Pete H has uploaded some terrific Almagre panoramas online here . Pete says:
Also, I’ve uploaded many of the new panoramas that provide a way to see this bristlecone forest in context. They will soon be integrated into Google Earth. Visit http://www.GigaPan.org and search for Almagre to see this work in progress
Integrated into Google Earth no less. Pete also reports:
The Almagre Bristlecone Gallery now contains several new albums with detailed photos on all the trees that we cored and that were revisited in trip #4 (undertaken to obtain detailed angle and bark measurements and photos.)
Tree numbers 024, 026, 028, 030, 031, 033, 037, 047 and 048 all have detailed photo folders now.
Quite a contrast to how real climate scientists do things. /snark
Climate Audit 
26 Comments
Looking at the dry, scrubby, thin-soiled, dusty environment that the bristlecones hang on to, I can’t help but wonder at Mann’s description of the bristlecones as occupying a magical “sweet spot” to measure the temperature of the Earth.
He’s obviously never been anywhere near there.
Interesting taunt. Has Mann ever actually seen a Bristlecone?
Very good work!!
[Steve: what does this have to do with Almagre panoramas? C’mon, Andrey. This is the sort of comment that third party readers are reasonably annoyed by and that I spend too much time having to deal with.]
SteveMcI:
I do not mind you snipping comments on the subjects you think are damaging to your site credibility (thought my and other commenters posts universally snipped couple of months ago are currently approved mainstream, like co2 fertilisation), but why snip innosent fun inclusions? Or one have to be member of the union to subvert slightly from the thread subject?
Steve: I don’t mind a little banter. But the banterers are typically online at the time, have their exchange and it doesn’t need to be preserved for eternity. It’s distracting for other readers.
P.S. Do you ever sleep, Steve?
All the panoramas uploaded to date have now been placed (approximately) at their correct locations in Google Earth. There are a few more panoramas to be uploaded. If you have trouble viewing or something seems very far out of place, please make note of it.
I’ve also realized that the new photo galleries need some tagging — the photo filenames did not come through when uploaded! Tagging them with directions should go quickly.
Some notes on the new photo galleries:
* Some photos are marked “full view” — meaning a multi-photo composite to capture a detailed view of the tree.
* ALL the tree photos are reduced in size from the originals, for viewing speed and space savings. If anyone wants access to original photos, please ask. (Leslie H’s shots from Day #1-3 are 9mp, approx 3k x 4k, my shots from Day #4 are 6mp, approx 2k x 3k.)
Finally, there are many more photos yet to come of Graybill’s trees. These are of interest because they are all on-the-record trees at some level: they’ve been sampled, some archived, many used in chronologies. All are strip bark. Be patient and I’ll get there… it’s a significant amount of work to reprocess these composite photos. (Can’t wait for some software improvements… and boy this sure makes me itch for a faster computer! Anyone got a VERY fast system available?)
If those craggy desert dwellers are not moisture limited I’m a simian sibling of my parents. This screams moisture proxy.
Be careful about jumping to conclusions. The environment is complex. For example, remember we’re talking tree line here… part of the “desert” environment is due to altitude. Is that temp, precip, or ??? Not very obvious.
As I understand “teleconnection”, which is admittedly quite poorly, distant temperature trends can affect local conditions such as moisture. So just because a tree responds to moisture doesn’t mean that this isn’t indirectly correlated to temperature somewhere else. I’m not sure I buy the idea that such effects can be teased out from other influences by complex statistical techniques, but that’s the idea (I think).
Sure, and quite a plausible assumption. But these are supposed to be temperature proxies, not something else as a proxy for a proxy for temperature elsewhere (a secondhand proxy of sorts). If they are responding through teleconnection to another region’s temperature, then they are not accurately serving as proxies for the temperature within their own region, which is ultimately the goal if one wants to find the global mean temperature, right?
Mark
To discuss the subject of multivariate response intelligently you need to read:
Salzer, M.W. and K.F. Kipfmueller. 2005. Reconstructed temperature and precipitation on a millennial timescale from tree-rings in the southern Colorado Plateau, U.S.A. Climatic Change, 70: 465-487.
Re: #7 [MrPete]: “its a significant amount of work to reprocess these composite photos.”
May I recommend PTGUI? (www.ptgui.com) Out of all the composite photo merging tools I have tried (and that would be all of them, really), this one actually performs as promised. In terms of compensating for exposure differentials and subject movement, nothing on the market tops this program. It works the way that the photomerge in Photoshop CS3 should have if Adobe had gotten their act together. It does cost approx $100, but it’s worth it. (Disclosure: I’m not affiliated with the company – I’m a fine art photographer with an interest in climate change issues.)
Apologies if this is what you’re already using.
Sean – I’m using the next (unreleased) version of Hugin…at the moment, free is a Very Good Thing for me, although perhaps the CA tip jar could be convinced to supply PTgui if it really does help. Could we talk about this offline? I’d like to compare experiences. Webbed dot Pete at gmail …
very good paper. thanks for providing this link!
rather obviously treering data is influenced by several factors. as is climate. it is a complicated relationship, but even looking at multiple factors, the graphs have hockey stick form… (i know, i m not making friends here…)
please take a look at the paper anyway.
Those pines look scrumptuous. Make me hungry.
Another Mann Production, this time with hurricanes.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-11/ps-aop112107.php
Please move to appropriate thread as needed.
#15 sod says:
Sounding a bit like Al?
I’m wondering if you noticed that your hockey stick has a blade at BOTH ends?
An inconvenient truth.
I’m not here to make friends.
“Quite a contrast to how real climate scientists do things. /snark”
RealClimate “scientists.”
*snicker*
sod, you seem quite enamored with hockey sticks. The interesting thing is, in this case, we’re finding hockey sticks that are completely unrelated to climate. Hockey sticks presence/absence is immaterial.
Not strictly on topic for this thread but I thought it might be intriguing to some. SM talks about a coherent explanation for the temperature increase based on doubleing CO2. Here’s a recent piece I found: http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/steve/pubs/HeatCapacity.pdf
Steve: I’m familiar with this (and it’s interesting), but this does not give 2.5 deg C, has been heavily criticized by IPCC scientists and does not represent a mainstream exposition. It’s hot off the press as well – you’d think that somebody would have presented this sort of calculation clearly prior to AR4.
funny, isn t it? and i thought the last hockey stick had been cut out of the wood of thse beautiful trees in this pictures.
and that was supposed to be BEFORE Steve made short work of the Bristlecone.
but alas, it looks like other trees provide the right wood for the stick as well….
yes, i m still quite unsure whether a real, physical hockey stick would manage to proof its form during an audit on this page.
why would proxys with a hockey stick form be irrelevant? because other things have hockey stick form as well? bizarre logic?
Sod #22 😉
The problem is, with intra-tree variation exceeding the size of any growth surge (whether recent (hockey stick) or older (high/low anomaly)…
To me it seems quite a stretch to imagine such data is relevant for anything other than whatever-it-is that leads to such variability in a single tree. Certainly not climate.
I don’t care if data forms hockey sticks or not. I do care when scientists ignore demonstrated variability in data. I do care when data shows variability that requires additional explanation. I do care when obvious physical attributes are simply ignored by those who do data processing.
So, I’m not suggesting proxies with hockey-stick form are irrelevant in general, but that BCP proxies appear to be irrelevant to climate questions — at least until proven otherwise.
Why is stating the fact that the panel/report found that:
1. Bristlecones are problematic as temperature proxies and shouldn’t be used.
2. The HS graph hasn’t been proven or disproven, but it can’t be used itself to prove anything about the past because its methods are not good.
Why does stating that either make somebody anti-AGW or mean they have an agenda/ideology? Heck, you don’t even need to agree or disagree with the conclusions to say, yeah, that’s what was said.
#15
From the text of the linked paper:
So the past temperature data is based entirely on BCP.
And for Bender, this study proposes an interactive ecological model, where elevation, temperature, and precipitation all influence ring width, yet the study confounds (statistically) species and elevation, and as mentioned abouve, uses only one species (Bristlecone Pines) for temperature measurements. Do you see these in any way as flaws or limitations?
Bump. If I could convince Bender to take a break from John V.