Steve McIntyre points out how climate science errors return from the dead as zombies:
PAGES2K, Gergis and Made-for-IPCC Journal Articles
March 15, 2013 was the IPCC deadline for use in AR5 and predictably a wave of articles have been accepted. The IPCC Paleo chapter wanted a graphic on regional reconstructions and the PAGES2K group has obligingly provided the raw materials for this graphic, which will be published by Nature on April 21. Thanks to an obliging mole, I have information on the proxies used in the PAGES2K reconstructions and will report today on the Gergis reconstruction, of interest to CA readers, which lives on a zombie, walking among us as the living dead.
The PAGES2K article has its own interesting backstory. The made-for-IPCC article was submitted to Science last July on deadline eve, thereby permitting its use in the Second Draft, where it sourced a major regional paleo reconstruction graphic. The PAGES2K submission used (in a check-kited version) the Gergis reconstruction, which it cited as being “under revision” though, at the time, it had been disappeared.
The PAGES2K submission to Science appears to have been rejected as it has never appeared in Science and a corresponding article is scheduled for publication by Nature. It sounds like there is an interesting backstory here: one presumes that IPCC would have been annoyed by Science’s failure to publish the article and that there must have been considerable pressure on Nature to accept the article. Nature appears to have accepted the PAGES2K article only on IPCC deadline eve.
The new PAGES2K article contains reconstructions for all continents and has an extremely long list of proxies, some of which have been discussed before, but some only now making their first digital appearance. Each regional reconstruction is a major undertaking and deserving of separate peer review. It seems impossible that these various regional reconstructions could themselves have been thoroughly reviewed as re-submitted to Nature. Indeed, given that the PAGES2K coauthor list was very large, one also wonders where they located reviewers that were unconflicted with any of the authors.
Of particular interest to CA readers is the zombie version of the Gergis reconstruction. Previous CA articles are tagged gergis.
CA readers will recall that Gergis et al 2012 had stated that they had used detrended correlations to screen proxies – a technique that seemingly avoided the pitfalls of correlation screening. Jean S pointed out that Gergis et al had not used the stated technique and that the majority of their proxies did not pass a detrended correlation test – see CA discussion here (building on an earlier thread) reporting that only 6 of 27 proxies passed the stated significance test.
Read it all here: PAGES2K, Gergis and Made-for-IPCC Journal Articles
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Fortunately Gergis, along with Flannery and Karoly, will be out of a job come September 14th.
Is there any chance that paleo proxies are also manipulated and “corrected” like temperature and sea level? Huge problems for the future of climate science are: the egregious complicity of Nature and many other journals in the perpetration non-science and the data cooking of scientists of sworn allegiance to the; CO2 politics. The fact that the data chickens are being cared for by Colonel Sanders scientists makes for an intractable problem for science unless a thorough cleaning is done. Somehow we need new stainless journals for this science, a total reassessment of raw data, generation of new instrumentation, asterisking and re-education in the scientific method for thousands of PhDs, and a non-partisan committee and custodian of it all. .
Patrick: unfortunately not, Gergis won’t be out of a job on Sep 14. She used her flawed paper as the basis for a new ARC grant application last year, without disclosing that the paper had already been rejected by the time the ARC grant applications were assessed by the referees. She acknowledged that her paper had been rejected only immediately after the ARC outcome. So, she won another $351,805 of taxpayers’ money from the ARC (2013: $118,785; for 2014: $115,920; for 2015: $117,100). This despite the fact that 90% of the ARC application (most of them based on honest research) do not succeed.
Gary Pearse’s analogy of data chickens being cared for by Colonel Sanders is creative and quite smart. With that in mind, CFC’s original recipe used a pressure cooker.
Sounds like the next report will be a smörgåsbord of easy pickins. My guess is that weird weather and modern proxi measures of temperature (IE ocean changes, some kind of new statistic on weather pattern variations, etc) will take the place of the uncooperative temperature sensors at and above ground level. This oughta be fun! Hell, they may even haul out the sleeping sun to explain the pause. I hope they do. I do so hope they do. I love reading the dry wit of our esteemed solar expert.
This is starting to remind me of the steroid era in baseball. There will be asterisks on records and people left out of the Hall of Fame based on their cheating through the use of steroids on the data.
The Pearse’s metaphor of “the data chickens” is absolutely great, the analogy more vivid than I heard on this subject in recent years. +1000
a strong testament to the weakness of climate science and the intellectual abilities of the Climateers.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/10001044/Scientist-jailed-for-faking-tests-on-rats-in-hope-of-testing-experimental-drug-on-patients.html
Follow the link and you will see a scientist has gone to prison for faking tests. Its a precedent climatologists should beware of.
Reminds me of that ship in the movie pirates of the Caribbean.. The Black Pearl??? Any way, the ship of the dead which surfaces only to take on new ship mates… Sounds like the ship has surfaced again..
It is interesting to see that the new Australasian reconstruction includes the Palmyra Atoll Coral Proxy present in the discredited Gergis paper. Despite this proxy being 1300 miles outside the study area, and not corresponding to any temperature reconstruction I have ever seen, its inclusion suppresses the medieval warm period.
An earlier comment by Rob Soria on Gergis new ARC grant at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/11/21/the-class-act-of-michael-mann-and-joelle-gergis/#comment-1154385:
“After their paper was officially rejected, they kept this information secret to everyone for several weeks, so that the referees of their ARC grant application wouldn’t know. (It was precisely the time when ARC grant proposals were assessed). It was their legal and more duty to inform the ARC panel that the paper on which they based their new grant application had been rejected. Perhaps a FOI request is needed to find out whether they did so.”
More by Rob/Robbo on http://joannenova.com.au/2012/11/are-arc-grants-for-science-or-a-form-of-government-advertising-disguised-as-research/
Is it already clear whether Gergis had informed the ARC panel on her paper retraction? Has anyone filed an FOI request?
If, when the Nature paper appears, the same detrended criterion for proxy selection is claimed, and if it was not followed (as appears probable based on McIntyre’s leaked proxy list,
Then why don’t you all do something. Specifically, ask in writing for the paper to be retracted in those grounds, supplying the evidence Steve has worked up.
I have asked Science to retract the Marcott paper, providing the editors with more than sufficient written cause. They have acknowledged the complaint in writing, and said they are studying the matter in light of the damning FAQ compared to Figure 1a and the abstract. I have told them that if they do not respond in a reasonable time, I will escalate in multiple fora. And absolutely will. The MSM appears to be getting more receptive, even in the UK. An EConomist article would be quite lovely, following on the Harvard economics kerffuffle.
War is hell. It is about time the other side suffered a mounting casualty count. Gergis deserves to be such a casualty owing to blantant past misrepresentation about ‘lack’ of selection bias, rather than receiving more grant funds.
This thread seems like the perfect place for an observation that has been troubling me for a while. All the talk about the various publications finally willing to point out that the actual temps and models do not square nor do the models fit would proven components of climate remind me a great deal of what happened when Outcomes Based Education (OBE) became controversial all over the world. There was a consistent practice of “We hear you. We are stopping” and then a breaking up of the components and simply renaming them.
The idea that “they are finally listening to us and paying attention to the facts” simply does not square with what is being pushed on K-12 all over the world. And with much of the curriculum being on databases that no parent can see and assessments based on vague open-ended problems, this battle is shifting completely into the schools. There the Predatory Statists who fully intend to mooch for life as Tax-Consumers and never produce anything of value are perfectly free to foster false beliefs on Climate to their hearts content. Which is precisely what is planned.
So please be careful in assuming anything but a 21st century game of possum and diversion of attention is going on.
@Robin
I hear ya. One of the strange things about the USSR’s educational system was a blend of great attention to the theoretical and philosophical side of sciences: why and how the theories developed into laws and practical methods. It was combined with what boiled down to an arbitrary evaluation process where brilliant students would be given mediocre grades because they either asked hard questions with vaguely political opinions in them, they were judged to be to uppity or had an ‘attitude’, or they were simply thinking outside the box and thus presented a danger to any top-down status quo. On the other hand good grades could be bought with smiles, influence, money or toadying.
Crispin–I wrote a story this past week explaining that about 1960 the Soviets came up with an updated version of Dialectical Materialism that they inserted into their education system and into Eastern Europe. In education it was called Ascending from the Abstract to the Concrete and a Finnish prof by the name of Engestrom who speaks all over the world giving keynote addresses to groups like the International Society of the Learning Sciences inadvertently tipped me off how it has now been exported to the West. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/treating-western-society-and-its-economy-as-a-train-in-need-of-rebuilding-and-central-direction/ is the story.
When I was following up on the story I discovered that ISLS had its first conference in the Pacific Rim or Asia last year. Sydney, Australia. But still alarmingly sponsored by the US National Science Foundation.
Between what NSF has said they are doing with education to squelch climate skepticism and blend the human and natural sciences coupled to a recent Rand report that is part of the new Global Cities Education Network, I have no doubt that CAGW will be front and center in the real world problems students are to develop solutions for. In addition NSF is funding a program at Harvard Ed School called Understandings of Consequences that are bad science being brought to the classroom via multi-user videogaming.
Really no way for the student to know it is bad science and all the visuals will simply reenforce false beliefs. Influential false beliefs.
I am very worried for good reasons.
Patrick says:
April 20, 2013 at 6:11 am
“Fortunately Gergis, along with Flannery and Karoly, will be out of a job come September 14th”
For those of us not parties to the inner circle, a slightly more expansive explanation of WHY this might be the case would be helpful!.
“For those of us not parties to the inner circle, a slightly more expansive explanation of WHY this might be the case would be helpful!.”
Because that’s the date of the Australian General Elections and the current Labour Government is on track for a massive political defeat. That could well see the end of funding for the proponents of CAGW.
There will be an Australian election on September 14.
I’ve said it before and will say it again…Abbott will NOT repeal the carbon tax…..
Might change the name but there will be no reduction in the tax base…..
They are playing with the deckchairs of the Titanic … let them play!
@Stuart McL –
Let’s hope those swine are dispossessed! And then we can go after the US Kleptocrat party’s AGW funding.
What Rut Istvan is saying here and you should all listen LOUD and CLEAR nothing will happen by ranting here you need to get onto Nature, Climate Journals, Universities employing these people etc with the evidence and threaten to make it much much BIGGER in the media. The MSM is now coping on and will jump on it if there a big story behind all this and there is of course. Cheers
Global Warming causes zomibes!
We’re doomed!
The early bird has found the worm, fat with arrogance and overconfidence.
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