Just last month, these were the claims:
We’re screwed: 11,000 years’ worth of climate data prove it. It’s among the most compelling bits of proof out there that human beings are behind global warming, and as such has become a target on Mann’s back for climate denialists looking to draw a bead on scientists. — The Atlantic, March 9th
Global Temperatures Highest in 4,000 Years The modern rise that has recreated the temperatures of 5,000 years ago is occurring at an exceedingly rapid clip on a geological time scale, appearing in graphs in the new paper as a sharp vertical spike. — Justin Gillis, New York Times, March 7th
Study: Recent heat spike unlike anything in 11,000 years “Rapid” head spike unlike anything in 11,000 years. Research released Thursday in the journal Science uses fossils of tiny marine organisms to reconstruct global temperatures …. It shows how the globe for several thousands of years was cooling until an unprecedented reversal in the 20th century. — Seth Borenstein, The Associated Press, March 7th
True face of climate’s hockey stick graph revealed The rate of warming in the last 150 years is unlike anything that happened in at least 11,000 years, says Michael Mann of the Pennsylvania State University in University Park, who was not involved in Marcott’s study. — Michael Marshall, New Scientist magazine, March 7th
Now, Ross McKitrick, building on the work of Steve McIntyre and others in the blogosphere, shows how easily these media outlets were duped into believing this study was the end-all for proof of man-made climate change.
We’re not screwed?
11,000-year study’s 20th-century claim is groundless
On March 8, a paper appeared in the prestigious journal Science under the title A reconstruction of regional and global temperature for the past 11,300 years. Temperature reconstructions are nothing new, but papers claiming to be able to go back so far in time are rare, especially ones that promise global and regional coverage.
The new study, by Shaun Marcott, Jeremy Shakun, Peter Clark and Alan Mix, was based on an analysis of 73 long-term proxies, and offered a few interesting results: one familiar (and unremarkable), one odd but probably unimportant, and one new and stunning. The latter was an apparent discovery that 20th-century warming was a wild departure from anything seen in over 11,000 years. News of this finding flew around the world and the authors suddenly became the latest in a long line of celebrity climate scientists.
The trouble is, as they quietly admitted over the weekend, their new and stunning claim is groundless. The real story is only just emerging, and it isn’t pretty.
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Read his excellent essay in full at The Financial Post here:
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2013/04/01/were-not-screwed/
I should add, I would like to see a post, by someone in the proxy field to deal with this. If there is support for this in the many proxies this would be the biggest finding so far in climate science, maybe in science itself if we are considering the future of the human and other species. One look at that graph tells me that we are helpless to roll back mother nature as easily as all the cream-puff geoengineering types think.
Caleb says:
April 2, 2013 at 2:56 am
I grew up in a wealthy town where people, and especially the wives, were quite smart but knew nothing about engines, and the local auto mechanic took advantage. He would replace things that didn’t need replacing, (if he really replaced them at all.) For example he might replace a car’s ball joints after 2000 miles. “….
Same in my town. I know a lot about automobiles and I see a lot of scamming. They love to replace brake rotors around here. Why? Because it’s the simplest job to do while the car is on the lift for inspection, it cost less than $20 a wheel and they can charge $250, and they can scare the owner into all sorts of “safety” concerns if you don’t replace them. 99% if the time it’s total rubbish.
In the book “Freakanomics” they have similar events which are ascribed to the concept of “information assymetry”. It’s essentially the power someone holds over others when there isn’t a balance in knowledge about the subject, like the true state of the brakes, or the value of an object for sale, or what the climate data really says about the climate system.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_asymmetry
Marcott et. al. use a 300 year smoothing technique and then expect the end point hundred years to be representative! They are either idiots or biased and the reviewers have no common sense to recognize the disconnect! And why did it take skeptics to find that Marcott’s PhD thesis findings were vastly different? The hypocrisy and hubris abound! Severe penalties are well deserved to all involved in producing, reviewing and publishing this paper, maybe even the withdrawal of Marcott’s PhD.
Bill
Re Skyphil above is this important?
“seriously mistaken reference and claim about insolation over 11,500 years” link. If it is should it not be followed up urgently (if so I assume SM is looking into it)
BUT…..the readership of the un-retracted / un-corrected warmist reports outnumbers that of “The Financial Post” and even THE BEST blogs (;-) by what, a few tens or scores of millions?
You will never win a cultural dispute by rational argument.
Culture can only be changed by cultural acts. For an excellent example of a cultural act (working outside of rational argument) you have that superb cartoon by Josh, the scythe.
The MSM is always reporting that doomsday is here, doomsday is here, and they always cry wolf, so nobody believes them any more any way. The public has reached the saturation point, and no amount of doomsday claims will get traction. Their scheme is unraveling, and now temps are headed down, so we can really laugh at their flailings and failings.
David L. says:
April 2, 2013 at 2:51 am
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I don’t see that happening simply because the public will not buy into such a switch, at least not for a generation or two. They have shot their bolt with manmade global warming, if that turns out to be bo**ocks, the public will not believe ‘the Team’ should they claim catastrophicmanmade global cooling.
No, I think that the public will instead be baying for blood. Should cAGW fall down, the MSM will review the effect and costs of policies that were undertaken with a view to mitigation. It will become clear that we have locked ourselves into energy prices at least some 30% higher than they need be, we have lost much industry and lost a lot of jobs. If on top of this we have to endure energy insecurity until new conventional power generators can be built, the public will not be in the mood to cut the greens some slack let alone to go with them on their next suicide mission.
11,500… 1500.. I haven’t read through this whole sorry mess, but could it be that a career has hit the wall on a misread or a typo…?
Their problem is they posted the studty too early. April 1st was yesterday.
OK, their STUDY
Ross has put together as really easy to digest summary of the whole Marcott et al debacle in this article. I really hope it gets wider visibility than just the FT – a great paper but most the general public will never see it & this is an article everyone could & would understand. The general public needs to see how the CAGW crowd operates & this shines a light on it like few other articles do.
If there were truly unbiased journalism out there, this whole episode ought to be the final nail in the coffin of the whole CAGW scare, but unfortunately, I suspect that will not be the case.
richard verney says:
April 2, 2013 at 5:43 am
“No, I think that the public will instead be baying for blood.”
Even if elements of the public are, the MSM will not give them any publicity. Blogs that report about such an unrest will be smeared by psychologists/sociologists as being run by the insane, as has already happened.
If the public manages to see through the propaganda fog in larger numbers, the repressive measures might get more extreme. Alternatively, if the leaders of the regime are chicken, like e.g. social democrats are, they will retreat and the meme will collapse.
Jeff L…its NOT the FT, if it was it would mean something. Its the “Financial Post”. Whats that!
Yes indeed, this is a great read and a cogent summary of the takedown of Marcott et al. Perhaps for legal reasons, Ross chose to call the deliberate re-dating of the core tops “arbitrary”, when clearly nothing could be further from the truth. That is to say, why bother re-dating without a specific purpose in mind. Furthermore, if there was a valid reason for re-dating specific samples, an explanation should have been annotated in the original paper.
One can almost picture Marcott and the team begging those responsible for originally dating the samples in question for a viable cover story. Methinks this is why it took so long for Marcott et al to post their lame FAQ/ semi-retraction. I wonder if Steve or anyone else has reached out to said individuals for a statement?
To Skiphil says:
April 1, 2013 at 11:19 pm
seriously mistaken reference and claim about insolation over 11,500 years
[emphasis added]
Nicolas Nierenberg Posted Apr 2, 2013 at 12:23 AM
Nick, so this is pretty funny to me. They reference Huang 2004 as their source for decreasing insolation over an 11,500 year period to the present. I found the paper from S Huang 2004 GRL. It only covers 1500 to the present and claims increasing temperatures and insolation during that period. See figure 4.
This has all the correct page numbers etc. I have no idea how this could be a reference for an 11,500 year period.
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1500 or 11,500 – it’s only a difference by one order of magnitude.
That’s close enough to support “The Cause” with full authority for those who want to believe….
Reblogged this on BenfromMO and commented:
Worth a reblog.
I just read the comments below the Revkin piece “Scientists Find an Abrupt Warm Jog After a Very Long Cooling”. It was a very sobering and disturbing experience; those of us who stay away from alarmist blogs forget how entrenched those beliefs are.
People like Susan Anderson (who she?) have no interest in going to CA (or coming here) and actually reading the detailed analyses of Marcott et al’ s fudging of the data. Instead, they keep citing and posting links to all the heavily censored alarmist blogs; sadly their appeals to authority and their belittling of people like Steve Mc do not fall on deaf ears.
The title of Revkin’s piece should be amended to “Scientists CREATE an Abrupt Warm Jog After a Very Long Cooling”. But there is more alarmist noise on the thread, than sensible presentation of the mistakes in the paper.
Nothing will happen with this until some big shots start demanding that Science withdraw the paper
Do they really think that they won”t get caught? They can’t be that stupid. I guess they know they will get caught, but not until after all the headlines trumpet our impending doom. It is probably worth it, not only for the ‘noble’ cause, but for the bottom line. Despite a flawless record of being wrong, doom and gloomers are often rewarded financially. Take Paul Erhlich…please.
Shaun Marcott is a name that has now appeared in news outlets around the world. The majority of people seeing that name will never know that his ‘science’ is really a deception. They will think he is a very smart young man adding more proof to a settled science!
Its not about being correct. Its about being loud and scary. It’s not a conspiracy. Its just how it works. That’s where the big bucks are.
In some of the blogs there seems to be a misconception that Marcott et al. somehow “spliced” modern thermometer data onto their reconstruction and that the resulting sharp uptick, while misrepresenting the temporal resolution of their reconstruction, is a valid comparison.
Trouble is, that’s not what they did. Their reconstruction is a compilation of many Monte Carlo “realizations” of the actual proxy series. The Monte Carlo realizations created the uptick out of thin air, with no help from the modern instrumental record. The “blade” of the hockey stick is purely an artifact of the reconstruction statistics. People who try to claim that it’s just comparing the thermometer record to the paleo reconstruction are missing the point.
The sad truth is the cold NH land temperatures this winter have done much more to sidetrack the cagw bus than anything else. While debunking this nonsense is essential, the impact is far less than it should be.
I would think that the fault lies with the universities that allow those teaching climate science to ignore valid scientific points made by qualified skeptics. You cannot blame the younger climate scientists for being alarmists when they paid good money to be indoctrinated into the CAGW cause. They seem to have been taught a religion posing as a science as well as the true science involved.
Without some sort of potential punitive measures there is no reason any school’s administration will care what is being taught. Perhaps Congress should threaten to prevent taxpayer backed student loans from being used at any university that can be shown to have suppressed or blatantly ignored evidence suggesting they are teaching pure conjecture as fact. I’m not saying something that is conjecture should not be taught, only that it should be made clear to the student that it is not fact and that the student should be both alert and open to any contradictory evidence, as that is what any true scientist should do.
Matcott was quoted on CA as saying that it was standard practice to redate core tops. I think that was from his FAQ. That statement should be put under the microscope.
The invariably senseless ‘policylass’ (fashions herself a member of the “policymaker class”) I think.
Has an obscure, unread blog dedicated to material furthering mankind’s future enslavement to a scientist-governing oligarchy …
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If none of them does, and if Science lets it stand, maybe with a “clarification,” it will go harder on science-as-an-institution in the long run.