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:
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“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?).
…
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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/
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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…..