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.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Thank you for this post and the link to Bishop Hill’s blog – this is the sort of thing a non-scientist like me had been praying for!
Speaking layman terms, I thoroughly enjoy simple wikipedia. Here is my version of “global warming” article. Don’t think it would survive long enough for others to enjoy.
——————
Global warming (aka climate change) is a controversial (oops, moot) subject. Sometime two hundred years ago some scientist (oops, a guy in a white robe) proposed (oops, came out with) a theory. His name was Arhellius (or something like that). Yeah, you know, if you enter greenhouse, can’t you notice its warmer there? His grand discovery laid dormant for a while, until madam Thatcher, who at the time was struggling with powerful coal union, decided to reincarnate and leverage it in her fight. All the rest is history, and now global warming is a new bogeyman. To make the matter short and answer your lingering question: “Can I fart?” Yes you can, but you have to buy a carbon credit for this.
Sorry folks, but as long as the worlds leaders treat this “Science” as fact, this will just keep on ticking.
Yet even as we speak…er…write, the honorable Sen.’s Boxer and Kerry are introducing the lastest cap and trade legislation. The AGW train is still on the tracks and running, and will until enough politicians find it too dangerous to their re-elections to oppose the legislation.
Is it disquieting only to me that Briffa is suddenly quit stricken with a serious illness? While I’ve never been much of a conspiracy theorist, it is apparent there is a concerted effort to deceive people world wide by many powerful people. Suddenly, a person that is obliged to answer some very embarrassing questions is too sick to respond? I pray that it is only a coincident and for the safe recovery of Mr. Briffa.
REPLY: We have this on word of a reputable (and appreciative of the new data) colleague who works with Mr. Briffa. We have no doubt of this, so please no more speculation. – Anthony
Overheard in Happy Valley: Look what you’ve done! You stupid little denialists! You’ve ruined my wonderful wickedness. I’m melting!!! Melting…
We should not press too much to scientists who had not an erroneous intention of doing the things wrong. Many times there is confusion with data or wrong interpretations of the data, or an erroneous methodology. I remember the case of Dr. Kramerer; the scientific society pushed him so much on that issue of his midwife toads that he at last committed suicide. After all, he was innocent.
Here’s hoping for the speedy recovery of Dr(?) Briffa and the speedy demise of the hockey stick.
And the speedy release of everyone’s raw data.
For those of you who are not informed, David Rockefeller is a US Senator.
No! The Earth is flat, I say! Flat! And there are monsters on the edge. Monsters!
Bret (04:44:41) wrote:
“Don’t we need to give Briffa a chance to explain himself before we can declare the hockey stick to be dead?”
For almost a decade, Briffa has fought tooth-and-nail to keep his data and methods from public scrutiny by AGW skeptics. As such, IMO he has had ample time to “explain himself”. In fact, his silence is his explanation–i.e., he has none.
Reed Coray
Well done, Nick. Readability makes a huge difference.
Giggle… to full blown..soda pop out the nose laughter(so glad i wont have to pay for the carbon tax on that)
Science… is winning… and the truth has escaped its prison (with the help of scandalous truth bandits like mr watts)
As some of you here may know… My own efforts which are meager when compared to others, has also been to see that every Algorite be rescued from there melting ice bergs of idiocy.
This Morning, on reading this report.. I forwarded it to several of my favorite AGW zealots…
I got three nasty phone calls… two drop dead emails..
and one simple.. “I hate you and that damn website!”
Long live MR Watts… for giving me a so much fun this morning.
Is it only me who finds something ironic in the fact that the hockey is a game played on ice?
Ecotretas (05:44:24) mentions getting in touch with the European Union, which sponsored Briffa’s research. Good move. It’s British taxpayers’ money which finances the shenanegans at Hadley, CRU, etc. British readers should be doing all they can to influence the political process. There must be doubters among MPs in all parties, and the first party to break the stranglehold of Greenthink which has seized the whole of Westminster will hold a trumpcard in next year’s election.
Forget Bilderberg. Think boring old-fashioned democratic political activism.
Let’s see if I understand this right.
The Yamal series “hockey stick” proxy method is analogous to this scenario:
Assume all of Shakespeares works were lost. All you have are a few select quotes. In order to recreate Shakespears work, you let 10 0000 monkeys loose for many years on 10 000 typewriters (for those who remember what those are). Then you examine the last few lines of their ‘writings’. You find, that the last few letter sequences one monkey typed were “two bee or knot 2 b”.
Now, because this is a close enough correlation to a still known Shakespearean quote, you assume that all previous ‘writings’ of this monkey were also close recreations of Shakespears works.
Is this about right?
Cassandra King (09:05:32) said:
To see a world in a grain of sand, an eternity in a second and the future from a dozen trees?
By Gaia, I wish I’d said that. Spread that message everyone. For changing minds where it matters, that quote may be worth a thousand dry statistical analyses. (sorry Steve)
Mark Bowlin (09:16:48) said:
I hate to be cynical but what difference will this make? … the hockey stick was already discredited …
True, but the truth doesn’t emerge in a straight line. A point worth making in any discussion is that you can’t get currently predicted temperature rises (4°C by 2060 seems to be the current favourite) without a steeply accelerating trend, i.e. a hockeystick. Ask warmists if they think it will happen, and why.
KLA (11:28:57) :
Is this about right?
Thanks to the internet we know that those 10.000 monkeys will not even come close to “two bee or knot 2 b”
BTW: the sinking of H(m)S Yamal is great news, it needed a lot of hits, but there it goes 🙂
what 10000 monkeys with typewriters give you a very big pile of… carbon credits
The dedicated forensic science effort by McIntyre has done a whole lot more than bury the hockey stick. Exposing the corruption within “settled science” has a far greater impact for me. Well done Steve. I’ve been circulating the breaking story each day to all the Australian politicians journos and bureaucrats I can.
You may perhaps suggest Steve & Anthony as candidates for next year…
The political situation in Norway wrt. AGW is a sorry one. The fact that the whole thing is a scam was not even mentioned in the recent parliamentary election campaign. Every party, from left to right, competed in promising more in Copenhagen.
Btw. it isn’t so strange that the Peace price is Norwegian. At the time of Nobel Sweden and Norway was in union.
Gore’s award was the Nobel Peace Prize which is usually given to politicians and others who promote “peace”. Another notable recipient was Arafat, although the peace part I don’t understand. You can see that this is a politically driven award and is not based on scientific merit. Don’t confuse this with the Nobel awards for the various branches of science (chemistry, physics, medicine, economics). These awards are for real accomplishments in science not just political b.s.
Michael–
Re David Rockefeller’s “world govenment” quote, you are misinformed. David is NOT a US Senator, never has been. For many years he ran the Rockefeller family bank — Chase Manhattan, and the family foundation. I have no doubt David made the statement in the website you linked to given David’s membership in the Council of Foreign Relations and Tri-Lateral Commission but he is not “Jay” Roekefeller US Senator. As a staunch AGW skeptic, i urge you to get your facts straight before making snarky triumphalist statements. When you’re wrong on an easily checkable fact, it makes you and other skeptics look foolish and hurts skeptics’ credibility.
Cheers
Just a few definitions:
From Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary:
Main Entry: den·dro·chro·nol·o·gy
Pronunciation: \ˌden-(ˌ)drō-krə-ˈnä-lə-jē\
Function: noun
Date: circa 1928
: the science of dating events and variations in environment in former periods by comparative study of growth rings in trees and aged wood.
From a Dictionary of Plant Sciences | 1998 | MICHAEL ALLABY:
dendroclimatology: A branch of dendrochronology dealing with the relationships between annual growth increment and climate, and especially with the reconstruction of past climates from dated tree-ring series.
From me:
Dandruffdendroclimatology: The flaky psuedoscience branch of dendroclimatology whose practitioners are obsessed with finding trees from which hockey sticks can be fabricated.
Reed Coray
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJQwHwP0ojI&hl=en&fs=1&]