The Neo Paleo Twitter war of Mann -vs- D'Arrigo

It just goes to show that you need to keep your Witze about you 😉
(Sorry, really sorry…)

This has all the hallmarks of a small mann snit, headed for a tiff… or even a full blown huff!
“..Promises fireworks at poster session.” Oh Goody! I love fire works, what with the 4th of July coming up and all!

It’s dendro AND it’s a model. Indisputable then.

I still don’t think Dr. Mann has a basic handle on Leibigs Law.
He doesn’t believe that Leibig’s Law should apply to his work — he certainly doesn’t believe that the FOIA applies. Besides, the only handle he’s concerned with is on his hockey stick.

Twitter? Really? Why would anyone pay any attention to the kind of people who snipe at each other on Twitter. Grow up all of you.

braddles says:
June 15, 2012 at 12:38 am
People are trying to rebut and debate scientific papers using 140-character Tweets? What is going on in science? I don’t care who is right, this is insanity.
It’s the logical extension of post-modern science.
Sorry for using “logical” and “post-modern science” in the same sentence…

I do not understand the NEED to “Tweet”. I do not understand how so many otherwise media-savvy persons can so comprehensively beclown themselves whilst “Tweeting”.
Why does this happen with such an exponential increase in self-beclownments? Not only that, but a permanent trail of one’s idiocy will last the human equivalent of “forever”.
Stupid is as stupid does…….

Revenge of the dendros?

Tweets are twiffic if you want to tersely tweak or twit, otherwise twivial.

Science has been reduced to soap opera status. “Tweeting” back and forth? How “manly” is that? Now that I think about it, how “manly” is the “he said, she said” exercise in which we are currently engaged? Think I’ll go chop some wood or, as Willis is inclined to say, “Pound some nails”.

What is the difference between Mann and his tree rings and an old lady and her tea leaves?
Answer: Not much…

For some one who in his own words didn’t want the hockey stick to become the “be all of climate science/ipcc”, Mann is sure defending it and the methodology behind it?

Espen said;
“I don’t think historic records support anything special about 1259. There was a famine in England, but it started in 1257, and was most likely due to bad government, not weather events.
I think the most likely explanation here is that “volcanic forcing” isn’t as simple as modelers want it to be”
I agree with you. Sorry for the length of this post but it is highy relevant to the topic; I had this same conversation a couple of weeks ago in another place with, amongst others, R Gates who used to post regularly here;
As it happens I am writing a article on the period from around 1200 to link up with my study which reconstructed CET back to 1538. I am especially interested in its impact locally and on the nearby uplands of Dartmoor.
. In consequence I have been looking in the archives of the medieval Exeter Cathedral, The Met office and Devon records office and been examining original scrolls dating back to the 13th Century. Consequently what folows is based on actual contemporary observations. Its unedited so hope it makes some sort of narrative sense;
—– —— Exchange started as follows——–
“Having now spent some time looking at evidence on the ground and written documentation in a variety of places I would look askance at science, as recently evolved in the form of ice cores and marine cores, in relation to this statement by the very eminent Jean Grove, an LIA scholar at Cambridge University (who died several years ago) and wrote;
“… marine cores taken off the southeast coast of Greenland showed warm stable conditions between 10th and 13th century followed by cold conditions beginning about 1270 and culminating probably about 1370 and a brief interruption 1370 to 1470 did not involve reversion to the relative stability and warmth of the MWP.”
I can see no empirical evidence for this downturn in 1270, indeed it seemed to contain some of the warmest years in our record. There are very many pieces in the climate jigsaw and I doubt anyone has found them all or knows how to assemble the whole.
tonyb
 R. Gates | May 31, 2012 at 7:35 pm | Reply
Tony,
You said:
“I can see no empirical evidence for this downturn in 1270…”
_____
Of course I would hope you are kidding. There were a series of very large volcanic eruptions around the time of 1250-1300. The cooling affect from the release of those volcanic aerosols would be something for you to consider as potential “empirical” evidence. Ice Core data clearly shows these eruptions as occurring. But I assume you knew all this…see:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16797075
But of course, changes in solar uv output also played role in the LIA, most notably in the later periods. But early on, it seems volcanic aerosols might well have kicked the whole party off to a cool start.
 climatereason | June 1, 2012 at 1:18 pm | Reply
R Gates
Of course I knew that. The written records shows for example the extreme cold caused by Icelandic eruption in the 1700′s but not ones in the period I referenced. That is not to say they didn’t happen, but written evidence to date does not show it. Reliable written evidence trumps ice cores.
tonyb
 Steven Mosher | June 1, 2012 at 1:34 pm |
Funny. how do you calibrate a written record? how do you determine it is ‘reliable’ when reliable means “captures the temperature accurately” faced with a ice core that showed an eruption ( global of course and of the the right size ) and a written record that failed to record cooling, I’d take the physical evidence over the record of humans. face with a contradiction between these two ( an ice core that indicated cooling and a written record that recorded “warmer” ) I’d still take the ice core record.
 Louise | June 1, 2012 at 1:49 pm |
“Reliable written evidence trumps ice cores.”
Translation: “anecdote trumps data”
 ceteris non paribus | June 1, 2012 at 2:06 pm |
”
Reliable written evidence trumps ice cores.
”Card-playing metaphors do not entail that two types of evidence equals a dilemma.
 climatereason | June 2, 2012 at 3:51 am |
Mosh
I suggest you read A F van Engelen/J Buisman/F Unsen of the Royal Met Office de Bilt who describe how you convert non instrunental information by putting them into 11 categories. (see History and Climate’ edited by Briffa/Jones/Ogilvie and Davies)
We have numerous records and are always searching for more, and these can be converted into reasonably accurate temperatures when they can be categorised. My ‘ The long slow thaw’ estimates are pretty close to those from De Bilt as I used this method of classification- despite what you think its not a ‘finger in the air.’
Records I researched from the Medieval Exeter Cathedral included these
1697 Charity payment to poor in severe weather
1702 and 1705 storm damage to church roof
1703 trees blown down in Cathedral Close by storm –December
1740 January ‘£23 to be given to poor in consideration of the severity of the season.’
1783 ‘Extra poor relief in extreme cold’ (due to Iceland volcano?)
I would take stuff written down by people who were there at the time rather than cores which may reflect an event but not its real world effect
Tonyb
 R. Gates | June 2, 2012 at 9:45 am |
Tony,
I’m just not sure where you are actually coming from on this. You wondered about the cause of the cooling in the time frame around 1270-1300– cooling which you admitted to having occurred– and when I pointed out the very solid evidence of a series of large volcanic eruptions in this time frame as documented by ice core data, you suggest “observations trump data”. What observations are you referring to? The Vikings were experiencing increasingly foul weather in their Greenland colonies in this same time period– the same time period that the ice cores in Greenland show large volcanic eruptions were cooling the globe.
 climatereason | June 2, 2012 at 10:45 am |
R Gates
No, please read my post, I didn’t say there was cooling around 1270-1300.It was the eminent Jean Grove who said it.
I said I couldn’t find any written evidence to support this (in the area I am talking about) in fact there is continued evidence of habitation on the High moors around here right through this period, and the Cathedral records have this to say;
‘The winter period was defined as the beginning of November to the end of the 11th or 12th weeks of the Christmas term-so winter lasted up to 20 weeks (note subsequent change of calendar) During this period (1279 to 1353) ‘the work force was much reduced in number on account of the weather, (in the winter) though work does not seem to have ever altogether ceased on this account.’
Just because there were signs in a core of a volcanic event around 1270 doesn’t mean this had a real world impact. However, I need to do much more research before I would disagree with someone like Jean Grove.
Louise said (and I assume that you and mosh would agree;
“Translation; anecdote trumps data”
However if the written record(s) were good and the data unsubstantiated, which would you go for? ‘Data’ because it is deemed to be scientific? Ideally both need to corroborate each other
tonyb
 manacker | June 3, 2012 at 8:24 am |
steven, tony b and louise
Today’s (reconstructed) “ice core data” is recorded by human beings.
Past (historical) climate data was recorded by human beings.
If the historical data include crop records, etc., they are “harder data” than the ice core stuff.
To write historical data off as “anecdotal” (and hence inferior in quality) would be asinine. (But I’m sure that’s not what anyone is doing here.)
Max
 gbaikie | June 2, 2012 at 11:20 am | Reply
“Ice cores from both the Arctic and Antarctic record a massive volcanic eruption in around AD 1258. The inter-hemispheric transport of ash and sulphate aerosol suggests a low-latitude explosive eruption, but the volcano responsible is not
known. This is remarkable given estimates of the magnitude of the event, which range up to 5 × 10^14–2 × 10^15 kg”
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/joc.891/pdf
So this unknown eruption was bigger than Tambora.:
Wiki: “With an estimated ejecta volume of 160 km3 (38 cu mi), Tambora’s 1815 outburst was the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history.”
160 km3 or say 320 trillion kg- 3.2 x 10^14 kg.
So unknown eruption is seemingly much bigger than Tambora.
Both these scales of eruption utterly dwarf the ones in more modern times.
Mount Pinatubo[1991]: 1 X 10^13 and Krakatoa[1883] : 4 x10^13
So around AD 1258 an eruption as much as 200 times more ejecta
Pinatubo, or perhaps as small as 10 times more than both of them combined.
 R. Gates | June 2, 2012 at 2:04 pm |
Though there was a very large one around 1258, it wasn’t the only one as Ice core data show several lessor ones, but still larger than Pinatubo.
 climatereason | June 2, 2012 at 3:18 pm |
R Gates
uncertainty in the 1258 record
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/02/the-mysterious-missing-eruption-of-1258-a-d/
tonyb
 climatereason | June 2, 2012 at 3:36 pm |
gbaikie
the paper says it could have been a small eruption that was sulfur rich. The evidence for the severe cold seems to come from tree ring reconstructions.
tonyb
——– End of exchanges——

So let me clarify.
– A massive blip temperatures caused by natural phenomena does not show up in tree-ring proxies.
– Tree ring proxy-based reconstructions show that C20th warming is greater than anything in the past 1,000 years.
– These reconstructions are then fed into climate models that try to estimate the influence of known forcings such as solar, CO2 – and volcanic activities. (See Gergis quote below)
– As the biggest fluctuation in the reconstructions is the C20th uptick, and the only extreme phenomena in C20th not present in others centuries is the increase in greenhouse gas levels, then anthropogenic forcings are the major recent driver of global warming.
Like with the post 1960 decline in tree-ring proxy temperatures, Mann, Fuentes and Rutherford show that tree ring proxies fail to pick up known global temperature fluctuations. By implication, they provide further corroboration for claims that climate models exaggerate the influence of CO2.
From Gergis et al. 2012 abstract

A preliminary assessment of the roles of solar, volcanic, and anthropogenic forcings and natural ocean–atmosphere variability is performed using CSIRO Mk3L model simulations and independent palaeoclimate records. Solar and volcanic forcing does not have a marked influence on reconstructed Australasian temperature variations, which appear to be masked by internal variability.

Here we use a tree-growth model driven by simulated temperature variations to show that the discrepancy between expected and reconstructed temperatures is probably an artefact caused by a reduced sensitivity to cooling in trees that grow near the treeline.
Yeah, it couldn’t be that the model is wrong, now could it?
/sarc
Models all the way down.

If one removes all the “tree-ring reconstructions” “tree-growth model” “driven by simulated temperature variations” “reconstructed temperatures” “probably an artefact” “assessment of synthetic proxy records” “simulated temperature variations” is there anything real left in this paper, or is it merely a mental exercise with no real-world data whatever?

“Skeptical empiricism, the kind exemplified by the carefully thought-out and tested research in science at its best. It differs from plain empiricism” — which is simply the observation of results of the world around us. Put more simply, it is important for us to be skeptical about the world around us and not blindly accept what we believe to be “truths.”
Gerald Holton, professor of physics and the history of science, Harvard University

Handbags at dawn …
Pointman

I await the “War with Posters” with heart aTwitter (sic). Can’t believe PSU is paying Mr. Mann to put out ridiculous tweets calling others names. GET A JOB.

tonyb, thanks, very interesting!

Dr. Mann seams to be a bit of a Twit.

The gist of this is as follows:
Climate models tend to predict, due to their sensitivities, large cooling spikes due to volcanic eruptions. Apparently, the volcanic cooling estimated from tree rings is not nearly as large. Mann has put together a model which suggests that tree rings will underestimate the volcanic response.
This is all very odd, because just the other day at Lucia’s blog, I was discussing paleo reconstructions, and they were defending as representing temp because you could see volcanic cooling episodes clearly. My response was that I found it more problematic for the recons that you could see volcanic eruptions. They aren’t easy to spot in the real observational record. Mann wants to claim volcanic effects are underestimated by current recons? No way, the observations seem to indicate they over estimate.
Consider Krakatoa, the largest volcanic “spike” in terms of “forcing” in the observational record. The cooling seen in the observations? Well it’s quite difficult to tell in the monthly noise, but it doesn’t look like it’s more than about .2 degrees in the monthly (HadCruT 4). I tried to get it to show up better with a 13 month centered average, it ended up being more like .1 degrees at it’s peak. This should get lost in the noise in the reconstructions.

Ms Witze has made a big blunder, because anyone who critices Michael Mann is a anti-science Mann harasser.
You see, acording to Mann, Dr. Micheal Mann is a special type of scientist. He infallible and always right and anyone who attack him must be on the pay of big oil.

fred berple: “What we are seeing in the long sad history of tree ring “science” is nothing more than phrenology. ”
I think you are now being mean to phrenologists to suggest their work is no better than dendrochronology..
🙂

NAP has a very interesting free paper:
http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12192&utm_medium=etmail&utm_source=The%20National%20Academies%20Press&utm_campaign=NAP+mail+6.14.12+-+PDF+Anniversary+(MyNAP)&utm_content=customer&utm_term=B
On Being a Scientist:
A Guide to Responsible Conduct in Research: Third Edition
Perhaps one or two people might read this article and benefit from it.
Bob

David, UK says:
June 15, 2012 at 7:04 am
agreed, it’s a sad spectacle to see prominent (if not so respectable) scientists slagging it out about who might say what in politics. They are supposed to be analyzing a scientific paper, and they are debating the political “context”….

Yes Ric. There are all sort of optimal and suboptimal temps involved around enzyme processes, transportation, etc. The freeze line and the effective temp of that plants ‘anti-freeze’ tend to be at the minimum. Never seen a sample based on a woody plant that could experience non-growth years because of temperatures not rising above freezing certain years. I suspect such a micro-climate would be ‘above’ the tree line.
But if you completely defined it, it would be too long to tweet. 😉

I go over to the topix news place sometimes and read their global warming forum. Ok: me and about 15 other people argue with global warmers all the time. In this kind of propaganda war, it really helps you keep your momentum by doing mostly,
precisely what, an organization would do: find the most lethal point that you know will be there the day the big disasters start pouring down on the other side, and just go back to it, over; and over; and OVER.
See this makes the other side, very very angry and somewhat demoralized; because no matter what they say, that lethal point keeps being there: in their face: and each day’s progress is ruined when the readers come by and see you rebutted them.
For – literally MONTHS now: my stock thing has been to simply say:
“Why didn’t YOU or ANYONE you KNOW
realize the M.A.G.I.C.A.L. T.R.E.E.M.O.M.I.T.U.R.S.
AINT
REEL
HEET
SINT
SURS?
Why didn’t YOU or ANYONE you KNOW
realize about that ***LIGHT, HEAT, WATER, S.I.X.T.E.E.N. nutrient MINERALS in PROPORTION
thing?
WHY?
Becaws yew thawt that ‘tair M.A.G.I.C. HOCKEY STICK MAYuTH
wuz REEL TO.
And YEW THAWT THAY DUN CYFERD DUUMzDAY with it,
from thuH
MAGICAL TREEMOMITURs with the “600 year dataloggers” built in.”
Listen: they have been hating my guts in a big way but there’s more: If I get really torqued, I simply roll out this occasionally:
Ok I roll it out all the time. It stops them in their tracks and I mean like *snap*
“WHY didn’t you REALIZE it was a SCAM when the INFRA RED ASTRONOMY FIELD
never rolled out the PHOTOS of the SKY – 100, 50, 25, 10 years ago, and TODAY-
showing “ALL THIM MAGICAL INFER REDS wat DUN GOT TRAPT up THAIR whur thUH
Presuhdint’s jet’s HEET SINT SUR AINT NO GOOD?”
LoL. What can they say? What could they have EVER said?
Nuttn’ That’s what. A great big “…!DOH!”

Why on Earth do people use TWITter??