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.
“Is there a deep subconscious fear there amongst the scientific community that they are about to lose their standing and even a lot of financial support if this ongoing climate scandal is allowed to become a publicly accepted image that science is now becoming just a perverted cause used to prop up a power grabbing ideology?”
I think it’s the confederacy of the anointed. Here’s a link to an interesting book on the presumptuousness and blinkeredness of the in-cult of our age. It’s Science Is a Sacred Cow, published in 1950 but still relevant, and cheap (used) on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Science-Sacred-Cow-Standen/dp/0525470166/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1254539676&sr=1-1
I posted a long review on Amazon consisting of the nuggets I found in it, which gives a good thumbnail of its contents.
To paraphrase Indiana Jones and Sallah:
“They’re cutting in the wrong place!”
PS: Here are the first six nuggets from Science is a Sacredd Cow. Visit Amazon to check out the rest.
15-16: Scientists are convinced that they, as scientists, possess a number of very admirable human qualities, such as accuracy, observation, reasoning power, intellectual curiosity, tolerance, and even humility.
18-19 [Certain people (called “science fiends” later in the book)] suppose that because science has penetrated the structure of the atom it can solve all the problems of the universe. … They are known in every … college as the most insufferable, cocksure know-it-alls. If you want to talk to them about poetry, they are likely to reply that the “emotive response” to poetry is only a conditioned reflex …. If they go on to be professional scientists, their sharp corners are rubbed down, but they undergo no fundamental change. They most decidedly are not set apart from the others by their intellectual integrity and faith, and their patient humility in front of the facts of nature…. They are uneducated, in the fullest sense of the word, and they certainly are no advertisement for the claims of science teachers.
23-24: Mr. Hillaire Belloc has pointed out that science has changed greatly, and for the worse, since it became popular. Some hundred years ago, or more, only very unusual, highly original spirits were attracted to science at all; scientific work was therefore carried out by men of exceptional intelligence. Now, scientists are turned out by mass production in our universities, and … they are very ordinary professional men, and all they know is their trade.
26: As advertising always convinces the sponsor even more than the public, the scientists have become sold, and remain sold, on the idea that they have the key to the Absolute, and that nothing will do for Mr. Average Citizen but to stuff himself full of electrons.
31: They will define these [terms] in tight phrases which convey a meaning only to those who already understand it.
31: The dreadful cocksureness that is characteristic of scientists in bulk is not only quite foreign to the spirit of true science, it is not even justified by a superficial view.
Here are a few more nuggets. (I couldn’t resist.):
191: If this “critical openminded attitude” … is wanted, the question at once arises, Is it science that should be studied in order to achieve it? Why not study law? A judge has to do everything that a scientist is exhorted to do in the way of withholding judgment until all the facts are in, and then judging impartially on the merits of the case as well as he can…. Why not a course in Sherlock Holmes? The detectives, or at least the detective-story writers, join with the scientists in excoriating “dogmatic prejudice, lying, falsification of facts, and data, and willful fallacious reasoning.”
123: Insight is not the same as scientific deduction, but even at that it may be more reliable than statistics.
140: “There’s many a true word spoken in jest”; scientists are abominably solemn; therefore scientists miss many a true word.
141: Science … must be absorbed in order to inculcate that wonderful humility before the facts of nature that comes from close attention to a textbook, and that unwillingness to learn from Authority that comes from making almost verbatim lecture notes and handing them back to the professor.
168-69: Physical scientists probably deserve the reputation they enjoy for incorruptibility and unswerving devotion to pure truth. The reason for this is that it is not worth while to bribe them.
176-77: But although in theory physicists realize that their conclusions are … not certainly true, this … does not really sink into their consciousness. Nearly all the time … they … act as if Science were indisputably True, and what’s more, as if only science were true…. Any information obtained otherwise than by the scientific method, although it may be true, the scientists will call “unscientific,” using this word as a smear word, by bringing in the connotation from its original [Greek] meaning, to imply that the information is false, or at any rate slightly phony.
177-78: Our advanced and fashionable thinkers are, naturally, out on a wide swing of the pendulum, away from the previous swing of the pendulum…. They seem to have an un-argue-out-able position, as is the manner of sophists, but this is no guarantee that they are right.
189: There are science teachers who actually claim that they teach “a healthy skepticism.” They do not. They teach a profound gullibility, and their dupes, trained not to think for themselves, will swallow any egregious rot, provided it is dressed up with long words and an affectation of objectivity to make it sound scientific.
205-06: And yet, what if the average itself were wrong?… Is it not plausible, and even likely, that most of us have the wrong kind of brain wave?
Well, in my mind, at least, the mystery of the MWP is solved. Here goes. First I found this post on CA from Jeff Id that contained a quote from Briffa. Let’s see if I can reproduce it.
Jeff Id:
In an attempt to discuss the issue of Briffa’s reply. The suspicion of readers about sorting of data is far from unjustified. This quote is from the Osborne Briffa 06 SI
Osborn/Briffa:
“We removed any series that was not positively correlated with its “local” temperature observations [taken from the nearest grid box of the HadCRUT2 temperature data set (S9)]. The series used by (S3) were already screened for positive correlations against their local annual temperatures, at the decadal time scale (Table S1). We removed series from (S1) that did not correlate positively with their local annual or summer temperatures (Table S1), or which did not extend into the period with instrumental temperature to allow a correlation to be calculated. The series from south-west Canada (named Athabasca) used by (S1) did not correlate positively with local temperature observations, but has been replaced by a new, better-replicated series (S10) that does correlate very highly with summer temperature (Table S1) and has also been RCS-processed to retain all time scales of variability”
Back to Jeff:
It’s not like he should be offended by peoples suspicions that he may have actually ‘sorted’ the data. It’s almost standard practice in paleoclimatology. I realize Steve suggested sorting may have been done previously by the original Yamal authors. IMO it’s still likely that the data was sorted before use. I don’t think I’ve said it any stronger than that in any of my writings.
Back to me:
I wrote this reply at CA.
“Jeff, I’m holding my head. I’m falling out of my chair here. I simply can’t believe what Briffa is saying. That in itself guarantees that you are going to get modern temperatures that are higher than medieval temperatures. This means that all of the trees that don’t show 20th century warming are thrown out. And it is obvious that many trees don’t show the warming of certain periods of time. This means that you get 100% hits for trees that reflect 20th century warming and you get some much smaller percentage of hits for trees that reflect MWP warming. Trees have growing bursts for many different reasons. Shade from other trees; roots reaching nutrients at different times; hillside water flow changing to help or hurt the tree, etc. The chances that all the optimum conditions that supported growth in the twentieth century were also there in the MWP are practically nill for all the trees that were chosen. It seems to me that this builds in a huge bias for showing more 20th century growth. Do you have a link where I can get the quote that you gave. I have to put that in my archive.”
Thanks for this post, Caleb.
Occams Razor at work.
Question: Where did common sense begin to filter out of scientific research?
When real-world, real-time observations and field studies were supplanted by the computer lab.
Hey…not to say that GCMs will not have some vital importance someday. They can not help us now, however, in their current form.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
A sample of 10 of anything is too small to draw any conclusions unless 10 of whatever is all you have. In a forest of 10s of thousands of trees, picking just 10 at random may seem like a reasonable idea. Good statistical techniques demand that outliers be filtered out. However here we have an extreme outlier defining the last 10 years of climate debate! How anyone can call that “good science” with a straight face is baffling.
As I am sure many have posted:
1) Excellent post Caleb (I read it the first time around). Its forefulness lies in the fact that most of the scientists had long since lost thge wood for the trees. Enter Caleb with reality check.
2) It reminds us that observation and data collection are paramount in scientific endeavors. This was stated at the beginning of the first science 101 (or whatever) but often gets a tad misty over the years.
The AGW crowd is becoming increasingly exposed as a bunch of GIGO modelers (I did a lot of econometric modeling in my day, and can literally prove up is down through statistics if pressed) who have spent far too little time in the field measuring stuffs. Perhaps the offices at the UN and CRU are too comfortable? Maybe they could use them for something useful like sheltering the homeless, while we banish the AGWers to the poles for ice core work.
This reminds me of the story of two physics professors who were chatting near a metal globe in a garden. One of the professors chanced to put his hand on the shady side of the globe and exclaimed sharply that it was warm – hot even. They then discovered that the sunny side was cool.
For half an hour they engaged in an excited and heated discussion on the significance of this amazing find, factoring in everything from Kirchoff’s laws to Stefan-Boltzmann equations to anthropogenic global warming.
Just when they had reached a consensus opinion that this was indeed an alarming manifestation of Global warming, where a particular “forcing” was not adequately represented, the gardener came along and rotated the globe. He said he did that at regular intervals to keep one side from getting too hot.
My vote for a Nobel now goes to Caleb
The reason must be because he’s out standing in his field.
It seems to me that using tree-rings to try to ascertain paleoclimatic conditions is as much an art as a science. The only way to approach a useful degree of accuracy is to have a sufficiently large sample size. A single tree sample is likely to provide about as much information as an exit poll carried out on a single voter.
I’ve cut down plantations of cedar and cypress in my time — trees that when given even growing conditions, tend to produce straight cylindrical trunks with symmetrically round cross-sections showing fairly regular and easy-to-measure rings. And one of the things I noticed early on was that a bunch of saplings of the same species planted in the same vicinity on the same date will result in a wide range of sizes of mature trees that show major differences in year-by-year ring growth. Even using such “uniform” sample conditions, which are unlikely to be found in nature, it must take considerable skill and effort at measurement and statistical analyisis to determine the size of the climate signal buried the background noise of the variation between individual samples. Useful though tree-ring data undubtedly is, I think Caleb is right to draw attention to the potential pitfalls of reading too much into data from limited samples.
There is a pink thing in the center of the picture of the Siberian larches that can be nothing but Manbearpig.
Holy cow don’t let the UN IPCC know about this or they might have to start using proper science (empirical stuff even) instead of the GIGO computer stuff they usually use !
Anyway I think Gore Mann Briffa & Co should come back as trees (not cherry trees though) in their second life and we can get Caleb to manure them and see how thick they grow !
In this context Bill Sticker should have a very honourable mention.
Bill Sticker (22:05:13) : 28-09-2009
Excuse my ignorance; but the thought occurs, having examined a number of felled trees and the timber therefrom in some quite old English buildings, is that tree rings, even in very tall straight growing species, are very rarely symmetrical. So taking a ‘core’ from the xylem to the heartwood. which is I believe the current method for establishing the amount of tree growth occurring in any one year, cannot be reliably used as a ‘proxy’ for anything but highly local environmental factors like slope, shade, rainfall, branch growth, damage and disease.
If as observed, tree rings are generally asymmetrical in width and a sample core is only taken from one side of the tree, how can said core be said to form a reliable proxy for temperature and / or climate in the first place? The growth rings would have to be measured across the entire cross section of the tree and some kind of averaging formula used to give an approximate value for any given year.
Just an anecdotal observation you understand. Please delete this comment if I have stated the blindingly asinine or obvious.
Tuttle (15:03:27) :
“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.”
Bill, you are very wrong: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0cqsdIsFBU
I wonder what conclusions future dendrochronologists will draw from tree ring sample taken fron the Las Vegas area, if looking at the tree rings without considering local influences other than temperature.
They will show steady growth during the late 20th and early 21st centuries, perhaps leading those scientists to propose significant increases in temparature occurring.
A silly example, I know, but it serves to illustrate that perhaps water is a more critical requirement for plant growth than temperature alone, since sufficient water confers the ability to regulate the plant’s response to high temperate (via transpiration/evaporation) whereas temperature of itself provides no mechanism for the plant to respond to water shortage other than shutting down progessively, with ultimate death.
Caveat – I’m no botanist, my observation is the consequence of a broad scientific education in UK schools some 50 years ago (when schools taught the principles of science rather than a collection of tick box facts and opinions) and from a lifetime of growing my own fruit and veg. Oh, and a bit of common sense, which I have found often lacking in many otherwise brilliant, single-minded people who seem to lack the ability to take a broad view.
Don Keiller (14:10:39) :
Tree rings may be missinterpreted. Tree LINES cannot.
Rashit M. Hantemirov* and Stepan G. Shiyatov (2002) A continuous multimillennial ring-width chronology in Yamal, northwestern Siberia. The Holocene 12,6 pp. 717–726
http://www.nosams.whoi.edu/PDFs/papers/Holocene_v12a.pdf
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.
Yes … But … I would expect there will be a lag in that the tree line will recede with declining temperatures but the temperatures will decline first and the tree line will follow, and when temperatures increase it will be a while before the trees can expand their range into the newly warmed territory. What the lag will be I don’t know but (waving hands) I would think it would depend on a number of factors such as species, altitude, rainfall, soil types, rate of temperature change (slow change might allow the trees to keep up, fast might leave them father behind), etc.
“Oh, dear. Its back to the Dark Ages of science.”
No, that was sheep livers cut open to decide to go to battle.
NOW, we have tree rings and ice sheets to decide on more tax.
Slightly OT I fear, but following on from Caleb’s excellent post.
ROM (18:41:02) :
…Is there a deep seated fear in the science community that for the first time due to the all pervasive internet, a highly visible, [ and deliberate? ] distortion and corruption of science is happening in a very, very public fashion.…
…Will science as a whole lose that aura that has so carefully been cultivated ever since WW2 when it was seen that the immense contribution of the allied scientists helped win the war and that the german scientists also nearly did the same for the axis powers?…
I think ROM has put his finger on it. The problem is the professionalisation of science. Look back at the truly great scientific discoveries and you see individuals using their own or a benefactor’s money (Darwin(own), Newton (university), Faraday (benefactor) and Curie (university) as just a few examples). The science was driven by the curiosity of the scientist who then struggled to keep body & soul together somehow. Since WWII, when all available scientists were herded in to help the war effort (including poor old Alan Turing who was driven to suicide for being a poof [yeah, I know, you snipped it]), the Powers That Be have sought to reflect the glory on themselves by controlling all scientific effort. The result is obvious.
People like Caleb (and there are many of them) are still making real, useful observations and only need a little training in evaluation and use of tools like statistics to make genuine scientific advances. This interweb thingie as well renders traditional peer review redundant, since it increases the bandwidth so hugely. Paper journals have to use peer review to winnow out the Green-Ink-and-Lots-of-Capitals brigade, but on blogs like this we can see all sorts of shades of opinion, experience and expertise and, in general, are quite good at sorting out those who foam at the mouth. Such is genuine peer review, the peers not being restricted to the narrow field of specialisation necessary to keep journal costs down but people from a wide range of backgrounds who often bring up facts that no narrowly specialised expert would know. I offer as evidence Drs. Leif Svalgaard, Roy Spencer and the Rogers Pielke. All prepared to offer their knowledge and to slap down the loonies so that we can all get a reasonable handle on what’s going on. !
If Professors did not have to spend so much of their time satisfying the bureaucratic demands of institutionalised science they would be able to guide and train their students in proper protocols and warn them against Labrador-puppy-like enthusiasm, bounding from unwarranted assumptions to foregone conclusions.
I have read again today the history of Isaac Newton delaying publication of his gravitational theory for years.
“The distance from the earth to the moon was already known so that it was a relatively simple matter to calculate the circumference of the moon’s orbit. Dividing this length by the length of a lunar month then gives the speed at which the moon is travelling. And knowing this speed, Newton was able to calculate the centripetal acceleration of the moon toward the earth. Could this acceleration be due to the gravitational attraction of the earth?
When he carried out the actual calculation, the two centripetal accelerations turned out to have different values. After rechecking his calculations, the discrepancy remained. It finally caused Newton to set his theory aside and to concentrate his efforts on other studies.”
As we all know, at the end, Newton was right. When the distance of the Moon was later adjusted to a better value, he was able to prove that his law indeed provided the correct answer, and he finally made his theory public. Later, we learned that his gravitational law does not work when objects are moving at high speeds, but that is another history.
It seems to me that science was better when papers where not peer-reviewed, but scientists had a true desire to understand nature. The theory of Newton was beautiful, but Newton considered that reality had some preeminence over it.
Compare it with how some Climate scientists are handling the AGW hypothesis. There were some indications 15 years ago that there was a link between CO2 and temperature that could explain the observed warming. Models were construed that showed the relationship in the past (Mann, et al., for instance) and provided some forecasts for the future (such as the “hot spot”).
As other scientists have been checking the consequences of the theory and shown that neither the past, nor the future, seem to be in accordance with the predictions, the AGW scientists have not, as Newton did, consider that there might be a problem with their theory, but rather than reality is less important than their theory.
How sad.
Even Wikipedia gives some clues about growth of Siberian Larches
It is faster-growing than many other coniferous trees in cold regions, but requires full sunlight. When grown in plantations it should be kept widely spaced, and intensive thinning is required.
Well here it is folks, hot off the press.
Hitler’s reaction to the long awaited Yamal Tree-Ring base data release.
See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTGLpqFGyYM
😉
regarDS
Common sense trumps remote sensing. Not before time. Let’s hope this “new” reality will catch on…
This reminds me of the joke of the scientist and the spider:
A scientist decided to do research on spiders. The scientist showed the spider to obey their orders.
The scientist put the spider on the table and ordered, come here!. The spider walked toward the scientist. The scientist wrote: When you talk to the spider, the spider obeys.
Then he tore a leg off the spider and put it back on the table and ordered: spider!, come here!. The spider limped to the scientist. The scientist wrote: Even if you tear a leg of the spider, the spider keeps obeying.
Then he tore another leg off the spider and put it back on the table and ordered: spider!, come here!. The spider limped towards the scientist. The scientist wrote: Even if you pull up two legs of the spider, the spider keeps obeying.
Then he tore all the legs off the spider and put her back on the table and ordered: spider!, come here!. The spider tried to move, but he had no legs. The scientist wrote: When you tear off the legs of a spider she gets deaf.
(Please, excuse my poor english. I’m not english speaker)
Juan
(from Spain)
Great quotes Roger. Some of them deserve to go alongside those of Eisenhower, and hewed in stone.
My only issue is that there are occasional teachers who DO teach a healthy skepticism. But many of those lose their jobs, or quit teaching, as a result.
Like Anthony, I thought highly of Caleb’s post:I have also worked in the forestry business, though planting trees rather than cutting them down mainly. Hard but rewarding work.
tallbloke (20:15:19) :
Caleb (18:59:33) :
Great post, Caleb, this is why I love this site. Insight from people with a lifetime of experience.
My own lifetime of experience walking around the hills and countryside through forests has shown me the way a strong gust of swirling wind can knock down a stand of pine trees or larches in a tight, small area of forest. Especially where soils are thin and the underlying substrate is wet or sandy. Think about the effect on the trees immediately to the north of the suddenly cleared area, suddenly recieving much more sunlight with it’s warmth.
No human intervention needed, natures processes can produce the variety of patterns we see in remote and ‘pristine’ areas, including trees which suddenly show growth spurts.