The two most non-essential professions on the planet right now are that of Big Climate alarmist and his attorney in a vanity lawsuit. Yet Michael E Mann, inventor of the global-warming "hockey stick", and his counsel John Williams are disinclined to let their lousy eight-year-old defamation suit against me shelter in place for a couple of months, and the other day they made a surprise move. By which I mean a deranged and desperate move.
Before we get to that, let me make a general observation: You'll have noticed that millions of people around the world are what one might call Coronaskeptics and pop up on TV and radio pooh-poohing the pandemic models. One reason they do that is because Mann's we're-all-gonna-die school of data analysis did immense damage to modeling in general - to the point where large numbers of persons simply dismiss all models as being a crap shoot of bollocks ...because, as I heard a radio host say yesterday, they'd seen all the climate alarmist models fail to pan out. That's on Mann and his chums.
Anyway, as many readers will know, Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick are the dynamic duo that broke Mann's hockey stick - to the fury of the warm-mongers. They are not parties to what Steve calls "Mann's stupid lawsuit", but nevertheless:
I have a nominee for most absurdly venal activity during COVID lockdown. Michael Mann has ramped up his vanity libel lawsuit. Last Friday, McKitrick and I (who are non-parties in lawsuit) were notified by a Washington lawyer for one of the defendants that Mann's lawyer had requested that he (the defendant's lawyer) accept service of (separate) subpoenas to McKitrick and myself for documents.
The lawyer in question does not represent McIntyre & McKitrick any more than, say, Alan Dershowitz or Michael Avenatti does. Furthermore, both Macs are Canadians who reside in Canada. So Mann and John Williams really need to find a Canadian process server to serve McIntyre at that rackets club where he plays squash with the chickie from Mean Girls (Steve leads a very glamorous life).
Of course, they'd also have to find a Canadian judge willing to entertain the notion that a Canadian living in Canada should be compelled to comply with such a subpoena. That would be a long shot - not least because, following his loss in another nuisance lawsuit before the British Columbia Supreme Court, Mann reacted to His Lordship's decision by denying he had lost at all and refusing to pay the defendant's costs:
The provision in the Court's order relating to costs does NOT mean that I will pay Ball's legal fees.
See also this interview with Dr Ball:
The judge in the Mann-v-Ball case ruled that the defeated Mann must pay Ball's legal costs, which are in excess of US$700.000. But Mann has already indicated he won't pay.
If that's still the case, then Doctor Fraudpants has joined Cary Katz in the scofflaw department (see Statement 38 here), and there's even less reason for a Canadian judge to entertain the flimflam of a petitioner who disdains to be bound by the courts he appeals to. And all that's if the courthouse was open in the first place:
It's hard to picture a Canadian court being interested in breaking our coronavirus lockdown in order to accommodate Mann's vanity litigation. But it proceeds onward in the fetid swamp of D.C. courts.
True, the DC courts are a fetid swamp. But even they aren't fetid enough not to choke on Mann's absurd grandiosity. Jennifer Anderson, this year's trial judge (her two predecessors retired), ruled a few months back:
Plaintiff is a scientist with his research focus on global warming, not the scientist representing the entirety of the science behind global warming.
The wound to Mann's amour propre evidently still festers, because, even as Judge Anderson quite properly shrank the case to its essentials, Mann refuses to get the message and keeps trying to open it up. Hence this pitiful attempt to ensnare M&M in a case they're not a party to, by attempting to bully them into it by doing an end-run around their nationality and residency.
As Steyn Club members know, Steve and Ross were delightful shipmates on last fall's pre-Corona Mark Steyn Cruise. In fact, one of my most pleasant memories of that voyage was a conversation with Steve's mum about her afternoon tea with the then Princess Elizabeth in Toronto in the early 1930s. As I recall, Mrs McIntyre hopes to have another bath bun and pot of Darjeeling with Her Majesty, but that would depend on international air or sea travel ever enabling them to be on the same continent again.
Mann's demand that some other guy's lawyer accept service for some fellows in another country where he's already in defiance of the courts is a desperate move even by his loser standards. But it would truly be a travesty of justice if Steve and Ross were forced to expend money seeing off his garbage gambit. If they're forced to do so, we'll have to hold a SteynOnline fundraiser or some such to ensure that not one penny (even a Canadian penny, bearing Steve's mum's tea companion's head) is borne by two men guilty of nothing other than forensically dissecting every single flaw in Mann's worthless "science".
If ever anything were "non-essential" right now, it's a sclerotic eight-year going-nowhere vanity lawsuit. Mann should self-quarantine off, to put it politely.
~And with that back to our Corona coverage: I'll be back later today with a brand new episode of Daniel Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year - and tomorrow with another socially distant self-isolated audio edition of The Mark Steyn Show.
~We opened The Mark Steyn Club over two-and-a-half years ago, and I'm thrilled by all those across the globe - from Fargo to Fiji, Vancouver to Vanuatu, Surrey to the Solomon Islands - who've signed up to be a part of it. My only regret is that we didn't launch it seventeen years ago, but better late than never. The Steyn Club is not to everyone's taste, but, if you're minded to give it a go, we'd love to have you. You can find more information about the Club here - and, if you've a pal who might be partial to this sort of thing, don't forget our special Gift Membership.
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What a relief to discover that Stephen McIntyre - based on his Twitter feed - isn't a Corona-denier.
There's no doubt a lot of the Covid projections are flawed. There's a stack of "good" reasons why. That said, a lot of regional outbreaks are on the exact same trajectory as Italy's, which is a depressing thought. Fortunately, there have been *unseen* benefits in terms of mitigation and preparation (given that Lombardy locked down after 800 deaths).
A lot of the conservative cognitive dissonance is interesting:
A. "Studies show that China could have prevented 95 per cent of coronavirus infections if its measures to contain the outbreak had begun three weeks earlier... the bastards."
B. "This lockdown in New York is part of a globalist racket and a major over-reach of absolutely no proven benefit in controlling what is basically a bad common cold that only kills a bunch of really old people in countries with socialised healthcare."
PS. Experts get it wrong all the time, often with serious longterm consequences (eg. WMDs and an ongoing war - costing much blood and treasure - nearly 20 years later). But there's a lot to be said for avoiding politicisation, and acting in good faith on the best available evidence - or not, as in Dr Mann's case.
"Corona-denier" is a pretty disgraceful term to use.
Interesting lip-service you pay to the notion that "experts can be wrong." The truth is, most so-called experts, particularly those on the left, have agendas. They put their agendas before their science. That is why they have often been hideously wrong, especially when predicting massive calamity, which is where the money is for them. Search the internet and you'll find many hilarious articles about such predictions. For example: That we'd run out of oil - 50 years ago; that we'd run out of natural gas; that we'd run out of copper and gold; that billions would die of starvation beginning around 1980; not to mention the ridiculous global warming predictions that have come up laughably short and that Mark has chronicled in tremendous detail. But now, we're supposed to believe every so-called expert about the corona virus – as long as they make a dire prediction. Not only that, we're apparently to turn over the running of society and all societal authority to them.
When you hear statements like, "the virus could kill up to 240,000 Americans," recognize this and similar statements for the meaningless statements that they are. It is saying the virus could kill somewhere between 0 and 240,000 people. That's quite a DAMN LARGE MARGIN OF ERROR! What kind of genius expertise is needed to say something like this? I could have made a prediction like this when I first heard of the virus's beginning in Wuhan without knowing anything more. And no one bothers to counter them. This "estimate" was later revised to "kill between 100,000 and 240,000 Americans." What is the confidence in this estimate? Without it, the statement is meaningless. Even trying to avoid all news coverage and blather about this, I hear at least a dozen of these ridiculous, meaningless, scare-statements per day.
I'm still waiting for anyone who supports the near total shut-down of society in America to tell us how the symptomology of corona virus differs from the seasonal flu. The symptomology and its effects on people, not the molecular structure. I've heard no one address this, so I looked it up. See a recent article in Medical News Today. The symptoms are identical. The at-risk populations are identical. The measures recommended for prevention of spread are identical. Seasonal flu kills tens of thousands of Americans per year – mainly the elderly and immune-compromised – in just the same way as corona virus. Yes, technically not all seasonal flus are pandemic, but that is just semantics. It's a matter of scientific technicality. Seasonal flus kill tens of thousands of Americans per year. That is not semantics nor technicalities. Are we going to shut down society for 4 months every year for the seasonal flu?
That is the issue – did we need a near total shut down of society in America because of the corona virus? To say we did not is not being a "corona-denier," a pretty disgraceful term. Do you deny the enormous costs these shut-downs are having? Just consider the jobless claims in the US the last two weeks. They are staggering. Try to imagine the wreckage of lives associated with these millions of claims, not to mention all of the other ruinous effects this is having on the society and will continue to have probably for years to come.
The situation could have been handled as we would handle a serious seasonal flu. Extra precautions for the elderly and ill, common sense precautions for everyone else, some temporary travel restrictions. The rest of this is the type of government overreach that makes your so-called experts feel smart and important.
If you think the hospital and morgue over-flows in New York are the equivalent of bad seasonal flu and should have been handled the same way, then why would you object to the term "denier"?
I have never advocated the total shut down of any country for an indefinite period if you read my comments. You ask, "Do you deny the enormous costs these shut-downs are having?" - On the contrary, as I've written many times, it's an absolute disaster - and it was avoidable. Early testing/ tracing/ isolation of a handful of early cases as in Singapore etc - which skeptics would argue was "hysterical panic" - would have averted the economic catastrophe. What I loathe is the politicisation of a pandemic whether by the left or the right.
Personally, I think calling others "gutless" is pretty disgraceful. I have a relative in the US epicentre whom I don't consider gutless, even if you do.
Centuries ago everybody said the world was flat and that the earth was in the center of the universe. You can guess which one people still believe in to this day. The same thing can be said about climate change. Smog that is common in places with compacted populations like NYC or Los Angles are going to happen because having people live on top of each other with no room to move creates air pollution. Just ask China. Their masks can't even keep out the air pollution, what makes them think it'll keep out COVID-19? These "people" want to be viewed as heroes but in the end they're Ray and Egon in the scene in Ghostbusters where the first discover a ghost and Peter asks them "So what do we do?" and they just look at each other and don't have a clue what to do.
So Michael 'climategate' Mann has still not paid Dr Ball. What a lowlife.
In a real scientific community he would of been laughed out of science when he got caught manipulating Briffa's data.
The first Climategate. It has been one long list of lies since then. A true lowlife. As Dr Tim Ball said he Mann should be in prison.
Delighted that the current trial judge is relying on the proper standard of "actual malice" in the discovery disputes, and (judging by the language in her order) may be less than impressed with Mann's argument that, "If Penn State says I'm okay, you're malicious to disagree..."
The case didn't get the immediate dismissal it deserved, but maybe there's summary judgment in its future, as there should be. Stay healthy, Judge Anderson.
The Coronaskepticism suggests we're all good with maintaining the status quo: "The Chinese Are Our Friends!"
Mark - I would like to know who is funding Mann in this obscene parody of judicial process. It's quite obvious that Mann initiated this lawsuit for no other purpose but to litigate-you-into-the-ground as many of his ilk like to do. His attorneys may be as cynical and ethics-deprived as he is but they aren't billing him in Monopoly money. The freight for carrying a lawsuit like this has to be heavy.
You have fought this with a determination and tenacity that I find amazing. This isn't simply the well-known lawyers tactic of "greenmail." It's being pursued for the sick purpose of crushing another human being and further eroding free speech - All to satisfy the narcissism of a small-time academic who has been blown up to huge size by the hot air of opportunistic doomsday elitists. I'm a lawyer who got out of personal injury law because of the venality of so many of the clients. I have found that our legal system, particularly the civil side, is awash in venality. You are a victim of it. BTW - Last time I heard Dr. Mann was swanning off to South America, or the Galapagos Islands or New Zealand on a six-month "research expedition." Is he back and has he ever responded to your requests for interrogatories, depositions or other forms of discovery?
When did we drift into calling scientific theories "models"? Einstein didn't call it his "model" of relativity. "Model" sounds like something that has worth in and of itself, like a diorama built for a school project. "Theory" implies something whose only value is in the accuracy of its predictions. You can falsify a theory, but to "falsify a model" doesn't quite sound right...and that's probably the point. A model is a theory in a safe space.
As for Mann, the guy is just such a worthless nuisance he's like a cartoon...starting to wonder if he's really a concoction of Mark's creative mind, performance art, the latest courtroom villain to stare down and defeat in the year's season finale. If only. Whatever the case it's working, my billfold stays open until you beat this guy Mark, good luck.
To the contrary, a "model" is a work of supposition, a simplified concept of how the model maker thinks nature eorks that leaves out many of the aspects of reality in order to be able to calculate a result in a time period less than a million years so we might draw some conclusions and make some predictions that can be tested vefore nature itself provides the answer. A model is full of guesses about the initial conditions of the sysyem being studied at time zero, and guesses and conjectures about how elements inyeract and change with time. Every computer game is a model making certain assumptions. HALO may operate as a self-consistent model universe, but it says nothing about the reality of alien artifacts such as a ring the size of earth's orbit whose inner, sun-facing surface is inhabited by non-human races that can travel between stars faster than light speed. A model that purports to representnthe nstural world has to be validated by making predictions that correspind to reality. ALL of the various climate prediction models endorsed by the UN ICPP have utterly failed to match the reality of the climate since 1997. They all predicted a continuatuon of the trend line of warming that took place between 1975 and 1997, and all have failed to match the reality of a basically flat temperature since 1997. The claims that current years are the "hottest on record" conceals the fact that the increments of increase are so small they are not statistically valid. Despite their failures, scientists have been unable to fix their models so that they match the unexpected flattening of the real climate temperatures. Those of is who wrote software for a l8ving have a common phrase: "Garbage in, garbage out." If the assumptions built into the design of ypur program are faulty, the output will be faulty. And if the output is not in accord with reality, your inputs were wrong. The guesses about how global temperature works are manifestly wrong. That should not surprise us. While scientists have bern studying weather and climate for a century, they have NEVER demonstrated the ability to make an accurate long term prediction of what the climate will be like 10, 20 let alone 100 years in the future. They have NEVER done it before, so we are not justified in thinking they can do it now.
Contrast this with the physicists who used Einstein's equations for General Relativity to predict the existence of gravitational waves, and how a machine could be built to detect and measure them. After decades of hard work, in 2015 scientists demonstrated that gravitational waves are real, can be measured, and that using them we would have the first direct observation of Black Holes. Their theories and models were vindicated by measuring the real world. More recently gravitational waves pointed to neutron stars colliding, and were confirmed by telescopes measuring x-rays, visible light, infrared light, and radio waves. This real scientific proof of theory happened in the same decades that climate scientists have been trying to prove their climate models predict reality, without any success. Astronomers have been detecting thousands of planets arpund other stars. Geneticists have decoded the human genome. But climate scientists still have no validated theory of global temperature change. We should not be mak8ng public policy decisions based on an unproven fantasy, akin to Lysenko under Stalin, who used political power to banish his competition.
...And the rates of change of initial conditions, and the rates of change of the rates of change...
Yes, you raise another important aspect of computer models. There are no smooth functions for directly calculating the interaction and feedback of the many factors affecting long term temperatures. The computer models use numerical models with thousands of iterations. The mathematics of Numerical Analysis is largely about the inherent uncertainty in the values input to such calculations, and the inevitable way that small errors at the start will propagate into larger errors with more calculations. It means that the errors inherent in calculations of predictions about 50 and 100 years from now make the predictions totally unreliable. If ypur calculations do not address the exponential propagation of errors over time, your model has no relationship to the inescapable reality of uncertainty in our measurements of the natural world. Predictions that are nice and exact are therefore untrue.
This is why Mann's hockey stick forecast is obviously inteliable, because a validly calculated prediction would show probability errors around the central prediction, errors which will mathematically grow as it gets farther from observed reality. Mann's forecast line is totally divergent from reality for the past twenty years, and the error range for his future predictions should properly blow out into meaninglessness.
A scientific model wherein the data on the ground not only does not confirm the model, but rather contradicts the model is more properly and genteelly called a "fantasy". Less genteelly, it's called 'batshit crazy raving lunatic steaming bag of horseshit".
That was good.
Mark,
Maybe Dr Mann will give up, but I doubt it. Let me put on record my contempt for his hysterical pseudo-science, hoping that he will see fit to try to get at me in Tutukaka. And by the way, Tutukaka hasn't had much attention in the members' list of locations..
What a thin-skinned maladroit twit this boy man is .In this rather profound time we are all experiencing , how can any sane person be so consumed with themselves , alas some people will never learn the lessons of today that are truly important and essential. Many of us would financially support your fearless friends , if it comes to that Mark
I'd certainly have liked to find him lying on the ball at the bottom of a ruck, G. But look at the picture: amazing that he ever emerges from behind mummy's apron.
Much of my hope lies in the appearance that Mark looks considerably heartier and healthier than Mann.
I too have noticed the similarity between "climate change" and coronavirus. Both are going to kill nearly all of humanity, both are going to require "great sacrifice" by the little people of the planet to control (but not so much from the Grandees of the World, it's a profit opportunity in the market, don't you know). The third similarity: neither phenomena is going to get anywhere near the left's dire apocalyptic pronouncements about the end of the human race. That said, the left has been hoping and telling us every five years or so that this or that event is the "end of the world as we know it." This time it looks like the leftist totalitarians of the world may get their fondest wish. Amazing what a little existential fear can motivate people to accept and do.
On the nail, C.
I suddenly have a strange yearning to listen again to that famous little tone poem by Frederick Delius, "On Hearing the First Cockwomble in Spring,"
Mark replies:
That's a grand title, Brian. I may have to take you up on that on the next Steyn Cruise.
It's possible that I've made this point before at SteynOnline.
I'm a retired PhD physicist whose last degree is actually in astronomy&astrophysics. Because of this background, I understand the "greenhouse effect" of CO2 (also methane and water vapor) -- it's real. And I used to be an adherent of the view that human activities are driving climate change. But for a decade I've been an agnostic-leaning-toward-skeptic ... because of the rancid behavior of so many prominent adherents.
What am I talking about? My growing skepticism was informed by the revelations of "Climategate" in late 2009. But the most potent "datum" I've encountered was an interview of William Happer published in Princeton's student newspaper about the time Happer was going to be testifying on the subject before a Senate subcommittee back then. Happer, a world-class optical physicist (member of the National Academy of Sciences, in a named chair at Princeton, etc.) had been Undersecretary of Energy in charge of the department's $3 billion/year budget for basic research under the first President Bush. From that interview:
"Happer explained that his beliefs about climate change come from his experience at the Department of Energy, at which Happer said he supervised all non-weapons energy research, including climate change research. Managing a budget of more than $3 billion, Happer said he felt compelled to make sure it was being spent properly. 'I would have [researchers] come in, and they would brief me on their topics,' Happer explained. 'They would show up. Shiny faces, presentation ready to go. I would ask them questions, and they would be just delighted when you asked. That was true of almost every group that came in.'
"The exceptions were climate-change scientists, he said.
"'They would give me a briefing. It was a completely different experience. I remember one speaker who asked why I wanted to know, why I asked that question. So I said, you know I always ask questions at these briefings ... I often get a much better view of [things] in the interchange with the speaker,' Happer said. 'This guy looked at me and said, "What answer would you like?" I knew I was in trouble then. This was a community even in the early 1990s that was being turned political. [The attitude was] "Give me all this money, and I'll get the answer you like."
"Happer said he is dismayed by the politicization of the issue and believes the community of climate-change scientists has become a veritable 'religious cult,' noting that nobody understands or questions any of the science.
"He noted in an interview that in the past decade, despite what he called 'alarmist' claims, there has not only not been warming, there has in fact been global cooling. He added that climate change scientists are unable to use models to either predict the future or accurately model past events.
...
"'[Climate-change theory has] been extremely bad for science. It's going to give science a really bad name in the future,' he said. 'I think science is one of the great triumphs of humankind, and I hate to see it dragged through the mud in an episode like this.'"
The Happer interview avoids all the clutter and disputes about the climate data and the complicated models. Instead, it provides a telling **sociological** observation. (At least it strikes one physicist -- me -- as sociological! It's all about understanding pretty obvious behavior among other humans.) I think Happer's observation is damning of the adherents' community and is consistent with the picture that "Climategate" seemed to reveal.
Of course Happer's experience with those "climate-change scientists" was around 1990, so his observations presumably weren't of Michael Mann, who attained prominence only late in that decade. But his experience was consistent with the thesis that, in this arena, we're not really talking about science at all. Instead, I call it "a science-resembling activity done in bad faith."
Thank you for your comment, Paul. Big astronomy buff.
No one's had to teach me about global warming (as was) since I saw Frank Capra's educational films as a lad in the 1960s. "The Unchained Goddess" (1958) addressed the greenhouse effect, and as an impressionable boy, I couldn't forget it. But the same impressionable boy knew bullying when he saw it, and what began as fair inquiry has turned into a curb-stomping, with the likes of Michael Mann trying to put his size-six boot in. I lamented in another post a day or so ago that you just can't reason with people on some subjects. Climate change is second perhaps only to Donald Trump. Far from denying science, we skeptics don't recognize hysteria, fear-mongering, and intimidation as science. Leftist rhetoric as usual, but not science.
"[A} science-resembling activity done in bad faith." Couldn't agree more, P. Thanks for sharing.
Agreed. As a former high school science teacher, I was a in a select minority of my peers that did not believe in anthropogenic global warming. I have been following this subject since the early 1980's and have yet to observe any empirical evidence that has proven one of Mann's or his followers' predictions or assertions. The science industry in the last century evolved from the acquisition of knowledge to having an air of religiosity and the acquisition of power. The scientific method is dependent on using models to be able to simplify and explain complicated phenomenons. The models are only as good as those who create them and the inputs used. In this case, as Mark has proved so brilliantly in his books, the modelers and the inputs are corrupt.
My own enlightenment came when I saw in the Climategate emails that a Geophysical Research Letters editor who had previously handled one of my own paleoclimate papers had been pushed off their editorial board by The Hockey Team. This was solely because he had the temerity to accept a paper of which they disapproved. I had already been following closely Steve McIntyre's ClimateAudit posts and I found his detective work very compelling. I loved his Starbuck's Hypothesis and for pure entertainment, it's hard to beat Andrew Montford's "Bishop Hill" blog posting about Caspar and the Jesus Paper. Definitely worth a read. It just shows that there's plenty of sausage making that goes into Consensus Science (TM).
Count me in if Steve and Ross need help with fending off any predatory American legal actions.
Chris/MCF: It'd be good if you'd provide links, or at least titles, to the McIntyre and Montford sources you mentioned.
Incidentally, I was on the Steyn/Alaska cruise and had several chances to interact with McIntyre. Notably, he successfully answered a test question I posed to him -- a "gedanken experiment," as we physicists call it -- pertinent to the workings of the "greenhouse effect," even though he's not a physical scientist.
If you'd like to test your physical understanding of the "greenhouse" effect, here's my gedanken experiment that I ran by McIntyre:
Suppose the atmosphere consists only of ~20% O2, ~80% N2, and trace CO2 at 400 ppm (i.e. no H2O, no methane, etc.); further suppose there's no biology involved (earth is barren) nor other variable external influences (sun is quiescent, distance to sun is fixed, cosmic ray environment is steady, ...). Then those gases will have some distribution with height, and earth's surface will have some temperature distribution, all in equilibrium with incoming sunlight. (Further ignore the heating source of radioactive decay within the earth.)
Now add as much CO2 to the atmosphere as the amount that's already there but -- somehow! -- confine the added CO2 to a one-meter-thick (or one-foot-thick) layer right at the ground. (To be clear, there's now twice as much CO2 present when considering the whole atmosphere, but all the added CO2 is right there at the ground, and all the "original" CO2 stays where it was.)
Then what happens to the earth's surface-temperature distribution under the changed condition?
Dr. Nachman. I, too, am a retired PhD physicist (1972). I spent my entire 36-year professional career in a sub-division of electrical engineering, not physics. Therefore, unlike yourself my knowledge of physics has atrophied to nullity. When I retired in 2008, I got interested in AGW. My basic nature made me a skeptic at the outset, and what thought I have given to the matter has solidified my skepticism. If you're interested, I'd like to initiate an e-mail discussion with you to get your thoughts and to have someone critique my thoughts.
I don't want to publicize my email address on this blog; but if you're interested maybe Mr. Steyn would be kind enough to send you my email address. If you're interested, this comment gives Mr. Steyn permission to provide you with my email. Another possibility is that I frequently read Joanne Nova's blog; and in the past when I have asked her, she has forwarded my email address to other parties.
Is the surface frictionless and the string has no mass?
Paul: I'm hesitant to put in links, but you can find things via Bing by searching for "climateaudit starbucks hypothesis" (check out the Pike's Peak posting, there were several posts about this around that time) and "bishophill caspar and the jesus paper", which immediately brings up the absolutely marvellous Andrew Montford summary of the sordid history of how a paper magically got included into an IPCC report. Dark humor at its best.
The Starbuck's Hypothesis involved Steve's frustration with dendro-thermometer folks always whining that they could not update their records to the present day, thereby allowing them to ignore the fact that the tree rings were not cooperating because they in fact failed to track current temperatures. So why believe that they work in the Middle Ages? Steve got so annoyed with this that he went on a trip to get his own cores on his own dime. The hypothesis was that he could do the field work in the morning and still have time to get back and get a cup of coffee at Starbucks.
As for the physics question, I'm tempted to guess that the 1m layer would not have much effect. The greenhouse effect deals with downwelling radiation and the fact that the upper atmosphere cools, thereby radiating less to space. Absent total pressure numbers and temperatures (T^4 is surprisingly non-linear), I hesitate to go further.
Although I did not stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, I did get the first correct answer for a radiation- based Eschenbach physics challenge over at WUWT, for what it's worth.
"Is the surface frictionless and the string has no mass?"
Of course. And the cow is spherical.
Reminds me of the distinction between the massless point and the pointless mass, Michael Mann being an example of the latter.
So is the answer to your test that the air temperature within 1 m of the surface goes up by 0.04 C or 1 C, depending on which calculation method you use or the surface air temp drops to less than -10 C as the absence of water vapor, clouds, etc. reduce the greenhouse effect to 5% of what it is now?
We would be living on one cold rock but you assumed there was no life on earth. Physics is Phun
To Walt, Chris Hall, and whom it may concern:
The answer to my gedanken experiment is that, to first approximation, doubling total CO2 **in the very peculiar way I specified** -- i.e. all the "new" CO2 **stays there at ground level** -- will cause no change in temperature, at the surface or anywhere else.
The "greenhouse" effect of CO2 amounts to this: Seen from far away, the earth's emission at infrared wavelengths characteristic of CO2 vibrational transitions is dominated by **cold** CO2, high in the atmosphere. (There's enough such CO2 that it's "optically thick.") If CO2 **up high** increases, then a broader chunk of the emission spectrum will be dominated by this cold CO2, because the wings of its emission lines are becoming optically thick.
Therefore, for earth's emission to balance the incoming power in sunlight, an increase in **high** CO2 forces earth's surface to warm a bit, in order for the increased emission from the surface to compensate for the increased portion of the spectrum dominated by the high, cold CO2.
But if you merely increase CO2 **at earth's surface** (and, in this gedanken experiment, insist that it stays there), you won't change the spectrum of radiation outgoing from earth to space – the portion of the emission spectrum dominated by high, cold CO2 won't change – so there won't need to be a change in surface temperature to keep the earth in power balance with incoming sunlight.
Excellent posts, Dr Nachman, thanks very much. It makes me wonder why so few understand it. I generally like to attribute poor behavior to the failed education system - ignorance instead of malice - but there is much evidence for the latter.
"You'll have noticed that millions of people around the world are what one might call Corona skeptics and pop up on TV and radio pooh-poohing the pandemic models. One reason they do that is because Mann's we're-all-gonna-die school of data analysis did immense damage to modeling in general - to the point where large numbers of persons simply dismiss all models as being a crap shoot of bollocks ...because, as I heard a radio host say yesterday, they'd seen all the climate alarmist models fail to pan out."
Well said Mr. Steyn and might I suggest we take a peek at the market last week? I'm a trader so that's all I focus upon lately and dare I say, I'm a tad encouraged. Yes, there are some new companies who have specifically skewed themselves to dealing with the life and work changes that the virus has enforced on us and their stock is rocketing.
Hurrah for them! They represent America at her finest and greatest ability to adapt to changing environments.
But here is the good news- the old "blue chips" are faring well also- Microsoft par exemple.
I observe two things:
1. Trump is instilling confidence among the electorate.
2. The ingenious nature of Americans are permitting them to work around this obstacle and continue to make the donuts.
We'll come out on the other side and when we do, the Don needs to enact severe punishment on the CCP. They need to pay for their Machiavellian actions.
I disagree with your last point about punishing the CCP. The United States cannot punish a communist country that will murder and enslave its own subjects. We could go to war with it, or refuse to trade with it, but I don't think that is what you are advocating. I do believe the Chinese communist government is fully and completely evil enough to do what you imply they have done, but I don't believe that they are that smart. I am not a big enough conspiracy theorist to believe the ChiComms purposefully started/created a new viral strain, then orchestrated a world-wide panic by announcing a new SARS virus strain too late, etc.
To me the issue is not the coronavirus anyway. It is not going to kill humanity, nor even weaken it in the long or short run. It has and will kill some people, but no more (and likely many less) that have been and will be killed by the many diseases active on the Earth each and every year . Risk of death from disease is part of the human condition and no government on earth now or til the end of time will ever change that. If you don't know any of the people who have become sick and have died personally and are kind of heartless, you might even secretly believe that a selective predator like this virus that takes almost exclusively the old and sick strengthens the species.
The issue, I believe, is the appropriateness of the public health response to the virus in the United States. How could any disease be worth the damage done to the economy and individuals financial security? Imprisoning innocent persons in their homes under threat of arrest, destroying their small business they have worked for decades to build? Seek solace at your church with your friends and families at a time of maximum stress and fear (stoked by the Government, see my comment about vents in Louisiana below) and you face arrest by the police ("protect and serve")? And do you really believe such the oh so cleverly named "social distancing" public health technique can work in an advanced industrial society like the US? I do not and do not believe it has worked. Against a virus spread through the air like this one ? Nail salons are closed, but child care facilities are not? I don't know about you, but I cannot live without trading with others for food, medicine, shelter, clothing and entertainment, which in my area requires close contact with many other people every single day.
I believe that what started as a worldwide thoughtless panic has devolved into bad faith political opportunism by the leftist parties, both here and in Europe, And the panic is unopposed by our defenders on the right as well. I believe that this gross violation of a free people's rights to choose what risk they will brave may (will?) have a very corrosive effect on human freedom in the US and everywhere in the future.
By punishment, I refer to brutal trade sanctions particularly on pharmaceuticals, one of which I am using often (Advil) thanks to the stress incurred on the market by the virus.
"I do believe the Chinese communist government is fully and completely evil enough to do what you imply they have done, but I don't believe that they are that smart."
I respectfully and vehemently disagree with this. Look at history; China has enjoyed a highly sophisticated culture (the Ming Dynasty as one of many examples) and Chinese-Americans dominate the freshman classes of the most prestigious universities in this country.This may or may not entail genetic superiority but it does imply a cultural superiority that emphasizes education and success.
Putting all that aside, China has a massive and motivated population that puts U.S. nationalism to shame. They wield an enormous amount of influence on global politics and we would be foolish to disregard their power to enforce evil intentions particularly as they have managed to manipulate the World Health Organization who was informed as far back as November by Taiwan about Wuhan and chose to ignore it.
The Donald is on to this and he will win this game because he's tougher and more discreet about his actions. Never underestimate the power of a tough guy who grew up in Queens.
Mr. Thompson,
Thanks for your reply.
First, I don't agree that "brutal trade sanctions" punish the Chinese Government in even any very small way. The Chinese people, at least the first and second world portions of their population, maybe a very tiny bit of inconvenience, but not punishment. The vast bulk of the Chinese population live a third-world, hand-to-mouth existence. They have no access to US pharmaceuticals in any event. But, do you really think Xi Jinping, the other Communist Party headmen, and their CCP member acolytes can't evade any US trade sanction to purchase any US pharmaceutical they wish? Most likely with the express permission of the US Commerce Department.
Second, you mischaracterize my statement that "I don't believe they are that smart," and perhaps imply I am racist. My son graduated from the University of California at Berkeley two years ago and I saw the number of Asian students graduating with him.
I made no statement about the Chinese people. You must read the sentence as written in its entirety.
The statement about "not smart enough" refers to the Chinese Communist Government, not the people of China. I stand by my statement about the Chinese Communists. They aren't the smartest, cleverest people on the planet Earth. They are among the most brutal killers, but not the smartest.
Third, I do agree with your statement about the World Heath Organization being manipulated. The WHO is corrupt to the core and is dominated by the avowed enemies of the United States. The WHO has lied about global warming, issuing the most dire predictions even after the issue has been shown fraudulent. The WHO has lied repeatedly about the cancer causing potential of glyphosate, the active ingredient in one of the most widely used herbicides in the world, Roundup. Although leftist trial lawyers in the United States quickly picked up this slander, US Courts have begun to disregard the WHO's dread issuances about the cancer causing affects of this product, a product that has been safely used for decades and is a vital part of the green revolution that has fed many millions across the world who would have otherwise starved. The WHO has lied about ibuprofen (advil) and its effects with respect to Coronavirus, having to retract those lies in the face of opposition and obvious reality. So, are you surprised they might lie about Coronavirus? I doubt the WHO needed much manipulation from China.
The United States in the by far the largest contributor to our enemies at the UN and World Health Organization. Why hasn't President Trump done anything about that? Finally, while I respect President Trump, I do not hold out hope he will want to, or be able to, hold the US politicians and hangers-on accountable for the awful mess they have made with the public health response to the Coronavirus. Only time will tell.
There were no intentional racist implications made here. If anything, there were plenty of cultural implications and proof for my argument because I only use facts and statistics.
But shall we move on? Appears as if we agree on plenty here re: WHO and the UN. The U.S. should cancel their membership in both and spend our hard-earned money on health and medicine.
Mann sure talks big for someone who refuses to share his data.
Thanks for a great big hearty laugh!
A trait he seems to share with Prof. Neil Ferguson and his thousands of lines of undocumented C written 13 years ago.
If I understand what's going on, Dr. Ego's legal team is asking attorneys completely unrelated (and possibly unknown) to McIntyre and McKitrick to accept subpoenas for work done by McIntyre and McKitrick. I must be mistaken. Dr. Ego's legal team can't be this dumb. The damage to the reputation of Dr. Ego's legal team must be enormous.
Mark, is it possible that Dr. Ego is taking this action to further delay his lawsuit against you and your counter-lawsuit against him in the D.C. courts?
Mr. Coray: May I offer my answer? It is possible, but it would not delay much. Assuming the attorney "accepted", it would not be good service. M&M would not be obliged to respond to it anymore than you or me. That might lead to a motion and hearing, but that would be a brief delay and would only result in another scolding for any attorney goofy enough to think serving a subpoena like that is valid service, or could form a basis for sanctions if M&M did not respond. Frankly, this doesn't even rise to the level of desperation. Mann's attorneys are supposed to be big time, sometimes those types throw around subpoenas before a young associate (who would see the ineffectiveness of it) can stop them. Later the young associate tells them, and the big-timer says, "Oh, I knew that." And (here's the real point) the big timers know they will never get sanctioned for such unethical tactics, trying to bully people.
Mr. Coray: I woke up to one other thought- this is likely a big head fake. The last thing these guys want is M&M testifying, they would show in terms even a DC Judge can't fail to grasp that "fraudulent" "tree ring circus" are not at all false, these descriptions are in fact too kind.
For all members, I have this- Mr. Mann's profession as a clisci is certainly non-essential. But his avocation as a climate whore is also known in "the oldest profession", won't comment on whether that's essential.
He's milking his grants. Loss in court would dry up his income. Question is who would be foolish enough to give him money now? Who is paying for his escapade?
Mark, I hope you are not counting me as a "Coronaskeptic". I have expressed a lot of skepticism over the data that has been available for the virus, especially in the early days of January and February.The absence of large studies of the incidence of the disease in random samples of the population were particularly troubling. The only information we had came from those who exhibited symptoms. And yet when we did population studies, like the NBA testing, we discovered a surprising level of infections. Which suggested the horse had already bolted from the barn and closing the door might not do much good. But I've been pleased with the progress we seem to be making in getting better data. Models can be no better than the data that that drive them.
The analysis and predictions of the swine flu epidemic in 2009 and 2010 are a case in point. At the time, there was speculation that older people may have had some immunity to the disease as their fatality rate was much lower than younger people. Three years later, analysis of the data showed that the elderly exhibited large increases in deaths attributed to respiratory and circulatory causes during the onset of the disease.. Correcting for this, the estimate of deaths from the swine flu is now 200,000 to 400,000 instead of the 20,000 (or so) at the time of the epidemic. Errors like this can have huge consequences. We seem to be doing much better today with our focus on producing large quantities of the right sort of equipment and devoting dedicated facilities for the care of those with the disease.
"We seem to be doing much better today...". And with fast tracking quick, reliable test kits and resultant widespread testing to give us some decent data, a need you point out in your first paragraph.
I, too, suspect the proverbial horse (and his whole herd) have bolted from the barn weeks ago and continue to do so at a high rate right now. Just that so many of the horses are asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic that without testing we'll never get good incidence counts, denominators. Deaths are easier to count (bodies don't move about on their own), but even those can be mis-attributed, skewing numerators in the arithmetic. Even after years of analyzing, all we'll have is an educated guess for numerator and denominator. I don't know whether to stress the educated or the guess.
"Deaths are easier to count [...] but even those can be mis-attributed."
Yep - only in-hospital deaths counted in France. Italy said to have under-reported deaths by a THIRD!
Critical Care stats tell a story: if a state has to double its ICU capacity in a few weeks in order to manage patients with the same disease (to the exclusion of all others), there's probably something going on.
Anyone who is not a skeptic about everything is poorly educated. Skepticism is the basis of the scientific method. We only get closer to the truth by questioning it. We find out what works by trying it, and use that until we find something better. There are so many things we know we don't understand that any certainties are bound to be overturned. What we arrogantly call "truth" is always just our best guess. As Spock said in Star Trek 4, I'll try to make the best guess I can.
It is unfortunate that some gurrier with a foosty climate model can clog up the courts to such a degree.
It's appalling, I. To be sure, there are stronger expressions to describe this person, which grow more accurate as they become less printable.
The worst thing is that this clown's imbecile falsehoods have already done damage to the world and threaten to do much more damage, and yet he is afforded what should be society's most respectable platforms (let alone any platform at all) from which to persecute individuals who point the folly out.
That pop you hear is my head exploding.
And the fact that Mann is plainly unwilling to have his tall tales examined anywhere, whether in court, or in a simple debate, shows that he knows he is spouting, as you say, falsehoods.
Just so, O. Second pop. Speech eludes me.
Mark - It is not pooh-poohing data models to point out their limitations and the risks of basing draconian policy decisions on them. Here's an important piece of advice for club members: When you hear "computer model," substitute "statistical model." See the difference it makes. "Computer model" makes it sound wondrous and infallible as if the computer is out there taking in the whole situation and giving its purely objective assessment. That's not how it works. In modeling, the only thing the computer does is the mathematical calculations it's asked to do. The model itself is devised by a statistician; that is, a person. The data that goes into the model is selected and compiled by researchers; that is, people. So, these models can be easily manipulated and, even when they aren't, can be wrong if they lack important predictors. Models make predictions. They are only as good as the data that goes into them. They depend a great deal on the skill and integrity of the statistician. And they can be and often are wrong. Yes – predictions, even from statistical models, can sometimes be wrong.
Your own writing on the global warming fraud, a fraud which has been perpetrated largely through the misuse and misunderstanding of statistical modeling, glaringly shows the caution with which these models must be used. I would go so far to say that no public policy, let alone a potentially society-crippling one, should be based solely on statistical models.
There predictions are often referred to as "data." Those predictions are not "data"; they are not facts, which is what data is. They are, as you so rightly pointed out predictions, or in less latinate terms "guesses." Models are often wrong, either because important variables are misweighted or ignored, or are even unknown to the model designer, or the data is incomplete, inaccurate, or just plain fudged.
We are seeing the same thing right now with the epidemiological models of this pandemic. While generalized epidemiological models are pretty robust, like every other model their predictions are only as good as the data and much of the data we have now is incomplete, inaccurate, or fudged (especially from China.) Garbage in, garbage out.
I agree.
As a former computer programmer, I note that computer models tend to have inhetent errors which becomenexponentially larger over time. Even if a computer simulation accurately predicted five years ahead, it would be inaccurate for ten years out, and at 50 years totally worthless. The dire forecasts that are the justifocation for the most severe, punishing government policies ate based on worthless claims of what models say about 50 and 100 years from now, in the garbage zone where the inherent errors dominate the output. From the standpoint of numerical analysis and computer science, the claim is stupid and anti-science in the extreme.
The climate models still cannot explain why temperatures went DOWN from 1935 to 1975 even as CO2 output grew with a growing population and the postwar industrial boom.
People who panic about poor predictions and their politicians who pander to that panic are mostly driven by ignorance of science and its foibles. The ultimate failure isn't the honest science, but the failures of the education system to teach everyone the science and math they should know, and the critical thinking.they need to understand it. Panic is always driven by ignorance.
Hubris has no bottom to its depths. Mann and his loony attorneys (no offense intended to loons) are today's proof.
About the climate models. In the 1970s when I was a grad student at Harvard a fellow grad student who was in the physics department was part of a team that was trying to model the oceans in order to gauge their effect on climate. The team consisted of physicists and perhaps other kinds of scientists at Harvard, Columbia, Stanford and Cal Tech and the ganged all their computers together to do the computer runs necessary for this kind of model. Admittedly computers are much more powerful nowadays but the intellects are not and in any case computing power was not the problem. In with all the end, these brainiacs working together concluded that it could not be done because the system of oceans was too complicated. By the way, years ago I read somewhere that it has been mathematically proven that there are some mathematical problems that cannot be solved mathematically (I don't have the citation handy at the moment).The oceans, of course, are only a part of what makes the climate. So I've been a skeptic
Max, while you were at Harvard, I was at MIT. Lorenz and Leith were modelers of climate, and one of my graduate classes was with Leith. The bottom line of their work was that the nonlinearities in the Navier-Stokes equation precluded predictions beyond about two weeks. Little vortices combine with others in unpredictable ways and affect bigger ones, and this works its way up to large scale phenomena like hurricanes. Lorenz created a very simple model of heat transfer that also had this chaotic property. Tiny differences in initial conditions can lead to vastly different results. The math and the physics is very difficult ... hairy ... and subject to many assumptions ... but they all suggest computer simulations are bound to be futile. This isn't to say that a long term history of climate won't exhibit features that lend themselves to some predictions. But long term in this sense would mean say a record of detailed weather measurements for a period of a millennium or two if you wanted to discover predictable patterns of a decade or two. And this would be fortuitous, not a certainty. Just think about the uncertainty we now have predicting hurricane tracks. And contrast that with the predictability and even theoretical understanding of von Karman's vortex street. It's a matter of scale (time and distance) and complexity, as well as physics.
Interesting. I'm not a STEM scientist myself, a mere social scientist, but I learned enough about statistics to be able to spot a flawed database a mile away. One of my sons is about to enter grad school in physics and we've had lots of talks about the field. He thinks that though there are some interesting new directions of inquiry such as quantum computing, which is his main interest, that overall this is not the most creative period for physics and that on a certain level the field had payed itself out. I am in no position to be the judge of that but what is interesting is that even though I think he is or at least is becoming a very good scientist he has bought into the human generated global warming scam and I attribute this to his age--he's been subject to brainwashing about this matter his entire life and since most of his age cohort has bought into it there is also the matter of peer pressure and psychology more often than not supersedes logic and reason. I'm always telling him that he may know more about science than I do but I know more about life and that I've been around long enough to see these scams come and go only to be replaced by new ones.
Too bad you and I didn't know each other back then, we could have met for coffee somewhere on Mass Ave. In my experience Autre Chose made the best croissant in the universe, better even than most I've tasted in France!
The kids of some of my friends have the same problem. They're smart, have PhDs, are in areas related to climate, and yet are still over-awed by computer models and decades of propaganda. I think you are probably better prepared to understand this phenomena than I am, as the basis for their beliefs have more to do with interpersonal relations than "science". The proponents of these models are of the Alpha sort, and they are relentless. They have no reason to acknowledge that their best is not good enough given tenure, federal grants, and the adulation of the Greta's of this world. They are the Langleys of our generation. Because of the complexity and difficulty of the problem, there is no simple measure of performance, such as a man flying a gasoline powered device thru the air, that would allow a couple of bicycle mechanics to reveal a better way.
Sorry Mark, but count me among the Coronaskeptics. When somebody "pops up" and tells me that 2.2 million Americans and 500,000 Britons are going to die when the global toll is still in the 10's of thousands and the total cases reported is still far short of a million I'm a little skeptical of his model. Even the estimates in the 100's of thousands for the U.S. seem dubious based on the evidence on the ground. If you saw Deborah Birx on the television the other day, she noted that the reality she is seeing does not match up with the models. Me too. This has all the earmarks of the climate change racket. (1) The predictions of death are dire and out of proportion to the evidence to date and (2) the due date for those predictions to come true keeps getting pushed out farther into the future. Hence nobody in charge can tell us when these ridiculous shelter-in-place orders with be lifted. If that is not a dead ringer for what Mann and his buddies have been doing for the past 30 years then I don't know what is.
I don't agree, Matthew, but the last thing I'll tell you is that I know anything for sure. The data tell us that the globe will pass a million infections and fifty thousand deaths today. The daily rate of new infections is now about 75,000, with a third of those here in the USA. And the pace has only quickened. Another month of these numbers would add over two million sick, almost three-quarters of a million here. But it won't be "these numbers": this disease doesn't have mere momentum (mass x velocity), it has force (mass x acceleration). We keep looking back because we are blind to the present, therefore completely ignorant of the future. People (esp the young) can be asymptomatic—but that is good news or bad? Are they building herd immunity, or spreading SARS 2 like wildfire? Both, most likely. The idea of "flattening the curve" (just like the good doctor flattened the medieval warming period) is to reduce the pace of infection so as not to overwhelm doctors and hospitals—as is now actually happening in Italy and New York City. (Honestly, I'd dispense with ventilators in favor of masks. Once you go on, you never come off.) What goes up must come down, but I don't think this thing has completed its upward trajectory, not by a long shot.
"Once you go on, you never come off."... well everyone comes off ... eventually (all disease is self-limiting and all bleeding eventually ends). Good point though is that no one comes all the way back. From a Britsih doc 50% survive... sort of from the Bird. The world is now being put on a ventilator of sorts ($2T so far in US). Irony is that maybe that "medical" intervention was also more damaging than needed.
I too am a deep, deep corona skeptic. I agree with everything you said. Just look at the CDC Flu Burden numbers to put this madness in context. Tens of millions of symptomatic cases, hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations, and tens of thousands of deaths in the United States EVERY YEAR.
Of course, the world has collectively lost its mind at this point, and logical discussion and argument are not possible. If and when the world regains its sanity I hope and pray the politicians that have exploited this disease will be called to account for their actions. I do not hold out any real hope.
PS Even the New York Times recognizes the political potential of the coronavirus panic to consolidate totalitarian control over the masses. Of course those writers do not see the same possibility with the leftists here in the US with respect to the virus, or the other pressing public health crises of our times, gun control and climate change.
"The data tell us that the globe will pass a million infections and fifty thousand deaths today."
That didn't take long; less than three hours, in fact.
It may not be a dead ringer Matthew but it's damn close. We've been conned into a fools game by Dr. Fauci and the rest of the nations 'health experts' into committing economic and fiscal suicide. Whatever their background these men are essentially academics and have no idea what they have done to America with this insane 'must contain this virus at any cost' policy. The highly questionable death estimates they are spewing out are ludicrous. A few days ago in an editorial the WSJ brilliantly exposed the flaw in these projections. No one in the government or the national press has taken notice. Laura Ingraham is covering this crisis better than anyone and we have the means at our disposal to cut the death rate dramatically starting now. Dr. Smith knows whereof he speaks - he's proving it now in real time. Listen to this man America! I was going to add before it's too late but we're already past the point of no return in fiscal terms.
First, I agree that the prospect of being placed in an induced coma and then a ventilator is a fearsome thing. But, like all of the "data" being tossed around in this panic, examine the statements concerning ventilators made by the Governor of Louisiana, John Bel Edwards this past weekend on the "Sunday News Shows." Governor Edwards, a Democrat, rarely appears on the Sunday News Shows so he has to make the best of it.
Governor Edwards said that "in the past couple weeks, Louisiana has requested 12,000 ventilators." The headline to the report in the Advocate, the Baton Rouge newspaper, was "Louisiana has only 1.6% of the Ventilators Requested for Coronavirus Patients." According to the Louisiana Department of Health, there are 507 patients on vents as of today. Apparently not all of the patients need the vent full time, as in New York, Louisiana is investigating sharing ventilators among patients.
My arithmetic indicates that Edwards figures the state will need 11,500 more vents over the coming days, weeks? While the patients needing the use of a ventilator is growing in Louisiana, it is much closer to a straight line, not exponential growth.
Only time will tell whether Gov. Edward's statements concerning ventilator demand will come anywhere near to true. It is 77 degrees today in Baton Rouge. The forecast is for temperatures in the 80's next week. Winter is over in South Louisiana. I wonder what data model supports Governor Edwards statements about ventilator requirements?
Finally, I wonder why Governor Edwards felt the need to take time out of his work handling this crisis for the people of Louisiana to make the "Sunday News Shows." And why did he make such a terror inducing public statement (terror inducing in the old and infirm especially) concerning ventilators? Louisiana has only 1.6% of the Ventilators it needs? Oh My God! Really? Whether true or not, what is the point of causing great fear in the population of Louisiana?
Charles,
Sadly, when Governors of any political stripe hear the word emergency, the first thing that comes to mind is Federal dollars. It matters not if it is a Chris Christie hugging Barack Obama post Sandy or Gavin Newsome with new found respect for Donald Trump. Whether or not those ventilators are needed for COVID-19, once they get delivered to Louisiana they are not going back. Money trumps politics.
"(1) The predictions of death are dire and out of proportion to the evidence to date and (2) the due date for those predictions to come true keeps getting pushed out farther into the future."
That's basically "flattening the curve" - when measures are taken - isn't it? The intended effect is a reduced + deferred peak. The figure quoted several weeks ago - more than 1 million deaths in the US (in 2020) - was based on "no action taken". The trajectories of HK, Singapore, Taiwan etc - where pre-emptive testing, tracing and isolation started in January - would suggest it's not a complete racket.
Interestingly, the current public health response in the US closely mirrors what took place a century ago, during the Spanish flu.
So you think we haven't learned anything in a hundred years? We're enormously smarter, and models based on "do nothing" are irresponsible. Science malpractice. But incorrect models aren't normally a problem unless irresponsible press parrots them to incite panic. Journalism panic is worse than science malpractice. Being wrong sometimes is inherent in science, though less often than in the past. Being wrong in reporting it is propaganda
"Being wrong in reporting it is propaganda."
Agree, David. And there's increasing evidence that death counts are being deliberately under-reported in several countries, including the US: "problem solved".
What's weird is a lot of the ("conservative") reaction to deaths - of individuals - on social media etc. "Yeah, but did she [a previously well 40-something with asthma] really die of Covid 19? She had bad asthma." And, "So this [50-something] guy with co-morbidities [ie. hypertension] is said to have died *of* coronavirus when it was actually 'with' coronavirus."
The Covid models are about death counts. The climate models are about temperatures. The ongoing skepticism of a lot of conservatives as a wave of disease and death - like that seen in Wuhan and Lombardy - sweeps across New York is disturbing to say the least. It's not just a "model" there anymore, it's actually happening, and the seeming indifference of many - based on politics - is really striking. There's no apparent dismay at the over-flowing morgues - only about the economy.
Morgues are always busy. The covid cases are a small part of that traffic except in a few peculiar areas like NYC, which are always busy due to frequent mayhem, but oddly quieter these days from that segment. There will be much to learn when things settle down and we have time to analyze what happened and how we can apply that for the next one. People don't die FROM covid-19, but WITH it. Death is usually from ARDS or pneumonia, which is often exacerbated by prior conditions, so it's always a question of whether the virus is the cause or a co-conspirator. There appear to be selective characteristics like sex and blood type with statistical preferences. Ultimately we'd all like to learn what we can do, to improve our survival. It won't be more government control, though many will advocate it.
Maybe you can cite deliberate under reporting, but I doubt it. Many examples of over reporting have been seen, but intent is always difficult to establish, except to the biased.
So over-reporting of deaths is due to bias and attracts skepticism, but not under-reporting?
Putting aside morgue traffic, the ICUs in New York are overflowing at double capacity with ventilated patients, which is presumably not part of their normal traffic. Covid-19 swab tests, by the way, have been found to have a false negative rate as high as 30% (based on ARDS patients who've had "negative" nasal/ throat swab tests but test positive on formal sputum samples).
And just to clarify: people are questioning the deaths of middle-aged people who have asthma, diabetes, cancer etc - implying that these co-morbidities were the primary cause of death. That includes cancer patients - at great risk wrt Covid - but who were otherwise considered "survivors" (because their cancer was well-controlled or in remission etc) before they developed respiratory distress.
What about the deaths - often sudden - due to viral myocarditis and conduction block etc? People without respiratory symptoms have literally collapsed dead - and tested positive. Some patients have been noted to have elevated troponins - and arrhythmias - in the presence of normal coronary angiograms. It's not all ARDS.
I think conservatives are unlikely to learn much before the next one because many are determined not to. It was being written off by many as an exaggeration/ hoax during Wuhan even with the emerging concern about a new SARS-like disease, so that conviction has to be maintained - even more so because of the disastrous economic impact. And if China has done nothing wrong because it's all an exaggeration, there's no reason not to resume business as usual and kick-start the (Sino-dependent) economy.
What comes to mind re the deaths are the curious stabbing incidents that progressives put down to "mental health". The lessons from 100 years ago - and the response during the flu pandemic - are probably more relevant than we realise.
Mis-reporting has many reasons. Those due to bias will differ depending on direction. More likely in many cases it's just incompetence. Reporters are generally not well educated, so they're often well informed about subjects they really don't understand. Some are just dishonest propagandists. Not hard for unbiased readers to distinguish them with cursory reviews. They tend to get away with errors of most types because most readers/viewers only hear what they wanted to hear.
Gov Cuomo announced this morning (Sunday) his numbers are declining. and Dr Birx described broader declines in the afternoon. If it sticks we'll see the models were wrong once again. They will decline quickly when they start using effective therapies.
Dr Ball has been consistently right in his comments about computer models. You simply cannot put random numbers into a computer and get scientific evidence out - but that is exactly what is claimed for computer models. Even the most sophisticated computer software will produce incorrect results, if it has a single fault in it. In fact, it will invariably produce incorrect results, if it is defective.
That's the thing with the digital world: being infallibly logical is not remotely the same as being right. The CRU emails showed that software used by the climate "professionals" was not even sophisticated. If that stuff turned up being run on any bank's system, there'd be a zillion-dollar lawsuit, the day before yesterday.
As Tim Ball observed, however, even the best software, perfect in every way, wouldn't have produced reliable weather results, since the weather maniacs didn't know (and don't know and quite possibly never will know) enough about their own subject to inject useful variables. Without dependable input, you can't get useful output.
GIGO is a cliché for a reason
Models are not necessarily bad garbage processors. They're just a tool to test a theory which tries to explain the world, by demonstrating understanding of the mechanisms of that theory. If real world data eventually matches the predictions from the model, that understanding might be correct, adding credibility to the theory. Failure shows the theory or the understanding of its mechanisms is incorrect and we should try another approach. That's how progress is made, formally or informally. Scientists like formality, and their careers depend on it.
But like any other tool, models can be misused by unscrupulous operators. Mann apparently manipulated data to make his model seem correct when, apparently, it is not. The problem is never the tool, but those who misuse the tool. Recently we've seen models used to predict Covid-19 outcomes, which have so far been incorrect, thankfully. We should be glad that infections and weather are doing better than the dire models predicted, but always worried that our revered scientists are so often wrong, and sometimes dishonest. The best model is always to look out the window. If you're still not sure, bring an umbrella.
"If real world data eventually matches the predictions from the model, that understanding might be correct, adding credibility to the theory."
That "eventually" is the problem. If the model is wrong, it's wrong.
But we can't know if the model is wrong or right until enough time has passed to confirm. Real data appears at its own pace, usually slower than we need in order to deploy requisite responses. That's why computer models and back testing are useful, to quickly show the model works at least to explain prior conditions. When scientists like the warmists fudge that data to fraudulently force the confidence in their model, that destroys what might have been a good theory as well as the failed model. It actually undermines all of science, and therefore deserves harsh punishment. We should be especially suspicious of any theory that attracts so many acolytes in spite of widespread proven fraud. Absence of prosecution shows governments are colluding in the fraud. Mulder was right - trust no one.
You're forgetting: the input to the model is supposed to be "real data." What is the point of a vastly expensive UNIX number-crusher, if the numbers it is crushing can be verified only by external events?
Computers are cheap these days. Models are often run with artificial data sets in order to verify the algorithm. If the purpose is to model a real world activity, it can only be verified with real world data. Then the problem can shift to the data level with filters for the data. Modeling has many opportunities for errors by the careless, and for scams by the unscrupulous.
"Models are often run with artificial data sets in order to verify the algorithm. If the purpose is to model a real world activity, it can only be verified with real world data."
That doesn't answer my point. It proves it. If you don't have the "real world data," a computer model is completely pointless. Running a computer model without "real world data" makes about as much sense as Lewis Carroll's caucus race.
Michael Mann and co are perfectly well aware that they have no reliable data. Exposure of their models to facts would demonstrate how fraudulent their models are
Mann has lots of reliable data. He chose to misuse it. There are many reasons models fail, but usually not fraud. Mann's fraud has degraded the whole science process. (If Mann sues me for saying that, I'll cite Mark's book in my defense.) But the real error, probably due more to ignorance than fraud, is the multitudes who accepted the fraud, and the politicians who tried to benefit from it.
Let's leave it there.