I mentioned yesterday in the press release thread:
So here’s the question, the press release below mentions sediments. Place your bets now on whether the Tiljander sediment series remains inverted or not.
Peer review doesn’t seem to catch the problem of using inverted data. That’s a good question for science and the peer reviewers. I suggest those who have contact put the question to them, because the results will look different when the data is used properly. In case anyone doubts this. The inversion was confirmed by the principal researcher that gathered the data, Tiljander, who confirmed this in an email to Steve McIntyre. – Anthony
============================
Yet another Upside Down Mann out
Science published today yet-another-Mann-et-al-reconstruction:
Michael E. Mann, Zhihua Zhang, Scott Rutherford, Raymond S. Bradley, Malcolm K. Hughes, Drew Shindell, Caspar Ammann, Greg Faluvegi, and Fenbiao N: Global Signatures and Dynamical Origins of the Little Ice Age and Medieval Climate Anomaly, Science 326 (5957), 1256. [DOI: 10.1126/science.1177303].
Seems to me that Mann has re-discovered the Medieval Warm Period.
I had a quick look at the paper, SI, and the code. What seems to be done this time is that the proxy network of Mann et al (2008) is processed with a slightly modified screening of Mann et al (2008), and then the reconstruction is done with a slightly modified RegEM CFR of Mann et al (2007)! Now to answer the question that seems to be on everyone’s lips: yes, Tiljander series are still used as inverted. This can be seen from the positive screening correlation values reported in the file 1209proxynames.xls. In fact, going quickly through the screening code, it seemed to me that they have really “moved on” from the screening employed in Mann et al (2008): only “two-sided test” is used!
%------------------------------------------------------------------
%% below is for selecting full/screened/1856-1925 screened/1926-1995 screened proxy-network
%% replacing "abs(z(4,i))>=0.165"/"abs(z(5,i))>=0.513" in line 75/84 with the followings for your expected proxy-network
%% abs(z(4,i))>=0 / abs(z(5,i))>=0 (full proxy-network)
%% abs(z(4,i))>=0.162 / abs(z(5,i))>=0.496 (screening over 1850-1995)
%% abs(z(6,i))>=0.195 / abs(z(7,i))>=0.602 (screening over 1896-1995)
%--
This means that if a proxy has a strong inverted correlation to the (two-pick?) local temperature, it gets picked – no matter what the physical interpretation is! Since RegEM doesn’t care about the sign, it is now really so that the sign does not matter to them anymore. Anything goes!
I’m speechless.
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New speak: Abnormal Science == Normal Science?
Sorry in advance, but I’m afraid I’ve been moved to butcher a verse of that nice Four Ages Of Man poem by Yeats:
He with Tiljander
Waged a fight
But Mann won
Tiljander is now upright . . .
Arn Riewe (13:19:08) : However truth prevails and reaches the millions, as shown by WUWT hits.
Good quote, Arn. Reminds me of this one, taken out of context but still valid: “….If we [the UK] fall, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science…” –Winston Churchill, June 18, 1940.
Well, the UK has fallen. The watermelons are in full control, there. Keep America free!
“Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy.” –Churchill
I commend this
[snip – don’t post this sort of juvenile garbage PPT here, we don’t need any more of this. – Anthony]
Thanks for posting. If I understand Kauffman’s “confusion”above, if comes about from a momentary lapse in judgement in how to use the Korttajarvi River varves: does increased density of sedimentation below the river imply greater temperature in the 20th century – or less?
Am I correct in my understanding that increased varve density implied heavier precipitation upstream, and hence declining temps? In any case Kauffman evidently forgot to invert them. The response to his e-mail came a day later.
Ric Werme said,
But the corollary to this may also have been true…
Kauffman’s e-mail is one of a string. On Sep 4, 2009, at 5:24 PM, Nick McKay responded:
In other words, you should use whatever does fit your purposes.
“Stephen Brown (12:56:03) :
@ur momisugly Stan (12:27:28) :
Both Australia and New Zealand have discovered that their “scientists” have been actively tampering with recorded data. Do you think that Canada is exempt from this phenomenon?”
It’s even worse when OZ CSIRO scientists just use Club of Rome data on AGW/CC and rubber stamp it claiming it was right with their own version of play the climate computer game.
Ok, fine, here we are. So, Penn State needs to be 1: made aware of the fact that Mann is still using inverted data, 2: asked how this was allowed to reach publication when it had been already well known in the scientific community that Mann had previously used these series with the data inverted and 3. asked how these results can be refuted in a public manner now that the paper has been published so that other researchers who might cite this paper know that it used data inverted from the actual data to reach its conclusion.
Now it probably doesn’t matter because I believe it has been shown that Mann’s math returns the same result no matter what you feed it so the inverted data might make no difference. I believe his math produces a hockey stick if you feed it white noise. As long as everyone is clear on that point, I believe that is all that matters. The point being that everyone needs to be clear on that point and that requires a very public statement.
I hate to seem stupid, but can someone point me to where the inverted data shows up in those graphs at the top of this post?
A new word for our vocabulary:
“ClimaTautology”
(n) The practice of relating every extreme weather event to Climate Change, in order to create fear and/or secure funding.
“ClimaTautologist”
(n) A practitioner of ClimaTautology.
Tautology [in Logic]:
a. a compound propositional form all of whose instances are true, as “A or not A.”
b. an instance of such a form, as “This candidate will win or will not win.”
Mann can’t publish a paper with Tiljander in the correct orientation, as that will be admission of an error on his behalf and would contradict his statements about the sign not mattering.
Interesting how the MWP is in the process of a make-over, an anomaly, to me, means an oddity or something wrong.
Google search on ClimateGate
you’ll never guess whose pictures comes up with the search.
http://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&channel=s&hl=en&source=hp&q=Climategate+&btnG=Google+Search
Would anyone volunteer to take Michael Mann’s place?
“ClimaTautology”
Easy to allow to happen when “peer review” is reduced to little more than spell checking and looking for grammatical errors. It appears that the science of certain people is beyond reproach and can not be questioned without risking one’s career or the publisher risking their “prestige”.
Yet again, another example of the the “beer-reviewed” media doing a better fact checking job than the “peer-reviewed” media.
Mike (11:25:07) :
My “stance”, as you put it, is just routine mathematics. Storks don’t come into it, rather it is Bayesian expectation of what is a relevant influence. Once Mann (or whoever) decides sediment density (or whatever) is relevant, then you clap it on and calculate the regression coeficients in tandem with the other contributors. Mathematically, once you do you the multiple regression, it makes no difference at all whether any of the factors were upside-down — because its coefficient will come out the same, just with the opposite sign (positive or negative). This is not a “stance” — it’s just math. Mann is right about this in terms of formal decidability.
I don’t want to defend Mann because I think his thesis is wrong, but right is right. I’ve done plenty of multiple regression myself (I am a published amateur scientist), and it really makes no difference which way you hold them. Darn.
@Squidly (13:27:57) :
Yes, checked it at 14:06,
no comments.
Sounds like discussion a la BBC:
Let’s everybody explain his opinion.
In the end, delete ’em all!
Would fit to ‘The Guardian’, too.
Did happen before, but stronger:
“Kill ’em all! Our Lord will select the good ones.”
Hummh, my sense of humor is really getting dark.
Gonna leave now, it’s nearly midnight here.
If Steve McIntyre wasn’t peer reviewer, then it’s worthless.
Jean S, can you tell me this:
Has Mann released all data and all code required to produce his results? I have been challenging the BBC to investigate this, as they wrote an article about this study (4-5 days after climategate arrived) without mentioning any caveats!
Any Penn State alumni here? Complain. It is embarrassing your school. Schools used to listen to complaints like that. Not sure if they still do, though.
NZ Willy (14:12:58) :
“I don’t want to defend Mann because I think his thesis is wrong, but right is right. I’ve done plenty of multiple regression myself (I am a published amateur scientist), and it really makes no difference which way you hold them. Darn.”
This is one of the most perplexing statistical elements to me as a layman. If signs make no difference, how is a positive or negative trend established? Would this imply that if temps were declining by 10C per decade that the sign makes no difference and that we would be showing massive increases in warming? Please help the unwashed masses understand.
Steve S. (11:06:39) :
“I’d like to know where in the IPCC/AGW movement is there clean and reliable science?
There must be some components which are untainted.”
If it was possible to remove a component and still retain function the IPCC would have done so before the greens woke up to the theoretical possibility.
There is no Q in “Team”. There is no R2 ditto. There is no Y in “Team”. If you don’t play ball there will be no U in “Team”. U don’t want that because…
There are a virtually limitless number of G’s in “Team”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/climatechange/2009/06/the_unpredictable_weather.html
What happens to a BBC employee if they get toward the edge of the reservation…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/climatechange/richard_cable/
Yet the guy with no wedding vegetables is still “editing” Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DSC_1150-w-smile.JPG
There is no(t yet) justice.
We do, however, have steven mosher (11:57:23) :
Utterly wonderful Steven. Thank you.
Put him in the penalty box for high-sticking.
Maybe Mann and his friends at Hadley CRU just haven’t found the right charting ALGORithm … pun intended.
We knew of the two branches of Science: Pure and Applied Sciences. We will now need to add a new branch the “Anything Goes Science” or “Twaddle Science”… any other names come to mind?
I had a prof in college who called this sort of thing “just-so” science, which I find quite apt.
Arn Riewe (14:55:55)
As I said, if you hold the input data upside-down, then the output coefficient is the opposite sign (positive or negative) to what it would have been. But the result is harder to explain to a lay audience. It is the same if you say “lower density wood implies a higher temperature” or “higher density wood implies a lower temperature”. If your output graph has temperature in an ascending scale, then you prefer to say the first of these because it is straightforward. But it is equally valid to say the second. But no hockey stick for me.
I see they turned off comments on the RC web site regarding the IPCC document with new hockeys stick and strangely old Arctic sea ice extent data (the make a big point in the photo of the 2007 extent minimum):
“Comments are now turned off. Unfortunately, the comments are now running about 10:1 insults and innuendo. Serious discussion seems to have largely died off. The last couple of posters did raise some reasonable questions, and I will respond to them after Thanksgiving. Meanwhile happy Thanksgiving to all the American readers (and to everyone else, for that matter).–Eric”
Gee why do you think this is, Eric? Could it be people finally getting tired of the fraud and deception? I sincerely hope this crew gets called up to account by Inhofe very soon. Preferably before Copenhagen, but I guess that is a little too optimistic.