I’m sure Bishop Hill won’t mind if I pinch this, it shows a rather head in the sand attitude that pervades the people who get money to study global warming, such as the Pacific Institute’s Dr. Peter Gleick. I agree with Bish though: “subterfuge” looks out of place in a scientific report, OTOH so does the use of a “trick”. He writes:
The Heartland Institute’s NIPCC interim report has just been published – see here. This is a summary of the new scientific literature since 2009.
I’ve taken a glance through the paleoclimate bits and it appears to have been put together in a very professional manner. I was blissfully unaware of just how much evidence has been emerging for the existence of a MWP in the world outside Europe.
If I had a criticism based on what I have read, I would say it’s over the authors’ tendency to slip into editorial mode – discussion of Mann being engaged in “subterfuge” looks out of place in a scientific report.
Lots of people are not going to like the report of course. Peter Gleick, the president of the Pacific Institute, tweets that the report makes him sick and refuses to link to it. Barry Woods and I have politely asked which bits in particular he is concerned with and he has told us that he doesn’t need to do this when someone is arguing that the Earth is flat.
Gleick’s head in the sand choices seem to be selective, for example, he’s written a book titled Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water. Gleick argues against bottled water on the grounds of it being environmentally unsound and just another profit grab by corporate interests selling to a gullible public.
Yet, in one of the most widely publicized environmental protests this year, what do we see? Yep, water bottles everywhere behind Gleick’s hero, Jim Hansen, seen going to the big house after his third arrest above.
I can just hear Gleick going “la la la la la la la la la” as he tries to reconcile climate protest with those protestors leaving water bottle rubbish all over the protest site. It’s a “Joe Romm head exploding moment”, which is why Gleick hasn’t said anything about it.
I suppose the message is “we should be concerned about the environment when those who lecture us on environmental concern actually do as they say”.
Speaking of protests…perhaps we should go Al Sharpton on Gleick, and stand outside his office and read him the NIPCC report through a bullhorn.
After all, such methods are widely accepted in Berkeley.
I have excerpted the passage from chapter 3 below, judge for yourself:
3.1.7. Northern Hemisphere
In the 27 November 2009 issue of Science, Michael Mann and eight coauthors (Mann et al., 2009) describe how they used a global climate proxy network consisting of data derived from ice core, coral, sediment, and various other records to reconstruct a Northern Hemispheric surface air temperature history covering the past 1,500 years for the purpose of determining the characteristics of the Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period. They used Mann’s “Nature trick” of Climategate fame, truncating the reconstructed temperature history near its end and replacing it with modern-day instrumental data, so the last part of the record cannot be validly compared with the earlier portion.
This subterfuge is unwarranted. And in its current application, it’s not just from 1981 or 1961 onwards that the ruse is applied; it’s applied all the way from 1850 to 1995, the period of overlap between the proxy and instrumental records that was used to calibrate the proxy data. Therefore, since the proxy data were available to 1995, the reconstructed near-surface air temperature history should also have been plotted to 1995, in order to be able to make valid quantitative comparisons between the degree of warmth of the Current and Medieval Warm Periods.
For those interested, Chapter 3 is available here NIPCC_chap03_PaleoTemperature (PDF)
The entire report is available here (PDF)
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Gary Pearse,
Yeah, the stuff about the journal editor does sound low-down. But know what? It happens all the time. There are sure to be lots of papers out there that got bullied through the peer review process, or that got bullied out. As long as people are involved, peer-review will be an imperfect, and at-times ugly process, but the best we have. This is, by the way, not all specific to the climate literature. Think things are better in the medicine? The whole process is one of stumbling, at times like a drunken frat-boy, towards a better understanding of things.
The IPCC, also imperfect, has made huge strides in opening itself to outside scrutiny, and improving the review and feedback process. In no small part due to people like Steve McIntyre, of course. What are your thoughts on the NIPCC review process? Looking at the Preface, the lead authors criticize the IPCC process, but provide no description of their review process. Isn’t this important? As you say, the skeptics are demanding it, fairly, of the IPCC. What do you demand of the NIPCC? Something, perhaps, that would make for an improved section 3.3?
Bob
I’m pretty sure few people have ever believed that the earth was flat. It’s always been a derogatory intellectual assault to insult the other party.
It has perhaps become a meme in these modern times to insult the intelligence of early history, and probably to insult the church in the same swipe.
From early mariners, they new the sails of the ship raised over the horizon before the body of the ship. Therefore the sea was curved over the horizon. Anybody in a crows nest and a monocular could see this for themselves. Do a Google search for historic world maps and see what you find.
And for the truly adventurous; here is the book of JOB written by Moses; 40:22 It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and… One could conclude that early Egypt also new the world was round, ie: “circle of the earth”.
I wonder if Hansen’s “Wonder Hat” will protect him from the inevitable future Earth-smacking GCR burst?
They’re not “tweets”, they’re “twits”. Anything coming from Twitter is a “twit”. I can’t imagine a more useless thing on the interwebtubez.
“Circle” doesn’t necessarily mean “sphere”. While many ancient civilizations considered the earth to be round, not all of them did.
If I were forced to pay for the NIPCC I might be concerned.
Are all of you blind? All the bottles in that photo are upright, capped and contain at least some water. Even if those enviros meant to litter, don’t you think the cops would make them clean it up or arrest them all if they didn’t? (Cue the Arlo Guthrie jokes)
Gary Pearse
It’s good to see a few of us have our integrity. I object to the words ruse, subterfuge and trick for two reasons, one they try to impute motives and motives are hard to prove. As I said they are not observable. So silly me I like to stick to what I can prove. When you do stick to what you can prove you typically end up with a better case. I also think that focusing on a non emotional description of the methods they used to understate uncertainities actually gives you better chance at convincing people who have never heard much about the case before. Since I live in Sf I get a chance to do this all the time. The discussions go something like this:
It’s not a fraud, why would they cheat? you cant prove they cheated.
Would you agree that this is a poor way to do the chart?
well.. ya.
Good, that’s all you need to accept at this point, because their motives are beside the greater point. The greater point is this. This is bad science. This is not the best science and we want the best science. So whether they did it by accident, or did it to save the planet, or did it because Mcintyre is a pest, or did it to fool some people, or to impose a world tyranny, or did it because they thought it was acceptable, we know this: it was bad science. That’s all we need to prove. When you try to stretch beyond this, well you’re doing your own tricks.. mind reading tricks
He must have never spoken to his brother about the subject of one of (his best selling if I remember) books. No, not the one on Feynman, the one on CHAOS.
Maybe they have a blood feud going. Hey, if he can throw random accusations….
Steven Mosher says:
September 2, 2011 at 12:35 am
Nice argument. Such a shame it fails over if the subjects are serial in their behaviour.
Bob says:
September 1, 2011 at 6:16 pm
The IPCC, also imperfect, has made huge strides in opening itself to outside scrutiny, and improving the review and feedback process.
Not according to Donna Laframboise:
“It’s now quite clear that IPCC movers and shakers have no intention of complying with either the spirit or the letter of the IAC committee’s recommendations. That this is a thoroughly unaccountable organization could not be any plainer.”
http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2011/09/01/the-iac-report-one-year-later/
Bob:
Your post at September 1, 2011 at 4:04 pm sums up your ‘contributions’ to this thread.
I asked you to stop knitpicking and to make a valid criticism of the NIPCC Report (which is much less flawed than the UN IPCC AR4 Report).
Your reply says:
“Richard,
Ok, here goes: chapter 3.3 on recent temperature trends, which I think people here would describe as “really important”, particularly given Anthony’s efforts in station evaluation, excludes 5 continents and most of the ocean.
Is that problem enough?”
Either you cannot read or you are presenting a deliberate falsehood. The following are the pertinent Section Headings:
3. Paleoclimate and Recent Temperatures
Introduction
3.1 Medieval Warm Period
3.1.1 North America
3.1.2 Europe
3.1.3 Asia
3.1.4 Africa
3.1.5 South America
3.1.6 Antarctica
3.1.7 Northern Hemisphere
3.1.8 Other Temperature Records
3.2 The Little Medieval Warm Period
3.3 Recent Temperature Trends
3.4 Urban Heat Islands
3.5 El Niño/Southern Oscillation
Section 3.3 begins saying;
“3.3. Recent Temperature Trends
Has the global warming of the past century, and
especially of the past few decades, been as dramatic
as the IPCC claims it has been, leading to
unprecedented high temperatures and unsurpassed
temperature variability? In the prior two sections of
this chapter we evaluated this claim as it pertained to
the past thousand years, with specific focus on the
Medieval Warm Period (approximately 800–1200
AD) and the Little Medieval Warm Period
(approximately 1400–1550 AD). Here, we evaluate it
with respect to temperatures of the past few decades,
once again limiting our discussion to papers published
after the 2009 NIPCC report.”
What part of “limiting our discussion to papers published
after the 2009 NIPCC report” do you not understand?
Richard
Steven Mosher says:
September 2, 2011 at 12:35 am
I object to the words ruse, subterfuge and trick for two reasons, one they try to impute motives and motives are hard to prove.
Perhaps you would prefer the Prof. Steve Jones version in his BBC report, where he refers to Briffa’s truncation as ‘tidying up a graphic.’
The other extreme? Or hiding the subterfuge.
Steven Mosher:
At September 2, 2011 at 12:35 am you say;
“I object to the words ruse, subterfuge and trick for two reasons, one they try to impute motives and motives are hard to prove.”
I fail to understand your objection.
The word “trick” is a direct quote from the ‘Team’ who produced and used the Mann, Bradley & Hughes ‘hockey stick’. There can be no rational objection to using the description (i.e. “trick”) when that is the description they use themselves.
A “subterfuge” is a strategem used to hide or evade an argument. The ‘Team’ say they used “Mike’s Nature trick” to “hide the decline” in temperatures after ~1960 that was indicated by the Mann et al. proxy study. Simply, “subterfuge” is what the ‘Team’ say they did so, again. there can be no rational objection to saying they did it.
And a subterfuge is a “ruse”.
It seems to me that this argument about what is – or is not – appropriate language is another subterfuge that is intended to hide the contents of the NIPCC report behind a smokescreen of irrelevant sophistry concerning language.
Richard
The discussion about whether or not Michael Mann used “subterfuge” reminds me of an analogous comment by James Taranto at opinionjournal dot com. Taranto posted:
“What’s the difference between a left wing nut and a right wing nut?
A left wing nut thinks President Obama is a genius.
A right wing nut thinks President Obama is an EVIL genius”.
This somewhat off topic and tenuous comparison between Mann and Obama reminds me of another one liner: “People do stupid things for a reason.”
John B says: “OT? There is an Enso meter on this home page. It has been stuck on dead center neutral for maybe 60 days. What is it telling us? The meter is not working? Or, if it is working, how can it be in one place for so long?”
And Anthony replied: “It tell us that the source of it, NOAA, is asleep at the switch. See here:
http://www.noaawatch.gov/ (see left sidebar) – Anthony”
Gentlemen, I believe the ENSO meter uses the Oceanic NINO Idex (ONI) data:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml
The May-June-July 2011 reading is 0.0 deg C. It should update in a few days, and we’ll be able to confirm it,
Richard,
That’s fine if their focus is on the MWP, and on literature since the 2009 report.
Would you not expect that their section 3.3, “Recent Temperature Trends”, even if not as detailed, should in some way cover the same general area as their MWP section? A quick ISI search, for 2010 only, shows that there were “a few” other papers on the topic that could have helped them to not exclude 5 continents and most of the ocean. If I’m missing that part of their discussion, please let me know!
Robert
Bob:
Your post at September 2, 2011 at 6:48 am continues your pretence that the NIPCC Report is flawed. It says;
“That’s fine if their focus is on the MWP, and on literature since the 2009 report.
Would you not expect that their section 3.3, “Recent Temperature Trends”, even if not as detailed, should in some way cover the same general area as their MWP section? A quick ISI search, for 2010 only, shows that there were “a few” other papers on the topic that could have helped them to not exclude 5 continents and most of the ocean. If I’m missing that part of their discussion, please let me know!”
Say what!?
YOU are claiming there are other pertinent papers that should have been assessed in the NIPCC Report.
So,
YOU need to justify your assertion by citing and stating relevant issues you think the NIPCC Report has failed to cover in its assessment of the literature.
Until then, stop trying to pretend the NIPCC Report is flawed. Your case is being harmed by the failures of your desperate attempts to show any flaw in the NIPCC Report.
Richard
“tib says:
September 1, 2011 at 3:53 pm
Funny how that “flat earth” phrase keeps coming up.
Wasn’t “the earth is flat” the consensus position for thousands of years till some skeptics noticed evidence that didn’t fit the theory?”
No, Eratosthenes was first to calculate the circumference of the earth with relatively reasonable accuracy in the 3rd century BC, using trigonometry and direct observation. He was also the first to calculate the tilt of the Earth’s axis, again pretty well. Even the later erroneous Ptolemaic system (which wasn’t, I think, based on observation) doesn’t suggest the earth is flat. Also, some commenters here mention the ‘circle of the earth’ – I suspect this actually relates to the ancient view that the earth was a circle of land surrounded by Oceanus, not a view that the earth was necessarily flat. And any sailor who thought about it would know the earth was curved.
I have to admit that bottled water is one of my pet peeves.
I have seen people at the 50 Cent movie pay $3.00 for bottled water where there is by law a drinking fountain. The fountain water is excellent but that is just my judgement.
To me it [bottled water] is the victory of advertising over good sense and the environmental impact is a delicious irony not to be ignored especially at an environmental rally.
I was once a high school teacher and kidded one of my students about buying water when there was a fountain in the hall and she replied “You get what you pay for ” as if that settled the matter.
I could understand “The fountain water tastes bad to me” but “You get what you pay for ” is silly !
Um, ok, here goes again. As best I can tell, their section 3.3 “Recent Temperature Trends” section leaves out, at minimum, the non-arctic regions of Europe and Asia, Africa, South America, Australia, the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Ocean. I would describe this as “a lot of area to exclude when, in 2010 alone, there were plenty of papers covering those areas that could be informative, even if they just chose the most representative ones, because I understand that they can’t read everything and that their focus is on the MWP” and, therefore, “bad”.
Sorry for the repetition! Not sure how else to explain it.
Re: bottled water:
Bottled water is not just about marketing. I buy 36-packs from Costco for really cheap. I typically open one per day, and refill from the 5 gallon cooler if I need more. There are always a few in my car, and more than once someone has desperately needed some water and I had it.
The alternative was stainless steel or plastic refillable containers that were always crusting up (we have really hard water here), and required constant cleaning. I’m fairly certain they weren’t very sanitary after a few days of use. I have a need to constantly have small amounts of water available. Primarily my allergies make it difficult to breathe through my nose much of the time, having water available means I don’t have to be constantly doped up with allergy meds.
My point is that I have absolutely no issues with bottled water, or the need or desire to constantly have fresh water available. HOWEVER: when someone DOES have a problem with bottled water, then I will incessantly mock and judge them when they (and their supporters) go ahead and use bottled water.
This pretty much sums up my attitude toward most of the ECO/AGW crowd. Personally, I don’t care if you want to be “passionate about the environment”, anyone who doesn’t care is an idiot anyway. But… practise what you preach. Take public transportation or walk or bike to your anti-oil protests. Don’t try whining about “warming” while shivering in -30C weather. Don’t deny scientific evidence that your scientific hypothesis is bunk, and don’t call people deniers while you deny their clear and obvious evidence.
Remember, too: MOST people who are currently in the “skeptic” camp originally were at least passive “believers” in the AGW hypothesis. Then we learned some things and realized that it was more of a belief system than any kind of scientific finding. Science is not about belief, it’s about finding evidence to support an educated guess. Failure to find such evidence is no excuse for fabricating it or cherry picking some.
Don’t those water bottles start off in life as oil? Most polyethylene sure does. Thought oil was evil.
Bob:
At September 2, 2011 at 8:37 am you conclude;
“Sorry for the repetition! Not sure how else to explain it.”
I fully understand your problem. You cannot “explain it” because you do not have a point to explain.
Read my posts at September 2, 2011 at 1:17 am and especially September 2, 2011 at 7:21 am for explanation of why you do not have a point.
You have failed to cite any flaw in the NIPCC Report because you have failed to find a flaw in it. Repetition that you would like to know of a flaw in the NIPCC Report does not mean such a flaw exists.
Richard
Hey Richard,
So you’re ok with the geographical coverage in section 3.3 then?
Robert