Update 5 pm Eastern: 1,000 comments on thread at http://judithcurry.com, and some very “feisty” discourse in this new era of civility.
Since my post on the “RealClimate’s over-the-top response” of Gavin and the Team has been getting a lot of discussion, I thought it only fair to mention that Dr. Judith Curry dropped in to leave a note. She said:
For more fun and games with Gavin, see my latest post at Climate Etc “Hiding the Decline” http://judithcurry.com/2011/02/22/hiding-the-decline/
Judging from comments like this one:
==============================================================
“I’m calling it like I see it”
How brave of you.
My point is that by lowering yourself to insult, you block off all sensible discussion of specific technical points – if you are so certain in your thinking that no further discussion is required, then fine. No more discussion will occur. But it would have been far better for you to have had the character to allow for disagreements without being disagreeable (did you not pick up anything in Lisbon?).
…
================================================================
It seems there’s a veritable free for all going on there. Gavin’s having a little trouble managing in a format that he doesn’t get to manage. See:
http://judithcurry.com/2011/02/22/hiding-the-decline/
Thread of the year! Kudos to Dr Curry for raising the issue .
Having just read through the comments, the only possible reaction is Wow!, Wow! with brass knobs on and a big china gazunder. The exchange is…. extraordinary. Dr Schmidt is gnawing at the ankle of integrity* with some vigour but little effect. And, sweetly, he has even brought doghanza along to give him moral support.
My respect for Dr Curry, already high, increases.
JF
*see cartoons by Josh.
I was surprised to see Judith wade into this matter at such a late stage but thought her comments good. They were nicely and calmly set out and I was pleased to see a scientist condemning what is clearly unacceptab;e practice which practice has discredited science amd climate science in particular. I applaud her for her stance.
Her comments have certainly produced a reaction
/Sarc on
Well Anthony, Gavin is out of sorts give the poor guy a break. I Mean just look at the list of things happening to him:
1. The government agency that is paying his paycheck is transiting from what science they still do to a Muslim outreach program.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/07/07/nasas_muslim_outreach_106214.html
I Mean think about it. It would not be easy trying to learn Farsi and Arabic and then trying to explain Hide the Decline and how the Hockey Stick is robust in those languages in just 6 to 9 months.
2. While he was off doing outreach, Eric Steig losses it over on RC and he wasn’t there to spin them out of it.
3. After missing out on that and finished with his outreach to the Muslims he finds that the evil republicans have passed a bill that might do away with his job that allows him to blog all day (When not doing outreach).
However there was even more Horror the Evil Republicans were taking away the money for the EPA to Impose CO2 regulations
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703803904576152753496208560.html
So of course Gavin is little off his game and little snippy, he has had a bad 2010 and 2011 isn’t looking to swift either.
/Sarc Off
High humor. I limited my comments mostly to misconceptions regarding PCA. It is amazing, but people really think there is some magical way to just tease out “temperature” as if it had some sort of name tag throughout time in tree rings. Sigh…
Even more interesting, IMO, is that Gavin, self-admitted dullard w.r.t. statistical analysis techniques, chose to wade into the quicksand on this one. His only technical defense is several since refuted papers all with the same problems. Even JC is basically calling him an idiot.
Mark
While I am encouraged by Dr. Curry’s challenge to Gavin, why does she not also question his non-climate background (mathematics) or for that matter the Don of GISS – James Hansen.
When Greek meets Greek.
Kindest Regards
Can we have the enormous intellect of ‘ianash’ on here? It’s ok, I’m just joking. She (ianash) is typical of the reason I gave up actually discussing anything on blogs, and just make periodic contributions. It’s a shame that forums get to this level, and I can see the appeal of allowing all comments – against the alternative that is RC and the truly awful Open Mind. But I still think it’s a great shame that we have this wonderful tool for discussing serious subjects, yet have to suffer the mind-thoughts of people like ianash.
R John says:
February 23, 2011 at 12:03 am
There’s no reason she should except to point out the double standard the same idiots hold for everyone else (notice the pattern of double standards, btw?) Steve M’s background is certainly non-climate.
There are so many “fields” within climate science that to expect anyone to be an “expert in climate science” would be akin to thinking the techs on on the TV show CSI are realistically capable of everything they do every week.
Mark
“Gavin’s having a little trouble managing in a format that he doesn’t get to manage.”
It’s easy to see why people following Gavin’s diatribes over at FauxClimate.org believe everything he blogs; since Gavin is actively denying even polite counter comments/posts under the guise of “SPAM filtering”.
I commend Judith Curry for trying to get “the scientific method” back into climate science. I read the whole article and thought it was well argued. It may not be “new knowledge” but it shows that even amongst “warmers” (maybe a weak one?) there is a quest to return to science as it should be practiced. Maybe we will see more climate scientists coming out and becoming scientists again now that the Republicans have a say over how money is spent (or not spent) on proving AGW, Climate Change, Climate Disruption or whatever it is called today.
Personally, I think the quality of the trolling says a lot about the strength of the argument.
I particularly liked this from Dr. Curry:
“I’m more interested in the handle than the blade of the hockey stick. I also view understanding regional climate variations as much more important than trying to use some statistical model to create global average anomalies (which I personally regard as pointless, given the sampling issue).”
The handle is crucial because if the proxies do not adequately show the degree of natural variability that goes to the heart of whether what we are seeing in the real world with our modern day sensing techniques is in any way unusual.
The regional climate variations are critical because it seems to me that a change in the distribution of the air circulation systems is the best guide as to whether the troposphere as a whole is experiencing net warming or net cooling.
As a a result of the dominance of AGW theory for more than two decades those critical issues have been ignored and any investigations apparently suppressed.
Poor Gavin has blown his last (did he ever have any?) shred of credibility. As for his dishonesty – well it shines out like a beacon.
He’s no scientist.
I see Judith’s comment is no longer there. Or at least I couldnt find it.
When this all over, I am going to apply for a NASA grant to create a nice montage for there headquarter using some old Piltdown Man stuff and some cores from Yarmal 061.
Seems to me that Dr Curry is gently falling off the fence. She has always been a warmist, even if only “luke”, but gradually she is seeing what the rest of have known for years, that AGW was never about science, it was always about politics from the moment when Margaret Thatcher set up Hadly.
I remember as a kid, some folk saying “they’d tax the air you breathe if they could get away with it”. Well now in England they do except it is the air you breathe out.
Reading that stuff over at Judith’s reminds me of rats in a sack, all fighting and squabbling over their righteous and sanctimonious indignation. Yuk!
Potentially this could develop into a significant story (particularly if one of the MSM papers were to run with it). The post and comments on Bishop Hill are worth a look.
Dr Curry is being very brave and is being treated by idiots in the alarmist camp as a traitor. Dr Curry is trying to be true to the scientific method and this is causing alarm for the true believers. Most people on her blog are supportive but some are a tad upset and angry. The symptoms of a lost argument even Gavin is angry and peeved [what a shame]
I am very disappointed in the replies. Almost every time Gavin posts a comment, Dr Curry folds immediately and leaves rebuttals to others in the comments.
He compares apples with oranges in terms of leaving data off graphs, and then asks her to cite something to back up another of her comments and she folds completely, even saying, “Good one Gavin, brilliant argument.”
WTF?
There are so many other fields of science, not corrupted by politically motivated AGW grants, oil money or other distracting influences, who for over a century have gathered data which shows that this current decade is NOT the warmest in history. From the fields of history, politics, archaeology, anthropology, geology, oceanography, marine biology, geography, botany, zoology, etc. all have papers which show evidence that lots of different parts of the earth were warmer during the past 1000 years than they are now.
The Hockey stick team produce a dodgy graph from unreliable and largely irrelevant tree-ring data to create a proxy, leave out the part where that tree-ring reconstruction fails to support the thermometer record (a record already suspect due to homogenisation issues) and then they pass that off as being a more accurate record of the last millennia temperature than all the other peer-reviewed and documented historical data combined?
Dr Curry then folds on the slightest pressure and is losing massive amounts of credibility on that one thread alone in my eyes.
I really hope that part II is better with cited examples and links to data and shows Gavin up for the arrogant, bullying, hypocritical pseudo-scientist he really is.
The really interesting thing is that JC ‘gets’ the seminal importance of the original TAR hockey stick in convincing policymakers that there was a problem – by candidly admitting that it had fooled her as well! This makes her thread all the more damning IMO.
I agree with Anthony that our pal Gavin must have had a bad hair day. (both of them)
I just went through all the comments on JC’s “Hide the
Decline” post. Gavin & his band-on-the-run played around in the open venue. I am glad for them that they could escape their self imposed exile at RC. They acted childlike, poor dears, except for their reflexive snarling habit.
Note to Anthony: I am accessing WUWT right now in the P.R.C. I thought someone commented last year that WUWT couldn’t be reached from here.
John
Well, I’ve waded in over on that thread and decided to wade back out for a while.
After the Gavin’s brusque, irritating and disruptive comments, some of the usual suspects like imanass, dogsbrethz, Jen, etc attacked the thread in true troll like Romm-ulan fashion.
Responding to the minions of non-sense can actually be quite tiring.
Anyway, I’m quite proud of this little posting I made over there…..
http://judithcurry.com/2011/02/22/hiding-the-decline/#comment-45878
With reference to the title of the post…. I’d rather not! LOL
This is a huge development. “Hide the decline” has not gone away. Sceptics were not permitted a genuine discussion of the issues. The Warmista used every trick in the book to hush up the matter, including the three big whitewashes. It seems to me that sceptics should jump at this opportunity to have a genuine discussion of the important issues raised by “hide the decline.”
The tide has definitely turned! I can remember just a few years ago nothing at all like this was happening. The truth will set you free!
I love the imagery of the handle of the ‘not to be named’ graph being made from treeometer data and the blade from thermometer data. Especially as all school kids know tree rings are not solely reliant for growth on temperature but also rainfall and sunlight.
I
What a thread! To see people you have only heard about fighting it out in plain view and admitting their doubts and apprehensions regarding the dubious science of the hockey stick was priceless!!
The consensus wall is crumbling. The “too smart for you” warmista’s are expressing a desire to rejoin those on the other side who seek to honour the scientific method and their own commonsense.
I suspect that the latest political developments (funding cutbacks) might have something to do with this latest outburst of openness amongst the professional elite but maybe I am just a cynic.
Maybe Josh can make a cartoon of Gavin clutching a rail of the Titanic while that back end is coming up out of the water…..or fiddling while Rome burns….. or something else along those lines.
😉
Gavin to Judy:
Why would anyone need a “cite” for thinking that something is rubbish? Example:
a: I think the moon is made of cheese
b: Well that’s makes no sense.
a: No sense? Got a cite for that?
The way Gavin is behaving is almost like a villain from one of those B grade hollywood action films who when the game is up at the end of the movie, is so desperate that he pulls a gun and takes a hostage (Judith Curry).
mmmm maybe a project for Ban Ki Moon!
Its funny how you describe as “Gavin having a little trouble” getting shouted down by a bunch of self-important, deaf-to-reason types. Gavin makes a good point – Judith’s words on reconciliation have proven to be empty. The only people she’s shown any attempt at “reconciliation” with are those with an anti-AGW slant – and she has acheived it by, essentially, agreeing with them or simply refusing to disagree with them.
Few people have done more to polarise the current “debate” than Dr Curry.
Mark T says:
February 22, 2011 at 11:55 pm
> Even more interesting, IMO, is that Gavin … chose to wade into the quicksand on this one. … Even JC is basically calling him an idiot.
She’s doing a really good job letting Gavin do that to himself and letting her commentors have a chance to engage Gavin in a dialog that would never happen at RC.
juakola says:
February 23, 2011 at 1:48 am
> I see Judith’s comment is no longer there. Or at least I couldnt find it.
See http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/22/realclimates-over-the-top-response/#comment-605122
[Reply: It’s there, I just re-read it. ~dbs]
Gavin didn’t hang around for long. Is that all we’re going to get from him? Looks like he’s not being allowed out to play with the big boys any more.
Ken Hall says:
February 23, 2011 at 3:59 am
Call it dismissive sarcasm. Gavin wants her to reply so he can attack the reply. Judith’s comment doesn’t give him that chance and implies he said nothing that is worth her time. She’s patting him on the head and saying “There, there, little boy, I know you’re upset, but perhaps you should have stayed home today.” Besides, she knows others can handle a rebuttal, and she’s giving them a chance they never had at RC.
Reading that blog by Dr Curry and the comments, it is encouraging to note that the old, arrogant ploys by Dr Schmidt et al (“read this, that and the next before you talk to me”, or “go away and think”) don’t work any longer. Commenters are answering right back.
I think The Team, Dr Schmidt especially, are still living in the pre-2009 days, where they thought they could dazzle everybody with their BS.
Times have changed, and they are re-fighting the battles of the last war – like the hidebound French generals in WWII who prepared for WWI ….
Dave H
You too are fiddling while Rome burns. You fail to see that some among the global warming aggregate don’t want to get along with the other side. They are not intending on rapport.
Ken Hall says: 3:59 am
“Good one Gavin, brilliant argument.” WTF?
Ken, the reason Gavin got SO upset was the patronising responses like this from Judy – this isn’t caving in, as you seem to believe, it’s simply a very condescending “there, there, Gavin, don’t you worry you little head about it”.
Dave H,
Did you read Dr Curry’s exchange with Schmidt? She was more gracious than he deserved. And Steve Mosher traveled to Lisbon for the express purpose of attending a reconciliation meeting. Guess what? Gavin and the rest of his scare crowd stayed away like spoiled children.
They’re not interested in reconciliation. They’re not interested in anything but keeping their taxpayer funded gravy train on track. If you had read Mosher & Fuller’s CruTape Letters you would see in the emails that all the animosity started and was perpetuated by Mann, Schmidt and their cronies. They actively went after anyone who didn’t toe their line. They caused people to be fired and editorial board members to resign. They run RealClimate on time paid for with unwilling taxpayers’ money, and they censor like old time Soviets – censoring on behalf of the federal government!
You can’t keep poking your finger into someone’s chest, and call them vile names [“denialists”, etc.] without eventually getting some push-back. Now that they’re hearing other opintions that they can’t control, they’re panicking and lashing out.
Judith Curry has put herself in a tough spot. She is trying to at least get a dialog going. For you to say she has “done more to polarize the current debate” either means you don’t know what you’re talking about, or you’re just a scck puppet for the Schmidthead and his gang of tax suckers.
lol, they’re asking for citations and references of why intentional deception shouldn’t be done. They expose themselves for what they are more and more. The problem is character. It appears Gavin and minions are openly defending intentional deception. This dovetails quite nicely with the recent premise of “justifiable disingenuousness” from the Steig debacle.
They wonder why they have a credibility problem? They’ve no compunction.
I apologise unreservedly to Dr Curry if I missed her sarcastic patronising tone. If that what it is, then that is still a little disappointing and is providing fuel for her Alarmist detractors.
As steveta_uk says:
I would have been more impressed if it had been Dr Curry making that remark in reply, rather than the weak [climbdown or patronising sarcasm] response she made.
I look forward to her ripping Gavin a “new one” in her next follow-up article.
I think its most entertaining to watch Gavin in a discussion he can’t control or censor. He’ll stick to RC as the last bunker to hide in when things get unpleasant.
Oh, and Judith has blocked the poster known as “ianash”. The signal has improved immensely.
I don’t agree with Dr Curry on a lot of things, but she’s hitting her stride in calling the Hockey Team for continuing dishonesty and its behaviour towards critics who turned out to be correct.
Ken Hall says:
February 23, 2011 at 6:39 am
I apologise unreservedly to Dr Curry if I missed her…
========================================================
I don’t think she was quite prepared for the response from Gavin and gang. They are particularly apt at misdirection, hand waving, and red herrings. Dr. Curry was speaking towards the generality of a misleading graph. They made several attempts to move her discussion points to a different topic. Her glib response was appropriate.
Gavin and gang are basically asking for citations as to why it isn’t ok to present deceptive graphs. Personally, the alarmists’ show of character(specifically their lack of) on that particular thread stands by itself. These are the people much of the world trusts. And they vehemently argue the case for an intentionally misleading graph.
How does one respond to people that believe it’s ok to be deceptive when presenting science? It isn’t about citations, references or making one’s own constructions. It’s about credibility. Gavin and gang have shown why they deserve none.
Well that is a tipping point – climate changer if ever there was one, 100 points to the actual scientists who took up the discussion, but at the end of the day the poor response by Gavin and the juvenile drivel of ianash. The guest appearance of the Dhog, who is looking/sounding frayed and tattered and a little more unhinged than usual. or is he trying to look more adult and restrained than ianash and the flit in and out of the likes of Tim Lambeth and others, sounds alarm bells for alarmist climate faux science. I think I even heard the fat lady singing in among the screeching from the RC faithful who clearly had lost the plot.
It is really sad that it has to end in such a mess and disorder, rather than an honourable back down in the interests of Science – Time to Mann up, declare unconditional surrender with an apology for being misleading and at least TRY and recover some credibility.
Then lets get back to discussing irritations like weather, politicians and dictators.
There are multiple issues, not just a choice of how to present a graph:
1.Subjective choice of trees/sites for sampling
2.Post-hoc dropping of “non-responders”
3.Linear response to temp assumption (which is actually known to be false.) which makes the inverse problem undefined.
4.Ignoring six sigma outliers like Yamal larch which heavily affect the result
5.Hiding adverse verification statistics (R-sq of 0.05 means you have nada)
6.Unjustified weighting (bristlecones 400x others)
7.Proxies different orientations (+ vs – temp indicator) in different time periods of the recon.
8.Choosing graph baseline to emphasize post-1980 “warm”
9.End point padding—even worse with instrumental data
10.Hiding the decline as discussed above
11.Thick red line for instrumental data to make it look “hot” and to hide lines underneath that are going down.
12.Repeated use of “robust”, “similar”, “reliable” with no quantification
Judith has now completely exposed why ‘hiding the decline’ was misleading. She wrote that the graph where the instrumental record is spliced on the end of the tree ring record, does not make clear to the reader that this is because the tree ring data is diverging from instrumental data.
Every attempt by people like Gavin Schmidt to try and defend it sounds more and more like a cheating politician trying to defend a policy decision. The public can intuit when they are being lied to, and the more the politician – I mean Gavin Schmidt – try and spin their way out of it, the more angry the public become.
In accountancy, financial statements are required to give a ‘True and Fair’ view of the economic reality of the business, and to favour economic substance over legal form. Hiding the decline is neither a true nor fair view of the tree ring record. We all know it, and Schmidt knows it.
Some of the funniest moments are always when Tim Lambert references Deep Climate as an authority. They must be… never mind. Either way, folks like Tim are so hung up on actual authority that it must be a real treat to know DC is the best he can do.
Mark
Maybe someone in the USA could do a FOIA request to see how much NASA time Gavin is spending on RealClimate? After all budgets are tight…
For me the highlight of Dr. Curry’s article was the link to Dr. Richard Muller’s talk on global warming. Richard Muller is a physics professor from Berkley University and has written several books on global warming. In about 2004 Dr. Muller was contacted by McIntyre and McKitrick for help in the hockey stick controversy and was stunned by what they were showing him. His talk is about 52 minutes long but it is worth watching a real scientist talk about global warming.
Jim
Over there one of Gavin’s regulars thinks RealClimate allows only worthy conversations.
dhogaza | February 23, 2011 at 12:11 am | Reply Thank God real climate doesn’t let this sort of conversation happen, which basically consists of Judith Curry launching unsourced ad hom attacks against various scientists, with piling on by random posters.
dhogaza, who’s almost as bad as Ray Ladbury, must think it noble that Gavin has doctored, edited, manipulated and censored many conversations.
Those RC folks are incapable of honest discussion as demonstrated by Curry’s thread.
Wow. Gavin attempted to defend himself by claiming that the hockey stick was merely a summary graph and not meant to show “everything.”
Then, he compared the hockey stick to some satellite hurricane graph that didn’t show any data prior to 1970. I’m still scratching my head trying to figure out why he would do that. The hurricane graph didn’t attempt to splice in data in an attempt to make the graph look better.
I’m shocked that Gavin doesn’t have a better argument.
As a graduate student I collected a difficult spectrum that was going to be the central piece of data in a public presentation. There was an extra peak due to an electronic spike (which was fairly common). As I put the talk together, I used the spectrum as it came out of the instrument: extra peak and all. My advisor stopped me and said “Erase that peak”. I said “Isn’t that dishonest…the peak really happened” He said “Do you know why that peak is there?” I said “Of course, there was an electronic spike when the mechanical arm hit the MCP” He said “Are you sure?” I said “yes, it happens frequently..I can even make it happen on command”. He said “Do you want to talk about it in your presentation”. I said “No, that peak has nothing to do with my talk” to which he responded “precisely….that peak does not help tell your story. You know why it’s there. And if you include it, the audience will focus on that and you’ll have to spend valuable time discussing a moot point”. From that day on I didn’t see “massaging” data as wrong as long as I was honest about it.
In the case of “hide the decline” it seems to me they got rid of the data because it didn’t help them tell their story, but they had no good reason as to why it was in deviation to the story. It would have been like my situation in graduate school except I was telling my advisor that the peak showed up sometimes and I had no idea why and it was also inconvenient to the story I wanted to tell so I want to erase it. He would have made me figure that random peak out or to include it as unexplainable….but not to erase it. That would be dishonest.
@Smokey
> Gavin and the rest of his scare crowd stayed away like spoiled children.
This slant is very telling.
> You can’t keep poking your finger into someone’s chest, and call them vile names [“denialists”, etc.] without eventually getting some push-back.
You really do have a jaundiced view of the history of this “debate”. You’re also very quick with the insults in your response. Classy.
> Judith Curry has put herself in a tough spot. She is trying to at least get a dialog going.
I see no evidence of a serious attempt at any dialogue with anyone outside of the “skeptical” view, which means all she’s managing to do is alienate anyone who does not hold that viewpoint. As far as I can tell, all she’s done is provide a venue where every crackpot can air their pet prejudices in the comments and feel like it has some kind of seal of scientific approval, because Dr Curry never calls anyone out on thier garbage (unless they are *completely* off the wall, but then it is only very rare). She’s provided a forum that is absolutely impervious to any sort of dialog.
Unless of course your idea of “dialog” is just repeating the same untruths and insults until the other side gets bored and goes elsewhere, whereupon you can declare yourself “the winner”.
“While I am encouraged by Dr. Curry’s challenge to Gavin, why does she not also question his non-climate background (mathematics) or for that matter the Don of GISS – James Hansen.”
She’s right not to descend into ad hominem. Best to let the science and only the science speak and focus on the science alone.
Distraction is not argument, its a diversionary stratagem usually employed because a more robust response is not available.
The biggest problem will always be, convincing the average person that weathermen can predict the future…
….throw in lying, cheating, obnoxious behavior, the liberal media, things that just do not make common sense, taxes, the UN, predictions that do the opposite, claiming warmest year on record when people are snowed in and dying from the cold, telling everyone your taxes and utilities are naturally going to go up, making cars that have to be plugged into the grid, claiming warmer makes it colder, attributing every weather event as proof of global warming, claiming weather is unprecedented and hasn’t happened since it happened last time 10 years ago, claiming their science is robust and presenting the total opposite at the same time, using “may, might, coulda, woulda, shoulda in every paper, running websites to promote it and censoring everything…………
warmcold, snowrain, flooddrought, creasing………..
Only a total idiot would believe this mess……………
Judith’s post is a huge development (a potential tipping point) in terms of the propaganda war. This is the main reason why Gavin is freaking out. It opens the door for other scientists to speak out. She’s giving them a ton of cover.
I’m totally gobsmacked.
I have come to admire Judith Curry’s honesty as a person and as a scientist; fronting up to any nastily-adversarial situation takes real strength of character. I am delighted she has risen to Bishop Hill’s challenge to Sir John Beddington to explain ‘hide the decline’, the phrase which which was hurled into the midst of an astounded sceptical community by the Climategate emails. Gavin has lost any credibility he once had and his troglodytic followers are digging the hole he is in ever deeper by their mad statements. Gavin’s tactic of demanding citations to illustrate self-evident facts or even opinions is one that AGW supporters use to shut down rational discussion of any kind on the Guardian’s CiF. The shoddy cloth that CAGW is woven from is unravelling in front of our eyes.
I agree with Dickens Goes Metro.
This could be a seminal moment. Perhaps, just perhaps, the sight of Judith Curry – former hockey team supporter – challenging the great leviathan on its favourite stomping ground – MBH98, will prove sufficient to encourage other, less hardy souls from the climate community to break ranks and support her. Goodness knows, it’s time!
In any case, this is the most exciting day since climategate, witnessing Curry and Schmidt locking horns in public…..let’s hope this is just the start!
Mark T says: “High humor. I limited my comments mostly to misconceptions regarding PCA. It is amazing, but people really think there is some magical way to just tease out “temperature” as if it had some sort of name tag throughout time in tree rings. Sigh…”
If you believe in fairies, you’ll arrange to see fairies everywhere you look. Dr. Curry asks for photographs. Instead, she gets a spittle-spewing rant.
Ken Hall says: “I am very disappointed in the replies. Almost every time Gavin posts a comment, Dr Curry folds immediately and leaves rebuttals to others in the comments….”
That happens fairly far down the chain. Dr. Curry figures out partway down that cognitive dissonance is driving the other side of the debate, and there’s not much point in trying to argue with someone that disturbed. It’s too much like trying to have a game of dominoes at tea with Hannibal Lecter. Ah, the heartbreak of proctocraniosis.
The brilliance of Dr. Curry is she drew the rat out of the hole to test the cheese. In her follow-up article she’ll be testing the trap. I too look forward to the follow up article. It will prove interesting and I dare say even worse for the rat.
John Whitman says in a note to Anthony:
“Note to Anthony: I am accessing WUWT right now in the P.R.C. I thought someone commented last year that WUWT couldn’t be reached from here.”
Possibly was me and as of late December last year, it was still true. It depends on where you have logged on and for certain locations (Schools affiliated with western countries and large hotels) it may be occasionally possible to escape the “Great Firewall”. However, I have been in at least 10 different locations not of the former, where the firewall was working very well. The only way to escape this block was to use “tools” to get around it. The price of that is horrible internet speeds to fool the censors. Sorry it’s a bit off topic, but think it is important to know who is censoring and has access to these views. PRC does not want the Chinese populous to know or be exposed to anything divergent from their Party Line, which closely matches RC mantra.
With China now with the largest internet population, this is a significant exercise of censorship of WUWT views.
Gavin comes across as a pompus jackass in his posts. Which, I suspect, he quite possibly is.
I am an engineer. I deal with data every day, all day. As I type this, I have an Access query running in the background. As I’ve said before, when the tree rings “lost correlation with surface temp” in 1961, you cannot possibly then assume that there ever really was a correlation to begin with. Especially when you have absolutely no explaination for the loss of correlation. I swear if I produced a graph where I cut out sections of data and spliced in what I wanted, I may very well be fired. “Dishonest” doesn’t quite cover it.
This clarifies in my mind that Gavin does not get it. And on top if it, he doesn’t understand that he doesn’t get it…
There now are over 800 comments on that one JC post alone!
(Funny how they never get 800 comments on anything at RC.)
Gavin must have been hopping mad to pop out of his hole into the light of day like that. It is sort of like a mole jumping up from his molehill, clenching his tiny fists, and taking a swing at the sunrise.
Glad to see it happen, even as a silent lurker.
I wonder how many have visited the JC site silently, like I did. Any figures? More than visited RC today?
As a mathematician, Gavin should know enough statistics to know that the hockey stick is a mathematical and methodical can of worms. I think “the team” is getting really desperate now, because their house of cards of little cheats has really started to collapse. I’m glad to see that dr Curry has decided to finally address the question of the hockey stick, which (in addition to Al Gore’s commercialization of the subject) was what made me a “skeptic”.
Having read Judith Curry’s article, it is difficult to find much to disagree with. Unless, of course, you have another agenda and something to hide.
The only other point I wish to make is that there is one group of people who have a deep insight into climate history – they are called geologists.
And by geologists I mean those scientists working in the private sector, not the bureaucrats who ‘work’ in government. Finding a private sector geologist who believes in AGW is as rare as finding rocking horse poo.
MattN:
I’m absolutely sure Gavin gets most of it by now. He’s basically cornered in a trap of his Team’s own manufacture. He cannot bring himself to back up and condemn the trick, and there is no way to move forwards and defend it – because it is scientifically indefensible. What he may not yet realise is that his bitter and vitriolic prattling on Judith’s blog, along with the awful contributions of his most vehement defenders (ianash, dhogaza et al), is highlighting the main event – Gavin’s credibility as a scientist, bleeding out before our eyes.
Gavin and all of the team, responsible for creating “the trick” in order to “hide the decline”, are exposed directly as practitioners of pseudo-science. There is no escaping this predicament now. Beddington wanted the pseudo-science exposed and condemned, and that’s exactly what he’s going to get.
Well said. The rest of your comment is good, too. I agree 100%.
It’s laughable that Gavin attempts to claim that those who understand the issue don’t have a problem with the hockey stick.
Reading Gavin’s comments at JC’s site I am reminded of the recent comments by Gaddafi.
@al gored
‘Reading Gavin’s comments at JC’s site I am reminded of the recent comments by Gaddafi’
They were mistranslated from the original Arabic. I have it on good authority that what he actually said was
‘Oh dearie me. We seem to be in a bit of a bind. WTF do we do now?’
But maybe you were right all along….
MattN says:
February 23, 2011 at 9:52 am
As I’ve said before, when the tree rings “lost correlation with surface temp” in 1961, you cannot possibly then assume that there ever really was a correlation to begin with.
I think it’s still possible that there’s a correlation, but not with “global temperature”, but with local temperatures in some areas, for instance on the Yamal peninsula… Just look at the graph of the closest long-running station to Yamal, Ostrov Dikson: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=222206740006&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
Jimmy Haigh says:
February 23, 2011 at 5:45 am
Gavin didn’t hang around for long. Is that all we’re going to get from him? Looks like he’s not being allowed out to play with the big boys any more.
It’s the middle of the day in the US, and we know that Gavin doesn’t post during work hours.
/sarc
“I’m absolutely sure Gavin gets most of it by now.”
Quite possibly. But he sure isn’t going to let it get in his way of continuing to defend the indefensible.
The ENTIRE thing hinges on an approx. 100 year period (1850ish -1961) where certain tree rings appear to correlate to surface temp. I get that. Had this correlation continued past 1961 ans well past Y2K, they quite possibly might have had a decent point. But the fact that correlation was lost, I immediately want to know “how many times in the past 1000 years did they lose correlation?” The answer is, of course, “we have no idea”. Which makes the graph complete junk.
An Engineering student would get an “F” on a project presenting data with this quality. And we are trying to base policy on this?
MattN says:
February 23, 2011 at 9:52 am
As I’ve said before, when the tree rings “lost correlation with surface temp” in 1961
=================================================
Matt, weren’t the tree rings correlated with only 9 years of temperature data in the first place?
It’s settled then. By consensus, the “Hockey Team” consists of a bunch of liars that will deny every piece of factual evidence showing their deception.
Espen: Possibly, sure. But it’s not presented that way in the “stick” is it?
Latitude: No idea.
Latitude says:
February 23, 2011 at 11:11 am
MattN says:
February 23, 2011 at 9:52 am
As I’ve said before, when the tree rings “lost correlation with surface temp” in 1961
=================================================
Matt, weren’t the tree rings correlated with only 9 years of temperature data in the first place?
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Lat, there has been so many different approaches to the treeometers, I can’t remember which approaches go to which work of fiction. The “9 years” rings a bell, but which incarnation and what context, I can’t recall. It seems it was in the SI of one of the papers.
Espen says:
February 23, 2011 at 10:02 am
Not necessarily. PCA and related methods are used more by statisticians and engineers doing signal processing. Degrees in mathematics are quite different. I do believe Gavin admits he does not know the concepts. If my belief is true, you have to wonder why he defends them knowing he does not have the requisite knowledge.
Mark
Latitude says:
February 23, 2011 at 11:11 am
Impossible to tell. A correlation is calculated over a stretch of data that contains noise (even if it is not well defined noise.) Any short period within that data can have just about any correlation even if the whole still has whatever correlation results.
Mark
I have seen a number of people comment on Gavin’s weak attempt to “defend” the whole “Hide the decline” debacle.
I don’t think that is what he was trying to accomplish instead I think he was hoping to hijack the comments with the hurricane chart, and course get in a few jibes at Dr. Curry.
The fact of the matter is that when the team decided to hide the decline they were committing scientific fraud. The teams defense of this is that they are not frauds, just incompetent, but the science (of AGW) is sound.
It is sad that Gavin’s method of defending himself and his team is somewhat worse then a four year old caught red handed breaking some rule or other trying to stay out of trouble.
And to think that he is the teams best option…
Having spent far too much time reading all of this stuff here and on JC’s site, I feel that I have to weigh in. Equating Dr. Schmidt’s remarks on JC to those of Gadaffi are a bit over the top. Now perhaps comparing them to Baghdad Bob……….hmmmmm.
Cold Englishman says:
February 23, 2011 at 3:07 am
That’s my girl: ‘Cool Hand Luke’! 😉
Mark T: you don’t have to know PCA to suspect that the way data is sampled is severly flawed… But you may be right – I guess I’m biased: I have a degree in a different branch of math myself, but I took a few non-obligatory statistics courses during my studies.
My point is that by lowering yourself to insult, you block off all sensible discussion of specific technical points – if you are so certain in your thinking that no further discussion is required, then fine.
——————————————
This from a man who rages against anything short of hero worshipping at rc and who puts criticism in a place called the bore hole. It must be painful to be gavin these days. He is completely unable to see the irony. Funny how his own complaints would be put in the bore hole if presented at rc.
Lat, there has been so many different approaches to the treeometers, I can’t remember which approaches go to which work of fiction. The “9 years” rings a bell, but which incarnation and what context, I can’t recall. It seems it was in the SI of one of the papers.
=================================================
That’s what I remember too James.
It’s been a while, but I “think” I remember reading that the tree rings were calibrated against only 9 years of temperature data.
Doesn’t matter though, the margin of error is larger than the temperature range they claim to get from them….
… and they had to pick and choose to even get the ones they did.
Complete waste of time………….
Holy moley, Batman. Apparently Climate Etc had a problem loading comments so JC opened a second thread for additional comments. Combined total comments is over 1,000 in 24 hours and still growing . Of course, part of the traffic was driven by Gavin losing the chiuauas of war. The local spca handled them with aplomb.
PS. chiuauas =alternative spelling of chihuahuas.
Bigdinny says:
February 23, 2011 at 12:10 pm
“Equating Dr. Schmidt’s remarks on JC to those of Gadaffi are a bit over the top. Now perhaps comparing them to Baghdad Bob……….hmmmmm.”
Agree! I did make that Gadaffi comment and, after some further thought I just equated Gavin’s comments with Bagdad Bob’s instead a while ago over at JC’s site.
http://judithcurry.com/2011/02/23/hiding-the-decline-part-ii/#comment-46848
The possibilities are endless. Monty Pythin’s Black Knight would also work… though maybe that should be saved for the BBC’s Richard Black. How about Richard Nixon?
Espen says:
February 23, 2011 at 12:46 pm
Maybe true, but insight into what PCA is really doing helps and that’s not something you’re going to pick up in a standard math degree.
You probably won’t even learn PCA unless you actually major in statistics. I didn’t, though I learned every thing else (signal processing) related – it was simply never called “Principal Component Analysis.” EVD and SVD are two methods for implementing PCA, btw, which you actually can learn in a good linear algebra class.
Mark
Latitude says:
February 23, 2011 at 1:04 pm
Complete waste of time………….
========================================================
As is most of the chasing around after their sophistry. McShane and Wyner destroy dendrochronology. Tree rings don’t agree with the last 50 years? 1st thermometer was invented in 1714. How long did it take to develop properly calibrated and distributed thermometers to compare against tree rings? And people believe that we can accurately assess temperatures 1000 years ago to a tenth of a degree? Its flabbergasting, the gullibility of some people. Well, if its on a graph, it must be true.
MattN says: February 23, 2011 at 9:52 am
“…when the tree rings “lost correlation with surface temp” in 1961, you cannot possibly then assume that there ever really was a correlation to begin with. Especially when you have absolutely no explaination for the loss of correlation.”
Hi MattN. For “the tree rings” I assume you mean a small percentage of groves confined to northern latitudes only. Trees closer to the equator do not evidence any divergence problem. For “cannot possibly assume … a correlation”, temperature correlations are robust wrt to the instrumental record for both groups up until ~1960 and non-divergent series (the strong majority case) thereafter.
What factors might give a scientist a measure of confidence that inclusion of a divergent series is justifiable? IF divergence is attributable to temperature rise beyond a threshold that affects the tree’s environment or physiology AND other paelo series in the reconstruction do not indicate past temperatures entered that regime AND the signal from the divergent series was broadly consistent with other data, the inclusion would be a distinct benefit (particularly where paleo data was sparse).
A long bow? Many potential causes of divergence have been suggested for each stand affected with no conclusion reached as to the real cause(s), so the first caveat above is a surmise only. However, it is certainly not “indefensible” as so many claim, particularly in light of improved proxy number, quality and coverage across the last decade resulting in independent reconstructions showing the same temperature behaviour WITH AND WITHOUT tree ring data. Science moves on. Improvements to MBH98 (a 12 year old paper) support its key conclusions.
David L says:
February 23, 2011 at 8:31 am
That is a rather poor supervision in my opinion.
Firstly, if you don’t report what you actually see – it can never be really replicated – can it? – as your equipment may be slightly different to someone elses? If everyone did that – we’d get nowhere very slowly!
Secondly, there is no need to ‘erase’ something that is so easily explained (as per your example). In your presentation, it would be more appropriate to say something like ‘this spike is there because of x,y,z and is ignored’ – it takes but a couple of sentences!
If you don’t do this – and later someone replicates your work and finds a similar spike, from their own equipment – you will be held accountable for false reporting/recording – and rightly so!
If that was one of my old supervisors from many eons ago – I’d have taken him/her to serious task!
It’s not right – it’s not clever – don’t fall into such bad habits!
and just to put it into a context you may be able to understand – in my line of work, if I don’t report what I find (because it doesn’t suit or whatever) and someone repeats the work later – it’s MY arse that gets sued! Whereas, if I report a ‘bad’ result, but use my judgement and a suitable professional explanation to ‘ignore’ it – I can’t be sued because I have brought it to everyones attention! Get it?
James Sexton says:
February 23, 2011 at 1:57 pm
Please let me show you my up-to-2007 graph of US real estate prices. The consensus knew they could never go down. Apparently the current scenario of decreasing values is simply a result of ongoing increases in value. That can sometimes fool little people like me. Of course, I was unable to see all the green shoots a while back too, so I must be exceptionally stupid.
Robert M says:
February 23, 2011 at 11:53 am
I have seen a number of people comment on Gavin’s weak attempt to “defend” the whole “Hide the decline” debacle.
The fact of the matter is that when the team decided to hide the decline they were committing scientific fraud. The teams defense of this is that they are not frauds, just incompetent …..
—————————————-
It’s a common “defense” in breach of fiduciary duty claims. “We weren’t trying to rip off other shareholders. We just made some bad decisions, Your Honor”.
Well at least people can now make up their minds as to whether the guy is a fraud or an incompetent ….
…. or they could lean towards a third alternative, which happens to be my call – he’s both.
Dave H says:
February 23, 2011 at 5:34 am
Few people have done more to polarise the current “debate” than Dr Curry.
Yes, it does tend to get a little polarized when the principles of real science are put forth in comparison to an “anything goes except real science” CO2=CAGW Propaganda Operation. ‘Happens with a Good vs Evil confrontation, too.
James Sexton says:
February 23, 2011 at 1:57 pm
Tree rings don’t agree with the last 50 years?
======================================
I don’t think they agree with anything in the real world at all.
Since we know the tree rings lost correlation with actual thermometers in 1961.
We know that they picked only the trees that matched the temps they wanted them to,
and threw the rest of the tree rings out. Which means they threw out the vast majority of trees……….and only found a very small amount of trees that showed the temps they wanted to……
If, I remember correctly, that the tree rings were only calibrated to 9 years of temperature records in the first place………..
Why is anyone talking about this at all?
….this is some kind of joke
Kev-in-Uk says:
February 23, 2011 at 2:28 pm
David L says:
February 23, 2011 at 8:31 am
That is a rather poor supervision in my opinion….”
I do agree! My purpose of the post was to show some evidence that academic scientists can be pretty cavalier with data massaging and still consider it honest. Nowadays I’m in big Pharma and every little bit of data is recorded for all eternity: good, bad, ugly, or otherwise. You can’t massage anything for any excuse. That’s what kills me about the team. They ought to try working in Pharma for awhile and see if they can get away with even the smallest bit of their nonsense.
David L,
Richard Horton, editor of the British medical journal The Lancet, has said that
“The mistake, of course, is to have thought that peer review was any more than a crude means of discovering the acceptability — not the validity — of a new finding. Editors and scientists alike insist on the pivotal importance of peer review. We portray peer review to the public as a quasi-sacred process that helps to make science our most objective truth teller. But we know that the system of peer review is biased, unjust, unaccountable, incomplete, easily fixed, often insulting, usually ignorant, occasionally foolish, and frequently wrong.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_review#Criticisms_of_peer_review
So if these problems persist in Big Pharma related science, imagine how things work in the wonderful world of the team’s ‘global climatology.’
I read a great deal of the interchange last night and am happy to hear that eventually ‘ianash’ was blocked. After a couple of hundred posts I began skipping ianash entirely becaues there was no intention whatsoever to participate, merely draw cartoons.
Good call.
While valid points are made, I fear Dr. Curry is now really in the bulls-eye. Read the climategate emails and understand what will happen now.
Ammonite:
” For “the tree rings” I assume you mean a small percentage of groves confined to northern latitudes only.”
I am refering to Briffa’s reconstruction (Yamal?) that they are refering to that “lost correlation” in 1961, which is why they loped off the offending data.
“independent reconstructions showing the same temperature behaviour WITH AND WITHOUT tree ring data”
I am aware of ZERO reconstructions without tree ring data that show a hockey stick. Please point them out to us.
1) Just because you do not like it, you don’t get to ignore valid data. There is ZERO evidence that post-1960 data in that series was invalid. It just didn’t say what they wanted it to. So they ignored it like a dead racoon.
2) Again, because Briffa’s recostruction lost correlation after 1960, you HAVE to ask the question how many other times in the last 1000 years did it lose correlation. If you can’t answer that, then you have garbage data. It might be 100% accurate. Or it might be 100% innacurate. You don’t know. And that’s the point.
Ammonite,
The decline was deliberately well hidden. You can’t see what happened in this hockey stick…
…unless you look real close.
Matt, it’s 100% inaccurate…..
The test is can it predict in real time…
…if it can’t
No different than all of the 25 or so computer models………
“Matt, it’s 100% inaccurate…..”
Well, I’m sure at SOME point in that time frame it was an accurate account of temperature. Even a broken clock is exactly right twice a day, right? 🙂
Gavin said
It’s obvious that Gavin did say that E&E dispensed with peer review but has dispensed with substantive peer review, I’m curious as to how this is different from the AGW team had admitted to doing in the climategate Emails in regards to peer review? At first glance it appears the pot is calling the kettle black.
Sorry “It’s obvious that Gavin did say ” should have been “It’s obvious that Gavin did not say ” for the want of a preview button a post was lost!
MattN says: February 23, 2011 at 5:30 pm
I am aware of ZERO reconstructions without tree ring data that show a hockey stick. Please point them out to us.
Matt, I always have a sinking feeling when it comes to posting research links on WUWT. I am not aware of one single requestor showing the slightest evidence of looking any of them up and assimilating the information provided. I hope the links below will prove useful to you. The first relates to North America only and uses pollen for the reconstruction. The second covers the Northern Hemisphere (proxy data still being sparse for the SH) and compares reconstructions with and without tree ring data. Both approaches conclude that recent warmth is “likely anomalous” – read Hockey Stick.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/viau2006/viau2006.html
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2008/09/02/0805721105.abstract
MattN says:
February 23, 2011 at 6:24 pm
“Matt, it’s 100% inaccurate…..”
Well, I’m sure at SOME point in that time frame it was an accurate account of temperature. Even a broken clock is exactly right twice a day, right? 🙂
===================================================
Yep, that’s what I’ve been trying to get someone to help me remember.
I have it in my head, that the tree rings were calibrated to only 9 years of temperatures.
So they would be “right”, sorta, for those nine years. As good as I can remember, those nine years were in the late 1800’s.
“”If, I remember correctly, that the tree rings were only calibrated to 9 years of temperature records in the first place………..””
But as far as being an accurate proxy for temps, they are 100% inaccurate….
Ammonite:
Re: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/viau2006/viau2006.html
July temps only? Awesome. What about the other 11/12ths of missing data?
Re: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2008/09/02/0805721105.abstract
Watch the pea under the pod. If you don’t know what that means, you are not paying attention…
Dr. Curry is privileged to have Dr Schmidt posting in person on her blog. Does Dr Schmidt or even Dr Mann ever post on WUWT? We could have some really interesting discussions.
Why should Dr Curry have all the fun?
Moderators could delete posts containing the word “liar”to keep the discussions seemly, except that Drs Schmidt & Mann posts should not be censored or altered in any way.
[Reply: I fully agree. Drs Mann and Schmidt are always welcome to contribute an article. ~dbs, mod.]
MattN says: February 23, 2011 at 7:26 pm
Watch the pea under the pod.
Firstly, thank you for following the links provided. Not surprisingly pollen does not have a lot to say in winter, yet it does produce a hockey stick in summer. If you don’t like the examples given, feel free to conduct your own literature search, but remember: “just because you do not like it, you don’t get to ignore valid data.”
As for peas and pods, others are watching very closely on our collective behalf.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/h483676101066104/
The timeline evidence suggests that AGW continues to fall slowly, basically one by one of the real scientists (ie Curry, Dyson, et al) changing their minds about it. It will never be instant old soldiers only fade away they say…..
Judith is walking a path of discovery, objective of/toward the outcome. Commendable and fearless.
The sun will shine bright on that day when the momentum, begun here, results in a broadly held realization that it was the knuckledraggers who had it right all along.
🙂
Muller thought the “hide the decline” was deceitful. Dr. Curry now openly criticises the Hockey Team. Gavin is acting like himself being angry and crying like a five year old. This may not be the end of the debate, but perhaps a new beginning for climate science where the rotten apples are being left out. Sorry, Gavin, but your posts read like what my four year old niece would say when angry. I cannot see how you can expect to be taken seriously as a “great scientist” after this ordeal.
Ammonite:
Not ignoring anything. I’m looking for the missing 11 months of data. Just as we we not declare 2011 the warmest of coldest year on record based on January data alone, I see no reason to pronounce 20th century warming was anamalous based solely on one month pollen data.
I believe Ammonites 2nd reference is to Mann 08.
Steve Mc did an analysis of this [http://climateaudit.org/2010/08/01/the-no-dendro-illusion/]
and a small extract follows – initially he is referring to the original hockey stick – MBH98
“In the terminology of M08, without bristlecones, they did not have a “validated” reconstruction as at AD1400 and thus could not make a modern-medieval comparison with the claimed statistical confidence.
Ironically, the situation in M08 appears to be almost identical. Once the Tilj proxies are unpeeled, Mann once again doesn’t have a “validated” reconstruction prior to AD1500 or so, and thus cannot make a modern-medieval comparison with the claimed statistical confidence.”
As people are aware, this issue has been in the blogs a long time.
At one stage Gavin was interviewed on collide-a-scape and a small section of comments at CA went as follows: Quote
Roger Pielke, Jr.
Posted Aug 5, 2010 at 9:49 PM | Permalink | Reply
Gavin responds:
http://www.collide-a-scape.com/2010/08/04/gavins-perspective/comment-page-4/#comment-13149
*
Brian Eglinton
Posted Aug 5, 2010 at 10:40 PM | Permalink | Reply
Thanks for highlighting this Roger.
Gavin makes 5 dot points to detail the handling of the Tiljander proxies.
In short
– lake sediments may contain climate related signals – in the case of Tiljander there were known issues,
– Mann et al (2008) used these proxies. In CPS method, local correlation fixes the orientation. If you have reason to believe this is wrong the proxy should not be used.
I will quote 3) in full:
“3) Since Mann et al (2008) were very aware of the potentially dubious nature of the modern portion of the Tiljander proxies, they performed their reconstructions without those proxies (and three others with potential problems) in sensitivity tests in the supplemental information (specifically Fig S8). Neither reconstruction (for NH mean (EIV) or NH land (CPS) temperature) is materially affected by the absence of the Tiljander proxies. This is the identical result to what you would have if you had a priori insisted on the opposite orientation of the proxies in CPS.
– the validation using tree rings but not Tiljander go back to 700AD (EIV method) and 400AD (CPS method)
– if people object to using Tiljander or think they are upside down – the non-Tiljander reconstructions in the SI shows it makes little difference.
– “Nothing stated in the RC posts or comments was incorrect.” Without trees & Tiljander, “these methodologies don’t allow you to say anything before 1500.”… “All validated reconstructions show late 20th Century warmth as anomalous over the their range of validity.”
By which we can say that if we reject trees & Tiljander, we have confidence the temperature has risen only in the last 500 years. I think this is my take home line from all this. The historical, large scale phenomenon supporting a MWP have not been addressed by these particular proxy studies.”
End of Quote
In other words – Gavin agrees perfectly with StevMc – that without Tilj & the trees, the study does not validly reconstruct back into the MWP. The paper arrives at its conclusion by careful selection of suspect proxies. Yes – Gavin agrees that removing them hurts the conclusion, but he carefully reframes the conclusion to “over the their range of validity”. But he hopes that this validity range being only to 500 years ago misses the casual reader.
Strangely – having tried to minimise the significance, he waded back into the issue over at Judith’s blog?
Craig Loehle says:
February 23, 2011 at 7:28 am
There are multiple issues, not just a choice of how to present a graph:
1.Subjective choice of trees/sites for sampling
2.Post-hoc dropping of “non-responders”
3.Linear response to temp assumption (which is actually known to be false.) which makes the inverse problem undefined.
4.Ignoring six sigma outliers like Yamal larch which heavily affect the result
5.Hiding adverse verification statistics (R-sq of 0.05 means you have nada)
6.Unjustified weighting (bristlecones 400x others)
7.Proxies different orientations (+ vs – temp indicator) in different time periods of the recon.
8.Choosing graph baseline to emphasize post-1980 “warm”
9.End point padding—even worse with instrumental data
10.Hiding the decline as discussed above
11.Thick red line for instrumental data to make it look “hot” and to hide lines underneath that are going down.
12.Repeated use of “robust”, “similar”, “reliable” with no quantification
Craig, very good post and bullet points the “bad” science well. All I would add is the amazing energy (years) spent by the “team” in not letting the science be replicated by refusing to release the data and meta data for so long, and the thousands of web comments by the “team” attempting to reduce all of the above to a simple debate on “how to present a graph” and “minor statistical differences” which are common to most papers. The entire picture is one big affront to the scientific method, and when used as a political wepon to attempt to steal from the people of the world with trillions of dollars in tax, centralize power away from individuals into the hands of unelected bureaucrats, then all I can say is “there should be a law”.
Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
February 23, 2011 at 5:22 am
“or fiddling while Rome burns….. or something else along those lines.”
Typo: surely “Romm”?
Gavin’s (hyper)reaction is entirely expected given that his little “team” is being attacked on two fronts now (the “Steig-gate” scandal and now more repudiation of Climategate and “hide-the-decline”). One wonders if he’s getting any “work” done at all at NASA/GISS – not that it matters…
Personally, the whole Gavin-Mann-Steig-RealClimate thing has become boring and cartoonish, but sadly emblematic of the entire sorry CAGW research establishment…
The hockey stick is scientific fraud. Gavin Schmidt is a poor scientist. Sue me.
I applaud Gavin for staying with the sinking ship.
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5295/5474333318_d79c8022ee_z.jpg
It takes real courage to do what he’s doing.
For Ammonite: The “No-dendro illusion”: http://climateaudit.org/2010/08/01/the-no-dendro-illusion/
All you do is put TWO bad proxies in your reconstruction, that way, when you remove the dendros, you still have a stick.
Magic. Just like the guy on the street corner I saw working it last weekend.
Watch that pea and keep hiding the decline, baby…
Magnus says:
February 24, 2011 at 2:10 am
“… Sorry, Gavin, but your posts read like what my four year old niece would say when angry. I cannot see how you can expect to be taken seriously as a “great scientist” after this ordeal.”
I’m not sure the fact that Gavin may act like a child would by itself call into question if he’s a “great scientist”….
During my tenure in academia I noticed a lot of the academic researchers had a similar personality as compared and contrasted to “the real world”. It seemed the trend was that many of the most succesful academic folks had developed intellectual capacity far beyond their years, but experienced emotional arrested development at around the age of 5.
Gavin’s poor scientific arguments and unbelievably closed-minded biases may cast him out of the “great scientist” bucket.
Brian Eglinton says: February 24, 2011 at 3:44 am
“By which we can say that if we reject trees & Tiljander, we have confidence the temperature has risen only in the last 500 years.”
Hi Brian. Thank you for your response. “Confidence” speaks to the heart of the issue. When multiple overlapping proxy series all give the same result for a given period (< 500 yrs) it gives me a sense of confidence that the techniques employed are robust and the proxies reliable. On that basis, use of a particular proxy set beyond that period is not unreasonable. Is it guaranteed to give an accurate result? No. In using sparse data does the confidence level diminish? Yes. And as proxy quality, coverage and quantity increase resolution is improved. It will be interesting to see where the boundary lies in 2018.
The pollen study linked above is for North America only, July only. It stretches 14,000 years and shows a hockey stick. Is this definitive re global temperatures? Hardly. It's scope is far too limited in space and monthly coverage, but it is consistent with Mann et al 08. In my estimation it rates a very small plus in favour of the hockey stick and the hockey stick itself a small plus in the preponderance of evidence favouring AGW.
At JC’s Climate Etc. site “Hiding the decline” is up to 1227 comments and “Hiding the Decline Part 2” is up to 677 comments.
Her daily traffic soared. She states, “Total number of hits today is almost 22,000 (well above previous CE high already, which equates to an average day for WUWT). Of these, 8,000 were referrals (5,000 from WUWT; then more than 100 ea from Climate Depot, Climate Audit, Bishop Hill). Compared to normal traffic, about 15% of the daily hits are from referrals. Of the total hits, 16,000 are for the two hiding the decline threads…”
It goes to show you that “hiding the decline” does not keep anything hidden, nor does it it lead to a decline in attention.
It’s amazing how many minds are focused like the proverbial lazer on this issue.
Ammonite, you are missing the point on Tiljander. It is junk data.
Per ClimateAudit:
“It turned out that the twentieth century uptick in Tiljander’s proxies was caused by artificial disturbance of the sediment caused by ditch digging rather than anything climatic. Mann had acknowledged this fact, but then, extraordinarily, rather than reject the series, he had purported to demonstrate that the disturbance didn’t matter. The way he had done this was to perform a sensitivity analysis, showing that you still got a hockey stick without the Tiljander proxies.
Great care is needed when reading scientific papers, particularly in the field of paleoclimate, and this was one of the occasions when one could have come away with an entirely wrong impression if the closest attention had not been paid. The big selling point of Mann’s new paper was that you could get a hockey stick shape without tree rings. However, this claim turned out to rest on a circular argument. Mann had shown that the Tiljander proxies were valid by removing them from the database and showing that you still got a hockey stick. However, when he did this test, the hockey stick shape of the final reconstruction came from the bristlecones. Then he argued that he could remove the tree ring proxies (including the bristlecones) and still get a hockey stick – and of course he could, because in this case the hockey stick shape came from the Tiljander proxies. His arguments therefore rested on having two sets of flawed proxies in the database, but only removing one at a time. He could then argue that he still got a hockey stick either way.
As McIntyre said, you had to watch the pea under the thimble. ”
Indeed….
MattN says: February 24, 2011 at 2:36 pm
Ammonite, you are missing the point on Tiljander.
. . . . . . penny slowly dropping. Thanks MattN.
I posted the response I copy below in reply to Gavin Schmidt at the link provied above.
I think the reply warrants my copying it here because I think some readers of this thread may be interested in it and in hope that its further publication will encourage a response from Dr Schmidt.
Richard
Gavin:
Your obfuscation and personal attacks on Dr Curry are reprehensible.
The facts are
(a)
The tree-ring proxy data indicated declining temperatures after 1960.
(b)
The thermometer-derived data indicated rising temperatures after 1960.
These facts indicate that
1.
The tree-ring proxy data are wrong
Or
2.
The thermometer-derived data are wrong.
Or
3.
Both the tree-ring proxy data and the thermometer-derived data are wrong.
Those findings are the only significant results of the MBH studies that provided the infamous ‘hockey stick’ graphs. And they are important findings.
But the MBH papers did not assert those findings. Instead, those papers used ‘graphology’ to “hide the decline” in temperatures after 1960 that was indicated by the tree-ring proxy data. And the ‘climategate’ emails prove that the ‘graphology’ was not merely incompetence but was “Mike’s Nature trick” being used to deliberately misrepresent those findings.
So, “Mike’s Nature trick” was either corrupt scientific practice or pseudoscience: there are no other possibilities.
Please remember that I have continuously complained at the splicing of the two data sets from the first week after publication of MBH98 (i.e. since long before the McIntyre demolitions of the MBH studies).
Indeed, you left a closed Climate Science discussion forum (of which we were both Members) in a huff because you could not cope with my pointing out your egregious scientific errors.
Your obfuscations, posing of straw men and throwing insults like confetti do not – and cannot – distract from the fact that “Mike’s Nature trick” was either corrupt scientific practice or pseudoscience. In my opinion, the only hope you have for a way back from where you are is to abjectly apologise for having done it, and that hope may be forlorn.
Richard
“. . . . . . penny slowly dropping. Thanks MattN.”
Any time…..