Some background from the original “hide the decline” from Steve McIntyre here
Despite relatively little centennial variability, Briffa’s reconstruction had a noticeable decline in the late 20th century, despite warmer temperatures. In these early articles [e.g. Briffa 1998], the decline was not hidden.
For most analysts, the seemingly unavoidable question at this point would be – if tree rings didn’t respond to late 20th century warmth, how would one know that they didn’t do the same thing in response to possible medieval warmth – a question that remains unaddressed years later.
He writes now in Hide-the-Decline Plus
Indeed, they did not simply “hide the decline”, their “hide the decline” was worse than we thought. Mann et al did not merely delete data after 1960, they deleted data from 1940 on, You can see the last point of the Briffa reconstruction (located at ~1940) peeking from behind the spaghetti in the graphic below:
Detail from Mann et al (EOS 2003) Figure 1. Arrow points to Briffa series peeking out from behind the spaghetti
Had Mann et al used the actual values, the decline would have been as shown in the accompanying graphic:
Figure 3. Re-stated Mann et al (EOS 2003) Figure 1 showing the decline.
Had Mann and his 13 co-authors shown the Briffa reconstruction, without hiding the decline, one feels that von Storch (and others) might have given more consideration to Soon et al’s criticism of the serious problem arising from the large-population failure of tree ring widths and density to track temperature.
Read the whole article Hide-the-Decline Plus
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@Zorro says at 2:11 am “This climate fraud was used to give the OK to a wind farm in our community and which has torn it apart. My blood boils.”
Wish I had a law degree, because Mann et al (Penn, UVA) are all plausible defendants in a civil suit. Some law firm(s) could be suing these mendicants for the next decade.
Hell, it might impel me to go back to law school., lot’s of $$$ to be made against these disgusting liars.
Sue me Mann, you lying mendacious bitch. Let’s open discovery.
Colin in BC/David Ball– I think we all concur. CO2/AGW is a valid theory or hypothesis. Quite banother thing is proving it as a physical fact in the atmosphere, and even more remote is proving CO2/AGW is catastrophic. NEITHER has been proven. Enter the Mann fraud which attempted to con us with a bogus ‘proof’.
Fair and Balanced!
This has been thoroughly discussed.
There are a number of misconceptions regarding ‘hide the decline’:
The “decline” does not refer to a “decline in global temperature” as often claimed. It actually refers to a decline in tree growth at certain high-latitude locations. This decline began in the 1960s when tree-ring proxies diverged from the temperature record.
“Mike’s Nature trick” has nothing to do with “hide the decline”. “Mike’s trick” refers to a technique by Michael Mann to plot instrumental temperature data on the same graph as reconstructed data over the past millennium.
The divergence of tree-ring proxies from temperatures after 1960 is openly discussed in the peer-reviewed literature and the last two IPCC assessment reports.
Fair and balanced!
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http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=2507.txt&search=Michael+BROWN
Note, copy still HTML active FOIA emails only via notepad, or similar.
They are still alive, and well.
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=2507.txt&search=Michael+BROWN
Ilkka.
Getting Warm:
It is no surprise that you present your mendacious post at December 1, 2011 at 1:48 pm from behind a false name.
Anybody who wants a genuine “fair and balanced” view of the issue can obtain it by reading my above post at December 1, 2011 at 1:52 am.
Richard
For most analysts, the seemingly unavoidable question at this point would be – if tree rings didn’t respond to late 20th century warmth, how would one know that they didn’t do the same thing in response to possible medieval warmth – a question that remains unaddressed years later.
—————–
Well let us assume the strong decline in the Briffa apparent temperature in the late 20th century is caused by the temperature exceeding a threshold.
If that was true ,and the medieval temperatures also exceeded that threshold, then we would also see a big dip in tree ring derived temperatures for the medieval period.
We don’t. So either medieval temperatures were less than the threshold or there is no threshold effect. Take your pick.
Phil Jones is controlling UK Cabinet.
Professor Jones,
Many thanks for assisting us with data for the Trade Report. The
only problem we have now is interpreting the data in a diagram. The one
that the Central Office of Information have done for us is unclear and to
simplify it somewhat we were interested in leaving out the North and South
data because the presentation COI gave us gave no clear indication when air
temperature in the North overshoots the South. As Daniel, the Team leader
for the Trade Project suggests below, we are thinking of just including the
‘Smooth Globe’ info. I attach a file below of what it would probably look
like. Would it be possible for you to describe the smoothing process
(compared with the raw global data) in a line or two so we could add it to
the footnote we intend to have in the Report? The alternative would be to
just have the raw global data – do you think this would be better? Would be
most grateful if you could get back to us as soon as possible as publication
date draws ever nearer.
<>
Many Thanks for your help,
Jonathan.
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=4707.txt&search=%40cabinet-office.x.gsi.gov.uk
Ilkka
How can anyone plot a graph where their own data goes outside their error bars?
– this is not just a crime of omission …
Also, I like the ‘Briffa scaled 1856 – 1980’
– it’s a nice touch
– actually it looks like they had a sudden fit of guilt in a follow-up plot that CA has
– where it was changed to ‘Briffa Scaled 1856 – 1940 ‘ !!
James Sexton says:
December 1, 2011 at 7:59 am
It is invalid, because the base assumption is invalid. YOU CAN NOT GET A MEAN TEMP FROM LOOKING AT A TREE RING! It doesn’t matter how you look at it.
http://suyts.wordpress.com/2011/11/29/dividing-by-zero/
=============================================
LOL……………………..more or less
Higher temps on the trees they were using…..will cause those trees to grow slower……mimicking lower temps……closer rings…heat will stress them like cold
While it successfully hid the MWP…….it didn’t cooperate with the hockey stick
They wanted the tree rings because they didn’t show a MWP……..but they had to splice and hide the decline for the same reason……the trees didn’t show a incline now
Where they ran into problems, is while it smoothed out the MWP, they couldn’t explain the sharp recent drop. They wanted a sharp up-tic for the unprecedented……the tree rings had the opposite down-tic…..
….and yes, they picked everything from the get go
Which trees, which temps, etc
Dendro is hard, and mostly a game…..trying to guess with nothing to calibrate it
LazyTeenager says:
“Well let us assume the strong decline in the Briffa apparent temperature in the late 20th century is caused by the temperature exceeding a threshold.
If that was true ,and the medieval temperatures also exceeded that threshold, then we would also see a big dip in tree ring derived temperatures for the medieval period.
We don’t. So either medieval temperatures were less than the threshold or there is no threshold effect. Take your pick.”
You’re just guessing why there is a decline
– but it’s interesting that no one has done an experiment to find out why for the last 70 years there has been a divergence
– it could be global dimming – or any number of factors
Could it be that tree rings just aren’t very good at tracking temperature, as Lucy Skywalker shows?:
http://www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/Science/Scientific/Arctic-Yamal3.htm
A Gem in 2895.txt:
cc: REDACTED, REDACTED
date: Tue Jun 10 14:53:21 2003
from: Keith Briffa
subject: Re: possible rewording of section of letter?
to: “Michael E. Mann”
At 01:15 PM 6/10/REDACTED, Keith Briffa wrote:
Mike
I know you up to your neck in marital bliss , and I am sorry to bother you , but on the
advice of Phil I thought it worth asking for your sanction of the following rewording of
the end of the penultimate paragraph of the letter. This is, we believe, important because the original phrasing is a large hostage to fortune, given that it seems to criticise (completely rubbish might be a better phrase) all work based on proxies that do not actually resolve the “climate trends of the last few decades” . As you know, many proxies used by you , us, and others, do not extend over this period of rapid warming and some that do (eg our MXD data) do not display an
appropriate rapid response. What you have written could coneivably be twisted to imply
that we (you) are criticising our (your) own work. How about changing the section with
currently reads – The conclusions , for example, of the ….of temperatures during the most recent decades against reconstructions of past temperatures, taking into account the uncertainties in
those reconstructions. As it is only the past few decades during which Northern
Hemisphere temperatures have exceeded the bounds of natural variability, any analysis
(SB03) that considers simply ’20th century’ mean conditions , or does not properly
resolve the changes of the late 20th century (e.g. through the interpretation of
evidence from proxy indicators which do not resolve the climate trends of the past few
decades), cannot yield any insight into whether or not recent warming is anomalous in a
long-term and large-scale context.
to –
……….
AntonyIndia says:
A Gem in 2895.txt:
WTF?!
Mann shoots Foot?
Mann puts Foot in Mouth?
gosh, heaven forbid that these clowns should actually think critically about “our (your) own work” rather than tailor their language for a public relations campaign posing as science!!
“This is, we believe, important because the original phrasing is a large hostage to fortune, given that it seems to criticise (completely rubbish might be a better phrase) all work based on proxies that do not actually resolve the “climate trends of the last few decades” . As you know, many proxies used by you , us, and others, do not extend over this period of rapid warming and some that do (eg our MXD data) do not display an appropriate rapid response. What you have written could coneivably be twisted to imply that we (you) are criticising our (your) own work….”
Hi All,
While most posters seem to buy into the premise that it must be the proxies that are wrong for not tracking temperature, the other option is that actually the proxies are right and it the ‘official’ temperature record that’s wrong. Given the change in the set of stations that have been contributing data over the years it does raise the question about what effect that has had.
Cheers
DM
I compared photographs and biographies of the “Hockey Team” members.
With attention to details pertaining to their personal lives and other non-climatological matters.
I make a bet: “Climategate Leaker” is Keith Briffa.
(Explanation of my reasoning (physiognomy, anthropology, psychology, cryptology and flubdubology of it) would take 2000 pages, so I happily refer to the limits of space and readers’ patience.)
An interesting side note to this issue is Phil Jone’s initial reaction to the first Climategate release. He came clean about what he did to the spaghetti graph he prepared for WMO headline graphic. This was the subject of the now famous “Mike’s trick” and “hide the decline. This IS the context that we’re always told we’re missing.
The initial frank an honest coming clean post got taken down within 48h but is now archived elsewhere on the UEA site. So lets have a look at Jones’ very own account of what the data should have looked like and what he gave WMO to present to world leaders:
http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/2009/nov/CRUupdate
Briffa’s work is not just cropped off it is made to go totally in the opposite direction and skyrockets. There is absolutely no indication that this is a mix of data from another source. There is no mention in the legend of the thermometer data , just the proxies. The other two proxies were basically running level , even slightly downwards up to 2000. They suffer the same fate. They are falsified to show a dramatic increase.
This was not a simple cut and paste operation, it was done by skilful blending of the two datasets.
Jones goes one step further than what Mann did in the Nature paper where, despite the blending, he did use a different colour for the temperature data. Here Jones uses that same line and does not even mention the use of temperatures.
This graph is a fraud, it does not show what it purports to show.
Sorry guys you just can’t do this sort of thing. If you did this with stock options you’d get 5 to 10 in the state pen.
LazyTeenager:
At December 1, 2011 at 2:20 pm you say:
“Well let us assume the strong decline in the Briffa apparent temperature in the late 20th century is caused by the temperature exceeding a threshold.”
NO! ABSOLUTELY NOT!
We do not need to assume anything. The fact – NOT an assumption – is that the proxy temperature data from trees and the measured surface temperature data from mostly weather stations diverge from ~1940 to the present.
This indicates
(a) The proxy data are wrong
or
(b) The measurement data are wrong
or
(c) The proxy data are not indicating the same parameter as the measurement data.
There are no other possibilities. Therefore, it is a blatant fraud to
1. delete the proxy data that disagree with the measurement data
2. then to splice the remaining proxy data onto the measurement data
3. and to claim the resulting combined data set provides an indication of a single parameter.
Richard
OK. My post to LazyTeeanager has still failed to appear probably because it contains the f-word. So, I again provide it here with some minor amendments that hopefully enable it to appear and add clarity.
***********************************
LazyTeenager:
At December 1, 2011 at 2:20 pm you say:
“Well let us assume the strong decline in the Briffa apparent temperature in the late 20th century is caused by the temperature exceeding a threshold.”
NO! ABSOLUTELY NOT!
We do not need to assume anything. The fact – NOT an assumption – is that the proxy temperature data from trees and the measured surface temperature data from mostly weather stations diverge from ~1940 to the present.
This indicates
(a) The proxy data are wrong
or
(b) The measurement data are wrong
or
(c) Both the proxy data and the measurement data are wrong
or
(d) The proxy data are not indicating the same parameter as the measurement data.
There are no other possibilities. Therefore, it is a blatant fr@ud to
1. delete the proxy data that disagree with the measurement data
2. then to splice the remaining proxy data onto the measurement data
3. and to claim the resulting combined data set provides a correct indication of a single parameter.
Richard
Allencic says:
December 1, 2011 at 8:12 am
I realize the money aspect of all this AGW stuff and I understand that jerks like Al Gore and grant grubbers stand to make lots of moola but what I simply will never understand is why, why, why are there so many enviros and politicians who do not stand to profit for AGW but who are still, in the face of literally no good, honest evidence, determined for a climate apocalypse to be true? It must be nothing more than a doomsday cult with a thin veneer of “science” as supporting its bizarre beliefs. Why wouldn’t anyone (except the likes of Mann, Hansen, Jones, Gore, Thompson, etc.) be damned glad that its just a hoax?
______________________________
My guess is it’s because we humans seem to need to believe in something greater than ourselves, and perhaps most cAGW’ers have nothing else?
And, fear of doom is nothing new. Remember the cartoon of the old guy with a sign reading “The end is near”.
Or, maybe it’s feelings of guilt, needing to be assuaged by punishment. LOL
http://www.yorku.ca/dcarveth/guilt.html
Roger Knight, “And because they want to maintain their stance as outsider/rebels, accusatory prophets. They don’t want to make their peace with The System in any shape or form. That reduces their “cred” among their coterie”.
That is a sharp observation and pretty much explains the tactics of most of the main stream media. Our news men and women of today have become determined “iconoclasts” who try to tear down the corrupt and obsolete (in their mind) to make way for the “new”. What are the words they always use, “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable”.
There are a lot of very good comments on this thread.
Thanks to Steve McIntyre for his tireless efforts as well as the commenters here. McIntyre is a straight shooter and this is very damaging to the ‘hocky stick’ and its purverors. The emails are the final convicting evidence.
I hope legal and a somewhat ‘poetic justice’ is found. Poetic justice being as these clowns / frauds have conspired in destroying others jobs and careers, so should it be applied to them. The effect on the world economy and the taxpayers is not to be overlooked. Incarceration for the long running and deliberate fraud? Should they be able to keep the gains from their participation in this? How have the courts judged in the past on keeping gains from improper / unlawful actions?
I think we are far past the revelations of the tactics / schemes used by these so called climate scientists and should now seek legal remedies. I would expect that some of the personally aggrieved parties will soon come forward in civil proceedings. Unfortunately, the biggest players with the biggest financial interests will simply say they aren’t scientists, but just followed the consensus. But by no means could ‘the Team’ be considered small fry. They are all big fish and very much involved.
LazyTeenager:
At December 1, 2011 at 2:20 pm you say:
“Well let us assume the strong decline in the Briffa apparent temperature in the late 20th century is caused by the temperature exceeding a threshold.”
If you believe that then explain why the same logic doesn’t apply to the higher temperatures in the Midieval Warm Period?
The cAGW Believer mentality: Clumsily stumbling and tripping, helter-skelter, with a big broken signboard saying, “THE END IS NEA//”
An excellent guide, I’ve found, to theory and predictions: take the 180° converse of cAGW assertions and projections as the likely truth. An excellent example is the JAXA IBUKI map of CO2 net emissions.
Here is CRU,s debate about treerings.
Why dont you look at the data, its now available.
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?search=+–