Today’s serving of cyberipecac: An interview in the Philly Inquirer by staff writer Faye Flam (you can’t make this stuff up) of Climategate martyr St. Micheal Mann. There’s no point in my doing a fisking of the article, since guest blogger “John A.” at WattsUpWithThat did such a magnificent job here.
A lot of what John refers to is esoterica, but the end is priceless:
And then to Climategate. Faye is obviously well out of her depth and sinking fast
Mann recalls a Friday night when a colleague alerted him that the hackers had tried to expose the e-mails on RealClimate, the blog he founded with another climatologist.
Over the ensuing weeks, pundits have shifted their focus from one set of e-mail exchanges to another, dubbing the issue “climategate.” First, the spotlight shone on an exchange between two other researchers referring to a “trick” Mann had used in plotting his data.
But not even Mann’s critics can cite any evidence of deception in the now doubly investigated hockey stick papers. The term trick, said Mann, described a technique he used to display his data.
Again this fascination with deception, but I’m willing to bet this is Mann misrepresenting what actually happened with a journalist too lazy to check facts.
Other pundits criticized Mann and colleagues for agreeing to shun the journal Climate Research after it published work by climate-change skeptics. Mann said the particular article was bad science and was “polluting” the journal.
Pundits, Faye? They were scientists including the editor of the journal.
The article finishes with a tear-jerker:
There is still much debate over how big a role human activity plays in the current warming trend, and how the future will be affected. Climate science – and earth science in general – is not expected to make the kinds of sharp predictions that chemists and physicists can make with repeated experiments. “It would be nice if we could do controlled experiments,” Mann said. “But we have only one Earth.”
Yes, and all of these nasty questions make baby Jesus cry.
I wonder why newspapers are sinking fast into the mud of history and then Faye Flam arrives to remove the wonder.
John A., I take my hat off to you, Herr Snarkmeister.
One thing that John didn’t point out though, and I think it bears mentioning is this:
(more…)
