Xanthippa's Chamberpot

Since Dr. Mann’s new hobby of suing people has brought up the subject of the ‘hockey-stick graph’ – specifically, whether its creation was honest incompetence or straightforward fraud valid ‘climate science’, I wend digging through the interwebitudes for some more background material.

Note:  Dr. Mann is not suing National Review and Mark Steyn for comparing Penn State’s whitewashing of both the pedophile and himself.  Not at all.  He is suing them for having called him a fraud.  And the reason he is suing Dr. Ball is because he said that Michael Mann belongs in State Penn, not Penn State…  Therefore, I am not suggesting either of these things, in any way, shape or form.

There is so much material out there, it is difficult to pick the best few – the ones that best document the events.  However, here are a few front runners:

• Real Science:  History of How the Hockey Stick Was Manufactured

This post opens with:

‘There wasn’t any hockey stick prior to the year 2000.

The 1990 IPCC report showed that temperatures were much cooler than 800 years ago.’

It then supplies graphs – of what was the historical record prior to 2000, and how that all changed as the ‘hockey-stick graph’ took shape.

It even points out which bits were done by Phil Jones’s team, which by Michael Mann’s team.

Chock full of graphs, showing the ‘before’ and ‘after’ figures.

So, how did this become ‘accepted science’?  What ‘studies’ confirmed it?  How did it make it into the IPCC reports?

That is an interesting story in its own right – and has been meticulously pieced together in this post:

• Bishop Hill:  Caspar and the Jesus Paper

From the intro:

‘The story is a remarkable indictment of the corruption and cyncism that is rife among climate scientists, and I’m going to try to tell it in layman’s language so that the average blog reader can understand it. As far as I know it’s the first time the whole story has been set out in a single posting. It’s a long tale – and the longest posting I think I’ve ever written and piecing it together from the individual CA postings has been a long, hard but fascinating struggle. You may want to get a long drink before starting, and those who suffer from heart disorders may wish to take their beta blockers first.’

Here, meticulously documented, is the story of how the ‘hockey-stick graph’ went from being just one paper, submitted by one scientist, to ‘scientific consensus’ and unquestionable holy writ.

It documents questionable behaviour by the scientists involved, the editors of the journals and the IPCC folks, none of whom appear to be following their own guidelines of professional conduct.

• the IPCC itself…

While we are on the topic of IPCC itself, it is important to note that while they loudly touted the unfortunate hockey-stick graph for quite some time – before quietly removing it without an explanation  – it is important to understand that this is not a body of leading scientists:  it is primarily a political body, formed by a political organization, through a politically correct process, to promote its own political agenda – with a few scientists tossed in for window dressing.

One person who has documented IPCC’s sloppiness (if not downright corruption) and lack of adherence to its own rules is the Canadian journalist Donna Laframboise.  Here she is, from a tour in Australia:

Much of the IPCC process was dominated by ‘climate modelling’ – computer programs that try to predict what will happen based on what has happened.  On the surface of it, this seems valid:  the problem is in how these models were constructed.  It seems they are, to put it mildly, highly flawed.

Another fundamental problem for the IPCC reviewers was that they were only permitted to comment on the studies which were pre-selected and presented to them for comment.  This selection process was highly sensitive – but handled by the behind-the-scenes bureaucrats.  There were many instances where scientists spoke up, saying the material they were presented with was not representative of the current work in the field and asked to be permitted to include a broader spectrum of studies.  These requests were summarily dismissed by the apartchicks running the show.

But even as hamstrung as they were, when scientists actually commented on errors/omissions/inaccuracies in the drafts of the reports, their comments were dismissed, the drafts were not corrected and the objectionable conclusions or downright errors made it into the final reports.  Cough, Himalayan glacier, cough…

That is not a sound scientific process….

While I was scouring the interwebitudes looking for supporting links, I came across an interesting site:

• 1100+ Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skeptic Arguments Against ACC/AGW Alarm

Bookmark this site – it catalogues peer-reviewed, scientific papers (by category) which refute the warm-mongering narrative.  Over a thousand of them.

It would b easy to just sit here are read them all – but then, this post would never get fin…