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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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.
Biffra’s 2008 Royal Society paper shows a clear instrumental temperature increase over the last few decades for the Yamal peninsula, most pronounced during the summer growing season. This is in contradiction to the RCS tree-ring chronology for the Schweingruber series calculated by McIntyre.
Rejecting the Schweingruber series as a good proxy therefore seems reasonable, unless there are doubts about the instrument record in Northern Siberia. Why the Schweingruber series doesn’t appear to be a good recent proxy is an important but separate point.
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.
Obviously the cherry picking was not innocent but very deliberate. The stonewalling regarding raw data archival was (is) not innocent: after this one, what is HADCRUT hiding? Some scientists obviously have been less than honest in their work. Yet It is really strange to see how the media were all over Watergate, Woodward and Bernstein were heroes but here it’s silence…
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!
Climate Audit offline this morning. Must have hit a nerve.
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….
RE Stan, 9/28 03:03:49,
Actually, the Royal Society and its journal the Philosophical Transactions of the RS are the heroes here. Although they published an article by Briffa using this data, they actually compelled Briffa to archive his data as required by their policies, thus enabling Steve McIntyre to expose his cherry-picking. Other big-name journals like Science and Nature have published articles with this data, but haven’t bothered to enforce their similar rules.
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 you haven’t already, it’s time to write to your MP, Senator, Congressman, representative, etc.
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?
CA getting slammed apparently. Caught the thread last night before Steve published the code. Was up late enjoying the comments.
Can’t get enough of this.
Is Climate Audit down???
Of course this finding on Steve’s part ties in very well with the earlier finding about the North American bristlecone series that was used by Mann. When Lenah Ababneh published her bristlecone series from the same locations, they diverged widely from the series used by Mann and others. Ababneh’s used a much larger sample, and she checked the significance of using strip bark trees. Bottom line was that Ababneh’s trees showed no 20th century warming. This left us with a data set problem. The Yamal series used by Briffa and others did show warming, but no access to the data was available. Now that we have the access, the same divergence appears that was found in the North American series. I don’t think that we want to use only the trees that Briffa didn’t select. I think the best line on the graph is probably the combinatin line.
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.
People, ost links to this to the writers at The Register, the BBC and every well read forum and noticeboard.
J. Bob (08:35:36) :
Off the thread a bit, but came across a review of a British Medical Journal, Lancet, regarding use of population control to reduce global warming.
—
There are times I am tempted to have another kid when I hear this nonsense. This would make the point that brilliance, humor, and good looks will always be more valuable resources than rice or whatever.
Thanks for the posting – and Steve McIntyre’s unyielding efforts.
Also, to John F. Hultquist (21:11:09), for the linked reference to the “divergence problem”. I read abstract:
http://go2.wordpress.com/?id=725X1342&site=wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.clim-past-discuss.net%2F4%2F741%2F2008%2Fcpd-4-741-2008.html
And it’s worth quoting:
Perhaps Wilmking and Singh deserve some credit for trying to deal with this apparent paradox, but… I’m once again, they make is sound like an absurdity, and the contrived effort to neutralize it, merely absurd.
Still, I don’t agree with the sentiment of: “…the sordid story of tree ring proxies used for climate interpretation”
It seems clear by now that many scientists have corrupted this science by announcing results to support preconceived notions of climate warming. They are showing us no results at all, but something manufactured for a particular end that serves their self-interest. Maybe it was true of the science’s founder, Andrew Ellicot Douglass, an astronomer who looked so hard for a link between tree rings and sunspots that he was bound (doomed) to find them.
But how many centuries after Antony van Leeuwenhoek first saw his “wee beasties” under a microscopes (he died in 1723), until scientists had a working and accurate germ theory? And how many subsequent years of bickering, self-serving, data-hoarding (-and hiding) researchers since then, til notions of spontaneous generation were put to rest? and every workng vaccines thereafter?
Just don’t toss out the baby with the bathwater.
Besides, I believe most of the improprieties that Steve has found to date have been associated with so-called “strip bark” trees. Dendros love them for their age. There are many chronologies out there, including oak and other long-lived deciduous tree type. I don’t think they are all corrupted.
[snip – Adolfo you need to stop trying different names to get around security or I’ll complain to your ISP next]
Came over here from Ace of Spades.
A couple years ago I was searching for evidence of a global chill in the 660s AD. There’s mentions of bad winters in the Ulster Chronicle (Ireland) and the Maronite Chronicle (Syria); and an Italian flood in the Book of the Popes (Rome). I had some trouble with the relevant dendrochronology and eventually gave up.
Also I’ve delved into dendrochronology when trying to sort out the chronology of the Late Bronze Age, in Wikipedia. I tell you that is a special can of worms right there.
I don’t really have a side in the AGW debate. There’s been some BS flung around on both sides. And there are political careers, and cash, to be made from suckers and taxpayers either way. But anybody who suppresses dendrochronology isn’t just screwing with modern science; they’re screwing with our ability to do history. They’re on my turf.
Briffa, Schweingruber and their pals in the 1995 paper claimed that 1032 as “coldest in the millenium” – a millenium which sported a near Ice Age, and the Tambora year 1815. Since this was during a solar maximum there must have atmospheric shock that year on the level of 535 AD. There should have been reports of famines, plagues, the sun not shining, invasions, rivers of eroded soil, dustbowls and the apocalypse. I’m not exaggerating in the slightest – read David Keys’ Catastrophe. There is no such record for 1032.
I’ll just say that Dendrochronology has enough problems without the introduction of bad, cherry-picked data. Most of the rest of my thoughts were too angry to post even at Ace’s site and I won’t dare print them here.
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.
ah, no, just exceedlingly slow, heavy traffic no doubt
REPLY: I’m working t offload traffic right now by moving the Yamal images to my server.
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_chronologies1.gif
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/rcs_merged.gif
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.
Unfortunately, the stick did its job. Refutations are always ignored.
Steve McIntyre has replicated the ancient practice of turning “sticks into snakes”. Steve turns “sticks into Manns”.