Book review by Andy May
Mark Steyn has written a wonderful new book on Dr. Michael Mann’s hockey stick and the controversy surrounding it. It is difficult to overstate the significance or impact of Mann’s Hockey Stick (Mann, Bradley, Hughes (23 April 1998), “Global-scale temperature patterns and climate forcing over the past six centuries” (PDF), Nature 392 (6678): 779–787, Figure 5, the paper is often abbreviated as “MBH”). The Hockey Stick appeared in Figure 1 of the Summary for Policymakers of the third IPCC Assessment Report (called “TAR” published in 2001) and it was prominently displayed in Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth.” As the book clearly shows, both the graph and the movie have been thoroughly discredited by hundreds of scientists who have attempted and failed to reproduce Michael Mann’s hockey stick using his data and other proxy data. Further, MBH attempts to overturn hundreds of papers that describe a world-wide Medieval Warm Period from around 900 AD to 1300 AD. The chapter devoted to Dr. Deming discusses this, for more information see here, here and here.
Professor Jonathon Jones of Oxford University:
“The hockey stick is an extraordinary claim which requires extraordinary evidence…the evidence is extraordinarily weak…its defenders were desperate to hide this fact…I’d always had an interest in pathological science, and it looked like I might have stumbled across a really good modern example…The Hockey Stick is obviously wrong. Everybody knows it is obviously wrong.”
As 1973 Nobel Prize winner Professor Ivar Giaever said “Global Warming has become a new religion – because you can’t discuss it and that is not right.”
Steyn’s book documents the problems with the hockey stick, its use by the IPCC without proper peer review or validation, and the attempt to cover up its problems. It does this artfully using the words of the scientists, both “alarmists” and “deniers” and those in between. The list of quoted scientists is huge and includes Mann’s co-authors and others who supported him even after the paper and his hockey stick were shown to be wrong and perhaps, fraudulent.
The hockey stick told us that the recent warming period (1950 to 1998) was unusual in the last thousand years and that this sort of sudden warming had (supposedly) never happened before and that man’s CO2 emissions were (presumably) the cause. After all, what else was unusual about that time period? Yet, all of these suppositions were wrong and the hockey stick was wrong. Carbon Dioxide is a greenhouse gas and it does cause warming of the atmosphere by trapping heat radiated from the ground and oceans, no one who has studied the issue disputes that. But, the graph appeared to show that this Carbon Dioxide based warming was much more dominant in our climate than traditional paleoclimate studies, physics or chemistry would suggest. As noted above it was an extraordinary claim, yet it was accepted instantly without checking it. This had the effect of destroying the credibility of the IPCC and the previously respected publication Nature.
At the time that Michael Mann’s hockey stick was chosen to be Figure 1 of the TAR summary for policy makers, Mann had just received his PhD. As many in the book note, the ink was not yet dry on his diploma. Yet, in addition, he was made one of the lead authors of the very section of TAR that presented his hockey stick (see figure 2.20). As a result it was up to him to validate his own work. In the words of Dr. Rob Van Dorland, an IPCC lead author:
“It is strange that the climate reconstruction of Mann passed both peer review rounds of the IPCC without anyone ever really having checked it.”
The hockey stick was never validated, yet it became so famous that it was taught to young children all over the world in elementary schools. Many years later, in 2005, it was thoroughly debunked by Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick (often abbreviated M&M). They showed that using the statistical technique invented by Michael Mann even random number series (persistent trendless red noise, see M&M Figure 1) will generate a hockey stick. Basically, Mann had mined many series of numbers looking for hockey stick shapes and gave each series that had the shape he wanted a much higher weight, up to a weighting factor of 392! This was truly a case of selecting a desired conclusion and then molding the data to fit it. Prominent statisticians Peter Bloomfield, Dr. Edward Wegman and Professor David Hand said Michael Mann’s method of using principle components analysis was inappropriate and misleading and exaggerated the effect of recent global warming.
Mann’s notorious statistical exercise was not sufficient to build the entire hockey stick. Unfortunately for him, if his model was carried to the present day, it peaked in the 1940’s and then declined in temperature. So, he simply spliced actual estimated global temperatures to his proxy reconstruction and didn’t mention it in the article, this is the notorious and poorly understood “Mike’s Nature Trick” scandal. More on the fraudulent parts of the hockey stick, including the Briffa “hide the decline” trick can be found here. These two links on “hide the decline” and “Mike’s nature trick” are the most balanced and informative I know of, one is by Professor Curry and the other by Steve McIntyre.
As you can see in the book many prominent scientists in the IPCC knew the hockey stick was “crap” to quote Professor Simon Tett, Chair of Earth System Dynamics, University of Edinburgh, formerly with Met Offices Hadley Climate Research Unit or CRU. And they knew it as early as 2001, but no one said anything. And, as we know from “climategate” emails, even though they knew it was “crap” they colluded to block Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick’s paper challenging the hockey stick. For years Dr. Michael Mann and Dr. Phil Jones (Hadley CRU) kept the supporting data for the hockey stick secret as well as the computer algorithms they used to generate the hockey stick. This very act would normally have invalidated their work and the hockey stick, but it was accepted by Nature and the IPCC anyway. A very sad period of time for science.
Dr. Kevin Vranes in 2005 said ”Your [Dr. Mann’s] job is not to prevent your critics from checking your work; your job is to continue to publish…” “Why did the IPCC so quickly and uncritically accept the hockey stick?” asks Dr. Roy Spencer, “Because they wanted to believe it.” They needed it as a PR tool, they didn’t check it in any way they just ran with it.
One of the best critiques in the book is from Oxford Professor Jerome Ravetz:
“[The climate community] propounded as a proven fact, Anthropogenic Carbon-based Global Warming. There is little room for uncertainty in this thesis; it effectively needs hockey stick behavior in all indicators of global temperature, so that it is all due to industrialization. [This proposed “fact”] relied totally on a small set of deeply uncertain tree-ring data for the medieval period, to refute the historical evidence of a warming then; but it needed to discard that sort of data for recent decades, as they showed a sudden cooling from the 1960’s onwards!”
The problems encountered publishing the valid criticisms of Dr. Mann’s hockey stick are a serious indictment of the current peer review system, especially the systems at Nature and at the IPCC. Professor Hans Van Storch (University of Hamburg) went so far as to say “Scientists like Mike Mann, Phil Jones and others should no longer participate in the peer-review process.” Reform is needed and some suggestions by Professor Ross McKitrick are made here. The current peer review process can and has been used to suppress valid and important papers. This is why I applaud the internet and scientific blogs, they prevent self-serving and arrogant scientists from blocking the truth. One thing we have seen since the time of Copernicus and Galileo, no deception of this magnitude lasts forever.
Contrary to the myth that 97% of climate scientists believe we are headed toward a man-made climate doom, the truth is that a very small group of second rate climate scientists have captured the attention of some prominent political and media figures. They have also isolated themselves from the rest of the scientific community and suffer because of it. To quote Professor the Lord Oxburgh of Liverpool:
“We cannot help remarking that it is very surprising that research in an area that depends so heavily on statistical methods has not been carried out in close collaboration with professional statisticians. Indeed there would be mutual benefit if there were closer collaboration and interaction between CRU and a much wider scientific group outside the relatively small international circle of temperature specialists.”
So, the following question is from Professor Mike Kelly (Cambridge) and it was directed to Dr. Keith Briffa, but could easily have been directed to Mike Mann or any of the alarmists:
“Given that the outputs of your work are being used to promote the largest revolution mankind has every contemplated, do you have any sense of the extent to which the quality control and rigour of approach must be of the highest standards in clear expectation of deep scrutiny?”
At this point, it is fair to ask what Dr. Mann and his colleagues have to say about all of this. The book does go there in some detail. Dr. Mann claims that his hockey stick has been replicated by others and this is true. But, they not only used the same data or similar data, but they used the same statistical techniques that have been shown to be critically flawed. One case in point is fairly typical of the others. Karoly and Gergis, in 2012, published their own hockey stick to rave reviews in the public media, especially in Australia. It claimed 95% certainty that the recent decades in Australasia were the warmest in 1000 years. They used similar proxies as Dr. Mann and used the same statistical techniques. Steven McIntyre went to work and blew it up in less than three weeks. He sent his statistical analysis to the authors. Dr. Karoly and Dr. Gergis, to their credit, recognized their error and withdrew their paper, even after the mainstream media praise. As Joanne Nova wrote, “In May it was all over the papers, in June it was shown to be badly flawed. By October, it quietly gets withdrawn.”
Just as Karoly and Gergis’s paleoclimate reconstruction disappeared, Mann’s seems to be disappearing as well. Professor Philippe De Larminat noted in 2014:
“The hockey stick curve, which ignores large climatic events, seems to have come straight from another world… This Chapter 5 [in the Fifth and latest IPCC report] in question does not make the slightest mention of the famous publication from Mann et al … neither in the text nor among the some 1,000 specific bibliographical references in this chapter. Given the extensive use that the IPCC made of it in the past (cited six times in the Third Assessment Report), and the controversy it still causes, this absence is peculiar.”
Let’s hope that hockey stick fiction goes away like the 97% consensus fiction has.
Professor Ian Plimer notes:
“In the next IPCC report, the Medieval Warming and Little Ice Age mysteriously reappeared. This suggests that the IPCC knew that the “hockey stick” was invalid. This is a withering condemnation of the IPCC. The “hockey stick” was used as the backdrop for announcements about human-induced climate change, it is still used by Al Gore, and it is still used in talks, on websites and in publications by those claiming that the world is getting warmer due to human activities. Were any of those people who view this graphic told that the data before 1421 AD was based on just one lonely alpine pine tree?”
So, the book shows that the hockey stick is dead to all scientists on all sides of the climate debate. What is the impact of this appalling chapter in the history of science? I think that Professor Judith Curry says it best:
“With regards to climate science, IMO the key issue regarding academic freedom is this: no scientist should have to fall on their sword to follow the science where they see it leading or to challenge the consensus. I’ve fallen on my dagger (not the full sword), in that my challenge to the consensus has precluded any further professional recognition and a career as a university administrator. That said, I have tenure, and am senior enough to be able retire if things genuinely were to get awful for me. I am very very worried about younger scientists, and I hear from a number of them that have these concerns.”
This is an outstanding and important book and I highly recommend it.
This post was originally published on andymaypetrophysicist, republished here with the author’s permission via our “submit a story” link on the menu bar.
You can order it on Amazon here, .
Scribblerg makes a good point. Until information like that presented in this review is presented routinely in the mass media there will not be a change in the public perception of the bogus issue of man-made global warming. Scientists of the proper stature and position are going to have to organize an effort to confront media executives and editors throughout the country with the need to correct this calamity before it becomes larger than it is. I recently traded emails with the opinion page editor of my local newspaper (in a large city) and his reply to me was “William, don’t you realize That 97 percent of scientists and many government officials disagree with you?” I replied that he should contact a number of professors in the climate field at the various universities in the state and ask if they believed that man caused global warming. I did not receive a reply.
As I’ve said 1,000 times any 1st year econometrics student could have identified the “tricks” Mann was using. This Multi-collinearity weighting scheme is just one is just one of the violations. He deliberately avoided using thermometer data until 1903, and kept proxies in the data until 1983. Each time there are alterations to the data construction the data set “dog legs.” That should have been a red flag to anyone seeking the truth.BTW, what caused the dog leg in the 1980 and 1903 for that matter? What suddenly changed? Certainly not CO2.
Unfortunately, this description from the post isn’t really true. It’s not really false either. It’s one of those things which is so off-base, it’s not even wrong. The next part of the review:
Is even worse, as what it says is just wrong, showing the author doesn’t actually know the subject he’s writing on; he only has a vague grasp of some ideas sort of related to it. Sadly, what he says can be found in Mark Steyn’s book, so it’s no surprise he and others will be misinformed in this way. When leading lights in a movement make bold factual claims on relatively simple matters, it’s natural for people who look up to them to expect those claims to be true.
And since no skeptics seem to be willing to step up and point out what Steyn writes on these matters is false, I’m sure the author of this post won’t be the only person who will be similarly misinformed.
Care to share the true information? McIntyre nailed Mann’s garbage to the wall for all to see.
skeohane, I agree Steve McIntyre did so. The problem is what McIntyre says is not what Mark Steyn says. If you read McIntyre’s descriptions of Michael Mann’s work, you won’t find him saying the same things Steyn says because what Steyn says is wrong. The fact I point out Steyn is wrong doesn’t somehow mean I’m defending Mann. It just means I’m pointing out Steyn is wrong.
As I pointed out above, I’ve written a short eBook to give people an easy way to get familiar with the problems of Mann’s original hockey stick. It should only take half an hour, maybe an hour, to get through. If you do, you’ll understand exactly why it is reasonable to call Mann’s work fraudulent. You can find it here:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00RE7K3W2/
And I have a standing offer to send anyone a free PDF copy of it if they don’t want to buy it. There’s a follow-up to it as well, which deals more with Mann’s later work. They both evolved out of the two detailed reviews I wrote of Mann’s book, which you might remember were reposted and praised on this site a while back. I think they’re much better written and far easier to follow, and they do a good job of showing just what the central problems with Mann’s work and behavior were.
– – – – – – –
Brandon Shollenberger,
I am commenting with regards your ‘August 30, 2015 at 6:37 am’.
Of course, in addition to McKitrick’s brief summary of problems of the hockey stick, there is another flawed aspect of the hockey stick diagrams used in the IPCC TAR, AR4 and WMO 1999. That additional flawed aspect is the pseudo-scientific graphical impression/ inference that the diagrams created. A pseudo-scientific impression/ inference was created by using on those diagrams both (a) the proxy ‘hockey stick shaft’ and (b) the recent thermometer (instrumental) ‘hockey stick blade’.
I think the authors of those diagrams created pseudo-science because their intention was to create a false impression that reality fit their hypothesis. In that regard, here Professor Ivar Giaever (PhD) talking about the nature of pseudo-science,
John
John Whitman, unfortunately, Ross McKitrick’s description in that book is somewhat inaccurate. The inaccuracies aren’t anything too severe though, and I suspect they happened due to how little space he devoted to the subject. Even with them, however, McKitrick’s description is leaps and bounds above Steyn’s. You’ll note, McKitrick doesn’t say anything like:
Which is simply untrue. McKitrick also doesn’t say anything like:
Which is, if we’re being rather generous, incredibly misleading. Other inaccuracies present in this post and Steyn’s book are also absent from McKitrick’s description because, once again, his description is far, far better.
Brandon Shollenberger,
McKitrick went on in his chapter in that book to give more detail as a retrospect on the Hockey Stick.
It very arguable that Steyn’s fundamental thrusts in his new book on Mann (& his Hockey Stick escapades) are without reasonable basis. You seem to hold that there are no reasonable bases for his fundamental thrusts on Mann’s work. Some of the statements by some of the PhDs quoted in his book tend to support Steyn’s fundamental thrusts. So we civilly disagree.
John
John Whitman:
I know. I’ve commented on it before to say I think his chapter was a good one. Even so, there were some nuances that he got a little wrong. For instance, he writes Graybill and Idso said the bristlecone proxies should not be used for temperature reconstructions. In actuality, they said the modern portions of the proxies should not be used. They discussed the possibility of using the earlier portions if one could find a way to calibrate the proxies without using the modern portions (something Mann’s methodology couldn’t do).
Similarly, he claims the CENSORED directory showed Mann knew the hockey stick vanished without bristlecones, but what it actually showed is he knew you’d still get a hockey stick without bristlecones due to the Gaspe proxy. That proxy just shouldn’t have been used because it had been duplicated and artifically extended. In both cases, the nuances don’t affect the point he’s making, but they do show the issue is not quite as simple as he makes it out to be. But again, I think these are minor things, unlike Steyn’s.
We can be stuck in disagreement, but the reality is Mark Steyn makes many factual claims in his book. Whether or not he can find other people to quote making similar claims won’t change whether those claims are true or false. It certainly won’t make what he says more true if he can take people’s quotes out of context to misrepresent them to make it appear they support what he says, something he does on a number of occasions.
You don’t have to agree with me that he does things like that, but he does do them. And he also just flat out says things which are false. So does this blog post. That’s just how it is. A book a lot of people are going to read says things which are very untrue about Michael Mann’s work, and rather than correct it, this site is helping promote those false claims. The result is people are going to become even more misinformed than they already are.
Brandon Shollenberger,
Quite a few of the PhDs he quoted in his book discuss in similar ways as Steyn does the various aspects of the hockey stick problems.
I am getting the ebook version soon, so I will be able to list in detail by electronic search my evidence that Steyn is not inconsistent with a broad range of PhDs on the matter of the hockey stick problems. It is likely he was informed by what they all said and what even McKintrick has said.
John
John Whitman:
I don’t know that there are really many people who have said what Steyn says, but let’s suppose they have. Some have said it is reasonable to doubt humans have played a role in causing atmospheric CO2 levels to rise. That doesn’t make those beliefs reasonable. It doesn’t make it reasonable for Steyn to repeatedly make factual claims which anyone who had one even the most basic of research on Michael Mann’s hockey stick would know is false.
I don’t know where Steyn got the ideas he put in his book, but the simple reality is he says tons of things which are horribly wrong. If skeptics want to be taken seriously, or if they just want to have some integrity, they should speak up and point this out.
Again, I do not think Steyn’s words in his book are uninformed by the 100+ PhDs positions on the hockey stick problem. They all either subtly or starkly differ in their views on the matter of the problems of the hockey stick. This is an open discourse where reasonable men have differences . . . it is what make science vibrant.
Anyway, once I get my ebook version then I’ll do some comparative studies on the many many views of the 100+ PhDs compared to Steyn’s views.
John
John Whitman:
Again, it doesn’t really matter where Steyn got his ideas from. He could have gotten the horribly wrong ideas I’ve been criticizing from 100 PhDs (which he certainly did not) and they’d still be wrong. If anything, him finding many PhDs which give terrible opinions would just discredit the point of his book, showing the opinion of “experts” has no particular connection to reality, making them practically worthless.
I’ve been reviewing the book at my site. so far, I’ve discussed ~1/3rd of the quotes Steyn has offered. Quite a few do nothing to support the claims I’ve criticized Steyn for making, not in the least because Steyn misrepresents what some people said. And misattributes at least one quote, and may well have even fabricated at least one quote.
But yeah, there are some “experts” in the book who do say things which are as completely wrong as the things Steyn says. For instance, there’s the guy who apparently believed Michael Mann and his group collected all the proxy data they used themselves, making the hockey stick a very expensive project, when in reality all they really did was download the data from the internet (or get it via e-mail). Personally, I think that just makes the book look bad.
On these specific issues, I’ll refer to two comments from my site which I wrote yesterday. Particularly important highlights:
That most likely will be proven wrong on a biblical scale. The climate “scientists” are not “isolated” from the rest of the scientific community. The silence of the scientific community enables and empowers them, and when the fraud is finally exposed all funding will be cut for Federal Research, not just to the climate science departments. Silence in the face of evil is evil itself. University Presidents like those at The Ohio State University turn a blind eye to what is happening at the Byrd Polar Research Center and the Glenn School of Public Policy. The lie brings them money, so they stick with the lie. Send an email to the president and expose that the Thompson don’t archive or release their data, send an email to the President that the climategate emails debunk the Byrd’s position that global warming is causing the Mt Kilimanjaro glacier to melt. Send an email to the President that sublimation is the cause and it has nothing to do with CO2. You will get no response at all.
BTW, note how bone dry the land it. There is no sign of melt. No streams, no pools, no puddles, just dust. No evidence of melt at all.
There is no thermometer evidence supporting the claim that the peak of Mt Kilimanjaro is melting. The glacier is 2000 ft above the freeze line.
http://www.unep.org/dewa/Portals/67/pdf/kili_icecap_poster_av.jpg
Mt Kilimanjaro is 17, 340 ft high, 2000 ft above the freeze line:
Freezing level (ft) 15600 15300 14800 15100 15300 15100 15600 15600 15100 15600 15600 15100 15600 15600 14900 15600 15400 14800
http://www.mountain-forecast.com/peaks/Mount-Kilimanjaro/forecasts/5963
This is the truth:
The only thing that Evil needs to prevail it for good men to do nothing.
https://youtu.be/mDKcF–1hEc
This video does a great job demonstrating the concept of simplifying arguments down to easily understood messages and communicating it in a manner that a 2nd grader can understand. We “skeptics” need to condense our arguments down and communicate them in videos like this one. Someone should make a video detailing the fraudulent statistics of the Hockeystick. Choose the simple concepts like not including thermometer data until 1903. Stick to the concepts that anyone would understand.
https://youtu.be/EH_Izul6J5M
co2islife:
Okay, even if this were true, and by no means am I agreeing it is, how would “not including thermometer data until 1903” be bad, much less anything worth focusing time and attention on? Of all the things you could possibly choose to talk about when it comes to Michael Mann’s work, why in the world would you pick that?
1) Instrument data is infinitely more accurate than “proxy” data. I know of no known credible field of science that would use a “proxy” when more accurate instrumental data was available. Why would anyone ever choose less accurate data when more accurate data is available?
2) It is clear that when the instrumental data is added and the “proxy” data is removed the behavior of the data set dramatically changes, it dog legs. That is clear evidence that the “proxy’ was not a good estimator of the actual.
3) #2 is evidenced by the fact that the proxy data was removed because the instrumental data wend higher and the proxy data went lower, so they chose to “hide the decline.”
4) Instrumental data has far less error than a proxy does by definition. Why inject error when you don’t have to?
5) We have thermometer data going back to the mid-1600s. Why is that data ignored? The IPCC published thermometer data from 1860, why was that data ignored? Simple. It didn’t give the predetermined and desired result.
6) The proxy data used erases the known evens of the Roman and Medieval warming periods and the little ice age. To reject those events should have taken extreme evidence, and the best data available. That wasn’t required.
7) What possible explanation could exist to not use widely available thermometer data? And why, when sets of thermometer data was available that covered the globe, were they ignored? Why would anyone seeking the truth do that? The answer would simply be found by adding the thermometer data to the set and dropping the proxy data. If you do that the hockeystick no longer exists and you no longer have a linear relationship between CO2 and temperature.
Read the descriptions on the chart. Instrumental data is not added until 1902, and proxies are not propped until 1980. Why are those dates selected? They give the desired results. There is no logical reason to chose those dates other than by doing so you get the chart you want. He cherry picked and data sets to get the desired results. That would be considered fraud in the Financial world.
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2010/2/4/1265282134205/TempChart.gif
http://ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/myths/the-hockey-stick/image
co2islife:
These sort of comments make me want to bang my head against a wall. Michael Mann didn’t use instrumental data instead of proxy data. He calibrated proxy data against instrumental data. That means he had to use both, together, over the same period of time. That period of time happened to be 1902-1980. Claiming that was fraudulent because he didn’t start the period before 1902 is just absurd given you want to do calibration on reliable data.
So even if we disregard the fact your idea Mann somehow used proxy data instead of instrumental data is just completely insane, with no basis in reality, your idea that his choice of using instrumental data only from 1902 on is bad, much less fraudulent, is just absurd.
I have no idea how this could be “clear” given it never happened, but I hope you enjoy your fantasies. I’ve always heard hallucinogenics are fun, but I’ve never actually tried any myself.
For an entirely different set of results, in entirely different paper, published by entirely different people. But sure, let’s blame Mann, because… we don’t like him, I guess?
That’s actually not true, but it’s funny you say it because it reminds me you actually believe:
Even though one of the common criticisms of Mann’s work, both in his original hockey stick and his follow-up 2008 hockey stick, is his use of instrumental data. Over 20% of the proxies in the original hockey stick were instrumental records, and a ridiculous number of proxies in his 2008 hockey stick had instrumental data used to fill in missing periods, and people criticized Mann for that, with good reason. But here you are, telling us all about how Mann didn’t use instrumental data, because it would have given the wrong results.
That is the level of education Mark Steyn and this site is giving out. The “skeptic” movement isn’t just unaware of basic details of the hockey stick. It is so completely misinformed at this point that it actively attacks Michael Mann for things which are the exact opposite of the truth. You can take any number of real criticisms of the hockey stick, and you’ll find “skeptics” going around arguing against them in their attempts to prove the hockey stick is wrong.
It’s crazy.
It is about taxing and spending, about grants and funding, about votes, about power, about the U N .
It is not about truth, not about facts, not about even Mann, not about ice, not about the temperature records, not about sea rise.
No amount of facts piled on top of facts will move this lie made political operation that feeds itself off this lie/fraud/corruption.
The lie base will fail, the lie made foundation will crumble, there is no corner stone, there is no real thing that can be made real out of this dust blowing in the wind.
I will fall from the heavy load of lies needed to keep it winning votes for more taxes and spending on the fraud.
Taxes are real.
Wasting of the taxes can not be hid will enough over time from those on the paying end of the tax fraud.
Now where did I put that link to my Yeti video?
– – – – – – –
richardscourtney,
I do not agree with your judgment(s) of the validity of your presumed CO2 hypothesis.
It appears to me to be is a bizarre intellectual paradox, to say the least, if a person claims a physical atmospheric effect must be absolutely real in the atmosphere yet it is not unambiguously detectable (your ‘undiscernible’) in the real atmosphere. From a philosophical perspective, that bizarre intellectual paradox does seem to have the consistency of the kind of paradox that is fundamental to flawed Kantian / Hegelian epistemology and metaphysics.
John
John,
What if any warming effect from having four rather than three CO2 molecules per 10,000 dry air molecules is promptly negated by negative feedbacks, such as from water vapor?
Gloria Swansong,
Interesting hypothesis of the behavior of a physical effect of CO2 in the atmosphere, but are you saying it has been unambiguously detected in the real atmosphere?
John
John,
Unambiguously no, although the recent study at sites in Alaska and Oklahoma claimed to have observed the CO2 GHE. There is room for doubt IMO because the study wasn’t purely observational but involved modeling.
WUWT covered it in March, IIRC.
So that you may arrive at your own conclusion at to degree of ambiguity:
http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2015/02/25/co2-greenhouse-effect-increase/
John Whitman:
You have quoted the conclusion of my above post that is here. My post (which you have quoted out of context, do not link, and have cited with an incorrect date and time stamp) completely explains its conclusion.
If you have any dispute with that post then please state it instead of making irrelevant, unjustified and untrue assertions about a “paradox” which does not exist; i.e. this nonsense
Richard
Oops. In my above comment’s first sentence the first ‘is’ should be deleted. So my comment should read,
John
+1
The simple fact is the Arrhenius radiative greenhouse theory confuses the cause (gravito-thermal) with the effect (IR absorption and emission from IR-active greenhouse gas passive radiators). That is why the Arrhenius-believers are so confused about even a scientific definition of what their radiative greenhouse theory is, much less able to provide any solid evidence.
You are too humble h-schtick. Give Richard Courtney the link:
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.ca/2014/12/why-man-made-global-warming-theory.html
richardscourtney August 30, 2015 at 2:19 pm
Richard, it’s been fun and we’re really not far apart. You say “indiscernible degree” and I say “indistinguishable from zero”. CO2 is certainly a beautiful molecule with a lot of interesting properties and I think we agree about that if nothing else. Spoiler Alert; here’s a quote from the above article:
“Bad things can happen when climate modelers conveniently ignore over 200 years of well-established physics, including confusing a cause with an effect, but that is unfortunately what has happened. We will now show additional reasons why man-made or natural CO2 cannot be the Earth’s climate control knob, demonstrating how the IR emission spectra from greenhouse gases are simply an effect of and not the cause of the mass densities/gravity/pressure/viscosities of all gases present in each layer of the atmosphere all the way from the surface to the edge of space, which in-turn are entirely responsible for the resulting temperatures (via the Ideal Gas Law and other physical laws) at every altitude, not IR backradiation from passive IR absorbers/emitting gases (so-called “greenhouse gases” for the first time a decade later). “
Michael Wassil and hockeyschtick:
NO! It has NOT “been fun” dealing with the irrelevancies, illogical assertions, refusal to consider evidence and blatant falsehoods from the two of you.
The best I can do in response to your comments in this sub-thread is to copy my most recent above reply to hockeyschtick. It is here and says:
“Hockeyschtick:
For reasons known only to you, you ask me irrelevant questions and make irrelevant assertions when you demand
A blackbody at 217K cannot warm a warmer blackbody at 255K by 33K up to 288K and heat transfer (n.b. HEAT transfer and not energy transfer) from cold to hot would require an impossible continuous decrease of entropy.
But none of that is relevant to the effect of the radiative greenhouse effect (GHE).
The Sun heats the Earth and has a Surface temperature of 5,778 K.
The Sun can and does heat the Earth to a surface temperature of 288 K.
Without the GHGs in the Earth’s atmosphere the Sun would only heat the Earth to a surface temperature of 288 K.
The effect of the GHGs is to inhibit heat loss from the Earth.
This effect of GHGs is similar to the effect of providing insulation to the walls of a building that is internally heated (e.g. by a fireplace): the GHGs in the atmosphere raise the Earth’s temperature enclosed by the atmosphere, and the insulation in its walls raises the building’s temperature enclosed by its walls.
No violation of thermodynamic principles is involved in the increase of the Earth’s surface temperature which results from the presence of GHGs in the atmosphere; i.e. the radiative greenhouse effect (GHG).”
Richard
Ooops!
I intended to write
“Without the GHGs in the Earth’s atmosphere the Sun would only heat the Earth to a surface temperature of 288 K.”
Sorry for the misprint.
Richard
Ouch; Still wrong!
It should be 255 K and NOT 288 K.
This what happens when suffering frustration at time wasters.
Richard, although, thankfully, you answered the simple questions correctly, you then falsely claim these have nothing to do with the GHE and thereby contradict your answers.
As seen in the OLR spectra, the CO2 + H2O “partial blackbody” has an emitting temperature of ~217K corresponding to the 13.33-15 micron band of IR.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vvN1VZjxhu4/Vc0gRW-aXeI/AAAAAAAAHUI/dlx0Wlsaeco/s1600/OLR%2BNimbus_energy_out%2B2.jpg
You just admitted radiation from a 217K blackbody cannot warm a 255K BB to 288K, therefore whether or not the 13.33-15 micron radiation comes from a BB or GHG’s makes NO difference as that low energy/frequency radiation cannot warm the much warmer surface, and if it could would require an IMPOSSIBLE reduction of entropy.
GHGs are NOT “insulation”, blankets, greenhouses, glass panes, etc. which are SOLID objects that work by limiting CONVECTION, which has absolutely nothing to do with “radiative forcing.” On the contrary, GHGs are free to convect and actually enhance convective COOLING.
Arrhenius-believers falsified once again.
hockeyschtick:
Clearly, your post is either malign or demonstrates you lack ability to understand even simple scientific concepts such as ‘inhibiting heat loss raises temperature’.
None of your waffle changes the facts that:
A blackbody at 217K cannot warm a warmer blackbody at 255K by 33K up to 288K and heat transfer (n.b. HEAT transfer and not energy transfer) from cold to hot would require an impossible continuous decrease of entropy.
But none of that is relevant to the effect of the radiative greenhouse effect (GHE).
The Sun heats the Earth and has a Surface temperature of 5,778 K.
The Sun can and does heat the Earth to a surface temperature of 288 K.
Without the GHGs in the Earth’s atmosphere the Sun would only heat the Earth to a surface temperature of 255 K.
The effect of the GHGs is to inhibit heat loss from the Earth.
This effect of GHGs is similar to the effect of providing insulation to the walls of a building that is internally heated (e.g. by a fireplace): the GHGs in the atmosphere raise the Earth’s temperature enclosed by the atmosphere, and the insulation in its walls raises the building’s temperature enclosed by its walls.
No violation of thermodynamic principles is involved in the increase of the Earth’s surface temperature which results from the presence of GHGs in the atmosphere; i.e. the radiative greenhouse effect (GHG).
Richard
John Whitman:
You have repeated your untrue assertion about a “paradox” that does not exist so I will repeat my response.
You have quoted the conclusion of my above post that is here. My post (which you have quoted out of context, do not link, and have cited with an incorrect date and time stamp) completely explains its conclusion.
If you have any dispute with that post then please state it instead of making irrelevant, unjustified and untrue assertions about a “paradox” which does not exist; i.e. this nonsense
Richard
richardscourtney,
The paradox in your conclusion is stated very explicitly / concisely and I find your conclusion (which I quoted) represents consistently and completely all that you said earlier in your previous comment(s).
The paradox you presented is clear, so based on it I argue that Feynman would agree with me that your paradox resides outside of what can reasonably be scientifically said. My understanding is that Feynman would have one claim only what is unambiguously detected/ observed in reality can be claimed as a rational basis for {your words follow}“It [CO2 hypothesis] is an absolutely certain fact’”.
Your paradoxical statement is good for discussion. Which I think will now be expanded upon in this thread. It offers us a valuable learning experience in how to avoid framing statements which are problematical scientifically.
John
John Whitman:
You do not state any paradox in my comment because it contains no paradox.
And the absence of any paradox is why you are wrong when you assert this nonsense.
My comment is here and anybody can read it to see for themselves that it does not provide any paradox.
The only pertinent issue worthy of discussion is why you are posting your untrue nonsense.
Richard
richardscourtney,
Here is the conclusion of yours which I found to be a “bizarre intellectual paradox”,
It looks like the conclusion of yours (which I quoted) is a paradox based on the following good sampling of various definitions of the concept ‘paradox’.
. . . and . . .
. . . and . . .
So, Richard, paradoxical? Congratulations.
I will leave you with these two paradoxical quotes from Lewis Carol (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson):
“Contrariwise, if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic.”
“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”
John
John Whitman:
There is no paradox and you do not state one.
You say my clear, logical and explained conclusion “seems illogical” to you but that tells about you and nothing else.
As my explanation began by saying
YOUR INSUFFICIENT INTELLIGENCE TO UNDERSTAND THIS DOES NOT MAKE IT “PARADOXICAL”.
Richard
If that is even close to accurate then every Hockeystick chart published is wrong. Once again, here is the chart from the IPCC. Read the description.
a) Instrumental data 1902 to 1999
b) Reconstruction 1000 to 1980
c) Instrumental value 1998
http://www.klimaskeptiker.info/img/hockeystick.gif
If what you are saying, that he had the instrumental data, why isn’t that identified on the chart? If he had the data to “calibrate” why didn’t he just use the actual values? More importantly, just what kind of thermometer did he us to calibrate the year 1000AD data? Facts are you are wrong.
co2islife, you clearly have no idea how temperature reconstructions are made. You’re criticizing the hockey stick without having the slightest idea how it was made, despite claiming it was made in a fraudulent manner. And then you’re saying things like:
Anyone who knows the slightest detail about how a reconstruction like this gets made knows proxies get calibrated against the modern instrumental record as part of the process of combining them into the reconstruction. The proxies can’t just be combined with one another as you don’t know how they’d be related to one another. You need some commonality, such as the instrumental record, to try to establish a relationship between them.
To accomplish that, Mann used the instrumental record from 1902 to 1980 to put all of his proxies in what he considered to be a common scale, namely, temperature. This calibration was intended to put them on a common scale for their entire records, as far back as 1000 AD. This is all very basic stuff, so when you say things like:
You just sound stupid. Asking why someone didn’t use the calibration data instead of the data they’re calibrating? That’s just… And your last question? You clearly don’t know what calibration is.
I swear, I don’t think there’s been a person on this page who has accurately criticized Michael Mann or his work. What is going on? Mann did a lot of horrible things. It’s not hard to point real problems out.
But you also have put down Mark Steyn who has written a brilliant book – its top of the hit parade of books published on climate. He didn’t publish the dragon-slayer sciency put down that apparently you claim to have done. However he collected an unexpectedly large number of heavy duty put downs of Mann and his hockey stick that are not well known on the ‘outside’ that I think is going to generate a paradigm shift in the “debate”. These fellows, some of whom one could say have been ‘outed’ with their opinions, are just what is needed to get a critical mass of criticism of the whole mess. Others will feel safer coming forward, young scientists will be emboldened. Please, Brandon, you are destroying your own reputation, probably a bit put out by this upstart invading what you see as your territory. Please rejoice at the new node in history that this man has created.
Also, accept that this is certainly as much Mark’s fight given that he is being clubbed over the head by a multi-million buck law suit stick from this odious personage. You have done your stuff, ok (but on this thread you are undoing it all). Now step back and enjoy your introduction to one of the world’s brightest lights, a one man wrecking crew in action. This guy is a freedom fighter for free speech that isn’t an egghead. He’s been sued before and the result was the quashing of a statute in Canada. He receives death threats like you receive junk mail in your post box. Let’s judge the guy by results, soon to be forthcoming.
Gary Pearse:
It isn’t a brilliant book. It’s a terrible book. If “skeptics” were actually being skeptical or applying their stated standards of honesty and accuracy to the book, they’d be condemning it, not praising it.
Except his book contains so many mistakes and misrepresentations it won’t work. It’ll be easy for people on the other “side” to argue against the book as all they have to do is paint Steyn as a person who has no idea what he’s talking about who just cherry-picks quotes that sound good without understanding what they actually mean, much less what any of the real issues are.
I’m not going to “rejoice” at a bad book with tons of errors being published and widely embraced so it can spread a great deal of misinformation. If Steyn had written a good book, I’d be praising and celebrating it. The sad fact of the matter is, he didn’t. He wrote a bad book, and as such, I’m not going to praise it.
If this book is any indication, Steyn isn’t a champion of free speech. He’s just a bully who likes to be able to say whatever he wants without any fear of consequence. Any true advocate for free speech knows it has reasonable limits, and they’d at least consider those limits when arguing for it. One of those limits is you don’t flagrantly make things up to trash people’s reputations – which Styen has done in this book.
You can love the guy. You can hate me. I don’t care. This book is a piece of trash, and if you actually cared about skepticism rather than tribalism, you’d see that.
why isn’t that identified on the chart?
It is, it’s the red line as is clearly stated on the graph!
“We cannot help remarking that it is very surprising that research in an area that depends so heavily on statistical methods has not been carried out in close collaboration with professional statisticians.” (Lord Oxburgh)
This is from the report into the matter sought by UEA to investigate possible wrongdoings by Phil Jones, c.s.
Mann claims that that report exonerates him (and Jones). But to me the quote means something much more profound and damaging than what Mann does not read in it, or does not want to read in it: Lord Oxburgh says in the nicest possible words: you (Mann, Jones, the whole caboodle) were out of your depth. (full stop).
Now that is something Mark Steyn ought to use when he gives his evidence in his court case.
Richard and Brandon,
There still seems to be some confusion over Mike’s Nature Trick and the splice, so here are the relevant parts of Steve McIntyre’s post on the details:
Begin quote:
The trick is clearer in MBH99. The graphic in MBH98 (Nature) is much muddier and doesn’t show the trick as clearly. First, here is the (rather muddy) graphic from MBH98 showing the smooth:
Next, on the left is a blowup of the latter part of the above graph. The overprinted yellow line is an exact emulation of the MBH smooth obtained by splicing instrumental data after 1980 with proxy data up to 1980, followed by truncation after smoothing. (Here to about 1953.) If Mann had not spliced instrumental data after 1980, the smoothed series (following his methodology) would have looked like the version on the right – the orange line showing the result without the instrumental splice.
Although Mann and others have regularly described his “Nature” trick as nothing more than plotting both instrumental and reconstruction data in the same graphic, the “trick” was more than that: it was, as shown above, the splicing of instrumental data with proxy data prior to smoothing. On one occasion however, Mann implictly conceded the Climate Audit exegesis of his Nature trick, stating in an inline comment at realclimate as follows:
“In some earlier work though (Mann et al, 1999), the boundary condition for the smoothed curve (at 1980) was determined by padding with the mean of the subsequent data (taken from the instrumental record).”
End quote
To see the figures go to: http://climateaudit.org/2011/03/29/keiths-science-trick-mikes-nature-trick-and-phils-combo/
So Mann seems to admit the splice before smoothing. But, either way the splice was done, he didn’t just plot them together as some of you seem to think. I hope this clarifies the issue. I think most of the debate of splice or no splice, documentation or no documentation in the caption to figure 5 is simply semantic. But, the root of the deception by Mann (and perhaps Briffa) is that they spliced the instrument record on to the end of a proxy, smoothed the resulting dataset and presented it as a proxy. They did present and identify the raw instrument data in addition, but that was window dressing. The criminal splice happened earlier, be fore the smoothing. McIntyre shows the results with the instrument data spliced and without, they are very different. They committed this fraud in several papers and in the IPCC TAR.
Andy May, you somehow fail to note what you just described is not what you described in your post or what Mark Steyn described in his book, yet it is what I described. Or at least, it is if we append to your description the important qualifier that Mann truncated the smoothed series at the original ending point, something you failed to note. So I guess the real problem is you’re still not describing what was done accurately.
This is not simply splicing temperatures onto the proxy record like you and Steyn claim. It’s called padding the proxy record for smoothing purposes. The authors shouldn’t have used the instrumental record for the padding, but that doesn’t justify you and Steyn grossly exaggerating what was done. As for your comment:
And perhaps Briffa? If you’re going to write a post telling people what was done, you should be able to know who did what. It’s not very difficult. Briffa’s series were truncated to cover up the “divergence problem.” Mann padded his proxy reconstruction with the instrumental record for smoothing purposes as a trick to “hide the decline.” Jones combined these two procedures together when making the WMO graph. That sums it up.
But you’ll note, Mann did not splice two series then present them as one. He merely used one series as padding for another when smoothing it. And as for:
No McIntyre did not. What McIntyre did was show results you get if you use the instrumental record as padding and the results you get if you use something else as padding. Just what that “something else” would be is an arbitrary choice, so there is no single answer one can provide. You can come up with any number of alternatives. They’ll all look different than what Mann came up with, but some will also look different than what McIntyre came up with.
I guess there is no convincing you, we just have to disagree.
I read Steyn’s book a couple of weeks ago on a vacation in Iceland (went there to hide from the warming!). I was skeptical at first but the format, being short two and three page vignettes, made it easy to pick up and put down.
Naturally, the big reason to write the book was for Steyn to slam Michael Mann because of the lawsuit…and he did it with gusto. But it answered a few questions I have had for a while.
One of them is the CRU E Mails. As a non science person (engineer…Howard, not Sheldon) I never understood the big deal about these E Mails. Now I get it.
Another useful thing it did was to characterize Mann as the neophyte that he really was back when all of this hit the fan.
But mostly, it tells the story of the discrediting of the hockey stick. Unfortunately, once it served its purpose of giving climate science a relatable image that was used to sell this miserable science to so many world leaders, the fact that it became disproven was irrelevant. The “science” had stuck by then and leaders are charging forward, ignoring the fact that this science becomes more and more questionable with each passing year.
Good book, though. Worth the read.
IMO the statistics of the HS and other “climate science” icons are intentionally incompetent. “Climate scientists” could have sought professional statistical help if they wanted good data handling. Surely they knew they weren’t up to it, but plainly didn’t care. Or if they were, they purposely fudged.
They’re frauds, charlatans and hoaxsters of the lowest order.
Steyn covers this nicely.
Also statistical incompetents, but they could have fixed that if they wanted to, by hiring competent help.
Brandon Shollenberger wrote:
1) Mann chose to discontinue to use the proxy data when the instrumental data diverged from the proxy data. That is fraud. “Hiding the decline” and “Nature trick” are statistically fraudulent methods. The very fact that he acknolodged that the proxy was faulty, and yet let it remain in parts of the data reconstruction is undeniable evidence of cherry picking. Cherry picking is an example of fraudulent statistics.
https://youtu.be/JlCNrdna9CI
2) When instrumental data is available it should be used instead of the proxy, not in combination with it. There are plenty of temperature data sets for the N Hemisphere. The IPCC, NOAA, NASA have temperature records going back to 1860 that cover the N Hemisphere. Why do these organizations not use the Hockeystick Chart data post 1850?
http://myweb.uiowa.edu/rhorwitz/images/globaltemps.jpg
3) This temperature data goes back to the mid 1600s. It is obvious why Mann didn’t include it.
http://climatereason.com/LittleIceAgeThermometers/CentralEngland_UK_Large.gif
4) For him to completely drop all the proxy data from the set in 1980, you would have to make the case that all the regions covered by the proxy data now have thermometer data available, and you would need to show that as temperature data became available the select proxy sets were dropped. Can you provide evidence that Mann gradually replaced the proxy data with thermometer data?
5) Before Mann the scientific evidence pointed to a Medieval Warming and Little Ice age. Mann’s chart erased all of that. In no other field of science in the history of man has the tyranny of the status quo been so easily defeated. It is a joke to think one research paper can erase all the prevailing evidence without any scrutiny or reproducibility.
co2islife August 31, 2015 at 3:06 pm
1) Mann chose to discontinue to use the proxy data when the instrumental data diverged from the proxy data.
I suggest you read the Mann paper, it is linked above, the proxy data was not discontinued in 1980, the ‘training period’ with the instrumental data was ended in 1980 because many of the proxy series end in 1980 or shortly thereafter.
3) This temperature data goes back to the mid 1600s. It is obvious why Mann didn’t include it.
Yet if you read the paper you’ll see that temperature data was used for “verification back to 1820 in all cases and back through the mid and early eighteenth century in many cases”
Brandon Shollenberger wrote:
It never happened? Just how do you think the chart got the name “Hockeystick?” The sharp bend ie dog leg occurs to the year that thermometer data is added. Temperature data existed before 1903, but it wasn’t included. Only when thermometer data is added does it take a sharp turn upward. What happens if you keep using the proxies? You get a decline that needs to be hidden by using a nature trick.
Are you a dog leg denier?
http://www.klimaskeptiker.info/img/hockeystick.gif
1) The IPCC no longer uses this chart for good reason.
2) He was collaborating with Briffa in their research, clearly they both were impacting each others work. Why did Briffa then change his results?
3) What is magical about 1903, what is magical about 1980? Nothing. Those dates were simply chosen to create a graph that gave the desired results. Why use proxy and thermometer data together? Because it gave the desired results. Why drop proxy data in 1980? Because it gives the desired results.
4) There have been countless temperature reconstructions and only 1 before 2000 showed a Hockeystick. Were all researchers before Mann simply incompetent? Was the IPCC incompetent when they published this chart in 1990 before the Hockeystick?
5) Why was the Hockeystick never discovered before 1999? Why do the ice core data not support such claims? Why does the archaeological evidence not support the Hockeystick? Why does the written record and art work not support the Hockeystick?
Frozen Venice
http://www.standeyo.com/NEWS/10_Earth_Changes/10_Earth_Changes_pics/100110.little.ice.age.jpg
Here is another one:
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c01a3fd2b88ba970b-pi
Brandon Shollenberger wrote:
Are you kidding? You might want to tell Michael Mann that. The error bands on his Hockeystick represented by the gray lines are clearly wider for the pure proxy data, and become almost non-existent when he goes to pure instrument data. Proxies by definition are less accurate than the direct measurement. Proxies are estimates of estimates. Proxies by definition are second choices, they are alternative measurements, they are better than nothing.
http://www.klimaskeptiker.info/img/hockeystick.gif
Brandon Shollenberger writes:
1) You are wrong
2) Steve McIntyre pretty much proves the Hockeystick is pure garbage
3) No temperature reconstruction before the Hockeystick excluded the little ice age and Medieval warming period
4) Cherry picking is fraud
5) Using bully tactics in the Peer Review process is fraud
6) Read the Climategate email, that field of science is as corrupt as they come
No kidding. Are you telling me that Proxies are actually related to what they are trying to represent? Wow, that is really earth shattering news. No kidding, temperature proxies are calibrated to temperatures. Problem is, as Mann found out, there are many many more factors than temperature that impact proxies like tree rings, coral and ice cores. When calibrating tree rings you can’t just use temperature you also must use humidity and other factors. Mann seemed to forget that, and that is why the whole “hide the decline and nature trick” came into play. Temperatures went up, proxies went down, he dropped the proxy FOR THAT SELECTED PERIOD. That is fraud. How did he know that didn’t happen in the rest of the data set when temperature records didn’t exist to alert him of the divergence?
Really, that is nice. You seem to ignore the fraud. He deleted the proxy data when it didn’t didn’t jive with the temperature data. That is fraud. Just what do you think “hide the decline and nature trick” imply? Honest statistics? You can’t pick and choose when to use proxy data and when not to. There isn’t 1,000 years of temperature data to alert you when you have a divergence. He could only identify the divergence over the past 100 years. He only edited the past 100 year for the divergences. What about the other 900? Briffa had the same proxies and got totally different results. The proves the proxies he is using are unreliable and inconsistent at best. You don’t reject every temperature reconstruction ever created based upon faulty proxies. That isn’t how science works. This is from the 1990 IPCC. You don’t get to reject this based upon un-reproducable data. Only people that take the same flawed data sets and apply the same flawed statistics end up with a Hockeystick. McIntyre demonstrated that a random data set will give you a hockeystick using the Mann data and statistics. Key is, no one before Mann ever created a Hockeystick. On honest scientist ever will in the future.
?w=700
Once again, he deleted and adjusted data based upon divergences between the proxy and the temperature record. How did he make those adjustments when temperature records didn’t exist. Simple answer? HE DIDN’T That is fraud. He only made adjustments for the past 100 years. We have no way of knowing how many time the data diverged in the past, the Briffa proves the proxies they were using gave inconsistent results. Mann, by consulting Briffa on how to Hide the Decline and use a Nature Trick clearly was must have adjusted his own data, and was instructing Briffa on how to corrupt his data as well. That is also called collusion in any other field. In business these Men would be behind bars.
https://youtu.be/JlCNrdna9CI
Brandon Shollenberger writes while hooked to an IV Drip of AGW Kool-Aid:
20% of the proxies were instrumental data? Just what kind of instrumental data is a tree ring, ice core or coral? Why does the chart specify that instrumental data isn’t used until 1903? Are all the charts mislabeled? I still don’t understand why thermometer data wasn’t used before 1903? Care to explain that? Did Mann not know that the IPCC had thermometer records going back to the 1850s? Did Michal Mann not know about the EA CRU, NASA and NOAA? Has Michael Mann been living under a rock and simply not aware that these data sets existed? Does Michal Mann not know how to use the internet? Please explain to me and everyone else why thermometer data was excluded prior to 1903? Please explain why no one until Mann discovered the Hockeystick pattern of temperatures? Please explain why all temperature reconstructions prior to 1999 were invalidated because of Mann. Is that really how science works to you? Some hack rewrites history on an epic scale and we are to just believe him? Is this blind faith science?
1) No independently created, unbiased and objective temperature reconstruction in the past or the future will ever reproduce the Hockeystick. It simply took way too many customized statistical techniques totally foreign to real science. The only way the Hockeystick is reproducible is if you use the same garbage data and the same garbage statistical methods.
2) The Hockeystick totally rejects 100% of all temperature reconstructions up to 1999 and after. That alone makes this a highly likely fraud on the level of the Piltdown Man and/or Cold Fusion.
3) Even the instrumental data in this “Science” have disagreements. Satellite data show a “pause.”
4) CO2 has its greatest impact when increasing from a very low level. The CO2 increase from 180 to 250 over the past 900 years did absolutely noting according to the Hockeystick, and yet when CO2 went from 250 to 350 it caused run away warming. Simply go to MODTRAN and calculate this out. The Hockeystick is 100% contrary to the absorptive behavior of CO2. CO2 traps less heat at higher concentrations. The marginal impact of CO2 is much less at 350 ppm than 180 ppm. Mann’s Hockeystick defies physics.
http://climatemodels.uchicago.edu/modtran/
co2islife September 1, 2015 at 3:33 pm
20% of the proxies were instrumental data? Just what kind of instrumental data is a tree ring, ice core or coral? Why does the chart specify that instrumental data isn’t used until 1903? Are all the charts mislabeled? I still don’t understand why thermometer data wasn’t used before 1903? Care to explain that? Did Mann not know that the IPCC had thermometer records going back to the 1850s? Did Michal Mann not know about the EA CRU, NASA and NOAA? Has Michael Mann been living under a rock and simply not aware that these data sets existed? Does Michal Mann not know how to use the internet? Please explain to me and everyone else why thermometer data was excluded prior to 1903?
As pointed out before if you’d taken the trouble to read the paper you’d no that everything you say here is wrong!
Instrumental data prior to 1903 was used, data series going back as far as 1550 were used. The 1903-1980 period was used for ‘training’ the proxy data. The other data was used for verification outside that range.
Boo Hoo, Michael Mann claims that he has been attacked and treated unfairly. Clearly he hasn’t read the Climategate e-mails about his bully tactics, manipulation, collusion and exclusion.
https://youtu.be/06DdPb_DFo0
How does one “fudge” or “mis-represent” comments like the Mt Kilimanjaro glacier is disappearing due to sublimation? His description is so far from reality. He is an awful “scientist” and an even worst propagandist.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/22/al-gores-global-warming-claims-on-kilimanjaro-glacier-finally-dead-and-buried-in-the-climategate-2-0-emails-even-phil-jones-and-lonnie-thompson-dont-believe-it/
BTW, this chart implies that the Little Ice Age persisted until 1900, in fact the entire last 1000 years was a Little Ice Age that bottomed in 1900. This chart implies that the 1800s were colder than the little ice age era. is there any evidence of that? Did crop yield collapse in the 1800s? Is there any evidence what so ever that the 1800s were colder than the Little Ice Age era? is there any evidence that the late 1800s early 1900s were colder than the late 1700s and early 1800s? I doubt it. This chart is pure crap.
http://www.moyhu.org.s3.amazonaws.com/pics/MBHFig5b.png
I guess this never happened.
https://youtu.be/LObn2Sk7tVg
Watch the documentary in the previous post about the little ice age. The Hockey-stick
23:20 into the documentary. The Pope back then made similar mistakes regarding the weather and climate like the one is doing today. Here, I tagged the clip:
https://youtu.be/LObn2Sk7tVg?t=23m10s
The Hockey-stick shows a falling temperature from 1000 to 1900, with the later end of that period being the coldest. What evidence other than faulty proxies do we have as evidence? The only evidence is the fraudulent statistics of Michael Mann.
http://www.klimaskeptiker.info/img/hockeystick.gif
The Legacy of Michael Mann lives on:
http://www.onenewsnow.com/culture/2015/09/01/climatologist-obama-peddling-a-non-issue
BTW, the Hockey-Stick got past the Peer-Review process. Is that how “science” is now done? A few UN-elected corrupt scientists get to rewrite history, reject all findings before, bypass the tyranny of the status quo? The fact that the Hockey-Stick counts as “sound science” proves we need reform in the funding and review process of science. Michael Mann is giving the Government all it needs for further oversight of Science. That is the real harm this fraud had done. He has politicized science.
WUWT, you may want to commission an article about past climate decisions by the Pope and the Catholic Church. In this documentary they discuss how the Pope blamed Witches for the Little Ice Age. I tagged the clip here. It is in about 23 min 20 seconds. It would be a great reminder as to just how wrong the Pope has been in the past, and just how wrong he is today.
https://youtu.be/LObn2Sk7tVg?t=23m20s
Dr Sallie Baliunas also did something on Witchcraft and climate change. Unfortunately, my understanding is that the climate bullies have driven her from the field.
https://youtu.be/s3CjSBCahBc
https://youtu.be/VYDXFmEzZg0
https://youtu.be/Ib2ZlHakSkc?list=PLB23906671779C66E