I have been inspired by my reading of The Hockey Stick Illusion by A.W. Montford. It has caused me to revisit the Climategate 1 data files as well as the thousands of emails now made public. In doing word searches on files and emails, I sometimes just stumble over stuff that catches my eye and which  opens all sorts of questions. That very kind of serendipitous event happened the other day and what I discovered was quite enlightening

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Updated!

Right before Christmas I finally purchased The Hockey Stick Illusion by A.W. Montford (a.k.a. owner of Bisop Hill blog), and I have to admit it has been both a fascinating read and a worthwhile investment in time. I have been able to accelerate my understanding of the interplay between The Hockey Team, the skeptics (led my McIntyre and McKitrick) and the mountain of email and data made public in Climategates 1  & 2.

I am just now nearing the halfway point after the intense march to, and repercussions from, the 2006 NAS ‘investigation’. I have a much deeper understanding of how the RE and R² (also denoted as r2) verification debate became so intent. I will not be able to explain in a few lines what Montford did so skillfully in many chapters, but the point of this post is to show how the new Climategate emails uncover a blatant lie by one Michael Mann to the NAS panel. A panel that supposedly was an arm of a Congressional Committee investigating AGW theory and the battle over accuracy and correctness between the two camps.

A synopsis of the topic could be summarized as follows:

• In Mann, Bradley, Hughes 1998 (denoted ‘MBH98’ and source of the infamous Hockey Stick graphic) the claim was made that the connection between modern temps and proxy reconstructions was statistically significant and showed today historically warmer than any period since Medieval times.
• However, as McIntyre began his due diligence audit of the methods and data of MBH98 he noted a few problems, only one of which was how MBH98 relied on the rarely used and unwarranted statistical verification of RE instead of the traditional and more reliable R² . In fact, most statisticians prefer to check multiple verification tests to prove their work is ‘robust’ and not just random correlations without any meaning. It turned out MBH98 admitted to using R² as well, but did not report the value (i.e., was the math any good). This seemed very strange.
• After much work McIntyre confirmed Mann had performed the R² test, as had Amman & Wahl in their 2004 papers trying to confirm Mann’s Stick. But nowhere could he find the true values (or the ones ‘recreated’ by Wahl and Amman).
• When Congress decided to investigate the mess, the NAS jumped in to try and protect the AGW claims and held hearings for Congress. It was at these hearings in 2006 that Mann’s Hockey Stick was shown to be pretty much broken. At that time Mann apparently testified (according to Montford’s book) that he had never computed R².

Here is the passage from The Hockey Stick Illusion and McIntyre’s blog:

He [McIntyre] explained to the panel how Mann had reported in MBH98 that he had calculated the R² for the Hockey Stick, but had withheld the fact that the results indicated his reconstruction was unreliable. McIntyre went on to demonstrate how the IPCC had later misrepresented the Hockey Stick as having significant ‘skill’. Having dramatically failed the verification R² test, the confidence intervals for the Hockey Stick were, in the words of Hegerl, “from floor to ceiling”. In other words, you could have no confidence in the results at all.

This was a very damning set of accusations and one which promised some fireworks when Mann came to speak the following day. In the event though, absolutely nothing happened. John Christy, who was seen as the lone sceptic on the panel, asked Mann about his R² score. Mann tried to evade the question by denouncing its usage in general, but Christy pressed him further, asking whether he had in fact calculated the figure. Mann’s reply was sharp and to McIntyre, at least, breathtaking:

We didn’t calculate it. That would be silly and incorrect reasoning.

Here is where Micheal Mann committed perjury to hide his mistakes. Mistakes that destroy the Hockey Stick and all claims today we are experiencing unprecedented warm climate conditions.We know his MBH98 stated they computed the numbers. But we also know the Hickey Team was working with Wahl and Amman on supporting Mann with Briffa and others. So what where they saying as this went down?

The truth comes from Eugene Wahl himself in a series of emails with Keith Briffa in June 2006, right after the NAS panel. It spans many emails, but let’s focus on email #5240:

Also, let me know if I can help on the issue of RE vs r^2. I could write a few brief sentences as something for you to look at if you would like. Wahl-Ammann show very clearly that there is objectively demonstrated skill at the low-frequency level of the verification period mean for all the MBH segments, although the earlier MBH segments do have really low r^2 values (indicating very little skill at the interannual level).

A low R² value means there is no statistical significance. The ‘earlier MBH segments‘ are those reconstructions which compared the modern climate to the Medieval Warm Period (MWP). Thus the claim that the MWP is not as warm as today really had not statistical ‘skill’ (something I would also convey to Mann) – according to am brief moment of honesty by Wahl.

We later find out in Montford’s chronology of events that the Wahl-Amman papers never do support MBH98, and in fact confirm the low R² values which Mann conveniently hid from scrutiny. All this proves the Hockey Stick is actually a crock of stick.

Mann lied many times to NAS. This is probably the most egregious one, to claim he never knew his claims were statistical garbage. No wonder he ran from McIntyre and McIntrick for so many years. They had caught him red handed, hiding the true math and the true results. And all the so called peer review in the world missed this until M&M stepped up and did the scientific process right.

Shame on all the rest for even pretending their PhDs convey upon them the title of ‘scientist’.

Tags: Caspar Amman, CRU, Eugene Wahl, Global Warming, Hockey Stick, IPCC, Micheal Mann, Montofrd, The Hockey Stick Illusions

Merry Christmas to all from the Strata-Sphere!

We hope everyone has a joyous and wonderful Christmas, and we thank you for all the time you spend visiting and sharing your thoughts with us.

Update At End

Major Update: Well, well – it seems Tim Osborn admits to the artificial adjustments used by CRU (and shown at the end of this post) in a Dec 2006 email to coworker Thomas Klienen (email #4005):

Unfortunately we haven’t yet published the details of how the gridding and calibration were done. Also we have applied a completely artificial adjustment to the data after 1960, so they look closer to observed temperatures than the tree-ring data actually were — don’t rely on the match after 1960 to tell you how skilfull they really are!

Looks like Osborne just confirmed my analysis of Osborn-Briffa  for me! – end update

Since the Climategate 2 emails have come out I have been able to gain a lot more context on the workings (or should I say shenanigans) of the Hockey Team and their efforts to hide the fact the science was rapidly pointing away from  their claims of historic recent warming. Not only was the CRU temperature record completely unverifiable and unmaintained (see here), the premise behind tying today’s temperature back 1500 years via tree rings was also a fool’s errand and completely unfounded (see here).

These two revelations alone are enough to deem the AGW science D.O.A, since the CRU gridded data sets cannot be replicated even by CRU (let alone independent analysis) and the foundational principle that supposedly connects tree rings (and other biological proxies) to local modern temperatures cannot be applied. Mathematically the story is a mess.

In these posts and others I have laid out how the Hockey Team responded when faced with the realization that the science was not confirming their ideology. Instead of rejecting their conclusions and following the data, they attempted to cover the problems up, obscuring the problems from the science community. And in this post I show how bad it really got.

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Tags: Briffa, Climategate, CRU, Esper, Global Warming, Hide the Decline, Jones, Mann, McIntyre, Osborn

Addendum: At the end of this post I note how Phil Jones finally admits he has lost or overwritten the original raw data from prior CRU products. One of Jones’ admissions is that his group continuously overwrites their data. He tries to say some data has not been ‘adjusted’ or deleted, etc. But the truth is he has reprocessed the data so many times very little of it is still pristine. As I said at the end, this invalidates all claims to date built upon this unverifiable data. Without the ability to reproduce results, then the results cannot be defended. My guess is only 10-20% of the data is untouched. And it is the ‘adjustments’ on the remaining that needs to be audited and cross checked. Going forward there may be some claims to be derived, but nothing in the current record that cannot be reproduced would be considered verified.

Addendum2: What we may be seeing in all this is the slow biasing of ground station data as discovered at NCDC recently. Would it be true irony if the ‘divergence’ Briffa detected in the tree rings was actually all the fudging Jones was doing on the temp record? – end addendum

In a previous post on the ClimateGate 2 emails I noted how Phil Jones, the head of CRU, was a serial deleter and FOIA dodger. I was being too kind.

I decided it would be worthy to paint the evolving picture of how this man lied to people requesting data and – worse – how he lied to his coworkers at UAE and CRU. If anyone is regretting the new release of emails it is Phil Jones (though Michael Mann will come in a close second).

The emails show over time an arrogant ass fool who felt he was too pure to be bothered with criticism, technical challenges and scientific scrutiny. Time and time again he simply made things up and communicated these fantasies as fact. The email record exposes a petty and whiny man whose career should now be truly over.

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Tags: CRU, Gridded Data, Lost Data, Phil Jones, Rsw Data, UEA

Newt Gingrich’s Presidential campaign should now be over, with his latest bizarre and ridiculous proclamation:

Newt Gingrich says as president he would ignore Supreme Court decisions that conflicted with his powers as commander in chief, and he would press for impeaching judges or even abolishing certain courts if he disagreed with their rulings.

“I’m fed up with elitist judges” who seek to impose their “radically un-American” views, Gingrich said Saturday in a conference call with reporters.

Another life long politician who thinks he is above the law and can use the power of the Presidency to threaten and coerce others to bend to his will.

What is wrong in DC right now is the fact that this same childish mentality is running rampant through out the political and bureaucratic elites. This is how we got Obamacare crammed down our throats. This is why there was a 2010 backlash vote against incumbents and the Democrats. This is the very cancer that has the Senate and Super Committee running around circumventing our constitution and laws and getting NOWHERE.

Congress has failed to fulfill their duty for going on 3 years now by not passing budgets. When has that ever been allowed? The President bypasses the Congressional confirmation process through recess appointments and creating Czars.. The Senate and House define bills ‘deemed’ (e.g., already passed) when the bill has never once had a vote logged on it. The list of infractions goes on and on. And that is just the normal day-to-day business crap.

There are kickbacks to political cronies all through the government. The fools that brought us the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac 2008 subprime implosion retired filthy rich after wiping out the savings of tens of millions of hard working Americans. Teachers have been caught cheating on tests to garner raises and bonuses.

The administration has been flaunting the constitutional oversight role of Congress by covering up their insane and deadly gun walker program. The administration refuse to release information on all the Solyndra’s out there, where tax payers bail out failed green companies – all with ties to the Obama campaign. The country is falling apart due to rampant disregard for the law – like trying to mandate people buy a product (health insurance) because the politicians don’t have the spine to fix their messes. The number one problem in America is the fact the federal government is out of control and running outside its constitutional limits.

And Newt’s idiotic answer is to flaunt the law and separation of powers even more?

Toast.

What happens when the underpinning claims of a scientific theory are proven wrong?

Under the tried, true and ancient scientific method that framed the work of Newton, Einstein and uncounted others the proposed theory is deemed disproved and the scientists making the claim have to go back to the drawing board. The theory is rejected.

But in the niche realm of climate pseudo-science (an area with little rigor, little quality checking, no independent assessment of methods and result, but tons of money) the answer is change the underpinning claim. Move the goal post and pretend the failure never happened. Even worse, change the conditions of the claim completely. And in the end, when you are totally boxed in by reality and facts, pretend the uncertainty you pretended was never there makes it impossible for you to see the history that is crystal clear. In other words, put the blinders on and pretend this was your story all along.

The Climategate 2 emails, when added to the Climategate 1 set, is a massive amount of dirt to sift through. On any given topic there are up to a hundred emails spanning the time period 1996-2009. Reading and synthesizing the mountain of evidence down to pertinent or representative context and evidence is a lot of work. But it always seems worth the hours of reading and noting when you step back and reveal the mess that is the pseudo-science of global warming.

The big challenge for the alarmists has always been PROVING that the current climate is unique and significant in recent times. If today’s climate is not unique, there is no way to claim what is happening today is primarily a result of human activity. In fact, it would require us to assume today’s climate is primarily driven by the same natural forces that have been at work for thousands if not millions of years. And the single biggest challenge to all of this is the well documented Medieval Warming Period (MWP).

This post will trace how the IPCC alarmists at CRU claimed today is warmer than this period in time (950-1250 AD), but then had to change their story many, many times before finally trying to pretend our lack of definitive data means we cannot say the MWP existed at all (which is the same as saying we cannot claim we are warmer today than then – QED alarmists theories are disproved).

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Tags: Global Warming, Medieval Warm Period

It seems we have not learned our lesson yet on how badly out of control the federal government is. You’d think we would have learned from ObamaCare and the Frank-Dodd-Morgtage debacle how shoddy (but always ‘well meaning’) legislation can wreak havoc when it finally becomes law, policy, processes and procedures.

The Frank-Dodd-Morgtage disaster is a classic example of DC screwing up in reverse because they did not think things through – or simply ignored the downside risks because they were on a mission for God. The liberals wanted to extend the honor and joy of home ownership to many more people. They did this by removing the responsibility of home ownership and putting that on the back of taxpayers (basically all the truly responsible home owners). The liberal do-gooders did not realize it would only take a small fraction of the over all housing market invested in subprime loans to topple the entire housing market – and wipe out the life savings of tens of millions of people.

The ratio of lower-quality subprime mortgages originated rose from the historical 8% or lower range to approximately 20% from 2004-2006, with much higher ratios in some parts of the U.S.[1] A high percentage of these subprime mortgages, over 90% in 2006 for example, were adjustable-rate mortgages.[2] These two changes were part of a broader trend of lowered lending standards and higher-risk mortgage products.[2][3] Further, U.S. households had become increasingly indebted, with the ratio of debt to disposable personal income rising from 77% in 1990 to 127% at the end of 2007, much of this increase mortgage-related.[4]

Instead of more home owners, we now have fewer and the homes have lost much of their value.

ObamaCare is even worse. The Democrats openly admitted we would not know the damage imbedded in the liberal fantasy until the law was passed and mindless bureaucrats started implementing it. So far the news is pretty bad. Most small businesses are dropping their health insurance benefits; therefore, most people cannot keep their current policies as promised. Large or politically connected companies are getting waivers so they don’t have to participate. Medicare/Medicaid are getting gutted to pay for the billion dollar bureaucracy (which will not address a single patient’s medical needs). ObamaCare is the epitome of stupid big-government-solutions thinking. It will waste billions on top of the already high costs of medical care, sucking up the money needed to help patients. Talk about an epic backfire.

Now we have another bill rushed through Congress, probably unread and riddled flaws. Or in this case, is there something much worse than unintended consequences at play:

The bill which would codify into law the indefinite detention without trial of American citizens is about to be passed and sent to Obama’s desk to be signed into law, even as some news outlets still erroneously report that the legislation does not apply to U.S. citizens.

…

“It is not unfair to make an American citizen account for the fact that they decided to help Al Qaeda to kill us all and hold them as long as it takes to find intelligence about what may be coming next,” remarked [GOP Senator Lindsay] Graham. “And when they say, ‘I want my lawyer,’ you tell them, ‘Shut up. You don’t get a lawyer.’”

…

Senator McCain also told Rand Paul during a hearing on the bill that American citizens could be declared an enemy combatant, sent to Guantanamo Bay and detained indefinitely, “no matter who they are.”

This is a very, very dangerous bill if senators’ statements are true. I do not run off half-cocked on conspiracy theories as should be well known. I did not fall for the Bush-FISA nonsense from the left, nor the Birther BS regarding Obama from the right. I looked objectively at Able Danger, Global Warming and a host of other issues and pull out the facts from the fiction and decide for myself.

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Tags: Bush, Detaining Americans, GITMO, Graham, Levin, McCain, Obama

I had to read this liberal’s epiphany and laugh a sad laugh:

But today, the most important sentence isn’t a report on something that just happened, but a fresh look at something that’s been happening for the last three years. In particular, it’s this sentence by the Financial Times’ Ed Luce, who writes, “According to government statistics, if the same number of people were seeking work today as in 2007, the jobless rate would be 11 percent.”

Welcome to the real world Ezra. For your information this has been reported ad naseum on my blog and others FOR MONTHS!:

From December 2011 on November Unemployment:

When you recompute the unemployment rate using the number of employed (140,580,000) out of  the real workforce of 158,500,000, you get a more accurate reflection of the job situation in America.

That actual unemployment rate is 11.3%

From September 2011 on the August unemployment:

The adjusted U3 unemployment for July, based on a nominal workforce size (the red line) was 10.7% – and rising.

From July 2011 on June unemployment:

That red line shows 2.5 million fewer workers in the work force. It also shows that if the work force was at its normal level, we would be at 10.7% unemployment in June – not 9.1%.

From June on July unemployment:

When you recompute the unemployment number (which is those working minus the total workforce pool) the actual, on the ground unemployment is at 10.5%.

From April on March unemployment:

If we recalculate the real unemployment against the nominal labor force (155.9 million verses the current 139.8 million) the real unemployment rate is a staggering 10.3%.

I mean … really? People are just now cluing in inside DC on this???

Not surprisingly there is so much more damning information in the 5,000+ new Climategate emails it is hard to know how to present it. You could do large posts noting all the incidents of unscientific behavior, or you could do tons of small ones on each instance. I have a larger post in mind that juxtaposes the IPCC claims against the behind the scenes discussion by authors (which show an enormous gap between the science and the claims).

But today, being a day for decorating the tree, I will focus on one email and how it contains  evidence of covering up or filtering out contrary scientific results that would undermine the IPCC claims that our current climate is unprecedented.

The email is #0475 and is from Mar 2002. It is between Ray Bradley and Ketih Briffa as they work on an IPCC report. Ray responds to comments by Briffa to make changes the report. The changes seem reasonable until the last topic:

I cut Hammer ref
I just thanked “ll those who provided data”
I was looking at Graybill & Shiyatov Fig 20.6, but you are right that the  warmest period was after 1160….though some argue the MWP extends into the  14th century….certainly it shows a cold 11th century.  So I’lll cut that  reference, as requested…

I conclude Briffa had suggested swapping out studies by Fischer and Springer Verlag over the Graybill & Shiyatov work in Russia:

>for the melt record (l) use .
>
>2. “Intercomparison of….techniques”, Fisher and others.1996. Nato
>ASI Vol 141, “Climate variations and forcingmechanisms of the last
>2000 yrs”, Springer Verlag etc. pp 297-328.
>Can not track down yet where the low re one came from (can you ask Dave
>directly)
>Other points are ok
>Did you track down the Hammer ref (some European conference) ?
>Do you need list of acknowledgements yet? Should include
>Mike Salmon for drawing the figure
>and Fisher, Black, Luterbacher, presumably Johnsson ,Bianchi,Kegwin,
>van Engelen,Keith Barber and Darrel.Maddy, for the data I used.
>I am really pushed , sorry about brief reponse- honest.
>Keith

As with most short emails and limited context it is difficult to be sure, but it seems Briffa was concerned about Graybill & Shiyatov because this tree ring study blows a lot of holes in the Hockey Team’s claims about the  supposedly geographically limited nature of the Medieval Warm Period (the Hockey Team’s latest unproven excuse to claim the ‘globe’ was not warmer than today). Ray originally tries to include the study since it is both valid and applicable:

>At 10:46 PM 3/4/02 -0500, you wrote:
>>yes–they do show a MWp in shiyatov and graybill 1992–but i added briffa
>>2000, too.
>>i still need a response to my last email
>>ray

Ray Bradley included Graybill & Shiyatov, and later Briffa requested he pull it –  the reason clearly being concern over the MWP (Medieval Warming Period).

So, what does that study say? The study is one of a series discussing the high altitude tree line response to climate in Russia. In this independent study siting Graybill and Shiyatov (on which Ray Bradley is co-author – “Climatic change at high elevation sites“, Diaz, Beniston & Bradley) we learn this:

Beyond the realm of snow and ice, and alpine tundra, the tree-line defines an important climate-related ecotone. Although the tree-line itself varies in structure and composition from one mountain region to another, and is subject to many potentially limiting ecological constraints (Tranquillini 1993) climate is the dominant control, at least away from the oceanic margin. Consequently evidence of past changes in tree-line position is generally interpreted in terms of variations in summer temperature.

OK, this discussion indicates high altitude tree line locations are a strong indicator of past climate. Probably orders of magnitude better than tree rings – where non-temperature ecosystem factors,  in tandem with the genetics of the species and individual trees, overwhelm any temperature signal. The tree-line is a feature of the complete population of local trees and has much less influence from the same factors that make tree rings lousy measures of past local climate (let alone past regional, hemispheric or global climate).

If I was weighting proxies I would weight tree line data orders of magnitude over tree rings. So what’s the MWP issue here? It’s pretty stunning:

Radiocarbon-dated microfossils (tree stumps or wood fragments) from above the current tree-line can thus provide dramatic testimony of warmer conditions in the past.

Holy Hockey Puck Batman! There is ‘dramatic testimony‘ of warmer past conditions in Russia!

But wait, there’s more:

This is well-illustrated in the Northern Urals where now dead trees beyond the tree-line have been dendrochronologically dated to obtain information on the timing of past tree growth at high elevations (Shiyatov 1993). This reveals that most of the trees were growing in the 10th-12th century A.D.; no trees where found to date from the late 18th and 19th centuries, indicating the tree-line had retreated at that time. This evidence is strongly supported by tree-ring studies in nearby forests, where maximum ring widths where found at the time the forest advanced and minimum ring widths where characteristic of the 18th-19th centuries (Graybill and Shiyatov, 1992).

The science literature for this conclusion is pretty clear – it was MUCH warmer in the Medieval Period than today:

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).

The tree-line has responded to the end of the Little Ice Age (as one would expect), but we have yet to reach the same line that existed in prior, non-industrial times. So today’s climate is not warmer than the MWP. End of story. Tree rings have no argument to disprove the tree-line.

Which is why Graybill and Shiyatov 1992 had do be removed from the IPCC report. It would not just undermine the Hockey Stick. It would be stronger evidence than the tree rings that today is not as warm as the MWP. It is hard to believe Ray Bradley would be willing to throw out his own conclusions for ‘The Cause“. But people who become consumed with a cause throw out all sorts of morals.

What we have here is more hiding of critical scientific data to create the illusion of unprecedented warming. One of many examples in those 5,000 emails.

More on the tree-line can be found here.

Tags: Briffa, IPCC, Medieval Warm Period, Tree Rings, Tree-Line