Sunday, September 17, 2017

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


“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, but I know fraud and libel when I see it and I will be spending the next few days dissecting this particular example of malicious wordsmithing crossing over into criminal vandalism in an effort to make my case.  

I will be quoting the entire (nothing left out, nothing added) editorial, talking point by talking point, in chronological order, though broken down into bite-sized chunks, here we examine Points of Contention (POC) 4 to 9, 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
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Investor's Business Daily POC#4 - “In this case, it was temperature data. Mann's famous "hockey stick" rendition of temperature and climate changes makes it appear as if temperatures began rising sharply in the 19th century as carbon dioxide from the Industrial Revolution began to build up,”
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First, this mixing up temperature and climate change as though it’s the same thing indicates profound unfamiliarity with the most fundamental 'facts of life' of our global climate engine.  “Climate changes” are the result of warming (or cooling) our planet!  

When it comes from the lips of experts, it’s an indication of the hideous amount of seepage they’ve allowed to fuzzy up their communication.  It’s simple unavoidable physics warming leads, changes follow, propaganda-speak not withstanding.

The rest is true enough.  That is what Mann et al. 1998 and 1999 did, because that’s where the data took them.  But please remember, the graph is about tracking temperature - NOT climate change.

Those were pioneering papers.  They were built on the work of others and others have continued to build on their effort.

“An independent assessment of Mann's hockey stick was conducted by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (Wahl 2007). … , they confirmed the principal results of the original hockey stick - that the warming trend and temperatures over the last few decades are unprecedented over at least the last 600 years.”

“Changes in surface temperature send thermal waves underground, cooling or warming the subterranean rock.  … 350 bore holes in North America, Europe, Southern Africa and Australia (Huang 2000). …, yielding only century-scale trends. What they find is that the 20th century is the warmest of the past five centuries with the strongest warming trend in 500 years.”

“… A reconstruction of Northern Hemisphere temperature from stalagmites shows…, the temperature in the latter 20th Century exceeds the maximum estimate over the past 500 years (Smith 2006)."

Historical records of glacier length …, temperatures in recent decades exceed the uncertainty range over the past 400 years (Oerlemans 2005)


Figure 6: Composite Northern Hemisphere land and land plus ocean temperature reconstructions and estimated 95% confidence intervals. Shown for comparison are published Northern Hemisphere reconstructions (Mann 2008).
https://www.skepticalscience.com

In other words, all the real world physical evidence indicates the Dr. Mann’s team was onto something.  So why does the GOP and Investors Business trivialize it?  This is important information to process.  


Good information, proxies are explained at 2:40
followed by examining the decline.



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Investor's Business Daily POC#5 - “and then soared uncontrollably in recent years to near-record highs for the last millennium.” 
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Well, yes tragically that is exactly what is happening, now 2017 we have clearly passed all recorded history.  The point?

In the nearly two decades since those original papers global temperatures have continued to soar at a seemingly uncontrollable rate, still the GOP and Investors Business pretend they can ignore it away.

Global Warming - temperature anomalies by country 1900-2016
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Pumphandle 2016


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Oh and about that “global warming hiatus,” excuse me for saying “I told you so”, but I did.  The heat was found where the physics told everyone who was paying attention it would be found, in our oceans!
Improved estimates of ocean heat content from 1960 to 2015 
Lijing Cheng, Kevin E. Trenberth, John Fasullo, Tim Boyer, John Abraham and Jiang Zhu 
Science Advances  10 Mar 2017: Vol. 3, no. 3, e1601545  
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/3/e1601545 
“… We found that changes in OHC are relatively small before about 1980; since then, OHC has increased fairly steadily and, since 1990, has increasingly involved deeper layers of the ocean. In addition, OHC changes in six major oceans are reliable on decadal time scales. All ocean basins examined have experienced significant warming since 1998 …”
When will the GOP and Investors Business stop this malicious and stupid denial of reality?
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Investor's Business Daily POC#6 - “Mann used proxy data for much of his chart, which, because of its distinctive shape, was soon called the hockey stick.” 
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Well, yes, of course.  Proxy data was specifically what Mann’s team was working on, there was no “much” about it, it was all about proxies and teasing useful information out of them.  

Nor is there anything sinister about it.  But all Investors Business can think about is the hockey stick shape and how they hate it.  The thing is the shape is what it is - it reflects the reality of what is happening on our planet.  GOP and Investors Business should stew on that reality, rather than playing denial games.

Let’s return for a moment to the science and Dr. Mann’s dedication to the problem at hand, teasing useful information from assorted sets of proxy data.  

I wonder how many people who toss epitaphs at Dr. Mann, have ever looked at the papers - or though about the long steady slog and the community of scientists who had been working on gaining this understanding.  Truly a generations long effort.  Mann et al. were part of that effort.  They never claimed they were the last word on anything!  Check it out.  

 Take a closer look:

Mann wrote: "More detailed discussions of the estimation of, and potential sources of uncertainty or bias in, these series are available . . ."   Investors Business or anyone in the GOP can you explain why you are demonizing these studies and ignoring all subsequence efforts?  Here's a list of the studies in question.

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

Proxy-Based Northern Hemisphere Surface Temperature Reconstructions: Sensitivity to Method, Predictor Network, Target Season, and Target Domain
S. RUTHERFORD, M. E. MANN,  T. J. OSBORN, R. S. BRADLEY, K. R. BRIFFA, M. K. HUGHES, AND P. D. JONES
July 2005 - American Meteorological Society

What amazes me is that right there in the title you can read “uncertainties, limitations, inferences” yet Dr. Mann get's treated like a criminal who committed some great fraud, "uncertainties, limitations, inferences" - indeed this Investors Business editorial is the fraudster and vandal.  It's pure criminally malicious manipulation of the truth is astounding.  Yet, all the good placid citizens went along with the destructive charade.

Dr. Mann’s work was an important breakthrough, but decidedly a work in progress.  Information was digested and lessons were learned and the science moved forward.
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Investor's Business Daily POC#7 - "It became the symbol of "science" proving that global warming was now disastrously heating our planet. And it was the centerpiece of the United Nations' efforts to propagandize on behalf of making the developed world poorer to temper the effects of global warming." 
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FALSE! 

There's a ‘league of hockey sticks’ of supporting evidence that enhanced GHGs are indeed warming our planet.  






Improved estimates of ocean heat content from 1960 to 2015

Global Warming 
driving Climate Change 
increasing Extreme Weather


As for the scientific “proof” - as in mathematically defined and irrefutable

We need to go back to 50s, 60s and the US Air Force’s intensive atmospheric studies which thoroughly mapped out the atmospheric physics of greenhouse gases at all altitudes.  It was one of the requirements for making heat-seeking air to air missiles accurate.  It wasn’t just the US, these atmospheric research projects were mirrored by Australian, Russian, and others, all working pretty much independently, yet they all came up with the same results - amazing.  


Archive, Hanscom AFB Atmospheric Studies, 
Cambridge Research Lab

Here’s some proof that folks can take to the bank.  Consider all the modern marvels that would be impossible without that precise and thorough understanding.  That understanding also tells us exactly how much extra heat is being held within our global heat and moisture distribution engine - measuring exactly where all that heat is going is the challenge.  But that’s a different story.  Back to those modern marvels that require scientists and engineers having achieved an exquisitely thorough understanding of greenhouse gas behavior in our atmosphere.

CO2 Science - Why We Can Be Sure.

This post is an interesting sort of one way collaborative effort and I've posted it before, but its worth repeating. You see, over the years I've communicated with a number of scientists and grads.  Asking straight forward questions and often receiving informative replies.  I try not to over do my welcome, after all these are very busy people with more important things to do. Still, for this post I sent a grand shout out to a number of my correspondence pals and received more responses than I expected including some informative surprises for me. I have taken great liberty slicing and dicing their responses. Rewriting some, leaving other quotes untouched and giving all of it some order.

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Investor's Business Daily POC#8 - "The U.N.'s proposals would require a massive decline in the West's standard of living, and hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes.
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Here we get to the self-interested core of the problem.  Hatred for the U.N., resentment of any regulations and a god given hatred for taxes.  Even stronger any notions of tempering our ravenous appetites are absolute taboo. 

I believe this lies at the heart of why, nothing has been accomplished in a half century regarding the public understanding of what we are doing to our one and only life enabling and sustaining planet Earth. 

People decided maximizing profits and minimizing responsibly was more fun than soberly recognizing the “limits of our growth” and the necessity for moderating our appetites and populations.  We knew for certain for over a half century, and all we do is try harder and harder to deny stone cold sober physical reality.

Rather than thinking about our kids and their kids, we dedicated ourselves to me, me, me and the principles of:  “too much is never enough” and “maximize profits while minimizing responsibilities.”
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Investor's Business Daily POC#9 - "The only problem is, according to critics, Mann's data were manipulated in such a way as to make them incorrect." 
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FALSE. 
Mann’s data and results were correct.

The amorphous critics?  Who were they?  A mining engineer, investment speculator, turned agenda driven attack dog?  A blogger dedicated to attacking and confusing climate science rather than constructive learning/teaching based on the incoming data? 

Incidentally “Manipulation” is a nasty dog whistle.  Data processing is data manipulation, it’s what get’s done with raw data to make it useful.  Nothing was manipulated into any sort of incorrect manner.

Business Investors' contempt for learning about physical reality is pathetic - why is such destructive trash talk humored?  What they are doing is not free speech and the exchange of ideas nor a lively constructive argument, it’s criminal vandalism!  Here’s what’s happening in the real world:

More than two dozen reconstructions, using various statistical methods and combinations of proxy records, have supported the broad consensus shown in the original 1998 hockey-stick graph, with variations in how flat the pre-20th century "shaft" appears.[12][13] The 2007 IPCC Fourth Assessment Report cited 14 reconstructions, 10 of which covered 1,000 years or longer, to support its strengthened conclusion that it was likely that Northern Hemisphere temperatures during the 20th century were the highest in at least the past 1,300 years.[14] Over a dozen subsequent reconstructions, including Mann et al. 2008 and PAGES 2k Consortium 2013, have supported these general conclusions.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_controversy

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Setting the record straight on misleading claims against Michael Mann
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Much-vindicated Michael Mann and Hockey Stick get final exoneration from Penn Statetime for some major media apologies and retractions
JOE ROMM - JUL 1, 2010

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A Review of Michael Mann's Exoneration
Richard Littlemore | December 4, 2009

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What evidence is there for the hockey stick?
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Hockey stick or hockey league? 
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For the genuine students, http://www.meteo.psu.edu/holocene/public_html/shared/research/old/mbh98.html

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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)


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