This will be a top sticky post for a day or two – new stories appear below this one.
In the over 7,000 published stories here on WUWT, I have never used the word “liar” in the headline to refer to CRU and the Yamal affair. That changes with this story.
I’ve always thought that with CRU, simple incompetence is a more likely explanation than malice and/or deception. For example, Phil Jones can’t even plot trends in Excel. In this particular case, I don’t think incompetence is the plausible explanation anymore. As one commenter on CA (Andy) said
“I suspect the cause of all this is an initial small lie, to cover intellectual mistakes, snowballing into a desire not to lose face, exacerbated by greater lies and compounded by group think. “
Given what I’ve witnessed and recalled from the history of the Yamal affair with Steve McIntyre’s latest investigation, I’m now quite comfortable applying the label of “liar” to the CRU regarding their handling of data, of accusations, and of FOIA.
In my opinion, these unscrupulous climate scientists at CRU deserve our scorn, and if UEA had any integrity, they’d be reprimanded and/or shown the door. But as we’ve seen with the handling of the Muir Russell sham “investigation”, key questions to key players weren’t even asked about key points of evidence. For example, Muir Russell didn’t even bother attending the one interview (April 9) in which Jones and Briffa were supposed to be asked about paleoclimate. So UEA/CRU will probably just try to gloss this over with another lie too. – Anthony Watts
McIntyre: Yamal FOI Sheds New Light on Flawed Data
Phil Jones’ first instinct on learning about Climategate was that it was linked to the Yamal controversy that was in the air in the weeks leading up to Climategate. I had speculated that CRU must have done calculations for Yamal along the lines of the regional chronology for Taimyr published in Briffa et al 2008. CRU was offended and issued sweeping denials, but my surmise was confirmed by an email in the Climategate dossier. Unfortunately neither Muir Russell nor Oxburgh investigated the circumstances of the withheld regional chronology, despite my submission drawing attention to this battleground issue.
I subsequently submitted an FOI request for the Yamal-Urals regional chronology and a simple list of sites used in the regional chronology. Both requests were refused by the University of East Anglia. I appealed to the Information Commissioner (ICO).
A week ago, the Information Commissioner notified the University of East Anglia that he would be ruling against them on my longstanding FOI request for the list of sites used in the Yamal-Urals regional chronology referred to in a 2006 Climategate email. East Anglia accordingly sent me a list of the 17 sites used in the Yamal-Urals regional chronology (see here). A decision on the chronology itself is pending. In the absence of the chronology itself, I’ve done an RCS calculation, the results of which do not yield a Hockey Stick.
In today’s post, I’ll also show that important past statements and evidence to Muir Russell by CRU on the topic have been either untruthful or deceptive.
The Relevance of Yamal
The Yamal chronology is relevant both because, since its introduction in 2000, it has been used in virtually all of the supposedly “independent” IPCC multiproxy studies (see an October 2009 discussion here) and because it is particularly influential in contributing an HS-shape to the studies that do not use bristlecones.
IPCC AR4 Box 6.4 showed the eight proxies which have been used the most repetitively (this wasn’t its intent.) Of these eight proxies, Briffa’s Yamal (labelled “NW Russia”) is shown with the biggest HS blade, larger even than Mann’s PC1 (labelled here as “W USA”). See here) and tag yamal.
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Figure 1. Yamal Chronology in IPCC AR4 Box 6.4. Labelled as “NW Russia”
In previous posts, I’ve satirized the “addiction” of paleoclimatologists to bristlecones and Yamal as, respectively, heroin and cocaine for climatologists. (In pharmacological terms, upside-down Tiljander would be, I guess, LSD, as the psychedelic Mann et al 2008 is indifferent as to whether proxies are used upside-down or not (cue Jefferson Airplane‘s insightful critique of Mannian statistics.)
Although Yamal and Polar Urals had been long-standing topics at Climate Audit, they first attracted wide attention in late September 2009, when measurement data became available for the three “regional chronologies” of Briffa et al 2008 (Taimyr-Avam, Tornetrask-Finland and Yamal).
The 2008 Taimyr-Avam and Tornetrask-Finland networks were dramatic expansions of the corresponding networks of Briffa (2000), but the Yamal network, which was already much smaller than the other two networks, remained unchanged. Analysis of the previously unavailable Taimyr data showed that Briffa had added measurement data from several Schweingruber sites into the Taimyr-Avam regional chronology (a point not mentioned in the article itself.) Since there were a number of Schweingruber sites (including Polar Urals) in a similarly sized region around Yamal, it seemed almost certain that CRU would have done a corresponding regional chronology calculation at Yamal.
This raised the obvious question of why. Ross posed the question in a contemporary op ed as follows:
Combining data from different samples would not have been an unusual step. Briffa added data from another Schweingruber site to a different composite, from the Taimyr Peninsula. The additional data were gathered more than 400 km away from the primary site. And in that case the primary site had three or four times as many cores to begin with as the Yamal site. Why did he not fill out the Yamal data with the readily-available data from his own coauthor? Why did Briffa seek out additional data for the already well-represented Taimyr site and not for the inadequate Yamal site?
The question applied not just to the Khadyta River site in the original CA post, but to Polar Urals and other nearby sites. These questions resulted in considerable controversy at the time. CRU protested their innocence and posted a lengthy response on October 29, 2009, denying that they had ever even “considered” use of the Schweingruber Khadyta River site, discussed in contemporary Climate Audit posts. In a submission to Muir Russell, they later denied ever re-appraising their Polar Urals chronology.
The Climategate dossier was released in November 2009, a few weeks after the Yamal controversy. As Fred Pearce observed in The Climate Files, the Climategate dossier begins with Yamal and ends with Yamal. Pearce also observed that the word “Yamal” occurs more often than any other “totem” of the disputes, even more than “hockey stick”. Nearly all Climategate documents with unbleached dates were copied after my Yamal posts and Yamal measurement data dominated the earliest documents.
The Climategate dossier revealed that CRU had, after all, calculated a Yamal-Urals regional chronology as early as April 2006. (CG1 – 684. 1146252894.txt). The present FOI request referred to this email.
==============================================================
Read the entire story at Climate Audit here. It is a MUST READ for anyone who has been following Climategate.
My sincerest congratulations to Steve McIntyre for the perseverance to finally get this issue brought into the sunlight.
UPDATE: New visitors might need a primer for this story –
YAD06 – the Most Influential Tree in the World by Steve McIntyre
Sept. 30, 2009
http://climateaudit.org/2009/09/30/yamal-the-forest-and-the-trees/
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“Warmist” treering proxy temperature evidence is falsified directly by local thermometer records.
– the conclusion of this piece of mine on Yamal, which was posted here thanks to Anthony and Jeff Condon, very shortly before Climategate.That, and its two companion pages, are nice picture-rich introductions/additions to the Yamal story.
And now here’s my poem of yesterday from TT. Think the Three Witches from Macbeth “double double toil and trouble…”
Siberian Weird Sisters Song
Hoxy poxy
Sproxy proxy
Docksy clocksy
Brokesy hockeysticks
Ask us no questions
We’ll tell you no lies
Treering peering
Data fearing
FOIA nearing
Courtly hearing
Ask us no questions
We’ll tell you no lies
Golden fame
Nobel claim
Skeptics to blame
oh shame oh shame
Ask us no questions
We’ll tell you no lies
IPCC
palmy greasy
tricky precis
easy peasy
Ask us no questions
We’ll tell you no lies
Science corrupt
Data obstruct
FOIA no luck
oh dear oh dear
Ask us no questions
We’ll tell you no lies
Poor Tony and Steve! You work so hard with this stuff and yet all the media wants to hear about is who has abandoned the HI next. State Farm is the latest to pull funding, I believe.
All hail Peter Gleick!
This brings science into utter contempt. It’s shameful.
The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee examined various issues following climategate and in march 2010 produced a report entitled “The disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia”.
The report included specific sections on Transparency and Dishonesty.
Under Transparency is the following exchange with Jones:
“Graham Stringer: You are saying that every paper that you have produced, the computer programmes, the weather stations, all the information, the codes, have been available to scientists so that they could test out how good your work was. Is that the case on all the papers you have produced?
Professor Jones: That is not the case.
Graham Stringer: Why is it not?
Professor Jones: Because it has not been standard practice to do that.
Graham Stringer: That takes me back to the original point, that if it is not standard practice how can the science progress?
Professor Jones: Maybe it should be standard practice but it is not standard practice across the subject.”
The Committee concluded that transparency should mean that “scientists should take steps to make available in full their methodological workings, including the computer codes. Data and methodological workings should be provided via the internet. There should be enough information published to allow verification.”
Under Dishonesty the Committee stated:
“Critics of CRU have suggested that Professor Jones’s use of the words “hide the decline” is evidence that he was part of a conspiracy to hide evidence that did not fit his view that recent global warming is predominantly caused by human activity. That he has published papers—including a paper in Nature—dealing with this aspect of the science clearly refutes this allegation. In our view, it was shorthand for the practice of discarding data known to be erroneous. We expect that this is a matter the Scientific Appraisal Panel will address.”
Given the failure of the UEA to provide the data requested in response to Steve McIntyre’s FOIA request until being forced to by the Information Commissioner, it is clear that the UEA are not complying with the Committee’s opinion as agreed by Phil Jones that data, codes and all information needed for verification should be made available as “standard practice”.
The data which has now been obtained and which appears to be evidence of dishonesty calls into question the Committee’s conclusions about the honesty of the CRU whereby they were led to believe that data which didn’t fit the hockey stick/CAGW hypothesis was discarded on the dubious grounds that it was “erroneous“.
The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee should now examine witnesses under oath if possible, especially Jones and Briffa, on the findings of Steve McIntyre in order to establish whether previous testimony to the Committee and other Enquiries was untruthful.
The Committee has a duty to ensure that taxpayer’s money is properly accounted for within their remit. Should they look impartially at these latest developments and find that the CRU/UEA had wilfully distorted scientific results to create a CAGW scenario enabling the CRU to obtain additional, extensive and unjustified research funding, the matter should be referred to the UK police.
The MSM should be all over this story as it threatens to topple the absurd CAGW doomsday predictions and all the self appointed hierophants, politicians and gullible dupes who have worshipped CAGW and poured billions of our money down the CAGW drain.
But sadly I won’t hold my breath……….
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/387/38705.htm#a11
http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-archive/science-technology/
You left out the word malicious. This isn’t science it’s politics; motive is all and stratified.
But there’s wiggle room (for “interpretation”) in those larger lies. On this issue, Steve’s “nailed” them–he’s got them dead to rights. This is a simple, black/white matter that politicians and prosecutors can understand. Many politicians in the UK are secretly skeptical of the climate Cassandras and have been looking for a brush to tar them with. This will do it. (It’s like nailing Al Capone for tax evasion, which was easier to prove than his other offenses.)
Incidentally, in the immediate aftermath of Climategate I argued with Brendan H that more scandalous material would come out and would cause snowballing skepticism. It’s taken longer than I thought, but this is what I had in mind.
Mike Mangan says:
May 7, 2012 at 6:51 am
Guess I’ll just leave a copy of what I left at CA, a comment which I’m sure will be shortly snipped-again.
“Roddy is right about one thing. It doesn’t make any difference. The IPCC does not care. The high falutin’ academies do not care. Andy Revkin does not care. The Team doesn’t care what you say anymore. Your best efforts have led to naught. They operate with impunity. You’re a tiger, but a toothless one.”
Steve McIntyre is capable of many things but is really only interested in counting the angels on the head of a pin. Most people on both sides are like that, participating for the sheer compulsive pleasure of splitting hairs.
—————————————————————————–
Mike Mangan, when you have made one tenth of the contribution that Steve McIntyre has, not only to the integrity of science, but also to educating people about science and statistical analysis through his blog, you will be considerably older than you are now – and hopefully a lot wiser.
Most people who read his blog can never aspire to his level of expertise, but an awful lot of them have learned a great deal from it. And remember, he gives up his own time and gains nothing from it, unlike the overpaid, tenured, pampered, globetrotting incompetents and liars he has exposed.
Daffy Duck has a brief but eloquent expression for my opinion of you, Mr Mangan.
“I’d like to specifically exclude Paul Dennis from any opprobrium attached to UEA and from any hard conclusions directed toward certain scientists of the UEA Climate Research Unit.”
Honest enough to be the leaker of the “Climategate” emails?
BIgCityLib rightly points out how effective Gleick’s activities have been in getting funders to withdraw their support from Heartland.
Why no charges against Gleick?
There are reasonable grounds for both reparative and punitive damages.
re: rogerknights: “But there’s wiggle room (for “interpretation”) in those larger lies.”
As always, that’s exactly the problem, and it’s what allows Nick Stokes to question the ‘lie’. UEA continued to say ‘we didn’t consider it at the time ‘. That doesn’t mean they hadn’t previously done work comparing or combining data sets. Same problem with saying ‘they didn’t have the time’, because well heck they had only done preliminary work between the two sets.
Unless somebody comes up with an e-mail showing that ‘CRU did consider using the wider data set at the time ‘ then there’s no proof they lied. I would say it easily rises to definition of a lie by omission, but of course Nick will say it doesn’t. They’re just so busy, they didn’t have the time to consider more data. Good data analysis is one thing but time is money.
Climate Audit gets to be a bit above layman terms, so let me attempt to summarize. Someone here please correct me if I’m wrong.
The proxies are responsive to things other than temperature. To filter out these other things, Mann et al. weighted the proxies by their match with thermometer records. A strong match is assigned a weight near 1.0, while a very poor match is assigned a weight near zero. The proxy-derived temperatures are multiplied by these weights, added, and averaged. The higher weighted proxies thus dominate the final result.
If the proxies are poor proxies for temperature this method will produce a hockey stick no matter what the past temperature really was. The proxies which best show recent warming will dominate and align to create the blade, while the past temperature anomalies from the proxies where there is no thermometer record to compare to will average out to zero.
However, in the case of Mann et al. the weighting does not bottom out at zero. A proxy that shows cooling where the thermometer record shows warming can receive a negative weight. Thus the temperature derived from that proxy is effectively turned upside down before being added into the final average. That was the case with at least one proxy from the Tiljander series.
drobin9999 says: May 8, 2012 at 6:21 am
Unless somebody comes up with an e-mail showing that ‘CRU did consider using the wider data set at the time ‘ then there’s no proof they lied.
That’s nonsense. Take this example, a kid doesn’t come to school one day. On inquiry they say: “I couldn’t find my shoes”. This could be true … some children may be that daft.
Then the teacher asks: “why didn’t you wear your trainers”.
To which the pupil replies “I didn’t think I could wear trainers”.
This is the situation before the FOI. The UEA were claiming that they didn’t think to use the other data.
But what happens if we then discover the pupil had been seen wearing trainers a few weeks before to school? (without comment from teachers).
Do you then say: they must have forgot they had trainers?
Likewise do we say the UEA had forgot they had data they used in 2006? which they then didn’t use in 2008?
OK, let’s assume they were being honest … did they then behave honestly? Did they admit their mistake when it was pointed out to them or did they pretend it did not happen? Did they constantly change their story, did they suggest those who were questioning them were liars, did they act like someone who did wrong? In all this time, has there been a single plausible explanation? Did they have to be taken kicking and screaming to the FOI commissioner when they gave an explicit commitment to release such information?
Was there an attempt to cover up their actions? Did they e.g. suggest that the paper in question were part of the climategate inquiry, or did they conspire with others to prevent this key paper being examined?
Come on. Fair enough we shouldn’t jump to conclusions, but there comes a point that it would daft not to jump to the obvious conclusion that they lied.
They have been given the time and opportunity to come up with a plausible explanation. They have not, and when all other explanations are excluded, the one that remains is that they lied.
If I may add to Tom R’s explanation, the ‘upside down Tiljander’ proxy refers to the fact that the proxy was derived from lake sediments. It was later discovered by Ms Tiljander, who did the original proxy study, that road and bridge construction early in the past century had overturned the lake sediments.
The lake sediments were corrupted, and completely unusable as a proxy. Ms Tiljander, a postdoc student at the time, informed Dr. Mann of her discovery before he published. Mann used the corrupted Tiljander proxy anyway, because it was essential for producing the hockey stick shape he wanted [Mann later downplayed the importance of the Tiljander proxy. But if it was not important, why would he knowingly use a corrupted proxy?].
The result was what Mann intended: a hockey stick-shape graph, purportedly showing fast accelerating recent temperatures. But when the Tiljander proxy is removed, Mann’s hockey stick disappears.
Michael Mann has once again been deceptive. Mann’08 has been falsified due to his deliberate misuse of the Tiljander proxy. This is not the first time Mann has knowingly misuded data in order to acheive false results. Mann’s original hockey stick chart, used repeatedly by the IPCC, was so filled with errors that Nature was forced to take the rare action of publishing a Corrigendum of MBH99, the basis for the original hockey stick. As a result, the IPCC can no longer publish Mann’s hockey stick chart.
bigcitylib says:
May 8, 2012 at 3:05 am
What an absolutely incredible post.
Smokey says:
May 8, 2012 at 7:30 am
Did Mann not say as well that it didn’t matter which way up his proxies were?
Criticize this thought pattern then: Mann’s entire career (his life’s work and energy and his entire academic and worldwide (fundraising) credibility) are based on his theory of tree-ring growth that:
“An increase/decrease in worldwide temperatures will cause an increase/decrease in tree ring thicknesses” … and so therefore … (if everything else and all other factors are assumed to be the same)
“I can use tree ring thicknesses to back-calculate worldwide average temperatures.”
Further, Mann is determined, fixated, and mesmerized by his theory that:
“An increase in man-released CO2 is driving an increase in worldwide temperatures.”
Can anybody, anywhere, regardless of what their opinions are about CAGW, disagree with those two statements?
If so, then look at two cases:
A. Global Average Temperature (and all other factors!) remain steady, CO2 increases linearly over time since 1950. Tree ring thickness during the growing season increases.
B. CO2 (and all other factors!) remain steady, Global Average Temperature increases linearly over time since 1950. Tree ring thickness during the growing season increases.
How does he separate the influence of CO2 increasing (and causing an increase in tree ring growth by as much as 27%) from temperature increasing over that period? Tree ring widths have increased recently, but how can he tell WHY they increased between CO2 and temperature?
If he has not factored CO2 increases into EVERY recent tree study for EVERY tree specie since 1950, or has over-corrected (or under-corrected) for CO2 increases in growth rates for one or more tree species over that same period, does that not require Mann to “reverse his temperature proxies” to force them to match the recent thermometer record?
For people who want a more accessible explanation of Mann’s statistical parlor tricks, I would suggests Andrew Montford’s book “The Hockey Stick Illusion”. Montford does a good job of detailing how the Yamal and Tiljander tricks work. The reason the Press hasn’t gotten on to is because the math that Mann uses is somewhat sophisticated. Most journalists have simply never encountered math at this level and they are intimidated by it. The short summary is that Mann has invented a variant of a well known statistical tool known as PCA. Mann’s version of PCA has never been reviewed in the statistical literature. McIntyre has demonstrated conclusively that Mannian PCA mines for the presence of hockey stick shapes within the data and then imposes those shapes onto the composite of all data. So if you have thousands of time series (proxies) all showing no trend and you add just one series that has a hockey stick shape to the mix, Mann’s PCA method will output a hockey stick shape as a high order principle component for the entire composite of all proxies. So all Mann needs to do to manufacture hockey sticks from any data is to always include at least one series with a hockey stick shape.
So instead of calling them “scientists”, I suggest “lie-intists”.
I got this from another post.
Aryan Physics Revisited: A Comparison of 1930s German Physics and Global Warming Science Today
by James H. Rust, Professor of Nuclear Engineering (ret.)
I am seeing a lot of posters proclaiming that Mann, Hansen, etc. were ‘peer reviewed’. Who are the peers that reviewed their studies and papers?
Makes me wonder how Hitler would have been treated if he was ‘peer reviewed’?
Not saying the AGW crowd are Nazis, just curious.
grizzlygovfan says:
May 7, 2012 at 8:55 pm
….. The thing is, as Robert Felix has said for some time, long before the ice gets built up we will be fighting in the streets for food. We need serious agricultural and energy resource adaptation going on, even if it is merely a “Little” Ice Age.
____________________________
Oh there is serious agricultural and energy resource adaption going on. The wealthy are shoving the poor off their land at an increasing rate. (ALL resources are tied to land ownership doncha know.) I have been watching this develop with increasing alarm over almost two decades.
WUWT threads:
They had to burn the village to save it from global warming
The ugly battle between rural residents and alternative energy mandates in California
Other References:
A liberal democrat’s presentation at a Tea Party meeting on Agenda 21, the use of Eminent Domain (recent Supreme Court decision allows corporations to use Eminent Domain for forced takings) and zoning for land grabs. My comment listing actual passages from the United Nations that backs up the information in this video – link This video gives the best explanation I have seen of what is going on behind the scenes.
More References
Joannenova: Farmers Fighting for a Fair Go The World Trade Organization Agreement on Ag. and greens are already effecting agriculture in Australia.
Joannenova: EU carbon trading rocked by mass killings… …murders of 23 local farmers who tried to recover land, which they say was illegally sold…. (not to mention a journalist and his partner)
Getting Used to Life Without Food 2011
Barton Biggs: Stock A Safe Haven With Food And Firearms To Protect Against Doomsday Pillagers – BUSINESS INSIDER 2010
Credit Suisse: The Hunt for Land Has Already Started, Farmland investing has gained international attraction over the past couple of years… 2010
Alternative Investment Resource: Rothschild Cashes in by Investing in Farmland 2010
Farm land Grab a collection of articles.
George Soros, Feds Seize Control of America’s Flooded Farmland 2011
US Universities in Africa ‘land grab’: Institutions including Harvard and Vanderbilt reportedly use hedge funds to buy land in deals that may force farmers out. 2011
Pat Frank May 7, 2012 at 7:03 pm —
“For example, Steve McIntyre described Paul refusing to be bullied by the UEA and calling for freer access to data.”
Which Phil Jones had already started to put effort into before Climatgate1. It’s in Nature’s climate blog of August 2009.
Now that its point set match google has been trying to supress this totally; try ” global warming fraud UEA” 0 results
RACookPE’s comment prompted me to note something that is starting to concern me. The world indeed has a major climate related problem. We have many academic institutions, senior academics, governments and otherwise valuable individuals who have been completely consumed by the AGW cult. In addition to which we are about to be swamped by legions of young graduates who were sold a career in “climate change science” on the strength of Mr Gore’s video. Most of these people are not stupid. They have relied on what they thought were impeccable authorities. They were sold a pup. At some point reality will prevail and they will realise they have been had and their “cause” is lost. When an army is defeated in the field as victor you have two options reconciliation or annihilation. But how do we reconcile institutions like the CSIRO or the BOM in Australia. Theses sorts of places were highly regarded and a vital part of our nation yet their credibility has been trashed. Personally I think the CSIRO is a lost cause. Due this mess I think it has less than 50% chance of existing in 10 years. Yet it is not sceptics like me who are going bring them down but those very angry, very hurt and very sad graduates who wasted four years and a lot of money on degrees that people will giggle at (you cannot disguise a diploma when the actual words “Climate Change” are in the title.) These are going to be very unhappy times.
Roger says:
May 8, 2012 at 9:17 am
Now that its point set match google has been trying to supress this totally; try ” global warming fraud UEA” 0 results
——————————
Not that I trust Google the way it carries water for The Cause, but you must have some strange filters on your system; I got 2,540,000 results in 0.30 seconds.
CRU seems to be premeditatedly avoiding the communication of some truths and in the absence of those truths they are purposely creating a fictional narrative that supports the incorrect CAGW presumption of the IPCC leadership.
It looks like more than just lying to me.
John
Ok, maybe it’s just my own ignorance here (if so, someone please enlighten me), but WHY would anyone put any faith at all in ANY tree-ring-based temperature record, no matter how many trees were in the sample, or how widely dispersed they were?
Temperature is far from the only thing that has an effect on tree-ring width. Moisture is at least as important, possibly more important. Rainfall varies dramatically from year to year, and on decadal, centennial, and longer time scales as well. And rivers change course all the time, and some of the water seeps horizontally through the surrounding land, which is why you see trees next to rivers on otherwise tree-less terrains (I wonder if the river near Yamal 06 gradually got closer to the tree over the years, explaining its unusual growth pattern). Then there’s cloud cover (trees need light as well as heat). Nutrient availability (a wild animal taking a leak or a dump next to a particular tree could increase growth for at least a year; what would happen if a GAME TRAIL went right by that tree for a few decades?). And going back for a moment to the meandering of the river, the closer a tree is to a water source, the more likely animals will be to pass near that tree (and leave feces, urine, or rotting fish carcasses behind on top of the roots). There’s volcanic eruptions (combination of light availability and nutrient availability). And especially over the period of time when AGW is supposed to have occurred, there’s CO2 fertilization (we KNOW CO2 has increased in recent years, and we KNOW plants grow better with more CO2, so how can anyone conclusively state that the increase in tree ring width is caused by increased temperature and not increased CO2?)
Or are they looking at more than just the width of the rings? Is there some other property of the rings that can CONCLUSIVELY point to the CAUSE of a ring’s large or small width? And for a given set of values for all these properties of a tree ring, is there ONLY ONE set of environmental variable values that can account for it? Because they certainly don’t know the values of all the other variables that can affect properties of the rings.
And then there’s the fact that 1960 or so, whatever formula they were using to estimate temperatures from tree rings, however they controlled for the other factors, dendroclimatology has COMPLETELY FAILED. (This was the excuse Mike Mann used to explain his “Nature Trick”, AFTER he got exposed for it in ClimateGate I). And noone knows why. So how can they be so sure that whatever has caused it to fail now didn’t happen some time in the past?
On an almost-completely-unrelated note, does anyone know if Yamal 06 is still alive? Because I would be very much interested in obtaining some cuttings of new growth from that tree. I’d like to root those cuttings and grow them and sell them to skeptics as mementos of the global warming hysteria when it’s all over (of course, Anthony and Steve get theirs for free, along with Lord Monckton, and, just out of spite, Gore, Mann, Hansen, and the CRU). I’m hoping the US government (soon to be under the control of saner minds) will buy thousands of them to plant all over the Capitol grounds to remind future lawmakers of the foolishness that was climate alarmism.