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.
“Kermit (13:54:04) :
[…]
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?”
How does your common sense tell you that we are “at least as warm [as] one thousand years ago” when Vikings have settled in Greenland, doing agriculture, in the MWP?
“A 2000-YEAR GLOBAL TEMPERATURE RECONSTRUCTION BASED ON NON-TREERING PROXIES”, Craig Loehle, Ph.D.
http://www.ncasi.org/publications/Detail.aspx?id=3025
DirkH (15:56:24) :
I hope you get a response from Kermit regarding your link:
“A 2000-YEAR GLOBAL TEMPERATURE RECONSTRUCTION BASED ON NON-TREERING PROXIES”, Craig Loehle, Ph.D.
http://www.ncasi.org/publications/Detail.aspx?id=3025
But if you don’t…well, that tells you and us other readers Kermit doesn’t have an answer…
Silence speaks volumes…
My dear Wren, please take my advice. You really risk damaging your psyche by participating in the paranoia of Joe Romm and Deep Climate. As Dirk points out above the Piltdown Mann’s Crook’t Hockey Stick is phony from the inappropriate use of decentered Principal Component Analysis. Ask Ian Jolliffe. What is shocking is that it took a Congressional investigation to challenge it, and even when world expert statistician’s panned the use of decentered PCA, still many in climate science defended it, as some still hopelessly do.
Another interesting point from the Wegman report was delineating the echo chamber in climate science peer review, a point which has been double-underlined in spades by the revelations in the released emails.
So please, ignore those sick defenders of the faith to which you’ve been listening. The truth shall set you free.
=====================
Will S. (10:16:15) :
National Research Council, which found that Mann’s statistical approach was suboptimal, but his overall conclusion was justified;
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………
You spin it in a misleading way, as is usual for those who wish to use the Hockey Stick as proof of manmade global warming. You make it appear they they are saying it is warmer now than it ever has been in the last 2000 years. You make it appear that they approve of the Hockey Stick. BUT THEY DO NOT.
…………………………………..
You left this out:
….Not all individual proxy records indicate that the recent warmth is unprecedented….(page 3)
……………………………………
You also did not mention this—as is always the case with your ilk:
Even less confidence can be placed in the original conclusions by Mann et al. (1999) that “the 1990s are likely the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, in at least a millennium”….(page 4)
………………………………..
The report (page 14) also uses this graph (multiproxy Northern Hemisphere), which does not resemble a hockey stick:
http://books.nap.edu/books/0309102251/xhtml/images/p200108c0g14001.jpg
…………………………………………
The report also says (page 18)
Large-scale surface temperature reconstructions yield a generally consistent picture of temperature trends during the preceding millennium, including relatively warm conditions centered around A.D. 1000 (identified by some as the “Medieval Warm Period”)
…………………………………
To say other proxies can be found that roughly agree with the Hockey Stick (which is what the report says) does not mean the Hockey Stick has been affirmed as an accurate gauge of temperature for the last 2000 years. Doing that would mean you would exclude all other far more reliable temperature proxies. Tree ring proxies are not reliable proxies for temperature. They are used for other purposes. Which is also what the report alludes to when they say (page X) “….We have tried to make clear how this piece of the climate puzzle fits into the broader discussions about global climate change….”
Science by its nature requires unforgiving accuracy. Fudging, and gray areas, do not have a place in science.
…………………………………………..
The report at this link
http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11676&page=R1
“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?”
It’s sort of hard to formulate a response when it’s impossible to understand the context of the first phrase:
“Since global temperatures have been rising since 2009”
Is this a joke? Or a serious assertion that a temperature trend of two and a half months is evidence of a permanent shift in climate?
” 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), “…
I was puzzled by this remark… now it occurs to me that what Will S. refers to must be the fact that Dr. Spencer switched to a different moving average! Dr. Spencer explained why he did so. Will, is that a problem for you? “Readjusted the formula”… oh come on as if we’re talking magical potions here!
You can run your own moving averages on his data, you do know that, do you?
Are the CO2 proponents now all reduced to the nitpicking shambles that pop up here regularly? Where’s the intellectual calibre?
DirkH (15:56:24)
“Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week
Was there a Medieval Warm Period? YES, according to data published by 809 individual scientists from 482 separate research institutions in 43 different countries … and counting! This issue’s Medieval Warm Period Record of the Week comes from the Southern Canadian Tundra, Southwestern Keewatin, Nunavut, Canada. To access the entire Medieval Warm Period Project’s database, click here.”
http://co2science.org/
Wren (14:37:14) :
climateprogress—-“whether Barton, Wegman, et al, are guilty of misleading Congress, a felony offense.”
ROFL!
It is evident that it will take more than one book to debunk all of the IPCC’s mantras on climate change. The IPCC and their adherents are indeed deliberately shut-eyed to their own dilemma. John Houghton has defended the IPCC against charges of ‘ecofanaticism’ in this recent Times article.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article7061646.ece
Houghton, former co-chair of the IPCC, is the one who said in 1995 “If we want a good environmental policy in the future we’ll have to have a disaster.”
One claim in the Times article runs “The IPCC process also makes it impossible for green propaganda to be slipped in.. (to the reports)”. I thought that several references in the IPCC reports were shown to be from Greenpeace and WWF sources?
DirkH (15:56:14)
I think you read my sentence wrong. I said that it looks like we WERE at least as warm during the MWP.
I was just curious why that one post was not challenged.
Wren (14:37:14) :
Let me cheer you on in bringing the Hockey Stick and all of global warming science into a Senate Investigation. I want to see it televised on C–SPAN. I want to see all of the evidence from both sides broadcast for the world to see.
Try to find that felony!
It would be wonderful to see Christy, Spencer, Lindzen, Monckton, Ferenc Miskolczi, Happer, etc, answering questions on the real science.
KPO (09:44:32) :
”…It is a travesty of justice that these “leaders” are not held personally responsible.”
Strike “leaders” replace with “charlatans”. FIFY
Methow Ken (09:57:30) :
Nothing summarizes how the whole ClimateGate saga should offend all objective scientists and engineers better, than these words from thread start:
”I find the reaction of the scientific establishment more shocking than anything. The reaction was not even a shrug: it was shut-eyed denial.”
Ken is quite correct here.
I am a retired biochemistry professor. Some scandals in biomedical research started being publicized about 10 years or so before I retired. The NIH made schools forms committees to investigate the allegations of fraud in research and these are still present in the the universities. Several prominent researchers were barred from federal grants for many years and some were, I think, prosecuted.
In my opinion, these fraudsters should be drummed out of the scientific/academic establishment and several should be prosecuted for fraudulent misappropriation of federal funds, not to speak of the havoc they have played with our economy.
DirkH (15:50:07) :
“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/
=====
I’ve seen it before. Nothing new.
DirkH (15:52:23) :
“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.
=====
Method is more important than results?
Wren (14:37:14) :
James Hansen, a no air conditioning partisan set up?
Mann received a half million of stimulus money. As it is public money, I would like to know how every penny is spent.
That money is tax-payer’s money. That means it is MY money, (or, to be more honest, my grandchildren’s money.) I very much resent it being spent to perpetuate a fraud. (I also resent the absurd idea it stimulates the economy.)
I don’t think a cent should be spend on defense lawyers for Mann, and also don’t think any should be spent on “public relations.”
For some “public relations” is just another word for propaganda. I am increasingly convinced the entire hockey stick farce was a public relations gimmick from the start. It was done with the same cynical disregard for Truth as is seen in commercials for Chocolate Sugar Bombs Cereal, aimed at little children watching Saturday morning cartoons.
Forgive me, but any time I see inane comments such as those by “Wren,” I can’t help but wonder if some of Mann’s “stimulus money” was used to hire useful idiots.
Once I was an aspiring young writer who loathed working a real job, and consequently had trouble coming up with the rent. My situation was so desperate at times that I probably would have used my gifts to sell Chocolate Sugar Bombs Cereal, had I the chance. I don’t claim I am beyond corruption, but simply state no one felt I was worthy of being corrupted. Years ago, I felt this was unfortunate, but now I understand I was actually blessed.
Fellows like Mann, and especially Briffa, were not so lucky. Briffa makes me especially sad, for initially I believe he really did think he had discovered something no one had seen before. By the time he realized all the acclaim, fame, and funding he was receiving was nothing but a public relations gimmick, he was in up to his neck.
However things have simply gone way, way too far. We are not talking about selling a few packages of Chocolate Sugar Bombs cereal with a little “white” lie. We are talking about economic disaster, about a Great Nation like England brought to its knees because it is building windmills that won’t work in a cold wave, and also about much, much worse.
Consequently I think we should demand Mann account for every penny of the stimulus money he has received. Not a penny should be spent on Madison Avenue hype. Every penny should go to Truth.
Truth will show the hockey stick was hype.
WHERE IS MY KINDLE VERSION?!
/me grumpy
“Wren (18:20:54) :
[…]
Method is more important than results?”
Well, Wren, i don’t know how to bring it to you, but if you botch up your statistics, the result probably won’t be right. Other researchers will not be able to understand how you created that graph you published, you see? Even if you are open about the assumptions your method makes, these assumptions might be on flakey ground. Even worse, some researchers seem to have a hard time understanding that often, mathematical algorithms make implicit assumptions about trends or other properties of the data. If you use a tool that you don’t understand or don’t care to understand, you might mistake the artefacts of the method for a real signal.
That’s why the choice of the method is important and needs to be done with a lot of care. Usually a researcher will want to avoid a false positive.
Wren @ur momisugly 18:20:54
You say: ‘Method is more important than results’?
How’s this: ‘Right result plus wrong method equals bad science’. You’d know that if you did a little reading.
Besides, the Piltdown Mann’s crooked stick was a wrong result and a wrong method. That’s double plus ungood science.
===============
Another thing, Wren, you’ve clearly overdosed on the RealClimate Kool-Aid to think that the Hockey Stick has been confirmed by subsequent studies. Look carefully, and you’ll see the non-uniformitarian split bark bristlecones, the twisted Gaspe series, the Yamal Enchanted Orchard, and the dizzy lake varves in study after study purporting to confirm the hockey stick. They are inadequate series and time and again they can be shown to warp the whole study.
Get it through your head; the hockey stick is propaganda. Good stuff, too; it worked on you. But it is The Big Lie, repeated over and over and over again. Worst of all, it’s been used to indoctrinate youth. This is very bad, and so are you, Wren, unless you are just a useful idiot.
============================
Posters interested in the controversy over Mann’s temperature reconstruction,”the hockey-stick curve,” may want to read Richard L. Smith’s report on presentations at an American Statistical Association session titled “What is the Role of Statistics in Public Policy Debates about Climate Change?”
Ed Wegman of George Mason University gave a talk
focusing on the statistical flaws in the Hockey Stick that, in his view, render much of the current literature on this
subject of doubtful validity. J. Michael Wallace of the
University of Washington presented the broader findings of a NRC panel that acknowledged the statistical issues raised by Wegman, but defended the hockey stick based on a broader scientific context.
“The NRC report reviewed a number of other reconstructions of the temperature record based on proxy
observations and believed that the Mann et al. claim that the last two decades were the warmest of the last 1000 years was entirely plausible.”
Wegman’s response was “the fact that the answer may have been
correct does not justify the use of an incorrect method in the first place”
or
“Method Wrong + Answer Correct = Bad Science.”
The report is available in a 2007 ASA newsletter at http://www.amstatonline.org/sections/envr/ssenews/ENVR_9_1.pdf
Hmmm……..
Method Correct + Answer Wrong = ?
“Wren (18:20:54) :
[…]
Method is more important than results?”
Well, Wren, i don’t know how to bring it to you, but if you botch up your statistics, the result probably won’t be right. Other researchers will not be able to understand how you created that graph you published, you see? Even if you are open about the assumptions your method makes, these assumptions might be on flakey ground. Even worse, some researchers seem to have a hard time understanding that often, mathematical algorithms make implicit assumptions about trends or other properties of the data. If you use a tool that you don’t understand or don’t care to understand, you might mistake the artefacts of the method for a real signal.
That’s why the choice of the method is important and needs to be done with a lot of care. Usually a researcher will want to avoid a false positive.
====
Sure, but if I am so intent on nit-picking I miss the forrest for the trees, that ain’t good.
McIntyre didn’t show Mann’s Hockey Stick is wrong, nor did Wegman. Read the report in the ASA newsletter I described previously.
http://www.amstatonline.org/sections/envr/ssenews/ENVR_9_1.pdf
Looks like Wegman is saying OK Mann may have the right answer, but I don’t like the way he got it.
Kermit (13:54:04) :
…..But, I’m also curious about this post above, which seems to have gone unanswered:
” Will S. (10:16:15) :
……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;……..
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?”
Good question. The response is actually another question. If this unprecedented warming had a precedent 1000 years ago, when CO2 and mans burning of fossil fuels was not to blame, then how does the warming in the late 20th century prove the AGW hypothesis?
Answer. It doesn’t, hence Manns statistical efforts to send the MWP down the memory hole.
It is also interesting BTW that there is a credible hypothesis that the de-forestation in Europe for crops that preceded the LIA caused the LIA, or played a part in it, as it changed the surface albedo and caused more short wave radiation to be reflected, and so cooled the land (the LIA did not end until 1850 and improvements in agriculture reduce the rate of deforestation) .
It is very possible that some of the warming in the late 20th century, if not most, in the Northern Hemisphere may be due to reforestation of the last 60 years (made possible by improving crop efficiencies, government ownership of public land, and reduced rates of population growth in the developed world), combined with increasing population (in the devloping and undeveloped world) and energy consumption (everywhere, as energy consumed to do work or heat gives off heat), as well as urban sprawl. Not to mention a more active sun. There is also the change in ocean circulation (PDO) in the Pacific that began in the 1970’s.
The argument is not are we warming, as nobody argues that we have not warmed over the past century (the not warming argument is limited to the last 10 years). The question is if mans emissions of CO2 is the cause, and if not, what is, and what kind of warming (or cooling) can we expect in the future.
To say this science is settled in the midst of so much uncertainty is downright Orwellian. Even my dog raises his ears and looks puzzled when I tell him the science is settled, but maybe thats because I start giggling uncontrollably.
Mann is so lucky. He misused a statistical method and got the answer right anyway.