Dirty Laundry II: Contaminated Sediments

Jul 6, 2011 – 10:55 AM

From time to time, scientists inadvertently use contaminated data and their results are affected. For example, some time after publication of Grand et al (PNAS 2004), the authors determined that their results were erroneous as a “result of contamination of genomic DNA with plasmid DNA”. They promptly issued a retraction, expressing their regret for the error and any inconvenience. The reputation of the authors does not appear to have been diminished by the retraction. Mistakes happen and the mistake was promptly dealt with by retraction of the article.

Like Grand et al, Mann et al 2008 (M08) used contaminated data, in their case, the Finnish sediment data of Tiljander et al, the modern portion of which had been contaminated by agriculture and bridgebuilding. In addition to using the modern contaminated portion of the data, M08 made a second error by using the Tiljander lightsum and XRD upside down to the interpretation of its originators. Their handling of Tiljander data has been sharply criticized on different occasions by two eminent Finnish paleolimnologists – Atte Korhola here and Matti Saarnisto here.

In contrast to Grand et al, Mann et al have not issued a retraction or corrigendum or even admitted an error. Instead, in multiple venues (without explicitly admitting an error), they’ve asserted that, in any event, the error doesn’t affect their “central conclusions” [their PNAS reply, Feb 2009 here] or, more recently, “any” of their conclusions [Mann et realclimate, June 2011 here], as though that ended the matter.

It doesn’t. Even if the error didn’t have a material impact on the results, a Corrigendum should have been issued. Kaufman et al 2009, for example, issued a corrigendum when they learned that they too had used data (including their Tiljander series) upside down. But the situation for Mann et al 2008 is quite different. The most prominent claim for Mann et al 2008 was its supposed achievement of a “skillful” reconstruction without tree rings for the past 1300 years. Unfortunately, this “achievement” can now be seen to have been a complete mirage, dependent on the use of contaminated data in the EIV reconstruction without tree rings.

Realization of this failure has taken some years since publication, because the impact of contaminated data is not the same on all reconstruction variations and the original analyses only reported the cases of least impact.

For example, if the reconstruction also uses strip-bark bristlecones, the contaminated sediments do not have a material effect. On the other hand, the contaminated data turns out to have a dramatic impact on the EIV reconstruction without tree rings. The impact on the CPS reconstruction without tree rings is intermediate.

The original SI to Mann et al 2008 (and again in the recent realclimate thread on Kemp et al 2011) only showed the case where contaminated data has the least impact – reconstructions which also include bristlecones. To date, the impact of contaminated data on the no-dendro EIV and no-dendro CPS reconstructions remains unreported at the official Supplementary Information at PNAS. The no-dendro EIV was not even reported at Mann’s website for Mann et al 2008, where he has been publishing informal corrections to the official SI. Instead, the disquieting no-dendro EIV results were quietly released within the SI to a different article (Mann et al 2009, Science) without any mention in the running text of the article itself, without any corrigendum at PNAS and without even a realclimate thread. Nor, as shown below, did the SI to Mann et al 2009 clearly show the full impact of the contaminated data. This became much clearer with AMac’s recent re-coloring – see his post here – which prompted my re-examination of Mann et al 2008.

Continue reading →

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Comments (264)

Nic Lewis on IPCC Climate Sensitivity

Jul 5, 2011 – 8:37 AM

Nic Lewis (a co-author of O’Donnell et al 2010) is a very sharp analyst who’s recently taken an interest in climate sensitivity estimates and has an interesting guest post at Judy Curry’s today.

In his studies, he noticed that the IPCC’s representation in AR4 Figure 9.20 of the probability distribution for climate sensitivity arising from observationally-based Forster and Gregory 2006 differed substantially from the distribution in the original article. He reports that the alteration had the effect of fattening the tails of high-end climate sensitivity. He reports:

The IPCC did not attempt, in the relevant part of AR4:WG1 (Chapter 9), any justification from statistical theory, or quote authority for, restating the results of Forster/Gregory 06 on the basis of a uniform prior in S. Nor did the IPCC challenge the Forster/Gregory 06 regression model, analysis of uncertainties or error assumptions. The IPCC simply relied on statements [Frame et al. 2005] that ‘advocate’ – without any justification from statistical theory – sampling a flat prior distribution in whatever is the target of the estimate – in this case, S. In fact, even Frame did not advocate use of a prior uniform distribution in S in a case like Forster/Gregory 06. Nevertheless, the IPCC concluded its discussion of the issue by simply stating that “uniform prior distributions for the target of the estimate [the climate sensitivity S] are used unless otherwise specified”.

The transformation effected by the IPCC, by recasting Forster/Gregory 06 in Bayesian terms and then restating its results using a prior distribution that is inconsistent with the regression model and error distributions used in the study, appears unjustifiable. In the circumstances, the transformed climate sensitivity PDF for Forster/Gregory 06 in the IPCC’s Figure 9.20 can only be seen as distorted and misleading.

Update– A commenter at Judy Curry’s has drawn attention to AR4 Review Comments. I’ve uploaded the more convenient version that used to be available (IPCC took this down in favor of a less usable version.) Search “uniform prior” for interesting discussion.

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Comments (78)

Wimbledon – Djokovic v Nadal

Jul 3, 2011 – 11:02 AM

Were others watching the Wimbledon final? What a heavyweight battle. The quality of individual points was even better than Federer v Nadal 2008.

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (40)

More Mendacity from East Anglia Revealed

Jul 2, 2011 – 12:00 PM

More developments from Bishop Hill on the strange relationship between the University of East Anglia and the supposedly “independent” Muir Russell review. On yet another occasion, the University gave untrue answers in order to avoid FOI disclosure, an untrue answer that led to several follow-up FOI requests that they were unable to subvert, but which ultimately showed the mendacity of the original refusal.

In this case, the original request from David Holland in December 2010 (see CA post here) was for the documents, that “in the view of the University, comprises the contractual basis under which Sir Muir and his team operated and under which the University was contractually obliged to pay the sums that you have disclosed”. The request was not limited to Muir Russell, but included, for example, the retainer of professionals, including Luther Pendragon and lawyers.

Please provide me copies of the Correspondence between the University and Sir Muir Russell that, in the view of the University, comprises the contractual basis under which Sir Muir and his team operated and under which the University was contractually obliged to pay the sums that you have disclosed of what, I assume, is taxpayers money.

Please advise me as to how the disbursements were made. For instance, were the fees of the legal advisors paid directly by the University? If not who paid and how were they reimbursed.

In its response, the University denied the existence of relevant documents:

The University does not consider that there was a contractual relationship with Sir Muir Russell or the inquiry team; it was by way of a public appointment (as is commonplace in these circumstances). Nonetheless, it may be helpful to you in understanding the terms on which the appointment was made if we refer you to the agreed terms of reference (see: http://www.ccereview.org/pdf/FINAL%20REPORT.pdf, p.22) and certain email correspondence between Professor Acton and Sir Muir. (see attached .pdf file).

The attached correspondence consisted of a single email from Acton to Muir Russell, referring to an earlier email (never produced) and to a conversation in a taxi, including the following (part of which was blacked out for reasons that remain unclear):


Up to that point, I think that it’s fair to say that anyone who’d bothered turning their mind to the issue would have presumed that either (1) Muir Russell and the various members of the panel had worked under agreements with the University and were paid under those agreements, or, less likely, (2) that Muir Russell had set up the Muir Russell Review Team as an unincorporated entity, established a bank account for the Team and paid and received invoices from panel members and suppliers through that bank account. (Many Climate Audit readers do not work in the public sector and think about details such as this.)

A few months later, Andrew Montford, an accountant by day, tried again, this time asking for general ledger and invoice details.

1. A detailed lists of amounts expended – i.e. at invoice level – for the two inquiries. For each amount processed through the ledgers, I would like the following fields
– invoicer/payee name
– date
– amount
– contents of narrative field
– authorised by
2. Please provide copies of invoices (or equivalent documentation) used to process the above payments.

This time (see CA here plus Bishop Hill) , the University provided the general ledger information but refused to provide invoices, claiming:

The additional work required to actually provide copies of the invoices would place the time required well over the appropriate limit.

At that time (May 2011), I commented:

Even from this information, the UEA’s claim that Muir Russell was a “public appointment” looks increasingly fantastic. If a public appointment had really taken place, then there would be invoices from the Muir Russell Review Group to the University of East Anglia, instead of, as seems to be the case here, invoices directly from Geoffrey Boulton, Luther Pendragon etc to the UEA.

I also observed:

Despite the efforts by the UEA to avoid showing the invoices from Muir Russell and others, I think that they will come out. And will show that the UEA’s attempt to claim Muir Russell as a “public appointment” was just another subterfuge to avoid compliance with an earlier FOI request.

David Holland also followed up with an FOI request to Muir Russell, following up the apparent implication of the University’s claim that he was a “public appointment” – if he was a “public appointment”, then presumably the Muir Russell Review Team was a “public authority” and thus itself subject to FOI. Muir Russell rebuffed the request as follows (referring to FOI (Scotland):

I have however taken advice and I am satisfied that I am not, and the Review Team as a whole is not, a public authority for the purposes either of the 2002 Act or the 2004 Regulations. In the circumstances we are not under any legal obligation to make information concerning the Review available to any person under that legislation. [referring to Scottish Act]

The new development is that Montford requested copies of large invoices, including those from Muir Russell, Boulton and Luther Pendragon, all of which have been provided (see here). As so often, the details of the invoices told a different story that told by the University in subverting the original FOI request.

Remember how the University said that it “does not consider that there was a contractual relationship with Sir Muir Russell or the inquiry team”. However, when it came to collecting his ₤40,000 from the University, Muir Russell had no doubt whatever of the existence of an agreement between him and the university that he should get paid ₤40,000. Muir Russell signed and submitted a UEA Form4/5 for Occasional Work/Self-Employed Work referring in his own handwriting to an “agreed fee” with the University (see here):

Muir Russell’s Forms 4/5 for expenses up to July 2010 were approved by Lisa Williams, while his claim for ₤40,000 in fees was signed by (I think) UEA official Brian Summers. Muir Russell submitted his claim for fees and expenses on July 15, 2010, shortly after delivery of the report. A second claim for expenses of ₤881.25 using UEA Form 4/5 was submitted on Nov 29, 2010 for expenses incurred on Nov 17, 2010, labeled (perhaps) “Brodie’s ???”, also approved by (I think) Brian Summers.

Holland’s original request had covered documents from professionals – also not provided at the time. Four invoices from Luther Pendragon (a public relations firm) were provided – see here. All four invoices (from March 2010 to July 2010) were addressed to Climate Change Emails Review, Box 16, Edinburgh. Three of four invoices were approved by Brian Summers of UEA on his own; one invoice was first approved by Muir Russell with a second approval from Summers. All were directly paid by UEA.

The two invoices from Olswang LLP (lawyers) was similarly addressed to Climate Change Emails Review, Edinburgh, but both were approved by Brian Summers of UEA and paid by UEA. The invoice for the period May 20 to July 31, 2010 refers to an attached “narrative” (standard in legal invoices), but this was withheld from the documents with no apparent justification. The other invoice for the period July 1, 2010 to July 2010 refers to the provision of legal services “relating to Freedom of Information advice”. This was shortly before the apparent destruction of emails by the University of Edinburgh pertaining to activities of Muir Russell panelists. Although Muir Russell had promised transparency, my guess (and it is only my guess) is that they took legal counsel on how they could legally destroy documents.

Marsh, an international insurance firm, provided professional indemnity coverage. There are two invoices, one from 2010 and one just recently in 2011. The first invoice (2010) was addressed to Climate Change Emails Review, Edinburgh; the second to Lucy Mouland, Climate Change Emails Review, University of East Anglia, Norwich. The first invoice was approved by Brian Summers; the second by Lucy Mouland. Both were paid by the University of East Anglia.

Panel member Jim Norton submitted four invoices for fees and expenses, charging a per diem of ₤1250/day. His invoices are all directly addressed to the “University of East Anglia” and include VAT charges (Muir Russell and Boulton did not charge VAT). The first and second invoice were approved by Muir Russell; they were accompanied by UEA Forms 4/5 that were not signed by either Norton or Muir Russell; they were signed by Summers and appear to have been prepared by the UEA Registrar’s office. Norton’s third invoice (dated May 4, 2010) does not have an approval signature from either Muir Russell or Summers; again the UEA Form 4/5 was signed by Summers and appears to have been prepared by the Registrar’s Office.

There are two invoices from Edinburgh Research & Innovation Ltd for the services of Peter Clarke, charged out at ₤800/day. The invoices were sent to the Climate Change Emails Review team, Edinburgh. Both were approved by Muir Russell and, for UEA, by personnel in the Registrar’s Office. No expenses were included with these invoices.

There were two invoices from the Royal Society of Edinburgh, some of which were for room rental – rates were as high as ₤682 for May 26, 2010. They also charged for William Hardie’s services at ₤490/day.

Former BP executive David Walker, hired on as a consultant to salvage the mess in March, submitted three invoices, all addressed to the Climate Change Email Review, Edinburgh. A covering UEA Form 4/5 accompanied each invoice, none of which was signed by Walker. In each case, they were signed by Muir Russell and countersigned by Summers; they were paid by the University. Walker’s rate was ₤1200/day.

Finally, Geoffrey Boulton submitted four UEA Form 4/5s, each of which was accompanied by a schedule entitled “Log of Work: UEA-CRU Review Team”. Details of the schedules appear to have been expurgated prior to delivery, in particular, information on the number of hours charged out by Boulton and his unit rate were expurgated in all but page 6 where Boulton’s daily rate is ₤1500/day, nearly double the rate of Peter Clarke who was charged out through Edinburgh Research. On other Form 4/5s, the corresponding information appears to have been hidden from the FOI requester. Boulton’s Form 4/5s are signed by himself, Muir Russell and countersigned by Summers.

It will not come as any surprise to anyone that Boulton, the most conflicted member of the panel, was brought on board first. His December 2009 log itemizes “Advising Sir M-R on remit, science and personnel for review team, contacting potential members, arranging video conference.”

The invoice (page 6) shows that he spent two days (Jan 13/14) reviewing the emails, one day (January 17) on the “development of criticisms of CRU form published/web/email” and two weeks later (Feb 2) one day on “production and circulation of document “Scoping the Issues”.

Observations

In the past, we’ve speculated on what the Climate Change Email Review was as a legal entity – most of which has resulted from disinformation from the University of East Anglia.

After examining the invoices, invoice approval process and invoice payment process, I don’t think that there can be any serious doubt as to the legal status of the Climate Change Email Review: that it was nothing more than a university committee with outside members.

We now know (and while we may have suspected this, we did not “know” this) that the Review did not have a bank account nor did it invoice the university for interim payments nor did it pay its members according to invoices and then re-invoice the university. It bore no marks of independent legal existence.

As a comparison, consider the Investigation Committee formed by Penn State in respect to Mann. Let’s suppose that such an Investigation Committee established a mailing address in a separate building. That wouldn’t establish a legal existence for the Investigation Committee separate from the University. Suppose now that the Investigation Committee included members from another university or from a professional society. It still remains a university committee with outside consultants. Same thing applies here even when all the members are outside consultants.

The invoices show that the Muir Russell Email Review was a university committee with outside members. Muir Russell was nothing more than a consultant to the university with a fee agreement. The university directly paid all invoices sent to the committee and, in many cases (as shown above) the invoices were directly approved and paid within the registrar’s office. Legally, the Climate Change Email Review should be subject to Freedom of Information, no greater and no less than any other university committee.

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Comments (92)

Nature on Renewables and “Natural” Therapies

Jun 30, 2011 – 8:42 AM

Nature published an editorial yesterday purporting to address IPCC’s promotion of the Greenpeace scenario for renewables. The subheading read:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change must implement changes now to regain lost credibility or it will remain an easy target for critics seeking to score cheap points.

As hapens far too often, Nature has posed the issue in the wrong way. The problem that Nature should be concerned about is whether IPCC is discharging its duties and responsibilities of providing the public and policy-makers with effective and balanced scientific advice. That’s what Nature should be worried about. If it does so, then critics will have less to criticize.

GreenTherapy

The editorial demonstrates Nature’s failure to grasp the totality of WG3’s problems. Let me try an analogy. I realize that analogies are often unhelpful as the differences all too often obscure the points. I hope that I can avoid this below.

Let’s suppose that there was an Intergovernmental Panel on Cancer, also divided into three Working Groups. WG1 is supposed to be about the “hard science” (I’ll avoid the temptation to digress into the Working Group 1 proxy reconstructions of paleo-cancer), while WG3 is about therapy.

Let’s also suppose that NGOs are actively supporting “natural” remedies for cancer with one of the NGOs, Green Therapy, claiming that, by 2050, up to 77% of all cancers could be treated by “natural” therapy. (Green Therapy isn’t even the most extreme NGO, another advocate of natural therapies said that 100% of all cancers could be treated “naturally” by 2050.) Let’s also suppose that “natural” therapies for cancer have become popular in university departments of sustainability and that there are a number of vanity “peer-reviewed” journals on the topic and that Green Therapy commissioned a publication of their scenario in this specialist literature, co-authored by several members of a university sustainability department.

Let’s now suppose that the IPCancer commissioned a special report on Natural Therapies, the authors of which are mostly drawn from university departments of sustainability.

Chapter 10 of the resulting report (one of the authors being from Green Therapy) stated that they had located 164 scenarios describing the future outlook for natural therapies and provided summary statistics on the future outlook for natural therapies according to these scenarios. Four of the scenarios, included the 77% Green Therapy scenario, were singled out for special prominence. The authors of chapter 10 made no attempt to independently assess the validity of the Green Therapy scenario (or any other scenario).

The Special Report was then received by the chairs of IPCancer, who were meeting in UAE (not UEA). Without simultaneously releasing the Special Report itself (it would not be available for another month), IPCancer issued a press release leading with the statement:

Close to 80 percent of the world‘s cancers could be treated by natural therapies by mid-century if backed by the right enabling public policies a new report shows.

Later in the press release, IPCancer stated:

Over 160 existing scientific scenarios on the possible penetration of natural therapies by 2050, alongside environmental and social implications, have been reviewed with four analyzed in-depth. These four were chosen in order to represent the full range. Scenarios are used to explore possible future worlds, analyzing alternative pathways of socio-economic development and technological change. The researchers have also studied the challenges linked to how natural therapies can be integrated into existing and future health care systems and likely cost benefits from these developments.

The most optimistic of the four, in-depth scenarios projects natural therapies could treat as much as 77 percent of the world‘s cancer by 2050, with the lowest of the four scenarios seeing natural therapies accounting for a share of 15 percent in 2050.

The claim that “close to 80 percent of the world‘s cancers could be treated by natural therapies by mid-century if backed by the right enabling public policies” was widely disseminated by the world press.

A month later, when the report was published, it was discovered that that IPCancer WG3 had made the above press release without any independent assessment of the validity of Green Therapy’s claim that that 77% of the world’s cancers could be treated by natural therapies and that nothing had in fact been “shown” in this respect by the WG3 report beyond what was already known (i.e. that Green Therapy had already made this claim.)

In addition to the WG3 report not actually proving what IPCancer had claimed, it was quickly determined that a Green Therapy employee had been one of the Lead Authors of the chapter responsible for assessing the outlook for natural therapies (but which had failed to do so.) One commenter claimed that the Green Therapy employee had “dictated” the conclusion of the report – an over-statement that was quickly pounced upon by IPC defenders to distract from other equally serious problems.

The prominent science journal Naturo argued that there was nothing wrong with the assessment process itself:

In fact, the Green Therapy writer was one of six authors of a peer-reviewed paper that examined an extreme scenario of favourable economic conditions that allowed the maximum possible take-up of natural therapies by 2050. Although the scenario is optimistic — and no doubt in line with the agenda at Green Therapy HQ — its inclusion is entirely justified. How else could the report answer the question of how much natural therapy would be possible under different economic assumptions?

Naturo thought that the problem was mainly cosmetic:

The IPC’s vulnerability to such attacks should also prompt it to reconsider how it frames its findings. Journalists and critics alike gravitate towards extreme claims. So when the IPC’s press material for the May report prominently pushed the idea that natural therapies could treat “close to 80%” of the world’s cancers by 2050, it was no surprise that it was this figure that made headlines — and made waves. The IPC would have saved itself a lot of trouble and some unwarranted criticism had it made the origins of this scenario explicit.

Too Fantastic?
This all seems a little farfetched, doesn’t it. But read Nature’s editorial and re-read the original CA post on the matter (and follow-ups.)

The problem isn’t just cosmetic; it’s that IPCC WG3 didn’t deliver an authoritative report on Renewables that answered questions that people were actually and legitimately interested in.

As I said previously, I would like to know how much weight we can place on optimistic scenarios for deployment of wind and solar. I’m hardly alone in this – people are starving for reliable and independent information. I knew that Greenpeace and WWF had published scenarios claiming that renewables could supply 77% or more of world energy by 2050. But I wondered whether this was little more than fantasy on their parts. IPCC fails if it doesn’t deliver a report that, after much parsing, does not address the question of whether this is fantasy or not.

I haven’t parsed the literature on renewables, but there are many questions on which I’d have appreciated authoritative opinions.

For example, I hear the usual concerns that the median output of wind farms is a fraction of nameplate capacity and that their output can be zero at times of peak demand. (This is very much the case in Ontario.) In order for the IPCC report to be useful, it has to provide something more authoritative than a repetition of a Greenpeace scenario.

I’m also aware of great optimism on the part of technology promoters that the cost of photovoltaic can be halved repeatedly until it reaches not only grid parity, but becomes the energy supply of choice. It would be great if this scenario bears out. If photovoltaic reaches grid parity or below – then it seems to me that we have a future of great prosperity ahead of us and that many of our present worries will dissipate.

But before relying on such a favorable scenario, I, for one, would like really hard and really independent cross-examination of the evidence that such an optimistic scenario is realistic. It’s one thing to hear such a scenario from Greenpeace or WWF. It’s another thing if their evidence for the feasibility of such a scenario has been examined and verified by independent assessors. IPCC didn’t do this.

The problem isn’t just IPCC’s deceptive press release, though that is a more serious problem than IPCC is acknowledging. In other fields, a press release that was as misleading as the IPCC’s, would bring in the securities commission. If the underlying report had answered questions of actual interest, perhaps people might not have objected so much to the deceptive press release.

But the report itself didn’t answer questions of actual interest. The combination of a report that failed to assess the feasibility of the optimistic scenarios and a deceptive press release should have concerned Nature on the substance rather than the cosmetics. At the end of the day, people want to know how much weight can be placed on optimistic scenarios for renewables. WG3 didn’t deliver. This is what Nature should have objected to.

As one final editorial comment: if climate change is as serious a problem as we are told, we need to know right away whether the Greenpeace/WWF scenarios of plentiful large-footprint renewables are a fantasy. Nor should serious people acquiesce in delays incurred because IPCC WG3 didn’t carry out its responsibilities to provide a searching assessment.

If the scenarios are a fantasy (which is what I suspect but do not “know”), then more climate activists are going to have to follow the lead of Mark Lynas and George Monbiot in grasping the nettle of re-appraising opposition to nuclear. And if the scenarios prove a fantasy, Nature has abetted the perpetuation of the fantasy by its acquiescence in IPCC WG3 abdicating its responsibilities.

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (108)

ICO Orders UEA to Produce CRUTEM Station Data

Jun 27, 2011 – 6:24 PM

Breaking news: Today probably marks the closing chapter of the longstanding FOI request for CRUTEM station data. The UK Information Commissioner (ICO) has rendered a decision (see here) on Jonathan Jones’ appeal of the UEA’s refusal to provide Prof J. Jones with the CRUTEM station data that they had previously provided to Georgia Tech. The decision that can only be characterized as a total thrashing of the University of East Anglia. Continue reading →

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Comments (268)

Riggs’ Geological Perspective on North Carolina Sea Level

Jun 23, 2011 – 1:44 PM

Here’s an interesting presentation on North Carolina sea level that sheds light both on the long term geological history of the area and on why it’s been subjected to particular study. The author is Stanley Riggs, a veteran specialist on the geology of the North Carolina barrier islands.

The PPT nicely shows the steady rise of sea level in the North Carolina area during the Holocene with many good illustrations and pictures, including, for example, stumps in the present day surf. It illustrates how barrier islands have migrated during the process of sea level rise, showing the importance of hurricanes in the migration process. It contains some useful pictures showing the impact of sea level rise on coastal highways, sharply raising questions about the viability of settlements on a surf line that is moving on century scale. Because these settlements are important to North Carolina, it seems to have been a center of this sort of research.

They ask: “SHOULD WE ENGINEER OUR DYNAMIC COASTAL SYSTEM TO KEEP UP WITH THE ONGOING RISE IN SEA LEVEL?” or “OR SHOULD WE BEGIN ADAPTING TO THESE CHANGES NOW TO MAINTAIN A SUSTAINABLE COASTAL SYSTEM AND ASSOCIATED ECONOMY!”

Regardless of one’s position in the climate debate, this sort of question needs to be squarely faced by coastal communities.

One of Riggs’ slides contains the following information on shoreline recession for Mainland Dare County (Roanoke Island also shown is similar:

1817-1851 1700 ft 50 ft/yr
1851-1954 400 ft 4 ft/yr
1954-1997 200 ft 5 ft/yr

I was surprised by the relatively high rate of shoreline recession in the early 19th century relative to more recent recession but I’m not familiar enough with the data to comment on this.

In a supplementary slide, Riggs refers to estimates from Horton, Kemp et al on sea level rise rates as follows:

18000–11000 BP – 49 in/century
11000—8200 BP – 34 in/century
8200-3500 BP – 8 in/century
3500—200 BP – 4 in/century
1800-1900 AD – 8 in/century
1900—2000 AD – 16 in/century
1980—2000 AD – 18 in/century

The Riggs presentation is not dated, but the pdf was made in January 2010 (but it obviously might be an older PPT and merely converted to pdf at that time.)

The new Kemp et al 2011 study draws different conclusions on the past two millenia, stating:

Sea level was stable from at least BC 100 until AD 950. Sea level then increased for 400 y at a rate of 0.6 mm/y [2.3 in/century] followed by a further period of stable, or slightly falling, sea level that persisted until the late 19th century. Since then, sea level has risen at an average rate of 2.1 mm/y [8.2 in/century] representing the steepest century-scale increase of the past two millennia. This rate was initiated between AD 1865 and 1892.

and again later:

From at least BC 100 until AD 950, sea level was stable (0.0 to + 0.1 mm/y). Between AD 850 and 1080 the rate of sea-level rise increased to 0.6 mm/y (0.4 to 0.8 mm/y) for the following 400 y. A second change point at AD 1270–1480 marked a return to stable, or slightly negative, sea level (−0.2 to 0.0 mm/y), which persisted until the end of the 19th century.

Between AD 1865 and 1892 sea-level rise increased to a mean rate of 2.1 mm/y [2.3 in/century] (1.9 to 2.2 mm/y) (12). Sea-level variations in the last 2100 y did not exceed ~0.25 m until the onset of the modern rise in the late 19th century. The modern rate of sea-level rise was greater than any century-scale trend in the preceding 2100 y; a conclusion that is independent of the GIA correction applied.

What accounts for the differences? Dunno for sure, but it might be due to the Kemp et al includes an isostatic adjustment:

A constant rate of subsidence (with no error) was subtracted from the Sand Point (1.0 mm/y) [3.9 in/century] and Tump Point (0.9 mm/y) [3.5 in/century] records.

Quantitatively, the isostatic adjustment is obviously not insignificant for the past two millennia.

The desire to tease a centennial signal out of such coarse data has obviously led the academics into increasingly complicated and more problematic statistical methods. Like their decision that the “appropriate factor” for downweighting was 10. An unsavory statistical process, to say the least, almost as unappetizing as pulling a Rabett out of a hat.

For readers interested in the topic of sea level rise in North Carolina, I urge them to look at the predecessor geological literature to try to get some footing on the actual data prior to the application of obscure and mannomatic methodologies.

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (57)

PNAS Reviews: Preferential Standards for Kemp (Mann) et al

Jun 22, 2011 – 1:50 PM

About 10 days ago, we discussed the PNAS reviews of the recent submission by Richard Lindzen, a member of the National Academy of Sciences with a distinguished publication record.

A few days ago, PNAS published Kemp et al 2011, a submission by one of Mann’s a graduate student [from the University of Pennsylvania]. While, in this case, we do not have access to the reviews, it is possible to make conclusions about the review process of the Mann article both on the limited information in the article and on the basis of the article itself. Continue reading →

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AMac: Upside Down Mann Lives on in Kemp et al 2011

Jun 21, 2011 – 4:11 PM

AMac:

Yesterday, Kemp et al. 2011 was published in PNAS, relating sea-level variation to climate over the past 1,600 years (UPenn press release). Among the authors is Prof. Mann. (Kemp11 is downloadable from WUWT.) Figs. 2A and 4A are “Composite EIV global land plus ocean global temperature reconstruction, smoothed with a 30-year LOESS low-pass filter”. This is one of the multiproxy reconstructions in Mann et al. (2008, PNAS). The unsmoothed tracing appears as the black line labelled “Composite (with uncertainties)” in panel F of Fig. S6 of the “Supporting Information” supplement to Mann08 (dowonloadable from pnas.org).

This is one of the Mann08 reconstructions that made use of the four (actually three) uncalibratable Tiljander data series.

As scientist/blogger Gavin Schmidt has indicated, the early years of the EIV Global reconstruction rely heavily on Tiljander to pass its “validation” test: “…it’s worth pointing out that validation for the no-dendro/no-Tilj is quite sensitive to the required significance, for EIV NH Land+Ocean it goes back to 1500 for 95%, but 1300 for 94% and 1100 AD for 90%” (link). Also see RealClimate here (Gavin’s responses to comments 525, 529, and 531).

The dependence of the first two-thirds of the EIV recon on the inclusion of Tiljander’s data series isn’t mentioned in the text of Kemp11. Nor is it discussed in the SI, although it is an obvious and trivial explanation for the pre-1100 divergence noted in the SI’s Figures S3, S4, and S5.

Peer review appears to have been missing in action on this glaring shortcoming in Kemp11′s methodology.

More than anything, I am surprised by this zombie-like re-appearance of the Tiljander data series — nearly three years after the eruption of the controversy over their misuse as temperature proxies!

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Comments (62)

US Science Committee Asks IPCC to Implement COI Policy

Jun 20, 2011 – 4:13 PM

Judy Curry draws attention to a letter from the Chairman of the Oversight Subcomittee of the US Science Committee to the UN Chairman asking that IPCC not be permitted to delay implementation of Conflict of Interest policy until after AR5 – press release here.

Judy observes that a distinction should be made between Lead Authors and reviewers. The issues for WG3 seem harder – involving not just COI but “bias” – but that doesn’t mean that they should be postponed until after AR5 as the IPCC foolishly decided at the last plenary.

By Stephen McIntyre | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (33)