John Mashey
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johnmashey.bsky.social
John Mashey
@johnmashey.bsky.social
1.4K followers 2.2K following 1.8K 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
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
johnmashey.bsky.social
3/ Lamb(1982) Climate History and the Modern World, whose p.76 has following chart, derived from Lamb(1965) The Early Medieval Warm Epoch... p.26 Fig.3, which carefully differentiates measured data 1680- (Manley) vs "analyst opinion" pre-1680. Figure caption explicitly says "central England."
Lamb(1982) "Climate History and the Modern World", whose p.76 has following chart, derived from Lamb(1965) "The Early Medieval Warm Epoch..." p.26 Fig.3, which carefully differentiates measured data 1680- (Manley) vs "analyst opinion" pre-1680. The Medieval period was neither measured nor a real reconstruction, and has been known to be too high for decades. Nevertheless, this was an early attempt by a top climate scientist to estimate temperature curves for 1000+ years for the are with the longest measured temperature record.
July 31, 2025 at 5:41 AM
johnmashey.bsky.social
As an analogy, consider the Six Americas surveys on climate:
climatecommunication.yale.edu/about/projec...
Climate communications experts have mostly concluded tthat the "Dismissive" category is unreachable, far better to focus on reaching the intermediate groups.
I think same applies here.
July 28, 2025 at 9:26 PM
johnmashey.bsky.social
"N-year event" is sadly often misconstrued by the public, as "an event every N years."
Pros know it means Probability of 1/N per year, assuming:
a) There's enough data for good estimate of N, very hard for N=1000 for example.
b) N isn't changing.(☹️)
Ex: 50-year flood, Pr=.455 in 30-year mortgage.
Charts.Probability of at least one N-year event in 1, 10, … 100 years … = 1 - Pr(zero N-year events) If 50-year event, 45% chance will have at least one over life of 30-year home mortgage. Climate change reduces estimated intervals for some kinds of events, raises chance you'll see one. If a "1000-year event" occurs twice in same place in a few years, it is very likely NOT a 1000-year event.
July 15, 2025 at 5:48 AM
johnmashey.bsky.social
Martin Green & team's work is well-known worldwide. PERC, (invented in 1980s, really got commerical in 2010s) is an important one of myriad improvements that make current cells efficient.
He offers a good history in recent interview, all worth reading.
www.100climateconversations.com/martin-green
Martin Green interview: "MG Yeah, I guess the first discovery that you could convert light into electricity happened back in the 19th century, Edmond Becquerel in France did it in 1839. But it wasn’t until 1954 that the first efficient silicon cell was made. And you know, 95 per cent of the cells made today are made from silicon. The start of the modern interest in solar was with that and there was a lot of excitement. It was made at Bell Laboratories, one of the pioneering laboratories in the US in telecommunications, and a whole lot of different areas. And it actually made a front page on the New York Times in 1954. You know, ‘Vast power of Sun is tracked by cell using sand ingredients’ or something like that, some headline like that. So, it caught everyone’s imagination and Bell Labs released photos of families crowding around a solar panel, obviously going to do something useful with it. But the costs then were just exorbitant because the semiconductor industry was just in its infancy in that era."
July 13, 2025 at 5:22 PM
johnmashey.bsky.social
My sign for *Palo Alto* NoKings day might be related.
June 20, 2025 at 1:18 AM
johnmashey.bsky.social
2/ As per study 2013-204, in Santa Cruz, CA County of stuff collected on beaches, open spaces, public areas:
saveourshores.org/tobacco-wast...
Cigarette filters help only company profits (cheaper than tobacco), don't help health, and discarded ones are toxic, besides being plastic.
June 20, 2025 at 12:30 AM
johnmashey.bsky.social
Having seen many signs, I did a different one for NoKings in Palo Alto, maybe a bit more subtle, but:
1) Has DOGE collected any personal data? (Or just interested in “efficiency”?)
2) A Palo Alto company named from Lord of the Rings orb, often used by gov’t, might be relevant.
Thread a bit later.
June 15, 2025 at 1:36 AM