Lubos Motl struggles with Mannian sophistry.
Lubos — Interview with Michael Mann
h/t reader hjbange
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MM – Yeah, some of our articles are probably more penetrable than others. And some of what we write is technical enough that it is likely impenetrable to the general public, and even likely some other scientists.
And some that can’t be understood by the god’s.
the Air Vent 
I just watched a 3 minute clip of Rahmstorf, and it was the same Crap.
Funny how they claim their body of “science” is indestructible, yet they’re SO INSECURE about it.
Hell, just focus both your eyes on their work and watch them start having a complete nervous breakdown.
The Team’s arrogance was apparent to a colleague way back in 1999:
There certainly are some things known but to God, but I don’t think it’s the papers Mann should be worried about…
Climate blogging.
First off, Im no capitalist. And maybe harder to believe, Im no socialist. Both some posts and a lot of comments on this blog, as well as a lot of other climate blogs seem very political. One particular example would be the rambling about US health care plans. I find such references highly irrelevant when it comes to climate science.
I am a very strong skeptic of IPCC’s work, the “accepted” AGW theory and generally the lack of “good” science in this debate. In this respect “The Air Vent” is a very good information channel and one which I have come to rely on when it comes to “climate stuff”. This also goes for climateaudit, wattsupwiththat and bishop hill.
My problem arises when there is a mixing of policies attaining to other subjects, such as health care in the US. This is a problem based on several reasons:
1. A good climate blog should try to focus on CLIMATE, not health care or policies not connected to climate.
2. By involving “trash talk” about your political opponent or public policies, you become a political blog. Often this and other blogs have stressed the problem of AGW-believers mixing science and politics, how is this consistent with this blog posting or linking to clearly politically biased posts?
3. By attacking the “lefties” you are alienating a group with just as much intellectual capacity as the “righties.” This group may be an even MORE sought after group as readers of blogs like tAV, as they generally lack unbiased information channels on climate.
I wont stop reading this blog, and I very much appreciate the work that is beeing put into it. Still, I think it would be even better if you could be stricter on the mixing of politics and science, and stressing a stricter fact-based scientific approach.
Thanks HLx
I have the opposite leanings as Hnx regarding the validity of AGW climate science. However I completely concur with his comments regarding the last 5 or 6 posts.
I am new to this blog, so perhaps this is the typical standard for posts. I started reading the hockey stick reconstructions, the gridded data posts, etc and thought I had found a site that presented real counter arguments to the science, rather than the more typical “these guys are goons” and “gotcha” type arguments that I see on many skeptical blogs.
Maybe a politics vs science in the title (and lets face it there is, at this point, some cross-over between these two) – like [politics]Manniac or [science]CO2 falls as fossil fuel use increases and [science/politics]review of Europe’s Cap’n’Trade proves carbon tax increase emissions
As with Hnx – still plan on reading and certainly appreciate the different viewpoints.
It’s Jeff’s blog – his “air vent”. I consider myself neither left nor right myself, but I’m probably a communist by us standards, being a european. Still, I don’t mind most of the political comments here, I think I can always learn from listening to other people’s opinions – and es
Hnx,
Unfortunately the science has been hijacked, and now we are forced to go after those who have hijacked it. The sceptics, and most of the rightists, aren’t the ones who dragged it into the political mud.
Lubos is a firsthand witness of leftist politics, as his country was under the boot of the Soviet experiment. Societies simply don’t want to be experimented with or socially engineered by an elite few – this what it’s all about. Just read Mann’s quote above. He should be happy not to be living in Canscescu’s 1989 Romania. Unfortnately politics is in the science. If you want politics out, then tell the leftists and the Arrogant to stop politicising it. Go and bark up the other tree too.
Hnx – Or perhaps it is your fear and inability to counter other arguments and views that is driving you to demand we be denied to have a voice? I’m starting to get annoyed.
I try to lurk on the technical threads as the much of the maths are beyond me. I appreciate those threads the most, though — “what do people who haven’t drunk one-or-another flavor of Kool-Aid think?”
Speaking of Mann and technical threads, I stumbled across “James’ Empty Blog,” which is math-heavy and has a pro-AGW Consensus slant. Commenter Carl C raises some hackles when he writes,
Further down, Carrick dryly remarks,
Circling the wagons around Mann and his reconstructions can’t be entirely enjoyable.
Oops, I lost the last part of my post, I’ll complete it here:
…I think I can always learn from listening to other people’s opinions – and especially from listening to American conservatives, whose opinions get a pretty biased coverage in European media.
AMac, like you I tend to lurk on the technical threads. Although I only understand about 5% of it I can get a general idea of how strong or weak an idea is if I read around enough. The political threads are the worst, mainly because everyone seems to consider themselves a political expert and most aren’t shy about demonstrating the ‘fact’.
Actually, what I have come to conclude with all of this is that people generally like easy stories, with good guys and bad guys and clearly opposed sides. The best histories of this whole thing won’t be along for 50 years or so, once some distance is established. At the moment it seems that few can see beyond their anger. Steve Mosher may be somewhat ahead of the curve there.
We evil conservatives get beat up by pretty well all the media these days. This thread though is about some crazy answers Mann gave which Lubos linked to.
Have you guys read the interview? He goes on about well organized interests against the unfunded scientists and all kinds of complete bullshit. Mann really seems to have lost all contact with reality. I listened to part of a video presentation he gave recently. He sounds reasonable enough in that instance, but I’ve seen his papers, I’ve read his very leftist politics. In my opinion, the interview shows how far gone he really is mentally. He lives in a parallel universe, thus the title.
I actually think that Jeff’s political posts have a role to play. By putting his politics out front it is like a public declaration. Contrast this with guy’s like Mann who, for years, have tried to pretend that their politics don’t play a role. As Lubos has shown it continues to this day. I do not always agree with Jeff’s politics, but I know who I find more honest.
HNx – I understand your frustration. I have a son with neurological issues and frequent a few sites dedicated to the disorder. I’m looking for the latest in research, treatment and legal issues, but frequently find the articles and comments derailed in political finger pointing. As I’m conservative, and most of the comments are left-wing, I find it annoying and counter productive.
That being said (here comes the but), I think this issue is a bit different. My experience is that most of the AGW skeptics didn’t get started with a detailed review of the science, but after their “BS detectors” went off. It seems just a bit too coincidental that every solution to AGW furthers the progressive agenda and limits individual freedom. Consider this partial list:
Restrictions on energy usage
Increased taxes on individuals and business
Limits on suburban growth and sprawl
Mandatory use of mass transit and restrictions on personal vehicle ownership
Restrictions on speech (“Nuremburg trials for deniers”)
Limits on the power of the people (“too important to be left up to a democracy”)
Suggestions that the right to reproduce be limited
Devolution of power from sovereign national governments to the UN
The people are not unreasonable and are willing to sacrifice freedom for the greater good if the situation warrants it (World War II is a perfect example). However, they are not willing to do it if they think they are being manipulated. When asked to prove their contentions, the AGW advocates retreat into “the science is settled”, hide the data, and insinuate we are too stupid to understand. I’m just a lowly engineer and state college graduate, who am I too question Michael Mann and his Oxford PhD?
On another blog, commenters were discussing what environmental scare story could be used to further a right-wing agenda. They came up with plate tectonics and a predicted increase in earthquake frequency and intensity. It seems that all that oil beneath the surface is lubricating the plates and facilitating the destruction. The answer is to pump every last drop out as quickly as possible. Once it’s out we need to do something with it so we may as well put it in our cars. Of course it’s absurd, but is it any less ridiculous than the AGW alarmist predictions? They rest entirely on computer models. I’m sure we could generate models to “prove” the oil-earthquake theory too.
Unfortunately, the politics can’t be divorced from this issue as it is being driven by politics. Mann himself made a political connection in the interview when he compared skeptics to those that attended town halls protesting President Obama’s health care reform. Mann failed to note that the public sides with those opposed to Obama’s health care plan (by a 15 to 20 point margin) for the same reason mentioned above, the limitations on the individuals ability to chose what is in their own best interests.
If one believes that the AGW crowd is perpetrating a fraud (or at least knowingly embellishing something minor into a catastrophe), isn’t the logical question why? The only answer that makes sense is monetary and/or political gain.
Jeff’s blog, Jeff’s rules of course, and for that reason Jeff’s political rants are the only ones that don’t really irritate me on here (not that anyone else gives a toss about that). Espen is absolutely right about the (mis)characterisation of US conservative politics in the European media – UK media at least.
Like Hnx, I prefer less politics. On the other hand, I appreciate the honesty of Jeff letting us know where he stands politically, and the fact that he isn’t hiding it. The lack of honesty by the “Team” is what made the recent BBC interview of Jone all that more breathtaking. Even though he didn’t relinquish his belief that the science behind AGW is sound, and I wouldn’t expect him to, he did finally admit that the science isn’t nearly as certain as they had portrayed it to be. For anyone who has been following this debate for a long time (me, since 92ish) that admission was stunning.
Of course, the US press is circling the wagon too. Check out the ,a href=”http://sonicfrog.net/?p=2894″>latest defense for the medias continual avoidance of this entire story. It’s also breathtaking.
Ooops. Should have read:
Of course, the US press is circling the wagon too. Check out the latest defense for the medias continual avoidance of this entire story. It’s also breathtaking.
Firstly: got my nick, which I use on these blogs, a bit messed up, should be HLx.
Response chronologically:
@Espen:
I’m Norwegian, and yeah, even right wing Europeans are leftist compared to the US. As to the matter of opinions, you may have a valid point. But that is on the condition that you get peoples well funded opinions, not short phrases as: “… On the other hand, he overwhelms us with tons of far-left notions about many kinds of political questions that everyone is supposed to agree with, e.g. that the opponents of Obama’s socialist health care are an “irrational sort of conspiracy-driven lunatics”. ;-)”
This statement implies that if you are skeptical to the theory of AGW you should also be opposed to “Obama’s socialist health care.” What the post does not provide is any reason, whatsoever, for why I should hold this opinion. So, I do not know what I have to learn from people just stating opinions, when they supply no reason for holding that opinions.
@P. Gosselin:
I do agree that “the science has benn hijacked.” Though, I not believe that the science has been hijacked by politicians. I do not regularly speek highly of people, nor about politicians, but in this instance the politicians, as always, are but a tool or “useful fools” for the real players. Reasoning should be that someone benefit from government programs and law revisions, and these people should then be the correct target for the frustration. When has it ever been fruitful to be angry at politicians? They are idiots.
@P. Gosselin 2:
In my own opinion I do not possess any fear or inabilities, and probably do neither you, about ones own ability to cope with differing opinions. When you say “arguments” Im pretty confused, because often there is no arguments attached to the different opinions, or should I say “statements.”
@Jeff Id:
Conservatives get beat up pretty well in media always, as do democrats. I refer to my first answer to P. Gosselin in this post, as I see it, political views are pretty irrelevant for the science, as are politicians.
Yes, I have read the interview linked from the secondary blog, and yes: Mann is just dodging and talking bullshit. Still, I do not understand that my point wouldnt be validly posted in exactly this thread, since the link leads to a political “half-rant.”
@Layman Lurker:
It is very well that Jeff Id lets his political views show. Then people know who the person Jeff Id is, and that he is not hiding it. This is often a problem with journalist, which are trying to portray themselves as “neutral and unbiased,” but who almost exclusively hold one stance or another on every piece of work they produce. So, every honor to Jeff Id for not trying to portray himself as someone else. :)..
HLx
Amac:
I agree with those posters who say politics and science questions should be kept as separate as possible–which is not to say that politics doesn’t influence how scientific questions get framed, or funded. But something strikes me as very odd about the climate debate (& pls forgive me if I bring up the obvious and hitherto addressed).
I know of no other scientific issue in which the political leanings of the scientists, technicians and analyists on either side of the climate change divide are so consistent, and predictable.
Take any scientific or technical issue (almost). You simply cannot adduce the politics of the researcher by looking at his stance vis-a-vis the data. Nor should you. Individual political views of researchers/scientists should be all over the map.
Not so with climate change. Virtually everyone who supports AGW is on the political left; and from what I gather, most of those who are skeptical are either libertarian, conservative or to the right.
This is not coincidence. What it suggests is that political views, at least as far as the climate change debate goes, are pivotal.
It is no accident that Mann and others of his stripe have called for a top down “revolt of the engineers” approach to whatever ails us. They are impatient with democracy and believe that they have finally found a scientific reason to circumvent it. What greater good can there be than the good of the planet?
Get in line you Betas and Gammas.
#19
The cause of global warming and enviromentalism is what pulls a lot of left leaning people into climate science. Hopefully, the growth of the skeptical blogs will stimulate more independant minded science types into the field.
I am tired of hearing the spin about realclimate from these guys. Every time I read something from Mann or Schmidt I think, “Who do you think you you’re fooling?”.
From the Benshi Interview: (I’ll help RO and Mikey out the Q&A, they need advice)
RO – So who gives you guidance in dealing with the media?
MM – Well, I have friends, like Arlie Schardt, the director of EMS, Environmental Media Services, (who changed their name again). He was Al Gore’s National Communications Director for the 2000 campaign. Ya see, Arlie is friends with David Fenton…they even share the same office space. They’re the ones that founded RealClimate but we’re all by our lonesome now. Just us real scientists hunkered down against those Philistines…You know who I mean…
RO – Have you guys ever paid any communication experts for advice?
MM – No, all our advice has been given to us gratis. Just like my legal expenses…all donated for the good of the Noble Cause…Even Gavin’s time has been donated.
RO – The reason I ask about Real Climate…except that your blog is impenetrable to anyone who is not fluent in the language of current issues in the world of climate science…
MM – Yeah, some of our articles are probably more penetrable than others. The comments section is definitely impenetrable to many (hehe, we keep ’em out, just like we do with the peer-reviewed literature) And some of what we write is technical enough that it is likely impenetrable to the general public, and even likely some other scientists, especially those who know the truth.
RO – OK, last question. Is that a space suit you are wearing?
MM – Yes it is. Gavin at NASA is helping me to become the first real scientist in space.
Jimchip you owe me a keyboard for the wine I just sputtered into it. On second thought treat it as negacash (like negawatts) and see if Gore will pay you for a carbon offset that you can then send to me because I drink wine and have given up champange in order to reduce my carbon footprint.
Jeff, Time to destroy the well-funded anti-AGW myth?
Would you consider a thread where people can nominate their funding levels in approximate terms?
My personal funding is easy to state. I make a loss of a few thou $ a year.
How about the signatories on this list?
http://archive.atomicmpc.com.au/forums.asp?s=1&c=1&t=117990
#22 John, no champagne…very thoughtful, but you need to know a fundamental rule: Don’t Drink and Derive! (It effs up the smoothing circa 1960). I’ve already bought the offset in India and I’m trying to sell in the UK…higher price in developed countries. I used MM as a reference and they put me right through to Pachy. I promise to share if it works.
“Gavin at NASA is helping me to become the first real scientist in space.”
What an asshole. This is presumably a shot a Harrison Schmitt. But Apparently none of the scientists who have been sent up count?
#26 timetochooseagain,
And think about “The Onion”.
Read #21 again.
Hnx said February 19, 2010 at 12:46 pm …
Hnx (HLx ?), The simplest thing to do is to not read political discussions if you don’t want to. You might not like some of Jeff’s conservative ideas but his analysis and science are excellent work. Read that and try to make up your mind about the facts – it now appears we may have an alarmingly small number to work from. The reasonable assumption that the world has been warming since the end of the Little Ice Age may in question thanks to the biasing and pruning of the available raw data. After you have reached a working conclusion about reality, then you can, in an informed manner, reason out what seems good policy.
Right now the science has been split along apparent ideological lines. Ideology is useless in science since it is a symptom of mental “stopped-clock syndrome,” i.e. in the ideologue’s mind the hands in the mental clock have stopped. He or she then commences to insist that only they have the right time. What we want to know presently is which stopped clock, if any, is correct at the moment. They’ll all be wrong later.
People make a big deal out of how the climate debate is split along ideological lines but it should not suprise anyone given the fact that the solutions generally things that left leaning people want to see happen anyways and if CO2 did not exist they would invent some other reason to justify them. What this means is left leaning people have no incentive to look at the science critically because it tells them exactly what they want to hear.
.
The reverse is true for right leaning people. For that reason they have a huge incentive to analyze the science carefully and have frequently found many issues.
Don’t use the hockey stick as an argument ever again. Some people are getting tired of hearing about it. And if you do, then you’re a hater and all kind of other ugly things.
http://klimazwiebel.blogspot.com/2010/02/poem-for-unknown-blogger.html
The interview becomes even more pathetic, when minus the super-size ego, one understands this as the pathetic sell-out of professional and personal integrity, ethics, all for some smarmy, chump change grant money churning out the answers demanded by “da man.” And “da Mann” was just doing what he was told to do, following the carrot of grant dollars, if he came up with the “right answers.”
Mann and Phil Jones and all the rest of the “climate science chorus” are little more than whores, selling themselves cheaply to the Goldman Sachs crowd, who are chasing the really big bucks. (I’ve heard Al Gore’s venture capital firm has topped a billion in assets, already.)
If there’s any doubt this is a money game, a grifter’s scam:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/32255149/wall_streets_bailout_hustle/
I have never read anything more hard hitting.
(ears ago, I have a vague recollection of wandering around my apartment in Boston hearing, “And this is Mike Tiabbi, for Channel Five news…” Mike, apparently, had a kid: Matt Tiabbi, who is not only a wonderful writer, he’s funny and pulls no punches.)
Here’s another Matt, from his blog, about the appropriateness of righteous indignation, something you folk should “feel” in spades:
http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2010/01/27/populism-just-like-racism
Tiabbi’s article will give you a larger context in which to understand “Climategate,” what’s really happening. …..Lady in Red
Jeff Id said
February 19, 2010 at 2:03 pm
What’s funny is that in the early days, shortly after CA was born, I actually read a quote in which Mann said (paraphrased) “If you ask my friends, most of them would say I’m rather conservative.” Hehe, self delusion.
Mark
#31
Did you post the wrong link? This is a writeup of the banks and TARP – good support for the move your money campaign but not an argument either way for AGW.
I skimmed all seven pages and didn’t see any mention of global warming or even the dreaded cap’n’trade.
Of course, the Mann interview is with the political Mann, and by the way a Mann evidently devoid of a sense of humor, so we really do not get even a glimpse of what he has to say specifically about the science.
He is a very boring interview in political mode and one who tends to portray himself as a victim. He shows tendencies of a left wing propensity to dislike and distrust any business interests in mouthings that are typical of the more partisan and less sophisticated political commentators on that part of the political spectrum.
Would not the true scientist be more interested and excited about giving evidence and glimpses into the science he practices instead of pronouncements about what the science says – and who is picking on him of late?
Tom Fuller has a reference to eureferendum criticizing realclimate: “(he really takes them to school)”.
Michael Mann continues to be disingenuous (i.e., “lacking in candor; also: giving a false appearance of simple frankness”).
RO – Have you guys ever paid any communication experts for advice?
MM – No, I wish we or I had the money to do that, we’re in this on our own and we don’t get any money… there’s actually no financial compensation that any of us have ever received for doing this, it’s a labor of love. It’s something that we are all very concerned about, the accuracy of the science that we are all involved in, the climate science”.
It may be true, perhaps even likely that Michael Mann has never personally “paid any communication experts for advice”
But why pay for something when you get it for free?
As is well documented here), Michael Mann attended two separate 3-day sessions (out of a total of six sessions)organized by the Metcalf Institute for Marine & Environmental Reporting. These workshop sessions were “… an indispensable tool for helping journalists learn from climate change experts, and climate change experts in return to learn from journalists, on cutting communication issues involved in informing the public on the most critical environmental issue of the 21st Century.” according to one participant, Stephen H. Schneider, Ph.D..
According to the report on the workshops, the scientists were selected “because of their firsthand experiences in dealing with the media…”. Michael Mann would seem to be following one of the primamry tenents of PR journalism (perhaps partially learned at these sessions) – get your story out there, no matter how unbelievable.
My questions:
1) Was Michael Mann paid by the University of Virgnia for the days he attended these workshops?
2) Were his expenses reimbused by the University or the NSF?
By the way, this whole series of conferences was mainly supported financially by the NSF (National Science Foundation), and once again we see NSF Paleoclimate Program Director Dr. David Verardo organizing the funding and playing a key role as noted in the workshop report. (“David Verardo, Ph.D., of the National Science Foundation, is the person to whom the vast majority of the credit should go for supporting this unique science/journalism project” further noting Dr. Verardo’s “courageous commitment to fund a program that went well beyond the conventional boundaries of basic science”. Some may remember that Dr. Verardo has authorized many of the NSF grants to Michael Mann, and was the one who stepped in to support Michael Mann’s refusal to provide code for MBH 98/99 as his own “intellectual property”. Dr. Verardo stated in a letter to Steve McIntyre that Michael Mann was “not required to provide you with computer programs, codes, etc”. This issue has never received proper follow up.
#33, Mr. Thoughtful:
I apologize.
The article was the correct link, but I made the leap from the Wall Street mess
to cap and trade on my own. The article is a stunning analysis of what has happened in the past 18 months, the extent to which the public of the entre world
has been abused.
No. I imagine that cap and trade, designed by former Enron and Goldman Sachs folk is the next scame, coming down the pike. The Rolling Stone article explains the mentality.
Here is a lucid overview of cap and trade, done, interestingly, by Highly Committed Greenie, Annie Leonard:
http://www.storyofstuff.com/capandtrade/
The cap and trade rip-off is planned for our future, the next scam by the Wall Street grifters. ….Lady in Red
37 – Jeremy Warner at the Telegraph:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jeremywarner/100003851/here-comes-the-next-bubble-carbon-trading/
He references this article:
Click to access Conning-the-Climate.pdf
Yes. Jeremy Warner’s piece is good. That was my point: as put-upon as Mann portrays himself — and he *is* on a sort of front line — he is just the schmuck charged with getting “the right answer.” If the carbon trading cheats had wanted an upside-down hockey stick, Mann would have followed the funding grants in that direction, to that “right answer.” He is only a dumb pawn.
This was never about science.
….Lady in Red
Hi! People, our US democracy doesn’t looks like it seems to work so well at this time. Sometimes i wonder if socialist and other countries are pointing at us. We start to become like a third world nation these days …