Skiphil writes in comments:
“…there are some interesting developments in the “Marcott curve” which puts more of the circus in jeopardy. In addition to a new post on CA detailing changes in the core top record, there is this very significant comment on a prior thread which deserves some serious exploration:”
![marcott-A-1000[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/marcott-a-10001.jpg?quality=83)
Jean S on “Marcott’s main plot (Figure 1A)”
Hah! There is some additional fun in Marcott’s main plot (Figure 1A). Mann’s hockey stick there is the global EIV-CRU from Mann et al. (2008), which means that there is no actual reconstruction post 1850, since it’s the Reg-EM produced EIV reconstruction! So they have now essentially “grafted the thermometer record onto” Mann’s reconstruction. To his credit, Mann has always been careful to plot the post 1850 part in EIV reconstructions in a different color. He is actually explicitly warning in his data description spreadsheet that the values for 1850-2006 are instrumental data.
So in Marcott et al Fig 1A we have a comparision in the interval 1850-1950 between their reconstruction (uptick) and Crutem3 (LAND only) (annual?) instrumental record (no uptick). But that’s not all, folks! See the associated uncertainties … Mann et al (2008) uncertainties (which seem to match in the plot to those given in the spreadsheet, i.e., 2 sigma, whereas Marcott et al uncertainties are 1 sigma) are naturally calculated only up to 1849 (as there is no actual reconstruction afterwards), but in the Figure 1A they continue all the way to the end. Where did those 1850-2006 uncertainties come from?
Source comment here
@ScepticKnitter says:
March 19, 2013 at 8:51 pm
/////////////////
Probably the best allegorical post I have seen on this topic. Well said!
Now, if only Mann et al could knit…
Further to my post above, I do not wish to give the impression that I am defending Mann’s work; I am not.
My point is simply that had he carried out his work properly, he would have included tree ring data up to the date of his paper, and the reader would then have been able to see what that proxy tells us about temperature within the limitations of that proxy.
If that proxy data showed that temperatures post 1960 were falling and if the reader considers the thermometer record post 1960 to be accurate, or at any ratea more reliable, record of temperature than the tree ring proxy data, then the reader would immediately know that the proxies used by Mann were not reliably reproducing temperature for the period post 1960. Absence some convincing explanation, once that fact becomes apparent, the reader would draw the obvious inference; if tree ring data does not accurate record/reflect temperatures for the period say 1960 to 1990, why should it be any more reliable for the period say 1600 to 1700, or say 1200 to 1300? All of this goes to showing the limitation of the chosen proxy.
How can it possibly “confirm” the hockey stick when it CONTAINS the hockey stick? What the hell kind of science is that?
How in the hell did they think we wouldn’t figure this out?
Re: Nigel S
I love it. I was going to ask about terminology, whether grafting shouldn’t be called “graphting”. Yours is better … marcotting, grafting (horticulturally speaking) is all about propogation. Isn’t that what this is all about? Propogating the cause?
JohnB
Ohh, seeing as they seem to be in the mood lately, watch out for the legal letters with the title of this one!
From Merriam-Webster:
“Definition of GRAFT
: the acquisition of gain (as money) in dishonest or questionable ways; also : illegal or unfair gain”
😀
So, from an audio tinkering perspective (to simply explain this to a barmaid), we have an audio sample running through a complicated circuit that we don’t really understand. Someone (Marcott) is claiming that the signal’s DC voltage sweeps up toward the end of the trace, which makes us highly suspicious because someone else had claimed that, and their data was severely debunked (Mann).
So in an effort to prove that it really does, Marcott hooks a bunch of voltage probes into the poorly understood circuit’s various components, sometimes grabbing a cathode connection, sometimes a plate (emitter and collector, or source and drain for transistors) and runs the signals over to a summing (averaging) circuit and a low-pass filter. He also runs a bunch of the signals through a tape-loop delay, for reasons unknown, and all the while insists that towards the end of the signal the DC voltage coming out of the averaging and low-pass filter circuit is going to sweep upwards.
So we play the input signal and everything looks pretty reasonable, but right before the signal gets to the end he starts yanking loose about half of his circuit probes (his proxy data starts running out), and sure enough, the DC voltage drifts. He says, “Aha! See, it sweeps up at the end.” We retort, “Right before it got finished you started yankin’ the low-voltage cathode probes loose, so of course the average swept up at the end.”
Also toward the end, the raw input signal was changed from a scratchy Edison cylinder recording of Herbert Hoover to a 16-bit MP3 from an iPod, but he pretends the background noise and hiss never diminished, which isn’t really the issue, it just shows that he has no idea what he’s doing.
Okay, maybe that’s not quite down to barmaid napkin levels of simplicity.
So he’s making a black and tan, and as the pitcher is almost full he stops one tap and finishes with straight Guinness. No, that’s not quite right either.
Has anyone found, in the latest Climategate email release, the vital one? “We must get rid of the Holocene warm period.” It must be out there somewhere!
trafamadore says: March 19, 2013 at 8:22 pm
The main point of the abstract: “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."
That is the main point of the paper.
Well, if that was the main point of the paper, they probably should not have created/grafted/concocted a bloody great uptick on the end to encourage every fanatical CAGW dramatist to run around screaming in delight and hooting in a tribal dance, shouting “Hockey stick, hockey stick!”
Trafamadore
You seem to be missing the whole essence of this discussion, and why the whole issue is so important.
I don’t know whether your misunderstanding is deliberate or not. But I’ll be generous and assume the latter, and explain it to you.
Marcott originally did the work that you rightly applaud as part of his thesis. This showed no hockey stick.
Subsequently Science published a later version, with a hockey stick. This has raised several issues:-
1) How the “stick” suddenly appeared.
2) Why the peer review process missed the pertinent criticisms made by Steve Mac and others.
3) Why Science so readily accepted what now appears to be a fundamentally flawed paper.
Whether these criticisms only affect a small part of the paper or not, they serve to fundamentally undermine the whole work.
Whether the rest of Marcott’s paper is worthy or not, these are all questions we are entitled to ask.
Glad to be of help.
Paul
trafamadore says:
March 19, 2013 at 7:56 pm
Chad Wozniak says: “The real question is how do we get across to the uninformed multitudes that the alarmies are purveying horseshit? – and worse than that, proposing mass murder?”
In a blog world where Monckton is a “real” lord and Tisdale and Eschenbach
write “real” science articles…and real research is “horses**t”….yes, there is a problem somewhere.
It is clear, from your reference to Monckton, that, at least, you are not British! Thankfully!
@Trafamdore (sic)
“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.”
Even ignoring the random spaghetti graphs and grossly understated uncertainty, given the low proxy resolution in the part of this paper you are claiming to be ‘the point’ (which of course makes all the wildly fabricated parts related to the ‘modern uptick’ okay), how could this statement possibly be valid? Temperature variations of the instrumental era would have been completely lost in the smoothing of the proxy reconstruction, so how is this in any way demonstrated without averaging everything into utter meaninglessness?
Do you really believe what you claim? Your needing to resort to weird ad homs about Eisenbach and Tisdale indicate you probably do not. In this case, are you just being paid by some activist group to make a lot of distracting noise on blogs? I don’t mind either way, I’m just interested in your kind of reasoning and how it might be possible in a sane human being. As already pointed out by someone else here, the standard of argument by other, noticeably absent warmists here, is generally a lot higher. They must really hate this paper.
rafamadore says:
March 19, 2013 at 9:25 pm
[…] all the sentences you and others are focusing on are perspective, not the main research in the paper. Sentences like “A heat spike like this has never happened before, at least not in the last 11,300 years and Surface temperature reconstructions of the past 1500 years suggest that recent warming is unprecedented in that time.” is not based only on the research in the paper but many other published studies.
trafamadore says:
March 19, 2013 at 9:51 pm
THEN the critical letters and the responses are sent to reviewers (like me) to decide if the critique/response is interesting/relevant enuf to be published or not.
——————————————————————————————————————
Traf, are you seriously saying that, as a self-proclaimed reviewer, you would accept comments in the conclusions (of ALL sections) of a submitted paper that were not based on the paper itself?
In other words, do you really consider it ok to include unsubstantiated* speculation in the conclusions of scientific research without making it very clear indeed within the text that it is only speculation?
If you do then either you’re lying about being a reviewer, or the journals you review for have entirely unacceptable standards.
* nowhere do they substantiate those conclusions with any reference to the other work you speak of and, sans supporting evidence, they are nothing but speculation.
Traldarafome,
Why are the various versions of you on here? You try to defend the indefensible, but you try without offering any technical answers. You just keep saying “Read the paper, it doesn’t say that.”
Are your masters pleased with your work? Your masters are appealing to low-information voters, but that is not the audience here. I think you go through the motions, rather than addressing any serious questions with any serious answers.
Transparent, foolish, regrettable, rather pathetic, what a way to make a living. We’re all glad we are not you…
ScepticKnitter says:
March 19, 2013 at 8:51 pm
———–
Thanks. You’ve got more in common with good scientists than you probably think. Certainly you’ve got more in common with engineers in general than you probably realize. 🙂
All too often I hear arguments from warmists that amount to ‘oh, the climate scientists have more important work to do than that drudgery. or oh, the math and science they deal with is way too complicated for detailed checking like that‘ It’s a bunch of baloney. It sounds to me like you’ve got a strong commitment to following a rigorous methodology that focuses on finding and correcting errors, and I’d bet you get good results from that. I’ll tell you a secret, although I expect you already know it: this works in virtually ANY field, be it sewing, science, engineering, manufacturing, or what have you. If you want quality, you need reproducible results. If you need reproducible results, you need discipline and a methodology; doesn’t matter how smart or talented you are, there’s no way around it.
Raymond: BP in this context means Before Present, which is Jan 1, 1950.
Trafa(l)madore: Some papers published here qualify as science, despite their authors’ not being in academia or even having graduate or undergrad degrees. These facts do not automatically disqualify them as real scientists. Please point out the faults in their work, if you find any, but don’t engage in the fallacy of appeal to authority.
Do you recall the quotation from Feynman cited by Marcott?
One of Einstein’s three heroes was Faraday. Check out his academic credentials, or lack thereof. For that matter, Einstein himself had only a four-year teaching diploma, so worked as a patent clerk (assistant examiner). Darwin’s undergrad degree was in divinity, & he was not an academic. Copernicus had a doctorate, but in canon law & worked in a church, not a college.
The WUWT posters whom you mention may not be among the world’s five or ten greatest scientists, as are those above, but they don’t need the credentials you imagine in order to conduct valid research & analysis.
Hey guys, give trafamadolt a break. He is quite entertaining. Let’s face it, the problems with Marcott’s paper have been explained so many times a cave man can understand it. There is only one word to explain his comments … denial.
This is in line with most alarmists today., They deny the flat temperatures this century, they deny the ocean’s influence on climate cycles, they deny the model projections are way off, they deny the weather is not climate with constant cherry picking of any extreme weather event. All they have been doing lately is denying everything that has been happening in the real world.
Where else can a guy get this kind of entertainment for free?
I didn’t know what “alkenone” dateing was, and still need to learn more. But this article by Benthien, et. al., in global Biogeochemical Cycles seems to indicate that nutrient-limited growth rates might obscure the temperature signal derived from alkenones.
1] We have analyzed the stable carbon isotopic composition of the diunsaturated C37 alkenone in 29 surface sediments from the equatorial and South Atlantic Ocean. Our study area covers different oceanographic settings, including sediments from the major upwelling regions off South Africa, the equatorial upwelling, and the oligotrophic western South Atlantic. In order to examine the environmental influences on the sedimentary record the alkenone-based carbon isotopic fractionation (εp) values were correlated with the overlying surface water concentrations of aqueous CO2 ([CO2(aq)]), phosphate, and nitrate. We found εp positively correlated with 1/[CO2(aq)] and negatively correlated with [PO43−] and [NO3−]. However, the relationship between εp and 1/[CO2(aq)] is opposite of what is expected from a [CO2(aq)] controlled, diffusive uptake model. Instead, our findings support the theory of Bidigare et al. [1997]that the isotopic fractionation in haptophytes is related to nutrient-limited growth rates. The relatively high variability of the εp−[PO4] relationship in regions with low surface water nutrient concentrations indicates that here other environmental factors also affect the isotopic signal. These factors might be variations in other growth-limiting resources such as light intensity or micronutrient concentrations.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2001GB001433/abstract
Albert Benthien1,3, Nils Andersen2,4, Sonja Schulte1, Peter J. Müller1, Ralph R. Schneider1, Gerold Wefer, Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 16(1), 2002, p12
Here’s my list of the 15 greatest scientists. Please feel free to criticize & post your own.
Those passing the Trafamadore Test (doctorates in scientific or, generously, math & working as tenured professors at reputable universities) as “real scientists” get a P; those failing an F.
Copernicus F
Kepler F (MA in theology)
Galileo F (no degree)
Newton F (Professor, but no doctorate)
Lavoisier F (left school at 18)
Hutton F
Faraday F
Darwin F
Pasteur F (no doctorate)
Maxwell F (no doctorate)
Mendel F
Einstein F
Rutherford P
Pauling P (Oregon State, then OR Ag College, & Cal Tech)
Franklin P (provided key info that backbone has to be on the outside of DNA helix)
If not Franklin, Watson P or Crick P, then Lederberg P.
Paul Homewood.
1) How the “stick” suddenly appeared.
2) Why the peer review process missed the pertinent criticisms made by Steve Mac and others.
3) Why Science so readily accepted what now appears to be a fundamentally flawed paper.
A pertinent set of questions. I think Steve McI, Jean S and a few others are well on the way to figuring out HOW the uptick appeared. However, a corollary to that is WHY the uptick appeared.
My interpretation is that Marcott’s thesis is a reasonably solid piece of work in reconstructing the Holocene temperature based on long term and relatively low resolution marine proxies. Clearly, such data only provides a relatively ‘broad brush’ result, so care is needed in interpreting short term fluctuations and rate of change. As such, the results cannot be directly compared with modern instrumental data of far higher resolution. However, to my mind it appears that the research and findings as per the thesis are very publishable in a mid-level specialist Earth Science journal (which is more than could be said for my own geology PhD research…). No way are the results of this reconstruction sufficiently novel to justify publication in Nature or Science.
At some point between the thesis being written and the Science paper being accepted for publication, someone* has decided that with a bit of data man-handling, a more visually interesting result can be obtained that moves the paper from ‘solid if mundane’ to ‘high profile’
While it is tempting to see the fingerprints of a certain well-known hockey-stick lover in this, my suspicion is that the suggestion came from within after the work Shakun did on re-dating cores. The modifications made suggest very strongly to me that the idea came from someone very familiar with the proxy data used in this case. Most likely one of the PhD supervisors.
As for #2 – this simply highlights the weakness of the peer reviewing process (which I have limited experience of as both an author and reviewer). The reviewers are not expected to ‘take apart’ the data in detail, especially for a data-processing-heavy paper like this. The reviewer’s job is to ensure that the paper is original, interesting to the journal’s readership, readable, does not contain any egregious errors (such as 1+1 = 3), and that the conclusions are consistent with the data interpretation therein (and usually to make sure that any paper’s the reviewer has written on vaguely related subjects are cited…).
It would probably be good practice within academic institutions if they followed similar procedures to those we do in the commercial world whereby reports / papers are subject to a strongly critical review prior to release into the outside world (by someone familiar with the field but no particular involvement in the data handling and writing) – OK, this is probably more complicated for research papers as the reviewer will really have to get into the nuts and bolts of the data processing to spot the mistakes. However, their first role would be a ‘sanity check’ of the results – i.e. does the output look realistic based on the input data. This was where the first clues were that all was not well with Marcott et al 13, in that none of the archived proxy series (prior to various truncations and redating) showed the strong up-tick at the end that is present in the reconstructed temperature.
For #3 – Journals like Science (and Nature) are almost at the intersection between specialist academic journals and popular science magazines. High profile sells more copies, and there is little in the climate science world that is more high profile than hockey sticks, however they are concocted. Why these are considered so important is anyone’s guess.
Mann & his ilk are now officially cowards, throwing a sacrificial grad-student lamb to the wolves to protect their own valuable skins.
I think they may actually be considering withdrawing the paper, especially if Science is somewhat shocked and appalled at what they’ve done and is considering retracting it..
For me, Marcott is the Rubicon.
I’ve tried to keep a neutral perspective. I’ve tried to give AGWers the benefit of the doubt. I’ve tried to assume everyone is acting in good faith.
No more.
From this point forward, I’m just going to assume every single “scientific” paper in climate “science” is trying very hard to mislead.
Newton was a mostly untutored kid when he created the mathematics that we know as the calculus. He became a professor on the basis of that work. I would refer to him as an amateur.
Joe says:
March 20, 2013 at 5:32 am
At some point, Trafamadore is going to say “But you talk like lying, cheating, and stealing are bad things.”
Ian Blanchard says:
March 20, 2013 at 7:50 am
As for #2 – this simply highlights the weakness of the peer reviewing process (which I have limited experience of as both an author and reviewer). The reviewers are not expected to ‘take apart’ the data in detail, especially for a data-processing-heavy paper like this. The reviewer’s job is to ensure that the paper is original, interesting to the journal’s readership, readable, does not contain any egregious errors (such as 1+1 = 3), and that the conclusions are consistent with the data interpretation therein (and usually to make sure that any paper’s the reviewer has written on vaguely related subjects are cited…).
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Thanks Ian…..I wish more people could grasp this