A BULLY OF WARMISM GETS HIS BLUFF CALLED

We’re likely to learn much more about what may be the biggest scam in history because a blustering bully has had his bluff called.

Dr. Michael Mann of Penn State University created the famous ‘hockey stick’ graph, which purports to show that global temperatures soared in the 20th Century after having been stable for 900 years. According to it, the Medieval Warm Period (about AD 800 to 1400), and the Little Ice Age (about AD 1600 to 1850) never existed.  

The methods Dr. Mann used to create his graph would generate a ‘hockey stick’ no matter what data were fed into it, charged Canadians Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick in a 2005 paper. Two congressional committees asked scientists to look into the controversy.

"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," concluded the report of a committee headed by Dr. Ernest Wegman, a statistics professor at George Mason University.  A panel formed by the National Academy of Sciences also had little confidence in those assertions.

Actual measurements of global temperatures weren’t made before about 1850, so scientists use proxies to estimate temperatures in earlier times.  Dr. Mann used data from bristlecone pine trees in California.

"My study of tree rings from the Yamal region in Siberia corroborated Dr. Mann’s findings," said Dr. Keith Briffa of the University of East Anglia in Britain.  Then a scandal forced him to disclose he’d used data from just 12 of the 252 trees in the Yamal data set.  It was clear Dr. Briffa had cherry-picked the data to get the results he wanted.

Dr. Briffa’s shenanigans — and much more — were exposed when in 2009 someone posted on the Web 1,079 emails exchanged by scientists who promote AGW.  In one, Dr. Briffa’s boss wrote: "I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline."

‘Mike’ is Dr. Mann.  ‘Keith’ is Dr. Briffa.  ‘Nature trick’ refers to an article Dr. Mann wrote for Nature magazine in which he mixed real temperature data with proxy data to a produce the hockey stick.  Without this ‘trick,’ at its end his graph would have shown temperatures declining.

"It was that attempt to ‘hide the decline’ through the manipulation of data that helped bring down the global warming house of cards," said Investors Business Daily.

By the time the emails were published, it was clear computer models had greatly exaggerated warming.  Global temperatures peaked in 1998, according to real world measurements.  

Recent research has confirmed the Medieval Warm Period did in fact exist, that it was worldwide, and that temperatures then were warmer than today.  It may have been even hotter during the Roman Warm Period (250 BC — 400 AD).

"Michael Mann was the man behind the fraudulent climate-change ‘hockey-stick’ graph, the very ringmaster of the tree-ring circus,"  Mark Steyn wrote in National Review Online July 15.

If National Review doesn’t apologize for describing the hockey stick graph as ‘fraudulent,’ he’d sue, Dr. Mann threatened.  That’s a tactic he’s used often before to stifle criticism.

This time it didn’t work.  National Review would welcome a lawsuit, because through the process of discovery it could obtain information Dr. Mann has strived to keep secret, said Editor Rich Lowry.

"He’s going to go to great trouble and expense to embark on a losing cause that will expose more of his methods and maneuverings to the world," Mr. Lowry said.

Around 5 times the amount spent on the Manhattan project ($22 billion in 2008 dollars) has been spent on man-made global warming, mostly by our government and Western European governments, British journalist James Delingpole said last year.  Among the beneficiaries have been scientists such as Dr. Mann and Dr. Briffa. 

In their editorial praising Mr. Lowry for his defiance, the editors of Investors’ Business Daily practically dared Mr. Mann to sue them, too.

Global warming has been "the greatest fraud of all time, and Michael Mann has been at the heart of it," the IBD editors said.  It’s bluff has been called.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.