Steve McIntyre published an update tonight showing the last 200 years of the Yamal tree ring data versus the archived CRU tree ring data used to make the famous hockey stick. For those just joining us, see the story here.
First here’s the before an after at millennial scale.
Steve McIntyre writes:
The next graphic compares the RCS chronologies from the two slightly different data sets: red – the RCS chronology calculated from the CRU archive (with the 12 picked cores); black – the RCS chronology calculated using the Schweingruber Yamal sample of living trees instead of the 12 picked trees used in the CRU archive. The difference is breathtaking.
Figure 2. A comparison of Yamal RCS chronologies. red – as archived with 12 picked cores; black – including Schweingruber’s Khadyta River, Yamal (russ035w) archive and excluding 12 picked cores. Both smoothed with 21-year gaussian smooth. y-axis is in dimensionless chronology units centered on 1 (as are subsequent graphs (but represent age-adjusted ring width).
Now lets have a look at the data for the last 200 years where that hockey stick lives (and dies):
Here is a comparison of the Briffa chronology of the spaghetti graphs (red) versus the “SChweingruber” variation i.e. using russ035w instead of 12 recent of 252 CRU cores, leaving 240 unchanged. (The red curve here is the archived CRU chronology, which varies slightly from my emulation of the RCS chronology.)
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kim
September 28, 2009 11:58 pm
So ten trees, picked for reasons politic not scientific, have sustained the belief in the hockey stick by the mass of climatologists, opinion makers, and politicians, and have facilitated them in foist a monstrous fraud on the world for the last decade.
Utterly breathtaking.
I propose a Museum to Human Folly and an expedition to find those ten trees and exhibit them in the main hall.
===================================== REPLY: Actually 12 trees according to Steve – A
REPLY: Actually 12 trees according to Steve – A
Stay with 10, Anthony, leaving two still pristine in the folly to continue their glory for posterity to mess with…
Tenuc
September 29, 2009 12:18 am
They obviously picked the cherry trees to get the tree data to match the dodgy thermometer data 😉
so that is 12 more reasons to believe that the alarmist extremes of AGW is a fraud, rather than a mere mistake. This suggests that the AGW alarmism is based upon deliberate falsehood rather than just poor, but innocent, methodology.
What is Anthony’s take on this? I know that Anthony does believe that AGW is not a fraud and that there is a school of belief that AGW is real, but far less dramatic than the alarmist’s would have us believe. Where does this latest revelation leave us? Big Picture I mean?
steven mosher
September 29, 2009 12:45 am
looks like a stacked jury. I will say this. Tom P wins the Michael Mann award for excellence in statistics.
Seriously, Everybody should be aware that Steve’s work doesn’t break the hockey stick. It’s in the statistical penalty box. Simply, you can’t say that the MWP was warmer or colder than the present. The upshot os Steve’s work is this: we don’t know.
The big problem is this. Now that everybody knows which proxy’s show a strong MWP and those which do not, it’s virtually impossible to do a reconstruction except by randomly selecting proxies. Or selecting all proxies. Moreover, going forward you can expect more people to hold back samples from the archives. remember Briffa’s 12 samples were selected from a larger population and THAT population was not even archived.
It’s like this. They will now go out into the field and do 100 cores. They will examine those cores and only supply the data that confirms their hypothesis. When Steve McIntyre did his coring he followed the right proceedure. Take the cores, archive them all. Analysis is separate from proper data collection and archiving. You find a related difficulty in Kaufman 09, where the sediment series ( varves) are transformed and manipulated before they are archived. Always Always the raw data needs to be archived.
CRUTEMP anyone? lost the raw data.
For we engineers these are just standard practice.
The UK MET office have issued another doom an gloom story.
Four degrees of warming ‘likely’
In a dramatic acceleration of forecasts for global warming, UK scientists say the global average temperature could rise by 4C (7.2F) as early as 2060.
The Met Office study used projections of fossil fuel use that reflect the trend seen over the last 20 years.
Their computer models also factored in new findings on how carbon dioxide is absorbed by the oceans and forests.
The finding was presented at an Oxford University conference exploring the implications of a 4C rise.
The results show a “best estimate” of 4C being reached by 2070, with a possibility that it will come as early as 2060.
Richard Betts of the Met Office Hadley Centre described himself as “shocked” that so much warming could occur within the lifetimes of people alive today.
“If greenhouse gas emissions are not cut soon then we could see major climate changes within our own lifetimes,” he said.
“Four degrees of warming averaged over the globe translates into even greater warming in many regions, along with major changes in rainfall.”
Big burn
The model finds wide variations, with the Arctic possibly seeing a rise of up to 15C (27F) by the end of the century.
Western and southern parts of Africa could warm by up to 10C, with other land areas seeing a rise of 7C or more.
In its 2007 assessment, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said the average warming by the end of the century would probably lie between 1.8C and 4C (3.2-7.2F), though it did not rule out the possibility of larger rises.
Key to the Met Office calculations was the use of projections showing fossil fuel use continuing to increase as it has done for the last couple of decades.
“Previously we haven’t looked at the impact of burning fossil fuels so intensely,” said Dr Betts.
“But it’s quite plausible we could get a rise of 4C by 2070 or even 2060.”
Dr Betts and his colleagues emphasise the uncertainties inherent in the modelling, particularly the role of the carbon cycle.
But he said he was confident the findings were significant and would serve as a useful guide to policymakers.
The presentation at Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute came as negotiators from 192 countries were gathering in Bangkok for the latest set of prepatory talks in the run-up to December’s UN climate summit.
Major governments of developing and industrialised nations are committed to a deal that would keep the global temperature rise to 2C, which many regard as a threshold for “dangerous” climate change http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8279654.stm
OleD
September 29, 2009 1:28 am
I am as excited about this discovery as most others seem to be on this blog and on CA.
However, the astounding graphs we have seen so far represents “dimensionless chronology units” only. Not quite temperatures.
In that respect I can hardly wait to see the revised Mann et al. temperature proxy graphs when the Schweingruber data has been included. Only then will we be able to see the real impact of this discovery. And only if the impact is large enough will it get the proper attention in the media – hopefully before the Copenhagen Climate Conference.
Boudu
September 29, 2009 1:41 am
Lies, damned lies and selected tree rings.
It’s almost funny, would be if not for the policy decisions that this eroneous data has driven.
I nominate Steve for an honorary knighthood.
David Porter
September 29, 2009 1:54 am
Sadly, I think that there is now so much vested in AGW around the world that it will be a case of “the stick is dead, long live the stick”.
Aron
September 29, 2009 2:01 am
Monckton has been saying this all along and showed tree ring data that didn’t match the hockey stick in his presentations.
Mike Bryant
September 29, 2009 2:19 am
I cannot tell a lie… the cherry trees cut down Mann… and mankind…
Mick
September 29, 2009 2:26 am
So, how many schoolbooks need to be replaced?
With recycled paper of course!!
lol
rbateman
September 29, 2009 2:33 am
Simply, you can’t say that the MWP was warmer or colder than the present.
You are correct. The people who lived in the MWP wrote enough about it to leave little doubt that is was much warmer than now. They said so.
Is broken the record of antartic sea ice?
The website from University of Bremen shows that record from September 2007 is broken: http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr/ice_ext_s.png
I spoke about this in my blog (in spanish, sorry)
vg
September 29, 2009 3:20 am
Jose I think thats why Cryosphere is apparently going to change the base lines again so you cant see this anymore. Keep ears open…
Jim Greig
September 29, 2009 3:22 am
Has anyone else noticed how the AGW defenders stay away from these posts that make their position indefensible?
Alan the Brit
September 29, 2009 3:23 am
As rbateman has high-lighted, it is all too easy to get lost in the scientific detail about the MWP & even the LIA. There is plenty of literature describing life in those periods, that clearly suggests they were periods when the Earth’s climate was different than that of today. I understand that evidence, scientific & literary, for both events has been discovered world wide.
Despite these wonderfully timed BS findings, (Bureaucratic Science – you know, it produces the desired result on time just when the politicos need it, unlike real science), with rises of 4°C temp, has there been any AGW signal found in the Troposphere above the tropics, which is where both sides of the non-debate seem to agree the signal should be found?
BTW you colonials are lucky, on our Sunday morning BBC 1 politics show we had the delights of one John Prescott (a well known Marxist Socialist former Labour Party Leader nicknamed two Jags, two shags, – due to his love of luxury gas guzzlers & extra marital activity) who is now the UK’s Climate Tzar, jetting around the globe telling everyone how they must reduce their carbon emissions to give the “kids a future”, all on his 6 figure taxpayer funded salary + generous expenses – well he is saving the world afterall! Then again you do have Al Gore.
Andrew,
Does it have to be spelled out? The Schweingruber Yamal sample clearly exhibits a “divergence problem”. There is no elevated recent values so it must be tainted in some way and should not be used.
I am sure Realclimate will be along soon to sooth us.
Alan the Brit
September 29, 2009 3:32 am
BTW – when I say Prescott was a Labour Party Leader, I meant in his capacity as Chairman of the Party, as opposed to a potential (God forbid) Prime Minister.
RR Kampen
September 29, 2009 3:49 am
So, actually global temperature is falling, just like the freezing point of water.
Mac
September 29, 2009 4:02 am
Brought to you by RealClimate Productions:
Michael Mann and The Cherry Pickers – Greatest Hits
1. Ride Like The Wind.
2. Purple Rain.
3. Here Comes The Sun
4. Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow.
5. Carbon Dating
6. Ice Ice Baby
7. Sea Of Love
8. Heat Of The Moment
9. Daddy Cool
10. From Russia With Love (Briffa version)
Available now from all reputable peer-reviewed journals.
I am shocked with the treering story.
Congratulations for everyone involved and for those that helped to spread the news.
But what now ?
Will there be a reaction of e.g. the IPCC ? I think it would be very important that the official warming propagandists react on this. Is there a task at the side of the serious scientific bloggers to provoke such a reaction ?
As far as I can judge the sceptics have now an argument to build on in a discussion with the believers.
It would be very interesting to see how heavy the other side measures this argument.
P Wilson
September 29, 2009 4:24 am
JustPassing (01:12:44) :
So far, the IPCC, the met office, in short, all the institutions that predict climate have been wrong about the last 10 years, from their models prior to the last 10 years. (Hansen et al) . That is a sufficiently long enough period (20 years) to doubt the veracity of their long range predictions, if th eclimate goes the opposite way to the models. If they erased the c02 signal, or at least downplayed it by a factor of 100, then they might have been right, although the alarmism and impending doom (note: The catastrophe is always impending and never real) would also have been eradicated.
Back to the issue: Tree rings at best give a blurry picture of past proxies. It would be better to consult arboriculturalists about trees than dendrclimatologists, and thats why scientists in the field of past proxies, both pre and post IPCC use sediment cores, peat bogs, and other such forensic investigation to obtain a better picture of past climates.
So ten trees, picked for reasons politic not scientific, have sustained the belief in the hockey stick by the mass of climatologists, opinion makers, and politicians, and have facilitated them in foist a monstrous fraud on the world for the last decade.
Utterly breathtaking.
I propose a Museum to Human Folly and an expedition to find those ten trees and exhibit them in the main hall.
=====================================
REPLY: Actually 12 trees according to Steve – A
REPLY: Actually 12 trees according to Steve – A
Stay with 10, Anthony, leaving two still pristine in the folly to continue their glory for posterity to mess with…
They obviously picked the cherry trees to get the tree data to match the dodgy thermometer data 😉
so that is 12 more reasons to believe that the alarmist extremes of AGW is a fraud, rather than a mere mistake. This suggests that the AGW alarmism is based upon deliberate falsehood rather than just poor, but innocent, methodology.
What is Anthony’s take on this? I know that Anthony does believe that AGW is not a fraud and that there is a school of belief that AGW is real, but far less dramatic than the alarmist’s would have us believe. Where does this latest revelation leave us? Big Picture I mean?
looks like a stacked jury. I will say this. Tom P wins the Michael Mann award for excellence in statistics.
Seriously, Everybody should be aware that Steve’s work doesn’t break the hockey stick. It’s in the statistical penalty box. Simply, you can’t say that the MWP was warmer or colder than the present. The upshot os Steve’s work is this: we don’t know.
The big problem is this. Now that everybody knows which proxy’s show a strong MWP and those which do not, it’s virtually impossible to do a reconstruction except by randomly selecting proxies. Or selecting all proxies. Moreover, going forward you can expect more people to hold back samples from the archives. remember Briffa’s 12 samples were selected from a larger population and THAT population was not even archived.
It’s like this. They will now go out into the field and do 100 cores. They will examine those cores and only supply the data that confirms their hypothesis. When Steve McIntyre did his coring he followed the right proceedure. Take the cores, archive them all. Analysis is separate from proper data collection and archiving. You find a related difficulty in Kaufman 09, where the sediment series ( varves) are transformed and manipulated before they are archived. Always Always the raw data needs to be archived.
CRUTEMP anyone? lost the raw data.
For we engineers these are just standard practice.
Not to worry. Senator’s Kerry and Boxer are rushing to the rescue with the Senate’s version of the Waxman bill, just in time to save us all.
From Drudge:
http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2009/09/28/28climatewire-boxer-kerry-set-to-introduce-climate-bill-in-43844.html
JimB
The UK MET office have issued another doom an gloom story.
Four degrees of warming ‘likely’
In a dramatic acceleration of forecasts for global warming, UK scientists say the global average temperature could rise by 4C (7.2F) as early as 2060.
The Met Office study used projections of fossil fuel use that reflect the trend seen over the last 20 years.
Their computer models also factored in new findings on how carbon dioxide is absorbed by the oceans and forests.
The finding was presented at an Oxford University conference exploring the implications of a 4C rise.
The results show a “best estimate” of 4C being reached by 2070, with a possibility that it will come as early as 2060.
Richard Betts of the Met Office Hadley Centre described himself as “shocked” that so much warming could occur within the lifetimes of people alive today.
“If greenhouse gas emissions are not cut soon then we could see major climate changes within our own lifetimes,” he said.
“Four degrees of warming averaged over the globe translates into even greater warming in many regions, along with major changes in rainfall.”
Big burn
The model finds wide variations, with the Arctic possibly seeing a rise of up to 15C (27F) by the end of the century.
Western and southern parts of Africa could warm by up to 10C, with other land areas seeing a rise of 7C or more.
In its 2007 assessment, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said the average warming by the end of the century would probably lie between 1.8C and 4C (3.2-7.2F), though it did not rule out the possibility of larger rises.
Key to the Met Office calculations was the use of projections showing fossil fuel use continuing to increase as it has done for the last couple of decades.
“Previously we haven’t looked at the impact of burning fossil fuels so intensely,” said Dr Betts.
“But it’s quite plausible we could get a rise of 4C by 2070 or even 2060.”
Dr Betts and his colleagues emphasise the uncertainties inherent in the modelling, particularly the role of the carbon cycle.
But he said he was confident the findings were significant and would serve as a useful guide to policymakers.
The presentation at Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute came as negotiators from 192 countries were gathering in Bangkok for the latest set of prepatory talks in the run-up to December’s UN climate summit.
Major governments of developing and industrialised nations are committed to a deal that would keep the global temperature rise to 2C, which many regard as a threshold for “dangerous” climate change
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8279654.stm
I am as excited about this discovery as most others seem to be on this blog and on CA.
However, the astounding graphs we have seen so far represents “dimensionless chronology units” only. Not quite temperatures.
In that respect I can hardly wait to see the revised Mann et al. temperature proxy graphs when the Schweingruber data has been included. Only then will we be able to see the real impact of this discovery. And only if the impact is large enough will it get the proper attention in the media – hopefully before the Copenhagen Climate Conference.
Lies, damned lies and selected tree rings.
It’s almost funny, would be if not for the policy decisions that this eroneous data has driven.
I nominate Steve for an honorary knighthood.
Sadly, I think that there is now so much vested in AGW around the world that it will be a case of “the stick is dead, long live the stick”.
Monckton has been saying this all along and showed tree ring data that didn’t match the hockey stick in his presentations.
I cannot tell a lie… the cherry trees cut down Mann… and mankind…
So, how many schoolbooks need to be replaced?
With recycled paper of course!!
lol
Simply, you can’t say that the MWP was warmer or colder than the present.
You are correct. The people who lived in the MWP wrote enough about it to leave little doubt that is was much warmer than now. They said so.
Is broken the record of antartic sea ice?
The website from University of Bremen shows that record from September 2007 is broken:
http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr/ice_ext_s.png
I spoke about this in my blog (in spanish, sorry)
Jose I think thats why Cryosphere is apparently going to change the base lines again so you cant see this anymore. Keep ears open…
Has anyone else noticed how the AGW defenders stay away from these posts that make their position indefensible?
As rbateman has high-lighted, it is all too easy to get lost in the scientific detail about the MWP & even the LIA. There is plenty of literature describing life in those periods, that clearly suggests they were periods when the Earth’s climate was different than that of today. I understand that evidence, scientific & literary, for both events has been discovered world wide.
Despite these wonderfully timed BS findings, (Bureaucratic Science – you know, it produces the desired result on time just when the politicos need it, unlike real science), with rises of 4°C temp, has there been any AGW signal found in the Troposphere above the tropics, which is where both sides of the non-debate seem to agree the signal should be found?
BTW you colonials are lucky, on our Sunday morning BBC 1 politics show we had the delights of one John Prescott (a well known Marxist Socialist former Labour Party Leader nicknamed two Jags, two shags, – due to his love of luxury gas guzzlers & extra marital activity) who is now the UK’s Climate Tzar, jetting around the globe telling everyone how they must reduce their carbon emissions to give the “kids a future”, all on his 6 figure taxpayer funded salary + generous expenses – well he is saving the world afterall! Then again you do have Al Gore.
Andrew,
Does it have to be spelled out? The Schweingruber Yamal sample clearly exhibits a “divergence problem”. There is no elevated recent values so it must be tainted in some way and should not be used.
I am sure Realclimate will be along soon to sooth us.
BTW – when I say Prescott was a Labour Party Leader, I meant in his capacity as Chairman of the Party, as opposed to a potential (God forbid) Prime Minister.
So, actually global temperature is falling, just like the freezing point of water.
Brought to you by RealClimate Productions:
Michael Mann and The Cherry Pickers – Greatest Hits
1. Ride Like The Wind.
2. Purple Rain.
3. Here Comes The Sun
4. Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow.
5. Carbon Dating
6. Ice Ice Baby
7. Sea Of Love
8. Heat Of The Moment
9. Daddy Cool
10. From Russia With Love (Briffa version)
Available now from all reputable peer-reviewed journals.
FWIW my explanation of why this is important – http://www.di2.nu/200909/28.htm – including this nice closeup graph now
I am shocked with the treering story.
Congratulations for everyone involved and for those that helped to spread the news.
But what now ?
Will there be a reaction of e.g. the IPCC ? I think it would be very important that the official warming propagandists react on this. Is there a task at the side of the serious scientific bloggers to provoke such a reaction ?
As far as I can judge the sceptics have now an argument to build on in a discussion with the believers.
It would be very interesting to see how heavy the other side measures this argument.
JustPassing (01:12:44) :
So far, the IPCC, the met office, in short, all the institutions that predict climate have been wrong about the last 10 years, from their models prior to the last 10 years. (Hansen et al) . That is a sufficiently long enough period (20 years) to doubt the veracity of their long range predictions, if th eclimate goes the opposite way to the models. If they erased the c02 signal, or at least downplayed it by a factor of 100, then they might have been right, although the alarmism and impending doom (note: The catastrophe is always impending and never real) would also have been eradicated.
Back to the issue: Tree rings at best give a blurry picture of past proxies. It would be better to consult arboriculturalists about trees than dendrclimatologists, and thats why scientists in the field of past proxies, both pre and post IPCC use sediment cores, peat bogs, and other such forensic investigation to obtain a better picture of past climates.