[Thank’ee for the linkage, Mark Steyn! Sorry about beating you to the post title. I think you’ll find I did address Mann’s science my piece on whether his work was ‘independently replicated’]
Just when I think I can’t dislike Michael Mann any further, I am proved wrong. I thought that his claims to have been repeatedly exonerated by investigative bodies were just a product of his delusional megalomania.
As it turns out, however, they are conscious lies. Why do I say this? Because in his book, Mann admits that the investigations had nothing to do with him:
The statistician on the Oxburgh panel, David Hand, caused a bit of trouble with offhand remarks he chose to make at the press conference announcing the panel’s findings. Though our own work did not fall within the remit of the committee, and the hockey stick was not mentioned in the report, Hand commented that “the particular technique [Mann et al.] used exaggerated the blade at the end of the hockey stick.
Of course, that’s the same panel that supposedly ‘exonerated’ him.
Mannling David Appel was last seen around these parts claiming that Mann’s hockey stick had been ‘repeatedly replicated’. Since I showed that isn’t so, he’s sloped off somewhere. But let me revisit Mann’s methods. This is the graph he shows to the IPCC when he’s telling people what to do:
This is the one he publishes on his own in scientific journals:
And this is the one he produces when he has to work with other people who can check what he’s up to:
How does this look to you?
Meanwhile, the thuggery continues. In this series, I’ve already banged on about Mann’s mau-mauing of journals, his sliming of other scientists et cetera, kai tai lopa, ad nauseam. For simply deciding to join the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a 79 year old Professor is hounded in a way I haven’t seen anywhere else, not even in the disgraceful treatment of James Watson.
Yes, yes, I know the counterarguments: The GWPF is a denialist organisation. Let’s also stipulate for the sake of the argument that it’s formed of racist, sexist, homophobic, neo-nazis whose aim is the freeing of Great Cthulhu from his watery tomb.
So. What?
I’ve banged on about this twice before, but thrice is the charm. I’ve spent the last few months arguing with racialists, and I’ll keep on doing so. It never occurred to me to try and find out their real names and try to get them all fired, and nor would I if I had the chance. I’d be disgraced otherwise. It is of the highest importance to have these arguments out in the open. Nothing good can come of silence and darkness, and you only succeed in building something lasting through truth, reason and facts, facts, facts.
Not by engaging in stunts like this:
Yes, the Mann is having his sycophants police even Amazon reviews of his book.
As a great woman once observed: “An error made on your own is safer than the ten truths accepted on faith, because the first leaves you the means to correct it, but the second destroys your capacity to distinguish truth from error.” This behaviour isn’t that of someone trying to gain rational agreement but of one enforcing a faith-based creed.
I’m really, really not surprised that there’s so much denialism around, if this is the public face of climate science. I accept that climate change is real and man-made, but I am the fortunate position of reading all the science independently. If I didn’t have that opportunity, if I was solely reliant on what I saw on the media, would I still come to the same conclusion? I don’t think I would, no.
I know that my skeptical and atheist colleagues don’t like it when I bang on in this vein, but this is even more important for those of us who recognise that global warming is real, man-made and a problem. Mann’s contemptible antics are set to discredit climate science in the public eye and make it impossible to get anything done.
And it would be worse still if Mann doesn’t crash and burn in this lawsuit. I know people are thinking “Oh, it’s just going to hurt the deniers” – wrong. There’s no such thing as specific censorship. You can’t just hold down one thing, you always end up holding down the things next to it. If you, for example:
– Accept that global warming is real, but disagree about its extent, or
– Agree about the extent, but disagree about the rate, or
– Agree about the rate and the extent, but disagree about the effects or
– Agree about the rate, extent and effects, but disagree about how to deal with it, or
– Agree about all the foregoing, but disagree how to get those solutions done…
Mann’s goonshow tactics will be trained on you. Why do I say that? For the simple reason that that is what is already happening. We will need the best ideas we can get to deal with this issue, and the only way to get those is to have the freest possible marketplace of ideas.
Finally, a few words on Mann’s ridiculous #antiscience thing. Scientists, true scientists, have three thousand years of the finest minds in history behind them, thirty centuries of searching this world for truth. The idea that science needs defending by Mann and his twitter hashtag manages to combine the grandiose and pathetic.
