Guest post by Barry Woods (please bookmark his blog RealClimategate -Anthony)
Judith Curry has tackled the ‘Hide the Decline’ issue at her blog Climate Etc. The issue is that data was hidden from policymakers (and the public) so not to confuse them… and other data spliced in to perhaps give a very different message?
As published using Mike’s Nature Trick to “hide the decline”
Mike’s Nature Trick not used. Thermometers and spliced in tree ring data removed.
As temp reconstructions proxies (tree rings) were used to explain or ‘sell’ that modern temperatures were ‘unprecedented’ so global warming ‘must’ be down to humans and that policy makers should something now.
The fact that the proxies temperature decline when the thermometer readings are going up, would indicate that they are NOT a good proxy for past temperature.
I think even the most unscientifically trained politician and member of the public could see this, especially if you look at the 2 graphs above..
The screen captures are from the video Judith Curry links to (part I):
No point talking here about it here, go to where the debate is.
http://judithcurry.com/2011/02/22/hiding-the-decline/
http://judithcurry.com/2011/02/23/hiding-the-decline-part-ii/
http://judithcurry.com/2011/02/24/hiding-the-decline-part-iii/
At the Bishop Hill blog, at least one scientist has chimed in to support Professor Judith Curry
Professor Jonathon Jones (Physics – Oxford University)
”If you’re wondering who I am, then you can find me at the Physics Department at Oxford University.”
Professor Jonathon Jones:
“People have asked why mainstream scientists are keeping silent on these issues. As a scientist who has largely kept silent, at least in public, I have more sympathy for silence than most people here. It’s not for the obvious reason, that speaking out leads to immediate attacks, not just from Gavin and friends, but also from some of the more excitable commentators here. Far more importantly most scientists are reluctant to speak out on topics which are not their field. We tend to trust our colleagues, perhaps unreasonably so, and are also well aware that most scientific questions are considerably more complex than outsiders think, and that it is entirely possible that we have missed some subtle but critical point.
However, “hide the decline” is an entirely different matter. This is not a complicated technical matter on which reasonable people can disagree: it is a straightforward and blatant breach of the fundamental principles of honesty and self-criticism that lie at the heart of all true science.
The significance of the divergence problem is immediately obvious, and seeking to hide it is quite simply wrong. The recent public statements by supposed leaders of UK science, declaring that hiding the decline is standard scientific practice are on a par with declarations that black is white and up is down. I don’t know who they think they are speaking for, but they certainly aren’t speaking for me.
I have watched Judy Curry with considerable interest since she first went public on her doubts about some aspects of climate science, an area where she is far more qualified than I am to have an opinion. Her latest post has clearly kicked up a remarkable furore, but she was right to make it. The decision to hide the decline, and the dogged refusal to admit that this was an error, has endangered the credibility of the whole of climate science.
If the rot is not stopped then the credibility of the whole of science will eventually come into question.Judy’s decision to try to call a halt to this mess before it’s too late is brave and good. So please cut her some slack; she has more than enough problems to deal with at the moment.If you’re wondering who I am, then you can find me at the Physics Department at Oxford University.”
Feb 23, 2011 at 10:29 PM | Jonathan Jones
Silly Me! I just now noticed that the US National Debt is a leading indicator of Global Warming.
Edit:
policy makers should something now
should be “do something now”
Richard Muller is clearly a “climate realist,” like most of us skeptics. However, his worry over CAGW seems to rest upon the climate models. As people who know here understand, these are perhaps the weakest part of any such case.
As Freeman Dyson calls it, this is the collective “My impression is that the [climate] experts are deluded because they have been studying the details of climate models for 30 years and they come to believe the models are real. After 30 years they lose the ability to think outside the models'”
JohnWho says:
February 25, 2011 at 1:07 pm
Thanks! I can’t believe I missed the rest of that article! Dumb.
But right you are, with this kind of ‘evidence’ I can hardly wait too. I think Anthony et al may have already demolished both of those “peer-reviewed studies… in Nature, one of the world’s premier scientific journals” here… will go look.
Well said Professor Jones. My sentiments exactly, but delivered far more eloquently than I could.
I hope you will have the courage to forward a copy of your comments to Sir Paul Nurse, President of the Royal Society, reminding him of his duty to uphold the principles of the the scientific method and the honour of the scientific professions which he so gravely failed to do when he fronted the Horizon programme “Science Under Attack.”
Incidentally, I never thought I would be singing the praises of a Professor Jones, especially on this blog.
Ninderthana,
Your description of ideal proxies is consistent with the model that the dendroclimatologists use. Your simplification ignores many compounding factors such as variable sunlight due to competition, availability of nutrients, etc. Furthermore you ignore the fact that growth ring widths follow an inverted U-shaped curve with respect to temperture. If the temperature is just right and other conditions are good then you get thick growth rings. If temperature is too hot or too cold you get thin growth rings.
Dendroclimatologists assume that their practices of tree selection are sufficient to isolate a given tree to be temperature-limited. It is difficult to know if their methods actually work, because any tree that doesn’t match their priors is tossed out because it is deemed non-responsive. See the works of Jacoby or D’Arregio for further details.
Dendroclimatology holds potential, but the science has a long ways to go before the practices live up to the ideals.
I cannot unglue myself from the screen… this is history unfolding, someone likened it to el Alamein, someone likened it to a dam bursting, someone likened it to War and Peace giving way to Crime and Punishment… ah, we still await Gulag Archipelago.
Lukewarmers are winning the Right To Speak… even if the science [to me] still needs to be examined a lot more rigorously, not just Hide The Decline but also… hey, the ice-core CO2 measurements that Jaworowski said were far too low all along… the MLO record of annual CO2 increases that simply doesn’t begin to compare with the record of annual fossil fuel use increases…
… to say nothing of the Madoff-mad-ripoffs called C*ap and Tirade…
… the serial corruption of IPCC…
… but hey, the Right To Speak first, the dam breaking makes a deafening noise as everyone appears there to speak their particular grievance after years of the Team’s gagging games.
And Judith puts forward some very important proposals in her Part III, to me the reframing of incentive for research being one of the most significant but they are all important.
Earle Williams says:
February 25, 2011 at 6:24 pm (replying to Ninderthana)
Your description of ideal proxies is consistent with the model that the dendroclimatologists use. Your simplification ignores many compounding factors such as variable sunlight due to competition, availability of nutrients, etc. Furthermore you ignore the fact that growth ring widths follow an inverted U-shaped curve with respect to temperature. If the temperature is just right and other conditions are good then you get thick growth rings. If temperature is too hot or too cold you get thin growth rings.
OK. So continue that thought: CO2 is believed to have been stable prior to 1950, then increased dramatically. (This according to the Gospel of CAGW according to Mann, Briffa, Hansen, etc. Then again, now they are trying to link all climate change to CO2 going as far back as the Industrial Revolution of the early 1700’s when the Little Ice Age ended and the world’s temperatures began to rise. Naturally. As they continue to do so now….)
How do the world’s few dendrochronologists correct their “assumed” constant nutrient level, water level, sunlight level, soil level, etc for the (assumed) slow rise in CO2 between the 1880-1890’s high temperatures and 1940 high temperatures, then thhe very dramatic rise in plant growth due to CO2 between 1940 and 2010?
If they have NOT corrected for this CO2 change, what good are any other “corrections” to their prejudices about pre-selecting trees to sample to “eliminate” the other biases that have supposedly been removed by pre-selecting sample trees?
In short, is their field actually producing valid “knowledge” at any level of research and writing?
HIDE THE DECLINE
I concur with Prof Richard Muller’s conclusion regarding hide-the-decline completely that I have written the text for part of his presentation as follows. I was also one of those who were deceived by the “hide-the-decline” graph a decade ago.
Video presentation by Prof Richard Muller
Director of the Berkeley Earth Project
http://bit.ly/eGzSuJ
What about the Climategate?
The scientists have now been exonerated, acquitted, not guilty.
They did get a wrist slap.
They deceived the public, and they deceived other scientists, but they did nothing that was immoral, illegal, or anything like that.
What did they do to deceive the public?
This is in the report. This is in the review, not the charts.
But these are the data as they published it on the cover of the World Meteorological Organization magazine:
Plot 1. http://bit.ly/fmHLX3
These are the data that many of my fellow scientists at Berkeley used.
They say, hello, you know the public may not understand graphs, but I do.
Look at this. Here is the temperature for the last thousand years going all over the place. It is not actually temperature but they actually measured tree rings, corals, that is a proxy for temperature; goes all over the place.
Look what happened recently: Zoom! That is clear and incontrovertible. The public may not understand this so I have to now lend my prestige to this. I am a professor of Physics and I will now go and tell people global warming is clear and incontrovertible because I have seen the actual data [Plot 1] and it is. Unfortunately, a lot of my colleagues have behaved in this way.
In their paper, if you dig into it, they said they did something with the data from 1961 onwards. They removed it and replaced it with temperature data. So some of the people who read these papers asked to see the data; they refused to send it to them, the original raw data. They used the Freedom Of Information Act. The freedom of information act officer, on the advice of the scientist, would not release the data.
Then the data came out. They weren’t hacked like a lot of people say. Most people who know this business believe they were leaked by one of the member of the team who was really upset with them.
So I now can show you what the data that they refuse to release, the original data before they did anything. What they did was, and there is a quote. A quote came out on the emails, these leaked emails that said, let’s use Mike’s trick “Hide The Decline.” That is the word. Let us use Mike’s trick “Hide The Decline.” Mike is Michael Mann, he said, “trick” just means mathematical trick. That is all. Now, my response is, I am not worried about the word trick. I am worried about the decline. What do you mean hide the decline?
Let me show you this. Now we have the data. Now it has been released. This is what it is.
Plot 2. http://bit.ly/hmBIcs
That is the raw data, as any Berkeley scientist would have published it. It would have said, okay, we have had the medieval warming, ice age, and now we have global warming. And there is some disagreement, but this disagreement is all over the place and that just shows the technique is not completely reliable.
What they did is, they took the data from 1961 onwards, this peak, and erased it. What is the justification for erasing it? The fact that it went down. And we know the temperature is going up. Therefore, it was unreliable. Is this unreliable [pre instrument data]? No. How do we know? We don’t know, but [hand waving]. This [post 1961 unreliability] is probably some human effect. The justification would not have survived pear-review in any journal that I am willing to publish it. But they had it well hidden and they erased that and they replaced it with temperature going up.
Let me show you how cleverly this was done. Get back to this plot [Plot 1]. There it is. They added the same temperature data to three different plots giving the illusion that there are three different sets going up. And they smoothed it, because temperature changes smoothly. If they had not smoothed it, you might have noticed, wait a minute, what is the change going right there? Why is it abruptly different? You don’t notice that because it is smooth. Smoothing is legitimate in their mind, because temperature change is not discontinuous.
So that is what they did, and what is the result in my mind? Quite frankly, as a scientist, I now have a list of people whose paper I wouldn’t read any more. You are not allowed to do this in science. This is not up to our standards.
I get infuriated with colleagues of mine who say, “well you know it is a human field, you make mistakes.” When I showed them this, they say, “no, that is not acceptable.”
Now, here is part of the problem. The temperature I showed you before, this one
Plot 3: http://bit.ly/ewYmxR
Of the three groups I picked the one I trusted the most. Which group was this? Ya, the group that hide the decline.
Jim Hansen predicts things ahead of time. We have a group here that feels it is legitimate to hide things. This is why I am leading a study to redo all this in a wholly transparent way.
HIDE THE DECLINE (Revised: used WUWT figures)
I concur with Prof Richard Muller’s conclusion regarding hide-the-decline completely that I have written the text for part of his presentation as follows. I was also one of those who were deceived by the “hide-the-decline” graph a decade ago.
Video presentation by Prof Richard Muller
Director of the Berkeley Earth Project
http://bit.ly/eGzSuJ
What about the Climategate?
The scientists have now been exonerated, acquitted, not guilty.
They did get a wrist slap.
They deceived the public, and they deceived other scientists, but they did nothing that was immoral, illegal, or anything like that.
What did they do to deceive the public?
This is in the report. This is in the review, not the charts.
But these are the data as they published it on the cover of the World Meteorological Organization magazine:
Plot 1. http://bit.ly/gI0r8I
These are the data that many of my fellow scientists at Berkeley used.
They say, hello, you know the public may not understand graphs, but I do.
Look at this. Here is the temperature for the last thousand years going all over the place. It is not actually temperature but they actually measured tree rings, corals, that is a proxy for temperature; goes all over the place.
Look what happened recently: Zoom! That is clear and incontrovertible. The public may not understand this so I have to now lend my prestige to this. I am a professor of Physics and I will now go and tell people global warming is clear and incontrovertible because I have seen the actual data [Plot 1], and it is. Unfortunately, a lot of my colleagues have behaved in this way.
In their paper, if you dig into it, they said they did something with the data from 1961 onwards. They removed it and replaced it with temperature data. So some of the people who read these papers asked to see the data; they refused to send it to them, the original raw data. They used the Freedom Of Information Act. The freedom of information act officer, on the advice of the scientist, would not release the data.
Then the data came out. They weren’t hacked like a lot of people say. Most people who know this business believe they were leaked by one of the member of the team who was really upset with them.
So I now can show you what the data that they refuse to release, the original data before they did anything. What they did was, and there is a quote. A quote came out on the emails, these leaked emails that said, let’s use Mike’s trick “Hide The Decline.” That is the word. Let us use Mike’s trick “Hide The Decline.” Mike is Michael Mann, he said, “trick” just means mathematical trick. That is all. Now, my response is, I am not worried about the word trick. I am worried about the decline. What do you mean hide the decline?
Let me show you this. Now we have the data. Now it has been released. This is what it is.
Plot 2. http://bit.ly/i6MqnK
That is the raw data, as any Berkeley scientist would have published it. It would have said, okay, we have had the medieval warming, ice age, and now we have global warming. And there is some disagreement, but this disagreement is all over the place and that just shows the technique is not completely reliable.
What they did is, they took the data from 1961 onwards, this peak, and erased it. What is the justification for erasing it? The fact that it went down, and we know the temperature is going up. Therefore, it was unreliable. Is this unreliable [pre instrument data]? No. How do we know? We don’t know, but [hand waving]. This [post 1961 unreliability] is probably some human effect. The justification would not have survived pear-review in any journal that I am willing to publish it. But they had it well hidden and they erased that and they replaced it with temperature going up.
Let me show you how cleverly this was done. Get back to this plot [Plot 1]. There it is. They added the same temperature data to three different plots giving the illusion that there are three different sets going up. And they smoothed it, because temperature changes smoothly. If they had not smoothed it, you might have noticed, wait a minute, what is the change going right there? Why is it abruptly different? You don’t notice that because it is smooth. Smoothing is legitimate in their mind, because temperature change is not discontinuous.
So that is what they did, and what is the result in my mind? Quite frankly, as a scientist, I now have a list of people whose paper I wouldn’t read any more. You are not allowed to do this in science. This is not up to our standards.
I get infuriated with colleagues of mine who say, “well you know it is a human field, you make mistakes.” When I showed them this, they say, “no, that is not acceptable.”
Now, here is part of the problem. The temperature I showed you before, this one
Plot 3: http://bit.ly/ewYmxR
Of the three groups I picked the one I trusted the most. Which group was this? Ya, the group that hide the decline.
Jim Hansen predicts things ahead of time. We have a group here that feels it is legitimate to hide things. This is why I am leading a study to redo all this in a wholly transparent way.
Girma says:
February 25, 2011 at 8:31 pm
Let me show you this. Now we have the data. Now it has been released. This is what it is.
Plot 2. http://bit.ly/i6MqnK
Care to tell us where that data for the black curve came from?
Anyone involved in the “Hide The Decline” discussion who focuses on and/or defends the word “trick” is either missing the point or deliberately trying to obfuscate the relevant issue. It makes not a whit of difference whether “trick” connotes something evil or the greatest scientific simplification of a difficult problem since Fermat’s comment in the margin of his copy of Arithmetica. The relevant issue is the phrase “Hide The Decline”. Deliberately suppressing data that was part of a study but had the potential to devalue your message is not science–it’s skulduggery.
Girma says:
February 25, 2011 at 8:31 pm
“Look what happened recently: Zoom! That is clear and incontrovertible. The public may not understand this so I have to now lend my prestige to this. I am a professor of Physics and I will now go and tell people global warming is clear and incontrovertible because I have seen the actual data [Plot 1], and it is. Unfortunately, a lot of my colleagues have behaved in this way.”
Who is the Professor of Physics? Yourself? Or someone you neglected to quote? You seem to be contradicting yourself, to the extent that I can’t tell which side of the fence you’re sitting on.
I concur with Prof Richard Muller’s conclusion regarding hide-the-decline completely that I have written the text for part of his presentation as follows.
http://bit.ly/haX3Dj
I continue to be astonished that people are still arguing about the hockey stick trick. How did a single tree ring study somehow trump several thousand published papers full of proof of the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age? “Hide the decline’ refers to the last part of the Mann et al. curve, but the bigger picture is even worse! At very best, all that this study could possibly show is that these tree rings fail to show climatic trends. The geologic data is clear and unequivocal–the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice did occur globally and the hockey stick is nothing more than a really dumb trick.
Give the Hockey team a break, imagine how hard they had to fight to just delete the post 1960 paleo data. Mann was probably pushing to just use it upside-down.
From the comments at Climate Etc
Judith Curry’s repsonse to Gavin, I think is wworth repeating.
http://judithcurry.com/2011/02/22/hiding-the-decline/#comment-45770
curryja | February 22, 2011 at 7:41 pm | Reply
Gavin, the field does not need any more summary graphs of this nature. They have done an enormous disservice to climate science and its credibility. Continuing to defend these kinds of graphs is beyond anything I can understand.
Leaving out that data and putting a “likely” confidence level on conclusions from that data is bad science, anyway you slice it.
If you don’t like dishonest, try misguided and pseudoscience.
There is no way this is defensible scientific practice.
I really hope we don’t see any more of these kinds of graphs, in the AR5 or elsewhere. I’ve tiptoed around this one long enough, I’m calling it like I see it.
Professor Jones goes onto my list of selfless heroes. On a material level,he has everything to lose and nothing to gain from nailing his colours to the mast.
I just hope he has his income stream and pension completely sorted out.
Bravo, Prof!
Could we have statements like his from a 1000 similar influential scientists? Who knows where that would lead….
The use of tree rings as climate proxies is a legitimate, but tricky bit of science as this Wikipedia article shows:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendroclimatology#Climate_factors
The so called “divergence” of tree rings since the 1950’s is a recognized phenomenon among scientists who study this, and papers have been written about this topic. Here is a recent review of this topic:
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~liepert/pdf/DArrigo_etal.pdf
The causes, however, are not well understood and are difficult to test due to the existence of a number of
covarying environmental factors that may potentially impact recent tree growth. These possible causes include temperature-induced
drought stress, nonlinear thresholds or time-dependent responses to recent warming, delayed snowmelt and related changes in
seasonality, and differential growth/climate relationships inferred for maximum, minimum and mean temperatures. Another
possible cause of the divergence described briefly herein is ‘global dimming’, a phenomenon that has appeared, in recent decades,
to decrease the amount of solar radiation available for photosynthesis and plant growth on a large scale. It is theorized that the
dimming phenomenon should have a relatively greater impact on tree growth at higher northern latitudes, consistent with what has
been observed from the tree-ring record. Additional potential causes include “end effects” and other methodological issues that can
emerge in standardization and chronology development, and biases in instrumental target data and its modeling. Although limited
evidence suggests that the divergence may be anthropogenic in nature and restricted to the recent decades of the 20th century, more
research is needed to confirm these observations.”
The paper cites references going back to 1995. The uniqueness of this period has a basis in science, and is a legitimate reason to discount the use of tree rings as a proxy, post 1950, while accepting properly selected tree ring data as proxies for earlier periods. If one accepts this, charges of fraud that have been made by some people are not warranted.
If people have different scientific views they should present the results of their work in the scientific literature, rather than impugn the integrity of the specialists in the field of tree rings who have published their work.
If critics of the theory of tree ring divergence, have any scientific work to show they should by all means mention it. Charges of fraud, and character assassination should not substitute for scientific work. Repetition of these charges in the echo chamber of the blogosphere doesn’t make them correct.
While the height and shape of the temperature graph of past eras, including the MWP, have changed somewhat, the existence of the blade of the “Hockey Stick” has been confirmed by scientific research done since the pioneering work of Mann et. al. was published in 1999, even when no tree rings have been used.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/07/the-montford-delusion/#more-4431
As a great deal of other research has shown, you can even reconstruct past temperature without bristlecone pine tree rings, or without any tree ring data at all, resulting in: a hockey stick. It also shows, consistently, that nobody is trying to “get rid of the medieval warm period” or “flatten out the little ice age” since those are features of all reconstructions of the last 1000 to 2000 years. What paleoclimate researchers are trying to do is make objective estimates of how warm and how cold those past centuries were. The consistent answer is, not as warm as the last century and not nearly as warm as right now.
The hockey stick is so thoroughly imprinted on the actual data that what’s truly impressive is how many things you have to get rid of to eliminate it. There’s a scientific term for results which are so strong and so resistant to changes in data and methods: robust.
REPLY: Oh puhleeze. Trees are much better proxies for precipitation than they are for temperature, but the uncertainty of growth factors is so high, who knows what they are really saying about their local growing conditions?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/03/19/treemometers-or-rain-gauges/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/28/a-look-at-treemometers-and-tree-ring-growth/
And as Lucia and McIntyre has demonstrated, if you throw out certain trees, only leaving the ones you like, then add the instrumental record, the hockey stick “science” becomes a confirmation bias delusion.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/17/how-to-trick-yourself-into-unintentional-cherry-picking-to-make-hockey-sticks/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/28/how-the-trick-was-pulled-off/
This is the big lie right here in the graph below Mr. Adler, look away, it burns!
From: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/26/mcintyre-data-from-the-hide-the-decline/
The post-1960 data was deleted from the archived version of this reconstruction at NOAA here and not shown in the corresponding figure in Briffa et al 2001. Nor was the decline shown in the IPCC 2001 graph, one that Mann, Jones, Briffa, Folland and Karl were working in the two weeks prior to the “trick” email (or for that matter in the IPCC 2007 graph, an issue that I’ll return to.)
For now, here is a graphic showing the deleted data in red.
Figure 1. Two versions of Briffa MXD reconstruction, showing archived and climategate versions.shown below, clearly does not show the decline in the Briffa MXD reconstruction.
Eadler, that’s the biggest problem, human selection of proxies and throwing out of data they didn’t like that was “inconvenient”. You really need to stop defending this garbage; you aren’t convincing anyone and you are just showing yourself to be a religious zealot for the cause. Mostly, you just waste time when people have to respond to your constant stream of defending the indefensible.
– Anthony
@Andrew30
I don’t know who you’re making fun of, but, that was hilarious!
eadler says:
“If critics of the theory of tree ring divergence, have any scientific work to show they should by all means mention it. Charges of fraud, and character assassination should not substitute for scientific work. Repetition of these charges in the echo chamber of the blogosphere doesn’t make them correct.” [my link above]
As usual Adler has it backward. The charge of an “echo chamber” is adler’s personal psychological projection: blogs that censor different points of view, like realclimate and climate progress, are the “echo chambers.” The are populated with uniformly like minded head-nodders who always agree with each other. Thus, “echo chamber.” WUWT allows, even encourages different points of view. Thus WUWT does not fit the definition of an “echo chamber.”
I do agree that “Charges of fraud, and character assassination should not substitute for scientific work.” When Mann’s climate clique adopts transparency by publicly archiving all of their raw data, methods and metadata, they will be on the road to scientific legitimacy. But so far their use of character assassination [as repeatedly demonstrated in the Climategate emails] and fraud [as shown in Anthony’s graph above, and in Mann’s devious hiding of “censored” data] make their false claims nothing but pseudo-science.
REPLY: Oh puhleeze. Trees are much better proxies for precipitation than they are for temperature, but the uncertainty of growth factors is so high, who knows what they are really saying about their local growing conditions?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/03/19/treemometers-or-rain-gauges/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/28/a-look-at-treemometers-and-tree-ring-growth/
And as Lucia and McIntyre has demonstrated, if you throw out certain trees, only leaving the ones you like, then add the instrumental record, the hockey stick “science” becomes a confirmation bias delusion.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/17/how-to-trick-yourself-into-unintentional-cherry-picking-to-make-hockey-sticks/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/28/how-the-trick-was-pulled-off/
This is the big lie right here in the graph below Mr. Adler, look away, it burns!
From: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/26/mcintyre-data-from-the-hide-the-decline/
The post-1960 data was deleted from the archived version of this reconstruction at NOAA here and not shown in the corresponding figure in Briffa et al 2001. Nor was the decline shown in the IPCC 2001 graph, one that Mann, Jones, Briffa, Folland and Karl were working in the two weeks prior to the “trick” email (or for that matter in the IPCC 2007 graph, an issue that I’ll return to.)
[figure]
For now, here is a graphic showing the deleted data in red.
Figure 1. Two versions of Briffa MXD reconstruction, showing archived and climategate versions.shown below, clearly does not show the decline in the Briffa MXD reconstruction.
Eadler, that’s the biggest problem, human selection of proxies and throwing out of data they didn’t like that was “inconvenient”. You really need to stop defending this garbage; you aren’t convincing anyone and you are just showing yourself to be a religious zealot for the cause. Mostly, you just waste time when people have to respond to your constant stream of defending the indefensible.
– Anthony
All of the ideas you mention, especially the need to understand what is the limiting resource which controls plant growth rate, is part of the science of dendrochronology and covered in the review I cited above. IF, and this is a big IF, the specimens can be selected properly with this principle in mind, there is a huge advantage in dating by means of tree rings. That is why it is so attractive. If proxies are to be used at all, human selection is clearly necessary.
Your own references indicate that as well.
You may argue that confirmation bias was at work in the elimination of the post 1950 tree rings, but there were scientific reasons expressed for what was done. Calling it fraud is not legitimate, since this problem had been discussed in the scientific literature in an open way. I don’t see why pointing this out makes me any more of a religious zealot than those who charge fraud.
It is also true, that the hockey stick graph has survived the test of time without the infamous bristlecone pines, or without any tree rings whatever, as new proxies have been developed since 1999. Whatever the objections to the procedure used to develop the original graph, it has stood the test of time as the science has advanced. It doesn’t matter how often you bring up the issue of “hide the decline”, it doesn’t change the big picture regarding the correctness of the Hockey Stick graph.
REPLY: A true scientist shows all data, and does not eliminate data that does not fit the premise, or come up with rationalizations as to why the data should be eliminated. Nor does a true scientist refuse to provide all data for replication when asked. These are the problems with the “hockey stick”.
Go ahead argue this all you want, it won’t change the data, and the TOTAL data does not support the premise. The fact that you and many others keep trying to prop up this train wreck is the most depressing and laughable thing I’ve ever seen. You really are blind. As a wise man once said, “have you no shame”? In climate science, there seems not to be because people like yourself are wholly convinced the end justifies the means, because “we are saving the planet”.
– Anthony
REPLY: A true scientist shows all data, and does eliminate data that does not fit the premise, or come up with rationalizations as to why the data should be eliminated. Nor does a true scientist refuse to provide all data for replication when asked. These are the problems with the “hockey stick”.
A true scientist knows how to eliminate invalid data. There is plenty of Paleoclimate data archived, including the data used for Mann 1999.
Go ahead argue this all you want, it won’t change the data, and the TOTAL data does not support the premise. The fact that you and many others keep trying to prop up this train wreck is the most depressing and laughable thing I’ve ever seen. You really are blind. As a wise man once said, “have you no shame”? In climate science, there seems not to be because people like yourself are wholly convinced the end justifies the means, because “we are saving the planet”.
– Anthony
I don’t know what you mean by total. There is scads of data listed to support the Hockey Stick here:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch6s6-6.html#table-6-1
Since then Mann has drawn on a huge amount of additional data an analysed it in different ways, all of which confirm that the NH temperature has a hockey stick shape.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2008/09/02/0805721105.abstract
Following the suggestions of a recent National Research Council report [NRC (National Research Council) (2006) Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years (Natl Acad Press, Washington, DC).], we reconstruct surface temperature at hemispheric and global scale for much of the last 2,000 years using a greatly expanded set of proxy data for decadal-to-centennial climate changes, recently updated instrumental data, and complementary methods that have been thoroughly tested and validated with model simulation experiments. Our results extend previous conclusions that recent Northern Hemisphere surface temperature increases are likely anomalous in a long-term context. Recent warmth appears anomalous for at least the past 1,300 years whether or not tree-ring data are used. If tree-ring data are used, the conclusion can be extended to at least the past 1,700 years, but with additional strong caveats. The reconstructed amplitude of change over past centuries is greater than hitherto reported, with somewhat greater Medieval warmth in the Northern Hemisphere, albeit still not reaching recent levels.
Invective and admonition is no substitute for science.
REPLY: Selective use of data, as demonstrated above, is not a substitute for science. Wishful thinking won’t make the whole Briffa dataset make a hockey stick, only selective use of the dataset after 1960 and the splicing of the instrumental temperature record will, plus “tricks” so that people won’t see behind the spaghetti. Such tactics deserve admonition. In business, such tactics would earn an SEC investigation and likely a jail term. In climate science, it get a free pass by those “saving the planet” looking for that justifiable means to an end. By accepting and arguing for the lie, you become one of those people
– Anthony
Bravo Anthony! I watched that Muller Video BTW–very interesting…..and relevant to the eletric car debate. But he promotes some scientific assertions which are in fact a trojan horse. You have to agree there is global warming caused by man, that CO2 is the culprit, and that any action we take in the western world to curb CO2 is irrelevant due to the increasing use of coal fire power stations in China and something to do with India. I feel all the science promoted as supporting AGW needs to be taken off the table and reviewed. Because, as of right now, it’s all D.O.A. The fruit on the Gore tree. Does he have any apples that don’t have maggots in them?????
Re Phil. says:
February 25, 2011 at 9:04 pm
Girma says:
February 25, 2011 at 8:31 pm
Let me show you this. Now we have the data. Now it has been released. This is what it is.
Plot 2. http://bit.ly/i6MqnK
Care to tell us where that data for the black curve came from?
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I too am puzzled by the sharp drop at the end of tree-ring temperature proxy(black line) that the second chart labels as from Apr-Sep Briffa Quatenary Science Review 19,87. It doesn’t look like any of the charts presented in the abstract of the Briffa article available at his web site:
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/qsr1999/
Perhaps the black line is from a chart or data in the Briffa article not shown in the abstract, or perhaps I am misunderstanding something. It would be ironic if the criticism of Jones for misrepresenting Briffa’s data, itself misrepresented the data. Hopefully, someone will clarify where the black line was obtained.