A recurring question which was asked again on at Eurotrib: in the Wikipedia spaghetti graph, how many of the spaghetti strands are from the Hockey Team? I guess it depends how you define the "Hockey Team". Almost exactly one year ago, I posted up the following listing http://www.climate2003.com/blog/hockey_team.htm of who I thought was on the Hockey Team (without prior reference to the Wikipedia spaghetti graph) and virtually every spaghetti strand is from authors who appeared to me as part of the Hockey Team. My perception was based on direct connections through coauthorship with the strongest weight being given to coauthorship of a multiproxy study and secondary weight to coauthorship of other articles (without attempting to make an exact formula).
Here is a listing of Wikipedia reconstructions with comments.
| 1. (dark blue 1000-1991): P.D. Jones, K.R. Briffa, T.P. Barnett, and S.F.B. Tett (1998). The Holocene 8: 455-471. | Jones and Briffa are core Hockey Team |
| 2. (blue 1000-1980): M.E. Mann, R.S. Bradley, and M.K. Hughes (1999). Geophysical Research Letters 26 (6): 759-762. | obvious |
| 3. (light blue 1000-1965): Crowley and Lowery (2000). Ambio 29: 51-54. Modified as published in Crowley (2000). Science 289: 270-277. | Crowley is core Hockey Team and used data supplied by Jones (not independently selected) |
| 4. (lightest blue 1402-1960): K.R. Briffa, T.J. Osborn, F.H. Schweingruber, I.C. Harris, P.D. Jones, S.G. Shiyatov, S.G. and E.A. Vaganov (2001). J. Geophys. Res. 106: 2929-2941. |
Briffa, Jones, Osborn, Schweingruber are core Hockey Team |
| 5. (light green 831-1992): J. Esper, E.R. Cook, and F.H. Schweingruber (2002). Science 295 (5563): 2250-2253. | Cook, Schweingruber are core Hockey Team. Cook has also published articles with Jones and Briffa |
| 6. (yellow 200-1980): M.E. Mann and P.D. Jones (2003). Geophysical Research Letters 30 (15): 1820. DOI:10.1029/2003GL017814 . | duh |
| 7. (orange 200-1995): P.D. Jones and M.E. Mann (2004). Reviews of Geophysics 42: RG2002. DOI:10.1029/2003RG000143 | duh |
| 8. (red-orange 1500-1980): S. Huang (2004). Geophys. Res. Lett. 31: L13205. DOI:10.1029/2004GL019781 | Huang was not in my listing. This goes back only to 1500; other borehole data shows an MWP |
| 9. (red 1-1979): A. Moberg, D.M. Sonechkin, K. Holmgren, N.M. Datsenko and W. Karlén (2005). Nature 443: 613-617. DOI:10.1038/nature03265 | Moberg was not in my list, but has co-authored with Jones. Moberg and Jones [2003] is the reference for HadCRU2, the most recent CRU temperature compilation. |
| 10. (dark red 1600-1990): J.H. Oerlemans (2005). Science 308: 675-677. DOI:10.1126/science.1107046 |
Oerlemanns was not in my list, but this only goes back to 1600. |
I’ve discussed most of these studies in various posts – see Categories in right frame. Aside from the overlap of authorship, there is the important overlap of critical proxies: bristlecones, Polar Urals, Dunde – which often contribute the entire MWP-modern difference in a given Hockey Team reconstruction. . For example, bristlecone/foxtails, an obviously compromised proxy, are used in MBH, Esper et al 2002, Mann and Jones 2003, Jones and Mann 2004, Crowley and Lowery and Moberg et al [2005]. Polar Urals, another compromised proxy, is used in Jones et al [1998], MBH, Crowley and Lowery [2000], probably Briffa et al [2001] (the sites remain unlisted), Esper et al [2002], Jones and Mann 2004, Moberg et al 2005.
Since Moberg was not on my initial list, it’s worth noting that he would not be regarded as “independent” of Jones and Briffa, just by looking at the following overlaps in the list of articles attributed to him at the CRU listing:
Jones, P.D. and Moberg, A., 2003
“Hemispheric and large-scale surface air temperature variations: an extensive revision and an update to 2001.” Journal of Climate 16, 206-223 American Meteorological Society (R)
Jones, P.D., Moberg, A., Osborn, T.J. and Briffa, K.R., 2003
“Surface climate responses to explosive volcanic eruptions seen in long European temperature records and mid-to-high latitude tree-ring density around the Northern Hemisphere.”
In: Volcanism and the Earth’s Atmosphere (A. Robock et al., Eds.). American Geophysical Union, Washington, D.C.
Yan, Z., Jones, P.D., Davies, T.D., Moberg, A., Bergstrom, H., Camuffo, D., Cocheo, C., Maugeri, M., Demaree, G.R. and six others, 2002
“Trends of extreme temperatures in Europe and China based on daily observations.”
Climatic Change 53, 355-392 Kluwer Academic Publishers. (R)
Jones, P.D., Briffa, K.R., Osborn, T.J., Moberg, A. and Bergstrom, H., 2002
“Relationships between circulation strength and the variability of growing-season and cold-season climate in northern and central Europe.”
The Holocene 12, 643-656
Yan, Z., Jones, P.D., Moberg, A., Bergstrom, H., Davies, T.D. and Yang, C., 2001
“Recent trends in weather and seasonal cycles – an analysis of daily data for Europe and China.”
Journal of Geophysical Research 106, 5123-5138
Camuffo, D., Demaree, G., Davies, T.D., Jones, P.D., Moberg, A., Martinec, J.M., Cocheo, C., Maugeri, M., Thoen, E. and Bergstrom, H., 2000
“Improved understanding of past climatic variability from early daily European instrumental sources (IMPROVE).” In: Proceedings of the EC Climate and Environment Conference, Vienna, 19-23 October 1998. CDROM, EC Research DG, Biodiversity and Global Change Unit DI/1, Rue de la Roi, 200-B-1049 Brussels, Article No. 162, 8pp
Moberg, A., Jones, P.D., Barriendos, M., Bergstrom, H., Camuffo, D., Cocheo, C., Davies, T.D. and others., 2000
“Day-to-day temperature variability trends in 160-to-275 year long European instrumental records.”
Journal of Geophysical Research 105, 22849-22868 (R)
Moberg, A., Jones, P.D., Barriendos, M., Bergstrom, H. and 8 others including Davies, T.D., 2000
“Daily temperature variability trends in 200-year long European instrumental records.”
Journal of Geophysical Research 105 (D18), 22849-22868
From this, it loooks like Moberg is a protegé of Jones. In other circumstacnes, they might even have put Jones on the masthead of Moberg et al [2005] (and I’ll bet there’s correspondence about this) and they decided to leave Jones off the masthead to make it look more independent. Maybe not, but Moberg doesn’t seem very “independent” to me.
Climate Audit 
42 Comments
Would it be fair to say that the whole field of global/hemispheric/regional paleoclimate reconstruction is so new and therefore small that it would be very difficult to create one without: a) using some of the same data; and b) collaborating with those few also studying the field?
If so, then would it not be fair to say that because the field is so new and sparsely studied that to ignore any question or criticism is just absurd, asinine, daft, ill-advised, ill-considered, incautious, injudicious, irrational, ludicrous, preposterous, ridiculous, senseless, short-sighted, unreasonable or unwise? (I couldn’t pick the best synonym).
My understanding from previous posts is that the problems with the Urals are in the 1100s. Since MBH98 only goes back to 1400, and I have been looking at the MBH98 data, I haven’t spotted this problem. However, I do note that the Ural data seems to have a strong “Little Ice Age” and noticable “MWP” in its signal. Here is my amateur analysis of that data.
I notice, if I add the Urals data to my multiproxy reconstruction which uses all of the MBH98 non-dencrochronological, temperature proxy data, it seems to exaggerate the existing shape. On this page, the top is the average of those non-dendro proxies and the bottom is the same, with the Urals thrown in.
So basically what I’m saying is, I don’t see anything odd about the Urals data post-1400. In fact it appears to be pretty consistent with the non-dendro proxies, which is not the case with most of the other dendro proxies. They seem to be trendless, or mostly trendless with a big upwards spike starting in 1900. My analysis of them, broken up into two groups and shown individually and averaged, is here.
Please note, I’m not making any assumptions about the proxies’ ability to predict temperature. I am merely analysing the proxies as numbers to see what signal comes out. Make of the result what you will.
Some of my comment is missing from of the preview as I type it. I hope it posts OK.
Regarding the name for the Mann hockey team how about the Kyoto Hotairs? 😉
Rich
The Department of Physical Geography, Stockholm University
Dissertation Series 1994 – 2000
“Anders Moberg, 1996. Temperature variations in Sweden since the 18th century.
Dissertation No. 5. Fakultetsopponent: Dr. Phil D. Jones.”
I am guessing, but it looks like PDJ was moberg’s external examiner.
cheers
per
#1 – those are expanations for the phenomenon, but the non-independence remains and I agree that the premise supports the 2nd point.
#2. Nicholas – I still don’t get what you’re doing in the graphs, but I’ll try to get to it.
Reference #10 Prof J Oerlemans is renowned glaciologist and does not play hockey.
http://www.onderzoekinformatie.nl/nl/oi/nod/onderzoekers/spinozapremie2001/PRS1236316/
I believe that his philosophy is that it may get a bit warmer eventually due to anthropogenic increase of greenhouse gasses but it will only be a ripple on our way to the inevitable new ice age.
But that’s not my idea.
I am a member of wikipedia and have followed the debate somewhat that occur with regards to global warming articles. Any article on wikipedia that has anything remotely related to global warming seems to be dominated by William M. Connolley, who through his apparently abundant free time and fanatical persistence dominates what content exists with regard to these articles (just check out the version history and comments to see what I mean). Any data that is allowed to persist, while obtained from a reputable source, is carefully cherry picked so as to present the strongest global warming argument. Any opposing, or even ‘weaker’ data will be continually opposed, attacked and removed until the poster gives up. Mr. Connolley, is a member of realclimate.org and while probably not directly involved in the hockey team, he is a definite apostle 😉
Amen
Really? We hadn’t noticed 😉
Actually Bill Connelley runs five weblogs as well as being an admin on Wikipedia. Does anybody think he’s gainfully employed in his job?
I have other commitments at the moment, which are taking up much of my time, but I have a little article brewing for Wikipedia which will demonstrate William Connelley’s true occupation. I bet you can’t wait on wikipedia, can you?
Interesting (five weblogs, etc). I just thought he was a passionate “believer” (if those that have doubts are “skeptics” then those that have no doubts must be “believers” I would think). I had no idea he seems to be spending his life “spreading the word”. He must be employed by Greenpeace or something.
Make sure you post a link John.
Re #10
I doubt that he is being funded by anyone (unless someone can show any evidence), so I am tempted to believe that he is funded by the UK taxpayer as a civil servant at the British Antarctic Survey.
Mind you, his boss, Chris Rapley has also recently come out as a fully fledged climate alarmist, with his BBC Online article (where else?) on the terrible problem of overpopulation and how the Earth is groaning under 6 billion people and the Earth can only “sustain” 2 billion. So perhaps Rapley gives Connelley plenty of leeway in those awkward hours waiting for our doom to be prophesied in the tea leaves of the climate modelling runs.
Mind you though, I did discover recently that the Environmental Defence Fund, which pays for the hosting (at least) of realclimate.org where Connelley does his best work, also contributed to the funding of James Hansen’s 1988 climate modelling study that really began the global warming scare as it exists today.
Small world, isn’t it?
Re: #11
Not to worry, when the time comes, everyone will watch.
The Greenpeace remark was just a joke. I wasn’t actually suggesting that (that would make me a sceptic ‘nut’ and a conspiracy theory ‘nut’ 😉 )
About a year ago (whish I could find the thread) on a slashdot arguement one of the faithful accused me of being funded by oil concerns (I’m not of course, it’s just standard tactic as we know).
So I go to the link in his signature. Funny enough, he did run a website (night have even been associated by Connely) that was funded by a variety of enviornmental groups.
Another accused me of being an oil schill after seeing the website for company that I worked for. There was a comment on the wensite about wanting to get into the oil industry, in particular drilling. The ludicrous part is that -we would like to- but haven’t. We make an infinte amount more money from enviornmental concerns, I say that because so far as I know our sales to oil companies is zero, while to enviornmental concerns it’s in the tens of thousands (primarily water, though I did sell to a University doing soil remediation and GHG work last year)
Connolley’s duties at the Antarctica Survey cannot be very demanding given his Internet output. I wonder if his controversial activities count as part of his job.
Sorry for this bit of self-(serving)acknowledgement — but both here and I believe on Deltoid, my posting of the inextricable linkage of wiki’s spaghetti and Dr Connolley have been my personal speculation for months. My thanks to Dr Lambert, in http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=505 , and others, who have now removed all doubt.
Mr. Mcintyre,
Don’t worry if you don’t get what I’m doing. Perhaps it just doesn’t make sense 🙂 However, I think I have a simple explanation:
What I’m doing is treating the raw proxy data as the first derivative of what it is proxying. Why? Because, in the example of trees, we believe they adapt to their environment. That means smaller/less dense rings mean the climate is getting worse for the tree and larger/more dense ones mean it is getting better. Due to the adaptation, they are relative, not absolute, hence I am treating the data as being the derivative, and integrating it.
Regardless of whether this is the “correct” thing to do, I think it highlights trends in the data visually which are hard to make out in the raw data.
I hope that makes sense but if not you may safely disregard my analyses 🙂
Never hurts to experiment. I’ll take a look.
Time to re title the thread ‘Lets all ad hom ……. ………’?
Re #16. I’d expect better of you, at least, Steve. How do YOU find the time for your prodigious output? Are YOU helped out financially?
Jesus, I would have thought we’ve ALL been down the ‘Oh, you are financed by x, y, or z and are biased!’ road e-bleedin-nough by now?
John,
If you’re going to write an article about Bill please spell his name right 🙂 Otherwise the searches might not hit it so often…
Wouldn’t have anything to do with local council elections would it? Seems to be something he doesn’t talk about much – very few hints on his wiki page or his personal web site, other than a general link to the local green party. You’d think his political aspirations would be something to be proud of?
Footnote: having a strong political viewpoint does not preclude one from carrying out good science. Any more than being funded by ExxonMobil does.
Steve,
Thanks for your post here to give your extensive answer to that question, too – although the only ones I wasn’t sure about were Esper et al and Moberg et al. The big question, however, that comes back to me everytime is not so much about the circle of scientists that constantly work together – although it seems to enhance the idea of the ivory tower.
It is more about the range of datasets and methods every group of authors use for their work – and you point that out yourself in your post. The overlap in data already seems present – how genuine and original does that make the work of different groups of authors? It raises questions about the used methodology as well – are they partly swapped alike the datasets?
Open Source seems the only way to me to convince everyone. I’m observing that the wagons get circled instead.
While climate change is a small world, and several authors cross-linked in different publications, it is far more interesting to look at the differences in results.
After MBH98, the first publication which differs in amplitude vs. the other temperature reconstructions was for borehole temperatures by Huang ea., 2000. This revealed a much cooler LIA of app. -1 degr.C, vs. the -0.2 degr.C in the shaft of the hockeystick of the MBH98 reconstruction. This is important, as that has consequences for the impact of natural changes (especially solar) on current and future temperature changes. Mann ea., 2003 optimised the Huang data (but corrected this partly in 2004), but Pollack and Smerdon protested against this optimisation.
The second reconstruction with a larger variability (and a high MWP) was from Esper ea., 2002. He used a different method for (regional) calibration of tree rings (see Cook ea., 2004), which retains long-term trends better than the method used by MBH98, but also a different calibration period. The effect of this can be read in Esper, Wilson and Briffa, 2005. Mann ea. reacted on the Esper publication, and Cook and Esper responded to this critique.
While Esper’s reconstruction is only based on extratropical NH tree ring sites, Moberg ea., 2005 used different non-tree ring proxies for the long-term temperature trend and tree rings only for superposed short term temperature variations, effectively downplaying the influence of tree rings on the total reconstruction.
The reconstructions of Esper, Moberg and Oerlemans, 2005 (the latter based on glacier length records), all show a difference of app. 0.8 degr.C between the LIA and the mid-2000 temperatures (and a MWP app. at the same height of around 1950) vs. a difference of only 0.2 degr. C in MBH98 and other reconstructions. This is discussed by Esper, Moberg, Luterbacher and others, 2005 for its importance towards future climate expectations. The variability in the pre-industrial period was mainly from two sources: volcanic and solar. Volcanic gives a long-term average variation of maximum 0.1 degr.C over the past 600 years (see Fig. 6 from Briffa ea., 1998), that means that solar changes had an influence between 0.1-0.9 degr.C (the latter for the borehole reconstruction). This makes a hell of a difference, as the recent upswing since 1850 is in large part GHG driven (with a 0.1 degr.C solar past) or solar driven (with a 0.9 degr.C solar past), as in both cases, the instrumental temperature variation must be explained with a different ratio between GHG/aerosols at one side and (enhanced) solar at the other side (of course besides the accuracy of the instrumental temperature record). Thus we still are in need of (far) more accurate reconstructions of the past millennium to have a better view on what can be expected in the future…
#22 – most readers seems to have focussed on our discussion of the methodological defects in MBH98 – which are interesting, but we’ve tried to be equally attentive to data issues. We found the bristlecone impact by following the defective method to see what it overweighted and then assessed whether such undue weight should be attributed to them. Most of the methodological discussions, be it RegEM or principal components, boil down in the end to making weighted averages of proxies, using different methods and thousands of calculation steps to calculate the “right” weights. Thus we’ve spent a lot of time showing the problematic role of bristlecones in MBH – a topic which no one on the Hockey Team has replied to in the slightest. They prefer to talk about methods – and whether they can “get” a similar answer without a flawed method. If you’ve got flawed proxies, you can “get” similar answers in a variety of ways – that doesn’t mean any of them are valid. The fact that they can’t “get” the results without bristlecones – using all the other proxies – is what they should be worried about.
The flawed bristlecones are used over and over again in these studies – why? Also the flawed Polar Urals series, which purports to show a cold 11th century.
They argue that the various Wiki studies are “independent”. Well, aside from the overlap of authors, it is simply false that the proxies are “independent”. By recollection, 14 or 15 of the 17 Jones et al proxies are used in MBH. I listed the repeated use of Polar Urals, bristlecones – also Tornetrask and Dunde are repeatedly used.
My surmise is that any similarity within the spaghetti graphs (which isn’t very much) is probably not more than one would expect given the extensive overlap.
#23,
On focussing on the method, I have done the same in the EuroTrib overview, simply because most of what is published in the official journals relates back to the methodology problems. During my research in the past weeks, it did stuck out that the reliability of the dateset didn’t get touched at all – except for some critical posts on ClimateAudit. The entire debate seems to be ignored. I attempted to point this out in the diary but it kind of snowed under. And of course I spelled out bristlecones wrong, which doesn’t really help in driving the point home.
My interest is seriously picked. I’d like to build a spreadsheet to compare the proxy datasets of at least those articles listed in Wiki. I don’t know how much work has been done on that before, so this might be a superfluous chore.
Re: 20
Peter,
That was not an ad hominem, but rather a comment on the fact that Connolley seems to have a lot of time to correspond. He has replied to my emails, therefore I must assume that he also replies to many others as well. He certainly spends a large amount of time communicating.
I am certainly not financially compensated for posts that I place on this blog or any others. However, I do find time outside of my normal 80+ hour work week to comment on issues which I feel are important.
You might ask the Realclimate folks about the financial ramifications of pushing their agenda. There is little doubt that by pushing their agenda they do benefit by obtaining grants, research money and prestigious positions in their fields.
I’ve done collations of the underlying datasets for the different studies,wherever possible,which has been very time-consuming. Remind me and I’ll post up some collations some time next week.
There needs to be a separate category (or a separate weblog) on this phenomenon:
Scientific reporting to the press before even submitting to a journal
Latest example: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4679220.stm
Interesting article, fascinating result (if true), not even yet submitted to a journal – straight to the press.
I hear that the Erdos team is pretty big.
Re #29
The Erdos team is pretty big, in what sense? Is there a certain size beyond which you can publish your findings straight to the press before even submitting your work?
Re # 28
“If true”
The plasma guys have already figured it out: http://public.lanl.gov/alp/plasma/nature.universe.html
Re #31
Before we go hog wild about this result, shouldn’t we be worried that an astonishing claim in science has once again been announced to the press before submission to any journal? Shouldn’t we be concerned that we can’t see the data to replicate and verify the result? Shouldn’t we be concerned that this new result contradicts previous assumptions about the dark matter? Shouldn’t we be concerned that the results reported indicate that the dark matter appears to be much hotter than the surface of the Sun and yet no infrared detector (like the Spitzer Space telescope) can see it?
Re # 32
John,
all excellent points by I regard it as religion rather than science, so the usual checks and balances would not apply. Notice how all the extra commentary are worded as “awesome” etc. Everyone agrees with it except for the renegades who publish in IEEE (plasma guys).
Cosmologists and astronomers regard themselves as the creme de la creme of science, dealing with creation and the big bang, and would regard our reactions as impertinence on our part. How dare we question their authority!
You can’t disprove the theory because of its deductional nature. They start off with one core assumption – the only force in the cosmos is gravity, and from that develop mathematically what we can read in your initial post # 28.
But why publicise it before publication? Indeed, or is it already slated for publication and its ready for printing and this is an advance PR campaign.
I suspect funding is the issue and they want maximum exposure now, not after publication when, I guess, funding decisions have been made.
Considering the kit they use (climate guys just need a slightly bigger computer) these guys would have rather large capex requirements.
RE: #31 Here are a few more details [from the Independent newspaper]. There are so many things in here which ring Sagan’s “extraordinary claims…” alarm, my ears are hurting:-
…In recent years, most cosmologists have assumed dark matter to be “cold” – that the particles of which it is made moved around relatively slowly.
However, the astronomers calculated that they moved at about six miles per second, giving it a “temperature” higher than the surface of the Sun. If it was made of hydrogen atoms, dark matter would be as hot as 10,000 C. Thanks to its unusual nature, it has a high temperature caused by the excited movement of its particles but no heat.
Prof Gilmore added: “The strange thing about dark matter is that it has temperature but doesn’t give off radiation. It is a different form of matter not made of the same stuff as ordinary matter that consists of protons and neutrons, and has no charge.”
The researchers calculated that while ordinary matter, such as that found on Earth, contains some 1023 particles per cubic cm, dark matter contains only one third of a particle in the same volume.
The particles cannot be packed together more tightly than the equivalent of four atoms of hydrogen per cubic cm of space. This low density means the smallest possible volume of dark matter is a cube measuring 1,000 light years along each side containing 13 million times as much mass as the Sun….
John A – I’m not sure what your primary fields are and whether they include physics, but personally when I read this it broke my mind. And with that, I think we are getting quite far off-topic.
[i]But why publicise it before publication?[/i] Isn’t that what this website is all about, unpublished specualtion?
John A – Re #29, Lambert’s making a joke. He’s talking about Steve’s article, not your cosmology article. Read it again and I am sure you will get it. Myself I think his comparison makes no sense.
We don’t have too many rules here, but, for now, off-topic discussions of entropy are one of the few places that I draw the line and I’ve deleted a number of comments – if I’ve over-deleted, it’s late and sorry about that.
I actually thought there was quite a bit of relevance (temperature, entropy, models, fudge factors to get models to match, overzealous scientists). Oh well.
RE#36 –
This website is different in that Steve does have published work available, along with unpublished “in-progress” work. Steve’s work rises above speculation. He provides reasoning for why various multi-proxy studies (and their data sets) are problematic.
Steve needs no cheerleading…and that is not my intent with this post. Spend enough time here and you’ll find the only speculation is with regard to the motives of the Hockey Team to withold data and methods, make ad hominem attacks, and refuse to answer simple, direct questions regarding their “research.”
Nicholas re#2
Your page looks fun and interesting!
Have you got a ‘Janet and John’ introduction page anywhere?
Chas : Are you referring to my proxy reconstruction project? Sorry, I haven’t really gotten around to documenting it, although I’ve discussed the methods I’m using a little. I was writing it for my own curiousity, and realized since I could put it up on a public web server I might as well let others play with it, but have not yet had time to write enough explanations to allow you to dive in. I may eventually have time to do that. If you like, send me an email to hb AT mo DOT x256 DOT org and I’ll forward you some explanations I’ve written previously which might help.