SEPP SCIENCE EDITORIAL #21-2010 (July 10, 2010)
By S. Fred Singer, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project
Climategate: The Muir-Russell report: Some initial comments
http://www.cce-review.org/pdf/FINAL%20REPORT.pdf
In contrast to the Oxburgh report, the Muir-Russell (MR) report is quite substantive (160 pp, incl 8 appendices) and very professionally produced. MR members held some dozen meetings (presumably in Edinburgh), conducted many interviews at UAE, and accepted some 100 submissions (all unpublished). [A very few of these came from recognizable skeptics; none from Douglass, Christy or Singer, although our work is referred to on pp 148-149 — as a threat to Jones?]
I have several major criticisms, mostly connected to the fact that the MR team had no in-house competence in the relevant science (atmospheric physics and meteorology). Prof Geoffrey Boulton is a geologist, Prof Peter Clarke is a particle physicist, and Professor James Norton seems to be a general expert on engineering and business. Sir Muir Russell himself once got a degree in natural philosophy (physics). As far as one can tell, they consulted only supporters of anthropogenic global warming (AGW), i.e., supporters of the IPCC.
As a result, they could not really judge whether Phil Jones (head of the Climate Research Unit at UEA) manipulated the post-1980 temperature data, both by selection of weather stations and by applying certain corrections to individual records. Had they spoken to Joe D’Aleo or to Anthony Watts, they might have gotten a different slant on the CRU’s handling of station data.
The MR Team concentrates much of the report on the ‘hockey stick,’ and on whether the 20th century was the warmest in the past 1000 years (as claimed by Michael Mann and also by IPCC-3, relying mainly on tree-ring data,). But that issue is really irrelevant and a distraction from the main question (which is never addressed): is the warming of the past 50 years mainly anthropogenic (as claimed by IPCC-4) or natural (as asserted by NIPCC and some other IPCC critics)?
In pursuing the question, the Team must realize that the CRU deals only with land data (covering, imperfectly, only 30% of the Earth’s surface) and that sea-surface temperatures (SST) are really more important. Weather stations and trees tend to be land-based.
Also, the Team never bothers to inquire about the atmospheric temperature record from satellites, the only high-quality and truly global record in existence. They seem unaware of the substantial disparity between satellites and the CRU record.
In defense of the MR Team, they consider science to be outside of their charter and within the remit of the Oxburgh team. [See Item 5 on p.10] (Having seen the Oxburgh report, however, some might consider this a joke.) Yet the Team feels empowered to speak with authority about conclusions that depend on climate science. In fact, none of the investigations so far have had a serious look at the crucial science issues.
As a result, the Team doesn’t seem to realize [p.23 and 32] that “hide the decline” and “Mike’s [Michael Mann] ‘trick” refers to a cover-up. Mann’s 1000-yr temperature record (from proxies) suddenly stops at 1980 – not because there are no suitable post-1980 proxy data (as Mann has claimed in e-mails that responded to inquiries), but because they do not show the dramatic temperature rise of Jones’ thermometer data.
This problem recurs again with Fig 6.2 (which is Fig 3.1 from IPCC-4) and involves misuse of the ‘smoothing’ procedure, i.e., replacing annual temperatures with a ‘running average’ of (usually) five years and sometimes longer. [I discussed the matter in some detail in my Science Editorial 8-09 (2-28-2009)]. As can be seen by inspection, there is little rise in temperature between 1980 and 1996, until the ‘super-El-Nino’ of 1998 (which has nothing to do with GH gases or AGW). The satellite record shows more clearly the absence of any significant temperature rise between 1979 and 1997.
It is ironic then that the real post-1980 global temperatures may be closer to the proxy record than to the thermometer record. We will find out when we learn what data Michael Mann discarded.
In this connection, the legal demand for all of Mann’s data by Virginia’s Attorney-General Ken Cuccinelli assumes additional significance. Based on his own statements, one suspects that Jones has deleted some crucial e-mails. It is likely that these may be discovered among Mann’s e-mails, now held by the University of Virginia. It might put a new light on the whole Climategate affair.
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Anthony, did you make a submission on the topics you are cited here on? If not, why not?
REPLY: I did make a Parliamentary submission some months back, so did Steve McIntyre. Like Steve, I was never contacted. – Anthony
Anyone who has read those emails and doesn’t think anything is amiss is either a moron or involved in a cover-up type of operation. At the least it is academic dishonesty and at the worst it’s out and out fraud. What they admitted to in those emails is not science, it is financially motivated political activism through the gerrymandering of climate data. If there was any integrity in the climatology science circles, these men would be ostracized.
[snip – I won’t allow you to insult Dr. Singer with such insulting words unless you have the courage to put your words to your name, and, I don’t give a rattus norvegius butt if you don’t like that. Otherwise clean it up and resubmit – Anthony]
Why won’t they let any skeptic groups in?
You would only have to read the “Harry_Read_Me.txt” to see what state Phil Jones’s data bases were in. How they got any result from that mess is beyond me. Anyway, if I’m not sure, I’ll just make it up ! And I have.
Adding to what I said above, I’t seems to me that Muir Russel didn’t know what he was doing either, and took the page from Harry’s book, and “Just made it up…” So he did !
In my 20 Years in nuclear power, I had plenty of exposure to the “anti-nuclear kooks”.
Observations: ALL of them were left of center, some were outright “communists”,all at least socialists.
Second observation: Their “experts” trotted out for public hearings, debates, etc. were always “particle physics” types. They were usually teaching physics at a state college, or private college as a “day job”. Here’s the parallel with the Muir group: The anti-nuke “experts” once wore a radiation badge (TLD generally, some of the older ones, actual “film” badges) , and therefore were “experts” on all aspects of NUCLEAR power. I.e., Radiation Health Physics, emissions, fuel cycle, etc. (Never mind the fact that they never had to worry about contaminated areas, moving tons of highly radioactive materials about without incident, and managing to generate something besides “papers”, i.e. electricity to run society!)
I guess once again there might be one more similarity between the anti-nukes and the Muir group. I doubt that any of the folks in the Muir group has had direct involvement with such systems or groups as actually provide real services and real products to the public. Mostly just paper. Pity!
I think “we” (skeptics) have no need to apologize for our lack of “formal” credentials.
In point of fact, I’ve seen “amateur” work on WUWT that makes much of the politically charged work by the AGW types look pretty, well, “amateur” itself!
REPLY: Regarding radiation badges…some days I wish I had a crap dosimeter for the stuff I’m exposed to.
;o) – A
Re Norwegian Rat: Anthony, as the agw walls crumble, you can expect that civil warmists who were taken in by the scam will continue to abandon ship and you will be dealing more and more with the residual ideologue rats. How I miss the many talented, gifted, respectful agwers that are very few these days.
Anthony– Ah, well the MR thing is quite separate from the parliamentary thing, and they did seem to take at least some portions of the submissions that Steve made to them seriously enough to address some of those points in their report, so perhaps they might have with yours as well if you’d made one to them. Ah well, barn doors and horses and all that.
REPLY: I recollect submitting the same report to Muir IIRC. But can’t remember, and writing from laptop so don’t have all my references. I know I didn’t send anything to Oxburgh -A
Don Easterbrook, the Mann Hockey Stick graph, and 1900 studies about the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age:
Jeez Tony, is “delusional” that bad. Oh that’s right I insulted your “research”.
Let me put it this way: the report did not concentrate on the hockey stick, unless you consider 8 pages out of 120 to constitute concentration. The complaints about the surface temp record seem odd in light of the fact that the Muir Russell report took the more direct approach of just simply replicating the work of the CRU. Using either adjusted or unadjusted data they got results which agree with the other attempts at an analysis of the land surface record. His call for comparison with the satellite record is silly since the the satellite record and the surface record agree to a large extent. In addition the comparison of the land record produced by CRU and the record produced by their replication is the proper test to make. So far no one is screaming about the SST record in the late 20th century and the CRU has no part in producing the SST record. His comments about Mann have no relevance to the terms of the Muir Russell report, since Mann’s work was not a part of the terms of reference.
I would note also that other than the initial “derogatory” comment about Singer, that I kept the bulk of my comment evidence based. The same evidence is presented in this comment, although since I had a little time to think about it, it my be stated in better terms. Feel free to delete the first sentence.
REPLY: Having had to deal with a friend who had a mental illness, and seeing people ridicule him, yes, I’m a bit touchy when people apply such labels wantonly. But I see you’ve stepped into the light in a subsequent comment, and for that courage I thank you. – Anthony
And oh yeah, me real name:
John M. Sully
113 South 9th Ave. Apt A.
Bozeman, MT 59715.
Phone number for all those who want to make threatening calls: [removed – no reason to post this]. I don’t care.
REPLY: Welcome to the light Mr. Sully, post your comments then. – Anthony
Had they spoken to Joe D’Aleo or to Anthony Watts, they might have gotten a different slant on the CRU’s handling of station data.
Joe D’Aleo. Listen and watch for 20 minutes. You’ll get an earful.
part 1
Joe D’Aleo
part 2
Anthony, thank you for the honorary Dr. title, but I am not a Dr., nor do I even have a BS. I studied Computer Science in the 1980’s and like many was offered a very lucrative job before I graduated. Poverty for another year or a good job, what would you do?
REPLY: Fixed, sorry. -A
Dr. Singer states:
” As a result, the Team doesn’t seem to realize [p.23 and 32] that “hide the decline” and “Mike’s [Michael Mann] ‘trick” refers to a cover-up. Mann’s 1000-yr temperature record (from proxies) suddenly stops at 1980 – not because there are no suitable post-1980 proxy data (as Mann has claimed in e-mails that responded to inquiries), but because they do not show the dramatic temperature rise of Jones’ thermometer data.”
I may have this wrong, but my understanding is that, although it is related to Mann’s hockeystick chronology, it is actually Briffa’s tree-ring data that was truncated in the “hide the decline” trick because in the last third of the 20th century it diverged (downward) from the temperature record and implies that either something was wrong with the temperature record, or something was wrong with tree-rings as a climate proxy. Mann’s role was to pressure Briffa to delete the offending portion of the graph hiding the tail under other “spaghetti” and Jones was only too happy to assist.
Rattus Norvegicus says:
July 10, 2010 at 9:21 pm
the report did not concentrate on the hockey stick, unless you consider 8 pages out of 120
It only needed two sentences:
The Mann Hockey Stick graph is bad science.
The Mann Hockey Stick graph is used for political and environmental propaganda.
And oh yeah, just in case a call is too personal, my email is johnsully@hotmail.com
REPLY: I think you assume too much in thinking people want to threaten you, my only issue is being on a level playing field. If one should want to apply insults and labels to people, I’ve always felt that one should have the courage to put their name to it. You’ve now done that. -A
Rattus Norvegicus
867-5309 should have been the clearest lesson why you shouldn’t put your phone number out in public.
Of course Anthony, you don’t apply the same standards to those who post content free comments which support you.
Help me out here, is it “Russell” or “Russel”?
[It’s Russell. ~dbs, mod.]
Nobody is fooled by this pal-review melarkey.
David44,
You have this wrong in the details. Briffa had always truncated the data in 1960 because he discovered the “divergence problem”. This was something that was well discussed in the literature, as pointed out in the report. Osborne provided the final data, which had been processed with an updated method and cut the data off in 1960. In earlier emails he had told Mann not to use the data after 1960 because of the problems which were discovered.
It seems that there were some problems with the earlier data set because it did not agree well with other efforts as it did not seem to reflect long term variability properly. The new methodology did handle this properly. You might argue that Briffa’s new paper (I think it was in Science, year 2000) was an attempt to bring his data into line with other reconstructions, except that Briffa was interested in developing methods to retain long term climate signals in tree ring data. I don’t see any evidence in the published literature that Briffa was way off base, although this would require a search of the literature post TAR. But if you do this there does not seem to be any systematic refutation of his methodology post TAR.
Basically, the conclusion of “nothing to see here” is correct.
Amino Acids, I don’t care, the NRA calls me every day looking for money. Don’t make me no nevermind.
Rattus Norvegicus says:
July 10, 2010 at 10:27 pm
content free
The Hockey Stick is content free; content free of science, that is. The data will show you that. But it has lots of political and environmentalism content. Looking at the political reports on it, environmentalist’s attitudes toward it, and Al Gore’s movie will show you that.