Tamino, in his continuing effort to bring every one of Mann’s questionable practices back into the light of day, has stumbled into the treeline11.dat series, which he proclaims triumphally in his most recent post as having a hockey stick shape. This is none other than the notorious Gaspé cedar series, which was analyzed at length in MM2005 (EE).
Tamino purports to be a data analyst capable of criticizing our published corpus. It’s pretty discouraging when a “data analyst” can’t even figure out that treeline11.dat is the Gaspé series and that there are many problems with it
But hey, if Tamino wishes to pick at these scabs, that’s more than fine with me. The Gaspé series illustrates the problems with Team proxy reconstructions, just as well as the bristlecones. Here are some of the problems.
First and this is a big problem. Mann adjusted the treeline11.dat series without disclosing the adjustment. In the entire corpus of 415 MBH series, only one series was extended at its beginning to enable it to avoid a cut-off point (and include it in an earlier network.) You guessed it – the Gaspé series in the AD1400 network, which was a troublesome section of the reconstruction. It is my opinion that the extension of the Gaspé series was not accidental and was done in order to affect results in the AD1400 network. Unique “adjustments” like this are the sort of thing that financial accountants take great exception to. Rob Wilson confirmed to me that “such extrapolation is not a standard approach in the tree-ring community.”
Second, the unique adjustment was not disclosed in the MBH98 footnotes. Worse, the start date of this series was actually misrepresented in the original supplementary information, which listed the series as starting at the “adjusted” start date rather than the true start date. We only noticed the extrapolation when we compared the Mann version to original data. We noted this in MM 2003, but were not then fully aware of the impact.
Third, in the early portion of the Gaspé chronology, there is only one tree – a point that was widely publicized back in 2005. Standard chronological methods require a minimum of 5 cores and preferably more. The early portion of the Gaspé chronology did not meet quality control standards. Again, Wilson confirmed that chronologies should not be used in periods where there is only a single core. If Mann wanted a site from the Jacoby network for his AD1400 network, then one was readily available without having to “adjust” anything. The archived Sheenjek River version goes back to 1186; instead of using this archived version, Mann used a “grey” version. Sheenjek does not have a HS shape. Mann et al 2007 uses the same network as MBH98, not removing the “adjustment” even after it’s been discovered and not using the updated Sheenjek version.
Fourth, the Gaspé series is a cedar chronology. There is no botanical evidence that cedars respond linearly to warmer temperatures. World experts on cedar are located at the University of Guelph, Ross McKitrick’s university. Ross and I had lengthy discussions with these cedar experts about this chronology – they said that cedars like cool and moist climate.
Fifth, the Gaspé chronology was never published in formal literature. There was an informal description in Natural Areas Journal, where the HS shape was observed – with the caution that this shape would have to be confirmed in other sites, mentioning pending cedar sites in Maine and Michigan. Neither of these sites had a HS shape. There is another long cedar chronology in the ITRDB (Lac Duparquet – cana106). This series was listed in the original SI as being used, but was not used, as later admitted in the Corrigendum. It does not have a HS shape.
Sixth, and this is very troubling: an update to Gaspé was done in the early 1990s – the update did not get a HS shape (shown below). This update was never published. I happened to obtain a copy of the update which was shown at CA here. The updated version of the Gaspé series does not have a HS shape. It has never been shown publicly except here at CA. Jacoby and d’Arrigo refused to provide me with either the updated chronology or with the measurement data. D’Arrigo refused to provide the updated information on the basis that the older version was “probably superior with regards to a NH signal”. The updated Gaspé information was taken over 15 years ago and has never been archived. When I objected to NSF, which funded the collection of the update, they took no action to require Jacoby and D’arrigo to archive the missing data.
Seventh, none of Cook, Jacoby or D’Arrigo would provide this information on the location of the Gaspé cedars when I inquired, saying that I wished to re-sample the site. They claimed that the collection was done prior to GPS and that they didn’t know where it was.
The Gaspé series demonstrates in one nice package many different aspects of the problems with Team reconstructions. And yes, that’s Tamino treeline11.dat. Again I refer readers to MM 2005(EE) where the problems with the Gaspé series are discussed at length. Again, Tamino has inaccurately represented the research record.
Climate Audit 
120 Comments
Don’t forget that while Gaspe is used in the NOAMER network, where it is extrapolated back to AD1400 so it can remain in that roster, it also appears on its own as cana036 in the AD1450 network.
We discussed this as far back as our Nature resubmission in March 04: http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/fallupdate04/MM.resub.pdf
Sort of makes you wonder what Tamino is attempting to prove, bringing up these easy bogeys.
Here in NZ we have a political party that has become expert at creating smokescreens, sometimes making policy decisions merely to take media away from an issue that is bubbling under the surface. It seems Tamino may be playing this game with CA. It just seems so silly and surely he realises he is not going to win this.
Ever seen the movie “Wag the Dog”? Nuff said…
Actually, the fact that Tamino will never engage in a give and take debate on these statistical and proxy issues raised on CA means they never have to admit defeat. So unless you read CA, you would never no that there are problems with Taminoa’s “teaching”. So if there are no reprecussions for making mistakes why not just preach to the choir. To bad there doesn’t seem to be a way to get Tamino to respond to CA’s critiques.
Geochemist, I mentioned on another Blog that their hero Tamino was getting his butt kicked left and right on CA
Bob – the question is will Tamino address the specific issues raised on CA and admit it if he finds he made an error or that valids points are being made.
The word “cedar” can be very misleading. Many trees whose wood has an aromatic odor are called “cedars,” but are not, in the botanical sense. The only true cedars are in the Cedrus genus. Most trees called cedars, including all native North American “cedars” are not in that genus. For example, “Eastern red-cedar” is in the Juniperus genus; “Western red-cedar” is thuja plicata; “Atlantic white-cedar” and “Alaska yellow-cedar” are in genus Chamaecyparis. However all of these trees, except juniperus do prefer moist cool environments. I did a little google searching and couldn’t determine the genus for Gaspe cedar, so I don’t know anything about it; it might possibly prefer warmth.
Perhaps Steve’s comprehensive and well constructed presentation at Georgia Tech regarding these issues has motivated some of the bright young students to ask some “difficult” questions in relation to these very influential proxy reconstructions.
Rather than Tamino attempting the divert Steve’s attention, it may be more of an effort on his part to maintain the credibility of false “facts” in an academic environment where some people with inquiring minds are scratching their heads a little.
I would also hope that Tamino will turn his attention next to Cook’s Tasmanian reconstruction (Huon pines- Mount Read). As Steve has pointed out on numerous occasions, Dr Mann weighted this series very heavily. In my opinion his handling of the data has been a disgrace (using obsolete data instead of the Cook’s “adjusted” data that is archived at NOAA).
It is not that I believe for one second that tree ring proxies can determine, within tenths of a degree Celsius, the temperature hundreds or thousands of years ago.
We have to keep in mind a fact (that has been pointed out by numerous posters on numerous threads on this blog) that trees need moisture to grow. Temperature can go up and down, from positive to negative; rainfall on the other hand cannot go below zero.
The rainfall (or moisture from snow melt) response in any particular area can be capped.
The temperature can continue to rise substantially in these situations with no signal from your proxy being possible
Cheers
Gaspe are probably Eastern Red Cedar, the same type Cedar Point in Ohio is named after and the same type they make nice furniture and decorative boxes out of in various cottage industries around the Great Lakes.
Steve, it’s traditional to stop kicking your opponent once they are on the ground. You proved your point, no need to keep pummeling him.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/metadata/noaa-tree-3032.html
Thuja occidentalis L
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thuja_occidentalis
a ha!
Why do these guys (like Tamino) bring a pocket knife to a gun fight? If the paleo data “don’t matter” why such vigorous defense of the indefensible?
Hans…. shhhhhhh! Wouldn’t want the biological sciences to get involved. 😉
Or maybe it’s time. I can’t think of a better set of challenges that could benefit from strong multidisciplinary input.
As they say, laughter is the best medicine! 😀
Petty comment: When a tree’s common name is confused with a recognized genus name, a hyphen is used. e.g., it’s Douglas-fir, rather than Douglas fir, because it is not a true fir (Abies spp), it is Pseudotsuga (false hemlock). (I surmise that the man, Douglas, for whom the tree is named, didn’t know too much botany). So we have Western red-cedar, Atlantic white-cedar, etc., because they are not in the Cedrus genus. 🙂
Re 17 jae
Where did you dig up this pseudo-convention on monenclature? It is certainly not global. There is no substitute for botanic names. That is correct science.
jae: continuing off-topic, I had drawings and specs for a house I bought in Oakland, the original specs from 1936. The framing wood was specified to be “Oregon Pine,” or “O.P.,” which turned out to be what I have always called “doug-fir.”
Re dondro in general
Although I have not looked exhaustively, I have never seen a comparison of two or several trees growing adjacent to each other, in terms of between-tree errors for both dendrochronology and dendrothermometry. One would have thought this to be a good starting point on the road to trust.
BTW, when the genus and the species adequately define a plant, the convention is that the genus starts with upper case and the species with lower; and both are italicised, as in Thuja plicata.
RE5 Geochemist
Your description of Taminoland sounds like a church.
OK, what am I missing? I do not see how Tamino’s PCA #5 post is related to this a all. And I do not see how this somehow rebuts the pro-NC-PCA stance in Tamino’s last post either.
Geoff, 18:
I learn’t it in dendrology class. 🙂
geoff:
Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa. I thought I was getting picky here, LOL.
Hans Erren (#14) writes,
How so?
More trivia: In Australia the common names really get weird. They have “redwood,” “cherry,” and many other common names that usually refer to a given genus; and they are all Eucalyptus! (Geoff, see the italics 🙂 )
Hu McCulloch writes
I think this identifies it as a strip-bark species. But I’m just guessing.
13, Hans, re Thuja Occedentlis :
Don’t know much about that species, but Thuja plicata does exceptionally well in the Inland Empire, which has very hot dry summers. The largest Western red-cedar mill in the world is now at Lewiston, Idaho.
And just so we’re clear, chronologies from strip-bark species appear to be Fraught.
Yes, the long-lived cedar in Ontario are strip bark. Larson and cedar specialists have probably investigated the phenomenon as a botanic phenomenon more thoroughly than the bristlecone folks.
Christopher says:
Tamino could probably do a wonderful PCA analysis using the number of people named Smith, Singh and Wang and use that to create a hockeystick. However, that does not mean the result is meaningful. The issue with Tamino is he keeps picking the few datasets which have a dubious connection to temperature and claiming that they prove that the Mann hockey stick is real representation of global temperatures.
What is the initial reference for the Gaspé Cedar series? (Is there one?) Was the study focused on finding temperature-limited trees, precipitation-limited trees, or a general study of ring-width?
If dendro enthusiasts wish for a high, try a search for “BIF” (or as we say for short, banded iron formation) which is a rock type widespread in the iron ore province of the Pilbara of Western Australia. Careful visual analysis has matched the extensive microbanding from sites hundreds of Km apart. The science of the mechanism is not settled by the mature community of geologists, so it is not incorporated into models or forecasts.
The beaut thing for dendros is that the BIF record extends back billions of years. Imagine the proxy potential there!!! Why, one might find a way to correlate it with the most novel and important global events ever. (And it has no strip bark).
jae, not being prickly, just helping spread correct science with nomenclature conventions. OK with you?
OK, so you looked at BIF and found the banding of limited use.
Why not try the zebra Equus burchelli and others, because it has banding too. We took our granddaughters to a zoo where a male zebra with black undercarriage down was grazing. “Look” said one of them “that zebra is losing a black stripe”. Strip wood again?
#13,14 :
# 30 :
Be careful not to confuse live bark with dead bark. Those bristlecones with the good signal have lost part of their living bark (cortex), which means at least that they cannot grow in width at the damaged location. Destroying the cortex around the whole tree is an approved means to kill it. On the other hand, peeling a corch tree from dead bark (corch) over all the height of its trunk leaves it essentially unharmed, with the expectation of more harvests to get. Some trees drop their dead bark regularly in form of strips (Thuja, Eucalyptus) or in plaques, like plantains.
Re Ulises #35 Correct.
ok here is a picture of the bark
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abendl%C3%A4ndischer_Lebensbaum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thuja_occidentalis
#35. You say:
What on earth do you mean by “bristlecones with the good signal”? What is a “good signal” versus a “bad signal”? The NAS panel said that strip bark trees should be “Avoided”.
Now one problem in this field is that, to my knowledge, there are no technical studies analyzing the impact of strip barking on ring widths in a detailed way. Pete Holzmann took some careful samples last summer in our Almagre project and we found huge pulses in some strip bark trees – hugely non-normal distributions, 6-7 sigmas.
So if you’ve got small networks as so common in dendro studies, all you need is a couple of strip bark trees to really skew the distribution and all you end up measuring is whether you’ve got a couple of strip bark trees.
Re#22, the relation is that Tamino brought up this proxy on his thread. As Steve wrote, “Tamino..has stumbled into the treeline11.dat series, which he proclaims triumphally in his most recent post as having a hockey stick shape.” Search for “treeline,” or “proxy #9” on Tamino’s thread, and there you have it.
The points Steve makes here have to do with the issues with the proxy, not the entirety of Tamino’s thread. Nevertheless, Tamino explicitly presented one hockey shaped proxy on that thread which is not part of PC #1 or PC #2 for the North American ITRB, and this was it…seemingly blissfully ignorant of all the issues with it.
#22 (Christopher): Tamino’s “treeline11” is the Gaspé series. There’s nothing new to the fact that you get a hockey stick even when removing completely the noamer PCs in AD1400 step; the Gaspé series takes care of that. So the whole last part of Tamino’s post is rather meaningless. Steve is here just giving a brief overview of the problems with the series.
And what comes to Tamino’s arguments in the beginning of the post, could you (I’m banned there) ask your master to illustrate (mathematically) the following “conclusion”, which is rather central to the “pro-NC-PCA stance in Tamino’s last post”:
telling…
Is the growth of trees affected by the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.
While I am not a botanist, I am a chemical engineer. Since the formation of cellulose is basically a chemical reaction of atmospheric CO2, shouldn’t the growth rate be dependent on the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere?
Is this taken into account in tree ring studies?
Tamino is not engaging in science but public relations. It doesn’t matter whether he is right or wrong since his challenge to M & M is about producing a media soundbite. The soundbite goes something like “Mann shown to be correct after all” or “Hockey Stick real after all”. See who reports on Tamino’s “breakthrough” or links to him and you will understand his purpose.
It appears that strip-bark species are susceptible to CO2 fertilization. If you search this site for “strip bark” you’ll get loads on this. Our gracious host has posted recently that too much has been made of this in his opinion. I looked for that post but could not find it.
re 15: (Craig Loehle)
Yes. It smells like Tamino is up to something and really is not interested in scientific discussion with CA, but is deliberately provoking CA to respond to matters that have already been covered…
#40 (Jean S)
OK, I had missed the link between what bit of MBH data Tamino was examining and how spurious that same data’s use as a meaningful proxy is. [I’m sure many reader’s missed that to, fwiw.] In terms of “illustrat[ing] (mathematically) the following “conclusion”…” I believe that is what the initial Latex equations are meant to do. T talks of being nearly parallel and how that is sufficient to validly use a non-centered PCAs in this context. I can follow the algebra bit am unsure what relevance it has to he whole discussion. That’s still the link I’m missing. SM and T somehow getting together is a pipe dream. This back and forth of the blogs is as close as it will get and for the last exchange the “discussion” quality seems more tenuous than in previous exchanges.
Just to follow-up: When T says “First, here’s the result of regressing NH temperature from GISS against all 22 proxies using multiple regression:” He’s talking about Gaspe only then? I know this (his) is a sandbox post but forgive me for still being confused.
The trees that Hans shows are certainly not strip-barked.
#46 (Christopher): He’s showing that if an eigenvalue of a covariance matrix Z (i.e. from “centered PCA”) is parallel (or orthogonal) to an offset vector (“the new-origin vector c_a”), then the eigenvector is also an eigenvector of the what-ever-matrix Y (i.e. from short-centered “PCA”). Eigenvectors are PCA weights given to proxies. Now, in the paragraph I quoted, he claims (that’s why I wrote “conclusion”) that it is indeed the situation with respect to the 4th eigenvector of the centered PCA and the off-set vector stemming from short-centered analysis in the the North American ITRDB data. However, I’m unable to replicate that. In fact, I got that the angle between those two vectors is approximately 64 degrees. Since, at least according to him, I’m “amateurish”, it is very likely that I miscalculated/-understood something. That’s why I’m interested if he could actually illustrate the point.
#47: From then on. The result without the Gaspe series, you could see essentially from Figure 4 in this post. The Gaspe series is there called “the ‘Queen Anne’ series”.
#38 Steve :
Same as you and the NAS panel, but alas, I did not put the quotes around “good signal” to mark it as irony. Sorry for that.
#49: “Eigenvalue” in the first line of #49 should be “eigenvector”.
Re: 45
Patrick M.
I attempted to make that precise point a few days ago on another CA thread. Reid [#43] had probably put his finger in the very purpose of Tamino’s exercise.
PS: Erik [11] That’s the rule in the romantic litterature rule, never during the actual fight…
I wonder if Tamino’s exercise is aimed at keeping Steve McIntyre ditracted from a serious paper on Almagre, which I feel would be really damaging to the hockey stick group?
It’s delusionary to defend the hockey blade, when current evidence has a blade pointing downwards. You evaluate Tamino as if he were rational. In a cooling world, warmists suffer from cognitive dissonance as the world realizes that the role of CO2 in climate has been exaggerated. Look at the NPR report, which talks about a cooling atmosphere and colder oceans, but ends with ‘we just don’t know where all the warmth is going’. There is madness loose in the land.
====================================
Kim, I’m glad to see that someone else picked up on that too. In the beginning of the NPR report, they has to say something along the lines of: that although all data says one thing, their data must be wrong. If a science reporter can’t pick up on what is wrong with that thinking, then I’ve given up hope that the media will ever report the truth. We’ll be 20 years into an ice age and they’ll still be talking about how the earth is going to off-the-charts hot any moment.
“Open Mind” regular “Dhogaza” repeatedly refers to Tamino as “HB,” which would seem to rule out Grant Foster. Why do Mosh and others think he or she is Foster?
HB = Hansen’s Bulldog, I reckon.
HB = Hansen’s Bulldog
Thomas Huxley was Charles “Darwin’s Bulldog”
Tamino has styled himself “Hansen’s Bulldog”
re 56. We figured it out a while back. Then to test the assumption I posted posts to RC with
the name Grant Foster. Something innocuous like, “great post gavin” it was blocked.
I did the same thing at Tamino’s site and at Eli’s site. All blocked.
I changed my IP and tried again, this time putting hints in the text like ” i GRANT you this
will FOSTER some lively conversation….” blocked.
So, that confirmed it for me. not 100% but hey…
Another fun thing to do is to post to RC using the name Betsy Ensley. That’s a really deep inside joke.
Hu,
Tamino revealed himself with this post at RC http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/09/climate-insensitivity/ and this referenced submittal http://www.jamstec.go.jp/frsgc/research/d5/jdannan/comment_on_schwartz.pdf , although a few RC posters either couldn’t make the connection or didn’t want to call attention to it for other RC readers (as shown in the comments). I guess you can’t submit a paper for publication under the name “Tamino” with your address being of the WWW variety.
Sorry for the lurker intrusion, but have to say
Surely tamino doesn’t mind being known as Grant Foster? Since he posted as Grant Foster here:
http://www.allthingsbeautiful.com/all_things_beautiful/2006/12/politicizing_an.html
And then crossed referenced on his own site here:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2006/12/18/same-old-same-old/
Re #61, Just because “Tamino” has posted a detailed summary of the comment by Foster, Annan, Schmidt and Mann does not mean he is Foster. He could as easily be one of the other 3, or just a 5th party who happened to be partial to the comment.
But no big deal. If “Tamino” signed his articles with a real name I might pay more attention to him.
#61,
Or there is a connection with Mr. Schwartz..
Are you certain you have the correct variable star observer?? Those documents, unless you can show me what I missed, don’t prove much, at least as I see it now.
It will just be retitled to “Climate Change”, (as it currently is). The cause will always be anthropogentic. This whole cause was always in reality, a political cause.
#62,
That’s a good connection. Other possibilities are,
1. “Tamino” merely copied the “Grant Foster” posting without credit
2. “Grant Foster” was “Tamino’s” “George Fox” (think: Eliot Spitzer’s pseudonym)
Any other identifying connections?
“So, that confirmed it for me. not 100% but hey…”
Mosh, I won’t finish that line. But where are your ratings on the likelyhood and your error bars and confidence intervals?
Bramps says:
The writing style in the Grant Foster post is classic Tamino. e.g.:
“It’s a common tactic of denialists to claim that we’re so ignorant we don’t know anything about climate. Certainly there’s a lot we don’t know. But there’s a lot we do know. And here’s the bottom line: greenhouse gases absorb infrared radiation, trapping heat near the surface of the earth. This isn’t fancy-shmancy computer modelling; it’s basic physics.”
No doubt in my mind.
I found the one at #62 above doing a quick search at work (during compile times honest) and another “Grant Foster” that posted on an Irish Trad site in 2001 that had the email address starting with tamino. BTW no fancy hacking, the email address appeared in the google results window but was hidden on the actual page.
I could post the evidence for this inconclusive second link but…
BTW No implied criticism of him from me because I’m not qualified, And I wont be surprised if this is struck off as off topic, but I think like most people if he’s posting reasoned stuff on proxies it seemed to me interesting to clear up just who he may be and what his meta-interests are. Still not 100% sure though.
Lurk on.
And also classic combination of two things in one; GHG absorb IR is one thing, that’s the part that warms the atmosphere. Trapping heat near the surface of the Earth is another thing, that’s the re-emission of longwave radiation in the downward direction.
RE: #62 – busted.
Of course, Grant Foster may also be a pseudonym – derived by switching the order of Foster Grant.
RE original post,
The big difference between Gas (Gaspe presumably) and “Ed Gas” (?? Gaspe) in the figure is not that Gas extends a few years beyond Ed Gas, but in their overlapping behavior since 1950 or so, with Ed Gas hockeysticking, but Gas just slogging along pinkishly. Is Gas a composite of several trees, or just a single tree? Was it based on the same tree(s) as Ed Gas, or a separate sample? Anyway, what does Ed Gas stand for, and who collected it?
The reference Steve gives to the vintage CA thread on “Jacoby #1: A few good trees” at https://climateaudit.org/?p=29 includes an amazing communication by Jacoby that may as well be entitled “A Manifesto for Cherry Picking.” For this he gets NSF support??
I suspect that the Gaspe “cedars” are in fact Genus Prunus, species Avium.
I’m thinking about inviting Steve and Tamino to the local temperature station, lighting the BBQ and letting them work this out face to face.
The first link to other sites on Tamino’s website is the AAVSO which is the institution Grant Foster previously worked for. Lots of coincidences for Tamino to not be Grant Foster including co-authoring papers with Gavin, Annan and Mann.
Either that or Tamino is plagiarizing Grant Foster’s posts.
Let me bring you up to speed. My name is Wayne Campbell. I live in Aurora, Illinois, which is a suburb of Chicago — excellent. I’ve had plenty of joe-jobs, nothing I’d call a career. Let me put it this way: I have an extensive collection of nametags and hairnets. OK, so I still live with my parents, which I admit is both bogus and sad. However I do have a cable access show — and I still know how to party. But what I’d really like is to do “Wayne’s World” for a living. It might happen, tsshyeah, right, and monkeys might fly out of my butt.
Ed Gas is the original Gaspe series collected by Ed Cook in 1984. Gas is the update collected by Jacoby and D’Arrigo c 1991. The original collection had about 30 cores if I remember correctly. I don’t know how many were in the 2nd collection since the measurements were never reported or archived. I was sent this graph by someone, who thought it would interest me, but who couldn’t send me the measurements.
#73. Jacoby’s associate Rosanne D’Arrigo told an astonished NAS panel that “you have to pick cherries if you want to make cherry pie”. They didn’t mention this exchange in their report for some reason.
That was the day before Mann said to a speechless panel that he didn’t calculate the verification r2 statistic as that would be a “foolish and incorrect thing to do”.
Steve,
Do you remember this? (exerpted from a longer post by JEG)
Why pick at scabs?
With posters on the Tamino blog extolling the virtues of the BCP (and other) proxy series being teleconnected to ENSO conditions I wonder if that day is coming soon. A bit of testing of the waters to see what arguments will have to be “dismissed” perhaps.
Sorry, quote didn’t go in.
Re #77, 78, 73,
Thanks for reminding me of D’Arrigo’s comment. I remember your mentioning it a while back, but didn’t at first tie it in with Jacoby “a few good trees” post at http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=29.
The Jacoby and D’Arrigo Gaspe cherry orchard is sounding almost as “fruitful” as the BCPs! The MBH reliance on a single (somewhat extrapolated) Gaspe tree to get back to 1400 pales in comparison to how blatantly they cherry-picked the 20th century.
This should become a textbook example of how not to do statistics!
(A special thanks is also in order to “Tamino,” whoever he may be, for keeping this NSF-funded scandal on the front burner.)
#81. You could make a great statistics seminar on all of this. It would be good for economics or business or engineering students since it would make the topics very lively and many insights transpose nicely to economics or finance.
There’s a somewhat mystifying cultural divide when one comes to climate scientists who are either genuinely baffled by these sorts of issues for some reason or going nyah-nyah-nyah I can’t hear you.
I think that a lot of the problem comes from the “signal” metaphor transposed into proxies. They assume that everything contains a “signal”, whereas people with business or social science experience don’t make such assumptions. The word “proxy” itself is laden with assumptions. Someone in economics would be very cautious about saying that a tech stock price index on the Hyderabad Exchange is a “proxy” for world economic activity. Or the PC4 of rice prices in different Uttar Pradesh municipalities. But Mannian climate scientists would simply assert that this was a proxy for world “economic fields” and proceed from there.
Very well put Steve.
Hu McCulloch says:
‘I suspect that the Gaspe “cedars” are in fact Genus Prunus, species Avium‘
Prunus avium was introduced into the USA in the 1600s and moved west in the 1800s at about the time global warming started.
Perhaps they really are to blame.
Re#63, #64,
Your comments were within 22 minutes of my comment…maybe you went through the RC post and the paper too quickly?
The suspicions alone from Tamino revealing what he knows about this “submitted” but otherwise unreferenced paper is substantial. His details practically amount to plagiarism of the paper, unless you believe that Tamino and Grant Foster simultaneously came up with the same ideas separately and then connected with each other to share that fact before Tamino’s post. Of course, Tamino “could” be one of the co-authors, but enough is know about them for this not to be the case. The ethical situation of these separate entities of Foster and Tamino subsequently going their separate ways with Foster submitting for publication with other RC folks while Tamino spills the guts of the article on RC itself ahead of publication seems extremely questionable and illogical.
Aside from the ethical and RC logic isses, how about Foster et al and Tamino independently performing the exact same analysis at the same time? If you want to be lazy about it, look at Fig 1b in the paper and compare to Tamino’s post – identical chart down to lineweights, font and size, scales, etc. Coincidence?
Tamino also mucked-up a tad in his post, saying, “We ran 5 simulations of an AR(1) process with a 5-year time scale…” Who exactly is “we” that did these simulations when Tamino is supposed to be doing a guest post? It seemed like maybe a botched cut, paste, and re-phrase job from the paper, which was a “we” job.
There were plenty of blogs at that time which noted this was the “outing” of Tamino. There was even an ardent supporter of RC and Tamino who had posted that he was happy to see Foster et al submitted for publication but regretted that it resulted in Tamino’s outing. To my knowledge, Tamino never openly admitted anything, nor would RC let any “revealing” posts through. But other sites did.
It’s really no big deal to me what his real name is, but you’ve got a place to start if you do care in finding out.
Pp. 85-87 of the MM05 article Steve cites in his original post above raises a potentially very important issue for the BCPs, and perhaps even also for the Gaspe cherry — uh cedar — trees, namely sheep grazing. As MM already point out, sheep will tend to clear out competing growth. (Great photo on p. 87!) But they also fertilize the area with their manure!
Another possible relevant factor might occur if they gnaw on the bark when they can’t find grass. If so, this could be what causes the “stripbark” pattern that leads to the notorious stripbark growth surge. This could explain why so much stripbark seems to have occurred in the last century or so, and not so much in earlier centuries.
So why is Sheep Mountain called Sheep Mountain if not because of the sheep??
Hu:
Elk are also notorious for chewing on bark when the snow is deep. And elk herds have been driven to the highlands by civilization. IIRC, they used to be essentially plains animals.
Still the sound of crickets chirping over there at Taminoland. He’s made a diversion from science to writing posts supporting Obama.
There are two odd statistical matters in Tamino’s RC post #5 I’d like to mention, involving his regression toward the end of NH temperature over 1880-1980 (101 obs) on the MBH 22 proxy set.
First, this is apparently a “direct” regression, rather than the “indirect” CCE approach used (in over-simplified form) by MBH. Doing it in this manner greatly flattens the reconstruction to an extent that even MBH would not obtain.
And second, he claims that because he has not set aside a “verification” period, he has no way of testing if the regression has any validity. This is nonsense — the standard Regression F statistic (which is a simple transform of R2) provides an F test of the hypothesis that all the coefficients (apart from the intercept) are 0, and therefore that the data set has some explanatory power. Out of 22 regressors with zero true coefficients, we would expect 1.1 to be spuriously significant at the 5% level, and 2.2 to be spuriously significiant at the 10% level, so just finding 1 or 2 proxies that are individually “significant” based on their t-statistics is not necessarily meaningful unless the Regression F statistic is significant for the full wheelbarrow of regressors. A similar test of joint significance is also available using CCE (see previous CA thread “UC on CCE”).
In any event, setting aside a “verification period” strikes me as an odd way to test for significance, given the availability of standard t and F stests on the full sample regression. Using a verification period does not even guard against data mining, since an unscrupulous researcher could simply search for regressors that give good verification statistics. If one is worried about the stability of the full-sample regression, one could always just do a “switching regression test” (aka Chow test) to test for equality of coefficients in the first and second half of the full sample, but still use the full sample coefficients for prediction etc. This is kind of like simultaneously validating the first half with the second half and the second half with the first half, but better, IMHO. Tamino at least uses his whole sample to fit his regression.
Bramps says:
I’ve had several instances in my travels where there have been attempts to unmask online sockpuppets and pseudonyms. One of the things that I’ve seen used successfully in those attempts is linguistic analysis, and in particular linguistic quirks that can act as a kind of stylistic “fingerprint”. A written form of a personal shibboleth, if you will.
One of the things that really stands out for me in the comparison of the referenced “Grant Foster” comment posted at All Things Beautiful (and cross-posted at Tamino’s site) is the consistent use of the misspelling “concensus”. “Grant Foster” uses it repeatedly, and goes so far as to “correct” the referenced use of the word consensus in the post to which he responds.
If I Google search Tamino’s site for the term “concensus” (WordPress search only posts, not posts and comments), I find 17 different posts where either the post itself and/or comments and responses by Tamino use that term (in many cases multiple times).
Across all of Tamino’s site, every single instance of the usage of “concensus” appears to be written by Tamino, save only two comments: one single comment by “cobblyworlds”, when responding to a post by Tamino which utilized that particular spelling, and one comment by “Pat S”.
That’s it. Every other usage (and there are a *lot*) appears to be directly attributable to Tamino. So Tamino has a habit of using that quirky spelling, and so does Grant Foster… but almost no one else at Tamino’s site does.
I’d wager that others with more time (or more of an inclination) could find and point out other linguistic quirks of Tamino, but this appears to be an obvious red flag to me. With the term “consensus” utilized so much in discussions of global warming, I find it odd that “both” Grant Foster and Tamino would so frequently and regularly misspell it, while so few others in the discussion would. These are supposed to be highly intelligent individuals, right?
Michael Jankowski @ 85:
Don’t you see, its not plagiarism at all — its teleconnection. You silly CA people simply don’t understand that brain waves consist of high frequency signals that are local to the individual and low frequency signals which are “global”, i.e., shared within a spacial network of climate scientists. All one needs to do is simply filter out the high frequency local signals and become one with the low frequency signals. Reading someone else’s paper helps with the filtering process.
Kristen – that is quite funny, a very amusing mental picture.
Marine_Shale – yes, I think you are onto something. One of them “Ian” appeared to be probing over at Wattsupwiththat, along those very lines of logic (or reputed logic).
Lots of education will be needed to counter it. Most people are really clueless about how different things are East of the Sierra, versus West of it. The White – Inyo mountains have more in common with the Humboldt Range than they do with most ranges in California. The best source of moisture for Western Great Basin BCPs is the collective impact of snow bearing storms originating near the Canadian Arctic Shore and coming straight down from the North. Hmmm … how would that jibe with ENSO?
Hi,
91, MPaul
I think this is a better view of Tamino.
Two quick questions.
First:
If this is true, shouldn’t the entire dataset be thrown out? Is the climate world that hard up for tree data, impossible to reproduce data is still used? Why even bother to go outside and look at the trees, if other scientists simply accept your data on face value, why not just make it up, if you are not going to give evidence that the data is valid?
Second:
I few people have noticed that Tamino has moved on to a political venue, does anyone here believe Steve or Anthony could endorse any political opinions without being eviscerated by the Alarmist Blogs out there? Just curious?
#90
Excellent!
Google the blog he links so too:
– “surf.bird.scribble” tamino –
and you’ll see tamino id’s himself as a mathematician and makes other comments.
Re # 73 Hu McCulloch
I can see the fun in the reference to Prunus (=cherry, cherry picking etc) but I miss the “Avium” (which should have a small a, avium), which is a reference to birds.
Of course, I might have missed the real point that there is a real tree of this name, simply called “Wild Cherry”, from which most cherries cultivated for fruit derive. But its provenance is Europe (incl. UK) and West Asia. (ref. Hillier Manual).
Re # 50 Ulises
I also assumed that ‘good strip barks’ was meant with an oxymoron connotation. In my post # 36 when I said “correct” I was referring to different processes of bark shedding or removal.
One has to take care when overlapping another discipline. Both Pinus aristata and Pinus longaeva Bailey carry the common name of “Bristle Cone Pine”, a good reason to avoid common names. The latter was recognised in 1970 but its leaves lack white resin spots found on the former. There is no Cedrella (cedar) genus native to North America. Thuja plicata and Thuja occidentalis are native to N America, while Thuju orientalis originated from west China. I have followed some of the paths of George Forrest who gave many of the west China plants botanical names, with guides from the renowned Kunming Institute of Botany.
Soil testing will probably be of no help. I used to own a soil test lab and can comprehend the difficulties of interpretation. Especially with long-growing trees, you really need the information over the whole growing cycle – and on a frequency that accounts for sporadic, unseasonal events that so much determine if a tree will live or die, or have thin or thick rings, or have an inverted U response curve to some factors, as I continue to stress.
Geoff This might be what he means:
http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/hort/consumer/poison/Prunuav.htm
Sweet cherry Toxic if eaten
Re #77, 78, 81, 82, Here is Tamino’s graph of MBH Proxy 16, aka the Gaspe “treeline11” series:
(Compare “Ed Gas” in Steve’s original post.) In Jacoby’s communication to CC, quoted by Steve way back in his 2005 post on “A Few Good Trees”,, Jacoby explained that his research strategy was
Specifically, he and D’Arrigo took the 36 series collected previously by Ed Cook, and selected the 10 that has the “best” correlation to climate data for his published results.
Steve mentioned that he had tried simulating the Jacoby-D’Arrigo “methodology” using random numbers, and came up with a hocky stick, but didn’t give an example. Below is my own attempt at this:
The blue line is the average of 36 randomly generated AR(1) series with rho = .95 and scaled so that the average has unit variance. The red line is the average of the 10 “best” of these, where “best” is defined to be the realizations with the biggest rise between 1850 and 1980. This average was scaled to be comparable to the first, abstracting from the selection procedure.
Since the cherry picking process selects series that are unusually high in 1980 and/or are unusually low in 1850, the shaft of this HS has a pronounced decline to 1850, followed by a sharply rising blade that ends at record highs in 1980, much like Tamino’s treeline11 aka Proxy 16 series.
As Tamino so aptly put it, the Gaspe Proxy 16 data
Thanks for bringing the Gaspe issue back to everyone’s attention, Tamino! It looks like there’s more than one way to stick it to a gullible public with bogus data manipulation, as well!
Cherry picking disclaimer: OK, so I tried a few different seeds for my RNG, and picked the one that best illustrated the point…
Re Geoff Sherrington #96, Mike Davis #98, with a little further reading, it appears that the Prunus cerasus, or tart cherry, is preferred for cherry pies, while the Prunus avium (with a small a per Geoff) is the sweet cherry (Bing, Ranier, etc) preferred for direct snacking.
Since, as Steve pointed out in #78 above,
Tamino’s beloved Gaspe treeline11 series would clearly be Prunus cerasus rather than P. avium.
BTW, I was surprised to learn from Mike’s link that sweet cherry pits (and wilted leaves and twigs) are highly toxic. I hope this is only if you chew them!
#99. This looks very similar to my calculations. I did simulations using AR coefficients drawn from the available JAcoby sites picking 10 of 36 and calculating the “hockey-stick-ness” of the product. The JAcoby index was almost median.
We never said that Mann’s PC1 (a form of automated cherry picking) was the only way to cherry pick data. There’s the old fashioned way (Jacoby) – simply cherry pick manually.
The logic of Tamino and his ilk never seems to rise above – we can cherry pick using methods other than the PC1; therefore you’re wrong.
Spending time on worrying about who Tamino is and discussing it here is probably at least one of the things that all of this was meant to do.
Who cares if it’s Grant Foster or Foster Grant or Jody Foster or Racer X. 🙂
Lurk Off
I admit I do have a problem, within my limited understanding, of the problem of the identity of tamino (I do know who he is now for my own curiosity)
For example, I found it annoying how the journos gave Joe Klein a hard time when he was eventually found out to be the author or Primary Colors. I guess they felt bad they didn’t spot it themselves. They could have looked to their own inadequacies but they chose not to.
However, as far as I know, he didn’t give himself glowing reviews on his own work before he was found out.
That’s the trouble. You never get congratulated for a negative.
Lurk on .
Re # 102 Sam Urbinto
I dislike pseudonyms in scientific work because they conceal possible connections of influence. I’d like to know Tamino’s identity so I can check his past and present associations and publications, then place a mental index on his utterances. It worries me that so much IPCC work was infiltrated by activists of the type that risked the lives of others by driving metal spikes into trees due for harvest. I do not see this type of activism as compatible with credible science, I see it as a sick mind. BTW, there are indications that deceit was used to avoid unmasking; and I do not see lying as a scientific property of value, either.
Rule #1 in Boy Scouts: never eat a hot-dog or marshmallow cooked on a cherry branch. Learned that tidbit when I was actually a Bear Scout (still a cub in other words).
Mark
Keep away from the oleander as well.
In all of this discussion, don’t forget that curve shape still doesn’t prove anything (whether you agree with Tamino or not) – at best, it would still just be correlation, not causation.
Of course, the odds of causation probably decrease significantly if there is no correlation.
>> Steve, it’s traditional to stop kicking your opponent once they are on the ground.
Viking tradition says to only leave one person from the village alive. I urge Steve to follow viking tradition, within the non-violent confines of civilized debate.
108 (Gunnar): I second Gunnar’s point. Leif
The one soul you leave alive should at least be able to tell a good story. Otherwise, take no prisoners, leave no witnesses. That’s an ancient Prussian proverb I just made up.
re 104. GS I always love your comments and perspective. its a fresh of breath air.
Kinda off topic but a month back I gave an interview to a writer from the Economist who extolled the virtues of being anonymous. His point was this. By being anonymous he was much more likely to take input and revisions from others ( since he didnt OWN the final thoughts) and he felt a liberty to change his mind going forward without worrying about this nonsense about consistency.
In some ways this attachment we have to understanding the history of the person holding the view is a distraction. Some days I think: “Show me your facts, show me your math, stuff your CV where the sun dont shine, sideways.” Other times I am interested in the background, but not for the truth of the matter, rather for the flavor.
Anyway, I always enjoy your posts. Cheers
My apologies for botanical references throwing this OT.
The important parts are Steve’s lead in and responses like #99 Hu McCulloch. Let’s stay focussed on these.
The broad issue is not whether cyanide in cherry pips is toxic, it’s more about whether contaminated science is poisonous. (I have no doubt that it is).
Example after example of contaminated science is being presented and the theme is starting to get promoted to John Citizen. Others wiser than I have commented on the need for greater visibility of the defects found. How about some concentration on data dissemination to the public – some novel ideas, some volunteers with friends and rellies in the PR business, journos, etc? I live in Australia and we are not globally significant to do this. Has to be seeded in Nth America and Europe. I’m sure some French would be independent enough to speak out, for example, they have shown an ability to buck the Party Line.
The Message Board would be a good place to start. Top left of screen, just below the orange “Make a Donation”, a good idea too.
Geoff:
My point was that when these pucks were thrown out onto the ice, the intent may have been to get the players not using the one that was actually in the game.
🙂
#112 – Geoff. My feeling precisely. These CA threads are fascinating and compelling
but I promise you that while we discuss who Tammany (sic) really is, snip
Since Tammy has decided to attack Basil with some rather spicy comments
I asked Tammy if he had any response to the Question surrounding the Gaspe series.
Seeing after all how he was teachin everybody how to analyze them data.
The Post was spiked in a typical tammy trantrum.
To paraphrase TS eliot, this is how the fight ends, not with bark, but tammy’s whimper.
He sits in his corner, Gaspe ing for air and picks a fight he thinks he can win to avoid one he knows he’s losing.
Open mind has closed for lack of Inventory
He’s quit posting my comments, now, too. Apparently Tamino’s tired of me ‘witnessing my faith’ in the ironic words of Hank Roberts. There is a new term for skeptics; now we can be called sun-worshippers.
===================================
re 116. He made a huge deal about admitting mistakes, so I asked him about the
Mann mistake WRT geographical locations. Easy to correct, just suggest that Mann do this
Tamino. Nope, only basil, anthony,goodridge have to admit mistakes.
More and more people are not getting past the Tammy filter, only those that agree with his views, or fail to ask the hard questions.
He still allows others to “jump on” the scientists, but at least these are scientists that are willing to show their work. Again and again, I’ve seen how eager he is to rip into a paper. Just not the pro-AGW ones.
Too bad, because he DOES show basic lessons on certain subjects. He just doesn’t want to use that ability to explain data handling on the pro-AGW papers.
So Grant Foster, show us how your field pertains to Climate Science. If other “climate scientists” have to put up with the “google search” crowd, why can’t you?
Snip as necessary.
Like I said. “open mind is closed for a lack of inventory”
Tamino, you owe Steve a huge thank you. If you have the ability to gather, he didn’t have to step forward with a kind heart and point out all of the pot-holes you were about to step in. That trait of his personality is why he is a man of science. Be a man, many of science world-wide are awaiting your proper response.
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