Note: I spent the day with the BEST team yesterday at Lawrence Livermore Berkeley Laboratories and I’ll have a report on it soon, but here in the meantime is what Fred Singer has to say about it, via Climate Realists. – Anthony
By Dr. Fred Singer
The e-mails leaked from the University of East Anglia in November 2009 produced what is popularly called “Climategate.” They exposed the thoroughly unethical behavior of a group of climate scientists, mainly in the UK and US, involved in producing the global surface temperature record used and relied on by governments.
Not only did these climate scientists hide their raw data and their methodology of selection and adjustment of temperature data, but they fought hard against all attempts by independent outside scientists to replicate their results. They also undermined the peer-review system and tried to make it impossible for skeptical scientists to publish their work in scientific journals. There is voluminous evidence in the e-mails to this effect. In the process, they damaged not only the science enterprise — full publication of data and methods, replication of results, open debate, etc — but they also undermined the public credibility of all scientists.
However, the most serious revelation from the e-mails is that they tried to “hide the decline” in temperatures, using various “tricks” in order to keep alive a myth of rising temperatures in support of the dogma of anthropogenic global warming. There have now been a number of investigations of the activities of this group, mainly in the UK. These have all turned out to be complete whitewashes, aimed to exonerate the scientists involved. None of these investigations has even attempted to learn how and in what way the data might have been manipulated.
Much of this is described in the “Hockey Stick Illusion: Climategate and the corruption of science” by A. W. Montford. Meteorologist Joseph D’Aleo and others have made a commendable effort to show how data might have been altered. But an independent effort to reconstruct the global temperature results of the past century really demands a dedicated project with proper resources.
The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) Project aims to do what needs to be done: That is, to develop an independent analysis of the data from land stations, which would include many more stations than had been considered by the Global Historic Climatology Network. The Project is in the hands of a group of recognized scientists, who are not at all “climate skeptics” — which should enhance their credibility. The Project is mainly directed by physicists, chaired by Professor Richard Muller (UC Berkeley), with a steering group that includes Professor Judith Curry (Georgia Tech) and Arthur Rosenfeld (UC Santa Barbara and Georgia Tech).
I applaud and support what is being done by the Project — a very difficult but important undertaking. I personally have little faith in the quality of the surface data, having been exposed to the revealing work by Anthony Watts and others. However, I have an open mind on the issue and look forward to seeing the results of the Project in their forthcoming publications.
As far as I know, no government or industry funds are involved — at least at this stage. According to the Project’s website www.berkeleyearth.org, support comes mostly from a group of charitable foundations.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Atmospheric physicist S. Fred Singer is Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia and former director of the US weather satellite service. He is a Senior Fellow of the Independent Institute and the Heartland Institute. He is the author or co-author of Unstoppable Global Warming [2007], Nature not Human Activity Rules the Climate [2008], and Climate Change Reconsidered [2009].
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“walt man says:
February 19, 2011 at 12:37 pm”
The real issue is if the tree ring data diverged and suggested lower temperatures when the thermometer based temperatures were supposedly rising then the issue is was the previous tree ring data actually a good proxy for temperature? That was the real purpose of hiding the decline because it calls into question the validity of the tree ring data used to construct the proxies.
As to the validity of the temperature measurements I would have to see all the raw data not the homogenized data that is released. I would also need to see a better handling of the UHI effect. Finally the arctic temperatures need to be actually measured not just use some land sites and then extend them out up to 1200 km. The validity of the overall values really hasn’t been established given all the problems raised by a lot smarter scientists than I am.
Sorry once again to be commenting so much, but many people seem to be unaware that there was an entire paper published in Nature in 1998 that was solely about the “divergence problem” concerning the particular sample of tree rings that diverged from the thermometer record after 1960.
K. Briffa et al. (1998). “Reduced sensitivity of recent tree growth to temperature at high northern latitudes,” Nature 391: 678-682.
Later tree-ring papers always referred back to this paper. The divergence problem is very well known among the small group of scientists who do research in this area.
will1be says:
February 19, 2011 at 6:42 pm
Minor correction to the above comment about Ben Santer’s “stamping ground.”
Lesson learned: if you try to inject a little wit, be careful it doesn’t reveal you as a half-wit.
Tenney Naumer says:
February 20, 2011 at 6:48 am
If hiding in plain sight is hiding, well that is a good trick indeed.
The use of thermometer data after 1960 was fully explained in the first paper that was published with it. All subsequent papers footnote the “trick” — so nothing at all was ever hidden.
——————————————-
Silly, silly Phil!
He said “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature Trick…..to hide the decline.”
He intended to hide the decline, he took action to hide the decline, he appears to believe that he has hidden the decline, but you tell us that nothing was ever hidden.
For sure, it didn’t stay hidden!
Are you saying he was deluded or incompetent when it came to concealment? You don’t appear to have an alternate meaning for the word ‘hide’.
This dictum from the late Alfred Korzybksi is the nub of the problem. When ideologies take over, the map becomes increasingly separated from the territory, and science becomes wishful thinking, at best, or nasty agendas at worst.
Sounds to me as though the engineering approach advocated by Ian W (February 20, 2011 at 6:57 am) is the best way to keep your eyes fixed on the territory—and eschew the simplistic and probably meaningless reification of ‘global average temperature’ altogether.
/Mr Lynn
“…Unless everyone wants to argue that temperatures have actually declined since 1960…”
Actually temps did decline after 1960 all the way to the late 70’s. This is one of my personal point of irritation. As time moves on, the past temp data keeps changing so much. 20 years ago a graph of the last 100 years showed a clear and sharp decline from the 50’s through the 70’s. But every new revision of the past has lessened that cooling. Now we see nothing but a flat plateau during that period in the most recent graphs. This is re-writing history.
I would not be so quick to completely write of the tree rings as completely incorrect. Does everyone here think that every proxy in every area of the planet is a perfect match to the global climate average? Of course they are not. I would expect there are lots of tree rings that disagree, or exaggerate trends or have delays in showing global trends. It is the nature of the proxies. But it is very obvious why the Mann and team would want to edit out the recent divergence and bury it. It does bring out a good point brought forward by some posters though. Why not just eliminate that set if it has such a clear problem? The obvious answer is they wanted to keep the rest because it supports the the “myth”.
But of course that particular e-mail was talking about that one example in a specific context, and a literal review of Singers statement would show it incorrect.
So instead of arguing endlessly in posts, why not just ask Anthony to send a request to Singer for a clarification of what he meant? Add it to the end of the article. Simple and no more speculation. simple
Tenney,
You are pointing to single location or regional proxies that may or may not be valid and that’s fine. I could just as easily point to other proxies from other regions that show the MWP was warmer. Recall that was the team’s argument, that the MWP was a local phenomenon unique to certain areas of the NH. I personally remain unconvinced that it is possible to reconstruct global temps to a level of accuracy that answers the “unprecedented” question. As you must be aware, the adequacy of the excuses as to why the divergence exists has been beaten to death also. The publication of these excuses in the peer reviewed literature doesn’t mean their adequate. Ironically, until the CAGW mania publication of a scientific hypothesis marked the beginning of debate not the end.
D. Caldwell writes,
“Why do they keep using it?”
It has totemic value to contrarians but I don’t know of any scientists still using Mann et al.’s 1998 temperature reconstruction, because it’s been superceded by better ones including Mann et al. 2009. The 1998 version was described to me recently as “hitting the target but missing the bullseye” — that is, wrong on some details but not the big picture. Studies by different research teams using better PCA centering or no PCA at all, and other sets of tree rings or no trees at all, have found again and again they reach roughly similar conclusions.
That big picture (anomalous recent warming, which forms the “blade” of the hockey stick seen by Mann and just about everyone else) has been widely confirmed. I’ve noticed three new hockey-ish graphs from widely different studies published in just the past few months. There are scores more in the literature.
Researchers keep using this idea of recent warming because so many of them can see it in their own data.
@Oliver
Please look at my comment about two comments above yours.
As I wrote there, this divergence problem is out there in the literature for all to see — and it is always referred to in any paper using this particular sample.
Therefore, it would not be correct to assume that the “trick” involved was anything more than standard procedure for authors of tree-ring papers who used this sample.
It was not hidden. This was an innocuous use of the word “trick.”
And “hide the decline” would be a short hand way of describing the procedure (by now standard) to deal with the divergence problem.
Taken out of context, of course it looks bad. But since the whole thing is a well-known procedure used by these authors that has been out in the literature for over 10 years, we cannot ascribe nefarious purposes to Phil Jones’ email. Nor to Michael Mann.
Doug Badgero writes,
“I could just as easily point to other proxies from other regions that show the MWP was warmer.”
I’m sure it happened somewhere, but which proxies do you have in mind, showing the MWP warmer than today?
Smokey says:
February 20, 2011 at 2:55 am
John Finn,
It’s amusing watching how apologists for the straightforward statement “Hide the decline” try to make it mean “Let’s not hide the decline.”
Who are you trying to fool?
I’m not trying to fool anyone. As I said earlier I was on to the “hide the decline” trick several years ago – long before you ever thought it was an issue. “Hide the decline” refers to the proxy reconstruction. Fred Singer wrote
He has clearly got it wrong. It’s easy to show he has got it wrong. I’m sure the BBC and other pro-AGW media outlets will be only too pleased to point out how one of the leading sceptics has got it wrong. Perhaps you agree with Singer’s statement, in which case you are also wrong and you need to familiarise yourself with the facts.
Here is a link that collected many proxies over various time frames. I think the author shows the futility of this effort pretty well.
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Holocene,Historicandrecentglobaltemperatures.pdf
Gneiss says:
February 20, 2011 at 10:04 am
Doug Badgero writes,
“I could just as easily point to other proxies from other regions that show the MWP was warmer.”
I’m sure it happened somewhere, but which proxies do you have in mind, showing the MWP warmer than today?
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php
By Dr. Fred Singer.
>>
However, the most serious revelation from the e-mails is that they tried to “hide the decline” in temperatures, using various “tricks” in order to keep alive a myth of rising temperatures in support of the dogma of anthropogenic global warming.
>>
Oh, PLEASE get your facts straight. I’m no defender of CRU or their americain based co-conspiritors but if you’re going to critisise them for twisting the truth there’s no point in twisting the truth to do it or looking silly by getting your facts wrong.
“Hide the decline” was NOT a decline in temperatures it was a decline in Briffa’s tree ring proxy data. This blatantly showed the proxy was less than reliable. When the proxy went the wrong way the decided to “hide” it by cutting it off in 1960 and blending in incompatible thermometer data.
In the case of P. Jones’ WMO graphic where he claimed to have used “Mike’s trick” he went even further than Mann had done with the hockeystick, he actually used the same line colour for both data sets. Complete scientific fraud.
Mann by comparison just cropped off the bit that did not suit his argument and super-imposed the thermometer data. It has been fairly well established (see CA coverage of this issue) that Mann also fiddled proxy data by padding the end of the running mean window with thermometer data to blend the two lines together despite the fact that actual proxy data was available. The thermometer data was shown in a different colour.
What they were actually hiding was not only the small period of decline but the fact that the proxy data upon which the whole “unprecidented warming” argument was based was totally unreliable.
That is no small matter. So rather than making specious claims that warmists will take create comfort in dismissing (quite justifiably) please get your facts straight, doctor. This is one of the key issues of the climategate fraud which shows they knew their data did not show what they were claiming it did and on at least two very public documents went to quite some efforts to hide the facts.
I suggest you correct this article. The truth is more damning than your incorrect claim.
Maintain a public data base the raw data, the corrected data, and corrected methodology.
Have statisticians vet your analytical procedures, not climatologists, and make public copies of the procedures, their reasoning, and your software code. The former will prevent ‘hockey stick’ problems, the later will spot your errors. Acknowledge any contributions from both.
Above all, you must be like Caesar’s wife – above reproach.
Wow, Tenney, do you think you could try harder to contort the issue any better to support your position? It was indeed nefarious because their intent was to deceive, to hide from everybody the truth that tree rings aren’t reliable as proxies.
Mark
hey! what happenned to my last post? I spent a while correcting “Doctor” Fred Singers specious rubbish and it seems to have got dumped.
OK, just wordpress playing games it seems.
It was decline in temperatures, which they tried to hide. Temperatures as reconstructed by proxy (tree ring) data.
Otherwise, they wouldn’t speak about unprecedented temperatures.
IMO, this temperature proxy decline hints at real temperature decline, which is not seen in official instrumental records (UHI, selection/confirmation bias).
@ur momisugly
Tenney Naumer says:
February 20, 2011 at 9:58 am
——————————————-
I’m not yet addressing what the word ‘decline’ refers to.
It’s the word ‘hide’ for starters.
To hide is to conceal. To keep from view, to prevent from seeing. It just doesn’t have another meaning.
It is not unreasonable to believe that Phil Jones was seeking to conceal something. He said that he had just concealed something. It doesn’t matter yet what it was.
I am fully prepared to discuss this in some other language, but to “hide” means to conceal in English, and that connotes an intent to deceive.
It’s absurd to move on to the meanng of ‘decline’ without acknowledging that.
If it helps, I don’t have a problem with “trick” having innocuous meanings.
Of course, the divergence was his problem, but the greater context is that he was an embattled warmista wishing to deny ammunition to his opponents in the war of “humans are warming the world with their CO2” and “No, they’re not”.
If the divergence destroys the credibility of the proxy, then you can’t prove it’s warming because we don’t know how warm it was before. Offering up other proxies is fine but it doesn’t in any way rescue the discredited ones.
What is Y-axis in all those tree ring reconstructions? It’s not tree ring width in mm.
Dave Wendt, I checked out the first Northern Hemisphere example on the “CO2 Science” website you cited. It’s Moberg et al. (2005), a well-respected alternative to Mann’s reconstruction. But the Moberg data don’t support any claim that the MWP was warmer than today. Their proxy series ends in 1979. The Moberg article itself contains a graph matching proxy with instrumental records, which have risen substantially since 1979. They draw a conclusion opposite to yours:
“We find no evidence for any earlier periods in the last two millennia with warmer conditions than the post-1990 period—in agreement with previous similar studies1, 2, 3, 4, 7.”
CO2 science skips the substance and draws their own version of this graph. But when they write that their version is “adapted from Moberg et al. 2005,” what that means is they left off instrumental data in order to hide the incline.
Are there other examples better than this?
Doug Badgero, I’m not sure where to start with your link. Can you pick one for me, a well-validated regional proxy that you like, showing MWP temperatures higher than today?
I’m not doubting that such exist, just curious to see your best case.
Edim says:
February 20, 2011 at 11:50 am
IMO, this temperature proxy decline hints at real temperature decline, which is not seen in official instrumental records (UHI, selection/confirmation bias).
Presumably you also accept that the neither the MWP nor LIA existed since that is what is “hinted” in the proxy record.
Oliver Ramsay writes,
“I am fully prepared to discuss this in some other language, but to “hide” means to conceal in English, and that connotes an intent to deceive.”
It connotes no such thing. Computer programs offer “hide” options in a wide range of contexts, including the drawing of graphs.
Googling “microsoft word hide” just now got me 5 million hits. I doubt that most have anything to do with deception.
Gneiss,
It’s quite clear from the context of the quote that the intent was indeed to keep from the intended audience (policy makers) the fact that the instrumental record diverged from the proxy record.