WUWT readers may remember when Bishop Hill wrote Caspar and the Jesus paper. It was a wonderful narrative of the complex subject of tree rings and Steve McIntyre’s quest with debunking the Mann MBH98 paper, which created the original hockey stick. Now Bishop Hill has done it again with another great narrative. – Anthony
September 29, 2009 ClimateThere is a great deal of excitement among climate sceptics over Steve McIntyre’s recent posting on Yamal. Several people have asked me to do a layman’s guide to the story in the manner of Caspar and the Jesus paper. Here it is.
The story of Michael Mann’s Hockey Stick reconstruction, its statistical bias and the influence of the bristlecone pines is well known. McIntyre’s research into the other reconstructions has received less publicity, however. The story of the Yamal chronology may change that.
The bristlecone pines that created the shape of the Hockey Stick graph are used in nearly every millennial temperature reconstruction around today, but there are also a handful of other tree ring series that are nearly as common and just as influential on the results. Back at the start of McIntyre’s research into the area of paleoclimate, one of the most significant of these was called Polar Urals, a chronology first published by Keith Briffa of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia. At the time, it was used in pretty much every temperature reconstruction around. In his paper, Briffa made the startling claim that the coldest year of the millennium was AD 1032, a statement that, if true, would have completely overturned the idea of the Medieval Warm Period. It is not hard to see why paleoclimatologists found the series so alluring.
Some of McIntyre’s research into Polar Urals deserves a story in its own right, but it is one that will have to wait for another day. We can pick up the narrative again in 2005, when McIntyre discovered that an update to the Polar Urals series had been collected in 1999. Through a contact he was able to obtain a copy of the revised series. Remarkably, in the update the eleventh century appeared to be much warmer than in the original – in fact it was higher even than the twentieth century. This must have been a severe blow to paleoclimatologists, a supposition that is borne out by what happened next, or rather what didn’t: the update to the Polar Urals was not published, it was not archived and it was almost never seen again.
Read the rest here at Bishop Hill’s blog, and be sure to leave a nice comment if you like his writing.
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It should be called the “Yamal Briffa Affair”. Maybe for the movie?
CO2 is not the culprit, it is not the cause of global warming and climate change, nor is it a pollutant.
CO2 is an integral part of their strategy to control the world. Who are they? They are the Bilderbergs and the global wealthy elite human beings of the planet whose only desire is to rule the whole entire place.
There is no basis for claiming CO2 causes global warming, now referred to as climate change. There is no basis in fact or science. All your bases Bildreberg’s are belong to us.
At least the Bilderbergs got a consolation prize. It’s called the Internet. They wanted a controlled collectivist society? Well the got it. Here we are.
You can’t control the Internet just like you can’t control the weather.
I think this is how history is written.
As I read through the Bishop Hill’s blog story you suggest above, Anthony, I keep thinking of the great traditions of a part of the English scientific community…
“Piltdown Man” is a famous paleontological hoax concerning the finding of the remains of a previously unknown early human.
The silence at RealClimate is stunning!
The silence speaks volumes.
Or in other words:
THE MUSIC HAS STOPPED FOR THE WARMISTS
“CO2 is an integral part of their strategy to control the world. Who are they? They are the Bilderbergs and the global wealthy elite human beings of the planet who’s only desire is to rule the whole entire place.”
This is harebrained conspiracy fantasizing, which adds nothing to the important fact. The important fact, the only one, is that the Hockey Stick studies have now been shown to be based on little or no evidence. We can hypothesize that the reason the data has been concealed for so long is that the authors were worried about what would be revealed by independent scrutiny. That much is about as far as we can or should speculate.
The idea that Mann, Jones, Briffa….etc are part of a Bilderberg plot to rule the world is both silly and borderline insane. They are just bad scientists with an agenda. It happens. Look at the autism MMR case. Look at the cholesterol hypothesis. There were lots of scientists prepared to exonerate tobacco. Focus on the important fact, we now understand the climate better. What do we understand?
That the best minds in the business have failed to find any robust evidence for any unusual 20c warming in the context of the last 2000 years. That is what matters. That is all that matters.
I was getting more and more depressed as the runaway train heading to Copenhagensville was gathering momentum… then along comes this buffer… Hallelujah !!!
The internet is the biggect thing since the printing press. Bigger.
The controlling elite persecuted pamphleteers in C18th Europe and governments got hired thugs to smash printing presses.
Setting up a server or ten with it’s own name space and the ability to work over dial up might not be a bad idea. The pirate radio of the blogosphere.
It depends just how determined the ‘powers that be’ are to ram falsehood down the throats of the masses.
Being prepared for any eventuality is a sensible way to go in my view. Just in case censorship takes an ugly turn.
I cant find a single AGW site that has any hint of a rebuttal or even comment on this. The silence is deafening. Surely at least one of them will have something to say…….?
It is a good day to die — but a bad day to drag the Trekkies into the AGW bottomless pit without them to focus on a new movie.
Roger Carr: I like the quote about Piltdown man “The Piltdown man hoax had succeeded so well because at the time of its discovery, the scientific establishment had believed that the large modern brain had preceded the modern omnivorous diet, and the forgery had provided exactly that evidence.” Sounds familiar!
One might easily take the comment above with a very large dose of salt. or even contempt. at one time I may have done so. I came to this website via a recommendation from the webmaster at the Dan Burisch website. now I look at this blog every day without fail. I am no scientist but pride myself in completely rational thinking which I aim for all the time. i have no time whatsoever for religion though we are all spirits in physical bodies which I accept fully. enough of that.
now having said all that, there would seem to be some deep attempts at a manipulation of the world which means we people via possibly the Bilderbergers, New World order, and even the Illimuminati. assuming these exist I also believe they are foolish people and probably not very pleasant compared to the run of sane rational people.
it may be the focus on so called global warming is one more attempt to manipulate the rest of us I am open to this being the case if proven .
now, as far as climate goes, i was sympathetic to the global warming thesis, but after much reading and reflection, I believe like life itself, other complicating factors are at work and religiously blaming carbon dioxide may be one method of exerting control,
there are other factors, which may influence warming. or cooling. one is the shift towards the galactic centre, during 2012. which seems to be scientifically accepted. am i right on this? many believe we are entering a region of dust accretion around this point where we are exposed to the galactic centre as we circle round the milky way. where the gravitational field exerts more pull on the surrounding matter. I believe all the planets in the solar system are warming up right now? am I right?
another point, statistics are taken over a very short period of time and we assume only these factors are to blame that are actually looked at in our models. now assuming we incorporate some extra factors int our analysis, will these not influence our eventual conclusions ? so, the more things we consider the better weighted our conclusion may be in terms if what is actually happening. I read clouds are being taken more seriously, as far as creating cooling conditions and is the cosmic ray thesis really dead as proposed by the I think a Danish scientist?
if we are entering a more cloudy area of the galaxy this must impact not only on our own atmosphere but on the sun as well, , are these things considered instead of blaming it all on carbon dioxide and methane? surely it may be we have to offset global warming with global cooling and then see how the hockey stick graph performs then, instead of sticking to one rigid model based purely on warming. the Earth may have warmed up over the last 150 years, but what is to say it will not cool down, if the sun stays as quite as it is? too much faith is placed in finely made models, but the only real ‘model’ we have is reality, how things are and we must thus be humble observers for a change.
the problem with our models, is like religion I think. we first devote huge emotional resources into erecting the edifice then we spend the rest of our time finding reasons/justifications to believe the models are correct. we make the assumptions which the models are meant to prove, first, then the model is created, or theory, or such, then the facts are sought to boost our faith in the edifice we have built., –like religion.
Nick
The Hockey Stick debacle reveals that dendroclimatology is more akin to astrology and alchemy. A fiction , a product of group think by the Team, one that delibrately played on the weakness of peer-review.
Is science being badly damaged by this episode?
It sure is!
How Steve McIntyre trashed the Hockey Stick in plain English. How Steve continues to trash AGW claims in plain English even a maths blind archaeologist can follow. What’s not to like? 😀
The AGW sites are trying to rebutt by silence. If they say nothing, then there is no controversy.
Over at JoNova, however, there’s a true believer leading everyone on a red-herring chase as a form of rebuttal. It’s amusing.
The silence is deafening. Surely at least one of them will have something to say……
Yup. As soon as they recover their wits, it will be, “Lalalalalalalalalalalalalalalala…”
“tallbloke (02:01:27) :
The internet is the biggect thing since the printing press. Bigger.
The controlling elite persecuted pamphleteers in C18th Europe and governments got hired thugs to smash printing presses.
Setting up a server or ten with it’s own name space and the ability to work over dial up might not be a bad idea. The pirate radio of the blogosphere.
It depends just how determined the ‘powers that be’ are to ram falsehood down the throats of the masses.
Being prepared for any eventuality is a sensible way to go in my view. Just in case censorship takes an ugly turn.”
And I’d guess, just like China after a certain event, will be just as determined to prevent the masses from discovering the tuth. Here in Aus there was/is talk of interweb censorship, hidden behind “protecting children from porn” etc etc. While I agree, the interweby has opened up access to information, that “information” can, and as we know, is manipulated.
Even though this site and others like it are truely awesome to visit, and are eye opening, 99.9% of people just like to “follow the authority” (A classic 1950’s shock experiment is testimony to that) on any given subject. And the “authority” is pro-AGW. Victorian bush fires, AGW (Incidentally, “authorities” are back burning in both states before summer this year). The Sydney dust storm, AGW. Flooding in the Phillipines, AGW. The Samoan tsunami, how long before someone spouts it’s cause to be AGW?
What I see happening here in Australia (what’s the term I forget, it’s not like sponsorship, but more like product endorsement…like in certain films you see everyone using Motorolla or Nokia phones) in popular TV shows, like Good News Week on channel 10 (Which is REALLY funny), a pro-AGW comment, inline with the theme of the program, is, subliminally, poped in for good measure.
A colleague of mine has a brother who is about to be involved with the Australian ETS, if it get’s started of course (Which of course it will, and KRudd747 will not return to power). My colleague appears to be pro-AGW.
Terry (02:02:30) :
“I cant find a single AGW site that has any hint of a rebuttal or even comment on this. The silence is deafening. Surely at least one of them will have something to say…….?”
For them it has to be peer-reviewed, didn’t you know?
I checked the page where the raw data is, and it’s interesting to see the timestamps involved with the different objects on the page. It seems to have happened on Sep, 8th. But what intrigues me Steve is the TayBavRing.raw file; it also seems to be new. Might it also represent something special?
Ecotretas
Tue, 08 Sep 2009 10:38:27 GMT – /
Sat, 21 Apr 2007 07:33:04 GMT – EurasianGridBox.dat
Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:29:20 GMT – Column.prn
Mon, 14 Apr 2008 08:01:00 GMT – RCS_TRW_SSA.xls
Wed, 10 Dec 2008 10:50:18 GMT – TornFinADring.raw
Tue, 08 Sep 2009 10:31:04 GMT – YamalADring.raw
Tue, 08 Sep 2009 10:31:08 GMT – TayBavRing.raw
Thank you, Steve and Anthony. I’ll be giving to both tip jars.
Next, I’ll be hitting my “elected career politicians” with the news.
“It’s dead, jim….but not as we know it.”
And Michel (01:46:12) is, as per usual, on the money.
Don’t we need to give Briffa a chance to explain himself before we can declare the hockey stick to be dead?
appreciate the post for those of us who don’t get all the science speak.
also great for those who have just started visiting
Andrew Orlowski of The Register sent me another link earlier. This is by far the best explanation of the whole sorry affair I’ve read so far. Still not much in the mainstream press though!