Dave D. asked for a link to a dendro journal with a historical archive. I believe there’s only one with free access, and it is quite interesting, starting with A.E. Douglas Editorship in 1930′s:

Bill

I calculated the correlations of the summer months to annual temperatures for 1189 USHCN stations from 1920-2005 using the Urban Calc. Mean data set. I excluded 32 stations that had more than 20 data points missing. The histogram below shows the distribution of correlations for these 1189 stations. The data indicate that on average the 3 summer months’ temperature only explain 30% of the annual temperature (mean correlation = 0.55) for the USHCN stations scattered across the lower 48 states of the US.

It looks like LDEO archiving one HDB and giving out a different one rather ruined the statistical signficance tests by being pre-screened. For everything or just that series? How ruined? Sure seems a mess.

Maybe this episode will help to get the problem fixed.

Sam,
I am sure you are a very nice man and understanding guy. Actually, my employees would tell you I’m a very understanding guy as well. But if Rob was working for me, a mistake like that would really piss me off. In fact, I’m still pissed off. If I understand this correctly, it changes the conclusions of the paper.

Steve,
Thank you for snipping me. Some tongue-lashings should not be given in public. Can you please restore the line that shows the second part of my comment was directed to Rob?

Your response to my #26 really caps it for me. If Rob’s article identifies by number the particular ITRDB data set used and he did not use it, well… geez. What can one say to that? [Steve: snip - far too strident]
I suppose this means you are going to publish a Corrigendum and thank Steve McIntyre for pointing out your error. You certainly need to set the record straight.

Steve: Ron, errors happen. But this sort of error shouldn’t happen. It only happens because of the pernicious use of grey data that so infects the dendro field.

Re #31, I believe the general case is that many dendros recognize that trees respond to a range of stimuli (water, temperature, soil, co2) as a first order response. The concern is to what level any of these stimuli represent THE limiting factor for growth. Rob Wilson’s methodology merely selects those trees which respond best to temperature during the calibration period. Of course, it is no guarantee that the response to temperature remains consistent throughout the entire observation period. At least in Rob Wilson’s case, it appears that any and all trees which had a significant response to temperature during the calibration phase are indeed included in the study regardless of where that data may lead.

Here you refer to the first order response, but plants are somewhat more tricky than that. My first post-grad job was on factorial experiments with pots given a wide variety of controlled combinations of postulated controlling influences. The findings were commonly that yields of leaves, stems and roots (we were doing grasses and legumes) were a complex outcome of interactive factors, as virtually all experimenters find. Then, change the conditions of one variable and another set of complex interactions emerges. I hate to be knocking dendro all the time, but I find it fanciful to think that non-isotope dendrothermometry can work at all.

With nutrients, the leaky bucket analogy is often used. The bucket with many holes will empty to the lowest hole (c.f. yield). Patch that and it levels higher, etc. I do not think it can be assumed that there is prior evidence that CO2 as a nutrient equates to the top, a mid or the highest hole at any location, indeed with any tree. To continue the analogy, when you patch one hole in the bucket, others can “change position” so to speak, with higher order interactions.

It’s rather sad to read of the provisos that have to be put on past work of this type to justify more. A bit like the last breath of a dying man.

The stats are fascinating, but the stories I am reading are as much of human frailty as the growth of plants. The last breath again. It makes one appreciate the honest realists.