Judith Curry has announced that she has resigned from her post at Georgia Tech, as of Jan 1st. It seems to be an early retirement — she is “a few years shy of 65” and plans to stay on as an Emeritus Prof.
She is leaving the university to devote more time to Climate Forecast Applications Network, a private company that she set up with Peter Webster. She says she will keep her Climate Etc blog running, as well as setting up a new blog for CFAN.
She plants some heavy parting punches on academia and climate science, regarding the underlying reasons for leaving: “my growing disenchantment with universities, the academic field of climate science and scientists.”
“A deciding factor was that I no longer know what to say to students and postdocs regarding how to navigate the CRAZINESS in the field of climate science. Research and other professional activities are professionally rewarded only if they are channeled in certain directions approved by a politicized academic establishment — funding, ease of getting your papers published, getting hired in prestigious positions, appointments to prestigious committees and boards, professional recognition, etc.”
“How young scientists are to navigate all this is beyond me, and it often becomes a battle of scientific integrity versus career suicide (I have worked through these issues with a number of skeptical young scientists).”
“At this point, the private sector seems like a more ‘honest’ place for a scientist working in a politicized field than universities or government labs — at least when you are your own boss.”
Ouch!
Climate Scepticism 
Well spotted Paul. John’s ‘great storm’ just got stormier.
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Let us wish this courageous and strong woman every success in her new ventures. I hope the day will come sooner rather than later when she will be very widely recognised for her integrity, and her principled opposition to the CO2 Madness raging all around her in academia.
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Good for her. Working in a political atmosphere you don’t agree with is very, very depressing. The sad part is that sceptic students won’t have her around. I can understand her conflict in the desire to keep the true scientific flame alive but it will be years before it will be safe for students to question the warming dogma. Change will have to come from the top or from outside academia. I hope it doesn’t have to wait for current students to reach professor status.
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Richard Drake says: 03 Jan 17 at 4:33 pm
“Well spotted Paul. John’s ‘great storm’ just got stormier.”
[snip]
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Lets hope she is able to continue CE, perhaps with the assistance of more guest technical posts. Indeed, the storm still rages.
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When I saw the title, I had to check the byline to make sure it wasn’t from Brad Keyes.
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What an amazing woman. following her career has been more interesting than any miniseries or Neil Stephenson novel.
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We can compare the reception to this announcement to what we saw when James Hansen hung ’em up. I don’t think anyone called him ‘going Emeritus’ or past his prime or fleeing the fray. Of course, Bill McKibben soon called him a climate denier, so I suppose Judith will get her share of flack.
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Searching Google>News>last 24 hours for “Judith Curry” produces NO hits.
Extending the search to a week produces one snide comment in the Graun: “…Roy Spencer, John Christy, Richard Lindzen, William Happer, and Judith Curry, are shown conclusively to be wrong..” .. and that’s about it.
Leave out the “News” filter and Cliscep comes in third of 157 hits. News is Olds. We is News.
Judith’s retirement means that the 97% have just become 98%. Does this represent a victory for the warmists? I don’t think so.
There is a huge correlation (well nigh 1) between being a member of the 97% (or 98%) and shitting once a day, thus demonstrating that consensus scientists belong overwhelmingly to the class of beings formed of base matter subject to decay and putrefaction.
According to Lewandowskian statistics, it follows that there is an equivalently high correlation between belonging to the 3 or 2 % of climate contrarians and being a superior being, having gained true enlightenment, akin to the Buddhist Bodhisattvas or Muslim Waliy, no longer subject to base materially needs, potentially immortal, and certainly superior to your average university professor.
Congratulations Judith Curry.
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After a brave and extremely tenacious tenure, Prof Judith Curry has the good grace to hang her hat up when lesser persons might have stayed to munch on popcorn as they watched their warmist colleagues and ideological adversaries squirm ever more each day with the prospect of having their funding cut under Trump and their ‘vital’ research downgraded. Although she publicly laments the stifling group-think academic atmosphere currently prevailing at Universities, she leaves on a high note, optimistic perhaps that at least some of her stubborn ‘consensus bought and paid for’ colleagues who follow her won’t jump, but will be pushed, as the swamp is slowly drained.
All the very best to Judith Curry – she has been an inspiration to opponents of climate change alarmism everywhere and deserves to breathe some pure, fresh air, far away from institutional academia. Her departure from Georgia Tech is not a loss, and certainly not a victory for the alarmists, because her departure is not an end, it is a beginning, the beginning of the end for climate change groupthink in academia, even though that may presently seem to be a far off prospect.
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Geoff, there is now a news article, in something called E&E News
Judith Curry retires, citing ‘craziness’ of climate science
There are some more quotes from her:
“Once you understand the scientific uncertainties, the present policy path that we’re on doesn’t make a lot of sense,” she said. “We need to open up policy dialogue to a bigger solution space. So I’m just looking to open up the dialogue and to provoke people into thinking.”
And there’s this from Roger Pielke jr:
“If you only look at her academic career, absent the glossy overlay of the climate debate, you would say this is a pretty distinguished academic who had a pretty successful career,” he said. “The facts that she was excoriated by her peers, smeared and so on just illustrates having a tenured position isn’t a guarantee of academic freedom.”
Guess which distinguished climate scientist said this:
“She has played a particularly pernicious role in the climate change denial campaign, laundering standard denier talking points but appearing to grant them greater authority courtesy of the academic positions she has held and the meager but nonetheless legitimate scientific work that she has published in the past,” he said. “Much of what I have seen from her in recent years is boilerplate climate change denial drivel.”
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Would it be the guy who has spawned more sceptics than anyone else with his shoddy work?
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Manners maketh the Mann. Rotten to the core.
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Judy says among many other good things:
I think we can agree on that. Can Trump do it? That truly would be something.
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I’m afraid I’ll have to disagree with the “new generation of math” part.
Shortmodern centered PCA, Pearson R squared as silly and incorrect reasoning, Caspar Ammann’s RE calibration/verification ratio, climate models without clouds being understood, … etc. It’s time to go back to tried and true old math!LikeLike
Canman: fair point. In the context it seems clear Dr Curry means a new generation of good mathematicians and physicists, attacking Navier-Stokes and other aspects of climate dynamics. Mannomatics will hopefully become a historical curiosity.
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“The facts that she was excoriated by her peers, smeared and so on just illustrates having a tenured position isn’t a guarantee of academic freedom.”
What planet does this guy live on? Does he really believe that tenure gave her the right not to be criticized for what she said or did? Academics (Matthews, Pielke) who don’t understand academic freedom – that is ironic.
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Curry never complained about criticism. Nor did Pielke, to my knowledge. Why is responding to criticism now semantically equal to complaining about it?
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Here’s climate scientist James Annan on Mann’s comments:
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Re the Mann quote. It is another example of why he is held in such low esteem by many of his peers. Possibly most of them nowadays, since not a one came forward to file an amicus brief for him in his legal action against Mark Steyn.
For more chapter and verse on peer opinions of Mann, see Mark Steyn’s timely book about him. It is entitled ‘A Disgrace to the Profession’: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Disgrace-Profession/dp/0986398330 Well worth a place on your bookshelves, or in your Kindle.
Here is an extract from Chapter 17, a distinguished professor of ‘Earth and Environmental Sciences’ , Professor Wallace Smith Broecker, does not mince his words about Mann in an interview he gave in 2010:
Now that is rather rude for a family blog like ours, but it does support the notion that there is considerable distaste for the man out there amongst his peers.
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Mark Steyn is also riled about this latest trashy offensiveness from Michael Mann about Judith Curry. To see more of the gutter in which Mann and chums dwell, read this: http://www.steynonline.com/7661/the-craziness-of-the-climate-science-echo-chamber
It ends on a rousing note however:
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“…it does support the notion that there is considerable distaste for the man out there amongst his peers.”
It supports the notion that Broecker has considerable distaste for Mann. Can you give examples of other similar distaste for Mann (as opposed to criticism of the HS), perhaps from chapters 1 to 16?
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The distaste for Mann is clearly linked to his work on the hockey stick, not just that it was shoddy and demonstrably wrong on several counts – that sort of error is part and parcel of science, but that he did not do the honourable thing and admit it in order to help with further scientific progress. Instead he entered a Walter Mitty world of his own fantasising, in which he is a hero saving the planet while being attacked by malevolent forces. This, he seems to feel, gives him licence to be personally obnoxious about his critics. Most of the material in the Steyn book concentrates on the flaws in Mann’s work, and that is a large, but not complete, part of the basis for the ‘disgrace to his profession’ label. Here are a few more quotes with the wider basis in view (with ‘chapter’ numbers beside them):
5 ‘The behaviour of Michael Mann is a disgrace to the profession ‘ Note that does not just refer to his work, but to his ‘behaviour’
6 ‘underlying fraudulent science’ Note that fraudulent does have overtones of motive, not merely of incompetence
7 ‘authors of alternative studies … have been bullied and subtly blackmailed’. Once more, there is more here than mere technical criticism
8 ‘I now have a list of people whose papers I won’t read anymore.’ Just a hint of the personal there perhaps.
11 ‘It is the job of scientists of integrity to expose pathological science … It is a litmus test of whether climate scientists are prepared to stand up against the bullying defenders of pathology in their midst.’ Now ‘bullying defender of pathology’ also speaks to me that the writer is concerned about bad behaviour, and a distasteful personality.
.
.
.
120 ‘The climate science field, and the broader community of academics, have received an enormous black eye as a result of defending the hockey-stick and his behaviour.’ There’s that behaviour word again. Actually spelt behavior in the book, but I prefer the other spelling.
Well that’s just a few of the 120 relevant entries in the book revisited, and I do not have time for more. Nor do I have the inclination really, since I do feel you must learn to do your own homework. I am concerned that we will hamper your development, and just encourage more laziness on your part, if we just dive in and answer your questions for you here every time. So it has been against my better judgement to compose this reply, but there you go. Human frailty is everywhere to be seen. The last quote given, the one from item 120, is, by the way, from Judith Curry. Her restraint is admirable.
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Len’s responses here are very, very typical of the warmist mindset. Mann’s comments on Curry’s resignation are very suggestive that he is a total shit. His petulant, arrogant, childish, evasive, impolite, dishonest public behaviour and documented academic malpractice provide further empirical evidence that strongly backs up the notion that Mann is indeed at total shit. But instead of paying heed to the evidence, Len demands that John provides further examples of a consensus of scientists that Mann is a total shit!
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John, they are anonymous, so don’t mean much.
Jaime, I’ve often been puzzled by the animosity to Mann, and I don’t understand the source. Your high adjective count indicates you share the animosity, but you offer no substantiation. If he has been found guilty of malpractice or fraud, as suggested here, I’ll take you seriously, but as far as I’m aware he hasn’t and your accusation is what is total shit. Why do you expect someone who has been subject to such accusations to just roll over, rather than hitting back?
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None of them are anonymous, Len. You really must get yourself a copy of the book. Each of the 120 people quoted in the main part of it are recognised professionals in relevant fields. I just left their names and titles out to make my comment a little crisper.
Meanwhile, the US legal system has led to this:
‘Climate change expert sentenced to 32 months for fraud’
http://linkis.com/www.nbcnews.com/news/lfsQO?next=1
His lawyer pleaded for mercy for his client on psychological grounds:
It seemed to work, as he only got 32 months in jail. That must be reassuring for others like him out there. There is compassion to be found in all sorts of places, and that is a good thing.
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Fascinating story John. A climate expert who was driven to manipulate those around him through the fabrication of grandiose narratives. And that’s his defence lawyer talking! Who would have believed it?
James Annan’s tweet in support of Mann (thanks Paul) I find really strange. I well remember when Murry Salby came onto Judith’s radar as I was a pretty avid reader of Climate Etc at the time. It’s hard to forget that she said “wow” on first taking in Salby’s work and this became a massive cause of criticism – with Steve Mosher (who hadn’t said wow) in very amusing form in response:
August 2011 that was. Over five years ago. One of the points I was going to get to in my Christmas post is how little the climate debate has changed in the seven years since Climategate. At least Judith Curry is moving. Once again, very best wishes to her.
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Len, I have no particular animosity towards Mann; I’m merely observing his behaviour towards others, which marks him out as not very pleasant. My only experience of his behaviour personally is a brief but polite conversation on Facebook which he deleted very quickly because I had the audacity to question his conclusions quoting other research which he airily dismissed as irrelevant.
http://climatecontrarian.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/a-brief-conversation-with-michael-mann.html
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John, your quotes are pretty weak. I wont be buying the book. And your fraud case is irrelevant. The guy might just as well have been a climate science sceptic for all the connection there is to science. And I don’t recall any sceptic being bothered by Salby’s history.
Richard, Annan’s opinion is probably shared by most scientists. How anyone can support Salby’s CO2 views is a puzzle, but someone like Curry? It is bizarre.
Jaime, ‘animosity’ was the wrong word, but you used six negative adjectives, an accusation of malpractice and a final description of being a “total shit”. Disdain or even hatred seem closer. And you have no personal experience of the man, getting all of your cues perhaps from others who may also have no personal experience. Now you say this person of whom you have no personal knowledge is just not very pleasant. And you said that “instead of paying heed to the evidence, Len demands that John provides further examples of a consensus of scientists that Mann is a total shit!” as if you have somehow decided there is a consensus from a few things said against him.
It would be nice to know why you expect someone who has been subject to the sort of nastiness your comment typifies for over a decade to just roll over and be nice about it, rather than hitting back, but I guess I’ll wait in vain for such an explanation. It is not the style of cliscep authors to justify themselves.
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Len:
Can you prove please that Judith Curry “supports Salby’s CO2 views”. This was precisely my point. I had no idea she did. She certainly indicated that she supports his right to express them. Do you agree? It would be good to be on the same page on this.
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Mr. Martinez, I also have a copy of Steyn’s book (as well as the Climategate emails–in fact I was the first journalist to lay hands on the Climategate emails–lucky guy that I am).
Mann’s colleagues said rather nasty things about him and about his work. Many of them. Repeatedly. If you are passionately interested in the numbers and level of vitriol, say so and we’ll compile some quotes for you.
The most charitable summary would be that Michael Mann is neither liked nor respected by his peers.
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Richard, you are right, I haven’t seen her explicitly support his views. But her “Wow” and comments such as “If Salby’s analysis holds up, this could revolutionize AGW science.” make her seem at least credulous. And that really is bizarre, I think.
Thomas, yes please (numbers and vitriol).
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Okay, Mr. Martinez–it’ll take a little time, so please be patient.
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Well, maybe not so long:
From climate scientists, all of whom support the general consensus on climate change:
Wallace Broecker: “The goddam guy is a slick talker and super-confident. He won’t listen to anyone else,” one of climate science’s most senior figures, Wally Broecker of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University in New York, told me. “I don’t trust people like that. A lot of the data sets he uses are shitty, you know. They are just not up to what he is trying to do…. If anyone deserves to get hit it is goddam Mann.”
Eduardo Zorita: Why I Think That Michael Mann, Phil Jones and Stefan Rahmstorf2 Should be Barred from the IPCC Process. Short answer: because the scientific assessments in which they may take part are not credible anymore. These words do not mean that I think anthropogenic climate change is a hoax. On the contrary, it is a question which we have to be very well aware of. But I am also aware that editors, reviewers and authors of alternative studies, analysis, interpretations, even based on the same data we have at our disposal, have been bullied and subtly blackmailed.
Atte Korhola: Another example is a study recently published in the prestigious journal Science. Proxies have been included selectively, they have been digested, manipulated, filtered, and combined – for example, data collected from Finland in the past by my own colleagues has even been turned upside down such that the warm periods become cold and vice versa. Normally, this would be considered as a scientific forgery, which has serious consequences.
Hans von Storch: A conclusion could be that the principle, according to which data must be made public, so that also adversaries may check the analysis, must be really enforced. Another conclusion could be that scientists like Mike Mann, Phil Jones and others should no longer participate in the peer-review process or in assessment activities like IPCC.
Bo Christiansen: The hockey-stick curve does not stand. It does not mean that we cancel the manmade greenhouse effect, but the causes have become more nuanced… Popularly, it can be said that the flat piece on the hockey stick is too flat. In addition, their method contains a large element of randomness. It is almost impossible to conclude from reconstruction studies that the present period is warmer than any period in the reconstructed period.
David Rind: Concerning the hockey stick: what Mike Mann continually fails to understand, and no amount of references will solve, is that there is practically no reliable tropical data for most of the time period, and without knowing the tropical sensitivity, we have no way of knowing how cold (or warm) the globe actually got. I’ve made the comment to Mike several times, but it doesn’t seem to get across.
Tom Wigley: I have just read the M&M stuff criticizing MBH. A lot of it seems valid to me. At the very least MBH is a very sloppy piece of work – an opinion I have held for some time. Can you give me a brief heads up? Mike is too deep into this to be helpful.
From Mann’s collaborators and coauthors:
Phil Jones: Keith [Briffa] didn’t mention in his Science piece but both of us think that you’re on very dodgy ground with this long-term decline in temperatures on the thousand-year timescale. It is better we put the caveats in ourselves than let others put them in for us.
Keith Briffa: I have just read this letter – and I think it is crap. I am sick to death of Mann stating his reconstruction represents the tropical area just because it contains a few tropical series. He is just as capable of regressing these data again any other “target” series, such as the increasing trend of self-opinionated verbiage he has produced over the last few years
Edward Cook: I will be sure not to bring this up to Mike. As you know, he thinks that CRU is out to get him in some sense. I am afraid that Mike is defending something that increasingly cannot be defended. He is investing too much personal stuff in this and not letting the science move ahead.
Raymond Bradley: I would like to disassociate myself from Mike Mann’s view. As for thinking that it is “Better that nothing appear, than something unnacceptable to us” …as though we are the gatekeepers of all that is acceptable in the world of paleoclimatology seems amazingly arrogant. Science moves forward whether we agree with individual articles or not.
Matti Saarnisto: In that article [Science], my group’s research material from Korttajärvi, near Jyväskylä, was used in such a way that the Medieval Warm Period was shown as a mirror image. The graph was flipped upside-down. In this email I received yesterday from one of the authors of the article, my good friend Professor Ray Bradley …says there was a large group of researchers who had been handling an extremely large amount of research material, and at some point it happened that this graph was turned upside-down. But then this happened yet another time in Science, and now I doubt if it can be a mistake anymore. But how it is possible that this type of material is repeatedly published in these top science journals? There is a small circle going round and around, relatively few people are reviewing each other’s papers, and that is in my opinion the worrying aspect.
Rob Wilson: I want to clarify that my 2 hour lecture was, I hope, a critical look at all of the northern hemispheric reconstructions of past temperature to date. It was not focused entirely on Michael Mann’s work. The “crock of xxxx” statement was focused entirely on recent work by Michael Mann w.r.t. hypothesized missing rings in tree-ring records. Although a rather flippant statement, I stand by it and Mann is well aware of my criticisms (privately and through the peer reviewed literature) of his recent work.
Some of the harshest criticisms come from physicists; I’ve selected this one from Jonathan Jones, who I had the pleasure of meeting with last June while in the UK:
Jonathan Jones: My whole involvement has always been driven by concerns about the corruption of science. Like many people I was dragged into this by the Hockey Stick. The Hockey Stick is an extraordinary claim which requires extraordinary evidence, so I started reading round the subject. And it soon became clear that the first extraordinary thing about the evidence for the Hockey Stick was how extraordinarily weak it was, and the second extraordinary thing was how desperate its defenders were to hide this fact. The Hockey Stick is obviously wrong. Climategate 2011 shows that even many of its most outspoken public defenders know it is obviously wrong. And yet it goes on being published and defended year after year. Do I expect you to publicly denounce the Hockey Stick as obvious drivel? Well yes, that’s what you should do. It is the job of scientists of integrity to expose pathological science. It is a litmus test of whether climate scientists are prepared to stand up against the bullying defenders of pathology in their midst.
Two of the most surprising statements (to me) are from two young scientists associated with Skeptical Science:
Neal King: My impression is that Mann and buddies have sometimes gone out on a limb when that was unnecessary and ill-advised. Mann, for all his technical ability, is sometimes his own worst enemy. Similarly, with regard to “hiding the decline” in Climategate, I am left with the impression that the real question is, Why would you believe the tree-ring proxies at earlier times when you KNOW that they didn’t work properly in the 1990s? Mann et al spent too much time defending what was incorrect, and allowed the totality of the argument to become “infected” by the fight.
Robert Way: I don’t mean to be the pessimist of the group here but Mc2 brought up some very good points about the original hockey stick. I’ve personally seen work that is unpublished that challenges every single one of his reconstructions because they all either understate or overstate low-frequency variations. Mann et al stood by after their original HS and let others treat it with the confidence that they themselves couldn’t assign to it. The original hockey stick still used the wrong methods and these methods were defended over and over despite being wrong. He fought like a dog to discredit and argue with those on the other side that his method was not flawed. And in the end he never admitted that the entire method was a mistake. They then let this HS be used in every way possible despite knowing the stats behind it weren’t rock solid.
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That list includes some of Mann’s co-authors (Cook and Briffa for example), and the leaked emails have more–I’ll try and dig up some examples.
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Re Salby, Judith and I had a private discussion about this. She had been asked several times to produce a Salby post. I had one drafted but unused for Blowing Smoke because did not fit the overall scheme the way the book finally developed. We decided jointly that his stuff was so bad there was no reason to dignify it with a CE post. Anyone looking at his three youtube lectures with any modicum of climate knowledge will spot multiple gross errors. So I can assure you her wow was not complementary. She thinks Salby is worse than just wrong. I think she is right.
Complete opposite of the recent Stevens adaptive iris paper. I wrote it up technically, and she decided to do a complementary ‘history of science’ post (both posted at same time) after talking to Lindzen and getting the whole back story on how the warmunist rejection response unfolded to that seminal 2001 paper by him in BAMS.
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An apology would be fine Len – for questioning Dr Curry’s judgment publicly on this, on a wholly false basis. And to me, for getting completely the wrong end of the stick of what I was saying. Then it would be interesting – given your obvious passion for accuracy in matters climatic – how you intend to put James Annan right on his very harmful tweet.
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Thanks Tom. Two Monty Python sketches come to mind.
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Is it not also remarkable that Len will leap to the defence of Michael Mann “who has been subject to the sort of nastiness your comment typifies for over a decade”, justifiably it would seem, in many cases, and who has played the victim card time and again throughout that period, yet dismisses the very real, far less justified and considerably more nasty and insidious harassment which Judith Curry has endured for a decade courtesy of her peers? Maybe not.
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Jaime,
Maybe you can explain to me when public (or private and then leaked) criticism of an academic/researcher reflects on the academic/researcher being criticised, and when it reflects on those doing the criticism.
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That would be entirely dependent upon the nature of the criticism Ken and how justified or not (based upon the evidence) it was. I don’t think there are any hard and fast rules.
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Jaime,
Maybe there is no hard and fast rule, but – based on the discussion here – it would appear that a rough guide would be that if the person being criticised is someone you mostly agree with, it reflects on those doing the criticism, while if it is someone you mostly disagree with, it reflects on them.
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I have sought in vain to find any leading CO2 alarmist worthy of admiration on moral or intellectual grounds. Some of the leading ones, like Gore, Hansen, Mann and McKibben seem to me little short of insane in their very different ways On the other hand, on the calmer, rational, open-minded other side of this ‘crisis’, I can think of many distinguished and admirable people in leadership roles. Judith Curry is most certainly one of them. May good fortune attend her and her new ventures. I note there are a couple of hundred admiring comments about her below her retirement from GT announcement. I think she is widely admired.
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Ken,
“it would appear that a rough guide would be that if the person being criticised is someone you mostly agree with, it reflects on those doing the criticism, while if it is someone you mostly disagree with, it reflects on them.”
Might be some truth in that. We’re all (mostly, I think!) human. You might like to put that point to Len also.
It becomes complicated of course when the people criticising Mann are also those with whom one mostly disagrees with! As we know, 97% of all scientists agree that AGW is real and significant, therefore it stands to reason that the academics criticising Mann are in broad agreement with him; so you have to wonder if there is something more to the criticism of Mann, coming as it does from within his own circle, than say the criticism of Judy Curry, which emanates mostly from people opposed to her scientific stance on global warming.
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ATTP, how would you characterize the criticism those climate scientists of Michael Mann, some of which appears in my comment above?
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Tom,
I don’t really have any interest in characterising them at all. I was mainly suggesting that there seems to be a slight inconsistency in how people are assessing the criticism of various climate scientists; sometimes it seems to reflect on the critic, sometimes on the person being criticised.
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Jaime, Thomas, and Ken, Of course, the substance of the criticisms is critical to evaluating them. In the case of Mann the substance of the criticisms appears to be correct as Wigley’s email (quoted by Thomas above) said. The suggestion that there is inconsistency is irrelevant, but seems to be the best that can be done by Ken to cast dust before men’s eyes to obscure the truth of the matter. I assume that Ken agrees with the substance of the criticisms of Mann’s work since he has offered no reason to reject the criticisms.
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The ATTP formerly known as Ken clearly does have an interest in such characterisations as evidenced by his earlier question on this thread which called for others to elucidate their views. But when tasked with doing so himself, he goes into denier mode. I think I may have seen this pattern of behaviour before, and it has never been impressive. It is unsettling, really, to see such weakness in an adult.
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ATTP, you are quick to highlight criticisms of people like Judith Curry or Roger Pielke without noting similar inconsistencies on the part of other members of your tribe. I’d welcome an explanation.
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Tom.
Am I? Mostly I’m happy to engage in criticism of what people say. I’m less interested in discussions about people’s character. I will say, though, that there are some topics that are so divisive that I can’t see much point in engaging in them.
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ATTP, I guess my point is that you aren’t consistent yourself in criticism of climate scientists–you do say bad things about scientists that you think are contrarian, skeptical or ‘denialists.’ You do not focus on what they say and you do talk about their character or lack thereof.
You also encourage (at your blog and elsewhere) others when they do the same.
It seems that you are calling for your opponents to abide by a set of behavioral conventions that you do not adhere to yourself.
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Tom,
Examples? I think I called Anthony Watts “not a very nice person” recently, but he’s not really a climate scientist. Care to put some effort into finding examples of me talking about the character of climate scientists I regard as contrarian, skeptical, or “denialist”?
I don’t really think I have opponents, but if you mean “people with whom I often disagree” then no, do whatever you want. I don’t really care.
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Len’s gone very quiet. They were just friendly suggestions.
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https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2015/09/15/more-nonsense-sorry-nonsensus-from-richard-tol/
“That it is nonsensical is no great surprise, as is the fact that what Tol is doing is not a valid interpretation of the data.”
“That would be quite a nice way to illustrate the idea of a consensus, something Richard is clearly still very confused about.”
I don’t know what the folks are ERL were thinking here. Maybe they got sick of Tol constantly harassing them and finally caved in.
“Yes, I can imagine the meeting they had. “If we let him publish this, maybe he’ll stop whining”.
“Richard,
Cook’s estimate is an outlier.
Rubbish. You included the consensus of those who are unconvinced about AGW, which is just stupid.
The rest of your comment is just you JAQing. Also if you publish this with the following statement
Cook et al. (2013) state that 12,465 abstracts were downloaded from the Web of Science, yet their supporting data show that there were 12,876 abstracts.
then you are publishing a statement that you do not know to be true. I would regard that as having publishing something dishonest.”
Umm, how many examples do you want? We could search your blog for Curry, Soon, both Pielkes…
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Tom,
Pretty happy to stand by all of that. Your point?
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You’re criticizing Tol, not what he writes or says. You encourage others when they do the same.
I made my point above. You want your opponents to abide by one set of behavioral conventions when you do not do so yourself.
I think there’s a word for that.
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Tom,
Huh? No, I’m precisely criticising what he writes or says.
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Thomas, I personally don’t know how Ken Rice can rationalize in his own mind his obvious hypocrisy. He says some things are just too divisive. That is an invitation to biased thinking.
Bear in mind that bias often shows itself as selection bias. Ken selects who is worth attacking publicly. It is apparent that he is biased in this selection.
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Pot, kettle, etc.
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Thomas, thanks for the list. Mann has clearly come in for some criticism. Some of the examples are pretty strong but many are quite good natured. It is also odd that if (as some here propose) he is held in such low regard by the CS community, he should have been and continue to be the recipient of so many academic awards, etc (see wiki).
Richard, Curry is the author of her own misfortune. If she saw Salby’s work and thought it was crap (and as RISTVAN says, “Anyone looking at his three youtube lectures with any modicum of climate knowledge will spot multiple gross errors.” so a professor of atmospheric whatever should see the problems in a flash) then the obvious thing to post is, “this is crap”. Only a credulous fool would instead say “Wow” and “If Salby’s analysis holds up, this could revolutionize AGW science.”
Jaime, “Is it not also remarkable that Len … dismisses the very real, far less justified and considerably more nasty and insidious harassment which Judith Curry has endured for a decade courtesy of her peers?” You accused Mann of malpractice and others suggested fraud. Such harassment has been the norm for Mann. What could be more nasty than that for a scientist and where has Curry suffered such nastiness?
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ATTP, I note that at your blog you are again posting about RCPs as if they are in some way projections or predictions or some such nonsense. Here’s a chance to help your readers clear away some misconceptions.
I assume you know that the Representative Concentration Pathways are in fact designed to provide inputs to climate models and that the totals (8.5, 4.5, etc.) were assigned to the research teams, not the result of any research or modeling that they did.
The research teams have been clear that they are not projections or predictions. Perhaps you could call your readers’ attention to that fact.
It is true that after the exercise the teams were asked to provide rough narratives outlining how the totals could be achieved, but the research teams acknowledge that there is much work to be done on them.
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Another Ken thread.
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The excellent Tucker Carlson interviews JC:
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Tom,
No, I’m not. You could try reading it again?
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Thanks for digging out that interview Ian. It perfectly illustrates Curry’s openness and down to earth attitude on climate change. Over the years, she has returned again and again to the thorny subject of attribution, questioning in particular the IPCC’s confidence on the attribution of CO2 emissions to ‘most or all’ of the the warming we have seen since 1950. For simply suggesting (on the basis of empirical evidence) that a larger proportion of the warming we have seen might be natural climate change, for seriously questioning the IPCC, for ‘going against her colleagues’ and for the unspeakably heinous crime of engaging with ‘climate deniers’, she has been vilified by her colleagues and subjected to a long campaign of harassment, bad-mouthing and ostracization.
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101101/full/news.2010.577.html
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Yes, thanks for that Ian, and I think Jaime’s comment in response is spot-on.
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ATTP, you write, “The different RCPs (or emission pathways), however, illustrate different possible future pathways. We may not know what pathway we’ll actually follow, but we can certainly influence what it will be. In some sense we’ve already done so, as the lowest pathway is probably no longer possible, and we’re probably unlikely to follow the highest because it’s pretty clear that doing so would potentially lead to severe climate impacts.”
That certainly sounds as though you think RCPs in some way describe potential realities. But if they did, it would be pure coincidence, not the result of having developed a pathway as the result of research, study, prediction or projection.
The totals were handed out at the beginning of the assignment. The narratives are essentially responses to the question ‘Well, what circumstances in your opinion could cause Wm2 to reach such a total?”
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Another take on Curry and the Mann that perhaps hits the nail on the head concerning the man who is “a disgrace to the profession.”
http://www.steynonline.com/7661/the-craziness-of-the-climate-science-echo-chamber
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The problem here Len is that the science establishment has taken upon itself the defense of Mann and his work and allowed their partisanship to lead to denial that there is a problem.
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The people who don’t know him laud his efforts. Those who know or have worked with him rubbish him.
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For me, the interesting take is that we are all familiar with climate shills saying that they are not mere grant-harvesters, because they could get much better paid jobs elsewhere if money were what interested them. We all know that they are unemployable outside academe. Now we get someone who has been ostracised by the morons who practise climate science – who on Earth would give Annan a job, for example – who retires from academe to do a job. Surely an example for the Manns and Annans and Gergis and fellow upside-down chronologists to follow.
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Tom:
And those who have heard him speak, just once, in Bristol, four days after John Cook, will freely admit that not all alarmists are equal. Cook was 1000% better in allowing real questions, starting with a brilliant one from Nic Lewis. Mann’s talk was one of the most boring, yet repugnant, I have ever had the misfortune to have to sit through. He was then protected by the organisers from facing anything as demeaning as a real question.
I had a great chat with the consensus enthusiast sitting next to me afterwards though, who’d come across my name on blogs and was genuinely surprised by how sane I seemed to be in real life. And our pre-meeting at Caroline K’s, and chats in the pub afterwards, including with Richard Betts, more than made up for it.
Graceless is the word chosen by Steyn – it won’t be the last! – and is dead right. Lauding and protecting such a person after the hockey stick became the poster child of the IPCC’s third assessment report in 2001 was a major error by climate central and will one day come back to haunt them.
As for Len’s graceless and groundless comments about someone he isn’t fit to evaluate licking the boots of, isn’t it interesting how the tiny disciples imitate the Big Mann? I’m not going to waste my weekend on it. But credulous is right. Use in conjunction with mirror.
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Maninabarrel. I disagree. Many of the climate science people I have met probably could earn larger salaries outside of academia. Not infrequently many of them supplement their incomes with commissioned work for industry or business. To dismiss them as only shills, incapable of doing other work is to make a big error. They are scientists and have been trained as such. Those skills can and are redirected. Not uncommonly those who stay in academia use their organizational skills to move into administrative roles within universities but commonly also into government or business. Don’t also forget the examples provided by WWII where scientists were retrained in different roles. My geology professor became a RAF meteorologist, and an academic ornithologist, who became a friend, became a radar engineer.
I have little doubt most climate scientists will find other employment, but probably not so prestigious.
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Richard, it is only groundless if RISTVAN is wrong. He says of Salby, “Anyone looking at his three youtube lectures with any modicum of climate knowledge will spot multiple gross errors.” Do you think RISTVAN is wrong or do you think that a professor of atmospheric physics should see the problems immediately? Why, if multiple gross errors are clearly present, would someone lend weight to the work with “If Salby’s analysis holds up, this could revolutionize AGW science.”?
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Len M. If you still have not figured out that Judith’s comment of Salby was biting SARCASM later deliberately misconstrued into a slander by Annan, then you are hopelessly dense. I already provided the private truthful background. Judith is a lukewarmer concerned about uncertainty, attribution (the A in AGW), and ECS.
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This is how you get bog standard pedagogy …
If professors aren’t allowed to have some personal and professional views that are outside the field’s “accepted standard” knowledge, then they are merely vessels of “accepted standard” pedagogy.
Anyone continuing to do “research” under these constraints is simply playing a “let’s do research” game with someone else’s funds.
Why differentiate at all between “research universities” and vocational tech schools in this regard?
This is how Georgia Tech truly becomes the “North Avenue Trade School” after all …
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Len: I don’t agree with Rud that Judith’s first “wow” was one of derision for Salby. I was reading Climate Etc regularly at the time. She was initially open that he might be right. Later – and I entirely trust Rud on this part – she decided he was badly wrong.
That was my understanding when I wrote the following
As Mosher was indicating it is ridiculous and wrong to attack Curry for being open to something new. I’d have said then, and I say now, it’s a mark of something called a real scientist. For Annan to agree with the repugnant words of Michael Mann and give this as an example is both pathetic and evil. Hopefully the pathetic will win out. And by saying “Curry brought this on herself” you condemn yourself to the same verdict. You should be ashamed.
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Curry adds that with her resignation her “fall from the ivory tower that started in 2005 is now complete.” Curry continues, “At this point, the private sector seems like a more ‘honest’ place for a scientist working in a politicized field than universities or government labs — at least when you are your own boss.” The good news is that Curry is not bowing out climate research and the climate change debate; she plans to continue and increase her blogging on climate research and climate policy. As she notes, “Once you detach from the academic mindset, publishing on the internet makes much more sense, and the peer review you can get on a technical blog is much more extensive. But peer review is not really the point; provoking people to think in new ways about something is really the point. In other words, science as process, rather than a collection of decreed ‘truths.'”
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