Reader “pottereaton” submitted this on 2013/04/01 at 2:28 pm
McIntyre/Tamino Feud brewing:
First McIntyre at DotEarth:
Steve McIntyre
Toronto, Canada
Andy,
The ideas in Tamino’s post purporting to explain the Marcott uptick,http://tamino.wordpress.com/2013/03/22/the-tick/ which you praise as “illuminating”, was shamelessly plagiarized from the Climate Audit post How Marcott Upticks Arise. http://climateaudit.org/2013/03/15/how-marcottian-upticks-arise/
It’s annoying that you (and Real Climate) would link to the plagiarization and not to the original post.
Then Tamino, (at his blog) although his comment may have preceded McIntyre’s:
UPDATE
Dave Burton, purveyor of foolishness and myths, submitted the following comment:
“Grant, I find it just plain bizarre that you wrote all this and never even mentioned Steve McIntyre, who first figured out what Marcott had done wrong, and whose excellent work is the whole reason you wrote this.”
For your information, Davy boy, McIntyre’s contribution to this was limited to his every effort to discredit the entire reconstruction, to discredit Marcott and his collaborators, and of course his usual knee-jerk spasms at the sight of anything remotely resembling a hockey stick, sprinkled literally with thinly veiled sneering.
Also for your information, the original version of this post mentioned McIntyre (and linked to his posts) extensively. But prior to posting I decided to remove that, since McIntyre had already fully explored the “low road.”
=====================================================
IMHO, Foster’s response to Burton seems to be mostly venom, and it seems that his emotions got the better of his ability to do science professionally when he decided to remove the references. Seems like a clear case of spite to me. – Anthony
UPDATE: This is a comment and response from “Tamino” on that thread at “Open Mind”. IMHO Grant Foster might be suffering from social isolation issues (from what I know, he works from home with his cat) that prevent him from seeing a reality unfavorable to him, and so he is substituting his own. This is just sad. – Anthony
Steven Mosher | April 2, 2013 at 5:03 am |
It’s pretty simple Tamino. You wrote that you had acknowledgements in your post. You wrote that you removed them. What you think of Steve Mcintyre is not the issue. What you think of me is not the issue. Your opinion of what constitutes good scholarship is shown by the fact that you originally included the cites. So, what I think about scholarship is not the issue. Your behavior shows that you understood the right thing to do. Include the cites. For some reason you changed your mind. We will never know what that is. But your own behavior shows that when you first wrote it, you did as you were trained.
[Response: I have repeatedly stated the truth — that the only “acknowledgements” were of his mistaken ideas and his insulting tone. For you to claim that these were owed to him for reasons of “scholarship” is either mind-boggling stupidity (which I doubt) or nothing more than a pathetic excuse to denigrate me in a dazzling display of your ethical shortcomings.
Perhaps you and others are so keen to discredit my insights because it is now obvious that McIntyre was so clueless about the Marcott paper. Cite that.]
bmcburney says:
“Again, the paragraph doesn’t say what you say it says. It just doesn’t.”
I doubt that any scientific paper could survive this level of motivated misreading. But Marcott et al. could have tried by stating things more simply, in short sentences and boldface. And if they had a statistician with Tamino’s acumen on board, they might have better understood and articulated what’s wrong with that Standard5x5 uptick, and graphed it with a dashed line or suppressed it accordingly. They’ll be sadder but wiser when they write their next paper. In the meantime it looks like the main conclusions from this paper are standing up to initial scrutiny well, and will be cited, replicated and improved by other researchers.
Certainly McIntyre and Tamino went steps beyond Marcott, and Tamino worked out a better way to do things. For McIntyre to imagine he discovered the dropout problem that is plainly stated and graphed multiple times in the paper, or to express surprise when Marcott said “not robust” in an email, are signs that he had not read it.
daveburton says:
“For what it’s worth, Tamino has gotten one climate-related article published (with co-author Stefan Rahmstorf):”
He has two. And other articles involving time series or spectral analysis, some of them widely cited.
Louis Hooffstetter says:
“Yeah, and that paper was a classic, wasn’t it?”
F&R 2011 does something new, and already shown to be robust. It’s been cited in more than 20 other peer-reviewed articles. Who knows, might actually become classic.
BA,
It is certainly true that if Marcott et al. had written something along the lines of “we think modern uptick produced by the Standard5x5 is probably not robust because of the loss of proxies with values in the modern period” the whole discussion of this paper would have been very different. I also believe that if they had adopted Tamino’s “differences” method of analysis and had used the published proxy dates then they certainly would have obtained a more plausible result in the modern period. As compared to what they actually did, I think they would have had a much better paper. So I guess we have reached a kind of agreement.
Of course, according to Tamino, if they had done all those things they also would have produced an “modern uptick” of less than 0.15 C. Now, go back and re-read the original press release see if you can think of a reason why they didn’t do exactly what you are now suggesting they should have done. Here is a hint, imagine a press release headline which said: “New analysis by Marcott et al. reveals shocking truth that modern warming is comparable to medieval warm period and current temps are significantly lower than during vast majority of the holocene.”
Mind you, that still would have left the problem of changing the frequency resolution in the modern period only (which is a problem which really can’t be solved given these proxies). But if you dump all the conclusions regarding comparisions to the modern period, I think you would have a fairly sound paper.
It occurred to me a few days ago in one of my LOTR ruminations (based on a bizarre comment thread on Real Science) that in some ways D. Appel resembles one of the giant trolls that burst into the city of Minas Tirith after the gate has been breached. After reading this, I realized who the other two trolls were.
BA says:
April 3, 2013 at 4:43 pm
Are you getting all your info from McI, without bothering to read either Marcott or Taminio? The “difference” is not an artifact of redating, or of inexplicable deletion. It was produced mainly by the facts that (a) these long-term proxies become progressively more sparse toward the present and (b) one of the analytical methods, Standard5x5, was not robust against this problem.
The problem is you are getting your information only from Tamino’s closed mind.
There have been other reconstructions based on the data without redating and those do not lead to an increase in temperature.
http://suyts.wordpress.com/2013/03/14/hockey-stick-found-in-marcott-data/
But of course you are invited to do your own calculation with the data available online without redating and without truncating data.
Only with the redating and truncating of some proxies there results an increase in temperature at the end of their chart “the uptick”
So stop pretending you do not understand, the problem of the redating is there and has nothing to do with ” the very slight recalibration of radiocarbon dates from CALIB 6.0.1 (essentially negligible in the modern period in discussion here), but with Marcott-Shakun core top redating. ”
http://climateaudit.org/2013/03/17/hiding-the-decline-the-md01-2421-splice/
“As noted in my previous post, Marcott, Shakun, Clark and Mix disappeared two alkenone cores from the 1940 population, both of which were highly negative. In addition, they made some surprising additions to the 1940 population, including three cores whose coretops were dated by competent specialists 500-1000 years earlier. ”
http://climateaudit.org/2013/03/19/bent-their-core-tops-in/
bmcburney says:
“I also believe that if they had adopted Tamino’s “differences” method of analysis and had used the published proxy dates then they certainly would have obtained a more plausible result in the modern period. As compared to what they actually did, I think they would have had a much better paper. So I guess we have reached a kind of agreement.”
No. I do like the differences method which looks simple yet comes out pretty close to both RegEM, and Standard5x5 too for all but the most recent values. I wish Marcott et al had thought of that or for other reasons graphically downplayed the Standard5x5 uptick instead of just stating that it is not robust. On the other hand, comments I’ve seen by paleoclimatologists seem to agree that adjusting the published radiocarbon dates using new and better correction in general was the right step. It would make little sense for a synthesis study in 2013 not to use the best methods.
“Of course, according to Tamino, if they had done all those things they also would have produced an “modern uptick” of less than 0.15 C. Now, go back and re-read the original press release see if you can think of a reason why they didn’t do exactly what you are now suggesting they should have done. Here is a hint, imagine a press release headline which said: “New analysis by Marcott et al. reveals shocking truth that modern warming is comparable to medieval warm period and current temps are significantly lower than during vast majority of the holocene.””
Conspiratorial, and wrong. 1940 is the end point for the reconstruction, and for the small modern uptick Tamino finds in re-analyzing the proxies. As the authors make clear in their paper, FAQs and interviews, their comparisons between holocene and modern temperatures are not, and could not possibly be, based on the proxy uptick. Proxies that end in 1940 cannot tell us about temperatures in 2000-2009. Marcott’s PR mistake was imagining that people would read the paper if they were curious about how that comparison was made. With equal lack of success I’ve been suggesting people look at Fig 3.
“Mind you, that still would have left the problem of changing the frequency resolution in the modern period only (which is a problem which really can’t be solved given these proxies). But if you dump all the conclusions regarding comparisions to the modern period, I think you would have a fairly sound paper.”
Just for a start, have you read their sections about the resolution issue? Since the redating accusations didn’t work, and the proxy uptick thing turns out to be trivial, this idea about resolution or “spikes” seems to be the next line of attack. But it’s not holding up either.
Lars P. says:
“The problem is you are getting your information only from Tamino’s closed mind.”
Most of the info I posted here comes from reading the Science paper itself.
I see that Jeremy Shakun has followed up on the FAQs with a new post responding to questions about redating and core tops.
BA says:
April 4, 2013 at 2:24 pm
…
On the other hand, comments I’ve seen by paleoclimatologists seem to agree that adjusting the published radiocarbon dates using new and better correction in general was the right step.
…
—-
That’s interesting, I’d love to read those. Do you have a link?
BA,
I would not say that re-dating the cores per Marcott et al. is always an error or will always be unjustified. However, it is a step which has not presently been justified by experts and no justification is provided in the Marcott et al. paper or related materials. I can see that, despite the absence of any actual evidence, you have been able to form an opinion on this subject which gives you comfort. Once the original authors or other experts have examined the issue, agreement on this point may become more widespread.
I was aware of when the reconstruction ended and the recent comments by the authors. Those things change nothing. Use the published dates, include the proxies which were inexplicably deleted, use the “differences” method and you still need to change the headline to something like what I wrote above. Of course, Marcott et al. do have a point about the fundamental error of comparing proxy results to the modern period. The frequency resolution alone makes that impossible. Too bad they did not read that press release before sending it out. I agree that was a big PR mistake.
Mark Bofill says:
“That’s interesting, I’d love to read those. Do you have a link?”
For example, see Richard Telford’s post Mar 16, 2013 at 4:56 PM:
http://climateaudit.org/2013/03/16/the-marcott-shakun-dating-service/
BA says:
April 4, 2013 at 4:31 pm
—-
Thanks BA.
Wow I need to NOT skip the comments at Climate Audit, that’s a fascinating discussion!
Doublethanks BA. 🙂
BA –
Please consider my comment:
—
Mark Bofill says:
April 3, 2013 at 6:13 am
—-
withdrawn.
BA says:
April 4, 2013 at 2:24 pm
On the other hand, comments I’ve seen by paleoclimatologists seem to agree that adjusting the published radiocarbon dates using new and better correction in general was the right step. It would make little sense for a synthesis study in 2013 not to use the best methods.
I could not see anybody having a problem with using the new and better radiocarbon dates, so why do you keep mentioning it, as nobody raised the question?
Conspiratorial, and wrong. 1940 is the end point for the reconstruction, and for the small modern uptick Tamino finds in re-analyzing the proxies. As the authors make clear in their paper, FAQs and interviews, their comparisons between holocene and modern temperatures are not, and could not possibly be, based on the proxy uptick.
No researcher would graf the thermometer record onto any reconstruction:
“Michael Mann at Real Climate, Dec. 2004:
Response: No researchers in this field have ever, to our knowledge, “grafted the thermometer record onto” any reconstruction. It is somewhat disappointing to find this specious claim (which we usually find originating from industry-funded climate disinformation websites) appearing in this forum….”
The new hockey stick was praised as a validation of the thermometer record.
Mark Bofill rambled something on April 2, 2013 at 3:01 pm in
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/01/mcintyre-charges-grant-foster-aka-tamino-with-plagiarism-in-a-dot-earth-discussion/#comment-1264271
Truth and science don’t fly here. Smear, libelous accusations, insulting participants whose views are not liked by equalizing them with cockroaches, endorsing the falsification and context stripping of statements made by climate scientists, based on the rationalization that such an approach was the correct one to understand the meaning of the statement correctly, do instead.
REPLY: This proves my point about why you are really here, based on your admission here in this comment – Anthony