Tue 28 Jun 2005
Chris Mooney reports on the latest attack on the hockey stick. Joe Barton, chair of the Committee on Energy and Commerce has sent out a set of letters, supposedly “requesting information regarding global warming studies”. However, if you look at the letters, you will find that the only study he is interested is Mann, Bradley and Hughes from way back in 1998 (the “hockey stick” study); and the questions are loaded ones of the form: “Can you explain why you made all the errors detailed in Mcintyre and McKitrick’s Energy and Environment paper?”
It is probably just a coincidence that Joe Barton has received $574,000 in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry, more than any other congressman.
Update: Reaction from:
Atrios: “The appropriate response to this is ‘Bite me, Congessman’.”
teece: “This is the kind of tactic you would have expected in Soviet Russia.”
Kevin Drum: “Joe Barton is harassing scientists who have the temerity to publish results he finds inconvenient”
Josh Rosena: “This is an anti-climate science Congressman trying to get material for a smear against Mann.”
john m. lynch: “The interference continues.”
Paul from Wizbang: “I’m guessing the creators of the global warming hockey stick are –shall we say– pucked.”
Steve Verdon: “there seems to be a pattern with regards to climate scientists and their willingness to share data”
Mark Trodden: “Dear Congressman Barton, … I am extremely concerned by the tone and implications of these letters and consider them a thinly-veiled attempt to intimidate honest scientists into avoiding work that might lead to an opinion different from the current administration on topics that are politically sensitive.”
de Selby: “I expect industry whore congressmen to create false controversies. When they abuse their power at the expense of individual citizens, I call it McCarthyism”
David Appell: “This is unprecedented, as far as I know, and has the air of a scientific witch-hunt.”
PZ Meyers: “Joe Barton is an arrogant pissant”
James Annan: “I suspect that a witch-hunt like this could have serious repercussions for scientific research in the USA”
June 28th, 2005 at 7:14 am
Wow. I read the letters. Witch hunt is accurate. Never once was, say, Moberg et al. mentioned.
I surely hope someone ponies up some cash for good lawyers to slam these people hard.
Too bad the time it will take for a good defense takes away from research.
D
June 28th, 2005 at 7:22 am
I’d agree that some (most?) of the requests are burdensome and should be ignored, but I don’t think non-burdensome requests should be ignored, just as Benny Peiser was ethically obligated to turn over his 34 abstracts to Tim when asked.
June 28th, 2005 at 9:38 am
That’s a good point, Brian. I’m just hoping to make lemonade out of this situation by turning the interrogation back around and illuminate motives…
Best,
ÐanØ
June 28th, 2005 at 11:18 pm
If the science was honest why is there any question about releasing data and methods?
June 29th, 2005 at 1:33 am
Agreed. The brunt of the letters was not “how did you get it wrong?” but more “why haven’t you complied with the sharing policies of your public grant to which you agreed?”. The director of the NSF was also called out because the NSF refused to enforce its own policies.
The letter to the IPCC asked how the IPCC ensures objectivity and independence as it allowed Mann to be the lead author on the section that detailed his work.
Why HAS Mann refused to answer his critics and hindered others in attempts to duplicate his work? Maybe because he understandably doesn’t want to be shown in error?
June 29th, 2005 at 1:46 am
Mann has released the data and methods and he has answered his critics. How did you guys manage to stay ignorant of this?
June 29th, 2005 at 2:07 am
Mann has never released his actual source code. How difficult could this be? Why doesn’t he do it immediately?
June 29th, 2005 at 2:08 am
Mann has never released his actual source code. How difficult could it be to do this? Why doesn’t he do it immediately?
June 29th, 2005 at 2:09 am
Mann’s source code was specifically requested by his critics and he even went as far as telling the Wall Street Journal that he “would not be ‘intimidated’ into releasing his algorithm.” To date he has not. His critics had to resort to attempting to recreate his code and probably have as they have come very close to his numbers. The letter to him from the House Committee was very pointed that he deliver the code NOW.
If his critics are so wrong, why doesn’t he just release everything and prove it instead of allowing allegations to build?
Truth appears to be that he made an error in using the principle components method and this error resulted in the amplification of a single dataset. His critics maintain that if this dataset is removed, the Hockey Stick vanishes and if it is replaced by a dataset with randomly rising noise, the Hockey Stick reappears. This is strong evidence that the other inputs used for MHB98 are, in fact, superfluous to the result.
Don’t take my word for it. Richard Muller, a pro-GW scientist, reported all of this in his MIT Review column. www.technologyreview.com/…
Latest from the Climate Audit: www.climateaudit.org/inde…
I apologize for the long post but apparently much of it is needed.
June 29th, 2005 at 2:11 am
Wow. The bots have come out of the woodwork on this one.
I wonder if part of the agreement to go to Penn State was they had a good anti-Inquisition staff there, including lawyers and PR people familiar with smear campaigns.
ÐanØ
June 29th, 2005 at 2:19 am
Yes ad hominem attacks are the best response to intelligent discourse as they demonstrate the depth of your thinking processes. You have nothing else to say except those you disagree with are full of it?
June 29th, 2005 at 2:19 am
Bill, this has all been dealt with before. You might want to read my previous posts in the category McKitrick.
June 29th, 2005 at 2:25 am
Bill, go to www.realclimate.org, all your questions can be answered. The letter sent to Mann and others was written by an oil-industry flack and the attack on Mann is meaningless in terms of the science as the “hockey stick” results have been replicated by numerous other scientists using numerous methodologies. This is intimidation, pure and simple. The answers to all of the questions posed by Rep. Barton are available in the public record. McKitrick et al are charlatans, and they should not be driving the discourse on this situation, regardless of what you want to believe.
June 29th, 2005 at 2:46 am
Would any one like to come right out and say that Mann’s work shouldn’t be Peer-reviewed? For something that has been taken as gospel by the “consensus” it would seem that it would have been through a fine-toothed comb before publishing. However it seems that there are still questions unanswered. To ask him to come before those who funded his research and answer said questions just seems like good science.
June 29th, 2005 at 2:57 am
Well, actually I have gone to realclimate.org. My personal take is that Dr. Mann is exhibit ting Nixon-like behavior. If he has made an error, and it’s beginning to appear a very likely fact, he probably did so in honest error. It will prove most unfortunate that the MHB98 Hockey Stick, which provided a major impetus to the Kyoto Accord, is indeed shown to be a calculation artifact.
However, when McIntyre and his cohort originally raised their questions, I myself was interested and I went to Mann’s website and, yes, some of the data were there. Strangely, they disappeared a short time after that (because of a “computer crash”) and never reappeared. The data that he originally provided do not appear to be the actual data used in his calculations.
His recalcitrance in providing his data and methods is very sad. Science bases its reputation on free and open dialogue. Science depends upon constant criticism to maintain integrity. Dr. Mann has stated quite openly that answering such criticism (outside of his website) is beneath him. If it takes a letter from Congress to get him to act like a scientist, so be it. If we must pay to have our scientific policies scientifically analyzed I’m all for making sure that the process is above reproach and the answers are in fact true as far as can be determined. If Dr. Mann is about to be hung, it’s because he reneged on his contracts. If Congress dislikes his message, they at least found something appropriate to use against him.
OTOH, if he HAS delivered his data, methods and algorithms what does he have to fear? Why are YOU afraid for him?
Dr. Mann has been raised to a level that he may not truly deserve. If it should be shown that he was in error it will prove quite embarrassing to him. As such, I take anything that he has to say at this time with a very large grain of salt.
June 29th, 2005 at 3:22 am
I suppose none of the choir here will raise an eyebrow or be suspicious when the response from Mann et. al. in regards to code and/or data will be, “Sorry we lost it”? Of course, being able to actually do things like replicate a study is…you know…what science is about.
June 29th, 2005 at 3:56 am
The bots have sh*tty talking points fed to them wrt to this topic.
ÐanØ
June 29th, 2005 at 4:03 am
Sigh. Mann’s data and algorithm is here. His results have been independently reproduced, see here.
June 29th, 2005 at 4:08 am
See the big picture.
To assault Mann et al. is to assault the pro-GW science, and it has all the earmarks of the strawman fallacy.
Straw Man, definition:
The author attacks an argument which is different from, and usually weaker than, the opposition’s best argument.
Best argument of pro-GW: carbondioxide is the driver gas.
Weaker argument by pro-GW: the temp. record form a hockey-stick.
While the industry whores can do nothing ’bout carbondioxide, it is just “logical” that they assault the hockey stick graph, where the results indeed could be unclear.
June 29th, 2005 at 4:17 am
I don’t want to be associated with the loonies showing up here and in Chris Mooney’s comments, but I think that even oil industry shills like Barton have the right to request data, if and when the request is reasonable. To the extent that it’s currently available, Mann can just say “Hello? It’s right here, Congressman, right in front of you,” while politely saying “bite me” to the unreasonable portion. I also think a restricted request for funding information is reasonable, but not the fishing expedition Barton is on.
Try this: suppose the Democratic vice-chair of that Congressional Committee had sent a similar letter to McIntyre and McKitrick. Would such a letter be entirely inappropriate, or only inappropriate in parts, or not inappropriate at all?
June 29th, 2005 at 4:28 am
Damn. Where to start?
Of course not. Mann’s work (in particular, MBH98 has been extensively peer-reviewed; that’s just the point.
Mann et al. have published
the data used in MBH98, along with a
detailed description of the algorithm.
I’ll assume that you didn’t just make up the bit about the “computer crash”, but note that a search of RealClimate fails to turn up the phrase. What seems to be missing here? What do you think has changed?
Jeez, people! The data and algorithm description have both been published, an independent team has
replicated the MBH98 results, and have even published the code so you can go run it with and without bristlecones, etc., to your heart’s content! Yet we continue to hear a relentless drumbeat of indignation about Mann’s “recalcitrance in providing his data and methods.”
The willful ignorance required to repeat this hogwash is irritating.
The laziness essential to maintaining that ignorance in the face of repeated attempts to mitigate it is infuriating.
But the arrogance of a smarmy comment like “being able to actually do things like replicate a study is … you know…what science is about” made by someone who has had every opportunity to know better is maddening. It’s enough to make a body downright … shrill.
June 29th, 2005 at 4:39 am
There was a long thread on Slashdot that pretty much resolved all the questions concerning Mann and his hockey stick. I’d say the senator should go read it before he begins his doomed expedition. The only doubt I think even plausible to have is anthro cause warming ~40% or ~80% of total recorded warming.
And I’d kill to get the spellchecking plugin to work on my site.
June 29th, 2005 at 5:29 am
So the MBH98 dates from, umm, 1998, and the independent reproduction of their work has only been submitted for review last month ? so, umm, seven years later ?
Is this the first time anyone has been able to independently reproduce the MBH results ?
(Assuming that this new paper and code turns out to be valid - and I don’t feel like taking anything much on faith right now.)
June 29th, 2005 at 5:48 am
Hmmm….
This has a very deja-vuish feel to veterans of the “Kellermann never released his data!” wars, as Tim may recall.
June 29th, 2005 at 5:53 am
Mann’s source code is available here.
The top-level directory to data/methods is here
June 29th, 2005 at 6:24 am
Re #21: The impetus for the work was the M&M attack, which is much more recent. Prior to that, there was no need for it.
My general comment on this whole controversy is that Mann should be under no obligation to respond to non-scientists like M&M who a) have done no relevant work aside from their attack on Mann, b) are happy to accept the sponsorship of fossil fuel industry fronts like the so-called George C. Marshall Institute, c) have been shown to have made numerous errors, including the famous “degrees v. radians” conflation. [McIntyre wants to make it clear the degrees/radians mixup was McKitrick’s and had nothing to do with McIntyre. TL] If, on the other hand, someone like, oh I don’t know, maybe Kevin Vranes were to volunteer to be Mike’s full-time corresponding secretary in charge of dealing with fossil fuel industry shills, I think Mike should generously accept. To do so otherwise would be a waste of Mike’s valuable time.
June 29th, 2005 at 6:24 am
One needs to distinguish between replication and reproduction. Replication - repeating a study using the exact same methods as the original authors - is very rare in science, IME. (There is one broad class of exceptions - what might be called “in-house replication”. It is fairly common practice for a new graduate student in a research group to be assigned the task of replicating some part of a recently completed and published project. This provides good training for the student, as well as a post-facto opportunity to catch errors.) Most of the time, scientists try to reproduce the results of a study using different methods. This is generally more useful, since a different method will have different strengths and weaknesses than the original one, and often provide an opportunity to extract new information that the original study did not find. Given finite resources, scientists prefer reproduction, which tests underlying assumptions as well as mechanical details and can generate new knowledge, to replication, which merely demonstrates that the other guys did what they said they did.
The results of Mann et al. (1998) have been reproduced several times since then. Ammann and Wahl were the first to replicate it.
June 29th, 2005 at 7:04 am
Re #25
Robert, in what area of science does your experience lie ?
I have always thought that the ability to replicate experiments is the very foundation of science. Without replication, you are taking the other guy’s word for it. When the other guy says you can’t replicate his work, and you must take his word for it - then you have moved out of science and into religion.
As an example, consider the fun and games over cold fusion a few years back. As soon as it was announced, other labs were trying to replicate the results. When they failed, it was recognised that the original experiment was in error.
If climatology regards replication, even of so important a result as MBH, as a boring job to fob off on a junior, then I would suggest that climatology does not yet have the right to call itself a science.
June 29th, 2005 at 7:16 am
Re #23
McIntyre has a post up describing in detail why the link you mention does not contain all the necessary code - see :
www.climateaudit.org/inde…
June 29th, 2005 at 7:24 am
Freddy, my expertise is Physical Chemistry (my own work is theoretical chemistry, but I am very familiar with the experimental work as well and have done some in the past.) Very mainstream stuff.
Based on my experience, I would guess that no more than one percent of the peer reviewed papers I have read over the past 20 years have involved replication. For the reasons I gave - it is nearly always more useful to reproduce a result using different methods, than merely to repeat someone else’s experiment or calculation.
Schematic example: Scientist A measures the rate of a chemical reacti on using absorption spectroscopy, and gets a surprising result. Scientist B then measures the same rate using laser-induced fluorescence, and gets a different answer. Scientist C designs a third method and agrees with A. They all go to the same conference and present their results. They try to figure out why A got different results than B and C. A goes back to his lab, and discovers a mistake. This is how it usually goes - if there was a mistake, A is much more likely to find it since he understands his experiment better. (There are huge amounts of tacit knowledge involved in scientific research, especially experimental.) Only if the discrepancy persists for an extended period, will someone eventually try to replicate the original study.
Cold Fusion was a case where the initial result was so astonishing that it demanded to be replicated right away. There are a few other examples - I know of a present-day physicist who replicated the original Millikan Oil Drop experiment, because of suggestions that M. might have fudged his numbers a bit. And fields such as synthetic chemistry, where one’s goal is to make stuff rather than to understand chemical processes, involves a lot of replication, since one goal is to eventually come up with a procedure that will be used on an industrial scale.
June 29th, 2005 at 7:31 am
Bill, “It will prove most unfortunate that the MHB98 Hockey Stick, which provided a major impetus to the Kyoto Accord, is indeed shown to be a calculation artifact.”
The MBH curve has not been shown to be an artifact, and even more serious for your credibility, if you bother to check dates you will find that the Kyoto treaty was created 1997, before that article was even published!
BTW, who is willing to request an audit of Spencer and Christy’s work? With their latest revision the way their result has changed over the years begs some serious questions. Maybe those two ought to be the naxt target of Barton’s zeal.
June 29th, 2005 at 9:00 am
#28
Robert, a fair response, thank you.
It doesn’t surprise me that so few peer-reviewed papers that make it to journals are about replication - after all, if Scientist B has confirmed Scientist A’s work then this hardly merits a peer review. However, if Scientist B had found that Scientist A’s work was grossly flawed, and A would not come clean about it, then I would suspect that B would be more likely to get published. If this is not something that happens regularly in mainstream chemistry - then I am delighted to hear it, that is how science should be.
With regard to cold fusion : as I understand it, the original MBH paper was the same sort of shock to the existing consensus. Prior to MBH98, the consensus was that late twentieth century temperatures were well below the peak of the medieval warm period, and thus could easily be explained by natural variability.
Post MBH98, when late twentieth century temperatures are the highest in the second millenium, it becomes more reasonable to blame anthropogenic factors. (Though hardly a proof - it could also be a cycle with a period longer than 1000 years, like glaciation.)
I would suggest that this was not a mainstream result, and that climatologists should have sought to replicate it immediately.
One other thought: chemistry is a real science, you are trying to figure out the distinct set of rules by which the universe works, and how to use those rules to our advantage. MBH98 is more of an exercise in mathematics, particularly in those areas that McIntyre is questioning. Saying “I’ve got a wonderful proof of this, but I can’t be bothered to tell you the details” is something you can get away with when you are Pierre de Fermat, but I don’t think Michael Mann is quite in that league.
June 29th, 2005 at 9:01 am
Sorry Tim there is only one bit of code (the file named GetData) there and it is too small to do the job, and the comments suggest it is for pulling Jones and Briffa’s data. No other code is available at that site. Besides, why would Mann say he is not going to give the code to McIntyre and McKitrick when it is supposedly available publicly? Is Mann a kook?
By the way, did you actually get around to looking up who pays for Mann’s site at RealClimate.org? Didn’t think so. Environmental Media Services out of Washington D.C. Looks like Mann is a lapdog for special interests too.
As for Wahl and Ammann, first that isn’t peer reviewed work (yet)…or more accurately it was reviewed and rejected. Second, their code is not Mann’s code. I know it is asking alot that Mann make his code public, but I think it is only the right thing to do…don’t you Tim…or maybe Lott should have sat on his data and code too. Right?
June 29th, 2005 at 9:54 am
Re #24
“The impetus for the work was the M&M attack, which is much more recent. Prior to that, there was no need for it.”
Prior to MM, the MBH study became a key part of a very vocal, well-funded campaign to make major changes to the economies of the developed world. One way or another, we tax-payers will pay for those changes. Damn right there is a need for checking.
This attitude that only a member of the brotherhood of climatologists can possibly have anything to say on this subject is more appropriate for religion than science. Thanks to MBH, climatology is no longer just another academic discipline: it is one of the two key items on the agenda at next week’s G8 meeting. Welcome to the big leagues.
If your only basis for judging the merit of McIntyre’s work is the source of his funding, then I suggest you go and read his site. If he is wrong, say so, with details. If you don’t understand the maths, then find someone you trust who can explain it to you. I am not interested in arguments about whether oil companies are more evil than aging hippy anti-capitalists; I want the data and the science.
Regarding the degrees vs radians matter: if this is true, it doesn’t surprise me: didn’t NASA lose a Mars lander a few years ago because its landing radar was talking yards and its landing computer was talking meters, or some such ? Mistakes happen, that’s why you check things exhaustively, then get a second pair of eyes to check them again. You may be willing to accept that MBH are infallible; I am not.
I do not understand the reference to this Kevin Vranes person, and I suspect I won’t care. If Mike’s time is too valuable to respond to detailed professional enquiries about such a key piece of research, then I question his status as a responsible scientist.
June 29th, 2005 at 10:01 am
What people seem to be forgetting is that regardless of the results of Mann, several other scientisits have independentally reproduced the results of Mann et al using different methodologies. Being able to somehow implicate Mann in wrongdoing is meaningless in regards to the science. That being said, his methods should be available and transparent for the community to examine. However, if someone has no expertise and they have been proven to be defective in basics of statistical analysis (as have M/M), why should their work and the crooked editorial staff at a newspaper be enough to drive a congressional inquiry? This inquiry has all the makings of a frivolous lawsuit designed specifically to harass where the burden of proof is somehow on the accused and not on the accuser. The Real Climate website specifically states that the scientists received donated web hosting services and that is all their remuneration. Can Rep. Barton make the same claim before G*d concerning his acceptance of oil and gas monies, given that he presumably has no expertise in this area whatsoever, yet he appears to be a blank slate for the every whim of said petroleum interests?
June 29th, 2005 at 10:16 am
Steve, poster #23 seems to have the links you’re looking for, although I can’t judge if the info is complete.
June 29th, 2005 at 10:29 am
Yet here we all are arguing about the bloody hockey stick again. This is while glaciers are retreating, the Arctic ice is melting at at totally unprecedented rate, direct measurements show sea temperature anomalies and the permafrost in the Arctic is melting.
Look the Mann data is an interesting study but it is not the main part of the GW case. Even if it was totally wrong(which it is not) this does not mean GW is not happening. Even if there were 5000 hot periods in the past this does not mean that this one is natural as well.
GW skeptics cannot doubt direct measurements like the atmospheric CO2 level and the sea temperature. The hockey stick is simply one thing they CAN attack so they do. Like any good defense lawyer they only have to sow seeds of doubt. You cannot doubt an instrument measuring CO2. However if you ‘expose’ an evil plot to conceal and manipulate data it does not have to be true, just appear to be true. So you get a couple of charlatans, again it does not matter if they have any scientific credibility, to go over the data and find anything that could be construed as doubtful. Then this ‘evil plot’ is then trumpeted to the world as scientists manipulating data so therefore the whole GW case is doubtful. The people that pay for the charlatans have direct and traceable interests in not reducing fossil fuel use.
Lets get on with addressing the danger of rising CO2 and climat change and leave this disgusting FUD campaign alone.
June 29th, 2005 at 10:51 am
I’ll stop using up bandwidth by noting my take is here (the left is overreacting to the oil industry shill, accountability is a two-way street, and it’s the job of the good guys to react responsibly to provocation).
June 29th, 2005 at 1:31 pm
Thomas, the “sceptics” will soon be after Spencer and Christy if the “rumours” about the currently being performed corrections are correct. Don’t want to pre-empt the revisions, other than to say they will be cold comfort to the sceptics.
Guess the sceptics can always move onto straight denial…
David
June 29th, 2005 at 1:36 pm
Steve,
“Algorithm” is not the same as “code”. Mann has released the algorithm, which is all you need to replicate his work as Ammann and Wahl were able to do.
Using a forum provided by an environmental group does not make you a lap dog for special interests any more than McIntyre speaking at oil-industry funded events makes him a lap dog. Getting directly paid with over half a million dollars does, however.
If Ammann and Wahl’s replication has been rejected by a journal, that helps show you why scientists usually don’t do replications — you can’t get them published because they are not original.
June 29th, 2005 at 3:11 pm
Okay fine, nice semantical dodge, but McIntyre has been asking for code and Mann has been refusing it. Wny? Without the code it is much harder to make sure that Mann et. al. didn’t make a mistake which is what McKitrick and McIntyre are trying to answer.
And you’ve looked at all of Mann’s funding? You seem to think looking at funding is legit…so why not Mann’s?
I don’t see any links in comment #23. I do see some in comment #21, but again there isn’t much there. For example, if you go through Mann’s FTP site long enough you’ll find a bunch of files labled pca-*.f (comment #25 has a link as well to the pca-noamer.f file which appears to be identical to pca-soamer.f). These files are all the same from what I can see. McIntyre wanted to look at the code to make sure it matched up with his. He is pretty sure he has it right, but wants to make sure. But Mann just wont cooperate. Makes me think he is hiding something.
June 29th, 2005 at 3:12 pm
More here.
June 29th, 2005 at 4:41 pm
Steve - The fact that Mann ‘won’t release his code’ is irrelevant. The data is there that he used. It is up to the competent investigator to conduct whatever analysis of the data that he/she sees fit. Mann chose PCA analysis. Any competent scientist can whip up a bit of code to automate this lengthy process. This, I guess, is what Mann has done. It is probably no more that a couple of lines of perl or bash script that runs the PCA program with the various datasets.
If you draw sinister conclusions from whether or not Mann will release the code he used is entirely up to you. It is probably that M&M are not functioning scientists doing real research and have not ‘paid their dues’. I am not a scientist however I can think of it this way. A top keyboard player will give you lessons however there is no way in the wide world he would allow you to copy his special sounds that he/she has spent years compiling. If you are too lazy to make your own library of sounds then as far as he/she is concerned you do not deserve a head start.
If you cannot make head nor tail of the data then I suggest you study the subject until you can.
June 29th, 2005 at 4:49 pm
I’m impressed by the size of the balls of the sceptics that continue continue this BS even when the top science academies of the G8 came out and said there was no longer any doubt.
The Royal Society what would they know!
How are we to move onto solutions we these guys are still whipping this dead horse? There is no point asking for the best science om the subject they’ll won’t accept anything unless it toes their position.
June 29th, 2005 at 5:45 pm
Re #39: I just love rumors like that, and look forward to the denouement. Any idea as to when?
By the way, Pat Michaels has prepared the way for a two-pronged skeptic fallback position: 1) Sure, global warming is happening and human-generated GHGs are at fault, but we don’t need to do anything about because the worst it will get is the low end of the IPCC range and 2) at that level, the benefits of global warming (increased fertility, e.g.) will outweigh any harm.
Re #34: You said (in reference to M&M’s demand for information): “If Mike’s time is too valuable to respond to detailed professional enquiries about such a key piece of research, then I question his status as a responsible scientist.” Mike has done just that. Or perhaps you meant to say amateur, not professional.
When I say Mike has done just that, I visited his personal site just now for the first time and found details of a 2003 controversy (of which I was only vaguely aware at the time) that resulted from a couple of shoddy papers that Soon and Baliunas had produced attacking the hockey stick. Unlike M&M, S&B are at least professionals (although by no means paleoclimatologists), so they got a full response. Not only did a dozen other paleoclimatologists join Mike in rebutting them, the American Geophysical Union (which has endorsed the hockey stick since 1998) itself issued a press release promoting the article (see holocene.evsc.virginia.ed… and links at the bottom of that page). So, Mike has already been through the mill on this stuff and has received full backing from his colleagues. I now understand even better his lack of patience with M&M.
June 29th, 2005 at 6:21 pm
“Not only did a dozen other paleoclimatologists join Mike in rebutting them, the American Geophysical Union … itself issued a press release promoting the article”
Yes but they’re all obviously part of the conspiracy too.
I bet when they aren’t faking evidnece of global warming their finding new ways to prevent the desperately needed use of DDT in developing countries.
June 29th, 2005 at 7:00 pm
I’m a glacial geomorphologist and am convinced that GW is happening (that’s way mountain glaciers all around the worls are in recession) and am (mostly) convinced by the argument that most of it is anthropogenic. However, it seesm to me that the best way to spike the guns of the deniers would be if Mann agreed to their requests at this time. Once it is shown that MBH were right, then the deniers will have even less ground to stand on.
June 29th, 2005 at 7:31 pm
Steve (#41) - it’s not a “semantical dodge”. If Mann et.al.’s work is incorrect, with the algorithm it’s possible (and in fact for this algorithm, not overly difficult) to invalidate their work. All you have to do is code it up, which shouldn’t be too hard in something like matlab.
If you seriously believe there’s an error in their code (which I infer from the tone of your comments), why don’t you go and do this?
And McKitrick wants to check the code “matches up”? The easiest way to see if it matches up is just to perform the same analysis, and see if identical results pop out. Modulo numerical errors, they should be identical. If they’re not, publish it!
June 29th, 2005 at 8:20 pm
Re #39 again, the satellite data revision appears to be much more than a rumor: climate.uah.edu/may2005.h…. The degrees C per decade number at the top seems like the critical one, and now it’s been jacked up to .12. End of controversy?
June 29th, 2005 at 8:24 pm
Steve, I have been told that Spencer and Christy have withdrawn their data, or are dicouraging its use, though it seems to still be on their webpage??? The problem relates to an incorrect sign on their correction of diurnal drift of satellites; Fu et al have been hinting at a problem like this for a while, and it has finally been found.
Whatever happens, one hopes Spencer and Christy do not have to tolerate the none sense Mann has recieved. All scientists make mistakes, but the very great majority are trivial, and that goes for the Mann98 - after all the only real difference between M&M and Mann98 is that the M&M reconstruction develops wild oscillations around 1600.
The bigger issues with the work of Mann et al (as I understand them) appear to be decreased variance (typical of all regression approaches), and a possible underestimate of low frequencies in tree ring data. Both are well known, and are being addressed in improved versions of these early analyses. If anything, new work such as by Mohberg (sp?) suggest the recent warming is even more anomalous, as the little ice age was rather cooler…
BTW you don’t have to go to the US to see this repositioning by the sceptics. It is already happening in Australia with Carter and co. The new argument is that we can’t be sure the warming is anomalous until it is bigger than anything else seen before… trouble is by the time it is bigger we’ll be having beach holidays at the north pole.
Regards,
David
June 29th, 2005 at 8:31 pm
Steve, the Spencer and Christy note is curious… it almost suggest that the reconstruction is only partially complete???
Regardless, the trend has gone up by 50%.
Fancy that, the modellers, theory, and mainstream climate scientists said the troposphere would warm all along…. and it has. Mainstream science 1 - sceptics 0 .
June 29th, 2005 at 11:31 pm
Steve, what would be the point of someone else running exactly the same code as MBH and presumably get exactly the same answer? The real issue is if the program is correct, and the best way to be sure of that is to have someone else write a similar program. It’s a lot harder to look at code and make sure it is correct, because errors can hide in ways that look very reasonable.
David, you think that S&C doesn’t deserve the treatment MBH are getting. I’m not so sure. Jump over to Tech Central Station and read what Spencer has written there. He has dug a pretty deep hole for himself by accusing Nature and Science of being ‘gray scientific litterature’ for the crime of not letting HIM review all their articles of the MSU data.
June 30th, 2005 at 1:02 am
Mann’s response to repeated requests for source code is similar Kerry’s response to requests for his military records during last years presidential campaign. Alternately claiming all records have been released and then saying he won’t sign the form to release all his records.
The reason the global warmers are so upset about Congressman Barton is that this episode has the potential of being a “Waterloo” event.
The letter that was sent to Mann wasn’t the important letter. The letter that was sent to the IPCC is the one that will cause the global warmers the most trouble.
Prediction: The IPCC will dump Mann and claim they were deceived by an unscrupulous scientist. They will also claim just because there have been significantly hotter and colder periods in the past 1,000 years it is irrelevant to the cause of them saving the world.
June 30th, 2005 at 2:19 am
Reid: Are you prepared to put money on your prediction?
June 30th, 2005 at 2:32 am
Sorry Tim, I don’t gamble.
The problem with the letter to the IPCC is that they have to respond or they will get into a funding battle with US Republicans. That’s a fight the IPCC will easily lose. The Barton letter contains precise questions that can’t be glossed over with “consensus” talk and other talking points. Hence, faced with the fact that they haven’t abided by their own data quality standards they will do the politically expedient thing. The will sacrifice Mann and claim they need more funding to peer-review their “consensus” science.
It is obvious that Mann won’t cooperate with his detractors because his study can’t withstand real scrutiny. Mann would have knocked out his opponents long ago if his work wasn’t fraudulent. Not just wrong but fraudulent.
June 30th, 2005 at 3:22 am
Not just the IPCC but the NSF as well.
I think fraudulent may be too strong a word. I for one am willing to think this was honest error. In many ways the error is subtle. I’ve done quite a lot of data massaging myself. It’s easy to get fooled when the numbers meet your expectations. I’ve been lucky enough to learn to see that as a sign of possible error. Mann, et al. may not have been so lucky. I think they realize the errors now. The real problem is saving face. The problem may be unsolvable.
June 30th, 2005 at 3:38 am
Re #56: What errors? Be specific.
June 30th, 2005 at 4:20 am
Steve, BillBud has no idea.
And Reid of Murrica, Mann’s data is available. You may want to revisit your talking points.
D
June 30th, 2005 at 4:41 am
Dano, if Mann has nothing to hide then Barton and his Congressional commitee will get nowhere. Problem for Mann and the IPCC is that specific questions have to be answered with specific answers. It is going to be both hillarious and sad to watch scientists arguing that full disclosure is not required for peer review. Or that consensus trumps the need for peer review. Orwellian!
M&M claim “the withholding of R2 and other verification statistics, the impact of the presence/absence of bristlecones (the CENSORED directory)”…
Mann may have originally made honest mistakes, I have my doubts, but he should have done the scientifically honest thing and withdrawn his study once it was found to be statistically untenable. Instead he crossed over into fraud and refuses to engage in peer review science.
The worst outcome of this affair for global warmers is if the general media picks up the story. It hasn’t yet but if it does it will severely hurt the global warming movement.
June 30th, 2005 at 5:13 am
It is going to be both [hilarious] and sad to watch scientists arguing that full disclosure is not required for peer review.
Barton is not a peer. Nor are M&M. Nor is the study statistically untenable, as other papers have similar results.
HTH your clue-finding,
D
June 30th, 2005 at 6:28 am
I’ve been avoiding doing this for quite some time, but I finally girded my loins and paid a visit to McIntyre’s Climate Audit site. Contrary to the impression I had gotten, and as is reflected at www.climateaudit.org/inde…, McIntyre is demanding far more than just a few lines of code. I haven’t had a chance to pursue it in detail yet, but at least half of this stuff seems to be demands to get inside Mike’s head; i.e., not for data or code or algorithm, but for what Mike’s basis was for making decisions about how to handle the data. Put another way, it’s pretty clear from the linked post that McIntyre already has more than everything a scientist would need to critique Mike’s work. Instead, McIntyre is demanding a step-by-step of everything Mike used, thought and calculated.
When it was just “a few lines of code” I wondered if Mike wasn’t being a little unreasonable in not coughing it up. Now that I see the whole picture it’s clear that McIntyre’s sole project is to permanently harass Mike (and not so much his co-authors, which is perhaps significant) and that it’s pointless for Mike to cooperate with him any further.
June 30th, 2005 at 6:35 am
it’s pretty clear from the linked post that McIntyre already has more than everything a scientist would need to critique Mike’s work.
pssst, Steve, you’re dangerously close to calling Mac a scientist.
Thought I’d point that out, sir. :o)
Best,
D
June 30th, 2005 at 6:53 am
Steve, it has been clear for a long time that M&M has only been interested in harassment. Every time Mann responds to one demand or explain one error they made they just change their story and come up with some other supposed error in the MBH article. They are reasonably skillful at bullshitting so that it sounds like they know what they are talking about, but that’s just about it.
Lambert’s finds about KcKitrick in posts like these are hilarious:
timlambert.org/2004/10/mc…
Someone who doesn’t even understand the fundamentals about what average temperature means has no business doing this kind of stuff. He should go back to school first.
June 30th, 2005 at 6:58 am
Sorry for any such implication! I hope it’s clear to everyone that McIntyre is no scientist. His site even includes a remark from him to the effect that he has no interest in doing climate work aside from trying to discredit Mike. One wonders what he would do with his life if he ever felt that he could declare victory. Since he’s such a consistent fellow, maybe set up a site devoted to crucifying Spencer and Christy?… nah. :)
June 30th, 2005 at 7:32 am
Facts is ugly things. All the needed code is at holocene.evsc.virginia.ed…. You have to crawl up and down the ftp site to find the various programs that were used, but the programs and the eigenfunctions and the pcs are all there. So is the data. The programs all have an extension .f The files which specify the data used by the programs have an extension .inf output files have extensions .out.
It is not necessarily organized for the convenience of the reader and you have to look through the FORTRAN and the various data files to figure out what is going on, but, having done so it appears relatively straightforward.
So much for that.
Second NONE of the data belongs to Mann. He used data measured by others. There were a few errors in the data list originally published, and M&M picked up on them in the shrillest possible way, but most of the errors were obvious, and given the .inf files in the Holocene ftp site, easy to find. Most of the original data is archived at the NOAA paleoclimate site referred to in the Nature article (at least the correction, the site moved around a bit). A few pieces are elsewhere.
The archive has been there for at least a couple of years since I first found it. There is more stuff at umass (or at least there was).
Now, unknot your pants, take a deep breath and relax.
June 30th, 2005 at 10:12 am
Mr Reid of America - you can retreat into your state sponsored Lysenko-ism and deny climate change all you want. Dr Manns data has been scrutinised and confirmed.
If you are wrong and the climate does change your group will no doubt be the first ones on their hind legs whining “why didn’t you damned scientists do anything about it”
This FUD campaign that your government (and ours unfortunately) is complaisant in is helping to slow action on Global Warming. By the time you and your kind are finally defeated it will be far to late and the die will be cast, if it is not already.
Welcome to the new world, Mr Reid, that you helped create.
BTW Tim - love the spell checker
June 30th, 2005 at 10:54 am
Antiscientists or simple dupes who may have been considering joining the team of inept economist Ross McKitrick against Michael Mann and the field of climate science, would be well advised to first pay Tim Lambert the compliment of reading his very excellent past posts on McKitrick’s bumbling and bumptious efforts at criticizing things he knows nothing about before tucking themselves any more tightly into bed with their hero.
It should be clear to any scientist who looks at his work that McKitrick is one of the greater fools and narcissists alive in the world today, but nobody has demonstrated McKitrick’s scientific failings, or pricked his conceits, more elegantly and concisely than has Tim. Oh - and Tim shows excellent manners in the process, too, so delicate flowers needn’t fear exposure to coarse language or anything nasty in his treatment of young Ross.
Go ahead Bill and Reid, why not check out Tim’s education of Ross McKitrick? It’s not Tim’s fault that the lesson hasn’t taken, some students are just irremediable (and some bear allegiance to things other than the pursuit of learning and truth).
June 30th, 2005 at 10:55 am
Reid wrote: “The problem with the letter to the IPCC is that they have to respond or they will get into a funding battle with US Republicans. That’s a fight the IPCC will easily lose.”
Reid, what makes you think the US is currently providing significant funding to IPCC?
June 30th, 2005 at 11:03 am
Re #57: What errors? Be specific
RE #61: When it was just “a few lines of code” I wondered if Mike wasn’t being a little unreasonable in not coughing it up.
It’s a bit much to ask that the errors be detailed here. Without a background in statistics and PCA in particular, any brief answer simply invites endless rounds of argument. There is insufficient room here to give adequate explanation.
What M&M are asking is quite reasonable. The MHB98 study was based on a large amount of detail and the data weren’t simply plugged into a simple piece of code and certainly not into an integrated program. To show full understanding of the methodology and tools, an accrutae reproduction is required (replication). Only then can you say specifically where processing occurred.
Attempts at recreation have led to deeper and deeper questions. The rational for the M&M request of Mann have been detailed in MM03 and MM05. Links can be found at the link you included. They are located in a sidebar.
Mann is being most disingenuous. He has stymied attempts at replication by gathering up all of his files and effectively delivering them in a paper bag sans any real documentation — assuming he hasn’t omiitted files. It’s an old law trick: if you must deliver damning evidence to the opposition, make sure it’s buried among ten thousand irrelevant pages.
Make no mistake: M&M are gaining acceptance one scientist at a time. Yes, I know, MHB98 has been replicated at UCAR but for science to proceed it will require more that one replicator.
Here’s an interesting link on N-Rays, which were all the rage at one time. Blondlot’s results were duplicated by more than one investigator. The only problem was that they never existed!
www.cs.princeton.edu/~ken…
It is part of: www.cs.princeton.edu/~ken…
Interesting reading.
June 30th, 2005 at 11:47 am
Re: post 67
winston-
I understood Ross McKitrick quickly responded and corrected the degrees/radians gaff found by Mr. Lambert in the non-Mann critique related paper - part of review process post-publication. I also understood he modified his original conclusions based on the relevant corrections.
Has Dr. Mann responded credibly to the assertion that:
There is/are bristle-cone pine proxy/proxies that drive the hockey stick blade characteristics of the MBH’98, ‘99, and Corrigendum plots.
It is also charged that the code used to implement the MBH’98 and ‘99 has an inherent bias towards the hockey stick blade — in effect, one could plug in Mickey Mouse and out comes the hockey stick blade.
This rather inflammatory attack seems the easiest of all to dispel by MBH, by simply releasing all of the code, the data, and the output of the code to drive this powerful and easy-to-remembr assertion away forever!
Finally, there is an unrelated (to Barton) request that proxy verification and (possible) recalibration be done — updating the mid/late 70s terminated proxies to better correspond with actual atmospheric and satellite readings from then to present.
Again, this seems reasonable given the at least the satellite data available from that period to present. I know it costs money, but it appears we’re spending more in time and money arguing about the how much it will cost. If the 1990s were the warmest in the modern record (industrial revolution), or the 600 or even the 1000 year record, let’s find out what the proxies have to say about it? Again, this doesn’t seem unreasonable to me.
Your comment?
June 30th, 2005 at 12:13 pm
Re #67:Go ahead Bill and Reid, why not check out Tim’s education of Ross McKitrick?
I’m afraid it is you who may be the dupe. Tim is showing a deep misunderstanding of what has been said or he really doesn’t care. For example, the PCA method used by Mann, while valid if properly applied, uses RMS and not simple arithmetic mean in it’s basic operations. Using Tim’s logic, or what I think his logic is, the application of PCA itself must have been incorrect. Surely he isn’t trying to say that.
In reality, no one, least of all M&M, is actually denying the existence of GW. What is in dispute is that MHB98 is showing (or claiming, anyway) unprecedented recent warming. Part of that recent “warming” vanishes if you consider the Medevial Warm Period, which itself seems to have vanished in MHB98.
Mann’s methodology in the application of PCA is suspect. M&M have shown that the MHB result can be obtained through misapplication of PCA and difficult to obtain otherwise. This raises serious questions about the MHB result.
Regardless of anything that may have been said, this is the most important M&M finding. MHB has been used to shore up a very expensive program largely because of the depiction of unprecedented recent warming and the absence of the MWP for comparasion. It is wise to investigate and resolve these questions in due haste.
Mann is not the proper agent to use in reaching a resolution (although he should certainly aid the effort). The questions must be resolved independently. You can’t get much more independent than M&M. If Mann has made serious blunders that somehow have passed the peer review process, it raises even more serious questions. It behooves us all for an investigation also to be independent of those who supplied the reviewers. You certainly shouldn’t be taking Mann’s word for his correctness.
I suggest that you not take one person’s word for anything — including mine. Perhaps you understand PCA, perhaps not. In any case, it is wise to fully understand waht underlies the argument and withold opinion until you truly do.
June 30th, 2005 at 12:29 pm
John McCall: While a decentered method produces “hockey sticks” the eigenvalues for these sticks are very small. Their influence can be shown by looking at the results when using M&M centered and the de-centered methods. The final plots are almost identical and a good portion of the difference can be attributed to the calibration (the M&M method over-specifies the calibration period). I notice that this argument has been absent in recent times and for a good reason, it is not a strong one.
Bill Bud: When you talk about the application being suspect, are you talking about the de-centered approach of Mann. That is the only part that I know of that is in question. If so, I would not call it an error. As I said above the centered and de-centered give almost identical answers. Also, you can make an argument for using the de-centered method since it reduces the number of degrees of freedom in the calibration period.
Regards,
Y.
June 30th, 2005 at 12:41 pm
Re#72: As I said above the centered and de-centered give almost identical answers
Your saying it doesn’t make it fact. Mann also appears to have used higher order terms in places. These lead to instabilities in further calculations so must be applied with care.
As I said before, I am not going to provide a detailed list here. If you really want to know the answer to what M&M are saying I suggest you start with them. You should not consider me nor anyone else the proper source for that information.
Re#72:the de-centered method since it reduces the number of degrees of freedom in the calibration period.
Choice of origin in no way reduces the number of degrees of freedom which depends only upon the number of axes.
June 30th, 2005 at 1:04 pm
Mr Lambert, given that you express disdain for McKitrick’s mistake regarding degrees and radians, are you able to also express the same feeling for Michael Mann for his calculation of temperature principal component series weighted by the cosine of the latitude instead of (correctly) by the square root of the cosine of the latitude ? If not, why not ?
June 30th, 2005 at 1:11 pm
Re#72: would not call it [decentered approach] an error.
Actually its a grievous error. The whole idea behind PCA is to normalize the data so datasets with varying scales and correlations can be compared with each other. It does this by first normalizing each component to unit variance. If you choose something other than the mean of that component as reference you have automatically introduced a bias in the form of high variance into your data. This is a beginner’s mistake but can also be used for intentional fraud.
PCA is not horribly complicated (except perhaps for computing the rotation Jacobian) but it involves concepts not discussed much outside of statistics. Many popular math workbenches provide it as an adjunct but sometimes that’s the mathematical equivalent of providing a loaded handgun to a child. One really needs to understand tools before using them.
June 30th, 2005 at 2:42 pm
Bill, why are you persisting in saying that Mann’s code is not available. Have you looked at holocene.evsc.virginia.ed… yet??
June 30th, 2005 at 3:00 pm
Eli, I think it is common ground that not all of Mann’s code has been released.
Bill, we’ve gone over the contred/uncentred thing before here. The bottom line is that it doesn’t make a difference to the results. See Dummies guide to the latest “Hockey Stick” controversy
June 30th, 2005 at 3:51 pm
Bill I only came to make a general comment about the fitness of Ross McKitrick for scientific work - by self demonstration he has none - and not to enter debate on Michael Mann. For discussion of the relevant Mann papers and his methods I’m happy to leave it to RealClimate and their peers to grapple with the odd fair effort at criticism.
I bear in mind that before he approached Mann with requests for data and code, etc, in fact back in February 2003, bumptious McKitrick had aleady published his deepest thoughts on climate science in “Taken by Storm”. His subsequent requests of Mann may be seen to have been in spectacularly bad faith when you take a look at what McKitrick had already written on Mann’s field of expertise. McKitrick’s book contains more stupidity than I’m prepared to revisit just now, but stuff such as “… There is no theory of climate. There is no known physical meaning for adding up data and dividing by the number of data that everyone insists on adding up and dividing by. Furthermore once they have this number, no scientific basis exists to show that its behavior has any implications for our lives. There is a lot of hand waving and gesticulating, but no science. The people who like these statistics have a burden that they have not been made to bear. You have to prove a proposition in both directions in order to make an equivalence….” blah, blah, blah exemplify it. I guess people who think McKitrick has a clue could be puzzled by Mann’s bad reaction to him.
So to repeat, I’m suggesting that people like Ross McKitrick or Congressman Big Oil are not “peers” of any scientist in any way that makes sense to me. Consequently I’ll be listening to scientific opinion on the issues, not theirs (other than for amusement or provocation, let’s say).
June 30th, 2005 at 6:13 pm
A note on full disclosure and scientific research.
No scientist is obligated to publish ancillary notes, code, etc., regardless of funding source. All that is required is enough data and methodology to enable others to reproduce the work. The rationale behind this is purely pragmatic, journal space is limited and publishing an implementation of an already described algorithm would be considered redundant. It would probably also put most articles well over the maximum word count.
Of course, most researchers will be happy to provide example code to anyone who asks. Mike put at least some of it on his ftp site. However, this is at their discretion and by no means mandatory. And in this case, given McKitrick’s history and general rude demeanor, I’m not surprised Mike’s ignoring him. As a tax payer, I’m personally glad he’s focusing on his research rather than attempting to appease the cranks.
June 30th, 2005 at 7:56 pm
Sigh … it didn’t go through, so let’s repeat this.
Straw Man, definition: The author attacks an argument which is different from, and usually weaker than, the opposition’s best argument.
Best argument of pro-GW: carbondioxide is the driver gas. Weaker argument by pro-GW: the
temp. record form a hockey-stick.
Other than that, Coop:
“Mike put at least some of it on his ftp site. However, this is at their discretion and by no means mandatory. “
I’m inclined to disagree. Taxpayer funded research are IMO, public record, at least morally. Unless the gov’t hasn’t specifically ruled it secret as is the case with defense related studies, or if the gov’t has another reason the specifically declare a study secret.
June 30th, 2005 at 8:55 pm
Let’s not keep debating in generalities about this stuff. Appended below is McIntyre’s list of wants from www.climateaudit.org/inde…. In my opinion, all, or almost all of it, falls into the categories of “I’ve shown that X is a mistake; prove to me it wasn’t” or “I’ve shown that Y is a discrepancy; explain to me why it wasn’t” or just “I’ve shown that Z calculation is wrong; show me your work so I can point to your exact mistake” and not “missing data.” Of all of these 5 might be missing data and 21 might be a needed clarification about data used, although I haven’t looked at them in enough detail to know one way or the other. The rest appear to fall into the categories I outlined. Data or not, is it reasonable to ask Mike to provide this type of information?
July 1st, 2005 at 1:06 am
Re#77:
Tim, I seem to have missed where the issue of centered/non-centered is addressed in that link except for comment #2 that seems to agree with what I said: if you do not center the data on it’s mean, you automatically increase variance. Unless you meant main point (4) which I discuss below.
Have you ever done a PCA? One of its principal [pun intended] values is that it can be used to remove high frequency noise that seems omnipresent in measurement. In statistical terminology, you are discarding irrelevant variance. Unfortunately, PCA does little to solve the question of what’s mundane and what is not.
All of the datasets used in MBH98 are supposedly measuring the same thing, namely, global temperature. Removing one or two should not change the observed trends.
Tree ring data is at least once removed from actual measurement of the desired item. Each dataset may exhibit trends of some variables unrelated to temperature — available water for instance. Hopefully, when taken as an aggregate, local variations in the unrelated will appear in the higher, discardable PCs provided that you have at least the same time period for each in each dataset and that the datasets have been properly normalized.
Problems begin to arise when the datasets don’t overlap as when they are separated in time or place.
RC Point(4) as promised: In general, one of the underlying assumptions involved in PCA is that the mean of each dataset is zero. Using the mean of the dataset means may be valid if all of the datasets properly overlap but the validity of this must be verified. The significance criteria (3) cannot be used for this purpose. For example, if the minimum of all data was used as reference instead of the mean, all of the PCs would pass (3). Using anything other than the dataset mean when the datasets do not overlap is highly questionable. Subsequently grafting them raises eyebrows about competence. Grafting non-overlapped datasets that used different measurement techniques is …. Well, you figure it out.
In fact, comparing two datasets that do not have overlap is questionable. Tree ring data do not simply reflect temperature. The main observed trend may not be driven by temperature at all. The significance criteria described in point (3), while statistically correct, do not provide aid in distinguishing the underlying cause of any particular PC. It’s quite possible that the causes of PC1 and PC2 could be exchanged between datasets.
Indiscriminately applying or improperly applying statistical methods can quickly lead to GIGO.
July 1st, 2005 at 1:12 am
re: Chill
I’ve worked on many taxpayer funded research projects. It is not now, nor has it ever been, required that PI’s, or their staff, offer full disclosure to the general public. We simply don’t have the time or resources. There are also privacy issues at stake here. Just because I’m paid with public funds doesn’t give you the right to read my email, look at my white board or go through my desk.
The reality of contemporary research in the information age is that work with a high visibility will eventually attract the attention of those with an agenda. Often its merely personal gain or ego-stroking, but in some cases the motives are more sinister. Regardless, scientists are by no means obligated to indulge the whim of every crank with access to email. If they did they would not have any time available to get any real work done.
re:Steve
Some of those requests might be reasonable, from one of Mike’s peers. From someone not only not in the field, but also lacking a formal science education, less so. Mike is under no obligation to provide a free education in paleoclimatology to Canadian economists. If M&M are so interested in the field, by all means they should invest some of their donations from the petroleum industry in a quality science education. After they’ve gotten their four year degrees, done graduate work, performed original research and received their PhD’s in a relevant field I’m sure the community would be more than willing to work with them. Hopefully they would learn something about humility and respecting the work of others in the process.
July 1st, 2005 at 1:34 am
re: Coop
One of the first things learned in engineering is that you should be ready to explain what you are doing to your paycheck provider. “Explain” might as well be “educate” with regard to most providers.
If you are using public funding, the public is your paycheck provider. Saying: “Just give me money and don’t worry about what I do with it,” is plain arrogance.
True, Canadians may not have provided him with money, but it seems that one of his paycheck providers is now demanding answers.
It remains to be seen if he flips one toward the money tree or actively tries to kill it.
July 1st, 2005 at 2:06 am
re:Bill Bud
I agree with you totally. Barton is clearly answering directly to his paycheck providers in the petroleum industry. I’m sure they are thrilled to death with his minimizing the risks of their products, but that really has no bearing on the legitimacy of Mann’s research.
July 1st, 2005 at 2:21 am
I notice poor Bill Bud is sorely underread, or someone gave him cr*ppy talking points.
Bill: there are numerous other studies that have the same conclusions.
The peer review process has been done. Educate yourself in how it works, else have someone give you talking points that aren’t cr*ppy, ’cause no one here buys your story.
July 1st, 2005 at 3:03 am
Bill Bud:
Re: “Choice of origin in no way reduces the number of degrees of freedom which depends only upon the number of axes.”
With a de-centered approach you only need 2 PCs to capture the data. With a centered approach you need 5. Thus the number of degrees of freedom will change.
My saying that the two reconstructions are almost identical does not make it so, but me, and Mann and M&M and W&A all saying they are is a pretty good start.
Finally, you make a valid point about scientists being accountable for public funding. Now, will you join me and agree that they are not accountable to the public for private funding. In which case why should the committee ask for it?
Regards,
Y.
July 1st, 2005 at 4:47 am
Afraid I disagree with you on some of the parts of your post, Yelling.
Moving the reference point will change the magnitude of the variance but will not move it toward zero unless most of the points are near that value which would likely make it the mean.
Last I heard, M&M are saying that the Bristlecone data are the source of the HS and that the other sets are essentially random. IOW: they average toward zero so the Bristlecone data shines brightly. I don’t have time to go there every day. If they have rescinded this claim could you show me where?
I do agree that they should not be held accountable for private funding. However, if you are referring to the committee request for additional funding, I presume it’s to establish how much of Mann’s work came from the public trough.
Mann isn’t the only one to use legal tricks. A good lawyer never asks a question to which the answer is not already known and every question should build your case. Rest assured that answers to the questions asked of Mann, et al. and the NSF have already been established. The committee is rubbing their noses in it.
July 1st, 2005 at 5:40 am
For the past 15 years the global warmers with a weak hypothesis and a string of cherry picked studies and custom ordered computer models have managed to sideline the sceptics. The media have portrayed the sceptics as cranks and tools of industry.
Most sceptics are neither cranks nor tools of industry. Many are far left politically but know junkscience when they see it and have the integrity not to join the charade. The House investigation into Mann is just a start. Expect the GCM’s cited by the IPCC in the 1990’s to be investigated to see how well they have worked.
We have reached the inflection point. It is all downhill to oblivion for the Kyoto central planners. Kyoto is collapsing due to non-compliance. Any follow-up treaty to Kyoto will likely be a European only affair if a treaty is negotiated at all.
And climatalogy will stop being a political science and return to being a physical science.
July 1st, 2005 at 5:49 am
Thanks, Reid of Murrica, for rolling up, into one place for us all to see, all the current agitprop phrases being used today.
Well done!
D
July 1st, 2005 at 8:06 am
Reid: “It is all downhill to oblivion for the Kyoto central planners.”
Reid, have you ever actually READ the Kyoto Accord?
July 1st, 2005 at 9:00 am
91 Reid, have you ever actually READ the Kyoto Accord?
No. So what?
It expires in 2012. So far attempts to achieve a follow up agreement have been a disaster. Italy has said it won’t sign on to a post-Kyoto agreement. The US, China, India, Brazil, Mexico, etc. will not accept any carbon restrictions.
The German opposition leader Merkel, who is the likely next German PM, said Kyoto will have to be renogiated for Germany to remain in. The National party in New Zealand, who has a good shot at taking power, said they will pull out of Kyoto.
The future of mandatory carbon controls is bleak. Any advanced nation adhereing to Kyoto will devastate their economy. Even the Europeans aren’t that foolish. Expect a complete Kyoto collapse long before it expires in 2012.
You can bet on that Tim.
July 1st, 2005 at 9:37 am
Tim, when Mann said that he “would not be ‘intimidated’ into releasing his algorithm”, what do you think that he was talking about - if he’s already released his algorithm, as you say he’s done? Surely by “algorithm” Mann was talking about source code and you are attempting to a make a distinction without a difference. Nigel
July 1st, 2005 at 9:37 am
I was curious as to whether your claim that Kyoto was based on “central planning” was based on sheer ignorance or a failure of comprehension.
The Kyoto Protocol does not prescribe how countries meet their targets. It DOES set up a series of market-based mechanisms, such as emissions-trading and the Clean Development Mechanism, which are designed specifically to maximise fleixibility and ensure that the market rather than governments determine how and where emissions are reduced.
It may also surpise you to know that there’s also no “Godless Asiatic hordes will eat your babies” provision in there.
July 1st, 2005 at 9:52 am
Reid of America - “For the past 15 years the global warmers with a weak hypothesis and a string of cherry picked studies and custom ordered computer models have managed to sideline the sceptics.”
This is absolute and utter crap and simply shows your total ignorance of the subject. You seem to have only a Fox News knowledge of the subject of global warming. The platitudes that you spout are just generalisations designed to fool the ignorant.
In all of this time will tell. Climate Change may well be the final nail in the coffin of the USA. Lets have this conversation in 20 years and see how you are going. The nations that embrace climate change and embrace renewable power will be thriving while the dinosaurs perish. The USA should be leading this global warming fight. With the USA and Europe we could be making real cuts and forcing China and India to do the same. Instead we have this crap.
If you look at the simplicity of the science behind the idea of global warming then you will realise how hollow and foolish your words sound.
July 1st, 2005 at 11:01 am
Ender -
If the nations that embrace climate change and renewable power thrive economically relative to carbon economies I guarantee the US, China, India, etc. will follow. Guaranteed! But that won’t happen without big advances in energy and power technology. And when new economical technology becomes available there will be no need to have any carbon restrictions. Carbon fuels will then be abandoned.
But until that new economical technology is available the only thing that will get abandoned are fossil fuel use restrictions.
July 1st, 2005 at 11:40 am
Bill Bub:
No need to be afraid to disagree with me - my wife does it all the time!!!
Your comments about moving the reference point seem like the argument about the hockey stick bias introduced by the de-centered. If so, I can agree with you in theory but point out that the eigenvalues of the associated eigenvectors are very small.
Second, I don’t think that M&M ever said that the whole hockeystick was based on the BCP series. I believe that it only dominates in the early 15th. Also, they are very careful to say that it is the characteristic shape of the BCP that shows up in the reconstruction. They know that you can’t trace a dataset to a PC.
You really lost me with your comments about private funding. You said that you agree that they should not be accountable for private funding but then say it is acceptable to the committee to ask for it!?!
Your last paragraph is quite troubling to me. It clearly demonstrates that you feel that this is political based and not a legitimate request for clarification on science and in fact the committee already knows the answers. Does this not make it harassement?
Regards,
Y.
July 1st, 2005 at 1:33 pm
At least two times, I have seen the allegation here that M&M are in the pay of the fuels industry. The “link” the ad hominem arguers make is that they made a presentation of their work to the Marshall Institute, which has received some money from that industry. O the horror! But if you go to the National Geographic News website, as ardent a global warmer site as you’re likely to find, you’ll see that it’s funded by none other than (trumpet fanfare, please) — ExxonMobil. The mandatory funding disclosure in M&M’s published articles state that no external funding was used for their work and none was solicited.
People who make this silly argument need to stop and realize that it takes very little money to reanalyze data that already exists, which is what M&M did. All that’s needed is expertise in the statistical methods that were used, which M&M have, and a computer program.
The ad hominem arguers also need to realize that the same statistical procedures are used in nearly all analytical fields, including economics, which means it’s not necessary to be a climate scientist to determine whether a climate scientist applied the right statistical procedure to his data and did it correctly.
July 1st, 2005 at 2:34 pm
All that’s needed is expertise in the statistical methods that were used, which M&M have, and a computer program.
timlambert.org/2004/10/mc…
July 1st, 2005 at 2:38 pm
All that’s needed is expertise in the statistical methods that were used, which M&M have, and a computer program.
And these links:
timlambert.org/2004/05/mc…
timlambert.org/2004/08/mc…
July 1st, 2005 at 5:07 pm
Speaking as a cheerfully non-boffin kinda person but as an professional expert in rhetoric, sophistry and general logic-chopping, this sort of debate so often seems to devolve into one party saying “We seem to be losing hair, shouldn’t we find out where, how and why and then do something about it?” and another party responding by splitting individual hairs and then proclaiming “Hah! there’s two of ‘em now. What’s the problem?”
Meanwhile the hairline keeps receding.
July 1st, 2005 at 5:26 pm
Reid: “And when new economical technology becomes available there will be no need to have any carbon restrictions. Carbon fuels will then be abandoned.”
Tell me, Reid, dio you have ANY knowledge of economics at all?
I don’t mean have you read Ayn Rand and Bob Heinlein and accepted the invisible hand of the amrket as your personal savior, I mean have you ever actually studied the academic
discipline of economics?
July 2nd, 2005 at 12:18 am
Re#97:
Yelling,
Politically based? Probably. Congress Critters are political entities. Acting non-politically is against their religion. The whole issue of GW has become a political football. That’s why this website is here.
But I find nothing sinister in this. Mann’s research was funded with public money. Politics is behind giving it in the first place. Politics is the price of accepting it.
Yes, I think the request for information about other funding is a fair one. The majority of Congressional members are lawyers so they think and act like lawyers. The question is a “foundation” question, nothing more. Without it, the committee investigation will forever be open to the counterclaim that Mann’s work was really privately funded. The answer will lay such counterclaim to permanent rest.
Of course they know the answers! That’s the way lawyers think and act. They have been trained in being that way as court cases are conducted in question-answer mode. The questions are used to build the case. Those letters were written by lawyers. Think about the order of the questions.
Is this harassment? Depends upon your definition. I think having to go to traffic court is harassment. It certainly isn’t an investigation. Mann seem to have been a bit flip in his actions and the NSF was negligent in enforcing the terms of its grant to him.
Despite what Bement may think, it was his job. This isn’t an investigation, it’s a reprimand at best. The person in most danger here is Bement — not Mann. Bement is the one with the potential dereliction of duty charge dangling over his head.
For Mann, it’s nothing but a good finger wagging. However, the letter was quite specific. If he is still prone to uncooperation, he’s about to discover its consequences such as a Contempt of Congress charge.
Of course there may be other motives behind the letters, too. A good lawyer is like a good chess player. Every move has at least two purposes. Mann, etc. may have made some very bad moves.
July 2nd, 2005 at 2:29 am
Coop: “We simply don’t have the time or resources.”
Don’t talk that crap to me. There are webpublishng programs available.
Coop: “Just because I’m paid with public funds doesn’t give you the right to read my email”
Strawman. Your e-mail is private but your studies are public record. If you hamper against publishing when asked, hello subpoena, and you lose.
Ender:
“The nations that embrace climate change and embrace renewable power”
Climate change yes, but nations with the windmills are then bankrupt and global laughing-stocks, and nations that invest in nuclear are the winners.
July 2nd, 2005 at 3:18 am
Bill Bub:
So we move out of the science and enter the arena of politics. Sorry, you will have to continue the disucssion with others since I much prefer to stick with the science.
Regards,
Y.
July 2nd, 2005 at 3:28 am
As do I. Perhaps another time?
BB
July 2nd, 2005 at 6:51 am
Chill:
Ignoring lunatics is right everyone, including Michael Mann, is allowed. I will demonstrate this by ignoring you.
July 2nd, 2005 at 7:34 am
“If you look at the simplicity of the science behind the idea of global warming then you will realise how hollow and foolish your words sound.”
Posted only from clueless to how complex the deterministic GW/AGW/NGW forcing allocation problem really is. Such a statement also exhibits a near complete ignorance of how poor the models are/have been at predict