Fred Singer on the BEST project

I hope they have “GREAT” success in their quest for the “TRUTH”!!!!

This is absolutely what must be done immediately in climate science if it is to regain any credibility whatsoever. However, I do wish that a larger body of scientists, including sceptics, had been involved in setting out the details. The project should not be limited to land surface measurements and, most important of all, the project should introduce entirely new systems of measurement based on the best technologies but especially to include continuous recording through fail-safe computer networks. This project is worthy of serious funding.

Im curious to see if BEST might give a NH that resembles the original collection of temperature sets:
http://hidethedecline.eu/media/PERPLEX/fig52.jpg
(fig 52 of http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/the-perplexing-temperature-data-published-1974-84-and-recent-temperature-data-180.php)
K.R. Frank

sharper00 says:
February 19, 2011 at 12:00 pm
Much as I hate to admit it. I agree. The trick was to hide the decline in the proxy data, not the adjusted LIG thermometer record.
Wouldn’t it be interesting if the proxies were right & the adjustments made to thermometers were wrong?
I’m not going to argue temps though as whatever they do, it’s irrelevant. Temps ain’t energy, end of argument.
DaveE.

“However, the most serious revelation from the e-mails is that they tried to “hide the decline” in temperatures, using various “tricks” in order to keep alive a myth of rising temperatures in support of the dogma of anthropogenic global warming. ”
Yikes!!! that is just so wrong!!!!!!!
The decline was in tree temperature data. This followed thermometer readings until the 60s then started falling. There are papers written by UEA that query why this happened.
The thermometer temperature has been rising since the late 60s. the tree data is therefore in error. after this time.
The HIDE part refers to a leaflet written by the WMO where a graph was provided that appended the valid thermometer readings to the possibly valid tree readings calculated berfore the 60s. The decline in tree temperatures were therefore hidden.
Dr. Fred Singer should be ashamed of his distortion of reality

The good thing about Dr Singer’s pieces is that the sheer shrillness of the tone should immediately tick off thinking readers that something is afoot (special marks for the “myth of rising temperatures” bit).
More seriously: I can’t find any Arthur Rosenfeld at UCSB or GATech. Presumably this is not Arthur H. Rosenfeld from the California Energy Commission /UC Berkeley?

“tallbloke says: February 19, 2011 at 12:44 pm
I think Fred does know exactly what the Team mean, but likes to court controversy by saying something ambiguous.”
That has to be a quote of the week
Keep on defending, It gives me a laugh!

@tallbloke
“I think Fred does know exactly what the Team mean, but likes to court controversy by saying something ambiguous.”
There’s nothing ambiguous here, the statement is completely wrong and strongly suggests Fred Singer either can’t get basic facts right or doesn’t let basic facts get in the way of his argument.
Unless everyone wants to argue that temperatures have actually declined since 1960 and tree proxies are the only reliable measurement of this then scientists did not ” keep alive a myth of rising temperatures in support of the dogma of anthropogenic global warming.” as alleged.

walt man says: February 19, 2011 at 12:37 pm
Some stuff about the output of the UEA modeling code, some stuff about the retro-cast explanation and white-wash in general.
Walt, you might want to look at the infection in the code that caused the graph to rise.
http://www.thespoof.com/news/spoof.cfm?headline=s5i64103
The code (FOI2009/FOIA/documents/harris-tree/briffa_sep98_e.pro) did Exactly what the author intended. It drove the MWP down and the industrial era up.
The computer code is a complete context, unlike the emails, it requres No interpertation of the intent, the meaning or the purpose; it is a complete description of the intent of the author.
The hockey stick was the objective, the code was the means, the data was irrelevent.
You could have fed the program noise and you would have got the same result. Actually given the error bars in the data, it likely could be considered tat the input was in fact just noise.

steven mosher says:
February 19, 2011 at 1:30 pm
Fred singer. Try to be more careful explaining the mails you probably never read.
Your statement is wrong. Those of us who dedicated months to investigating the mails, years to investigating tree rings and temperatures deserve better. At this stage you should know better.
========================================
Mosh, can you add a short note showing where Fred was wrong?

Andrew30 says: February 19, 2011 at 1:35 pm
…
Walt, you might want to look at the infection in the code that caused the graph to rise.
The code (FOI2009/FOIA/documents/harris-tree/briffa_sep98_e.pro) did Exactly what the author intended. It drove the MWP down and the industrial era up.
Lets look at a bit more of that code:
; Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!
;yrloc=[1400,findgen(19)*5.+1904]
valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,-0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,$
2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor
if n_elements(yrloc) ne n_elements(valadj) then message,’Oooops!’
yearlyadj=interpol(valadj,yrloc,timey)
;
;filter_cru,5.,/nan,tsin=yyy+yearlyadj,tslow=tslow
;oplot,timey,tslow,thick=5,color=20
;
filter_cru,5.,/nan,tsin=yyy,tslow=tslow
oplot,timey,tslow,thick=5,color=21
yearlyadj=interpol(valadj,yrloc,timey)
Does not this line give a yearly adjustment value interpolated from the 20 year points?
filter_cru,5.,/nan,tsin=yyy,tslow=tslow oplot,timey,tslow,thick=5,color=21
Does not this line plot data derived from yyy
;filter_cru,5.,/nan,tsin=yyy+yearlyadj,tslow=tslow
;oplot,timey,tslow,thick=5,color=20
The smoking gun line!!!!
Does not his line plot data derived from yyy+yearlyadj The FUDGED FIGURE
BUT…………
IT’S COMMENTED OUT!!
This is further backed up by the end of file:
plot,[0,1],/nodata,xstyle=4,ystyle=4
;legend,[‘Northern Hemisphere April-September instrumental temperature’,$
; ‘Northern Hemisphere MXD’,$
; ‘Northern Hemisphere MXD corrected for decline’],$
; colors=[22,21,20],thick=[3,3,3],margin=0.6,spacing=1.5
legend,[‘Northern Hemisphere April-September instrumental temperature’,$
‘Northern Hemisphere MXD’],$
colors=[22,21],thick=[3,3],margin=0.6,spacing=1.5
To me this looks as if ‘Northern Hemisphere MXD corrected for decline’ would have been printed in colour 20 – just the same as the smoking gun line. HOWEVER you will note that this section is commented out also.
This code was written in 1998. If it had been implemented in any document then there would have been no leaked emails about hiding the decline
What is more – The code does not touch the medieval warm period
Also worth a look (hidden????)
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/research/
about 13th project

I wonder if the objective of BEST is still to try to produce a meaningless number – an AVERAGE global temperature change from data that has such a wide spread annual and decadal swing as to be utterly meaningless.
I wonder how BEST is going to deal with UHI, poor siting, “drift siting” (from rural to urban) and airport bias that may or may not have completely different causality to rural global average temperature change? Further, I wonder how BEST will deal with the lack of uniform siting of the historical record, the lack of sites at the temp extremes, the lack of sites in difficult locations, (mountain slopes, glaciers, deserts, jungles) record discontinuities, and the lack of adequate auditing to verify verity?
Finally, based on the graphic video shown here on a previous post of modeled global CO2 changes over time that was more modeling-to-fill-in-the-blank guesstimate than actual data, based on fewer actual data points – it seems to me that ALL of the data that are being used – historical temp, “adjusted” current land and sea temp, CO2 and especially proxys – trying to find truth in any of it is a sisyphean waste of time and money. And since it is so very easy and tempting to introduce your personal bias, your group’s genera political bias, or your funding source’s bias, it will be impossible to conduct the blinded or double blinded analyses necessary to prove correctness and draw meaningful conclusions.
Before the work even starts, I am skeptical of the results, and bemoan the waste of good money chasing after bad . . .

Using a new magnifying glass to refigure Earth’s global temperature from a sad assortment of surface-based measurements made during the past 150 years or so is another exercise in futility. It would seem equally rewarding to inspect the old products of buggy-whip makers and their peddlers to see if there was something wrong with the materials or the sales methods they used.
Global temperature measurements made by satellites for the past 30 years or so cover almost the entire globe including the oceans, are not affected by poor siting conditions and rapidly growing urban heat islands. Just junk the hopelessly polluted surface data and look at what the satellites are reporting — lots of noise in the data, but no signal to validate the IPCC’s AGW buggy-whip.

Fred Singer: “…support comes mostly from a group of charitable foundations.”
The Berkeley project, in as far as it generates an ‘open source’ Temp database and involves the likes of Judith Curry is excellent. Charitable foundation funding however is no comfort, in case anyone should infer this from Dr Singer’s neutral statement.
Further to JohnWho above, the fourth listed donor:
Fund for Innovative Climate and Energy Research (created by Bill Gates).
Bill Gates’ TED Speech 2010: “To cut CO2 emissions to zero and stop climate change — a problem that he said is bigger than creating new vaccines — Gates urged researchers to find clean sources of energy. CNN reports: Gates said the deadline for the world to cut all of its carbon emissions is 2050.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/12/bill-gates-ted-speech-201_n_461034.html

One of the lead scientists is Robert Rohdes, now Phd physics, but use to run Global Warming Art through Wikipedia.
For many of us, Global Warming Art was our first exposure to objective data that covered a wide range of topics. I know I replicated many of the charts that needed alot of processing and I always concluded Robert did it right in the end. So, I’m okay with the group as long as they show all the raw data as well as the processed data.

I spent the day with the BEST team yesterday at Lawrence Livermore Berkeley Laboratories
So you were in that cold rain down here. It smelled so clean though.

sharparoo: “There’s nothing ambiguous here, the statement is completely wrong and strongly suggests Fred Singer either can’t get basic facts right or doesn’t let basic facts get in the way of his argument.
Unless everyone wants to argue that temperatures have actually declined since 1960 and tree proxies are the only reliable measurement of this then scientists did not ” keep alive a myth of rising temperatures in support of the dogma of anthropogenic global warming.” as alleged.”
I too think Fred Singer has this wrong. While it is certainly true that the Team tried to “hide the decline” in the temperature signal from their proxies, the real issue is the value of the proxies. What sort of scientists find that the data they’ve been using for a 1500 year reconstruction has, for no reason they can explain, diverged from measurable temperature records, then proceed to truncate the records, or in Jones’ case add the temperature records to the end of the period, without asking themselves whether these proxies can be trusted. If we have a divergence in the late 20th century that cannot be explained how on earth is it possible to trust these proxies to give us accurate temperature measurements for the previous 1400 years. That’s the scandal in “hide the decline”, continuing to use the proxies when there was an unexplained divergence in the 20th century.

A word or two on Singer saying “using various “tricks” in order to keep alive a myth of rising temperatures in support of the dogma of anthropogenic global warming”.
Before the emails came to light, Steve Mac had raised issues with the truncation of a series of labelled “Briffa” in two IPCC reports. This falls within the scope of Singer’s choice of words.
walt man says: “The HIDE part refers to a leaflet written by the WMO where a graph was provided that appended the valid thermometer readings to the possibly valid tree readings calculated berfore the 60s. The decline in tree temperatures were therefore hidden.”
OK – that’s another example.
If there were any attempts to manipulate peer review with regard to relevant analysis, these could also fall within the scope of Singer’s choice of words.
walt man needs to do more work to support his assertion that Singer has distorted reality.

Heh, funny, I spent the day today at Lawrence Berkeley while you were at Lawrence Livermore.

Dr. Singer said: “However, the most serious revelation from the e-mails is that they tried to “hide the decline” in temperatures, using various “tricks” in order to keep alive a myth of rising temperatures in support of the dogma of anthropogenic global warming. ”
Taken in the context of what was happening at the time, his statement is a close approximation of the truth. Here’s why:
I used to believe in AWG. One day a guest blogger on boingboing posted a clearly reasoned, cogent argument that the hockey stick was flawed because it erased the medieval warm period. That got my attention. I had studied the European settlement of Greenland (as a hobby). The historical evidence indicated that the settlement of Greenland ended when the climate got too cold to support farming.
The editors at boingboing posted a counter article in which they pointed to a link and said something like: “See there, the hockey stick does too exist.” Neither the article nor the link it pointed to passed the smell test. Some time later, both articles disappeared. The result was that I now became interested in AGW and started paying some serious attention to it.
I have spent a large part of my career in both scientific and engineering environments and am acutely aware of the difference. The job of scientists is to speculate. Engineers, on the other hand, require something like certainty. The basic legal requirement for Engineering is that people can bet their lives on your work. If scientists had to work to that standard, they would never discover anything. My initial ‘smell test’ reaction was much better stated by Burt Rutan: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/03/aviation-pioneer-and-master-engineer-burt-rutan-on-global-warming/
Dr. Singer states the truth. ‘The Team’ bent over backward to attempt to erase the Medieval Warm Period. Splicing thermometer readings to the proxy readings to ‘hide the decline’ was far from the only trick they tried. IMHO, Singer may be too polite to ‘The Team’. If they were engineers, not scientists, they would lose their licenses.

As so many have stated above “if tree rings were not accurate proxies after 1960 why should we believe they were accurate before 1960”? It defies logic that when tested against thermometers they failed but were still considered reliable as proxies. How can anyone claiming to be a scientist be so deceived?
I am but a simple farmer yet I know that growing any crop requires a multitude of inputs all of which are necessary in the correct amounts at the correct time to ensure successful production. It takes just one input to be sub-optimum to cause production loss or in some cases complete failure. The most obvious is a lack of water at critical times. Trees are just another crop and react in much the same way as corn or lucerne.

@tallbloke
“The point is that the decline in tree ring proxy temperature was hidden by overlaying a thick red instrumental temperature curve. “
That isn’t Singer’s point.
This post is about instrumental records and Fred Singer used the “Hide the decline” line to suggest that the other instrumental records were hiding a real decline in temperatures which this new one will presumably correct.
“Singer knows all this”
Does he?
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=6640
“The UEA e-mails tell us of attempts to “hide the decline” (of temperature) using “Mike [Mann]’s Nature trick.” It is important now to discover the truth, either from e-mail evidence or by direct testimony. Unfortunately, none of the investigations so far have delved into this matter, but instead have produced what amounts to a series of whitewashes. “
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/10/fred-singer-on-the-muir-russel-report/
“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.”
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/02/the_end_of_the_ipcc.html
“We learn from the e-mails that the ClimateGate gang was able to “hide the decline” [of global temperature] by applying what they termed as “tricks,” and that they intimidated editors and forced out those judged to be “uncooperative.” No doubt, thorough investigations, now in progress or planned, will disclose the full range of their nefarious activities. “
It’s clear that Singer believes “hide the decline” refers to a real decline in temperatures which have been covered up, not the ad-hoc explanation you just invented about not having the space to be vaguely accurate.
“Seems to work too.”
Apparently it only works on people who care about accuracy. Others seem to be more skilled at reversing the clear meaning of others to make it whatever they need it to be.

bob paglee says
Global temperature measurements made by satellites for the past 30 years or so cover almost the entire globe including the oceans, are not affected by poor siting conditions and rapidly growing urban heat islands. Just junk the hopelessly polluted surface data and look at what the satellites are reporting — lots of noise in the data, but no signal to validate the IPCC’s AGW buggy-whip.
I totally agree. Why on earth try to make a new record of a very dubious record. The satellite record is the best so far so why not stick with it? Rehashing the land temp record is no different to going back to ships taking temps from buckets and ignoring ARGO. Wasted effort. Just make sure the IPCC can’t adjust the satellite and ARGO data.

K says:
February 19, 2011 at 2:06 pm
I propose that WWF, Greenpeace, The Sierra Club, Al Gore, and the like be deemed part of a group called the World Temperature Federation. Think about it (but not too long).
8^D

walt man says: February 19, 2011 at 2:02 pm
Wrote a poorly constructed explanation of a completly different program.
I don’t expect that Walt was the author of the response.
briffa_sep98_e.pro
Line 4:
—
; Reads Harry’s regional timeseries and outputs the 1600-1992 portion
— Poor Harry, we know about his story..
Line 10:
—
valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,-0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,$
2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor
—
Lines 53-70
—
; APPLY ARTIFICIAL CORRECTION
;
yearlyadj=interpol(valadj,yrloc,x)
densall=densall+yearlyadj
;
; Now plot them
;
filter_cru,20,tsin=densall,tslow=tslow,/nan
cpl_barts,x,densall,title=’Age-banded MXD from all sites’,$
xrange=[1399.5,1994.5],xtitle=’Year’,/xstyle,$
zeroline=tslow,yrange=[-7,3]
oplot,x,tslow,thick=3
oplot,!x.crange,[0.,0.],linestyle=1
;
endfor
;
; Restore the Hugershoff NHD1 (see Nature paper 2)
;
—
valadj is Not Altered between lines 10 and 53.
Line 67 is the last statement in the primary processsing for loop (endfor)
Each series in the loop is altered using valadj via yearlyadj immediately before plotting.
None of this is commented out.
Perhaps you are looking at an ‘adjusted’ version of the source code.
Try this:
http://ukginger.net/FOI2009/FOIA/documents/harris-tree/briffa_sep98_e.pro
PS:
The lines from your post:
; ‘Northern Hemisphere MXD’,$
; ‘Northern Hemisphere MXD corrected for decline’],$
Do NOT appear in the code (briffa_sep98_e.pro), in fact most of wat you posted is NOT in the code.
The code you used was from briffa_sep98_d.pro, the Prior version the program.
The last version know is briffa_sep98_e.pro.
You are being deceptive or you are being decieved.
Nice try, but you fail.
I feel that briffa_sep98_e.pro is the encoding of a lie.

@tallbloke
“Sharper: Which do you think is more egregious, the Team’s hiding of the decline, or Singer’s characterisation of it?”
We’re talking about what Fred Singer said on the post in which Fred Singer said it and you want to talk about “the team”. Says a lot really.
I wonder what Singer will say if the new temperature record agrees with the existing ones and whether his comments will be better than teenage acne or worse than teenage acne. If better we can presumably give him a pass.

Once again, you need to watch the pea under the thimble. Few would disagree that the earth has warmed a little in the past 150 years. So what are this fine folk gonna do, confirm it, or tell us is was worse than we thought? We are all missing the point, it is the CAUSE of the change in temperatures which is the prime consideration, and I doubt that a trace gas, about 0.039% of the earths atmosphere is the reason. We have had some serious cooling in the past three years, and I wouldn’t believe a word what any group of thermometer stats say. They are wasting their and our time trying to tell us that it is warmer/colder/the same. We need to know WHY! Watch the pea.

Walt;
One more thing.
I expect that the code that follows the
; Restore the Hugershoff NHD1 (see Nature paper 2)
Comment is reproduction of ‘Mikes nature trick’, you can look at the code and if you understand it it will be clear. Here are the highlights.
restore,filename=’../tree5/densadj_MEAN.idlsave’
; Extract the post 1600 part
..
densadj=densadj+yearlyadj
…
; Now overplot their bidecadal components
…
; Now overplot their 50-yr components
…
; Now compute the full, high and low pass correlations between the two
; series
;
perst=1400.
peren=1992.
…
ts1=densadj(klh)
[Walt remember where densadj came from; yearlyadj which includes valadj (the fudge)]
…
printf,1,’Age-banded vs. Hugershoff-standardised’
…
—
That print statment does not seem to transarently explain the fudge.
You could have put a straight line (segment) through this thing and you would have got a hockey stick out. No other outcome was possible.

re. Kramer’s comment:
“What worries me about this project is that it’s being done at UC Berkeley. That town is practically Moscow west.”
I suggest that one views the web site of Professor Muller, a key member of the team, and physics professor. He teaches the course “Physics for Future Presidents” and has an excellent book out on the subject. His lectures are on the web for all to see. Below is his web address. I suggest we all listen/view lecture 28, especially the beginning. His beginnings are fifteen minutes of answers and comments on any questions from the class. The beginning of lecture 28 is about the “Hockey Stick,” and the time of the particular class is about one week before Copenhagen.
I believe you will find him to be objective and truthful and not afraid to speak out.
http://muller.lbl.gov/teaching/Physics10/PffP.html

Thanks D King
Everyone should watch the Dr. Muller video. Watch the whole thing it’s only 11 minutes long.

Sleepalot says:
February 19, 2011 at 2:01 pm
John Robertson says:
“The thermometer temperature has been rising since the late 60s. the tree data is therefore in error. after this time. ”
Lol. Brilliant deduction, sir! How, pray tell, did the trees learn to lie ?
Imo, the mistake the Team made was to get their trees from the wilds: if they’d
got them from urban sites, they might’ve shown the same warming that urban
thermometers do.
The problem here is I was actually quoting ‘walt man’ for the line you attributed to me. Unfortunately I had neglected to italicize the quote (my bad – I don’t know the cite attributes and must read up on them!) and that led to the confusion. I agree that the fact that the trees diverged from the temperature data in the 1960s is quite interesting and (to me at least) makes any tree ring data suspect for (pre) historical times until that discrepancy is explained by something other than ‘anomalous behaviour’ which only means ‘haven’t a clue’.

Fred Singer and the heartland institute are 2 good reasons skeptics get called “deniers”… Skeptics should distance themselves from their nonsense to maintain any credibility…

Robb876 says:
February 19, 2011 at 5:24 pm
Fred Singer and the heartland institute are 2 good reasons skeptics get called “deniers”… Skeptics should distance themselves from their nonsense to maintain any credibility…
=====================================
Robb, would you like a list of the people the true believers should distance themselves from……..should we start at 10,000 and work our way back

lawrie says:
February 19, 2011 at 3:32 pm
Why on earth try to make a new record of a very dubious record. The satellite record is the best so far so why not stick with it? Rehashing the land temp record is no different to going back to ships taking temps from buckets and ignoring ARGO. Wasted effort. Just make sure the IPCC can’t adjust the satellite and ARGO data.
Three cheers!

I now have more ‘faith’ (is that the right word?) that something good may come out of this after reviewing the video of one of Richard Muller’s talks. It appears that he is at least sceptical to the correctness of the temperature record as presently compiled by the Team. If he is a key player and if he approaches this with an open mind, perhaps a more ‘accurate’ temperature record will be achieved.
Of course, there will always be the problem with error bars, the problem that a global record is instrinsically absurd and measuring temperature is not a measurement of energy. All of these failings will mean that caution will alwasys need to be applied when considering the relevance of the temperature record.

JPeden says:
February 19, 2011 at 5:50 pm
“Just make sure the IPCC can’t adjust the satellite and ARGO data.”
Well said.
Beware sensor calibrations!

D. King says:
February 19, 2011 at 6:19 pm
JPeden says:
February 19, 2011 at 5:50 pm
“Just make sure the IPCC can’t adjust the satellite and ARGO data.”
Well said.
Agreed, but lawrie was the one who said it!

I didnt’ see a damn thing in the methodology about correcting for UHI.
Anybody here willing to bet the results are more than 0.05C different than the hockey team’s pencil whipped result?
I wouldn’t bet on it. This is just an attempt to lend credibility to the extant claims. The data collection methods were just never designed or intended to have the kind of accuracy needed to detect a miniscule GHG signature riding on top of far greater natural variation. It’s an exercise in polishing a turd and everybody knows you can’t polish a turd.

Robert E. Phelan says:
February 19, 2011 at 6:21 pm
“correspondence between the instrumental and proxy records was close until 1960 when they began to diverge”
Sure they were. If you have enough trees to choose from it’s easy enough to find some that show what you want. Unfortunately none of those worked really well in the last several decades so they just stopped using tree rings and stitched in thermometer data instead which showed what they wanted to show.
The bottom line remains that if the tree rings weren’t a good proxy in the last 40 years you cannot claim they were a good proxy for the 800 years preceding that. What Mann did was bogus, dishonest, and several other adjectives which propriety prevents me from writing here. Anyone who argues otherwise can apply the same adjectives to themselves.

Redherrings abound, Cadae has nailed the context of “Hide The Decline”, Fred Singer is accurate in his description of the multiple fraud by team IPCC. The period of climate being argued has steadily shrunk since Steve McIntyre started asking questions, soon the sky is falling section will be calling todays weather unprecedented since breakfast. Sort of like the concensus has fallen from 2500 to 0052. Or is it now 18? Saying the temperature increase since 1960 is significant is a deliberate ploy. The defense of the CRU emails ,of context ,was ironic to say the least.

Andrew30 says: February 19, 2011 at 3:59 pm
briffa_sep98_e.pro
Line 4:
—
; Reads Harry’s regional timeseries and outputs the 1600-1992 portion
Line 10:
—
valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,-0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,$
2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor
—
========================
Notice that phrase “fudge factor” doesn’t sound like hiding to me!
========================
Lines 53-70
—
; APPLY ARTIFICIAL CORRECTION
I feel that briffa_sep98_e.pro is the encoding of a lie.
did you notice this:
;****** APPLIES A VERY ARTIFICIAL CORRECTION FOR DECLINE*********
Hiding????
Next file calibrate_nhrecon
; Specify period over which to compute the regressions (stop in 1960 to avoid
; the decline that affects tree-ring density records)
next file recon_overpeck
; Specify period over which to compute the regressions (stop in 1940 to avoid
; the decline
(I think they mean 1960 !! to agree with the code that follows)
Next File recon_esper.pro
recon_mann.pro
recon2.pro
recon_jones.pro
recon_tornyamataim.pro
All the same comment added in the header
Hiding?? I do not think so
recon_tornyamataim.pro
Seems to be the later version of your files:
densadj=reform(rawdat(2:3,*))
ml=where(densadj eq -99.999,nmiss)
densadj(ml)=!values.f_nan
Note no yearlyadj no valadj
So which programme was used to publish??

Dr. Singer is being generous when he says that “[The Climategate protagonists] undermined the peer-review system.” They MANIPULATED the peer-review system so as to try to exclude opposing research and to intimidate editors who did have an inclination to publish such work. Then, having contrived this nearly impermeable wall of opposition, they and their supporters could puff themselves up as self righteous and demean any work that was not “peer reviewed.”
The BEST project has the potential to begin to establish badly needed credibility in the field. But we have been burned before. “Trust but eerify.”

sharper00 says:
February 19, 2011 at 12:00 pm
“However, the most serious revelation from the e-mails is that they tried to “hide the decline” in temperatures, using various “tricks” in order to keep alive a myth of rising temperatures in support of the dogma of anthropogenic global warming.”
“I’m pretty sure that anyone even remotely familiar with the climategate emails, even people who think everyone involved should be stuffed into a cannon and fired into the sun, knows this claim is simply not correct.”
Jones, Mann, and others lied and presented graphs which falsely showed that tree ring data continued to show rising temperatures after 1960 when the data in fact showed a decline. Spin it how you want. They are liars.

Pretty soon the trolls are going to be so annoying that there will be no point in posting to this site. If there were some redeeming value in the trolls, I could maybe understand posting what they write, but I do not see it.

I’m staying cautious on this until we see more. There are few reasons for optimism:
– I suspect that they will likely release all the raw data, adjusted data, methods and code.
– The involvement of physicists (or anyone from the ‘hard’ sciences) is probably a positive. Even the ones with an agenda tend to have more rigor in their work than they typical Team ‘climate scientist’.
– The involvement of some lukewarmers.
– Seeking input from the skeptic community.
There are also reasons for pessimism:
– Some of the funding appears to come from agenda-driven sources.
– Focus on the temperature record is generally not conducive to promoting skepticism among the public. Most skeptics acknowledge that the temperature has increased since the little ice age, just not as much as the alarmists assert. The key point that remains unaddressed in this effort is “why the temperature is increasing”. Due to the last few decades of relentless propaganda, most members of the public will just assume that any increase they hear about is man-made, even if the “why” is left unaddressed. Therefore any improved data set that shows the temperature is increasing, even if less than previously thought, does little to help the skeptical viewpoint but is a PR “win” for the alarmists.
– If you were one of the leaders behind the climate alarmist movement, now that the existing temperature records are so thoroughly suspect, it would be a logical strategic move to commission a new temperature record that would appear more legitimate. In fact, if you were clever you would probably try to include (or appear to include) some of the things in the “optimistic” list above (as long as your desired outcome could still be guaranteed). It would be particularly damaging to your opponents if you could get some leading climate skeptics to endorse the methodology before the results are released.
Thus, even if the results are completely unbiased and accurate, it’s probably not going to be much help to the skeptics but can easily be spun to support the alarmist agenda (“see, the world actually is warming due to CO2 just not yet as fast as we thought. That means there’s still time for Cap and Trade to still save your children’s future!”)
Certainly, a more accurate and transparent temperature record will help the fundamental science (for those that want to pursue it honestly), however even the best case outcome for skeptics is still likely to be neutral-to-slightly-negative for the political battle and near-term public opinion.

In the beginning was the decline.
Then there was the desire to CONCEAL (sorry, HIDE) the decline.
Then there was the HIDING of the decline.
Then there was the discovery of the HIDING of the decline.
Then there was the protracted discussion about which decline was being HIDDEN.
Okay, the HIDING wasn’t a roaring sucess, but the intent was not HIDDEN.

Scientists have only their credibility to support or defend them. Honesty must be expected. Tricks and hide are not words that can be allowed or accepted by science, end of story.

Hi Lucy!
Apropos hiding post 1960 temps: Here see how IPCC in their report shows old vs. new temperature graphs.
For some reason they have only chosen old series that ended around 1960 at the latest… They “forgot” a row of graphs showing a decline post 1960:
http://hidethedecline.eu/media/PERPLEX/fig2.jpg
In the IPCC graphics its mostly NH temperature data based graphs they show, as do I.
Taken from:
http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/the-perplexing-temperature-data-published-1974-84-and-recent-temperature-data-180.php
K.R. Frank

It is irrelevant whether temperatures actually declined after 1960, unless Phil Jones was referring to such a decline with his words “Mike’s Nature trick to hide the decline.” Unless Jones was doing so, Fred Singer is wrong. I think it’s obvious that Jones was not doing so, because: the trick in question is the substitution of the instrumented record for the proxies; the decline shown by the proxies is what the trick hides; surely, Jones believes that thermometers are a more reliable indication of actual temperatures than proxies are; it doesn’t matter whether the instrumented record is wrong, because that’s not what the trick hides.

Indeed, with this line:
> they tried to “hide the decline” in temperatures
Fred Singer basically skewers all criticism of, eg. the BBC Horizon program for attempting to address this misconception.
You can argue that all “real skeptics” understand it was all about proxy divergence all you like – the fact is that this understanding is restricted to a niche audience, while the “temperature” misconception was published far and wide.
Do you honestly think that the fallout from the CRU emails would have been anything like as severe had this particular untruth not been repeated ad nauseum through the popular media?
And now we see this from Dr Singer. If one the most prominent “skeptical” experts either does not understand this trivially simple point, then clearly something is very wrong.
By rights, Singer should be corrected with as much venom and vehemence as has been directed at those that have tried to refute this particular talking point in the past.

David A. Evans says:
February 19, 2011 at 12:34 pm
sharper00 says:
February 19, 2011 at 12:00 pm
…..I’m not going to argue temps though as whatever they do, it’s irrelevant. Temps ain’t energy, end of argument.
DaveE.

It seems it is impossible to make people understand – after all they are Physicists . /sarc
It is perhaps unfortunate that it was decided to have physicists run this project and not metrologists (yes people with expertise in measurement). A metrologist would have asked what was to be measured. Answer ‘energy’.
A metrologist would then have told the physicists that measurements of atmospheric temperature are a very poor guide to atmospheric energy content.
The metrologist would then have pointed to a site like http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/extreme/gfs/current/pwat_max_swath.png
(which is in the reference section of WUWT) and asked the physicists if they noticed any difference in the amount of water in the atmosphere at the equator and near the poles. The metrologist could then have given the physicists a much needed lecture on enthalpy of volumes of air with varying amounts of water vapor and therefore the total unreliability of comparing air temperatures at sites near the pole with sites near the equator and the folly of averaging these values. More detailed issues like not even using averages for diurnal variables like this would probably be too complex for the physicists to follow.
/sarc? off
If it is the energy being retained in the Earth that is of concern then measure ocean heat content as it happens heat content and temperature are closely equivalent in water and the oceans cover 2/3 of the globe. Whereas atmospheric temperature gives almost no guide to heat content unless you know the water content of the volume of air being measured and work out its enthalpy and then convert to energy content.
Instead we get global averages of averages of the wrong metric.
Nevertheless, if this is exercise is going to be done using temperature at least follow an auditable Quality Management System ideally to ISO-9000. For each site document the details of the site the observation system, and its history, the raw readings and why particular observation times were chosen and the method used to collate the data. Document any variance or adjustment made, how it was made, why it was made, and on whose authority it was made. Provide documented source code for all collation algorithms to allow others to replicate the production of the final outputs. In other words complete transparency.
I have a feeling that this quality approach will not be followed as this is a university science exercise not an engineering exercise. It will be a huge disappointment if this is the case as literally inestimable amounts of money and even people’s lives could hinge on the output.

I’m not a scientist but do wonder why there is little discussion of whether a single number average of temperatures has any real meaning.
I believe that cold dry air needs much less energy to warm it up than warm “wet” air, so averaging temps from different places is not going to mean much re energy gain/ loss/ distribution, surely?
Also, a single number blurs whether it is day time or night time or both that are changing (if they are), and seasonal effects.
Seems to me there are huge leaps of faith needed to go from single figure averages via simplified radiative physics ideas to it all being CO2.
I wish BEST well, but I’m not sure whether the results will help, unless some of the above is addressed.
Please tell me if I’m wrong. (I’ve learned quite a lot from WUWT comments and posts, useful in explaining that matters aren’t “settled”, so thanks Anthony and others)

@Doug
Actually, Doug, there are many studies. This link will have some you may not trust but others for which there is no reason to doubt (but does not include the study I linked to above):
http://www.skepticalscience.com/broken-hockey-stick.htm
Dr. Singer cannot be unaware of these studies. Dr. Muller may be unaware of them, which could be a lapse on his part since he speaks so emphatically on the matter.

Robert E. Phelan says:
February 19, 2011 at 6:21 pm
. . . just as an aside, both the treemometers and the mechanical instruments of the industrial age are “proxies”. Don’t mistake the map for the territory.

This dictum from the late Alfred Korzybksi is the nub of the problem. When ideologies take over, the map becomes increasingly separated from the territory, and science becomes wishful thinking, at best, or nasty agendas at worst.
Sounds to me as though the engineering approach advocated by Ian W (February 20, 2011 at 6:57 am) is the best way to keep your eyes fixed on the territory—and eschew the simplistic and probably meaningless reification of ‘global average temperature’ altogether.
/Mr Lynn

Tenney,
You are pointing to single location or regional proxies that may or may not be valid and that’s fine. I could just as easily point to other proxies from other regions that show the MWP was warmer. Recall that was the team’s argument, that the MWP was a local phenomenon unique to certain areas of the NH. I personally remain unconvinced that it is possible to reconstruct global temps to a level of accuracy that answers the “unprecedented” question. As you must be aware, the adequacy of the excuses as to why the divergence exists has been beaten to death also. The publication of these excuses in the peer reviewed literature doesn’t mean their adequate. Ironically, until the CAGW mania publication of a scientific hypothesis marked the beginning of debate not the end.

@Oliver
Please look at my comment about two comments above yours.
As I wrote there, this divergence problem is out there in the literature for all to see — and it is always referred to in any paper using this particular sample.
Therefore, it would not be correct to assume that the “trick” involved was anything more than standard procedure for authors of tree-ring papers who used this sample.
It was not hidden. This was an innocuous use of the word “trick.”
And “hide the decline” would be a short hand way of describing the procedure (by now standard) to deal with the divergence problem.
Taken out of context, of course it looks bad. But since the whole thing is a well-known procedure used by these authors that has been out in the literature for over 10 years, we cannot ascribe nefarious purposes to Phil Jones’ email. Nor to Michael Mann.

Smokey says:
February 20, 2011 at 2:55 am
John Finn,
It’s amusing watching how apologists for the straightforward statement “Hide the decline” try to make it mean “Let’s not hide the decline.”
Who are you trying to fool?
I’m not trying to fool anyone. As I said earlier I was on to the “hide the decline” trick several years ago – long before you ever thought it was an issue. “Hide the decline” refers to the proxy reconstruction. Fred Singer wrote

However, the most serious revelation from the e-mails is that they tried to “hide the decline” in temperatures, using various “tricks” in order to keep alive a myth of rising temperatures ….

He has clearly got it wrong. It’s easy to show he has got it wrong. I’m sure the BBC and other pro-AGW media outlets will be only too pleased to point out how one of the leading sceptics has got it wrong. Perhaps you agree with Singer’s statement, in which case you are also wrong and you need to familiarise yourself with the facts.

Gneiss says:
February 20, 2011 at 10:04 am
Doug Badgero writes,
“I could just as easily point to other proxies from other regions that show the MWP was warmer.”
I’m sure it happened somewhere, but which proxies do you have in mind, showing the MWP warmer than today?
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php

Maintain a public data base the raw data, the corrected data, and corrected methodology.
Have statisticians vet your analytical procedures, not climatologists, and make public copies of the procedures, their reasoning, and your software code. The former will prevent ‘hockey stick’ problems, the later will spot your errors. Acknowledge any contributions from both.
Above all, you must be like Caesar’s wife – above reproach.

hey! what happenned to my last post? I spent a while correcting “Doctor” Fred Singers specious rubbish and it seems to have got dumped.

It was decline in temperatures, which they tried to hide. Temperatures as reconstructed by proxy (tree ring) data.
Otherwise, they wouldn’t speak about unprecedented temperatures.
IMO, this temperature proxy decline hints at real temperature decline, which is not seen in official instrumental records (UHI, selection/confirmation bias).

What is Y-axis in all those tree ring reconstructions? It’s not tree ring width in mm.

Edim says:
February 20, 2011 at 11:50 am
IMO, this temperature proxy decline hints at real temperature decline, which is not seen in official instrumental records (UHI, selection/confirmation bias).
Presumably you also accept that the neither the MWP nor LIA existed since that is what is “hinted” in the proxy record.

Gneiss,
It’s quite clear from the context of the quote that the intent was indeed to keep from the intended audience (policy makers) the fact that the instrumental record diverged from the proxy record.

Sorry, it was Oliver R rather than John M who stated that “hide” connotes deception.

Gneiss says:
February 20, 2011 at 1:50 pm
“It connotes no such thing. Computer programs offer “hide” options in a wide range of contexts, including the drawing of graphs.”
———————
Do you mean programs like CAD, where you can hide layers so you DON’T see them?
Can we agree that “hide” means “conceal”?
Then we can look at why one might choose to “conceal” something.
Or, would you like to suggest another meaning?
Where are we trying to conceal it? On a graph? How does it show up on that graph?
Would it have appeared as a big mess of ink that obscured the lines, or as a nice clean line going in an unsatisfactory direction? A downwards one, perhaps?
It’s cute that you cite a Google search and then speculate about what you might have found in the results. You could try another one with the word ‘decline’ and I’ll hazard a guess that outside of the UEA fiasco you won’t find an instance of “divergence” being offered as a synonym.

If the email had said instead, “We decided to show proxy-derived temperatures for older periods, where they have been well validated, but then show instrumental temperatures more recently where those are more accurate,”

How well validated were they for the period prior to 1800? Why “hide” from policy makers the fact that the divergence occured at all?
I suspect the second question is related to the first.

Oliver R writes,
“It’s cute that you cite a Google search and then speculate about what you might have found in the results.”
Well, I actually looked through the first half-dozen pages, and it appeared all the citations that far used “hide” the same way my graphics software does. So it wasn’t quite as cute as speculation. Perhaps you
“Can we agree that “hide” means “conceal”?”
Sure.
“Then we can look at why one might choose to “conceal” something.”
In this case, because showing it gives a misleading impression. That temperatures declined, when they didn’t.
“You could try another one with the word ‘decline’ and I’ll hazard a guess that outside of the UEA fiasco you won’t find an instance of “divergence” being offered as a synonym.”
Now we’re both cute.

John Finn writes,
“Presumably you also accept that the neither the MWP nor LIA existed since that is what is “hinted” in the proxy record.”
There’s no reason to presume that.
The proxy records do more than hint about these periods. For instance, Mann et al. (2009) clearly show the LIA, and also a period they term the MCA which more or less corresponds to the MWP. Mann’s MCA covers warm periods in the N Atlantic and PDO regions, but anomalous cool temps in El Nino 3 region for those centuries.
Moberg’s (2005) reconstruction shows a Northern Hemisphere warm period that starts earlier than Mann’s does, and a LIA that seems to start later. GISP2 suggests a Greenland MWP that starts earlier and ends earlier than Mann (2009), and a LIA that starts earlier too.
Anyway, there’s much information on these topics in various proxy datasets, and extensive discussion in the scientific literature about them.

@ Gneiss,
I’ll agree that we’re both cute and that “hide” means “hide”.
You said:
“If the email had said instead, “We decided to show proxy-derived temperatures for older periods, where they have been well validated, but then show instrumental temperatures more recently where those are more accurate,”
———-
Well, he DID say that in the same e-mail.
We don’t think he was trying to HIDE anything from Ray, Mike and Malcolm, the recipients of the e-mail. He was talking to them about hiding some decline or other from somebody else.
When I phone up my fellow bank-robbers and say “I’ve hidden the money under my mattress,” that doesn’t constitute a confession to the police. Unless they’ve got my phone tapped.

007:
Smoking Frog,
If we could trust the instrumental temperature record, there would be no need for this project. But we can’t….
I didn’t say we could trust it. My point was that Dr. Singer’s remarks were about what Phil Jones said, so they stand or fall depending on what Jones meant. I say that Jones did not mean that the trick was hiding a decline of temperatures, and this is practically beyond disputing. So Singer’s remarks on this point are wrong. However, I doubt that Singer meant them the way they sound. I think he was talking about temperatures derived from the proxies. At least, I hope so.

Dave Wendt writes,
“If you are still unable to comprehend that notion I fear it is beyond my capability to enlighten you. ”
You wrote a long note and you’re right I can’t follow your thinking. Something about the invalidity of comparing proxies with instrumental records, followed by a claim that the 1930s are equivalent to the present. No example, though, of a study that showed large-scale MWP temperatures warmer than today.

Here my post that you first responded too
Dave Wendt says:
February 20, 2011 at 10:43 am
Gneiss says:
February 20, 2011 at 10:04 am
Doug Badgero writes,
“I could just as easily point to other proxies from other regions that show the MWP was warmer.”
I’m sure it happened somewhere, but which proxies do you have in mind, showing the MWP warmer than today?
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php
Doug suggested the existence of regional proxies that verify that the MWP was warmer than the present and you seemed to express a desire to see some of them. I responded by providing a link to an archive that contains numerous examples of such proxies. You responded by referring to one of the studies which was somewhat equivocal and indicated it could be made to show the present climate to be warmer by the simple expedient of attaching instrumental data to the proxy data. My response to that indicated my personal objection, and afaik the objection of most of the world outside of Mr. Mann’s small circle of friends, to the legitimacy of APPENDING instrumental data to proxy data. That’s appending, not comparing
ap·pend (-pnd)
tr.v. ap·pend·ed, ap·pend·ing, ap·pends
1. To add as a supplement or appendix: appended a list of errors to the report.
2. To fix to; attach: append a charm to the bracelet.
[Latin appendere, to hang upon : ad-, ad- + pendere, to hang; see (s)pen- in Indo-European roots.]
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
I closed my response with a statement that life is too short. Although it’s perhaps to subtle for you, implicit in that statement is an extension which continues “to argue with someone who is not amenable to rational persuasion”. If you consider that statement as a hypothesis, I would have to say that your last response is QED.

Gneiss:
Googling “microsoft word hide” just now got me 5 million hits. I doubt that most have anything to do with deception.
Googling “bullshit any word you like” gets – About 6,760,000 results (0.18 seconds)
So what?
Both Mann in the original “trick” and P. Jones’ in his even more blattent fraud where trying to hide the part of the data that clearly showed that the proxies they were using as the basis for thier argument were not reliable proxies at all.
The fact that Jones produced his graphic for the cover of a WMO report shows his clear intent to decieve the world.

The compromised surface-temperature stations — now greatly reduced in number — give NOAA NCDS and NASA GISS all kinds of opportunities to manipulate the data through homogenization, interpolation and “adjustments” that either ignore or fail to accurately account for the urban heat island (UHI) effect. The current network of reporting stations is beyond redemption. We should stick with the satellite data, and call it a day.

Pat Frank: “Fred Singer was dead-on right. He just wasn’t entirely explicit, contextually, thereby leaving a specious opening for diversionary dust-raisers.”
Tallbloke: “On further reflection, I admit I don’t know whether he is ignorant or whether he is being deliberately ambiguous for dramatic effect or pure mischief.”
I’ve just been pointed to this thread from Keith Kloor’s site, as an example of sceptical ignorance. It is VERY clear that whatever cause/reasoning lies behind Fred’s miscommunication, his uncorrected assertion is exceedingly unhelpful and will remain so until the ambiguity is resolved.
It is hard enough to fight the obfuscations and straw man arguments that drip from the fingers of the mts and Lamberts of this world without this kind of output from Fred, air-dropping free cannon fodder on the alarmists’ positions.
The thing I enjoy most about arguing the sceptical corner is that I don’t HAVE to rely on obfuscation, carefully constructed and caveat-laden points in order to defeat the ridiculous and indefensible drivel spewed forth by the alarmists. All I have to do is point out those things in their arguments before driving my own points home. Fred’s output in this piece, whether because he wants to ruddle the bucket or because he actually believes what he wrote as simply as he wrote it, is at the VERY best complicating things. How can we criticise the “opposition” for their round and vehement defence of lousy practices if we turn a blind eye to the same within our own ranks?

“”””” walt man says:
February 19, 2011 at 2:02 pm
Andrew30 says: February 19, 2011 at 1:35 pm
…
Walt, you might want to look at the infection in the code that caused the graph to rise.
The code (FOI2009/FOIA/documents/harris-tree/briffa_sep98_e.pro) did Exactly what the author intended. It drove the MWP down and the industrial era up.
Lets look at a bit more of that code:
; Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!
;yrloc=[1400,findgen(19)*5.+1904]
valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,-0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,$
2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor
if n_elements(yrloc) ne n_elements(valadj) then message,’Oooops!’
yearlyadj=interpol(valadj,yrloc,timey)
;
;filter_cru,5.,/nan,tsin=yyy+yearlyadj,tslow=tslow
;oplot,timey,tslow,thick=5,color=20
;
filter_cru,5.,/nan,tsin=yyy,tslow=tslow
oplot,timey,tslow,thick=5,color=21
yearlyadj=interpol(valadj,yrloc,timey)
Does not this line give a yearly adjustment value interpolated from the 20 year points?
filter_cru,5.,/nan,tsin=yyy,tslow=tslow oplot,timey,tslow,thick=5,color=21
Does not this line plot data derived from yyy
;filter_cru,5.,/nan,tsin=yyy+yearlyadj,tslow=tslow
;oplot,timey,tslow,thick=5,color=20
The smoking gun line!!!!
Does not his line plot data derived from yyy+yearlyadj The FUDGED FIGURE
BUT…………
IT’S COMMENTED OUT!!
Well Walt Man, I’m not into writing code; but I’m surrounded by people who do. And the code they write ultimately has to be burned into a ROM on a chip, to get the chip to do what it is supposed to do (It’s an Optical Navigation digital camera)
There’s not a single byte of code that those guys leave in to take up valuable real estate; and also to increase the probability of making mistakes, that are hard to find in debugging.
So the fact that some skullduggery code was COMMENTED OUT to me merely indicates that it was placed there so it could be used whenever it wqs needed; after all, commenting out code, is simply adding a switch to turn it on or off.
So the very existence of the code; commented out or not; shows an intent to use it when required; and then return the switch to the off position.
And evidently much of the raw data was “lost” or erased, so how could anyone now go back and prove whether the commented out code was ever used or not.
You don’t have to actually catch sight of the skunk, to know that one passed by.

Simon Hopkinson says:
February 21, 2011 at 9:39 am
“How can we criticise the “opposition” for their round and vehement defence of lousy practices if we turn a blind eye to the same within our own ranks?”
Let me say at the beginning Simon that this comment is not aimed at you particularly, but at this whole comment thread. Your comment just happened to be the last straw.
Can I request that we all lighten up and give it a rest. Dr. Singer’s statement that has generated all this sanctimony was obviously not a masterpiece of accuracy or logical wizardry and I have no intent to argue it one way or the other, just to point out that it is not greatly relevant to the post in general, which, in itself appears to be a largely unedited attempt to endorse the BEST project. In the end that endorsement is not exactly ringing and by the time the project produces any results this post, like most of the information in the world today will have disappeared down the memory hole.
The notion that the alarmist community is going to use this faux pas as a bludgeon in future argumentation misses two rather obvious difficulties. First the alarmist side has never seemed to require any actual errors from the skeptical community to maintain the torrential flood of propaganda they produce on a daily basis. Second, for them to leap on this particular blurb and use it effectively against the skeptical argument would require them to embrace the alternative interpretation offered by the commenters most critical of Singer’s assertion i.e. that Mike’s “trick” was deployed to conceal the complete worthlessness of the proxy data. I may have missed something, but I can’t recall that argument ever being one they were eager to make.
The various talking heads that are out front for CAGW have been filling the world with misstatements and outright lies for decades without their supporting blogs ever uttering even a whimper of anxiety about the potential damage to their credibility, but it seems that when any of those, who ought to be seen as our allies in what is indeed a life or death struggle, commits so much as a typo the comment thread degenerates almost immediately into an orgy of cannibalistic sanctimony. There is a need to support scientific standards, but we also need to recognize that purity in science is a laudatory goal which is never achieved, least of all in “climate science” which is the most bastardized field in all of human enquiry.
The skeptical side of this controversy has been on the defensive from the beginning, largely because of huge deficits in financial support and media access, but also because the other side never allows these principled niceties to interfere with their message. They have continually shown themselves to be capable of screwing themselves right into the floor in order to spin facts that challenge their meme. That no matter how erroneous the argument or egregious the behavior of their comrades they will be supported and defended at all costs. I don’t suggest we should embrace a similar modus operandi for ourselves, only a little reasonability in the face of fairly inconsequential diversions from our own assumed truths.
CAGW does indeed present an existential threat to humanity’s future, not from any fantastical cascade of climate catastrophes, but from the real present, ongoing, and future disasters being produced as the intended and unintended consequences of the nearly insane solutions which have been implemented, are being implemented, and are proposed for future implementation to solve a problem which is not likely to be as damaging as any of a couple dozen real harms which have been shuffled to the back burner so that resources can be focussed on a computer generated illusion.
If the coal train of carbon demonization is to ever be really derailed we need to keep all the allies we have and recruit as many more as possible. That incredibly important effort will not be advanced by continually deploying into circular firing squads on the delusional expectation that it will force our opponents to cede us the moral high ground.
rant off

If Fred Singer and Judith Curry are involved, then I will be satisfied with the end results as I know they will insist the studies are conducted using the scientific method.