Twenty years ago today: The infamous “hockey stick” graph that crystalized global warming and ignited the climate wars was published, and became known as MBH98. The science in it was so bad, it is credited with spawning the modern climate skeptic movement.
Michael E. Mann writes in the formerly Scientific American:
Two decades ago this week a pair of colleagues and I published the original “hockey stick” graph in Nature, which happened to coincide with the Earth Day 1998 observances. The graph showed Earth’s temperature, relatively stable for 500 years, had spiked upward during the 20th century. A year later we would extend the graph back in time to A.D. 1000, demonstrating this rise was unprecedented over at least the past millennium—as far back as we could go with the data we had.
Although I didn’t realize it at the time, publishing the hockey stick would change my life in a fundamental way. I was thrust suddenly into the spotlight. Nearly every major newspaper and television news networkcovered our study. The widespread attention was exhilarating, if not intimidating for a science nerd with little or no experience—or frankly, inclination at the time—in communicating with the public.
Nothing in my training as a scientist could have prepared me for the very public battles I would soon face. The hockey stick told a simple story: There is something unprecedented about the warming we are experiencing today and, by implication, it has something to do with us and our profligate burning of fossil fuels. The story was a threat to companies that profited from fossil fuels, and government officials doing their bidding, all of whom opposed efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As the vulnerable junior first author of the article (I was a postdoctoral researcher), I found myself in the crosshairs of industry-funded attack dogs looking to discredit the iconic symbol of the human impact on our climate…by discrediting me personally.
In my 2013 book, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines, I gave a name to this modus operandi of science critics: the Serengeti strategy. The term describes how industry special interests and their facilitators single out individual researchers to attack, in much the same way lions of the Serengeti single out an individual zebra from the herd. In numbers there is strength; individuals are far more vulnerable.
The purpose of this strategy, still in force today, is twofold: to undermine the credibility of the science community, thus impairing scientists as messengers and communicators; and to discourage other researchers from raising their heads above the parapet and engaging in public discourse over policy-relevant science. If the aggressors are successful, as I have argued before, we all lose out—in the form of policies that favor special interests over our interests.
Read the rest of Dr. Mann’s “poor me” pleading here (or not)
In the meantime, Climategate happened in November 2009, along with “Mike’s Nature Trick”
So far one of the most circulated e-mails from the CRU hack is the following from Phil Jones to the original hockey stick authors – Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley, and Malcolm Hughes.
From: Phil Jones
To: ray bradley ,mann@xxxxx.xxx, mhughes@xxxx.xxx
Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000
Cc: k.briffa@xxx.xx.xx,t.osborn@xxxx.xxx
Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,
Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or
first thing tomorrow.
I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps
to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from
1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual
land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land
N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999
for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with
data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.
Thanks for the comments, Ray.
Cheers
Phil
Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) xxxxx
School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) xxxx
University of East Anglia
Norwich Email p.jones@xxxx.xxx
NR4 7TJ
UK
The e-mail is about WMO statement on the status of the global climate in 1999 -report, or more specifically, about its cover image.
Back in December 2004 John Finn asked about “the divergence” in Myth vs. Fact Regarding the “Hockey Stick” -thread of RealClimate.org.
Whatever the reason for the divergence, it would seem to suggest that the practice of grafting the thermometer record onto a proxy temperature record – as I believe was done in the case of the ‘hockey stick’ – is dubious to say the least.
Mike’s response speaks for itself.
No researchers in this field have ever, to our knowledge, “grafted the thermometer record onto” any reconstrution. It is somewhat disappointing to find this specious claim (which we usually find originating from industry-funded climate disinformation websites) appearing in this forum.
But there is an interesting twist here: grafting the thermometer onto a reconstruction is not actually the original “Mike’s Nature trick”! Mann did not fully graft the thermometer on a reconstruction, but he stopped the smoothed series in their end years. The trick is more sophisticated, and was uncovered by UC over here.
When smoothing these time series, the Team had a problem: actual reconstructions “diverge” from the instrumental series in the last part of 20th century. For instance, in the original hockey stick (ending 1980) the last 30-40 years of data points slightly downwards. In order to smooth those time series one needs to “pad” the series beyond the end time, and no matter what method one uses, this leads to a smoothed graph pointing downwards in the end whereas the smoothed instrumental series is pointing upwards — a divergence. So Mann’s solution was to use the instrumental record for padding, which changes the smoothed series to point upwards as clearly seen in UC’s figure (violet original, green without “Mike’s Nature trick”).
TGIF-magazine has already asked Jones about the e-mail, and he denied misleading anyone but did remember grafting.
“No, that’s completely wrong. In the sense that they’re talking about two different things here. They’re talking about the instrumental data which is unaltered – but they’re talking about proxy data going further back in time, a thousand years, and it’s just about how you add on the last few years, because when you get proxy data you sample things like tree rings and ice cores, and they don’t always have the last few years. So one way is to add on the instrumental data for the last few years.”
Jones told TGIF he had no idea what me meant by using the words “hide the decline”.
“That was an email from ten years ago. Can you remember the exact context of what you wrote ten years ago?”
Maybe it helps Dr. Jones’s recollection of the exact context, if he inspects UC’s figure carefully. We here at CA are more than pleased to be able to help such nice persons in these matters.
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Lucky coincidence that.
Coincidence or not, his statement here is B.S. as it contradicted DECADES of research showing that the MWP and LIA is real and significant.
“The graph showed Earth’s temperature, relatively stable for 500 years, had spiked upward during the 20th century. A year later we would extend the graph back in time to A.D. 1000, demonstrating this rise was unprecedented over at least the past millennium—as far back as we could go with the data we had.”
Shame this WUWT retrospective did not correctly summarise this frawwdulent science.
Mann did not graft, he cropped off the inconvenient end of the Briffa data and hid the cut-off behind another line, so it appeared that all lines were showing the same rise.
Jones DID graft , he went beyond what Mann had done because he cropped and then used the same coloured line to represent two different datasets and display it as a continuous line. That was what the WMO 2000 report used on its cover and was pushed all around the world. It is Jones’ version which is the iconic ‘hockey stick’ which the public knows, not Mann’s original MBH1998 graph.
Note the green line , Briffa’s data according to the legend. Except that Briffa’s data was cropped at 1960 and the temp record was GRAFTED on using the same line colour. This is what Jones refers to as “Mike’s Nature Trick” except that it goes way beyond crop and hide and into blatant scientific FRAWWD.
Greg wrote, “Except that Briffa’s data was cropped at 1960 and the temp record was GRAFTED on using the same line colour.”
Not only that, he rounded the splice points to hide the grafts.
Greg continued, “This is what Jones refers to as “Mike’s Nature Trick” except that it goes way beyond…”
I would not say that Jones was more dishonest than Mann. After all, Mann was complicit in Jones’ fraud, too. It is true that Jones did the dirty deed for the version on the WMO Report cover, but his email about it was addressed to Bradley, Mann & Hughes, and cc’d to Briffa and Osborn (who replaced Jones as CRU Director in 2016). Jones didn’t go rogue, the other five were obviously in on the scheme, as well.
“Earth Day 1998 observances?” Surely one only “observes” religious holidays.
Earth Day isn’t a religious holiday?
Exactly what jumped out at me. The use of the term “Earth Day 1998 observances” even 20y ago, shows their attitude that it was like a religious duty. Part of their crusade for THE CAUSE.
My fellow Courtney: Top comment, and a zinger. My compliments.
The Mann fraud gift that keeps on giving. Like VD.
Lenin’s birthday.
Am I correct in believing that Mann’s proxy data was extracted from a single tree?
Or has that become a bit of a sceptical urbane myth?
Pretty sure it was that single, unfortunate, Bristlecone Pine that he based the entire fiction on, but I could be wrong.
Nope.
It was Briffa who found a hockeystick by corrupting his entire dataset with one tree in, the Yamal peninsula.
See this for some of the worst science since Piltdown.
But we mustn’t be too hard on Briffa. If he wasn’t on “sick leave” from the CRU after this scandal came out we may never have had the crime of Climategate.
By which I mean that all the data that was gathered together into a HarryReadMe file would never have been found if he was there to protect it. Obviously he wouldn’t leak it himself so as the CRU had to circle the wagons and not throw him to the wolves.
That would be ludicrous. Although it would explain why the information was gathered in one place.
It was YAD061, the most influential and costly tree in the history of man (or Mann). It was the only tree in that group that showed a warming trend, so the study was heavily biased towards that tree. (How can a scientific study introduce a bias towards a particular component in a study….?).
That tree has cost the world about 4.8 trillion dollars, and counting. You could have encased it in gold and adorned it with diamonds, for much less.
R
If they hadn’t found that tree, they would have kept searching till they found another proxy that suited their purposes.
There was a data set weighting used, so that those trees with a ‘temperature’ profile that matched the desired shape more closely were given added ‘weight’. One of the trees was given a weight of more than 400 compared with trees that did not have the ‘right profile’.
True. I remember, Steve McIntyre devoting quite a bit of time on the Yamal series
It was not one tree, but the way his program worked, it was the dominant one. Read the left side of Climateaudit.org.
Yep …. Mann had his tree, and Briffa had a different tree. Both used Mann’s PC analysis or some such that weighted the data to the one tree. (Kudos to Steve McIntyre for successfully reverse engineering the beast and figuring out what was going on …. cause Mann and Jones weren’t about to give up the methods and codes). This whole debacle is what got me really interested in this whole Global Warming crap. I had just graduated grad school in environmental risk assessment, and to say the least …. I only thought the professors at my institution were corrupt … these guys took the cake …. and ate it too!
They’d have to be scientists to give up methods and code.
But neither they nor consensus “climate science” in general practice the scientific method, in which results must be repeatable by others.
Mickey employs the Big Fat Liars’ Strategy of; lie big, because a big lie is more believable, and when called on your lie, double down and pretend you are the “victim”, and a martyr for “the greater good”. It’s the passive-aggressive way. Because that’s how he rolls.
Mikey never met a split infinitive he didn’t love….
I in all my days as a climate skeptic have never liked him.
But I do like an occasional split infinitive!
No, you discredited yourself. And continue to do so.
Who still promotes your “iconic symbol”?
How many filed an amicus brief in your support?
Why are you hiding your UVa emails?
Why do you file lawsuits instead of engaging in open debate if you are really a scientist?
Who pays your legal fees for you?
You are the attack dog.
Who’s holding your leash?
The first lie is the claim that those who disagreed with him were industry funded.
The second lie is the belief that being industry funded proves that they are being dishonest.
The third lie is the belief that there is something nefarious in trying to shoot holes in other people’s work.
Recycle time!
Stopping by Yamal One Snowy Evening
What tree this is, I think I know.
It grew in Yamal some time ago.
Yamal 06 I’m placing here
In hopes a hockey stick will grow.
But McIntyre did think it queer
No tree, the stick did disappear!
Desparate measures I did take
To make that stick reappear.
There were some corings from a lake.
And other data I could bake.
I’ll tweek my model more until
Another hockey stick I’ll make!
I changed a line into a hill!
I can’t say how I was thrilled!
Then Climategate. I’m feeling ill.
Then Climategate. I’m feeling ill.
The left always accuses the other side of doing the very thing they are guilty of.
And the right does the same thing.
Simon,
Example, please.
Thanks!
Simon
Agreed.
A bit like the UK Conservative party (Right) accusing the Labour party (left, and the opposition) of anti Semitism, only to find it to be true. The UK Labour party has admitted it’s anti Semitic.
But wait……..No such accusations against the Conservative party.
How strange.
And along comes Simple Simon to demonstrate for us the art of projection.
And the world has been suffering the cost for that ever since.
I always thought the context of Jones remarks were of little consequence. Someone who uses tricks to hide as a scientific method is obviously not to be taken seriously.
The argument is that “trick” meant ‘clever thing’ not a sleight of hand.
Of course that misses the point. There may be no intent to deceive others. But only because they have already deceived themselves and are now looking for self-assurance.
“M Courtney April 23, 2018 at 1:36 pm
The argument is that “trick” meant ‘clever thing’ not a sleight of hand.
Of course that misses the point. There may be no intent to deceive others. But only because they have already deceived themselves and are now looking for self-assurance.”
Yet “hide the decline” surely shows intent? “Hide” assumes an active process, not passive or incidental. Even without the “trick” it shows intent to install a false understanding in others.
This gives “trick” the aura of deception and sleight of hand.
What do you think?
Chris Norman,
“I always thought the context of Jones remarks were of little consequence.”
Judging by the willingness of so many to believe the superficial, erroneous interpretations of the emails, this seems to be a common idea among skeptics. It is an indication of how far some will go to find the truth – not very far. It’s more comfortable to make assumptions and listen to those who support one’s beliefs, allowing no other explanation.
They conspired to dodge FOIA requests, delete emails and data, black ball scientists who disagreed with them, and corrupt the peer review process.
It’s all there, in their own words. To paraphrase you: “Have you read the Climategate emails, Kristi?” LOL!
http://michaelkelly.artofeurope.com/cru.htm
Kristi Why do you defend Mann who is one of the most reprehensible human beings that I have come across?
Ha ha, don’t go down this road unless you want to be the ignorant fool.
I have the book that covers it well, written by Steve Mosher and Thomas Fuller.
They were doing a LOT of bad things in those e-mails.
Kristi; the intent was obvious from the procedures and methodologies that they used to contrive their data. The emails just verify that they knew they were [doing] such.
Kristi Silber,
I suspect that most of us agree with what you call the “superficial, erroneous” interpretations of the emails because we have read them in context, and we have seen for ourselves that context makes no difference.
Many warmists have claimed that the emails have been taken out of context, but none, as far as I know, has been able to produce an example of a Climategate email whose context provides mitigation.
Kristi Silber April 23, 2018 at 4:02 pm
Kristi, you truly seem to have no clue here. Rather than mention a single instance that might support your laughable claims, you are simply throwing mud at the wall and hoping something sticks.
I submitted the first FOIA request to CRU, the one that set the whole madness in motion, and I’m one of the people mentioned by name in the Climategate emails. As such, I am much more aware than you and most folks here of the context because I LIVED IT.
If you’d like some context, you should read my post about what went on. It’s here.
My advice? Stop beclowning yourself regarding subjects about which you know virtually nothing. It just makes people point and laugh, and I assure you, they are not laughing with you …
w.
Would you care to put forth an alternative, and in your mind, more proper interpretation of those remarks?
Or are you going to pull your standard stunt and just whine that other people aren’t being nice to you and demand that they stop it?
‘It is an indication of how far some will go to find the truth – not very far.’
Just checking – this was the troll-flake who criticized posters for ‘not knowing what they’re talking about’.
This is also the same troll-flake who had the sheer, unadulterated gall to come to Watts Up With That, for God’s sake, and explain to all of us – complete with links to professional smears – where our movement came from – and why – and of course, who financed it all.
I mean, my God, this is arrogance to the point of farce – it’s a Far Side cartoon – ‘you may be a kangaroo, but I know a little about marsupials myself.’
All apparently under the impression she’s not being insulting.
But it does illustrate how far some will go to rationalize away the truth – pretty far.
Many thanks to Willis.
I have just spent hours reading your excellent 2009 post and responses just agog with horror.
Trying to look up what happened afterwards to the CRU yields words like “exonerated”.
What happened please?
If you all would simply take my post literally, you would see that I’m commenting on a particular idea: thinking one knows enough from cherry-picked excerpts without looking at the context. I think this is wrong. I think it leads to misconceptions. The exact same thing applies to CAGW supporters.
I’m not defending Mann, Jones, or anyone. I’m urging reason. I’m battling bias, prop’ganda, hate and anger. I am trying in my teeny tiny, probably ill-conceived and certainly inept way to heal the deep divide in America today. I’m doing it all wrong, though. I thought maybe awareness of the way bias is spread (on both side) could slowly in some minds make a difference, but it’s the wrong tack.
I have genuine respect and admiration for the abilities of many people here. Their knowledge and experience goes far beyond mine. But we all have different knowledge and must make decisions for ourselves. I decide to limit my judgement of Mann and cohort not because I support them, but because I don’t know the whole story.
Limited judgement isn’t blindness, though. It seems pretty clear that they did not handle their data or data requests well and didn’t behave very professionally. The code issue is a little different, especially 20 years ago. It sounds like the FOIA wasn’t too clear when it came to computer code and intellectual property rights. (Imagine finally publishing research it took years to finish, and the next week having a dozen people asking for all data used, a list you don’t have, and the code for a computer program you spent weeks on – and knowing they want it so they can try to discredit your research, even if it means misrepresenting it.)
As for the rest, I don’t know. Jones seems more at fault to me than Mann. It comes down to whom one chooses to believe: the official committees that investigated, or the investigation by the contrarians (including the investigation of 4 of the investigations). My money is on the officials, partly because none of them knew how many more investigations there would be, and what subsequent groups might find. They wouldn’t stick their necks out to save these guys, especially if the emails were as clearly damning as the cherry-picking makes them out to be. Besides, I still have some faith in humanity and the integrity of scientific oversight. I believe people realize scientific misconduct cannot be tolerated in the profession, especially in such a controversial field.
None of us here has read them AND talked to the scientists involved and other scientists in the field about this. How many here know the story behind the peer review concerns, the apparent stifling of alternate views? What do you think it was about?
……………………………………………..
People here insult me. They may laugh at me. I’m sure plenty dislike and despise me, and they sure hate what they think I represent. It’s not easy. I didn’t come to make enemies, but neither did I come to make friends or have my ideas confirmed. I’m here because I love the beauty and wonder of life on our planet. I care about the potential effects of rapid climate change on humanity. And I’m here because I care about America and Americans.
Sporran April 24, 2018 at 2:10 pm
Thanks, Sporran. The best source about anything Climategate related is Steve McIntyre’s blog. There is a “Categories” dropdown on the left, and it has a link to the “investigations“, better called “whitewashes”. In most cases they never asked the right questions, they were done by friends of the miscreants, and they often didn’t even talk to the principals.
w.
Kristi Silber April 24, 2018 at 2:35 pm
Kristi, I took your post quite literally. I pointed out that I am not working from “cherry-picked” excerpts. I am not only looking at the context, inter alia I am part of the context. And I pointed you to my clear explanation of what went down, with all the context you could want.
In response, you come back, ignore my explanation, don’t say a word about everything I had in my post regarding what went on, you make the same accusations, and say that:
I know the story about it, and you are doing your very best to ignore that fact. I wrote the first FOIA to UEA CRU, I’m the one that Phil Jones lied to, I’m the one whose FOIA they were making up stories to avoid, I’m the one that their emailed excuses were sent to, I’m one of the few mentioned in the emails, so your claim is total crap. No other word for it. Absolutely bogus.
Oh, please, you give yourself far too much credit. I just think that you are incredibly biased and dense and unwilling to admit when you are wrong, but I don’t “hate what you represent”. Nor would I waste one second disliking or despising you. You’re not worth it. I save those for people that actually make a difference. Seriously, it’s time for you to follow the FIrst Rule of Holes, which says:
Regards,
w.
PS—As I mentioned below, there is an explanation of what you laughably call the “investigations” here. Note also that a UK Parliamentary Committee said that criminal charges would have been brought for their attempts to avoid my FOIA, but the Statute of Limitations had run out by the time they got around to it …
Kristi, since you’ve never read any of the CliimateGate emails, you have knowledge regarding how much context is necessary to understand.
As a result your whining is merely more evidence that you will say anything in order to distract from the problems that others have been poking in your favorite gravy train.
The full set of Climategate emails are here:
http://sealevel.info/FOIA/
The top-level folder lists 137 highlighted emails, and one source code file, plus links to folders and .zip files with all the others.
You can click on the column headers to sort in various ways.
This is the Climategate whistleblower’s “README” manifesto (minimally edited to make the message numbers into hyperlinks):
http://sealevel.info/FOIA/README.txt.html
Willis,
“In response, you come back, ignore my explanation, don’t say a word about everything I had in my post regarding what went on, you make the same accusations, and say that:”
I’m very sorry Willis, I wasn’t replying to you there; for some reason I don’t think I’d even read your post, I was actually thinking of Tim Ball’s article moved from another site, not yours. It was short excerpts with interpretations and no context. Tracking down the full context could be impossible without the conversations behind them. I know how condemning they look.
How do you know you were first, Willis? You sure weren’t the only one.. Was it a coordinated effort at CA? Why would multiple people there want the info? Sounds like McIntyre was even more persistent than you. There may have been others, too, doing the same thing.
Was CA the other to get the emails from the hacker?
I read your exchange at the link you sent. I have a different perspective on it, too long to go into here.
“”Oh, please, you give yourself far too much credit. I just think that you are incredibly biased and dense and unwilling to admit when you are wrong, but I don’t “hate what you represent”.”
I give myself credit for some things, but not much, I can admit when I’m wrong. For instance, I’ve lately come to think that because of my image of the Earth as zillions of interactions, each potentially affected by climate change, I may be overestimating the ecological problems. But who knows? I don’t.
We are all biased.
I am not dense.
Kristi, here’s Phil Jones threatening to illegally delete the CRU Station Data data, rather than comply with FOI law and let McIntyre & McKitrick see it:
http://sealevel.info/FOIA/1107454306.txt
Excerpt:
Do you think my summary of Jones’ email is a “superficial, erroneous interpretations” of it? If you do, then please tell me what you think the correct, non-superficial interpretation is.
Jones obviously knew that he was in the wrong. Note the subject line he chose: “For your eyes only”
Here’s Phil Jones, three years later, in 2008, brazenly boasting of deleting files subject to David Holland’s FoIA request… in an email to the UEA’s Information Compliance Manager!
https://sealevel.info/FOIA/2368.txt
Here’s Jones, in 2009, conspiring with the UEA’s Information Compliance Manager to hide data subject to FOIA requests:
https://sealevel.info/FOIA/1577.txt
Here’s Jones in 2004 celebrating the untimely death of Australian skeptic John Daly:
https://sealevel.info/FOIA/1075403821.txt
Phil Jones is not a nice man. He is not an honest man, either. I don’t understand how anyone can defend that sort of behavior. I truly don’t.
But, then again, some people — including Michael Mann — even still admire Fakegate forger Peter Gleick and his accomplices at DeSmogBlog. Mann recently called Gleick “one of the most respected scientists in the country.”
That’s why I’m here. Thanks Mike.
Pretty much the same for me, not so much because it was crap work, but because of the large number of people that were defending such blatant statistical silliness. That made me realize how political this was and un-scientific. Had the scientific community correctly pooh-poohed the work things could be quite different now for many of us.
I was trained to be skeptical and when the CO2 CAGW issue was articulated in the late 1970’s I paid attention and came to the conclusion that the analysis of the data was flawed. CO2 Lagging Temperature change, the absorption spectrum inverse log relationship to doubling of concentration and finally the assumptions in the models appeared biased against any other warming mechanism. Including insolation Milankovitch cycles and solar flux. As Darwin said your peers will regal them selves showing you where you have misinterpreted the data. Well the facts surprisingly fell on deaf ears and this was against everything I was taught. Even Kunn would shake his head, Popper would simply dismiss it as “not science any longer”. . With the publishing of the Michael Mann “Hockey Stick” and Steve McIntire’s rebuttal it became clear that there was another horrible beast at work and it was all about poitics and water melons not about science. That was the end of it for me.
That’s what tipped me off that the whole thing was off the rails. It conflicted with too much known history around the world. What’s more it made these extraordinary claims that all that history was wrong, but offered no explanation for what mechanism caused all these historical records to be so far removed from truth. It couldn’t explain the Greenland colony. It couldn’t explain the Roman mines covered by several thousand feet of ice. It was just wrong on all counts.
Indeed, the believe in the CAGW narrative requires one to be ignorant of historical knowledge about the climate.
Having just spent a decade fighting the great ozone hole sc@m, I was already a skeptic.
When I heard that the hockey stick had eliminated both the MWP and LIA I was pretty sure that the same people were launching the next sc@m, and I was right.
I was skeptical before then (1998) because I believed global warming was caused by ocean cycles hiding solar influence after a few years originally believing in it. I had been researching ocean anomalies since about 1995. That’s when I first claimed global temperature records will only occur from the strongest El Nino’s and the one in 1997/98 only strengthened my ideas. The Mann always trying to change history brought alarm bells ringing with this first infamous hockey stick.
Alarming, just some examples:-
1) Instrumental data added to proxy data.
2) Removing well known periods in history verified before using proxy data.
3) It become clear that data used was cut short after to hide the decline in them.
4) One now well known Biffa proxy showed significant warming where generally none of the others did.
https://climateaudit.org/2009/09/26/briffas-yamal-crack-cocaine-for-paleoclimatologists/
5) Random numbers always returned a hockey stick
6) The graph couldn’t be recreated, just like Mann’s GISS.
Dave Burton,
Been reading your links. First one:
“Yes, we’ve learned out lesson about FTP. We’re going to be very careful in the future what gets put there. Scott really screwed up big time when he established that directory so that Tim could access the data. Yeah, there is a freedom of information act in the U.S., and the contrarians are going to try to use it for all its worth. But there are also intellectual property rights issues, so it isn’t clear how these sorts of things will play out ultimately in the U.S.” (Mike)
“Just sent loads of station data to Scott. Make sure he documents everything better this time ! And don’t leave stuff lying around on ftp sites – you never know who is trawling them. The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone.” (Phil)
First, this is an unnamed file or files they are talking about. We don’t know what it is, and they don’t know the kind of things they will have to hand over. They certainly aren’t going to delete the whole ground station data set just because of an FOIA request. It might be some work they’ve done that they don’t want to get into the hands of the enemy just because they don’t want to make it easier for them – and there is no scientific standard saying they should. Replication, the excuse for wanting the data, should be from the ground up to avoid repeating the mistakes of the first study. The skeptics wanted CRU’s work to try to find apparent weaknesses and trumpet them. The skeptic scientists ARE enemies of the mainstream – they have made themselves enemies through unprofessional practices, like publishing research on blogs and saying publicly that science as a profession is not trustworthy, or scientists are corrupt/biased.
Then there is an intellectual property rights consideration. The FOIA had just begun in the UK, and the scientists weren’t sure what was covered. It wasn’t the norm in climate science to share computer code or analyses (according to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee – Eighth Report
The Disclosure of Climate Data From the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia). This report found the UEA more at fault that CRU because it didn’t provide better support handling the many and sundry requests.
That’s just my argument concerning the first link. I have arguments about the other links I read, too, but I am not going to take the time. The main point is that there is stuff we don’t know, and messages can have very different meanings than they first appear. There are people behind the emails who know each other, may know if someone is kidding without an emoticon, and they are human. They say dumb things, say they will do things that they don’t do. You can’t convict someone on the basis of something he says he will do.
The case of Phil deleting files may have occurred after the FOIA request. Scenario: He gets the request, hands over what he has to, then spends a day deleting all emails with names of skeptics to avoid it happening again. There is nothing illegal about that.
I’m not trying to defend these guys. I’m saying that often there are alternative ways of looking at things. We don’t KNOW what they meant all the time.
That Graph is 100% completely irreproducible independently. Nature Tricks to Hide the Decline are unique to the person making up the dataset. You also have to ignore instrumental data until 1902. What a complete joke.
Your very accurate comment that the Mannian Graph™ is completely irreproducible leads me to think that Mann et al should have published their results here:
http://www.jir.com/ which is the beb site for the Journal of Irreproducible Results.
oops “web site” not “beb site.’
rgirouard@sbcglobal.net,
One of my all-time favorites. Used to read in college a few decades ago, but have not kept up with for a while. My dad was an engineer, and one Christmas, when I didn’t have a lot of money, I found a JIR book in a book store and bought it for him. My favorite article from way back when was on quantum baseball. If you haven’t seen it, think of the uncertainty of whether a base runner is on base or not.
jir looks like its been well dead for 10 years.
Two of the best articles I ever saw in JIR were: “Nutrition of Pet Rocks” and the ever-famous Dietz and Holden’s “Fake Tectonics and Continental Drip”. JIR was a gem; it allowed otherwise serious scientists to poke fun at themselves and show that they actually had a sense of humor (h/t, Bill Murray, “Ghostbusters”).
Regards to all,
Vlad
So long as the Primary Media Outlets control 90% of the message board the Propaganda Ministry controls tone, tenor, volume and frequency of information. With that much power they can run cover for the alarmists and bury the truth while promoting the make believe. 80% of the population are too busy devoting the majority of their bandwidth to living their lives not knowing that Government Funded Science is playing a long game to control those lives. The Government is winning.
Current events and popular opinion suggest otherwise.
polls show 33% believe it is a hoax and remember the lies are still being taught in our school system.
And Mann et al 98 was influential enough for the US congress to commission the Wegman report. Mann definitely made an impact with that study/sarc
Nothing is funnier than that clown playing the victim…….
“for a science nerd with little or no experience” – Well, he got that part right although then again I may be insulting nerds.
On second thoughts maybe I should cross out the “scientist” bit.
Must reads again:
“The Hockey Stick Illusion” and “Hiding the Decline” by Andrew Montford.
Because being trained as a scientist does not prepare you to defend pseudoscience.
I agree that the hockey stick graph is nothing but a symbol (a cult symbol) and the paper it originated in merely a fictional story. But it’s a complete lie that any industry first “attacked” the Grimace impersonator; it was first independent statisticians and hundreds of researchers that had studied the LIA and MWP that immediately discredited the fictional story you put together using pseudo proxy data.
Again, we see the words of an egotistical out of touch mook. First of all, all criticisms of the pseudo science was correct rebuttals based on scientific grounds. Secondly, there is already a name for the purported attacks you describe but it is your MO to completely ignore scientists that have come before you.
But please, keep on with your charlatan ways. You will soon be the face of scientific disgrace and your work used as the example of pseudo-science posing as science for future generations to learn from.
“Nothing in my training as a scientist…”
Apparently that training didn’t stick…, or maybe Mikey’s just untrainable.
I think he was out playing hokey when those lessons were being taught. 😉
I still dont buy the tree ring thermometer theory. Tree growth is effected by so many things, like moisture, competition, predation, that it is a leap of faith to say that tree rings are primarily governed by temperature. For instance, a really hot UK summer will produce thin tree rings, because there is often not enough moisture during a hot summer.
Plus I was looking at rings recently in cut pines, and the trunks had wildly different ring thicknesses in different quadrants within the same trunk. One quadrant may have a sudden burst of thick rings, that was not represented elsewhere on the same trunk. So if you took cores from these trees, you would get a different temperature profile for every trunk quadrant that was drilled…! From a dozen trees, you could achieve an infinite variety of temperature profiles.
Ralph
ralfellis
April 23, 2018 at 1:46 pm
Yes, I quite agree. Perhaps by sampling multiple trees you could eliminate quadrant variation and competition issues…but then how do you reliably sort out temperature from moisture changes/availability?
However, I’m not a botanist. I would think they would/should know.
There is no such thing as an undisturbed tree.
https://youtu.be/AihvuZiDhsg
This sort of thing. On this larch trunk there is strong growth in the 7 oclock position at about 22 years, suggesting a warm climate. But if you took the core in the 3 oclock position, the warm years disappear. And I saw some pine trunks with greater discrpancies than this.
Ralfellis, you just don’t understand how to read the treemometer … here’s my diagram explaining the inner secrets.
w.
The same goes for the oak trees I cut for firewood.
There is a rough seven year drought cycle that is often visible.
The “funny” part of Mann´s hockey stick is that it is not a temperature vs. time graph but actually a tree ring thickness vs. time. Where thicker rings mean higher temperatures, because trees grow faster at higher temperatures.
I would be worried if the blade of the stick had gone down, but the blade goes up, meaning that the trees grow faster, and that is a good thing.
Mann´s real “genius” is making us believe that trees growing faster is a bad thing.
(Yes, I know Mann´s hockey stick statistical issues)
“On this larch trunk there is strong growth in the 7 o’clock position at about 22 years, suggesting a warm climate…”
Or a storm toppled nearby trees to give this one more sunlight…
Or ash from an upwind volcanic eruption provided iron and other necessary nutrients…
Or bears pooped on the roots…
Or…
Willis.
🙂 … 🙂
I so agree with you. I would love to see some articles debunking tree ring data. Ice cores also are just as innaccurate and useless. A list of all factors affecting both would be quite lengthy indeed.
Ice cores aren’t useless, but the temporal and concentration error bars are much larger than usually given if you are trying to represent the “ambient atmosphere” at the time of firn formation. If you are just reporting the concentrations in the bubbles then the error bars are fine, but they are probably off by quite a bit for the atmosphere.
What I am saying is, they, like most proxy data, can give a general impression, but should in no way be considered precise. They are what they are and nothing more. Too many climate press people tend to make outlandish extrapolations about the implications of a paper. Many times the paper does not explicitly (or implicitly) support CAGW, but does throw a sop to it in the conclusion to get the paper past the gate-keepers. Reading the results sections is sometimes an enlightening experience.
Ice cores are now where near as bad as tree rings because the latter can’t be distinguished between two main conditions, precipitation and temperature. Tree rings are determined by sunshine levels, CO2 levels, water content, minerals in ground and temperature. Ice cores are only dependent on snowfall pressed down to ice, trapping the atmosphere at the time.
http://www.antarcticglaciers.org/glaciers-and-climate/ice-cores/ice-core-basics/
Another point is that trees have a temperature at which they grow best. Going above or below that temperature means less growth. So even if everything else was being held equal (an utter impossibility), you would still need to know whether the temperature was above or below the optimum temperature before you could know if increasing tree ring widths meant the temperature was increasing or decreasing.
That’s a very good point.
It’s less complete than including nitrates and sunshine and moisture but far more pertinent. Even if all else were equal (like a school quiz) it still couldn’t give you the answer.
Let’s just stick to counting the rings and knowing the age.
Yes, but the argument is that the tree has a longer growing season inside the perfect bubble it will have a wider ring. (Do I believe this – not really though there is some truth). If the tree leafs out in April instead of May and doesn’t drop foliage until October instead of September, then theoretically, it would have a wider ring (all other factors being impossibly equal). Of course if it got too hot for a couple of months or there was no rainfall for a couple of months, etc, all things would not be equal.
And if tree rings are not primarily controlled by climate, then how can dendrochronology ever work? How can you compare your wood sample, grown in a micro-climate in East Anglia, to a reference sample grown in a different micro-climate in Ireland ??
The whole thing soulds like voodo-science to me.
R
It should be referred to “Lenin’s Birthday” which is the true insider Earth Day spirit of the event. Far more to the point.
I believe the Serengeti lions choose their victIm based on several key traits: weak, lame, unfit, inept, incautious, cognitively impaired, diseased and just generally incompetent when it comes to defending their position.
Andy: Well, the lions also choose the “victims” chosen by big oil. According to Dr. Mann’s version. And he knows how to pick ’em.
Michael Mann is a lying liar who spends his spare time lying. Among the biggest is a lie of omission. He was found to have committed a grievous mathematical error in the original Hockeystick calculations (failure to center the data before the principle components analysis).
He also neglects to mention that he used post hoc proxy selection. And he doesn’t think it’s worth noting that his method will “mine” hockeysticks out of red-noise data.
He is as far from a scientist as a man could possibly be—opaque, dishonest, and completely without principles … in fact, I’d say he specializes in unprincipled component analysis.
For more of his slimy double-dealing, see here … and for the true story of the hockeystick, see ClimateAudit.
w.
I agree with all that. Which is rare when someone uses the word ‘liar’. In Mann’s case I agree with that.
Except…
That one statement is not proven.
It is not contradicted by the evidence. But it is not proven.
Surely, the post hoc proxy selection is proven. It’s the process he used to “mine” the hockey-stick shape. As w has reminded us, the method even creates a hockey-stick from red noise data. For anyone new to all this: climateaudit is a stunning read (w gave the link, above).
But there was more post hoc activity than that. He truncated the proxy data where the divergence started. Maybe not “post hoc proxy selection” in the usual sense, but nevertheless a form of post hoc proxy selection. A much more egregious one.
Mike Jonas, So he fooled himself and then didn’t discard results that fit his folly?
That’s a whoopsie.
That’s my theory. That’s what I see happened.
But it’s not “post hoc proxy selection” in the usual sense. In the malevolent sense.
It’s just possible that, at the start, he fooled himself. The process he used seemed reasonable: use the proxies that best fitted observations. But as any mathematician can tell you and as Steve McIntyre demonstrated, it’s heavily flawed. What happened next – Michael Mann doubling trebling and quadrupling down on the error in the face of sensible serious and substantiated criticism of his work – showed his ridiculous lack of any kind of scientific rigour, his absurd bias, and hence his absolute unworthiness. Perhaps the saddest part of all is that very few journalists have shown even the slightest understanding of how they have been played as fools for 20 years.
Mike, they haven’t been “played”. They are willing, perhaps even eager, participants.
Yes Willis but some university gave him a degree (s) in science so he believe he must be one. It does matter that he missed the point of Scientific Method altogether or maybe like some of the advance degree people I once managed he was never taught the subject to begin with.
Willis
“(failure to center the data before the principle components analysis).”
Small correction, I recall. He centered the data, but he chose to center it on the 20th century portion, not the whole data set he was analysing for principal components. That was a major error. When the data is properly centered over the whole data set, the MWP re-appears.
Personally I believe that he made the error deliberately, the alternative being that he was too incompetent to perform the calculation correctly. He knew what he was doing so the misrepresentation of what the data said was deliberate.
I still chuckle at the diagnosis of “Mannchausen Syndrome by Proxy”.
Definition from Wikipedia with select alterations to suit dear Mikie:
Mannchausen syndrome by proxy (MSbP), is a condition wherein a scientist fabricates, exaggerates, or fabricates climate health problems for those who pay their salary (taxpayers), with the primary motive of gaining attention, adulation and grants from said taxpayers.
In case there are those unfamiliar with the satirical reference, there is an actual psychological syndrome called Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy.
Mann, Jones and the other hockey team members have committed many egregious assaults on science. They conspired to eliminate the medieval warm period, to flatten out the little ice age, to ignore climate history of the Holocene, to pretend that major climate drivers unknown to them could not be possibly influencing modern temperatures, that science must pick one winner from among competing but uncertain probabilities, and that correlation can equal causation for adequately complex systems.
They began a corrupt regime of nearly instant citations of their own and their friend’s papers to give them i credibility in the IPCC assessment process. They accept and promote pal-reviews of alleged peer-reviewed science. They corruptly conspired to thwart papers and even whole journals they suspected would be critical of them or run counter to the hockey stick message. GCM climate modelers likewise somehow have installed a new corrupt and unscientific paradigm of exempting their own hypotheses (virtual climate models) from falsification testing. They’ve begun to finesse a post-normal message that these toys have become infallible, proven science, guiding data elimination in the ARGO float dispute.
The use of statistical tests not demonstrated (scientifically) as being fit for purpose abound in climate science. The need and desire to make hockey sticks drives tendentious proxy selections in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres (Mann, et al. Pages 2K, Gergis and Karoly, et. al.). And plain faulty analysis like that of Camille Parmisan and her butterfly studies, when married to aforementioned unscientific GCMs, mean that the biological impacts of CAGW are guaranteed to mirror the tendentious conclusions of the hockey team, and thus give false credibility due to cross-discipline matching results. And now social scientists and social and political activists have learned how to pile on and thus guarantee their own funding, needing only to find some temperature stresser to humans, communities, animals or biomes, and then marry a guaranteed upward projection of CO2 based climate models to multiply that stress, in a way that can draw nearly any desired bad conclusion, and thus forever ensconcing this alleged future “damage” into the scientific record.
These men and women have harmed science, and are still doubling down on their corrupt methods. It won’t stop until these methods stop, and people again start to ask honest questions of nature, rather than to presume they already know the answer and then set out to prove it. To get science’s mind right, this “proving” has to stop and the disproving needs to reassert itself. The publication of a paper has once again to be seen as the beginning of its replication and verification, not the conclusion of some objective truth.
[when estimating and making approximations in physics] “The way we learn what to throw out, and what not to throw out, is a central part of science, which… is NOT to know the answer before you’ve asked the question, which is religion. – Lawrence Krauss
Willis,
I have read your smooth operator story. First I want to commend you on your work. I wish I had the understanding of math and statistics that you do.
Then I want to comment on the fact that you didn’t get this published. I’m not criticizing you, I’m trying to pose a different way of seeing the experience.
You say, “After the usual long delays, they said I was being too hard on poor Michael Mann, so they wouldn’t even consider it ”
Now, is that really what they said? What was the real comment?
If you think it was rejected because you submitted it to Mann’s friends, that suggests you believe it was critical of Mann. The question is, why did you phrase it in a critical way rather than a purely constructive one? Why use his data rather than a neutral set? And why on Earth would you take out all references but those to Mann, and resubmit to the same journal? That just makes it more like a personal attack. You would have had to know that there was controversy over the “hockey stick” and that the whole community was sensitive about what might be construed as a biased attack from a skeptic layman. (Just trying to think in their shoes here.)
In the intro you say, “[3] He then goes on to say that the best choice among these methods is the one that minimizes the mean square error (MSE) between the smoothed data and the data itself:” As evidence, you follow it with a quote from Mann, “That constraint providing the minimum MSE is arguably the optimal constraint among the three tested.” However, the two statements are not the same, and it’s not a logical step to then go on to say, “[4] However, there is a better and more reliable way to choose among these three constraints.”
Do you see how “better and more reliable” is not appropriate here, when you’ve quoted and said nothing about the actual method they’ve used?
Even strangers to Mann might have rejected this, IMO. Your intro is half quote. You only have one citation. Your graphs are at different scales, making the curves look different. You only use Mann (and Jones, et al., which wasn’t in your references list); you should have used a different data set if you didn’t want to come off as picking on him. It’s odd addressing only Mann’s work and using Mann’s work through the whole thing without actually referring to it in the title. Your discussion section is weak: it’s nothing but a summary of your methods, and this is not professional.
None of this is a comment on your actual work or its value. You have to understand that there are professional standards of presentation, background, the use and criticism of others’ work. By your own admission, you had little experience with scientific publication at the time. And this is a prestigious journal.
I also don’t think it’s correct to assume that someone actually stole your idea. Considering the intervening time, it’s possible that someone vaguely remembered reviewing your piece, thought of the truncation, and brought it up to someone else. I don’t know. It’s also possible you’re right, but the thing is, you don’t KNOW that.
Willis, you give as evidence of Mann’s wrongdoing a bunch of stuff written by contrarians, on a skeptic blog. I have no more reason to believe them than I do Mann. In fact, I have less reason because I’ve seen the way they operate. I’ve seen the bias. I have no reason to trust anyone who ends a treatise trying to prove wrongdoing in someone’s work,
“I suspect that the whole episode has wider social significance as an indicator of a rather defective aspect of early 21st century scientific culture.”
THAT is propaganda. Besides, why is an economist critiquing the work of a climate scientist??? Doesn’t that say something? Aren’t there supposed to be plenty of skeptical climate scientists around?
Gee, Kristi – Steven Mosher called Mann’s actions ‘pretty close’ to criminal.
And by the way – putting an algorithm in a model to automatically produce a graph is a common trick in industry – something economists are trained to spot, but a climate scientist like Mann thinks he’s real clever, pulling a fast one.
If you take the time to read Mann’s e-mails, you will find him to be a stuck-up, contentious, Progressively bigoted little twerp, who rankled the feathers of even his close associates.
And self-declared ‘climate scientists’ are not specialists – they depend upon a wide variety of disciplines, of which they are not experts in. And then they discredit the criticism of a specialist in the field, by saying ‘they’re not a climatologist.’
See, THAT is propaganda. As is the constant, vague references to ‘possible’ consequences, or exactly what the ‘97% consensus actually means’ – usually a statement most skeptics would agree with – something to the effect of ‘C02 is a greenhouse gas, and humans are contributing.’ or ‘Climate Change is real.’
AND the fact that there are so few academics who will come out as skeptics should tell you something about the culture, and how ‘contrarian’ views are chased off campus like witches.
Absolutely. The very fact that it’s based on PCA is in a sense fraudulent. Everyone who has not studied the hockey stick will think it’s a graph that shows the average of the proxies, which thus gives an indication of the climate. But it’s actually PCA, which is not an average. If you want an average all you have to do is take the average. Trouble is, that didn’t give the result he wanted i.e. a hockey stick.
The proxies Mann used mostly showed a clear MWP and LIA signal. But Mann’s method efficientyly removed them. It literally got rid of the MWP.
That a scientific fraud still gets scientific awards shows how corrupt the climate establishment is.
Chris
In honor of the 20th anniversary on the auspicious hockey stick graph, a review of the rise and fall is provided, using the six stages first identified in socio-psychological theories:
Clearly, in this case the zombie status of Mann’s modern warming spike is evident, Josh drew so well:
The gory details with links is at https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2018/03/11/rise-and-fall-of-the-modern-warming-spike/
I could really know nothing about science and just deduce from the way Mann talks and using common sense know everything he is talking about is pure horseshit. If proper science needs an open mind this dude has zero science credibility.
Steve McIntyre explained the Mann/Jones/Hughes/Bradley/Osborn hockey stick very well here:
If you watched that lecture then it will be obvious to you why Jones was so terrified of Steve McIntyre’s analytical powers that, in a 2/2/2005 email entitled “For your eyes only,” Jones told Mann that if Steve McIntyre and Ross Mckitrick file a FOIA request for the CRU station data, he (Jones) planned to delete the data rather than release it to them:
http://archive.is/f2hjr#selection-9.2013-9.2319
Richard Muller’s discussion of the hockey stick was also very good:
The police never found out who did it. I don’t think they tried very hard. It was all too disgraceful. It was clearly an insider with knowledge of UEA servers
Or knowledge of the IT guy who had knowledge of UEA servers.
Anyone in authority – academic staff – are in that group.
I seem to recall reading one email, but perhaps incorrectly, that Briffa was upset about how his work was being used. Perhaps it was he, under the guise of being away on leave, that assembled and left open the HarryReadMe file.
Huh?
I thought it was the Russians. /sarc
Perhaps…
But who asked for all the emails to be gathered together in one place as the HarryReadMe file anyway?
Forget the Russian hacking. The policy believe the Russians had a sleeper in the UEA CRU to arrange this. Which means they sleepers everywhere.
There may be less paranoid explanations.
Tom, you might be thinking of one of these:
Climategate I:
“bullshiting and politiking in various meetings… try to convince myself that this is of use to us as a dendrochronological community…” -Briffa 0846715553.txt
Climategate II:
“I find myself in the strange position of being very skeptical of the quality of all present reconstructions, yet sounding like a pro greenhouse zealot here!” -Briffa 2009.txt
Whoever the brave Climategate whistleblower is, (s)he deserves a knighthood or damehood,
Like Dec 7 1941, another day that will live in infamy.
The infamous “tree” was from research done by Dr. Ken Briffa wherein he used a fossilized tree ring that was an enormous outlier within a very small sample set form the Yamal Peninsula. No legitimate scientist would do such a thing. Steve McIntyre referred to it as the most influential tree in the world
I’d like to see a compilation of apologist excuses for it.