This Mann-made global warming lawsuit could backfire on the Penn State alarmist. Support science, energy and freedom - donate to Dr. Tim Ball’s legal defense fund

Lewis Carroll died too soon. Just imagine the fun he’d have with the cliquish clan of climate catastrophe researchers who seek to control science, debate and public policy on global warming and energy - and then get outraged when someone challenges their findings, methodologies or integrity.

On October 1, Dr. Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University and “hockey stick” fame published an angry riposte in Colorado’s obscure Vail Daily Voices (circulation 15,000), expressing his umbrage over an article that had appeared in the free coffee shop newspaper a day earlier. 

“An individual named Martin Hertzberg did a grave disservice to your readers by making false and defamatory statements about me and my climate scientist colleagues in his recent commentary in your paper,” Mann began. (Hertzberg is a research scientist and former US Navy meteorologist.) The thin-skinned Penn State scientist then ranted:

“These are just lies, regurgitation of dishonest smears that have been manufactured by fossil fuel industry-funded climate change deniers, and those who do their bidding by lying to the public about the science.” [emphasis added]

Meanwhile, NASA scientist Dr. James Hansen, recipient of huge monetary awards for strident climate disaster claims, wants oil and coal company CEOs prosecuted for “crimes against humanity.”

So Mann and Hansen are honest scientists, trying to do their jobs. But Hertzberg and anyone else who questions the “imminent manmade climate change catastrophe” thesis are dishonest crooks, liars, Holocaust deniers, hired guns for fossil fuel interests, criminals threatening all humanity.

Hertzberg’s views were defamatory, but Mann’s and Hansen’s accusations are mild, rational and truthful.

(Readers can find Mann’s letters and lively discussions about them and Hansen on Dr. Anthony Watts’ WattsUpWithThat.com climate change website. Hertzberg’s letter appeared, mysteriously disappeared, then reappeared in the Vail Voices online archives as the controversy raged and ebbed.)

The bizarre saga gets even stranger when viewed alongside Dr. Mann’s kneejerk lawsuit against Dr. Tim Ball, a Canadian scientist, historical climatologist and retired professor who has frequently voiced his skepticism about claims that hydrocarbon use and carbon dioxide emissions are the primary cause of climate change and present an imminent risk of widespread planetary cataclysms. Dr. Ball has analyzed Canadian and global climate history, and does not regard computer models as much more than virtual reality scenarios that should never be the basis for real-world public policy. 

Dr. Ball had poked fun at Dr. Mann, playing word games that suggest the computer guy should not be at Penn State, but in a similarly named state institution. Unfortunately, Mann is not easily amused, as Dr. Ball should have known from the PSU professor’s testy reaction to the “Hide the decline” animation and other spoofs that various AGW “deniers” posted online.

Mann insisted that Dr. Ball’s little joke was libelous and took him to court. Mann’s legal principal seems to be that libel is fine only when he and Hansen practice the craft, albeit with far less good humor than others display. More importantly, Dr. Ball does not live or work in the United States.

US libel cases are governed by the First Amendment, “public figure” rules and other safeguards that ensure open, robust debate, and make it difficult and expensive to sue people over slights, affronts, insults, disagreements and jokes.

Canada, unfortunately, has more limited free speech protections. So Dr. Mike sued Dr. Tim in Canada, assuming victory would be rapid and sweet. Surprise! Dr. Ball decided to slug it out.

In Canada, the principal defenses against libel claims are that the alleged defamation constitutes “fair comment” or was in fact “the truth.” Ball chose the latter defense.

Doing so means the penalty for losing could be higher than under “fair comment” rules. But arguing that his statement was based on truth allows Dr. Ball to seek “discovery” of evidence that Dr. Mann’s actions reflect a use of public funds to alter or falsify scientific data, present highly speculative results as solid facts, or otherwise engage in something that a reasonable person would conclude constitutes dishonest activity or criminal culpability, undertaken moreover through the use of taxpayer funds.

Proving that will not be easy, especially since Mann has steadfastly refused to provide such potential evidence to anyone, including Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. That evidence might include Climategate emails; computer codes and data used, misused or used selectively to generate global warming spikes in historical graphs; and questionable research or proposals used to secure additional government grants, misinform citizens or lawmakers, or promote costly or harmful public policies.

The US government alone spent an estimated $79 billion on climate, renewable energy and related research between 1989 and 2009 - and many billions more since then. Obviously, there is a lot at stake for scientists, universities, government agencies and other institutions engaged in trying to demonstrate a link between human greenhouse gas emissions and climate, weather, agricultural, sea level and other “disasters.” The reputations and credibility of researchers and their institutions are likewise at stake.

Keeping people alarmed, insisting that numerous disasters will soon result from carbon dioxide emissions and a few degrees of planetary warming - and silencing anyone who questions climate chaos claims - are essential if this money train is to be kept on the tracks.

Dr. Mann is likely aided by Penn State lawyers, largely paid for with climate research taxpayer dollars the university wants to safeguard, by preventing criticism or scientific disclosure and transparency.

A judge and jury will decide the Mann vs. Ball case, after carefully weighing all the evidence on whether Dr. Ball’s allegations and insinuations were factual, accurate and truthful.

Dr. Mann’s research was conducted primarily with public money. It is being presented as valid, peer-reviewed science. It is also being used to champion and justify major policy recommendations at state, national and international levels. And those recommendations call for carbon taxes and other penalties for using hydrocarbon energy; the replacement of affordable, dependable fossil fuel energy with expensive, unreliable wind and solar facilities; a roll-back of living standards in rich developed nations; and limited or minimal energy and economic development in poor countries.

Therefore, as I have argued previously, the public has a right to demand that Mann & Comrades show their work, not merely their answers and policy demands. Thus far, serious questions about Mann’s research remain unanswered. The public also has a right to require that Mann, Penn State & Company provide their source material, not just their results - along with anything else that may be relevant to gauging the validity, accuracy and honesty of the work and its conclusions and policy recommendations.

We the People have a further right, duty and obligation to protect free speech, robust debate, the integrity of the scientific method, our personal freedoms, and our access to the reliable, affordable energy that makes our jobs and living standards possible. One way you can do this is by supporting Dr. Tim Ball’s legal defense fund. Just click here or go to http://DrTimBall.com/

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and Congress of Racial Equality, and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death.

First estimate of global land temperature trends from the RUTI project , recently presented at Joanne Nova for the Coastal-Noncoastal issues.

... Between 1950 and 1978, the BEST results for global land temperatures have 0.55K more warming than RUTI. Otherwise, the 2 datasets are strikingly similar ....

Fig1. First estimate of global land temperature trends (enlarged). As always in the RUTI project, data are unadjusted GHCN and the main efforts in the RUTI project is to identify areas of similar temperature trend before averaging - this due to limited data periods made available from GHCN (see more). As will be the case for all data sources, older data, especially before 1900 has limited data as foundation. All RUTI data in the present article use 1961-90 as base period.

Results:

1) Temperature peak in the latest decade appears to be around 0,22 K warmer than the 1940´ies heat peak.

2) We see a strong temperature decline 1940-78 around 0;55-0.6 K.

Lets compare with the Berkeley’s BEST project:

Fig1a. Recently, Berkeley released data for land temperatures as shown (enlarged).  Lets compare Undajusted GHCN/RUTI with Berkeley:

Fig1b. (Red RUTI graph is 10 yr avg.) (enlarged).

1) Temperatures recent decade is

RUTI:  0.2-0.25 K warmer than warm peak around 1940

BEST:  0.75-0.8 K warmer than warm peak around 1940

2) Temperature decline after 1940-1978 is

RUTI:  Approx 0.55-0.6 K

BEST:  Approx 0.1-0.15 K

BEST has around 0.55 K more heat in their results than RUTI, and that this difference mostly occurs between 1950 and 1978.

Fig1c. The difference in temperature trends 1950-78 is best illustrated by setting temperatures 1940-50 for the two datasets to be equal (enlarged). 

Read much more with continent by continent comparisons here.

Despite the collapse of the Kyoto process and the decline in public concern, professional environmental alarmists and eco-activists - who are now concentrating their venom on stopping the Keystone XL pipeline - continue to thunder that climate science is “settled.” Their authority for this claim is the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC. Anybody wishing to gauge the reliability of such science, or the true nature of the IPCC, should read Donna Laframboise’s compelling, indeed at times jaw-dropping, The Delinquent Teenager Who was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert.

In a meticulously referenced and deservedly praised page-turner, Ms. Laframboise, an accomplished journalist who turned to the skeptical blogosphere, demonstrates how the IPCC is a thoroughly political organization. Far from objectively weighing the best available science, it cherry-picks egregiously to support its main objective: to serve its government masters. Its lead authors are not the world’s leading scientists but frequently wet-behind-the-ears graduates, and/or ardent activists. They are also selected on the basis of gender and country “diversity” rather than expertise. The organization, Ms. Laframboise demonstrates, has also been thoroughly infiltrated by environmental NGOs, in particular the World Wildlife Fund.

The book elucidates how the panel’s much-vaunted “peer review” amounts to a “circular, incestuous process. Scientists make decisions as journal editors about what qualifies as peer-reviewed literature. They then cite the same papers they themselves played midwife to while serving as IPCC authors.” IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri’s claim that all the “Climate Bible’s” science is peer reviewed is, in any case, bunk. With a body of volunteers, Ms. Laframboise went through the 2007 report and found that more than 5,000 references - over a third - were from less-than-reliable sources. The most egregious such “grey” reference led to the claim that the Himalayan glaciers were to disappear by 2035. This terrifying assertion was traced back to the top of a non-expert’s head.

After the embarrassment of “Glaciergate,” which came on top of the much more serious “Climategate,” the InterAcademy Council (IAC), which represents international academies of science, was tasked with examining the IPCC process. One of Ms. Laframboise’s greatest coups was to gain access to at least some of the responses to a questionnaire the IAC sent to ­IPCC authors. Far from “consensus,” those responses - which she cites in detail - indicate widespread concern, confusion and distrust.

She introduces us to numerous well-credentialled skeptics, including Jason Johnston, an expert in environmental law, who set out to verify whether the ­IPCC reports in fact “conformed with the peer-reviewed climate science literature.” His conclusion: “on virtually every major issue in climate change science,” IPCC reports “systematically conceal or minimize what appear to be fundamental scientific uncertainties.”

The Delinquent Teenager reveals how inconvenient science has been buried and sums up: “The IPCC ignores the consensus among hurricane experts that there is no discernable link to global warning. It ignores the consensus among those who study natural disasters that there is no relationship between human greenhouse gas emissions and the rising cost of these disasters. It ignores the consensus among bona fide malaria experts that global warming has not caused malaria to spread. In each case the IPCC substitutes its own version of reality. In each case that version of reality makes global warming appear more frightening than genuine experts believe the available evidence indicates.”

Meanwhile the authors of the “Climate Bible” can always find space for post-deadline alarmism. The U.K. government’s Stern Review was castigated by experts for its wild alarmism and ludicrous assumptions. However, Ms. Laframboise points out, “26 references to the Stern Review were added to 12 different IPCC chapters after the work of the expert reviewers had already been completed.” (The Stern Review, incidentally, wasn’t peer reviewed, although Sir Nicholas Stern was given a peerage for writing it.) Like Lord Stern, many of the IPCC’s leaders firmly believe it is their job to “steer” society away from carbon and consumerism, which, as Ms. Laframboise forcefully points out, is no part of science.

One of the many disturbing issues arising from the book is the sheer vitriol unleashed against Mr. Laframboise for daring to ask questions. “It is peculiar, indeed,” she writes, “that people who see things differently try to link my climate views to racists, Holocaust deniers, child murderers, mental illness and the tobacco industry.… It is bizarre that prime ministers and other officials think it remotely appropriate to publicly denounce climate skeptics as cowards, saboteurs and anti-science Flat-Earthers...Whatever happened to tolerance and mutual respect?”

Her conclusion is that the IPCC process is irretrievably compromised and should be scrapped. However, the IAC review is among those documents now buried as this corrupt organization continues under the same conflicted leadership. The Delinquent Teenager should be required reading for all those who, like something out of Animal Farm, bleat or oink that “the debate is over.” Ms. Laframboise leaves us in no doubt that a ­debate has never even taken place.

UK Met Office Pours Cold Water On Severe Winter 2011-12 Forecasts
October 14, 2011

The UK Met Office has distanced itself from recent media reports that the UK and Ireland are set for an ‘Arctic Winter’.  The UKMO, which stopped issuing seasonal forecasts in 2010, also has said that recent long range forecasts by other agencies “bear no relation to the kinds of weather that forecasters at the Met Office are currently expecting”.

iWeather Online (IWO) also has forecast that Ireland and the UK are unlikely to see a repeat of the pre-Christmas freeze of 2010.  Temperatures are expected to remain below average for much of the coming season, however, according to the IWO forecast.

In an opinion piece for The Times, UKMO Chief Executive John Hirst called for a sense of reason in response to the claims (read 1, 2, 3) of other forecasting agencies in weeks.

According to the UK Met Office: “Over the past few weeks, there have been some colourful headlines in some parts of the media about what’s in store for this year’s winter in the UK. Reports of ‘-20C within weeks’, “A winter fuel crisis on the way’ and ‘Widespread snow in October’ have all raised expectations that we’re in for an ‘Arctic winter’. [These headlines] bear no relation to the kinds of weather that forecasters at the Met Office are currently expecting - there is no need for alarm.”

5 days later....

Subzero Temperatures And Snow Herald Arrival Of Winter In Ireland And UK

Heavy snow showers will continue across the Scottish East and West Highlands during Wednesday.  More widespread snow is expected to affect the region for a time on Thursday.

Snow fell overnight at Cairngorm, Glenshee and Glencoe, while further heavy showers are forecast for Wednesday.  The live webcam at Cairngorm, where temperatures dropped to minus 5 celsius overnight, showed snow continuing to fall at the ski resort this morning.

Wintry showers, with snow settling to around 400m, will become more scattered during the afternoon. However, the UK Met Office has warned of temporary blizzard conditions over ridges and summits. The UKMO also has warned of a severe wind chill and buffeting at higher levels.

The snowline in Scotland on Wednesday afternoon will be down to 200 metres, according to wetter3.de.

Outbreaks of snow will sweep eastwards across the Scottish Highlands tomorrow afternoon but will turn to rain at lower levels as the evening progresses. A slow thaw is expected from Thursday evening and night as milder air moves in across Ireland and Britain.

Tuesday was generally the coolest day in Ireland since 19th March last with the max temperature being 12.2c at Valentia Observatory, Co. Kerry and the lowest max temperature coming in at just 8.8c at Ballypatrick Forest, Co. Antrim.

I’m a denier for several reasons. There is no substantive evidence that the planet has warmed significantly or that any significant warming will occur in the future. If any warming does occur, it likely will be concentrated at higher latitudes and therefore be beneficial. Climate research has largely degenerated into pathological science, and the coverage of global warming in the media is tendentious to the point of being fraudulent. Anyone who is an honest and competent scientist must be a denier.

Have you ever considered how difficult it is to take the temperature of the planet Earth? What temperature will you measure? The air? The surface of the Earth absorbs more than twice as much incident heat from the Sun than the air. But if you measure the temperature of the surface, what surface are you going to measure? The solid Earth or the oceans? There is twice as much water as land on Earth. If you decide to measure water temperature, at what depth will you take the measurements? How will the time scale on which the deep ocean mixes with the shallow affect your measurements? And how, pray tell, will you determine what the average water temperature was for the South Pacific Ocean a hundred years ago? How will you combine air, land, and sea temperature measurements? Even if you use only meteorological measurements of air temperature, how will you compensate for changes in latitude, elevation, and land use?

Determining a mean planetary temperature is not straightforward, but an extremely complicated problem. Even the best data are suspect. Anthony Watts and his colleagues have surveyed 82.5 percent of stations in the U.S. Historical Climatology Network. They have found - shockingly - that over 70 percent of these stations are likely to be contaminated by errors greater than 2 deg C [3.6 deg F]. Of the remaining stations, 21.5 percent have inherent errors greater than 1 deg C. The alleged degree of global warming over the past 150 years is less than 1 deg C. Yet even in a technologically advanced country like the US, the inherent error in over 90 percent of the surveyed meteorological stations is greater than the putative signal. And these errors are not random, but systematically reflect a warming bias related to urbanization. Watts has documented countless instances of air temperature sensors located next to air conditioning vents or in the middle of asphalt parking lots. A typical scenario is that a temperature sensor that was in the middle of a pasture a hundred years ago is now surrounded by a concrete jungle. Urbanization has been a unidirectional process. It is entirely plausible - even likely - that all of the temperature rise that has been inferred from the data is an artifact that reflects the growth of urban heat islands.

The “denier” is portrayed as a person who refuses to accept the plain evidence of his senses. But in fact it is the alarmist who doesn’t know what they are talking about. The temperature of the Earth and how it has varied over the past 150 years is poorly constrained. The person who thinks otherwise does so largely because they have no comprehension of the science. Most of these people have never done science or thought about the inherent difficulties and uncertainties involved.

And what is “global warming” anyway? As long ago as the fifth century BC, Socrates pointed out that intelligible definitions are a necessary precursor to meaningful discussions. The definition of the term “global warming” shifts with the context of the discussion. If you deny global warming, then you have denied the existence of the greenhouse effect, a reproducible phenomenon that can be studied analytically in the laboratory. But if you oppose political action, then global warming metamorphoses into a nightmarish and speculative planetary catastrophe. Coastal cities sink beneath a rising sea, species suffer from wholesale extinctions, and green pastures are turned into deserts of choking hot sand.

In fact, so-called “deniers” are not “deniers” but skeptics. Skeptics do not deny the existence of the greenhouse effect. Holding all other factors constant, the mean planetary air temperature ought to rise as the atmosphere accumulates more anthropogenic CO2. Christopher Monckton recently reviewed the pertinent science and concluded that a doubling of CO2 should result in a temperature increase of about 1 deg C. If this temperature increase mirrors those in the geologic past, most of it will occur at high latitudes. These areas will become more habitable for man, plants, and other animals. Biodiversity will increase. Growing seasons will lengthen. Why is this a bad thing?

Any temperature increase over 1 deg C for a doubling of CO2 must come from a positive feedback from water vapor. Water vapor is the dominant greenhouse gas in Earth’s atmosphere, and warm air holds more water than cold air. The theory is that an increased concentration of water vapor in the atmosphere will lead to a positive feedback that amplifies the warming from CO2 by as much as a factor of three to five. But this is nothing more that speculation. Water vapor also leads to cloud formation. Clouds have a cooling effect. At the current time, no one knows if the feedback from water vapor will be positive or negative.

Global warming predictions cannot be tested with mathematical models. It is impossible to validate computer models of complex natural systems. The only way to corroborate such models is to compare model predictions with what will happen in a hundred years. And one such result by itself won’t be significant because of the possible compounding effects of other variables in the climate system. The experiment will have to repeated over several one-hundred year cycles. In other words, the theory of catastrophic global warming cannot be tested or empirically corroborated in a human time frame.

It is hardly conclusive to argue that models are correct because they have reproduced past temperatures. I’m sure they have. General circulation models have so many degrees of freedom that it is possible to endlessly tweak them until the desired result is obtained. Hindsight is always 20-20. This tells us exactly nothing about a model’s ability to accurately predict what will happen in the future.

The entire field of climate science and its coverage in the media is tendentious to the point of being outright fraudulent. Why is it that every media report on CO2 – an invisible gas – is invariably accompanied by a photograph of a smokestack emitting particulate matter? Even the cover of Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, shows a smokestack. Could it be that its difficult to get people worked up about an invisible, odorless gas that is an integral component of the photosynthetic cycle? A gas that is essential to most animal and plant life on Earth? A gas that is emitted by their own bodies through respiration? So you have to deliberately mislead people by showing pictures of smoke to them. Showing one thing when you’re talking about another is fraud. If the case for global warming alarmism is so settled, so conclusive, so irrefutable...why is it necessary to repeatedly resort to fraud?

A few years ago it was widely reported that the increased concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would cause poison ivy to grow faster. But of course carbon dioxide causes almost all plants to grow faster. And nearly all of these plants have beneficial human uses. Carbon dioxide fertilizes hundreds or thousands of human food sources. More CO2 means trees grow faster. So carbon dioxide promotes reforestation and biodiversity. Its good for the environment. But none of this was reported. Instead, the media only reported that global warming makes poison ivy grow faster. And this is but one example of hundreds or thousands of such misleading reports. If sea ice in the Arctic diminishes, it is cited as irrefutable proof of global warming. But if sea ice in the Antarctic increases, it is ignored. Even cold weather events are commonly invoked as evidence for global warming. People living in the future will look back and wonder how we could have been so delusional.

For the past few years I have remained silent concerning the Climategate emails. But what they revealed is what many of us already knew was going on: global warming research has largely degenerated into what is known as pathological science, a “process of wishful data interpretation.” When I testified before the US Senate in 2006, I stated that a major climate researcher told me in 1995 that “we have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.” The existence and global nature of the Medieval Warm Period had been substantiated by literally hundreds of research articles published over decades. But it had to be erased from history for ideological reasons. A few years later the infamous “hockey stick” appeared. The “hockey stick” was a revisionist attempt to rewrite the temperature history of the last thousand years. It has been discredited as being deeply flawed.

In one Climategate email, a supposed climate scientist admitted to “hiding the decline.” In other words, hiding data that tended to disprove his ideological agenda. Another email described how alarmists would try to keep critical manuscripts from being published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. One of them wrote, we’ll “keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!” Gee. If the climate science that validates global warming is so unequivocal, why is it necessary to work behind the scenes to suppress dissent? You “doth protest too much.”

As described in my book, Science and Technology in World History: The Ancient World and Classical Civilization, systematic science began with the invocation of naturalism by Greek philosophers and Hippocratic physicians c. 600-400 BC. But the critical attitude adopted by the Greeks was as important as naturalism. Students were not only allowed to criticize their teachers, but were encouraged to do so. From its beginnings in Greek natural philosophy, science has been an idealistic and dispassionate search for truth. As Plato explained, anyone who could point out a mistake “shall carry off the palm, not as an enemy, but as a friend.” This is one reason that scientists enjoy so much respect. The public assumes that a scientist’s pursuit of truth is unencumbered by political agendas.

But science does not come easy to men. “Science,” George Sarton reminded us, “is a joykiller.” The proper conduct of science requires a high degree of intellectual discipline and rigor. Scientists are supposed to use multiple working hypotheses and sort through these by the processes of corroboration and falsification. The most valuable evidence is that which tends to falsify or disprove a theory. A scientist, by the very definition of his activity, must be skeptical. A scientist engaged in a dispassionate search for truth elevates the critical – he does not suppress it. Knowledge begins with skepticism and ends with conceit.

Finally, I’m happy to be known as a “denier” because the label of “denier” says nothing about me, but everything about the person making the charge. Scientific theories are never denied or believed, they are only corroborated or falsified. Scientific knowledge, by its very nature, is provisional and subject to revision. The provisional nature of scientific knowledge is a necessary consequence of the epistemological basis of science. Science is based on observation. We never have all the data. As our body of data grows, our theories and ideas must necessarily evolve. Anyone who thinks scientific knowledge is final and complete must necessarily endorse as a corollary the absurd proposition that the process of history has stopped.

A scientific theory cannot be “denied.” Only a belief can be denied. The person who uses the word “denier” thus reveals that they hold global warming as a belief, not a scientific theory. Beliefs are the basis of revealed religion. Revelations cannot be corroborated or studied in the laboratory, so religions are based on dogmatic beliefs conservatively held. Religions tend to be closed systems of belief that reject criticism. But the sciences are open systems of knowledge that welcome criticism. I’m a scientist, and therefore I must happily confess to being a denier.

David Deming [send him mail] is a geophysicist, associate professor of arts and sciences at the University of Oklahoma, and author of the books Science and Technology in World History, Vols. 1 & 2.