UPDATE: 12:55PM Dr. Mann ducks a TV station reporter who requested an interview afterwards, see below.
Steve McIntyre recently published a new graph on his website Climate Audit.
Alerted to the fact that Dr. Mann would be speaking at the OC Water Summit, I was asked to submit a question, but I could not make it there in time given the short notice. A suitable proxy, our friend Roger Sowell, was kind enough to attend and ask a question. Here’s what I sent him in way of a primer, I don’t know the actual question he asked, but we hope to have a video presentation later as I was told it was recorded.
Figure 1. Yamal Chronologies. Green – from Hantemirov _liv.rwl dataset; red- from Briffa et al 2008.
How interesting it is that the Hantemirov data in green, diverges from the CRU 2008 “Hockey Team” data in red. This is due to a larger data sample. One tree core, YAD061 is responsible for most of the difference, when a small set of tree core data is used.
This graph demonstrates how trees simply don’t show a hockey stick shape when all of the data is used.
In MBH98, your paper Dr. Mann, has a similar problem to the Briffa data. Your solution was to not use tree core data after 1960 and to splice on the instrumental temperature record to in effect “hide the decline” of the trees after 1960.
How do you respond to the charge that the tree ring data was cherry picked to show a desired result, and that Mr. McIntyre has falsified your work by showing that the premise of a hockey stick falls apart when all of the data is used?
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Roger Sowell was in the audience this morning (thank you for responding on short notice). I received this answer via text from Roger Sowell, to a question he asked:
He responded that it was Bradley as coauthor, and his (MBH98) work did not use the Briffa data.
Said the decline or divergence is well known but not understood, so is being studied.
Basically dodged the question; called it “specious”.
He said the warming is real and he addressed all this in his book.
It was hoped that Steve McIntyre would have provided a question for submission, but there was no email response from him in time.
Roger Sowell has done some excellent work in climate skepticism, I urge readers to read his recent presentation, here’s the primer:
The following is the presentation I made on April 17, 2012, to the Southern California Section of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), at their monthly dinner meeting held at Long Beach, California. The title for the presentation is “What if the Warmists are Wrong? Is Catastrophic Cooling Coming? Implications.” My heartfelt thanks to Mr. Alan Benson, chair of the Southern California Section, for the invitation to speak. I also appreciate those who attended, and especially for their questions. As always, it is an honor to address AIChE members.
The presentation was approximately one hour, followed by another hour of questions and answers. The presentation is in three parts, as suggested by the title: 1) Are the Warmists Wrong? 2) Is Catastrophic Cooling Coming? and 3) Implications.
Background: this topic could easily require a week to present the many aspects and interesting details. With a mere hour at my disposal, this presentation necessarily hits only the major points. My purpose here, firstly, was to inform the audience of what has transpired in the climate science arena in part 1, primarily as to the quality of the data and the climate models. It is important to note the scarcity of agreement between the model projections and actual data. Secondly, my purpose was to present the case for imminent global cooling in part 2. Thirdly, my purpose was to describe a few of the many and serious implications for imminent global cooling in part 3, tying this in to what engineers can expect. Engineers are problem-solvers, and this presents a great many problems to solve. I also described a few of the legal ramifications of imminent global cooling.
Full presentation here, well worth bookmarking.
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UPDATE: 11:40AM I’m told via telephone that a local TV station is going to be interviewing Dr. Mann, and also Mr. Sowell due to his question. He promises more details later. Stay tuned.
UPDATE2 11:55PM: I wrote to Roger Sowell, after getting the above message, he reports Mann ducked the interview with KOCE-TV, the PBS station in Southern California. When Mann can’t even appear on warm-friendly PBS, you know he’s on the run.
On Friday, May 18, 2012, Anthony wrote:
Dear Roger,Thank you most sincerely for taking time out of your busy schedule to do this, I am in your debt. Anthony,
He replied:
My pleasure. This has been noteworthy.
Dr Mann refused the interview, and according to the reporter, he was extremely rude about it.
My interview went ok, I believe.
Roger
I’ll post that interview if it becomes available online.
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Sounds like it was the wrong question to ask. You need to figure out something Mann cannot dodge away, if that ‘something’ exists that is.
Every public speaker has a set of canned responses anyway.
Thought he already lived in Fantasyland…
The response was truly worthy of a Manniac. So which cards are Briffa and Bradley in a game of three card Monte?
omnologos says:
You need to figure out something Mann cannot dodge away, if that ‘something’ exists that is. Every public speaker has a set of canned responses anyway.
• • •
How about this:
“Dr. Mann, you repeatedly claimed to have won the Nobel Prize. I have here the official list of all Nobel Prize recipients. You do not appear on that list. Care to explain?”☺
Global cooling has far greater dangers to humanity than global warming – crop failures, economic depression, and famine. See the consequences of the Little Ice Age. e.g., about 1/3rd the population of Finland perished during the Grea Famine of 1695-97.
Neumann, J., S. Lindgrén, 1979: Great Historical Events That Were Significantly Affected by the Weather: 4, The Great Famines in Finland and Estonia, 1695–97. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 60, 775–787.
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/1520-0477(1979)0602.0.CO;2
Overall, on average, global temperatures climate has been declining from the Holocene climatic optimum as we head towards the next glaciation.
Central planning bears equally large threats. Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” caused 36 – 45 million million deaths from famine, with a similar number of children not born. This caused a major dip in global population.
Sorry, I’ve read here that the algorithm used would create a hockey stick graph no matter what you plugged into it. I recall a posting here of a climategate email where even one of the team described creating random data in Excel and feeding that in and generating a hockey stick graph. Wasn’t he crowing that his, what, 12 year old daughter could do a better job?
Now you’re saying the algorithm is valid but the data they used was insufficient and cherry picked.
Ok, which one is it?
The question is unimportant. What is important is that where ever Mann goes he knows someone could be there with that killer question, the organises know, the audience know.
Mann is in play.
The question posed to mann should have been, ” Have you stopped falsifying data sets?”, answer yes or no.
I love when someone opens a good can of worms! 🙂
Pardon my ignorance on the details, but I don’t understand why this question was asked of Mann instead of Briffa? As I understand it, Mann didn’t use tree ring data to construct his hockey stick. He replaced the tree core data after 1960 with the instrumental temperature record to “hide the decline”. So his hockey stick shape after 1960 came from the instrumental record. So how does the fact that “trees simply don’t show a hockey stick shape when all of the data is used” connect to Mann when he didn’t use trees to construct his hockey stick in the first place? Do you understand my confusion?
I’ve read several articles on this, including some by Steve McIntyre, but they all seem to assume the reader already knows the connection of the tree ring data to Mann’s hockey stick. Is the connection too complicated to summarize and that’s why these articles leave it out? I would be surprised if other novices besides me are not confused on this point. Perhaps someone can explain (or provide a link that explains) how the tree data connects to Mann’s hockey stick given that Mann did not use tree data for the hockey stick part of his graph.
@TomB,
This isn’t about the algorithm used, which you’re right would produce a hockey stick shape from multiple data sets, basically no matter what data was used.
What’s discussed here is the raw data set, not the algorithm or its output. There is one tree in particular that has a hockey stick shape in its raw data, and by over representing that tree, you get that red line in the graph.
When you use all the raw data, and graph the raw data, you get no hockey stick shape what so ever.
This is nothing to do with the algorithm, which is a separate issue -on top- of this issue.
I would have asked a completely different kind of question. Something like this:
Dr. Mann, suppose you became aware of an impending natural disaster, say something like a volcano erupting in downtown New York City. If the authorities were reluctant to evacuate millions of people on your say so, would you share with them data and scientific analysis that led you to your conclusion, or would you just let those millions of people die?
omnologos says:
May 18, 2012 at 11:11 am
Sounds like it was the wrong question to ask. You need to figure out something Mann cannot dodge away, if that ‘something’ exists that is.
I have a step-daughter who lies incessantly and, for years, it’s only her mother and I who would call her out – everyone else accpeted her version of things because she’s good at it. Recently she’s gone a little too far and others are starting to wise up. As they do there’s a snowball effect and she’s losing her credibility faster than any of the individual “gotchas” would warrant.
With luck the local TV picked up on Mann’s evasion, hence the interview with Mr Sowell as well. If that’s the case then every little chip in the armour helps 😉
He responded that it was Bradley as coauthor, and his (MBH98) work did not use the Briffa data.
===============
I’m thoroughly confused by this statement………….
TomB says:
May 18, 2012 at 11:31 am
This graph demonstrates how trees simply don’t show a hockey stick shape when all of the data is used.
Sorry, I’ve read here that the algorithm used would create a hockey stick graph no matter what you plugged into it. I recall a posting here of a climategate email where even one of the team described creating random data in Excel and feeding that in and generating a hockey stick graph. Wasn’t he crowing that his, what, 12 year old daughter could do a better job?
Now you’re saying the algorithm is valid but the data they used was insufficient and cherry picked.
Ok, which one is it?
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The deception is layers upon layers. Mann’s mannipulation of the data would produce a hockey stick using random noise. On top of that, handling the data he chose to use (more tree rings were available) in an honest manner would still produce a hockey stick because of just one atypical tree ring. Leave that one tree out and use all the rings and the hockey stick disappears. (He tried again with corings from a lake but handled them as honestly as he did the tree rings.) Besides, tree rings are lousy proxies for temperature to begin with. Layers upon layers.
In answer to Louis, I would say that the fact that the tree rings did not show the warming of the 1980’s and 1990’s suggests that they are not a reliable guide to past temperatures. It is this that he was hiding as much as anything.
I should add that he wasn’t just out to make the future look hotter, he was out to change the past.
“Said the decline or divergence is well known but not understood, so is being studied.”
I think Mann might have actually slipped here. Every time I hear an AGW advocate discuss “hide the decline” on TV, the talking points are always drivel about how the emails were taken out of context, there’s no “trick”, nothing unusual going on, etc etc.
I could be wrong, but I’ve never seen one publicly admit to anything being “not understood”.
“UPDATE: 11:40AM I’m told via telephone that a local TV station is going to be interviewing Dr. Mann, and also Mr. Sowell due to his question. He promises more details later. Stay tuned”
Hurrah!!! Another public opportunity for a quid pro quo comparison of the data and analysis, as well as to assess the integrity of each presenter adherence to unbiased, honest science…. or not!
Thanks for posting the link to Roger Sowell’s SoCal AIChE presentation!
MtK
I’m told via telephone that a local TV station is going to be interviewing Dr. Mann, and also Mr. Sowell due to his question. He promises more details later. Stay tuned.
*making popcorn*
Louis, you can see Mann’s proxies here: http://climateaudit.org/2005/06/02/mbh98-proxies/
They do not end in 1960 and they do include tree rings.
And, you should be cautious about what you say Dr Mann did. As he said himself: “No researchers in this field have ever, to our knowledge, “grafted the thermometer record onto” any reconstruction.” http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/myths-vs-fact-regarding-the-hockey-stick/
You can search for this quote on Climate Audit and elsewhere for further analysis of this statement.
just some guy;
I could be wrong, but I’ve never seen one publicly admit to anything being “not understood”.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I noticed that too. Mann would look pretty silly trying to assert that the divergence problem is not understood and also that the trees are an accurate proxy for temperature.
Then again, the notion that tree growth responds exclusively to temperature is pretty silly, and he’s gotten away with that.
And he got caught using an algorithm that sifts the data looking for hockey stick shapes and emphasizing them over the rest of the data which is pretty silly too, and got away with that as well.
And it would be pretty silly to graph temperature data onto a graph of tree ring data to “hide the decline” in the tree ring data because it would be so easy to get caught. Wait… he DID get caught… and got away with that as well.
There’s no words to describe the debate anymore, none.
DR_UK;
And, you should be cautious about what you say Dr Mann did. As he said himself: “No researchers in this field have ever, to our knowledge, “grafted the thermometer record onto” any reconstruction.”
>>>>>>>>>>
As always when Dr Mann is looking like the charlatan he is, the paid trolls come out of the woodwork with “warnings” and handy quotes and links to articles on charlatan friendly sites.
Sorry DR_UK, I read the climategate e-mails, I looked closely at those graphs, and I read the excuses after the fact trying to justify that they did exactly that. This was what Phil Jones was reffering to as “Mike’s Nature trick” in the climategate emails, and the fact that various researchers tried to JUSTIFY what they did instead of claiming that they didn’t tell me all I need to know about this fiasco.
Dr Mann.
When Wile E Coyote breaks the law of physics, why does he get away with it until he faces the camera and the audience laughs? Before he crashes and burns.
If he were so wily, why run off the cliff in the first place ?
Let me put my question to you, DR_UK.
If you were a scientist who, in the course of your research, became aware of an impending natural disaster, only days away, that would kill millions of people, would you disclose your data and methods to the public in order to convince them to take action?