Arguments
Patrick Michaels: Serial Deleter of Inconvenient Data
Posted on 17 January 2012 by dana1981
Patrick Michaels is a research fellow at the Cato Institute think tank, the chief editor of the website World Climate Report, has been given a climate blog at the business magazine Forbes, and his articles are frequently re-posted at climate "skeptic" blogs like Watts Up With That (WUWT). Despite his clear conflict of interest (Michaels has estimated that 40% of his work is funded by the petroleum industry), many people continue to rely on him as a reliable source of climate information. This is an unwise choice, because Michaels also has a long history of badly distorting climate scientists' work. In fact, not only does Michaels misrepresent climate research on a regular basis, but on several occasions he has gone as far as to manipulate other scientists' figures by deleting parts he doesn't like.
Patrick Michaels is a serial deleter of inconvenient data.
Hansen 1988
Skeptical Science has previously documented the most high-profile example of Michaels' serial data deletions, which involved James Hansen's 1988 study projecting future global warming. James Hansen is a scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), and one of the world's foremost climate scientists.
Climate scientists aren't in the business of predicting how human greenhouse gas emissions will change in the future - that is a policy question. Instead, climate scientists predict how the climate will change in response to a series of possible emissions scenarios (for example, continuing with business-as-usual emissions, dramatically cutting our emissions starting in the year 2020, etc.). In 1988, Hansen used the NASA GISS climate model to predict how the planet would respond to three possible scenarios. Scenario A assumed continued exponential (accelerating) greenhouse gas growth. Scenario B assumed a reduced linear rate of growth, and Scenario C assumed a rapid decline in greenhouse gas emissions around the year 2000. Hansen believed Scenario B was the most likely to come to fruition, and indeed it has been the closest to reality thus far. In the summer of 1988, Hansen presented his results in testimony before U.S. Congress.
Ten years later, with the Kyoto Protocol international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the works, Patrick Michaels was invited to testify before Congress about the state of climate science. He spoke of Hansen's 1988 study, and in the process, grossly misrepresented its projections and accuracy by deleting Scenarios B and C, wrongly asserting that the planet had warmed "more than four times less than Hansen predicted."
Original Version
Michaels Version
James Hansen had this to say about Patrick Michaels' distortion of his work:
"Pat Michaels, has taken the graph from our 1988 paper with simulated global temperatures for scenarios A, B and C, erased the results for scenarios B and C, and shown only the curve for scenario A in public presentations, pretending that it was my prediction for climate change. Is this treading close to scientific fraud?"
Michaels certainly didn't mess around with his first known case of data deletion, using it to mislead our policymakers as they decided whether or not to commit to reducing American greenhouse gas emissions (they ultimately refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol). Michaels' other data deletions, while being almost as misleading, were not made on nearly as grand of a stage.
Schmittner 2011
Another example of Michaels' serial data deletion involved a paper by Schmittner et al. last year which attempted to estimate the climate sensitivity - how much the planet will warm in response to a continued rise of greenhouse gases. Schmittner et al. used geologic data to calculate the climate sensitivity based on the transition between the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) and the current relatively warm interglacial period (approximately 20,000 years ago), and came up with an estimate towards the lower end, but within the likely range listed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
However, there are two strong caveats associated with their results. First, based on their interpretation of the geologic data, they estimated a smaller temperature change from the LGM transition than most previous studies, which was the main reason that their climate sensitivity estimate was relatively low. Had they used a more widely-accepted global temperature change for the period in question, their climate sensitivity estimate would likely have been very close to the most likely estimate from the IPCC.
Second, and more relevant here, Schmittner et al. arrived at two fairly different results when they used ocean temperature data as opposed to land temperature data. Their climate sensitivity estimate based on land-only data was significantly higher than with ocean-only data. When they combined the two, the result was close to the ocean-only estimate, because the majority of their data came from ocean measurements.
This is an important caveat because climate sensitivity applies to the planet as a whole. If different results are obtained from ocean and land data, then we can't be sure which is correct, and in fact many climate scientists are skeptical of the small LGM temperature change estimate, which is based heavily on the ocean temperature data. Thus Schmittner et al. felt it important to include both estimates in the figures in their study.
However, it is very important for climate "skeptics" like Patrick Michaels that climate sensitivity be low. This would mean that the planet will not warm as much in response to rising greenhouse gases, and we don't have to worry about reducing our emissions as quickly. Thus as he did with Hansen's figure, Michaels deleted the inconvenient data from the figure in Schmittner et al., leaving only the combined estimate, which as noted above, is heavily weighted by the lower, ocean-based climate sensitivity estimate.
Original Version
Michaels Version
On Planet 3.0, thingsbreak had an excellent interview with Nathan Urban, co-author of Schmittner et al., in which Michaels' distortion of his results was discussed:
"World Climate Report doctored our paper’s main figure when reporting on our study. This manipulated version of our figure was copied widely on other blogs....I find this data manipulation problematic. When I created the real version of that figure, it occurred to me that it would be reproduced in articles, presentations, or blog posts. Because I find the difference between our land and ocean estimates to be such an important caveat to our work, I made sure to include all three curves in the figure, so that anyone reproducing it would have to acknowledge these caveats....I find the result of their figure manipulation to be very misleading...They intentionally took our figure out of the context in which it was originally presented, a form of “selective quotation” which hides data that does not support their interpretation...I find World Climate Report’s behavior very disappointing and hardly compatible with true skeptical inquiry"
Gillett 2012
The latest example of Michaels' serial data deletion involves a recent paper by Gillett et al. which like Hansen (1988), projects future global warming in several different emissions scenarios. However, Gillett et al. made three different projections for each scenario. For the first projection, they simply ran their climate model to see how much global warming it would predict in each scenario. For the other two projections, they scaled their climate model run based on observational temperature changes that they estimated from greenhouse gases and other influences over two timeframes, 1851-2010, and 1901-2000.
In their figure showing the results of these projections, they illustrated the results using the two different timeframes, because the results in each were markedly different. When Gillett et al. constrained their model using the timeframe from 1851 to 2010, the model projected less warming than when they used the timeframe from 1901 to 2000.
This is a very similar situation to Schmittner et al., in that using two different sets of data produced two fairly different sets of results. Thus like Schmittner et al., Gillett et al. made a point to note the fact that their results were very sensitive to the timeframe they used, and included both results in their figures
But once again, the data projecting larger future global warming was inconvenient for Patrick Michaels' narrative, so he simply deleted it.
Original Version
Michaels Version
In these figures, the dashed lines in the horizontal direction are the projections from the unconstrained climate model for the three emissions scenarios (the RCPs). The solid vertical lines are the model projections using the 1851-2010 data, and the dotted vertical lines (deleted by Michaels) are the model projections using the 1901-2000 data.
Deleters and Enablers
In every case discussed above, Michaels has deleted the data which contradict his constant arguments that the planet will warm less than most climate scientists expect, and thus that global warming is nothing to worry about. Given his history as a serial data deleter, rather than being given so many platforms from which to spread his misinformation, Patrick Michaels (and certainly the World Climate Report website) should be considered an unreliable source of information.
This is a problematic situation. There are a large number of people who simply don't want to accept the scientific reality that humans are causing rapid global warming. However, this reality is accepted by the vast majority of scientific experts, because it is supported by the preponderance of scientific data. Denial enablers like Anthony Watts, Forbes, and other media outlets have found a way around the first problem by giving fake skeptics like Patrick Michaels a platform to speak to those who are in denial about the science. Patrick Michaels has found a way around the second problem by simply deleting the data which is inconvenient for his narrative, only presenting his audience with the bits of evidence which seem to support their denial, as long as the inconvenient data are ignored.
Not at all. Michaels is making an important point. Climate "skeptics" just can not make a case without distorting data. Any NGO, blog, commentator or presenter who uses this material is clearly and explicitly conceding that fact.
As Mann recently point out
Here's Ben Santer showing how Micheals misrepresents science during a congressional hearing.
Michael's attempt to misled Congress (not for the first time as noted in the main post) was not only wrong as Ben Santer correctly noted it was also disingenuous (because we know Michaels knows better, either that or he is ignorant of the climate science). That Michaels was wrong has recently been reaffirmed by by Huber and Knutti (2011). They find:
"Our results show that it is extremely likely that at least 74% (+/- 12%, 1 sigma) of the observed warming since 1950 was caused by radiative forcings, and less than 26% (+/- 12%) by unforced internal variability."
Michaels could only create his illusion by excluding error bars and by ignoring the cooling affect of sulphates.
Should you or I trust him or the World Climate Report that Michaels runs? The evidence strongly suggests no, we should not, nor should we trust people or groups who uncritically trumpet his ideological propaganda.
"And if anyone had any doubts that this is an isolated incident by WCR (i.e., Michaels) they would be wrong, and it is not limited to doctoring graphs, but also ignoring or amending text from papers that does not support their narrative. Here DeepClimate shows how Michaels and Knappenberger misrepresented the work of Easterling and Wehner (2009) and Solomon et al. (2010) in a post titled "Michaels and Knappenberger’s World Climate Report: “No warming whatsoever over the past decade".
There is a very clear pattern of deliberate attempts to mislead and misinform by the WCR. well, either "deliberate" or they have no clue how to properly undertake science and report on science."
Dr. Michael- he represents both. Conflict of interest?
Remarkably convenient, that.
It is neither.It is denialism.
Any moment now.
Any... er...
Putting on my pedantic hat, those in denial honestly believe, whatever belief that is; I find it difficult to imagine scenarios where you can exhibit a bias toward deleting information contrary to your position and still be called honest.
For example, three top executives of Nortel Networks Corporation are on trial today in Toronto for such examples of fraud.
"Cato’s Patrick Michaels: Serial Deleter of Inconvenient Data” Climate Progress
"Patrick Michaels Loves to Delete Inconvenient Data” Planetsave
[dana1981] Thanks, also by Climate Crocks and Deltoid.
[dana1981] Indeed several have, including SkS here and here
Anyhow, now that these problems have been shown, will the WCR staff correct them? The IPCC did fixed the Hymalaya error (took a while though), so as the WCR strives to be better then the IPCC I assume they will fix pronto? Chip, tell me you will please...
cheers, lrg
False climate change data a Crime Against Humanity
In 2004: Michaels-McKitrick Climate paper basic error
Michaels "co-operated with Ross McKitrick on another paper that managed to "prove" that global warming wasn't happening by mixing up degrees with radians."
The fundamental error and its implications is discussed at Deltoid.
But to be fair, that time they did not delete inconvenient data, they were just being grossly incompetent.
Rep. Waxman Presses for Inquiry on Global Warming Denier Pat Michaels
So can we assume that Upton (a staunch anti-science Republican and denies that we need to reduce our GHG emissions) turned a blind eye and failed to follow up?
It would not surprise me. Nothing these anti-science extremists do surprises me anymore.
I'd bet Michels never won a spot the difference competition.
Try as I might, I honestly cannot see why the uproar over our treatment of either Schmittner et al. or Gillett et al. As Pat pointed out over at WCR, our presentations closely followed the Abstract (as written by the original authors) of each paper. It was never our intention to discuss the intricacies of the paper, but to introduce our audience to their existence and place the findings in some context. Don’t you all, here at SkepticalScience publish collections of abstracts from the recent literature from time to time to alert your readers? Perhaps it would sit easier with you if you just considered us as presenting an “abstract” of main Figures in each paper?
And as far as the 1998 testimony goes, your article has added absolutely nothing new to the topic which has been discussed ad nauseum at various point and places across the web. I have laid out my take on the event in various Real Climate discussions (see here and here and my comments esp. #21, #65, and #90 of the first link). Nothing has really changed since then, from either side.
So to me at least, your article lacks both novelty and substance—but then again, perhaps I am too close to the situation to offer a fair assessment.
-Chip Knappenberger
World Climate Report
[DB] Chip, you are neither the focus of the OP of this thread nor are you the Chief Editor of the World Climate Report (WCR). Michaels is, both. So while your opinion is duly noted, Michaels failing to personally present his case on this thread will be construed as de facto evidence of the merit of the OP.
Unlike WCR, comments are allowed by all parties in this forum, with the caveat that comments be on-topic of the thread on which they are placed and that they also be constructed to comply with the Comments Policy. That standard should prove no difficulty for men of good character and conscience.
Please let Michaels speak for himself. Why does Pat Michaels send someone else to cover up his dirty work for him? This speaks volumes about Pat Michaels, he likes to try and control the message-- no one is allowed to comment at WCR. How cowardly, how totally untransparent and how nicely designed to evade critique. The double standards at WCR are astounding.
I suggest that from now on you let Pat speak for himself and defend his own transgressions. Surely he is man enough to to defend his own work, rather than have a foot soldier do the work for him?
What stuns me is that in trying to defend/rationalize/justify his doctoring of graphs, Michaels then elects to propagate more half truths, and misinformation, while making a good few strawman arguments to boot. (-snipYou guys know no shame. It is clear that Patrick Michaels (and anyone defending him) lost his (their) moral and ethical compass a long time ago-).
[DB] Please, let us model what we wish others to emulate.
Inflammatory snipped.
That is a recipe for spreading misinformation. By pulling selectively from the abstract and neglecting to analyze the work, you may as well be summarizing a newspaper by reading the front page headlines only.
A case in point is Michaels' commentary here:
Schmittner et al. results join a growing number of papers published in recent years which ... have come to somewhat similar conclusions, especially regarding the (lack of) evidence to support the existence of the fat right-hand tail.
That 'presentation' cleverly missed the fact that Schmittner found low sensitivity in large part by using data that were truncated at the high and low ends and a model with known limitations. There is 'no evidence' of the fat tail because the authors didn't look at the fat tail.
But from this you feel free to build false conclusions:
But, as the evidence mounts against a high value for the climate sensitivity ... the IPCC is going to be hard-pressed to retain the status quo in its Fifth Assessment Report, especially in light of the enhanced scrutiny that its AR4 misdeeds brought upon the process.
Nice to see Michaels taking an opportunity to throw a punch at the IPCC with unspecified 'misdeeds'. Such superficial analysis has lots of color, but no substance. Gross simplification makes it easy to spin, if that is your real goal.
"Try as I might, I honestly cannot see why the uproar over our treatment of either Schmittner et al. or Gillett et al."
Seriously? You are that numb to the severity of your actions?! (-snipIt is probably because you have deluded yourself-). People are very good at rationalizing and defending even the most indefensible of crimes Chip. It is also probably because you chose to simply ignore/dismiss Dr. Urban's and Dr. Hansen's legitimate concerns-- ignore them and the problem goes away, at least in your mind.
If you fail to see the uproar, just shows how completely divorced you are from acceptable and ethical scientific practices. You and Michaels are routinely engaging in scientific misconduct-- but you will deny that, just as you deny the seriousness of continuing along our current emissions path.
Anyhow, I for one will from now on respond only to Patrick Michaels (the promulgator of misinformation, distortion and half truths, and the deleter of inconvenient data) (-snipshould he manage to summon the courage to post here-).
I hope your conscience, (-snipshould you have one,-) does not let you sleep well tonight.
[DB]Again, let us embody that we wish others to emulate.
Inflammatory snipped.
I find that highly duplicitous on Mr. Knappenberger's part. Chip can drop the "good cop, bad cop" shtick, no one is buying that little act anymore.
In stark contrast to Michaels'and Knappenburger's very selective approach to information, the new series (for SkS) on Skeptical Science that he highlights does report on all relevant studies, even those we personally consider to be poorly done, or whose results we may happen to disagree with.
"....if Michaels and the World Climate Report similarly reported on (for example) studies which find high climate sensitivity"
Highly doubtful. They wish to pursue a very particular narrative-- that climate sensitivity is low, so there is no need to limit GHG emissions. Quite simple.
For example, I find no evidence of WCR or Michaels publishing and highlighting the paper by Lunt et al. (2010).
An abstract is written by the author and so is usually a fair summary of the key elements and findings of the paper (though there are of course poor abstracts!). There is less room for misinterpretation as it is the author summarising the paper's findings, in a setting where a summary is expected. A figure is usually a very important element of a paper in which details are refined and the exact presentation is often quite painstakingly deliberated over in order to present a point and make best use of space. Deliberately leaving some of the information out of a figure can completely alter the conclusion one takes from the figure. It is noteworthy, as Dana says, that the data deleted always happens to be in one direction - this is not a neutral "abstraction" of a figure.
And the same thing goes for arguments and for data selection. If you want or need to exclude them, you can find a way to say "I've left out ... because ..."
There is neither explanation nor excuse for silent omission.
If you don’t like the conclusions of our WCR articles, fine. But to go after our handling of the figures with such (-snipdisdain-), when they are immaterial to the points we are making (because you could read a textual description of them written by the authors themselves in the included abstracts), just seems like making noise for the sake of making noise.
-Chip Knappenberger
World Climate Report
[DB] Inflammatory tone snipped.
Does that mean you would support modifying quotes from various papers as well? Because that's exactly the same behavior - changing context and presentation to emphasize a particular point.
"But to go after our handling of the figures with such disdain, when they are immaterial to the points we are making..."
Yes, folks can dig in further. And find out that Michael has misrepresented the data by omitting large portions of it. Your figures are essential to the points you are making - and you are being disingenuous.
That strikes me as rather a silly defense. Obviously, the experts here could put their hands over the graphs and still get the message you are trying to convey. Unfortunately, the non-experts would be mislead by your graphs. If you claim that your message "would not be impacted in the slightest" had you left out the graphs, then why didn't you? What could possibly be the justification for doctoring a graph?
My job right now involves creating graphs for a report. One thing I refused to do, even though my boss requested it, was make a graph with two scales for the same units, one on the left and one one the right, specifically because the difference in scale is considered bad practice and misleading. Your graph goes beyond what my boss asked me to do: in your case, even a careful reading of the graph would not reveal the missing time frame and easily leads to the wrong conclusion.
Good points and valid ones too-- Michaels et al. have in the past modified the text of scientific papers to change its meaning as I noted at #4 above.
It is very sad that Patrick Michaels apparently still has not got the decency to come here and defend his own transgressions, instead we have to repeatedly hear from a loyal apologist.
If the graphics were immaterial to their case/narrative then why did they have to doctor them or even bother including them for that matter? The fact remains that they did both. You saying they are being disingenuous is being incredibly generous.
Now this is when reasonable and rational people would apologize to both the authors and the journal, and would replace the doctored figures with the originals. But I they probably won't. If so, then I sincerely hope that the AGU goes after them.
That is the nice thing about being a fake skeptic, you never have to concede error or correct mistakes. There is simply no accountability.
There are more problems with Michael's sad attempt to justify his scientific misconduct while slander (SkS and Dana; for all we know Chip co-authored that response), but I'll let Dana have the pleasure of dealing with that.
Actually Patrick Michaels also omitted key portions of the text from Gillett et al., so either way their readers have been mislead.
Same deal with Schmittner et al. (2011).
Now can you imagine their outrage and indignance had someone done that to one of their papers. Well, they now officially have no grounds whatsoever to complain about how anyone presents one of their papers.
I have seen a great deal of "advocacy" papers over the years. Many of them are worth reading - presenting interesting data that may have been overlooked, that supports their position.
However, presenting edited graphs (and misquoting papers) IMO crosses the line between advocacy and, to be frank, deception. A harsh statement, but I feel well supported by the data, as presented in the OP here and on the links in various comments. Michaels and Knappenburger are living examples of the Nick Naylor character from Thank You For Smoking.
Or perhaps it might be advisable to cover both the graphs and the words at the same time. //sarcasm
Might I point out that your response is not just to the SkS authors (and commentors) but to the audience who read this material; a great many of whom are only interested in the substance of the posts - more than which "side" they're on...
... and, I should ad, many of whom are quite used to reading scientific papers as well as press articles, NGO reports etc.
It can't really be said that your response is vindicating Michaels and WCR against the accusations made, now can it?
If the authors of the papers put information in graphs to go with their own words, who are you guys to contradict them?
All the examples above are of important data having been removed from the graphs which materially changes their content. Very poor practice.
But showing the original graphs means including the data that contradicts the point the WCR is trying to make. However discussing and showing contradictory data is key in science, the IPCC does it constantly but the WCR doesn't. Even worse, WCR does not only fail to discuss existing contradictory data the authors actively delete it.
Why is that? I have yet to see Chip or Patrick present a clear valid reason to actively delete contradictory data to the point they are trying to make.
"Now can you imagine their outrage and indignance had someone done that to one of their papers. Well, they now officially have no grounds whatsoever to complain about how anyone presents one of their papers."
Honest brokers should always be honest. We should hold ourselves to higher standards than Michaels has done in the past.
"We included our version of the figures to help visualize what the authors were describing in the abstracts."
Wouldn't using the original graphs the authors made be a better help in visualizing what the authors were describing? Why would doctoring the authors' original graphs (without saying so) make the graphs better express the authors' ideas? If a climate scientist had done that to a "skeptic" graph, don't you think there would be big outcry? As for the omission not affecting the argument you made, what nonsense. Of course it did, that was the whole point in doing what you did.
It's the intellectual equivalent of the punctum caecum. Just as with a visual blind spot, they are unable to see what is in that part of the field-of-view, and just as with a visual blind spot their brains fill in the gap with what it thinks should be there.
For several years now I've been ruminating over the fact that humans as a species seem too fundamentally flawed to perceive, as a whole, the pickle that they're entering of their own volition. Given their audience's response and the authors' own comments after the criticism that has been justly levelled at them, I think that this (...in and of itself, insignificant...) little antic of Michaels and Knappenberger (and by extension, of Watts) has cemented for me that the propensity for exaggerated subjective ideology/mythology is a phenotype too prevalent in the human genotype for the species' long term extancy.
Or, more succinctly... Michaels, Knappenberger and Watts are proof that we're stuffed.
"Honest brokers should always be honest. We should hold ourselves to higher standards than Michaels has done in the past."
I, of course concur fully Mark, and we do hold ourselves to higher standards, or at least we strive to. Ordinarily this all goes without saying, but I think it needed to be said here because whatever moral high ground that Michaels thought he once might have held has just vanished (together with the deleted data and ignored text).
But, ofcourse, the warming is real and the data was left out by the data supplier with good and publicly documented reasons.
Even massively zoomed-in portions of graphs were minutely dissected by the skeptic auditors and again scientists were found guilty of hiding the cooling signal in tree rings by plotting other series on top of the supposedly 'inconvenient' data.
Never mind that the skeptics got tricked by one of their own and that any hiding -if there was any at all- is impossible to notice at normal zoom scales.
Yes, great storms of outrage ripped through the skeptic community. But that was a bit more then a year ago and how different the skeptics respond now when some fellow-skeptics remove inconvenient data from other peoples work. No outrage, no minutely dissected graph investigations. Nothing of that at all. On the contrary, there are only excuses.
This is a clear case of how fake skepticism works.