See here for some discussion of Bob Carter’s claims (in the comments).

From my own perspective, I think there is going to be a huge pile of cherry-picked (non-scientific) junk analysis emerging in the coming decades, and it would be a mistake to devote much effort to this hydra. The warmers will do their thing, the coolers theirs.

As for your particular beef, I see the current wave of cooler arguments not as a counter-cultural phenomenon but as a reactionary backlash. The “analyses” they present are not rational science, but a rhetorical device intended as a counterpunch to the statistically untenable arguments that the current warming trend is “unprecedented” for 1000 years. (It’s unprecedented only since the LIA ~AD1600, which everyone agrees with, even the coolest coolers.) As a scientific argument, the cooler case is statistically invalid. As a rhetorical counter-punch … well, the warmers probably deserve it.

I’m interested in your diligence and perseverance on this task of uncovering statistical boobies made by climatologists out in the field. I’m also wondering as well why you haven’t taken the time to apply the same levels of criticism and in depth study towards claims in the media made by Bob Carter. Claims that global warming stopped in 1998. You must be aware that Bob specifically chose 1998 because it was the year of that epic El Nino and 1998 has a particularly high temperature record, so when all other years are compared to it they appear cooler. You must be able to see the obvious game being played here, and you should surely be aware that the standard method is to take a 30 average from the temperature record as the zero standard to avoid the issue of being forced to manually find a representative year. Bob’s method could be exploited in either direction, and so surely he’s inviolation of statistical method. Is 1998 a representative year in the previous 30 years, clearly not. Perhaps you’d like to publish something on your website upon this subject. I can see in your responses to Trenberth that you value a balanced approach and that your publication’s aims are merely to correct statistical errors. Surely then, following this approach you could spend some time to correct Bob Carter’s claims as it seems your aims are to correct errors of the type displayed in Bob’s comment.

Regards

Paul

Mark

#42: Thanks for a good laugh!

One of the retorts that used to spring to my mind when people criticized us for being “amateurs” -although statistically I regard the Hockey Team as amateurs – was this: if we found this many mistakes, can you imagine how many mistakes a “real” expert would find?

Steve: I suspect that you now have as much expertise in proxy studies as anyone in the world. You don’t have the coursework or degrees, but you certainly have the knowledge. You are no amateur, thats for sure!