Kill It With Fire

Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach

The discussion of the 1998 Mann “Hockeystick” seems like it will never die. (The “Hockeystick” was Dr. Michael Mann’s famous graph showing flatline historical temperatures followed by a huge modern rise.) Claims of the Hockeystick’s veracity continue apace, with people doggedly wanting to believe that the results are “robust”. I thought I’d revisit something I first posted and then expanded on at ClimateAudit a few years ago, which are the proxies in Michael Mann et al.’s 2008 paper, “Proxy-based reconstructions of hemispheric and global surface temperature variations over the past two millennia” (M2008). This was another salvo in Mann’s unending attempt to revive his fatally flawed 1998 “Hockeystick” paper. I used what is called “Cluster Analysis” to look at the proxies. Cluster analysis creates a tree-shaped structure called a “dendrogram” that shows the similarity between the individual datasets involved. Figure 1 shows the dendrogram of the 95 full-length proxies used in the M2008 study:

Figure 1. Cluster Dendrogram of the 95 proxies in the Mann 2008 dataset which extend from the year 1001 to 1980. The closer together two proxies are in the dendrogram, the more similar they are. Absolute similarity is indicated by the left-right position of the fork connecting two datasets. The names give the dataset abbreviation as used by Mann2008, the type (e.g. tree ring, ice core) the location as lat/long, the name of the princiipal investigator, and if tree rings the species abbreviation (e.g. PIBA, PILO).

What can we learn from this dendrogram showing the results of the cluster analysis of the Mann 2008 proxies?

First let me start by describing how the dendrogram is made. The program compares all possible pairs of proxies, and measures their similarity. It selects the most similar pair, and draws a “fork” that connects the two.

Take a look at the “forks” in the dendrogram. The further to the left the fork occurs, the more similar are the pairs. The two most similar proxy datasets in the whole bunch are ones that are furthest to the left. They turn out to be the Tiljander “lightsum” and “thicknessmm” datasets.

Once these two are identified, they are then averaged. The individual proxy datasets are replaced by the average of the two. Then the procedure is repeated. This time it compares all possible remaining pairs, including the average of the first two as a single dataset. Again the most similar pair is selected, marked with a “fork” (slightly to the right of the first fork), and averaged. In the dataset above, the most similar pair is again among the Tiljander proxies. In this case, the pair consists of the “darksum” proxy on the one hand, and the average of the two Tiljander proxies from the first step on the other hand. These two are then removed and replaced with their average.

This procedure is repeated over and over again, until all of the available proxies have been averaged together and added to the dendrogram and it is complete.

In this case, the clustering is clearly not random. In general a cluster is composed of measurements of similar things in a single geographical area (e.g. Argentinian Cypress tree rings). In addition, the proxies tend to cluster by proxy type (e.g. speleothems and sediments vs. tree rings).

Next, the dendrogram can be read from the bottom up to show which groups of proxies are most dissimilar to the others. The more outlying and more unusual group a group is, the nearer it is to the top of the dendrogram.

Next, note that many of the groups of proxies are much more similar to each other than they are to any of the other proxies. In particular the bristlecone “stripbark pines” end up right at the top of the dendrogram, because they are the most atypical group of the lot. Only when there is absolutely no other choice are the bristlecones at the top of the dendrogram added to the dendrogram.

So how does this type of analysis clarify whether the “Hockeystick” is real? The question at issue all along has been, is the “hockeystick” shape something that can be seen in a majority of the proxies, or is it limited to a few proxies? This is usually phrased as whether the results are “robust” to the removal of subsets of the proxies. And as usual in climate science, there are several backstories to this question of “robustness”.

The first backstory on this question is that well prior to this study, the National Research Council (2006) “Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years” recommended that the bristlecone and related “stripbark” pines not be used in paleotemperature reconstructions. This recommendation had also been made previously by other experts in the field. The problem for Mann, of course, is that the hockeystick signal doesn’t show up much when one leaves out the bristlecones. So like a junkie unable to resist going back for one last fix, Dr. Mann and his adherents have found it almost impossible to give up the bristlecones.

The next backstory is that a number of the bristlecone proxy records collected by Graybill have failed replication, as shown by the Ababneh Thesis. Not only that, but one of the authors of M2008 (Malcolm Hughes) had to have known that, because he was on her PhD committee … so the M2008 study used proxies that were not only not recommended for use, but  proxies not recommended for use that they knew had failed replication. Bad scientists, no cookies.

The final backstory is that the Tiljander proxies a) were said by the original authors to be hopelessly compromised in recent times and who advised against their use as temperature proxies, and b) were used upside-down by Mann (what he called warming the proxies actually showed as cooling).

With all of that as prologue, Figure 2 shows the average signals of the clusters of normalized proxies (averaged after each proxy is normalized to an average of zero and a standard deviation of one). See if you can tell where the Hockeystick shaped signal is located …

Figure 2. Left column shows average signals of the clusters of proxies shown in Figure 1, from the year 1001 to 1980. Averages are of the cluster to which each is connected by a short black line.

You can see the problems with the various Tiljander series, which are obviously contaminated … they go off the charts in the latter part of the record. In addition, if the Tiljander data were real it would be saying record cold, not record hot, but the computational method of Mann et al. flipped it over.

The reason for the unending addiction of Mann and his adherents to certain groups of proxies becomes obvious in this analysis. The hockeystick shape is entirely contained in a few clusters—the Greybill bristlecones and related stripbark species, the upside-down Tiljander proxies, and a few Asian tree ring records. The speleothems and lake sediments tell a very different story, one of falling temperatures … and in most of the clusters, there’s not much of a common signal at all. Which is why the attempts to rescue the original 1998 “hockeystick” have re-used and refuse to stop re-using those few proxies, proxies which are known to be unsuitable for use in paleotemperature reconstructions. They refuse to stop recycling them for a simple reason … you can’t make hockeysticks without those few proxies.

To sum up. Is the mining of “hockeystick” shaped climate reconstructions from this dataset a “robust” finding?

Not for me, not one bit. While you can get a hockeystick if you waterboard this data long enough, the result is a chimera, a false result of improper analysis. The hockeystick shaped signal is far too localized, and occurs in far too few of the clusters, to call it “robust” in any sense of the word.

w.

PS – The entire saga of the Ababneh Thesis, along with lots and lots of other interesting information, is available over at ClimateAudit. People who want to improve their knowledge about things like the proxy records and the Climategate FOI requests and the whole climate saga should certainly do their homework at ClimateAudit first … because in the marvelous world of Climate Science, things are rarely what they seem.

[UPDATE] Some commenters asked for the data, my apologies for not providing it. It is located at the NOAA Paleoclimate repository here.

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James P
May 31, 2011 8:20 am

“you can get a hockeystick if you waterboard this data long enough”
🙂

Septic Matthew
May 31, 2011 10:08 am

A skeptical view of the “hockey stick”, written by McShane and Wyner, is now available in hard copy, with discussion and rejoinder, in the Annals of Applied Statistics, Vol 5, Number 1, dated March 2011, pages 5-123. There is an expanded rejoinder along with lots of data and code from the discussants in the supplemental online material through the Annals of Applied Statistics web page at the Institute of Mathematical Statistics web page: http://www.imstat.org.
Most of this was available on the internet before now, but I think it is worthwhile to read the hard copy version.
Discussants included Schmidt, Mann and Rutherford; and McIntyre and McKitrick; in all, there were 13 papers by discussants, plus the original and rejoinder by M&W. Like Willis today, and others here and there, M&W point to the dependence of the hockey stick shape on a selected subset of the data. Schmidt et al defend the selection, as you’d expect.
Willis,
I think that you should write up today’s comment for a professional journal. I think you have presented a nice clear case.

Beth Cooper
May 31, 2011 10:26 am

Willis, thanks for the charts and overview of upside down Tiljander. They clearly show that what was going on here certainly wasn’t science.

Steve C
May 31, 2011 10:50 am

Willis, I don’t know quite how you manage to keep producing so many easy-to-read, easy-to-understand articles, but many thanks for another one. Your figure 2 is superb: take out the two known dodgy datasets and the hockey stick evaporates. Once again, many thanks.
Alexander Feht – I completely agree with you. We need a popular, public face to stand up for real science, before the vacuous “celebrities” who regularly trumpet AGW nonsense completely pollute the public’s perception of science. Unfortunately, the fact that no-one springs to mind makes me, too, wonder whether the popular perception of “science” has been so contaminated already as to appear “settled” – at least, for long enough for the shower playing for global power to make their putsch. The next few years are going to be “interesting”, if none too pleasant.

Jeff Carlson
May 31, 2011 11:01 am

first drown it in holy water , then shoot it with a silver bullet, then drive an oak stake thru its heart, then behead it and finally burn the head and body in the fires of Mount Doom … then maybe it stays down … maybe … also, if you find the ring of power, also drop it in the fires of Mt. Doom just to be sure …

Mikael Pihlström
May 31, 2011 11:29 am

“The discussion of the 1998 Mann “Hockeystick” seems like it will never die.”
… says Willis in the opening sentence. That is a little bit artful & coy, since WUT
and CA are the main agents keeping this discussion alive at the detriment of a
broader, updated perspective on climate reconstruction studies.
Of course I can see the difficulty for sceptics here: the reconstructions generally
reproduce the MWP and LIA periods, which you are fond of, but at the same
the recent warming peak invariably shows up and most often, it already exceeds
the MWP peak. With (a) warm years piling up recently, (b) new proxy studies
being published all the time, your battle against the Hockey Stick is doomed
to fail.
The bristlecone data is erroneous? Exclude it, no major difference.
In fact, exclude all tree ring data? No major difference, now when other proxy
data is increasingly available.
Exclude also the Tillander data? No major difference.

May 31, 2011 2:01 pm

Willis:
I did not have the background to figure out use of R readily when I once tried or else I’d look into using this type of analysis also on long running (century old) tide gauge records, of which there are dozens. They are here: http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/. I do believe the resulting analysis would be highly damning to claims of recent surges in sea level since very much like these proxies the vast majority of records show no trend change at all, at least by eye. They are, on average, a characterized by a lack of trend change on the decadal scale, which is not something you find so readily in single site thermometer records, so sea level in my mind becomes a potentially much better counter to one of the two central tenants of AGW: that both T and and sea are suddenly surging.
-=NikFromNYC=-

May 31, 2011 8:15 pm

Mikael Pihlström.
All you need to produce a flat shaft is some proxy that has a blade.
1. BCP
2. Tiljander
3. yamal.
So, its easy to drop BCP and get a flat shafted hockey stick
easy to drop Tiljander, easy to drop yamal.
Thats been the trick. drop one keep the others. drop 2 keep one.
pea thimble.
if you understood what the underlying methods did to supress variability in the shafts you’d understand better. read Jeff id. or better run his code

Bill H
May 31, 2011 8:42 pm

trees are a very poor proxies for temperature. when you look at water content/sun/food/temp the combinations and variables can lead you astray very quickly. especially if you have no records or observations to verify the findings.
makes one wonder what Mann was thinking when he used them. a questionable source and hard to verify… that’s the answer…. hide the data and hard to replicate.. where have i heard that process before?

Tilo Reber
May 31, 2011 9:04 pm

Willis: “There’s a report of the original finding of upside-down use of Tiljander here, and a good discussion of related issues here. ”
Okay, I think I get it. Basically, Mann’s software picked the sign. Since upside down Tijander data would coorelate to other data for the last 100 years, Mann’s software simply decided for itself how the data should be interpreted – ignoring the real world interpretation. The odd thing about this is that the software would have to decide that it didn’t care that the coorelation for the MWP and LIA was destroyed by doing such a sign inversion. Mann probably used the results without checking since it gave him what he wanted. Then, after his error was exposed, Mann had to make a decision, lie or acknowledge that he had done something really stupid.
As always, Mann choose to lie. If I’m interpreting this correctly, what he said was, “using the data with the sign as I have used it causes the data to coorelate with other data around the world, so – my sign is correct.” Basically, he called Tiljander a fool who didn’t understand the physical interpretation of his own data. He ignored the inverted correlation that his interpretation caused for the MWP and LIA, and he ignored the fact that his misinterpreted hockey blade actually had the shape that it had due to man made construction projects screwing up the data for the last 80 years. And he purposely ignored these things even though they were pointed out to him just so that he could make the claim involved in his lie.
Going one step futher, Gavin is not so stupid that he did not realize that Mann was lying. And yet he helped to prop up Mann’s lie. I don’t know how else to say this, but how is it possible for Realclimate to be considered anything but a propaganda organization for a warmist mafia.
Come on Leif, get off the fence – say something. This issue looks to be 100% clear cut to me. Can you think of any defense for Mann’s actions?

Mescalero
May 31, 2011 9:13 pm

The AGW crowd keeps telling us that Mann’s results are supported by “independent” studies. OK, when will someone list and review those “independent” studies? I’m available to assist in any reviews of these “independent” studies.

Mikael Pihlström
June 1, 2011 4:00 am

Willis Eschenbach says:
May 31, 2011 at 11:24 pm
steven mosher says:
May 31, 2011 at 8:15 pm
“So, its easy to drop BCP and get a flat shafted hockey stick
easy to drop Tiljander, easy to drop yamal.
Thats been the trick. drop one keep the others. drop 2 keep one.”
OK. It is principally correct to watch out for such easy tricks. But, on the other
hand, it is also very easy to post-facto identify anything resembling a HS shape and dismiss those datasets with something less than impartiality. And that is my main point: with the increasing basic evidence available the sceptic tenet that all
HS-resembling datasets are corrupt/misinterpreted/falsified is faring badly.

MikeN
June 1, 2011 7:11 am

Willis, you are in error when you say the computational method of Mann et al flipped over Tiljander. The software does not do any flipping of Tiljander proxies. The error was that Mann should have manually flipped Tiljander before using it, to make warm point upwards. Then after this flip, the software would have dropped it for being uncorrelated.

PaulD
June 1, 2011 7:16 am

Mikael Pihlström says
“And that is my main point: with the increasing basic evidence available the sceptic tenet that all
HS-resembling datasets are corrupt/misinterpreted/falsified is faring badly.”
As someone who is actually interested in understanding this issue and getting to the bottom of it, I would appreciate a link or a citation that would support this point. I would actually like to investigate whether it is true. When I have evaluated similar claims from other websites I have found such claims to be unsupported.
My own reading leads to me to a different conclusion: There are a few basic proxy series that are responsible for the blade of the hockey stick in all of the supposedly “independent” reconstruction. When those proxies are examined, there are sound physical reasons to conclude that they are not good temperature proxies. (e.g. the Tiljander series, the strip bark series).
Nothing that I have read would cause me to reach the conclusion that, “the sceptic tenet that all HS-resembling datasets are corrupt/misinterpreted/falsified is faring badly” I am willing to be persuaded otherwise, but you will need to point me to some evidence.

Tilo Reber
June 1, 2011 8:45 am

Mikael Pihlström: “But, on the other hand, it is also very easy to post-facto identify anything resembling a HS shape and dismiss those datasets with something less than impartiality.”
Since the way in which you make your living is dependent upon Mann and the other warmists being right, I don’t think you have much room to talk about impartiality.
Mikael Pihlström: “And that is my main point: with the increasing basic evidence available the sceptic tenet that all HS-resembling datasets are corrupt/misinterpreted/falsified is faring badly.”
No, that is untrue. First of all, there has never been a serious debate about temperature increase in the last century. The debate has been all about that temperature increase being “unprecedented” within the last 2000 years. In other words, it has been about the flat shaft of the hockey stick. And with regard to that the “increasing basic evidence” is that there was a substantial MWP and LIA. And that evidence says that the proxy MWP was as warm as the proxy data for today. So it is the assertion that today’s climate is unprecedented that is fairing badly, because the hockey stick is, is fact, wrong.
Mann’s flipping of the Tiljander data also turned the MWP and LIA upside down and thereby contributed to making the shaft flatter.
What is interesting Mikael, is that you talk about impartiality, but you don’t seem to care how corrupt Mann is in the way that he does his science. All that you seem to care about is being able to declare victory for your agenda at the end.

Duke C.
June 1, 2011 9:11 am

Here’s something interesting, and slightly off-topic-
I was going to try to locate one of the Graybill Bristlecones during an upcoming fishing trip to the Eastern Sierras. CA531 (Graybill-Onion Valley) seems to be an ideal candidate. Long/Lat and elevation can be found here:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/metadata/noaa-tree-3393.html
North: 36.77 * South: 36.77
West: -118.35 * East: -118.35
Altitude: 2865 m
When I checked the correlation stats I came up with entirely different coordinates:
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/treering/measurements/correlation-stats/ca531.txt
Latitude : 3546 N
Longitude : 11821 W
Elevation : 2865 M (actual elevation is less than 2000 meters)
This location is in the Sequoia Nat. Forest, near Bright Star Canyon; 100 miles south of Onion Valley and approx. 800 meters lower in elevation. Checked the entire Graybill database for a Bristlecone located at 35.46N/118.21W. Nothing.
How can the same tree be located 100 miles south of Onion Valley?

Bill Lindqvist
June 1, 2011 9:12 am

I always knew Mann-made global warming was real! This further confirms it!

Jim Masterson
June 1, 2011 5:53 pm

>>
Ric Werme says:
May 30, 2011 at 6:34 pm
If it’s any consolation, RGGI’s cost to consumers is totally unclear. Here in New Hampshire, on[e] power producer has come up with estimates of $0.065 cents per month and also $0.36 per month.
<<
Maybe it’s because they’re using the frequency version of Wien’s displacement law for one estimate and the wavelength version of Wien’s displacement law for the other estimate.
/sarc
Jim

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