How does Prof Jones revelation affect AGW in particular and the peer review process generally?

matt · March 4, 2010, 3:26am

But they shouldn’t. If two different methodologies applied to exactly the same tree ring density data produce a hockeystick with a flat shaft and a hockystick with a wiggly shaft, then questions need to be asked about the methodologies before you apply them to other tree ring density data. Nobody likes people looking over their shoulder, but you have to let people check your working.

GIGObuster · March 4, 2010, 3:44am

Ok, with this it is clear that you are completely ignorant about the “decline” issue.

It was already justified, they already explained and were aware of the issues with tree-ring proxies showing declining temperatures in the later 20th century.

GIGObuster · March 4, 2010, 4:14am

Oh really?

I guess you did not check the link at Deltoid showing his methods.

Recently there is evidence that the “independent” research that allegedly found troubles with the proxy research was not as independent as it was assumed:

I can now fill in important gaps in the timelines of the initial investigation and the Wegman panel. But more importantly my review has led to some startling conclusions:

* Not only was the original Barton-Whitfield investigation (in the form of intimidating letters) inspired by the allegations of “climate science auditor”  Steve McIntyre, but the defining impetus seems to have been a little known Cooler Heads Coalition-Marshall Institute sponsored presentation by McIntyre and sidekick economist Ross McKitrick in Washington barely a month beforehand.
* Energy and Commerce Committee Republican staffer Peter Spencer played a key but hitherto undisclosed role in the investigation and the subsequent Wegman panel report, and  apparently acted as the main source and gatekeeper of climate science information for the panel.
* Steve McIntyre was in communication with the Wegman panel, at least concerning technical questions around replication of his work. The full extent of McIntyre’s communications or meetings with Spencer or other staffers, as well as Wegman panelists, is still unknown. However, the record shows there were at least two intriguing opportunities for face-to-face meetings in Washington during the Wegman panel’s mandate.

All this, along with new information about the circumstances of the Wegman panel’s formation and mandate, raises serious doubts about the supposed independence of the Wegman panel.

matt · March 4, 2010, 4:43am

Ok, with this it is clear that YOU are completely ignorant about the “decline” issue. See, I can patronise too!

The notorious “hide the decline” email is shown here. Note the subject line: “Diagram for WMO Statement”. The relevant WMO statement is here:
http://www.wmo.ch/pages/prog/wcp/wcdmp/statemnt/wmo913.pdf. The diagram with Keith Briffa’s spliced data is the cover diagram, and it’s a nice scary bit of advertising. And I don’t have a problem with it - it’s cover art, and not meant to be a scientific publication.

Waht I do have a beef with is them doing the same thing in the IPCC Third Assessment Report. The report that went out to governments and policymakers. The report where they chose to show proxy data (Fig. 2.21) spliced with instrumental data, without disclosing anywhere that data had been spliced in that figure, or discussing the divergence problem anywhere. Pointing back to a Nature paper (which doesn’t itself splice the data!) and saying it was fine to leave that little factoid out of IPCC TAR3 is not good enough.

GIGObuster · March 4, 2010, 5:11am

But can you understand why? That is the question.

Of course this also shows that you did not look closely at the explanation. It was not a secret, researchers on that field already knew about the problems, as it was explained before, there was no need to mention that once again.

It was good enough for the National Academy of Science that investigated before and the University review/investigation that was made just last month. The issue was disclosed before and it was not a secret. It is a problem only by the denier media that omits lots of information already available. Instead of complaining about misunderstanding the science, it is high time to demand better from your sources.

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/12/steve_mcintyre_down_in_the_quo.php

The phrase “hide the decline” from the stolen CRU emails has been taken out of context and construed to refer to a decline in temperatures this century when in fact it was a reference to a decline in tree-ring density since 1961. Steve McIntyre knows this, but instead of a correction, he offers another misrepesentation of its meaning, quote mining the stolen emails to argue that the IPCC was hiding stuff:
IPCC Lead Authors met in Arusha, Tanzania from September 1 to 3, 1999 … at which the final version of the “zero-order” draft of the Third Assessment Report was presented and discussed …
No minutes of this meeting are available, but Climategate correspondence on Sep 22-23, 1999 provides some contemporary information about the meeting.Mann noted that "everyone in the room at IPCC was in agreement that the [decline in the Briffa reconstruction] was a problem"
But Mcintyre has mislead his readers by leaving out the parts of the emails that show that his intrepretration of them is false. Deep Climate has the bits that McIntyre deliberately left out:
But even a cursory examination of the emails in question shows that the discussion was really about other aspects of the reconstruction, specifically obvious discrepancies between Briffa's reconstruction and the other two under consideration over the major part of the reconstruction's length. Thus, once again, McIntyre's speculations are shown to be utterly without foundation. ...

Even worse, McIntyre left out intervening sentences within the actual proffered quotes in what appears to be an unsophisticated attempt to mislead.

Seriously, any time one sees McIntyre using elipsis it's a good idea to check it out
.

No doubt, instances of cherry-picked and poorly-worded “gotcha” phrases will be pulled out of context. One example is worth mentioning quickly. Phil Jones in discussing the presentation of temperature reconstructions stated that “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” The paper in question is the Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998) Nature paper on the original multiproxy temperature reconstruction, and the ‘trick’ is just to plot the instrumental records along with reconstruction so that the context of the recent warming is clear. Scientists often use the term “trick” to refer to a “a good way to deal with a problem”, rather than something that is “secret”, and so there is nothing problematic in this at all. As for the ‘decline’, it is well known that Keith Briffa’s maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the “divergence problem”–see e.g. the recent discussion in this paper) and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682). Those authors have always recommend not using the post 1960 part of their reconstruction, and so while ‘hiding’ is probably a poor choice of words (since it is ‘hidden’ in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate, as is further research to understand why this happens.

GIGObuster · March 4, 2010, 5:33am

(Skip to 4:00 minutes to get to the explanation)

As the tree ring data was shown to be unreliable after 1960 it was not then used. Published research already in the record mentioned before that it was not a good idea to use tree rings after the 60’s; then the other proxies from corals, ice cores and historical records took precedence. The data from thermometers was added and **mentioned **in the actual graph that appears in the Mann paper that was referenced by the IPCC.

It is only a secret when deniers do not show what the source said.

elucidator · March 4, 2010, 6:17am

I should like to ask that such persons who feel compelled to assail the research a question: is the larger argument that if Jone’s research, data, methodology, modeling or web page should prove faulty, then that alone should place the entire intellectual edifice of AGW in grave peril?

Or is the struggle devoid of such sordid political taint, and simply the fervent desire that the scientific method be preserved in its pristine purity?

Either its the former, or somebody here is burning agenda incense. If so, it would appear to be based on a forlorn hope, that if only Jone’s can be nullified, all the other research will shrivel up and die. That would be like hoping to prove that Darwin deliberately fudged his research on Galapagos finches, which would mean that creationism is vindicated.

matt · March 4, 2010, 6:40am

This also shows that you did not read what I wrote. I understand the explanation. I have no problem with the explanation. I think it’s an acceptable practise to splice proxy and instrumental data (IF you can justify your confidence in the older data once you’ve found divergence in the modern data.) The only problem I have is not mentioning this has been done in a scientific publication.

For the record, I will spell it out: I HAVE NO PROBLEM WITH THE “HIDE THE DECLINE” EMAIL. I THINK IT WAS AN INNOCENT REMARK.

Not from paleoclimatologists, no. But that’s not who the IPPC report was aimed at. I’m not sure which NAS investigation you’re referring to. Do you mean the NRC panel that Keith Briffa was actually invited to sit on, and then asked Mann for advice about? The one about which Mann said: “The panel is solid. Gerry North should do a good job in chairing this, and the other members are all solid. Chrisy is the token skeptic, but there are many others to keep him in check”? Because that’s not exactly what I call impartial. http://junkscience.com/FOIA/mail/1139835663.txt Read backwards for chronological order.

I’m not sure that panel even looked at the issue of data splicing in the IPPC report anyway - the issue under discussion was Mann’s hockeystick.

your Deltoid cite is a rah-rah blog comment on another blog, deepclimate, and doesn’t itself say much at all. The deepclimate cite is actually pretty good, although it attributes to malice what could easily have been incompetence. To me, it is not so clear cut which parts of the data series the various comments refer to. The 1999 Briffa Science paper referenced by Deepclimate, where his truncated series is published, is not the Briffa paper referenced in TAR 3, where AFAIK his seried appears untruncated.

GIGObuster · March 4, 2010, 7:15am

Well, it was.

As it is becoming a custom in discussion like this, you could had fooled many by not clarifying sooner

The panel of scientists was convened by the National Research Council (NRC) of the United States National Academy of Sciences (NAS)

And you do lose respect for going to Junk Science for evidence. As the cite from Deep Climate shows, they were correct on not trusting McIntyre.

And I would not be surprised that Briffa, that had reported early on the divergence issue, already took that into consideration. I seems that you are assuming here that the IPCC did not check the source, or that that they ignored what they saw in the source.

Either way, it is enough to stop relying on the deniers.

What is missing here is the fact that the emails are still referring to the reconstructions from 1999 - 2001, later Mann and Briffa came with even more evidence and this time McIntyre had to resort to accusations of cherry picking that he had to backpedal(?) from.

McIntyre’s diatribes have led to widespread accusations of “cherry-picking” and general scientific misconduct against Briffa and other paleo-climatologists (for example, see the ever befuddled but angry Tom Fuller in Examiner.com). And McIntyre’s claims have even been construed, both in the “denialosphere” and at least two “mainstream” newspapers, as a crushing blow to the IPCC and the scientific consensus on climate change. The UK Telegraph’s James Delingpole opined that the controversy showed climate science was a “MASSIVE lie”, while Ross McKitrick’s libel-flirting diatribe in the National Post claimed that “what lies at the core is either flawed, misleading or simply non-existent” (more on McKitrick below).

The climate scientists at RealClimate.org have reacted with indignation:

An unverified accusation of malfeasance is made based on nothing, and it is instantly ‘telegraphed’ across the denial-o-sphere while being embellished along the way to apply to anything ‘hockey-stick’ shaped and any and all scientists, even those not even tangentially related. The usual suspects become hysterical with glee that finally the ‘hoax’ has been revealed and congratulations are handed out all round. After a while it is clear that no scientific edifice has collapsed and the search goes on for the ‘real’ problem which is no doubt just waiting to be found. Every so often the story pops up again because some columnist or blogger doesn’t want to, or care to, do their homework. Net effect on lay people? Confusion. Net effect on science? Zip.

Yet McIntyre’s supporters suggest that McIntyre himself can not be held responsible for such excesses. Roger Pielke Jr., ever ready to defend McIntyre against real climate scientists exonerated McIntyre, pointing to a belated clarification from McIntyre:

I don’t wish to unintentionally feed views that I don’t hold. It is not my belief that Briffa crudely cherry picked. My guess is that the Russians selected a limited number of 200-400 year trees – that’s what they say – a number that might well have been appropriate for their purpose and that Briffa inherited their selection … [Emphasis added by Pielke]

But not so fast. Here’s “Bishop Hill”, in the very account of the Yamal affair fulsomely recommended by Pielke.

Without an explanation of how the selection of this sample of the available data had been performed, the suspicion of `cherrypicking’ would linger over the study, although it is true to say that Hantemirov also had very few cores in the equivalent period, so it is possible that this selection had been due to the Russian and not Briffa.

Now where did he get the idea that cherry-picking might be a possible issue? Well, when McIntyre presented his initial analysis of the Yamal chronologies on September 26 he noted:
I presume that these 17 ring-width series from living larches are a sample from a larger program on living larches. This graphic shows the use of over 30 cores from about 600 to 1500 and the use of about 17 cores in the 19th and 20th century (presumably the 17 cores from living trees.) …
Rob Wilson could do that in an hour. What about the rest of the Yamal data? Where is it?

To what extent is the Yamal HS a product of the selection process and to what extent is it climatic? Without the complete data set, it is impossible to set aside the troubling thoughts that one is faced with in these circumstances. [Emphasis added]
The obvious inference was, as Ross McKitrick put it in a subsequent comment, that the 20th century “sub-sample” had not been, ahem, “randomly selected”.

In subsequent comments, McIntyre continued to insist that someone, whether Briffa or the Russian team, had possibly “cherry-picked”, or at least not “randomly selected”, the Yamal living tree sub-sample:

As to whether the selection was previously made by Hantemirov and Shiyatov or not – I discussed this in the previous post and noted that there was evidence that the selection might have been made by them.

Of course, soon after Briffa confirmed that the underlying data set he used was exactly the same as the Russian team (but processed differently), and that, in general, he “did not select tree-core samples based on comparison with climate data”.

In the face of that forthright assertion, and in the absence of any evidence whatsoever of a more complete living tree sample to be “cherry-picked”, McIntyre “moved on”.

But McIntyre’s insinuations of “cherry-picking” (presumably of a less “crude” variety) also focused on Briffa’s “failure” to augment the “thin” Yamal living tree sample with a nearby data set from Schreubinger that contained 34 tree-ring samples from living trees. This was contrasted with Briffa’s augmentation of Avam-Taymir chronology (also from Siberia).

While Yamal stayed unchanged in Briffa et al 2008, the Taimyr series was modified noticeably, becoming the “Avam-Taimyr” series. … One doesn’t expect Team adjustments to leave even small scraps on the table and this proved to be the case here as well – the added data substantially increased 20th century values and substantially lowered 1150-1250AD values, thereby altering the medieval-modern differential in favor of the 20th century.

The intended insinuation was obvious. The barely-veiled accusation is that Briffa selected sample sets and even altered his methodology to produce the desired result, in both the Yamal and Avam-Taymir chronologies.

In fact, the Yamal Divergence thread contains no fewer than 30 references to cherry-picking, including this from McIntyre himself:

I’d be inclined to remove the data affected by CRU cherrypicking but will leave it in for now.

In another comment on that thread, McIntyre distinguished two sorts of supposed “cherry-picking”: trees within a site vs. sites within a multi-proxy study.

Jacoby, D’Arrigo, whatever other faults they may have, use the entire crossdated population from a site. (They cherry pick sites, but don’t cherry pick trees within a site.)

matt · March 4, 2010, 7:22am

No. It may make the science more open and the record-keeping more rigorous, which is a good thing. It might put a stop to advocacy posing as science, and it’s certainly jolted the media out of their good-vs.-evil take on climate issues, for the moment anyway. The intellectual edifice of AGW is as sound as it ever was. Which is fairly sound, but not sound enough to declare that “the science is settled” or to label any and all skeptics as “deniers.”

I really do recommend Trenberth’s paper as a good summary of where the science is at, and the limits of our measurements and climate understanding. I’ve linked to it already, but here it is again: http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/Trenberth/trenberth.papers/EnergyDiagnostics09final2.pdf

GIGObuster · March 4, 2010, 7:35am

If you had paid attention to previous discussions you would notice that deniers are not skeptics. BTW using a straw man is still not considered a good tactic.

Unusually, I’m in complete agreement with a recent headline on the Wall Street Journal op-ed page:
“The Climate Science Isn’t Settled”
The article below is the same mix of innuendo and misrepresentation that its author normally writes, but the headline is correct. The WSJ seems to think that the headline is some terribly important pronouncement that in some way undercuts the scientific consensus on climate change but they are simply using an old rhetorical ‘trick’.

The phrase “the science is settled” is associated almost 100% with contrarian comments on climate and is usually a paraphrase of what ’some scientists’ are supposed to have said. The reality is that it depends very much on what you are talking about and I have never heard any scientist say this in any general context – at a recent meeting I was at, someone claimed that this had been said by the participants and he was roundly shouted down by the assembled experts.

The reason why no scientist has said this is because they know full well that knowledge about science is not binary – science isn’t either settled or not settled. This is a false and misleading dichotomy. Instead, we know things with varying degrees of confidence – for instance, conservation of energy is pretty well accepted, as is the theory of gravity (despite continuing interest in what happens at very small scales or very high energies) , while the exact nature of dark matter is still unclear. The forced binary distinction implicit in the phrase is designed to misleadingly relegate anything about which there is still uncertainty to the category of completely unknown. i.e. that since we don’t know everything, we know nothing.

In the climate field, there are a number of issues which are no longer subject to fundamental debate in the community. The existence of the greenhouse effect, the increase in CO2 (and other GHGs) over the last hundred years and its human cause, and the fact the planet warmed significantly over the 20th Century are not much in doubt. IPCC described these factors as ‘virtually certain’ or ‘unequivocal’. The attribution of the warming over the last 50 years to human activity is also pretty well established – that is ‘highly likely’ and the anticipation that further warming will continue as CO2 levels continue to rise is a well supported conclusion. To the extent that anyone has said that the scientific debate is over, this is what they are referring to. In answer to colloquial questions like “Is anthropogenic warming real?”, the answer is yes with high confidence.

But no scientists would be scientists if they thought there was nothing left to find out. Think of the science as a large building, with foundations reaching back to the 19th Century and a whole edifice of knowledge built upon them. The community spends most of its time trying to add a brick here or a brick there and slowly adding to the construction. The idea that the ’science is settled’ is equivalent to stating that the building is complete and that nothing further can be added. Obviously that is false – new bricks (and windows and decoration and interior designs) are being added and argued about all the time. However, while the science may not be settled, we can still tell what kind of building we have and what the overall picture looks like. Arguments over whether a single brick should be blue or yellow don’t change the building from a skyscraper to a mud hut.

The IPCC reports should be required reading for anyone who thinks that scientists think that the ’science is settled’ – the vast array of uncertainties that are discussed and dissected puts that notion to bed immediately.

This was also explained and remarked in the video posted before, Tremberg knows that global warming is unequivocally happening. The problem has been calculating properly where the heat is going to, so then we can be better prepared for the changes that will take place.

Of course other researchers are reporting where the heat is going and that is why those that say that global warming stopped in 1995 or 1998 are not correct.

matt · March 4, 2010, 7:56am

It was not in TAR3.

And I clarified in my second post on the matter, which you misunderstood.

Then we are talking about the same panel.

Good grief. Do you ever ENGAGE WITH THE MATERIAL PRESENTED TO YOU instead of attacking the source? The ONLY information in my link are hacked/leaked email exchanges between Mann and Briffa. I Googled Mann, Briffa, NAS and North and the junkscience link was the first hit that showed what I was looking for. I invite you to look at it, albeit on the oh-so-terrible junkscience site, and actually read the 3 or 4 emails between Briffa and Mann. Then comment on how impartial the NAS panel was, if you care to. “Lose respect” indeed.

Again, as far as know the IPCC source does not show truncated data, although I’m willing to be corrected on that. I have no access to Briffa’s 1998 paper. I think the IPCC authors of that figure took data from the source, truncated the diverging data and didn’t mention the truncation.

Well if you want to play my blog vs. your blog…

??? Your own Deepclimate cite shows that McIntyre was talking about the 1999-2001 period. McIntyre may have associated the wrong comments with the wrong parts of the graphs, possibly deliberately, but I don’t understand the point you’re making here.

GIGObuster · March 4, 2010, 8:06am

And I did care and commented.

Yeah, I guess it is an unfair fight when my blogs are made by academics and climate researchers

As McIntyre said:

“I’m assuming that CA readers are aware that, once the Yamal series got on the street in 2000, it got used like crack cocaine by paleoclimatologists.”

The problem with deniers like McIntyre has been that they assume the same tactic will work today just as it was used “successfully” before. The point here is that just as he was wrong regarding the early reconstructions, he was wrong also when criticizing the latest one.

matt · March 4, 2010, 8:08am

Ooh, did I miss a meeting? AFAIK, what you call “deniers” ARE skeptics, but skeptics aren’t necesarily deniers. And the strawman comment is pretty rich considering you appear to be debating someone in your own head rather than me.

I’m not a denier at all, and I’m a fairly mild skeptic. I think too much confidence is expressed in our understanding of climate change, and that’s it. I recommend Trenberth’s paper because it’s a good summary, not because it supports a skeptical position (it most certainly does not).

matt · March 4, 2010, 8:14am

Like Deltoid and Deepclimate?

Now I understand. You want to argue with Steve McIntyre, but I don’t believe he posts here.

GIGObuster · March 4, 2010, 8:14am

I will let others figure out if claiming that scientists are saying that “the science is settled” was not a straw man argument.

And it is a summary that I also agree with, adapting to the climate change is an imperative if nothing is done to control global warming gases.

matt · March 4, 2010, 8:24am

Not seeing it. Not any comment on the emails, not any comment on how impartial the NAS panel was. Just an attack on the source and an attack on me for linking to it.

I made NO SUCH CLAIM. You would have fun debating McIntyre; you could misrepresent each other all day.

GIGObuster · March 4, 2010, 8:32am

Did you miss the smile?

Oh well, the guy at Deltoid works with computer models and he is an academic. In the case of DeepClimate it has been recommended before by Real Climate and others. What I’m saying here is that so far I have not caught them misleading others, unlike many denier sites.

Good, the less he is referred to the better. It just so happens that early you mention that McIntyre was not fairly treated when he was trying to get information. What it is clear is that McIntyre can not be trusted with that information as he is really not telling the whole story:

A list of the FOI requests received by the University of East Anglia about the CRU has been posted. Most of the Climate Audit fishing expedition were turned down, but there is one priceless one FOI 09-97 for which additional information was sought
I hereby make a EIR/FOI request in respect to any confidentiality agreements)restricting transmission of CRUTEM data to non-academics involing the following countries: [insert 5 or so countries that are different from ones already requested 1]
1. the date of any applicable confidentiality agreements;
2. the parties to such confidentiality agreement, including the full name of any organization;
3. a copy of the section of the confidentiality agreement that "prevents further transmission to non-academics".
4. a copy of the entire confidentiality agreement,
It was clear that the requests were vexatious and they were turned down.
Eli also points to a comment from MinnieMouseJon
This is simply evident for any climatologist working, for instance, in Spain. I pay for the data (even for research) and every time I buy data I have to sign a contract stating that I can’t disclose data to ANY third party. Neither for research nor for any other users of the third party. Well … why doesn’t McIntyre simply buy the data to the original owner instead of requesting it from CRU? (The national weather services are the owners…)
I can't understand why this is so hard to understand.

GIGObuster · March 4, 2010, 8:39am

The videos already are a good comment on the emails, cherry picked and missing a lot of the context, useless to make any judgments in almost all the cases mentioned in the CRU hack, except for the usefulness of allowing deniers to mislead others.

So **who **is saying that “the science is settled” then? As I did not said that, I had to assume it was your take on what scientists had said. And if you still want to weasel out of that one, who is labeling all skeptics as “deniers”?

It was a straw man argument.

matt · March 4, 2010, 9:10am

Fair enough.

IIRC, previous FOI requests had been turned down on the grounds of confidentiality agreements, so that FOI does in fact make sense and is not necessary “vexatious”. And I DO think Jones would have been much better off giving out his data, or better yet, putting the non-confidential data into a public database as I believe Judith Curry has suggested.

Ah. I can’t watch videos here - old flash plugin and no Admin authority to upgrade. But seriously, its 3 or 4 little emails. You could, you know, READ them and express an opinion of your own.

The media, politicians, bloggers, probably some SDMB posters… one member whose name I won’t mention has stated explicitly on these boards that AGW deniers are equivalent to holocaust deniers. But anyway, a strawman argument implies an attack. Where in my reply to elucidator am I attacking anyone? I made a statement of my belief - "the intellectual edifice of AGW is as sound as it ever was. Which is fairly sound, but not sound enough to declare that “the science is settled”. Where’s the strawman?

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