Luterbacher and Hegerl at NAS

Mar 8, 2006 – 10:28 AM

My notes on Luterbacher and Hegerl are not very good. Hegerl, in particular, was very difficult to follow and it would have been hard for the panel to assimilate. She made one nice observation – someone asked her about confidence intervals with low correlations. She said that they would be from the floor to the ceiling. Keep that in mind as we consider verification r2. Continue reading →

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in General, NAS Panel | Comments (6)

D'Arrigo: Making Cherry Pie

Mar 7, 2006 – 5:09 PM

D’Arrigo presented their new study. I went over and introduced myself and said that I thought that their new study was much better than Osborn and Briffa and that it was too bad that they hadn’t received the same publicity. She said – Well, I guess that’s a compliment of sorts. I was trying to be nice, but the compliment was sincere. I missed much of her presentation as I went to a back office at NAS to download some information to edit our own PPT presentation, but a couple of interesting things, including one issue related to Briffa and familiar to readers getting firmly on the table. Continue reading →

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in D'Arrigo 2006, Divergence, Jacoby, NAS Panel | Tagged , | Comments (61)

Mann: "I Am Not A Statistician"

Mar 7, 2006 – 7:57 AM

Mann told the NAS panel: "I am not a statistician". No one on the panel contested that claim.

A friend sent me Mann’s bio distributed as part of today’s Margolin Lecture at Middlebury College, which says that the focus of his research is "the application of statistical techniques to understanding climate variability and climate change from both empirical and climate model-based perspectives" and the "development of statistical methods for climate signal detection". I guess one of the methods is Mannian principal components. The bio says that his research has been the subject of a feature story in the Wall Street Journal – is that the one where he said that he wouldn’t be "intimidated" into disclosing his algorithm?

Among the "now-solid evidence" to be presented at the lecture are "paleoclimate observations spanning more than a millennium". I thought that the Hockey Team had "moved on". If Mann is promoting the HS to young undergrads at Middlebury, can we conclude that maybe they haven’t "moved on"?
Continue reading →

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in MBH98 | Tagged | Comments (158)

The Origin of the [Term] "Hockey Team"

Mar 6, 2006 – 3:29 PM

William Connolley, who tends to be a little truth-challenged when it comes to matters Mc, said over at Fleck:

Incidentally, note that this “Hockey Team”stuff is a figment of McI’s.

Now I’ll admit to having some fun with this, but the term originated over at realclimate (and it wasn’t just an incidental use). I think that the first use of the term was on Jan. 27 here:

Rather, as demonstrated in IPCC(2001) [see this comparison here] and numerous additional studies since, it is what is perhaps more aptly termed the “Hockey Team”–that is, the multiple independent reconstructions and model simulations that now indicate essentially the same pattern of hemispheric mean temperature variation in past centuries, that support a “Hockey Stick” description of past temperature changes.

A few days later (and the blog had justed started), I said , having a little fun with forming lines, see the link.

Now it seems that we’re playing against an entire Hockey Team. First things first, what should the team be called: the Kyoto Flames? the IPCC Heat? the Blades? the Fever?
….
I’m a little worried about their skating skills. It looks like Mann can skate backwards, but what about Hughes? So many decisions, so little time.

A few weeks later on Feb 18, 2005, Schmidt and Ammann, used the term here:

The wider climate science context is discussed here, and the relationship to other recent reconstructions (the ‘Hockey Team’) can be seen here.

In Sept. 2005, they used the term again as follows:

So for this round at least, it looks like ‘Hockey Team: 2, MM: 0’.

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in General | Comments (28)

Hits

Mar 6, 2006 – 2:15 PM

When we were having all the site crashes in October, John A turned off the hit counter to economize on space. We were running about 5000 hits/day at the time. We’ve been running without hit information for a few months. John figured out some way of getting the counter back without using as much space as the previous counter and turned it back on about a week ago. We’re now running at 8500 hits/day, a quarter million/month. Thanks for visiting. Quiet people are allowed to comment too.

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in General | Comments (9)

David Stockwell on A&W

Mar 6, 2006 – 2:09 PM

Another excellent post by David Stockwell here. Everyone having fun?

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in MBH98, Wahl and Ammann | Tagged | Comments (16)

Building Coalitions

Mar 6, 2006 – 1:38 PM

Let no one say that we at climateaudit do not contribution to coalition building. In the bibliography to Wahl and Ammann [Clim Chg 2006], we see the following citation:

Wahl, E., Ritson, D. and Ammann, C. accepted, Reconstruction of century-scale temperature variations, Science

If you can’t get accepted at GRL, you can always try Science.

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in MBH98, Wahl and Ammann | Tagged , | Comments (3)

Verification r2 Revealed!!!

Mar 6, 2006 – 10:29 AM

For the first time, a member of the Hockey Team (Ammann and Wahl) has admitted that the verification r2 for the early steps of MBH98 are catastrophic. Results confirm our calculations – as we predicted. They have not explained the justification for issuing a press release that all our claims were "unfounded" and UCAR has not retracted the press release. I’ve left this as a sticky for a little while since it’s rather fun. Continue reading →

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in MBH98, Wahl and Ammann | Tagged , , , | Comments (126)

Alley at the NAS Panel

Mar 6, 2006 – 9:09 AM

Richard Alley has been a prominent figure in climate change debate. Again we were told to expect a fire-and-brimstone presentation with warnings about tipping canoes. His presentation was lively, but, like Schrag, Alley expressed great caution about what could legitimately be expected from paleoclimate studies and made some very interesting remarks about the disconnect between what policy-makers wanted and what academics could provide.

Here are some striking observations from Alley, which I’ll flesh out below. Alley said that the records mostly stop before the present warming, adding that there is “no coordinated effort to update paleoclimate data, to obtain a clear picture of the last decades in the context of the millennium”. Alley said that paleoclimatologists usually collect records for other reasons and “policy-makers are trying to squeeze the process”. He said that the “community could do better if that was a high priority”, later saying that “we have a tremendous ability to do better”. He said that we “had not really integrated them [polar cores] in a coherent way”, because “this was “not the highest priority of the scientific community”. He thought that updating records was merely “operational” and not something that you could ask a Ph.D. to do. Continue reading →

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in NAS Panel, News and Commentary | Tagged | Comments (6)

Sir Humphrey and the Boehlert Questions

Mar 5, 2006 – 6:39 PM

Yes, Minister was a wonderfully funny British comedy of a generation ago, (some info here and here or google yes minister humphrey) which featured Sir Humphrey Appleby as a senior civil servant (deputy minister) "managing" the Minister, his nominal boss, but who was always outwitted by Sir Humphrey. Each episode would start off with the Minister having some bright idea of instituting change, often involving a cut to civil service budgets. Sir Humphrey would resist and no budget would ever be cut. In a way, Sir Humphrey is descended from PG Wodehouse’s Jeeves. Here are some typical bon mots:

Sir Humphrey briefs his minister

“It is axiomatic in government that hornets’ nests should be left unstirred, cans of worms should remain unopened, and cats should be left firmly in bags and not set among the pigeons. Ministers should also leave boats unrocked, nettles ungrasped, refrain from taking bulls by the horns, and resolutely turn their backs to the music.”

“Almost anything can be attacked as a failure, but almost anything can be defended as not a significant failure.”

“If people don’t know what you’re doing, they don’t know what you’re doing wrong.”

Keep that thought in mind as we see how Sir Humphrey (Cicerone) dealt with the Boehlert questions in classic Yes, Minister style. Continue reading →

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Barton Committee, NAS Panel, News and Commentary | Tagged , , | Comments (31)