The scientist behind the controversial ‘hockey stick’ graph has said it was ‘somewhat misplaced’ to make his work an ‘icon of the climate change debate’.
From the Telegraph, By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent
Professor Michael Mann plotted a graph in the late 1990s that showed global temperatures for the last 1,000 years. It showed a sharp rise in temperature over the last 100 years as man made carbon emissions also increased, creating the shape of a hockey stick.
The graph was used by Al Gore in his film ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ and was cited by the United Nations body the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as evidence of the link between fossil fuel use and global warming.
But the graph was questioned by sceptics who pointed out that is it impossible to know for certain the global temperature going back beyond modern times because there were no accurate readings.
The issue became a central argument in the climate change debate and was dragged into the ‘climategate’ scandal, as the sceptics accused Prof Mann and his supporters of exaggerating the extent of global warming.
However, speaking to the BBC recently, Prof Mann, a climatologist at Pennsylvania State University, said he had always made clear there were “uncertainties” in his work.
“I always thought it was somewhat misplaced to make it a central icon of the climate change debate,” he said.
…
Professor John Christy, an atmospheric scientist from the University of Huntsville in Alabama, said just a quarter of the current warming is caused by man made emissions. He said that 10 to 30 per cent of scientists agree with him and are fairly sceptical about the extent of man made global warming.
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full story here
The hockey stick was SO MUCH of a central icon that Iain Stewart drove it around London on a truck billboard for BBC2, as seen in the 2nd YouTube video at this page: http://www.climate-resistance.org/2008/09/biased-broadcasting-climate.html
About 10 years late
The Telegraph also reported on an interesting related article about butterflies. hmmm. It seems that a large blue carnivorous butterfly went extinct 50 years ago in the England area because the area where they flourished got too cold for the red ants they eat. Now that the place has heated up, the butterfly is making a comeback. And of course the local scientists are giving mother nature a helping hand to get this going. Trouble is, are they fighting a natural AMO induced natural cycle? The article sounds a lot like the salmon cycle that uncovered its cause: the PDO.
The obvious rule-out issue with this butterfly is the AMO flipping from warm to cool and then back again. That flip is one of our longer oceanic oscillations and I would bet this butterfly population in England is tied to it.
So where are the researchers of old who went about studying flora and fauna populations tied to oceanic/land temperature cycles? There are lots and lots of ancient old articles that were highly correlative. That steady stream of biology scientists seems to have dried up yet we know there are many species of flora and fauna that depend on oscillations, and are genetically tied to these temperature oscillations, in order to stay healthy.
That Mann attributes his odd collection of data to AGW makes me wonder if he failed to rule-out natural causes. Oh. What am I saying? Of course he forgot.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/7857268/Climate-change-brings-back-endangered-butterfly.html
The “shukkin’ and jivin'” begins.
One wonders if Mann looked over his shoulder and spotted Ken Cuccinelli. 🙂
“Misplaced?”
Well, Mann certainly misplaced the Medieval Warm Period…..
It’s instructive to see members of The Team move into Stage III of the grieving process (negotiation) since Stages I (denial) and II (anger) have run their course.
Funny, I never got the sense from reading Mann’s posts at RC that he saw “uncertainties” in his work or that he thought the hockey stick was misplaced as a central icon of the climate change “debate” – particularly when trying to defend the hockey stick against M&M’s analysis.
I wonder if the threat of Cuccinelli shining a spotlight on his work has anything to do with his new contrite attitude?
It was misplaced, alright. Rather than being placed in the IPCC report, it should have been put out with the trash.
These statements by Mann are too few and too late. He reveled in the glory all those years and fought tooth and nail to have the thing accepted as something resembling a valid scientific finding.
Now we can discuss the degree of ‘misplacement’.
Now he tells us…
Indeed Mann has a point and the blame for the “hockey-stick” becoming such an important icon of the debate really lies with the IPCC’s TAR which used the ‘hockey-stick’ as an icon for global warming. Who was the lead author on TAR anyway?
The hockey-stick is important, if it is right then the changes we are seeing are unprecedented and outside the normal pattern of climate change and most likely are the result of unique circumstances (CO2) which are created by man, if it is wrong then the climate changes we are seeing now are not unprecedented and might be (not are but might be) part of the normal pattern of climate changes the world goes through.
Sure, he’s so conscious of uncertainty in his work that he allowed the caveats he holds to filter on down to the common man. Absolutely, I believe him.
And pigs fly.
Shame he’s saying that only now, 10 years AFTER it became the IPCC’s poster child
Talk about rewriting the past and shifting the blame
And so it begins…
“…even if severe global warming is not certain it is worth preparing for the higher temperature projections.”
There’s a rather large difference between ‘we must act now to save the planet’ and ‘we should probably act now to save the planet’.
Shouldn’t the title Professor be put in quotes? What a crook.
Now he tells us!
Gosh!
It has never been easy to confuse Michael Mann with a shrinking violet suffering from a shyness problem. His views are pretty well known and he does not have a reputation for hiding from the glare of publicity.
His webpage http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/Mann/index.html even includes 10 carefully chosen photgraphic images of himself to download just in case there is any doubt as to his appearance. A quiet and retiring backroom boy he is not!
And yet suddenly, 12 years after publication, he has decided that the work most closely associated with his name (the Hockey Stick) has been over publicised and the emphasis on it ‘misplaced’. Given that it was the IPCC that helped to make such a lot of noise about it as ‘proof’ of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming and he is a such a prime mover in that body, I fear he doth protest too much…..and too late
And the timing is interesting. In the UK, many have been enjoying the book ‘ The Hockey Stick Illusion: Climategate and the Corruption of Science’ by AW Montford. This details in blow-by-blow detail the difficulties others have encountered in attempting to verify Mann’s work. And leads many to believe that it may have some serious failings.
Until recently it has been difficult for readers in the US to obtain this book. But Montford (who also publishes the excellent Bishop Hill blog) recently announced that he had eventually secured a US distributor.
It may be a pure coincidence that Mann makes his observations that the Hockey Stick furore was overblown in the same month that Montford’s book become easily available in the US.
Or it may not.
Wow, what a voltafaccia!
Looks like the author of the falsified global temperature graph no longer agrees with Mann-made warming! Seems he could be aware that the Zeitgeist on this issue has changed.
As I was walking up the stair,
I met a Mann who wasn’t there.
He wasn’t there again today,
I wish that Mann would go away!
“However, speaking to the BBC recently, Prof Mann, a climatologist at Pennsylvania State University, said he had always made clear there were “uncertainties” in his work. “I always thought it was somewhat misplaced to make it a central icon of the climate change debate,” he said. ”
Yeah, right. To borrow a phrase – “Pardon me while I puke”
If I recall correctly, did Dr. Mann not claim at a hearing regarding the “hockey stick” in the past that his reconstruction was accurate to a tiny fraction of a degree? I don’t recall the exact incident; perhaps someone else does.
So, professor Mann goes from peddling to back-pedaling. And who was it most responsible for having “somewhat misplaced” the hoaxy stick? Why, the IPCC of course. So, they get thrown under the bus by Mann. The CAGW/CC death spiral has begun. Should be fun to watch.
Yes, they are now lost with a hockey stick shaped hole in their hearts and minds, and they can’t find anything to fill it. 🙁
They don’t want the real one, with the very curvy handle showing the MWP and the LIA, which also happen to correspond to historic solar maximums and minimums.
Perhaps a nice new geoid with vanishing icecaps and rising sea levels, let me know.
We do know about climate history from anecdotal evidence even if we don’t have temperature readings. We know there was a warm period in the Roman era and again in the middle ages simply from the kind of crops that were grown. We know that there was a little ice age from the frost fairs on the Thames. Mann’s hockey stick does not reflect this and is simply wrong. No, not some uncertainties, just plain wrong. For the IPCC to take this up was plain wrong and demonstrates that they are not doing scientific work but acting as propaganda for a new age religion.
As for the prof guessing how much man made CO2 contributes to global warning – it’s just a guess (he calls it an estimate). But there is no solid theory about how the climate works, long term. Skeptics must hammer this point. Senior govt. figures are making policy on the basis of guesswork. Sure, they are raising extra revenue, or hope to, but in the process they are damaging the industrial base of the free world.
I have to question if they are really true to the duties of their office. What private agenda are they working to? In Britain, we have an Energy Minister who believes that nuclear fuel is outdated and wants us to revert to the middle ages technology of windmills (please don’t call them turbines – they are certainly not).
Our governing class are in the grip of a collective panic and see their salvation as green technology but you, dear taxpayer, will pay the price thanks in part to guesses from our esteemed professor.
I find it a little late to come forward and now express that there were uncertainties in his work. Why was there not these expressions during the time of the great push being made by the warmists. It appears in my humble little educated brain that there might be some face saving and distancing from prior positions beginning to occur at this late date after billions of dollars and other currencies have been squandered because of incorrect assumptions because of incomplete science. We still have plenty to learn in this field and it will require many disciplines to get all the data and then much time to understand the science. Perhaps we can now move on and look at the whole picture rather than just one small part.
Bill Derryberry
He seemed awfully happy with the hockey stick before Climate Gate.