Email 2383 contains further evidence that everyone in the world of paleoclimate knew the Hockey Stick was a duffer.
From: Tim Barnett [[2]mailto:XXXXXXXXXXX@ucsd.edu]
Sent: 11 October 2004 16:42
To: Gabi Hegerl; Klaus Hasselmann
Cc: Prof.Dr. Hans von Storch; Myles Allen; francis; Reiner Schnur; Phil Jones; Tom Crowley; Nathan Gillett; David Karoly; Jesse Kenyon; christopher.d.miller@noaa.gov; Pennell, William T; Tett, Simon; Ben Santer; Karl Taylor; Stott, Peter; Bamzai, Anjuli
Subject: Re: spring meeting
not to be a trouble maker but……if we are going to really get into the paleo stuff, maybe someone(s) ought to have another look at Mann’s paper. His statistics were suspect as i remember. for instance, i seem to remember he used, say, 4 EOFs as predictors. But he prescreened them and threw one away because it was not useful. then made a model with the remaining three, ignoring the fact he had originally considered 4 predictors. He never added an artifical skill measure to account for this but based significance on 3 predictors. Might not make any difference. My memory is probably faulty on these issues, but to be completely even handed we ought to be sure we agree with his procedures. best, tim
It’s interesting how much evidence there is now that the Hockey Stick was known to be a problem. Perhaps readers can help collate a list of emails making this point.
NAS panel review of hockeysticks prompted by McIntyre and McKitrick.
#1104 -Heinz Wanner – on reporting his NAS panel critique of Mann to the media.
I just refused to give an exclusive interview to SPIEGEL because I will not cause damage for climate science.
#1656 Douglas Maraun – on how to react to skeptics.
How should we deal with flaws inside the climate community? I think, that “our” reaction on the errors found in Mike Mann’s work were not especially honest.
#3234 Richard Alley
Taking the recent instrumental record and the tree-ring record and joining them yields a dramatic picture, with rather high confidence that recent times are anomalously warm. Taking strictly the tree-ring record and omitting the instrumental record yields a less-dramatic picture and a lower confidence that the recent temperatures are anomalous.
Paleoclimate and hide the decline
#0300
Bo Christiansen – On Hockey stick reconstructions
All methods strongly underestimates the amplitude of low-frequency variability and trends. This means that it is almost impossible to conclude from reconstruction studies that the present period is warmer than any period in the reconstructed period.
Ed Cook #3253
the results of this study will show that we can probably say a fair bit about <100 year extra-tropical NH temperature variability (at least as far as we believe the proxy estimates), but honestly know fuck-all about what the >100 year variability was like with any certainty (i.e. we know with certainty that we know fuck-all).
#4133 Johnathan Overpeck – IPCC review.
what Mike Mann continually fails to understand, and no amount of references will solve, is that there is practically no reliable tropical data for most of the time period, and without knowing the tropical sensitivity, we have no way of knowing how cold (or warm)the globe actually got.
[and later]
Unsatisfying, perhaps, since people will want to know whether 1200 AD was warmer than today, but if the data doesn’t exist, the question can’t yet be answered. A good topic for needed future work.
Rob Wilson – 1583
The palaeo-world has become a much more complex place in the last 10 years and with all the different calibration methods, data processing methods, proxy interpretations – any method that incorporates all forms of uncertainty and error will undoubtedly result in reconstructions with wider error bars than we currently have. These many be more honest, but may not be too helpful for model comparison attribution studies. We need to be careful with the wording I think.
#3234 Richard Alley – on NAS panel and divergence
records, or some other records such as Rosanne’s new ones, show “divergence”, then I believe it casts doubt on the use of joined tree-ring/instrumental records, and I don’t believe that I have yet heard why this interpretation is wrong.
#4758 Tim Osborne – Criticizing other people for doing the same thing
Because how can we be critical of Crowley for throwing out 40-years in the middle of his calibration, when we’re throwing out all post-1960 data ‘cos the MXD has a non-temperature signal in it, and also all pre-1881 or pre-1871 data ‘cos the temperature data may have a non-temperature signal in it! If we write the Holocene forum article then we’ll have to be critical or our paper as well as Crowley’s!
#0497 – Phil Jones UEA – Scientists don’t know the magnitude of past warming.
Even though the tree-ring chronologies used have robust rbar statistics for the whole 1000 years ( ie they lose nothing because core numbers stay high throughout), they have lost low frequency because of standardization. We’ve all tried with RCS/very stiff splines/hardly any detrending to keep this to a minimum, but until we know it is minimal it is still worth mentioning.
#0886 Jan Esper on his own reconstruction – also hidden decline
And the curve will also show that the IPCC curve needs to be improved according to missing long-term declining trends/signals, which were removed (by dendrochronologists!) before Mann merged the local records together.
Tiim Osborne 4007
Also we have applied a completely artificial adjustment to the data after 1960, so they look closer to observed temperatures than the tree-ring data actually were
Tim Osborne #2347
Also, we set all post-1960 values to missing in the MXD data set (due to decline), and the method will infill these, estimating them from the real temperatures – another way of “correcting” for the decline, though may be not defensible!
#3234 Richard Alley
Unless the “divergence problem” can be confidently ascribed to some cause that was not active a millennium ago, then the comparison between tree rings from a millennium ago and instrumental records from the last decades does not seem to be justified, and the confidence level in the anomalous nature of the recent warmth is lowered.
I think the best way to sum up all of this is a quote from a guest post at tAV and DieKlimazweibel by Bo Christiansen:
Where does all this lead us? It is very likely that the NH mean temperature has shown much larger past variability than caught by previous reconstructions. We cannot from these reconstructions conclude that the previous 50-year period has been unique in the context of the last 500-1000 years.
Of course we all know that the IPCC reports differently.
Unbelievable— and here I thought Wall Street was the ground zero and citadel of hypocrisy.
Very telling. Nobody, even in the wider circle, dares to raise their voices in public, when this stick was wi(l)dely used for concerted misinformation on a global scale, wasting hundred billions of taxpayers’ money, killing the children FOIA2011 is talking about.
I’d call this a crime against humanity and a strong example how science should not be allowed to work out.
John, I was about to say the same about DC and Brussels
Note that these are the same individuals that were either silent or vigorously defended Mann when he was criticized.
The “hide the decline” discussion by Alley and Osborne is important. No claim of ‘scientific lingo ‘will change the meaning of that discourse.
There seems to be a hint that at least one writer is close to understanding that Mann’s mathematical model will cause a hockey stick no matter what data is introduced.
The pretense that there is a scarcity of data regarding the Medieval Warm Period (a pretense maintained by NOAA to this day) is laughable given their reliance on highly suspect data to prove a dramatic warming trend.
Today’s letters in Wall Street Journal has Mann’s latest propaganda attempt.
Reminds me of Tariq Assiz pronouncing Iraqi victory
while American tanks were rounding the corner right behind him.
The last the world heard from him as he ran the opposite way was:
‘Look, look! We are winning!”
Sorry name escapes me but what about that email from a young Ph.D. at CRU who wanted a meeting with the rest of the team there as he was uncomfortable about letting the hockey stick get away without criticism?
All the quotes are out of context!
Really.
And wasn’t Gilbert at NAS criticized for what he said in his review of MBH — something like “flawed math,” “corrupt data,” and “Whatever it is, it isn’t science.”
This is an important area. Of the various sins of omission and commission that these emails reveal, the sheer irresponsibility exposed by such as the above quotes is a great source of dismay. The irresponsibility lies of course not in the quotes themselves, but in the subsequent silence in the public square on the part of those who made them. The blatant promotion of the hockey-stick by the IPCC and such as Al Gore led to, as an all but inevitable consequence, the deliberate, profound frightening of children. To fail to protect children from such abuse represents an abdication of a basic adult responsibility. This was and is not ‘scary fairy tale’ level for the children, although the ‘science’ may be at that level. This was and is a level at which damage to their sense of wellbeing and security can be expected, and has indeed been observed – driven by people convinced that the hockey-stick was evidence of imminent catastrophe (http://climatelessons.blogspot.com/p/climate-anxiety-reports-of-frightened.html). A few calming words from those IPCC scientists ‘in the know’ would have helped create a calmer, more accurate, more credible, more defensible perspective. But I guess such words would also have harmed ‘the cause’. I wonder what awful malevolence lies in that ’cause’ that it could be the motivation for such inaction.
I’m sorry, but this whole thing just seems very ironic in light of Santer et al attack on the Satellite record in the latest edition of Science (their “special” on Data Replication and Reproducibility):
From the abstract:
“Although concerns have been expressed about the reliability of surface temperature data sets, findings of pronounced surface warming over the past 60 years have been independently reproduced by multiple groups. In contrast, an initial finding that the lower troposphere cooled since 1979 could not be reproduced. Attempts to confirm this apparent cooling trend led to the discovery of errors in the initial analyses of satellite-based tropospheric temperature measurements.”
By way of threadjack: In Durban, “One more proposal simply requires that rich countries commit to cutting their “greenhouse gas emissions more than 100 per cent by 2040.”” http://reason.com/archives/2011/12/05/delusional-in-durban (paragraph 11)
I think we got an Ig Nobel candidate right there
Here’s set of links for these messages:
2383.txt
1104.txt
1656.txt
3234.txt
0300.txt
3253.txt
4133.txt
1583.txt
3234.txt
4758.txt
0497.txt
0886.txt
4007.txt
2347.txt
2346.txt
(in case anyone wants to check context…)
I think that the one that you have referenced as 2347 should actually be 2346 (also linked above).
To John Garrett, whose comment was:
“Unbelievable— and here I thought Wall Street was the ground zero and citadel of hypocrisy.”
Wall St. was going to make huge amounts of money buying and selling CO2 credts, making derivative markets on them. The next big scam after selling worthless housing derivative products.
Wall Street;s use of PAC money may explain why so many politicians were, and still are, silent on Climategate and the hockey schtick. If they want to get reelected, today, they need money. If financial entities give them PAC $, those entities don’t want a still possible mega-market in CO2 trading being undercut.
It’s really a three cornered hypocritical stool — disingenuous climate “scientists,” financial PAC money, and politicians who need that $.
Mann’s letter in the wsj demonstrates the left’s delusional reality.Truth is to climate as efficiency is to green energy–irrelevant. There is no limit to our government borrowing. There is no limit to how many laws and regulations we can create. We can spend whatever it takes for whatever we want. Let’s build pyramids so we can create jobs. Pretend these are the worst times and we can party on.Our grandkids are gonna puke when they pay our bills.
Another email to add to the list is the one where someone (Wigley?) was talking about their kid’s science project and how it disproved the notion that trees are reliable temperature proxies.
But didn’t the AR4 conclude that the recent warming was “very likely” due to human activity? If there is nothing anomalous about recent warming when compared to the past, then this conclusion is “very likely” wrong.
Ed Cooke in email 3253 says
“but honestly know fuck-all about what the >100 year variability was like with any certainty (i.e. we know with certainty that we know fuck-all).”
Is that the true state of climate science? “We know with certainty that we know fuck-all.”
Please don’t delete this Mr Moderator. These are not my words.
At this point, I believe that dendrochronology could say something about the net quality of life on an annual basis for each tree from which a core sample was taken and analyzed. Beyond that i will need more than a ” just trust me on this”.
There is no other word for it but FRAUD.
This FRAUD is on the scale of Bernie Madhoff. In this case, Billions of taxpayers funds have gone down the drain!!!!
These people ALL directly benefited from taxpayer funding due to the fraudulent “scare mongering” by some of their “team”.
When you know or realize you are part of a FRAUD against the public, you owe it to those being scammed to speak out and report it. You owe it to the taxpayers who fund your work. You owe it the institutions you work for. You owe it to yourself and your family if you have any moral or ethical compass at all.
This goes beyond DISGUSTING. It is CRIMINAL NEGLIGENCE – through their inaction these people knowingly allowed a FRAUD to be perpetrated.
With respects to Apollo 13:
Gene Kranz: Let’s look at this thing from a… um, from a standpoint of status. What do we got on the spacecraft that’s good?
[pause]
Sy Liebergot: I’ll get back to you, Gene.
Where does AGW stand — is anything good?
Topic — Then — Now
* Hockeystick — current warming is exceptional — dead, and they knew it
* Glaciers are Melting — graphic example — not due to warming or not happening
* Polar Bears — graphic example — doing well, misused photos
* Hurricanes, Tornados, Drought — graphic examples — not linked to climate change
* MWP — ignored or “not global” — still there
* Surface Temperature Record — what problems (pre-Anthony) — problems don’t matter (BEST)
* Abuse of Statistics — we know what we are doing — internally, no we don’t
* Antarctic ice sheets — accelerated melting — not
* Arctic Ice — ice free by 20xx due to AGW — ice fluctuations due to wind patterns
* CO2 residency — short – long -short – long — ?
* PDO drivers — what PDO — still don’t know
* Cosmic Ray seeding clouds — crazy alternative hypothesis — experimental support
* Sulphate Hypothesis — keep in back pocket — SO2 down due to clean coal?
* The Cause — shhhhh — out of context
* BBC, NYT, etc. — bastions of journalistic integrity — ho ho ho
* “Science” — the settled consensus of … — internally, we don’t know either, but were going to get you fired if you disagree
* Divergence — hide it — caused by something we don’t know, so ignore it
* Missing data — its all on the web — we lost it
* IPCC — impartial review of peer-reviewed literature — biased review by stacked committees of environmental ngo propaganda, mixed in with literature written by committee members
Did I miss anything?
From Wikipedia re the Hockey Stock:
“The graph was seen by mass media and the public as central to the IPCC case for global warming, which had actually been based on other unrelated evidence. Jerry Mahlman, who had coined the “hockey stick” nickname, described this emphasis on the graph as “a colossal mistake, just as it was a mistake for the climate-science-writing press to amplify it.” He added that it was “not the smoking gun. That’s the data we’ve had for the past 150 years, which is quite consistent with the expectation that the climate is continuing to warm.”[22] From an expert viewpoint the graph was, like all newly published science, preliminary and uncertain, but it was widely used to publicise the issue of global warming.”
If the hockey stick was not that important, why was it not demolished from the ‘inside’ in the name of scientific honesty and public accuracy, since obviously Mann’s colleagues saw the problems with his construction? Why did the warmists continue to defend it even after McIntyre and McKitrick demolished the mathematical and statistical basis for the graph and Edward Wegman’s report for the senate uncovered further problems in 2006? The warmists’ claim that the hockey stick was a side-show needs to be completely disemboweled, and the enormity of wrongdoing revealed in these e-mails needs to be put in its true context.
As John Shade says above, this ‘science’ was used to terrorize children. Every generation needs its bogeyman, I suppose, but global warming has none of the thrill for children of ‘trolls under the bridge”. Plus it is explicitly intended to create a burden of guilt in children and adults alike for partaking in the original sin of being born and thereby generating environmental damage. These ‘scientists’ deserve our utmost scorn.
Really, it’s time to start thinking about criminal action. The amount of money wasted globally chasing this alarmist claptrap that the individuals privately KNEW to be claptrap puts Wall Street to shame (not to mention the number of dead from substandard power grids/astronomical fuel costs in the poorer areas of the world).
The one pleasing thing to come out of all of this is that most of these “scientists” who defended Mann and Jones over the years have turned out to have equally low opinions of them as ours. Mann just happened to be the useful idiot who bumbled into what amounted to a great ad campaign. Now these “scientists” were tasked with producing what the ad campaign promised.
It’s interesting that these scientists agree that Mann and Jones 2003 paper was “the worst thing Jones has produced” when that paper really cemented Jones as a full fledged, arm waving global warming fanatic. His past work, and even the last two years after Climategate shows a Jones much more willing to accept the fact that we are 1) no longer warming and 2) we really don’t know that much about the long term trend. Mann just seems to exude this aura of horribly bad science that infects whoever he is working with.
Real Climate, as a product of Mann himself, is sitting dead center in this Mannian anti-Science field.
“David Schofield says:
December 5, 2011 at 8:34 am
Sorry name escapes me but what about that email from a young Ph.D. at CRU who wanted a meeting with the rest of the team there as he was uncomfortable about letting the hockey stick get away without criticism?”
That was mentioned.
See
http://algorelied.com/?tag=douglas-maraun
Somehow, even after everything else, I expected some angst over how reality continues to diverge from the path that supports “the cause”, but no just cold blooded conniving. Here’s a riddle, what’s the difference between a “Flat-Earther” and a “Climate Scientist”; answer, the “Flat-Earther” enjoys the rational debate even knowing their position is false.
Amazing how little courage is displayed among the members of the scientific community.
Again, we see that many scientists have known full well that climate alarmism is entirely fictitious, yet they have done nothing to stop the madness.
Gotta go along to get along.
Right.
I do hope that someone here with a subscription to the WSJ pastes this article into the comments section on Mann’s pathetic whimper of a letter.
[Reply: You don’t need a WSJ subscription, just sign up and log on to comment. ~dbs, mod.]
Also, for fun and profit, can we start referring to this particular scandal as “Hide the Mann”? That is essentially what all of these “scientists” are discussing here: limiting Mann’s presence in the future without excluding him all together since excluding Mann would simply be admitting what skeptics have been saying all along.
Ed Cook in 4241.txt
In response to Rob Wilson discovering that RegM provides a hockey stick when fed randomly generated time sequence data.
Meant “time series” not “time sequence” in my last comment, if it matters. In this case it might mean the same thing.
“Judge a man by the company he keeps”
Surely this applies to science to as in “Judge a scientist by the scientists he mixes with.”
Will scientists with good reputations want to be associated with AR5? Will they be happy to have their names printed in the same list as Phil Jones “the serial liar” and M Mann? At some point this will become a serious problem, maybe it already is a problem?
Do real scientists want to work for the IPCC?
How about the ones who contributed last time, are they happy to leave this mess unresolved?
Crosspatch,
Nice.
Well, it seems they’re on to us:
#2960
So, if we show Keith’s series in this plot, we have to comment that “something else” is responsible for the discrepancies in this case. Perhaps Keith can help us out a bit by explaining the processing that went into the series and the potential factors that might lead to it being “warmer” than the Jones et al and Mann et al series?? We would need to put in a few words in this regard. Otherwise, the skeptics have an field day casting doubt on our ability to understand the factors that influence these estimates and, thus, can undermine faith in the paleoestimates.
But I don’t know why they’d get that idea:
#5017:
I just downloaded your powerpoint presentation from your server and looked at it. Very nice job! It really covers many of the issues regarding proxy uncertainty and tree rings.
It is also really important not to let the instrumental people off the hook, especially after that debacle just published on by Thompson et al. in Nature concerning the SST corrections or lack there of.
The recent Eos article by Vecchi likewise shows how much uncertainty remains in the instrumental SST fields. So it is increasingly clear to me, as I believe it is to you, that the climate data homogenization methods used can contribute significantly to the uncertainty in the reconstructions even when the proxies are typically assigned pretty much all blame. So while we need to be completely honest about the many large uncertainties in our tree-ring data and reconstructions, the instrumental data mob needs to be equally honest and upfront about how they are contributing significant uncertainty to the reconstructions as well. This is especially important at the lower frequencies, which makes time-scale dependent calibration even more difficult to objectively assess.
But after all, we’re just amateurs who, according to Jones, are retired, with lots of time. Considering what they think of actual, you know, experts, though, we get off fairly easy:
I mean, just because a guy is a “Professor, Tree Physiology/Biochemistry, Forestry & Environmental Management, University of New Brunswick” (i.e, in an area of the world where forestry is very important) says
#3219:
I would add that it is the exceptionally rare dendrochronologist who has ever shown any inclination to understand the fundamental biology of wood formation, either as regulated intrinsically or influenced by extrinsic factors. …It would be a major step forward if dendrochronology could embrace the scientific method.
That doesn’t mean the team can’t slime him:
Rod’s comments are remarkably ignorant and insulting. I suggest that he stick to what he knows best and not claim that he understands dendrochronology and its methods. That way he would not sound so stupid. To suggest that dendrochronology does not embrace the scientific method and is as biased as he claims verges on libel. Of course, Rod has the right to his opinion. It is just a shame that he chooses to expose his ignorance of dendrochronology in such a negative way.
Actually, as a student of history, it appears that dendrochronology is about as scientific as reading the entrails of sheep.
Sorry, but that last paragraph is mine, the preceding was from Ed “Swearingist Scientist Evah” Cook.
BTW, 1469 is also a doozy concerning tree rings:
“A substantial number of the sites across Canada are in the boreal forest but nowhere near latitudinal or elevational treeline. The boreal forest is complex and should not be catagorized by a blanket “temperature sensitive” description regarding ring widths”
When Mann wrote his forthcoming book, he didn’t think these ghosts out of the past would arise to haunt it. Reviewers will be able to quote them, and this thread, to rebut claims he makes therein.
John Shade says:
December 5, 2011 at 8:45 am
…Of the various sins of omission and commission that these emails reveal, the sheer irresponsibility exposed by such as the above quotes is a great source of dismay. The irresponsibility lies of course not in the quotes themselves, but in the subsequent silence in the public square on the part of those who made them. The blatant promotion of the hockey-stick by the IPCC and such as Al Gore led to, as an all but inevitable consequence, the deliberate, profound frightening of children. To fail to protect children from such abuse represents an abdication of a basic adult responsibility. This was and is not ‘scary fairy tale’ level for the children, although the ‘science’ may be at that level. This was and is a level at which damage to their sense of wellbeing and security can be expected….
___________________________________
This reminds me of the 1950’s -1970’s nightmares caused by the thread of nuclear disaster via the cold war where kids were taught to hide under their desks and people built underground “Bomb shelters”
On the other hand Goldman Sachs went a step further and just starved kids to death outright in 2008. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/04/27/how_goldman_sachs_created_the_food_crisis?page=0,1
(WTO agreement on Ag was ratified in 1995)
Number of hungry people, 1969-2010 Graph: http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/10/images/hungry_timeseries.jpg
The death of children under the age of five peaked at 9 million in 2008 then dropped to 7.6 million children in 2010.
“Hunger and malnutrition are the underlying cause of more than half of all child deaths… Most would not die if their bodies and immune systems had not been weakened by hunger and malnutrition moderately to severely underweight, the risk of death is five to eight times higher.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_and_Agriculture_Organization
One could almost say the the commodities futures speculators lead by Goldman Sachs, managed to murder by hunger by about a million children.
The only thing the “investors” behind CAGW are interested in is money and power. People mean nothing to them. We are cattle to be used or destroyed as they wish. There are plenty of references to statements made about “Too many people”
Do you think the hedge funds and University Endowment funds and corporations rushing to “invest” in farmland in Africa and South America to profit from carbon credits, give any more of thought to the natives they push off the land than the American settlers did a hundred and fifty years ago?
The transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869…..
Ironically the Railroad Barons that fostered the slaughter of the buffalo, are often the ancestors of those we see today buying third world farmland.
Luther Wu says: December 5, 2011 at 9:55 am:
“Amazing how little courage is displayed among the members of the scientific community.”
I agree. You may or may not have noticed that the name Mann, Michael is missing form both the “To” list and the “Cc” list. What odds will you give me that Dr. Mann’s name also was NOT on the “Blind Copy” list?
Jean Parisot says: December 5, 2011 at 9:33 am.
Very good. I believe you’ve covered everthing.
Question: How many “climate scientists” does it take to deflate an ego the size of Dr. Mann’s?
Answer: Give me a minute, I can’t seem to stop laughing.
I am hoping that a team of unbiased scientists will write a book about the holes in just the science that all these emails have surfaced. Not a hatchet job but a very scholarly analysis of how the science was so poor. There is too much just for the taking to let this opportunity slip by.
Poor old Michael Mann after the cascade of inside opinion now seeing the light if day! You can almost feel sorry for him. But not quite!
Oh, the schadenfreude almost hurts!
Alix James says:
December 5, 2011 at 10:31 am
. . .
Rod’s comments are remarkably ignorant and insulting. I suggest that he stick to what he knows best and not claim that he understands dendrochronology and its methods. That way he would not sound so stupid. To suggest that dendrochronology does not embrace the scientific method and is as biased as he claims verges on libel. Of course, Rod has the right to his opinion. It is just a shame that he chooses to expose his ignorance of dendrochronology in such a negative way.
Actually, as a student of history, it appears that dendrochronology is about as scientific as reading the entrails of sheep.
Dendrochronology and dendro-haruspication are really quite different. Dendrochronology is a useful (and really, a scientific) process that counts tree rings and develops regional patterns of ring-development over time. It is handy for many things including calibrating C-14 measurements, and directly dating structures that include logs. Used properly only religious fundaentalists with fixed ideas about the planet’s age dislike it.
Haruspication using tree rings is different. It purports to tell you why that tree grew as it did, when it did. When, as in the case of the Yamal data, you use too few trees to derive a regional pattern, well that isn’t science any longer. “Guess work” would be a superior term.
Here is a reponse to a question about Osborne’s email from gavin.
Tim Osborne #2347: “Also, we set all post-1960 values to missing in the MXD data set (due to decline), and the method will infill these, estimating them from the real temperatures – another way of “correcting” for the decline, though may be not defensible!”
Speak to us about the context of that.
[Response: Read the whole email. Osborn is using RegEM to do a reconstruction of temperature using his MXD tree ring data. The method as programmed by Tapio Schneider produces a record that is equal to the real temperature series where they exist and the imputed values elsewhere, for both the MXD data and the temperature reconstruction. If you don’t include MXD data post-1960, they will be imputed by the RegEM algorithm (based on correlations and covariance from where there are both sets of data). – gavin]
Hilariously, considering the JAXA IBUTU(?) satellite results, it seems that the West absorbs more CO2 than it emits already, so the >100% has already been achieved.
Jean Parisot says: (You know, about letting the Wall Street Journal they were listening to another Madoff.)
Well, I tried. Before I could find the correct link at WSJ.com to post your suggestion that the WSJ should see that the Science Is Not Settled, a compatriot beat me to it.
WSJ.com
Jeremy Poynton wrote: 8 minutes ago
He copied the entire article and it got online. The comments to Mann are a mite hostile, I must admit. Kinda like they were talking to Scrooge.
Merry Christmas, and any other holiday that makes you smile. Grampa.
John Garrett says:
December 5, 2011 at 8:08 am
Unbelievable— and here I thought Wall Street was the ground zero and citadel of hypocrisy.
I think you are being unjust to Wall Street. They may be many things but they are rarely hypocritical. They’re a bunch of smart guys who are unabashedly in pursuit of making loads of money and who have repeatedly demonstrated that they will do anything they can get away with to do it. When the government forced them to issue millions of mostly worthless subprime mortgages, they did what smart guys do, they found a way to make money off them. In the Congressional hearings in the aftermath of the 2008 debacle, one of the leading government regulators testified that as the derivatives market blossomed to the doom threatening level, they had all the legal authority they needed to bring it under control, but chose not to because their financial models, similar to climatic GCMs, showed a rising trend extending out to the horizon.
I doubt there are many of us who would not be more willing to engage in risky behavior with our money if the government allowed us to keep any profits but promised to cover any of our losses. BTW, for anyone who might want to believe that we are moving closer to resolving the world’s financial mess, I recommend going to the U. S. Debt Clock site
http://www.usdebtclock.org/#
Go to the lower half of the graphic and look at the number under “Currency and Credit Derivatives”. For those who have difficulty dealing with large numbers that’s $761 TRILLION, more than 15 times total global GDP. When the next cascade of defaults occurs there won’t be anything close to enough money in the whole wide wonderful world to stop it.
Reading all this good work done by diligent sceptics makes the AGW deceit very obvious but who else is reading it? I mean who else in a position to do something about it e.g. the Royal Society; they must be aware of what’s going on..
I sometimes feel like Kevin McCarthy at the end of the film Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956 version). Thank God for WUWT – a refuge of sanity.
@Colin Porter December 5, 2011 at 9:12 am:
The real story is that climatology is a REALLY new scientific “discipline” (don’t choke on that word too much), and like any new science, it is in the period where it is still getting its feet under it. This is the period where they are supposed to be reporting to the public in terms like, “So far it seems that…” and “We are still piecing it together, and will know more later, as we solidify what we know.” Unlike other new sciences, climatology was accepted without having to prove itself, Immediately everyone in it was an expert. (By “immediately” I mean within the first 75 years.)
And with the “-ology” the public assumed since it wasn’t “astr” -ology, and that public pronouncements were solidly researched and vetted, not just something pulled out of people’s bums.
What they really needed to be doing was proving every way but Sunday that tree-rings are excellent proxies, and especially that the divergence problem (which underlay the “hide the decline” effort) was solved. And they needed to empirically test out the re-radiance issue of CO2, determine in 20 different studies WHAT the UHI for individual cities and towns are, and to prove the assumption about ice cores (that the ice in any one level has not been contaminated).
And most of all, they need to simply do studies that falsify forcings other than anthropogenic CO2 as the cause of whatever warming there is. And, after the CG2.0 emails, there is much more doubt that warming is even happening.
Right now it is a science based mostly on untested hypotheses, and they need to admit it. By pretending that the know things which are only guesses or assumptions, they are not only giving their own -ology a bad name, but science in general.
So, yes, it does appear that they “know fuck-all.” But at the same time, that is why science studies things – to get past that stage. Honesty helps.
Tim Osborne e-mail #2347
Also, we set all post-1960 values to missing in the MXD data set (due to decline)…
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
What intrigues me is the “Decline” after 1960. Here is a “hopefully” accurate chart of temperature from “Continuous data” http://justdata.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/continuitybysectors1900-2009.jpg
There was more variability in the data before 1960 then after 1960
Here is one of the CAGW graphs of temp and CO2 http://zfacts.com/metaPage/lib/zFacts-CO2-Temp.gif
It shows an increase in CO2 of about 80 ppm. So how do trees response to an increase in CO2? They increase height and biomass. Increases in CO2 also mean more drought resistance. So why the heck would the trees used by Mann (Briffa) respond with a DECREASE in growth?
Response of spruce to 700 ppm CO2: http://www.co2science.org//subject/l/summaries/ltspruce.php
Another long term study shows a gradual increase of SHRUBS at the tree line, (Calif?) This may be the reason for the decline – COMPETITION! (Darn, I lost the reference @ CO2science)
Also of interest:
(The elevation limit for shrubs would also change similarly to that of the tree line)
Cyclical Environmental Change Depicted in Lake Sediments of Northern Russia
…The last 2500 years of the sediment record was strongly indicative of fluctuating limnological conditions… http://www.co2science.org//articles/V7/N16/C2.php
A completely separate study showing the typical Warm and cool periods.
The more I have read of the CG2 emails, the more I view Mann as the bully in the clique of Climate Science. You can see it in how hard and unwavering his rebuttles are in those few instances where teammates raise a concern. He really comes off as being an anal orifice to those around him.
Couple that thought with the back channel, Mann not included, emails that flew around, sighting his errors in science and approach.
I guess to advance your career in Climate Science, you are required to toe the line according to Mike. That way you get to sit at the cool table in the cafeteria, you get recommended for good jobs.
I’ll bet the atmosphere in on the Team is pretty frosty now that their back-biting is coming to light. (see what I did there? that was punny)
Duster says:
December 5, 2011 at 11:39 am
Well said.
My family cuts 20 cord of wood every year, and has in the same wood bush since 1976, so I’m quite familiar with tree rings.
It was always fun as a kid to count back through and try to reconcile what the rings said with what our recollections of the weather was like. Of course, there was that year the eastern tent caterpillar ravaged the land, stripping trees so that June looked like November. I’m sure the scientists take stuff like this into account, right?
DCA says:
Speak to us about the context of that.
[Response: drivel from gavin]
Tut, Tut – gavin tries to defend the ‘not defensible’, but doesn’t do a very good job!
Yes, and no. These comments were made prior to publishing the graph, were they not? Sceptically reviewing and commenting on a work prior to publication is their job.
Were the comments passed on to the work’s creators? Were the concerns addressed by the creators? Was the revised work subsequently reviewed and accepted?
I bet we all know the answer to those questions, and that’s a problem too.
Dave Wendt says:
December 5, 2011 at 12:25 pm
….BTW, for anyone who might want to believe that we are moving closer to resolving the world’s financial mess, I recommend going to the U. S. Debt Clock site
http://www.usdebtclock.org/#
Go to the lower half of the graphic and look at the number under “Currency and Credit Derivatives”. For those who have difficulty dealing with large numbers that’s $761 TRILLION, more than 15 times total global GDP. When the next cascade of defaults occurs there won’t be anything close to enough money in the whole wide wonderful world to stop it.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
ECONOMIC 101 – FIAT MONEY effects:
Also see this article on Hyper-inflation in the USA. http://www.creditwritedowns.com/2011/04/on-hyperinflation.html
Bernacke doubled the US money supply between 2008 and 2009. The fact the dollar is the World Reserve Currency is what has saved our tails…. So far.
Meanwhile China is grabbing as much gold as she can and encouraging her citizens to do like wise as she agitates to have the US Dollar removed as the World Reserve Currency.
Unfortunately we can not disentangle CAGW, Energy, Carbon Credits, Food land, and a financial community determined to make money on anything and everything they can and the devil take the hind most.
It’s a good day to be a sceptic.
re: statistics for “hockey stick”
It seems that Michael Mann still cannot grasp that there any problems in his stats and methods, as reflected in his flatulence in the Wall St. Journal today.
One assumes that his pitiful opinion piece today is trying to prepare the public for the impending publication of his masterpiece (due out in March 2012):
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2011/10/13/mann-of-letters.html
So – can anybody explain why certain articles (—- Himalaya —) and graphs like the Hockey-stick make it through the “Peer-review system”? – Or, am I spelling it wrong – should it be the “Peer-revive system” perhaps?
When is the world going to wake up and smell the ashes!? It’s so frustrating when obviously the media is behind the scam too, so they all just report, “move on, nothing to see here”, or don’t even report anything at all.
Brian H says
Hilariously, considering the JAXA IBUTU(?) satellite results, it seems that the West absorbs more CO2 than it emits already, so the >100% has already been achieved.
————–
Well maybe you should look at the primary source for this rather than the commentary. I suspect someone has fooled you. And that would be hilarious.
I remember that Michael Mann himself said that the hockey stick got too much attention and that he thought it was strange that it became an icon of the global warming movement. It think is was at the height of criticism after climategate 1. He was crawling back on his own work then.
I’ve been searching the internet to find it back but havent found it. Does anyone remember this and maybe have a link to that quote of him or to the interview where he said that?
The older I get, the meaner I am.
(sarc)
Dear Michael Mann,
Michael, as I sit here in the U.S. Senate and read the blog postings on watts up with that on your awards and citations for your work I think back on just how much your awards and citations are just like mine. I think you are being swiftwatt’ed and its jut not fair.
Yours ever,
Senator John F. Kerry
former Lt. John F. Kerry
ps
You know I served two tours in Vietnam..
E-mail 0497 (from Phil to Mike Mann) also says:
“Keith didn’t mention in his Science piece but both of us think that you’re on very dodgy ground with this long-term decline in temperatures on the 1000 year timescale.”
@John says at 8:51 am: “Wall St. was going to make huge amounts of money buying and selling CO2 credts, making derivative markets on them. The next big scam after selling worthless housing derivative products.”
Not to mention derivative credit card debt sold to Iceland banks, as is amply detailed in the entire first chapter of Michael Lewis’ book “Boomerang.”
Goldman Sachs was one big player in the monetized global warming scam. When they published it on their web site a couple years ago (but “disappeared” from it now), 18 of the 21 partners in Al Gore’s Generation Investment LLP were ex-Goldman Sachs.
Enron was another huge player, and the 2008 (2007?) documentary “The Burning Season” unintentionally illustrated the Wall Street greed and avarice which drove the now dead “climate market,” which reached a peak in Bali.
My recollection is that after Climategate I there were “investigations” by Penn State Uni, Muir Russell, (for UEA), US Congress, UK Parliament (and a few others I can’t think of right now). Given what is in Climategate II it would seem that “The Team” may have misled some or all of these “investigations” by telling a few “porkies.” (For the benefit of American and other non-UK readers “porkies” comes from Old-London, cockney rhyming slang. Thus “porky pies” = “lies.”)
I beleive that telling lies to a UK Parliamentary Committee is an indictable offence which may result in a criminal conviction and a spell in gaol. Maybe the same is true for the US Congress.
Can anyone report these facts to the relevant authorities and have those investigations reopened?
Jean Parisot says: December 5, 2011 at 9:33 am
… Where does AGW stand — is anything good? Topic — Then — Now:
* Hockeystick * Glaciers are Melting * Polar Bears * Hurricanes, Tornados, Drought * MWP * Surface Temperature Record * Abuse of Statistics * Antarctic ice sheets * Arctic Ice * CO2 residency * PDO drivers * Cosmic Ray seeding clouds * Sulphate Hypothesis * The Cause * BBC, NYT, etc. * “Science” * Divergence * Missing data * IPCC
Did I miss anything?
Pretty good.
But I’d like to flag up the CO2 issues because this is where the rot started. People forget, maybe because we are now quite clear that CO2 is irrelevant. But CO2 has never really been satisfactorily dealt with. This is because to do so needs a multidisciplinary approach – like cutting off all the heads of the hydra at the same time. In brief, the issues are these:
(1) city dwelling secondrate scientists forget the size and inertia and heat storage capacity of the oceans
(2) they forget the oceans’ capacity to story CO2
(3) they also forget Henry’s Law of CO2 solubilities changing with temperature
(4) they forget about the 800-year lag of CO2 behind temperature, probably reflecting the 800-year thermohaline cycle
(5) they forget the MWP which arose about 800 years prior to establishing MLO and can therefore explain the recent rise naturally
(6) they forget the commonsense observation that vegetation absorbs all excess CO2 available
(7) they are mesmerised by the “stairway to heaven” consistency of MLO results
(8) they refuse to consider that other, older CO2 measurements could have been just as accurate and, interpreted well, just as telling; and
(9) they also fail to notice the disqualifying discrepancies in endpoints and tiny details, between the human emissions curve and the MLO/ice core curve
(10) they are put off by “Team” tarring of Jaworowski et al, who showed the multiple problems with ice core proxy CO2 measurements leading to results that are too low and too flat
(11) they are unable to penetrate the falsity of the ice hockey stick claim of “gas age” allowing a splice between MLO direct measurements and ice core proxies.
(12) they are unable to penetrate the falsity of the oxygen-isotope argument for MMCO2
There. That matches your list now.
It’s interesting to learn the history of Mauna Loa and link with Arrhenius’ son or nephew – set up because there was a genuine fear that warming might be happening and that CO2 rising might be the cause and that we might be to blame for rising CO2. All the warmist points really and truly followed that.
Oh, you need to note – measuring TSI fluctuations as too small to explain the changes – while gagging info on other solar effects and amplifications.
Does anyone else see a disconnect between the individual scientists of old and the Big Science collaborations of recent decades? It used to be the scientists competed with each other and argued with each other over whose methods were best, and then they would go out and empirically prove them.
These emails, much more than CG1.0, show scientists all playing with methods just to get results/outputs that are acceptable or even popular among their pals (and their careers?) – or, even worse, The Cause. These people ought to be all over each others’ mistakes and ripping them new orifices.
IMHO, the competition is gone, since government money has made for larger and larger projects, which means collaborative rather than competitive science – since large projects require more hands on deck. Then, among the project researchers, they have to come to a consensus. The competitiveness in doing the science thus became political/office politics competitiveness and competitiveness for the big money grants. You can see that though they EMAIL each other with professional reservations, the reservations never rise to the level of actual competition or disagreement – it becomes, “Let’s massage this so that everyone can sign onto it,” or, “I disagree, but I am not going to state that too strongly, just in case the Funding Gatekeeper (Michael Mann, the renowned fundraiser) gets pissed off at me and cuts me out of the loop.”
Science wasn’t always like this. I don’t agree with the folks who are alarmed at what they see as Big Government trying to control every citizen’s life, but I do see Big Government MONEY as a distorter of science.
I wonder if this is the first time Mann has seen these emails between his peers. It is a hard thing to overhear people you imagine are your friends indulging in a bit of back-stabbing, even with an ego of ordinary size. Considering the apparent size of Mann’s ego, I imagine he’s seeing red.
REPLY: I imagine he’s ignoring them like Gavin has – Anthony
If you do nothing else, DO NOT MISS the comment of Dr. Jonathan Jones, Professor of Physics, Brasenose College, Oxford University made on the Bishop Hill blog ( http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2011/12/2/tim-barnett-on-the-hockey-stick.html ) at December 3, 2011 at 6:11 PM. Professor Jones makes an unequivocal condemnation of the “Hockey Stick” and much of climatology.
( a brief excerpt)
…For me the Hockey Stick was where it began, and probably where it will end (and I will daringly suggest that the same thing might be true for our host). The Hockey Stick is obviously wrong. Everybody knows it is obviously wrong. Climategate 2011 shows that even many of its most outspoken public defenders know it is obviously wrong. And yet it goes on being published and defended year after year.
Do I expect you to publicly denounce the Hockey Stick as obvious drivel? Well yes, that’s what you should do. It is the job of scientists of integrity to expose pathological science…
Poor Mikey. No one wants to play with him.
You have to wonder if this new batch of e-mails has some justice oriented Attorney’s General in the U.S. thinking of using the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) against the Team. They probably need a lot more, but isn’t this smoke that we’re reading?
If that doesn’t happen perhaps a seated Grand Jury that realizes that the 5th amendment to the U.S. Constitution and common law (as supported by the Supreme Court as recently as the early 1980’s) allows for a jury to bring a “presentment” which is an action resulting from an investigation brought of their own accord and not just an an indictment in response to direction from an A.G. But that is probably just fantasy of what might have been if the core tenants of the U.S. Constitution had not been systematically smothered over the last century.
O H Dahlsveen says:
December 5, 2011 at 1:49 pm
So – can anybody explain why certain articles (—- Himalaya —) and graphs like the Hockey-stick make it through the “Peer-review system”? – Or, am I spelling it wrong – should it be the “Peer-revive system” perhaps?>>>
The most common term up until now has been “pal review” which I think fits.
Jack Thompson;
Reading all this good work done by diligent sceptics makes the AGW deceit very obvious but who else is reading it? I mean who else in a position to do something about it e.g. the Royal Society; they must be aware of what’s going on..>>>
Oh, they’re aware, and LOTS of people are reading these emails. There are researchers who have learned that their work and their careers were submarined by “the team”. See the thread on Pat Michaels! He’s openly challenging what they did, and he won’t be the only one. There’s others who have no doubt decided to put things behind them, and still others who are more than likely preparing law suits. Inside the professional societies, I can assure you these things are being discussed, and there will be plenty of venom in the process. They will be slow to respond, because they are consulting with their own lawyers. Having backed “the team” to the hilt, they are more than likely not just debating it internally, but finding out if they are exposed legaly as well, and I’m betting some of them are.
The publishers that had the moxy to print “The Hockey Stick Illusion”, “ClimateGate” and “The Great Global Warming Blunder” will be evaluating the profit dollars in printing sequals.
There’s more prosecutors like Kuchwahtisname and more FOIA requests to come, revealing still more shenanigans.
Behind closed doors, scientists with no skin in the game are consulting to their political leadership, and saying quietly that it looks like a scam, smells like a scam, probably is a scam. The politicians fear to come out strongly against the science, so they make other excuses for backing out of Kyoto, because they want to remain politically correct. But Japan got out months ago, Canada is getting out soon, the US was never in, China was always in…provided they didn’t have to do anything, same with Russia…India and Brazil are in…provided someone pays them to do something…which nobody will, the EU is whining that it can’t be just them and the Aussies, and they’re on the brink of financial collapse so they couldn’t spend a penny anyway, and all those “green” projects that suck up cash and produce nothing will soon be on the chopping block. That leaves…Australia. One election ought to finish that.
So no, the MSM isn’t screaming bloody murder…. yet. They are in shock themselves. Someone just blew up their world view, and they have no idea what to do about it.
So yes, there’s plenty of people reading plenty of things, and there are plenty more skeletons to come crawling out of closets, along with law suits and criminal charges.
Alas, history happens in slow motion. We watched the Soviet Union slowly and obviously crumbling from within for decades, but just one hairline crack here and another there in the facade. Then one day, a bunch of folks took sledge hammers and knocked the Berlin Wall down with nary a peep from the USSR.
The dam has not yet burst. It will. You’ll know when it is about to happen by the tell tale sign of all great conspiracies collapsing of their own weight:
They’ll start to turn on each other.
In the meantime, keep the heat on. Make ’em squirm until…they eat each other alive.
And they will.
even CRU guys had plenty of doubts about Mann and his work in the late ’90s, and according to this Phil Jones email (#0497 from May 1999) relations were at a breaking point between Mann and everyone at CRU, both from scientific doubts expressed about Mann’s work and from Mann’s evident interpersonal volatility:
===================================================================
in May 1999, Phil Jones trying to talk Michael Mann down from some hysteria
http://foia2011.org/index.php?id=447
cc: REDACTED,REDACTED,REDACTED, REDACTED
date: Thu, 06 May 1999 17:37:34 +0100
from: Phil Jones
subject: Straight to the Point
to: REDACTED
Mike,
Just back from two weeks away and from discussions with Keith
and Tim and some emails you seem quite pissed off with us
all in CRU. I am somewhat at a loss to understand why. It is
clear from the emails that this relates to the emphasis placed
on a few words/phrases in Keith/Tim’s Science piece. These may not
be fully resolved but the piece comes out tomorrow. I don’t want
to open more wounds but I might by the end of the email.
I’ve not seen the censored email that Ray has mentioned but this
doesn’t, to my way of working, seem to be the way you should be
responding – ie slanging us all off to Science. We are all
trying to work together for the good of the ‘Science’. We have
disagreements – Ray, Malcolm, Keith and me have in the past,
but they get aired and eventually forgotten. We have never
resorted to slanging one another off to a journal ( as in this
case) or in reviewing papers or proposals. You may think Keith
or I have reviewed some of your papers but we haven’t. I’ve
reviewed Ray’s and Malcolm’s – constructively I hope where I
thought something could have been done better. I also know
you’ve reviewed my paper with Gabi very constructively.
So why all the beef now ?
Maybe it started with my Science piece last summer. When asked
to do this it was stressed to that I should discuss how your
Nature paper fitted in to the current issues in
paleoclimatology. This is what I thought I was doing. Julia
Uppenbrink asked me to do the same with your GRL paper but
I was too busy and passed it on to Keith. Again it seems a
very reasoned comment.
I would suspect that you’ve been unhappy about us coming out
with a paper going back 1000 years only a few months after
your Nature paper (back to 1400). Ray knew all about this as
he was one of the reviewers. Then the second Science comment
has come out with a tentative series going back 2000 years.
Both Science pieces give us a chance to discuss issues highly
relevant to the ‘science’, which is what we have both tried to
do.
Anyway that’s enough for now – I’ll see how you’ll respond,
if at all.
There are two things I’m going to say though :
1) Keith didn’t mention in his Science piece but both of us
think that you’re on very dodgy ground with this long-term
decline in temperatures on the 1000 year timescale. What
the real world has done over the last 6000 years and what
it ought to have done given our understandding of Milankovic
forcing are two very different things. I don’t think the
world was much warmer 6000 years ago – in a global sense
compared to the average of the last 1000 years, but this is
my opinion and I may change it given more evidence.
2) The errors don’t include all the possible factors. Even
though the tree-ring chronologies used have robust rbar
statistics for the whole 1000 years ( ie they lose nothing
because core numbers stay high throughout), they have lost
low frequency because of standardization. We’ve all tried
with RCS/very stiff splines/hardly any detrending to keep
this to a minimum, but until we know it is minimal it is
still worth mentioning. It is better we ( I mean all of us
here) put the caveats in ourselves than let others put them
in for us.
3) None of us here are trying to get material into IPCC. I’ve
given you my input through the review of the chapter in
Asheville. I may get a chance to see the whole thing again
at some stage, but I won’t be worried if I don’t.
I can’t think of a good ending, but hoping for a favourable
response, so we can still work together.
Cheers
Phil
Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0)REDACTED
School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0)REDACTED
University of East AngliaREDACTED
NorwichREDACTED Email REDACTED
NR4 7TJ
UK
how and why the CRU guys came to suppress their own doubts and residual integrity to go along for the big ride with Michael Mann may be one of the keys to understanding the ‘inside’ workings of this whole fiasco….
John Shade says:
December 5, 2011 at 8:45 am
“The blatant promotion of the hockey-stick by the IPCC and such as Al Gore led to, as an all but inevitable consequence, the deliberate, profound frightening of children. To fail to protect children from such abuse represents an abdication of a basic adult responsibility. This was and is not ‘scary fairy tale’ level for the children, although the ‘science’ may be at that level. This was and is a level at which damage to their sense of wellbeing and security can be expected, and has indeed been observed – driven by people convinced that the hockey-stick was evidence of imminent catastrophe.”
Very well said. The Greens and the Warmists have violated their moral responsibilities to children as they created propaganda based on lies and half-truths for the purpose of threatening children’s sense of well being. Stalin would have been thrilled by their activities. Destroy children’s sense of well being and you make them and the adults that they will become dependent on the state.
Colin Porter says:
December 5, 2011 at 9:12 am
‘Is that the true state of climate science? “We know with certainty that we know fuck-all.”’
Absolutely. That is the case. You quoted the words of an honest climate scientist. Well, he was honest while emailing his pals.
Alix James says:
December 5, 2011 at 10:31 am
“#3219:
#1
I would add that it is the exceptionally rare dendrochronologist who has ever shown any inclination to understand the fundamental biology of wood formation, either as regulated intrinsically or influenced by extrinsic factors. …It would be a major step forward if dendrochronology could embrace the scientific method.
#2
Rod’s comments are remarkably ignorant and insulting. I suggest that he stick to what he knows best and not claim that he understands dendrochronology and its methods. That way he would not sound so stupid. To suggest that dendrochronology does not embrace the scientific method and is as biased as he claims verges on libel. Of course, Rod has the right to his opinion. It is just a shame that he chooses to expose his ignorance of dendrochronology in such a negative way.”
In item #1 above an eminent professor of botany raised an issue that I bring up often. The Team never had any physical hypotheses that could explain “the fundamental biology of wood formation, either as regulated intrinsically or influenced by extrinsic factors.”
In other words, The Team did not know what environmental factors or internal factors caused a particular kind of tree to change in its growth patterns. When Briffa discovered the decline, he had no idea why it had happened and said so in articles published around the time of the hockey stick.
The big point here is that, because they had no physical hypotheses, there never was empirical support for their proxy records. All they did was find trees in an interesting environment and take measurements. So their proxy series had no empirical grounding whatsoever.
It is very important that The Team was warned about their ignorance by an eminent scientist in the early years of their work. The most sympathetic interpretation that can be put on item #2, which is a response to the eminent scientist, is that The Team did not understand what he said. Unfortunately, to this day, The Team and their minions are mute on the topic of empirical support for their proxy series, except to make the claim that they are empirical. But The Team has not a clue what empirical means in this context.
The Goodwin;
But The Team has not a clue what empirical means in this context.>>>
Excellent deconstruction!
The spectre of a team of dendrochronoligists calling a botanist “stupid” because he tried to point out to them what the known factors were in plant growth tells you just how arrogant “the team” had become at that point. The conclusions were set in stone, and any that dared defy them were “stupid”.
So where does their folly leave them today?
Well, from 1920 to 1960 trees grew faster, and CO2 rose at the same time, so CO2 must cause global warming.
From 1960 to 2010, trees grew slower, and CO2 rose at the same time, so CO2 must cause global warming.
When you stand back and boil it down… that’s what their claim rests upon. Conclusions first, all data collected points to the conclusion.
John Shade says: December 5, 2011 at 8:45 am
Well said.
davidmhoffer says: December 5, 2011 at 7:30 pm
Well said.
Theo Goodwin says: December 5, 2011 at 9:12 pm
Well said.
And others well said. Another classic post with replies. Thank you.
It’s the heads of the scientific institutions that I’m looking to at this time. The kindest thing that can be said about the scientists involved is that some of them believed in their work (at times), there were no engineering standards brought in when the science tipped from pastime to R&D-with-consequences, and they did not see the damage they were doing to Science.
Therefore, leniency in some of the individual sentences. But draconian measures of reform from the leadership in Science. That’s you, Paul Nurse. That’s you, Gerry North. And more. In fact, the best thing you could do would be to stand down and allow someone of the calibre of Jonathan Jones or Judith Curry to take over the reforming process.
davidmhoffer says:
December 5, 2011 at 7:30 pm
David, all well and good. However, when will energy policy be reversed? When will inexpensive energy (the life blood of every economy) be a political goal? When will enviromental concerns be restricted to good science and common sense? The US is still going backwards in this area. Europe has not accepted that clean CO2 emissions are likely a good thing. Inexpensive energy is really the only hope for the worlds economy.
Given that some of these emails clearly show that the Hockey Stick had issues, I wonder if there is going to be another investigation into the Hockey Stick?
There ought to be and it seems like it should be a slam dunk conclusion that it has issues like McIntyre first showed.
I think we need to gather all of the emails that show issues with the Hockey Stick and send them to a MSM reporter along with the story behind the hockey stick. This is definitely a newsworthy story IMO.
Not funny. I’m not a Democrat and have no fondness for John Kerry whatsoever. But his service record is not one of the areas that can legitimately be criticized. The official position of the Veterans of Foreign Wars is that whatever is says on your DD-214 is your service record. John Kerry did serve two tours in Vietnam and was awarded the Silver Star for conspicuous gallantry in combat. End of story.
I served with guys that had been in the “Brown Water Navy” and there is no way, no way at all, that you could have done that and not have been involved in some truly hairy bare knuckles combat. Period. Full Stop.
I forgot rising sea levels —
* Rising seas — inexorable, accelerating seas will drown coastal areas — same slow rise since the LIA, no need to sell your beach house
TomB says:
December 6, 2011 at 6:43 am
APACHEWHOKNOWS says:
December 5, 2011 at 2:59 pm
TomB, please calm yourself. Military records are curious things, and politicians have been known to, well, influence them. As for the Silver Star, please consider this:
http://hnn.us/articles/153.html
My read on this is conflicted. It would seem that so many heroes served in the armed forces, with no accolade, and so many politicians have stolen valor, with no reckoning. Back on subject, please.
ApacheWhoKnows, Yah-te-hey. Sensitive subject, right? Don’t poke the bear, if you don’t like the roar. Back on subject, please.
Grampa.
Jean Parisot says:
December 5, 2011 at 9:33 am
Where does AGW stand — is anything good?
Topic — Then — Now
* Hockeystick — current warming is exceptional — dead, and they knew it
* Glaciers are Melting — graphic example — not due to warming or not happening
* Polar Bears — graphic example — doing well, misused photos
* Hurricanes, Tornados, Drought — graphic examples — not linked to climate change
* MWP — ignored or “not global” — still there
* Surface Temperature Record — what problems (pre-Anthony) — problems don’t matter (BEST)
* Abuse of Statistics — we know what we are doing — internally, no we don’t
* Antarctic ice sheets — accelerated melting — not
* Arctic Ice — ice free by 20xx due to AGW — ice fluctuations due to wind patterns
* CO2 residency — short – long -short – long — ?
* PDO drivers — what PDO — still don’t know
* Cosmic Ray seeding clouds — crazy alternative hypothesis — experimental support
* Sulphate Hypothesis — keep in back pocket — SO2 down due to clean coal?
* The Cause — shhhhh — out of context
* BBC, NYT, etc. — bastions of journalistic integrity — ho ho ho
* “Science” — the settled consensus of … — internally, we don’t know either, but were going to get you fired if you disagree
* Divergence — hide it — caused by something we don’t know, so ignore it
* Missing data — its all on the web — we lost it
* IPCC — impartial review of peer-reviewed literature — biased review by stacked committees of environmental ngo propaganda, mixed in with literature written by committee members
Did I miss anything?
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Very good! A nice compendium of ‘where are we’ on this AGW vs. Reality competition.
The Hockey Stick graph–from what I can tell from Steve’;s posting recently, was not even ‘PEER reviewed’. The 2 days prior to IPCC submission, giving the reviewers no time to digest the portent of the boggus blade on the hockey stick–had they been inclined to do so!
IT was peer reviewed in any traditional sense of the word. (I never had Sex with that woman…..(for clarity sake let me add the next bit)….Ms. Lewinsky!)…..Peer Reviewed.
The Hockey Stick — Peer reviewed Science — Well, neither Peer reviewed nor Science
IPCC authority — 2500 of top scientists — Especially if you count WWF, Greenpeace rain makers! Children writing phd thesises
Hurricanes amplified and multiplied — No increase in either category
KIlamanjaro Snow melt victim of AGW — Er….not quite
Himalayan Snow melt AGW — Er.. Not really
Ocean level rise catastrophic — 1 mm is catastrophic? Er Not really.
Patchy Morals qualified to be head of IPCC — His knowledge of Climate practicallty zero.
Etc, Etc,…. Anyone else like to have a go??
Please, START AND FINISH ONE COGENT THOUGHT AND IDEA before starting another!
.
Prof Wegman did Mann’s statistics properly and provided the corrected chart.
[From Wikipedia, grudgingly: Edward Wegman is a statistician, a statistics professor at George Mason University, and past chair of the National Research Council’s Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics. He holds a Ph.D. in mathematical statistics and is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and a Senior Member of the IEEE. In addition to his work in the field of statistical computing, Wegman is notable for contributing to the 2006 Committee on Energy and Commerce Report investigation which inquired into the Hockey stick controversy.]
Dave Wendt says:
December 5, 2011 at 12:25 pm
John Garrett says:
December 5, 2011 at 8:08 am
Unbelievable— and here I thought Wall Street was the ground zero and citadel of hypocrisy.
I think you are being unjust to Wall Street. They may be many things but they are rarely hypocritical. They’re a bunch of smart guys who are unabashedly in pursuit of making loads of money and who have repeatedly demonstrated that they will do anything they can get away with to do it. When the government forced them to issue millions of mostly worthless subprime mortgages, they did what smart guys do, they found a way to make money off them. In the Congressional hearings in the aftermath of the 2008 debacle, one of the leading government regulators testified that as the derivatives market blossomed to the doom threatening level, they had all the legal authority they needed to bring it under control, but chose not to because their financial models, similar to climatic GCMs, showed a rising trend extending out to the horizon.
I doubt there are many of us who would not be more willing to engage in risky behavior with our money if the government allowed us to keep any profits but promised to cover any of our losses. BTW, for anyone who might want to believe that we are moving closer to resolving the world’s financial mess, I recommend going to the U. S. Debt Clock site
http://www.usdebtclock.org/#
Go to the lower half of the graphic and look at the number under “Currency and Credit Derivatives”. For those who have difficulty dealing with large numbers that’s $761 TRILLION, more than 15 times total global GDP. When the next cascade of defaults occurs there won’t be anything close to enough money in the whole wide wonderful world to stop it.
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Pyramid scheme about to collapse: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/707568901000000-how-and-why-banks-increased-total-outstanding-derivatives-record-107-trillion-6?page=1
Government bond scam by banks,
http://www.financialsense.com/contributors/rob-kirby/the-extinction-of-the-bond-vigilantes
“What this all means folks is that the much ballyhooed “flight to quality” and rush to buy U.S. Government bonds is really an elaborate hoax–ENGINEERED in the bowels of the Federal Reserve and executed on the trading desks of their proxies; the likes of Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, B of A, Citibank and Morgan Stanley by creating ARTIFICIAL SCARCITY for U.S. Government debt.”
I wonder of the pigs in Animal Farm ever went to such trouble to obfuscate the stats.
If the farm animals had better education and access to information, they wouldnt have been so easily led into the ‘re-adjustment’ of farm animal rules. The Cause of course, is more important than anything else, “You don’t want to see Jones Back!”