A little relief from Mann source code (but don’t worry, I’m not finished with it.) In my post on IPCC 1990 arising out of the controversy about the WSJ editorial, I referred to the following quote from the Executive Summary to chapter 7 (p. 200), which stated (having the Younger Dryas in mind):
We conclude that despite great limitations in the quantity and quality of the available historical temperature data, the evidence points consistently to a real but irregular warming over the last century. A global warming of larger size has almost certainly occurred at least once since the end of the last glaciation without any appreciable increase in greenhouse gases. Because we do not understand the reasons for these past warming events, it is not yet possible to attribute a specific proportion of the recent, smaller warming to an increase of greenhouse gases. [my emphasis]
I attempted to trace the basis for overturning this view in later IPCC reports to see whether and how the changing views were based on updated science. I follow the trail a bit further here.
In my post on IPCC SAR [1995], I noted that IPCC SAR [1995] reversed the view of IPCC [1990] that changes larger than those observed in the past century had occurred in the Holocene. For example, the chapter summary stated:
Based on the incomplete observations and paleoclimatic evidence available, it seems unlikely that global mean temperatures have increased by 1 deg C or more in a century at any time during the last 10,000 years.
The change in view was partly attributed to a paper by the omnipresent Wigley and Kelly [1990] discussed here, and to Crowley and Kim [1995] discussed here. The finding specifically attributed to Crowley and Kim [1995] was the following:
Crowley and Kim (1995) estimate the variability of global mean temperature on century time scales over the past millennium as less than +- 0.5 deg C. (running text)
The finding attributed to Crowley and Kim [1995] was not actually established there, but was attributed to the textbook, Crowley and North [1991]. Figure 3 in Crowley and Kim [1995] stated:
"Error bars" represents a generous estimate of the range of natural variability based on records of the last 1000 years [Crowley and North, 1991]. [my bold – see the scale denoted +- 0.5 degree C in the bottom left hand corner of the figure.]
Elsewhere the running text in Crowley and Kim [1995] stated:
The projected increase in global average temperatures for all scenarios also greatly exceeds the past record of climate variations over the last millennium [Crowley and North 1991] (Paleoclimatology, Oxford University Press, 339 pp). A generous estimate of that natural variability for that time is +- 0.5 degree C.
I then promised to look up Crowley and North [1991]. I’m not sure that I’ve closed the loop entirely, but here’s where I am. Despite Crowley’s fulminations against me elsewhere and his unreliable and fantastic accounts of our correspondence, I highly recommend Crowley and North, Paleoclimatology, to interested readers. It gives a readable and rational account of a variety of important paleoclimatological topics. Bradley’s text is also very good and covers a different vantage point. Both scientists seemed more pleasant before they were touched by IPCC glory.
I have diligently looked through Crowley and North 1991 (339 pages) and been unable to locate an exact source for this quote. I’m not saying that it isn’t in there somewhere, merely that I haven’t been able to locate it so far. (In passing, it is irritating to cite a textbook without a page reference.) The best that I can do is the following discussion in chpater 14, in the context of an interesting discussion of why warming to 1990 wasn’t as much as predicted by the models of Hansen et al. and Schlesinger et al. (I’ll try to remember to look up these predictions.) The excuse for the failure of warming to appear was that there were negative natural forcings and the observed shortfall to model predictions was within the range of natural variation. This excuse seems to have been superceded by the attribution of the shortfall to aerosols (but I haven’t followed the aerosol debate except at a remote distance.) Anyway, Crowley and North (page 255) say:
Despite the geologic evidence, some CO2 doubling studies suggest that the atmosphere should have already have warmed to levels greater than those of the present (e.g. Hansen et al 1984; Schlesinger 1986). Are the models wrong or are other processes operating that are obscuring the trend? One possibility involves sequestering of excess hear in the intermediate and deep layers of the ocean (Hansen et al 1984; Schlesinger 1986) a possibility for which there is some empirical evidence, as intermediate waters in the North Atlantic appear to have warmed significantly over the last 30 years (Roemmich and Wunsch 1984).
Another explanation for the CO2 “delay” involves modulation of atmospheric signals by volcanism and solar variability i.e. by “natural” climate fluctuations. There have been significant decadal and centennial-scale climate fluctuations over the last 1000 years (e.g. Figure 5.6). The characteristic temperature range of these fluctuations is 1.0-1.5 deg C, i.e. enough to modulate any uniform CO2 warming trend by the amount observed in the instrumental record. [my emphasis]
I guess that an estimate of +- 0.5 deg C can be construed as being equivalent to a range of 1.0 deg C., but 0.5 deg C seems to have been dropped pretty casually. The argument itself then depends on Figure 5.6, which is shown below.
Original Caption. Figure 5.6. Examples of decadal and centennial scale climate variability. (a) The phenological temperature in China (after Zhu, 1973). This index is based on timing of recurrent weather-dependent phenomena, such as dates of lowering of shrubs or arrivals of migrant birds or distribution of climatically sensitive organisms. (b) the growth rings of a juniper tree from western China (after Wang et al 1983). (c) The winter temperature index in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River (after Zhang 1980) (d) The number of Chinese counties affected by drought (after State Meteorological Association 1981). (e) The frequency curve of dust rains in China (after Zhang 1984), (f) the àŽàⳏ18 record from Camp Century, Greenland (after Johnsen et al 1970); (g) the àŽàⳏ18 record from Quelccaya ice cap, Peru (Mosley-Thompson et al 1990); (h) the àŽàⳏ18 record from the South Pole (Mosley Thompson et al 1990). Shading equals cool intervals. [From E. Mosley-Thompson; modified from Zhang and Crowley, 1989 and Ren, 1987]. Courtesy. E. Mosley-Thompson.
This is pretty sketchy evidence for overturning a finding of IPCC [1990]. It is also not new scientific evidence: all of this was available to IPCC [1990] and presumably considered by them. The choice of proxies is interesting, as I’m familiar with many of them from later multiproxy studies. The Zhu [1973] phenological dates were resoundingly criticized in Zhang [Climatic Change 1994], who argued that Zhu [1973] had misinterpreted the medieval Chinese lunar calendar and wrongly calculated medieval phenological dates (which were actually earlier than Zhu’s calculations). This had a big impact on the supposed medieval coldness of Zhu [1973].
Zhang [1994] reported that tax records showed that medieval citrus and boehmeria crops ranged to the north of modern locations. Despite this resounding contradiction of Zhu [1973], Crowley and Lowery [2000] unaccountably used Zhu [1973] as one of the series supposedly showing wildly differing medieval regional patterns. I asked Crowley why he used this series – a hardly unreasonable request. Crowley refused to answer and has of course fulminated against me recently in EOS.
The growth rings of "a" juniper tree in west China is pretty weak evidence of past temperature change to say the least. Juniper trees in the US are precipitation proxies. I saw a picture of a juniper tree on the internet about 18 months ago (from around Dulan, I think) and it was in a desert location, but I can’t locate the picture now. This juniper tree gets used from time to time – Bradley and Jones [1993], as I recall. I have not read the original reports of the next 3 Chinese articles and I’m not even sure that they are in English. The number of Chinese counties affected by drought and the frequency of dust rains in China do not appear to me to be obvious indicators limiting the temperature range to +- 0.5 deg C. I’ll try to locate Zhang 1980 (but for present purposes, this article was presumably within the purview of IPCC 1990).
So we’re left with the three ice core àŽàⳏ18 records: Camp Century, Greenland; Quelccaya and the South Pole – all of which were available to IPCC 1990 (and even discussed by it). The Quelccaya àŽàⳏ18 series is a mainstay of subsequent multiproxy studies, but the Camp Century and South Pole àŽàⳏ18 series are dropped from the later studies – I wonder why. Figure 5.6 does not translate the àŽàⳏ18 fluctuations into deg C – I wonder what the basis for the translation was. It’s a pretty frail foundation for overturning the equivalent of a Supreme Court decision. I have seen no new scientific information involved in the overturning.
Climate Audit 
111 Comments
Would it be silly to suggest that the basis for overturning the view was simply that it seemed likely that such things were caused by things we would now be likely able to detect such as the shut down or turning back on of the ocean conveyer?
(perhaps nobody had thought of that one earlier)
They have a mantra about the science moving on (which may have a multitude of purposes)and the wording of this finding is “Because we do not understand the reasons for these past warming events”
I don’t see how one can argue that the science can never move on without learning those reasons(not that you are). They could just say that their models give them enough correlation on their known variables at this time, and they can’t remember every last finding in a giant report, especially one that includes the phrase “because we do not understand”.
All just my highly amateur opinion.
Michael Seward,
Your posts are really quite extraordinary. Why do you say that McIntyre and McKitrick (M&M) should “Give ’em hell. This is how science makes progress.” Scientists just don’t think you make progress in that way – they want to make real progress in science and do so by writing papers about their scientific results. Publishing these papers requires responding to the comments of the referees. Saying that the refeees are idiots or trying to ignore them won’t help you get published.
M&M found significant flaws in the MBH98 paper and give details of these flaws on this web site. When they asked for Mann’s data and programs, Mann became very combative and refused to cooperate. He gave every indication of having something to hide. This created a problem which has come back to haunt him.
The US government is spending about $3,000,000,000 a year on “global warming”.. Mr Watson, of the State Dept, says $5.2 billion – (see http://www.climatechangeissues.com/files/PDF/conf05watson.pdf ) but a colleague says that some of that shouldn’t be counted. (Oh, and when you go to this site, read Ross McKitrick’s talk – replace watson by mckitrick in the above URL). McKitrick makes the importance of the hockey stick to the IPCC ABUNDANTLY clear.)
Do you really want the USG to spend all that money year after year on “global warmimg” which may not be happening? Frankly, I was delighted when I read what Congressman Barton had done.
Steve: I am delighted that you are extending your audit outside the narrow bounds of the “Mann et al.” reconstructions. However, it would make this site much more believable if you expended as much effort on papers supporting “contrarian” arguments — otherwise, I am afraid, many will continue to view your critiques simply as biased “spin”. May I suggest you direct your formidable critical faculties to paper such as the following (which I am sure you will agree have played, or will play, a significant part in the policy debate):
Soon, W. and Baliunas, S., 2003. Climate Research, 23, 89-110.
Soon, W., Baliunas, S., Idso, C., Idso, S., and Legates, D.R., 2003. Energy & Environment, 14, 2 & 3, 233-296.
Eschenbach, W., 2004. Energy & Environment, 15, 3, 527-543.
Khandekar, M.L., Murty, T.S. and Chittibabu, P. 2005. Pure and Applied Geophysics, 162, 1557-1586.
Re: #3
Just what is it that’s unbelievable about this site? Have you looked at Steve’s math and found it to have doubtful aspects? If so where have you posted your doubts? Do you find that you doubt he’s actually asked for and been denied certain sorts of data? If so, where are the contrary messages to counterbalance his posts of the exchanges between him and various members of the Hockey Team?
What you really mean is that you’d like him to attack people you dislike (at least dislike the work of). But members of the Hockey Team and others have already attacked these people far beyond Steve’s poor powers to add or detract. I’d think that before Steve should be required to attack these people further we should be shown papers demanding Crowley post the source data of this and Biffra locate that, etc. presented by the Hockey Team. Then your request might make sense.
Steve: Thanks. I’ve tried to specialize in multiproxy studies used by IPCC and I’m trying to do stuff that other people aren’t doing.
Dave (#4): You will find in my previous posts plenty of instances of assertions by Steve that I found “unbelievable” — i.e. I did not agree with them. More generally, it does not surprise me that, if you search deep enough, you can find mistakes in any paper. These may range from the trivial to the important. However, the APPARENT importance of such mistakes depends on the spin — which is why I asked Steve to take a more even-handed approach.
Steve (your comment to #4): You say "I’ve tried to specialize in multiproxy studies". Well, good, here is your chance to expand those investigations. In Khandekar, Murty and Chittibabu, 2005 (Pure and Applied Geophysics, 162, 1557-1586), pages 1567-1568, there is a discussion of the "Earth’s temperature variation in geological and historical times". I’d very much like your critique of this.
Steve: I am not short of opportunities or things to do right now. I’m sure that there are many other equally competent people who would be willing to do this work for you.
Steve — if you block and/or delete uncomfortable postings, you should at least delete the responses (#3 which replies to #3!) — it looks all the more suspicious now!
John Hunter
Steve: If I snip things, my practice is to mark the snip and post it with the snip, as there have been a number of examples. If I snip something in its entirety, I’ll mark it for control purposes. I have no recollection about #3. It’s possible that I selected it out for editing and deleted it without marking a snip; that’s not what I usually do and if so, it was inadvertent. Some of Hunter’s posts (although I don’t think #3) may be being picked up as spam, especially if they contain long repetitive passages, which are assigned negative spam points by our spam control. We get far too much spam (475 rejects one day) to manually control this any more. If Hunter’s post was rejected by our spam program, did our spam program incorrectly reject it? Reasonable people can disagree on this.
Hang on Steve. This isn’t a reason for another dig at John Hunter, it’s not really about whether you deleted a post either (because the post referred to by others clearly isn’t there), it’s simply about whether the thread reads properly if the criticisms are present but that criticised isn’t. It doesn’t, period.
Steve: The numberings off. I may have done something inadvertent while I was replying to a post. If so, sorry about that. I’m not going to spend any time worrying about it. and please don’t waste bandwidth trying to fuss about it. Hunter just emailed me asking if I ever got any paper supplies from CGX while I was working on MM03.
If you want the context, Peter, John Hunter was his usual snippy (or should that be snipable under the circumstances) self and wanted Steve to audit various skeptics. However my message stands pretty well on its own even without the other side of the conversation.
Here’s the explanation to the mystery of #3. Hunter’s comment was “retro-spanked” by the spam software. It wasn’t anything that I did. I didn’t realized that it would go back and “retro-spank”. Here’s the Spam Karma report on post #3.
Spam Karma 2 Report:
Encrypted Payload: good_karma 0.5: Encrypted payload valid: IP matching.
Link Counter: good_karma 0.5: Comment has no URL in content (but one author URL)
sk2_snowball_plugin: bad_karma -9: Retro-spanking triggered by comment ID: 3495
Overall Karma: -8
Spam Karma rejected 6 Hunter posts as spam. This is absolutely without any intervention on my part. My respect for the software goes up all the time.
Steve: So you are saying that, quite out of the blue, just as my questions were perhaps getting a bit uncomfortable (e.g. can you vouch that, during your writing of your 2003 E & E paper you never received ANY in-kind support from CGX Energy Inc.?), your spam filter suddenly (and without prompting from any of you) rejected 6 of my posts — well I think that is stretching credibility a bit far, don’t you?
Steve: One of Hunter’s supposedly “uncomfortable” questions is whether I received any paper supplies from CGX in 2003 (!!!) I’m pretty sure that Spam Karma classified him as Spam because of repetitive language, but I’d like to think that Spam Karma had a little chuckle about paper supplies.
….ommmm indyfunded ommmm….
Get a life, John Hunter
This is just a test of your spam blocking
So — you are just blocking postings from my individual computer — interesting.
Steve: I am not blocking you. Spam Karma thinks that you’re a spam originator.
So, Steve, tell me – why it is "bad" that Michael Mann apparently blocks you from his sites, but it is fine for you to block me?
It what most people call "spin" …..
Steve: First of all, I’m sure that you are not blocked from viewing the site. Second, I didn’t do anything. Spam Karma classified you as a spam originator. Who am I to argue? We’re under assault by spam – we got 476 spams from poker sites and things like that one day. I really am not prepared to operate without spam software.
John Hunter,
I would guess it is possible that after the first spam blocking, the software automatically banned all posts from that specific IP. I’m sure Steve could fix this problem, but it’s ironic that spam blocking software creates problems too.
Best, Bryan
re: #12
It’s amazing that so many people have absolutely no ability to recognize on-line irony. I assure you John, that Steve wasn’t trying to do an absolute block on you. But you do seem to have this desire to see how many messages you can get clipped without (I assume) resorting to cussing and other such automatic no-no’s.
To John Hunter:
Why do you not do a REAL study – then it may not be spammed out. This thread started out good until you entered. The spam filter is not the only one tired of your PHD non-science.
Re #6 “One of Hunter’s supposedly “uncomfortable” questions is whether I received any paper supplies from CGX in 2003 (!!!)” – ROFL
John H,
Pens and paperclips? You’re joking right?
Spam Karma seems to know a thing or trwo – “The term SPAM may have come from someone’s low opinion of the food product with the same name, which is generally perceived as a generic content-free waste of resources.”
Re #7. Hans, nice ad hom 🙂 – not subtle, but, nevertheless, pushing the right buttons. Rather surprising though, given you expressed views about such things 😉
Peter,
Luke 6:42
Sincerely
John
Hans Erren (posting #7), Steve (who seems unable to give a straight answer), and all the other sniggerers:
My point about Steve’s possible conflict of interest is that I cannot see that he could honestly say that he has no "competing interests", when the journal Nature’s "Competing Financial Interests Declaration Form" gives the following examples of such interests (and I don’t think Nature is too far off the mark):
"Employment: Recent (i.e. while engaged in this research project), present or anticipated employment by any organization that may gain or lose financially through publication of this paper."
and:
"Personal financial interests: Stocks or shares in companies that may gain or lose financially through publication; consultation fees or other forms of remuneration from organizations that may gain or lose financially; patents or patent applications whose value may be affected by publication."
Now I don’t think anyone would pretend that policies related to climate change, and related publications such as the IPCC TAR and papers like M & M (2003), have NO financial impact on companies involved in the oil and gas industry. It is also a demonstrable fact that Steve was a Strategic Advisor to CGX Energy Inc., a company which is primarily involved in oil and gas exploration, while he has writing M & M (2003). So, until Steve can absolutely confirm otherwise, I can only surmise that he HAS HAD, or DOES HAVE, or WILL HAVE, competing interests regarding his climate-related activities as described on this site.
It’s as simple as that.
Steve: I submitted an article to Nature and signed the Nature disclosure of competing interests form without any difficulty. I was able to truthfully do so then and could truthfully do so now. So I would appreciate it if you (Hunter) would stop jumping to conclusions.
The biggest issue facing CGX is the offshore border dispute between Guyana and Suriname, which has tied up exploration. CGX doesn’t have any oil and gas reserves. On a previous occasion, I told Hunter that the Northwest Exploration with which I’m associated had no oil and gas reserves or production (it has done gold exploration) and had nothing to do with a company with a similar name with oil and gas production in Nevada. Despite this, Hunter posted up at realclimate that I was associated with a company which had a similar name as company with oil and gas production – with predictable reactions of outrage at realclimate. I’ve treated Hunter very civilly here, despite questions of increasing foolishness, such as about paper supplies in 2003, and it is disappointing to me that he would write such reckless material at realclimate.
Hunter’s investigation of paper supplies reminds me of the Seinfeld episode with the library cop – remember the one where the “library cop” comes to Seinfeld to investigate a missing book, Tropic of Cancer, from 25 years ago. Remember how the library cop turned to Seinfeld and said, “OK, pretty boy,….”. It was great. The missing book turned out to have been taken from George by the coach while the jocks were giving George a wedgie. The coach then turned into a homeless person lurking outside the library with one of his few possessions being the missing Tropic of Cancer. It was classically Seinfeld clever. I’m thinking of Hunter as the paper supplies cop – “OK, pretty boy,…”. Hunter was a Cambridge grad in the 1960s and his CV is up-to-date, so he does not lack paper credentials.
Re: #18
If your analysis is correct, wouldn’t it be the case that essentially all scientists have competing interests in that the number of publications (especially in prestige journals like Nature), affects their ability to both attract quality researchers and the ability of the researchers to attract government and private funding?
Istn’t it Greepeace who pays or had paid Hunter: His trip to Tuvalu ?
Steve,
Practically everything in life can be related to a Seinfeld episode – even though it was supposed to be a show about “nothing.” But I must caution you on referencing the show. There is an episode where a company called Kramerica tests out a method of using rubber to contain oil in ship hulls, and there is another episode where George pretends to have a company called Vandelay Industries (which deals in latex) interesting in hiring him. One could use an interest in Seinfeld to portray you as a supporter of the oil industry!
Since Hunter has brought up the topic. Let’s think about whether any typical scientist can declare no competing financial interest in nearly as forceful terms as I can. Paul Gosling has posted from time to time on the pressures facing a practical scientist: (and I hope I’m not mischaracterizing his comments here) – if you disclose all the adverse stuff, you won’t get published and you need to get published to get grants. So the need or desire for future grants is an ever-present prospective financial interest for scientists. A prospective financial interest is not just whether stocks or shares might go up or down (or, pace Hunter, the alluring prospect of more paper supplies). In order to get tenure, you need to publish. A tenure job is a big financial prize – don’t tell me that that doesn’t constitute a prospective financial interest. So how can any ordinary scientist declare that he has no prospective financial interest?
Steve (your response to #18):
> On a previous occasion, I told Hunter that the Northwest
> Exploration with which I’m associated had no oil and gas
> reserves or production (it has done gold exploration) and
> had nothing to do with a company with a similar name with
> oil and gas production in Nevada.
The first part of this statement is irrelevant (any INTEREST in oil and gas is relevant, not just reserves or production) and the second part is completely untrue (is this what happens with your communications with Michael Mann and others?). You have NEVER told me that "Northwest Exploration had nothing to do with a company with a similar name with oil and gas production in Nevada" (although you had ample opportunity to). If you had, I would obviously have worded my realclimate posting differently.
> Despite this, Hunter posted up at realclimate that I was
> associated with a company which had a similar name …..
The reason I posted anything to realclimate was because I was completely frustrated with your prevarication. If you had been more open about yourself, this issue would have been cleared up a while ago. I will not pursue this further at present.
You clearly have a different understanding of "competing interests" from my own. The central issue of posting #18 was your INVOLVEMENT with "CGX Energy Inc., a company which is primarily involved in oil and gas exploration" — it matters not one iota whether they have do or do not have any actual oil or gas reserves — they have an INTEREST in oil and gas.
Steve: You gave this criterion – "Employment: Recent (i.e. while engaged in this research project), present or anticipated employment by any organization that may gain or lose financially through publication of this paper" and a similar criteria in respect to shares. The publication of my submission to Nature (or any other of my publications) will not make a difference of 1 cent to the value of CGX shares. I’m not engaged this because I own some CGX shares. I’m doing this because it interests me. This costs me money to do, it doesn’t make me money. I know that this seems impossible to you but it’s a fact.
But as my mother would say, Enough about me. Tell us a little about yourself. You’ve asked me a lot of questions about me because you supposedly want to know what drives me. What is your class interest in all of this? What city in England did you come from? What did your father do? Did you go to a grammar school or a public school? Which one? Do you have an upper class accent? None of this critical information is on your CV.
Steve (#20): As I said in my posting ($21): “you clearly have a different understanding of “competing interests” from my own”. You confuse “prospective financial interest” with “COMPETING financial interest”.
Really?
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=258#comments
I think it’s pretty clear that Steve’s “private company” with “no employees” isn’t doing any oil and gas production in Nevada (unless maybe you think he’s Superman).
I’d like to ask a question of John Hunter: Are you a member of any organization, or environmentalist group which has an interest in the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol, and if so, which ones?
Please don’t feed the trolls.
RE: #21
The late Thomas Gold recognized the “conflict of interest” problem in the science community and wrote a rather enlightening essay about it.
Closeminded Science
It seems to me that one of the problems with the climate community is it operates like a cottage industry. A jack of all trades mentality. In the semiconductor industry there are a ton of electrical engineers, as would be expected. There are also physicists, chemist, materials scientists, mechanical engineers ect. ect. As sophisticated as semiconductors are they are trivial in comparison to the climate system. IMO the collaboration of experts, from different fields, to solve complex problems, is unfortunately missing in the climate community. It therefore doesn’t surprise me when someone, who isn’t part of the “herd”, comes along and pops their balloon. When the “herd” can find nothing wrong with the outsiders work is it a surprise that some resort to guilt by association attacks? As Dr. Gold says:
One last point. Not only has the outsider upset the belief system of the “herd”, but like rubbing salt in the wound, the outsider also obtains notoriety and a place in history that few members of the “herd” will ever achieve.
Hunter
What You are trying to do is what we would call in Germany as “Rufmord” .
(spreading of vicious rumors about someone )
Why You are not telling people that Greenpeace was paying your trip to Tuvalu
re #16:
An ad hom is a logical fallacy. Hunter is chasing windmills because he doesn’t have scientific arguments.
Just like you.
John Hunter:
Not exactly an apology is it? John Hunter defamed Steve with lies on the Internet and all we get is this arrogant response when Steve has put him straight.
Where does this guy get off? Is this the expected ethical behavior of a scientist at the University of Tasmania?
Apparently, the demands and requests of a climate scientist to others are measured by minutes, hours, and days (as exemplified by Dr Hunter), while compliance by climate scientists to the demands and requests of others is measured by weeks, months and years (Mann, Crowley, etc).
Steve (your response to #26): Thank you for telling us that you own shares in CGX Energy Inc..
As to your questions: I’m sorry but I don’t understand what you mean by "What is your class interest in all of this?" — perhaps you can answer this yourself from the following responses. I was born in London and brought up in Carshalton. My father was an electronic engineer. I went to a grammar school — Wallington County Grammar School. My accent is a mixture of southern English, American and Australian (all places where I have lived). You see — it’s really very easy to be open isn’t it?
Michael Jankowski (#28): Thank you — you could not find anywhere where Steve "told me that `Northwest Exploration had nothing to do with a company with a similar name with oil and gas production in Nevada’". Evidently, Steve couldn’t either.
John A (#29): "Are you a member of any organization, or environmentalist group which has an interest in the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol, and if so, which ones?" The simple answer is "no". However, the question is irrelevant to the present discussion, which is about "competing financial interests" (re-read #21).
John A (#34): "John Hunter defamed Steve with lies on the Internet and all we get is this arrogant response when Steve has put him straight." I have told no lies about Steve. The words I used on the realclimate posting were "CGX Energy Inc. occupy the same Canadian address given for McIntyre in McIntyre and McKitrick (2003), an address which is also occupied by Northwest Exploration Company, another business which apparently engages in oil and gas exploration (or at least a company with the same name does)." The fact that Steve now belatedly assures us there are two companies called "Northwest Exploration Company" does not turn my original statement into a lie.
Bernd Stroeher (#32): "Why You are not telling people that Greenpeace was paying your trip to Tuvalu?" Firstly, you should check your facts. I have never been to Tuvalu — I think you mean Fiji. The facts about the presentation on sea level rise that I gave at the Pacific Islands Forum in Fiji in 2002 have always been quite open (see for example http://www.trump.net.au/~greenhou/greenhouse_industry.html). It was quite clear at the time of the presentation that my presence at the Forum was facilitated by Greenpeace.
Steve: You knew that Northwest Energy had no employees and was a private company – so it was obviously different than a public company with oil and gas production in Nevada. You posted information at realclimate, that you reasonably knew to be misleading, but did so anyway. What are your plans to correct the false information?
As a wrap-up, it is probably worth clarifying the issue of your response to posting #8 where you brought up the question of whether you "received any paper supplies from CGX in 2003" — a response which brought characteristic derision from your followers. Here are the actual quotes from my postings, which were either censored or blocked: "….. you have failed to declare that you received NO IN-KIND SUPPORT for your work — this could include the use of office space, computers or Internet access by a company which could gain or loose depending on the way in which governments address the issue of global warming." "So are you telling me that, during the writing of McIntyre and McKitrick (2003), you NEVER ONCE used paper, the telephone, a computer or the Internet access of the company at which you were a ‘Strategic Advisor’ (CGX Energy Inc.) as an aid to the preparation of that paper?" Your concentration on the issue of "paper" is just another example of your spin.
Steve: It’s the paper supplies cop again — this time with hard-hitting questions about internet access in 2003. I told you that I was in compliance with the Nature test. I have never been an employee of CGX. It’s none of your business, but at the time, I was active in a mineral exploration company which subleased office space from CGX and had no connection at all to climate issues. I’ve done nearly all my climate work from home, where I’ve organized space for it and I don’t like moving stuff back and forth. I own my own computer. I buy my own paper. I pay my own Internet access and telephone bills. Further, no company that I’ve been associated with would have any financial interest in any publication that I’ve submitted. I cannot imagine that any party to this debate has cleaner hands than I do. On the other hand, it’s pretty obvious that UCAR has a direct financial interest in promoting concern about global warming – perhaps you should check out Caspar Ammann.
I’m convinced that the Bre-X fraud started with geologists producing fake results simply to get “research” funding and the whole thing got out of hand. It’s obvious to everyone but climate scientists that they have an interest in public concern about global warming – if there’s no problem, there’s no funding. That doesn’t mean that their advice is wrong, only that there is a real issue with them. Get on the case, Inspector Gadget.
Steve (your response to #36): Firstly, there was no "false information" on realclimate — just two alternatives, which you have now belatedly clarified. I had already posted your clarification to realclimate. You may well want to clarify further the status of Northwest Exploration Company, as it seems quite confusing to me. The 2000 and 2003 Annual Reports of CGX Energy Inc. describe Northwest Exploration Company as "the predecessor company to CGX Energy Inc.". Also, at http://www.equitytransfer.com/PredcoNew.asp?billing_company=c, "CGX Energy Inc." is listed as the "Current Company Name" of CGX Energy Inc. and "Northwest Explorations Inc" is listed as the "Predecessor Company Name". This site also says that "Northwest Explorations Inc is now CGX Energy Inc." (I assume "Explorations" should read "Exploration"). So can you tell me how and when CGX Energy Inc. and Northwest Exploration Company coexisted, and explain how one company can become another and yet you can still be associated with the first? Finally, information on any connections with any other companies called "Northwest Exploration Company" would be appreciated, however tenuous (that may save a bit of future heartache).
Steve: Northwest Explorations Inc. changed its name and became CGX Energy; they are legally the same company. Northwest Exploration Company is a different company. The Northwest in Nevada is a third company. I’m not going to give you lessons on corporate organizations. This has nothing whatever to do with paper supplies, Inspector Gadget.
Re: #37, #36, and similar silliness. I’m surprised to note that JH is actually providing evidence to back up one of his main arguments (his argument that a person’s past actions/connections are at least as important as the scientific strength of his argument). Based on his posts here, I’d certainly think twice before taking any JH-authored papers at face value.
BORING !!! Hunter, let’s just assume that at some point in his life, Steve has benefitted from the oxidation of a few molecules of hydrocarbons – like, the last time he drove somewhere – and get back to his maths and argumentation.
Incidentally, even if he were a fully paid-up employee of Exxon, this doesn’t necessarily mean he wouldn’t benefit from AGW nonsense.
I went to a talk at the Royal Society the other day because I was curious to see why the chairman of Shell Oil was making friendly noises about global warming. The answer came when he started talking about CO2 sequestration, particularly in the context of Shell’s North Sea assets. These will be running out in the next few decades, at which point Shell and the other operators will incur significant abandonment costs.
However, if, as he was suggesting, they start running the pipeline network backwards to take CO2 from onshore power plants and pump it into the exhausted gas reservoirs, then those abandonment costs will be deferred. More immediately, someone will have to pay him for performing this valuable public service…
The point is that companies exist to make money for their shareholders. If the Government is daft enough to start giving them money (my money! and yours!) for doing something unnecessary, then they will probably go along with it. It tends to be a great deal easier than real private sector competition.
Steve (responses to #36 and $37): Once again, I’ll ignore your abusiveness (“Inspector Gadget” …) — this, and your insufferable class-conciousness (some evidence of which you have wisely deleted) reflects on you, not me.
Armand MacMurray (#38): you say that “one of (my) main arguments” is “that a person’s past actions/connections are at least as important as the scientific strength of his argument” — wrong (certainly regarding the “at least”) — I’ve never said that — more spin.
fFreddy (#39): yes, auditing IS “boring” — which is why I am intriqued at Steve McIntyre’s apparently pathological desire for destruction rather than construction. Wouldn’t you think that anyone with his obvious mental capacity would want to find how the world works, rather than revelling in trying to find other people’s mistakes? It is this intrique that drove my “audit” of Steve’s background, and his continual evasiveness which made it such a drawn-out affair.
Comment to John Hunter.
This discussion started from Steve’s text about Crowley & North 1991.
You have already given 11 comments (out of 39 so far) here, but still there is no connection to any of the problems Steve was discussing.
Look for instance at the last part of Steve’s text. What’s your contribution to the following problem:
[Steve’s text] -start-
“So we’re left with the three ice core àŽⳏ18 records: Camp Century, Greenland; Quelccaya and the South Pole – all of which were available to IPCC 1990 (and even discussed by it). The Quelccaya àŽⳏ18 series is a mainstay of subsequent multiproxy studies, but the Camp Century and South Pole àŽⳏ18 series are dropped from the later studies – I wonder why. Figure 5.6 does not translate the àŽⳏ18 fluctuations into deg C – I wonder what the basis for the translation was.”
[Steve’s text] -end-
Compare and contrast these two statements by John Hunter:
with
I think this is what called “sophistry”. Hunter would probably use the word “spin”.
Further to this one:
The dictionary says for “audit”:
Clearly Hunter is not “auditing” at all. He has not examined the accuracy or reproducibility of what Steve has submitted. He protests that he is not sufficiently qualified in statistical analysis to do so. On the other hand he is qualified to perform background checks, demand personal and business information and if he doesn’t get it in short order, post misleading and untrue statements about Steve on the Internet to people who support his political views.
The scientific method is not about publication and peer review, but about reproducibility and falsification. This isn’t “revelling in other people’s mistakes” (although its nice for Hunter to admit these mistakes) but an absolutely necessary function of scientists everywhere.
John Hunter has not demonstrated any technical ability in questions of science, in my opinion, but he has demonstrated that he is willing to use any political technique to smear people who clearly do have such an ability. This is clearly an attempt to “smear by remote association”
Oh and by the way, Steve is not a “contrarian”, someone who “makes decisions that contradict prevailing wisdom”, but someone who conscientiously checks whether that “prevailing wisdom” is rooted in reality. So perhaps you’ll stop the abusiveness and try some science for a change.
I did tell you, as Steve did. Surely you don’t expect us to believe you got to where you are today without the common sense and reading comprehension to follow those quotes.
Want to bet?
Re #44. Let me know the odds and what the question is and we’ll see.
re #42 & #44
John A, I’m not sure but what you’re being a bit unfair to John Hunter. Assuming that the paper he produced on the Tuvalu sea levels are his own work, and I see no reason to doubt it, he obviously can do science. Whether it’s entirely correct or not or whether the conclusions drawn by John H from it are correct is another issue.
Anyway you may be confusing John H with Peter. Peter has said he has no science ability and refused to deal with the science. John H is a scientist and also refuses to get into the science. In Peter’s case this is honest, though it may make him liable to be bitch slapped, but in John’s case I think it shows an unwillingness to get into if because he knows he’ll not be able to defend the Mann position.
The importance of understanding the climate (which includes the question of global warming) would be hard to overestimate. The climate is a key element for life on earth. What could be a more important question for the attention of scientific exploration? The work done by the scientists at NASA, NOAA, etc. are of immense importance to the welfare of the American people. It certainly seems to be money well spent on a subject of enormous importance to American taxpayers.
Some things are best left to the marketplace. This is not one of them.
Steve: I agree that it is a very important subject for research. That’s one reason why all the data and source code should be archived meticulously and why climate scientists should stop acting like primadonnas about it. Why shouldn’t these guys disclose everything?
Re #46, Dave ‘Peter has said he has no science ability and refused to deal with the science.’ Nope, I’m pretty well educated, and I certainly wouldn’t have said I have no science abilty. Otoh, there are plenty of things I don’t know about – higher maths being one. Perhaps you’d modestly claim your science abilty isn’t limited?
What is ‘bitch slapped’ and what has it to do with climatology?
I have a question for John Hunter. Aside from the fact that I’d said that the Northwest with which I’m associated had no employees, he said that a company with a similar name to Northwest Exploration Company was currently involved in oil and gas production. I’ve googled and can’t locate evidence for the existence of such a company, although I’ve seen a report of activity of a company with this name in 1983. What is your source of the information that a company named Northwest Exploration Company is presently involved in oil and gas production? I thought that you were going to correct the false information that you had distributed at realclimate. When are you going to do that?
re #48 Peter, if you have no abilities at ‘higher math’ then you basically have no science ability. Of course maybe your definiton of higher math is different than mine. The math needed by a scientist should include calculus and differential equations. Today it’d also include some statistics and linear algebra. Depending on the field it might require other courses, for instance a theoretical physicist would need vector and tensor analysis while a biologist or biochemist would need some theory of Kinetics (though perhaps some wouldn’t consider that a math subject).
This isn’t to say that an interested layman can’t follow a scientific discussion without knowing these subjects, but such a person can’t reasonably be said to have science ability.
For clarity and openness, I had 3 semesters of calculus, differential equations and some more advanced courses, Advanced calculus, measure theory, set theory and Topology (the non-geometrical sort) as an undergrad and a course in the mathematics of Quantum Mechanics and one on Kinetics in grad school. I’ve read texts on linear algebra, statistics, etc. on my own but didn’t take courses in them.
You should probably google “Bitch Slap” +definition to see the various meanings (I did, as I wanted to make sure I understood the term before I used it.) I meant “be made fun of for discussing things you don’t understand yourself.” In this case I was both using and mentioning the concept, though I didn’t necessarily figure anyone would get the joke.
Steve (#49): The problem is that you deleted some of my postings without having apparently read them. Around the middle of July, the only relevant thing you said about the activities of Northwest Exploration Company was in a response to my posting of 14 July. Your response said:
"It’s a private company and has no employees. ….. It has some assets from business that I’ve done in the past."
This was still quite consistent with information I had gleaned from the web about PREVIOUS oil and gas activities of a company called Northwest Exploration Company. So I pursued my questioning of you with posting that you deleted. Here is a reminder (for brevity, I have only included the relevant parts of postings):
————————————————————————————
Posted 15 July 2005:
In the absence of any information from yourself, I did a cursory search of the web for mentions of "Northwest Exploration Company" — these showed that the company had substantial "interests" in fossil fuel extraction. Here are a few examples:
http://www.petrosourcecorp.com/history.htm
(which contains the statement: "1983: Petro Source entered into a ten year contract to purchase all of Northwest’s natural gas liquids, and another ten year contract to purchase all of Northwest Exploration Company’s Nevada crude oil production).
oil-gas.state.co.us/orders/orders/ng-14/1.html
http://www.nbmg.unr.edu/lists/oil/oilreport.php?api=%20%2027-023-05246
oil-gas.state.co.us/Orders/orders/334/1.html
134.197.46.69/lists/oil/oilreport.php?api=%20%2027-023-05226
134.197.46.69/lists/oil/oilreport.php?api=%20%2027-023-05234
Also, the 2000 Annual Report of CGX Energy Inc. (cgxenergy.ca/investors/Annual_2000.pdf), an "oil and gas exploration company" with assets of $5 million in 2000, describes Northwest Exploration Company as "the predecessor company to CGX Energy Inc" — which does not exactly make Northwest Exploration Company sound like a cottage industry!
Now, I’ll accept that there may be more than one company called "Northwest Exploration Company" but the above does show that at least one of these companies has engaged in "crude oil production". Also, perhaps you are nothing to do with that company. If this is indeed the case, then it provides a good example of why more openness on your part could prevent such misunderstanding at an early stage.
————————————————————————————
Posted 16 July 2005:
I attach, to the end of this, the earlier posting that you snipped in its entirety and which you claim contains "observations ….. which are either incorrect, pertain to irrelevant companies or do not contradict anything that I’ve said" (NOTE added: this was the posting of 15 July 2005). I am not interested in the last two of your three categories, only the first. Please indicate to me anything in that posting that was incorrect. I did allow that "there may be more than one company called "Northwest Exploration Company" and that "perhaps you are nothing to do with that company" — if either of these is the case, please tell me, as I emphasise that I want to be as accurate as I can. If you do not answer these questions, I will assume that everything in that posting was correct, and that it relates to a SINGLE company called "Northwest Exploration Company" and that you are, or were, involved with that company.
————————————————————————————
Posted 18 July 2005:
Finally, since I have had no response from you indicating anything in my previous posting (15 July) was untrue, I am assuming the facts were correct, even though you claimed on this site that "some observations …..are ….. incorrect".
————————————————————————————
Posted 18 July 2005:
Steve, you said:
> So that there is no doubt, I will re-iterate that your taunts contained untrue
> observations.
What then were these "untrue observations"?
John Hunter
————————————————————————————
I think most observers would see that I tried my utmost to get the correct facts regarding "Northwest Exploration". At not time prior to 26 July did you give any indication that there was more than one company called "Northwest Exploration" and now there turn out to be three! However, my realclimate posting allowed for this uncertainty by saying "CGX Energy Inc. occupy the same Canadian address given for McIntyre in McIntyre and McKitrick (2003), an address which is also occupied by Northwest Exploration Company, another business which apparently engages in oil and gas exploration (or at least a company with the same name does)."
If you feel there has been anything misleading in any of my postings, then the fault is entirely your own.
You also ask: "I thought that you were going to correct the false information that you had distributed at realclimate. When are you going to do that?". Well I posted a clarification to realclimate on 27 July (as I already told you in posting #37). As of now, they appear not to have included it — it may be in a queue or they may have deleted it. If they have deleted it then I think, given your own habit of deleting my posting (apparently unread), then I fear you have nothing to complain about.
Steve: I have not deleted any of your comments. As I pointed out before, some of your posts were retro-spanked by Spam Karma as spam. I have figured out to rescue retro-spanked posts and am trying to decide whether your posts were in fact spam. You try to guess and impute things in areas where you have little to no knowledge of how things work and then recklessly disseminate your guesses as though they were truth.
The corporate name of the company, Northwest Exploration Company, in the Nevada URLs is a different name than the corporation here, Northwest Exploration Company Limited. Anyone with corporate experience with have recognized the difference in corporate name and thought to inquire as to whether they were the same company. In particular, all the URLs pertaining to Northwest Exploration Company in Nevada pertain to holes drilled or business in the late 1970s-early 1980s. Anyone with business experience would have thought to check why there were no history between some holes drilled in the late 1970s andthe appearance of a slightly different name in 2000. Your recklessness here is simply breathtaking.
I told you that Northwest Exploration Company Limited was a private company and had no employees. This is true. I said that it had never engaged in oil and gas exploration; this is also true. You don’t understand how Northwest Exploration Company Limited can be negligible, while GGX can have assets. Just because you don’t understand how this can be the case doesn’t mean that it’s not true. In areas that you don’t understand or have experience, I urge caution in making public statements before recklessly making claims. Describing why the above is true is not something that would normally be part of a resume or curriculum vitae.
While I have no obligation to explain this to you, I have no objection to doing so. Northwest Exploration Company Limited carried out gold exploration as a provate company in the mid-1990s. In late 1997, it was taken over by Northwest Explorations Inc. through a share exchange to become a 100% subsidiary of Northwest Explorations Inc. and continued to carry out gold exploration as a subsidiary of Northwest Explorations Inc. I was President of the subsidiary and a director of the parent. Northwest Explorations Inc. went public and continued gold exploration. The gold exploration was unsuccessful and all gold exploration operations ceased and all employees of the subsidiary were terminated. In 1998, CGX Resources did a reverse takeover of Northwest Explorations Inc. and changed the name of Northwest Explorations Inc. to CGX Energy Inc. As a result of the takeover, I ceased to be a director of the parent company. CGX Energy Inc. had no interest in the gold exploration subsidiary, Northwest Exploration Company Limited, which, at the time, had some gold exploration concessions of negligible value, all of which have since been dropped, and some small liabilities and sold the subsidiary to a private group with which I was involved. Northwest Exploration Company Limited has successfully done some property transactions involving hardrock mineral exploration properties (nothing to do with oil and gas) acquiring some assets in the process.
The above corporate re-organizations are a little bit complicated, but you had no reason to assume otherwise.
You did not “try your utmost” to obtain answers. I told you that your surmises were incorrect. You surmised otherwise and, without waiting a reasonable length of time for an answer to your questions, you rushed off and disseminated highly misleading information at realclimate which you have failed to correct. It is not my “fault” that you made misleading statements. Given the profusion of postings from you, you cannot seriously argue that you have been unable to state your positions at this board. I have every right to complain about your dissemination of false and misleading information. If realclimate is unwilling to permit you to correct it, then you have a serious issue with realclimate, which I encourage you to promptly deal with. .
Steve (#26): You said "the publication of my submission to Nature (or any other of my publications) will not make a difference of 1 cent to the value of CGX shares". Now, according to the 2003 Annual Report of CGX, there were (at the end of 2002) 48,599,959 CGX shares. A 1 cent change these represents $486,000. So all you are telling us is that any change in the total stake due to your publications would be less than $486,000 — which sounds a pretty good potential profit to me! But I’m not very good at financial matters, so please correct me if I’m wrong.
Steve: For greater certainty, in my opninion, the impact would be $0. If you put the question to any investment banker with experience in speculative exploration companies, I believe that you would get the same answer. You have no claimed any expertise in financial matters and certainly not evidenced any and therefore you should be very cautious in making public statements and claims in areas where you lack background and relevant expertise.
Actually, John, you haven’t parsed that statement properly at all. All that Steve said, if one was inclined to be literal as you seem to be, was that the change in value would be any number other than $485,999.59, it could be $1, it could be $40 billion. I’m disapointed you didn’t pursue this statement to its logical conclusion – it would surely be entertaining.
John S. (#53): I wasn’t trying to be particularly smart so I wasn’t expecting a "smart" answer. I was making a point which I believe was in accord with the actual meaning of Steve’s original posting (i.e. that any change would be LESS THAN 1 cent per share). The point is that relatively small changes in share prices (caused by, for example, a media release or a scientific publication) can make a pretty large change in total dollars. If you are in the business of buying or selling shares, changes as small as 1 cent per share ARE important.
Steve: Again any scientific publication by me would make $0 difference to CGX.
John Hunter:
Compare with what Steve actually said:
Where did the “per share” come from? Only from the fertile mind of someone with a clear axe to grind.
Have you got any scientific information about the work of Steve McIntyre, rather than a paranoid conspiracy theory involving the ramping of shares in a small Canadian exploration company?
Inquiring minds would like to know.
So John Hunter is a paid shill for Greenpiece, that totally devalues anything he may have to say about climate change at any time in any forum. Greenpeace is perhaps the most consistently dishonest organisation in the world, and you admit you take their money to promote matters that are in their interests. Credibility, zap, gone, just like that. Who cares about any real research or data you may have produced, it can’t be worth considering because of the funding conflicts.
This is of course simply applying the standard AGW believers methodology as used against anyone who wishes to even investigate the claims made by such researchers as Mann, Bradley, or Hughes. Sauce for the goose…
John A (#55): I think I made a reasonable assessment of what Steve meant. Perhaps he would like to tell us himself. However, whatever he meant makes little difference to my point — i.e. that "relatively small changes in share prices (caused by, for example, a media release or a scientific publication) can make a pretty large change in total dollars". Is that wrong? Is that a "paranoid conspiracy theory"? I don’t think so. I think it is just an observation.
Yes, I have some "scientific information about the work of Steve McIntyre". It is only another observation though, based on reading a rather small sample of this site. My feeling is that Steve’s work is effectively his own. What he publishes is based on his own hard work and his own mathematical abilities (which seem to me to be reasonable). Although this site pretends to be a forum for discussion of his work, I have never seen any contribution from anyone else on this site that seems to have been incorporated into his work — I may well have missed something but this is just my observation. It seems to be very much a report of a one-man team (Steve), aided by Ross McKitrick, playing against what he calls the "hockey team" — with a whole crowd of his followers cheering or booing from the sidelines. What I don’t see is any serious scientific discourse between him and his followers — at least any discourse that actually adds to the scientific case presented by Steve McIntyre (if there was such discourse, then why doesn’t Steve include such people as authors, and why does he make so little acknowledgment of their assistance?). I certainly see few "inquiring minds".
Steve: Your point is wrong and again shows your lack of relevant expertise and your willingness to engage in reckless speculations in areas where you lack expertise. A scientific publication by me would make $0 to difference to the value of CGX shares. As a test of this, if CGX directors felt that it did make a difference, then CGX would not only be obligated to issue a press release, but would be anxious to do so. CGX’s position is that this is a personal interest of mine. People are interested in my present celebrity, but let there be no doubt about this: this is a hobby and it costs me money to do.
John Hunter:
I think you are the only person who seems to think your assessment is “reasonable”. You have not even slightly demonstrated that Steve’s work has made any value difference to a small exploration company in Canada, with whom Steve has done business – and true to form you demand that Steve prove a negative (a logical impossibility).
It is a “paranoid conspiracy theory” to imply, without any evidence, that Steve’s work is influenced by his work for a particular company, or that this company has secretly helped fund, directly or indirectly, Steve’s work in climate science, so as to enhance the value of that company.
It is not some innocent observation, because you have not observed anything. It is smear through innuendo and a rotten chain of implying sinister motives, using marginal readings of what Steve has stated, not at all the basis of honest inquiry.
It was Enron, a thoroughly corrupt fossil fuel company, that gave money (millions of dollars), time and materials to Greenpeace, an international environmental corporation, in order to promote the Kyoto Protocol, by which both groups would make large financial gains. You have taken money from Greenpeace, as you have already admitted. Shall we follow your chain of reasoning, and impute sinister motives to the work you have done, the political views you have expressed and the rhetorical techniques you have used on this weblog?
John A. (#57): You say "I think you are the only person who seems to think your assessment is ‘reasonable’", which presumably means you think my assessment is unreasonable. Now there aren’t too many options here. I would have thought Steve meant EITHER "less than 1 cent per share" OR "less than 1 cent for all the shares". I now presume that you prefer the latter option, which means "1 cent in $16,882,627" (the total value of shares according to the CGX 2003 Annual Report). So the interpretation you would prefer is "the publication of Steve’s submission to Nature (or any other of his publications) will make a difference of less than 0.00000006% to the value of CGX shares". A rather bold claim, don’t you think — can you justify it? But perhaps Steve can help us out here and tell us what he really meant. Perhaps he was only speaking idiomatically and actually meant "the publication of Steve’s submission to Nature (or any other of his publications) will make ZERO difference to the value of CGX shares" — an even bolder claim, which HE may wish to justify.
This light-heartedness does actually lead to a serious question — presumably someone has looked at the effect of the publication of articles and books on share prices (e.g. the publication of the IPCC TAR on fossil fuel share prices) — does anyone know of such studies?
Steve: Once again, $0. Look, I can’t keep up with all these posts demanding stuff and, then if I trun my back for a second, you rush off half-cocked to realclimate and publish misleading information. In my opinion, IPCC TAR has had no impact on fossil fuel share prices. It has had a direct impact on funding for climate research. I also think that having one’s study discussed in IPCC TAR (and even more so, if it was featured) would have an impact on academic career prospects. I suspect that we can even think of one prominent IPCC author (then untenured) whose work was highlighted and has recently obtained a tenured job. That’s a real connection.
John Hunter:
You have basic comprehension skills. I am amazed.
Will the tedious pedantry lead to a conclusion?
You’re asking Steve to prove a negative, to prove that the shareholders of this particular company did not at any time think that Steve’s academic work made a material difference to the implied value of the company sufficient to cause decisions to buy or sell shares in that company.
In other words, an impossible task.
So you’ve argued from a position of complete ignorance and asked Steve to disprove your argument.
Perhaps you’d like to do what lots of climate scientists do these days: create a mathematical model containing your ignorant assumptions, add large non-physical parameters to stabilize the model, and then have your model output put through the lax quality control of academic peer review by your peers (people as ignorant as you) before publishing your results in quality academic journals.
You can add it to your CV. Maybe you can get invited to large conferences in exotic locations (and I don’t mean Peckham) to discuss your "discovery". Maybe some large political pressure group will pay for your bar bill (but of course you’ll keep your academic integrity and independence intact).
Through the bottom of the beer glass, it will look and feel just like science. And the pay’s just the same.
Please, Dr. Hunter! Steve was clearly using a figure of speech with reference to “not one cent.” The meaning of this figure of speech is ZERO, zilch, nada, nothing! I think pretty much everyone who reads what Steve said understands what he meant. I’ll have to ask some Aussies if this figure of speech isn’t widely understood Down Under. Maybe you’re not pulling our leg and really don’t understand.
But this whole argument can probably be ended using your own words and ridiculous logic:
If “changes as small as 1 cent per share ARE important,” then changes smaller than one cent are not important. Steve’s claim of “will not make a difference of 1 cent to the value of CGX shares” would be smaller than one cent, and by your own acknowledgement, not important. Unless you are going to argue what Steve meant was any difference less than OR greater than $0.01, which if you choose to do so, God help us all.
Is Steve in it only for the money? If so then we may safely skip the math. We just discount his argument the way we discount paid commercials on TV, or the way we discounted the testimony of scientists in the employment of tobacco companies.
It could be. Exxon or some other oil company could secretly be funding him. He could be hiding his ill gotten assets until he comes under less public scrutiny. There could be a vast conspiracy to defame honest climate scientists.
Certainly there are enogh evil men in the world and there is enough money at stake. Almost any conspiracy scenario is possible. But how probable is it?
The question we might ask is, “Is there much money in anti-global warming advocacy?” I think not. I in fact looked into it. There is a lot of money in political advocacy in general but in my judgement the anti-global warming issue pays too poorly to be a good business investment. There are a number of pro-global warming advocacy funding sources that are available but far less so on the anti-global warming side.
I make web sites for a living. I considered for about six months making a site that presented the anti-global warming point of view. I investigated the pro-warming sites and saw their funding strategies. They had government, foundation, and large private contributors. In contrast the anti-warming sites seemed to have access to far fewer resources. I abandonned the effort. Direct contributions from small private contributors seemed to much of a business risk. Its not that I didn’t believe that Exxon or some other big energy company would never fund me for corporate ethical reasons, it was just that that prospect was too slim for the investment involved.
In my judgement, the pro-warming advocacy side pays much better. Or to put it another way, the pro-warming side is more corrupted by filthy lucre. First of all climatologists largely live on the global warming issue. Without that one issue the career prospects for climatologists collapse. The average US climatologist doesn’t get his first real job until he is something like thirty five. By such an age he has run up substantial debts. He enters a field in which the unemployment rate is among the highest in the sciences. Climatology has attracted many students in recent years and not all of them are fully qualified. Those who enter Climatology for political or public policy reasons dilute the talent pool. This makes it all the harder for the well prepared scientists. There is strong competition for the available positions. All these factors make Climatologists vulnerable to the pro-warming bias that butters their bread.
But why listen to me? My subjective judgement and limited research of which side is better funded could be wrong. In the spirit of the true scientist, I hearby call for more research. Someone should set up two identical organizations with web presences but on opposite sides of the global warming issue. Both sides should seek financial support. We will then be in a position to judge the influence of money on the character of the debate.
Pat,
Not to particularly pick on you since I expect we agree but really “Is Steve in it only for the money? If so then we may safely skip the math. We just discount his argument the way we discount paid commercials on TV, or the way we discounted the testimony of scientists in the employment of tobacco companies” is just wrongheaded.
The idea that people with a financial interest in something are thereby more likely to lie that others is not just insulting it’s also probably wrong. You mention tobacco. Well you’ve seen what has happened to them. If you had a company in an energy related field would you like to end up like executives for tobacco companies did? Would you like to be in jail like executives from Enron are? Would you like your reputation forever sullied? I don’t think so. What we actually have is that a lot of oil companies, utilities, etc. are so cowed by big environment that they at least pay them lip service and start wasteful programs just to show they’re part of the ‘reasonable’ gang. Those who are willing to actually stand up for what they believe are not going to hide their light under a bushel basket.
Of course I have this occasional fantasy that someday I’ll get a call from someone with lots of money who will say, “I saw your messages on X and you did such a good job that I’d like to pay you $50,000 a year to run my anti-warmer website.” But if there’s anyone out there tempted to do so, be certain that I’d never hide where I got my money from (at least in general terms. It wouldn’t necessarily be wise to name names.)
I think it’s certainly true they are “more likely to lie.” But just because someone is paid by a partisan organization doesn’t mean they lie all/most/some/any of the time.
No matter what a person’s agenda, funding, motivation, etc, is, a fact is a fact, and it cannot be simply dismissed.
Michael,
I’m not talking about casual lying but lying about which you can be held accountable (not necessarily financially but in terms of reputation, etc.) I think we have all been lied to where a salesman is just trying to make a sale. That’s why we have signed quotes or contracts. But we don’t see lying very often where there’s a paper trail. That’s precisely why I think the warmers are so upset. There’s not supposed to be a paper trail if they’d err… enhanced the fit of their data to their theory; or at least avoided pointing out inconvenient facts.
Steve has provided a paper trail a mile wide. He could have any relationship to anybody at all he wanted and it’d make no difference. If fact if he was a hired voice for an oil company I’d be MORE likely to accept his math since I’d assume they’d have had other people with the requisite knowledge check it out in detail before allowing it to be released. At this point it’s up to those who disagree with his findings to find errors, not Steve. Instead all we see is ad hominen attacks. And the reason is simply that they know they’re busted and want to cover it up.
Should anyone be interested, the Crowley and North (1991) book which Steve referees to is available from Amazon’s associated booksellers at a very reasonable price. The books by Hughes are much more expensive but at least some of them are available.
Steve and others (starting with Steve’s response to posting #51): Boy, have I pushed a few people’s buttons! Please, Steve, don’t pretend that the subjects I bring up are of no interest to people! But first to your response:
You say: “I have not deleted any of your comments. As I pointed out before, some of your posts were retro-spanked by Spam Karma as spam.” I’m sorry, but this is a complete whitewash, Steve. The postings you snipped were from around 15 July — postings which you, in some cases, even “summarised” (in your distorted way) on this site. The “spam” issue didn’t start until around 24 July, and was evidenced by the anti-spam software sending messages to the poster. So, sorry, Steve — there is a discrepancy of around 9 days — you are wrong — you deleted my postings and apparently didn’t read them properly.
You also say: “The corporate name of the company, Northwest Exploration Company, in the Nevada URLs is a different name than the corporation here, Northwest Exploration Company Limited. Anyone with corporate experience with have recognized the difference in corporate name and thought to inquire as to whether they were the same company.” Steve: if you had actually read my postings from around 15 July OR re-read them as given in my posting #51, you would see that I did precisely that — I asked you SEVERAL TIMES “whether they were the same company” (e.g. on 16 July) — you declined to answer these initial postings.
You also say: “You did not “try your utmost” to obtain answers. I told you that your surmises were incorrect. You surmised otherwise and, without waiting a reasonable length of time for an answer to your questions, you rushed off and disseminated highly misleading information at realclimate which you have failed to correct.” Steve: I gave you several days to answer, during which time you were responding to my posts (e.g. saying things like “”some observations …are … incorrect”, rather than the obvious “they are different companies”).
You also say: “I have every right to complain about your dissemination of false and misleading information.” Sorry, Steve, there was nothing false in my posting to realclimate — I gave two alternative possibilities, the uncertainty being entirely due to your own evasiveness.
You also say: “If realclimate is unwilling to permit you to correct it, then you have a serious issue with realclimate, which I encourage you to promptly deal with.” Get real, Steve — I have no “serious issue” with realclimate — there is nothing to “correct” and they have just as much right to delete postings as you have. If you want to post a comment to realclimate you are quite free to do so.
Finally as regards the issues of the effect of publications on share prices, I am quite surprised that someone with a claimed mathematical ability should choose to say “a scientific publication by me would make $0 difference to the value of CGX shares” — EXACTLY $0? — I wonder how you would justify that. I also find it interesting that no one seems to be willing to answer my question “presumably someone has looked at the effect of the publication of articles and books on share prices (e.g. the publication of the IPCC TAR on fossil fuel share prices) “¢’¬? does anyone know of such studies?”.
My father used to say “when you argue with a fool, you can’t tell who is winning.” I would urge those who are responding to silliness to consider that before the interesting and useful posts become completely overwhelmed. Don’t feed a troll!
I wrote the post saying that the USG was spending about $3 billion a year on global warming. (I don’t see why Michael Jankowski’s name is attached to it on post #47.)
The reason I wrote this post was that the sheer amount of money being spent meant that the failure of Mann, Bradley and Hughes to help Steve and the rest of us understand the difference between the results he obtained and they obtained was quite disgraceful. MBH should have given Steve their programs and data the very first time he asked for them. Why waste yet more money and time when the data and programs exist?
Some of the discussion of “global warming” is completely ludicrous. In today’s Opinion Journal in the Wall Street Journal we find the following remarks by Al Gore in New York on 1/15/2004:
“I don’t think there is any longer a credible basis for doubting that the Earth’s atmosphere is warming up because of global warming ” says Gore, claiming that “the vast majority of the most respected environmental scientists ” agree. Of course this is a tautology, like saying “Gore lost the election because he received fewer votes.” Gore’s reasoning is completely at odds with the scientific method which is founded on doubt. What Gore is offering is a form of religious fanaticism without God, in which infallible “scientists” promulgate dogmas and politicians browbeat us into making drastic changes to our lives in order to conform to them.
Gore denounced the Bush Adminstration – over and over and over, and in shrill paranoid terms: “new frontiers in cynicism… lobbyists and lawyers for the biggest polluters .. pseudo scientific front groups.. conspiring.. chooses special interests over the public interest… a toxic mess left for our children.. the country’s worst polluters getting off the hook.. radical changes.. exercise of raw power… a disdain for the international community.. close cooperation with the most powerful special interests.. a clever strategy of deception.. Orwellian language.. wholly owned by the coal, oil, utility and mining companies.. a moral coward.”
While nobody here has made remarks which are quite as odd as this, some of the points are pretty bizarre. All the comments about whether Steve works for CGX or Northwest something or other are quite extraneous to the basic point of is his science right? All the wriggling by MBH makes me sure that it is and that why I’m delighted by the actions of Congressman Barton.
John Hunter has posted untrue and misleading statements at realclimate, implying that the Northwest Exploration Company Limited with which I’m associated, is an oil and gas producer. He said this in spite of repeated and categorical statements to him that his speculations were false. He has recently suggested that it is somehow my fault that he made false statements. Here is a short chronology of the incident.
The record is slightly incomplete because some of the comments have been retro-spanked by Spam Karma, which we had then just installed. I am sure that they can be located, but I can’t locate them readily, but the relevant context is clear. Spam Karma sends a spam report on a daily basis, but the first report that I have retained is for July 18 and I cannot document July 14-17 at present although the reports may exist somewhere.
14 July – Installation of Spam Karma 2 software
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=259#comments
15 July 2005 [Hunter Version of Posting as re-posted July 27]
Comment July 30: Due to Spam Karma operations, I do not have a copy of my reply. However, I made a prompt and contemporary reply stating that the above statements contained "observations ….. which are either incorrect, pertain to irrelevant companies or do not contradict anything that I’ve said."
16 July (Saturday) [Hunter Version posted up July 27]
16-17 July
Comment July 30: This was a week-end. I was away for the week-end. We had houseguests. I did not look at a computer, even to see if there were pending demands from Hunter.
18 July
Comment July 30: The M, B and H response letters together are archived. Source code is also archived. Since I’m blocked from Mann’s FTP site, I went down to the university to retrieve source code and spent most of the day at the university library.
18 July [Hunter version as re-posted on July 27]
Spam Karma Version
Comment July 30: I had specifically stated that his July 15 posting "observations ….. which are either incorrect, pertain to irrelevant companies or do not contradict anything that I’ve said" . I was away for the week-end and when I returned, I stated that his taunts "contained untrue observations". He accordingly could not thereafter "assume that the facts were correct". Hunter saw this response since it is quoted in his next message.
18 July 2005: [Hunter version as re-posted July 27]
July 30 Comment: This post by Hunter was picked up in the 2:37 pm spanking and I did not consider it until today.
July 18 2:37 pm SPAM KARMA REPORT
Contrary to Hunter’s allegation that I deleted his posts, a number of his posts were "retro-spanked", including the "retro-spanking" of 3 Hunter posts on July 18. It is possible that some were "retro-spanked" previously. The spam assault which we were then experiencing was documented on a contemporary basis as follows:
The July 18, 2005 Spam Karma report was issued at 2:37 pm and stated:
July 19, 2005
Hunter posts false and misleading speculations at realclimate.
July 25, 2005
The Spam Karma issue was first identified http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=276 comment #7.
COMMENTS- JULY 30
I’ve told Hunter that I did not delete any of his comments, but that they were retro-spanked. Without any specific knowledge, Hunter categorically asserts the opposite as follows:.
While the Spam KArma issue was not specifically identified until July 25, the Spam KArma retro-spanking affecting Hunter had commenced by July 18 and perhaps a little earlier. Hunter didn’t have access to the above documentation; I just collated it. However, when I snipped his materialpreviously (and there’s a considerable number of examples), I documented the snip in the posting itself and there’s a verifiable trail. Hunter is obviously familiar with the fact that this is how I’ve done things when I manually edited his material. However, how on earth could he positively assert that I was "wrong" and state so positively that I had "deleted" his material.
The above correspondence also shows that there was no "prevarication" on my part. I promptly told Hunter on 2 occasions that his conclusions were incorrect or pertained to "irrelevant companies". How can he in all seriousness say that he had no knowledge of the possibility that he was discussing the wrong company, when I’d told him so. Also, the simple fact that the references that he cited pertained to operations over 20 years and that the company had a different name should have given him pause. I told him twice that his surmises were incorrect. I had no obligation to provide any further explanation. EVen if I did have such an obligation, he allowed for the passage of exactly one business day after July 18 before rushing off to publish his misleading statements at realclimate (and made no attempt to ensure that his second July 18 email had even been received, much less responded to). The very haste of Hunter’s actions indicates the possibility of malice as well as recklessness.
Hunter says the following:
In fairness, Hunter did allow for the possibility that the companies were different. However, I specifically put him on notice that his speculations did involve "irrelevant companies" and again on July 18 that his taunts contained "untrue observations". So in fact, his situation is worse. He had direct knowledge that his speculations concerned "irrelevant companies". Knowing that, he should not have rushed off and posted untrue and misleading speculations.
Hunter says:
In the first post, I said that Hunter was discussing "irrelevant companies". I really am trying to do other things besides replying to Hunter. If a reply was not as expansive as it might be, that does not give licence to Hunter to ignore the clear statement that he was making "untrue" observations or to make untrue and misleading statements. I get more than a little tired of Hunter’s definition of "evasiveness" or "prevarication". In this case, if he doesn’t get an answer in one business day, he proceeds to make false statements.
Finally, Mr. John H., You seem to feel that you have no obligations in this matter. You have knowingly made misleading statements, I think that you have an obligation to remedy the situation and that you should make it a personal priority to correct the record.
Nobody seems to have asked Hunter why he felt the need to post misleading and untrue speculations on Real Climate.
In fact, looking back at the material in this tread, it seems that at best, it was a fit of pique at not getting instant answers from Steve, at worst it was a way of applying pressure to get what he wanted.
Either way, it was the action of a bully – http://www.bullyonline.org/workbully/amibeing.htm
Steve, I for one would be very happy if Spam Karma permanently blocked Hunter from any further ranting on your blog.
Re #71. Yup, nothing like shutting up the one qualified critic of this site is there? Then, if you get me too, it’ll just be like a meeting of the N. Korean communist party – everyone in 100% agrement with Dear Leader Steve, nothing is off limits in the descriptions of your enemies, dissent will not allowed… And, just to save you the bother, I know I’m not qualified so save the various insults you, or proably someone else tbh, will probably, if recent experience is anything to go by, spout in my direction.
Peter: the last "scientific" comment made by Hunter to my recollection was his completely false account alleging that an IPCC 1990 graph purported to represent "local " temperature.
Re bullying. From the site Micheal mentions:
“What is bullying?…being belittled, demeaned and patronised, especially in front of others”. I think I could find numerous examples of where both I and John Hunter have faced that kind of thing from contributors here.
Michael, when you make allegation you ought to make sure they’re not going to backfire on you!
Peter, I had this in mind: “constant nit-picking, fault-finding and criticism of a trivial nature – the triviality, regularity and frequency betray bullying; often there is a grain of truth (but only a grain) in the criticism to fool you into believing the criticism has validity, which it does not; often, the criticism is based on distortion, misrepresentation or fabrication”
Steve (#70): 1. You accept that you received my posting of 15 July giving a number of URLs relating to the oil and gas activities of a company called “Northwest Exploration Company”, and that you did reply to it (although you don’t have a copy). Your reply was characteristically evasive and did not indicate what parts of my posting were incorrect. If, in response to my statement “I’ll accept that there may be more than one company called ‘Northwest Exploration Company’… perhaps you are nothing to do with that company …”, you had said “there are two companies and I am not associated with the one engaged in ‘crude oil production'” things would have been immediately clear. 2. For some reason you make no mention of whether you actually read my posting of 16 July, where I asked you to “indicate to me anything in that posting that was incorrect” — presumably Spam Karma tore it up before you got to see it! 3. You accept that you received my posting of 18 July which gave you a further chance to clarify the issue of “Northwest Exploration Company” and your association with it. Your only reply was that my “taunts contained untrue observations”. THERE WAS NO WAY IN WHICH I COULD KNOW WHICH OF MY STATEMENTS WERE UNTRUE. 4. You accept that I sent a further enquiry on 18 July asking “what then were these `untrue observations’?”. You did not read it — whose fault was that — mine? 5. You now claim “I told him twice that his surmises were incorrect. I had no obligation to provide any further explanation.” Well, you may have had no obligation, but don’t you think it might have been a sensible to clarify the issue at this stage? After all, it is you that seems to have a problem with the realclimate posting, not me. 6. You say: “You have knowingly made misleading statements”. Steve: I know what I knew at the time; you DON’T know what I knew at the time. Your statement is plainly wrong. I made clear what I knew, and what I didn’t know, by allowing two possibilities in my posting to realclimate. 7. I have submitted another posting to realclimate with the clarification. If they reject it, then it’s over to you. Have you ever tried talking to these guys nicely? 8. Perhaps you should note that, as well as allowing for two possibilities in the realclimate posting, I did add that “the point is not to pretend that everyone who has any connection with the fossil fuel industry should be disbelieved, but rather to indicate a small but significant discrepancy in the common description of Steve McIntyre.” I don’t think that is too outrageous is it? I think this may all be summarised by: if you persist in giving evasive answers to clear questions, and if you install spamming software which you appear unable to control and which removes incoming postings, then you are bound to end in grief — and that is no fault but your own. None of which alters the fact that, during the time when you were writing the 2003 Energy & Environment paper, you had a business association (as Strategic Advisor) with, shared an address with, and owned shares in, CGX Energy Inc., a company which describes its “principal business activity” as “petroleum and natural gas exploration”. Again, I don’t think that is too outrageous — do you? In addition, if I added that the address of CGX Energy Inc. “is also occupied by Northwest Exploration Company, another business which apparently engages in oil and gas exploration (or at least a company with the same name does)” — does it really make any significant difference? I don’t think so.
Steve: There was nothing “evasive” about the answers. I told you that your claims were incorrect or pertained to irrelevant companies. That’s not very hard to understand. If someone told me that some of my information pertained to “irrelevant companies”, I would re-consider whether to publish a supposed connection with a company whose last known operations was in the early 1980s and which had a different name. If someone told me that my information contained “untrue” observations and I still did not know what was untrue, I would not recklessly proceed to publish the information. I would not subsequently make the laughable rationalization that ” THERE WAS NO WAY IN WHICH I COULD KNOW WHICH OF MY STATEMENTS WERE UNTRUE.” Unfortunately this last sentence seems to sum up much of present-day climate scientific procedure. If in doubt, I would certainly undertake more due diligence before publishing than making one peremptory demand on an Internet site and proceed with less than one business day’s notice. In particular, you had no evidence that I had received or acknowledged the demand. While the demand was intercepted by Spam Karma resulting in my not seeing it, any number of other plausible explanations could have accounted for my not replying to the posting within 1 business day – I could have been travelling; I could have had family obligations; I could have been on vacation. You say that I “do not know what was in your mind” at the time that you published misleading information. The only relevant matter is that you had notice that your information was incorrect – and there is proof that you received the notice. You have an ongoing responsibility to correct the false information. You have represented yourself on this board as a practicing scientist associated with a respectable institution. As such, you are subject to codes of conduct. My impression is that these codes would preclude the reckless behaviour in which you have been indulging and the embarrassing excuses that you are providing.
Michael Mayson (#71): Please indicate what was “untrue” in my posting to realclimate.
Steve (your response to #74): Firstly, you could do well to answer the question I posed to Michael Mayson: "Please indicate what was “untrue” in my posting to realclimate." Secondly, you say: "You have an ongoing responsibility to correct the false information. You have represented yourself on this board as a practicing scientist associated with a respectable institution. As such, you are subject to codes of conduct. My impression is that these codes would preclude the reckless behaviour in which you have been indulging and the embarrassing excuses that you are providing." Please stop being a pompous oaf. You know as well as I do that there is no "false information" in my posting to realclimate — just two alternatives. Yet you expect me to continue to pressure climateaudit to clarify this single posting, which after clarification will hardly mean anything different — it will STILL be clear that you had a business association with a fossil fuel exploration company while you were writing your 2003 E & E paper. May I take it that you will also go through the entire content of climateaudit, correcting the numerous errors of fact contained in the postings?
Steve: It is hardly "euphemistic" to describe me as being in the mineral exploration business. I’ve been in the mineral business all my business life. At the time that you refer to and in the very information that you are citing from, my principal occupation is described as the president of a mineral exploration company, and I was providing part-time consulting to CGX. You made false and misleading allegations that I was connected to an oil and gas production company, Northwest Exploration Company, when you had notice that you were making surmises about an irrelevant company – irrelevant because it had no connection to me. I am getting extremely bored with trying to pick your spitballs off the wall. You seem to think that just because a spitball is not picked off the wall within 24 hours, that you are then justified to assume its "truth". I think Spam Karma was right.
Anyway you’ve had your say. You’ve not corrected your information at realclimate. I’m bored with 3 spitballs a day. If you want to comment on any scientific topic, your comments are welcome. Any non-scientific trolling will be deleted from now on.
The subjects you bring up "are of no interest to people," at least in relation to the people, places, and things you attach them to. I have to admit that it was amusing to see you post here occasionally, and I had enjoyed seeing you post on another site. We have a saying here in the US about not being able to take our eyes off of a train wreck, and that’s the best way I can describe the interest in your posts. But the length, frequency, and increasing absurdity of your posts has led them to become tedious and boring. Another poster here described you as a "troll." I would have to add that you are a seemingly obsessed one at that.
Steve: I simply lack the time and interest to respond to Hunter’s spitballs.
RE#69
Thanks Roger Bell, I didn’t notice that. I don’t know why my name was attached to it, either.
RE#72
Peter, I’m curious as to how his qualification as a “client scientist” is related to 95-99% of his criticisms/posts here.
Considering that the only qualification seems to be a name, an email address, and some grasp of the English language, you’re just as qualified.
On the contrary – you are several orders of magnitude better than the person you are defending.
My God…the navel gazing here is just…amazing.
Peter or John H.,
Have either of you maintained a website with comments? I have and the notion of deleting (retroactively) legit comments due to a “misread” by spam software is very much possible. I’ve had the problem on my site with MT-blacklist. So please stop with this Dennis the Peasant routine. Nobody is opressing you.
Re #71.
You’re joking? When did Hunter ever provide a criticism of Steve’s science?
Re #76
I’ll answer that when you tell me why you posted your suppositions to Real Climate.
I looked at the travesty of this link, which started as a technical discussion of Crowley and North [1991]. It really is hard to distinguish the onslaught of spitballs from the onslaught of automated messages from the poker sites. I should have been more disciplined in my moderating. The remarkable Spam Karma software has submitted today’s report, retro-spanking 3 Hunter posts (id=3671, 3672, 3673) without my ever touching anything. My respect for the software increases daily.
Re comment to #72:
I’m not sure if this was from Steve: "the last ‘scientific’ comment made by Hunter to my recollection was his completely false account alleging that an IPCC 1990 graph purported to represent ‘local’ temperature".
Anyway, whoever it was from: it was quite clearly a typo. Why would I purposely change words? I was simply reminding the "inquiring minds" on this site of what I presumed they had already read. I naturally (now I realise, incorrectly) assumed that all the "inquiring minds" actually read the IPCC documents that they so denigrate — but perhaps they don’t — perhaps they just believe the spin.
Steve: There was no typo in the original report. The context clearly indicated that you had mis-read the original report, not that you made a typo in your comment. I haven’t seen any civilian posters denigrating IPCC 1990. It’s hard enough picking all your spitballs off the wall, but if you justify such mis-reading as a type of skill-testing question as to whether others than pick up on these errors, you are raising spitballing to a whole new level.
Steve (response to #84): You claim: “There was no typo in the original report. The context clearly indicated that you had mis-read the original report, not that you made a typo in your comment.”
Are you trying to be serious? I know exactly what I thought when I was writing the comment — you don’t. I have always recognised that that graph was a schematic of “global” temperature — you have absolutely no way of knowing what I believed. The point I was making was that the graph was a SCHEMATIC, which was why I emphasing the word “schematic” — I was not making any point about whether it was “local” or “global”. If this is the level of “evidence” you use in the rest of your work, then I am very glad I am not wasting my time going through it all.
For the record, I have manually assigned two trolling posts by Hunter to spam as I said I would. Previously only Spam Karma had done this classification.
A curiosity: I googled Hansen Schlesinger and the sixth item on the google was this thread. If Hunter keeps spamming this thread, maybe we’ll get this thread to the top of the Hansen Schlesinger google.
Steve,
Since my last post (now # 86) was in response to one of Hunters that you deleted feel free to delete mine too. By the way, I fully support your policy in respect to Hunter.
John Hunter remarked:
“If this is the level of “evidence” you use in the rest of your work, then I am very glad I am not wasting my time going through it all.”
1. I’ve never seen any evidence you’ve gone through ANY of his work. If you had you might not have spent all this time on external trivialities.
2. Given that you disagree with Steve on many points, I’d think that if you really felt he did poor work, you’d be encouraged to dig into it to find the many flaws available.
This is my first, and last, time reading through this thread. I have worked closely with Steve over the past couple of years. When Steve first contacted me in 2003 I knew nothing about him: his age, his career, his financial status, his current employment, his family, his politics, or anything else. None of that was of any concern to me: what mattered was the substance of his work, and this speaks for itself. It has always been the basis of our collaboration. I was, and remain, deeply impressed by his technical depth, his personal integrity and his unfailingly congenial disposition, even in the face of constant provocation from people of small character. Years from now people will be studying Steve’s work and admiring his contributions to science; the sorts of obsessive personal attacks printed above will be seen for the worthless distraction it is.
Steve: Thanks. Attacks which lack substance don’t really bother me. They say more about the person making them. Mann sent a ridiculous email to Natuurwetenschap & Techniek, distributing ridiculous accusations that Ross and I were in the pay of ExxonMobil in an effort to block publication of an article about us and made slanderous accusations of being “dishonest”. He had done so successfully with New Scientist and tried unsuccessfully with GRL.
Dave Dardinger (#58):
You said: "Given that you disagree with Steve on many points, I’d think that if you really felt he did poor work, you’d be encouraged to dig into it to find the many flaws available.
I don’t necessarily disagree with much of what Steve says (I don’t have a view about a lot of it). I do disagree with some of those things, and I have pointed out some of the most obvious. However I do not "dig into" everything everyone has ever said on the climate issue — some have been over-emphasised by spin, some are just not that important and some are just plain wrong. I think this site contains examples of all these categories. However, I don’t feel "encouraged to dig into" most of these issues — there are other things to do. But I do sometimes "dig into" possible and plausible motivations.
Steve: The last comment that Hunter made disagreeing with something that I said was in how I characterized IPCC 1990. The Mannian view of the Medieval Warm Period is that it was local to Europe. The WSJ showed the IPCC 1990 graphic with a MWP as evidence of a pre-Mannian view. Hunter contested this, claiming that the IPCC 1990 graphic showed “local” temperature. I went back and checked the original caption, which said “global”. Hunter now says that his “local” was a typo for “global” and that no one can contest that it was a “typo” because no one knows what he was thinking. Since then, I am unaware of anything other than spitballs or searches into “motivation” from our resident troll.
Hunter, you must be getting tired and sloppy. You just admitted to being nothing more than a troll on this site.
“However, I don’t feel “encouraged to dig into” most of these issues “¢’¬? there are other things to do. But I do sometimes “dig into” possible and plausible motivations.”
If you have other, supposedly more productive, things to do then why do you spend so much time trolling here? You are doing exactly what the AGW “warmers” are accused of doing, trying to discredit the person because you can’t discredit the science.
The wonderful thing about good science is that it stands or falls on it’s own merits. The motivations of the author are completely irrelevant. A real scientist would know this.
Michael Ballantine (#92): You say "The wonderful thing about good science is that it stands or falls on it’s own merits. The motivations of the author are completely irrelevant."
But Steve McIntyre refuses to do any "good science" — he only audits — he will not produce his own paleoclimate reconstruction. The fact that he won’t just begs the question — what is his motivation? I don’t think this question is "irrelevant" — and even if it was "irrelevant", I still find it interesting.
I said above that I would mark non-scientific trolling by Hunter as spam. I marked two more Hunter posts as spam and grudgingly let one through.
Michael (#91): You say “The wonderful thing about good science is that it stands or falls on it’s own merits. The motivations of the author are completely irrelevant. A real scientist would know this.”
Then why, pray, is Steve wasting so much time checking the papers of “the hockey team” — why doesn’t he just ask the authors to do it themselves?
Hunter really is like a poker site. He keeps posting the same thing – 4 times now. It’s not that there’s anything in his post that I marked as spam that’s some big expose. It’s just that I said that I wasn’t going to accept more trolling; he’d more than had his say and I’m sticking to it. There seemed to be a consensus that we’d had enough from our resident troll.
Neil Collins, of the Daily Telegraph (8/1/05), has an article on a report of the House of Lords select committee on economic affairs. This committee has issued a report “The Economics of Climate Change”. This report is an attack on the Kyoto accord through its weakest link, the underlying science. There are remarks such as “We have some doubt about the objectivity of the IPCC process, with some of its emission scenarios and summary documentation apparently influenced by political considerations.”
Steve, may I seek you premission to be allowed to answer Michael Ballantine (#96)?
Michael makes my point exactly – it DOES matter WHO does the checking — and it does, to a certain extent, matter WHO does the science. Most scientific papers are not like mathematical proofs — they are not just a set of logical steps that we can check just by reading the paper — most papers contain much that we have to take on trust (e.g. the details given about how an experiment was performed — most people have neither the resources nor the time to go away and replicate EVERYTHING we read in a paper) — so, basically, we need to be in a position that we can trust the author. And, at the other extreme, when it comes to auditing and replication, we have to put ourselves in the contrary position where we DO NOT trust the author. So — it DOES MATTER who the author is. Thank you, Michael, for helping to make that clear.
(snip)
Steve: Even audits tend to spot-check. If you find some discrepancies, you flag the file and examine it in detail. Once some errors had been found in Mann’s description of what he’d done, why should anyone have accepted his word for the rest of it?
Re #97 Steve McIntyre said "Once some errors had been found in Mann’s description of what he’d done, why should anyone have accepted his word for the rest of it?" Does the same apply to you Steve?
Steve: I have never expected people to accept my word for anything. I’ve always assumed that they wouldn’t. That’s why I’ve tried to be meticulous in archiving code, recognizing that it’s almost impossible to verbally describe all steps in an algorithm. Obviously I ‘ve emphasized the importance of archiving data and methods so that results can be replicated. But having said that, I can’t think of an specific statement in our publications that has been shown to be incorrect. Our emulation of Mann’s methodology in MM03 did not implement a then undisclosed stepwise principal components procedure, the parameters of which were partly disclosed in the Corrigendum SI and which are still partly outstanding. We noted the lack of explanation in MBH98 and our inability to obtain clarification on this in MM03. In fact, the stepwise issue was really irrelevant, as the real PC problem in MBH98 was elsewhere and quickly discovered once we saw the PC source code inadvertently left at Mann’s FTP site. however, the emulation defect at that time did not affect any of the statements about MBH98 itself as discussed in MM03 Scorecard.
Lots of people have been working busily to disprove MM05 findings and there is much huffing and puffing at realcliamte and by Wahl and Ammann. However, these people NEVER quote us and always set up different things which they purport to disprove. Look at the GRL abstract. No one is disputing the bias in the MBH PC methodology. No one has come forward to dispute the massive MBH98 cross-validation R2 failure. No one has come forward to say that they can get a hockeystick using MBH98 methods without the bristlecones. No one argues that MBH98 realy did report R2 statistics and we just missed them. What they say is: an MBH98 reconstruction without bristlecones (which they call the MM05 reconstruction) fails the RE test. So what – we already said that. They say that they can get a hockeystick using 5 PCs – so what, it’s just a backdoor method of getting the bristlecones in. If we weren’t right on these big issues, we wouldn’t still be standing upright.
What errors has Steve made, Peter? And who’d asking anyone to take Steve’s findings on faith in the first place? The plea of Steve’s supporters here is quite the opposite. We urge anyone with the ability to examine his findings carefully and report on them.
Deflection, manipulation and wild extrapolation. Wow! Did anyone else draw the same conclusions from my #96 comment as Hunter did in #97? I thought I only said that an author cannot check their own work. How did that become a matter of trust in who is doing the science or the checking.
The work must stand on it’s own, regardless of who did what. If the work needs the backing of an authority figure then it is opinion, not science.
If you can stick it on some discs and hand it to several independant teams, each containing expertise in the required fields, and they can replicate the work then it is science. Please note that expertise means the ability to do the required work. It does not imply anything at all about the formal schooling of the people doing the work.
I do not implicitly “trust” the word of anyone on either side of the debate. I look at what is presented, reconcile it with my own observations and and draw my own conclusions. So far, the AGW crowd is a sad joke and getting worse every day.
Nope, I knew exactally what you meant … I got dizzy from reading #97.
Re #100,101
What Hunter means is “the only people qualified to audit his work are people who agree with his conclusions and not nasty mathematically able skeptical Canadians”
Re #99. Dave, I never mentioned errors, you did. I was just establishing that what Steve says appies to Michael M. & Co applies to him too – Steve has established this. Fair enough. I actually doubt Steve has made serious errors, I doubt Michael M. & co. have either. Yes, I know I’m wrong, just what I think.
Heh, this guy North of C&N is not such a bad egg.
Steve: Gerry, we appreciate such distinguished company. I thought that your book with Crowley was really interesting and hope that other people noticed the following comment from my post (notwithstanding the fact that I’m cross about Crowley’s comments):
You couldn’t make it up…
Re 103
If we’re being pedantic, I never said you claimed Steve made errors. I merely asked you what errors he’s made. Since you say none, that’s settled. But Steve has definitely shown errors Mann has made. Since you’ve said you don’t have the science ability to test that statement, I can’t see that your opinions on the matter have any significance whatsoever.
(On topic)
The graph makes the range of centenial variation look more like 2.0 degrees. I don’t agree with the +/- 0.5 in the original article. But it’s just more truth shading…