Note: I’m reposting this excellent essay from Jo Nova to give it a wide as an audience as possible. Be sure to bookmark her site if you have not already. – Anthony
300,000 dollars and three years to produce a paper that lasted three weeks: Gergis
The paper might have been scientifically invalid, but it was a box-office success. The headlines were everywhere
“1000 years of climate data confirms Australia’s warming” said the press release from University of Melbourne. It was picked up by The Guardian: “Australasia has hottest 60 years in a millennium, scientists find”; The Age and The Australian led with “Warming since 1950 ‘unprecedented’. The story was on ABC 24 and ABC news where Gergis proclaimed:” there are no other warm periods in the last 1000 years that match the warming experienced in Australasia since 1950.” It was all over the ABC including ABC Radio National, and they were “95% certain“! On ABC AM, “the last five decades years in Australia have been the warmest. ” Plus there were pages in Science Alert, Campus Daily Eco news, The Conversation, Real Climate and Think Progress.
Blog review is where the real science gets tested
Skeptics have been looking through the paper, and three weeks after it was published a team at Climate Audit uncovered a problem so significant that the authors announced that this paper is “on hold”. It has been withdrawn from the American Meteorological Society website. Bishop Hill has probably the best summary of what this means, and how it unfolded.
When Steve McIntyre asked for the full data, she refused. Gergis has an activist past which she has recently tried to hide. She was proud to mention in her biography that her data has been requested from 16 nations: So requests from Tunisia, Cuba, and Brazil are OK; but Canada — not so much. Apparently she didn’t appreciate his expertise with statistics and told him to get the data himself from the original authors, and added ” This is commonly referred to as ‘research’. We will not be entertaining any further correspondence on the matter. “
Will any of these media outlets update their news?
(The Uni Melb news feed is here).
On AM, David Karoly raved about how the study was strong because it relied more on observations not modeling (it is getting to them that skeptics keep pointing out they have no empirical evidence), and claimed he had “high confidence” in the results. (Is that the same kind of high confidence he has in future predictions of warming?)
MATTHEW CARNEY: Professor Karoly says the strength of the study is that it’s relied more on direct observations and measurements than climate modelling.
DAVID KAROLY: Nothing is absolutely certain in science but we say with very high confidence because we have repeated the analysis alone for the uncertainties that the warming in the last 50 years is very unusual and cannot, very likely cannot be explained by natural climate variability alone.
How concerned are they with accuracy? Are all these media outlets happy to leave their readers or viewers with the impression that these results are robust, reliable, and strong? In truth, even before this paper was withdrawn, before it was promoted, investigative reporters had plenty to wonder about.
Did any journalist really ask any hard questions to start with?
Let’s not bother to get into the point that the results of crunching the data 3000 different ways means their “confidence” came from models, not from the 27 proxies, most of which didn’t cover the full 1000 years, or the Australian mainland either.
The litany, the message went on and on and on in the media and apart from Adam Morton in The Age, most investigative journalists never thought to ask the question “How much warmer are we now than 1000 years ago” because if they had, Gergis would have had to say “by a tenth of a degree”. (That much eh?) Technically it was 0.09C.
The certainty of Australia being 0.09 of a degree cooler 1000 years ago comes down to observations from a batch of trees in Tasmania and New Zealand. (If we can calculate the regional temperature so accurately that way, why do we bother with a network of 100 thermometers? We could pop a max-min gauge next to those trees and “interpolate” the rest, No?)
Why not skip the thermometers and just go with the trees? They’re accurate to one hundredth of a degree across a continent and sea.
Funding?
Funding apparently ran to $340,ooo but may have been nearly a million dollars (at least that’s what Gergis thought in 2009, I can find no official record of it):
“The project, funded by the Australian Research Council’s Linkage scheme, is worth a total of $950K and will run from mid-2009 to mid-2012″. [Source: Joelle Gergis has deleted her blog. Cached copy here. Webcite copy]
Is this how policies are promoted now? The government finds b-grade activist scientists, funds them to produce papers that may or may not stand the test of …a few weeks, and the media rush to rubber stamp and repeat the story without asking hard questions, and in the end the government gets “third party” policy promotion — seemingly independent endorsement of the purest kind. At $340,000, it’s returned decent value some would say.
———————————————————————-
REFERENCES
Cook, E. R., Buckley, B. M., Palmer, J. G., Fenwick, P., Peterson, M. J., Boswijk, G. and Fowler, A. 2006. Millennia-long tree-ring records from Tasmania and New Zealand: a basis for modelling climate variability and forcing, past, present and future. J. Quaternary Sci., Vol. 21 pp. 689–699. ISSN 0267-8179. [abstract]
J. Gergis, R. Neukom, S.J. Phipps, A.J.E. Gallant, and D.J. Karoly, “Evidence of unusual late 20th century warming from an Australasian temperature reconstruction spanning the last millennium”, Journal of Climate, 2012, pp. 120518103842003-. DOI. [ Paper (PDF)]
ARC Funding: ARC Linkage Project Funding Outcomes
[It’s hard to find the original grants, this is one, which doesn’t add up to $950k could be part of the funding, or extra funding, or perhaps the original offer of $950k didn’t come through?…]
2606 ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES
LP0990151 Dr JL Gergis; Prof DJ Karoly; Prof N Nicholls; A/Prof DS Garden; Prof CS Turney; Dr AM Lorrey; Dr K Braganza; Dr RJ Allan; Miss G Skelly; Ms RJ Moran; Dr K Tan; Mr RA Neville; Dr NR Lomb
Approved Project Title Reconstructing pre-20th century rainfall, temperature and pressure for south-eastern Australia using palaeoclimate, documentary and early weather station data.
2009 : $ 65,000
2010 : $ 117,500
2011 : $ 105,000
2012 : $ 52,500
APA(I) Award(s): 1
APDI Dr JL Gergis, Collaborating/Partner Organisation(s), Australian Bureau of Meteorology, Met Office Hadley Centre, Murray-Darling Basin Commission, Department of Sustainability and Environment,
Melbourne Water , National & State Libraries Australasia, National Library of Australia,
State Library of Victoria , State Library of New South Wales, Powerhouse Museum, Administering Organisation The University of Melbourne,
Summary of Linkage Projects Proposals by Primary Class Code for Funding to Commence in 2009
Updated 13 August 2009 Page 14
Project Summary
South-eastern Australia is in the grip of a severe water crisis due to the worst drought in recorded history and increasing temperatures. This landmark project brings together a team of Australia’s leading climate scientists, water managers and historians with the common goal of reconstructing south-eastern Australia’s climate history. The greatly extended record of annual rainfall and temperature variability will allow better planning for water storage and use, and improved testing of climate model simulations. Improving our understanding of the historical impacts of climate extremes on society will assist with planning for life in a hotter and drier future.
Thanks to Geoff Derrick for tadvice.
The dependent variable problem is well recognized in other fields. In climate science, temperature is the independent variable and tree rings are the dependent variable.
Climate science selects only those cases (trees) where the dependent variable correlates with the independent variable. Substitute “climate science” for “comparative politics” in the paper below:
How the Cases You Choose Affect the Answers You Get:
http://cooley.libarts.wsu.edu/schwartj/pdf/Geddes1.pdf
This is not to say that studies of cases selected on the dependent variable have no place in comparative politics. They are ideal for digging into the details of how phenomena come about and for developing insights. They identify plausible causal variables. They bring to light anomalies that current theories cannot accommodate. In so doing, they contribute to building and revising theories. By themselves, however, they cannot test the theories they propose and, hence, cannot contribute to the accumulation of theoretical knowledge (compare Achen and SnidaI1989). To develop and test theories, one must select cases in a way that does not undermine the logic of explanation.
If we want to begin accumulating a body of theoretical knowledge in comparative politics, we need to change the conventions governing the kinds of evidence we regard as theoretically relevant. Speculative arguments based on cases selected on the dependent variable have a long and distinguished history in the subfield, and they will continue to be important as generators of
insights and hypotheses. For arguments with knowledge-building pretensions,however, more rigorous standards of evidence are essential.
Que Blammo?
==========
ThinkingScientist says:
Or perhaps journalists could ask her how she could make such sweeping statements about the climate over 1,000 years without a single proxy in the study actually being on the Australian land mass.
Especially given that Tasmania and South Island (NZ) are entirely South of Australia. Higher latitude tends to imply cooler.
Ninderthana says:
June 10, 2012 at 5:32 am
Anyone who dismisses all tree ring widths as proxies for variations in average temperature is doing so out of pure ignorance. I have to assume that you are intelligent enough to realize that there are cases were tree-ring widths are reasonable proxies for the average air-temperatures. Otherwise, there is little to discuss.
=================
Ninder, mountain hemlock is a product of early snow pack and moisture….that’s the connection between them and the PDO…..not temperature
(It’s not finished but if I waited till it was it would be in the archives section. Still a bit cluncky.)
To the tune of:”Winter Wonderland”
Hockey sticks, are a snappin’.
They don’t tell what’s been happenin’
We’re not buyin’ the fright
They’re desperate tonight
Erasin’ the winter wonderland!
Gone away are old records
Here to stay are new records
Change the old logs
String ‘em along
Erasin’ the winter wonderland!
In the graphing Hansen built a strawman
He said,”As long as CO2 abounds,
“More heat until we’re fri-ed!”
We say, “no, man!
We’ve seen that Michael Mann is just a clown!”
Ninderthana says:
June 10, 2012 at 5:32 am
Anyone who dismisses all tree ring widths as proxies for variations in average temperature is doing so out of pure ignorance. I have to assume that you are intelligent enough to realize that there are cases were tree-ring widths are reasonable proxies for the average air-temperatures. Otherwise, there is little to discuss.
============================================
Ninderthana, I’d be more than happy to read where someone, anyone, has presented a reasonable case where is can be reasonably assumed a tree ring is a proxy for average air temps. State the case, make the case. Simple assumptions of facts which haven’t been shown is the very definition of operating in ignorance. Quit projecting your intentional ignorance and state the case.
James Sexton says:
June 10, 2012 at 11:30 am
Ninderthana, I’d be more than happy to read where someone, anyone, has presented a reasonable case where is can be reasonably assumed a tree ring is a proxy for average air temps..
=================================
I believe it’s called the Briffa Bodge………………………
the Briffa Syndrome rises up once again
[ I miss the good old days of riding miscreants out of town on a rail after thorough tarring and feathering ]
Peter H,
You state that this incident has no impact on the science. Well, maybe, maybe not.
It certainly has no impact in the sense the paper appears to be of poor quality and therefore adds little or nothing to our understanding of the science. But what it does do is open yet another window on how some scientists in climate change go about their work and how the “science” gets reported to the rest of us.
Do incidents like this generate smug comments on WUWT and other blogs? Certainly. And they add nothing to the conversation. So what about you? Do you have anything of value to add or are you going to simply show your own smugness in pointing out that of others?
MikeB says:
June 10, 2012 at 7:26 am
But it appears that credit is also due, Anthony, to your warmist contributor Nick Stokes, who confirmed Steve’s analysis and subsequently led to a withdrawal of the paper. Because when a warmist and a sceptic both agree that a paper is flawed – it is flawed. So credit where credit is due.
*grumble, grumble*
Mike’s right.
Nick Stokes, you’re annoying but you have integrity, and that counts for a lot.
Even assuming the paper’s conclusions don’t change and ignoring the bit about it using less than half of the data sets, I’m still not sure what it tells us. That the last half century is a tenth of a degree C warmer than any time in the past 1000 years? (Plus or minus two tenths of a degree.)
Even if I accept that someone can determine the temperature from a 1000 years ago with that level of accuracy, or ignore that the margin of error is twice that of the predicted value, are we not talking about a difference that is meaningless?
Scottish Sceptic
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/09/jo-nova-chronicles-the-snapping-of-the-gergis-hockey-stick/#comment-1005779
http://www.houseofnames.com/mcintyre-family-crest
Motto: Per ardua
Mark Bofill says:
June 10, 2012 at 8:00 am
Why is it that so many climate scientists are allergic to math and statistics? Seriously, do other fields suffer from this, and we just don’t hear about it? Or are they dishonest; I.E., they can do the math but they know they’re doing it wrong?
What really freaks me out is this. Before the blogosphere, how much B.S. got pumped out unchallenged as scientific fact into the world by similar shoddy methodology?
___________________________________
A heck of a lot more than scientists would want us to know.
There are a lot of stories on scientific misconduct hitting the internet now. For example British Medical Journal Makes Shocking Data Corruption Revelation …”a newly published BMJ survey of almost 2,800 experts in Britain found six per cent of doctors and scientists knew of possible research misconduct at their own institution”…
Or the red wine scandal UConn officials said their internal review found 145 instances over seven years in which Dr. Dipak Das fabricated, falsified and manipulated data…
Or the noted Dutch psychologist, Diederik Stapel: A well-known psychologist in the Netherlands whose work has been published widely in professional journals falsified data and made up entire experiments, an investigating committee has found… committed academic fraud in “several dozen” published papers, many accepted in respected journals and reported in the news media… The scandal, involving about a decade of work, is the latest in a string of embarrassments in a field that critics and statisticians say badly needs to overhaul how it treats research results.
There is even a website dedicated to scientific malfeasance but I didn’t book mark the link.
It seems once a scientist is “seduced to the darkside” it is not just once but become a regular habit. We as a culture have put scientists up on a pedestal and treated them as more than human. We are only now finding out just how human and fallible scientists are.
I have posted my notes and quotations from listening to the 30 min. press briefing conducted by Karoly, Gergis, and Phipps on May 17, 2012. Regardless of what may happen with the Gergis et al (2012) paper I think there are some extraordinary statements here. Both what they do and do not say. For instance, Gergis blandly dismisses any possible issue with reliability of tree rings for temps at this level of (claimed) precision.
Karoly claims that the study’s finding of a 0.09C difference between 13th century and late 20th century temps means there was no MWP at all for Australia:
David Karoly tells journalists that 0.09C difference means there was no Medieval Warm Period for Australia
He seems to be laboring under an assumption that unless a MWP is at temps higher than today’s temps there is no MWP at all?!! He says and/or implies this repeatedly, with emphasis, for the journalists.
One possibility is that this paper was rushed to get it published prior to RIO+20 and/or IPCCv5. I don’t know which, but one should assume that not only do we have a problem with an activist scientist publishing work haphazardly, but we also have the work rushed before its completely finished just to meet an abritrary deadline in order to make it standout at certain conferences.
Obviously, the scientists involved are being activists because a real scientist would not rush a paper just to make a political point or to have it included in certain publications. A real scientist would release it when the paper is finished. That is probably a problem with most papers released in the last few months….and by trying to get the greatest impact before RIO+20 or IPCC they are basically dogging it.
All they had to do was look at the science objectively and come to the conclusions that the data brings us to. End of story. But instead these activists as I will refer to them as released haphazard work as quickly as possible to just flood the market so to speak with trash. Expect more of this until RIO is complete later this month and of course for IPCC the fifth attempt at “coming to a consensus.”
As I have always said, if there was a consensus and the science was settled, why bother wasting money on more science. Just stop funding it and do something right?
Who are they really trying to convince with their political rhetoric?
Upside down: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hp_Ju_vbPro
benfrommo
They definitely had inclusion in AR5 as the goal, but the project has been in the pipeline at least since July 2010 and probably earlier (since Gergis had announced her initial 3-year “SEARCH” funding on her now deleted blog back in 2009. Here’s the announcement about Neukom joining the project to develop the data and statistics:
Neukom joins team of Gergis and Gallant to develop climate reconstruction for IPCC’s AR5
[July 10, 2010]
……
“….[Neukom] is spending time with Joelle Gergis and Ailie Gallant discussing reconstruction methodology and data management to help the SEARCH project develop its long-term climate reconstructions for south-eastern Australia and the broader Australasian region.”
“During his fellowship, Raphael will compile all the currently available high-resolution records from Australasia and South America regions to develop seminal Southern Hemisphere–wide climate reconstructions.”
“Reconstructions of past atmospheric circulation from this less-studied region of the globe will then be compared against climate model data to assess the regional climate variability in different parts of the Southern Hemisphere.”
“Raphael plans to have his results ready in time for incorporation into the next global climate change assessment report of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) due out in 2013.”
Everyone is seeming to buy the story of ‘its just a processing mistake’. But I find it hard to believe that the authors unwittingly crafted a written description of one procedure while plotting the results of another.
If I were a co-author I would be pissed off. Academic misconduct could be investigated here.
Sounds like a good job for Marc Morano. He just needs to start sending out PRs from the stories in Climate Depot. He’s probably already got the media contacts and lists from his work with Senator Inhofe.
/Mr Lynn
“What is your result” “How much warmer are we” isn’t a hard question. It’s a basic question and should have been the first one asked. (perhaps third, after “who are you” and “what are you doing”).
Do these people ever go outside?
In many parts of the world these days, that should be enough to make one skeptical.
@skiphill, interesting.
But I kind of wonder if the original plan had been to release and/or finish the study just for IPCC, but they decided to get it finished early for RIO and cut corners for that reason. Just speculation mind you, but that is really interesting to see how the timing of the study was worked out. Perhaps I am completely off and they had ZERO CLUE and we always know that stupidity is often a larger cause in climate science of bone-headed mistakes then actual malice.
Although for the malice explanation, this is the simplest explanation, so if you think about it I would tend to think either option is equally possible in this case. (this is slightly sarcastic in that I am only half serious…)
I think the reality is probably both after reading such information on this study. They rushed it and were incompetent, which was my original hunch as well. Just another wasted study that should never have been published. But that is neither here nor there, we are used to this kind of thing by now.
Remember folks, in finding mistakes in any of these papers, look to the assumptions made. Everyone of these studies related to CAGW make certain assumptions and begin with the famous weasel words (for instance in this case) of “if we warm, then the following is possible.”
Jo Nova says:June 9, 2012 at 8:44 pm
Last swipe of ?funding and volunteers network not including any other Australian Research Council (ARC) grants Jo
SOUTH EASTERN AUSTRALIAN RECENT CLIMATE HISTORY (SEARCH)
http://climatehistory.com.au/about-us/
About the project
The project is led by researchers from the University of Melbourne’s School of Earth Sciences. The aim is to investigate south-eastern Australia’s climate history using the following sources:
Palaeoclimate records: tree rings, coral, ice cores and cave deposits
Documentary records: newspaper articles, governors’ records and early settler accounts
Early weather data: weather journals, government gazettes and pre-Federation observatories
These records will allow us reconstruct past climate conditions (rainfall, temperature and atmospheric pressure) and see how climate variability has influenced Australian society over time.
The project SEARCH
1. Partners with:
1.1 (Aus) Bureau of Meteorology
1.2 (Aus) Melbourne Water
1.3 (Aus) National Library of Australia
1.4 (Aus) National and State Libraries Australasia http://www.nsla.org.au/memorandum-understanding
1.5 (Aus) Murray Darling Basin Authority
1.6 (New Zealand) National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research Ltd (NIWA) http://www.niwa.co.nz/about-niwa/our-company
1.7 (Aus) State Library New South Wales (NSW)
1.8 (Aus) Powerhouse Museum
1.9 (Aus) Dept Sustainability & Environment
1.10 (UK) UK Met Office
1.11 (Aus) State Library Victoria
1.12 (Aus) Monash University
2. Affiliates with
2.1 Atmospheric Circulation & Reconstruction over Earth (ACRE)
“ACRE is led by a consortium of seven core partners –
1) the Queensland State Government
2) University of Southern Queensland in Australia;
3) Met Office Hadley Centre (MOHC) in the UK;
4) US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL)
5) Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado;
6) The National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) of NOAA
7) University of Giessen in Germany
8) University of Bern in Switzerland”
http://www.met-acre.org/
2.2 Aus2K
Broken link on webpage goes to http://www.pages.unibe.ch/science/2k/aus2k/index.html
But this link available on a google search
http://www.pages-igbp.org/workinggroups/aus2k/people-projects
Aus2k – People/Projects
Wednesday, 12 January 2011 13:30
Group Leader
Joelle Gergis (also group data manager)
Group Members:
Drew Lorrey
Steven Phipps
Raphael Neukom (data manager)
AND
The map and table below provide an overview over all entries in the Aus2k metadatabase
Map: Click the flags on the map to view details of the entry.
Table: Datasets are sorted by the date when they were entered, wich the latest entry on top.
You can search the database by keywords here.
Showing 268 datasets
http://www.pages-igbp.org/workinggroups/aus2k/metadatabase
2.3 PAGES Past Global Changes
http://www.pages.unibe.ch/about/general-overview
2.4 South Eastern Australian Climate Initiative (Phase 1 ended in 209, Phase 2 is a three year $9 million program)
http://www.seaci.org/about.html
3. Supported by
3.1 Australian Research Council (where the grant originated)
4. For Volunteers
4.1 OzDocs Database
http://www.ozdocs.climatehistory.com.au/
OzDocs is an exciting new citizen science project run by a climate research group at the University of Melbourne and we need your help!
Also won a University of Melbourne Vice Chancellor’s Citizen Engagement Award in 2011:
OzDocs – A ‘Citizen Science’ project to uncover Australia’s Climate History
Dr Joelle Gergis (School of Earth Sciences)
Australia’s spectacularly erratic climate influences every aspect of our lives.
Although official weather records kept by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology date back to 1910,
it is possible to extend these records by extracting information from historical records including explorers’ journals, ships’ logs, newspapers and artworks.
The project will tap into historical sources to develop Australia’s first online database of climate information dating back to first European settlement. Volunteers will assist in gathering data from historical documents to upload to an online database.
Partners_:_ National Library of Australia, State Library of Victoria, State Library of New South Wales
http://climatehistory.com.au/2011/10/05/ozdocs-project-receives-engagement-award/
source: http://climatehistory.com.au/about-us/
Background to these Awards:-
STAFF ENGAGEMENT EXCELLENCE AWARDS 2012
The University of Melbourne will be awarding four (4) Staff Engagement Excellence Awards up to the value of $5,000 to reward excellence in engagement projects which furthered the University’s agenda for engagement in the schools, departments and faculties of the University.
The awards recognise engagement projects with external partners that enhanced the University’s teaching and research programs, and provided demonstrable returns to community or partner organisations.
Applications for excellence need to demonstrate links to The University of Melbourne’s teaching and research strategies and indicate how the project addressed social, economic, environmental or cultural issues.
Summaries of winners from the 2011 Staff Engagement Excellence Awards scheme can be viewed at http://www.mepo.unimelb.edu.au
P8/12 http://www.mepo.unimelb.edu.au/files/kt/VCEngagementAwards2011_0.pdf
source: http://www.mepo.unimelb.edu.au/content/pages/vice-chancellors-engagement-awards
http://www.dvc-universityaffairs.unimelb.edu.au/strategic-partnerships
Our engagement objectives
From its many specialities and in the hands of our staff and students, the University of Melbourne’s engagement links stretch out in myriad directions.
Around the corner or around the globe, our partnerships and links with government, business, alumni and community form a core part of our charter.
Our engagement objectives are:
• To develop the standing and practices of the profession
• To foster partnerships to advance research
• To commercialise the University’s intellectual capital
• To enhance students’ readiness for professional life
• To foster partnerships that enhance teaching and learning
• To raise aspirations for tertiary study
• To produce cultural engagements
• To develop better policy and governance
• To foster intellectual discourse and knowledge dissemination
• To meet our responsibility to the greater public good
• To improve the University’s reputation and public standing
Long shot……………..
Citizen Science Alliance
http://www.citizensciencealliance.org/gzexample.html
Another long shot…………….
Welfare (unemployment and disability etc) benefits in Australia allow a component of hours ‘volunteered’/week to maintain receipt of the welfare benefit. (check)
Mods hope the are in order on this.