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A Disgrace To the Profession, climate change, Climate science, EPA, Mark Steyn, Michael Mann, obama, Professor J. Scott Armstrong
Among the most common features of global warming/climate change “research” is scientific fraud all but mandated by the money and political influence underlying it. “Lost” data sets, refusal to provide data sets and methodology to other scientists for replication, computer models that are dictionary definitions of “garbage in-garbage out,” altering measurements to conform with a hypothesis, ignoring data that don’t support a hypothesis, and more characterize much of what is lauded by the Left as “climate science.” This is not surprising, considering a recent finding, as explained by Brietbart:
Fewer than 1 percent of papers published in scientific journals follow the scientific method, according to research by Wharton School professor and forecasting expert J. Scott Armstrong.
Professor Armstrong, who co-founded the peer-reviewed Journal of Forecasting in 1982 and the International Journal of Forecasting in 1985, made the claim in a presentation about what he considers to be ‘alarmism’ from forecasters over man-made climate change.
‘We also go through journals and rate how well they conform to the scientific method. I used to think that maybe 10 percent of papers in my field … were maybe useful. Now it looks like maybe, one tenth of one percent follow the scientific method’ said Armstrong in his presentation, which can be watched in full below. ‘People just don’t do it.
This is unsurprising to those that are old enough, and have been paying attention. I recall reading alarmism about an imminent ice age back in the 1970s, which eventually changed to global warming, and now, climate change when the forecast warming failed to materialize. In every case, doom was imminent, right around the corner unless we—mostly America—spread around billions of dollars to combat it. Prediction after prediction utterly failed, and over and over again, the data and evidence supportive of those failed predictions somehow vanished. Here are Armstrong’s criteria. They are unremarkable to anyone with even a passing familiarity with the scientific method:
According to Armstrong, very little of the forecasting in climate change debate adheres to these criteria. ‘For example, for disclosure, we were working on polar bear [population] forecasts, and we were asked to review the government’s polar bear forecast. We asked, ‘could you send us the data’ and they said ‘No’… So we had to do it without knowing what the data were.
Why would any reputable scientist, particularly those working for the government, refuse to provide data they used to reach their conclusions? After all, such information, a part of government work, is owned by the public, unless of course, it involves top secret, national security involved polar bear forecasts. Hey, you don’t suppose the Russians have been colluding with Trump and polar bears…? We need a special polar bear prosecutor! The most likely conclusion is they have no data, or they made it up or otherwise altered it to reach conclusions not supported by an honest application of the scientific method.
According to Armstrong, forecasts from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) violate all eight criteria.
Considering the people involved in that panel, like the litigious and potentially fraudulent Michael Mann, this is hardly surprising.
They’re rewarded for doing non-scientific research. One of my favourite examples is testing statistical significance – that’s invalid. It’s been over 100 years we’ve been fighting the fight against that. Even its inventor thought it wasn’t going to amount to anything. You can be rewarded then, for following an invalid [method].’
‘They cheat. If you don’t get statistically significant results, then you throw out variables, add variables, [and] eventually you get what you want.’
‘My big thing is advocacy. People are asked to come up with certain answers, and in our whole field that’s been a general movement ever since I’ve been here, and it just gets worse every year. And the reason is funded research.
As they say in Texas, “you dance with them what brung you.” Such bastardization of science was the rule rather than the exception under the Obama Administration, which spent untold billions on unproven, but politically favored “research,” and various green boondoggles. For Obamites there was no question that global warming was occurring, the only question was how to support it via pseudo-science that would provide cover for massive wealth redistribution. Research grants were handed out only to those who could be relied upon to produce the correct results by any means necessary.
Armstrong concluded his talk by arguing that scientific evidence should be required for all climate regulations.
Imagine that. And we laymen, assured of the sanctity of the scientific method in our science survey courses, always thought that to be the case. John Hinderaker of Powerline reveals just how naïve many have been:
It is increasingly clear that the battle over global warming consists of science on one side, and politically-motivated dogma on the other. Ken Haapala of the Science and Environmental Policy Project offers historical context:
In the 30 years between the 1979 Charney report to the National Academy of Sciences on an investigation of the possible effects of increased carbon dioxide on the earth’s temperatures to the 2009 EPA’s finding that carbon dioxide, and other greenhouse gases, endanger human health and welfare, government-funded Climate Studies have largely turned from empirical science to dogma – a belief system unsubstantiated by physical evidence.
The Charney report included some of the nation’s best meteorologists and climate researchers and the report recognized that laboratory tests demonstrated that the direct influence on global temperatures from doubling carbon dioxide would be minor – possibly unmeasurable.
The report also identified educated guesses – estimates – that the CO2 influence might be greatly enhanced by increases in water vapor – the dominant greenhouse gas. If correct, this positive feedback would greatly multiply any increase from CO2. The report recognized that the warming would occur in the atmosphere, and that we did not have comprehensive measurements of atmospheric temperatures. Thus, the hypothesis of significant atmospheric warming from increased water vapor could not be tested.
The EPA. Hmm. Could that organization be interested in non-scientific, manipulated results, results that would dramatically increase its power, results that align with the policy preferences of leftists?
In March 1990, Science Magazine published a paper by Roy Spencer and John Christy describing a method of using data collected from NOAA polar orbiting weather satellites to comprehensively calculate atmospheric temperatures for virtually the entire globe, except for the extreme poles. These data cover about 97 to 98 percent of the globe, including oceans, deserts, mountain ranges, jungles, etc. where there are few surface instruments. Initially, certain small errors in calculation were discovered, including orbital decay. These were acknowledged and corrected. This is how science advances.
These data, published monthly, are independently calculated by two other entities and are independently verified by four sets of weather balloon data using different instruments. The government-sponsored United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), and the EPA largely ignore the atmospheric data, which is far more comprehensive and better tested than surface data.
Not only are the satellite data more comprehensive and better tested than surface data, they haven’t been tampered with. Government-funded warmists at NOAA and other agencies have systematically altered historical surface temperature data by lowering temperatures that were recorded decades ago, and raising temperatures that have been reported recently. The surface temperature record has been so badly corrupted that it is doubtful whether it can be used to prove anything at all. Yet government-funded warmists rely on it to the exclusion of the transparent satellite data.
Hinderaker’s observations agree with Armstrong’s research. If the actual data don’t provide the results warmists prefer, they ignore them or alter them. But why would any competent scientist ignore the best available data? That’s the point: no competent, honorable scientist would. Pseudo-scientists serving political ideology and masters would.
Unfortunately, subsequent government-funded research went from properly testing the educated guesses (hypotheses) in the Charney Report to using them to create fear of global warming, now called climate change. Economically drastic programs and government policies have been justified based on these untested guesses.
From 1993 to 2016, the US government spent over $40 Billion on what government entities classify Climate Science – and has produced no refinement to the 1979 Charney Report.
Forty billion, even during the age of Obama, is real money. Such expenditures on faulty, even false science explain why actual evidence is commonly ignored: it would derail the gravy train.
Independent scientists and climate researchers have produced far better estimates of the influence of CO2, based on empirical (scientific) observations. But that research is not included in official government publications.
Public policies on energy and the environment should be based on the best available empirical science, not on incomplete studies, which have become dogma.
On March 29, the U.S. House Committee on Science Space & and Technology held a hearing titled “Climate Science: Assumptions, Policy Implications, and the Scientific Method” featuring climate scientists John Christy, Judith Curry, Michael Mann, and Roger Pielke Jr., who recently left the field, in part because of abusive tactics by certain members of Congress. Comparing the written testimony of John Christy with that of Michael Mann provides a stark illustration of the difference between empirical science and scientific dogma.
Michael Mann is among the global warming “scientists” caught in their defrauding of the public. Mann, who is known for suing anyone daring to criticize him, is currently embroiled in a six-year lawsuit against Mark Steyn, the National Review, and others. Mann initially suggested that daring to criticize a Nobel Laureate was actionable under the civil law, but was eventually forced to withdraw that claim when Steyn proved Mann never won a Nobel prize. Steyn’s most recent article on that never-ending litigation may be found here. An excerpt from that article:
Mark Steyn’s A Disgrace to the Profession is a compilation of scientific commentary on Michael Mann and his work and is a valuable antidote to the idea that questioning or criticizing this particular researcher is an overt admission of ignorance, let alone an “attack on science”. What I will argue in this essay is that Steyn has done serious students of the AGW hysteria an even greater service. In fact, this work reveals some features of the hysteria that are, I think, critical for understanding it in depth. The present essay, which will elaborate on this point, is intended as a contribution to the study of what one of those quoted in Steyn’s book called “pathological science”.
For those who aren’t familiar with the work, Steyn’s book is a collection of highly critical comments by scientists of varying degrees of eminence concerning Michael Mann and his (in)famous “hockey stick” temperature graph. The book emanated from a still-ongoing lawsuit that Mann filed against Steyn for writing in a National Review Online article that the hockey stick was fraudulent. Steyn was struck by the fact that, when it came time to file third-party amicus briefs, no one filed a brief in Mann’s defense. So he began combing the Web and other resources, and found a plethora of critical comments that he collected into one volume. In fact, by now almost everyone, skeptic or warmist, has backed away from this very flawed piece of evidence.
Whether people like Mann are the cause of the disaster that is contemporary science—particularly climate science—or merely willing recipients of money and the destruction of the scientific method that money compels, is a topic for another day. Suffice it to say the climate emperors are wearing no clothes, and more and more are realizing it.
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pieslapper said:
When the pseudo science of Paul Ehrlich’s “Population bomb” failed to detonate, the statists had to come up with some new method of control, you know, for the children.
ontoiran said:
what became of the attorneys general lawsuit against exxxon/mobil, et al for “misleading” all of us climate deniers?
Mike McDaniel said:
Dear onto iran:
As far as I can tell, it’s still winding its way through the courts.
Casey Tompkins said:
To pick a nit, Mann did not sue Steyn & company over the hockey stick, but over specific comparisons between Mann and and Jerry Sandusky.
I think the claim that Steyn & company deliberately implied that Mann was some sort of child abuser is not supported, but claiming that Mann was originally concerned more about the hockey stick graph is disingenuous .
In point of fact Steyn & company only claimed a similarity in approach to Mann and Sandusky in terms of the casual approach to investigations. They claimed an equivalent “whitewash” for both investigations which Mann interpreted as a claimed equivalence between himself and a child molester.
Leonard Jones said:
There is a HUGE loophole that allows the use of such language in the
context of humor, comedy, satire or sarcasm. There was a famous
case in which some public figure sued a comedian for libel or slander.
Not only did the court find for defendant, (a humorist) but when the
plaintiff slandered the humorist, his lawyer told him to shut is mouth
because could end up being sued.
I think it is all about the fradulent hockey stick grap and is also why Steyn
called him the “Jerry Sandusky of climate science.” Mann is going to be
sued into penury in this case. In an earlier civil action against Dr. Timothy
Ball, Mann defaulted because he stubbornly refused to release his
data and methods in the discovery phase.
Mann’s MO is to file SLAPP suits on ANONE Who challenges his so-called
“Science.” This is the exact opposite of science, zero peer review, distorted
graphs, faulty data and methodology. Any real scientist would have to have
balls bigger than a water-buffalo to top that off with a SLAPP suit!
The average temperature is remarkably stable. There is an average
peak to peak swing that has never exceed much more than 2 degrees C.
Mann’s fradulent graph goes like this over a period of 1,000 years:
/
/
___________________________/
There is no varaition whatsoever above or below the baseline. You
would have to type about 960 underlines followed by one slash, and
even then, that single character could not represent more than about
a 2 degrees C increase in a flat baseline.
_________X960_______________/
This is an INTENTIONAL fraud! The spreadsheet he used auto-scaled
the graph.
CO2 is one a trace gas in the Earth’s atmosphere existing at about
350 PPM (Or about 3-1/2 in 10,000). It is way too small to have ANY
effect whatseover on average global temperatures. It is that simple.
And of that 350 PPM, all but 14 were contributed by nature.
Mike McDaniel said:
Dear Leonard Jones:
As Steyn has written, the DC courts have made what should have been a quick dismissal of Mann’s suit into a never-ending disaster of legal misadventure. I suspect you’re right, and Steyn will not only prevail, but will sue Mann into oblivion, but it has already consumed 3 years, with no sign of ending anytime soon. Still, this is one of the most important First Amendment cases in a very long time. God bass Steyn for staying the course at enormous expense.
Leonard Jones said:
That did not format correctly. The two slashed on the left should be
atop and to the right of the firt line. The contained too many characters
and these two got wrapped around!