By John A
A shout-out for a review of Andrew Montford’s “The Hockey Stick Illusion” by Matt Ridley in Prospect Magazine.
Andrew Montford’s The Hockey Stick Illusion is one of the best science books in years. It exposes in delicious detail, datum by datum, how a great scientific mistake of immense political weight was perpetrated, defended and camouflaged by a scientific establishment that should now be red with shame. It is a book about principal components, data mining and confidence intervals—subjects that have never before been made thrilling. It is the biography of a graph.
I can remember when I first paid attention to the “hockey stick” graph at a conference in Cambridge. The temperature line trundled along with little change for centuries, then shot through the roof in the 20th century, like the blade of an ice-hockey stick. I had become somewhat of a sceptic about the science of climate change, but here was emphatic proof that the world was much warmer today; and warming much faster than at any time in a thousand years. I resolved to shed my doubts. I assumed that since it had been published in Nature—the Canterbury Cathedral of scientific literature—it was true.
I was not the only one who was impressed. The graph appeared six times in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s third report in 2001. It was on display as a backdrop at the press conference to launch that report. James Lovelock pinned it to his wall. Al Gore used it in his film (though describing it as something else and with the Y axis upside down). Its author shot to scientific stardom. “It is hard to overestimate how influential this study has been,” said the BBC. The hockey stick is to global warming what St Paul was to Christianity.
The rest of the review is here.
Most tasty quote (my emphasis):
Well, it happens. People make mistakes in science. Corrections get made. That’s how it works, is it not? Few papers get such scrutiny as this had. But that is an even more worrying thought: how much dodgy science is being published without the benefit of an audit by Mcintyre’s ilk? As a long-time champion of science, I find the reaction of the scientific establishment more shocking than anything. The reaction was not even a shrug: it was shut-eyed denial.
Let’s not forget that the origins of this phenomenon are financial and political plans by Maurice Strong and the Club of Rome who made it public years ago that they needed a crisis around which to cause the birth of a new world order and power structure.
This, indeed, has never been about the science of climate. This whole exercise has been a fight to have the “climate science” project recognized as part of this long-term political/wealth/power takeover plan designed to reduce the world’s population, cripple development of the undeveloped countries, and de-industrialize the developed countries.
Kumbayah and log cabins all around while we go 100% agricultural, Luddite, and nontechnological. Skip that retirement fund, life expectancy will be too short to bother as medical care will be only at the midwife level. Oh, and horses emit too much methane so one of you will have to pull the plow today, mush!
……the principal component analysis “mined” the data for anything with a 20th century uptick…..
This is what you’re supposed to do when you have an issue as important as this. Just ask Steven Schneider and Al Gore! It’s not lying when you have an important cause. And look, Al Gore won the Nobel. Steven Schneider was on stage with Al Gore when he accepted the Nobel! How can the Nobel people be wrong?
If that’s not enough, look at Steven Schneider’s web site:
http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/
You see the Hockey Stick graph right there in plain view as soon as you open his page?
Steven Schneider teaches at Stanford. How dare you have the nerve to question him!
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ok, sarc really off now, 😉
About this supposed, and now disgraced hockey stick.
If CO2 did have a physical property to absorb and hold heat longer and in greater amount than other consituent parts of the atmosphere, O2 (20%) & N2 (79%), and H2O (1% as water vapor), then per the laws of physics carbon dioxide would rise in the atmosphere relative to those other consituents.
Wouldn’t it?
And wouldn’t it build-up like O3 (ozone) in a layer high in the atmosphere?
But no such layer or build-up of carbon dioxide has been detected.
This lack of measurable build-up suggests carbon dioxide doesn’t behave appreciably different than oxygen or nitrogen (which dominate the atmosphere) in terms of energy absorbtion & release.
Therefore, increases in carbon dioxide’s percentage in the atmosphere would have no impact on climate changes.
In any event, if there was an effect of CO2 rising-up towards the atmosphere’s contact with space, the suface of the atmosphere, if you will, where a larger amount of heat was then released (supposedly because CO2 holds more heat longer), this heat would be exhausted out into space and not contribute to the Earth’s heat budget.
Wouldn’t this act as a kind of heat pump causing a cooling effect?
Is this why you never hear or read AGW scientists analyzing the physical mechanics of rising CO2 in terms of the ideal gas laws?
(Because if they could discuss the physical mechanics of warming and rising CO2 which then exhausts heat into space they would do so, as it’s readily understandable and conforms with the ideal gas laws where warm or warmer gas rises more than cooler gas.)
Obviously, they can’t because they’ve put all their chips down on some supposed mechanism that works the exact opposite way.
In defiance of the known and accepted laws of of physics & chemistry.
In view of this set of physical relationships (ideal gas laws) it is encumbent on AGW scientists to explain how & why their supposed mechanism has any physical basis in reality.
To my knowledge (and correct me if I’m wrong), AGW scientists have not demonstrated how their mechanism fits within these known physical constraints & parameters.
AGW proponents, please explain why the above discussion is wrong, or/and devil’s advocates for that’s matter, because we need to get to the bottom of the science.
These are the kind of things AGW scientists have to answer before serious consideration is given to their claims.
A great book.
Interesting to see a good review in Prospect magazine – it’s a left-of-centre lifestyle magazine.
I ordered a few copies last week. I’m going to donate some to the Calgary Public Library to go along with the copies of “The Crutape Letters” I donated earlier.
The most frustrating thing about the hockey stick debate is the desperate tactics used by its supporters to resurrect it.
They constantly produce a new study confirming the hockey stick knowing that it will take time for McIntyre to expose it as a cherry picking piece of research supported by dubious statistical techniques. By then they’ve produced another ‘improved’ study. That way they can always claim that the latest piece of research supports the hockey stick.
To all hockey stick supporters…
‘E’s not pinin’! ‘E’s passed on! He has ceased
to be! ‘E’s expired and gone to meet ‘is maker! ‘E’s a stiff! Bereft
of life, ‘e rests in peace! If you hadn’t nailed ‘im to the perch ‘e’d be
pushing up the daisies! ‘Is metabolic processes are now ‘istory! ‘E’s off
the twig! ‘E’s kicked the bucket, ‘e’s shuffled off ‘is mortal coil, run
down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisibile!!
THIS IS AN EX-HOCKEY STICK!!
Monty Python
It’ll live up to expectations. I’ve read it twice.
For some great background on the whole ‘green’ crisis industry, Elaine Dewar’s book ‘Cloak of Green’ is also worth a read. Little out of date but provides the context for the AGW project and its related eco-scares.
“You’ve got to tell the children the truth;
They don’t need a whole lot of lies.”
————-Jimi Hendrix
“Truth is Beauty”
————-John Keats
This has always been about Truth versus deceit. What amazes me is that the deceitful have been so able to perpetuate their dishonesty.
I don’t even like the deceits involved in a surprise birthday party for my wife. Over and over in my fifty-seven years I have seen that any sort of lie tends to come back to haunt the liar. Falsehood doesn’t always blow up in the perpetuator’s face or result in jail time, but it has a corrosive effect and, even if it seemed to lead to profit (and trips to Bali) to begin with, it hurts the liar in the end, and sometimes goes on to hurt those nearest and dearest “unto the second and third generation.”
I am beyond thinking any more that we are dealing with honest mistakes. This is a good, old-fashioned battle between good and evil.
Here is what the Warmists have said in the past and will say it again:
“The data doesn’t matter. We’re not basing our recommendations on the data. We’re basing them on the climate models.”
Prof. Chris Folland, Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research
“The models are convenient fictions that provide something very useful.”
Dr David Frame, Climate modeler, Oxford University
“It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.”
Paul Watson, Co-founder of Greenpeace
“Unless we announce disasters no one will listen.”
Sir John Houghton, First chairman of IPCC
“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony… climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.”
Christine Stewart, former Canadian Minister of the Environment
So is everyone out here up in arms about the use of the d-word?
[Reply: we ask that the label not be used by commenters, as it is a reference to Holocaust denial. ~dbs, mod.]
Bart @ur momisugly 13:00:51
I’ve never been bothered much by the terms ‘denier’ or ‘denialist’, Bart, because they pale in comparison to much of what I’ve been called on the alarmist boards. Nonetheless, it is often used with much the same tone as ‘Holocaust Denier’ is. And that offends some people very much. It’s the tone as much as the term.
Truly, I do deny the IPCC’s conception of the effect of CO2, considering, as I do, the effect to be much exaggerated. That’s how I justify the term ‘alarmist’ to describe those who still seek to fearmonger the populace.
The time is rapidly approaching, though, to stop forming tribes to throw rocks at each other. We need to find out the true sensitivity of climate to CO2 and this chasing of the chimera of CO2 demonization has wasted a lot of time.
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Ah, Bart, I read your comment again and I see the nasty sort of disingenuousness I see commonly from you. The verb ‘to deny’ is still a useful English word, and Ridley has so used it. It is the alarmist faction in climate science that sought to illegitimately give their theory of AGW the certainty of the historical Holocaust, and to cast the skeptics into disrepute, who have misused the term.
So take your silly little insinuation and cast it into your museum of precious disingenosties. Need a little more shelf space?
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er, ‘precious disingenosities’. That’s a rock with sharp points on it, Bart.
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OK, I’m skeptical of all the claims too. I’ve used non-linear models in making my living for going on two decades, so I am really skeptical about the claims there.
But, I’m also curious about this post above, which seems to have gone unanswered:
” Will S. (10:16:15) :
Since global temperatures have been rising since 2009(even to the point that Roy Spencer readjusted his formula yet again to reduce the rise we saw in the last couple of months), it seems that there’s not much to write about here except old saws. This subject has been thoroughly vetted several years ago by the National Research Council, which found that Mann’s statistical approach was suboptimal, but his overall conclusion was justified;
Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Past 2,000 Years The National Academies Press”
So, even though I have seen charts that do not agree with these charts, and common sense would suggest that we were at least as warm one thousand years ago, what is the response to this post?
Charles Higley 11:09:15
Maurice Strong is now in China advising the Chinese government. Unless that’s how they describe house arrest.
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“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony… climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.”
Christine Stewart, former Canadian Minister of the Environment
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I didn’t know Canada had a Marxist in such a position like America has now.
I think the best service for mankind is to buy the book and pass it on…
Critique of Hockey Stick a Partisan Set-up?
Was the independent report on the Hockey Stick climate reconstruct that Dr. Edward Wegman prepared in 2006 for the U.S. Congressional Committee on Energy and Commerce actually a partisan set-up?
According to a recent article at climateprogress.org, ‘Wegman, who had presented himself as an impartial “referee” between two “teams” debating the quality of the so-called Hockey Stick graph was, in fact, coached throughout his review by Republican staffer Peter Spencer.
The article also alleges Wegman and his colleagues worked closely with one of the teams, especially Hockey Stick critic Stephen McIntyre, but not with the authors of the climate reconstruction (Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley, and Malcolm Hughes).
The report was requested by Republican Rep. and Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Joe Barton, who refused an offer by the National Academy of Sciences to do an independent study, and opted for Wegman instead.
Because the Wegman Report was presented to Congress as an independent and impartial review, climateprogress.org deems it reasonable to ask “whether Barton, Wegman, et al, are guilty of misleading Congress, a felony offense.”
http://climateprogress.org/2010/02/08/wegman-barton-hockey-stick-analysis-revealed-as-fatally-flawed-right-wing-anti-science-set-up/
Will S. (10:16:15) :
Since global temperatures have been rising since 2009(even to the point that Roy Spencer readjusted his formula yet again to reduce the rise we saw in the last couple of months), it seems that there’s not much to write about here except old saws. This subject has been thoroughly vetted several years ago by the National Research Council, which found that Mann’s statistical approach was suboptimal, but his overall conclusion was justified;
Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Past 2,000 Years The National Academies Press
========
True.
According to the National Research Council, “The basic conclusion of Mann et al. (1998, 1999) was that the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1,000 years. This conclusion has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence that includes both additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions and pronounced changes in a variety of local proxy indicators, such as melting on ice caps and the retreat of glaciers around the world, which in many cases appear to be unprecedented during at least the last 2,000 years.”
The report is available at
http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11676&page=3
I finished reading it the other day. The positive reviews are well deserved.
It read like a thriller, I found it hard to put down and my thoughts returned to it throughout the day.
“I find the reaction of the scientific establishment more shocking than anything. The reaction was not even a shrug: it was shut-eyed denial.”
I suggest criminal neglect is a more appropriate term.
Will S. (10:16:15) :
Since global temperatures have been rising since 2009(even to the point that Roy Spencer readjusted his formula yet again to reduce the rise we saw in the last couple of months),
Please provide the proof for your claim.
“Wren (14:58:53) :
[…]
True.
According to the National Research Council, “The basic conclusion of Mann et al. (1998, 1999) was that the late 20th century warmth in the ”
This might be of interest to you, Wren:
http://climateaudit.org/2005/03/16/the-significance-of-the-hockey-stick/
“Wren (14:37:14) :
Critique of Hockey Stick a Partisan Set-up? ”
Why is it important whether something was a set up? We are not in a drug scene sting investigation. Dodged statistics by Mann are dodged statistics. They will still be dodged in a 1,000 years whether a Steve McIntyre explores it or not.