Saturday
Jun192010
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Arthur Smith on the trick
Jun 19, 2010 Climate: CRU Climate: Jones Climate: Mann Another defence of the Nature trick has been published. This time the author is Arthur Smith.
Reader Comments (24)
Arthur Smith makes the following statement in his preface:
Using the same logic, you can assert that the space shuttle Discovery's last mission was a success. Just ignore/delete the trajectory divergence over Texas, which is obviously just erroneous data. As long as you mention, elsewhere, that you've decided to exclude the latter part of the mission, your assertion that it was a success can stand.
And they wonder why some of us are left with the impression that they're untrustworthy thieves from the public coffer. No, really, they do actually wonder why that is.
Your Grace,
It is your premises in which we meet, and your choice on the material for sermons, but really, I think the sacred/profane radar is in need of a recal?
Using the data you "think" is reliable is fine, Simon, certainly if you explain what you have done and why.
The problem is that, human nature being what it is, there is too much of a temptation (even a sub-conscious one) to slip into data you "want to be" reliable. When your reputation and your future job security and your funding are all on the line it is hard not to succumb.
All the more reason to have your data and your conclusions checked by someone who does not have an axe to grind or a vested interest in the answers being the "right" ones.
It seems that this principle has been either forgotten or abandoned by the heads of university departments, the very people and organisations we ought to be able to rely on to keep their research departments on the straight and narrow.
Sam, an unexplained or inexplicable divergence such as Briffa's tree rings must surely call into question, if not wholly obliterate, the credibility of the proxy. To selectively graph portions of it, specifically excluding the portions that don't reinforce the "strong message" is itself unacceptable, but there is an equally strong, or even stronger, argument for not permitting its inclusion at all.
In the CAGW promotion industry, if a thing can be published that supports the sale of the idea we are facing a climate crisis, then it must be true, and data, ethics, truth and reality all need to take a backseat to the larger goal.
I think Simon has got to the heart of the matter. "If you have reason" is the critical phrase in Arthur Smith's post. Most of us here cannot think of any reason why the tree ring data would be a reliable indicator of pre-instrumental temperatures when diverging from modern instrumental temperature records. The only way the "trick" could conceivably be defensible would be if they presented the data with and without the post 1960 numbers and gave a clear, coherent explanation as to why they thought the recent data should be discarded. That has never happened, for the simple reason that no such explanation exists.
As it stands, the behaviour is simply dishonest and would be grounds for a formal written warning in my business, with summary dismissal for a second offence; in climate science, however, the offence has been repeated on many occasions and defended by almost everyone in the "consensus".
If it's cool it's weather, if it's warm it's climate-- so says the peculiarly self-deluded in-group so comfortably ensconced in Pachauri's peculating IPCC, salted like fool's gold throughout academia. These people act in bad faith, under false pretenses, using notions of objective, rational "science" to obscure willful manipulation and deceit.
Rather than constantly guarding against the latest Climate Hysterics' misrepresentation, we're better off ignoring 'em completely in favor of decent and trustworthy sources such as McIntyre and McKitrick, Montford (h/t), Pielke, Watts et al. As for the Green Gang of Briffa, Hansen, Jones, Mann, Trenberth and others of their ilk such as Romm and Schmidt, absolutely the less said the better.
John's comments remind me. We are constantly told that the 2003 heatwave is both proof and a dreadful warning of the effects of Global Warming caused by our CO2 emissions.
70,000 dead, if you believe Wikipedia. (No, NOT me.)
Whereas the exceptionally cold weathernotclimate in Winter 2009 / 2010 was just a little local fluke.
Six months on, someone must have had a look at the excess mortality that this cold weathernotclimate caused? No?
Perhaps a FOIA request might be the thing?
I think what is being forgotten is that "Climate Change" and "Climate Science" are political, not scientific issues.
The issue is money, not "saving the world". True, you hear that mantra repeatedly from the faithful, who are "willing to die" to save the world, save the whale, save the spotted owl, or save the [fill in the blank]; but the issue is money, in the form of taxes that can be spent to make some rich and others powerful.
People like Arthur Smith are merely tools -- willing or duped -- used by those who seek power and money to dupe the faithful into handing over their money to them.
We really need to approach these issues from a political viewpoint. Arguing about the science is frankly a waste of time. The Climategate emails had their impact not because of the faulty science they exposed, but the duplicity that was revealed.
Simon, yes. Badly phrased, I'm afraid.
If you believe something to be so and all of a sudden the data are not backing you up, there's nothing wrong with creating a scenario and saying, "look this is what I think should be happening according to my previous figures; this is what appears to happening now."
Proper peer-review (or better still, referring it upwards in your department) will find the holes in whichever bit doesn't stack up. If you've been relying on proxies and then you get real observations to play with it would be surprising if there wasn't a discrepancy of some sort. If it means your graph is going to go down when until then it's been going up most honest scientists would assume the "mistake" was with the proxies, I would have thought, but the only way to find out is to get someone else to take a fresh look. If that's a problem, then there's a problem!
If you believe something to be so, and the data aren't backing you up, you should double-check your data, and if there are no measurement or transcription, you have to change your belief, not refer it upstairs and hope your boss doesn't spot the "trick". A physical theory that is falsified by the data is stone dead. Mann, Briffa, the unfunny Arthur Smith and co have just been nailing it to its perch for the last 10 years.
Is there a funny Arthur Smith ? You surely cannot be referring to the UK guy who typifies BBC PC "comedy" and drones on about how the rest of us need to be taxed out of sight.
Quote AP Smith.
"But the tricky cases are those who are much more subtle in their nonsense. Making stuff up is easy. Making stuff up that on the face of it looks somewhat plausible does take a bit more skill. Figuring out that the "plausible" stuff is just as much nonsense as the obviously wrong takes considerably more work, and some of these actors tend to make a lot of work for those of us trying to defend real science"
Unquote.
It is precisely this type of language and it's very dismissive and condescending tone, that sticks in the craw, the bloke is so full of it himself but with the above statement he is blowing his own foot off, can't he see that?
No he cannot! And that is three quarters of the problem, getting past the arrogance and enormous obstinacy of his (and others like him.... ref, CRU/Uni Pa/GISS, UN IPCC) steadfast and unwavering personal belief in his (and their) own Godlike infallibility.
Humility is a gift, the greatest scientists were indeed humble men, because great men are conscious of the facts and of the magnitude of the Universe and the more you do learn, the more you realise, that you are only at the beginning, this is the mark of a man.
The tone of the argument is aloof and resembles many alarmist sites, another reason why I only dip in there infrequently, I cannot stand the self congratulatory blurb and back slapping, wow.......... what it is like to be a climate scientist God and does God get a look in?....And is he a mate of that other fount of wisdom and profound humility - Moonbat?
Two military adages come to mind.
1. No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.
2. Never reinforce failure.
The Hockey Stick never survived McIntyre's critical analysis.
Climate scientists now believe they can save the Hockey Stick thru strength of numbers. An appeal to authority.
This flawed tactic allows sceptics to discredit all climate science. That is the danger they now face - their staking their credibility on what a growing number of people now know to be a scientific fraud.
Can anyone explain why coloring your mice in the laboratory with a felt-tipped pen is a career ending move, but salting your WMO graph to avoid having to confront the fact that your historical temperature 'proxies' are unreliable simply brings out zealous apologists and the Keystone Kops inquiries?
I wonder what we would have seen if the post 1960 proxy data had demonstrated a greater warming than the actual temperatures? Would they have been replaced “using the data you think is reliable”
Having prefaced his blog post with a discussion about the validity of tree ring proxies that suffer the divergence problem as a temperature proxy (quoted in my first comment, at the top), I see that Arthur's now promising to delete comments that question whether or not Briffa's proxies are in fact a good proxy for temperature. He says such comments are "off topic". Arthur writes:
Of course, it's not off-topic. It goes directly to the very subject being discussed and to Arthur's assertion in his preface. The problem for Arthur is that he knows it's indefensible, and if he allows the discussion there's a genuine danger that reason will prevail. God forbid that might happen on his watch!
"Watch the pea," says Arthur. "Don't look at what my hands are doing, watch the pea.. keep watching the pea.."
I began to read the referenced blog article, but then I quickly stopped where Smith began lauding "Prof. John Abrahams" and "Brian Angliss" -- I knew I was traveling in Kooksville.
Ditto when I posed very simple questions to 'DeepClimate' about his breathless post on Mike Hulme.
"Please refrain from posting here any more. Thanks!"
;)
I think Arthur has done a fine job with his post. He has taken a specific claim by Steven Mosher, and demolished a portion of it.
Note, he is not commenting on the Nature trick, but on Steven's explanation of it, that Briffa's data in AR4 were appended to the instrumental data, smoothed, then cutoff at 1960, to hide the decline. He looked at the data, and could find no evidence of this. TAR work is ongoing.
@ MikeN
Perhaps you'd be better reading the other comments on here before posting?
It's all been said before in the masterpiece "Dr Strangelove".
An SAC General has gone loopy and President Muffley is in the Pentagon War Room asking General Turgidson how his hand-picked generals could have allowed a failure. The world faces final nuclear destruction in minutes.
Muffley:
There's nothing to figure out General Turgidson. This man is obviously a psychotic.
Turgidson:
Well, I'd like to hold off judgment on a thing like that, sir, until all the facts are in.
Muffley:
(anger rising) General Turgidson, when you instituted the human reliability tests, you assured me there was no possibility of such a thing ever occurring.
Turgidson:
Well I don't think it's quite fair to condemn a whole program because of a single slip up, sir.
Just about the first thing I was taught in my (geology / geochemistry) PhD was that there is no such thing as bad data, only bad interpretation.
Second thing I was taught was that you don't mix up directly measured data points with proxies, smoothed data or model outputs. Comparing apples and oranges, and especially when you don't make the difference obvious, would not even be permitted for an undergraduate, never mind a front-line researcher
Third thing was that I should never write 'models show...' (or 'demonstrate', or even 'suggest'). All models really tell you is what went into the model, and the best you can hope for is that the model does a reasonable job of back-calculating reality and that any forward projections seem sensible.
Why is it that so much of climate science is undermined simply by ignoring these basic scientific premises?
Spotted in Waitrose last Sunday, browsing the paper section but not buying; buying a latte to take away; seen wandering about the car park with fag in mouth and coffee in hand; attired in floppy hat, short-sleeved shirt, shorts and carrying a backpack... Arthur back from a Suffolk trek?! (You may have dressed to fool people but that rasping voice ordering coffee blew your cover, pal!)