explanation of the various blunders and tricks McIntyre and McKitrick tried to get away with, here's some paragraphs.

False Claims by McIntyre and McKitrick regarding the Mann et al. (1998) reconstruction
Filed under: Paleoclimate — mike @ 4 December 2004

A number of spurious criticisms regarding the Mann et al (1998) proxy-based temperature reconstruction have been made by two individuals McIntyre and McKitrick ( McIntyre works in the mining industry, while McKitrick is an economist). These criticisms are contained in two manuscripts (McIntyre and McKitrick 2003 and 2004–the latter manuscript was rejected by Nature; both are collectively henceforth referred to as “MM”). MM claim that the main features of the Mann et al (1998–henceforth MBH98) reconstruction, including the “hockey stick” shape of the reconstruction, are artifacts of a) the centering convention used by MBH98 in their Principal Components Analysis (PCA) of the North American International Tree Ring Data Bank (‘ITRDB’) data, b) the use of 4 infilled missing annual values (AD 1400-1403) in one tree-ring series (the ‘St. Anne’ Northern Treeline series), and c) the infilling of missing values in some proxy data between 1972 and 1980. Each of these claims are demonstrated to be false below.
[McIntyre and McKitrick have additionally been discredited in a recent peer-reviewed article by Rutherford et al (2004)].

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Proxy-Based Northern Hemisphere Surface Temperature Reconstructions: Sensitivity to Method, Predictor Network, Target Season, and Target Domain  -  July 2006
Results are presented from a set of experiments designed to investigate factors that may influence proxy-based reconstructions of large-scale temperature patterns in past centuries. The factors investigated include 1) the method used to assimilate proxy data into a climate reconstruction, 2) the proxy data network used, 3) the target season, and 4) the spatial domain of the reconstruction. …

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

On Yet Another False Claim by McIntyre and McKitrick
Filed under: Paleoclimate Supplemental data — mike @ 6 January 2005

McIntyre and McKitrick (MM), in one of their many false claims regarding the Mann et al (MBH98) temperature reconstruction, assert that the “Hockey Stick” shape of the reconstruction is an artifact of the “non-centered” Principal Components Analysis (PCA) convention used by MBH98 in representing the North American International Tree Ring Data Bank (ITRDB) data series. 

We already demonstrated the falsehood of this assertion here by showing (a) that the hockey stick pattern emerges using either the MM (centered) or MBH98 (non-centered) PCA conventions, but was censored by MM through an inappropriate application of selection rules for determining the number of Principal Component (PC) to retain, (b) that use of the correct number of PC series (5) to be kept with the MM (centered) convention retains the characteristic “Hockey Stick” pattern as an important predictor, and yields essentially the same temperature reconstruction as MBH98, and finally (c) the MBH98 reconstruction is recovered even if PCA is not used at all to represent the North American ITRDB Data (i.e., each individual tree-ring series is used as a predictor with equal weight in the analysis). The claim by MM that the hockey stick pattern arises as an artifact of the PCA centering convention used by MBH98 is seen to be false on multiple levels.

Here, however, we choose to focus on some curious additional related assertions made by MM holding that (1) use of non-centered PCA (as by MBH98) is somehow not statistically valid, and (2) that “Hockey Stick” patterns arise naturally from application of non-centered PCA to purely random “red noise”. Both claims, which are of course false, were made in a comment on MBH98 by MM that was rejected by Nature , and subsequently parroted by astronomer Richard Muller in a non peer-reviewed setting–see e.g. this nice discussion by science journalist David Appell of Muller’s uncritical repetition of these false claims. These claims were discredited in the response provided by Mann and coworkers to the Nature editor and reviewers, which presumably formed the primary basis for the rejection of the MM comment.
Contrary to MM’s assertions, the use of non-centered PCA is well-established in the statistical literature, …
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Then there is Sou’s collect, further adventures with Ross McKitrick over at HotWhopper.

April 28, 2017
Dishonest premises from Ross McKitrick at WUWT and the Cato Institute

March 26, 2017
I like visiting Earth but I don't want to live there with Ross McKitrick @wattsupwiththat

September 2, 2014
The ultimate cherry pick - or how not to interpret a temperature chart, courtesy WUWT

October 20, 2013
The Evangelical Science Denier and the Alarmist Fundamentalist Religious Cult: The Cornwall Alliance

September 18, 2013
Is climate disinformer Ross McKitrick dishonest or dumb?

______________________________________________________________
Investor's Business Daily POC#14 - “When the two force-fed Mann's own statistical formulas with random data, they generated ... a hockey stick. So, in essence, the climate books were cooked to make global warming seem extreme, no matter what data were used.”
_______________________________
FALSE.

Investor’s Business is leaving out a really big part of this story.  McIntyre and McKitrick did their computations wrong.  No doubt I would too.  That’s why I trust the community of skeptical experts when they tell me this equation equals this result.  Particularly when it fits into the fundamental physics that I do have a good grasp on.

In fact, the MM fiasco is a good lesson in why we need experts and why serious scientists spend a life time learning their craft.  This is complex stuff that requires more than an accounting degree and a speculators fast talk to fathom. 


Posted by Tim Lambert on August 26, 2004

If you’re new here: In previous postings on Ross McKitrick I have shown how he messed up an analysis of the number of weather stations, showed he knew almost nothing about climate, flunked basic thermodynamics, couldn’t handle missing values correctly and invented his own temperature scale



Lambert's full collection:

I’ve had a closer look at the “bombshell” paper that Patrick Michaels described like this:

After four years of one of the most rigorous peer reviews ever, Canadian Ross McKitrick and another of us (Michaels) published a paper searching for “economic” signals in the temperature record. … The research showed that somewhere around one-half of the warming in the U.N. surface record was explained by economic factors, which can be changes in land use, quality of instrumentation, or upkeep of records.

There seems to be some problems with their work. To understand them you need to understand the two different ways of measuring angles.


If you do calculations and get degrees and radians mixed up, you get the wrong answer. Which is what McKitrick did. His analysis included a variable cosablat, which was supposed to be the cosine of absolute latitude. 

Trouble is, the software he used expects angles to be measured in radians, his data has latitude in degrees, and he didn’t convert from degrees to radians. Consequently, every single number he calculates is wrong

I corrected the error and reran his regressions. The sizes of the “economic” signals were greatly reduced. They no longer “explain” half of the surface warming trend. Removing the effects of the economic variables now just reduces the warming trend for his sample from 0.27 degrees/decade to 0.18 degrees/decade, which is very close to the warming trend for the whole globe.

Even this overstates his results—McKitrick did not calculate statistical significance correctly …


~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Roy Spencer is one of the few climate contrarians with real credentials.  That doesn’t stop him from propagating some real whoppers, however.  Here I’ve collected links to critiques of Roy’s work.  I’m starting with the posts I’ve made on my blog, including my 3-part review of his new book, The Great Global Warming Blunder:  How Mother Nature Fooled the World’s Top Climate Scientists.

https://bbickmore.wordpress.com/2011/02/25/roy-spencers-great-blunder-part-1/
https://bbickmore.wordpress.com/2011/02/28/roy-spencers-great-blunder-part-2/
https://bbickmore.wordpress.com/2011/03/01/roy-spencers-great-blunder-part-3/
______________________________________________________________
Investor's Business Daily POC#14 - "Suddenly the hockey stick, the poster child of the global-warming community, turns out to be an artifact of poor mathematics," science writer Richard Muller noted in the 2004 issue of the MIT Review, on the controversy. "How could it happen?"
_______________________________ 

Oh boy now we come to the opportunistic self promoter Richard Muller the TV physicist seeking a greater audience.  Please note that this is 2017 and Investor’s Business needed to dig all the way back to 2004 for their money quote.  

They can’t bring themselves to break the news, for all his faults Richard Muller has enough integrity to admit when he’s wrong.  The title of this first article seems especially appropriate for Investor's Business.

More People Who Can’t Handle The Truth
Paul Krugman, October 21, 2011


“… Richard Muller, the skeptic we’re talking about, seems to have had different motivations from many of the professional climate skeptics. He basically appears to have suffered from nothing more than characteristic physicist arrogance, the belief that people in lesser sciences just don’t know what they’re doing. (Economists experience this all the time, but we make up for it by being equally condescending to sociologists.) To his credit, he went and tried to do better — and is now being honest in revealing that what he got was pretty much the same as the results of previous research. … 
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Climate change study forces sceptical scientists to change minds
Leo Hickman - July 29, 2012
Earth's land shown to have warmed by 1.5C over past 250 years, with humans being almost entirely responsible


The Earth's land has warmed by 1.5C over the past 250 years and "humans are almost entirely the cause", according to a scientific study set up to address climate change sceptics' concerns about whether human-induced global warming is occurring.

Prof Richard Muller, a physicist and climate change sceptic who founded the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (Best) project, said he was surprised by the findings. "We were not expecting this, but as scientists, it is our duty to let the evidence change our minds." He added that he now considers himself a "converted sceptic" and his views had undergone a "total turnaround" in a short space of time.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

George Marshall - July 31, 2012


One of our biggest problems with climate change is that it simply refuses to fit conventional narratives. So when a leading skeptic makes a public conversion it makes a compelling story that calls for our attention.

Seems only right to give Michael Mann some equal time on this one too.

Stick to the Science
By Michael E. Mann on June 24, 2011

“Last month, Scientific American ran a disappointing interview by Michael Lemonick of controversial retired University of California, Berkeley, physics professor Richard Muller.  As an undergraduate physics major at Berkeley in the mid 1980s, I knew about Muller—and his controversial, now generally discarded, theory that a “death star” was responsible for major mass extinctions.  

Later, as a graduate student studying climate, I became aware of Muller’s work attempting to overthrow the traditional Earth Orbital theory of the Ice Ages—that, too, didn’t pan out. To be clear, there is nothing wrong in science with putting forth bold hypotheses that ultimately turn out to be wrong. Indeed, science thrives on novel, innovative ideas that—even if ultimately wrong—may lead researchers in productive new directions.

One might hope, however, that a scientist known for big ideas that didn’t stand the test of time might be more circumspect when it comes to his critiques of other scientists. Muller is on record accusing climate scientists at the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit of hiding data—a charge that was rejected in three separate investigations. In his interview, Muller even maligned my own work on the “hockey stick” reconstruction of past temperatures. 

Muller falsely claimed “the hockey-stick chart was in fact incorrect” when in fact the National Academy of Sciences affirmed our findings in a major 2006 report which Nature summarized as ““Academy affirms hockey-stick graph.” Scientific American itself recently ran an article “Novel Analysis Confirms Climate ‘Hockey Stick’ Graph” (November 2009 issue). …”


______________________________________________________________________
Investor's Business Daily Character Assassination Attempt on Michael Mann 
8/31/2017 - investors.com

An examination - 36 points of contention.

September 15, 2017
#A) Examining Investors Business Daily’s malicious libel against Dr. Mann (1-3)

September 17, 2017
#B) Examining Investors Business Daily’s malicious libel against Dr. Mann (4-9)

September 17, 2017
#C) Examining Investors Business Daily’s malicious libel against Dr. Mann (10-14)

September 18, 2017
#D) Examining Investors Business Daily’s malicious libel against Dr. Mann (15-27)

September 19, 2017
#E) Examining Investors Business Daily’s malicious libel against Dr. Mann (28-36 and fini)


No comments: