Here on climateaudit, it never fails to amaze us how many different ways that the Hockey Stick appears in various guises. But on the other hand, its use in the context of "greenhouse warming", "anthropogenic climate change" or the Kyoto Protocol appears almost universal.
For all the bleating about "other studies" which "confirm the Mann, Bradley and Hughes 1999 reconstruction", those studies are never used. For example, I’ve yet to see the Moberg et al (2005) or Esper (2002) or any other reconstructions, used to demonstrate the case for an economic vice like the Kyoto Protocol in order to avoid "Abrupt Climate Change". Continue reading →
It’s been too long since our last round of Spot the Hockey Stick! but despite the impressive backpedalling of some that the Mann, Bradley and Hughes study is sooo old hat and soooo last millennium, it’s still being cited at breathtaking pace as the best thing in climate science since the thermometer.
Thus we come to Dr Andrew Weaver, of the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences at the University of Victoria in Canada. In his EOS460: Earth System Science course which you can find at this link.
Now this next bit will cause some reaction, so Steve if you’re reading this, put down the bottle so you don’t spit beer all over the keyboard.
Ready?
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Recently, as the hockey stick looks more and more splintered, some climate scientists have argued that the hockey stick graph was merely incidental in Kyoto promotion.
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Margaret Wente, one of my favorite columnists, had a column today leading with the words "Steve McIntyre… " Continue reading →
Cook et al. [2004] is a “reconstruction of past drought across North America from a network of climatically sensitive tree-ring data”. It uses 835 sites in North American regions overlapping Mann’s PC network. I thought that it would be interesting to compare the two networks. Of course nothing is straightforward when you’re dealing with the Hockey Team. Continue reading →
One of our correspondents has brought my attention to another article (Jan 24, 2005 link ) by Hans von Storch on the current state of climate science and the political climate of “Global Warming”.
How Global Warming Research is Creating a Climate of Fear
By Hans von Storch and Nico Stehr
The polar ice caps are disappearing! The Gulf Stream is soon to reverse! Right? Well, maybe. But calling such apocalyptic theories into question is becoming more and more difficult for skeptical scientists. Meanwhile, the public is getting tired of being fed a diet of fear.
Theories of global warming have left laboratories far behind. Now, they are the stuff of Hollywood.
Gone are the days when climate researchers would be content to sit in their ivory towers, packed to the gills with supercomputers, crunching numbers. Nowadays, their field is more likely to deliver the material of thrillers, and they themselves have acquired the leading roles. The issue has become so hotly contested and the forecasts so spectacular that they are no longer merely the stuff of media reports. And professionals who make their daily bread staging the apocalypse have taken the bait.
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There is an article in Das Erste in which the view that the “two Canadians were right” is attributed to Cubasch.
On Feb. 16, 2005, Das Erste (archive) included the following comment (translation courtesy of Joseph Potts):
He [Cubasch] discussed with his coworkers – and many of his professional colleagues – the objections, and sought to work them through. In this, they ran afoul of the very same difficulties on which Steve McIntyre had gotten stuck. It wasn’t easy at all to come by the data that Michael Mann had used. “That was indeed unusual.” Normally, one collaborates and discusses the questions in conference. Bit by bit, it became clear also to his colleagues: the two Canadians were right. Their curve, which was was based on the data provided by Mann, looked quite different, especially in a particular respect. Between 1400 and 1600, the temperature shift was considerably higher than, for example, in the previous century. With that, the core conclusion, and that also of the IPCC 2001 Report, was completely undermined.
Our GRL article has been selected by AGU as a Journal Highlight. Continue reading →
Here are the current top fifteen climate science reasons for not disclosing data or code: Continue reading →
Our former sticky notes "Overview", "Due Diligence" and "Bring the Proxies up to date" have been disappeared (by the WordPress software) from the top of the page.
As they’re important, I’ve put them as links in the "Favorite Posts" list in the sidebar.
They’re still current, so if you want to add comments to them, please do so.
Climate Audit 
Margaret Wente in The Globe and Mail, Toronto
Margaret Wente, one of my favorite columnists, had a column today leading with the words "Steve McIntyre… " Continue reading →