From Steve McIntyre: Left- Briffa reconstruction from Oct 5, 1999 Climategate email. Matches Briffa et al 2001 Plate 3 version up to 1960. Post-1960 values deleted in 2001 version shown in red; right – emulation of IPCC AR3 figure without trick. Briffa shown here in purple for emphasis.
Dr. Richard Muller calls out the “hide the decline” aka “Mike’s Nature Trick” on this YouTube video of a presentation he gave.
For some strong background, see Steve McIntyre’s Heartland 2010 presentation here (PDF)
this ‘trick’ along with vostok ice core data, no reduction in outgoing longwave radiation and the flat temps for the last 10 years are the nail in the coffin for agw.
gary thompson
March 18, 2011 10:16 pm
the link to the heartland 2010 presentation has an issue. REPLY: Fixed, thanks, Anthony
John Tofflemire
March 18, 2011 10:22 pm
Muller gently rips to shreds the scientific integrity of the people involved in this episode. These people are guilty of scientific misconduct. Period.
TBear
March 18, 2011 10:28 pm
So …
Just to be clear about this.
Is the underlying point, by Briffa, that there has been a marginal temperature increase over the 20th Century, but the 20th Century up-trend is not off the charts, by comparison with previous centuries and, so, may well just be natural variability? As opposed to an increase that looks, when plotted, freaking scary and, hence, may be caused by the cardon dioxide monster?
Can someone tell me if I have correctly interpreted what Briffa is saying?
And, if that is so, wtf is happening?
I mean, I am not a scientist.
But what I would dearly love to know, if this whole AGW-scare is based on bullshit, where the hell is the rest of the scientifc community?
Specifically, why, if Briffa is right, are not scientists of all description shouting the AGW-Worriers down? Does the scientific community, at large, not give a rat’s arse, for the reputation of science, generally? Very confused, here.
Oh, and don’t bother replying with conspiracy theories, or `weight of institutional pressure’ arguments; these are, for non-AGW paradigm scientists, lame excuses. If it is true that non-AGW scientists are incapable of acting as free-agents, irrespective of political winds, frankly, I would rather not know.
And if the established professional institutes of science are so compromised that they are incapable of speaking out, where are the new groups of concerned (for the reputation of scisnce) forming? And if no such replacement institutes are not presently forming, wtf not?
Much of the responsibility for correcting the AGW-overreach must rests with the scientific community. When are we going to see some concerted push-back from that community?
“We now have a list of people whose papers I’m not going to read anymore.”
Is this enough? Should the existing papers be withdrawn?
Excellent video BTW. How many times does it have to be explained? A lot, apparently.
chip
March 18, 2011 10:34 pm
ouch – that’s gonna leave a mark
Bob Diaz
March 18, 2011 10:37 pm
I find it sad that “science” could take such a wrong turn and committ such fraud. Unless all science is open to full review, this level of fraud will happen again.
The raw data, all steps, the processed data, and everything else must be open to friend and foe, if we expect to avoid massive fraud.
“trust, but verify.”, Ronald Regan
The new science groups are out here on the “Net that covers the world”. Peer review and all. Time for real scientists to poke their heads out of the “Ivory Towers” and work together in the light of day. No one cares about work that is hidden. As long as it is hidden it does not exist! No “gang” can prevent publishing on the web. Just do it. pg
A couple corrections.
The FOIA did not request the “decline data” The FOIA requests to CRU covered.
1, CRU stations and data ( willis)
2. Jones temperature data for his 1990 paper
3. Correspondence WRT AR4
McIntyre had a request into a journal for Yamal data.
The divergence data, however, was removed from archives and only became accessible to the general public because of the mail liberator. The data was attached to one of the mails.
Andrew30
March 18, 2011 10:47 pm
David Stockwell says: March 18, 2011 at 10:31 pm
“Is this enough? Should the existing papers be withdrawn? ”
No. Yes, and then they should be burried.
They are all infected. http://www.thespoof.com/news/spoof.cfm?headline=s5i64103
TBear, youv;e got it wrong.
“Just to be clear about this.
Is the underlying point, by Briffa, that there has been a marginal temperature increase over the 20th Century, but the 20th Century up-trend is not off the charts, by comparison with previous centuries and, so, may well just be natural variability? As opposed to an increase that looks, when plotted, freaking scary and, hence, may be caused by the cardon dioxide monster”
The data that was erased was tree ring data. Theory says that tree rings respond somewhat linearly to temperature. So, they measure rings. Then they calibrate the rings against temperature in the instrument period. Then the “reconstruct” past temps from tree rings. From 1960 on for one region of the world Briffa found that after 1960 tree rings went in the Opposite direction from the temps in that region.
That left these choices.
1. the temp data was wrong
2. tree rings dont track temperature
3. Something happened to these trees, they diverge.
From our book.. sorry if the formating is effed up
“To get a sense of how Briffa treated the problem in the original source material, it’s instructive to review his early papers, those cited by Jones, papers all too familiar to the readers of CA. In 2006 McIntyre drew attention to Briffa’s discussion of the divergence problem and posted the following graphics from Briffa’s paper in 1998, 2000 and 2004. … tree ring width and maximum latewood density are shown to
diverge from the recorded temperature. …
So, part of Jones’ defense is correct. CRU, specifically, Briffa had displayed this divergence clearly in prior publications. And the underlying literature does discuss the problem in detail.
Briffa, 1998 writes:
During the second half of the twentieth century, the decadal-scale trends in wood
density and summer temperatures have increasingly diverged as wood density has
progressively fallen. The cause of this increasing insensitivity of wood density to
temperature changes is not known, but if it is not taken into account in
dendroclimatic reconstructions, past temperatures could be overestimated… In the areas where the growth data extend through to the warm late 1980s and early 1990s
(NEUR, WSIB, CSIB, ESIB), the divergence is at a maximum in the most recent
years. Over the hemisphere, the divergence between tree growth and mean summer
temperatures began perhaps as early as the 1930s; became clearly recognisable,
particularly in the north, after 1960; and has continued to increase up until the end
of the common record at around 1990.
It’s important to understand everything at play in Briffa’s argument because it will help illustrate why Jones’ graphic misleads readers. As Briffa and others had found, during the second half of the 20th century some tree measures had started to diverge from the temperature record. The underlying science holds that some trees are temperature sensitive. That is, their growth
properties follow temperature, amongst other things. By studying these measures over time the scientists can reconstruct past temperatures. Very simplistically, higher temperatures correlate with thick ring width for example. Temperature goes up, tree rings get wider. (We say simplistically because the width of tree rings is influenced by a lot of factors and it is not, well,
simple.) By looking at tree rings during the instrumented period and the widths seen in that period it is hoped that past temperatures can be reconstructed. The problem Briffa and others found was a divergence from this pattern. The tree ring series and the ring width series marched hand in hand from 1850 to the mid 20th century but then in some species and some locations this pattern changed. There are several ways to handle a problem like this. If tree rings and temperatures diverge, one
can question the accuracy of the temperatures, or question the tree rings, or question tree ring
science itself, or some combination of these. The precedent for questioning the temperature
record is established in the literature. As noted in previous chapters and on CA, Wilson and others
had on occasion compiled their own temperature records, specifically in Canada, when the
official record was at variance with tree rings. Briffa does not even explore this possibility with
these rings. In his mind, Jones’ instrument record is a fact. If the instrument record cannot be
questioned then Briffa is left with fewer choices. He could just use the data as it is. But if he does
this, then as he writes “past temperatures could be overestimated.” That is, if the data is merely
used “as is” then past temperatures will appear higher. It’s vital to note that he would see such an
estimation as an “over estimation.”
But to some the data is just the data. If tree rings or density reflect the temperature, then these
rings would indicate a warmer past than the present. To preserve a cooler past (which politically
he must do to show that current warming is unprecedented), Briffa must “do something” with this
data. He’s left with two choices. He could argue that these tree rings show that the basic science of reconstruction is flawed. The basic science operates on a theory that a tree that is temperature sensitive today will be temperature sensitive in the past. If that’s not true, if trees can sometimes function as “treemometers” and sometimes diverge from that, then the hopes of reconstructing past climate are dashed. Briffa cannot bring himself to even discuss this logical possibility. Briffa is left then with one choice: He cannot question Jones’ temperature record. He cannot use the data as is and create a large MWP, he cannot question the very science he carries out, so he must “adjust” the data. In his case the adjustment is a simple deletion. The data that diverges is simply disappeared. To be sure, that deletion is “discussed” but the discussion consists merely of pointing at possible reasons for the phenomena. In 2006 McIntyre canvasses the theories in the
following post:…..
Theo Goodwin
March 18, 2011 11:00 pm
TBear says:
March 18, 2011 at 10:28 pm
“But what I would dearly love to know, if this whole AGW-scare is based on bullshit, where the hell is the rest of the scientifc community?”
Now we are going to learn. The fact that Muller has entered the debate with guns blazing means that scientists will have to stake out clear positions. The dam has broken. Finally, some politicians will be embarrassed. If Al Gore is capable of embarrassment, he should be deflating at this point. After all, he continues to trumpet the hockey stick that will be remembered as a product of dishonest scientists.
Why it has taken scientists so long to make their criticisms public is not such a mystery. The case of Judith Curry shows that the Climategate community does act as a body and will attack, viciously, anyone who is perceived as being outside the fold.
Magnus A
March 18, 2011 11:01 pm
Dr Judith Curry comments this here: http://bit.ly/fhKca7
About the study “Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature” (BEST) here http://www.berkeleyearth.org
—
I think it’s natural and necessary to involve new persons in e g the IPCC efforts, and next report’s (overall) content. Among lots of things scientists (“non-deniers”) as e g Cornelis de Jager & Silvia Duhau [1], and prof. U R Rao [2] has released studies showing the sun’s role in climate change historically (hundreds of years) is about 40 percent of climate change. IPCC has so far dismisses correlation on cause and effect of the sun. There are lots of other examples, and those in control of the IPCC procedure (Real Climate staff, Mann, Jones etc.), who present the well-known cause and effect diagram with small changes since a decade ago as settled science, involve dogma.
[1] The variable solar dynamo and the forecast of Solar Activity: Influence on Terrestrial Surface Temperature : http://www.cdejager.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/2010-Variable-solar-dynamo3.pdf
[2] Contribution of changing galactic cosmic ray flux to global warming. Current Science, vol. 100, no. 2, 25 January 2011 : http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/25jan2011/223.pdf
Charlie Foxtrot
March 18, 2011 11:21 pm
The video should be require viewing for all college freshmen entering a technical field.
To reply to TBear, the best explanation I have heard for the AGW behavior is that it has become religion, not science. It has all the hallmarks of religion. The fact that it is now non-falsifiable (global warming causes cold weather, hot weather, snow, rain, and now even earthquakes, therefore all weather is verification of AGW) is very much like religious beliefs, and makes discussion pointless. The vehemence of the warmists is also similar to that of a religious zealot (how dare you deny God?). Any data you present them is discounted as having been generated by private money from cigarette sales and greedy capitalists, not pure and unbiased government, and therefore it is corrupt, similar to blaming all evil on the devil.
James Sexton
March 18, 2011 11:30 pm
TBear says:
March 18, 2011 at 10:28 pm “Much of the responsibility for correcting the AGW-overreach must rests with the scientific community. When are we going to see some concerted push-back from that community?”
=================================================
Many from the general scientific community did and do participate. If I’m not mistaken, Theo is a scientist. And, as far as I can tell, the overwhelming majority are ardent skeptics, albeit, with a different view than some of us. However, the institutions themselves were silent, if not supportive of the alarmism.
Theo Goodwin is correct about Dr. Curry’s experience. (its an interesting story) Theo is also a bit more optimistic than I am about the reaction to Dr. Muller. We’ll see.
Why? Mostly because of money. The reason Penn St. shanked their inquiry of Mann.
Recently, we’ve seen more and more scientists complain about the black eye climatology has given science in general, but this is of their own making. I hold them responsible. They are worse than the charlatans. We’ll always have deceivers with us. It is for us to always be diligent towards such things. The laymen never forgot, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”
The science community did.
Graeme
March 18, 2011 11:31 pm
Trees are thermometers – yes they are, yes they are, yes they are….
And my chair is in fact a poodle!
NikFromNYC
March 19, 2011 12:07 am
ceci n’est pas science
kbray in california
March 19, 2011 12:21 am
This FRAUD has influenced and re-directed worldwide industry and governments onto a foolish tangent costing at least BILLIONS of dollars (if not Trillions).
The ongoing negative effects of these charts and subsequent laws are still bubbling through our economies and continue into the future.
The laws need to be revoked and the creators of this fraud need to be incarcerated.
Long live carbon dioxide. Please focus on pollution and air filters instead.
Larry in Texas
March 19, 2011 12:42 am
I remember the first time I saw the clip from Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” that showed the Mann “hockey stick” graph. I remember starting to laugh, because as a lawyer with only modest familiarity with statistics, but great familiarity with tricks with statistics, I knew that any trend such as was shown in that graph was “too good to be true.” If it’s too good to be true, it usually isn’t. If it’s so off the charts that it looks unprecedented, it’s got to be wrong.
Now I know Steve McIntyre doesn’t like to use the word “fraud,” because he is a scientific guy and he is trying to get to the bottom of things, and properly so. But what folks must remember is that a lot of this work was being done in connection with the IPCC Second [?? – I don’t remember if it was second or third] Assessment. There has already been a lot of interchange between some of the more ambitious UN bureaucrats who are trying to make a case for political action with respect to climate change, as this had been going on for the previous ten years or so. I have to believe that in the interests of this closely-knit community, in which they all reinforced their mutual belief system, the stakes were high and no one wanted to appear uncertain about anything. So, they cheated a little bit. Well, a lot, in my opinion. You can claim that everyone’s motives were pure, but ahhh, believe me (I used to work in government, I’m quite familiar with the policy messes and confusion that unelected bureaucrats can make), they weren’t. You can claim the methods to be typical of science, but as Prof. Muller shows, they are not.
MarkoL
March 19, 2011 12:47 am
The scary part is that none of the mounting evidence against AGW, IPCC, Gore, Mann & co. seems to matter one iota. No matter how much we break down the false prophecies, lies, scary scenarios, hockey-sticks, etc. , when players like google get into the political AGW game, it is becoming less and less about something we can influence with hard evidence and more about finding partners that can influence masses. I hope the ever growing number of us that don’t believe in AGW, will someday soon change the mind of these AGW believers (like google and the MSM) into at least considering that the AGW prophets and “scientists” are not 100% right, that they don’t know what is going on and that much of the “science” is in fact fueled by greed for control, power and money and other inexplicable agendas. Vive la résistance!
Tenuc
March 19, 2011 1:58 am
Climate ‘science’ is no more. Instead it has mutated into an abnormal advocacy group to push the green agenda against fossil fuels. As with any belief system, any facts which would falsify its tenets are conveniently erased, or a hasty change is made to explain the anomaly.
Briffa and the rest of the useless bunch of CRU green agenda advocates have been found out and the CAGW meme is crumbling back to the dust from which it came.
Time to bring back the Spanish Inquisition!
Mr Green Genes
March 19, 2011 2:47 am
“Time to bring back the Spanish Inquisition!”
One, two, three: “I didn’t expect the Spanish Inquisition!”
Roger Knights
March 19, 2011 2:49 am
Steven Mosher says:
March 18, 2011 at 10:45 pm
The divergence data, however, was removed from archives and only became accessible to the general public because of the mail liberator.
For alliteration, how about saying, “the letter liberator”? You call the e-mails “letters” in the subtitle of your book (“The CRUtape Letters”).
I like the subtle “dig” of your using the sixties-leftist’s OK-word for theft against the Team. (It was the word they used when, for instance, they invaded university offices and “liberated” documents therefrom.)
I suggest that henceforth our side relentlessly employ this term in describing the “hack”–it’ll be worth it to annoy the Other Side. E.g., refer to “liberated letters” (or documents, or ‘Lectronic Letters) rather than “hacked e-mails,” to “The Liberator” (be sure to use capitals!) whenever the other side uses “the hacker,” etc.
This presentation is riddled with factual error … as Mosh points out the claim that the divergent data was ‘hidden’ by FOI is just wrong. Gavin has a few other points about the video this clip was excerpted from
“Muller’s video and characterisation of the issues is partial, and quite frankly, misleading. He neglects to mention the actual temperatures (which is what the graphic was supposed to show), and insinuates that Jim Hansen was somehow cooking the books, because he was able to forecast that 2010 would be a near record breaking year (which was actually not hard to do). Instead of being impressed by a prediction made based on scientific reasoning and then being validated by events, he implies that scientists shouldn’t be making predictions at all. This makes no sense. Muller’s presentation contains many basic errors – conflating baroclinic instability (a cause of mid-latitude storminess) with latent heat release (the cause of tropical storms), for instance, and mis-represents Gore’s statements on a number of issues. This is in line with his previous statements on the paleoclimate reconstructions which were also overblown and misleading. Thus while he may have a great reputation in his field, and while he has certainly made some interesting (though ultimately unsuccessful) contributions to understanding ice age cycles, his statements on the broader climate issue are neither comprehensive nor reliable. He may have great confidence in his own ability, but as he himself has said: “Most of our opinions are based on false information” and “Scientists are as easily fooled as anybody else”. He might want to “take steps to compensate” for that. “
Jimbo
March 19, 2011 3:10 am
TBear says:
March 18, 2011 at 10:28 pm
Specifically, why, if Briffa is right, are not scientists of all description shouting the AGW-Worriers down? Does the scientific community,…
Charlie Foxtrot says:
March 18, 2011 at 11:21 pm
To reply to TBear, the best explanation I have heard for the AGW behavior is that it has become religion, not science. It has all the hallmarks of religion.
Tenuc says:
March 19, 2011 at 1:58 am
Climate ‘science’ is no more. Instead it has mutated into an abnormal advocacy group to push the green agenda against fossil fuels. As with any belief system, any facts which would falsify its tenets are conveniently erased, or……
You two are right on the money. Man-made global Warming belief bears the hallmarks of what traditionally would be recognised as a religion. [UK judge via the Guardian]
Scott
March 19, 2011 3:44 am
I didn’t appreciate until now that Richard Muller is the leader of the breakaway group who will reestimate global trends in temperature. William M. Briggs (Adjunct Professor of Statistical Science, Cornell University) talks about this in his blog. http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=3558
I seem to remember this was mentioned here as well.
Going by the other 47 minutes from the rest of the full video presentation, I presume Professor Muller is one of the representatives from the AGW camp.
Iggy Slanter
March 19, 2011 4:07 am
Please note that I admit to being easily confused…. But Dr. Muller believes that human emissions of CO2 causes dangerous global warming. But he destroys the science behind it (rather elegantly I might add) in only a couple of minutes. Can someone walk me through this?
jcrabb
March 19, 2011 4:43 am
What is it about retired Professors to talk about subjects they have no idea about, he is a Physicist not a Climatologist, would anybody listen to a Chemist talkking about Physics?
Stacey
March 19, 2011 5:01 am
Well he his only saying what we’ve known for many years from work here and on Climate Audit, who really gets the plaudit:-) H however he is a scientist who considers that global warming is occurring so I think the Team need to beware.
One thing he says which infuriates. “The public may not understand graphs”.
Venter
March 19, 2011 5:13 am
Crabb
Can you please tell me which of the AGW scientist is a ” Climatologist ” by qualification?
JamesS
March 19, 2011 5:14 am
@Iggy Slanter: One might say that even though Dr. Muller personally believes that anthropogenic CO2 is causing warming, the case hasn’t been proven yet and this “science” is not the way to do it. It would be similar to a prosecuting attorney believing the accused is guilty, knows he doesn’t have the evidence, but also knows that breaking into the perp’s house without a warrant to get evidence is not the way to win the case.
This is a very simple example, of course, but what it shows is that Dr. Muller has integrity as a scientist. His personal beliefs are unimportant compared to what the true science shows, and he will go where the actual evidence leads.
Bill Illis
March 19, 2011 5:15 am
Something from the Guardian’s news article on the Berkeley group’s effort to construct a new temperature series caught my eye.
Peter Thorne, (of climategate fame, who has worked in most of the climategate institutions and until recently, was leading an effort to build a new temperature series under the auspices of the WMO and the UK Met Office) is quoted as saying,
“We need groups like Berkeley stepping up to the plate and taking this challenge on, because it’s the only way we’re going to move forwards. I wish there were 10 other groups doing this,” he says.
So, there is the playbook against the Berkeley group.
It is standard technique of the pro-AGW’ers. Get out ahead of some new non-AGW publication or get a rebuttal published in a very short timeframe in order to short-circuit any new non-AGW finding. The rebuttal allows them to ignore the finding and keep the publication/finding out of the IPCC etc. It is now the standard MO from the pro-AGW set.
Somewhere, a group from the Met, UEA and the NCDC is trying to replicate some of the Berkeley Group’s activities in advance (with the appropriate +0.4C adjustments applied) and will try to upstage them or something of the sort. Either that, or a number of groups will be ready to take the Berkeley Group’s raw database collation and apply the appropriate data torture techniques and come up with an even greater trend in temperatures.
Maybe they actually have 10 groups on standby already.
Might be a little paranoid, but this is their standard MO.
JamesS
March 19, 2011 5:18 am
@jcrabb: You must have missed the statement of Dr. Curry about Dr. Muller: “While most of his research is in physics, Muller has also published important papers on paleoclimate…”
The man does have street cred in climate science.
jcrabb
March 19, 2011 5:31 am
Muller obviously doesn’t really know what he is talking about, in the full length presentation, he calls Saudi Arabia ‘King of Coal’ while discussing a graph displaying world Oil resources.
[Reply – So that is your reason to rubbish his expertise? Nice criterion. Ever done a presentation to a large audience? Even the most experienced will err and not notice from time to time. Chances are the audience got what he meant not what he said ~ jove, mod]
He states that Coral reef bleaching is not increasing, which is totally wrong , it only started to occur since the 70’s, seems he should just stick to Physics.
[Reply – perhaps what you mean is ‘science only started reporting it to occur in the 70s’, which is not the same thing ~ jove, mod]
You’re indeed “not allowed to do this in science” – I am glad that some heavy hitters, who are still teaching, are now coming out with this.
This ‘trick’, btw is the precise reason why my luke-scepticism, before ClimateGate, turned into scepticism.
This ‘trick’ alone has made climate science as perpetrated by The Team into something one really doesn’t need to waste time on any longer. The Team really ought not to be called ‘scientists’ any longer.
Sadly, too many climate and other scientists have kept silent about this, which does nothing for their reputation.
Let’s praise the very few amongst them, who have been rising their heads above the parapet, and let’s hope their courage hasn’t come too late to repair the damage done not just to climate science, but to science in general.
Bernie
March 19, 2011 6:55 am
Master Crabb:
Richard A Muller has written extensively on ice ages. He is eminently qualified to comment on this and many other related topics. His critique carries significant weight among his fellow scientists.
His explanation of his graph of fossil fuels was a bit muddled early on, but only a pedant would argue that the graph is not easy to understand.
================
From the article linked to by Jimbo, edited slightly for objectivity.:
No one who spoke to the Guardian about the Berkeley Earth project believed it would shake the faith of the minority who have set their minds againstin favor of global warming. “As new kids on the block, I think they will be given a favourable view by people, but I don’t think it will fundamentally change people’s minds,” says Thorne. Brillinger has reservations too. “There are people you are never going to change. They have their beliefs and they’re not going to back away from them.”
jcrabb
March 19, 2011 7:05 am
Sure the mistake about Saudi Arabia is not terminal, but he was a Professor at Berkely so he is in no way new to speaking in public.
Rhe idea that the ‘trick’ was a secret is a load of utter bollocks, there was a paper published about it before the IPCC report was published, so how on Earth can it be called a secret, the fact that Muller doesn’t know about this paper shows he doesn’t know what he is talking about, that he is just dabbling.
As for reef bleaching, no I don’t mean science started reporting it then, I mean that it starts being reported then because thats when the phenomenon starts, do you think Scientists only started looking at reefs in the 70’s
Iggy Slanter
March 19, 2011 7:11 am
Thank you JamesS. I appreciate your help. Cheers.
Dr. Lurtz
March 19, 2011 7:18 am
At best tree rings can only show a low to medium correlation to temperature. Tree ring growth depends upon the following [major items]:
1) Temperature
2) CO2
3) Ground Water, rain
4) Humidity
5) Amount of fertilizer, i.e., Sulfur, Iron, etc.
6) Previous Winter Season coldness/warmness.
7) Forest Fires releasing fertilizer, CO2, altering local light levels, etc.
8) Light Levels
9) Atmospheric Dust lowering leaf efficiency
10) Disease, infestations, etc.
Some of these items average out, some don’t. A stand of tree might be great for 200 years and then become not reliable due to disease, infestations, etc.
If we treat the data as low to medium correlation, we can use tree rings a one puzzle piece. The same is true for CO2. How can it be possible to leave out the increase in solar output over the last 350 years.
Just like the Catholic Church pushed that the Earth was the center of the universe, AGW push constant Solar Output with the only variable being CO2.
Since the Earth is warmer due to years of increasing Solar activity, now that the Sun has gone quiet, the average Global temperatures will plummet [higher starting point, heat input turned off].
Check -> http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.gif
to watch the heat leave the Pacific and the Atlantic.
mitchel44
March 19, 2011 7:21 am
When the Global and Hemispheric page here, http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/recons.html does not contain the names Jones, Briffa, Mann, Amman, Wahl, Osborn, or any trace of their work, maybe the fight will be over.
But not before.
Fred from Canuckistan
March 19, 2011 7:23 am
We should all be thankful that Mann, Briffa, Jones et al dabble in Climate Scientology and are not scientists developing new drugs..
With their version of scientific ethics and morality, their penchant, if not adoration for deceptive data manipulation when it is convenient to “prove” their predetermined and preferred scientific outcome would have by now resulted in a lot of very sick and dead people.
All they have done is to contribute to the flushing of tens of billions of valuable dollars down the public policy toilet, real money that could have been used by real scientists doing real work for the the real benefit of real people.
History will not be kind to these fools and the other rat-pack of eco-grifters profiting off the great scam.
jcrabb
March 19, 2011 8:40 am
Bernie:
Another issue that makes me wonder about Dr Muller’s expertise is that he states there has been no warming over the last ten years, a quick perusal of ‘Wood for Trees’ shows this statement to be incorrect, as there is quite a significant slope indicating warming has occured, it is not the flat line if what he says were to be true.
PhD student
March 19, 2011 8:42 am
No amount of evidence will impact the current belief in AGW in academia. As a PhD student I see on a daily basis how reliant academia has become on the AGW scare, it leaves me truly speechless.
Countless colleagues are dependent on CO2 being a pollutant. Their jobs depend on it, the value of their education depends on it, the relevance of their publications depends on it, and the list goes on and on.
As bad as it is, i cannot see how it will become anything but worse. The vast majority of PhD positions announced, the courses available, and funding are related to AGW.
God help the few who dare being openly skeptical in this environment.
The truth has become the biggest enemy of the system.
This will end in tears, and lots of it
chris y
March 19, 2011 9:12 am
Prof. Muller is worried about the lack of solutions to the global warming problem. He is not a CACA, but he clearly sees only problems with increased CO2 levels.
Aside from the tree ring circus discussion, I think the most important couple of minutes in the talk starts at around 3:23 of the full talk (not the excerpted video). He targets cloud cover response to warming as the key unknown issue.
Transcribed from Prof. Muller’s presentation-
“There is an uncertainty, because when you increase the carbon dioxide, making the temperature rise a little bit, this causes water vapor to evaporate, more water vapor than you would have otherwise.
That enhances the greenhouse effect, but it is believed not to enhance cloud cover.
If it enhances cloud cover significantly, then all the calculations are wrong.
Everybody admits this. This is not a contentious issue.
If you look at the IPCC- this is the big UN panel- when people say there’s consensus, that is what they are referring to. And they state in their report- and you can read the summary report, its only about 7 or 8 pages, and its available on the web- they are very clear about the fact that cloud cover is the biggest uncertainty.
And if cloud cover were to increase by 2%, in the next 50 years, we wouldn’t have global warming. So this is the big unknown.
And as you’ll see, if you believe that you can get favors from God by praying, then I suggest you pray that cloud cover will kick in. Because my evaluation is that when I show you what the problem is, if the global warming models are right (and I think they are very likely right) then we are going to have global warming. And there is nobody proposing any solution about what to do about it.”
robertvdl
March 19, 2011 9:17 am
Climategate ‘hide the decline’ in depth explanation by Stephen McIntyre 1/3
jcrabb,
Give it up. If that’s the best you’ve got, then you got nothin’.
I recall when President Jimmy Carter [who was used to speaking in front of large audiences] was praising the best known U.S. Senator of the day, Sen Hubert Humphrey. Carter called Humphrey “Senator Hubert Horatio Hornblower.” Carter went on speaking, not realizing what he had said. Carter was a nuclear engineer, but you’d probably give him a pass because he’s deep down the same kind of character as Mann and Jones.
The most shocking part of Muller’s presentation was the before/after graphs showing that the huge warming spike was a complete fabrication. I roll my eyes when I read some folks’ apology for that devious altering of reality by people who certainly knew exactly what they were doing and why. Do their apologists really expect us to believe there is a legitimate excuse for their deliberate fraud?
Nuke
March 19, 2011 10:06 am
Trust the scientists. They’re the experts and they are here to help.
BTW: That’s sarcasm.
Peter Miller
March 19, 2011 10:09 am
The reality is the one group who know more about paleo-climates than anyone else are geologists.
Geologists – government employees excepted – are the most sceptical group around and therefore are ignored as heretics by the AGW cult. The concept of natural climate cycles remains the greatest heresy perceived by the AGW cult’s high priests.
The concept of using tree rings as a proxy for past temperatures – other than for dating extreme events like volcanic eruptions – is just goofy, as there are so many other factors than temperature which affect tree ring growth. Somehow ‘a science’ has grown out of the study of tree rings and like most other things treated as gospel by the Team and the other purveyors of bad science, should simply be treated as nothing more than data manipulated junk.
I for one am glad not to be living in ‘the Little Ice Age’. I also totally reject the concept of trying to regulate (i.e. stabilise) climate, as there is absolutely nothing significant mankind can do to alter our planet’s temperature, short of creating a ‘nuclear winter’ after an atomic war.
Theo Goodwin
March 19, 2011 10:17 am
Mosher writes:
“So, part of Jones’ defense is correct. CRU, specifically, Briffa had displayed this divergence clearly in prior publications. And the underlying literature does discuss the problem in detail.”
You really have no concept of lying and the harm that it can do. If I tell Jones a lie and because of that lie he kills himself, the fact that I told Smith the truth does not lessen the harm, the evil, or the blameworthiness.
The hockey stick was presented to the public. It was the star of Al Gore’s academy award winning movie, for God’s sake. You must apply the standards of truth that are relevant to the general public. Al Gore used the hockey stick to tell a lie and I do not believe that Mann, Jones, or any Climategater PUBLICLY dissented from that lie. The fact that additional information was published in scientific journals is irrelevant to the audience for the hockey stick, the general public.
Please stop equivocating on the words ‘lie’, ‘truth’, ‘is’, and ‘a’.
rbateman
March 19, 2011 10:23 am
Move over, Piltdown Man, meet the new fossils on display: AGW Man.
GeneDoc
March 19, 2011 10:52 am
“We now have a list of people whose papers I’m not going to read anymore.”
Data falsification is the term we in science use to describe this behavior. This includes suppression adverse data (the decline), as well as incompletely describing the data sources (mixing tree ring and temp data). Lack of scientific integrity can result in a variety of punitive outcomes. Journals can decide to withdraw (retract) papers, institutions can elect to terminate employment, granting agencies can withhold funds. In the case of using falsified or fabricated data in support of grant applications, criminal charges can be filed (fraud). Honest errors and even one-time offenses by those who are early in their careers and inadequately educated are often forgiven. Ongoing and repeated offenses can easily result in expulsion from science and even fines and imprisonment. It’s always ugly and affects students, colleagues and competitors.
Dr. Muller’s decision to “shun” this group of authors is a perfectly reasonable response. He’s stating that he no longer trusts their studies–they are no longer to be believed as honest reporters of data and conclusions. Among scientists, that is a very very harsh determination and punishment.
Anton Eagle
March 19, 2011 10:57 am
jcrabb,
Just who, exactly, do you think “Climate Scientists” are?
When you get right down to it… they are just physicists, chemists, etc. that happen to be studying the climate instead of some other physical or chemical system.
The idea that physicists and chemists somehow cannot understand the intricacies and nuance of the climate science debate is offensive and absurd. That is exactly the kind of argument you would expect from some kind of quasi-religious group, rather than fellow scientists.
The truth is, a well educated physicist, or chemist (or engineer, etc) can understand and even obtain some expertise in just about any scientific endeavor in which they become interested. All it takes is a little time and work to get up to speed on the specific lingo and previous findings of that sub-field.
Physics is physics… and chemistry is chemistry… and these are essentially universal. Unless, you want to argue that climate science somehow does not follow the normal laws of physics and chemistry?
Come to think of it, since pretty much all your “science” is done in a computer model, and not the real world… perhaps your physical laws ARE different after all. Hmmm… I guess that’s really the main problem with “climate science”, and I guess that explains why all those predictions aren’t working out so well. Maybe a little basic physics and chemistry is exactly what you guys need?
Theo Goodwin
March 19, 2011 11:09 am
Mosher writes:
“So, part of Jones’ defense is correct. CRU, specifically, Briffa had displayed this divergence clearly in prior publications. And the underlying literature does discuss the problem in detail.”
Not one of the Climategaters ever asked themselves whether the evidence of forty years, evidence that they had collected, showed that tree ring data is not useful as a proxy for temperature. The useful scientific result from all of Briffa’s research was that tree ring data should be called into question. Yet that fact, that divergence, is exactly “the decline” that they conspired to hide on the hockey stick. Briffa’s articles ask no questions of scientific methodology. He never asks his colleagues to question tree ring data. Not one of the Climategater conspiracy ever blinked on tree ring data and they do not today. You overlook the fact that they defend their older work even today. You cannot deny that the tragic flaw in each and every member of the Climategate conspiracy is an inability to be critical of their own work and a failing to appreciate scientific method.
Theo Goodwin
March 19, 2011 11:13 am
jcrabb says:
March 19, 2011 at 4:43 am
“What is it about retired Professors to talk about subjects they have no idea about, he is a Physicist not a Climatologist, would anybody listen to a Chemist talkking about Physics?”
Ok, moderators, ok. I give. I will never again ask that you ban a troll, if you will just please ban jcrabb.
MikeN
March 19, 2011 11:15 am
There is no WMO Magazine.
Werner Brozek
March 19, 2011 11:16 am
“jcrabb says:
March 19, 2011 at 8:40 am
Bernie:
Another issue that makes me wonder about Dr Muller’s expertise is that he states there has been no warming over the last ten years,”
I do not have graphs for the last 10 years, but check out the green bar graphs at the following. It shows that on the 5 data sets, the average for last 5 years was lower than for the last 10 years. So if graphs were to be drawn for the last 10 years, I cannot see how they would rise very much. http://www.climate4you.com/GlobalTemperatures.htm#Comparing%20global%20temperature%20estimates
Theo Goodwin
March 19, 2011 11:19 am
Phil Clarke says:
March 19, 2011 at 2:59 am
“Instead of being impressed by a prediction made based on scientific reasoning and then being validated by events, he implies that scientists shouldn’t be making predictions at all.”
Sir, Warmista cannot make predictions. They cannot because they do not have a set of physical hyptheses that enables them to explain and predict a rise in Earth’s temperatures. They have only simulations running on computers and such simulations cannot be used for prediction or explanation. When Muller says that “they” should not be predicting, he means that they should not be pretending to do something that they cannot do, namely, predict without the benefit of physical hypotheses.
Richard G
March 19, 2011 3:12 pm
The Harry_Read_Me.txt documents the data falsification and fabrication that corrupts the entire CRU database, the supposed clearinghouse of global climate data used everywhere in climate science. The fools gold standard of climate science. It leaves a smoldering crater where credibility used to be.
TBear
March 19, 2011 5:36 pm
Ok, I said Briffa when I should have said Mueller.
But, still no straight answer to my questions?
If climate `scientists’ are (I assume) very small percentage of all the world’s qualified natural scientists, it does seem very, very odd that, if the AGW-Catastrophe-thesis is obvious horsecrap that the existing professional academies are not calling it and that there is (apart from some notable exceptions) no sense of a general push-back from the scientific community at large.
So, the all-powerful AGW crowd have got everyone that scared and intimidated?
Doesn’t add up …
mike g
March 19, 2011 5:41 pm
Has it been shown that the trees diverged from the temperature or that the temperature diverged from the reported temperature. I’m still not clear on that. I know for a fact that it was miserably hot sleeping outside in August in south Alabama in the 70’s although NOAA says the average August low was in the 60’s. So, I’m calling BS on their historical record.
Gregory Ludvigsen
March 19, 2011 5:52 pm
Artificial intelligence is no substitute for natural stupidity
Julian in Wales
March 19, 2011 6:24 pm
laughed until the tears came, so clear. Thanks you so much
jcrabb
March 19, 2011 7:14 pm
Apologies to Theo, Anton and JamesS, I retract saying Dr Muller is not a Climate Scientist and not qualified to comment, a regretable moment of ignorance and stupidity on my behalf.
Theo Goodwin
March 19, 2011 7:52 pm
mike g says:
March 19, 2011 at 5:41 pm
“Has it been shown that the trees diverged from the temperature or that the temperature diverged from the reported temperature.”
The trees diverged from what Briffa was reading on his thermometer (or interpolating from some exotic temperature grid known only to Warmista). The trees showed signs of a declining temperature over a period of about forty years, if you assume that the observed changes in the trees are a good proxy for temperature, as Briffa did. Briffa’s thermometer showed a rising temperature. Thus, what Briffa saw or discovered was a divergence between his tree ring data (declining temperature) and his thermometer data (rising temperature). This divergence is an important scientific discovery. Indeed, it undermines all tree ring data of the kind Briffa studied. It should have been in the title of a major peer-reviewed article in a major journal. However, being a Warmista, Briffa and The Team chose to “Hide The Decline” (divergence). Not only did Briffa lie, along with the others, but he betrayed his own scientific work to support the Global Warming Narrative.
Theo Goodwin
March 19, 2011 8:23 pm
jcrabb says:
March 19, 2011 at 7:14 pm
All is forgiven and forgotten.
Old Grump
March 19, 2011 11:04 pm
jcrabb says:
March 19, 2011 at 5:31 am
He states that Coral reef bleaching is not increasing, which is totally wrong , it only started to occur since the 70′s, seems he should just stick to Physics.
[Reply – perhaps what you mean is ‘science only started reporting it to occur in the 70s’, which is not the same thing ~ jove, mod]
Have you ever considered the onset of coral reef bleaching in relation to sport diving? I remember reading Jacque Costeau’s narrative of his early days developing the aqualung. Since I read it 40 or more years ago and have read many hundreds of other books since, the name does not come immediately to mind. (Small matter. In today’s world, a quick electronic search can find nearly everything.) Although perhaps not in that volume, I distinctly remember Costeau mentioning that merely placing a hand on or rubbing a coral surface can cause damage to the coral organisms. In that light, what effect do any of you think that divers visiting these reefs might have? Boats shedding exhaust and oil into the water. Probably throwing food scraps over the side. Sewage dumping. Suntan lotions. Sunblock. Deodorants. Perfumes and colognes. Soap and detergent residues.
Not saying that’s what’s causing problems. I just like to bring to light possibilities. I’m not that dogmatic about things. I consider myself intelligent enough to at least have a glimmer of how much I will never know.
@PhD student: I hope that you can stand graduate school, if that is what you still want. I couldn’t stand the lies and corruption and fraud that I saw. I decided I would rather hang with a higher quality crowd.
And, for the possible attackers, I didn’t flunk out. I had passed my oral prelim and had good research results. I walked away. I’m a chemist and a good one. I’m also a good scientist who follows where the data leads not to someplace I want the data to go.
jcrabb
March 20, 2011 1:08 am
Old grump,
From http://www.fws.gov/coralreef/proceedings/Day%202%20PDF/5-Athline%20Clark.pdf
“•The bleaching response of corals in Hawaiian waters is complex but highly predictable.
•The bleaching threshold in corals is controlled primarily by temperature, irradiance and duration of exposure. This pattern is further modified by water motion, sedimentation and other factors as described by Jokiel (in press).
Results of extensive research on thermal tolerance of Hawaiian corals conducted in the 1970s and identification of a warming trend in Hawaiian waters led Jokiel and Coles (1990) to predict that mass bleaching would soon occur in the Hawaiian Archipelago if the trend continued.”
Sure enough major bleaching occured in 1996 and 2002, so it seems that these guys have nailled it.
Phil Clarke
March 20, 2011 9:44 am
Theo, are you saying the reduced sensitivity of recent tree-growth to temperature should have been the subject of a peer reviewed paper?
Hard to argue that the ‘divergence problem’ was concealed when it has its own wiki entry ….. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divergence_problem
In other news, Muller’s temperature series project is the subject of a mail from Ken Caldeira to Joe Romm…
“Their preliminary results sit right within the results of NOAA, NASA, and HadCRU, confirming that prior analyses were correct in every way that matters. Their results confirm the reality of global warming and support in all essential respects the historical temperature analyses of the NOAA, NASA, and HadCRU.”
So it seems we will soon have 4 surface based and two satellite estimates of global mean temperature trends all painting the same picture. REPLY: PHIL FAIL – The “divergence problem” Wiki didn’t appear until AFTER Climategate. It was well concealed prior to that. From the Wiki Talk page: Thanks for starting this, guys. I’ll contribute a bit as time permits. Cheers, Pete Tillman (talk) 19:50, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
And if you believe Joe Romm and his spin venom, you’ll believe most anything. I pity your lack of cognizant BS filtering ability. – Anthony
Phil Clarke
March 20, 2011 11:33 am
Well, if you want pre-climategate references, the ‘heavily-concealed’ Divergence problem was discussed ….
> In the literature. Eg.D’Arrigo et al., 2004, Cook et al. (2004), Briffa et al (Nature, 391, 678-682) and many others.
> In the IPCC AR4 report
> On climate-related blogs, including extensively at Climate Audit
I am not sure that Steve McIntyre would agree that publishing on his blog equals concealment!
By contrast prior to Nov 2009 there seems to be not a single mention of the cover art for the WMO pamphlet that Muller uses in his talk and which was the subject of the ‘hide the decline’ faux scandal. Does anybody know of one? REPLY: the only real scandal here in this pointless discussion of yours (besides the actual real hide the decline issue) is Romm’s lie, which he’ll soon be called out for. Yes, I used the word “lie”. But you’ll believe anything I suppose. I’m sure you’ll rush to defend him when the rug gets pulled out from under him. – Anthony
Phil Clarke
March 20, 2011 12:25 pm
Erm, the text quoted is from Ken Caldiera to JR. I guess we wait for the final paper to appear, it promises to be interesting.
TTFN.
Theo Goodwin
March 20, 2011 12:54 pm
Phil Clarke says:
March 20, 2011 at 9:44 am
You are all over the place in your response to me. If you want to address one of my posts, reference my words, focus on them, formulate some response to them, and then make your point or points.
Whether or not there is manmade global warming has nothing to do with the claim that Briffa, Jones, Mann, and all the rest of the Climategate Crew lied. Take Briffa as an example. If he had been unwilling to lie, then he would have forbidden Jones, Mann, and the others to publish a hockey stick that did not show the divergence that he discovered. Had they published anyway, he would have denounced them publicly. He would have opposed Gore’s movie and would have denounced it publicly. Anything less is lying.
If you think about the group interaction among Climategaters, Briffa is the one who was treated far worse than any other and the one whose scientific contribution was not only diminished but treated as not existing. My guess is that Briffa placed the Climategate emails on the unprotected server.
Theo Goodwin
March 20, 2011 12:58 pm
Phil Clarke says:
March 20, 2011 at 9:44 am
“Theo, are you saying the reduced sensitivity of recent tree-growth to temperature should have been the subject of a peer reviewed paper?”
Absolutely, it is Briffa’s most important contribution to science. If it had been published and not suppressed, no one would ever have seen the hockey stick.
Theo Goodwin
March 20, 2011 2:10 pm
Phil Clarke says:
March 20, 2011 at 9:44 am
“Theo, are you saying the reduced sensitivity of recent tree-growth to temperature should have been the subject of a peer reviewed paper?”
From the abstract of the paper you referenced, there is this:
“When averaged over large areas of northern America and Eurasia, tree-ring density series display a strong coherence with summer temperature measurements averaged over the same areas, demonstrating the ability of this proxy to portray mean temperature changes over sub-continents and even the whole Northern Hemisphere.
During the second half of the twentieth century, the decadal-scale trends in wood density and summer temperatures have increasingly diverged as wood density has progressively fallen. The cause of this increasing insensitivity of wood density to temperature changes is not known, but if it is not taken into account in dendroclimatic reconstructions, past temperatures could be overestimated.”
The first sentence says everything is cool with the data. The second sentence says something like “Oh, there is this little matter that the tree rings show declining temperature over the second half of the twentieth century and the cause is unknown but everything is cool.”
The abstract should have begun as follows: “My research provides powerful evidence that tree rings of the kind that I study have not been useful as proxies for temperature in the second half of the twentieth century.” Then he could have added the Warmista statement: “No doubt this can be explained away but I have not yet figured out how to do that; however, The Team let me publish this mealy-mouthed paper because I really need the publication.”
Theo Goodwin
March 20, 2011 2:21 pm
jcrabb says:
March 20, 2011 at 1:08 am
If you want to be taken seriously here, you cannot say “A said B would happen at C and B happened at C; therefore, A made a true prediction.” For example, I could say “My son will complain about tonight’s dinner when it is served at 6 pm” and then at 6 pm when my son complains I could conclude that I made a true prediction. The problems should be obvious. Number one, I state nothing that could be used by a neutral observer to explain or predict my son’s behavior; without such information, there can be no prediction. Number two, my son complains all the time but the fact that he complains all the time does nothing to enable an outside observer to explain or predict his complaint behavior. Number three, etc. If you do not have the necessary explanatory hypotheses, you have nothing that can be used for prediction. So, until you can present the necessary hypotheses in your own words, you are not discussing science.
Feet2theFire
March 20, 2011 9:48 pm
The video almost cuts off the real message of the video:
This is why I am now leading a study to re-do all this…
I am happy to hear this statement from the horse’s mouth, that THIS is the reason for the UC study.
It is also major that he said earlier (3:48):
And now what is the result in my mind? Quite frankly, as a scientist, I now have a lot of people whose papers I won’t read anymore.
That is one heavy trip – that a group of them has impugned their own work to the point that other scientists treat it as not true, simply because it is by that group. In other words, he doesn’t think of them as scientists anymore.
It was only a matter of time.
Also of import is that Muller early on (1:48) says that most scientists who matter do not think the Climategate files were hacked, but it was some “member of the team who was really upset with them.”
This UC study will be such a breath of fresh air. Come hell or high water, no matter which way their findings go, we will (hopefully) have something everyone will respect and be able to replicate.
jcrabb
March 21, 2011 2:54 am
Theo Goodwin says:
March 20, 2011 at 2:21 pm
The hypothesis is coral bleaching is primarily driven by sea temperature, Muller seemed to be suggesting otherwise and as I am not Marine Biologist I linked to a paper that supported the hypothesis.
Alexander K
March 21, 2011 9:27 am
I once knew an old chap who was a devoted Anglican and disliked Roman Catholics. He used to embarass his devout Anglican family during the communion service by refusing to recite the part of the Nicene Creed that states that ‘I believe in the Holy Catholic Church’ as he didn’t understand that ‘catholic, also means ‘universal’. Some of the Warmista who have popped up here debate the Hide The Decline actions of The Team and the lack of statistically-meaningful warming for the current decade (as outlined by one Prof Jones of UEA) with a similar level of understanding.
Icarus
March 21, 2011 9:36 am
[Snip. You can try posting again, but without the denier name-calling, the multiple accusations that the author is “lying”, etc. ~dbs, mod.]
Bill Illis
March 21, 2011 5:56 pm
Steve McIntyre has another very interesting finding on the “hide the decline”.
They also truncated the beginning of the line(s) as well as the post-1960 end of the line.
Hide the incline and hide the decline in one fell-swoop. Dr. Richard Muller’s comment about “you are not allowed to do this in science” is even more apropos now. http://climateaudit.org/2011/03/21/hide-the-decline-the-other-deletion/
Feet2theFire
March 23, 2011 4:55 am
@Viv Evans March 19, 2011 at 6:05 am:
The Team really ought not to be called ‘scientists’ any longer.
I think that is what Dr Muller was saying when he said he said
This is why I am now leading a study to re-do all this…
and
And now what is the result in my mind? Quite frankly, as a scientist, I now have a lot of people whose papers I won’t read anymore.
One scientist doesn’t need to “re-do” the work one thinks was done by other, real, scientists.
And if “people whose papers I won’t read anymore” doesn’t say, “These guys aren’t real scientists in my opinion,” what does?
Feet2theFire;
Actually, “re-do”ing is exactly what is supposed to happen in science (it’s called “replication”) but gets short shrift too often, frequently because journals are loathe to publish mere validation studies — especially when they come out negative. They just like the big initial “headline” reports, just like MSM “if it bleeds it leads” reportage and so on.
Calls for a “Journal of Negative Results” are not just jokes. Science-and-information theory teach that you get more from negative results than positive ones.
this ‘trick’ along with vostok ice core data, no reduction in outgoing longwave radiation and the flat temps for the last 10 years are the nail in the coffin for agw.
the link to the heartland 2010 presentation has an issue.
REPLY: Fixed, thanks, Anthony
Muller gently rips to shreds the scientific integrity of the people involved in this episode. These people are guilty of scientific misconduct. Period.
So …
Just to be clear about this.
Is the underlying point, by Briffa, that there has been a marginal temperature increase over the 20th Century, but the 20th Century up-trend is not off the charts, by comparison with previous centuries and, so, may well just be natural variability? As opposed to an increase that looks, when plotted, freaking scary and, hence, may be caused by the cardon dioxide monster?
Can someone tell me if I have correctly interpreted what Briffa is saying?
And, if that is so, wtf is happening?
I mean, I am not a scientist.
But what I would dearly love to know, if this whole AGW-scare is based on bullshit, where the hell is the rest of the scientifc community?
Specifically, why, if Briffa is right, are not scientists of all description shouting the AGW-Worriers down? Does the scientific community, at large, not give a rat’s arse, for the reputation of science, generally? Very confused, here.
Oh, and don’t bother replying with conspiracy theories, or `weight of institutional pressure’ arguments; these are, for non-AGW paradigm scientists, lame excuses. If it is true that non-AGW scientists are incapable of acting as free-agents, irrespective of political winds, frankly, I would rather not know.
And if the established professional institutes of science are so compromised that they are incapable of speaking out, where are the new groups of concerned (for the reputation of scisnce) forming? And if no such replacement institutes are not presently forming, wtf not?
Much of the responsibility for correcting the AGW-overreach must rests with the scientific community. When are we going to see some concerted push-back from that community?
“We now have a list of people whose papers I’m not going to read anymore.”
Is this enough? Should the existing papers be withdrawn?
Excellent video BTW. How many times does it have to be explained? A lot, apparently.
ouch – that’s gonna leave a mark
I find it sad that “science” could take such a wrong turn and committ such fraud. Unless all science is open to full review, this level of fraud will happen again.
The raw data, all steps, the processed data, and everything else must be open to friend and foe, if we expect to avoid massive fraud.
“trust, but verify.”, Ronald Regan
You are allowed if you’re a climatechangeologist!
The new science groups are out here on the “Net that covers the world”. Peer review and all. Time for real scientists to poke their heads out of the “Ivory Towers” and work together in the light of day. No one cares about work that is hidden. As long as it is hidden it does not exist! No “gang” can prevent publishing on the web. Just do it. pg
A couple corrections.
The FOIA did not request the “decline data” The FOIA requests to CRU covered.
1, CRU stations and data ( willis)
2. Jones temperature data for his 1990 paper
3. Correspondence WRT AR4
McIntyre had a request into a journal for Yamal data.
The divergence data, however, was removed from archives and only became accessible to the general public because of the mail liberator. The data was attached to one of the mails.
David Stockwell says: March 18, 2011 at 10:31 pm
“Is this enough? Should the existing papers be withdrawn? ”
No. Yes, and then they should be burried.
They are all infected.
http://www.thespoof.com/news/spoof.cfm?headline=s5i64103
TBear;
What’s with the “Briffa” stuff? The presenter is Muller. Briffa is one of the people whose papers he will no longer read.
TBear, youv;e got it wrong.
“Just to be clear about this.
Is the underlying point, by Briffa, that there has been a marginal temperature increase over the 20th Century, but the 20th Century up-trend is not off the charts, by comparison with previous centuries and, so, may well just be natural variability? As opposed to an increase that looks, when plotted, freaking scary and, hence, may be caused by the cardon dioxide monster”
The data that was erased was tree ring data. Theory says that tree rings respond somewhat linearly to temperature. So, they measure rings. Then they calibrate the rings against temperature in the instrument period. Then the “reconstruct” past temps from tree rings. From 1960 on for one region of the world Briffa found that after 1960 tree rings went in the Opposite direction from the temps in that region.
That left these choices.
1. the temp data was wrong
2. tree rings dont track temperature
3. Something happened to these trees, they diverge.
From our book.. sorry if the formating is effed up
“To get a sense of how Briffa treated the problem in the original source material, it’s instructive to review his early papers, those cited by Jones, papers all too familiar to the readers of CA. In 2006 McIntyre drew attention to Briffa’s discussion of the divergence problem and posted the following graphics from Briffa’s paper in 1998, 2000 and 2004. … tree ring width and maximum latewood density are shown to
diverge from the recorded temperature. …
So, part of Jones’ defense is correct. CRU, specifically, Briffa had displayed this divergence clearly in prior publications. And the underlying literature does discuss the problem in detail.
Briffa, 1998 writes:
It’s important to understand everything at play in Briffa’s argument because it will help illustrate why Jones’ graphic misleads readers. As Briffa and others had found, during the second half of the 20th century some tree measures had started to diverge from the temperature record. The underlying science holds that some trees are temperature sensitive. That is, their growth
properties follow temperature, amongst other things. By studying these measures over time the scientists can reconstruct past temperatures. Very simplistically, higher temperatures correlate with thick ring width for example. Temperature goes up, tree rings get wider. (We say simplistically because the width of tree rings is influenced by a lot of factors and it is not, well,
simple.) By looking at tree rings during the instrumented period and the widths seen in that period it is hoped that past temperatures can be reconstructed. The problem Briffa and others found was a divergence from this pattern. The tree ring series and the ring width series marched hand in hand from 1850 to the mid 20th century but then in some species and some locations this pattern changed. There are several ways to handle a problem like this. If tree rings and temperatures diverge, one
can question the accuracy of the temperatures, or question the tree rings, or question tree ring
science itself, or some combination of these. The precedent for questioning the temperature
record is established in the literature. As noted in previous chapters and on CA, Wilson and others
had on occasion compiled their own temperature records, specifically in Canada, when the
official record was at variance with tree rings. Briffa does not even explore this possibility with
these rings. In his mind, Jones’ instrument record is a fact. If the instrument record cannot be
questioned then Briffa is left with fewer choices. He could just use the data as it is. But if he does
this, then as he writes “past temperatures could be overestimated.” That is, if the data is merely
used “as is” then past temperatures will appear higher. It’s vital to note that he would see such an
estimation as an “over estimation.”
But to some the data is just the data. If tree rings or density reflect the temperature, then these
rings would indicate a warmer past than the present. To preserve a cooler past (which politically
he must do to show that current warming is unprecedented), Briffa must “do something” with this
data. He’s left with two choices. He could argue that these tree rings show that the basic science of reconstruction is flawed. The basic science operates on a theory that a tree that is temperature sensitive today will be temperature sensitive in the past. If that’s not true, if trees can sometimes function as “treemometers” and sometimes diverge from that, then the hopes of reconstructing past climate are dashed. Briffa cannot bring himself to even discuss this logical possibility. Briffa is left then with one choice: He cannot question Jones’ temperature record. He cannot use the data as is and create a large MWP, he cannot question the very science he carries out, so he must “adjust” the data. In his case the adjustment is a simple deletion. The data that diverges is simply disappeared. To be sure, that deletion is “discussed” but the discussion consists merely of pointing at possible reasons for the phenomena. In 2006 McIntyre canvasses the theories in the
following post:…..
TBear says:
March 18, 2011 at 10:28 pm
“But what I would dearly love to know, if this whole AGW-scare is based on bullshit, where the hell is the rest of the scientifc community?”
Now we are going to learn. The fact that Muller has entered the debate with guns blazing means that scientists will have to stake out clear positions. The dam has broken. Finally, some politicians will be embarrassed. If Al Gore is capable of embarrassment, he should be deflating at this point. After all, he continues to trumpet the hockey stick that will be remembered as a product of dishonest scientists.
Why it has taken scientists so long to make their criticisms public is not such a mystery. The case of Judith Curry shows that the Climategate community does act as a body and will attack, viciously, anyone who is perceived as being outside the fold.
Dr Judith Curry comments this here:
http://bit.ly/fhKca7
About the study “Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature” (BEST) here
http://www.berkeleyearth.org
—
I think it’s natural and necessary to involve new persons in e g the IPCC efforts, and next report’s (overall) content. Among lots of things scientists (“non-deniers”) as e g Cornelis de Jager & Silvia Duhau [1], and prof. U R Rao [2] has released studies showing the sun’s role in climate change historically (hundreds of years) is about 40 percent of climate change. IPCC has so far dismisses correlation on cause and effect of the sun. There are lots of other examples, and those in control of the IPCC procedure (Real Climate staff, Mann, Jones etc.), who present the well-known cause and effect diagram with small changes since a decade ago as settled science, involve dogma.
[1] The variable solar dynamo and the forecast of Solar Activity: Influence on Terrestrial Surface Temperature :
http://www.cdejager.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/2010-Variable-solar-dynamo3.pdf
[2] Contribution of changing galactic cosmic ray flux to global warming. Current Science, vol. 100, no. 2, 25 January 2011 :
http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/25jan2011/223.pdf
The video should be require viewing for all college freshmen entering a technical field.
To reply to TBear, the best explanation I have heard for the AGW behavior is that it has become religion, not science. It has all the hallmarks of religion. The fact that it is now non-falsifiable (global warming causes cold weather, hot weather, snow, rain, and now even earthquakes, therefore all weather is verification of AGW) is very much like religious beliefs, and makes discussion pointless. The vehemence of the warmists is also similar to that of a religious zealot (how dare you deny God?). Any data you present them is discounted as having been generated by private money from cigarette sales and greedy capitalists, not pure and unbiased government, and therefore it is corrupt, similar to blaming all evil on the devil.
TBear says:
March 18, 2011 at 10:28 pm
“Much of the responsibility for correcting the AGW-overreach must rests with the scientific community. When are we going to see some concerted push-back from that community?”
=================================================
Many from the general scientific community did and do participate. If I’m not mistaken, Theo is a scientist. And, as far as I can tell, the overwhelming majority are ardent skeptics, albeit, with a different view than some of us. However, the institutions themselves were silent, if not supportive of the alarmism.
Theo Goodwin is correct about Dr. Curry’s experience. (its an interesting story) Theo is also a bit more optimistic than I am about the reaction to Dr. Muller. We’ll see.
Why? Mostly because of money. The reason Penn St. shanked their inquiry of Mann.
Recently, we’ve seen more and more scientists complain about the black eye climatology has given science in general, but this is of their own making. I hold them responsible. They are worse than the charlatans. We’ll always have deceivers with us. It is for us to always be diligent towards such things. The laymen never forgot, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”
The science community did.
Trees are thermometers – yes they are, yes they are, yes they are….
And my chair is in fact a poodle!
ceci n’est pas science
This FRAUD has influenced and re-directed worldwide industry and governments onto a foolish tangent costing at least BILLIONS of dollars (if not Trillions).
The ongoing negative effects of these charts and subsequent laws are still bubbling through our economies and continue into the future.
The laws need to be revoked and the creators of this fraud need to be incarcerated.
Long live carbon dioxide. Please focus on pollution and air filters instead.
I remember the first time I saw the clip from Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” that showed the Mann “hockey stick” graph. I remember starting to laugh, because as a lawyer with only modest familiarity with statistics, but great familiarity with tricks with statistics, I knew that any trend such as was shown in that graph was “too good to be true.” If it’s too good to be true, it usually isn’t. If it’s so off the charts that it looks unprecedented, it’s got to be wrong.
Now I know Steve McIntyre doesn’t like to use the word “fraud,” because he is a scientific guy and he is trying to get to the bottom of things, and properly so. But what folks must remember is that a lot of this work was being done in connection with the IPCC Second [?? – I don’t remember if it was second or third] Assessment. There has already been a lot of interchange between some of the more ambitious UN bureaucrats who are trying to make a case for political action with respect to climate change, as this had been going on for the previous ten years or so. I have to believe that in the interests of this closely-knit community, in which they all reinforced their mutual belief system, the stakes were high and no one wanted to appear uncertain about anything. So, they cheated a little bit. Well, a lot, in my opinion. You can claim that everyone’s motives were pure, but ahhh, believe me (I used to work in government, I’m quite familiar with the policy messes and confusion that unelected bureaucrats can make), they weren’t. You can claim the methods to be typical of science, but as Prof. Muller shows, they are not.
The scary part is that none of the mounting evidence against AGW, IPCC, Gore, Mann & co. seems to matter one iota. No matter how much we break down the false prophecies, lies, scary scenarios, hockey-sticks, etc. , when players like google get into the political AGW game, it is becoming less and less about something we can influence with hard evidence and more about finding partners that can influence masses. I hope the ever growing number of us that don’t believe in AGW, will someday soon change the mind of these AGW believers (like google and the MSM) into at least considering that the AGW prophets and “scientists” are not 100% right, that they don’t know what is going on and that much of the “science” is in fact fueled by greed for control, power and money and other inexplicable agendas. Vive la résistance!
Climate ‘science’ is no more. Instead it has mutated into an abnormal advocacy group to push the green agenda against fossil fuels. As with any belief system, any facts which would falsify its tenets are conveniently erased, or a hasty change is made to explain the anomaly.
Briffa and the rest of the useless bunch of CRU green agenda advocates have been found out and the CAGW meme is crumbling back to the dust from which it came.
Time to bring back the Spanish Inquisition!
“Time to bring back the Spanish Inquisition!”
One, two, three: “I didn’t expect the Spanish Inquisition!”
For alliteration, how about saying, “the letter liberator”? You call the e-mails “letters” in the subtitle of your book (“The CRUtape Letters”).
I like the subtle “dig” of your using the sixties-leftist’s OK-word for theft against the Team. (It was the word they used when, for instance, they invaded university offices and “liberated” documents therefrom.)
I suggest that henceforth our side relentlessly employ this term in describing the “hack”–it’ll be worth it to annoy the Other Side. E.g., refer to “liberated letters” (or documents, or ‘Lectronic Letters) rather than “hacked e-mails,” to “The Liberator” (be sure to use capitals!) whenever the other side uses “the hacker,” etc.
Quote of the week?
Gulf stream slows down
Gulf stream speeds up a little
Plants move uphill
Plants move downhill
Sahel to get less rain
Sahel to get more rain
Sahel to get more or less rain!
I got lots more… ;O)
This presentation is riddled with factual error … as Mosh points out the claim that the divergent data was ‘hidden’ by FOI is just wrong. Gavin has a few other points about the video this clip was excerpted from
“Muller’s video and characterisation of the issues is partial, and quite frankly, misleading. He neglects to mention the actual temperatures (which is what the graphic was supposed to show), and insinuates that Jim Hansen was somehow cooking the books, because he was able to forecast that 2010 would be a near record breaking year (which was actually not hard to do). Instead of being impressed by a prediction made based on scientific reasoning and then being validated by events, he implies that scientists shouldn’t be making predictions at all. This makes no sense. Muller’s presentation contains many basic errors – conflating baroclinic instability (a cause of mid-latitude storminess) with latent heat release (the cause of tropical storms), for instance, and mis-represents Gore’s statements on a number of issues. This is in line with his previous statements on the paleoclimate reconstructions which were also overblown and misleading. Thus while he may have a great reputation in his field, and while he has certainly made some interesting (though ultimately unsuccessful) contributions to understanding ice age cycles, his statements on the broader climate issue are neither comprehensive nor reliable. He may have great confidence in his own ability, but as he himself has said: “Most of our opinions are based on false information” and “Scientists are as easily fooled as anybody else”. He might want to “take steps to compensate” for that. “
The answer to this question might be found at Deep Throat: Follow the money
2011 USA government funding of climate science – $2.48 billion
http://climatequotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/cc2011.png
http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/rdreport2011/
You two are right on the money. Man-made global Warming belief bears the hallmarks of what traditionally would be recognised as a religion. [UK judge via the Guardian]
I didn’t appreciate until now that Richard Muller is the leader of the breakaway group who will reestimate global trends in temperature. William M. Briggs (Adjunct Professor of Statistical Science, Cornell University) talks about this in his blog.
http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=3558
I seem to remember this was mentioned here as well.
Going by the other 47 minutes from the rest of the full video presentation, I presume Professor Muller is one of the representatives from the AGW camp.
Please note that I admit to being easily confused…. But Dr. Muller believes that human emissions of CO2 causes dangerous global warming. But he destroys the science behind it (rather elegantly I might add) in only a couple of minutes. Can someone walk me through this?
What is it about retired Professors to talk about subjects they have no idea about, he is a Physicist not a Climatologist, would anybody listen to a Chemist talkking about Physics?
Well he his only saying what we’ve known for many years from work here and on Climate Audit, who really gets the plaudit:-) H however he is a scientist who considers that global warming is occurring so I think the Team need to beware.
One thing he says which infuriates. “The public may not understand graphs”.
Crabb
Can you please tell me which of the AGW scientist is a ” Climatologist ” by qualification?
@Iggy Slanter: One might say that even though Dr. Muller personally believes that anthropogenic CO2 is causing warming, the case hasn’t been proven yet and this “science” is not the way to do it. It would be similar to a prosecuting attorney believing the accused is guilty, knows he doesn’t have the evidence, but also knows that breaking into the perp’s house without a warrant to get evidence is not the way to win the case.
This is a very simple example, of course, but what it shows is that Dr. Muller has integrity as a scientist. His personal beliefs are unimportant compared to what the true science shows, and he will go where the actual evidence leads.
Something from the Guardian’s news article on the Berkeley group’s effort to construct a new temperature series caught my eye.
Peter Thorne, (of climategate fame, who has worked in most of the climategate institutions and until recently, was leading an effort to build a new temperature series under the auspices of the WMO and the UK Met Office) is quoted as saying,
“We need groups like Berkeley stepping up to the plate and taking this challenge on, because it’s the only way we’re going to move forwards. I wish there were 10 other groups doing this,” he says.
So, there is the playbook against the Berkeley group.
It is standard technique of the pro-AGW’ers. Get out ahead of some new non-AGW publication or get a rebuttal published in a very short timeframe in order to short-circuit any new non-AGW finding. The rebuttal allows them to ignore the finding and keep the publication/finding out of the IPCC etc. It is now the standard MO from the pro-AGW set.
Somewhere, a group from the Met, UEA and the NCDC is trying to replicate some of the Berkeley Group’s activities in advance (with the appropriate +0.4C adjustments applied) and will try to upstage them or something of the sort. Either that, or a number of groups will be ready to take the Berkeley Group’s raw database collation and apply the appropriate data torture techniques and come up with an even greater trend in temperatures.
Maybe they actually have 10 groups on standby already.
Might be a little paranoid, but this is their standard MO.
@jcrabb: You must have missed the statement of Dr. Curry about Dr. Muller: “While most of his research is in physics, Muller has also published important papers on paleoclimate…”
The man does have street cred in climate science.
Muller obviously doesn’t really know what he is talking about, in the full length presentation, he calls Saudi Arabia ‘King of Coal’ while discussing a graph displaying world Oil resources.
[Reply – So that is your reason to rubbish his expertise? Nice criterion. Ever done a presentation to a large audience? Even the most experienced will err and not notice from time to time. Chances are the audience got what he meant not what he said ~ jove, mod]
He states that Coral reef bleaching is not increasing, which is totally wrong , it only started to occur since the 70’s, seems he should just stick to Physics.
[Reply – perhaps what you mean is ‘science only started reporting it to occur in the 70s’, which is not the same thing ~ jove, mod]
You’re indeed “not allowed to do this in science” – I am glad that some heavy hitters, who are still teaching, are now coming out with this.
This ‘trick’, btw is the precise reason why my luke-scepticism, before ClimateGate, turned into scepticism.
This ‘trick’ alone has made climate science as perpetrated by The Team into something one really doesn’t need to waste time on any longer. The Team really ought not to be called ‘scientists’ any longer.
Sadly, too many climate and other scientists have kept silent about this, which does nothing for their reputation.
Let’s praise the very few amongst them, who have been rising their heads above the parapet, and let’s hope their courage hasn’t come too late to repair the damage done not just to climate science, but to science in general.
Master Crabb:
Richard A Muller has written extensively on ice ages. He is eminently qualified to comment on this and many other related topics. His critique carries significant weight among his fellow scientists.
His explanation of his graph of fossil fuels was a bit muddled early on, but only a pedant would argue that the graph is not easy to understand.
================
From the article linked to by Jimbo, edited slightly for objectivity.:
No one who spoke to the Guardian about the Berkeley Earth project believed it would shake the faith of the minority who have set their minds
againstin favor of global warming. “As new kids on the block, I think they will be given a favourable view by people, but I don’t think it will fundamentally change people’s minds,” says Thorne. Brillinger has reservations too. “There are people you are never going to change. They have their beliefs and they’re not going to back away from them.”Sure the mistake about Saudi Arabia is not terminal, but he was a Professor at Berkely so he is in no way new to speaking in public.
Rhe idea that the ‘trick’ was a secret is a load of utter bollocks, there was a paper published about it before the IPCC report was published, so how on Earth can it be called a secret, the fact that Muller doesn’t know about this paper shows he doesn’t know what he is talking about, that he is just dabbling.
As for reef bleaching, no I don’t mean science started reporting it then, I mean that it starts being reported then because thats when the phenomenon starts, do you think Scientists only started looking at reefs in the 70’s
Thank you JamesS. I appreciate your help. Cheers.
At best tree rings can only show a low to medium correlation to temperature. Tree ring growth depends upon the following [major items]:
1) Temperature
2) CO2
3) Ground Water, rain
4) Humidity
5) Amount of fertilizer, i.e., Sulfur, Iron, etc.
6) Previous Winter Season coldness/warmness.
7) Forest Fires releasing fertilizer, CO2, altering local light levels, etc.
8) Light Levels
9) Atmospheric Dust lowering leaf efficiency
10) Disease, infestations, etc.
Some of these items average out, some don’t. A stand of tree might be great for 200 years and then become not reliable due to disease, infestations, etc.
If we treat the data as low to medium correlation, we can use tree rings a one puzzle piece. The same is true for CO2. How can it be possible to leave out the increase in solar output over the last 350 years.
Just like the Catholic Church pushed that the Earth was the center of the universe, AGW push constant Solar Output with the only variable being CO2.
Since the Earth is warmer due to years of increasing Solar activity, now that the Sun has gone quiet, the average Global temperatures will plummet [higher starting point, heat input turned off].
Check ->
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.gif
to watch the heat leave the Pacific and the Atlantic.
When the Global and Hemispheric page here, http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/recons.html does not contain the names Jones, Briffa, Mann, Amman, Wahl, Osborn, or any trace of their work, maybe the fight will be over.
But not before.
We should all be thankful that Mann, Briffa, Jones et al dabble in Climate Scientology and are not scientists developing new drugs..
With their version of scientific ethics and morality, their penchant, if not adoration for deceptive data manipulation when it is convenient to “prove” their predetermined and preferred scientific outcome would have by now resulted in a lot of very sick and dead people.
All they have done is to contribute to the flushing of tens of billions of valuable dollars down the public policy toilet, real money that could have been used by real scientists doing real work for the the real benefit of real people.
History will not be kind to these fools and the other rat-pack of eco-grifters profiting off the great scam.
Bernie:
Another issue that makes me wonder about Dr Muller’s expertise is that he states there has been no warming over the last ten years, a quick perusal of ‘Wood for Trees’ shows this statement to be incorrect, as there is quite a significant slope indicating warming has occured, it is not the flat line if what he says were to be true.
No amount of evidence will impact the current belief in AGW in academia. As a PhD student I see on a daily basis how reliant academia has become on the AGW scare, it leaves me truly speechless.
Countless colleagues are dependent on CO2 being a pollutant. Their jobs depend on it, the value of their education depends on it, the relevance of their publications depends on it, and the list goes on and on.
As bad as it is, i cannot see how it will become anything but worse. The vast majority of PhD positions announced, the courses available, and funding are related to AGW.
God help the few who dare being openly skeptical in this environment.
The truth has become the biggest enemy of the system.
This will end in tears, and lots of it
Prof. Muller is worried about the lack of solutions to the global warming problem. He is not a CACA, but he clearly sees only problems with increased CO2 levels.
Aside from the tree ring circus discussion, I think the most important couple of minutes in the talk starts at around 3:23 of the full talk (not the excerpted video). He targets cloud cover response to warming as the key unknown issue.
Transcribed from Prof. Muller’s presentation-
“There is an uncertainty, because when you increase the carbon dioxide, making the temperature rise a little bit, this causes water vapor to evaporate, more water vapor than you would have otherwise.
That enhances the greenhouse effect, but it is believed not to enhance cloud cover.
If it enhances cloud cover significantly, then all the calculations are wrong.
Everybody admits this. This is not a contentious issue.
If you look at the IPCC- this is the big UN panel- when people say there’s consensus, that is what they are referring to. And they state in their report- and you can read the summary report, its only about 7 or 8 pages, and its available on the web- they are very clear about the fact that cloud cover is the biggest uncertainty.
And if cloud cover were to increase by 2%, in the next 50 years, we wouldn’t have global warming. So this is the big unknown.
And as you’ll see, if you believe that you can get favors from God by praying, then I suggest you pray that cloud cover will kick in. Because my evaluation is that when I show you what the problem is, if the global warming models are right (and I think they are very likely right) then we are going to have global warming. And there is nobody proposing any solution about what to do about it.”
Climategate ‘hide the decline’ in depth explanation by Stephen McIntyre 1/3
http://www.youtube.com/user/Androidoful#p/u/1/JlCNrdna9CI
Annotated Notes for Presentation to Heartland Conference, Chicago
May 16 2010
http://www.climateaudit.info/pdf/mcintyre-heartland_2010.pdf
jcrabb,
Give it up. If that’s the best you’ve got, then you got nothin’.
I recall when President Jimmy Carter [who was used to speaking in front of large audiences] was praising the best known U.S. Senator of the day, Sen Hubert Humphrey. Carter called Humphrey “Senator Hubert Horatio Hornblower.” Carter went on speaking, not realizing what he had said. Carter was a nuclear engineer, but you’d probably give him a pass because he’s deep down the same kind of character as Mann and Jones.
The most shocking part of Muller’s presentation was the before/after graphs showing that the huge warming spike was a complete fabrication. I roll my eyes when I read some folks’ apology for that devious altering of reality by people who certainly knew exactly what they were doing and why. Do their apologists really expect us to believe there is a legitimate excuse for their deliberate fraud?
Trust the scientists. They’re the experts and they are here to help.
BTW: That’s sarcasm.
The reality is the one group who know more about paleo-climates than anyone else are geologists.
Geologists – government employees excepted – are the most sceptical group around and therefore are ignored as heretics by the AGW cult. The concept of natural climate cycles remains the greatest heresy perceived by the AGW cult’s high priests.
The concept of using tree rings as a proxy for past temperatures – other than for dating extreme events like volcanic eruptions – is just goofy, as there are so many other factors than temperature which affect tree ring growth. Somehow ‘a science’ has grown out of the study of tree rings and like most other things treated as gospel by the Team and the other purveyors of bad science, should simply be treated as nothing more than data manipulated junk.
I for one am glad not to be living in ‘the Little Ice Age’. I also totally reject the concept of trying to regulate (i.e. stabilise) climate, as there is absolutely nothing significant mankind can do to alter our planet’s temperature, short of creating a ‘nuclear winter’ after an atomic war.
Mosher writes:
“So, part of Jones’ defense is correct. CRU, specifically, Briffa had displayed this divergence clearly in prior publications. And the underlying literature does discuss the problem in detail.”
You really have no concept of lying and the harm that it can do. If I tell Jones a lie and because of that lie he kills himself, the fact that I told Smith the truth does not lessen the harm, the evil, or the blameworthiness.
The hockey stick was presented to the public. It was the star of Al Gore’s academy award winning movie, for God’s sake. You must apply the standards of truth that are relevant to the general public. Al Gore used the hockey stick to tell a lie and I do not believe that Mann, Jones, or any Climategater PUBLICLY dissented from that lie. The fact that additional information was published in scientific journals is irrelevant to the audience for the hockey stick, the general public.
Please stop equivocating on the words ‘lie’, ‘truth’, ‘is’, and ‘a’.
Move over, Piltdown Man, meet the new fossils on display: AGW Man.
“We now have a list of people whose papers I’m not going to read anymore.”
Data falsification is the term we in science use to describe this behavior. This includes suppression adverse data (the decline), as well as incompletely describing the data sources (mixing tree ring and temp data). Lack of scientific integrity can result in a variety of punitive outcomes. Journals can decide to withdraw (retract) papers, institutions can elect to terminate employment, granting agencies can withhold funds. In the case of using falsified or fabricated data in support of grant applications, criminal charges can be filed (fraud). Honest errors and even one-time offenses by those who are early in their careers and inadequately educated are often forgiven. Ongoing and repeated offenses can easily result in expulsion from science and even fines and imprisonment. It’s always ugly and affects students, colleagues and competitors.
Dr. Muller’s decision to “shun” this group of authors is a perfectly reasonable response. He’s stating that he no longer trusts their studies–they are no longer to be believed as honest reporters of data and conclusions. Among scientists, that is a very very harsh determination and punishment.
jcrabb,
Just who, exactly, do you think “Climate Scientists” are?
When you get right down to it… they are just physicists, chemists, etc. that happen to be studying the climate instead of some other physical or chemical system.
The idea that physicists and chemists somehow cannot understand the intricacies and nuance of the climate science debate is offensive and absurd. That is exactly the kind of argument you would expect from some kind of quasi-religious group, rather than fellow scientists.
The truth is, a well educated physicist, or chemist (or engineer, etc) can understand and even obtain some expertise in just about any scientific endeavor in which they become interested. All it takes is a little time and work to get up to speed on the specific lingo and previous findings of that sub-field.
Physics is physics… and chemistry is chemistry… and these are essentially universal. Unless, you want to argue that climate science somehow does not follow the normal laws of physics and chemistry?
Come to think of it, since pretty much all your “science” is done in a computer model, and not the real world… perhaps your physical laws ARE different after all. Hmmm… I guess that’s really the main problem with “climate science”, and I guess that explains why all those predictions aren’t working out so well. Maybe a little basic physics and chemistry is exactly what you guys need?
Mosher writes:
“So, part of Jones’ defense is correct. CRU, specifically, Briffa had displayed this divergence clearly in prior publications. And the underlying literature does discuss the problem in detail.”
Not one of the Climategaters ever asked themselves whether the evidence of forty years, evidence that they had collected, showed that tree ring data is not useful as a proxy for temperature. The useful scientific result from all of Briffa’s research was that tree ring data should be called into question. Yet that fact, that divergence, is exactly “the decline” that they conspired to hide on the hockey stick. Briffa’s articles ask no questions of scientific methodology. He never asks his colleagues to question tree ring data. Not one of the Climategater conspiracy ever blinked on tree ring data and they do not today. You overlook the fact that they defend their older work even today. You cannot deny that the tragic flaw in each and every member of the Climategate conspiracy is an inability to be critical of their own work and a failing to appreciate scientific method.
jcrabb says:
March 19, 2011 at 4:43 am
“What is it about retired Professors to talk about subjects they have no idea about, he is a Physicist not a Climatologist, would anybody listen to a Chemist talkking about Physics?”
Ok, moderators, ok. I give. I will never again ask that you ban a troll, if you will just please ban jcrabb.
There is no WMO Magazine.
“jcrabb says:
March 19, 2011 at 8:40 am
Bernie:
Another issue that makes me wonder about Dr Muller’s expertise is that he states there has been no warming over the last ten years,”
I do not have graphs for the last 10 years, but check out the green bar graphs at the following. It shows that on the 5 data sets, the average for last 5 years was lower than for the last 10 years. So if graphs were to be drawn for the last 10 years, I cannot see how they would rise very much.
http://www.climate4you.com/GlobalTemperatures.htm#Comparing%20global%20temperature%20estimates
Phil Clarke says:
March 19, 2011 at 2:59 am
“Instead of being impressed by a prediction made based on scientific reasoning and then being validated by events, he implies that scientists shouldn’t be making predictions at all.”
Sir, Warmista cannot make predictions. They cannot because they do not have a set of physical hyptheses that enables them to explain and predict a rise in Earth’s temperatures. They have only simulations running on computers and such simulations cannot be used for prediction or explanation. When Muller says that “they” should not be predicting, he means that they should not be pretending to do something that they cannot do, namely, predict without the benefit of physical hypotheses.
The Harry_Read_Me.txt documents the data falsification and fabrication that corrupts the entire CRU database, the supposed clearinghouse of global climate data used everywhere in climate science. The fools gold standard of climate science. It leaves a smoldering crater where credibility used to be.
Ok, I said Briffa when I should have said Mueller.
But, still no straight answer to my questions?
If climate `scientists’ are (I assume) very small percentage of all the world’s qualified natural scientists, it does seem very, very odd that, if the AGW-Catastrophe-thesis is obvious horsecrap that the existing professional academies are not calling it and that there is (apart from some notable exceptions) no sense of a general push-back from the scientific community at large.
So, the all-powerful AGW crowd have got everyone that scared and intimidated?
Doesn’t add up …
Has it been shown that the trees diverged from the temperature or that the temperature diverged from the reported temperature. I’m still not clear on that. I know for a fact that it was miserably hot sleeping outside in August in south Alabama in the 70’s although NOAA says the average August low was in the 60’s. So, I’m calling BS on their historical record.
Artificial intelligence is no substitute for natural stupidity
laughed until the tears came, so clear. Thanks you so much
Apologies to Theo, Anton and JamesS, I retract saying Dr Muller is not a Climate Scientist and not qualified to comment, a regretable moment of ignorance and stupidity on my behalf.
mike g says:
March 19, 2011 at 5:41 pm
“Has it been shown that the trees diverged from the temperature or that the temperature diverged from the reported temperature.”
The trees diverged from what Briffa was reading on his thermometer (or interpolating from some exotic temperature grid known only to Warmista). The trees showed signs of a declining temperature over a period of about forty years, if you assume that the observed changes in the trees are a good proxy for temperature, as Briffa did. Briffa’s thermometer showed a rising temperature. Thus, what Briffa saw or discovered was a divergence between his tree ring data (declining temperature) and his thermometer data (rising temperature). This divergence is an important scientific discovery. Indeed, it undermines all tree ring data of the kind Briffa studied. It should have been in the title of a major peer-reviewed article in a major journal. However, being a Warmista, Briffa and The Team chose to “Hide The Decline” (divergence). Not only did Briffa lie, along with the others, but he betrayed his own scientific work to support the Global Warming Narrative.
jcrabb says:
March 19, 2011 at 7:14 pm
All is forgiven and forgotten.
jcrabb says:
March 19, 2011 at 5:31 am
He states that Coral reef bleaching is not increasing, which is totally wrong , it only started to occur since the 70′s, seems he should just stick to Physics.
[Reply – perhaps what you mean is ‘science only started reporting it to occur in the 70s’, which is not the same thing ~ jove, mod]
Have you ever considered the onset of coral reef bleaching in relation to sport diving? I remember reading Jacque Costeau’s narrative of his early days developing the aqualung. Since I read it 40 or more years ago and have read many hundreds of other books since, the name does not come immediately to mind. (Small matter. In today’s world, a quick electronic search can find nearly everything.) Although perhaps not in that volume, I distinctly remember Costeau mentioning that merely placing a hand on or rubbing a coral surface can cause damage to the coral organisms. In that light, what effect do any of you think that divers visiting these reefs might have? Boats shedding exhaust and oil into the water. Probably throwing food scraps over the side. Sewage dumping. Suntan lotions. Sunblock. Deodorants. Perfumes and colognes. Soap and detergent residues.
Not saying that’s what’s causing problems. I just like to bring to light possibilities. I’m not that dogmatic about things. I consider myself intelligent enough to at least have a glimmer of how much I will never know.
@PhD student: I hope that you can stand graduate school, if that is what you still want. I couldn’t stand the lies and corruption and fraud that I saw. I decided I would rather hang with a higher quality crowd.
And, for the possible attackers, I didn’t flunk out. I had passed my oral prelim and had good research results. I walked away. I’m a chemist and a good one. I’m also a good scientist who follows where the data leads not to someplace I want the data to go.
Old grump,
From http://www.fws.gov/coralreef/proceedings/Day%202%20PDF/5-Athline%20Clark.pdf
“•The bleaching response of corals in Hawaiian waters is complex but highly predictable.
•The bleaching threshold in corals is controlled primarily by temperature, irradiance and duration of exposure. This pattern is further modified by water motion, sedimentation and other factors as described by Jokiel (in press).
Results of extensive research on thermal tolerance of Hawaiian corals conducted in the 1970s and identification of a warming trend in Hawaiian waters led Jokiel and Coles (1990) to predict that mass bleaching would soon occur in the Hawaiian Archipelago if the trend continued.”
Sure enough major bleaching occured in 1996 and 2002, so it seems that these guys have nailled it.
Theo, are you saying the reduced sensitivity of recent tree-growth to temperature should have been the subject of a peer reviewed paper?
Hard to argue that the ‘divergence problem’ was concealed when it has its own wiki entry ….. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divergence_problem
In other news, Muller’s temperature series project is the subject of a mail from Ken Caldeira to Joe Romm…
“Their preliminary results sit right within the results of NOAA, NASA, and HadCRU, confirming that prior analyses were correct in every way that matters. Their results confirm the reality of global warming and support in all essential respects the historical temperature analyses of the NOAA, NASA, and HadCRU.”
So it seems we will soon have 4 surface based and two satellite estimates of global mean temperature trends all painting the same picture.
REPLY: PHIL FAIL – The “divergence problem” Wiki didn’t appear until AFTER Climategate. It was well concealed prior to that. From the Wiki Talk page:
Thanks for starting this, guys. I’ll contribute a bit as time permits. Cheers, Pete Tillman (talk) 19:50, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
And if you believe Joe Romm and his spin venom, you’ll believe most anything. I pity your lack of cognizant BS filtering ability. – Anthony
Well, if you want pre-climategate references, the ‘heavily-concealed’ Divergence problem was discussed ….
> In the literature. Eg.D’Arrigo et al., 2004, Cook et al. (2004), Briffa et al (Nature, 391, 678-682) and many others.
> In the IPCC AR4 report
> On climate-related blogs, including extensively at Climate Audit
I am not sure that Steve McIntyre would agree that publishing on his blog equals concealment!
By contrast prior to Nov 2009 there seems to be not a single mention of the cover art for the WMO pamphlet that Muller uses in his talk and which was the subject of the ‘hide the decline’ faux scandal. Does anybody know of one?
REPLY: the only real scandal here in this pointless discussion of yours (besides the actual real hide the decline issue) is Romm’s lie, which he’ll soon be called out for. Yes, I used the word “lie”. But you’ll believe anything I suppose. I’m sure you’ll rush to defend him when the rug gets pulled out from under him. – Anthony
Erm, the text quoted is from Ken Caldiera to JR. I guess we wait for the final paper to appear, it promises to be interesting.
TTFN.
Phil Clarke says:
March 20, 2011 at 9:44 am
You are all over the place in your response to me. If you want to address one of my posts, reference my words, focus on them, formulate some response to them, and then make your point or points.
Whether or not there is manmade global warming has nothing to do with the claim that Briffa, Jones, Mann, and all the rest of the Climategate Crew lied. Take Briffa as an example. If he had been unwilling to lie, then he would have forbidden Jones, Mann, and the others to publish a hockey stick that did not show the divergence that he discovered. Had they published anyway, he would have denounced them publicly. He would have opposed Gore’s movie and would have denounced it publicly. Anything less is lying.
If you think about the group interaction among Climategaters, Briffa is the one who was treated far worse than any other and the one whose scientific contribution was not only diminished but treated as not existing. My guess is that Briffa placed the Climategate emails on the unprotected server.
Phil Clarke says:
March 20, 2011 at 9:44 am
“Theo, are you saying the reduced sensitivity of recent tree-growth to temperature should have been the subject of a peer reviewed paper?”
Absolutely, it is Briffa’s most important contribution to science. If it had been published and not suppressed, no one would ever have seen the hockey stick.
Phil Clarke says:
March 20, 2011 at 9:44 am
“Theo, are you saying the reduced sensitivity of recent tree-growth to temperature should have been the subject of a peer reviewed paper?”
From the abstract of the paper you referenced, there is this:
“When averaged over large areas of northern America and Eurasia, tree-ring density series display a strong coherence with summer temperature measurements averaged over the same areas, demonstrating the ability of this proxy to portray mean temperature changes over sub-continents and even the whole Northern Hemisphere.
During the second half of the twentieth century, the decadal-scale trends in wood density and summer temperatures have increasingly diverged as wood density has progressively fallen. The cause of this increasing insensitivity of wood density to temperature changes is not known, but if it is not taken into account in dendroclimatic reconstructions, past temperatures could be overestimated.”
The first sentence says everything is cool with the data. The second sentence says something like “Oh, there is this little matter that the tree rings show declining temperature over the second half of the twentieth century and the cause is unknown but everything is cool.”
The abstract should have begun as follows: “My research provides powerful evidence that tree rings of the kind that I study have not been useful as proxies for temperature in the second half of the twentieth century.” Then he could have added the Warmista statement: “No doubt this can be explained away but I have not yet figured out how to do that; however, The Team let me publish this mealy-mouthed paper because I really need the publication.”
jcrabb says:
March 20, 2011 at 1:08 am
If you want to be taken seriously here, you cannot say “A said B would happen at C and B happened at C; therefore, A made a true prediction.” For example, I could say “My son will complain about tonight’s dinner when it is served at 6 pm” and then at 6 pm when my son complains I could conclude that I made a true prediction. The problems should be obvious. Number one, I state nothing that could be used by a neutral observer to explain or predict my son’s behavior; without such information, there can be no prediction. Number two, my son complains all the time but the fact that he complains all the time does nothing to enable an outside observer to explain or predict his complaint behavior. Number three, etc. If you do not have the necessary explanatory hypotheses, you have nothing that can be used for prediction. So, until you can present the necessary hypotheses in your own words, you are not discussing science.
The video almost cuts off the real message of the video:
I am happy to hear this statement from the horse’s mouth, that THIS is the reason for the UC study.
It is also major that he said earlier (3:48):
That is one heavy trip – that a group of them has impugned their own work to the point that other scientists treat it as not true, simply because it is by that group. In other words, he doesn’t think of them as scientists anymore.
It was only a matter of time.
Also of import is that Muller early on (1:48) says that most scientists who matter do not think the Climategate files were hacked, but it was some “member of the team who was really upset with them.”
This UC study will be such a breath of fresh air. Come hell or high water, no matter which way their findings go, we will (hopefully) have something everyone will respect and be able to replicate.
Theo Goodwin says:
March 20, 2011 at 2:21 pm
The hypothesis is coral bleaching is primarily driven by sea temperature, Muller seemed to be suggesting otherwise and as I am not Marine Biologist I linked to a paper that supported the hypothesis.
I once knew an old chap who was a devoted Anglican and disliked Roman Catholics. He used to embarass his devout Anglican family during the communion service by refusing to recite the part of the Nicene Creed that states that ‘I believe in the Holy Catholic Church’ as he didn’t understand that ‘catholic, also means ‘universal’. Some of the Warmista who have popped up here debate the Hide The Decline actions of The Team and the lack of statistically-meaningful warming for the current decade (as outlined by one Prof Jones of UEA) with a similar level of understanding.
[Snip. You can try posting again, but without the denier name-calling, the multiple accusations that the author is “lying”, etc. ~dbs, mod.]
Steve McIntyre has another very interesting finding on the “hide the decline”.
They also truncated the beginning of the line(s) as well as the post-1960 end of the line.
Hide the incline and hide the decline in one fell-swoop. Dr. Richard Muller’s comment about “you are not allowed to do this in science” is even more apropos now.
http://climateaudit.org/2011/03/21/hide-the-decline-the-other-deletion/
@Viv Evans March 19, 2011 at 6:05 am:
I think that is what Dr Muller was saying when he said he said
and
One scientist doesn’t need to “re-do” the work one thinks was done by other, real, scientists.
And if “people whose papers I won’t read anymore” doesn’t say, “These guys aren’t real scientists in my opinion,” what does?
Feet2theFire;
Actually, “re-do”ing is exactly what is supposed to happen in science (it’s called “replication”) but gets short shrift too often, frequently because journals are loathe to publish mere validation studies — especially when they come out negative. They just like the big initial “headline” reports, just like MSM “if it bleeds it leads” reportage and so on.
Calls for a “Journal of Negative Results” are not just jokes. Science-and-information theory teach that you get more from negative results than positive ones.