While not really “secret”, one might describe it that way because unlike the many things Dr. Mann has been doing lately, there wasn’t one peep of press coverage about it. He helped organize this conference, and as we know Dr. Mann doesn’t shy away from reporting to the press on anything that helps his stature. Surprisingly, the usual science writers didn’t mention it, and you’d think they would, given all the major players that converged in Portugal for this event. So, it seems like they may have missed it too. Portuguese blogger “EcoTretas” only got word of this from a tip about a related story in a Portuguese newspaper. His essay is below, and there’s a lot more after that. – Anthony
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The ClimateGate Secret Meeting
A usual reader of the blog sent me yesterday an interesting news from a Portuguese newspaper. It deals with the classic Medieval Warm Period problem, in the most green Portuguese newspaper. I immediately recognized one of the worst environmental journalists in Portugal, dealing with one of my favorite issues. Interestingly enough, Ricardo Trigo, a portuguese climatologist, was trying to explain the pseudo-science behind climate change and global warming, confusing things like Greenland’s vikings and Maunder’s Minimum.
But what really interested me in the story was a reference to Phil Jones, the person in the center of the ClimateGate controversy.
And references to a conference in Portugal, regarding the Medieval Warm Period. I spent some time trying to figure out what had happened. Turned out that I had not read the news with attention: the conference had happened a month before!
Between 22 and 24 of September, a symposium entitled “The Medieval Warm Period Redux: Where and When was it warm?” was organized in Lisbon, Portugal. The Climategate mob was here, including Phil Jones, Michael Mann, Malcolm Hughes and Raymond Bradley. I bet the main point on the agenda was how “to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period“. The abstracts for the conference are available here. Probably, the best abstract of the symposium was for Malcolm K. Hughes (highlights are my responsibility):
| We meant the title of our 1994 review “Was there a Medieval Warm Period, and if so Where and When?” (Hughes and Diaz, 1994) to be read in two ways. Firstly, it was to be read quite literally. Secondly, it was meant to be ironic. The literal reading was rewarded by an attempt to identify and synthesize records thought to be appropriate to this task. Irony was used to imply that, since a clear and simple answer was not forthcoming from the review, it might be useful to reformulate the question. Please read the title of this abstract in the light of this explanation of the 1994 title.
The trajectories of these two concepts (“Medieval Warm Period” and “Medieval Climate Anomaly “) will be traced. A case will be made for the abandonment of both of them, on the grounds that they are inappropriate, uninformative, and that they very probably divert attention from more revealing ways of thinking about the Earth’s climate over the past two millennia. It is clear from many recent publications, especially many of the abstracts submitted for this meeting, that high-resolution paleoclimatology has moved firmly from the mode of descriptive climatology to that of physical climatology. As a result, there is little utility in picking over definitions of the geographic and temporal extent of putative epochs, especially in the Late Holocene. The pressing questions concern the dynamics of the climate system, and the relative roles of free and forced variations, whether the forcings are anthropogenic or not. |
All the information I’ve got till now makes me believe that this was an almost secret meeting. No news transpired, not even here in Portugal. Given the abstracts, and the one seen above, their intentions are clear! If Ricardo Trigo kept his mouth shut, nobody would probably hear about it. So I wish to thank my loyal reader for bringing this to our attention.
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Here’s more on this conference. First have a look at the attendees. It reads like a who’s who book of paleoclimatology. I’ve highlighted some of the more recognizable names.
The source of that list is the brochure, which you can download here. With all these paleo-bigwigs meeting in one place, surely somebody would have written about it?
It appears they are trying to rehabilitate the paleoclimatology so that it plays well in the next IPCC report. The main website has this to say about it:
We propose to revisit the MCA/MWP assimilating widespread and continuous paleoclimatic evidence in a homogeneous way and scale them against recent measured temperatures to allow a meaningful quantitative comparison against the 20th-century pace and magnitude of warming. It is the goal of the organizers to focus attention on this topic, so that the latest results will be considered in the next (fifth) assessment report of the IPCC.
[Annual mean NH temperature anomalies from their 1500 to 1899 means (°C) simulated by different models (lines) and compared with the concentration of overlapping NH temperature reconstructions (grey shading). Taken from Figure 6.13 of Jansen et al., 2007: Palaeoclimate. In: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Solomon et al. (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA.]
Among the topics to be discussed are:
• Reconciling multiple proxy climate records—what do the differences indicate regarding the scale of MCA/MWP climate?
• What do the latest modeling results tell us about possible forcing mechanisms during this period?
• What are some other impacts of climatic variability during the MCA/MWP regarding such topics as changes in ocean basin tropical cyclone activity?
• What were some of the key regional patterns of climatic anomalies during this time? How do they compare with 20th century patterns?
• In what specific ways does the post-1980 period, considered a time when the global warming signal is evident, different from the largest anomalous multidecadal periods of the MCA/MWP?
Clearly, they seem to be embracing the existence of the MWP, but at the same time once again they appear to be trying to figure out how to minimize it.
When you see things like this (from MBH98 co-author Malcolm K. Hughes) on the MCA/MWP:
A case will be made for the abandonment of both of them, on the grounds that they are inappropriate, uninformative, and that they very probably divert attention from more revealing ways of thinking about the Earth’s climate over the past two millennia.
And look at the attendee list and lack of press coverage, you realize it’s the same gang of people running the same game all over again.
The key is, will they learn to shoot straight this time?
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“Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” — George Orwell, ‘1984’
As for AGW and climate change…. you could also say… “A case will be made for the abandonment of both of them, on the grounds that they are inappropriate, uninformative, and that they very probably divert attention from more revealing ways of thinking about the Earth’s climate over the past two millennia”
Apparently, the Vikings main mode of transportation, the knarr, was like the modern day SUV and thus caused man made warming even back then.
Well, you can run, but you can not hide…..
Don’t they just have to revamp that old nature trick (you know the one that is not a trick at all but rather a clever thing to do) that they employed in ‘hide the decline’ ? I think that we can all guess as to what will remain of the MWP once proper homogenisation and other statistical tools have been used to massage whoops I mean to present the data in a meaningful manner easily understood by policy makers.
Well if you can’t ignore it, at least try to minimize it as much as possible (As much as they can get away with without prosecution).
Clearly they have learned nothing about ethics or how to conceal their intentions.
Go hockey team!
There will be no straight shooting here. They’ve already shown the nefarious depths to which they will stoop and the pressure to keep this charade going has to be immense.
Expect even more ridiculous conclusions to be published in the fifth assessment.
They will not go quietly into the night.
From what I can tell so far, the meme will be, yes there was a MWP and a LIA, but it doesn’t matter. “Nothing to see here, move along.”
Nothing like a fresh set of marching orders to get everyone back on the same page.
http://mwplisbon2010.fc.ul.pt/pdf/Abstracts.pdf
Where is Keith Briffa?
Remember the “The Pied Piper Of Hamelin”. In AD 1284 rats invaded Hamelin. Well, it happened again in December 17, 2008
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article5355348.ece
Well you beat me to it. It had just been posted at Tom Nelson and made my jaw drop. I posted here at once on Tips and Notes but that did not clear for a few minutes, Spam dragon problems I imagine, by which time you had it up on the front page.
Fascinating isn’t it? It raises so many issues it will take time to digest but as far the attendees are concerned the outcome cannot be good. After all there is plenty of time to take the implications apart. And publicise them.
It is what the blogosphere does so well. Cats out of bags really.
Hope all is continuing to go well with the recent medical problem.
Kindest Regards
The quoted portion of the Objectives seems to me to reveal their inability to see that their bad is empty. Viz:
“Reconciling multiple proxy climate records—what do the differences indicate regarding the scale of MCA/MWP climate?” Without any instrumental records of the ‘Medieval Climate Anomoly’ or the ‘Medieval Warm Period’, what method(s) could they possibly use to reconcile what they think their proxy records show? Note, also, that there is no mention of any possible error in those proxies.
“What do the latest modeling results tell us about possible forcing mechanisms during this period?” Since the models haven’t been shown to have any use in “predicting” existing weather/climate conditions without being “fudged” to produce them and – most especially in my mind – since output from computer models is not data nor any other sort of objective record, those results cannot possibly tell anything about anything in that period.
“What are some other impacts of climatic variability during the MCA/MWP regarding such topics as changes in ocean basin tropical cyclone activity?” Again, the utter absence of anything better than second- or third-hand proxies for measurements of “climatic variability” let alone tropical cyclone activity defeats any attempt to ascertain “other impacts”. Do you suppose the insurance companies have records of loss going back that far?
“What were some of the key regional patterns of climatic anomalies during this time?” and “How do they compare with 20th century patterns?” Once again, what are the sources, if any, of their data on regional patterns of climate, let alone anomalies? What is the “base year” or decade or century against which they are relating this missing data to? Unanswerable, to my understanding.
Much ado about nothing, redux; or so it seems to me.
Sorry to Godwinize this discussion, but it reminds me of Iran’s Holocaust Denial conference a few years ago.
Methinks they’re afraid of being made irrelevant, and thus wanna keep that research money train rolling. Make no mistake, AGW is a big time industry and the investors are not going to give up their investment easy, if ever. I wonder if they’re looking at the budget cuts in Europe & the upcoming US elections & formulating plans to keep taxpayers still on the hook for their speudo research and planet saving meetings in exotic, beachfront, tropical locations.
I don’t read many scientific papers, but it’s interesting that Hughes’ intro is written in the style of post-modern poli-sci deconstruction.
There once was a big difference between the language of the hard and soft sciences; maybe not so much any more.
“A case will be made for the abandonment of both of them, on the grounds that they are inappropriate, uninformative, and that they very probably divert attention from more revealing ways of thinking about the Earth’s climate over the past two millennia.”
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The key phrase being “divert attention”.
Do they not yet realize, every word they utter is examined under a microscope.
As it should be, considering the implications.
Ready.
Aim.
Shoot foot.
First Real Climate and the other CAGWers claim that paleo reconstructions aren’t terribly relevant to the science of climate. Then the Hockey Team opens summer training camp in secret in Portugal to try to bury the MWP – again. All while Gavin Schmidt et al. publish a paper attempting to minimize the importance of water vapor in driving climate.
Somebody should tell Tom Fuller that the other side of the debate doesn’t think it’s over yet either. The warmist leviathan is like Michael Meyers in the Halloween movies. It isn’t enough to knock him down or shoot him. Once he’s down, you have to cut his head off to make sure he’s dead.
LOL. There are all sorts of Gangs out there. Here we have a Team which I will call The Losers, who cannot admit or maybe, possibly, doubtfully, don’t know how stupid they look. Sorta like “The One.”
I think this is damning evidence against Mann in the Scamgrant Virginia case, that Cuccinello[sp?] can use to show intent to defraud, since Mann was one of the key cover-up agents at this conference. Can someone make sure this evidence gets to the VA DA? Intent is a key ingredient in government fraud cases.
Make that Loser. Or Moron.
Boy, scientists doing science (and without alerting the media!)…That does seem nefarious!
REPLY: ah… way to purposely miss the most important part of the post so that you can play snark over substance. -A
I hate it when they try to “…..rehabilitate the paleoclimatology so that it plays well in the next IPCC report.”
Ok, got my bag of grain & ready to sail . When is the global warming predicted to leave Greenland bare of cold and the fertile land that was available for the Vikings due to unfold again?
“Thank you for attending. We, and our media, await your MWP peer-reviews.”