I did mean what I said about shock at what I percive as a lack of awareness of suitable data collection/analysis methods to prevent bias. This area would seem to be well touched on in the most basic methods courses, no? On content, this seems to be same issue as what Martin and I were talking about on the other thread, so I appreciate his response.

I’m just shocked that Rob is so thick-headed not to understand this. Paleoclimatolgy must not be getting very bright guys. If someone pulled this sort of biased stat crap in medicine (FDA sudmission or even just QA testing in a facility for GMP), they would cut his dick off. He doesn’t even know how wrong he is. I’m in shock!

BTW, it’s ok to do a series of cores and find out that they don’t tell a story or that you just have some general inferences or after the fact, say what a possible interpretation is. You can even publish it. But he needs to give his thick head a wack and realize that he’s not going to get to publish a “reconstruction”. What he’s going to publish is results of a field survey and some speculative interpretation. And for that it’s CRITICAL (for the advancement of the field) that he includes everything, all the stuff that doesn’t make sense, all the “warts”, etc. in the publication.

B. I’m not clear why Rob should have had to cite Steve. Read some of the comments here about it, but didn’t see one that said a specific thing of Steve’s that needed a cite (for example a method from Steve or the like). Steve’s papers are pretty much restricted to the nitty gritty of MBH.

Virginia juniper (Redcedar) is generally much more prevalent here than in the past. The overwhelming reason are human land-use changes — forest-clearing, farmland abandonment, fire-suppression & pastureland grazing. Browsed pastures are typically kept clear of trees except V. juniper (and thorned shrubs) as cattle won’t eat them. The result is establishment of large, diffuse groves in many formerly farmed and currently grazed or abandoned areas, especially on valley limestone-derived soils.

Point is, I can say w/reasonable certainty that temperature/CO2/rainfall changes are negligible factors in this expansion here. VA juniper has simply taken advantage of land changes (human or otherwise), as it always has. Textbook old-field succession aided greatly, recently, by fire-suppression and finicky domestic browsers. I’d think the simplest explanation is that the closely related western NA junipers are doing the same thing, except rainfall would be a more limiting factor there as it’s generally drier.

http://www.inkstain.net/fleck/?p=1122#comment-944
http://www.inkstain.net/fleck/?p=1366#comment-908
http://www.inkstain.net/fleck/?p=1366#comment-915

I don’t see anything in my Spam Karma log to indicate something from you had been blocked, and of course I haven’t done anything to prevent you from posting, as I think that would be inappropriate, whether I agree with you or not.<

John A replies: Of course not, John. In the course of running a few weblogs myself I have recently come to realise how twitchy and inconsistent spam filters can be. The tone was meant to be ironic rather than accusatory. It was just that having submitted a comment (I may have written a comment on your weblog once before a long time ago) it immediately brought up a page accusing me of being a spammer – so I assumed that my comment had been deleted – an assumption that turned out to be wrong. I accept your explanation without reservation or rancour.

Growing problem – Warm weather and aggressive fire suppression help thirsty junipers outcompete pasture grasses and sagebrush, and sink their roots into large swaths of rangeland across Central and Eastern Oregon
Sunday, October 02, 2005
MICHAEL MILSTEIN

Behold the scraggly juniper. It is taking over Oregon.

The prickly, pungent native tree has found a way to flourish across Eastern Oregon, changing the landscape and soaking up precious water as it goes. It has sunk its deep and tenacious roots into about 10 percent of the state so far and is gaining ground more quickly than anyone realized, a new survey by the U.S. Forest Service shows.

[...]

Susceptible as seedlings

Wildfires once torched many seedling junipers before they got going. Beginning near the turn of the century, livestock grazing started clearing native grasses that fed the blazes, and crews later began extinguishing whatever flames did manage to get a foothold.

The weather has probably helped, too. Records suggest the past century has been a little warmer and wetter, which would also favor the spread of junipers.

Nobody knows for certain, but Miller suggests that rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels may be helping junipers spread. Carbon dioxide acts as a kind of invisible fertilizer, helping trees pick up their pace.

Best,

D

A brilliant demonstration of this fact can be seen is an ecological cross section from the Pacific Ocean running northeast through downtown Los Anglese then out into the Mojave Desert. There is a distinct band where junipers thrive, utterly and absolutely delimited by average annual precipitation amount.

Steve: See my reply here