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.
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.