58 thoughts on “Hide The Decline II”

  3. The original is still on the Net. I watched it again with pleasure. Thanks for the reminder.

  4. It’s like Spycatcher that Margaret Thatcher banned in the UK. As a result everyone read it. It was so boring it needed a big promotion like that. Some people even managed to read it all the way through to the end, certain that it must be worth reading.

    But she was very smart at politics, perhaps it was calculated to divert attention away from something else.

  8. some cliche about wrestling pigs might work.

    threatening a lawsuit about a copyrighted image is just asking for MORE air play for the piece. dont these guys learn.

  9. Sequentials are always worse than the original. This guy needs some dental repair…

  11. Steve Mosher, they really don’t learn. Discovery on this suit could be quite revealing.

  12. Mann’s just not very bright. Read his various slanders of Lawrence Solomon. Or his e-mails. To take off Dean Wormer in Animal House — Foolish, vicious and sloppy is no way to go through life.

  13. SteveM posted more at http://climateaudit.org/2010/04/20/hide-the-decline-ii/

    A cease and desist letter said this:

    We are writing to demand that you cease and desist any and all use of Dr Mann’s likeness, which you have misappropriated in various videos posted on your webpage http://www.minnesotansforglobalwarming.com, including the video Hide the Decline –Climategate. You are hereby advised that the use of Dr Mann’s likeness, which you clearly misappropriated from PSU’s webpage, http://www.meteo,psu.edu/~mann/MRG/index.html, is not authorized and infringes on various copyrights. Such use also improperly misappropriates Professor Mann’s likeness for commercial exploitation, given that the video clearly supports Minnesotans for Global Warming’s efforts to sell various products and merchandize. Finally, the referenced video clearly defames Professor Mann by leaving viewers with the incorrect impression that he falsified data to generate desired results in connection with his research activities. This false impression irreparably harms Dr Mann’s personal and professional reputation.

    For these reasons, we demand that you immediately cease and desist using Dr Mann’s likeness and that you immediately remove the defamatory video from your webpage (including cashed [sic] versions.) If you persist with this defamatory activity, please be advised that we will be compelled to enforce Dr Mann’s rights, which may include the recovery of damages from you. Please contact me to confirm your intentions or if you wish to discuss this matter further.

  14. Anyway, the together, it appears Mann’s POV is :

    1) The specific photo of Mann is a copyright violation.
    2) The video defames him by leaving the impression he falsified data to generated desired results in connection with his research activities.

    I’m not entirely sure how either would fly in court. Obviously, it was in M4GW’s interest to yank the offending video and…. make another one that specifically avoids complaints 1 & 2. Unfortunately for Mann, when clarified to the wider public, what Mann did do appears deceptive. The argument that scientist or specialists understand and approve of what Mann did only makes people think the problem goes well beyond Mann.

  16. Re: steven mosher (Apr 20 23:27),

    threatening a lawsuit about a copyrighted image is just asking for MORE air play for the piece. dont these guys learn

    Yes. Even if people don’t like the more recent video, it was made. The major uproar over climategate was dieing down; now there is more discussion. If any suit goes forward, it will now not be in the hands of academics who tend toward sympathy with other academics.

    I’m not a lawyer, but I suspect there is a good chance Mann would lose both a copyright and a defamation suit.

    First, I doubt Mann owns the copyright to his photo. My understanding has always been that if I hire a photographer to photograph me, unless the contract includes a copyright transfer to me, I don’t think I own the photos. I have to buy the photos from him, and I need his permission to even copy them. If Mann doesn’t own the copyright, he doesn’t have standing to sue for copyright violation. But, even if Mann holds the copyright, there would be a bunch of legal issues to thrash out, including whether or not the use was “fair use”. I wouldn’t want to spend money on lawyers to argue the issue in court– but I suspect that there could be quite a few arguments on both sides there. ( My money would be on the copyright holder either a) losing outright or b) winning but getting $0 in damages.)

    On the defamation issue: The claim is not that M4GW flat out said something untrue but that their video ends “leaving viewers with the incorrect impression”. Leaving an incorrect impression can be defamation (as I read on wikipedia 🙂 ) But it has to be harder to prove.

    After all, what precise impression did viewers get? And what is the precise truth? Merely showing some people developed a wrong impression during the time period when the video ran isn’t necessarily going to show the video was the cause of the incorrect impression. Maybe all viewers gathered from the video was that he did “something shifty and/or ‘tricky’ to hide the decline”.

    Well…. I think what he did was shifty or tricky and deceptive. That’s an opinion. If M4WG share my opinion, and make a video, that’s not defamation.

    Now, did some people “out there” think the shifty thing Mann did was falsify data? Sure. I’m sure you can find examples on the web or even fox news.

    But did these people get that impression from the video? How do we know they didn’t get that impression from Glenn Beck? Or Ann Coulter? Or some stray person posting in comments on a blog who never saw the video? Or maybe some people who aren’t addicted to climate blogs and forums but merely read newspapers got the impression that “hide the decline” meant outright falsifying data because it’s what a committee investigating Mann decided to investigate?

    Some people can complain that SteveM is “lawyerly”. But let me tell ‘ya something. If Mann proceeds with a lawsuit, he’s going to encounter people who really are “lawyerly”. (My brother-in-law is a lawyer. His advise about suing is that one should generally try to avoid it. )

  17. It would be interesting to find out who really does own the copyrights (if there are any at all) of the photos in question.
    And even then, I think the courts permit fair use of copyrighted photos for parody purposes.

  18. hunter–

    It would be interesting to find out who really does own the copyrights (if there are any at all) of the photos in question.

    Mann’s photo album page says:

    Permission to reprint must be obtained from Tom Cogill.

    See: http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/Mann/album/album.html

    This suggests at least Mann thinks the photographer Cogill owns the copyright. (Cogill takes great photos!)

    And even then, I think the courts permit fair use of copyrighted photos for parody purposes.

    I think this is complicated. The photo itself is not the subject of the parody. Mann is. Does that make a difference?

    Mann’s lawyer brought up the commercial gain linkage. INAL, but I think commercial linkage alone is not enough to vitiate a fair use claim. I’m not sure how courts would view M4GW snipping Mann’s face out of a larger photo and adding it to a parody in a copyright violation. Even if Mann held the copyright, I suspect if he sued he’d be at risk of wasting a lot of money paying lawyers.

    As for actually suing if he didn’t own the copyright? I bet a decent lawyer would not only advise strongly against it. Some might ask Mann to seek alternate representation.

  20. Mac,

    Thanks for the link to the original video:

    Images from original video:

    The video does start with:

    “making up data the old hard way
    fudging the numbers, day by day.”

    I think ‘making up data’ would definitely be read as insinuating… well… making up data. That’s followed by fudging– which could be read as the method one used to make up data. So, the “fudging” concept is key to the accusation of “making up data”.

    I suspect in a lawsuit, people are going to argue about
    a) what people who speak English think “data” and “fudge” mean
    b) whether or not that statement lead them to believe Mann falsified data, and
    c) whether Mann actually did falsify data in the sense people understood the meaning of the word “fudging data”.

    I suspect semantics will matter to the courts; judges, lawyers and juries aren’t going to permit prevarication (using the same word with two meanings) to distract them.

    So, we are going to be treated to definitions of “fudging”:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fudging

    Fudge factors are invented variables whose purpose is to force a calculated result to give a better match to what happens in the real world.

    Fudge factors are usually calculated retrospectively, and when a calculation has only managed to produce a good match to real data by the addition of a variable that seems artificially tailored to allow that result (to allow the calculations to be “fudged” to give the right answer), critics may sometimes refer to the variable in an uncomplimentary way as a “fudge factor”.

    The term fudge, meaning falsify, derives from this concept[1].

    Also http://www.thefreedictionary.com/fudging

    v. fudged, fudg·ing, fudg·es
    v.tr.
    1. To fake or falsify: fudge casualty figures.
    2. To evade (an issue, for example); dodge.

    So, fudging is related to the concept of falsifying.

    But fudging can be used differently.

    I know when I use “fudge data”, I don’t mean someone made up numbers out of thin air. I mean they ‘made up’ or ‘created’ “just the right data” set in a different sense. They may have cherry picked the numbers they liked, found reasons to ignore numbers they didn’t like etc. They did this to avoid or dodge the issues presented by the inconvenient data.

    If someone did that, in my view, they did fudge, and the fudging altered the data in the data set used for some purpose That is to say: They falsified in a very specific sense. So, assuming the video accuses Mann of fudging, the question is: Did he falsify in the specific sense people understand “fudging”?

    Then, in court, we’d have the question of how speakers of english (not just scientists) interpret data. That seems simple enough. But here we go:

    http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=data

    1: (n) data, information (a collection of facts from which conclusions may be drawn) “statistical data”
    2: (n) datum, data point (an item of factual information derived from measurement or research)

    It’s pretty clear that Mann did not do (2). But what about (1)?!

    Is leaving facts out (i.e. omitting data points showing the divergence) of the collection of facts from which conclusions are made “fudging data”? I think some will argue that this does constitute “fudging data”. If you read above, I consider the act of leaving out inconvenient data, fudging.

    That’s the words I would use to describe doing this. This is how I would understand the accusation in M4GW.

    Mind you, other people might think that leaving data out is not fudging data. They might also focus on the “making up” as somehow unlinked from “fudging”.

    So, the lawsuit would involve a lot of semantics and then many arguments about what, precisely, Mann did.

  22. I want one of those Michael Mann Balloons..

    Se that’s the crazy thing. an ICONIC picture of Mann is way better than an actual photograph.

    Michael mann balloons at every tea party.

    liza, make it happen

  23. Lucia,

    One time at RC I explained to people that data is routinely adjusted and people accused me, of accusing climate scientists of fraud.

    WRT Mann’s fudging. splicing a tree ring series and temp
    series ( on part of the trick) and filtering the combination is a FUDGE

    Its a neat trick, one that should have been documented completely and indicated in the graphic.

  24. steven

    WRT Mann’s fudging. splicing a tree ring series and temp
    series ( on part of the trick) and filtering the combination is a FUDGE

    Yep.

    The question is whether it was an acceptable (open and above board fudge) or unacceptable (slippery and unconcealed) fudge.

    Fudging has a fairly wide band of usage. Falsify overlaps with fudge but is stronger word. (We have lots of words that overlap in English. This fact is exploited when people are spinning stories.)

  25. steven mosher (Comment#41181) April 21st, 2010 at 10:14 am
    Lucia,

    WRT Mann’s fudging. splicing a tree ring series and temp
    series ( on part of the trick) and filtering the combination is a FUDGE
    Its a neat trick, one that should have been documented completely and indicated in the graphic.

    But Mann didn’t do that, did he?

  26. The issue in a defamation suite would likely deal less with “fudging…” and more with “making up data”. “Fudging” (highly selective use of data / poor methodology combined with questionable math skills) is probably well within current industry standards for climate science but “making up data” is clearly over the line. I think Mann might prevail on that point but at great risk of a costly failed suit in pursuit of rather modest potential damages. And in the wake of climategate and with the avalanche of critical detail available from Climate Audit as a basis for review, discovery could become a really expensive sh**storm.

    I am not a hockey stick fan but I can see why Mann would react badly to his image used as a talking head claiming he made up data. It could have been funny without being quite so personal.

  27. George-

    The issue in a defamation suite would likely deal less with “fudging…” and more with “making up data”

    Sure. That’s how the plaintiff would present it. They would present the first sentence split from the second. The defense would link the two and say that the audience would read the first statement in context. Communication comes in packets. Note that Mann’s attorney describes the “impression” left. So, what impression is created by the video? A lawsuit is a big argument.

    I can see why Mann would react badly to his image used as a talking head claiming he made up data. It could have been funny without being quite so personal.

    Sure. If I were Mann I’d be totally P.O’d about the video.

    But– at least with respect to the court itself– the decision in a defamation lawsuits isn’t supposed to be about whether the video is funny, whether it could have been funny without being mean, or whether Mann has a right to be P.O’d. Lawsuits are about whether or not it’s defamation.

    …discovery could become a really expensive sh**storm.

    Yep. It would also be time consuming for Mann. If defense lawyers request material from Mann, who is going to have to do the work to supply that information? Probably Mann himself will do much of it. Not a graduate student. Not an assistant hired by the university. (That said, the suit might request documents from the university too. If a judge orders them, someone will have to comply.)

    Also US courts are not friendly to plaintiffs in defamation suits particularly when the issue involves anything remotely political. Climate change is a political hot potato right now.

    Those of us in the peanut galleries might learn whether a) Mann is a public figure for the purpose of a suit, b) how lawyers parse “data”, “making up” and “fudge”, c) whether the copyright suit has any validity, d) how much plaintiff and defendants are willing to risk on lawsuits and e) who might be willing to step in and cover Mann, M4GW or No Cap-and-Trade Coalition’s court costs.

  28. Why doesn’t Mann file a lawsuit now?
    The damage is already done! Why doesn’t he? The video had half a million hits – that’s serious damage in my view. I think a normal person would have sued by now. I would have long ago.
    You can bet your last nickel his lawyer told him he had no case.
    What’s left to do? Send a threatening letter and hope country-boy Elmer blinks.

  29. I don’t get it.
    The guy has the resources to produce a whole new clip (okay, with B actors), but can’t seem to get the advice of a lawyer.
    Or why doesn’t he just transfer the rights to the video to someone with deep pockets?

  31. Phil. (Comment#41187) April 21st, 2010 at 11:33 am

    “But Mann didn’t do that, did he?”

    of course not.

    The funny thing is this. Everybody who defends mann refuses to acknowledge what he did. he even claims never to have done it.
    Funny. Jones seems to understand what Mann’s trick was. Understood it well enough to replicate it. Take a tree ring series, append a temperature series and smooth. And funnily, we can replicate Jones doing mann’s trick. So we understand what jones understood. The only people who refuse to understand what mann did are those who try to defend him. Which is sad, like dumberer and dumberer sad.

    http://rankexploits.com/musings/2010/the-enquiry-into-manns-alleged-misconduct-moves-forward/

  32. ScienceofDoom,

    You got to the end of Spycatcher without gnawing your limbs ofF?

  33. So Mann’s lawyer made a false claim in his intimidation attempt to M4GW.
    I would be happy to buy the rights to the video for a $1 and re-post it myself and let the bloviating hockey player have at it.
    And I think I would respond with a stack of discovery requests that would represent the deforestation of a large part of the Amazon.

  34. Heh, it’d be rather ironic if that forwarded “marooned.jpg” originated from Mann.

  35. steven mosher (Comment#41194) April 21st, 2010 at 1:34 pm
    Phil. (Comment#41187) April 21st, 2010 at 11:33 am
    “But Mann didn’t do that, did he?”
    of course not.
    The funny thing is this. Everybody who defends mann refuses to acknowledge what he did. he even claims never to have done it.
    Funny. Jones seems to understand what Mann’s trick was. Understood it well enough to replicate it. Take a tree ring series, append a temperature series and smooth. And funnily, we can replicate Jones doing mann’s trick. So we understand what jones understood. The only people who refuse to understand what mann did are those who try to defend him. Which is sad, like dumberer and dumberer sad.

    But what you describe is not what Mann did.

    http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn107/Sprintstar400/Mann.jpg

  36. Phil. (Comment#41210)
    April 21st, 2010 at 6:32 pm

    Phil, you’re way off target… so far off target that if we went out shooting, I’d wanna be the clay pigeons

  38. MikeC

    Jones doesnt know as much as Phil does about mikes trick. Just listen to Phil. Jones was Lying when he described the trick.

    plus stop taking those mails out of context. print the whole thing! opps u did.

    Hmm. Jones is a liar or phil is right and mann did nothing wrong. tough choice. But wait Mann is on that mail, so if Jones is a liar then mann is also an idiot.

    Tough choice. brought to us by Phil.

    hey Phil. I believe in AGW. get off my team, its hard enough defending this science against skeptics

  39. Steven,
    Lets try n translate yer last statement…
    Phil doesn’t know as much as Phil does about Mike’s trick (so far so good)
    We’ll leave the email comment up to Military incriptors ( I haven’t a clue)
    forward…
    Phil is a liar or Phil is right and Mike did not trick anyone
    But wait, Mike is on the mail. So if Phil is a liar then Mike is an idjit… a tough choice brought to us by Phil
    But then Steven becomes a liar because no matter how much he may or may not believe in AGW, he is not now, nor ever has been, a member of the team.

  41. Surely the risk is that during discovery, the famous secret algorithm from MBH98 would have to be produced in evidence? If Mann has kept it secret this long, even in the face of Wegman, this could not be a welcome turn of events. Is that what the new publisher of the video is alluding to?

    This thing gets more and more like the Dreyfus case every week.

  42. MikeC,

    haha. I guess Phil. never read the mails. Maybe Mann can say he never read it. or maybe he will argue that he corrected Phil
    who knows, guys like Phil. will say and do anything to avoid the obvious: Mann fudged data.

  43. steven mosher (Comment#41226) April 21st, 2010 at 10:34 pm
    MikeC
    Jones doesnt know as much as Phil does about mikes trick. Just listen to Phil. Jones was Lying when he described the trick.
    plus stop taking those mails out of context. print the whole thing! opps u did.
    Hmm. Jones is a liar or phil is right and mann did nothing wrong. tough choice. But wait Mann is on that mail, so if Jones is a liar then mann is also an idiot.
    Tough choice. brought to us by Phil.
    hey Phil. I believe in AGW. get off my team, its hard enough defending this science against skeptics

    I’m not defending anyone but if you’re going to describe what Mann did get it right! Mann’s diagram which I linked to shows quite clearly what was done.
    You claimed that: “Mann’s fudging. splicing a tree ring series and temp series ( on part of the trick) and filtering the combination is a FUDGE
    Its a neat trick, one that should have been documented completely and indicated in the graphic”.

    He didn’t do that, if you want to criticize what he did, fine, but don’t criticize him for what Phil Jones did!
    For the record since you appear to be unable or unwilling to read the figure, Mann plotted the reconstruction, (both smoothed and unsmoothed and clearly differentiated on the figure), and the modern instrumental data (not spliced, in a different color and not smoothed, and clearly indicated in the graphic).
    So your description is wrong in all particulars! It’s a funny way to defend the science by completely mis-describing the work then criticize that strawman.

  45. Hi Phil –

    The smoothed value shown in that plot seems to run to 1980. As it uses 40 year smoothing, the data for 1980 – 1999 must have come from somewhere. Looking purely at the reconstructed unsmoothed data, I would have expected the smoothed curve to finish with a slight downtick. The plotted smooth does not and looks quite consistent with using the observed temperatures to fill in the missing 20 end values needed by the smoothing procedure.

    Do you know which particular method was used to create this missing data? End point smoothing methods have been a bit controversial so it would be good to know how it was done for the graph above.

  46. Steven,
    If Phil shoots himself in the foot again and bleeds to death, it’s all your fault.

  47. MikeC (Comment#41272) April 22nd, 2010 at 12:15 pm
    Steven,
    If Phil shoots himself in the foot again and bleeds to death, it’s all your fault.

    I’m right on target it’s Steve who’s shooting himself in the foot!

  48. I’m not a lawyer, but sometimes I pretent to be one on the internet. I would submit to you that “making up data” is exactly what Mann did. I present exhibit Q, the Tiljander series, he took some data that showed cooling (due to contamination) AKA “down data” and using his unique statistical skills, he turned it into “up data”. In other words, he had some down data and he used it to make up data (the old hard way). I would also suggest, if it pleases the court, that he took a bunch of data that was neither up nor down and turned it into “up data”

  49. The best research the denialists have put out yet. Do Tommy James and the Shondelles know about this?

  50. Erm. The Fat Mann Clown video seems to have also gone now. Is there no end to the influence of the evil Greenies?

  52. Carrick (Comment#41439) April 24th, 2010 at 9:38 am
    Phil, which part am I missing?
    Almost all of it, reading comprehension not a strong point on your part apparently. Try reading Comment#41253 again!

  53. Phil, being an ass is apparently one of your strong suits. Have at it. I’m no longer even interested.

  54. Carrick, my understanding is that in this case the criticism isn’t that the proxies end in 1980 on the graph. (iirc many of the series end ~1980) The criticism is focused on the shape of the end of smoothed proxy series, roughly 1940-80.
    Notice the shape there in the image you linked, and then here is an image from McIntyre where he tries to use his MBH99 emulation to obtain the same result using Mann’s stated 40 year smoothing(red), along with a 20 year smoothing as well(blue).
    http://climateaudit.files.wordpress.com/2007/05/splice28.gif
    Not quite the same, now he tries ‘grafting’ the instrumental record onto the end using the year 1981-1998 and smoothing
    http://climateaudit.files.wordpress.com/2007/05/splice29.gif
    Next he tried 1902-1998 of the instrumental record
    http://climateaudit.files.wordpress.com/2007/05/splice30.gif

    For more info (and in case I made any mistakes) see the “update” at the end of this post
    http://climateaudit.org/2007/05/11/the-maestro-of-mystery

  56. Thanks, MikeZ and Paul Evans. Mann’s comments were interesting, I’m willing to trust his comments, but they need to be verified.

    Amac seems to be on fire on this issue, perhaps he could go through Mann’s response.

  57. Hi Carrick –

    I thought this quote from Mann was interesting.

    “In referring to our 1998 Nature article, Jones was simply pointing out the following: our proxy reconstruction ended in 1980 (when the proxy data set we were using terminates—see item #1 above)
    so, it didn’t include the warming of the past two decades. We therefore also showed in our article the more recent instrumental temperature data which extended through 1995, so that the reconstruction could be viewed in the context of recent instrumental temperatures. The separate curves for the proxybased
    temperature reconstruction and for the instrumental temperature data were clearly labeled, and the data for both curves were available in the public domain at the time of publication for anyone who wanted to download them.”

    As far as it goes this is fine. What it does not deal with is the methodology used to make the smoothed graph of the reconstruction. As far as I can tell, nobody has been able to reproduce this smooth using any of the known methods for smoothing and end point handling.

    It is this smoothed graph that appears to have been built using both reconstruction and instrumental data. It is one of the mysteries of climate science that such a simple matter can remain unresolved.

  58. Regarding the copyright issue, odds are no one owns the it. I expect that it was published without a copyright notice. (And, Lucia, I think we discussed once on CA that the copyright can, in some cases, be resurrected from that, but not, I think, in this case.) Your comments about ownership also seem on the mark, though again I’m just guessing about the facts. However, copyright law is rather draconian, so I would urge at least some caution regarding this count.

    The right of publicity claim is, IMO, hopeless, though I will grant that this area of IP law is brand new and offers some possibilities for some surprising decisions. Still, I wouldn’t bet on it. While there is ample room to critique the SCOTUS’ opinions in NY Times v. Sullivan, et seq., the result was inevitable, in view of our First Amendment. This case is essentially on all fours with those decisions, the only difference that the offended parties are trying to use the Right of Publicity instead of libel. The policies are the same, the outcome will be the same.

    The libel claim is laughable on its face, and I’d be looking for attorneys fees, and consider filing a Rule 11 motion (despite the courts’ habitual and lamentable reluctance to grant them) if it were brought.

    (Lucia, the bedrock prerequisit for a libel claim is a false assertion of fact. I believe the Wikipedia article’s point is simply that “giving an impression,” i.e., an implicit, rather than explicit, assertion, can theoretically meet the requirement, but this is simply meant to close the loophole of using evasive language, while, nonetheless, making the factual assertion. In any event, even if there were an explicit and demonstrably false assertion of fact in the video, there is still a mens rea requirement, and that is where most libel cases die. I don’t think, in view of the “CRUtape letters,” that M4GW would have much trouble showing that they did not act with reckeless disregard for the truth of anything I saw in that video.)

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