Quote of the week #20 – ding dong the stick is dead

Truth will out.
Thank you, Steve McIntyre et al. Each one of these weakens the AGW juggernaut and brings us a bit closer to a long overdue return to common sense.

ok…now i feel stupid, but not sure if i follow. someone put it in layman’s terms for me. i think i get it, but i would rather be sure!
REPLY: In a nutshell:
1- In 1998 a paper is published by Dr. Michael Mann. Then at the University of Virginia, now a Penn State climatologist, and co-authors Bradley and Hughes. The paper is named: Northern Hemisphere Temperatures During the Past Millennium: Inferences, Uncertainties, and Limitations. The paper becomes known as MBH98.
The conclusion of tree ring reconstruction of climate for the past 1000 years is that we are now in the hottest period in modern history, ever.
See the graph http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/image/mann/manna_99.gif
Steve McIntyre, a Canadian mathematician in Toronto, suspects tree rings aren’t telling a valid story with that giant uptick at the right side of the graph, implicating the 20th century as the “hottest period in 1000 years”, which alarmists latch onto as proof of AGW. The graph is dubbed as the “Hockey Stick” and becomes famous worldwide. Al Gore uses it in his movie An Inconvenient Truth in the famous “elevator scene”.
2- Steve attempts to replicate Michael Mann’s tree ring work in the paper MBH98, but is stymied by lack of data archiving. He sends dozens of letters over the years trying to get access to data but access is denied. McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, of the University of Guelph publish a paper in 2004 criticizing the work. A new website is formed in 2004 called Real Climate, by the people who put together the tree ring data and they denounce the scientific criticism:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/false-claims-by-mcintyre-and-mckitrick-regarding-the-mann-et-al-1998reconstruction/
3- Years go by. McIntyre is still stymied trying to get access to the original source data so that he can replicate the Mann 1998 conclusion. In 2008 Mann publishes another paper in bolstering his tree ring claim due to all of the controversy surrounding it. A Mann co-author and source of tree ring data (Professor Keith Briffa of the Hadley UK Climate Research Unit) used one of the tree ring data series (Yamal in Russia) in a paper published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 2008, which has a strict data archiving policy. Thanks to that policy, Steve McIntyre fought and won access to that data just last week.
4- Having the Yamal data in complete form, McIntyre replicates it, and discovers that one of Mann’s co-authors, Briffa, had cherry picked 10 trees data sets out of a much larger set of trees sampled in Yamal.
5- When all of the tree ring data from Yamal is plotted, the famous hockey stick disappears. Not only does it disappear, but goes negative. The conclusion is inescapable. The tree ring data was hand picked to get the desired result.
These are the relevant graphs from McIntyre showing what the newly available data demonstrates.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/rcs_chronologies_rev2.gif
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/rcs_merged_rev2.gif

Bless you all for your constant grasping for reality and truth. I live for these earthly revelations.

Mann and Briffa knew that their data was a lie….. They actively tried to stop anyone from scrutinizing their data, so they knew it was dodgy. This isn’t an honest mistake, but rather a deliberate attempt to propagandize the climate debate….
They have abused science in the worst way possible.

John F. Hultquist (21:11:09) :
The “divergence problem” is explained in this abstract
The explanation is bogus because it ASSUMES that the divergance is consistent across all time scales. i.e. the ASSUME that a tree that does not diverge today did not diverage at any time in the past. That would be a rediculous assumption in any field other than climate science yet it is accepted as reasonable in climate science.
The willinging to accept rediculous assumptions as fact as a long as they produce the ‘correct’ results makes the climate science consensus highly suspect.

Wait a minute…weren’t tree ring proxies discredited for purposes of indicating ambient temperature? Weren’t other factors found to be more important in tree-ring growth, such as precipitation?

One question I have is how do we CLONE more Steve McIntyres?
BRILLIANT sleuth work.
I hope Michael Mann is shaking in his boots.
He ought to be.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

Robert Wood (21:03:10) : “If I’ve understood this correctly …”
It’s far stranger than that. I work with archaeological chronology – both C-14 and obsidian hydration data – all the time. No one I know would willingly paint themselves into such a corner, short of someone taking their children hostage. You might grumble if the data shot your pet theory in the head, but empirical data trumps mathematical models every time because the data is reality, while the model is just someone’s blood, sweat and tears. You might snarl if it became obvious that some lab mixed up C-14 samples and the results they sent you are obviously wrong, but you still report not only the results but the problems with them so that the next schmuck doesn’t use your flawed data to erroneous conclusion. As Steve wrote, it is very “disturbing.”

Pure Scientific Forgery… what happened again to that guy in Japan (?) when he fudge all the data on cloning? He was fired and won’t be able to have any grant for research… What about Mann now?

OT: Google Earth has new layers “showing” what “will” happen in 40 years if we don’t reduce Co2 emissions… http://www.google.com/landing/cop15/#intro
P.S. Sorry if I had to put it here… the comment box in the tips page is not showing. Could it be because it is too full?
REPLY: page reached the comment limit, cleaned now. thanks -A

I subscribe to Scientific American, and I’m often irritated by their tendency to push agendas in politics, religion, and AGW that I find offensive and marginally scientific, if at all. I mentioned one such example recently in a comment to another WUWT article, in which the relevant SA article is here: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=stumbling-over-data
The current posting strikes me as an excellent rebuttal to the above article, which portrays Watts and McIntyre as overzealous amateur scientists whose goal in life is to embarrass real scientists when the latter commit minor mistakes in data presentation.
I would very much enjoy at least a “letter to the Editor” by Anthony and/or Steve that contrasts the SA article with the facts described here in the current posting.

In Australia, much is lauded by both major parties of the previous change over, many quote AGW or climate concerns. Primarily though it was labor regulation issue that drove the change. The majority of the swell, was in seats in Australia we call regional seats, outer urban or rural.
An article today in the Australian http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,26135086-601,00.html
Outlines that there is quiet concern in these swinging seats, they are by and large centrist from a policy perspective, not taking PC and other blackmail or fraud well. (the poll is on the front page of the Oz online).
There have been a series of newspolls that show trends or samples finding concern with the AGW mythology, in these centrist or marginal seats.
It is to be noted, these seats are blue collar, SME businesses, Farm or Grazing communities and sa lot of elf employed, they tend because of isolation to be people who research issues as issues. Because it their nature in self reliance, this is not to say they are right wing or anti environment. Just issues as issues.
I mention this here because in the various threads, people are not aware of an almost universal turning point occuring. I have a mate in the UK and they are not buying this AGW stuff either unless they get advantage of course.
I apol for the length of the Post, But I once debated Gavin as a bank manager would do, you have had ten years show me the money put up or shut up.
In finance if financial data is asked for and not given, this does not inspire confidence in three areas.
1. Possible Fraud or the business is on the verge of bankruptcy. 2. Incompetence or 3 the Tax mans after them for failure to provide returns, of course a fair bit of arrogance may be mixed in, 1 ,2 or 3..

Here here! to Jerry Lee Davis and his suggestion about getting this story out into the mainstream media.
to Phillip Bratby: According to a comment on Steve’s article at Climate Audit, Briffa is ill and won’t be answering e-mails for a while.
Please note that Briffa works in England. There is not the slightest chance of him being pulled up before the equivalent of a Senate enquiry to answer awkward questions about the use or misuse of public funds. His work is funded by the European Commission. No criticism of anything green would ever get past the Euro-cracy, given the strength of the Green Party in the European Parliament. The best chance of getting this story out in the open would be if some journalist told it in a fashion which would force the people concerned to go to court. (Merely telling the facts as they are recounted here by McKitrick could be considered libellous..)

Yes this is saddening and devastating. The problem is always the same with this stuff, whether its Thompson’s refusal to publish, Mann’s refusal to supply his algorithm to Wegman, CRU’s refusal or inability to supply their raw station readings, Jones’ attempt to withhold the names of his Chinese Stations, well, lots of others.
The problem is that the conduct of the leading lights of the AGW movement is now the main obstacles to any reasonable person taking the hypothesis seriously. And, we should recall, there might be some truth to it. So it really is important to get to the bottom of the evidence.
As it is, based on this stuff, more and more people are going to simply dismiss it out of hand. Which is fine if it is totally wrong, but catastrophic if it is correct.

Also, the Yamal proxy is the key to creating hockey stick shapes in many different papers, including the latest Arctic warming paper, Kaufmann 09.

Mann Myth Busted!

KimW (22:55:35) :
This is a body blow to Science. For all the wisdom spoken about how science is impartial, here is proof that papers were published to give a desired result, and not what was there.
Unfortunately I tend to agree, and it saddens me greatly. For most of my scientific career I have always pursued honesty even tho it was unpalatable to my clients. This whole temperature fiasco is disgraceful, from UHI adjustments to proxy interpretations. While proxies are useful it does appear that the “wood in the trees” problem has become a major issue. Sad.

This needs to be read in conjunction with the global temperatures to 1850, as constructed by Phil Jones at CRU. Myself, and many others here, query how they are constructed, and the value of a global temperature in the first place.
Phil Jones refuses to release the data, and as far as I understand the current situation it appears the dog ate it.
Perhaps Anthony or the moderators can provide a direct link to a couple of the reports on these topics (covered here and elsewhere) and append it to this article, as that would put this thread into a better context-especially for those readers not familiar with the whole saga-which resembles an Icelandic epic in its complexity and longevity.
tonyb

Ray (22:27:43) :
>Pure Scientific Forgery… what happened again to that guy
>in Japan (?) when he fudge all the data on cloning? He was
>fired and won’t be able to have any grant for research…
>What about Mann now?
Hey, wait a moment Ray. The guy you mean is the deposed Professor Lee of Korea, not Japan! Maybe you Americans (?) find it hard to distinguish Koreans from Japanese by visage, but…………….

At Climate Audit, Geoff Sherrington says I’d be trying to crack the CRU temperature problem as well as the dendro problem, because in combination they might tell a stronger story than each alone.
With this in mind, I’d like to refer folk here to my second visual piece, this time on the thermometer records circling Yamal that Jeff Id has just published: Delinquent Treering Records To be sure, the records I used are not from CRU but from Daly and GISS – but they are another wedge of good evidence that might help push CRU to release their temperature records that back up the dendro work.

Roger Sowell (21:52:39) :

Wait a minute…weren’t tree ring proxies discredited for purposes of indicating ambient temperature? Weren’t other factors found to be more important in tree-ring growth, such as precipitation?

The analysis was done assuming tree ring chronology is a good proxy for temperature. Even with this assumption, the data don’t support the AGW contention.
Add to all this the simple fact: Trees make terrible thermometers.

But it’s still a hockey stick – just the other way up… 🙂

Doug Keenan’s site: http://www.informath.org/ is worth a look. He’s got some peer reviewed papers such as:
“The fraud allegation against some climatic research of Wei-Chyung Wang”, Energy & Environment, 18: 985–995 (2007).

The most important aspect of this revelation is that the word “uprecedented” can now be deleted from the AGW lexicon.
Future corrected proxy studies alongside projected global cooling now have the potential to completely undermine the standing of AGW advocates. The reputations of people like Hansen, Mann, Schmidt, Romm, Revkin, Stern, Monbiot, et al, now look certain to be trashed. No politician worth their salt will entertain opinion that will lose them votes.

Is there even one reporter in the ranks here that has the connections and the cojones to place this in the major news outlets?
Mike

You know what the worse thing about this is?
It’s not that Mann or the IPCC have skewed the data to fit their proposition – that is to be expected of people or groups that use science to push a political agenda.
The worst thing is that the Royal Society – an institution dedicated to impartial science for almost 400 years – has become politicised and corrupted by the current incumbents. That is the most damning indictment of modern society there can be.

Ninderthana (02:27:40) :
It all depends on whether you can walk and chew gum at the same time.
Mountain hemlock located along coastal ranges of Alaska and Canada
have tree ring widths that are temperature-sensitive, at least on decadal to centential times scales.
This can be comfirmed by comparing the D’Arrigo et al. (2001) tree ring PDO reconstructions with proxy SST reconstructions that have been obtained by Linsley et al. (2000 & 2004) using the Sr/Ca ratios measured in corals at Rarotonga in the South Pacific.
I whole heartily agree that you must be careful in using tree-ring chronologies as temperature proxies temperature but it is just stupidity to claim that all of the temperature data based on tree-ring chronologies are
wrong!
Given that tree ring temp proxies tend to be offered with resolution far finer than decadal or centenial time scales, that the only confirmation you offer for the single example you quote is another proxy, of perhaps equally, dubious provenance, that there seems to be mounting evidence that the correlations quoted between various proxies for temps is more a product of the statistical manipulations arising from between the ears of the people constructing the proxies than of anything happening in the real world, and that you failed to address the argument I offered that tree foliage maintaining temp ranges narrower than ambient makes it virtually impossible for a tree to create an accurate record of that ambient temp, I’d have to say you fell miserably short of providing proof for your final assertion.

is this m. mann?

Repeated Grauniad CIF link yo this item lasted 22 mins.
They’re speeding up!
“Facts are sacred” unless they risk undermining the “consensus”.

“it’s standard practice to reject data that is ‘obviously wrong'” said a commenter on Steve’s site. And yet just last week I spent an hour telling a research student that when we have six sets of data that agree tolerably well, and a seventh that doesn’t, we include the seventh in the paper too. We can, if we tell the readers, exclude it from the subsequent analysis, but we can’t exclude the data from the paper. That isn’t so much a matter of scientific practice, more a simple matter of morals. So many climate scientologists seem to be crooks that others who are merely incompetent, or guilty of bad judgement, are going to be tarred with the same brush. And I don’t suppose that only their branch of pseudo-science is infected with this – only yesterday a friend told me of a recent discussion with a physicist about a headline-grabbing colleague of his who had issued apocalyptic predictions that were mutually contradictory. The physicist smirked and said that you have to grab the public’s attention somehow.

Third re-post lasted about 5 mins – then was removed, without even leaving the usual greyed-out trace.
Kafka-esque!
Clearly Steve & Anthony’s news has made a big impression with the Grauniad’s mods – even if the poor saps who read the rag never get to see it.

The black line, Schweingruber, is a rake. A rake to put away all the mistakes made by the hockey stick.

Foxgoose:
“I posted a polite, non-controversial item with a link to this site, and the original CA article, on a Guardian CIF discussion today – it was taken down within 45 minutes.”
They deleted a post I made some time ago when I suggested that if they were really serious about carbon emissions, and if they wanted to send a message about how urgent this is, they might do well to consider how much emissions they are making in trucking newspapers thousands of miles each day.
But perhaps it was when I added that they ought to close themselves down that the moderator took exception. However, at least one reader saw it because they gave a thumbs-up!

It doesn´t matter how much actual data WUWT shows, they will keep on preaching the end of the world because of “global warming”, they are doing it right now, through the media, in all countries all over the world. It is the biggest marketing campaign ever.

I suspect Christopher Booker might be relied upon to get this story out to a wider public in his excellent Sunday Telegraph (UK) column. But, correct me if I’m wrong, folks, but I thought the hockey stick had already been trashed by the USA’s chief statistician.

So this appears to combine the best of both worlds: cherry picking, while completely ignoring contradicting data.
Brilliant….

This is really interesting, and potentially very important. I look forward to seeing this research in print in a good scientific journal after peer review.

Why do they so strongly need to undertake this data selection in order to prove global warming?
Can’t a scientist just present all the data objectively and say “there it is”. Shouldn’t that be the purpose of their profession?
For the most part, the objective data is going to show some warming anyway (maybe it will also show some other cycles as well) but there is no need to exagerate and sacrific one’s integrity in such a way.

Any violin maker can now produce modern versions of Stradivarius violins!

Vacationing in Duluth yesterday, kids riding around without shirts, celebrating one of the warmest and driest Septembers ever, rather like the August we didn’t have.
Going home and today, angry skies, cold, stiff winds with punishing rain, rather like Novembers of recent decades.
AGW is about to fall off everyone’s table.

I agree with Mark Wagner. This smells very much like [snip]

Robert Phelan hits nail on head:
When does this cross the line form mere Manniac incompetence to Manniac cynical bad faith?

Question: What caused the increase in global average temperatures of the late 20th century ?
Answer:’ Man made models caused the increase in average global temperatures in the late 20th century.

Foxgoose:
Yes – what is going on with CIF? I too, posted a comment this morning, only to find it had been “removed by a moderator” within the hour. My comment was mildly ironic, but otherwise completely harmless, I would have thought – it contained no offensive language or references to any other poster. It was, however, critical of the Met Office’s latest report, the subject of the Guardian’s article.
Up until now I’ve always been impressed with the light touch of CIF moderators. But as Maurizio Morabito has pointed out in his “Unbearable Nakedness Of CLIMATE CHANGE” blog (http://omniclimate.wordpress.com/), there seems to have been a change of policy recently at the Guardian, with CIF moderators becoming much more intolerant.
Pity, but I guess the poor dears must think they’re fighting a losing battle with us sceptics.

Don B (06:10:16) :
Energy Secretarty Chu has said that the AGW sceptics have made up data. And he probably believes that. How can the actual situation be conveyed to people like him who refuse to believe scientific facts which undermine what they strongly believe?
______________________________
When he was accepting the $5-600 million grant from BP at Lawrence Berkeley Labs, Chu’s comments regarding AGW were far different from what they are now. Strangely, although I can’t say I have Googled extensively, links to those press releases do not appear to be readily available.

Well I’m starting a lively exchange over at http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/28/met-office-study-global-warming?commentpage=3 but I have to toddle off to bed now.
I recommend getting in there, it sounds like fun!

“Energy Secretarty Chu has said that the AGW sceptics have made up data. And he probably believes that. How can the actual situation be conveyed to people like him who refuse to believe scientific facts which undermine what they strongly believe?”
Steven Chu isn’t interested in facts. He’s a “watermelon environmentalist”. Green on the outside, Red on the inside.

Carbon isotopes? So we are to believe that man-made CO2 produces different isotopes of carbon (and CO2) than natural sources. Burning oil in various forms and natural gas is different than burning trees (as in forest fires). What of arson? If some nutcase starts a forest fire, is that different from a lightning strike?
And, given that man-made CO2 is about 3% of the total CO2 production, can that really make the C13/C12 ratio “decline dramatically “. Even if true, we didn’t start a dramatic consumption of fossil fuel until after WWII. Yet CO2 increase has been reasonably linear since 1850, assuming that data has not been “adjusted”.
Me finds all this a wee bit hard to believe.

Add to the list: Calling 212 scientists to account:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=4091&linkbox=true

Blogger at “Violating the Principles of Open Access” points out failure of open-access data rules at PLoS in a study published at PLoS: “Empirical Study of Data Sharing by Authors Publishing in PLoS Journals”.
Researchers tested researchers’ following of the requirements for data access. There are obvious failures to follow the rules, although I suspect the small sample size makes it hard to produce many statistics.

Paulus (07:57:19)
Guardianistas know they are on borrowed time
1. The paper loses money at terrifying (if you are a Guardianista) rate
2. It is kept afloat (just) by advertising state funded non-jobs and the sale of ‘Autotrader’ (via a ‘tax-efficient’ offshore company’ NB this is not a joke!).
3. 2. is likely to change by May 2010.

Great, a Janus Graph.
This reminds me of Korf’s clock.
Christian Morgenstern
Korf’s clock
Korf a kind of clock invents
where two pairs of hands go round:
one the current hour presents,
one is always backward bound.
When it’s two – it’s also ten;
when it’s three – it’s also nine.
you just look at it, and then
time gets never out of line,
for in Korf’s astute invention
with its Janus-kindred stride
time itself is nullified.

We really need some labels on the axes of the graphs, or else the graphs are pretty much meaningless. I can “guess” what I am looking at, but a graph requires labels.
Thanks!

Retired Engineer (08:33:16) :
” Yet CO2 increase has been reasonably linear since 1850, assuming that data has not been “adjusted”
It is currently being adjusted by Mauna Loa volcano itself….

Probably been said already. But facts don’t matter with a religion. They help, but in the end, it comes down to what feels right. Unfortunately, science tends to make peoples heads hurt. They’d rather hurt themselves when given the chance.
Right! I’m off to annex Washington state. Film at eleven.

If folks could keep copies of their posts to The Guardian, and the dates/times they were submitted, I think we have the basis for another good article… on Freedom of Speech. If, that is, it is plain from the extant Guardian posts that only warmists (and possibly obviously asinine skeptics) are given the floor. Any volunteer to collect them all?

Is Climate Audit down???

Wow. This is just unbelievable.
This is one of those blog articles where I’d love to have an “e-mail this!” option. We all know the media isn’t going to give this the recognition it deserves, so it will be up to all of us to inform anyone & everyone we know.

[snip – Adolfo you need to stop trying different names to get around security or I’ll complain to your ISP next]

If the media weren’t wholly corrupt they would give this more coverage [snip] than they have, over the years given to the Hockey Stick.
I doubt, at least here in Britain. that they will give 1,000th as much. Thank Ghod for the net.

This explains why they have been loath to release their raw data and the methods they use on those data. They have been caught cheating. And once they have one lie out there, other lies must be fabricated to support it. And so we have the wholesale deletion of global rural surface temperature recording stations leaving an urban-biased network that reflects UHI in order to back up their earlier conclusions.
In the meantime, the worry that we might be boiling ourselves alive creates a huge surge in research grants for their field of study and launches various climatologists onto the jet setting speaking circuit making celebrities out of them and advancing their career. All of this being done with the expectation that once the world discovered what was going on, they would be retired or dead and their kids would be quite rich.
That puts the “carbon credit” kiosk at SFO selling credits for 60x market value in a whole different light. We now have proof that the foundation science for AGW was based on the selection of data that would guarantee the desired outcome. Practically every AGW paper out there can trace its origin back to those tree ring studies either directly or indirectly (referencing a paper that references the study).
Most importantly, Steve M’s work shows NO 20th century temperature anomaly. And so again, people who in their hearts believe they want to do something good for their neighbors and future generations have been taken to the cleaners hook, line, and sinker and have been parted from considerable portion of their hard earned income.
I sincerely feel that someone should go to prison for this. This wasn’t an accident. This was not a mistaken conclusion. This shows that the conclusion was “cooked” from the start. Billions and possibly trillions of dollars have been wasted on this nonsense globally.
It’s pitchfork and torch time.

Steve McIntyre has replicated the ancient practice of turning “sticks into snakes”. Steve turns “sticks into Manns”.

KimW (22:55:35) :
“This is a body blow to Science. For all the wisdom spoken about how science is impartial, here is proof that papers were published to give a desired result, and not what was there.”
Nonsense. What do you think people like Steve and Anthony are doing, tatting? Quite the opposite, it shows that scientific analysis properly applied catches bad or even fraudulent analysis quite elegantly. What it IS a body blow to is the clique-ish definitions of “peers” being used to limit who should review papers. There’s nothing “special” about the statistical methods used in climatology that a statistician wouldn’t understand. Nor is there anything about trees and tree growth that a climatologist would know that a forester wouldn’t, and wouldn’t know better.

What is “wanker” in climatese? [snip]

@Foxgoose
I saw your Guardian post earlier today and thought that won’t be up for long, as Geoff chambers pointed out. Geoff I think you used to be a regular poster there. Unfortunately I have been moderated many times only to fight again.
Comment is free if you agree?
Now to matters in hand, Ding Dong Leslie Phillips is alive but the hockey stick is not broken it is intact and in a shape us poor souls always thought it should be?
We delude ourselves because my Gav and his mates are very clever, they new that about the unused data all along and of course the data was excluded for very good reasons.
He’s a lovely boy and has an answer for everything.
The results using the data do not accord with the models and the long term trends as determined by Professor B Blocks, PhD Camel hygiene at the University of Noscience, Rockall, Uk
Guys and Gals for goodness sake please don’t tell Steve what to do:-)

Today is a good day indeed.

I predict that the response will be in the form of an ad hominem. Following the lawyer rules
1) If you have the law, argue the law
2) If you don’t have the law, argue the facts
3) If you don’t have the facts or the law, attack the person.

I have a feeling that the real turning point will come as soon as the ‘AGW Faithful’ start sensing that they’ve been betrayed, or lied to, by their high priests. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, or believers who discover that their idols have feet of clay.
I wonder how long it will take before the pro-AGW media do an about-turn.

I’m reminded of a statistics saying: in God we trust, everyone else brings data.

“Well I’m starting a lively exchange”
Jerome, it appears there are a whole bunch of deleted posts over there….

I read the post and comments at climateaudit and I do agree that there are issues that need to addressed. Specifically, why the subset of ten chronologies were chosen and why the others were discarded. Could these ten just be the best calibrated to recent measured temps? Can one assume that treemometers preserve this calibration or do they cycle in and out? I am not a dendrochronologist so I do not know. As scientists though, we need to make sure that our methods are transparent and it appears this might not the case with Yamal data and methods.
Something that should also be understood is that the Mann et al. 2008 paper reproduces the hockey stick without using tree rings. Here is the abstract and the entire paper is free to download at:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2008/09/02/0805721105.abstract
Following the suggestions of a recent National Research Council report [NRC (National Research Council) (2006) Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years (Natl Acad Press, Washington, DC).], we reconstruct surface temperature at hemispheric and global scale for much of the last 2,000 years using a greatly expanded set of proxy data for decadal-to-centennial climate changes, recently updated instrumental data, and complementary methods that have been thoroughly tested and validated with model simulation experiments. Our results extend previous conclusions that recent Northern Hemisphere surface temperature increases are likely anomalous in a long-term context. Recent warmth appears anomalous for at least the past 1,300 years whether or not tree-ring data are used. If
tree-ring data are used, the conclusion can be extended to at least the past 1,700 years, but with additional strong caveats. The reconstructed amplitude of change over past centuries is greater than hitherto reported, with somewhat greater Medieval warmth in the Northern Hemisphere, albeit still not reaching recent levels.
Another tidbit from the Mann et al. (2008) paper is:
It is intriguing to note that the removal of tree-ring data from the proxy dataset yields less, rather than greater, peak cooling during the 16th–19th centuries for both CPS and EIV methods (see Figs. S5a and S6b, respectively), contradicting the claim (33) that tree-ring data are prone to yielding a warm-biased ‘‘Little Ice Age’’ relative to reconstructions using other high-resolution climate proxy indicators.
Ding, dong, the stick might not be wrong. 🙂