Data fudging the prime cause of global warming

After "Models the prime cause of global warming" we bring you "Data fudging the prime cause of global warming":

And of course there’s this famous animation where the middle 20th century got cooler as if by magic. Watch how 1934 and 1998 change places as the warmest year of the last century. This is after GISS applied adjustments to a new data set (2004) compared with the one in 1999:

Science at the gates of plagiarism

Steve McIntyre:

There’s another plagiarism incident around the same time that I’d meant to document and more serious. A longstanding Climate Audit technique has been to illustrate proxy weights by plotting circles with area proportional to the weights. I’d observed that proxy weights could be extracted from the linear algebra, even for RegEM. The points had been revived in CA posts at this period concerning Steig and I reported that I’d tweaked the RegEM algorithm to extract the weights. The same technique was applied in Mann et al 2009 (Science); Mann’s language closely tracked the CA language. But more importantly the concept was identical to the concept written up at CA, both in the extraction of weights and the illustration in a graphic.

Michael Mann, Serial Misrepresenter of Reality

On Michael Mann:

…
Mann Contradicts Himself
While so far Mann has simply misrepresented his sources, he also contradicts himself. On page 138, Mann, brings up a paper by Eugene Wahl and Caspar Ammann, saying:

They showed that, had McIntyre and McKitrick subjected their alternative reconstruction...

No paper by McIntyre and McKitrick has ever claimed to make an “alternative reconstruction.” This should seem more like a fabrication than a contradiction until the reader reaches page 191. There, Mann quotes a description of McIntyre:

Paleoclimatologist Tom Crowley perhaps summarized it best: “McIntyre ... never publishes an alternative reconstruction that he thinks is better ... because that involves taking a risk of him being criticized. He just nitpicks others. I don’t know of anyone else in science who ... fails to do something constructive himself.”58

Mann approvingly quotes Crowley criticizing McIntyre for not publishing an “alternative reconstruction” despite the fact 53 pages earlier, he claims McIntyre published an “alternative reconstruction.”

Mann Contradicts His Sources and Himself
Mann contradicts his sources. Mann contradicts himself. It is hardly surprising he would do both at the same time. On page 123, he says:

The central claim of the McIntyre and McKitrick paper, that the hockey stick was an artifact of bad data, was readily refuted.45

To understand Mann's misrepresentation here, there is no need to understand any technical details. All you need to do is compare a few simple sentences. First, compare the above sentence with a quote from the abstract of the paper he discusses (emphasis added):

The particular “hockey stick” shape derived in the MBH98 proxy construction – a temperature index that decreases slightly between the early 15th century and early 20th century and then increases dramatically up to 1980 — is primarily an artefact of poor data handling, obsolete data and incorrect calculation of principal components.

Even though McIntyre and McKitrick's conclusions refer to “poor data handling, obsolete data and incorrect calculation of principal components,” Mann claims their argument dealt solely with “bad data.” On its own, this would be bad, but it becomes silly when the reader looks at Mann's note #45. It says (in part):

To be specific, they claimed that the hockey stick was an artifact of four supposed “categories of errors”: “collation errors,” “unjustified truncation and extrapolation,” “obsolete data,” and “calculation mistakes.”

In the main text of his book, Mann portrays the paper's argument as solely referring to “bad data.” In the note he attaches as a reference, he lists as part of the paper's argument, “calculation mistakes.” …

The Skeptics Case

The main point of the skeptics and all you need to know about the climate debate:
The Skeptics Case

Sun Tzu’s principles for an unfair scientific fight

Judith Curry:

• Outsmart your opponent so that battles aren’t necessary
• Pick your battles carefully.
• In the course of your battle, don’t lose the moral high ground.
• Divide and conquer; don’t give your enemy cause to rally together and combine forces
• Overconfidence can be fatal to your strategy
• If the campaign is prolonged, the resources will not be equal to the strain
• If you know your enemy, you can win battles without a single loss

George Carlin on your rights

(via)

Gleick's Integrity

Judith Curry about Gleick's integrity:

Gleick on integrity:

• A brief lesson in the integrity of science
• Climate Change and the Integrity of Science, Again
• AGU’s new task force on scientific integrity and ethics begins
• Threats to the integrity of science: congressional testimony

I even referenced his testimony in my uncertainty monster paper.

My first interaction with Gleick was he invited me to speak in an AGU session that he was organizing on the integrity of science, my presentation can be found here.

He has made it known to me via email that he has been displeased with my “behavior.” I seem to have gotten his goat to have been mentioned in the fake Heartland strategy doc (hard to believe that he didn’t write this).

The irony of it all, this coming from a scientist that has made a particular point about integrity and written many essays and even testified to congress on the subject.

And Steve Mosher makes an interesting observation:

Oh: at first they said how dare you accuse Gleick.
Now, he is a hero?

Huh. Well, no need to worry about libelling Gleick or any other person.

A tip: Please do not visit Joe Romm’s blog and use the name Peter Gleick to confess to forging a document. because, fooling people by assuming a false identity will get you hero status.

err..