Bishop Hill: Gonzo science and the Hockey Stick ( Prof Mann and the Hockeystick )

A new book recounts how the 'Hockey Stick' model was created and more intriguingly, the political and institutional defence of the indefensible. (At one stage the Hockey Stick's defenders argued that trees on different continents had "teleconnections" with each other - a claim that wouldn't be out of place in a homeopathy brochure.)

Andrew Montford, a science publisher and blogger under the name Bishop Hill, has provided the storytelling to match the detective work and persistence of another blogger, Steve McIntyre, who dismantled the Stick. Andrew talked to us about The Hockey Stick Illusion and some of the key issues it highlights.

You say the IPCC needed the Hockey Stick to be true, and that's why it got such prominence. Was this the best they could do?

If you put any of the other major temperature reconstructions in place of the Hockey Stick I think it's true to say it doesn't look so frightening. They have a Medieval Warm Period that is within a whisker of the temperatures we have now. You can make them look scarier by overlaying the instrumental record over the 20th Century part of the graph - in fact, that's part of the reason why it looks scary. I show this in the book - in Briffa series [see below].

But [these reconstructions] wouldn't convince anybody there's anything going on there at all. So yes, they needed it to convince people; and they promoted it, they had policies to sell. And when it proved to be flawed they had to stand behind it, because otherwise, they'd look stupid.

Now to the story. The preparation of the original Hockey Stick turns out to be a small part of the saga. How the issues McIntyre raised were dealt with by the scientists and the establishment is the main story.

KFI is always running a good campaign....

Listening to them at the moment...

Talking about the IPCC report,, and Jerry Brown , Arnold,...and the funny board we have out here....

We are the only state campaigning to stop Global Warming .....

Talking about Lawrence Solomon author of The Deniers

and something he wrote an article in a Canadian paper...not sure which....listing things found ....

Much of the content came from Green Advocacy groups who then were also reviewers....of the IPCC report.

A Resource:

Some Global Warming Links:

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Apparently, the debate isn't quite over.

(for comparison, here is the mainstream)

Beyond the Himalayas by Lawrence Solomon, National Post, February 6, 2010
The global warming guerrillas by Matt Ridley, The Spectator, February 3, 2010
Global Warming Update by Walter Williams, Jewish World Review, February 3, 2010
Credibility is what is really melting by Mark Steyn, Macleans, February 3, 2010
Keeping Canadian students in the dark on climate by Lawrence Solomon, National Post, January 30, 2010
Heat wave closes in on the IPCC by Terence Corcoran, National Post, January 26, 2010
Canadian scientist says UN's global warming panel 'crossing the line' by Richard Foot, Canwest News Service, January 26, 2010
Glacier Meltdown: Another Scientific Scandal Involving the IPCC Climate Research Group by F. William Engdahl, GlobalResearch.ca, January 23, 2010
Climate Community Has More Egg on Face by Bill Sweet, IEEE Spectrum, January 22, 2010
Scientists using selective temperature data, skeptics say by Richard Foot, Canwest News Service, January 20, 2010
First Climategate, now Glaciergate by Lorne Gunter, National Post, January 20, 2010
Earth on the Brink of an Ice Age by Gregory F. Fegel, Pravda, January 11, 2010
Frosty, Frigid Global Warming by Ted Twietmeyer, GlobalResearch.ca, January 7, 2010
2009: The year climate change and global warming activists would like to forget by Tony Hake, Climate Change Examiner, December 31, 2009
The scariest article you will read this year by James Delingpole, The Telegraph, December 30, 2009
The Settled Science by James P. Hogan, LewRockwell.com, December 29, 2009
German Physicists Trash Global Warming "Theory" by John Oâ€™Sullivan, Climategate.com, December 26, 2009
A 2,000-page epic of science and skepticism -- Part 2 by Terence Corcoran, National Post, December 21, 2009
Trouble over tree rings by Terence Corcoran, National Post, December 21, 2009
Climategate: What's the "trick" and what did it "hide"? by Terence Corcoran, National Post, December 20, 2009 (Searchable Climategate emails)
Wikipedia's Climate Doctor by Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post, December 19, 2009
A 2,000-page epic of science and skepticism -- Part 1 by Terence Corcoran, National Post, December 18, 2009
My position on climate change by David Crowe, December 17, 2009
Inconvenient truth for Al Gore as his North Pole sums don't add up by Hannah Devlin, Ben Webster, Philippe Naughton, The Times, December 15, 2009
Climategate archives by Watts Up With That, December 15, 2009
Is devoured polar bear cub a victim of global warming or act of nature? by Alison Brownlee, National Post, December 10, 2009
Copenhagen climate summit: global warming 'caused by sun's radiation' by Louise Gray, Telegraph, December 8, 2009
Rethinking Green: Eat global, not local by Kevin Libin, National Post, December 8, 2009
Climate Change: The Global Media presents an Apocalyptic Scenario by Michel Chossudovsky, GlobalResearch, December 7, 2009
Feed the world: grow fish in Alberta's badlands by Kevin Libin, National Post, December 7, 2009
Rethinking Green: Save the environment: Don't take transit by Kevin Libin, National Post, December 7, 2009
ClimateGate Could Threaten Copenhagen Climate Deal by Declan McCullagh, CBS, December 7, 2009
Are the Russians Coming? Brief Thoughts on the Climate Change Scandal by Sean Gabb, Libertarian Enterprise, December 6, 2009
Blue Bin Blues by Kevin Libin, National Post, December 5, 2009
Climategate reveals 'the most influential tree in the world' by Christopher Booker, Telegraph, December 5, 2009
The Fiction Of Climate Science by Gary Sutton, Forbes, December 4, 2009

A recent article from Mr. Solomon....FR Thread:

Beyond the Himalayas (descriptions of 9 IPCC controversies)

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National Post [Canada] ^ | Saturday, February 6, 2010 | Lawrence Solomon

Posted on Sat 06 Feb 2010 05:34:48 PM PST by canuck_conservative

What caused a fall from grace so sudden that IPCC’s insiders now demand Pachauri’s ouster, and that leads the Indian government to set up an “Indian IPCC” as a national alternative to the IPCC, declaring that it “cannot rely” any longer on the organization that its own representative heads?

One answer is Climategate — the unauthorized release of emails in November that showed the duplicity of scientists associated with the IPCC. Unquestionably, Climategate opened the floodgates to the torrent of scandals that have since poured out, seemingly without end. Many of the new scandals, some of them sporting “-gate” as a suffix, were little known before the Climategate emails were released; many were well known, but not publicized by a compliant press. Their sheer number deserves cataloguing.

More WWF: The IPCC’s reliance on the World Wildlife Fund as an authority in Glaciergate was no anomaly. Blogger Donna Laframboise thought to do a search on the IPCC’s own site of “WWF” and found it turned up dozens of times, and was a source on everything from mudflows and avalanches to fish in the Mesoamerican reef.

Greenpeace et al.: Ms. Framboise then checked out Greenpeace and found that this advocacy organization, too, was an IPCC source. For example, Greenpeace’s report, The Pacific in Peril, was the sole source for a claim that linked global warming to coral reef degradation. On a roll, she then found that members of other advocacy organizations, such as people from David Suzuki Foundation, Environmental Defense and Friends of the Earth were among the IPCC’s “expert reviewers.”....

(Excerpt) Read more at network.nationalpost.com ...

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Torturing the climate numbers until they confess