Mann's hockey stick disappears – and CRU's Briffa helps make the MWP live again by pointing out bias in the data

Not only has the Hockey stick disappeared, but so have the Grand Solar Minima and Maxima correlations…

I can hear Rosanne Rosannadanna now: “Never mind.”

Color me happy.

What a news!

If you Halloween was incomplete without some Climate Science Comedy treats…
see “Penn Pied Piper Plays Laureate” for a satirical look at current events….
WARNING…do to the banal nature of current culture, this satire contains gratuitous
use of double-entendre and was processed by equipment previoulsy used on NUTS.
Trick or Treat here…. http://fauxscienceslayer.com/pdf/Penn_Pied_Piper.pdf

Leif, Maunder started at 1645. Graph (b) has 1645 4C colder than now.
Admittedly the cold started around 1600, warmed a bit and then made a big dip back to 8C. But it was cold. Very cold.

Think there’s a chance that the authors are irritated at the glowing attention that Mann and Hansen preen over for publishing nonsense and this is a passive aggressive way of shutting them up and getting back to reality?

Hockey Stick, return to sender:
Hit Me With My Hockey Stick
Hit me, hit me, hit me
Hit me slowly, hit me quick
Hit me, hit me, hit me

Ah…Isn’t this just a temperature reconstruction from one area,,,Northern Sweden? I don’t necessarily see any contradiction whatsoever with the work of Mann et al., which showed that although many individual regions experienced similar warmth to modern warmth sometime in some broadly-defined “Medieval Warm Period”, the warmest times were asynchronous in different regions and, hence, when you looked globally the warmth was not as great as the late 20th century warmth which was not asynchronous.
It helps to understand carefully what someone’s work actually said before jumping to the conclusion that a new piece of work contradicts it!
REPLY: Oh, please. You really are a myopic sorts aren’t you? By your logic then we should ignore Yamal, and the infamous YAD061 sample becuase it is too local. That seemed fine for these scientists purposes before.
The truth is that Mann’s hockey stick is a fabrication, he’s “embellished” it, just like he did his Noble Prize claims, and there are other papers that confirm that the MWP is as warm or warmer than today, such as
Christiansen of the Danish Meteorological Institute and F C Ljungqvist of Stockholm University.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/17/new-paper-confirms-the-climate-was-warmer-1000-years-ago/
Esper et al in the Journal of Global and Planetary Change
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/18/yet-another-paper-demonstrates-warmer-temperatures-1000-years-ago-and-even-2000-years-ago/
But you’ll poo poo those too. because that’s what you do as a defender of the faith….a faith that is now dying a slow sure death. Go ahead spin furiously, because nobody but the faithful believes in the embellished dendro claims of the team anymore.- Anthony

By the way, my research thesis, published and archived in the Oregon State University library, includes such thanks but when my paper was published in a major journal, the citation of the debt I owed was removed by the higher-up laboratory powers-that-be I worked for before it got published. So apparently, my observation about when your lose your honest integrity appears to be valid.

We are talking about Sweden, right?

sunshinehours1 says:
October 28, 2012 at 11:51 am
Leif, Maunder started at 1645. Graph (b) has 1645 4C colder than now.
One should look at graph (c), not the individual years. And some people would say that now is the warmest on record in spite of solar activity being the lowest in a hundred years. But, for true believers, cheery picking always works their way. One way out is to claim that tree-ring data is nonsense, but that also makes nonsense that there was a ‘decline’ to hide.

joeldshore says:
October 28, 2012 at 12:02 pm

It helps to understand carefully what someone’s work actually said before jumping to the conclusion that a new piece of work contradicts it!

You wouldn’t contradict Mann’s work if a hundred… nay, a thousand pieces of work contradicts it, joel. Some people are just stuck.
But then, Mann has every reason to be honest, doesn’t he? Or are you missing the gist of Mann’s suit against Steyn?
Stay stuck if you want while the rest of the world moves on.

The hockey stick is dead! Long live the king of global hoaxes!

Et tu, Briffa.
But that would compare the IPCC to Caesar, who was a great man.

“I don’t necessarily see any contradiction whatsoever with the work of Mann et al., which showed that although many individual regions experienced similar warmth to modern warmth sometime in some broadly-defined “Medieval Warm Period”, the warmest times were asynchronous in different regions and, hence, when you looked globally the warmth was not as great as the late 20th century warmth which was not asynchronous.”
Is this true, that 20th C warming is not asynchronous? I have seen the plots of global anomalies, but not the actual local records for the various continents etc. I DO know there is much controversy over local records, eg the Australian and NZ temp records for the past 100 years. I have done wolfram alpha plots o actual temp records for many countries and find very few cases of upwards trends but I have no idea how accurate those plots are.

Edim says:
October 28, 2012 at 12:37 pm
I see correlations.
Of course you do. True believers always do. For them, everything fits nicely, no matter what the data says.

Steven Mosher says:
October 28, 2012 at 12:57 pm
tallbloke why do you spread this nonsense without even checking.
TB always spreads nonsense, to wit his comments upthread. Best thing is to just ignore it.

Steven Mosher says:
October 28, 2012 at 1:04 pm
Not sure if you are a reviewer or not but the SOD
I’m not. I only try to make sure that the solar data is correct [hard enough with people wanting to cherry pick old, obsolete, invalid ‘data’]. Actual science usually is of minor interest compared to the ’cause’, whatever that might be.

The prospect of going to jail for those deliberately corrupting science is going to do a lot of good for those that have adhered to the scientific method. Unsettled science is real again.

Leif: “One should look at graph (c), not the individual years.”
Ok.
From 1550 to 1750 the vast majority of the temperatures are below 10C. From 1400 to 1550 temperature straddle 10.
Until I see the data I would suggest a .5C drop after 1550 that lasted for 200 years. I am not a believer in tree rings, but think .5C lower sustained over 200 years is not trivial.
That would be the modern equivalent of dropping from 1998 temperatures to 1970s temperatures (the coming ice age time).

WUWT: “The truth is that Mann’s hockey stick is a fabrication, he’s ’embellished’ it, just like he did his Noble Prize claims,”
Careful Anthony, lest ye be subject to the wrath of Mann…
😉

I’m still open to convincing on the value of tree-ring proxies, but don’t forget that even instrumental measurements are really proxies in the strict sense. What they actually measure is the expansion or electrical effects of temperature.
The only difference really is in the control we have over other factors that might affect the readings as we build and calibrate the instruments and filter the output. With tree rings we have no control over other factors when they were “built”. Whether or not we can calibrate or filter for them is, to my mind, still a very open question – to simply say “we can’t” is no better than saying that “the science is settled”.
From the abstract it appears that this is the question that Melvin and Briffa are approaching, and doing so without applying preconceptions to the results (or they would have found another stick in the locker room). Whether or not it ultimately withstands the (no doubt harsh) scrutiny it will receive from certain quarters, it may well mark a turning point back towards real scientific enquiry within the field.
For that, at least, this work should be commended.

Svald says “…. Actual science usually is of minor interest compared to the ’cause’, whatever that might be.”
Right on, Svald! And I support the “cause” of identifying all the-junk-science for the junk that it is!

joeldshore;
I didn’t say this sample can be ignored. I just said it alone does not a global or hemispheric reconstruction make. Neither does Yamal. Can you show me where anyone has claimed it does?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
“Although ostensibly representative of northern Eurasian summer conditions, these data were later scaled using simple linear regression against a mean NH land series to provide estimates of summer temperature over the past 2 kyr (Briffa et al., 2004).”
IPCC AR4 WG1 Ch6 P471

sunshinehours1 says:
October 28, 2012 at 1:16 pm
Until I see the data I would suggest a .5C drop after 1550 that lasted for 200 years. I am not a believer in tree rings, but think .5C lower sustained over 200 years is not trivial.
Perhaps not, but solar activity does not follow curve (c): http://www.leif.org/research/HMF-Briffa.png The green curve is solar activity deduced from cosmic ray proxies of the solar magnetic field as carried out to the Earth by the solar wind.

It’s obvious that Big Oil has gotten to Briffa!
/sarc

“Ball indicates there is a list of likely suspects, insiders, who may well have been the whistle blower and points a finger at Keith Briffa, one of the climate scientists who appeared to be a war with those running the show at the Climate Research Unit.”
For the rest of the article, see:
http://www.skinnymoose.com/bbb/2009/12/23/climategate-hacker-probably-whistleblower/

Question for anybody that might know: Has the data necessary for replication been provided?
Aside from the question as to whether or not trees make good thermometers, the sticking point has, to me, always been the deliberate concealment of data and methodology that appears to undergird modern ‘climate science’. Any time Steve M. has been able to actually get his hands on raw data, he conclusively shows that the published results are utter crap. Any time Anthony is able to compare raw measured temperature data against the ‘adjusted’ published results, he conclusively shows the published results are utter crap. And so on, and so on, and scoobie doobie doo……
To rephrase my question, is this real science?

Me thinks this is partly a “way out” for Briffa, so at least in future he is considered “partly” honest at least….Mann’s case will be destroyed by Steyn and a pandoras box will open..

Anthony Watts wrote:

Look at graph 5c, and you’ll see 20th century warmth matches peaks either side of the year 1000, and that for the TRW chronology 20th century warmth is less than the spike around 1750. This puts 20th century (up to 2006 actually) warmth in the category of just another blip. There’s hockey stick, and the MWP returns, though approximately equal to 20th century warmth rather than being warmer.

Mr. Watts, while you are presenting this new study by Melvin et al. as something that provides results which allegedly refute Mann’s hockey stick you do not tell your audience here that the temperature reconstruction shown in the graph, explicitly mentioned by you here, in the Melvin et al paper is done only for a region of Northern Scandinavia, unlike the temperature reconstruction in Mann et al., (1999), doi: 10.1029/1999GL900070, which was a reconstruction of the Northern Hemispheric temperature. You are not presenting the results of the Melvin et al. paper correctly and you are jumping to conclusions, which are not supported by the new Melvin et al. paper.
The Hockey Stick in Mann et al., (1999) does not preclude the possibility of the existence of a Medieval Warm Period, anyway. The shape of the Hockey stick in this paper is characterized by a long-term cooling trend from warmer Medieval times up to the end of the 19th century, which is followed by a sharp upward movement in the temperature in the 20th century (see Figure 3 in Mann et al., 1999). The Hockey stick in this paper doesn’t even preclude the possibility of a Medieval Warm Period with about equal temperatures as in the 20th century, since the 20th century average temperature still lies within the upper half of the error band of Mann’s Hockey Stick in the part of the reconstruction that covers the Medieval times.

Does anyone other than me also see the large number of rapid temperature rises that are similar to the late 20th century rises attributed to CO2?

I actually have always thought that Briffa, and to a substantial extent Jones as well, have felt quite uncomfortable being considered members of “the hockey team” and having a lot of pressure not to speak their doubts and to toe the party line. There are a few comments in the climategate papers (and elsewhere) that have suggested annoyance at having their “scientific opinion” co-opted by some sort of group effort to defend Mann at all costs because the hockey stick was “the” official empirical basis of CAGW. They’ve also had a lot of pressure on them not to express their own doubts in public.
Yes, David, precisely the letters you refer to more exactly. Also wasn’t there a story about being on a talk show and having their “scientific opinion” defined by the talk show host, where any contrary evidence or guarded observations were edited out? This has been simmering for a LONG time.
Note well that Jones and Briffa’s early climate reconstructions clearly showed the MWP and were far less “hockey stick”-like than Mann’s. Then there was the climategate 1 communication from (was it Bradley?) stating quite clearly that the goal was to “erase the MWP” and the LIA, as with them in place no rational person could be brought to the requisite state of panic — it’s getting as warm as it was 1000 years ago WITHOUT anthropogenic CO_2 — so what’s the beef?
Good heavens. We could actually regress to where climate science is actually science again.
rgb

My friends, I say it again. I believe briffa is FOIA.
Been a fun week reading all the comments 😀

My personal opinion not worth much and based upon nothing other than I have grown a few things, is that tree-ring proxies are indicative of little other than hoe felicitous the local conditions were to the welfare of that particular stand of trees.
As for this study being local to Scandinavia all I know is that climatic, seasonal conditions, year on year are pretty similar from Siberia to the West coast of Ireland with Scandinavia & Siberia bearing the brunt of the low temperatures in winter but having pretty similar summers all over the area. It’s mild & temperate. And I’d say if that’s true of today there is no reason why it won’t be true of the past.
Certainly you can’t accept this as being a reconstruction for the whole of the Northern hemisphere but the more studies like this that can be done honestly perhaps the alarmists will stop trying to dismiss the MWP as fiction.
I welcome that Briffa has done this work though never thought I’d see the day.

Trees grow according to whichever environmental parameter is the limiting one. If there’s enough water, sunlight, and nutrients, then temperature may be the limiting factor, but if (for example) water is scarcer than normal and thus limits growth, the validity of the tree growth as a temperature proxy is going to fail.

I believe it is unfair to cast a stone to Briffa, Jones was his boss and it would have been very difficult for him to go against him and his colleagues, it would have been a social suicide, everybody cannot be Svensmark who passed through very tough time and resisted. The most important point is that he eventually wrote this paper and that the tide seems to change.

zootcadillac says:

Certainly you can’t accept this as being a reconstruction for the whole of the Northern hemisphere but the more studies like this that can be done honestly perhaps the alarmists will stop trying to dismiss the MWP as fiction.

When you talk about “alarmists […] trying to dismiss the MWP as fiction” are you talking about, for example, when Mann et al. said in their original 1000-year reconstruction paper (1999) that

Our reconstruction thus supports the notion of relatively warm hemispheric conditions earlier in the
millennium, while cooling following the 14th century could be viewed as the initial onset of the Little Ice Age sensu lato.

Or are you talking about something else? I agree that there seems to be an issue with fiction here.

Timing of 4 paleo papers suspicious to even the non-cynical.
In the month of October 2102 three papers published showing adverse results versus the AR3 and AR4 endorsed Hockey Stick papers by Mann.

Christiansen of the Danish Meteorological Institute and F C Ljungqvist of Stockholm University.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/17/new-paper-confirms-the-climate-was-warmer-1000-years-ago/
Esper et al in the Journal of Global and Planetary Change. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/18/yet-another-paper-demonstrates-warmer-temperatures-1000-years-ago-and-even-2000-years-ago/
‘Potential bias in ‘updating’ tree-ring chronologies using regional curve standardisation: Re-processing 1500 years of Torneträsk density and ring-width data’ by Thomas M Melvin, Håkan Grudd and Keith R Briffa in the the journal ‘Holocene’ http://hol.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/10/26/0959683612460791.abstract and http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/28/manns-hockey-stick-disappears-and-crus-briffa-helps-make-the-mwp-live-again-by-pointing-out-bias-in-ther-data/

The deadline for submission of papers for potential inclusion to AR5 was July 31 2012.
I assume they were not in the FOD or the SOD? If so is it because they were too late? Is there anecdotal evidence by those involved in authoring the papers of any unusual delays or unusual processes imposed by the journals wrt the reviews and acceptance of those papers that caused them to miss the AR5 deadline for paper submittal?
I contrast the above questions with the CA post on the problematic and unusual circumstances involved in the IPCC keeping the research of Gergis et al (that has results favorable to the results of Mann’s hockey stick papers which AR3 and AR4 endorsed) alive even though there is prima fascia evidence that it missed the July 31 deadline. http://climateaudit.org/2012/10/22/ipcc-check-kites-gergis/#more-17121
John

How long before Briffa has to deny his heretical ways , Mann nether forgives for forgets any member if ‘the Team ‘ crosses him they better watch out.

TBear says:
‘Two scientists, two different results.’
That is actual part of defence , that Manns claims are up for ligament challenged and therefore it is reasonable to suggest he was wrong given there are conflicting views from the ‘experts ‘
Mann’s ego has never allowed that to be the case in the past, he regards himself to be a god like figure incapable of being wrong and and therefore from being fairly challenged.

The difference in this study is that they just presented the data.
They did not “mine” the data for hockey sticks as almost all the other tree-ring/proxy reconstructions do.
As in throw data out if it does not have a hockey stick and even accentuate data if it does have a hockey stick (bristle-cone pines for example).
As in cut the data off and append a completely different series to it (adjusted temperatures).
This is a world of difference that has nothing to do with location but deals with methodology.
Even in the latest FOI releases related to the withdrawn Gergis paper, (see Climate Audit today) the authors note they did not want to use Mann’s method of using undetrended temperature to proxy correlations because this tends to construct “hockey sticks”.

tallbloke says:
October 28, 2012 at 4:18 pm
Steinhilber’s TSI fit’s quite well with Mann08 if you treat it in the same way as I do with my solar proxy for ocean heat content
As you say, fiddle the right way and you can make anything fit.
tallbloke says:
October 28, 2012 at 4:22 pm
By The way Leif, have you seen Steinhilber’s latest paper?
Sure, after having been rejected by other journals, they finally found one that would take it.

Leif Svalgaard says:
October 28, 2012 at 12:56 pm
“True believers always do. For them, everything fits nicely, no matter what the data says.”
And, similarly for True Disbelievers.
The amplitude modulation of temperatures is still incredibly obvious. Physician, heal thyself.

tallbloke says:
October 28, 2012 at 4:56 pm
Which journals rejected their paper, to your knowledge?
Why don’t you ask them?

tallbloke says:
October 28, 2012 at 4:56 pm
“Well naturally, there is a status quo to defend after all. Which journals rejected their paper, to your knowledge?”
I guess it was a journal whose editor thought that Leif Svalgaard is an expert in solar physics and sent the paper to him as a referee. The paper was rejected based on Leif’s biased arguments.
Then the authors sent the paper to another journal and the editor did not thought that Leif was an expert in the topic. And the paper was accepted without problems.
Numerous papers are coming out on this topic. I hope that Anthony realizes that Leif mislead him, and that planetary harmonics is key to understand both solar dynamics and climate change, as my papers strongly suggested.
By the way, a correlation between planetary harmonics and Steinhilber’s TSI was first noted in my paper:
Scafetta N., 2012. Multi-scale harmonic model for solar and climate cyclical variation throughout the Holocene based on Jupiter-Saturn tidal frequencies plus the 11-year solar dynamo cycle. Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 80, 296-311.
And a possible physical mechanism is here
Scafetta N., 2012. Does the Sun work as a nuclear fusion amplifier of planetary tidal forcing? A proposal for a physical mechanism based on the mass-luminosity relation. Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 81-82, 27-40.

I’ve sent this to all BBC environmental correspondents. No replies as yet…

davidmhoffer says:

Your question as worded doesn’t refer to Yamal, it refers to “this sample”.

Well…I guess it is open to interpretation but I meant it to refer to Yamal.
Nonetheless, I don’t think it matters. The IPCC quote refers to Briffa work covering “sites across northern Fennoscandia and northern Siberia”. The current Briffa paper seems to refer only to “the Torneträsk region of northern Sweden”.

joelshore says:
“…the point-of-discussion is the synchronicity of warm events within the Northern Hemisphere on centennial time scales.”
Not really. The point of discussion is your false claim that the MWP was not a global phenomenon. I and others have shown you that it was. The 2nd Law does not allow a major region to remain so anomalously cold or hot for hundreds of years as you sem to believe. The same goes for the LIA, which Mann ±90% erased.
Anyway, thanks for your assertion. I back my comments by posating empirical evidence, and lots of it. You just assert your opinion, or link to other model-based opinions. And do I have to point out once again that the planet does not agree with your “carbon” scare?

Leif Svalgaard says:
October 28, 2012 at 5:42 pm
“Regardless of who rejected the paper, there are almost always several referees, especially with high-quality journals.”
Leif, if an editor send this type of papers to you, that means that the editor himself is biased on the topic. So, also the other referees were poor scientists unfamiliar and possible hostile on this topic.
By the way, my two accepted papers were refereed by 4 people plus the editor and everybody agreed that the papers had to be published and were free of errors.

Nicola Scafetta says:
October 28, 2012 at 5:56 pm
So, also the other referees were poor scientists unfamiliar and possible hostile on this topic.
I know that your definition of a poor scientist is one that is not enthusiastic about your papers…
By the way, my two accepted papers were refereed by 4 people plus the editor and everybody agreed that the papers had to be published and were free of errors.
If you try hard enough and long enough you eventually find a journal that will take your stuff.

D Boehm says:

joelshore says:
“…the point-of-discussion is the synchronicity of warm events within the Northern Hemisphere on centennial time scales.”
Not really. The point of discussion is your false claim that the MWP was not a global phenomenon.

Well then, I am sure you will have no trouble whatsoever pointing to the post where I made that assertion? Here’s a couple that might help you: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/28/manns-hockey-stick-disappears-and-crus-briffa-helps-make-the-mwp-live-again-by-pointing-out-bias-in-ther-data/#comment-1126559 http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/28/manns-hockey-stick-disappears-and-crus-briffa-helps-make-the-mwp-live-again-by-pointing-out-bias-in-ther-data/#comment-1126537 …Or maybe not!

OMG!!
Leif: “I only try to make sure that the solar data is correct”
Says it all..

joelshore,
You are an apologist for Michael Mann. But if your position now is that there was a global MWP and a global LIA, post it here.

joeldshore;
Nonetheless, I don’t think it matters. The IPCC quote refers to Briffa work covering “sites across northern Fennoscandia and northern Siberia”. The current Briffa paper seems to refer only to “the Torneträsk region of northern Sweden”.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I suppose we’re splitting hairs at this point. My understanding is that this data series is a subset of the ones you refer to, which in turn were cited by the IPCC as a proxy for NH temps, just as I pointed out. Now when we consider the larger data set being referenced by the IPCC, in the context of this paper, that statement by the IPCC becomes highly questionable on several grounds.
1. This work shows that the techniques employed in Briffa 2002 and 2004 need to be corrected across the board. In other words, if this paper is correct, then all the other data series in the Fennoscandia and northern Siberia series also need to be corrected. Which in turn means that they will no longer be correlated to the temperature record for the NH and so the IPCC conclusion must be discarded. Or….
2. If none of the other data series need to be corrected (only this one) the effect would be that the Fennoscandia series with the corrected data would no longer correlate to northern Siberia, meaning that the two areas are not sychronised. Since their being synchronised was a large part of the argument that they represented NH temps, this IPCC conclusion would have to be discarded in this case also.
Either way, Briffa et al 2012 pretty much falsifies 2002, 2004, and the IPCC conclusion.

D Boehm says:

You are an apologist for Michael Mann. But if your position now is that there was a global MWP and a global LIA, post it here.

As I’ve pointed out ( http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/28/manns-hockey-stick-disappears-and-crus-briffa-helps-make-the-mwp-live-again-by-pointing-out-bias-in-ther-data/#comment-1126559 ), that is the position of Mann, at least as of his 1999 paper…and I don’t have any reason to believe that he has changed it.
However, it was also his opinion that the Northern hemisphere warmth overall was not as great as in current times and, as I have explained, this seems to be not so much based on any claim that there weren’t areas…maybe even lots of areas…that saw warmth comparable to current warmth sometime during the several hundred year period broadly defined as the MWP. Rather, it is because the warmth in these different regions was not synchronous, which means that when you average over the whole hemisphere, you get a broad, diffuse bump rather than the more dramatic spike we get over the past several decades when most places have warmed with a large degree of synchronicity. This lack of synchronicity was in fact well illustrated by looking at two examples of evidences for the MWP that ColdOldMan linked to: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/28/manns-hockey-stick-disappears-and-crus-briffa-helps-make-the-mwp-live-again-by-pointing-out-bias-in-ther-data/#comment-1126537
That is the very site that claims to be refuting Mann’s claim and yet it gives support for Mann’s argument…Go figure!

S. Geiger says:
October 28, 2012 at 6:45 pm
but these types of arguments should consist of facts and dialog, not mere argument by journal association
Few facts and even less dialog have been brought to bear on this [and would have been OT anyway], but the journal issue is important as different journals have different ‘impact factors’ [often related to the quality of their peer-review process – although some will consider peer-review as mere gate keeping], so authors often ‘walk down the list’ until a friendly journal is found. Of course, in this agenda driven discussion, reason falls by the wayside and discussion eventually degenerates into ad-hom attacks, to wit the various remarks about persons’ expertise and bias, etc.

davidmhoffer says:

Now when we consider the larger data set being referenced by the IPCC, in the context of this paper, that statement by the IPCC becomes highly questionable on several grounds.
…
Either way, Briffa et al 2012 pretty much falsifies 2002, 2004, and the IPCC conclusion.

I think that you are making a lot of assumptions here in regards to how significant the Briffa 2012 result turns out to be. At best, it raise some questions about that earlier work; it does not falsify it.
Also, when you refer to the “IPCC conclusion”, you are referring, as near as I can tell, to one sentence of the IPCC report, which reports what Briffa et al. did but does not seem to offer a strong opinion one way or the other as to whether Briffa et al. are likely correct in their notion that this region can tell us a lot about the whole Northern hemisphere temperature record.

joeldshore says:
October 28, 2012 at 6:24 pm
Nicola Scafetta says:
By the way, my two accepted papers were refereed by 4 people plus the editor and everybody agreed that the papers had to be published and were free of errors.
That’s pretty impressive. Do they give a money-back guarantee? In the journals that I have published in or refereed for, there are no guarantees given or expected from referees as to whether the papers are free of errors. Certainly, the journals ask one to assess validity as best as one can and to find errors as well as one can but they certainly don’t expect referees to determine definitively if the paper is error-free.
– – – – –
That’s EXACTLY what they are supposed to be expected to determine. Many fields have revision rates one FIFTH that of the climatology religion.
The religion where physicists claim they can’t think of a way to check rise of gas-relevant spectra (heat) in the atmosphere. Thay dont no no waye two.
You’re an intellectual invalid who claims on an international forum for atmospheric and earth based electromagnetic energy,
you don’t believe there’s a way for mankind to check whether there is a rise in gas-specific spectra of LIGHT
in the atmosphere.

Thank yew perfesser borehole, for that scintillating outlook on sientz and sients refurEEying.

joelshore says:
“That is the very site that claims to be refuting Mann’s claim and yet it gives support for Mann’s argument…”
Well, the interactive chart certainly doesn’t give very much support to Mann’s position. Most of the items show a global MWP. Not all, but most. I’ve posted that chart at least a half dozen times, and commentators generally agree that it shows a global MWP. It just so happens that you and Mann are not part of the MWP consensus. ☺
But then, you never were part of the true CAGW consensus.

Leif Svalgaard says:
October 28, 2012 at 6:06 pm
“How many referees and editors were there on all yours papers that were rejected?”
Technically speaking, my accepted papers were never rejected. Also if a previous version might have been rejected by a journal, the accepted version has always been a revision.
See, Leif, your way of reasoning, which is filled of logical fallacies, demonstrates only your personal deep rancor toward everybody with whom you disagree. Essentially, you do not have scientific arguments, and use defamation and insinuations. Do not worry, more and more people are realizing who you really are.

You carbon dioxide zombies all sound the same. Like tobacco executives.
“Please raise your right hand….proceed.”
“I buhleev thair is uh.. MAGICAL GAS that… CAINT HAVE IT’S SPECTRAL PROFILE in thuh.. AT-MUS’-FEAR checked, and that the MAGICAL GAS might only be LOOKABLE AT with uh… HOCKIE STICK statistic that MAKES HOCKEY STICKS but is REAL MATH.”

joeldshore “than the more dramatic spike we get over the past several decades when most places have warmed with a large degree of synchronicity.”
Except for the 30% of the world that has cooled. And the large number of airports etc whose only warming is UHI.
Remember, the post 1980 warming may all be about clean air legislation removing a large amount of SO2 from the atmosphere.
However, since proxies are not thermometers and thermometers are not proxies, why not compare proxies to proxies?
Looking at the modern proxy record in the above graph, 1934, 1960 and 1980 are as warm as 2002 and all are a lot warmer than 1998.
1934ish in the graphs appears to be the warmest year in both proxies. By far.
Do you agree?

sunshinehours1 says:
October 28, 2012 at 8:34 pm
1934ish is really 1936 now that I’ve looked at it closer.
Perhaps you are overlooking 2003 or so…

Please, could someone tell me which TSI values should be used? WoodForTrees uses “PMOD composite TSI monthly average”:
ftp://ftp.pmodwrc.ch/pub/data/irradiance/composite/
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/pmod/from:1979/mean:13/normalise/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1979/mean:13/normalise
If the cycles of that are supposed to somehow match the cycles in temperature, I sure don’t see it.
NOAA provides three different updating sets:

1.) Composite Total Solar Irradiance database 1978-present, compiled by C. Frohlich and J. Lean
2.) ACRIM Composite TSI Time Series 1978-present, compiled by R. Willson
3.) SORCE (Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment) 2003-present, compiled by G. Rottman

The Frohlich and Lean version incorporates the ACRIM data. The World Radiation Center is referenced, the start years match, leading me to believe this might be the “PMOD composite” WFT uses. The “readme” at the address given by WFT also references Frohlich and Lean.
However, with further looking, I find the F&L database accessible from NOAA has nothing newer than 2003.
NOAA says to check the ACRIM site for up-to-date info, where I can’t find anything newer than November 2011.
And I can’t find the file WFT says it uses where it said it got it from. And March 2011 is the newest data WFT has.
On the WUWT Solar Reference page, SOURCE is referenced (with the erroneous extra “U”), but that dataset only goes from 2003. Although I could try my luck with their annual Historical TSI Reconstruction which starts at 1610. (Does the xxxx.5 indicate it’s the center of that year, or it goes from July that year to end of June next year, or what?)
Dr. Svalgaard provides a link to the PMOD data, but that file is no longer there. This file looks like the most current one, ends at July 3, 2012.
(Note to Leif: PMOD link on your Download data page has an extra slash on the end.)
So which TSI values should be used, and where do I get them?

kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
October 28, 2012 at 9:08 pm
So which TSI values should be used, and where do I get them?
Last year it was finally officially realized that PMOD has uncorrected degradation so that the values have an artificial downward trend and that there is no observational evidence that the minima are different: Slides 31 and 33 of http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/news/2011ScienceMeeting/docs/presentations/1g_Schmutz_SORCE_13.9.11.pdf “Observed data do not support a measureable TSI trend between the minima in 1996 and 2008”
Something I have shown some time ago, e.g. http://www.leif.org/research/PMOD%20TSI-SOHO%20keyhole%20effect-degradation%20over%20time.pdf which the observers have finally agreed to.
If you want my best guess [based on the reconstructed sunspot number] you can get it here:
http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-Guess.xls
The values for the Maunder Minimum are, of course, pure speculation.

Leif: “Perhaps you are overlooking 2003 or so…”
If it was 2003, they wouldn’t have cut the top of the graph off. Therefore, logically it has to be 1936.

sunshinehours1 says:
October 28, 2012 at 10:55 pm
If it was 2003, they wouldn’t have cut the top of the graph off. Therefore, logically it has to be 1936.
I fail to see the ‘logic’. The top is cut off, so you can’t tell if it was 1936 or 2003.

tallbloke says:
October 28, 2012 at 11:41 pm
This is what I said about treemometers: […] So, pretty tenuous.
Yet you claim that they ‘fit nicely’ with your model. Nice confirmation bias there, or perhaps just ‘forked tongue’.

Mann has said that the localized MWP meant that their was a negative modulating effect in the tropics, which was LaNina like, and suggested similar thing in response to global warming.
That’s some powerful handwavium he’s got there. Rather like Trenberth’s heat locked up in the oceans; and the magic effect of aerosols; and the way polar amplification is not going to affect Antarctica as much after all, and …
It’s all post hoc ergo propter hoc of the worst sort. “Just so” reasoning that would be laughed at if an undergraduate produced it, but is apparently de rigueur in the world of climate science.
The simplest explanation, which Mann will never admit, is that the MWP wasn’t localised at all.

I recall Briffa saying at the height of the Yamal Hoo Ha that he was still working on a “robust’ methodology and that ” time would tell” whether he was right or not (something like that).
Strikes me as an honest bloke trying to get it right.

richardscourtney says: ” For example, growth or death (with falling) of a nearby tree may alter available sunlight.”
And if it doesn’t, can the tree in your backyard tell about the temp on Midway / Pacific? Two trees 10feet apart, have different tree rings, 2] Agronomist and lumberjack can tell you that: the thickness of the rings on an individual tree depend on 101 different effects. Agronomist and lumberjacks work for leaving / climatologist use tree-rings; because they con for leaving
The trees are lying Richo, same like you. The ”tree-rings theory” should be shoved up the Mann’s ring!!!

I notice that the reconstruction takes a big dip in the last half of the 16th century. That fits very well with historic records for Europe, where 1540 was possibly the warmest summer of the millennium – warmer than CAGW poster child 2003 – but where the last decades of that century had severely cold weather.

“Look at graph 5c, and you’ll see 20th century warmth matches peaks either side of the year 1000”
You don’t need to go back 1000y, Just look at late 19th c. Just as warm as present.
This warm period was suppressed by Hadley “bias corrections” which removed two thirds of the inconvenient downward trend.
This plot shows Met Office Hadely adjustments remove about 0.3 C from the downward trend between 1860 and 1920.
http://i44.tinypic.com/149o081.png
Also note the 0.1 C offset in the AMO plot which aligns the two data sets thereafter. This again points out a glitch in the “bias corrections” . This was the point at which Hadley changes from one correction adjustment to another.
All these “corrections” are largely guesswork in terms of duration, timing and magnitude of the effects. Hadley’s John Kennedy agreed that they were based on hypothesis. He explains the adjustments of this period here: http://judithcurry.com/2012/03/15/on-the-adjustments-to-the-hadsst3-data-set-2/#comment-186646

P. Solar says: “You don’t need to go back 1000y, Just look at late 19th c. Just as warm as present. ”
oops, I misread the dates, peak that was as warm as current period was late 18th c. , not late 19th (which was close but less warm than today.)

joeldshore,
browse through some of these references to papers showing the Medieval Warm Period in many parts of the southern hemisphere such as Antarctica, southern Africa, South America, Australia, New Zealand.
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php
Here is a handy map
http://www.co2science.org/data/timemap/mwpmap.html

More and more it’s looking like Briffa was the leak behind the Climategate emails. Probably he didn’t like being bullied by Mann and is now geting his revenge, aka playing the long game.

TimTheToolMan wrote in
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/28/manns-hockey-stick-disappears-and-crus-briffa-helps-make-the-mwp-live-again-by-pointing-out-bias-in-ther-data/#comment-1126841
in reply to my comment in
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/28/manns-hockey-stick-disappears-and-crus-briffa-helps-make-the-mwp-live-again-by-pointing-out-bias-in-ther-data/#comment-1126477

Jan P Perlwitz says: assorted stuff implying Melvin is not useful whereas Mann is useful.

I didn’t say or imply anything like what you assert here. You are reading something into my comment that isn’t in there.

Come on Jan, neither is representative of global temperatures. Or even Northern Hemisphere temperatures for that matter. Whats the point of saying one is better than the other, especially when the one you prefer was authored by a man who is known to be biased towards confirming AGW.

What is the point of a straw man argument? You aren’t replying here to anything I said. You are replying to something else.
Besides that, pointing to an alleged bias of Mann as an argument against the Mann et al., (1999) study, is a logical fallacy. It’s an ad hominem argument. You can’t logically or empirically refute the results of a scientific study, of any scientific study, by applying ad hominem arguments against the authors of the study.

The Melvin study is another piece in the puzzle. Nothing more. There was a time when AGW believers would argue there were no conflicting papers to AGW but you dont hear that as often anymore do you.

To the contrary. Sets of statements that are generally accepted among climate scientists today, with the exception of a small minority, as a valid explanation regarding the diagnostic and the attribution of the global warming that is happening, were much more controversial in the field, let’s say 20 years ago, since there has been an accumulation of more and more scientific evidence in support of those statements over the time period from back then to today.

Simon says:
“Did anyone else notice the large post-2000 increase in temperature?”
Aside from Perlwitz and his fevered imagination, no.
Where is it?

An illustrative comparison of this tree ring reconstruction of temperatures in Sweden to solar activity history, global temperature history by non-tree ring proxies, and arctic temperature history:
Overall it is notably supportive, as long as the sources are primarily not those heavily revised for CAGW-movement convenience:
http://s7.postimage.org/tc7f57vnv/composite2.gif
(click to enlarge and scroll)

richardscourtney wrote in
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/28/manns-hockey-stick-disappears-and-crus-briffa-helps-make-the-mwp-live-again-by-pointing-out-bias-in-ther-data/#comment-1127226

So what?
What a self-defined group of ‘climate scientists’ think is not the subject under debate.

A climate scientist is a scientist who does research and publishes in scientific journals on past, present, and future climate of Earth, as a whole or aspects of it. There isn’t a big problem to define what a climate scientist is.
Also, you are not entitled to impose on others here what they are debating and what they aren’t.

and I then did not know of “Mike’s Nature trick” to “hide the decline”

The alleged “Mike’s Nature trick” to “hide the decline”, which is nothing more than a talking point, unproven assertions that are disseminated in fake skeptic opinion blogs and similar.

Since then the studies of M&M, Wegman and North have all trashed it because MBH used invalid statistical procedures.

That is your assertion, according to which some studies, the exact references of which you avoid to provide here, would have achieved that.

However, the Briffa paper may also be ‘bad science’ because it relies upon treemometers, too. As I said of treemometry in my post at October 28, 2012 at 3:34 pm
[self quote]
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2009/tricking-yourself-into-cherry-picking/

Obviously you have an opinion, which you are trying to back up with a link to an opinion on another opinion blog.

In either case, as you say, it has been supported by the 75 people whom you have repeatedly claimed are 97% of ‘climate scientists’.

And yet another lie by you, Mr. Courtney. I haven’t made such a claim which you are asserting here, certainly not “repeatedly”. Considering your previous lies about what I allegedly said, like in the context of my statements about the fraudulent Oregon Petition, there seems to be a pattern here.

Jan, the only thing you have are warm temperatures in some places that have been warm enough to give a global average that is warmer when compared to some other period. We also have temperatures that are colder than that same comparison period. But of course, these are hidden in the global average. If there ever was a statistic that hides something we should know, it is the global average. But it is a useful statistic if you want to use it for some other purpose than explaining Earth’s temperatures. AGWers use the global average for some other purpose me thinks.
You don’t have a lot. You do not have correlation. You do not have causation. You do not have models that are predictive. You have not ruled out natural intrinsic ENSO factors, along with ENSO variations in oceanic temperatures, clouds and pressure system spin offs. ENSO factors do not swing like a pendulum, something many climate scientists are now beginning to realize.
What you do have is the same sorry set of statistics re-read over and over again. That kind of scientific reporting does not a case make.

tallbloke says:
October 29, 2012 at 1:21 am
So, you are unable or unwilling to back up your slanderous accusation with any checkable facts.
First, this was no slanderous accusation, just a statement of fact, and your fact checking as Mosh points out does not have a good track record. Second, as you well know, the review process is confidential and reviewers are not allowed to divulge details.
No matter, I’ll ask Abreu and Steinhilber
You could also ask them to publish [e.g. on your blog] the [many and detailed] reviews of their paper. Personally, I publish the reviews of my own papers, accepted or not. This allows people to judge the review process.