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Michael Mann Vindicated (Again) Over Climategate

Posted by Soulskill on from the arguments-that-cannot-be-won dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Michael Mann, a climatologist at Pennsylvania State University, was one of the central figures involved in the 'Climategate' controversy, which saw many private email conversations between researchers posted publicly. Now, an investigation (PDF) by the National Science Foundation has found "no basis to conclude that the emails were evidence of research misconduct or that they pointed to such evidence." Phil Plait points out that other investigations have found similarly that claims of Mann's misconduct took his statements out of context. 'A big claim by the deniers is that researchers were using "tricks" to falsify conclusions about global warming, but the NSF report is pretty clear that's not true. The most damning thing the investigators could muster was that there was "some concern" over the statistical methods used, but that's not scandalous at all; there's always some argument in science over methodology. The vague language of the report there indicates to me this isn't a big deal, or else they would've been specific. The big point is that the data were not faked.'"

2 of 961 comments (clear)

  1. Re:AGW by jdgeorge · · Score: 5, Informative

    CO2 released by human activity far outpaces volcanic CO2 release. Looking for a citation for a claim helps people avoid saying things that are easily proven to be incorrect.

    From the USGS article:
    "....not only does volcanic CO2 not dwarf that of human activity, it actually comprises less than 1 percent of that value. "

  2. Not Surprising by Layzej · · Score: 5, Informative

    After the most recent exoneration, Fox was holding out on this NSF report as the last word on the issue: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/04/06/climate-gate-michael-mann/ They felt that the NSF was the "only independent government organization with the skill and tools to investigate effectively"

    Their findings are not surprising. Mann's research has been replicated using different methods time and time again. Here are just a few examples:

    http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v3/n6/full/ngeo865.html

    http://www.sciencemag.org/content/325/5945/1236.abstract

    http://www.leif.org/EOS/2009JD012603.pdf

    http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2010GL044771.shtml

    http://www.colorado.edu/news/r/9059018f4606597f20dc4965fa9c9104.html