Global warming’s most dangerous apostate speaks out about the state of climate change science.
By ANNE JOLIS
Barack Obama conceded over the weekend that no successor to the Kyoto Protocol would be signed in Copenhagen next month. With that out of the way, it may be too much to hope that the climate change movement take a moment to reflect on the state of the science that is supposedly driving us toward a carbon-neutral future.
But should a moment for self-reflection arise, campaigners against climate change could do worse than take a look at the work of Stephen McIntyre, who has emerged as one of the climate change gang’s Most Dangerous Apostates. The reason for this distinction? He checked the facts.
The retired Canadian businessman, whose self-described “auditing” a few years ago prompted a Congressional review of climate science, has once again thrown EnviroLand into a tailspin. In September, he revealed that a famous graph using tree rings to show unprecedented 20th century warming relies on thin data. Since its publication in 2000, University of East Anglia professor Keith Briffa’s much-celebrated image has made star appearances everywhere from U.N. policy papers to activists’ posters. Like other so-called “hockey stick” temperature graphs, it’s an easy sell—one look and it seems Gadzooks! We’re burning ourselves up!
“It was the belle of the ball,” Mr. McIntyre told me on a recent phone call from Ontario. “Its dance card was full.”
At least until Mr. McIntyre reported that the modern portion of that graph, which shows temperatures appearing to skyrocket in the last 100 years, relies on just 12 tree cores in Russia’s Yamal region. When Mr. McIntyre presented a second graph, adding data from 34 tree cores from a nearby site, the temperature spike disappears.
Mr. Briffa denounces Mr. McIntyre’s work as “demonstrably biased” because it uses “a narrower area and range of sample sites.” He says he and his colleagues have now built a new chronology using still more data. Here, as in similar graphs by other researchers, the spike soars once again. Mr. McIntyre’s “work has little implication for our published work or any other work that uses it,” Mr. Briffa concludes.
He and his colleagues may well ignore Mr. McIntyre, but the rest of us shouldn’t. While Mr. McIntyre’s image may use data from fewer sites, it still has nearly three times as many tree cores representing the modern era as Mr. Briffa’s original.
Yet Mr. McIntyre is first to admit his work is no bullet aimed at the heart of the theory of man-made climate change. Rather, his work—chronicled in papers co-written with environmental economist Ross McKitrick and more than 7,000 posts on his Climateaudit.org Weblog—does something much more important: It illustrates the uncertainty of a science presented as so infallible as to justify huge new taxes on rich countries along with bribes to poor ones in order to halt their fossil-fueled climbs to prosperity. Mr. McIntyre offers what many in the field do not: rigor.
It all started in 2002 when—as many might given the time and Mr. McIntyre’s mathematics background—he decided to verify for himself the case for action on climate change.
“It was like a big crossword puzzle,” he told me. “Business was a bit slow at the time, so I started reading up.”
Prior to the Briffa graph revelation, he had also caught a statistical error that undercut another exalted “hockey stick” graph prominently featured by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or IPCC, this one by Michael Mann, head of Pennsylvania State University’s Earth System Science Center. Alerts about review boards’ seemingly lax standards litter his blog, highlighting in particular the IPCC, which has used both the Mann and Briffa graphs in its reports. In 2007, Mr. McIntyre found a technical gaffe that forced NASA to correct itself and admit that 1934, not 1998, was the warmest year recorded in the continental U.S.
“At the beginning I innocently assumed there would be due diligence for all this stuff. … So often my mouth would drop, when I realized no one had really looked into it.”
Even more innocently, he assumed the billion-dollar climate change industry would welcome his untrained but painstaking work. Instead, Mr. McIntyre is subjected to every kind of venom—that he must be funded by Big Oil, by Big Business, by Some Texan Somewhere. For the record, the 62-year-old declares himself “past my best-by date, operating on my own nickel.”
Read the entire article here: Revenge of the Climate Laymen
The funniest bit of that article is the comments & one Barrie Harrop who seems to think that S.M. doesn’t publish in ‘reputable’ publications.
He was pointed to a few & still maintained this ridiculous claim.
DaveE.
Re: Robert E. Phelan (16:54:22)
“Is it at all possible that he doesn’t have a political bone in his body and simply wants honesty in science? What a concept!”
Steve Mc has hinted at his political leanings a few times and even ran a post and allowed comments regarding Obama’s election. Unlike most of us (presumably), he leans left politically. Here is his post on the election:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=4265
In that post Steve stated:
“I don’t often talk about my political views – though I’ve sometimes taken pains to point out that I do not share the political views of many readers. In American terms, Canada would be a blue state along the lines of Massachusetts; Toronto would be a liberal city in a blue state; and I live downtown in one of the most liberal constituencies in the city. None of this is unrelated to my political views. ”
That is what makes his scientific intregrity all the more impressive. His honesty in science tends to anger those in his own political camp, yet he presses forward relentlessly with the auditing.
He’s an Inspector Colombo clone.
“Ma’am … I must apologize. I have just one more question … “
Has anyone read the nasty comments on the WSJ article by Barrie Harrop?
Yeah, quite funny. He’s got 10 years invested in a windmill company (in Australia, I believe) and doesn’t want anyone rocking his green boat.
Robert Wood of Canada (16:20:47) : “I believe these people are discussing whatever under a statue of Athena; note the shield. Perhaps the artist was making a point about reason.”
That staff the goddess of wisdom is holding is a spear. Wisdom is not optional; stupidity will be punished. Bad science –> Bad karma.
“Has anyone read the nasty comments on the WSJ article by Barrie Harrop?
An amazing run of ad hominem attacks. I get the impression AGW’ers are really scared. The emperor is naked.”
I was just about to comment on that as well. I enjoyed when someone figured out he was the director of an environmental sustainability company and called him out on it. It seems a good number of people stand to make a lot of money with the AGW movement.
Jeremy (17:28:01) : Has anyone read the nasty comments on the WSJ article by Barrie Harrop?
Please provide a link. Thanks.
I had to email the chief prairie bureau of the Canadian Press to let her know that so far since the Yamal affair, the Finnish TV and the Wall Street Journal Europe were faster than the Canadian Press to interview Steve McIntyre! LOL
Willie and David’s article presents a solid counterpoint to this recent garbage piece by David Horton in the Huffington Post, “You’re no Galileo”:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-horton/youre-no-galileo_b_355799.html
Oh no. David Horton? The noted “polymath?” Seriously, this is a fella who married in, somehow. After a week his post has 9 comments. Even they ignore him.
As mentioned above, the Climate Scientists want McIntyre to do his own reconstructions !! . Proof that they have lost the plot. They cannot see that it is not a case of two or more rival views being argued in a court but simply that they be completely open with the data, their sampling methods and their logic.
Science depends on results being able to be replicated, and comments like “However, can the nuances of methodological developments be communicated to the laymen—and would they want to know? I do not think this would help.” , implies that there is a closed shop and thus closed minds.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof – not “Trust me”.
Phelan’s and LeftyMartin’s comments seem about right.
McIntyre isn’t dangerous to anyone. And the last time I heard he believes global warming (GW) is occurring, that man has some role (AGW) in that, and it is better to find out how much.
He is a very astute man who has the skills and curiosity to review some climate science papers. I don’t know, or care, why he decided to do so. As long as he does it honestly.
He called his activities auditing. So far he has caught a number of mistakes. Doing so does not settle the big question or shake the Universe. It just takes mistakes out of the science.
He has also found that people don’t like their work being checked. So he is routinely labeled an agent of the Devil. Or of Big Oil. Usually both.
He is especially capable in statistical analysis and had a long and successful technical career. Since Climate Science relies heavily, in some matters totally, on statistics he is on strong and familiar ground. Some of his detractors have learned that the hard way.
One of things I have admired about Steve McIntyre is that he does not claim to be a skeptic of AGW. In fact he comes down on posters who try to use his site as a soap box for anything other than the paper or method he is auditing.
He has on several occasions even stated that if he were a policy maker he would feel obliged to follow the consensus on matters of science.
The thing that he has done and continues to do is to keep the pressure on climate scientists to produce science rather than opinion dressed as science. I don’t think he has been very successful in cleaning up climate science, but he has shed a great deal of light on just how shoddy and dishonest so many of the top people of that field are.
Kim W hits nail on head:
That the AGW promoters cannot or will not be open and forth coming with their data, methods and processes is prima facia proof of their lack of actual science.
Michael (17:36:05) :
I thought this song appropriate for the thread topic. The global warming religion seems to be falling off a cliff.
That wouldn’t be a cliff at Sheep Mountain (http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7779) now would it? It seems strangely appropriate that the sheeple would be basejumping off there lemming style.
Bob Tisdale (18:17:40) : Please provide a link. Thanks.
Bob, the link to the WSJ article is at the top of this post.
The comments are below the WSJ article (2 pages, I think).
Bob, I just checked – the comments are at the top of the WSJ article.
Windmills and solar are very expensive to maintain. That’s the big hidden cost.
The real cost of any energy system is the TOTAL cost over its lifecycle divided by its utlization rate as a % of its rated power. Solar and wind have very low utilization rates and hence much higher total costs than coal or nukes.
Its a losers game. That is why they have to get the government involved – to prevent competition – and to bear the losing hand.
I still think what we have is “scientists” making the facts fit the funding,as for the politicians well they all know the truth, otherwise they would be falling over themselves to beg us not to buy goods from “dirty” manufacturing countries like China, as they do not even hint at this they have to know the reality.
Bulldust (18:54:11) :
That wouldn’t be a cliff at Sheep Mountain (http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7779) now would it?
Not that Sheep Mtn – but how about Sheep Mtn Colorado:
http://www.sangres.com/mountains/sheeps.htm
This Sheep Mountain produces natural CO2 for enhanced oil recovery in West Texas !
@Bob Tisdale: Please provide a link. Thanks.
http://tinyurl.com/ydfnday
Click on the comments tab to see all of Barrie’s nonsensical vitriol.
The title of the piece is:
Julian the Apostate Presiding at a Conference of Sectarians
This is a great article and Mr. McIntyre truly deserves this audience.
The discussion has a Mr. Barrie Harrop and he is a posterchild of the arrogance and ignorance, which I have never seen nor expected between scientists. Well, he’s not a scientist but simply copying the Manns, Rahmstorfs, Schmidts and others. They all have been trapped with hiding data, manipulating facts, suppressing other opinions.
This is exactly the strange behaviour that brought me and most likely many others to the sceptic camp, where you are encouraged to build your own picture.
Before I did absorb some of the climate facts, my gut feeling already told me that people acting this way are dishonest, un-scientific and just not worth to listen to.
Thank you, AGW guys. Keep doing your job as usual.
Wow, that Barrie Harrop fellow over at WSJ is some piece of work. What always amazes me even more than than the trolls are those who are as bad as Barrie, but use their own name. His level of ignorance and bile is just plain embarrassing.
the line I enjoyed the most:
“Methods certainly need to be continually refined and improved. I doubt that anyone in the paleoclimate community would disagree with that,” says Rob Wilson of the University of St. Andrews’s School of Geography and Geosciences. “However, can the nuances of methodological developments be communicated to the laymen—and would they want to know? I do not think this would help.”
Well Mr. Wilson, here is one “layman” who is helping to fund your research, and you better believe that I am interested in what you are doing!
Arrogant beyond belief!
…temperatures appearing to skyrocket in the last 100 years, relies on just 12 tree cores in Russia’s Yamal region. When Mr. McIntyre presented a second graph, adding data from 34 tree cores from a nearby site, the temperature spike disappears.
I’m having trouble believing that Briffa, et al, didn’t know about the flawed methodology. But I’ll continue to try to.