More on Requests for Data

Jul 2, 2005 – 8:49 AM

With the recent interest taken by the House Commitee in data archiving, I’d like to review some of my past thoughts on data policy. An audience seems to be developing for these issues. First and most importantly, here is some information on U.S. federal government policy on archiving of data. There are definite and long-standing policies on archiving data which are being flouted by climate scientists and not being enforced by NSF.

After publication of Antonio Regalado’s article in the Wall Street Journal on Feb. 14, 2005, where Mann said that he would not be "intimidated" into releasing his algorithm, I posted the following overview on our requests for source code to show that there had been no "intimidation". Such language from these guys – Mann using the word "intimidation", Crowley "threatening". I included accounts of my requests to Mann for information before MM03 here and after MM03 here .

I also posted up my correspondence with National Science Foundation here. ( sequential – follow links). One action of the NSF that particular surprised me was in connection with my request to Mann for the residual series, which I copied to NSF. While Mann had refused various other requests and I did not expect him to provide me with the information on the residuals, I had not specifically asked him for this information before and, unless you ask, you can’t say for certain what he would do. BEFORE Mann could refuse, Verardo of NSF responded that Mann did not have to provide the information. I was really surprised for this – for all Verardo knew, Mann could quixotically have decided to provide the residual series. Verardo had no business interfering.

In mid-2004, I sent NSF a detailed letter asking for information from various climate scientists that was not archived. In response, I got blown off by NSF saying that the requested information was at WDCP and I should look there. The information wasn’t there or I wouldn’t have asked. (A couple of data sets were archived after this letter – Jacoby archived some Mongolian data, Hughes some Russian data and Thompson for the first time a very coarse (decadal average) data on Dunde, Guliya and Dasuopu. I would like to think that it had some connection with my inquiries – in the case of Thompson, it definitely was because of the involvement of Climatic Change.) The administrator seemed to have no idea that guys like Jacoby and Thompson were not adequately archiving their information. (I’ve attempted to make it clear from time to time that, however frustrated I may be with Mann, his disclosure is better than most climate scientists. I’m sure that it’s a considerable source of frustration to him that the people who are worse have avoided publicity so far.)

I’ve posted up comments on my efforts with Jacoby not systematically, but in some anecdotes here , here , here and here . I will post up some details about Jacoby which are interesting.

I have also posted some thoughts on these matters in a couple of op-eds at the National Post – one on due diligence, one on bringing the proxies up to date

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Archiving, Multiproxy Studies | Tagged , , , | Comments (4)

The Crowley-McIntyre letters

Jul 1, 2005 – 10:32 PM

Crowley’s comments to The Chronicle of Higher Education were as follows:

According to Mr. Crowley, the Duke professor, he received repeated e-mail messages from Mr. McIntyre demanding data and documentation, which grew increasingly threatening. "I’m usually happy to send people some stuff," said Mr. Crowley. However, he added, "McIntyre comes back time and again. He could take up a huge amount of time. It’s like you have nothing better to do in your life than answer questions from Steven McIntyre."

Obviously, Crowley’s comments have waived any expectation of privacy. So here’s the actual correspondence. It speaks for itself and cannot be construed as "increasingly threatening". If Crowley was happy to "send people stuff", then why did it take so long to obtain information? Crowley also requested data from me, which I sent promptly. Continue reading →

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Archiving, Crowley, Multiproxy Studies | Tagged , | Comments (22)

Chronicle on Barton Letters

Jul 1, 2005 – 8:54 PM

The Chronicle of Higher Education posted on July 1, 2005 here has some comments on the Barton Letters and on me. Continue reading →

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Barton Committee | Comments (3)

Crowley and Kim, 1995crowley

Jul 1, 2005 – 7:30 PM

In IPCC 1995 [SAR] – An Extended Excerpt, I quoted the following key statements from IPCC 1995:

Alpine glacier advance and retreat chronologies (Wigley and Kelly, 1990) suggest that in at least alpine areas, global 20th century temperatures may be warmer than any century since 1000 AD and perhaps as warm as any extended period (of several centuries) in the past 10,000 years. Crowley and Kim (1995) estimate the variability of global mean temperature on century time scales over the past millennium as less than +- 0.5 deg C. [my italic]

Then I wondered:

These last two lines are the ones that jettison the issue of attribution of past climate change. I’ll try to get to comments on the two sources quoted here. It would be nice if they were relying on sources that were not so closely associated with the campaign. I wonder how strong Wigley and Kelly, 1990 and Crowley and Kim, 1995 really are, especially relative to some of the recent work from Joerin and Nicolussi noted up recently on this site.

Wigley and Kelly, 1990 did not support the claims attributed to them at all, as discussed here. Here’s the rest of the story on Crowley and Kim, 1995, which proves to be no better than a secondary and perhaps tertiary source. Continue reading →

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in IPCC, Multiproxy Studies | Tagged | Comments (2)

Blogs on Barton Letters

Jun 29, 2005 – 12:07 PM

The Barton letters have occasioned an active debate in blogworld. Here are some links to some of the more active discussions. I’ll add others as they come to my attention as well as some blog comments without chats. Some of the links have a list of outbound topical links as well. Continue reading →

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Barton Committee, News and Commentary | Tagged | Comments (103)

“Full, True and Plain Disclosure” and Falsification

Jun 28, 2005 – 3:22 PM

"Full, true and plain disclosure" is a fundamental obligation in the offering of public securities. As someone with experience in this field, I’ve been reflecting for some time about the following questions:

Is there a duty of “full, true and plain disclosure” or its equivalent in science? If so, how is it expressed in journal policies and science codes of conduct? If not, should there be such a duty?

Continue reading →

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Disclosure and Diligence | Tagged , , , | Comments (42)

Consensus – Two Examples

Jun 28, 2005 – 2:06 PM

For people with stock market experience, "consensus" is not something that usually is a strong buy signal. Here are some interesting examples – two from Enron showing how fragile a "consensus" can be, one from a geologist surveyed in one of the surveys supposedly showing a consensus among scientists.

Continue reading →

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in General | Tagged , | Comments (26)

A Summary of MBH98 Replication Issues

Jun 28, 2005 – 11:52 AM

Mann and realclimate have argued that MBH98 was replicable on the original record. Mann cites Wahl and Ammann as support for this, but Wahl and Ammann are close associates of Mann’s (Ammann is a realclimate contributor), working recently from a much different record, hardly “independent” and their code only addresses one area of MBH98 calculations. Cubasch is a better test; he was not able to replicate Mann – see here; also von Storch has reported Mann’s “shoddiness” here. As I pointed before, Wahl and Ammann’s replication does not do anything that we had not already done – their calculated RPCs under identical assumptions are identical to mine – see here, here and here. There are many issues which cannot be replicated even after one Corrigendum and an extensive Corrigendum SI, as well as issues that could not be replicated on the pre-Corrigendum record. Continue reading →

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in MBH98, Replication | Comments (1)

Wigley and Kelly 1990

Jun 28, 2005 – 6:13 AM

As noted before, IPCC 1995 (SAR) arrived at the following important new conclusion based only on Wigley and Kelly 1990, as stated in the Chapter 3 Executive Summary:

Based on the incomplete observations and paleoclimatic evidence available, it seems unlikely that global mean temperatures have increased by 1 deg C or more in a century at any time during the last 10,000 years.

Then in the chapter summary, the following statement is made.

In at least some regions, 20th century temperatures have been warmer than any other century for some thousands of years.

The importance of these findings for IPCC was that IPCC 1990 had said that as long as it was unable to explain past larger warmings, it was unable to allocate a proportion of modern warming to human versus natural causes. These findings in IPCC 1995 are their way of circumventing the findings of IPCC 1990. However, I can find no support in the underlying reference (Wigley and Kelly 1990) for these conclusions. I’ve posted up a pdf for others to look at. Continue reading →

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Geological, IPCC | Comments (4)

IPCC 1995 [SAR] – An Extended Excerpt

Jun 27, 2005 – 11:34 AM

Continuing my industrious typing from old IPCC reports, here is an extended excerpt from IPCC 1995 (SAR) dealing with climate change and variability.

If you recall from IPCC 1990, it left an important oustanding question as to the impossibility of attributing the portion of present warming that it is due to human influences, when the attribution of past warmings of equal or greater size was not understood. IPCC 1990 also was reluctant to rely heavily on tree ring results. Here we see that the attribution is past warmings is not resolved; what they do instead is to re-define the issue to the Holocene after 10,000 BP and then argue that no temperature changes of 1 degree in a century have occurred in that period. This latter point is based on Wigley and Kelly [1990].

I’ll comment later on Wigley and Kelly [1990], but will observe here that Wigley and Kelly are both important advocates and I don’t think that either of them have published extensively on the Younger Dryas. Continue reading →

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in General, IPCC, Multiproxy Studies | Tagged , , | Comments (7)