Guest Post by David Middleton
The Gorebots are all atwitter about this new paper…
Science 8 March 2013:
Vol. 339 no. 6124 pp. 1198-1201
DOI: 10.1126/science.1228026
A Reconstruction of Regional and Global Temperature for the Past 11,300 Years
Shaun A. Marcott, Jeremy D. Shakun, Peter U. Clark, Alan C. Mix
Surface temperature reconstructions of the past 1500 years suggest that recent warming is unprecedented in that time. Here we provide a broader perspective by reconstructing regional and global temperature anomalies for the past 11,300 years from 73 globally distributed records. Early Holocene (10,000 to 5000 years ago) warmth is followed by ~0.7°C cooling through the middle to late Holocene (<5000 years ago), culminating in the coolest temperatures of the Holocene during the Little Ice Age, about 200 years ago. This cooling is largely associated with ~2°C change in the North Atlantic. Current global temperatures of the past decade have not yet exceeded peak interglacial values but are warmer than during ~75% of the Holocene temperature history. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change model projections for 2100 exceed the full distribution of Holocene temperature under all plausible greenhouse gas emission scenarios.
Marcott et al., 2012 is behind a paywall; however the supplementary materials include a link to their proxy data.
This paper appears to be a text book example of creating a Hockey Stick by using a low resolution time series for the handle and a high resolution time series for the blade…
Let’s test one of the 73 proxies.
I picked ODP-1019D, a marine sediment core from just offshore of the California-Oregon border because it has a long time series, is a an annual reconstruction and has a nearby long time series instrumental record (Grants Pass OR).
ODP-1019D has a resolution of 140 years. Grants Pass is annually resolved…
Let’s filter Grants Pass down to the resolution of the Marcott et al. reconstruction…
Grants Pass sure looks very anomalous relative to the rest of the Holocene… Right?
Well, not so fast. ODP1019D only has a 140-yr resolution. The record length at Grants Pass is less than 140 years. So, the entire Grants Pass record would be a single data point in the ODP-1019D record…
While, the most recent ~140 years might be warmer than most of the rest of the Holocene in this particular area, does anyone else notice what I did?
The Grants Pass/ODP-1019D area has been warming at a fairly steady rate for 6,500 years…
I don’t know how many of these proxies I will have time to analyze… Probably not very many. Maybe this could become a WUWT crowd-sourcing project.
Title revised per notes below, 03-11-2013. Mod]
“It’s worserer than we thunk! Hockey stickerish with super extra scary sauce!!!”
Given the simplicity of the peer review we just witnessed at http://suyts.wordpress.com/2013/03/11/the-dagger-in-the-heart-maybe-a-remedial-explanation-of-marcotts-hs-blade-mikey-whats-that-about-a-dagger/
…what on earth possessed Marcott et al to value being included in AR5 but be ridiculed by everyone else?
Oops! of course the reviewers are…”D***ers”. What a parallel reality!
“This paper appears to be a text book example of creating a Hockey Stick by using a low resolution time series for the handle and a high resolution time series for the blade…”
yup.
However, it’s trivially true since the blade is always higher resolution from the shaft.
The shaft almost always suffers from a loss of high frequency signal.
The real job will be addressing how they accounted for the potential loss of high frequency signal.
You’ve merely pointed out what they admit. It a clear way, I’ll add.
I think one of the problems is that there are just so many climate scientists.
In order to get published, in order to stick out so that professorships are offered, individual scientists have to extend the envelope and publish even wierder stuff than has gone before in order to get noticed.
Nobody wants to see yet another journal article that says “we ran a climate model and came up with +3.25C by 2100”. That’s been done 100 times already.
Nobody wants to see yet another article that says there is some uncertainty regarding the past climate. That’s been done 100 times already. Medieval Warm Period – 200 times already. Ice cores – 50 times.
Global warming will bring back Unicorns – now that is going to get you noticed. Global warming will extend Ebola infections to London by 2020 – now that is going to get you to some conferences.
Replicate Mann’s phony hockey stick – done a dozen times already – but Mann will put a good word in for you when you need a fellowship or an Assistant Professor position. Nuff said.
Posted this at bishophill – think that this may be appropriate here too.
It’s already been accepted by Climate Psyientists that traditional paleo-proxies such as tree-rings haven’t performed to specification for the last half-century or so.
The reasons for this are steeped in highly complex post-normal calculations involving quasi-mechanical teleconnections; a branch of funding-mathematics that tranforms a political viewpoint into simple graphical outputs that can be displayed in Powerpoint by many and, it has been rumoured, even in Excel by a few highly-skilled eggheads!
The problem of how to fix the Anthropocenic proxy-problem occupied the waking and sleeping hours of some of the worlds brightest Nobel laureats-in-waiting for days on end until Dr Mann had his Eureka moment!
With hindsight his solution was both simple and brilliant, so simple that it didn’t need explaining and so brilliant that it illuminates the way for current groundbreakers such as Marcott 2012 et al.
I refer, of course, to Mikes ‘TRICC” (commonly misspelt as Trick) – an acronym for Transfer of Revenue Into Climate Coffers.
His thinking – I hypothesise – went a bit like this –
(A) The Paleo-proxies represent temperature.
(B) Recent proxies don’t give us the correct temperatures.
(C) But we’ve got the temperatures we need without using proxies.
thus (and this bit is pure Genius)
(D) We’ll use temperature records as a proxy for.. drumroll … TEMPERATURE!
Dr Marcott et Al (izzat thanks for the Internet-thingy Al?) have indeed stood on the shoulders of a giant.
Nick Stokes says:
March 11, 2013 at 4:46 pm
, remember that there are at least 3500 more Gtons to burn.
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I’ve always wondered what type of person would look at this and think “Oh no, we’re getting warmer”…..
http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/vostok.png
Mosher–Do you have their code? It might explain how they deal with the loss of high frequency signal.
Aw, Nick, your fears provoke you to ‘fake but accurate’.
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How do you know that hasn’t happened before? Ever hear of an exposed coal seam? Coal deposits have been exposed, eroded, and naturally burning for millions of years. How much coal has been released into the atmosphere in the past? Similarly, we only see the petroleum deposits which still exist — petroleum has been seeping to the surface for a long time also.
And 4,000 years ago, a lot of forests got burned off when agriculture began. I have no idea how many Gtons of C were released by that… nor how many times before that were continent-wide forests burned off.
It seems to me that Andrew Revkin’s caveats with regard to Marcott and friends substantially agrees with the views expressed on this forum:
“Because the analysis method and sparse data used in this study will tend to blur out most century-scale changes, we can’t use the analysis of Marcott et al. to draw any firm conclusions about how unique the rapid changes of the twentieth century are compared to the previous 10,000 years. The 20th century may have had uniquely rapid warming, but we would need higher resolution data to draw that conclusion with any certainty. Similarly, one should be careful in comparing recent decades to early parts of their reconstruction, as one can easily fall into the trap of comparing a single year or decade to what is essentially an average of centuries. To their credit Marcott et al. do recognize and address the issue of suppressed high frequency variability at a number of places in their paper.”
However, Marcott and friends, and especially the project manager at NSF, present the work as if it is the hockey stick resurrected. They know what they have done, know that it was wrong, and know that they should apologize for it. Of course, now it is too late after the proCAGW media blitz, except for the necessary apology to the American taxpayer (NSF, ya’ know).
If I am in error in this post, I would appreciate correction.
Nick Stokes says:
March 11, 2013 at 4:46 pm
It follows the insertion of 350 Gtons C into the atmosphere from fossil fuels… remember that there are at least 3500 more Gtons to burn.
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so 91% is still in the ground!! so much for “peak oil”.
no use leaving the stuff in the ground. dig it up and pay down the debt so our children and grandchildren wont be mortgaged to the Rothschilds. Otherwise, it is no different than being born into slavery.
Of if that doesn’t grab you, dig it up so we don’t send hundreds of trillions of $$ to the middle east to put nuclear weapons in the hands of folks that have been told by god they need to destroy us to save us.
You are going to need something a whole lot bigger than a fossil fuel powered air-conditioner to deal with a nuke in the neighborhood. 911 was a warning of what is likely to follow if you continue to pour your gold into the hands of your enemies. And if you think de-industrializing will make them like you better, well the poor need saving along with the rich.
Nick Stokes;
However, the spike of the last century does have special status, apart from being well observed. It follows the insertion of 350 Gtons C into the atmosphere from fossil fuels. That hasn’t happened before.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
It also follows the invention of the wheel. That hasn’t happened before. And writing. That hasn’t happened before. And sailing ships. That hasn’t happened before either.
Get real. The “spike” isn’t actually a spike unless you torture the data to make it look like a spike, and all sorts of things happened before it besides CO2 increases. Not to mention that the spike has had a blunt flat top for 17 years despite more gigatons C in the last 17 years than EVER before. Not to mention that CO2 has been higher in the past and it matters not one bit what the source was, it could have come from pink faeries or visitors from Alpha Centauri…it did diddly squat to temps so trying to claim that because it came from fossil fuels makes it different is just nonsense. It doesn’t even rise to nonsense.
I’m greatly depressed that climate “science” has been reduced to such chicanery. I’m also angry that peer review has been responsible to the publishing of such nonsense. Doesn’t anyone bother to examine the information presented in peer review?
AnonyMoose says:
March 11, 2013 at 6:01
“How do you know that hasn’t happened before?”
Because no evidence has been provided that it has. JP
The trailing average of an instrumental record is more “apples & apples” with a geologic proxy.
I still feel compelled to say …
For the period 1960-2012, CO2 goes from 316-385 ppm and HADCRUT3 global from ~287.7-288.4K.
So while CO2 increases 21%, temperature increases 0.24%. What part of the 0.24% is due to man-converted CO2?
Lord Moncton, I am truly humbled by your compliments. In this particular area, the warming appears to have begun around 4500 BC. This would make ~6500 of warming.
Bill Illis says:
March 11, 2013 at 5:07 pm
“I think one of the problems is that there are just so many climate scientists.”
Aside from the unregulated flood of funding into climate science and all things CAGW, the huge expansion in the number of graduate programs in climate science has been unconscionable. More radicals tenured for life and forever begging/threatening for taxpayer support.
Steve, I appreciate the kind words and always welcome your constructive criticism.
My view on handling the high frequency loss in the proxy data is to filter the higher frequency signal down to the lowest frequency proxy series, unless there’s something that can be used as a deconvolution operator to “recover” the higher frequencies of the low frequency proxy signal. I don’t think Marcott et al. did this; but I haven’t read the paper. From what I can tell, their stacking procedure appeared to be very flawed. A big like stacking raw shot records without proper move out corrections.
Steven Mosher says:
March 11, 2013 at 5:01 pm
“The real job will be addressing how they accounted for the potential loss of high frequency signal.”
Done. And what the accounting reveals is not pretty.
http://suyts.wordpress.com/2013/03/11/the-dagger-in-the-heart-maybe-a-remedial-explanation-of-marcotts-hs-blade-mikey-whats-that-about-a-dagger/
Two words: Plant stomata.
A typo in my reply to Steve Moshser…
A bit like stacking raw shot records without proper move out corrections.
I take it, then, that livestock grazing in Greenland has never been better.
I’m sorry Dave….
“Lord Moncton, I am truly humbled by your compliments”
“but I haven’t read the paper”
Brandon had a comment at CA with links to graphs of all of the individual proxies for the Marcott et al. (2013) study:
http://climateaudit.org/2010/02/03/the-hockey-stick-and-milankovitch-theory/#comment-403822
It doesn’t prove anything without proper statistical analysis but it does indicate how “curious” it is that the paper could get such a hockey stick out of these proxies! Few if any of the proxies offer any (visual) support for the blade of the hockey stick, so what is in the stats “food processor” that produces such an outcome?