There’s another puff piece on Raymond Bradley in the U Mass magazine entitled Never Mind The Weather. The article reports, among other things, that:
Bradley says he is sickened by the coordinated and well-financed campaign to discredit the data he and others like him are generating.
If Bradley were asked to name people who were involved in this "coordinated and well-financed campaign", I wonder who he’d name. Would I be on the list? If he thinks so, it’s despite explicit statements that I am not being financed by ExxonMobil or anyone else and I am not doing this to save the carbon economy. I’m doing this from my savings and I’m doing this because I find it interesting. I’m also doing this without any "coordination".
Bradley goes on to say that:
What he didn’t bargain for when he and his colleagues published those papers, but what he realizes in retrospect he should have anticipated, was the fury with which those having a vested interest in what he calls “the carbon economy” would attack not only his work but also him personally. The hockey stick “became the focal point of the venom and diatribe of the so-called climate skeptics,” said Bradley. “You publish a paper and you expect people to challenge it and ask questions, but you don’t expect to be personally attacked for what you are doing, your motives questioned and your competence questioned. That’s not the normal way of science.”
First of all, Bradley’s right about one thing: for a paper like MBH98, you do "expect people to challenge it and ask questions". And yet there seems to have been remarkably little challenging or questioning until I got interested in it. If Bradley expects people to "ask questions", then surely it’s legitimate for those people to expect answers. What is his justification for such secrecy and obfuscation about their data, methodology and source code? For example, after our first 2003 article, they said that they used 159 series (a figure nowhere mentioned in MBH98). I asked them to identify the 159 series – they refused. The 159 series have still never been listed (and is of course wrong anyway.)
As Bradley said, I didn’t "expect to be personally attacked for what you are doing, your motives questioned and your competence questioned. That’s not the normal way of science." But that’s sure what I received. Mann wrote to Natuurwetenschap & Techniek accusing me of being "dishonest" and disseminated to them a scurrilous pamphlet by the Environmental Defence Fund, accusing me of being supported by ExxonMobil. Mann reported similar accusations being made to New Scientist. I’ve been accused of all sorts of incompetence – look at the realclimate blogs about McIntyre and McKitrick. Or look at Trenberth’s comment about being "incredibly stupid" or Mahlman’s "lampoonable". (One of the benefits of this blog is that I hear a lot less about being incompetent, as even the most avid Hockey Team fan is unlikely to think that, for example, Benestad’s discussion relying on an assumption of independent identical errors is mathematically more sophisticated than the various discussions here of econometric approaches to autocorrelation.)
I’ve been as hard on the hockey stick as anyone else – probably harder. The Hockey Team thinks that I’m too hard on them. Where have I "personally attacked" Bradley or "questioned his motives"? I’ve tried to stick to criticism of the articles. Now some of the criticisms of the articles cut pretty close to the bone, e.g. it’s hard to make a statements that MBH98 failed to disclose the adverse cross-validation R2 statistic or adverse sensitivity results to the absence of bristlecone pines without implying some criticism of the authors. However, the direct criticism is of the articles.
I’ve written enough about these matters that I’ve undoubtedly strayed from time to time into slightly sharper commentary. Usually, I’ve ratcheted up in response to new slurs, such as those made in the ES&T article. But I can’t offhand think of any commentary of mine that "personally attacked" Bradley or "questioned his motives". (If someone draws any such to my attention, I’ll take a look at what I’ve got posted.) As I say, it’s possible, but I would certainly deny that it’s in any sense characteristic of my criticism of the hockey stick.
Bradley went on to say:
Bradley credits Mann with originating new mathematical approaches that were crucial to identifying strong trends
I wonder what Bradley would describe as being the "new mathematical approaches". There are only two possibilities: (1) Mann’s PC methodology; (2) Mann’s regression-inversion methodology. We’ve described the flaws in the PC methodology at some length in our GRL and EE articles. I’ve not described the problems in the regression-inversion methodology formally, but I’ve posted on these problems from time to time here. The usual Hockey Team approach to the identification of flaws in these methodologies is to argue that they can "get" a hockey stick another way e.g. old-fashioned cherry-picking. It’s interesting that Bradley takes the opposite view – that Mann’s flawed techniques are "crucial" to identifying "strong trends".
Climate Audit 
36 Comments
No-one has a greater vested interest both professional and financial in the veracity of the Hockey Stick than Bradley himself and the environmental pressure groups that pay for RealClimate’s hosting and bandwidth.
I wonder if Mann, Bradley or Hughes try the “vested interests” line in front of the Senate Committee, if and when it calls them to a public hearing? That might not go down too well…it might even be called “contempt”.
I wonder if he should get in touch with David Appel to produce another fawning hagiography in “Scientific American”? We could all do with another laugh.
IMHO you don’t need new techniques to identify strong trends….
It’s disappointing that the authors of this piece didn’t bother to check up on Bradley’s allegations.
Roger Bell
Come on, it’s U Mass Magazine, not Technology Review or even one of the major university mags. Their main focus is likely class news and fundraising, not good journalism.
If you want to complain about journalism, check out The Seattle Times’ multi-story expose on climate last Sunday. It’s at
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002549346_globewarm11.html
(free registration may be required to see it after Sunday when it becomes a week old). The reporter, Sandi Doughton, implies that she talked with Steve and/or Ross for the article. Of course, RealClimate.org is among the 10 alarmist sites listed as resources, while Climateaudit.org is missing from the list of just two “skeptic” sites (Tech Central Station and the CEI are the ones listed).
The hockey stick is covered as “Setting the record straight | “Hockey stick” broken?”:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002549473_globalhockey09.html
She conflates the two main criticisms as “…a computing flaw that fails to distinguish the effect of temperature from other environmental factors, such as nutrient levels, that influence tree-ring size or coral growth.” Not to worry, though! “Researchers who have examined the calculations agree there is a statistical crack in the stick, but most say it doesn’t change the conclusions.”
Interesting.
But I thought the Hockey Stick was old news and everyone had moved on to newer more important things.
Here is an interesting juxtaposition:
This
and
Isn’t he questioning the motives of his critics by associating them with “the carbon economy” and “so-called climate skeptics”?
This next quote from the article might be the hammer hitting the nail:
I thought they were publishing a prehistorical climate reconstruction. Fancy that their interpretation of past climate could be coloured by a lack of interest in what happened in the past.
Another direct hit here:
So if one were to take a political role, why would one be surprised when politicians want to interact with them?
When
he seems to be admitting that without Mann’s unique math, they could not have created such strong trends.
Re #6
Yep. “unique” is one way to describe it…
Are you sickened by “the coordinated and well-financed campaign to discredit the data” supporting the theory of global warming? Do you believe the campaign exists?
The “carbon economy” is no hoax. The International Monetary Fund estimates that oil export revenues of Middle Eastern countries alone will reach $400 billion this year. Economists at J. P. Morgan estimate that the 19 big energy exporters will reap $781 billion this year. This creates an enormously powerful political constituency supporting efforts to discredit and undermine climate scientists and the conclusions of their professional organizations. Perhaps you are not on the gravy train, but you shouldn’t deny that such a campaign exits.
The list of politically aligned think tanks and advocate organizations politicizing the scientific debate are well known. They include the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide & Global Change, the Greening Earth Society, the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, Global Climate Coalition, the George Marshall Institute, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, to name a few. They exist to undermine and discredit the authority of climate scientists, and to oppose efforts to regulate fossil fuels.
“Global warming” describes the rise in the Earth’s temperature resulting from human sources of greenhouse gases. Arctic sea ice is on an accelerating, long-term decline. Ocean warming is consistent with expected results from increased greenhouse gas levels. Errors in satellite and balloon tropospheric temperatures have been corrected, supporting global warming theory and land-based temperatures. And on and on and on.
There is a flavor of a “good cop- bad cop” routine going on here. I think you’ve taken this article too personally.
#8 “Are you sickened by “the coordinated and well-financed campaign to discredit the data” supporting the theory of global warming? Do you believe the campaign exists?”
As opposed to the coordinated and much better financed campaign by central planners (socialists) to use a weak hypothesis to alter the course of the world economy. Fortunately, the carbon economy will thrive until a more economical energy source is widely available. The Kyoto crowd are involved in a massive circle jerk that is being ignored by the nations that will dominate the future (US, China, India, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, etc.) and being embraced by nations in relative steep decline (Europe). But even Europe is just talking a big game and not adhering to Kyoto themselves. Wake up and smell the reality Michael. AGW is political hype dressed up as science but even if it were confirmed beyond a doubt that would not make a difference. As Tony Blair said last month, no nation is going to harm their economy to meet Kyoto goals.
There are certainly well organized and well financed campaigns to convince everyone that catastrophic events will occur if we do not take immediate and drastic actions. The proponants of this thinking tell us that their data supports their point of view, but they have generally been unwilling to provide the data which supports their conclusions. Trying to get their data has, in fact, been extraordinarely difficult. Those of us who work in the scientific field find this to be strange. In most scientific fields, data is readily available to support the conclusions of a study.
Indeed this is true. Both side of the argument have politicized the dedate.
Actually “global warming” describes what has been happening since the end of the last ice age. You have described anthropogenic global warming. Many people believe that all global warming is caused be man, however it is a logical fallacy to claim that because many people believe something, it is therefore true. Eveyone used to believe that world was flat and that the sun circled the earth.
Most of the posters here try to slash through the political chaff that is swirling around this dabate to get to the heart of the scientific issues. The basic questions have to do with whether the data supports the authors’ conclusion.
“Incredibly Stupid” Trenberth
Looking at his diagram “Global Heat Balance 1997”.I see more energy leaving the surface to be absorbed by Greenhouse gases (350W) than is returned (324W).
To me this is surface cooling by the Greenhouse effect
Is it me or him
Thomas,
It’s you [g]. I have, I expect, the same same version of the graph as you do since it has the same numbers as you show. First of all it’s a graph of how the energy flows starting from solar input to various outputs which must, in the long run, balance. Various things absorb various amounts and then emit what they absorb to various of the other things, (i.e. space, the atmosphere, clouds, the surface) For each individual item the ins balance the outs, but the particular amount in each category needn’t be the same (i.e. surface emission of longwave IR vs surface absorbtion). Now this is all for one particular situation with a given amount of greenhouse gasses. If there were no greenhouse gasses the amount emitted by the surface would be less and essentially all of what the surface emitted would go directly to space (since there’d be no clouds without H2O which is, after all, the most abundant ghg.) Now if more of a particular GHG, say CO2, is in the atmosphere then it will absorb a bit more of the longwave IR emitted by the surface and then send back more as the atmosphere will warm and this will make the surface warmer than it’d otherwise be.
BTW, you have to be very careful using the term ‘warm’ both with some warmers and some skeptics since they want to endow the term with the meaning “send energy from a higher temperature source to a lower temperature sink” which I regard as a silly usage, but I’ve never had any luck in getting one of them to see that. I like the term to simply mean “send energy from one body to another” and not have to worry about which one has the higher temperature and have to figure out the net flow before I’m allowed to use the term. Energy flow is energy flow, IMO.
And that graph is a good example of what I mean. There’d be no reason to show the 350 emission by the surface and the 324 absorption by the atmosphere if the net warming is all we were allowed to talk about. We’d just have 24 wm-2 and forget about it.
Re #10, Brooks,
“Actually “global warming” describes what has been happening since the end of the last ice age.”
Isn’t it at least arguable that the evidence suggests “The world warmed rapidly after the last ice age but temperatures have probably been static or falling since“? See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Holocene_Temperature_Variations.png for example.
What evidence makes you feel able to say what you did with the level of certainty you did? Surely you can’t state what you did (which I why I didn’t state what I did with great certainty :)).
Nice graph, Peter, but doesn’t it bother you that so many of those proxies showed temperatures much higher than the present for long periods of time and yet the end of the world didn’t come, as the warmers would have happening if we continue to use fossil fuels? Maybe there isn’t anything to worry about anyway? We don’t need a one-world government to make sure nobobdy drives SUVs? And maybe even if you won’t go so far, we may have time to get the models better and longer data series? [Preferably ones which are archeived too.] Maybe you can afford to pour a nice cool lemonade and go out on the patio and enjoy a slightly warmer early fall than you enjoyed when you were a kid?
Re#14, Dave, as I’m sure you actually well know, it depends. And it depends mainly on the why of higher temperatures.
Re Autumn, here in the UK (and, as far as I can see, at least in much of Europe/west Asia as well) it’s been consistently warm. Again, it’s the why that interests me and, imo, ought to concern us.
re 15
Autumn, here in the UK (and, as far as I can see, at least in much of Europe/west Asia as well) it’s been consistently warm. Again, it’s the why that interests me and, imo, ought to concern us.
Peter, I absolutely am not concerned about a hot autumn, au contraire, I like it! And the farmers too, they are happily harvesting.
Re 15: Peter, why ought we be particularly concerned about a warm autumn, rather than the cold impending northern winter? See The Sunday Times for 9 October at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1819000,00.html
Re %17. I should have referred to the forecasts of a cold British winter (due to negative North Atlantic Oscillation) not to winter in the northern hemisphere generally.
re 17:
It’s about time! Looking forward to another “elfstedentocht” (skating marathon on natural ice).
Don’t like my gas bill though, as dutch domestic gas price is linked to the crude oil price…
http://home.casema.nl/errenwijlens/co2/europe.htm
I agree, from my observations, the local biosystem here has benefitted, in general, from the autumn warmth.
And it helps balance the previous two cool autumns (autumn 2003 was very cool).
It seems that one of the central arguments in favor of AGW is that climate has been or should be static, at least as far as temperature is concerned. If your definition of climate includes long time scales (at least hundreds of years, if not thousands), then this assertion is absurd. It’s obvious that climate is always changing. Sometimes it warms, and sometimes it cools. When it really cools we get an ice-age. Be thankful that is not happening. Since it has warmed and cooled in the past without help from man it is entirely possible that any warming that is happening now is completely natural. If we understood the past warming and cooling cycles perhaps we could control for them and prove one way or the other if man is causing any warming now, but we don’t and we can’t. Until we have a better idea what is going on we should just continue to collect data. If the AGW proponents turn out to be correct, then we will have to adapt to the new conditions just as we always have.
Re #17, it’s funny how people just accept forecasts of cold weather but not warm.
Re #20, I’ve no idea where you are so can’t comment.
Re #21, Well, I suspect you’ll get your way. I suspect the best we can hope for is adaption to whatever happens.
Oh, and re#16, so, you accept it’s warm then ;), progress of a sort I suppose…
re 22:
I can’t recall I ever wrote it wasn’t warm… I just don’t blame CO2 for all of it.
[audio src="http://home5.swipnet.se/~w-55183/casablanca/round_up.wav" /]
Peter,
What do you mean by the following?
Just what did I do that I can not state?
Perhaps I am wrong, John_A, but you didn’t give evidence for the following:
No-one has a greater vested interest both professional and financial in the veracity of the Hockey Stick than Bradley himself and the environmental pressure groups that pay for RealClimate’s hosting and bandwidth.
It’d be nice to know, if this is only superstition or fact.
Brooks,
re #24, I think there is a BBC “Yes Prime Minister” episode which accurately summarises Peter’s comment.
It should be dismissed.
John A
Bet you London to a brick that Realclimate.org is ultimately taxpayer funded.
Goods betted – 1 bottle Malt Whisky?
Re: #25
In 2004, the top 16 environmentalist groups raked in $2 billion. That’s quite a financial incentive. The Environmental Defense Fund pay for the webhosting of RealClimate.org out of the goodness of their hearts, clearly.
Re #27
Louis, I don’t mind who funds the website, because its a trivial cost. What does bother me is that taxpayers pay for the policies based on the results of these people, which cannot be properly checked. It bothers me that so many people are so willing to believe in the political statements of these people based on little more than a “burning in the breast”.
As I’ve said before many times, RC is not a scientific weblog. It’s a political website written by a small coterie of climate scientists. Some of those scientists are in desperate danger of losing their entire career. I think Bradley’s statements in Steve’s citation are the signs of a worried man under intense political pressure.
If I were Bradley or Hughes, I’d contact Steve and Ross and sit down and discuss all of the issues. If I were in such a position, I would want to know whether my “enemies” are really packing heat.
The registrant organization of realclimate.org is Environmental Media Services, a part of Fenton communications, a prominent scare campaign, and misinformation, operation.
Isn’t at all taxpayers money in the end? But thats besides the point.
Ignoring AGW for a moment, surely recent events have show that heavy reliance on oil is a dangerous position to be in. Growth in the UK economy is forecast to fall because of higher oil prices and inflation is at an 8 year high, again largely due to higher oil prices. I believe the situation is similar in the USA. Here in the UK we are becoming more and more reliant on energy imports from such stable places as N. Africa and Russia. I would be quite happy to see more of my taxes going into research into alternative energy sources. If thats because of AGW scarmongering so be it.
Paul
Re: 30
Yes it is all taxpayers’ money, however you and I as individuals can direct our money as we see fit. Once the money gets into the hands of our governments, we basically have no control over how it is spent.
Your other point on reducing reliance on imported energy is a rather complex issue. The folks who brought us AGW are the same folks who for all intents and purposes stopped us from building nuclear power plants which neither produce CO2 nor rely on oil imported from Russia, Saudi, or Venezuala. On the positive side, technologies which were far too costly with an oil price of $20 – $30/barrel are now economical with oil selling above $50/barrel. Here in the US, the demand for hybrid vehicles exceeds the supply and used SUVs are becoming tough to sell.
Mr. McIntyre,
Are you a contributing writer for the George C. Marshall institute?
If so, have they paid you for your contributions?
Re: #32. Coop, thanks for posting. What difference does it make who Steve is or who he works for? All of these types of questions are merely red herrings, designed to distract people from the issues. He could be an AI construct for all I care. The critical thing is, Steve has important things to say, whether he is paid by aliens from Mars or from mom’s cookie jar fund.
Why are you AGW folks so stuck on who is paying the bills? Could it may be, possibly be, just might be, because you find it so much easier to attack the messager rather than engage with the message?
Who pays Steve’s salary is as immaterial as who pays your salary or mine. What you are doing is called an “ad hominem” argument, which happens when someone can’t or won’t deal with the message, and so they attack the messenger.
This is what you are doing, and while I am happy to see you post, I would request that you post about the issues and forget about the personalities. The important question is, is Steve right? Please try dealing with that.
Suppose Steve were paid 100% by Exxon (he’s most definitely not, but suppose he were).
So What?
Would that make him wrong? Would that change the truth of what he says by one iota? Clearly not. If Steve is right he is right, if he’s wrong he’s wrong, whether he is paid by Exxon or by Greenpeace.
Posting questions such as yours just tells people that you are not interested in the issues, but in besmirching someone’s character in an attempt to discredit them.
Sorry, but that doesn’t work here. I invite you to post about the issues, and I strongly discourage you from trying character asassination … it doesn’t work on this site, we know who we are, and guess what?
We don’t care! We care about the issues!
w.
Willis,
I believe it was John A who initiated this particular thread by saying:
Coop is just playing along.
I have no appointment or office with the George Marshall Institute, either as a “contributing writer” or otherwise. I have made two presentations in Washington at a meeting room on Capitol Hill in Washington co-sponsored by the George Marshall Institute (one of which was attended by David Appell). My travel expenses were paid, but I did not receive an honorarium or fee for the presentation.
I have no objection to being paid and would prefer to be paid rather than to be doing this gratis. Throughout my life, I’ve made a living by earning money. However, my climate research has been done at a very considerable financial sacrifice because I could otherwise be making money. I notice that lots of academics funded by NSF are doing very nicely, thank you very much.
While I have made the financial sacrifice, I don’t believe that I have an obligation to do so. If, in the future, someone believes that it’s worthwhile to fund this research, it would not be “bought” research. I’d still say what I thought. If someone paid me some money for a presentation, it in no way begins to compensate me for the cost of not being at the table to do mining deals in what’s been a great market for speculative stocks.
thank you very much. succesfull article
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[…] on the "new statistical approach" in the UMass magazine interview as follows (discussed here): Bradley credits Mann with originating new mathematical approaches that were crucial to […]
[…] let's turning back the clock a little. As many readers know, some time ago, coauthor Bradley credited Mann with "originating new mathematical approaches that were crucial to identifying strong trends". One […]