Another bombshell coming for AGW?

The problem iwth this news item, is if tochatihu is correct it has no substance. That the mann hockey stick was wrong is no longer a matter of speculation but a matter of fact and the data has been corrected. Whenever the numbers look too good on a statistical study it is a place for us to be extra skeptical. The corrected data gives us a better picture of earth temperatures, but does not change the science of a warming trend within the earths cycles.

Thank you for pointing out what this is all about. Science should be corrected with scientific criticism not law suits unless real fraud is at work.

 

Shucks, I don't know what it's all about. But if the AG wants to lay out a case for fraud, it would be more efficient to make it a bit more airtight.

Of course, if somebody wants to know what we can read from a long list of paleo temperature proxies, a peak at that 2008 article in PNAS would be good. But if you (and I am not speaking to anybody in particular) don't want to know, that's cool too.

Again thanks to Trebuchet for keeping tabs on stuff like this. If Dr. Mann is emailing his pals about it, I don't get the emails.

Must be why my name is not on the CID

 

Near as I can tell, the only scientific debate over the "hockey stick" at this point is on how far back you can reliably characterize the "handle". This, from the National Academies of Science report cited above:

I'll paraphrase as:

• We're sure temperatures are rising
• All the competent reconstructions of the past show roughly the same results, regardless of methods.
• We pretty sure the hockey stick handle is at least 4 centuries long.
• Preponderance of evidence says it's at least 11 centuries long.
• Beyond that, there's not enough data to say one way or the other.

If "wrong" means having the premier science body in the US come to that conclusion, it's hard for me to conceive of what "right" would be.

From the NAS report:

• The instrumentally measured warming of about 0.6°C during the 20th century is also reflected in borehole temperature measurements, the retreat of glaciers, and other observational evidence, and can be simulated with climate models.
• Large-scale surface temperature reconstructions yield a generally consistent picture of temperature trends during the preceding millennium, including relatively warm conditions centered around A.D. 1000 (identified by some as the “Medieval Warm Period”) and a relatively cold period (or “Little Ice Age”) centered around 1700. The existence of a Little Ice Age from roughly 1500 to 1850 is supported by a wide variety of evidence including ice cores, tree rings, borehole temperatures, glacier length records, and historical documents. Evidence for regional warmth during medieval times can be found in a diverse but more limited set of records including ice cores, tree rings, marine sediments, and historical sources from Europe and Asia, but the exact timing and duration of warm periods may have varied from region to region, and the magnitude and geographic extent of the warmth are uncertain.
• It can be said with a high level of confidence that global mean surface temperature was higher during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period during the preceding four centuries. This statement is justified by the consistency of the evidence from a wide variety of geographically diverse proxies.
• Less confidence can be placed in large-scale surface temperature reconstructions for the period from A.D. 900 to 1600. Presently available proxy evidence indicates that temperatures at many, but not all, individual locations were higher during the past 25 years than during any period of comparable length since A.D. 900. The uncertainties associated with reconstructing hemispheric mean or global mean temperatures from these data increase substantially backward in time through this period and are not yet fully quantified.
• Very little confidence can be assigned to statements concerning the hemispheric mean or global mean surface temperature prior to about A.D. 900 because of sparse data coverage and because the uncertainties associated with proxy data and the methods used to analyze and combine them are larger than during more recent time periods.

To be clear, the NAS had McIntyre/McKitrick testify about their criticisms. So it's not like they ignored that.

By contrast, the other "official" US inquiry into this, Republican-sponsored Wegman report, never even contacted Mann about his analysis, but consulted closely with McIntyre. How's that for unbiased?

Hardly, matters, because now it appears that about a third of the Wegman report was simply plagiarized. I guess that's not unexpected, as Wegman didn't know anything about climatology.

University investigating prominent climate science critic - Science Fair: Science and Space News - USATODAY.com

Although, in fact, that hardly matters, because the one thing Wegman didn't do was see whether his criticisms actually mattered empirically. Turns out, they don't.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/07/the-missing-piece-at-the-wegman-hearing/

Wegman's criticism centered on the implementation of principal components analysis. But Wegman never bothered to show what the impact of fixing those "errors" would be. Answer: Not much. Fixing the "errors" in that leads to small changes in the estimated temperatures:



And, in fact, simply skipping the principal components (data reduction) step entirely and (possibly over-) fitting to the underlying data yields the same shape, just with more "jitter" in the estimates:



Are there still people out there trying to "disprove" this, whatever that might mean? Sure. IMHO, having done statistical analysis all of my professional career, the key to understanding most of those "disprooofs" is that, if you screw up a statistical analysis badly enough, you can make the results disappear. But in any event, the great preponderance of evidence says that Mann was essentially correct.

OK, so what is Cuccinelli really about?

It's certainly not about the funds. The Commonwealth has already spent more money on these lawsuits than was involved in the original grant. To which you should add the money the University of Virginia has had to spend defending itself.

So this certainly isn't a typical fraud investigation. The point of an ordinary fraud investigation is to protect the taxpayers of the Commonwealth of Virginia. You spend monies to make recovery of fraudulently obtained funds, or to deter future fraudulent behavior. Here, we're wasting the taxpayers' funds to investigate an individual who would no longer be eligible for a grant from the Commonwealth in any case.

Here's my explanation: The nuts have learned from "Climategate". Despite five official investigations that have found the underlying science and temperature series to be sound, the main takeaway from "Climategate" is that if you can get at the raw email stream, you can selectively edit it for propaganda purposes. If you look at the CID, they ask for every email ever sent to or received from ... and then there's a list of names as along as your arm.

So that's what they're after. They want more raw material to use for propaganda purposes. Period. There's no financial logic to the lawsuit. There's no evidence of "fraud". As pointed out just above, there's no scientific logic to the lawsuit. Near as I can tell, there's no legal logic to the lawsuit. The grant was not for paleo temperature reconstructions, the entire basis for the lawsuit is that Mann referenced his earlier work as part of the grant application. So it's not about financial, scientific, or legal logic. It's about obtaining fresh raw material for propaganda.

Our Statesmen in Congress have already announced that they'll hold hearings in the House. So we're already getting geared up for more theater of the absurd, a la the Wegman report. Cuccinelli is just doing his part to help out the home team.

 

Read the CID yourself, here:

Civil Investigative Demand Issued to Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia, September 29, 2010 - FIRE

To summarize: They want a copy of any document, email, record of a phone call, or anything else, between Dr. Mann and a list of 39 individuals. Or any other correspondence by anyone else that references correspondence between Mann and those individuals in any way. Plus they want all documents, etc., for all administrative staff that had any contact with Mann. For the period 1999 to 2006, inclusive. Plus any correspondence with Mann after he left UVa, by anyone. Plus any data, programs, or drafts that Mann may have produced while at U.Va. Plus, if any of these have been erased, destroyed, or lost, they want to know exactly what, who, when and under what circumstances the destruction or loss took place.

Oh, and a representative of the UVa board must deliver all this in person, and any failure to produce any part of that request will be treated as a refusal to comply with the CID.

The rationale for this CID is identical to Cuccinelli's original demand, the one that got tossed by the Albermarle county court: Even though this grant has nothing to do with paleo temperature reconstructions, Mann referenced two papers that the Wegman report (see "plagiarism" above) and McIntire/McKitrick later said used improper statistical techniques. And Mann should have known that at the time of the grant. So referencing that paper on his grant application -- in effect, failing to predict all future criticisms that would be leveled against his work -- was an intent to mislead for financial gain, and hence, fraud.

Let's hope the courts have the good sense to toss this one the same as the did Cuccinelli's last demand.

 

Very nice post Chogan2. I would only add that the denialist camp has become quite adept in using the judicial and regulatory systems as obstructionist forces. As an example, how is a scientist to have time for research if s/he is fielding inane data requests all the time ? If irony is anyone's cup of tea, I point out that they probably learned tactics from the environmental movement.

 

What was wrong was the data going back more than four centuries. The methods used to estimate both the mean and variances did not pass any statistical scrutiny. Mann has since reworked some of the numbers and assumptions. A scientific theory should be vigorous enough to stand peer review. This instance when the data was made public criticism led to a better model, one that did not need hand waving to explain how it fit anecdotal evidence to the contrary. If the mann hockey stick is your measure of religion, man is a failed pope as he is fail-able. The science of the warming trend in the last few centuries was not affected.

Btw: mann in the original paper clearly stated that more and better data was needed. You should not read more into the hockey stick graph than the authors themselves stated.

 

Put aside the legal issues. I don't think I've ever heard of an environmental group getting the government to pursue a million-dollar judgment against a researcher, based on the fact that they didn't like what the researcher discovered.

(Here's the language of the statute in question:

2006 Virginia Code - § 8.01-216.3 - False claims; civil penalty - Virginia§ 8.01-216.3 - False claims; civil penalty :: Justia -- US Laws, Codes, Statutes & Cases -- Justia Briefly: The penalty is three times the amount of the grant, plus $10,000, plus all legal costs.)

Put aside the technical issues: There now appears to be no argument that the methods used by (pioneered by (?)) Mann yield the correct answer for the last four centuries, the only argument appears to be over the standard errors (not the mean) of the back-cast for time periods prior to that.

Fair enough.

Y'all still don't get it. You don't grasp what the "hockey stick" is fundamentally about.

It's about the blade. Not about the height of the blade alone, relative to some recent past. It's about that, plus the rate of change. Abrupt change.

It's not "the ramp". It's not "the wedge". It's not "the gradual upward slope". It's the "hockey stick".

There's nothing in the recent (post-Jesus, say) record to suggest that any such rapid global climate change has occurred prior to the industrial era.

So the point of the "hockey stick" is two-fold:

1) It's hot now. Hotter than its been in the last 400 years. Probably hotter than the last 1100 years. That's the tip of the hockey stick.

2) It's getting warmer at a historically-unprecedented rate. At least compared to the recent past. That's the blade. That's why this is a hockey stick and not a ramp.

And the clear corollary is:

3) If we keep doing what we're doing, the temperatures will soon be completely off the scale. If it isn't already now.

In other words, once you agree that the 400-year picture presented by Mann is about right, all you need to do is extrapolate the "blade" to realize the we're about to be in deep doo-doo. Unless some heretofore-unknown factor is going somehow to stop the blade right at current temperatures.

Was the Medieval Warm Period as warm as today? Plus or minus? I don't give a hoot. Here we are today, doing okay. The issue is, what's the most likely prediction for subsequent generations.

If the 400-year hockey stick is right, then, well, then, we'd best get ready for a rapidly warming planet.

Does Mann's method simply completely miss prior periods of such rapid warming? Has anybody suggested that? Is there any first-principles argument to suggest that this must be so? Is there other evidence outside these proxies to suggest that such rapid, global, warming has occurred in the recent past?

If no, then ... follow the slope of the blade to figure out why this is a problem.

 

As I said in my original post, IMHO if this is what the lawsuit is about it has no merit. But good science is good science and politically motivated science still is bad science. We should be able to support skeptics and good science at the same time as decrying hidden data and religious charges against deniers.

Well that sounds quite political. In the original hockey stick there was no way we could get where we are without human CO2. With revised figures temperatures may have been higher in the past then cooled down. The scientific questions are why did it get this hot, and why did it cool down.

Then the next question is are we past a tipping point. If we shut off all the cars will the ramp not keep going up. Models should be able to support all the data. These are just some of the scientific questions we can ask if we take the religious and political fervor out of the science. I am quite interested if kyoto would have done anything about future temperatures. Let's get the models and prediction out there with peer review, not just review from the peers that we know will agree.

IMHO if we completely stopped driving AGW would continue. There may be other solutions. I do not believe the sky is falling, nor do I see a 1:1 correspondence between CO2 generation and GW.