by Steve McIntyre
Even in their Nov 24, 2009 statement, the University of East Anglia failed to come clean about the amount of decline that was hidden. The graphic in their statement continued to “hide the decline” in the Briffa reconstruction by deleting adverse results in the last part of the 20th century. This is what Gavin Schmidt characterizes as a “good thing to do”.
First here is the Nov 2009 diagram offered up by UEA:
Figure 1. Resized UEA version of Nov 2009, supposedly “showing the decline”. Original here ,
Here’s what UEA appears to have done in the above diagram.
While they’ve used the actual Briffa reconstruction after 1960 in making their smooth, even now, they deleted values after 1960 so that the full measure of the decline of the Briffa reconstruction is hidden. Deleted values are shown in magenta. Source code is below.
Figure 2. Emulation of UEA Nov 2009, using all the Briffa reconstruction.
R SOURCE CODE:
##COMPARE ARCHIVED BRIFFA VERSION TO CLIMATEGATE VERSION
#1. LOAD BRIFFA (CLIMATEGATE VERSION) # archive is truncated in 1960: ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/treering/reconstructions/n_hem_temp/briffa2001jgr3.txt”
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])
#2. J98 has reference 1961-1990 #note that there is another version at ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/contributions_by_author/jones1998/jonesdata.txt”
loc=”ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/contributions_by_author/jones2001/jones2001_fig2.txt” test=read.table(loc,skip=17,header=TRUE,fill=TRUE,colClasses=”numeric”,nrow=1001) test[test== -9.999]=NA count= apply(!is.na(test),1,sum) test=ts(test,start=1000,end=2000) J2001=test[,"Jones"]
#3. MBH : reference 1902-1980 url<-"ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/contributions_by_author/mann1999/recons/nhem-recon.dat" MBH99<-read.table(url) ;#this goes to 1980 MBH99<-ts(MBH99[,2],start=MBH99[1,1])
#4. CRU instrumental: 1961-1990 reference
# use old version to 1997 in Briffa archive extended
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")
Briffa= ts(Briffa,start=1000)
CRU=window(Briffa[,"CRU"],start=1850)
tsp(CRU) # 1850 1999 #but starts 1871 and ends 1997
delta<-mean(CRU[(1902:1980)-1850])-mean(CRU[(1960:1990)-1850]);
delta # -0.118922
#used to get MBH values with 1961-1990 reference: compare to 0.12 mentioned in Climategate letters
#get updated version of CRU to update 1998 and 1999 values
loc="http://hadobs.metoffice.com/crutem3/diagnostics/hemispheric/northern/annual"
D=read.table(loc) #dim(D) #158 12 #start 1850
names(D)=c("year","anom","u_sample","l_sample","u_coverage","l_coverage","u_bias","l_bias","u_sample_cover","l_sample_cover",
"u_total","l_total")
cru=ts(D[,2],start=1850)
tsp(cru) # 1850 2009
# update 1998-1999 values with 1998 values CRU[(1998:1999)-1849]= rep(cru[(1998)-1849],2)
#Fig 2.21 Caption
#The horizontal zero line denotes the 1961 to 1990 reference
#period mean temperature. All series were smoothed with a 40-year Hamming-weights lowpass filter, with boundary constraints
# imposed by padding the series with its mean values during the first and last 25 years.
#this is a low-pass filter
source("http://www.climateaudit.org/scripts/utilities.txt") #get filter.combine.pad function
hamming.filter<-function(N) {
i<-0:(N-1)
w<-cos(2*pi*i/(N-1))
hamming.filter<-0.54 – 0.46 *w
hamming.filter<-hamming.filter/sum(hamming.filter)
hamming.filter
}
f=function(x) filter.combine.pad(x,a=hamming.filter(40),M=25)[,2]
## WMO Figure at CRU #http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/2009/nov/homepagenews/CRUupdate #WMO: http://www.uea.ac.uk/polopoly_fs/1.138392!imageManager/1009061939.jpg #2009: http://www.uea.ac.uk/polopoly_fs/1.138393!imageManager/4052145227.jpg
X=ts.union(MBH=MBH99+delta,J2001,briffa=briffa[,"gate"],CRU=cru ) #collate Y=data.frame(X); year=c(time(X)) sapply(Y, function(x) range(year [!is.na(x)]) ) # MBH J2001 briffa CRU # [1,] 1000 1000 1402 1850 # [2,] 1980 1991 1994 2009
smoothb= ts(apply(Y,2,f),start=1000)
xlim0=c(1000,2000) #xlim0=c(1900,2000)
ylim0=c(-.6,.35)
par(mar=c(2.5,4,2,1))
col.ipcc=c("blue","red","green4","black")
par(bg="beige") plot( c(time(smoothb)),smoothb[,1],col=col.ipcc,lwd=2,bg="beige",xlim=xlim0,xaxs="i",ylim=ylim0,yaxs="i",type="n",axes=FALSE,xlab="",ylab="deg C (1961-1990)") usr 1960 points( c(time(smoothb))[temp],smoothb[temp,"briffa"],pch=19,cex=.7,col=”magenta”)
well, my reply to all this is Chiefio-size-length. YOU HAVE BEEN WARMED!
“ClimateGate reflections: Groupthink, Courtesy, Trolls, and Good Science”
For the first time ever, I was cross with WUWT for allowing a whole thread on an important topic to get railroaded by one hysterical alarmist. It drowned Steve’s important point, namely that the “hide the decline” is still continuing, and it hid my own “absolutely essential” contribution 🙂 ……….. rats! And Tom Vonk was also not amused… but then Plato Says said “Oh TomVonk don’t be such a square. CTM gave us all a bit of light relief.” and Plato Says also has a point.
It made me start thinking about the conditions which brought about this…. err, emotional outburst… and also remember that whilst various climate skeptics have been faced with serious threats to profession, life and limb, I’ve now heard that Prof Jones has had to ask for police protection. This concerns me. The last thing I want is that my actions should inspire anything smacking of revenge.
ClimateGate, as a high point in the saga of the serial corruption of Climate Science, has affected a lot of us very deeply. Many here (self included) admit to being hooked on WUWT, CA, whatever, as a lifeline to sanity. Many of us have burned the midnight oil since Climategate broke. WUWT, amazing as ever in its prolific outpouring of key material as well as courtesy, has been on overdrive yet has kept going, and is evolving to accommodate developments.
If ever one wanted proof that you cannot objectify Science by removing the human element, this is it. WUWT and CA have above all taught and reminded me that people make or break the science, and that courtesy is the first prerequisite for… the development of good science. Courtesy gives one space to explore those “aha!” flashes of insight, without being made to feel foolish. And it is a give-and-take process, as the best of us can go over the top in the heat of the moment. Likewise, I have compassion for the belief the CRU cabal and many other warmists have, that they are latter-day Robin Hoods tackling Dangerous Global Warming. Compassion, but not respect. This belief, which has a lot to do with the phenomenon of “Group Think”, is a dangerous one.
Here are eight symptoms indicative of groupthink according to Wikipedia sourcing Janis1977.
1. Illusions of invulnerability creating excessive optimism and encouraging risk taking.
2. Rationalizing warnings that might challenge the group’s assumptions.
3. Unquestioned belief in the morality of the group, causing members to ignore the consequences of their actions.
4. Stereotyping those who are opposed to the group as weak, evil, biased, spiteful, disfigured, impotent, or stupid.
5. Direct pressure to conform placed on any member who questions the group, couched in terms of “disloyalty”.
6. Self censorship of ideas that deviate from the apparent group consensus.
7. Illusions of unanimity among group members, silence is viewed as agreement.
8. Mind guards — self-appointed members who shield the group from dissenting information.
The collapse of the UK bank Northern Rock is thought to be a recent major example of groupthink. I would add the Challenger disaster, the Madoff financial deceptions, the mass suicide of the followers of Jim Jones, and the rise of the Third Reich. And, to some extent, every single religion – in which Scientism and Atheism and Warmism have all the worst qualities of religions. And I don’t think WUWT is exempt either. But having said this, I think that groupthink may be part of our survival psychology – perhaps it’s there for a reason – and the best we can do is become aware so that it serves rather than drives.
Recently several posts of high scientific merit have been posted, during this time of “high noise to signal ratio” and I hope they do not just get buried. I hope that the new ClimateGate department will help archive not just the important “ClimateGate” news but also the unfolding good science, so that its development can continue. I hope this might be an opportunity to develop a contents index to the website, rather like our opposite numbers Skeptical Science, Gristmill and RealClimate have already got, IMO quite rightly. For in the end, it is the science to which we must continue to refer, even though close on the heels of this comes the question – how the heck do I communicate to a rabid warmist?
I faced this question ages back and decided that being an amateur put me in the strong position of seeing things afresh and that I had enough grasp of science and scientific method to write up a Primer, an introduction to sceptical / realistic Climate Science, with adequate science and from the point of view of an ex-warmist – and that this would be a Good Thing.
I could see clearly that a skeptics’ wiki would be desirable, even ideal… but lacked the skill or time to do this. But ClimateGate is another opportunity to do something like this, to consolidate the skeptics’ knowledge base, to be able to speak both to professionals like Judith Curry, to dedicated amateurs who have vital professional skills like RomanM, to dedicated amateurs who lack skills but care about good science, and even (by association) to dedicated amateurs like Aimee who lack skills and seem (to us) to lack all vestiges of commonsense, courtesy, or understanding of Scientific Method. Aimee has succumbed to the going “group think” about climate change. But are we free of group think ourselves? Do we need to step outside the whole process a bit more, to see… important breakthroughs in the whole of Science being given a chance, that would not have come about without this crisis?…. a difficult birth-process?…. the future of Science By Blog?…. how to help reclaim good science?…. how to discern and sideline the religious/groupthink elements on ALL sides?…. and perhaps recognize that it is ok to be passionate…. and even fail sometimes…. if we can also just step outside ourselves and watch, become aware…. and leave space for…. Life to unfold…. WUWT…. back to passionate curiosity.
No conclusions, we are in the middle of interesting times… but just as the Silent Minute was the “one weapon the Germans could not match” during the second World War, so reflection is…. perpetually a source of new life and hope.
Other threads in which I could make this point…but I’m here.
While in engineering school, I didn’t understand why I had to take Engineering Economics. As it turns out, applied scientists are often constrained by more pragmatic concerns such as resources (input such as investment) and consequences (output such as benefit). In fact, some unintended consequences are the result of poor design…exploding fuel tanks, disintegrating tires, or thrown compressor blades.
Well, it seems that AGW scientists could also benefit from understanding the trade-offs associated with the allocation of scarce resources. A little exposure to cost-benefit analysis, understanding of risk-reward, and the concept of no free lunches could be a good thing.
Seems as if the warmists want to put off all risk (eliminate CO2 emissions for fear of questionable climatic consequences) at any cost (spend other people’s money – i.e. mine) for the purpose of …(?)…saving the planet, polar bears, whales, kittens…and millions of other species.
Maybe Copenhagen should open with a short course/seminar in economics…and not the Marxist or Keynsian style!
de Rode –
95% of all CO2 production would be emitted even without humans on the planet.
In 1997, Indonesian peat fires may have released 13% – 40% as much carbon as fossil fuel burning does in a single year
I know I rely on Wiki – but the point is the same.
“”” Aimee Gardens (23:20:28) :
It still amazes me why you deniers are willfully accepting that millions of species going extinct every month and the polar caps being bombarded by solar radiation. Do you enjoy watching your planet explode like a kitten burned alive in a microwave on high for 10 minutes? I think something is wrong with you people 🙁
Reply: I’m allowing this unsnipped for entertainment value. Challenge to you Aimee. Name ONE species that went extent in the last 3 months. ~ charles the moderator. “””
Supposedly, since Europeans, and other immigrants, came to the USA, the Eastern Elk has gone extinct; about the only large species to do so in the history of the USA.
Who would want to bet that any Eastern Elk, couldn’t breed with any Western Elk; or any New Zealand Elk for that matter; and produce perfectly normal offspring.
This is just the first day of this month Aimee; can you give us the names of just the first ten of the 32,000 species that are going extinct today ?
And NOAA used the same code for the deleted existing data [Briffa’s diverging data] as it does for years with absolutely no existent data.
So the question arises as to whether NOAA’s [NCDC’s ?] archive can be trusted to not in effect hide data as non-existent when it actually exists.
And the question arises as to whether NOAA, CRU, the IPCC, and now the UEA are all somehow linked up in the process that hides certain data which would tend to disprove the existence of the hockey stick.
I don’t see where Gavin Schmidt is an expert on this. He is a computer scientist, one of the AGCM writers. He is not a statistician or paleoclimatologist. He does, however, know what the results of Briffa’s study do the end result of the AGCMs run out to the year 2100.
Getting rid of the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age makes the Hockey Stick handle straight. That will result in solar having very small influence on climate. Every single AGCM ends up having small effects due the recent Gran Maximum of solar activity. “Its not the sun doing it, no siree.”
By truncating the graphs at 1940 or 1960, and then slapping the instrument record onto the end, that results in every single AGCM having a large effective coefficient for CO2 affecting temperature.
This, in conjunction with UHI additions/corrections to the raw temperature data really make the CO2 coefficient large.
Lets face it. There are very few papers upon which the coefficients for solar and CO2 are based.
Gavins interest was as a programmer. He knew (and reviewed positively) any papers that would diminish solar and maximize CO2 effects when the AGCMs are run out to 2100.
Plato Says:
his conservative MP responded—
“I will continue to accept that we cannot consider it sensible to pollute our atmosphere with carbon and not expect it to have a destabilising effect on our climate system. For that reason, I will carry on supporting measures to decarbonise our economy”
Carbon polluting atmosphere? Decarbonise economy?
Don’t use fuel of any kind, not even wood, no plastics, no rubber, no food (has carbon in it)… Someone isn’t thinking.
Oops, my bad. I forgot he’s a politician.
Prepare to enter the dark ages….
Reply: I’m allowing this unsnipped for entertainment value. Challenge to you Aimee. Name ONE species that went extent in the last 3 months. ~ charles the moderator.
Latecomer to the party, it’s been a busy first of the week. Thanks ctm for the late afternoon (local time) guffaw. However Malcolm Turnbull is close to political extinction.
Lucy Skywalker. Very good points. I too, believe we should focus on Steve M. and your work, and not get sidetracked. Although some of the posts were hilarious. fm
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.
Emails present a look into intent.
But the CODE represents evidence of actual wrongdoing.
I keep hearing the media discussing the emails, but it’s the code where AGW will be broken.
KEEP WORKING THE CODE.
It looks like I am in a tiny minority to say that Aimee’s posting looks like irony (said to be an extinct species in the USA). Everything in her note is so OTT that it has all the earmarks of a spoof. Lighten up folks, life isn’t totally serious.
IanM
Isn’t the issue of “hiding the decline” discussed here? http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v391/n6668/abs/391678a0.html
Lucy, good points. Mark Wagner, you’re absolutely right. I’ll keep pummelling media sources here to have them focus on the real crime not the titillating emails. And of course, Amiee’s post had me laughing out loud in public— it allowed me to get a seat all to myself on the crowded bus homeward.
CTM: while I think Aimee Garden’s comment is a huge chortle, I’m concerned that you may have contemplated snipping it. I presume that this was either because she is stating views contrary to the general tenor of the blog, or maybe because they elude reality by such a large extent? Nice to know which – I’m not sure that a Comments moderation policy similar to that of Real Climate would be such a good thing.
Reply: Her use of the word denier makes her vulnerable to cutting. We take a dim view of that word here depending on the context of the person using it. We do not moderate as RC does. We do not censor points of view although certain topics are off limits, such as creationism or chemtrails. ~ ctm
All: Can you help me?
I emailed Starbucks to tell them I am boycotting their stores for supporting cap and trade.
**They replied, “Our decision to support cap and trade legislation is based on what we’ve learned firsthand. Our coffee buyers and agronomists work with farmers everyday and they’ve seen how climate change is impacting our business. Rainfall and harvest patterns are shifting. Communities that once could easily grow coffee are now struggling. We’ve also seen how reducing the use of electricity and water in our stores results in both cost savings and benefits the environment.”**
It seems no one can make the distinction between conservation and environmentalism (as in reducing global population, imposing global governance, removal of nation-state, censorship and criminal punishment of objecters)
We need to get this out.
http://www.starbuckscontactcenter.com/?group=CR&template=CR319&CN=7697696&aspect=88721
We can explain the difference between conservation and the treasonous beliefs of “environmentalists: behind the cap and trade laws being considered by the “free” world.
If we can get just Starbucks to restate their position, we may accomplish something. I’m not sure where else to turn. This problem is overwhelming to me, because I love America, and believe I am watching her commit suicide.
The multinational companies, the ones who benefited from a free market system, are turning on that system to break it.
A list of these companies is at nocapandtrade.com. They pay the news services for advertising services. The news services hear from them on a daily basis.
I suggest we all contact Starbucks together here.
All: Can you help me? Contact Starbucks
I emailed Starbucks to tell them I am boycotting their stores for supporting cap and trade.
**They replied, “Our decision to support cap and trade legislation is based on what we’ve learned firsthand. Our coffee buyers and agronomists work with farmers everyday and they’ve seen how climate change is impacting our business. Rainfall and harvest patterns are shifting. Communities that once could easily grow coffee are now struggling. We’ve also seen how reducing the use of electricity and water in our stores results in both cost savings and benefits the environment.”**
It seems no one can make the distinction between conservation and environmentalism (as in reducing global population, imposing global governance, removal of nation-states, destruction of republican forms of government, imposing censorship and criminal punishment of objecters)
We need to get this out.
I suggest we all contact Starbucks together here.
http://www.starbuckscontactcenter.com/?group=CR&template=CR319&CN=7697696&aspect=88721
We can explain the difference between conservation and the treasonous beliefs of most “environmentalists”
If we can get just one company, Starbucks, to restate their position, we may accomplish something. I’m not sure where else to turn. This problem is overwhelming to me, because I love America, and believe I am watching her commit suicide.
The multinational companies, the ones who benefited from a free market system, are turning on that system to break it. They believe it won’t matter to their bottom line.
A list of these companies is at nocapandtrade.com. They pay the news services for advertising services. The news services hear from them on a daily basis. Targeting these multinationals is the only way to get anyone to listen. (Google is busily trying to control this as we speak.)
Aimee looks like a stooge to me.
Notice how; if you leave out the trees the graph looks even warmer. If they really wanted to hide anything they could have just left out the trees altogether.
Kevin (15:01:28) is right. Jones published about this problem before the email was written.
Some hiding.
sorry for the duplication. I hit the space bar by accident and it rearranged (and POSTED) my message. The first post will be confusing.
Michael Alexis (07:16:04) :
@roger Knights
“Do you mean sarc-ing without a tag or mobying a warmer?”
The first. I’m astounded that anyone here could think that any real warmist could be so obviously beyond the fringe. I’m glad I have a little company in that view in the recent post here:
Ian L. McQueen (14:55:26) :
“It looks like I am in a tiny minority to say that Aimee’s posting looks like irony (said to be an extinct species in the USA). Everything in her note is so OTT that it has all the earmarks of a spoof. Lighten up folks, life isn’t totally serious.”
Lucy: Creating an index to the entire contents of WUWT would be a tough / lengthy job, even harder maybe than creating a wiki. But a set of several tables of contents, one per topic, would be not too laborious. E.g., there’d be one TOC for threads on Topic A, another for Topic B, etc. There could even be a hierarchy of TOCs, with some topics being sub-topics of others. This would make WUWT easier for visitors to navigate—and for regulars too.
Another high-payoff value-added feature would be for persons like yourself and Pamela to be allowed by Anthony to go through the archives and flag the best posts in each thread with a star or two.
In addition, or instead, it would be nice if there were possible to yellow-highlight good passages, because often there are nuggets in otherwise undistinguished posts.
These flags and/or highlights would make it much easier for newcomers to skim the site for the Good Stuff and get up to speed. It would also make it easier to handle drive-by critics who re-raise a point that’s been dealt with before, by referring them to threads they can quickly skim.
If people keep looking how can they hide it!
“Someone left some evidence.”
“We would have never found that evidence without you.”
“I’ll analyze it…with science.”
First a few words to Kathryn before I get on-topic below:
One thing to tell Starbucks is that elevated CO2 actually may be very good for coffee growers. This article seems to indicate (I’ve not read the article and don’t know enough biology to do so, I guess) that coffee responds positively to elevated CO2: http://www.springerlink.com/content/m32315525666100x/
Most plants that respond positively to high CO2 levels also become more water-efficient. So, it may well be that in a high-CO2 world, coffee growers can return to the environmentally friendly shadow growth method, and use less water than before.
***Trying to get on-topic:***
What are the main components of the Briffa analysis discussed by Steve McIntyre? If it’s the Polar Urals or Yamal, I wonder why they would think there is a “divergence”, when in fact the nearby long-running station Ostrov Dikson has had temperatures that’s similar to the Briffa graph. I created this graph: http://i45.tinypic.com/2ns6jk6.jpg by downloading June-August temperatures for Ostrov Dikson from GISS. To avoid too much noise (arctic temperatures are extremely variable), I smoothed the curve with a centered 3-year mean. The Briffa series ends in 1994, please note that that corresponds to approximately the start of the current warm period of Ostrov Dikson. Also note that the temperature fluctuations are strikingly high, even with my smoothed curve, and despite the fact that this place is close to the Arctic Ocean: As you can see, most 3-year means between 1940 and 1960 were above 3.5 C, while the period 1965 – 1975 was below 2.5 C.
To Moderator,
To echo TomVonk and Vincent’s comments to delete such nonsense posts like Aimee’s.
I almost fell for it then I thought this person might not be a kid but a grown up adult troll trying to take focus off the article. Even alarmist adults can’t be that silly (or maybe ….), plus the use of the word “denier” that let the cat out of the bag (or microwave / pun intended). Maybe next time you might want to consider DELAYING such early, off-topic nonsense comments till later to reduce the chances of it hijacking the discussion otherwise don’t allow, move or delete.
Jimbo
To Moderator:
On reflection, given WUWT’s new, post-Climategate circumstances, I’d echo calls for our long-suffering moderators to deal with aimee-trolls not because they are not genuine but because they are wildly OT and waste both the site’s and visitors’ resources. (I wish I hadn’t added to the noise.)
Kevin:
You asked:
“Isn’t the issue of “hiding the decline” discussed here? http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v391/n6668/abs/391678a0.html ”
No. It is not. If you think it is then please explain.
But Arch Stanton seems convinced because he asserts:
“Kevin (15:01:28) is right. Jones published about this problem before the email was written.”
Stating that a problem exists in one place while attempting to conceal it everywhere else is commonly known as “covering your ass”.
In the item at the URL Jones mentions the existence of the divergence problem when he says;
“When averaged over large areas of northern America and Eurasia, tree-ring density series display a strong coherence with summer temperature measurements averaged over the same areas, demonstrating the ability of this proxy to portray mean temperature changes over sub-continents and even the whole Northern Hemisphere. During the second half of the twentieth century, the decadal-scale trends in wood density and summer temperatures have increasingly diverged as wood density has progressively fallen. The cause of this increasing insensitivity of wood density to temperature changes is not known, but if it is not taken into account in dendroclimatic reconstructions, past temperatures could be overestimated.”
There is a clear disagreement between the sentence that says;
“When averaged over large areas of northern America and Eurasia, tree-ring density series display a strong coherence with summer temperature measurements averaged over the same areas, demonstrating the ability of this proxy to portray mean temperature changes over sub-continents and even the whole Northern Hemisphere.”
And the sentence saying;
“During the second half of the twentieth century, the decadal-scale trends in wood density and summer temperatures have increasingly diverged as wood density has progressively fallen.”
How can there be “strong coherence” when the parameters have “increasingly diverged” over a quarter of the calibration range?
And the following sentence is clearly disingenuous. It says;
“The cause of this increasing insensitivity of wood density to temperature changes is not known, but if it is not taken into account in dendroclimatic reconstructions, past temperatures could be overestimated.”
PROBLEM
How can “this increasing insensitivity of wood density to temperature changes” be “taken into account in dendroclimatic reconstructions” when its cause “is not known”?
SOLUTION
Ignore “this increasing insensitivity of wood density to temperature changes” then hide the decline.
And that was the adopted solution: see Steve’s excellent analysis (above) and Lucy’s superb presentation (mentioned above and at
http://www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/Science/Climategate/hide-decline.htm ).
Richard
“Name ONE species that went extent in the last 3 months.”
~ charles the moderator.
Scientific integrity in climate science.
I think that seems to be pretty much extinct. Although the last remnants probably passed away years ago, it’s absence is only now becoming known to the public.