HockeyStick, finally updated with modern trees, collapses

You’ll be shocked that after decades of studying 800 year old tree rings, someone has finally found some trees living as long ago as 2005. These rarest-of-rare tree rings have been difficult to find, compared to the rings circa Richard III. The US government may have spent $30 billion on climate research, but that apparently wasn’t enough to find trees on SheepMountain living between the vast treeless years of 1980 to now.

I’ve always thought it spoke volumes that many tree ring proxies ended in 1980, as if we’d cut down the last tree to launch the satellites in 1979. We all know that if modern tree rings showed that 1998 was warmer than 1278, the papers would have sprung forth from Nature, been copied in double page full-fear features in New Scientist, and would  feature in the IPCC logo too.

Ponder that the MBH98 study was so widely cited, repeated, and used ad nauseum. It was instrumental in shaping the views of many policy makers, journalists, and members of the public, most of whom probably still believe it. The real message here is about the slowness of the scientific community to correct the problems in this paper.

Steve McIntyre has been asking for an update since 2005. He has the details of the new paper by Salzer, and produces this devastating graph below. The black line is MBH98 – the Michael Mann curve of Hockeystick fantasy. The red line is HadCRU (the Hadley best guess of surface temperatures, from surface thermometers and computers). The droopy green line is the Graybill chronology to 1987, while the blue lines are the updates to the SheepMountain series of tree ring “temperatures”. Oops.

See Climate Audit for details and sources.

The  obvious message is that these particular proxies don’t work now and probably never did, and that this hockeystick shape  depends on not using tree rings after 1980.

More important than the details of one proxy, is the message that the modern bureaucratized monopolistic version of “science” doesn’t work. Real scientists, who were really interested in the climate, would have published updates years ago. (Indeed, would never have published the hockeystick graph in the first place. Its dysfunctional combination of temperatures and truncated proxies is mashed through a maths process so bad it produces a hockey stick most of the time even if the data is replaced by red noise.)

The screaming absence of this obvious update for so long is an example of what I call the “rachet effect” in science — where only the right experiments, or the right data, gets published. It’s not that there is a conspiracy, it’s just that no one is paid to find the holes in the theory and the awkward results sit buried at the bottom of a drawer for a decade.  The cortex soaked in confirmation-bias couldn’t figure out how to explain them.

See Climate Audit for McIntyre’s view on Salzer et al 2014.

The new results of Salzer et al 2014 (though not candid on the topic) fully demonstrate this point in respect to Sheep Mountain.  In the warm 1990s and 2000s, the proxy not only doesn’t respond linearly to higher temperatures, it actually goes the wrong way.   This will result in very negative RE values for MBH-style reconstructions from its AD1000 and AD1400  networks when brought up to date, further demonstrating these networks have no real “skill” out of sample.

We’ve also heard over and over about how “divergence” is limited to high-latitude tree ring series and about how the Mann reconstruction was supposedly immune from the problem.  However, these claims mostly relied on stripbark chronologies (such as Sheep Mountain) and the validity of such claims is very much in question.

As previously discussed on many occasions, stripbark chronologies have been used over and over in the canonical IPCC reconstructions, with the result that divergence problems at Sheep Mountain and other sites do not merely impact Mann et al 1998-99, but numerous other reconstructions.  Even the recent PAGES2K North America reconstruction uses non-updated Graybill stripbark chronologies.  It also ludicrously ends in 1974.  So rather than bringing the Mann et al network up-to-date, it is even less up-to-date.

Note that bristlecone pines were never supposed to be used as climate proxies anyway. They are a rather unusual species — their growth was thought to be CO2-limited rather than limited by temperature or moisture, so they responded well at first to the increase in CO2 in the 20th century, though obviously something else is going on after 1980. This graph and these results apply only to one situation — not all tree rings. But the  failure of review applies to the whole scientific community.

The IPCC adopted the hockeystick for their logo shortly after Mann produced it, but long since dropped it. Where was the all-marvelous, hallowed, IPCC “expert” review?

REFERENCES

Salzer et al 2014 ,  Changing climate response in near-treeline bristlecone pine with elevation and aspect,  Env Res Lett open access doi:10.1088/1748-9326/9/11/114007

 

h/t to Bishop Hill, GWPF

9.4 out of 10 based on 168 ratings

202 comments to HockeyStick, finally updated with modern trees, collapses

  • #
    blackadderthe4th

    ‘HockeyStick, finally updated with modern trees, collapses.’

    But you seem to have neglected the fact that the same results can be obtained from other sources, sediments, etc, not just tree rings! And they back up the hockey stick results. I suggest you do a little bit of research before you rejoyous for no good reason.

    The truth behind Mann’s hockey stick!

    ‘…but while the sceptics were busy attacking Mann, other researchers were doing there own science, hunting for more proxies and USING DIFFERENT METHODS to work out past temperatures…soon M Mann’s graph was joined by many others, all reconstructing the past 1000 years of temperature, the question was would they back up M Mann or prove him wrong? It might look confusing but this graph has a really clear message, the red line is M Mann original hockey stick graph, very flat and hardly any MWP…the other lines are the reconstructions done since, there is a big spread in other words scientists disagree about a lot of the temperature, that’s not really surprising, because working out the temperature for the last couple hundred years…but the crucial part…this is 1000AD…M Mann probably under estimated…what these lines all agree on…there is evidence nowhere in any period of past 1000 years that is as warm as the second part of the 20th century. In other words the end of the 20th is really unprecedented, once again the sceptical attacks has made this science stronger, we now have a whole hockey team of graphs, they make a very convincing case that global warming…really is unusual’ Dr Iain Stewart.

    Now watch for yourself:-

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9jtVZ3RUCU

    [If you had bothered to read, and tried to understand, what Jo has written in this post, and in some of Jo’s previous posts, you would know that the point you make has already been addressed. Mann used a statistical process that always produces a hockey stick curve. McIntyre and other researchers, using different data, but the same technique, have also produced hockey stick curves, which is no great surprise. The source of the data is not the problem. It is the way that the analysis is conducted, that is the problem. -Fly]

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    • #
      blackadderthe4th

      ‘that is the problem’ no the problem is, you’ll not accept the bleeding obvious, CO2 causes the warming of the atmosphere and results in climate change! Because I suspect you would view that as damaging to your country’s exports of fossil fuels and your paymasters, whoever they are, do not want that to happen! So you jump through hoops, bend reality and spread untruths to that aim. How embarrassed must Jo actually be by taking the 30 pieces of silver? Given her so called background and qualifications! You can lead a climate change denier to the truth, but you can’t make them think, obviously!

      (How embarrassed you must be,to be unable to post a logical rebuttal to her blog post.Did you read the science paper she referred to?) CTS
      [He doesn’t seem to be very good at reading at all. Perhaps there is a market for making YouTube editions of scientific papers. Now, there is an opportunity for you, CTS] -Fly

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      • #

        Grand conspiracies and baseless slurs.

        It’s so going to kill you when you find out I earned nothing and was right. I feel sorry for you.

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        • #
          the Griss

          “I earned nothing and was right”

          He already knows that, Jo..

          You can see the utter panic in this posts, because he KNOWS his religion, the basis for his whole existence, is crashing down around him.

          His bizarre, irrational tantrums and psychotic clown behaviour will become even funnier to watch as he become more and more MANIC DEPRESSIVE.

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        • #
          blackadderthe4th

          ‘I feel sorry for you.’ so do I, for the friends you keep!

          ‘For four years, Nova worked for the Shell Questacon Science Circus, based in Canberra, Australia. The Science Circus is an outreach program run by Questacon, the Australian National Science and Technology Centre. The program is sponsored by Shell Oil, with additional support from Australian National University. She has also worked for Foxtel, a cable television company part owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.’

          Say no more!

          http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Jo_Nova

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        • #

          Michael, try to keep up. I talk about systematic problems in the science community. Monopolistic funding. Confirmation bias. Problems with peer-review processes. There are no grand conspiracies in my posts, though I’m sure you would like there to be.

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      • #
        ExWarmist

        Hi BAT4th.

        Let’s go through what you just wrote.

        ‘that is the problem’ no the problem is, you’ll not accept the bleeding obvious, CO2 causes the warming of the atmosphere and results in climate change!

        That’s a blunt statement – a straw man. Many commentators (including myself) on this site would accept the idea that CO2 will warm the atmosphere, especially at the lower PPM ranges, such as 0 to 20. However it is also well known that the warming impact of CO2 drops off (i.e. diminishing returns) as the concentration increases. The impact of CO2 induced warming above 400 ppm may not be all that significant, given that CO2 induced warming follows a logarithmic scale to atmospheric concentration.

        It is also well understood that the “Catastrophic” impacts of AGW will be driven by the action of water vapour +ve feedback to increasing CO2 concentration – an effect that has been glaringly absent in the physical evidence of record, and which hence remains entirely hypothetical after 30 years of looking for it. A glaring fact that should be providing you with doubt – rather than the fundamentalist certainty of your pseudoreligious zealotry.

        Because I suspect you would view that as damaging to your country’s exports of fossil fuels and your paymasters, whoever they are, do not want that to happen!

        Do you have any evidence of this vile canard? that Jo is driven by payments from vested interests? If so – please present it forthwith or apologise – such an insulting comment has no place in this forum.

        Do you often entertain conspiracy theories about those who disagree with you?

        Do you think that entertaining conspiracy theories is the sign of a weak mind?

        Do you assume that your arguments are so “rational” and “compelling” that disagreement can only be motivated by wilful stupidity or base greed for monetary gain?

        So you jump through hoops, bend reality and spread untruths to that aim.

        As above, so below – do you have any specific actionable evidence of Jo jumping through hoops, bending reality, or spreading untruths – well let’s just call it lying? – If so – please present it – or apologise as you have not only insulted our host but our forum as well.

        How embarrassed must Jo actually be by taking the 30 pieces of silver? Given her so called background and qualifications!

        Layers of insult, you attribute emotion when you have no evidence of it’s existence, followed by allusions to betrayal (30 pieces of silver) and then question our hosts background and qualifications.

        Clearly – you have no decency, no manners and no honour.

        You can lead a climate change denier to the truth, but you can’t make them think, obviously!

        For the community at this site, we have an explicit culture of evidence based reasoning. A culture that you are clearly unable or unwilling to engage with, a culture of honest enquiry that you seem to find offensive and threatening.

        Might I suggest that you look deep within the operations of your own beliefs and challenge them with strong rigour, and then break them against the hard rock of measured, repeatable, independently auditable test before you deign to judge others.

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        • #
          blackadderthe4th

          ‘Do you have any evidence of this vile canard?’ the smoking gun is there for everybody to see, her denial that fossil fuels are a problem with regards to climate change! When all valid science says its the number one problem.

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          • #

            BA, this is so inane, it’s not even worth publishing as “target practice” but I’ll publish it for the record, so everyone can see why I stopped publishing the anonymous irrational entity called Blackadderthe4th who could not string together coherent sentences. He thought “youtube” was a scientific reference, and namecalling rants and wild conspiracies are a rational argument. It’s over BA. After 551 comments, and personal emails to try to help you, I’m not going to explain for the 20th time that this is a blog where people write words (not bad unreadable voice-to-text quotes of videos like your next two comments in moderation). All your comments from now will go straight to spam. They aren’t worth snipping. I expect you will complain about “censorship”. Good luck with convincing people. – Jo

            I see you have been filling up the top of the thread with this drivel. Add indulgent, narcisistic and a boor to the list. No more. Never again.

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      • #
        The Backslider

        you’ll not accept the bleeding obvious, CO2 causes the warming of the atmosphere and results in climate change!

        Oh goody BlackUdder! I know that you will never answer this, because you cannot and cannot backup your own statement:

        Where is the “signature” for CO2 “forcing” in the temperature record.

        Please show it to me.

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        • #
          blackadderthe4th

          ‘Where is the “signature” for CO2 “forcing” in the temperature record.’

          ‘Please show it to me.’ and guess what here it is!

          [It’s in a youtube — Give up BA. You don’t know the answer or you would explain it. – Jo]

          [SNIP]

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      • #
        Chesterdue

        BA4,

        Don’t listen to deniers.

        I followed your link and watched the Youtube Video of Michael Mann.

        This is the video where he bravely ignores the consensus that 97% of the world’s scientists believe in man made CO2 climate change in order to show balance.

        It made me realize just how silly deniers really are. It’s really so worth the time. I laughed and laughed and laughed at them stupid deniers. He actually found so many scientists ready to denounce his hockey stick.

        In this video Mann organises a walk around to get scientific opinions and allows a whole bunch of denier scientists to denounce his Hockey Stick so that he can graphically present just how much he sacrificed in his lonely stand against fierce and overwhelming criticism of his research.

        Mann rightly likens his courageous solo efforts to that of Gallileo.

        This brought tears to my eyes never before have I seen such devotion and courage in the face of…. let me just go through that bit again – something doesn’t seem right here:

        ‘Mann organises a walk around to get scientific opinions and allows a whole bunch of denier scientists to denounce his Hockey Stick…’

        Hey wait just a goldarned minute…

        There shouldn’t be that many denier scientists left in the world – Michael Mann denounced all of them and threatened them with defamation.

        Hmmm… so how come there are so many – unless the consensus is wrong – NOOOOOOOOOO.

        Wait gather thoughts… 11,944 scientific papers graded by John Cook – check.

        59 papers mention that man made CO2 may cause global warming – check.

        59 out of 11,944, carry the 1, divided by 100 that comes to 97% – check.

        So where the heck did Mann find recognised research scientists who disagree with his work?

        This is all an evil plot by big oil and Jonova obviously and that means this Mann video is a fake.

        Probably got the same people that faked the Moon Landing video.

        Why you dirty rats Big Oils and Jonova, will you stop at nothing to promote real science?

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      • #
        James Bradley

        BA4,

        What’s the difference between a climate scientist and a Haitian Wich Doctor?

        One uses chicken gizzards to predict the future and raise zombies to do his bidding, while the other is a qualified madical practitioner in the Carribean.

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      • #
        el gordo

        ‘CO2 causes the warming of the atmosphere and results in climate change!’

        From the evidence available your theory is a fallacy.

        210

      • #
        Safetyguy66

        “Paymasters” lol, I haven’t got a cheque in so long…. oh wait Ive never got a cheque.

        On the other hand I spent the better part of 10 years working in renewable energy including 2 of Australia’s largest windfarms and your going to tell me about AGW you Youtube jockey of an idiot. Your clueless.

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      • #
        Konrad

        “CO2 causes the warming of the atmosphere and results in climate change”

        Good news! CO2 does not cause atmospheric warming. The net effect of our radiatively cooled atmosphere is surface cooling. Sure, some inane climastrologists went and claimed that the surface would average only 255K without atmosphere, but they had made the hideous mistake of assuming the surface to be a “near blackbody” whereas on our ocean planet 71% of the surface is an extreme short-wave selective surface. The net effect of our radiatively cooled atmosphere is to lower surface temps from around 312K to 288K not raise them from 255K. No need to panic, AGW is a physical impossibility.

        (Anyone standing close to Blank&Addled^4 should now move to a safe distance to avoid debris from warmulonian head-popping.)

        111

    • #

      Yawn. All the other hockeysticks depend on one tree in Yamal, or the upside down Tjilander series, or on post hoc adjusted boreholes.
      I’ve already given you this link to 120 proxies posted on my site, but we all know you can’t read.

      702

      • #
        the Griss

        Thanks Jo, for continuing to publish BA4’s posts..

        A source of hilarity, as they truly show just how far the rabid alarmists have sunk.

        There is NO bottom on that barrel ! 🙂

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        • #
          TedM

          Griss: another bulls eye.

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        • #
          Peter Miller

          Gross, I think we should look at BA4 in the context of Cuba and North Korea.

          The world needs these two systems to survive in order to show and remind the world just how bad and wrong the communist and socialist systems are

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          • #
            Greg Cavanagh

            Sad but true. Otherwise we’d simply repeat history, at least this way we have a living example.

            60

          • #
            OriginalSteve

            Surely you dont mean something like :

            “all your reseach papers are belong to us…”

            *grin*

            20

          • #
            ian hilliar

            But people go to Cuba on holiday and tell me how fabulous it all is. Mind you, they do vote green, and would live in a yurt if they could, but no yurts available in the inner city.

            30

            • #
              Bob Cormack

              But people go to Cuba on holiday and tell me how fabulous it all is.

              There are a fair share of those in Boulder (Colorado) as well — however, I have yet to hear of one who moved there.

              00

      • #
        Rereke Whakaaro

        🙂

        60

      • #
        blackadderthe4th

        It gives me great comfort to realise you have to rely on leaving the vast majority of my posts in moderation, because you KNOW you are being economical with the truth. what are you frit of? The truth, would be my guess. Remember when they throw Galileo in jail for telling the truth? It was obvious that an old book was right and the Sun went around the Earth, was it not? But science proved him right, what does your religion prove, 30 pieces of silver can get a lot of web space, but not much sense!

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        • #

          BA — not brave enough to put your real name to your fantasies?
          So brave, spitting irrational tin-foil hatter theories from your anonymous hidey-hole. Too chicken to own your own words.

          Why would I be afraid of your delusions of “truth”? I’m just afraid you will bore people.

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        • #
          ExWarmist

          Hi BAT4th.

          If you want to engage in a conversation or debate, you have to write something that other people can work with – I mean – what your doing right now just doesn’t leave any room for actual engagement.

          Do you have anything that would provide a reasonable and independently verifiable basis for what you are trying to say or not?

          Is it too much to ask for evidence?

          Are you able to provide any evidence whatsoever for your beliefs?

          I’m just flabbergasted by the semantic emptiness of what you write.

          Sometimes I think you may just be a bot.

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          • #
            the Griss

            Hey ExW, its sort of like watching a child chucking a tantrum in a supermarket and nearly throwing fit.

            Ranting, frothing, incoherent, thrashing aimlessly.

            All in an attempt for some sort of recognition that he wants some more red cordial.

            Imagine how embarrassed his minders would be if they could see him. ! 🙂

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          • #
            Annie

            BOT4th maybe? EW

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        • #
          the Griss

          Your meds need re-adjusting, BAffled.

          The imbalance is making your meaningless rants even more dopey and incoherent that usual.

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        • #
          James Murphy

          BAT4th, Strange that you talk of Galileo, when you are playing the part of the Roman Catholic Inquisition, with your desire to silence anyone you perceive as heretical, or anyone who has the temerity to question your belief system.

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        • #
          Radical Rodent

          Should you wish to fall back on the Galileo story, at least make make yourself familiar with it. It is obvious you know nothing about it.

          20

        • #
          Backladderthe4th

          BA4,Dude,

          What are you doing, we already have one DS4 disorder more than most, but this post of ours is positively unhinged.

          It gives me great comfort to realise you have to rely on leaving the vast majority of my posts in moderation, because you KNOW you are being economical with the truth. *Geez what the hell is that about?

          what What are you frit afraid of?

          The truth, would be my guess. *Guess???? You guess??? WE NEED FACTS!!!!!

          Remember when they throw threw Galileo in jail for telling the truth?

          It was obvious that an old book was right and the Sun went around the Earth, was it not? But science proved him right, what does your religion prove, ! *this is all just meaningless drivel

          30 pieces of silver can get a lot of web space, but not much sense cents” *I think this is a good reference to tax payer funded grants and subsidies that these deniers seek to deny us, and it’s the only bit you should keep.

          For the love of God, montressor, for the love of God, stop.

          Your making me crazy, how many personalities do you think I can juggle – what with all the sloppy phoenetics and the phony Non English Speaking background sentence structures.

          Where the hell is a continutity editor when you need one – and you need one!!!!!

          This script will need a complete rewrite, I can’t even find a motivator for the main protagonist.

          Sloppy work, sloppy.

          You’re making us all look like inuits (because of the sentence structure and an overt reference to polar bears that I want included).

          I expect it corrected and on my desk first thing tomorrow morning!!!!!

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        • #
          Denis Ables

          Notice that BA4 has NOT responded to (what should be simple for him) a query to provide evidence that the co2 level has some impact on global temperature. Readers: donot hold your breath awaiting a credible, or even useful, response.

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        • #
          Annie

          Thumbs down meant BA4…finger slipped on screen.

          Your attack of the vapours is very amusing.

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      • #
        yonason

        What are you “frit” of, Joanne? Don’t be so “economical with the truth,” like warmist bl_addar is not with his words. Yet tis not the time for there to be much “rejoyousing.”

        Warmists say the darnedest things.

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    • #
      stargazer

      Is it necessary to cherry-pick ‘sediment data’ in order for that method to replicate the tree-ring results?

      50

    • #
      Backladderthe4th

      BA4,

      You go guy, high five dude, you win, but you forgot the most conclusive evidence of all.

      Okay so you deniers think you have an answer for everything, answer this, we got something better than evidence, science, facts or research, we got us some CHICKEN GIZZARDS that conclusively back up Mann’s tree ring data.

      Dunno how they do it, just like the tree rings and sediments and coffee grounds, right, it’s some mystical sh*t okay, that just can’t be explained.

      But the chicken gizzards are conclusive, and the science is definitely out on this you deniers, and the Verified Optimum Of Decomposing Offal Observation (VOODOO) is in.

      Yes that’s right deniers read it and weep, the voodoo is in and it supports Mann’s hockey stick.

      Climate change is real.

      Suck on that deniers.

      The voodoo is in.

      we gotcha, we gotcha…

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      • #
        the Griss

        “we gotcha, we gotcha…”

        Yep, BAffled does put forward something rather like a kindy argument. 🙂

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      • #
        NielsZoo

        So the back part of my property, about 1/3 hectare, has a bunch of (untended natural) Sweet Bay trees, Magnolia Virginiana, spaced between 5m and 10m apart and the soil conditions back there are almost ideal for the species. Some of them are beautiful, tall, majestic and at the right time of the year are covered with white flowers and produce lots of berries. Some of them are scrawny, straggly and don’t flower much at all. 30 years from now which ones are to be used for the temperature proxy that will be assigned an accuracy and precision higher than most commercial thermometers and thermocouples?

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        • #
          Rereke Whakaaro

          Sorry, we will have to cut them down, one by one, until we find some tree rings that fit our hypothesis.

          I warn you now, they may all have to go.

          But it is all in a good cause. After all we are saving the Planet (if not your actual trees).

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          • #
            NielsZoo

            I will then be applying for a grant to “study” the effects of increased solar radiation on deaf pot bellied pigs… ’cause those trees are their shade and white pigs get sunburned just like blond people do. The grant will be used to examine the different formulations of sunscreen and its efficacy in the porcine population. (Sorry NASA, I don’t think this one will qualify for Muslim Outreach.)

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      • #
        gai

        “we got us some CHICKEN GIZZARDS that conclusively back up Mann’s tree ring data.
        >>>>>>>>

        Why there is even a News article about that study BA4!
        Telegraph – UK When it comes to climate change, we have to trust our scientists, because they know lots of big scary words

        …commentators are asking if global warming is to blame. In particular, some are wondering if the direction of the Jet Stream is being altered by Arctic ice melt….

        However, most of this reportage has been second-hand. Unprecedentedly, I had direct access to the meteorologists concerned, as I was in Exeter in spirit form, and I managed to speak to the principal actors.

        First, I asked Stephen Belcher, the head of the Met Office Hadley Centre, whether the recent extended winter was related to global warming. Shaking his famous “ghost stick”, and fingering his trademark necklace of sharks’ teeth and mammoth bones, the loin-clothed Belcher blew smoke into a conch, and replied,

        “Here come de heap big warmy. Bigtime warmy warmy. Is big big hot. Plenty big warm burny hot. Hot! Hot hot! But now not hot. Not hot now. De hot come go, come go. Now Is Coldy Coldy. Is ice. Hot den cold. Frreeeezy ice til hot again. Den de rain. It faaaalllll. Make pasty.”

        Startled by this sobering analysis, I moved on to Professor Rowan Sutton, Climate Director of NCAS at the University of Reading…..

        …I moved on to Professor Rowan Sutton, Climate Director of NCAS at the University of Reading. Professor Sutton said that many scientists are, as of this moment, examining the complex patterns in the North Atlantic, and trying to work out whether the current run of inclement European winters will persist.

        When pressed on the particular outlook for the British Isles. Professor Sutton shook his head, moaned eerily unto the heavens, and stuffed his fingers into the entrails of a recently disembowelled chicken, bought fresh from Waitrose in Teignmouth….

        So there you have it, CHICKEN GIZZARDS that conclusively back up Mann’s tree ring data.

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      • #
        el gordo

        ‘Suck on that deniers.’

        As a card carrying member of the Denialati I can say with certainty that global cooling is imminent.

        20

      • #
        Denis Ables

        no helpful content, but consistent.

        00

      • #
        Reinder van Til

        Of course climate change is real. Climate has always changed due to Milankovich cycles, the Sun, Ocean cycles, aerosols and watervapour with just a very small role for CO2. We sceptics don’t deny climate change. And even if climate changes today there is no empirical evidence that it is a bad thing

        00

    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      I am not going to say anything.

      It is my policy to never have a battle of wits with an unarmed person.

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    • #
      ExWarmist

      Ok, I’ll bite…

      BAT4th says …

      But you seem to have neglected the fact that the same results can be obtained from other sources, sediments, etc, not just tree rings! And they back up the hockey stick results. I suggest you do a little bit of research before you rejoyous for no good reason.

      Let me ask you this question.

      If you have a method that produces hockeysticks – why would you expect it to be proxy independent?

      The problem with any and all paleocliamatology is always “what is the evidence?” for anything, warming, cooling, etc, it doesn’t matter. Why is one set of data deemed to be a good proxy of temperature and another set not.

      Let’s take Mann’s evidence – no, let’s take Briffa’s because it is more explicit of the underlying methodological problem.

      The problem here is that a single tree that shows a strong hockeystick shape is deemed to be evidence, precisely because it conforms with the dominant narrative of the paleoclimate community of AGW, and yet the tree that is next to it – does not show the same characteristic growth patterns is deemed not to be evidence and is discarded without explanation.

      It is the lack of explanation for non-conformance of the same species of tree at the same location that blows a mile wide hole in the underlying idea that you have a “temperature” proxy.

      For modern climate science, a tree (or any other source of a proxy) is a proxy “Thermometer” when it conforms to the desired AGW narrative, and is not a proxy when it does not.

      Confirmation bias in perfect demonstration.

      You have been fooled by the action of confirmation bias in all it’s false glory.

      Until you and the rest of the AGW community address your methodological shortcomings – you will never have the credibility that you desire.

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    • #
      Uncle Gus

      So… Mann’s tree ring proxies were worthless, but it turned out he was RIGHT ALL ALONG! How did he do that? How did he know? Did a time traveller come from the future and tell him which way to fudge it? A space alien? An angel? Or was it just the power of faith?

      Whether or not you are right about global warming, the sheer illogicality of your position on Mann is breathtaking. “He is saying the right things, so he must be one of the good guys.” You should be embarrassed by him.

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      ghl

      BA4
      “there is evidence nowhere in any period of past 1000 years that is as warm as the second part of the 20th century”
      Except of course thermometer readings from the 1890s and the 1930s.

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      Sean McHugh

      Bla-the4th,

      Do you recall how the decline of the polar bears used to be a primary icon of Global Warming? Notice that you don’t hear much about that now?

      Another thing the TV media would reliably have as a backdrop, when discussing Global Warming, was dried cracked earth. Have you noticed that backdrop’s disappearance since the rains that brought the filling of the dams and the Brisbane floods? You could almost hear them at the TV stations saying, “We can’t use these images again for a while”.

      The Hockey Stick is another such embarrassing icon.

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    Kevin Lohse

    Hope Mark Stein’s got wind of this. Should make his day in court.

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    Jaymez

    I wonder if the UK Government will recall ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ from all schools just after Al Gore issues an apology for using Mann’s misleading Hockey Stick graph as his primary marketing tool since 2007. Yeah right!

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      Carbon500

      I can only hope that there are science teachers in the UK who have taken the trouble to point out and discuss all the misrepresentations in Al Gore’s propaganda film and book with their pupils.
      Not an onerous task, after all.

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      Safetyguy66

      He neither cared nor understood if it was right then and he certainly doesn’t car or understand if its right now. Al Gore’s fascination with frightening people stems from nothing more than his attempt to punish America and indeed industrialised society for not recognising his awesome superiority and making him POTUS.

      http://youtu.be/h05YfP_8UsU

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        ExWarmist

        It’s possible, however I thought the massive monetary rewards were the key motivator.

        When Big Al left the Whitehouse is personal wealth was approx $2M, then it went into the multi $100Ms off the back of his favourite scare story.

        When Big Al participated in the founding of the now defunct Chicago Climate Exchange (Sponsored by the Tides Foundation, where Barack Obama was on the Board), it was in anticipation of creating a world wide Carbon credit market worth $10T per year, with $500B in trading commissions for the Big Banks, with every cent extracted from the 99.9% of the population that don’t earn enough not to care what energy costs.

        Clearly Big Al is a great Humanitarian.

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    • #

      The Veep was always America’s best insurance against assassination of the President. 😉

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        ExWarmist

        Well then, Barack Obama and Joe Biden had better avoid being in the same location at the same time.

        Someone might get too excited by the opportunity.

        Hmmm – who’s the Speaker?

        Two birds, one stone, etc.

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      • #
        gai

        I prefer the original method of choosing the President and VP. The guy with the most votes was president the guy with the second most votes was VP there was not ticket with the President and Vice President on the same ballot. This kept the President on his toes especially if the second guy was from the opposing party. Now we have the VP chosen to be the guy the people would most dislike to see as president allowing the President to be as corrupt as he wants.

        John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were “for the first (and, so far, only) time, the President and Vice-President… represent opposing parties.”

        http://www.thegreenpapers.com/Hx/NomProcess.html

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      cedarhill

      One key point that could be amplified “It’s not that there is a conspiracy, it’s just that no one is paid to find the holes in the theory…”

      Thus the Golden Rule strikes again – those with the gold determine do not fund views contrary. If conspiracy is too strong, perhaps willful deceit by many?

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    Peter Miller

    There are so many obvious error factors in the pseudo-science of using tree rings to try and accurately estimate historical temperature trends that it is truly amazing so many were taken in by Mann’s manipulated mathematical myths.

    It is also amazing that so little attempt has been made, until now, to collect the post-1980 tree numbers. Mann is many things, but one of them is that he is not stupid, so he must have known the methodology he used in his Hockey Stick hoax was totally dodgy. [If] So, he indulged in a deliberate deceit – if that conclusion is not correct, then he has to be stupid. Either way, he derives our complete contempt.

    However, the gullible swallowed the Hockey Stick hoax hook, line and sinker and Mann smugly bathed in the undeserved glory it brought him.

    The Hockey Stick has been central to the alarmist cult’s arguments on supposed man made climate change. Just like so much in climate science, there is no substance whatsoever to support the arguments for imminent CAGW.

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      hannuko

      Mann is many things, but one of them is that he is not stupid

      I’m not so sure about that. He did claim to the court of being a nobel laureate and when people started to call him on it, he acted like he actually believed to be a nobel laureate.

      I do not claim to know the man, but it is conceivable that he is of an average intelligence who wants to be a genius but deep inside knows he is not that good. He is living in a lie. This is why he is so unusually aggressive against those that question the quality of his work.

      I have known people that suffer from the same problem. They tend to be very tragic personalities.

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        Peter Miller

        To deceive so many people so comprehensively is quite an achievement – something not easily achievable by a stupid man, but by someone who is cold and calculating.

        Perhaps the word ‘unintelligent’ should be substituted for ‘stupid’. Mann is an intelligent individual, someone with a great ego and as he has to live the big lie, he lashes out with lawsuits at anyone who he exposes him for what he really is.

        For those who remember the notorious Robert Maxwell (the owner of the UK’s Daily Mirror newspaper), there are obvious similarities.

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          Brute

          The deception has not been accomplished by Mann’s intellect. He’s just a useful fool that does not know when to shut up. And a mediocre scientist to boot.

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            Manfred

            (A)GW (Mann et al.) were always the convenient stalking horses of those with larger agendas. Mann merely proves the adage: ‘every Mann has his price’.
            As for his intellect, it appears sufficient. I would however question its application.

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          Rereke Whakaaro

          I am not sure that I agree with you.

          He could simply have found a data series that produced a hockey stick, by random chance, and then mistaking correlation for causation, burst into print on the matter.

          Having done that, and having achieved a degree of fame (or notoriety) as a result, he could then not find a way to recant, with dignity.

          This might explain why his graph determinedly stops at 1980, and why he has resolutely refused to grant access to his data, and why any charts post-1980, are drawn by using other data series, tacked on the end.

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            Binny

            I think you might be closest to the mark

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            Andrew McRae

            On Twitter he has recently begun citing the opinion of The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal as support for his own view of climate change denial.

            Yes it’s a comedy goldmine. Make of that what you will. 🙂

            Would CSICOP conclude that reports of unprecedented radiation sources in the sky were just misinterpretations of Air Force weather balloons?

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          He didn’t deceive anyone. The people who believed it either wanted to believe it, because it suited their ideology, or chose to exploit it as yet another tool that justified their job or improved their bank balance.

          When trying to understand these issues, begin with the premise that most people are either evil, or stupid or evil and stupid and work backwards from there.

          It is NEVER the issue; it is ALWAYS the person.

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      mike restin

      I’m not a scientist nor mathematician but could there be something useful from tree ring study? Although, I’m pretty sure if you cherry pick your data you’ll get whatever answer you’re looking for.
      Maybe if someone could honestly evaluate all of the processes and data Mann et al collected a good pro could actually glean some information and add to our knowledge.
      But, whadoiknow?
      (please refer to disclaimer in first sentence)

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        Rereke Whakaaro

        If you want the short answer to the question, “could there be something useful from tree ring study?” The short answer is, “In regard to long-term global temperature change, no.”

        The long answer is, “Yes, because it diverts his attention away from doing something else, that could be even less beneficial to the integrity of science, and even more dangerous to the well being of mankind.”

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        Grant (NZ)

        I would suggest that climate scientists would be better served by avoiding studies of Pinus aristata and focus instead on Prunus avium and its various cultivars. While not as long lived, it is much easier to pick the data you require.

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        NielsZoo

        Even when used for relative dating (dendrochronology) it can be extremely problematic to impossible to match up growth patterns from different areas. My brief collegiate foray into archaeology many decades ago taught me that almost all proxy methods were only reasonably trustworthy when using them as relative markers between sites in the same geographic and climate niche. Even then, the error bars were significant. That held true for everything from radioisotopes to paleomagnetics as local environments have significant effects.

        Tree rings are a great tool for some things but I can’t see any kind of precision available when trying to use them for “climate” proxies just because of what they are. Natural variability wipes out any possible statistical fixes that would give them any kind of accuracy. Is a run of slow growth drought or cold or excessive heat? I guess it depends on what you need to prove to keep your paycheck coming, hence the hockey stick math and the “nature trick.”

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        Mark Hladik

        Hi Niels,

        As a Geologist and Physicist, I can see that using a proxy is a valid technique, PROVIDED one has calibrated the method.

        Just guessing at this point, but it would probably take several centuries worth of study and data in order to properly calibrate a tree-ring method of paleotemperature. One would have to involve virtually every continent, and use representative areas (steppe, mountain, arid; tropical, temperate; etc … ) and recruit generations of investigators (since the calibration period would be longer than the lifetime of any one researcher).

        Even then, the method would require constant re-calibration, to account for climatological changes (which, by the way, are constant anyway), migration of climate zones, random events such as volcanic episodes (which in the local area may provide an influx of raw nutrients, hence change the growth patterns of associated fauna), and so on.

        Mr. Adder-the-fourth (the black variety) is constantly demanding proof of our position, yet when I challenged him (among many others) to run a cross-correlation between Veizer’s paleotemperature curve (widely cited in the ‘peer-reviewed literature’ that warmunistas revere with holy reverence) and Berner and Kothavala’s GEOCARB III curve (also widely cited), s/he refused flatly. Just didn’t want to see that there is no correlation between the two, yet firmly believes that ‘CO2 causes warming’ of the atmosphere, without limit.

        Adder-the-fourth (black) also cannot explain why there was a glacial event in the Ordovician/Silurian transition, when the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere was around (or more than) 3000 ppmv; even better, the Cryogenian had CO2 measured in the percent range (best estimates are 4% in GTS 2004, and 13% in GTS 2012). I believe the difference in the estimates is due to better techniques based on stromatolites.

        Jo gets a double thumbs-up from me for finally exorcising Addder-the-fourth (black) and the incessant FaceTube videos (of which I only watched one, which was too much anyway).

        Hope that helps; please advise if I can clarify anything else. Do have a great day, and enjoy the rest of the interglacial.

        Regards to all,

        Mark H.

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      Leigh

      The following was a short exchange on wattsupwiththat.com with Eric Worrall and another blogger.
      It doesn’t validate his work but it explains why he so vehemently defends it.
      The money involved is not exactly “beer money”.

      I wonder how many $ he as earned from grants

      ReplyEric Worrall December 6, 2014 at 9:44 pm

      Probably a lot. Mann also got half a million dollars from Obama’s stimulus fund, for no specific reason, other than a general suggestion he use the money to perform more research into climate change.

      http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703657604575005412584751830

      But I don’t think the evidence supports the idea that they are just in it for the money. I think its more likely, that they are so sure they are right about global warming, they discard or disregard any evidence which contradicts their idea of what is true. Their mission to save the world supersedes their duty as scientists to report all the facts, including adverse evidence.

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    Leonard Lane

    Great post Jo (thanks to Steve McIntyre too!). Empirical proof of what many thought all along (and had related empirical data cited in the above post to support their skeptical positions). But this does it. Let’s wait for the retractions!
    Incidentally, when I first went to work at the Los Alamos National Lab. in the early 1980’s, one of the first papers I was asked to review and use if appropriate, dealt with precipitation re-constructions using tree ring data from the SW USA. I questioned at the time how temperature, shading, pests, diseases, hail storms, etc. might confuse the precipitation estimates. If I recall correctly, the answer was we really don’t know and that is part of the estimates’ uncertainty.

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      Grant (NZ)

      Not to mention altitude, aspect, soil type, edge effect, inter/intra species competition, stocking rates and every other factor that confounds growth modelling in forestry.

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    Greg Cavanagh

    For me, the fact that neither the science community nor the political community made any attempt to verify the original claims (tree rings, historical temperatures, missing little ice age, roman warm periods disappearing, CO2 causes warming, ect…) speaks volumes that they were never interested in the truth to begin with.

    When all this catastrophic talk began and they started calling for increased taxes for research. I said to myself right then, if they don’t bother to research if the claims are true and simply start to research for a cure, it will make a mockery of the process of science, and demonstrate that they are not interested in finding out if any of it is true.

    I was fully skeptical from the start, BECAUSE they never questioned the original claims.

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      ExWarmist

      Yes Greg,

      Once I became aware of the methodological flaws in the AGW Climate Science position, – I could not help but be sceptical of the published results.

      And nothing has changed – there has been no attempt in the mainstream to correct the methodological issues, and hence the mainstream results are still lacking in any credibility.

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    Doug Proctor

    Mark Steyn has called Mann’s usage of his Hockey Stick graph as fraudulent in the sense that he knowingly created something with the intention and actual result of causing other people to do something (a layman’s description of a “fraud”). But Mann didn’t just create and use it in 1998. He has used it repeatedly, including in presentations (for which he was paid) in Britain this year (as covered by WUWT and Bishop Hill).

    There is no fraud if you are unintentionally wrong. If you delete information (Nature Trick) because you honestly believe the deleted data is bad data, that is also not fraud. But if you stop using data after 1980 also because all recent data is “bad”, not just a subset, one could reasonably conclude intent to mislead existed. As there was a definite drive to turn knowledge into action, that would be fraud back in 1998.

    The continued use of non-updated data is of great interest to the fraud concept. Did Mann know of the results of data collected after 1980? As the “top” tree-ring climatologist, I would expect so. When? If he knew, and refused recommendations to update his graph with modern data, that might constitute evidence of current fraud. Remember, you have to be wrong “honestly” to be innocent of fraud. Mann would have to say he didn’t know about the new data, it wasn’t available to him OR that he hasn’t been working in that field for a long, long time. Which I don’t think he would say.

    On the face of it, I’d say Mann has known for years that subsequent work invalidated his claims of the temperature history of the last millenia, but he has assidiously avoided recognizing and incorporating this knowldedge. He has pursued the path of conscious ignorance because he wanted others to do something they wouldn’t do otherwise, be it donate to PennState/personal research projects, give him financial awards, support his IPCC buddies and ideological agenda, or simply keep him in the glow of fame. Any one of which is the clincher in a claim of fraud, actions by others that would not otherwise occur.

    And all he ever needed to do was say, “That’s what I thought at the time, do your own work if you don’t agree.”

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      Brute

      You are absolutely correct. That’s the way out for this lot. “I always stand by science. I did then and I do now. And science said what it did even if we now know better.”

      Excuses don’t matter in this case though. This is a political issue and there is no accountability in politics. They’ve gotten away with it and that’s that. Deal with it, people, deal with it.

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        Rereke Whakaaro

        Deal with it, people, deal with it.

        Oh we are, believe me, we are. And there is always accountability, it is just that sometimes it is more subtle, than at others, and sometimes it is not immediately apparent.

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      David Jay

      He KNEW. Before submission.

      search for: “CENSORED directory”

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    PeterS

    I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for the global warming alarmists to stop using the old data to keep peddling the hoax. This recent truth will be ignored. What does need to be done though is all the reputable scientists to pronounce publicly and unilaterally that those who continue to use the old tree ring studies to support the global warming alarmist picture be considered as crackpots and stripped of their titles as scientists. It’s the least thing they could do, but then again I wouldn’t hold my breadth.

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    spaatch

    What the heck do a handful of trees on some hills have to do with the entire Northern Hemisphere temps?? Nuffin!

    From the Salzer et al paper:

    Changing climate response in near-treeline bristlecone pine with elevation and aspect

    In the White Mountains of California, eight bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva) tree-ring width chronologies were developed from trees at upper treeline and just below upper treeline along North- and South-facing elevational transects from treeline to ~90 m below.

    There is evidence for a climate-response threshold between approximately 60–80 vertical m below treeline, above which trees have shown a positive growth-response to temperature and below which they do not.

    Chronologies from 80 m or more below treeline show a change in climate response and do not correlate strongly with temperature-sensitive chronologies developed from trees growing at upper treeline. Rather, they more closely resemble lower elevation precipitation-sensitive chronologies.

    At the highest sites, trees on South-facing slopes grow faster than trees on North-facing slopes. High growth rates in the treeline South-facing trees have declined since the mid-1990s.

    This suggests the possibility that the climate-response of the highest South-facing trees may have changed and that temperature may no longer be the main limiting factor for growth on the South aspect. These results indicate that increasing warmth may lead to a divergence between tree growth and temperature at previously temperature-limited sites.

    http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/9/11/114007/article

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      Graeme No.3

      Of course. Higher temperatures let trees expand into areas previously too cold for them; e.g. The tree lines in Norway were much higher during the medieval warm period. The trees expanded northwards in Canada and Siberia a lot further than they are now. It was noticed in the 1990’s that the tree line in Siberia had moved northwards, but no where near the medieval warm period lines.

      So measuring tree rings in those trees right at the edge will show some response to the warmer weather in the 1980’s and 1990’s, but the older trees aren’t responding at all. There are those who think that any “warming” since 1940 is entirely due to data manipulation. Those who think AGW is happening should go and talk to the trees!

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    handjive

    The Jury is IN!

    2004: To Kevin Hennessy, senior research scientist at CSIRO atmospheric research, the reverse is true.

    “That (medieval) period, while it was warm, is not warmer than the last part of the 20th century.

    The last decades of the 20th century were at least the warmest in the past 1800 years,” he says.

    “The argument is not resolved at this point. ”

    The jury is still out.”

    The Jury is IN!

    The Mann paper was the original “proxy” paper, which used complex statistical methods to combine 112 proxy records into an inferred climate curve from 1400 to 1902.

    From 1902 to the present day, actual thermometer measurements were used.

    The IPCC (and CSIRO) relied heavily on the Mann paper in coming to their global warming conclusions.

    http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/01/16/1073878029212.html

    The Jury is IN!

    31 Mar 2006: This is the Worst-Case scenario for Global Warming, as forecast by the CSIRO and the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

    Recent weather(?) been ominously supportive of it.

    Climate change impacts on Australia and benefits of early action to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions

    http://www.csiro.au/resources/pfbg (pdf)
    . . .
    No.
    This is the Worst-Case scenario for a scientific quackery of historic proportions.

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    Ted O'Brien.

    ….”where only the right experiments, or the right data, gets published.”

    The only explanation that I could ever conceive for the change to partisan management of the CSIRO in December 1986.

    (In Australia much of the country shuts down for three or four weeks over Christmas. It is common to see contentious political announcements made just before this to give the announcements that period without public scrutiny.)

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    handjive

    Michael Mann posts picture of human ‘hockey stick’ on Facebook.

    https://www.facebook.com/MichaelMannScientist/photos/a.221233134599563.54502.221222081267335/809905352399002/?type=1

    No update there.

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    Neville

    The PAGES 2K study does have more reliable proxies like the Antarctic ice cores that show higher warming ( than today) from 149AD to 1250AD (Med WP) and a high spike of 30 years during the LIA.
    Jo has also provided a graph of the Holocene from GISP 2 that shows Greenland was much warmer than today and had a warmer Med WP as well.

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      The simple fact that the Vikings farmed Greenland proves that Greenland was warmer during the MWP. Don’t need the proxies, just simple facts. AKA “data”

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        Dariusz

        Vikings also used deciduous trees to build their boats. These trees used to grow in Norway, now they don,t. In fact the reason why they expanded was due to warm weather.

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    Jo – link “has the details of the new paper by Salzer” links to the graphic below rather than the paper.

    ——-
    Thanks. Fixed. – Jo

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    thingadonta

    Things wrong with the hockeystick:
    star comment

    -It cherry picks data by leaving out post 1960 years which don’t support a pre-determined conclusion.

    -It hides the decline of these years by substituting a different dataset.

    -It has never explained why post 1960 years don’t fit the model, and there is a distinct lack of curiosity in this regard.

    -It splices different datasets with different uncertainties.

    -Data wasn’t checked prior to publication.

    -It uses a statistical technique which selectively mines for hockeysticks without even needing to have one.

    -Data is not available.

    -Data is not replicable.

    -Code is not available.

    -Code is not replicable.

    -It doesn’t address previous research adequately.

    -It uses local data and applies it to regional and world conclusions.

    -It not only cherry picks different time periods, it also cherry picks different data types within these periods (different proxies) with different uncertainties. It filters out those it doesn’t like.

    -The predictions it makes have not been fulfilled.

    -It wasn’t properly subjected to criticism at the time.

    -It was used as a political tool without proper context. (Al Gore even used it to show a graph of c02 levels in the past 1000 years-it’s not his main graph, he only shows it for a few seconds in one slide in one of his more befuddling moments, but even Mann has never said that the hockeystick is a measure of c02).

    -It heavily relies on one lone pine tree in the USA to make vast conclusions.

    -Data was not archived properly.

    -Samples were not duplicated and archived properly. (Mann said it is too hard to get the samples again, but you can drive and walk to one of the main trees in question and sample it yourself).

    That’s 19, but I’m sure there’s more.

    It’s piece of rubbish science.

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      Andrew McRae

      It not only cherry picks different time periods, it also cherry picks different data types within these periods (different proxies)

      Willis Eschenbach has a rather revealing graph on his WUWT guest post, see Figure 2.
      The subset of proxies that formed the most hockeystick-like shape were, 3rd from the top, the Tiljander lake sediments, and in the topmost set 9 of 11 proxies were Graybill Pines. The Tiljander proxies are a whole different matter, though Mann using them upside down was the most obvious “mistake”.
      We might be forgiven for thinking the Graybills were still an accurate record of the last 1000 years of temperature even if the Tiljander cores were wrong. This new study that McIntyre is talking about has shown that even the small subset of proxies that received unfairly high weight in producing the Mann hockeystick were themselves still not reliable indicators of temperature.

      The hockeystick was based on trees. Trees aren’t thermometers. How to get that message out?

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        john robertson

        The next 30 winters will hammer that message home.
        Global warming will be measured in feet these next few decades.

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    pat

    u r discussing weightier matters, but must post these two:

    6 Dec: UK Telegraph: Emily Gosden: UN climate change talks: Global warming negotiators can’t stand the heat
    Temperatures are rising at the UN’s climate change summit in Peru, where delegates complain their overheating venue is harming deliberations
    But the near-9,000 delegates attending the UN’s climate change summit in Peru have found they also have a more local warming problem to contend with: the venue is too hot.
    Sweltering temperatures inside the meeting halls have prompted many delegates to complain that the temporary buildings are generating their own “greenhouse effect” – with one Zimbabwean representative at Monday’s opening plenary reportedly even suggesting it was “too hot to work”.
    With temperatures in the mid-seventies outside, the mercury has hit more than 86F in some of the halls, which have been specially-constructed on the site of the Peruvian military headquarters in Lima.
    “3 days in & it’s still crazy hot. How can they expect any smart decisions to be made in these conditions?,” Yong Ly, a delegate observing the talks for the P3 Foundation anti-poverty group, wrote on Twitter…
    Benny Peiser, of the climate-sceptic Global Warming Policy Foundation described the summit as the “green blob’s annual ritual” and “an expensive form of mass tourism, never mind the carbon footprint”.
    “More importantly, the ritual gathering isn’t going to overcome the underlying deadlock,” he said.
    “The developing world will ask for a high price which will sink the deal in the US.” He said he believed any deal would not be legally-binding and that this would lead the EU to renege on its own carbon-cutting pledges. “In short, the deal that is now in the making won’t slow CO2 emissions and won’t bind any nation. But it will be sold as a breakthrough – as all agreements have been sold in the past,” he said.
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/climatechange/11277544/UN-climate-change-talks-Global-warming-negotiators-cant-stand-the-heat.html

    it didn’t take long!

    7 Dec: AFP: Philippines typhoon sparks calls for climate action
    “Year after year we are bombarded… from one typhoon to another,” he told AFP as his wife and son of one year left their Manila home for the relative safety of higher ground.
    This is the third typhoon in a row to hit the Philippines during the annual, ministerial-level climate negotiations towards a new, global pact to limit climate harm by curbing Earth-warming greenhouse gas emissions…
    It is never possible to attribute any individual weather event to climate change, but the UN’s World Meteorological Organization has said extreme storms like Haiyan were “consistent” with human-induced climate change…
    Developing countries want commitments that rich nations are loath to give: to helping with climate-change adaptation, finance, and compensation for loss and damage suffered…
    Greenpeace’s Jasper Inventor, a Filipino, added: “In the hour of our peril, now is the time for politicians to back up their expressions of solidarity with real action at the UN climate talks.
    “It has become an issue of our survival.”…
    https://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/25706451/philippines-typhoon-sparks-calls-for-climate-action/

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      Andrew

      It is never possible to attribute any individual weather event to climate change, but the UN’s World Meteorological Organization has said extreme storms like Haiyan were “consistent” with human-induced climate change…

      How fortunate for them that Equatorial Island state Philippines receiving severe typhoons is “consistent” with their theory. Considering how it always HAS had them and all.

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        Rereke Whakaaro

        Ah yes, but the current typhoons, consistent with climate change, are subtly different. So subtle, in fact, that only those anointed by the IPCC, and blessed with the power of divine observation, may be privileged to see it.

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          john robertson

          Zee Emperor’s clothes are of zee finest fabric…only the ignorant cannot feel this fabulous fabric, only the unenlightened cannot see the fantastic weave..
          Some things never change about human nature.

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          Leigh

          Actually , the IPCC and their discriminatory ‘tool” is quite simple and one that can be used by all.
          Big or potentially big is global warming.
          Including blizzards of catastrophic sizes that engulf an entire country.
          Small is just weather.
          Their “tool” is simply infallible.
          Try it.
          The amazing thing about this “tool” is it is not far removed from a crystal ball.
          It can predict the future.
          eg. When a large storm or heatwave is forcast.
          It is more often than not followed by the oblgatory climate change propoganda, “that their frequency will be increased because of global warming”.
          And yes, size does matter.

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        LevelGaze

        Last Friday I came home and found a banana skin on the kitchen floor. Totally “consistent” with a gorilla having escaped from the zoo and now hiding out underneath my bed.

        … Just not terribly likely.

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          the Griss

          “consistent with”.

          This must surely be one of the most WHIMPY statement that “climate séance” has ever come up with !!

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          NielsZoo

          In light of your report a committee has been formed and funded to study the impacts of culinary space gorilla incursions. The preliminary report has stated that mankind’s overuse of banana based foodstuffs are the primary cause and significant regulatory changes are required in order to combat this threat. Without government intervention, including a banana bunch credit system and a taxation scheme which may cause the cost of bananas to “necessarily skyrocket,” our children may never know what it’s like to be able to walk into a kitchen without fear of being accosted by a banana crazed primate. Join us in stopping man’s banana fueled planetary destruction at nomorebunches.org. As a side note the march on the UN for additional funding for more awareness campaigns will be rescheduled when there’s less snow on the ground.

          It has been noted that there are misdirections from “bananiers” attempting to blame these well supported and scientifically proven incursions on juvenile humans. These reports have not, as of now, given any proof that gorillas are not responsible therefore their arguments are considered to be crazy right-wing propaganda and will not be published in any properly peel peer reviewed journal.

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      Olaf Koenders

      Temperatures are rising at the UN’s climate change summit in Peru, where delegates complain their overheating venue is harming deliberations

      But the near-9,000 delegates attending the UN’s climate change summit in Peru have found they also have a more local warming problem to contend with: the venue is too hot.

      They need to stop emitting greenhouse gases. Tell them to hold their breath and strap themselves to their seats. That’ll fix it.

      Better still – stay home. We’re sick of paying through the nose for expensive climate confabs overloaded with self-important “delegates” that don’t do any useful work anyway.

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      gai

      “Temperatures are rising at the UN’s climate change summit in Peru, where delegates complain their overheating venue is harming deliberations…”

      What a crock weather for Lima:
      Sun on forecast:
      72°F/64°F…… 72°F/64°F…… 72°F/64°F…… 73°F/65°F

      What absolutely great weather!

      It must be all the hot air these idiots are blowing that is the problem.

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    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      Who gave permission for the Martians to breath out? That is what I want to know.

      We need an inquiry into this. I don’t mind heading it up (for reasonable financial recompense for the time involved, of course). But an inquiry is required, because we owe it to the children.

      As a secondary matter, in my far-reaching, and in-depth inquiry, I will also seek to determine how the meteorite left Mars, to come to earth, in the first place. Was it not properly tied down? And if not, who was responsible? Inquiring minds want to know.

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    Interestingly there is a proxy which does work – the polar snow line. The polar snow line is similar to the snow line on mountains, the elevation where trees stop growing, except instead of being an elevation, it is a location – the northernmost point in a given region in which trees will grow.. The polar snow line is well defined, and appears to vary based on global temperature. The Russian scientists Mann’s tree ring gimp Keith Briffa sent to the Far North, to collect his tree samples, tried to tell Briffa he was measuring the wrong metric, in the Climategate archive.

    http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=0907975032.txt

    According to reconsructions most favorable conditions for tree growth
    have been marked during 5000-1700 BC. At that time position of tree
    line was far northward of recent one.

    [Unfortunately, region of our research don’t include the whole area
    where trees grew during the Holocene. We can maintain that before 1700
    BC tree line was northward of our research area. We have only 3 dated
    remnants of trees from Yuribey River sampled by our colleagues (70 km
    to the north from recent polar tree line) that grew during 4200-4016
    and 3330-2986 BC.]

    This period is pointed out by low interannual variability of tree
    growth and high trees abundance discontinued, however, by several
    short (50-100 years) unfavorable periods, most significant of them
    dated about 4060-3990 BC. Since about 2800 BC gradual worsening of
    tree growth condition has begun. Significant shift of the polar tree
    line to the south have been fixed between 1700 and 1600 BC. At the
    same time interannual tree growth variability increased appreciably.
    During last 3600 years most of reconstructed indices have been varying
    not so very significant. Tree line has been shifting within 3-5 km
    near recent one. Low abundance of trees has been fixed during
    1410-1250 BC and 500-350 BC. Relatively high number of trees has been
    noted during 750-1450 AD.

    There are no evidences of moving polar timberline to the north during
    last century.

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    cohenite

    A great post and appropriate to talk about meaning in trees at Xmas tree time.

    A safe and happy Christmas to all.

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    Robert O

    The Hockey Stick was used in the summary of one of the earlier IPCC reports which achieved considerable political leverage, but the sad thing is that it really has never been retracted by that organisation, it just disappeared.
    Dendrochronology is not really an exact science, but gives general trends relating to the seasonal growing conditions in the higher latitudes, more or less temperature, precipitation, severe fire, etc.

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    spaatch

    Jeremy Poynton
    December 7, 2014 at 8:16 am

    The simple fact that the Vikings farmed Greenland proves that Greenland was warmer during the MWP. Don’t need the proxies, just simple facts. AKA “data”

    The Vikings only farmed the Southern most bits of Greenland, the rest of it was frozen.

    http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/lia/15.gif

    Farming is being done today in much the same places.

    http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/greenland-reaps-benefits-of-global-warming-8555241.html

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      the Griss

      Ah. so the temperature now, would be about the same as way back then.

      NO WARMING 🙂

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        the Griss

        And where was all the CO2 to cause that previous warm period.

        The point is that they have found evidence of settlements UNDER the current Greenland ice.

        So it MUST have been warmer in Greenland back then.

        Or are you another one that thinks that ice is cause by warming ???

        Sorry, but in Greenland, it was warmer then, than it is now. !

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      TdeF

      So it was called Greenland for a reason? (As opposed to Iceland)

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      gai

      spaatch, you seem to think we have no knowledge of Archeology.

      Vikings grew barley in Greenland
      …The Vikings are both famous and notorious for their like of beer and mead, and archaeologists have discussed for years whether Eric the Red (ca. 950-1010) and his followers had to make do without the golden drink when they settled in Greenland around the year 1,000.

      The Greenland climate was mild when they landed, but was it warm enough for growing corn?

      Researchers from the National Museum in Copenhagen say the answer to the question is ‘yes’. In a unique find, they uncovered very small pieces of charred grains of barley in a Viking rubbish heap on Greenland.

      The find is final proof that the first Vikings to live in Greenland did grow barley – the most important ingredient in brewing beer, making a form of porridge or baking bread, traditionally seen as staple foods in the Vikings’ nutritional diet.

      Each side of the grain of barley is only a couple of millimetres long, and the grain weighs less than 0.01 mg – yet the find is an archaeological sensation. (Photo: Peter Steen Henriksen)

      “Archaeologists have always believed that the Vikings tried to cultivate the soil on their farms in fertile southern Greenland,” says Peter Steen Henriksen, who holds an MSc in agriculture. “But this hasn’t been proved until now.”

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        gai

        MORE:

        Viking hunting outpost on Greenland
        …Knut Espen Solberg, leader of ‘The Melting Arctic’ project mapping changes in the north, said the remains uncovered in past weeks in west Greenland may also be new evidence that the climate was less chilly about 1,000 years ago than it is today.

        ‘We found something that most likely was a dock, made of rocks, for big ships up to 20-30 metres (60-90 ft) long,’ he told Reuters by satellite phone from a yacht off Greenland. He said further study and carbon dating were needed to pinpoint the site’s age.

        Viking accounts speak of hunting stations for walrus, seals and polar bears in west Greenland. Inuit hunters also lived in the area.

        ‘This is the furthest north on Greenland that evidence of year-round Viking activity has been found,’ Solberg said of the finds in an area called Nuussuaq. ‘At the time the Vikings were living here it was warmer than today.’

        In a Medieval warm period, trees and crops grew on parts of Greenland. The Vikings disappeared in the 14th century, coinciding with a little-understood shift to a cooler climate.

        Solberg said that the expedition, linked to Norwegian climate research institutes and including an archaeologist, reckoned the dock was probably built by Vikings because the Inuit only used small kayaks and had no need for a large quay.

        The team, which came upon the ruins during their expedition, also found remains of several small stone buildings nearby. Both Inuit and Vikings had similar building styles….

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      gai

      AHHH, yes Super Mandia website — The guy who is running Mikey Mann’s legal fund. No wonder he needs hipwaders….
      Photo

      Now there is a guy we should all take very seriously.

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    TdeF

    As one of the 2% of people who live in the 1/3 of the planet South of the Tropic of Capricorn (60% live North of the Tropic of Cancer), it was amazing that a tree study in the US was ever presumed to define for Global temperature, even if you could define such a thing from pole to pole. Worse, according to Prof Plimer, Manne’s original study was one tree, naturally in one location.

    The Southern Hemisphere is mainly water and the countries there are Australia, South Africa, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, half of Paraguay, New Zealand, sundry Pacific islands and Antarctica . By far the biggest land mass is Antarctica which is much colder than the arctic. Melbourne would be in Africa but it is rarely very hot. Most of this part of the planet is water. No trees at all. Maybe tuna rings?

    The absurd notion that the hemispheres were identical led to Prof Turney’s massively expensive and nearly fatal Ship of Fools expedition to document the melting ice. The only good land temperature records in the region which corresponding to 25% of the land contribution are Australian and these subject to homogenization and elimination and time limits.

    If the Australian BOM can completely ignore good professionally recorded thermometer readings in specially designed boxes prior to 1910 because they were inaccurate to one degree and not compensatable, why would anyone believe Manne’s tree proxies from another hemisphere? This is not science but the manufacture of data to support a hypothesis for political and financial reasons.

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    • #
      David Jay

      But, but, but… Mann used a BUNCH of proxies. From all over the place. Probably even ones from south of the Tropic of Capricorn.

      (shhh… don’t ask about the weighting)

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    Safetyguy66

    “The screaming absence of this obvious update for so long, is an example of what I call the “rachet effect” in science — where only the right experiments, or the right data, gets published. It’s not that there is a conspiracy, it’s just that no one is paid to find the holes in the theory and the awkward results sit buried at the bottom of a drawer for a decade. The cortex soaked in confirmation-bias couldn’t figure out how to explain them.”

    So true. Listening to someone on the radio recently, a scientist but cant remember who. He was saying that in his opinion not enough of the data from failed experiments is captured or published these days and that without a good record of the failures its impossible to ascertain the veracity of the success.

    This has certainly been the hallmark of climate science. No publication and indeed active suppression of data and results that don’t fit the models. Its a massive concern not only as it relates to the myth of CO2 Armageddon, but the effect its having on other branches of science, where researchers may be tempted to draw conclusion from the fact that the people they work with agree with them a lot rather than repeatable experiments resulting in data that supports or refutes a hypothesis….. As out-dated and unfashionable as those methods are these days.

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      NielsZoo

      That’s an excellent point. What’s the first thing you do when a complex system fails? You dig up all the logs and data before, during and after the event. From that you not only learn the conditions of the failure you also find the holes in the data that you should know when designing the new system. Learning from failure is kind of a basic thing, but in our current “post science” climate we no longer need to do any of that… we have computer models. We can use their output to compare against outputs of other computer models… much better than real data and not cluttered up with that “learning” process.

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      • #
        Rereke Whakaaro

        Dale Carnegie reputably said, “I am more successful than other people, because I have made more mistakes than other people.”

        You learn best, by allowing yourself to fail. As long as you do not irrevocably harm yourself or others, in the process.

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    • #
      James Murphy

      Similar comments have been made about pharmaceutical research. They document the things that don’t work (well enough), but don’t necessarily look at why they don’t work. Makes sense really, pharmaceutical companies exist to make a profit, this is no mystery.

      The other argument is that with the way data is recorded now, both in volume, and in method, you have to have an idea of what you are looking for, before you look for it, and the chances of serendipitous discoveries are lessened as a result. The oft-quoted example of this is the work by Jocelyn Bell Burnell, who investigated the famous ‘scruff’ on chart recorders, eventually leading to the discovery of pulsars. Now it’s entirely possible that this ‘scruff’ would be filtered out and ignored.

      Giving ever-increasing control of government research funding to accountants and bureaucrats (non scientists) could well be one of the biggest long term follies of humanity.

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    Eugene WR Gallun

    I wrote this a few years ago and now and then re-post it.

    THE HOCKEY STICK

    There was a crooked Mann
    Who played a crooked trick
    And had a crooked plan
    To make a crooked stick

    By using crooked math
    That favored crooked line
    Lysenko’s crooked path
    Led thru the crooked pines

    And all his crooked friends
    Applaud what crooked seems
    But all that crooked ends
    Derives from crooked means

    Eugene WR Gallun

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    john robertson

    What I find curious , is that the ” rapid” increase in CO2 has little effect on these long suffering trees.
    Whats it gonna take to get some healthy growth on the starving plants/

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    manalive

    The location of the treeline is largely controlled by summer temperatures and growing season length. Temperatures have responded strongly to twentieth-century global warming and will display a magnified response to future warming. Dendroecological studies indicate enhanced conifer recruitment during the twentieth century. However, conifers have not yet recolonized many areas where trees were present during the Medieval Warm period (ca AD 800–1300) or the Holocene Thermal Maximum (HTM; ca 10000–3000 years ago).

    … (Climate change and the northern Russian treeline zone G.M MacDonald,* K.V Kremenetski, and D.W Beilman 2008).
    That’s a quote from one of umpteen treeline studies around the Arctic ocean — the Arctic treeline being a far more reliable indicator of past climate conditions in the Norther Hemisphere than tree rings IMO (as a layman) but ignored by the media.
    The dendro-studies by Mann and his cohorts would seem to be the outliers but somehow got all the publicity.
    This ‘hide the decline’ study confirms the ‘hockey stick’ as blatant scientific malpractice (can’t say ‘phraud’).

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    panzerJ

    Here in Victoria the “authorities” are scaring us with tales of a savage fire season,which is strange considering so far this summer we are having a wet cool one,and the way the season is going this will continue on til Christmas and the new year.
    Fires will eventually come about,that’sd the nature of Victoria but they will not be as destructive as other years.

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      panzerJ

      Flood reports for east Gippsland.
      This rain will assist in the growth of grasses scrub etc in the bush which will eventually lead to a trash burden on the forest floor which will stoke eventual fires if fuel reduction burns aren’t done,which is exactly what will happen under a Labor govt.
      Wildfires come after a prolonged dry spell of at least two years,it is the work that is done in the next autumns that will give a guideline as to the severity of any wildfires that erupt(as opposed to a bushfire which can break out at any time once the weather becomes hot and dry).

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    panzerJ

    Looking at ancient trees is no pointer or outlook for our coming weather.
    Too many variables over the centuries to be able to use any data,all it does is give us a historical perspective of what the climate/weather may have been like,which is as good as saying “once upon a time”.

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    John of Cloverdale

    I am sure “our” ABC, the BBC, et al. will be all over this “breaking” news story (sarc). Well maybe after Christmas and the New Year for the ABC. We wouldn’t want to interrupt their holidays, would we?

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    Joe V.

    Hate to rain on the parade but has anyone considered pollution ? Remember Acid rain which was big in the Eighties , killing forests in Northern & Central Europe when even the then Communists authorities in Czechoslovakia were liming their forests for protection from the smoke of neighbouring Poland & East Germany, while Norway was reconsidering its annual gift of a Christmas tree to London in protest .

    Anyway, here’s an example of a study from Tennessee showing increased uptake of metals coinciding with stunted growth
    http://50-87-121-150.unifiedlayer.com/treerings/science.pdf

    Have yet to see if any there may be any such studies for the Sheep Mountain .

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      NielsZoo

      Did you read the article? I got to the first column of the second page and stopped here, emphasis mine:

      …but whether such concentrations are toxic in these tree tissues is not known. At all sites short-leaf pine are now growing at 0.6 to 0.8 mm/year, compared to initial rates of 1.6 to 7.3 mm/year (Fig. 1). However, no statistically significant (12) correlations between current tree growth rate and trace metals concentrations in the phloem plus cambium were found. Whether metals concentrations of such magnitude in living tree tissues are potentially of concern is not yet clear.

      Not something I would hang my hat on.

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    Roy Hogue

    I suppose I spent too many years worrying about how to calibrate the expensive boxes my employer sold. But to me an instrument used to measure something should be calibrated regularly and the result you get from the same input should be the same, time after time after time… …forever.

    So a question arises from all this. How do you calibrate a tree ring? Judging from the result Jo has laid out I guess you don’t. If tree rings could be calibrated maybe those graphs would all look the same within the calibration error. But they don’t. They’re not even close. It’s not even sure that the input is the same: different trees; different places; different weather from one year to the next; different amounts of rain; soil depletion slowing growth. We don’t even know all the variables.

    I’m not sure what the moral in this is. But it’s got to be something like this — a tree ring may tell you something about the age of the individual tree but useful information ends at that point and for anything else you start guessing. I think it’s about time for climate research to leave tree rings to the botanists and get back to using better methods — something tried and true like, say, real undoctored temperature measurements, maybe?

    I’m sure our friend the Black Adder will have something to say about this so have at it BA, have at it. If you know how to calibrate a tree ring I’m all ears.

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    Svend Ferdinandsen

    It is strange that treerings ever got used to tell about temperature. I have’nt seen the papers that without doubt show that treerings can be used as thermometers, and SteveMcIntyre might come up with something about that.
    It holds also for many of the other proxies, that they react on a lot of different environmental factors and temperature is only one of them and may not be the most influential.
    The way they are used, you could use anything that varies a bit from year to year, then you “calibrate” to known present days temperature and voila, you have a thermometer.
    It is more woodo than science, but disguised with a lot of complicated matrix operations, which very few understand.
    My point is, that if normal averages dont give the wanted result, then it is because there is no result. To use matrix operations you have to be very carefull. You can extract a real result or you can extract your wishes.

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      NielsZoo

      Is “woodo” a typo or deliberate? Either way, I like it. I have to agree that one could probably use these methods to fit the stock market in the 1900’s into Russian tree rings from the 1300’s with just as much fidelity.

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        Svend Ferdinandsen

        I am danish, so english of any kind is not my natural language, and some times an error comes up. Likewise i can not write or talk so sofisticated as one born with the language. The finer details are lost in translation.
        By the way is woodo a word?

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          Rereke Whakaaro

          It is a word when spoken in one of the Germanic languages where “w” is a long “v” sound.

          The English spelling is voodoo, and refers to African tribal (or perhaps South American Indian?) belief in black magic, and the ability of the medicine man to curse somebody.

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          NielsZoo

          “Woodo” is not a word but we could use it as a noun describing the religion and magic of tree rings. R. Whakaaro, voodoo here in the States has always been more than just a belief in “black” magic. It’s a very naturalistic and somewhat secretive religion. Don’t understand much about the intricacies but the practitioners are in the Caribbean Islands. They, along with the Cajuns are the purported flock here in the States primarily concentrated in Louisiana and Mississippi with a smattering of them in Alabama, Georgia and Florida.

          FYI Svend your English is very good… and far, far better than I could do with the language I studied in high school and college. I’d be lucky not to get boiled socks for lunch if I tried to order in French.

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            Rereke Whakaaro

            Thank you for pointing out that voodoo comes from the Caribbean Islands. I currently work in International Relations, so naturally I am geographically challenged.

            For example, I have absolutely no idea which wine would be appropriate to order, to accompany lightly seasoned boiled socks?

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    Don Gaddes

    Fossil tree-rings are just as valid temperature/precipitation models as growing trees. The data is not limited to particular species,(although observed better in some.)

    It may be noted that the current Solar Induced orbital ‘Dry Cycle’ which started circa 110 degrees longitude (Beijing) in mid-February 2014, is now affecting New Zealand – and will reach Australia’s East Coast by early January 2015. Thus we have the current slowing of the Southern Lows and the wild weather on the East Coast, as the encroaching ‘Dry Cycle’ approaches from the East. (note also the Phillipines typhoon, and further activity along these longitudes.)
    This current series of ‘Dry Cycles’ will mean a Five year Dry Period, exacerbated by the Lunar Metonic Cycle happening in 2016.
    The temperatures will fluctuate as a result of precipitation,(or lack of it.) – but overall the picture is Colder and Drier.) The current fear-mongering over temperature is a disgrace.

    Alex S. Gaddes identified these Solar Induced Orbital ‘Dry Cycles’ ( and a method for accurately predicting them) in his work ‘Tomorrow’s Weather’ (1990.) An updated version of this work,(including ‘Dry Cycle’ forecasts to 2055) is available as a free pdf from dongaddes93@gmail.com

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    yonason

    What this site needs is a little BL_ADDER relief. That guy is definitely full to bursting.

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    […] to a narrative of “fake but accurate” when it comes to “climate change” (Jo Nova) You’ll be shocked that after decades of studying 800 year old tree rings, someone has finally […]

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    Michael Larkin

    Jo, I always have difficulty understanding Steve McIntyre’s rather technical posts. I’d like to thank you for exracting the essence of his latest and making it much more intelligible to me. This isn’t the first time you’ve clarified technical issues for me!

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    The Hockey Stick has been thoroughly discredited in terms of sampling, time period, and statistical methodologies. However, the Hockey Stick never could have provenance if scientists would have noted the obvious: tree lines in the past 10,000 years have been both both much farther north in the Northern Hemisphere and grew at much higher altitudes. The Russian scientist who provided Mann and Briffa their core samples made note of that when they obtained the samples. Trees may grow faster with less competition for light, when better fertilized (liked when neighboring trees blocking sunlight die and decompose), when climate warms for an extended period, or when changing wind patterns increase precipitation. Or when a woodsman cuts down neighboring trees and pastures his sheep and cattle nearby. But during sustained warm periods, trees grow farther north, and when it’s cooler they retreat south. Finding evidence that trees grew hundreds of kilometers further north 6,000 years ago simply means it was warmer then, with no regard to core samples. No other tests or interpretations need apply.

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  • #

    5 stages of grief
    denial
    anger
    bargaining
    depression
    acceptance

    As the AGW crowd goes through these stages(mourning the loss of their idiocy), it will make for some entertaining reading.
    Free advice:
    Do not take it seriously.

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    Amber

    Looks like M Mann has the opportunity to review and if necessary dispute the work of
    Steve McIntyre .

    Science is great because you can afford to make mistakes on the way to the limits of truth at a point in time .

    Anyone making claims that the science is settled is trying to sell something because they are running out of runway and they know it .

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    […] recently, climate science denialist JoNova took the new paper by Salzer et al to task using equally mind numbing arguments. JoNova notes that […]

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    • #

      Greg, thanks for popping in, thumbs up from me. Lets share your arguments with everyone here. From your link:

      More recently, climate science denialist JoNova took the new paper by Salzer et al to task using equally mind numbing arguments.

      What’s the scientific definition of a “denialist” Greg, or are you just namecalling?

      JoNova notes that “after decades of studying 800 year old tree rings, someone has finally found some trees living as long ago as 2005. These rarest-of-rare tree rings have been difficult to find … The US government may have spent $30 billion on climate research, but that apparently wasn’t enough to find trees on SheepMountain living between the vast treeless years of 1980 to now.”
      I’m sure the scientists involved in tree ring research would like to know where their $30 billion dollars went, but that’s another story.

      The $30 billion, went here. It’s out of date now, the real number is much higher.

      I asked Malcolm Hughes about JoNova’s implication that there has been next to zero research on or with bristlecone pines over these many years. He said, “This post makes a big deal about the lack of updating of bristlecone pine chronologies since 1980. This is simply wrong. She fails to acknowledge that in 2009 we published on bristlecone pine growth rates in PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) and put tree-ring data from Sheep Mountain out to the year 2005 in a publicly accessible archive.”

      [OK, so multiple hockey-stick papers, and repeats and iterations in the IPCC reports plus press conferences is equal to putting the data in a “publicly accessible archive”. Like listeners of MSNBC are trawling PNAS for loosely connected “growth rate” studies and hunting down the datasets while they drive to work. Good luck with convincing people that climate scientists are working just as hard to update their scary graphs as they did to create them.

      JoNova also implies that the lack of tree ring proxy use for periods after 1980 is somehow suspicious, but as detailed at length above, the divergence problem is, well, a problem. Also, further work such as that reported here is likely to revive some of that data and allow it to be used, eventually. At the very least, future work with high altitude/latitude tree ring data will be improved by these methodological and ecological studies.

      Yes, the divergence problem is real. Congratulations. And “one day” the data might be improved enough to “allow it to be used”. Or then again, we might turn it into a logo for the IPCC and put it on hats, banners, and posters all over the world instead. What would a scientist do, I wonder?

      Climate science denialist Steve McIntyre has also weighed in on Salzer et all’s research. His post is truly mind numbing, as he treats Salzer et al as a climate reconstruction paper, and critiques it as such, but the paper examines the methodology of tree ring proxy use and the ecology of tree rings. McIntyre shows the same figure I show above (Figure 5 from that paper) and critiques the researchers for failing to integrate that figure or its data with Mann et al’s climate reconstructions. But they shouldn’t have. That is not what the paper is about. Another very recent paper by the same team is in fact a climate reconstruction study (published in Climate Dynamics) but McIntyre manages to ignore that.

      Of course, Mann et al should not rush to integrate the new data with their 1998 Hockeystick. It’s only been 16 years that it’s been in the headlines, and there are only global agreements, billions of dollars and the fate of the planet at stake. Why hurry?

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        Sean McHugh

        Greg, thanks for popping in, thumbs up from me. Lets share your arguments with everyone here. From your link:

        Jo, you are more generous than I. A link isn’t “arguments”. It requires no work or courage from the dropper and means that the recipient first find, condense and present possible arguments against his position before composing counterpoints. For that, Greg will get a thumbs down from me.

        Merry Christmas to you and everyone else here. Happy Holidays to Greg.

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          Michael Wells

          Sean, what are you babbling about? Did you not notice that Greg wrote the article he linked? How is coming here to present it to the person he’s criticizing and invite her response lazy or cowardly? Do words mean anything to you people? Or are you just addicted to whatever burst of contrived righteous anger and scorn you can gin up?

          Do you think I can finish this post without using a single non-interrogative sentence? What kind of question is that?

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        Michael Wells

        JoNova –

        So researchers revised their info, the updates were published in reports and publications that can be accessed for free online, and were announced to the press… but this doesn’t count as updating because it wasn’t featured on MSNBC?

        And this:

        Yes, the divergence problem is real. Congratulations. And “one day” the data might be improved enough to “allow it to be used”. Or then again, we might turn it into a logo for the IPCC and put it on hats, banners, and posters all over the world instead. What would a scientist do, I wonder?

        You do realize this isn’t remotely a rebuttal, don’t you? Just playground “nyah nyah nyah” games?

        Of course, Mann et al should not rush to integrate the new data with their 1998 Hockeystick. It’s only been 16 years that it’s been in the headlines, and there are only global agreements, billions of dollars and the fate of the planet at stake. Why hurry?

        You do realize the same for this, don’t you?

        How do you look in the mirror without bursting out laughing?

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      Jaymez

      “I asked Malcolm Hughes about JoNova’s implication that there has been next to zero research on or with bristlecone pines over these many years.”

      This pretty much proves the point Jo Nova was making because there was no obvious updated research, you had to ask Hughes.

      In the Salzer et al (2009) paper in PNAS the authors admit that they can’t really allocate how much ring growth is due to temperature, precipitation or CO2 fertilisation, even though they are prepared to make some guesses with regards the first two climate factors and dismiss the last.

      A bit like the IPCC dismissing TSI as a significant climate factor – which incidentally is a potentially more significant factor on mechanisms such as photosynthesis at higher altitudes as I’m sure you know. Which emmmmm, may even have an impact on tree growth at high altitudes. So TSI can have an impact on growth, but also total irradiation will be greater, more direct and less diffused and scattered at higher altitudes.

      In addition, changes in aerosol (particulate) atmospheric content, would also impact on irradiation scattering and diffusion. For plant growth the photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) is of high significance. TSI, and aerosol content and atmospheric density which of course changes with altitude are all important factors not significantly explored in the Bristlecone tree ring data.

      In the graphs at Salzer et al 2009, their data shows firstly that while recent tree growth in the last 50 year period to 2005 may be marginally the highest in recent times, it is not dramatically higher than the growth rates from about 1900BC to 1500BC years ago. (as shown in Graph A). Graph B shows an extremely variable, but increasing growth trend from 1950 to 2005. Coincidentally, this would of course coincide with the continued global warming trend experienced since the LIA, but the more dramatic rise in growth rate in the decade to 2005 may be at least partially explained by the reduction in aerosols over North America during that time. the graphs can be found in the PNAS paper here: http://www.pnas.org/content/106/48/20348/F2.medium.gif

      Certainly every measure I have seen of aerosol pollution over North America shows significant declines from about 1970 onwards. This could increase PAR particularly in the Alps and therefore impact on tree growth rates.

      Then of course the adiabatic lapse rate can also alter significantly depending on the amount of moisture in the air. With some trending global warming since the LIA there is predicted to be more moisture in the atmosphere. When moist air rises and cools, water condenses, thereby releasing heat. This would also impact tree growth rates more significantly in the Alps where the air is usually much drier.

      Anyway I digress.

      Ignoring all the scientific arguments, statistical methodology and assumptions made or not even considered, I just find it incredibly ironic that as part of the climate scare campaign, some scientists are pointing with concern to ‘Unusual Modern Growth of Trees at High Elevation’.

      To any real environmentalists, increased growth rate of trees would be considered a good thing and they would support whatever is causing this wonderful outcome. More trees, cleaner air, more insects, birds, other fauna, and of course potential fuel and materials for humans to utilise.

      But no, in the ‘opposites world’ we currently inhabit this increased tree growth is apparently a portent of doom!

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        Michael Wells

        Jaymez – So, Greg asked the scientist who did the updated research to comment on it, and that proves JoNova’s point that the research wasn’t updated. Got it.

        Denier blogs often resemble nothing so much as grade C Lewis Carroll knockoffs.

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          Michael, if you are going to use the term “denier” here on a science blog, you need to define it. Please name the empirical evidence that we won’t discuss. See this post asking for evidence from Jan 2010. Perhaps you’ll be the first to find that paper. If you can’t define that term in a scientific way with accurate English you can’t use it here. You wouldn’t want to be a petty namecaller eh?

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          the Griss

          But this isn’t a “d*nier” blog.

          Its a “realist/science” blog.

          Many people here have degrees in maths/science/engineering, or in multiple science subjects. Some have PhD’s in those subjects as well.

          This is not a blog of social studies, political and arts majors like most alarmist blogs.

          The “d*niers” are those that refuse to accept scientific reality.

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    eliza

    Jo ‘I feel sorry for you.’ so do I, for the friends you keep!

    ‘For four years, Nova worked for the Shell Questacon Science Circus, based in Canberra, Australia. The Science Circus is an outreach program run by Questacon, the Australian National Science and Technology Centre. The program is sponsored by Shell Oil, with additional support from Australian National University. She has also worked for Foxtel, a cable television company part owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.’

    Say no more!

    http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Jo_Nova

    Jo why did you even bother to answer this? its a complete joke Hahahahaha

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      “eliza” — Sourcewatch is a joke, why would I bother trying to correct their mistakes? They feed small minds who quote ad hominem fallacies.

      As I said last time someone raised that: While I involved with the Science Circus, I was paid by the government and a member of The Wilderness Society, Greenpeace and The Greens. Wash that through your grand conspiracy theory. Our Foxtel “income” BTW was 0.1% of the income from The Australian Greenhouse Office. By your reasoning, I’m an angel.

      I’ve published this because it’s at the bottom of the thread. Don’t bother trying again with off-topic ad homs.

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        Lord Jim

        It is interesting to compare the opening paragraphs for Jo Nova and Tim Flannery:

        Tim Flannery will take up a position at Sydney’s Macquarie University in the Division of Environmental and Life Sciences in mid-2007. [1][2] He was Director of the South Australian Museum until he resigned from the position in August 2007. He is also a “councillor” of the Copenhagen Climate Council and the World Future Council. He has invested in Geodynamics, a business venture involved in geothermal power.

        [SNIP Lord Jim, since there are errors in the SourceWatch para on me, (like my birthyear and more), I don’t feel any urge to repeat them – J]

        Uh, so what are Tim’s qualifications again?

        But we should thank eliza for an epic example of a ‘Bulverism’.

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    […] recently, climate science denialist JoNova took the new paper by Salzer et al to task using equally mind numbing arguments. JoNova notes […]

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