Mann's "Hockey Stick" NOT supported by NAS Panel

Mann's "Hockey Stick" NOT supported by NAS Panel
*********

In the accompanying thread "(OT) What Global Warming has in common
with Marxism"
http://groups.google.ie/group/rec.bi...dda0f151cc4d7d
Bill Asher claims that the NAS Panel under Gerald North supported
Michael Mann's Hockey Stick.

The NAS Panel was set up specifically to counter the Wegman Panel,
which had been commissioned by the US Senate to investigate Michael
Mann's statistical credibility, and had found it to be zero as related
in "(OT) What Global Warming has in common with Marxism". The NAS
Panel expressed itself less forcefully than the Wegman Panel but in
every essential agreed with it, finding that,

*** the principal components method by which Hockey Stick was achieved
was flawed
***RE tests are insufficient for statistical significance (i.e. the
Hockey Stick has zero meaning)
***Mann's Hockey Stick depends on bristlecone proxies which are known
to be unreliable
***Such strip bark forms should be “avoided” in reconstruction

This is a comprehensive condemnation of a statistical report, stated
politely. (In plain English, Mann was either incompetent or
deliberately cooked up a politically desirable result.) Certainly, to
support a multi-trillion policy, for which purpose the Mann Hockey
Stick was put forward by IPCC, one would expect at least enthusiastic
support from a scientist's peers, especially from a panel which was
constituted specifically to support Mann against Wegman.

North and his panel were then also called before the Senate
subcommittee, together with Wegman. The members of the NAS panel were
then asked under oath if they wished to dispute the Wegman findings,
and this interesting dialogue ensued:

CHAIRMAN BARTON. Dr. North, do you dispute the conclusions [about the
Mann papers] or the methodology of Dr. Wegman's report?
DR. NORTH. No, we don't. We don't disagree with their
criticism. In fact, pretty much the same thing is said in our
report.
DR. BLOOMFIELD [statistician to the NAS Panel]. Our committee reviewed
the methodology used by Dr. Mann and his co-workers and we felt that
some of the choices they made were inappropriate. We had much the same
misgivings about his work that was documented at much greater length
by Dr. Wegman.
WALLACE: The two reports were complementary, and to
the extent that they overlapped, the conclusions were quite
consistent.

In short, the NAS committee -- set up to support Mann -- agreed item
by item with Wegman's devastating condemnation of the man and his
methods as totally incompetent. I quote only two paragraphs of
Wegman's comprehensive indictment of Mann:
'The controversy of Mann’s methods lies in that the proxies are
centered on the mean of the period 1902-1995, rather than on the whole
time period. This mean is, thus, actually decentered low, which will
cause it to exhibit a larger variance, giving it preference for being
selected as the first principal component. The net effect of this
decentering using the proxy data in MBH98 and MBH99 is to produce a
“hockey stick” shape.' Later Dr Wegman added that this was
"politically convenient".

The Wegman report executive summary concludes with a total,
contemptuous dismissal of Mann's Hockey Stick:
'Overall, our committee believes that Mann’s assessments that the
decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade of the millennium and that
1998 was the hottest year of the millennium cannot be supported by his
analysis.'

And Dr North and everone else on the NAS Panel agreed under oath to
every word of that and more.

North claimed, somewhat limply, that the fact that the statistics were
totally crooked didn't mean Mann didn't arrive at the right answer.
Remember, his Panel had been constituted specifically to support
Michael Mann's contention that Global Warming is a danger. And the
best they could officially say of the Mann papers were that they were
statistically incompetent but that their conclusions were nontheless
"plausible" in places. Wrong in method but "plausible"? And not even
all of it, just in parts, the rest bad, like the curate's egg? Holy
****! And on that they want to commit trillions? With such a low
standard of proof, anything at all can be made to appear plausible.

In any event, plausibility without correct method and conclusive proof
is a personal belief, nothing to do with science, which is all about
proof. Edward Wegman said so:

Method Wrong + Answer Correct = Bad Science.

That was prophetic shorthand, as reports were already in the pipeline
that applying Mann's algorithm, which Wegman had condemned so roundly,
to random red noise also produced a Hockey Stick. Every time. If
random inputs can duplicate your "science", it is cargo cult science.
Speak into the tennis ball, Dr Mann.

But Asher claims that the NAS Panel "supports" Mann's Hockey Stick!

Method Wrong + Answer Correct = Bad Science

Think on it, Asher.

By the way, Asher, Edward Wegman, the most distinguished statistician
in America, probably in the world, is a past chairman of the Committee
on Applied and Theoretical Statistics of the National Academy of
Sciences, the very institution that Mann (and you, little Bill Asher!)
cites as supporting Mann's work!

Well, actually no, Michael. Wegman consigned your incompetence to the
devil, and North's solidarity was about as grudging as you can get
without asking you to resign from the NAS. You screwed up, Dr Mann,
and you got caught out. And your supporters and followers are
operating on faith alone.

The Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age remain, and while they
stand Global Warming is a joke. That, of course, is why the Global
Warmies, like Michael Mann, expend so much energy to lie these
historical phenomena out of existence.

Andre Jute
Reformed petrol head
Car-free since 1992
Greener than thou!

Maybe you should get some. Then you would be annoying the ladies
(men? - your fastidiousness is obvious) rather than us.

You know what I'm talking about.

:-D

D'ohBoy

“You can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on.”
George W. Bush
Andre,
You are in a select group, thankfully a minority that
doesn't include climatology experts or those
capable of rational thought.
JP

On Wed, 29 Jul 2009 20:14:55 -0700 (PDT), Andre Jute
wrote:

Mann's "Hockey Stick" NOT supported by NAS Panel
*********

Good to know! Especially useful to those of us interested in bicycle
technology.

--
jeverett3ATsbcglobalDOTnet (John V. Everett)

RonSonic wrote:

There are other factors that have been ignored lately. The 90s were
somewhat quiet causing us to forget this one, but all it'll take is
another busy year and we freeze again.

90s weren't so quiet when hundreds died in Chicago heat wave:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1995_Chicago_heat_wave. Very little media
attention because Clinton was...well, let's go with playing golf. (And his
name wasn't Bush.)

http://tinyurl.com/lxwlud

And also 'cause these are really cool photo's.

Stunning, actually.

BS (not)