Last month the National Research Council report on climate reconstructions released its report and basically vindicated the hockey stick. This was widely reported in the media. But not in The Australian. I did a search through the archives of The Australian to see what they had published about the study. They did not report anything when the hockey stick study was published or when it was included in the TAR or publish anything supportive of it. They have, however, published several stories on how it was wrong or fraudulent.
For example, Soon and Sallie Baliunas' badly flawed paper was touted as refuting the hockey stick. Mark Steyn was allowed to claim that Mann, Bradley and Hughes were guilty of fraud. And now, right on the front page, the hacks who put out The Australian claim that Global Warming is a fraud. (Next week the headline will probably be "The Fraud of Evolution".)
If you've been following the hockey stick wars, you've probably guessed that The Australian is peddling the Wegman report. Because the Wegman report was commissioned for an obviously partisan purpose by Joe Barton, and because the non-partisan NRC report had already covered the same ground and then some, Wegman's report has been ignored by the media. Apart from The Australian, the only other newspaper to mention this is the notorious Wall Street Journal editorial page.
Inside the paper we find Alan Wood writing:
[Wegman]'s report was released last Friday and supported McKitrick and McIntyre's criticisms of the hockey stick, finding Mann's statistical work flawed and unable to support the claims of the hottest century, decade and year of the past millennium.
The terms of reference for Wegman were carefully constructed to ask if there were flaws in Mann's eight-year old paper but not to address the broader question of what effect such flaws have on the temperature reconstruction. This is so folks like Wood can declare the hockey stick broken if any flaw is found. Did Mann's paper contain flaws? The NRC panel agreed that it did, but also found that they made little difference to the reconstruction. Wood, of course, doesn't mention this.
However, it destroys the idea of an alarming escalation in global temperatures and, as the Wall Street Journal remarked on Friday, brings the present temperature rise within the range of natural historical variation.
Even if the hockey stick was broken this would not follow. Never mind the reconstructions, the instrumental record shows an alarming escalation in temperatures. And if we don't have a reconstruction, then we don't know whether or not the present temperature rise is within the range of natural historical variation.
But there is no escaping the damage done to the IPCC's reputation. It has relied heavily on a badly flawed piece of work, produced by what Wegman discovered was a small, insular group of paleoclimatologists who incestuously peer review, reinforce and defend each others' work.
The NRC panel concluded otherwise. Mann's work was not badly flawed, but Wegman's Social Network Analysis was.
Wood then continues to cherry pick his studies, citing the dodgy House of Lords Committee on Economic Affairs inquiry while ignoring the better Stern review, as John Quiggin explains.
Wood's article and the front page headline appears in the Wednesday Australian, which has the Higher Educational Supplement, full of ads from Australian universities for academic positions. I think universities should find more effective means of using their advertising dollars than giving them to a newspaper that holds science, scientists and the scientific method in such contempt.
... as "plausible".
LOL!
Tim, who can take you seriously when you post stuff like this?
See Tim. This is just what I mean. Mr Mann has been found out, effectively manipulating the data to misrepresent the position.
Mr Von Storch stated in an interview in Der Speigel about Mr MannSpiegel:
"Why were Mann's critics unable to get a hearing?
Storch:
His influence in the community of climate researchers is great. And Mann rejects any reproach most forcefully. His defensiveness is understandable. Nobody likes to see his own child die. But we must respect our credibility
as research scientists. Otherwise we play into the hands of those sceptics of global climate change who imagine a conspiracy between science and politics."
No doubt Mr Mann's motives are fine, and he really cares about the problems of AGW. But the issue is that he has lost so much credibility for the movement. Can we please all (including you and RC) get back to real science and PROVE AGW so we can get on with taking action to fix it.
Credibility is what this is all about, and it seems to me that people like Mr Mann are really losing it for those of us who care.
Mark Steyn was allowed to claim
Good gawd. How in the hell has Mark Steyn become the right's preeminent authority on everything?
Well, Mann was not a man after all. He was too "busy" to turn up for Congress for his public exection.
The use of Mannian tree ring studies as temperature proxies has been debunked.
Time to "move on" to the so called "other evidence", ice cores, and boreholes etc.
I wonder how long it will take before the ice core evidence, which has been manipulated as badly as the tree rings, is also debunked.
Boreholes will be more difficult for the warmers, because a lot more studies have been done by truly independent people.
Also, remember that the calibration of the CO2 measuring equipment is done by one small group.
When this is all over, there won't be much of the current "ClimateScience" left standing.
Shorter MarkR:
Now, where'd I put that tinfoil hat?!
Best,
D
Yes, that's correct, Nanny -- "plausible" means "completely demolished."
And Dano -- don't be so harsh on MarkR. I read the same paper he did: "Mannian Tree-Ring Studies Considered Harmful" in the Journal of Tendentious Results.
Jeez. Do researchers in other fields have to put up with this kind of crap?
Oh, yeah. I forgot.
I know it's impossible to draw a direct correlation between individual instances of high/low temperature and global temperature trends, but here in England we've been sweating our way through what today was apparantly the hottest recorded temperature here (if the news reports are to be believed). I'm just waiting for that post El Nino cooling trend to kick in now...
My favourite bit:
"the IPCC's lead author, who selected Mann's hockey stick for prominent display, was none other than Mann himself."
Not one of the lead authors, mind, but *the* lead author. No wonder he's busy!
The real question in all this is who supplies this nonesense to the paper.
PS MarkR "When this is all over, there won't be much of the current "ClimateScience" left standing." are you predicting that conservation of energy will be proved wrong? Your faith in the earth's atmosphere as a life support system for money making is truly fanatical....
Hi Billy
There won't be any "conservation of energy".
The law of unintended consequences is in play.
Warmers mistaken concern over natural climate change is forcing governments to adopt extensive nuclear power programs, which I personally am not in favour of.
Fancy having something unpleasant, with a half life of 10,000 years, at the bottom of your garden?
That's what you're working towards.
Wegman is anti hockeystick but not anti warming Here's pt10 of page 50 "We note here that we are statisticians/mathematicians who were asked to comment on the correctness of the methodology found in MBH98/99. In this report we have focused on answering this question and not on whether or not the global climate is changing. We have discussed paleoclimatology only to the extent that it was necessary to make our discussion of the statistical issues clear.The instrumented temperature record makes it clear that global temperatures have
risen since 1850 CE. How this present era compares to previous epochs is not clear because the uncertainties in the proxies. However, it is clear that average global temperature increases are not the real focus. It is the temperature increases at the poles that matter and average global or Northern Hemisphere increases do not address the issue. We note that according to experts at NASA's JPL, the average ocean height is increasing by approximately 1 millimeter per year, half of which is due to melting of polar ice and the other half due to thermal expansion.The latter fact implies that the oceans are absorbing tremendous amounts of heat,which is much more alarming because of the coupling of ocean circulation to the atmosphere. (See Wunsch 2002, 2006)."
That Alan Wood would get this completely wrong is hardly surprising .
For all who say RealClimate don't censor postings, here's a copy of one I just sent for posting on their new page "The missing piece at the Wegman hearing":
"Finally, after years of prodding you admit that MBH98 was wrong.
None of the other following studies have had similar audit, and until such time as they do, in the light of the many flaws uncovered by Steve McIntyre, and the Wegman Report, they can no longer be relied upon."
Check their page to see if it see's the light of day there.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/07/the-missing-piece…
Hi Bill
I live in the County of Surrey, England.
Within proveable geological history, the whole county has been under sea water.
Conversley, within proveable geological history, sea levels fell to create a land bridge between England and France.
On a geological measure, the 1 millimeter change you appear to be worried about is so vanishingly small as to be totally insignificant.
You miss the point MarkR ,as you done on many other things. This is about argument from authority and not my opinion. The conclusion of the Wegman report is that global warming ( irrespective of the hockey stick debate) is a relaity to worry about.
MarkR - I have commented before that the real impact of Mann et al's egregious research will be to make it harder for legitimate climate scientists to get funding for what may be worthwhile projects. There will justifiably be an air of healthy skeptisicm for a while to come. The community's (including Nature, Science et al) failure to strongly criticise the statistical juggling that went on is largely to blame. Hopefully, this embarassing example can lead to an improvement in standards across the board. Following hot on the heels of the Hwang debacle I'd suggest that the scientific publications need to have a long hard look at their methods.
Au contraire mon ami, it is you who misses the point.
Temperatures and climate have always been changing.
The question is, do we cause any of it.
Hi Jack
I agree with you 100%.
Let's hope real honest scientists, and science come to the fore again.
MarkR now I know you are a troll. It is up to the moderator of this site to control your trolling.
Hi Bill
Thanks for that.
Wouldn't it be easier just to try and point out if I was factually incorrect?
The Australian has one incredibly partisan opinion page, and not just on the matter of climate change. The current federal Liberal party has, apparently, decided that state Liberal parties will never win elections again. And so they are marching headfirst towards the demolition of the state-government based federalism. If I am reading the opinion page correctly The Australian couldn't be happier, I believe they call it "reform". If some part of the federal Liberal party decides that Evolution is the next Great Evil I will not be surprised to see long tracts in The Australian explaining to us, in a head-masterly kind of voice, why the Earth is clearly no more than 6000 years old and exactly why God made dinosaur bones to trick the unbelieving. All I take from all this is that they know exactly which side of the bread has the butter on it.
The more interesting thing here is the obvious parallel between creationism and global warming denialism. A parallel that I am quite sure some (or perhaps even most) such denialists find quite distastful. MarkR here, for instance, doesn't seem to need to evaluate all evidence for global warming to know, quite confidently, that they are all wrong. It would be an easy way to do science if it worked; First work out what your conclusion is and then start on the trivial matter of working out ways in which all the observations are wrong. Such thinking has led to the wholesale abandonment of scientific rigor. In creationism it's led to the confident assertion of things like large variation in the speed of light and on the global warming side conclusions such as 'there is no such thing as average temperature'. I think that probably this way of thinking about things warps your ability to critically analyse in an objective way.
At least in the case of creationism the personal motivation of its adherents is obvious enough. I can only speculate on the motivation of people who have decided, a priori, that climate change is not happening. The debate that is proceeding is frustrating though, and probably pointless. In the science world new evidence adds confidence to conclusions, in the creationist/anti-gw world new evidence has no intrinsic value, it simply hasn't been debunked yet. 'Debate' is impossible when people have decided to make the facts fit their pre-conceptions, everything ends up as a shouting match. At the end of the day though, the scientific method works and good science tends to eliminate bad science, regardless of the debate, even if one side of the debate gets played out on the opinion page of The Australian.
Hi mg
"MarkR here, for instance, doesn't seem to need to evaluate all evidence for global warming to know, quite confidently, that they are all wrong."
Well MBH98 was all wrong, and the warmers, and IPCC have used the Hockey Stick for years as their totem.
Since the only research to have been fully independently audited has proved to be wrong, aren't you a little concerned about the quality of the rest of it?
MarkR you are very little evil troll aren't you. Fully independently audited" guffaw . That will get their blood boiling won't it.
heh :)
Bill I think a workable, everyday term for an evil troll such as MarkR may be "lawyer". Things are true in so far as one can win the shouting match over them, persuading an observer not expert in the field that you sound prettier than your opponent does. On the plus side of his account I haven't noticed MarkR pretending to be a scientist in any respect (which you can tell anyway by his force of advocacy for his casus belli).
Re: "Finally, after years of prodding you admit that MBH98 was wrong.
None of the other following studies have had similar audit, and until such time as they do, in the light of the many flaws uncovered by Steve McIntyre, and the Wegman Report, they can no longer be relied upon."
How could you be so irrational, MarkR? The whole RC article you cite shows that the criticisms of M&M and their implementation make no difference in the grand scheme of things, that the hockey stick survives as intact as it was earlier.
You've been inhaling too much CO2 from those fossil fuel industry folk.
>On a geological measure, the 1 millimeter change you appear to be worried about is so vanishingly small as to be totally insignificant
MarkR why are you wasting our time? You are 300% out on your numbers - prehaps you might visit the University of Colorado (sea level) website between visits to cliamteaudit.... Geez, and to think your willing to hang a Mann for underestimating the warmth of temperatures 900 years ago? BTW, nice and warm in England ain't it. Guess it must be than darn heat island again...
mg | July 19, 2006 10:38 PM
Thats an interesting theory. Although I think that the federal LN/P's push for centralisation of federal power has been driven by its frustration with an "obstructionist" states-based Sentate.
The ALP has also, and continues to, strongly favour centralisation of governmental affairs. Most centre-Left political activists want the federal government to control health and education spending.
Most ALP state premiers seem happy with Howards version of federalism, especially since he brought the states-financing GST in, a much more lucrative source of revenue than wholesale taxes.
PS Sorry about OT.
You will all notice that, RC and Stoat aside, most climate scientists don't bother debating with the sceptics and are too busy working to worry about people who don't understand the science.. The arguments have moved on and left the sceptics behind. There are lots of important unanswered scientific questions but from where I'm sitting most politicians, big business etc are convinced and trying (slowly) to do something about AGW.
Mark R said:
"I live in the County of Surrey, England".
Really? Could have fooled me. Sounds more like you reside somehwere in Cloud Cuckoo Land. You speak as if you are a sage of wisdom on the subject of climate science. Please, I would appreciate it if you'd list all of the dozens of peer-reviewed papers you have out on the subject so that I could download them from the relevant journals. Same goes for Jack Lacton and the other climate change deniers, like Per. You guys talk BIG but don't seem to do research in the field. Do you? I reckon the answer is a resounding 'no'.
I am not a climate scientist but a population ecologist, and I sure as hell wouldn't dare to make grandiose statements contradicting the consensus reached that is reflected in the latest IPCC draft, as well as in the positions of just about every National Academy of Science Panel of every country on Earth. Forget the bloody hockey stick. The NAS in the US released a statement just after the IPCC dosument was released affirming AGW. They also claimed thatb the IPCC was very conservative in its regional and global predictions of future warming - this because the IPCC document incorporated so many scientific views (on both sides of the debate) that no extreme position was allowed to dominate the final draft.
Stephen Harrison is correct. To the vast majority of statured climate scientists, the sceptics are a laughingstock. I made the mistake of debating a sceptic in environmental science on the topic of extinction rates and the consequences of human simplification of the biosphere a few years ago. Never again. The guy knew absolutely nothing about the topic and ended up giving a short lecture claiming that ecological science was dominated by 'dogmatic views' and backed this up with slides of characters from the "Lord of the Rings" movies.
BTW, MarkR ought to know that Hans von Storch was recently part of a BBC online panel of seven 'experts' in the UK which was questioned about the seriousness of AGW. Although 3 out of 7 downplayed the possibility that it would be 'catastrophic' for humans, they unanimously argued that it would likely lead to 'severe changes for humans'. Here are 4 of the most important questions with poll results:
1. It is likely that temperatures will rise by 3C to 5C by the year 2100 unless we act swiftly to cut greenhouse gas emissions and protect natural forests. VERDICT: YES 7, NO 0
2. Temperatures might rise by as much as 8C by 2100, but this is less likely. VERDICT: YES 7, NO 0
3. A temperature rise of 3C to 5C would probably bring severe changes for humans. VERDICT: YES 7, NO 0
7. We are being reckless with the planet through greenhouse gas emissions combined with broader human-driven environmental change. VERDICT: YES 7, NO 0
Point seven is perhaps the most important. AGW is one of several major stresses inflicted on natural systems by humans. That we are being 'reckless' with the biosphere is beyond scientific debate. It is a given. A fact. Now its past the time to start to deal with these problems before they can spiral beyond the control of humanity t deal with them.
Hi Bill
Within proveable geological history, the whole county has been under sea water.
Posted by: MarkR | July 19, 2006 09:09 PM
I like this. Now if there were some untoward policy implications to this claim he'd be trying to debunk the science that suggest it as well.
No Mark...I say PROOVE that the whole country has been under sea water.....what's your evidence?
I like nannygovernment as well. His basic premise...that Nanny government sucks requires the conclusion that global warming is a hoax....well done mate. You're a true thinker and I'm sure with enough will power you can change the photometric properties of the CO2 molecule.
Jeff's forecasts (F) with my responses (R)
F1 It is likely that temperatures will rise by 3C to 5C by the year 2100 unless we act swiftly to cut greenhouse gas emissions and protect natural forests.
R1. So what? temps in Surrey yesterday were 10C higher than normal, how many extinctions were there?
F2. Temperatures might rise by as much as 8C by 2100, but this is less likely.
R2. So what? temps in Bagdad yesterday were 10C higher than in Surrey. How many died there otehr than from Sunni/Shia mayhem?
F3. A temperature rise of 3C to 5C would probably bring severe changes for humans.
R3. Why? Temps in Dubai/Cairo/Baghdad are always at least 10C higher than in Surrey, so why the net migration from Surrey to Dubai?
F4. We are being reckless with the planet through greenhouse gas emissions combined with broader human-driven environmental change.
R4. Survival of the fittest, sadly excluding Jeff.
I can only speculate on the motivation of people who have decided, a priori, that climate change is not happening.
Posted by: mg | July 19, 2006 10:38 PM
I think their motivation is quite clear. And I always try to tease it out of them by asking them why they don't want global warming to be real......the obvious answer is that it prooves that markets can NOT self correcting and that sometimes you need a government solution. They hate that answer because they are obviously so independent they don't need or use any government services. Heck they could live on an Island all by themselves and be just as well off. They'd even have cable and a big screen TV on their island.
Rex: Re R3 so according to this logic there is nothing to worry about if the world becomes 4 degrees cooler since there are lots of places that are 4 degrees cooler than Dubai/Cairo/Baghdad.
John
An extraordinarily irresponsible column from Wood. To go from one specific statistical critique of one specific paper to the position that global warming is a "fraud" is utterly ridiculous.
And he concludes what? That the earth isn't warming at all? I remember asking a group of oceanographers about this in 1998, and they were all unanimous - the earth is warming.
My response to Rex,
You outdo yourself by responding with an answer that sadly reveals a poor understanding of complex systems and of science in general (let me guess: you aren't a scientist). How many times must this be said: you are mistaking stochastic short-term processes with long-term deterministic ones. If the temperature was 35 C in Surrey every day of the year you could expect the entire system to collapse piecemeal. THIS IS UNDENIABLE. Populations of plants and animals have genetic boundries beyond which they cannot adapt. Luckily for the biota of Surrey, days of 35 C are rare events. However, a global increase of 3-5 C over what is effectively a geological blink of an eye (a single century) is unprecendened in many thousands if not millions of years. Of course, there will be regional variations that are much, much grater (as in the high Arctic right now, where temepratures are increasing by many times the global average). Further, such global/regional increases in temperature will be accompanied by more droughts, heat waves, and other extreme weather events, that in time will have profoundly negative consequences on ecosystems and the species/populations that make them up.
The rest of your response falls into the mistaking sort-term weather with longer term climate gobbledegook and does not merit a response. You do not understand what the term 'fitness' means, nor of the fact that our species is utterly dependent for its survival on a range of ecological services that emerge from natural systems over variable spatial and temoral scales. Sorry to say it, but your answer is what I would have expected from a mediocre high school student. As I have said to the likes of Tim Curtin, Per and others, if you want to debate envronmental science with me, do so, but don't spew out childish nonsense that belies a poor understanding of the subject.
"The Australian" has one incredibly partisan opinion page
It's not just that. In the past I've been staggered at the clumsy way they spin things on the front page. Paul Kelly's editorship, maybe? Who knows.
"On a geological measure, the 1 millimeter change you appear to be worried about is so vanishingly small as to be totally insignificant."
Conversely, if one got a treatable cancer but one's oncologist refused to treat it because on a geological measure, the difference between living for 50 years versus 55 years was so vanishingly small, would you accept that with the same equiaminity?
The new trend from AGW deniers: the warming is sent by Buddha to teach us detachment from this world, pierce the veil of Maya and achieve enlightenment.
Hi Muirgeo
I said COUNTY, not Country.
Chalk
- a type of limestone. Chalk is white in colour and very fine grained. It is formed by the accumulation of minute shallow marine organisms. The white cliffs of Dover are a well-known chalk deposit of Cretaceous age.
Do you know what is under the grass on the Surrey Downs?
Hi Muirgeo
I said COUNTY, not Country.
Chalk - a type of limestone. Chalk is white in colour and very fine grained. It is formed by the accumulation of minute shallow marine organisms. The white cliffs of Dover are a well-known chalk deposit of Cretaceous age.
Do you know what is under the grass on the Surrey Downs?
Posted by: MarkR | July 20, 2006 11:13 AM
There's no proof for that. I think it was a giant local flood. And it also probably had something to do with solar effects.
MarkR: You said
Since the only research to have been fully independently audited has proved to be wrong, aren't you a little concerned about the quality of the rest of it?
<\i>
Really - I am somewhat surprised at this statement since with your wide bredth of knowledge you seem to have overlooked Mears & Wentz and their review of Spencer and Christy (I don't think they called it an audit).
Of course there is a difference. The M&W review set to rest the last main question in the topic of global warming where as the current NAS and Wegman review raises some interesting statistical points but the thing that everyone agrees (both Wegman and North) is that it means very little for the current theory of global warming.
Regards,
John
I just deleted some blatant trolling by MarkR. MarkR, from now on you are now restricted to one comment at a time. If you post more than one comment in a row, I will delete all but the first.
MarkR, I usually just skip over your comments. You might find that people take you more seriously of you posted less and didn't just repeat your self all the time.
Tim -
1) This is your blog, so restricting comments to one at a time seems ok by me. After all, MarkR could consolidate comments (like I'm doing). Such restrictions are just one more thing to argue over, though.
2) What exactly is a troll, anyway? Any brief definitions out there?
3) I liked hearing that MarkR is anti-nuclear. Since nuclear is the big government, (bureaucracy, regulation, subsidies, central authority) solution, his position is refreshingly conservative, though you never hear conservatives make it.
4) MarkR - do you also favor removing government subsidies for energy? We might have lots of room for agreement here, but about zero chance of influencing policy. (It's OK to bury your answer in an unrelated post. ;-)
Definitions of Troll on the Web:
>From the fishing term. As a noun, synonymous with flamebait. As a verb, to post controversial or provocative messages in a deliberate attempt to provoke flames.
teladesign.com/ma-thesis/glossary.html
>a newsgroup post that is deliberately incorrect, intended to provoke readers; or a person who makes such a post
www.archivemag.co.uk/gloss/T.html
http://www.hyphenologist.co.uk/killfile/anti_troll_faq.htm
Quotation:
>For example, Soon and Sallie Baliunas' badly flawed paper was touted as refuting the hockey stick.
To my understanding, the analysis of Soon+Baliunas is in favor of global warming and not conclusive in respect of MWP and LIA.
Please refer to the following link:
http://www.miljodebat.dk/viewtopic.php?p=422&highlight=baliunas#422