I found the plenary talks by Vaclav Klaus, Richard Lindzen, Lawrence Solomon, Willie Soon, and John Sununu to be particularly interesting. Klaus’s first name, BTW, is “Vah-tslaf”, not “Vah-klav” as in his introduction.

While I agreed with much of what Christopher Monckton had to say, reducing opponents to “bed-wetters” is not exactly mature political dialog.

…unless, of course, the issue was really, really important, and “there are no excuses for inaction” — and the whole industry of climate change research rests upon public consumption of the myth…well then, some exaggeration would be understandable, some glossing of the “truth” in a movie, for example, might be necessary and if that still fails, well, one might create virtual data to fill any pesky voids that actual empirical science and causal theory might normally supply, except that in this instance, they don’t…then, of course, some deviance from the high road might become the norm, people might not ask uncomfortable questions, researchers might cite each others papers, even use each others data series and reinforce the consensus the really important issue needs to exist….

No couldn’t happen. You’re right. The peer-review process and norms of academia would sniff that fraud and impose censure like a ton of bricks.

But, if that had been the case, we wouldn’t have the blogosphere populated by Climate Audit, WUWT or any of the myriad of other fine, blogs that provide the means by which to challenge and question the Orwellian world of climate science politics and its evolution in practice over the past decade.

What really frightens the academic community about the Heartland Conference, the blogs and the whole climate issue is the knowledge that if that same audit and scrutiny was applied across the board the vast majority of funded research would be revealed as being (variously) arcane, mundane, obvious, ideologically deterministic, unsubstantiated by empirical data, speculative, self-serving, manipulative and/or “creative” in its use of methods, data analysis and findings.

The problem with politicized science is that it exhibits all of these failings. But it remains funded and peer-reviewed. Far from inhibiting a career, it appears one can assume a role of considerable status as a political advisor by embracing the correct politicized science.

Steve, glad to have you stop in! I hope your vacation is wonderful. We look forward to having you back. Thank you for straightening me out that you have not submitted a paper on this topic yet. I thought you had.

Also, I have a few questions but they can wait a few days till you get back.

Regarding Briffa’s Yamal chronology, I do not see Yamal listed on slide 26. Did Wegman refer to it using a different name?

Also, it appears Esper02 for Polar Urals is colored differently from the rest because it uses the Polar Urals update which indicate today is not as warm as MWP. Is that correct? But the paper still shows unprecedented warming in the 20th century because of the bcps, correct?

Let me see if I understand the role Briffa played. In 1995, Briffa published the first tree ring series without a strong MWP based on Polar Urals. The updated Polar Urals (without Briffa) shows a strong MWP. Once the Polar Urals were updated, Briffa substituted the Yamal chronology and the MWP disappeared again. Briffa’s Tornetrask series does not show MWP and was used in all the IPCC spaghetti graphs. The updated Tornetrask (without Briffa) shows a strong MWP, but has been neglected by the IPCC. I am sure I am leaving out some interesting info, like the data deletions, but is that the gist of Briffa’s “contributions?”

the other studies are not independent of Mann because they have pretty much the same input data

Correct. But what is the one data ingredient that they all share? It is the flawed tree-ring proxies that show an uptick in the early 20th century, up to the 1980s, yet DIVERGE from this trend in the last 30 years. That these proxy-based reconstructions do not use the most up-to-date proxies is poor science, possibly bordering on dishonest. Yes, you heard correctly.

If you were not already aware of this fact, well, I find that shocking. It means you need to search this blog for these phrases:
“update the proxies”
“bristlecone”
“divergence”
“positive and negative responders”
“MWP megadrought”

and read and read and read wherever the links take you …

Trust me on this: you will want to read this story before expressing any opinion in public.

just checking in quickly. I’ll be back online in about 2-3 days. The “common error” is nothing more than data snooping/data mining. 9 of 12 spaghetti studies have Graybill bristlecone chronologies – despite caveats against interpreting the 20th century growth pulse as anything to do with temperature. But scientists in the field know that these have a HS shape. Most so-called “proxies” are little more than noise. If you mix a HS with a number of white noise/low order red noise, the noise cancels out; all the so-called different methods re-inflate the amplitude of the composite so that the std deviation matches the std deviation of temperature. Thus they get the HS-shape of the bristlecones back.

The bristlecone addiction is made worse by Ababneh’s total failure to replicate Graybill’s results at Sheep Mt. IMO Graybill’s (admitted) bias towards strip bark trees made his results pretty questionable. Until Abaneh and Graybill are reconciled, all recons using Graybill chronologies should be cordoned off – this is over and above the other issues.

As I observe in my notes, there are 3 studies that don’t use bristlecones, but each of the use Briffa’s Yamal chronology, which he substituted for the Polar Urals series. Merely using the Polar Urals update instead of Yamal reverses these results.

These results have been discussed in many threads. The point would be worth writing up in a more formal article and Ross has urged me to do so for some time. Also look for our supplementary presentation to the NAS panel for an example of “apple picking” as opposed to “cherry picking”.

My approach to these questions differs somewhat from Craig Loehle’s, as I have not ventured to present my “own” reconstruction as I think that any such presentation would, with present information, be subject to the same criticisms as I apply to others. I view Loehle’s article as being a sort of sensitivity study on Moberg et al, with both studies being vulnerable to the same sorts of criticism.

I limit my statements to the observation that trivial variations lead to different results.

and can be mixed with

One of the most obvious errors is the inclusion of the Bristlecone Pine Series. According to Steve’s slide 26 (from the Wegman Report), all but three of them included bcps. Strip bark trees are not symmetrical and so you can get vastly different info from two cores just six inches away on the same tree. Strip bark trees are not a reliable proxy for anything. Even the NAS panel said strip bark tree data should be avoided in temp reconstructions, but they keep using it. The three that do not use bcps have other problems. I am not the right person to summarize the other issues. Perhaps someone else wants to explain. Craig? bender?

The key question in my mind is: do all of them (not just Briffa’s and Mann’s) have a common error?

The assumption that they can separate a temperature signal from all the other growth factors.

What caught my eye about Steve’s slide for the ICCC was that it seems to take on not just one or two paleo-reconstructions but all 12 shown in Figure 10.6(b) of the IPCC 2007 Working Group 1 report. The key question in my mind is: do all of them (not just Briffa’s and Mann’s) have a common error?