Comments on: Bristlecone/Foxtail #2: Bighorn Plateau

By: Patrick Trombly

Patrick Trombly — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 16:43:21 +0000

Karl Rove, in addition to having a hurricane machine, has a time
machine. He went back in time and dug up a tree from a lower
altitude and re-planted it where it is today.

He did this thousands of times, and also changed the course of rivers,
stopped inlets and harbors from icing over, left false evidence of what
grew when and where, caused increased drift ice in the North Atlantic
in the 1200s, and forged hundreds of writings in which some of these
events were observed and explained as having resulted from climate change.

By: TCO

TCO — Sat, 24 Sep 2005 04:06:24 +0000

regardless of the lack of these studies, that sylogism you mentioned is inadequate, because the acid test of a proxy is performance going forward. Especially given all the possibilities to cherry pick. Admitted to on RC.

By: Steve McIntyre

Steve McIntyre — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 11:13:20 +0000

What’s even more interesting is that some of these sites are the very ones that are ESSENTIAL to all hockey stick diagrams. I’ve been meaning to post up an elevation diagram on bristlecones and I’ll do it today when I find it. Actually, it’s interesting to carry the elevation idea along together with the data-mining/non-robustness idea. I’ve got two locations in the entire world right now where I have quantified estimates of treeline over the past millennium (neither done by core Hockey Team). One is bristlecone; I think that there’s one for foxtails and one is Polar Urals. All have depressed modern treelines relative to the MWP. So aside from CO2 fertilization in the bristlecones, you have elevation changes.

I understand the argument that treeline changes are delayed i.e. that treelines would not move in 15 years. But the bristlecones were not reproducing in the mid-1950s so I find it hard to believe that the mid-1950s were warmer than when these foxtails were established: which is part of the proxy syllogism. (The syllogism is: they can “show” by proxies that the mid-20th century was “warmer” than the MWP; they can show by instruments that the late 20th century is warmer than the mid-20th; ergo the late 20th warmth is unprecedented without need to check to see whether the proxies work in warm decades like the 1990s.

By: TCO

TCO — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 05:53:57 +0000

so does noone use elevation as a formal proxy?

By: John A

John A — Thu, 31 Mar 2005 19:05:54 +0000

But the MWP never happened. You’re just in denial, Steve.