Or as an alternate title: “Why we find it difficult to trust certain climate scientists.”
This posting by Bishop Hill, telling the tale of the nefarious temperature reconstruction known as the Michael Mann hockey stick, from start to present, is an excellent summation for the layman reader struggling to understand the entire affair and why it is such an amazing pox on the conduct of science and practice of peer review. This sums it up quite well:
That the statistical foundations on which they had built this paleoclimate castle were a swamp of misrepresentation, deceit and malfeasance was, to Wahl and Amman, an irrelevance.
I highly recommend reading it, and Bishop Hill deserves thanks for condensing this affair into a readable story.
Counters:
Re Hansen:
If somebody comes with a claim, but are not willing to back it up. You’d think they got something to hide, wouldn’t you??
On a more personal note: If AGW was falsified (which is difficult because nothing disprove AGW, even cooling) would you think that was a good thing or a bad thing?
counters (07:26:47) :
How about something similar about James Hansen and his GISS???
Why do we automatically assume that Hansen has engaged in dishonest or unethical practices?
Counters, that unfortunate conclusion was not assumed but reluctantly adopted despite Hansen’s apparent expertise. Understand first, this isn’t about Hansen the person. This is Hansen the scientist and mostly his assertions. At every turn the usual process of scientific discovery has been thwarted. It is this last that forces reluctant consideration of other explanations.
The larger issue is not the hockey stick or any other particular chart. It is that the scientific method was sidestepped in favor of political motives. This is especially troublesome when trillions of dollars are on the line.
counters,
I have considerable sympathy for the case you’ve put here. Whilst I don’t agree with everything you’ve said, I support the view that the demonising of individuals, on the basis of highly questionable assumptions, does nothing to serve what, surely, should be a common interest, and that is the pursuit of scientific understanding.
As regards the HS issue, the statistical limitations of MBH98/99 have been thoroughly examined by bodies independent of the ‘team’. My summary view of all that is that there were valid criticisms of its methods and that levels of uncertainty were not properly expressed, but not that it has been ‘debunked’ in the way that others here think. Some may be as outraged as they like, but that’s my judgment. But I do not ‘support’ the HS. I don’t have any ‘commitment’ to relatively early scientific studies in particular fields. What I support is any advancement of our scientific knowledge. So, if there is a robust study to come which demonstrates that the MWP was global and equivalent to or in excess of current temperatures, then bring it on (I don’t think that Loehle meets the ‘robust’ criterion). We need to understand as much as we can, but that is, frankly, not advanced by constantly attacking totems. So, if Steve McIntyre now has ‘proof’ that W&A’s work is shown to be faulty, then let him publish. I will look forward to his academic paper. But until I see it presented in that context, I shall reserve my judgment.
I’ve been reading here, and doing a little posting, to get a better understanding of what the ‘sceptics’ case currently is. I find myself reading a lot of vitriolic, ad hominem attacks, straightforward defamations based upon nothing but speculation. There is absolutely no proof whatsoever that I am aware of that Hansen has applied human bias to the GISS records. I am not impressed by defamation. If the ‘sceptic’ case has science to present, then let that be presented. Personally, I look forward to, for example, Spencer’s next paper. I hope it might be significant, that it might lead us to reassess our perception of risk. I wouldn’t bet much on that at all, but it is my hope. In the meantime, I’d suggest that people stick to discussing the science we have rather than whipping up a witch-hunt. As someone whose current view is that the risk of AGW is high, I have to say that the general impression I am gaining here, of the ‘sceptical’ case being fueled by personalised spleen rather than scientific objectivity, is doing nothing to encourage me to reassess my judgments.
The HoCkey was create dto kill the MWP and LIA.
If the MWP exists (and it does) then the “unprecedented warming” becomes “just another warming cycle”. There were no SUV’s in the MWP.
It wasn’t man who caused the MWP.
It was Mann who tried to hide it.
Stan and Old Man Winter have pretty much covered the arguments about why Hansen should be at least suspected.
My real problem is that AGW theorists and modelers do not allow a debate that would set up testable hypotheses. Surely, if something can not be tested, then it can’t be debunked. This puts in the same category as many religions.
I sent the link to this story to John Stossel at ABC news but I doubt he will follow up on it considering the volume of mail he receives. I told him this account on Bishop Hill would make a great story on a show such as 20/20. If there is any big media that would cover this story, it would open the eyes of many people of the unprofessional behavior of these so-call scientists. Hiding your data just to influence public opinion is an ethical failure with far reaching consequences. It’s a story that needs repeating to a larger audience.
The IPCC and the “science involved with the Mann/Wahl-Ammam “Hockey Stick” ARE JUST AS BAD AS ANY OF EXCUTIVE AT ERON. They should be investigated by the Senate and band from any further grant money.
Here’s the sad news
The same group is now involved with the PR Challenge Paleoclimate Reconstruction Challenge.
This is the letter I sent to my Senator.
Dear Sir;
You may be aware of the PR Challenge or Paleoclimate Reconstruction Challenge. http://www.pages.unibe.ch/science/prchallenge/index.html Many scientists of this group are the same “scientists” which give us the famous “Hockey Stick” reconstruction of our past climate. I should not have to remind you of the boondoggle surrounding the hockey stick starting with “We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period to any input number resulted in the same graph being reconstructed.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
I demand as a tax payer and citizen that:
A) An independent audit done to validate and verify all works from Paleoclimate Reconstruction Challenge before any government body and/or government employee can refer to and/or use in full and/or in part for any government function including the IPCC.
B) If any government funding is used in all and/or part of this reconstruction, the reconstruction shall be subjected to the principle of forecasting as described in Principles of Forecasting handbook.
C) If any government funding is used in all or part of this reconstruction, the reconstruction shall be subjected to the Data Quality Act.
D) If scientist and/or institution that does not comply with independent audit and/or principle of forecasting and/or Data Quality Act shall have his and/or hers and/or institution government funding suspended immediately.
Sincerely,
“We-think” mentality can be researched and even experimentally demonstrated. And it can be done on people who have perfectly good reasoning capacity and who are basically educated, honest, community-minded, contributing citizens. I don’t think there is a vast conspiracy and I have never said so. I don’t think the “we-think” based decisions and beliefs that lead to the invasion of Iraq amounts to a vast conspiracy either.
I do think that political views guide what the “we-think” group will pay attention to and give credence for. Contrary evidence is brushed aside because the group is now thinking beyond scientific endeavor and are attempting to continue to prove their belief, even when evidence says otherwise.
There are well-respected scientists and even medical doctors who still believe in the resurrection of the body of Jesus. That belief is neither wrong nor right but it can and does lead honest people to try to convince others of that belief, even though scientific evidence is absent or contrived, or not yet fully developed.
AGW is at that stage. The full understanding of climate change is not within our grasp yet. The theory has not been fully developed. Yet the proponents act as if it was. It would be like developing a new pill that may have benefit based on some but not all lab experiments, but before trials are made on real humans using gold-standard double blind study designs with controls, the company decides to go ahead and market the product, hoping and even believing they are right.
Do you really want to take the chance that people could be seriously harmed by a rush to cap and trade?
You’ve got a funny standard if you think the skeptics are full of ad hominem stuff but the believers aren’t. Have you never been to the main believers sites?!?! This blog is downright somnolent compared to RealClimate when it comes to personal attacks.
This blog (and others) certainly do roundly decry Hansen and Mann and several others. Why? Bad science. You’re blinding yourself if you don’t see several really obvious biases toward recent warming in the Hansen-led “adjustments” to the GISS data. It’s not an ad hominem attack if it’s true.
Not all of the skeptics avoid ad hominem attacks, but this is the Internet – what do you expect?!?
There is a wise old adage which I paraphrase here :- “Hansen is as Hansen does” – perhaps that will settle the argument.
Oops, that last post was in reply to Talbot.
Steven T
Your approach seems eminently reasonable. Rely on the science based on peer reviewed published papers. But this is not how the debate about climate change has actually proceeded.
The ‘hockey stick’ was iconic in the debate between 1998 & 2005, it has been reproduced ad nauseam in numerous books and other forums, especially the media. It was the centrepiece of the TAR and used to promote the agenda of the IPCC, particularly their summary for policy makers.
So when considerable doubt is brought to bear on the veracity of the ‘hockey stick’ the response of the climate community (not unique in that respect) is to close ranks, deny that there was problem and, after various attemts at rehabilitation (some of which continue to this day), eventually argue that the ‘science has moved on’. The problem with this is that in the wider world the iconic impression continues and the damage done is not refuted. This, of course, suits various political agendas.
Lastly, I’m sorry to have to say that if you think ‘climate change’ is solely about science you are very politically naive
I’m a CPA. If I do sloppy work, clients pay penalties. If I do really sloppy work, I’m considered negligent. If I knowingly disregard laws with the intent to decieve, that constitutes fraud. Negligence and fraud can result in fines, loss of license, or even jail time. So, I take my work seriously, set up procedures to avoid mistakes or catch and correct them. (and one would think that someone whose work is the basis for national/global energy policy decisions would be held to an even higher standard)
Now, some here are….ahem…”highly” critical of Hansen/Mann. Some forgive his errors because “he’s human.” Or “it’s complicated.” Or “it’s inaccurate, but that doesn’t mean intentional.” Whatever.
My only point here is that at some level Hansen/Mann have been made aware of the significant problems with their data. At some point their response becomes either negligent or fraudulent.
What is that point? Are we there? Then what?
@Steven Talbot
Despite (currently) disbelieving in AGW, I do find a lot of the angry posts against AGW to be an embarrassment – especially since quite a few even seem to stoop to the level that us Skeptics complain about the Pro AGW camp. Still, this is probably unavoidable (but still undesirable), given how Skeptics feel they are treated (ridiculed) by the other side.
IMHO, the best approach is to simply look at all the evidence from both sides, weigh it up yourself, and do your best to ignore all the name-calling & faulty logic coming from either side…
I hate to see the value of science damaged in the eyes of the public which is exactly whats is going to happen when this comes to light. Mistakes are expected (thats what peer review is in place to catch) but to manipulate the system and peer process to that extent should end their professional career.
THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS……. AUDREY II = GISS
Me really scares, are these numbers.
T= 0,001ºC , p = 10-millibar , CO2 = 0,1 ppm, age 300000 =years ago, nano carbons aerosois???
Beijing urgent; Medal of gold – James E. Hansen – category sodoku.
“By their fruits ye shall know them.”
Yes, this serves as a good example of “bad science” and an embarrasing failure of the peer-review process.
BUT, for the sake of discussion, realize that it’s entirely possible that “The Hockey Stick” could reflect reality, and at the same time be a statistically insignificant model. These are not necessarily exclusive conditions!
Consider, one can measure 2 people out of a population of a thousand and come up with an average height that is actually the near exact average (by sheer luck, or a-priori observation and sampling bias), but there is no statistical significance in the measurement whatsoever because it was a poor sample design (poor science). In this example, the predictive power of the resulting model is very weak, although the predictive model hits the actual average square on the head. An accurate average but obviously, not good science.
Alternatively, one can obtain results from a good scientific experiment or sampling effort that show clear, statistically-significant differences or correlations that are in reality, completely insignificant in terms of reflecting real, functional differences/relationships.
Hopefully, this “Hockey-Stick Caper” will help in tightening the screws and result in better science that furthers understanding of these exceedingly complex phenomena.
By the way, on following this and other Blogg discussions, I can only admire those who are so certain on both “sides” of the AGW debate; it must be nice!
One can be certain in church. People tend towards certainty at the bar on Friday and Saturday nights. Politicians and bussinessmen have to appear certain out of sheer necessity. But with AGW at this stage, neither “side” can base certainty in science; no way, no how. The book remains to be written.
Cautiously agnostic,
Jd
Its just priceless to hear the AGW crowd complain that someone is being to harsh with them. Skeptics have had to endure being called just about everything in the book daily. I won’t get into that, I don’t have time nor the energy to list the insults. But when Jim H. called for skeptics to be jailed to avoid debating them was the last straw as far many people are concerned.
“I find myself reading a lot of vitriolic, ad hominem attacks, straightforward defamations based upon nothing but speculation.”
Priceless, just priceless and kind of sad.
Counters said:
As Steve Mc noted on his blog, if you are auditing the books of a company, you would likely pick some things at random and check them. If everything stacks up, you likely won’t go any further. However, if they appear to be a bit on the dodgy side, you’ll dig deeper.
Applying this to climate science would seem to indicate that further investigation is warranted – even more so, given that this sorry tale is not the only example ever to be exposed in the blogosphere of failure to fully expose data and methods.
Perhaps there is nothing more that is questionable in the whole field, but given the reluctance of many practitioners in the field to supply their data and methods to a qualified statistician, when the conclusions of the paper are reliant on statistics, is disturbingly suspicious – even more so to me, given that most research scientists I have dealt with tend to be, err, somewhat obsessive/compulsive about their research and will talk about and explain it in detail at the drop of a hat.
Yes, I am on the sceptic side of of this debate, but, believe it or not, what concerns me the most is that the alarmists are right, but will ultimately end up being ignored because they turned into activists instead of honest brokers of knowledge. The boy who cried wolf really did see a wolf in the end…
John D said:
Indeed.
Hmmm, Let’s see.
Hockey stick.- Even though Mr. Talbot says it isn’t, it’s debunked.
Ice Core CO2.-in question by Jaworoske, Beck, and others. Will the ice core data withstand the scrutiny that the Hockey stick has? I seriously doubt it.
Warming Troposphere.-Whoops, satelites find no warming troposphere.
Warming Oceans.- Whoops, that isn’t there either.
Melting polar ice caps?–Not so much.
GISS?–under serious scrutiny and serious questions.
“We understand the physics.”-Well, O.K., but the thread below this one is about how we don’t understand the physics.
Climate models.–Show me one that has actually predicted something, for the right reasons.
I mean, really folks, how many legs does the AGW thing got?
My reaction is the same every time I see that graph. If you take it at face value, we were falling into an ice age before the blade started and thanks God that it did.
The hockey stick has been debunked. It was done by reproducing the results through application of its algorithms to red noise, and still producing the same hockey stick.
Of course Mann says that, I paraphrase, “of course the method is not robust to red noise, but random variations in tree ring growth have been shown to be ‘white’ noise”, that is that the variations do not carry from year to year. This is patently absurd.
Saying that the stick has not be “debunked” is like saying that OJ is innocent based on the finding of a court of law. It is an insult to anybody with a working brain.
John D said: ….luck
Lucky … a Nobel prize ….. good luck
Beijing urgent; James E. Hansen -disqualified (eliminated and banned)- doping mathematical.
good luck…..