UPDATE: After some late night insomnia, and re-reading Steve’s essay again, I have decided to make this introduction to his essay a “top post” for a couple of days. New stories will appear below this one.
Readers, I urge you to read and digest this story, because it forms the seminal basis for everything that is wrong with Team paleoclimate science: the hard earned field work of Russian field researchers whose inconvenient data was excluded, warnings from colleagues ignored, tribalism exposed, testimony self-contradicted, whitewashes performed, and in a hat-tip to Leibig’s Law, even a “reindeer crap theory”. As one CA commenter, Peter Ward, put it:
My 13-year-old daughter asked me what I was reading. I explained at a high level and showed her figure 4. She grasped it immediately. How can we get this figure publicised widely?
I urge every climate blog to pick this utterly damning story of forensic investigation up and make it as widely known as possible. – Anthony
By Steve McIntyre
In The Climate Files, Fred Pearce wrote:
When I phoned Jones on the day the emails were published online and asked him what he thought was behind it, he said” It’s about Yamal, I think”.
Pearce continued (p 53):
The word turns up in 100 separate emails, more than ‘hockey stick’ or any other totem of the climate wars. The emails began with it back in 1996 and they ended with it.
Despite Jones’ premonition and its importance both in the Climategate dossier and the controversies immediately preceding Climategate, Yamal and Polar Urals received negligible attention from the “inquiries”, neither site even being mentioned by Kerry Emanuel and his fellow Oxburgh panellists.
I recently submitted an FOI request for a regional chronology combining Yamal, Polar Urals and “other shorter” chronologies referred to in an April 2006 email – a chronology that Kerry Emanuel and the “inquiries” failed to examine. The University of East Anglia, which seems to have been emboldened by the Climategate experience, not only refused to provide the chronology, but refused even to provide a list of the sites that they used to construct the regional chronology.
This refusal prompted me to re-appraise Yamal and its role in the Climategate dossier.
Read the full story here: Yamal and Hide-the-Decline
============================================================
It appears the cardinals of deadwood at UEA and CRU have learned absolutely nothing.
Note to the person who’s running the BOT to keep posting one star like you did the last top post where over 1000 “1” star votes were logged (a new record). I have your IP address from the widget. If you keep it up, I’ll register a complaint with your ISP. In the meantime, “grow up”.
– Anthony
R. Gates says:
April 10, 2011 at 7:14 am
“With or without tree-ring data (throw it out – all of it!) and we still get the 20th century warming…i.e. the Hockey Stick shape. Despite the skeptical rhetoric that the entire hockey stick is based on carefully selected (or unselected tree-ring data), that simply is not the case.”
You haven’t read Montford’s book about McIntyre’s criticisms. Tree rings were cherry picked to manufacture hockey sticks. As for the rest of your article, stop changing the subject.
Arctic warming? I don’t think so:
http://notrickszone.com/category/arctic/page/2/
ferd berple says:
April 10, 2011 at 7:11 am
“Global warming is a regional phenomenon, as it is mostly happening in the arctic.”
Aye. Where there are no thermometers…
Postscript to my previous comment…
In the following link, I directly address the alarmist hysteria about a highly cherry picked 2,000 year temperature record in the Arctic (cited by R. Gates, April 10, 2011 at 7:14 am).
Among other things, I note that the GISP2 study demonstrates that one need only go back another 17 years (to 2,017 year ago) to find warmer temperatures than today.
http://sbvor.blogspot.com/2009/10/recent-hysteria-arctic-now-warmest-in.html
But, far larger deceptions are exposed in my previous comment and the associated substantiating links.
As a matter of routine, I hereby confess that I am an old retired bureaucrat in a field only remotely related to climate, with minimal qualifications and only half a mind.
Re Gary Mount, April 10, 2011, 5:52 am
Sorry, I did not spot this post until after I had posted the previous one.
I am sorry I cannot grasp the significance of the world’s population as most, surely, will have no idea what science is. And we should have a free society without political correctness the like of which no doubt protected Adolf Eichmann from adverse comments about his activities that might perhaps have persuaded him to stop. Beware current political trends in the UK!
The question is how is the institutional situation to be arranged so that all those who work within it are free of the dilemma of whether to behave ethically or whether to do what their employer wants. Evidently, the answer is not obvious to government (or to me). And my experience teaches me that situations with these dilemmas are routine and that decision makers then go with their perception of the most pressing common good, more or less irrespective of other ethical considerations. Extra rendition, etc. Not nice.
In the climate change context, if we could free the Government of belief that CAGW is real, they could let the UEA do real science. But the belief is already there and the Government wants the UEA to bolster its case. We have to live with that situation and work from there.
Re Wade, April 10, 2011 at 7:04 am
Yes, obviously it depends on who they are. But I think the people I refer to are obvious from my first post. Also I see refraining from criticism as a tactical necessity.
Two yrs ago my two planted larches grew about 3.5 ft, but the late summer- fall period was very dry. Last season, despite sufficient spring – early summer rain, they grew only half as much (pretty much the same pattern for all my trees). The annual temp anomaly for both yrs was essentially the same — near average.
Tree-rings are not temp proxies — more like 1-yr lagged mid-to-late warm season precipitation proxies.
“Global warming is a regional phenomenon, as it is mostly happening in the arctic.”
1) Milankovitch Cycles almost exclusively drive climate in the Northern hemisphere (where glacial advances and glacial retreats occur).
2) NASA has documented “around 100” glacial advances and glacial retreats over the last 2.5 million years (all of them in the Northern hemisphere).
3) Both the Arctic AND the Antarctic are experiencing an on-going, uninterrupted 10,000 year cooling trend wherein the latest warming is demonstrated to be not even close to being outside the bounds of natural variation.
The citation links and more details are found below:
http://sbvor.blogspot.com/2009/10/recent-hysteria-arctic-now-warmest-in.html
http://sbvor.blogspot.com/2000/01/temperatures-over-time.html
Ecclesiastical Uncle:
I understand your opinion. People were doing their jobs within whatever social context existed.
Saying that the devil, a boss, or an organization made someone perform a dishonest, or illegal act may explain, but does not excuse individuals from taking responsibility for their own decisions. If Briffa was forced to deceive the world he can always make that claim, and accept the ensuing criticisms.
The situation boils down to a moment where men made real world choices. They made the choice to be dishonest and people who read this blog and most other blogs in the world understand that kind of situation. It is individuals that make these choices, not organizations.
Once Briffa and Jones made their choices, they had sold-out their honor and their colleagues. There was no return to the world of honorable men.
Some enterprising Law Firm should start a civil lawsuit and or a class action suit against all involved. Just the cost of the defense would have them backpedaling.
“R. Gates says:
April 10, 2011 at 7:14 am”
I apologise Mr. Gates however, making a post with links to the BBC and Wikipedia, IMO, does you no favours at all. In fact it is priceless! Can you provide real, unbiased, scientific links? I thought not!
The Team belongs behind bars. The most vexing thing is they and the institutions which employ them have gone completely unpunished. Perhaps civil suits could rectify this miscarriage of justice to some degree?
The hockey stick of solar activity.
Have a look at this graph in wikipedia. It shows that solar activity over the past 1200 years very closely matches the hockey stick shape, with solar activity at an all time high.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Carbon14_with_activity_labels.svg
Also from wikipedia:
“The level of solar activity during the past 70 years is exceptional — the last period of similar magnitude occurred over 8,000 years ago. The Sun was at a similarly high level of magnetic activity for only ~10% of the past 11,400 years, and almost all of the earlier high-activity periods were shorter than the present episode.[27]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_variation
But of course, we all know that CO2 drives climate. Solar activity has no effect.
R. Gates says:
April 10, 2011 at 7:34 am
“See, the problem is, if you accept that the Arctic is warming, and is the warmest in at least 2,000 years, as shown in these completely independent non-tree ring related studies:”
The problem with that is that Amundsen was able to navigate the Northwest passage circa 1900 and Greenland was warm enough for Vikings to raise cattle there beginning 1000 years ago which is something that hasn’t been practically possible there for the past 800 years.
Historical facts contradict what you’ve written, Gates. But hey, you aren’t the only warmist who refuses to let facts get in the way of your narrative accounts of the past.
R. Gates says:
April 10, 2011 at 7:34 am
See, the problem is, if you accept that the Arctic is warming, and is the warmest in at least 2,000 years, as shown in these completely independent non-tree ring related studies:
=======================================================
Ice Free North Pole At Peak Ice On March 17, 1959
Skate (SSN-578), surfaced at the North Pole, 17 March 1959
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/04/10/ice-free-north-pole-at-peak-ice-on-march-17-1959/
eadler says:
“McIntyre’s work is wrong, and he doesn’t know what he is talking about.”
Either eadler is either completely ignorant of the actual facts, or he is being typically disngenuous and mendacious. He should know that his propaganda only works with censorship, such as RealClimate routinely employs.
Adler continues: “The protests over Yamal are unfounded, and immaterial as far as the validity of the Stick graph is concerned.”
Adler lies again. The protests over Yamal are founded on Briffa’s carefully cherry-picked trees that produce a deliberately fabricated hockey stick shape. By removing just one single tree [YAD061], Briffa’s Hokey Stick completely disappears.
Why would Adler lie about something so easily debunked??
If you want a single factor explanation for the rise and fall of global warming hysteria and the global cooling hysteria which preceded it, this one is a very good fit:
http://sbvor.blogspot.com/2010/12/how-amo-killed-cagw-cult.html
Spread the word!
Alexandre says:
And what is wrong with the argument I used? Your statement was hypocritical.
Excuse me? Your exact words were “Not all paleoclimate reconstruction include Yamal tree rings.” Now you’re just plain lying.
It is. But that is not the point of Steve’s post.
Numerous times. Many, if not most, of us have been following the issue for several years. Clearly you did not read Steve’s post. Had you, you would have understood the significance of this proxy (as well as those nearby.) This is where you are being hypocritical by accusing people in here of not knowing the issue when you yourself do not.
Mark
Lies, damn lies and ‘climate scientists’.
Whoever had the decency to leak the Climategate emails, it would be great if he or she could let us have another batch to fill in a few gaps.
We need to put a wooden stake into the heart of the AGW cult – in any field of real science, the Team’s ‘research’ would have been ridiculed by their peers, resulting in its members becoming unemployable.
In their resume/CVs – putting “I was an expert in cherry picking and manipulating tree ring date – a dodgy concept at best – and deceived millions of people, thus becoming a hero to tax grabbing politicians”, is perhaps something they might wish to hide, just like they hid their data selection and manipulation procedures.
“If you don’t wish to, then don’t make any more comments here about Mr. McIntyre. – Anthony Watts”
Hooray for Anthony!
I do not know why you put up with people like Eadler and R. Gates, to name just two. To me they are pure Alynskyites. However, I defer to your higher wisdom (not sarcasm).
As a matter of routine, I confess I am an old retired bureaucrat in a field only remotely related to climate science, with minimal qualifications and only half a mind.
Re Bob, April 10, 8.49am
I doubt there was a moment of choice. The situation crept up on them. It is sad for them now but I fear you are right and they will be for ever tarred by what they have done. Poor souls! Unless the CAGW crowd prevail, that is, in which case they may be heroes!
Re Dave Springer April 10, 2011, 8.56am
Gosh, putting them behind bars would raise the ante! Would that be wise? A civil action, now there’s a nice thought. Over to the lawyers!
R. Gates says:
April 10, 2011 at 7:34 am
Oh, you seemed to be doing so well then you just happened to leave out one crucial point… GCMs expect BOTH poles to undergo the same warming. Left that out on purpose, didn’t you, because it defeats your argument, right? Polar amplification, not “north polar amplification.”
Mark
Btw, R. Gates, I thought you were 25% skeptic? Shouldn’t that “in skeptics minds” comment thus also apply to you? Or do you only apply that 25% to those regions that are conveniently overlapping with the other 75% of the nonsense you spew?
Mark
If any professional is going to do shoddy and incompetent work then climate science is a good place for them. As opposed to say… airliner engineering and maintenance.
At least this way their incompetence can be detected before one rises above the trees.
“Why would Adler lie about something so easily debunked??”
Because he is acclimated to blogs such as RealClimate (where the moderators never allow the facts to challenge the lies).
The entire “Progressive” ideology is PURE mythology! That is why it can ONLY survive in an absolute intellectual vacuum!
Pamela Gray says:
April 10, 2011 at 6:50 am
Wonderful question and wonderful post. The answer is simple and straightforward. The villain is PC – Political Correctness. Every day at the super-elite high school that my son attends, he learns that:
1. Al Gore is right.
2. Reverend Farrakhan is right – on any number of issues.
3. The head of Planned Parenthood is right.
n. And ad infinitum.
None of these matters may be debated; rather, doctrines must be memorized.
PC is a tool that has been around for quite a while, every since Alinsky invented it, and it is now the main tool of the ever more desperate communists who are struggling for power in the US. Semantic warfare is the main tool of the Left.