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Unthreaded #40
This entry was written by Stephen McIntyre, posted on Sep 26, 2009 at 5:00 PM, filed under Unthreaded. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.
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Climate Audit 
685 Comments
Steve. You have made a rooky mistake. You need to invert the Yamal larch series! đ
Might I suggest that we commenters refrain from any rash language – the analysis speaks for itself.
Re: Bishop Hill (#8),
I echo Bishop Hill’s comment. I realize that this post will provoke rash language from many people, but please understand that rash language doesn’t help – it’s offputting to third parties and lurkers who get tired of it and it makes me waste time snipping and editing. So please dial back any comments to the most neutral ones possible.
Having said that, in my opinion, this is one of the most significant posts at this blog and I hope that readers recognize this.
Re: Steve McIntyre (#9),
I think to the simple general reader like me, the full import of this post will sink in now
It would help greatly to plot confidence intervals on the cherry-picked versus unpicked curves. There’s no dating error, so it’s a straightforward pointwise calculation. I bet the confidence envelopes do not overlap in the divergence region.
.
Oh yes: where are the lambs? Speak.
Re: bender (#12),
yes, confidence intervals would be pretty neat. I’ve heard you discuss a bootstrap from time to time and if I understand things correctly there are quite enough series to do a pretty credible jack-knife bootstrap for the green and/or black mean series.
I think CA is winning the “PR challenge”.
Steve:
I appreciate your commitment to “just the data”… but please forgive those of us who may harbor impure thoughts…
Steve, the work you have presented here is breathtaking. Looking forward to the response from the journals that have published papers based on this data.
Mike Bryant
An earthquake just struck East Anglia (CRU). Incredible work Steve, you never cease to amaze.
The twelve proxies of climatescience.
Steve and others can fill in the second through eleventh verses. Maybe Evan could chime in.
The first proxy of climatescience, uncensored, said to me:
….
….
….
The twelve proxies of climatescience, Yamal, said to me:
All this is much ado about nothing. We strive to develop and use the best data possible. The criteria are good common low and high-frequency variation, absence of evidence of disturbance (either observed at the site or in the data), and correspondence or correlation with local or regional temperature. If a chronology does not satisfy these criteria, we do not use it. The quality can be evaluated at various steps in the development process. As we are mission oriented, we do not waste time on further analyses if it is apparent that the resulting chronology would be of inferior quality.
If we get a good climatic story from a chronology, we write a paper using it. That is our funded mission. It does not make sense to expend efforts on marginal or poor data and it is a waste of funding agency and taxpayer dollars. The rejected data are set aside and not archived.
As we progress through the years from one computer medium to another, the unused data may be neglected. Some [researchers] feel that if you gather enough data and n approaches infinity, all noise will cancel out and a true signal will come through. That is not true. I maintain that one should not add data without signal. It only increases error bars and obscures signal.
A lesser amount of good data is better without a copious amount of poor data stirred in. Those who feel that somewhere we have the dead sea scrolls or an apocrypha of good dendroclimatic data that they can discover are doomed to disappointment. There is none. Fifteen years is not a delay. It is a time for poorer quality data to be neglected and not archived. Fortunately our improved skills and experience have brought us to a better recent record than the 10 out of 36. I firmly believe we serve funding agencies and taxpayers better by concentrating on analyses and archiving of good data rather than preservation of poor data.
Steven 21, that’s very similar to their existing MBH98/MM05 argument. Whether it’s valid or not is another issue. Just substitute MBH98 for Yamal, Briffa, etc. and tree ring for varve or whatever. From Realclimate’s webiste:
They think it is perfectly acceptable to select and emphasize the samples that reflect the calibration temperature record, as these are the ones that are most likely to be correct. The rest are noise at best or damaged / disturbed / non-representative samples. Many people are convinced by this argument because they don’t realise how flaky the temperature record is and how few the number of records reflecting that calibration period are or the size of the discarded sample set.
Re: Peter Dunford (#13),
I continue to be shocked, as it is obvious to any first-year undergraduate that biased seleciton will artificially inflate the tree-climate correlation in the calibration step and thus necessarily produce a higher recosntructed tempearture during the calibration period versus the instrumental period. This is malpractice and it must be stopped. The next reviewer to accept this practice be forever damned.
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Ask Gavin Schmidt if it is ok to do this with computer simulation runs, sift through them all, find the ones that match the record and publish only those. How can it be acceptable in paleoclimatology if it is unacceptable in computer modeling? Because Jan Esper says? This is insane.
Great post, obviously of great significance in this truly amazing feuilleton.
As for RealClimate’s response, can I suggest that it will include:
1) Man-made climate change doesn’t rest solely on these reconstructions, so “it doesn’t matter”.
2) There is a lot of “independent” research that confirms the hockey sticks.
3) McIntyre and McKitrick are not (real)climate scientists, but are conneted to the mining business and right-wing think-tanks, respectively.
4) MM’s claims are “false and specious”, and they are not peer reviewed, and even if they are, then the journal is not relevant.
5) It’s all about something in the past, and the science has now “moved on”.
Re: Feedback (#45),
Let’s leave the speculations on Team responses aside. It’s kinda fun, but we’ve done it enough.
Plus we can be 100% confident that RC is not going to respond or comment on this. They will not touch this topic with a bargepole. They’ll ignore it.
Excellent! Your analysis reminds me of a jargon word from another symbolic universe: “Busted!” Perhaps you could incorporate that into a title, if you publish?
snip – prohibited words
It look exactly as the story about Great reef calcification (or lack of). Few data at the end, carefully cherry-picked, causing the hockey stick.
Would we like custard with that climate Cherry Pie?
If the original Briffa paper where this data was published is “recalled” due to defects (i.e. withdrawn or removed by the host journal), how does this affect future published papers that have cited that article? Are there procedures within journals that ask authors to assess the materiality of the loss of withdrawn or corrected articles that they’ve cited?
Steve: they’ll say that they’ve “moved on”. Don’t hold your breath.
I will not accept any scientific observation without the observations being publicly available.
Robert Wood
2009
Thank you Steve!
Steve,
Hmmm, interesting and watch out for the next AIG News out November – some interesting letters to editor which might have a bearing on this particular issue – it is,as Steve understands, not an unfamiliar technique in our side of business, mining.
Other than that, I recommend no one advise any to ride in a helicopter over rain forests for the near future ;-).
Are the real & reliable temperature readings from the area(s) where the tree samples were taken?
Dear Steve
Please do not snip the baiters let them speak with the tongues of babel.
I hope that this is the right place to ask this question.
Just what does “temperature-limited” mean? I suppose that the Yamal trees are considered “temperature-limited” because they survive in a far northern climate. However, the summer temperatures, when growth occurs, are above freezing. It is the winter cold that prevents tress from propagating, isn’t it? More particularly, it would seem to me to be the average temperature, which is integrated over the year by the ground, that affects tree survival by affecting root activity.
So if tree survival is affected by average temperature but growth is limited by summer temperautre and perhaps precipitation and other factors, how are the confounding variables that affect growth, but not directly survival, un-entangled?
I hope that this is a sensible question.
Re: TAG (#110),
This actually is a good question, though it is OT. What shapes treeline is a matter of investigation. Nobody knows for sure. Are growth and reproduction limited by the same factor? Probably not. In the treeline condition (alpine or tundra) growing season length (e.g. number of frost-free days) is the primary factor limiting growth. Not just air temperature, but soil temperature.
.
It is quite possible Yamal larch are temperature limited. That doesn’t mean the uptick is evidence of climatic release.
Is it advisable to have a second thread for the fly-by comments?
This is an unprecedented case where some venting might be justified.
Like Stacey, I enjoy reading nonsense from the likes of Ellie.
But I would hate to see the brilliant signal here buried in such noise.
.
Newcomers can help by following blog policy and commenting in “unthreaded”.
Has anyone else been unsuccessful in getting a post through the censorship at RC regarding this finding? My comment on their most recent thread never made it.
Thanks
Ed
If you wish to ruminate about dendro things, please take it to (say) the first Yamal thread and leave this for Briffa things.
Re: Steve McIntyre (#114),
Sorry about my comment, I didn’t realize you were having so much trouble on this thread. It might be acceptable still under the premise that this is a demonstration that Briffa’s tree ring results are very sensitive to choice of proxy. Clearly there were other choices of proxy available and known.
Steve, would it be possible to plot all the related reconstructions together on the same plot, or at least one above the other on the same page? Hantemirov, Briffa, Esper, Schweingruber…?
Re: PaulM (#115),
I’m working on re-integrating the Polar Urals. The Hantemirov reconstruction isn’t really relevant because the corridor method removes centennial variation – see the prior thread where I discussed it. I’d rather not spend the time distinguishing it on every occasion.
Steve,
If the “temperature signal” in tree rings is indistinguishable from random noise, what are the odd that by pure chance Briffa would have found a set of his size that correlated with the modern temperature record?
Replying to #119 requires “rumination about dendro things”.
This appears to be the RC thread where they put all the tree rings on the table.
How bad does this look now?
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/how-do-we-know-that-recent-cosub2sub-increases-are-due-to-human-activities-updated/
How do we know that recent CO2 increases are due to human activities?
â 22 December 2004
Another, quite independent way that we know that fossil fuel burning and land clearing specifically are responsible for the increase in CO2 in the last 150 years is through the measurement of carbon isotopes.
One of the methods used is to measure the 13C/12C in tree rings, and use this to infer those same ratios in atmospheric CO2. This works because during photosynthesis, trees take up carbon from the atmosphere and lay this carbon down as plant organic material in the form of rings, providing a snapshot of the atmospheric composition of that time.
Sequences of annual tree rings going back thousands of years have now been analyzed for their 13C/12C ratios. Because the age of each ring is precisely known** we can make a graph of the atmospheric 13C/12C ratio vs. time. What is found is at no time in the last 10,000 years are the 13C/12C ratios in the atmosphere as low as they are today. Furthermore, the 13C/12C ratios begin to decline dramatically just as the CO2 starts to increase â around 1850 AD. This is exactly what we expect if the increased CO2 is in fact due to fossil fuel burning.
Re: Steve S. (#124),
And just what do carbon isotopes have to do with Briffa’s Yamal chronology?
Re: bender (#129),
I think Steve S was confused and believed that at least some substantial number of people here denied that human activity is the cause of increased CO2 in the atmosphere. OT, to be sure, and in addition, quite incorrect as there have only been a tiny number of people here who held such a position and they generally get shouted down (or snipped by Steve Mc).
RE Barry #122,
Steve “Moshpit” Mosher was pulling your leg in #22 with a parody of the HS Team’s likely response. Unfortunately, he neglected to put a “winky face” đ at the end.
Re: Hu McCulloch (#133),
Got it! Sorry too slow today. I’ll try to keep up next time. đ
Re: Barry (#53),
Dont let it happen again.
“..it’s good to kill an admiral from time to time, to encourage the others.” Voltaire
Perhaps this public examination of the science will encourage others to be more, shall we say, careful.
Biffra’s 2008 Royal Society paper shows a clear instrumental temperature increase over the last few decades for the Yamal peninsula, most pronounced during the summer growing season. This is in contradiction to the RCS chronology for the Schweingruber series calculated here.
Rejecting the Schweingruber series as a good proxy seems reasonable, unless there are doubts about the instrument record. Why it is not a good recent proxy is an important but separate point.
I’m not a scientist but my simple google search shows tree ring research from South America that would question whether 10 cores from Yamal are “robust”.
The study linked below from Laguna Aculeo Central Chile goes back to 850 AD and shows a Medieval Climate anomaly between 1150-1350 that is +.27C to +.37C compared to the 20th century. (Van Gunten 2009)
See link at:
http://hol.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/19/6/873
Also a 1992 study by Lara and Villalba did a 3622 year reconstruction from Southern Chile using Alerce trees which are the second longest living tree after the bristolcone pine. It stated:
“Neither this proxy temperature record nor instrumental data for southern South America for latitudes between 35° and 44°S provide evidence of a warming trend during the last decades of this century that could be related to anthropogenic causes.”
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/260/5111/1104
Why all the reliance on 10 cores from Yamal when there is so much data to the contrary that can be found at other sites around the world?
Thanks
Ed
I’m thinking Briffa’s best defense at this point is to apply the established and peer-reviewed Tiljander method to the divergent proxies.
In trying to guess at how Briffa will respond to this, can someone update me. Did Mann ever respond to the Lenah Ababneh data?
snip – political comments are against blog rules,
I hope honest climatologists start to question the validity of these papers. There is no evidence that long term temperature sensitive trees actually exist. So far the best I’ve seen is some very short term correlations which aren’t even clearly demonstrated to be beyond the edge of spurious noise.
I apologize for the snail-like response of the blog today. Frustrates me as well.
Tom P. you said:
I haven’t found a source yet for the actual instrumental temp records for the region over the last century, so I can’t confirm or deny the assertion (perhaps someone more experienced at finding this type of data can help me out). However, this more current work seems to state that temp changes are not so dramatic, or as dramatic as the Blade of Biffia would indicate:
Gotta go work now.
Steve: I’m sorry to be rude – but please do not use bandwidth on an important post that is going to be read by third parties to ask for help on finding temperature data.
Oops. Should be “Blade of Briffa”!
Sorry Steve. Didn’t realize that was out of bounds. Won’t happen again.
snip no problem
here is a link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_sharpshooter_fallacy
Could someone with the data find the closest REAL temperature records for the area, using good old fashioned THERMOMETERS, just so we can see the actual temperature trend in the Yamal area over the past 100 years. Could be an interesting juxtaposition, and an emphasis of the other kind of divergence. Maybe Steve did this already in the past ?
Tom P: where is your reply to Kenneth Fritsch’s #188? He’s got the essence of it.
.
There is a major difference between exploratory science – developing a model (i.e. constructing a hypothesis) – where peeking (Texas sharpshooting) is allowed – and applying a model (e.g. reconstructing climate) that has been shown to be valid through independent testing. The validation stage roots out false models, shows the sharpshooter to be a fake.
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In this case the application is quite serious. Yet no validation has been done.
Sorry – that instruction was not on the page I was viewing. I’d spent the last 30 minutes digesting all this, before posting my comment. Point taken.
I was used to dealing with tracking data and sometimes we got a track pass data from a particular radio telescope that was obviously defective when applied to the existing tracking data. That whole pass would be an outlier. Then in individual points in the data there would also be outliers. The orbit determinaton/trajectory analysis software I was using would throw both of those cases out.
I would think similarly if you were looking at a particular stain of trees from several locations and most of them were in agreement and one showed a marked difference that would be an outlier location.
In a individual collection location one tree that gave remarkably different results would be an outlier point.
I believe that these still may be of scientific value if you were able to find these cause of the anamoly but would not be useful in determination of temperature.
Our outliers became useful when more data that agreed with them was obtained because that meant a change in trajectory (i.e a thruster burn or engine burn or perhaps a collision with a space object.
Tom P et al:
Make your case here. Cherrypicking is sharpshooting is EXACTLY what these guys are doing. Your turn.
Felicitations Steve, it’s about time you got this one securely under your belt.
Best regards, suricat.
BeePee:
Hockey stick #1 was previously broken when Steve M disclosed the sensitive dependence on California bcps. (See the Wegman report and NAS report.)
Hockey stick #2 is now broken because of its sensitive dependence on Yamal larch.
Almost all paleoclimate recons use one of these two series. Therefore all sticks are broken.
Let’s start there. That’s the entry point to the backstory. If you want answers you must read.
D F Linton:
I saw it and explained why it’s irrelevant. If cows had balls they’d be bulls.
Tom P says:
-The divergence covers dfferent time periods for different species and sites. It covers at least five decades. So you are wrong on that one.
-The sensitivity analysis Steve presented shows that the master chronology would change tremendously if you start diluting the uptick signal in Briffa’s chosen few. So you are demonstrably wrong again. Any other questions? Any other fallacies you need dispelled?
My bender, you are cranky tonight, LOL! “McIntyre’s Pit-Bull/Bulldog?”
Re: Michael Jankowski (#6),
I hate untidy lab notebooks. I will calm down when people start following Steve’s far-too-gentle suggestions.
Thanks bender.
I am aware of some of the backstory, particularly in relation to HS1/Wegman & NAS.
My ‘backstory’ is that I was concerned about premature celebrations of the HS’s demise. (It is a hydra, I think).
I will admit guilt to not having understood properly this forum’s etiquette. I will also admit some confusion about the terms. This seems to be the broader symptom… In my question on the other thread, I clearly asked a newbie question, mistakenly lumping anything that could be referred to as ‘the hockey stick’ together. As you said ‘this is about Briffa’.
However, your last post [Re: bender (#3)] appears to suggest that I wasn’t entirely mistaken: “Therefore all sticks are broken.” That was the order of claim that prompted my comment.
(Just to be clear – I’m not at all interested in defending sticks.)
So are the sticks broken because they prove either the incompetence(/dishonesty – if we want to say so) of those who compiled them, or because the error that is introduced is fatal? What is the sensitivity of HS2 to Briffa?
Re: BeePee (#7),
Thank you for moving here. Now I will reply like the gentleman I can be.
This is a good question that everyone is asking. First, you tell me: how do you, or would you, measure “sensitivity”? One measure that Steve has found useful in assessing Team work is whether the choice tips the balance regarding the MWP vs. CWP comparison. Do you find that to be an acceptable criterion? (Tell me if the acronyms are opaque.)
Re: bender (#8),
[Re the TLA’s MWP and CWP – I’m guessing M = medieval, and C = contemporary?]
Since the significance of the HS to the wider debate is that it seemingly demonstrates that ‘things are warmer now’, I guess the measure of sensitivity to the layperson is the extent to which the blade is flattened by Steve’s result. I guess the MWP is still interesting insofar as it demonstrates variability. But I think most people would be content with just a focus on the recent end of the HS.
But as I said, I am aware that I may have misconceived the problem. And indeed, we have a right to be suspicious of a study which seems to take liberties with the raw data, and conceals its method. I just want to be damn sure I know what I am saying when I have arguments with alarmists, and I don’t want to overstate things.
Re: BeePee (#95),
There are many many tiny choices to be made in developing a paleoclimatic reconstruction of climate. (See Berger and Cubash.) Curiously, Yamal tips the balance on the CWP vs MWP issue. Moreover, this is a pattern in Team papers. Many seemingly innocuous changes by the Team have the same effect (imagine that). Such as padding a chronology that started in 1404 to make sure it gets included in a step that screens out proxies if they don’t start in 1400. (See Gaspe Jacoby cedars 1404). Seems innocuous, until realize what that choice does in terms of elevating CWP just barely above MWP.
Re: BeePee (#96),
You have seen my comment to Bishop Hill? (In “Fresh Data on Yamal #1”)
.
As Mosher says, the models are the primary axis of attribution. To argue alarmists you have to argue about EBMs and GCMs. Paleoclimatic recons have nothing to say because the uncertainty is too high. Anyone argungthat current temperatures are “unprecedented” is not cognizant of the true error on these reconstructions. Why do you think MBH98 were implored to publish MBH99? Becaseu these uncertainties are not trivial. Yet their confidence itnervals are an utter joke. Search for UC’s posts on confidence interval construction.
.
I understand some have argued that IPCC TAR and FAR do not even depend on paleoclimate. In which case, one must ask – as only Steve M has – what are they doing there if they are unimportant to the argument? Why not remove entirely? Their power as a rhetorical device (smoking gun iconery) is large. They are addicted to that iconery. Hence the “Hanno 2009” incident in the UNEP report. And hence the “spot the hockey stick” game played at CA. They can’t give it up; it’s too seductive.
Re: BeePee (#7),
Anyone can make mistakes. That the methods are flawed is a concern, but it is not what invalidates the conclusions. That happens strictly becasue of sensitive dependence of these reconstructions on 20th century upticks in either California bristlecone pines, or Yamal’s larch. In both cases, larger samples and recent updates have shown the anomaly to occur in a narrow subset of samples. Name me a hockey stick climate recon that does not use either of these series and I buy you dinner. But you said you read the Wegman report, so you remember that table of his.
Peer reviewed data that is proven to be unrepresentative versus a yet to be peer reviewed application of the scientific method which shows no global warming (like many other data sets and proxies). No hesitation on where I would go.
As an engineer working for NASA who is steeped in the BS of denial (which has led to two disastrous shuttle accidents) I would say Ellie and Sue have completely missed the point and are trying to convince themselves they are not on shaky ground. By hiding behind the peer review canard they clearly tell more about themselves than anything Steve has done.
Peer reviewed means nothing – zip. There are innumerable peer reviewed papers that proposed pure junk science. They were only using counter research, which happens every day. If Ellie and Sue knew what they were talking about, they would know more peer reviewed papers get debunked than survice the scientific method. Anyone stuck on the peer review canard is not a real scientist, IHMO.
Those of us at NASA become disgusted with people who deny their mistakes, and who rely on violations in process to ignore warning signs and errors in the data. In our business that type of unscientific thinking and lack of principled rigor kills. Literally.
In my world, Biffa would be up against a panel and required to defend himself or correct the record. In my world he could never hide his data, he could never claim the process was not followed when another person (engineer, lab tech, anyone) showed this kind of false result. In my world, those who make claims they cannot back up would soon be out doing something less dangerous to humanity and humans.
I applaud Steve’s efforts to not throw accusations, but since this DOES impact the lives of millions of people and trillions of dollars, the way to treat these alarmist claims is as if lives counted on the outcome. The rigor should be no less than for test flights, space flights or commercial transportation. There should be no games, no lame excuses. It either passes muster or it doesn’t. Every problem discovered is another ding on credibility. Too many dings and you are out.
Cries of process violations are not a sign of an open and inquisitive mind – they show just the opposite.
PS I would like someone to comment on my take on the larger implication of this finding. Do you think I am wildly off?
Re: Richard (#11),
Correct. But even NAS said that nothing could be confidently concluded re: comparisons more than 600 years in the past. The uncertainty grows quickly as you go 400, 600, 1000, 2000 years into the past. The problems Steve has uncovered with Yamal throw into question literature published AFTER IPCC 4AR. Kaufman et al. (2009) for example.
… and Steve M has expressed disinterest in non-expert dissections of GCMs at this blog.
Studies illustrated in the IPCC AR4 spaghetti graph, Wikipedia spaghetti graph or NAS Panel spaghetti graph (consult them for bibliographic refs) that use the Yamal proxy include: Briffa 2000; Mann et al (EOS 2003); Mann and Jones 2003; Jones and Mann 2004; Moberg et al 2005; D’Arrigo et al 2006; Osborn and Briffa 2006; Hegerl et al 2007, plus more recently Briffa et al 2008, Kaufman et al 2009. (Note that spaghetti graph studies not included in the above list all employ strip bark bristlecone pines – some use both.) Ot
Hanno’s UNEP graph recently under discussion uses the Mann and Jones 2003 reconstruction, which uses both Yamal and Mann’s PC1.
Hey BeePee,
Ask your alarmist friends what they make of Kaufman et al’s (2009) argument that burning fossil fuels has saved us from a new ice age. Ask our friends at RC.
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v2/n1/abs/ngeo390.html
Still a lot of Hockey Sticks to get through…
I’d be grateful for some reference on tree life cycle stages and the accuracy of them as thermometers. The kind of reference would show, for instance, that a given tree may not correlate with temperature for the first 100 years of its life, then correlate closely, then again not for the last 100. Or whatever number is appropriate.
I’d also be grateful for some reference showing that in the tree ring studies, the age of a given tree is taken into account in the above manner. The kind of reference would show, for instance, that for trees of species X in location Y, we excluded samples for all trees except those between certain age limits, because we know that this particular kind of tree is not a thermometer outside those limits.
Thanks in advance.
I am still not really understanding how showing that a subset of tree samples correlates with 20C instrumental temperatures gives any evidence that those same trees will correlate with earlier temperatures. It still seems that is an hypothesis to be proven. If this were medecine, for instance, we’d have a correlation of poverty with cholera for one UK or two London neighborhoods in the period 1820-1860 but not for many others. We would then attempt to reconstruct the incidence of cholera for the whole of the UK for the period 1000-1820 using the correlation we had established for our one or two neighborhoods as proxies. Is that what is going on here?
Re: michel (#106), Typically dendros do NOT sift through samples a posteriori. A priori they will bias their samples by selecting, for example, treeline sites, over valley bottom sites. The former showing stronger correlations with temperature, the latter with precipitations. However these temperature correlations are always quite weak and usually confounded with a precipitation signal. Search through this blog. Lots of these papers have been discussed.
.
Newbies need to read the blog. It will take you weeks. But you won’t regret the investment.
Around the time that the Briffa and Esper graphs diverge, a large meteorite effect destroyed many trees at Tunguska, 1908, about 1,300 km away from the study area. While this is highly speculative and not promoted here (yet) it illustrates the type of event that is needed to explain the divergence. Conversely, can it be shown that Tunguska had no effect on studied tree rings?
Re: Geoff Sherrington (#186), Thought the same thing the other day.
Re: Geoff Sherrington (#107),
Along these same lines, the Tsar Bomba was detonated some 400 miles to the west of the Yamal peninsula in 1961. Tsar Bomba was a 50MT blast, Tunguska is estimated to have been around 15MT.
You will probably snip but is it not blatantly obvious that Tom P has been put here to obfuscate this whole thread because of its implications for the whole science etc..and same elsewhere and you all have fallen for it very sad
Re: Vg (#111),
He’s just skeptical, and that’s fine. Steve’s results are robust. Let Tom P pick away.
Bender:
At #204 you say to me:
“The paleoclimate data do not refute the GCMs.”
But I, EddieO and Steve did not mention GCMs did not so I fail to understand your point.
Please explain
Richard
PS To save others needing to check, I copy my entire posting below.
EddieO:
Yes, I completely agree.
And I add that the entire world owes a debt to Steve for his above analysis and for his previous analyses of the dendro data.
This thread is about the science of the ‘hocky stick’ methodology, but I venture an OT point which I think is pertinent and important:
i.e. prior to December the public and all who are to attend CoP15 need to be informed of the findings reported here by Steve.
Steve:
Brilliant! Thank you.
Richard
Lubos #186
It’s impossible to edit Wiki without edits being reverted by W. Connelly. Connelly is the team member who trolls Wiki to make sure all articles agree with the concensus view.
Good luck with that
Thanks
Edward
May I ask a layman’s dumb question that perhaps Bender or RomanM or someone else knowledgeable can answer?
Suppose the only temperature record (actual thermometer readings) we had was a 100 year long period during the MWP that exhibited the warming “ramp -up” of the MWP. And suppose we did a dendro reconstruction in which, for that 100 year period, we only used trees that correlated with the warming, excluding those that for whatever reason did not show the trend — but used all the trees for the balance of the reconstruction up to and including today. Would that create a reverse hockey stick, making it appear that the warming of the MWP was “unmatched” in the historical record?
Re: Michael Smith (#116),
It is certainly a credible concept that this could be the case (for example, using stationary red noise) although the details would differ. The right side, back in the past would be similar in shape to the same process we have already seen. The side going towards the future would start higher and trend down towards an average level due to the initial choice of proxies.
I would venture that this would not be the case if the initial set of proxies was Briffa’s since the set had already been chosen on the basis of an existing increasing modern trend. It is doubtful that a subset of these proxies could exhibit a different non-blade twentieth century behaviour. Mix in the Schweingrubers and it is a new ball game.
Re: Michael Smith (#119),
Yes, almost certainly. Selection of a subset of chronologies for a desired shape over a desired time frame will either a) remove bad series that don’t measure temperature, or b) select for series with noise (non-temperature signal or true error) that “supports” the desired shape. Or both. In either case, this gives your selected time period a probably unmatchable advantage in showing the desired shape, regardless of what time period you select.
Re: Morgan (#122),
This being the case, the results obtained are a function of the arbitrarily chosen calibration period, how can the word robust ever enter discussions of the results?
If conservation of mass or energy, for examples, formed the basis of accepting or discarding data, that is robustness.
On a related issue, this being an Unthreaded thread. It seems to me that words are simply thrown out from, and constantly repeated by, the climate change community with no regard to the actual meaning of the words within the framework of technical discussions.
Robustness is one of the words of choice when the AOLGCMs are the subject. The calculated numbers are simply declared to be robust even when well-established criteria for demonstrating that the models, numerical solution methods, coding, and calculations are indeed robust have not yet been applied to any of the software.
Theres a real interesting post at Real Climate, provided of course you don’t read it.
I thought I would comment but as before our Gav was not amused:-
“Decadel predictions; its quite simple really. Every ten years some so called climate scientist refuses to release details of their work and then Steve McIntyre shows the pathetic mistakes they make?
You better come home Gav one of your cohorts seems to be in trouble soon?
I see you managed to infect the Graniad with your moderation policy.
A quick question from a dumb geologist and occasional gardener to those who understand tree growth:
Given that one of the things dendroclimatology is measuring is the change in conditions at a site, how confident can we be that a tree that appears at present to be acting as a treemometer (given its setting) was acting as a treemometer in eia warmer/colder/wetter/drier past?
Seems that there’s a very big assumption made even amongst the cherry picking…
Looking for the appropriate place for these dendro questions prompted by the Yamal Divergence Problem thread. I can see others here have the same Q’s:
I now understand three problems with “treemometers”. Can anybody help my understanding?
#1 – SM states very clearly in “Yamal: A Divergence Problem” #217
Further, as Roman and JeffID very clearly point out, selecting for a series with good fit against the instrumental temperature record at the very least biases the signal to noise ratio for the calibration period.
JeffID partially paraphrasing Roman in “Yamal: A Divergence Problem” #215:
2 – How can it be known that populations that fit the temp record now, fit the pre-recorded temp record? JeffID hits on this a number of times. Couldn’t these trees be subject to local environmental changes (moisture, sunlight, etc) pre-dating the instrument record that effect the relationship of ring growth to temp?
At the logical extreme, how do we know that the relationship between ring growth and temp isn’t the result of noise to begin with? This, in fact, seems likely to this layman if it is difficult to find trees that display this relationship. I guess this is the very most basic dendro question đ
#3 – If, as I understand, core samples only go back as far as 1550. What is done to estimate temp with these proxies beyond that year? Is there a proxy for the proxy?
All of these items (especially #3) are reflections of my ignorance. Sorry for the dendro 101 questions.
thank ya’ll for this very educational and interesting discussion.
Re: Eric (#124), To get the older part of the reconstruction, sub-fossil wood (mostly buried in river sediments) was used and cross-dated with overlapping live trees and so on to older ages.
I am also just a reader here but I would like to say that I do not find Tom P’s posts irritating. In fact I find the discussion to be highly elucidating and interesting.
Craig,
How is the age of the sub-fossil wood estimated? Is this where carbon dating comes in?
sincere thanks,
Eric
Re: Eric (#128),
By crossdating.
Fans of GCMs will enjoy this thread on tuning the GCMs.
Folks are welcome to ask Gavin Schmidt for his review.
thank you Bender
If anybody else needs a basic dendrochronology education, I found this useful.
http://www.ltrr.arizona.edu/lorim/basic.html
As support for my contention that the surface record is “juiced”, through a failure to correctly adjust downward for UHI effects, readers will enjoy this paper by Ross McKitrick:
McKitrick, R.R. and P.J. Michaels (2007), Quantifying the influence of anthropogenic surface processes and inhomogeneities on gridded global climate data, J. Geophys. Res., 112, D24S09, doi:10.1029/2007JD008465.
which suggests at the very least that the problem deserves a seoond look by someone other than Phil Jones.
For those (like me) who who like readable summaries, see Bishop Hill’s blog story The Yamal Implosion.
Does anybody here known how to do multiple regression analysis? Thanks in advance.
Re: Andrew (#134),
Use lm() in R. “Multiple” simply refers to the use of more than one predictor in the model statement.
lm(y~x1+x2+x3)
Re: bender (#135), Thanks.
Sometimes Steve refers to “10” trees used to augment Yamal and sometimes “12”. Why the difference?
Is it the case that these 10 or 12 trees were selected from sites remote (~400 km away) from the Yamal peninsula?
From Chiefio E M Smith. Anyone want to get published with this gentleman? Hu McCulloch, Craig Loehle, anyone?
Chiefio E M Smith
Briffa is blaming our host for the comments of others. I think Steve has done an admirable job of keeping his criticism focused on the data rather than the author.
As Steve regularly says, watch the pea. Both RC and KB are answering “easy” questions that they can field, rather than the direct criticisms made by Steve, which they have no response to. They will now insist Steve’s criticisms have been dealt with.
It would be like Steve doing a post criticising Gavin for “implying” that earth would wind up just like Venus (because LynnVincentNathan had said it), and therefore claiming Gavin’s models are wrong.
You gotta laugh at some of the RC figures though. Look, we squashed up the instrumental record in the corner of a graph and stretched it across the full y-axis, and then claimed it as a surrogate hockey stick… with reasoning like that…
Of course, their use of the popularity of the name “Gavin” in the US, were they trying to illustrate the problems with spurious correlation or what?!
The real climate (i.e., Gavin’s) response is as predicted. Once you scrape off all the sarcasm it can be summed: “it doesn’t matter… there are still Hockey sticks everywhere”.
Posted at WUWT
Hockey Stick Man:
I’m a lumberjack, and I’m okay.
I sleep all night and I work all day.
The Canadian:
He’s a lumberjack and he’s ok
He sleeps all night and works all day
Hockey Stick Man:
I measure rings on the trees
Some I like and some I leaves
I have some friends who measure with me
Some they like and some they leaves.
The Canadian All togeffer noow:
He measures rings on the trees
Some he likes and some he leaves
He has some friends who measure with him
Some they like and some they leaves.
đ
The end (of my career)
Did you guys read RC response to this?!? Amazing. They are scrambling. If I didn’t know otherwise, I’d guess desperation.
What? More Hockey Sticks? One at a time, Please!!
PS: Keep up good work, mr McIntyre. Your battle for open standards will win in the long run!
McIntyre followers are missing the point, the HS is not broken, the “blade” on the HS is should not be derived form proxy data but from observations. Proxy data are really on valuable to infer the instrumented temperature record prior to circa 1880. How can you be so blind to that fact? RC et al. are not scrambling for goodness sakes, talk of fantastical statements. Also, to suggest that there are HS everywhere is ludicrous– the insinuation, of course, is that they are all wrong, regardless of the data source (tree rings or not) or who conducted the analyses. Sounds like readers here typically tend to believe that AGW is a conspiracy (theory).
[Steve: the issue with proxy reconstructions is this: if the proxy does not accurately record warmth in the 1990s and 2000s (the Divergence Problem), then we cannot draw any conclusions about that proxy in the 1000s. This was discussed at the NAS Panel presentation days, especially by Kurt Cuffey, though they avoided the issue in their report.]
Open standards yes, accountability, yes, better methods yes, but character assassination, obfuscation, pontification and misinformation, please no. Mr. McIntyre needs to stop ‘feeding’ this misinformation to his denier friends and skeptics. I would purport that he is obscure on purpose because that allows those with an agenda to (mis)interpret his analyses any way that they wish. Again, I challenge Mr. McIntyre to openly disclose his true intent here, and to be very clear what the implications (or rather lack thereof) are of his “work” are for AGW.
Steve: I’ve established a blog policy that prohibits attributing motives to scientists. I ask readers not to do so and for the most part, they comply, as I do myself. The blog is not pre-moderated and, from time to time, I have to snip posts that break this policy. Sometimes I miss such comments and I ask readers to point offending comments to me. In my opinion, this blog is freer of such allegations than other climate blogs. If there are specific posts or comments that breach this policy, please bring them to my attention so I can deal with them. As I mentioned to you in another comment, in 2005, I published an editorial on the context of the Hockey Stick here and my views have not changed materially since then..
Re: Lorax (#24), It is clear that it is warming since 1900 or so. How do we know this is unusual? Because the tree-ring proxy data go down gradually and then suddenly go up to very high levels. But the “going up” is heavily based on 2 sites, and a total of 35 or so trees. And the whole enterprise of a 1000 year proxy is called into question as well (see, e.g., my paper: Loehle, C. 2009. A Mathematical Analysis of the Divergence Problem in Dendroclimatology. Climatic Change 94:233-245).
Re: Lorax (#24),
I think you do not quite get the point of this. If you feel that the reconstructions should end in 1880 and we should play pin the tail on the donkey with instrumental data then that’s your affair but that really would be a broken hockey stick held together with elastoplast.
Alex
Re: Lorax (#24), that was a very funny remark, but how should we read RC’s post, rather than a blatant piece of frustration and desperation, without in any instance referring to the issues prompted by McIntyre, and accusing him of lying, obfuscating, denicrating, etc.? They say they are all for “audits”, but then again, we do not forget that there was 10 years, 10 years that have passed since the first request of data. How is “audit” even possible? How can I take Gavin seriously? His own final graph lends a clue, though: he’s not to be taken seriously, or alternatively, he does not take McIntyre seriously.
But the hilarious part is that most of his “Hockey Stick” examples are temperature sliced graphs!! He even has the gall to show a Kaufman graph with and without Yamal, implying that Yamal “doesn’t matter”, but it’s clear on the graph itself, that it does matter (there’s something of 0.5ÂşC of difference, not quite clear due to the graphic choice). And a “Hockey Stick” of CO2 concentrations?!? What has that got to do with anything?
I think that you are the one who is not aware of the issues surrounding the Hockey Stick. That question of yours is a red herring. I’m not the best person to inform you of this. Read Bishop’s Hill original piece on this subject.
Re: Luis Dias (#32),
Like this.
hehehe
Re: Lorax (#24),
There are a few legitimate questions posed by the Yamal post. So don’t pooh pooh the discussion so cavalierly. The discussion between factions will probably get a bit intense because the life’s work of a few may be wasted. Determining a reasonable temperature reconstruction based on the growth rate of tree is an incredible challenge.
Personally, reconstructions based on tree rings I ignore. This beating a dead horse issue is because they are bull doggedly reused by climatologists. The few paleoclimate reconstructions I would give any credence to are low frequency. Trying to get too much from too little is a fools game. IMHO
Re: Lorax (#24),
A central question when looking at variation in stochastic processes is this: for a given period of time, is the process likely operating within its expected range or has something changed that’s causing the process to operate within a new range? The handle of Mann-like hockey sticks is relatively flat — the process exhibiting relatively narrow variability until just recently. In such a case, the points on the end of the blade would be very, very unlikely to be in the normal range of the process. It would indicate that something very likely had shifted in the process (like the introduction of a new forcing).
If, on the other hand, temperatures during the 11th and 12th century were about what they are today or maybe a bit higher, then today’s temperatures could not be said to be exceptional. You could not conclude that the handle was due to any assignable cause.
This whole debate centers around the question of whether today’s temps are exceptional. The hockey stick is the only thing that says they are.
Wow – still awaiting moderation?
I hope I don’t have to wait 10 years!
I must be blind because I can’t see where the misinformation is. All of the data and methods are available to you and anyone else here and now (even though it’s taken years to get the original data from the original author!). SM couldn’t be more transparent in his approach if he tried. Whatever his motives are don’t matter; you can reproduce or rebut his results to satisfy yourself one way or the other. I can see that Briffa apparently has an undisclosed method for selecting cores that just happens to produce a blade. He didn’t shed any light on this in his reply, so the question remains unanswered. This should interest you more than “motives”. Surely getting close to the fact of the matter is an honest enough motive in itself?
It’s a shame that the hockey team don’t critique each other’s papers with as much diligence as is shown here. That’s the main lesson I take from all of this.
Hu McCulloch, if a particular tree ring series is analyzed and it is not consistent with the observed regional SAT record, should it not then be removed from the analysis b/c there is obviously something wrong with it? Why one one be so careless to include a proxy that is not capable of reproducing the observed data record in that region?
For those who like to turn a blind eye to the obvious abuse of McIntyre’s findings go look on the web and see how people are using these ‘findings’ to claim that AGW is a hoax and that the HS is broken (people are claiming that on this thread– care to correct them?). Read the recent missive in the Telegraph by Delingpole. Posts on WUWT et cetera. McIntyre’s own analysis shows that the data only diverge in the 20th century, so it seems then that the previous claims made here that the warming in the MWP was “suppressed” is unjustified. Also, McIntyre is focussed on on small region of the globe, when we are actually concerned with global SATs. His claims would carry much more weight if he expanded his analysis to other regions and actually reconstructed the global SAT record using the ‘correct’ data.
This fiasco certainly shows that proxy analyses have problems (especially tree rings which respond primarily to warm season temps, when most of the warming has occurred in winter (consistent with the AGW theory)). But is has no place in the AGW “debate”. The instrumented record does not rely on proxies, the model simulations do not rely on proxies, measurements of glacier retreat do not rely on proxies, leaf burst and senescence do not either et cetera, et cetera.
As I stated previously “By not setting the record (and media) straight he is guilty of making a gargantuan error in judgement and ethics. I do not wish to see his following here defend this, I want to see Mr. McIntyre to be responsible and make sure that his data/findings are not misinterpreted or used incorrectly.”
Why is McIntyre leaving it up to you and others to defend him, rather than speaking up himself? I maintain that McIntyre is intentionally being obscure as to his true intentions and interpretation of the data and how it pertains to the HS and AGW, b/c that way those in denial about AGW can misinterpret the “findings” as they choose and to further their agenda. Again I urge McIntyre to clarify this point and place his findings in the context of AGW, so as to be open, honest and transparent and to prevent further/future abuse of his analyses/audits. Has he corrected the people at WUWT, or Delingpole?
Thanks for the links I’ll have a look.
Re: Lorax (#40),
10 (TEN) years after his work was published Briffa admits he and his colleagues are “working to improve the robustness” of their findings.
Where were the caveats placed on the original work which still needs to be ‘improved’? Why was this paper allowed to be used in other studies without recognition that work needed to be done to improve its robustness?
Re: Lorax (#40),
Lorax, if their is a statistical god, I only hope that he will forgive you for you know not what you speak. Unfortunately I think your misconceptions might be held to some degree by the Briffa’s of the world and thus one cannot in all fairness question their motives -only their awareness of the applicable statistics.
Re: Kenneth Fritsch (#77),
Do not speculate on Briffa’s knowledge. He is very smart and well-informed. Rather, point to Jan Esper’s statement, which smaks of profound ignorance, despite his intelligence.
Lorax might want to read FAQ 2005 (link is on left under pages)
Lorax#44 – You really need to spend more time on the issue at hand and this website in general. First, you cannot throw out trees that do not match the temperature record because you have no way of throwing out trees before there was a temperature record. Either there is a statistical signature of temperature in all the trees or there isn’t. To do what you suggest guarantees a hockey stick even when there might not be one! Secondly, the purpose of this blog and its place in the AGW debate has been expressed hundreds of times. I disagree that it is Steve’s responsibility to referee what others do or say with his findings. Do the researchers that produce reports that are then used by others (usually the media) to make outrageous claims about AGW have that responsibilty? If so they are derelict.
Windansea, thanks. Hmm, those statements should be under “mission statement”, that is a rather obscure link. I believe it rather telling and convenient that McIntyre would not reiterate his claims/stance made in “FAQs 2005”. Especially given that he knew that this story would get a lot of attention. And I maintain that is irresponsible for someone who makes a point of lecturing about transparency and ethics.
What I also want to know is did McIntyre “feed” the story to Delingpole? Also, Delingpole obviously “misinterpreted” , abused even, McIntyre’s findings. So even if MS did not feed Delingpole the story, why has McIntyre not made a point of setting the record straight in the Telegraph? That is just one example.
Let us not be naive, there is a lot at stake here, and we all know that even the clergy do not practice what they preach. So let us not assume that McIntyre is any different/superior. I maintain that McIntyre has an agenda, why else would he focus almost exclusively on those papers which pertain to AGW in any shape or form? To me this speaks volumes! Audits should be done randomly, I agree that more journals should conduct audits, but what McIntyre does smacks of a witch hunt to discredit climate science, especially those climate scientists who understand AGW to be a credible threat.
Interestingly, McIntyre still hides behind his followers instead of addressing my concerns directly……….
Re: Lorax (#44),
“Interestingly, McIntyre still hides behind his followers instead of addressing my concerns directly”
Apparently, you haven’t been around here much. Based on the few years I’ve kept my eye on this place, it’s highly unlikely that he’ll leave your comments unaddressed for long (where “long” means “more than a day”), but he does actually have a full life outside of this blog… sports, grandkids, travel, some consulting work.
He posts his data and methods for easy replication (or refutation), rebuts people running related commentary on parallel blogs (because they’ll so rarely come here), and debates with people posting here on relevant topics — reserving the right to snip what he considers to be unproductive / endless arguments over points which cannot be proven one way or the other. Too bad some other climate science blogs aren’t run that way. He can on occasion indulge in some whithering commentary, but it’s not even remotely as snippy as what’s seen routinely at Real Climate, Climate Progress, etc.
Stick around a few days, and you’ll see for yourself.
Re: Lorax (#44),
The difference between you and Steve McIntyre is that he formulates precise, calculated, scientific challenges to scientific orthodoxy and you engage in wild, unsubstantiated, and reckless personal attacks.
The contrast is stunningly obvious.
Your religous ferver has overwhelmed your better judgment.
Re: Lorax (#44),
I’ve had the pleasure of meeting and talking with steve in person a few years ago. I’d suggest your attempts at divining intentions are under determined by the evidence you have. Simply, you are making shit up. If you have a scientific hypothesis, a testable hypothesis about his intentions, please explain it so we can see if what you say has any meaning.
If you want to speculate, try stocks.
More to the point, this fiasco tells us that we need open standards. We need that scientists that publish papers in allegedly “superior” journals, and others too, archive their data and methods extensively. These problems were pin pointed in a matter of days since they were released by Briffa. Instead, it took 9 years. Can’t you see a problem here? It does not matter if there was intent or not and I appreciate that McIntyre does not editorialize on this subject. But how can you stop third parties to see mal intent in this? Either way, the methodological behavior of these gentleman was lacking. My personal hope is that these issues never get repeated.
In Briffa’s reply, however, I see some key elements that tell me that this won’t be so. He tells us that he’s on to solve these and other issues in future assessments. As McIntyre said, the Team has “moved on”, and so perhaps there’s too much “naiveness” or even “malintent” on focusing so much in “obsolete” data that, in the end “doesn’t matter”. I’ve seen too much of this lately…
Exactly. I agree 100% with you. But even so, MBH98 graph, the “Hockey Stick” has been the key marketing figure of global warming, appeared some 8 or 9 times in the 3rd assessment, and it was the cover of the IPCC report. And apart from being a marketing blunder, it’s a very damned story for the IPCC rethoric and methods, and all climatology will suffer from this. There’s a lot of good science that is being slashed because of this. One more reason to criticize this kind of behavior, no?
This is just speculation and conspiracy theory on your part. Gavin feels the same way, but hey. He just says what he feels he should say, and nothing more. He doesn’t editorialize. He snips comments that do. What more do you want?!? Of course, his criticisms get attention from “deniers”, how could it not be so? But this is completely irrelevant to the issue at hand. The issue is, should Briffa withhold data that is foundational to proxy records that create HS figures? Should anyone? And is Briffa correct in his paper or is McIntyre criticisms correct? To this, RC does not answer or reply. All they do is handwaving and parading their own prejudice. Quite disappointing, from a “real climate scientist” standard.
Oh, come on! The world does not revolve around your comments in this blog, you know? Come again tomorrow, I’m sure McIntyre will answer you (he always did, when I asked him).
“There’s no one on earth would buy that fool thneed”
Mr “Lorax”
the real Lorax was a voice for honesty, integrity and openness; not for scofflaw science.
I am the Lorax, I speak for the trees
GFY
It’s his blog, not yours, and it’s your responsibility to read it before opening your yap with silly project
Just a geochemist, you are making strawman arguments and deflecting.
Re “You really need to spend more time on the issue at hand and this website in general. First, you cannot throw out trees that do not match the temperature record because you have no way of throwing out trees before there was a temperature record. ” Yes, researchers do not always have the luxury of concomitant SAT data, but weren’t the tree cores in question obtained during a period for which regional SAT data were available?? If that tree core or species is not reflecting the known temperature record then it is clearly suspect and should not be included, end of story.
If I publish a paper and see that a reporter has discussed it in a mainstream publication but in doing so has grossly misinterpreted my findings in any way shape or form, I am obliged to correct him/her. They are not the expert, I am, so it is up to me to set the record straight and present the true facts and place my research in the appropriate context. Even if it means doing a guest editorial. This is especially relevant if my work happens to be controversial and to have important consequences. To ignore such transgressions by the media and blogs is wholly irresponsible and unprofessional. You must understand that a lay person reading Delingpole’s missive cannot make an informed decision, such stories confuse the public at best and at worst lead them to believe that AGW is a sham.
Re: Lorax (#51),
This is irony at its finest!
Have you noticed how many AGW proponents are actually putting out press releases BEFORE their papers are published? Have you read the articles published from these press releases (and associated interviews)? When is the last time you saw a “correction” issued by these “scientists”?
Give me a break!
Re: Lorax (#51),
In addition to Hu’s very appropriate response to your perspective on inclusion/exclusion of tree rings, it is important for you to come to an understanding of the ethos of the blogosphere, and of Steve’s blog in particular.
Unlike some blogs which are financially sponsored and provided with staff whose time is paid for, this blog has no financial sponsorship other than the good graces of its readers who sometimes toss some money into the tip jar. It is staffed 100 percent by volunteers, the primary one being Steve. And he’s a guy with a family and a life.
There is so much traffic here I guarantee he hardly has time to notice all the comments here, let alone keep track of what other people write in other venues. And he certainly has no time to promote his work to journalists.
This site really is about good science. We don’t always hit it, but we get closer every day.
Re: Lorax (#51),
Re: Hu McCulloch (#54),
I agree Delingpole is another cheeky chappy iconoclast type, somewhat common of the British media; it seems we Brits have the best of both the po-faced doom laden and cheeky chappy writers. Christopher Booker is more serious but seems to be prone to similar levels of exaggeration when winging it on little evidence (he is quite good on subjects he has invested more time in).
After discovering him via this blog I think Andrew Revkin seems to be the best (or at least most conscientious) journalist commenting on these issues. It might be interesting one day to have a vote on the best MSM writing from the opinion of both blog âsidesâ and see how the normal distribution lies đ
Sorry if that was OT
I think Briffa has been pretty reasonable in his reply, his desire to find a way to measure climate change reliably can’t be argued against. However his, what now seems de rigueur, conflation of the author’s statements with the subsequent comments on the blog seem to be just used as a bit of a smokescreen.
There should be a name for that kind of conflation? I vote âYamallingâ.
RE Lorax #40,
The strategy you advocate is superficially attractive, but unfortunately amounts to outright cherry picking. To see how it can generate the appearance of a dramatic hockey stick using serially correlated artificial data with no true relationship to temperature, read David Stockwell, “Reconstruction of past climate using series with red noise” in Australian Institute of Geoscientists News March 2006 (#83), p. 14, at http://landshape.org/enm/wp-content/uploads/2006/06/AIGNews_Mar06%2014.pdf.
I did happen to read that one, and agree that Delingpole is overstating Steve’s case. He outright accuses Briffa of using the cherry-picking strategy that you (along with D’Arrigo, Jacoby and Esper) advocate, while Steve repeatedly has stated that he has not accused Briffa of this.
Delingpole goes on to describe treerings as being the best indicator of past climate, which is clearly a mis-reading of Steve’s position. He furthermore indicates that the Yamal series under discussion was included in the MBH HS, which is clearly muddled.
It’s his blog, not yours, and it’s your responsibility to read it before making silly projections of motives.
no need to feed anyone anything, 1000’s visit here daily. Plus Steve is no more responsible for misinterpretations of his posts than climate scientists are for their papers.
gosh, maybe he audits climate science because it’s interesting? why are you here? If the science supporting AGW is so strong, why fear the auditing?
Why do you think Delingpole is not capable of following blogs and picking up the story all by himself? I did, on the same day it broke. But anyway, there are literally hundreds of stories fed to the media by the Team and their supporters every day, around the world. The sheer weight of propaganda is truly breathtaking. So why does this story bother you when the others do not?
There are issues with the instrumental record, as you may know. The surface instrumental record has been discussed here at length (and at surfacestations.org). The satellite instrumental record is too young to be useful in terms of judging natural variability given decadal and multi-decadal phases. I don’t see it has any more validity than the tree proxy record, i.e. I don’t understand the certainty that the data entail the conclusions.
To the subject at hand, does this peer-reviewed science have integrity or not? If it does, why does it take years to get data for replication? Where is the analysis of the probity of the core selection procedure? And why aren’t these problems being picked up during the review process? ( I think I know, Wegman provided some kind of an answer). Are the problems with Briffa not indicative? Who’s press release shall we trust when we read it tomorrow?
Lorax says: “the model simulations do not rely on proxies, measurements of glacier retreat do not rely on proxies, leaf burst and senescence do not either et cetera”
Leaving aside model measurements, the other two ARE proxies. Unless you have the measurements of glaciers and leafing for MWP then those should not be part of any argument on this topic. If you do have MWP measurements for those, please post a link.
Re: Eric (skeptic) (#61),
We do have some measurements of glacier face location during the MWP, as reconstructed by Le Roy Ladurie in ‘Times of Feast, Times of Famine.’
When a glacier retreating in the 20th c. uncovers a shrine built in the 12th c., that’s a measurement.
Winansea, not sure what you are trying to say. I certainly have no fear about audits– in fact I have said that they should be done more often. However, I would be concerned who is doing the auditing though. Someone from a blog versus someone from a reputable,respected, neutral and qualified group who has experience in that field or at least the tools used. You would not be wished to be audited by you neighbour would you? I am sure McIntyre finds climate interesting, that is not relevant. What is relevant is why he does not share the same enthusiasm for auditing papers on the other side of the AGW debate? Understand?
Many stories is which the science is misrepresented bother me, not just this one. Delingpole’s story is just another example, and McIntyre should be setting the record straight in the Telegraph. All such errors should be addressed, including ones when people try and attribute singular weather events to AGW.
Robinson, the instrumented SAT record is much more trustworthy (even with all its issues) than the tree ring record. To suggest otherwise is ludicrous
Re: Lorax (#63),
What you, and too many others, do not understand about Steve is that he is a qualified expert in an aspect of climate science that is too often ignored by many who have open access to the peer-reviewed publishing system. Steve is a statistician.
Quite a few others here are also statisticians.
Surprise surprise, the issues discussed here are typically statistical.
What you are asking for, expertise in the tools used, is EXACTLY what you get here, and what you do NOT get at the other sites.
Why else do you imagine there is such a growing community of rock solid working scientists who hang out here?
Yes, there’s also a peanut gallery that on occasion gets out of hand. Steve has better policies for handling them than any other site I know of.
Trying to manage commentary at other sites is a bridge too far, IMHO.
Romam “This is irony at its finest!
Have you noticed how many AGW proponents are actually putting out press releases BEFORE their papers are published? Have you read the articles published from these press releases (and associated interviews)? When is the last time you saw a “correction” issued by these “scientists”?
Give me a break!”
This is not relevant. Either way, McIntyre should show that he is better than that.
Lorax – perhaps Steve is indulging in that precious commodity known as a real life? I never expect him to be online every second of every day to answer every quibble about one of his posts. I suspect he may be at the squash court, endeavoring to keep some physical fitness level. Even so, Hu and others are addressing your points quite effectively.
No, you should know he’s better than that.
TheDuke, not true. I gave an example of the Delingpole story. That is a fact. Talking of facts, please advise me how many papers that claim to refute AGW McIntyre has audited, versus how many that support that he has audited.
The Duke” Your religous ferver has overwhelmed your better judgment.”
Sorry, I do not cater to any religion. You know, if someone starts liking those understand AGW to be a credible concern to be following a religion, then the alarm bells go off. This thread is like speaking to a guilty party, sooner or later the truth starts to come out, and sure enough, you guys just could not go without making juvenile claims about those scientists who understand the science of AGW to be followers of some religion.
For a site that alleges not to draw those in denial, I am sure reading a lot of posts by people who clearly think AGW is a hoax or a religion even.
Romanm :”Have you noticed how many AGW proponents are actually putting out press releases BEFORE their papers are published? Have you read the articles published from these press releases (and associated interviews)? When is the last time you saw a “correction” issued by these “scientists”?
Give me a break!”
A red herring, but anyhow McIntyre is better than they are is he not? So other’s “mistakes” excuse him for making the same mistake? I think not.
Re: Lorax (#69),
Which contrarian IPCC AR citation did you have in mind for review? If Steve does not have the bandwidth I am sure that there are others that may take an interest.
One caveat: If I participate I will not scour the internet day and night looking for someone misusing the paper or its conclusions.
Re: Lorax (#70),
Lorax. Steve’s reasons for focusing on the accepted science of AGW are clear. The denialist junk is NOT WORTH THE TIME. Tammy does a fine job of debunking that. BTW, I believe that AGW is true. Nothing Steve says remotely bothers me. His commenters who go off the deep end don’t bother me.. much. What DOES bother me is people, who like me believe in AGW, but who refuse to stand up to shoddy science. The real denialist is an AGW believer who actually knows better and who is in denial about the shody work that steve uncovers. for example, watch Nick Stokes spin in circles trying to defend ramesdorf or others trying to defend mann or briffa. That’s the biggest issue
Lorax:
I absolutely would, if I believed my result was solid. So would anyone who has done good work – they would be proud to have their work validated and improved. This is why Steve has the guts to put data and code in a forum read by 10’s of thousands with confidence.
Good work should stand up to scrutiny from anyone. Doesn’t Briffa believe that his work is solid? If not, I suppose he should be afraid of his neighbor auditing him….
Cheers, K.
My posting was delayed due to a busy site and my not being available to try posting again.
Lorax, if you simply are driving by with your hyperventilating silliness then ignore this post, but if not please consider the following. If tree rings or any other proxy do not agree in the instrumental period, or do not agree well, the proxy itself becomes a sham or a proxy with great uncertainty. Actually tacking an instrumental record onto the end of a reconstruction is not as simple as implied in your comment.
What the sensitivity analyses tend to show is that, with a hard and fast a priori criteria selection, the subsequent calibration and verification might show significantly worst correlations to temperatures which in turn would increase the uncertainty in the reconstruction. If one were to select posterior those tree samples with the best instrumental response from a sample of tress, directly or indirectly, that were, lets assume, merely responding red and white noise, one could really fool oneself with the resulting HS â unless one was aware of the implications of such a selection process.
The selection process is all critical and thus sensitivity testing that bears on that goodness of that process is all critical also.
Real Climate has finally come out with comments about the Yamal affair. The response has been predictable.
From âthe groupâ at Real Climate â âWho should we believe? Al Gore with his âfactsâ and âpeer reviewed scienceâ or the practioners (sic) of âBlog Scienceâ? Surely, the choice is clearâŚ.â
âBlog Scienceâ of course meaning Steve McIntyre and his deconstruction / destruction of the Briffa Yamal analysis.
Before this the opening lines of Hey Ya! (mal) from âthe groupâ :
Interesting news this weekend. Apparently everything we’ve done in our entire careers is a âMASSIVE lieâ (sic) because all of radiative physics, climate history, the instrumental record, modeling and satellite observations turn out to be based on 12 trees in an obscure part of Siberia. Who knew?
No groupies -what IS a MASSIVE LIE is the Yamal temperature reconstruction as depicted by Briffa. (Here let me make it clear I am not accusing Briffa of a massive lie but the output in his analysis)
This lie was used to bolster the claim that the original hockey stick of Mann was verified by subsequent âindependentâ studies and data.
This data reconstruction was used directly in the temperature reconstruction of no less than 10 of the 12 graphs of the IPCC AR4 spaghetti graph.
It was based on this spaghetti graph, and not on any radiative physics, climate history, instrumental records, modeling or satellite observations, that the IPCC anounced that the warming of the past 50 years has been unprecedented in the past at least 1300 years.
That statement has been shown to be clearly false by Steve McIntyre’s âBlog Scienceâ.
The difference between Steve McIntyre’s âBlog Scienceâ and the âpeer reviewed scienceâ claimed by âthe groupâ, is that this âblog scienceâ is published on a website along with the data, analysis, programs. It is open to all to review, criticise, analyze and debunk. It has been attacked and defended in open forum. Surely these are the attributes of âpeer reviewâ?
The âpeer reviewed scienceâ alluded to by âthe groupâ on the other hand, has been âpeer reviewedâ by a small group of authors, referred to as âThe Hockey Teamâ or âThe Teamâ for short, who mostly âpeer reviewâ each others papers.
The data, the programs and the methodology used to arrive at their conclusions, in flagrant violation to the rules of science, is not given to any other independent reviewer, who might want to try and replicate their results or critically examine the data and methodology.
All requests for this data and methodology has been denied for years and on the two rare occassions that it has been revealed, (reluctantly and only under duress, and after years of protracted battle), it is been found that the âpeer reviewedâ science was indeed defective and wrong, if not clearly manipulated.
And all this by âBlog Scienceâ.
It is not surprising therefore that sceptics, like myself, do not look upon this âpeer reviewedâ science as peer reviewed science at all, but instead like highly suspect edicts from a secretive cabal.
So coming back to the question put by âthe groupâ âWho should we believe? Al Gore with his âfactsâ and âpeer reviewed scienceâ or the practioners of âBlog Scienceâ? Surely, the choice is clearâŚ.â
It is to me â I would trust the âBlog Scienceâ of Steve McIntyre to the âfactsâ of Al Gore, or the âpeer reviewed scienceâ of âThe Teamâ. Wouldn’t you?
Re: Richard (#140),
According to an inline quote on RC:
Do I need to spell it out? đ
Yes that may be so, but that wasn’t my point. The instrumented record doesn’t extend far enough into the past to pick up all of the natural variance, obviously, so as I say, I don’t see how one can be confident that the data entail the conclusions (and some of the instrumental data is itself suspect, especially the surface record). But anyway, you also say that,
He’s a mathematician (unless you are telling me there is a whole area of statistics specific to Climatology that is as yet unknown to mathematicians?) and if his conclusions and methods are wrong, they are well documented (you even get code listings!), so you and others can find them. I’m not sure the argument from authority does your case any good. The Science either stands on its own or it doesn’t.
Lorax:
The most substantive commenters here do not “follow” Steve. We pay attention to his work. But nobody here worth listening to accepts the idea of an all-knowing authority.
McCulloch, “The strategy you advocate is superficially attractive, but unfortunately amounts to outright cherry picking. To see how it can generate the appearance of a dramatic hockey stick using serially correlated artificial data with no true relationship to temperature, read David Stockwell, “Reconstruction of past climate using series with red noise” in Australian Institute of Geoscientists News March 2006 (#83), p. 14, at http://landshape.org/enm/wp-content/uploads/2006/06/AIGNews_Mar06%2014.pdf.”
Believe it or not, I am also here to learn. So I take exception to you suggesting that I endorse cherry picking. I was simply asking questions, about how one should go about determining which data are good and bad. I think that we can agree that only good data should be used.
I am not an expert in this field and was asking if there is an objective method for doing so. Comparing the reconstruction with OBSERVED data seems to be a natural choice. Obviously we do not always know this a priori, but, if a given tree core is not consistent with the regional SAT record, then why include it? I would argue that doing so is prudent, and not cherry picking. The goal of proxies is to find an alternative empirical method of replicating the temperature record, if a given tree or set of data are not doing that (and especially if we do not know why), then I think it reasonable to exclude those data which are not doing that for whatever reason. That was my point, and again, I take exception to you making the fallacious statement that I endorse cherry picking. Had the regional SATs in the region of interest been cooling in the late 20th century and the core was not showing that cooling then obviously that tree is not responding to the SATs alone but other factors, and that does not help us make a reliable temperature reconstruction, so why keep it? Obviously if one does not have a concomitant SAT record then one cannot make that call, but it is my understanding that these cores were retrieved at a time and in areas which do have instrumented SATs.
Player “I absolutely would, if I believed my result was solid”. Even if that neighbour hated you? Would you want someone who runs a blog on taxation to audit your taxes? I tghink not. You missed my point. My point is one should be audited by your someone who has not got an agenda (personal or otherwise) and who is affiliated with a reputable group who can be held to account if they mess up or make a mistake in your audit.
Re: Lorax (#78),
It is against blog rules to impugn motive. Yet you have broken that rule several times now. I’m sure your own motives are noble. However there is more to good science than noble intentions. When can we start answering your questions?
Conard “Which contrarian IPCC AR citation did you have in mind for review?”
Why don’t we let McIntyre choose. But for starters, how about the work on CGRs?
Re: Lorax (#81),
The topic at this blog is mostly paleoclimate reconstructions. Forays into other topics risk being deleted.
Fritsch “Lorax, if their is a statistical god, I only hope that he will forgive you for you know not what you speak.”
I prefaced my message I am here to learn and then receive this demeaning post– did you miss that part? I do not appreciate your tone. Kenneth, please then explain to all of us (I’m sure that there are other people here who are not statisticians) why what I said is wrong instead of making juvenile quips.
Re: Lorax (#83),
What Ken meant is that in science one is not allowed to select which data are reported on. i.e. When sampling it is important to take unbiased samples. What he meant is that you need to understand how bias can creep into a study without the author even noticing that it’s happened. You need to understand the full ramifications of a bias that goes undetected.
Re: bender (#195),
Not true bender there are plenty of situations where it’s allowable to select data, the use of temperature sensitive mutants in the study of the cell cycle for example.
Re: Phil. (#427),
Oh please. You can’t propose a hypotehsis test, then only report the part of the data that support the hypothesis. Don’t be facile.
Re: Lorax (#83),
As another non-statistician let me try to persuade you that your methodology is wrong.
The full proxy record, containing a large number of cores, has a low temperature signal and a high level of noise, and the result is a tendency to flatline This comprises the handle of the hockey stick. At the blade end, where the cores can be compared to the instrumental record the bulk of the samples have been removed and only those conforming broadly to the instrumental record, those having a high temperature, have been retained. There is a logic in doing this and there is no need to impute improper motives to anyone for having done so, but there is no getting round the fact that this has the effect of replacing the recent cores with the instrumental record. Insofar as it is claimed that studies constructed in this way can demonstrate that the recent rise in temperature is an anomolous emminence compared to the last millenium, that is wrong. Apples are being compared to oranges. The handle is low temperature signal/ high noise and the blade is high temperature signal /low noise.
It doesn’t mean that it can’t or won’t be demonstrated that recent temperatures are anomalous, only that in this study it hasn’t been demonstrated, and it exposes an error which will be repeated in any other study which uses a comparable methodology
Re: Lorax (#86),
Lorax, you come parading onto the site all puffed up about comments made here and at other sites with the intent to blame and slam Steve M and annouincing that he is on treacherous grounds. You then proceed to reveal in a short comment that you have no understanding of the issues here. Did you read what Hu M politely indicated to you about your (mis)conceptions of sampling criteria for a proxy? Do you understand the implications? If not instead of being an attack dog why don’t you asks some intelligent questions about that that you do not understand and are wantiong to learn.
If I were you I would proceed a lot more quietly until I understood what is going on here and attempted to gain some insight into what the analysis are attempting to reveal. To be honest with you, to me you appear like other drive bys who come here preach a behavior code that is in actuality never seen at other web sites or blogs and then proceed to contribute very little to the knowledge base here. You may prove me wrong, but at this point I doubt it.
We can continue this in unthreaded. I asked for a citation not a topic.
Over on RC, Gavin implies that all data held by RC members and used in published “recent” papers is now available.
Is this true?
Obviously a great deal of CRU data remains unavailable, and obviously key methodological steps used by RC folk remain hidden or otherwise undocumented.
But is there any (recent) raw data that they have yet to archive?
It would be helpful if there were a consolidated list of data sets that CA folk would like to be able analyze, but are otherwise unable to obtain.
Wow, I can’t believe I’m being more reasonable than St. Kenneth! đ
Steven, I agree. I share your frustration. What we must keep in mind is that these are incredibly sophisticated and complicated data and methods, and one is bound to make mistakes. There will always be mistakes, the question is were those mistakes though ignorance, b/c someone was fiddling the data, or b/c they just were incompetent? Either way, steps must obviously be taken to avoid making mistakes, and if they are made, to “fess up” and correct them. I have no problem with that.
These blogs (RealClimate, WUWT, ClimateAudit et cetera) all have agendas, let us not be so naive as to deny that. If McIntyre’s agenda is to audit all climate research or proxies, then great, but his record shows that not to be the case, and that raises questions. That is what I have an issue with, that and not holding those who report in the media (an entire article devoted to his work, not just a comment or one liner) on his work to account. Yes, blog are a stretch, there are so many of them, but there was only one Delingpole article.
It is disheartening to see McIntyre work elicit responses such as the one below (from WUWT):
“So the entire hoax of AGW was built on a single tree ring? And we are a Senate vote away from taxing ourselves into oblivion based on this hoax?
This really should end the practice of bending over backwards to be civil to the lying scum AGW team.”
Steve: I do not permit that sort of comment at this blog. I’ve set blog policies that prohibit that sort of comment and enforce them.Most readers here comply but from time to time some don’t. Comments are not pre-moderated and therefore I sometimes have to snip comments after the fact. It is impossible for me to keep with comments on other blogs.
Re: Lorax (#92),
Lorax, unlike Steve, who works from home, I don’t often get to watch WUWT during the day. Sometimes I do during break or while I’m waiting on something at my office to finish but for the most part I rely on scheduled publications from items I find in my morning and evening hours, plus volunteer moderators during the day.
We get several times the volume of comments as some other blogs, and inevitably some bad language does slip through. Like Steve I have a policy against such things, and like Steve sometimes it is moderated after the fact rather than immediately. That was the case here and the offending words have now been removed from the WUWT comment. If you look around, you’ll see Steve and I being called all manner on names and labels, yet nobody seems to care about getting those removed. The foul prose from “dhoghaza” alone could fill a book. Yet as we’ve seen RC gives precedence to his gutter talk as opposed to more thoughtfully phrased scientific questions.
Nearly 10 years of stonewalling has led to this. People are angry about this incident, and I can’t blame them for venting at times like this. Briffa and the team brought this anger on themselves with the constant stonewalling for replication data and the ivory tower demeanor that has pervaded their view of legitimate questioning.
If the team players don’t like this heat coming from their employers, the public, perhaps then they should stop working in the kitchen.
Conard, how about Svensmark et al’s. (2009) paper published in GRL.
Re: Lorax (#96),
This is OT. You risk being snipped. Be forewarned. Twice now. Don’t complain later when it happens.
Lorax:
Lorax, the beauty about science is – it is objective. Love and hate have nothing to do with whether a piece of work stands up to scrutiny. Science stands on its own – not on the shoulders of the person who did the research.
The audit is of the work, not the person who performed it. If my work is solid, and it will stand up to cross-examination regardless of who does the audit – my mother or someone who hates me. I have many peer-reviewed papers, and I know what deep internal and external soul-searching was done before they were published. But now they are all solid and well cited results. If anyone is afraid of external review, they are either unsure about the result of hiding something.
Cheers, K.
Lorax – I’m here to learn too. Please can you explain why you think such an exclusion of data would be an “end of story”?
Re: your points on the value of independent and qualified audits of climate papers they are sound. If you haven’t already, please can I suggest you read the Wegman Report? It is at the bottom of the links list at the top right of this page.
Lorax Your aspersions on McIntyre’s motives are disgraceful and there is not a shred of evidence to support them. Why on earth would Steve McIntyre feed a story to James Dellingbole? He is a journalist in the UK not the US or Canada. That you should imagine such things says much more about your own character than about McIntyres. You might also reflect that you are allowed to post here. I and many others are prohibited from posting on RealClimate as our views may be different from those of Gavin Schmidt and his followers. And while you are so freely making insinuations, do you think the the refusal by Dr Briffa nd others in the AGW camp to release their data provides a favourable impression of the supporters of AGW? Do you think the sneers and sarcasm so prevalent on RealClimate and other pro-AGW blogs is clever and constructive? McIntyre and Anthony Watts do allow all points of view to be aired as to be fair, does George Monbiot who is very pro-AGW. The approach to open and accountable science exhibited by some proponebts of AGW is I can assure you, very counterproductive indeed.
Sorry – flip that to the “…top left of this page”
Lorax: The key point at issue here is whether or not the current warm period is outside the normal range of temperature variation for this interglacial. That’s an important issue because it could give us some imperfect idea of how much of the current warming is man-made versus how much is due to normal climate variation. Are we experiencing a natural cycle that is bringing temperatures back up to levels comparable to the ones before the little ice age, along with a minor man-made component? Or are we experiencing an increase due primarily or completely due to man-made changes?
Satellite and surface temperature records can’t demonstrate that we are currently outside the normal range of temperature variation because they don’t go back far enough (under 50 years for Satellite records and under 100 years for anything like complete surface temperature records–and there are a lot of problems even during those periods).
The only way to determine whether or not the current warm period is unusual for our interglacial is to find temperature proxies that go back before the instrumental record. The study at issue here has been widely cited as a significant piece of evidence that the current warm period is unprecedented for our interglacial (or at least for the last thousand years). If it can’t robustly pick out the current warm period, then it couldn’t pick out previous warm periods either, which means that it doesn’t prove anything one way or the other about whether our current warm period is warmer, colder, or about the same as the Medieval Warm Period.
By the way, even if you could find accurate proxies going back a thousand years or so, that really doesn’t say much about the range of natural temperature variation possible in an interglacial. Our interglacial is over ten thousand years old, and nobody is even claiming to be able to reconstruct climate in detail for the entire interglacial. Until you can do that you can’t prove that current temperatures are outside the normal range of variation.
Even if you could reconstruct temperatures for the entire interglacial, that wouldn’t prove anything about the future natural temperatures of the interglacial. We know from a variety of lines of evidence (including evidence of higher sea levels) that the interglacial before this one was considerably warmer than our current temperatures. It’s possible that we may see higher natural temperatures in our interglacial before it’s over.
Ian, I asked if he did “feed” it. I did not say that he did. Big difference. I’m simply asking for McIntyre to be transparent.
I concur that Briffa’s refusal to release the data was very frustrating. I think it is easy for us to say, yes post the data on the internet, when it is not our data. At the end of the day, McIntyre should not be doing this, there should be an independent unbiased body overseeing that.
For the most part the RC posts are void of sarcasm. I think the sarcasm on RC referring to McIntyre’s work is b/c they are frustrated with the endless stream of accusations from the skeptics, some of which are truly astounding and fallacious. They have become the “lightning” rod for everything and anything pertaining to AGW issues.
Bender, pardon me, but what is being ‘snipped’ referring to? I am only trying to respond to the flood of people commenting here on my posts, and making accusations. Do I not have the right to respond?
Curious “Lorax – I’m here to learn too. Please can you explain why you think such an exclusion of data would be an “end of story”?
Because they are clearly not reflecting the actual conditions? That is, why would one include data to generate/produce a reconstruction when you have demonstrated or know that they are not responding in a realistic manner to the in situ or regional conditions? Wouldn’t one want to use a record that reflects the actual conditions?
I think this quote from Steve may better guide you suggestions for selected articles:
If I memory serves I think Mr McIntyre actually banned the discussion of Svensmark at one point but I could be wrong on that. Perhaps that is what the ever peevish bender is referring to as there have been many posts on subjects not directly related to reconstructions.
If this request by Mr McIntyre is a demonstration of unethical bias please elaborate.
oops. wrong thread [obviously meant for unthreaded]
Lorax – I think you might be confusing the proxy and the parameter. If I understand this correctly the reliability of a proxy measure (in the absence of a known causal relation) is evaluated through statistical techniques. These statistical techniques need to be applied to a full data set instead of one which has been reduced in advance to agree with a postulated relationship. If one reduces the available dataset in advance of analysis, the analysis will suffer from bias.
Lorax’s professed concern seems to be out of bounds for this blog. His near frantic concern with the potential popular reaction to Steve’s work is actually somewhat bizarre. One would think it obvious that Steve cannot be held accountable for the what others make of his work. By implication, Steve is not playing by the some unspoken and extra-scientific rule that it would appear the entire climate science community has implicitly agreed to. I begin to understand why so many papers relevant to “climate change” end with an apparently obligatory statement that the authors support the conclusions of the IPCC, despite any implications their work might have to the contrary. Steve has actually said that he supports the IPCC policy conclusions, but Lorax seems to want from Steve an active disavowal of all “deniers”. Lorax would appear to have a political rather than a scientific concern. “Lorax”, indeed,
So we can expect ‘neutral-toned’ comments from Steve from now on? I mean, nothing like
Or is that ‘neutral-toned’?
Or the comments here and over the denialosphere demanding Briffa ‘Explain or Resign’? Is that also ‘neutral-toned’?
Lorax
I know that Christopher Booker (Telegraph) regularly stops by WUWT and I think here also. Similarly I have seen Dellingbole make references to stories he obviously gleaned from the blogosphere. He is a journalist looking for a different angle on key stories -especially if it would upsert Monbiot. There is obviously no love lost between them.
It is an absurd idea to believe Steve needs to feed British journalists-they are voracious hunter gatherers already!
tonyb
Curious– thanks, good points.
mpaul– good points too, how about the rate of temperature change in the 20th century? Is that not more important? As to whether or not today’s temps are exceptional, one has to preface that with in the last x years, centuries. one could go back to 4.5 billion years ago, but that would not be constructive. What we know to be exceptional is the increase in GHG concentrations( from anthro activities this time), and the physics tells us that increasing GHGs increases temperature. We also know that GHG concentrations are going to go up a lot more than current levels b/c of anthro activities. Scientists understand that it is not coincidence that global mean SATs have been increasing (after excluding interannual-variability) in step with increases GHGs.
The problem here is that we will only no for sure when it is possibly too late. That is a rather risky way of surviving is it not?
Re: Lorax (#119),
“…how about the rate of temperature change in the 20th century? Is that not more important?”
Not necessarily. It only depends on the nature of previous variability. Any stochastic process guy who looks at a series (for any stochastic process) that looks like the Mannian hockey stick would quickly conclude that the underlying process had become unstable and unbounded. Scary. Terrifying actually. If that were a manufacturing process, someone would be running for the emergency power shut-off. But, in reality, there’s ample evidence of wider-ranging climate variability (wider than the hockey stick, that is) in the recent past. And there’s no evidence that the climate has ever become unstable and unbounded despite lots of changes in atmospheric chemistry.
Re: Lorax (#119),
Lorax, I would like to go back to your response to Curious’s comment about statistical evaluation of proxies in relation to temp. I do this because you brought this up several times in the thread. Commenters please feel free to correct me if I am wrong.
Curious stated:
To expand on what Curious said, Protocols for tree selection are set out a priori to indentify and sample the best candidates for temperature signal. Once the trees are sampled and the value frequencies are plotted, the characteristics of the sample population can be analyzed (mean, median, SD, etc.). If values within the population which coincide with temp are out there at 3 or even 2 sigma in a well defined distribution then one seriously has to question whether this is actually temp or just “noise” within a population which does not express temperature adequately. If there is a subset within this population which truly expresses the temp signal, then it should be distinguishable from the broader population as it would have its own logical distribution pattern.
There is a danger of just plucking out uptick values which coincide with temp and ignoring the broader population. There are many possible reasons for an uptick besides temperature. The population provides the context with which statistical inferences can be made with confidence. If shoddy statistics leads to false proxies being captured during calibration to the insturmental record, then it is noise being captured and not signal. Any noise captured during calibration will dampen temp signals prior to the insturmental period. The greater the noise vs signal – the greater the effect until pre-insturmental eventually approaches the straight shaft of a hockey stick. The blade of the stick is not affected as its value is pegged during calibration.
One other unrelated point. You took offense to Hu’s response when you were asking questions about selecting proxies with temp correlations. I can’t speak for Hu but I certainly did not interpret Hu’s comment as suggesting you advocate cherry picking. If I had made this comment to you, I would be suggesting that it is reasonable to want trees which correspond to temp signal, but that picking trees based only on correlation to temp is flawed.
[RomanM: Stop repeating yourself. You said this identically two comments back. This is nothing more than trolling and if it had been my blog, I would have snipped it.
If you have a new point to make, do it. ]
@Slownewsday
Stop yamalling at Steve
His friend Anthony Watts has been quite clear what Steve’s meaning was
[snip: misquoting from someone other than AW]
Or perhaps Steve needs to ask Anthony to change that wording, since he got the message wrong?
[moderator: snd, now you are attributing another blogger’s extremist article to Anthony, and discussing on Steve’s blog? That’s ridiculous. Please stop this nonsense!]
Re: slownewsday (#122),
I think Anthony has his own opinions and feels that he has the right to express them on his own blog. Strange that.
Re: John A (#127),
He does, but he has clearly misunderstood what Steve was saying.
Sorry slownewsday, I mispoke, you were just selective quoting without context – we are both inane…
Lorax wrote:
Gah. I hope this simply was badly stated and is not an accurate representation of how you believe science should work.
McIntyre should indeed “be doing this.” Anyone else who damned well pleases, now or a century from now, should be doing this. We should not have to rely on an allegedly independent and unbiased — and thus supposedly infallible — body to oversee the evaluation for us.
Yes, “it is not our data.” It also is not our obligation to believe any claims based on that data if we can’t access it.
If any researcher is not willing to let others review the source data or the analysis methodology, then whatever is being done is not “science” as the scientific community uses the word. The researcher’s results might be accurate, but if we have no way to distinguish them from the results of astrology or black magic, then we have no reason to give the researcher’s claims any more weight than we would give the claims of an astrologer or sorceror.
No problem Lorax – do read the Wegman Report when you have a moment. The Exec. Summary is easily digestible and fully supported in the detailed report. It also discusses many of the relevant climate reconstruction papers.
Also there was a good post here at CA a while ago on a paper by Briffa and Cook which discusses some of the issues around tree ring use:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3260
And there is a wealth of information and expertise in the site archives.
Lorax – I’m starting to despair from your logic. You said:
If there are cores (or any samples in general) collected from a region and some of these seem to correspond or react to some external measured factor, whereas the others do not, then if the cause/s of their different behaviour can’t be established, the whole set must be either used as it is, or judged as unsuitable proxy. It is that simple.
Kasmir, I’m not sure how to respond to your opinionated allegations. I am, in you mind, “frantic”. I’ve learnt form posting on other threads that it is not much use for me to try and reason with you…it just ends up in a mudslinging match or you perhaps referring to me as an “eco nut” of some similar juvenile term. My comments here have been quite muted for the most part, but I have received quite the backlash. Intriguing. Is it that you are just not used to hearing dissenting voices at CA? Sorry, I have no political agenda, but I understand why you feel it necessary to try and defame me by suggesting that I do.
Again I endorse auditing, if done properly. Again, all scientists need to reign in journalists who misrepresent their data/findings– that is a much less onerous task than than trying to construct/critique tree ring proxies……
Re: Lorax (#130),
Please let us know of any errors you might find.
Re: bender (#135),
Okay, I’m going to defend Bender (yikes!)
Lorax, what bender was doing was inviting you to actually examine the auditing that is being done on this site (i.e. review the code, check the data) and let us know what errors you find in the audit process.
Admittedly, that would take some work on your part, but since you are committed to auditing that is done correctly I am sure you won’t mind…
Re: David Jay (#152),
I just want to know what he’s doing here. What is his question? I hear some general complaints about what this or that commenter said, but very little directed Steve’s way regarding the work he’s done. Where’s the scrutiny that we’ve been promised?
Re: Lorax (#130)
Lorax, it’s not up to me whether you’re welcome here. I full expect Steve will “snip” my comments as being off topic. I’m actually glad to see that you seem to be settling into discussing the issues rather than continually castigating Steve for others’ reaction to his work. I still strongly disagree with your advocacy of cloistered secrecy on this or any other matter of science; “amateurs” have always been important contributors to the advancement of science, which fact is often lost in hindsight. My guess is that posterity will take Steve’s contributions quite seriously. But I apologize to my allusion to the juvenile source of your “Lorax” screen name, although it is quite evocative.
Jennifer Marohasy got the message pretty clearly.
[snip]
Delingpole has got the message
[snip]
There are all these people who are making these rash statements based on Steve’s comments. Maybe he should be a little upset that so many people around the world are misrepresenting him? Sending out urgent clarifications, making sure the slurs against Briffa are ended immediately, and apologies made?
[ed: snd, as has been repeatedly noted, the proprietor of this blog barely has time to monitor his own blog, let alone what others say. You’re not contributing to the discussion.]
He can’t discredit it if it’s done properly and the conclusions follow logically from the methods and data. That’s the beauty of science. It stands or falls on its own two legs. If it’s solid, it’s untouchable. Agendas don’t matter. As to audits being done randomly, that’s fine for the IRS with a huge pool of similar taxpayers to choose from. This situation is entirely different. As explained, this is a keystone to many other scientific claims and conclusions, and it warrants extra attention and should be able to withstand any logical challenge.
“…especially those climate scientists who understand AGW to be a credible threat”
I think you were looking for the word “believe” in this sentence, not “understand.” If they understand something based on data and methods that don’t hold water, then they really don’t understand anything.
Again, you seem to not understand the premise that the science will stand on its own if it’s done right no matter who audits it. It’s not a painting, a dance routine, or a novel, which are all subject to the personal whims and preferences of the reviewer. Rather, it’s a logical series of steps from Point A to Point Z that anyone with the proper background should be able to follow. If it’s internally consistent, it passes. If it’s not, it fails. If the auditor publishes his work and his arguments and methods he’s done his job.
If I didn’t have anything to hide and I did my taxes right it wouldn’t make any difference. If I was trying to get away with something it would matter to me, but one of the premises of science is you don’t try to “get away with something.” That’s a big no-no. And you yourself claimed that everyone has an agenda so I don’t see how you’re going to get away from that problem. Most of science is one agenda going up against another. The beauty of it, though, is that there is an objective standard to judge by and the truth will win out, through the back and forth process. The same can’t be said of a painting, a dance routine, or a novel. There it really would matter who reviewed you.
Bender “Please let us know of any errors you might find.”
This is another straw man argument. I am not in the auditing business, never said I was, so your point is moot. Stop deflecting.
So now we have, predictably, reached the point of obfuscation and debating semantics.
kcom:
What is so difficult for you guys to understand? You keep trying to suggest that I endorse people “hiding” errors, how many times do I need to remind you that I don’t.
Re: Lorax (#136),
There is no argument there. It is an open invitation to discuss data and papers and ask questions.
This is about the most out of control thread I’ve seen at CA.
Lorax, if nothing else please do note how many (off topic, as this one) posts you’ve been allowed today. I used to read Real Climate (in fact, I directed others there thinking they were indeed honest brokers)…it didn’t take too long to figure them out. Any supposed science blog that prohibits dissenting opinions/ideas is nonsense. This blog has a MUCH higher real science to nonsense ratio.
slownewsday wrote:
In contrast, it’s heartwarming to see the AGW proponents in the climatology community rushing en masse to condemn such rash, irresponsible statements in the media as this:
At a reception for the Tokyo [Olympics] bid, Governor Ishihara sought to drive home climate concerns saying, âI think this (the 2016 Games) could be the last for mankind.â He said, “Global warming is getting worse. Scientists have said that the earth has passed the point of no return.”
I mean, surely they must be doing their best to counter extremist claims like this one … Right?
Re: Mike G in Corvallis (#140),
You are changing the topic.
I find the above very offensive, and an attack of the pursuit of truth in science. Steve is effectively conducting a “random audit”. If someone is suggesting there be an official organization to conduct random audits, while the findings of one scientist should never be questioned or tested by another then that person is against the scientific method.
People forget that this is an audit site. All he does is check data, there is no point of view, which is 100% the way to go! (as a scientist myself)
Does anyone else get the suspicion that “Team” doesn’t understand what a sensitivity analysis is? Scary, considering Trillions of our dollars are riding on this.
Lorax, since you endorse auditing, perhaps you can try posting to that effect on RealClimate. A quick look at this site should let you know which papers and authors haven’t been forthcoming. Ask them if they think those authors should provide data. We can start with the rest of the data from this study.
Lorax
In your reply to my earklier post you commented
I concur that Briffa’s refusal to release the data was very frustrating. I think it is easy for us to say, yes post the data on the internet, when it is not our data. At the end of the day, McIntyre should not be doing this, there should be an independent unbiased body overseeing that.
There is an unbiased independent body it is called peer review. What is your take on the peer review process on Dr Briffa’s paper that did not contain the data necessary for others to repeat his experiments?
MikeN, go to RC and see what they say about making the code/data available. Schmidt is fielding some very challenging questions on that very matter right now. The question for me who should be doing the auditing to ensure that the process is systematic, independent/unbiased, fair and professional. Should it be the journals? Should it be done for everyone to misinterpret, twist and abuse on the blogosphere, no. The results of such an audit should be made freely available upon its conclusion– you are innocent until proven guilty right?
The peer-review probably needs to be more rigorous ands include some for of auditing. Also, I have almost been burnt by using someone’s data (previously published) and assuming that they applied due process and checked everything– well they didn’t, fortunately I discovered their error before drafting my manuscript
Corvallis re “At a reception for the Tokyo [Olympics] bid, Governor Ishihara sought to drive home climate concerns saying, âI think this (the 2016 Games) could be the last for mankind.â He said, “Global warming is getting worse. Scientists have said that the earth has passed the point of no return.”
This is the kind os stuff that makes me mad! Whaaat? As someone who understands (not “believes”, apparently that has religious connotations) AGW to be a credible threat/problem I am incensed about such comments, they really do more harm than good.
Scientific method, Steve’s audits are not random, unless he can use some stats to demonstrate otherwise. Suggesting random audits is not an affront on science, in fact, it would be a big improvement over how science is currently conducted, a step forward to ensure integrity and honesty and due process. One of the reasons I suggest random, is b/c it is simply impossible to audit every single paper out there. If you know of a better method then please share instead of simply attacking and critiquing. I am trying to be constructive in what appears to be a very aggressive forum to “outsiders”. McIntyre is not beyond reproach or accountability or questioning. Alas, many people posting here seem to believe that and that smacks of superiority and bias.
Finally, I find the continual references to “the team” juvenile and unprofessional.
In fact, McIntyre has recently audited papers (Steig, Kaufmann) that were not part of the most recent IPCC (AR4) as he himself claims (as shown by another post #113 above).
Re: Lorax (#154),
1. Please point to any of Steve’s errors. Of course he’s fallible. He’s just careful. And he admits and corrects errors immediately when they’re found.
2. Why are you so concerned with “what people seem to believe”? Do you not understand that the focus here – until recently – is data and papers, not psychology and religion?
3. It is totally unclear what you are doing here. You say you are here to learn, but all I see is disruptiveness.
4. Have you grown to understand yet why cherry-picking is non-scientific? It’s a pretty important concept for anyone who hopes to engage with rational people.
Re: Lorax (#154),
And his responses are bunk. He insists that all data is available or “you are confusing us with someone else”
Steve M has noted many papers with no archived data contrary to what Gavin said. Many are “Team” papers.
You are the one exhibiting “superiority and bias”. Steve responds to questions and makes corrections promptly.
Check other threads on this this weblog as to how the “Team” does not respond. You can read Dr. Wegman’s report in which he did not find any errors made by Steve.
Really? Well, That is exactly what the “Team” describes – peer review their own papers and write “new” studies with certain proxies being reused.
If you want to see juvenile and unprofessional read the discussion at RC on Briffa’s response. Briffa responded in a polite manner but made false accusations about Steve’s analysis. After that it is all downhill with the commentary including Gavin. There is not one scientific point made there compared to several days worth of critique at Climateaudit.
Jay. Sigh, talk about more twisting and deflecting. I have not once questioned McIntyre’s methodology. I have questioned his motives and how he goes about sharing that information. Got it? I’m beginning to lose my patience with the continual distortion of my comments by some posters here. I though CA was about sticking to the facts, the data, the methodology? I’m beginning to doubt that with each passing post. I’ll remind you again that I am not in the auditing business, how many times does that need to be said? That does not, however, preclude me from having some opinions on it, unless of course this is only a forum for those who are omniscient?
Re: Lorax (#158),
Couldn’t agree more, Mr. Lorax. You say: “I though CA was about sticking to the facts, the data, the methodology? I’m beginning to doubt that with each passing post.” Dare I say your understanding of CA is that it covers the issues of science.
However, you come to a blog auditing an analysis, one for which the blog author has waited 9 years. What do you want?: “I have not once questioned McIntyre’s methodology. I have questioned his motives and how he goes about sharing that information.”
Thanks for playing.
Re: Lorax (#158),
It is. But all you want to talk about are Steve’s motives and “how he goes about sharing information”. You are complaining about getting exactly what you are asking for.
.
Tell us what you think of Kaufman et al. (2009).
Re: bender (#162),
No, No Bender. You should be asking Mr. Lorax about Mr. Kaufman’s motives.
Re: Lorax (#158), “I’ll remind you again that I am not in the auditing business, how many times does that need to be said? That does not, however, preclude me from having some opinions on it…”
Whew!
I think that Steve M. is right to be cautious about ascribing motives to anyone on this. It could easily be a situation where the guy released a small preliminary study and before he knew what hit him it was getting cited by all kinds of people and in the middle of a huge controversy. Not releasing the data immediately and defusing the situation may not have been the best way of dealing with the situation, but maybe he hoped it would all fade out with newer and better studies coming out.
A lot of people have this inflated idea of what science and scientists are. The vast majority of scientists are either academics or working for a bureaucracy. In either case, the incentives are to not rock the boat. Don’t go after the big picture issues. Find a little non-controversial niche and publish a steady stream of non-controversial studies that no one outside your specialty will read and nobody will care enough about to look closely at your methodology.
Go to a university library and glance through the journals at random some time. The vast majority of the studies are of interest only to specialists and comprehensible only to specialists–in some cases probably deliberately. You can make a nice, obscure, middle-class living writing these things, and the vast majority of scientists do that.
Take somebody from that background and suddenly toss their obscure study on Siberian tree-rings into a high-stakes political/economic poker game like AGW, and they’re not going to enjoy the experience. I wish this guy well with his health issues and if he’s in the kind of situation I described, I hope he finds a graceful way out that at the same time advances the science of the issue.
Re: Barry R (#251),
i think this may be the best expliation so far.
Briffa did not mean to mislead, but agenda etc… hijacked his work.
what would you do/anybody?
Kenneth, I have made some constructive comments regarding auditing and peer review, don’t try and make me out to be some irrational poster. Hu did not understand my questions. I read Hu’s comments, he did not seem to understand where I was coming from as he accused me of endorsing cherry picking, which I do not. Distortion. I never claimed that I have “no understanding” of the issues here, more distortion.
Ironically, I learnt something today not from the experts who post here, but from someone who claims to be in my predicament (poster “curious”) and to not be an expert on these matters. Interesting.
I find the attitude of you and others here to be omniscient, and to be honest rather “holier than thou”. I bit of humility would not Hurt Kenneth. I’ll do my best to prove you wrong, sir.
Re: Lorax (#164),
Believe it or not, “Hockey Team” is THEIR self-description. It was not begun here. We are honoring their own appellation.
Lorax, a suggestion if I may, if you have any intention of providing useful insight or helpful influence to the process.
Don’t walk into a community and assume you can discern motives and methods from a cursory examination. If there’s anything we have learned here (and too easily forget) it is that motives are VERY hard to discern. Right now, emotions are a bit heated and so various people are getting on one another’s nerves.
Instead, consider listening a LOT more than you write, for quite some time. Get to know the ebb and flow of the blog. Did you know that 80+ percent of blog readers never say anything? Take time at a given community to discover who the “players” are and how they operate. We all have our own quirks and habits.
Jeff Id was right: this is the most food-fightish thread we’ve had in a long time. By the time things settle down, you’ll find the much of the hottest dialogue has been snipped or even completely removed if necessary.
We avoid pre-moderating here because we trust commenters to follow the rules. When they don’t, there can be a mess to clean up. But that’s better than locking the front door. (AFAIK there are only two people who have actually been blocked here!)
Re: MrPete (#263), just out of curiosity, who were the 2 people blocked and/or on what threads.
thanks
Re: dougie (#386),
One was “Methane Mike” who was a somewhat obnoxious poster on a board I frequented. I sent him here thinking seeing some true science at work would abash him a bit. Unfortunately he ignored rational discourse here just as much as he did on the other board and he had to be blocked.
I’m wondering who the second person was too. I know you don’t get locked out just for being a troll as we’ve had many of them and they’ve always been able to continue posting. I’ve thought it might have been either John Hunter (who was, I believe locked out until he’d apologize to someone for something) or TCO who spent way too much time posting here and badgering Steve to publish more, and suddenly was gone, but still posts elsewhere.
Steve: Nope. Not one of them. It was some other Methane Mike type.
Re: Dave Dardinger (#420),
thanks for that Dave
it was TCO i was thinking of as well, has Steve really blocked him?
i surmise he was a pain/pest to steve, but he seemed to add something useful to the blog. missed the bust up (which thread).
i am just a lurker in all this but as bender often has stated before i have tried to read as much as possible – my mind is in basic data mode & experts
Re: dougie (#451),
TCO was not banned. He just needed to be put on a leash a few times. I don’t miss him.
Is there something wrong with including in the criteria used to decide which papers to audit factors such as the importance of the paper in major policy decisions, or on the prominence of the paper in public discussion, or surrounding circumstances like the non-disclosure of underlying data?
In the case of an unfunded individual with limited resources should they not be able to audit whatever papers interest them?
Re: SB (#165),
SB– Kind of like tree rings used in temperature reconstructions, Mr. McIntyre should only seek out those papers to audit with very high robustness to RC squealing (or a high signal to noise ratio).
Wow, bender and Parrish. I think that we all need to take a deep breath.
My point about Kaufman, which was lost on you is that McIntyre claims to only audit research “relied upon by the IPPC”. I am not here to discuss the merits or failings of that research. This is about Briffa remember?
Actually motives can be measured by counting how many papers which claim to refute or question AGW McIntyre has audited.
1. Please point to any of Steve’s errors. Of course he’s fallible. He’s just careful. And he admits and corrects errors immediately when they’re found.
That is nice to hear. However, I did not say he made any errors, your comment is not relevant.
2. Why are you so concerned with “what people seem to believe”? Do you not understand that the focus here – until recently – is data and papers, not psychology and religion?
Lorax: Please this is ridiculous. I have not discussed psychology or religion, except to explain why I use the word “understand” versus “believe”, and that was b/c of what someone else here quipped about.
3. It is totally unclear what you are doing here. You say you are here to learn, but all I see is disruptiveness.
Lorax: Not trying to disrupt, the distraction comes from the steady stream of displeased, in fact indignant, posters who do not appreciate anyone stating that McIntyre should be correcting the Telegraph article which pertains directly to this entire fiasco. So your point is again, not relevant.
4. Have you grown to understand yet why cherry-picking is non-scientific? It’s a pretty important concept for anyone who hopes to engage with rational people.
Again, really, do you read my posts? I do not endorse cherry picking, of course doing so is unscientific. I was trying to understand why they (Briffa et al.) decided to include some core data and not others– you seem to think that I was defending their choices, well no, I was not. Can we at least agree on that?
Re: Lorax (#168),
I invite you to comment about Kaufman on a thread about Kaufman, not here.
I believe I answered your other question before you asked it, in a crosspost.
Re: Lorax (#168),
Believe it or not, that’s been discussed before.
Unfortunately, there’s significant documentation that IPCC refuses to cite many such papers. IIRC, they even have explained why at a senior leadership level. In essence, their goal is assessing AGW, and consider skeptical science to be out of bounds.
AFAIK, there’s no way you could “audit” an equivalent number of pro and anti paleoclimatology papers that are cited by IPCC. The pool of available material is way too lopsided.
Re: Lorax (#168),
This is not true. I am motivated by the desire to understand what happened to Lamb’s MWP. You see it when you exclude tree-rings from multi-proxy networks, as in Loehle & McCulloch’s reconstruction – but you lose it when you include Team tree-ring chronology-based work, such as Briffa’s Yamal larch and Hughes’ California pines. I want to understand the nature of that sensitivity. To get to the bottom of that you have to audit the papers that Steve audits. And because many of these folks don’t archive their data or release their code, you have to go chasing it all down. It ends up being a formal audit instead of a simple friendly enquiry.
Re: Lorax (#170),
As I’ve said on other occasions, it is not possible for me to monitor all blog commentary. It’s hard keeping up with blog comments here. I went out to play squash about 4 hours ago and about 80 comments have piled up. I’m tired and won’t go through them until tomorrow by which time another batch will be online.
The Daily Telegraph blog is not one that I follow and I had not read the Delingpole article until it was brought to my attention. I agree that this article mischaracterized my position and promptly sent an email to the author http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7244#comment-358456 .
In addition, I posted a similar comment at Lubos blog at about the same time.
While I do not believe that I had an obligation to do so, I also thought that it was reasonable enough to suggest that I do so and I did, posting up a notice that I done so. I submit that my behavior was far more gentlemanly than the various untrue claims about me made at realclimate and elsewhere that don’t seem to bother you.
I’m not sure what else you expect me to do.
I have already received followup on both requests. Lubos sent me an email saying that he had modified the paragraph in question out of respect for my request. Delingpole also responded and has indicated that he is prepared to amend his text and I expect something to be done tomorrow.
Meanwhile, goodnight everyone. (I lost at squash and am not playing well right now.)
Random audit? When an auditor finds something suspicious, does he quit the case? What is being audited here is a body of work by a research Team that has been shown to be deficient in its due diligence and systematically produces work where the conclusions rely heavily on a very few morsels of data, yet nevertheless influence IPCC reporting and global environmental policy. When a new paper of that ilk is published, it receives an appropiately weighted level of scrutiny. And contributors here expect the same in return.
I’ve been watching this Lorax thing for the bulk of the day. I’m not a regular here, though I stop by and post on rare occasions. I’m going to jump in here and say what I see happening. Lorax, you seem to have developed a rather interesting variation on the ad hominem attack. Instead of deflecting discussion from the issue by directly attacking the person, you accomplish the same thing by asking questions that imply ad hominems. Look, if we’re talking science, or even logic, methodology is the issue. Motives, personalities, how somebody else misunderstands the issue–those are all irrelevant.
This is really a science site and people are really here for the most part to talk about science, not personalities. Persist in trying to make it something else, and of course people will get irritated with you. Why wouldn’t they? There are more than enough sites out there where ad hominem attacks are considered the height of argumentative skill. This isn’t one of those and shouldn’t become one.
Machnee, I too do not appreciate the tone at RC. That said, it is out of character for them, for the most part they are quite professional and thoughtful and do a good job of explaining the science. I think it an overstatement for you to claim that “There is not one scientific point made there compared to several days worth of critique at Climateaudit.”
To borrow a phrase from Pink Floyd “Us and them”. It is sad that the science has come to this, “Us and them”. But that is a reality I suppose. You should know, I go to CA and WUWT and other skeptic’s blogs, not to disrupt ,but to see different points of view, and perhaps learn something. Today was the first day that I felt compelled to post something, and I can;t say that I am flattered by the “attention”.
Bender, I explained why I used the term “random”. Purely logistical, nothing else.
Re: Lorax (#175),
???
Re: Lorax (#175),
Lorax, have you not become aware of RC’s long term policy to completely shut down and berate any input, however polite, that doesn’t follow their party line?
They are professional in the sense of presentation. They are not professional in the sense of scientific dialogue. As soon as a credible critique is written, it is killed. You will never see it at RC. Not because such critiques do not exist but because they have an explicit filter against them.
And that is why people are learning that the honest truth is not to be found at RC. Science does not advance when managed in such fashion.
Yes, this site has an agenda. But it is not about pro/anti AGW. It is for good science. That statement is often misbelieved by newcomers. Yet eventually those who take the time to stick around discover that it’s true.
Re: Lorax (#175),
“Explaining the science”. You have not been reading enough there. They do a good job of promoting AGW.
Re “not one scientific point”. I am still looking for one. Several of the comments twisted what Steve has said or done.
. Re: Lorax (#164),
Lets see you appear to blame Steve M for irrational statements of others and now you want to blame me for how your demeanor is perceived here. I would suggest you allow that people make their own judgments about these things. I was not saying or implying irrationality on your part, but rather your appearing uninformed or misinformed with a great tendency to preach. Do you take us for dunces that you came here to listen and learn after your entrance here? I know the demeanor of people who come here to learn and that is not what I saw from you â not by a long shot. People like you spend way too much time preaching to be effective listeners.
Having said all that, if you really want to learn about proper sampling criteria that will pass statistical muster, we have many more knowledgeable people than I here willing to take you (gently) by the hand to answers your questions. I took a very different view of your exchange with Hu M than what you reported above. A simple question: Do you understand what is wrong statistically with the sampling approach that you endorsed and led to HuM’s comments? You seemed to take his reply very personally. Cherry picking does not make you a cherry picker in anything but the figurative sense.
OK, you seemed confused. My argument, had you actually read my posts, is that the audits should be “random” (for want of a better word) because there is simply not enough time nor enough resources to audit every paper accepted for publication. You should know that. Peer review does not currently involve inspecting the raw data, and that I think should change. What the best way to do that is up for debate; I do not claim to have all the answers as some people here seem to believe that they have.
You would all be up in arms if only those controversial papers claiming to have refuted AGW were audited by a sister site, would you not? Bender, I really am trying to be constructive here is what is a very aggressive crowd.
Either way, an audit should not turn into a public circus, and that is exactly what is going on when other people can scalp information carefully gleaned here (concerning the Briffa fiasco) and then distort it to further their own agendas. That is why I suggest McIntyre be careful, and do his best to set the record straight when he is able. Thus far he seems unwilling and that I find bothersome and starts to raise inconvenient questions. As I said before, not every blog out there, but at least those in the media who elect to dedicate entire missives filled with misinformation on the issue. That is not unreasonable.
Re: Lorax (#182),
In an ideal world, this would be true.
Unfortunately, Steve’s polite requests for data normally (!) turn into multi-year battles. And the most productive way to win those battles has been to go public. Sunshine is a great disinfectant.
The public circus is a direct result of failure to adhere to data publication requirements. A few scientists are professional and cooperative — and we don’t see public circuses.
One more related point: Steve has a longstanding offer, occasionally taken up, for ANY of the scientists involved in these topics to post their own articles here and interact with the community. No restrictions, no holds barred (other than the sitewide prohibition on topics such as religion, etc.) This has resulted in some very informative and engaging conversations. Unfortunately, the Hockey Team (remember, their term!) has yet to participate.
Re: Lorax (#182),
Why do you think it is Steve McIntyre’s sole responsibility to correct any “misrepresentations” of his posts?
You say what you have to say and a person can gather what meaning best he can from what you have said.
Are you aware how many readers there are are of CA or WUWT? I fancy they are more than those of RC.
And why do you imagine that what you interpret of what he says is a better interpretation than mine, for example?
If RC says that he has engendered “misrepresentations” what is your opinion of my post Richard (#174), above? Why did they not clear up my misinterpretation, instead of censoring me?
RC is professional? They typically include a half a dozen ad hominem arguments per paragraph. That is not professional.
Mark
slownewsday in 172, I think everyone here would love for Briffa to “clear up” his selection criteria for Yamal.
Mr Pete, I intend to stick around and listen a lot more. I’ll hold you to you assertion that “Yes, this site has an agenda. But it is not about pro/anti AGW. It is for good science. That statement is often misbelieved by newcomers. Yet eventually those who take the time to stick around discover that it’s true.”
The anti AGW groups do love CA though, don’t they?
If the IPCC are so “lopsided” then is McIntyre should not have said what he did about the IPPC. He should be open to auditing all paleoclimate and such like papers. Yet, that does not seem to have happened. Why not? Don’t try and blame this one on the IPCC. They are not responsible for what McIntyre chooses or chooses not to audit. McIntyre and McIntyre alone decides that. Until he does broaden his “band with”, the awkward and inconvenient questions will be asked by me and others.
It is late here and I need sleep. This has been exhausting andthis is not something I actually have the time to embark on. Anyhow, my fault for not cow towing to the party line here I guess. I do not see much questioning just agreeing….just like at RC.
PS: Can you actually prove what you accuse RC of? If it is true, I will certainly keep that in mind when going there. But I would prefer quantitative proof rather than allegations.
Re: Lorax (#187),
I need sleep soon as well đ so this is my final comment for the evening.
I don’t know that anyone has been keeping score.
I can be authoritative about CA because I’m one of the volunteers who helps keep it going.
As for RC, there are plenty of folk whose very-reasonable comments were blocked at RC. At one point, someone was going to create a blog just for the RC-blocked comments. Don’t know if that ever happened. In any case, you will find the CA archives chock full of comments from people who have posted their RC comments here because they couldn’t get them through moderation at RC. Many of those comments are from working scientists with very informed material to contribute.
I don’t want to hijack this topic thread for a discussion of RC vs CA comment policy. Folks, please take further commentary on this to Unthreaded.
Re: MrPete (#191),
I always post my RC snips at CA.
Re: bender (#195),
There is a site now for archiving these called rcrejects.wordpress.com
Re: Lorax (#187),
Please do not tell Steve what to audit on his own time and dime. If he got the millions that the universities get for research, he could hire staff. If you would be familiar with the last IPCC and Steve’s activities there you would understand the problem. Read Steve’s posts on IPCC. Do not talk about broadening band width. Do you have any real questions about the Briffa paper?
Re: Lorax (#189),
You could do a poll of the regulars here and see if there are any of them who have NOT had polite disagreements with RC blocked. I’m a quick learner and though I’ve been here since the first days of Climate Audit, I found quickly that there was no hope of getting RC to engage in real dialog. So I stopped going there. Occasionally I’ll return just to be sure things haven’t changed, but it never has.
Re: Lorax (#189),
You might want to list one or two such papers he should have audited but didn’t. I think you’ll find all the important papers which discuss paleoclimate via proxies have been looked at here. Look up at the address bar on your browser and notice that the page # is up to 7257 (though the actual number of posts by Steve isn’t quite that large) and the number of comments are at 358547 (ditto). Erase the comment number and enter various random lower page numbers for a while and you may be amazed at what you’ll find.
Frankly, I much prefer Lorax’s company to that of Tom P. And when he can prove that he’s learned something about the dangers of cherry-picking then I can say it will have been worth it.
(BTW, the moderating practice here at CA is quite simple: get rid of the spam, and trust people to post reasonable comments. Snip after the fact only as necessary. Most of the time, very little snipping is necessary.
Most comments get auto-moderated because they included a lot of links or their web browser is strangely configured. I promise, there is NO political or point of view bias in the path from your comment to the thread. We use generic automated WordPress management tools.)
Really we should thank Lorax and Fordprefect et al for helping hone some really sharp debating skills among the readers here. I am impressed with the quality and clarity of arguments on this thread.
Lorax, maybe you are right. The only data that should be used is that which mirrors the 20th century increase in temperatures. So all those multi-proxy studies are overkill. This endless statistical analysis is so tedious when it is obvious that only data with the right 20th century slope should be used anyway. The obvious solution is not to make sure that Yamal and/or bristle cone pines are included proxy’s, but to throw the others out and only use Yamal and bristle cones. Well the bristle cones have problems so I guess we have to get rid of those, but we can stil just use Yamal. But I guess we have to look at the individual trees in Yamal and when we do we see that most of those trees don’t belong either because they don’t have the right 20th century slope, so get rid of those trees. Hey, but there’s this one tree in Yamal, (YAD 061) and if . . . .
Lorax, you continue to assume you are talking to a rather naive group of people here. That the IPCC and RC provides evidence overwhelmingly for proponents of immediate AGW mitigation is obvious to any one who is familiar with their reviews and comments. That does not impugn the work that they report but simply makes those of us who can judge aware that we are limited to one side of the issues when reading their material. I cannot speak for Steve M but what I see at CA is analysis of works in the climate field that is generally done by scientists who advocate for the consensus on AGW and since that consensus is reported to be rather overwhelming that alone would account for the preponderance of his analysis being focused there. The history of his interest started with Mann’s reconstruction and has taken a logical progression from there with many papers that have been either progeny or closely associated through authorship with that initial Mann paper.
That you come here imploring Steve M to focus on other papers is a more than a bit disingenuous in view of the slant of RC and the IPCC. Come here to talk about the quality of his work and that of RC and IPCC, for that matter, but please quit the silliness about his reputation or that of IPCC and RC being harmed by what they chose to review and analyze. We are all big girls and boys here and can think and judge for ourselves, so get off your kick and start contributing something to the analyses.
Lorax,
I just completely fail to understand why you continue to think Steve McIntyre’s motivations are important at all. His work is what matters. Why Steve decided to devote so much effort to auditing “climate” is his own concern. What matters is his results, which are manifestly impactful. Steve has no more responsibility to audit (say) Svensmark than Briffa has to collaborate with him. There is no scientific benefit to impugning anyone’s motives. Academia itself is inherently rife with rivalries and hidden agenda; at least in the sciences the idea is that the truth will out through public verifiability. Personal and political agenda are not *supposed* to matter to the outcome. Steve understands this, but you don’t seem to care much about anything but uncovering hidden agenda. Who cares about (say) the backstory about why Briffa entered the dendro field? We should all care about reaching the scientific truth, and just as importantly, the whole scientific truth. Private science is not science, it’s proprietary research. The scientific method is all about public verifiability. Briffa should have released his data long ago. Why does Climate Audit exist? because the dendrochronology community did a crappy job of auditing itself, and then tried to cover it up. If that incestuous community had put half the energy into self audit that it has put into denial and cover up Climate Audit wouldn’t need to exist.
Lorax # 25
Steve provides a reference to his editorial on the context of the hockey stick. Well written and lucid. Yes, the MBH graph originally got me involved because Al Gore used it and initially I believed it. The primary focus of Steve’s editorial was that IPCC were using the HS throughout their reports and for presentations as a sales gimmick and, if it was wrong, they should stop using it. Indeed, the Australian Climate Change Ministry continue to display this graph on their website, and in New Zealand where I live, NIWA refer all its climate change science to the IPCC website. But what was missing from Steve’s editorial was my understanding of the importance of the hockey stick. Why have people at Real Climate got their knickers in a twist? Why is Briffa suddenly talking to Steve McIntyre? IPCC have to have hockey stick graphs, they can’t do without them.
The proposition is that recent warming cannot be explained by natural change since it has never changed this much before. Except in the Medieval Warm Period which gives the lie to this argument, so IPCC had to get rid of the MWP. They have chosen to do this by use of hockey sticks which eliminate MWP. Next step is to establish the climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2, and they can now do this by ascribing the âunprecedentedâ warming in the 20th Century all to CO2, because there is no other explanation. This then allows them to calculate what the feedbacks must be. Then their models can double the CO2 and, voila, huge temperature increase. If the hockey stick gets broken (apart from the popularity of the name âGavinâ), then unfortunately the AGW house of cards falls down.
They HAVE to get rid of the MWP, so expect everything to be thrown at you including the kitchen sink.
Skinnydog, I assume that your post was mean to be sarcastic? Mocking people is not a nice, nor a professional, trait Skinnydog. Your post just succeeds in undermining the credibility of CA.
Fritsch, the contents of this blog go beyond “analyses”. Don’t be naive. There are plenty of paleo papers out there that do not have anything to do with AGW. Yet, McIntyre seems to be oblivious to them. McIntyre has no affiliation, so he is free to audit whoever he wishes. Strange then that he keeps focussing/obsessing on Mann et al. Thanks to those who corrected me about “the team”, I still maintain it sounds juvenile. Why would they choose to use such a term? It sounds very insular.
So much for someone trying to express concerns about data presented here being manipulated and used for ulterior motives. That is not disingenuous. I stand by my comment that McIntyre is harming his reputation by seeming to cherry pick whom he audits– it seems that he has a vendetta against the team, and that that is the sole purpose of this blog. Nobody has made a convincing argument to the contrary, just lots of rhetoric and ad hom attacks against me thus far. For the record, RC are not doing themselves any favours. I am equally disappointed in both CA and RC.
I did have a question about how to properly apply Granger causality to some of my data, but in view of the aggressive opines here, I’m too scared to ask for fear of being mocked, or be the at the receiving end of some condescending comment.
Re: Lorax (#208), Lorax I still await your answers to my questions here: Richard (#192),
Re: Lorax (#208),
So instead you thought you would say things like”
I’m not going to be railroaded off this site.
Just who the heck do you think you are exactly? Again, I am astounded at the arrogance, indignation and pompous attitude of some posters hereâ and this from some “professionals”.
Perhaps that is why peer review, for all its faults, remains the “best” that we have in place, at least that way condescending opines and rhetoric like those displayed here ..
Might I respectfully suggest/request some humility on your part in the future Loehle? Good night, Sir.
However, even if official audits were in place McIntyre et al. would still do this b/c then they would just move the goal posts and claim that that auditing system was corrupt. It seems that there is just no making McIntyre happy.
You had one relevant question but were too scared to pose it but no too scared to give a stream of abrasive invective.
I still await your answers to my question here: Richard (#192),
Re: Lorax (#293),
The explanmation is given at this blog in a thread devoted to that topic. Basically, because a “team” of scientists is stronger than any individual.
Alan “and they can now do this by ascribing the âunprecedentedâ warming in the 20th Century all to CO2, because there is no other explanation.”
This is also off topic, but I’m afraid that the climate scientists have never climate that all the warming arises only from CO2. There are obviously other explanations/drivers, internal climate modes, solar forcing etc. GHGs (of which CO2 is but one) are just one aspect of the equation. They have made this perfectly clear all along. That is why the SATs do not display a monotonic upward trend. The impressive blade in Gore’s graphic has nothing to do with proxies. One it seems can be justified in arguing how the proxy data and observed SATs were merged, or if they should even be merged in that way. It seems not. Anyhow, not many reasonable and informed people question the 20th century warming and the rate of warming.
If I understand McIntyre’s graphs, they do not disagree with those of the CRU for the MWP. The issue there seems to lie with the 20th century data and why they chose to exclude certain cores form their analyses. Anyhow, please do not confuse this fiasco with what is happening now and expected to happen with future SATs as GHGs continue to increase and more and more positive feedbacks kick in. It is still early days in this experiment that we are performing. The hype has create the impression that all the warming should be occurring now, and that is obviously incorrect.
If I understand your post correctly you believe that the 20th century warming showed by Gore is false? We do not need proxy data to “infer” that , we have the instrumented record, and despite all its homogeneity problems, it is the best metric that we have over that length of time. Murphy et al. recently published a paper on CO2 sensitivity and the earth’s energy imbalance in JGR-A, you might find it helpful in addressing some of your concerns and misunderstandings of what is going on with AGW.
Hope my tone was not offensive, I’m really tired and said that I’d stop posting a while ago but the attacks keep coming.
Loehle, with respect, I take offense. I am no troll. Look up the definition, I have asked some relevant questions concerning this fiasco. Some stupid ones too apparently. But you don’t learn if you don’t ask. I have also made some constructive suggestions where and when possible. I did not come here to “preach the gospel of AGW” and derail the discussion. But if people keep attacking then I have every right to a rebuttal. I’m not going to be railroaded off this site.
Just who the heck do you think you are exactly? Again, I am astounded at the arrogance, indignation and pompous attitude of some posters here– and this from some “professionals”. I’ll keep your comments made to me (and others) in mind the next time I come across one of your papers. RC and CA have done themselves no favours today. Perhaps that is why peer review, for all its faults, remains the “best” that we have in place, at least that way condescending opines and rhetoric like those displayed here by Loehle and Fritsch are not relevant and ignored. Might I respectfully suggest/request some humility on your part in the future Loehle? Good night, Sir.
Kasmir, thanks for your comments. I have not seen this kind of loyalty even on RC. Quite astounding really. Everyone agreeing with everyone else, except for that dratted Lorax. That said, I agree with much of what you said Kasmir. However, even if official audits were in place McIntyre et al. would still do this b/c then they would just move the goal posts and claim that that auditing system was corrupt. It seems that there is just no making McIntyre happy. Good night from Canada.
Lorax
I tried to post this (see below) at RC. Vapourised immediately. Why not have a real good look at the ethos and ethics of RC and CA”
I haven’t seen your explanation of why Prof Briffa didn’t provide and was not compelled by the journal to provide the data on which he based his conclusions. Steve McIntyre has been trying for nearly a decade to obtain these data but none at RC seem to think this at all unusual. The Western world, by and large, is run on principles of democracy and if people take McIntyre’s results and draw their own conclusions this is all part of the democratic process. Refusing to provide data for others to evaluate that is derived in large part courtesy of the UK taxpayer could not be called either scientific or democratic. Additionally it seems that the peer review process is somewhat different in climate science than in other areas of science. I wonder what John Maddox would have thought of that process now.
Steve: I haven’t been trying for “a decade” to get this data. I’ve been trying since early 2006. However, the chronology was first published in 2000 and it took nearly a decade for the measurement data to be made available.
Steve McIntyre. Although I have said much about you today and critiqued what you do (or don’t do), I really appreciate you taking my concerns seriously. I just saw your post of 11:12 pm and wish to express my sincere thanks to you. You have gone a long way to winning my respect. Sorry about the squash game.
Richard, could it be that the reality is that the handle was “just flat”. I’m going to be ridiculed for this comment, but do other independent proxies also show a similar and relatively “flat” handle? It seems that you don’t want to entertain the idea that it could simply be flat? Would that be so awful?
OK, now I am done. Promise.
Re: Lorax (#214),
You wrote:
â —– could it be that the reality is that the handle was “just flat”. I’m going to be ridiculed for this comment, but do other independent proxies also show a similar and relatively “flat” handle? It seems that you don’t want to entertain the idea that it could simply be flat? Would that be so awful?â
Your comment is not ridiculous, but it does illustrate the problem with the way the Hockey Stick has been presented. You suggest the handle may have been âjust flatâ. This impression arises solely from the fact that the mean value is drawn in bold and that catches the attention of the casual observer. The mean is flat because of the high level of noise which is self cancelling. The significant line to follow is the upper error bar, which is not flat. Some of the temperature datum points will have fallen on that line. You can calculate how many. We don’t know where from the hockey stick, but inferences can be drawn from the historical record. Examination of this parameter tends to show the late 20th century as very slightly higher than any time in the previous millennium â a weak claim, but the highpoint of the hockey stick claim. The issue, as you point out is with the handle and not the blade. The compelling argument against the hockey stick claim is that the calculation of the error bars is unrealistic, a realistic calculation would give much wider error bars and the 20th century peak would all well within those.
Lorax:
You might want to go back and reread Alan’s post when you’re less tired. The issue he is addressing is the relationship of the current warming period to previous warming periods. I don’t think anyone here denies that our current temperatures are higher than they were during the Little Ice Age (very roughly 1300 AD to 1850 AD). The question is: Are our current temperatures warmer than they were in previous parts of the interglacial, such as the Medieval Warm Period? If current relatively high temperatures are no higher than temperatures before the Little Ice Age, then our current temperature rise may for the most part represent a natural cyclical recovery from the Little Ice Age.
By the way, when we talk about the Little Ice Age, we’re not talking about something that happened a long time ago in either historical or geological terms. The exact dating of the Little Ice Age is in some dispute due to differing criteria, but the dates are generally between 1300 AD and 1850 AD, with a slow recovery after that.
PS
However, even if official audits were in place McIntyre et al. would still do this b/c then they would just move the goal posts and claim that that auditing system was corrupt. It seems that there is just no making McIntyre happy.
I think that’s unacceptable
Had that comment been made by me to any other blogger I would be at the very least snipped but preferably “railroaded off” if not this site at least this posting.
Good grief, Richard. I think the fact that Steve did address my concerns in effect answers both of our questions ending those emails . Apparently Steve does believe it to be important, and to his credit he acted on it.
As for RC censoring your posts, I do not support censorship. I am not here to support RC or support their modus operandi. Don’t try and make me their poster boy.
There was no instead…….blah blah blah. Please do stop distorting. You also neglect to observe that the “abrasive invective” was also coming/streaming from Loehle (and Fritsch).
I promised that my previous was my last, and we could do this all night. For those of us in N. America, can we all get some rest now please?
Re: Lorax (#220),
Lorax – the graph of the combined data does not show a flat handle. It is exactly as I have posted above.
I do not know if other proxies also show similar and relatively “flat” handles, but quite possibly if they use the Briffa data, which has been shown to be flawed. I am not a climate scientist. I have only learnt about the Briffa graph and that is what is being discussed.
And how would other flat handles be relevant to this graph? When you do an experiment it is always independent of any previous experiment and its results cannot be predicted on the basis previous experiments. Unless you are suggesting that a flat handle is the only believable outcome and thus must be obtained somehow, come what may.
Just because he was gracious enough not to respond to an unsubstantiated and offensive allegation doesn’t deter from the fact that your comment is unsubstantiated and offensive allegations.
That he was gracious enough to answer you despite your insults and allegations seems to have sent you over the moon.
To your discredit you do not have the courtesy to apologise.
A lot of your comment are your opinions like “RC and CA have done themselves no favours today.” Might I suggest you keep your opinions of RC and CA to yourself, or try and display your disappointment at RC on RC and see if they are published.
Re: Lorax (#220), A troll on this site is someone who comes here to be disruptive and to derail the conversation rather than to discuss the science. You have argued with at least 20 people. When I and others raised substantive answers to what you said you seemed to intentionally misunderstand them. Whatever.
You’ve done tremendous stuff in the last few days. To pry the data out of Briffa was itself excellent. To have done the analysis so quickly and fluently was impressive. You’ve shown a complete mastery of a very complicated topic and a great mass of information. To have done all this while keeping the tone calm and reasonable and focused on the facts and the science is equally praiseworthy, and it must have taken some restraint. And the conduct of the discussion has been excellent too.
Don’t let it take too much of a toll on you personally. Delegate what you can. Get some others to help with moderation during these rush periods. It may not be exactly the choices you would make, but it will be a lot better than getting distracted with what is essentially administrative chores. There must be people who would volunteer for this to help the site.
And sqash. Well, its a great sport. But, be careful. Our joints and muscles do lose something as they get older. There is something to be said for cross country in the winter and cycling (on a sprung Brooks saddle as we age!) in the summer. I know, they are not competitive and its harder to get out and do them three times a week. But do be careful.
Lorax, #52:
Which means that you assume, before the measurements are taken, that the trees in question will show increased ring width simply because of the regional SAT and no other reason.
If only one core from one tree out of the grove shows the increased tree ring width in the 20th century, what physical properties make that core the most accurate?
Lorax, #184:
How “random” do you expect to get when at least 10 papers have used the same Yamal magic tree, and several before that used the BCP?
Add to that, in order for an audit to be effective, the “auditor” needs to be able to GET the data.
It wouldn’t have mattered if it were Steve or someone else, lack of data only slows the science.
Lorax #189:
I don’t think that you can say only the “anti-AGW” types love CA, any more than you could say thet the “pro-AGW” types love RC.
It all comes down as to what comments are allowed through. The types of comments allowed can flavor the blog.
Here at CA, we get a mix of both types.
Over at RC, we’re still awaiting moderation…
So, is the idea the 20th century global temperatures were the highest in the last 1000+ years right or not? Am I missing something? I thought the world agreed that we had much warmer periods (eg, Medieval Warming Period with England so much warmer, and Greenland having little or no ice/snow). If so, aren’t the findings made from the “hickey stick” charts totally baseless anyway? Some try and explain away this inconsistency by saying the past warmer periods were local weather phenomena, and did not represent the global situation. Why can’t the same thing be said with the tree ring results leading to the hockey stick charts?
slownewsday
Perhaps Steve used the phrase
“The second image below is, in my opinion, one of the most disquieting images ever presented at Climate Audit.”
because in his opinion he thought it was. It is after all only his his opinion and surely expressing an opinion is perfectly allowable? Isn’t it? If he had said this is the most diquieting etc etc you might have grounds for complaining as that is a definitive statement but Steve’s opinion is just that, an opinion.
It would be “most disquieting” for a reason.
Re: slownewsday (#230),
Stop the troll act. It is disquieting for purely statistical reasons. Scientifically speaking, it is disquieting because it shows that one of the key paleoclimatic chronologies from which meta-analysis (Spaghetti Graph, etc.) take its conclusions may be way wrong. Even Briffa has admitted this, while trying to save face. Any further sociological inferences that you or any other makes upon this, is their own, not McIntyre’s. The argument is scientific, that is to say, statistical, empirical. It has nothing to do with motives.
That you try to impugn your own prejudiced thoughts to others says more about your own motives than anyone else’s.
Because it is his opinion and he’s perfectly entitled to it and he gives reasons. As it is yours to disagree, with or without reasons. It also has absolutely nothing to do with your blockquote about “purposely selected” cores. This has been addressed in the introduction to this post. Have you read it? What is it about “It is not my belief that Briffa crudely cherry picked” that you have difficulty with?
I echo Jeff Id, IMO discussions here have been seriously off-topic and therefore it was frustrating to see Lorax’s requests repeated endlessly while Steve was out. I’m sorry that the discussion was not diverted quickly to a more appropriate thread. I appreciate Steve’s desire, reinforced by comments and snips continually, to stay on-topic and courteous, and to answer all reasonable newcomers questions. Perhaps Steve needs moderators to cover when he is unavoidably unavailable.
I wonder if an FAQ for this site could be helpful, to help those like Lorax appreciate the rationale behind this site a bit better, and get such folk up to speed and attuned without wasting bandwidth on arguments and defences that have been repeated endlessly before.
Interesting to see the comments about needing a ‘random’ audit of papers and papers that are not supporting the AGW hypothesis. I have just paid about ÂŁ1000 in taxes to fly my family to the US and back. Taxes that are (at least claimed to be!) justified by the AGW hypothesis. As far as I am concerned this removes any need to be unbiased about auditing. Since the AGW hypothesis is being used to justify policy decisions the auditing standards being applied need to be much stronger. This, I believe, brings us closer to Steve’s position and is why I am 100% behind his (and all the others that collaborate) efforts.
Hope this is a suitable thread for what follows, apologies if not:
Not being a specialist in this area, I do not know what ‘corridor standardisation’ is. Can any kind soul help me here?
Other than that I found it easy to follow the gist of Steve’s presentation, and am mystified why some others cannot see it. Briffa’s type of temperature estimate from tree rings can give wildly variable results and is therefore unreliable. The data showing this was not freely available for a long time.
One wishes that Britain would undertake an equivalent there of the Wegman report. Such an inquiry need not focus unduly on the unfortunate Briffa with his reported serious illness. But an inquiry could ask why both Briffa and CRU have not made their data freely available (and why CRU evidently has not even kept their data properly). An inquiry could check whether British journals are properly archiving all relevant data in accessible places. An inquiry might profitably ask how the vaunted peer-review process broke down so badly in this vital area. It might also ask how much effect these shortcomings have had on the deliberations of the IPCC and the impending proceedings at Copenhagen.
Hi Steve,
i’m just writing to thank you for the work you are doing. The world and especially Germany would need more people like you to show that the IPCC’s conclusions are not “state of art”. German’s biggest climate activists Rahmstorf and Schellnhuber (from PIK) are unfortunately consultants of our government too and there is nobody to stop them.
So keep on doing finding the truth!!
Regards
Feldi
Michel #232
Bravo, that’s is what this thread is about.
Now if Lorax can weigh in on these issues, rather than trying to psychoanalize Steve’s intent, he could show that he is not a troll.
I am not holding my breath.
well if we can measure motives as lorax suggests, lets go measure lorax and see how many times he has pestered RC over censorship.
Lorax:
“However, I would be concerned who is doing the auditing though. Someone from a blog versus someone from a reputable,respected, neutral and qualified group who has experience in that field or at least the tools used.”
Well, Steve wouldn’t have to do this work if such a body as you describe did the job instead, but they didn’t and don’t.
If any such body wanted to do such an analysis then they couldn’t without the data. It is truly shocking to a lay person that the data on which massively influential peer-reviewed papers are based can be withheld for the best part of a decade (and without Steve that data might never have been released).
Were any pro-AGW scientists – or any other scientists – pushing to be able to replicate? Apparently not. That alone is shameful.
Why is it not a scandal, regardless of AGW, that peer-reviewed papers can be published – and used as the basis of life-changing action and spending in the real world – without the data on which those papers are based being made available for checking? Isn’t replication supposed to be essential for good science?
The impression is left that one can publish any half-plausible pro-AGW paper, however flawed it is, as long as it conforms to the “consensus” and only Steve or a handful of others who are prepared to take the flak, give a toss.
In my eyes, and I suspect many others, until data is published at the same time as the paper, then the process is fatally flawed, science suffers and so does the rest of the world which relies on it.
Lorax has succeeded in turning a thread about Briffa’s response into a muddied and dirty thread about Steve and his motivations.
Perhaps IGNORE would be good from here on out and a healthy supply of snipping. You can start with my responses to Mr. L.
Re: Stephen Parrish (#323),
Yes, perhaps IGNORE is a good idea.
An amusing sequence of events in the RealClimate comments. JoshV asks (#51)
Gavin gives a snarky response, and a request made by TrueSceptic (a pro-AGW commentator who has posted here in the past, comment #108) to be more specific. Gavin duly responds by the following quote from CA:
Lets be clear: the original question was evidence that Briffa selected, as opposed to the Russians. Let’s look at Steve’s original quote in context:
The original comment is clearly loaded with caveats and suggesting the Russians selected rather than Briffa. Gavin has taken the quote out of context. Further, it is a comment within a post and Gavin references the head post (perhaps he doesn’t want people to find the full quote?), as opposed to referencing the exact comment (as he does when linking WUWT quotes).
Since Gavin is clearly reading the blog: Gavin, why not try to understand Steve’s claims rather than quote mining like an eristical weasel?
Re: Spence_UK (#253),
Whoops, I completely missed #148, in which JoshV makes the same response I do.
So what did Gavin do when it was entirely clear that Steve made no claim that Briffa performed selection, as erroneously placed in the head article?
He accuses Steve of being “complicit in propagating slander”. (Written word is libel, not slander Gavin) Let’s remember the content of the RealClimate post again:
And STEVE is the one who is “complicit in propagating slander”? Perhaps you should take a long hard look in the mirror, Gavin.
Tip of the hat to JoshV for exposing Gavin’s desperate line of reasoning on his own blog!
So, how does one get on the unthreaded board and others when new accounts are not available? Looks like a lot of educational posts are sitting over there.
Cheers, AJStrata
Real Climate is actually surreal climate. They really treat their readers like mushrooms.
My comment here Bob Koss (#209), is virtually identical with what I attempted to post at surreal climate. I judiciously removed the first sentence in order to not offend their tender sensibilities. That comment has now been purged from their system after awaiting moderation since 12.19 AM their time.
It seems even the mildest chiding isn’t acceptable reading for their followers.
A paper may be wrong?
Am I missing something here. A paper may be wrong so there are headlines like this
One paper, out of thousands, which may be wrong, cannot invalidate AGW. (The A is for Anthropogenic)
The ‘hockey stick’ is not the only evidence for AGW, it is only a small part of the evidence. There are many other ‘hockey sticks’, none of which use trees for proxies. The evidence for AGW is much more than just estimates for the past climate tempertatures.
From the Register
He seems to think it’s a scandal. A paper may be wrong.
How the global warming industry is based on one massive lie.
AGW is not based on one paper, or one aspect of researching AGW. AGW has a physical basis, there is a temperture record, there is ice being measured.
“most disquieting” seems to be over egging the cake.
Without unprecedented warming, as is shown in studies such as Briffa and many others, AGW becomes GW. Notwithstanding the fact that there are problems with the instrumental record, GW is of Scientific interest but not really of political interest. It isn’t just one paper either. As you point out, there are lots of papers (some of them use Briffa in their own analysis and some of them have been covered here in the past). What are we to make of them in the light of this? How many of those previous papers contain unsupportable conclusions based on the use of `unorthodox’ statistical methods and incoherent data? Don’t you see how things like this break down public trust in the integrity of the Scientific process?
Re: Robinson (#332),
This is an illogical statement, and I doubt that Steve M would agree with this. Whether current warming is unprecedented or not says nothing about causation (and future direction) of current trends as opposed to the historic record.
Re: Dave (#621), “Whether current warming is unprecedented or not says nothing about causation (and future direction) of current trends as opposed to the historic record.”
.
True. But the indirect effects of the hockeystick are precisely what wiped out the entire causality argument. The hockeystick makes this statement very reasonable: “The natural, non-anthropogenic climactic variability is exceedingly low compared to recent warming.”
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If, on the other hand, current warming turned out to not be unprecedented, you need a lot more precision from your models to have the same confidence. This partitioning of GW between AGW & (non-A)GW is a lot simpler if you can reasonably assume natural warming is negligible.
If after years of CA working away, this is the “Most Disquieting”, then all that has happened is it has raised my estimation of the scientific process.
Re: slownewsday (#128),
Have you taken a look at Caspar and the Jesus Paper?
Re: slownewsday (#330),
Your quote is incorrect. It was described as “one of the most disqueiting”. Please pay attention to what people write.
I think that my thoughts (not so scientific) about climate change are more real now than I figured them to be. I’m skeptic about anything but THE ANSWER from the climate scientist from the climate scientist confirmed that I’m still sceptic about AGW.
Twelve monkeys. Film where Bruce Willis time-travelled. Dunno about reality or time travelling but funnily twelwe monkeys (on that film) didn’t destroy earth. In reality, perhaps twelve trees shows what is really going on.
I strongly suggest these comments unrelated to Yamal be moved to unthreaded. slownewsday, like Lorax, apparently has to be taught how to thread questions appropriately.
Sure, one of them then. The point still stands. Steve is making claims for this being remarkable and something tht stands out, if my understanding of the expression “One of the most significant” is correct.
Re: slownewsday (#338),
I have explained elsewhere why the finding is indeed remarkable. It fits a pattern.
Re: slownewsday (#339),
As you pointed out once already, this prediction of human psychology was wrong. What a shocker. Now let’s see how this thing evolves. Briffa has still much accounting to do before the full story is told. It’s then that we can best judge who’s on and who’s off The Team.
Re: slownewsday (#339),
Actually, it is worth noting that RC has not touched the substance of the issue. They have sidestepped everything material, and waded into everything ad hominem. Which is what one might have predicted.
slownews:
Apparently you do not find it remarkable that a single tree (YAD06) is a primary shaper of historic temperature reconstructions in the following papers:
Briffa 2000
Mann and Jones 2002
Mann et al (EOS 2003)
Jones and Mann 2004
Osborn and Briffa 2006
D’Arrigo et al 2006
Hegerl et al 2007
Briffa et al 2008
Kaufman et al 2009
Re: David Jay (#343),
But those studies are “independent” replications. đ
Does anyone know how the trees that are supposed to be randomly selected for coring get randomly selected? Something Steve said, about being able to take 10 cores in an hour, got me thinking about this. I have serious doubts that if it was done just by letting the core-taker pick according to the whim that the results would truly be random. My presumption would be that the result would be biased towards trees that the core-taker found attractive, whether because they were bigger (more visible), looked wasier to core, or what have you. If age bias would introduce a systematic error, that suggests to me a much more rigorous approach to randomization is needed. Perhaps marking off an area 100m square, numbering all the trees in it, then picking one by lottery. Move on to another plot and repeat.
MC:
On a closing note, as I said from the outset, I did not say or imply that Briffa had “purposely selected” individual cores into the chronology”
Actually, you did say that:
“Unfortunately, to date, people in the field have not honored this responsibility and, to an outside observer, seem to have done no more than pick the version (Yamal) that suits their bias.”
http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2009/10/apology-for-yamal-accusation.html
[MrPete: 1) this is motivation discussion which belongs in unthreaded; 2) You (and Appell) are misreading. That note is not about Briffa but others and their selection of the Yamal proxy.]
Re: bigcitylib (#96),
You are conflating exactly the issue that I clarified in pre-emptive #85. Read.
Bender et al.,
Every single one of my comments from yesterday has been removed (even those pertaining to Briffa and questions about the selection of trees, and even those comments made before I was warned/threatened of being snipped), yet other’s rebuttals to some of my comments remain. That despite people assuring me yesterday that this blog was different, superior even. Oh, so it is because I had to be taught a lesson? What nonsense. Try again. Are we adults, or playing in the school yard? Apparently the latter– close ranks and bully the outsider. I have never before witnessed such an en mass rabid attack on a dissenter on a blog as took place here yesterday. Yes, you are clearly much better than that lot at RC. Consider this, the censorship and actions like those displayed here yesterday and today by you and your ilk clearly give others very good reasons to consider CA to be a “group think” site. Also consider that McIntyre agreed that I had some valid concerns and he acted upon them. So I have been vindicated by McIntyre himself.
I have, it seems, effectively been banned form this site after one day. So much for openness, fairness and transparency. Talk about the kettle (CA) calling pot (RC) brunt arse. Interestingly, skeptics like Spencer and Pielke Snr. do not allow comments, period. So, Bender, please consider to audit some of the recent work published by Lindzen, Spencer and Pielke Snr.
PS: I know my comment will be snipped, of course. Bender, I’ll remind you that you were guilty of distorting and building endless straw man arguments against me yesterday. So you were not threading questions appropriately; can you say “hypocrisy”? I await you and your cohorts’ indignant replies.
To say I am disappointed in CA would be a gross understatement.
[MrPete: Lorax, NOTHING you said has been snipped. Please read my comment above, where I (and Steve in parallel) moved all of the “motivation” notes to the unthreaded thread. There’s a link there as well. This comment of yours also belongs in Unthreaded, but I’m leaving it here for now… obviously you are just getting the hang of the blog and need to know how to find your way to the conversation that got moved!]
Re: Lorax (#97),
It’s been moved uncensored to unthreaded — where it belonged in the first place.
Happy now!
Re: Lorax (#97),
They were shifted to “unthreaded”, as explained above. (And don’t say I didn’t warn you. I did twice.) Nothing was deleted. You are welcome to continue in “unthreaded”. Impugning motive is against blog rules, however, so you will need to be more careful – even on “unthreaded”. Good day.
Re: Lorax (#97),
Not if you don’t break blog rules, it won’t. Nothing you have said has been snipped. It has been unthreaded from a thread where it was OT.
Re: Lorax (#97)
Lorax, try to keep up, they haven’t been removed, they’ve been moved, to the unthreaded section accompanying this thread. Go have your say over there. You are a combative type, you’ll enjoy it.
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7213
Steve McIntyre, just saw your message, it came though while I was composing my last message. I can understand that some of what went on yesterday should be unthreaded. But everything I said? That is unreasonable. I’m deeply concerned that you even considered deleting all my posts, even those directly pertaining to the Briffa methodology. Doing so would amount to censorship, nothing less. I’ll say it again, I am deeply disappointed by this drastic action.
[MrPete: Lorax, please read more carefully. Nobody with ability to moderate has considered deleting your posts. That comment about deletion was written by someone else. ALL of your posts remain. Personally, I would have left your original post, which was part science and part motivation… but with the continuing flareups I’m not sure it would have been wise. Obviously we’re on a hot topic here.]
Re: Lorax (#103),
In a foodfight of that magnitude, individual snipping is unpractical. You were warned that the further the thread went astray the stronger the possiblity the whole thing would be excised. This is blog policy. It is called “zamboni” – a great Canadian hockey term for a device used to clean the slate.
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The topic here is Briffa. Further distraction risks being moved.
Re: bender (#105),
As a matter of fact, the Zamboni is an American invention and from Southern Califirnia, no less.
Lorax: many of my on-topic comments were moved as well.
Tallbloke, I was not combative until the attacks on me began. Stop making false accusations.
I am Canadian bender, I know what a Zamboni is and does. I maintain that my comments directly pertaining to Briffa’s methodology should not have been unthreaded.
I clearly wasted a lot of time yesterday and have a deadline, so this will be my last post.
Re: Lorax (#108),
You caused many of my own on-topic comments to be unjustly moved as well. And now this discussion is increasingly at risk of being unthreaded. Congratulations.
Lorax, please, is your ego that important? I want to learn more about Briffa, not about your self importance.
Lorax is such a drama queen.
Lorax:
October 2nd, 2009 at 9:41 am
..tallbloke:
..October 2nd, 2009 at 9:36 am
From Lorax’s first post to CA:
So, ascribing motivation to Steve M in your very first post Lorax. Not combative at all eh?
Re: tallbloke (#348),
If one must speak in symbols, then it IS broken. ALL of them are broken. There are only two team recons that do not depend sensitively on tree ring data.
.
[Attempting to bait Lorax to the correct thread.]
Re: bender (#368),
If one group od dendros think treerings measure temperature, and another group of dendros think treerings measure precipitation, and neither of them know anything about either prior to (say) 1820, how do they separate the signals, such as they are?
Re: tallbloke (#371),
The topic has been discussed before at CA on innumerable occasions. Read the blog. The short answer is that the signals are not separable, especially to the extent that the plant responds to moisture deficit, which is the combination, or interaction, of precipitation/soil moisture and temperature. The hope is that over much longer time scales, growing season length is the stronger limiting factor of the two, such that the temperature response dominates. Hence the favoring of treeline sites. If there is enough temperature variability in the calibration period such that temperature dominates the plant’s response, then an approximate reconstruction of the past is possible. This approximation is weakened to the extent that the joint response to moisture is, in fact, inseparable.
.
It is the fact that climate reconstructions are a priori approximations that makes it necessary to compute honest confidence intervals on reconstructed temperatures. These approximations, even at their best, are fairly poor. In very few cases do correlations with instrumental temperatures exceed 0.3-0.4. I don’t have numbers in hand. But some of the best papers on the topic are – off the top of my head – by Salzman and Kipfmueller and Wilson – “the young dendros”. Read threads that discuss their very good papers. I recall several that touch on the problem of inseparability. But also read the papers on treeline shift by Miller.
Re: tallbloke (#371),
Oh, I meant to point out – if it weren’t already obvious – that there are not two camps that don’t speak to each other, precip versus temp. There is a camp in between where temp and precip are jointly considered. Those papers are worth reading.
I copied this comment from Lorax over here where it belongs. Please note the intentional exaggeration of the actions taken and how they are sensed to be aimed at a single individual.
If my profiling of drive bys is correct, we are in the final stages wherein the drive by finds a way to proclaim his/her feelings hurt by CA behavior or processes and then usually leaving after a few parting shots.
I can only hope. And, of course, continue to hope that he/she will get over themselves and contribute something to the analyses and knowledge base here.
Folks, I’m about to do it again. Can we please limit this thread to discussion of science?
Some may disagree, but I am going to do the humble thing: leave one of Lorax’ non-science comments here for a time, mostly to give him a chance to see that we really ARE trying hard to encourage a good discussion. You can’t imagine how hard it is to get this right.
QBeamus, I don’t know who snipped your message (pretty sure it wasn’t me).
But to everyone: your patience is appreciated. Herding cats is not easy! Especially when we all have real world work to do.
Re: MrPete (#113),
Great! Note: BigCityLib #96 and my reply #107 are substantive.
Re: bender (#370),
Sorry… I suspect everything OT got moved, even if substantive. Even my comment with the herding cats link disappeared.
[whoops! There ’tis… not sure why/how the delay in the move. Let’s look tomorrow… we can clean up “minor” comment-location errors later after all is quiet.]
Re: MrPete (#372),
That’s ok. The most important one – the one pre-empting BCL’s misread – is still there.
I suppose TAC is a USC fan. Yuk.
Dr. McKitrick. Thanks. I am confused though. Because in your National Post article you claim to know the answer to that question (whereas here you claim otherwise) when you say that the 20th century was warm but not exceptionally so. What is most worrisome is that the second and third figures that you show in the NP (the ones which exclude the Yamal data) create the incorrect impression to the lay person reading that is that the 20th century has not warmed at all! A picture is worth a thousand words and those are the images that will stay in people’s mind after reading your missive. While I agree with some of what you said, I found the article to be quite biased. The slant was definitely along the lines that AGW is built on a house of cards.
Need I remind you that the greatest warming is projected to occur in the second half of the 21st century. Also, that the 10 warmest years in the instrumented record have all occurred since 1997. Additionally, that the warming should not be and is not monotonic. If you are going to elect to go to the media, please do try and discuss/present both sides of the story rather than posting misleading graphics and then lamenting how bad the science related to AGW is. Yes, the “other crowd” allegedly doesn’t do it, but that does not excuse you. We are now dealing with a very different beast than we were during the MWP (in terms of drivers etc.), so let us not try and use it to obfuscate and fall into a false sense of security about what is happening now and projected to happen down the road with the SATs, OHC and cryopshere.
It is most unfortunate that this Briffa fiasco is being used by people to dismiss and refute AGW, and your missive in the NP is just going to fuel that fire. Reading the comments by people who read your article clearly demonstrates that your missive has done just that.
Lorax: If You start your argumentation from this base:
“that the greatest warming is projected to occur in the second half of the 21st century. Also, that the 10 warmest years in the instrumented record have all occurred since 1997.” And if You think this is scientifically settled and not scientifically questioned may I understand that You are upset.
But if You take a closer look of these AGW truths may You also end up with more questions than answers that so many of us have done.
Take the second statement first: “the 10 warmest years in the instrumented record have all occurred since 1997”
Sound terrifying. But what does it may say? Maybe that we still recover from little ice age.
Here is Yamal/Briffa one of the most important proof from some to say LIA and MWP does not exist.
But other reports are very clear of both a MWP and LIA. Whom shall we trust?
The first statement: “that the greatest warming is projected to occur in the second half of the 21st century.” IS scary.
But have the model managed to model the past? Yes only if there is NO MWP or LIA.
Wait now. This IS the most important issue here. Can the models only handle Yamal flat climate and then use a stick uppwards is that very scary from a scientific view. And that make me belive that there is some serious flaws with the models.
Mr. McIntyre, thanks for your comments on Steig et al. I would assume that you have informed them of what you are doing. Yes, of course inconsistencies do matter, I never said that they didn’t. But it also matters whether or not, at the end of the day, errors in the methodology and/or data significantly alter the conclusions.
It still concerns me that such “audits” are done in a public forum. After all, innocent or not, the Revenue Canada does not audit our taxes in public, nor do they permit one and all to not only see what is being done, but for others to jump in and enter the fray. Auditing should formal and confidential, then once the jury is out so to speak, those results and how they were arrived at can be open for debate. That is how issues with data are dealt with in reputable journals. Author B has an issue with Author A’s work. Author B contacts the editors and they get to hash it out and then post get to post their defense/rebuttal AT THE SAME TIME. The process can then continue over one or two iterations if need be, but the conflict is kept between those making the accusations and the defendant. That method reduces the chances of any conflicts turning into a circus as the Briffa, Steig and Kuafman matters have. I do not care to know that Briffa is seriously ill, that is private. Yet, when you insist on conducting these audits in a public forum, and permit every Tom, Dick and Harry to weight in on the issue before the ‘accused’ have even had an opportunity to address your concerns, then that crosses the line, and these personal details get leaked. Additionally, that is both unnecessary and unfortunate, yet you and your supporters here seem completely blind to that fact. Not only that, but we now have the ridiculous situation where people every day now are off to the horses en mass and are using this Briffa fiasco to maintain that AGW is a hoax. Thanks, in part to your zeal and carelessness, the horse has bolted the barn and there is no turning back, before the revised SAT construction has even been made. in its entirety.
The internet is wonderful, but also dangerous and open to abuse Mr. McIntyre, things go viral and fallacies become ‘truth’ in no time. By auditing a narrow band width in a public forum rather than following a more appropriate discourse in journals, it really does make it look like you have an agenda. And McKitrick’s missive in the NP does not help your claims to the contrary either. Not all reconstructions use tree ring data, never mind the contentious Yamal data. So even though there are other reconstructions out there, some even with “error” bars, it seems that (all?) those reconstructions do not refute the HS either– both in terms of the magnitude of the blade and the slope of the blade. Interesting then that McKitrick conveniently forgot to point that out to readers.
Re: Lorax (#377),
Auditing should formal and confidential, then once the jury is out so to speak, those results and how they were arrived at can be open for debate. That is how issues with data are dealt with in reputable journals. Author B has an issue with Author A’s work. Author B contacts the editors and they get to hash it out and then post get to post their defense/rebuttal AT THE SAME TIME.
That suggestion would be funny were it not so hopelessly naive. Read the following and then come back and tell me you still think the pace of scientific advance should be determined by the speed at which “reputable journals” resolve disputes:
#110 is riskily OT.
#111 is OT.
Lorax: go to unthreaded!! Do you never learn?
McIntyre’s work being subjected to “smear review”? Lorax (#111),
Cold Lynx, you are forcing me off topic here. There are plenty of other proxy data which show that the LIA and MWP were real. Do I truest the tree-ring constructions? Not really. However, you are obfuscating. There are plenty of other independent proxy temperature constructions out there. The LIA was relatively short-lived and you are expecting that we are are experiencing some kind of rebound that has now been going on for over 150 years now? Highly doubtful.
Climate scientists as well as scientist from several other disciplines agree that what we are experiencing now is noteworthy on the century and even millennium time scales, and this is still very early days. CO2 concentrations are their highest in what, almost 700,000 years, and you seem to expect the climate to show very little response to that additional radiative forcing? Murphy et al. (2009) have shown that the earth has been in positive radiation imbalance now since the fifties.
Regarding the models. The problem with the model hindcasts is that they are only as good as the input data. They can only respond appropriately or reproduce the climate record if we can give them the appropriate drivers whether that be GHGs, aerosols, solar forcing etc. If that cannot reproduce the MWP and LIA as you allege, then that has probably almost everything to do withe the boundary conditions and very little to do with the model physics. Aerosol data are simply not available, solar forcing data are even more scarce. It is widely accepted that the LIA was in response to the Maunder Minimum, but as far as I know we do not know exactly how the TSI was reduced during that time. So please do not try and discredit the models using the LIA and MWP. The models physical and dynamical cores continues to improve, and improved grid spacing is also going to help a lot in coming years.
I sense that you are looking for a silver bullet here, something for you to rationalize maintaining the status quo.
Re: Lorax (#114),
When someone is “forcing” you off-topic, reply in unthreaded.
Here. Where this is posted. Ok?
According to McKitrick’s missive in the Canadian newspaper the National Post, and I quote, “Only by playing with data can scientists come up with the infamous âhockey stick’ graph of global warming “. “Playing with the data? Well, Briffa et al. have clearly been judged by McKitrick. Bender, any thoughts? Am I still being presumptuous?
Lorax says:
McKitrick is speculating on what would likely happen if the impact of Steve’s discovery were to be estimated by recalculating all of the multiproxy studies that make use of Briffa’s unrepresentative sample. No one knows what would happen because the data and code used in those papers is not available. Once it is available, then that calculation can be done. What is your prediction as to the length of time it might take to do that? I imagine McKitrick is willing to speculate becasue he thinks it could take years before that level of compliance is achieved. Ask Dr. McKitrick. It’s his speculation, not mine. FWIW I suspect his and Steve’s hunches are correct. But we are all willing to be proven wrong.
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Are you being presumptuous? About what? I think this directly addresses your original concern: the hockey sticks that depend on Yamal larch indeed appear to be broken. For now.
Lorax: I am responding to you here so as not to hijack the Briffa thread.
I didn’t write that. What I wrote is contained in the article itself.
I was referring to the Yamal series. Surely you will agree that the inclusion of the Schweingruber sample removes the conspicuous departure at the end.
None of the graphs exclude the Yamal data–the 3rd one explicitly includes all the data. Also, it’s the data that create an impression. If you disagree with the data that’s fine, but my point was that the strong impression created by the first graph depends on the lowest-quality portion of the data set.
So? Projections from models are not evidence. In any case this is irrelevant to my column.
I have written elsewhere about my work on the surface temperature record, which you can find here. I’m not going to drag all that in here but having several journal articles published and a slew more under review I am entitled to comment in the media on the topic.
No, it is the fact that legitimate questions and problems in the climate science get swept aside by organizations like the IPCC. Questions that are never properly answered have a habit of not going away.
Steve it’s clear RealClimate has accepted the challenge of defending Yamal. Please consider creating a “snark free zone” where only technical comments / replies about that research would be allowed. You’ve offered it – just do it and then have somebody you trust copy as needed from other places if Briffa or RealClimate prefer to post at their own sites.
This is a great opportunity to see if a blog can be used to carry on a respectful and relevant discussion of ressearch that has huge international significance. You can do this unilaterally as long as they post things *somewhere*.
Re: Lorax (and bender (#379)),
Lorax, you’ve thrown up quite a few statements as if they are accepted fact. I would suggest that on this blog at least, you limit yourself to elements that can be supported by facts.
I understand the sense that one can make those statements, since the MSM and some other blog sites repeat those statements endlessly. But that doesn’t comprise actual scientific support for the statements.
I’ll give you an example or two.
You said “There are plenty of other independent proxy temperature constructions out there…Climate scientists as well as scientist from several other disciplines agree that what we are experiencing now is noteworthy on the century and even millennium time scales.” Care to provide some support for this assertion?
It has been shown by Steve (you’ve been referred to p12 of his Ohio State presentation before) and in Senate testimony (see the Wegman report) that this is not actually true. BTW, I don’t know anyone who would seriously argue with the century-level noteworthiness (although there’s some dispute about that) but the millennium picture has hardly settled on the hockey stick.
A second example. You said “The problem with the model hindcasts is that they are only as good as the input data…that has probably almost everything to do withe the boundary conditions and very little to do with the model physics.” I suggest searching CA for Browning. He’s a senior guy at NOAA, very high level math. He has provided extensive commentary putting forth the assertion that it is exactly the unphysical model parameters that are horribly wrong. He asserts, with evidence, that the models only remain within bounds because they are tuned to do so, not because the physics is stable.
I provide these not to engage in further discussion on those topics but simply to give two (of many possible) examples demonstrating that there’s a lot of depth available to engage on the substance of what you are asserting as accepted facts.
We can also give you sources showing that there really is a concerted PR effort to act as if the science is settled, even though it is not. If you’re not already aware, read Warm Words.
If it weren’t for the stifling nature of the community context, there would be a far more vigorous discussion on the reality of climate science.
Re: MrPete (#383),
Wow, if everyone who posts on here did that the threads would be much shorter!
MrPete,
Where did you learn to be so even-toned? You’re my hero. (Next to Ken.)
Re: bender (#384),
Thanks for the compliment, bender! I’m glad it shows, at least some of the time. I have a LOT to learn. (Willis is one of my heroes here on that front.)
In the real world, I deal with contentious multi-cultural interactions all the time. Technology-based interaction is one of my specialties. Believe me, this group is interesting but hardly the toughest. We have a term for it: “vigorous discussion” đ Any more in-depth answer to your question gets into one of the absolutely verboten topics on CA. Sorry.
(Sorry, lots more I could respond to but no time to even read it all… heading out the door. I just noticed bender’s comment and couldn’t resist.)
Goodness gracious, Rev. Larox do you never stop preaching. Get off your pulpit and back out to your flocks.
What you describe as people taking blog comments and spinning them for their own purpose happens all the time and on all sides of the climate issues and just about any other non climate issue you might want to mention – and by the media and politicians – and not only from blogs but from peer reviewed papers.
You seem to want to protect the poor innocents out there from getting information and judging for themselves. You would be scary if you had any power to enforce your concerns.
You would do better to join the analyses and start looking for the truth – for your own edifications.
Wow, reading the comments here seems like I have ruffled just more than a few feathers. Sorry for throwing a spanner in the works at group think.
Actually, I am going to try and directly contact Gavin and Michael at RC to voice my concerns. I am deeply troubled by the allegations made against RC here. It is surprising that there has not been a libel suite between the two parties yet.
Loelhe, I’ll remind you again that you do not understand the definition of a troll. I came here originally to raise some concerns I had with auditing in the public forum using the Briffa case as an example, to express the dangers of doing so, and to note that I suspected that the reason for doing so in the public domain was not entirely innocent. I then gave some examples as to what led me to believe that, even suggested some researcher’s work who CA should consider auditing, and how the auditing might be done. I also asked some questions about selecting tree records, made some comments about the big picture implications for the problems with Briffa et al’s data selection. I could go on.
I have also trying to encourage people here to consider the broader implications of this Briffa fiasco and to try and avoid getting bogged down too much in the details. That is not unreasonable.
Please, the indignation from posters here seems to arise from CA followers taking offense that someone might actually not cater to group think and for daring to call a spade a spade. Again, if people insist on attacking me here, then I have every right to a rebuttal. Whatever– apparently name calling and making juvenile quips about monikers is quite common and accepted on this “elite” site. Yes, the attacks on me have all been very “professional” (read with sarcasm). Do any of you understand what patience and restraint I have exercised whilst enduring all the rabid attacks? I’ve been baited and been the subject of so many ad hom attacks from so many different people that it is astounding (This is not a “poor me” lament, just a fact). Those juvenile quips and ad hom attacks have done nothing but tarnish CA’s credibility. So well done I guess.
As for those of you claiming that CA has no “agenda” or that McIntyre’s results are not being abused, consider this headline from the National Post (a Canadian rag) written by non other than McKitrick on 2 October, 2009:
“Only by playing with data can scientists come up with the infamous âhockey stick’ graph of global warming ”
Read that. Think about what the message is. Despite everyone’s assurances that this is Briffa fiasco is only about the integrity of the data, the science, the methodology et cetera, all that comes tumbling down when one reads McKitrick’s headline. I rest my case.
Anyhow, I’ll let the group think to continue uninterrupted lest I raise any more inconvenient thoughts. Have a good weekend everyone.
For those of you who choose to distort, I am trying to raise/communicate my concerns about auditing in the public forum, and the negative consequences of that. I ahve explained that ad naseum. The fact that Briffa is seriously ill, is just one example of information that is not fit for public fora. Those are legitimate concerns, and people here are surprisingly resistant to hear any critique or to address those concerns.
Re: Lorax (#388), “It is surprising that there has not been a libel suite between the two parties yet.”
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Not likely. Firstly, truth has always been a defense to libel. Secondly, in the modern (post-NYTimes v. Sulivan) era, the entire concept of a suit for libel is basically unconstitutional.
Though I keep forgetting that Steve is a Kanuk. They don’t really have the same free speech protections in the UK/non-US-former-UK countries. Still, truth has always been a defense, since the days of Lord Cook.
Re: QBeamus (#390),
If the suit were brought under British law it would be up to the accused to prove he spoke the truth.
Re: Phil. (#393), Yeah, that was the traditional rule in the US, too–the reason, of course, being that the US adopted British common law in its entirety. The phrase “truth is a defense” says exactly that–a defense is something the defendant has to prove (assuming the plaintiff has made his prima facie case). The rule in the US today is that not only must the plaintiff prove falsity, he must show some sort of mens rea. The way the rule gets applied, the preactical effect has been to render libel actions unconstitutional, except, possibly, in the most malicious and egregious of cases.
Re: Lorax (#388),
Lorax,
is there any actual comment or criticism that you have about anything that I wrote about the Briffa papers?
PS. You don’t need to worry about RC keeping track of things. Look up Gavin, the Mystery Man,
Lorax: “Yes, of course inconsistencies do matter, I never said that they didn’t. But it also matters whether or not, at the end of the day, errors in the methodology and/or data significantly alter the conclusions.”
.
But of course the errors in methodology significantly alter the conclusions. Before the errors were detected, the conclusion was the “hockey stick.” (At least, that is, if one overlooks the fact that reseach for which data and methods are concealed is hidden should not be considered scientific evidence of anything.) After the errors were uncovered, we knew that no valid conclusions could be reached. “We don’t know” is an entirely legitimate conclusion, and very different from any assertion that we do know.
McKitrick, then ask the NP to print a more appropriate and less inflammatory headline! I find it difficult to believe that you had no idea that they were planning on using that or something similar. The last time I published in the print media they asked me first if the title was reasonable before it went to print?
The second graph is labeled “Same series using the larger Schweinbruger tree ring collection…..” Readers quite rightly take that to suggest that the Yamal data are not included there. So what happened to the Yamal data in the second figure?
Fritsch, re ‘Rev. Lorax”. Please, your juvenile quips only discredit you even more.
CA’ers, I simply do not have time to keep this “debate” up for a second day. I’m sure you can appreciate that replying to the endless stream of posts directed at me is very time consuming. I guess I have been railroaded off after all. Jolly good job, high fives all around.
Smith, I never said peer-review is perfect, in fact I have suggested earlier ways to improve it and concede that there are issues. Conspiracy theories aside, peer-review in many ways it is still way better than these internet blogs.
Re: Lorax (#394),
There is a semantic confusion here. All the data are from Yamal. In the 2nd figure the end-of-sample live trees (10 as of 1990) are removed and replaced with the 34 Schweingruber series. But the Yamal fossil data are all there in all 3 graphs.
.
Having published numerous op-eds over the years in the National Post, Newsweek, Christian Science Monitor, and various other places, I have never had control over the title or the blurb below the title. As far as I know this is always supplied by the editor.
Re: Ross McKitrick (#402),
And as an author when that title/comment does not accurately represent your comments don’t you have an ethical responsibility to write a clarifying comment to the publication? If they don’t publish it why would you ever write for them again?
Re: Phil. (#417),
I don’t have a problem with the title. As far as I am concerned what this story is about it that a data set has been revealed to have a defect: the sample collapses just at the time the most prominent feature of the series emerges, a feature not shared in a comparable data set. That is the sort of problem that should have been known from the outset, before it was used as an ingredient for a long series of prominent multiproxy reconstructions. People might still have used it, but likely with a caveat and sensitivity analyses. I was involved in the NAS panel that cited the “independent” studies to defend the plausibility of the hockey stick. Had we been able to show the panel in 2006 what we now know I think the panel would not have issued the conclusion that it did.
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As for the NP article blurb, it is ambiguous because it refers to the “infamous ‘hockey stick’ graph”, which I take to refer to the MBH98 graph, and calling that episode “playing with data” is not inappropriate for what happened there.
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With regard to journals, I am author or coauthor of 7 papers currently under review, some that have been going back and forth since early 2005. I have seen every form of stonewalling and gatekeeping you can imagine. But I’m paid to publish in journals, and I accept the fact that it’s part of the business. Steve is not being paid by anyone. He does this as a hobby, at considerable financial expense to himself. If anyone doesn’t like how he runs his blog, set up your own blog.
Lorax 388
Ross 382
Lorax – as well as “being here to learn” you appear to be taking a strongly antagonistic position. Please slow down and check the ground you are on before posting.
Lorax’s naivete is priceless. I’m gonna tell Gavin …
Curious, please read #394. If your were in my shoes, you would find that I have exercised great restraint in view of the attacks made on my here. Reading that headline should not only make me made but McKitrick and others too….it is not accurate and is inflammatory. I have published in the print media before and each time the editor said this is what we were thinking of making the headline or teaser, what do you think? The NP should have done that. And if it did, then McKitrick should have objected, no? He says that he did not see that headline before going to print and I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt even in the absence of any data/proof from his side. I think that to be quite reasonable.
Steve I have no problem with what you state about Briffa’s data. As I have said many, many times now (and which is deftly avoided each time– why is that?) the public forum in which you choose to critique and ‘expose’ these data is what I have an issue with. Why are you so resistant to publishing these exposes in the journal/s where the original manuscript was published? Please read my concerns again.
Re: Lorax (#397),
How about strapping those restraints onto your keyboard wrists?
Re: Lorax (#397),
Journals crave novelty, not correctness. READ THE BLOG!
Re: Lorax (#397),
1. What makes you think he hasn’t tried (& isn’t trying)?
2. He (along with Ross) have published several Journal Articles
3. How long does it take to have a journal article published compared to how long it takes to “publish” on his blog?
origin of the term “hockey team”
“Lorax’s naivete is priceless.” Yes bender, it is all one big conspiracy– so why bother?
Right now I feel that RC can;t be trustd for information, nor can CA. So who does that leave me with? Oh, the ‘corrupt’ journals. Loehle et al. publish in them, perhaps you do too. If they are indeed so corrupt, then why do you continue? Truth is, you do have some faith in the peer-review process. Now what is McIntyre’s issue then? Has McIntyre even tried to go the journal route with these exposes? Had he tried to do so several times and was stonewalled each time, at different journals then, I would be much, much more sympathetic to the claims that the peer-review system is corrupt and that this is his only choice. Please stop being so condescending. Perhaps I am wrong, in which case I apologize and retract my comments to that effect.
Re: Lorax (#400),
I will. Once you cure your obvious ignorance by READING THE BLOG.
Bender, so now you choose to speak for McIntyre? He is a “big boy”, I am sure that he can speak for himself without your help.
Re: Lorax (#403),
Yes. Me too. If only he weren’t so preoccupied doing real work and answering all your other questions which are already answered on the blog, if only you would read. Read. Then write.
Lorax – look at the timing of 394 and 395. We cross posted. The reason I say slow down is because Ross posted 382 at 1:02pm and 46mins later you are attributing something to him which he has already stated he did not write. (Apologies if these timings have been the result of moderation/moving from other threads).
Re: your points on the role of “public audit” – did you read the link from Michael Smith in 387?
Thanks for the clarification McKitrick. So what do you think about the title they chose? If you disagree, I would urge you to request that they change it to better reflect your missive.
Re: Lorax (#406),
What does anyone think of any title chosen by a newspaper? C’mon, grow up.
Bender, re 405. No need to go ad hom Bender. Interesting how you chose to focus on that comment (about being condescending) and ignored my comments about the journals…..
Re: Lorax (#409),
I answered that question in #401. Journals crave novelty, not correctness. Peer review is fallible. It’s purpose is not to ensure correctness, but replicability. I’m not being condescending whn I say you are naive. You just obviously not a scientist familiar with how the whole system works.
Lorax,
In one or two sentences what exactly are you trying to accomplish?
Lorax – Again, you need to explore the contents of this Blog. If you had you will have seen that Steve has published in Journals and I believe has other manuscripts and comments in review. You would have also discovered that some of his attempts to publish have been reviewed/rejected by those in league with the Team (some making the kind of condescending remarks you complain about here) making it extra difficult to make that hard work pay off in print. So spend a few days searching the blog – lots of interesting stuff.
Lorax – did you see this question? Please could you answer?
Bender, you are too funny. And now you claim to speak for McKitrick.
If you are OK with the media posting inappropriate and misleading text relating to the Briffa fiasco, be my guest. That said, and with due respect, dismissing such a request as “childish” does not support your claims of professional integrity.
The message here is seems to be becoming very consistent. CA does not seem to have an issue with these audits being undertaken in the public forum, and then when someone predictably abuses the data/statements (sourced here), then you wash your hands and wish to be absolved of any wrong doing or having any part in such abuse. A national paper prints a misleading title, heck, “wasn’t my fault”, or “who cares”. How convenient and cavalier. It seems like CA like to place the responsibility at others’ door steps rather than assuming some responsibility itself. How unfortunate. McIntyre took an important first step by contacting the Telegraph yesterday, I hope that he continues to do so when such matters are brought to his attention– b/c it will happen again.
Re: Lorax (#415),
No. I speak only for me. This is not a telephone conversation. You address the audience. I address the audience. Anyone can chime in. Ain’t it great?
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For Layman Lurker:
Low temperature limits of root growth in deciduous and evergreen temperate tree species
P. ALVAREZ-URIA and C. KĂRNER
Functional Ecology (2007) 21, 211â218
Speaking as a professional physicist in academia, the peer review process in general gets a lot too much credence by laymen then is actually warranted. In some areas of science, it is is badly broken or passe. For instance in high energy physics, nearly all relevant papers are listed at arxiv.org, which is not peer reviewed (it only has quality control guidelines that keep out blatantly obvious crackpot works). There are literally thousands of examples of papers that are published in the peer reviewed journals that are erroneous and plenty of papers on arxiv that are correct, but never published. Worse, sometimes correct papers are denied publication (many famous examples). The signal to noise ratio does improve slightly in a major publication relative to arxiv, but the downside is many months of lag as well as incidents where a bad paper is included and now gets more justification than its due. Often its the case the reviewers in question were lazy or not competent to judge the validity of the work (believe me, I know from first hand experience as a reviewer)
In the end, what matters most is a well thought out mathematically sound argument that specialists can digest and argue about. Blogs can do this just as well as a peer reviewed paper, and indeed sometimes they even get cited in peer review literature.
In climate science, I get the feeling certain individuals are very stubborn and snobby about reviewing information outside of their little journals, and frankly thats pretty archaic in this day and age.
I have not said he has not published (just how many times was that again), if I did say that then I erred. I know of at least one paper. I asked why he does not take his concerns to the editor in which the contentious journal first appeared? Why is this so confusing to you?
If McIntyre is trying, then please let me know. Which journals and on what, or is that a secret?
Curious, no, I have not read the link, too busy.
Conard, don’t be lazy, read my posts.
Bender, “Journals crave novelty, not correctness.” Bender, sorry now that is just plain nonsense, it seems that you are not familiar with what is required to publish a paper. Correctness is key.
Re: Lorax (#418),
Often correctness is just assumed. Reviewers are busy people. They can’t and don’t check every detail. Correctness should be key.
Re: Lorax (#418),
On the contrary, Steve revels in revealing his communications concerning potential or actual publications; mostly responses to Journal Articles by the Team. I’m not quite sure which search terms would be best for finding such posts here, but it’s likely that if you look at the topics in the left column above you’ll find plenty. Recently most of the communications involve trying to get Journals to enforce their archiving requirements, but a goodly number involve requests to post replies to articles.
Lorax – now you are getting it. The purpose of CA is to do these audits in a public forum because 1) they are not being done anywhere else, and 2) the posts often attract people of considerable expertise and intelligence and issues get worked on in colaborative fashion in a very unique way. Unique in the sense that it is out in the open and conducted by people that would otherwise never met. As for people misrepresenting things in the media or other blogs…..its done this way for every contentiuos issue of our times from both sides. Best get used to it.
Lorax:
Yes, I share your frustration – for example: search Google news 2009 for “steig antarctic warming” and “steig antarctic warming corrigendum” and compare the coverage.
Lorax – AGAIN read the blog!!!!!!! Steve has written to Journals many times requesting data be archived etc. and all or most all of these correspondences are ON THE BLOG!!!!! No secret hiding places!! Spend some time clicking and scrolling and reading instead of typing!!!!
Bender, Ross and Steve can defend themselves, they do not need your help by you keep interjecting with quips.
Phil (#417) raises a very good point.
Just a geochmeist I choose not to simply “get used to it”. It is that attitude that has gotten us here.
Re: Lorax (#425),
Happily for you they have chosen, for some reason, to interact. I had assumed they would be too busy to bother. You will note that in every case my remarks were consistent with their replies. In some cases a crosspost even. So your complaint is spurious.
Re: Lorax (#425),
He’s not defending them, he’s babysitting you (gd&r)
Seriously, demanding attention of the principle at a blog is a rather trollish activity. If you’re well known and post under your own name, Steve is pretty generous of his time. But there are just too many posters here to let him engage in long-winded conversations with each and still do the things which make this blog popular and valuable. It’d be more polite to engage the regulars here and get the majority of your questions answered by them than getting huffy because Steve only replies to you occasionally.
Geochemist all the exclamation marks do not make your message any clearer or more convincing. I must be losing you somehow. I wan to know why McIntyre has not published his audits and corrections in the journal in which a particular contentious paper appeared, and by following the appropriate, official channels. I said nothing about him not writing to journals asking them to archive data. I support him on that.
I also asked about what he is working on now to publish in a journal. If you know, your or someone else just tell me, instead of yelling at me to read “THE BLOG”. My quip about it being a “secret” was clearly a poor joke, sorry of it offended.
Dave, thanks. I hope CA has a good search engine, this is an extensive/large site. Hence me asking if anyone happened to know off the top of their heads.
Re: Lorax (#430),
Hence my sugestion you shut up and read.
Lorax – Steve has indeed attempted to get comments related to his audits published in the original Journals and I know of one case where is was accepted. The reason we are asking you to read the Blog is that you will get a better picture of what has or hasn’t been done if you do the work yourself. You want everyone else to feed you information that can be found by yourself if you would spend the time that many of us have. Don’t you think its better to have some idea about the subject (this blog) that you are commenting about?
Lorax, no disrespect intended, but there is a huge disconnect between your view of how things in climate science ought to work versus the reality of what actually happens. If you read that article I linked to in 387, you’d get some idea of what Steve is up against. If you would follow bender’s advice and read the blog, you’d get an even better idea.
But as it is, you have wandered onto a battlefield without any knowledge of the previous battles that have been fought, what tactics have been tried and failed, what sort of tactics the other side has employed, etc. — and you suggest that one side effectively disarm unilaterally. You can’t expect that suggestion to make much sense to the side you are exhorting to lay down arms.
Lorax, a couple of comments about the journals and the whole journal system.
I suspect we are living through the beginning of the end of the journal system. I think of the learned journals as a kind of old media. Like a lot of other old media, new media (especially the internet) are making the journals increasingly irrelevant to the scholarly enterprise. Nowadays, most important papers have been cited a dozen or more times before they ever see physical print in a journal. I do not even subscribe to journals. It is a waste of money, and by the time anything that really matters to me appears in a journal, I have almost always known about it for a long time. People put their working papers on their web pages. You know who is in your field. You even know the youngsters from recruiting efforts (this is why recruiting is so personally valuable).
Indeed, the only incentive I have any more to publish in journals is pure institutional momentum. (I am at the end of the promotion chain and people who care keep up with what I do.) I mean that the official coin of the university realm is the refereed publication. Promotion and tenure committees cannot evaluate the quality of my work, but they can count the lines under the heading “Refereed Publications.” Quantity has a quality all its own. So yearly raises and promotions depend on those lines. Outside offers are a substitute, but there will be a promotion and tenure committee to deal with at the bidding university too.
There is now almost no good reason anymore that the refereed publication is the coin of the realm. If I want to know how highly regarded a paper is, Google Scholar will generally tell me how many times it has been cited. That is a far more accurate indicator of influence and importance than having been published in Journal X or Y. It is also a better indicator of merit than whether or not the paper got by three all too human referees with little incentive to be fair or careful. Some referees are very fair and helpful and careful. Many more are not. Citations say a lot, whether the paper is in print or just a working paper available on someone’s webpage. So whenever people dismiss something because it hasn’t appeared in print in a refereed journal, I have to say that I think they are terribly old-fashioned in their way of thinking, at best, and just wanting an excuse to ignore good work at worst.
Institutions change very slowly, especially institutions that are not subject to the heavy discipline of profit and loss, or life and death, and so on. The old music industry is rapidly becoming a victim of creative destruction because of profit and loss. The old institution of the refereed journal will take a lot longer to die. But die it will.
Re: NW (#448), A very convincing summary of the state of the journal review system. I wonder quite how much the journals are trying to fight for survival – but being outside of the network it is difficult for most of the readers here to comment on the value or need for the current system. Surely anyone who is doing novel research needs to have access to everything which has been written despite the acceptance of that work at the time it was written. Where is the divergence problem going to be in 10 years time? Noone knows!
I do like reading articles in print, but only at the level of Physics World, for the purpose of entertainment and background information.
on reading these Briffa threads, the image that keeps popping into my head is of a herd of wise old elephants (and maybe a rhino with a bent horn) in serious discussion/debate being pestered by a wasp.
how do you guys/gals resist squishing it?
you have the patience of saints.
well done Steve and all involved & get well soon to K.Briffa
I want to apologize to the audience and to Steve for all the commenting. But “babysitting” is exactly the right word. Thanks, Dave (and Michael and MrPete). My shift is SOOOO over.
Dave , I do not need “baby sitting”, that insinuation is offensive and incorrect. I do not expect McIntyre to respond to all of my posts. It took a while, but I am now finally here on the OT. I have asked him some direct and fair questions and would appreciate a reply whenever he has the time. He is not the PM or president. No offense intended, but at the end of the day McIntyre runs an internet blog for goodness sakes, he is not the editor of a journal, or a respected think tank, or…..You guys really do need to get grounded as to McIntyre’s importance in the greater scheme of things in the world– really, at times comments made here sound like they are coming from a group of students following their infallible mentor. Hence my suggesting of “group think” earlier. This is the opinion as someone new here, I am not trying to offend when I say those things. That is my honest opinion and observation, and I am not the only one who has made that observation. But I chose to come here to find out for myself and alas, my fears have largely been confirmed.
Anyhow, other than bender telling me “to shut up”, I do appreciate those here who have taken the time to politely fill me in and nudge me in the right direction. I clearly have a lot of reading to do.
NW, I agree with much of what you said. The fact remains that peer-review is what is in place now, and until something better comes along, we can’t just ignore it. That is not reasonable, nor realistic. Academia right now demands that one publishes, and that is not going to change, for decades probably. It is also not a good reason to ignore journals across the board. Some are much better than others, focus on those.
Re: Lorax (#441),
I put “grin, duck and run” after the statement. Have you no sense of humor? Ok, I’ll use an adult word which basically means the same thing. Bender was mentoring you. If you get hired somewhere, even if you had a chance to meet the President, you’d not expect him/her to drag you around to meet everyone else and help you through your first few days. S/he’d assign someone else to do the duty and get back to his/her usual activities. Maybe we need an official system of mentoring around here so Steve can let newbies get acclimated without his being pestered. Maybe a thread called CA basics could be set up and a light editing hand be used there so questions which can’t be discussed in the main blog could be gone through. If it’s done right, a newcomer who seems lost could be directed to such threads and much of the learning would occur simply by reading them.
Believe me, Lorax, you’re far from the first person to come here and think to improve it simply by that person’s force of personality. Believe me Luke, you still have much to learn about the use of the force.
Re: Lorax (#442), Honestly, I don’t see how it’s possible to devote so much attention to someone whose only purpose is…..to get attention. And the attention he so passive-aggressively seeks seems to be from those whose work often challenges the AGW orthodoxy.
I say passive-aggressively because of many many statements like this one:
You guys really do need to get grounded as to McIntyre’s importance in the greater scheme of things in the worldâ really, at times comments made here sound like they are coming from a group of students following their infallible mentor. Hence my suggesting of “group think” earlier. This is the opinion as someone new here, I am not trying to offend when I say those things. That is my honest opinion and observation, and I am not the only one who has made that observation. But I chose to come here to find out for myself and alas, my fears have largely been confirmed.
Unwilling to do the hard work himself at even the most basic level, he’s full to the snout with helpful suggestions about who should be contacting whom and how someone else should fill his or her day.
I suppose the passive-aggressive issue is exposed in his remarkable set of statements that it is incumbent upon an auditor to broaden the scope to include other kinds of papers including those that don’t conform to the “settled science”.
And yet the moving parties in climate science are those who claim that there is a sharp and unprecedented uptick in recent temperatures…..and that man is the cause. Well, then. In science, that’s the equivalent of drawing a big bulls eye on your back, since those results have to be replicated and stressed in order for there to be acceptance of the results. That’s how science works.
It’s up to the defenders to dismantle unfair or faulty claims to the contrary.
The next time someone comes up with a cold fusion claim, I wonder if Lorax will be so fastidious about the distribution of audit targets among those who aren’t convinced.
Lorax has received precisely what he came here for. Attention. I would be very much inclined to give him a great deal less of it.
Excellent work, Steve. It’s hard to imagine why any rational mind would recoil at the work you do. It’s only controversial because so few others seem willing to do it under circumstances where it should be the norm.
–Krumhorn
McKitrick “As for the NP article blurb, it is ambiguous because it refers to the “infamous ‘hockey stick’ graph”, which I take to refer to the MBH98 graph, and calling that episode “playing with data” is not inappropriate for what happened there.”
So please ask them to change it. Or do I need to contact Terrence Corcoran from the NP to correct the blurb? Ross, I never questioned your publication record thanks, so I do not see how many papers you are publishing is relevant.
Re: Lorax (#453),
You are at liberty to write a letter to the editor if you think the blurb is incorrect. Of course you’ll have to divulge your real name. If you are prepared to do that for the newspaper, why not be a good sport and do so here too? It is much more enjoyable corresponding with real people who take responsibility for their words by publishing them under their own names rather than hiding behind a pseudonym. And I apply that to supporters and critics alike. As to the blurb, the article places the discovery about the Yamal data in the context of the earlier hockey stick battle and the discovery about the data problems behind its shape. So a blurb should evoke the context while piquing the interest of the reader. How would you have worded the blurb differently?
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I was not implying that you questioned my publication record, I was just drawing attention to the fact that journal publication is a long, slow, irritating and at times infuriating process, and when someone is not being paid to endure it they can be forgiven for not bothering with it if they are satisfied with the impact they are having by other means.
No need to apologise bender – it’s been a hoot. Lorax says far more about himself than he realises (or herself).
BTW – it’s cooking on gas over at ROGER PIELKE JR.’S…
I told him to “grow up” too. Musta missed that. Surprise.
Terrence Corcoran: Lorax summons your attention.
PeterS: “No need to apologise bender – it’s been a hoot. Lorax says far more about himself than he realises (or herself).”
How mature of you Peter. Thanks for that lovely, irrelevant psycho babble. Sticks and stones mate. Comments from you and Bender are beginning to sound like those from the resident “peanut gallery”. Every blog has one you know.
Bender, I am sorry I erred, yes I mean to say “other than Bender telling me to “grow up””. Someone else told me to ‘shut up’, it is hard to keep track the stream of vitriol being spewed by the supporters of McIntyre here. I thought that you were all above that? Clearly not.
Bye bye.
Re: Lorax (#446),
Now look, here Lothar …
Re: Lorax (#446),
If you are sincere in leaving and I can only hope you are as you are wasting a lot of bandwidth, you have made my profiling of drive bys live for another day.
I suspect that you are truly concerned about GW and somehow think what is related here might affect what I suspect you see as an emergency to act. I see immediate mitigation of AGW by our government as a major concern regardless of where the truth may lie with regards to AGW (I personally accept the simple concept of CO2 warming but have major concerns about feedback effects, the detrimental effects of warming and in the end the certainities that can be attached to any of these processes). I have major reservations about unintended consequences of government reactions to “emergencies”. I do not think my stance on this issue is, by any means, within the consensus at CA and do not really care because it has no influence on the search for truth in these matters.
I think your concern has caused you to hyperventilate here and in the process pretty much make a fool of yourself. You do your cause no good and you are wasting our time here. Bye bye.
If I find out that Tom P and Lothar are somebody’s sock puppets …
Lorax, ‘not inappropriate’ doesn’t mean it needs to be changed.
This isn’t just an issue of a few trees. There are other problems with these studies, and they can certainly be argued as the scientists playing with data until they get a hockey stick.
Mann had a panel of the National Academy of Sciences criticize his decentered PCA because it tended to filter out and enhance hockey-stick shaped proxies.
Re-read comments #2 and #3 and have a laugh.
Are others having trouble getting comments to appear at RealClimate? I had assumed – I now think wrongly – that they would not do heavy handed comment censorship on the latest Mck Attack post. FWIW here’s the comment over there:
It’s unfortunate to see so many insults and tired talking points rather than *key issues* such as:
Is Yamal robust?
Why does proxy selection in papers like Yamal, Kaufman seem to include more proxies with stronger GW signals than a randomized proxy selection process?
Why isn’t there a randomized proxy selection process or at least a well structured one as was suggested (but appears not implemented) in the Kaufman Arctic lakes study?
Why does it take so long to properly archive data and why is there a single shred of resistance to totally transparent archiving of source code and data?
To what degree is observed global warming the product of human activity?
To what degree is the modern warming trend unprecedented?
Role of the Medieval Warming Period and why is there so much disagreement about temps at that time? (another proxy selection issue!) Simply asserting that these questions âhave been answered many timesâ isn’t only wrong and insulting, it’s counterproductive if you sincerely want to challenge the growing mainstream view that climate science has been compromised by cognitive biases and ego. I’m staying open to your insistence that the science has not been compromised at all and McKintyre is just a slinging mathematical mud, but posts like this don’t provide much support for that idea.
Re: Joe Hunkins (#41),
Post your questions there and here. We’ll see who lets your posts through and who gives you the more complete answer.
Lorax,
So much of what you write reflects inexperience. Why do you not set up your own blog, feel the experiences of a blog owner, then come back with more mature questions?
BTW, is Lorax one person or a group of people?
Joe this blog is littered with posts of censorship at Real Climate. You are by no means the first or the last. But thanks for posting it here. A record of Real Climate censoring should be available somewhere.
Joe, post at rcrejects.wordpress.com
The really telling thing here is that RC is all over the place defending AGW as if this work had anything at all to do with disproving AGW.
Where RC has not treaded within a country mile is defending the use of a single outlier tree in a study that RC itself fell all over like a bunch of school girls swooning over a rock star.
I asked RC if the Briffa series had been plotted without YADO6 but it didn’t get through (actually none of my posts do). It also didn’t get through onto Tamino’s siteand RC where a few are criticising WUWT of cemnsorship. I don’t know how they have the gall to do that when Tamino and RC censor like crazy
snip –
Steve: please do not use prohibited language; please do not get into food fights. And what gives you the authority to ask people to “go away” from my blog?
Posted at Real Climate.
Real Climate,
Because you claim to want to deal only with scientific facts, I will point out a number of mathematical facts that you have never addressed (mathematical references available on request).
1) There is no mathematical or numerical basis for convective adjustment, i.e. it is an ad hoc process to project column instabilities (overturning) to larger scales of motion to artificially maintain hydrostatic equilibrium.
2) The hydrostatic equations are not the proper well posed limit of the inviscid, unforced, compressible equations of motion and are ill posed for the initial value problem. The ill posedness leads to increasingly larger exponential growth during shorter and shorter periods of numerical integration as the mesh size is decreased
in order to attempt to obtain a numerically convergent solution. This problem is swept under the rug by convective adjustment and excessively large (unphysical) dissipation.
3) The use of unphysically large dissipation in climate models leads to the incorrect
nonlinear cascade of enstrophy and to an inaccurate numerical solution of the equations of motion with the correct physical dissipation.
4,) In order to hide the incorrect cascade of enstrophy, the necessarily physically inaccurate parameterizations (forcings) are artificially tuned to alter the spectral cascade. ( Note that if the forcings were physically accurate, but used with the wrong enstrophy cascade, the result could not be physical.)
5. The hydrostatic equations were derived in the free atmosphere, i.e. above the surface boundary layer. The addition of a surface boundary layer parameterization is an ad hoc and inaccurate attempt to add a surface boundary layer (see Sylvie Gravel’s manuscript on Climate Audit to see the impact of such an artificial parameterization.)
6. In the presence of shear, the equations of motion grow exponentially with a
time scale on the order of hours. This exponential growth can only be handled by a numerical method for a few hours – not days, decades, or centuries.
As I expect this post to be deleted, I will also place the post on Climate Audit.
Jerry
Re: Gerald Browning (#470),
Jerry
it doesn’t matter. They aren’t trying to predict the weather, they don’t care that they can’t predict the exact fluid behaviour. They just want to know what the general state of the climate is going to be. It’s going to be warmer, ice will melt, the albedo will change, there will be more water vapour. It will then be even warmer. It’s already warmer.
On real climate, above comment immediately follows comment 299 on Hey Ya! thread.
Awaiting moderation (deletion).
Jerry
Gee, it already seems to have gone into the black hole.
Jerry
Re: Gerald Browning (#474),
Well it was off topic so what did you expect, here it would get turfed off into ‘unthreaded’ at best.
Re: Phil. (#477),
No. It would got to Exponential Growth #3. What’s eating you, Phil?
Re: bender (#479),
And you’d jump all over, him like you did to Lorax, for posting off topic, right?
Jerry is a one trick pony whose standard approach is to post that exact same post to show how clever he is. When you’ve seen it multiple times it gets rather boring! In this case he posted it in a thread where it was way off topic and therefore wouldn’t be accepted, and came over here to say ‘look my post has been kicked out at RC’ as if it were a badge of honor, actually it makes him look like a jerk!
Re: Phil. (#488),
Respectfully,
1. There is no such thing as OT on “unthreaded”. So your prediciton of my behavior is incorrect.
2. I stated that I enjoyed Lorax’s company. I just wanted him on “unthreaded”.
3. To call someone a “one-trick pony” is ad hom, which is unusual for you.
4. If you can refute Jerry’s argument, or show how it is irrelevant, go to it.
So what’s eating you?
Re: bender (#489),
Also respectfully, Jerry posted that on RC on the thread about Yamal with the intention of having it snipped and promptly came over here to brag about it. If someone did that here you’d be all over it to get it moved (as you did with Lorax).
Indeed, so why wouldn’t you adopt the same policy with Jerry when he posts OT?
It describes his action of posting the same post over and over again, that’s not ad hom
Showing it’s irrelevant is easy, it has nothing to do with Yamal!
So what’s eating you?
Re: Phil. (#498),
Oh I get it. You think I have a double-standard? Speaking of one-trick ponies, Phil.
.
Well, I understand your complaint now. Yawn. But Phil, I predict that Jerry could post that comment on the most appropriate thread at RC and still get no reply. If you want to prove me otherwise, find the right thread, post it, and watch the result. When nothing happens you can come back and apologize for suggesting I have a double-standard when in fact I do not.
.
Shame on you, Jerry. Posting off-topic at RC. Shame.
Re: Phil. (#488),
It is a fact that he asked the question there, and no one wanted to answer it. The rest is name-calling.
Yea, I pointed out on Tamino’s site about Sahelard’s temperature record, and he came back with the warming since 1960 blah blah, where did you get the idea there was no warming?, and when I tried to respond that 1925-1950 was the same as 1980-2000 he cut it. To make things worse, someone else posted that it’s rude not to answer him.
BTW, over at RC they are asking about a better comment preview system, as the one they have causes excessive bandwidth. Perhaps you could suggest the JS one used here?
Ian, you might have to change your name to get a post through.
MikeN
I think it works on the IP address or anything from Fremantle as I’ve tried using the Uni library computers with a different name but I still get blocked on Tamino and vapourised on RC
Steve said:
Meanwhile, goodnight everyone. (I lost at squash and am not playing well right now.)
Sorry ’bout the squash game. You have too much on your mind probably.
Well at RC, if you challenge the contributors, or get too scientific in your skepticism, it’s likely blocked automatically. The only skeptic comments they prefer are political or ones that are easy to refute.
MikeN>> Is there an archive where to send ones censored RC-posts?
I posed a question there, when someone ranted about AGW being based on “simple physics”, where I asked this person if this simple physics really can account for solar variation, clouds and precipitation. In no way was I incoherent, insulting, harsh or anything. This comment never appeared. After that I tried with several postings and they all got cut.
I did get two-three through, and most of those where probably deemed “easily refuted”, since they recieved insulting but far from comprehensive answers. When I tried to follow-up, those comments where cut.
I actually got quite a long answer directly from Gavin to my first question, but that one was mostly about a clarification of something he had written before which I had problems understanding.
So, is there someone around who collects all these censorings?
I have been active on the Internet since 1995 and I have never, ever encountered the type of behaviour that RealClimate exhibits.
I’ll ask again. Is “The second image below is, in my opinion, one of the most disquieting images ever presented at Climate Audit.” neutral toned?
Re: slownewsday (#482),
You keep asking the same question, and you keep getting the same answer. The tone is scaled to the datum. In that sense it is “neutral”.
Re: slownewsday (#482),
Why is tone important?
You are ignoring the substance of the remark, which reveals a truth with which you are uncomfortable.
If you want to scold people for the tone of their remarks, scurry on over to RealClimate and give Gavin and Mann an earful for the vicious tone of their most recent post.
Steve’s remark is a simple personal observation that expresses his shock and dismay at his findings. Why did it need to be “neutral?”
It would be nice of Steve would take responsibility for his own words, he claims he has made no insinuations against Briffa, yet Watts is demanding he ‘explain or resign’. Clearly Watts has misinterpreted Steve’s language, and needs to be corrected, as Briffa has been told by Steve that nothing like that was intended. It is all a misunderstanding, clearly, but Steve needs to take responsibility for some language that was poorly phrased.
Re: slownewsday (#483),
I guess you’re trying to make some news where there is none? Each individual has responsibility for their own words, not how they are spun by others. The image is disquieting. Bye.
Re: slownewsday (#483),
I suspect that several years of parroting settled science dogma has skewed your perceptions. Believe it or not, people are allowed to interpret information and make up their minds on issues for themselves. On this blog, there is no “sole truth” style party line which is pronouced from above and accepted uncritically by followers.
Steve did not make insinuations – he has explained that in no uncertain terms. Anthony is entitled to interpret the results in his own fashion. He is not speaking for Steve nor is he claiming to. Steve’s responsibility does not extend to policing the world and he has no responsibility for “correcting” anything that others may say anywhere else UNLESS those people claim to be speaking on his behalf or claiming that that is what Steve said or thought..
No, there’s no misunderstanding and there’s no poorly phrased language. If you have a problem with Anthony’s interpretation of the entire situation, you should go to his blog and explain why you think he is wrong.
I submitted the following comment to the Spectator blog.
Last time I had a comment disallowed on RC it was in response to one of Rasmus’s posts. He had said the solar-climate correlation failed after 1950. I merely reminded him that his RC colleague Raypierre had previously written that it was 1960 on an RC post, that his other RC colleague Mann along with Trenberth and some other IPCC luminaries had published that the correlation failed after 1980 and that Lockwood had recently published that it failed after 1985. Not very controversial I thought – just a reminder to be consistent.
Phil,
Real Climate made the statement
as if everything climate scientists have done is perfect. My point is that they have come nowhere close to answering the important continuum mathematical questions about the impact of the ad hoc crude assumptions they have made developing climate models. Real Climate deletes anything that involves a careful analysis of their gimmicks. And I only posted on one topic. There are serious problems with the assumptions made in radiative physics, satellite measurements, climate data, etc. This area of “science” is a joke.
Jerry
Re: Gerald Browning (#492),
Jerry,
Don’t worry about Phil. Your point is very clear. You asked a question that not only did not get posted, but that Gavin Schmidt is ideologically opposed to ever answering. He’s in love with his models.
Phil,
The climate modelers have used our well posed multiscale system in an aqua planet simulaton.
The joke here is that they tried to compress the spectrum by moving up the convective forcing closer to the large scales. The mathematical theory of the multiscale system does not support such nonsense, but they blindly went ahead with wasteful modeling runs without any theory. Now why would they try to compress the spectrum if their
current climate models are accurately computing the cascade of enstrophy and the physical forcing?
We await your detailed mathematical analysis.
Jerry
Phil,
Just where would you like me to post my comment on Real Climate to ensure that it will be addressed by the
Team?
Jerry
Re: Gerald Browning (#495),
There are threads where it would fit, and maybe Phil will oblige to mention one. The problem is you ask a question, they give a one-sentence reply, usually dismissive, and if you follow up, the peanut gallery will flame you as a “denier”. If you ask more than one question then Hank Roberts or Ray Ladbury or some such character becomes your handler. Then Barton Paul Levenson or some such character will start a-preachin’ about denialist sin. At that point, Gavin and “-mike” et al are beyond reach. Ever.
bender (#494),
I know. I think the climate modelers misuse of our well posed multiscale system is very telling. They have a serious problem now that the mathematical theory (bounded derivative theory) for multiple time scale systems is published.
Jerry
Phil,
1. This is “unthreaded”, not “Yamal”. He is not OT here.
2. Where would you like Jerry to post his comment at RC?
What’s eating me will be obvious to anyone reading this exchange.
Re: bender (#499),
That he came running here to boast about his post being rejected at RC (before it had been) was never the issue!
He can try posting in a thread where it’s on topic.
Yes, that you jumped into a thread without reading the previous posts (not the first time), try reading this Re: Phil. (#477),
Re: Phil. (#503),
Ignore /on
Jerry,
It appears by your posts that you have a very detailed knowledge both mathematical and physical of the climate models. I have two questions. First do you know of a good site, or post which details the construction of these models where the intended audience would be for someone outside the field of study but capable of of following the math and physics?
Second, do you know if the models produce as a by product the magnitude, variance and correlations of the various radiative effects. I have often wondered whether one could produce a monte carlo simulation of the earths radiation balance as predicted by models so as to be able to know how many years one might have to wait to be able to falsify the models predictions.
thx
david
Heh heh. Like Dr. Gerald Browning and “Lorax” should receive equal treatment. That’s pretty damn funny.
Phil (#503),
Is there a mathematical argument here as I requested, or just more BS?
Feel free to post my comment wherever you would like at RC. I posted it right after *299 a on the thread
Hey Ya! for the reasons I indicated. That thread is now at #375 and way past the time I posted.
And I see you didn’t mention the misuse of the well posed multiscale system by the climate modelers
or the contradiction with their statements about the accuracy of their molasses balls.
Jerry
Re: Gerald Browning (#504),
Jerry you made an irrelevant post in a thread about Yamal with the intention of getting it rejected so you could come over here and brag about it. Had you posted it here in the Briffa thread it would have been kicked out too ( like Lorax’s posts were).
david_a (#500),
To look at detailed scaling analyses for the different scales of motion, you can read the Browning and Kreiss manuscripts and ignore the mathematical arguments that follow (e.g. Browning and Kreiss 2002, JAS,v 59,1680
and references therein). Note that the arguments for the balance between the vertical velocity and the total heating for mesoscale (and smaller) motions in the midlatitudes also apply near the equator for all scales of motion. Thus for all of these cases, if the parameterizations involved in producing the total heating are inaccurate, then so will be the vertical velocity and subsequently the dynamics,For a detailed scaling analysis of the explicit physics parameterizations, see the manuscript by Lu et al mentioned a number of times on this site.
As the climate models do not accurately approximate either the dynamics or physics, any conclusions drawn from them are suspect.
I will be happy to answer any questions about the scalings that appear in our manuscripts or any other details.
Jerry
Bender,
Back a bit, I think you stated that none of this affected GCMs. Thinking that you were referring to the proxy discussions, does this mean that GCMs do not reference any time series, or if they do, are they only instrument series? Or are GCMS entirely physics (?) driven without any reference to measurement series?
Re: j ferguson (#507),
I don’t understand your question but am happy to reply if you can clarify. The essence of my statement is contained in the comment Steve posted at the “spectator blog” (whatever that is). He remarked on that earlier today.
Re: bender (#513),
My concern was that if climate modeling is base-lining on paleoclimatological series and the series may be unsupportable before the period in which they can be directly callibrated, then maybe the models are suspect for this reason alone.
I can’t find your earlier comment now in all of the shuffling, but to rephrase my question, are the models completely independent of proxy data?
I must be asking this clumsily, and if so, sorry to waste time.
Re: j ferguson (#514),
The models are functionally independent of the proxy data.
david_a (#500),
It is more important to understand the scalings for the different atmospheric motions than the exact construction of numerical methods for the climate models. Many different numerical methods have been used (e.g. second order in time and space, fourth order in space, spectral in space, etc.). An understanding of the different motions shows why the hydrostatic system fails and why parameterizations for the different scales have such an important impact. If there are problems with the parameterizations, the numerics are irrelevant. Also if the cascade of enstrophy is wrong, then the models cannot be physically correct. Might I suggest you look at our manuscript on numerical methods for 2D turbulence to see some simple numerical examples of how the use of the incorrect amount or type of dissipation leads to an incorrect solution.
Jerry
J
I guess Lorax and slownewsday are postgrads working for Gavin or Mike Mann. Their mission has been to disrupt the scientific comment on Briffa. They have had some success, but on the other hand if they are as I suspect then the Team is obviously worried.
Re: Dave Andrews (#526),
I disagree. Lorax writes with the authority of someone of experience, and the fact that he wants someone to give him the answers rather than put in the mileage reading the blog also speaks to me of a senior person.
He asked a reasonable question about Steve’s attitude to publishing, which Ross tried to answer. I’m sure people have said this blog needs a FAQ page (actually I see there is a FAQ 2005 page), and if there was then on this subject it would point to articles listing the difficulties Steve has had in getting published.
Lorax also raised the question of whether this type of auditting should be done in private, to avoid embarrassment of the participants. I have very much enjoyed the discussion which, for me at any rate, refuted that position.
Lastly, DaleC, I disagree with you about ad hominem (#539). There is far too much of it on this blog you ****** đ I am disappointed in Phil’s gibe at Jerry, since I had previously come to respect Phil over on the Sea Ice thread. There is nothing wrong with being a deep expert on one thing and trying to make sure that the point is not forgotten. Some points need to be re-iterated. Like the effect of long solar cycles on climate (oh, here I go again, one-trick-pony #2).
Rich.
Re: See – owe to Rich (#548),
I was disappointed, too, in Phil’s jibe, for the same reason. He’s a voice of reason on the sea ice thread. But he appears to be reverting to an older behavior – pointing out what he sees as a double-standards at CA. (The irony is that he appears to have no problem with, for example, Barton Paul Levenson going on about galactic cosmic rays on the RC Yamal thread.) I hope Phil can revert to his sea ice modus operandi, where he deals in facts rather than name-calling.
Re: bender (#551),
bender, I have nowhere suggested a double standard at CA or by you, in fact I assumed that CA would have treated Jerry’s off topic post in the same way as RC i.e. remove it from the thread where it clearly did not belong. I also assumed that you would have responded in the same way as you did to Lorax, i.e. you would have petitioned for its removal. Why do you think that is a accusation of a double standard?
I haven’t seen that post but from what you say it would appear to be off topic.
What name calling?
hi jerry
thx for the references. i will see if i can follow along
d
Davida, Drroyspencer.com has a simple summary that might be what you are looking for. Specific models usually have the methods published in a paper.
In one-trick-pony Phil’s haste to point out a double-standard (yawn) I suppose he did not reflect on the fact that RC has no place for general questions, whereas CA does: “unthreaded”. (Another inequality in his ridiculous comparison.) Perhaps RC can try that innovation? Or maybe they just couldn’t give a hoot what questions skeptics might have?
.
Shame on Jerry for not suggesting RC implement an unthreaded thread.
Death by soft taco, I think deserves a thread all of it’s own. In the end what did you do or are you a ghost from the other side??
This site is great, even when posters go off topic I learn even more. I think catch a tiger by it’s tail, is an asian idiom not of western origin since tigers are not native to Europe.
Henry
Rubbish. If he has not put is claim correctly, and others are using his word incorrectly, he should take responsibility for his poor use of language. Especially since there are people out there demandinding Briffa ‘explain or resign’. These are very serious words to use against someone who is entitled to the presumption of innocence, and sound like he has already been found guilty. Steve can’t dodge responsibility for that.
Re: slownewsday (#517),
Come off it! Who (other than you) is saying that he put his “claim” incorrectly? I have no problem with anything he wrote. You see any technical problems, I don’t. Incorrect facts – don’t see any -point them out. Exaggerated statements – not in my book. Does he feel more strongly about it than he lets on? Don’t know -and you certainly don’t either – but there’s no indication of it in what he wrote.
You seem to make it up as you go along. Get real!
david_a (#511),
The basic scaling concept is quite simple. One chooses typical values for the motion of interest, i.e. typical horizontal and vertical spatial scales and the time scale and the associated scales for the the dependent variables (horizontal and vertical velocity and density and pressure). A simple change of independent and dependent variables using these scales leads to a nondimensional system that reveals the relative size of each term in an equation. For example, for large scale motions, typical horizontal length scales are 1000 km,
the vertical scale is 10 km, and the time scale is on the order of a day (10^5 sec). The horizontal velocity values are typically 10 m/s, the vertical velocity 1 cm/s,and the pressure and density are small perturbations of the mean pressure and density at each height (this reflects the stratification). One can determine the size of each term without the change of variable, e.g. the size of the term uux is 10 m/s times 10 m/s divided by 1000 km = 10 -3 m/(s^2), but the change of variables makes this process more rigorous. Once the change of variable is made we use the nondimensional parameter epsilon = 1/10 to indicate the relative sizes of the various terms in an equation. Note that for large scale motions the total derivative of the vertical velocity
is 6 orders of magnitude smaller than the pressure gradient and density terms. Once you have absorbed these
ideas, we can proceed from there.
Jerry
david_a,
That should be 10 ^(-4), not 10^(-3). Then note that the Coriolis term fv is 10^(-4) times 10 m/s = 10 ^ (-3),
i.e. an order of magnitude larger than the advective term uu_x. This is reflected in the scaled system by the factor epsilon^ (-1) multiplying the pressure gradient and Coriolis terms.
Jerry
SlowNewsDay and Lorax both advocate positions which are transparently obvious in their consequence – rather than auditing the key publications which are being used to justify the expenditure of trillions in the long term, they would prefer that Steve McIntyre i) wasted his time monitoring comments on other blogs just in case he has been misrepresented and ii) audit inconsequential papers which have nothing to do with anything in terms of public policy. The consequence would be a lot less time fingering the many woeful inadequacies of the proxy reconstructions.
And while I am here, can I please make a plea that the term ‘ad hominem’ be used correctly. It does not mean that one cannot call a dirty spade a dirty spade – it means that irrelevant personal details should not be used in place of an argument – for example “Jack says that 2+2=4, but he kicks his dog and yells at his wife, so I wouldn’t believe anything Jack says”. Rightly calling someone a dill, as I was often tempted to do while witnessing the Lorax exchanges, is not ad hominem.
Ideas and contributions have to evaluated on their merits, not from where they come from. – gavin]
This thread at times appears to be discussing the meaning of words and English phraseology. Here is some poetry:
In Memoriam
HOCKEY STICK
Age 11
So. Farewell then
Hockey Stick
Robust Reconstruction
It would seem that
You are dead
But are you?
You have risen
many times before
So why not now?
But then. Do dendro
Theories really die?
And so. The enigma stays
With us
(E.J Thribb age 17 ½)
(With apologies to Barry Fantoni. I would also like to….
continued p99)
GrantB – with further apologies…
So. Farewell then
Hockey Stick
You were a goody
But what use are you
Without a ‘woody’?
From Nylo at RC [note gavin’s reply]:
Gavin, kudos, understands the distinction between cores i na chronology vs. chronologies in a reconstruction, but even he can’t see the problem with ex post facto cherry-picking of chronologies to match a 20th century instrumental trend. The guy is clearly not fit to handle time-series in any statistical analysis. I suppose cherry-picking computer runs ex post facto is no big deal?
It took quite some time to digest all the vitriol and ad hom attacks made against me, not to mention the juvenile quips. We have two toddlers, so I have learnt to be very tolerant of juvenile behaviour. Guys, vitriol is only going to strengthen my resolve. I love the connotation’s attached to the phrase “drive-by”. Almost as bad as the analogy of “cocaine addicts”.
Anyhow, I digress. What I wanted to ask is if Mr. McIntyre had an a priori knowledge of McKitrick’s missive (and that is a generous term for thecontent of his missive, but I’ll get into those specifics tomorrow)? Did McIntyre edit or contribute directly to that missive in any way? Ws he aware it was going to print? Does McIntyre agree /concur with the statement:
“Only by playing with data can scientists come up with the infamous âhockey stick’ graph of global warming”?
If not, has he contacted Ross McKitrick’s connections at the Financial Post to request a correction and or to distance himself from those statements? The FP missive was at least the second time last week that the media abused McIntyre’s work. Again, the perils of conducting “audits” in the public forum Steve M. Although in this case it seems that McKitrick is the one guilty of drawing premature conclusions as to the validity of Briffa’s analysis and questioning his skills as a scientist when he states that “Whatever is going on here, it is not science.” Well, Dr. McKitrick (funny, I keep wanting to call you “Lord Monckton”), you might wish to consider the content of your missive first before critiquing others’ scientific skills. Anyhow, McIntyre contacted the Telegraph (allegedly, in the interests of transparency could you please post a copy of that message for all to see please Mr McIntyre?), the question is will he now again demonstrate his integrity and contact the Financial Post?
Re: Lorax (#553),
Where do you get the ridiculous notion that Steve is Dr. McKitrick’s (or anybody else’s) keeper? No one is “guilty” of anything. We are all adults here doing perfectly legitimate activities.
Your demands that we do the auditing in “secrecy” is indicative of the arrogant patronizing censors of the past who wanted to protect weak minds from radical corrupting ideas. If this attitude you display wasn’t so pitiful, it would be funny.
Yes, the aggressive and dismissive tone in your own comments has certainly earned you the respect that you receive.
Roman, stop distorting and get your facts right. Really, this continued distortion by supporters of CA is both unbelievable and ironic– are you not supposed to be opposed to distortion? I never suggested “Your demands that we do the auditing in “secrecy””. Are we to conclude, using your logic, that our taxes are audited in secrecy? No they are not.
Romanm, actually I have displayed immense restraint here in view of the juvenile and hostile environment. Am I aggressive? Perhaps, but clearly asking nicely is not going to work here at groupthink.org. My tone probably stems from my frustration when people of repute like McKitrick choose to not correct inflammatory statements made in connection with their work. That is not acceptable. I have contacted the Financial Post, they know my name, my contact details, with whom I am affiliated et cetera.
The one being “dismissive” here romanm is McKitrick, not I. It is telling that you either fail to see that or choose to ignore that fact.
Re: Lorax (#555),
A few “bon mots” from you (there were a lot more available):
No place in the debate, but it has become the poster child of the AGW movement… and of course, there is so much more proof (which doesn’t need to be audited either).
For the same reason that I focus on the same material. I came to this web site because I got sated with the exaggerated claims of “catastrophic tipping points”, “monster hurricanes”, “disappearance of up to 50% of all species by 20xx”, “high death rates due to famine and pestilence”, etc.. When you read the papers, they were full of arm waving and “maybes”, but no real evidence of anything more concrete or of legitimate statisitcal analysis of the existing information. But hey, if I want to audit something (as a hobby?), go get something random.
Do you accept all of these exaggerated claims? If not, isn’t it hypocritical to allow those free reign, but claimthat Steve should take the “high road”?
Patronizing …
… arrogance! I am sorry that we don’t meet your standards. I would hazard that my credentials (and those of many others here) are no less than yours and my personal amount of experience with academic work in a wide set of disciplines is much longer than you’ve been alive.
But calling it “juvenile group.think” is OK? Your repetitious ramblings have become a waste of time and effort…
Lorax – did you do the google I suggested up thread in 439?
Curious, no I have simply not had the time, I am extremely busy. Could you please just cut to the chase and tell us what your point is/was? Thanks.
Romanm, I would support audits done in a manner similar to what was done to deal with the Mann et al. paper. Happy?
Lorax – I just timed it. Invest 30 seconds and then lets discuss it.
Lorax, if I have had any part in strengthening your resolve to remain here preaching to us, I want to publicly apologize to the other posters and readers here. I will personally apologize to you, Lorax, if it will in any shape or manner lessen your resolve.
Lorax, by now we all understand your views on the urgency of actions in dealing with AGW and your apparent concern that there are those who, either directly or indirectly, are affecting public opinion by publicly analyzing/challenging, not AGW, but rather the papers that have been influential in forming policy Making proselytes here, as you must already realize, is obviously wasting your time.
Whether you know it or not, RC is a blog that was set up to deal with your concerns and deal with them in a manner like (in certain moments at least) to which you seem to prescribe here. I would sincerely suggest that you will be more influential by participating at RC. You can describe your experience here â no need to mention that were a bit of an ass yourself.
Of course, if want to join the dicussion of the ongoing analysis here, I would say you would be more welcome – without the preaching.
Fritsch, “Lorax, if I have had any part in strengthening your resolve to remain here preaching to us”
I thought religious talk was not allowed. Snip please. That is also the point I stopped reading your post Kenneth. Try again.
Curious, did it, I still do not know your point. Besides, we are not allowed to discuss Steig et al. here. Steve M said so himself. So if you are trying to use that as an example pertaining to the Briffa case, then please just state whatever it is that you wish to say.
Lorax – we are on “unthreaded” so I think we are ok to continue but apologies for wasting your time if we are snipped.
Thanks for doing the google. How many hits did you get for each search?
Lorax, I don’t see how Steve s responsible for every headline that editors come up with. Have you asked the same question of RealClimate? Do they correct headlines and media statements that go beyond what the science says?
I can’t speak for Steve, but I don’t have a problem with that headline.
‘Playing with data’ is not the same as making up data, or cherry-picking trees.
Ex-post-facto selecting of chronologies is also ‘playing with data,’ and even more so using an algorithm that filters out from a large pile of proxies those that happen to match the current warming, guaranteeing a hockey stick result. That is definitely ‘playing with data.’ Thomas Fuller blames the existence of cheap statistical packages for the current hockey stick mess. Perhaps you should complain to him about his accusations of playing with data.
Curious,
For “steig antarctic warming” I got 7 hits (on the google.ca domain)
For “steig antarctic warming corrigendum” I got 0 (on the google.ca domain). If I modify you particular search to “steig +corrigendum +antarctica”, then I get 2,070 hits. If I search “steig +corrgendum +”antarctic warming”” I get 39 hits.
Curious, stop playing games. Your game proves nothing except that one has to be careful how you search on google.
has anyone seen a comment on the Yamal situation from a dendro (apart from the Briffa response) anywhere in blogland yet?
i realise a reply/response ultimatly has to come from Briffa, but since the guy is unwell at present, surely somebody can fight his corner even if by ‘anon’ comments.
Lorax – agreed re: careful use of google.
For this one I make it 33 hits:
http://news.google.ca/archivesearch?q=steig+antarctic+warming&as_ldate=2009&as_hdate=2009&sugg=d&scoring=a&hl=en&ned=ca&sa=N&start=30
For this one I make it 0 hits:
http://news.google.ca/archivesearch?q=steig%2Bantarctic%2Bwarming%2Bcorrigendum&btnG=Search+Archives&hl=en&ned=ca&scoring=a
Are you sure you searched the “news” archive?
Curious, not sure if I did search the news archive. Let me ask you this. What is the readership of Nature (print, plus online)– that is, the edition of Nature in which Steig et al. published their original article and the corrigendum? Let me also ask you if the corrections made to their data analysis in the corrigendum made them arrive a different set of conclusions.
Roman, talking of ramblings, you post #569 is an excellent example of that. An excellent example of cherry picking too I might add.
Believe it or not I am heading out the door here, but I’ll be more than happy to address your post tomorrow when I have more time. Have a nice day.
PS: McKitrick, from non other than CA, has now made the mistake about making serious accusations and drawing premature conclusions in the print media before this story has even been fully resolved! I can speak more to that tomorrow as well if you wish.
Re: Lorax (#570),
That sounds like a threat to me. You talk of settling these issues outside of the public view so go do your thing about McKitrick one on one. I am certain that McKitrick would either ignore you as a nut case or set you straight on your threats. By the way how do we lose a nut job on this blog?
Methinks the Lorax doth protest too much.
Actually Michael, thou doth not protest/question enough when it comes to McIntyre and McKitrick. Gotta run.
Lorax – Sorry re: slow response. Thanks re: “news” archive. It’s is important to know we’re on the same page re: data so that misunderstandings can be avoided.
The 33 hits I got for “steig antarctic warming” gave 144 related articles. I only checked 2 of these “related” links groups and some aren’t directly on the Steig paper. However the point remains that that Nature paper reached a huge worldwide audience way beyond the readership of the Journal itself (print and online). Additionally the story was carried by broadcast media (in the UK at prime time news slots – one channel alone has over 9 million listeners). If the google searches are representative the Corrigendum, on the other hand, will have reached (some of) the Nature readership and some blog followers. As far as the corrections go, if I’ve understood correctly, the minimum continental trend with 95% confidence interval is 0.02 degC/dec. and the authors do not believe this impacts on their conclusions.:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v460/n7256/fig_tab/nature08286_T1.html
The BBC web coverage:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7843186.stm
shows the original trend chart from Nature:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/08/sci_nat_enl_1232563167/html/1.stm
and searching the site does not find a reference to the Corrigendum.
How far do you think the authors and/or the journal should go to make sure the inaccuracies are brought to the public’s attention? How far do you think the authors and/or the journal should go in challenging any language reporting their work which they do not agree with?
Since this is “unthreaded”:
From RC –
I wonder if the load on the server had anything to do with the line of comments in the “awaiting moderation” section.
Having to go through that many posts, determining which ones are suitable for posting at RC (i.e, does it support AGW, does it trash CA or SM, etc) probably is a very long process.
Maybe Someone should post a letter to “contrib -at- realclimate.org”, and say that their upgrade to the blog software seems to preventing anti-AGW posts from getting through.
Since I know that Gavin reads this blog, then, a statement. When you have to refuse more posts than you allow, there’s someting wrong with the moderation.
While you guys are having fun with Lorax, I hope you also pay attention to the remarkable double-standard that gavin in #552 has just set re: cherry-picking. Those words are going to come back to haunt him. Too bad Lorax took the conversation in a different direction in #553.
Bender, Lorax first must state whether he views Gavin’s post in 422 to be cherry picking. Based on past statements, I think Lorax believes the method of selection of proxies described by Gavin as simply good science.
Fritsch, “By the way how do we lose a nut job on this blog?”
LOL, you guys are too funny. What I was referring to is McKitrick making premature/incorrect conclusions in the public forum about the Briffa case before it has been concluded. In my opinion, to draw premature conclusions as he has done is a not right (i.e., a mistake). So let us be clear, there are no threats, veiled or otherwise. Had you bothered to read McKitrick’s missive you would know that McKitrick also said defamatory things like “Whatever is going on here, it is not science” when speaking of Briffa. That is a serious allegation to make against a fellow academic in the public forum, and hardly diplomatic.
No, no those at CA are making no serious accusations about Briffa fiddling the data, just asking him to explain/justify why he chose certain cores and not others et cetera. Well, McKitrick’s statements fly in the face of those comments made by McIntyre and others here that they are not making accusations of wrong doing. We are not talking about comments made about Briffa et al. by Delinpole or someone else (those comments were bad enough), these serious accusations are coming from McKitrick, and were sourced right here at CA.
Calling me a “nut job” does not do anything whatsoever CA’s already fatally damaged reputation. Each time you make such defamatory comments your credibility goes down another notch, you are beginning to run out of notches. Such actions also show you and your friends here to be very desperate.
Now Ross is a big boy, let him speak for himself please and stop interfering, and trying to shift focus away from McKitrick’s missive. Talk about closing ranks.
JSchulte, I do not speak for Gavin, nor do I endorse cherry-picking. So you too stop trying and distract the attention away from the McKitrick issue by dragging me into your battle with Gavin. That is not relevant here. My issue is with McIntyre’s involvement (if any) with McKitrick’s missive. If he had any knowledge of that missive and whether or not he had anything to do in the drafting of that missive whether it be by his own pen/keyboard or editing it for McKitrick. And why is McKitrick refusing to ask the FP to issue a correction. Do you understand? I can’t honestly make it any clearer, so please don’t make me have to repeat myself yet again. My questions are very, very relevant to the Briffa story and CA’s involvement therein.
Fritsch, “You talk of settling these issues outside of the public view so go do your thing about McKitrick one on one”
Now not so fast there Kenneth. Isn’t CA about airing all the data, statements, science in a public forum? Being transparent? Time for CA to walk the talk that they are so eager to brag about. Hmmm, yet I sense that the ranks are closing rapidly here. It is becoming clear that CA is not so keen on accountability and transparency when the shoe is on the other foot. So sorry for having to raise inconvenient thoughts, but someone has to do it, because no one here is. Not even close.
Re: Lorax (#580),
So when are you going to ask your first scientific question?
McKitrick’s comment applies to several studies. So you have to learn to live with it and get on with science, snip
Lorax, correction for what? ‘Not science?’ Not handing over data is science?
> But is has no place in the AGW “debate”. The instrumented record does not rely on proxies, the model simulations do not rely on proxies, measurements of glacier retreat do not rely on proxies, leaf burst and senescence do not either et cetera, et cetera.
John Pittman has posted at The Air Vent, that the proxy record does influence the global warming debate, in that they use the historical record to separate the influence of CO2 versus natural causes. I don’t think that part of the argument has been audited very well either.
Re: MikeN (#581),
Not for lack of trying. Go ask Gavin Schmidt right now about that issue. Get Pittman in there. See how far you get.
Kenneth, I have thought again about what I said, and I can appreciate that it could be perceived by some as sounding like a threat. So I sincerely apologise to McKitrick if that is how he interpreted it that way. I most certainly did not intend it to come across that way and have already explained what I was actually trying to convey in post 579 above. So how about we try and let cooler heads prevail, and take a break?
Mike N, your posts is yet another attempt to distract and deflect. But I’ll humour you, the proxy data have nothing to doing with the radiative forcing properties of GHGs. Does that clarify things for you?
OT, perhaps even for unthreaded, but to those who have this “thing” about who is and isn’t a climate scientist, it looks like Reuters has decided.
And from our authoritative friends at Wikipedia.
So McIntyre has BS in Mathematics and claims to be a Paleoclimate expert. Are you saying one cannot work outside your discipline? It works for McIntyre how come not this fellow?
Re: Lorax (#586),
Where did he “claim” to be an expert?
But I will state that he knows more than most people. He is well researched in many fields. And few Paleoclimate people know enough about statistics.
Re: Lorax (#586),
It would be nice if you were actually up to speed on who is arguing what. I have no problem with people coming up to speed in areas outside their discipline.
It is a common meme by many AGW proponents that you have to be a “climate scientist” to understand the problem.
It would be great if you don’t agree with that.
Lorax
your comments/replies suggest you are smart, so i have to ask the obvious
1. why no comment from any dendo’s on this.
2. let Briffa answer for himself when well.
On the topic of censoring at RC. Here’s one of my favorites where Falafulu fisi was censored
Bad Andrew,
So throw out all the propaganda and what do you have left?
Global warming. Sea level rise, ocean ‘acidification’, species migration, changes in seasonal onset, precipitation changes, mass loss of ice caps, averaged glacier retreat, etc.. It’s obviously important to figure out why and to do our best to project the future.
This sounds like propaganda to me.
Does it, Andrew? Well, do some research – that’s how to distinguish. I don’t know where to begin to respond, since I don’t know what position you’re coming from. Do you think the world has not warmed through the 20th century (I’m not talking about natural v anthropogenic, you understand, I’m just wanting to know what you think has happened)?
Maybe someone wants to ask Eli about ivory tower academics sucking and blowing at the same time – insisting that “their” tax-payer funded data can be protected even when it is used to overturn global policy in the public sphere. Who here thinks that you abandon the right to IP protection as soon as you seek to influence trillion-dollar global policy? Who here believes in democracy?
There’s a poster from RC (off and on for at least 4 years) who is now posting on WUWT correcting the rubes there when they make somewhat elementary mistakes, but also arguing about cigarette manufacturers and other odd topics. He never changes to the new topic himself, but is always able to continue a tangent.
This is on the McKitrick thread there. I doubt this guy is a paid troll or anything close to that. But I think this affair has hit close to the bone of their belief system which is that CWP is unprecedented. Lorax also brought up the proxies that make it unprecedented (leafing, glaciers, etc). But whoops, those are not unprecedented, the MWP had same or better warmth worldwide as measured by those (although it is obviously difficult to gather a sufficient worldwide data sample).
I think these are the true believers, not in it for the money or fame or papers in peer reviewed journals. Their cognitive dissonance in this situation attracts them here and WUWT but their belief system can’t change easily since there is a huge artifice of selected observations and facts that they have built up over the years to support it. So they proselytize and argue the tangents that they are more familiar with rather than study and figure out exactly what Briffa did.
Re: Eric (skeptic) (#594),
What if Tom P were my sock puppet? What if the faithful at RC are swallowing our half-chewed regurgitate? Do they ever think?
Re: Eric (skeptic) (#594),
A sizable chunk of the angst tied up in the assumption that anyone with the slightest doubt doesn’t believe in sea level measurements, ice cores, satellite measurements etc. The arguments tend to convey “Why am I even bothering, they aren’t educable.”
.
But any rebound from a strong Little Ice Age could cause all of the same observed warming. “Breaking the stick” has absolutely nothing to do with proving the “blade” of the eighties and nineties to be in error.
.
It has to do with questioning the heel and nearby shaft. Accurate reconstructions of this period require conducting your proxy hunts in a sane fashion, calibrating meticulously, and demonstrating a solid predictive power in an out-of-sample test period.
.
Enter Mann et al. There have been hundreds of dendrochronology studies, with far more trees and cores involved, thrown in as potential proxies. (Do we have a number for the total number of cores involved?) When one hears that thousands of disparate sources of potential proxies have been cleverly compiled into a solid temperature reconstruction – it is plausible and encouraging.
.
To find that the proxies with the most significant weights boil down to a few trees in Colorado (where resampling shows divergence), an inverted sediment study in Tiljander, and a very limited sample in Yamal whose provenance was obfuscated for a decade is quite troubling.
.
At the same time, professional historians have a strong respect for the Little Ice Age. The “localized” affect is “anecdotally” witnessed over a decent slice of the Northern Hemisphere. But it wasn’t measured conclusively outside of Europe. So the global effect is rightly questioned.
.
The key accomplishment of the hockeystick was to demolish the debate over what fraction, exactly, of the observed warming was anthropogenic.
Andrew,
When I start posting on CA I end up sitting up all night, so I must go to bed. If you want me to present evidence of any particular claim I have made then please let me know and I’ll get back to it tomorrow.
I believe the globe has been warming and cooling for a very long time and will continue to do so.
And I think it is a good idea for us to seek to understand why it does so. Do you disagree?
Good night đ
I think we have a misunderstanding, Phil. Maybe we can work it out. Why would I petition for removal of Jerry’s comment from “unthreaded”. Nothing is OT here.
Re: bender (#597),
OK one more time, Jerry posted on the Yamal thread on RC a completely irrelevant post about the mathematics of climate modelling. He immediately came over here to brag about his post being rejected on RC (before it had been). I pointed out that had he done the same here (on say the Briffa thread) his post would have been also been moved away, and that you would probably have pushed for it like you had with Lorax. It was his posting behavior at RC and his posturing here that I was criticizing.
Re: Phil. (#612),
And yet when Tom P does the same thing, you say what exactly? Nothing?
Re: bender (#618),
I’m not a moderator here and I certainly don’t follow all the threads so I don’t know what you’re referring to, what I’ve seen of Tom P’s posts seem to be on point regarding the Briffa data but perhaps you’re referring to something else?
Re: Phil. (#619),
I mean his stunt of posting at CA, waiting a couple of hours, then posting at RC that Steve is unresponsive etc. Read the “Gavin’s guru” thread.
Simon,
“And I think it is a good idea for us to seek to understand why it does so.”
I agree, Simon. Good night.
Andrew
Simon,
“Global warming” was conveniently morphed into a more nebulous catch all of “climate change” some 5 years ago when even core political proponents of AGW had to acknowledge that CO2 could no longer be held up as a determinant factor in temperature variation, even to the lowest common denominator. The AGW hypothesis remains -kindly put- unproven, and much more realistically and inconveniently, is being falsified on an ongoing basis by a growing body of reliable and verifiable data. If you can not acknowledge that incontrovertible fact, I’m afraid we are gliding into the realm of faith.
Calamitous sea rise level, you say? Best available data tells us otherwise.
Arctic sea ice extent? 2009: 1 million sq km above outlier 2007?
New data showing an increase of the overall ice mass in Greenland?
A 4th consecutive year of record Antarctic sea ice extent?
Glacier retreat, you say? When several studies by teams in India and Europe and North America refute that contention? My own observations [for what they are worth] after discussions with experts in Alaska this summer that show glaciers are growing where it counts, which is not at the bottom but at the top?
Ocean acidification? How can “oceans” acidify globally when anyone who understands this matter will tell you there is no such thing as a “unified” “global” ocean? Have you ever seen the Plimsol line on an ocean going vessel? It is the ultimate marker of how different the seas around the globe are in terms of their chemical properties [salinity, ph levels, etc.]. Good Plimsol understood this some 150 years ago and it has saved many a ship from sinking.
The above is not “propaganda”. Very inconvenient observations to some, for sure. Data made available and verifiable by all and sundry has the unfortunate property of being inconvenient to some. It’s the very basis of science. That’s why we know what we know – until of course, what we think we know is proven wrong.. –
Propaganda? Don’t think so.
bender, “What if Tom P were my sock puppet? What if the faithful at RC are swallowing our half-chewed regurgitate? Do they ever think?”
and
bender again “Maybe someone wants to ask Eli about ivory tower academics sucking and blowing at the same time”
Bender, please tell me that you are NOT and eminent scientist. Do you have editorial privileges here? You know, in terms of snipping?
Hmm, do your comments refer to all academics, even the ones who frequent/support this blog? I share your frustration with the “ivory tower” that some academics cater to, but you make quite the sweeping generalization there.
I am going to reply to poster curious here as well if you don’t mind, s/he is at least one person who is open to engaging dissenting opinions. Curious, I do not profess to have the answers, but I am willing to try and think of a better way to deal with these issues so as to avoid circus acts. How far should journals and/or scientists go to set the record straight? Let us all agree that it is impossible to keep the media and blogs on message. However, that does not absolve us from at least trying and taking action at those times when we are aware of transgressions. Someone, ronanm I think, earlier gave some ad absurdum example of AGW fanatics getting the wrong end of the stick and perpetuating nonsense. That happens for sure, from both sides. Now if those issues can be caught early on then it helps a lot. Also, if it can be traced back to a given source, even better. Then the source should feel compelled to deal with it. How, do they deal with it? I don’t know, a press release perhaps? What does one do if someone brings it to your attention that your work had been misrepresented when publishing in the NYT, for example? Would one not insist that they correct it ASAP. One would probably not publish with them again, unless they responded professionally and issued a correction. Regardless, one should probably be wary of going back to them and seek out a more reputable media outlet.
Regarding audits being done properly. How about this. Journals add a small premium to their publication fees– and those who don’t charge publication fees would be required to do so. Those funds would be used to support the admin costs and overheads for an independent group who would deal with auditing data and papers in that field, as well as resolving disputes that could not be resolved by the journals. Obviously it would be more complicate that stated here, but I believe that it could be done and made to work. Anyhow, just a thought. Now instead of ridiculing this CAers, how about you actually either suggest another model, or suggest ways to improve the above model.
Now good night everyone…..
Lorax:
What’s your opinion on data disclosure? Say I want to put a chemical plant in your backyard, and I tell you it’s safe, and you ask for greater assurance, but I don’t want to tell you the chemical process or show you the engineering plans for the plant because you might make trouble or, worse steal, my intellectual property. Should I be obliged to disclose?
[mod: Bender, you’ve developed a habit of insulting people, whether by misuse of their handle or otherwise. Please stop. Just because this is “unthreaded” doesn’t give you or anyone else the right to debase the conversation.]
Since Eli Rabett has the ability to post at RC witout ever seeing the replies (moderation again), I’ll post my reply here.
“…until recently…”
After a 10 year wait, after repeated requests by published academics, after letters to the journals themselves, the data is out. Not because of the scientists, but because of a journal following their rules.
“…shared with some others…”
Shared with members of an elite group. You could probably count on the fingers of one hand the “others” the data was shared with.
Agreed. Intellectual property is important. People who go out and actually core the trees should have first use of the data. But after the paper is out, what then? What if someone else wants to refute your data or methods? Isn’t that what science is about?
So one scientist picked a group of cores, published the paper, and let his friends use the data. After 10 years, and letting the data be used in at least 10 papers, why was there still a refusal to release? Afraid we’d find something wrong with it?
Every time I’ve tried to post at your site, or at RC, the same hue and cry goes up “We’re not going to do your homework for you!! Read the papers!!”
Well, reading the papers also means looking at the data. In most of the classes I’ve taken, points were removed if you didn’t show your work. Is it the same in climate science?
“Ocean acidification” is a scare tactic, as the ocean is not an acid, and will not be one. The PH for the ocean is above 7.
Re: MikeN (#80),
I dont know much atmospheric CO2 is changing the pH of oceans… but it seems to me that just because the ocean is slightly basic that a lowering of its pH could still potentialy harm the oceanic ecosystems if those ecosystems were dependent on a relatively static pH level…regardless if the lowering of the pH would result in the ocean becoming an acid (lower than 7 pH)
Of course I have no idea how pH sensitive the oceanic ecosystems are
>the proxy data have nothing to doing with the radiative forcing properties of GHGs.
True, but the impact of the radiative forcing properties on global temperature, the confidence level in the current estimated impact is affected by proxy data.
The Archer MODTRAN calculator has been moved to a new server. The URL is now:
http://geoflop.uchicago.edu/forecast/docs/Projects/modtran.orig.html
Alan, the flatness of the hockey stick handle in the MWP was not tackled by Tom P. since it is a separate issue, and his focus (correctly on topic) was the blade and YAD06. I don’t know if Tom P was drawn here by cognitive dissonance, but then he republished his results on the RC chaff thread and they passed Cumulus’s peer review, Then, Cumulus suggested publishing the results at the National Post (post 403) so that their readership would realize the importance of YAD06.
This was all predicted in the very first post in this thread. It was meant in jest, but then Tom P made his rookie mistake in R despite being quite knowledgeable about the dendro subject. Perhaps Cumulus made the same rookie mistake or maybe he didn’t actually review Tom’s results. One tangent, if I may. I really like weather but I hate weather monikers. Cumulus is a great example of the high degree of nonlinearity of water vapor which invalidates almost every climate model, especially the ones that fit entirely inside one post at RC. I would say other than CWP proxies that start in the LIA, that is probably the other major area of true belief: that water vapor is linear, or RH is constant.
Hope this is the right place. As a rookie, I’ve found this set of exchanges, related blog posts and the science (and what looks like pseudoscience) behind the whole mess riveting and appalling in equal measure.
As such, regardless of which “side” anyone adopts it is deserving of far wider discussion and coverage.
Are there preferences / guidelines for this?
So far I’ve taken the tack of recommending the Bishop Hill blog as a primer and then referring to the primary blog posts here for detail.
I’ve sent this on, along with suitable exhortations to “The Naked Scientists” a popular science podcast, the New Scientist and “More or Less” a BBC radio series that concentrates on the impact that numbers in general and statistics have in real life.
Any suggestions on the approach and who to approach? Is this sort of advocacy for expanding the discussion considered acceptable ?
I think Cumulus is Lorax.
Re: MikeN (#622),
I think Cumulus is my ring finger. And Lorax is my index finger. And Tom P is my …
baby finger.
CA contest:
Be the first to locate the best quote from Gavin Schmidt that answers this question:
.
Does Gavin Schmidt endorse the cherry-picking of computer simulation runs that match the isntrumental record the way he endorses the cherry-picking of tree ring chronologies that match the instrumental record?
.
Contest closes Friday.
Re: bender (#86),
I don’t think he will endorse such cherry-picking bender, because if he cherry picks model runs that match the surface record they will have projections that are wildly higher than what we observe in the tropical troposphere — and if he cherry-picks model runs that match the tropical troposphere, they won’t agree with the surface record. He has to have both kinds of runs in the ensemble in order to make the claim that “There is NO clear model versus data inconsistency”.
At least that is what I remember from the whole debate over the Douglas et al paper. I could be wrong!
Re: Michael Smith (#102),
Entry #1 in the contest. Thank-you. A supporting url would firm up your enviable position in the queue.
.
So, to be perfectly clear, you are suggesting GS may have a double-standard: one set of rules for how he works and another set of rules for how his paleoclimate colleagues work?
.
Serious allegations require serious evidence.
Bender, “Does Gavin Schmidt endorse the cherry-picking of computer simulation runs that match the isntrumental record the way he endorses the cherry-picking of tree ring chronologies that match the instrumental record?”
If one is using multi-model ensembles as the IPCC (and others) does(do) your and CA contests amateur and juvenile quip becomes moot. You seem to fail to understand the concept of ensembles, versus deterministic forecasts. Honestly, this site is like recess at the school yard. Except, in this day and age lawyers get involved to solve spats between “adults”. Can we please tone down the rhetoric? And please don’t say in your defense, as my toddler would, “But, but they do it!”.
PS: Oh, we could play fun word games with “bender”. But I’m better than that. Hey bender, using Steve’s analogy, are you then one of his groupies in addition to being the resident peanut gallery?
Re: Lorax (#94),
Dear Lorax,
Has the burning of fossil fuels prevented an ice age?
Re: Lorax (#94),
Yes, I know I’m a boob when it comes to such issues. But tell me: how are those ensembles generated? And would it be ok to pitch out any runs that yield nonsensical results?
Re: Lorax (#94),
Lorax, that was uncalled for. Im my reading over two years of pretty much every thread on this site, Bender is hard on faulty reasoning, but ultimately fair. As far as suggesting he doesn’t understand the subject……good luck with that.
I find the rhetoric on this site positively civilized compared to reading the dripping condescension and vitriol on RC. Much more revealing, however, is when someone like Lucia comments on something she knows well, the usual suspects at RC claim she’s unqualified to have an opinion, and the proprieters of that site know better yet remain silent.
Re: Lorax (#94),
There is no concept of ensembles. There is no scientific or computational justification for it and no other scientific field does it. And if you don’t believe that then ask Gavin what the scientific basis is. He usually doesn’t give one – preferring to say instead “it just works”.
Re: JamesG (#110),
“Ensembles” are a valid statistical concept. Look it up.
Since Bender has mostly ignored the snark and gone right to the issue, I withdraw the nomination.
COMPARING TREE PROXIES and LONG TERM TEMPERATURE DATA
With the debate about tree ring data and âglobal warming, I though I’d compare tree ring data to long term temperature data. The tree ring data I found from http://www.climatedata.info
With tree ring Nor. Hem. proxy data shown below, used the 20 year MOV Norway, Sweden & Russian data, since they were more compatible to Ave14 defined below:
http://www.climatedata.info/Proxy/Proxy/Proxy/treerings_northern.html
Next I took the 14 longest temperature records from http://www.rimfrost.no/
plus the east English data starting in 1659. I averaged the whole bunch up to form a composite average Ave14. This is shown below, with different types of filters:
I used 40 year filters consisting of a MOV, Fourier filter, and a 2 pole reverse Chebushev filter. The later is found in MATLAB as âfiltfiltâ. Basically the later filter is run forward and then backward to compensate for phase delay. Unfortunately the end points generally will have a significant error, but is a good cross check for date in the middle of the sample. The Fourier gives much better end point results, comparable to the EMD method.
The figure below compares the 20 year MOV averaged tree ring data with the 20 year MOV Ave14 data. The tree ring width is plotted against temperature.
For what it’s worth, it’s in the region where it âkinda looksâ correlated, but would need more sophisticated analysis to show anything definite. From this short analysis, if I were a betting man, I would not bet the chicken coop on tree ring data, much less the farm .
This post was stopped by the RC “gate keeper”. Nothing like “open” discussion.
Lorax:
There are too many basic errors with how these groups typically perform their ensemble analyses for me to be impressed with that argument.
Phil ((#618),
Were you able to post my comment on Real Climate, or did you even try.
Were you able to show that any of my comments were mathematically incorrect and if so, where is the
mathematical response.
And what about the misuse of the multiscale system by the climate modelers?
Or have you moved on.
Jerry
Re: Gerald Browning (#628),
He’s moved on, Jerry. He is accusing you of asking the question at RC, knowing that it would not get accepted, and then coming here and gloating that they won’t talk to you. He says only a “jerk” would do that. Myself, I don’t know how you could know in advance that it would not be accepted. But I would let it slide. It’s obvious Phil won’t and can’t engage on your topic (let alone Lorax). My question is, supposing you were to follow Phil’s advice and ask that question in a thread where it would not be off-topic, what kind of reply would you get?
.
Maybe that didn’t work before. It never hurts to try again.
Lorax (#625),
An ensemble of inaccurate models is an inaccurate number. You assume that the models represent reality when clearly they do not, i.e. they do not accurately approximate the dynamical equations nor the physics.
Jerry
I like ensemble means.
Model A: It will be 223 degrees colder on the eastern seaboard by 2100. Model B: It will be 226 degrees hotter on the eastern seaboard by 2100.
Climate modelers: Our climate models project that the eastern seaboard will warm by 3 degrees by 2100. This scenario is the ensemble mean of our best climate models and is extremely robust.
Bender, I submit in evidence this link: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/12/tropical-troposphere-trends/
Note the graph at the end. The model runs that create the lower projections for the tropical troposphere â the lower projections that permit RC to claim “there is no clear model-data discrepancy â those model runs don’t match the surface record. Likewise, the upper projections from the model runs for the tropical troposphere â which come from those model runs that DO match the surface record â are way, way above the tropical troposphere observations.
You can look at the individual model runs in the original Douglass et al paper here: http://icecap.us/images/uploads/DOUGLASPAPER.pdf
So yes, I’d say there are two different standards at work here. On the one hand, Gavin wants to throw out tree ring series that don’t appear to be responding to the 20th century warming, but insists on including model runs that don’t match either the surface record or the tropical tropospheric record.
All,
Here is the definition of a climate ensemble from wikipedia. Note the caveats in the application of the method.
To express the same problems in another manner, one assumes that the models produce a large number of random perturbations about the correct solution. If the number of random perturbations is not sufficiently large (the number of climate models is very small), if the perturbations are not around the correct solution (the models are not dynamically or physically accurate), or the distribution is not random (the models are biased), then the method is not applicable.
The ensemble method was first introduced when the weather modelers finally had to admit that there were serious errors in their models. For an example of the unavoidable flaws in a weather model, see Sylvie Gravel’s manuscript on this site. (Similar unavoidable flaws are rampant in climate models.) But the caveats below for the legitimate application of ensembles have not been met for either case.
Climate ensemble
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
A climate ensemble involves slightly different models of the climate system. There are at least 4 different types, to be described below.
Contents
[hide]
* 1 Aims
* 2 Perturbed physics ensemble
* 3 Initial condition ensemble
* 4 Forcing ensemble
* 5 Grand ensemble
* 6 Weather
* 7 See also
* 8 External links
[edit] Aims
The aim of running an ensemble is usually in order to be able to deal with uncertainties in the system. An ultimate aim may be to produce policy relevant information such as a probability distribution function of different outcomes. This is proving to be very difficult due to a number of problems. These include:
1. The ensemble has to be wide ranging to ensure it covers the whole range where the climate models may be good.
2. Measuring what is a good model is difficult. This may need to consider not only errors in the observation but also in the model.
3. Any prior assumptions about distribution can influence the probability distribution function produced
Jerry
bender (#641),
I am more than willing to repost on RC, but I want the “expert” to tell me where to post it so that it is appropriate. Then if it is again not accepted, Phil’s argument gore down the drain.
Jerry
Re: Gerald Browning (#645),
Phil? Homework assignment …
Bender,
Sorry wrong number (should be #639).
Jerry
Regarding RCS, I am a bit concerned about the construction of the RC from the raw data aligned by age. These data are a combination of the effects of age, epoch, and situation. If they deliberately select for “sensitive” cores, this will olny make thes situtation worse, As I have mentioned on another thread I think it might be a good idea to approach the problem iteratively by entering an initial estimate of one (assume a value of unity, i.e no effect) and use that to calculate an estimate of the next effect, and then on to the third effect and then replace the original estimate of the first effect if its new estimate and carry on until the stabilse.
I have done enough to convince myself that they will converge given enough iterations. Allowing these extra freedoms should “oil” the process, giving more flexibility which will hopefully help mine for a useful signal. I suspect that there is more signal in the data than shows up inthe published chronolgy. The danger is of course that allowing the procedure to mine more deeply, runs the risk of it seizing on aspects of that data that are thin and could be attributing in several ways but will be mined for which ever one the algorithm favours.
Anyway I am giving it a go, all the vectors will be free, no smoothng or fitting, and it will be interesting to see what sort of a job it makes of calculating the RC, and if it can make a convincing job of that, what it manages to mine for in the data. I am hoping for a few more nobbles on the HS, but it will do what it will do. I think that the only subjective bit is deciding on th algorithm.
Basically try to minimise RW – A(date)*B(age)*C(core-id).
I will be back if it works!!!!!
Alex
Carrick, “There are too many basic errors with how these groups typically perform their ensemble analyses for me to be impressed with that argument.”
Care to elaborate?
Lorax (#648),
Mathematics requires that to ensure the correct application of a method, all of the requirements of the assumptions in the hypothesis be met. Note that none of the requirements of an ensemble mean are met.
Jerry
I would normally prefer to have this discourse in private Mr. McIntyre. But given that you prefer to discuss/critique others in a public forum, I’ll post here on your blog. What is good for the goose is good for the gander right? So regarding your comments to me earlier todayâŚ.
Now hang on there Mr. McIntyre. You are taking people for fools. You admit that you have just acquired the data. The full/complete analysis of this new data is thus not yet complete. You also claim that before âdiscussing the implications of Yamal quality defects, it’s first necessary to verify the detailsâ. That raises some interesting questions as to your modus operandi, because those facts have not deterred you from drawing far reaching conclusions. For example, when you claim that âYAD06âthe most influential tree in the worldâ. Just more than a little premature and irresponsible don’t you think? To place the YAD06 tree’s influence in the appropriate context, or the Yamal chronologies for that matter, you would have to first quantify its/their impact (if any) on the full global SAT reconstruction. Your present conclusions drawn here at CA, regardless of their debated validity or worth, are thus premature, especially when it comes to drawing conclusions about the global SAT reconstruction. And what if you are wrong? If that turns out to be the case then all you will have succeeded in doing is tarnishing both your reputation and that of Dr. Briffa.
The fact that it is improper to discuss this issue in the public forum (before the data have even been analyzed in full) under the guise of a âprofessional auditâ seems to elude you. So let me make an analogy. You are, of course, very familiar with the NAS reports concerning the Mann et al. reconstruction/s. Did the NAS panels release data analyses or their musings piece meal? Did they make inflammatory accusations before the reports were completed? No. Did they make references to scientists using certain tree chronologies being addicted to crack cocaine, or to Mann et al. having âgroupiesâ? No. Did they engage in public mud slinging? No. Did they have one and all (qualified or not) question and nit pick the data in the public forum and for people to draw incorrect conclusions? No. Now why is that Mr. McIntyre? I’ll tell you why, because those were professional audits/reviews conducting by expert panels. And at the end of the day they were transparent and you respected the findings of both reports did you not?
So instead of basking in the glory of being the ring-leader in this public circus, why don’t you shut down the Briffa thread? Then keep working on the data analysis, and once the analysis is complete, write it up and submit it to a journal for peer-review. [You, Mr. McIntyre, and Dr. Briffa can converse in private (you could even insist on having an independent third party privy to all communications between the two of you) if you both choose]. Either that, or get NAS to convene another expert panel to deal with your allegations against Dr. Briffa.
McIntyre don’t try and deny that defamatory statements and unsubstantiated accusations have not been made against Dr. Briffa on CA threads or that similar allegations in the media and blogs have not been sourced from information posted at CA. You might say nice things about your objectives and stance on certain matters etc. on your âFAQ 2005â link, but your cohort’s actions (i.e., McKitrick) and rhetoric of those who post here have not been entirely consistent with those statements (for example, that you have made no claims that your work disproves global warming).
It does not help your credibility when have still refused to distance yourself from McKitrick’s missive in the FP. Or, that you have not clarified what your involvement was (if any) in the drafting of that missive; McKitrick appears to have displayed data sourced here at CA. Can you confirm or deny that? Anyhow, until you address those concerns or at the very least show us all that you have complained to the FP about the grossly misleading and inflammatory (defamatory?) statement âOnly by playing with data can scientists come up with the infamous âhockey stick’ graph of global warmingâ, then one can only conclude that you agree with your cohort’s (i.e., McKitrick’s) statements and those of the FP related to the McKitrick missive. McKitrick has been loathe to distance himself from the aforementioned statement (i.e., âOnly by playingâŚ..). The inaction by you and McKitrick concerning this statement casts suspicions as to your true motives here at CA.
The message out there in the mass media (and contrarian blogs) is that the jury is in, the HS has been broken (again) and the whole theory of AGW should be called into question because climate scientists (all of them apparently) have been playing with (all) the data. So why move on addressing AGW? However, the radiative forcing of GHGs on global SATs is independent of Yamal tree-ring chronologies. And that is what the majority of respected climate scientists and world leaders are concerned withâthe radiative forcing of GHGs and the implications of positive feedback loops on the planet’s future climate. Your actions (or rather lack thereof when it comes to McKitrick), are making it increasingly difficult for others to believe that you honestly consider AGW be a legitimate threat to the world that your grandchildren (and their children) will inherit. I urge you to take a more constructive and positive role/lead.
Re: Lorax (#651),
Too much ranting. Using you analogy of checking for details, that would mean that Briffa and the team should not have published anything. It would also mean that ey have not archived enough information. So take your complaints to the Hookey Team. If you would care to read earlier posts on this blog you will find that only a few trees or proxies will cause a hockey stick, so jump off the wagon and quit whining about Mckitrick’s statement. Now go to your own thread that Steve set up and debate some science instead of whining.
Ahh, now I finally understand what a “missive” is.
JamesG “There is no scientific or computational justification for it and no other scientific field does it.”
Really? How about you debate Kaufmann, Hamill, Whitaker, Kalman and other world leaders in that field as to the validity of ensemble techniques. No one ever said ensembles were perfect, but ECMWF (and others) have demonstrated ensemble forecasts to be superior to deterministic forecast. And you’d be interested to know that scientists also use ensemble techniques to modelling the movement of moisture through soil, and in air tracer experiments (pollution plumes, volcanic ash).
Re: Lorax (#654),
I have been rather puzzled by this Lorax character but now that he ventured in the scientific domain there is a certitude that he has not a clue .
This :
No one ever said ensembles were perfect, but ECMWF (and others) have demonstrated ensemble forecasts to be superior to deterministic forecast. And you’d be interested to know that scientists also use ensemble techniques to modelling the movement of moisture through soil, and in air tracer experiments (pollution plumes, volcanic ash).
is not even wrong .
.
The stochastical treatments of plume chaotic dynamics critically depend on ergodicity . Now it has been know for a very long time that these flows are generally NOT ergodic . Let’s quote G.Sposito :
.
.
Now this has absolutely nothing to do with what is done in numerical GCMs where the term “ensemble mean” is completely perverted what this Lorax can’t even begin to understand .
Clearly ensemble averaging only applies to different realisations of the SAME dynamical system with known and correct physics . And the ergodicity would have to be demonstrated FIRST anyway what didn’t happen and won’t happen .
We meet G.Browning when the correctness is considered because of the exponential divergence which shows that the models have not correct physics inside .
Averaging different realisations of different MODELS which use per definition different physics (if only different subgrid parametrisations or different randomness assumptions – you know the ominous “weather = noise” statements) is nonsense with no sound basis in non linear dynamics .
Most people using just the common sense have already written here that it would be remarkable if “averaging 2 wrong solutions could give a right one” .
Indeed it would be remarkable to say the least .
.
So Bender I think that you can safely ignore this guy who has nothing to say to actual science . It is probably just an RC mole who has been sent here to try to disrupt the discussions abusing the liberal stance of S.McI as far as moderation is concerned .
Of course I am not telling that S.McI should imitate RC because RC is just a (bad) joke where no real discussion is ever allowed .
Re: Lorax (#654),
I’m presuming these scientists you mention all know already that there is no scientific or computational justification for ensembles. No debate is possible if there is no foundation for the assumption. The reason they all come out with the same hind-cast is quite simply because they knew the desired result beforehand. Nothing magical about it. And in case that wasn’t obvious you could have deduced this from the divergence of the projections.
I am interested to know that they use this for water permeation through soils since there is a well-validated and very accurate finite element method for doing that very thing. That is what civil engineers use when building dams. As for modeling of plumes, there are many accurate computational methods for that too, mostly solving the Navier-Stokes equations. Hence if they are using ensemble models in these fields then there is no actual need to.
My cynical view is that the only justification for ensemble modeling is that it maximizes the number of modelers receiving government grants. You never see this in commercial software where you are supposed to validate individual codes on the basis of percentage error. On that basis all GCM’s fail. An ensemble mean is therefore merely a combination of individual failures.
Mock all you want Michael SMith– comments like that don’t help your credibility one iota. How about you actually apply your critical thinking skills to McIntyre’s and McKitrick’s missive in the FP?
Re: Lorax (#654),
I didn’t know you were concerned about credibility. How wonderfully ironic. Be a dear, and analyze Kaufman’s most recent paper for us?
Don’t Larch trees create their own mini-environment by annual shedding of needles? I assume after a few decades a substantial insulating mat would be covering the ground. It seems this would aid in both ground water retention and insulate the ground from freezing for possibly an extra couple weeks during the year.
Since the growing season is so short around Yamal, could the extra insulation be a factor in the older trees having wider widths as they age?
Re: Bob Koss (#656),
A buildup of cones, too, could act in the manner of “black carbon” causing earlier melt (amplifying a warming microclimate). Who knows? Perhaps Jim Bouldin can weigh in on any studies that have been done to address mechanisms of divergence and age-related biases?
Re: bender (#660),
Judging what Bouldin has posted elsewhere on this subject he’s unlikely to post here so you’ll have to go elsewhere to get his advice.
Just a geochemist: “Hysterical rant”.
“Hysterical”, that is priceless! Is that not a term that male chauvinists often use to try and discredit and belittle women? LOL. Contrary to what you believe, the posts here and elsewhere clearly suggest that there is very little debate and critique going on here at CA (it seems more like group think central)– especially when it comes to questioning Mr. McIntyre and McKitrick. So far the only other dissenting voices that I have come across are Phil and Tom P, and CA is doing a fine (albeit it juvenile) character assassination of Tom P. They have also had a bash at Phil and me too of course. There have also been reference made to people coming to CA and bloodying their noses (that post was apparently removed b/c I can no longer find it). Anyhow, I would argue that it is more a case of those who challenge the group think here being given bloody noses.
Justageochem, you are being incredibly naive, if you think McIntyre’s and McKitrick’s agenda is all abut “honesty” and “integrity” and “transparency”, and warm fuzzy, feel-good words like that. Please do also apply your critical thinking skills to McIntyre’s work, but the relevance/importance of his work in the bigger picture.
Justageochem “I guess we should just make blogs illegal and repeal the first ammendment.”
Stop making ad absurdum arguments and distorting, never said or suggested that. R e a d my “hysterical” missive again.
justageochm “As for misleading headlines, etc. do you really think people that actually care are so stupid as to make up their minds in this manner?”
Well why did McKitrick bother writing it in the first place then? While McKitrick’s antics are irrelevant to AGW policy in the USA (well, maybe not, people “town hall meeting” often use those headlines in their arguments) and elsewhere in the world, he does have some influence in Canadian politics, and what Canada plans to do about AGW. McKitrick’s missive certainly does not motivate Mr. Harper (Canada’s PM) to take meaningful action on this file.
While you are quick to characterize me being as “hysterical”, I caution you that some on the net have accused McKitrick of making a hysterical rant about how we are all being led down the garden path about AGW, and how climate science is corrupt and broken.
Have a nice calm and sane evening.
>To place the YAD06 tree’s influence in the appropriate context, or the Yamal chronologies for that matter, you would have to first quantify its/their impact (if any) on the full global SAT reconstruction.
What is SAT?
If you would rad and understand the threads, you would see that Steve has quantified the impact of Yamal, and the single tree. Sometimes Steve doesn’t write clearly, and people don’t know which thread to follow, but I would point you to the thread labeled
The Impact of Yamal on the Spaghetti Graph
Bender, be a dear and stop trying to make strawman arguments and introducing red herrings. You are trying very hard to deflect and that is telling. Just to humour you, I have never vouched for the Kaufman et al. paper. Have not even talked about it in fact.
Re: Lorax (#659),
What argument am I making? I thought I was asking for your POV on a science paper. Never mind …
Time to ping this thread?
From the Weather UnderGround
Tropical Storm GRACE Public Advisory 3
Don’t ask him questions that I can answer. Ask him questions only he can answer.
He’ll spend all day answering the easy ones, dodging the very few good ones. Show some restraint.
Ok bender, anyone is allowed to answer. (As if I could stop you.)
Jason, that is very helpful for a newbie like me. However, how about thesub-fossil and alluvial deposit trees? How can anyone know if these were near a temperature-driven line, even if they were the ones collecting the cores?
Thanks! Cheers.
Re: player (#184),
As with most of the Dendro assumptions, nobody can really know if these trees were at the tree line when they were alive.
Assumptions can be made from the absolute and relative locations of the trees, and from the data collected.
Obviously the quality of the end result depends on the accuracy of the assumptions. Every scientific field has to make due with the data available.
—
I like to watch PBS specials about archaeology. Featured archaeologists often make detailed reconstructions of the past based on breathtakingly little information. To some degree they are using knowledge gleaned by many thousands of researchers over the past century of archaeological research, and applying that knowledge to their own specific sites.
But to some degree they are constrained by the need to have SOME working hypothesis.
If, for each question of fact, a researcher were to say: “Well, it could be a house of worship, or it could be a wealthy person’s home, or it could be something completely different” it wouldn’t be possible for that researcher to effectively function, let alone publish, receive grant money, or appear on PBS.
So archaeologists use all of the information available to them to create working hypotheses, and they talk about these hypotheses almost as fact, because the factual record is limited, and the available facts require numerous assumptions before they can be converted into high level conclusions.
Unsurprisingly, it is quite common for the conclusions drawn by one generation of archaeologists to be overturned by the next.
What makes this situation a bit more interesting, is that Briffa’s 2000 reconstruction resulted not from work that he personally performed, but from data acquired by his Russian collaborators. Briffa drew his conclusions not from data into which he had first hand insight, but from data collected and described by somebody else.
To the extent that dendrochronological assumptions, like archaeological assumptions, depend on using decades of hard won knowledge to interpret details about a site (in this case how to identify and calibrate treemometers), Briffa was not in a good position to make these assumptions.
Re: Jason (#186),
Thanks, Jason.
So, regardless of what the modern 20’th century trees exhibit, is it fair to say that the last millennium of temperature reconstruction cannot be derived accurately from tree ring data alone due to the lack of knowledge about the location of the tree line for the fossil and alluvial tree data?
Even if one granted that Briffa correctly picked the modern tree cores and the hockey blade is correct, the flat handle is something I find hard to trust, especially as both temperature and CO2 (not to mention precipitation) can affect that considerably. Is that a sensible way to think of this reconstruction technique? I can see how a multi-proxy study might be able to resolve uncertainty… but not with the Yamal data alone.
Thanks, Cheers.
Re: player (#187),
I think its fair to say that dendro reconstructions (whether or not using dead trees) bear a very heavy (and as yet unsatisfied) burden to prove that they are temperature proxies.
In my mind, the key to proving this, would be repeated large scale replicability. Different researchers should be able to sample the same site, retrieving large numbers of cores, and repeatedly get the same result.
The point of Steve’s original article (and many past articles here), is that such replicability has not even remotely been achieved. Proxies from the same location routinely show contradictory results.
So I don’t think that it is impossible to meet this burden. But it has plainly not been met.
Hmmm….
Gavin recently wrote about an anonymous tipster, who turned out to be none other than Gavin himself. Now we have Gavin quoting the anonymous Tom P. Do you suppose….
WELL: I AM GENERALLY A SUPPORTER OF CA, BUT I MADE A VERY INNOCUOUS STATEMENT THIS PM, AND IT WAS DELETED. WTF? ARE YOU ADOPTING RC METHODOLOGY? EXPLANATION, PLEASE!
[mod: Hi jae. I doubt it was purposefully deleted. Heavy load has made mgmt a bear in recent days. Please bear w/ us!]
I understand there are 30 sites that more or less show the hockey stick. However http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php seems to show even more sites that do not generally agree, and they cover a larger range of areas and types of data. There is also a recent analysis of the data supporting the lack of warmer period about 1000 years ago, and the depth of the little ice age, that shows the data is inconsistent internally. I did not put that site here but would be glad if anyone is interested.
RCS standardization? Missing metadata? Selection criteria? Efficacy of Dendroclimatology? The discussions make for interesting reading, but I feel it may be muddying the waters with regard to the number one problem with the Yamal reconstruction, which is sample size. With only 10 cores after 1990 and 5 cores after 1995, the Yamal study cannot be called science.
Re: Konrad (#203),
Can’t be called science? It’s a small sample, yes. It APPEARS to be a non-representative sample, yes. There may have been some biases introduced by undisclosed sub-sampling, yes. But as long as you know where the study plots are located, then the study is replicable and it IS science. Nasty as it is to hide the metadata.
I#m not suggesting any malfeasance of malpractice by the climate science community, they don’t seem to have a disciplined approach to the process of producing scientific papers, probably due to the fact that until around 1998 their work was carried out without much public, or political interest. Once they foretold the end of the world then there were bound to be people who would challenge their output. In this particular case if it was an engineering project and Steve McIntyre managed to get the data and prove it was interpretable in different ways there would be an audit trail for the engineers to follow. In the case of Briffa and co. the audit trail should lead to the notes of the peer review, and should show that he was challenged on the number of trees not being a significant statistical sample and answered that to the satisfaction of the reviewers, who, understanding where he was coming from and agreeing with the science put on record their agreement with the outcome of the paper. This could then be produced to refute any suggestions that the work was in anyway anything but openly scientific. So it should be simple for Briffa et al.
I have a 100% record of being moderated out of RC, and this was one of the questions I posed to Gavin yesterday. I had on censored which stated that Steve McI had not said that Briffa had done anything wrong and that if there was an error on Briffa’s part this in no way refuted the AGW case. What am I doing wrong?
Isn’t it “decentered” PCA which was the team invention (ie they moved the center), and “non-centered” PCA (ie there is no center chosen) is the one which Joliffe said may have certain uses under certain circumstances ?
Remember, when Schmidt debated AGW against Chrichton, he lost.
The interesting question will be to find out how many other tools used to support AGW are similarly dubious in data, methodology, integrity or all of the above.
Loraz at 652:
[You, Mr. McIntyre, and Dr. Briffa can converse in private (you could even insist on having an independent third party privy to all communications between the two of you) if you both choose]
That would have been a beautiful choice to have made about 8 years ago. I am a professional auditor also and I have been sandbagged before, the firm I worked for has been sandbagged a lot of times. Never has there been a legitimate issue other than delay and further delay an excuse for sandbagging. Its all about buying time so somebody can keep doing what they are doing.
Fortunate for our financial system sandbagging is not condoned for the most part, audit reports have to be filed and they generally don’t get filed until the sandbagging operation is over.
Now that alarmist reports have been used to corner research dollars; your reply is to have somebody else fix the problem. It stinks!
Bender, not sure what you are asking me about.
Bender, by flat, I mean little trend. Lucy has a chart here.
http://www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/Science/Scientific/Arctic-Yamal.htm
The mean from 1980-1995 is 0.57
The mean from 1925-1950 is 0.53
I haven’t matched up every station yet, but here is the list published with Briffa’s data.
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/melvin/PhilTrans2008/Climate-related-charac/
I don’t see Salehard in there.
Continuing the occasional commentary on RC.
I used to think that RC stood for Roman Catholic.
Then I discovered climate science and discovered it stood for RealClimate (a week before I discovered what CA stood for).
Now I know that it stands for Real Censorship đ
Rich.
From the paper, it looks like they may be using Hoseda. They are claiming a correlation of .56, and they use June and July temperatures, or perhaps late May, June, and early July.
Perhaps I am misreading this, but they have April temperatures are negatively correlated, and warmer springs means less tree growth. Doesn’t that invalidate the whole proxy?
Re: MikeN (#702),
For a multiple regression/correlation analysis the marginal effect of factor A can only be understood in terms of the joint effects of factors B, C, etc. So be careful here. I can’t track your work, so apologies if my comment is irrelevant.
>You can’t ask Eli a question like that – the standard response is “I’m not going to do your homework for you”.
Well I’m asking on his site, but he doesn’t even read his own comments. He posted an update by dhogaza that Briffa mentioned the Russians to Steve in an e-mail, without noticing that I posted it in his comments, even though dhog said it.
So circularity of arguments happens even in the comments about climate science.
A new unthreaded would probably cut server load by a third.
Probably. It’s on figure 6 of http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/363/1501/2269.full
April is -.25, and November is -.32
Maybe they are meaningless, but it could mean that a tree-ring growth in the past is a combination of high tree growth from a warm summer and negative growth from a warm April.
Re: MikeN (#705),
To be clear: when the effects of other months are included in the analysis, the causal, independent effects of April and November, are not equivalent to the apparent, marginal effects of April and November. The apparent effects of those months are mitigated by the apparent effects of the intervening months.
Apparently Antarctica just had it’s lowest level of summer snowmelt in nearly thirty years at least:
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2009/10/06/antarctic-ice-melt-at-lowest-levels-in-satellite-era/
Not much melting at all down in Antarctica last summer:
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2009/10/06/antarctic-ice-melt-at-lowest-levels-in-satellite-era/
October’s Physics World has a strong Copenhagen flavour, with articles on models, and publicity
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/indepth/40528
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/indepth/40526
I have already written to criticize the non-scientific nature of the ‘debate’
In Ryan’s Scraping the bottom thread, Bender pointed me to the most recent paper from the Swanson and Tsonis team about coupling of ocean eigenthingies. I believe he was referring to:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2008GL036874.shtml
Unfortunately, there is apparently no PDF of this available anywhere, and I don’t have a JGR subscription. But the abstract certainly is interesting!
Re: Andrew (#708),
That’s what I’m talking about. And I can’t get it either.
Re: bender (#709), Although, along that same line:
Re: TomVonk (#721), I actually have read some of Tsonis’ papers before, but I’m intrigued by the most recent one. They are all fascinating indeed.
Re: Andrew (#722),
Was there ever a doubt I was right? đ
Re: Andrew (#708),
I have recommended reading Tsonis already some 2 years ago on this blog .
The problem is that 99% of the climate “scientists” are stuck with the physics of the 19th century .
It is all about equilibriums , small deviations from equilibriums and perturbative treatments .
Yet it is well known since about 30 years that these physics hopelessly fail when dealing with complex non linear systems .
So when Dan Hughes told me that Schmidt has posted that his models exhibited chaotic behaviour I was quite excited .
And as this statement stands in contradiction with the statement that “models exhibit deterministic trends at specific time scales” I tried to post some comments and clarifications on RC . As none of my comments passed censorship over there , I stopped going to RC .
.
What Tsonis is basically doing is to say that the climate is a chaotic system with great internal variability , much greater than what the climate “models” show . The chaotic behaviour is created by non linear coupling between 6 subsystems .
From that follows that there will be shifts and discontinuities . Therefore any apparent “trend” at an arbitrary scale like 20 or 30 years would be meaningless and could be broken by an infinitely small variation in one of the parameters like f.ex the coupling strength between the subsystems .
Even if I have some criticism to this approach especially to the introduction of stochastical components because chaotic systems are not random , Tsonis approaches climate with a very different and in my opinion right paradigm .
The day when you will read the words “ergodicity” and “climate” in the same phrase , you should all take note of the name because this person will inaugurate a new era in climate science .
.
The seminal 2007 Tsonis paper is here : http://www.uwm.edu/~aatsonis/2007GL030288.pdf
And another , more qualitative draft is here :
link
Steve,
What happened to Lorax’s thread? If you decided to delete it, a comment as to your reasoning might be appropriate?
Jerry
Re: Gerald Browning (#710),
It had to go, Jerry. Someone identified the fellow (I won’t even use his pseudonym) using details he’d supplied about himself and they sent him a threatening email. The fellow was palpably upset and Steve M graciously complied with a solution of the fellow’s choosing. Many commenters expressed their concern over the incident. I won’t say any more other than I’d be mighty surprised if it was any commenter here who would do such a nasty thing.
Re: bender (#711),
Which is why despite Anthony’s abuse I will not use my name when posting.
Re: Phil. (#714),
Can’t say I blame you.
.
P.S. I found a place at RC for Jerry to post and the thread was closed to comments. Which they do a lot when they want to discourage follow-up.
Re: bender (#711),
Re: Phil. (#714),
very sad to see it end this way for the poster concerned & can see your point Phil (what a sad world).
i think i caught the end before it was removed & found the snipet of the email sent very distressing, so i can imagine his/her feelings.
Steve Mosher made a few comments towards the end that i found interesting, but in light of above may be irrelevant.
Re: bender (#711),
“I’d be mighty surprised if it was any commenter here who would do such a nasty thing.”
I missed the end of that affair, although I half suspect we have not heard the end of it. Was anyone able to confirm that there was in fact such an e-mail? This whole AGW thing is becoming far too jihadist and there is nothing that would surprise me. Hope he sends the damn thing to the authorities and they take it seriously.
bender (#711),
Understood. Verbal exchanges are one thing, but unjustified threats are another.
Jerry
bender (#711).
FWIW I see that lorax made a few of his own threats
Not nice behavior on his part or on the person who threatened lorax.
Jerry
Gosh, would you believe that when it is dry, it isn’t wet, and vice versa?
From:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2009/aug/uspctarea-wetdry-svr.txt
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2009/aug/uspctarea-wetdry-mod.txt
Re: Andrew (#717),
yes, that’s jaw-dropping. Reminds me of that 1.00 R-squared between poverty and money I saw in the Journal of Irreproducible Results.
Three large earthquakes have occured around Vanuata this morning. (7.8, 7.3 and 7.1) Here on the West coast of New Zealand we are under tsunami warnings and alerts. Up on Mount Ruapaha, which I can see from the house, they are rehearsing evacuation from a Laha. I live about 5k from Mount Taranaki. In the council offices of our local authority they are having a presentation by one of Al Gore’s deciples. You got to laugh at these people, and boy have I laughed. Sent an email to the council to get out of their offices as a tsunami was coming!!! Global warming is the least of our worries.
Nick Stokes,
I must admit that a year or two ago I really did enjoy your posts. Maybe I am just getting too old for it all now. My enthusiasm for your efforts has waned somewhat.
Maybe just a little. đ
Re: Andrew (#724),
Hey, a little healthy skepticism never hurt anybody.
Phil.: I believe that statement is in comment 250 in the first “Yamal: A Divergence Problem” here: http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7168#more-7168
Re: Michael Smith (#321),
Thanks I knew I’d read it somewhere and couldn’t find it.
Re: Phil. (#324),
Why didn’t you just ask? It appears like you were willing to assume that Steve had removed it. Were you?
Re: endles quibbking bout who said waht to whom
Reading these exhanges I am reminds of Einstein’s aphorism about “The war of the frogs and the mice”. There is one difference in that teh dispute Einstein was referring to had at least some importance.
Phil seems to be joining those who invent false accusations against Steve in order to distract the thread.
The topic is “Gavin’s guru”.
Good Lord, what a mess.
Everybody agrees that Cherry Picking is a form of scientific misconduct.
Everybody agrees that accusing someone of Cherry Picking is a serious charge.
Everybody agrees that falsly accusing someone of Cherry Picking is bad.
The problem, in this context, is that there is a very serious disagreement between (for lack of better terms) “the dendros” and “the statisticians” over what constitutes “Cherry Picking”.
Let me submit that are two types of “cherry picking”, insidious and innocent. In the first, the motive of the picker is to bias the results, in the second, the picker biases the results without realizing it.
Whatever picking has gone on by Briffa, the Russians, or anyone else for that matter, is most likely of the innocent variety. It still produces biased results, but that was not the intent.
As Steve stated in one of his early comments on Yamal, this point is obvious to statisticians and econometricians, but it seems completely lost on most dendros and climatologists, even ones who have prove quite adept at mathematics.
Bender can you give me the RCS chronology numbers for Yamal and Yamal + Khadtya/Schweingruber?
Re: MikeN (#726),
I can’t give you anything that isn’t already in Steve’s code.
I don’t see it. I don’t have R setup, and am looking for the equivalent numers to the Schweingruber data you posted.
A mid 20th-century qualitative change in tree growth form
This is an example of what you get when you do not cherry pick “positive responders”:
3 camps: (+), (0), (-) all in one population.
YMMV
Re: bender (#730), It would be good to hear a knowledgeable view on that paper and its relevance to temp. reconstructions.
Has everyone seen Kim and Bender and Raven on the Cruel Mistress blog? Great fun!
Here’s the latest thread:
re : Tom P (#353),
The only problem is that you don’t seem to understand enough math to know what the real problem is. You ignore all of the evidence on the shortcomings of the selected living proxies and the magnification that RCS imposes upon them. You are still fixated on an irrelevant issue as if everything in the entire chronology rides or falls on it. Greater than 75 vs. less than 75. You have got to be kidding.
Do you know how RCS works? Do you know what changes in the calculations when you remove proxies? Your original issue was that short term proxies were “noise” and as you removed them the “signal” shone through. When it was clear that you made that up, it changed to something else. According to what you wrote on RC, Steve was backpedalling and would soon hasve to admit the error of his ways. drweaming in Technicolor!
Figure out that the observed temperatures don’t match the Briffa chronology – there’s no hockey stick in them.
Give us all a break. Find some new issue to harp on – this horse is no longer moving…
Ben asked what’s the difference between a religion and a belief system. What the hell do I know wabout that stuff? But Ben seems like an interesting guy. Why don’t you mosey over and give your reply?
snip – enough food fighting
Anthony Watts (comment #93) noted that Tom P has a history of commenting on Anthony’s blog, WUWT. According to Anthony, Tom P’s first attempt at formulating an argument occurred when Tom P described “positive feedback” using an example of milk heating in a saucepan [see http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/15/rommula-sudden-acceleration/%5D. In a WUWT comment time-tagged 17:08:00, 4 April, 2009, Tom P provides a Feedback Diagram for his heating-milk-in-a-saucepan example [see http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/3089/milkfeedback%5D. I know this (my) response is off topic relative to Steve McIntyre’s 4 October 2009 blog entry entitled: Gavin’s Guru and RCS Standardization, but I have given some thought to Tom P’s heating-milk-in-a-saucepan Feedback Diagram and I couldn’t resist commenting.
Tom P’s Feedback Diagram shows heat (labeled Reduced heat loss) from the element of the Feedback Diagram labeled Insulation being summed with the Heat In, and the sum heat passed into the element of the Feedback Diagram labeled Milk. Heat from the Milk is then passed to the Bubbles that form on the surface of the Milk. [Here I make the assumption that these Bubbles constitute the Insulation element in Tom P’s Feedback Diagram.] In my opinion, such a feedback can only exist if the Reduced heat loss is zero–which implies there is no feedback.
First, “heat” flows between two objects only when the objects are at different temperatures; and the “heat” always flows from the object at the higher temperature to the object at the lower temperature. In Tom P’s Feedback Diagram, the Heat In will flow into the Milk provided the temperature of the “heating element” (not shown in Tom P’s Feedback Diagram but assumed to be the source of the Heat In) is higher than the temperature of the Milk–a condition which is easy to achieve. All “heat” entering the Milk (both the Heat In and the Reduced heat loss) acts first to raise the temperature of the Milk to the Milk’s boiling point at which time the heat ceases to raise the Milk’s temperature and instead acts to change the state of the Milk from a liquid to a gas (Bubbles). The temperature of the Bubbles (gaseous form of milk) is at or slightly below the boiling temperature of the Milk–that is, for boiling milk with no outside heat transfer into the gaseous form of the milk, the temperature of the liquid form of milk is at or above the temperature of the gaseous form of milk. Because heat won’t flow from an object at a lower temperature into an object at a higher temperature, no “heat” will flow from the Bubbles to the Milk. [Note: If the Bubbles are heated to a temperature higher than the Milk, then “heat” can flow from the Bubbles to the Milk. Such will be the case if a portion of the heat from the “heating element” (which is hotter than both the Milk and the Bubbles) is directly transferred to the Bubbles; but Tom P’s Feedback Diagram does not include this “heat flow” path. In Tom P’s Feedback Diagram, the only heat entering the Bubbles is from the Milk.] Thus, as long as Milk exists, the temperature of the Bubbles is at or below the temperature of the Milk. Such a condition precludes the flow of “heat” from the Bubbles back into the Milk. This means the heat labeled Reduced heat loss in Tom P’s Feedback Diagram must be zero–which implies there is no feedback.
Second, suppose (a) the initial temperature of the Milk is “just below” the boiling point of milk such that any heat added to the Milk won’t raise the Milk’s temperature, but rather boils the Milk–i.e., changes the Milk from a liquid to a gas (Bubbles), (b) the Heat In is finite and is input over a finite time interval, and (c) the total amount of Heat In is sufficient to boil exactly 1/2 of the Milk. Given these conditions, the Heat In can at most (and will) result in exactly 1/2 of the Milk being converted to a gas (Bubbles). According to Tom P’s Feedback Diagram, however, as the Milk boils, the Bubbles will return a portion of the heat used to “make the Bubbles” back into the Milk. As long as this returned heat (labeled Reduced heat loss in Tom P’s Feedback Diagram) is greater than zero, it will result in additional Milk being converted from a liquid to a gas. This means that if Tom P’s Feedback Diagram is correct and the “feedback heat” is not zero, an amount of externally supplied heat sufficient to boil at most 1/2 of the Milk will result in the boiling of more than 1/2 of Milk. This is a violation of the conservation of energy; and as such invalidates Tom P’s Feedback Diagram for all but zero heat in the feedback path. Zero heat in the feedback path means there is no feedback.
Now, where’s that thread called “Real Climate Cant”, in which to include the following quotes from the estimable Rasmus Benestad:
and the rather unclear post script:
Does Benestad mean to imply that no one from the climate science community undertsands these papers. Surely not.
(See http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/10/why-the-continued-interest/.)
Snip if necessary, but here’s another example of the chaff from the other side.
The DO message is pretty simple: he is accusing Steve of artificially creating a hockey stick just to stir up controversy. But in fact it is Briffa’s stick and Steve merely recreated it, matching what the Briffa RCS that Steve showed in 2006 (and explained how it differed from Esper and Briffa’s own mean ring width).
AOLBGCM validation is an ongoing process.
Can’t ever do too much of it.
Re: Dan Hughes (#773),
If I were Eli Rabett I would start referring myself in the third person and chattering about the “giggles” I’m getting out of this. He even cites Kiehl et al. (2007) – one of my favorites. Let’s see Gavin wiggle out of this one.
Re: Dan Hughes (#773),
Slide 26 echoes Gerald Browning’s assessment of fundamental flaws in the parameterizations. I suspect the rain problem is directly related to the unphysical way that models deal with lapse rate instability, convective adjustment.
Removing aerosol indirect forcing (slide 12) would lower the calculated climate sensitivity by about 30%. But for the modelers, it’s not that simple. Removing AIF would also make their hindcasts fail to match observation.
Re: DeWitt Payne (#777),
Which you would expect if the models were over-tuned to fit the past – something that (a) Gavin Schmidt denies is done (despite my pointing to Kiehl et al. (2007), (b) would be plausible under Swanson & Tsonis’s LTP/instability hypothesis – which Gavin was also in denial of in 2007.
May I make the modest suggestion that from now on unthreaded posts be given titles with the form “Unthreaded “? The current title form is not very helpful in terms of remembering where you saw something and the proposed form follows the brilliantly successful “Sea Ice” thread group.
Arg, I used angle brackets in my last post. Using square brackets the form would be:
“Unthreaded [month-year]”
Someone asked about experimental approaches to proving that warming increases radial growth:
This is not a calibration and it does not consider moisture limitiaton. It is to my knowledge the very best proof there is that treeline trees really could function as treemometers.
Re: bender (#778),
The abstract reads plausibly, but the target is to estimate temperature change for the whole of the world. Not much permafrost in the tropics. No trees in the Antarctic.
There seems a need for more early-work type experimentation before we get to the finesse shown in the abstract. e.g. About 1800 Napoleon ordered many oak trees to be planted in a forest near Paris, for the masts of future ships. We now have a stand of similar trees with a 200 year history including climate records. (Some are auctioned annually for making wine barrels). I have not heard of a dendro study of this fairly well controlled set for both between-tree agreement and extrinsic relation to climate. Do you know of many fairly tightly controlled studies of tree rings related to climate?
Dear Steve,
I know you are interested in the analysis of results, and I am writing to ask your view.
I have some difficulty in accepting that the data from the ESRL global CO2 measurement programme (Mauna Loa etc) reflects changes in the actual quantity of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere.
As I understand it, the ERSL measurement is a relative one, i.e. of the ratio of CO2 in an airflow, which is shown to be increasing steadily. This is taken by others to mean that the absolute quantity of atmospheric CO2 is increasing.
I should like to propose an alternative interpretation; that the data is reflecting rather an absolute decrease in atmospheric O2.
The burning of carbon in the atmosphere produces CO2 which Henry’s law predicts will be almost completely absorbed by the oceans, as it is very soluble. However, only a tiny proportion of the lost atmospheric O2 will be replaced via ocean outgassing, as it is much less soluble than CO2. So, when carbon is converted to CO2, the net effect is a loss of atmospheric O2 almost on a molecular one-for-one basis.
It follows that by measuring and reporting increased atmospheric CO2 in units of parts-per-million-by-volume, the absolute amount of CO2 in the atmosphere may not be rising at all, but that it is only the proportion that is rising.
I appreciate that my view may be entirely and completely erroneous and stemming from ignorance, so I would very much appreciate a response, in order to correct my thinking.
If however there is substance in my observation, then the consequences would be far-reaching.
Yours
Tony
Re: Tony (#780),
What you’re suggesting would imply a very steep drop in the oxygen content of the atmosphere over the last 50 years, from the nominal 20% to about 16-17%, wouldn’t it? That would have far-reaching consequences indeed.
Re: Morgan (#781), Because O2 is so much more abundant, a very small drop in O2 would give the increase in CO2 described by Tony. Wouldn’t that be a kick in the pants if you were right?
Re: Morgan (#781),
Morgan,
The way I see it, reporting in parts-per-million makes it a counting problem.
It seems that the Mauna Loa system is based on a precise mass-flow over a precise period to get an exact mass … (equivalent to the ‘million’), and a measurement of the CO2 content via IR absorption of the airstream over the period ..( equivalent to the ‘parts per’) So if there is more C02 counted in the sample there must be exactly less of the othergas, in order to preserve the mass of the whole sample.
If the measurement was the other way round as ‘othergas’ reported at 999680 ppm, with a second sample dropping to 999620 ppm, would we have a problem in accepting that CO2 had gone up from 320 ppm to 380 ppm?
….. even though there was no actual increase in CO2 in the atmosphere?
Re: Tony (#787),
Tony, an extended comment of mine is awaiting moderation, I hope this one is coming through…
The measurements at MLO (and a lot of other stations) are in ppmv (parts per million by volume). That means that the mass flow doesn’t need to be known, as they measure a ratio of volumes (but they measure the flow to be certain that enough air passes). As all (ideal) gases have the same volume for the same molar mass (even CO2 in this case, at this small content), the mass ratio is known too.
See also for a detailed explanation of the methods used in many stations over the world:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/about/co2_measurements.html
Re: Tony (#786),
I’m still not following you. If there is less O2 as a proportion of the air, but the mass of the sample remains the same, wouldn’t that “O2 hole” in the sample be filled mostly by N2 and O2, and only 0.04% of it by CO2? Why would CO2-signatured IR absorption increase more than a tiny bit unless CO2 fills more than 0.04% of the “hole”?
Re: Tony (#780),
Re: Morgan (#781),
Re: Craig Loehle (#784),
Furthermore, what would be the theoretical impact, if any, on the water-vapor positive feedback model? And would Mother Nature compensate by simply reaching over and adjusting the high-gain tuning knob?
Re: Tony (#780),
Tony, there is little doubt that CO2 is really measured in quantity over the years. The measurement method (NDIR) measures the relative absorption of specific IR frequencies by CO2 in dried air (to prevent water vapor to interfer with the measurement). That is measured at 10 baseline stations and some 70+ other stations away from huge sources and sinks + regular airplane flights, ships, buoys, 400+ stations intended to measure CO2 fluxes in vegetation and industrial areas, balloon measurements and nowadays two satellites. In 95% of the atmosphere they find the same amount of CO2, increasing in the past 50 years in ratio with the emissions, only modulated by the seasonal exchanges of growing and decaying vegetation. You find very variable CO2 levels in the first few hundred meters over land near vegetation, cars, factories and house heating, but that is only 5% of the atmosphere and rapidely mixes with the bulk of the atmosphere. See e.g. the carbon tracker: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/iadv/
Henry’s law applies, but take into account that seawater is not fresh water. Seawater contains much more CO2 than fresh water at the same partial pressure of CO2, due to its calcium -bi- carbonate content. And the rate of transfer is quite slow, not instantaneous. That depends of wind speed (to mix the first millimeters in equilibrium with the atmosphere with the first hundred meters of the top oceans), temperature, pH, salt content, plant life,… See e.g. Feely e.a.: http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/feel2331/exchange.shtml
Oxygen measurements are done too, but that was only possible since begin 1990’s to measure the thiny change in oxygen level due to fossil fuel burning with sufficient accuracy (2 ppmv/year on 200,000 ppmv!). See e.g. http://www.bowdoin.edu/~mbattle/papers_posters_and_talks/BenderGBC2005.pdf
And if you want an overview , have a look at my page: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_measurements.html
Judging by their book “Climate of Extremes” Michaels and Balling apparently think that this paper is the key to understanding why the warming of the latter part of the twentieth century has more to do with AGW and the former warming natural (in their case, they say solar) warming. Anybody think they can make an argument against the idea that warming which is stronger in winter than summer-indeed specifically cold days versus warm-is an AGW effect?
I was keeping tabs and having a bit of a laugh at the stuff over on the Lorax thread. I notice this has gone.
Anyone know what happened to it?
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