Novice warmist debunks Michael Mann
Guest essay by David Hoffer
For those of us who have followed the climate debate for a long time, the notion that Michael Mann’s Hockey Stick graph might be dead is counter intuitive. For us, the Hockey Stick graph is central to the debate. It’s appearance in one brilliant stroke swept all discussion of the physics of climate change aside, wiped out discussion of sensitivity and natural variability, destroyed in the public’s mind any notion other than climate change was catastrophic and already upon us. Even the climate models played second fiddle to Mann’s tree ring chronology. I submit however, that the Hockey Stick is in fact dead, a symbolic (but important) final blow being struck at WUWT, not by a skeptic, but by a warmist. (Patience, I’ll get to that).
Of course Michael Mann is a major thorn in the side for most skeptics. We gnash our teeth as he takes court action to silence his critics, our blood pressure mounts as he continues to present at major climate conferences, and the increasingly shrill claims he makes drive us batty. But the truth is, the last few years haven’t been t that kind to Michael Mann. No longer does his Hockey Stick graph adorn the front covers of major WMO and IPCC reports. The Nobel Prize committee itself has repudiated his claim to a Nobel Prize. His science has been shredded by Steve McIntyre’s work on Climate Audit, and exposed as flawed in front of the Wegman congressional committee. Even his once comrade in arms, Keith Briffa, has published new tree ring chronologies that restore the Medieval Warm Period that Mann apparently worked so hard to erase. There was a brief moment when Mann thought he would be vindicated and back in the lime light with the publication of Marcott et al, but that paper was savaged almost instantly by McIntyre, Eschenbach and others, to the point that even Marcott admitted that it was not robust enough to draw any conclusions about the modern era. Mann’s presence in the climate debate is a pale shadow of what it once was, though he still shows up at speaking engagements with much the same slides, which it seems he hasn’t bothered to update since 2005. It’s like he isn’t even trying anymore.
But the most cruel blow of all (to date) was dealt to Mann’s Hockey Stick, not by some statistician, or paleo scientist, or physicist or geologist…. But by a warmist who showed up on Sept 3rd on WUWT, going by the screen name JoNovace. Her (I assume it is a “her”) screen name was an obvious play on Jo Nova’s good name, but the twist on the word “novice” turned out to be the very personification of cruel irony. JoNovace in fact exposed herself as a novice, and quite unintentionally, debunked the Hockey Stick in just two sentences.
It started in the November 2nd thread by Dr. Tim Ball titled “IPCC Prediction of Severe Weather Increase Based on Fundamental Error”. JoNovace appeared, making the usual warmist troll assertions. She skipped right into appeal to authority, citing the 97% consensus. She asked who readers would accept advice from for cancer treatment, a survey of football [fans] or from medical professionals. A commenter who pointed out the 18 year hiatus to her was rewarded with her claim that this existed only in the blogosphere and the brain dead. In short, the usual warmist talking points presented in the usual fashion sarcastic fashion. A troll so certain she was right, that anything that came out of the mouth of a skeptic must certainly be wrong. Suddenly, everything went sideways very fast for JoNovace. It started with this comment by Alan Miller which I reproduce in full here in italics:
· Alan Millar
“JoNovace
“…..pontificate that we were actually in a declining temperature period. That is how bonkers your hypothesis is at the moment. ”
I am not as brainy as you guys think you are, I don’t have my own hypothesis plucked out of thin air, I rely on experienced scientist to guide my conclusions”
Ahh so we we have someone who admits that they are just regurgitating someone else’s thoughts and is someone of ‘the Faith’
Well done, very useful!
Perhaps you would like to address my point about the ‘hide the decline’ trees. Mann and others used this paleo record, inter alia, to establish his ‘hockey stick’ As you should know after showing increasing temperatures, in the period from 1960 a period the alarmists are largely basing their AGW hypothesis on the trees actually started to show a sharp decline in temperatures.
They got round this by excising this part of the record and grafting on the actual temperature record. However, even you, in your lack of independent thought, can see that if we looked back at this period from the distant future, without the actual temperature record, you would assume temperatures and the trend were going downwards if you trusted the trees as Mann and his followers have declared they do.
That is why the current hypothesis is bonkers, without actual temperature records for the past, we have no real idea what was happening in such short periods of a few decades a la the period the warmists are currently relying on.
Does that make you think at all or is La La La going off in your brain at the moment?
Alan
And how did JoNovace respond to this well done summary of the “Hide the Decline” debacle? Well, she did so by dispatching Michael Mann and his tree rings to the rubbish heap with just two sentences. Here is her comment in full, in italics, bold mine:
· JoNovace
“….trees actually started to show a sharp decline in temperatures…..”
Tree rings don’t show temperature, what is your source for this? Tree ring may correlate with temperature if other factors are removed.
“1960 a period the alarmists are largely basing their AGW hypothesis on the trees actually started to show a sharp decline in temperatures.”
…but we know the temperatures were rising so this is nonsense. This is why tree rings dont “show temperature” as you put it.
So there you have it. Mann’s tree rings crushed in just two completely logical sentences, the Hockey Stick graph unceremoniously dumped into history’s dust bin by an erstwhile defendant of the CAGW meme itself. Confronted with Michael Mann’s “science” but without the pomp and ceremony and media spin to give it credibility derives from context and appeal to authority, even a novice to the debate could see the truth. Which is why they (apparently) aren’t including the Hockey Stick graph in Warmist Troll 101 classes anymore.
I pointed out JoNovace’s error to her, that she had just debunked giant tracts of CAGW science. To the best of my knowledge, she hasn’t been heard from since on WUWT. Once can only wonder what kind of epiphany this was for her. But as for Mann and his tree rings…. The warmists don’t drag them out to put on display anymore. Even a Novace can see right through them.
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Sounds like Novace was for it before she was against it. 😉
Don’t forget… well before Michael Mann came along with his hockey stick, we had similar sort of nonsense being shoved up our noses by expert climatologists in the 1980s, not by a chart but by way of the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/1986/06/24/movies/earth-s-climatic-crisis-examined-by-nova.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3As
Enjoy!
Is Mann really present plots that are only updated through about 2005? What kind of scientist does he think he is? I spent an hour updating my plots for a internal grant at my university to be reviewed by mostly non-scientists. What the heck? I wouldn’t even consider presenting anything without going over the recent results and updating my plots including discussion on the most recent publications.
there have been two posts here, in recent years – far more recent than 2005, like 2012 and 2014, separated in time by a year or more, documenting a WUWT person attending a Michael Mann presentation.
The Mann talk presented the Hockey Stick with data up to 2005.
If someone knows how to search, please do. It is totally genuine to say that Mann has in recent years told his compelling story, with hockey stick up to 2005 but not further.
The first report was a thread by someone who attended the San Francisco AGU meeting where Mann presented. I think it was Anthony–or maybe Willis. (Searching for Anthony and AGU and SF should locate it.)
Here’s the AGU/Mann link:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/04/a-conspiracy-of-one/
The truth behind Mann’s hockey stick!
‘They said the hockey stick was a fiction, because there was virtually no trace of the MWP. They accused Mann of using faulty data and dodgy statistics to rewrite history, The hockey stick still provokes strong reactions today, what is your reaction when you see that, the most famous graph in the world…[what a shame…it’s a scandal]…[this has been discredited]…[well the first thing is great dis-belief]…some even accused him of the ultimate scientific crime, fraud [If it’s fraud they should be in jail]…(I never expected the sort of attacks we were subject to)…[this was clearly and I’m going to say it bluntly, deliberately bent]…(if you {they} can’t win on the basis of science, you try to win on deformation, slander, rhetoric…which has no basis in fact)…M Mann was attacked in print and on the web…but while the sceptics were busy attacking Mann, other researchers were doing there own science, hunting for more proxies and using different methods to work out past temperatures…soon M Mann’s graph was joined by many others, all reconstructing the past 1000 years of temperature, the question was would they back up M Mann or prove him wrong? It might look confusing but this graph has a really clear message, the red line is M Mann original hockey stick graph, very flat and hardly any MWP…the other lines are the reconstructions done since, there is a big spread in other words scientists disagree about a lot of the temperature, that’s not really surprising, because working out the temperature for the last couple hundred years…but the crucial part…this is 1000AD…M Mann probably under estimated…what these lines all agree on…there is evidence nowhere in any period of past 1000 years that is as warm as the second part of the 20th century. In other words the end of the 20th is really unprecedented, once again the sceptical attacks has made this science stronger, we now have a whole hockey team of graphs, they make a very convincing case that global warming…really is unusual’ Dr Iain Stewart.
Now watch for yourself:-
You don’t think that a natural variation explains the range of the graph? Perhaps you’ll be less concerned a 1,000 years from now when it is colder/warmer/about the same.
Thanks for the laughs,BA4 ! Don’t stop, laughter is good!
Yes, they end with the punch line. Forget that the MWP was warmer than now, as proven by the regularly appearing Viking settlements that emerge from permafrost. That shows the past was as warm as the present — and those settlements are still appearing, indicating that the past was warmer than now.
And the MWP was only the most recent warming. Even warmer episodes preceded the MWP.
So the laugh at the end — the flaming red globe — shows this video to be just more warmist propaganda.
But thanx BA4, you had me fooled — for the first 4 minutes.
Sorry, all real unadjusted records prove you wrong. We are not even close to past highs, and the relationship of temperature to CO2 is that CO2 ALWAYS FOLLOWS temp change.
Prove me wrong!
Only 500 million years of evidence that CO2 is a GHG and therefore currently heating up the planet!
‘looking back at the effect co2 had in the past and these estimates should show a doubling in co2 we should see rise in global temperatures between 2 and 4.5 degrees, now that’s all basic physics…if basic physics is correct we should see a good correlation between temperatures and co2 over the past 500 million years. Well here is the data for temperatures and we get a very clear, oh dear…but it’s the climate science critics, politicians, the bloggers, amateurs, who showcase this graph that completely ignore the role of Sun and it is the climate researchers who factor it in. Over the last 500 million years solar output has being getting slowly stronger, but of course on its own it doesn’t show any better correlation with global temperature than co2 on its own. But if the co2 temperature levels link is correct then when we factor in both co2 and solar radiants which are the long time drivers of climate we should get a good correlation with global temperatures and we do! And the third piece of evidence from our geological past are the so called snowball Earth conditions…Earth should have being covered in ice and it was, several times…the only thing that changed during the snowball period was the co2 levels rose dramatically due to volcanic activity. The thawing of the planet fits perfectly with the role of co2 as being a powerful GHG…but during snowball Earth that kind of weathering did not happen…yes even with the Sun being about 6% weaker than today but with co2 level 25 times higher, the earth was much hotter than today. His amounts to our fourth piece of evidence that co2 is a powerful GHG…and the process repeated itself…so when I hear the argument the climate always changes and this is perfectly natural…then of course it is. There is absolutely no difference of the co2 bring added to the atmosphere now and the co2 that was added to the atmosphere in the past, it‘s the same stuff. Coming to the recent past climatologist agree that the amount of forcing from the Earth’s change in orbit though to be the initial trigger for deglacierization had no where near enough…I covered this in my video the 800 year lag unravelled…so before you claim co2 only lags temperature…so we have now seen how basic physics should warm the earth and we have seen…consistent with co2 as a powerful GHG…then there is no reason to believe co2 has reformed its behaviour because it has come from burning fossil fuels… Is there any evidence that co2 is causing any warming now. Back in the 1950s, 60s, 70s scientists saw no reason why co2 should change its properties and they predicted as co2 levels rose and aerosols cleared we would start to see warming. Over the last 35 years the atmosphere has being warming…of course not all of the heat goes into the atmosphere. Most of it goes into the oceans and evidence shows the deep oceans are absorbing a lot of the extra heat…’ Potholer54.
BA4,
That is a mighty big list of assertions.
Nary a “proof” in there, even though he asserts ‘proof’.
Do us a favor, please don’t link to the propagandist potholer. He has zero credibility among thinking readers.
‘K thx ‘bye
Any reconstruction based on proxies will not have the fine detail we see during the sensor period. At best these records have a single yearly data point interpreted as temperature from yearly proxies such as growth rings in flora and fauna sources, not a set of monthly (or even finer) values averaged to a single one which describes the observation data. In addition, there are different sensitivities in growth rings. Small differences of the kind we get our knickers in a twist over today may not be reflected in growth rings because flora and fauna response to these small differences are decidedly less sensitive than temperature sensors. In other words, it is possible that in the past, there are record hot days, months, or even years that growth rings cannot reflect. Therefore you should not splice the two together, nor should you use proxies to say there were no unprecedented hot days, weeks, or years in the past 1000 years compared to today. It is a stretch too far.
Pamela
Yours is a point that isn’t made often enough
Coarse proxy reconstructions bear little relationship to the fine grain of highly variable annual instrumental records, especially when the regional record is considered rather than an imperfect global one.
Here are ‘spagetti’ paleo proxy reconstructions graphed over annual CET which are so variable they stretch outside of the scale used
Tonyb
Link didn’t take, here it is again
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/clip_image0041.jpg
Tonyb
It’s funny how Mann could not find the Medieval Warm Period. I maybe mistaken but I do believe that Mann’s bristlecones were from the White Mountains of California.
hockeyschtick – 5 November, 2014
New paper finds bristlecone pines (used for Mann’s hockey stick) grow at significantly different rates & often not related to temperature
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2014/11/new-paper-finds-bristlecone-pines-used.html
To be an honest graph it should show graph work from ALL studies done on the MWP, otherwise it is just cherry picking. The good Dr. also did this for a BBC documentary which means that a warmist viewpoint was an upfront requirement. In addition, because of the tainted way that climate “studies” have to be done to receive recognition and grant funding, the graphs would need to be examined for scientific accuracy by unbiased authorities.
BFL says:November 15, 2014 at 2:05 pm Sorry, this wound up in the wrong place as it was a reply to
“Blackadderthe4th says:November 15, 2014 at 5:49 am” concerning the video by Dr Stewart
[We have seen that happen before, and are troubleshooting it. No clear answers right now. .mod]
“1960 a period the alarmists are largely basing their AGW hypothesis on the trees actually started to show a sharp decline in temperatures.”
Well, I would like to issue a warning not to oversimplify the debate about the HS!
S. McIntyre, R. McKitrick and others pointed out a lot of flaws in the various methods used to extract a temperature signal from proxies.
(My personal all time favorite is from J. Id: http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/06/20/hockey-stick-cps-revisited-part-1/ )
However there might be assumption based perfectly logical choices not to consider a certain proxies in a certain time range and the sentence as cited above does oversimplify. The way I understand Steve’s work, he, rather than criticizing a certain decision (replacing tree ring proxies with measured temperature after 1960 or so), tries to understand and collect all underlying assumptions (which in some cases might not even been clear to the creator of the reconstruction) and then to inconsistencies and implications of teh assumptions. On that path he also finds a lot of flaws or even likely mistakes, for example Mann’s decission to use decentered PCA without a proper justification for it. (I. Jolliffe says to that “It gives situations where uncentred or doubly-centred versions might conceivably be of use, but especially for uncentred analyses, these are fairly restricted special cases. It is said that for all these different centrings ‘it’s less clear what we are optimising and how to interpret the results’.” http://climateaudit.org/2008/09/08/ian-jolliffe-comments-at-tamino/)
Reblogged this on opineonthis and commented:
Some lies like The Protocols… and the Hockey Stick just have a Frankenstein quality. They were always dead but they live on.
The next big thing in Climate Science will be finding a way to hide the pause. I think I know how to do it.
Starting with 1998, we no longer need to use land, sea, or atmospheric temperature data. Instead, we will substitute the appropriate proxy data. How about we use Mauna Loa CO2 data from 1998 on, and then proxy it with the proper model.
Yeah. That ought to do it. I bet the abstract has already been submitted.
Well picked up and highlighted.
Thank you Anthony.
Liebig’s law of the minimum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebig's_law_of_the_minimum
Tree rings are great……………………for telling you how much growth was put on during individual growing seasons.
An astute dendrochronologist might be able to detect the likelihood that more than one ring appeared during a particular year from extremely adverse conditions mid season, that caused dormancy, there are numerous weather elements that can have a similar effect on tree growth(good or bad). So its impossible to tease out the individual contributions. This is especially so with temperature and precipitation.
No, it’s not dead. It is merely pining for the fjords.
To me this is completely amazing.
Mann speaking a few months ago defending the hockey stick.
At 38:00 he addressed why he used tree rings to 1960 and then surface temp.’s afterwards.
“certain types of tree ring data become unreliable and don’t track temperatures properly
we shouldn’t be showing misleading data, an artificial decline, it will mislead people”
How did this study possibly get published in a leading joural? Didn’t the scientist reviewers even understand kindergarten Science? The tree ring control data would have been 1960-present where we supposedly? have reliable data, yet that data was in the opposite direction of supposedly accurate surface temperatures. How could he possibly say that tree rings were accurate in the 1700’s but they are not accurate from 1960 on. But we can use them to accurately measure the past? And the world went along with this charade?
And in the video above speaking at a University, with likely many scientists in the audience, he sticks out his chest and states he didn’t want to “mislead” anyone???
He’s got so brazen he just doesn’t care anymore. He sees many senior politicians and political appointees making the same sort of outrageous statements. If it works for them, why shouldn’t it work for him?
If you can’t trust the tree ring temperature proxy after 1960 you can’t trust it before 1960. It’s as simple as that. Hiding the decline didn’t hide 1934 down turn when it was a notoriously hot year in the USA. Precipitation? I vaguely recall California suffered a few droughts in the 1960s.
Mann’s tree ring temps may in fact predict future temperatures! If we continue the proxy up to 2050, the downturn in 1960s may reflect the great cooling that appears to have begun. The apparent fit pre 1960s was from the previous cycle.
The hockey stick is not dead. It is the reason why AL Gore walks so stiffly when erect and upright. This “rear” insertion is the only value the hockey stick ever had …
For those of you that like to get to the heart of the matter, you should read Inspector McIntyre’s history of the entire farce. We can thank his curiosity and then due diligence for starting the real AGW skeptic movement.
http://climateaudit.files.wordpress.com/2005/09/ohioshort.pdf
Thanks for that link. I’ve gone through a lot of Climate Audit stuff and somehow missed that great summary. McIntyre also has some YouTube presentations that are prety good.
Anthony;
Doug L Hoffman didn’t write this.
I did 😉
I see it has been changed, thanks Anthony/Mods!!
[De nada. ☺ ~ mod.]
David
Stop trying to take the credit for dougs work. 🙂
Tonyb
Tony,
I wasn’t concerned about the credit, I was concerned about Doug being upset about being associated with something I wrote, poor guy.
About time this theory was sent where it belongs – straight to H-E-double-hockey-sticks.
From the article:
Of course Michael Mann is a major thorn in the side for most skeptics.
It might be the other way around… ☺
In ice hockey, it is illegal to play with a broken stick.
I never believed in his Hockey Stick,because I knew for 20 years before 1998 that MWP and LIA were real and supported by a lot of published papers in several disciplines,such as History,Geology,Farming,Architecture,Archeology and so on. It was too well established by facts to be taken down so easily.
It was published specifically to advance a politically based environmentalist propaganda,it is why it got undeserved attention by the IPCC,a political body running on a set prior i,that mankinds CO2 emissions are really bad for us,therefore we must accept only those papers that advance the pre- conceived position against a trace gas.
It was deliberate junk science from the start.
the change of the graph from lambs reconstruction to the mann one gave the game away for the IPCC. everyone could see that they were no longer about the science. the vast majority of proxies show the medieval warming period was warmer, or close to current temps and a global event. it just backs up the anecdotal evidence of things like the viking farms –
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php
Have you noticed a new paper by Salzer and Hughes shows bristlecones are bad for proxies.
JoNovace should have read this too from Climate Audit.
Ouch!
WUWT – March 19, 2008
Bristlecone Pines: Treemometers or rain gauges?
Sorry, I forgot the Climate Audit link.
http://climateaudit.org/2008/03/17/principal-components-and-tree-ring-networks/
I have to say I was a true believer, but then thought for myself a moment and independently dreamed up UHI (I had no idea what to call it). Why was it not ever mentioned, it had to logically be present?
That set me on the road to discovery.
And then came TELECONNECTIONS – especially as related to tree rings.
So…. for all practical purposes, trees are allowed to use ESP. We know that humans saying they can use ESP are all cranks or frauds. So why is OK for trees but not humans?
Teleconnections was one of those head slapping “oh you have to be joking” moments for me.
This absolutely does not mean the hockey stick is dead. It is only proof that the hockey stick means what ever people like JoNovace think it should mean. Since half the people in the world are below average there will be no shortage of interpretations of what the HS means. None will accurately portray the real meaning.
Unfortunately we know everything we need to know about JoNovace, a blog commenter who has no significance at any level, but nothing of what we need to know about Senator Inhofe who is now very important to the climate debate. Time to get focused on the near future and leave discredited events of the past in the past or we’re going to lose this thing before the next election.
Is it just me, or did the movie Interstellar deliberately have a stab at Dr Mann, making him a mad scientist and the villain?
Four possibilities:
(1)
The name “Mann” was chosen as a play on the dark side of human (mankind’s) nature.
(2)
‘Mann’ is intentionally poking fun at MM, as the director Nolan has left similar messages in other films. For example, the exchange between Alfred and Bruce Wayne in the Dark Knight, concerning how to deal with terrorism, was largely supportive of the policies then pursued by the Bush administration.
(3)
Nolan intended for both of the above.
(4)
It’s all just an accidental coincidence that this name was chosen.
It may also be significant that, despite all the natural disasters the Earth goes through in the movie, the words ‘Global Warming’ and ‘Climate Change’ are not mentioned once (as I was expecting). Neither was any attribution made to mankind AT ALL! I wonder if anyone has asked the Nolan brothers about this? In my experience of Nolan’s movies (The Prestige and Inception are in my top ten), he plots things out in great detail.
Whether or not the Hockey Stick is dead in the minds of activists is still an open question. But one thing is clear, the beloved tactic of latching onto a new study (typically involving models + proxies) to ‘refute’ decades of earlier well established research, is still the tool of trade of the climate activist troll.