Very recently the assertions by McIntyre and McKitrick (2005a, b) (MM), alluded to in the question (references at end of answer), have been shown by several papers to be largely false in the context of the actual data used by Mann and co-workers. Ammann (a palaeontologist at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research) and Wahl of Alfred University have two papers, one in review and one in press, that reproduce the original results published by Mann et al in Nature in 1998 and Geophysical Research Letters, 1999 and prominently used in the IPCC Third Assessment Report..

Amman and Wahl issued a press release in May 2005 on this finding. Fuller details are at http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2005/ammann.shtml These authors state that they will make their full computer code available publicly.

Three years later, the code and results become available. After they submit to AR4 and after it’s used by AR4. BTW at the time of Houghton’s testimony, one paper had been rejected – information that UCAR withheld for years; and the other paper was not “in press”; it wasn’t published until over 2 years later.

Buncha…

“What odds we will get a spaghetti chart in the 4th Assessment?”

I would guess about zero. But 100% you’ll see “science” explaining the pesky Medieval Warm Period was a local European phenomenon due to some goofy gulf stream patterns or such.

Too much money to be made on Kyoto carbon credits to let science stand in the way.

ET – I think the implications of Keppler at his point are much more uncertain at this point than anyone cares to admit. (Planck Insitute press release: “The Forgotten Methane Source” http://www.mpg.de/english/illustrationsDocumentation/documentation/pressReleases/2006/pressRelease20060110/
Steve and others working in paleoclimatology have mostly focused on variance in CO2 levels produced by plants and captured in various ways because that’s the factor human impacts were thought most vulnerable to effecting. If Keppler comes along and finds out that the most potent GHG is changing and coming from a mostly previously ignored source, then the whole ball-game becomes a do-over in terms of the ground covered in the late 80s and early 90s in the AGW debate.

First, let’s assume Keppler is correct. Then it becomes a question of learning which plants produce how much at which temperatures, latitudes, soils, and so on. What about humidity and altitude? as Steve has worked on. So many variables have to be reassessed, and getting a handle on them could well take years. And I doubt that many scientists working on plants (which reminds me: isn’t plant eco-climatology Pat Michael’s specialty? I think so – his assessment in the weeks and months ahead will be interesting to know), will go gently (er, rather, shoved) into that good night of having gotten basic plant productivity and emissions wrong for so long! There will be dismay and resistance to such findings, and even outrage.

“The new finding is an ‘interesting observation,’ says Jennifer Y. King, a biogeochemist at the University of Minnesota in St. Paul. Because some types of soil microbes consume methane, they may prevent plant-produced methane from reaching the atmosphere. Field tests will be needed to assess the plants’ influence, she notes.” Methane plumes were assumed to be significant during rainy seasons becuase microbes relasing the gas were great then. But this research says there is methane during dry seasons as well.
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060114/fob1.asp

Then, after that’s done (phew!), we get to the issue of human impacts on plant productivity of methane after industrial agriculture begins and through numerous changing regimes of technology: +-? +++-? +—? It’s certainly much too premature to say whether or not the claim that plant methane has made great differences over the past 150 years is definite. That it may account for “10 to 30 percent” of global GHG’s leaves an enormous variance left to be nailed down through actual scientific measurement. Very labor instensive, very time consuming work.

Keppler et al state: “we demonstrate using stable carbon isotopes that methane is readily formed in situ in terrestrial plants under oxic conditions by a hitherto unrecognized process.” If so, fleshing out the implications of this new process concretely could well result in much backtracking in global climate change related science.

So many people thought they could trust ecologists to have global sources and budgets for GHG’s nailed down because they trusted them to know this stuff (involving basic chemistry and physics) – thus, this squandered trust could well be the first casualty in the climate debate.

Roger Pielke, Sr, weighs in on the news at his blog and reports that he’s not hugely surprised. He quotes a scientist from the Guardian story, one whom he respects: “The result has come as a shock to climate scientists. “This is a genuinely remarkable result,’ said Richard Betts of the climate change monitoring organisation the Hadley Centre.” http://climatesci.atmos.colostate.edu/2006/01/ (See “Well-Mixed Greenhous Gases,” January 12.) Pielke notes, “We have already identified uncertainties of methane with respect to radiative heating in the Climate Science weblog of August 29th on global warming.”

Perhaps next fall or winter will tell us if Keppler’s got the goods. By then we may know if theresolution of this dramatic new uncertainty will be quick or else take many years. Many bets may be off until clarity is restored.

Meanwhile, the new Nature article (12 Jan 2006) becomes must reading for a lot of people. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v439/n7073/abs/nature04420.html The abstract from it concludes: “We suggest that this newly identified source may have important implications for the global methane budget and may call for a reconsideration of the role of natural methane sources in past climate change.” Thus, this bears watching by Steve and the rest of us as well. (The Planck Institute’s press release – link at top – provides the most intriguing details for the first read on this subject.)

Ammann (a palaeontologist at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research) and Wahl of Alfred University have two papers, one in review and one in press,

At the time, there was actually one rejected, one under review and none in press. But hey, who cares about facts; it’s the Hockey Team.

Your project, which you say started out as personal interest, has not only taken on a life of its own, but has assumed major importance beyond even climate science. That importance comes from the response of Mann and others who have stone-walled their data and methods. That behavior is the opposite of scientific integrity. Science operates in large part on trust of integrity among researchers. It would grind to a halt unless we could all assume that others have done their work conscientiously and with a determination to do it correctly. That is the larger issue at stake here.

Regarding ET’s comments in #2, if you don’t want to do a proxy reconstruction per se, why not a critical evaluation of proxy temperature reconstructions in general? Then you could explicitly point out the physical reasons why they are not yet worthy of trust. One or more physical climatologist might be willing to collaborate with you on that project. In so doing, you’d undoubtedly have to produce one or more spaghetti graphs. The best of those graphs would stand in some stark contrast to Mann’s, and so a paper on those lines would be a stone killing two birds.

Steve, there’s an adage about people growing into their jobs. When you took on the project, you almost certainly didn’t know what you were letting yourself in for.:-) But your work has grown organically into one that, without exaggeration, is globally important. As you decide to pursue it, you’re going to grow to accomodate its demands; demands that will have been entirely unforeseen at the start. Honestly, given the political turmoil around the debate, I think you’re going to need help, advice, and knowledgeable support (I’m not qualified to volunteer) to proceed. And, as you surmise, it’s necessary sometimes to look up from the details of your work and examine the landscape to see where you’ve come, where you need to go, and who is coming to oppose you. Sage advice is critical for that. That’s especially true in a project such as yours which has radically transformed itself in completely unpredictable ways all the while it has grown to such astonishing importance. You’ve inadertantly ignited your own baptism of fire, Steve. Prepare to temper yourself.

#5 – thanks TJ

But I reckon your right, that no one is going to run the risk of getting “the wrong answer”.

Thankfully barring elimination of the Human species, we will have the current temperature measuring technology, and as we go forward we will ave a more complte record that will show that on a geologic timeline, and upward trend of 30 – 40 is insignifigant.

ohn A; The only thing I would say is that that works well in the Sargasso sea, but you can’t get a true record of climate from one area. Can the same methods be applied in say the Berring Sea?

I honestly don’t know. There are apparently other reconstructions using similar methods from elsewhere (mostly equatorial Pacific, if my memory serves). The point about the Sargasso Sea measurements was the drill cores were taken in a gyre of the Gulf Stream where the sedimentation rate was particularly high. I don’t know the global distribution of this particular plankton either.

With all of the money spent of climate modelling, you’d think that someone would charter a ship and go find similar sites in the world’s oceans for a cut of the money. I suppose that such a course would run the risk of getting the wrong answer and the end of yet another environmental scare.