Wood mashes Mashey

In Chronicle of Higher Education, NAS president Peter Wood (picture) delivers a devastating critique of the warmistas in two articles: Bottling Up Global Warming Skepticism and Climate Thuggery. NAS, you may think, National Academy of Sciences, isn't that those people who white washed the hockey stick? Do not fear, this is a different NAS with far more credibility: National Association of Scholars.

In the first piece, NAS president Wood writes about the american showman P T Barnum, who got rich from freak shows and a museum with mermaids and other fake curiosities. That constitutes a truly devastating critique of the state of climate science; a merciless blow that the peddlers of climate apocalypse never will recover from. Once you get compared to P T Barnum (or Hitler) it is game over!

One alarmist who has much in common with P T Barnum is John Mashey. I wrote about Mashey's shameless attacks against Edward Wegman, the worlds best statistician, last autumn. In his piece, Woods writes:

But let’s put aside these vacant thoughts and turn to some serious news. Science reports that retired computer scientist Dr. John Mashey is attempting to patch the tattered reputation of “hide the decline” Michael Mann, the climate scientist whose famous “hockey stick” chart shows exponentially increasing global temperatures in the near term. Mashey has been, as he puts it, “trying to take the offense” against global warming skeptics by flyspecking their publications. “You hope they make a mistake,” he says, and when they do, he pounces with demands that journals retract whole articles. Some journals indeed have. As Science puts it, “His critics say Mashey is more interested in destroying his foes than in debating the issues.” Professor Mann is extolling his efforts at “exploring the underbelly of climate denial.”

Trying to find errors is your opponents' publication: what kind of low life would sink so low? Mashey has shown his true colors (green, red, brown), and the innocent Wegman is now under investigation for plagiarism. We skeptics would never do anything so mean. We are honorable people! Remember Climategate!

In the second piece, NAS president Wood documents how the warmists try to silence dissenting voices and cover up scientific facts that undermine their position:

Mann himself has deployed nuisance lawsuits in a similar fashion. He has sued Tim Ball—a Canadian global-warming skeptic, an environmentalist, and former professor of geography—for libel for writing that Mann “should be in the State Pen, not Penn State,” for his role in Climategate. Mann also threatened a lawsuit against Minnesotans for Global Warming for a satiric YouTube video titled “Hide the Decline.”

Indeed. Instead of engaging in a scientific debate with Ball and Minnesotans for Global Warming, Mann just goes ahead and sues them. But that is because he cannot counter their rock-solid arguments. By thus attacking his strongest critics, Mann tries to make everybody else afraid and thereby he prevents an open and informed scientific debate. "Makin' up data the old hard way. Fudgin' the numbers day by day. Hiding the snow and the cold and a downward line. Hide the decline (hide the decline)." That video was so funny! And scientific! "Oh Climategate I think you have sealed your fate. I hope you do a lot of time, cuz what you did was such a crime."


Mashey and co-thug Coleman try to retaliate in a piece of their own in CHI:

Although we see this elsewhere and ignore it, we were surprised to find articles and comments by Wood in CHE that could be considered libelous. We value the academy for open discussion and seeking truth. We both take academic misconduct seriously and have filed formal, detailed misconduct complaints. Wood’s use of phrases like “tattered reputation,” “statistical trickery and suppression of discrepant data,” “Barnum-esque hokum,” and “academic dishonesty” are not things that credible people publish without showing expertise and evidence. As Christopher Hitchens has so accurately stated: “That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.” Much of what Wood writes falls under the category of assertion without evidence, counter to the principles of scholarly discourse.

This is utterly ridiculous and without any merit what-so-ever! Why would NAS president Wood want to libel anybody? He is not taking sides in the climate debate. He describes his honorable intentions as follows:

Is anthropogenic global warming (AGW) a valid scientific theory? Is it well supported by the empirical data or is it mostly an artifact of computer modeling? I don’t have answers to these questions. I stand, rather, on the side of those who favor rigorous scientific inquiry, transparency, and openness. I am not a climate scientist, but neither do I cede the whole matter of answering such questions to the designated experts. Good science doesn’t limit itself to the views of narrow-cast specialists. Valid observations, corrective criticism, competing hypotheses, and rigorous testing can and often do arise from other sources.