Email 2383 contains further evidence that everyone in the world of paleoclimate knew the Hockey Stick was a duffer.
From: Tim Barnett [[2]mailto:XXXXXXXXXXX@ucsd.edu]
Sent: 11 October 2004 16:42
To: Gabi Hegerl; Klaus Hasselmann
Cc: Prof.Dr. Hans von Storch; Myles Allen; francis; Reiner Schnur; Phil Jones; Tom Crowley; Nathan Gillett; David Karoly; Jesse Kenyon; christopher.d.miller@noaa.gov; Pennell, William T; Tett, Simon; Ben Santer; Karl Taylor; Stott, Peter; Bamzai, Anjuli
Subject: Re: spring meeting
not to be a trouble maker but……if we are going to really get into the paleo stuff, maybe someone(s) ought to have another look at Mann’s paper. His statistics were suspect as i remember. for instance, i seem to remember he used, say, 4 EOFs as predictors. But he prescreened them and threw one away because it was not useful. then made a model with the remaining three, ignoring the fact he had originally considered 4 predictors. He never added an artifical skill measure to account for this but based significance on 3 predictors. Might not make any difference. My memory is probably faulty on these issues, but to be completely even handed we ought to be sure we agree with his procedures. best, tim
It’s interesting how much evidence there is now that the Hockey Stick was known to be a problem. Perhaps readers can help collate a list of emails making this point.
NAS panel review of hockeysticks prompted by McIntyre and McKitrick.
#1104 -Heinz Wanner – on reporting his NAS panel critique of Mann to the media.
I just refused to give an exclusive interview to SPIEGEL because I will not cause damage for climate science.
#1656 Douglas Maraun – on how to react to skeptics.
How should we deal with flaws inside the climate community? I think, that “our” reaction on the errors found in Mike Mann’s work were not especially honest.
#3234 Richard Alley
Taking the recent instrumental record and the tree-ring record and joining them yields a dramatic picture, with rather high confidence that recent times are anomalously warm. Taking strictly the tree-ring record and omitting the instrumental record yields a less-dramatic picture and a lower confidence that the recent temperatures are anomalous.
Paleoclimate and hide the decline
#0300
Bo Christiansen – On Hockey stick reconstructions
All methods strongly underestimates the amplitude of low-frequency variability and trends. This means that it is almost impossible to conclude from reconstruction studies that the present period is warmer than any period in the reconstructed period.
Ed Cook #3253
the results of this study will show that we can probably say a fair bit about <100 year extra-tropical NH temperature variability (at least as far as we believe the proxy estimates), but honestly know fuck-all about what the >100 year variability was like with any certainty (i.e. we know with certainty that we know fuck-all).
#4133 Johnathan Overpeck – IPCC review.
what Mike Mann continually fails to understand, and no amount of references will solve, is that there is practically no reliable tropical data for most of the time period, and without knowing the tropical sensitivity, we have no way of knowing how cold (or warm)the globe actually got.
[and later]
Unsatisfying, perhaps, since people will want to know whether 1200 AD was warmer than today, but if the data doesn’t exist, the question can’t yet be answered. A good topic for needed future work.
Rob Wilson – 1583
The palaeo-world has become a much more complex place in the last 10 years and with all the different calibration methods, data processing methods, proxy interpretations – any method that incorporates all forms of uncertainty and error will undoubtedly result in reconstructions with wider error bars than we currently have. These many be more honest, but may not be too helpful for model comparison attribution studies. We need to be careful with the wording I think.
#3234 Richard Alley – on NAS panel and divergence
records, or some other records such as Rosanne’s new ones, show “divergence”, then I believe it casts doubt on the use of joined tree-ring/instrumental records, and I don’t believe that I have yet heard why this interpretation is wrong.
#4758 Tim Osborne – Criticizing other people for doing the same thing
Because how can we be critical of Crowley for throwing out 40-years in the middle of his calibration, when we’re throwing out all post-1960 data ‘cos the MXD has a non-temperature signal in it, and also all pre-1881 or pre-1871 data ‘cos the temperature data may have a non-temperature signal in it! If we write the Holocene forum article then we’ll have to be critical or our paper as well as Crowley’s!
#0497 – Phil Jones UEA – Scientists don’t know the magnitude of past warming.
Even though the tree-ring chronologies used have robust rbar statistics for the whole 1000 years ( ie they lose nothing because core numbers stay high throughout), they have lost low frequency because of standardization. We’ve all tried with RCS/very stiff splines/hardly any detrending to keep this to a minimum, but until we know it is minimal it is still worth mentioning.
#0886 Jan Esper on his own reconstruction – also hidden decline
And the curve will also show that the IPCC curve needs to be improved according to missing long-term declining trends/signals, which were removed (by dendrochronologists!) before Mann merged the local records together.
Tiim Osborne 4007
Also we have applied a completely artificial adjustment to the data after 1960, so they look closer to observed temperatures than the tree-ring data actually were
Tim Osborne #2347
Also, we set all post-1960 values to missing in the MXD data set (due to decline), and the method will infill these, estimating them from the real temperatures – another way of “correcting” for the decline, though may be not defensible!
#3234 Richard Alley
Unless the “divergence problem” can be confidently ascribed to some cause that was not active a millennium ago, then the comparison between tree rings from a millennium ago and instrumental records from the last decades does not seem to be justified, and the confidence level in the anomalous nature of the recent warmth is lowered.
I think the best way to sum up all of this is a quote from a guest post at tAV and DieKlimazweibel by Bo Christiansen:
Where does all this lead us? It is very likely that the NH mean temperature has shown much larger past variability than caught by previous reconstructions. We cannot from these reconstructions conclude that the previous 50-year period has been unique in the context of the last 500-1000 years.
Of course we all know that the IPCC reports differently.
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Unbelievable— and here I thought Wall Street was the ground zero and citadel of hypocrisy.
Very telling. Nobody, even in the wider circle, dares to raise their voices in public, when this stick was wi(l)dely used for concerted misinformation on a global scale, wasting hundred billions of taxpayers’ money, killing the children FOIA2011 is talking about.
I’d call this a crime against humanity and a strong example how science should not be allowed to work out.
John, I was about to say the same about DC and Brussels
Note that these are the same individuals that were either silent or vigorously defended Mann when he was criticized.
The “hide the decline” discussion by Alley and Osborne is important. No claim of ‘scientific lingo ‘will change the meaning of that discourse.
There seems to be a hint that at least one writer is close to understanding that Mann’s mathematical model will cause a hockey stick no matter what data is introduced.
The pretense that there is a scarcity of data regarding the Medieval Warm Period (a pretense maintained by NOAA to this day) is laughable given their reliance on highly suspect data to prove a dramatic warming trend.
Today’s letters in Wall Street Journal has Mann’s latest propaganda attempt.
Reminds me of Tariq Assiz pronouncing Iraqi victory
while American tanks were rounding the corner right behind him.
The last the world heard from him as he ran the opposite way was:
‘Look, look! We are winning!”
Sorry name escapes me but what about that email from a young Ph.D. at CRU who wanted a meeting with the rest of the team there as he was uncomfortable about letting the hockey stick get away without criticism?
All the quotes are out of context!
Really.
And wasn’t Gilbert at NAS criticized for what he said in his review of MBH — something like “flawed math,” “corrupt data,” and “Whatever it is, it isn’t science.”
This is an important area. Of the various sins of omission and commission that these emails reveal, the sheer irresponsibility exposed by such as the above quotes is a great source of dismay. The irresponsibility lies of course not in the quotes themselves, but in the subsequent silence in the public square on the part of those who made them. The blatant promotion of the hockey-stick by the IPCC and such as Al Gore led to, as an all but inevitable consequence, the deliberate, profound frightening of children. To fail to protect children from such abuse represents an abdication of a basic adult responsibility. This was and is not ‘scary fairy tale’ level for the children, although the ‘science’ may be at that level. This was and is a level at which damage to their sense of wellbeing and security can be expected, and has indeed been observed – driven by people convinced that the hockey-stick was evidence of imminent catastrophe (http://climatelessons.blogspot.com/p/climate-anxiety-reports-of-frightened.html). A few calming words from those IPCC scientists ‘in the know’ would have helped create a calmer, more accurate, more credible, more defensible perspective. But I guess such words would also have harmed ‘the cause’. I wonder what awful malevolence lies in that ’cause’ that it could be the motivation for such inaction.
I’m sorry, but this whole thing just seems very ironic in light of Santer et al attack on the Satellite record in the latest edition of Science (their “special” on Data Replication and Reproducibility):
From the abstract:
“Although concerns have been expressed about the reliability of surface temperature data sets, findings of pronounced surface warming over the past 60 years have been independently reproduced by multiple groups. In contrast, an initial finding that the lower troposphere cooled since 1979 could not be reproduced. Attempts to confirm this apparent cooling trend led to the discovery of errors in the initial analyses of satellite-based tropospheric temperature measurements.”
By way of threadjack: In Durban, “One more proposal simply requires that rich countries commit to cutting their “greenhouse gas emissions more than 100 per cent by 2040.”” http://reason.com/archives/2011/12/05/delusional-in-durban (paragraph 11)
I think we got an Ig Nobel candidate right there
Here’s set of links for these messages:
2383.txt
1104.txt
1656.txt
3234.txt
0300.txt
3253.txt
4133.txt
1583.txt
3234.txt
4758.txt
0497.txt
0886.txt
4007.txt
2347.txt
2346.txt
(in case anyone wants to check context…)
I think that the one that you have referenced as 2347 should actually be 2346 (also linked above).
To John Garrett, whose comment was:
“Unbelievable— and here I thought Wall Street was the ground zero and citadel of hypocrisy.”
Wall St. was going to make huge amounts of money buying and selling CO2 credts, making derivative markets on them. The next big scam after selling worthless housing derivative products.
Wall Street;s use of PAC money may explain why so many politicians were, and still are, silent on Climategate and the hockey schtick. If they want to get reelected, today, they need money. If financial entities give them PAC $, those entities don’t want a still possible mega-market in CO2 trading being undercut.
It’s really a three cornered hypocritical stool — disingenuous climate “scientists,” financial PAC money, and politicians who need that $.
Mann’s letter in the wsj demonstrates the left’s delusional reality.Truth is to climate as efficiency is to green energy–irrelevant. There is no limit to our government borrowing. There is no limit to how many laws and regulations we can create. We can spend whatever it takes for whatever we want. Let’s build pyramids so we can create jobs. Pretend these are the worst times and we can party on.Our grandkids are gonna puke when they pay our bills.
Another email to add to the list is the one where someone (Wigley?) was talking about their kid’s science project and how it disproved the notion that trees are reliable temperature proxies.
But didn’t the AR4 conclude that the recent warming was “very likely” due to human activity? If there is nothing anomalous about recent warming when compared to the past, then this conclusion is “very likely” wrong.
Ed Cooke in email 3253 says
“but honestly know fuck-all about what the >100 year variability was like with any certainty (i.e. we know with certainty that we know fuck-all).”
Is that the true state of climate science? “We know with certainty that we know fuck-all.”
Please don’t delete this Mr Moderator. These are not my words.
At this point, I believe that dendrochronology could say something about the net quality of life on an annual basis for each tree from which a core sample was taken and analyzed. Beyond that i will need more than a ” just trust me on this”.
There is no other word for it but FRAUD.
This FRAUD is on the scale of Bernie Madhoff. In this case, Billions of taxpayers funds have gone down the drain!!!!
These people ALL directly benefited from taxpayer funding due to the fraudulent “scare mongering” by some of their “team”.
When you know or realize you are part of a FRAUD against the public, you owe it to those being scammed to speak out and report it. You owe it to the taxpayers who fund your work. You owe it the institutions you work for. You owe it to yourself and your family if you have any moral or ethical compass at all.
This goes beyond DISGUSTING. It is CRIMINAL NEGLIGENCE – through their inaction these people knowingly allowed a FRAUD to be perpetrated.
With respects to Apollo 13:
Gene Kranz: Let’s look at this thing from a… um, from a standpoint of status. What do we got on the spacecraft that’s good?
[pause]
Sy Liebergot: I’ll get back to you, Gene.
Where does AGW stand — is anything good?
Topic — Then — Now
* Hockeystick — current warming is exceptional — dead, and they knew it
* Glaciers are Melting — graphic example — not due to warming or not happening
* Polar Bears — graphic example — doing well, misused photos
* Hurricanes, Tornados, Drought — graphic examples — not linked to climate change
* MWP — ignored or “not global” — still there
* Surface Temperature Record — what problems (pre-Anthony) — problems don’t matter (BEST)
* Abuse of Statistics — we know what we are doing — internally, no we don’t
* Antarctic ice sheets — accelerated melting — not
* Arctic Ice — ice free by 20xx due to AGW — ice fluctuations due to wind patterns
* CO2 residency — short – long -short – long — ?
* PDO drivers — what PDO — still don’t know
* Cosmic Ray seeding clouds — crazy alternative hypothesis — experimental support
* Sulphate Hypothesis — keep in back pocket — SO2 down due to clean coal?
* The Cause — shhhhh — out of context
* BBC, NYT, etc. — bastions of journalistic integrity — ho ho ho
* “Science” — the settled consensus of … — internally, we don’t know either, but were going to get you fired if you disagree
* Divergence — hide it — caused by something we don’t know, so ignore it
* Missing data — its all on the web — we lost it
* IPCC — impartial review of peer-reviewed literature — biased review by stacked committees of environmental ngo propaganda, mixed in with literature written by committee members
Did I miss anything?
From Wikipedia re the Hockey Stock:
“The graph was seen by mass media and the public as central to the IPCC case for global warming, which had actually been based on other unrelated evidence. Jerry Mahlman, who had coined the “hockey stick” nickname, described this emphasis on the graph as “a colossal mistake, just as it was a mistake for the climate-science-writing press to amplify it.” He added that it was “not the smoking gun. That’s the data we’ve had for the past 150 years, which is quite consistent with the expectation that the climate is continuing to warm.”[22] From an expert viewpoint the graph was, like all newly published science, preliminary and uncertain, but it was widely used to publicise the issue of global warming.”
If the hockey stick was not that important, why was it not demolished from the ‘inside’ in the name of scientific honesty and public accuracy, since obviously Mann’s colleagues saw the problems with his construction? Why did the warmists continue to defend it even after McIntyre and McKitrick demolished the mathematical and statistical basis for the graph and Edward Wegman’s report for the senate uncovered further problems in 2006? The warmists’ claim that the hockey stick was a side-show needs to be completely disemboweled, and the enormity of wrongdoing revealed in these e-mails needs to be put in its true context.
As John Shade says above, this ‘science’ was used to terrorize children. Every generation needs its bogeyman, I suppose, but global warming has none of the thrill for children of ‘trolls under the bridge”. Plus it is explicitly intended to create a burden of guilt in children and adults alike for partaking in the original sin of being born and thereby generating environmental damage. These ‘scientists’ deserve our utmost scorn.
Really, it’s time to start thinking about criminal action. The amount of money wasted globally chasing this alarmist claptrap that the individuals privately KNEW to be claptrap puts Wall Street to shame (not to mention the number of dead from substandard power grids/astronomical fuel costs in the poorer areas of the world).
The one pleasing thing to come out of all of this is that most of these “scientists” who defended Mann and Jones over the years have turned out to have equally low opinions of them as ours. Mann just happened to be the useful idiot who bumbled into what amounted to a great ad campaign. Now these “scientists” were tasked with producing what the ad campaign promised.
It’s interesting that these scientists agree that Mann and Jones 2003 paper was “the worst thing Jones has produced” when that paper really cemented Jones as a full fledged, arm waving global warming fanatic. His past work, and even the last two years after Climategate shows a Jones much more willing to accept the fact that we are 1) no longer warming and 2) we really don’t know that much about the long term trend. Mann just seems to exude this aura of horribly bad science that infects whoever he is working with.
Real Climate, as a product of Mann himself, is sitting dead center in this Mannian anti-Science field.
“David Schofield says:
December 5, 2011 at 8:34 am
Sorry name escapes me but what about that email from a young Ph.D. at CRU who wanted a meeting with the rest of the team there as he was uncomfortable about letting the hockey stick get away without criticism?”
That was mentioned.
See
http://algorelied.com/?tag=douglas-maraun
Somehow, even after everything else, I expected some angst over how reality continues to diverge from the path that supports “the cause”, but no just cold blooded conniving. Here’s a riddle, what’s the difference between a “Flat-Earther” and a “Climate Scientist”; answer, the “Flat-Earther” enjoys the rational debate even knowing their position is false.
Amazing how little courage is displayed among the members of the scientific community.
Again, we see that many scientists have known full well that climate alarmism is entirely fictitious, yet they have done nothing to stop the madness.
Gotta go along to get along.
Right.