It was 20 years ago, climate scientist Michael Mann published his famous “hockey stick” graph that he says “galvanized climate action” by showing unprecedented global warming.
Mann used the 20-year anniversary of the graph to opine on the “industry-funded” attacks “to discredit the iconic symbol of the human impact on our climate,” which Mann claimed had withstood criticism.
“Yet, in the 20 years since the original hockey stick publication, independent studies, again and again, have overwhelmingly reaffirmed our findings, including the key conclusion: recent warming is unprecedented over at least the past millennium,” Mann wrote in Scientific American on April 20.
However, the two Canadian researchers who found serious flaws in the “hockey stick” study’s data and methodology disputed Mann’s characterization of the graph’s legacy.
“For everyone else, the debate was about data and statistical methods,” Ross McKitrick, an economics professor at the University of Guelph in Canada.
“For Mann, judging by his rant, it was all a giant political conspiracy against him and his heroic crusade to save the planet. He still won’t acknowledge the errors in his work,” said McKitrick who co-authored a 2003 study with mining executive Steven McIntyre that challenged Mann’s work.
Mann’s “hockey stick” graph, first published in 1998, was featured prominently in the U.N. 2001 climate report. The graph showed a spike in global average temperature in the 20th century after about 500 years of stability.
The “hockey stick” went viral and become a rallying cry for environmentalists and politicians who opposed fossil fuels and wanted climate policies. Former Vice President Al Gore even featured the “hockey stick” graph in his 2006 film “An Inconvenient Truth.” The graph also came under intense criticism, even sparking an investigation by GOP lawmakers.
Global warming skeptics were heavily critical of the “hockey stick” graph, especially in the wake of McKitrick’s and McIntyre’s 2003 study. Their study found serious flaws in the proxy data Mann relied upon to estimate temperatures going back hundreds of years.
The Canadians’ 2003 study showed the “hockey stick” curve “is primarily an artifact of poor data handling, obsolete data and incorrect calculation of principal components.” When the data was corrected it showed a warm period in the 15th century that exceeds the warmth of the 20th century.
3/ in our papers, we did not take a position on modern warm period vs medieval warm period. We pointed out gross errors in Mann's methodology, defects in the most critical proxies, and false claims about skill and robustness (what Mann called his "dirty laundry" in a CG email)
— Stephen McIntyre (@ClimateAudit) April 24, 2018
McIntyre and McKitrick also published a study on Mann’s “hockey stick” graph in 2005.
However, Mann wrote that “dozens of groups of scientists” had validated his 1998 study. Mann specifically pointed to a 2006 U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) report that “affirmed our findings in an exhaustive independent review published in June 2006.”
Even McIntyre said subsequent studies have “produced somewhat hockey-stick-ish temperature reconstructions,” but added, “none (NONE) of our specific criticisms of Mann’s methods, proxies, and false claims has been rebutted.”
“The NAS report did not vindicate him, it said his methods were biased, and his results depended on faulty bristlecone pine records that shouldn’t be used by researchers,” McKitrick told The Daily Caller News Foundation by email.
“The NAS panel also cautioned against conclusions about warming more than 600 years back and said uncertainties were being underestimated,” McKitrick said. “That criticism applies to many subsequent studies as well.”
Indeed, the 2006 NAS reviewers agreed with the “substance” of Mann’s study but noted “claims for the earlier period covered by the study, from AD 900 to 1600, are less certain,” Nature.com reported at the time.
The NAS noted the uncertainties were “not communicated as clearly as they could have been” and “confirmed some problems with the statistics,” but those problems only had a minor impact on the overall finding, Nature.com reported.
However, NAS reviewers were extremely critical of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change featuring the report so prominently in its 2001 assessment.
“The IPCC used it as a visual prominently in the report,” Kurt Cuffey, a NAS reviewer told Nature.com. “I think that sent a very misleading message about how resolved this part of the scientific research was.”
At the time, Mann said he was “very happy” with the NAS’s results and in the years since used his experience in defending the “hockey stick” to effectively label himself as a martyr for fighting global warming. Mann said attacks against him continued despite other researchers validating his results.
“There is no legitimate scientific debate on those points, despite the ongoing effort by some people and groups to convince the public otherwise,” Mann wrote in April as part of a screed against his critics.
Mann asks
‘What more noble cause is there than to fight to preserve our planet.’
How about the noble cause of not misleading readers with biased methods and bad data?” McKitrick said.
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So Mann just admitted to noble cause corruption.
Admitted it? He’s proud of it.
It is his core principle.
Liberalism 101: The end justifies the means.
The Piltdown man 2.0 needs to move from Penn State to the state pen for fraud and taxpayers money refunded.
This is what we are up against. People lie for 20 years and show no indication of ever changing.
Andrew
his got a very good career out of it , so why should he change ? And that is before we talk about ‘any’ ability he has to actually practice science.
Have you ever known a leftist to recant an ideological lie?
Bad Andrew,
You write,
“This is what we are up against. People lie for 20 years and show no indication of ever changing.”
YES!
In 1998 Mann, Bradley and Hughes published their paper (MBH98) that provided the first of Mann’s Hockey Stick graph, and I then immediately saw it failed the ‘smell test’.
As reported on ‘Watts Up With That’ here
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/12/a-mann-uva-email-not-discussed-here-before-claims-by-mann-spliced-and-diced/
Climategate revealed an email from Michael Mann in 2000 which refuted a complaint at his ‘Hockey Stick’ graph that I had made. Mann’s leaked email mine was in response to Chick Keller having copied an email from me to him. Both emails are included in the article at the top of the link.
My email included,
“>>It is historical revisionism to assert that the Little Ice Age and Medieval
>>Warming did not happen or were not globally significant. It will take much,
>>much more than analyses of sparse and debatable proxy data to achieve such a
>>dramatic overturning of all the historical and archaelogical evidence for
>>the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period. Those who wish to make
>>such assertions should explain why all the historical and archaelogical
>>evidence is wrong or – failing that – they should expect to be ridiculed. “
I stand by every word I wrote in that email , and I regret that so little ridicule has been applied to Mann and his Hockey Stick.
Mann’s email to Chick Keller said in full,
“>Chick,
>
>This guys email is intentional deceipt. Our method, as you know, doesn’t
>include any “splicing of two different datasets”-this is a myth perptuated
>by Singer and his band of hired guns, who haven’t bothered to read our
>papers or the captions of the figures they like to mis-represent…
>
>Phil Jones, Ray Bradley, and Malcolm Hughes dispelled much of the mythology
>expressed below years ago.
>
>This is intentional misrepresentation. For his sake, I hope does not go
>public w/ such comments!
>
>mike”
Well, I did “go public” and I am now doing it again here, but the execrable Mann has failed to make good on his threat. His failure to fulfil his threat until now is a shame because if the litigious little oik were to attempt to make good on his threat then my terminal prostate cancer would probably prevent me concluding any response (and I want to bury whatever remains of his reputation because his ‘Hockey Stick’ and its purveyors have trashed the reputation of real science.).
Richard
My fellow Courtney: I am deeply sorry to see the word terminal. I am grateful for your steadfast opposition to the execrable one and his phony science (he has diminished the reputation of science, simply put, and science should sue him for going public). You also proved to my satisfaction that M. Thatcher started this whole CAGW game, which I did not believe until you proved it. So I learned from you, and appreciate it.
Apologize for my fellow americans who reflexively argue that socialism has always failed, but we’re trained that way. Not exactly trained, but we get it alot. I know this, because when we bitch about “socialized medicine” in our VA (Veteran’s health care) and Medicare/Medicaid (health care for elderly, poor), an objective observer might point out that it’s socialized AND IT HASN’T FAILED YET. I add YET to keep my conservative credentials in order, and I think socialism is not the best “ism” but that does not diminish my opinion that you are one of the finest Courtneys to post here (top three, certainly).
I think you are correct, BTW, that Nasis (don’t moderate me, bro) were not socialists. The name worked for their program (1. fool people to obtain power; 2) use power to murder, start with enemies, then friends). Like russian communists. Left/Right kinda loses meaning when the program is to murder your own people. Socialism may be economically weak, but the program doesn’t involve murder untless thoroughly corrupted. Been meaning to catch one of your posts to say these things, and say thanks for your work.
Paul Courtney.
Thankyou.
Richard
Mikey Mann is part of a “noble cause” in the same way that Charles Manson was.
Cue Kristi in 3 … 2 … 1 …
Who the he11 cares about all this? You’re a bunch of vultures, eating a dead horse.
M&M, prof of econ and a mining exec, go after paleoclimatolgist trying to debunk his research. There was a statistical error or some sort, but NAS thought it not a big deal. I’m going with the latter. You all go with the others. So what? It’s done. There are other datasets, other analyses.
Or are you all bent of keeping this alive because it’s the only scandal (about the AGW crowd, anyway) you’ve got in half a century of climate science? Oh, no, there are plenty of CRU scandals to interpret from the emails if one is inclined.
And that means all mainstream climate science is corrupt and untrustworthy. I see.
Someone like C. Monckton, though, he’s a paragon of honesty and virtue?
And no skeptic scientists ever tried to circumvent the peer review process?
No skeptic scientists have ever failed to disclose conflicts of interest?
Nor have any skeptic scientists made blanket assertions or sly innuendo suggesting mainstream science is untrustworthy, biased or corrupt, I suppose?
One random point I’d like to make is that “denier” has nothing to do with the Holocaust. Another straw man. It’s because climate change deniers deny the evidence. “Skeptic” is not a fitting term for all those who disagree that AGW is a problem.
There you go, Vlad.
You Mad Bro?
Posing the question I asked (comment #270 on the earlier ‘hockey stick’ post) in the previous thread:
“For Ms. Silber:
Suppose we start with this: the original thesis of Mann et al, was that the annual growth rings of trees are solely a reflection of the temperature of the environment in which they live (or lived), hence the coining of the term ‘treemometers’ on this site.
Do you, as an ecologist, support this belief, unconditionally? Since I do not want you ‘ … wasting … ‘ any more time here at WUWT than necessary, a simple “yes” or “no” will suffice.”
End of opening thesis.
The remainder goes on for quite a while. I’m not expecting you to read it.
Regards to all,
Vlad (The Mostest-Deplorable-est Impaler-est, the biggest bully-est, and an even bigger-est crashing bore-est, according to C.T. at JoNova)
Typical Kristi. Declaring that unless one is a member of the anointed, you have no right to criticize someone who is.
Typical appeal to authority, while also proclaiming the right to determine who is and isn’t an authority based on nothing more than whether she agrees with the person or not.
I also notice that instead of actually dealing with counter arguments, she tries to discredit the entire skeptical movement by claiming that some members of the skeptical movement must be unclean. Heck, she can’t even come up with specific examples.
Then again, given her bogus degree, it’s highly unlikely she was ever required to actually think, just regurgitate what she’d been fed by her professors.
“those who disagree that AGW is a problem.”
I for one completely agree that AGW is a problem. I suspect that most, if not all the commentators here likewise agree that AGW is a problem.
The issue is how to tease out how much of the warming is attributable annothropic vs natural. The warmists take one factor that has a reasonably moderate to high correlation to temps over the last 75-150 years vs having almost zero correlation over the last 100m years and pronounce the sole cause of the warming as being annothropic.
The warmists have yet to explain how going from approx 280 ppm CO2 to approx 281ppm CO2 circa 1850 cause a shift from the cooling cycle to the current warming cycle. The warmists fail to acknowledge that the shift was a greater warming shift than the rate of warming from 1979 through the end of the century.
It doesn’t help the warmists credibility by creating and continuing to defend the HS. yes we know that it has been replicated numerous times. Though the replication is done with many of the same proxies and similar methods
Your response indicates you are not familiar (or ignore) the ex-post data selection / exclusion of valid proxies and the excess over weighting of proxies (or the under weighting of proxies) such as dome C (mann jones 2003) Gergis and pages 2k , law dome. mt reed, okasis swamp, Dome C. etc
Vlad,
No.
Then Kristi, you have joined the ranks of us skeptics.
Regardless, How can you say that 0.7C temperature increase over 150 years is a problem? Especially when most of it wasn’t caused by man. (Which should be obvious to anyone since most of it occurred prior to the big build up in CO2 levels.)
Either way you answered, I would accept. This is your field, not mine. But MarkW is correct: what is it about Mann’s temperature “reconstruction” that puts such a bee in your bonnet?
My regards and salutations to all,
Vlad
(and, I’m dying of curiosity: did you mean ” … (b)eating a dead horse … “?; truly, I’m serious; I’m just asking if we are looking at a typo, which is my sincere hope)
Vlad, you didn’t answer MY question, Why do you keep this alive? Why harp on it forever? It’s such a cliche!
You know, scientists mess up. It’s true. They are human. Some are arsholes. Some are egotists. Some are not as bright as others, though generally they have to be pretty smart to make it through grad school. And scientists mess up. They make mistakes! Some may not ever admit it. It happens.
But that doesn’t mean that they have committed fraud.
It doesn’t mean they are bad scientists.
It doesn’t reflect on the field as a whole.
Science has a way of ridding itself of errors. It takes time, but it happens. It’s not through targeting someone else’s science, trying to find something wrong. If McIntyre and McKitrick saw from the publication that the analyses were faulty, they were right to write a rebuttal. Did these guys know enough about dendrochronology to know from the paper that there was something wrong, given the information that was presented? Or was it a fishing expedition, hoping to find something to discredit this very influential graph? Doing so would be a big score for the skeptic movement. M&M did not try to analyze the data set using proper techniques to see what came of it, it was a simply destructive exercise. It was politically motivated science. Maybe it’s right, maybe wrong, but that’s not really what’s important here.
There are professional standards of behavior, including what James Cook U called “collegial” ethic in the Ridd case. This would include things like sharing of data, doing unbiased peer review, disclosing any conflict of interest, and keeping political and personalities out of science – the process, interpretation and communication of it. And one extremely important ethic is maintain the public’s trust in science. This means critiquing it, too – only through self-criticism can the scientific community identify and fix problems. It is a sign of strength to find and fix mistakes, and one benefit of climategate was that data became much more easily available.
Many skeptic scientists intentionally try to discredit mainstream climate science. Sometimes it’s obvious (Monckton’s “totalitarian”), sometimes it’s subtle (Judith Curry’s Congressional testimony talks about the sorts of bias that could potentially afflict scientists, without directly accusing them of biased science), but it’s not professional. Identify specific problems (peer review, p-hacking, lack of transparency that can be fixed) but don’t tell the public science can’t be trusted. That is anti-science.
That is why we are in this mess.
I’ve another comment awaiting moderation.
The prop’ganda machine has been at it since Kyoto. The American Petroleum Institute launched its Global Climate Science Communications Team in 1998. “The plan includes a multimillion dollar, multi-year budget to install “uncertainty” in the public policy arena. Target audiences are detailed including media, policy makers and science teachers….
“The other companies and front groups involved with the plan included:
“Southern Company
Chevron
John Adams Associates
Science and Environmental Policy Project
Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow
The George C. Marshall Institute
Environmental Issues Council
Frontiers of Freedom
Americans for Tax Reform
The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition
Funding sources were identified as American Petroleum Institute (API) and its members; Business Round Table (BRT) and its members; Edison Electric Institute (EEI) and its members; Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) and its members; and the National Mining Association (NMA) and its members.”
From original memo about the plan:
“Unless ‘climate change’ becomes a non-issue, meaning that the Kyoto proposal is defeated and there are no further initiatives to thwart the threat of global change, there may be no moment when we can declare victory for our efforts.”
The first on the list of tactics:
“Identify, recruit and train a team of five independent scientists to participate in media outreach. These will be individuals who do not have a long history of visibility and/or participation in the climate change debate. Rather, this team will consist of new faces who will add their voices to those recognized scientists who already are vocal.”
http://www.climatefiles.com/exxonmobil/1998-global-climate-science-communications-team-action-plan/
This is, of course, after the industry’s own scientists confirmed that AGW was a problem.
This link shows ads and other prop’ganda materials. Sherwood Idso, Patrick Michaels, Robert Balling and Rush Limbaugh all played active roles. It’s about the plans of the Information Council on the Environment (also known as Informed Citizens for the Environment) or ICE, which was formed in 1991 to “reposition global warming as theory (not fact),” and contains letters from the Edison Electric Institute.
http://www.climatefiles.com/denial-groups/ice-ad-campaign/
Vlad,
“(and, I’m dying of curiosity: did you mean ” … (b)eating a dead horse … “?; truly, I’m serious; I’m just asking if we are looking at a typo, which is my sincere hope)”
I meant “eating.” I said you were vultures. It’s a play on words.
MarkW,
You think you found a sore spot, a button to push, didn’t you? You love to attack my education. You end up just sounding jealous. You can do nothing to take my education and experience away, so get used to it.
It’s really very weird that Mark attributes my ideas to my professors. I remember a class period spent on climate change, but I’ve no idea what was said. It was decades ago, and the science has come a long way. Nor do I get my ideas from TV, since I don’t watch it. No, most of my ideas I have through interacting with skeptics and investigating their claims. I used to hang out at Breitbart, and it didn’t take me long to see how often publications were misinterpreted, excepts cherry-picked, and the kind of politicized, hate-filled rhetoric that is spouted by some deniers. Not all, though. There have been some very interesting scientific conversations, and I’ve learned a lot about climate and its measurement, modeling, etc – but there’s much I don’t know. I can see things from the skeptic viewpoint. I know most of the arguments, though there are always new ones.
It’s been astonishing how certain so many people are that the Left is evil, corrupt, totalitarian (and/or fascist) and socialist/communist/Marxist. There are some vicious people out there, people who talk about killing their countrymen. When did liberals become leftist (not the same as the Left) totalitarians, and why didn’t I notice? Was that the day Republicans became deplorable? They’re ALL ridiculous epithets.
How can anyone love America and hate half her people?
(Sorry, got a little off-topic there. I wasn’t referring to anyone in particular here.)
Let’s see: you asked, “Why do you keep this alive?”
Short answer: Personally, I could care less about Mann, his fraudulent science, and since you disavowed the use of treemometers, I have no interest at all in his “reconstruction”. Just for the record, this is NOT my blog; I am a guest of the host, who graciously allows me to post here, at his discretion.
I think Mann, and just about everyone who is a modern ‘warmist/alarmist’ is a fraud, but the problem is, if they get their way, everyone will suffer.
Equally, I might add.
If they stop pushing their agenda, then we can stop fighting. There are very serious, and very real, problems in the world, that could be addressed, if the CAGW camp would stop imposing their “values” on every one else. The problem is not CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere; the problem is this: we need to develop energy resources everywhere, and make energy inexpensive, abundant, and reliable. People (everywhere) need food, shelter, medical care, clean water, and gainful employment. Energy: cheap, reliable, expandable energy brings wealth wherever it is applied. In copious amounts. The sooner the better (for everyone).
CO2 is not the problem. Warmists are.
Regards,
Vlad
Joe, the non-climate scientist,
“The warmists take one factor that has a reasonably moderate to high correlation to temps over the last 75-150 years vs having almost zero correlation over the last 100m years and pronounce the sole cause of the warming as being annothropic.” Few scientists say we’re the sole cause of warming. I don’t know about the last 100m years, but for hundreds of thousands of years CO2 and temperature have been correlated. This is an excellent video talking about the lag of CO2 behind temperature when coming out of a glaciation:
‘The warmists have yet to explain how going from approx 280 ppm CO2 to approx 281ppm CO2 circa 1850 cause a shift from the cooling cycle to the current warming cycle.” ??? Um, I don’t think anyone argues that.
“The warmists fail to acknowledge that the shift was a greater warming shift than the rate of warming from 1979 through the end of the century.” ???
“It doesn’t help the warmists credibility by creating and continuing to defend the HS. yes we know that it has been replicated numerous times. Though the replication is done with many of the same proxies and similar methods”
Yeah, really? The same proxies, bristlecone for bristlecone? Or tree rings, ice cores, corals, sediment cores, carbon dating…that kind of stuff? What do YOU propose to use? Dendrochronology is still used, yes, and it is still a very useful tool for some purposes. It’s not just width of rings that is analyzed; the chemistry is also revealing. The pattern in the rings is clear enough that you can match them tree-to-tree, so you have overlapping records going as far back as you can find appropriate trees. I imagine they can often be fixed to a particular year, since large volcanic eruptions show up in different types of proxies – they are the “anchors,” I suppose? Is that right? (Evidently there are some 40,000-year-old kauri pines in NZ that are being “mined,” destroying a phenomenal record. I just read that today, can’t remember where.)
“Similar methods” – statistical, you mean? Well, that’s not a problem if the method was right before, even if something was done inappropriately. After all this time and all the replications, would it be so astonishing that they were doing it right? Or is it part of the conspiracy – “Let’s each of our groups do this independently and all do it wrong just to come up with the right graph to show the public”?
“Your response indicates you are not familiar (or ignore) the ex-post data selection / exclusion of valid proxies and the excess over weighting of proxies (or the under weighting of proxies) such as dome C (mann jones 2003) Gergis and pages 2k , law dome. mt reed, okasis swamp, Dome C. etc”
I don’t know about those instances, but I’ve a good grip on scientific methodology, which varies in different fields and with different types of data. What may be inappropriate in some circumstances if not always so. For example, if you were doing preliminary data exploration (which is sometimes necessary to test your statistical assumptions as well as make sure your data is free of obvious problems ) and found that 45 proxies agreed and one was way off for part of the record, that would be a clear outlier and you could legitimately remove it from your data set. Of course, you don’t run a test again and again with different subsets of proxies to find which fit your hypothesis – but you know that. Anyway I don’t know the incidents to which you refer, no.
.” Kristi Silber-
Your response to the following indicates that you should get up to speed in the issues associated with the HS and the supposed repeated replications of the HS
My comment – “Your response indicates you are not familiar (or ignore) the ex-post data selection / exclusion of valid proxies and the excess over weighting of proxies (or the under weighting of proxies) such as dome C (mann jones 2003) Gergis and pages 2k , law dome. mt reed, okasis swamp, Dome C. etc”
Kristi’s response – “I don’t know about those instances, but I’ve a good grip on scientific methodology, which varies in different fields and with different types”
ClimateAudit.org is an excellent place to start – it is an actual scientific website vs and advocacy website such as Skeptical science.
https://climateaudit.org/
https://climateaudit.org/2016/08/03/gergis-and-law-dome/
https://climateaudit.org/?s=gergis
https://climateaudit.org/page/2/?s=gergis
McIntyre is probably the leading expert on paleo proxies and statistical analysis. He is also a former peer reviewer for the paleo science, though he is no longer used due to the multitude of errors he has pointed out.
You should become familiar with his work.
The following comment from you indicates that you have not attempted an honest assessment of the issues he has pointed out.
Kristi’s comment – “Science has a way of ridding itself of errors. It takes time, but it happens. It’s not through targeting someone else’s science, trying to find something wrong. If McIntyre and McKitrick saw from the publication that the analyses were faulty, they were right to write a rebuttal. Did these guys know enough about dendrochronology to know from the paper that there was something wrong, given the information that was presented? Or was it a fishing expedition, hoping to find something to discredit this very influential graph? Doing so would be a big score for the skeptic movement. M&M did not try to analyze the data set using proper techniques to see what came of it, it was a simply destructive exercise. It was politically motivated science. Maybe it’s right, maybe wrong, but that’s not really what’s important
Kristi: So the NAS said no problem, why would you call it a scandal? You rip Mark for questioning your education (he’s not gonna take THAT from you, you’re so brave!) but it’s ok for you to question the education of M&M (“prof of econ and a mining exec”, well you can’t take THAT from them!). And your final random point (not so much random as the clear signal of a mind that can’t or won’t focus) tells us you think you’re the Pope of lexiconville. Sounds like you’ve made a real study of this, maybe you can tell us who first applied the word “den!er” to climate sceptics and give us the context. No, thought not. Anyway, thanks for once again demonstrating that reasoned argument is just not an arrow in your quiver.
So where is the “definitive” “correct” graph covering the last few millennia? Why don’t you post that instead of repeatedly posting the erroneous graph? Haven’t you heard of “availability cascade?”
That is a bit like being shown a drawing of the Minotaur, and then asking to see the actual real creature. The question as such is ‘wrong’.
Mann mixed data that shouldn’t be mixed, unless one is aiming to deceive. The different methods don’t have complete data for the entire time period and it seems no one is willing to now go back and get better, more complete, and up-to-date tree ring data. It would be very interesting from both a scientific and sociological point of view. But Mann chose to not even use all the most recent data that was available, because some of it told the wrong story. The whole field is probably now so poisoned that even an honest researcher would be risking their career by attempting to produce an updated ‘correct’ graph using dendrochronology.
Beyond trying to use proxies that were ill suited for the task, and the dodgy statistical techniques, there is also the problem that most of the proxies aren’t yearly, their resolution is decadal or longer.
Then comparing these to a record that does show yearly changes is invalid from the get go.
I quite like this one for the current interglacial based on GISP2. Perhaps someone can tell me what is wrong with it, why deny this and prefer Mann’s mix, match and season to taste fraud on the facts Piltdown science. I am puzzled as to why some pretend it is not common currency when it is one of a number of public domain climate change entry level foundation graphs of temperature anomalies. Not sure if it pre dates the Mann fraud, which it clearly shows to be wrong, as of course does the written history of the climate, from when that was available, and the archeological records.
?dl=0
Or perhaps this version of GISP2 for the Interglacial based on 2004 data.
?dl=0
Mann and his hockey stick doesn’t pass the sniff test, as history, which gives another set of proxies for temperature, contradicts his graph. The Chinese did a major study on their own records, and the LIA was present in northern China.
Right Tom, Mikey et al disappeared the LIA and then utilized “Mikes Nature Trick” to make the hockey stick. Speaking as a person who actually took money from a large oil company (everyone should know the thrill at least once of being paid more than you are worth!) the test of Reality is waiting for us all. What does Mikey think about ClimateGate? Oops!
I did it for the good of mankind, because I know what’s good for mankind. Nothing like humility.
MM seems to live in a parallel universe.
Also a place where the sun never shines.
Oh but it does. Just not on a place he can see it….
…something useful for Mueller to do
“3/ in our papers, we did not take a position on modern warm period vs medieval warm period. We pointed out gross errors in Mann’s methodology, defects in the most critical proxies, and false claims about skill and robustness (what Mann called his “dirty laundry” in a CG email)”
McIntyre’s work should be commended
I find the climate audit website one of the most honest, sticking to the science, McIntyre doesnt allow the off topic rants that you find at the activists sites or that you find here.
One of the claims by the warmsist is that MWP was regional and only emcompassed the North Atlantic and europe.
SM has pointed out numerous proxies that had ex post data selection/exclusions from gergis and pages 2k which show elevated mwp. such as mt reed, dome c law dome etc. yet were excluded from pages 2k gergis and underweighted in mannjones 2003.
Mann used tree rings as his temperature proxy, conflating wide tree rings (fast growth) with high temperature. But does a tree grow faster during a hot, dry summer or during a cool, wet summer? Some trees lose their leaves in August if the summer is too dry, but will hold green leaves through October in a wet year. Tree ring widths should be more correlated with warm-season precipitation than temperature, and they say nothing about winter climate, when deciduous trees are dormant.
Mann also found that the proxy tree-ring widths were actually decreasing in recent years, so he substituted the thermometer records for 1970 – 2000, because they showed an increase in temperature (which showed the trend Mann wanted to show).
Also, Mann’s proxy record prior to 1600 was based on ONE TREE. Whatever the climate may have been for that one tree in its location, that cannot be extrapolated to the entire globe, whose climate may have been greatly different elsewhere!
Temperature is only one of many things that impact tree growth.
Steve,
That’s the irony behind Mann’s claim that his hockey stick has been validated by numerous other studies. If that were so, then those studies also would have identified the tree-ring proxy downturn after 1980 (and after 1961 for Keith Briffa’s Yamal study) in contrast to the rising instrumental record in the last two decades of the 20th century. If effect, those corroborating studies would have demonstrated that Mann’s tree rings were not robust proxies for temperatures.
Mann relied heavily on the Graybill-Idso 1993 paper for tree rings, but that paper was a study of CO2 fertilization of strip-bark and whole bark bristlecone pines, not a temperature proxy paper. Both tree types showed increased growth, but only the strip-bark trees showed the hockey stick.
Graybill-Idso paper: http://www.climateaudit.info/pdf/others/graybill.idso.1993.pdf
In 2006, Linah Ababneh redid the Graybill-Idso study, with a much larger dataset, and aware of the criticisms of MBH98 (Malcolm Hughes, the “H” in MBH98 was her dissertation advisor). Her study showed increased growth started back in 1850, long before the big CO2 increase, but doesn’t resemble the MBH98 hockey stick. She equivocates on the treemometer theory.
Ababneh 2006: http://arizona.openrepository.com/arizona/bitstream/10150/193510/1/azu_etd_1878_sip1_m.pdf
20 years is about long enough for a reign of error.
Unfortunately Professor Muller has been deluded by the fake surface temperature data that NASA,NOAA and Hadley have put out not to mention the fake Australian and New Zealand temperature data. The main temperature chart that he showed is a prime example. He seems a reasonable man and someone should confront him with this fact.
Can anyone please tell me what the heck is going on with the Steyn case?
I’ve emailed Mr Steyn directly but no response. Is there some kind of gag-order in place?
Stern is a busy guy.
The case is ongoing”……
Wait…..wait, I’m getting a vision. Mikey Mann is in prison garb. And what’s this? Someone is making a shank in the shape of a hockey stick? Bizarre. Wonder what happens next. Oh well, at least he has his “nobel prize”. Maybe that will save him.
The “hockey stick” is destined to become an icon that represents both bad science and trillions of wasted dollars.
It’s worth remembering how long the science was settled before it was declared unassailable.
Three years.
Three years for a reconstruction of temperatures – proxies – not direct observations, to become “settled science”.
In a court of law hearsay does not become unassailable truth just because it was first gossiped a little after the last Olympics.
Science journalism should try to reach that standard, at least.
Science journalism has lost its way. Climate science journalism didn’t even get to the starting gate of truth.
> When first introduced in 1796, phrenology was the latest advancement in the field of neurology. It was widely accepted, even welcomed, by many practicing neurologists as a powerful diagnostic tool. Phrenologists were even on the winning side of an important scientific debate concerning a central concept of brain anatomy and function. As more scientific methods began to take hold within medicine, however, and the secrets of the brain began to yield to more careful investigation, phrenology became increasingly marginalized. By the end of the 19th century the last vestiges of phrenology were gone from scientific medicine and mainstream neurology, but not gone completely. Phrenology survives to this day as a classic pseudoscience, with dedicated adherents convinced of its efficacy.
> The history of phrenology, and the story of its modern believers, is a classic one in the history of pseudoscience.
https://theness.com/index.php/phrenology-history-of-a-pseudoscience/
Sound familiar?
Nice read. Thanks Anthony
I remembered reading this item then it really sunk in how much of a fraud Mann was.
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2009/9/29/the-yamal-implosion.html
The Yamal issue had nothing to do with MBH.
“The Yamal issue had nothing to do with MBH.”
Really, do tell? It seems that biased selection of cores used by Briffa are in part responsible for the hockey stick shape of the temperature reconstruction in MBH 98. If that’s not the case, enlighten us.
“If that’s not the case, enlighten us.”
Perhaps you could explain how the Yamal series was responsible for something in MBH98? It was first published in Briffa 2000.
Typical Nick response. Find a post were he can attack one small, nit-picky point and jump all over it.
Nick, people make mistakes, even ones who are interested in topics but not experts. I don’t know ossqss’ or Louis Hooffstetter’s background, but at least they are interested and participating, while you’re being nit-picky and disingenuous.
If you want to attack and ridicule someone, you respond, “The Yamal issue had nothing to do with MBH.”
If you want to engage and educate someone, you should respond, “The Yamal issue had nothing to do with MBH. I think you might be referring to bristle-cone pines.”
Nit-picking trivia. But, when was the Yamal data (numbers and dates and thicknesses) determined?
“Published” is meaningful ONLY if ALL the writers and researchers and editors and reviewers were first, fast, prompt, and ethical.
“Knowledge” of a tree event linking the extra (extended) date sequences would have been sufficient for an unethical author to append data to any sequence. Further, we know by observation of the fault-filled “data” that the “pal reviewers” did not do any credible job, much less a thorough and ethical job.
As I recall, the issue with Briffa was that he used the same PC analysis as Mann. …. not the same tree.
Not a nit pick.
being accurate in audits matters
“Typical Nick response. Find a post were he can attack one small, nit-picky point “
I was responding to ossqss, who wrote
“I remembered reading this item then it really sunk in how much of a fraυd Mann was.”
In fact, the link supplied was about Briffa, not Mann. That is not a “small, nit-picky point”.
If you’ve seen one hokey stick, you’ve seen yamal.
The bigger issue you can argue about how you make a nice wiggly line twist and do anything you like but proxies are not accepted in actual proper science because of the underlying danger. The only disciplines that deal with proxies are statistics, philosophy, computer and social sciences.
If I was allowed to use proxies in science I could prove just about anything because I only have to create some belief for the relationship and all hell breaks loose.
“The only disciplines that deal with proxies are statistics, philosophy, computer and social sciences”
And medicine. Just about every test they take is a proxy for something. Creatine for kidney function, enzymes for liver function, etc.
But of course also mercury expansion as a proxy for temperature, even litmus as a proxy for pH, etc, etc. What about a cloud chamber for particle detection?
Devil’s in the details, isn’t he?
Medicine has had enormous problem BECAUSE they use proxies, we could have a whole discussion about that.
Science by ideology is the issue.
So Nick, this quote would be incorrect then you say?
“Certainly, after its first appearance in Briffa’s 2000 paper in Quaternary Science Reviews, this version of Yamal was seized upon by climatologists, appearing again and again in temperature reconstructions; it became virtually ubiquitous in the field: apart from Briffa 2000, it also contributed to the reconstructions in Mann and Jones 2003, Jones and Mann 2004, Moberg et al 2005, D’Arrigo et al 2006, Osborn and Briffa 2006 and Hegerl et al 2007, among others.”
Today, the hockey stick pointed cold, with a temperature drop from record highs in the 70s to the 30s.
RE: “Mann …. used his experience in defending the “hockey stick” to effectively label himself as a martyr for fighting global warming.”
If he is a ‘martyr’, he is the first martyr to be hoist by his own petard.
This graph still makes me bow my head in shame for what main-stream science is becoming. Through corruption in major universities and government agencies, it has become an arm of propaganda for progressive agendas.
Thank heavens someone is trying to clean up the EPA.
Yes but when will NASA and NOAA get cleaned up? They both have been falsifying temperature data sets by substituting fake numbers that were not in the same data set of their earlier reports. It has happened more than once. Tony Heller has reported on this many times and can show you 3 different reports each a decade a part that used the same data set but was revised twice in the next 20 years.
The fun part is Mann’s work is only valid if you accept his ‘denial ‘ of past climate change . He is a ‘climate change denier ‘
The many other problems with this work merely add to that , and has a ‘hero ‘ of climate ‘science’ it is made clear that the area is a a bit of a joke , although to be fair it does provide an comfortable home for third rate academics , with massive egos , whose professional practice if it was done by a high school student in a science test would be unacceptable.
The only real question is what color will the bus be that his followers will throw him under to save themselves once the infighting starts . And how soon does it arrive . For as the leaked e-mails shows the quality of the Mann can be shown not in how AGW skeptics view him but how his colleagues do.
First, labeling the ordiante “Temperature” is itself a lie. Not one of the proxy reconstructions is grounded in a physical theory. All of them are pseudo-science; every single one.
Second, Steve McIntyre got hold of Mann’s “Back to 1400 CENSORED” directory, that showed beyond doubt that Mann’s 1400 verification step did not pass statistical muster. So, Mann knew the Hockey Stick graph was statistically wrong but published anyway. There’s a word for that.
Third Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick proved beyond any rational doubt (which doesn’t constrain alarmists) that the non-standard short-centering method Mann used falsely elevated the bristle-cone pine time series into position one among the Principle Components.
Effectively, Mann’s graph promotes the series from one tree into a global temperature.
Fourth, even after 20 years, Mann still refuses to reveal central details of his method. Apparently giving complete methodological descriptions is non-standard in science and required only by bullies and oil companies; *certainly* never by real climate scientists(TM).
Finally, Steve McIntyre showed that every single subsequent fake-temperature paleo-proxy graph producing hockey-stick like results just substituted some other hockey-tree, notably the YAD06 tree. Here’s Ross McKitrisk’s retrospective on the controversy.
Mann has gotten away with fraud only because he has been supported by the US National Academy of Science, the American Physical Society, and NASA GISS under the aegis of Gavin Schmidt, all colluders after the fact in the only capital offense in the sciences.
what about the temperature fraud that NASA and NOAA have been committing? Tony Heller has all the evidence. Looking at Tony Hellers resume is looking at a gold standard resume. Alarmists are afraid of Tony Heller.
Practicing real science would be a refreshing noble cause . Something the Climate Gate bullies failed to do .