Harold Morowitz, one of the leading figures in biophysics and a major contributor to our collective effort to understand more fully the origins of life, inadvertently provided an illustration of the need for a broad paradigm in his path-breaking (and still valuable) volume on Energy Flow and Biology (1968). Here he proposed that the evolutionary process has been “driven” by the self-organizing influence of energy flows, mainly from the sun: “The flow of energy through a system acts to organize that system…Biological phenomena are ultimately consequences of the laws of physics” (p. 2).
In the penultimate chapter, where he explored ecological aspects of energy flows, Morowitz admitted “at this point, our analysis of ecology as well as evolution appears to be missing a principle” (p 120). His conclusion: Although the flow of energy may be a necessary condition to induce molecular organization, “contrary to the usual situation in thermodynamics…the presence or absence of phosphorous would totally and completely alter the entire character of the biosphere” (p. 121).

Furthermore, as Morowitz noted earlier in his text, the lowest trophic level in the food chain is dependent on exogenous sources of free nitrogen, which would otherwise be a limiting condition (Liebig’s Limit) for the entire biosphere (as opposed to the abundant supply of energy).(We see this in the elevations of the Tien Shan with lightening induced Nox amplification and UV attenuation) Finally, and most significant, Morowitz acknowledged that the functionally organized cyclical flow of matter and energy in nature requires a explanation. “The existence of cycles implies that feedback must be operative in the system”.

The use of selective “proxies” to extrapolate and “fit “ data to hypothesis, for say Russia (FSU)( view the map in accompanying link) is geographically incomplete and imparts NO knowledge of the initial boundary conditions at the specific measurements for say PAR.

http://www.pages.unibe.ch/products/abstracts/solomina.pdf

Indeed if we view the central region of Siberia we see the response of growth to enhanced PAR after an event(Tunguska)where Kulik’s first expeditions made some observations about forest recovery in the catastrophe area.

In various years the impressions were different (Vasilyev 1999): in 1929–1930 the taiga seemed depressed in this area, while in 1953 no signs of growth deceleration were seen in comparison with neighboring regions. The first systematic pilot study of growth of the tree vegetation in the catastrophe region was performed during 1958 expedition (Vasilyev 1999). Anomalously large tree ring widths up to 9 mm were found in young specimens which were germinated after the catastrophe, while the average width of the growth rings before the catastrophe was only 0.2–1.0 mm. Besides the young trees, the accelerated growth was observed also for the survived old trees.Stimulated by these first findings, a large scale study of the forest recovery in the Tunguska area was performed in series of following expeditions after 1960. In 1968 expedition, for example, morphometric data for more than six thousand pine specimens were collected. This vast material establishes the reality of the accelerated growth without any doubt (Vasilyev 1999).

More recent study of Longo and Serra (Longo and Serra 1995) confirms this
spectacular phenomenon and indicates that the growth has weakened only
recently for trees of the respectable age of more than 150 years.
The cause of the anomalous growth remains controversial.

I need to get the nuance just right for the next comment:

If the S/N ratios of the different proxies have a wide range, the graph in #241 could well be better than Dr. Juckes’ Union reconstruction.

And I’m pretty sure that my comment above is 99.98% significant

I suspect the graph above may struggle with Dr Juckes’ significance test, as it only assesses spectral behaviour, and the spectral properties of the China proxy (borehole, I think?) are unlikely to be helpful in that regard. But that has far more to do with the uselessness of the test than the quality of any of the reconstructions.

As such, if you have disparate S/N ratios (which Dr Juckes has not checked for), the resulting reconstruction could end up worse than just cherry picking the one series with the best signal

You can pick the one with best correlation, or second best, or make Union from these two. Under CVM methodology all these are equally accurate:

Indigirka dirka Mohammed Jihad!

But it is moot. I like what http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2153#comment-147199 said.

We do know that the person providing the data, the lead author of Moberg et al. 2002, has stated:

I made the Indigirka available to you. My interpretation is that you (or anyone else) are allowed to do both A, B and C (as you define them in your last email).

A) using the data in a larger composite even if the composite does not show the Indigirka data separately.
B) showing a graphic of the data;
C) discussing the impact of inclusion or exclusion of the data in a larger composite

So now that we know that, the question becomes why didn’t Dr. Juckes use it?

I think we know he’s not going to answer that question. Well, except for what he’s already said, and there’s no reason to go over that again.

Hi,

There has been an active debate on the Internet about the data set popularly known as Indigirka. This is used in Sidorova and Naurzbaefv 2002, and was used in MSH2005. Some say the data is presently freely available without restriction from Nature as part of the MSH2005 archive. However, some still say there are restrictions on it’s use.

To the best of you knowledge are there restrictions on the use of this data set or any other data sets you use? If there are restrictions Indigirka, what they are and why?. Who would we need to talk to relax the restrictions? For example to put on a public accessable online archive eg ClimateAudit or similar.

Sean Egan