Another Pielke train wreck

The thing about a Roger Pielke Jr train wreck is that you just can't look away. Check this one out. Pielke claims that there were 1,264 times as many news stories about a Michael Mann study that suggests that hurricanes are at a 1,000 year high as about a Chris Landsea study that found no increase in hurricanes over the past century. (Mark Morano , of course, links to Pielke's post.)

The fun is in the comments as folks try to explain to Pielke that there is a film director called Michael Mann and that maybe Pielke shouldn't count those stories. Pielke comes back with the claim that restricting the search to "Michael Mann" + nature + hurricanes + Aug 13-15 gives 1,412 stories. Some folks might wonder how restricting the search gives you more results, but not Pielke. In fact, if you read what Google says at the link Pielke gave it says that there are "about 20", and if you look at all the results there are just 11. A similar search for the Landsea paper gives 5 news stories. This difference may be due to one paper being published in Nature and the other in The Journal of Climate.

Update: Soon after I posted this, Pielke finally made a correction, allowing that being out by a couple of orders of magnitude was a "bit sloppy". Heaven knows how wrong he would have to be before he admitted to being sloppy or very sloppy.

More like this

But... but...

1. Ad hominem! Ad hominem! This is just another excuse by Warmists⢠to avoid debating t3h scienz!
2. If there are 1,264 mentions of Mann et al.'s paper and only 1 mention of Landsea et al.'s paper, then it proves that the intarwebs have a librul bias. If there are 1,264 mentions of Landsea et al.'s paper and only 1 mention of Mann et al.'s paper, then it proves that Landsea et al. are right.
3. Pielke is absolutely right, period. Global warming is a religion and there are more and more skeptical scientists and the earth is cooling and Al Gore is Fat and Galileo will triumph over the Inquisition!
4. We need to bring more civility into The Debateâ¢. In recent years, The Debate⢠has become so Polarized⢠that we need a Voice of Moderationâ¢, and who better to be the Voice of Moderation⢠than Yours Trulyâ¢?
5. You see, Pielke might have a problem with basic maths, but Clinton Did It Tooâ¢, therefore Pielke is being Unfairly Demonized™, and therefore The Truth Lies Between the Two Extremes™. So says the Voice of Moderation™.

Well, when I got Peiser's emailed list ballyhooing his ineptly done Google search, I replied within minutes pointing out that he'd bollixed up his quoted string and showing him the correct numbers. He didn't reply -- I'm sure he was deluged with email pointing it out, it was such an obvious error. Peiser retracted, eventually, but only after much public posturing.

So I've posted to RPJr's thread warning him that he's Peisered himself and urging him to retract.

I trust it'll appear there.

By Hank Roberts (not verified) on 15 Aug 2009 #permalink

bi--IJI, you sir are a gentleman. (my favourite quote on WUWT)

I doubt my comment will get past moderation, so here it is for posterity:

~~~

> 1,264 = the number of news stories covering Michael Mann...

The fact that you thought searching for just a name (shared by a film director along with, possibly, other people) was significant demonstrates a level of myopia and incompetence that is hard to comprehend.

> hurricane "michael mann" nature = 1,412

Nonsense. That search returns "about 13" hits: : http://imgur.com/ZhD7K.png Restricting the dates produces a small anomaly and reports "about 27" hits. "Chris Landsea" produces "about 14" hits for the same date range. Woo hoo! Conspiracy!

What an embarrassing display of incompetence and delusion....

~~~

DavidCOG,
Ah, but you ignored the "all 1392 news articles" related to the first hit listed. Here are some of the oh-so-relevant hits when you click on that:

Atlantic may soon see first named storm - NHC
Reuters India - âAug 14, 2009â
NEW YORK, Aug 14 (Reuters) - The Atlantic Ocean could see its first named storm of the hurricane season in a day or two as a low pressure system off the ...

Atlantic Weather System May Become Hurricane, Planalytics Says
Bloomberg - Brian K. Sullivan - âAug 13, 2009â
Aug. 13 (Bloomberg) -- A system of thunderstorms in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa may develop . . .

Guillermo could strengthen to hurricane in Pacific
The Associated Press - âAug 13, 2009â
MIAMI â Forecasters say they're expecting Tropical Storm Guillermo to strengthen to a hurricane as it moves farther out to sea in the Pacific. ...

Apparently there are 933 more just like this. Ain't point and click so much fun? You don't even have to use your brain!

Google hit counts seem to be bogus for large numbers.

Example. With preference of 100 hits per page, search for this: "science blogs"

Google says: Results 1 - 100 of about 570,000

Now scroll down to the bottom and click on "10" for what should be the tenth page of 100 hits per page.

Google says: Results 601 - 641 of about 570,000

When they say "about" they really mean "don't pay any attention to the following number" :D

And I have seen cases where the number of hits goes up when I make a search more restrictive. Apparently Google is trying to help me by silently ignoring some of my search terms to give an unexpectedly higher hit count.

To really make the search more restrictive, you have to put plus signs in front of each term to show Google you really mean it.

Maybe the people who are confined to open threads or even personal threads could be let in on this one? I just love it when people try to defend stuff like this.

> when they say "about"

Google doesn't have one central data file of their web index; they have a lot of different machines each checking some chunk and updating some copy, and those copies get merged over time.
Each time you run a search or vary a search it goes to whichever of those different data-slurping modules happens to be free to answer you --- it may be one that's just finished indexing on the terms you use, or one that finished a while ago.

So if you repeat the same search, YMMV.

Or something like that. It's kind of like polling every nosy parker and intrusive gossip in a big city about what's going on -- each of them is up to date about something, most of them are caught up on most of yesterday's gossip, and all of them are caught up on last week's.

By Hank Roberts (not verified) on 15 Aug 2009 #permalink

This is WAAAAY beyond YMMV. It's clear that the Talented Mr. Pielke is so full of himself he didn't even take the 2 seconds necessary to spot check the results and see that the overwhelming majority have nothing to do with the papers in question. They're mostly news updates on current storms.

"Pielke claims that there were 1,264 times as many news stories about a Michael Mann study that suggests that hurricanes are at a 1,000 high as about a Chris Landsea study that found no increase in hurricanes over the past century. "

Should be "at a 1,000 year high" -- a typo?

*[Yes. Thanks. Tim]*

By Anonymous37 (not verified) on 15 Aug 2009 #permalink

The guy has like 200 papers and this weak cr*p is the best that you have? Lambert you can do better.

By Captain Bligh (not verified) on 15 Aug 2009 #permalink

Captain Bligh:
> The guy has like 200 papers
OK, so if Pielke Jr. has published 200 papers, then it's possible than the number of articles on Mann the film director is a negative number. I get it.

Neven: Thank you. [takes hat off and bows] :-B

Captain Bligh:

> The guy has like 200 papers

OK, so if Pielke Jr. has published 200 papers, then it's possible than the number of articles on Mann the film director is a negative number. I get it.

Neven: Thank you. [takes hat off and bows] :-B

So Pielke now admits that his original post was "a bit sloppy." Really? Ya Think?

He also now claims that the real numbers are 27 and 3. But his original links are still up, so now there is no way to examine his methodology at all - its a bald unsupported claim.

I haven't paid him much attention - is Pielke often this bad?

I haven't paid him much attention - is Pielke often this bad?

Yes.

> He also now claims that the real numbers are 27 and 3.

This, of course, only further proves that we don't know the true amount of Warmist Bias⢠present in The Internets Tubesâ¢. Therefore, one simply cannot discount the possibility that The Internets Tubes⢠exhibits a strong Warmist Biasâ¢. A bias which, of course, must be corrected by the Voice of Moderation⢠that is Roger Pielke Junior⢠-- as long as the Bias™ cannot be shown not to exist, the Voice of Moderation™ that is Pielke™ will always be Needed™.

Ha!

On Pielkes's blog he provides a link for the Michael Man count and one for the Chris Lansea Count. The Michael Mann link is to a google searchhttp://news.google.com/news/search?pz=1&ned=us&hl=en&q=%22Michael+Mann%22

But the Landsea link is to a NYT article on the Landsea study http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/science/earth/13atlantic.html

I wondered what you get if you enter "Chris Landsea" into the Google news search, and why Pielke didn't use that. Turns out that second link thrown up by Google news is to this very blog post with 'Another Pielke train wreck' proudly emblazoned.

By Craig Allen (not verified) on 16 Aug 2009 #permalink

Craig,

That is poetic! Cheers!

Plimer update (he's such a darling of the right wing).

so many fools, so little time.

Well, well ,well.

So interested in the fact that RP made an error - OMG he's human after all.

Not at all interested in yet another example of Mann's dodgy use of novel statistical methods.

Says it all about you really.

By Dave Andrews (not verified) on 17 Aug 2009 #permalink

DA - errors made by denialists are OK, they're just human, errors made by scientists prove that AGW is a religion and that it's a huge conspiracy to impose one-world government and force us all to live in caves.

Dave Andrews does have a point - lets get on to the science.

We have two studies using two different methodologies and two completely unrelated sets of data, coming to different conclusions about whether hurricanes have been increasing. They are both interesting and both are likely to contribute toward improving understanding in an area of climatology that is somewhat confusing. Which finding is more likely to be correct? What is the likely cause of the discrepancy? How can it be resolved? In the period that they overlap, do they in fact give significantly different results?

By Craig Allen (not verified) on 17 Aug 2009 #permalink

One wonders at Dave Andrews' knee-jerk, templated remark about a Mann Dodgy StudyTM is indicative of a mental condition.

That is: does he have other templated remarks about differing topics? Say, for example, about a gummint program, does he robotically reply with "soshulizm"? About a light rail project, does he robotically reply with "gimme muh fraydum". About a story on whales, does he mindlessly reply with 'environazis'? About a story on home prices, does he breathe through his mouth when parroting "prices should be set byyyyyyy Free MaaaaaaarketsTM!!!"

Surely there are no others out there with the same weird mental condition, are there? Heaven help us if so.

Best,

D

> Surely there are no others out there with the same weird mental condition, are there? Heaven help us if so.

> Posted by: Dano

Some form of "corporate tourette syndrome", maybe? Or "Right wing tourette's"?

My post didn't make the cut. I recalled that Phil Silver's TV show Sgt. Bunco had led to the word "bunco" becoming a generic noun (and adjective). I asked whether pielke or idso would follow suit :)

By Marion Delgado (not verified) on 18 Aug 2009 #permalink

Dano,

I don't do knee jerk reactions and my politics have been on the left since I was a teenager. As a small example, I have been a steadfast Guardian reader since the mid 1960s.

So your pathetic attempt at stereotyping is just that - pathetic.

By Dave Andrews (not verified) on 18 Aug 2009 #permalink

Dave Andrews - congratulations on breaking the stereotype with your sample of one. Can you tell us why you are so against climate change science?

On the other hand we can discuss how left the guardian is these days some other time.

I think Dave Andrews must be a closet secret hidden Leftist. Because he gives absolutely no hint of his supposed Leftism, except during those times when he wants to show us how Leftist he is.

On several occations I've noticed how Dave Andrews likes to take broad generalised digs at Monbiot.

Given DA lasts disclosure it begs the question Is DA perhaps a [Revolutionary Communist Party](http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2003/dec/09/highereducation.uk2) sympathiser or a [Living Marxist](http://www.monbiot.com/archives/1998/11/01/far-left-or-far-right/)?

So far left that [he's right](http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/01/13/flying-over-the-cuckoos-nest/)?

By Mark Byrne (not verified) on 18 Aug 2009 #permalink

Mark Byrne,

Sometimes George M writes a lot of sense, other times he spoils it by playing to his gallery. I happen to think his latest effort this week is quite good.

Perhaps you, dhogaza, mark,BPL, Chris O'Neill, Dano etc could indicate whether you are Kingsnorthian or Monbiotic?

By Dave Andrews (not verified) on 19 Aug 2009 #permalink

Monbiotâs exchange with Kingsnorth made excellent reading.

6 billion people, with more than a billion in desperate poverty, with the total sum exploiting more resources than are sustainable for even the medium term.

6 billion without the ability to benefit from those same resource due to depletion will not be 6 billon for very long.

I'm with Monbiot. If we can't transition to sustainable societies with the current (peak) resources, then it will be far harder to make that transition during the descent of ecosystem services.

I donât see a greener earth during the period of human contraction. If we wait for that, then I foresee starvation and war and unregulated consumption of remaining exploitable ecosystem services.

Democracies thin veneer will not last long under such desperate pressures (re enter the ascendency of war lords and even worse tyrants). Take our recent demonization of Muslims, or Hitlerâs demonization of Jews and lay these templates on a global where the trend towards âmore and moreâ has hit the wall and has been reversed. That template makes for some nasty potential scenarios.

Now is our best opportunity to act and preserve what we hold dear and progress in positive ways.

By Mark Byrne (not verified) on 19 Aug 2009 #permalink

Dave Andrews:

> I happen to think his latest effort this week is quite good.

Maybe that's just because you happen to be in a "I need to show everyone how Leftist and pro-Monbiot I am despite everything else I say" mode right now.

Being 2 orders of magnitude off is "a bit sloppy"? Doesn't this individual pretend to be engaged in serious objective science?

I can't help thinking that all this posturing about which paper one reads is intended to give one some supposed respect or gravitas, some perceived air of intellectual superiority in one's circle of acquaintances, but in following this discourse on newspaper readership it did bring to mind the inestimable Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister series (much of whose humour I suspect would be lost on a non-UK audience), and particularly this extract from the latter:

Hacker: I know exactly who reads the papers: The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country; The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country; The Times is read by people who actually do run the country; The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country; The Financial Times is read by people who own the country; The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country; and The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.

Sir Humphrey: Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun?

Bernard: Sun readers don't care who runs the country, as long as she's got big tits.

bi -IJI,

Perhaps you should go back to your scantily clad women.

By Dave Andrews (not verified) on 20 Aug 2009 #permalink

I appears as though the Pielke's are involved in another train wreck. You can find most of the other discussion by following links to julesandjames.blogspot.com and Pielke's own blog.

By Rattus Norvegicus (not verified) on 20 Aug 2009 #permalink

bi,

If you've got some spare scantily clad women, we could use a few out here in "Mantana".

By Rattus Norvegicus (not verified) on 22 Aug 2009 #permalink

the post didn't make the cut, deltron, because it's spam.

As is the post you just made. Here and on the other threads.

Please stop. It's horrendously obvious and nobody wins here.