The New York Times has published a commentary by climate scientist Michael Mann, in which he complains how certain politicians are wanting to investigate the work of climate scientists who are on the public dole. Mann accuses such politicians of trying to stifle science.
Well, Pot, meet Kettle. While Mann objects to congressional investigation into science work that he favors, he apparently has no objection to congressional investigation into science work that gets under his skin. Climate scientist Judith Curry writes, “Seven other climate scientists were the targets of a recent McCarthyite ‘witch hunt’ by Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.). I was one of the seven. Rep. Grijalva indicated that I was investigated because of my recent Congressional testimony summarizing peer-reviewed research indicating that the magnitude and impacts of expected warming could be less than generally believed.”
In his commentary, Mann promotes a short report published by Science magazine in June of 2015. Authored by Tom Karl, director of the National Climatic Data Center, the paper allegedly demonstrates that there has been no pause in global warming during the last 18 years. Mann fails to tell his audience that plenty of scientific data contradicts that report.
See the following:
The climate warming pause goes AWOL (or not)
Has NOAA ‘busted’ the pause in global warming?
@NOAA’s desperate new paper: Is there no global warming ‘hiatus’ after all?
Has NOAA/NCDC’s Tom Karl repealed the Laws of Thermodynamics?
The same day that Science published that aforementioned report, the Global Warming Policy Forum published a scathing rebuttal:
The paper by Karl et al. (2015) published today in Science is an ‘express’ report and not up to the standards of a comprehensive paper. It is a highly speculative and slight paper that produces a statistically marginal result by cherry-picking time intervals, resulting in a global temperature graph that is at odds with all other surface temperature datasets, as well as those compiled via satellite.
The rebuttal cites key pitfalls of that report.
In his NYT commentary, Mann repeats his claim that global warming is all Mankind’s fault. Climate scientist S.Fred Singer challenges that claim in his commentary The Burden of Proof on Climate Change, in which he writes the following:
“The burden of proof for Anthropogenic Climate Change falls on alarmists. Climate Change (CC) has been ongoing for millions of years – long before humans existed on this planet.
Obviously, the causes were all of natural origin, and not anthropogenic.
There is no reason to believe that these natural causes have suddenly stopped; for example, volcanic eruptions, various types of solar influences, and (internal) atmosphere-ocean oscillations all continue today. (Note that these natural factors cannot be modeled precisely.)
Let’s call this the “Null Hypothesis.” Logically therefore, the burden of proof is on alarmists to demonstrate that the Null Hypothesis is not adequate to account for empirical climate data; alarmists must provide convincing observational evidence for Anthropogenic CC (ACC) – by detailed comparison of empirical data with GH models.”
As it turns out, when the raw empirical data is compared to the climate models, the climate models fail.
Then again, honest science permits failure, permits claims to be falsifiable. Mann and his ilk, however, don’t want such honest science, which is why they try to marginalize any climate scientist who dares to disagree with them.
Michael Mann isn’t trying to save the Earth. Instead, he is trying to save his reputation, which was tarnished when his hockey-stick graph was debunked by other climate scientists.
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