National Review Article

May 24, 2012 4:00 A.M.
Climategate Continues
Will a penalty be called for Keith Briffa’s excessively curved hockey stick?
By Andrew Montford & Harold Ambler

Climategate, the 2009 exposure of misconduct at the University of East Anglia, was a terrible blow to the reputation of climatology, and indeed to that of British and American science. Although that story hasn’t been in the news in recent months, new evidence of similar scientific wrongdoing continues to emerge, with a new scandal hitting the climate blogosphere just a few days ago.

And central to the newest story is one of the Climategate scientists: Keith Briffa, an expert in reconstructing historical temperature records from tree rings. More particularly, the recent scandal involves a tree-ring record Briffa prepared for a remote area of northern Russia called Yamal.

For many years, scientists have used tree-ring data to try to measure temperatures from the distant past, but the idea is problematic in and of itself. Why? Because tree-ring data reflect many variables besides temperature. Russian tree growth, like that of trees around the world, also reflects changes in humidity, precipitation, soil nutrients, competition for resources from other trees and plants, animal behavior, erosion, cloudiness, and on and on. But let’s pretend, if only for the sake of argument, that we can reliably determine the mean temperature 1,000 years ago or more using tree cores from a remote part of Russia. The central issue that emerges is: How do you choose the trees?

It was the way Briffa picked the trees to include in his analysis that piqued the interest of Steve McIntyre, a maverick amateur climatologist from Canada. The Climategate e-mails make it clear that McIntyre earned the public scorn of the most powerful U.N. climatologists, including James Hansen, Michael Mann, and Phil Jones, while simultaneously earning their fear and respect in private.

McIntyre noticed a few problems with the way Briffa chose the sampling of Russian trees, and he wrote to Briffa requesting the data Briffa used in a published tree-ring paper. Briffa declined. And so began a four-year saga involving multiple peer-reviewed journals, behind-the-scenes maneuvering by Briffa and his closest confidants, and a Freedom of Information Act request on the part of McIntyre that appears to be on the verge of being granted. Even without the final set of data, however, McIntyre has shown beyond the shadow of doubt that Briffa may have committed one of the worst sins, if not the worst, in climatology — that of cherry-picking data — when he assembled his data sample, which his clique of like-minded and very powerful peers have also used in paper after paper.

It was already known that the Yamal series contained a preposterously small amount of data. This by itself raised many questions: Why did Briffa include only half the number of cores covering the balmy interval known as the Medieval Warm Period that another scientist, one with whom he was acquainted, had reported for Yamal? And why were there so few cores in Briffa’s 20th century? By 1988, there were only twelve cores used in a year, an amazingly small number from the period that should have provided the easiest data. By 1990, the count was only ten, and it dropped to just five in 1995. Without an explanation of how the strange sampling of the available data had been performed, the suspicion of cherry-picking became overwhelming, particularly since the sharp 20th-century uptick in the series was almost entirely due to a single tree.

The intrigue deepened when one of the Climategate e-mails revealed that, as far back as 2006, Briffa had prepared a much more broadly based, and therefore more reliable, tree-ring record of the Yamal area. But strangely, he had decided to set this aside in favor of the much narrower record he eventually used.

The question of Yamal had rightly come up when Briffa was questioned by Climategate investigators. He told them that he had never considered including a wider sample than the one he went with in the end, and hadn’t had enough time to include a wider one. However, the specific issue of the suppressed record appears to have largely been passed over by the panel, and Briffa’s explanation, like so many others given to the Climategate inquiries, appears to have been accepted without question.

But the ruse has now been shot to pieces, by the recent decision from the U.K.’s information commissioner that Briffa can no longer withhold the list of sites he used in his suppressed regional record for the Yamal area. The disclosure of these sites has allowed McIntyre to calculate what the broad series would have looked like if Briffa had chosen to publish it. He has shown that it has no hint of the hockey-stick shape that Briffa’s cherry-picked data indicated. Briffa’s decision to publish an alarming but unreliable version of the Yamal series — instead of a more reliable and thoroughly unremarkable one — has been the talk of the climate blogosphere, with many prominent commentators openly speaking of dishonesty.

Two and a half years after the initial revelation of the Climategate e-mails, new controversies, on the part of the scientists and the investigators involved, continue to emerge. Many of the players involved are desperate to sweep the scandal under the rug. However, their machinations have only succeeded in bringing renewed attention to their questionable science and ugly behind-the-scenes shenanigans, reigniting hope that more complete and more independent investigations — on both sides of the Atlantic — will yet be performed.

— Andrew Montford is the author of The Hockey Stick Illusion and the proprietor of the Bishop Hill blog. Harold Ambler is the author of Don’t Sell Your Coat and the operator of the blog talkingabouttheweather.com.


Orginal Link to article.

Ah yes... the one tree to rule them all.

Can I point out my post where I identified the: Briffa Bodge and how data was hidden to present a false impression, Upside Down Tiljander proxy and how a proxy was used incorrectly over and over again regardless of how many times it was pointed out, and the Yamal "one tree to rule them all" deception.

linky

You know, the one that CeeBee singled out the Tiljander issue and was comprehensively demolished and embarrassed in my court as a consequence?

I am happy to take on any commers over the One Tree… The court awaits!

Any takers?

Careful Arnost some body will have you hugging the monster again.

I've been at a function all evening; had a few wines, I reckon it'll be a hoot! Now if only the bus would come... SIGH!

As I said earlier today, I don't write them I just find them and post them but with this one there is a sense of vindication and small sense of accomplishment. The truth will always out in the end.

Hahahaa - those wines have gone to your head Arnost - the only sense of embarrassment I felt was for you making a fool of yourself with your courtroom jester nonsense!

Not you mate... I honoured you with a full and detailed argument, and you just throw out the patronising insults. As far as I'm concerned - I'm not prepared to waste any more time on you. And if you are so convinced younare in the right on Tiljander, start a new thread dedicated to a vote .... Othewize - Good night.

Is there anyone else that wants to play - I am prepare to honour your arguments and give full and frank account.

So I draw the line - just like I proved that Mann at the very least has behaved in a scientifically unethical manner - and if push comes to shove engaged in academic misconduct, I am prepared to argue tha Keith Briffa is likewise tainted.

Any takers...?

Not me M8,in my own humble opinion any paper that has relied on Briffa's Yamal proxy or Mann's hockey stick should be seen as tainted. Likewise all research that stems from any consequent papers.
One underlying premise of science is that of the null hypothesis . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_hypothesis

All one needs to do to after nearly three decades of AGW research is compare the models resulting from billions of dollars of dedicated research. Models based on tortured data derived from empirical observations that even without assuming a total bias were searching for confirmation of a clear signal of AGW. [img:center]http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/image_thumb22.png?w=624&h=467[/img]

Even on the best scenario's to avert catastrophic warming via Co2 reduction we have failed, yet we are still well below the predicted temperature increase? Even if this can be explained it does not refute the null hypothesis.

The whole premise is that manmade elevation of Co2 levels will exponentially increase the temperature due to forcings , so far the predictions have failed.

Joe Bast responds to Dr. Judith Curry’s post on Heartland

Posted on May 25, 2012by Anthony Watts
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/25/jo...and/#more-64258

From Lucia’s blog, by Josh
Joe Bast is responding to: Heartburn at Heartland Posted on May 24, 2012by Judith Curry

====================================

Received via email:

Dr. Curry,

Thanks for reproducing in your recent post my account of the left’s attacks on our scientists and donors. It’s a story that isn’t getting nearly enough attention in the blogosphere. I’m disappointed, though, that you also reproduced, at length and even endorsed, the lies and distortions written about us by Suzanne Goldenberg. A simple call or email to me or Jim Lakely would have given us a chance to correct her many misstatements.

I won’t ask for a correction or apology, but please understand that …

(a) Concerning ICCC-7, we set a record for the number of cosponsors (60), 12 speakers asked to speak after only 2 withdrew, and the mood was decidedly upbeat. Opponents (including “Forecast the Facts” and Occupy Wall Street) promised to disrupt the conference and failed utterly – fewer than 50 people showed up for their rallies. Those who did show up wore boots on their heads and refused Christopher Monckton’s invitation to debate.

(b) You didn’t see many new faces on the program because 50 warmists invited to speak refused to show up, and we had set aside space on the program for them. I’ve said after nearly every conference since the 3rd one that “this is probably our last conference,” and I’ve made a fundraising pitch, because the ICCCs are expensive and I suspect they are subject to the law of diminishing returns, but we keep doing them due to popular demand. Stay tuned for news about ICCC-8.

(c) Concerning Heartland’s financial health, we’ve raised more money since the Fakegate incident than in the previous 11 months, and are on track to double our income this year. We’ve doubled the number of current donors since February. With only one exception so far, the donors we’ve lost either didn’t give in 2011 (or even in 2010) or have agreed to fund spin-off organizations we are creating, such as the R Street Institute, so the result is no net loss of our effectiveness, and actually an increase.

(d) The campaign against our directors and donors being conducted by “Forecast the Facts,” 350.org, and Greenpeace – not by “anonymous individuals” as you strangely suggest – in fact is unprecedented because it could not have occurred had not Peter Gleick stolen and revealed our donor list. But we are obviously well on our way to building a new and much larger donor base that is “Greenpeace proof.”

(e) Our PR response to Fakegate has been called “brilliant” even by the folks at DesmogBlog. History will record it as another major scandal that helped bring down the man-made global warming movement. But the MSM and environmental groups doubled down on their strategic mistake, understanding that the only way to prevent Fakegate from “becoming another Climategate” is to take down Heartland and its network of scientists and donors. Their tactics compelled us to match their intensity.

(f) I am not surprised or disappointed that you and other bloggers disapprove of our tactics. It is simply not your role in the controversy to be aggressive or controversial. But it is ours.

(g) The billboard, which cost $200, generated more than $5 million in earned media so far, and that figure doesn’t include television, radio, and tens of millions of page visits and online commentaries. Was the MSM coverage overwhelmingly negative? Of course. How could it be otherwise? There has been no positive coverage of skeptics since Fakegate broke, none at all, and reporters have made it clear that they will not report the debate fairly, so there is no longer any point in trying to appeal to their ethics or honesty. Thanks to the billboard, 37 million Americans now know that the debate over climate change continues.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me or Jim Lakely if you have questions or suggestions.

Joe

Joseph Bast
President
The Heartland Institute
One South Wacker Drive #2740
Chicago, IL 60606

Web site http://www.heartland.org

Sir Boab

This seems to be a skirmish between opposing factions. Have there been "interesting news articles", or even boring ones, about it?

Is it worth-while to even learn their names, or what they stand for?
Who are Joe Bast, Judith Curry, Lucia, and Josh?

Whatever does Joe mean by "the left"? The political "left" has been dead for half a century.

Should we memorise what "ICCC" means?

Yes there have been Surly Bond. See the link I provided above, it has other links that you can track back through to see the rest of teh story.

Background: The Fakegate emails stems from when a scientist called Glieck fraudently obtained documents from Heartland, he or someone else then faked a document and then tried to use that as a means to discredit Heartland and its stance on cAGW. It soon became clear that it was a put up and Glieck fell on his sword and admitted in several newspapers to being the person behind teh illegally obtained documents. .It gets messy, very messy with pro cAGW all crying foul and attempting to blackmail major sponsors of Heartland into dropping their continued support.

Heartland hit back with an attack ad via a billboard that showed the Una Bomber and a quote that he still believed in AGW. The public backlash was huge but in a perverse manner it enabled more debate about cAGW and also bought more donations.

Joe Bast is neither a supporter or a detractor of Heartland and as he states in the WUWT post above, he details his reasons for attending the latest conference and making a presentation.

The debate, per se, has stagnated in the passed few months with main stream media not wanting to show anything but full acceptance of cAGW and will quite happily ignore most press releases hence Heartland paying a $200.00 fee for 24 hours use of an electronic billboard. The end result was directly opposite to what you might have expected and it has once again thrust the issue well back in front of Joe Public in the USA.

http://notrickszone.com/2012/05/26/lunin...s-jaws-to-drop/

No increased weather variability in Austria, new study shows.

His comprehensive, peer-reviewed paper found that there has been no increase in weather extremes in the Austrian Alps – surprising the world’s climate scientists. This study in my view is really big, and is upsetting the Climate Establishment in Europe. Dr. Böhm is quickly becoming the new enfant terrible.

Geologist Sebastian Lüning now provides additional details at his Die kalte Sonne website. I’ve translated his essay (with some editing).

===============================================
Surprise! Fewer Weather Extremes in the Alps Region
By Dr. Sebastian Lüning

The climate is going crazy and everything is getting more extreme. It’s only a question of time before the planet gets destroyed. This is what experts close to the IPCC have been telling us for some years now. But now a scientist has taken a closer look at the hard data and has found something truly amazing. Reinhard Böhm of the Central Administration for Meteorology and Geodynamics in Vienna has examined dataseries from 58 locations in the Alps, some of which go back to the year 1760. All the data is available in the Internet. Böhm published the study in the European Physical Journal.“

As expected also in Austria there has been a warming over the last 200 years, like almost everywhere else on the planet. That is expected and simply represents the transition from the Little Ice Age to the Modern Warm Period. The question that Böhm investigated, however, is: Did the weather get more cranky and more extreme during this time?

Austrian newspaper Die Presse here wrote:

Whether it is snowfall, heavy rains, storms or dry spells: After every notable weather event the media and experts are quick to explain that the increased frequency of extreme events of the recent past and of the coming future is due to man-made climate change. Hardly anyone questioned this claim – except for one person: Reinhard Böhm […]. In his recent research work, he evaluated up to 250 years of old weather data of the Alps region. The result even surprised him. The core message: An increased frequency of weather extremes caused by climate change – at least in the Alps region – could not be detected.”

In a press release of the Institute the stunning results were more shown in more detail (Figure 1) (see the article in Der Standard):

[On] the often quoted increase in weather extremes, this however has not been the case in the Alps. Completely to the contrary: ‘The temperature fluctuations have even decreased over the last decades,‘ summed up climatologist and study author Reinhard Böhm. […] The results of the study have left the scientists amazed.

Result No. 1: Over the last 250 years, the seasonal and annual fluctuation ranges of hot-cold, dry-wet have not gotten more extreme.

Result No. 2: Also over the last 30 years, which have been greatly impacted by man, there has been no trend to more variability when compared to the decades before.

And finally Result No. 3: The long-term development of temperature, precipitation and atmospheric pressure show two long waves of variability with a cycle of about 100 years. The climate was more variable (‘crazier”) in the middle of both past centuries, less variable (‘quieter’) at the start and end of the centuries.“

The last point is very important. As geological studies of the past 10,000 years have shown, natural cycles play an important role in the variability of the climate (see our past blog articles).

_______


Click the above link for the full story, graphs etc and links to the article he quotes as he posted yesterday.

_____

Meanwhile Al Gore continues to shoot himself in the foot with his latest press apperance -

See the video and quotes here: http://dailycaller.com/2012/05/25/still-.../#ixzz1vzOKd8Tj




Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/05/25/still-.../#ixzz1w2M1AFOO

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/05/25/still-.../#ixzz1w2LlJRgy

Mann etc must have kittens every time this bloke opens his gob.

The previous post refers to a paper by R Bohm: Changes of regional climate variability in central Europe during the past 250 years.
The abstract is here, but you have to click on "Show Summary". The paper itself is $35.00.
I am very happy to see such a paper, not as ammunition to beat the "warmistas" with, but as an example of the methodical research that is needed before anything can be said about increased climate variability.
Australian records are only half as long, and there is little other than daily rainfall.
When I get my local record in one long string of 47,000 days, I plan to try some such analysis.
Has anyone in Australia already had a go at it?

http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2012/5/25/science-communicator-heal-thyself.html

Science communicator, heal thyself

May 25, 2012 Climate: Sceptics Media

Last night the Biochemical Society hosted one of its regular TalkFest meetings. Being hundreds of miles away and entirely unaware of the occasion, I was not in attendance, but I picked up some interesting tweets under the #talkfest hashtag last night.

The subject was science communication and whether it is an inherently political activity. There were apparently suggestions that most sci comms people concentrate on cheerleading rather than challenging scientists and that they rarely question motive or funding. There was also a suggestion that science communicators should focus on opening science to the public.

These observations were particularly interesting when juxtaposed against some comments made by Felicity Mellor, a science comms academic who was also involved in the BBC review of science.

On climate, climate skeptics could be the usual source for the opposing view #talkfest

But if skeptics are part of the story, shouldn't they be quoted? - this all felicity mellor #talkfest

Isn't that odd? In climate science, it is the sceptics who are challenging scientists. It is sceptics who have opened the subject to the public. And the sci comms community has been at the forefront of efforts to cheerlead for the mainstream, to ignored vested interests, to shut down debate, to argue from authority, and to keep dissent off the airwaves.

Does the science communication community have something of a dilemma?

(Christian at the Carbon Brief, from whom I snaffled the tweets above, warns me that he may not have quoted Felicity Mellor precisely. The session is apparently slated to be podcast at a later date, so we'll find out then)
Pretty much sums up the reason why the debate is limited to Forums and blogs and out of the main stream media.

http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2012/5/21/wicked-wikipedia.html

Wicked Wikipedia

May 21, 2012 Climate: Sceptics Climate: other Media


Alex Harvey takes a look at the 2010 banning of several Wikipedia editors and events since that time - William Connolley has apparently been unbanned, while a more sceptical editor, Cla68, has had his ban extended.


In the case of William Connolley, the [Arbitration] Committee is shown to be extremely lenient, compared to treatment of skeptical editors. William's ban was recently repealed despite obvious signs that nothing much had changed. In the case of Cla68, however, who was perceived to be a climate change skeptic, it is shown that he was banned on the basis of entirely fraudulent claims, and has just now had his ban extended by another six months on the basis of a single frank, out of context remark made in an internet forum.

This double standard - even in Wikipedia - has rarely been so stark. In my view, it challenges the image of Wikipedia as a neutral, dispassionate broker of facts. We see that Wikipedia is, in fact, run by activists who drive away the neutral, objective people who would otherwise contribute.

That should set the cat among the pigeons.

And that boys and girls is just another reason why you shouldn't rely on Wikipedia as a single source of climate information.

Where is ROM? Has he been banned for a while or something, have not seen any posts from him for a long while!?

ROM was given a week out from the forum for repeated breaking of forum guidelines. Should be back in around now I think.

OK, thanks BNE, just wondering...thought that might have been the case!
Cheers

PMSL I found the cAGW anti-sceptic instruction manual.

SBT, your last post simply has me baffled. Could you explain it please?