Comments on: Spot the Hockey Stick #9: Andrew Weaver

By: DaleC

DaleC — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 11:29:22 +0000

The Hockey Stick is alive and well in my 15 year old son’s geography text book, first edition published 2006 for the 2007 academic year and beyond. In the chapter on climate it says

“The 1990s were the warmest decade of the millennium, and 1998 the hottest year. In all, there was a temperature rise of close to 1C across the continents.”

The first sentence is a paraphrase of the TAR, which says

“New analyses of proxy data for the Northern Hemisphere indicate that the increase in temperature in the 20th century is likely to have been the largest of any century during the past 1,000 years. It is also likely that, in the Northern Hemisphere, the 1990s was the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year (Figure 1b).”

Figure 1b is of course the Hockey Stick. The abstract for MBH99 says

“…our results suggest that the latter 20th century is anomalous in the context of at least the past millennium. The 1990s was the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, at moderately high levels of confidence.”

Note that where MBH have the qualifiers “suggest’ and “moderately high levels of confidence’, and the TAR has “likely’, and both have “warmest’, the geography text asserts as facts, and uses the much stronger and more emotive “hottest’.

And I wonder where they got the “close to 1C’ from, since the TAR claims only 0.6. Surely not a gratuitous exaggeration?

By: Willis Eschenbach

Willis Eschenbach — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 08:22:10 +0000

Peter H., people keep saying “Why do you keep harping on about the Hockey Stick, don’t you know we’ve moved on?” … This is why. The message that the Hockey Stick is fatally flawed still hasn’t sunk in.

To paraphrase H. L. Menken: “No one ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the public.”

By: MarkR

MarkR — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 16:13:30 +0000

Re13 A good starting read

By: Erwin Noyes

Erwin Noyes — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 12:44:04 +0000

I wish to know how the temperatures were derived by Mann et al in developing the “Medieval Warm Period” chart for the Northern Hemisphere 1999.
As only aboriginals were present for much of the time period in most of North America, as temperature recording devices with any reasonable degree of accuracy were not available until the early 19 hundreds, how on earth were the temperatures arrived at and particularly with such precision?
I have heard rumor that one technique was through the measurement of some tree rings, if this is so I would like to know the corrclation used to determine temperatures from tree rings relative growth.

Please enlighten me.
Thank you in advance.

By: N. Joseph Potts

N. Joseph Potts — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 23:54:35 +0000

Peter, I think much of these highjinks would dry up if Mann, et al would come forward and admit to the public that they deliberately fudged their hockey stick. I admit this is quite unlikely, and fear in any case that it would spoil quite a lot of good, clean fun we’re having with this quack and those who (unfortunately for all of us) have fallen for his drivel.

Not only does honest, penetrating, and valid criticism not move this propagandist to a recanting of his fraud, it moves him to CONCEAL the methods by which he produced it. He and his allies deserve every bit of ridicule we can heap on them. We owe it to all those who, in the future, may fall for the many expert lies they most certainly will be exposed to.

The only proper way to deal with anything THIS SERIOUS is to make fun of it, just as Charlie Chaplin did with Hitler. Did Chaplin think Hitler funny? No. Did he think Hitler ridiculous? Positively.

By: Jos Verhulst

Jos Verhulst — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 20:15:23 +0000

Here is an older version of Mann’s hockey stick:
http://www.fettes.com/Cairngorms/holocene.htm
Both versions seem to differ considerably

By: David H

David H — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 17:19:28 +0000

Peter, this is what it says under the Swedish Hockey stick. Note, not a caveat or error bar in sight.

“The mean temperature of the earth suddenly began to rise in the early 20th century, after many hundred years of fairly insignificant variations. At least the warming of the last few decades seems to have been caused mainly by anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases. — From Mann et al., 1999″

John replies: That little plot is the subject of the next Spot the Hockey Stick! instalment. Stay tuned.

By: Hans Erren

Hans Erren — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 14:34:38 +0000

Peter,
The “spot the hockeystick” is to show that this graph has become synonymous with global warming to policymakers and press, virtually neglecting alternative reconstructions.

By: Peter Hearnden

Peter Hearnden — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 13:57:34 +0000

I don’t know. In your efforts to find any way possible of villifying the ‘Hockey Stick’ you search around the net, rummage through someones on-line notes for something (anything?) to triumphantly post here (like some kind of self appointed climate truth policeman meeting his masters?), and ritually submit yet another scientist to CAtype ridicule. Just what *is* it with you and this place John? It’s worse than disrespect, it’s shameful.

Who’s next on the list?

By: Hans Erren

Hans Erren — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 13:01:36 +0000

re # 5 A direct link to 'A warmer world'