Last week I was interviewed by friend and colleague Tom Nelson about my journey in the climate wars. The full video and transcript follows, along with a link to the slideshow I prepared.
Understanding the Science Behind Climate Change Headlines | Tom Nelson Pod #242
From Tom Nelson:
Anthony Watts discusses his background and work in debunking misleading climate change headlines. He has spent decades in the media industry and now works for the Heartland Institute, where he provides articles, commentary, and research. Watts is known for his website, “Watts Up With That,” and has faced criticism from climate alarmists.
00:00 Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:27 Anthony Watts’ Background and Contributions
01:58 Climate Realism Show and Hosting Challenges
03:27 Debunking Climate Alarmism
04:02 Misleading Climate Headlines
06:22 Proxy Data and Temperature Records
14:53 Temperature Measurement Issues
24:19 Analyzing Temperature Data Bias
25:30 Questioning the Climate Emergency
26:16 Temperature Adjustments and Media Representation
27:37 Droughts and Natural Variations
28:30 Sea Level Rise Myths
29:49 Ghost Stations and Data Integrity
33:16 Temperature Measurement Evolution
36:05 Global Temperature Estimates and Satellite Data
37:41 The U.S. Climate Reference Network
42:39 Tree Ring Proxies and Historical Climate Data
45:21 Current Climate Debate and Public Perception
46:29 Final Thoughts and Reflections
Anthony’s Slide Show – download here
Transcript – download here
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“my journey in the climate wars”
If ONLY there was a climate war. The skeptics have been canceled by the MSM, most social media, and many politicians. Even many politicians who more or less are skeptics, play along to get along and keep their easy, lucrative jobs. I see no climate war. I’m one of the few people in Wokeachusetts to almost daily send emails to state enviros, greens, politicians, state agencies, etc. But of course I’m almost entirely ignored. Few are willing to rock the boat. I’ve been doing it for 50 years and they have punished me for it- tried to bust me 3 times via the state forester licensing board- all times I beat them off, partly with the help of the ACLU, who’ll defend anybody if it’s about their first amendment rights.
Good comments about tree rings.
When I started to look at this issue 4-5 years ago, I contacted several forestry professors and asked them about it- they had little to say- one recommended me getting “Fundamentals of Tree-Ring Research” by James H. Speer. Nothing in there about tree rings as proxies. I suspect climate “scientists” like Mann invented the idea without talking to actual tree ring experts.
At the same time I got that book, I found on Elsevier, “Concord and discord among Northern Hemisphere paleotemperature reconstructions from tree rings”.
You can see that paper at https://www.climatology.uni-mainz.de/files/2019/03/StGeorge_2019_QSR.pdf
It’s worth a read for anyone interested in tree rings as temperature proxies. Published in 2018.
As for me and my working as a field forester for exactly 50 years- I consider tree rings as having zero value as temperature proxies.
It all started with Harold Fritts’ 1965 paper, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0493(1965)0932.3.CO;2” target=”_blank”>Tree-Ring Evidence for Climatic Changes in Western North America. In 1971 he pioneered applying principle component (PC) analysis to tree ring series, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0450(1971)0102.0.CO;2” target=”_blank”>Multivariate Techniques for Specifying Tree-Growth and Climate Relationships and for Reconstructing Anomalies in Paleoclimate.” His preliminary work on the method goes back to the mid-1950s.
At first, it was legitimate. Fritts extracted numerical constructs and applied them to wetter/warmer — cooler/drier climate regimes. His 1976 book, Tree Rings and Climate, provided a full description of his approach.
At first it was all OK, and stuck to a defensible methodology.
I previously wondered why Fritts didn’t call foul on Mann and others for abusing his (Fritts’) work by claiming to extract physical temperature using his numerical (non-physical) methods.
But then, in 1990 Fritts co-authored a book chapter, “Methods of Calibration, Verification, and Reconstruction” that derived a PC method purporting to extract physical causality. It has everything that might raise the hair on the back of a scientist’s neck: tree ring calibration period, verification period, and the assumption of constant tree growth-response over centuries.
And then in 1994, this book chapter set the final stage: Fritts, & Shaskin, “Modeling tree-ring structure as related to temperature, precipitation, and day length.” pp. 17-57 in Tree rings as Indicators of Ecosystem Health. T. E. Lewis, ed. Unfortunately, the chapter link is unavailable.
It turned out that Fritts’ later work provided the methodological apologia for Michael Mann.
And that’s why Fritts never protested Mann’s abuses. Fritts himself pioneered them.
Pat, thanks for that explanation that none of the many forestry professors I talked to had a clue about- and no mention of that in the book I mentioned. I’ll look at all this further. This can be useful to me as I’m often trying to inform the “forestry community” about the problems with the “climate emergency”. Your critique seems extremely important- it needs to be discussed more, especially in WUWT- since the “tree ring thermometer” thing is a pillar of the climate emergency story.
“Tree Rings and Climate” is an expensive book. I’m interested but not that interested, as a low income retiree.
“It has everything that might raise the hair on the back of a scientist’s neck: tree ring calibration period, verification period, and the assumption of constant tree growth-response over centuries.”
So, nobody has tried to challenge that work in a peer reviewed publication? Yes, I know, peer review has its problems- but if somebody did this, it would be extremely important. If not peer reviewed it’ll be ignored.
Well, there’s Negligence, Non-Science, and Consensus Climatology and the references therein. That was peer-reviewed but it’s been ignored anyway. 🙂
My email address is on the paper webpage, if you’d like a reprint,
Glad you found the discussion of Harold Fritts and his work useful.
I’ll try to find Fritts book in my old college library, U. Mass., Amherst. If they don’t have it- I’ll ask the forestry school there why it’s not there. There is a statewide database for most libraries and it’s not there. If I have to spring for the book, I’ll do it. As a retired forester who is severely skeptical of the climate emergency BS, I need to learn as much as possible about tree rings as phony thermometers so I can use it to confront the climate whack jobs running Wokeachusetts. 🙂
Not only do the climate whack jobs want to end all fossil fuels- and decarbonize everything- they also want to stop all forestry.
Just got your email with the reprint. Thanks. I will want to discuss this topic more here in WUWT. Especially if and when I see a new article focused on this issue.
“Modeling tree-ring structure as related to temperature, precipitation, and day length.”
ROFL!! Where are the insect infestation, prevailing wind during spring rain, cloud, and humidity variables among others in the model?
Far too many climate scientists seem to believe that blackboard statistical analysis of small subsets of reality will allow proper attribution to the chosen “variable”. Did Fritts & Shaskin ever cut wood from a woodlot for fuel to heat with? What factors did they use to choose which trees to cut? Did they ever look at the wood they cut?
Tim, Dannenberg 2021 is a recent critical discussion of the tree ring growth models.
The paper is open access. A critical analysis of the models published here on WUWT would be very welcomed by everyone.
Excellent- printing it now. I think this issue is a potential Achilles heel of the climate cult. My knowledge of climate science is minimal- but I’ll study this topic.
I really don’t have time to analyze this in detail.
“These projected PET-driven decreases in soil moisture across all models led to increases in moisture stress (figures S8 and S9) and decreases in simulated radial growth (figures 5 and S10) over the 21st century in all regions, but especially in the driest regions. ”
I will make this comment. No where in the study is the effect of higher CO2 evaluated at all. The assumption in the study seems to be that increased temperature leads to lower soil moisture. Increased CO2 should lead to higher soil moisture since trees in the presence of higher CO2 are more moisture efficient.
Trees *are* growing larger over the past half-century. This implies higher levels of photosynthesis to support the growth as well as higher nutrient content which is probably soil moisture dependent. Higher soil moisture would dissolve more nutrients thus increasing the trees access.
This study is like so many climate science studies. Short on actual science and high on modeling (i.e. data matching using cherry picked variables).
If a future historian writes an honest account about the fight against climate alarmism fraud, Anthony deserves an entire chapter! Thank you Mr. Watts.
Sabine Hossenfelder recently described Anthony Watts as one of those “deniers”. Maybe……maybe CC is caused by Entropy which never decreases and results in increasing disorder,…..earth’s climate is doomed to ever increasing disorder?
And very good it is.
NOAA certainly needs to get its act sorted out, if we are to get anywhere near measuring the temperature of global land surface accurately. However, while land surface measurements can definitely be called into question, not so much the sea surface temperatures, which do show significant warming, albeit over a much shorter period and with much less coverage than land surface. Clearly land use changes are not being factored correctly into the equation, while sea surface by its very nature, is subject to change. Ice cap decline is another area to observe closely but the record is only decades into existence and ice loss does show some signs of stabilising, at least in the Arctic. The jury is still out and certainly the science is far from settled.
Temperature is a very poor metric to be used for any of this. The enthalpy of the ocean and the atmosphere above it depends on humidity and pressure as well as temperature. It’s enthalpy that determines heat content, not temperature.
Agreed!
The Earth is an energy system that is constantly changing and weather is the result of trying to achieve (and failing) equilibrium.
Anyone using the black body equations needs to adhere to Kirchhoff’s Law and most fail to even consider it.
Very good.
As I remember from old post, you initially accepted the idea of CAGW. Then someone you trusted (a past teacher?) took you to a few of sites that were part the data that went into data behind CAGW. (Between the years Hansen and then Al Gore got headlines.)
You became a skeptic and launched the Surface Station Project.
I may have a few things wrong, but I would liked to have seen more of that in “The Journey” part.
Really nice exposition, Anthony. All sorts of down home examples of bizarre station sitings and confused thinking which any general audience can grasp.
And I have to say, I really identified with the several times your voice cracked in irritation as you talked about all the nonsense you have found, over and yet over again. And it continues.
I didn’t realize that NOAA is more interested in a continuous record than they are in an accurate one.
That one is really strange and well outside the normal procedure or professional view of a working scientist. Those people have really lost the plot of what they should be about.
And your discussion of tree rings was priceless.
Very well done. I enjoyed the whole presentation. Long may it wave.
What Anthony does here, as he has been valiantly been leading on for decades, is to simply present a well-evidenced view, that counters the mainstream media narrative. True scientific hypothesis as well as well established theory, as I understand it, should welcome challenge and critique, in order to either: provide further validation; or to discard (either in part or in whole). Without such critique, true science is dead. I am very suspicious whenever I discern censorship on any issue. But it appears, that as regards climate change, the agenda is set, so that anyone who moves against it, will be attempting to do the equivalent to holding back the tide. Sadly, this is the case. But part of the reason is that there is so much misinformation circulating within all sorts of media, that it’s very hard, almost impossible for Joe Bloggs to discern fact from fiction…….or at least to discern genuine observation-based study from propaganda!
When I was young, in public school science, we were taught that the tree rings legitimately defined tree grow due to temperature.
As I grew up, I came to understand that temperature was the least of it. After all, the canopy kept the ground cooler under a tree than the surrounding environment. CO2, H2O, NO2, fire, insects, mold, and competition from other floral were factors not included in that earlier indoctrination.