When Brad Keyes wrote his great Shibbolithic post at WUWT, I just had to tweet it out.

This resulted in a long long thread about issues like climate comedy, the hockey stick and Oreskes’ consensus paper,  prompting Andy Revkin to tweet to us to chill out—twice.

It started out with derisive responses from Nick Palmer, Tony Duncan and Bob D. Then it started growing like Jack’s beanstalk with various sub-threads and it might still keep growing.

Here’s Some Highlights:

•  Ken Rice retweeted my call out adding that he wouldn’t bother reading it. Steve Mosher responded that “it’s not even funny.”

•  I asked for examples of climate humor that are funny. Eli Rabett chimed in linking to one of his own snarky posts ridiculing Anthony Watts. Then he tweeted a couple more unimpressive posts and another that I thought was beyond lame. Then Mosh and Brad started arguing about comedy.

•  Andy Revkin’s chill out video had a section on climate comedy. I tweeted about it leading to more discussion among me, Brad and Mosh. Mosh knows a lot of actual comedians and academics who’ve turned comedy into an actual science. I compared Brad to Robin Williams.

•  The hockey stick brawl started to form when Tony tweeted about engaging directly with climate scientists. I tweeted the well known video of Gavin Schmidt running from Roy Spencer. Brad started a skirmish with Tony by bringing up Michael Mann’s Serengeti strategy. I brought up Gavin’s inline responses to Judith Curry’s comment on the Real Climate review of Andrew Montford’s The Hockey Stick Illusion.

•  Brad branched out on Peter Gleick’s forged Heartland memo.

•  Tony asked why Mann would fabricate a result that ends up being confirmed by a dozen other subsequent studies? I replied “He’d want all the spoils and acclaim that getting there first brings, and which he got.” Dan Neuman quipped, “So he was able to foresee what all future research would show? Wow, Mann’s even more amazing than I thought.” I replied with David Deming’s Congressional testimony about getting rid of the Medieval Warm Period.

•  When the topic got to Principle Component Analysis, I tagged Steve McIntyre and Ross McKittrick. Steve showed up and started rebutting points. Caerbannog had a quote from MBH’98 that he claimed disclosed Mann’s hockey stick mining method. Steve refuted it and I gloated at Caerbannog.

Caerbannog’s quote from MBH’98:  “The proxy series and PCs were formed into anomalies relative to the same 1902–80 reference period mean, and the proxy series were also normalized by their standard deviations during that period.”

•  Steve brought up Mann’s use of FORTRAN instead of a modern language such as R. Eli replied “r in 1998?” This led to a big discussion about whether FORTRAN is outdated or still useful. Gavin showed up to dispute the usefulness of R in 1998. I actually think the other side sort of won this part of the debate.

•  Dan tried to claim there was nothing about the hockey stick that was hidden. I responded “Oh Baloney!!” Rob Honeycutt showed up and mocked me for my use of multiple exclamation marks. Then he started quizzing me. I tried to address his questions. He asked me if I’d read MBH98/99.  I like to think that I address questions, so I responded with a three tweet series  and some wisecracks.

•  Steve commented:  “one of the reasons I became interested in it early on was Mann’s incredibly grandiose and pompous verbiage to describe steps in his method that were merely linear regressions. Such inflated language for simple steps indicated pretentious mediocrity.”

•  Someone brought up Jon Stewart’s bit about “hide the decline” on the Daily Show. I located it.

•  This led to a lot of back and forth over “hide the decline” among Steve, Rob, Ken Rice, Eli Rabett and Tony. The Wegman report even came up. Later Steve made this important point: “Hide the Decline tried to deceive people into thinking that tree ring temperature reconstructions had more validity than they really did. They didn’t want to ‘dilute the message’ or give ‘fodder to skeptics.’ Deletion of decline as done in HTD would be illegal for fund manager.”

•  Things sometimes got heated. Rob tweeted “You castigate real science to your own peril.” I responded with a Robert De Niro “you talking to me” video. Steve called it a Freudian slip for, “You castigate Realclimate to your own peril.”

• Then Brad brought up two graphs by Naomi Oreskes that appear to have two conflicting numbers.  This led to a couple weeks of arguing with some participants at times leaving, which is probably the best measure of  who is winning a Twitter argument.

Brad’s List

Brad’s humor can be sharp edged. I asked him what tweets he thought should be included. Some of them are actually my tweets. He came up with these pithy descriptions:

•  Will Revkin take the bait?

•  What’s the problem, T or T`?

•  Flight of the consensutards

•  Publish = perish

•  Deniers are an odd lot

•  Ken’s Hockey Stick challenge

•  Believalist agrees with the scientists

•  Trust a German to tell the best joke in the thread

•  Steve McIntyre gives obscurantists a good hiding

•  Miscellanea:  one    two     three     four     five     six

This is my interpretation of what’s significant. Any other participants who don’t like it can write their own. As they say, history is written by the winners.

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33 Comments

  2. > Where the hell have I been?

    Holiday to the planet Earth presumably? I’ve always wanted to take the family there, see what all the fuss is about, but it means tearing myself away from the climate debate.

    Liked by 1 person

  3. I’m online enough to have intersected with it. It’s quite strange that I missed it all.

    I’m tempted to repost this for the dozen or so old timers who’d truly appreciate it.

    Do I have permission in case I decide yes, Mike?

    Liked by 3 people

  6. I got it. I’m just concerned that the set of people who would understand that and were not already directly involved in it would be limited to me. I may run it by Anthony. I’ll email Brad if I schedule it.

    Liked by 6 people

  8. “..Tony asked why Mann would fabricate a result that ends up being confirmed by a dozen other subsequent studies?..”

    sigh..why would “tony” ask such a rhetorically stupid “question”.?
    Mann fabricated his results.
    Others using the same awful data sets and tricks..”replicated” the original fraud.
    How many times has Climate Audit showed this…
    So “tony” is either a liar and a cretin…or just a liar..
    Take your pick..

    Liked by 2 people

  10. It’s worth pointing out that Mann’s reconstruction (almost straight line heading slowly down followed by tick up) wasn’t really replicated. I believe all following reconstructions had way more variation and some degree of MWP. Even Mann’s later reconstructions didn’t look the same.

    Liked by 2 people

  11. DaveJr

    that’s why Prof Mann’s admission to the NAS was so well-deserved and so long overdue: his singular genius for leading teams to craft game-winning hockey sticks, on time and on budget.

    Can anybody working in science today—even Mann—make a stick as well as Mann? If they can I’ve never heard of them.

    It was one small step for Mann, one giant accomplishment nobody else is ever likely to come close to.

    Liked by 1 person

  12. M & M went so far as to fix Mann’s mistakes.

    S. McIntyre and R. McKitrick, 2003. “Corrections to the Mann et al. (1998) Proxy Data Base and Northern Hemispheric Average Temperature Series” Energy & Environment, Vol. 14, No. 6, pp. 751-771

    Liked by 2 people

  14. “…AND THEN THERE’S PHYSICS says:
    How many times has Climate Audit showed this…
    Never.”

    You’re funny…and mendacious.
    But hey, this stuff is your new postmodern religious replacement right?
    There are more links..please do some basic research before be-clowning yourself..

    Rutherford/Bradley/Hughes/jones/Briffa/Osborn
    https://climateaudit.org/2005/02/12/errors-matter-2-the-different-method-of-rutherford-et-al-2005/

    Rutherford/Bradley/Hughes/jones/Briffa/Osborn
    https://climateaudit.org/2005/02/12/errors-matter-2-the-different-method-of-rutherford-et-al-2005/

    Grafting Games
    https://climateaudit.org/2015/01/08/more-mann-grafting/

    Cubasch Failing
    https://climateaudit.org/2005/03/13/cubasch-in-das-erste/

    members of the Mann “clique” had been “reviewing other members of the same clique”.
    https://climateaudit.org/2011/05/23/climategate-documents-confirm-wegmans-hypothesis/

    Wahl and Ammann

    https://climateaudit.org/2006/08/30/wahl-and-ammann-again-1/
    https://climateaudit.org/2008/05/23/will-stephen-schneider-say-what-the-acceptance-date-of-wahl-and-ammann-2007-was/
    https://climateaudit.org/2008/08/10/reconciling-to-wahl-and-ammann/

    https://climateaudit.org/multiproxy-pdfs/

    Liked by 2 people

  17. ATTP’s argument style, when confronted with his actual record, is difficult to distinguish from a liar’s.

    Liked by 1 person

  19. In psychiatry a mannerism is defined as an ordinary gesture or expression that becomes abnormal through exaggeration or repetition. Quite.

    Liked by 3 people

  21. Only three people appreciated my mannikin quip above, so maybe some background is missing. OK, it’s bad form to explain an attempted witticism, but it’s a slow day in the compound, so here goes. There are two layers.

    Michael Mann years ago wrote a article on the “Serengeti Strategy” explaining why he is the victim of so much abuse from other scientists. Predators like hyena gang up on a Serengeti wildebeest vulnerable by separation from the herd, so Mann claimed he suffers insults and attacks on his work and character by being such a visible champion of climate truth. It is not because he did anything wrong, and he implies that others are spared his pain, because so long as he stands, deniers are not emboldened to seek other targets.

    On another level, Mann projects and distracts from his own predatory moves to bully into silence those who disagree with him. Secure in his superior financial and legal resources, and his incredible global acclaim, he has attacked people like Tim Ball and Judith Curry with specious claims. Thus he also protects the flock against unbelievers who would sow doubt and undermine the faith.

    Mann carries a load of chutzpah that would kill anyone else.

    (Definition of Chutzpah: A son is convicted of murdering his parents, and appears before the judge for sentencing. The young man says, “Go easy on me, your Honor, I’m an orphan.”)

    I expect everyone knows a mannikin is an humanoid sculpture put on public display for people to buy whatever it is wearing.

    Liked by 5 people

  22. Do I now need to explain “Mannerism” in order to attract more appreciation? Nah, more than happy with the Manna it originally received.

    Liked by 4 people

  24. ATTP

    > I like how the commenters on this site focus on playing the ball, rather than the man…..hold on, have I got that the right way around?

    Science is ethics. Those who have none shouldn’t be surprised if their defects are discussed on science blogs.

    Like

  26. Richard my friend Wikki suggests that by extension, “manna” has been used to refer to any divine or spiritual nourishment. Likes here are getting more difficult to attain (compare with numbers given only a few years ago) and are certainly considered by the apprechiarti as manna-like.

    Liked by 3 people

  27. Richard

    > It’s the literalist in me.

    The literalist is only in you figuratively, one hopes! Unless an unresorbed twin is stowed away in your person and you just forgot to mention such autobiographical trivia until now, which I can’t absolutely rule out.

    Liked by 2 people

  28. Just missed how ATTP who supported the attacks on Susan Crockford, tries to make a point about ad him.
    Irony early in the day is tasty.

    Liked by 1 person

  29. Ron,
    The ego Manniac misrepresented the Serengeti strategy. The Serengeti predators go for the easiest prey: the infirm, the weak, the stupid, the poor in judgement. Mann, in his spectacular demonstration of out of control ego, chose to take all critiques of his fatally flawed magnum opus as personal insults. The Manniac also flatters himself that he is somehow the great leader of the herd, drawing the attention of the wicked. He clearly can’t defend his work, so depends on lawfare, his gang attack multi author papers and gigo derivative papers reaffirming his shoddy work.
    And mannikins are perfect fans for a Manniac.

    Liked by 1 person

  31. Since Mann goes around with others in attacking people like Crockford, when we trash Mann for such activities they should not just be “ad him” but could also be “ad them”.

    Liked by 1 person

  33. may I as a lurker chip into this wonderful list of Mannerisms>
    My name being Patrick Healy I one time introduced my beloved as Squahealy. She has never been to Africa.
    She has not forgiven me.

    Like

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