UPDATE: The Climate Audit server is getting hit with heavy traffic and is slow. If anyone has referenced graphs in blog posts or news articles lease see the mirrored URL list for the graphs at the end of this article and please consider replacement in your posting. I’ve also got a mirrored article of the Climate Audit post from Steve McIntyre. -Anthony
UPDATE2: Related articles
Update: A zoomed look at the broken hockey stick
A look at treemometers and tree ring growth
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We’ve always suspected that Mann’s tree ring proxies aren’t all they are cracked up to be. The graph below is stunning in it’s message and I’m pleased to present it to WUWT readers. I’m sure the Team is already working up ways to say “it doesn’t matter”.
The QOTW this week centers around this graph:
The quote of the week is:
I hardly know where to begin in terms of commentary on this difference.
– Steve McIntyre, Climate Audit in Yamal: A “Divergence” Problem
The graph above shows what happens to the “Hockey Stick” after additional tree ring data, recently released (after a long and protracted fight over data access) is added to the analysis of Hadley’s archived tree ring data in Yamal, Russia.
All of the sudden, it isn’t the “hottest period in 2000 years” anymore.
Steve writes:
The next graphic compares the RCS chronologies from the two slightly different data sets: red – the RCS chronology calculated from the CRU archive (with the 12 picked cores); black – the RCS chronology calculated using the Schweingruber Yamal sample of living trees instead of the 12 picked trees used in the CRU archive. The difference is breathtaking.
I’ll say. Ding Dong the stick is dead.
This comparison to CRU archive data illustrates the most extreme example of scientific cherry-picking ever seen. As Steve writes in comments at CA:
Also keep in mind the implausibly small size of the current portion of the Yamal archive. It would be one thing if they had only sampled 10 trees and this is what they got. But they selected 10 trees out of a larger population. Because the selection yields such different results from a nearby population sample, there is a compelling prima facie argument that they’ve made biased picks. This is rebuttable. I would welcome hearing the argument on the other side. I’ve notified one dendro of the issue and requested him to assist in the interpretation of the new data (but am not very hopeful that he will speak up.)
See the complete report on this new development in the sordid story of tree ring proxies used for climate interpretation at Climate Audit. And while you are there, please give Steve a hit on the tip jar. With this revelation, he’s earned it.
The next time somebody tells you that tree rings prove we are living in the “hottest period in 2000 years” show them this graph and point them to this Climate Audit article.
Here’s a “cliff’s notes” summary written by Steve’s partner in publication, Ross McKitrick:
Here’s a re-cap of this saga that should make clear the stunning importance of what Steve has found. One point of terminology: a tree ring record from a site is called a chronology, and is made up of tree ring records from individual trees at that site. Multiple tree ring series are combined using standard statistical algorithms that involve detrending and averaging (these methods are not at issue in this thread). A good chronology–good enough for research that is–should have at least 10 trees in it, and typically has much more.
.
1. In a 1995 Nature paper by Briffa, Schweingruber et al., they reported that 1032 was the coldest year of the millennium – right in the middle of the Medieval Warm Period. But the reconstruction depended on 3 short tree ring cores from the Polar Urals whose dating was very problematic. http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=877.
2. In the 1990s, Schweingruber obtained new Polar Urals data with more securely-dated cores for the MWP. Neither Briffa nor Schweingruber published a new Polar Urals chronology using this data. An updated chronology with this data would have yielded a very different picture, namely a warm medieval era and no anomalous 20th century. Rather than using the updated Polar Urals series, Briffa calculated a new chronology from Yamal – one which had an enormous hockey stick shape. After its publication, in virtually every study, Hockey Team members dropped Polar Urals altogether and substituted Briffa’s Yamal series in its place.
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=528. PS: The exception to this pattern was Esper et al (Science) 2002, which used the combined Polar Urals data. But Esper refused to provide his data. Steve got it in 2006 after extensive quasi-litigation with Science (over 30 email requests and demands).
3. Subsequently, countless studies appeared from the Team that not only used the Yamal data in place of the Polar Urals, but where Yamal had a critical impact on the relative ranking of the 20th century versus the medieval era.
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3099
4. Meanwhile Briffa repeatedly refused to release the Yamal measurement data used inhis calculation despite multiple uses of this series at journals that claimed to require data archiving. E.g. http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=542
5. Then one day Briffa et al. published a paper in 2008 using the Yamal series, again without archiving it. However they published in a Phil Tran Royal Soc journal which has strict data sharing rules. Steve got on the case. http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3266
6. A short time ago, with the help of the journal editors, the data was pried loose and appeared at the CRU web site. http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7142
7. It turns out that the late 20th century in the Yamal series has only 10 tree ring chronologies after 1990 (5 after 1995), making it too thin a sample to use (according to conventional rules). But the real problem wasn’t that there were only 5-10 late 20th century cores- there must have been a lot more. They were only using a subset of 10 cores as of 1990, but there was no reason to use a small subset. (Had these been randomly selected, this would be a thin sample, but perhaps passable. But it appears that they weren’t randomly selected.)
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7142
8. Faced with a sample in the Taymir chronology that likely had 3-4 times as many series as the Yamal chronology, Briffa added in data from other researchers’ samples taken at the Avam site, some 400 km away. He also used data from the Schweingruber sampling program circa 1990, also taken about 400 km from Taymir. Regardless of the merits or otherwise of pooling samples from such disparate locations, this establishes a precedent where Briffa added a Schweingruber site to provide additional samples. This, incidentally, ramped up the hockey-stickness of the (now Avam-) Taymir chronology.
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7158
9. Steve thus looked for data from other samples at or near the Yamal site that could have been used to increase the sample size in the Briffa Yamal chronology. He quickly discovered a large set of 34 Schweingruber samples from living trees. Using these instead of the 12 trees in the Briffa (CRU) group that extend to the present yields Figure 2, showing a complete divergence in the 20th century. Thus the Schweingruber data completely contradicts the CRU series. Bear in mind the close collaboration of Schweingruber and Briffa all this time, and their habit of using one another’s data as needed.
10. Combining the CRU and Schweingruber data yields the green line in the 3rd figure above. While it doesn’t go down at the end, neither does it go up, and it yields a medieval era warmer than the present, on the standard interpretation. Thus the key ingredient in a lot of the studies that have been invoked to support the Hockey Stick, namely the Briffa Yamal series (red line above) depends on the influence of a thin subsample of post-1990 chronologies and the exclusion of the (much larger) collection of readily-available Schweingruber data for the same area.
MIRROR URL’s FOR MAIN GRAPHICS IN THE CLIMATE AUDIT POST:
If anyone has referenced the Yamal graphs at CA in blog posts, please use these URL’s so that they get loaded from WordPress high traffic server.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/count_comparison1.gif
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/rcs_chronologies_rev2.gif
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/rcs_merged_rev2.gif
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Joel Shore (19:59:27) : But, I am also a little confused
More than a little.
When can we expect to see him publish these results in a peer reviewed journal? Until that happens, this is all just noise from outside the boxing ring. If McI wants to make a real impact, write an article and get it published in a scientific journal. Publishing on the net or in a newspaper is meaningless.
As stated here, this entire “Global Warming” is insanity! How do we, or can we, stop this worldwide mind-set and acceptance? How have people become so gullable…is the general population of earth that ignorant? I think a whole lot of people are educated BEYOND their intelligence!! Common sense and proven science must prevail once again or we are all domed as a human race. Wake up folks and understand that corrupt, unethical and immoral politics are destroying our lifes! We are being feed lies every day bu the news media and we are laying back and accepting it…this to too sad!!
The Global Warming scare is not really a result of ignroance or stupidity.
It’s a matter of the human impulse to manipulate and gain power over others, via the amazing strength of the herd instinct. In other words, human nature.
It causes me to consider mankind a failing experiment in evolution.
Yeah, this is bad, but it is not the “most extreme example of scientific cherry-picking ever seen”. That title belongs to Ancel Keys cherry picked 7 nations to “prove” the lipid hypothesis. The Low-Fat bunkum has killed untold millions and caused the suffering of God-only-knows how many millions more.
This hockey stick debacle has not killed millions yet, though it could have, gone unrebuked.
George E. Smith (18:10:59) :
Hi George. Yes dendrites come from the same root, and are used to describe branchings similar to tree branches. I think it is an artificial word, in the sense that somebody used a greek root and created the word according to the grammar. Most of the scientific words are constructs from greek and latin, some of the ungrammatical.
Most every day words over four syllables are of greek or latin origin anyway. I used to get great grades in reading comprehension examinations because of this, having had six years of ancient greek and four years of latin.
It looks to me that the signal to noise ratio in this dendro-data is very low. If these numbers are based on tree-ring width alone, ignoring, for example, the O16 to O18 isotope ratio in the wood of each ring, then I can understand why the quality of such data might be so poor.
But the stick may not be dead yet. I see that Senators Barbara Boxer and John Kerry have just introduced a proposed Cap-and-Trade bill with goals of lowering greenhouse gas emissions to 80 percent of 2005 levels by the year 2020, 58 percent of 2005 levels by 2030, and 17 percent of 2005 levels by 2050.
It’s just amazing how these tree rings have shown the world how wrong all the thermometers and satellites, and all the technology is! The science community will have to find a new way to measure temperature, now that it’s shown just how wrong all the measurements are! It’s cooling into a new ice age, not warming!
I’m wondering if my previous question was overlooked. Do we have any info re when this work will be written up and submitted for publication in a peer reviewed journal? If it won’t be, why not?
This is the only way this sort of work will change anything. It has to be submitted for review and published in an accepted scientific journal. If it isn’t, this is wasted effort.
Kevin (15:36:02) :
I would certainly encourage publication in a peer-reviewed journal. Would it go to ethical impartial reviewers without an agenda ?? I would hope so.
I’ve been involved in peer review (on both sides) for over 30 years now, and I would submit to you that the playing field is changing dramatically with regard to peer review. Publishing on this and other ethical non-censored sites invites vastly more intense and critical review than any private peer review would. Although this is just my opinion, I think it’s there for all to see and form their own opinions. In other words, this is not, as you say, a wasted effort, because Briffa himself, and Mann, and Al Gore even can come on here and try to refute the scientific analysis.
Good luck with that. The sophomoric responses from Tamino and Gavin tells me that they would need it.
Oh no! Al’s stick has gone limp.
hey,am dhaval from India. i appreciate Mr. McIntyre’s data evaluation. he has done a great job.thank you sir.the world needs to come out of ignorance. If you are confident over your data.then you should approach media. I think so there are many countries which are using the concept of global warming for their political interest. Also there is one request can u pl z send me the detail email of these result and comparison with the previous hockey stick graph on my mail. thank you.
> This wasn’t simply taken down, but disappeared without trace while I was reading it.
A blog post disappeared while you were reading it? Didn’t think that was possible.
dhaval, the previous Mann Hockey stick is discussed here:
http://www.climateaudit.org/index.php?p=166
Even when I read blogs, I generally do not comment or participate in discussions – well, may be you could say that it is a retired attitude… But, I thought that this does invite a comment, even if late in making it.
The total carbon content of the world (when you include the core and the mantle of our earth) doesn’t change much as there aren’t many carbon rich meteorites striking our world…
Given this, it is only the atmospheric content of carbon that is of concern. I would like, being a person not in the community, how much of carbon (as dioxide) a volcano gives out to what is given out by us mining these out and burning these.
There may be fluctuation in climate that would encourage multiplication of carbon-fixing organisms to carbon-releasing organisms like us. Again another indicator would be the quantity of carbon-releasing organisms that exits compared to the carbon-fixing ones.
Whichever way you go the release of carbon to atmosphere cannot be slowed down whether we mine it or whether it is because of a natural causes like a volcano, or because of organisms like us.
The increase in temperature due to higher CO2 will be compensated as there will be more water that will evaporate and cause a cloud cover that will decrease the temperatures over significant areas so as to lower the overall surface temperatures…
So, it would be a cycle – what is causing harm is deforestation to fix back the carbon that WE are emitting (not only through supposedly fossil fuels, but more by our own biological mechanisms – I would really like to have a figure as to the amount of CO2 that we as humans are releasing to the atmosphere). Fortunately we can not control the algae that grows in the Oceans which will/may revert back the equilibrium – but with epsilon deviation as time goes on, more carbon is released from our core and mantle, which cannot be stopped…
So, we need to accept that the average carbon content of the surface of earth will keep increasing (only if our Earth’s core and mantle has not captured in their formative years those fragments with more carbon)
Two solutions…
One – take tones of carbon lump formed by our life forms in space ships and throw it out in space.
Two, accept the climatic change, and increase the carbon-fixing organism and reduce the carbon-emitting organisms (this would mean that in the next million years, tentatively more that 80% of life here should be carbon fixing organisms)…!!!
I request all to understand the overall dynamics at a planet-level and think accordingly – people who cannot take a pike and do the ground work to contribute to the society by planting more plants, will talk anything to keep their bread/funds coming their way…
Dr. Kasivishvanathan Sundar,
To answer a couple of your questions…
Human CO2 emissions versus natural emissions:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/eia_co2_contributions_table3.png
We know too little about volcanoes. Those on land we can measure. But hundreds of thousands of new undersea volcanoes were recently discovered:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12218
Great data…
But, I do not understand the classification of human CO2 emissions – when I meant human, I did not mean the human activity but we as biological organisms (and other higher organisms that give out CO2) that contribute to the atmospheric carbon (as dioxide) – each of us probably (do check this) exhale 1 kg of CO2 every day; with population of 6 billion for humans alone, this would be 6 million tons a day – what about the other species that are around…?
And out of volcanoes on land that we can measure what is the ratio of the CO2 emitted by them to us burning the fossil (if it is really fossil – it could be from carbon compounds from even earlier in formation of our planet or is being formed right now under us) fuels – any data there?
But, wouldn’t you think that the total carbon content of this planet as a whole that includes its crust would not change much and the atmospheric carbon would increase with time (whether man/life-form made or not)…?
And, are we really so much advanced to have understood all the processes that are involved – aren’t we making tall claims one-way or other…?
My suggestion (what ever it is worthy of) is to follow the path of minimalism for a coming few centuries by every individual who has the conscious power to alter the surroundings – it is, maybe a distant hope…
I hope that these doesn’t offend anyone established in this field and it is just that I would like to highlight an alternative way of looking at things – do apologize my ignorance, if any…