He really makes a laughingstock of himself in this feckless piece of disinformation about the Yamal affair. It reeks of desperation. He even manages to use my objections to NCDC using an incomplete, non quality controlled preliminary dataset posted on the web solely to keep volunteers updated of the survey status and for no other purpose, as an “unpublished” work suitable for scientific consumption. NCDC went ahead and used it for a paper anyway, despite my objections. Somehow in the bizarre hockey team entrenched mindset of Gavin, this is comparable to the team’s objections to releasing FOI sought data on Yamal. Note to Gavin – my file was already public!
You’d think a scientist could get this simple fact right.
Gavin writes:
UK FOI legislation (quite sensibly) specifically exempts unpublished work from release provided the results are being prepared for publication. So McIntyre’s appeals have tried to insinuate that no such publication is in progress (which is false) or that the public interest in knowing about a regional tree ring reconstruction from an obscure part of Siberia trumps the obvious interest that academics have in being able to work on projects exclusively prior to publication. This is a hard sell, unless of course one greatly exaggerates the importance of a single proxy record – but who would do that? (Oh yes: YAD06 – the most important tree in the world, The global warming industry is based on one MASSIVE lie etc.). Note that premature public access to unpublished work is something that many people (including Anthony Watts) feel quite strongly about.
Worse, McIntyre has claimed in his appeal that the length of time since the Briffa et al (2008) paper implies that the regional Yamal reconstruction has been suppressed for nefarious motives. But I find it a little rich that the instigator of a multitude of FOI requests, appeals, inquiries, appeals about inquires, FOIs about appeals, inquiries into FOI appeals etc. is now using the CRU’s lack of productivity as a reason to support more FOI releases. This is actually quite funny.
Furthermore, McIntyre is using the fact that Briffa and colleagues responded online to his last deceptive claims about Yamal, to claim that all Yamal-related info must now be placed in the public domain (including, as mentioned above, unpublished reconstructions being prepared for a paper). How this will encourage scientists to be open to real-time discussions with critics is a little puzzling. Mention some partial analysis online, and be hit immediately with a FOI for the rest…?
Our favorite Yamal tracking historian, Andrew Montford explodes Gavins claims at Bishop Hill.
Montford writes:
Gavin Schmidt has issued the official response to the recent excitement over Yamal. I have to say, even on a brief glance through it is a wild piece of writing.
Briffa, as we know, reprocessed data from Hantemirov and Shiyatov in his 2000 paper on Yamal. He used the same data again in his 2008 paper on regional chronologies. Schmidt says:
McIntyre is accusing Briffa of ‘deception’ in stating that he did not ‘consider’ doing a larger more regional reconstruction at that time. However, it is clear from the 2000 paper that the point was to show hemispheric coherence across multiple tree ring records, not to create regional chronologies. Nothing was being ‘deceptively’ hidden and the Yamal curve is only a small part of the paper in any case.
As McIntyre’s article is quite clear that the Yamal regional chronology dates back only to 2006 it can of course not be relevant to the 2000 paper. This is something that he makes quite clear in his article.
One of the purposes of Briffa (2000) was clearly to demonstrate the effect of RCS methodology on the Hantemirov and Shiyatov 2002 dataset. I have no objection to CRU claiming this “purpose” for Briffa (2000).
But, by 2008, this was no longer their “purpose”. Indeed, one doubts whether the editors of Phil Trans B would have accepted a 2008 paper with such a mundane purpose. The actual “purpose” of Briffa et al 2008 is stated quite clearly and was entirely different: it introduced and discussed “regional” chronologies.
Schmidt is therefore engaging in some serious disinformation. Unfortunately, this is not the only occasion. For example, he points out that McIntyre had long ago received “the data” from the Russians who originally collated it.
Full story here: http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2012/5/11/realclimate-on-yamal.html
Gavin should know by now that he can’t get away with this sort of stuff. I wonder what Phil Jones will do next week.
Given the responses to my question, I now ask if anyone here is a teacher, and can asnwer it, please!
“You’d think a scientist could get this simple fact right.” It had never occurred to me that anyone might confuse Gavin Smirk with a scientist.
Is Gavin Schmidt running for Pope-to-be in a religion that venerates Gaia? Arguments abour religion are generally no more useful than religiously rigged software.
“….the public interest in knowing about [just about anything will impact the public should always] trumps the obvious interest that academics have in …[any research that was funded with public money].” If you want to keep your research out of FOIA’s grasp, use your own or private money.
“Gavin should know by now that he can’t get away with this sort of stuff.”
Oh but he does. These guys can literally say anything and get away with it. The more outrageous the claims, the more it’s believed, and the more prestige is accorded. People used to get locked up for lunacy, now they’re offered Op-ed’s in the NYT’s
Yes, it’s this kind of manic and confused writing that won Gavin Schmidt the inaugural “GISS Klimate Kommunications Award” for 2011! Heh!
By the way, was this written during government work hours? Just asking…
(In fact, this is almost as confused as his climate code Model E …)
Phil C says:
May 11, 2012 at 10:22 am
Given the responses to my question, I now ask if anyone here is a teacher,
I’m a teacher
and can asnwer it, please!
Since answering your question would require me to compose a line-by-line deconstruction of Schmidt’s screed (which is what you requested) and does not involve Rotary Wing Aerodynamics (which I teach — you requested a teacher, after all) — no.
Phil C: <Can you repeat the specific “disinformation” or “dumb mistake” one at a time and make this clear?
Given the responses to my question, I now ask if anyone here is a teacher, and can asnwer [sic] it, please!
One at a time.
1. Dr. Schmidt says that a regional analysis is forthcoming. So McIntyre’s appeals have tried to insinuate that no such publication is in progress (which is false)…
2. Dr. Schmidt does not deal with the original claim to the Russell investigation (made twice) that such an analysis had not been considered.
3. Dr. Schmidt objects to anyone raising the question why no reference to the analysis (which had in fact been undertaken) was included in the relevant paper. …McIntyre got the erroneous idea that studies were being done, but were being suppressed if they showed something ‘inconvenient’. Why would anyone get such an idea? Maybe because the authors first denied that the analysis had been undertaken, then claimed that it wasn’t mentioned because they didn’t have time to finish it?
Three examples should be enough. I think most of my third graders could understand this. It’s not exactly on the order of:
1 + 1=2
Therefore e=mc^2
The intervening steps are left for the student to do as an exercise.
: > )
I love the presence of unsung own-goals in Gavin’s piece. Remember the days of “he who must not be mentioned”? When I found WUWT, nothing that reached me on the soft green new-agey spiritual links, or the official religious or scientific links, had the slightest hint of the existence of an underground resistance movement of skeptics.
Now Gavin not only mentions Steve McIntyre, Anthony Watts and Andrew Montford by name, he also supplies hyperlinks. WUWT! WOW!
The oldest villain’s ruse, I have thoroughly learned here, is to point to the accuser who is about to expose the villain’s misdeeds, and pre-emptively accuse the accuser of his own evils – which he does well because he is an expert. Now read Gavin in the mirror:
Steve McIntyreGavin / Briffa is free to do any analysis he wants on any data he can find. But when he ladles his work with unjustified and false accusations of misconduct and deception, he demeans both himself and his contributions. The idea that scientists should be bullied into doing analysesMcIntyreGavin / Briffa wants and delivering the results to him prior to publication out of fear of very public attacks on their integrity is ludicrous.I now find myself sorely confused and questioning my belief system.
The Great and All-Knowing Mann declared this subject “largely irrelevent”.
But now, Gavin Schmidt, an acolyte of The Great and All-Knowing Mann has seen fit to ponificate on a subject that The Great and All-Knowing Mann declared “largely irrelevent”.
Is this questioning The Great and All-Knowing Mann’s ability to determine that which is “largely irrelevent”?
One should be able to have absolute faith that if anyone knew all that was “largely irrelevent” it would be The Great and All-Knowing Mann.
Over at Steve´s blog, -from the original story about “the most influential tree in the world from way back in 2009,- I noticed the very first comment there being spot on:
Posted Sep 30, 2009 at 7:04 PM
by the signature dearieme:
“So one jolly lumberjack could have changed the Earth’s climate”.
I have never encountered another human being who talks so much, yet doesn’t say anything at all. Listening to Gavin Schmidt is like torture. I think I’d rather have a root canal.
Roger says:
May 11, 2012 at 9:19 am
“Good! keep hammering away at this YAMAL story. It will hit mainstream as it’s the ONE most credible item that will bring AGW down because there is now De facto Evidence for deception/fra*d.”
I totally agree that this is proof of fr*ud; and therefore extremely important. What I disagree with is that it will hit mainstream – the MSM is currently sweeping so many developments in the US as well as in the EU under the carpet it must be becoming pretty crowded there. No way in h*ll they’ll report it.
This proves that society would be better off if it paid some unionized researchers not to publish in place of the current paper mill incentive system to turn out misleading, unsupportable drivel among friends in a broken peer review process for joint promotion. One approach would be to require them to publish first in a top journal in the baisc sciences before punching their ticket to publish anywhere else. This top-down gate system in place of a bottom-dwelling volume-is-better system would help for awhile, until they undermined the process at top journals in basic sciences.
Phil C
May 11, 2012 at 10:22 am
Given the responses to my question, I now ask if anyone here is a teacher, and can asnwer it, please!
###
The fact that you were unable to discover the answer for yourself would indicate that you do not have the necessary machinery to benefit from a teacher, no matter how gifted. My guess is that you are just a half trained concern-troll. You sure smell like one. If you are not, I feel sorry for you. Anyway, you wold not like me as a teacher. I’m not nice and would probably hurt you feelings by not recognizing what a special snowflake you are.
Taphonomic says: The Great and All-Knowing Mann declared this subject “largely irrelevent”. But now, Gavin Schmidt, an acolyte of The Great and All-Knowing Mann has seen fit to ponificate on a subject that The Great and All-Knowing Mann declared “largely irrelevent”.
Proxy reconstructions validate models and models validate proxy reconstructions. Both sides of this are required, or else climate science would need to look at raw, unadjusted data.
In climate science this transcendant balancing principle is called Yin and Yin.
I know that only one person, the moderator, will read my posts on RC, but then I’ll share them here when on-topic. Here are my two recent contributions to RC on Gavin’s Yamal Yawn thread. Of course I got boreholed… twice, with not so much as a “hey sailor, can I buy you a cup of coffee.” That came as a huge surprise as you can see in my .sig.
————
@ur momisugly #7 moderater eric said: “What’s at issue here is whether McIntyre is actually interested in science progressing, or merely in stopping it from progressing.”
Wow, that’s creepy! I want to address the meat of this issue, but can’t let this sort of crap go without a response, so I’ll do two posts.
No, McIntyre’s motives are NOT what’s at issue, eric. I’ve seen this kind of crap before, from Scientologists. It’s the old “we’re right, by definition, and anyone who disagrees is an ___SP___ [fill in the blank]” ploy. A little hint for you: this thought-stopping ploy never works for long, and if you keep at it, you’ll end up being thought of as a thug and a cultist, and no one will like you. Furthermore, such feeble attempts to control how people view your opponent(s) are an insult to the noble history of scientific inquiry, a history which should be respected most by people claiming to be scientists.
People who’s scientific work is being criticized should NOT lie in judgement of the internal motivations of the critic. Under that system, corruption would build so fast it would make your head spin. So, let’s give McIntyre the benefit of assuming his motivations to be noble, of wanting to show where a bit of debateable theory has gone astray.
My new RC posting sig:
Weeee! Hey I really like this new ejector slide from “authorized” RC threads to the Bore Hole. 😉
————
and
————
@ur momisugly #7 moderater eric said: “What’s at issue here is whether McIntyre is actually interested in science progressing, or merely in stopping it from progressing.”
No, that not what’s at issue here. What’s at issue is McIntyre’s contention that Briffa has done bad science by discarding the results from a dataset that showed the hockey-stick-less proxy curve, when that sample had more cores, and should have judged to be a preferred sample.
None of Gavin’s dissembling even addresses the meat of this issue. Nor does he explain why Briffa claimed he didn’t have time to finish it’s analysis, when that analysis had been done two years before?
Contrary to Gavin’s assertion, Briffa was NOT simply trying to recreate his 2000 results, he was building new regional reconstructions. The new dataset should have been included. Excluding it looks suspiciously like cherries.
Of course, for those of us tired of being manipulated by shameless propaganda, we’ll PRESUME Briffa did this so the hockey-stick illusion can still be maintained in IPCC v5. Sorry, Gavin, until I hear a better explanation, that’s what I’ll be assuming.
My new RC posting sig:
Weeee! Hey I really like this new ejector slide from “authorized” RC threads to the Bore Hole. 😉
juanslayton:
OK, now we are getting somewhere. Let me just tackle the first point you raise. (I’ll try to get to the others after we’ve cleared this up.)
You quote Gavin Schmidt’s blog post over at Real climate where he writes:
UK FOI legislation (quite sensibly) specifically exempts unpublished work from release provided the results are being prepared for publication. So McIntyre’s appeals have tried to insinuate that no such publication is in progress (which is false) or that the public interest in knowing about a regional tree ring reconstruction from an obscure part of Siberia trumps the obvious interest that academics have in being able to work on projects exclusively prior to publication.
I’ve included the entire sentence, as well as the preceding one, which I think is important context in this case, as what is at issue here is an FOI request.
Is your purpose in raising the above quotation to address the “disinformation” or “dumb mistake” which of the following:
a. UK FOI legislation does NOT exempts unpublished work
b. McIntyre’s was fully aware that a publication is in progress
c. The public interest in knowing about a regional tree ring reconstruction does indeed trumps the interest that academics have in being able to work on projects exclusively prior to publication.
My guess is that you think there’s something wrong with “b” (hint: you italicized it), but I don’t see what’s at issue here. What’s going?
Briffa published his supposed MB1998 results 14 years ago.
So, you are somehow claiming that he STILL “researching” his paper today – 14 years later, when the FOIA requests were uniformly processed years PAST the printing date?
Why, oh why, are CAGW-paid so-called “scientists” permitted, even encouraged, to hide their original data to avoid independent “checks” of their results?
What do they to hide but errors, deliberate errors, deliberate “bad math” techniques that falsify their un-duplicated supposed results. The Mann-Briffa tree list – which was deliberately hidden so their data could not be challenged becomes as real as Rumpelstiltskin’s wooden-tree-rings-into-gold scam.
A fairy tale? Yes. Because NO ONE has duplicated their results. .
Raises Hand
Seems to me, from what my decidedly unscientific mind can tell from reading about all of this, that the entire AGW theory is largely based on tree rings. Or, at the very least, provides the context with which they can evaluate modern temperatures and make statements such as hottest ever, etc.
But it seems that the empirical data is very sparse, a few trees here, a few trees there. Then they pick and choose which trees to uses.
It would seem a trivial exercise to extract core samples from thousands of trees throughout the world. Getting the cores is certainly not rocket science.I also seem to remember from my statistics that sample size is everything, or something like that. The bigger it is, more reliable the results.
I would think it would be in everyone’s interest to mount an effort to collect ten of thousands of core samples from all over the world, take hi-resolution photos of them and have a computer count the rings. Even that process would be fairly straight forward. After that’s it merely a database and statistical exercise.
Am I wrong? Why hasn’t this been done?
Why is Gavin even getting involved?
Since it is Briffa who is in the spotlight, surely he should be responding to what are pretty serious allegations?
Phil C: My guess is that you think there’s something wrong with “b” (hint: you italicized it),
Well, truth is, I italicized it because it was a quote, not for emphasis. I did consider bolding “which is false,” since that is an explicit claim that the material is being held/developed for publication. Were I a legal beagle, I would object that reference is here made to something not admitted in evidence. Has either Dr. Wahl or Dr. Amman ever stated that they plan to publish? If so, maybe there’s a point. If not, then neither you, nor I, nor Mr. McIntyre can be fully aware that a publication is in progress.
What I think is currently going on this political spring [1] will give new meaning to The Immaculate Deception
The term comes from American Football where in 1978, the Oakland Raiders made several fumbles in the last 12 seconds of the game, moving the ball forward each time until they recovered it in the end zone winning the game.
The IPCC-CRU-NOAA team is going to own that term in the near future. The clock is ticking down to Rio+20 where they hope it will be game over. They must get the ball into the end-zone before they finally get penalized for their recent conduct. Getting what you want into AR5 is everything. Fumble the science by adjust temperatures, change the way to plot ice. Publish through pal-review rather than with true peers; delay and contest FOIA on the flimsiest of grounds. Get the ball into the end zone in time, even if mistakes must be admitted later. Deconstruct. Decoy. Delay. Deceive. But Deliver!
I once thought that scheduling Rio+20 four months prior to the American Presidential Election was foolish on the part of the left. Obviously, winning November and Rio+20 would be ideal for the environmentalists and Agenda21. But a heavy push in Rio might hurt the Obama reelection effort. But I must temper that notion with the possibility that the left may be faced with the choice of winning either Rio+20 or November, but not both. Winning Rio+20 and loosing November may be viewed as the better long term strategy.
….
Note [1] with the latest by Gavin, Hansen, Revkin, UEA vs McIntyre, Po-Chedley-Fu-Trenbreth vs Christy-Spencer UAH, Romm, US EPA vs Coal, paleotootology, Tuvalu super-moon hype, NSIDC graph tweaking, Climate Change now a National Security Threat, CRUTEM4, Mann+UVa vs ATI, 10-year Global Change Strategic Plan … and these are only from the first “Ten Days in May”…
This Yamal affair, and the whole hockey stick deception, point to criminal malfeasance. A comment I just did at Real Science http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/05/11/intelligent-life-on-mars suggests that the Mars rover backers, similar to the doomsday cultists, are after funding. I like my comment because it rounds up and uses many appropriate synonyms for the manipulative enviro- / eco-nuts, ecofreaks. An excerpt:
Confirmation bias strikes again.
sycodon says:
May 11, 2012 at 12:24 pm
Raises Hand
Seems to me, from what my decidedly unscientific mind can tell from reading about all of this, that the entire AGW theory is largely based on tree rings…..
____________________
You might want to look at Lucy’s flick graphs. It puts the whole issue up in an easy to understand form. http://www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/Science/Images/ice-HS/noaa_gisp2_icecore_anim_adj.gif