John Mashey
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johnmashey.bsky.social
John Mashey
@johnmashey.bsky.social
1.5K followers 2.4K following 1.9K posts
Semi-retired computer scientist, ancient UNIXer, "Big Data"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mashey
Last 20 yrs: chasing anti-science disinfo, esp. on climate or tobacco, helping defend scientists.
Supporter of UCSF, CSLDF, NCSE, CSI, member AAAS, AGU.
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johnmashey.bsky.social
From @janemayer.bsky.social 's www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
I consolidated the various awards from Ginni+UIP,
I susopect you know most of these names.
2017-19 awards from Ginni Thomas and United in Purpose
November 26, 2025 at 8:34 AM
johnmashey.bsky.social
You probably know all this, but if not, Robert P. George got 2018 Lifetime Impact Award from Ginni Thomas & UIP, published Gorsuch book (from dissertation), which included word-for-word copies, but worse, selectively deleted text contrary to his views.
www.huffpost.com/entry/gorsuc...
Complex graph of relationships, including Ginni thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Robert P. George.
November 26, 2025 at 8:27 AM
johnmashey.bsky.social
3/ You may recall John Daly's "Still Waiting for Greenhouse", which had first appearance of exact not-quite-IPCC(1990)-Fig.7.1(c) image (attributed to IPCC(1995)) that was used by McIntyre, McKitrick, Wall St Journal, Inhofe. Daly had written book The Greenhouse Trap(1989), which has (more in Alt):
Fig 8, from The Greenhouse Trap(1989( by John Daly. No source is given, but the book has a Suggestions for Furhter Reading Section that includes H. H. Lamb's Climate History and The Modern World(1982), whose Fig.10, p.76 has curves that likely led to IPCC(1990) Fig.7.1(c), but Daly seems to have found one of the more simplified versions "floating around" in UK at least, and then redrew it, exaggerating the drop from MWP peak to LIA depth, which is a little more than 1 degree C in Lamb & IPCC(1990), but more than 3C in Daly. The scale is unlabeled, but Daly used Celsius throught the book.
November 26, 2025 at 8:02 AM
johnmashey.bsky.social
2/ It turned out 1989 report was not source for IPCC Fig.7.1: 7.1(a) and 7.1(c) have the same curves as 12989, but 7.1(b) is 20,000 years versus 10,000, and smoothed. Phil had told me various versions were floating around UK then, looks like 1989 started with one & colorized, IPCC used another.
UK Dept of Environment 1989 report: Global Climate Change figure showing (estimated) temperature changes over 1M years, 20,000 years, 1000 years versus IPCC(1990) Fig.7.1.
November 26, 2025 at 8:02 AM
johnmashey.bsky.social
1/ Really glad to hear of Met Office involvement.
I was *very* impressed and pleased with their responsiveness to a 2023 request below, looking for 1989 report cited in Jones, Briffa, Osborn, et al(2009).
They sent me a PDF of the report within 4 days,
for which I thanked them strongly!
Request to Met Office for 1989 report. Hello, I am a California, USA resident doing historical research on the origin of a particular chart, Fig 7.1(c) of the IPCC(1990) report. This was a 2009 paper led by Phil Jones, Keith Briffa, Tim Osborn, etc of the University of East Anglia: “UK Department of the Environment 1989: Global climate change. Report by the Department of the Environment in association with the Meteorological Office,” They thought that Fig.7.1(c) was derived from that report, but recently I’ve been trading emails with Phil Jones. He has asked around, but could find no one who has a copy. In searching your database, I think (and hope) that report is the one shown below. Can you tell me if it is possible to get it scanned and emailed to me, and if so, what I need to do. I’m unsure of any copyright status, will fill out forms if needed. I couldn’t tell from your website how you receive payments, if such are needed, but we do PayPal, or if a check required, my wife is British and still has bank acount in UK. To explain why I’m hoping to get this, I investigate and report on climate denial, and variants of Fig 7.1(c) have long been misrepresented to attack climate scientists. I’ve written on this: http://www.desmogblog.com/2015/01/26/medievaldeception-2015-inhofe-drags-senate-dark-ages but so far, none of us have been able to find the original source for one of the common variant images misused by many, and there is at least some chance it came from the 1989 report. I’m collecting material for a possible book about the history of the misuse of this image in blogs, websites, the US Senate, and many books.
November 26, 2025 at 8:02 AM
johnmashey.bsky.social
And for most, nicotine addiction only works during adolescent brain development, which varies but for dome til age 24. Almost no one starts later. (Was 5%, now~1%)
Big Tobacco KNEW.
RJR 1984: Importance of Younger Adult Smokers:
www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docu...
1987 RJR=>Joe Camel
RJR 1984 The Importance of Younger Adult Smokers, 1st page Less than 1/3 of adult smokers start after age 18, 5% after age 24 (that was 1984, by now it’s ~1%. Later they mean: hook them young! Then, they note many smokers stick with first brand. So, get them before the competitors do!
November 24, 2025 at 5:52 AM
johnmashey.bsky.social
I keep flying pigs over my desk, for events like this.
November 21, 2025 at 8:40 PM
johnmashey.bsky.social
And of course City Journal is published by the Manhattan Institute, often funded by fossil fuels and Big Tobacco...
www.desmog.com/wp-content/u... p.39
For fossil funding, see p.95, Column "Manhat" (Exxon, Scaife, Koch funds...)
www.desmog.com/wp-content/u...
Philip Morris funding of think tanks mostly known to recieve fossil funding.
November 15, 2025 at 6:53 AM
johnmashey.bsky.social
Veteran's Day:
Captain Dad, served in N Africa ~1943, where disease withered leg.
1st Lt Mom, served in US, then England (late 1944-45)
US gov't tried to take care of soldiers then:
Mom was/led physical therapists, got Dad walking again.
Fascists were unliked, also our trunk of Stars&Stripes.
Veteran's Day: Captain Dad, served in N Africa ~1943, where disease withered leg. 1st Lt Mom, served in US, then England (late 1944-45) US gov't tried to take care of soldiers then: Mom was/led physical therapists, got Dad walking again. Fascists were unliked, also our trunk of Stars&Stripes.
November 12, 2025 at 7:18 AM
johnmashey.bsky.social
I picked up this book on visit to White Mountains in 2007. Although focused on Schulman, it of course discusses Douglass, including history with Lowell.
The author happened to be there, so autographed it for me.
I thought it was interesting history.
Cover of “Edmund Schulman and the “Living Ruins -Bristlecone Pines, Tree Rings and Radiocarbon Dating” (2007) by Donald J McGraw
November 10, 2025 at 9:32 PM
johnmashey.bsky.social
(CBS destruction is very sad).
I watched I love Lucy when I was a kid, I don't doubt Desilu helped others ...but it was sponsored by Philip Morris, who considered it their best advertising:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Love_...
www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/docs/slxn0189/ 1954 PM report, p.13:
Philp Morris 1954 Annual Report, p.13: "Firm advertising support was given the selling effort, with the "I Love Lucy" television show once again pacing the entire advertising field." "Lucy, "Ricky, Jr." and Desi, Philip Morris stars in the nation's toprated television show, bring our selling messages to 41,000,000 people a week"
November 1, 2025 at 5:22 AM
johnmashey.bsky.social
5/ And of course, Robert Proctor's "Golden Holcaust" (cited in the paper that started this) had opinions:
Robert Proctor, in Golden Holocaust(2012) also noted key role of lawyers, including an example.
October 24, 2025 at 2:11 AM
johnmashey.bsky.social
4/ Sharon wrote of RICO trial's Judge Kessler, who also had words about lawyers:
Sharon Eubanks quotes Judge Kesseler, who ruled in the RICO case, who also identified the key role of lawyers in defending Big Tobascco by making discovery really hard.
October 24, 2025 at 2:11 AM
johnmashey.bsky.social
3/ She wrote about they key roles played by lawyers in obscuring bad actions by claiming "privilige":
Sharon Eubanks writesd of key roles played by lawyers in defnind Big Tobacco; "lawyers were involved in all sensitive areas of the industry work...The lawyers even gave training session to the companies about privilege...
October 24, 2025 at 2:11 AM
johnmashey.bsky.social
1/ To this day, there are 298K tobacco documents in @ucsf-industrydocs.bsky.social marked "privileged" involving outside counsel:
www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docu...
Client-attorney privlege worked better with outside counsel to hide documents.
corporate.findlaw.com/litigation-d...
In House Counsel and the Attorney Client Privilege When it comes to the successful assertion of the attorney-client privilege, any litigator currently active can tell you that the task is a whole lot easier if the lawyer involved is outside, rather than inside, counsel. While the legal principles are generally the same in both situations, practical experience and some recent court decisions suggest the emergence of a double standard, arguably resulting in a weakening of the privilege for inside lawyers. … However, because the client is a corporation, and because of the dual roles of the in-house lawyer as both counsel to and employee of the corporation, unique questions arise when the privilege is asserted for communications with in-house counsel. Moreover, at least recently, these issues have sometimes led to the disallowance of claims of privilege. … Unfortunately for corporations and other supporters of a broad application of the privilege, courts appear more and more willing to look hard at this issue of business vs. law and find against the proponent of the privilege.
October 24, 2025 at 2:11 AM
johnmashey.bsky.social
Wow! is projection of 3 ft SLR by 2050 for this geography an expected value, or a "worst case, but think about what you'd do"? (CA provides ranges, as in opc.ca.gov/wp-content/u..., but I don't know what VA does.)
Sea Level Rise. Sea level rise will cause severe flooding, damaging infrastructure. Additionally, saltwater intrusion from sea level rise can make drinking water unsafe for coastal communities, leading to dangerous impacts on health.3 Sea level rise presents a major challenge for Hampton Roads, where projections indicate substantial land loss under a scenario of 3 feet of sea level rise by 2050.4 At this level, approximately 116,000 acres of land would be permanently inundated, with wetlands accounting for nearly two-thirds of the area impacted (73,440 acres).5 While these losses are not incorporated into the current mitigation modeling framework, they represent a critical factor for long-term land use and ecosystem stability in the region.
October 22, 2025 at 3:26 AM
johnmashey.bsky.social
No Kings march, Rinconada Park, Palo Alto, 1 mile South of Palantir HQ, one inspiration for my sign:
Palo Alto No Kings march sign, at Rinconada Park, 1 mile South of Palantir co HQ. Sign has 50-yr-old sci-fi book The Shockwave Rider, set in dystopian surveillance USA, ~2015, whose federal giv’t turns out to be run by organized crime, in control of data, immune to prosecution, sometimes grabs people and disappears them.
October 18, 2025 at 10:47 PM
johnmashey.bsky.social
Loch Lomond weather today was perfect for picnic on the island and a hike…
Just made it, given tomorrow’s weather forecast😊
Loch Lomond, Santa Cruz mountains, CA
October 13, 2025 at 4:39 AM
johnmashey.bsky.social
1/ Looks good, will study in detail, but quick:
You might want to look at related work of UNH's Larry Hamilton, @ichiloe.bsky.social, who has done surveys for years:
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
4-party (D,I,R,T) split, Dunning-Kruger effect visible,
those who knew least were most confident.
August 13, 2025 at 6:02 PM
johnmashey.bsky.social
5/ p.6 McK misrepresented borehole work.
Pollack, Huang, Shen(1998) p.279 wrote:
"has led us to choose five centuries as the practical interval over which to develop climate reconstructions."
McK attacked IPCC(2001), but simply ignored the borehole discussions on p.132, Fig.2.19.
(Done for now).
Huang and coauthors published their findings in Geophysical Research Letters6 in 1997. The next year, Nature published the first Mann hockey stick paper, commonly called “MBH98.”7 Mann et al. followed up in 1999 with a paper in GRL (“MBH99”) extending their results from AD1400 back to AD1000.8 In early 2000 the IPCC released the first draft of the TAR. The hockey stick was the only paleoclimate reconstruction shown in the Summary, and was the only one in the whole report to be singled out for repeated presentation. The borehole data received a brief mention in Chapter 2 but the Huang et al. graph was not shown. A small graph of borehole data taken from another study and based on a smaller sample was shown, but it only showed a post-1500 segment, which, conveniently, trended upwards.
August 8, 2025 at 7:00 AM
johnmashey.bsky.social
4/ p.6 This is very deceptive.
-Citation is wrong, the reference is actually Huang et al(1997), on p.1947 they stated clearly that they excluded data on 20th century (borehole top 100m).
- McK magically stretched this to 1990, falsification.
- Likeliest is central line, but graph style makes big.
McKitrick: Figure 4. World Climate History after AD1,000 according to ground borehole evidence. Vertical axis: average anomalies in o C, with range indicating Bayesian probability boundaries. Source: Huang et al. (1998); data supplied by Huang
August 8, 2025 at 7:00 AM
johnmashey.bsky.social
2/ p.5 This is a 2X false citation/falsification.
IPCC(1995) has no such curve, but 1995 seems to make MBH99 hockeystick a sudden overturning of consensus. IPCC(1990) has a similar curve, but not this exact image, almost certainly due to John Daly in 2000.
www.desmog.com/2015/01/26/m... Details.
McKitrick 2005 Figure 3: World Climate History According to IPCC in 1995, Doubly-false citation, nothing like this graph appears in IPCC(1995). The curve is like IPCC(1990) Fig.7.1(c), but image is different, so McK did NOT get this from IPCC(1990). If he had read that, he strongly misrepresented what they said about it. The first known appearance of the image is by John Daly in 2000, and McI used it in the month before McK05.
August 8, 2025 at 7:00 AM
johnmashey.bsky.social
You might have a map like this, but centered on Wellington or Auckland,
although designed for distance, not “Compass” directions.😊
NZ is fairly far from SF, but I used to visit every year in the 1990s, great times!
Map of world centered on San Francisco.
August 8, 2025 at 12:04 AM
johnmashey.bsky.social
Agreed. I have some history dissecting such reports.
I think it's a good idea to set up classification scheme to allow summaries, like "how many bad refs?"
See first page of “Strange Falsifications in the Wegman Report” on progression of honest errors to fraud.
www.desmog.com/wp-content/u...
In dissecting such reports, consider cited references. I’ve seen all these: 1) Credible references Reasonably current, ideally including most recent ones, accurately interpreted 2) Credible references, but… 2a) Obsolete, as have been superceded; red flag except in discussion of history 2b) Downplayed 2c) Cherrypicked to mislead, often by extracting chart out of context 2d) Cherrypicked, but more, clearly misrepresented, sometimes even inverting unwanted conclusions 2e) Well-known reference that would contradict claims OMITTED 2e1) By lack of knowledge 2e2) Deliberately, i.e., a higher-level cherrypick of sources 3) Low-credibility references, often long-debunked, but accepted, weighted heavily 4) Invalid references 4a) False citation, can only be deliberate (this can be hard to prove, but sometimes possible) 4b) Honest errors (although if many, evidence of sloppy work) 5) References without citations (unless carefully labeled as ~further reading else may be bibliography padding) 6) Claims with no citations Credible reports stick to 1) or if historical, include 1b to show evolution, might have a few 4b, or might cite 3) to debunk. I’ve often wished there were a standard marking for references, like +(credible) – (not credible), =(mixed or just mentioned for completeness). Low-credibility work often cite many 2a-2d to look credible, obscuring weight given to key papers in 3. 2d is falsification, and 2c and 2e2 might be falsification, but harder to prove. I THINK IT IS VALUABLE FOR ANY TECHNICAL CRITIQUES TO CITE OMITTED MAJOR CREDIBLE REFERENCES, i.e. 2e which at the very least points out poor scholarship. Hopefully, collecting all these generates a good list of OMITTED works.
August 4, 2025 at 5:16 AM
johnmashey.bsky.social
4/ Although Lamb's estimates (not reconstruction) for Medieval era have long been known to be high, his drop betwen high and low was ~1C.
Daly(1989) p.51 Fig.8 seems a redraw of Lamb's chart, but Daly's drop is ~3C and the claim is general, not Central England. Of course, no source or citation.👎
John Daly(1989) The Greenhouse Trap, p.51 Fig 8, changes Lamb(1982) high-to-low drop of 1C to 3C, also expands from central England to the world.
July 31, 2025 at 5:41 AM