It is my opinion as a former QA auditor in the nuclear industry that a systematized, end-to-end documented review of Mann et al which is topically structured in direct alignment with the reconstruction’s process flow sheet would add a level of professionalism to the endeavor which is not possible to attain by writing competing research papers; by writing critical books about the hockey stick; or by writing a series of audit findings against various climate science sub-topics and posting these findings helter-skelter on the Internet.

The auditing efforts of Steve & Company against Mann et al and The Hockey Team will not attain critical mass as a policy influencing endeavor unless the individual findings and their supporting information are integrated into a single product which presents a unified picture of the Mann et al temperature reconstruction — not only how, technically, the reconstruction is being done; but also how the various audit findings relate to each other and also to the temperature reconstruction as a whole.

Such an auditing document could be implemented in the form of a series of hyperlinked web-pages, organized according to the process flow sheet, and with links to both the reconstruction’s technical detail and to the findings which relate to that particular technical detail.

An integrated, well structured, professionally written auditing product done in the form of a topical outline which directly follows the temperature reconstruction’s process flow path will be more than the sum of its parts ….. much, much more, I think.

Why perform Fourier transforms? As one of my favorite programming books(“Real-Time Programming: Neglected Topics”)says about doing those on any time series, “With a sufficiently warped mind, any signal is repetitive”. I’m being facetious, but being weak in statistical methods, the description of principle components in “The Hockey Stick Illusion” did make me think they sounded a bit like FFTs.

And to repeat, “The Hockey Stick Illusion” (which I’ve almost finished) is not an engineering process manual, but a history book that reads like a ‘whodonit’. But it reveals much about the refusal of ‘climate scientists’ to follow the Scientific Method, much less any engineering method.

In the nuclear industry, Mann et al could not have done such a poor job of documenting their work without being called to account for it.

What I want to see here is a nuclear-grade auditing process, and that means moving to the next higher plane of auditing theory as it applies to scientific and technical projects.

In the nuclear industry, quality assurance and quality assurance auditing are not merely administrative “check the box” types of processes.

QA is a tool for communicating to management whether or not they are actually getting the quality they expect. In this case, “management” is the tax-paying public, since climate science is largely a government funded enterprise.

The Hockey Stick Illusion has its place, certainly, but it does not represent the kind of systematized, knowledge-managed review process that is necessary for the auditors to build their own reputations as trustworthy auditing professionals.

“What would also be very useful — for those of us who are curious as to how, specifically, the Mann et al reconstruction is organized ”

Unfortunately Mann et al did not provide that information, hence the decade or so effort to try to reconstruct, reproduce and validate. If you want to understand more of the history, try reading The Hockey Stick Illusion.