You’d think academics in the upside down Mann climate proxy world would pay attention, and not repeat the same mistakes of the past. Apparently not. WUWT readers surely recall the Yamal YAD06 (The most influential tree in the world) and the core sample YAD061.
Steve McIntyre points out the YAD061 equivalent in Marcott et al, where a single sample contributed the majority of the uptick.
He writes:
TN05-17 is by far the most influential Southern Hemisphere core in Marcott et al 2013- it’s Marcott’s YAD061, so to speak. Its influence is much enhanced by the interaction of short-segment centering in the mid-Holocene and non-robustness in the modern period. Marcott’s SHX reconstruction becomes worthless well before the 20th century, a point that they have not yet admitted, let alone volunteered.
Marcott’s TN05-17 series is a bit of an odd duck within his dataset. It is the only ocean core in which the temperature is estimated by Modern Analogue Technique on diatoms; only one other ocean core uses Modern Antalogue Technique (MD79-257). The significance of this core was spotted early on by ^.
TN05-17 is plotted below. Rather unusually among Holocene proxies, its mid-Holocene values are very cold. Centering on 4500-5500 BP in Marcott style results in this proxy having very high anomalies in the modern period: closing at a Yamalian apparent anomaly of over 4 deg C.
Figure 1. TN05-17.
In the most recent portion of the Marcott SHX, there are 5 or fewer series, as compared to 12 in the mid-Holocene. Had the data been centered on the most recent millennium and extended back (e.g. Hansen’s reference station method is a lowbrow method), then there would have been an extreme negative contribution from TN05-17 in the mid-Holocene, but its contribution to the average would have been less (divided by 12, instead of 4). As shown below, TN05-17 pretty much by itself contributes the positive recent values of the SHX reconstruction. It’s closing anomaly (basis 4500-5500 BP) is 4.01 deg. There are 4 contributing series – so the contribution of TN05-17 to the SHX composite in 1940 is 4.01/4, more than the actual SHX value. The entire increase in the Marcott SHX from at least 1800AD on arises from increased influence of TN05-17 – the phenomenon pointed out in my post on upticks.
Read the entire post here: http://climateaudit.org/2013/04/10/the-impact-of-tn05-17/
Please tell me if I have this wrong (and I’m open to correction! … this is beyond my pay grade):
Marcott et al Fig 3. Did they really arrive at the Holocene median and 66% range shown by the black square and blue bar, (which is oh so much less than the range of the proxies)…
… by creating 1000 stacks of data all a little different by random addition of “red noise” of the dame power spectrum as Mann’s data, then statistically analyzing that?
We all know if you take enough inaccurate measures of something then statistically we can derive a more accurate mean …. but really, …. generating replicates of the same thing, then analyzing it all?
C’mon, surely this is jumping through a few too many hoops.
markx says:” They probably did not really mean to finish on this note:Global temperature, therefore, has risen from near the coldest to the warmest levels of the Holocene within the past century, reversing the long-term cooling trend that began ~5000 yr B.P.
Climate models project that temperatures are likely to exceed the full distribution of Holocene warmth by 2100 for all versions of the temperature stack (35) (Fig. 3), regardless of the greenhouse gas emission scenario considered (excluding the year 2000 constant composition scenario, which has already been exceeded). By 2100, global average temperatures will probably be 5 to 12 standard deviations above the Holocene temperature mean for the A1B scenario (35) based on our Standard 5×5 plus high-frequency addition stack (Fig. 3).”
No, actually they did mean to finish on that note.
You are confusing data with discussion. Did you read ref 35? It’s the 2007 IPCC. They are comparing the long past (their data) to a summary of the current data summarized in ref 35. And it goes with the discussion part of the abstract: “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.”
toml says: “It would be very interesting to repeat Marcott’s analysis dropping out one proxy at a time. It’s a pretty standard sensitivity analysis method.”
Jeff Alberts says:”You’re assuming they DIDN’T use Yamal as a learning experience. They learned how to make a stick where there are none. Such things can ONLY be deliberate.”
Maybe. But what is it with this one temperature trace? I am assuming that the sources and analysis were decided at the beginning of the study (which might be hard for some of you to believe, because all scientists are evil and are in this business for the $$). What then would you like them do with the ones they did not like? Do some of you think the uptick data should not be included. Really? So you think, based on the results, they should have picked the data sets they used? But wait, isn’t that what people contend Mann did in his 1998 paper?
Pretty entertaining watching this discussion.
So when will Marcott et al add this to their FAQ?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/31/marcott-issues-a-faq-on-thei-paper/
The basic problem with Marcott’s paper is that between the time of its publication and the completion of his original thesis, he was got at by a person, or persons, unknown from the Climate Mafia.
As someone said earlier, without the Hockey Stick and the well-planned media frenzy, none of us would have ever heard of Marcott. The fact that his paper and his thesis come to different conclusions, when this is combined with his dodgy statistical analysis, it is hardly surprising his name has now become mud/Mann.
Well… how many times do they have to do this before it is fraud? To me it’s fraud now and has been fraud for a very long time. All these graphs concocted to get the headlines and scare the puplic are very dileberately crafted to misrepresent. That’s fraud.
We can spend years debating about a man’s intentions while all the while he continues to rob us. What are we waiting for, for him to retire? Let’s just call it like it is, collar the b******ds and bring charges against the lot of them. Every single time.
Yes, I know, it costs. It’s not likely to happen. I’m just pointing out that sitting around twiddling our thumbs and debating whether to call it fraud or not – when it clear is – is pointless. These alarmists and grafters are laughing at us when we are trying so hard to be fair and gentle with them.
I wouldn’t put it past ’em!
A.D. Everard says:
April 11, 2013 at 12:32 pm
I second that motion!
trafamadore:
I read your post at April 11, 2013 at 11:41 am several times. It displays a very strange and distorted view.
Contrary to your distorted view, nobody thinks “all scientists are evil”.
Indeed, those of us who are scientists do NOT think of ourselves as “evil”.
Are you not aware there are corrupt people in every walk of life?
I wish it were not so, but sadly it is. And there are a few corrupt scientists.
Scientists do not seek money as their main objective: they would have chosen a profession other than science if it were. Most scientists desire to conduct research and know – secretly hope – fame and esteem may be a reward for their work.
Almost all scientists are true scientists. They seek research funds to enable them to conduct honest research which may in some remote possibility gain them fame and esteem.
A few scientists are corrupt scientists. They seek research funds to enable them to conduct dishonest research which they hope will rapidly gain them fame and esteem. And financial rewards do come with fame and esteem, but money is not the objective of the corrupt science. The fame and esteem are most simply obtained from research corrupted to provide results supportive of a political agenda; e.g. AGW.
Proxy climate studies have a shocking history of being corrupt science conducted by corrupt scientists.
Therefore, only the naive fail to start from a situation of distrust when another proxy climate study is published and seems to concur with much previous research which has been found to be corrupt.
Richard
steveta_uk says: “Bit puzzled by this. I thought Steve Mc had shown that the uptick was an artifact of the processing and wasn’t in any of the proxies. And now, he’s identified a specific proxy with an uptick.
Can’t be both, surely?”
Please check, but from memory I think you will find that Steve’s first analysis was on one particular subset of the proxies (alkenones?), where dates had been changed thus producing an uptick. This analysis is of a different proxy set.
Question. Has anyone made a strong counter argument that this is not out and out fraud? If not why isn’t someone charging Him?
Question. Has anyone made a strong counter argument that this is not out and out fraud? If not why isn’t someone charging Him?—— 1. They are professionals with University degrees.. 2. Professionals respect each others degrees.. 3. Most journalists and people in the legal profession have University degrees..
If you have letters after your name you do not cross the line for any reason for fear of being booted out of the elite club you worked so hard to get into..
The biggest reason is… They just dont care.. Sure they are not saving the world but they are enriching their friends.. Expanding their political base and annoying all the right people / industries while they are at it.. ( all on the public dime)
Why wont it stop?.. Because getting your social or political opponents to contribute to your political war chest through taxes is the best idea government workers have ever come up with..
Its so perfect it almost brings a tear to ones eye ;(
richardscourtney says: “A few scientists are corrupt scientists. They seek research funds to enable them to conduct dishonest research which they hope will rapidly gain them fame and esteem. And financial rewards do come with fame and esteem, but money is not the objective of the corrupt science. The fame and esteem are most simply obtained from research corrupted to provide results supportive of a political agenda”.
What a very strange and distorted world you live in. Marcott is a grad student and you paint him with the same brush as everyone else who has studied this because, like everyone else who has studied this, he finds an temp uptick at the end of the 20th century. Hmmm. How strange.
I wonder why that happens. (keep repeating with reverb)
Two types of confirmation bias in science:
Intentional confirmation bias.
Unintentional confirmation bias.
Climate science is the former.
If climate scientists were doing a drug evaluation and 99 out of 100 participants died, they would approve the drug based on a single person surviving.
trafamadore says:
April 11, 2013 at 3:07 pm
richardscourtney says: “A few scientists are corrupt scientists. They seek research funds to enable them to conduct dishonest research which they hope will rapidly gain them fame and esteem. And financial rewards do come with fame and esteem, but money is not the objective of the corrupt science. The fame and esteem are most simply obtained from research corrupted to provide results supportive of a political agenda”.
What a very strange and distorted world you live in. Marcott is a grad student and you paint him with the same brush as everyone else who has studied this because, like everyone else who has studied this, he finds an temp uptick at the end of the 20th century. Hmmm. How strange.
I wonder why that happens. (keep repeating with reverb)
=========================================================
WOW !!
Talk about living in distortion !!!!
” like everyone else who has studied this, he finds an temp uptick at the end of the 20th century.”
You really don’t understand what the issue is with Yamal and the Marcott “uptick”.
At least your supply of bliss is plentiful.
trafamadore says:
April 11, 2013 at 3:07 pm
What a very strange and distorted world you live in. Marcott is a grad student and you paint him with the same brush as everyone else who has studied this because, like everyone else who has studied this, he finds an temp uptick at the end of the 20th century. Hmmm. How strange.
__________
But there was no uptick in the PHD thesis version of the paper. Hmmm. How strange.
trafamadore says:
April 11, 2013 at 3:07 pm
richardscourtney says: “A few scientists are corrupt scientists. They seek research funds to enable them to conduct dishonest research which they hope will rapidly gain them fame and esteem. And financial rewards do come with fame and esteem, but money is not the objective of the corrupt science. The fame and esteem are most simply obtained from research corrupted to provide results supportive of a political agenda”.
What a very strange and distorted world you live in. Marcott is a grad student and you paint him with the same brush as everyone else who has studied this because, like everyone else who has studied this, he finds an temp uptick at the end of the 20th century. Hmmm. How strange.
I wonder why that happens. (keep repeating with reverb)
—–
Yeah? After reading Climate Gate 1 & 2, after hearing Stephen Schneider’s remarks on being effective as opposed to being honest, after James Annan’s statements regarding peers lying during elicitation exercises to motivate political action, you bet I approach climate scientists with suspicion about their integrity and motives. They have earned this mistrust.
Unfortunately for the honest climate scientists, if they are any, they haven’t run their crooked colleagues out on a rail, so they’ll just have to bear it.
This is probably very evident for most of you but in my mind anyway is a way to describe how Mann ans Marcott et all do research ( and I stand corrected if wrong ),
I stepped out this morning and it was raining, the same thing at dusk last night and at noon 2 days ago, raining again, I then checked my Stevenson screen records for April 1, 2, 3 and 4. At the observation times (& 7am and 6 pm on average) it was raining again every time !!
I turned to my wife and said “it’s been raining for 10 days straight!!! (she did not even answer just looked at me).
trafamadore says:
April 11, 2013 at 11:41 am
toml says: “It would be very interesting to repeat Marcott’s analysis dropping out one proxy at a time. It’s a pretty standard sensitivity analysis method.”
Jeff Alberts says:”You’re assuming they DIDN’T use Yamal as a learning experience. They learned how to make a stick where there are none. Such things can ONLY be deliberate.”
Maybe. But what is it with this one temperature trace? I am assuming that the sources and analysis were decided at the beginning of the study (which might be hard for some of you to believe, because all scientists are evil and are in this business for the $$). What then would you like them do with the ones they did not like? Do some of you think the uptick data should not be included. Really? So you think, based on the results, they should have picked the data sets they used? But wait, isn’t that what people contend Mann did in his 1998 paper?
Pretty entertaining watching this discussion.
Even if the proxies were decided at the beginning of the study, it is normal to validate your proxies if possible and also to look for outliers. In studies with large numbers of proxies it would be normal to remove outliers as unreliable – or specifically note why that outlier is being retained. It would be normal in that case to provide some other validation of the values from that proxy.
What we appear to have in this case is an outlier which showed cold against the warm average and warm against the few that were left cold. Retention of this contrary proxy needs full documented reasoning: this was not done – nor any extra validation. To then rely on it as the basis for your press release having just left it in the averaged set of proxies apparently hoping no-one would notice, is not what one would normally expect from a post-doc researcher.
trafamadore:
I am writing so you know I read your reply which demonstrates you failed to read or understand my post to you. I need say no more because others have expressed the astonishment at your failure to understand which I share.
Richard
richardscourtney says:”I am writing so you know I read your reply which demonstrates you failed to read or understand my post to you.”
ActualIy, understand your post perfectly.
You think: that there are tens or hundreds or even thousands of climate scientists involved in a conspiracy of some sort to convince the world that global warming is occurring, and making up data to convince people of this. These scientists speak different languages, live in different counties and do research is completely different areas.
I think: you are nuts.
REPLY: Maybe, but at least he has the courage to put his name to his ideas, so that if he is wrong, he is accountable personally, unlike you. -Anthony
UPDATE: upon further inspection I find that:
jr2458@sbcglobal.net – Result: Bad
MX record about sbcglobal.net exists.
Connection succeeded to mx2.sbcglobal.am0.yahoodns.net SMTP.
421 4.7.1 [TS03] All messages from verify-email.org will be permanently deferred; Retrying will NOT succeed. See http://postmaster.yahoo.com/421-ts03.html
So see ya later, anonymous coward. A valid email address is required to post here by blog policy. Having none, you get the redirect to the permanent spam bin. – Anthony
Ian W says:”Even if the proxies were decided at the beginning of the study, it is normal to validate your proxies if possible and also to look for outliers. In studies with large numbers of proxies it would be normal to remove outliers as unreliable – or specifically note why that outlier is being retained.”
I am not aware of this. I always leave outliers alone, they usually do no harm, and you can check this by comparing the median with the average. You really need a good reason to remove data, and those data were already published I think. So to remove them you need to explain what was wrong with a published study, and I wouldn’t bother, it just gets people irritated at you.
trafamadore:
Your post at April 11, 2013 at 4:15 pm says in total
I did not say, I did not suggest, and did not imply that I ” think: that there are tens or hundreds or even thousands of climate scientists involved in a conspiracy of some sort to convince the world that global warming is occurring, and making up data to convince people of this.”
I DON’T!
Read what I wrote.
Clearly, by your on words, you proclaim that you are nuts.
Richard
REPLY: Richard, he’s a blog policy violator and has been dealt with, he won’t be posting here again – Anthony
Anthony:
Thankyou for your kind message to me. Of course it is right that a blog policy violator be banned. However, I want it to be clear that I have not asked for anybody to be banned.
The freedom to post diverse views is one reason that WUWT is so very, very valuable.
It is your blog and it has obtained its immense success as a result of your management. If my replies to trafamadore caused problems then I sincerely apologise. WUWT is valuable and it is my desire to support it and not to harm it in any way.
Richard
Anthony:
I posted a ;personal message to you. It seems to have gone in the ‘bin’ possibly the spam folder.
You do not need to post it here unless that is your choice, but I would appreciate your being able to read it.
Richard