Steven knew this in 2006 but had to wait until now to get the raw data.
Posted on 10/01/2009 8:29:06 AM PDT by Thickman
Thanks for the link. They oversimplified and failed to show why water concentration differences don’t matter, particularly regarding clouds (or lack of tropical clouds). In a nutshell, the extra convective outflow produces subsidence which is cooling. There are other mistakes, but mostly they are oversimplifying trying to defend the paramaterization of the models. But you can’t parameterize based on today’s atmosphere or any linear extrapolation of it. Water vapor is highly nonlinear.
I knew right away Briffa was referring to McI's points. Briffa is toast and he knows it, that's why he launched ad hom attacks and didn't address those points. The team will circle the wagons while they quietly adjust a few charts down (like they already did on RC). Then they showed a couple of charts without MWP!
Here's why this is not just a tempest in a teapot. The natural variations in climate produced a MWP similar or greater than today's. Most proxies confirm this (sea levels were same or higher then, seasons were longer then, glaciers receded more then). The only proxies that don't confirm this are a handful of Bristlecones and one tree in Russia (ONE tree!).
Here's why you can't pick one tree, or ten trees, or 100 trees: the instrument record doesn't matter when you pick trees. You can make up any random record you want, and find trees that match that record. Then you can use those trees to "confirm" that record. That is BS.
The correct way to use trees is to take a large population and choose a portion randomly or use the entire population. Briffa's trees were chosen by the Russians. They were NOT chosen randomly.
As far as the "court of science" goes, the science left this argument a long time ago on the dendro side, now we know just how bad their science is: most of their studies relied on PROCESSED data from a FLAWED study. NONE of the researchers used the RAW data. ALL of them should have rejected the RAW data had they seen it.
Why don’t you ask your friends at RC why they are censoring every reasonable question sent to their site?
I have to give cogitator credit for being a bit relaxed in his attempted defense of Briffa. On other sites I have seen extremely irrational posts by the cult members who are attempting all kinds of arguments in defense of the indefensible.
The key point is that the heart and soul of many major studies upon which AGW theory is based is flawed - unquestionably. In most scientific endeavors this would necessitate going back to the drawing board. In climate science, however, this finding will result in continued political tactics.
This is a significant development no matter how it is spinned (spun?). The only question is “does it have legs?”.
It is up to average, common sense-driven people to make others aware of it becasue the AGW industry has the media, cap n’ trade utilities and the politicians in its pocket.
What we have here is a disclosure that trusted scientists were not forthcoming with their data; at no point in Briffa’s response does he explain why this withholding took place and why it went on so long.
It has not been posited by McIntyre, to my knowledge that this newly analyzed released data changes the whole scope of things only that the comparisons show a strong bias toward the apparently desired outcome.
Priest’s robes necessarily are loosely fit, not as symbols of the certain knowledge in the hereafter but as a gesture of humility; something that seems to be in very short supply nowadays.
I respectfully disagree. The entire process of peer review, in its present state, has been put into question. The present process lacks tracability.
I knew right away Briffa was referring to McI's points. Briffa is toast and he knows it, that's why he launched ad hom attacks and didn't address those points. The team will circle the wagons while they quietly adjust a few charts down (like they already did on RC). Then they showed a couple of charts without MWP!
I'm going to use the word "Science" to talk generally.
Remember a couple of days ago when I said that Science is ponderously self-correcting? Despite the immediacy of the WWW and blogs, that's still true. The actual fact that Briffa was moved to respond as quickly as he did shows that there's an adaptation taking place. Likewise for some data archive and database corrections that have been motivated by discoveries of actual errors. But there will be some things that are very slow to change -- and I for one think that's still good. (I don't think Briffa would even entertain the concept of being "toast". I think he rightly believes what he's done has been accurate, and he's going to defend it as best he can. He should.)
One of the aspects of Science slow to change is how Science formalizes research and discovery. This is done by addressing research published in peer-reviewed literature with further publications in the peer-reviewed literature. Given our impatience, motivated by the accelerated speed of data and information transfer in this age, this now seems SO slow and antiquated. Quoting Scotty: "A keyboard? How quaint". But for Science to truly be Science, it requires methodological adherence: careful statements of what was done, how it was done, WHY it was done that way -- and what it means, and whether or not what was done resulted in agreement or disagreement with what was done before. And yes, it also requires transparency; other researchers should be able to determine what was done and how it was done.
McIntyre has not done this (yet) with regard to the Yamal series. What he has done so far is to say, informally, "Here's what I think was done wrong. Here's a different way to look at it. There might be some implications if I'm correct." He's also done some independent analyses with the other data set. As Briffa noted, it was a little unclear as to how he made his choices. Therefore, that's not enough. Rather, he should show how to do it right: how he would do it right, what that means, what his results are, how they are different from previous results, how important those differences are for the overall interpretation of the available data.
Like it or not, that's how Science functions, and that's what RC was asking for. They're asking for McIntyre to be a scientist, not merely a critic. Viewing this as it happens is fascinating. Everyone should sit back, RELAX, let things play out, and enjoy the process (see below). This might end up being a sidebar issue to votes in Congress, but my opinion is that the way those votes will go is not going to be based very much on climate; it's going to be based on economics, and energy sources, and demographics, and the basic philosophical concept of what actions we should take (or not take) based on imperfect assessments of the future that could possibly include potentially deleterious trends affecting future generations.
Here's why this is not just a tempest in a teapot. The natural variations in climate produced a MWP similar or greater than today's. Most proxies confirm this (sea levels were same or higher then, seasons were longer then, glaciers receded more then). The only proxies that don't confirm this are a handful of Bristlecones and one tree in Russia (ONE tree!).
I thought the NAS panel conclusion was that the available proxy data older than 400 years was so uncertain that it abrogated any capability of drawing quantitative comparisons between past and present. Qualitatively all that can be said, I thought, was that there was a MWP which was warmer than the "periods" (100,200, 500 years?) immediately preceding or following. I'm not trying to split hairs; I believe that's a basic conclusion in the report.
Here's why you can't pick one tree, or ten trees, or 100 trees: the instrument record doesn't matter when you pick trees. You can make up any random record you want, and find trees that match that record. Then you can use those trees to "confirm" that record. That is BS.
Based on what I've read, there was no deliberate selection by Briffa, and McIntyre has even circumspectly said he didn't imply that Briffa had tried to "find trees that match the record" or words to that effect. You said that Briffa was "handed the data by the Russians". Briffa says:
The Yamal tree-ring chronology (see also Briffa and Osborn 2002, Briffa et al. 2008) was based on the application of a tree-ring processing method applied to the same set of composite sub-fossil and living-tree ring-width measurements provided to me by Rashit Hantemirov and Stepan Shiyatov which forms the basis of a chronology they published (Hantemirov and Shiyatov 2002). In their work they traditionally applied a data processing method (corridor standardisation) that does not preserve evidence of long timescale growth changes. My application of the Regional Curve Standardisation method to these same data was intended to better represent the multi-decadal to centennial growth variations necessary to infer the longer-term variability in average summer temperatures in the Yamal region: to provide a direct comparison with the chronology produced by Hantemirov and Shiyatov.
So doesn't the problem originate with H&S? He did a different analysis of their data. If you think I'm being obtuse, don't get mad at me. (I get the sense that the perceived problem is that he didn't look at all the tree-ring data independently. That's a good question to pursue.)
The correct way to use trees is to take a large population and choose a portion randomly or use the entire population. Briffa's trees were chosen by the Russians. They were NOT chosen randomly.
Is it? What if some of those trees were clearly influenced by a growth factor that was not temperature-related? If you know that yet you choose randomly or use the entire population, is that going to be valid? What exactly were the H&S selection criteria? (That may have been addressed but I'm not going to search for it.)
Found this over the weekend in the snowstorm of discussion going on: "Typically in dendrochronology mean site chronologies are constructed from many cores from many trees. Hypothetically, say you are collecting samples for a dendroclimate study and you collect cores from 50 trees. Lets say after you crossdate and measure them, ring widths from the cores from 40 trees are agreeing well with each other (strong common variance) and for some reason 10 trees are not agreeing so well with the rest. It could be that at some point in their long lives, these trees had been hit by lightening, or had porcupine damage, or suffered from some parasite, or were growing in different microtopographical locations that rendered their growth response to climate different from the rest. So, you would not want to use these 10 trees for a climate study because their growth patterns aren’t like the majority. Hence, you exclude these 10 and build a mean chronology from the 40 where the common variance is high – variance assumed to be related to climate. At this point, after the mean chronology is built, you then compare it to instrumental climate data. This is maximizing climatic signal in your mean series while reducing noise."
(You are astute and probably know this; I suspected it generally, but the above was a good summary, for me, and maybe for others following along to see if I'm going to make any actionable statements.)
[Added on 10/07/2009: Obviously I've been following along on the Real Climate thread. Things have gotten really interesting at reply 514 and subsequent. One of the things I didn't do was to jump off a cliff when this "breaking story" first broke. My impression is that, perhaps, this isn't as significant as it was first promoted to be. Are you following along? Has your view changed? Do you think that there was some hasty over-promotion in certain circles? Plus, Revkin's column was certainly interesting. I hadn't read before what McIntyre said to Crowley; did he really wait four years to reply? I don't agree with him (surprised?) and this is why: what he's doing used to be done privately. As in: "Dear Mr. Scientist: I think I found a mistake in your work, because of my expertise in {field of expertise}. But I'm not really a scientist in this field, so I can't publish this. I hope you will examine my results and determine if they are correct, and if so, I hope they will assist you to an improved, more accurate result with your research." But now, McIntyre publically says something might be wrong, and the various echo chambers hear this and echo distortionally, with trumpets, that something IS wrong -- and by implication, the whole edifice of science on this issue is wrong. And who's believing that? Hmmm... Such approaches foster a general disbelief in scientific results and scientific practitioners, and a growing dismissal of the authority of science to settle matters of fact. And this is to our societal detriment on a host of issues, not just climate change.]
As far as the "court of science" goes, the science left this argument a long time ago on the dendro side, now we know just how bad their science is: most of their studies relied on PROCESSED data from a FLAWED study. NONE of the researchers used the RAW data. ALL of them should have rejected the RAW data had they seen it."
This happens in Science, and not just climate science. There a relatively famous case of an Indian fossil taxonomist (Gupta) who faked a lot of stuff that got published, and a lot of other papers used it. Gupta was also doing this deliberately and systematically, it should be noted.
As I said, if what McIntyre is talking about deserves to be in the "court of science", then he needs to "file the papers" to have the court take the case. And that means publishing a better analysis -- or at least one that he thinks is better. It at least needs to be different.
Finally: one of the reasons that I've tried to mostly withdraw from here and discussions on any other forums is because the issue has at times made me emotional, and I'm trying in this reply to simply address what you've said as emotionlessly as possible. I've never liked being called names and having my motivations questioned simply because I want to achieve a better understanding of this important issue. In my past history here I frequently tried to address misperceptions, which is rarely a pleasant process for the person harboring the misperception being addressed -- particularly if they don't think that they're misperceiving anything. So I don't do it anymore even though I cringe at some of the stuff I read.
People will think what they think. I wish there was a way to emotionlessly and provide information "sorters" that would allow the basic informative stuff to get through without the overlying meta-socio-political messages being communicated, but that's merely a pipe dream. [Final note: what about the recent revelations regarding when McIntyre actually had that data he had been so diligently seeking? There also apparently have been some new papers, but I'm not clear on where they fit in -- and I may never be.]
Steven knew this in 2006 but had to wait until now to get the raw data.
As for Steve M, just give him the data. If Briffa had read his 2006 post and sent the data we would be far ahead by now. Instead everyone has wasted years, not just Steve but everyone who used Briffa's RCS which needs to be tossed.
Suffice to say that the blade of the hockey stick, which came from a single tree, is what made the 20th century pop above the MWP. Absolutely junk. But the fix is in, Briffa is going to have the Russian guy reach into his much bigger bag of tree rings and verify Briffa's results. We can be absolutely certain that the Russian guy will get a nice grant from some Soros-funded climate alarm foundation. Then Briffa will say, well we really should have used more trees, but it turns out we were correct anyway.
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Can anyone tell me where Yamal is located. I have lived in the same mid-Atlantic states town since 1961. I would say that for at least the last 20 years, the winters have been much milder on average than they were the first 20 years I lived here. Also, the summers do not seem to be quite as hot. I think the warmer winters are somewhat warmer than the summers are cooler. Probably average out to a net gain in temperature. Can’t speak for other areas of the globe.
Northern Russia.
"The Yamal Peninsula (Russian: полуо́стров Яма́л), located in Yamal-Nenets autonomous district of northwest Siberia, Russia, extends roughly 700 km (435 mi) and is bordered principally by the Kara Sea, Baydaratskaya Bay on the west, and by the Gulf of Ob on the east. In the language of its indigenous inhabitants, the Nenets, "Yamal" means "End of the World".
The peninsula consists mostly of permafrost ground and is geologically a very young place —some areas are less than ten thousand years old.[citation needed]
I see that the Yamal peninsula sticks up into the Arctic Ocean. Given the variability of sea ice, wouldn’t that make tree ring growth potentially different from other areas of the world, or even inland in Russia?
There are “Climate Scientists” who might claim that the trees of Yamal have a special teleconnection to global annual temperatures.
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