Mashey on Wegman

Edward Wegman is a professor at George Mason University. In 2006,at the request of U.S. Rep. Joe Barton and U.S. Rep. Ed Whitfield (both Republicans), he led a small team of statisticians in examining the claims, made by Michael Mann and others, to have reconstructed past temperatures based on various proxy indicators, and to have therefore shown that present temperatures in the planet's Northern hemisphere were "unprecedented" over the past 1,000 or so years. Wegman's report criticized these claims quite harshly and, though Mann's arguments have been largely sustained by mainstream scientists, The Wegman Report has nevertheless been embraced by denialists and members of the Republican Party in the U.S. Congress.

John Mashey is an American computer scientist, best known as the creator of the "Mashey Shell". He has also done some fascinating research on, for example, the demographics of the AGW denialist movement, which I have written about here and here. However, his latest project, appearing on the Deep Climate website, is more important by several orders of magnitude.

Because, in essence, Mashey is accusing the writers of The Wegman Report (whether these were Wegman himself or others on his team) of plagiarism, among a host of other forms of academic mis-conduct:

Of 91 pages, 35 are mostly plagiarized text, but often injected with errors, bias and changes of meaning. Its Bibliography is mostly padding, 50% of the references uncited in the text. Many references are irrelevant or dubious. The team relied heavily on a long-obsolete sketch and very likely on various uncredited sources. Much of the work was done by Said (then less than 1 year post-PhD) and by students several years pre-PhD. The (distinguished) 2nd author Scott wrote only a 3-page standard mathematical Appendix. Some commenters were surprised to be later named as serious “reviewers.

In his recommendations, Mashey suggests:

George Mason University ought to investigate many problems, as should several other universities and journals, the US Office of Research Integrity and perhaps the American Statistical Association (ethics issues). At least 4 agencies may have possible fund mis-uses to consider. Some authors or publishers might pursue copyright issues. Congress and the DoJ should investigate the manufacture of the Wegman Report. Possible felonies are covered by the US Code, 18.U.S.C §1001 (misleading Congress), §371 (conspiracy), §4 (misprision), which might involve many more people. The report lists about 30 issues, not all for Wegman Report itself, but including derivations and related activities.

I should emphasize once again that this is serious stuff. For one thing, the accusations leave Mr. Mashey and the folks at DC open to a possible lawsuit. However, the instances of plagiarism, padding, and "dubious" citations are so thoroughly documented (here)that I think their case has been pretty much demonstrated. To give just one example, the Wegman Report bibliography references:

Valentine, Tom (1987) "Magnetics may hold key to ozone layer problems," Magnets, 2(1) 18-26.

It turns out that Mr. Valentine has no relevant scientific background. Furthermore, he has also written about engines that consume no fuel, psychic surgery, and other like topics in addition to the ozone hole. Remember again that The Wegman Report was presented to the U.S. congress as a piece of reputable science.

In any case, Mashey's research is also serious stuff because of its timing. The U.S. Republicans may walk away from November's mid-term elections with control of the House, Senate, or perhaps both chambers, and they have already promised to launch witch-hunts against climate scientists. It would be useful to have Mr. Wegman, should he be on the witness list in one of these show trials, confronted with some of the irregularities in his own research.

For more information, Joe Romm has a good account here.

Marc Morano's New Hero

...is ex-University of Ottawa professor Denis Rancourt, last heard offering himself as an "assurity" to RBC bombing suspect Claude Haridge. Haridge and bombing suspect Matthew Morgan-Brownboth both attended Rancourt's now-discontinued social activism course. In 2008, U-of-0 dismissed Rancourt after numerous complaints about the course (including accusations of anti-Semitism)...a move which Rancourt, according to his wiki page, blamed on the "Israel Lobby"

Turns out Rancourt has been cranking out denialist Lit since at least 2007, and has been praised by such luminaries as Alexander Cockburn and Senator James Inhofe. This is only his most recent effort.

Good find Marc! The credibility of the AGW denialist community has been enhanced immeasurably by your touting this guy's work.

Bjørn Lomborg To Lose State Funding?

Conservative Party climate spokesman Per Ørum Jørgensen said the government should consider if it was paying for Lomborg to go to Greenland and tell people there that it was fine not to support a climate agreement at the conference in Copenhagen.

Jørgensen was referring to Lomborg’s trip to Greenland in August when he praised the country’s stance that if a climate deal did not allow developing nations to advance industrially it would not support it.

Lomborg has been providing the Denialist community with pseudo-science talking points for years now. My favorite is probably here, where he claims that things will work out fine for the polar bear if it only learns to to evolve backwards.

The Buzz On Buzz Aldrin

On July 26th, 1969, at the age of 39, Buzz Aldrin became only the 2nd man to walk on the surface of the moon. This year, at the age of 69, he became one of the world's most famous climate change deniers:

While trying to spread the word about the possibilities of space, Dr Aldrin said he was sceptical of climate change theories.

“I think the climate has been changing for billions of years,” he said.

[...]

“I’m not necessarily of the school that we are causing it all, I think the world is causing it.”

...an event much discussed in on blogs, on Fox, and elsewhere. Less often mentioned was the fact that, around the same time, Buzz also came out as a proponent of the theory that there is an alien artifact--a "monolith", if you will-- on the Martian moon Phobos:

Ah well, we all get old. In any case, many years ago climate change denier Fred Singer also thought something was fishy about Phobos.

John Maclean Is Back To Mis-Representing His Own Paper

Will the world get warmer if there is an El Nino? Yes, that's extremely likely. In recent paper that I co-wrote with Professor Bob Carter and Professor Chris de Freitas we showed that the the average global temperature as measured from satellites shifts about 7 months after a corresponding shift in the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). The visual correlation is so good (see our figure 7) that its clear that the ENSO is the primary driver. The absence of any residual warming (i.e. warming that the ENSO cannot account for) means that carbon dioxide has negligible, if any, effect.

See here .

In anticipation of certain comments... (a) we use the analysis as a means of exploring a relationship and as a means to an end, which figure 7 amply demonstrates, (b) we do not use temperature data measured at the surface because it has far too many inconsistencies, and (c) we often use the word "trends" in a general sense rather than a statistical sense (where the exact line will be described to an accuracy of several decimal places).

I've written about the paper in question here, and there are plenty of links in that post to other, more systematic debunkings. But what is important is that, after admitting (along with his co-authors) that the paper in question "does not analyse trends" (meaning it has nothing to offer to the AGW debate), McLeans now wants it to be about trends again--though "trends" in some non-statistical sense. But not, I would argue, about "trends" in the general sense (meaning "general tendency or inclination"), because that was precisely the sense of the term at issue when De Freitas and co. previously admitted their work was not about trends. I admit to being somewhat confused by the 2nd paragraph, and suspect it is straight bullshit. I mean, the statistical sense is the general sense, no?

Sigh. Its hard to explain bullshit.

PS ESNO=El Niño

Chris De Freitas Back Pedals

Much back and forth on climate blogs about this paper, Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature, by AGW deniers J. D. McLean, C. R. de Freitas (who I have written about previously here), and R. M. Carter. It has been touted by Morano as yet another refutation of AGW theory and, indeed, the paper's press release makes just such claims:

Nature not man responsible for recent global warming

[...]

Bob Carter, one of four scientists who has recently questioned the justification for the proposed Australian emissions trading scheme, says that this paper has significant consequences for public climate policy.

"The close relationship between ENSO and global temperature, as described in the paper, leaves little room for any warming driven by human carbon dioxide emissions. The available data indicate that future global temperatures will continue to change primarily in response to ENSO cycling, volcanic activity and solar changes.”

“Our paper confirms what many scientists already know: which is that no scientific justification exists for emissions regulation, and that, irrespective of the severity of the cuts proposed, ETS (emission trading scheme) will exert no measurable effect on future climate.”

However, faced by a barrage of withering criticism in the blogosphere, for example

That ENSO is a major contributor to variability in global temperature, is ancient news[....]That ENSO is a major contributor to recent trends in global temperature, they have not shown — not even “perhaps.” In fact it’s downright impossible for their methodology to do so.

...co-author De Freitas has essentially disowned the remarks from his own presser. This admission occurs deep in the comments at Watts Up With That:

Chris de Freitas (16:08:44) :

The paper by McLean et al (JGR, 2009) does not analyse trends in mean global temperature (MGT); rather, it examines the extent to which ENSO accounts for variation in MGT.

[...]

Since so much of the criticism in the blogosphere to date is about the failure of the McLean et al paper to detect trends, which was not the aim of the paper

What this means is that Mr. de Freitas is admitting that his paper says nothing of significance about the existence/non-existence of AGW, contra the statements in its press release. Kudos to Joel Shore (also in the WUWT comments) for screwing this admission out of Mr. De Frietas.

And if you are wondering how the paper made it through peer review in the first place, there is an interesting trick AGW skeptics will sometimes employ (Roy Spencer does this sometimes) wherein they make their wild and crazy assertions in the press release to the paper, but leave them out of the paper itself. That is, the paper becomes an occasion for a polemic conducted via press release, blogosphere, and MSM. That seems to be what has occurred here.

PS. The same climb-down, posted by McLean and attributed to all three co-authors, also appears in the comments at Real Climate.

PPS ESNO=El Niño

That's One Confused Denier: Marc Morano Employs Pro-Hindu Young Earth Creationist Talking Points To Refute Global Warming!

Several days ago, this headline appeared on Climate Depot, a climate change denial site run by Republican Alpha-Hack Marc Morano (the guy behind the Swiftboat smear):It links to a post from a blog post re the Oronteus Finaeus Map, which purports to show Antarctica

...as being largely ice-free with flowing rivers and a clean coastline. Some of the mountain ranges pictured on the map have only been recently discovered.

...thus disproving the theory of man-made global warming. Except that the map, which isn't a particularly accurate portrayal of Antarctica in the 1st place, has long been employed by anti-evolutionists, ancient UFO buffs, and other assorted nut-jobs in support of their various conspiracy theories and hobby-horses. Notably, it turned up in the 1996 NBC program The Mysterious Origins of Man, narrated by none other than Charleton Heston. From Talk Origins:

Although MOM was anti-evolutionary, it was not advocating scientific creationism, even though some of the "experts" and arguments are familiar to readers of scientific creationist literature. Instead, just as scientific creationism is an attempt to use science to support fundamentalist Christianity, MOM is apparently an attempt to use science to support Hinduism. Much of the material in the program is based on the contents of two books[....] by Michael Cremo and Richard Thompson, both of whom appeared on the show and are members of the Bhaktivedanta Institute, a branch of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.

Not surprising that the map

...probably based on the drawings of Portuguese sailors, and possibly depicting Australia rather than the Antarctic, should get pressed into service in the anti-AGW cause. Unfortunately, not surprising either that Morano should choose to highlight the kind of gibberish that has sprung up around it.

But I guess when your target audience is the Fox News crowd.

Our Best Guess Is Is Likely Wrong (AGW Could Be WORSE Than Expected)

Marc Morano jumps all over the press release for this paper (Carbon dioxide forcing alone insufficient to explain Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum warming), and is flogging it as yet another blow to the theory of AGW. But he's got nothin'. From the release:

Doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide is an oft-talked-about threshold, and today's climate models include accepted values for the climate's sensitivity to doubling. Using these accepted values and the PETM carbon data, the researchers found that the models could only explain about half of the warming that Earth experienced 55 million years ago.

Which is to say that something else must have caused the other half of the PETM warming. Co-author Richard Zeeb explains:

But Zeebe said this [the release of CO2] could only explain a 1 to 3.5 degree Celsius rise in temperatures, adding that a commonly accepted scientific range for a doubling of CO2 is between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees Celsius.

This meant other factors must have been at work to drive up temperatures between 5 and 9 degrees Celsius.


And if there are unknown factors that contributed to the PETM warming being greater than current models predict, then it is quite possible that future warming will be greater than what current models predict, as these unknown factors add their weight to the equation:

"If this additional warming which we do not really understand, was caused as a response to the CO2 warming, then there is a chance that also a future warming could be more intense than people anticipate right now," Zeebe said.

In addition, and contra Singer, who argues on CCNET that

Their discussion simply *assumes* that CO2 should be the cause of the sudden warming 55 my ago.

...the paper, more specifically Zeebe's later discussion with Reuters, makes no such assumption, at least if "cause" = "PETM trigger event".

"There may have been an initial trigger," he told Reuters on Wednesday from Hawaii. This could be a deep ocean warming that caused a catastrophic release of methane from hydrate deposits under the seabed.

...which is one of the standard theories in the relevant PETM literature.

More Shuffling The Deck Chairs On The Good Ship Denial

International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC) Executive Director Tom Harris is looking for an Executive Director for their American afficliate, to be known as the Climate Science Coalition of America (CSCA).

With Dr. Roy Spencer’s acceptance of the Chair position for the new Climate Science Coalition of America, we are now seeking candidates for the Executive Director position, the person who will actually lead the organization from an administrative perspective. Please see the following link which describes the sort of person we are seeking and forward this on anywhere you think would help us in our search for the ideal candidate:

[Here] is the job ad.

Thanks very much!
Tom Harris
Executive Director
International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC)
P.O. Box 23013
Ottawa, Ontario
K2A 4E2
Canada

The ad is self is quite revealing. PR/Advocacy/looking good on the Rush Limbaugh show are all desirable requirements. So are skills at designing "communications packages for the general public, especially young people."

NDP And Reform: Together At Last

"Joining the B.C. New Democratic Party in vowing to axe the tax is the Reform Party of B.C., who have adopted the slogan, “We ♥ CO2.”"

Also lining up behind the NDP in railing against the carbon tax are the B.C. Conservatives, who have made the issue one of the six main planks of their platform.

And another 1st: NDP policy gets a prominent write-up on IceCap, the premier Climate Change Denialist site. They must be so proud.

Same Old Same Old, The Japanese Edition

The "Japanese scientists" who have "made a dramatic break with the UN and Western-backed hypothesis of climate change" are the same brand of local deniers and retired old farts from mostly-irrelevant fields that usually publish this kind of report, except they talk like this: 資源学会はエネルギーと特に関係の深い電気・機械・化学のみならず.

Jon Jenkins: Another Denier With Credibility Problems

He wrote against global warming, and his university revoked his status. Or they sacked him for misrepresenting his status in what he wrote against global warming.

Its starting to sound like the latter. Where have I heard that before?

Climate Change Denier Says NDP/Liberal Coalition Can't Work

Remember Barry Cooper? He's the guy that wrangled the junk scientists at Friends of Science (Tim Ball's gang) their operating money, under odd circumstances.

When you read his remarks on a potential NDP/Liberal coalition, keep that in mind. This guy is ready to sling bullshit.

Are Christians Bad For The Environment?

Just one of the many questions former IPCC chair for scientific assessment and practising Christian John Houghton considers in his new Physics Today interview. His answer?

Of course, it's a very broad human responsibility, not just a Christian one. But on the whole, Christians have been lagging behind many other groups in their concern for the environment, care for the Earth, and care for poor people. And Christians, because of their beliefs, should really be out in front.

Houghton also discusses the greening of the Evangelicals and blames America for being the seat of the Denialist movement. Important stuff because, as Newsbusters columnist and Denier extraordinaire Noel Sheppard has written:

Folks, If religious leaders are going to get in on the con, we're in trouble...

Damn right.

Lyndon LaRouche Becomes A Player In The Denialist Movement

On July 11th, to great fanfare, ABC (The Australian Broadcasting Corporation) broadcast Martin Durkin's fakeumentary "The Great Global Warming Swindle". Afterwards, a studio audience asked some very strange questions of host Tony Jones and his guests. And one of them wore a t-shirt that read "Anthropogenic Global Warming is a bigger fraud than your girlfriend's orgasm!"

As it turns out, the audience had been infiltrated by about 15 members of the ALYM, or Australian LaRouche Youth Movement: followers, that is, of Lyndon LaRouche.

I have written about Lyndon LaRouche before. To characterize him briefly, I'd call him an extremely rich, tax evading anti-Semite who thinks the Queen of England sells drugs and the aliens are coming, among other things. He has also managed to somehow connect Nazi Eugenics, Al Gore, Global Warming, and (once again) the Queen of England.

And, whats interesting is that, as I noted here, and others have pointed out elsewhere, this is not La Rouche's first foray into the Warming Wars. His magazine, Executive Intelligence Review, seems to be one of the few places left where water witch and climate skeptic Nils-Axel Mörner or, as I like to call him, the dowsing denier, can still air his views. In fact, there seems to be a whole section on EIR permanently devoted to "debunking" climate change theory. Furthermore, this is not the first time the ALYM has used these kinds of tactics. In April, for example:

The LaRouche Youth Movement strongly intervened in a meeting hosted by the Australian Fabian Society (a "pro-worker" arm of British imperial policy, which runs the Australian Labor Party) entitled, "A New Socio-Economic Framework: Progressive Responses to Globalisation".

[...]

We blanketed the audience of 50 or so as they were going in with the CEC's latest New Citizen, with the banner headline "Global Warming is a Fraud!" LYM members Aaron Isherwood and Doug Mitchell identified themselves and intervened in question time, Aaron to Liddle on the necessity for LaRouche's New Bretton Woods (NBW), and Doug to Norris on the global warming swindle, including whether the Blair government would fire Al Gore for pushing this hoax.

On the other hand, not much activity on this front from the Canadian wing of the LaRouche Youth movement. While there have been several classes held in Montreal on environmental issues, these don't seem to have inspired anything in the way of an "intervention". However, in May the Montreal LYM organized a Town Hall meeting :

...using as the invitation a cartoon of Al Gore stepping on Africa in the Cecil Rhodes colossus-pose. The flyer read: "Al Gore's Plan to Solve 'Over-population': Kill Africans."

It is a pity that LaRouche's gang doesn't seem to be well integrated into the broader Denialist movement. It would be truly wonderful to get a picture of Tim Ball, for example, presenting to a room full of LaRouchians.

Update: According to this, the Montreal youth movement did indeed attempt to disrupt Gore's speech in Montreal when he came to town.