By Steve McIntyre from his camirror.wordpress.com site.
For the very first time, the Climategate Letters “archived” the deleted portion of the Briffa MXD reconstruction of “Hide the Decline” fame – see here. Gavin Schmidt claimed that the decline had been “hidden in plain sight” (see here. ). This isn’t true.
The post-1960 data was deleted from the archived version of this reconstruction at NOAA here and not shown in the corresponding figure in Briffa et al 2001. Nor was the decline shown in the IPCC 2001 graph, one that Mann, Jones, Briffa, Folland and Karl were working in the two weeks prior to the “trick” email (or for that matter in the IPCC 2007 graph, an issue that I’ll return to.)
A retrieval script follows.
For now, here is a graphic showing the deleted data in red. 
Figure 1. Two versions of Briffa MXD reconstruction, showing archived and climategate versions.shown below, clearly does not show the decline in the Briffa MXD reconstruction.
Contrary to Gavin Schmidt’s claim that the decline is “hidden in plain sight”, the inconvenient data has simply been deleted.
The reason, as explained on Sep 22, 1999 by Michael Mann to coauthors in 938018124.txt, was to avoid giving “fodder to the skeptics”. Reasonable people might well disagree with Gavin Schmidt as to whether this is a “a good way to deal with a problem” or simply a trick.
Figure 2. IPCC 2001 Fig 2.21 showing Briffa, Jones and Mann reconstructions together with HadCRU temperature.
Retrieval script:
##COMPARE ARCHIVED BRIFFA VERSION TO CLIMATEGATE VERSION
#1. LOAD ARcHIVED DATA
url<-"ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/treering/reconstructions/n_hem_temp/briffa2001jgr3.txt"
#readLines(url)[1:50]
Briffa<-read.table(url,skip=24,fill=TRUE)
Briffa[Briffa< -900]=NA
dimnames(Briffa)[[2]]<-c("year","Jones98","MBH99","Briffa01","Briffa00","Overpeck97","Crowley00","CRU99")
sapply(Briffa, function(x) range( Briffa$year[!is.na(x)]) )
# year Jones98 MBH99 Briffa01 Briffa00 Overpeck97 Crowley00 CRU99
#[1,] 1000 1000 1000 1402 1000 1600 1000 1871
#[2,] 1999 1991 1980 1960 1993 1990 1987 1997
Briffa= ts(Briffa,start=1000)
#2. LOAD CLIMATEGATE VERSION
loc="http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=146&filename=939154709.txt"
working=readLines(loc,n=1994-1401+104)
working=working[105:length(working)]
x=substr(working,1,14)
writeLines(x,"temp.dat")
gate=read.table("temp.dat")
gate=ts(gate[,2],start=gate[1,1])
#Comparison briffa=ts.union(archive= Briffa[,"Briffa01"],gate ) briffa=window(briffa,start=1402,end=1994) # plot.ts(briffa)
X=briffa
par(mar=c(2.5,3,2,1))
plot( c(time(X)),X[,1],col=col.ipcc,lwd=2,ylim=c(-1.2,.5),yaxs="i",type="n",axes=FALSE,xlab="",ylab="")
for( i in 2:1) lines( c(time(X)),X[,i],col=i,lwd=1)
axis(side=1,tck=.025)
labels0=seq(-1,1,.1);labels0[is.na(match(seq(-1,1,.1),seq(-1,1,.5)))]=""
axis(side=2,at=seq(-1,1,.1),labels=labels0,tck=.025,las=1)
axis(side=4,at=seq(-1,1,.1),labels=labels0,tck=.025)
box()
abline(h=0)
title("Hide the Decline")
legend("topleft",fill=2:1,legend=c("Deleted","Archived"))
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Anthony: Oops! I looked for it on your main page, didn’t see it, but didn’t scroll far enough down.
It appears the period from 1910-1950 appears to be way warmer than the last 20 years based on that grapth. But with a slight upturn from 1980-1990…The bottom appears to be around 1970’s…So 1930’s and 1950’s were .2-.5 warmer than today.
Is that right.
Also to note is around 1650 the height of the little ice age it’s only around .4-.5c cooler than today. I thought the little ice age was 2c colder than today.
Spartan79 (15:47:12) :
Tim S.: is the what you’re looking for?
Must admit that I have watched it a few times as it just makes me laugh sooo much.
“Climategate” has everybody rethinking global warming. Many are wondering — if leading scientists were tempted to finagle their data, is the evidence for catastrophic climate change weaker than previously thought?
Actually, the evidence was never even evidence.
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/what-is-%E2%80%94-and-what-isnt-%E2%80%94-evidence-of-global-warming/
Finbar (14:55:39) :
That’s one of their favorite propaganda techniques, mocking our legitimate concerns as if they are just some nut-ball conspiracy. They tell the truth about themselves, and laugh at it, as if it couldn’t possibly be true. It’s surprising how effective that has been, not just in perverting science, but in politics and business, as well. It’s harder to get away with in engineering, because when the design fails, it’s usually pretty clear who’s fault it is, though that won’t stop a good con artist from blaming the victim anyway. After all, what does he have to lose?
Heidi Deklein (15:50:39) :
Now I’m a believer
Not a trace of doubt in my mind
Come on Heidi, get a few friends together and make a Utube vid for all us people that know the song and where you are coming from.
p.s I’ve got a Heidi of my own now.
Pre-crime …
A staple of the “Human Rights” Industry in, among others, Canada, a *pre-crime* can be committed by utterance of any statements that is “*likely* to expose a person to hatred or contempt”. (Check out the litany of woes Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn have had to endure over the past three or four years.)
How is this any different from the *pre-crimes* committed by the Haldley CRUw and IPCC.
Effectively, by their collective malfeasance, anyone associated with pushing for climate change action resulting in increased taxes, is guilty of a pre-crime … in that the ensuing tax burden is guaranteed to have “likely resulted in the exposure of governments to the hatred and contempt of their taxpayers.”
In Ezra’s immortal words:
Fire.Them.All.
That graph is actually very frightening. If those proxies really were behaving like thermometers, we’ve been cheated out of 0.3-0.4C of cooling due to dodgy surface records. One could eyeball a continuation of the slow downward overall trend in temps since the Eemian and hello glaciation.
yeah, I know, one set of proxies. But still…
Finbar (14:55:39) :
P.S.
In fact, Monbiot is using a variant of that technique. Here illustrated by Claude Raines
Very effective, given all those he’s taken in with it.
Climategate reaches White House.
Holdren conspires with Mann and Jones to bash Soon/Baliunas when they write about Hockey Stick validation
From FOIA file
1066337021.txt
There seems to be a consistent missunderstanding by media interviewers about the meaning of Jone’s boast of using Mann’s ‘trick’ ‘to hide the decline.’ Should we worrry about it, I dunno. Too difficult for sound-bite interviews? Perhaps not.
The interviewers take the quote, out of context, to suggest that these guys were trying to hide the recent decline found in global temperature indicators (i.e., no warming since this century).
Whereas, as I understand it:
This is all about the dubious use of proxy data to make recent warming look historically extraordinary. The need to hide the decline since 1960 suggests that the proxy data set used to hide the MWP etc is not a good proxy. If the data was assessed as divergent from measured temperature after 1960 then maybe it is also wrong about 1260, or 1360 when other indicators suggest it was warmer than now. What has been found is clear evidence that these IPCC authors knowingly manipulated the data used as proof of recent extraordinary global warming….and then actively obstructed other scientists requests to check the data and what they had done with it.
A bit more than a sound bite, but, if this is right then, we might want to encourage this correction where possible. Otherwise, we might stand accused of allowing the quote to be missinterpreted out of context.
Mailman (15:20:19) :
“Sorry guys, being a mere mortal…what does this all mean (well, not the deleted data bit, but the data itself)?”
Read the legend in figure 2, look it up if you’re interested. You shouldn’t expect an education of a complex topic to be provided everytime someone new asks.
The data itself shows there was temperature data (inferred from reading tree rings – “tree data”) to around 1990, and that the “tree data” plotted on the graph left off around the most recent 30 years worth of that “tree data”. Look at the temperature anomaly in figure 1 at around 1990, about -.3c. That doesn’t show on figure 2.
HTH
‘ HACK ‘ ?? If this is a hack, I’m a climate scientist!
Syl, I agree, but I feel that the 1930s-1950’s where very close to the late 1980-1990’s. Also, I believe that the little ice age was at least 2c cooler than the 1998 peak.
I agree the 1930’s and 1950’s where very very warm across the globe. But looking at snow fall trends has me thinking that the 1980s and 1990 were much alike that time period. I feel its a pattern,,,but we are a middle of a respectable down turn not much unlike the 1960’s and 1970s when they where crying ice age.
I couldn’t help but giggle at the Google ad for solar power associated with this article 🙂
Why are people claiming RC is down? Last post by “Dan” on
26 November 2009 at 5:43 PM
Looks like this is finally breaking in the Canadian mainstream news media
http://www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/lorrie_goldstein/2009/11/26/11929676-sun.html
Toronto Sun – Lorrie Goldstein – SCATHING!
Mailman (15:20:19) :
Sorry guys, being a mere mortal…what does this all mean (well, not the deleted data bit, but the data itself)?
Regards
Mailman
———————————————————–
Among other things it means that the jury is still out on whether the planet is experiencing a long term warming trend( leaving aside the question of it actually being a bad thing or not ). If it is (getting hotter ), then are people really the cause? If no (to either of the above ), then future behavior of the global society becomes somewhat less clear. Translation: Global political and financial power will change hands yet again. How, and to whom, is undecided at present, but there are many contenders. It may turn out to be ” the devil you know” outcome, or a continuation of the well known ” King of the Hill” game we’ve been playing since we became bi-pedal. My bet is on the latter.
But of the ~ 6.7 billion people who occupy the planet, no more than a few million have any idea what any of it means and even fewer have any real say so in the outcome. The rest of us just live our lives the best we can.
This is maybe a little OT, but yesterday on CSPAN (in the US) they had a big trans-Atlantic conference on health issues surrounding AGW (but originating in the UK, I think). The rhetoric was pretty much that billions are going to die for lack of water, etc.
But I watched a little on the off chance that someone said something about the CRU-gate. Indeed one person did: Richard Horton, the editor of The Lancet.
He was rather full of venom toward those who were trying to make something of this (all timed to disrupt Copenhagen, you see). So I queried the internet on Mr. Horton.
He was the editor when the controversial article on Iraqi war casualties was printed…which I anticipated.
But I didn’t know that he published a rather infamous article of MMR and autism which was influential in reducing the vaccination rate in the UK.
This website is from a reporter from the Sunday Times which (if you click thru) will tell an interesting story.
http://briandeer.com/mmr/richard-horton.htm
There still is life in the old girl yet!
Straight after a dismal ‘question time’ on the BBC, that briefly touched on the subject of Global Warming in front of a mostly sullen audience, the programme ‘This Week’ came on the box.
Hosted by the excellent Andrew Neil, the first five minutes really rips into the politics and bad science behind AGW. Thanks messrs Neil and Portillo for that. Thanks also to Ms Abbott who after tentatively mentioning the recent floods in North England was clever enough not to pursue the matter when Mr Neil, puckishly, asked her about the 1954 floods in the same area.
Why do I think the above is on topic?
Firstly, it shows how effective the combination of humour and undoubted mastery of the topic (Neil and Michael) are in countering dissent ( Diane)
SMc, Anthony and many others have this gift in abundance but their talents are known of by too few at the moment. For those of us with less talent but the same aspirations to put Science back on its rightful pillar our role must be to make more aware of the issues permeating climate change.
I just tell acquaintances to Google Climategate- it seems to help.
Secondly, for those who can get ‘This Week’ on the BBC iPlayer the first five minutes will render your keyboard a soggy mess unless you remove all potable beverages first.
You have been warned!
Keith Minto (15:54:42)
Hear, hear!
>>>Sorry guys, being a mere mortal…what does this all mean?
And it also means that if the tree-ring data is not a good proxy for climate temperature, then they should not be using it to delete the Medieval Warming Period from history.
I fact, I wonder how they have derived this tree-ring data in the first place. I have always thought that you should only use tree rings for the last half of a tree’s life. For the first half, until it gets its head above the canopy, the tree rings represent the tree’s struggle for light with its neighbours – totally unconnected with temperature and climate. Only when the tree is mature, should its rings be counted.
Do they do this? I bet they don’t.
.
Melbourne 11 am Friday 27 Nov. A quick poll has indicated the Australian public are 81% against Emission Trading Tax and 7% are in favour. Yet we have both main political parties pushing for it. What is the modern definition of democracy?
Sounds familiar. Aren’t these the same bunch who were hollering from the rooftops that the WMD intelligence that was accepted by all of these countries was a con? Sorry guys, you already played that card.