While not really “secret”, one might describe it that way because unlike the many things Dr. Mann has been doing lately, there wasn’t one peep of press coverage about it. He helped organize this conference, and as we know Dr. Mann doesn’t shy away from reporting to the press on anything that helps his stature. Surprisingly, the usual science writers didn’t mention it, and you’d think they would, given all the major players that converged in Portugal for this event. So, it seems like they may have missed it too. Portuguese blogger “EcoTretas” only got word of this from a tip about a related story in a Portuguese newspaper. His essay is below, and there’s a lot more after that. – Anthony
===========================================================
The ClimateGate Secret Meeting
A usual reader of the blog sent me yesterday an interesting news from a Portuguese newspaper. It deals with the classic Medieval Warm Period problem, in the most green Portuguese newspaper. I immediately recognized one of the worst environmental journalists in Portugal, dealing with one of my favorite issues. Interestingly enough, Ricardo Trigo, a portuguese climatologist, was trying to explain the pseudo-science behind climate change and global warming, confusing things like Greenland’s vikings and Maunder’s Minimum.
But what really interested me in the story was a reference to Phil Jones, the person in the center of the ClimateGate controversy.
And references to a conference in Portugal, regarding the Medieval Warm Period. I spent some time trying to figure out what had happened. Turned out that I had not read the news with attention: the conference had happened a month before!
Between 22 and 24 of September, a symposium entitled “The Medieval Warm Period Redux: Where and When was it warm?” was organized in Lisbon, Portugal. The Climategate mob was here, including Phil Jones, Michael Mann, Malcolm Hughes and Raymond Bradley. I bet the main point on the agenda was how “to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period“. The abstracts for the conference are available here. Probably, the best abstract of the symposium was for Malcolm K. Hughes (highlights are my responsibility):
| We meant the title of our 1994 review “Was there a Medieval Warm Period, and if so Where and When?” (Hughes and Diaz, 1994) to be read in two ways. Firstly, it was to be read quite literally. Secondly, it was meant to be ironic. The literal reading was rewarded by an attempt to identify and synthesize records thought to be appropriate to this task. Irony was used to imply that, since a clear and simple answer was not forthcoming from the review, it might be useful to reformulate the question. Please read the title of this abstract in the light of this explanation of the 1994 title.
The trajectories of these two concepts (“Medieval Warm Period” and “Medieval Climate Anomaly “) will be traced. A case will be made for the abandonment of both of them, on the grounds that they are inappropriate, uninformative, and that they very probably divert attention from more revealing ways of thinking about the Earth’s climate over the past two millennia. It is clear from many recent publications, especially many of the abstracts submitted for this meeting, that high-resolution paleoclimatology has moved firmly from the mode of descriptive climatology to that of physical climatology. As a result, there is little utility in picking over definitions of the geographic and temporal extent of putative epochs, especially in the Late Holocene. The pressing questions concern the dynamics of the climate system, and the relative roles of free and forced variations, whether the forcings are anthropogenic or not. |
All the information I’ve got till now makes me believe that this was an almost secret meeting. No news transpired, not even here in Portugal. Given the abstracts, and the one seen above, their intentions are clear! If Ricardo Trigo kept his mouth shut, nobody would probably hear about it. So I wish to thank my loyal reader for bringing this to our attention.
===========================================================
Here’s more on this conference. First have a look at the attendees. It reads like a who’s who book of paleoclimatology. I’ve highlighted some of the more recognizable names.
The source of that list is the brochure, which you can download here. With all these paleo-bigwigs meeting in one place, surely somebody would have written about it?
It appears they are trying to rehabilitate the paleoclimatology so that it plays well in the next IPCC report. The main website has this to say about it:
We propose to revisit the MCA/MWP assimilating widespread and continuous paleoclimatic evidence in a homogeneous way and scale them against recent measured temperatures to allow a meaningful quantitative comparison against the 20th-century pace and magnitude of warming. It is the goal of the organizers to focus attention on this topic, so that the latest results will be considered in the next (fifth) assessment report of the IPCC.
[Annual mean NH temperature anomalies from their 1500 to 1899 means (°C) simulated by different models (lines) and compared with the concentration of overlapping NH temperature reconstructions (grey shading). Taken from Figure 6.13 of Jansen et al., 2007: Palaeoclimate. In: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Solomon et al. (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA.]
Among the topics to be discussed are:
• Reconciling multiple proxy climate records—what do the differences indicate regarding the scale of MCA/MWP climate?
• What do the latest modeling results tell us about possible forcing mechanisms during this period?
• What are some other impacts of climatic variability during the MCA/MWP regarding such topics as changes in ocean basin tropical cyclone activity?
• What were some of the key regional patterns of climatic anomalies during this time? How do they compare with 20th century patterns?
• In what specific ways does the post-1980 period, considered a time when the global warming signal is evident, different from the largest anomalous multidecadal periods of the MCA/MWP?
Clearly, they seem to be embracing the existence of the MWP, but at the same time once again they appear to be trying to figure out how to minimize it.
When you see things like this (from MBH98 co-author Malcolm K. Hughes) on the MCA/MWP:
A case will be made for the abandonment of both of them, on the grounds that they are inappropriate, uninformative, and that they very probably divert attention from more revealing ways of thinking about the Earth’s climate over the past two millennia.
And look at the attendee list and lack of press coverage, you realize it’s the same gang of people running the same game all over again.
The key is, will they learn to shoot straight this time?
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Brian Eglinton,
So they have surrendered because they cannot get rid of the MWP. They lost on that. So they are moving the goal post. It is only a matter of time until they admit defeat there too. They will always lose. Because as Richard Lindzen puts it, (para) “We will win, because we are right, and they are wrong.”
🙂
The according to the definition of conspiracy in Wikipedia, this would be a cabal.
How will they back cast their models now?
From the World Health Organization
http://tinyurl.com/2dj5e7t
Ruh Roh Rorge.
I’ll swear that thing gets fuzzier and fuzzier (maybe time for a sight test).
Whether it’s this…
http://www.churchofglobalwarming.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Hockey_stick_chart_ipcc.jpg
or this…
http://mwplisbon2010.fc.ul.pt/imagens/foto2.png
it is only for the last 50 years of the ‘blade’ that fossil fuel use can be associated…
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/graphics/cumulative_global_1751_2007.jpg.
Climate Change is not your enemy. It is totally natural. It is illogical to fight it. Climate Change is good. It is your friend. It pushes the human race forward.
What would be more interesting than looking at who was there would be finding out who was not invited. Mike M. asked “where is Keith Briffa”? Yes, and why? A couple of others occur to me, I can’t remember their names, but I would have recognized them if they were there. Steve McIntyre should be able to analyze this.
Everyone involved keeps trying to tell us that it is the physics that is important and the science is rock solid as regards the heating effects of increased CO2.
Bearing in mind how much time, effort, and money, is spent in trying to continually refute or minimise the MWP it is clear that the physics is not as robust as is suggested.
tonyb
Maybe they were just discussing the next winther?
Among the topics to be discussed is:
“….. in what specific ways does the post-1980 period, considered a time when the global warming signal is evident [?], different from the largest anomalous multidecadal periods of the MCA/MWP…..?
Good question, it isn’t.
jose says:
October 22, 2010 at 8:11 pm
Seriously? This is the best you could do? “[A]n almost secret meeting”, organized by Mike Mann? You’re getting desperate. The symposium was actually announced in June 2010, and they have a website.
While not really “secret”, one might describe it that way because unlike the many things Dr. Mann has been doing lately, there wasn’t one peep of press coverage about it.
Climatologist without press coverage?
Anyway, the Vikings in Greenland might be one of the more visual aspects of the MWP, a thing that is really telling is the average age of the Europeans during the MWP. At the end of the MWP in 1275 the average life expectancy for Europeans was 35 years, 50 years later during “The great famine” (caused by unusally harsh winters and cold wet summers from ±1310 until ±1330) it had dropped to 29 and another 25 years later it dropped to just over 17 during the height of the “Black Death”.
It took Europe as a whole around a 150 years for its population to recover to levels as seen at the end of the MWP. Even today there a regions in France that are less populated than they where at the end of the MWP.
I wonder if they can write this out of the history books.
Why is there little note of the extensive MWP work by the Idso group at co2science? See–
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/description.php
There is no doubt about the basic facts:
“Was there a Medieval Warm Period? YES, according to data published by 889 individual scientists from 529 separate research institutions in 43 different countries … and counting! “
Hasn’t anyone told this gang that the end buzzer sounded already? The game is over.
It’s like they’re all standing around, alone on the field, demanding a rematch.
We shouldn’t begrudge the boys a holiday in Portugal, after all if you stay inside playing with your models all the time you become pasty faced and lose all touch with reality. You might even start believing the world is coming to an end. Nothing like a bit of winter sun to melt away the paranoia!
“Mike, can you delete any emails you may have had with Kieth re: the Portugal itinerary? Keith will do likewise. Can you email Gene and have him do the same? We will be getting Caspar to do likewise. Cheers. Phil”
What is interesting is that in the middle of the MWP Europe exeperienced the ‘Great Famine of 1315–1317 (occasionally dated 1315-1322) resulting from a series of severe weather events. It shows what extremes nature can enforce upon us even though in this case, we still have a warm period. As I write this in Bristol UK, we are already experiencing some unwelcome cold weather. I just hope that we are not on the way to one of these extreme events, and that the sunspots get their act together.
[Wikepedia] was the first of a series of large scale crises that struck North Europe early in the fourteenth century, causing millions of deaths over an extended number of years and marking a clear end to an earlier period of growth and prosperity during the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. Starting with bad weather in spring 1315, universal crop failures lasted through 1316 until summer 1317; Europe did not fully recover until 1322.
Gosh, Portugal is a nice place. I always hoped to go there on business, but finally had to take vacation and pay out of pocket.
No doubt, the team is a smart group. Out of my league.
A number of scientits were saying that Michael Mann should release the code and dat for reproducibility. Or even as just a good idea!!!!
Phil Jones wrote a long email to the scientists, saying why not to relese code..
He then forwarded it to Michael Mann – saying PEASE DELETE – EYES ONLY, and
don’t tell RAY or MALCOLM…
Presumably the Ray and Malcolm in the email below, are Malcolm Hughes and Raymond Bradbury, in the above article…
——————————————————-
From: Phil Jones
To: mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Subject: CLIMATIC CHANGE needs your advice – YOUR EYES ONLY !!!!!
Date: Fri Jan 16 13:25:59 2004
Mike,
This is for YOURS EYES ONLY. Delete after reading – please ! I’m trying to redress the balance. One reply from Pfister said you should make all available !! Pot calling thekettle black – Christian doesn’t make his methods available.
I replied to the wrong Christian message so you don’t get to see what he said.
Probably best.
Told Steve separately and to get more advice from a few others as well as Kluwer and legal.
PLEASE DELETE – just for you, not even Ray and Malcolm
Cheers
Phil
——————————-
following this email
Dear all,
I agree with most of what has been said so far. Reproducibility is the key word. If the
Mann el al material (to be) posted on the website is sufficient to ensure reproducibility, then there is no compelling need to force them to hand it out. If not,then the source code is warranted. Also, even if there is no compelling need to make the source code public, doing it anyway would clearly be beneficial for the entire debate.
Yours,
Christian
Christian Azar
Professor Department of physical resource theory
Chalmers University of Technology
—————————————
It was a heads up, because various other scientists (possibly Professor Arnell as well) had been saying that Mann should release his code, following MM’s paper (debunking Mann’s hockey stick) – (iethat MANN should release the ALL the cose and data for the papers that LOST the MWP.
——————————————-
Phil Jones sent a long email saying that this should not happen.
———————————————————————
Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 12:37:29 +0000
To: Christian Azar , christian.pfister@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
From: Phil Jones
Subject: Re: AW: CLIMATIC CHANGE needs your advice
Cc: “‘David G. VICTOR'” , ‘Katarina Kivel’ ,
N.W.Arnell@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,
frtca@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, d.camuffo@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, scohen@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, pmfearn@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, jfoley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, pgleick@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,
harvey@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, ahs@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, Thomas.R.Karl@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, rwk@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,
rik.leemans@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, diana.liverman@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, mccarl@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, lindam@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, rmoss@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, ogilvie@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, barrie.pittock@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, pollard@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, nj.rosenberg@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, crosenzweig@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, j.salinger@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, santer1@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, h.j.schellnhuber@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, F.I.Woodward@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, gyohe@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, leonid@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, shs@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Dear Steve et al,
I’ve been away this week until today. Although the responses so far all make valid points, I will add my thoughts. I should say I have been more involved in all the exchanges between Mike and MM so I’m probably biased in Mike’s favour. I will try and be impartial, though, but I did write a paper with Mike (which came out in GRL in Aug 2003) and we currently have a long paper tentatively accepted by Reviews of Geophysics. With the latter all 4 reviewers think the paper is fine, but the sections referring to MM and papers by Soon and Baliunas are not and our language is strong.
We need to work on this.
Back to the question in hand:
1. The papers that MM refer came out in Nature in 1998 and to a lesser extent in GRL in1999. These reviewers did not request the data (all the proxy series) and the code. So, acceding to the request for this to do the review is setting a VERY dangerous precedent. Mike has made all the data series and this is all anyone should need.
Making model code available is something else.
2. The code is basically irrelevant in this whole issue. In the GRL paper (in 2003 Mann and Jones), we simply average all the series we use together. The result is pretty much the same as MBH in 1998, Nature and MBH in 1999 in GRL.
3. As many of you know I calculate gridded and global/hemispheric temperature time series each month. Groups at NCDC and NASA/GISS do this as well. We don’t exchange codes – we do occasionally though for the data. The code here is trivial as it is in the paleo work. MBH get spatial patterns but the bottom line (the 1000 year series of global temps) is almost the same if you simply average. The patterns give more, though, when it comes to trying to understand what has caused the changes – eg by comparison with models. MM are only interested in the NH/Global 1000-year time series – in fact only in the MBH work from 1400.
4. What has always intrigued me in this whole debate, is why the skeptics (for want of a better term always pick on Mike. There are several other series that I’ve produced, Keith Briffa has and Tom Crowley. Jan Esper’s work has produced a slightly different series but we don’t get bombarded by MM. Mike’s paper wasn’t the first. It was in Nature and is well-used by IPCC. I suspect the skeptics wish to concentrate their effort onto oneperson as they did with Ben Santer after the second IPCC report.
5. Mike may respond too strongly to MM, but don’t we all decide not to work with or co-operate with people we do not get on with or do not like their views. Mike will say that MM are disingenuous, but I’m not sure how many of you realise how vicious the attack on him has been.
I will give you an example. When MM came out, we had several press calls (I don’t normally get press calls about my papers unless I really work at it – I very rarely do). This was about a paper in E&E, which when we eventually got it several days later was appalling. I found out later that the authors were in contact with the reviewers up to a week before the article appeared. So there is peer review and peer review !! Here the peer review was done by like-minded colleagues.
Anyway, I’m straying from the point. Tim Osborn, Keith Briffa and I felt we should put something on our web site about the paper and directs people to Mike’s site [RealClimate-BJW ?] and also to E&E and the MM’s site. MM have hounded us about this for the last four months. In the MM article, they have a diagram which says ‘corrected version’ when comparing with MBH.
We have seen people refer to this paper (MM) as an alternative reconstruction – yet when we said this is our paragraph MM claim they are not putting forward a new reconstruction but criticizing MBH 1998 !! We have decided to remove the sentence on our web page just to stop these emails. But if a corrected version isn’t a new or alternative reconstruction I don’t know what is.
So, in conclusion, I would side with Mike in this regard. In trying to be scrupulously fair, Steve, you’ve opened up a whole can of worms. If you do decide to put the Mann response into CC then I suspect you will need an editorial. MM will want to respond also.
I know you’ve had open and frank exchanges in CC before, but your email clearly shows that you think this is in a different league. MM and E&E didn’t give Mann the chance to respond when they put their paper in, but this is a too simplistic. It needs to be pointed out in an editorial though – I’m not offering by the way.
I could go on and on ….
Cheers
Phil
————————————————————–
That is what Phil Jones said to everyone…
He then forwarded the above email onto Michael Mann…. not to copy Ray and Malcolm and to DELETE after reading.
I’ll let everyone interpret it for themselves…..
Two most recent temperature reconstructions by Loehle and Ljungquist indicate existence MWP. This is also confirmed by changes in the Arctic magnetic field which can be used as a rough indicator of the N Hemisphere’s temperature movements; the GMF can be considered as a reliable guide for the Arctic itself, as the period of recorded temperatures demonstrates .
The Team are up to their ‘old tricks’.
So what I’m getting about this meeting of “the age of stupid” Dr. Evils is to rehabilitate the paleoclimatology, more secret proxies to push the IPCC position on the next Doom (fifth) report and abandonment of both MCA/MWP, AaaaLL this after being caught for hiding the decline/manipulating data/FOI blocking and then losing data sets when caught AND are still under investigation. In their evil Lair they are plotting with super computers, GIS graphs and god like proxies to take over the world by changing climate history!
You deniers ! Muahahahah!!
On a KAOS secret location in the middle of the north pacific ocean, inside Mauna Loa volcano all disguised as a Observatory for CO2 in the world! WE have harnessed the energy from the sun, mirrors are in place to block out the light to the earth focusing the suns light through the Hubble telescope to bring 10X the sun power to our cognitive computer brain!!!!! Muahahahaaa!!
Soon as the brain comes on line, no need to think, we’ve programmed the brain to think for you and for our future generations!! When the sun is blocked and the power directed to the great CCB you will have no need to exist, CCB models have calculated you are not sustainable for the future. Those not in compliance with the CCB consensus law will come under investigation as a terrorist security risk and then ticketed for immediate compulsory enrolment for re-education. Multiple CCB warnings can be subject to deletion.
Where is Austin Powers when you need him? heheheheh!
The next UN scare is already pushed down the pipeline.
Mann and Co run the risk to become obsolete = no funding
Pachauri’s IPCC will give it a new go but the next scare is coming.
http://climatequotes.com/2010/10/23/how-the-un-manipulates-the-media-and-the-public-on-biodiversity-part-1/
The Class of ’84 Warmist Farm © reunion in Lisbon revised their constitution:
1. Whatever goes
upon two legswith the MWP is an enemy.2. Whatever goes
upon four legs, or has wings,without the MWP is a friend.3. No
animalWarmist shall wear clothes because it is so darn hot.4. No
animalWarmist shallsleep in a bedwrite any more emails about Tricks and Hiding The Decline.5. No
animalWarmist shalldrink alcoholread WUWT.6. No
animalWarmist shallkillargue against any otheranimalWarmist.7. All
animalsWarmists are equal except for our high priests Mann and Jones.For more details reports please go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_farm and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four
What about the Roman Warm Period? Archeological evidence shows that grape vines were grown north of York in England, presumably because the Romans preferred to drink wine to poor quality water and wine did not travel well in those slow days. The same varieties now grow only as far as Dijon in France some 300 nautical miles south. (about 550km)
Damn that MWP, it don’t fit the narrative!…………………………. hang on a minute, Jonesy says, “hide the SYNCLINE!”
“Wow!”
says Mann, “it’s back to the future all over again!”
Send me an email…………………….. .
Long live the Medieval Warm Period! It really bugs the Hockey Team. All of this effort, to prove something didn’t exist
Presumably there will be new papers issued shortly, with authors from the Portugese juncket, but actually written by eager idiots from the same faculties as other Team players, keen to make a name for themselves.
I believe that in “fastest draw” style shooting contests, accuracy is not part of the competition.