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 It has been withdrawn from the American Meteorological Society website.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.
———————————————————————-
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.
peterhdn says:
June 9, 2012 at 1:14 pm
. Yeah, you all get all outraged but that has little effect on science
=======
Don’t know about that…got the paper pulled and made a lot of people aware of it
…more people read this blog than all the others combined….that includes the pro CAGW ones
Surely everyone in the climate synod has heard of and fears Steve Mac by now!
Oh you wanna believe it. That’s why Gergis wouldn’t let go of the data. They are starting to get the message that the Mounted statistician will be on their tails. In this instance, les félicitations à Jean S. Bien fait mon ami, très bien fait.
Latitude says:
June 9, 2012 at 1:22 pm
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.
And warmth for the winter.
Whilst I can accept some ‘scientists’ may make “mistakes”, either accidentally, or, deliberately; what is the excuse used by ‘Peer Reviewers’?
Surely, they should be named-and-shamed.
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.
I think we should demean all climate scientists. None of them has spoken out against this tribe of crooks.
Latitude says:
June 9, 2012 at 1:22 pm
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.”
Yup. Any climate paper that uses trees for climate temperature proxies is trash without even reading past the abstract. Doesn’t matter about the stats, the methodology, or the results. It’s all garbage. Every tree lives within its own ecosystem. Trees are barely proxies for other trees of the same species in a forest, let alone anything else. GIGO.
peterhdn says:
June 9, 2012 at 1:14 pm
Yeah, you all get all outraged but that has little effect on science. On politics you might have more effect but on science none
It’s not science we are trying to affect. It’s fraud we are actually exposing. You see, real science is not done the way these criminals do it and there are many scientists who comment on this site who are better qualified than the so-called climate science community.
The chances of having any effect on Politicians is zero. They have only two competences: deceit and lying. You might like to add cronyism to that as well but they are not alone with that one, witness the climate techician group.
Stephen Richards BSc Physics MSC Applied Physics
Here’s an encore for Gergis: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAlMomLvu_4
peterhdn says:
June 9, 2012 at 1:14 pm
You completely missed the points being made by the commenters so let me help you a little.
If you say we will have no impact on the science explain why. Is it because the scientists ignore everyone, is it because we are wrong. If so explain why. Get the gist ? Explanations is what make a troll not a troll. Compris?
Joe Public –
What odds that the ‘reviewers’ are residents of RealClimate?
Linus Law’s “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow” — it’s a principle that has served Open Source Software well. The fact that so many are so intent on hiding both method and day means they understand this.
Seems to me that the real problem here is that once the MSM have published the “results” and said that these results look reasonable, they will look silly if they now write that they were hoodwinked; and journalists just can’t be seen to look silly or susceptible to being hoodwinked.
So the chances of a retraction in the MSM seem slim.
Ouch! and double Ouch!! Ouch for the hockey stick and double ouch for the snotty reply to Steve M.
@ferd berple
“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.”
One often sees this interpretation: that some trees tell the truth and some lie.
There is the other possiblity that the trees are good for telling the temperature and that most of them are saying the temperature is not going up.
They may very well be good proxies for temperature. Are we sure? Obviously it is illigitimate to prefer the trees that confirm one’s initial bias. That is how the first Hockey Stick was created (weighting ‘acceptable’ temperature profiles more than ‘unacceptable’ ones, not actually deleting them). Of course assigning arbitrary virtues like ‘good quality’ and ‘complete’ and ‘confirmed’ to the ‘right’ series can enhance public acceptance of the published results. If that fails, scream loudly and claim McIntyre is an oil company shill, a-la-Mann.
[PS Is ‘a-la-Mann’ French for ‘ad hominem’?]
“””””…..Peter H says:
June 9, 2012 at 12:46 pm
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……”””””
And YOUR view off the party line was what ?
Oh, don’t bother; I see mod says “content free”; got it !
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/may/17/australasia-hottest-60-years-study?INTCMP=SRCH
Well, I shall be writing to the Guardian next week if nothing appears regarding the paper’s withdrawal by Tuesday. The Guardian’s AGW agenda is total. CiF moderates like Real Climate. You will not speak against the True Faith, else you will be excommunicated. We can at least cheer ourselves up that the Guardian is reportedly losing £1 million a day.
@ Roger Knights:
I like your emblem, but fear that raised hands snapping a hockey stick might be interpreted as a slight against the Canadian national religion here in Canada.
@ Jo Nova:
Excellent summary – this is one for my uni office door!
And lets not forget this paper claimed that the warmest pre-instrumental 30 year period was 1238-1267. The temperature was apparently 0.09 degC below 1961-1990 levels. But the quoted uncertainty is +/0.19 degC, which means the statement has no statistical significance and that it could have been warmer in the period 1238 – 1267. Why was that question not asked in the TV interview of Gergis? Is she going to be interviewed again about the papers failings, or is she going to issue a statement to retract her previous premature interview comments?
Or perhaps journalists could ask her how she could make such sweeping statements about the climate over 1,000 years without a single proxy in the study actually being on the Australian land mass.
Or perhaps journalists could ask her how, given that there are only two proxy series in that time period used in the study, and that they only retained 27 series and discarded 35 out of 62 series without stating why, is it really realistic to quote temperature accuracy to tenths of degree? The adjustments alone in the instrumental period post-1910 in GHCN amount to around 0.3 degC over a century. If we need adjustments of that magnitude in the instrumental period and are constantly changing temperatures from instruments just 100 years ago by more than a tenth of a degree, how can we possibly know the temperature a thousand years ago so accurately?
These are some of the questions the media and journalists should be asking. They don’t because either they have no scientific training or they are sympathetic to the views of these climate activists pretending to be competent scientists.
Gergis is a climate activist posing as a scientist. The withdrawal of this paper (even if temporary) shows clearly how peer review is just another form of appeal to authority. Publish the data (all of it), publish the code and let the results be reproduced by others. Anything less is bordering on criminal irresponsibility by those informing and making public policy.
@Peter H says:
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.
+++++++++++
Actually Peter it is good to have you raise the subject because I have noted particularly low levels of ad hom when the subject is not a person. When someone like M Mann is quoted long and loud in the Vancouver Sun without a single sentence from him that did not contain a fat lie, deliberate misrepresentation or partial truth, you can expect the vitriol to pour forth upon his person just as he pours it on any disagreeing evidence, person or plain fact.
It may surprise you that the ‘party line’ you refer to is not a party line at all but simply a demand that science be conducted properly and accountably and reproducibly. Is that too much to ask? I don’t think so. When someone tells me that vacuum cleaner can suck up the dirt and it doesn’t, I can get my money back. Not so with this climate alarmist lot. Frankly, that matters.
People can publish all the rubbish they like (and often do) but they normally can’t pry any of my money from my calloused hands without my consent or wilful blindness. $360,000 to reproduce the defective and deceptive (but not shoddy – it was done very carefully) work of MBH98 is very bad value.
You are free to offer any un-party-like views on this channel but you had better know your facts and methods before you put your name tag on it. If Gergis had submitted that as a term paper, would it have been given a failing grade? Of course because it would have received a proper review. So how did it get through peer review? Why were data sets from ‘continents away’ included? Just how stupid is the climate science community anyway? Is there no depth of incompetence they will not plumb?
I am presently reviewing funding applications. If I find that the proposed evaluation methods are not precise enough to give confident results they won’t get 5 cents, let alone get to peer review to then find out they made a boo-boo. It is shocking to see the level of incompetence to which Funders and Journals have fallen these days when it comes to matters of climate.
Oz: Demand the money back or else they must publish the data, the methods and the reproducible result(s).
Where’s all the global warming that we are paying for? Plumb cold here in New Zealand for the last 5 weeks, bought extra firewood, brrr.
Hockey Stick, meet Hockey Puck.
http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/slides/photos/000/356/271/102116805_crop_650x440.jpg?1282627872
They will not listen, they do not know how, perhaps they never will.
“South-eastern Australia is in the grip of a severe water crisis due to the worst drought in recorded history and increasing temperatures. ”
Flooding in SE Australia happening right now – http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/victorias-flood-threat-eases/story-e6frf7jx-1226388532817
Impeccable timing.
Tomwys says: “This again evidences the well confirmed mathematical principle, that the snottiness of response is directly proportional to the ineptitude of the AGW researcher.”
Brilliantly incisive, but you should have said “ineptitude and duplicity”.
NZ Willy says:
June 9, 2012 at 3:00 pm
Where’s all the global warming that we are paying for? Plumb cold here in New Zealand for the last 5 weeks, bought extra firewood, brrr.
Christ almighty!! You are in winter. Here in UK we are in what passes for “Summer.” The coldest and wettest April in over 100 years! May was no better and so far in June it is getting wetter and colder!! Now let them tell me that it is the hottest spring on record!! Bullsh*t!!
Stephen Richards says:
June 9, 2012 at 1:44 pm
My father, Phd climatology, has tried on all fronts to battle this multi-headed hydra, and it has cost him dearly. Even people who post on here have believed the BS that has been written about him. There have been enormous efforts to malign him, and anyone who has any brains has to ask themselves why such effort to discredit him? He recognized what was going on over 30 years ago, and has done his level best to expose this infection for the fraud that it is.
“the Guardian is reportedly losing £1 million a day.” Oh, that makes me so very happy. There is Justice somewhere still.
This also confirms the broken handle [upwards]:
http://notrickszone.com/2012/06/06/medieval-warm-period-shows-up-in-south-america-too-far-far-away-from-north-atlantic/
David Jones says:
June 9, 2012 at 3:51 pm
NZ Willy says:
June 9, 2012 at 3:00 pm
Where’s all the global warming that we are paying for? Plumb cold here in New Zealand for the last 5 weeks, bought extra firewood, brrr.
Christ almighty!! You are in winter. Here in UK we are in what passes for “Summer.” The coldest and wettest April in over 100 years! May was no better and so far in June it is getting wetter and colder!! Now let them tell me that it is the hottest spring on record!! Bullsh*t!!
************
Today in UK tabloids scream “worst storms and deluge for 10 years for the next 2 weeks”. Look at Welsh news today – 1000 people evacuated because of the flood:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-18381040
And we still have the bloody HOSE PIPE BAN!!!! (ok, I am not in Wales, but we also had lots and lots of rain for months).
The central heating in ON, and I am thinking of lighting up the coal burning stove…
When is this Global Warming going to kick in already??? They have bloody jinxed it, didn’t they?? And now nature is going to have fun and show us where our predictions belong.
Sadly it makes no difference how bad the science is or how easy it is to pick apart. Alarmist claims are picked up by the media and are reported with relish to the audience. When do you ever see a follow up story when it is ripped to pieces? Even when bad science fails review, it’s still a success for warmists as they know the MSM moves onto the next story at the drop of a hat and the majority of the audience will never follow the story themselves. Most of the time they report on nothing more than press releases, peer review doesn’t get a look in.
Even though the publishers of the Times Atlas had to eat crow over the missing 15% of Greenland’s ice claim within 24 hours, not one TV station in the UK bothered with a follow up story. I even tweeted the journalists who reported on it and was blanked. Journalism, much like science is not was it used to be.
Here’s one for the next global warming report and is right down their alley in terms of methodology. Take all the temperature sensors in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho that demonstrate quite easily that we have been cooling here over the past 5+ years. Then fill in the grids across the US. Presto. The US has been catastrophically cooling. So here ya go girlfriend. Your next paper. Don’t mention it!
Garry Stotel — Piers Corbyn predicted the weather you are getting but the UK Met office predicted the exact opposite ( even with their fancy super computers )
How about all the rest of the crap that the warmists have published and got away with?
One can measure the success of this effort by the shrillness of the trolls
They deleted a blog spanning three years because of this? Why?
As someone who once published in academia, I can tell you it’s very bad on one’s reputation to pull a paper. Very bad. Even publishing errata can stack up against you if done even a couple of times. But this is Climatology so it’s probably no big deal.
So the defense is that they made a few mistakes and will correct them. So why don’t they ever make ‘mistakes’ in the other direction? Why do all mistakes bolster the CAGW theory? If all the ‘mistakes’ go one way, that is bias, not error.
Same thing with temperature adjustments. If there are inaccuracies in the instrumental temperature records, why do all of the corrections bolster the AGW theory?
Never mind. I cannot even ask these questions anymore. It has gone beyond ridiculous and now dwells firmly in the world of the absurd. AGW climate science has become an absurdity. The scientists who live in the world of AGW are so deeply invested in the paradigm that they no longer have the ability to be rational, much less work with the scientific process.
I will be so happy when all this nonsense goes away and atmospheric scientists can get back to doing real, useful work.
“300,000 dollars and three years to produce a paper that lasted three weeks: Gergis”
As always with the CAGW swindle: Follow the money.
It occurs to me that this preselection of data sets for “correlation” with the thermometer record is really little different in its scientific value than searching for a group of stars that might be said to exhibit a pattern of say a bull or a bear or some ancient god.
I would just love to see people like Gergis put in front of a judicial inquiry and have some senior counsel just take them through their “scientific” logic and process. I reckon that would be great and hilarious television.
I also hope that the apparent collapse of the scientific credibility of this peer reviewed, published (toilet) paper asserting a hockey schtick australis opens up the public imagination to the constructive nonsense behind the Mannian hockey schtick major and the broader issue of self referenced logic in so called “climate science”. It is becoming crystal clear in the skeptical blogoshpere that “climate science” is branch of human enquiry and endeavour that has slunk and shrunk back from the enlightenment into the penumbra of belief based, ideologically inspired activity.
The next step is to see that view being properly articulated in the MSM. After all , when it comes to public policy, it is the numbers of voters ( as measured at the ballot box or indicated by properly conducted polling) who will accept a particular policy or policy advocate rather than the asserted number of alleged scientists who support some cartoonish depiction of where the centroid of the “science” is located. The MSM is where the Gaugemala, the Waterloo, the El Alamein, the D-Day or the Bulge will take place. Otherwise the MSM will let this struggle become another Khe Sanh.
We could characterize this contretemps with extreme pejoratives characteristic of such as Pentti Linkola, but shall refrain.
@tomwys: “This again evidences the well confirmed mathematical principle, that the snottiness of response is directly proportional to the ineptitude of the AGW researcher.”
I am so stealing that, but I will call it “Tomwys Law”.
Peter H says: June 9, 2012 at 12:46 pm
Geez Peter…. There IS probably a little too much ‘crowing’ in the replies, but under the circumstances, that is quite understandable.
But YOU don’t have much of a sense of irony do you? Prattling on about science versus politics when we had a widely acclaimed paper ‘crowing’ about ‘an Australian hockey stick’….. and mentioning an increase now over the warmest pre-industrial period of only 0.09 deg C with a quoted uncertainty of +/0.19 deg C….? Pretty plain who is playing politics in this case.
And now, to top it off, it turns out the very methodology was flawed, and the paper is withdrawn without explanation or publicity. “much ado about nothing..” ?
Politics indeed. And you are a fine example of a very severe case of indoctrination and of a very uncritical mind at work.
Maybe the paper comes with gilded edges in 24 caret gold? Hey, it could happen. I hear guvmn’t toilet seats are expensive too.
“planning for life in a hotter and drier future”
And then it rained. Pity you can’t put climate projections on the stockmarket, these people would have lost alot of money.
“This is commonly referred to as ‘research’”
Not sure I’ve ever seen someone place their foot that deeply into their mouth…I’m still lmao.
If the paper is reworked and comes back up in a different form, does that mean we can say it was reGergisated?
I don’t think this is off-topic here:
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/06/08/richard-feynman-caltech-cargo-cult-science/
Ooo. I’ll play that game. Maybe we could say it was reGergismitted.
Lets look at this a slightly different way. Let’s suppose that, rather than climate, we were talking about parachutes.
Person A: “Nothing is absolutely certain in sky-diving, but we say with very high confidence your parachute will work.”
Person B: “That sounds promising. Did the parachute work the last time it was tried?”
Person A: “No.”
Person B: “Has the parachute ever worked?”
Person A: “No.”
Person B: “Then why should I trust you when you say the parachute will work this time?”
Person A: “How dare you question me!!!? You have never designed a parachute in your life, while I am paid three hundred thousand dollars for my parachute designs!!!”
Person B: “Forgive me. However, before I strap the parachute on, will you tell me again why I should feel confident about doing so?”
Person A: ” Nothing is absolutely certain in sky-diving, but we say with very high confidence….”
This may sound a bit tough but I think most people here do not realize that the warmists won this one hands down because the only purpose was to get a paper up there that showed SH warming whether true or not. mainstream published it everywhere and that’s what people read. Gillard needs this for her carbon tax. They will not get the real info from here. Of course they eventually will but could take months to years by then the tax will be ingrained even Abbott will not get rid of it.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/05/fresh-hockey-sticks-from-the-southern-hemisphere/http://
link comes up as “Not Found – Sorry, but you are looking for something that is not here.”
As of now, you CAN get there by clicking on any of the links to comments on the right, or clicking here:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/05/fresh-hockey-sticks-from-the-southern-hemisphere/comment-page-1/#comments
or here:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/05/fresh-hockey-sticks-from-the-southern-hemisphere/comment-page-2/#comment-237435
Until they read this, and disable THAT access. If you want to see it, get it now.
Copies were made, just in case…
[A lot of] Latitude said:
“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.”
Then why do tree ring data obtained from mountain hemlock trees along the coast of Alaska [that indicate changes in sea-surface temperature (SST)] almost perfectly anti-correlate with SST that have been derived using the Sr/Ca ratios measured in corals at Rarotonga in the South Pacific between the years 1700 and 2000 A.D.
(NOTE: The anti-correlation is required because whenever the SST in the Bay of Alaska are
warmer than normal, the SST near Rarotonga are cooler than normal, and vice versa.).
The Sr/Ca ratios in corals are directly linked to the temperatures in which the corals are immersed.
If your statement was universally correct. Latitude, then it would impossible for the tree-ring widths in hemlock tree rings along the coast of Alaska to know about the SST around the island of Rarotonga in the South Pacific!
It always pays to be careful when you start shouting out [all encompassing] statements with the mob!
Crispin in Waterloo says:
June 9, 2012 at 2:51 pm
———
I agree. They should give all the data and everything else.
Tell us what you did. There must be a journal.
First you had an idea.
You got some money to test your idea.
What did you learn?
Using all the collected data, what did you learn?
When the public pays for science, that science belongs to the public.
If that’s not the law then we need to change the law.
Reblogged this on Is it 2012 in Nevada County Yet? and commented:
One more broken “hockey stick” when will these people learn that real scientists are watching?
Andrew Greenfield says:June 9, 2012 at 7:05 pm
Hits the nail on the head – ‘they’ don’t even care how silly the message sounds or how wrong it is, they just keep pushing it out there and to the ‘average man’ it becomes an ingrained truth.
Very Orwellian, and very successful.
Pamela Gray says:
June 9, 2012 at 4:30 pm
Here’s one for the next global warming report and is right down their alley in terms of methodology. Take all the temperature sensors in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho that demonstrate quite easily that we have been cooling here over the past 5+ years. Then fill in the grids across the US. Presto….
___________________________________
Hey Pamela, just add in
the Fayetteville NC station http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=425746930020&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
The Fort Pierce FL station: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=425000832070&data_set=14&num_neighbors=1
And the Annapolis Royal,Ns station in Maine http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=403713970020&data_set=14&num_neighbors=1
Then finish it off with Wasco CA: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=425000494520&data_set=14&num_neighbors=1
You can add in Newkirk KS for a midpoint if you want. http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=425003462780&data_set=14&num_neighbors=1
Now you have “covered” all of the USA and can “infill” the rest!
Ninderthana;
Then why do tree ring data obtained from mountain hemlock trees along the coast of Alaska [that indicate changes in sea-surface temperature (SST)] almost perfectly anti-correlate with SST that have been derived using the Sr/Ca ratios measured in corals at Rarotonga in the South Pacific between the years 1700 and 2000 A.D.>>>>
Because there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of tree species that grow in hundreds of thousands of different locales. The chance that one of them wouldn’t correlate (or anti-correlate) with one of millions upon millions of locals somewhere in the world is actually very low. If you believe that there is some physical mechanism by which trees in Alaska anti-correlate with temperatures in Rarotonga, you may wish to explain what it is. I for one would be very interested.
So RealClimate has not yet updated thier blog entry to reflect the fact that the paper is on-hold. I tried to post a comment asking if they would update the blog, and my comment was blocked. What is wrong with those people?
Andrew Greenfield says:
June 9, 2012 at 7:05 pm
This may sound a bit tough but I think most people here do not realize that the warmists won this one hands down because the only purpose was to get a paper up there that showed SH warming whether true or not. mainstream published it everywhere and that’s what people read. Gillard needs this for her carbon tax. They will not get the real info from here. Of course they eventually will but could take months to years by then the tax will be ingrained even Abbott will not get rid of it.
____________________________________________
I would not bet on that even if the warmists are. The regular news media has been doing a rapid nose dive square in the mud for the last five years or so. The internet/word of mouth method of passing info is becoming a lot more important than the MSM is. I suggest people look into stuff all the time by writing down phrases they should search. I have seen a drastic increase in the knowledge of the strangers I talk to over the last four to five years.
@Chuck Nolan
“If that’s not the law then we need to change the law.”
It is common sense as much as it is Common Law. No need to change anything. The Journals are acting intra vires (within their powers) when they demand compliance with their published data policies. That a whole new set of pathetic excuses has been deemed worthy for not doing so is embarassing everyone. The childish and unprofessional refusal to provide the data to McIntyre shows that some researchers need to go back to school, to the side of the desk where they belong.
UPDATE: Did Gergis get more funding for this from outside the ARC? If so where?
According to the ARC – the “linkage” projects get outside funds.
“Proposals for funding under Linkage Projects must involve a Partner Organisation from outside the higher education sector. The Partner Organisation must make a significant contribution in cash and/or in kind, to the project that is equal to, or greater than, the ARC funding.”
Can anyone track down the other source of the funding? Is that what makes this up to $950k, or did that promised funding never eventuate?
PS: Apologies. The Real Climate link in the first para was wrong (it had an extra http// typo – the page is still up at RC and the link works now.)
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/05/fresh-hockey-sticks-from-the-southern-hemisphere/
“Latitude says:
June 9, 2012 at 1:22 pm
No one can get temperatures or even climate from trees…all you can hope to get is the length of that particular growing season…”
Yes.
And what’s more laughable is some of these newer studies/research trying to tie in climate change and warming by using tree rings. Are now scouring pieces of old wooden antique furniture, etc And trying to determine/reconstruct climate from the tree ring grains on the wood from the past few centuries!
Gail Combs:
Gail, your Wasco link is busted. No matter, the station isn’t where NOAA says it is anyway. And the site has been ‘improved’ by placing the thermometer on the roof: http://gallery.surfacestations.org/main.php?g2_itemId=84683
…and now it has been aborted.
Scientists Name Baby ‘Global Warming’
Ninderthana says:
June 9, 2012 at 7:22 pm
[A lot of] Latitude said:,
Getting “climate” from trees seems possible. Western Larch (Larix occidentalis) grow nearby in selected locations. I have noticed there are no Olive (Olea europaea) trees in the locations where the Larch grow. This makes me think one could go around the world checking native plants with respect to the patterns of seasons, precipitation, and temperatures and with some diligent work and cartography produce a map of world climates. Oh, …
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%B6ppen_climate_classification
“The system is based on the concept that native vegetation is the best expression of climate.”
Getting temperature from trees seems a bit odd. What temperature is it that you are seeking? Some possibilities: yearly average, average high, average low by year or growing season, average temperature during hours above a selected number, and many others. Anyhow, an actual temperature is given little thought and the sought after number is the “anomaly” or deviation from a number you don’t know. Then we have ratios of chemicals of corals that grow in ocean water thought to be fairly good predictors of the water temperature in which they grew. So, we go back and forth with these linkages and get small numbers to 2 or 3 significant digits with almost no certitude, and these tell us fossil fuel use is about to cause an undefined tipping point so the UN needs to take over governing the world and redistribute the existing wealth as they direct the return to the stone age. On a believability scale from 0 to 100 this rates a 0.09 with a possibility of being negative. Wait! That can’t be. Let’s start at the beginning and eliminate all the uncertainty as we go through this again. Maybe in the morning.
The link to the Real Climate post on this has been removed…. get it on Google cache = You can run but you can’t hide on the internet!
Climate Justice. LOL
Jo Nova says: June 9, 2012 at 8:44 pm: “Can anyone track down the other source of the funding? Is that what makes this up to $950k, or did that promised funding never eventuate?”
I can’t speak for practices in Oz but in the US it is standard practice academia that the sponsors of the research be named at the end of the paper typically before the bibliography. From this one can go the the sponsoring agencies, if governmental, and track down the grant number and funding levels. Most university-based researchers in the U.S. also acknowledge and thank private sponsors e.g. the XYZ foundation, the Suzuki Foundation, Exxon Mobil, etc. Again, these folks like to burnish their images so there are usually press releases announcing the wonderful gift or grant to Prof. Doolittle at Goat Slopes State University. I would be surprised if this info isn’t available.
peterhdn says:
June 9, 2012 at 1:14 pm
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.
Excellent, because the AGW bottom line *is* that it’s all about politics (and the grant money). If it were actually about science, they’d have given it up as a bad hypothesis a decade ago.
Anyway, sorry, but beyond that I KNOW there is no point in further comment. The name calling will simply increase…
Says he, before the name-calling has even started.
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?
Let’s see — take imagined offense at being called a troll before anyone has called you a troll, then take your leave before the name-calling that hasn’t happened doesn’t happen even more.
Okay, you’re not a troll — you’re a self-licking ice-cream cone.
just went onto ABC radio national’s Science Program (really it should be called the Faith Hour!) to ‘rub it up’ the smug and sanctimonious Robyn Williams. Would they let me post?
Gutless creepy ABC.
@Andrew greenfield
This may sound a bit tough but I think most people here do not realize that the warmists won this one hands down because the only purpose was to get a paper up there that showed SH warming whether true or not. mainstream published it everywhere and that’s what people read. Gillard needs this for her carbon tax.
Ummm…isn’t there an opposition in Australia? I would have though that this development is a fairly powerful weapon in their armoury. All they need to do is calmly and thoughtfully draw attention to the fact that severe flaws have been found in the paper – by the bloggers, not the climate establishment – and allow the public to draw their own conclusions about the veracity of the whole thing.
peterhdn says:
June 9, 2012 at 1:14 pm
Okay, you’re not a troll — [SNIP: That really does lower the tone a bit, don’t you think? -REP].
Aarghh! No! Spit out that Kool-Aid!
Those mushy percentages are employed only in fields that can’t do any better, AKA social “sciences”. In actual hard sciences, you need more like 0.1% minimum, preferably 0.01% or 0.001%. Because of the risks of data snooping, bias, error, and co-incidence.
Hmm. OK, then overlay the hockey stick with, or create it our of, line-chart tracings resembling the temperature chart of the past 1200 years.
Is peterh aka peterhdn the Devonian pig farmer who used to entertain us some time back?
Jo Nova says:June 9, 2012 at 8:44 pm
First 15 minute web search results in:
Summary of Linkage Projects Proposals for Funding to Commence in 2009
LP0990151 p3 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
Reconstructing pre-20th century rainfall, temperature and pressure for south-eastern
Australia using palaeoclimate, documentary and early weather station data.
http://www.arc.gov.au/pdf/LP09_Rnd2/Mel_Uni.pdf
Australian Research Council Linkage project (LP0990151):
Reconstructing pre20th century southeastern Australian climate
undated Teleconference 1: Introductions and project planning meeting minutes (7pges)
http://climatehistory.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/ARC-Linkage_Gergis_TC1_minutes.pdf
Joelle Gergis (JG), David Karoly (DK), Rae Moran (RM), Gemma Ansell (GA), Claire Fenby (CF), Bruce Rhodes (BR), Andrew Lorrey (AL), Rob Allan (RA), Ailie Gallant (AG), Karl Braganza (KB), K. S. Tan (KT), Richard Neville (RN), Margy Burn (MB), Nick Long (NL), Janice Van der Velde (JV), Kate Irvine (KI)
Australian Research Council Linkage project (LP0990151):
Reconstructing pre20th century southeastern Australian climate
undatedProject Meeting 1: Research update and planning meeting minutes (5pges)
http://climatehistory.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/ARC-Linkage_Gergis_PM1_minutes.pdf
Joelle Gergis, David Karoly, Don Garden, Claire Fenby, Karl Braganza, Rae Moran, K. S. Tan,
Nick Lomb, Kate Irvine, Richard Neville, Margy Burn, Greta Harrison
Apologies: Neville Nicholls, Janice Van de Velde, Gemma Ansell
Appears from these two minutes that Australian government departments (Bureau of Meteorology, Libraries (State and Fed) and various other govt departments are keen to volunteers resources, archives and staff. Not clear whether this is volunteers outside of employed time or volunteering to work on the project in employed time. Many government depts allow staff to take paid leave to ‘volunteer’.
Other
Murray Darling Basin Authority approved $55,000 on 28/8/2009 for LP0990151
http://www.mdba.gov.au/about/list-of-grants/list-of-grants-by-mdba
Neukom R & Gergis J (2011) Southern Hemisphere high-resolution palaeoclimate records of the last 2000 years The Holocene, May 2012 22: 501-524, (first published on December 16, 2011)
1. Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Bern, Switzerland
2. School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne, Australia
Received March 29, 2011
Accepted September 14, 2011
http://hol.sagepub.com/content/22/5/501.short
Somebody said “Gergis is a climate activist posing as a scientist.”
Tbh, Gergis is a climate change fundamentalist, posing as a scientist. These self selected climate scientists are harming economies and the environment with their preconceived cultism beliefs and are destroying the good name of science. Her rebuke toward Steve McIntyre was both cowardly and mind-numbingly childish.
Climate scientists are doing as much damage to the economy than any corrupt bankers. They are out of control.
Australian Research Council Little infromation here, but interesting to look at categories of grants under subject 1 & subject 2 filters.
http://www.arc.gov.au/search/default.asp?qu=LP0990151&search=Search
Download excel
Choose RFCD tab
Use filters to search by ‘last year of funding’ and ‘subject 1’ (climate change in paleo)
David Ball (them) says:
June 9, 2012 at 3:57 pm
Stephen Richards says:
Good morning David. And yes I have admired your father and indeed supported in a minor way. He is a very brave and principled man. Sadly, there are few others around the world except those who have retired. When they speak out the press ignores thems or derides them but the vast, vast majority of so called scientists stay dumb and who can blame them when their careers are on the line.
June 9, 2012 at 1:44 pm
Blog review has come of age – but only because Steve McIntyre’s efforts have resulted in the data proxies being published online at the time of publication in the journal. Not like the decade that it took to get the Yamal data.
Several years ago there was discussion on Climate Audit about the many factors other than temperature that cause changes in seasonal tree growth. Also there was discussion on the variability of tree ring width around the circumference of trees. Dendrochronologists may have found ways to reduce such uncertainties but it would be very helpful if one of them would educate us on how they got the uncertainty to less than a tenth of a degree over a thousand years. Just a citation to a good reference would be nice.
I do understand that you are all busy, but I ask, without sarcasm, if a real dendrochronologist would be kind enough to help us out here.
juanslayton says:
June 9, 2012 at 8:57 pm
Gail Combs:
Gail, your Wasco link is busted…
________________________________________
The link’s OK now it is NOAA/GISS that was busted last night. It acted weird on several links. Some times they worked and sometimes they did not.
Trees as temperature proxies…??
As I have said before, I have two trees in the yard – one gets the run-off from the chickens, while the other gets the run-off from the garage. The first tree says this is the hottest couple of decades on record, while the other says it is the coldest couple of decades since the last ice-age.
Likewise the chestnut trees in central London, which have succumed to some blight or weavil, and only have 20% of their normal leaf cover.
In a couple of decades, a London tringologist (tree ring ologist) will be able to prove that 2012 was the coldest year on record – indeed, the coldest for the entire world, because of some narrow rings on London chestnuts caused by an infection.
And in a similar fashion, a dendrochronologist will be able to prove that these same London chestnuts actually grew in the late 17th century, because this 2012 ‘cold snap’ mirrors the narrow rings of the late 17th century.
You can manipulate tree rings any which way you want.
“Did any journalist really ask any hard questions to start with?”
Did any sceptics tell the journalists?
Come on folks. Greenspin NGOs send our probably a couple dozen press releases each week. Each University has a press department. The media have more than enough stories given to them on a plate – they don't go and look for them.
So did any sceptics tell the press?
Well yes. It was a long shot. After all the Scottish Climate and Energy Forum had nothing to do with the story, it wasn’t Scottish, but we did our bit and sent out a press release to around 40 Scottish and major UK news newspapers.
We did our bit … did anyone else? And if not why are we complaining at the press for not covering it if no one tells them?
It’s not difficult to tell the press: Our Press Release
Paul Coppin.
Trees are barely proxies for other trees of the same species in a forest, let alone anything else.
———————————————-
And surely the Yamal trees proved this, as every tree appeared to have different tree ring growths for the same years. That what the whole point of the cherry picking with Yad 061 – you cannot cherry pick if all the trees are telling the same temperature story, you can only do this is there are large differences between individual trees.
Has anyone done a statistical analysis, to determine the variability in tree ring widths:
a. In the same forrest.
b. In the same region/country.
c. In the same continent.
It would be interesting to see if there were any reliable continuity within the data, orwhether the result was simply random growth noise, dependent purely on local conditions.
.
” This is commonly referred to as ‘research’. We will not be entertaining any further correspondence on the matter. “
Pride comes before a fall.
I’ve recently sent this to another climate blog. In the hope that it will have a presence on WUWT I won’t say which blog except to say it is ardently followed by those supporting CAGW
What writers of and posters to, xxxx, do not acknowledge is that the MSM seizes on papers such as that of Gergis et al to promulgate the position of the proponents of anthropogenic climate change/global warming but do not run subsequent stories announcing that the results may not be entirely as initially presented. Consequently although scientists and possibly even auditors, may be aware that there could be a modification of the results, this is not made clear to the general public and could generate a bias in public opinion. That said, I agree entirely with one of the writers of this blog that “giving different sides ammunition” is not the way forward. I wish it were possible for both sides to discus their differences without rancour which, unfortunately, stems more from posters to rather than writers of blogs addressing climate science
Latimer Alder says:
June 10, 2012 at 12:01 am
@Andrew greenfield
This may sound a bit tough but I think most people here do not realize that the warmists won this one hands down .
Ummm…isn’t there an opposition in Australia? All they need to do is calmly and thoughtfully draw attention to the fact that severe flaws have been found in the paper – by the bloggers, not the climate establishment
Latimer, if this result had been found by a University, they would have immediately issued a press release to all their contacts they had developed in the media. The press release would be an almost press-ready story that a journalist could just take and print with a few minor alternations to an audience that have very little interest in the technical details (unlike sceptics).
They would have then spent a few days pursuing any journalists that did not print to “encourage” them to print it and ensure that it got out as prominent a placing as possible.
They would have a press officer ready to handle any questions, a spokesperson ready to go live on TV, etc. etc.
Now let’s compare that to sceptics
No press release has gone out from the key players.
Far from having a press officer with an open door, some sceptic sites don’t even have a contact email address, telephone or even an address to write to.
No one has attempted to write this up for a readership that has little knowledge of the subject (last time I looked into a story- as someone with a keen interest and a lot of knowledge, it took me 3 hours to work out what the story was about).
Let me entirely frank THIS IS NOT GOING TO BE TAKEN UP BY THE MEDIA AND IT WILL NOT BE THE MEDIA’S FAULT, BUT OURS.
Only in very exceptional cases will the media come looking for a story and do any investigation. And only then after the story has already reached the public by other means.
Ninderthana says:
June 9, 2012 at 7:22 pm
[A lot of] Latitude said:
======================================
You can not get temps from trees or corals…..period
What you can get is the length of growing seasons………..period
Take your optimum growing temp……there is no way to know if that range occurred in a cool temp phase…..or a warm one
Ex: mid range/optimum temp ……. 50 – 80 F
Did temps range from -20F to 80F?
…or did temps range from 50F – 120F?
“”If your statement was universally correct. Latitude, then it would impossible for the tree-ring widths in hemlock tree rings along the coast of Alaska to know about the SST around the island of Rarotonga in the South Pacific!””
They don’t do it now….what makes you thing they did it back then?
davidmhoffer,
There is a simple physical reason why the tree rings of mountain hemlock along the coast of the Gulf of Alaska closely correlate with the adjacent sea-surface temperatures. The reason is that amount of growth that a mountain Hemlock has in any one season is severely limited by temperature. The reason for this is that these trees grow right along the tree-line along the coastal Canadian/Alaskan Rockies. This means that it only takes a slight change in the nearby mean seas surface temperature for the growth period to expand or contract. And no, this relation ship is not something that has been established by proxy but a scientific fact that has been established by direct observations over many decades.
The second linkage in this relation, i.e. anti-correlation between the sea-surface temperatures in Rarotonga and those in the Alaskan Gulf, has been established from direct temperature measurements over last 100 years. The anti-correlation is part of the well known sea-surface signature due to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO).
And …. guys, if you want to know how to write a press release, this is a superb place to start:
How to write a killer press release by Friends of the Earth
Don’t laugh! Who’s has completely annihilated us in the media war on global warming? These are really professional people who know exactly what works and know how to encourage complete amateurs to make an impact with the press. Just remember the key points.
Just learn the key points
1. Human interest stories are very popular (make someone a hero!!! … not just a name, but who they are, where they live … “Prof Jones is a family man who is deeply passionate” )
2. Controversy or scandal is always of interest. (at least suggest there is something wrong)
3.Quirky, unusual or unexpected events and activities are also newsworthy. (Man bites dog … blogger proves the scientists wrong)
4. local celebrity, Local Angle ….I’ve already tried to find out if McIntyre is Scottish?
Like politicans-these people will do anything for money. Money is what it is about and until governments stop funding these type projects the “Gergiseses” will keep reporting.
John F. Hultquist,
I am ardent climate skeptic who believes that natural climate cycles are far more influential than any contributions by anthropomorphic CO2 to changes in the Earth’s global climate. I have spent much of the last decade conducting climate research on shoe-string budget [called my bank account] and putting up with a virtual tidal wave of disrespect and abuse.However, the one guiding principle for all of my efforts has been to build my views and ideas upon verifiable observations and scientific logic.
This does not mean that my views are always are right, however, it does mean that i am forced to call a spade a spade, when it is warranted. This is such an occasion. You are correct in pointing out the use of tree-ring widths as a temperature proxy is a dubious enterprise in most cases. However, there are specific cases when it can be scientifically verified that such a link does indeed exist. Mountain Hemlock along the coast of the Gulf of Alaska is one of these [rare] cases [please see my post to davidmhoffer above].
Normally, the results that are obtained form tree ring widths are only applicable locally. It is only by good circumstance that this particular temperature dependence can extended further afield. This results from the fact that variation in mean sea-surface temperatures in the Gulf of Alaska are intimately tied into variations of the PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation).
Anyone who dismisses all tree ring widths as proxies for variations in average temperature is doing so out of pure ignorance. I have to assume that you are intelligent enough to realize that there are cases were tree-ring widths are reasonable proxies for the average air-temperatures. Otherwise, there is little to discuss.
Scots Skeptic
Let me entirely frank THIS IS NOT GOING TO BE TAKEN UP BY THE MEDIA AND IT WILL NOT BE THE MEDIA’S FAULT, BUT OURS.
———————————————————-
Correct (in part). Then we need an appointed media spokesperson who is familiar with the format of sending out media press releases in a clear and concise format. All they then need is a list of the main media email addresses, which is not difficult to compile.
However, there is still the problem of whether any media outlet will use the information. I have been noting all press stories in the UK for about ten years, and it is evident that there are some stories that are ‘off message’ and will simply not be taken up by the media, no matter how newsworthy they are. And I am not simply talking about the Grauniad and the BBC, who can be relied upon to loose any skeptic point of view in the office paperwork. No, there are certain topics that even the ‘rebellious’ or ‘right wing’ media will also not touch.
AGW is one of those topics. I remember the Daily Mail’s science correspondent being anti AGW, and then came out with a huge article about how he had changed his mind. But subsequent articles demonstrate he has not really – he had been ‘lent upon’.
If the MSM in the UK will not give Lord Monckton a platform upon which he can preach, why would they ever listen to a WUWT blog representative? The only thing the MSN respect and bend to is political pressure and public opinion. Political pressure will not allow a skeptic voice to be aired. But if every time they write an AGW article, the newspaper recieved 50,000 complaints, they WILL begin to modify their views. It works, I have seen it done.
So don’t just write to WUWT, write a letter of complaint to the media (all the media outlets) each and every time you see an AGW story. Have a stock of contrary facts, and give them a couple each time (like Antarctic sea ice increasing and Antarctic temperatures decreasing etc etc). Keep writing, because nothing upsets a news editor more than the feeling he/she is loosing touch with his/her readership.
.
Jo Nova has a lot of very good postings on her blog, it is really great for WUWT to enable her even greater reach in the community. One of my favourites lately was the plea for free speach, especially bloggers which are targeted by new legislation:
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/06/the-forbidden-history-of-unpopular-people/
“It’s about arrogance, it’s about powerful people here in Australia who believe that they are smarter than you, that their opinion is worth more than your opinion, and that their thinking is better than your thinking, and if you think they’re wrong, you should just shut up.”
If a tree can measure temperature accurately to 1/10th of a degree why do we need a network of weather stations? Jo Nova puts it well.
Her reference to the ‘Bishop Hill site’ is also well worth reading in order to understand what went wrong here. In studies of this kind it is always necessary to reduce the data by filtering out unrepresentative samples. As bishop Hill puts it “Temperature reconstructions rely on “sorting” or filtering the data in some way, either choosing only proxy series that correlate well with their local temperature or alternatively weighting them according to how well they correlate. On the face of it, this is a reasonable approach, as the argument might well be made that if there is no correlation then the series is clearly not a proxy for temperature. However, the problem with this approach is that it amounts to a circular argument,,,,”
The main credit for unravelling this nonsense is of course due to master statistician Steve McIntyre, in spite of the fact that when he asked Gregis for the original data she refused. As stated in the article, she responded with “We will not be entertaining any further correspondence on the matter”. But it appears that credit is also due, Anthony, to your warmist contributor Nick Stokes, who confirmed Steve’s analysis and subsequently led to a withdrawal of the paper. Because when a warmist and a sceptic both agree that a paper is flawed – it is flawed. So credit where credit is due.
The really sad thing is that most of the news outlets that presented the original story as unconvertible proof of man-made global warming didn’t bother to print a subsequent correction when the story was revealed to be unsound.
Why is it that so many climate scientists are allergic to math and statistics? Seriously, do other fields suffer from this, and we just don’t hear about it? Or are they dishonest; I.E., they can do the math but they know they’re doing it wrong?
What really freaks me out is this. Before the blogosphere, how much B.S. got pumped out unchallenged as scientific fact into the world by similar shoddy methodology?
Kudos to Nick Stokes BTW; give me an honest man who disagrees with me any day instead of these other charlatans. We can disagree but so long as we’ve got integrity we’ll figure out the truth in the end.
Silver Ralph says:
June 10, 2012 at 6:04 am
The only thing the MSN respect and bend to is political pressure and public opinion. Political pressure will not allow a skeptic voice to be aired. But if every time they write an AGW article, the newspaper recieved 50,000 complaints, they WILL begin to modify their views. It works, I have seen it done.
So don’t just write to WUWT, write a letter of complaint to the media (all the media outlets) each and every time you see an AGW story. Have a stock of contrary facts, and give them a couple each time (like Antarctic sea ice increasing and Antarctic temperatures decreasing etc etc). Keep writing, because nothing upsets a news editor more than the feeling he/she is loosing touch with his/her readership.
Absolutely. Every time I’ve sent a letter to the editor of our local fishwrapper, he’s either printed it or replied that another correspondent covered the same ground. The paper is still a fishwrapper, but at least its editorial stance has moved from “we’ll all burn to death while we’re surrounded by drowning polar bears” to “actually, the temperature hasn’t risen all that much”…
Jo Nova says:June 9, 2012 at 8:44 pm
Second swipe at your question Jo, little in way of $$ though……..
6. Acknowledgments
We are grateful to all Aus2K working group members for data contributions and helpful discussions that clarified the study. Ed Cook is thanked for providing access to the signal-free tree ring standardisation program and Shayne McGregor is acknowledged for use of the modified version of the Unified ENSO Proxy used in this analysis. We acknowledge funding support from the Australian Department of Energy Efficiency and Environment, the Australian Research Council Projects LP0990151, FF0668679 and DP1092945, and Past Global Changes. SJP acknowledges the NCI National Facility at the Australian National University. We are indebted to all NOAA WDC data contributors who make multi-proxy research possible. P29/74
source: http://static.stuff.co.nz/files/melbourne.pdf
(1) Aus2K project member data
Aus2K steering committee members and data managers
Joelle Gergis (University of Melbourne), Andrew Lorrey (NZ National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research NIWA), Steven Phipps (University of New South Wales), Raphael Neukom (University of Melbourne, University of Bern)
http://www.pages-igbp.org/workinggroups/aus2k
(2) Searched for and got this Australian Department of Energy Efficiency and Environment
1x academic reference in media release http://www.climatechange.gov.au/
(3) DP1092945 Untangling the links between El Nino and the changing global climate
University of Wollongong
DP1092945 Dr HV McGregor; Prof CD Woodroffe; Dr SJ Phipps; Dr A Timmermann; Dr AW Tudhope; Dr JN Brown; Dr D Fink; A/Prof A Fedorov
Approved Untangling the links between El Nino and the changing global climate
Project Title
2010 : $ 130,000
2011 : $ 130,000
2012 : $ 90,000
Administering Organisation University of Wollongong
Project Summary
Australia is a country of ‘drought and flooding rain’, and a key factor governing these cycles is the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Our project will provide the following benefits to the nation (i) increased understanding of ENSO variability; (ii) increased knowledge of the extremes of ENSO; (iii) insights into what causes ENSO to vary; and (iv) improved ability to forecast ENSO. Understanding ENSO is essential for anticipating changes in drought and rain in the future. This understanding will help us to adapt Australia’s valuable agricultural and farming industries to climate change, and to manage our precious water resources.
FF0668679 Improving understanding of climate change and its impacts in Australia through detection and attribution of climate change
Listed under these 3 RFCD Codes……………
1.260502 Surface Water Hydrology
2. 260602 Climatology (incl. Palaeoclimatology)
3 . 260601 Meteorology
Organisational Unit(s)
Faculty of Science – University of Melbourne
Name of Funding Source or Scheme
ARC Federation Fellowship
http://www.arc.gov.au/pdf/FedFellow_bios_06.pdf
Synopsis:
Climate change is an important scientific, economic, environmental and social issue for Australia and the world. Professor Karoly aims to develop improved projections for climate changes in Australia through evaluation of the performance climate models in simulating global and regional climate variation over the past century and quantifying the contributions of different climate-forcing factors, such as greenhouse gases and stratospheric ozone depletion. Professor Karoly will collaborate with the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology to improve the understanding of the causes and impacts of Australian climate variability. Their work will help to build a capability for modelling new Australian climate scenarios and investigate the impacts on Australia of stratospheric ozone depletion. Professor Karoly’s research will assist policymakers considering issues such as emission reductions and adaptation to climate change caused by greenhouse gases.
People
Prof David Karoly (Staff)
School of Earth Sciences – University of Melbourne
(Collaborator)
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)
(Collaborator)
Bureau of Meteorology
Timeline
2006-2011
Code
SCI_15
Source: http://www.lowcarboncities.unimelb.edu.au/improving-understanding-climate-change-and-its-impacts-australia-through-detection-and-attribution-c
Selection Report for Fellowships http://www.arc.gov.au/ncgp/fedfellows/FF08_SelRpt.htm
Overall ARC expenditure in these Fellowships
http://www.arc.gov.au/ncgp/futurefel/FT09_selection_rep.htm
ARC source: http://www.arc.gov.au/ncgp/fedfellows/ff_outcomes.htm
LP0990151 Reconstructing pre-20th century rainfall, temperature and pressure for south-eastern Australia using palaeoclimate, documentary and early weather station data (already mentioned in previous post)
Other funding?
Summary of Discovery Projects Proposals for Funding to Commence in 2010 (word doc)
DP1096309 Dr PJ Rayner; Prof DJ Karoly
Approved Assimilation of trace atmospheric constituents for climate (ATACC): Linking chemical
Project Title weather and climate
2010 : $ 210,000
2011 : $ 180,000
2012 : $ 180,000
2013 : $ 200,000
2014 : $ 170,000
Primary RFCD 2606 ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES
APF Dr PJ Rayner
Administering Organisation The University of Melbourne
Project Summary Changes in atmospheric ozone and carbon dioxide affect many aspects of surface climate from changes in ultraviolet radiation (ozone) to long term changes in temperature (carbon dioxide). Better mapping of these gases will help us understand, predict and manage these changes. For ozone, it will clarify the link between ozone and surface weather. For carbon dioxide, improved knowledge of the impact of tropical deforestation, land clearing and changes in the southern ocean on atmospheric CO2 will support sustainable development in Australia and our region. The project hence addresses the priority goal ‘Responding to climate change and variability` under the National Research Priority ‘An Environmentally Sustainable Australia`.
Additionally a page by conscious.com writes of funding received in the vicinity of $1,900,000 by Karoly, tabled in Senate Parliamentary record 2009.
http://www.conscious.com.au/__documents/additional%20material/Australian%20Academic.pdf
Use of Australian government staff employed or put on as temporary employees in various departments for research, data, etc? Often l[not] listed as in-kind
If I may cross-post this from BH, I think this is very important (links below), especially for people (like me) who only began following these issues recently. This may be a good time to turn up the pressure on a variety of scientific journals and societies which have been allowing confirmation bias, pal review, careless stats, and worse to blight the scientific and public debates. As a newbie I have occasionally seen a reference to a discredited Steig et al (2009) on Antarctic warming, but had not tracked down some references until now.
I strongly urge all to acquaint or re-acquaint themselves with this history (I remember the scary cover of “Nature” magazine on this, and remember later hearing that Steig et al (2009) was over-hyped or worse, but I did not know this sordid tale until now):
WUWT on Steig et al (2009) rebuttal
CA on O’Donnell et al (2010) refutes Steig et al (2009)
Jeff Id on “Doing It Ourselves”
The dependent variable problem is well recognized in other fields. In climate science, temperature is the independent variable and tree rings are the dependent variable.
Climate science selects only those cases (trees) where the dependent variable correlates with the independent variable. Substitute “climate science” for “comparative politics” in the paper below:
How the Cases You Choose Affect the Answers You Get:
http://cooley.libarts.wsu.edu/schwartj/pdf/Geddes1.pdf
This is not to say that studies of cases selected on the dependent variable have no place in comparative politics. They are ideal for digging into the details of how phenomena come about and for developing insights. They identify plausible causal variables. They bring to light anomalies that current theories cannot accommodate. In so doing, they contribute to building and revising theories. By themselves, however, they cannot test the theories they propose and, hence, cannot contribute to the accumulation of theoretical knowledge (compare Achen and SnidaI1989). To develop and test theories, one must select cases in a way that does not undermine the logic of explanation.
If we want to begin accumulating a body of theoretical knowledge in comparative politics, we need to change the conventions governing the kinds of evidence we regard as theoretically relevant. Speculative arguments based on cases selected on the dependent variable have a long and distinguished history in the subfield, and they will continue to be important as generators of
insights and hypotheses. For arguments with knowledge-building pretensions,however, more rigorous standards of evidence are essential.
Que Blammo?
==========
ThinkingScientist says:
Or perhaps journalists could ask her how she could make such sweeping statements about the climate over 1,000 years without a single proxy in the study actually being on the Australian land mass.
Especially given that Tasmania and South Island (NZ) are entirely South of Australia. Higher latitude tends to imply cooler.
Ninderthana says:
June 10, 2012 at 5:32 am
Anyone who dismisses all tree ring widths as proxies for variations in average temperature is doing so out of pure ignorance. I have to assume that you are intelligent enough to realize that there are cases were tree-ring widths are reasonable proxies for the average air-temperatures. Otherwise, there is little to discuss.
=================
Ninder, mountain hemlock is a product of early snow pack and moisture….that’s the connection between them and the PDO…..not temperature
(It’s not finished but if I waited till it was it would be in the archives section. Still a bit cluncky.)
To the tune of:”Winter Wonderland”
Hockey sticks, are a snappin’.
They don’t tell what’s been happenin’
We’re not buyin’ the fright
They’re desperate tonight
Erasin’ the winter wonderland!
Gone away are old records
Here to stay are new records
Change the old logs
String ‘em along
Erasin’ the winter wonderland!
In the graphing Hansen built a strawman
He said,”As long as CO2 abounds,
“More heat until we’re fri-ed!”
We say, “no, man!
We’ve seen that Michael Mann is just a clown!”
Ninderthana says:
June 10, 2012 at 5:32 am
Anyone who dismisses all tree ring widths as proxies for variations in average temperature is doing so out of pure ignorance. I have to assume that you are intelligent enough to realize that there are cases were tree-ring widths are reasonable proxies for the average air-temperatures. Otherwise, there is little to discuss.
============================================
Ninderthana, I’d be more than happy to read where someone, anyone, has presented a reasonable case where is can be reasonably assumed a tree ring is a proxy for average air temps. State the case, make the case. Simple assumptions of facts which haven’t been shown is the very definition of operating in ignorance. Quit projecting your intentional ignorance and state the case.
James Sexton says:
June 10, 2012 at 11:30 am
Ninderthana, I’d be more than happy to read where someone, anyone, has presented a reasonable case where is can be reasonably assumed a tree ring is a proxy for average air temps..
=================================
I believe it’s called the Briffa Bodge………………………
the Briffa Syndrome rises up once again
[ I miss the good old days of riding miscreants out of town on a rail after thorough tarring and feathering ]
Peter H,
You state that this incident has no impact on the science. Well, maybe, maybe not.
It certainly has no impact in the sense the paper appears to be of poor quality and therefore adds little or nothing to our understanding of the science. But what it does do is open yet another window on how some scientists in climate change go about their work and how the “science” gets reported to the rest of us.
Do incidents like this generate smug comments on WUWT and other blogs? Certainly. And they add nothing to the conversation. So what about you? Do you have anything of value to add or are you going to simply show your own smugness in pointing out that of others?
MikeB says:
June 10, 2012 at 7:26 am
But it appears that credit is also due, Anthony, to your warmist contributor Nick Stokes, who confirmed Steve’s analysis and subsequently led to a withdrawal of the paper. Because when a warmist and a sceptic both agree that a paper is flawed – it is flawed. So credit where credit is due.
*grumble, grumble*
Mike’s right.
Nick Stokes, you’re annoying but you have integrity, and that counts for a lot.
Even assuming the paper’s conclusions don’t change and ignoring the bit about it using less than half of the data sets, I’m still not sure what it tells us. That the last half century is a tenth of a degree C warmer than any time in the past 1000 years? (Plus or minus two tenths of a degree.)
Even if I accept that someone can determine the temperature from a 1000 years ago with that level of accuracy, or ignore that the margin of error is twice that of the predicted value, are we not talking about a difference that is meaningless?
Scottish Sceptic
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/09/jo-nova-chronicles-the-snapping-of-the-gergis-hockey-stick/#comment-1005779
http://www.houseofnames.com/mcintyre-family-crest
Motto: Per ardua
Mark Bofill says:
June 10, 2012 at 8:00 am
Why is it that so many climate scientists are allergic to math and statistics? Seriously, do other fields suffer from this, and we just don’t hear about it? Or are they dishonest; I.E., they can do the math but they know they’re doing it wrong?
What really freaks me out is this. Before the blogosphere, how much B.S. got pumped out unchallenged as scientific fact into the world by similar shoddy methodology?
___________________________________
A heck of a lot more than scientists would want us to know.
There are a lot of stories on scientific misconduct hitting the internet now. For example British Medical Journal Makes Shocking Data Corruption Revelation …”a newly published BMJ survey of almost 2,800 experts in Britain found six per cent of doctors and scientists knew of possible research misconduct at their own institution”…
Or the red wine scandal UConn officials said their internal review found 145 instances over seven years in which Dr. Dipak Das fabricated, falsified and manipulated data…
Or the noted Dutch psychologist, Diederik Stapel: A well-known psychologist in the Netherlands whose work has been published widely in professional journals falsified data and made up entire experiments, an investigating committee has found… committed academic fraud in “several dozen” published papers, many accepted in respected journals and reported in the news media… The scandal, involving about a decade of work, is the latest in a string of embarrassments in a field that critics and statisticians say badly needs to overhaul how it treats research results.
There is even a website dedicated to scientific malfeasance but I didn’t book mark the link.
It seems once a scientist is “seduced to the darkside” it is not just once but become a regular habit. We as a culture have put scientists up on a pedestal and treated them as more than human. We are only now finding out just how human and fallible scientists are.
I have posted my notes and quotations from listening to the 30 min. press briefing conducted by Karoly, Gergis, and Phipps on May 17, 2012. Regardless of what may happen with the Gergis et al (2012) paper I think there are some extraordinary statements here. Both what they do and do not say. For instance, Gergis blandly dismisses any possible issue with reliability of tree rings for temps at this level of (claimed) precision.
Karoly claims that the study’s finding of a 0.09C difference between 13th century and late 20th century temps means there was no MWP at all for Australia:
David Karoly tells journalists that 0.09C difference means there was no Medieval Warm Period for Australia
He seems to be laboring under an assumption that unless a MWP is at temps higher than today’s temps there is no MWP at all?!! He says and/or implies this repeatedly, with emphasis, for the journalists.
One possibility is that this paper was rushed to get it published prior to RIO+20 and/or IPCCv5. I don’t know which, but one should assume that not only do we have a problem with an activist scientist publishing work haphazardly, but we also have the work rushed before its completely finished just to meet an abritrary deadline in order to make it standout at certain conferences.
Obviously, the scientists involved are being activists because a real scientist would not rush a paper just to make a political point or to have it included in certain publications. A real scientist would release it when the paper is finished. That is probably a problem with most papers released in the last few months….and by trying to get the greatest impact before RIO+20 or IPCC they are basically dogging it.
All they had to do was look at the science objectively and come to the conclusions that the data brings us to. End of story. But instead these activists as I will refer to them as released haphazard work as quickly as possible to just flood the market so to speak with trash. Expect more of this until RIO is complete later this month and of course for IPCC the fifth attempt at “coming to a consensus.”
As I have always said, if there was a consensus and the science was settled, why bother wasting money on more science. Just stop funding it and do something right?
Who are they really trying to convince with their political rhetoric?
Upside down: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hp_Ju_vbPro
benfrommo
They definitely had inclusion in AR5 as the goal, but the project has been in the pipeline at least since July 2010 and probably earlier (since Gergis had announced her initial 3-year “SEARCH” funding on her now deleted blog back in 2009. Here’s the announcement about Neukom joining the project to develop the data and statistics:
Neukom joins team of Gergis and Gallant to develop climate reconstruction for IPCC’s AR5
[July 10, 2010]
……
“….[Neukom] is spending time with Joelle Gergis and Ailie Gallant discussing reconstruction methodology and data management to help the SEARCH project develop its long-term climate reconstructions for south-eastern Australia and the broader Australasian region.”
“During his fellowship, Raphael will compile all the currently available high-resolution records from Australasia and South America regions to develop seminal Southern Hemisphere–wide climate reconstructions.”
“Reconstructions of past atmospheric circulation from this less-studied region of the globe will then be compared against climate model data to assess the regional climate variability in different parts of the Southern Hemisphere.”
“Raphael plans to have his results ready in time for incorporation into the next global climate change assessment report of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) due out in 2013.”
Everyone is seeming to buy the story of ‘its just a processing mistake’. But I find it hard to believe that the authors unwittingly crafted a written description of one procedure while plotting the results of another.
If I were a co-author I would be pissed off. Academic misconduct could be investigated here.
Sounds like a good job for Marc Morano. He just needs to start sending out PRs from the stories in Climate Depot. He’s probably already got the media contacts and lists from his work with Senator Inhofe.
/Mr Lynn
“What is your result” “How much warmer are we” isn’t a hard question. It’s a basic question and should have been the first one asked. (perhaps third, after “who are you” and “what are you doing”).
Do these people ever go outside?
In many parts of the world these days, that should be enough to make one skeptical.
@skiphill, interesting.
But I kind of wonder if the original plan had been to release and/or finish the study just for IPCC, but they decided to get it finished early for RIO and cut corners for that reason. Just speculation mind you, but that is really interesting to see how the timing of the study was worked out. Perhaps I am completely off and they had ZERO CLUE and we always know that stupidity is often a larger cause in climate science of bone-headed mistakes then actual malice.
Although for the malice explanation, this is the simplest explanation, so if you think about it I would tend to think either option is equally possible in this case. (this is slightly sarcastic in that I am only half serious…)
I think the reality is probably both after reading such information on this study. They rushed it and were incompetent, which was my original hunch as well. Just another wasted study that should never have been published. But that is neither here nor there, we are used to this kind of thing by now.
Remember folks, in finding mistakes in any of these papers, look to the assumptions made. Everyone of these studies related to CAGW make certain assumptions and begin with the famous weasel words (for instance in this case) of “if we warm, then the following is possible.”
Jo Nova says:June 9, 2012 at 8:44 pm
Last swipe of ?funding and volunteers network not including any other Australian Research Council (ARC) grants Jo
SOUTH EASTERN AUSTRALIAN RECENT CLIMATE HISTORY (SEARCH)
http://climatehistory.com.au/about-us/
About the project
The project is led by researchers from the University of Melbourne’s School of Earth Sciences. The aim is to investigate south-eastern Australia’s climate history using the following sources:
Palaeoclimate records: tree rings, coral, ice cores and cave deposits
Documentary records: newspaper articles, governors’ records and early settler accounts
Early weather data: weather journals, government gazettes and pre-Federation observatories
These records will allow us reconstruct past climate conditions (rainfall, temperature and atmospheric pressure) and see how climate variability has influenced Australian society over time.
The project SEARCH
1. Partners with:
1.1 (Aus) Bureau of Meteorology
1.2 (Aus) Melbourne Water
1.3 (Aus) National Library of Australia
1.4 (Aus) National and State Libraries Australasia http://www.nsla.org.au/memorandum-understanding
1.5 (Aus) Murray Darling Basin Authority
1.6 (New Zealand) National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research Ltd (NIWA) http://www.niwa.co.nz/about-niwa/our-company
1.7 (Aus) State Library New South Wales (NSW)
1.8 (Aus) Powerhouse Museum
1.9 (Aus) Dept Sustainability & Environment
1.10 (UK) UK Met Office
1.11 (Aus) State Library Victoria
1.12 (Aus) Monash University
2. Affiliates with
2.1 Atmospheric Circulation & Reconstruction over Earth (ACRE)
“ACRE is led by a consortium of seven core partners –
1) the Queensland State Government
2) University of Southern Queensland in Australia;
3) Met Office Hadley Centre (MOHC) in the UK;
4) US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL)
5) Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado;
6) The National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) of NOAA
7) University of Giessen in Germany
8) University of Bern in Switzerland”
http://www.met-acre.org/
2.2 Aus2K
Broken link on webpage goes to http://www.pages.unibe.ch/science/2k/aus2k/index.html
But this link available on a google search
http://www.pages-igbp.org/workinggroups/aus2k/people-projects
Aus2k – People/Projects
Wednesday, 12 January 2011 13:30
Group Leader
Joelle Gergis (also group data manager)
Group Members:
Drew Lorrey
Steven Phipps
Raphael Neukom (data manager)
AND
The map and table below provide an overview over all entries in the Aus2k metadatabase
Map: Click the flags on the map to view details of the entry.
Table: Datasets are sorted by the date when they were entered, wich the latest entry on top.
You can search the database by keywords here.
Showing 268 datasets
http://www.pages-igbp.org/workinggroups/aus2k/metadatabase
2.3 PAGES Past Global Changes
http://www.pages.unibe.ch/about/general-overview
2.4 South Eastern Australian Climate Initiative (Phase 1 ended in 209, Phase 2 is a three year $9 million program)
http://www.seaci.org/about.html
3. Supported by
3.1 Australian Research Council (where the grant originated)
4. For Volunteers
4.1 OzDocs Database
http://www.ozdocs.climatehistory.com.au/
OzDocs is an exciting new citizen science project run by a climate research group at the University of Melbourne and we need your help!
Also won a University of Melbourne Vice Chancellor’s Citizen Engagement Award in 2011:
OzDocs – A ‘Citizen Science’ project to uncover Australia’s Climate History
Dr Joelle Gergis (School of Earth Sciences)
Australia’s spectacularly erratic climate influences every aspect of our lives.
Although official weather records kept by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology date back to 1910,
it is possible to extend these records by extracting information from historical records including explorers’ journals, ships’ logs, newspapers and artworks.
The project will tap into historical sources to develop Australia’s first online database of climate information dating back to first European settlement. Volunteers will assist in gathering data from historical documents to upload to an online database.
Partners_:_ National Library of Australia, State Library of Victoria, State Library of New South Wales
http://climatehistory.com.au/2011/10/05/ozdocs-project-receives-engagement-award/
source: http://climatehistory.com.au/about-us/
Background to these Awards:-
STAFF ENGAGEMENT EXCELLENCE AWARDS 2012
The University of Melbourne will be awarding four (4) Staff Engagement Excellence Awards up to the value of $5,000 to reward excellence in engagement projects which furthered the University’s agenda for engagement in the schools, departments and faculties of the University.
The awards recognise engagement projects with external partners that enhanced the University’s teaching and research programs, and provided demonstrable returns to community or partner organisations.
Applications for excellence need to demonstrate links to The University of Melbourne’s teaching and research strategies and indicate how the project addressed social, economic, environmental or cultural issues.
Summaries of winners from the 2011 Staff Engagement Excellence Awards scheme can be viewed at http://www.mepo.unimelb.edu.au
P8/12 http://www.mepo.unimelb.edu.au/files/kt/VCEngagementAwards2011_0.pdf
source: http://www.mepo.unimelb.edu.au/content/pages/vice-chancellors-engagement-awards
http://www.dvc-universityaffairs.unimelb.edu.au/strategic-partnerships
Our engagement objectives
From its many specialities and in the hands of our staff and students, the University of Melbourne’s engagement links stretch out in myriad directions.
Around the corner or around the globe, our partnerships and links with government, business, alumni and community form a core part of our charter.
Our engagement objectives are:
• To develop the standing and practices of the profession
• To foster partnerships to advance research
• To commercialise the University’s intellectual capital
• To enhance students’ readiness for professional life
• To foster partnerships that enhance teaching and learning
• To raise aspirations for tertiary study
• To produce cultural engagements
• To develop better policy and governance
• To foster intellectual discourse and knowledge dissemination
• To meet our responsibility to the greater public good
• To improve the University’s reputation and public standing
Long shot……………..
Citizen Science Alliance
http://www.citizensciencealliance.org/gzexample.html
Another long shot…………….
Welfare (unemployment and disability etc) benefits in Australia allow a component of hours ‘volunteered’/week to maintain receipt of the welfare benefit. (check)
Mods hope the are in order on this.