A baseless Mann UVa email – claims by Mann spliced and diced

I think they are putting the nail in their own hysterical coffin. They seek to suppress any dissent with what amounts to smoke and mirrors. Arguing against one thing at one time (MWP being global because not all parts warmed simultaneously), then arguing the current warm period (CWP) is universal when even their own data does not show universal warming.
And Richard was both kind and generous when he attributed their error to stupidity. It is clear that regardless of how the error was originated (stupidity or malfeasance), the “coverup” was pure malfeasance.
Steyn is going to have a field day with this type of shenanigans. And Steyn is now Mann’s tar baby. Mann could have quietly dropped the suit against the others before discovery took place, but when Steyn countered sued, it is no longer his choice.

Twice in Mann’s email response he accuses Courtney of “deliberate” deceit or misrepresentation. What a hypocrite. Or is it just that old projection again?

“This is intentional misrepresentation. For his sake, I hope does not go
public w/ such comments!” — ruh roh

Oh Mann. http://insignificantknowledge.blogspot.fr/2011/01/occupational-hazard-of-being-empire.html

Steve at climateaudit did not see fit to let this intriguing side story be pursued there. Therefore, Anthony, thank you for fleshing out the details and airing them here.
Richard’s early encounter with “The Mann’s” retributive character on display so early after MBH is…most illuminating. To know him is not to love Him.

I have a couple questions concerning the following copied (yeah, I know, that’s stating the obvious) portion of the above email from Doctor of Catastrophology, Michael Mann:
‘>This guys email is intentional deceipt. Our method, as you know, doesn’t
>include any “splicing of two different datasets”-this is a myth perptuated
>by Singer and his band of hired guns, who haven’t bothered to read our
>papers or the captions of the figures they like to mis-represent…’
Ok, Mike (is it ok if I call you Mike?-actually I could care less), can you graciously inform me what is an ‘intentional deceipt’? Now, I’m going to guess it’s different than an unintentional deceipt but since I don’t know what a deceipt is I can’t possibly know the difference between an intentional version and an unintentional version.
My second question, Mike, is, what is a myth that’s ‘perptuated’? Now, I’m guessing that it’s different than a myth that has not been perptuated but since I don’t have a sliver of a clue (since I’m not as smart as you guys) as to what perptuated actually means I obviously would not know the difference between the two.
Now, I realize, Mike, that the answers to my two (there’s two more I could ask but I won’t) foregoing questions may be above my simple ability to comprehend. And, if so, that would be a clear representation why multi-trillion dollar policy prescriptions (as Obama is currently engaged in) should be directed by your input and not mine, as a voter.

Anthony, this post has numerous errors, none of which should be made by people interested in this topic. It is very disappointing to read such material.
In Mann et al 1998 (as Jean S first figured out), to calculate the smooth, Mann padded the MBH98 proxy reconstruction after its 1980 end point with instrumental data. Mann only used the smooth up to 1980. This was “Mike’s Nature trick”. Jean S observed the irony of this procedure, given Mann’s protestations against splicing, but the effect was relatively subtle. Contra Courtney’s conflation of “hide the decline aka Mike’s Nature trick, Mike’s Nature trick applied in Mann et al 1998 had NOTHING to do with “hide the decline” – which was an issue with the Briffa reconstruction.
Further, in Courtney’s 1998 email, he said:

The ‘hockey stick’ is obtained by splicing two different data sets. Similar data to the earlier data set exists for up to near the present and could have been spliced on, but this would not show the ‘hockey stick’ and was not done.

In the Mann et al 1998 diagram criticized in Courtney’s email, the proxy reconstruction and the observed data are distinguished by being plotted in different colors or different line type. In other words, they were not “spliced” in the diagram. In Courtney’s recent email to Anthony, he says that the above email “objected to the ‘hockeystick’ graph because the graph had an overlay of ‘thermometer’ data over the plotted ‘proxy’ data. This overlay was – I said – misleading because it was an ‘apples and oranges’ comparison: of course,” I, for one, would never have guessed that this was the criticism being made in the original email. While Mann’s response was marred by his all-too-typical invective, I can well understand why he rejected the allegation in Courtney’s email.
In Courtney’s recent covering email to Anthony, he now characterizes his earlier objection as an objection to proxy reconstructions being plotted on the same graph as observations as follows:

That email objected to the ‘hockeystick’ graph because the graph had an overlay of ‘thermometer’ data over the plotted ‘proxy’ data. This overlay was – I said – misleading because it was an ‘apples and oranges’ comparison: of course, I was not then aware of the ‘hide the decline’ (aka “Mike’s Nature trick”) issue.

While, as noted above, it would have been very difficult, if not impossible, for a contemporary reader to discern this meaning, this criticism is equally invalid in my opinion. I, for one, absolutely do not take issue with plotting a proxy reconstruction on the same scale as observations. I and others take issue with the “divergence problem” precisely because when one plots the Briffa reconstruction against observed temperatures in the 20th century, the two plots diverge. According to Courtney’s criticism, it would be invalid to do such a plot. This is absurd. This does not mean that I endorse the muddiness of Mann’s graphics or other defects. Only that I, for one, do not take issue with plotting a reconstruction and observations on the same scale. On the contrary, it is something that I’ve done on many occasions. As I said to Courtney at CA on this point, if I’m unconvinced on this issue, I can’t imagine why a judge or jury would be convinced.
In the WMO 1999 graphic, Jones deleted values of the Briffa reconstruction after 1950 or so (the decline), spliced instrumental temperature to the end of the record, smoothed the combination and plotted the spliced version (without peeling back to 1950 as in Mike’s Nature trick.)
Muir Russell criticized the truncation and splicing of data in WMO1999 as follows:

the figure supplied for the WMO Report was misleading in not describing that one of the series was truncated post 1960 for the figure, and in not being clear on the fact that proxy and instrumental data were spliced together.

However, he did not take issue with plotting proxy reconstructions and observations on the same graphic. (Not that Muir Russell would be definitive on this.)
There are important issues in connection with the Mann corpus. This is not one of them. Too often, Mann’s opponents make irrelevant and easily rebutted criticisms. Unfortunately, this makes it easier for Mann to avoid more substantive criticisms. For a full explication of the differences between the various incidents, I refer people to the following CA post: http://climateaudit.org/2011/03/29/keiths-science-trick-mikes-nature-trick-and-phils-combo/
======================================================================================================
REPLY: Thanks for your opinion and clarifications Steve. Bear in mind that Courtney wrote this before the “trick” and truncation was known. While I often defer to your superior knowledge on the subject of MBH98 it is my respectfully differing opinion that plotting the two datasets together (proxy reconstruction and instrumental temperatures) is indeed problematic and misleading in that both techniques have different samplings and sensitivities to temperature.
Instrumental temperature is much more sensitive than tree ring derived proxy temperature, which has a long time domain and is not exclusively a representation of temperature, due to equal if not greater sensitivity to other variables, as I pointed out here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/28/a-look-at-treemometers-and-tree-ring-growth/
While Courtney’s complaint is most certainly incomplete in today’s perspective, we shouldn’t just say that plotting two dissimilar datasets on the same chart without proper caveats is a proper practice.
An analog to the spliced combination plot of Mann’s MBH98 graph in today’s climate arena might be this: suppose somebody wants to argue that hurricanes in the NH are becoming more frequent, and they are the more frequent now than in the last 1000 years.
One way to do this is to look at historical reports of hurricanes in literature, newspapers, magazines and other historical writings. These would be a “proxy” for the actual frequency of hurricanes in a given year. Suppose that the researcher was able to find enough reports to to make what looks like a viable dataset, but that instead of using historical writings to determine frequency of hurricanes in the 20th century, the actual record of named hurricanes (essentially observations) was used, such as this graph, which has a nice “hockey stick” shape implying that hurricanes frequency had increased dramatically in the late 20th century.

Arguably, that’s incomplete, showing only the Atlantic, but it’s the best I can do on short notice before I head to work this morning.
The combination of the two datasets, historical literature accounts, plus named storms in the north Atlantic might very well look much like Mann’s flat section of the hockey stick up to about 1925…mostly flat, maybe a slight increasing trend. It would likely look a lot like this graph you plotted in the CA discussion of Besonen et al 2008 (which has other issues independent of this discussion, I’m only using it as an example of what such a graph for this discussion might look like).

To the layman and even to some scientists, they might take such a construct of hurricane historical accounts (proxy) and named storms (observations) as being proof that hurricane frequency is indeed dramatically increasing in the 20th century.
But the issue is sampling and sensitivity. As you’ve pointed out many times, low sampling and/or selected sampling of proxies leads to spurious results when extrapolated to a larger scale (regional to global for example).
From a sensitivity standpoint, since human literature is less frequent as a we go back in time, we’d expect any dataset of historical hurricane accounts to have lower sensitivity to the actual number of hurricanes in any given year simply due to population density and the lack of communications. Many storms would go unreported.
Even in the 20th century data, as shown in the Pew graph above, this effect is likely, due to the early part of the century having lower population, and less ability to observe hurricanes due to a lower level of technology. I talk about this effect in the reporting bias of “extreme weather” here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/19/why-it-seems-that-severe-weather-is-getting-worse-when-the-data-shows-otherwise-a-historical-perspective/ So even the Pew graph would almost certainly have a lower representation for named storms in the pre-satellite era.
So, for the purposes of my exercise, knowing that the two datasets for hurricane frequency would have different samplings and sensitivities to actual hurricane frequency in the NH, would it be proper to put these two datasets together into a single graph to argue that hurricane frequency in the NH is the “highest ever” at the endpoint of the graph?
From my viewpoint it would not be, because these two datasets have significantly different samplings and sensitivities to actual hurricanes. The layman doesn’t likely know this, and many of the media that might seize on such a graph probably wouldn’t note this as they often work from press releases. A press release about this hurricane frequency “paper” probably wouldn’t trumpet the fact that the two datasets are greatly dissimilar, and that as you go back in time, the sampling is less, and the sensitivity in the last part of the graph to hurricanes is dramatically higher than any part of the record.
And that’s why I see the splicing in MBH98 as another “trick”. Putting the two dissimilar datasets together implied they have equal sampling and sensitivity to temperature, when they clearly don’t, and the public and the media ran with that visual almost entirely without questioning it, becuase even though the colors were different, many newspapers back then didn’t reproduce in color, and many people simply take the graph’s “total shape” at face value, without realizing the differences between the two datasets.
(added, here is what a newsprint version of MBH98 might look like…note the dataset delineations disappear, laymen and politicians certainly wouldn’t be able to see beyond the total graph shape in B&W))

To me, that’s just as wrong as the truncation and the overlay issues.
Plotting/splicing two similar datasets of equal sampling and sensitivity in my mind is not an issue. Plotting two greatly dissimilar datasets with unequal sampling and sensitivity, is an issue.

Tom J says:
May 12, 2014 at 6:52 am
Ok, Mike (is it ok if I call you Mike?-actually I could care less), can you graciously inform me what is an ‘intentional deceipt’? Now, I’m going to guess it’s different than an unintentional deceipt but since I don’t know what a deceipt is I can’t possibly know the difference between an intentional version and an unintentional version.

Pot, kettle, black…
[Now, now – no more distracting arguments.
An intentional deceipt is obviously the automatically printed copy received from the teller (complete with name, address, and date of purchase) of the lie.
An unintentional deceipt happens when you rewrite over the carbon copy of the original deceipt. Mod]

“the graph had an overlay of ‘thermometer’ data over the plotted ‘proxy’ data. This overlay was – I said – misleading because it was an ‘apples and oranges’ comparison”
Aren’t there similar issues with recent headlines that CO2 of 400ppm (via Mauna Loa) was higher than the last X hundred thousand years (via ice cores)?

@pottereaton
Thanks.

Zeke Hausfather says:
May 12, 2014 at 8:25 am
As Steven mentioned, this post seems rather confused. Mann by-and-large did not splice the instrumental record together with the proxy record (they are plotted with separate colors and lines in his figures).
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
In such a manner as a casual observer would not have noticed the transition. It gave a false impression to all but the most astute and detailed of observers.

richardscourtney says:
May 12, 2014 at 7:37 am
Don’t let it ruffle your feathers too much. It’s just his usual drive-by MO. If you are third rate, then second and first rate do not even exist, and Mosher doesn’t even make the list.

Steven Mosher says:

…With this self aggrandizing crap from a third rate thinker.

Pros: ??
Cons: Diminishes your point, makes it easier to dismiss / ignore, and weakens your overall brand. I don’t have to admit to being a silent little lamb, I can ignore you because of the baggage.
Course, I don’t rate as a thinker at all, so perhaps the impact is insignificant.

Steven Mosher works with a proven liar, Richard Muller, paid by the Koch brothers no less. Muller created headline news about being a skeptic who bashed Mann but then suddenly was enlightened to become an climate model supporter, despite old quotes that showed Muller never was a skeptic whatsoever, but he had in fact resigned from the Sierra Club in the 1980s for their lack of support of low emissions nuclear power. What obviously happened was that Muller was envious of Mann’s fame and stepped in with his own hockey stick as he simultaneously bashed Mann in seminars, trying to steal Mann’s thunder and start tapping the funding (and fame) well. So the Berkeley Earth crew have a vested interest in a surgical and sealed Mann bashing narrative, as they hope their highly tweak-able auto slicing and dicing black box of adjustments will garner more support of emergency level funding in climate “science” minus all that *former* controversy.

“I and others take issue with the “divergence problem” precisely because when one plots the Briffa reconstruction against observed temperatures in the 20th century, the two plots diverge.”
Absolutely, Mr. McIntyre. But please add the additional information that Briffa had discovered that his evidence had turned against him and, as a genuine scientist, he had a duty to report that indisputable fact. Perhaps the most important finding of Briffa’s work was that the tree ring proxies in question are not reliable proxies for temperature.

George Daddis,

The help I need is documenting the origin of the term global warming “denier”.

Poptech dug into material relating to this here. It’s a starting point anyway.

Corrected second link: http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/03/03/an-entire-science-wrecked-by-data-tampering/

NikFromNYC says:
May 12, 2014 at 10:40 am
It’s the fact that Mann’s black and white dotted line exactly *lines* *up* with the end of the proxy data that represents the act of splicing, no matter how it is represented graphically.
Exactly. I was about to make the same point myself, viz, Why does using different colours mean that joining up curves is not “splicing”? (Does this mean that if I had two pieces of real rope of different colour I couldn’t splice them?)
Plus, there are plenty of reproductions of this curve that don’t use different colours.

Anthony asked: “What would be a more precise word for what occurred in MBH98?”
There are a huge number of MBH issues and not quickly summarized. The largest problem – and we didn’t articulate this at the time though it is latent – is the lack of consistency between proxies. The “proxies” are not temperature plus red noise -as required in Mannian and similar models. They are something else.
Otherwise, the most serious issues in MBH98 remain the issues raised in our 2005 articles (especially the EE article): overfitting in the calibration period; falsely claiming “statistical skill” without disclosing adverse verification statistics; falsely claiming “robustness” to presence/absence of dendro proxies while knowing that the reconstruction was not robust to bristlecones; lack of forthright disclosure that the HS shape derived from proxies (strip bark bristlecone) known to be problematic; questionable use of principal components methodology, including still undisclosed retention protocols; the arbitrary Mannkovitch adjustment; the still unknown confidence interval procedure of MBH99;…
In our 2005 articles, we pointed out that overfitted models typically failed out of sample. In tailored financial models, Ferson pointed out that out-of-sample testing tended to produce new “predictors” as old ones failed. In one of my earliest Op Eds, I urged that the proxy network be brought up to date. By this, I didn’t mean the development of new proxies, but bringing networks like MBH up to date. Have bristlecone ring widths continue to go to the stratosphere? Have Gaspe ring widths gone to the stratosphere? In the case of Gaspe, we know that an update was attempted and the results contradicted Hockey Stickness and were withheld. This was pointed out in early CA posts.
Of all people, I’ve been most skeptical of the likelihood of the Mann proxy network performing out of sample. Instead what we’ve seen is more or less what we predicted in 2005. As old proxies fail to live up out of sample, new “predictors” come into fashion: things like Kaufman’s varves.
There remains a lot to discuss. But “splicing” in MBH isn’t on the list.

@Steve M
” Ironically, one can validly accuse Mann in Mann et al 2008 of splicing proxy and observed data, as he did this in Mann et al 2008. It seems foolish to me to instead make an untrue accusation about MBH98.”
I take your point on the precision of language. There is another test. I saw the chart. I was led to believe that the proxy data ended and that temperature data was pasted on top to continue it to the present time (in 1997). I was in fact misled because the proxy data set available was truncated in order to hide its actual values. The chart misled members of the public like me.
People say (including here) that later data was spliced onto the former proxy data. It would be more correct to say that the truest description of the chart is one of measured temperatures with proxy data spliced onto it, identified by a different colour. The intention of the chart, and the truncation, and the title and notes was to have the reader consider the real temperature data to be a true representation of reality, and for the proxy data to be a good representation of reality going ‘back in time’. But the majority of the chart is not a true reflection of temperature and the author knew that so he truncated a select portion the data to hide its general inappropriateness.
We now know the measurements were real, but the proxy was not. How then to make them ‘fit’? By cutting off the divergent recent proxy data and having them meet at that point where they agreed. Mann did not do that to inform the public. He sought to hide the ‘real information’ which as pointed out above was to have most people think that tree rings are a reasonable proxy for temperature because ‘they fit’ so well. Tree rings are apparently not a reasonable proxy for temperature and he sought to conceal his discovery which is an attack on science.
It is a temperature chart electronically glued to a bad temperature proxy the author knew to be bad (because they didn’t match in the 20th century). That is explanation enough for me.
PS I felt Mann et al 2008 has a pretty clear MWP in it.

richardscourtney says:
May 12, 2014 at 12:49 pm
‘And the MSM will not get excited about e.g. “overfitted models typically failed out of sample”.’
It seems we are thinking along the same lines. First rate 😉

[Snip. “beckleybud” and “H Grouse” sockpuppet. Banned. ~mod.]

[snip – no – Anthony]

I’ll never understand why grown up scientists give any credence to tree ring data. It should be given the big boot, not credibility, it was never more than a means to mislead the gullible.

richardscourtney says:
May 12, 2014 at 8:58 am
“Say what!?
My original email to Keller said
The ‘hockey stick’ is obtained by splicing two different data sets. Similar data to the earlier data set exists for up to near the present and could have been spliced on, but this would not show the ‘hockey stick’ and was not done.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Has anyone produced a graph that shows what the correct, non spliced data would have looked like side by side the splice?

“UPDATE: Steve McIntyre responded in comments, saying he didn’t think the “splicing” issue in MBH98 was a substantial issue for him, and I responded to him, giving my reasons for why I disagree.
For the sake of completeness to discussing this issue, I’m elevating his comment and my response to the body of the post. – Anthony”
Wonderful work, Anthony. You are right on the money. Also, you work really hard. Thanks.

richardscourtney says:
May 12, 2014 at 2:41 pm
Let it rest. The discussion has gone far beyond anything in your claims.

richardscourtney says:
May 12, 2014 at 2:01 pm
John Whitman:
I have answered […] your post at May 12, 2014 at 1:15 pm. Read my post at May 12, 2014 at 12:01 pm.
[. . .]
Richard

– – – – – – – – – – –
richardscourtney,
I am sincerely sorry to hear of your voluntary withdrawal from the thread which you announced in your comment to our host on May 12, 2014 at 12:01 pm.
I find no substance to your claim to have pre-addressed in your comment to Steve McIntyre all of my following points: my general epistemic observations on a MBH98 graphic; my critique of your use of analogy in a scientific discussions; and my finding of no logic in your very specific attribution of graphic ‘malpractice’ on the subject MBH98 graph.
To other commenters who are in essential concordance with richardscourtney’s positions – Given richardscourtney’s withdrawal, can one of you address his claim.
John

Interesting posting.
Thanks Richard Courtney, many long thankless years waiting for the rest of us to catch up.
I appreciate your tireless efforts.
Much of the noise and fury here seems to be centred on the “quality” of the snake oil,is it Courtney defined Brand or McIntyre defined Brand? That matters?
As Richard rightly called it its still snake oil.
The works of Mann will live in Infamy.
Though I think we should agree to pardon The Mann, if he comes clean.
For he has proven to be a truth seekers best friend, no individual has done more to turn public opinion against the IPCC and the CAGW meme.

Zeke Hausfather says:
May 12, 2014 at 3:47 pm
Theo Goodwin,
It matters where the proxy data ended if folks are accusing Mann et al of using “splicing” to suppress divergent proxy data. Briffa was not an author of MBH 98
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The divergence problem appeared versus the instrumental record in the range of 1950 to 1960 depending on which specific type of tree. So, for a document published in 1998, it had already been known of for nearly four decades, perhaps more. So, EVEN IF the presentation of data was in a manner that Steve M says is OK by the standards of a statistician, the fact is that anyone current on that specific field of science (of which Mann insists that he was not only current, but a leading researcher in the world on that topic) would have known that the proxy data did not track the instrumental record for nearly 1/3 the course of the instrumental record. To portray it in ANY WAY as being a good proxy with that information in hand is criminal.

Richard G says:
May 12, 2014 at 3:51 pm
– – – – – – – – – – –
Richard G,
Re; Splicing.
Instead of a term (splicing) that clearly is not a description ( in any normal use of the term) of what goes on in the graphics under discussion, just instead precisely describe in climate science related (and associated formal statistical) terms the treatment of the relevant endpoints of the datasets in question in the subject graphic in MBH98.
That simple approach to what richardscourtney claimed was ‘splicing’ resolves itself into precise understanding. His use of ‘slicing’ initiated an incorrect premise into his argument.
John

davidmhoffer says:
May 12, 2014 at 4:07 pm
Right on the money!

This point is of course critical, fundamental:
>>…so it actually overlaps with the proxy plot, there is a nearly perfect correlation,
>Yes, the proxy data sets were selected to do that using the (ridiculous) assumption that the proxy values which did that would have done the same previously and subsequently. [RSC]
It is relevant to recall how “that which was plotted” as tree ring temps was detected and selected. Finding a set of sets that was selected to give a certain shape and then tweaking which inputs sets to include and exclude until there was a period of overlap with thermometer data implies nefarious intent although one could claim it was ‘calibration’ (which I think happened).
In the circumstances, finding the ‘desired (flat) 600 year temp proxy that met the ‘overlap’ requirement happened to also find that it did not continue to overlap for the recent years. Plotting both on a chart? I still have a problem with the selection method which stands as an independent problem. Plotting both, also had issues even when carefully sifting through tree rings for the desired outcome (to match the real temps).
So the older thermometer data was truncated until the overlap occurred.
The tree ring proxy was truncated until the divergence occurred.
They were plotted as a single data set, according to the link above to the paper.
That is a splice. Clearly and unequivocally. It isn’t even tree ring temp proxies and temps, it is sifted garbage and temps. I could get the same ring-result by measuring sets of hot dog remnants at the Waterloo dumpsite if I was allowed to choose which summer weekends to include.
So where did the full colour version with text noting the two as separate come from? Which version was used to promote CO2-rooted AGW alarmism? The ‘annotated two-colour spliced’ one or the ‘B&W single series spliced’ one?

Steven Mosher says:
May 12, 2014 at 5:21 pm
The idea that what Courtney says will be confused with what Steve says strikes me as nonsense.
However, the more important point is that you are calling for censorship. At present, it is voluntary self-censorship, but the fact that you are here making this argument worries me when I think what might develop from it.
In addition, please note that you are offering yourself as the censor. That too is worrying.

Thank You Aphan ! !
Yes, the two different data sets were clearly shown in two different colors. The problem is that by overlaying them in a point where they “match up”, and then continuing on with only ONE of the sets, it automatically leads the viewer to assume that the FIRST data set either ENDED at that moment, OR that it continued to match the second data after that, so that essentially, the SECOND set “picks up where the last one left off”. Using the word “updated” in the caption to the original chart is also meant to lead the viewer to conclude that the second data set is just a newer, better, reflection of the first set.
If the first data had continued on, it would not have shown a hockeystick. The second data set didn’t go back far enough to be reliable. It was a match made in heaven ONLY for someone with an agenda, and the fact that they “matched” for only a split second in scientific time, was all they needed to shove this chart, this newborn “climate scientist”, and the AGW theory to the forefront of the climate debate.
You have most concisely summarized this entire thread. All the gnashing and hubris does not matter. And yes, the core of folks that would do such are true divine believers in the religion of the church of CO2 caused global warming. The will NEVERadmit to being / doing wrong. They will die with their agenda. Why, Oh Why do we continue to bring knives to their gunfight ?

Steve and Anthony,
There are several other issues in the final decades of MBH 98/99, which I think are arguably just as serious, for instance Steve has commented concerning the “Swindlesque S-curve” that he was unable to reverse engineer it. The problem is that with the original 40-year smoothing, come 1978 onwards, an additional non-existent 20 years of data into the future was required. I recall that at one stage Jan Esper concluded that his dendro community methodology to fill-in the “missing” data at the time, 2002 (?) was naughty. (paraphrasing…. But he then went quiet on it). However, he and all continued the same way but mostly reduced the smoothing interval to 30-years, and thus a lesser version of the same problem.
There is a wonderful demonstration of a mea culpa on this by the UK Met Office and their strange 21-year weighted smoothing method. When they found that their original imaginary data fill-in approach didn’t give the desired approach they changed it:
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/smoothing.html
Figure’s 2 & 3 are most relevant
Bob Fernley-Jones

While I am still in the middle of getting caught up to date on May12ths harvest of fascinating clarifications about MBH98 and Mann between Steve McIntyre and Richard S Courtney, let me kindly REMIND readers and participants about the crucial shifting grounds underlying IPCC science and traditional practice in climatology back then.
The era 1998 to 2001 was a crucial time because the IPCC changed from observing and describing the potential AGW problem (1990 and 1995) to making a definite attribution of ‘a discernable human influence upon the climate’ (SPM, 2001, if memory correctly serves), and claiming the anthropogenic theory of global warming as “science.”
Over the late 1990s, also, I think, we saw the changing of the guard from the Old School cautious, synoptic climatologists to the Young Turks like Mann and climate modellers like Ben Santer, aggressively staking out their carerr-building claims making their international scientific reputations, and as respectable scientific pioneers. Old School climatologists such as Richard Lindzen – and even founders of the field’s methods like William Gray – began retiring then, and with them their venerable tradition of scrupulous scientific conduct and that remains beyond reproach, as well as cautious claim-staking and caveat-making in their science. These senior scientist cohorts definitely dominates at gatherings like the Heartland Institutes (soon to be) 9 Conferences, in stark contrast to the Richard Alley’s and Peter Gleick’s that populate AGU conferences.
My point is this: the issue of data handling, presentation with appropriate sensitivities, and allegations of misuse of the record between Steve and Richard here is absolutely fundamentally the same as the one waged between, say, Bill Gray and Kevin Trenberth in Colorado, or Will Happer and Michael Oppenheimer at Princeton University.
By the turn of the century, the effects of the Clinton era’s federal spending upon ‘climate science’ – increasing the budget 10 times in a single budget year of 1993 – had created a swarm of New Recruits to do the governments and eco-activists work on the global warming problem. This resulted in not only a dilution of cautious traditions that have been crowded out in publicity and personnel, but also important changes in the accepted and acceptable methods of science.
I can understand that Steve McInyre is not much interested in tracking and following this signal transition – and Richard Courtney may or may not either – but many kibitzers here reading the many blogs that attempt to follow and criticize climate science are.
To my mind, Steve is the brilliant analyst and revered master of long-form science criticism – and Richard is the leading role-model of the shortest form (with possibly many other commenters coming a close second), usually posting here.
While Anthony Watts himself is an indefatigable and timely master science-provocateur, his concision is sometimes uneven. And thus while his productivity is without peer and his shared talent pool unequalled, science bloggers like Joanne Nova and climatologists Judith Curry (as well as Roy Spencer and Roger A. Pielke, Sr.), are either more consistently concise or else measured and fair to the material, I believe.
After our most accomplished host come a few other skeptic bloggers like Jeff Id and Andrew Monfort. No doubt other serious readers will come different estimates of the bloggoverse – with maybe a different list of candidates – than I do.
These kudos dished out, I hope the larger picture of hoping and attempting – and yes, needing – to better understand the transition from traditional climatology to the well-poisoning free-for-all of climate science’ is very important to diagnosing the institutional transition that vexes CAGW-skeptics. This larger perspective is essential to ‘get right’ if anything appropriate is ever going to done to right the good ship of sound climate science, so the world can continue to flourish with human benefit.
This thread untangling of the Hockey Team’s exegetical founding claims over Mann reminds me of a famous quote from Sir Walter Scott: “Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive.” Richard’s complaint goes to Mann’s motives – and Steve and he differ as to how revealing those motives might be interpreted in MBH1998s crucial graph.
I still remember this period (1998-2001) of science news, and it affected my own transition to becoming a “worried warmer” – if the replication of these findings occurred. And with the IPCCs TAR in 2001, it did. And this transition of my own personal commitments (and back again, but sharply qualified and more deeply informed) is shared with the popular science writer Matt Ridley, as he explained in his Prospect review of Montford’s “The Hocker Stick Illusion.”
I want to thank the named and many unnamed participants to this thread for once more clarifying my understanding of “The Age of Global Warming (as historian Rupert Darwell trenchantly dubs it).

@Steve in Seattle
>Thank You Aphan ! !
>>Yes, the two different data sets were clearly shown in two different colors. The problem is that by overlaying them in a point where they “match up”, and then continuing on with only ONE of the sets, it automatically leads the viewer to assume…
I am not correcting your position or comment, but I want to extend it a little by pointing that there is an inherent claim in MBH98 regarding the core message. The core message is that the temperature of the NH and therefore probably the planet was pretty constant for centuries and leapt up suddenly when the industrial revolution got under way – because of CO2.
There are two data sets shown in the relevant graph: some ‘proxy data’ and some temperature measurements. The temperatures were measured with thermometers. It is crucial to understand (and state) that the other line’ is not a set of temperature data, nor is it a proxy for temperature data as it is contradicted by anthologies of weather reports and actual measurements.
To know what that line actually is, it is necessary to understand what Steve McIntyre uncovered and I don’t have time for all that here. But it is enough to remember that it is not a set of temperature data, proxy or not. It is just a wiggly line that was produced by a method that has no validity, and which happened to overlap some of the real temperature data during part of the time series. The included data sets were chosen on that basis.
The graph is a plot of the wiggly line that is not temperature, truncated so the part after the overlapping portion was not visible (because it did not agree with the instrument temperatures). The second thing that happened is the temperature plot was also truncated but on the older part leading up to the overlap, again, to prevent us seeing that the wiggly line did not agree with it.
The core claim in the paper is that the wiggly line represents the temperature of the planet (or NH if you like) and it is displayed in a manner that makes it look as if, when instruments became available, they overlapped (“affirming the accuracy” of the wiggly line) and thereafter instrument temperatures were shown. I have carefully considered Steve M’s point that a splice is two things represented graphically as one and not clearly stated as being different. He is right in general, but this is a special case of deception because Mann knew that the wiggly line was not representative of temperatures, and he went out of his way to make the overlapping period appear to confirm that it was, stating they were two different sets of information. We know Mann knew it was not representative of temperatures because when the rest of the data he had in hand was included, the MWP appeared. He only got his wiggly line by selectively removing data sets (tree rings) from those available, famously hiding those extracted from the set in a file called “Censored data”. This was not initially revealed in the ClimateGate emails, it was worked out before that by Steve, amazingly.
Richard’s complaint was that the way this thing was done is a ‘splice’. Consider: If I did it with two tree branches, it would be a splice. If I did it with two garden hoses that happened to cross each other at some point, it would be a splice. If I did it with two different sizes and colours of wire, cutting off the unused portions, such an overlapping joint is called a ‘splice’.
My telling you I have, for example, two types of apple trees on a single root stock trunk does not mean the joint is not a splice; one can’t say the wires were not spliced. That is what a splice is: I take the bottom of the tree cutting off all the branches I don’t want to keep and splice onto into it one or more branches I like. I report to the buyer that is what I did and how I created it. My wife has such a tree with 5 varieties of apples on it.
The core issue is whether or not you are led to believe that the root stock is also an apple tree. It could be an orange tree. “Apples” in Mann’s case are temperatures measured by instruments. Mann claimed that the wiggle line was also ‘temperatures’ produce by his jiggery-pokery method of analysing tree ring widths. That line does not in fact represent temperatures and he knew it when he made the claim in a way that induced people to believe that it did.
A key process in this inducement was to show an overlapping section at the ‘end’ of the wiggle line and the beginning of the ‘instrument line’. This splice is analogous to splicing an apple tree branch onto an orange tree trunk. Both are ‘truncated’ in order to create the chimera. Inspecting the overlap (literally in both cases) could convince an unsuspecting customer that the root stock is also an apple tree. As they grow so well together at the overlap, a claim that ‘this is an apple tree’ made from two distinct tree parts from different gardens might be convincing, even if untrue.
Richard is calling an orange an orange, an apple an apple. Mann’s claim the whole tree “is the same as an apple tree” is bogus, we now know, on two counts: The splice was a convenient subterfuge and the wiggly line did not represent the historical temperatures of the NH. It was a slick piece of work, but made in support of fraudulent claims: that there was no MWP and that human industry was causing an unprecedented rise in global temperatures by releasing CO2 into the atmosphere.
What followed from this crafted lie has been a very expensive piece of human history and the noble-cause corruption of the field of climate science, its publications and many of its main actors.

{all bold emphasis mine – JW}

Orson says:
May 13, 2014 at 12:48 am
[. . .]
While Anthony Watts himself is an indefatigable and timely master science-provocateur, his concision is sometimes uneven. And thus while his productivity is without peer and his shared talent pool unequalled, science bloggers like Joanne Nova and climatologists Judith Curry (as well as Roy Spencer and Roger A. Pielke, Sr.), are either more consistently concise or else measured and fair to the material, I believe.
[. . .]

– – – – – – – – – –
Orson,
I think you “believe” what you said about our host at WUWT.
But, you must address a question which you begged in your assessment of our WUWT host. Your begged question is: Why?
Why does our WUWT host achieve the well-recognized goal of a very educational stimulation of both scientists and supporters of science? It is likely because of tolerance for the open marketplace for climate science ideas in a reasonably moderated and civil setting. Our host simply does this better than the other venues you mentioned.
I respect you for saying your somewhat critical comment about our WUWT host to his face here at WUWT. Thank you for that integrity. I have little respect of the lack of integrity shown by richardscourtney in his backhanded insulting comment here at WUWT about Steve McIntyre; richardscourtney should have had the integrity to say it directly to Steve McIntyre at CA.
John

There’s no point going back to apple trees to discuss the term “splice”, because to anyone writing in paleoclimate of the last millennium, the term means a digital combination of two series. That’s how Mann (or myself) would interpret the complaint in Courtney’s original email. Now it seems that Courtney’s complaint pertained to plotting. But there’s no way that Mann (or myself) would have been able to guess that from Courtney’s email.
People who take umbrage at plotting the reconstruction and observations on the same plot should also recall that this was regularly done in articles to which Courtney did not object. Briffa et al 1998 – which showed the divergence problem – showed such a plot.
But to fully show the absurdity of Courtney’s complaint, recall the famous Lamb diagram of the MWP (also shown in IPCC 1990). The Lamb diagram showed the Central England temperature record in its later portion and a reconstruction from documents in its earlier portion. It didn’t merely show these two disparate records on a graphic, but actually spliced them. Anyone who is complaining about the Mann 1998 graphic should be hyperventilating about the Lamb diagram.
Too much of this present thread seems to be animated merely by dislike of Mann and partisan cheering of someone merely for opposing Mann than by informed skepticism.