[Thickman]

Very weak response by Briffa. He does not address the questions surrounding his aggressive efforts over the years to deny access to his data.

This is a seminal event in the battle against the CO2 propaganda machine. I believe that folks on FreeRepublic can do a great service to this nation by helping spread the word and interest in this FRAUD perpetrated on the scientific world and us!

[Paladin2]

"I do not believe that McIntyre's preliminary post provides sufficient evidence to doubt the reality of unusually high summer temperatures in the last decades of the 20th century. "

There's a strong mathematical/scientific refutation. Note there is no proposed release of his selection method(s) either. Weak indeed.

[agere_contra]

In his piece, McIntyre replaces a number (12) of these original measurement series with more data (34 series) from a single location (not one of the above) within the Yamal region, at which the trees apparently do not show the same overall growth increase registered in our data.

Yes, that would be the point. If I have understood this correctly McIntyre demonstrated that Briffa's data-analysis technique would show no hockey stick at all if Briffa hadn't carefully cherry-picked 12 trees with high growth for the most modern dataset.

Briffa apparently got a hockey stick by choosing to use only a small subset of the available data and excluding all others. Which would be farcical science.

[aruanan]

The basis for McIntyre's selection of which of our (i.e. Hantemirov and Shiyatov's) data to exclude and which to use in replacement is not clear but his version of the chronology shows lower relative growth in recent decades than is displayed in my original chronology. He offers no justification for excluding the original data; and in one version of the chronology where he retains them, he appears to give them inappropriate low weights. I note that McIntyre qualifies the presentation of his version(s) of the chronology by reference to a number of valid points that require further investigation. Subsequent postings appear to pay no heed to these caveats. Whether the McIntyre version is any more robust a representation of regional tree growth in Yamal than my original, remains to be established.

What I read HERE is that Briffa had a data set of 46 samples. He chose 12 and excluded 34. His result was the hockey stick used by Mann and everyone after him to show unprecedented warming in the last 100 or so years. When McIntyre finally got hold of the data set and used those 34 samples, he found a sharp decline in temperature over the last 100 years. 12 samples show a dramatic increase, fitting it with the global warming theology, 34 excluded samples show a large decrease, contradicting global warming theology. The 46 samples all together show a very moderate warming, consistent with a warm up from the little ice age.

From the link above:

Science is broken
So much for the repeat claims that peer review is a “rigorous process”. Those who keep telling us we have to “listen to the experts” and who put so much stock in a peer reviewed paper have been left hanging out to dry. Even if Briffa has a reason to exclude 2/3rds of the samples and somehow it’s just a coincidence that the ignored data were from slower growing trees, nothing changes the fact that he didn’t mention that in the paper, and nor, damningly, did he provide the data. It only takes a sentence to say (for example) “ABC tree chronologies excluded due to artificial herbicide damage” and it only takes a few minutes to email a data file.

[centurion316]

Very weak and very convenient. Let’s suppose that Briffa’s methodology had produced the data set used by McIntyre. Does anyone think that Mann would have used Briffa’s data? Unlikely. So, who benefited by Mann’s use of Briffa’s data? Well, in addition to the usual political suspects, my guess is that Briffa and Mann have enjoyed increased attention, praise, and funding. Just a guess.

[kidd]

It IS a weak response. And McIntyre DID analyze the situation with a bigger data set that DID include the Yamal data... and found NO AGW.

[Dr. Bogus Pachysandra]

This would seem to apply to Briffa.
From the Dinosaur DNA thread;
“Whenever any kind of evidence is concealed, one immediately questions the spoliators’ motives for doing so. The intuitive answer is that they dislike what the information would reveal. Therefore, to spoliate evidence suggests that the spoliators’ argument or theory would be weakened, or embarrassed, by that evidence. This suggestion is so strong, forensically speaking, that it is treated as a rule of presumptive inference in law courts. In other words, if someone hides evidence in this way, the law presumes that the hidden evidence was damaging to the argument of the spoliator. The spoliator then bears the burden of proof to show otherwise.”

[Buchal]

Does anyone on this thread know whether the ring thickness methods control for the fact that tree growth rates are not just a function of temperature, but also of the amount of CO2 in the air? (I.e., higher CO2 levels may produce thicker rings quite apart from any temperature change.)

[kidd]

Briffa's license plate number

[Fractal Trader]

ping

[xcamel]

FReepmail me to get on or off

Ping me if you find one I've missed.

---

[Old Professer]

WUWT whatsupwiththat has McIntyre's rebuttal to this Briffa response and it's a doozy; it seems that Briffa's hockey stick was made from a single tree:

[Old Professer]

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/01/response-from-briffa-on-the-yamal-tree-ring-affair-plus-rebuttal/#more-11361

[steelyourfaith]

 

Beam me to Planet Gore !

[ForGod'sSake]

BFLR

[Mack the knife]

It appears that this response can be boiled down to: “I am not a crook.”

[palmer]

Interesting bump. From what I understand, Briffa was handed these 12 cores in a group by the Russians. He got more then or later which he ignored. If these 12 were a completely random sample of many cores that the Russians took, or if these 12 were taken randomly (and that means tree selection in the field was truly random) then he might have a statistical leg to stand on.

If not, and my understanding is this sample was not randomly selected at all, then he is toast. At least a dozen major studies will need to be revised which used his COOKED data (not his raw data but even that was cooked by selection bias but would have been rejected by honest researchers).

There are simply not a large number of trees around the world showing hockey stick cores. If there were a majority of randomly selected cores with the shape, that would be significant. But in this (formerly) prime hockey stick location, there isn't. There is essentially ONE tree with a pure hockey stick shape. The rest peak before the time of coring.

[SunkenCiv]

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