Hockey stick hypothesis takes one to the inflection point

A story from the past. It is not uncommon that some issue arises and you have to wait for evidence or court rulings to emerge or be rendered in order to know whether your assumptions are likely to be correct.

Michael Mann is an example. An early and avid proponent of the AGW hypothesis. He is was everywhere in the late 1990s with his climate research, culminating with his hockey stick graph implying that increasing CO2 would have a tipping point leading to climatic collapse. A position which conveniently supported the corresponding hypothesis that western modes of governance and capitalism needed to be dispensed with.

Critics pointed out numerous issues with regard to his claims. He refused to release his data but took his critics to court. From Michael Mann Refuses to Produce Data, Loses Case by John Hinderaker. This case has been going on for nine years. Mann refused to provide his data to support his hockey stick analysis and the court therefore booted his case.

Some years ago, Dr. Tim Ball wrote that climate scientist Michael Mann “belongs in the state pen, not Penn State.” At issue was Mann’s famous “hockey stick” graph that purported to show a sudden and unprecedented 20th century warming trend. The hockey stick featured prominently in the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report (2001), but has since been shown to be wrong. The question, in my view, is whether it was an innocent mistake or deliberate fraud on Mann’s part. (Mann, I believe, continues to assert the accuracy of his debunked graph.) Mann sued Ball for libel in 2011. Principia Scientific now reports that the court in British Columbia has dismissed Mann’s lawsuit with prejudice, and assessed costs against him.

What happened was that Dr. Ball asserted a truth defense. He argued that the hockey stick was a deliberate fraud, something that could be proved if one had access to the data and calculations, in particular the R2 regression analysis, underlying it. Mann refused to produce these documents. He was ordered to produce them by the court and given a deadline. He still refused to produce them, so the court dismissed his case.

The rules of discovery provide that a litigant must make available to opposing parties documents that reasonably bear on the issues in the case. Here, it is absurd for Mann to sue Ball for libel, and then refuse to produce the documents that would have helped to show whether Ball’s statement about him–he belongs in the state pen–was true or false. The logical inference is that the R2 regression analysis and other materials, if produced, would have supported Ball’s claim that the hockey stick was a deliberate fraud on Mann’s part.