![most-influential-tree-350[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/most-influential-tree-3501.jpg?resize=350%2C280)
It seems that in the latest publication from CRU’s Keith Briffa, they decided to leave out those elements (The most influential tree in the world) Steve identified that led to the Yamal Superstick.
Have a look at this remarkable graph below.
McIntyre writes:
Unreported by CRU is that they’ve resiled from the Yamal superstick of Briffa 2000 and Briffa et al 2008 and now advocate a Yamal chronology, the modern portion of which is remarkably similar to the calculations in my posts of September 2009 here and May 2012 here, both of which were reviled by Real Climate at the time.
In today’s post, I’ll demonstrate the degree to which the new Briffa version has departed from the superstick of Briffa 2000 and Briffa et al 2008 and the surprising degree to which it approaches versions shown at CA.
Figure 3. Comparison of Briffa et al 2008 superstick to yamal_trw chronology of Briffa et al 2013. Both in z-scores.
[…]
…the next graphic shows the two CA calculations that had been so reviled by CRU and Real Climate (the green chronology of Sept 2009 and the May 2012 calculation with updated information from Hantemirov). I think that I’m entitled to observe that the B13 chronology is more similar to the two reviled CA calculations than it is to the Briffa et al 2008 superstick. Needless to say, this was not reported in CRU’s recent Real Climate article. 
Figure 4. Comparison of B13 Yamal chronology to CA (Climate Audit) calculations.
omnologos points out this missive from Gavin Schmidt on RealClimate:
The irony is of course that the demonstration that a regional reconstruction is valid takes effort, and needs to be properly documented. That requires a paper in the technical literature and the only way for Briffa et al to now defend themselves against McIntyre’s accusations is to publish that paper (which one can guarantee will have different results to what McIntyre has thrown together).
Looks like that guarantee expired.
Commenter ianl888 quips:
@Steve McIntyre
From Fig. 4 above:
it’s quite obvious that in 2009 and again in 2011, you shamelessly plagiarised Briffa 2013
Easily the worst sin in the academic book, run a close second only by disrupting the space-time continuum in order to perform the plagiarism
Too Funny! To prevent this from happening again, we need to establish a Pre-plagiarism Crimes unit, complete with a minority report. /sarc
Read Steve’s full report here: http://climateaudit.org/2013/06/28/cru-abandons-yamal-superstick/
Great video but so true for a Friday Night.
[ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMqc7PCJ-nc&feature=youtube_gdata_player ]
REPLY: But we are talking about Briffa, not Mann. Funny but misplaced. – Anthony
Can’t. Stop. Laughing.
Looks like they’re doing a sheepish grin moonwalk off the stage to oblivion.
Well done Steve. Vindication!
If they’re wrong, nail them. If they were wrong and admit it, pull out the nails.
(To Steve and others, thanks for swinging the hammer.)
PS to Mann, Do you still think “The Hockey Stick” is not broken?
@Steve McIntyre
One of the symptoms that comes along with “foot in mouth syndrome”, is that is physically very difficult to credit or apologize when, for the sake of discussion, one Briffa finds his proverbial foot in his mouth. Whereas it is known with some precision when one does put ones foot in ones mouth, evidence of removal of ones foot from ones mouth is not so well documented. This happens to a case where it was officially published (Briffa et al, 2013).
Keep up the good work!
I put this up about a year ago.
Stopping by Yamal One Snowing Evening
by Michael Mann
What tree this is, I think I know.
It grew in Yamal some time ago.
Yamal 06 I’m placing here
In hopes a hockey stick will grow.
But McIntyre did think it queer
No tree, the stick did disappear!
Desparate measures I did take
To make that stick reappear.
There were some corings from a lake.
And other data I could bake.
I’ll tweek my model more until
Another hockey stick I’ll make!
I changed a line into a hill!
I can’t say how I was thrilled!
Then Climategate. I’m feeling ill.
Then Climategate. I’m feeling ill.
The best bit is Gavin’s quote where he reassured the RealClimate True Believers that Briffa’s upcoming paper would surely show something very different from McI’s results…
REPLY: added, thanks – A
Well .. I”d like to think that things are falling apart for the “Team”, but we all know that science, correct, or incorrect, has never been a part of the Climate Debate. This is pure Political, headed by a pure Political Body [IPCC]. A correction in data has never had any impact at all on political agenda.
I’ve hung out on a political board for over 15 years with advocates of Global Warming … and simply put, …nothing will change their mind. [because their real beef is with the profits that the oil companies make … not climate].
AR5 … if the graph by the Lord of Benchley .. or whatever it is [No Offense], is correct, still has us predicted to boil … still totes the water that we need to ditch fossil fuels and kill more Swifts with Windmills.
But .. koodos to Steve …. it’s definitely a feather in his windmill.
Briffa seems to be leading the scramble towards the lifeboats. Mann will probably be the last to leave. Hanson will go down with the ship.
Integrity?
RealClimate?
What a funny guy you are.
When was the last time Steve was wrong? Seriously, I don’t know.
I saw a comment over at Lucia’s blog with a very interesting temperature study from stations around Yamal…
http://www.phys.uu.nl/~tuyll/DATA/gl.pdf
Has anyone posted Gavin’s quote over at realclimate (i don’t link to them OR SkepticalScience as it would bump their #s) with the two graphs to see if he has any comment?
PS
Go the Mighty British and Irish Lions!!!!!!!
It won’t matter. You can’t convince a moron by rational argument. And a con man will just find another way around. Most of the AGW cheer leading is by people who are looters and parasites. Their living depends on there being climate change. They won’t stop.
Personally, I’d prefer if they ALL went down with the ship !!
The disservice and discredit they have collectively brought upon ‘science’ is beyond comprehension and deserves nothing less than a place against a wall facing a firing squad. Davy Jones Locker would be too good a place for them IMHO.
Sorry, but I’m old school ‘trained’ – and the scientific misrepresentation they have perpetrated is beyond the pale – I can’t remember the film/whatever from which this comes but IMHO ‘Death’s too good for them!’ is the most appropriate quote I can think of at this juncture……..
Ian H says:
June 28, 2013 at 4:41 pm
my previous post was in reply to Ian – sorry – forgot to highlight!
Dr. Deanster wrote that advocates of GW would never change their minds, because “their real beef is with the profits that the oil companies make … not climate”. I think this is pretty close, but not quite on the money.
Modern environmentalism has been compared to a green religion, and it has a lot of similarities. In particular, there is lots of guilt mongering over a perceived original sin. We have been cast out of Eden, because in our greed and pride, we attempted to advance ourselves with the industrial revolution.
The claim is always some version of: “I at least care enough about poor mother earth to challenge the greed and over-consumption of 1st worlders. Therefore you should defer to my righteous good intentions, and not coincidentally, to me”. Righteous indignation about oil companies is simply one instance of the larger theme.
We are being entertained with absurd humor. We have gone from Hockey Stick to slap stick.
Aaaah!!! So satisfying. Especially when the Schmidt quote is added in.
Being in the sights of Steve McIntyre must be like being pursued by a less hurried, more polite but equally indefatigable version of The Terminator.
And when the post the next pile of rubbish posing as science – He’ll be back.
Figure 4 needs to have Briffa-2008, preferably in light grey,
fading into legend… Discredited, but not forgotten.
Next item of business:
Who has the pedigree tree of papers that relied on Briffa-2008?
It ought to be a spectacular arrangement of falling dominos.
When this “most important tree in the world’ issue was taking up a lot of Steve McIntyre’s computer’s cycles did not the darn thing melt? Okay, maybe not, but I do recall a shout-out here on WUWT by Anthony for a bit of cash to help with building a new system for Steve at some point a few years ago. Sufficient response. New system. Money (& Anthony’s time, I recall) well spent.
Same old Steve.
Hey Ya!
Steve’s two run slightly warmer than Briffa 13; suppose that makes Briffa the climate denier.
@Kev-in-Uk 5:27 pm
Davy Jones Locker would be too good a place for them IMHO
I dunno, it is about the only place left to find the “missing heat”
The one that is really hung out to dry with Briffa’s recant is Obama. As the nation’s leader, Obama should direct EPA to withdraw their 2009 finding that carbon dioxide is a pollutant and to notify the US Supreme Court that his Administration relied on false data in their testimony before the Court. Obama should further sign an Executive Order that all technical papers with Briffa 2008 in the reference list and/or with Yamal data sets should be withdrawn and disregarded in all federal undertakings.
As a courtesy to our neighbor and ally to the north, Obama should award the USA’s highest civilian honor available to a foreign national to Steve McIntyre. He should also direct the US Secretary of State to approve the Keystone XL pipeline straight away.
In the climategate files, there were two people I had some sympathy for.
Harry was obviously first in line, but Keith Briffa appeared to want to do the right thing, but allowed himself to be hammered down.
Good to see that he has come out from under the hammer and done the right thing.
This video keeps coming up on my Google glasses when I search for hockeystick.
😉
It would appear that the Divergence problem still exists. Where is that CO2 curve? Still climbing.
@Philip Peake
“In the climategate files, there were two people I had some sympathy for.
Harry was obviously first in line, but Keith Briffa appeared to want to do the right thing, but allowed himself to be hammered down.”
I would not disagree with you on that, Philip. At the time I even thought it was what made Briffa sick.
Three climatologists went deer hunting. A deer approached and the first climatologist fired but he missed by 20 meters to the left. The second climatologist fired but missed by 20 meters to the right. The third climatologist jumped up and said, “We nailed him boys, job well done!”.
Philip Peake says:
June 28, 2013 at 6:32 pm
In the climategate files, there were two people I had some sympathy for.
Harry was obviously first in line, but Keith Briffa appeared to want to do the right thing, but allowed himself to be hammered down.
Good to see that he has come out from under the hammer and done the right thing.
__________________
Others agree. In certain circles, Briffa has been recognized for his “slips” of integrity, despite pressure from the ramparts of catastrophe, and is even believed to be involved with some infamous emails, but I’ll not mention them.
..are we allowed to quote our vice-president on this?
it’s a big ———— deal!
..needs to be a sticky!
Congratulations to Steve. Vindication is rare in this world, but very nice, when it happens justly.
Also congratulations to Briffa. May God protect him from petty and unjust vindictiveness.
Luther Wu says:
June 28, 2013 at 6:53 pm
“ramparts of catastrophe”
________________________________________________________
Now ya just don’t see that word everyday>
Reminds me of a song!
How many time have you really heard any derivation of the word “rampart” anywhere ?
Thank you for reminding me Luther!
I never had the feeling Briffa was comfortable with all the teams shenanigans. He will probably be much relieved that he is a scientist again, though i’m sure he’ll pay a price for not towing the company line. My best wishes on returning to the science.
I’d like to congratulate Keith Briffa in getting to grips with science not political agenda. On that point aren’t we lucky that the rabid green guys didn’t get the power and authority they craved all along, to get their hands on a REAL (CLIMATE) red button, so they could eliminate the actual Real Scientists, instead of imaginary school children and football players that questioned the meme or gave wrong answers to their loaded questions.
The big job now is to make sure those rabid power hungry “substrates”, never ever, have any chance or opportunity of realising their evil anti human power ambitions!
But even more grateful thanks for Steve in confirming his ascendancy above the purile comments of Gavin Schmidt’s when speaking of Steve’s work. Respect is earned, and a public apology to Steve is in order if Gavin’s tarnished reputation is ever to be cleansed of those stains.
May we ever remind Gavin until that happens!
OssQss: I hear it almost daily, though that is because I live just east of the Rampart Range, i.e., near Pike’s Peak.
Steve Garcia: though certainly CO2 is diverging from temp, that is not the “divergence problem.”
Mark
No warming for 100 years at Yamal
Congratulations Steve, this has been a long time coming.
I think Briffa knew all too well what he was party of, and it sickened him.
Mann had his doubts about him, and now I think we can say his doubts are justified..
While I can’t say this absolves Briffa, it is a start..
Briffa could be the key to blowing up the TEAM all together.
Just need to nudge him in the right way.
I agree, congratulations to Steve, his contributions to the science are huge and he should be recognized for this by the scientific community.
On the other hand, I fear that this may not make any difference in the near future since the Administration really does not care about facts on a number of fronts including CAGW. The agenda does not need scientific facts as evidenced by use of all the misinformation and demagoguery being emitted from the left wing at the highest levels (as evidenced by the flat earth comment). The attack on coal and the EPA mandate on reducing sulfur in gasoline are just several recent examples of the misguided agenda which is devoid of a sound scientific basis.
Also the push to spend even more $$ on a failed alternative energy policy is disappointing, misguided and full of promises that will never be realized because it is not supported by sound engineering thermodynamic or economic principles.
Since the MSM is in bed with the agenda, we are in deep trouble until we get the Supreme Court to invoke a check on the agenda. Since we have at least 4 members of the court that will rubber stamp any green agenda goal regardless of the Constitution, I don’t see that happening soon given the recent approval of the 15% ethanol debacle by the court based on incomplete testing and the willingness to dump the responsibility on fuel suppliers to prevent numerous engine failures.
Also the massive environmental damage to the Gulf of Mexico from fertilizer runoff due to corn farming is being covered up and ignored inconsistent with the responsibility of the EPA.
Compare the latest Briffa to GISS or HadCrud, and you can see just how much Hansen et al have adjusted down the historic surface temperature record.
I hope someone goes back and corrects those records some time soon.
And the BOM records in Australia too. They need the “adjustments’ removing to give a picture of reality.
Thank you Steve McIntyre for keeping them honest!!
Terminators come in all shapes and …
What a waste of time and effort by all parties.
The leaked e-mails show that the Russian researcher who collected the tree-ring data observed that the trees line had not moved north as would be expected if climate warming had occurred. I attach an excerpt from the leaked e-mail (document 907975032.txt):
From: Rashit Hantemirov
To: Keith Briffa
Subject: Short report on progress in Yamal work
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1998 19:17:12 +0500
Dear Keith,
I apologize for delay with reply. Below is short information about state of Yamal work. Samples from 2,172 subfossil larches (appr. 95% of all samples), spruces (5%) and birches (solitary finding) have been collected within a region centered on about 67030’N, 70000’E at the southern part of Yamal Peninsula. All of them have been measured.
[SNIP except for the last sentence]
There are no evidences of moving polar timberline to the north during last century.
Rashit Hantemirov, Lab. of Dendrochronology, Institute of Plant and Animal Ecology,
8 Marta St., 202 Ekaterinburg, 620144, Russia.
Mark is right–CO2 diverging from temp isn’t a “divergence problem”–it’s an “intelligence problem”.
This ain’t gonna be popular but let me assure you anyway, I’m a denier. One way or another it appears that the big scare is unwinding. I’m sure there are many like Briffa, who’d like to do the right thing. Speculation sure, but I’m sure that Keith must have given due consideration to the lambasting he’s due from this side of the fence. Instead, I’d like to applaud Keith and shouldn’t everyone be doing all they can to smooth the path for those who come clean instead of the opposite?
““We nailed him boys, job well done!”. [Mushroom George 6:50PM] LOL.
O Super Secret Quality Serial Sampler — Thanks for another fun video!
And for the BEST SONG IN THE UNIVERSE! (Well, folks, I AM an American, you know, please pardon my bias) — Yes. I did stand through the whole thing.
******************************
Hearty CONGRATULATIONS on this long-time-in-coming vindication, Steven McIntyre. For YEARS those ol’ climatologists a-worked and a-worked and a-huffed and a-puffed….. , but they jes’ couldn’t come up with what ol’ Steve jes’ “threw together.” Boy, howdy! They is DUMB.
And good for you, Mr. Briffa. You’ll be in my prayers.
Does anybody know if Keith Briffa’s magic Charlie Brown Christmas tree, is still alive in Yamal, or did it finally fall over. Well you know that Ronald Reagan, when Governor of California , said of magic trees; “if you’ve seen two of them, you’ve seen yemal .”
Steve you better check if that tree is still up; it might be the cause of your anomalous anomalies.
Congratulations anyway.
some tree
“’…. if you’ve seen two of them, you’ve seen yemal.’” [George E. Smith]
LOL.
It’s definitely a great achievement that the world’s leading climate scientists have learned how to use valid statistical methods to analyse their data after all these years.
Yamal is important as a folly of climate science as the deliberate or otherwise deception perpetrated on scientist and politicians alike.
Once I looked up Yamal on the Siberian map, I noticed it is a peninsula separating the Arctic Ocean deltas of two great Eurasian rivers, Ob and Yenisey, the main source of fresh water to the Arctic Ocean, discharging more than 32,000 m3/sec.
Arctic Ocean currents circulation is highly thermo-haline structured and any variability in the fresh water supply will have direct effect.
On this illustration
http://www.divediscover.whoi.edu/arctic/images/ArcticCurrents-labels.jpg
(Yamal is the second peninsula east of Kara Sea) WHOI shows this inflow of cold fresh water (in blue, together with inflow from Lena river further east) as the principal cold surface Arctic currents.
Some 10-12 years later these waters will encounter warm currents of the Gulf Stream in the North Atlantic, south-west of Iceland. as the one of two principal contributors to the to the sub-polar gyre circulation.
Warm water runs northward through, turns westward near Iceland and the tip of Greenland. The current loses heat to the atmosphere as it moves north. the current becomes cold, salty and dense, plunges beneath the surface, and heads slowly southward back to the equator. The cycle
is extremely sensitive to the buoyant fresh waters flowing south from the Arctic Ocean.
In another words, the Subpolar gyre is the engine of the heat transport across the North Atlantic Ocean, which is the region of the intense ocean – atmosphere interaction. Cold winds remove the surface heat at rates of several hundred watts per square meter, resulting in deep water convection. These changes in turn affect the strength and character of the Atlantic thermohaline circulation (THC) and the horizontal flow of the upper ocean, thereby altering the
oceanic poleward heat transport and the distribution of sea surface temperature (SST).
The observational data shows that the this variability is the source of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscilation –AMO, principal source of the natural variability in the N. Hemisphere’s climate.
What this has to do with Yamal?
There is a direct correlation of the AMO with geomagnetic changes some 12 years earlier, at the delta of the two great Siberian rivers 6,000km away.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/YAMAL-GMF-AMO.htm
Physics of this correlation is not straight forward but I suspect that strong secular geomagnetic variability has an effect on the mixing of saline (electrically very conductive) with fresh (less conductive) waters.
Cannot be a very important, earth saving paper. Neither the ABC here in OZ nor the BBC or the Fairfax newpapers have reported this. (usually breathlessly). Sorry dudes, it just doesn’t rank as a watershed paper. No hockey stick just a broom stick. Maybe julia Gillard can use it to fly around now she doesn’t have the PM mobile. (just sayun)
Sarc off.
If Obahma, Gore, the IPCC and Krugman can get a Nobel will SMc get one as well??
regards
jim Steele says:
“Thank you Steve McIntyre for keeping them honest!!” My thoughts entirely.
‘Climate scientists’ do not like being kept honest, they really don’t like it. In the same way, politicians don’t like effective oversight to keep them honest.
Presumably this damning revelation is too late for AR5, so the Hockey Stick still limps on.
Hmm, the trolls are a bit quiet on this subject.
Anthony, you have to be more careful with your editing as surely the quote is not “Yamal Superstick”, but Yamal Supertrick”?
I also congratulate Briffa and McIntyre too. If Briffa’s illness was, in part, due to the pressures to stay “on song” with alarmism, then I know exactly how that sort of pressure can affect ones health. Sadly however, the damage has been done. There will be no apologies, no retractions, no reversal of damaging policy just more and more alarmism and lunacy. This so of thing usually does not end well for most people.
I’m reminded of the brilliant comments – I can’t remember who came up with them:
“If you see one tree you’ve seen Yamal” and “”One tree to rule Yamal…”
There’s no doubt about it: Steve McIntyre has more intellect and integrity that the whole of the hockey team, and all of their lackeys and apologists, combined.
If the you think of the time and energy Steven has spent showing poor science up with good science I am surprised he is not celebrating this back of the net moment by ripping his shirt off and diving full length across the the turf in front of 20,000 adoring fans.
Rocky Road
“CO2 diverging from temp isn’t a “divergence problem”–it’s an “intelligence problem” ”
I concur. But I would add:
The ‘divergence problem’ is in it self an ‘intelligence problem’. Or even ‘the elephant in the room’ which has been ignored (denied?) for the entire history of the so called ‘dendroclimatology’
Well done steve!
It should come as no surprise to anyone that paleo proxy reconstructions have no skill whatsoever in capturing real world ‘climate.’
graph 4 of this link shows it best
http://judithcurry.com/2013/06/26/noticeable-climate-change/
tonyb
I hate to pour water on all this triumphalism, but this ‘correction’ is because the purpose of the original papers has been achieved – The EU and the Etats Uni both have in place ‘carbon tax’ and energy controlling regimes and that was the entire purpose of the fraud. So now the climate ‘scientists’ can retrench a little in an attempt to save some face and dignity while the politicians take first world governance from here.
Ian8888
Sorry, I maligned your intelligence with my stupidity.
Randy Hughes says:
June 28, 2013 at 9:33 pm
All of the regulars here can be magnanimous when appropriate it’s just that some of us find it very difficult after so many years of exposing this grosse fraud. The team have had many, many opportunities to retract their lies but singularly failed so to do. Therefore, the time for magnanimity on our part has long since faded into the the mist of co².
String ’em up :))
So, where’s the big high-latitude Arctic warming?
Hi, is there anyway to lay a co2 graph on the top of the Biffa 2013? Is someone out there able to do that?
Where’s Scooter now?
This is a big deal.
So is Dr. Briffa now in Mr. Obama’s flat earth society?
Ian W says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
June 29, 2013 at 3:46 am
I hate to pour water on all this triumphalism, but this ‘correction’ is because the purpose of the original papers has been achieved – The EU and the Etats Uni both have in place ‘carbon tax’ and energy controlling regimes and that was the entire purpose of the fraud. So now the climate ‘scientists’ can retrench a little in an attempt to save some face and dignity while the politicians take first world governance from here.
Mods- what in this comment flagged it for moderation?
Reblogged this on Climate Ponderings.
How many papers need to recast with this update?
Sorry, but this won’t change anything. Crying about cimate change has taken on the same life as crying racism in the US. People make money touting it, ‘victims’ profit from it, news orgs sell more newspapers, and politicians garner votes. The average person doesn’t remember last year’s weather and assumes the loudest people are the most expert. At one time I thought a decade of cold weather would change minds, but now realize Man would still be blamed for the climate. We’ve had a decade and a half of stable temperatures, and most believe the climate been warming.
Whoever controls the narrative controls the people, and those with a vested interest in Manmade climate change have a firm control over that narrative. Our science has proved correct. We have a moral victory, but a pyrrhic one.
Whatever happened to the divergence problem? SkS claims that during the past 2 decades trees have grown more slowly due to AGW. Instead, Briffa’s latest reconstruction shows steady temperatures. Did he get traded?
Briffa should go the extra distance, and make right the great wrong done to McIntyre, and publicly apologize and acknowledge McIntyre’s contribution to the issue.
Inscription in Ashbourne church, Derbyshire (on a monument to the five-year-old Penelope Boothby): ‘She was in form and intellect most exquisite. The unfortunate parents ventured their all on this frail bark (barque), and the wreck was total.’
We can only hope it will prove so with this bark.
@ Jtom “Sorry, but this won’t change anything.”
I’ll differ with you here. Being a scientific paper that is technically a refinement of previous work, I can see how Briffa 2013 won’t have an immediate impact on the public consciousness or the public debate. One is reminded of the Saturday Night Live sketches with Emily Litella
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Litella
where she would end up saying, “Never Mind”.
The silence of the warmists will be slow in coming, but the silence will come. Perhaps one day the silence will be deafening. I’m a geologist. We’re a patient lot. We have time. and beer.
170 years, temperatures still flat.
Manfred says:
June 28, 2013 at 8:28 pm
“No warming for 100 years at Yamal”
and Bill Illis says:
June 29, 2013 at 5:07 am
So, where’s the big high-latitude Arctic warming?
Obviously, tree rings are now proven to be poor temperature proxies. But that proof was already implicitely presented by Michael Mann.
Help please. I come here with a mind uncluttered by climate knowledge. What issue was in dispute? Reference site would also be kool. Thanks.
I was hoping someone else as ignorant as I of statistics would ask this question.
The vertical axis is labeled z-scores, which is a dimensionless value. A high z-score, I think, indicates that the data is badly skewed (not a bell-curve) and therefore should be considered suspect? Is that about right? I make the assumption that the “oberved” value is the average temperature. In other words, a high z-score simply indicates that it is likely you have gigo?
Mikeyj says:
June 29, 2013 at 9:24 am
Help please. I come here with a mind uncluttered by climate knowledge. What issue was in dispute? Reference site would also be kool. Thanks.
Rick Werme has a guide to past postings. Here is the relevant background.
http://home.comcast.net/~ewerme/wuwt/cat_the_yamal_deception.html
I have been convinced for some time that Keith Briffa is Foia.
King James Bible (Cambridge Ed.)
I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance.
A big tip of my hat to Mr. Briffa, whose Wikipedia article, when last I looked, didn’t include this 2013 paper.
I’ve added a mention on the Talk page.
And a very big kow-tow to Steve McIntyre.
But isn’t it sad that this is how we do science in the twenty-first century – at the behest of the socialist power-leeches.
Auto
Sorry – it’s from Luke ch15:v7.
Spoken like a true geologist. In the rocks, we’ve seen it all before. The planet couldn’t still have the general climate it does after all it’s been through, if there weren’t mechanisms in place to keep it so.
The warmies think going from 187 to 400ppm of CO2 over 150 years is “unprecedented”? Did they ever wonder where the CO2 in those long-ago 2000ppm atmospheres came from? And where it went back to?
Give Walt and I a few beers and some time, and we can probably come up with an answer of some kind.
===================================================================
Check out some of the tabs at the top of the page and some of the sites listed at the right.
A quick summary of the issue addressed in this post would be that Michael Mann used Briffa’s work with tree rings to produce a graph of past and projected future global temperatures. It’s best known as “The Hockey Stick”. Steve McIntyre and others took a closer look at the data behind “The Stick” and discovered that they were trying to stick it to us. Among the problems was that the analysis of one particular tree ring, Yamal 06, was blown way out of proportion.
Now Briffa himself has yanked the rug out from under Mann and “The Hockey Stick”. Without “The Stick” the justification for all the political stuff going on to prevent “Climate Change” is mute.
(Again, that’s a quick summary as far as I understand it. There are lots of details and events that could be filled in.)
Here is the new GRANT SCIENCE THEORY – not C02 but CFC that cause Global Warming . .
http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0217979213500732
The vast bulk of the atmosphere is composed of N2 and O2, non-radiative non-GHGs. They are unable to dispose of sensible heat except through evaporative loss from the top of the atmosphere. Only GHGs can radiate energy to space. Hence, in their absence, the atmosphere would heat until it could “boil” away enough mass to counterbalance solar irradiation.
Hence GHGs are cooling agents which preserve atmospheric mass. The Warmist (and Luke-warmist) positions are 180° wrong. As usual.
Ya-malpractice equals Catastrophic Mannmade global warming and it’s more than fun to know that even Briffa now recognizes this. Good for him. 🙂
Hah! Blaming a tree for the hubris of so-called climate scientists.
Kev-in-Uk says:
June 28, 2013 at 5:27 pm
“…I can’t remember the film/whatever from which this comes but IMHO ‘Death’s too good for them!’ is the most appropriate quote…”
BBC television production of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, maybe? It’s what the Vogon captain says when contemplating Arthur’s review of his poetry.
Brian H says:
June 29, 2013 at 12:12 pm
“Hence GHGs are cooling agents which preserve atmospheric mass.”
It seems plausible and likely that in the reductio – no atmosphere at all, add a little CO2 – the GHE would make surface temperatures warmer than without it. However, that does not necessarily mean that the warming effect persists in the current climate state. The relationship of surface temperature to CO2 concentration could look like this.
Hence, suggesting that additional CO2 has little or no effect, or even cools the surface, at this time is not necessarily equivalent to denying that the GHE exists. You could be correct, that the radiative cooling dominates at the current state of the system. Indeed, this appears likely, since the sensitivity of CO2 to temperature is manifestly positive.
Thus, there is zero doubt that increasing temperature increases atmospheric CO2. If additional CO2 then increases temperature, there is a self-reinforcing positive feedback loop and, at the least, we should be seeing wide ranging oscillations in temperature and CO2, if not outright instability.
So when are they going to admit that the new graph means there was NO HEATING in the 20th century?
Downdraft says:
June 29, 2013 at 9:29 am
I was hoping someone else as ignorant as I of statistics would ask this question.
The vertical axis is labeled z-scores, which is a dimensionless value. A high z-score, I think, indicates that the data is badly skewed (not a bell-curve) and therefore should be considered suspect? Is that about right? I make the assumption that the “oberved” value is the average temperature. In other words, a high z-score simply indicates that it is likely you have gigo?
A z score is merely a standardized means of describing the difference between a given measurement or set of measurements and a given mean value. In tree rings, in order to eliminate the individual vagaries of how a specific tree grows, you measure all the rings, then use a z-score or dimensionless measure to make the data comparable to similar data from other trees. You are not looking for the same growth rates but instead the same variation in growth rates. The dimensionless number is critical because even looking at a single tree, the tree grows “slower” with age – at least the rings tend to be thinner. A simple calculation shows that very young trees can grow much “faster” based on the width of each added ring and yet lay down far less mass (an order of magnitude less) than an older, much “slower” growing tree. I would in fact rather see tree rings standardized by area rather than thickness.
Concerning”skewing” of data, that in and of itself is no reason to suspect the data. The distribution of wealth in the US is profoundly skewed and that is simply reality. There’s no reason to suspect that there really are fewer “poor” or many more “rich.” People living under bridges outnumber the Gates’s and Walton’s by the thousands. So skewing in and of itself is not bad. It simply means the statistician has to mind their p’s and q’s when working with the data. Certain tests assume normality and a significant departure can affect the reliability of a statistical analysis, a drum Steve McIntyre and others have been beating for years.
Also, no, the “observed value” is the thickness of tree rings, not temperature. The argument is that in a polar or near-timberline the environmental factor that has the strongest effect on tree growth is temperature, thus the discussion of tree growth as a “proxy” for temperature, that is the proxy values change in a correlated fashion with criterion of interest. Theoretically, and empirically, if there is a significant shift in regional temperature the tree line will move in accordance. Cooler and established trees will continue to grow but seeds will only germinate at lower, warmer, elevations. Warmer and young trees may appear upslope from their parents.
@tgasloli,
nope, basically no warming at all.
The ONLY warming that exists in the surface record was CREATED by Hansen and his cronies..
@ AndyG55 says:
June 28, 2013 at 9:09 pm
Compare the latest Briffa to GISS or HadCrud, and you can see just how much Hansen et al have adjusted down the historic surface temperature record.
I hope someone goes back and corrects those records some time soon.
And the BOM records in Australia too. They need the “adjustments’ removing to give a picture of reality.
***********************************
The same needs doing re the NZ – NIWA historical climate record which Jim Salinger “adjusted” – Salinger learnt his skills while at CRU I believe.
and the effect of Urban warm zones.
KenB says: “I’d like to congratulate Keith Briffa in getting to grips with science not political agenda …”
Agree with the sentiment – but congratulate Keith when he has given due recognition to Steve. In research circles, cross-referencing is hard currency and plagiarism is fraud.
Watch those CAGW snakes. They’ll still pull out the hockey stick occasionally, simply because it was once “accepted by consensus”. You know how they like to warp time. They’ll try to keep themselves in the “win” zone.
Seriously, unless this is all over the news, which I doubt, the general public won’t know that officially the stick has been dropped, so it will still have its propaganda usefulness. They continued to use it when they knew it was broken, and they’ll still pull out the scary charts to frighten the people.
I read the following comment left by a ‘Steve Wilson’ on Gavin’s RC post that read:
“….I don’t follow the contrarian side very closely so had to go to Wikipedia to see who Steve McIntyre might be…”
Such a comment sums up the intellectual quality of Gavin’s acolytes!
Perspective. The impact of the dendros has always been to “disappear” the MWP. It continues to be largely dissappeared. while the current anomoly has been reduced per Steve’s observation, so has the MWP anomoly.
There are so many HUGE issues with dendro-climatology. They win if we attribute any meaning to their graphs.
It would be delightfully ironic, if the person or persons who delivered the leaflet to the residence of Steve Mcintyre was/were (a) green activists.
A wonderful example of unintended consequences in my opinion.
Hey, I can claim a special distinction in webworld: I have been slapped down by Tim Osborn of CRU!
I only now noticed that he responded to an impertinent comment of mine (see June 3 and June 4 at end of this thread):
Tim Osborn commented on “The Yamal Deception”
He questioned whether I had read his RC post and the Briffa et al. (2013) paper (I had), while I was pointing out that the CRU lack of direct, credible engagement with issues raised by Steve McIntyre was/is most disappointing. I suppose he can say indeed that they treated the issues, in their way. I and many others would like to see more candid, thorough, and responsive discussions of the criticisms raised at CA and elsewhere.
“”””””……joerommiswrong says:
June 29, 2013 at 3:01 pm
I read the following comment left by a ‘Steve Wilson’ on Gavin’s RC post that read:
“….I don’t follow the contrarian side very closely so had to go to Wikipedia to see who Steve McIntyre might be…”
Such a comment sums up the intellectual quality of Gavin’s acolytes!……””””””
Well I don’t follow the OJ Simpson lawyer’s brats at all; so who the heck is Steve Wilson ?
I know Joe Wilson; he’s Valerie Plame’s main squeeze, but don’t know a Steve Wilson.
Thank you, Duster: June 29, 2013 at 2:35 pm. That helps. I should have realized it was tree rings, not temperature.
“Yamal Superstick of Briffa”
That would make a great title for a fantasy novel.
I am reminded of the chilling story of a plane crash which was caused by the failure of an air speed sensor and an inexperienced officer. The instruments kept telling him that the plane was about to stall, he kept pulling back on the stick and increasing the thrust….as the plane dropped out of the sky, tail first.
I am reminded of this story because it appears that Western Leaders are taking aggressive steps to ‘decarbonise’ our economies which are potentially catastrophic. They are making these critical decisions of the basis of wrong or false information.
It’s a worry.
I think rather than criticizing the Briffa paper it should be praised and the authors too. It seems they have come clean and published the complete tree ring paleo from ALL the trees from the same region of the single tree in Yamal and it shows NO warming. Its a big step for climate science in my view. Maybe they have realized the party is over and someone decided to let them publish the truth and real science (well, at least the CRU Team).The problem is now getting to the politicians on the Carbon Tax trough!
Pesadia above says:
“It would be delightfully ironic, if the person or persons who delivered the leaflet to the residence of Steve Mcintyre was/were (a) green activists.
A wonderful example of unintended consequences in my opinion.”
The hockey stick graph was delivered to every Canadian household by our Canadian federal government.
Isn’t it amazing and wonderful that Steve McIntyre didn’t just treat it as junk mail!
Talk about making a difference! If there is any justice, Steve McIntyre will receive the order of Canada and I will be able to pay homage to his star on the “Walk of Fame” in downtown Toronto.
Hot damn, it’s cool to be a fellow Canadian!
Chris Schoneveld says:
June 29, 2013 at 9:12 am
Manfred says:
June 28, 2013 at 8:28 pm
“No warming for 100 years at Yamal”
and Bill Illis says:
June 29, 2013 at 5:07 am
So, where’s the big high-latitude Arctic warming?
Obviously, tree rings are now proven to be poor temperature proxies. But that proof was already implicitely presented by Michael Mann.
——————————–
I do agree on Michael Mann, but that is a no-brainer.
Treeline hasn’t moved as well, another good indication that temperatures have not increased at Yamal.
That may not yet mean, the temperature record is totally wrong, and Yamal is far away from AMO or PDO climate drivers and may be an exceptional location. It would be interesting to compare with the closest instrumental temperature records.
I believe I recall from the climategate emails, that Briffa had his necktie cinched up at mention of the divergence problem and he caved in and went with the flow. Also in the emails, he snarked a bit at Mann’s work and I guess it was only a matter of time before he came in from the “warm” so to speak. I judge him to have a propensity to be honest but was not strong enough to stand up to the bullying.
“Commenter ianl888 quips:
Posted Jun 28, 2013 at 5:18 PM | Permalink
@Steve McIntyre
From Fig. 4 above:
it’s quite obvious that in 2009 and again in 2011, you shamelessly plagiarised Briffa 2013
Easily the worst sin in the academic book, run a close second only by disrupting the space-time continuum in order to perform the plagiarism”
Seriously speaking, I believe Steve M has a case of plagiarism to bring against Briffa!! He clearly predated the work of Briffa. Wouldn’t that be a cute piece of work. Everyone was aware of Steve’s published work on CA and it was even reviewed by Real Climate. I think he also has a case against Karoly, Marcott, etc for exactly the same reason. This would be one way to get “referenced” in the literature for the analyses that he did for which no credit was given. Maybe the plagiarism expert Bradley would happily join in and assist.
Eliza says:
June 29, 2013 at 6:00 pm
True, but the party gate crasher was Mr. McIntyre.
Without his scathing and frequent rebuttals, these “climate science” jokers never would have come clean.
Look, today’s post-normal “climate scientist”, the product of our counter-productive institutions of “higher eduction”, are willing to fess up only after they’ve been embarrassed time after time.
And they pay tuition for such an education? Simply amazing…
Reading this along with the comments is too much.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/09/hey-ya-mal/
Hey Ya! (mal)
Filed under: Climate Science Instrumental Record Paleoclimate — group @ 30 September 2009
…[Response: Don’t be so obtuse. The general point is perhaps something we can agree on – replication does not imply correctness. Far more important given the fact that we are dealing with climate proxies in this instance is whether we are interpreting them correctly. And much more progress is being made by looking at that, than is being made checking anyone’s arithmetic. – gavin]”
Response: Fair enough, so here goes (a couple of allied quotes as well): 1) “In my opinion, the uniformly high age of the CRU12 relative to the Schweingruber population is suggestive of selection”, 2) “It is highly possible and even probable that the CRU selection is derived from a prior selection of old trees”, 3) “I do not believe that they constitute a complete population of recent cores. As a result, I believe that the archive is suspect.”,4) (Ross McKitrick) “But it appears that they weren’t randomly selected.”, 5) (Anthony Watts) “appears to have been the result of hand selected trees”, – gavin]
[Response: Oh sure. He’s just ‘asking questions’ – and yet the innuendo and implication was perfectly clear to his friends and to the greek chorus and no correction of McKitrick’s or Watts’ comments were made. Strange that. At absolute minimum McIntyre is complicit in propagating slander – and if that makes you feel better about this, than good for you. It doesn’t do much for me. – gavin]
One small step forward.
The person who put “flat earth” on the President’s teleprompter will come to regret it, I think.
Eliza says
‘I think rather than criticizing the Briffa paper it should be praised and the authors too. It seems they have come clean and published the complete tree ring paleo from ALL the trees from the same region of the single tree in Yamal and it shows NO warming’
H’mm
I guess we should be sort of pleased in a prodigal son sort of way. They have perhaps stopped being disingenuous..
But given that it is very likely that they knew the truth all along and deliberately suppressed it, don’t they need to be punished for that too?
Kev-in-Uk: “BBC television production of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, maybe? It’s what the Vogon captain says when contemplating Arthur’s review of his poetry.”
Whenever the alarmists are pushing the denier shtick, I am going to start asking them for some of their dreaddful poetry.
Latimer Alder;
But given that it is very likely that they knew the truth all along and deliberately suppressed it, don’t they need to be punished for that too?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
If there is serious punishment for recanting, then one can be assured that they will never willingly recant.
“it’s quite obvious that in 2009 and again in 2011, you shamelessly plagiarised Briffa 2013”
In a major breakthrough, McIntyre controls the future without needing to control the past!
“He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future.”
George Orwell
davidmhoffer says:
June 29, 2013 at 9:11 pm
Latimer Alder;
But given that it is very likely that they knew the truth all along and deliberately suppressed it, don’t they need to be punished for that too?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
If there is serious punishment for recanting, then one can be assured that they will never willingly recant.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Not to mention that it is the politicians who pressured them into fudging the science that need punishing the most.
…”it’s quite obvious that in 2009 and again in 2011, you shamelessly plagiarised Briffa 2013″…
I believe the term he is trying to coin is “pre-plagiarized”. 😎
@davidmhoffer
We don’t need them to recant The work of showing them up has been done already. If they do its a nice to have and may purge their souls from sin (or other such analogy), but it isn’t essential.
And I take leave to doubt whether they needed mush pressure from politicians to fudge the science. Seems to me that for most of them the lure of fame (and maybe a bit of fortune) was more than enough to entice them into doing so. They’d seen that Mikey could rocket form nonentity to scientific superstar in a matter of weeks by providing ‘convenient results’, and took note.
“Pre-plagiarism” or perhaps it should be “Anticipatory plagiarism” – which is when you publish something before the “approved author” has even thought about it.
(It reminds me of the concept of “anticipatory bail” in India. Under Indian criminal law, there is a provision for anticipatory bail which allows a person to seek bail in anticipation of an arrest on accusation of having committed a non-bailable offence.).
It’s a sort of antidote to “Retrospective Prediction”!
http://ktwop.wordpress.com/2013/05/13/climate-science-reduced-to-retrospective-predictions/
This whole Dendrclimate is just cutting trees ten years after the temperature record. You can check for yourself. The trees cut in the eighties produced the Hokey Stick as they knew the nineties would be warmer. Now they now there is 15 years of lack of warming ahead (they are now analyzing trees cut in 1995) so the they levelled the temperature series. I would call it Dendro treepicking as for every new temprature reconstruction they switch what trees they use.
It has been many months since I last accessed Real Climate, basically because it is usually twisted, alarmist nonsense.
So I went to check to see what they said on the subject of Briffa 2013?
Are we discussing the same Briffa 2013?
Is Real Climate always so obviously disingenuous? My first thought was that their faithful seem to have bought the party line, hook, line and sinker, then I remembered their savage censorship on all comments not following their party line.
Arguing black is white is a standard alarmist technique, but this time the web of disingenuity is truly very special. Obviously, a very sensitive nerve has been touched.
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/yamal2009/
check the updates
Briffa is still putting out the same old crap, no thanks is due to him.
Yes I think I would have to agree now, I was wrong about Briffa he seems to be same or worse than the others suggest go for him all the way SM LOL
@thisisnotgoodtogo
I disagree. check the website for the current paper (linked inside the page you cited).
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/papers/briffa2013qsr/
Data and code, all there. Briffa deserves props for making that available.
Were it not, McIntyre would not have been able to make his current finding. That comment about McIntyre has been there since 2009.
Briffa’s recent paper is remarkably transparent compared to Phil Jones who famously said: “Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/27/an-open-letter-to-dr-phil-jones-of-the-uea-cru/
Where are the usual supporters og AGW? Amazing the silence.
Latimer Alder;
We don’t need them to recant The work of showing them up has been done already.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Oh? And the vast majority of people still think CAGW is a problem why then?
If a single member of the “the team” were to call a press conference and publicly recant, it would sway the public in a way that serially debunking poor quality science cannot.
Hi Anthony!
I did read what you link to. Yes, it is a great improvement – thanks to their own initiative or thanks to the scorn they received for doing what they were doing?
I also looked at this:
” McIntyre states “If the non-robustness observed here prove out .. this will have an important impact on many multiproxy studies …”. We have shown here that the “KHAD only” example constructed by McIntyre itself represents a biased chronology, contradicted by the evidence of other chronologies constructed using additional and more representative site data. The evidence does not support a conclusion that our previous work was in any way seriously flawed. ”
and this:
“The reworked chronology, based on all of the currently available data is similar to our previously published versions of the Yamal chronology demonstrating that our earlier work presents a defensible and reasonable indication of tree growth changes during the 20th century”
and:
“the results we show here do suggest that McIntyre’s sensitivity analysis has little implication for those other proxy studies that make use of the published Yamal chronology data.”
“
Anthony,
Yes, you are correct in that I was looking at the old statements.
Have they been revisited in the new commentary?
Aahh, yes, the famous tree-ring graph that actually shows historic rainfall and insect infestation, rather than historic temperature. And we are going to derive government policy for the next 50 years based upon that??
And regards Steve McKintire – if the UK government had any sense or any balls, they would hire him on £250 k pa to be the head of the reformed CRU in East Anglia. But they have no sense, and they have no balls, so I’m afraid Steve will have to subsist on our grateful contributions for the foreseeable future. A tip coming your way, for this one Steve……
.
i have a tree ring question: if all other factors stay the same, would an increase in C02 alone cause tree rings to show added growth?
Ian H says:
June 28, 2013 at 4:41 pm
IMO Mann will follow the money. It may be too late for him to start getting grant funding by practicing science instead of advocacy, but he’s still too young to retire like Hansen & make another million giving pep talks to Warmunistas around the world. He may also not be capable of doing real science.
====================================================================
A layman’s answer: In a laboratory greenhouse where CO2 was the only variable, yes. Probably.
(But remember that the Yamal tree rings weren’t presented as indicating past CO2 concentrations but past temperatures. “Treemometers”.)
Some commenters are suggesting that this means there was no 20th century warming at all.
This is wrong. The regional variations outweigh any such global statements. And the real question is what caused the changes in the climate; natural or something new.
They also miss the real news here. Someone from the UEA (Briffa, no less, the top-dog) is doing real science again. Hallelujah. A new era has dawned.
This is a good day.
Here I compare Yamal to CET
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CY.htm
with no comment.
“though I doubt the folks at RealClimate will have the integrity to acknowledge that he was right, and they were wrong.”
Correct. What the folks at Real Climate are doing is NOT acknowledging that Briffa (and I believe it is what Briffa is doing as well) dropped the Yamal series and they are ignoring/attempting to minimize the resulting loss of the hockey stick by saying, “it’s just improved data, see, and we dropped the temps in the 1000AD range so it’s still BAD, and … Steve McIntyre is just mean.” They post the graph but essentially ignore the fact of the huge drop in temps. “Move along, nothing to see here.”
Nah, I think they’d kick him off if he tried to abandon ship. I get the impression that amongst these guys Mann is – at best – tolerated. It certainly don’t get the impression they hold him in very high regard.
Marcos says:
June 30, 2013 at 10:53 am
i have a tree ring question: if all other factors stay the same, would an increase in C02 alone cause tree rings to show added growth?
===============
Marcos, the short answer is yes…
but only to a certain point…and that is the problem with tree rings, coral rings, etc
They can only give you an idea of their growing season….if you’re looking for high temps etc….they can’t tell you if it was 1 degree too hot to grow, or if temps kept rising and it was 15 degrees too hot to grow…..they can only tell you when it was just right……the three bears
James did an excellent post on this recently….with visual aids
http://suyts.wordpress.com/2013/06/29/a-repost-why-are-dendro-shafts-so-straight/
M Courtney says:
June 30, 2013 at 11:37 am
Some commenters are suggesting that this means there was no 20th century warming at all.
This is wrong. The regional variations outweigh any such global statements.
—————————————-
That may be so or not. It would be interesting to compare with the closest instrumental record.
I think chances would be rather good to bet on a higher instrumental trend here in the Arctic hotspot
In the end there may be a regional variation AND an inflated instrumental record.
Never fight a land war in Asia, and never argue numerical analysis with a professional statistician! Both actions will lead to grief.
I still don’t understand why many of these teams don’t engage the folks either in the mathematics or business statistics departments of their own universities to run the numbers blind and see if the analytical methodologies stand up before they put the papers out the door. Seems if one makes a basic statistical blunder because one didn’t run the obligatory population checks for normalcy before applying a technique that requires perfect normalcy for the numbers to mean anything, one has only oneself to blame for not engaging ones specialist colleagues.
M Courtney says:
June 30, 2013 at 11:37 am
“They also miss the real news here. Someone from the UEA (Briffa, no less, the top-dog) is doing real science again. Hallelujah. A new era has dawned.”
Too late. The warmunist scientists were the enablers; bought and paid for. The taxpayer financed subsidy juggernaut cannot be stopped. The MSM propaganda mill will repeat the mantra of YAD 61 into eternity; the “journalists” will not even notice Briffa’s new paper.
Berkeley Earth Yamal-Yenets
http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/regions/yamal-nenets
Not very similar. As the treeline has not moved northwards, I would go with the treering reconstruction.
Remarkable story, Jo Nova’s image tells a 1000 words.
Poking away at Team Yamal’s anthill, SM has become a national treasure. But the question remains: Where have climate research’s more credentialed and specialized confreres been all this time? Are Green Gang academics and Big Government shills so universally corrupt that over decades not a single one has ever applied SM’s sophisticated yet industry-standard techniques to objective, rational interpretation of empirical/observational data-sets distinct from Klimat Kooks’ radically dishonest, self-serving GCMs?
Not only does AGW Catastrophism reek of “peccatogenic” special pleading, but long-established bodies such as the U.S. AMS and Britain’s Royal Society have forfeited all credibility for a generation.
Now that is funny! Well done.
Sadly, the debate departed the realm of science and data some time ago. The only “concensus” is political, and it is in that arena those who stand most to benefit (monetarily) continue to shriek the loudest. The science and data analysis done by Steve and others here is solid and withstanding multiple proxies and testing by others. The politicians, media, and voters are not, unfortunately, listening to Steve (and Roy, and Robert, and so many articulate others).
I’m an optimist, however current trends in the political climate of doomsayers and alarmists who get more money as a function of their ability to scare people, is challenging that optimism…
I will continue to try my best, using your good science, to convince my friends and family. They will shrug and tell me that I’m not “expert” enough to even talk about it. Soldiering on! PS – multiple degrees in geology and 30 years of experience doesn’t count apparently.
@TYoke – How hypocritical the greens are, when the crony capitalists going along on der Fuehrer’s $100 million vacation are planning on bribing the local kleptocrats and stealing more and from poor African subsistence farmers to plant trees and make money from carbon credits and the sale of the timber harvested from the trees? Plenty of big money
@JFD – Nice thought, but der Fuehrer’s entire agenda to abolish civil liberties is founded on AGW, and he won’t give it up until forced to. One must understand that AGW and der Fuehrer’s assault on the Constitution are totally intertwined. He will never back off – even if he is impeached he will still keep trying.
RE: Mikeyj says:
June 29, 2013 at 9:24 am
“Help please. I come here with a mind uncluttered by climate knowledge. What issue was in dispute? Reference site would also be kool. Thanks.”
I’ve been attempting to become an “educated voter” about “Global Warming” for a decade now, and my mind is extremely cluttered by both information and misinformation. That’s one reason I resented Obama stating people like me were “flat earthers” who had “their heads in the sand.” He was disparaging the most educated of educated votes. I felt like I had to revisit the past ten years, and sat down and wrote a long and somewhat self-centered review of my learning curve. If you are interested it is at,
http://sunriseswansong.wordpress.com/2013/06/30/history-revisited-ending-with-keith-briffa-reviewing-data-snapping-blade-from-manns-hockey-stick-yet-again/
Looking back, one thing I realized is that getting older made me less touchy about being told I was wrong. When I was a sensitive (IE touchy) young poet I’d get all bent out of shape if even a spelling mistake was pointed out. Now I seem to find the thrill of discovery in both thinking a new thought, and also in seeing the thought needs improvement, adjustment, or even is flat-out wrong.
There are some climate scientists who resemble touchy, young poets more than mature, old men. Briffa seems to have matured, however. I can imagine him young and eager, searching for a “missing link,” and/or “smoking gun,” and having a sort of Eureka-experience when he found that tree, YAD06. Then everyone is slapping his back and shaking his hand and throwing money at him, and he feels high as a kite. However gradually he saw the thought required improvement, adjustment, and parts were flat-out wrong. So he did what mature people do. He corrected himself.
What I am now curious about is this: Is CRU going to follow his example?
Gary Pearse says: June 29, 2013 at 6:50 pm
I believe I recall from the climategate emails, that Briffa had his necktie cinched up at mention of the divergence problem and he caved in and went with the flow. Also in the emails, he snarked a bit at Mann’s work and I guess it was only a matter of time before he came in from the “warm” so to speak. I judge him to have a propensity to be honest but was not strong enough to stand up to the bullying
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Who knows why Briffa has done this? Your assume that he has acted entirely on his own volition and with pure motives without any sort of prompting from ….whomever. Remember, Briffa fought data disclosure and FOI tooth and nail, this all with the support and approval of the U of East Anglia. The truth came out and now the UEA is covered with an unsavory stench, all emanating from the CRU and Briffa. Someone at the UEA could very well have pointed out to Briffa that he who makes s**t has to clean it up- or else; a truth or consequences dilemma for Briffa. Briffa has engaged in quite dubious science and even more dubious behavior and for me this is the key to knowing the man.