What Michael Mann’s ‘Hockey Stick’ Graph Gave to UN Climate Fraud

Written by John O'Sullivan & Norm Kalmanovich on January 5, 2018. Posted in Current News

As Penn State climate professor, Michael Mann faces certain defeat in his libel suit against Dr Tim Ball, we examine why climate alarmism needed Mann’s notorious graph to bolster their claims of human-caused climate catastrophe.

Canadian climate researcher, Norm Kalmanovich, reminds us that an enormous historical event that undermines the idea that modern industrial emissions of CO2 dangerously impact climate, is the Little Ice Age (LIA). This period of considerable cooling occurred during the period 1645–1715. At that time there was a period of low solar activity known as the Maunder Minimum. Michael Mann’s ‘hockey stick’ graph (above) made the very cold LIA ‘disappear.’

Kalmanovich notes: “What everyone has left out is the reason why it was necessary to fabricate a temperature proxy that would eliminate the Little Ice Age.”

In 1998 a newly-qualified PhD scientist, Michael Mann seemingly appeared from nowhere to steal the show in the climate debate with a graph that caused controversy for the next 2o years, Mann’s new 1,000 year temperature proxy was the most iconic image in the UN’s highly-influential Third Assessment Report on climate change (2001) . It showed a distinct ‘hockey stick’ shape (a flat ‘handle’ for the first 900 years, then a sharp ‘uptick’ or hockey stick blade depicting temperatures for the modern era. In effect, Mann’s graph flattened nine centuries of climate variation and ‘disappeared’ both the Medieval Warm Period as well as the later Little Ice.

Mann’s graph was sensationally adopted as the poster image for the UN IPCC’s campaign to drastically cut emissions of carbon dioxide – a gas crucial as plant food but now depicted as a ‘poison.’ To many independent scientists Mann’s graph was a cynical fabrication and little more than temperature proxy trick concocted to validate government computer models, starting with Hansen et al 1981. See here:

https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1981/1981_Hansen_ha04600x.pdf

Western governments liked the idea of a new tax on our CO2 emissions. The idea was to give a wider and more credible scientific veneer to the computer models, which was necessary to keep the fraud alive. The original basis for the climate deception was Arrhenius ideas from 1896 that spawned the creation of the greenhouse gas theory. This was a theory already rejected by mainstream science since the 1950’s when Britain’s world-leading expert, C.E.P Brooks and the American Meteorological Society declared that CO2 can have no measurable impact on earth’s climate (Brooks, C.E.P. (1951). “Geological and Historical Aspects of Climatic Change.” In Compendium of Meteorology, edited by Thomas F. Malone, pp. 1004-18 (at 1016). Boston: American Meteorological Association).

In the pivotal ‘Charney’ report of 1979 fresh life was breathed into the ideas of Arrhenius, which can be examined here:

 http://www.rsc.org/images/Arrhenius1896_tcm18-173546.pdf  On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground

Arrhenius correctly predicted warming from carbonic acid (H₂O + CO₂) but only from the water (H₂O) component because there were no measurements above 9.5µ and blaming CO₂ for the warming could easily be disproven! This fatal admission is clearly identified in the literature:

But modern computer models have failed to prove that CO2 is a driver of climate. General circulation models have no way of including the effect from CO₂ as one of the initial conditions from which the models operate, so some way of doing this had to be conceived.

This was done through the creation of a CO₂ forcing parameter which was determined on the basis that the 0.5°C of warming from 1880 to1980 was entirely due to the increase in atmospheric CO₂ content from 300ppmv to 340ppmv

Hansen et al 1981 first line: Atmospheric CO₂ increased from 280 to 300 parts per million in 1880 to 335 to 340 ppm in 1980 (1, 2), mainly due to burning of fossil fuels. 

If a 1:1 forcing to temperature ratio was used it would easily be detected so a climate sensitivity factor of 0.75°C/W/m² was used which gave a forcing value of 0.67W/m² as what was needed to create the observed 0.5°C of warming.Arrhenius had developed a natural log relationship for the speed of chemical reactions based on the ratio of the reactants, so with the Arrhenius reference already in place the same natural log relationship was used to create the forcing parameter.

This required some constant multiplied by ln(340/300) to equal the 0.67W/m² of forcing required to cause the 0.5°C of warming.

The constant worked out to 5.35  giving the warming due to the 300ppmv to 340ppmv increase in CO₂ the required 0.67² of forcing 5.35ln(340/300) = 0.67W/m²

This became the generalized formula for the CO₂ forcing parameter 5.35ln(C/C_o) http://icecap.us/images/uploads/HANSENMARSCHALLENGE.pdf  shown below:

The critical problem here in James Hansen’s graph is that the 0.5°C of observed warming from 1880 to 1980 was claimed to be entirely due to increased CO₂ when natural warming since the Little Ice Age was estimated at the same 0.5°C/century as the 0.5°C in the hundred years from 1880 to 1980 on which the CO₂ forcing parameter had based!

This is why Michael Mann’s ‘hockey stick’ graph – the MBH98 Proxy only went back 600 years to the Little Ice Age with the full 1000 year proxy MBH99 just an afterthought to get rid of the pesky Medieval Warm Period which was shown to be warmer than current temperatures in the IPCC 1990 First Assessment Report.

The problem with the Hockey Stick was that it was replaced by a 2000 year proxy which showed both the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and the Little Ice Age (LIA)

 Study: Tree ring data has significant shortcomings as climate proxy

Abstract from Loehle, C. 2007. A 2000-year global temperature reconstruction based on non-treering proxies. Energy & Environment18(7-8): 1049-1058; and Loehle, C., and J.H. McCulloch. 2008: Correction to: A 2000-year global temperature reconstruction based on non-tree ring proxies. Energy & Environment 19(1): 93-100 (emphasis added):

http://agw-heretic.blogspot.ca/2008/01/study-tree-ring-data-has-significant.html

This was followed in 2010 by a further comprehensive study of the past two Millennia defining the Roman Warm Period  (RWP) The Dark Ages Cold Period (DACP), the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) The Little Ice Age (LIA) and the Current Warm Period (CWP).

The latest HadCRUT4 dataset dating back to 1850 shows just 0.78°C of warming in 165 years which equates to 0.47°C/century warming.

The 2010 Proxy shows that roughly half the warming since the 1690 ‘cold point’ of the Little Ice Age occurred by 1850 allowing us to calibrate the warming since the Little Ice Age at the same 0.47°C/century.

This is a big problem for the climate models’ forcing parameter because 5.35ln(C/C_o) is based on the 0.5°C observed warming being entirely due to CO₂ when the data shows that 0.47°C/century of this 0.5°C was in fact natural recovery from the Little Ice Age!

If in fact this 0.03°C/century was actually due to CO₂ it would have required 0.03 x 0.75°C/W/m² of forcing which is 0.0225W/m².

If the natural log relationship was valid here the forcing parameter would be some constant times ln(340/300) = 0.0225 with that constant being 0.180 instead of 5.35   With this constant the forcing from a doubling of CO₂ would be 0.1248W/m² which is only 0.0935°C when converted to temperature with the climate sensitivity factor of 0.75°C/W/m²!

With the Little Ice Age now reinstalled in the temperature record a doubling of CO₂ will only produce 0.0935°C of warming and not the 2.78°C of warming for a doubling of CO₂ that was determined for Hansen et al 1981 Model #4

This is why Mann fabricated the Hockey Stick Graph and with this reason being the perpetration of a fraud. Dr Tim Ball, in 2011, famously declared Michael Mann “belongs in the state pen, not Penn. State” and has faced a six-year legal battle from Mann over this controversy.

But as the evidence above shows, “state pen” is probably where Mann should be!

As the case unfolded, the BC Supreme Court directed Mann to turn over all data relating to his graph by Feb. 20, 2017. The deadline came and went without the data being handed over by Mann. Mann’s refusal to disgorge the data has put the Penn State researcher in a precarious legal position. As Ball explains (principia-scientific.org):

“We believe that he [Mann] withheld on the basis of a US court ruling that it was all his intellectual property. This ruling was made despite the fact the US taxpayer paid for the research and the research results were used as the basis of literally earth-shattering policies on energy and environment. The problem for him is that the Canadian court holds that you cannot withhold documents that are central to your charge of defamation regardless of the US ruling.”

Watch this space for the outcome of the science trial of the century.

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