Many people have been wondering what sort of response would be coming now that Steve has conclusively shown that the Marcott et al “hockey stick” is nothing more than an artifact of what appears to be the worst case of cherry picking ever.
His latest post reveals how to ‘Hide the Decline’, Marcott style:
By blanking out the three most recent values of their proxy #23, the earliest dated value was 10.93 BP (1939.07 AD). As a result, the MD01-2421+KNR02-06 alkenone series was excluded from the 1940 population. I am unable to locate any documented methodology that would lead to the blanking out of the last three values of this dataset. Nor am I presently aware of any rational basis for excluding the three most recent values.
Since this series was strongly negative in the 20th century, its removal (together with the related removal of OCE326-GGC30 and the importation of medieval data) led to the closing uptick.
Here’s the response from Real Climate Scientists™
(h/t to commenter Richard Mason on the Powerline blog)
From the YouTube description:
Stars in the background are artificial, as is the passing airplane.
Seems like a perfect response.
Read McIntyre’s latest here
Related articles
- McIntyre finds the Marcott ‘trick’ – How long before Science has to retract Marcott et al? (wattsupwiththat.com)
- The Marcott-Shakun Dating Service (climateaudit.org)
- Hiding the Decline: MD01-2421 (climateaudit.org)
- The Hockey Stick, Broken Again (powerlineblog.com)
- How Marcottian Upticks Arise (climateaudit.org)
- Marcott’s hockey stick uptick mystery – it didn’t used to be there (wattsupwiththat.com)
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Robert says:
:”Take a look at Climate Audit discussions …..”
Yes, please do. Are differing opinions (on the science, not just general trolling: wink), censored and deleted? Why? or Why not?
Is that type of thing done at RC? Why or why not?
Censoring and deleting differing opinions is a hallmark of “cultish” behavior.
Run along troll, this is the only response you will get from me.
TR
Thank you for your reply, Robert; sometimes it’s important to get the answer to certain questions/issues “in print”, whether the respondent was honest and sincere or misleading and deceitful, while showing disdain for the process/procedure (the discourse) overall …
.
Marcott’s snake oil in brief: 73 proxy records were combined into an aligned temperature record for 9400BC – 1950AD. Each individual data point has an uncertain age — the earlier the data point, the greater the age-uncertainty — but the age-uncertainty at 1950AD is zero. So the total proxy record was perturbed 1000x into 20-year bins, with each data point’s perturbation bounded by that data point’s age-uncertainty. Therefore the whole show was homogenized, except for the last 20-year bin (1950AD), which because of its age-uncertainty of zero, shared no data with its neighbors.
Thus the perturbation method guaranteed an outcome in which natural variations were smoothed out everywhere *except* for the last 20-year bin of 1950AD. Then all that remained was to use data selection and re-dating to ensure that the 1950AD data was of the warm variety. Once you got that data, push the switch, VROOOM, the whole 11,400 years’ data is homogenized smooth except for the 1950AD record which the data grinder can’t reach — results guaranteed!
All joking aside, I now have two very bewildered and slightly upset Bengal cats sitting on my desk trying to figure out what the heck is going on!
TomR,Worc,MA
Apparently I’m a troll for pointing out that there a lot of atta-boys at Steve’s site who don’t understand his arguments ? Fair enough, if that’s your definition, I’m a troll.
My other crime here is suggesting that a person who is accused be given a chance to respond to an accusation before judgement is made. That one also caused a lot of trouble. Strange, I thought it was a fundamental part of natural justice.
The RC lot don’t hate the stereotypical WUWT poster – they actually laugh at you (with good cause). Then again that’s what you do to them (with good cause). You lot have more in common than you realise.
Here are questions that should be answered on their FAQ:
1. Was this paper rejected by Nature, or did Nature ask for changes you guys didn’t want to make?
2. Would those changes have mitigated the criticism of McIntyre and other contrarians?
3. What changes were they?
Why can’t I find a photo of Shaun Marcott?
I agree with many of Robert’s points.
I try to write clearly enough so that an educated non-specialist can understand the issues, which often are fairly elementary points of data analysis. On some of the Marcott issues, I think that some people have arrived at “informed” agreement.
However, there is also a considerable amount of piling on by readers who “like” the result. I delete many comments at CA for “piling on”.
On the other hand, there was widespread endorsement of the Marcott results by reporters and specialists who did not have an informed understanding of the results in the paper – in the sense, that an informed understanding is emerging through ongoing analysis. Robert, I think that your criticisms on this issue would be more telling if you had equally criticized the promotion of the paper.
On the truncation of data points: I report phenomena and try to avoid speculating on motives. It is possible that the truncation of negative recent values arose through the application of an undescribed algorithm rather than manual truncation (in the style of Briffa’s deletion of data after 1960, a procedure often and inaccurately referred to as Mike’s Nature trick.). As I stated in the article, I am unable to identify such an algorithm in the Methods and thus far am unable to think one up, but I do not exclude the possibility. While Marcott’s answer to my original inquiry was uninformative, I agree that he should be given an opportunity to comment on this point and I will contact him directly and give him that opportunity.
Robert says:
March 18, 2013 at 11:59 am
I have stated my position on Marcott. It is a challenge to anyone who wants to defend him. It seems that you do not have the expertise to defend him and you do not want to do the work to gain the necessary expertise. Yet you keep posting to me. That kind of behavior is why some people call you a troll.
No one on this site acts as a judge. We develop reasoned positions on matters such as Marcot’s changes to a series and we wait for responses that intelligently address one or more points that we have made.
Robert says:
March 18, 2013 at 11:56 am
Robert,
McIntyre has answered you. I hope that satisfies you. He has his position. I have mine. My position will not satisfy you. Let’s leave it at that.
Robert,
Are you proposing that those responding are holding Steve McIntyre up as a godhead or a replacement of a father figure?
Ahhh, Robert, the original ‘Bob a job’. (Probably 30 pieces (shillings) now…) Oh dear.
Thanks for your comments Steve. I very much look forward to the response of Marcott et al. . They need to come up with a very good explanation and I hope they have one. Marcott is a young guy starting off in his career, it would be a shame for this to happen. If no decent response emerges then a complaint should certainly be lodged at their institutions and not just at the journal since the argument would be made that this has no material impact on the results themselves.
Regarding my (lack of) criticism of the promotion of the paper, there were enough people doing this already on CA and WUWT. As someone who often talks to the media about their research, and is careful not to overhype, I have zero tolerance for this type of behaviour. But if 10 other people have made the same condemnation then mine is irrelevant. Your argument would carry weight if I had defended the paper hype. In contrast to the hype issue, however, very few people were willing to stick up for the basic principle of collating all the facts (which fundamentally includes a response) before judging.
Theo – you wrote:
“No one on this site acts as a judge. We develop reasoned positions on matters such as Marcot’s changes to a series and we wait for responses that intelligently address one or more points that we have made.”
I’m sorry but that is just wrong. Please read the comments on the Marcott et al. paper at this site and CA. Are comments referring “Marcott’s snake oil” judgement-free ? Regarding your supposed “reasoned position while you wait for a response”, a reasoned position would include the possibility of there being an explanation (after all you’re apparently waiting for it). Using terms such as “rock solid” as you did to describe Steve’s case aren’t really consistent with that. Your response to my remark : “I have no idea if Mcintyre is right or wrong in this case.” was “We have to get past this before we can engage in a broader discussion. Where is he mistaken?”. Nothing you have written implies that you have an open mind in this. To pretend otherwise is daft.
I don’t see anyone here speculating that the data truncation could be due to reason X or reason Y. Were RC to attack, eg, Anthony Watts and show evidence that he had apparently removed inconvenient data points from his work on UHI’s I don’t doubt there would be raft of possible explanations, as there should be.
Scepticism means what it says on the packet – its to be applied both on results we like and those we don’t like.
Hi Robert, I can’t say I disagree with all your comments, but what rankles me about them is the nagging suspicion that your pretensions to fairness and neutrality are fake, just as your rhetorical tone sounds like Hal 9000, the computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey (which would make you a bot, not a troll). Have you taken to task the publications and bloggers who prematurely yet triumphantly waved Marcott about, crowing that the Hockey Stick is alive and well? If you want to penalize someone for unsportsmanlike excessive celebration there’s a good place to start. If you have indeed done so, you have my respect. If not, what’s stopping you?
Frank K. says:
March 18, 2013 at 6:50 am
Their response fit in with the general level of professionalism exhibited by many of the mainstream CAGW “scientists”.
BTW – it was 8 F here in New Hampshire this morning, and a big snow storm is headed our way tomorrow – in the middle of March. Happy Global Warming(tm) spring!
Snowed here in Philly all day saturday and I had to shovel the walk. Snowing right now (Monday) as I look out my window. They are predicting up to 6 inches. This Wed. is the first day of spring. And here I thought it arrived earlier and earlier each year: I’d be thankful for spring as early as Wed.
Robert, we skeptics have been duking it out with a powerful opponent for a long time, and we are finally landing some telling blows, and now you are telling us to pull punches until the opponent catches his breath. But you have not cautioned our opponent, and you say that’s someone else’s job. That makes it hard for us to accept you as a fair referee.
@Elmer, check out Andy Revkin,s interview with the lad, up on the side bar political climate.
Sorry Robert, but you come across as phoney and a troll.
Are you suggesting that in your, “Physical science” you will adjust your timescale at whim?
That changing this part of your “evidence” is of no significance?
Requiring no notation nor explanation?
At 2:08 you blow your concerned sceptic cover, you wouldn’t be the Professor Brown that turned up on Judith Curries site recently?
Don
Indeed. I might be ‘right’ (well you write that “can’t you disagree with all [my] comments” 🙂 )”. However, I’m still not be given credit for this because I didn’t populate other blogs attacking the over-hyping. Indeed even though I’m ‘right’ , you suspect “my pretensions to fairness and neutrality are fake”. This is a strange point since this discussion has taken up several hours of my time (while I’m stuck at a research lab). Like most people here I work for a living and don’t spend my life on blogs taking people to task. Nor would I wish to do so. Like everyone else, a point strikes me and I argue it.
I think a sensible interpretation of your nagging doubt is simply that I’ve been critical and gone against the consensus. That makes someone unpopular in any environment regardless of the context. Funnily enough, I think the only person who has said they agreed with much of what I wrote was Steve. Well, you said “you can’t disagree” but suspect me to be a hypocrite with “fake” “pretensions to fairness” so I’m not quite sure you count other than in a begrudging “right-but-insincere” kind of way
Regardless of whether or not you suspect its all pretence, I’m afraid I am motivated by fairness and scepticism here. My trigger here was seeing lots of people leaping to condemn people on the basis of one side of the story and their pre-held views. I wish they wouldn’t – it is rarely helpful in getting to the truth. Its not as if the facts of the case were especially elucidated and debated. The bulk of the thread consisted of people saying lots of nasty things from their computers that they likely would never say should they be face to face with the authors.
John
What is all this about covers being blow. What are you talking about ?
Okay, Robert, I will give you the benefit of the doubt, motivation-wise. But are you really happy removing specks here when there are massive beams of error and corruption elsewhere that need moving, beams that may well be life-or-death arbiters for struggling people as Willis has recently pointed out? Those would surely be more worth interrupting your work for.
To Robert, I did say “Marcott’s snake oil”, but that was after my own independent full analysis of the Marcott data and processing techniques. So it did convey my judgement, but it was a knowledgable first-hand judgement — no me-too-ism involved. You may say I wouldn’t use that term face-to-face with the authors, and you’d be right — but I am not face-to-face with the authors, capeesh? Sometimes the strong term is needed to be clear about one’s conclusion. cheers.
Another question for FAQ:
were the reviewers aware of the redating, particularly the removal of 20th century data and replacement with medieval data and its impact ?
…and an important rider, I found via my own 3-day investigation that the Marcott paper is not science, it’s just a cheap mathematical stunt. They can generate their outcome with any random data, as long as they (1) select warm data for the final 1950 bin using the techniques which Steve McIntyre is identifying, and (2) use the perturbation algorithm that they use. And yes, I would tell them that face-to-face. How polite would you be if that was your finding as well?
Robert,
McIntyre is a consummate professional. After years of reading him, I know that he will follow all the technical details until the last ‘t’ is crossed and ‘i’ dotted. In my experience, which might be too limited, he will stop there. He will not make moral claims or engage in moral argument. However, after all the technical dust has settled someone will have to make the moral argument. If no one does then the debate over CAGW is finished. Anthony and everyone can close up shop.
Maybe I should have stated my moral argument as a hypothetical: “If Marcott truncated the series and did not explain that choice in his article then he committed moral error.” To me, that abbreviated argument stands regardless of what Marcott did or wrote elsewhere. If I am not correct then the non-specialist has no place in this debate and our democracy is lost.
NZ Willy – you’re clearly a far better scientist than me. I wouldn’t dream of making a judgement call and calling someone else’s work “snake oil” until I had sought an explanation for what I had apparently observed. This is the case regardless of whether or not I had spent days of “independent study” on it. I tend to regard myself as being fallible like that. The more I know about a topic the more I realise I don’t know.
Theo – You ought to stop digging. You’ve contradicted yourself a lot during this discussion.