ACS Code of Conduct

Apr 18, 2006 – 4:53 PM

Someone pointed out that Environmental Science & Technology, which published a scurrilous attack on us, was published by the American Chemical Society, whose Code of Conduct online here says that it “expects its members to adhere to the highest ethical standards.” One clause states:

Public comments on scientific matters should be made with care and precision, without unsubstantiated, exaggerated, or premature statements.

It doesn’t seem to me that Thacker’s comments on us meet this code of conduct.

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in General | Comments (12)

Earth's climate crashes in 2013

Apr 18, 2006 – 9:01 AM

From our friends at climateprediction.net, climate disaster has struck

I regret to announce that we’ve recently discovered a major error in one of the files used by the climate model. The file in question specifies levels of man-made sulphate emissions but due to a problem with the file specification, models have been inputting greatly reduced levels throughout their runtime. The consequence of this is that aerosols responsible for "global dimming" (cooling) are not present in sufficient amounts and models have tended to warm up too quickly. The file specification error is also responsible for causing models to crash in 2013 which is how we originally came across the problem.

Unfortunately, all the data returned to us so far has been affected by this problem. While the data is scientifically very useful, and will certainly form the basis of future research (it allows us to investigate the full effect of greenhouse gas emissions without global dimming), it doesn’t enable us to compare the models’ performance against real world observations of the 20th century since such an important component is missing. In order to do the experiment we intended, we unfortunately have no choice but to start models again from the beginning.

Now I know what you’re thinking – how can they possibly have not put some limit in the software before the Earth heats up too much? But these are the same people who think that the Earth heating up by 11oC in 40 years is a reasonable result. I’d love to know what’s "scientifically useful" about bad data from a known unphysical model.

So all of that time and energy that people have allowed for these models to run has been utterly wasted. We could have told them that.

In the words of The Inquirer

With around 200,000 PCs running the experiment non-stop for two months, it looks very much as if the BBC experiment is making more of a contribution to global warming than scientific knowledge.

By John A | Posted in Modeling | Comments (263)

Hansen (2005) and Levitus error bars

Apr 18, 2006 – 8:28 AM

Someone has asked about the error bars in Levitus and whether the backtest of Hansen and Schmidt against those error bars would be as decisive.

Here is the result taken straight from the Levitus analysis:

You can use sophisticated statistical analysis to compare this, but my trusty Magic 8-Ball says: “Nowhere near”

By John A | Posted in Modeling | Comments (3)

IPCC 4AR – Access to Review Comments

Apr 17, 2006 – 1:46 PM

Last week, the review of the second draft of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report began. Some readers here are IPCC reviewers and may not be aware of the following provision of Appendix A to the Principles Governing IPCC Work http://www.ipcc.ch/about/app-a.pdf, which states that:

"All written expert, and government review comments will be made available to reviewers on request during the review process…."

Last week, I sent a note to the IPCC WG1 Technical Services Unit ( see ipcc.wg1-ucar.edu ) stating:

I would like to inspect "all written expert and governmental review comments" related to Chapter 6 – Paleoclimate provided up to the release of the Second Draft. Would you please provide me with information on how these can be accessed. Thank you for your attention.

I was not given a digital version, but today received by Fedex a hardcopy printout entitled "Expert Review Comments on First-Order Draft" – marked "Confidential, Do Not Cite, Quote or Distribute". I do not believe that the imprecations prevent me from mentioning the existence of the document without incurring thunderbolts from on high, but you never know. Can I say that I found the comments to be enlightening? For any of you that are IPCC reviewers, I highly recommend the exercise of getting the corresponding document for the section that interests you.

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in IPCC | Tagged , | Comments (10)

Lamarche and Fritts 1971

Apr 17, 2006 – 10:13 AM

While the Hockey Team like to talk about "moving on", in most scientific disciplines, articles of substance usually remain of continuing interest, since there had to be some interesting insight to have created the substance in the first place.

I’ve been backtracking through some of the tree ring literature to try to fully understand how the notion of a linear relationship between ring width and temperature became part of Mannian methodology. I wrote up a first installment about 10 days ago. I don’t promise that there’s any particular order in these notes.

Today I’m posting up on Lamarche and Fritts [1971], a paper by two very important tree ring guys, entitled "Anomaly patterns of climate over the western United States 1700-1930, derived from principal component analysis of tree ring data." (Mon Weather Review 99, 139-142.)
Continue reading →

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Multivariate | Tagged | Comments (27)

More Data Archiving

Apr 17, 2006 – 7:42 AM

I’m actually looking into the WDCP updates page more regularly now to see if any new information has been archived. Five more Jacoby data sets have been archived in the past week: one from the Yukon, 4 from Mongolia. There are still far more that have not been archived than have been archived, but that makes about 30 data sets so far this year.

There was one other curiosity in the recent archiving. In our NAS Panel presentation, we cited a study by Biondi et al [1999] from Idaho, which was a millennial length tree ring study, pointing out that it claimed "low frequency" similarity to the bristlecones prior to the mid-19th century (as Mann did with the Jacoby treeline reconstruction), but that the 20th century results were quite different in the various cases.

Biondi is one of the NAS panelists. While we talked about the need for archiving data, we did not mention to the NAS panel that Biondi et al had not archived the Idaho data set used in the reconstruction.

Last week, Biondi archived the Idaho data set.

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Disclosure and Diligence, Proxies | Comments (5)

BBC Radio: Overselling Climate Change

Apr 17, 2006 – 7:32 AM

On Thursday, April 20, the BBC has a show on Overselling Climate Change. BBC radio attended the NAS Panel and taped lengthy portions of it, as well as interviewing me, Hughes and others. It will be interesting to get their take on it. The title of the show seems pretty unusual in a BBC context. Can you get BBC radio 4 on the internet?

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in NAS Panel, News and Commentary | Comments (52)

Failure of oversight and peer review

Apr 14, 2006 – 12:26 PM

Demonstrating that scientific misconduct can happen anywhere, and not simply in one study, the case of Dr Ranjit Kumar Chandra is a case in point.

St. John’s, Nfld. [Newfoundland], may seem like an unlikely place for scientific scandal to brew, but in hindsight it appears, perhaps, the perfect place.

For almost three decades, Memorial University provided an out-of-the-way corner of the scientific world for the career of Dr. Ranjit Kumar Chandra to flourish.

Over the years, he became a world-renowned expert in the field of nutrition and immunology, was the recipient of the Order of Canada, and said to be a two-time Nobel Prize nominee, a man they called "the Jewel of Memorial."

But in the summer of 2002, Chandra packed up his office and quietly slipped into retirement. He had been accused of committing scientific fraud by one of the world’s most prestigious journals. For those who had followed his work over the years, it was a sad end to an otherwise remarkable career.

What follows is clear demonstration of the need for data and methodological transparency of the kind that Steve and Ross have been advocating for quite some time.
Continue reading →

By John A | Posted in News and Commentary | Tagged | Comments (20)

Thacker’s “Sources”

Apr 13, 2006 – 12:21 PM

Last summer, after Paul Thacker published a critical article about me in Environmental Science & Technology (also try here)  (ARCHIVE) , I contacted three of the people prominently quoted in the article – Mahlman, Trenberth and Famiglietti – to obtain confirmation of what they said. As you will see below, their responses are extraordinarily lame. None of them would defend the quotations. Here’s excerpts from Thacker on each of them:

But what began as an interview, Mahlman explains, quickly evolved into a spirited debate. Whenever he pointed out the importance of Mann’s work, Regalado would try to shift the discussion back to McIntyre and McKitrick. “I told him that as far as I know they’re quacks. That kinda riled him. …

Oddly, the McIntyre incident is not an anomaly, according to Kevin Trenberth, head of the climate analysis section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. “There have been several examples of people who have come into the field of climate change and done incredibly stupid things by applying statistics in ways that are inappropriate for the data,”‘? he says. …

“It is a concern if there is a group that thinks that this one paper is the most important to come out on climate change,”‘? says Jay Famiglietti, an associate professor in earth system science at the University of California, Irvine, and editor-in-chief of GRL, the journal in which McIntyre published his study. “If I had a student come to me and say, “I found this one paper that proves that climate change is hogwash,”‘? I’d say, “Well, that’s one paper out of how many? In science, you never look at [only] one paper.”‘?… Famiglietti, editor-in-chief of GRL, says that because the McIntyre paper generated a total of four letters, an abnormally high number, he will personally supervise their acceptance. He says that the letters differ in their specific criticisms and adds that he is ignoring the political controversy and focusing on the science.

When I contacted the three scientists, none of them were able to provide a coherent justification of their remarks to Thacker, but none of the three scientists has, in the mean time, corrected the public record, requiring me once again to rely on email correspondence to evidence just how mealy-mouthed they were. Continue reading →

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in News and Commentary | Tagged , , , | Comments (55)

Jacoby and D'Arrigo Archive Data!

Apr 12, 2006 – 1:24 PM

During the past 20 years, Jacoby and D’Arrigo had obtained over 45 RW series and at least 35 MXD series in North America. To the end of 2005, despite receiivng millions in grants, he had only archived a couple of North American RW series and no North American MXD series. I discussed this before here, listing information on unarchived sites and on grants.

Remarkably, in February 2006, after years of virtual silence, Jacoby and D’Arrigo archived 14 RW measurement data sets from the Seward Pensinsula and 2 Labrador RW measurement data sets (Eyeglass Lake, Medusa Bay), and, stop the presses, on April 12, 2006, archived information on 8 more Alaska sites: 8 RW chronologies; 7 of 8 RW measurement data sets (ak072 – Windy Wolf AK missing for some reason) and 5 MXD chronology and measurement data sets (ak071 – Silvertip; ak073 – Nazina Treeline and ak076 – Chisana Air missing). Here’s a quick survey of the new data. Continue reading →

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Jacoby, Proxies | Comments (4)