Guest commentary by David Middleton
Have you noticed the media’s coverage of Dr. Tim Ball’s court victory?
Neither did I.
The great news about Dr. Tim Ball’s court victory over Michael Mann appears to have been ignored by everyone except WUWT and the GWPF. I wonder why? I did find this on ARS Technica:
Have you guys seen this? I wonder if the Ars front page is going to cover this news.
Really embarrassing for Michael Mann. I wonder how that lawsuit vs. Mark Steyn is going too.
So far, no one has replied to “Billy.” I’m writing this at 8:00 AM, Houston time and it won’t be published until 8:00 PM… So maybe Billy’s question will be answered by then.
However, I did find a couple of interesting Clean Technica articles from back in June.
Defending Mann’s Hockey Stick because #ExxonKnew
Michael Mann Wins A Round In Court, Other Challenges Pending
June 17th, 2019 by Steve Hanley
Michael Mann is the man fossil fuel advocates love to hate. Together with fellow climate scientists Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes, he created the famous “hockey stick” graph in 1999 that predicted a sharp increase in global temperatures as carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere increased. That graph became a focal point of Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth.
For his efforts to alert us all to the danger of continuing to spew unlimited quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, Mann has been hounded by operatives acting on behalf of the oil and gas industries. He has been followed and kept under surveillance in hopes that he would commit some personal peccadillo that could be used to undermine his credibility.
[…]
Mann Sues Over 2011 Blog Post
In 2011, the Frontier Centre for Public Policy headquartered in Winnipeg published a statement on its website that accused Mann of fraud. He demanded a retraction and an apology but was rebuffed, so he sued. On June 14, the Frontier Centre apologized to Mann and removed the offending post from its site, according to a report by the National Observer.
I’ve settled my claims in BC Supreme Court against The Frontier Centre for Public Policy Inc. on a basis which includes the following retraction & apology. I have not settled my claims against Tim Ball, who remains a defendant in that lawsuit: https://t.co/3q5YhWoxxQ pic.twitter.com/SMWrD6LxlG
— Michael E. Mann (@MichaelEMann) June 7, 2019
A Vicious Attack In The National Review
Mann is still embroiled in a legal tussle in the United States. In 2012, the National Review published a story by Mark Steyn who called Mann “the Jerry Sandusky of climate science.” Mann sued for defamation. In his complaint, he states that Steyn went on to say, “He has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science that could have dire economic consequences for the nation and the planet. Michael Mann was behind the fraudulent climate change hockey stick graph, the very ringmaster of the three-ring circus.”How embarrassing for Steyn that a chart created by Exxon’s own scientists in 1982 mirrors Mann’s hockey stick graph almost exactly! Mann won at the trial court level but the case is now on appeal to a three-judge panel of the DC Circuit Court of appeals and the defendants are asking for a hearing by all the judges of that court. They have been joined by a coterie of interested parties including the Washington Post, NBC Universal, the Society of Professional Journalists, and the American Civil Liberties Union of the District of Columbia, all of whom warn that a decision favorable to Mann could put a crimp in a free press.
[…]
This bizarre bit caught my eye…
How embarrassing for Steyn that a chart created by Exxon’s own scientists in 1982 mirrors Mann’s hockey stick graph almost exactly!
I don’t recall any climate reconstructions in the pack of #ExxonKnew lies. So, naturally, I clicked on the link and quoted the only passage that seemed even tangentially relevant to the bizarre bit.
Confessions Of A Climate Activist: Don’t Blame Yourself, Go After The Criminals Who Sold Out Humanity For Profit
June 12th, 2019 by Steve Hanley
[…]
An investigation by Inside Climate News in 2015 revealed that ExxonMobil new exactly what the result of burning fossil fuels would be way back in 1982. Its scientists even created a graph showing what the result of pumping billions of toms of carbon dioxide would be over time. A version of that chart, with red lines added to show where we are today, was tweeted recently by Bloomberg correspondent Tom Randall.
The original hockey stick chart created in 1998 by climate scientists Michael E. Mann, Raymond S. Bradley and Malcolm K. Hughes brought hoots of derision from the industry and led to a well funded campaign — paid for in large part by ExxonMobil — to discredit the scientists who created it.
[…]
I hope, some day, the oil industry sues people who call us criminals. It’s time to go full-Chevron.
Here are the Tom Randall tweets:
Here’s another from @exxonmobile 1982. It showed how global warming would initially be almost indistinguishable from normal climate fluctuations. But by 2020 there could be no doubt—the old “normal” would be entirely left behind. Welcome to the future 2/ https://t.co/BPRn3ZMigz pic.twitter.com/lYvqLldBdh
— Tom Randall (@tsrandall) May 14, 2019
My first thought was that these cartoons bear no resemblance to the Hockey Stick and my second thought was that they looked very familiar (1, 2).
The first allegedly proprietary Exxon climate model is a cartoon derived from a 1979 National Research Council publication. It starts in 1960. The Hockey Stick starts 960 years earlier. The problem with the Hockey Stick was its erasure of the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age before splicing on the instrumental data . The Exxon cartoon starts about 100 years after the end of the Little Ice Age.
I plotted HadCRUT4 and MLO CO2 on the cartoon at the same scale… The “models” were wrong back then and are not much better now.
The second cartoon was based on papers published by the American Meteorological Society, American Geophysical Union and other publicly available research.
Exxon’s own modeling research confirmed this and the company’s results were later published in at least three peer-reviewed science articles. Two of them were co-authored by Hoffert, and a third was written entirely by Flannery.
Exxon’s modeling experts also explained away the less-dire predictions of a 1979 study led by Reginald Newell, a prominent atmospheric scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Newell’s model projected that the effects of climate change would not be as severe as most scientists were predicting.
Specifically, Newell and a co-author from the Air Force named Thomas Dopplick challenged the prevailing view that a doubling of the earth’s CO2 blanket would raise temperatures about 3°C (5°F)– a measure known as climate sensitivity. Instead, they said the earth’s true climate sensitivity was roughly less than 1°C (2°F).
I have yet to find any actual Exxon models… Much less any that confirmed a “Global Warming Consensus” or “Climate ‘Catastrophe’”. What I have found are reports which cite other people’s models and quite a few “cartoons” derived from those reports.
I plotted HadCRUT4 on the second cartoon at the same scale. I anchored it on the range from -1 °C (K) to +1 °C (K). The cartoon is not exactly to scale and is off a bit at -2 °C (K). It clearly demonstrates that, apart from the recent El Niño, HadCRUT4 is within the “range of natural fluctuations (climatic noise).
Who is Steve Hanley? What sort of scientific qualifications would lead him to think that “a chart created by Exxon’s own scientists in 1982 mirrors Mann’s hockey stick graph almost exactly“?
About Steve Hanley
Steve Hanley Steve writes about the interface between technology and sustainability from his home in Rhode Island and anywhere else the Singularity may lead him. His motto is, “Life is not measured by how many breaths we take but by the number of moments that take our breath away!” You can follow him on Google + and on Twitter.Website: http://rhodetrips@wordpress.com
According to LinkedIn, he has A.B. degrees in English and sociology from Dartmouth and a J.D. from Boston University.
I am the site director for EcoWorldly.com, a global website specializing in ecotourism and sustainable travel/ I am also a contributing writer for Gas 2.0, Green Building Elements, EcoLocalizer and Sustainablog. My focus is on sustainable living and weaning society from its addiction to fossil fuels.
Steve Hanley, LinkedIn
Wean this, Bucko!
What sort of qualifications would lead me to question Mr. Hanley’s assertion? A B.S. in Earth Science (geology concentration, math minor), 38 years of experience as a geophysicist/geologist in the oil & gas industry and the ability to differentiate 1960 from 960. MAGA!
via Watts Up With That?
August 23, 2019 at 08:28PM
Iowa Climate Science Education 