Penalty Box for the Global Warming Hockey Stick

Here's a couple of interesting snippets from the Wall Street Journal editorial page on one of our favorite moonbat topics, "global warming."

The [current] claim [of global warming] originates from a 1999 paper by paleoclimatologist Michael Mann. Prior to Mr. Mann's work, the accepted view, as embodied in the U.N.'s 1990 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), was that the world had undergone a warming period in the Middle Ages, followed by a mid-millennium cold spell and a subsequent warming period -- the current one. That consensus, as shown in the first of the two IPCC-provided graphs nearby, held that the Medieval warm period was considerably warmer than the present day.

Mr. Mann's 1999 paper eliminated the Medieval warm period from the history books, with the result being the bottom graph you see here. It's a man-made global-warming evangelist's dream, with a nice, steady temperature oscillation that persists for centuries followed by a dramatic climb over the past century. In 2001, the IPCC replaced the first graph with the second in its third report on climate change, and since then it has cropped up all over the place. Al Gore uses it in his movie.

We've been over this before with "global warming" true believers who refute us every time—effectively they think—by endlessly documenting their claims with even more bogus claims. All nicely footnoted, too, and even from "respectable" scientific publications. Unfortunately, these "peer-reviewed journals" have been compromised by the bandwagon effect the editorial will describe below.

This academic slight-of-hand is yet another example of the typical selective sampling so favored by the left. It is further undercut by the fact that increasing numbers of "peer-reviewed" journals in all fields have been co-opted by leftist activists who have moved on from their destruction of the humanities to a full-scale attack on scientific credibility. Add to this the incessant propaganda by MSM organs like the Washington Post (which has lately added bogus global warming tics to articles that have nothing to do with the topic) you have an apparent groundswell of support for a theory that has no proof.

Why is this? The WSJ has a notion:

In 2003, two Canadians, Ross McKitrick and Steven McIntyre, published an article in a peer-reviewed journal showing that Mr. Mann's methodology could produce hockey sticks from even random, trendless data.

The report commissioned by the House Energy Committee, due to be released today, backs up and reinforces that conclusion. The three researchers -- Edward J. Wegman of George Mason University, David W. Scott of Rice University and Yasmin H. Said of Johns Hopkins University -- are not climatologists; they're statisticians. Their task was to look at Mr. Mann's methods from a statistical perspective and assess their validity. Their conclusion is that Mr. Mann's papers are plagued by basic statistical errors that call his conclusions into doubt. Further, Professor Wegman's report upholds the finding of Messrs. McIntyre and McKitrick that Mr. Mann's methodology is biased toward producing "hockey stick" shaped graphs.

And it's this really alarming graph (check out the link for a snapshot of the hockey stick graph and the real, fully contextrual one) that the "global warming" propagandists have been using as exhibit A. Fortunately, the researchers seem to have been able to publish in a "peer-reviewed" journal that has yet to be taken over by the Marxists and turned to political ends.

Let's pause here. We here at HazZzMat never attempt to pose as experts on all things. Rather, the primary purpose of our blog is to call into question and expose the 24/7 efforts of the hard left, aided and abetted by the MSM, to tear down our culture, our legal system, and now, even the validity of the legendarily effective scientific method that has brought countless miracles of health and technology to contemporary society. But the "global warming" nonsense is just the latest round in a continuing propaganda battle whereby leftist combatants in many fields, particularly the humanities, manipulate statistics—about which they know precious little— to support their own cockamamie theories, which are then published in compliant "peer-reviewed" journals that have subordinated scientific study to Marxist politics.

The most egregious offenders in this regard, historically, have been the gender feminists. (Perhaps you'll remember the bogus stats they bandied about a number of years ago, claiming that some 3/4 of all American husbands abuse their wives during the Super Bowl.) The investigations cited in the editorial above, conducted by true, profesionnal statisticians, should give Americans at least a pause before they buy into such nonsense, but we're not sure that's the case.

In any event, the statisticians themselves have an eminently plausible theory about what's been going on here:

Mr. Wegman goes a step further in his report, attempting to answer why Mr. Mann's mistakes were not exposed by his fellow climatologists. Instead, it fell to two outsiders, Messrs. McIntyre and McKitrick, to uncover the errors.

Mr. Wegman brings to bear a technique called social-network analysis to examine the community of climate researchers. His conclusion is that the coterie of most frequently published climatologists is so insular and close-knit that no effective independent review of the work of Mr. Mann is likely. "As analyzed in our social network," Mr. Wegman writes, "there is a tightly knit group of individuals who passionately believe in their thesis." He continues: "However, our perception is that this group has a self-reinforcing feedback mechanism and, moreover, the work has been sufficiently politicized that they can hardly reassess their public positions without losing credibility."

In other words, climate research often more closely resembles a mutual-admiration society than a competitive and open-minded search for scientific knowledge. And Mr. Wegman's social-network graphs suggest that Mr. Mann himself -- and his hockey stick -- is at the center of that network.

Yep. The editorial concludes:

Mr. Wegman's report was initially requested by the House Energy Committee because some lawmakers were concerned that major decisions about our economy could be made on the basis of the dubious research embodied in the hockey stick. Some of the more partisan scientists and journalists howled that this was an attempt at intimidation. But as Mr. Wegman's paper shows, Congress was right to worry; his conclusions make "consensus" look more like group-think. And the dismissive reaction of the climate-research establishment to the McIntyre-McKitrick critique of the hockey stick confirms that impression.

This is a key point. The real reason behind the "global warming" brouhaha is political. It's a case of anti-U.S. scientists trying to force this country to adopt the discredited and one-sided Kyoto protocols which would have the effect of severely weakening the U.S. industrial base while allowing, for example, Communist China to continue polluting away since it's a "third world" (i.e., friendly socialist) economy. Yes, the key point of the "global warming" hokum is, once again, to employ the Gramscian tactic of weakening our society to the point where it can no longer function.

Fortunately, saner heads have been holding the wingnuts at bay. But it will take a concerted effort to keep them there. It's tough to fight off seasoned zealots who work 24/7 trying to tear down the American Dream.

Hat tip to the House Committee on Energy and Congress for providing the link and the graphs.