Author Archives: Stephen McIntyre

PAGES2K: Gifford Miller vs Upside-Down Kaufman

The PAGES2K Arctic reconstruction uses Gifford Miller’s Hvitavatn (Iceland) data upside down. The error “matters” because this series is one of rather few PAGES2K series that show a Hockey Stick. Such gross errors ought to be corrected before the data is cited for policy purposes or said to confirm previous studies.

Steig’s Bladeless “Hockey” Stick

In a recent RC post entitled “Ice Hockey” and a recent Nature article, Steig and coauthors have introduced a novel and very baroque “hockey stick”, one without a blade. A true Halloween of horrors: in addition to Gergis’ zombie hockey stick, the bladeless Hockey Stick of Sleepy Hollow is now at large. The appearance of […]

PAGES2K Reconstructions

The PAGES2K article to be published tomorrow will show eight regional reconstructions, which are plotted below. In today’s post, I’ll try to briefly summarize what, if anything, is new about them. Antarctica: This is a composite of 11 isotope series (mostly d18O). It includes some new data (e.g. Steig’s new WAIS series) and some long […]

PAGES2K South America

A commenter observed that the forthcoming PAGES2K received over 50 pages of review comments from one reviewer. One wonders what he had to say about the PAGES2K South American network which has some very odd characteristics. Here is a list of proxies with a couple of interesting features highlighted. First, note that the “proxy” network […]

PAGES2K, Gergis and Made-for-IPCC Journal Articles

March 15, 2013 was the IPCC deadline for use in AR5 and predictably a wave of articles have been accepted. The IPCC Paleo chapter wanted a graphic on regional reconstructions and the PAGES2K group has obligingly provided the raw materials for this graphic, which will be published by Nature on April 21. Thanks to an […]

The Hockey Team and Reinhart-Rogoff

As some readers have observed, there is a lively controversy regarding an influential recent paper by Reinhart and Rogoff. Herndon et al (of Raymond Bradley’s UMass-Amhertst) concluded that RR’s conclusions depended on a bad weighting method, inexplicable exclusion of data from certain countries and years and even an Excel coding error. All the sorts of […]

New Nic Lewis Paper

Nic Lewis’s paper on climate sensitivity is available. See his BH post here. Also see discussion at Judy Curry and WUWT.

Tingley and Huybers Exclude Mt Logan

Perhaps the greatest single difference between being a “real climate scientist” and policies recommended here is that “real climate scientists” do not hesitate in excluding data ex post because it goes the “wrong” way, a practice that is unequivocally condemned at Climate Audit and other critical blogs which take the position that criteria have to […]

Tingley and Huybers: Varve Compaction

Specialist literature on varves e.g. Besonen et al 2008 – coauthor Raymond Bradley -(which is cited by Tingley and Huybers) make the obvious observation that varves are compacted within a core. Besonen et al 2008 allow for compaction by estimating annual mass accumulation as a more appropriate measurement of varve “thickness”, rather than uncompacted varve […]

New Light on Svalbard

In 1997, the 121 m Lomonosovfonna ice core was drilled in Svalbard. As of mid-2009, when Hu McCulloch and I wrote CA posts on this core, nothing had been published on O18 values prior to AD1400 nor had any Lomonosovfonna data been archived, even for the post-1400 period. Both Hu McCulloch and I, in separate […]