Some background from the original “hide the decline” from Steve McIntyre here
Despite relatively little centennial variability, Briffa’s reconstruction had a noticeable decline in the late 20th century, despite warmer temperatures. In these early articles [e.g. Briffa 1998], the decline was not hidden.
For most analysts, the seemingly unavoidable question at this point would be – if tree rings didn’t respond to late 20th century warmth, how would one know that they didn’t do the same thing in response to possible medieval warmth – a question that remains unaddressed years later.
He writes now in Hide-the-Decline Plus
Indeed, they did not simply “hide the decline”, their “hide the decline” was worse than we thought. Mann et al did not merely delete data after 1960, they deleted data from 1940 on, You can see the last point of the Briffa reconstruction (located at ~1940) peeking from behind the spaghetti in the graphic below:
Detail from Mann et al (EOS 2003) Figure 1. Arrow points to Briffa series peeking out from behind the spaghetti
Had Mann et al used the actual values, the decline would have been as shown in the accompanying graphic:
Figure 3. Re-stated Mann et al (EOS 2003) Figure 1 showing the decline.
Had Mann and his 13 co-authors shown the Briffa reconstruction, without hiding the decline, one feels that von Storch (and others) might have given more consideration to Soon et al’s criticism of the serious problem arising from the large-population failure of tree ring widths and density to track temperature.
Read the whole article Hide-the-Decline Plus
Make this known far and wide.
FergalR gets the
Gold on the foremast this time.
So many Mobys.
===========
Jeez. How much worse can it get!?
Sounds like Briffa wasn’t a team player and didn’t understand cause and deflect.
I dont know if 1479 has already been covered, but it gets worse..
From: David Rind
To: Jonathan Overpeck
Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2006 16:43:08 -0400
Subject: Re:
Cc: Keith Briffa , rahmstorf@ozean-klima.de, Bette Otto-Bleisner
, cddhr@giss.nasa.gov, joos ,
Eystein Jansen , “Ricardo Villalba” ,
t.osborn@uea.ac.uk
Leaving aside for the moment the resolution issue, the statement should at least be
consistent with our figures. Fig. 6-10 looks like there were years around 1000 AD that
could have been just as warm – if one wants to make this statement, one needs to expand
the vertical scale in Fig. 6-10 to show that the current warm period is ‘warmer’.
Now getting back to the resolution issue: given what we know about the ability to
reconstruct global or NH temperatures in the past – could we really in good conscience say
we have the precision from tree rings and the very sparse other data to make any definitive
statement of this nature (let alone accuracy)? While I appreciate the cleverness of the
second sentence, the problem is everybody will recognize that we are ‘being clever’ – at
what point does one come out looking aggressively defensive?
I agree that leaving the first sentence as the only sentence suggests that one is somehow
doubting the significance of the recent warm years, which is probably not something we want
to do. What I would suggest is to forget about making ‘one year’ assessments; what Fig.
6-10 shows is that the recent warm period is highly anomalous with respect to the record of
the last 1000 years. That would be what I think we can safely conclude the last 1000 years
really tells us.
Al Gore @ 11.24 pm
Probably this response would do for that question…………………….. in relation to love in using public funding poorly………………
Babe, You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet (1974) Bachman Turner Overdrive
Looks like the error bars need error bars…
It’s a spectacular own goal really this. If they’d just left that whole series out with the argument that it didn’t track temps (though that would raise questions over other proxies, but that’s a different matter) then they’d have been fine.
SIgh. Science at it’s best apparently.
Hidden in plain sight!
Even Gavin at RC, notorious for his ability to argue black is white, will have trouble providing ‘a reasonable explanation’ for this.
“Make this known far and wide”
Well, I’ve done my best by being the first commenter on Deltoid’s latest ‘Open Thread’. Within the hour they will be coming out of the woodwork with bad breath and foam on their lips so if anyone feels like riding to my support like the US cavalry, feel free:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/12/december_2011_open_thread.php
“Worse than we thought.” Makes a great headline. Something ‘the team’ must recognise.
Friends:
I have been watching ‘Climategate 2.0’ with interest and have made no comments on the emails because they state the case I have been making since the early 1980s; viz. ‘climate science’ needs to be returned to the practices and methods of real science.
I write now to point out what I consider to be an error being made by commentators.
‘Hide The Decline’ was wrong. It was absolutely and unpardonably wrong. Hence, revelation of any additional detail cannot be “worse than we thought” because it is not possible to be worse than absolutely wrong.
‘Hide The Decline’ is the same scientific fraud as the ‘Piltdown Man’. In each case, selected parts of two different items were spliced together to provide a misleading scientific indication. This is scientific fraud of the worst possible kind.
It does not matter one jot whether one of the selected parts of one of the items was deleted at 1960 or 1940: the important issue is that the misleading splicing was deliberately conducted and is a scientific fraud.
A claim that the deletion date makes it “worse than we thought” invites argument about splicing dates which can only obscure the fact that the splicing is unforgiveable whatever the date of the splice.
Richard
What was that quip about State Penn, then? Is there a cell big enough for these sobs. This climate fraud was used to give the OK to a wind farm in our community and which has torn it apart. My blood boils.
Perhaps it reflects a “tipping point” in the paleo-climate community’s attitude to doing honest science. If the data post 1940 cannot be explained then neither can the pre 1940 data.
If you are going to delete post 1940 data then you might as well delete pre 1940 data all the way to 1000AD, unless you are acting dishonestly.
Richard: While I respect the point you make, I still feel that there is a difference between (e.g.) stealing $1 and stealing $1 000 000, but maybe that’s just me… Personally I am getting quite punch drunk from reading all this stuff emerging from the e-mails. Dunno whether to cry or laugh (both hysterically, of course). It is without a doubt worse than I thought, and I thought it was pretty bad… 🙁 I at least thought that these pple, while misguided and arrogant, had some honour in believing their own nonsense… Now I know differently. No honour at all. Unbelieveably sad…
Over and over and over yet again the alarmists are caught fudging the data or just plain making up non-scientific scare stories and calling it science. And yet, so many people in the western world believe in their heart of hearts that the planet is warming and mankind is the cause!
I just don’t understand. Is it that truth really does not matter to most people and data is only useful when it proves one’s own myths?
“Man sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest” ~ Paul Simon
Richard S Courtney says: December 1, 2011 at 1:52 am
I write now to point out what I consider to be an error being made by commentators.
‘Hide The Decline’ was wrong. It was absolutely and unpardonably wrong. Hence, revelation of any additional detail cannot be “worse than we thought” because it is not possible to be worse than absolutely wrong.
Fair point, perhaps Anthony can put the “worse than we thought” in inverted commas and emphasise Richard’s point in the head text.
How come nobody ever talks about the Holocene Optimum? 1000 years is a cherry picked figure, 6000 is cherry picked the opposite way:)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/Holocene_Temperature_Variations.png
I recommend readers to visit the Eos Forum paper itself, and use magnification themselves to verify Steve’s picture. When you do this, it is, er, mindblowing to see how the incriminating evidence is there, in the paper itself, when we apply a simple forensic technique – attend to the details – that are cleverly made unnoticeable at the ordinary scale.
Note too that the grey is the “uncertainty” attendant on Mann 1999. Note too that there are many other suspiciously truncated lines, whose provenance we can detect by referring to the colour chart. Note too that it is mainly PSEUDO-DATA from models that rises along with the temperature record (which is also vulnerable to recent UHI)
@richard S Courtney says:
December 1, 2011 at 1:52 am
////////////////////////////////////
Up to a point I agree with your observation.
However, I do consider the period to have a bearing on the confidence that can be appled to the proxy. Eg, if at around this time there were 150 years worth of instrument temperature records for the area in question, if there was a divergence between tree rings and just 1 year, one might reasonably conclude that tree rings were a good proxy, had been well tuned to the instrument record and the divergence of just 1 year was an outlier.
However, what we have here is a very different issue. Of the 150 year record, we have a divergence for 60 years, ie., for more than 1 third of the period. This is no outlier. Further, one imagines that the errors associated with temperature records grow wider the further back in time one goes. Put another way, the most recent 60 years is likely to be the most accurate years of data. So what we have here is divergence with the best and most accurate 60 year period of the data.
This would suggest that there was either at the very least a tuning error and the proxy should be tuned to the last 60 years of the data, or if that made nonsense then the conclusion would inevitably be that the proxy is wholly unreliable PERIOD such that the entire proxy should be thrown out.
I consider that any reasonable scientist in this situation would conclude that the proxy was not reliable and should be wholly disregarded, and that no reconstruction of events earlier than the instrument record could be made using that particular proxy.
Thus the issue here is why did these scientists not throw out the proxy? Why did they go ahead and make a reconstruction based upon what was so obviously a patently flawed and unreliable proxy?
Richard S Courtney says:
“‘Hide The Decline’ is the same scientific fraud as the ‘Piltdown Man’. In each case, selected parts of two different items were spliced together to provide a misleading scientific indication. This is scientific fraud of the worst possible kind.”
Shouldn’t that read Piltdown Mann ?
Not that it matters much when you can plug in any random number set and STILL generate a hockey stick….
Looking at this the other way around, If we assume for a moment that the tree-ring reconstruction is correct, would this not imply that it was the station record that was “played with” past 1940?
Best,
J.
This need addressing. I want Warmists here to give me an answer.
As time progresses we are being made aware of more and more data that has been ignored, altered or twisted to exaggerate the political goal of carbon control. These liars are not worth the ‘scientist’ label.
Have you found a graph in that flaw?
Julian Williams in Wales: Shouldn’t that read Piltdown Mann ?
I still prefer Meltdown Man
I think you should read this. This is how they reacted on Broeckers paper: Was the Medieval Warm Period Global?
http://di2.nu/foia/0983196231.txt
http://di2.nu/foia/0983286849.txt
Some extracts:
“but he thinks Ed Cook is a great scientist”
“If we’re all on board, than an appropriately toned, “high road” response here might be appropriate.”
“let Wojick stew in his own juice”
“perhaps we should just try to let this thing die…”
“there *is* a hemispheric “medieval warm period” and “little ice age””
“Science’s embargo policy prevents me from saying much more at this time, but if Phil or anyone else wishes to comment further,”
“I’m not the only one who thinks the IPCC is nuts.”
“So Julia handled it.”
“Wally told me he didn’t reckon Tom, so Tom has got the right vibes.”
“Julia is asking us to go ahead and hinting at a joint response.”
“Could add in that even the two warming periods in the 20th century don’t show warming everywhere – especially the early 20th century. Remember that we are all basically averaging long series together and if one site shows a big warming/cooling then the average will to a lesser extent.”
“Thanks for your message regarding Wally Broecker’s Perspective. I am of course aware of this Perspective coming out – I did handle it – I realized that it was perhaps a bit handwaving in parts but I thought the message was interesting and the article passed the usual screening.”
Found on:
http://mittelalterlichewarmperiode.blogspot.com
Yours,
Pascal
Richard @ 1.52 am
Well stated and many thanks.
However this does not negate the work that needs to be done.
And you do not need to be observing, rather actioning, speaking to the people that lived (or not), who challenged this fraud in science. Honour them.
The others were content it seems to allow this to occur. As it has become an artefact.
Or is art-e-fact?
Actually the Briffa record up to 1940 is a pretty good reflection of what we do know from other data about tropospheric temperature changes over the past 600 years.
On that basis the post 1940 drop would be higly significant yet it was simply deleted as an inconvenient truth.
Given my interest in shifting climate zones I would suggest the following:
i) In cool periods like the LIA the limiting factor for growth is temperature.
ii) In warm periods such as the MWP and today the limiting factor for growth is rainfall.
The best growth conditions occur between cold and warm periods.
So that proxy record understates the warmth of warm periods but fully reflects the coolness of cold periods.
Having dendro evidence underrating warm periods would be a problem for Mann because the MWP could have been significantly warmer than the present. There is a suggestion of that in the warmth of Greenland when the Vikings settled it. The climate zones would have to have been more poleward than at present to allow the agriculture that they engaged in.
David Duff,
I added my comment to the thread on Deltoid – I hope it’s some help.
I made a comment in reply to a numpty called Kevin who seemed to think that because the graph was ‘only on the cover’ it didn’t matter that it was being wantonly selective with the data.
Regards,
Andy
Obviously, all the the tree-ring temperature reconstructions should be just thrown out.
As a technique, it does not work.
Let’s see if climate science can accept the “more-than-obvious” conclusion and move on to other temperature indicators.
If they don’t, we will be able to assess their ability to make reasonable conclusions and/or their desire to continue abusing the scientific method.
I’ve asked it before, and I’ll ask it again:
at what point does this level of manipulation rise to the level of fraud?
many others have been prosecuted for less.
tallbloke says:
December 1, 2011 at 12:05 am
Looks like the error bars need error bars…
My first thought: Huh, a part of the data that lies outside the error band? But you hit the nail on the head with your remark.
Richard:
I agree, but such an argument is not a scientific one, rather, it is one of political gamesmanship. The counter to any defense along this line of thought is that now there is yet another 20 years of divergence that must be dealt with, even more seriously calling into question the validity of tree rings as proxies for temperatures. If they diverged from 1940 till now, and we only have a few hundred years with which to compare, what does that say about a 1500 year comparison? Furthermore, for a 1960 divergence, there are all manner of deflections being applied, many tied to events during that period of history IIRC, but 1940 renders any of those moot.
Ultimately, tree rings tell us how well trees grow during any given period. The number of inputs and known non-linearities greatly overshadow any individual indicator.
Mark
They faced four big problems with their narrative – a medieval warm period, a little ice age, a temperature drop post 1940, and a divergence between instrumentation and proxies post 1960.
Unable to find even a single data source to cover all four problems, they had to splice together different data sources, and quite literally remove the pieces which did not fit the narrative.
It now is clear they were all aware and complicit in this – over a long period of time.
Is it any wonder they have hid, refused access to, and deleted data and correspondence?
The whole thing is astonishing – but it does support the theory that if you are going to sell a lie, better make it a big and outrageous one.
I can totally see why the general population find the counter narrative hard to believe – what we are suggesting has been going on is quite literally unbelievable if anything approaching reasonable standards are assumed.
I agree with Richard S C at 1:52 am. Let’s all face certain ‘facts’ because Steve M’s discovery regarding the post-1940 drop deleted from mann’s reconstruction makes certain things fact. The CO2 theory is a valid theory of physical science; the last 200 years has seen unprecedent human intervention in the’carbon cycle’ so AnthroGW (AGW) is a valid theory, there is a massive distinction between CO2 theory and CATASTROPHIC GW (CAGW) predictions, there is now way to empirically prove CAGW because there is no database of worldwide temps pre-industrialization to date. Those are the facts. Enter Mann’s fraud. The historic DENDRO THERMOMETER temp reconstruction. He came up with physical evidence proving CAGW. There was a problem. There is no Dendro thermometer — trees are a rough analoge to a mass of factors including temps, humidy, rainfall, cloud cover, drought, ice storms etc etc. They are NOT thermometers. So he had a bogus theory — fair enough. His fraud was deleting inconvenient post 1940 data, and covering that up since then. His greed was all the grant money and publicity to be had from his proof of CAGW. He’s been exposed as a fraud– nothing he says can be considered credible. Those are the facts.
Jud– they had a bigger problem. trees are not thermometers. The rest of your comment is spot on.
richard verney:
At December 1, 2011 at 3:21 am you say to me:
“
I consider that any reasonable scientist in this situation would conclude that the proxy was not reliable and should be wholly disregarded, and that no reconstruction of events earlier than the instrument record could be made using that particular proxy.
Thus the issue here is why did these scientists not throw out the proxy? Why did they go ahead and make a reconstruction based upon what was so obviously a patently flawed and unreliable proxy?”
For clarity, I reply that I completely agree. Indeed, I have often said the same myself (including on WUWT).
But I was making a different point. Simply, the splicing of parts of two different data sets is not acceptable: it is plain wrong. And I have been saying it is wrong since the week that MBH98 was published.
Nothing should be allowed to distract from the facts that the splicing is plain wrong and was done with malice of forethought.
Richard
@Peter Miller – Good luck getting Gavin to respond. I tried posting twice yesterday at RC, pointing out that proxy chopping and manipulation (i.e. grafting) was not good science. My comments were summarily banished to the bit bucket.
I agree with my friend Richard – wrong is wrong – but the additional detail, that the false data-splice dates back to ~1940 and is visible (with magnification) in plain sight, is news to me – thanks.
My scientific conclusion is this:
These “hockey team” global warming conspirators are utterly discredited – a reasonable assumption is that EVERYTHING they have or will produce should be disregarded.
This conclusion saves considerable time and energy…
… and I trust that true energy conservation is something we can all agree on.
__________________________
BTW, splicing together two dissimilar datasets to promote the fantasy of humanmade global warming was also used by “the team ” in a bogus attempt to say that Antarctica was warming. Remember this, from 2009?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/21/antarctica-warming-an-evolution-of-viewpoint/#comment-80957
Tallbloke I would take that one step further. These GIGO climate scientists need to start developing error bars for themselves!!!! And the funny thing about that, is that they probably have already done that…you know…just in case.
@Peter Miller (Update) – My post and a reply from earlier today. They (Dr. Schmidt) chose to remove a portion of my comment. The part that now reads [edit] originally stated “proxy manipulation as bad science”.
I notice that the red line (temp record) is wider and place on top of the other lines. I suppose this is to cover up those being chopped off.
Lucy: I went to the EOS paper you linked to see for myself per your recommendation. However, there are no lines the pass over and infront of the big red line. I could not find the snap shot of McKintyres (presumably of the same EOS plot) with the actual EOS. Can you do a snap shot in progressively higher magnifications.
Splicing the dataset to drop the non-fits, as Richard Courtney observes, is done “with malice a forethought” and this is unforgiveable. Yet I think that the splice setup is even worse than the Briffa deletion.
(1) it looks like it isn’t just Briffa that’s been deleted or curtailed too soon
(2) those iniquitous pseudo-data from models are there, looking like they prop up a “meteoric rise” in thermometer records. These do NOT belong here at all, and simply make more visual distractions
(3) Look at Siberian thermometer records compared with local treering records 1880-2005. The treering records do not remotely resemble the thermometer records regarding years of high temperatures or low temperatures; yet the thermometer records agree closely with each other. Trees are self-evidently no use as thermometers. However, treeline records DO show a correspondence with climate changes – showing, of course, a warmer MWP in Siberia.
(4) of course, the EOS paper simply puts in all the pro-hockey-stick papers and omits all the rest, the papers against which the Team is fighting with this paper. I want to be reminded, which are the rogue HS-creators in each recon?? (Tiljander etc)
Stephen Wilde says:
December 1, 2011 at 4:06 am
“Actually the Briffa record up to 1940 is a pretty good reflection of what we do know from other data about tropospheric temperature changes over the past 600 years.
So that proxy record understates the warmth of warm periods but fully reflects the coolness of cold periods.
Having dendro evidence underrating warm periods would be a problem for Mann because the MWP could have been significantly warmer than the present.”
There is an apparent conflict in your statements. How can the record be a pretty good reflection of what we know from other data over the past 600 years yet the proxy understates the warmth to the degree found in hide the decline?
I think many people are struggling with this question. It does seem a big step to say that the entire proxy record is as untrustworthy as the years 1940-2000, roughly the period in “hide the decline.” I believe that the entire record must be viewed as untrustworthy until we have some scientific evidence to the contrary. At the very least, we must conclude on what we know now that tree ring proxies cannot be treated as a linear function of temperature.
The importance of “hiding the decline” has not received a full explanation. What makes the hiding worse than we thought is that it reveals that the scientists involved either do not have the instincts of empirical scientists or they overcame their instincts. Upon making the discovery of the decline in tree ring width, a genuine scientist would have seen that this discovery is the important product of his work and would have published the matter and undertaken empirical research to determine why the decline occurred. No member of The Team did that. If we do not understand this larger point about “hiding the decline” then we do not understand the degree to which The Team betrayed science.
I would have thought that Horner etc have enough evidence by now (re emails) to put Mann (and other persons aiding and abetting at Penn State and UEA) in Jail/or fines for public fraud.
“They faced four big problems with their narrative – a medieval warm period, a little ice age, a temperature drop post 1940, and a divergence between instrumentation and proxies post 1960.”
A neat explanation:
i) The cooling period post 1940 shows up nicely in the dendro data with a reduction in tree growth.
ii) From 1960 the UHI effect starts to influence thermometer readngs and the divergence begins.
iii) From 1975 to 2000 a poleward shift in the climate zones causes drought issues for tree growth which declines further.
iv) From 1975 to 2000 the UHI effect is compounded by a run of strong El Ninos raising tropospheric temperatures.
The result is a large divergence between surface sensors and dendro data.
I would say that the WHOLE editorial staff at Nature and main editors needs to be fired/replaced totally, over the whole climate science issue to get some credibility back for what was now become a “trash journal”
Anyone who has ever grown a tree (or nearly any plant) knows that growth is limited by water. In drought years trees don’t grow much, no matter what the temperature is.
I like “Meltdown Mann” to describe this new era
@richard and Lucy
Richard writes, “A claim that the deletion date makes it “worse than we thought” invites argument about splicing dates which can only obscure the fact that the splicing is unforgiveable whatever the date of the splice.”
That is the salient point. One can think of Anthony calling it ‘Worser that we thot’ or some other such bad-grammar parody because that is what it is: a parody of science.
Equally astonishing is Gavin’s management of the content and deletions at RC. I have appreciated the exposure (on another thread) of the ideology and financing, the support and backroom connections that led to the creation and continuation of this US Government Agency-tolerated attack on the academic and science communities and the knee-jerk defence of the indefensible.
Richard’s comparison of stitching together of monkey and ape bones with the stitching of strings of spreadsheet numbers is apropos. That is it exactly: knowing fraud advertised as fact for the purpose of reaping money from the gullible, defended by co-conspirators in return for a portion of the lucre. Others, not wanting to be left out, gradually add support to the ‘Piltdown’ claims with ‘maybes’ and ‘probablys’ to the extent they can get part of the gate receipts. The trading firms want to sell Piltdown futures and derivatives to ward off the (probable) coming invasion from the Planet of the Piltdown Apes.
As RealClimate is the most visible US advertising agency furthering the nefarious scheme (and involving some of the highest profile perpetrators), would it not be appropriate for the Department of Homeland Security to investigate the international and political connections leading through the agency that brought RC together to determine the domestic security risk posed by what appears to be a small group of local and foreign agents intent on gaining a powerful influence over domestic and foreign policy decisions? Their behaviour is not accidental. Speaking only of the RC connection to foreign interests, this is the work of a determined and well-connected group determined to silence a proper investigation of the links (if any) between AG CO2 emissions and climate change (if any). That the US-DOE funded or funds this years’-long attack on US-based science, academia and self-governance should also be of interest to the DoHS as the primary result has been (at the least) to denigrate the US in the eyes of the international community all the while extracting funds and where possible directing it to researchers whose agenda meets with their approval.
Why should US taxpayers fund that? Incredible!
This has gone on far too long. And the reason it has, I believe, is because we’re not asking the right questions.
Forget all of the temp reconstructions and rebuttals for a minute. Forget the “hide the decline” for a bit. Hiding the decline is every bit as valid as the methods used to construct the graph in the first place. Pick a graph, any graph, it doesn’t have to be Mann’s or Briffa’s or…. it doesn’t matter…..it is all invalid science and math. And it would be laughable if it not for so many people lending this madness validity.
Tree rings? Conifers grow when the mean temp gets ablove 46°F. For these, the growth season is about 6-8 weeks. (Think high elevations and places like Yamal) Tell me, what is the mean temperature when there is no tree growth. WE DON’T HAVE A LOWER VALUE TO DETERMINE A MEAN!!! It is impossible to get a daily, seasonal, yearly, decadal, or century mean by looking at tree rings! IT isn’t valid math. It isn’t valid science. It doesn’t matter what form of statistical wizardry one uses, it still involves inventing a number(and in most cases numbers) to get a mean. It is invalid, because the base assumption is invalid. YOU CAN NOT GET A MEAN TEMP FROM LOOKING AT A TREE RING! It doesn’t matter how you look at it.
http://suyts.wordpress.com/2011/11/29/dividing-by-zero/
Anthony etal,
I called Congressman Ralph Halls main number, put the person there on to getting this thread to the attention of his staff help on the House Science Committee. I used 202-225-6673. Others here might know other members of the committee and pass it to them also.
Or even you Anthony might make sure the lawyers on that committee see the above fraud.
It is what it is. Acting together like they did makes them possible RICO con-artist.
Fascinating. I read where Steve McIntyre was trying to untangle the spaghetti and saw when he actually posted the result. So this is the other shoe.
I realize the money aspect of all this AGW stuff and I understand that jerks like Al Gore and grant grubbers stand to make lots of moola but what I simply will never understand is why, why, why are there so many enviros and politicians who do not stand to profit for AGW but who are still, in the face of literally no good, honest evidence, determined for a climate apocalypse to be true? It must be nothing more than a doomsday cult with a thin veneer of “science” as supporting its bizarre beliefs. Why wouldn’t anyone (except the likes of Mann, Hansen, Jones, Gore, Thompson, etc.) be damned glad that its just a hoax?
Don’t forget out Solar friend. TSI has a role also as plants utilise quantum effects in Photosynthesis. The quantum makeup of the photon has a role which is linked to TSI,
(i’m sure I can come up with some spaghetti graphs to prove it!)
I’m in hopes that: Especially, Dr Ball’s Attorneys are watching.
Question: Why doesn’t the snap shot of the close up of the EOS posted by Steve McIntyre match the actual EOS. Any takers??……….. (in original EOS…nothing crosses over the red line infront it)
Original:
http://coast.gkss.de/staff/storch/pdf/Soon.EosForum20032.pdf
Steve’s Snap-Shop:
http://climateaudit.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/mann_eos_emulate21.png
@Johnnythelowery
I think it is because Steve used a postscript version of the graph, which is much higher resolution and due to being vector based can be expanded to almost any size.
Theo Goodwin says:
December 1, 2011 at 7:28 am
“How can the record be a pretty good reflection of what we know from other data over the past 600 years yet the proxy understates the warmth to the degree found in hide the decline?”
That ‘pretty good reflection’ applies only to the period from 1400 to 1940. In other words it includes neither the warmth of the MWP nor the warmth of the late 20th century.
As I said, a shifting of climate zones leading to, over time, an interplay between cold and drought leads to a good match for cold periods which accurately reflect the cold induced growth slowdown but a bad match for warm periods because warm periods give drought induced growth slowdown.
So you get slower growth both in cold spells and at the peak of warm spells with the best growth in between when it is neither too cold nor too dry.
To explain that outcome one simply must acknowledge that the cause is a shift in climate zones especially the movement of the rain bearing jets first poleward and then equatorward. Probably in a long (in our terms) solar induced multicentennial cycle.
Dear ‘Dear!’ Steve: LucySkywalker posted a link to the EOS paper i believe you are discussing here. I note the plot on the original EOS paper is not the same as your pot shop blowup version and the version. Nothing in the EOS original plot passes over the big fat red line. They are not the same?? Just saying. —- Cheers Johnnnny
Steve – excellent question. It seems that there are TWO versions of this graphic. I downloaded the paper in Nov 2003 and was using the version as published at EOS. Lucy’s link is to a version posted at Hans von Storch’s website in which the order of line plots is different – so that the big red line is on top of all others.
——————————————————-
Thanks Anthony. Steve posted a response i pasted above. Never mind. Sorry all.
Once again, since I can draw a horizontal line through nothing but grey (error range of the postulation), I can just as validly assert that mean global temperature has remained precisely constant for the last 2000 years.
Why can I not get an award, applause, and a perpetual pension?
log onto http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au australian govt will not release climate paper saying only 1mm or less sea level rise in sydney very interesting
Veritas, now you see why GS won the Climate Communications Prize!
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/18/a-deserved-award-for-gavin-schmidt-of-real-climate-and-nasa/
NK says:
December 1, 2011 at 5:36 am
“The CO2 theory is a valid theory of physical science;”
That makes it a valid theory, something quite different from a fact
Johnnythelowery says:
December 1, 2011 at 8:22 am
Question: Why doesn’t the snap shot of the close up of the EOS posted by Steve McIntyre match the actual EOS. Any takers??……….. (in original EOS…nothing crosses over the red line infront it)
Original:
http://coast.gkss.de/staff/storch/pdf/Soon.EosForum20032.pdf
Steve’s Snap-Shop:
http://climateaudit.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/mann_eos_emulate21.png
==============================================================
You’re referencing a different graphical representation….. that’s why….. go here for the one I think Steve is using…. http://www.atmos.washington.edu/2006Q2/211/articles_optional/Mann_on_Soon2003.pdf
Of course, this is interesting all by itself………
Spaghettigate!
My two cents: Multiple tree ring chronologies were not a problem til Mann began reinterpreting them and creating his own to show new, “exciting” results for largescale warming. Boring, pre-1998 chronologies (Huber Lamb, for example) pointed toward a localized: warm Roman Period, warm Medieval Period between the 11th and 14th centuries, cooling Little Ice Age, and slightly warmer 20th century. In other words, just what other proxies and historical records already showed.
Steve McIntyre documents in his article how Mann went from his position as a young climate researcher to a known figure in 1998 when he began to prominently featured his own graphs of unprecedented 20th century warming, using principal component analysis. IPPC appointed him to a lead author position for that year’s report – and Briffa was left behind, apparently out of work
The modern “divergence” quandary seems less a problem if we remain skeptical of the instrumental temperature record as well as the tree ring records. If the e-mails show one thing, it is that ALL the records have issues if they’ve been created in an atmosphere of agenda-building. Flags for such issues probably first appeared with the first proclamations that “global warming” and “global cooling” were, in fact, “problems”.
Because then “an avalanche of answers must be found too fast.” E.g., about the veracity of their idols and trusted sources. And their echo chamber. If they were wrong about this, what else might they be wrong about?
And also because they’ve seen what happens to those who break ranks (e.g., Dyson)–shunning or maligning. It’s safer to be one of the herd of independent minds.
And because they want to maintain their stance as outsider/rebels, accusatory prophets. They don’t want to make their peace with The System in any shape or form. That reduces their “cred” among their coterie.
@Johnnythelowery
“Question: Why doesn’t the snap shot of the close up of the EOS posted by Steve McIntyre match the actual EOS. Any takers??……….. (in original EOS…nothing crosses over the red line infront it)”
++++
I understand from reading at CA that there is a sescond possible explanation which is that McIntyre reproduced the work from the data. That explains how he was able to produce the plot showing what the rest of the curve looks like if you do not delete the data. Not so? When re-running the plot he can make whichever line he wants to appear on top. Otherwise, where did the plot of the rest of the data come from? It was not the intention of the authors to let anyone know about the rest of the data because it undermines their core claim that tree rings are relevant to temperature reconstruction.
With due respect, I disagree. At best, AGW rises to the level of hypothesis. Others argue AGW never left the realm of conjecture, given that as a hypothesis (or theory), it is unfalsifiable (any weather event, it seems, is blamed on AGW). If something is not falsifiable, it is at best a weak hypothesis, or just plain old conjecture.
Stephen Wilde says:
December 1, 2011 at 7:37 am
Stephen, what you offer are hunches, very sophisticated hunches. I believe that we should demand rigorously formulated and well confirmed physical hypotheses about the many factors that affect tree growth, factors such as changes in moisture and sunlight. To ask for anything less is to settle for something less than science. The Team led everyone to believe that their graph reflected empirical research. We must emphasize that they were not truthful in that claim.
While I’m not ready to state that we can’t learn anything from tree rings, these shenanigans cause me to wonder whether it isn’t time to consign dendroclimatology to the dustbin of history along with other pseudosciences like phrenology.
It is understandable that Mann and his co-conspirators fight so hard to obscure the truth. They find themselves in the unenviable position of having spent their entire professional lives engaged in a “science” with no greater power of discerning past climate than charting bumps on peoples’ heads was in discerning their character and intellectual abilities.
Richard Courtney sez:
“Simply, the splicing of parts of two different data sets is not acceptable: it is plain wrong. And I have been saying it is wrong since the week that MBH98 was published. Nothing should be allowed to distract from the facts that the splicing is plain wrong and was done with malice of forethought.”
The same can be said for splicing the *daily* CO2 record from Mauna Loa onto the ice core CO2 proxy data, which reflects app. *1500 year* mechanical smoothing.
And it is with malice aforethought.
They had to get rid of the decline, and they did.
They had to get rid of natural variability, and they did by:
Getting rid of the MWP and the LIA, and
Getting rid of the warming of the 1930’s and the cooling from the 1940s to the 1970’s.
They had to get rid of the UHI.
They had to do something about the empirical refutation of the missing upper tropospheric fingerprint or hot spot – so Ben Santer rides to the rescue to smear the error bars.
It goes on and on and on. Basically any threat to their claims is “gotten rid of” with a bogus paper or counter-paper, and professional retaliation and career destruction of the scientists and journal editors in question.
Regards,
Apparently Mann and friends are very familiar with a couple of Murphy’s law variants. The first variant is, Given careful control of temperature, light, humidity, and pressure, the damn thing will do whatever it wants. The second variant is, First draw your curve, then plot your points.
@Zorro says at 2:11 am “This climate fraud was used to give the OK to a wind farm in our community and which has torn it apart. My blood boils.”
Wish I had a law degree, because Mann et al (Penn, UVA) are all plausible defendants in a civil suit. Some law firm(s) could be suing these mendicants for the next decade.
Hell, it might impel me to go back to law school., lot’s of $$$ to be made against these disgusting liars.
Sue me Mann, you lying mendacious bitch. Let’s open discovery.
Colin in BC/David Ball– I think we all concur. CO2/AGW is a valid theory or hypothesis. Quite banother thing is proving it as a physical fact in the atmosphere, and even more remote is proving CO2/AGW is catastrophic. NEITHER has been proven. Enter the Mann fraud which attempted to con us with a bogus ‘proof’.
Fair and Balanced!
This has been thoroughly discussed.
There are a number of misconceptions regarding ‘hide the decline’:
The “decline” does not refer to a “decline in global temperature” as often claimed. It actually refers to a decline in tree growth at certain high-latitude locations. This decline began in the 1960s when tree-ring proxies diverged from the temperature record.
“Mike’s Nature trick” has nothing to do with “hide the decline”. “Mike’s trick” refers to a technique by Michael Mann to plot instrumental temperature data on the same graph as reconstructed data over the past millennium.
The divergence of tree-ring proxies from temperatures after 1960 is openly discussed in the peer-reviewed literature and the last two IPCC assessment reports.
Fair and balanced!
Message to Members
ADDRESSING CRITICAL CLIMATE CHANGE ISSUES
Dear AAAS Member,
Glaciers are melting, sea levels are rising, extreme weather is increasing–scientific
evidence is clear and scientific leadership is critical to dealing with global energy and
climate problems.
The [6]AAAS Board released a strong statement on 18 February saying, “We are already
experiencing global climate change–and the pace of change and the evidence of harm have
increased markedly over the last five years.” The Board urges aggressive R&D to transform
the world’s existing and future energy systems away from technologies that emit greenhouse
gases.
The new AAAS Board Chair and former AAAS President [7]John P. Holdren spoke out during the
Annual Meeting in February saying, “Global risks require the scientific community to join
with political and business leaders in a concerted search for solutions.” Dr. Holdren drew
a standing ovation when he called for scientists and engineers to “tithe” 10 percent of
their time “working to increase the benefits of S&T for the human condition.”
AAAS is addressing these critical issues with a broad range of initiatives including the
recent Global Climate Change Town Hall, which attracted 1,200 people, and public access to
[8]online information resources.
The time to act is now. We urge our members to join us in this effort. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Alan I. Leshner, CEO, AAAS
P.S. Symposia proposals are due 2 May for the 2008 Annual Meeting, “S&T from a Global
Perspective,” 14-18 February in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. [9]Submit a proposal.
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=2507.txt&search=Michael+BROWN
Note, copy still HTML active FOIA emails only via notepad, or similar.
They are still alive, and well.
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=2507.txt&search=Michael+BROWN
Ilkka.
Getting Warm:
It is no surprise that you present your mendacious post at December 1, 2011 at 1:48 pm from behind a false name.
Anybody who wants a genuine “fair and balanced” view of the issue can obtain it by reading my above post at December 1, 2011 at 1:52 am.
Richard
For most analysts, the seemingly unavoidable question at this point would be – if tree rings didn’t respond to late 20th century warmth, how would one know that they didn’t do the same thing in response to possible medieval warmth – a question that remains unaddressed years later.
—————–
Well let us assume the strong decline in the Briffa apparent temperature in the late 20th century is caused by the temperature exceeding a threshold.
If that was true ,and the medieval temperatures also exceeded that threshold, then we would also see a big dip in tree ring derived temperatures for the medieval period.
We don’t. So either medieval temperatures were less than the threshold or there is no threshold effect. Take your pick.
Phil Jones is controlling UK Cabinet.
Professor Jones,
Many thanks for assisting us with data for the Trade Report. The
only problem we have now is interpreting the data in a diagram. The one
that the Central Office of Information have done for us is unclear and to
simplify it somewhat we were interested in leaving out the North and South
data because the presentation COI gave us gave no clear indication when air
temperature in the North overshoots the South. As Daniel, the Team leader
for the Trade Project suggests below, we are thinking of just including the
‘Smooth Globe’ info. I attach a file below of what it would probably look
like. Would it be possible for you to describe the smoothing process
(compared with the raw global data) in a line or two so we could add it to
the footnote we intend to have in the Report? The alternative would be to
just have the raw global data – do you think this would be better? Would be
most grateful if you could get back to us as soon as possible as publication
date draws ever nearer.
<>
Many Thanks for your help,
Jonathan.
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=4707.txt&search=%40cabinet-office.x.gsi.gov.uk
Ilkka
How can anyone plot a graph where their own data goes outside their error bars?
– this is not just a crime of omission …
Also, I like the ‘Briffa scaled 1856 – 1980’
– it’s a nice touch
– actually it looks like they had a sudden fit of guilt in a follow-up plot that CA has
– where it was changed to ‘Briffa Scaled 1856 – 1940 ‘ !!
James Sexton says:
December 1, 2011 at 7:59 am
It is invalid, because the base assumption is invalid. YOU CAN NOT GET A MEAN TEMP FROM LOOKING AT A TREE RING! It doesn’t matter how you look at it.
http://suyts.wordpress.com/2011/11/29/dividing-by-zero/
=============================================
LOL……………………..more or less
Higher temps on the trees they were using…..will cause those trees to grow slower……mimicking lower temps……closer rings…heat will stress them like cold
While it successfully hid the MWP…….it didn’t cooperate with the hockey stick
They wanted the tree rings because they didn’t show a MWP……..but they had to splice and hide the decline for the same reason……the trees didn’t show a incline now
Where they ran into problems, is while it smoothed out the MWP, they couldn’t explain the sharp recent drop. They wanted a sharp up-tic for the unprecedented……the tree rings had the opposite down-tic…..
….and yes, they picked everything from the get go
Which trees, which temps, etc
Dendro is hard, and mostly a game…..trying to guess with nothing to calibrate it
LazyTeenager says:
“Well let us assume the strong decline in the Briffa apparent temperature in the late 20th century is caused by the temperature exceeding a threshold.
If that was true ,and the medieval temperatures also exceeded that threshold, then we would also see a big dip in tree ring derived temperatures for the medieval period.
We don’t. So either medieval temperatures were less than the threshold or there is no threshold effect. Take your pick.”
You’re just guessing why there is a decline
– but it’s interesting that no one has done an experiment to find out why for the last 70 years there has been a divergence
– it could be global dimming – or any number of factors
Could it be that tree rings just aren’t very good at tracking temperature, as Lucy Skywalker shows?:
http://www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/Science/Scientific/Arctic-Yamal3.htm
A Gem in 2895.txt:
cc: REDACTED, REDACTED
date: Tue Jun 10 14:53:21 2003
from: Keith Briffa
subject: Re: possible rewording of section of letter?
to: “Michael E. Mann”
At 01:15 PM 6/10/REDACTED, Keith Briffa wrote:
Mike
I know you up to your neck in marital bliss , and I am sorry to bother you , but on the
advice of Phil I thought it worth asking for your sanction of the following rewording of
the end of the penultimate paragraph of the letter. This is, we believe, important because the original phrasing is a large hostage to fortune, given that it seems to criticise (completely rubbish might be a better phrase) all work based on proxies that do not actually resolve the “climate trends of the last few decades” . As you know, many proxies used by you , us, and others, do not extend over this period of rapid warming and some that do (eg our MXD data) do not display an
appropriate rapid response. What you have written could coneivably be twisted to imply
that we (you) are criticising our (your) own work. How about changing the section with
currently reads – The conclusions , for example, of the ….of temperatures during the most recent decades against reconstructions of past temperatures, taking into account the uncertainties in
those reconstructions. As it is only the past few decades during which Northern
Hemisphere temperatures have exceeded the bounds of natural variability, any analysis
(SB03) that considers simply ’20th century’ mean conditions , or does not properly
resolve the changes of the late 20th century (e.g. through the interpretation of
evidence from proxy indicators which do not resolve the climate trends of the past few
decades), cannot yield any insight into whether or not recent warming is anomalous in a
long-term and large-scale context.
to –
……….
AntonyIndia says:
A Gem in 2895.txt:
WTF?!
Mann shoots Foot?
Mann puts Foot in Mouth?
gosh, heaven forbid that these clowns should actually think critically about “our (your) own work” rather than tailor their language for a public relations campaign posing as science!!
“This is, we believe, important because the original phrasing is a large hostage to fortune, given that it seems to criticise (completely rubbish might be a better phrase) all work based on proxies that do not actually resolve the “climate trends of the last few decades” . As you know, many proxies used by you , us, and others, do not extend over this period of rapid warming and some that do (eg our MXD data) do not display an appropriate rapid response. What you have written could coneivably be twisted to imply that we (you) are criticising our (your) own work….”
Hi All,
While most posters seem to buy into the premise that it must be the proxies that are wrong for not tracking temperature, the other option is that actually the proxies are right and it the ‘official’ temperature record that’s wrong. Given the change in the set of stations that have been contributing data over the years it does raise the question about what effect that has had.
Cheers
DM
I compared photographs and biographies of the “Hockey Team” members.
With attention to details pertaining to their personal lives and other non-climatological matters.
I make a bet: “Climategate Leaker” is Keith Briffa.
(Explanation of my reasoning (physiognomy, anthropology, psychology, cryptology and flubdubology of it) would take 2000 pages, so I happily refer to the limits of space and readers’ patience.)
An interesting side note to this issue is Phil Jone’s initial reaction to the first Climategate release. He came clean about what he did to the spaghetti graph he prepared for WMO headline graphic. This was the subject of the now famous “Mike’s trick” and “hide the decline. This IS the context that we’re always told we’re missing.
The initial frank an honest coming clean post got taken down within 48h but is now archived elsewhere on the UEA site. So lets have a look at Jones’ very own account of what the data should have looked like and what he gave WMO to present to world leaders:
http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/2009/nov/CRUupdate
Briffa’s work is not just cropped off it is made to go totally in the opposite direction and skyrockets. There is absolutely no indication that this is a mix of data from another source. There is no mention in the legend of the thermometer data , just the proxies. The other two proxies were basically running level , even slightly downwards up to 2000. They suffer the same fate. They are falsified to show a dramatic increase.
This was not a simple cut and paste operation, it was done by skilful blending of the two datasets.
Jones goes one step further than what Mann did in the Nature paper where, despite the blending, he did use a different colour for the temperature data. Here Jones uses that same line and does not even mention the use of temperatures.
This graph is a fraud, it does not show what it purports to show.
Sorry guys you just can’t do this sort of thing. If you did this with stock options you’d get 5 to 10 in the state pen.
LazyTeenager:
At December 1, 2011 at 2:20 pm you say:
“Well let us assume the strong decline in the Briffa apparent temperature in the late 20th century is caused by the temperature exceeding a threshold.”
NO! ABSOLUTELY NOT!
We do not need to assume anything. The fact – NOT an assumption – is that the proxy temperature data from trees and the measured surface temperature data from mostly weather stations diverge from ~1940 to the present.
This indicates
(a) The proxy data are wrong
or
(b) The measurement data are wrong
or
(c) The proxy data are not indicating the same parameter as the measurement data.
There are no other possibilities. Therefore, it is a blatant fraud to
1. delete the proxy data that disagree with the measurement data
2. then to splice the remaining proxy data onto the measurement data
3. and to claim the resulting combined data set provides an indication of a single parameter.
Richard
OK. My post to LazyTeeanager has still failed to appear probably because it contains the f-word. So, I again provide it here with some minor amendments that hopefully enable it to appear and add clarity.
***********************************
LazyTeenager:
At December 1, 2011 at 2:20 pm you say:
“Well let us assume the strong decline in the Briffa apparent temperature in the late 20th century is caused by the temperature exceeding a threshold.”
NO! ABSOLUTELY NOT!
We do not need to assume anything. The fact – NOT an assumption – is that the proxy temperature data from trees and the measured surface temperature data from mostly weather stations diverge from ~1940 to the present.
This indicates
(a) The proxy data are wrong
or
(b) The measurement data are wrong
or
(c) Both the proxy data and the measurement data are wrong
or
(d) The proxy data are not indicating the same parameter as the measurement data.
There are no other possibilities. Therefore, it is a blatant fr@ud to
1. delete the proxy data that disagree with the measurement data
2. then to splice the remaining proxy data onto the measurement data
3. and to claim the resulting combined data set provides a correct indication of a single parameter.
Richard
Allencic says:
December 1, 2011 at 8:12 am
I realize the money aspect of all this AGW stuff and I understand that jerks like Al Gore and grant grubbers stand to make lots of moola but what I simply will never understand is why, why, why are there so many enviros and politicians who do not stand to profit for AGW but who are still, in the face of literally no good, honest evidence, determined for a climate apocalypse to be true? It must be nothing more than a doomsday cult with a thin veneer of “science” as supporting its bizarre beliefs. Why wouldn’t anyone (except the likes of Mann, Hansen, Jones, Gore, Thompson, etc.) be damned glad that its just a hoax?
______________________________
My guess is it’s because we humans seem to need to believe in something greater than ourselves, and perhaps most cAGW’ers have nothing else?
And, fear of doom is nothing new. Remember the cartoon of the old guy with a sign reading “The end is near”.
Or, maybe it’s feelings of guilt, needing to be assuaged by punishment. LOL
http://www.yorku.ca/dcarveth/guilt.html
Roger Knight, “And because they want to maintain their stance as outsider/rebels, accusatory prophets. They don’t want to make their peace with The System in any shape or form. That reduces their “cred” among their coterie”.
That is a sharp observation and pretty much explains the tactics of most of the main stream media. Our news men and women of today have become determined “iconoclasts” who try to tear down the corrupt and obsolete (in their mind) to make way for the “new”. What are the words they always use, “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable”.
There are a lot of very good comments on this thread.
Thanks to Steve McIntyre for his tireless efforts as well as the commenters here. McIntyre is a straight shooter and this is very damaging to the ‘hocky stick’ and its purverors. The emails are the final convicting evidence.
I hope legal and a somewhat ‘poetic justice’ is found. Poetic justice being as these clowns / frauds have conspired in destroying others jobs and careers, so should it be applied to them. The effect on the world economy and the taxpayers is not to be overlooked. Incarceration for the long running and deliberate fraud? Should they be able to keep the gains from their participation in this? How have the courts judged in the past on keeping gains from improper / unlawful actions?
I think we are far past the revelations of the tactics / schemes used by these so called climate scientists and should now seek legal remedies. I would expect that some of the personally aggrieved parties will soon come forward in civil proceedings. Unfortunately, the biggest players with the biggest financial interests will simply say they aren’t scientists, but just followed the consensus. But by no means could ‘the Team’ be considered small fry. They are all big fish and very much involved.
LazyTeenager:
At December 1, 2011 at 2:20 pm you say:
“Well let us assume the strong decline in the Briffa apparent temperature in the late 20th century is caused by the temperature exceeding a threshold.”
If you believe that then explain why the same logic doesn’t apply to the higher temperatures in the Midieval Warm Period?
The cAGW Believer mentality: Clumsily stumbling and tripping, helter-skelter, with a big broken signboard saying, “THE END IS NEA//”
An excellent guide, I’ve found, to theory and predictions: take the 180° converse of cAGW assertions and projections as the likely truth. An excellent example is the JAXA IBUKI map of CO2 net emissions.
Here is CRU,s debate about treerings.
Why dont you look at the data, its now available.
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?search=+–