Climategate 2 email – Rob Wilson replicates McIntyre & McKitrick – produces hockey sticks out of noise

Juliette Jowit of The Guardian has contributed a thorough “Nothing to see here; move along” article explaining just why nothing in Climategate 2.0 is damaging to UAE or “the cause”:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/24/leaked-climate-science-emails

That’ a joke, right? One of the esteemed climate scientists tests the algorithm of a colleague on WHITE NOISE, it produces the HOCKEY STICK SHAPE, and the scientist says “I don’t think it’s a problem”?????
Could we have these guys defunded and BANNED from any further research activities?

2011: A Climate Odyssey – Arthur C. Clarke’s Bowman meets the climate debate.
“The thing’s hollow—it goes on forever—and—oh my God—it’s full of Hockey Sticks?!

“I first generated 1000 random time-series in Excel” Maybe Jones should try that. Oh right I forgot he doesn’t know how to use Excel.

It is clear that Mann has not completed graduate level forestry or agricultural research design coursework. He mistakes one step of the scientific process for another. Experimental plot design is different than plot observation. The AGW scientists get the two mixed up when studying trees as a proxy for temperature. Experimental plot design sets up a grow period carefully designed to minimize (or at least control) all variables except the one under study. Plot observation simply grids a natural plot and observes it for interesting phenomenon to later hypothesize and study under controlled plot conditions. Mann needs to take the next step and develop an experimental plot design to see to what degree temperature anomalies observed in the past affect tree ring growth when all other variables are controlled to a steady state. That he and we are massaging his observational phenomenon data suggests that we are falling into the same trap instead of pointing out the more egregious design error.

oakwood says:
November 27, 2011 at 11:10 pm
“It is certainly worrying, but I do not think that it is a problem so long as one screens
against LOCAL temperature data…”
Great work – he has successfully and smoothly “debunked” any idea that McIntyre’s work challenges the Mann hockey stick.
What “LOCAL” temperatures is Wilson talking about, oakwood? And where is the work that even shows the local temps. track the GMT? All Mann did is to take tree ring data already collected in the field by someone else from the obviously flawed stripbarks and try to “fit” it to GMT via his Hockey Stick seeking algorithm, not updating the data after 1980 because it would be ~”too expensive and difficult”. Which McIntyre disproved by his “Starbucks hypothesis” by collecting field data himself at the Almagre site, Colorado. Has Mann ever collected any data himself?
Then McShane and Wyner showed that Mann’s data does not even track the “in sample” data of the calibration period itself, nor the “gradient” of the blade, and that similar methods produce Hockey sticks sometimes with flat shafts, but “most do not”, from random series given “time dependence in the temperature series”.
Such that, “Consequently, the long flat handle of the hockey stick is best understood to be a feature of regression and less a reflection of our knowledge of the truth.”
So what temperatures of any kind or source does Mann’s Hockey Stick replicate or track, oakwood?

Meanwhile, on the planet where the Associated Press lives:

“The overwhelming majority of climate scientists say the earth’s surface temperatures have been rising rapidly because man is burning fossil fuels such as coal and oil. Studies show the rising heat already has led to animals migrating, crop yields decreasing, glaciers shrinking and shore lines shifting. Developing nations, where overwhelmingly poor populations are vulnerable and infrastructure is fragile, are particularly hard hit, leading to calls on industrialized nations that got a head start on pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to do, and pay, more to deal with the results.”

Posted moments ago at: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g4Cf1d5NRoFFdHJCRybrNjwvCqlg?docId=f0aaf0e2d85b46eb8aaf322bd7913159

Rob Wilson did not drop dead moments after publishing this. It can only be taken to represent then the results at this moment in time. Not known is if Rob went on to “play” with the data further to explore the consequences of this discovery.
Or to put it more plainly, this post is a data point, and a data point does not define a trend. Don’t conclude anything until you know what Rob did next. Certainly don’t assume this is the entirety of his investigation. And don’t conclude that even if this were the entirety of his investigation don’t conclude it is conclusive. That is what the other side does.

The Wall Street Journal (Nov. 28) op-ed that Jack Mclaughlin, November 28, 2011 at 5:19 am refers to mentions: … email written by Mr. Mann in August 2007. “I have been talking w/ folks in the states about finding an investigative journalist to investigate and expose McIntyre, and his thus far unexplored connections with fossil fuel interests. …
McIntyre has indirectly received $20 in financial assistance from fossil fuel interests. My brother-in-law has prospered from the natural gas exploration company that he owns and has been generous with a few of his dollars. Has helped street people and others and has even been generous with his siblings. That generosity has allowed me to be uncharacteristically generous as well, and I once donated $20 to McIntyre’s Tip Jar.
Just the evidence that Mann was looking for?

TerryS says:
November 28, 2011 at 1:46 am
‘Rob states “but I do not think that it is a problem”.’
This means “I remain a member of The Team, don’t hit me!” As TerryS and others have pointed out, he found the problem and immediately dropped it. That should tell you everything you need to know about whether it is a genuine problem. Anyone who is serious about this matter will read McIntyre’s extensive analyses of the problem.

I heard (endured) some global warming propaganda this morning on NPR. The segment lamented about the dire need for “drastic” CO2 reductions immediately by industrialized nations or, basically, the world will burn to a crisp very soon. No mention of the Climategate 2.0 emails and the obvious (to any sane, reasonable individual) mass collusion of “climate scientists” to create a mass hysteria about non-existant global warming. Just the same old tired propaganda from National Propaganda Radio—publicly funded, of course.

@TerryS
“It must be nice to be so believing that somebody only has to state they think something is true and you believe it. Rob states “but I do not think that it is a problem”. Rob does not perform any experiments to verify this statement. He does not provide any reasoning as to why it would not be a problem.”
++++++
I am quite surprised by your statement above as it is diversionary. The method used by McIntyre to test the method used by Mann et al was clearly described and anyone can reproduce it. You infer that Rob did not know how it worked. Mann knew how it worked and described it in his paper (’98). They all knew how it worked (if they could understand the MM paper examining it).
Why is it wrong? Principle Components analysis is not a process applicable to the problem Mann was working on. McIntyre’s objection was not specifically that the result was a hockey stick (which it inevitably happens to be) but an observation that the mathematical approach used was invalid. Whether it produced hockey sticks or not would not address the root problem which makes them appear out of the mathematical void.
I am forced to conclude that it is you who do not understand what the core issues are and thus you have made the statements above thinking that some verification of the statement or why the shape occurs is needed. The experiment was the verification you seek. He was reproducing an experiment and getting the same result. This is called the “scientific method”. I find you comment diversionary. We should rather look to the matter of the Team knowing full well in 2006 that MM98 was junk science.
Back up one step from the outputs from random inputs with autocorrelations of zero. Principle Component analysis is an invalid step in the chain of events. Further, it was not the only defect as you will quickly find out by reading McIntyre and McKitrick’s paper. The output, whether a flat line, a hockey stick, or coincidentally a reasonable reproduction of the known temperatures, is invalid because of the method used. Even you guess the correct answer in math, you still get a ‘fail’. If you get a wrong answer using wrong methods the mark is no different.
When one claims that the temperature of the past 1000 years is hockey stick-shaped because of man-made CO2 emissions, one needs to show some correlation between CO2 and temperature. Mann’s paper was supposed to be that proof and the IPCC made much hay repeating his claim to have shown the temperature flat for 1000 years and a steep rise in the 20th century. Mann’s paper is mathematically invalid and would have been failed if submitted as an undergrad term paper, at least at any Canadian university.
McIntyre and McKitrick reproduced Mann’s method and showed that, because it was a defective method, any large data sets fed into it resulted in a hockey stick output, even when the input was known to be meaningless gibberish like desert tree ring data or random red noise. Rob reproduced McIntyre’s reproduction of Mann et al. Rob claims to have gotten hockey sticks by using white noise, not red, which extends the issue to even greater proportions!
The hockey stick temperature chart produced by Mann et all in 1998 is mathematically, logically and statistically indefensible, yet indirectly you defend it. Please stop. It has been enough of an embarrassment to the climate community already.