...see #24.
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Posted on 03/19/2013 10:50:08 PM PDT by neverdem
We wrote here about a recent effort by a group of climate alarmists headed by geologist Shaun Marcott to resurrect Michael Mann’s discredited hockey stick. The Marcott paper, as you would expect, received uncritical coverage in the liberal press. But it didn’t take long for climate scientists to begin taking it apart, as we noted in our post.
Now Steve McIntyre, who was principally responsible for showing that Mann’s original hockey stick was a fraud, has gone over Marcott’s data on the key proxies he uses for 20th century temperatures, ocean cores. McIntyre found that Marcott and his colleagues used previously published ocean core data, but have altered the dates represented by the cores, in some cases by as much as 1,000 years. Anthony Watts sums up:
It seems the uptick in the 20th century is not real, being nothing more than an artifact of shoddy procedures where the dates on the proxy samples were changed for some strange reason.
McIntyre’s post on his research is here. This chart shows how critical Marcott’s re-dating was to his conclusion that temperatures spiked in unprecedented fashion in the 20th century. The red line shows ocean core temperatures using the original dates under which the data were published: it shows cooling during the 20th century. The black line shows the same data, only with the dates changed by Marcott. It shows temperatures rising significantly, rather than declining:...
(Excerpt) Read more at powerlineblog.com ...
I remember JoNova having an article on that fact,...might have been less ,...it was some time ago.
Washington Turns Science to Science Fiction
Covers the spending on Green Energy ...which is huge also.
“Global Warming” is a myth created by the mental disease of Liberalism. Good luck using facts and reason against it. A cure would involve inpatient treatment.
...see #24.
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Worth a double posting.
I didn’t know Hinderacker was a lawyer, too. He’s obviously throwing down the gauntlet to Mann. I’m sure you’ve seen some of the posts about Mann on Anthony Watts’ site. He seems to me to be an adolescent petulant person.
That could get real interesting real FAST.
Thanks gleeaikin.
On reading the comments below the original article and also the discussion here by a guy who tried to recreate Marcott's results, it sounds like neither the original data nor Marcott's revised data can be trusted. Those big upward and downward spikes near 2000 could be artifacts.
As for prosecutable fraud, IANAL but I think we will have to settle for Marcott's reputation taking a hit.
Was his intent to deceive? Did he gain from his deception? It seems that it should be prosecutable:
Fraud is generally defined in the law as an intentional misrepresentation of material existing fact made by one person to another with knowledge of its falsity and for the purpose of inducing the other person to act, and upon which the other person relies with resulting injury or damage. Fraud may also be made by an omission or purposeful failure to state material facts, which nondisclosure makes other statements misleading.
To constitute fraud, a misrepresentation or omission must also relate to an ‘existing fact’, not a promise to do something in the future, unless the person who made the promise did so without any present intent to perform it or with a positive intent not to perform it. Promises to do something in the future or a mere expression of opinion cannot be the basis of a claim of fraud unless the person stating the opinion has exclusive or superior knowledge of existing facts which are inconsistent with such opinion. The false statement or omission must be material, meaning that it was significant to the decision to be made.
Sometimes, it must be shown that the plaintiff’s reliance was justifiable, and that upon reasonable inquiry would not have discovered the truth of the matter. For injury or damage to be the result of fraud, it must be shown that, except for the fraud, the injury or damage would not have occurred.
To constitute fraud the misrepresentation or omission must be made knowingly and intentionally, not as a result of mistake or accident, or in negligent disregard of its truth or falsity. Also, the plaintiff must prove that the defendant intended for the plaintiff to rely upon the misrepresentation and/or omission; that the plaintiff did in fact rely upon the misrepresentation and/or omission; and that the plaintiff suffered injury or damage as a result of the fraud. Damages may include punitive damages as a punishment or public example due to the malicious nature of the fraud.
There are many state and federal laws to regulate fraud in numerous areas. Some of the areas most heavily litigated include consumer fraud, corporate fraud, and insurance fraud.
http://definitions.uslegal.com/f/fraud/
If Steve McIntyre or others in the field are willing to testify that this was fraud, then perhaps it could be successfully prosecuted. I would not like to be the guy who had to explain such complex, highly technical research to a jury that had little or no science background. If Marcott had a grad student research assistant who would testify that he or she was told to fabricate results or to discard results that did not support AGW, that would be a huge help to the prosecution. Without such a smoking gun, and without heavyweight expert witnesses, prosecution for fraud sounds to me like an uphill battle.
At some point something has to be done. You cannot have two absolutely differing facts. Science can debate causes until they’re blue in the face and politicians can latch on to one that serves their cause or purpose. But how can you have two opposite “facts” without fraud?
Science is about experimentation and falsification.
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