Investigations Into Global Warming Scientist Lead to Evidence of Fraud!!

Some of you may have heard of Michael Mann - the creator of the infamous "hockey stick" graph that has been under recent investigation for alleged misconduct. Now there is an interesting new development in this case. From the Washington Post:

The people who squawk the loudest about "scientific integrity" & "sound science" often have absolutely no problem with outright scientific fraud, as long as it supports their pre-existing political opinions.

Just take the example of Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli

A leading skeptic of climate change science whose work was cited last week by Virginia Attorney Gen. Ken Cuccinelli is himself under investigation on charges that his work contained plagiarism and inaccuracies, a George Mason University spokesman confirmed Friday.

(Edward) Wegman, who was chair of the National Academy of Sciences' (NAS) Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics, was tapped in '06 by Republican representatives Joe Barton and Ed Whitfield to assemble a so-called "expert panel" to critique the famous hockey stick, a graph illustrating a thousand-year temperature record as reconstructed by climate scientists Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes. But Silicon Valley entrepreneur John Mashey has since demonstrated that, rather than convene a group of experts, Wegman tapped a couple of grad students and together they produced a report that was generously plagiarized from Bradley's own work and then twisted - or just misrepresented - to appear to undermine the hockey stick and its creators.

wait...er...did that say skeptic of climate change science...

*gasp* NO! I did not see this coming at all!


By the way did you also notice the part where they mentioned Republican representative Joe Barton as commissioning the report? Yes, that Joe Barton - the one who infamously apologized to BP:



Who'd have thunk the people alleging all the supposed scientific fraud in the big global warming scam are actually just a bunch of big oil grovelling republican stiffs, who have no proof of any fraud - other than to reference their own reports, which were little more than a homework assignment for some grad students - which they apparently copied, fudged, and are now under investigation for fraud.

*DUNH DUN DUNNNNNNH*

Oh yeah - and by the way: the investigation against Michael Mann? The Judge already threw it out because there was absolutely no evidence of any misconduct.

So now even the Judges are in on it too! This conspiracy just gets bigger and bigger!! QUICK - aaaaaaaah, somebody apologize to BP!!!


...
Anyway here's more on the Hockey Stick "controversy" (for anyone who wants to know the real story behind it, not the political denier propaganda surrounding it):

Is the hockey stick broken?

Climategate Scientist Cleared in Inquiry, Again

Two more independent studies back the Hockey Stick: Recent global warming is unprecedented in magnitude and speed and cause

This piece will give some of the questions to
this controversial subject ....peace
An Open Letter to Dr. Michael Mann..............First, let me say that I disagree entirely with Cuccinelli’s legalistic approach. It doesn’t seem like the right way to achieve the desired result, that of shining the merciless light of publicity on your actions.

On the other hand, your opinion piece published in the Washington Post contains a number of omissions, misrepresentations, exaggerations, and misstatements of fact. Unfortunately, his math was wrong, and the method he used mines for "hockey stick" shapes and will pull them out of random data, so the graph turned out to be both meaningless and totally misleading.

So without further ado, Dr. Mann, here are my comments on your opinion piece. I have put your entire article from the Washington Post, without deletions, in bold italic. wattsupwiththat.com...

reply to post by mc_squared

S&F Good Post

Who'd have thunk the people alleging all the supposed scientific fraud in the big global warming scam are actually just a bunch of big oil grovelling republican stiffs, who have no proof of any fraud - other than to reference their own reports, which were little more than a homework assignment for some grad students - which they apparently copied, fudged, and are now under investigation for fraud.

Great to see the government in action.
Greed and Corruption (the acme of capitalism) in an intimate embrace.

For God's Sake (and the Country), vote as many Independants into Government and break the 2 Party Monopoly.

reply to post by the2ofusr1


Ahh yes, words of wisdom from the eternal fountain of truth that is wattsupwiththat.com

I have recently laid out all sorts of evidence on what a fraud that website is too. You can find it in this post here.

Or just watch this Peter Sinclair video:



As for the incessant hockey schtick drama - I've already left several links in the OP that lead to numerous other independent studies all confirming said stick. Here's one more:

The National Research Council published a 160 page book that once again came to the same general conclusions, and based their findings on multiple lines of evidence.


This subject is a total dead horse that the deniers continue to beat since they can't seem to connect any punches on anything else.

reply to post by CitizenNum287119327


Agreed.

also Killer Clowns from Outer Space is one of the finest pieces of cinema I have ever seen

reply to post by mc_squared

True.
World would be a fine place if every town had a B-Grade Movie local Sheriff like that.

There is no doubt that climate changes and has been for a long time ...Where I live ,scientist say there used to be 5 miles of ice. And I guess they have found frozen Mammoths in the north with flowers in there mouths ....Alaska was once tropical place . Yes climate is a changing but your post was about Mr. Mann's contributing to the man made warming pyridine . co2 makes up what,1, 2, maybe 3 percent of our atmosphere and humans contribute what 20 , 30 percent of that ? That big orange ball we have in the sky ,I would think has some bearing on surface temperatures . Hey how about all of the underwater volcanoes ,do you think they may some bearing on it ? I don't know if you read the letter I posted but I thought they asked some very good questions . Maybe you could respond to that . No doubt there are people in politics as well as science that could be a little more truthful ...

You see I am not a scientist and I am unable to ask the good questions and Mr Mann should be able to answer the questions that were asked of him in that letter ...Unless he is refusing ...anyhow have a good one ..I think its going to be a cool winter and probably a warm summer .At least I can count on the weather for change ,seems that politicians and bureaucrats wont ...peace

reply to post by the2ofusr1


Ok I see you are naturally skeptical and that's totally cool, so let me first of all point out that there are a number of places you can go to address some of the questions and concerns you have about climate change being natural, or how big of a role the Sun plays, or whatever..

Two that I absolutely recommend are:

www.skepticalscience.com - Skeptic Arguments and What the Science Says
Global Warming & Climate Change - Frequently Asked Questions

The first is technically just a blog, but it is written by a guy with a degree in Solar Physics, and it backs up virtually every piece of information it presents with links to the actual papers or raw data. The second comes straight from full-fledged atmospheric scientists out of top notch universities and research organizations across America and the rest of the world.

Now...

As for the letter: here's the first problem. Please note that letter is written by a guy named Willis Eschenbach. Eschenbach himself is not a scientist, he's a construction manager and "blogger". I guess this shouldn't matter if he's got valid questions for Dr. Mann, but here's the next problem. Eschenbach generally doesn't have a clue what he's talking about, and he's been caught lying before:
Willis Eschenbach caught lying about temperature trends

Also did you look at the post I linked to before about debunking wattsupwith.com? That entire reply was initiated because someone put up a link to this post on WUWT that was based on the calculations of Willis Eschenbach. I showed in my reply that Eschenbach simply made the math up.

So here's the thing. As was previously posted in the links above - Dr. Mann has already faced questions (and been exonerated by)
- Congress
- Penn State University, as well as 3 separate British probes into the "Climategate" affair
- A Judge
- and most importantly: the entire scientific community - who scrutinize and peer review his work every single time he publishes something. They have not only found his methods to be reliable, but also produced numerous other studies and methods of their own that all give the same results.

So after already facing and passing ALL these trials - do you honestly expect the guy to even waste a minute of his day responding to some crackpot blogger posting on a well known disinformation blog? I think this story speaks for itself.

Also one last thing.

You said this:

your post was about Mr. Mann's contributing to the man made warming

My post was actually about much more than this. This post, like many of my previous threads, is about drawing attention to the fact that so much of the alleged doubt and skepticism and controversy over global warming science is actually being manufactured by a handful of people - mostly corporate lobbyists, the hack scientists they employ, and the bloggers who spread their disinformation for them. These people are deliberately exploiting your natural skepticisms to further their political agendas.

I'll give you the most prime example - they are the ones constantly banging the "climate change is natural and it is always changing" drum that so many people like yourself feel is a valid reason to denounce all the apparent "alarmism", and instead be leery of what might be the hidden agenda behind global warming.

But here's the thing - if you look at the actual science instead of all the political rhetoric surrounding it - you will see that environmental concerns over global warming have much more to do with the rate of warming than they do with the amount. The fear is that the balance of nature is a very delicate one - and many of our ecosystems will simply not be able to adapt in time to such a sudden and abrupt shock that the hockey stick graph portends.

And in fact - there are already signs in our ecosystem that this is happening.

Furthermore, there is plenty of historical evidence that previous warming cycles have correlated with mass extinctions.

Meanwhile the other important detail about the "climate is always changing" argument is it has never happened before while humans were around, so there's all the concerns associated with unprecedented flooding and drought. And once more we are already seeing signs of this with what occurred in Pakistan and Russia this summer.

So while yes it's true, climate has been warmer in the past, there are multitudes of reasons why this doesn't excuse it from still being a big deal. But the denialists don't want you to think about that - they want you to just focus on their over-simplified, easy-to-swallow explanations - and then get yourself all worked up about taxes instead. In the meantime they are more than happy to take your money at the gas pump so you don't end up wasting it on something frivolous like saving the world

reply to post by mc_squared

But here's the thing - if you look at the actual science instead of all the political rhetoric surrounding it - you will see that environmental concerns over global warming have much more to do with the rate of warming than they do with the amount.

Okay, let us look at the rate of warming over the last 150 years, here, here, and here, and see if anything unusual is happening, shall we? Note that the vast bulk of human CO2 emissions occurred after 1940 and the rate of warming between 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 is pretty much the same in the graphs above. Phil Jones, a leadning proponent of AGW said on the BBC news that the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998: "are similar and not statistically significantly different from each other" as the graphs above attest to. So no, there is no unsual rate of warming. Here are the links to the above graphs, here, and here. The rate of warming, each lasting for around 20-35 years, with cooling between those warming intervals would suggest that they are cyclical in nature and therefore not anthropogenic.

reply to post by mc_squared
Any competent researcher involved with the science behind climate change will admit that CO2 is far from the only influence on global climate. It has long been known that short-lived greenhouse gases and black-carbon aerosols have contributed to past climate warming. Though the IPCC and their fellow travelers have tried to place the blame for global warming on human CO2 emissions, decades of lies and erroneous predictions have discredited that notion. For anyone still clinging to the CO2 hypothesis, a short perspective article on the uncertainty surrounding climate change in Nature Geoscience has put paid to that notion. It states that not only did other factors account for 65% of the radiative forcing usually attributed to carbon dioxide, but that it is impossible to accurately determine climate sensitivity given the state of climate science wattsupwiththat.com...-26 297

I understand your concern for our planet .....Trust me I was there with you until I started thinking about other factors ....I will try and respond to your last reply to me but I have to think hard and look long as you have dropped much for me to read ..... Please read this last article and tell me if any of it has a ring to it ....peace

reply to post by Nathan-D


Let me borrow from another myth to debunk your latest myth: enter "it's the Sun":

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/0943566b2fef.gif[/atsimg]

...correlates quite nicely up until the 70's, and then diverges right around the time it's supposed to as GHG's start to become the dominant forcing.

As for this current warming not being "statistically significant" - first of all that is a cop-out. Everyone knows we are still only in the beginning stages of what's supposed to be coming, which is why people are at each others throats over it. Meanwhile overall temperatures continue to push forward and set records, temperature extremes are clearly accelerating and other indicators of rapid climate change are advancing at increasingly alarming rates.

But you are always trying to pigeon hole such a vastly correlated issue into tiny little cherry-picked perspectives to validate your opinion. Case in point:

The rate of warming, each lasting for around 20-35 years, with cooling between those warming intervals would suggest that they are cyclical in nature and therefore not anthropogenic.

Then explain it. This is such a lazy response. Do you think it would ever stand up in an actual scientific forum? Right now there is absolutely no natural explanation that accounts for this current warming - not the Sun, not cosmic rays. So what is it? Is it Trogdor burninating the countryside??

If you want to unseat CO2 from it's lofty elitist perch in the climate science pyramid scheme then making superficial observations like this just isn't gonna cut it. You need a valid hypothesis that explains those observations, one that can be tested and predicted, and one that stands up to the rigors of scientific scrutiny. THEN you need to also go re-write the laws of physics and explain how CO2 doesn't lead to warming, since everything in the math alone implies that it does.

So do you understand AGW has ALL these factors firmly behind it? And we're supposed to just ignore these obvious warning signs because maybe there's some undiscovered natural thing out there that one day when it's too late will be able to explain it? Until you get this - I'm sorry but my responses are going to continue to be pithy, since all I see you doing is trolling for another debate.

reply to post by the2ofusr1


Well actually this post from WUWT is exactly the type of thing I'm talking about.

For example instead of reading the wattsupwiththat version - go do what I just did and have a look what the authors say in the actual article:
Short-lived uncertainty?

Of the short-lived species, methane, tropospheric ozone and black carbon are key contributors to global warming, augmenting the radiative forcing of carbon dioxide by 65%.

Augmenting.

Look up the definition of augmenting:

1. To make (something already developed or well under way) greater, as in size, extent, or quantity
2. Linguistics To add an augment to.

So: augmenting - as in adding to, not replacing.

Now look at what WUWT tried to slip past you:

It states that not only did other factors account for 65% of the radiative forcing usually attributed to carbon dioxide

No, that's not what they said at all. They said it adds to the radiative forcing of CO2 by an additional 65% - it does not say it "accounts for" or "stands in place of".

So do I really need to go on? This a perfect example of why wattsupwiththat is nothing but distorted denier propaganda.


And look - I understand your skepticism too, I appreciate you being polite about it when 99% of the people I usually deal with on this topic come out with their guns blazing to tell me all about how obviously brainwashed I must be, but then have nothing to back it up once I call them out on it.

But this is all I'm trying to get out of people with these threads - it's that if you want to be truly skeptical, you have to be skeptical of BOTH sides of the story. And you need to be really really careful when reading this sort of stuff because these people will deliberately try to spoon-feed you the information in a way so that you don't even question what they're saying. Then they will get you all riled up about how much the other side is "lying" or "hiding the decline" or whatever - so in the meantime you don't even notice how much the so-called skeptics themselves are lying to you.

There are many people out there who have become very aware of their shady techniques - which is why you hear them constantly saddled with the term climate 'denier' instead of 'skeptic'. It is well deserved.

reply to post by the2ofusr1


I should just add this diagram to settle whether there's any ambiguity over the use of the term 'augmenting'

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/4b6f4da86d79.jpg[/atsimg]

Notice CH4, black carbon, and tropospheric Ozone add up to about 65% of the equivalent forcing from CO2 alone - not 65% of the total after CO2 is added in (the total at the bottom happens to look the same as CO2 alone because it has subtracted all the negative forcings on the left).

Also - the WUWT article makes it sound as if climate scientists aren't interested in reducing other manmade GHGs... Of course they're interested in reducing them as well - that's why they're included in the report.

reply to post by mc_squared

THEN you need to also go re-write the laws of physics and explain how CO2 doesn't lead to warming, since everything in the math alone implies that it does.

I don't need to "rewrite" the laws of physics. The physics of CO2 within the atmosphere dictates that it must have an effect - this is undeniable. But how much of an effect? The physics concerning its effect are quite clear. CO2 just as any other gas in relation to IR (infrared) absorption of wavelengths behaves according to beers law - logarithmically. Thus if 200ppm produces 0.5C warming then 400ppm would require another 0.5C. 800ppm = another 0.5C. 1200ppm = another 0.5C. It is not enough to say that extra CO2 produces significant warming.

As an example of this logarithmic GH potential and response. It's like putting 20 blankets on your bed. This will warm you half as much as putting 100 blankets on. Every blanket past 20 will make it a little warmer but the change will be very small and will get smaller with every blanket added. After 96 blankets the change of adding the last 4 will be undetectable as the change will be so infinitesimally small. The last 4 blankets represents mans total CO2 contribution. After the first 20ppm of CO2 the warming effect is essentially on a curve asymptotically approaching zero.

As for this current warming not being "statistically significant" - first of all that is a cop-out. Everyone knows we are still only in the beginning stages of what's supposed to be coming, which is why people are at each others throats over it.

Who is "everyone" exactly? You mean the IPCC's computer models? How can you possibly know what the temperature trend will be over the next 50 years? You don't, unless you put faith in the IPCC's computer models. In any case, you seemed to have missed the point. The periods of warming that occurred during 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 are pretty much similar and not statistically significantly different from each other - as admitted by even Phil Jones - and yet they each occur during times of significantly different CO2 levels. If CO2 is such a dominant force of temperature shouldn't the rate of warming increase proportionately to CO2 levels?

graph

That graph (presumably) by John Cook contradicts a number of other studies.


(Hoyt Schatten)


(Willie Soon et al 2004)

Right now there is absolutely no natural explanation that accounts for this current warming - not the Sun, not cosmic rays. So what is it?

The Sun and cosmic rays have been driving the temperature of the planet for the last 540 million years, if I were a betting man, I would say they still are.


(Shaviv and Veizer 2003 and Svensmark et al 2007).

As opposed to the very weak correlation between CO2 and temperature.


(Scotese 1990 and Berner 2001).

Even if John Cook's graph was right 30 years is statistically insignificant compared to 540 million years. If the Sun and cosmic rays have been the driving force behind temperature for 540 million years chances are they still are.

So do you understand AGW has ALL these factors firmly behind it? And we're supposed to just ignore these obvious warning signs because maybe there's some undiscovered natural thing out there that one day when it's too late will be able to explain it?

The warming is entirely consistent with natural trends as I showed you in my first post.

Until you get this - I'm sorry but my responses are going to continue to be pithy, since all I see you doing is trolling for another debate.

I'm trolling am I? By simply questioning AGW? Ouch.

reply to post by Nathan-D

I don't need to "rewrite" the laws of physics. The physics of CO2 within the atmosphere dictates that it must have an effect - this is undeniable.

O Really?

Then why were you peddling this garbage the last time we got into this debate:

It's not that greenhouse gases may not help, they can't help drive up the planetary temperature. The greenhouse effect promulgated by the AGW fraternity violates the second law of thermodynamics; a cold atmosphere cannot heat up a warmer planet. For the AGW theory to be true, they'd need to rewrite the laws of thermodynamics first.

You are sooooo full of it Nathan. You know why? Because you get your information from sources that are completely full of it. And you just soak it all up from them like a sponge and then immediately repeat it on here like it's a fact - not even bothering to notice how often it makes you completely contradict yourself in the process. I have pointed this out to you so many times by now it's ridiculous.

But now here you are trying to sell me a graph from Willie Soon? The same guy who was at the center of one of the most distorted and fraudulent papers in climate science history - and the same guy who is notoriously known for getting his funding directly from ExxonMobil??

Chief scientific researcher at the frontiers of Freedom's Center for Science and Public Policy which was set up after $100,000 ExxonMobil grant in 2002.

Oh and thank you for also trying to slip me a graph that only shows mean U.S. temperature versus TSI.

Hello?...Wh..who is this? Cherry-picking?! Hey Nathan - it's for you.


So please cut the crap about how you are "simply questioning" AGW. You are trying to distort it. Whether you are doing this consciously or unconsciously I don't know but either way you've been shown the error of your ways so many times now it's unreal.


And you clearly don't understand how the actual mathematics of logarithms can work. If you had paid closer attention to this thread you would've seen this has already been debunked.

And finally this nugget of pure solid gold:

Even if John Cook's graph was right 30 years is statistically insignificant compared to 540 million years. If the Sun and cosmic rays have been the driving force behind temperature for 600 million years chances are they still are.

Are you trying to make me spit out my coffee from laughing this morning - is that your goal?

The last 30 years is highly significant when the mechanism in question has only been around for 150 or so. Meanwhile man made emissions have only become particularly relevant well after that.

And OF COURSE natural factors like the Sun were the main drivers of climate change for the last 600 million years - how were man made emissions supposed to factor into this equation when man wasn't around to make them?? So now that anthropogenic causes have joined in - we're supposed to merely extrapolate the results of a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT EXPERIMENT?

And even though those results don't show up in the current observations AT ALL - we're supposed to use your absolutely twisted and grossly unscientific reasoning that "chances are" they're still in there somewhere?...hiding?

You are trying to get Solar forcing to pinch hit for CO2 and you don't even understand which ball game you're in.

Here's an update on this. USA Today contacted some of the review panel and published the following:
Experts claim 2006 climate report plagiarized

An influential 2006 congressional report that raised questions about the validity of global warming research was partly based on material copied from textbooks, Wikipedia and the writings of one of the scientists criticized in the report, plagiarism experts say.

Review of the 91-page report by three experts contacted by USA TODAY found repeated instances of passages lifted word for word and what appear to be thinly disguised paraphrases.

More hypocrisy from the skeptics:

The Wegman report called for improved "sharing of research materials, data and results" from scientists. But in response to a request for materials related to the report, GMU said it "does not have access to the information." Separately in that response, Wegman said his "email was downloaded to my notebook computer and was erased from the GMU mail server," and he would not disclose any report communications or materials because the "work was done offsite," aside from one meeting with Spencer.

BREAKING NEWS - there's been an update on this story. The report was pulled, because the culprits got caught red-handed and decided to save face and throw one of their students under the bus. These climate "skeptics" have a lot of integrity, let me tell ya.

Climate study gets pulled after charges of plagiarism

Anyway - now back to everyone's regularly programmed denial.

lalala...