Note: I’m reposting this excellent essay from Jo Nova to give it a wide as an audience as possible. Be sure to bookmark her site if you have not already. – Anthony
300,000 dollars and three years to produce a paper that lasted three weeks: Gergis
The paper might have been scientifically invalid, but it was a box-office success. The headlines were everywhere
“1000 years of climate data confirms Australia’s warming” said the press release from University of Melbourne. It was picked up by The Guardian: “Australasia has hottest 60 years in a millennium, scientists find”; The Age and The Australian led with “Warming since 1950 ‘unprecedented’. The story was on ABC 24 and ABC news where Gergis proclaimed:” there are no other warm periods in the last 1000 years that match the warming experienced in Australasia since 1950.” It was all over the ABC including ABC Radio National, and they were “95% certain“! On ABC AM, “the last five decades years in Australia have been the warmest. ” Plus there were pages in Science Alert, Campus Daily Eco news, The Conversation, Real Climate and Think Progress.
Blog review is where the real science gets tested
Skeptics have been looking through the paper, and three weeks after it was published a team at Climate Audit uncovered a problem so significant that the authors announced that this paper is “on hold”. It has been withdrawn from the American Meteorological Society website. Bishop Hill has probably the best summary of what this means, and how it unfolded.
When Steve McIntyre asked for the full data, she refused. Gergis has an activist past which she has recently tried to hide. She was proud to mention in her biography that her data has been requested from 16 nations: So requests from Tunisia, Cuba, and Brazil are OK; but Canada — not so much. Apparently she didn’t appreciate his expertise with statistics and told him to get the data himself from the original authors, and added ” This is commonly referred to as ‘research’. We will not be entertaining any further correspondence on the matter. “
Will any of these media outlets update their news?
(The Uni Melb news feed is here).
On AM, David Karoly raved about how the study was strong because it relied more on observations not modeling (it is getting to them that skeptics keep pointing out they have no empirical evidence), and claimed he had “high confidence” in the results. (Is that the same kind of high confidence he has in future predictions of warming?)
MATTHEW CARNEY: Professor Karoly says the strength of the study is that it’s relied more on direct observations and measurements than climate modelling.
DAVID KAROLY: Nothing is absolutely certain in science but we say with very high confidence because we have repeated the analysis alone for the uncertainties that the warming in the last 50 years is very unusual and cannot, very likely cannot be explained by natural climate variability alone.
How concerned are they with accuracy? Are all these media outlets happy to leave their readers or viewers with the impression that these results are robust, reliable, and strong? In truth, even before this paper was withdrawn, before it was promoted, investigative reporters had plenty to wonder about.
Did any journalist really ask any hard questions to start with?
Let’s not bother to get into the point that the results of crunching the data 3000 different ways means their “confidence” came from models, not from the 27 proxies, most of which didn’t cover the full 1000 years, or the Australian mainland either.
The litany, the message went on and on and on in the media and apart from Adam Morton in The Age, most investigative journalists never thought to ask the question “How much warmer are we now than 1000 years ago” because if they had, Gergis would have had to say “by a tenth of a degree”. (That much eh?) Technically it was 0.09C.
The certainty of Australia being 0.09 of a degree cooler 1000 years ago comes down to observations from a batch of trees in Tasmania and New Zealand. (If we can calculate the regional temperature so accurately that way, why do we bother with a network of 100 thermometers? We could pop a max-min gauge next to those trees and “interpolate” the rest, No?)
Why not skip the thermometers and just go with the trees? They’re accurate to one hundredth of a degree across a continent and sea.
Funding?
Funding apparently ran to $340,ooo but may have been nearly a million dollars (at least that’s what Gergis thought in 2009, I can find no official record of it):
“The project, funded by the Australian Research Council’s Linkage scheme, is worth a total of $950K and will run from mid-2009 to mid-2012″. [Source: Joelle Gergis has deleted her blog. Cached copy here. Webcite copy]
Is this how policies are promoted now? The government finds b-grade activist scientists, funds them to produce papers that may or may not stand the test of …a few weeks, and the media rush to rubber stamp and repeat the story without asking hard questions, and in the end the government gets “third party” policy promotion — seemingly independent endorsement of the purest kind. At $340,000, it’s returned decent value some would say.
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REFERENCES
Cook, E. R., Buckley, B. M., Palmer, J. G., Fenwick, P., Peterson, M. J., Boswijk, G. and Fowler, A. 2006. Millennia-long tree-ring records from Tasmania and New Zealand: a basis for modelling climate variability and forcing, past, present and future. J. Quaternary Sci., Vol. 21 pp. 689–699. ISSN 0267-8179. [abstract]
J. Gergis, R. Neukom, S.J. Phipps, A.J.E. Gallant, and D.J. Karoly, “Evidence of unusual late 20th century warming from an Australasian temperature reconstruction spanning the last millennium”, Journal of Climate, 2012, pp. 120518103842003-. DOI. [ Paper (PDF)]
ARC Funding: ARC Linkage Project Funding Outcomes
[It’s hard to find the original grants, this is one, which doesn’t add up to $950k could be part of the funding, or extra funding, or perhaps the original offer of $950k didn’t come through?…]
2606 ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES
LP0990151 Dr JL Gergis; Prof DJ Karoly; Prof N Nicholls; A/Prof DS Garden; Prof CS Turney; Dr AM Lorrey; Dr K Braganza; Dr RJ Allan; Miss G Skelly; Ms RJ Moran; Dr K Tan; Mr RA Neville; Dr NR Lomb
Approved Project Title Reconstructing pre-20th century rainfall, temperature and pressure for south-eastern Australia using palaeoclimate, documentary and early weather station data.
2009 : $ 65,000
2010 : $ 117,500
2011 : $ 105,000
2012 : $ 52,500
APA(I) Award(s): 1
APDI Dr JL Gergis, Collaborating/Partner Organisation(s), Australian Bureau of Meteorology, Met Office Hadley Centre, Murray-Darling Basin Commission, Department of Sustainability and Environment,
Melbourne Water , National & State Libraries Australasia, National Library of Australia,
State Library of Victoria , State Library of New South Wales, Powerhouse Museum, Administering Organisation The University of Melbourne,
Summary of Linkage Projects Proposals by Primary Class Code for Funding to Commence in 2009
Updated 13 August 2009 Page 14
Project Summary
South-eastern Australia is in the grip of a severe water crisis due to the worst drought in recorded history and increasing temperatures. This landmark project brings together a team of Australia’s leading climate scientists, water managers and historians with the common goal of reconstructing south-eastern Australia’s climate history. The greatly extended record of annual rainfall and temperature variability will allow better planning for water storage and use, and improved testing of climate model simulations. Improving our understanding of the historical impacts of climate extremes on society will assist with planning for life in a hotter and drier future.
Thanks to Geoff Derrick for tadvice.
It’s not suprising climate scientists don’t like sharing their data, it’s so incovenient.
Reblogged this on Climate Ponderings and commented:
“Did any journalist really ask any hard questions to start with?”
DAVID KAROLY: Nothing is absolutely certain in science but we say with very high confidence because…
…because we have redefined very high confidence to mean “sorta-kinda somewhat maybe”…
kim2ooo says:
June 9, 2012 at 11:23 am
“Did any journalist really ask any hard questions to start with?”
Yes — “Does she spell her name ‘G-e-r-g-i-s’ or “G-e-r-j-i-s’?”
“Apparently she [Gergis] didn’t appreciate his [Steve McIntyre’s] expertise with statistics and told him to get the data himself from the original authors, and added ” This is commonly referred to as ‘research’. We will not be entertaining any further correspondence on the matter. “
This again evidences the well confirmed mathematical principle, that the snottiness of response is directly proportional to the ineptitude of the AGW researcher.
The link to the Real Climate post on this has been removed….get it on Google cache
Send an email to ALL mainstream media on this story and point out that paper has been WITHDRAWN due to unacceptable sloppy work.
Good work in finding the outlandish claims were nonsense, 0.09 deg C indeed. And thanks for reporting it and getting the fraud out to the public. Incompotent and lazy scientists doing dirty work. The yardstick of quality declining with number of authors seems to be holding.
http://cooley.libarts.wsu.edu/schwartj/pdf/Geddes1.pdf
This paper provides a good explanation of the “selecting on the dependent variable” problem inherent in selecting trees that appear well correlated with temperature as a basis for doing temperature studies.
If you only select trees that appear correlated with temperature, you are ignoring the larger body of trees that are telling you that trees are not a good proxy for temperature.
For example, say we selected companies that were highly profitable to study why they were profitable. We found that factor X was common to all successful companies. This might lead us to conclude that factor X cause companies to be profitable.
However, by not studying unprofitable companies, we overlooked the fact that factor X was common to unprofitable companies as well, and thus had little or no influence of profitability.
The same situation with trees. The assumption is that temperature (factor X) determines tree growth (profitability). By only studying trees that correlate with temperature, climate science has ignored the large body of trees telling us that temperature (factor X) is also common to trees that show no growth (low profitability) and thus had little of no influence on tree growth (profitability).
Bill Tuttle says:
June 9, 2012 at 11:37 am
Ha ha ha ha…..
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I REALLY LIKE THAT THE FUNDING HAS BEEN EXPOSED!!! 🙂
The article asks, (Is that the same kind of high confidence he has in future predictions of warming?)
I laughed hard at that one, but nonscientists, and the general public will not get the pun. The general public definition is the emotion of being sure of oneself. In a scientific paper, high confidence means there is less than 5% or less than 1% probability that you would get such unusual results by chance alone.. And real scientists know that just ruling out chance does not tell you what caused the result. Systematic errors such as miscalibrated instruments, or urban heat island effect, could have cause the observed change, not the cause you think it was, such as “global warming” or “carbon dioxide” or sunshine changes.
Speaking on “snapping the hockey stick.” I appeal once more to anyone with graphics skills to create a stick-snap logo for Our Side. Here’s what I’ve written in the past:
I have an idea for a powerful and aggressive visual image: a pair of upraised hands decisively snapping a hockey stick (with its blade upturned at the right). It is based on the well-known (to warmists) logo of the War Resisters League, in which the hands are snapping a rifle.
It’s a clear, clever “grabber.” It’s a way for people on our side to identify themselves and give a Bronx cheer to the climate consensus. It would be a great conversation-starter.
I donate this idea free to WUWT and Josh, who could split the revenue. I think WUWT could sell a million of ‘em, metaphorically speaking. (It would work for lapel pins, coffee cups, book covers, web-site medallions, and T-shirts too.)
A preliminary but unsatisfactory-to-me version of this image, drawn at my request by S. Weasel, can be seen on my page on Photobucket at http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y254/RogerKni/Misc/87a659ba.png
It needs the following changes, which I hope Josh [or someone] will make:
1. The legend around the perimeter should be larger and changed to “Gore Resisters’ League.” (This quip ought to irritate any warmists who see it.)
2. The hands should be redrawn so they don’t exactly copy the hands in the WRL’s logo.
3. The wrists should be shackled to each other, indicating our defiance despite our suppressed and marginalized status.
So two questions for people that follow this stuff more closely than I. First, was this paper published a few weeks ago so it could specifically get into AR5 before any counter research could be done (if so, what does this now mean for AR5)? Second, I know that the researchers are now claiming they found the problem before Steve M (didn’t they say June 5?). So, is there an FOIA in Australia, and if so, could someone living there request the documentation of them finding it on that date before Steve M and coworkers? Personally, I’m having my doubts they actually found it before the blogosphere did, and they’re just saying they did because the “ineptitude” of Steve M. with climate things is one of the huge talking points of the CAGW crowd and had to be maintained. If it could be shown that they lied about figuring it out themselves, it would be a huge blow to the CAGWer’s credibility.
-Scott
Blog review is where the real science gets tested. or Blog review is where the science gets the real test. The latter, until the peer-review process is reformed.
The way I read the statement on SteveM’s site, they simply realized they forgot to detrend the data first so they are going to fix that step. There appears there may be an even larger flaw with inverted series but one step at a time. As Steve says, don’t get too excited yet. This zombie might return in slightly different form.
Scott says:
June 9, 2012 at 12:09 pm
“So two questions for people that follow this stuff more closely than I. First, was this paper published a few weeks ago so it could specifically get into AR5 before any counter research could be done (if so, what does this now mean for AR5)?”
You will be right about the release time. Will there be a hard copy printed of AR?. If so it is probably already being printed. I wont be suprised if this was to feature prominantly as proof that humans are responsible.
Past experience shows that it will not matter. Certain people are “spring loaded” to believe anything that validates their own conclusions, credibility notwithstanding. They have shown that they can rationalize anything. Gavin Schmidt has apparently done the very same thing (claimed to have independently discovered something in order to prevent CA getting the credit) in the past and has not suffered from it to any noticeable degree. As long as they come to the “correct” conclusion, it doesn’t seem to matter much how they get there. That is why they can get away with refusal to release data and methods. They just don’t matter … the ends justify the means.
Gergis (noun)
A peer review paper that is released with much fanfare and then promptly pulled.
My paper featured in the environment section of the Guardian but it turned out to be a gergis
Other meanings:-
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Gergis
But, hey, at least this place wont be full of smug ‘I told you so’ comments from the kind of people who scrabble around in haystacks and when they find something pointy that could be needle they shout ‘This is a pile of steel!’….Or, indeed, the final nail – ho hum…
Btw, yeah, yeah, call me a troll – as a long time watcher of WUWT I notice that more and more name calling is what commentators here do to anyone who dares to offer a view off the party line.
[Reply: Thank you for your content-free opinion, which you will note is not censored here like it would be at your typical alarmist blog. ~dbs, mod.]
Its hard to believe after the upside down plot of the the tiljander proxy in the Mann hockey stick:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/22/manns-inverted-tiljander-data-survives-another-round-of-peer-review/
that another upside down plot would be used again in manufacturing a hockey stick. Surely everyone in the climate synod has heard of and fears Steve Mac by now!
Funding should come with it the necessity of having a real statistician as a co-author (as opposed to the sociology- psychology-climatology-type statistics skills)
Peter H says:
June 9, 2012 at 12:46 pm
“Btw, yeah, yeah, call me a troll – as a long time watcher of WUWT I notice that more and more name calling is what commentators here do to anyone who dares to offer a view off the party line.”
Did you offer a view? Did I miss it? You’re complaining about name calling without even offering a “view off the party line”? Do you have anything to contribute? About temperature proxies? No? Oh, you’re just trolling, I see.
This is so wrong in so many ways:
lousy science;
lousy peer review;
lousy journalism.
If not for the blogosphere, who would ever get the truth?
“Did you offer a view? Did I miss it? You’re complaining about name calling without even offering a “view off the party line”? Do you have anything to contribute? About temperature proxies? No? Oh, you’re just trolling, I see.”
Phew, that was quick!
My view? My view I made clear. That is that as per usual this is so much WUWT ado about nothing. Yeah, you all get all outraged but that has little effect on science. On politics you might have more effect but on science none.
Anyway, sorry, but beyond that I KNOW there is no point in further comment. The name calling will simply increase and I’ll save everyone the bother by dipping out again (which I guess will provoke accusations of ‘running way’ or the standard ‘See, he IS a troll’)….QED eh?
Jo Nova in her link asks the question
Well, I think certainly some are.
Here’s a good example. Chris Colose, junior alarmist and a sort of proto-Gavin had this to say on his blog before he even became a climate scientist (in 2007) –
With the best will in the world, think how that prejudice will affect every subsequent choice – of topic, colleagues, institution, research problem, method, etc etc etc. With such a strong prior belief what chance of objectivity?
I strongly suspect that this permeates whole swathes of climate science and the production of Hockey Sticks wasn’t merely a likelihood, it was an absolute certainty. A graph simply waiting for the least objective researchers to make the necessary 30 ar 40 dubious choices and assumptions. And to be fair, without the necessity of conscious cherry-picking.
This isn’t to demean all climate scientists, simply to say – as Jo Nova does – that we should be extremely sceptical of anyone who thinks they can be an objective scientist at the same time as being a committed subjective believer.
No one can get temperatures or even climate from trees…all you can hope to get is the length of that particular growing season….
With no explanation of why.