About that graph…

This one:

The title “Battle of the Graphs” certainly lives on, even though it is approaching a decade in age, as there has been a lot of off-topic contention on this WUWT thread as well as a free-for-all bashing over at the “Stoat” a.k.a. William Connolley (who “takes science by the throat”, implying he is some sort of “tough guy”) saying that this graph that appeared in a Telegraph article was erroneous and created by Christopher Monckton.

Based on the simplest available evidence, I was ready to conclude, as were many, that indeed Monckton had created the graph, that it was in error, and that he had refused to admit to any of this. I was ready to censure him myself, just as the over-the-top Stoaters wanted to do, probably so Connolley could direct a new denigrating Wikipedia entry as he is known to do (he’s not allowed to edit Wikipedia pages of living persons anymore, so he directs by proxy). Now, after further investigation I can tell you I was wrong, and so is Connolley.

If Monckton was wrong I certainly would’ve had no trouble pointing this out just as the Stoaters were doing, but I have one advantage that neither Monckton nor the Stoaters have: I have actually worked at a newspaper and I have submitted articles as a guest author to newspapers. So, I am familiar with the artwork process. Further, I have also published a number of articles from Monckton myself here and I am quite familiar with his style of producing graphs.

Thus, I noticed something about the Telegraph article that no one else seemed to.

WUWT commenter Kevin O’Neill, who also frequents Connolley’s website pointed out in this comment the charges against Monckton.

First let’s have a look at the article itself. The URL for it is:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1533290/Climate-chaos-Dont-believe-it.html

A screencap of the heading portion is shown below with the highlight done by me in yellow.

Unfortunately the link under the yellow highlight no longer works and so for some it is impossible to check Monckton’s references and calculations that were included with the essay. We’ll get back to that in a moment, please read on.

Here is how the article presented the graph that is in contention, I have screen captured a portion of the original Telegraph article:

Several things immediately struck me as being out of place when I first saw the graph after reading about the contention surrounding it, here is a list.

The style (colors, font, etc) is not anything like I’ve ever seen from Monckton in all the graphs he has submitted to WUWT.
The horizontal lines on the bottom portion of the graph are ~~obviously spaced incorrectly~~ (the 20th century average line looks like it is incorrect on left axis) along with other cues in the plot line indicating to me that they were hand-drawn yet I’ve never gotten the graph from Monckton that was hand-drawn. Everything he has ever sent me has always been from a computer program output, thus the idea of having ~~improperly spaced lines and coordinates~~ a hand drawn plot didn’t make sense to me.
My experience with newspapers told me that this was likely a graph that was prepared by the art department of the UK Telegraph. You see, all major newspapers and even some middle and minor ones have an art department. And, when they get some sort of illustration from a guest author, or data from a government report, they almost always redraw it to fit the style and format of the newspaper. Especially the colors and the fonts.

Just look at any major newspaper in the United States like USA Today when they get in data from say, the Labor Department, they produce their own graphs of that data. They can also make grievous mistakes with such data in the way it is presented such as this article from Charles Apple (who watches newspapers and the graphics and photos they produce) demonstrates:

Obviously, neither the editor nor the artist saw the sexual suggestion in the imagery. I don’t blame the NWS or the Red Cross who provided the data, I blame Doyle Rice and Julie Snider. Note the references at the bottom of the graphic.

Here, USA Today took data from the National Weather Service and the American Red Cross and turned it into what is obviously a ridiculous graphic. It got past the editor, and made it into the final publication.

I noted such references to internal artists, editors, and sources were missing from the UK Telegraph article as seen in the screen cap further above, and it is this omission that I believe led many people to conclude that Monckton produced that graphic.

If you examine other graphics from the UK Telegraph, you will find that they do have such references but they are also similarly designed and of a similar size with similar fonts and colors. For example, look at this graphic from 2005 that has been redrawn, but no mention given of an internal reference to The Telegraph art department:

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/4198339/Global-warming-will-bring-cooler-climate-for-UK.html

It is plainly obvious that is a graphic created by the newspaper and not by any scientific entity, otherwise it wouldn’t have the jagged shadow edges. So, the question surrounding the graph allegedly produced by Christopher Monckton is; did he included in the original list of references that he provided the Telegraph in that now missing link at the top of the original article? I’m happy to say I have found that original source file that Monckton provided to the Telegraph. It was lodged in the Wayback machine. I was able to find it simply by putting in the correct URL of the original Telegraph article as shown below:

https://web.archive.org/web/20090301000000*/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1533290/Climate-chaos-Dont-believe-it.html

When you pull up the archive from 2009, the link appears for the PDF file of Monckton’s references but unfortunately it gives a 404 as seen below:

Oddly though if you click on the LEFT MOST vertical lines (circa 2007/2008) in the timeline above, the PDF will actually download, and that is what I did. For those of you that would doubt this you can go here and try it yourself:

Click to access warm-refs.pdf

And for posterity, here is a local link to the PDF of the References Monckton provided for the Telegraph article in 2006: warm-refs

If you open that PDF file you will notice a number of graphs and references including the graph from IPCC section 7 graph C. McIntyre speaks of its source here.

But no trace of the exact artwork combination as presented above appears in the Telegraph article is in Monckton’s reference PDF file, clearly indicating that the telegraph art department redrew that 1990 IPCC graph and the hockey stick graph, changing the top-bottom order. Below is page 6 from Monckton’s “warm-refs” PDF file, showing those graphs:

While I was ready to condemn Monckton for producing a sloppy graph like many of these Stoaters, it is now abundantly clear to me that he did not draw it and the claims by these people are erroneous and simply mendacious.

Stoat/Connelley is simply flat wrong, and the website that cited Monckton’s graphic as an example of what not to do needs to clarify that it was the newspaper that made the errors, that the source graphs came from the IPCC, and that Monckton drew none of them.

All this breastbeating over something that can be simply researched as I have done is just a waste of everyone’s time.

Monckton prepared a rebuttal as well which I present below.

=================================================================

There comes a point …

By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley

Those of us who have raised questions about the magnitude of Man’s influence on climate have become used to the expensively funded, often carefully co-ordinated campaigns of personal vilification organized by adherents of the Climatist Party Line. Occasionally we growl a little. More often we refuse to be distracted. We carry on.

The purpose of these relentless attacks on us is not only to do us down but also to frighten off third parties who might otherwise find the courage to speak out and express their own doubts about the Party Line.

But there comes a point when it is necessary to take action. I hope no one will disagree that that point is reached when allegations of lying or fabrication are made; when the allegations are unquestionably false; when they are persisted in despite requests to cease and desist; and when they are widely disseminated in a manner calculated baselessly to cause maximum reputational damage.

Recently a commenter at Jo Nova’s blog posted several comments to the effect that I had “faked” a graph. I quickly asked Jo to replace them with a note to say legal proceedings were in train. Enough, I had decided, was enough.

Here is the diagram I was supposed to have “faked”:

This surely blameless diagram appeared alongside an article I had written for the Sunday Telegraph on 5 November 2006, the first time I ever went public on the climate question. The article went live on the internet at midnight on a Saturday night. Two hours later the Telegraph’s website crashed, for 127,000 people had tried to access the article.

Now, it is not the custom of UK newspapers to ask their contributors to illustrate their articles. As usual, I was not consulted and offered no advice on the matter, and had no hand in their production and no foreknowledge that they were to be used. The graphs are not labeled as having been sourced from the IPCC (indeed, one of the graphs has the shadow of a hockey stick overlaid on it and marked as the “IPCC ‘hockey stick’”, making it blindingly obvious that it is not an official IPCC’s graph).

The Telegraph’s graphs are simple and, it seems to me, harmless schematics illustrating the difference between the representations of 1000 years’ global temperatures as they appeared in the IPCC’s 2001 (top) and 1990 (bottom) reports.

The graph from p. 202 of the IPCC’s 1990 report now looks like this:

With the article I supplied some background material for Telegraph readers on its website. In that material, the IPCC’s 1990 graph also appeared, mistakenly captioned as 1996 rather than 1990. The graph as I reproduced it looked like this:

What I had not realized until very recently was that for several years allegations had been circulated all over the place to the effect that I had fabricated the graphs that had appeared in the Sunday Telegraph article. Yet not one of those who had made these allegations had ever contacted me to verify the facts. And not one of them had said what was wrong with the Telegraph’s graphs anyway.

Perhaps the worst of the many allegations of dishonesty against me appeared on a “science education” website, where an entire section under the bold heading “Misuse of scientific images” was devoted to the Telegraph’s graphs.

The offending section contained the following untruths:

Ø that in that article I had “disputed the concept of climate change” (Not that old chestnut again! I had accepted the concept but queried its likely magnitude);
Ø that the Telegraph’s graphs were instances of “poor use of graphical displays” that “can confuse and obscure data” (No, they neatly showed the main point: in 1990 the medieval warm period and little ice age were shown clearly, but by 2001 both had gone, and a sharp uptick in the 20^th century had been added);
Ø that I had “created the [1990] graph on the bottom using different calculations that did not take into account all of the variables that climate scientists used to create the top graph” (No, I had not created either graph or done any calculations for such a graph);
Ø that I had deployed “common techniques used to distort visual forms of data – manipulating axes, changing one of the variables in a comparison, changing calculations without full explanation – that can obscure a true comparison” (No, none of the above); and
Ø that the article had been published in the Daily Telegraph (No, the Sunday Telegraph, and that suggests the website had never seen the original article but had picked up the libel from somewhere else).

I only discovered that this spectacularly inaccurate and profoundly damaging infestation of allegations when the commenter at Jo Nova’s site who had accused me of “faking” the graph mentioned on his own blog that I had not objected to the libel as it appeared on the science-education website. I had not objected because I had not known about it. No one at that website had thought to check any of the facts with me, or, as far as one can tell, with anyone else.

In short order a letter before action was sent to the website, which promptly did the right thing and took out the entire section, though there are indications that attempts are being made in some quarters – unsuccessfully so far – to get them to put it back up again.

I gave the commenter at Jo Nova’s website who had accused me of “faking” the graphs several chances to retract and apologize. Instead, he and several others sneeringly doubled down by accusing me of “lying” when I had said the graphs at the Telegraph website had not purported to be, and had not been labeled as, IPCC graphs.

They also alleged that the graph in my background materials accompanying the Telegraph article was “not the same graph” as that from the IPCC’s 1990 report: in effect, that I had “faked” that one as well. Judge that for yourselves from the two monochrome versions of the graph above. There seem to me to be no material differences, and I think it would be hard for the defendants to convince a court that there were any.

So I am going to court. My lawyers say the libels are plain and indefensible. They comment additionally that no judge would regard the schematics in the Telegraph (whoever had drawn them) as significantly misrepresenting the difference between the 1990 and 2001 reports’ images of the past millennium’s global temperature anomalies. As far as they can see, there is not a lot wrong with the graphs in any event.

I have told this story not only because some commenters here have been unwise enough to repeat in threads here the allegations they have made elsewhere but also because I thought it might be time to reveal the steps we have to take on an almost weekly basis to try to stem the tide of false allegations directed at us.

Nor am I by any means the only victim. For years, this shadowy Propagandaamt has been tampering with Fred Singer’s Wikipedia page to allege that he believes in Martians.

Niklas Mörner, the sea-level expert, has had his page got at on the ground that he sometimes dowses for water or other underground treasure. My late father once did that for the Maltese Government, and found three lost Punic tombs and a fine marble head of Seneca from the first century AD. My drawing of it (in the day before digital cameras) is probably still to be found somewhere in the Museum of Classical Archaeology at Cambridge. But I never had the knack for dowsing myself.

A pressure-group founded and funded by Prince Charles is prone to intervene to try (unsuccessfully, the last time they tried it on me) to prevent the publication of skeptical scientific papers in British learned journals.

A team of paid hacks telephones the Chancellor and the Dean of the Faculty at every university at which skeptics are invited to speak. About half the time, they succeed in getting us disinvited.

Journal editors are sacked for printing papers by skeptics.

However much one might hope that scientific discourse can be conducted in an open atmosphere of sensible dialog, the truth is that on the climate it can’t, because the extremists won’t play fair. The Politburo are determined to keep the scare going for just a little longer, till they can get the Treaty of Paris safely signed by all nations in December 2015.

So I am going to court to defend myself and, in so doing against the constant barrage of falsehoods told in support of the Party Line. We went to court against Al Gore because his movie was poisonous political propaganda dressed up as science.

We won. Nothing else but a court case would have worked. It was only when the department of education in London were confronted with 80 pages of scientific testimony, and knew that that testimony would stand up in court against all their falsehoods and evasions, that they caved in and settled, paying $400,000 to the plaintiffs and undertaking to circulate 77 pages of corrective guidance to every school in England.

In the present case, the other side has blinked thrice. On the website of my defamer, there is a nervous little note that he will not give me his name and address unless I answer various impertinent questions of his. The court will have no patience with any nonsense of that sort.

And there are now various postings at the same blog, again rather nervous, saying that perhaps they could plead that I don’t have a reputation and they can accuse me of whatever they like.

They will be unwise to take that line. For if they say I have no reputation they have to be able to come up with evidence that any material detrimental to my reputation on which they may try to rely is true. And most of it is no more accurate than their accusations that I “faked” a graph that I had plainly not faked. If they waste the court’s time with point after point that has nothing to do with the case at hand, they will merely aggravate the damages they will have to pay.

Finally, the perp has been unwise enough to admit that at the time when he made his allegation of “fakery” he did not know whether I had “faked” the graph or not. In the courts, to make a damaging and untrue allegation not knowing whether or not it is true is as culpable as making it when one knows it is not true. And there is no defense once that admission has been made. It has been made.

There is a curious and touching notion among some skeptics that, since the truth will of course prevail in the end, we should persevere with the scientific argument but not take the defamers and the scamsters to court. The feeling is that using the courts somehow isn’t cricket.

Sometimes, though, it’s necessary to play hardball. Being Valiant for Truth is not for wimps.

================================================================

UPDATE:

From comments, Steve McIntyre finds another version of the Lamb/IPCC AR1 1990 graph, which looks to me to be much closer to the graph used in the Telegraph article. This graph does NOT appear in Monkton’s PDF.

He writes in a comment:

The lower panel of the Telegraph diagram appears to have derived from (what appears to be) a variation of the Lamb graphic, a variation that I had not noticed until now. The variation appears in the following blog posts (and visually matches almost exactly):

http://drtimball.com/2011/they-are-still-trying-to-rewrite-climate-to-show-current-conditions-are-abnormal/

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.ca/2009/12/from-mann-paper-in-nature.html

Neither blog post provides a citation for the figure, but there are clues that should enable its exact provenance to be tracked down fairly quickly. It appears to be from a book about European climate and have been developed by Lamb. It is unclear why the Telegraph would have used this variation instead of the IPCC 1990 variation, but doubtless we will find out in due course.

UPDATE2:

Nick Stokes adds in comments (bold mine):

There is a version of that graph at the John Daly site here. The article does not seem to be dated, but Daly is indicated as the author, which would make it 2004 or earlier. No source given.

Here is the graph from John Daly’s website, listed as figure 4:

And here is the Metadata, dating the creation of it precisely to Feb 10, 2004, two years before Monckton’s article in the Telegraph.

(right click on image at Daly’s website here to verify yourself)

Nick Stokes adds in a second comment:

Steve McIntyre says: July 3, 2014 at 12:12 pm

“The lower panel of the Telegraph diagram appears to have derived from (what appears to be) a variation of the Lamb graphic, a variation that I had not noticed until now.”

Here, on the Wayback machine, is a version from 2001 on the John Daly site.

And the screencap:

Since Daly’s graph is a near perfect match for the one in the Telegraph, and appears as far back as April 21, 2001, and Monckton did not provide it in his PDF to the Telegraph, I’d say “case closed”.

UPDATE3:

There is some whingeing from Kevin O’Neill in comments that Figure 7.1c from IPCC AR1 WG1 chapter 7 (available here: http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/wg_I/ipcc_far_wg_I_chapter_07.pdf ) was not “faithfully” reproduced in my article, even though I made a reference to a technical discussion at Climate Audit on that specific graph and the exact figure appears no less than 3 times in the essay split between my own and Monckton’s

If you open that PDF file you will notice a number of graphs and references including the graph from IPCC section 7 graph C. McIntyre speaks of its source here.

To satisfy such whingeing, here is the exact page from IPCC AR1 WG1 chapter 7, followed by a magnified view of figure 7.1 (including graphs A,B, and C) in case Mr. O’Neill wants to claim “a magnified version is needed for readers with poor eyesight” as part of his game. I challenge him and readers to find any material difference between the graphs below taken directly from the IPCC WG1 Chapter 7 page 202 and those in the essay.

Magnified figure 7.1abc:

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Phil.

July 3, 2014 9:15 pm

Monckton of Brenchley says:
July 3, 2014 at 4:45 pm
Once again, full marks to Anthony, and also many thanks indeed to Steve McIntyre, whose fascinating comment attaching an image of the John Daly temperature reconstruction may well – as Anthony has said – have closed the case. For I did not possess and had never seen a copy of that graph, but presumably the Telegraph found it on the John Daly website. Now we shall see whether my defamers have the good sense to apologize without reserve, retract their libels, and remove them from the web.
Interestingly the Telegraph article was also published in AIG News, #86, November 2006 which contained the same ‘Battle of the Graphs’ figure, under your byline claiming to have been reproduced with your kind permission.
http://www.klimarealistene.com/web-content/09.03.08%20Klima,%20CO2%20analyser,%20Monckton%20m.fl%20NB%20Nov06.pdf
If that graph was produced from John Daly’s version then the distortion of the temperature axis which is apparent in the Telegraph version was added later.
Another similar version which shows up with the name: hhlamb_1000_years.jpg seems to have originated in the Register (http://regmedia.co.uk/2009/11/26/hhlamb_1000_years.jpg) it is referred to as the last 1000 years in Europe and has had the post 1950 wiggles added but doesn’t have the T axis distortion. That one certainly appears to have arisen from the Daly one, the IPCC derived graphs only run to 1950 such as the following:
http://illuminutti.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/maunder-minimum-01.jpg?w=627
The only versions with the distorted axis that I have come across are the Monckton/Telegraph versions.
“Anything is possible” mentions the landmark paper by Friis-Christensen and Lassen in 1991. In the context of the current failure of global temperatures to rise for almost 18 years (see an adjacent posting by me for the latest update), and bearing in mind the numerous predictions of global cooling that are now in circulation, including a prediction just sent to me by Dr Horst Ludecke that the world may be 1.2 K cooler by 2100 than today, the conclusion of that great paper by F-C and L is worth restating here:
“The observations we have presented suggest that long-term variations in Earth’s temperature are closely associated with variations in the solar cycle length, which therefore appears to be a possible indicator of long-term changes in the total energy output of the sun. If this result can be related to a real physical mechanism there is a possibility to determine the greenhouse warming signal and predict long-term climate changes by appropriate modeling of the sun’s dynamics. Estimation of the natural variability of the Earth’s climate and its causes are needed before any firm conclusion regarding anthropogenic changes can be made.”
Amen to that.
Unfortunately that ‘great paper’ is seriously flawed by the presence of inappropriate smoothing and arithmetic errors that are responsible for the apparent ‘close association’ referred to.
This is shown in Fig. 1 by Damon and Laut:
http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/DamonLaut2004.pdf

ullr1998

July 3, 2014 9:47 pm

This is certainly a lot of dredging by lots of people to put this wild hair to bed! CONGRATULATIONS to the ever energetic and resourceful Anthony – to Lord Monckton – to Steve McIntyre – to Nick Stokes – and no doubt others whom I may have missed in my first read-through.
This is a Herculean labor – and one that transcends a lot of deceit and mischief minded, good hearted and mindful as well as the partisan trolls.
This has been long lived menace on climate science discussions. I hope that Lord Monckton’s lawsuit can be the final bottle-stopper — and for us geeky readers here like me, an opportunity for a new book to be written, perchance? I welcome, no – RELISH the thought!

William Connolley

July 3, 2014 11:39 pm

I’ve just received the following email, from someone claiming to be AW:
—-
As a third party, I am passing this request on from Monckton of Brenchley.
He requests that I provide him with your email addresses so that he can send a communication to you.
Please advise if you accept this request.
—-
But its an odd request. Firstly, my email isn’t hard to find. Second, someone purporting to be Lord M has already been posting messages to me on my blog (see, e.g. http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2014/06/27/battle-of-the-graphs/#comment-49175). Of course, there is no way of telling if that person is Lord M. And of course, I have no way of telling if the purported email is from AW.
REPLY: Well you do now. Monckton asked me to see if was OK to pass on your email. I assume from your “not hard to find” statement that it is now OK. OF course you could have simply replied to the email and asked for verification, but that would have spoiled your opportunity to make an issue of it. – Anthony

Kevin O'Neill

July 3, 2014 11:45 pm

As one of the many people that Monckton of Brenchley is pursuing accusing of libel, I will add my two cents.
First, Anthony does the discussion a disservice by not *accurately* reproducing both the IPCC 1990 graph and the graph from Monckton’s reference materials. When you are discussing the difference between two graphs is it not important to reproduce them accurately? Monckton claimed his “inexpert eye” couldn’t tell the difference. And lo and behold Anthony fails to reproduce them accurately and in full. Hmmm. Forgive me for being just a bit …. disappointed.
1) The graph in Moncton’s reference materials is captioned as being from UN 1996. It’s not. Let’s bypass the year error. Even if it had been labeled from UN 1990 it would have been wrong. It’s NOT an authentic IPCC graph. When something is not authentic it’s a knock-off, a fake, a counterfeit. The graph in Monckton’s reference materials that purports to be from UN 1996 is a fake. Monckton – not the Telegraph – is responsible for his reference materials. Monckton (re)produced the fake graph.
2) Monckton has admitted he did not have the IPCC 1990 report. His excuse for the reference materials graph is that:
a) an eminent scholar sent it to him
b) he got it from a reliable source
c) he reproduced the IPCC 1990 graph
Take your pick – Monckton has given all three responses – though c) conflicts directly with his statement that he didn’t have the 1990 report.
3) Not having the 1990 report is evidence in and of itself of falsification/fabrication. You do not cite materials you have not read. Not having the report Monckton jumped to the conclusion that the graph wholly represented the expert’s opinion. The text, on the otherhand, clearly raises questions. To this day, nearly a decade after his Telegraph article, I have *NEVER* seen Monckton mention the caveats in the text. One could draw the conclusion he’s *still* never read the report.
4) In the original thread where this started Monckton said, “For my part, I am referring Mr Svalgaard’s long list of malicious comments about Dr Evans (but not about me: I give as good as I get) to his university…”
Got that, “but not about me:I give as good as I get” — yet he’s pursuing libel charges against how many people? Right. Obviously Monckton of Brenchley can’t keep his own words straight. Some might call that a lie. Some might call him a liar. Hell, I would. I have 🙂
Now, in most internet flamewars, people don’t run around threatening libel suits, but then again most of us don’t have a lawyer on retainer as I suspect Monckton does. I don’t like intimidating tactics. I don’t like bullies. I don’t care about fake British lords. I am very easy to find. Anthony has my email address. My home address can be found in less than a minute of internet search time. I have made my offer to Monckton of Brenchley to withdraw my assertion that he lied. He has ignored this. All I asked is that he explicitly state several simple, self-evident truths.
I have absolutely *zero* fear of losing a libel suit. In fact, I would welcome the opportunity. So the “Right Honorable” gentlemen ought to actually sh*t or get off the pot.
The takeaway for me is that to excuse his research misconduct Monckton says he is neither an academic nor a serious researcher. That we should all remember the next time he opines on anything.

MikeB

July 4, 2014 12:22 am

Zeke Hausfather says:
July 3, 2014 at 2:25 pm

I’m amused at how some folks edited the label of the old Lamb figure to make the axis end at 2000 instead of 1950. Tisk tisk.

Zeke, I take your point but this is exactly how graph 7.1 (c) was presented in the first IPCC report. The time axis does appear to extend to 2000, even though that report was published in 1990. No justification is given nor reference made to where the graph or data came from (presumably from Lamb but it doesn’t say).
However, since the IPCC is the ultimate Authority on this topic based on thousands of peer-reviewed scientific works in which every line is scrutinised and approved by governments around the world, it seems reasonable for other authors to refer to it.

Pointman

July 4, 2014 1:32 am

Poor Willy, first he’s scorned and now possibly sued, all in one month. That’s some going.
Pointman

Monckton of Brenchley

July 4, 2014 1:49 am

“Phil.” repeats a point made earlier in the thread: that my article in the Sunday Telegraph had been reprinted, with my consent, in another paper, accompanied by the Telegraph’s graphs. It is my custom, when I am asked whether anything I have published may be reproduced in a respectable medium, to consent subject to the condition that the copyright-owner (in the present instance the Telegraph) also agrees.
I have no information to suggest that the respectable journal that reproduced my article did so without the consent of the Telegraph.
In any event, there is nothing wrong with the Telegraph’s graphs. They show the main point mentioned in the text: that the IPCC’s 1990 European millennial temperature reconstruction differs from its 2001 Northern-Hemisphere reconstruction over the same period. In the latter, the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age have been eradicated and the 20th-century temperature uptick exaggerated.
It seems not impossible that the systematic attempts to smear me by my defamers may have been motivated in part by the desire to conceal the extent of this divergence, which, notwithstanding the squidging of the y axis in both graphs to make them fit the limited space available, is clearer in the Telegraph’s schematic than anywhere else I have seen. The minor variations between the Telegraph’s curves and those of the original IPCC graphs are, in this context, insignificant and irrelegant.
To those who imply that the Telegraph, in thus altering the aspect ratio of both graphs, is not fairly representing them, I point out that in any graph in which the units on the x and y axes are different there is freedom to alter the aspect ratio. As it happens, the squidging of the vertical axes in both graphs has the effect of diminishing, not enhancing, the visual impact of the differences between the two graphs – a difference that was nevertheless very clear in them.
Frankly, it is extraordinary that my defamers found such willing takers for the nonsense that I had “faked” the Telegraph’s graphs. Given the narrow purpose for which the graphs were drawn, there is nothing wrong with them: indeed, their clarity is commendable. And I did not draw them in any case. Nor, as it now turns out, did I even supply – in my background material – the graphs on the basis of which the Telegraph drew its own graphs. Congratulations to Anthony for smoking that one out.
“Phil.” cites a non-reviewed “Forum” article in EOS as suggesting that Friis-Christensen and Lassen were incorrect in their conclusion that longer solar cycles indicate lesser solar activity and vice versa. However, some confirmation of their result may be found in noticing that an overlong solar cycle tends to be followed by a weaker cycle: in short, that there is an offset of approximately one solar cycle in the effect. Certainly, the present solar cycle – if it is now at its peak – is considerably weaker than the overlong previous cycle. That tends to suggest that Dr Evans may not be wide of the mark in finding an 11-year delay between changes in solar activity and the climatic response on Earth. One should perhaps keep an open mind. And Friis-Christensen and Lassen are certainly correct that it would be advisable if possible to identify and filter out the mechanisms by which temperature changes naturally in order to determine the anthropogenic residual correctly.

Monckton of Brenchley

July 4, 2014 1:56 am

Mr Hansen correctly points out that in IPCC (1990, fig. 7.1(c)) the caption not only showed the dates from 900-1950 AD, specifying 1000, 1500 and 1900 AD, but also, below the year-dates, carried the apparently bizarre caption “Years before present”. This error arose because the “Years before present” caption applied to parts (a) and (b) of the three-part graph, which took the reconstructed record back a million and 10,000 years respectively, while the “1000 AD 1500 AD 1900 AD” caption manifestly applied only to part (c).
It is interesting that at least one of my defamers took me to task for having altered part (c) when all that I had done was to remove the manifestly irrelevant and misleading caption that did not apply to that part of fig. 7(1). It would surely have been more appropriate if the IPCC had been criticized for its unsatisfactory labeling of the graph. But my defamers seem to regard the IPCC as sacrosanct and incapable of error.

Monckton of Brenchley

July 4, 2014 1:57 am

“Martin” says one of my defamers did not commit libel. However, in support of his conclusion he cites only one of that defamer’s comments.

Nick Stokes

July 4, 2014 2:16 am

Monckton of Brenchley says: July 4, 2014 at 1:49 am
“In any event, there is nothing wrong with the Telegraph’s graphs.”
What is wrong with the schematic is that it embellishes the 1990 plot with numbers on the y-axis. If those are based on genuine science, that would be interesting. But no-one can tell us who put them there, or on what basis they were derived.

William Connolley

July 4, 2014 2:21 am

> the desire to conceal the extent of this divergence
Not believable. Wiki has the same information, but more clearly and accurately presented: see the second graph in
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MWP_and_LIA_in_IPCC_reports
I drew it. No-one is attempting to conceal the difference between the IPCC ’90, 95/6 and 2001 temperature reconstructions. The point at issue is the interpretation of the difference. You lot insist that things were better in the good old dayes (http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2012/10/10/adoration-of-the-lamb/); everyone else accepts that science moves on and improves.

berniel

July 4, 2014 2:39 am

The source of the Daly website graph:
I did once try to source the graph on Daly’s website, but to no avail. The closest I got was a smoothing of the La Marche 1994 White Mountain Bristlecone graph. This was commonly used to indicate the North American trend in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It seems to have all the bumps in the right place, if heavily smoothed. Lamb reproduced it a number of times. It also appears in the influential US GARP report of 1975 (Fig 9a graph c).
http://enthusiasmscepticismscience.wordpress.com/2013/09/22/hubert-lamb-and-the-assimilation-of-legendary-ancient-russian-winters/1975_understanding_paris_london/#main
The millennium graph in Daly’s The Greenhouse Trap
In the section ‘The last thousand years’ on p51 Daly uses an uncited graph that is again smoothed, but very close to Lamb’s extension of Manley’s CET graph for summer, 10b here:
http://enthusiasmscepticismscience.wordpress.com/global-temperature-graphs/1964_1966_britiansclimateinthepast-unpub-lecture-pub-inchangingclimate/
Daly does not reference, but he has a few of Lamb’s books in his suggested reading which contain the CET millennium graphs (and the La Marche 1974 graph).
The Telegraph graph is stylistically close to Tinkell 1986
http://enthusiasmscepticismscience.wordpress.com/global-temperature-graphs/1986_tickell_gmt/#main
and to Nat Geographic 1976:
http://enthusiasmscepticismscience.wordpress.com/2013/09/22/hubert-lamb-and-the-assimilation-of-legendary-ancient-russian-winters/1976_nov_-matthews_natgeo/#main
Finally, it should be noted that the Lamb CET millennium graphs, and two other graphs–which derived from a trans-europe temperature map–were widely used to indicate the millennium trend in NH and global temperature from the late-70s and up until the hockey stick. But, while he did speculate about a more generalized (especially a European trend), Lamb never made the Global claim of these graphs. To get an idea of just how complex Lamb imagined the spacial variability, especially how the MWP and LIA vary, even across a small arc of the globe, see this winter severity map:
http://enthusiasmscepticismscience.wordpress.com/2013/09/22/hubert-lamb-and-the-assimilation-of-legendary-ancient-russian-winters/1963_lamb_millennium_map_europe/#main

dbstealey

July 4, 2014 2:40 am

Mark Stoval (@MarkStoval) says:
The difference in the two cases is that Lord Monckton always makes public all the data and sources he uses and Dr. Mann never does.
That is true, and an excellent contrast. And:
BM says:
Well Kevin O’Neill?
The answer is made clear above. A stand-up guy would accept that the question of the graph has been resolved. But like Warmists everywhere, people like O’Neill and Connolley can not admit that Lord Monckton is innocent of their incessant accusations.
We all recognize a class act. Anthony is a class act. They are not.

knr

July 4, 2014 3:07 am

Nick Stokes you get a lot farther if you willing to discuss ’embellishes’ to graphs , pictures and even data that the warmest have been willing to use for years . And not just the none climate ‘scientists’ either , science by press release using scarier claims and graphs combined with a unwillingness to correct publicly identified errors seem an ‘occupational hazard ‘ of those working in this area.

Michel

July 4, 2014 3:13 am

The IPCC now bases its certainties on the Fig 5-7 from the Chapter 5 of the latest AR5 report, from which everybody can see that picking one reconstruction rather than another one enables all sorts of interpretations.
The lack of T increase over the past 15-18 years is not visible since the graph is conveniently cut at the year 2000.
see figure at: https://db.tt/bSYmjvZV

knr

July 4, 2014 3:16 am

Kevin O’Neill s
‘I don’t care about fake British lords.’
You don’t like facts either it would seem , the majority of those who are ENTITLED to be called Lord do cannot sit in the house of Lords , therefore having the right to sit in the house of Lords has does not affect your right to the use the title. That has been true for years and would have been easy to find out if you could care to . Meanwhile Monckton does have a right to the title , that has been legally settled.
Poor fact checking , smearing and BS , you’re a true son of ‘the cause ‘

Anthony Watts

Author

July 4, 2014 4:40 am

In response to Kevin O’Neill.
Readers should follow this link to Climate Audit (referenced in my post) http://climateaudit.org/2008/05/09/where-did-ipcc-1990-figure-7c-come-from-httpwwwclimateauditorgp3072previewtrue/ to see that this particular bugaboo has been a William Connolley has made a career out of accusations about the IPCC AR1 Figure 7c graph.
Yet Connolley, while castigating McIntyre back in 2008, still has done nothing to contribute to finding the provenance he’s been whingeing about that I am aware of.
Kevin O’Neill seems equally Stoat-like in that he’s claiming

“First, Anthony does the discussion a disservice by not *accurately* reproducing both the IPCC 1990 graph and the graph from Monckton’s reference materials”.

The link to the reference at Climate Audit seemed more than sufficient to me, especially since McIntyre discusses the issue in detail. But I decided to indulge Mr. O’Neill, and in UPDATE3 I’ve added the link to IPCC FAR WG1 Chapter 7 and “faithfully” reproduced Figure 7 including 7A, 7B, and 7C. in that update, including both the page and a magnified version in case Mr. O’Neill wants to make a new claim about the graph not being big enough for his failing eyesight to interpret.
Also, from my viewpoint, Figure 7.1c appeared no less than three times in the entire combined essay, yet O’Neill considers these appearances as “fake” but offers no supporting evidence to back up the claim of fakery. This is why Monckton plans to take him to court.
The question now for readers is to find anything materially different (except for the Y axis label font style, which might be nothing more than differences from the draft to final WG1 report) between what Monckton submitted in his PDF to what the IPCC Chapter 7 page 202 graph 7.1c shows. I myself cannot determine any difference of significance in what the graph line portrays, and I consider Mr. O’Neill’s point moot and nothing more than gamesmanship, and therefore I’m predicting he’ll find some new and equally pointless objection to raise now.

William Connolley

July 4, 2014 4:56 am

>> someone purporting to be Lord M has already been posting messages to me on my blog
> REPLY: Well you do now. Monckton asked me to see if was OK to pass on your email.
I’m still curious if the person posting to my blog was Lord M or not. I can see no way to know for sure; that a person who you have presumably verified is indeed the real Lord M is attempting a second channel of communication suggests that it wasn’t the real one. Perhaps the person who posts on this thread claiming to be Lord M could comment?
REPLY: You really should stop playing games, as you have the ability to verify the comment yourself. The IP address and email in your comment should be enough, unless of course you are technically inept or that scienceblogs platform doesn’t provide such information. I can easily verify you as “you” by your email and IP address which shows you commenting from Cambridge, UK. But I’ll leave the decision to Monckton as to whether to waste further time. – Anthony

bit chilly

July 4, 2014 5:04 am

kevin and william seem to be quite happy to have the right of reply here.pity the same cannot be said for some of the websites they frequent that support the warming meme.
the points they are attempting (and failing spectacularly) to make here are laughable. all those years of unadulterated sensationalism unchallenged,whilst having smoke blown up their arse by acolytes have gone to their heads . off with their heads i say ,or in modern parlance ,reduction of assets through the legal process.

knr

July 4, 2014 5:14 am

William Connolley given the extensive work of you and your sock puppets the idea Wiki can be trusted to cover this subject honestly and fairly is frankly hilarious. Congratulates you trued it into worthless locationsof information on AGW thanks to your effects, you must be so proud .

Phil.

July 4, 2014 5:22 am

Monckton of Brenchley says:
July 4, 2014 at 1:49 am
“Phil.” repeats a point made earlier in the thread: that my article in the Sunday Telegraph had been reprinted, with my consent, in another paper, accompanied by the Telegraph’s graphs. It is my custom, when I am asked whether anything I have published may be reproduced in a respectable medium, to consent subject to the condition that the copyright-owner (in the present instance the Telegraph) also agrees.
I have no information to suggest that the respectable journal that reproduced my article did so without the consent of the Telegraph.
Since they don’t give the source as The Telegraph and don’t give the usual copyright statement referencing the newspaper it seems likely that they did not get The Telegraph’s consent. Apparently they thought you were the copyright holder?
In any event, there is nothing wrong with the Telegraph’s graphs.
Actually there is, they show a bizarre distortion of the vertical axis not found on any other version of the Lamb graph.
Nick Stokes says:
July 4, 2014 at 2:16 am
Monckton of Brenchley says: July 4, 2014 at 1:49 am
“In any event, there is nothing wrong with the Telegraph’s graphs.”
What is wrong with the schematic is that it embellishes the 1990 plot with numbers on the y-axis. If those are based on genuine science, that would be interesting. But no-one can tell us who put them there, or on what basis they were derived.
The earliest I’ve seen is Tickell in 1986 who added a temperature bar, but no absolute scale.
“Phil.” cites a non-reviewed “Forum” article in EOS as suggesting that Friis-Christensen and Lassen were incorrect in their conclusion that longer solar cycles indicate lesser solar activity and vice versa. However, some confirmation of their result may be found in noticing that an overlong solar cycle tends to be followed by a weaker cycle:
Actually it doesn’t ‘suggest’, it explicitly details their errors.
Their graph doesn’t show “overlong solar cycle tends to be followed by a weaker cycle” even in its original form, although the switch from ‘overlong’ to ‘weaker’ by you is confusing.

Nylo

July 4, 2014 5:34 am

Monckton of Brenchley says:
July 3, 2014 at 11:40 am
IPCC hockey stick” should have revealed even to the meanest intelligence that […] But we are dealing not with the meanest intelligence but with people who are mean but not intelligent.
I love that sentence! lol I’m sure I will find the occasion to use it myself 🙂
One can always learn from Lord Monckton, even when he doesn’t try to teach 🙂

William Connolley

July 4, 2014 6:07 am

>> was Lord M or not. I can see no way to know for sure
> REPLY: You really should stop playing games, as you have the ability to verify the comment yourself. The IP address and email in your comment should be enough,
How could it be enough? I’ve got no idea what Lord M’s IP should be; nor what his email address is. If you’d like to post here his email address or IP I could verify it, I suppose. Or he could. But Lord M isn’t very good at answering questions.
REPLY: Oh, please. You know where he lives in ~~England~~ Scotland, right? Or has that fact escaped you as well? Maybe you could look it up in Wikipedia. Then use any one of the freely available IP checking tools, which you can also probably look up on Wikipedia.
Of course you and I know you’ll come back and say that’s not enough. You’ll cite “uncertainty”. I’m not playing your silly game any further, so make no reply. – Anthony

a reader

July 4, 2014 6:10 am

The absolute scale on the temp. bar looks like it may come from Lamb’s fig. 4.4 on page 53 of “Weather Climate and Human Affairs”. The “middle” line, which is about at 9.25C, is marked as the 20th century average, so I assume that is what it is. That line is not on Lamb’s chart.