It’s Thanksgiving weekend. But I see the comment count on the most recent thread is approaching 300. Please continue the discussion here. As soon as I click publish, I’ll close that thread and move the most recent 20 or so comments so people can see them here.
195 thoughts on “Son of Climategate: Part II”
Comments are closed.
Nick:
You show the results—maybe with a dashed line—or you don’t show the results and explain why you didn’t.
Those are the “responsible behavior in research” choices.
Toto:
So you’re claiming now that all (or most) trees south of 50 deg N do not show a divergence? I think if you make that conclusion, then you really are cherry picking.
Nick:
Actually Briffa’s Science paper doesn’t even mention divergence.
No concealment?
Nick “As to whether you show and explain on every occasion – that is a matter of practicality, and presentation. At some stage, enough is enough.”
The only thing that qualifies as “enough is enough” for this point is the surrounding discussion because it has indeed been done to death. What they did in the assessment report was far from enough and some people (yourself included, Nick) refuse to see that there is a problem that the rest of us clearly see.
No wonder it keeps coming around…
So the golden phrase is…”A number of tree-ring chronologies have displayed anomalous growth or changed responses to climate forcing on different time scales in very recent decades (3, 9). ”
And you think this is adequate discussion of an effect that could conceivably invalidate the whole area of science?
TT 86214
“What they did in the assessment report was far from enough”
In the TAR they said:
It’s not a treatise on the subject, WG1 can’t do that. But there are plenty of references. The AR4 says:
TT #86216
“And you think this is adequate discussion of an effect that could conceivably invalidate the whole area of science?”
Treerings aren’t that important. But scientific papers are written for people who can follow references, and when you’re writing a one-page paper in Science, you rely on that. The (3,9) refers to a total of 7 papers. Of these
Reduced sensitivity of recent tree-growth to temperature at high northern latitudes is a whole Nature paper devoted to this topic, and
Trees tell of past climates: but are they
speaking less clearly today? is an even more detailed and thorough inquiry.
Nick : Well thanks for that. I’d not seen that passage in the AR4 which is a lot better than the AR3.
But the specific and significant uncertainty simply didn’t percolate up to the summary. To me the science IS saying that when its warmer, trees (or at least some of them) show it to be cooling and hence cant be reliably used as thermometers no matter how much we want them to be useful. There is simply no evidence divergence is unique to “recent decades” and I wouldn’t mind betting plenty of trees diverge from the temperature record all over the place all the time.
That should be the end of it for Dendroclimatology until its resolved…but its not is it.
Nick “scientific papers are written for people who can follow references, and when you’re writing a one-page paper in Science, you rely on that.”
Yes but when you refer to a result from another paper to support your paper you need to take account of the uncertainty in that paper too. Its not enough to say the uncertainty was discussed “over there” and doesn’t apply to my result.
At least this puts to rest any debate over whether this was hacking or not. The timing, the comments and the selective quoting all indicate.
#Political motivation.
#Malicious intent.
#No interest in advancing science.
“But OK, the post-1960 period – the issue here as you say isn’t lack of data, it’s divergence. It has been extensively written about, so there is no concealment. As to whether you show and explain on every occasion – that is a matter of practicality, and presentation. At some stage, enough is enough.”
Yes, if your readers, policy makers, are up to speed on the science written in 1998, you might consider not showing it.
But Briffa had two choices:
1. Show a graphic with the decline, and explain it in the text
2. Show a graphic without the decline and explain it in the text.
he choose 2.
A. he didnt save any space in graphics or words
B. His text refers to a divergence and the reader has no idea how big it is.
C. Panels that have looked at the issue, thought it was potentially devastating for the science.
D. Recent studies of the same trees and area show that the divergence is only a problem if you adjust temperature series.
So, I see no reason to choose 2. No rationale why is is scientifically
1. more complete
2. more transparent
3. more accurate
4. more informative
5. more ANYTHING than convienient to the “story”
At least this puts to rest any debate over whether this was hacking or not.
Pronouncing that the debate is over seems to be a habit with folks like Bugs.
Tim.
“And you think this is adequate discussion of an effect that could conceivably invalidate the whole area of science?”
That is why you CANNOT show the graphic. You cannot show the graphic because it would take 10000 words to undo the message it delivers. That is why, gavin says you have to show the warming in the graphic. because people dont read the words. That is why they cant show the decline because the pile of words to explain it is huge.
You see, gavin agree with me and disagrees with Nick. the best way to get the message across is with the graphic. Not with text and references to 10 year old papers.
Bugs.
There is a reason why the case is open.
There is a reason why the file is in the open password protected
No deal has been done. Yet.
He may want to come in from the cold.
He has contacted the other side.
he’s not a hacker.
@Mosher
“He may want to come in from the cold.”
That is seriously wacky.
The selective quoting is malicious.
Mosher 86223,
That pretty well sums up the entire issue. Nick will, of course, never accept this as a ‘failure” of those involved. That doesn’t matter, because it is as clear a case of policy/advocacy intruding on ‘the science’ as you are going to find. Of course, many email messages show the same pattern of sacrificing clear statements of scientific uncertainty so as to not confuse the ‘story’ those involved want to tell the public (and politicians!). Anybody who can’t see the problem just doesn’t want to see it.
Mosh “it would take 10000 words to undo the message it delivers.”
At the moment no amount of words undoes that message. There are no known words that can do the job becasue we simply dont have an answer. Waffle and speculation isn’t the kind of science we should be using to reshape our societys with.
As a biologist I find all this discussion about divergence of tree rings fascinating.
Here is a very simple question.
a prior, what would one would expect the line shape of a titration of an environmental component vs growth (ring width) to be?
We actually know this one in the majority of cases; you either get a sigmoidal line shape or something like a Gaussian. Initially growth is highly restricted by an input, then becomes less and less restrictive and finally becomes inhibitory.
It is highly unusual for anything to provide a linear function vs growth.
Let us for the moment assume that the Earth is warming, and the temperature is greater than it has been in the thermometer measured history. If this is the case could we expect that the ring widths of trees to get smaller as temperatures increase? Undoubtedly yes. Indeed, such a response would be completely biologically coherent.
If this is the case, why drop it from the reconstructions?
Well, if you have a pair of peaks in the past it leads to two very different reconstructions;
Fat-Thin-Fat could mean Warm-Cool-Warm or Warm-Hot-Warm. The inability to differentiate between Warm-Cool-Warm and Warm-Hot-Warm is the killer for the ‘unprecedented warming’ message.
Because a non-linear relationship between growth (as tree ring width) and temperature; the most common biological response observed to temperature, they deemphasize the nature of the problem.
The MWP most likely represents Warm-Hot-Warm and not Warm-Cool-Warm; which would undermine the cause.
bugs,
Consider these two sentences:
1. Selective presentation of quotes.
2. Selective presentation of data.
See a pattern?
Andrew
How’s the de-skunking coming? It should really be a parallel thread since the topics are so similar 🙂
“he’s not a hacker.”
Looks like someone is working on “Son of Crutape Letters: Who Blew the Whistle?”.
I don’t believe our meticulous Mr. Mosher would make such a categorical statement, without knowing that it was an inside job. I can’t wait to find out who our hero is.
dallas–
The house was successfully deskunked in time for T-Day. I’m just busy doing holiday stuff. Wed: Cleaning. Thursday: Cooking/eating. Friday: Cooking/Shopping/Eating. I’m cleaning again and doing laundry. I’m going to go work out now– I need to burn off that Turkey, stuffing etc. Tonight Jim and I are having Vegetable Turkey Soup and whole-wheat oat fiber rolls. We need to clear out all that fat!
I know! I know! He’s hiding in plain sight AKA The Purloined Letter.
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@DocMartyn (Comment #86231)
I had my BSc(Biology) and was enrolled in Forestries in the early 1980’s. That some tree species at least showed an inverted U shaped growth response to increasing temperatures was known then as I distinctly recall viewing graphs of such research results while conducting my own lab project to measure the number of degree-days necessary to stimulate bud burst in douglas fir seedlings. As you have pointed out there are perfectly plausible explanations of the “divergence” available from the Biologists and that being so it is not at all a foregone conclusion that the “divergent” data is “bad data”. It could be quite good data in light of the underlying biology so it should have been left on display and the plausible explanations given.
Toto:
Either they are really stupid for not just restricting their series to ≤ 55°N, or there’s something wrong with your conclusion.
Here’s another curious comment from toto:
I think this is the comment JeffID is “dodging”:
So based on kdk’s comment, two of the four series match up pretty well(I highlighted them), and are basically statistically indistinguishable: the upward trending data and sinewave #1. kdk’s point is valid, but I hardly think “statistically indistinguishable” is a synonym for “fails miserably”.
So we’ve got two baffling claims from toto now, one that they can avoid the divergence problem by including all series south of 55°N (actually you can’t, I already know this to be false from other analyses, it is actually only by cherry picking that you can arrive at that conclusion), and at least one arbitrary pattern works equally well as a hockey stick.
Nick:
Because it does not address his figure and the manipulations of his results in generating the figure that he performed, it is actually completely irrelevant.
He did not discussed the fact he cut the plot of his analysis off at 1960. He did not discuss the fact he cuts the plot of his analysis off at 1550, he did not provide a text file with the full analysis of the data present, he did not even provide the program he used to generate it this was released as part of the climategate emails.
Briffa’s treatment of his analysis results in the sole figure of his Science magazine article not meet or even come close to matching up with responsible conduct of research, as so clearly explained by Dick Feymann in 1974 during his commencement address so appropriately labeled “cargo cult science”:
Not showing the full analysis of your results, or equivalently from an ethics perspective not explaining that you haven’t shown part of it and why, not providing the raw results (e.g. text file with full analysis included) or the program to replicate it so it would even be possible to know you had chopped off part of the results of your analysis in the only figure displaying it, without the program getting “leaked” later…. these are certainly not bending over backwards, they don’t even come close to meeting the minimum standards for responsible conduct of research.
bugs.
I am not quoting.
he may want to come in from the cold.
you have no idea what I am referring to. It’s not what you think.
when the truth is on your side your best foot forward is full disclosure of all the data.
How do we know this? Do we have any ready examples?
Lets look at an example of a chart that discloses all the data
and devastates cherry picking
http://moyhu.blogspot.com/2011/11/picture-of-statistically-significant.html#more
The author of that knows that the truth is on his side. So he discloses everything. There is nothing to hide.
picture is worth a thousand words.
like gavin said, show the data if you have it. people will remember the graphic.
I don’t need to make this argument with my words. I make this argument with Gavins words and Nicks charts.
If you have an issue with it take it up with them.
JT, as you state, an inverted ‘U’-shaped curve is the most common response of biological systems to an effector.
However, such a response invalidates the use of ring widths/densities as proxies of temperatures. Therefore a linear relationship between ring widths/densities and temperature and all cases where this relationship is discredited is placed in the naughty corner; divergent.
Now matter how many times this is pointed out, people with a cause will claim that there a linear relationship between ring widths/densities and temperature.
IPCC AR4 Lead Author Richard Alley wrote this email,#3234, which shows that the problem with tree rings as proxies were well known and well understood.
date: Fri, 10 Mar 2006 22:50:43 -0500 (EST)
from:
subject: Divergence
to: drdendro@ldeo.columbia.edu, jto@u.arizona.edu, k.briffa@uea.ac.uk
Ed et al.–This is getting a little unmanageable in a hurry, I fear–there are now two or three overlapping emailing lists active, and my original words have been muddied. I am not on the committee, and I clearly never said that I know what the committee is thinking or doing. I did say that based on my impression of the questions asked in public by the committee (or more properly, by some members of the committee…) that I felt that they had some serious issues, and that I don’t expect that they will provide a strong endorsement of the tree-ring based millennial reconstructions. Rosanne did not emphasize the divergence problem, and sought to play it down as something that might have several explanations but that did not upset the basic reconstructions, so her presentation was in line with your emails. She did show her data, and the folks in the meeting room saw the divergence in those data.
Despite assurances from Ed and Keith, I must admit that I still don’t get it. The NRC committee is looking at a number of issues, but the one that is most publicly noted is to determine whether, and with what confidence, we can say that recent temperatures have emerged from the band of natural variability over the last millennium or two. Millennial reconstructions with high time resolution are mostly tree-ring based, mostly northern
hemisphere, and as I understand it, some are correlated to mean-annual temperatures and others to seasonal temperatures. The performance of the tree-ring paleothermometry is central. Taking the recent instrumental record and the tree-ring record and joining them yields a dramatic picture, with rather high confidence that recent times are anomalously warm. Taking strictly the tree-ring record and omitting the instrumental record yields a less-dramatic picture and a lower confidence that the recent temperatures are anomalous. When a big difference is evident between recent and a millennium ago, small errors don’t matter; the more similar they are, the more important become possible small issues regarding CO2 fertilization, nitrogen fertilization (or ozone inhibition on the other side…).
Unless the “divergence problem†can be confidently ascribed to some cause that was not active a millennium ago, then the comparison between tree rings from a millennium ago and instrumental records from the last decades does not seem to be justified, and the confidence level in the anomalous nature of the recent warmth is lowered. This is further complicated by the possible small influence of CO2 fertilization.
Ignoring for a moment the reasons for the controversy, the motivations of some of the participants, the relative scientific unimportance of the answer (this is about icons, not science), the implications if the skeptics are actually right (the climate may be more sensitive than we thought, because forcings are not revised if the thermometry is revised, so global warming may be worse than we thought), and any other extraneous issues, I believe that:
–There will be a lot of press and blog coverage of this issue when the NRC
report comes out;
–People will look closely at how the IPCC and NRC agree/disagree on this;
–There is a reasonable likelihood that the basic thrust of the IPCC and NRC will agree, but that the details of wording and confidence may be somewhat different, and that this difference could be amplified greatly by the political process in ways that would be used to damage the IPCC.
For what it’s worth, I also am not fully reassured by the emails that have come through.
Ed gives a very nice statement of what might have been done procedurally, but none of this was done, the time for the committee is very tight (the report is to be done by the time we meet in Norway, I believe…), and unless some of you provide input to the committee, they probably have a large fraction of their information already. (I believe that you can make statements to the committee by email; statements will be posted on a public web site and used by the committee.)
Keith says that the issues are complicated (undoubtedly correct), that he has unpublished data making the case stronger, and that “virtually all long tree-ring reconstructions that contribute to the various reconstructions, are NOT affected by this. Most show good
coherence with temperature at local levels in recent decades.â€
I was just looking at some of the recent Mann et al. papers, and at the Osborn and Briffa paper from this year. In that one, as nearly as I can tell, there are 14 long records, of which 2 extend to 2000, 8 end in the early to mid 1990s, 1 in the early to mid 1980s, 2 in the early to mid 1970s, and one in the late 1940s. That looks to be a pretty small data set by the time you get into the strongest part of the instrumental warming. If some of the records, or some other records such as Rosanne’s new ones, show “divergenceâ€, then I believe it casts doubt on the use of joined tree-ring/instrumental records, and I don’t believe that I have yet heard why this interpretation is wrong.
I’m open to hearing what I have screwed up. Please note, I have no direct stake in this! I went to the meeting, I spoke, I’m done. But, I think you have a problem coming, that it involves the IPCC and particularly chapter 6 and paleo generally, that I really should let Susan know what is going on (if you’ve seen all the increasingly publicly disseminated emails, you know the story). I’d rather go back to teaching and research and raising money and advising students and all of that, but I’m trying to be helpful. Casting aspersions on Rosanne, on the NRC panel, or on me for that matter is not going to solve the underlying problem.
Regards–Richard
DocMartyn,
Densities are not widths. On the other hand a non-linear response is obvious but for a restricted temperature range, it may be possible to assume linearity. I link again a graph that I think illustrate the limits but also the oportunities of dendro.
http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/8966/dendrod.png
Perhaps, the most serious problem does not come from trees.
What are the chances the remaining emails just say stuff like, please order more pencils or X took the last cup of coffee and didn’t refill it?
This whole thing is so depressing. It shows that scientists are as venal as bankers and politicians. They care more about what furthers their own interests than what is scientific truth.
That is when a gravy train comes along they all jump aboard.
phi, are you taking the piss or what?
Are you trying to tell me that there is a linear correlation between any of those POINTS?
If so, what is the lineshape of the correlation and what is the 95% confidence interval of the SLOPES.
buy me coffee Dave and I’ll tell you some jokes, strum my ukelele and show you my holiday pohotos…
and an interesting debate between Keenan and co is firing up on climate audit
Yup, lucia, take a look.
=========
DocMartyn,
Hey, we’re talking about climatology and not mechanical. High-frequency correlation you see between T and MXD is quite remarkable.
the thread is here
http://climateaudit.org/2011/11/22/new-climategate-emails/#comment-312808
just search for Keenan
Phi, “High-frequency correlation you see between T and MXD is quite remarkable”
I understand every word, but not the meaning.
Could you please tell me what High frequency means, to you, in this context? You see terms like high, medium and low are context dependent.
Are you telling me that based on this figure, one could estimate the external temperature a tree was subject to in the course of a year to the width of the ring laid down?
If so, tell me statistically how it would be done.
Welcome to the world of climate science….
diogenes/kim,
Feel free to post a few paragraphs revealing your interpretation of the conversations you think are “interesting” and which, evidently, you think I or others should read.
DocMartyn,
I mean by high frequency variation from year to year. This high-frequency correlation T-MXD is surprisingly better than that which can be seen between two thermometers of stations separated by a few km. But as you can see, it’s a large linear divergence between T and MXD (1.7 ° C per century in this particular case).
ok Lucia but, as an amateur, what should I believe when I read this:
Douglas J. Keenan
Posted Nov 26, 2011 at 6:07 AM | Permalink | Reply
Beran is wrong: he is using seasonal data (in this case, monthly), and not accounting for that. It would be the same if we were using non-fractional ARIMA; we would have to either aggregate the data (into annual values) or use SARIMA.
David Parker, and Phil Jones, and Ross McKitrick, are not doing things properly either. The DW statistic is based on assumptions that virtually never truly hold with real data. It is a relic from an earlier era, and deserves no place in modern statistical analysis. Use AICc etc.
there was a very single-minded cricketer bin the 1970s for Yorkshire called Geoffrey Boycott…by the end of his carrer as a player it was clear that everyone was out of line apart from him, in his worldview. I suspect that keenan might be in the Boycott camp. And I have no claims to be a scientist – unlike Jones/mann and co
Well, diogenes beat me to it, but I’d like to learn if AICc supercedes DW and why that is important. I hope to learn, such is the interest.
Also interesting is what he has to say about the ability to communicate with you and this blog.
===========
thanks Kim
my take is that Keenan is saying that everyone else is wrong, but he doesn’t say what the right result is. Which makes it frustrating for the likes of me.
#86243
Steven,
Thanks for the kind words. I should demur, though, that I didn’t actually show everything. I omitted (on the triangle plot) trends of less than 4 year duration, though clicks will show them.
The reason in the original plot was that they made a lot of distracting color noise, made problems for the color scale, and I thought were of little interest. In the plot you linked, the significance test would have fixed a lot of that, and I now plan to include more (probably to about 1 yr duration), primarily to get the axes back in line. But these are the sorts of practical considerations involved in graphical presentation. Showing absolutely everything isn’t necessarily doing the right thing by your readers.
phi:
This argument would be a lot more convincing (and seem a lot less like hand waving) if you created an MXD versus distance correlational plot, and compare it to what we get with temperature versus distance correlations. As it is, you’re looking at a few series and trying to make inferences on the entire population from that.
Of course I’m referring to something similar to this.
DocMartyn:
This is because they are invoking Liebig’s law of the minimum, and they are trying to select for species and locations where that species growth might be temperature limited.
The degree to which this holds, and the duration over which it can hold, are things that I believe the observed divergence between temperature and tree-ring proxy (MXD or otherwise) shows.
Of course you can take a—to the rest of us off the wall but otherwise bold—leap like phi has done and suggest that the thermometers are wrong and the treemometers are right.
i dunno nick
take it up with richard alley
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2011/11/26/456-5/#more-12663
Apparently, Realclimate hacked itself.
Carrick are you aware that biology has moved on from the 1880’s? We know for instance that there is not one single factor that controls growth, indeed, growth is an opportunity cost competing with one potential offspring.
Imagine that you are a tree enjoying the best weather, for your particular species, that you have noticed in the last 150 years. Evolutionary speaking, is it the best strategy to invest in a slightly thicker trunk or is it best to generate as many seeds as you damn well can?
You can play these games using computers and you find, because intra-species selection pressure is always greater than extra-species selection pressure, that it is better to live on the edge and invest more in offspring, especially in a small niche.
The idea that a tree between a pair of thermometers would correlate better to one, that the thermometer did with its twin suggests that they purchase better thermometers.
Re: Carrick (Nov 26 12:33),
Carrick,
One of the things I find frustrating about sceptic discussions is that some large cgarge is levelled, and when you query, it comes back to some matter of clarity or whatever. But the fault is still held to affirm the major charge.
So it is here. You alleged concealment of divergence. I pointed out that he had a paragraph on the subject. In a one-page Science paper, that’s a lot. And it includes links to papers which discuss in detail.
Then you say he didn’t link the discussion to the graph. Well, again, it’s a one-pager. The graph is staring you in the face.
But these are issues at most of presentation. Maybe he could have added a few words to help. But it isn’t concealment.
@Mosher
“Steven Mosher (Comment #86242)
November 26th, 2011 at 2:12 pm
bugs.
I am not quoting.
he may want to come in from the cold.
you have no idea what I am referring to. It’s not what you think.”
I’m not surprised, since you have done no more than make vague suggestions.
DocMartyn isn’t this a rhetorical question: “are you aware that biology has moved on from the 1880′s?” (I’d assume it is since, who wouldn’t think biology has moved on from the 1880’s???)
The first point of my comment was to observe there is can be a monotonic relationship between growth and temperature based on Liebig’s law of the minimum.
You seem to have been suggesting that the growth must to be double-sided, I’m simply pointing out that this needn’t always be the case, and in deed the postulate that the growth for properly selected specimens is “temperature limited” is the foundation for paleoclimatological reconstructions of temperature.
I now invite you to go back and reread my original comment, and to think about the implications of this comment in more depth:
Two things that I thought where obvious here so I didn’t point them out: 1) the temperature record is 150 years long, 2) the divergence occurs for about 1/3 of that, and that these observations should be related to my comment on “the degree to which [the assumption of temperature limited growth] holds, and the degree to which it holds” comment.
If you ponder this for a little while, it should be apparent I’m basically in agreement with you on this point.
Diogenenes–
I have no idea why you think that’s interesting.
Kim–
If you have a question for Doug or UC, ask them. Once again, if you find something “he” has to say about ability to communicate here, if you want me to know about it, you are going to have to be more explicit. I assume you are trying to be ‘subtle’. But, sorry, I’m not going to try to hunt down whatever it is you are finding interesting merely because you are too lazy to be clear.
Nick, context is everything.
Actually I alleged he failed to discuss that he left out part of the results of his analysis in his figure and accompanying text, you then moved the goal post to a generic discussion of divergence that had nothing to do with his figure, the figure caption or surrounding text, and I pointed this out. You are now arguing over the length of the document as if that somehow excuses the omission, which it does not. It is a classic non sequitur.
In that paper, even in the part you quoted, he does not discuss the fact that he omitted part of his analysis in his sole figure, nor why. Since it is only one page long as you observe, those basic findings of facts are things we should all be able to agree on.
One of the thing we in the US have been dealing a lot with lately is “responsible conduct in research.” Feynman in his 1974 lecture so nicely summed it up, I’ll repeat this again on this thread, including a bit more material:
Did Briffa meet this standard of ethical behavior, one that has been ground into most physicists? Um… “no”.
cce:
Stick to the facts, cce. What you know is different than what you say you know.
Carrick, Liebig’s law of the minimum, isn’t.
Indeed, you would be surprised at the amount of nutritional/mineral supplements that are supplied to plants to increase their growth.
Again, the idea that a biological system would behave in a linear manner to an input like temperature, is exceedingly unlikely. Dispute Nick’s assertions, nor what the rest of the Manniac’s claim, neither Norther nor Southern hemisphere tress show a good correlation between ring widths/density and ‘average’ temperature, nor ‘summer average’ temperature.
We know this, because they never, ever, publish the data.
DocMartyn:
Sorry, Doc, but that’s an unsupported assertion on your part. Saying it ain’t so doesn’t make it “ain’t so”.
Yes they do.
All of the data is there (Mann 08 publication), including the temperature series they used. The source are available too.
We can rightly criticism them for the things they do wrong, but it’s wrong to criticism them for the things they do right.
O.K. Carrick. From you link I have have had a look. Have they ever reported a the tree widths for an area, call it 30 miles, where they have an actual temperature record?
Or are we to take their estimated temperature record on faith?
Anyway. I have picked a tree. What should the minimum correlation coefficient be between their temperature plot and their ring widths?
Let me guess, even though individual trees ring widths in Manns data set show no correlation with either the CRU or HAD temperature series, some sort of combination and fictionalization of a large number of trees does?
Is that how it works?
“some sort of combination and fictionalization of a large number of trees does”
The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy.
Andrew
From what I understand of it, PCA analysis allows the temperature component to be seperated out from the other factors. Calibration against existing temperature series is then used to identify the temperature PCA. The ‘decline’ was a period when this process started to break down for tree rings, from the ’60s on. Research is being done into understanding that. As with much groundbreaking research, this takes time. This is why the “Hockey Stick” is only one component of the multiple strands of climate research into climate change. The other strands of research stand completely independently of paleo-climate.
Doc Martyn:
You wouldn’t want to compare individual tree to individual temperature, but they do use regional scale comparisons.
I dinna what you mean by “fictionalization of a large number of trees”.
Eye on the ball here: I’m just suggest you get the part right about what they get right, and don’t accuse them of errors that they don’t make. There’s plenty they get wrong without having to embellish this.
Re: Carrick (Nov 26 19:41),
Carrick, your accusation was:
“Actually Briffa’s Science paper doesn’t even mention divergence. No concealment?”
Your words, not mine. And yes, Feynman says you should report everything that might cast doubt. But he didn’t say it required that the discussion be written out in toto in everything you write. Briffa had just written two major papers on the subject, which he referred to. That is ample fulfilment of Feynman’s exhortation.
Carrick, DocMartyn,
I do not master enough English to effectively defend my point of view. But I would be interested to know how to explain what we see on this graph:
http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/1905/atsas.png
Your words, not mine. And yes, Feynman says you should report everything that might cast doubt. But he didn’t say it required that the discussion be written out in toto in everything you write. Briffa had just written two major papers on the subject, which he referred to. That is ample fulfilment of Feynman’s exhortation.
###########################
1. he wrote those papers in 1997 and 1998.
When the NRC actually saw the divergence data I do believe it cause quite a few questions.
You have a choice
1. show the decline and explain it
2. hide the decline and explain it
There is no practical or scientific reason to prefer #2 over #1
#1 takes the same space as #2
#1 requires the same amount of words as number two
#1 actually shows the reader the magnitude of the decline
With #2 readers are left to imagine a small decline or a ginormous decline. with #1 they get to see the decline
Again, #2 has nothing to recommend it
Steven,
Going back to
“That is why you CANNOT show the graphic. You cannot show the graphic because it would take 10000 words to undo the message it delivers. That is why, gavin says you have to show the warming in the graphic. because people dont read the words. That is why they cant show the decline because the pile of words to explain it is huge.”
I think that actually summarizes what is wrong with all this rule-making about how people should present graphs. Ultimately, the author has to convey to the reader what he believes to be true. Sure, he has to record how he got there. But getting it right is what matters.
Now here he isn’t presenting a graph to show how proxies work. He’s presenting a record of climate. Some of the trees post 1960 deviate from thermometers, and he (like all of us) believes the thermometers are right and the trees are not measuring temperature there. Now as you say, words can provide the record, but the graph conveys the message. And as a record of climate, putting curves on the graph you think are wrong is not the right thing to do. To convey the mechanics of how the record was compiled, you provide words. As he did.
Lucia said,
“The house was successfully deskunked in time for T-Day. I’m just busy doing holiday stuff. Wed: Cleaning. Thursday: Cooking/eating. Friday: Cooking/Shopping/Eating. I’m cleaning again and doing laundry. I’m going to go work out now– I need to burn off that Turkey, stuffing etc. Tonight Jim and I are having Vegetable Turkey Soup and whole-wheat oat fiber rolls. We need to clear out all that fat!”
Glad to hear it. I see lots of salads in my near future as well.
On an aside, Annan has his thoughts on Schmitter, http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2011/11/more-on-schmittner.html and a little humor on the new leak, http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2011/11/new-leak.html
@mosher
“Again, #2 has nothing to recommend it”
Scientific papers are written to make a point. That point was made.
For example
“Your paper should focus on what worked, not things that did not work (unless they didn’t work for reasons that are interesting and provide biological insights).”
Since there were no insights to be gained from the decline, (it was still being studied), it was consigned to seperate papers.
http://www.sci.sdsu.edu/~smaloy/MicrobialGenetics/topics/scientific-writing.pdf
Should all scientists submit themselves to the ClimateAudit inquisition before they do anything.
This may be off topic for son of climategate, but is related to deskunking 🙂
http://redneckphysics.blogspot.com/2011/11/for-lucia.html
Re: bugs (Nov 27 05:30),
> Scientific papers are written to make a point. That point was made.
I think all parties can agree on bugs’ characterization. It’s a recurrent theme in these conversations.
The question, of course, is: what point is that point?
Authors of scientific papers have a great deal of discretion as to the narratives they present. However, it’s discretion bounded by evidence. Well, in other disciplines it’s bounded by evidence.
bugs, Nick Stokes, Boris, et al. see no problems with the Mainstream climate science norms. Carrick, SteveF, Steve Mosher, et al. have identified issues that they see as major shortcomings in this field.
No instructive historical analogies spring to mind (situations that both sides would find illuminating, that is.) If I think of one, I’ll submit it.
tree temperatures right use tree temperatures
Tree temperatures wrong use thermometers
a question where were the thermometers when they only had tree rings [sarc] ASU
Steven:
“he’s not a hacker.”
So RC wasn’t hacked? I mean for the non-hacker story to hold water you have to think the “whistleblower” posted the file and then some hacker saw it first and hacked RC before coffee. Please. You guys arguing that Climatagate wasn’t a hack aren’t thinking this through.
Bugs @ 86287 – “Scientific papers are written to make a point”.
Wow, just wow. I was trained that scientific papers were written to advance science.
Sometimes, the conclusion can be, “I just don’t know the answer because I get contradicting results, and I’m not sure if it’s the quality of the data or unknown factors that I haven’t isolated; more work is needed”. That is a perfectly fine conclusion to a paper, and useful to all who are interested in a certain field. If you declare “here is what I know, here is what is uncertain, here are some logical next steps to take”, then hey! I will believe and trust you.
I believe the “I will only publish if my conclusions match my hypothesis” approach has taken over in many fields, and it is a disservice especially to emerging fields. As a researcher, I need to know what areas are dead ends and what areas need better data data gathering/precision; that where I can put my focus. Useful! If I see nothing but a parade of “I was right” papers from a source, but find they use unmeasureable/unknown “constants” to make their equations work, then beware, beware…..and it ain’t just climate science with these fragile scientific egos that can’t bear to see a single hypothesis “unproven”….
“Carrick, SteveF, Steve Mosher, et al. have identified issues that they see as major shortcomings in this field.”
Great. Write papers. Post on blogs. Attend conferences. Correspond with the scientists. People aren’t automatically right when they raise issues and none of these posters has shown in-depth knowledge of the issues being discussed. They may be right. Who knows for sure?
As for the Richard Alley email being tossed around, I’d love to hear what he thinks now. Did the dendro folks convince him?
As for me, I tend to take the reconstructions with a grain of salt (read: wider error bars) in part because of the divergence problem. They are not exactly the lynchnpin of AGW that they have been made out to be in skeptical circles and all the attention they get is because these biological systems have a lot more wiggle room for skeptics than, say, physics.
@Boris (Comment #86293)
“They are not exactly the lynchnpin of AGW that they have been made out to be in skeptical circles and all the attention they get is because these biological systems have a lot more wiggle room for skeptics than, say, physics.”
You mean there is much less wiggle room for climate modellers who base their GCM’s on physics? They really pinned down climate sensitivity, didn’t they?
.
Attention is what you get and hope for when you advertise. The IPCC Third Assesment report heavily advertised the hockey stick. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about the loud entrance of paleo-reconstructions on the climate scene:
“This iconic graph was featured prominently in the WG1 Summary for Policymakers under a graph of the instrumental temperature record for the past 140 years.[35] Versions of these graphs also featured less prominently in the short Synthesis Report Summary for Policymakers, which included a sentence stating that “The increase in surface temperature over the 20th century for the Northern Hemisphere is likely to have been greater than that for any other century in the last thousand years”, and the Synthesis Report – Questions.[36]
A large poster of the IPCC illustration based on the MBH99 graph formed the backdrop when Sir John T. Houghton, Co-Chair of Working Group 1, presented the scientific basis report in an announcement shown on television, leading to wide publicity.[22]”
Boris,
“Great. Write papers. Post on blogs. Attend conferences. Correspond with the scientists.”
Great idea, but I am not funded, and anything I do is on my own dime. I have neither the time nor money to devote much of my life to climate science. I have in fact several times attempted to correspond with climate scientists, usually without a reply; Josh Willis being a notable exception. My interactions with a few climate scientists on bogs have not generally been positive; you might remember Michael Tobis’s reaction when I suggested he was mistaken about how the atmospheric level of CO2 would react to a sudden stop in CO2 emissions.
“You mean there is much less wiggle room for climate modellers who base their GCM’s on physics? They really pinned down climate sensitivity, didn’t they?”
Well, they pinned it down to a range that doesn’t include any numbers skeptics are happy with. Which is kind of the point.
Nick when I wrote
I would have thought you would realize when I wrote this short comment, I was discussing divergence in the context of figure 2. More to the point I apologize to everybody involved by not writing more clearly that this was (to me) the (blindingly obvious) context and for giving you an outlet to simultaneously attack me for observing that he didn’t mention divergence in the context of figure 2 as well without you having to actually admit he didn’t discuss it in the context of his own analysis of data.
“No concealment” as an “ethics charge” could hardly refer to the generic discussion of divergence you pointed too, as I don’t think anybody would think he was under any ethical obligation to discuss that topic, except in the context of his own analysis results.
phi:
I don’t know what else to say other than what I said earlier.
These are individual series, and you can’t generalize the behavior of individual series to the population. In order to generalize them to a population, you need to compare a lot more series to a lot more series, and use a quantitative measure like correlation value rather than a visual one.
Boris:
I write papers, post on blogs, attend conferences and correspond with scientists already.
The Holy Bible on hackers
Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.
– John 10:1
The Holy Bible on partnering with thieves
Whoso is partner with a thief hateth his own soul: he heareth cursing, and bewrayeth it not.
– Proverbs 29:24
There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him:
haughty eyes,
a lying tongue,
and hands that shed innocent blood,
a heart that devises wicked plans,
feet that make haste to run to evil,
a false witness who breathes out lies,
and one who sows discord among brothers.
Proverbs 6:16–19
You shall not spread a false report.
You shall not join hands with a wicked man to be a malicious witness.
You shall not fall in with the many to do evil, nor shall you bear witness in a lawsuit, siding with the many, so as to pervert justice, nor shall you be partial to a poor man in his lawsuit.
Exodus 23:1-2
Anybody who knows evidence must testify in court (Leviticus 5:1)
Carefully interrogate the witness
Deuteronomy 13:15
A witness must not serve as a judge in capital crimes
Deuteronomy 19:17
Not to accept testimony from a lone witness
Deuteronomy 19:15
Relatives of the litigants must not testify Deuteronomy 24:16
Not to testify falsely Exodus 20:13
Punish the false witnesses as they tried to punish the defendant
Deuteronomy 19:19
AMac (Comment #86289)
November 27th, 2011 at 7:02 am
Read his paper, he has evidence. You can disagree with it and write your own paper. Or you can start up your own ClimateAudit Inquisition. That way, as we can clearly see now, does not work. There is no slimy, unturned rock that is not interesting to McIntyre.
Meh, just Meh. You doth protest too much.
Advancing science=making a point.
There are people out there demanding the one paper on global warming that tells them everything. There is no such paper, there never will be. Papers are written to make a point. That is one of the reasons the IPCC was put together, to tie all the pieces of knowledge together in one place. That is why text books are written. However, these do not advance the science, since they do no research.
Carrick,
This what I “know.”
Gavin said that Realclimate was hacked. Administrator logins were disabled, the file was uploaded, and a post had been prepared.
Now, based on this, I can think of three possibilities.
1) Gavin is lying and is part of a conspiracy.
2) The climategate perpetrator (or an accomplice) was one of the Realclimate contributers and did this without Gavin’s knowledge. Although, disabling Gavin’s access and doing this without permission would meet my definition of “hacking” no matter who did it, but whatever.
3) The climategate perpetrator or accomplice hacked Realclimate.
I think #1 and #2 are, shall we say, absurd.
Bugs 82680,
Wow the trees suddenly started to behave in a way they never had before and we don’t understand it?
Couldn’t be that the trees were behaving as they always had but previous attempts at understanding were wide of the mark?
I have been having a look at the data you so kindly linked to that Mann08 deposited.
What I did was to calculate the r2 value of year start of NH tree series to year Start+100 years against CRU and HAD NH (years 1850 to 1950), then start +1 to start 101, e.t.c.
So we can get some idea of the measured temperature fitting to the data set. Of course, a prior, one would expect that both CRU and HAD would record the best r2 for the 100 years of tree ring data that started in 1850 and ended in 1950, as one would expect tree-thermometers to have their closest correlation to temperature when the dates match.
Alas, this is not the case. For instance, ak046 (a composite) has 921 different 100 year stretches to start; a start date of 1850 is 19th for the HAD match, but quite pathetically 427th the CRU.
Now has these series have been chosen for their fittingness, why such lousy matches?
Carrick,
Who says being an academic doesn’t have its advantages. 🙂
.
Maybe you don’t write the right kind of papers, attend the right conferences, and communicate with the right scientists to satisfy Boris.
Carrick,
“These are individual series, and you can’t generalize the behavior of individual series to the population.”
Yes and no. On the one hand, it is a special case but it must also be explained. On the other hand it is not possible to escape the generalization or we can never establish anything interesting. If one claims that global temperatures of CRU are reliable, then we must prove that its components are. And that’s bad start for the cell 5-10E, 45-50N, however well equipped with quality stations.
Bugs,
Well, if the IPCC were a non-political body, we might actually agree on something. The failing of the IPCC is that is it blatantly political, with a clear set of left wing/green policy objectives. No doubt that warms your heart just as much as it chills mine.
Boris (Comment #86291)
November 27th, 2011 at 8:50 am
Steven:
“he’s not a hacker.â€
So RC wasn’t hacked? I mean for the non-hacker story to hold water you have to think the “whistleblower†posted the file and then some hacker saw it first and hacked RC before coffee. Please. You guys arguing that Climatagate wasn’t a hack aren’t thinking this through.
##########################
Boris, there is a difference between performing a hack and being a hacker. There is a difference between being a hacker
and being a tool. ( go to the word origin please ).
Let’s get down to basics
1. getting the files at CRU
2. Uploading to RC
#2 ( I believe gavin) required a hack, but not necessarily a hacker.
a tool could perform this hack.
On number 1 we have the following possibilities
Attitude of the person:
A. pro agw
B. anti agw
Access to the system
A. authorized
B. unauthorized
AA: whistleblower
AB: vigalantee
BA: traitor
BB: evil doer
and to be really diabolical somebody WITH access to the system and pro agw could perform a hack to get into a system
that he had authority to be on. That’s really sneaky, that approaches hackerhood. haha hack into your own system. perfect.
The point is the method of access doesnt tell you what you want to know. Motivation. And that, motivation, tells you nothing
about the mails themselves.
Boris:
“As for me, I tend to take the reconstructions with a grain of salt (read: wider error bars) in part because of the divergence problem. They are not exactly the lynchnpin of AGW that they have been made out to be in skeptical circles and all the attention they get is because these biological systems have a lot more wiggle room for skeptics than, say, physics.”
This is something we can agree upon.
If the HS disappeared tommorrow we know no more and no less about climate sensitivity than we know now.
The claim that temperatures are unprecidented today is an unfortunate side show for the science. No need to lay the blame on Gore for that. GHGs warm the planet, how much is the key question, the MWP says nothing very interesting about that question… the LGM is a different matter entirely. To my mind
the MWP is important insofar as it is a window that LGM recons have to pass through.. and the LIA is important insofar as it is a window that MWP recons have to pass through. if you get my drift.. LGM recons are most important for ECR because the time scale is such that both fast and slow feedbacks are fully accounted for.
so, I buy hansens argument
Annan has a nice post up on a related paper.
I wish more people visited his place, Dream Blog:
Held
Lucia
Annan
we’d have to purge all things political or gossip oriented
which of course would mean.. no traffic
The Holy Bible says
“If thieves or looters come to you during the night, won’t they steal only until they’ve had enough? You will be ruined! If people come to pick your grapes, won’t they leave a few grapes behind? Obadiah 1:5 (GOD’S WORD® Translation (©1995)
__________
Not the e-mail hacker. This cowardly thief takes all, and reveals parts in installments in an attempt to slander the victims of his theft.
SteveF (Comment #86295) says:
My interactions with a few climate scientists on bogs have not generally been positive;
I’m not bloody surprised.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_bog
Damned I-pad auto-complete.
cce, you are basing your entire argument on what Gavin said. One needn’t invoke “Gavin is lying” for what Gavin said to be unintentionally misleading or even contain outright false statements.
There’s a reason anecdotal accounts don’t carry much weight in a court of law.
Carrick,
Gavin said he was not able to log in to Realclimate either as himself or as an administrator, nor could he log in to the terminal. He said there was an uploaded file. He said there was a prepared post. 4 minutes after the file was uploaded, a post was made at CA linking to it, which was the first known “announcement” — hardly a mere “anecdote.” Now, which one of these things do you think is misleading or false? Or do you suggest that the person who originally took the emails didn’t intend to release them and someone else did this against their wishes? Do you know how crazy these alternative theories are?
And no one said this was a “court,” although common sense would be appreciated.
Boris:
You make this sound as if this is a malady suffered uniquely by AGW skeptics.
Perhaps if Tom Wigley, Michael Mann, etc didn’t get so d*mned exercised anytime there is a suggestion that temperatures could actually be higher during the MWP, lay-people wouldn’t put as much weight on it either.
Anyway, I happen to agree with you on the relative unimportance of the paleo reconstructions, and wish the IPCC and other scientific bodies would bite the political bullet and admit this in public too. As long as they are devoting entire chapters to the topic, people are going to put much more weight on it than is frankly deserved.
cce, I know what Gavin said, and will remind you again of the limited value of anecdotal information, which is what this is.
It’s amusing to me how often people invoke “common sense” to counter appeals for critical thinking.
By the way, cce I just had problems logging onto my server at work.
The only possible explanation is it was hacked.
[I’m sure Lucia has never, ever had problems with her web service either. 😉 ]
I was rather amused when I read one of the emails where someone was suggesting Climate Audit’s service interruptions might be strategic. Yeah. Right. Heh!
“The point is the method of access doesnt tell you what you want to know.”
There is no reason for a whistleblower to hack into RC and create a post. It turns a quasi-illegal act into an absolutely illegal act and ups the risk of getting caught. So, there’s nothing to gain and plenty to lose.
But a hacker has already clearly broken the law and doesn’t really lose anything by striking at RC. And there’s a big upside: a huge FU to RC and Mann and etc. I mean, I secretly admire the cojones and the idea.
Maybe a whistleblower handed the file to hackers? Again, doesn’t seem like a smart move and leaves a trail.
I’m going to go with Occam on this one.
Yes, Annan’s blog is pretty awesome.
Boris – look at the number of user/password combos sent around in the e-mails. There’s a pretty good chance the person didn’t have to “hack” into RC, as opposed to just using credentials sent to either Briffa or Jones.
Boris:
I don’t think it’s established that what we might agree to call the “RC hack” (as a form of rubric) was illegal.
You might start here.
We don’t absolutely know for sure what happened on RC, we only have Gavin’s account of it with no chance for “cross-examine” (I know that sounds absurd, but appeal to critical thinking…the purpose of a cross-examine is to explore the accuracy of the characterization of the account, without that opportunity for cross-exam, people can put any spin they want to on the facts), no independent forensics, etc. Nothing truly objective is ever released.
There was a case when I was involved of the administration of a computer system (helped pay the bills when I was a post-doc) where a person was accused of misuse of a computer system. It turned out there was a bug in the “priority throttling” of the system, whereby the CPU usage of the user’s program was not being properly metered (the theory was as your program’s CPU increased, its priority should be lowered incrementally…and this wasn’t happening here…had to be an exploit, right?). Anyway, the user was not at fault, he was doing nothing wrong, and the other person brought this to the level where there was a hearing over whether to fire the person being accused of malfeasance…over a computer bug.
To frame this issue, think what would have happened in terms of legal ramifications if we had not caught the bug that was responsible for not throttling the code, he was dismissed and it was later established that he was wrongfully fired. (Especially since the main point of the original accusation…and I know this without any doubt… was to “get back” at the professor the user was working with.)
Anyway, the point is that I’ve seen way to many cases— where lay people with absolutely no system experience think “it has to be A because…” and usually they’re just dead wrong—to accept at face value what anybody tells me, without objective substantiation, about a particular apparent system break in.
Max,
its not theft. Its misuse of a cmputer or unauthorized access.
Theft requires that you deprive the owner of property
Steven Mosher:
Well, close. Intellectual property theft doesn’t deprive the owner of the property, but it does imply unauthorized access to their protected intellectual property, and generally subsequent exploitation of that. If the individual didn’t acquire any intellectual property (that includes not viewing any confidential documents), he certainly isn’t guilty of theft.
Unauthorized access isn’t necessarily illegal even on government computers. Here’s the relevant federal statute.
The sorts of things this statute relates to is assess and dissemination of “disclosure protected” government documents, commercially exploits data taken from that computer, maliciously disrupts the functioning of the computer, etc.
In general, there is no federal statute blocking me from accessing a publicly shared folder on your computer. There is no law against me uploading (otherwise legal to possess) documents to your computer as long as I am not maliciously causing harm, etc.
Regarding part of the back story of the “RC hack”, it’s not like they’ve never had problems with stability before or since the “hack.”
Heh, I know what the divine like appearance of the emails was; it was a good thing. Now figger that one out.
================
Re Carrick (Comment #86325)
I’m not sure, but this link may be to the applicable UK law.
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1990/18/section/1
I’m sure the police wouldn’t be investigating the hacking if they thought no law was broken.
Re Steven Mosher (Comment #86324)
Steven, skunks come in different colors but they all stink.
If the hacker contacts you, urge him to turn himself in. If he hasn’t committed a crime, he probably won’t do time.
Max_OK, according to the latest FOIA release, they haven’t spent a dime on the investigation since February. If a complaint is made, an investigation is of course required, regardless.
(Also, intent of this language: “he causes a computer to perform any function with intent to secure access to any program or data held in any computer” seems similar to that of the US.)
Whether the unauthorized email releases were stolen or not depends on a number of variables. If the data are in a publicly accessible location, I suspect no law gets violated. If the person had access to them, the data were privately stored, and he released them as a “whistle blowing” act, then he is certainly shielded.
Other than those simple cases, it gets really complicated in a hurry. If somebody breaks into the computer, steals the data, then sells them or profits by their release financially, it’s almost certainly illegal in both the US and the UK.
Boris, this one’s for you since you “encouraged” me to look at this in more depth.
My “marble graph” for Mann 2008.
The data, from Mann 2008, are described in these links (1), (2) and (3).
A somewhat comprehensive discussion of this and other analyses is located here.
Max_OK:
One man’s skunk is another man’s hero. It would be interesting to hear your reactions to whistleblowing in general. Are these people all skunks?
Carrick, if you will cite some examples of actual whistleblowers, I will tell you what I think about them, but in general, I expect a whistleblower to be someone who reveals the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
I do not expect a whistleblower to be a hacker who hides and reveals selected e-mails he has obtained illegally for an agenda. I would call that person a thief and a coward.
Re Steven Mosher (Comment #86324)
Steven, skunks come in different colors but they all stink.
If the hacker contacts you, urge him to turn himself in. If he hasn’t committed a crime, he probably won’t do time.
####################################
some skunks violate FOIA laws.
Will your view of climategate change when you discover that he co authored papers with Jones? Not saying he did, but would it?
be careful what you wish for.
Yes Max that is the UK law.
theft in the UK requires denying the owner of his property.
Now. heres the funny thing. are you gunna prosecute a guy who holds a password to 220K emails…then what? prosecute him again for releasing the password? ha.
he’s put them in a corner.
for a reason.
a deal.
he walks, but cant talk.
balls in their court.
a blinder well played.
Bugs
Or you can start up your own ClimateAudit Inquisition. That way, as we can clearly see now, does not work. There is no slimy, unturned rock that is not interesting to McIntyre.
That’s strange, in my field research, whenever I have lifted slimy, unturned rocks I have found bugs
@steven mosher (Comment #86334)
November 28th, 2011 at 2:18 am
Mosher, you are entering the realms of 9/11 truther crazy with that line of ‘reasoning’. They have already fired both barrels, that’s all they have got. You can tell by the way they had to puff this release with selective quoting that completely changes meaning when put in context. Read RC, there’s nothing there. The rest of the mails are just nothing. They put them there as a teaser for all the people who like being teased.
The hacker is not a co-author with Jones. If they were, they wouldn’t be doing crazy like this, they would just go to the academic board and file a complaint. They wouldn’t provide such blatant cherry picking of quotes that fall apart when placed in context. That’s just pure, clumsy, artless, and spiteful stupidity.
TerryMN (Comment #86322)
November 27th, 2011 at 8:09 pm
Briffa and Jones have nothing to do with running RC.
Carrick (Comment #86319)
November 27th, 2011 at 7:00 pm
Are you seriously saying this RC wasn’t hacked. They didn’t just have problems logging on to their site, the web site content was interefered with and the stolen files were place on it. That will never happen to you or Lucia by an accident.
Re: Carrick #86330,
> My “marble graph†for Mann 2008. [link]
There are a number of tree-ring series from the southeastern and south-central US, perhaps 40 or so. This surprises me, given the idea that tree growth is temperature-limited in generally cold or cold-dry conditions (e.g Nevada and California bristlecone pines, Siberian larches). There must be more to the story, as such conditions are unlikely to obtain near the Florida or Texas coast.
Also, “world” in “world temperature” seems to refer mostly to the continental U.S., New Zealand, Chile, southeastern Quebec, Western Europe, and the Anchorage, AK area. What a world.
bugs
a) he said “like”.
b) various people guest post at RC from time to time. I imagine they are given logons.
c) Briffa and Jones could, conceivably, fall in the category of potential guest posters, and people “like” them could be potential guest posters.
There are other reasons why someone might be given a logon.
AMac (Comment #86339)
November 28th, 2011 at 7:52 am
The idea of PCA is that you cater for other growth limiting factors, IIRC. The global temperature will be consistent across the globe, while local conditions will not, while the known temperature record will also isolote the temperature component. PCA will seperate these out.
Carrick, AMac,
Carrick’s “marble graph” is really very interesting. The noise in the overall trend (lots of negative trends mixed with positive trends at all latitudes) is obvious, and suggests that other regional factors like droughts, insects, diseases, random site-to-site variation in temperature trends, etc. can easily swamp any signal that comes from less localized trends (like overall warming).
.
That the overall trend is clearly positive, even in regions where cold temperatures never limit growth, fairly well shouts that there are other important factors…. like maybe CO2 fertilization. There have been at least a few well controlled experiments (spanning decades?) where the local CO2 concentration has been increased in controlled areas within a growing forest. I have read about how much the trees have increased biomass accumulation rate in the enhanced CO2 environment. Does this show up in thicker growth rings? Donno, but sure seems like a reasonable expectation. Maybe separation of expected tree ring changes due to CO2 increases from the overall trends would better reveal the true temperature influence. Hummm… CO2 enhancement experiments in larch forests near the tree line would be informative, but maybe a bit unpleasant to administer. 😉
lucia (Comment #86340)
November 28th, 2011 at 8:08 am
bugs
Briffa and Jones have nothing to do with running RC.
a) he said “likeâ€.
Usually being an admin and contributor are two different functions.
I imagine they aren’t.
Being a guest poster is not being an admin. From Gavin.
An admin problem won’t upload a file, and change the site content with a new post.
Re: bugs #86341,
Yes, that’s the idea behind this use of PCA. Unfortunately, ISTM that if temperature isn’t a large determinant of tree-ring growth — i.e. if its influence is less than the “noise” levels contributed by other varied and variable “signals” — then neither PCA nor any other protocol will be able to tease temperature out. It’s not a magical elixir.
My observation was that temperature-limited growth has been claimed to become a major influence only under certain circumstances, e.g. at treelines governed by high altitude or high latitude. And that tree stands in the SE and south-central U.S. wouldn’t seem to qualify.
Can you offer any insight (e.g. links) as to why and how the known temperature record can be used by PCA to isolate the temperature component of tree-ring growth, under such conditions?
Thanks.
Here is an article that estimates the historical effect of CO2 on tree ring growth in temperate forests: http://web.missouri.edu/~stambaughm/2006_Voelker_CO2Growth.pdf. If I am reading the article correctly, a tree of the species studied that grows for 50 years in 100 PPM higher CO2 has a trunk that is ~70% greater in diameter, even though the tree’s height is not much changed. This suggests a tree grown in 100 PPM higher CO2 sequesters ~2.89 times (1.7^2) as much CO2 in it’s trunk during the first 50 years of life as the same tree grown in lower CO2. That means a lot of extra carbon is probably being held in temperate forests.
bugs, hypothetical: if I have a user name and a password (however obtained, getting it from one of the emails that he had access to wouldn’t qualify), which are sufficient for posting content, and I use it to create a post, that’s not hacking, even if I screw it up and cause the system to hang (because of the plethora of bugs in WordPress, especially a modified version like runs on RC).
Regardless for it to be technically hacking, the individual would have had to gain the required access level for posting via an exploit. (Zeke and others have that level on this blog. You don’t know who does or doesn’t have similar access on RC or had it at the time of the “RC hack.” Gavin problem doesn’t even know, he studies problems and isn’t a system administrator, and mostly on that blog acts as an advocate not a CFD scientist)
The uploading of data isn’t hacking. Running a pre-installed program on the system isn’t hacking. (It may be unauthorized usage, depending on who the individual is that performed the action.)
Since we don’t know how access was gained (I don’t think Gavin knows, he certainly hasn’t told us), we can’t say it was a “hack”. And we certainly can’t go from there to saying it was illegal.
Gavin gives us a narrative, that’s called an anecdote. We are told in science never to use anecdotal evidence. Anecdotal evidence is very power for advertisements, useless in science, useless in court, both for the same reason.
It’s more of an indictment on the critical thinking ability of people who are willing to accept anecdotal evidence than it is of the “RC hacker” (again using that as a moniker). And having said that I might as well be speaking to you in Mandarin Chinese for all of the good this will do in reframing your thinking.
Max_OK:
I don’t think this describes very many whistleblowers. A substantial portion of them “blew the whistle” as a “pay back”, and they weren’t interested in the truth, so much as getting somebody else in trouble.
You want a list of whistleblowers here’s one. Don’t feel a requirement to post your views on these individuals, I’m just pointing out the list exists.
bugs-
Hmmm… looks like you are likely right. The guest posts are under “group”. I usually give my guest posters logins. But then I limit access to wp-admin using htaccess.
I neither said nor implied being guest poster is being an admin.
FWIW: I don’t even know what you think you are rebutting by your observation that being a guest poster is not being an admin.
Guest posters given author status which is lower than “admin” status can upload files to the server through WordPress. WP is designed that way.
Huh? If someone logs in to the default WP assigned “admin” user, they can upload files and change content of the site. Easily.
Out of curiosity, do you use WordPress as a blogger? Because by writing “Neither did the admin login.” Gavin’s wording suggest that RC retained the default “admin” login assigned by WP but that “admin login” wasn’t working for him.
This could happen because Gavin forgot the password, or because another authorized user with admin privileges changed the password to “admin”. Neither would be too surprising.
If all members of the RC team have admin privileges plus they have the “admin” user floating around, then RC authors should find that they often can’t log in as ‘admin’ because the password might change!
Keeping the “admin” user is one of the biggest known security boo-boos of WordPress. Bloggers do it all the time because few worry about anyone hacking into wordpress.
Deleting the default user “admin” is one of the first bits of security advise on nearly every WP security post everywhere.
Steven Mosher,
I don’t see that the alleged victims of the alleged hacker have anything to gain by making a deal, unless the release of the remaining emails would result in substantially more embarrassment to them than has already ensued. If the alleged hacker is a co-author on some Jones papers, it would seem to be better for the team if he never came out of the closet.
Tell us more Steven. I will still buy the book when it comes out.
Don.
No second book.
There’s nothing more to tell.
Dont take hypotheticals seriously. They are hypotheticals designed for rhetorical effect.
AMac:
Which is the curious thing about including this data in his reconstruction. The meta file contains details on the sources, so we could go back and reread the original articles for the justification for including those data sets.
Lucia:
Or even because the WP server crashed. And the person trying to post the article could have caused that inadvertently.
Carrick–
Yep. Depending on how huge the file uploaded was, one could crash the server. Current versions of WP have limits on the size of file uploaded, but that wasn’t always the case. In the past, WP let authors (not just admins) upload freakin’ huge files.
I don’t remember when it was that WP started automatically blocking me from uploading files ending with .php. I can upload .txt .jpg .png etc from inside wp. I used to be able to upload anything. This was probably a serious security hole. But it was possible.
Re Carrick (Comment #86348)
Carrick, the list of whistleblowers is longer than I would have imagined. IMO, most of them did the public good, although I have mixed feelings about those who landed in jail. I didn’t see any hackers on the list.
I would be wary of working with some of the whistle-blowers (e.g., Linda Tripp). Trust is important in working relationships, and who trusts a co-worker who has snitching tendencies.
Re steven mosher (Comment #86333)
“Will your view of climategate change when you discover that he co authored papers with Jones? Not saying he did, but would it?
be careful what you wish for.”
________
steven, I guess that would depend on the co-author and his motives.
Given the number of Jones’ co-authors, I could waste a lot of time speculating on who that might be.
Michael Mann
A. Moberg
T.J. Osborn
K.R. Briffa
S.C.B. Raper
P.M. Kelly
T.M.L. Wigley
R.S. Bradley
H.F. Diaz
C.K. Follard
D.E. Parker
J.K. Angel
S. Lebedoff
J. E. Hansen
And I’m not sure those are all of Jones’ co-authors.
OK, Steven. I didn’t know that you engaged in idle speculation. Just to be clear, are we to understand that none of the following was based on actual information?
There is a reason why the case is open.
There is a reason why the file is in the open password protected
No deal has been done. Yet.
He may want to come in from the cold.
He has contacted the other side.
he’s not a hacker.
he’s put them in a corner.
for a reason.
a deal.
he walks, but cant talk.
balls in their court.
a blinder well played.
I personally doubt the password protected file is a bargaining chip for anyone.
I think the reason we have a password protected file now is to help ensure that anything said by the Team from here on out is the truth. They cant afford to lie because they cant afford to take the chance that whatever is in that file catches them out.
It is, indeed, a blinder well played.
Max,
The police are obviously not investigating the ‘crime’ that seriously as they have been going for two years but with very little result. Perhaps they think they have actually a lot more pressing issues to deal with.
Dave Andrews, I thought this was pretty amusing.
Max can talk about the blue lights flashing as the constabulary are hot on the heels of this rabid hacker, but I don’t think that’s what’s actually happening.
Carrick (Comment #86362)
November 28th, 2011 at 4:30 pm
The chances of catching a hacker are usually very small. There is no physical evidence, all digital evidence can be obscured if you know what you are doing. The skills needed for tracking hackers are very specialised, and not part of the general police skill set.
Bugs
Assuming the Police read the Emails I suspect that they are looking for a leak probably confining there efforts to anyone who had contact with Phil !!
“There is no physical evidence, all digital evidence can be obscured if you know what you are doing.”
bugs,
Please regale us with us more insightful hacker lore. You seem to know A LOT.
Andrew
Ever since I interacted with Andy Revkin (DotKim ’08) I’ve trusted his intellectual curiosity and integrity. These emails disappoint me. But then, I remember how many other honest men and women were fooled by this coterie.
C’mon, Andy, say it ain’t so.
=============
Re Carrick (Comment #86362)
“Max can talk about the blue lights flashing as the constabulary are hot on the heels of this rabid hacker, but I don’t think that’s what’s actually happening.”
_________
Yes, it’s kinda like the police investigation of accused child molester Sandusky. Nothing was happening on the investigation, but that’s not because the police believe child molestation is a minor crime.
Bugs says that the chances of catching a hacker (whistleblower) are small. That is quite misleading. It all depends on how well the security was and how good the hacker/whistleblower is. Also, just because they police have not spent more money doesn’t mean they are not investigating or have leads. Modern police commercial crimes units have plenty of experience with this sort of thing. This happens in the corporate world all the time. Its ridiculous to say that the police don’t know how to deal with it. The more likely, and more boring and sane, reason nothing has happened is that they see it as a clear case of whistleblowing.
Max_OK,
Actually despite a Penn State employee catching another in flagrante delicto raping a child their superiors declined to notify the police.
So it’s not “kinda like” it. Probably be more like other investigations closer to home.
Kevin (Comment #86368)
November 28th, 2011 at 6:21 pm
A hacker and a whistleblower are two completely different skill sets. This was not a whistleblower. You can tell from the malicious editing of the emails in the readme that comes with the second set. No whistleblower would do that. A whistleblower wants the truth to come out. All the edits have done is show that the hackers are partisans, for whom the truth is not enough, so they have to manipulate it to create their own version of what happened.
Don
He has contacted the other side.* ( i doubt this more now)
MAX,
dont take the hypothetical seriously.
my point was this. If the hacker was one of those guys would you
read the mails differently?
I would not. the whodunnit is a diversion
JCF – For example Keith Briffa took home emails that were subject to FOI to ensure
their safekeeping.
SM –back-up server was taken out of action 20 Nov. Police took it away on 24th.
Appears that hackers hacked 5 Oct. Upload to Realclimate website on 16 Nov. What
happened in the interim?
JCF – hackers were in from Oct (we believe they offered info to BBC in early
October) and again mid Nov. Not sure if they were continuously hacking in the
meantime.
Mosher,
The whodunnit really is a waste of time. He/she will come forward either on their death bed or after rather advanced Alzheimer’s… sort of like Watergate’s ‘deep throat’. The British police have lots of better things to spend time on anyway. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_murders_in_the_United_Kingdom
MR – Hack or a leak?
SM – the attack did look targeted. Police are looking at both options.
IR – highly skilled individual must have done this. Two options – simple attack by
internal person or sophisticated external attack.
JCF – back up was compressed, so whoever did this would need software to restore
files. Could have been a staff member in CRU, or someone using a CRU computer.
Much more difficult/sophisticated to do this externally. What was published on
website included an “FOIA folder†– which was not a replication of what was on the
back-up server. This is something which had been put together in this way by
whoever published the data. .
ya.. I got better things to do now..
later
Max_OK:
I think this comparison…conflating release of the emails with child molesting… gets some sort of award.
bugs:
Whistleblowers aren’t ever malicious? What utter nonsense.
Re: Carrick (Nov 28 19:59),
” Ithink this comparison…conflating release of the emails with child molesting… gets some sort of award.”
Yes, the McIntyre Award.
Thanks, Nick. I was sure there was a name for it. 😉
If it is a whistleblower, I am pretty sure the team would hope that he/she never be discovered. It would be very bad for them if a climate science colleague with a conscience, or someone in the organization who took offense at the criminal stonewalling of the FOIA process were the revealer of the emails. They would not want to hear an insider’s defense in a court of law, and in the court of public opinion. We know of their aversion to dirty laundry. I would bet money that if little Phil knew that it was an insider, he would not tell the bobbies.
Don, if the bobbies knew it was an insider, they’d sit on it too.
Re Nick Stokes (Comment #86379)
I thought the McIntyre Award was for nitpicking rather than conflating. McIntyre isn’t even competent at conflating. He failed to conflate the NSF exoneration of Mann with the Penn State child molestation scandal. Surely, McIntyre knows of the NSF exoneration.
http://www.nsf.gov/oig/search/A09120086.pdf
Don Monfort (Comment #86381) November 28th, 2011 at 9:49 pm “If it is a whistleblower, I am pretty sure the team would hope that he/she never be discovered.”
If it was somebody who was ONLY a whistleblower (i.e. they had legitimate access to all the files) then it would not have been difficult to discover who was responsible.
“Surely, McIntyre knows of the NSF exoneration.”
He should. They interviewed him for the investigation.
“The police are obviously not investigating the ‘crime’ that seriously as they have been going for two years but with very little result.”
By this logic, no one investigated Jack the Ripper seriously. A dead end in a case tells us nothing about the nature of the perpetrator.
Carrick:
“A somewhat comprehensive discussion of this and other analyses is located here.”
This is pretty interesting. Thanks.
It might also be interesting to see the magnitude of the divergence. Also, if I’m not mistaken, the trend for the southeastern US for the time period in question is negative? Or flat? Maybe I’m thinking of a longer time period, though.
NYQ,
You are assuming that the whistleblower is no smarter than you are. Why don’t you get someone to help you think of ways that an insider could cover his tracks. I will help you get started:
1. enlist the aid of an outsider/hacker accomplice
Boris:
My guess is, based on the way they weight the summation, all of those US sites which are red don’t have much positive weight, and the stations with negative trends end up pulling the mean trend negative.
I can say that the unweighted mean of the trend is positive for that period:
mean = 3.451365382794 for 927 points, std. dev. = 6.8329260275118
This is out of a program, so don’t ding me for not truncating plz.
The error of the mean (this should be taken with salt and other applicable seasonings, as some data really are correlated with others… you need to do a five-degree-by-five-degree grid average or the like before summing) is 0.22, so we have 3.45±0.22 for the trend.
Finally here is a histogram of the trends.
It’s my impression that some parts off the SE did experience negative temperature trends during that period (not the SE in general, I suspect increased irrigation played a role). Of course it’s only the thermometers in close geographic proximity to the tree in question that matters, if you are going to correlate temperature trend to tree-ring proxy trend.
Also here are the raw trends for 1958-1998 for all proxies. I’ve only been looking at type_id=9000, which is tree rings (I suspect they’ve got a key someplace for all of the different proxy types, but I haven’t founded it or needed it for what I was doing).
The other thing to note is they don’t typically adjust for the difference in phase of the short-period versus long-period response (I don’t even know if that would work, but using the complex transfer function between tree-ring proxy and local temperature is a good place to start, before feeding it through more sophisticated processing). They also make a big deal about preserving the long-period trends at the expense of short-period climate fluctuations.
The Cook 2004 paper had some coherence measurements (see figure 7, note they are plotting the square of the coherence in that figure), and it appears the data lack any coherence for periods shorter than 20 years or so, and were very coherent (≥ 0.9) for periods greater than about 50 years.
So maybe part of the issue is as simple as 30-years is too short a period to be accurately captured in the reconstructions?
Carrick,
You are doing all that interesting work anyway… why don’t you combine everything and write up a guest post?
SteveF, I have one of the worst cases of perfectionism in the world, which is why.
Thanks for your comments above on possible response to CO2, by the way. I thought it was interesting, it is a lot to try and process why we are playing a game of “follow the bobby”.
Carrick,
Most everyone who cares about the quality of their work has that tendency. But I don’t think most people demand perfection, only honesty…. and a bit of insight about the subject. 😉
SteveF:
Hopefully I can offer both of those. 😉
I admit my initial response to seeing that figure was .. pleasure. Not because it confirmed a particular preexisting notion (in fact it dashed it), but because I learned something new.
The thing that is most frustrating to me in dealing with people who are on “sides” in this debate is that they refuse to admit when things are done incorrectly. What they are arguing for may be correct even when the arguments they use are full of holes.
What I can tell anybody from my experience in science: A correct position on a given scientific controversy is never made worse by improvements in the methodology. And if your position is wrong, wouldn’t you like to know that so you could invest your limited life span defending something that is plausibility correct?
tracking the “missing” heat.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-11-29/southern-ocean-waters-warming/3700532
Also an observation on the effects of ocean acidification.
Boris 86386,
Are you really trying to conflate hacking of emails with serial murder?
Unbelievable.
Well, another long thread entitled Climategate implicitly about the incriminating emails, but it appears to be a showcase for Nick, Boris, bugs etc. exercising their deflection techniques. And where is the proprietor in all this? Absent? No opinion?
MarkR–
I’m here. People are discussing their views in comments. That’s permitted. It’s even permitted if their views differ from yours.
Lucia, your opinion on the Climategate emails would be most welcome.
MarkR–
If you have been reading the comments you will be aware that I was quite busy before and during the holidays. In my house, these were preceded by the intrusion of a skunked kitty– so I spent quite a bit of time deskunking. Then, T-Day is “my” holiday. (Big sister get’s Christmas.) So, I spend Wed-Sun doing holiday stuff. Also, we are currently transfering Popsy-Wopsy to get additional hospice care. He hasn’t been eating, bathing, or getting up. So, I’m dealing with “stuff” that I consider a higher priority than the desires of Mark R.
Anyway, guess what? I haven’t read all 5,000 of the emails. I’ve read maybe 20. You may welcome an opinion, but it doesn’t mean I have much of one to share. I’m not going to come up with an opinion on your timetable just because you want one.
However, people are welcome to discuss them. I am happy to provide a forum.
Lucia,
I will put your dad on my prayer list.
Andrew
Don Monfort (Comment #86388) November 29th, 2011 at 9:28 am “NYQ,You are assuming that the whistleblower is no smarter than you are. ”
No, I was assuming that they were ONLY a whistleblower i.e. all they did was take some data they had legitimate access to and make it public. Perhaps they did more than that – i.e. changed records to hide what they had done (or had somebody else do so). If so, it is still reasonable to describe what they did (or had done) as ‘hacking’.
For example imagine person X lives in a house and has given person Y keys to their house. Person Y uses the keys to enter the house and take from the house an object that belongs to person Y – but doesn’t tell person X. Slightly odd behaviour but person Y is not a burglar. However now imagine the same scenario but person Y makes it look like the house was broken into (so that person X won’t realise it had to be person Y who took the object).
Lucia, sorry to hear about Popsy-Wopsy
Thanks Andrew and Jimi.
The Guardian reports secret message hidden in fresh email files
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/29/secret-message-hacked-climate-science-emails
NYG,
Whatever. You need to drink less, or more.
“Whatever. You need to drink less, or more.”
Or the same but at different intervals
The old man was asked
To help others with his care.
‘God will take care of me’.
=================
“Are you really trying to conflate hacking of emails with serial murder?”
It should be pretty obvious that I wasn’t. Try reading my response again and see if you can grasp my point. Invite some friends. Make a game of it.
Lucia, I am sorry to hear about your father’s failing health. I only hope that hospice care can make him as comfortable as they did for my father and sister in the last month’s of their lives.
Hope your Pop gets better soon.
Lucia,
Having gone through this myself not long ago, my thoughts are with you. This too will pass.
Steve