Climate Audit

Alan S. Blue

snip – please don’t use this thread to wade into issues argued at length and in more detail on other threads. sorry bout that.

Charlie Iliff

Chief Justice Rehnquist used to give a speech at the Fourth Circuit Judicial Conference citing Gray’s little poem. He identified Supreme Court opinions which had some interesting issues, but not immediate newsworthiness. I hope there are similar flowers blooming in the climate science desert that will someday lead to better understanding of weather and climate, without immediate attacks on those who may have watered the flowers.

anonymous

“Our study reproduces the well known cooling of the Antarctic interior which took place during the 1970s through 1990s (and is believed to be, as confirmed by our study, due to stratospheric ozone depletion which was greatest over that particular time interval).”

How embarrassing.

Really, really, embarrassing. It’s worse than Gavin being found out as the Mystery Man.

anonymous

maybe i should have continued reading…. ok not so embarrassing

Jared

“Men are apt to mistake the strength of their feeling for the strength of their argument. The heated mind resents the chill touch and relentless scrutiny of logic.”
William E. Gladstone

John Bennett

I am appalled by the degree of ad-hominem attack in Mann’s comment. It borders on being libelous, and does not advance his position one bit. It almost makes me believe that he would welcome legal action, in that it would provide another forum for publicly airing his views.

I rarely post comments on this site, but I read it assiduously, along with numerous other climate-related blogs. The postings over the last few days have left me incredulous at the responses that so-called professional scientists have made to reasonable criticism. And while I sit here chuckling and rolling my eyes at the latest shenanigans of Mann, Schmidt, et. al., I’m also left with a very bad taste in my mouth. If this weren’t such a serious subject, it would be comical.

Steve McIntyre and Climate Audit do a wonderful job of being both educational and (perhaps inadvertently) entertaining, and I look forward to reading the posts every day. But the amount of work and fortitude involved in keeping this up must be incredible. I invite everyone to join me in clicking the “Make a donation” link at the top left and adding a bit to the CA tip jar.

fred

This is a classic of its kind, a gem, quite lovely, and thank you for publishing it. If it smells like a cult, walks like a cult, and barks like a cult, it probably is one.

Tom C

Mann appears to really dislike Canadians.

Pete

As many others have noted, the first thing that popped into my head (as someone who works in the mainstream media) was the word: libel.

It is staggering that this person (Mann) should feel so bullish as to publish what is – in essence – a rant studded with ad hominem attacks which are coated in unsubstiantiated smear.

It is indicative of someone who has been indulged for so long by the powerful that they think they are immune to the normal restrictions which apply to all of us who go in to print simply because they now firmly believe they are ‘doing the Lord’s work.’

I come at this whole issue from what could be termed the Left, I have no time for the greed and chicanery of the fossil fuel industry and therefore I am concerned when someone is painted as a ‘shill’ for unscrupulous energy companies.

Lawrence Solomon – as his rebuttal and a quick Google search of the organistion he belongs to would testify – is most certainly not a ‘shill.’

How many more people have to be tainted in this way before one of them takes the matter through the courts?

Keep up the good work Steve, you are restoring the reputation of scientific inquiry and scepticism – and given the appalling attacks of recent months and that laughable report carried uncritically by the BBC among others – it won’t be long before the mainstream media cotton on to something they seem to have missed all along: a darn good story.

There certainly is one here – and I don’t doubt that many interested parties are following this waiting for the optimum moment to take it to the top of the news agenda.

I don’t know what form that will take, but one thing is certain: Mr Mann and his fellow travellers are not going to emerge it from it well.

Steve McIntyre

Apart from regular provisions at RC, Mann connoisseurs may enjoy these two other flowers by the Maestro here or as Referee # 2 here.

• Jean
  Posted Feb 7, 2009 at 4:03 PM | Permalink

  Re: Steve McIntyre (#22),

  “In our evaluation, we discarded the inappropriate tone of reviewer #2 and his/her scientifically irrelevant points”

  Steve: We discussed the Burger Cubasch paper long ago. Today we’re talking about the sweetness of flowers.

Pete

Bishop Hill,

I thought exactly the same thing, but if that was the case then surely he must have run his eye over it before it went into print. He is a scientist, so maybe the laws on libel are not as clear to him or as pressing and intimidatory as they are to those of us who work within its confines on a daily basis. I would be sacked from my job if I allowed an article like that into the public domain under the masthead of our company without rigorous scrutiny of the ‘facts’ Mann mentions here. Let us not forget, the person who wrote the offending article is not usually the one put through the mangle by m’learned friends, but rather the organisation which published it – as our dear libel lawyers seek out who has the most money to pay the biggest sum in terms of damages.

This could get interesting.

Pete

Steve McIntyre

Mann’s hissy fit has been picked up by the Spectator here.

bender

Lies?! By Solomon in the NP?
Is this not libel?
The truth, again, is that there have been NO independendent reconstructions of the hockey stick. There is no consensus that the CWP is warmer than the MWP or that the rate of warming has been faster. To suggest otherwise would be a lie.

Steve McIntyre

Lots of posters talk tough about libel, but the costs of such litigation are considerable. So it’s the sort of thing that only the very rich can practically pursue. To my knowledge, Lawrence Solomon does not fall into that category and I doubt that he’d bother. A more salient issue would be whether there is any breach of any applicable code of conduct.

Jack Wedel

My concern is that if Mann’s defamation/libel of Solomon goes unchallenged in a court of law, you will find thousands of AGW accolytes running around saying, “There, it’s got to be true – there is no challenge to Mann’s statements.”

Steve, you say legal action is costly. How costly? Alternately, can we learn what his university’s code of professional conduct might be?

Alan Wilkinson

Steve, I think your date re Gavin is the wrong year:
On Feb 2, 2008, while realclimate coauthor Gavin Schmidt …

You might want to correct your post.

kim

Man spat the cactus out too late
Its bitterness persists in hate.
=================================

Alan Wilkinson

Ridicule is much more cost effective than a libel suit, and generally much more pleasurable.

Mann has now presented himself as such an easy target that I am sure revenge will be enjoyed cold for many years to come – despite decadal warming phases.

kim

PaddikJ, frankly, I’m completely baffled by the behaviour. I’ve spent a lot of time pondering the question, and I don’t know the answer. I think the most likely explanation is that they are ‘true believers’ and justify their behaviour by their faith. Pitiable, or not? Your choice.
=============================================

John A

More fun at Amazon.com where Michael Mann’s book: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dire-Predictions-Understanding-Global-Warming/dp/0756639956/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1234048684&sr=1-1Dire Predictions: Understanding Global Warming has a certain David Appel as the first reviewer.

Appel gushes:

I love the concept behind this book: an “illustrated” guide instead of another long text of prose about global warming. It has tons of charts and graphs and colorful pictures, so you learn the field in a new way — less abstractly, more intuitively. Slightly below a Scientific American-level. This book would be great for someone who wants to understand climate change, but doesn’t have the background (or patience) to read a 300 page book on it. Plus it would be great for kids 7th grade and up.

“Slightly below Scientific American-level”. That’s not saying very much is it? After all, it was you who wrote the embarassingly bad biography of Michael Mann in 2005 in Scientific American that had lots of readers reaching for the Mylanta(TM)

“Great for kids 7th grade and up”? So we aren’t talking in-depth statistical analysis then. Not that Mann is capable of such a level as he’s not a statistician and makes so many mistakes in analysis that it keeps one Canadian in bemused semi-retirement tracking them all.

I’ve read hundreds of books and articles and papers on climate change, and yet I still learn things from nearly every page in the book, no matter where in it I start.

Can’t type any more…stomach churning

KlausB

Dear Steve,

when you do start with lyrics, I feel free to add some more

“I’m the tomb of one shipwrecked,
but sail thou,
even while we are perished,
the other ships sailed on,
across the sea”

from Ulysses, somewhere,

Was remembered by and did find it again there,
in a novel from Douglas Reeman (Alexander Kent)
‘Rendevouz – South Atlantic’

Robert in Calgary

Oops! Sorry for the double.

Bill Illis

A professional scientist would admit his mistakes, fix them and then try to never repeat them again.

I doubt that recruiting dozens of other scientists to just keep repeating those mistakes over and over again, hurting their reputations just as much in the process and then firing off vitriolic commentaries to national newspapers falls within that definition.

Jack

Jonathan Shafer:

“Frankly, Steve has been way more respectful than any of these other climate scientists.”

You’re kidding, right? “The Team” and all that? And yet again, more fingerpointing. Again, at some point SOMEONE has to act the grown-up.

“But instead of anyone acknowledging this fact, or publicly calling out any of their bretheren, it’s always about how Steve is behaving.”

So you’re stooping once again to the “they’re not playing fair so why should I?” tactic. Whatever. If you’d read my comments, you’d see that I am, in fact, in favor of *science* rather than any particular “side.” How on earth do you know that I have, in fact, NOT taken any of my “bretheren” to task? You have no idea, in fact.

“People come to Climate Audit for a number of different reasons, but primarily, because they know they can comment without censorship and without constantly being attacked, unlike say Real Climate or Open Mind.”

I beg to differ. Those of you who believe that climate scientists are evil incarnate feel quite welcome to comment here. Those of us who have spent our careers studying this stuff and who feel the concerns related to climate change are legit do not feel *quite* as welcome here on this blog. Get real. Do the hairs on your neck not go up when I say I think that climate change is real and is caused by human activity? You are not attacked here because you’re with your “bretheren.”

“I won’t hold my breath looking for your public pronouncements against Mann, Schmidt, et al, decrying their public displays as well.”

Personally, I am not real concerned about what you do with your breath.
I do think that Dr. Mann, Dr. Schmidt, et al., have made enormous advances in climate science. I also think that they are human and perhaps have lost some perspective when badgered with sometimes inane, sometimes less inane arguments presented here at this blog. (“Badgering” is the key word here). I think that Steve McIntyre has some scientifically valid points. I do not think any of these points negate the advances in climate change research over the last many decades, nor do they “prove” that climate change is false. I do think that the inquiry of Steve McIntyre could marginally improve some aspects of climate change research. I also think that his presentation of ideas in such an “in your face” way has eliminated any chance of collaboration.

• Bob Koss
  Posted Feb 7, 2009 at 6:35 PM | Permalink

  Re: Jack (#58),

  I do think that Dr. Mann, Dr. Schmidt, et al., have made enormous advances in climate science.

  Could you enlighten me by mentioning a couple of the “enormous advances” you think they have made?

• Jonathan Schafer
  Posted Feb 7, 2009 at 7:28 PM | Permalink

  Re: Jack (#58),

  You’re kidding, right? “The Team” and all that? And yet again, more fingerpointing. Again, at some point SOMEONE has to act the grown-up.

  Apart from the fact that the “team” analogy is correct, You all seem mighty thin-skinned and strangely lacking in any sense of humor whatsoever. But all that aside, are you seriously going to compare calling someone a member of “team” to the statements made by other climate scientists against Steve? That’s an appalling equivocation.

  “But instead of anyone acknowledging this fact, or publicly calling out any of their bretheren, it’s always about how Steve is behaving.”

  So you’re stooping once again to the “they’re not playing fair so why should I?” tactic. Whatever. If you’d read my comments, you’d see that I am, in fact, in favor of *science* rather than any particular “side.” How on earth do you know that I have, in fact, NOT taken any of my “bretheren” to task? You have no idea, in fact.

  I’m not stooping to anything. I’m simply objecting to another post putting the onus on Steve to always maintain the respect, despite what others do. Steve is a far sight more respectful than they are. Is he sometimes snarky? You bet. But if you read this site consistently, you’ll always see him post comments about not imputing motives, not calling out other scientists, and not taking a result a bridge too far. That’s far more than you’ll get out of Mann or Schmidt.

  As to what actions “you” might have taken, while I can’t “prove” anything, I think I like my odds about whether I’m right or not.

  “People come to Climate Audit for a number of different reasons, but primarily, because they know they can comment without censorship and without constantly being attacked, unlike say Real Climate or Open Mind.”

  I beg to differ. Those of you who believe that climate scientists are evil incarnate feel quite welcome to comment here. Those of us who have spent our careers studying this stuff and who feel the concerns related to climate change are legit do not feel *quite* as welcome here on this blog. Get real. Do the hairs on your neck not go up when I say I think that climate change is real and is caused by human activity? You are not attacked here because you’re with your “bretheren.”

  Ha. That’s really funny. Evil incarnate? I suppose you might find one or two along the way, but no, that certainly would not apply to the vast majority of people here. I may think you are wrong, but I know that Steve does not censor things like that, unlike Real Climate, where the discussion is always one sided.

  “I won’t hold my breath looking for your public pronouncements against Mann, Schmidt, et al, decrying their public displays as well.”

  Personally, I am not real concerned about what you do with your breath.

  I didn’t ask you to be.

  I do think that Dr. Mann, Dr. Schmidt, et al., have made enormous advances in climate science. I also think that they are human and perhaps have lost some perspective when badgered with sometimes inane, sometimes less inane arguments presented here at this blog. (“Badgering” is the key word here). I think that Steve McIntyre has some scientifically valid points. I do not think any of these points negate the advances in climate change research over the last many decades, nor do they “prove” that climate change is false. I do think that the inquiry of Steve McIntyre could marginally improve some aspects of climate change research. I also think that his presentation of ideas in such an “in your face” way has eliminated any chance of collaboration.

  I guess I didn’t realize asking for data and source code to be archived amounted to inane, badgering requests.

  Steve himself would agree with your statement that any of his discoveries prove anything, other than what he says they prove. He has repeatedly said so.

  As to collaboration, this has been going on for years. No one had any intention of collaborating with Steve, whether he posts in the most respectful way possible or not. After all, why should they provide him the data when he’s just out to find something wrong with it.

• KlausB
  Posted Feb 7, 2009 at 7:34 PM | Permalink

  Re: Jack (#58),

  Dear Jack,
  [sarcasm]
  Somehow , I’ve the bad feeling, we’re living on different planets.
  [/sarcasm]

  When your reply to somebody starts with “are you frickin’ SERIOUS????? Who are you?”
  Then, I feel free to ask: “Who are you? Please introduce yourself first.”
  “Help for complete amateurs can’t”. Can’t what, please?

  When I was young, everybody in the scientific field was always eager to explain his work
  and was open to all questions, even the silly ones. On line with the phrase:
  “There are no silly questions, there are only silly answers”

  What shall I tell to my kids? “Some few professions of the scientific community
  do nowadays express similar attitudes as the ‘Holy Inquisition’ against Gallilei?

  Science will always prevail, but not your view of science.

  KlausB

  By the way, if you are so convinced that you are are on the right side,
  why is your writing so agressive?

  When you are right, you don’t need that.
  When you are wrong, it is by far not enough to cover your clause.

• MJW
  Posted Feb 7, 2009 at 7:46 PM | Permalink

  Re: Jack (#58),

  So you’re stooping once again to the “they’re not playing fair so why should I?” tactic. Whatever.

  I think it’s more along the lines of “shouldn’t you put your own house in order first before you criticize others’?”

  If you’d read my comments, you’d see that I am, in fact, in favor of *science* rather than any particular “side.” How on earth do you know that I have, in fact, NOT taken any of my “bretheren” to task? You have no idea, in fact.

  Have you taken your brethren to task? If you have, perhaps a link to those criticisms would provide some perspective. If you haven’t, shame on you for implying you have.

• MrPete
  Posted Feb 7, 2009 at 8:01 PM | Permalink

  Re: Jack (#58),

  At some point, doesn’t SOMEBODY need to play the grown up and concentrate on the science? Whatever the reason, whatever the cause, stooping to the level of thumbing noses and finger pointing is childish. At some point, someone has to step up.

  Jack, you’re getting a strong reaction here not because people want to censor you, but because you really don’t get it.

  Please step away from your own anger and frustration, and try to read dispassionately what Steve posted above. Does his post actually “thumb noses” or “finger point?” Read through the rest of what he has written over the last year or two. How many times does he address scientists respectfully? How often does he disrespect them?

  Now read what Mann wrote. Then take an honest look at the screeds you’ll find all over the Internet. See how the “team” refers to Steve. How often is Steve treated respectfully by them? How often do they disrespect him?

  You will find a night and day difference. For most of “the team” you will find it well nigh impossible for them to speak or write his name at all, and if mentioned, it is normally, almost exclusively, with disdain or worse. Steve hardly ever lapses into such language toward anyone.

  Steve has repeatedly offered the right of direct guest authorship on CA (with their own login password) to any scientist who has something to say to the CA audience. That includes “the team.” On the other hand, Real Climate won’t even allow commentary on their postings from many qualified scientists, let alone authorship of headline articles.

  Mann’s Meltdown is just the tip of the iceberg. There’s a consistent problem here, and it is beginning to become highly visible.

  [I still relate this to the dumbfounding perspectives that otherwise-reasonable people had about Y2K. Once they made up their minds, all the facts in the world would not sway their perspective. Too embarrassing. Likewise… many of us here sense that less is known than many would have us believe. We just want the truth. But too many True Believer scientists, activists and politicians are trying to tell us The Science Is Settled. And it’s easy to find sources that show we’re not just imagining things.]

  Jack, we want solid science, not a particular answer. I’d hope you too could promote such a perspective.

  Edit: BTW, as others have noted, “hockey team”, “the team” etc is their self-designation. If they want to be called by such a term, why should you complain?

• jryan
  Posted Feb 9, 2009 at 12:11 PM | Permalink

  Re: Jack (#59),

  You do realize, Jack, that that statement is also finger pointing, don’t you?

  I’m beginning to question your credentials in “this stuff”.

Mr. Kaos

Jack: Grow up

We are about to embark on massive change to the energy systems across the western world. This is change that will have enormous damaging effects on our economies, because we will attempt to dismantle highly efficient forms of energy (e.g. oil, coal & gas) and replace then highly inefficient forms (e.g. wind & solar). And we are doing this largely because of the work & claims produced by Mann & co.

And somehow, you believe we should not question this vigorously. Who made you and your lot the purveyors of truth & wisdom? You have some hide to scold Steve and others who support what he is doing.

I am continually amazed at the blind arrogance of some people that play with numbers & formulas and as a consequence think they understand how everything works. You have a PhD in climate science – big deal. LTCM had a team of Nobel Laureates & PhDs in math and thought they understood it all, until they lost everything and nearly bought the economic system to its knees. Same again now with the ‘sophisticated’ statistical & math models applied to mange risk – these people were smart, they knew what they were doing, it all was confidently under control.

So you think you have the climate nailed because of the application of certain statistical methods to some selected data, or because of the assumptions and guesses in GCMs?

What you, Mann & co don’t seem to not understand is the concept of uncertainty. You lot don’t seem to understand that mathematical & statistical models are not self-referential – they cannot tell you how well they are representing the phenomenon they are applied to. They cannot deal with unknown unknowns or the complex layers within uncertainty.

We have a weak hypothesis of ‘catastrophic AGW’ – that is all. Until someone can actually produce compelling evidence for this hypothesis, then the job that Steve and others are doing is a vital service to society.

theduke

Jack:

At some point, doesn’t SOMEBODY need to play the grown up and concentrate on the science? Whatever the reason, whatever the cause, stooping to the level of thumbing noses and finger pointing is childish. At some point, someone has to step up.

Every time Steve tries to concentrate on the science, in this case by writing cordially to Steig requesting that he send him a specific set of data, he meets first with delay, then refusal, and then scorn. In this most recent incident. the scorn was followed by a dirty trick perpetrated by Schmidt.

Jack

Mr Kaos:

“We are about to embark on massive change to the energy systems across the western world. This is change that will have enormous damaging effects on our economies, because we will attempt to dismantle highly efficient forms of energy (e.g. oil, coal & gas) and replace then highly inefficient forms (e.g. wind & solar). And we are doing this largely because of the work & claims produced by Mann & co.”

Hey look. I have total sympathy with this! This is an ugly problem. The trouble is that many of you have equated scientists with WANTING to dismantle our current energy systems. From my perspective, scientists are primarily interested in science. Period. The response to science is something completely separate. I never claimed any of this was easy. But the fact that it is hard doesn’t negate the science, as much as we would like it to.

“And somehow, you believe we should not question this vigorously. Who made you and your lot the purveyors of truth & wisdom? You have some hide to scold Steve and others who support what he is doing.” (and several other ridiculous accusations)

LOL! Seriously? Perhaps you would like to show me where anything I have written suggests that we should not question this vigorously, or where I think we have the climate nailed or where we do not understand the concept of uncertainty? Quotes, please? And yet you and your ilk would suggest that this blog is a friendly place to discuss climate as opposed to RC or others? Give me a break.

I hold out hope that there is a place for discussion somewhere. Not here.

eo

Re #7 and 13 Mann is just conforming to Benford’s Law of controversy. “Passion is inversely proportional to data and facts”

Alan Wilkinson

Jack: Do the hairs on your neck not go up when I say I think that climate change is real and is caused by human activity?

No. Of course climate change is real and of course human activity has an effect. That is why we are here. Trying to understand it quantitatively and qualitatively.

Now if you say you think the only cause of climate change is human activity or that the science is settled, then I would raise my eyebrows – but principally at your sanity rather than your science.

Jack

For Frank K:
From the vague questions you have posed, I assume that you are less interested in my answers and more interested to see whether I am truly “connected” with climate science research.

You asked me:
“So, Jack, I await your links to the differential equations…and also let us know which subroutines in the Model E source code actually solve the differential equations you come up with…”

Since I have not worked directly with Model E, and have never claimed to, I am not sure why you think I would know the names of the particular subroutines of a code that I have never worked with. HOWEVER…I am intrigued that you persist in asking about links to “differential equations.” I do wonder if you have ever worked with a GCM?

Because of the vague nature of your question, I will respond with equal “vagueness.” The equations solved in GCMs encompass those of conservation of momentum, energy and mass. Is there a particular question you have with respect to one of these equations? Do you want me to throw around names like Navier-Stokes?

W F Lenihan

If I recall correctly, Canadian libel law is similar to that in the very strict UK. I also recall that the prevailing party is entitled to recover litigation expenses and attorneys fees in Canada.

Solomon should sue Mann for libel in the Canadian courts. Mann’s malicious lies will not be well received by a Canadian judge or jury. I also believe that Canadian courts will have jurisdiction over Mann because the injuries and damage caused by the libel occurred in Canada.

I would be very costly for Mann to defend the defamation suit in a Canadian court. Solomon would receive both real and poetic justice there.

Mike Lorrey

I would suggest going through his university’s ethics board would be the best approach. Those of us who fought against victim-disarmament (i.e. gun-control) in the US over the past 20 years used the same approach against fraudulent science and its purveyors, even going so far as to get one ‘scientist’ with an agenda dismissed from his post for faking data and faking historical documents.
No need for a libel suit, a university ethics penalty is discrediting enough.

Jack

#84 KlausB:

Klaus – go easy on Jack. He’s probably a young’n. His use of the phrase “are your fricken’ SERIOUS” is right out of the playbook of my teenage kids :^)

Hopefully, he’ll learn a little bit about partial differential equations and mathematical physics from all of this…

Oh Frank, Frank, Frank.

🙂

If you only had a clue.

Jack

MJW:
“Have you taken your brethren to task? If you have, perhaps a link to those criticisms would provide some perspective. If you haven’t, shame on you for implying you have.”

How on earth do you think this helps anything? Do you SERIOUSLY think everything scientists do is linked somehow? Are are you just being an ass?

• MJW
  Posted Feb 7, 2009 at 7:57 PM | Permalink

  Re: Jack (#90),

  How on earth do you think this helps anything? Do you SERIOUSLY think everything scientists do is linked somehow?

  Well, Jack, I’m assuming that if you felt so strongly about the issue, you would have posted similar criticisms on websites such a RealClimate, directed at Gavin’s and Mann’s insulting comments.

  Are are you just being an ass?

  This from the guy who wants to raise the level of discussion.

• AJ Hill
  Posted Apr 14, 2009 at 7:06 AM | Permalink

  Re: Jack (#88),
  Jack, may I suggest that you’re wasting your time here. It’s taken me a while to recognize this blog for what it is, which constitutes some kind of credit I suppose; but after a while the clues become apparent: posts from someone with a website named “nanny_government_sucks”, another from somone gloating about his accomplishments in America’s lunatic gun culture, and – as you’ve experienced with Frank – the kind of intellectual posing that makes the Scientific American discussion forum such a burlesque.
  I gather that Mr. McIntyre isn’t a scientist – at least, not a qualified climate scientist, who could actually obtain employment in the field or publish in a refereed journal on the subject. Instead, he prowls around the outskirts of reputable science, trying to pick up scraps of bad data, stray procedural errors, minor contradictions – anything that he can use to discredit the conclusions of AGW. Along the way he’s attracted a band of enthusiastic followers, most of whom seem to be right wing fanatics of one sort or another.
  Later in this thread I notice some posts by a fellow named Walt Bennett, who’s noticed the same thing: this isn’t an intellectually honest forum, but a thinly disguised effort by a bunch of politically motivated partisans to harass climate scientists and discredit their work (without actually entering the arena of scientific dispute or doing any genuine original research themselves!) No wonder scientists often refuse to debate or correspond with them. I wouldn’t.
  It would be one thing, if McIntyre & Co. were genuinely interested in improving the quality of climate research; in that case their nit-picking might serve a useful role. Their obvious agenda makes that unlikely. I think you’re wasting your time here. I certainly don’t intend to waste any more of mine.

  • Navy Bob
    Posted Apr 14, 2009 at 7:19 AM | Permalink

    Re: AJ Hill (#267),
    An archetypal ad hom. Right out of the (self-snipped) Party playbook.

    Steve: please do not descend into a food fight.

Jack

Klaus:
“By the way, if you are so convinced that you are are on the right side,
why is your writing so agressive?”

Why do you suspect I think I am on the right side? And what is it that you interpret as aggressive? Disagreement? Hmmm. Methinks I smell a skunk.

lucia

If Jack wants to focus on the science, there are people commenting on purely scientific threads. He has the option of posting there, but does not.

As for SteveM posting several articles on behavior in a time Jack considers too short: it’s not Steve’s fault that the several episodes of odd behavior happened in such a short time.

Is there a rule that one can’t comment on Mann’s vitriolic, ad hominem filled rant simply because it comes right on the heals of Gavin’s odd decision to claim he found the problems with Harry “independently” from Steve, Steigs unfounded accusations that people accused him of fraud, and Bader’s mysterious letter clarifying “mis-impressions” about the sudden public appearance of data that Santer refused to provide?

No. There is no such rule in science, politics, rhetoric, or, well, anything.

Are people only allowed to notice and comment the bad behavior if it’s rare and infrequent? Or spaced out in time? Are one only permitted to notice it the first time it happens, and afterwards give free passes? What could possibly justify such a bizarre rule?

No last name Jack seem to suggest the rule is justified because his colleagues who, evidently thought we should ignore Mann’s behavior from day one, think noticing the bad behavior when it recurrs is… what?

It’s not as if Steve is rehashing complaints about a single episode of behavior that happened long ago and then stopped. The Mann rant just happened. If anyone– including Jack– would like less frequent discussions of Mann’s rants, they should contact Mann and suggest he restrain himself. Explain to him that his behavior is raising eyebrows and fanning flames of skepticism. Mann can elect to stop, or not. But Jack asking people to not notice Mann’s irrational rants is like asking rain to fall up. As long as Mann does these things, people are going to notice.

• Alan Wilkinson
  Posted Feb 7, 2009 at 8:22 PM | Permalink

  Re: lucia (#108),

  Great comment, Lucia. Of course Jack has a point that there is a sceptical bias here as the reaction he has generated well shows. But that is the nature of open debate – people take sides and show both their partisanship and their character in the process, not always to their credit.

  The bottom line for me is: was it useful to know about Mann’s latest outburst? And I have to answer: yes, it shows the character of a pivotal player in the great controversy of AGW.

Bob Koss

Jack,

You say.

You’re kidding, right? “The Team” and all that? And yet again, more fingerpointing. Again, at some point SOMEONE has to act the grown-up.

The scare quotes indicate you find something objectionable to use of the phase “The Team”.

It seems Mann and Schmidt feel it is appropriate. That’s what they started calling themselves. RC post in January 2005. Just search for part of the small snippet below.

… it is what is perhaps more aptly termed the “Hockey Team” …

Perhaps your objection is to only using team without preceding it with hockey?

Paul Penrose

Jack,
You must be kidding: Model E is correct unless we can prove it is in error? That is completely backwards from the way science and software engineering works. Software must be verified and validated before one can even begin to assert it’s correctness. All of the climate models I have seen are not only not verified, they are not even verifiable as currently written. This does not necessarily make them “wrong”, in the sense that you meant, but it does put them in the “unknown” category. We should not be making public policy decisions based on their output, but that’s exactly what Mann, Gore, and their supporters assert.

My perspective comes from being a software engineer for over 25 years. I have worked for the likes of IBM, Medtronic, and Lockheed-Martin. I have used my real name, so if you wish you can do a quick search on the US patent website where you will find a software patent where I am named as one of four inventors (and Medtronic is the owner). So please, no “who are you”, questions.

jim edwards

A libel lawsuit by Dr. Solomon would be very interesting. Words like “disingenuous”, “attack”, and “disinformation” aren’t highly defamatory, but the word “lies” is. Mann would either have to pay a settlement, or give testimony about his work under oath to try to establish that Solomon really is mischaracterizing Mann’s work [b/c the truth of Mann’s charge would be a defense…]. What a great PR event for Mann in either case [Not !].

Even if Solomon were held to be the equivalent of a public figure under US law, Mann would be liable for his libel if he demonstrated a reckless disregard for the truth. Given that Mann is not a newspaper reporter, but a principal privy to all of the specifics, Mann would likely have to prove that Solomon was substantially incorrect in his accounting of the facts in order to have a defense.

Even a verdict of $1 from a Canadian jury would be news-worthy.

There’s got to be somebody willing to prosecute this case pro bono.

MrPete

All: yes, please let’s avoid piling on. Only speak up if you have something to add to the conversation… otherwise it’ll probably be snipped by tomorrow morning…

bender

Interesting to contrast Mann’s appeal to authority/trust/belief:

Gee, who should we trust here? The most dishonest industry advocate in the climate change debate, or the world’s most prestigious peer-reviewed scientific journal. You be the judge.

vs. McIntyre’s suggestion to actually read the NAS report:

For interested readers, I compiled relevant quotes here and both reports, the testimony of both Wegman and North, and Wegman’s answers to supplementary questions are linked from this site.

For Jack: I’m not a “follower” of anyone. I survey the facts.

Craig Loehle

This business with Jack is pretty funny. He comes in to complain about the attitude of Steve and his minions (how much do we minions get paid, anyway?) and ends up being the rudest troll in quite a while. Makes you want Jon back.
Jack, here’s the thing, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. If I said I had a pill that will cure cancer, but won’t reveal what is in it (but the ingredients are robust) the FDA will make me pull it from the shelves. When big claims are made about the world warming up, and anyone asks to see the ingredients, the answer is almost always “no you can’t see it, not the data and not the code”. Public companies have to cough up their financials, politicians have to cough up their income statement, drug companies have to turn over their test results, heck even a peanut processing plant has to keep records of their salmonella testing, but Phil Jones does not have to make public which weather stations are in the network and GISS doesn’t have to reveal (with working code) how they “adjust” station data? Oh, please. As to your remark that only certain people are welcome at CA, not true. Look at Leif Svalgaard (sp?). Not only did he have quite his own opinions about the sun, he kept up his end of a debate here for months. I think he finally quit due to carpel tunnel. He didn’t lose his cool.

maksimovich

Finally, Mr Lawrence goes on to attack the journal ‘Nature.’ Gee, who should we trust here? The most dishonest industry advocate in the climate change debate, or the world’s most prestigious peer-reviewed scientific journal. You be the judge.

OK has the said Journal a prior record of errors and omissions Well use Makarieva, Gorshkov as examples.

Somewhat simplifying these models are built as follows. One takes a dataset formed by experimental data derived from measurements. Extensiveness of the dataset used is determined by the available computer power. Then one postulates some arbitrary correlation links between the measured variables. These correlation links form the mathematical structure of the model. The plausibility of the chosen numerical parameters of the postulated correlation links is tested on the basis of the established statistical criteria. After that, using the established correlation links, one makes a forecast. If the forecast is disproved by the additional or newly available data, then the number of parameters employed in the correlation links is increased until the coincidence between the forecast and the observations becomes satisfactory. For example, in one model the global carbon cycle was modelled by 1,500 non-linear integral-differential equations, which were used to make predictions about the future increase of atmospheric CO2 concentration. When analysed in detail, many such models appear to violate the energy conservation law and/or the second law of thermodynamics (see, e.g., Makarieva, Gorshkov, Li (2004) Ecological Modelling 176: 15-26 for an example of such a model which got published in Nature).

AM further elaborates 2008

Based on our own scientific expertise, we can illustrate the above points with specific examples of models that were judged to be most successful based on their agreement with the data and claimed derivability from a “universal” theory, yet shown to confront the fundamental laws of nature. As one can see, the problem transcends across the natural science as a whole. The biological model of organismal growth (West et al.,Nature 2001) misinterpreted the energy conservation equation and replaced it with the one conflicting with the energy conservation law. Despite that, the model showed perfect agreement with the data. After the error was identified (Makarieva et al., 2004) it took
the model’s authors four years to explicitly admit it (Moses et al., 2008) and re-formulate the model. The re-formulated model re-calibrated using the same data as the original (wrong) one showed equally good agreement with the data and got equally well published (Hou et al., 2008). Thus, irrespective of conflicting with the energy conservation law or not, the model agreed with the data, was widely cited and raised little concern in the reading audience. Another example is the recently criticized model of hurricanes as Carnot cycle (Emanuel, 2003), which was argued to be based on the concept equivalent
to perpetual motion machine of the second kind (Makarieva et al., 2008).

Interesting,let us move on to the way the Editors of Nature misquote authors we will use Mueller as an example.

Measurement of the lunar impact record for the past 3.5 b.y.
and implications for the Nemesis theory
Richard A. Muller page 633

The confusion about the stability of the Nemesis orbit was made worse by an editorial comment that appeared in the same issue of Nature as the articles by Hut, Hills, Torbett and Smoluchowski, and Clube and Napier. The comment was by Bailey (1984, p. 602), and it was titled Nemesis for Nemesis.” Bailey stated: “the Nemesis proposal is extended and shown, in fact, to be quite incapable of producing the strictly periodic sequence
for which is was originally designed.” This was a misreading of the original Nemesis paper (Davis et al., 1984), which explicitly pointed out that the period would not be constant but would have orbit to orbit variations of several million years.Bailey’s comment also characterized the paper by Hut (1984), as a “near retraction” of the Nemesis theory. Yet Hut (1984, personal commun.) considers his paper to be a vindication of the original Nemesis calculations, not a retraction. M. Bailey (1984, personal commun.) later said that he never wrote the words “near retraction,” but that they had been inserted by the editor at Nature. An informal and unscientific survey of astronomers who discredit the Nemesis orbit (taken by me, over the following decade) showed that none of them had read the Hut paper. This is not surprising; why bother to read a paper when, according to the accompanying comment, it amounts to a near retraction?

So much for peer review and editorial accumen

MrPete

Walt, read the report. It’s stronger than a request for better resolution. They said his work could not support “hottest in a thousand years” when that’s exactly what he claimed. That’s as close as a very deferential group could get to saying it was BS.

Nobody here is saying discrediting the hockey stick discredits AGW. The bigger question is: when BCP’s and related data are discredited, what do you have when they are completely removed from the picture. That is a significant discussion.

Richard Sharpe

Jack said:

You can bet I’ll never “shoot you a link or two” to any of my publications. I’m a quite a bit smarter than that. I’m just really pissed off that Steve has disappointed me so much. I’d hoped for more.

Did you really say that? It sounds to me like you would not like your papers to be reviewed by people.

That seems like an unscientific attitude.

Nicolas Nierenberg

As far as I can make out all Mr. McIntyre did was post up the comments of two other people. I’m not sure why this, in particular, raised Jack’s ire. I also feel that Jack would be a lot more credible with if he would use his real name. I want to make it clear that I don’t think real names are required to participate on blogs, but if he wants to represent himself as a part of the climate science community, then he should be willing to not hide behind a pseudonym.

As a direct response to Jack It is true that this site attracts a lot people who are skeptical about AGW, but Mr. McIntyre has made it clear that he has no particular opinion on that subject, and in fact would rely on the consensus view outside the areas he has looked into if he were making policy. From what I have read, in the areas he has looked into he has raised and published very interesting objections to the prior published research, and I think that this process is healthy. Personally I also find that part of this site entertaining.

• Jeff Alberts
  Posted Feb 8, 2009 at 3:31 PM | Permalink

  Re: Nicolas Nierenberg (#122),

  As far as I can make out all Mr. McIntyre did was post up the comments of two other people. I’m not sure why this, in particular, raised Jack’s ire.

  He came in angry. He was posting a lot of words in caps, lots of exclamation points and question marks all in a row. So he was just a short fuze. I guess that’s what happens when you have a PhD in “stuff”.

Richard M

I also think this may be a spooky kind of denial of service attack. Keep Steve busy so he won’t spend any time looking at Steig’s paper.

Gerry Morrow

I think Pete as our Mystery Man.

Steve McIntyre

#130. Walt, if you read what I’ve written on this, I’ve never suggested that the 1000 year paleo studies are relevant to policy studies. In this spirit, as an IPCC reviewer, I suggested that the entire paleo chapter be deleted if it wasn’t relevant to policy. However, people sometimes say to me – if the HS is wrong, then the situation is much worse than we think. My reaction is: well, then we’d better find out if it’s wrong and govern ourselves accordingly. And why would we thank people who obstructed of this determination? In this Harry thing, I observed that I did not know whether this particular error mattered. I noticed it right away as an outlier in the West Antarctic area where Steig’s results differed most from predecessor results that did not use it. Steig says that I should know somehow that this error doesn’t “matter”. Well, I don’t “know” that. As I’ve said, maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. Before I examined anything in this area, I urged Steig to make his code available, since he used a technique the properties of which are not well understood. After the Harry error surfaced, I re-iterated this request so that the effects could be independently assessed by third parties such as myself. In my opinion, that was the only prudent course of action. In the event, Steig got stubborn, started throwing slurs at me and others and the case has attracted a lot of publicity. He could have nipped much of this in the bud by simply making his code public, which would have kept people like me, Jeff Id, Roman M and others busy and appreciative of his cooperation. Instead, he took a highly confrontational attitude.

theduke

Solomon’s response to Mann’s gratuitous attack was highly professional.

J.Hansford.

Jon, post137…. What are you on about? There is no nose, no face and no spite.

McIntyre simply posted Manns own words and Solomons responses and leaves the interpretations to the readers….

Just reading Manns letter, is to wade through bile… Not good at all. He is not civil, nor fully truthful in his own defence of simple criticisms….. Surely you read it Jon? Can you not see and comprehend the inconsistencies in Manns letter? Just Manns misrepresentation of the NAS findings,for a start. Or the house of representatives findings with Dr Wegman as the commissioned expert….. Surely Jon you can see that there is valid argument to criticise Micheal Mann

Steve McIntyre

Again please do not pile on. Realize that piling on posts are likely to themselves become flowers that may well “blush unseen”.

Andy

Wow. Just wow. What a rambling, emotional rant by Mann. Why am I thinking of gorillas?

Lucy Skywalker

Steve,
having read, laughed, cried, and then found the thread given appropriate time out, I wandered over to Blog Rules and Road Map and was delightfully surprised (giveaway: never read it before!) to find it saying so much of what appeared here, headed up by Kenneth Fritsch’s wise comments.
You can’t force newcomers to go there first; but how about running a thread on “Scientific Method via Blog” or some such title, that everyone can join in? That way, the community here will not only produce a useful reference document, we will also actually watch ourselves in producing it, that we stay on target, and actually remember to refer folk there early on. Plenty of examples from recent events.

Just a thought.

• David James
  Posted Feb 8, 2009 at 2:49 PM | Permalink

  Re: Lucy Skywalker (#147),

  Lucy S., your idea:

  but how about running a thread on “Scientific Method via Blog” or some such title, that everyone can join in?

  is something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. It seems that scientific discussions on this blog get sidetracked more often than is desired. This is perfectly normal; any topic related to AGW is going to have the added cultural/human burdens that have to be filtered out to find the science of interest.

  However, I wonder if there is anything we can do differently to improve the product?

  So, for my first ever blog post, I’d like to second your idea and suggest a thread on what constitutes good science (or good blog science). But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I’m not sure what is ‘good’ science. Perhaps this is another one of those things that you know it when you see it?

  However, I do know what is beautiful science. Beautiful science is science where two people of differing viewpoints will agree with the results/analysis, because the science is clear, open, replicable, etc. By this definition, the science of AGW isn’t very attractive in my humble view. And that is sad since I think the idea that humans can affect the climate is plausible; with merit, and deserving of study (and I think Steve M. has said as such on this blog).

  Along the lines of your suggestion, I think it would be great to have a cheat sheet that would list acronyms for judging the good/bad characteristics of scientific write ups (including Steve’s).

  So, if someone made an appeal to authority, then the ATA count could be incremented by one. This would be in the bad category of characteristics.

  Likewise, if the scientist included a link to the data/code, then the IDC (included data and code) could be incremented by one in the good category.

  The list shouldn’t be snaky (like BS bingo) but rather a serious attempt to clean up the discussion with the aim of improving the science done on blogs.

  -David

  PS, thanks for the blog Steve.

Bob Mc

I think this thread has devolved into standard internet fare. The recent arrival of a few very vocal critics has resulted, IMO, in turning what is an informative website of the errors in the science of climatology into what I can best describe as the same as say, an RC-like site, only from the other side of the issue. I hope this does not occur.

I’m not suggesting a moderator as other sites have. I am suggesting that commenters should not feed trolls, and the site hosts should exercise the power of the SnipperTM to keep the discussion on track and remove the tit-for-tat anonymous bloviating.

I am guilty of what I classifiy as “low-level” piling on and snarky-ness. I resolve to return to the lurker balcony and merely learn.

Pierre Gosselin

I’m not sure who is moderating today, but I don’t consider people here are “piling on” and being “snarky”.
Read the letter – examine it. Please, is this how scientists who “don’t think correctly” are to be treated in the future? This kind of behaviour has to be promptly rebuffed. And many should pause to think about where emotionally-charged science could take us. I know in Germany and in Japan such emotionalism simply gets booted out of any professional circle. They don’t want anything to do with it. For them that’s for K-8 levels.

kim

Please trouble him not
In his lair, the Cave
Of the Ocean Bear.
=======================

Andrew Thomson

There are those on this thread who stipulate that posting comments such as these made by Mann are a distraction. I would counter that addressing such mindsets is fundamental to steering good science, particularly in the field of climatology.

My line of work has granted me the opportunity to work across multiple scientific disciplines and I have been fortunate enough to work with a host of researchers on a good array of R&D projects. I can state that egos and bias are not immune to most areas I’ve been involved with, but they are coupled with an understanding that the best means to counter challenges are through illustrating good scientific work and portraying a professional civility that shows the researcher understands critique is a cornerstone of the scientific process.

As I’ve looked to study the findings of climate science I think I’ve found abundantly clear two themes that by and large depict this field:

1. It is an emerging field filled with many complex parameters and there is an exceedingly large amount to learn.
2. There is no other field possessed with so many researchers that are so sure of themselves.

It seems very strange that such hubris grips those where point 1. is clearly the case. I’ve read many readings from proponents and detractors to the theory of AGW and I feel comfortable in stating that there is a real problem of scientific tribalism endemic in many researchers who have fallen on one side of this field of investigation. A fact tellingly obvious when they choose to label themselves with competitive monikers such as calling themselves “The team.” The science will be embraced by a level that is substandard until this issue is met head on. Hence I think it is critical to show such clear bias and how it obviously corrupts the science.

Jon

I think you’re all rather missing the point. In no way did I defend anything Mann said. In no way did I complain about legitimate criticisms of his (or anyone else’s) work. This coy BS about not endorsing Solomon’s views but simply posting them verbatim will be never be seen by a passerby and they will justifiably take away a certain perspective about what this site is about. [Steve: I posted Mann’s views verbatim, not Solomon’s.]

People seem to think I am complaining or attacking this blog- I’m not. I’m offering my perspective on how it can improve its image, but it appears that this advice in unwanted. Fair enough. But then I’m sure you can understand why people will group CA in with Booker, Solomon, WUWT, etc. The significance of this is probably lost on those who think that anthropogenic climate change is a hoax. I’m sure it’s not for the more rational commenters however, and those are who I am trying to reach.

• Jeff Alberts
  Posted Feb 8, 2009 at 3:33 PM | Permalink

  Re: Jon (#162),

  People seem to think I am complaining or attacking this blog- I’m not. I’m offering my perspective on how it can improve its image,

  It’s your opinion that it needs improving. Perhaps your opinion is wrong.

stan

Morgan (159),

You are correct. In the end, however, the real significance of the fate of Mann’s hockey stick is not what it tells about the credibility of Mann or his methods. The real significance is what it tells us about the credibility of the climate science community that embraced it without question.

Steve’s work on the hockey stick was how most non-scientists first learned that climate scientists don’t bother checking and replicating each other’s work. [Which makes their claims of authority (see Mann, Gavin, and Steig just in the last week) so frightening. They won’t let us check them and they won’t check each other.]

The significance of the unquestioning embrace of the hockey stick is reinforced now in the impact of Anthony Watts’ surface station project. While it might ultimately make a real difference in the temperature record, it has served an even more important purpose by revealing how cavalier the climate scientists are about quality control. Every lay person that I have told about the siting issues is shocked. They simply cannot believe that Hansen et al could make the kind of pronouncements of doom that they make without first bothering to check the quality of their instruments. The general public just assumes that the science would start with the basics.

The incentive to overreach in trying to break new ground will always be a part of science. Everyone wants to make a splash. One of the obligations that scientists owe to their field and the public is a commitment to check and replicate the claims of their fellow scientists. When they fail to do that as a community, the public suffers. And that is a big part of why credibility matters.

Manfred

when i assisted my girl friend a few years ago in writing her master thesis in sociology i had to read 42 sociology books – quite some work fora physicist.

i therefore regard responding to (stop) mann’s et altri’s behaviour as “social action”, because otherwise, without a reaction, the rest of the society has to deal with or to live with it.

Jon

Also, the creation of, commenting, and moderating threads like these really illustrate the disingenuous nature of claims that it’s too time consuming to “audit” the occasional whopper from WUWT or Roy Spencer…

Steve: This thread took negligible time to put together. At I’ve said on many occasions, I’m interested in mainstream science and have offered a platform here to several scientists should they wish to do an audit of the type that you propose. But they seem to be afraid of getting koodies.

lucia

Jon–
Of course if you didn’t read climate blogs, you would not have heard of this climate blog. People who don’t read climate blogs are pretty well unaware of all the climate blogs. People who don’t read knitting blogs haven’t heard of any specific knitting blogs. The same goes for football blogs, fashion blogs and blogs on a huge number of topics.

• henry
  Posted Feb 9, 2009 at 12:28 PM | Permalink

  Re: lucia (#174),

  Also, if you only visited OpenMind, RabbetRun, or RealClimate, you wouldn’t have gotten here from a direct link.

  All three do not link to CA, yet CA links to all three.

  All three have heavy moderation, CA’s is lighter.

  It appears that the only reason that people visit CA is because the three mentioned blogs have a visible hatred for this site, and people want to see what the fuss is all about.

  • JimB
    Posted Feb 9, 2009 at 12:55 PM | Permalink

    Re: henry (#209),

    Thus proving the old saying “Any press is GOOD press.”

    JimB

oakgeo

“Psssst, Gavin, there’s something about Mary.”

LOL. Here we do again…

Andy

A good auditor doesn’t use the same Excel spreadsheet that the company being audited does. They make their own calculations with the raw data.

As a practicing CPA in industry who is audited annually … and who used to be an auditor … I’ll just say it’s apparent that Steig has never been through an audit. In fact, financial auditors do exactly what Steig claims they do not. They take data provided by management, including many an Excel spreadsheet, and confirm it through various methods.

Performing an audit using only the source material (invoices, canceled checks, bank statements, etc.) is very uncommon and only used in rare cases … for example, in forensic audits where fraud is known or suspected. (avoiding insertion of a snippable comment here is difficult)

Bernie

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen

This hardly holds for one of the protagonists here!

Narcissus was a Mann
Who thought much
Of himself
And little of others

Steve McIntyre

#183. As I mentioned above, too many readers talk tough about suing. It’s expensive and time-consuming. I’d be hugely surprised if Solomon bothered.

• Richard
  Posted Feb 8, 2009 at 9:17 PM | Permalink

  Re: Steve McIntyre (#184), I agree with you about expense and time – but you never know – Mann’s accusations and language appear to be an easy target for a pro bono lawyer wanting to nail him, if he’s wanting to prove a point. Not that I’d want to be the lawyer or Soloman!

• bender
  Posted Feb 8, 2009 at 9:24 PM | Permalink

  Re: Steve McIntyre (#184),
  I just want Solomon to know he’s in the right. That’s all.

JR

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Jane Austen fans amongst the readership may recognise these lines from the novel, Emma. They’re quoted (actually misquoted (fragrance for sweetness)) by the character, Augusta Elton, as a sign of her ill-bred pretentiousness.

• Paul
  Posted Feb 9, 2009 at 3:07 AM | Permalink

  Re: JR (#186),
  While I love Jane Austin, in this case the most apropos place these lines are quoted must surely be in the final pages of C. S. Peirce’s “How to Make Our Ideas Clear”, where Peirce says that “all the followers of science are animated by a cheerful hope that the processes of investigation, if only pushed far enough, will give one certain solution to each question to which they apply it.”

JR

BTW, that last post shouldn’t be construed as my having a pop at SteveM. Fact of the matter is that I’m an advocate of man-made global cooling. I’ve just bulk-bought a consignment of electric blankets which should see me through to at least 2050.

Caleb

I first found this site back in August 2007, after I read about it in an article in the Toronto Star. The big news at that time was that 1998 had been demoted by NASA from its position as “warmest year.” I was somewhat shocked, for at that time I assumed data was data, and temperatures were simply read from thermometers. Up until then I accepted NASA press releases as gospel. The concept of “adjustments” being involved was like a slap on the side of my head. In my eyes NASA data sank to the level of CIA data; data seemingly was fudged, the intent being to sway the public’s mood, irregardless of the truth.

I felt somewhat indignant about this being done to me, and expressed my indignation to my friends, who are largely tree-huggers, as I myself am. Rather than equally indignant, the reaction of one tree-hugger friend (who I greatly respected) surprised me. I was soundly scolded.

Apparently I was not the only one who had discovered this site. The site was discovered, and mentioned by, Rush Limbaugh, (which resulted in the site being very hard to get to, for a couple days, as thousands visited.)

The simple fact the site had been visited by Rush Limbaugh made me, in the eyes of my tree-hugging friend, something called a “ditto head.” I tried to tell him that I hadn’t heard about the site by listening to Rush Limbaugh, but my friend wouldn’t listen. He launched into a diatribe about “people like me,” calling me “mindless” and “a puppet of Big Oil,” and a number of other unflattering things.

I was taken aback, to say the least. Because I respected the fellow, I went back and was very careful to double-check all my facts. However there was no getting around it; CA hadn’t changed the NASA data; it was Hansen himself. Then Hansen changed the data again, a couple of weeks later, and 1998 was suddenly “tied for first place.”

All of this meant little to my fellow tree-hugger, who I found myself respecting less and less. The only fact he seemed to care about was that this site was mentioned by Rush Limbaugh. Rush Limbaugh apparently is the kiss of death, to certain intellects.

As my friend became a former-friend, he made me embarrassed to be a tree-hugger. At times I felt I was in some Grade-B movie about World War Two, and he was over-playing the part of a German interrogator, shouting, “Lies! Lies! Lies!” …When all I was doing was bringing up the truth.

As I read Mann’s response to Lawrence Solomon I get the same feeling. There are the same references to “Big Oil,” the use of words like “shill,” and the same constant implication that Mr. Solomon is lying. In essence it boils down to “Lies! Lies! Lies!” …When all Mr. Solomon was doing was bringing up the truth.

Truth is a very important thing, and I like to think most tree-huggers became tree-huggers because they prefer Truth to raping the environment for short-term gain. Most tree-huggers see Nature as a Truth we must live within, rather than a foe we must war against. However the important thing is the Truth.

snip

It is important to confront Mann, and to rebuke him soundly. I admire this site because it is so civil, and adheres to unspoken laws of civil procedure, however at times I feel it is simply too polite. It is difficult to rebuke anyone here, without getting snipped.

Steve: perhaps so, but that’s policy here. snip – I may snip more. Sorry bout that.

• Richard
  Posted Feb 9, 2009 at 12:46 AM | Permalink

  Re: Caleb (#191), I think civility is the way to go and the level of it is to be admired on this website. But speaking personally, when I try to post on RC, I get rejected as soon as some probing questions are asked. Thus, regrettably I think some of the snark from that process spins off to here. But civil is the way to go – so keep snipping Steve. And Caleb, some people need causes and no amount of logic will help them. As the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it think.

Hoi Polloi

Psssst, Gavin, there’s something about Mary.

Steve, if you’re allowing yourself to make this kind of adolescent jokes, then why do you not only snip my much more moderate messages but delete them completely? Reversed censorship in CA??

Don’t let this brief victory carry you away from the real task, tearing down the flawed climate science with their models. Don’t let this drag you in a personal catfight withg the usual suspects. Don’t wrestle with pigs, it’ll get you dirty and the pigs like it.

I mentioned the crumbling AGW empire in one of my earlier deleted messages, now Pielke Jr is telling exactly the same on his website, so what did I do wrong?

Navy bob

Interesting essay by Theodore Dalrymple (Life at the Bottom) on certain intellectuals’ need to cling to ideology for meaning in their lives and their unhingement when it’s threatened.
http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_1_otbie-ideology.html

jim edwards

#198, Jim B.:

Aside from agreeing with Steve regarding most talk of law suits being “all hat and no cattle”…in the end, what would the court decision be?

“yes, Mann is guilty of libel”.

Ok?…and this means what in terms of furthering the debate regarding the Team or the Stick?

Not much, I think.

At the moment, there are two articles in the ether: “He lied” and “No I didn’t, his work has holes.” How are the vast number of voters supposed to discern who’s right ? We know which side the NY Times editorial board is likely to believe. This is a PR battle. This is a rare opportunity where a court of law could actually decide a justiciable issue about alarmism.

The plaintiff’s argument would be very short:
Mann wrote an article calling Solomon a liar [implying dishonesty in Solomon’s chosen profession], caused the defamatory article to be published, and a lot of people probably read it, and Solomon’s reputation was impaired. [extent of damages would take longer]

Mann would then be faced with choosing between:
1) Not disputing that he lied, but arguing that damage to Solomon’s reputation was minimal,
2) Doing nothing, and gambling on the result
3) Offering a financial settlement
4) Arguing that it was true that “Mr. Lawrence repeatedly lies about my work, the work of my colleagues, the findings of the scientific community, and even the judgments of the world’s leading scientific organizations and journals.”

In order to prove this, Mann would have to submit to hostile examination under oath, and demonstrate to the court where Solomon had mischaracterized BOTH Mann’s reconstructions AND the NAS / Wegman reports. Failure to do both would mean a victory for Solomon. Expert witnesses such as Wegman and North could give testimony to guide the court.

Nobody likes to be involved in litigation, but Solomon’s time and testimony are unnecessary to prevail here. All that’s needed is a pro bono attorney, Solomon’s consent, and a copy of Mann’s article. Likely costs would include deposition costs and court fees. It’s worth noting that most lawsuits settle. The likely outcome of a libel lawsuit by Solomon would be a full, public apology by Mann – assuming Solomon hasn’t lied repeatedly, as Mann claims. Maybe a little crow in his tummy would get Mann to think before he spouts off about his ‘enemies’.

jim edwards

W F Lenihan, #184:

Thanks, I know about Sullivan, which was an indirect result of Alabama segregationists’ outrageous reaction to the Montgomery bus boycott. Canada and the UK didn’t have the same modern struggle over government-mandated apartheid that we did [or a First Amendment], so they didn’t end up developing this rule.

As Steve M. says, I wouldn’t bet on Solomon pursuing this in court. If he did, Canada probably wouldn’t work, b/c Solomon would have no way of compelling Mann to respond in a foreign court. The likely forum would be Mann’s state of residence [Pennsylvania ?].

My point in #100 was that the “public figure” rule may protect the newspaper that published Mann’s article, but it does little for Mann b/c he has complete knowledge of the specifics of his own work. If Solomon was factually correct in his criticisms, Mann can’t seek refuge in negligence. He has actual knowledge of the facts in dispute; he doesn’t get to make a ‘mistake’ and call Solomon a liar.

theduke

There was an interesting libel case filed by Dr. S. Fred Singer against Dr. Justin Lancaster in which Lancaster was forced to write a retraction. (He has since retracted the retraction.)

You can find Dr. Singer’s version of the events surrounding the case here:

Click to access Revelle-GoreStory.pdf

Pierre Gosselin

If people are actually going to start suing others for libel in the field of climate change, then expect a huge backlog in the courts the years ahead. Unfortunately mudraking, smearing etc. has become the norm in climate science communication.

This science dispute is going to be settled by Nature only. Probably many of us will not even live long enough to see the verdict, which will only be known years down the road…2030+.

Christopher Chantrill

What I want to know is: How does Dr. Mann get onto the inside track and get his comments published on Google News, conveniently attached to news items about Mann?

Is this Google service available to ordinary mortals? Or do you have to be invited by the Google god?

jim edwards

Jepe, #222:

Well, “lies” implies bad intent that is not required to make a mistaken description of somebody’s views. Just b/c you make a mistake doesn’t mean you deserve to be called a liar.

Assuming that Solomon DID tell “lies” about Solanki and Weiss on more than one occasion (i.e. – “repeatedly”), then Mann would have an absolute defense [TRUTH] against a charge of libel for claiming that Solomon “repeatedly lies about … the work of my colleagues.”

The fact that Solomon has been accused of misrepresentation of Mann’s colleagues could be sufficient to give Mann a defense, even if Solomon never lied about them. [Because Solomon is a limited public figure]

A defense against that particular libel claim wouldn’t give Mann any defense against the three other libel claims, however:

Solomon “repeatedly lies about my work …”

Solomon “repeatedly lies about … the findings of the scientific community…”

Solomon “repeatedly lies about … the judgments of the world’s leading scientific organizations and journals.”

If Solomon sues, he gets to pick which of these four libelous remarks he wishes to pursue, as well as a potentially defamatory remark that Solomon’s “disinformation efforts” are “support(ed) financially” by “the fossil fuel industry”, and the claim that Solomon is “Doing the bidding of the fossil fuel industry.”

Peter Wilson

Mann’s confident assertion that Mr Solomon is funded by fossil fuel interests is particularly improbable, especially as Mr Solomon appears to have been a thorn in the energy industry’s side for some time. I also note that a search of the Exxonsecerets website shows no mention whatever of Lawrence Solomon – they don’t usually miss a dollar!. I would be interested to hear where Dr Mann gets his information from?

Of course, he wouldn’t publish that if it wasn’t true would he – surely he could be sued if that was the case?

Walt Bennett

Re: 135

Steve plays gotcha games by revealing his findings to his adoring throngs, rather than calling or visiting or writing the scientists themselves. He evidently prefers the public forum. We are all free to speculate as to why.

My opinion is that it feeds the whole idea that AGW can be classified as either “true” or “not true”, when of course it is both. Science advances in baby steps, and some of those steps are off a cliff, and some of those steps are backward, but they all advance the science.

The lay public has little chance of understanding that and will only understand that there is noise.

A pox on all our houses. We deserve the fate toward which we are so blindly charging.

• bender
  Posted Feb 9, 2009 at 10:11 PM | Permalink

  Re: Walt Bennett (#232),
  He “writes to scientists themselves”. – snip – Read the blog and then you’ll understand his modus operandi.

  • Walt Bennett
    Posted Feb 14, 2009 at 9:45 PM | Permalink

    Re: bender (#232), Steve, how did this ad-hom slip through?

    Steve: Because posters can post in real time, I’m not online 24-7 and have other things to do. I ask posters to comply with blog rules, but they don’t always do so. I ask people to notify me of such breaches of blog politeness policy rather than get into food fights. The errant word has now been snipped.

• D. Patterson
  Posted Feb 9, 2009 at 11:13 PM | Permalink

  Re: Walt Bennett (#232),

  Steve plays gotcha games by revealing his findings to his adoring throngs, rather than calling or visiting or writing the scientists themselves. He evidently prefers the public forum. We are all free to speculate as to why.

  We don’t need to speculate at all. If you had either made yourself familiar with the origins of this blog or not ignored those origins, you would not have made such a patently irrational comment. Steve McIntyre was submitting his findings as an offical IPCC reviewer direclty to the appropriate scientists. When his inquiries and findings did not satisfactorily support the long-standing (1970s) a priori WMO and subsequent IPCC conclusion that AGW was already a proven fact, he was progressively asked to NOT visit or write the scientists he is now reviewing. This blog came into existence AFTER the IPCC and scientists promoting AGW began to refuse their cooperation to Steve and other researchers contributing and not contributing to the IPCC reports and reviews. Not even the law courts necessarily require a plaintiff to undertake an unreasonable act of futiilty simply to maintain proof of due diligence. True scientific research requires a relentless search for errors in scientific papers, experiments, and data. Anything less is non-scientific faith. Are you perhaps implying Steve must pursue the authors with his findings until they take out a court ordered restraining order, before you’ll cease accusations of failing to communicate first with the authors (smile)?

• PaulM
  Posted Feb 10, 2009 at 7:19 AM | Permalink

  Re: Walt Bennett (#230),
  Walt Bennett, like many others before him, misrepresents this blog and its motives.
  His two post are also self-contradictory. In one he accuses SM of feeding the unhelpful ‘two sides’ view, and in the next demands to know which ‘side’ Steve is on. Walt, Jon and Jack should actually read the blog, rather than just exposing their ill-informed misconceptions.
  Of course, there is also much misrepresentation of Steve and his motives on the skeptic side.

• UC
  Posted Feb 10, 2009 at 10:53 AM | Permalink

  Re: Walt Bennett (#230),

  rather than calling or visiting or writing the scientists themselves.

  Reminds me of funny story, Steve wrote to a scientist, asking how confidence intervals of results in one paper were computed. The paper in question is probably the most famous climate science paper, and there is a word ‘uncertainties’ in the title. The response was:

  “Time to move on”

  🙂

Walt Bennett

re: 133

Steve, thanks for the direct response.

I take no issue with your role, and in fact I am quite sure it leads to better science. Your rhetorical approach, however, bothers me greatly. You come across – to me – as mocking the efforts of other climate scientists, and implicitly challenging their objectivity.

In so doing, you feed directly into the mindset of those who look for anything they can cling to as an excuse to reject AGW. Simplistic, sure, and not your fault. But you do feed into the problem, and as magnified as your role has become, so does that magnify the problem.

We would all be better off as a species and as caretakers of the planet of you would make it clear which side you’re on (the side of good science, I hope) and angle your efforts to maximize that role.

I don’t expect anything to change, but that is how I see it. All this taking of sides is getting us nowhere.

• bender
  Posted Feb 9, 2009 at 10:34 PM | Permalink

  Re: Walt Bennett (#233),

  implicitly challenging their objectivity

  Steig’s objectivity – for example – needs to be challenged. He is clearly guilty of confirmation bias. He saw a pattern and tried to make hay of it without checking the quality of the underlying data. Serious errors were found that change the weight and nature of his argument (the warming turns out to be localized, not widespread).
  
  Steve: we know that there are problems in some of the data, but the impact hasn’t been worked through yet.

  • curious
    Posted Feb 10, 2009 at 12:27 PM | Permalink

    Re: bender (#233),
    Hear, Hear, Bender.

    That’s what is shocking to me as an outsider trying to follow it. This is one of the biggest issues of our times and that paper was not going to be quietly stumbled upon in the reading room of a uni. library – it could only have been headlines around the world. Why wasn’t that data checked and triple checked? And why aren’t the authors mortified?

    Sorry if this is piling on – feel free to snip.

    • bender
      Posted Feb 10, 2009 at 12:48 PM | Permalink

      Re: curious (#241),
      Is climate science tainted by confirmation bias when it comes to hypothesis testing?
      (1) Michael Mann and his “dozens of independent investigators” can’t seem to cure their addiction to one non-independent ingredient: Graybill’s bristlecone pines.
      (2) Steig’s case presented earlier
      (3) Now Schmidt (2009), in his haste to lay waste to M&M07, ignores the real meaning of his negative coefficients.
      (4) All asserting that Jones et al have correctly estimated the “urban heat island” effect as being trivially small and corrected-for, when MM07 hints strongly otherwise – that there are other localized anthropogenic effects still not corrected for.
      (5) Not to mention the well-documented biases in scientific reporting by the hurricane climatologists.

      To me, it is clear that a confirmation bias exists. Is it a problem? That’s the question.

    • David Jay
      Posted Feb 13, 2009 at 9:33 AM | Permalink

      Re: bender (#242),

      Michael Mann and his “dozens of independent investigators” can’t seem to cure their addiction to one non-independent ingredient: Graybill’s bristlecone pines

      And of course it is worse than that, it starts with Graybill but the 20th century gets air-brushed over with instrumental data.

• Ross McKitrick
  Posted Feb 10, 2009 at 1:00 PM | Permalink

  Re: Walt Bennett (#231), Walt, Steve sometimes shows me bits and pieces of his offline correspondence with scientists in which he writes seeking data or clarification. When people respond offline in a constructive way then the issue stays offline, even if errors emerge. If Steve takes a dispute public it was almost certainly preceded by an unsuccessful attempt to get the information privately.

  • Walt Bennett
    Posted Feb 14, 2009 at 9:51 PM | Permalink

    Re: Ross McKitrick (#244), Ross, what a pretty face to put on things. Of course, that does not explain why Steve writes in an inflammatory tone (“Egregious!” “Insane!” and why her permits threads to wander into all sorts of ad hom territory.

    There are, however, good possible explanations for those behaviors.

    I just love the moral high ground the purveyors of this blog and their cronies have reserved for themselves.

    Just what the science needs.

    Steve: Can you identify for me where I’ve written “Egregious!” “Insane!” in an “inflammatory tone” or otherwise? I’m not an exclamation mark sort of person and these usages don’t accord with my own sense of my writing style. I searched these terms in head threads and only located one use of the word “insane” in a head post in the entire history of CA: http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3097 where it was a quote from a financial blogger about CDS credit ratings. I likewise searched the term “egregious” in head posts and found no uses of the word with an exclamation mark or inflammatory tone. “Egregious” was used 16 times in nearly 1800 head posts, of which about half were quotations from mainstream climate scientists.

    http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=4314
    Rather that “auditing” our paper, you should be directing your attention to the 2007 IJoC paper published by David Douglass et al., which contains an egregious statistical error.

    http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3082
    The most egregious example is when the temperature sensor becomes coated with ice in a rain cloud, in which case upper tropospheric temperatures can be as much as 20 C too warm.

    http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=725
    Even without technical training or a statistical background, you should have an adequate basis for discerning which of the two parties is likely wrong here. Only one of the parties involved has (1) had their claims fail scientific peer-review, (2) produced a reconstruction that is completely at odds with all other existing estimates (note that there is no sign of the anomalous 15th century warmth claimed by MM in any of the roughly dozen other model and proxy-based estimates shown here), and (3) been established to have made egregious elementary errors in other published work that render the work thoroughly invalid. These observations would seem quite telling. -mike]

    http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=262
    And so McIntyre himself has made a much more egregious methodological error by estimating this temperature rise that is completely out of whack with the original data.

    I’ve used the word “egregious” in a head post only once in the last year:
    http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3393
    The editors of Climatic Change didn’t have any information about the SI. When I contacted Caspar Ammann for the SI, he replied early this year in the typically ‘gracious’ Team style:
    why would I even bother answering your questions, isn’t that just lost time?
    So this became one more issue on the blog. Some readers get tired of the litany of non-compliance. Look, I get tired of the non-compliance too. Ammann’s case was particularly egregious because the article actually referred to and relied on the SI, which was then withheld.

    On earlier occasions, I used the word in head posts as follows:
    http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2536
    It is a red-letter rule in business that transactions between a company and its insiders or employees must be disclosed. Some of the most egregious breaches by Enron were its attempts to avoid disclosure of writeoffs by selling worthless assets to the infamous limited partnerships organized by company insiders for equally worthless paper issued by the partnerships. Company insiders cannot evade securities laws by pretending to be be acting in a “personal capacity”.

    http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2525
    While my primary interest in these ruminations is the possibility of pinning down a set of standards by which they agree that a study is “bad” – since it’s hard for me to determine any sins in Courtillot et al 2007 that are not committed more egregiously in MBH, there are some intriguing issues connecting SST bucket adjustments to attempts to assess solar correlation.

    http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2522
    As it turns out, I agree with most of his criticisms, but, as so often in climate science, Pierrehumbert (or the “Chevalier”) is silent on similar or more egregious transgressions by his fellow RC coauthors or IPCC.

    http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1056
    For today, I’m simply going to collate various Thompson versions. Now the differences are not as egregious as Guliya (which has been discussed recently) but the differences are intriguing.

    http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=715
    While the panel mentions our concern over biased choice of series, they did not discuss an egregious situation that we presented to them. In 1998, updated sampling at the Polar Urals site resulted in a series with elevated MWP values, as opposed to previous results used in earlier multiproxy studies which had low MWP values at this site. At about the same time, a site about 100 miles away (Yamal) was developed which had a very pronounced HS-shape. This site was substituted for the Polar Urals site in all but one multiproxy reconstruction.

    http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=629
    wouldn’t characterise the WSJ as ‘critics’ and yet they clearly think that M&M are offering an alternate reconstruction. It’s just one more thing they get wrong… -gavin]

    Some misrepresentations of our position are particularly egregious.

    http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=369
    I’ve done so with Crowley and Mann because of their egregious public misrepresentations of the actual correspondence.)

    http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=307
    I was under the impression that CRU was supposed to have quality control systems in place to pick up egregious outliers like this. It would be a good idea for some one to scrutinize the procedures and see what happened in this case.

    In the comment threads, I have never used either of the terms “Egregious!” and “Insane!” with an exclamation mark and, as noted above, this alleged usage seems completely foreign to my own sense of writing style. I’ve used the term “insane” in a comment thread on only three occasions, once to describe the voting volume in the 2007 blog awards.

    In the last year in comment threads, I’ve only used the word egregious twice:

    Folks, as always, I urge people not to over-generalize. We have here a particularly egregious example of Texas Sharpshooting, one that interests me because I have a personal involvement in the dispute. And yes, Texas Sharpshooting is a problem with Team paleoclimate studies. But not everything in the world is Texas Sharpshooting. When people try to go a bridge too far, as readers often do, all it does is generate easy ripostes for critics of this site. They point to the exaggerated claim – one that I didn’t make – and then use that as an excuse not to consider the issue that prompted the post.

    Ross observed on one occasion:
    Looks like “egregious” is the new favourite team adjective. All our methods are rigorous and conservative, all your errors are egregious.

    • Mark Weston
      Posted Feb 15, 2009 at 6:32 AM | Permalink

      Re: Walt Bennett (#256),

      Umm, yeah. If you’re going to complain that bitterly about ad hom and an inflammatory tone, you might want to re-examine your own writing style.

    • PhilH
      Posted Feb 15, 2009 at 11:16 AM | Permalink

      Re: Walt Bennett (#256),

      “Just what science needs.”

      If you have anything to contribute to the science that’s discussed constantly on this site, Walt, I’m sure it would be appreciated.

    • Steve McIntyre
      Posted Feb 25, 2009 at 9:38 AM | Permalink

      Re: Walt Bennett (#256),

      Walt, you never justified or withdrawn your drive-by accusation that I’d written “Egregious!” “Insane!” in an “inflammatory tone”, which I refuted in detail in inline comment. The accusation was untrue and without any foundation.

• BarryW
  Posted Feb 11, 2009 at 3:55 PM | Permalink

  Re: Walt Bennett (#231),

  Your comment shows a built in bias. What about those who look for anything they can find as an excuse to cling to AGW? Are they not worthy of your disapproval? And if you agree with this why didn’t you state the same rather than putting the onus on the skeptics to “behave”?

  snip-

  Sorry Steve… ranting again.

  Steve: yes.

bender

Is climate science sufficiently self-critical? I hope Mann’s letter to google news is not an indicator. It is loaded with errors that were greased by the self-righteousness filter, were not weeded out by the self-critical filter.

Craig Loehle

I am a little disturbed by Walt’s assertion that Steve and CA are “sowing confusion”. If an error is found in a prominent cancer study (as many have been over the years) would this be “sowing confusion”? Or should we let a proposed treatment be let loose upon patients even though it is toxic and not effective? When can it ever be “sowing confusion” to double-check scientific work? That people jump to conclusions (e.g., that the goof up at Harry station invalidated Steig’s work, when it did not) is simply to be expected and those who visit here a lot would know better than that. It seems this “sowing confusion” meme (also mentioned elsewhere) refers to discussing errors IN PUBLIC instead of in the polite society of journals where the public never goes. Kind of like mentioning that the daughter of the governor is a drunk and crashed her car instead of covering it up.

Paul Penrose

The phrase “to sow confusion” is usually used to imply a deliberate attempt to confuse people through deception. I don’t know for sure if this is what Walt meant; he may just be ignorant of this common usage. Either way it does not reflect well on him, IMHO.

curious

For info. There are some letters to the FP following up on the posted article:

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/02/11/fp-letters-to-the-editor-mann-s-world.aspx

Walt Bennett

Where did 5 days of comments disappear to?

• MikeU
  Posted Feb 25, 2009 at 9:25 AM | Permalink

  Re: Walt Bennett (#263), “Where did 5 days of comments disappear to?”

  To the current “Unthreaded” thread. They were moved, not deleted.

• Cliff Huston
  Posted Feb 25, 2009 at 9:27 AM | Permalink

  Re: Walt Bennett (#263),
  Moved to Unthreaded – That happens when you go off topic on a thread.

Edmond

Steve. I’m getting a broken link for “Larry Solomon replied today…”.
Could you check that please, I’m in England if that could make any difference.
Thanks