For readers unfamiliar with this work, this illustrates one of the mathematics techniques (tree ring proxy data inversion) Dr. Michael Mann uses to divine the famous “Hockey Stick” cited by Gore and others. – Anthony
Previously, we discussed the upside-down Tiljander proxies in Mann et al 2008. Ross and I pointed this out in our PNAS comment, with Mann denying in his answer that they were upside down. This reply is untrue (as Jean S and UC also confirmed.)
Andy Baker’s SU967 proxy is used in Mann 2008 and is one of a rather small number of long proxies. With Andy’s assistance, we’ve got a better handle on this proxy; Andy reported that narrow widths are associated with warm, wet climate.
I checked the usage of this proxy in Mann 2008. Mann reported positive correlations in early and late calibration (early – 0.3058; late 0.3533). Thus, the Mannomatic (in both EIV and CPS) used this series in the opposite orientation to the orientation of the original studies (Proctor et al 2000,2002), joining the 4 Tiljander series in upside-down world.
The difference is shown below:
Another upside down series. I wonder if it “matters”.
Could it really be just that simple? – Anthony
Of course he would think he can confuse reality to produce good results: Thief, The Insider, The Kingdom, Collateral, Heat, Ali, The Last of the Mohicans, The Aviator, Miami Vice.
Meanwhile…
Report: EPA To Declare 6 Gases A Public Health Risk
by The Associated Press
NPR.org, April 17, 2009 · The Environmental Protection Agency has concluded that carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases are a danger to public health and welfare. It is the first step to regulating pollution linked to climate change.
Congressional sources told The Associated Press that EPA will announce its proposed finding Friday and begin a comment period before issuing a final ruling. The EPA also will say tailpipe emissions from motor vehicles contribute to climate change. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the finding hasn’t been announced.
The action was prompted by a Supreme Court ruling two years that said greenhouse gases are pollutants under the Clean Air Act and must be regulated if found to be a human health danger.
Neil — The issue is that the scientists who gathered and analyzed the data associated low numbers with higher temperatures (numerically a negative correlation), and provided at least a plausible physical mechanism to explain the association.
The “Mannomatic” algorithm, looking at a small section of the data, and correlating it to some temperature record for that period, found a numerically positive correlation in that period. The algorithm implicitly assumes that this relationship holds for the entire period of the proxy record, therefore associating low numbers in the proxy with low temperatures.
The upside-down graph is simply a pictorial representation of this mathematical artifact.
But it gets even better! The algorithm will establish correlations to the temperature record over several periods. Depending on the period, it may find a numerically positive correlation in one period, and a negative correlation in another period. It then extends these over the entire time span of the proxy for separate components of the reconstruction. Comment 53 in the Climate Audit thread linked above shows that Mann used the Baker proxy this way. In different periods, Mann uses the proxy in the sense that low numbers mean high temperatures, and in the sense that high numbers mean high temperatures.
Mann’s protestations show either that he does not understand this very basic issue, or that he is deliberately obfuscating it. (I don’t know which is worse.)
I just clicked on the sea ice extent link on right.
Guess which year has the most ice now.
But there’s proof!!
“We’re seeing the reality of a lot of the North Pole starting to evaporate, and we could get to a tipping point. Because if it evaporates to a certain point – they have lanes now where ships can go that couldn’t ever sail through before. And if it gets to a point where it evaporates too much, there’s a lot of tundra that’s being held down by that ice cap.”
Henry Waxman
http://www.pbs.org/kcet/tavissmiley/archive/200904/20090413_waxman.html
Heaven help up if that tundra get out from under that icecap!!!!! so many stupid statement is so few words
Has anyone done studies of tree rings grown during the past century when we have daily records of weather to see if there is a correlation between cool and wet, cool and dry, warm and wet, warm and dry, or do they just review the prehistoric stuff? It seems a worthwhile Masters thesis for somebody.
Just a reminder not to confuse this particular paleo series with tree rings. It is a speleotherm. It is from a stalagmite (ground formation) in a cave, not a tree. Apparently Mann is not particular about the origin of the data he misuses.
I’d like to hear what Mann has to say about this.
OT: Revisiting this story, with apologies, Anthony / Charles, the following sea-change press item from the online ABC here in Australia really does seem to herald a rather important crack in the edifice of our recently-elected prime minister, ‘Carbon Kevin’ ‘s campaign platform:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/04/15/2543797.htm
The Aussies have a lot to lose from this government’s intended assault on our globally-material coal industry. And, whilst I am no apologist for the soot and stench of the Latrobe Valley in Victoria, I remain very cynical about a government that gets itself elected by climbing onto the latest bandwagon. So they had better be sure of the scientific foundation of their CO2 tax policy, before they inflict it on the economy of this country and on long suffering electorate that has put them into power.
Great post, caught it on CA a couple of days ago and it is perfect for this forum. Slightly OT- Want to direct any who hadn’t yet heard about the EPA finding announced this morning. It appears we’re actually going to make CO2 a pollutant in law (along with N2O SO2, and others) as Gore et al have desired for some time. Here’s a link to the “reasoning” and “justification” for this action (e.g. the way it’s being sold to the public): http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/endangerment/downloads/ScienceFactSheet.pdf . Here’s a fun activity for those of us “playing the home version of the game”: See how many of these points are being refuted by actual data or are products of the kind of sloppy analysis that is the topic of this latest post…! -JG
“Mann reported positive correlations in early and late calibration (early – 0.3058; late 0.3533). ”
R of 0.3? R squared of less than 10%? That is the basis for turning the world’s economy upside down?
Shudder.
Don’t tree rings follow the precipitation cycle, not temperature? I have never understood how tree rings could be a proxy for temperature. They are afterall a sign of growth, and without water and CO2 their growth is going to be slow.
I don’t know, but if you strip off some of it you get told there is nothing there. However, there is some data over here: http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt
DR (09:00:55) :
Does anyone no why this link is dead? http://www.atmos.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/
Yes, I know. It was moved to:
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/public/msu/t2lt/tltglhmam_5.2
The really terrible thing about all this is that I now view ‘scientists’ in the same light as I view politicians.
Treerings are not just sensitive to temperature and moisture, they are also sensitive to CO2. They LOOOOVE CO2 (especially pines like bristlecone pines). Now if the MWP was warmer but not so rich in CO2, pine proxies would not show it as being as warm. Now if there were less CO2 then because there were more forests competing… just a thought.
It is quite reasonable to conjecture that Mann is doing what he is doing for what he “believes” are valid reasons. What he consistently fails to do however is explain what exactly those reasons are. The science is, after all, settled.
Both Wegman and the NAS panel have shown that the statistical tools he uses are unusual and are not very likely to be valid (Wegman is more emphatic about it).
With that verdict on the record regarding his methods, one would think he would make an effort to justify his work. Mann however just ignores it all and continues to produce the same crap as if his methods are fully validated.
It must be nice to live in such a bubble. All his friends and fellow dendro climate “scientists” reinforce his views. His political allies honor him.
I almost feel sorry for him. His bubble though, like all the ones before (i.e. housing, hi-tech, Piltdown man, etc.), will eventually burst. Unlike Al Gore and the many who are financially profiting from this AGW nonsense, he won’t have hundreds of millions of dollars to console him through those dark times.
Gary Pearse (09:39:14) I found this one:
http://geoscience-meeting.scnatweb.ch/sgm2006/SGM06_abstracts/02_Natural_hazards/Stoffel_Markus_Talk.pdf
Here the abstract:
Tree-ring based chronology of debris-flow events and
deposition processes at Ritigraben (Valais, Swiss Alps)
since AD 1570
Markus Stoffel 1, 2
1 Laboratory of Dendrogeomorphology, Department of Geosciences, University of Fribourg, 1700 Fribourg
2 Institute for Environmental Science and Sustainability, University of Geneva,
1227 Carouge Growth disturbances in century-old trees were used to assess debris-flow activity on the forested cone of the Ritigraben torrent (Valais Swiss Alps), providing an unusually complete record of past events and deposition of material. The study of 2246 tree-ring sequences sampled from 1102 European larch (Larix decidua Mill.), Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) Karst.) and Swiss stone pine (Pinus cembra ssp.sibirica) trees allowed reconstruction of 123 events since A.D. 1570 (Stoffel and Beniston, 2006; see Fig. 1). Tree-ring records suggest that comparably cool summers with frequent snowfalls at higher elevations regularly prevented the release of debris flows between the 1570s and 1860s and that the warming trend in conjunction with greater precipitation totals in summers and falls between 1864 and 1895 led to an increase of meteorological conditions favorable for the release of events from the starting zone. Enhanced debris-flow activity continued well into the 20th century and reconstructions show a clustering of events for the period 1916–1935, when warm-wet conditions prevailed during summers in the Swiss Alps. Very low activity can, in contrast, be observed for the last 10-yr segment (1996–2005) with only one debris-flow event recorded on August 27, 2002 (Stoffel et al., 2005) . The reconstructed frequency is also in agreement with chronicle data on flooding events in Alpine rivers of Switzerland (Pfister, 1999), where a scarcity of flooding events can be observed for most of the LIA and during the mid-20th century as well. However, it is worthy to note that floods in adjacent Alpine rivers started to become more frequent in the 1830s, which is three decades before activity increased in the investigated case-study area.
Didn’t the EPA rely on the Supreme Court’s decision, which relied on the IPCC, which in turn relied on Michael Mann’s papers, when it agreed to decide the question of CO2 as a pollutant?
Now it turns out that all these decisions were based on completely false information. Does anyone know if any of this can be revisited?
OT, From the EPA statement on CO2 as harmful greenhouse gas:
Note: GHG are at UNPRECEDENTED levels as a result of human emissions; (WRONG — CO2 was much higher in the past; methane was likely higher also)
AND the increase (in GHG) is VERY LIKELY the cause of increase in average (global) temperatures; (WRONG — no correlation exists between CO2 and atmospheric temperature)
SEA LEVEL RISE — (WRONG…its been dropping in many places since 1993)
“EPA’s proposed endangerment finding is based on rigorous, peer-reviewed scientific analysis of six gases – carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride – that have been the subject of intensive analysis by scientists around the world. The science clearly shows that concentrations of these gases are at unprecedented levels as a result of human emissions, and these high levels are very likely the cause of the increase in average temperatures and other changes in our climate.
The scientific analysis also confirms that climate change impacts human health in several ways. Findings from a recent EPA study titled “Assessment of the Impacts of Global Change on Regional U.S. Air Quality: A Synthesis of Climate Change Impacts on Ground-Level Ozone,” for example, suggest that climate change may lead to higher concentrations of ground-level ozone, a harmful pollutant. Additional impacts of climate change include, but are not limited to:
increased drought;
more heavy downpours and flooding;
more frequent and intense heat waves and wildfires;
greater sea level rise;
more intense storms; and
harm to water resources, agriculture, wildlife and ecosystems.
In proposing the finding, Administrator Jackson also took into account the disproportionate impact climate change has on the health of certain segments of the population, such as the poor, the very young, the elderly, those already in poor health, the disabled, those living alone and/or indigenous populations dependent on one or a few resources.
In addition to threatening human health, the analysis finds that climate change also has serious national security implications. Consistent with this proposed finding, in 2007, 11 retired U.S. generals and admirals signed a report from the Center for a New American Security stating that climate change “presents significant national security challenges for the United States.” Escalating violence in destabilized regions can be incited and fomented by an increasing scarcity of resources – including water. This lack of resources, driven by climate change patterns, then drives massive migration to more stabilized regions of the world.
The proposed endangerment finding now enters the public comment period, which is the next step in the deliberative process EPA must undertake before issuing final findings. Today’s proposed finding does not include any proposed regulations. Before taking any steps to reduce greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, EPA would conduct an appropriate process and consider stakeholder input. Notwithstanding this required regulatory process, both President Obama and Administrator Jackson have repeatedly indicated their preference for comprehensive legislation to address this issue and create the framework for a clean energy economy. “ (emphasis added – RE Sowell)
http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/0/0EF7DF675805295D8525759B00566924
Jeff Id (09:18:17) :
I just clicked on the sea ice extent link on right.
Guess which year has the most ice now.
I’ve been watching that AMSR-E data and it seems to be updated more than once a day. Each day, around 11pm eastern time, the date advances to today’s date and the plot extends a couple of pixels to the right. But last night, the right hand end had curled down a bit. Today, it’s been very slightly revised upwards. This is best viewed on a very large monitor or a projector.
By the way, I am NOT saying that this is fishy. Up to the minute data (which may even use a smoothing algorithm) can behave like this. Updating more than once a day indicates a lot of effort and attention. Good for them.
This is called Climate Fraud.
@Smokey,
Re Supreme Court decision on CO2.
Overturning a SC decision is very difficult, but it is possible. The Court rarely reverses itself, and even more rarely does so in a short time frame.
Getting a case heard in the SC is also very difficult. Only a few causes may be heard in the SC without being appealed from a lower court, and CO2 is not one of them. Therefore, another lawsuit must be filed in a state or federal court, then appealed to state appellate court (or more likely, to federal court of appeals), then appealed to the SC on a writ of certiorari. The SC would likely deny the writ, having only recently heard a similar case. It is possible, though, especially if (as you suggest here) new evidence shows the previous decision was based on false information.
Timing is critical on something like this. It would be better to wait a couple of years, and when the crops have decreased or failed due to cold summers, the snow is growing deeper, sea levels are dropping, and the ice caps are expanding, then bring the case. Nothing like having the SC justices driving to the Court through snowdrifts, and blowing on their hands to keep warm when hearing a case like this!
Fat Man,
>>R of 0.3? R squared of less than 10%? That is the basis for turning the world’s economy upside down?<>Don’t tree rings follow the precipitation cycle, not temperature?<<
They would be influenced by Precipitation, CO2, Sunlight, Temperature, Droughts, Diseases, Crowding, Shading, Competition, Parasites, Fires, Soil Nutrients, Grazing, etc., making them hard to pin down as relevant for temperature/climate changes.
Jim