22 July 2012
Climate Expert Dr. Michael Mann Plans Libel Suit Against The National Review
Posted by Dan Satterfield
I am amazed at how political beliefs can lead people to say and do really ignorant things. I had a comment this week from someone who complained that it was nearly impossible to get information about climate change from a non political source, and he has a real point. It’s one of the reasons that I started writing this blog and hopefully I have made it a little easier to sort out the politics from what is real.
I steer away from commenting much on the day-to-day assault on science from political and certain religious groups, but I do make an exception when something is so egregious that it really should get some attention. The North Carolina Legislature’s inane attempt to outlaw the science of sea level rise is one recent exception.
This post is another.
This week the National Review published an insulting and (very likely) libelous article about climate change expert Dr. Micheal Mann of Penn State University I suspect that a formal apology and a retraction are on the way. if not, Michael Mann will have a very good case against them. The writer of that article deserves to defend his words in court and I suspect he will.
THE FACTS
Dr. Mann has been subjected to an overwhelming amount of hate mail and death threats, (most of which are very badly spelled) because he published a paper several years ago, with the image above in it. You may have heard about this image, it’s called the “Hockey Stick”, and let me say right here, that no matter what you may read on the internet, this image has stood the test of dozens of reviews and investigations. Every scientific peer group that has looked at it says it’s good science and if anyone tells you differently, they are giving you political propaganda.
To put it in plain words- the graph is correct, get over it.
However, some people cannot seem to get over it, and for those whose politics conflict with scientific reality, (whether it be evolution, climate change, or the age of the Earth) this image was too powerful to be ignored. Numerous attempts have been made to somehow or someway discredit Dr. Mann (or his graph). Fortunately, they’ve all failed and Dr. Mann’s famous graph stands as good science. Not only that, but he has been totally cleared of every accusation against him.
Dr. Mann has an excellent book out about his modern-day walk through the trials of Galileo, and I highly recommend it. Oh, and Dr. Mann posted a note on his Facebook page that he has indeed hired a very good attorney and plans to sue the National Review for what they wrote. After reading the insulting article in the Nat. Review, I suspect he will win in a big way. (Update July 24- the letter written by Dr. Mann’s attorney demanding an apology and retraction is available here.)
Standing Up For Science
This kind of thing has happened so frequently among those who do research in climate physics, that a legal defense fund has been established. The very fact that scientists are in need of such a thing is evidence in itself of the assault on basic science underway in America. If you’re the type of person who believes in Science you might think about a donation. Things are so bad that the National Center for Science Education recently added climate change to its mission to defend teachers and the teaching of real science in classrooms.
Some advice to students: If you are in a high school or college science classroom, and the instructor says anything that calls into doubt the scientific realities of the age of the Earth (4,500 million years), natural selection, or that the planet is getting warmer (and greenhouse gases are involved), then you are NOT being taught science. There is NO scientific evidence that call any of these into the slightest doubt.
None.
If your instructor says otherwise, I’d look for a new teacher.
It is a nasty position Michael with high stakes. It is a pity that such universally evaluated and accepted “science” must be defended on such base grounds. However the opposition is funded with over 200+ years of “legal” exploitation of and the pollution of the commons; the ability of the ruthless few to amass those riches. It has been estimated that the cost of transition to a Green Awakening Economy today is ~ the same % of GDP that the cost of transition to sewers and indoor plumbing in the 1800’s. Can anyone deny the value to humanity opposed to dumping “chamber pots” out multistory buildings on a daily basses. (Yet many did for much the same reasons expounded today.) Once again humanity finds itself in a position of the greedy few to amass huge profits from the exploitation of, and the pollution of, the commons. I prefer the “We All Win War” and the “R-love-ution” of investment in the future of humanity, the children, and Earth’s Life Support Systems. The only recourse in continuing the current path of ecocide leads to “Toastville” for the Kidders. Stop profits from pollution. NOW! It is not a cure all but it will go a long way toward a solution IMO.
See also this article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, where, in the second half, Peter Wood also makes Mann to be the beneficiary of a cover-up.
http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/a-culture-of-evasion
Peter Wood also has some problem which is the result of flaws in tertiary ed. Or maybe the proximate cause of the flaws are within Wood.
It’s quite a bit more disgusting than that.
“It has been estimated that the cost of transition to a Green Awakening Economy today is ~ the same % of GDP that the cost of transition to sewers and indoor plumbing in the 1800′s.”
Can you provide a reference or link to that estimate? Would be much appreciated.
Negative, I ran across the estimate some time ago and would have to do some google searching that you can surely do as well. You may in fact be rewarded with better data.
Anytime I write something about Dr. Mann it seems I am flooded with comments that violate the comment policy here in a big way. It confirms my thoughts that his one accurate picture of the past 1000 years is a very powerful image.
My comment policy is quite clear and all comments are reviewed BEFORE being published. So please take the time to read it and save us both some time. I am tagging it on to this comment.
***
Your opinions are welcome, but there are some rules.
A full name and working email address is REQUIRED if you want your comment posted. If you just want to call me names, no problem (I have been doing weather on TV for 30 years, I have a thick skin) just do not expect to see it posted.
Personal attacks on ANYONE are not permitted. I do not publish links to junk science papers/sites. This is not a platform for you to publicize junk science. I write this blog to do just the opposite. On the other hand, if it’s something published in a journal, let me know the cite, so I do not have to hunt for it.
If I have made a mistake, I will correct it immediately. Anyone writing several posts per week is bound to make an error, the correct thing to do is to correct it as soon as possible.
Dan,
I don’t have a strong point of view on Mann as I haven’t reviewed his work, but I was aghast that your defense of science said in summary “I declare my arguments final and complete, and beyond any scientific (as defined by you) inquiry!” That is not a defense of science, but rather an attack on the truth. Let all arguments be heard!
I implied no such thing, but I do imply that the people who were QUALIFIED to judge Mann’s work have all declared it good science. Since his 1999 paper, there have been numerous other papers that have confirmed it.
The give and take of ideas are at the core of scientific discovery, but not the give and take in political broadsheets or cable news networks from those with a political axe to grind. It’s the give and take in the science journals that distinguish what is accepted science, and what is not. Science does not give the public a vote on what is accepted as good science. (They didn’t on Pluto despite the outcry.)
Accuse me of being an ideologue in an ivory tower if you will, but it’s nothing of the sort. Anyone can challenge Mann’s findings. Learn the science and submit to a peer reviewed journal. That’s where the scientific arguments happen. The others are arguments based on political belief. Why, because that one graph makes it impossible to reconcile one’s belief that the climate is not changing, unless it can be discredited in mind of the holder. That alone is the source of the attacks on Dr. Michael Mann.
I’ve had a ton of comments on this post, and most have resorted to name calling, and had false emails with no name attached. I shudder at the thought of allowing the public to decide what is or is not scientific truth especially, when a major party platform is against teaching critical thinking skills.
Now, that is scary.:
Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values
clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based
Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging
the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.
Dear Mr. Satterfield
Forgive my ignorance but as a teacher I believed my job was to teach students to think critically about their universe and not dictate to them. Critical thinking is a leaned process, a process that in a science class needs time and attention. Hence my confusion; should I be telling my class what to think about global warming or can I teach them, like other topics in my science curriculum, how to think?
There is a stark contrast in this question. The former leads to a superficial understanding of the issue while the ladder enhances their critical thinking that they will use and need in any issue. This explains why in the math and science curriculums, there are requirements concerning correlation versus causation as well as the difficulty of isolating cause and effect.
Great experiments are great because they push for a conclusion that proves not only that one variable is related to another but that the variable causes the other to change. Conclusions can always be questioned and at the end of each science lab, students are asked about possible errors in their experiment. We are not asking them because we don’t know the answer, we are asking them because we want them to be thinking and asking questions about things that are being taught to them.
To be honest, and I do mean this, I would feel bad for any student that gets taught about global warming, this amazingly deep issue, in the superficial method that you suggest. Maybe my students should not be taught by me as you suggest. But if they were in your class they would simply not be getting “taught” at all.
Jonathan,
Critical thinking is indeed an important, learned skill. However, a student has to begin with some basic suppositions. I admit, it has been a while since I was in elementary school, but I was taught that there were nine planets (okay…now there are eight). In elementary school and maybe even in high school, I wouldn’t have had the understanding, much less the data, to question this assertion. The good science that Michael Brown has done on the categorization of solar system bodies has led to students now being taught that there are eight planets…and hopefully in high school, at least, the reasons why that is the case.
I’m sure that you teach your students that scientists make observations, try to explain what they see in a hypothetical way and then test to determine if their hypothesis is valid. In the case of global warming, the “test” is in the form of a model (and comparison with data). Now, no model is perfect, but there are certain trends that can be predicted and as far as I am aware (I’m a solar scientist, not a climatologist), the climate models are consistent with the data. We know that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, we know that carbon dioxide emissions are increasing, we know that the global temperature of Earth is increasing, and we know what the atmosphere of Venus is like (which is mostly CO2).
High school students can be taught the above, which should include interpretation of graphical information, followed by a discussion of what modelling is and how it is done. Students can, of course, be left to make their own conclusions, but the conclusion of ~97% of climate scientists is that global warming is occurring and that the origin is anthropogenic. If your Doctor told you that the medical community had determined that smoking was carcenogenic, would you disagree? Perhaps you would read up on the evidence, but at some point, there are skilled lab technicians and scientists who conducted experiments over many years and worked together to come to that conclusion. For your health’s sake, you would accept their conclusion, because if you don’t, there is a high stakes loss of your life.
I hope that you teach these types of things to your students. I’m certain that Dan would.
National Review contributor John O’Sullivan has compouded the comedy of manners with an even more egregious piece
This John O’Sullivan should not be confused with the eponymous former NR Editor.
Anthony Watts, Mark Steyn, Ran Simberg seem to be competing for recognition as the Eric Cartman of Climatology
You state that, “Every scientific peer group that has looked at it says it’s good science and if anyone tells you differently, they are giving you political propaganda.” and “people who were QUALIFIED to judge Mann’s work have all declared it good science. ”
Are you saying that not a single person qualified to judge Mann’s work has disagreed with his techniques or findings? If so, does that mean that you completely dismiss as political propaganda the papers of Stephen McIntyre and others that question the reliability and robustness of surface temperature reconstructions, even though they’ve been peer reviewed? Or are you saying that he, the others that have published papers on the topic, and the peer reviewers are all unqualified?
I think this snippet from Real Climate on the issue shows that claim is without merit. If you have a cite from a real journal I would be glad to look at it and comment on it.
“False claims of the existence of errors in the Mann et al (1998) reconstruction can also be traced to spurious allegations made by two individuals, McIntyre and McKitrick (McIntyre works in the mining industry, while McKitrick is an economist). The false claims were first made in an article (McIntyre and McKitrick, 2003) published in a non-scientific (social science) journal “Energy and Environment” and later, in a separate “Communications Arising” comment that was rejected by Nature based on negative appraisals by reviewers and editor”
Hello,
The name of the publication that Mr. Mann is thinking of suing is “National Review”, not “The National Review”. I cannot understand how you can keep making such an egregious error, especially one that is so easily corrected.
I have it correct. “THE” is not capitalized in the text.
Great piece, but typo in last graf (earth’s age)
I meant this line: age of the Earth (4,500 million years)
Ok, 4,540 million years. +/- 1%.
My mistake, sorry! Again, great piece.
not a prob- Thanks! You should see the crazy stuff in my inbox.
Your comments on the comments are at least as good as your blog.
Just a note to say that I have had towade through quite a number of comments that were either anonymous or resorted to name calling and did not get published. Most also made the same old claims from the usual places and amy were surprisingly old myths including the baseless accusations about data sharing.
I thought about trying to edit some to be acceptable, but really, that is not my role here and if you cannot write an intelligent comment, that is not my problem. Besides it would not be proper to possibly misconstrue someone’s words.
Science journalist Peter Hadfield (CBC, BBC and many more ) has a video out that covers many of the myths regarding Mann and his hockey stick. It is quite good and debunks most of the claims you see on the political websites that pretend to be giving science information. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CY4Yecsx_-s
I don’t know how you put up with the comments, Dan. I think you do a great job at conveying the seriousness of the situation without the hysterics (even if they may be warranted). It’s so completely sad that science has been dragged into extreme polarization of our country.
Mr. Satterfield,
This is my first visit to your blog but will not be my last. Thank you for a valiant effort to encourage civilized discourse, especially about such an important topic. The attacks on Dr. Mann regrettably echo attacks on great scientists and thinkers from the past, from Galileo to Copernicus to Da Vinci and even Einstein. The list is, unfortunately, too long. The good news; legitimate science prevailed. Truth has a momentum which cannot be stopped, only slowed. Thank you for putting your shoulder to the wheel in your own way. That is what it takes to keep the world turning.