One of the great things about WUWT is that people from all walks of life frequent here. We have PhD’s right down to Average Joe that read and post comments here. Everyone has something to contribute.
A general truism that I’ve noticed through life is that the people that actually work “hands on” with the things they study often know far more about them than the people that study them from afar. As in the case of the surface stations project, top scientists missed the fact that many of the climate monitoring stations are poorly sited because they never bothered to visit them to check the measurement environment. Yet the people in the field knew. Some scientists simply accepted the data the stations produced at face value and study its patterns, coaxing out details statistically. Such is the case with Briffa and Yamal tree rings apparently, since the tree ring data was gathered by others, field researchers Hantemirov and Shiyatov.
American Indians have been said to be far more in tune with the patterns of the earth than modern man. They had to be, survival depended on it. They weren’t insulated by technology as we are. Likewise somebody who works in the forest whose daily livelihood is connected to trees might know a bit more about their growth than somebody sitting behind a desk.
WUWT commenter “Caleb”, who has worked with trees for 50 years, wrote this extraordinary essay on Briffa’s lone tree core known as YAD061, which has a pronounced 8 sigma effect on the set of 10 tree cores Briffa used in his study. Caleb’s essay is in comments here, which I’m elevating to a full post. While we may never know the true growth driver for YAD06, this is one possible explanation.
Guest comment by Caleb Shaw:
I’ve worked outside since I was a small boy in the 1950’s, and have cut down hundreds of trees. I always check out the rings, for every tree has its own story.
I’ve seen some rather neat tricks pulled off by trees, especially concerning how far they can reach with their roots to find fertilizer or moisture. For example, sugar maple roots will reach, in some cases, well over a hundred feet, and grow a swift net of roots in the peat moss surrounding a lady’s azalea’s root ball, so that the azalea withers, for the maple steals all its water.
I’ve also seen tired old maples perk right up, when a pile of manure is heaped out in a pasture a hundred feet away, and later have seen the tree’s rings, when it was cut down, show its growth surged while that manure was available.
After fifty years you learn a thing or two, even if you don’t take any science classes or major in climatology, and I’ve had a hunch many of the tree-ring theories were bunkum, right from the start.
The bristlecone records seemed a lousy proxy, because at the altitude where they grow it is below freezing nearly every night, and daytime temperatures are only above freezing for something like 10% of the year. They live on the borderline of existence, for trees, because trees go dormant when water freezes. (As soon as it drops below freezing the sap stops dripping into the sugar maple buckets.) Therefore the bristlecone pines were dormant 90% of all days and 99% of all nights, in a sense failing to collect temperature data all that time, yet they were supposedly a very important proxy for the entire planet. To that I just muttered “bunkum.”
But there were other trees in other places. I was skeptical about the data, but until I saw so much was based on a single tree, YAD061, I couldn’t be sure I could just say “bunkum.”
YAD061 looks very much like a tree that grew up in the shade of its elders, and therefore grew slowly, until age or ice-storms or insects removed the elders and the shade. Then, with sunshine and the rotting remains of its elders to feed it, the tree could take off.
I have seen growth patterns much like YAD061 in the rings of many stumps in New Hampshire, and not once have I thought it showed a sign of global warming, or of increased levels of CO2 in the air. Rather the cause is far more simple: A childhood in the under-story, followed by a tree’s “day in the sun.”
Dr. Briffa should spend less time gazing at computer screens, and actually get out and associate with trees more. At the very least, it might be good for his health.
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This is my take on YAD061:
YAD061 was a young tree, not as big as those around it, living in the shades and just making it. Here comes a nomad tribe. They set camp nearby and cut that big ol’ tree that blocked the light from YAD061. Not only that, but the immediate area around YAD061 became their common toilets. The combined effect of more light and fertilizer made YAD061 very big in no time.
Many years after, when all trace of the nomad tribe has been erased from time, two Russian guys come along with saws and see that big ol’ YAD061 and tell themselves that this tree looks perfect and old for a tree ring study.
OH MY GOD! YAD061 MUST BE MORE IMPORTANT THAN ALL OTHER TREES SINCE HAS GROWN MORE THAN ANY OTHER RECENTLY… and this is how a future scientific myth started.
All,
Sub seeking to seeing – although the meaning is close…Damn fingers anyway!
MJB
see also http://www.glar.gl/pinus.pdf
As just a dumb ol country boy I can say authoritatively that Caleb is spot on.
Many times some otherwise very smart people are not blessed with an over abundance of walking around sense.
We all know what PhD means. Yeah, piled higher and deeper.
I posted recently suggesting (tongue in cheek of course) a Nobel for Anthony and Steve. Sorry Anthony. My vote for a Nobel now goes to Caleb
Caleb and Anthony:
Very refreshing to read the common sense of experience; interesting to see Bill Hunter’s comment about how the circumstances for faster growth might be different in boreal forests. I’m learning a lot and appreciating it.
Who was it again that knew about the PDO long before it was published in science journals? 🙂
If we wanted to see how the temperature changed in the last 150 years based on tree growth, there are billions of trees on earth older than 150 years that would tell us how things changed or did not change since then.
The idea of using a large enough number of samples is exactly to avoid giving too much weight to a single tree. In fact, in a much bigger sampling YAD061 would have been rejected for those same reasons Caleb told us. If it is warm or the soil has changed, it should affect the whole forest in the same way. If other factors impact the growth of single trees, those samples will be rejected after statistical analysis (i.e. like more local sun and local fertilization).
Alan S Blue,
The problem with usine trees in that environment for “climate” estimations is that you are then measuring how many years have a 1-2 week hot spell that is warmer than usual. As we are all frequently scolded, one to two week hot (or cold) spells are weather, not climate. So measuring a tree that had a 1-2 week hot spell during a year and assigning a warmer climate for that year as a whole is a false and misleading assumption to make. Trees that are active for a larger portion of a year are more likely to show a cumulative effect reflective of the annual climate than trees that are only active for a few weeks. Unfortunately for scientists, the changes between warm and cold become much smaller and harder to measure in such trees (and less likely to make a hockey stick).
usine=using…
Doug in Seattle,
I agree with your general assessment, but the fact is that we don’t know what the local environment was for the tree in question. It may have been part of a sparse grove, or it may have been a young tree inside of an older cluster.
It also may be that shade / sunlight was not the issue for this tree. It could very well have been an issue of water or nutrients. One could formulate several scenarios under which inadequate water existed for much of the tree’s life, then abundance was supplied – a rock uphill of the tree gave way, allowing water to reach the tree, for example. It could have been a root-binding issue, also, with some event near the end of the tree’s life eliminating the root-binding so that nutrients could be accessed and accelerate the tree’s growth. Or reindeer chose that tree to huddle around, giving the tree the benefit of their excreta. Who knows.
BrianMcL – The whole point of the problem is that the data hasn’t been available until just now. It’s sort of like the Polanski affair, the clock stopped on Briffa the day he ran away from giving out data.
[bridge too far. ~ ctm]
Suppose for a moment that trees in the artic did actually start to grow faster as co2 levels went up – wouldn’t the direct effect of co2 on growth be a better and simpler explanation than an indirect effect through temperature?
“A general truism that I’ve noticed through life is that the people that actually work “hands on” with the things they study often know far more about them than the people that study them from afar.”
Wiser words have not been spoken. One wonders about the outcome of our healthcare system re-design, masterminded from afar by the clowns in DC.
Don @ur momisugly 14:10:39
“This is the paper that provided the (unused) Yamal data.
Look at page 720. It shows how tree lines have moved SOUTH over the last 700 years. Tree line reflect minimum growth temperatures.
It has been getting progressively COLDER.”
That seems like an incredibly obvious and important thing for anyone arguing about AGW to have missed. Is there some abmiguity in the tree line progression?
Now, that’s something all the “Average Joes” who frequent this site can appreciate as an indictment tree-ring proxies. Each tree in the same location leads a different life.
Outstanding post.
Fantastic. Nothing beats simple observation.
While we are in more philosophical mode, does anyone know of “Meditation in a Toolshed” by Prof C.S.Lewis? He was in a dark old shed and saw a beam of sunlight shining through a space over the door. The beam was bright and striking with its specks of floating dust while everything else was dark. He was seeing the beam, not seeing by it. “Then I moved”, he says, “so that the beam fell on my eyes. Instantly the whole previous picture vanished. I saw no toolshed and (above all) no beam. Instead I saw, through the cranny over the door, green leaves moving on the branches of a tree outside and beyond that, ninety million miles away, the sun. Looking along the beam and looking at the beam are very different experiences.
“But this is only a very simple example of the difference between looking ‘at’ and looking ‘along’. A young man meets a girl. The whole world looks different when he sees her”. Chatting to her is very precious and he is as they say ‘in love’. Now comes along a scientist and describes his experience from outside. For him it is all about genes and chemicals in the brain and a recognised biological stimulous… That is the difference between looking along and looking at and you can see lots of examples of this all day long. You get one experience when you look ‘along’ and another when you look ‘at’. Which is the ‘true’ or ‘valid’ experience? Which tells you most about a thing?
In our time it is generally assumed that if you want to know about sexual love go to a psychologist, not lovers. if you want to undersand a mathematician at work go to a brain scientist, and if you want to understand tree rings where do you go? A Caleb out in the woods, or a Briffa siiting at his computer. One looking along and one looking at. The analogy nearly works, I think, and even if it doesn’t quite hold up it is nevertheless illuminating. The truth is that we need to look both ‘at’ and ‘along’. We need both Caleb and Briffa, but Briffa needs some integrity and humility, and both (all of us) need to understand what the other brings to understanding the phenomena of the world. End of philosophical musing. I hope it helps a little.
That reminds me of the typical presentation of results in front of an audience…
When the presenter says: “This is a typical result”, he really means “this is my best result”.
When the presenter says:”This representative sample”, really means “this is my only good result, two were wiped when I spilled my coffee on them and the other two were chewed up by my dog”.
Espen (14:32:04) :
In order for the trees to absorb CO2 and grow, they have to be above zero and water and nutrients must flow through their root systems. Trees that are in a frozen environment for 90% of the time won’t grow much.
Espen (14:32:04) :
Suppose for a moment that trees in the artic did actually start to grow faster as co2 levels went up – wouldn’t the direct effect of co2 on growth be a better and simpler explanation than an indirect effect through temperature?
A tree isn’t a CO2 sink — it will only take in the amount necessary to metabolize the nutrients it’s absorbing through its roots. If the amount of nutrients increases, the tree will grow additional foliage to increase its CO2 intake, but an increase in atmospheric CO2 will not affect its growth.
Nice common sense post, but as the information is anecdotal rather than produced by a computer model surely it is disqualified?
Anyone here able to pass any comment on the veracity of ice cores, which I look at with as jaundiced an eye as I do tree rings?
tonyb
Do you think we could get the guys who cut down the tree on the beach in the Maldives (that was showing no increase in sea level) to take out YAD061.
Also, this post illustrates very well the difference between knowledge and wisdom. Another illustration is that knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, but wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.
Anyone for dessert at Keith’s?
Common sense. did Briffa even visit the area?
Many people admire charles darwin,. I don’t. He had a theology degree and was carefull note taker. No one discredits his education because they like him.
People don’t question Algore.
Great article and great points he makes. we need more “calebs” so that we don’t waste a difficult experiment by forgetting something.