From the Telegraph:
The ‘hockey stick’ that became emblematic of the threat posed by climate change exaggerated the rise in temperature because it was created using ‘inappropriate’ methods, according to the head of the Royal Statistical Society.
By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent
Professor David Hand said that the research – led by US scientist Michael Mann – would have shown less dramatic results if more reliable techniques had been used to analyse the data.
Prof Hand was among a group of experts charged with investigating the “climategate” email scandal that engulfed the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) last year.
Sceptics claimed that the hacked messages showed scientists were manipulating data to support a theory of man-made global warming.
However the review, led by Lord Oxburgh into the research carried out by the centre, found no evidence of ”deliberate scientific malpractice”.
Lord Oxburgh said the scientists at the research unit arrived at their conclusions ”honestly and sensibly”.
But the reviewers found that the scientists could have used better statistical methods in analysing some of their data, although it was unlikely to have made much difference to their results.
That was not the case with some previous climate change reports, where “inappropriate methods” had exaggerated the global warming phenomenon.
Prof Hand singled out a 1998 paper by Prof Mann of Pennsylvania State University, a constant target for climate change sceptics, as an example of this.
He said the graph, that showed global temperature records going back 1,000 years, was exaggerated – although any reproduction using improved techniques is likely to also show a sharp rise in global warming. He agreed the graph would be more like a field hockey stick than the ice hockey blade it was originally compared to.
“The particular technique they used exaggerated the size of the blade at the end of the hockey stick. Had they used an appropriate technique the size of the blade of the hockey stick would have been smaller,” he said. “The change in temperature is not as great over the 20th century compared to the past as suggested by the Mann paper.”
…
Prof Hand praised the blogger Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit for uncovering the fact that inappropriate methods were used which could produce misleading results.
======================
Complete article here
Now that we know that the sun only affects Europe, we can understand why the MWP only warmed Europe – while the climate of the planet as a whole was completely stable.
It is clear to all of our top scientists now that minivans and SUVs affect the climate more than the sun – except in Europe where the sun has a much stronger effect.
“Hide the Decilne”-Move along, nothing to see.
Better than I expected, however..
It is remarkable that the focus is still on the size of the temperature rise in the 20th century. The “illusion” of the hockey stick is that the climate was stable prior to recent times. If the warm periods had not been mathematically removed, it would have been necessary to explain the climate varibility1000 and 2200 years ago before you could lay the blame solely on greenhouse gases.
What is the source of the graph in the article?
There is no attribution.
-Jay
“The change in temperature is not as great over the 20th century compared to the past as suggested by the Mann paper.”
Ignoring the question of the validity of the instrumental reconstruction, how could its alleged rise over the 20th century have been not as great as it was? Hand apparently thinks Mann’s wild tree rings are the thermometers.
Indeed, a series of factor analyses against factors that all look like hockey sticks will make anything look like a hockey stick.
“Mainstream” affirmative acknowledgment finally beginning for Steve Mc? And what to do with “the Mann”? Is PSU going to get an earful?
So Lord Oxburgh is basically saying to us, “talk to the Hand”.
Has McIntyre shown that the statistical methods did indeed produce different results, rather than could have produced misleading results.
In other words, any evidence that the hockey stick graph is wrong?
Anyway MBH98 is obsolete anyway, and maybe it is time to stop argueing that it is faulty or misleading, as there is better data in more recent publications.
I saw this on the Financial Times, but it was behind a paywall %&*#.
I’m posting it right now.
Steve McIntyre demonstrated early on that all valid methods of combining the MBH98 proxies produced a time series with no particular trend and showing considerable noise. Prof. Hand is plainly wrong in his claim that with correct statistical methods the MBH98 or MBH99 proxy series would produce a “field hockey” stick.
To summarize:
“We Brits are blameless, we were led astray by that incompetent American!”
@ paullm (09:03:49) : “Mainstream” affirmative acknowledgment finally beginning for Steve Mc? And what to do with “the Mann”? Is PSU going to get an earful?
Steve should get a medal, but nothing will happen to Mann. Penn State’s alumni have already given them an earful and are threatening to withhold donations (and students on campus are still collecting petitions), and look how THAT turned out.
“Prof Hand praised the blogger Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit for uncovering the fact that inappropriate methods were used which could produce misleading results.”…………I’d be more apt to believe the inappropriate methodology was unintentional if they’d hadn’t been told it was inappropriate YEARS ago. Where’s the corrections? Where’s the update to the studies? They applied “inappropriate” methods to a study. That’s fine, correct the errors when your informed. They didn’t. In fact, continued to tout same methodologies as proof of our impending doom unless we acquiesce our energy consumption choices to an alarmist near you.
They can candy coat in whatever manner they wish, the can offer left-handed congrats to Steve all they want, it doesn’t change the time line of when the CRU knew they were in error and their body of work since. Further, I’ve still yet to see a retraction or correction to any of the studies in which they applied the wrong methodologies. The people of the inquiry are distorting as much as the hockey-stick graphs are distorting.
dang……not “the can”……”they can”. I wonder why I never catch those things until I submit? lol
“as there is better data in more recent publications.”
Indeed. Regardless of their inherant mistakes and consistant reliance on the same dodgy data to produce the bulk of the trend, the “improvements” have meant the MWP has been making a comeback in recent years! Who would have guessed climate changed so rapidly!
kadaka (09:27:05) :
To summarize:
“We Brits are blameless, we were led astray by that incompetent American!”
lol, Well, you know how we can be…..so Briffa’s hockey stick was just a monkey see, monkey do sort of thing……odd they don’t mention that stuff. What of the other plethora of hockey stick graphs I’ve seen over the years???
Dear Mods,
In kadaka (09:27:05) I meant that to say “they were lead astray” as “they” specifically indicated CRU. I appreciate your diligence in correcting the mistakes of we commentators, and regretfully inform you that in this ONE instance it was not a mistake and did not require correcting.
Sincerely,
kadaka (actually “another” KDK)
[My apologies for being too helpful. ~dbs]
Ermm the west didn’t warm during the MWP. It was not yet discovered.
Truthfully, our satellite data also shows no mid devil warming either.
My keeborad is has spelling issues after some volcanic dust settled in it.
” bob (09:13:00) :
[…]
In other words, any evidence that the hockey stick graph is wrong?”
Welcome to the 21. century! No, we don’t have flying cars yet.
The real problem with this is the hockey stick chart combines the instrumental record with tree-ring proxy data. The chart has to use only one or the other, not both.
I would be more convinced if the tree-ring (and/or other proxy data) showed the blade of the hockey stick. Until I see that, I am going to have to call that chart and others like it BS and a fraud.
**************
Pat Frank (09:22:44) :
Steve McIntyre demonstrated early on that all valid methods of combining the MBH98 proxies produced a time series with no particular trend and showing considerable noise. Prof. Hand is plainly wrong in his claim that with correct statistical methods the MBH98 or MBH99 proxy series would produce a “field hockey” stick.
*******************
Hmmmm … would this be sleight of Hand?
“It wasn’t us, it was the Americans”?
Corrected Mann Hokey Stick chart: click
“The answer is still right, even though the method is incorrect.”
Bull. $#!t.
Jay Cech (08:58:16) :
“What is the source of the graph in the article?”
It was from a WUWT article from July 2007. Sorry, I don’t recall the name of the article & am too busy to search.
Glenn (09:57:27) :
“It wasn’t us, it was the Americans”?
Bingo. Full-blown CYA mode has been activated. They can’t discredit the science, they have too much riding on promoting CAGW. UEA-CRU is/was very prestigious, the main jewel of the CAGW crown, so they don’t want to disparage them. However there is that pesky media-loving American at that minor university only really known for its “American football” team…
There is too much out there now against the over-hyped CAGW alarmism for the main proponents to maintain a unified front. Even the “Impervious IPCC” is crumbling. Fracturing among national lines is to be expected.
I am awaiting the future spin where it is declared that Hansen has done terrible things with GISS’ interpretation of the historical temperature record yet the Hadley-CRU version is true and trustworthy. Should be interesting.
That chart posted by Smokey needs to be shouted from the rooftops–if anything will kill the Cult of Global Warming it will be recognition of the fact that the earth has been warmer in the historical past the rise in temperatures.
By teh ywa, aJsme, eth easron it si tfdificul to psot smiinsg or trdapnsose tetelrs is cabeuse hlaf the pepleo evha no btreoul aedirng tihs ptos–as lgon as eht rowds coantin lal eth lsetrte, the nimd “xiefs” them to lkoo rghit.
It isn’t until afterwards that we see the mistakes.
I await with bated breath the graph showing the “Field hockey stick” and the supporting data for it. When will Prof. Hand be showing that beauty?
The directly affects the amount of warming over the next 90 years predicted by the 21+ general circulation models. They are based on a nearly all of the heating experienced over the last 50 years being due to CO2. If it cannot be said that nearly all of the heating experienced over the last 50 years was due to CO2, then the disaster scenario producing computer programs are wrong.
When are the new CO2 effect coeficients going to be entered into the 21+ computer programs and then rerun out 90 years?
bob (09:13:00) :
Has McIntyre shown that the statistical methods did indeed produce different results, rather than could have produced misleading results.
bob, as I understand it one thing McIntyre and McKitrick showed was that Mann’s statistical methods produced hockeysticks no matter what data was fed into it, or at least for totally random data. Mann’s methods specifically mined for hockeysticks – the whole stick. There were some other things wrong with Mann’s methods, too – like using the “stripbark” bristlecones themselves for tree ring data analysis, and the “divergence” problem which started to crop up.
Briffa’s methods did the same thing via cherry picking the “correct” trees from within a population, in contradiction to why in statistics you analyze a whole population to begin with to see if it correlates with a known measure.
Add in problems such as Jones’ CRU statistical behavior and GISS’s, and no, it’s not time to “move on” as per Post Normal Science’s anti- Scientific Method m.o..
From kadaka (09:49:59) :
None asked for, and only reluctantly accepted. You do great work.
It is all MANN-made global warming, as in Micheal Mann made.
“Professor David Hand said that the research – led by US scientist Michael Mann – would have shown less dramatic results if more reliable techniques had been used to analyse the data.”
— what a load of “limited hangout”! See Wikipedia
This wasn’t, isn’t, nor ever will be about “reliable techniques” – but about instituting carbon credit as part of the Global Governance architecture of control.
In a an earlier Letter to Editor:
http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2008/12/nb-on-global-warming.html#Related-Letter-to-Editor-Jan272010
January 27th, 2010 at 1:02 pm
Don’t be fooled. The agenda for which global warming was constructed has obviously nothing to do with weather, climate, or environment. But with full-spectrum control of human life through the architecture of carbon-credit.
And that agenda can be pushed with many more mantras, including still, climate-change (in any direction).
Try not patting one’s self on the back like the anti-war movement did with the size of turnouts irrespective of whether it actually scuttled war or not. Here, unless and until all the diabolical architectures of global governance, inter alia, carbon credit, are scuttled, “the mad faith that has cost us so many futile billions already” will not only continue to cost several times that, but also cement incremental faits accomplis through various manufactured ‘hegelian mind fcks’ longer matters linger.
See: Between Global Warming and Global Governance – Concern for Environment is a ‘Hegelian Mind Fck’!
Thank you.
Zahir Ebrahim
Project Humanbeingsfirst.org
lol, kadaka and Glenn nailed it!! At least in Fox’s eyes. http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/04/15/michael-mann-climategate-global-warming/
That evil American……he took all the hard work those poor CRU people did and totally botched the graph!!!! Did Hand actually read the e-mails that showed collusion and collaboration between both sides of the ocean? Not that I feel sorry for Mann, but wow, with friends like that……….
Please also see Open Letter to Steve McIntyre : The ‘Highest Order Bit’ of Climategate is being ignored by Scientists – WHY?
http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2009/12/openletter-stevemcintyre-climategate.html
And that question still remains for Steve Mcintyre.
Thanks.
Zahir Ebrahim
Project Humanbeingsfirst.org
Jay Cech (08:58:16) :
What is the source of the graph in the article?
There is no attribution.
-Jay
EXACTLY, it does not seem to come from the Telegraph
Being a congenital data manipulator is not solely the realm of Mann and his co-conspiritors in climate fraud.
You only have to look at the average politician – hence the mutually beneficial relationship growing between the two groups: one writes unsupported scare stories in exchange for a comfortable lifestyle through big, long term, grants, so that the other has ‘a reason’ for increasing taxes for the rest of us.
Jay Cech (08:58:16) :
What is the source of the graph in the article?
There is no attribution.
-Jay
… and the Prof in Statistics D.Hand talks about a field hockey stick so the
spagetti stick in the lower picture is from ?
Penn State has, again, been put on notice.
They really are in danger of becoming forever known as The University Which Covered Up junk climate science.
Smokey (10:19:01) :
Jay Cech (08:58:16) :
“What is the source of the graph in the article?”
It was from a WUWT article from July 2007. Sorry, I don’t recall the name of the article & am too busy to search.
Sorry, I did not see this, it is very MISLEADING at the moment. You
automatically think, the Telegraph journalist or Hand …
In the 2nd graph, it refers to the 20th century average.
What is the average over the entire timespan of the graph?
“Zahir Ebrahim
Project Humanbeingsfirst.org”
Your diatrabe is unintelligible to me. One should not look for conspiracies when stupidity does just fine.
Chart of 18 MWP proxies: click
Law Dome chart showing the MWP: click
Mann’s data errors: click
The Holocene Optimum: click
Harvard report of peer reviewed studies: click
The MWP was global in extent: click
MWP global interactive chart: click
The climate alarmists are desperate to get rid of the MWP because it debunks their story that the current climate is warmer than ever before. It’s not. The climate is acting normally. Nothing unusual is going on.
PJB (12:44:55) :
“What is the average over the entire timespan of the graph?”
Here’s the average from Vostok that covers the same time period. The closest I could find on short notice. Probably a good proxy for temp change, though: click
Smokey (10:19:01) :
Jay Cech (08:58:16) :
“What is the source of the graph in the article?”
It was from a WUWT article from July 2007. Sorry, I don’t recall the name of the article & am too busy to search.
Smokey or whoever supervises.
It is a question of journalist ETHICS (it is on the main page!): you cannot
leave it like it is, it is manipulative – the text below the graph suggests a
connection.
Somewhat OT, but it seems we now have a
-Climate Gestapo:
“Police investigating the alleged theft of e-mails behind the recent “Climategate” uproar have been telephoning climate change sceptics to question them about their political and scientific beliefs.
The Norfolk Constabulary was called in by the University of East Anglia after thousands of its climate scientists’ confidential e-mails were published online last November. The documents appeared to show the scientists concealing information and manipulating data to fit their theories, although two independent inquiries have cleared the university of wrongdoing.
The Financial Times has learnt that everybody who made a request to the university’s climate research unit under Freedom of Information rules ahead of the alleged hacking is being approached by officers searching for the culprits.
In a letter to the FT, Sebastian Nokes, a businessman and climate change sceptic, said he was interviewed at length by a detective, who “wanted to know what computer I used, my internet service provider, and also to which political parties I have belonged, what I feel about climate change and what my qualifications in climate science are. He questioned me at length about my political and scientific opinions”. ”
Complete story :
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b942edba-47f6-11df-b998-00144feab49a.html
The real “trick” the alarmists came up with was, when it was becoming obvious that “global warming” wasn’t happening, replacing anthropogenic global warming with anthropogenic global climate change,
The notion of there being such a thing as “global climate” is absolute foolishness (but is quite useful in alarming the public needlessly, and in obtaining grants for “future study” and “more research”).
Climates are of a regional nature and are nothing other than a general idea of what sort of weather can be expected for a given region. Weather can have a great deal of variance in any given climatic region, and as Mark Twain is said to have said, “Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get.”
H2O is the great modulator of temperature on the planet, because of its large latent heat of vaporization (539 BTUs per pound of H2O) and the amount of H2O in the vapor state that can be entrained in air being dependent on the temperature of the entraining air. Too, the more H2O entrained, the less dense a given volume of air is. A volume of air with H2O entrained is less dense than the same volume of air would be with less H2O entrained at the same temperature.. Warm air rises through cooler air, but moister air rises through drier air also..
Surface winds blow over oceans and lakes, and entrain H2O vapor state molecules. When a loosely bound molecule of H2O at the surfasce of a body of water becomes entrained in air, it also changes from its liquid state to its vapor state, taking its latent heat of vaporization with it, and that latent heat of vaporization comes both from the air entraining it, and the surface of the body of water. The air lowers in temperature, as does the surface of water.
This H2O entrained air rises, and continues to rise, until the surrounding air is colder, at which elevation the latent heat of vaporization of the H2O molecules is given up to the colder air, and the H2O molecules change back to a liquid state, and clouds form.
The colder air becomes warmer, and the amount of IR it emits, in all directions, increases. As most of the “directions” will miss the planet, this process transfers heat away from the planet, cooling the planet.
Clouds raise the albedo of the planet, reducing the amount of IR reaching the surface.
When the surface air temperatures over bodies of water rise, this process increases, cloud cover increases, thus cooling the planet. When the surface air temperatures over bodies of water become lower, less H2O can be entrained, the above process slows, and less H2O becomes entrained in the air above those bodies of water. Less latent heat of vaporization of H2O is transported to higher elevations to be radiated away from the planet, and cloud cover becomes less, allowing more IR to reach the surface.
When surface air temperatures over 70% of the planet rise, this process cools the surface, and when the temperature of the surface air over 70% cools, this process slows, allowing the planet to warm, thus balancing the temperature of the planet.
As the surface air temperatures over bodies of water are dependent on conduction of heat from the warmer parts of the land areas, it makes for a great balancing act.
I look at these graphs and I have been struck by something again and again.
“Normal” seems to be he smallest part.
Coincidentally the so-called normal occurred during the 60’s, when presumably all of the climate scientists were young, hale and hearty and full of spunk if you will. The best days of their lives.
I call selection bias.
J.Peden (11:02:00) :
“Briffa’s methods did the same thing via cherry picking the “correct” trees from within a population, in contradiction to why in statistics you analyze a whole population to begin with to see if it correlates with a known measure”.
Briffa’s first selection was limited in numbers. Then came Mcintyre’s selection
also limited in numbers. They contradicted each other. Later, Briffa (et al)
analyzed everything available from Yamal area. I am sorry, but the whole
material was closer to Briffa’s first selection and Mcintyre’s selection was
the anomaly.
The give away is this: “Had they used an appropriate technique the size of the blade of the hockey stick would have been smaller,” So where is this new graph constructed using the “appropriate technique” that has a smaller blade? Well it doesn’t actually exist, Professor Hand is talking nonsense.
JK: From the linked Telegraph article:
Prof Mann, who is Professor of Earth System Science at the Pennsylvania State University, said the statistics used in his graph were correct.
“I would note that our ’98 article was reviewed by the US National Academy of Sciences, the highest scientific authority in the United States, and given a clean bill of health,” he said. “In fact, the statistician on the panel, Peter Bloomfield, a member of the Royal Statistical Society, came to the opposite conclusion of Prof Hand.”
JK: Sorry, Prof, you just lied again. By omission of the fact that the US National Academy of Sciences Wegman report had harsh words for your paper:
JK: The Wegman report was commissioned by congress and done by the National Academy Of Sciences. Wegman is a world renowned statistical expert and former head of the National Academy of Sciences statistics division. Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years – This free PDF was downloaded from: nap.edu/catalog/11676.html )
Wegman Report, item 7, page 49 (MBH is the hockey stick paper): Our committee believes that the assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade in a millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year in a millennium cannot be supported by the MBH98/99 analysis.
JK: MBH98/99 are the papers that brought us the hockey stick.
Wegman Report, item 7, page 49: The cycle of Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age that was widely recognized in 1990 has disappeared from the MBH98/99 analyses, thus making possible the hottest decade/hottest year claim. However, the methodology of MBH98/99 suppresses this low frequency information. The paucity of data in the more remote past makes the hottest-in-a-millennium claims essentially unverifiable.
Wegman Report, item 6, page 49: Generally speaking, the paleoclimatology community has not recognized the validity of the MM05 papers and has tended dismiss their results as being developed by biased amateurs.
Wegman Report, page 49: 1. In general we found the writing of MBH98 somewhat obscure and incomplete. The fact that MBH98 issued a further clarification in the form of a corrigendum published in Nature (Mann et al. 2004) suggests that these authors made errors and incomplete disclosures in the original version of the paper. This also suggests that the refereeing process was not as thorough as it could have been. . .
Wegman Report, page 49: 2. In general, we find the criticisms by MM03, MM05a and MM05b to be valid and their arguments to be compelling. We were able to reproduce their results and offer both theoretical explanations (Appendix A) and simulations to verify that their observations were correct. . .
JK: MM03, MM05a are the blogger’s papers that exposed the errors. See ClimateAudit.org
Wegman Report, page 49, item 3: . . Because the temperature profile in the 1902-1995 is not similar, because of increasing trend, to the millennium temperature profile, it is not fully appropriate for the calibration and, in fact, leads to the misuse of the principal components analysis. However, the narrative in MBH98 on the surface sounds entirely reasonable on this calibration point, and could easily be missed by someone who is not extensively trained in statistical methodology. Dr. Mann has close ties to both Yale University and Pennsylvania State University. We note in passing that both Yale University and Pennsylvania State University have Departments of Statistics with excellent reputations9. Even though their work has a very significant statistical component, based on their literature citations, there is no evidence that Dr. Mann or any of the other authors in paleoclimatology studies have significant interactions with mainstream statisticians.
Wegman Report, page 49: 8. Although we have not addressed the Bristlecone Pines issue extensively in this report except as one element of the proxy data, there is one point worth
mentioning. Graybill and Idso (1993) specifically sought to show that Bristlecone Pines were CO2 fertilized. Bondi et al. (1999) suggest [Bristlecones] “are not a reliable temperature proxy for the last 150 years. . .
Wegman Report, page 52: Conclusion 4. While the paleoclimate reconstruction has gathered much publicity because it reinforces a policy agenda, it does not provide insight and understanding of the physical mechanisms of climate change except to the extent that tree ring, ice cores and such give physical evidence such as the prevalence of green-house gases. What is needed is deeper understanding of the physical mechanisms of climate change.
Wegman report, page 4: In our further exploration of the social network of authorships in temperature reconstruction, we found that at least 43 authors have direct ties to Dr. Mann by virtue of coauthored papers with him. Our findings from this analysis suggest that authors in the area of paleoclimate studies are closely connected and thus ‘independent studies’ may not be as independent as they might appear on the surface.
Thanks
JK
mikael pihlström (13:23:07),
If you have a problem with a chart, there are a number of ways to handle it.
You can do your own search for the chart’s provenance, like I did. The original, I believe, is from a magazine article, but I can’t recall which one it’s from.
Or, if you think the chart is not accurate, you can draw your own chart, like Michael Mann did.
Or, you can simply disregard the chart and move to another article, since it bothers you so much because it shows what everyone else knows, but lacks the name of the person who converted the data into chart form.
Or, you can stop commenting on this site, which you wrongly disparage as posting unethical charts – screaming it in capital letters.
But please, quit nitpicking everything you think you’ve found, to try and discredit anyone who doesn’t think like you do. That doesn’t work here. You have been told repeatedly that your belief requires evidence to be convincing.
If you want to see a genuine, manipulative fraud, see jim karlock’s post above about Michael Mann. And since you actually seem to believe Keith Briffa, and his peer review pals, and how they manipulate the system, you should certainly read Caspar and the Jesus Paper.
It’s a very easy read. In only a few pages it gives a very revealing picture of the corrupt climate peer review process. Even Michael Mann is featured. It will open the eyes of anyone not blinded by alarmist true belief.
Where did the diagram come from? See McIntyre Climate Audit May 9 2008:
‘Where did IPCC Figure 7c come from?’
It seems to have come primarily from a Lamb publication on the MWP in 1965.
Smokey (15:20:32) : ‘
“Or, if you think the chart is not accurate, you can draw your own chart,”
Whatever you say, however strange to my ears, I can accept as your freedom
of expression. But, this concerns a minimal standard of journalistic
ethics. You know the anonymous graph with two wrong names beneath it is misleading. If I had not read that Prof Hand’s version was referred to as
a field hockey stick (that is it ressembles Mann’s hockey stick more than your
Spagetti stick) i would have been fooled.
Just add some words: Note: the graph is not from the Telegraph/ or D. Hand.
I can’t edit your main page
david elder (15:46:55),
Thank you. Now, would someone please hand mikael a hanky and tell him it’s all better now? Thanx.
bob (09:13:00) :
Has McIntyre shown that the statistical methods did indeed produce different results, rather than could have produced misleading results.
In other words, any evidence that the hockey stick graph is wrong?
Anyway MBH98 is obsolete anyway, and maybe it is time to stop arguing that it is faulty or misleading, as there is better data in more recent publications.
Michael Mann pioneered the use of bad proxies, and others rapidly piled on. Briffa’s stick even uses dead trees that show it was never warm enough for the trees to exist.
I’ve been thinking of an analogy.
Say law enforcement has solid evidence that a body is buried in a field. So they dig 1000 holes and one hole has a body, thus confirming the evidence.
Then, along comes Mann and uses the 999 empty holes to prove that no body was really there after all. Others pile on and viola!!!
Lots of studies showing no body.
Only one study showing there was a body.
Overwhelming evidence!!!!
CRU has a new project; The Dendroclimatic Divergence Phenomenon: reassessment of causes and implications for climate reconstruction. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/research/
And who is Principal Investigator? Yes, you guessed it, Briffa.
Quote:
“It suggests that the degree of warmth in certain periods in the past, particularly in medieval times, may be underestimated or at least subject to greater uncertainty than is currently accepted. The lack of a clear overview of this phenomenon and the lack of a generally accepted cause had led some to challenge the current scientific consensus, represented in the 2007 report of the IPCC on the likely unprecedented nature of late 20th century average hemispheric warmth when viewed in the context of proxy evidence (mostly from trees) for the last 1300 years. This project will seek to systematically reassess and quantify the evidence for divergence in many tree-ring data sets around the Northern Hemisphere.”
“Based on recent published and unpublished work by the proposers, it has become apparent that foremost amongst the possible explanations is the need to account for systematic bias potentially inherent in the methods used to build many tree-ring chronologies…”
The project start and end dates are 12/09 – 05/12. Look at the start date. Could this be coincidence?
Who is funding this work?
” mikael pihlström (14:07:36) :
J.Peden (11:02:00) :
“Briffa’s methods did the same thing via cherry picking the “correct” trees from within a population, in contradiction to why in statistics you analyze a whole population to begin with to see if it correlates with a known measure”.
Briffa’s first selection was limited in numbers. Then came Mcintyre’s selection
also limited in numbers. They contradicted each other. Later, Briffa (et al)
analyzed everything available from Yamal area. I am sorry, but the whole
material was closer to Briffa’s first selection and Mcintyre’s selection was
the anomaly.”
Surely it comes down to this. either recently “de-glaciated” topsoil contains vegetable matter that carbon dates to 800-1400 AD or it does not. If it does we can put the hockey stick in the sin bin with the phlogiston, the ether and the indivisible atom. If not then the MWP can go there instead. Stop tweaking the hypothetical models and go get some results, you know, do some science….
JK: Look a little closer. The Wegmen report was not connected to the NAS. The NAS offered to do a study for the House committee, but the Rep leadership said no, and asked Wegman instead. Wegman, a respected statistician who happens to have many connections to the military and defense industry – he was an early supporter of Regan’s SDI program – was critical of Mann. Later the NAS did a politically independent study and supported Mann’s work. Mann also responded to Wegman. The debate is legitimate, but you put the NAS on the wrong side.
Of course the most important point is that Hand said “any reproduction using improved techniques is likely to also show a sharp rise in global warming.” So, you can continue throw spit balls at those nerdy scientists from the back row, or you can get serious and play a constructive roll in figuring out what we can do to avoid or mitigate the major problems climate is very likely going to cause.
Note: I am not affiliated with the deepclimate blog, although I have posted there. Nor am I a statistician.
Obviously, now that the Brits & Scots have whitewashed the CRU component of The TEAM… they are backfilling in blame to anyone they think can handle it.
I would have thought that GB was more mature than this – can’t they just admit that they are all frauds – and should be imprisoned.
Regular readers know that nothing that Mann has done can be substantiated – even Dr. Jones is smart enough to know that he had been caught – and admitted no increase in temps since 1995.
Of course we know that, collectively, The TEAM is responsible for multiple capital crimes against humanity – and should be jailed now.
A case can be made that an extreme diversion of precious economic and scientific resources has transpired – causing loss of life and misery to many.
If you are a cheat and you have been caught – “Mann up” – and take your punishment.
Oh, and please help us find the REAL RAW TEMP DATA – maybe some honest Scientists can then determine if there is really anything going on.
Here is the WUWT link to the battle of the graphs
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/07/08/the-medieval-warm-period-linked-to-the-success-of-machu-picchu-inca/
(sorry mod, put it in the wrong article first by mistake)
OT but really very important IMHO.
Does anyone else think the EPA has screwed up again re: CFL’s.
I think disposal kits, fully disclosed instructions and mandatory recycling procedures and facilities should be required as a condition of selling the CFL’s.
These same people brought us MTBE and now we have contaminated ground water all over –
Shall we add Mercury Poisoning to the same ground water?
Or, is this a set up for a recent law school grad?
RockyRoad (10:35:33) :
The latter part of your post took some deciphering. Mainly because you pretty much ignored the heuristics that allow is humans to ignore spelling errors.
1) Usually should start with the right letter, (applies to some extent with end letter).
2) Transpositions should be adjacent
I know there are other factors but these are two of the main ones.
DaveE.
@Jonathan Drake (16:03:08) : “The project start and end dates are 12/09 – 05/12. Look at the start date. Could this be coincidence? … Who is funding this work?”
The funding request, that is the grant proposal, must have been submitted months before the start date. I’m surprised they don’t list the funding agency and the amount. Most scientists like to brag.
JD, I found the funding source: the Natural Environment Research Council. See the bottom of page 3 of the link below.
http://www.nerc.ac.uk/funding/available/researchgrants/awards/2008/standard-december.pdf
Ah, an article by Louise “copy and paste” Gray, Environment Correspondent. Why the heck the Telegraph pay her and Geoffrey Lean is beyond me. Poor people are still in denial!
jim karlock (14:41:34) :
JK: From the linked Telegraph article:
Prof Mann, who is Professor of Earth System Science at the Pennsylvania State University, said the statistics used in his graph were correct.
“I would note that our ‘98 article was reviewed by the US National Academy of Sciences, the highest scientific authority in the United States, and given a clean bill of health,” he said. “In fact, the statistician on the panel, Peter Bloomfield, a member of the Royal Statistical Society, came to the opposite conclusion of Prof Hand.”
JK: Sorry, Prof, you just lied again. By omission of the fact that the US National Academy of Sciences Wegman report had harsh words for your paper……
=====
You are mistaken. You should apologize to Mann for calling him a liar.
Wegman’s report is available online at
http://climateaudit.files.wordpress.com/2007/11/07142006_wegman_report.pdf
It doesn’t say Mann’s Hockey Stick is wrong.
What it does say:
“Overall, our committee believes that Mann’s assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade of the millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year of the millennium cannot be supported by his analysis.”
So the Wegman report is saying small parts of the Hockey Stick are not supported by Mann’s analysis. Over the length of the millennium (1,000 years)
the analysis does not support the claim that
1998 was the hottest year or the 1990’s was the hottest decade. Maybe they were, maybe they weren’t.
The National Research Council agreed with Wegman on those two points but but found additional evidence supports Mann’s basic conclusion that the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1,000 years.
“The basic conclusion of Mann et al. (1998, 1999) was that the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1,000 years. This conclusion has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence that includes both additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions and pronounced changes in a variety of local proxy indicators, such as melting on ice caps and the retreat of glaciers around the world, which in many cases appear to be unprecedented during at least the last 2,000 years.”
The National Research Council Report is available at
http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11676&page=3
Wegman on Mann’s Hockey Stick:
“The fact that the answer may have been correct does not justify the use of an incorrect method in the first place.”
Posters interested in the controversy over Mann’s temperature reconstruction,”the hockey-stick curve,” may want to read Richard L. Smith’s report on presentations at an American Statistical Association session titled “What is the Role of Statistics in Public Policy Debates about Climate Change?”
Ed Wegman of George Mason University gave a talk
focusing on the statistical flaws in the Hockey Stick that, in his view, render much of the current literature on this subject of doubtful validity. J. Michael Wallace of the University of Washington presented the broader findings of a NRC panel that acknowledged the statistical issues raised by Wegman, but defended the hockey stick based on a broader scientific context.
“The NRC report reviewed a number of other reconstructions of the temperature record based on proxy observations and believed that the Mann et al. claim that the last two decades were the warmest of the last 1000 years was entirely plausible.”
Wegman’s response was “the fact that the answer may have been correct does not justify the use of an incorrect method in the first place”
or
“Method Wrong + Answer Correct = Bad Science.”
The report is available in a 2007 ASA newsletter at http://www.amstat-online.org/sections/envr/ssenews/ENVR_9_1.pdf
I wonder what Wegman thinks Method Correct + Answer Wrong equals?
Wren (20:06:57),
Your apologies for the shenanigans in Mann’s game playing count for nothing.
If Mann’s Hokey Stick was legit, it would still be used. It’s not.
Smokey (20:12:15) :
Wren (20:06:57),
Your apologies for the shenanigans in Mann’s game playing count for nothing.
If Mann’s Hokey Stick was legit, it would still be used. It’s not.
====
It’s legit, and it’s still used.
“It’s legit, and it’s still used.”
Not in the new UN/IPCC Assessment Reports. Why? Because it’s been debunked.
Explanation here: click
Smokey (21:19:03) :
“It’s legit, and it’s still used.”
Not in the new UN/IPCC Assessment Reports. Why? Because it’s been debunked.
Explanation here: click
Nah !
Check here:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch6s6-6.html
The Mann Hockey stick graph is an urban legend… It keeps popping up here and there and only the gullible and the true believers embrace it…. maybe some small birds also flutter happily as the hockey stick is displayed…
Wren:
Wegman’s response was “the fact that the answer may have been correct does not justify the use of an incorrect method in the first place”
That’s a generic statement, Wren, not a confirmation of Mann’s answer, which alleged to erase the MWP. Was Wegman saying it did not exist, and that he knew it by some other investigation? Which one?
It applies to a case where you already pretty much know the correct answer because of the prior use and replication of correct methods, according to the rules of the Scientific Method. No amount of incorrect methods will make the answer any more correct = bad science.
I wonder what Wegman thinks Method Correct + Answer Wrong equals?
It means that either the answer might actually be wrong or else some previously unknown factor has affected the Method. So you look carefully at the situation to see what might be going on, and you repeat the Method. You might have just got onto something big.
It’s really not that difficult.
J.Peden, perhaps you know where there’s a graph constructed using the same data used by Mann but also using the appropriate technique that Wegman advocated?
No?
Are you aware that subsequent studies both using and not using the tree proxies have confirmed the hockey stick shaped graph?
Are you aware that the MWP and LIA are evident in the MBH98 graph, despite lies that MBH98 erased these climate periods (surely the ultimate strawman)?
Yes, let’s take the famous graph from 1972 again 🙂
I realise Louise Grey only asserts this in her article, but I have not been able to find any source where Prof Hand is actually quoted. I only can find other blog sites repeating this assertion.
Wren (20:06:57) :
Wegman on Mann’s Hockey Stick:
“The fact that the answer may have been correct does not justify
the use of an incorrect method in the first place.”
Note the context – one of the toughest multi-phased critical
examination of a single article ever? Wegman goes overboard
in severity. And was it even his final deliberated conclusion;
he retorted in a live session?
The scientific method does not assume that an original article should
get everything right. On the contrary, it assumes the opposite and bets
on subsequent contributions to point out flaws and evaluate the conclusions.
Of course there is a responsibility to not peddle crude mistakes
and crazy ideas: the peer review is meant to filter out such drafts –
Mann et al 1998 passed, right?
Shouldn’t a balanced evaluation consider positive outcomes also:
although the idea to somehow make a synthesis of paleo proxies
was probaly in the air at the time; it was Mann et al who did it, you
can’t take that away from him.
Sceptics are perhaps good at criticizing work done (which is necessary,
no question), but really don’t give enough thought to the creativity
side, which absolutely drives the science process.
It seems Mann could have done better, the statistics at least, been
more cooperative etc. But, the article probably, at the time, was not
seen by authors as something definitive.
So if the hockey stick is as dead as proclaimed, we will see a commonly
accepted successor with a significantly different shape gain ground
in the next years. It is fully possible, but let’s not go ahead of times.
Wren (21:45:54),
You folks keep trying to claim that Mann’s Hokey Schtick chart, which shows no MWP, is still used by the UN/IPCC.
That is false.
Here is the Mann chart that was debunked by McIntyre & McKittrick: click
You think I don’t know my charts? Here’s a corrected chart, showing the MWP: click
The IPCC loved Michael Mann’s chart! It was visually excellent propaganda. No other chart has the visual impact of Mann’s. It was so pretty. And SCARY! The IPCC would have never given it up if they weren’t forced to.
So you won’t be seeing Michael Mann’s debunked hokey stick chart in any new IPCC Assessment Reports. Only sad, pale imitations. Because Mann’s chart is debunked.
Smokey (04:35:31) :
Wren (21:45:54),
You folks keep trying to claim that Mann’s Hokey Schtick chart, which shows no MWP, is still used by the UN/IPCC.
That is false.
——————-
On the surface of it, looks like you are right – but the one in IPCC 2007
is titled MBH 1999. So, did M&M debunk this one? I thought they came
in much later?
In the MBH 1999 article text it looks like MBH were just continuing
there work? In that case is ‘debunked’ justified?
I find it hard to believe that the Mann hockey stick is still being debated. At the outset, a wealth of geologic data (including glacial fluctuations, oxygen isotopes from ice cores, pollen, historic data, crop fluctuations, ………) show that Mann’s concept of no Midieval Warm Period or Little Ice is ridiculous. Just take a look at hundreds and hundreds of papers in the literature! When I first saw Mann’s hockey stick I said either the trees he used weren’t sensitive enough to show the well-established global warming and cooling or else the data is fraudulent. After Climategate, we now know which of these was correct.
McIntyre and others have done an admirable job of exposing the misuse of data, but the AGW people are still using the hockey stick as proof of CO2 warming as if it was credible. They obviously haven’t read the literature (and yes, it’s peer reviewed and peer reviewed when that meant something) and I can’t for the life of me understand why anyone who call themselves scientists subscribe to the idea that just because climate warms (which it has done over and over for millenia), that somehow proves it is due to CO2 (especially when the warmings occur BEFORE CO2 began to escalate.
Just compare Mann & Jones (2003) “improved” hockey stick to Esper (2003), Moberg (2005) with Alley (2004)…
Alley, Esper, Mann & Moberg
Guess which reconstruction looks the least like the ice core d18O temperature data?
For the FT Article: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b942edba-47f6-11df-b998-00144feab49a.html
Try BreakthePaywall:
BreakthePaywall! is a free add-on for Internet Explorer (Firefox coming soon!) that simplifies using the various methods for circumventing website paywall restrictions.
Smokey (04:35:31) :
Wren (21:45:54),
You folks keep trying to claim that Mann’s Hokey Schtick chart, which shows no MWP, is still used by the UN/IPCC.
That is false.
Here is the Mann chart that was debunked by McIntyre & McKittrick: click
You think I don’t know my charts? Here’s a corrected chart, showing the MWP: click
The IPCC loved Michael Mann’s chart! It was visually excellent propaganda. No other chart has the visual impact of Mann’s. It was so pretty. And SCARY! The IPCC would have never given it up if they weren’t forced to.
So you won’t be seeing Michael Mann’s debunked hokey stick chart in any new IPCC Assessment Reports. Only sad, pale imitations. Because Mann’s chart is debunked.
=========
Smokey, you are wrong. Mann’s hokey stick is in the most recent IPCC report. See MBH 1999 in the second chart in Figure 6.10:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-6-10.html
Wren (08:48:59),
As I explained, imitations don’t count.
Wake me when you find this Michael Mann hokey stick chart in a recent or new IPCC AR: click
Mann’s wonderful, scary looking chart that catapulted him to fame and fortune was debunked by M&M, so the IPCC dare not use it even though they would dearly love to plaster it all over AR-5. Sorry about that. But it was based on BS data, and Mann knew it. In fact, he’s still at it. Here’s the correction: click
Smokey (09:23:00) :
“Mann’s wonderful looking chart was debunked by M&M, so the IPCC dare not use it even though they would dearly love to plaster it all over AR-5.”
You are fixed on Mann or the MBR 1998 graph. Just a year later
MBR 1999 produced a new one, which is still in the IPCC 2007 report.
So Mann self-debunked? Or, as most of us would conclude: continued
working scientifically, applying self-criticism and taking into
consideration criticism from Briffa, Jones. Correct me if I am wrong
Macintyre debunking came in later chronologically, at least after 2001?
These are Professor Hands own words:
“Prof Hand said his criticisms should not be seen as invalidating climate science. He pointed out that although the hockey stick graph
– which dates from a study led by US climate scientist Michael Mann
in 1998 – exaggerates some effects, the underlying data show a clear
warming signal.
He accused sceptics of “identifying a few particular issues and
blowing them up” to distort the true picture. The handful of errors
found so far, including the exaggerated hockey stick graph and a
mistaken claim by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035, were “isolated incidents”,
he said. “If you look at any area of science, you would be able to find odd examples like this. It doesn’t detract from the vast bulk of the conclusions,”
he said.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/162b0c58-47f5-11df-b998-00144feab49a.html
Smokey (09:23:00) :
Wren (08:48:59),
As I explained, imitations don’t count.
Wake me when you find this Michael Mann hokey stick chart in a recent or new IPCC AR: click
Mann’s wonderful, scary looking chart that catapulted him to fame and fortune was debunked by M&M, so the IPCC dare not use it even though they would dearly love to plaster it all over AR-5. Sorry about that. But it was based on BS data, and Mann knew it. In fact, he’s still at it. Here’s the correction: click
======
MBH 1999 is the Hockey Stick. See MBH 1999 in the See MBH 1999 in the second chart in Figure 6.10:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-6-10.html
It’s as plain as day. Why do you persist with the fiction that it’s not in the report?
mikael pihlström (09:55:51) :
“You are fixed on Mann or the MBR 1998 graph.”
No, that is projection. It is you and Wren who are fixated on Mann’s Hokey Stick graph. When Wren first brought it up, I pointed out:
“If Mann’s Hokey Stick was legit, it would still be used. It’s not.”
Wren responded:
“It’s legit, and it’s still used.”
It must be due to cognitive dissonance [Orwell’s “doublethink”] that is making both of you deliberately misunderstand the issue: Michael Mann’s scary looking chart was debunked by McIntyre & McKittrick.
That particular chart — by far the best of the bunch — can no longer be used by the IPCC. They would love to use it, but now they must use pale imitations [which are also bogus, but M&M debunked the Mann chart; the other copycat charts came out after the Mann debunking].
If that were not so, the IPCC would continue to use Mann’s original chart, because it is by far the best, most visually arresting, scary propaganda showing [falsely] that modern temperatures have risen to unprecedented levels. [They have not; and global temperatures during the earlier Greek optimum and the Roman optimum were warmer than current global temperatures, which are not unusual.]
The original argument is not as you are now trying to re-frame it. The IPCC’s use of inferior hokey stick charts is another issue. I simply pointed out that Michael Mann’s chart can no longer be used by the IPCC because the data Mann used to create it has been debunked, and I stand by that.
If you decide to pick more nits, show that the IPCC is still using this particular chart: click. You know they want to.
“”” Gilbert (16:02:14) :
bob (09:13:00) :
Has McIntyre shown that the statistical methods did indeed produce different results, rather than could have produced misleading results.
In other words, any evidence that the hockey stick graph is wrong?
Anyway MBH98 is obsolete anyway, and maybe it is time to stop arguing that it is faulty or misleading, as there is better data in more recent publications.
Michael Mann pioneered the use of bad proxies, and others rapidly piled on. Briffa’s stick even uses dead trees that show it was never warm enough for the trees to exist.
I’ve been thinking of an analogy.
Say law enforcement has solid evidence that a body is buried in a field. So they dig 1000 holes and one hole has a body, thus confirming the evidence.
Then, along comes Mann and uses the 999 empty holes to prove that no body was really there after all. Others pile on and viola!!!
Lots of studies showing no body.
Only one study showing there was a body.
Overwhelming evidence!!!! “””
Actually, you missed the proper analogy:-
In the usual case, somebody randomly digs a hole in a field, and finds a body. Law enforcement officials then jump to the conclusion that they have stumbled upon a whole field full of bodies.
Or more dramatically, you might have bored a hole into the ground on a farm called Elandsfontein, about 20 miles north east of Pretoria, SA; perhaps an 18 foot deep hole lokking for water. Instead of water you came up with a broken piece of diamond weighing about 21 or so ounces; obviously broken off an even larger piece.
So you jump to the conclusion that 18 feet below you is a whole sheet of diamond. In reality; you just accidently stumbled on the Cullinan Diamond; the largest gem qualitydiamond ever found.
It’s called a failure to observe the Nyquist sampling theorem, which lays down the rules for taking samples of any continuous function.
So include Biffra’s infamous tree rings, and ice cores or sediment cores, as examples of where a single sample is considered representative of the real situation.
Well that’s what happens when you use the Temperature measured at some Urban Heat Island to represent the Temperature 1200 km away from there; you get “aliassing noise”; and you get it for quite modest violations of the Nyquist Criterion; it’s what makes the wagon wheels go backwards in TV or movie horse operas.
And to be pedantic; the Cullinan Diamond was not actually discovered by a random bore in the ground. It was found in 1905 by Frederick Wells, the superintendent of the “Premier Mine” in SA while doing a routine inspection. But it was 18 feet below the earth surface, sticking out of a wall of the mine. (3106 Carats actual weight). The other missing piece, that was presumed to exist because of the large cleavage face; has never been found; and it is believed it also would not have been crushed in mining operations. Cullinan of course was the owner of the Premier Mine.
And no; don’t ask how I know all this stuff. My guess is you could probably find much more details by googling; I wouldn’t know; I never tried it.
But as for tree rings; a tree is a three dimensional object; it has a height, and a (roughly) circular crossection. When you core bore a tree, you get a one dimensional sample of that three dimensional object. It tells you nothing about what you might see if you bore a second hole at a different height or in a different radial direction; well other than the age from ring counting. That’s probably why they call it “dendrochronology.”
There is also (I am told) some sort of “general theorem of pattern recognition”; which basically says that pattern recognition is impossible. Well it really says something like:- given a finite set of N-dimensional projections (images) of an N+1 dimensional object; it is always possible to construct a counterfeit (different) , N+1 dimensional object that yields the same set of N dimensional projections. It is important in camouflage strategies and similar problems. Well it also is the reason for the “face on Mars”; which really doesn’t exist. Counterfeiting is relatively easy, for two dimension projections of real 3-D objects; well at least the usual three view engineering projections. The error rate goes down rapidly as the number of N-D projections increases.
Myth: the hockey stick graph has been proven wrong
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11646-climate-myths-the-hockey-stick-graph-has-been-proven-wrong.html
Arguments based on myths are phony.
Andrew W (00:13:36) :
Andrew:
1] I was analyzing Wegman’s statement per se, which I still don’t think was an endorsement of Mann’s Hockey Stick. But I was willing to entertain that I was wrong, if Wegman did think there were some valid studies showing the “correct answer” as the same thing Mann’s “bad method” study gave. If so, I was also asking what these studies were.
2] I believe Mann’s own “Team” refers to themselves as the “Hockey Team”, but at any rate everyone else refers to Mann’s reconstruction as in effect a “Hockey Stick”.
3] A Hockey Stick has a level shaft.
4] No, I am not aware of any proxy reconstruction which validly establishes or suggests, at the least according to statistical methods regardless of the physical meaning of the proxy data, an essentially level MWP – which would also contradict a massive amount of geologic evidence for a significant MWP, which even the ipcc admitted in its 1995 graph. I believe McIntyre has shown that these invalid proxy studies, including Gore’s Thompson’s Thermometer, always rely upon Mann’s stripbark bristlecones, or else have some other problem.
Anyway, what are the allegedly valid studies which show an essentially flat shaft MWP?
5] In that regard, I do know that Craig Loehle’s multi-proxy analysis, which used only proxies having a verification period of some duration, did show a MWP, and nothing resembling a level shaft from there on, either.
Wren (10:40:17),
You keep avoiding the point I’ve repeatedly made: that the IPCC can no longer use Michael Mann’s scary chart. THIS particular chart: click
I understand exactly why you avoid answering: if you admit the IPCC can no longer use Mann’s chart linked above, your response to my original point – the only point I made – fails.
Instead of digging a deeper hole, if you can’t admit to the fact that Mann’s hokey stick chart was debunked, then moving on to another subject would be your best course of action.
Unless, of course, you can show that the IPCC used Mann’s chart after it was debunked by M&M. Because you know they would love to keep on using it, rather than its inferior imitations.
Please post something that answers my original point, instead of responding with your own strawman arguments, or MoveOn. Fair enough?
The shape of Mann’s graphs aren’t identical, if that’s what you mean, but both swing upward on the right like a hockey stick’s blade. Incidentally, none of the graphs were ever smooth lines like an actual hockey stick.
Why do you continue to mischaracterize McIntyre’s and Wegman’s criticism of the hockey stick as “debunking” ?
Webster’s defines debunk as “to expose the sham or falseness.”
Has McIntyre or Wegman said the hockey stick is false?
George E. Smith (10:34:31) :
“But as for tree rings; a tree is a three dimensional object; it has a height, and a (roughly) circular crossection. When you core bore a tree, you get a one dimensional sample of that three dimensional object. It tells you nothing about what you might see if you bore a second hole at a different height or in a different radial direction; well other than the age from ring counting. That’s probably why they call it “dendrochronology.”
Quite right, but not entirely. Tree boring is primarily good for age
determination (dendrochronology), but the 3-D problem is not so
grave as you might think. Having bored hundreds of trees (killed some)
my intuition is that although one side of the tree can grow slower than the other the relative diffs in yearly growth on any side will not be disturbed.
If something happenson one side of the tree and not the other, for
instance a neighbour tree outgrows ‘our’ tree, your theory holds. But, since
a set would be a number of trees locally, these ‘anomalies’ tend to even out.
However, the stand history: silvicultural actions, draining, fertilization and
natural fertility distributed unevenly over time, could disturb any climate warming signal.
Scaling up, at landscape or even regional level tree rings would react to
a specific regional climate. If warming occurs, steadily increasing
temperature is reproduced in thicker tree rings, only if precipitation is
constant or co-increasing and serious nutrient limitation will not set in
in aged stands. Also, in any landscape there would be cooler and warmer
spots due to topography.
So, THERE IS NO REASON?, why tree rings should be a good proxy for
climate. But they seem to be and dominantly support warming theory.
What Mann did cleverly, was to not rely only on tree rings. You often
seem to forget that his are multi-proxy studies, which can be tricky
to handle methodologically I guess. Another clever thing was to expand
geographically to get nearer a global average. But, this got him into
trouble with sceptics, who distinctly remember sunbathing on Greenland.
Smoky, my previous post is a reply to you, but I forgot to address it to you. But you probably have surmised it’s for you.
Wren (11:33:02) :
“The shape of Mann’s graphs aren’t identical, if that’s what you mean…”
No, that is not what I stated or mean, which was: that particular Michael Mann Hokey Stick chart – the best one by far for the IPCC’s purposes, and the chart that catapulted Mann to stardom and grant heaven – was debunked, and that is why the IPCC can no longer use that chart. You’re doing everything possible to avoid facing that fact.
Keep digging that hole deeper.
Wren (11:33:02) :
“The shape of Mann’s graphs aren’t identical, if that’s what you mean, but both swing upward on the right like a hockey stick’s blade. Incidentally, none of the graphs were ever smooth lines like an actual hockey stick.”
OK, But Smokey has a point in that Mann 1998 reproduces Medevial WP
less than Mann 1999. However, every sceptic forgets or overlooks that
Mann 1998 has standard deviations indicated, which means that single
high temps in the MWP, rising to the level of average North Hemisphere
temp now are probably the regional warm periods you are missing. Whilst
the single low temps in MWP are due to geographical enlargment into
regions not affected by MWP. This is the right approach, because in the
AGW problem we need to go global.
——-
Why do you continue to mischaracterize McIntyre’s and Wegman’s criticism of the hockey stick as “debunking” ?
Webster’s defines debunk as “to expose the sham or falseness.”
—-
No, that you inform us of this, I would not say McIntyre debunked Mann;
M&M pointed out methodological weaknesses and thus contributed well.
But, Mann did not misapply PC analysis on purpose, he was just hasty and
did not consult experts (who does in normal science).
George E. Smith (10:34:31) :
“”” Gilbert (16:02:14) :
bob (09:13:00) :
Has McIntyre shown that the statistical methods did indeed produce different results, rather than could have produced misleading results.
In other words, any evidence that the hockey stick graph is wrong?
—————
Macintyre probably thinks he has; but, there have been 3 or 4 external
reviews, which support McIntyre on statistical methods, but find that
it doesn’t affect results much. The latest by Prof. Hand says that the hockey
stick shoul be a Field hockey stick; Mann disagrees citing a previous
review also including a statistician.
But, probably in the paleoecological area a lot of new evidence could
be produced and change the situation to some degree.
If it makes Wren happy, I’ll put it this way: M&M falsified Mann’s chart, which preposterously showed no MWP.
And if Mann would man-up and disclose his data and methodologies, the rest of his charts would be falsified as well. But Mann has been too well rewarded financially and with his status among the closed clique of climate grant beggars to stop generating his highly questionable charts.
All Mann needs to do is produce a hockey stick shaped chart covering the same time frame, showing the same temperatures, by using raw data and methods that he is willing to share with McIntyre and McKittrick. If that ever happens… pass the popcorn!
But that won’t happen, because Michael Mann knows he would be completely discredited. Volumes of data show not only a MWP, but several warmer periods during the holocene, thus falsifying the bogus claim that current temperatures are anything unusual.
Wren (11:33:02) :
“The shape of Mann’s graphs aren’t identical, if that’s what you mean…”
No, that is not what I stated or mean, which was: that particular Michael Mann Hokey Stick chart – the best one by far for the IPCC’s purposes, and the chart that catapulted Mann to stardom and grant heaven – was debunked, and that is why the IPCC can no longer use that chart. You’re doing everything possible to avoid facing that fact.
Keep digging that hole deeper.
—–
It was not debunked.
Webster’s defines debunk as “to expose the sham or falseness.”
Not even McIntyre or Wegman said the hockey stick is false or a sham.
Of course you may have your own definition of “debunked.” Humpty Dumpty was like that.
When _I_ use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
From Alice Through The Looking Glass, Chapter VI
Smokey (10:27:51) :
mikael pihlström (09:55:51) :
“You are fixed on Mann or the MBR 1998 graph.”
No, that is projection. It is you and Wren who are fixated on Mann’s Hokey Stick graph. When Wren first brought it up, I pointed out:
– – – – –
Your difficulties with logic is evidently due to yourself being torn
between two haystacks:
On one hand you want to keep Mann 98 (the only one true in your op.)
alive, so you can gloat
On the other you want the MWR to emerge as good as possible
In the choice between emotional reward and science, the true sceptic
chooses …
Smokey
And if Mann would man-up and disclose his data and methodologies, the rest of his charts would be falsified as well.
They could be falsified by new data from practising scientists perhaps;
but, not by M&M who have certainly tried, but can only rock the boat slightly.
You don’t recognize the fact that MWP signal will depend on the area and
other complicating factors.
Wren & mikael,
I’ll be out for a few hours. That should give you time to think about how to respond to my original comment.
Everything you’ve both said since has been a series of strawman arguments, by which you avoid admitting that the IPCC can no longer use Mann’s chart that I linked to several times above.
Mann’s scary chart was falsified. Mann is not willing to disclose his raw data and methods. He is hiding his devious methods and his statistical incompetence by blustering.
When I return, I expect you to either show that the IPCC is still using the chart in question, or concede the point.
Wren (10:40:17) :
Myth: the hockey stick graph has been proven wrong
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11646-climate-myths-the-hockey-stick-graph-has-been-proven-wrong.html
Arguments based on myths are phony.
Hah! Looking at that article, especially the “update” references, we find in 9/2008 that Mann had once again used “stripbarks” and methods which create hockey sticks out of red noise, and also an upside down Tiljander and subjective confidence intervals which make “likely” mean a 66-90% guess.
Then the New Scientist breathlessly announces as an “update”, ” It might even be hotter now than it has been for at least a million years,” referring us instead to a 9/2006 article where Hansen actually concludes in part, “Comparison of measured sea surface temperatures in the Western Pacific with paleoclimate data suggests that this critical ocean region, and probably the planet as a whole, is approximately as warm now as at the Holocene maximum and within ≈1°C of the maximum temperature of the past million years.” [my bold, and not that I know if Hansen is right or not.]
The New Scientist = The Post Normal Scientist?
mikael pihlström (12:05:19) :
George E. Smith (10:34:31) :
“”” Gilbert (16:02:14) :
bob (09:13:00) :
Has McIntyre shown that the statistical methods did indeed produce different results, rather than could have produced misleading results.
In other words, any evidence that the hockey stick graph is wrong?
—————
Macintyre probably thinks he has; but, there have been 3 or 4 external
reviews, which support McIntyre on statistical methods, but find that
it doesn’t affect results much. The latest by Prof. Hand says that the hockey
stick shoul be a Field hockey stick; Mann disagrees citing a previous
review also including a statistician.
But, probably in the paleoecological area a lot of new evidence could
be produced and change the situation to some degree.
—-
I think people skeptical of CAGW may be shooting themselves in the foot by stressing the Medieval Warming Period(MWP).
Suppose there was a MWP when average global temperature was as high as it is today. Obviously that level of temperature would be almost entirely a result of natural causes, not man’s activities. CAGW naysayers might claim this means recent global warming is a result of nature rather than man. Of course that “nature can affect climate, therefore man can’t” is in itself a logical fallacy.
Evidence points to man’s activities as a driver of the the rise in global temperature during the last century.
Temperatures continue to rise even when natural influences(e.g., La Nina and down-cyycle in sunspots) have a cooling effect.
So if nature alone can produce the warming some think happened a thousand years ago(MWP), think about the warming that could result from a combination of nature and man’s activities.
Smokey (12:33:45) :
Wren & mikael,
I’ll be out for a few hours. That should give you time to think about how to respond to my original comment.
Everything you’ve both said since has been a series of strawman arguments, by which you avoid admitting that the IPCC can no longer use Mann’s chart that I linked to several times above.
Mann’s scary chart was falsified. Mann is not willing to disclose his raw data and methods. He is hiding his devious methods and his statistical incompetence by blustering.
When I return, I expect you to either show that the IPCC is still using the chart in question, or concede the point.
=====
Smokey, there is little profit in you arguing against a point I never made. Obviously, the shape of Mann’s Hockey stick has changed, and I never said it hadn’t. But it’s still a shaft with an up-turned blade. We still call it a hockey stick because It still looks like a hockey stick.
Your continued claim that Mann’s Hockey Stick was debunked discredits you.
Smokey
“When I return, I expect you to either show that the IPCC is still using the chart in question, or concede the point.”
If the point is: ‘IPCC cannot use the original MBH1998’. The point could
possibly be conceded if the argument was better construed.
That IPCC is not using the said chart can be due to (1) a free choice
not to use it, or, (2) a constrained situation making it impossible to use
it.
Since both alternatives associate with numerous qualifications you
have presented in a non-coherent way in previous messages, it is
impossible to choose one or the other.
But, I regret that you make this a scholastic exercise and forget the
important questions.
How about asking the TREES if Mann was wrong?
“Receding glaciers in the Swiss Alps are exposing evidence of earlier warm Holocene periods. Researchers are discovering that green forests once existed under the ice and that the Alps were mostly greener than today….
Christian Schlüchter, Professor of Geology, and his team of researchers are studying remnants of ancient trees and peat that have been exposed by melting glaciers high in the Swiss Alps…
Examining carbon isotopes in a high-tech laboratory, he has been able to determine the exact age of the uncovered artefacts and precisely when and where the trees grew. The information allows him to piece together a pretty good picture of the glacial history in the Alps since the end of the last ice age. Some trees at very high altitudes even lived 600 years. Schlüchter says the equilibrium line that is the boundary between the feed and depletion zones of the glacier was as much as 300 meters (1000 ft) higher in elevation than today.”
Thank you P. Gosselin for translating this for us.
It’s really interesting watching my friends Wren and mikael squirm. They simply can not admit that the reason the IPCC doesn’t use that chart any more is because it’s been thoroughly debunked by McIntyre and McKittrick, followed by Wegman, et al.’s Senate testimony.
When I got back I re-read this thread from my post with all the charts @12:50:36 onward. Despite the facts presented by just about everyone else [Andrew being the exception in his single, erroneous post; he needs to check out Climate Audit], our cognitive dissonance-afflicted friends refuse to accept that the IPCC was forced to dump Mann’s chart — a chart that they dearly LOVED above all others.
The IPCC loved that particular Mann chart so much that they published it, what, six or seven times? Way more than any other chart in their Assessment Reports. And now they have to make do with pale, inadequate imitations, none of which has nearly the visual impact of Mann’s original chart.
The other charts are simply hockey stick shapes, which, as M&M showed, will be produced even with red noise as the input when using the Mann algorithm that they discovered by chance. Hockey stick shapes are produced by Mann’s algorithm even when baseball scores are the input.
But our friends seem to still believe that Mann’s iconic chart was voluntarily withdrawn by the IPCC for no good reason.
That’s what cognitive dissonance will do to CAGW believers. Fortunately, because of the questioning nature of the scientific method, skeptics are largely immune from Orwell’s doublethink: the holding of two contradictory beliefs at the same time. In other words, cognitive dissonance.
So, guys, let us know when the ice hits the equator. ‘K thx bye.
[snip – take a time out – we are all getting weary of Wren’s thread bombing -A]
Smokey (18:39:06) :
“But our friends seem to still believe that Mann’s iconic chart was voluntarily withdrawn by the IPCC for no good reason.”
“The other charts are simply hockey stick shapes, which, as M&M showed, will be produced even by red noise when using the Mann algorithm they discovered by chance.”
Common practice in science; you get a better version by working on the
material; MBH worked on it for a year and replaced MBH 1998 with MBH 1999,
no McIntyre around to pressure yet.
All Hockey stick versions are basically sound, reproducing both recent
warming and MWP. They have been examined with unprecedented care
by at least 4 different and independent experts. The last one Prof Hand’s
statement you can see at:
mikael pihlström (09:55:51)
Wren (13:13:34) :
So if nature alone can produce the warming some think happened a thousand years ago(MWP), think about the warming that could result from a combination of nature and man’s activities.
Tentatively, yes. And there is talk of the observed warming being only
slow recovery from the little ice age. This would be in the background.
A detailed analysis of how Mann’s Hockey Stick was debunked by one of the people who did the debunking: click [source]
“Prof Hand singled out a 1998 paper by Prof Mann of Pennsylvania State University, a constant target for climate change sceptics, as an example of this.
He said the graph, that showed global temperature records going back 1,000 years, was exaggerated – although any reproduction using improved techniques is likely to also show a sharp rise in global warming. He agreed the graph would be more like a field hockey stick than the ice hockey blade it was originally compared to.”
Proving that the good professor whatever he does know, knows nothing about Hockey. A stick used for real hockey (and I’ve played it on tarmac) might not be as long but is much more curved than the implement used in the inferior cold weather game.
See http://www.hockeysticks.co.uk/hockey_stick_head_shape.htm
In fact temperatures following a field hockey profile would require a rift in the fabric of space time that even Picard and LaForge would struggle to repair….
“”” mikael pihlström (11:33:43) :
George E. Smith (10:34:31) :
“But as for tree rings; a tree is a three dimensional object; it has a height, and a (roughly) circular crossection. When you core bore a tree, you get a one dimensional sample of that three dimensional object. “””
Well mikael. I’m not going to quote your entire argument; but the essence of it seems to be that tree borers are not bound by the Nyquist Sampling Theorem.
Well you’ve core bored hundreds of trees. But unless you killed them all and divied them up; I don’t see how you fill in the missing information that is lost irretrievably by inadequate sampling.
We had a crossection photo here just the last couple of months or so, that could heve yielded a host of completely different conclusions, depending on which radius, one happened to drill; and I’m sure that heaight changes would have also yielded dramatic changes.
I’m not saying it is worthless (other than for ring age), but it certainly isn’t adequate to simultaneously be a proxy for sunlight, temperature, water history, mineral changes due to flooding or other geological changes; etc etc.; all of which seem to impact wood growth.
People who gorw up on statistics seem to believe that the central limit theorem
can buy them a reprieve from non robust data prestidigitation. Nothing cicumvents violation of the Nyquist sampling criterion; which converts unknown out of band “signals” into eaqually unknown; but now in band aliassing noise; which cannot be removed except by throwing out perfectly legitimate in band signal information.
Our entire data communications structure and networks; depend intimately on the validity of the Nyquist Criterion; so wilful violation of it is not quite like a parking ticket that can be ignored.
It would be nice if pseudo dendrochronologists even mentioned the limitations of their proxy estimates.