Kyoto Debunked

[a_unique_person]

I am somewhat tired of posting on this over and over, but the idea that the Global Warming hypothesis was just "debunked" or made questionable by two rogue "scientists" is just a bit incredible. Like Yeti, I won't jump in until I see some sort of article in a peer reviewed journal.

Damm JREF drinking game. Never should have made it a whole sip for everytime something is called debunked when it isn't.

 

[EvilYeti]

Do you really think M&M would put a bald-faced lie in their response, concerning the recent manipulation of files in the quote below?

Considering their past behavior, yes. Their entire discourse with Mann was based on deception, as they never informed him of their intentions to audit his research.

Don't you think, given the considerable effort they have put into their audit, they would not want to be so easily caught up short?

They put very little effort into their audit. It amounts to sloppy (and wrong) undergraduate homework assignment.

Doesn't it raise even the slightest possiblity that Mann might, again I say might be trying to thwart further analysis by others?

No. The proxies Mann studied were collected by others, Mann has no control over them.

If you have some concerns, might it not be better to wait and see how the dispute develops?

I have no concern with junk science amateurs, funded by the petroleum industry, publishing junk science on the internet. If they have a case, submit the audit to Nature and see if they publish it.
They will never submit it, as I'm fairly sure they know its fraudulent.

The apparent manipulation of files raises a red flag in front of me that will not go away. That, along with Mann's evident misrepresentation of the efforts by M&M to acquire the data from Mann. (documented by M&M being astute enough to retain exchanged emails) These concerns give me doubts, that hopefully will be resolved by the scientific community.

The collated files Mann's associate prepared forM&M contained bad data, so they were deleted. There is no need to keep them around. Mann has since provided M&M with pointers to the raw data so they may collate it themselves.

If you have no such concerns, I'm sure your unswerving faith in Mann will not be swayed by further discussion.

The only "faith" I have is in the scientific method. Which Mann and team has followed and you and M&M have astutely ignored.
All M&M have to do to get me concerned is submit their paper in a SCIENCE journal! Then a team of very smart scientists will pour over their analysis and should it have any merit, they will publish it.

Now I ask you, why do M&M refuse to publish their findings in science journal, Nature for example?

 

[CapelDodger]

from Grammatron:

What do you think we as humans should do now to correct the problem that you think we caused?

That's not really answerable, since "we as humans" have never done anything in concert and, in fact, have no mechanisms in place to co-ordinate a species-wide policy. One answer might be "Establish political mechanisms so that a species-wide policy could be decided on and implemented", but that's not going to happen in the near future. And if it does happen we've no way of knowing what limitations will have to be accepted before such mechanisms can be created. Kyoto is meant to be a step along this road by establishing the principle of universal action. And it could only happen because it meant absolutely nothing. (Rather like the UN.)

"We" as individuals, interest groups, nations and so on will in the main continue to act in what we see as our self-interest. That perception will change as circumstances change - which they will do rapidly if warming continues at the present rate.

 

[Drooper]

...a team of very smart scientists will pour over their analysis and should it have any merit, they will publish it.

Now I ask you, why do M&M refuse to publish their findings in science journal, Nature for example?

There is no excuse for this level of ignorance from someone who claims to have faith in scientific method.


By simply following the links earlier in this thread I established:

Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick

What led you to publish in E&E rather than Nature?

After receiving the MBH98 data from Scott Rutherford and Michael Mann, McIntyre posted a series of observations about curiosa in the data on the internet discussion group climateskeptics. Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen invited McIntyre to consider writing up his work for submission and McIntyre agreed. Subsequent to this, McKitrick joined with McIntyre in the analysis and preparation of an article. McKitrick suggested that an article be submitted to Nature and a 1500-word version (to fit the word limit in Nature) was drafted. But after showing it to some scientific colleagues who were not familiar with the issue, we were advised that it was too short a format to convey the scope of the argument. So we chose to write a longer paper first in order to get the full body of material out. It has been suggested to us that we write a letter to Nature summarizing what is spelled out in the longer paper and we are considering this.

N.B. E&E is the Energy and Environment Journal.

This seems to answer your concerns, does it not?

Why didn't you do such a cursory check?

 

[DavidJames]

"There is no excuse for this level of ignorance from someone who claims to have faith in scientific method."

It appears the word refuse may not have been appropriate. But the fact is they decided not to submit to Nature. It was too short, so the decided to write a longer one and they considering writing a letter to Nature? Sounds to me like they really don't want to submit to Nature. Hmmm, maybe they did refuse.

 

[EvilYeti]

There is no excuse for this level of ignorance from someone who claims to have faith in scientific method.

By simply following the links earlier in this thread I established:

N.B. E&E is the Energy and Environment Journal.

This seems to answer your concerns, does it not?

Why didn't you do such a cursory check?

I saw that and it does nothing of the sort. It's a completely bogus and fabricated excuse. Nature published the original paper, there is absolutely no logical reason they could not fit an audit into a similarly sized article. There is also no reason they could not have published in any of a myriad of other SCIENCE journals with less stringent policies! And there is no harm in SUBMITTING it anyway and seeing what the editors have to say.

Instead they choose to publish in E&E, which is NOT reviewed and is NOT a science journal! Why is that? Perhaps because they KNOW their work is fraudulent?

There is no room for debate of there methods. There is a process for research audits and publishing findings. It is immutable. M&M are aware of this and chose to WILLFULLY ignore protocol. They are no more than a pair of agenda driven, fraudulent amateurs.

 

[EvilYeti]

David Appel has written up a 'final' summary of the affair.

I received a message from Steve McIntyre yesterday asking if I "had any luck identifying the 159 series in question at ftp://holocene.evsc.virginia.edu/pub/MBH98/? I'm not trying to be argumentative here; I really can't identify them and I'm very knowledgeable about this data."

No, I haven't fully identified all these series, but then I'm a journalist not a scientist, aren't I? More to the point, I'm not the one making any claims about Mann et. al.'s work. McIntyre is.

It seems to me highly incumbent on McIntyre and McKitrick, who are making serious charges in their Energy and Environment paper and who are going to Washington D.C. next week to amplify them, to have their data straight before they proceed.

And it's increasingly clear that they do not have their data straight. In fact, they clearly can't even find all the data they need to properly do their calculations.

Their latest missive reads like a Usenet post, full of accusations and innuendo, and one very far down in the thread at that. Who has the time or desire to parse and analyze every small problem in their life, every inconsistency they think they see? Certainly not me--it's incumbent on them, and on the peer-reviewers at Energy and Environment, to have already done this before publication.

If not, it seems to me the paper should be withdrawn until such time as they do have their data straight.

This is looking more farcical all the time. It's certainly not science as I've ever seen it done--it's the science you sit and do with your graduate advisor when you're just getting started on your research, months before any kind of publication.

McIntyre and McKitrick are trying to catch up on work they should have done long-ago, way before publication. In effect, they're trying to hold on to their claim while at the same time trying to figure out if they're done things right or not. And they’re casting about accusations in the meantime. Frankly it's getting a little embarrassing.

So what's really going on here?

It’s a smokescreen, it appears. Throw enough chaff into the air and hope for misdirection.

The work of Mann, Bradley, and Hughes was peer-reviewed by and published in Nature, one of the best scientific journals in the history of science. The work has been verified by several other groups, including Crowley and Lowrey, and Briffa. (See Figure 2.21 of the IPCC’s TAR, Vol. I.) M&M chose not to challenge MBH's work in Nature, the traditional venue for any challenge, but in a journal that has already shown that it published methodologically flawed science, by an editor who has admitted she’s politically biased against Kyoto, by a publisher who's admitted he'd take industry funding if he could be so lucky as to get it.

Who has the time when there’s so much real and serious science to cover? Who has the inclination to chase down every wild accusation from two non-climate scientists who can't even find all the data they need? What blog writer wants to bore his blog readers to death?

When I see some real substance here, I’ll report it, and I would any real science being done. Increasingly, I don’t see any at all.

 

[aerocontrols]

I saw that and it does nothing of the sort. It's a completely bogus and fabricated excuse. Nature published the original paper, there is absolutely no logical reason they could not fit an audit into a similarly sized article. There is also no reason they could not have published in any of a myriad of other SCIENCE journals with less stringent policies! And there is no harm in SUBMITTING it anyway and seeing what the editors have to say.

I agree that they should have attempted to publish in Nature. That having been said...

Instead they choose to publish in E&E, which is NOT reviewed and is NOT a science journal! Why is that? Perhaps because they KNOW their work is fraudulent?

Upon what basis do you make the claim that E&E is not reviewed? They have represented it as a peer reviewed research paper on their website. If you are correct, then they have clearly lied.

What criteria for being a science journal does E&E fail?

There is no room for debate of there methods. There is a process for research audits and publishing findings. It is immutable. M&M are aware of this and chose to WILLFULLY ignore protocol. They are no more than a pair of agenda driven, fraudulent amateurs.

Heaven help them for bypassing the immutable process of publication. Despite this unforgivable trespass, they still may have discovered errors in Mann. Even if they are no more than a pair of agenda-driven, fraudlent amateurs.

MattJ

 

[EvilYeti]

Upon what basis do you make the claim that E&E is not reviewed? They have represented it as a peer reviewed research paper on their website. If you are correct, then they have clearly lied.

I'm sure it's 'peer-reviewed' in the sense the papers are read by other junk science nobodies, but thats not what scientists mean when they say 'review'. To really review a paper, it is picked over with a fine tooth comb by fellow scientists with an equivalent level of expertise in the field in question. Would you care to point out the paleoclimatologist on E&E's staff?

What criteria for being a science journal does E&E fail?

Ummm, how about the fact that it's not listed in the SCI (Science Citations Index), unlike every other science journal on the planet? Why is that?

Heaven help them for bypassing the immutable process of publication. Despite this unforgivable trespass, they still may have discovered errors in Mann. Even if they are no more than a pair of agenda-driven, fraudlent amateurs.

And I may have discovered errors in the theory of realitivity and have proof that the moon landing was flawed. It's true cause I say so. Should every physicist and NASA drop what they are doing to prove me wrong? Of course not, the burden of proof is on me to prove my case in such a manner that others may replicate my work.

Heaven help them indeed, there are going to need it the way things are going.

 

[EvilYeti]

USA Today has published a correction to the Oct 28 article by Nick Schulz reiterating M&M's claim that Mann's data wasn't available online.

(c) USA TODAY - THURSDAY - November 13, 2003 - 14A


Corrections & Clarifications

In an Oct. 29 Forum article about new research that challenges the findings of an earlier study on global warming, the writer said the data on the original study by University of Virginia assistant professor Michael Mann aren't available online. The data can be accessed at ftp://holocene.evsc.virginia.edu/pub/MBH98/.

So M&M are caught in a lie, again. Junk science fraudsters, through and through!

 

[aerocontrols]

I'm sure it's 'peer-reviewed' in the sense the papers are read by other junk science nobodies, but thats not what scientists mean when they say 'review'. To really review a paper, it is picked over with a fine tooth comb by fellow scientists with an equivalent level of expertise in the field in question. Would you care to point out the paleoclimatologist on E&E's staff?

I am aware of what is required in the peer review process. The editors of the Journal in question select reviewers who are competent to review the paper. "Fine toothed comb" does not enter into it, I suspect, for E&E or for Nature.

I was mostly just interested in getting you to admit what your honest objections were - not that it's not reviewed, but that you don't trust the reviewers to be objective. Considering the nature of the journal in question, it's a much more defensible position, don't you think?

Ummm, how about the fact that it's not listed in the SCI (Science Citations Index), unlike every other science journal on the planet? Why is that?

That's a requirement to be a science journal? Your logic here is somewhat circular - perhaps a more reasonable objection is that E&E's absence from SCI is an indication that it's not reputable, rather than it's absence is proof that it's not a science journal.

And I may have discovered errors in the theory of realitivity and have proof that the moon landing was flawed. It's true cause I say so. Should every physicist and NASA drop what they are doing to prove me wrong? Of course not, the burden of proof is on me to prove my case in such a manner that others may replicate my work.

I take it you've visited M&M's webpage. They appear to be attempting to prove their case in just that manner.

Interesting hyperbolic examples, though.

 

[EvilYeti]

I was mostly just interested in getting you to admit what your honest objections were - not that it's not reviewed, but that you don't trust the reviewers to be objective. Considering the nature of the journal in question, it's a much more defensible position, don't you think?

My honest objection is that papers published in E&E are reviewed by no one other than the editor, Dr. Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen. Dr Boehmer-Christiansen has admitted to being biased against AGW research and the Kyoto protocol, so I will also admit that she is not objective. This is trumped by the fact that her background is not sufficient to properly judge the merits of the M&M paper as a proper audit of the Mann data.

That's a requirement to be a science journal? Your logic here is somewhat circular - perhaps a more reasonable objection is that E&E's absence from SCI is an indication that it's not reputable, rather than it's absence is proof that it's not a science journal.

If other people reference a paper published in a journal, that journal is going to end up in the SCI. As no one has seen fit to reference a SINGLE publication in E&E in the history of its existence, that is evidence enough for me that their publications have no scientific worth. Oh yeah, and they publish Landscheidt, an astrologer. So yeah, they are teh suk.

I take it you've visited M&M's webpage. They appear to be attempting to prove their case in just that manner.

They are a couple of junk science amateurs. Good for them and their website. They are in the elite company of everyone on the planet with a PC and AOL. When they decide to publish, feel free to PM me.

Interesting hyperbolic examples, though.

Thank you, I think they illustrated the point nicely. Do you have anything of substance, at all, to bring to the debate?

 

[Drooper]

So it seems to me that the position of Yeti et al is that unless something is published in Nature, it must be completely bogus/wrong/lies - pick your own.


I do remember a wonderful paper on homeopathy that was published in Nature.


Seriously, it seems to me that M&M have raised what they see as legitimate questions about the efficacy of the Mann paper - a paper that was held at the centre of COP3 as irrefutable evidence of AGW.

This paper has been published. It is open for rebuttal or correction - in fact it has been invited.

I, as a sceptic, want to see the debate. It seems the AGW supporters, such as Yeti, want anything but. What does that tell you?

 

[EvilYeti]

So it seems to me that the position of Yeti et al is that unless something is published in Nature, it must be completely bogus/wrong/lies - pick your own.

Well, you are either wrong or a liar. Take your pick.
If work isn't published, then its status is "unknown". It will remain "unknown" until it is published, at which point we should comment on it. Since the authors refused to publish in a reviewed science journal, it will be forever "unknown". Now, I wonder why they would render such important research invalid by publishing it in the wrong journal? Could be they are agenda driven and knowingly fraudulent?

I do remember a wonderful paper on homeopathy that was published in Nature.

And they also published a followup paper that proved the results could not be replicated. Sounds like good science to me! Now why wouldn't M&M publish a similar followup in Nature ?

Seriously, it seems to me that M&M have raised what they see as legitimate questions about the efficacy of the Mann paper - a paper that was held at the centre of COP3 as irrefutable evidence of AGW.

Based on what criteria? That they said so? How are you qualified to judge a audit of Mann's work? Are you a paleclimatologist?

This paper has been published. It is open for rebuttal or correction - in fact it has been invited.

It has not been(and due to the E&E legalese, cannot be) published in a reviewed science journal. Mann, etal., are preparing a full rebuttal for publication, again in a real science journal. And I'm sure M&M will "rebut" that on their website.

You have no idea how science is done, do you?

I, as a sceptic, want to see the debate. It seems the AGW supporters, such as Yeti, want anything but. What does that tell you?

A skeptic (which you are not), would be SKEPTICAL of an unreviewed paper published by two non-scientists in a non-science "journal". Especially since its critical of work done by scientists, reviewed by scientists and published in a science journal.

I'm all for debate, but the participents have to play by the rules for it to have any meaning. M&M refuse to, ergo their argument and conclusions are meaningless.

 

[shanek]

Man...Even with EvilYeti on ignore, I can tell from the replies that he's still up to his old tricks.

Let me guess: He's also said that the people in question aren't "real" scientists (No True Scotsman fallacy), that the only reason they didn't publish in a journal he personally approves of is because they know they're frauds, has said that those opposing him in this thread know nothing about science, are not skeptics, etc. My guess is that he's continuing his modus operandi of argumetn by authority, refusing to even acknowledge any data which seems to contradict it, choosing instead to belittle the source(s) of that data.

Am I right?

 

[a_unique_person]

Man...Even with EvilYeti on ignore, I can tell from the replies that he's still up to his old tricks.

Let me guess: He's also said that the people in question aren't "real" scientists (No True Scotsman fallacy),

No, it's not that fallacy.

guess is that he's continuing his modus operandi of argumetn by authority,

Or that either.

Am I right?

You do, however, appear to have acknowledged that your water conservation experiment was wrong.

 

[shanek]

You do, however, appear to have acknowledged that your water conservation experiment was wrong.

Where, in anywhere other than your deranged mind, is that the case?

 

[a_unique_person]

Where, in anywhere other than your deranged mind, is that the case?

I worked out the figures, and even in your scenario, with four flushes once a day extra, it still saves water. You did not deny them.

 

[EvilYeti]

Am I right?

No, as usual.

 

[shanek]

I worked out the figures, and even in your scenario, with four flushes once a day extra, it still saves water. You did not deny them.

You never presented any figures that I saw.