To my knowledge, Dr. Kaufman corrected his 2009 article by switching the XRD proxy from upside-down (published draft) to rightside-up (final version). But he did not address the above-mentioned premise or questions.

There’s no great shame in supporting an argument that one later discovers is a bad one. But shedding logic, evidence, and common sense to support an argument that has already been shown to be defective: such behavior signifies… what?

Premise – If Mann08′s use of the Tiljander proxies is legitimate, there must be plausible “Yes” answers to these two questions.

Question 1 – Are the Tiljander proxies calibratable to the instrumental record, 1850-1995?

Question 2 – Mann08 accepts the only relevant authority’s interpretation of one proxy (darksum), but entirely rejects their interpretation of two others (lightsum and XRD). Is it acceptable practice that Mann08′s authors failed to describe this highly unconventional approach in their paper?

Can you point to any defender of Mann08 who has acknowledged this premise or either of these questions? (Tellingly, the more appropriate terms “addressed” or “rebutted” are much too ambitious.)

Why not?

Having succumbed to the senile itch to post on ClimateAudit, and having promised myself that my last comment on this thread would really be my last, I find myself compelled to reply to bender.

I’ve read the thread bender refers to, and Connelley’s comments seem perfectly reasonable to me. He takes Steve’s view that Mann used Tijlander “upside down” to mean exactly what any non-diligent reader such as I took it to mean – that Mann had changed the sign on the y values (leaving aside the point that this would mean that varve thicknesses were negative) – and quite correctly points out that this makes no difference to the results of a multivariate analysis.

When bender pointed out the real issue, Connelley said: “This is the first time someone has made a coherent argument over this (perhaps it has been said before but lost in the noise, if so my apologies for missing it).” I’m with Connelley on this. Steve had a point, but made it in an exceptionally opaque and confusing manner (at least to non-diligent readers), and preferred to make fun of “Upside-down Mann” instead of presenting a coherent argument.

Whatever can be said can be said clearly.

And, as a postscript, bender’s comment about “the other side” is a perfect exemplar of Judith Curry’s comments on tribalism.

Over and out.

There is a thread at Collide-a-scape that started June 16, 2010, The Main Hindrance to Dialogue (and Detente), which starts off with this characterization by climate scientist and RealClimate.org blogger Gavin Schmidt of my writing about the Tiljander proxies:

— begin quote —

One of the pathologies of blog comment threads is the appearance of continual demands that mainstream scientists demand retractions of published work or condemnations of specific scientists for supposed errors or other sins. Most often the issue in question has been discussed dozens of times previously and is usually based either on an irrelevancy, or was acknowledged clearly in the original or subsequent paper or is based on some misperception of the science.

— end quote —

Gavin’s comments in the thread are numbers 5, 29, 43, and 54.

My remarks are under both ‘AMac78′ and ‘AMac’, thanks to a C-a-s software problem. Per host Keith Kloor’s request, I avoided discussing specifics of this case until he allowed that in Comment #65. My final comment is #132.

The thread can serve as a snapshot of the current Consensus AGW stance on Mann08′s use of the Tiljander proxies.