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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WAG (23:42:16) :
How exactly is it asserted, and with what proof, that the issues that cause the divergence in the later tree rings are not issues in the earlier reconstructions?
docduke (08:44:33) : says:
As far as I am aware, Steve McI only runs R on Windows. Of course, you do have to have the appropriate R packages as well.
Anthony, I know we have not seen eye to eye but please let these posts run.
I have no selfish reasons for posting here, my only aim is to kill Copenhagen.
[snip]
REPLY: “Sophistry in politics” No and hell no. You proceeded to post bomb multiple threads here multiple times even after I told you the content you were pushing on your website was not welcome.
Hell you are doing it right now, multiple posts under difference names.
Coming back later and saying “we have not seen eye to eye” while at the same time engaging in post bombing at the same time insults my intelligence and the intelligence of readers here when what was called for was an apology.
Bugger off!
– Anthony
I don’t see any HTML in the comments, so I won’t try to compose links. My first Google search on R took me to http://www.omegahat.org. That is apparently obsolete. With a more determined try, I got to http://www.r-project.org and cran.r-project.org which are very much alive! The Windows version of R can be downloaded from http://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/base/. I walked through the options, but a full install with default startup would have gotten the same result. It took about 30 seconds to install and under 5 minutes to copy the scripts from this page and run them on a Windows 2000 platform. The result was a printable, full-color graph of the “Hide the Decline” plot! One doesn’t even need to know how to read R to get this far, though further analysis and validation will certainly require more understanding. Manuals are available at cran.r-project.org/manuals.html including a 15 MB PDF manual that prints in approximately 3,000 pages (it is alleged)!
All this stuff is great, but what do we do next?
1) I think its time to write a revision of IPCC’s stuff plus policy prescriptions using the finally “released” information to revise the – a chapter on the fraud should be included
2) I think a series of international symposia on rescuing and rehabilitating science should be convened. We should also include the totally hijacked Social Sciences. I see several years of work. It should begin with a re-affirmation of the scientific method and promulgation of safeguards and should be published as a text for use in science education.
3) Courses in ethics with ample case histories should be mandatory for science students. Engineers and lawyers have to study ethics and apply the codes in all their dealings and can lose their right to practice if breached – why not scientists?
4) A substitute for the Nobel Prize must be created – I don’t see how the NP can be even repaired. They have been handing out prizes at least since the last decade of the 20thCent. to some of the most undeserving characters of the period: Arafat-Rabin-Peres for “Peace” in the Middle East; Kofie Annan for presiding over the massacre in Rwanda and for his son’s ripping off of the Oil for Food Program in Iraq. The IPCC for its “hide the decline” and other cartoonerie, Al Gore for knowingly perpetrating lies that the UK school boards had to ban because of the disinformation of his film (the ACADEMY AWARDS should be at least shaken up and in the process they might give Robert Duval a long-overdue oscar) and the people that didn’t get a Nobel Prize is equally telling: Ted Turner (eventhough I’m beginning to wonder about his supporting the UN); Bill Gates (I wrote to an Oslo newspaper when I read their blurb on the illustrious prize winners of the year and admonished the committee for overlooking Bill Gates probably because he was a capitalist like Alfie Nobel.
“Academics around the world who have spent years working on papers using this data must be in full panic mode. By the admission of the global-warming theocracy’s own self-appointed experts, the data they have been using is simply “garbage.” ”
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/nov/27/the-global-cooling-cover-up/?feat=home_editorials
Rereke Whakaaro (01:07:36) :
Hmm, perhaps I could do some research on the topic of, “Comparative Attention Span in Diverse Cultural Settings, as Influenced by Anthropogenic Global Warming”?
Could get you some grant money.
Icarus:
“‘In plain sight’ means that far from being hidden, the decline in wood density was announced in one of the biggest science journals on the planet –
“Reduced sensitivity of recent tree-growth to temperature at high northern latitudes””
Ah yes I remember it well. Having noticed the decline in proxy temperatures where the real temperatures went up they came up with this marvellous tautology: It does not mean the tree ring data is not a proxy for temperature at all – No. Instead it shows that there is a “reduced sensitivity” to temperatures at northern latitudes. What period are they talking about? Why, the period when the tree rings diverged from measured temperatures. So having failed to confirm their proxies with the temperature record, instead of rejecting the proxies, they rejected the evidence of the divergence.
Marvellous science.
I’ve been reading this blog (daily) for many months now.
It is absolutely essential that people use alternative news media sites to educate themselves about what is going on, and I regard this particular site as the best example of the genre (internet revolution in the availability of information). I sincerely thank AW, mods and all the contributors for being leaders in the effort to provide an alternative to the corporate-controlled, brainwashing MSM on the issue of AGW.
The 10 minute video by the American chap in this thread made me understand what the ‘divergence problem’ is – i.e. since 1960 tree rings going down, temps going up. Thanks to you sir.
It also clarified for me that ‘hide the decline (hide the decline)’ actually refers to hiding the decline in tree ring thickness to cover up the divergence problem. Twisted web these people weave. I don’t mean HARRY. I’m a coder too – for 25+ years – I totally empathise with him.
People – a quite small proportion of the public – are picking it up to mean it means ‘hide the decline in temperatures), which I now know it doesn’t. That’s not too bad though, because the MSM ARE trying to hide the decline (in global temperatures) since 1998.
Apparently Terry Wogan mentioned it on BBC Radio 2 this morning. According to my colleague, using the words “lying to us since 1998”.
Terry Wogan’s retiring at the end of the year so I guess he can say what he wants now…
I have seen comments on this thread and others which express concern that YouTube and the MSM (which I guess YouTube is almost part of now) are suspiciously quiet on this issue at the moment. There is, apparently some disquiet out there over what that means.
And I think that’s a good thing. If it takes the climate issue to make the global populace wake up to the fact that our minds are being subjected to a constant and ongoing barrage of brainwashing – through the MSM – then that can only be a good thing.
The question then becomes:
What else have we been deceived about, by the governments, the lying MSM and the ‘scientific community’?
And the international bankers, who set up and funded the UN, whose IPCC seeks to fill us with fear and impose global governance and taxation, who also control the MSM and the politicians?
I suspect that, over the coming months, many WUWT contributors may start to feel exasperated because they know that it’s all a crock of sh*t – and we can more or less prove it – but they’re going ahead and doing it anyway (Copenhagen etc.). And the MSM will keep ramping up the AGW fear factor (ice caps melting, cities drowning) in the coming couple of weeks – like we get at the moment from the BBC while all this
really important CRU leak stuff is happening.
We’ll be saying ‘but we have proof’, ‘it’s obvious they’re lying’ and so on.
Prepare to be very disappointed folks. Or make such a noise that you won’t be. The time is definitely now.
Big shout out to all the new contributors since this story broke. The only way we are going to make them back off re. Copenhagen (and all the rest), is if we intimidate them with our numbers, i.e. the number of us enraged by this issue, as evidenced, for example by WUWT viewing stats, etc.
Dear Moderator,
If this strays too far afield, feel free to cut it or suggest a more appropriate venue.
———–
“This will be the final nail in the coffin…..”
“This could be the final nail in the coffin…”
“Could this be the final nail in the coffin..”
Answer: We don’t know because we can’t forsee the future! As fast as we expose the rot in the structure’s timbers, the dark side tries to hide it again with wallpaper. They say “See, our house still stands!” Someday, with 20/20 hindsight, we will look back and see who won. For now, we can only keep the faith and fight the good fight — despair is a sin.
I dig in the code because many others are qualified to dig in the emails and try to put them in context. Fewer are retired computer scientists, so they/I must dig through that muck for the rest. It is a sewer down here (and I am unanimous in that opinion). I’m trying (and no luck yet) to understand this software/data dump at a higher level; tie together all the disparate pieces, as it were.
The biggest problem (as with all reverse engineering) for me is understanding what they should have done, aside from using a proper development method vs. their ad-hoc trial-and-error development method. Only by showing what they should have done as compared to what they actually did do can we with certainty establish that they are wrong! Anything less lets them deflect the criticizm as just a matter of opinion. There is nothing of formal documentation to point the way home. Do the following questions have answers?
1. What is the formal definition of the Earth’s Instantaneous Temperature? Here is what I mean by this: If I have a thermometer it will continuously vary in value, but at any instant of time I may read the instrument and determine the temperature at that instant. So, If I had a large number of thermometers randomly distributed about the Earth and read them all at the same instant of time,
is the arithmetic mean of the (gigantically) large number of individual instantaneous temperatures the Earth’s Instantaneous Temperature, or should a different central tendency estimator be used vice the mean.
2. What is the formal definition of the Earth’s Average Temperature over a given time period? Here is what I mean by this: Consider the following hypothetical case:
Day1 20, 30, 40, 50, 50, 40, 30, 20
Day2 20, 20, 35, 50, 35, 20, 20, 20
Day3 20, 35, 50, 50, 50, 50, 35, 20
If the preceeding data were accurate temperatures taken on 3 hour intervals at a fixed location on three consecutive days, do all three days have the same average temperature just because they have identical highs and lows? My (fast fading) recollection of university physics and chemistry classes suggests the answer is no. In addition, my grand-daughter in high-school said the answer is no. Am I making too much of nothing? Is it the case that the uncertainty of individual average measurements when averaged across space, then averaged over time provides a much more certain result? I also took Stats, and have some past experience in QA, but I’m not completely comfortable that I have a handle on this.
In times past, I have encountered cases of “since we can’t measure what we want, let’s measure what we can (and ignore the difference).” Is this just another such case? In my defense, I have tried to search for the answer to these two questions on my own, but have only found double-talk gobbledy-gook, and precious little of that. Guess Google isn’t my friend after all. Can anyone point me to a clear answer to either (or both) of the above questions?
p.s. My symapthies are with Readme-Harry; for all we know he may have left things better than he found them.
Gerhard Gerlich, Ralf D. Tscheuschner
Falsification of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics
http://arxiv.org/abs/0707.1161v4
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v4.pdf
(Submitted on 8 Jul 2007 (v1), last revised 4 Mar 2009 (this version, v4))
Abstract: The atmospheric greenhouse effect, an idea that many authors trace back to the traditional works of Fourier (1824), Tyndall (1861), and Arrhenius (1896), and which is still supported in global climatology, essentially describes a fictitious mechanism, in which a planetary atmosphere acts as a heat pump driven by an environment that is radiatively interacting with but radiatively equilibrated to the atmospheric system.
According to the second law of thermodynamics such a planetary machine can never exist. Nevertheless, in almost all texts of global climatology and in a widespread secondary literature it is taken for granted that such mechanism is real and stands on a firm scientific foundation. In this paper the popular conjecture is analyzed and the underlying physical principles are clarified. By showing that (a) there are no common physical laws between the warming phenomenon in glass houses and the fictitious atmospheric greenhouse effects, (b) there are no calculations to determine an average surface temperature of a planet, (c) the frequently mentioned difference of 33 degrees Celsius is a meaningless number calculated wrongly, (d) the formulas of cavity radiation are used inappropriately, (e) the assumption of a radiative balance is unphysical, (f) thermal conductivity and friction must not be set to zero, the atmospheric greenhouse conjecture is falsified.
Comments: 115 pages, 32 figures, 13 tables
published as International Journal of Modern Physics B, Vol. 23, No. 3 (2009)p.275-364
I have the most recent version of this paper on my desktop and review it frequently. It is mostly understandable but it doesn’t help me to make sense of this CRU-d. There must be some sense in this crud, why can’t I see it? What’s wrong with me? Help?
I suggest you all be very careful to emphasise that the problem is solely with the (so called) evidence for the idea that current warming is a historically unique event, which in turn has been used to justify requiring us to look for a historically unique culprit, that is – lo & behold – industrialisation which produces CO2.
Once the proxy data is revealed as unreliable – not just because of tree ring issues but also because other proxies all clash – then all we know is that temperatures have & are varying, and are a bit warm at present, probably. No need to look for a unique “anthropgenic” contribution. AGW converts will claim you are denying there has been warming, which is not really the key issue. The issue is “hockey stick – or not?”
Quite separately, I understand there are major issues with the science that CO2 is the major cause of warming.
Fortuitously, we do need to get away from burning oil, but lets drive policy from the correct facts, not from politically/green-inspired belief.
The elephant in the room is over population, IMHO, but that’s another story.
Keep up the good work!!
>>Can someone help me/us to understand the full
>>significance of this. I’m really confused.
Scientist, he say that tree rings are very good proxy for temperature, so we know temperatures in ancient past.
Scientist, he say that there was no Medieval Warming (MWP), because tree rings say so, and we all believe tree rings.
Scientist, he likes trees to say this, because the MWP [SNIP] his CO2 warming idea, as there were no coal-fires power stations in 1350. Good trees, well done you lovely reliable tree rings.
However.
Tree rings, well she says that temperatures have been decreasing since 1970.
Scientist, he says you stupid [SNIP] tree rings, real temperatures must have been increasing after 1970, because we have deliberately ignored UHI to make it so. And we have told everyone so. So I will delete you stupid unreliable rings after 1970 – because keeping you will invalidate all our other arguments.
.
Sorry, that was sarcasm at the end (aimed at them, not you all). What I should have said is “best I can figure out, you just can’t get there from here.” Trouble is who would take my word for it since I’ve not published in peer-reviewed journals?
The prior post was an over long way to say “If the biggest part of finding the right answer is asking the right question, then in this case what is the question we are missing?
MattN (19:18:24) :
“Say, where’s Tom P. these days?”
The devil is in the details:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/24/the-people-vs-the-cru-freedom-of-information-my-okole%E2%80%A6/
“Well, that explains a few things … they’ve managed to “persuade UEA to ignore all further FOIA requests if the people have anything to do with Climate Audit.” I hadn’t noticed that exemption in the FOI documentation I’d seen. Call me crazy, but I don’t think that’s in FOI Exemptions, I doubt if it’s legal, and it definitely isn’t ethical. I note that they are circling the wagons in Australia as well … this is followed by:
Phil Jones to Thomas Peterson of NOAA, 6/20/2007 AM (1182342470) :
Tom P.
Just for interest. Don’t pass on.
Might be a precedent for your paper to J. Climate when it comes out. There are a few interesting comments on the CA web site. One says it is up to me to prove the paper from 1990 was correct, not for Keenan to prove we’re wrong. Interesting logic.
Cheers
Phil
Wei-Chyung, Tom,
I won’t be replying to either of the emails below [FROM STEVE MCINTYRE AND DOUG KEENAN], nor to any
of the accusations on the Climate Audit website. I’ve sent them on to someone here at UEA to see if we
should be discussing anything with our legal staff. The second letter seems an attempt to be nice to me,
and somehow split up the original author team. I do now wish I’d never sent them the data after their FOIA
request!
Cheers
Phil
He obviously views sending data in response to an FOIA request as optional.
Thomas Peterson to Jones, same email:
Fascinating. Thanks for keeping me in the loop, Phil. I won’t pass it on but I will keep it in the back of my mind when/if Russ asks about appropriate responses to CA requests. Russ’ view is that you can never satisfy them so why bother to try?”
REPLY: Not the same Tom P. that posts here. That Tom P. is based in the UK at Imperial College. Not related to NCDC ‘s Tom Peterson at all. – Anthony
Someone at RC posted the NOAA link from above. Gavin, as smug as he is, replied that one should look in the right place. ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/treering/reconstructions/n_hem_temp/nhemtemp_data.txt
Steve, another wild goose chase I predict.
Ciao
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover_30y.uk.php
You like the Danish polar temperatures graph, but how about the sea extent graph?
REPLY: Apparently you weren’t skeptical enough to note on the right hand side that the graph comes from The National Snow and Ice Data Center, not DMI. NSIDC has an agenda, particularly now that it is headed by Dr. Mark Serreze who boasted in the media that we’d would see an “ice free north pole”. Didn’t happen. – Anthony
REPLY: Not the same Tom P. that posts here. That Tom P. is based in the UK at Imperial College. Not related to NCDC ’s Tom Peterson at all. – Anthony
I stand corrected. Do we know if the Tom P. who used to post here has any affiliation at all with either the motley CRU or the Team? His (lack of) understanding of statistical methodology as well as his demeanor towards data sampling and manipulation would seem to make him fully qualified for membership of those cliques.
sceptical (22:44:01) :
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover_30y.uk.php
“You like the Danish polar temperatures graph, but how about the sea extent graph?”
That is an incredibly lame presentation of the NH sea ice data, showing basically only September minimum, where 91.67% of the annual sea ice data have been discarded. Why not show all of the data to get a full picture?
Re. Mark Serreze, have you taken him to task for his appallingly stupid and antiscientific (no basis in science) prediction of “ice free north pole” in 2008?
Anyone interested in anything beyond this self gratifying hysteria, can look at the website below for a fact update and reality check on the nature of the stolen data from CRU.
https://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/2009/nov/homepagenews/CRUupdate
This feeding frenzy is disgusting. You all know that facts haven’t changed one way or the other. How about Watts and McIntyre release ALL their emails for the last 5 years to public scrutiny in the interest of freedom of information? I fully support an impartial inquiry, but it must include all relevant information.. INCLUDING ALL OF YOUR (Watts/McIntyre et al) data and emails and a criminal investigation into who stole the data and who knew it was happening. Then and only then can we clear this muddy water.
You do realise they hid – I mean, PUBLISHED – this discrepancy in Nature in 1998. Those wiley scientists hid their data in plain sight, in one of the most widely-read science journals, 10 years ago, right where denialists like McIntyre would never think to look!
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v391/n6668/abs/391678a0.html
Wow! Informational whiplash going from my local newspaper, Maine’s own Lewiston Sun Journal, to this thread. I read LSJ’s news through in about six minutes, spending at least two on the comics. On the other hand, I’ve let my breakfast coffee go cold in the hour-plus I’ve happily spent here. There was even a comics section (Hide the Decline” lol) and an informative embedded video lecture at 16:25:14! Superb! I learned tons and am properly and righteously mad as hell.
I love the Internet! Now, which way to the Bastille? The wheels have come off the GW HoaxWagon and I want to be there for the ritual burning of the carcass. I’m not even sure that I want to maintain my calm, collected and of-so-reflective outer facade for this event.
More recent in second half of article::
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/10/working-to-develop-more-reliable-methodology-keith-briffa/
Thank you so much for posting!! We have been covering Climagegate in depth at Common Cents…
http://www.commoncts.blogspot.com