Global warming’s most dangerous apostate speaks out about the state of climate change science.
By ANNE JOLIS
Barack Obama conceded over the weekend that no successor to the Kyoto Protocol would be signed in Copenhagen next month. With that out of the way, it may be too much to hope that the climate change movement take a moment to reflect on the state of the science that is supposedly driving us toward a carbon-neutral future.
But should a moment for self-reflection arise, campaigners against climate change could do worse than take a look at the work of Stephen McIntyre, who has emerged as one of the climate change gang’s Most Dangerous Apostates. The reason for this distinction? He checked the facts.
The retired Canadian businessman, whose self-described “auditing” a few years ago prompted a Congressional review of climate science, has once again thrown EnviroLand into a tailspin. In September, he revealed that a famous graph using tree rings to show unprecedented 20th century warming relies on thin data. Since its publication in 2000, University of East Anglia professor Keith Briffa’s much-celebrated image has made star appearances everywhere from U.N. policy papers to activists’ posters. Like other so-called “hockey stick” temperature graphs, it’s an easy sell—one look and it seems Gadzooks! We’re burning ourselves up!
“It was the belle of the ball,” Mr. McIntyre told me on a recent phone call from Ontario. “Its dance card was full.”
At least until Mr. McIntyre reported that the modern portion of that graph, which shows temperatures appearing to skyrocket in the last 100 years, relies on just 12 tree cores in Russia’s Yamal region. When Mr. McIntyre presented a second graph, adding data from 34 tree cores from a nearby site, the temperature spike disappears.
Mr. Briffa denounces Mr. McIntyre’s work as “demonstrably biased” because it uses “a narrower area and range of sample sites.” He says he and his colleagues have now built a new chronology using still more data. Here, as in similar graphs by other researchers, the spike soars once again. Mr. McIntyre’s “work has little implication for our published work or any other work that uses it,” Mr. Briffa concludes.
He and his colleagues may well ignore Mr. McIntyre, but the rest of us shouldn’t. While Mr. McIntyre’s image may use data from fewer sites, it still has nearly three times as many tree cores representing the modern era as Mr. Briffa’s original.
Yet Mr. McIntyre is first to admit his work is no bullet aimed at the heart of the theory of man-made climate change. Rather, his work—chronicled in papers co-written with environmental economist Ross McKitrick and more than 7,000 posts on his Climateaudit.org Weblog—does something much more important: It illustrates the uncertainty of a science presented as so infallible as to justify huge new taxes on rich countries along with bribes to poor ones in order to halt their fossil-fueled climbs to prosperity. Mr. McIntyre offers what many in the field do not: rigor.
It all started in 2002 when—as many might given the time and Mr. McIntyre’s mathematics background—he decided to verify for himself the case for action on climate change.
“It was like a big crossword puzzle,” he told me. “Business was a bit slow at the time, so I started reading up.”
Prior to the Briffa graph revelation, he had also caught a statistical error that undercut another exalted “hockey stick” graph prominently featured by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or IPCC, this one by Michael Mann, head of Pennsylvania State University’s Earth System Science Center. Alerts about review boards’ seemingly lax standards litter his blog, highlighting in particular the IPCC, which has used both the Mann and Briffa graphs in its reports. In 2007, Mr. McIntyre found a technical gaffe that forced NASA to correct itself and admit that 1934, not 1998, was the warmest year recorded in the continental U.S.
“At the beginning I innocently assumed there would be due diligence for all this stuff. … So often my mouth would drop, when I realized no one had really looked into it.”
Even more innocently, he assumed the billion-dollar climate change industry would welcome his untrained but painstaking work. Instead, Mr. McIntyre is subjected to every kind of venom—that he must be funded by Big Oil, by Big Business, by Some Texan Somewhere. For the record, the 62-year-old declares himself “past my best-by date, operating on my own nickel.”
Read the entire article here: Revenge of the Climate Laymen
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That seems like a fair treatment of the subject. Thank you Anne Jolis. Perhaps it will cause fence-sitters to look further and realize what this blog site has been revealing all along.
Carbon-neutral Earth = sterilization from all life forms.
There is no way to rid Earth of carbon. It’s too ingrained into the Solar System, a product of stellar evolution. And since oxygen is also here to stay, there will be C02.
The biggest enemy of Life on Earth is therefore those who wish to rid the Earth of the building blocks of life.
Will this insanity ever end?
Enjoy episodes of the remake of “V”. At least that makes sense.
None of this Climate Change cowpaddy on a sesame seed bun stuff is for human consumption.
Errm
Good grief. Well I never.
That is a very uncompromising article.
Gosh.
The next developments should be interesting.
“And lo, in that time of Mann, Briffa did come to Yamal, and saw that it was good…enough.”
-The Parable Of The Trees-
It is great to see Steve getting some wider attention – the service he has been doing has been both pro bono and outstanding. That the “mainstream” climate science community not only fails to recognize this, but villifies Steve for it, tells you absolutely everything you need to know about their scientific integrity (or, to be precise, lack thereof) and their devotion to decision-based evidence making.
Keep going, Steve McIntyre!!
Speaking of apostates, here is a good article by Willie Soon and David R. Legates “Galileo silenced again” on American Geophysical Union’s efforts to silence scientific inquiry:
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/17003
Willie and David’s article presents a solid counterpoint to this recent garbage piece by David Horton in the Huffington Post, “You’re no Galileo”:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-horton/youre-no-galileo_b_355799.html
“The Galileo, or Copernicus, of our day was James Hansen.” What a joke, we’ll let the history books sort this one out…
I believe these people are discussing whatever under a statue of Athena; note the shield.
Perhaps the artist was making a point about reason.
Math is power. The eco-fascists are right to fear Mr. McIntyre. We are all lucky that he does what he does.
Tim F
Yup; definately is a statue of Athena; note the Owl at her feet.
I think Steve always had more sense than to embrace the cause in the first place and I also think he is still open to persuasion.
Like many of us, he’s still waiting for that train.
It is good to see that people are taking a ‘breath’.
Good grief, no wonder the apostate has left them ‘owling…
Are the climatologists really demanding that Steve produce his own reconstruction? How bizarre. I’m trying to imagine a CFO telling the auditors they have no credibility to tell him his numbers are wrong until they produce their own annual report.
It is rather a pity that this article didn’t focus on the data access issues. That’s an issue that should be easily understandable to even laymen –an understanding by the public of how successful these people have been in hiding the data the whole house of cards stands on would really move attitudes.
Richard North at http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/ signs off his comments pages with the phrase “haec servari nequit nisi hereticus morti tradatur”. Being somewhat desirous of obtaining a translation from Latin, led me to this historical and curious reference.
THE RUIN OF EDUCATION IN IRELAND AND THE IRISH FANAR
” The Catholic University College, Dublin, was handed
over to the Jesuits in November, 1883. I am the Rector,
and I have eight Jesuit colleagues.” Evidence of Rev. Dr.
Delany, S.J., before the University Commission.
” The Catholic Church has the right and the duty to kill
heretics, because it is by fire and sword that heresy can be
extirpated. Mere Excommunication is derided by heretics.
If they are imprisoned or exiled they corrupt others. The
only resource is to put them to death. Repentance cannot be
allowed to save them, just as Repentance is not allowed to
save civil criminals ; for the highest good of the Church is
the Unity of Faith, and this cannot be preserved unless
heretics are put to death “haec servari nequit nisi hereticus
morti tradatur.”
Contemporary Jesuit Doctrine, approved by
the Theologians of the Society, and actually taught to-day by
their leading Canonist, Rev. Dr. Marianus de Luca, Professor
of the Decretals in the Vatican University.
“A war of this kind declared against heresy, in which
not even repentance could save the victim from the stake,
caused a deep dread of Roman fanaticism and Roman
power, the effects of which have not entirely passed away
to this hour.” On the Marian Heretic-Burnings, by Mr.
Wilfrid Ward. B.A., Catholic Member of the University
Commission.
http://www.archive.org/stream/ruinofedu … t_djvu.txt
That is a hell of a threat. Belief in some circles is that green philosophies are on a par with religious belief and as such, should by covered by UK redundancy law.
http://www.healthandsafetypeople.com/directArticle/view/?articleID=19441323
Shall we also see that the right and the duty to kill heretics and sceptics passed from the RC church to the watermelons. If so, please watch out Mr McIntyre, your work is invaluable in refuting AGW.
Like all stampedes, the herd has run far enough that it is winded and has decided to look over its shoulder and see if there really is a lion chasing them.
When they do that, the impulse to run falters. The fight or flight instinct only lasts briefly unless it is reinforced periodically by additional input. If you are a wildebeest running with the herd, and you keep passing Impala who are calmly grazing, you begin to wonder what all the fuss is about.
Larry
Looks more Like Barbara Boxer, and her committee having a toga party if you ask me.
I wonder when Wall Street is going to wake up, and discover that the way this ball bounces is going to have a big impact on some of their investment strategies.
I’m sure they are all waiting for free green clean renewable energy to finally pay off; well there will be winners and there will be losers; and I think darn few of the former, and plenty of the latter.
Well that is how The street works; fleecing the unwary.
The funny thing is that Steve M. can’t really be classified as either a “denier” or a “skeptic”. He won’t talk politics, is excruciatingly polite to the people he audits (who, IMHO need to be very slowly strangled three or four times a day) and simply demands fairness and transparency. God in Heaven! Is it at all possible that he doesn’t have a political bone in his body and simply wants honesty in science? What a concept!
“The Galileo, or Copernicus, of our day was James Hansen.”
Galileo and Copernicus didn’t concoct one fish story after another as they went along, and they didn’t do it to rule the world or make a pile of money.
And I don’t recall Galileo and Copernicus demanding to shut down all power to Washington DC or enact draconian taxation and de-population policies. They weren’t even politcally correct.
When was the last time you saw the village idiot crying Heat Wave in the middle of a blinding snowstorm get favorable press?
Wait we may have another supporter in the battle, and this is a big one indeed. Read the latest climate change “solution” proferred by the UN:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/birth-control-role-in-cutting-greenhouse-gas-emissions/story-e6frg8gf-1225799613138
I foresee in the not too distant future a celebrity deathmatch featuring in the red corner, Al “The Goracle” Gore versus, in the blue corner, His Holiness “Papa Benedict” the XVI.
While The Goracle has stinging condom sling shot attacks he needs to watch out for Papa Benedict’s staff and whirlwind incense burner attacks… OK maybe waxing a tad lyrical… but yes, the UN may be making a powerful enemy here.
“When the Roman Emperor Julian came to power, Christianity was less popular than paganism, but when the pagan Julian, known as The Apostate, was killed in battle, it was the end of Roman official acceptance of polytheism.” Unk.
I might be a bit picky, but while Steve is likened to be the antithesis of global warming, well, upon Julians death, his religion died with him.
So in McIntyre’s defense, I move we pronounce Steve, the ‘Martin Luther of Climate Change’. The leader of Global Warming Reformation.
Too deep? …. sorry.
What a great article. I drop in on CA from time to time, I actually started out over there, but found many of the posts went way too deep in the science weeds for me to follow. He and Anthony both have been doing yeoman’s duty for a very long time, and the world is, and certainly will be, a better place for it.
JimB
” leftymartin (16:15:27) :
That the “mainstream” climate science community not only fails to recognize this, but villifies Steve for it, tells you absolutely everything you need to know about their scientific integrity (or, to be precise, lack thereof) and their devotion to decision-based evidence making.”
Ir is much worse; you should have left out the word “scientific”.
Has anyone read the nasty comments on the WSJ article by Barrie Harrop?
An amazing run of ad hominem attacks. I get the impression AGW’ers are really scared. The emperor is naked.
The truth hurts, normally the truth talker is the one who gets hurt.
People flim flammed will never fess up to it until they are bankrupt.
M&M did good for science. A bit of luck they will escape a bonfire.
I thought this song appropriate for the thread topic. The global warming religion seems to be falling off a cliff.
R.E.M. Losing My Religion