Morning Call blowhard: ‘Thieves’ broke into Michael Mann’s e-mail

Allentown Morning Call columnist Paul Carpenter shows what he knows — and it’s not much.

In defending hokey stick inventor Michael Mann, Carpenter writes:

…When research by Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann linked global warning to carbon dioxide pollution, the vested interests went after him, even relying on thieves who broke into his email files. I noted the “scientists” who challenged his research were funded, in part, by Exxon-Mobil and the mineral mining industry.

“Political intimidation, character attacks, what appear to be orchestrated phone and email campaigns, nasty and thinly veiled threats, not just to us but to our families, are what it means in modern American life to be a climate scientist,” Mann was quoted as saying by Physics Today.

When I talked to Swan, I noted the attacks on Mann were supported by vested interests. “Yes, and the whole purpose of which was to put out misinformation,” Swan said. “He [Mann] seems to have been pretty well exonerated.”

That refers to investigations by Penn State and the Academy of Sciences that cleared Mann and found his research “well within the bounds of accepted science.”

I’d love to see similar probes of the work by the so-called scientists in the Exxon-Mobil camp. Then we could see if their arguments deserved, as Swan put it, “equal weight and validity.” [Emphasis added]

A few points:

• No one broke into anyone’s e-mail account, including Michael Mann’s. FOIA (whoever the blessed soul is) seems to have leaked parts of an e-mail file constructed in response to a request made under the UK Freedom of Information law.
• Though Carpenter claims to have retired as an engineer from Bell Labs, he apparently has little idea of how science works. The burden is on Mann and his ilk to prove whatever it is they’re trying to assert, particularly as it has changed over the years from global cooling to global warming to climate change and now to extreme weather — a burden that Mann et al. have not come close to meeting. So far, Mann has yet to prove that the errors in the hockey stick were honest mistakes.
• Unlike the skeptics, Exxon-Mobil now believes in global warming. Even so, it deserves little criticism from the likes of Carpenter as Exxon-Mobil has done infinitely more for humanity than Mann et al. and the entire global warming research industry.
• BTW, Mann was never “exonerated” at Carpenter parrots — for the simple reason that he was never genuinely investigated.