Flawed climate data

http://www.financialpost.com ^ | October 02, 2009 | Ross McKitrick

[Para-Ord.45]

Beginning in 2003, I worked with Stephen McIntyre to replicate a famous result in paleoclimatology known as the Hockey Stick graph. Developed by a U.S. climatologist named Michael Mann...

...Steve and I showed that the mathematics behind the Mann Hockey Stick were badly flawed, such that its shape was determined by suspect bristlecone tree ring data.

...a series of other studies published since 1998 had similar shapes, thus providing support for the view that the late 20th century is unusually warm. The IPCC also made this argument in its 2007 report. But the second expert panel, led by statistician Edward Wegman, pointed out that the other studies are not independent. They are written by the same small circle of authors, only the names are in different orders, and they reuse the same few data climate proxy series over and over.

...Briffa had published a paper in 1995 claiming that the Medieval period actually contained the coldest year of the millennium. But this claim depended on just three tree ring records (called cores) from the Polar Urals. Later, a colleague of his named F.H. Schweingruber produced a much larger sample from the Polar Urals, but it told a very different story: The medieval era was actually quite warm and the late 20th century was unexceptional. Briffa and Schweingruber never published those data, instead they dropped the Polar Urals altogether from their climate reconstruction papers.

...journals like Nature and Science, none of the journal reviewers or editors ever required Briffa to release his Yamal data...in 2008 Briffa, Schweingruber and some colleagues published a paper using the Yamal series (again) in a journal called the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, which has very strict data sharing rules. Steve sent in his customary request for the data, and this time an editor stepped up to the plate, ordering the authors to release their data.

...Steve searched a paleoclimate data archive to see if there were other tree ring cores from at or near the Yamal site that could have been used to increase the sample size. He quickly found a large set of 34 up-to-date core samples, taken from living trees in Yamal by none other than Schweingruber himself!Had these been added to Briffa's small group the 20th century would simply be flat. It would appear completely unexceptional compared to the rest of the millennium.

...Thus the key ingredient in most of the studies that have been invoked to support the Hockey Stick, namely the Briffa Yamal series, depends on the influence of a woefully thin subsample of trees and the exclusion of readily-available data for the same area. Whatever is going on here, it is not science.

(excerpt)

[Sacajaweau]

Flawed and rigged is two different things.

[Sacajaweau]

is = are for previous post.

[pieceofthepuzzle]

This is one of the most damning things that I’ve read yet.

[cajungirl]

The thinking was flawed/ the results were rigged. ANd the hiding of the data was rigged.

This is shocking.

[Lloyd227]

Hey folks,  check this out.  There is a way to make your voice heard where it might actually count.

The Climate Pool  (on Facebook)

Their "Mission Statement"

The Climate Pool is a hub for a global discussion on the Climate Summit in Copenhagen, planned to run from December 7-19. It is a Facebook fan page managed by leading news agencies all over the world which are members of the global media network MINDS International.

The issues at stake in Copenhagen affect the lives of billions of people in coming years. The summit, whatever the outcome, is likely to grip the attention of masses of news consumers the world over – yet the complex scientific underpinnings and attendant competing interests make the role of serious journalism more important than ever.

Around this journalism we hope to drive debate of the myriad aspects of the event with readers around the world.

The news agencies involved will be posting blog items, linking to relevant content and driving debate on the page’s discussion boards as well as by using other tools of social media – moderating those discussions in accordance with the highest journalistic standards. This site is not aimed at replicating the traditional media coverage of such an event but of providing back stories and a forum for analysis and various points of view. Many of the participating news agencies will concentrate on national aspects concerning their home markets; some will focus more on a global market. All are committed to jointly providing a new model for collaborative journalism and reader engagement. To avoid language barriers, all content of this site will be in English.

The following MINDS news agencies will actively contribute stories in the Notes section:

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Locate them on your Facebook account by searching on  The Climate Pool
If you do not have a Facebook account,  this one item alone is enough to justify getting one. 

Then help me and the rest of us  "let em have it"  :-)

[CedarDave]

Thus the key ingredient in most of the studies that have been invoked to support the Hockey Stick, namely the Briffa Yamal series, depends on the influence of a woefully thin subsample of trees and the exclusion of readily-available data for the same area. Whatever is going on here, it is not science.

Worse than the lack of data is that the statistical method used to produce the "hockey-stick" is flawed. It turns out that no matter the input data, the result turns out to look like the "hockey-stick."

From this link:

Global Warming Bombshell: Climate change turns out to be an artifact of poor mathematics.

Now comes the real shocker. This improper normalization procedure tends to emphasize any data that do have the hockey stick shape, and to suppress all data that do not. To demonstrate this effect, McIntyre and McKitrick created some meaningless test data that had, on average, no trends. This method of generating random data is called Monte Carlo analysis, after the famous casino, and it is widely used in statistical analysis to test procedures. When McIntyre and McKitrick fed these random data into the Mann procedure, out popped a hockey stick shape!

The net result: the principal component will have a hockey stick shape even if most of the data do not.

[Dick Bachert]

A very bitter former Senator and Vice President Al Gore seen here en-route back to prison after a federal appeals court refused to review his 20 year sentence for his lead role as spokesperson in the “Climategate” fraud conspiracy. The same court recently rejected the appeals of the lengthy sentences of the 137 alleged UN “scientists” – Gore’s co-conspirators – for falsifying data supporting so-called Cap and Trade legislation that trial testimony disclosed would have virtually destroyed what remained of the U.S. economy while unjustly enriching Gore and a cabal of insiders.

[enduserindy]

This is a great post. This is amazing. If he is right (he is) and all of the band wagon crowd really look at the evidence we will see a fundamental shift in the direction of mankind. Imagine the world peace, economic growth, and a cure to the ills of the third world if we built power plants that run on modern coal techniques everywhere to establish economies, producers and consumers. We may see them rethink many “liberal” policies. The bad news is how close we came to a dark, bleak path. The really crappy news is we still might but for yet another failed “liberal” policy. One thing is for certain, either way “change” is coming. My bet is the word “backlash” will be said allot in late 2010.

[steelyourfaith]

 

Beam Me to Planet Gore !

[Semper911]

Data Rape.

[ChildOfThe60s]

Flawed and rigged is two different things.

Yep. Flawed is a cheap weasel word. Why is it so difficult for so many to state a fact: criminal fraud. Nothing less.

[GreyMountainReagan]

ping

[GreyMountainReagan]

ping

[Publius6961]

Flawed and rigged is two different things.

Actually it's the same destination approached from different directions: the destination is called "error."

[rfp1234]

I read somewhere that McIntyre and McKitrick got a “hockey stick graph” from the Mann algorithm, after feeding numbers out of the telephone book into the computer!

[AFPhys]

Essentially correct.

The Mann algorithms are fatally flawed, and “produce” “hockey stick shaped” graphs 90% of the time with random data.