Steve McIntyre writes:
Yesterday, I received updated Yamal data (to 2005) from Rashit Hantemirov, together with a cordial cover note. As CA and other readers know, Hantemirov had also promptly sent me data for Hantemirov and Shiyatov in 2002. There are 120 cores in the data set, which comes up to 2005. I’ve calculated a chronology from this information – see below.
How interesting it is that the Hantemirov data in green, diverges from the CRU 2008 “Hockey Team” data in red. No wonder they had to “hide the decline”. The trees lie!
Give it up fellows, your cover’s blown.
I was going to run a larger excerpt of Steve’s latest post, but these two comments on the thread seem to sum it up pretty well.
morebrocato: Posted May 15, 2012 at 9:29 AM
It is utterly fascinating to me to see that Steve McIntyre and the folks at RealClimate have essentially the same rundown of events, yet in the way it’s presented and framed, you’d think they have nothing in common.
You state:
“A URALS regional chronology had been calculated as of April 2006. This was a version of the regional chronology which remained unchanged for many years” and then he ‘concludes’: “The regional chronology has not been a “work in progress” for years.”
But the reply is:
This is a very clear statement that of what he thinks (or rather he thinks he knows). But the reality of science is that finished products do not simply spring out of the first calculation one does.
So it’s absolutely true that this whole ‘late-night-at-the-office’ thing was indeed had by the Briffa et al researchers when the new data came in, and it could be assumed that they did (as you say, “99.9%”) similar calculations (the differences are meaningless) that perhaps showed identical results to your charts posted here and earlier regarding the wider regional Urals-Yamal data set.
So then, when Steve McIntyre sees the results of the ‘insta-reconstruction’ he immediately throws it out there… (one camp says this is the ‘a-ha’ moment of voluminous data, the other says ‘not-so fast’).
People generally try something, find something wrong, try something else, fix one problem, test something else, deal with whatever comes up next, examine the sensitivities, compare with other methods etc. etc. All of those steps contribute to the final product, and it is clear that the work on this reconstruction is indeed ongoing.
So the question then becomes… What gave the original researchers the idea that there’s something wrong with the data, rather than thinking this new data instead challenged their original findings? I suppose we’ll see the flags that were raised when the actual paper comes out in October (which will be a fascinating thing itself), but it could boil down to simply the thought that the presently measured temperature record (and its recent HS shape) should either be matched in the cores, or there may then need steps to be taken to refine the sample in an Esper-ian Mann-er.
In my head, isn’t that the only way they could come up with the idea that it’s going to take ‘too much time’ to go through the data? Otherwise, why do the initial ‘insta-reconstruction’ in the first place if you know in advance the large number of samples are going to need to be filtered.
When it finally comes out, it will be interesting to see if these same methodologies described in that paper were applied to the smaller Yamal area/cores. Perhaps they won’t be because of an ascribed anomalously high value of the site itself in supplying unvarnished windows into regional temperature. But, whatever that site selection methodology is, it still would then have to be applied to the other sites in the regional chronology (though it is on record in at least one place that on site-selection alone the Khyadyta River passes muster).
To continue…
For an analogous example, the idea that the first simulation from a climate model would be a finished product is laughable – regardless of the existence of that original output file. It would obviously be part of the work in progress. Although science is always in a work in progress in some sense, it is punctuated by milestones related to the papers that get published. They stand as the marker of whether a stage has been reached where something can be considered finished (though of course, it is always subject to revision).
My thought here (which I’ve been having a lot lately), is when new science revises and/or corrects old science, there should be some sort of acknowledgement of an incorrect or unadvisable procedure from a previous paper that henceforth should be avoided– included in the new stuff, no? It could/should be easy to say that the original MBH paper relied on substandard data and/or methodologies— particularly when corrected in future ‘milestone’ publications come out, regardless if they ‘confirm’ the original. It would be great for climate science communication if this happened, but unfortunately there’s too much poison in the well because only folks like Steve McIntyre figured out ‘publicly’ what all the climate scientists were conversing about often (in the climategate emails). The same thing could be said about the early Yamal papers.
I guess scientists have at least some right to hold onto their own data until their ready to publish it, and Gavin may be right about the ‘insta-reconstruction’ not constituting ‘adverse results’ that went unreported, but that depends on what comes out as the grand dendro methodology we’re all waiting for. But, in all this, it begs the question of why bother publishing the 2008/9 paper on Yamal? Even the researchers themselves would have known that that paper was near irrelevant compared to what the larger regional chronology would say when they ever got it done. For all the talk that NW Siberian dendrochronologies are such minor players in modern Climate Science, there certainly seems to be quite an apetite for even re-hashing that data occasionally while the Big One is tinkered with back at the lab.
In summary, McIntyre is wrong in his premise, wrong in his interpretation, and wrong in his accusations of malfeasance. – gavin]
It’s like there’s a “Connect the dots” game going on, but at the same time, it’s an M.C. Escher drawing or some optical device…
“A ha! I have found a rabbit! No, you idiot… You’re staring right at a duck”.
To Gavin’s credit, in situations like these it’s best to award the benefit of the doubt to the scientists themselves who are describing their own work/motives. However, they do have a high burden of explanation for their methodology.
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Nosmo King Posted May 15, 2012 at 9:33 AM
It must be really humiliating to “The Team” that they, with their grants and tenured positions, are getting eaten alive by Steve and a few others — the real scientists in the discussion — who work for the love of the truth and not much else.
Keep up the amazing work, Steve! You may not think of it in these terms, but you are doing a huge service to millions of people who, without your noble efforts, might fall victim to the tyranny of what it is the warmists are truly trying to achieve.
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Read Steve McIntyre’s latest here
UPDATE: Richard Baguley of the UK writes to me to advise of this post on Suyts Space, which is quite interesting:
Why Are Dendro Shafts So Straight?
I am perpetually flabbergasted at the outright denial of scientific facts by alarmists. When I comment on alarmist blogs and the conversation turns to dendrochronology, I point out the facts that bristlecone pines have a very limited temperature growth range. I’ll include a picture from the Treering Society(pdf). The reason for this is two fold. One, to demonstrate the very narrow range of the growth in terms of temps and time (the right side of the graphic) and then 2) to give the people with biology backgrounds something to mull over what this graphic is actually stating, which I’ll get to after my main point. (and how it relates to the left side)
We see that we have no lower bounds (or upper for that matter) of the regional temps. So, the sensitivity to temps are constrained within this narrow margin of time and temps. Even if all of the other factors going into tree growth were quantified to such an exacting purpose as to be able to pick up on a few 1/10ths of a degree (they are not) the physical limitations of growth means we would see see a flattening in the plotting of temperatures. No extremes could be plotted because the trees are incapable of divining such a signal.
He goes on to demonstrate how – well worth a read here.
the Team has invented dendrophrenology
vis a vis an award…consider ‘AAAS Award for Scientific Freedom and Responsibility’
http://www.aaas.org/aboutaaas/awards/freedom/
(feel free to nominate)
On behalf of everyone who is red/green colour blind- could you avoid red/green comparisons on the graphs?The data is complete gobbledegook if you are like me. Try something in blue, and keep up the good work!
Ken McMurtrie says:
May 16, 2012 at 2:24 am
Is the planet warming or not? Still awaiting some settled science!
That depends on the time scale you are asking about and the data set you wish to use. Here is the latest as I see it.
With the UAH anomaly for April at 0.295, the average for the first third of the year is (-0.09 -0.112 + 0.108 + 0.295)/4 = 0.05025. If the average stayed this way for the rest of the year, its ranking would be 12th. This compares with the anomaly of 2011 at 0.153 to rank it 9th for that year.
With the RSS anomaly for April at 0.333, the average for the first third of the year is (-0.058 -0.12 + 0.074 + 0.333)/4 = 0.05725. If the average stayed this way for the rest of the year, its ranking would be 21st. This compares with the anomaly of 2011 at 0.147 to rank it 12th for that year.
With the GISS anomaly for April at 0.56, the average for the first third of the year is (0.34 + 0.39 + 0.46 + 0.56)/4 = 0.4375. If the average stayed this way for the rest of the year, its ranking would be 13th. This compares with the anomaly of 2011 at 0.514 to rank it 9th for that year.
With the Hadcrut3 anomaly for March at 0.305, the average for the first three months of the year is 0.239. If the average stayed this way for the rest of the year, its ranking would be 18th. This compares with the anomaly of 2011 at 0.34 to rank it 12th for that year.
With the sea surface anomaly for March at 0.242, the average for the first three months of the year is 0.225. This compares with the anomaly of 2011 at 0.273.
So on all five of the above data sets, for their latest anomaly average, the 2012 average is colder than their 2011 average value.
On all data sets, the different times for a slope that is flat for all practical purposes range from 10 years and 7 months to 15 years and 6 months. Following is the longest period of time (above10 years) where each of the data sets is more or less flat. (For any positive slope, the exponent is no larger than 10^-5, except UAH which was 0.00055083 per year so this one really cannot be considered to be flat.)
1. RSS: since November 1996 or 15 years, 6 months (includes April)
2. HadCrut3: since January 1997 or 15 years, 3months
3. GISS: since March 2001 or 11 years, 2 months (includes April)
4. UAH: since October 2001 or 10 years, 7 months (includes April)
5. Combination of the above 4: since October 2000 or 11 years, 6 months
6. Sea surface temperatures: since January 1997 or 15 years, 3 months
7. Hadcrut4: since December 2000 or 11 years, 5 months (includes April using GISS. See below.)
See the graph below to show it all for #1 to #6.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1997/trend/plot/gistemp/from:2001.16/trend/plot/rss/from:1996.83/trend/plot/wti/from:2000.75/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1997/trend/plot/uah/from:2001.75/trend
For #7: Hadcrut4 only goes to December 2010 so what I did was get the slope of Hadcrut3 from December 2000 to the end of December 2010. Then I got the slope of Hadcrut3 from December 2000 to the present. The DIFFERENCE in slope was that the slope was 0.0055 lower for the total period. The positive slope for Hadcrut4 was 0.0041 from December 2000. So IF Hadcrut4 were totally up to date, I conclude it would show no slope for at least 11 years and 5 months going back to December 2000. (By the way, doing the same thing with GISS gives the same conclusion, but includes April in addition.) See:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2000/to/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2000.9/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2000/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2000.9/to:2011/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2000.9/trend
Hantemirov himself has made a comment on Climate Audit in typical ‘robust’ climate “scientist”style: I thought it was a troll but apparentlythe comment is genuine.
Rashit Hantemirov
Posted May 16, 2012 at 9:01 AM | Permalink | Reply
Steve, I’m horrified by your slipshod work. You did not define what you compare, what dataset used in each case, how data were processed, and what was the reason for that, what limitation there are, what kind of additional information you need to know. Why didn’t you ask me for all the details? You even aren’t ashamed of using information from stolen letters.
Do carelessness, grubbiness, dishonourableness are the
necessary concomitants of your job?
With disrespect…
I recall your interesting post about Liebig’s Law of the Minimum, which I’ve just reread. It followed Steve McIntyre’s initial Yamal discovery and clarified a lot for me, dendrochronolgy being an unfamiliar subject:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/28/a-look-at-treemometers-and-tree-ring-growth/
Yes. The Y axis values are divergent.
From what? What is actually being measured on that axis?
I just tried to post the comment below on Real Climate and it got blocked by the hall monitors. Geez! 🙂
Another commenter said: “Just remember, though. There are valid reasons, perhaps only understood by scientists who are well versed in dendrochronology, for including or excluding particular regional chronologies”
To which I replied (and was blocked): “As a layman, I would have agreed with you 10 years ago. Unfortunately, due to the “climage gate” emails, it is now impossible to bestow that amount of trust in climate scientists. Once they started behaving like activists and politicians, they lost that right.”
@ferd berple – I succumbed to bad judgement and attempted to rebut comment 149 “over there” but was promptly dumped into the hole; which prompted the response you cited above. I was so furious I even screwed up the website name. No more RC for me though; I’ll stick to sites that allow/encourage real debate.
I would really love to have the ammunition of these observations being formally presented in a journal. Perhaps a partnership with an open minded dendro guy and Steve working together?
Publish the results and make the other side defend theirs.
Phil C asked
What is being measured on the Y axis?
The Y axis references dimensionless chronology units centered on 1.0 as a baseline.
And these chronology units are age-adjusted ring widths, because the theory of dendrochronology supposes that tree ring width/density is representative of temperature – hence the apparent graphing of supposed rise and fall of “temperature” demonstrated in the tree chronology over the roughly 2000 years in that graph.
Looks like dogs aren’t the only things that pee on trees.
mikegeo says:
May 16, 2012 at 2:46 pm
You are being too kind!
The Y axis measures ‘something’ – where ‘something’ is the sum of one or all growth variables in any given year that result in a measurable tree ring thickness change from the previous year. The reference line to the Y axis is a ‘calibrated’ (read estimated/assumed) value for temperature caused ‘growth’ change…..
or in simple terms, Y axis refers to some semi-arbitrary and semi-empirically assessed change in tree ring size relative to something that may or not be ‘temperature’ dependent……
or even simpler – a general guesstimate of how a tree may have changed due to temperature in the past….
or – in AGW speak – an excellent temperature proxy, accurate to 1/10th of a degree, that can be cross correlated to almost any fecking thing they want! PMSL
The following posts sparked my reply:
ONE:
sycodon says:
May 16, 2012 at 1:30 pm
I would really love to have the ammunition of these observations being formally presented in a journal. Perhaps a partnership with an open minded dendro guy and Steve working together?
Publish the results and make the other side defend theirs.
TWO:
Rashit Hantemirov says on Climateaudit:
Posted May 16, 2012 at 9:01 AM | Permalink | Reply
Steve, I’m horrified by your slipshod work. You did not define what you compare, what dataset used in each case, how data were processed, and what was the reason for that, what limitation there are, what kind of additional information you need to know. Why didn’t you ask me for all the details? You even aren’t ashamed of using information from stolen letters.
Do carelessness, grubbiness, dishonourableness are the
necessary concomitants of your job?
With disrespect…
_______________
My reply:
When you say publish the results- well it cannot just be just found in graph commentary. Already concerned parties have expressed concerns about McIntyre’s assertions about the proxies. Already there is growing body of disinformation being wrapped around this latest “back to the past”.
Look at above – is this comment worth anything from Hantemirov?
Are all scientists warning the world that the climate we have known for the last two thousand years may change regionally too rapidly for many populations to cope? Is it more important to keep “the hate” directed toward any scientist who dares to tell you an opposing finding?
It is not comfortable. It is not easy. It must be really tough on the older generation thinking when they pass away their legacy will be a very different world: left in a state of collapse for future generations.
Truly this is developing into yet another flash in the pan. A complex science like this is now supposed to prove to those with confirmation bias that it has been a fraud all along.
By all means rest your weary head. Stake your claim on the findings of well eh….tree rings and supposed neat and tidy graphs of hockey sticks that do not exist. Never again we will any catastrophes into the future hurt us because you like the idea graphs do not contain hockey sticks.
Heed the history. Folks. It may not be the same things we may face over the next century. But learn from your past just how sensitive the earth is to climate change over the last two thousand years. It’s all there: dying resources, industrialisation, virus outbreaks, collapse of great nations and dramatic dislocation of populations that ensured.
http://www.eh-resources.org/timeline/timeline_roman.html
We live in a very narrow band of good healthy global climate. But lately there is not a day goes by that niggling worrying signs exist everywhere you look. We have upset the balance. We cannot simply go into the future ignoring what those tree rings of the past are really trying to tell us all.
To quote again……………
“Steve, I’m horrified by your slipshod work.”……………. “You did not define what you compare, what dataset used in each case, how data were processed, and what was the reason for that, what limitation there are, what kind of additional information you need to know. Why didn’t you ask me for all the details?”
And that my friends is what this is REALLY all about.
Why did you not ask for ALL the details? Why?
Lets get beyond confirmation bias.
If anyone is a late comer to this topic and you just don’t really “get it all” in this topic, try reading Lucia’s post on cherry picking… Tricking Yourself into Cherry Picking on the Blackboard and the article on Tallbloke’s TalkShop, here… Hey! Whassup Ya-mal-feasant pseudo-scientists?, thanks to Roger and especially Lucy Skywalker in a great in-depth comparison. After reading those two I finally understand this entire mess Steve McIntyre has meticulously deciphered in dendroclimatology without too much pain! 😉
Lucia describes in code Steve’s first discover long ago how the Hockey Stick was created and within the methodology how a hockey stick will pop out using simple random noise.
Lucy shows how, tree sample by tree sample, how this mess all narrowed down to one single tree, YAD061, it being the one sample that should have been tossed out if any were to toss out at all. Any intelligent scientist can see that. Really, NONE should have been excluded. That is cherry-picking (see Lucia’s article).
Thanks all, this post and those two put it all together, for me anyway.
Steve, I think this Ross guy is a troll that usually haunts Jo Nova’s site.
rossbrisbane says:
“… lately there is not a day goes by that niggling worrying signs exist everywhere you look. We have upset the balance. We cannot simply go into the future ignoring what those tree rings of the past are really trying to tell us all.”
That is a perfect example of the placebo effect. Ross believes it, so everything he sees confirms his belief. That is ‘confirmation bias’.
Ross says: “It’s all there: dying resources, industrialisation, virus outbreaks, collapse of great nations and dramatic dislocation of populations…” &etc.
Actually, everything is improving. In 1918 there was a terrible virus outbreak. We have seen nothing like it since.
And industrialization has made life immeasurably better for people, while enormously raising the average standard of living. How is that a bad thing?
And ‘collapse of great nations’? Where? History is littered with the remains of great nations. But like everything else, things are getting better now, not worse.
And ‘dramatic dislocations of populations’? Sure, folks are crossing borders for economic reasons. But CO2 has nothing to do with it.
Finally: ‘dying resources’. What does that mean?? There are more oil reserves now than ever before. When the free market is allowed to operate, all needs are provided for. There are plenty of resources today, more than ever before.
Only Malthusian Luddites believe the things that rossbrisbane is worrying himself sick over. There are no problems that cannot be easily handled. Life is an endless series of problems, but we are made to be able to handle them.
It’s all about attitude; if you think you can handle the problems, then you can. But if you believe you can’t handle the problems, then you can’t. You’re either a ‘Can-Do’ guy, or you’re a ‘we can’t do it’ person. For guys like rossbrisbane, the glass is always half empty. Folks like that should step aside, and let the Can-Do people handle the job.
I’ve just had a look at data for the tempertature station closest to Yamal with long term data. Salehard is at 67N 67E and Yamal is at 71N 71E and has data from 1883 to the 2011. The observed temperature shows no sign of a ‘hockey stick’ and is much closer to Steve McIntyre’s reconstruction.
http://www.climatedata.info/Discussions/Discussions/opinions.php?id=3283134733594426905
So its the same temperature now as it was in the 1940’s? What does this say about GISS’s graphs? Too bad we didn’t have satelittes back then.
Rossbrisbane, you suffer from just about the worst bout of projectionitis I’ve encountered. It seems to be a depressive disorder, caused by a growing awareness the warmista bubble is collapsing. Look around you, big NGOs moving out of “climate change,” climate scientists talking less and less about thermometers.
Really, the best thing you can do on a temporary basis is dump the dendrochronologists. They were late comers to the game. Dump the treemometers, there so much else at the IPCC! Unless you are a dendro, then I’d advise you to grab every grant you can as fast as possible.
The CAGW crowd says that CO2 is the big player here. Mann’s part has been in mannipulating tree rings (or should I say The One Ring) and sediment corings to say that it’s hotter now than in the past 1000 or so years. Implying the reason is man’s CO2 output.
Hansen’s part has been in predicting that future increases in man’s CO2 output will result in Venus on Earth.
A question: Has anybody tried to match past CO2 levels with Mann’s Weather Tree Channeling? For example, carbon dating has been around for awhile now. Have any of these trees been carbon dated? Do the carbon dating data bases have or give some indication of past CO2 levels? If so, do past CO2 levels back up or refute Mann’s leveling of the Medieval Warm Period and The Little Ice Age?
A follow up to my question about carbon dating: Can the individual rings be carbon “dated”? Not so much to get the “date” but an idea of the CO2 levels? It might be expensive but it would certainly be cheaper than betting a few trillion dollars and surrendering personal liberties based on the “CO2 is going to kill us all” hypothesis.
Must be terribly depressing being a warmist. Seeing the world through (snip) coloured glasses. You’d think they would be happy the “end” has been called off. Perhaps there is some benefit to thinking the world is spiralling down.
So I got to thinking about contributions to science and Steve’s blog and where it fits in the grand design, and how it compares to other offerings in the blogosphere, and it came to me that Steve has a site that is a source of information and not a regurgitation of information as so many are. I’ve seen evidence in posts that say “reblogged here at blahblahblah.com” which is just leeching. And there is more than that which separates Steve’s blog from blahblahbla.com – the tone at CA approaches neutral. Missing is the huzzah of fan boys, the enraptured chorus of “me too!” adulation, and jolly kindred showing of thumbs down. Science happens there. Cold, hard, science. Thumping of chests happens elsewhere because it is actively discouraged at CA and tabulated elsewhere. Red meat is served elsewhere – go there and you will find it and thump your chest in response and be tabulated. And while his blog is better for it – or lack of it, it will never be the most popular climate blog, because he discourages spiking the ball, and people that are drooling like Pavlov’s dog want to see the spike and need that will go elsewhere and when the time comes, vote for that elsewhere. That it does not happen at http://climateaudit.org is sooo refreshing.
I’m just rambling – somebody has to.
No hockey stick? Ah well, you can’t win Yamal.