From the “he who must not be named” department, comes this sure to be future McI-fodder.
UEA/CRU responds in a press release, authored by Tim Osborn, an excerpt:
===========================================================
Tim Osborn comments on “Yamal, Polar Urals and Muir-Russell”
Recent accusations (here, leading to embellishment across parts of the blogosphere, e.g. here) that the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) promoted tree-ring results that fit some preconceived view (e.g. of modern temperatures exceeding those during Medieval times) or curtailed other work because it did not support such a view, and that CRU deceived the Muir-Russell inquiry about its work in this area, are all false. (emphasis is Osborn’s)
Two key points to begin:
1. The raw tree-ring data used in our published work are available; anyone is free to use them in any way they wish.
2. We already responded in detail to criticisms concerning the Yamal chronology. The figure on that webpage (reproduced at the end of this document) shows the impact of including additional tree-ring data (black line) compared to our previously published data (blue and red lines). The impact is relatively small, though note the caveats in the text on that webpage. We are currently working towards a new paper that incorporates additional tree-ring data from the Yamal and Polar Urals region.
…
It is misleading, therefore, to imply that because we have not yet published all of our work in this area, we are somehow restricting the advance of scientific knowledge in this area. A recommendation of the Muir Russell report that is directly relevant to the issue of scientific advancement and to the current accusations is: (bold mine)
We note that much of the challenge to CRU’s work has not always followed the conventional scientific method of checking and seeking to falsify conclusions or offering alternative hypotheses for peer review and publication. We believe this is necessary if science is to move on, and we hope that all those involved on all sides of the climate science debate will adopt this approach.
Full press release is here: http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/CRUstatements/rebuttalsandcorrections/yamal
ALTERNATE LINK: http://www.webcitation.org/681asTi21
============================================================
…much of the challenge to CRU’s work has not always followed the conventional scientific method…
Oh, well that makes it OK then. /sarc What a laughable defense to cite now. What greater condemnation of CRU’s methods could be written? Do these guys understand what they are doing when they cite things like this? I think not.
Recall the bullying of CRU’s Phil Jones regarding the “scientific method” and peer review:
In July 2004, referring to Climate Research having published a paper by “MM”, thought to be Ross McKitrick and Pat Michaels, and another paper by Eugenia Kalnay and Ming Cai, Jones emailed his colleagues saying,
“I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin [TRENBERTH] and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”
Source: Wikpedia on the CRU emails – Alleged exclusion of papers from IPCC report
This episode reminds me of a famous movie line:
“I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” – General Yamamoto in the 1970 film Tora! Tora! Tora!,
Maybe the coded battle message now will be Yamal! Yamal! Yamal!
I think you missed the intended context. “. . . much of the CHALLENGE to CRU’s work” is what I think was being indicated had not followed conventional scientific methods. In other words, the challengers, aka the skeptics, aka a Certain Canadian Who Must Not Be Named.
REPLY: Yes, but I was thinking of them blocking peer review, I’ve added a CRU email quote to clarify. – Anthony
Since they haven’t published all their work in this area, would it not also be misleading to use it to advance an agenda restricting economic growth and asking to spend trillions to resolve a problem which may not even be problem?
Thats it keep hammering away at this Yamal thing its what will bring them down to be sure LOL
I read it the same way geo does–not that CRU hasn’t followed conventional scientific method, but that the challenges to it haven’t.
I can’t help but note the subject of the referenced sentence: “… much of the challenge to CRU’s work has not always followed the conventional scientific method of checking and seeking to falsify conclusions or offering alternative hypotheses for peer review and publication…”
The subject of the sentence isn’t “CRU’s work.”
With respect, that’s a fairly important distinction.
REPLY: See my note- Anthony
Indeed, Geo is correct – you’ve inverted the sense in the bold section.
REPLY: See my note- Anthony
What they are arguing is that they’re not crooks, they’re just incompetent, but no one is qualified to challenge them on their incompetence unless said individual is prepared to run the gauntlet of their protectors in order to get something in the pal-reviewed “literature”.
Er – Have you got the right end of the stick here? Is not Muir Russell saying ‘ . . . much of the challenge (to CRU’s work) has not always followed the conventional scientific method . . .’ ?
Yes, I agree. He is saying the CHALLENGES to CRU’s work has not followed the scientific method. Which is absolutely absurd. Almost as absurd as loping off 50 years of a chronology because you don’t like what it says…
Several pointed out my citation mistake, I was thinking of the CRU challenges to peer review submissions by MM and others, and I erred in cut an paste, fixed now, with a clarifying quote from Climategate emails added. Such is the issue when I try to fit in a story before heading to the office. My apologies for the confusion.
Please refresh the story – Anthony
Presented in boldface above is purported to be a Muir Russell inquiry quote:
CRU’s work has not always followed the conventional scientific method…
This is editing with a vengeance, completely reversing the meaning of the original statement:
much of the challenge to CRU’s work has not always followed the conventional scientific method…
I am disappointed to see such deceptive tactics on this blog.
REPLY: That was my mistake, I was thinking of the CRU challenges to peer review, and I erred in cut an paste, fixed now, with a clarifying quote added. – Anthony
I would be not surprised in this new paper never sees the light of day. Obviously SM will be analyzing this latest graph carefully and see if it tallies with past statements and data not provided or now revealed.
Anthony, it appeared to me that Osborn is stating that , ” . .much of THE CHALLENGE TO CRU’s work has not always followed the scientific method . . ” . I didn’t read it as Osborn stating that CRU’s work hasn’t followed the scientific method . . .
Now that still doesn’t change my mind about WHAT CRU DID nor how they have behaved. I think they have not done ‘good science’. But I think too much is being read into only the bolded words . . .
REPLY: See my note- Anthony
To quote Mandy Rice-Davies “He would say that wouldn’t he”?
“…much of the challenge to CRU’s work has not always followed the conventional scientific method…”
Wait a moment, after years of trying to get themselves a looser set of rules called Post normal Science, we want to be a Normal Science again at the CRU?
FINE! Make a prediction and when it gets falsified retract your IPCC reports!
Wonder how it’s going with the tropospheric hotspot…
Osborn apparently needs some remedial English work. The passage regarding not having “…not .. followed the scientific method…” is obscure beyond redemption. I think, as geo seems to, that “challenge” actually may refer to SM among others. Since SM has had to resort to FOI requests in order to even approach acquiring that data, and no one on the “team” has ever published an explanation of how the more modern tree-ring data were filtered, the gist of the assertion that the information is available is – ah – misleading. Also, when considering methods, peer review, and publication, perhaps if the “team” were actually willing to entertain such activities, rather resort to the behaviour documented in the Climategate emails, they might not be stinging quite so much.
If only peer review can move science forward what are they doing publishing press releases?
All of this is my personal opinion about the matter of course:
When CRU releases their data and code, they will be following internationally accepted standards for responsible conduct of scientific research.
When they explain why they:
a) excluded part of the larger Yamal data set after after
b) having first analyzed it, and
c) explain how they failed to notify the reader that they were excluding data they had access to and had already examined,
then they will be following internationally accepted standards for responsible conduct of scientific research. (However this remediation will not cure their previous failures to follow international standards, nor is denying that they materially failed to follow these standards, when they de facto failed to follow them, is anything further than an additional violation of these standards.)
In my opinion, at this point, I view them as having violated the trust of the scientific body. I do not think this public release statement helps their case and see it simply as a continuation of unethical behavior on the part of this group. Claiming that including all the additional data (which they had access to prior to publication) doesn’t materially affect the reconstructed curve is a demonstrable falsehood.
To suggest, after CRU employees have actively participated in blocking the publication of peer reviewed research, that other researchers must pass the CRU gauntlet before it can be considered to meet their “rigorous standards” for “conventional scientific methods” is snort-your-coffee-onto-your-keyboard laugh-out-loud lunacy.
Given that CRU only admitted to which subset of of the available data was used after an extended FOI fight, to suggest that CRU itself follows “conventional scientific practice” is simply beyond the pale. This information should have been available in the original peer-reviewed document.
Anthony,
Parody on/
Be careful, the pseudo-scientists of the Team (of CG1 & CG2 notoriety) surely are starting to draw pentagrams on the floors of their esteemed faculty lounges chanting forbidden evils curses on skeptic blog leaders. Or at least they are making wax figures of you all with locks of your hair stuck in and they are looking for pins to stick in the figures.
Do you have any good witches in Chico who can put protective counter charms on you?
Parody off/
Still, without parody, I say you should be careful. We all should not underestimate what some unbalanced people, caught up in the alarmist CAGW fanatical rhetoric, might contemplate in some sick phantasy.
John
Someone should do a little symbolic logic run-thru of that release. There’s some very dodgy stuff happening in all that verbiage.
I wonder why they chose to delete most of the second graph? Why did they not include statistical ranges, ie, standard deviations? How can anyone use this “proof” to judge whether or not the tree ring chronology says anything at all of import to 1000 years of temperatures?
Wow! Anthony, things change quickly in the blogosphere. Between reading the original post and posting my comment, you apparently have had an avalanche of very similar responses and you’ve addressed them. Still I think it did the job, because there’s an agreement that Osborn might have been better to not say anything,
REPLY: My mistake was the result of time pressure due to needing to leave for work and tangential inspiration. I got the idea on the YAMAL movie poster, but didn’t finish my citation about Jones and peer review. I had it in the clipboard, but didn’t paste it. Haste makes waste, but thank goodness I have WUWT’s insta peer review to spot such mistakes so that they can be quickly corrected. Thanks everybody! – Anthony
Isn’t this the same Tom Osborne, who in the climate gate emails sought to strip the PhD of a skeptic that he did not agree with?
So they are working on a paper which has the data Steve McIntyre requested. As it is a non-hockey-stick result, it will perhaps be reviewed harshly by Phil Jones and others as not interesting to the readers of the journal. This will be a paper that just can’t seem to get past under review status.
Such is the issue when I try to fit in a story before heading to the office.
And it speaks loudly as to why scientific findings are subject to lengthly peer review by qualified scientists before publication.
REPLY: But what about “Kevin and I will keep them out somehow”?
So all their data has always been freely available? That is just not true?
Mr. Watts,
One aspect of WUWT that originally gave me confidence in its intellectual integrity was its very light moderation and ( unlike a certain other well-known climate blog ) its willingness to accept criticism.
The quick recognition, admission of error and correction demonstrated in this thread reinforced my confidence in WUWT’s honesty and intellectual integrity.
“Truth will out.”
Yep – they’re blaming blogs for criticising their work. Sniff.
Stacey:
An account of which subset of the data they analyzed has not always been freely available—One operating principle in science is replicability.
If you don’t tell people what you did in enough detail that it can be replicated, you aren’t following established guidelines for responsible conduct of research.
What we have here, given the disparity between the CRU Yamal reconstruction and that of Steve McIntyre ,
is the apparent cherry picking of a subset of data that gave a desirable result.
Even if they had good reasons (especially if they did), they need to have explained which data they used and which they excluded at the time of publication, and the prior reasons for inclusion or exclusion of data.
Hearing weak-minded apologists give lame excuses framed by Osborne in the context of “standard scientific practice” seriously doesn’t do anything to help Ken Briffa’s case here.
Phil C’s defense seems to be that Anthony made an editing error, corrected it and admitted that he corrected it and apologized for it.
How is that a credibloe defense? Isn’t what Anthony did after recognizing his error what CRU should have done rather than double-down and continue the claim that everything they did was on the up-and-up?
I do not think Shakespeare could write a comedy as funny as the CRU Yamal saga. It would take Monty Python. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eMkth8FWno
Do not forget Willis’s tussle to get data from CRU
Some choice E-mails: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/14/reading-every-one-of-the-5000-climategate-2-emails/
250 note worthy e-mails http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/06/250-plus-noteworthy-climategate-2-0-emails/
Now that the citation error has been corrected. How about a Yamal-Yamal-Yamal T-shirt. That poster was as creative and funny as anything Josh has illustrated.
Dennis Ray Wingo says:
May 29, 2012 at 10:21 am
Isn’t this the same Tom Osborne, who in the climate gate emails sought to strip the PhD of a skeptic that he did not agree with?
______________________________________
Team ugliness – a call to get a skeptics PhD thesis revoked: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/02/team-ugliness-an-call-to-get-a-skeptics-phd-thesis-revoked/
There was also this one:
Regulatory Czar wants to use copyright protection mechanisms to shut down rumors and conspiracy theories: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/20/regulatory-czar-wants-to-use-copyright-protection-mechanisms-to-shut-down-rumors-and-conspiracy-theories/
Anthony, in the passge you quote from Muir Russel, I believe you highlighted the wrong sentence. It is the last one that is important: that BOTH sides must follow the established rules, seek to falsify conclusions or provide alternate hypothesies, not just the skeptic side. So it seems that MR were not just pointing to the skeptics otherwise the reccomendation would clearly have stated such–tho’ the tought part would be to get the other side’s work peer reviewed and past the gatekeeprs.
I’m sure that any paper that questions the Briffa paper will not make the peer reviewed journals even if they have to redefine the peer review process so this is an empty complaint.
I believe that “We note that much of the challenge to”, which you left out, changes the meaning of the highlighted phrase to mean that critics of the CRU are not using the scientific method. But never mind that, I noticed the incredible shrinking population of trees in the graphs shown in the release. The population went from a high of about 75 trees up to 1930, to a low of about 7 or 8 trees around 1998 or 1999. The decline was most precipitous between 1990 (about 55 trees) to 1998-99 (7 or 8). Now I’m no statistician, just an accountant, but I do know when the population of your sample decreases, the weight of the individual units that make up that sample increases. What is the explanation for the reduction of sample size? Cherry picking?
Is there a difference between the scientific method and the ‘conventional’ scientific method? One can only assume that Tim Osborn believes there is.
Friends:
I think this is an excellent article and a good thread.
I agree with the brief post by omnologos at May 29, 2012 at 10:15 am that says
And the adjacent long post by Carrick at May 29, 2012 at 10:16 am is superb. Among many other good points, Carrick says of Osborne’s press release:
Nothing more needs to be said, really. Except, of course,
I want a Yamal, Yamal, Yamal T-shirt .
Richard
In response to t-shirt and mug requests, I’ll work that up tonight with a higher resolution image, since the low res one above won’t reproduce well on such printings.
It was McKitrick and Michaels.
CRU do not seem to realise that they have betrayed the trust of the British public. They have supported the insupportable actions of the Team where they deliberately lied, cherry picked data, manipulated data to meet pre-conceived conclusions.and refused reasonable requests for data and how that data was processed.
So this statement is little more than arrant rubbish.
Bottom line: They realise they have been found out and they are squealing.
We note that much of the challenge to CRU’s work has not always followed the conventional scientific method of checking and seeking to falsify conclusions or offering alternative hypotheses for peer review and publication. We believe this is necessary if science is to move on, and we hope that all those involved on all sides of the climate science debate will adopt this approach.
=====================
Anthony, I’m uncertain as to whether you really needed to reconsider your first interpretation of the statement with regards to the above quote by the review panel. But you have made an ethical move to reflect your integrity with regards to that ambiguous statement.
Considering the whitewash factor by the review panel that statement could have been artfully crafted with the intention of ambiguity.
This will be an interesting thread. I hope someone with more time than I have now will publish the definition of ‘ambiguous’ as that will be a cornerstone in the upcoming discussion in the comments if the first few are any indication.
But I believe Yamal! Yamal! Yamal! is ringing in the CRU and the team’s ears. They hear it loud and clear. Just take a look at the recent PR from every angle to cover-up or draw attention away from the hockey stick. It has caused a lot of twisted panties! The closet door has opened and all the players have come out in a last ditch effort to try to bail out and save the sinking ship of CAGW.
Ahh, I get it. You disagree, go out and do your own data gathering – full stop.
Review and criticism of another’s work is not permitted in the Climate sciences. If you haven’t done your own field work, you have neither the knowledge nor the scientific right to have an opinion on the subject!
And whatever you do has to go through our acceptable peer-review group before you can talk about our work relative to your work.
This is how we maintain positions and get grants, dude. We publish a paper, and if there are mistakes, we fix it with the next money we get, unless that would be embarrassing, in which case we study something else. Remember, there is no grant money for reviewing the work of others, because that is really cheap work. And by they way, why would we do it? It will just make us look incompetent, which will make the next proposal harder to sell.
Come on! It’s hard to get money to study stuff, so leave us alone and we’ll leave you alone. The last thing we need is someone suggesting we didn’t use the last tranch of money well. Don’t be so high-and-mighty. People in glass houses, and all that.
Why was YAD061 not removed as an outlier? Remember in Steig’s Antarctica paper that the slight cooling trend in Comiso 2000 was changed to a slight warming trend simply by removing outliers:
The reference is to Reynolds 2002: An Improved In Situ and Satellite SST Analysis for Climate., which seems to be mostly about Sea Surface Temperatures and Ice concentrations and not about Air Temperatures above ice sheets as in Antarctica:
Nevertheless, it seems that when a result can be obtained that agrees with CAGW, then outliers are removed, even though it is not clear that this was justified for Steig 2009, yet in Yamal, YAD061, a clear outlier, was retained because, without it, the hockey stick shape was hard to come by.
We are not talking about picking ordinary cherries here. These are Jurassic cherries.
Here’s the deception: Osborne says “the raw tree-ring data used in our published work are available”.
That’s true. But they pre-filtered the data. The published paper was based on non-transparently selected data, the reasons for rejection of all other considered time series was not published, nor were the excluded time series made available.
So when Osborne says “are all false”, he’s being carefully true, and carefully deceptive.
Delicious. Here’s my favourite bit:
“all sides of the climate science debate”
It’s been a while since they admitted that there is a debate at all.
We won’t know that until you publish all of your work in this area.
Regarding restricting scientific knowledge need I remind them about efforts to get editors sacked for not following the party line. Deleting emails, re-defining the peer review process etc.
Phil C says:
May 29, 2012 at 10:22 am
Such is the issue when I try to fit in a story before heading to the office.
And it speaks loudly as to why scientific findings are subject to lengthly peer review by qualified scientists before publication.
REPLY: But what about “Kevin and I will keep them out somehow”?
What about it, they weren’t kept out and Trenberth was quite clear that under the rules of the IPCC they could not be.
I’m surprised at the respect that Muir Russell commands in this thread.
Going with the flow and bending the rules to advance science (you hope) is an error that, with group think, leads to folly.
Investigating folly with blinkers on leads to establishing a false premise as authenticated truth.
It’s Muir Russell who established the fraud (yes) and the courts will note that.
Phil, I’m not a fan of deleting outlier data unless 1) the reason why the data is an outlier is known and 2) that reason has nothing to do with the affect being studies. Natural variation occurs — that is why we have 3rd SD — and even if rare it still needs to be acknowledged. Goodness knows that I’ve often wished I could just lose an outlier or two.
The “rebuttal” comes a good bit of the way to where McIntyre already is. The “rebuttal” (the “responded in detail” link above):
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/yamal2009/
If you look at the second graphic in the “rebuttal,” you will see that temperatures as estimated by the larger group of treemometers than in the original Briffa papers now show very similar temperature peaks in the 1920s, 1930s, 1950s, 1960s, 1980s, and 1990s. VERY different that in the first graphic (the earlier Yamal chronology that McIntyre critiques), where there is a pronounced peak only in the last decade or so — in other words, a very strong hockey stick shape — and temps in the 1920s, 1930s, 1950s, 1960s, etc., are all very low, nearly as low as in the previous 1900 years (according to that graphic).
Compare on the same scale: in the second graphic, the peak temps in the new, more comprehensive analysis just noted all are between 2.5 and over 3 on the vertical scale provided. In the both graphics; however, none of the temps in these same time frames in the original article with much fewer trees, get over abourt 1.5 on the same scale, until the last decade or so.
No matter how these folks spin the results, they have now created a temperature proxy, using a more complete inventory of trees, that shows 20th and 21st C temps, starting from about 1925, with only a slight apparent temperature trend starting in the 1920s, basically what looks like an oscillation every 10 to 20 years with a similar peak at the end of the oscillation.
NOT a sudden hockey stick with a huge jump in temps in the last decade or so. See for yourself.
How ironic is it that Osborn’s statement:
“We note that much of the challenge to CRU’s work has not always followed the conventional scientific method of checking and seeking to falsify conclusions or offering alternative hypotheses for peer review and publication”
at first glance appears to say: “that much of the CRU’s work has not always followed the conventional scientific method…”
which is demonstrably true beyond any shadow of a doubt.
I’ve been trying for two hours to access the UEA PR link. You’d think a university would have sufficient bandwidth and connections available to avoid such a problem.
I see Bishop Hill commenter Martin A has thoughtfully provided an alternate link to their PR here.
http://www.webcitation.org/681asTi21
I am encouraged to see implausible PR releases like Osborn’s at the UEA/CRU website and Allen’s less than honest looking mis-selling of Climategate’s meaning in comments on skeptic blogs. With each of the climategate Team’s and their apologist’s iterations of the story (and I do mean story in the fiction sense), the worthy investigators at skeptical blogs find many more contradictions and false representations appearing; with each of CG2 & CG2 participant’s iterations of the story (and I do mean story in the fiction sense) the pattern of their lack of integrity becomes clearer.
Open dialog is very useful in getting at the underlying truth about what I consider the key question; Did those involved in the CG1 & CG2 related events intentionally destroy normal scientific processes to achieve their ideologically predetermined ‘a piori’ ends?
My assessment is tending toward the view that many independent investigators are closing in, in parallel, on an affirmative response. It looks to me like a truly sad day for the physical sciences supporting climate science . . . but . . . . . optimistically . . . . I also think science is sort of like the mythical phoenix . . . . it can destroy itself, then self-correct and be born again unaffected from its own ashes.
I hope to be able to continue to be optimistic about science’s ability to self-correct and be reborn from the anti-science shown in the CG1 and CG2 related events.
John
Osborn specifically do NOT write “all data available to recreate the calculations”, he is only claiming “all raw tree-ring data” to be freely available. He does not mention meta-data, nor code. This is important to a person such as McI since he wants to audit their work, not create new scientific interpretations from raw data. Basically, they are still hiding their methods such as intermediate analysis and exact tools to achieve the graphs and results they claim.
I also suspect that what’s meant with the statement that their “challengers” are not following established scientific methods is simply that the criticism is published in open and free discussions on blogs – not through (controllable) journal editors.
The press release precised
“If you won’t play our way. we won’t play with you”.
Gee, all McIntyre had to do was ask? The Yamal data is all available to anyone. No wonder CRU is miffed at the criticisms. They added a quote from watchdog Muir Russell to underscore the high standard they are held to. sarc off/
“People want to know whether their CRU are crooks. We are not crooks.” Said with a Richard Nixon flap of the jowls.
Anthony,
I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong.
When I click on the above link to:
http://www.cru.uae.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/yamal2009
I get a “The page you requested could not be loaded” diagnostic.
Whrn I run a traceroute to http://www.cru.uae.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/yamal2009
(IP 139.222.128.62)
The trace dies on the 11th hop from home at 80.91.246.69 which is
ldn-bb1-link.telia.net … one of the big servers in London.
Similarly, when I try for the other link to the press release at
http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/CRUstatements/rebuttalsandcorrections/yamal
(IP 139.222.128.219)
I again get “The page you requested could not be loaded…” .
On the 11th hop the trace dies at 213.248.65.207 ldn-bb2-link.telia.net
This has gone on for almost 45 minutes.
WUWT ?
REPLY: try this http://www.webcitation.org/681asTi21
That bottom graph on Osborne’s statement is hilarious.
The entire “blade” of the hockeystick is inversely proportional to the number of data points (cores). When the accusation is cherry picking, is it really the best argument a close up of a big red juicy cherry?
I think Osborne is tugging on SuperMc’s cape. I am looking forward to the consequences.
Lets face it Tim knows he has no choice but to go all in on this , admit they got it wrong and CRU is effectively screwed. Bang goes all the grant money and with students failing to sign on bang goes a host of jobs, particularly professorships.
CRU has had years of constant growth and easy grant money out of the AGW scare, that has seen it go from a obscure ,being subject most students had never even heard off, uncared for area at a minor unversity, to a big time player able to get the attention of the press and politicians by clicking its fingers .
So its all in for Tim and the CRU gang for thy simply have no choice , they smart enough to know that their academic careers are effectively over if they lose this fight so the lie must go on for they left themselves no fullback position thanks to their own arrogance. Which is why the fall will be even sweeter as they total deserve anything they get .
Rhoda R says:
May 29, 2012 at 12:41 pm
Phil, I’m not a fan of deleting outlier data ….
__________________________________________
And that sums up the whole of “CLIMATE PSYCIENCE” from the get go. “Selection” of data, deleting of “outliers”
The entire science is based on cherry picking. You can start with Callander in 1938. In order to revive Arrhenius theory of greenhouse warming due to man he had to select low values of CO2 from the available data to show CO2 rose from 292 ppm in the 19th century to 325 by 1956. link and link
This “selection process” continues today at Mauna Loa Observatory.
This comment by Ernest Beck is well worth rereading
Cherry picked CO2 measurements, Cherry Picked Temperature measurements and unexplained adjustments. Yamal is quite at home with the rest of the Team’s “CLIMATE PSYCIENCE” It is no wonder Climate Psychientists and their buddies seem to be speaking a different language. To them Lysenkoism IS science because that is what they have been taught. Pick the conclusion and work backwards.
A sampling of articles on the thermometer mess:
http://a-sceptical-mind.com/the-strange-death-of-the-themometers
http://joannenova.com.au/2011/10/messages-from-the-global-raw-rural-data-warnings-gotchas-and-tree-ring-divergence-explained/ (Includes info on tree rings thermometers)
http://notrickszone.com/2012/03/01/data-tamperin-giss-caught-red-handed-manipulaing-data-to-produce-arctic-climate-history-revision/
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/03/australian-temperature-records-shoddy-inaccurate-unreliable-surprise/
http://briefingroom.typepad.com/the_briefing_room/2010/02/breaking-news-niwa-reveals-nz-original-climate-data-missing.html
http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/11420
Anthony,
Many thanks.
http://www.webcitation.org/681asTi21 worked like a charm.
As Jeez notes above, the second panel graph in the PDF is absolute, undeniable
documentation that the “reworked” Briffa, et al 2008 (blue line) ends around
1997-8 and involves not more than eight trees (grey shaded area) in the sample
to top off the Hockey Stick blade !
No wonder they call Steve McIntyre “unscientific” when he uses a lot more
trees from the Russian data to continue the graph… and then compares that
result with the abberviated material (and weird statisitcal sampeling decisions)
employed by Briffa, Mann, Jones, Osborne, et al.
No wonder they hate the exposure of some of the conversations among the
“Team” members that floated to the surface in ClimateGate releases 1 & 2.
Carrick, Your post at 10.16 is spot on.
CRU is a travesty of a scientific establishment in the University of East Anglia which is a travesty of a university in a fine Cathedral city. Norwich hangs its head in shame.
Thanks Firey.
However, Phil C will no doubt point out that I repeated “after” and “of”, one place each in that comment (in need of a full time proof-reader, must be willing to travel), and… that and the fact his hair is a bird invalidates my argument. 😉
Gail Combs, thanks, you’ve said what I wanted to but much more effectively.
Love that YAD061 is shown on the movie poster. It is YAD061, isn’t it?
Why can’t these people (“The Team”) learn that it is always best to play a straight bat (sorry, I can’t think of a baseball equivalent)? Altogether too much ducking and weaving going on.
Did CRU follow this conventional scientific method? Why should anyone do what CRU refuses to adhere to.
CRU uses pal review, not peer review.
CRU obstructs, ignores or denies any research that corrects or contradicts CRU findings.
CRU does not share their code
CRU does not share their selection rationale
CRU… This list goes on and on. CRU announcing the above rejection of the latest public concerns and questions about their reconstructions, is just the pot calling the kettle burnt. The truth is that climate science is horribly degraded because of CRU and their pals breaches of conventional scientific method that the best science is now reached in the open blogosphere. CRU’s version of peer review published papers is how science should NOT be done, perhaps even one of the worst ways to pretend to conduct science.
I like Omnologos and Richards statements too. I think Anthony was correct in his initial thread listing, since CRU refuses proper science in their own practices.
I like the Yamal Yamal Yamal! I hope I can afford the mug when it comes out.
As a long time lurker who stands in awe of so many of the amazing posts and comments on this site, I never thought I would have the expertise to actually make a correction. It is the nittiest of picks but Yamamo was an admiral, not a general. Anthony, thank you for everything you do.
I’m getting a bit confused.
Originally, I understood that the hockey stick was an artifact of Yamal. But then I read that Yamal was not used in Mann’s work, rather, it was Tiljander that was the source of the questionable data. But now it seems that Yamal is the source. But this isn’t discussing Mann.
Obviously, I’m mixing up my tree-rings & how they were used. Is there a simple primer somewhere that can help me get it clear?
TonyG, there are several Hockey Sticks produced by the Team. MBH98 was the first. All use Mann’s short centered PCA. The short centered PCA method will mine for hockey stick shapes in the constituent data series and will then assign those shapes undue weight — virtually ensuring that the result of the PCA is a hockey stick.. So to manufacture hockey sticks, all the Team needs are a few (sometimes just one) series that exhibit the right shape. Bristle cone pines are used as the “active ingredient” in some of the hockey sticks, Tiljander in used in another, and Yamal is used in others.
Tom Osborn pointing to Muir Russel report: “We note that much of the challenge to CRU’s work has not always followed the conventional scientific method of checking and seeking to falsify conclusions or offering alternative hypotheses for peer review and publication.”
Pot meet Kettle -or- Do as we say, not as we do.
Tom Osbron – “The raw tree-ring data used in our published work are available; anyone is free to use them in any way they wish.”
More misdirection. To analyze said published work, the specific tree-ring data used in the work and how it was processed also needs to be made readily available. Leaving people to guess what particular data was used and how the data was processed is not science.
Enough with these word and mind games. Publish the data specifically used, publish how you selected the data, publish how you processed the selected raw data into the data as used.
Professor to college freshman: Fail to show your work, you fail.
TonyG – “I’m getting a bit confused.”
Obfuscation is one of the goals of AGW cabal. Paraphrasing Fields: If you can’t provide them with facts, baffle them with bull excrement. The AGW cabal do not want people to know and understand, otherwise the AGW Gig is up.
Darren Potter: The confusion in my case comes from trying to keep track of the obfuscation and fabrication. Just trying to tie the right one to the related result.
“It is misleading, therefore, to imply that because we have not yet published all of our work in this area, we are somehow restricting the advance of scientific knowledge in this area.”
More like delaying the inevitable rubbishing or their earlier work.
I see a quote has been provided regarding gatekeeping which comes from Jones.
This comes from Tim Osborn himself, a must read:
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=1199999668.txt
This page http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/yamal2009/
claims it was “Last updated: 28th October 2009 ” while Firefox tells me it was
“Modified 24 february 2010.”
He also said (and please treat this in confidence, which is why I emailed to you and
Phil only)…
Seeing that plastered on the ‘net had to sting.
Phil @ May 29, 2012 at 12:20 pm: “What about it, they weren’t kept out and Trenberth was quite clear that under the rules of the IPCC they could not be.”
Are you willfully ignorant or something worse?
Do you call what was done with McKitrick and Michaels 2004 by The Team honest in ANY way?
http://climateaudit.org/2012/01/31/geoffrey-boulton-and-ipcc-secrecy/
Despicable is the only way to describe the anti-science philosophy of Jones, Trenberth and the other members of The Team that you so ardently defend here.
Maybe the coded battle message now will be Yamal! Yamal! Yamal!
“Tora!” (tiger) was the code for “Surprise achieved.”
In this instance, “Yamal!” would be the code for “Crap! They’ve figured us out!”
Rhoda R says:
May 29, 2012 at 12:41 pm
///////////////////////////////////////////////////
I do not consider that not using an outlier is wrong. At times, a judgment call needs to be made. However, whenever one determines that it is not appropriate to use an outlier, one should always include the following:
1 Full and proper identification of the outlier and what it shows.
2 Full supporting reasons for considering it to be an outlier, and the reasons why it should not be included.
3. The effect of using/incorporating the outlier in the study/results.
Then anyone reading the study will be acquainted with all the (available) evidence, and can consider the validity of reasons put forward for not using all the data, and will know what effects there would be on the study if all the data was included.
“Yamal” – a definition: A code word shouted out when a stranger is spotted in CRU offices.
On receipt of this code word it is normal to hide under your desk and wait for the stranger (who may be seeking truth) to depart.
Currently Yamal is heard being shouted many times per day and staff beginning to damage their clothes in the rush to hide.
“Yamal” – a definition: a medical condition where the sufferer is averse to the truth.
The only known cure of Yamal is total public exposure.
Gail Combs says:
May 29, 2012 at 10:43 am
“I do not think Shakespeare could write a comedy as funny as the CRU Yamal saga. It would take Monty Python….”
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
That’s a good link you provide, Gail, but I humbly submit that there is a better one: “The Larch Sketch”
Anthony, DavidA’s comment at May 29, 2012 at 9:25 pm Should be put with the article since it shows what a liar Tim Osborn is. I cleaned it up for you.
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=1199999668.txt
[Thu, 10 Jan 2008]
Hi Ben and Phil,
as you may know (Phil certainly knows), I’m on the editorial board of IJC. Phil is right that it can be rather slow (though faster than certain other climate journals!). Nevertheless, IJC really is the preferred place to publish (though a downside is that Douglass et al. may have the opportunity to have a response considered to accompany any comment).
I just contacted the editor, Glenn McGregor, to see what he can do. He promises to do everything he can to achieve a quick turn-around time (he didn’t quantify this) and he will also “ask (the publishers) for priority in terms of getting the paper online asap after the authors have received proofs”. He genuinely seems keen to correct the scientific record as quickly as possible.
He also said (and please treat this in confidence, which is why I emailed to you and Phil only) that he may be able to hold back the hardcopy (i.e. the print/paper version) appearance of Douglass et al., possibly so that any accepted Santer et al. comment could appear alongside it. Presumably depends on speed of the review process. If this does persuade you to go with IJC, Glenn suggested that I could help (because he is in Kathmandu at present) with achieving the quick turn-around time by identifying in advance reviewers who are both suitable and available. Obviously one reviewer could be someone who is already familiar with this discussion, because that would enable a fast review – i.e., someone on the email list you’ve been using – though I don’t know which of these people you will be asking to be co-authors and hence which won’t be available as possible reviewers. For objectivity the other reviewer would need to be independent, but you could still suggest suitable names. Well, that’s my thoughts… let me know what you decide.
Cheers
Tim
Dr Timothy J Osborn, Academic Fellow
Climatic Research Unit
School of Environmental Sciences
University of East Anglia
Thanks Gail, I just realised after posting the CRs messed it up. If posts allowed quick edit I would have fixed it. I wonder if Tom has ever had to answer for that, I don’t think so.
Anthony, I believe that “Sleeping Giant” comment was made by Admiral (not general) Yamamoto.
pbrisco says:
May 30, 2012 at 10:28 am
Anthony, I believe that “Sleeping Giant” comment was made by Admiral (not general) Yamamoto.
Actually, the line was delivered by Toshiro Mifune, who played Admiral Yamomoto in a couple of Hollywood epics. The scriptwriters wanted a closing line that would foreshadow the war’s end, with a suitable “Japanese” fatalism. Yamomoto may have thought that after the attack, but there’s no record of his actually saying it.
I suspect the only accurate statement in the whole thing is that CRU did not deceive the Muir Russell enquiry. Such a deception was entirely superfluous since Muir Russell was under no illusions as to what to report and gathering evidence was certainly an unnecessary complication to be avoided as far as possible.