Bishop Hill Who left out the Hockey Stick caveats?
Jun 30, 2011 Climate: MWP Climate: Mann Via Richard Klein's Twitter feed comes this interview with Raymond Bradley in which he discusses his new book. Fascinating stuff, particularly this bit:
In 1998, a post-doc, Mike Mann, Malcolm Hughes and I published an article in Nature on climate in the last 600 years (Mann et al. 1998). Then, in 1999, we published another article in Geophysical Research Letters on temperature over the last 1000 years (Mann et al. 1999). The title was “Northern hemisphere temperatures during the past millennium: inferences, uncertainties, and limitations.” We were emphasising the uncertain nature of the problem. But nevertheless, when it got picked up by the summary for policymakers of the third Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, important caveats were left out.
Now who was it who was the lead author on the paleoclimate chapter of the Third Assessment Report again? I will need to revisit the treatment of the Hockey Stick in the report and the summary for policymakers to see just where the caveats were missing.
And then this:
[In] the IPCC Third Assessment, a report of over 880 pages, the “hockey stick” occupied less than one page. There were more than 200 figures in the book. The “hockey stick” figure was only one of them.
Six of them, if I'm not mistaken.
And then there's this:
Besides, we have since shown that even if you entirely avoid the procedure Barton’s statisticians objected to, and simply average all the data we used, you get the same “hockey stick” result. Simply put, the “hockey stick” is bomb-proof. No amount of data manipulation will make it go away.
This is very icky. The reason principal components analysis was used was to summarise down the US tree rings so that they weren't overrepresented in the dataset. If you don't summarise them down then they are indeed overrepresented. It's still wrong! And he can't get away with the fact that the hockey stick shape is coming from the bristlecones and everyone agrees that the bristlecones are contaminated with a non-climatic signal. Putting forward a different way of processing contaminated data is not going to convince anyone.
Reader Comments (39)
It's always the same question, the same question. Is he incompetent or disingenuous?
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Where there any other statisticians objecting to some of the procedures? Was it another statistician's work that led to Barton's investigation?
I cant find any mention in the interview about this mysterious statistician.
Curious that.
Lies, damned lies and Team statistics!
Actually, I think it's a three-way question: Immoral people know when they're lying; amoral people don't believe there is a difference between truth and lies; stupid people can't tell what is the truth and what is a lie.
There seems to be a bit of a rush at the moment to get the retaliation in before something else happens.
What is the "something else"?
Mann's correspondence? CRU data? Further legal action?
At least Bradley may have persuaded some of the US politicians not to fund climate science anymore!
Some of the multiple appearances of Mann's hockey stick in the 2001 IPCC WG1 report are as follows:
1. Fig 1 (p 3 of Summary for Policymakers, half page including caption);
2. Fig 5 ( p 29 of Technical Summary, more than half a page);
3. Fig 2.20 (p 134 of Ch 2 Observed climate variability and change, half a page).
There may be more, but that's enough to demonstrate that Bradley is either innumerate or a liar.
If someone like him told you it was raining you'ld need to look out the window to check.
Really? Here's the original press release so everyone can make their own judgement.
Mann's "no-PC" isn't an average - a point that Bradley perhaps doesn't understand. If the PC step is omitted, the next step is equivalent to a Partial Least Squares regression of temperature on proxies i.e. the proxies are not equally weighted. Bristlecones, surprise surprise, are weighted more heavily in this procedure than in a simple average. Though, as you observe, given the over-representation of bristlecones in the data set, even a simple average without allowance for over-representation overweights bristlecones.
Needless to say, Bradley tries to frame it as a sort of mathematical problem, rather than a data problem. I'm trying to recall if they've ever even used the word "bristlecone" in the past 5 years?
Re my earlier comment: I've no reason to suppose Bradley is lying or can't count up to 3 so I will withdraw that suggestion. I'm left with the alternative explanation - that he hasn't read the book in question. Perhaps he should remedy this situation. I have read large parts of the 2001 IPCC WG1 report, and reading it made me more critical of the climatology orthodoxy. It's not a independent assessment of the scientific literature. Parts of it are more like a vehicle for pushing the MBH hockey stick. Back then nobody had looked at the hockey stick closely or critically. That's no longer the case. Bradley may need to catch up with the science.
Ross complied 6 occurrences of the Hockey Stick in IPCC TAR at one time. I'll see if he has a list of Figure numbers.
Here's another fabrication by Bradley:
The actual letter (online http://republicans.energycommerce.house.gov/108/Letters/062305_Bradley.pdf) doesn't mention emails.
The questions about financing, as I understand it, are standard questions. I was asked a similar question prior to my testimony in 2006.
Those Mann emails must be dynamite
I was raised to understand that telling unlikely tall stories that one does not expect listeners to believe is entertaining if done well. I never expected to see or hear non-entertaining and highly unlikely tall stories in interviews with scientists about their published work.
The original press release makes one mention of 'uncertainties', and that mention is actually to downplay the uncertainties! Since there is no reason to believe that Bradley is entertaining the interviewer with a tall story, Bradley is a liar.
As Del-boy would say, 'Plonker!'
Steve
The Hockey Stick Illusion is your friend. From p 39
"This demonstrates the point of my book: that public officials are using their positions to pursue a politically motivated agenda, to intimidate scientists and to try to denigrate or suppress research that does not support their position."
A few typo's in this statement for "public officials" please replace with "Climate Scientists enagaged by the IPPC" and replace "scientists" with "" so that now its reads:
"This demonstrates the point of my book: that Climate Scientists enagaged by the IPPC are using their positions to pursue a politically motivated agenda, to intimidate anyone who disagrees with their findings and to try to denigrate or suppress research that does not support their position."
Steve:
Of course, they have Salzer, Hughes et al (2009), which was published just before the Climategate.
http://climateaudit.org/2009/11/17/salzer-et-al-2009-a-first-look/
As I anticipated at the time, the paper is becoming a standard tool in Team's bag for the defense of the indefensible, see, e.g., here:
http://www.realclimate.org/?comments_popup=4431#comment-182703
"There were more than 200 figures in the book. The “hockey stick” figure was only one of them."
This is equivocal Team-speak (intended to mislead, of course) meaning that given all the different types of figures, the hockey stick was only one of those types. In other words it doesn't matter how many times it appeared, it was only 'one of the figures'.
I had the same problem with a DVD my daughter bought me some months ago. It said it had 'one use of very strong language', which we both thought we might be able to stomach. But it was the F-word, and it was used in nearly every sentence spoken! So in DVD marketing 'one use' doesn't mean 'used once', it just means there is one word used an unspecified number of times, but this is terribly misleading, and I dare say deliberately so.
Is that the standard line from the Team these days and, if so, when did it become so? It sounds an important concession to me. The responsibility for the defect is a secondary. This was a defect and a really important one. Good to have Bradley agreeing with us on that.
Bradley either fools himself or attempts to fool others with his diminution of the Hockey Stick. Whether it was there once, like he says, or six times, in fact, he's avoiding the blatant point that it was far and away the most important figure. It's the only figure familiar to hoi polloi. Now that the mists of illusion are thinning among hoi polloi, Bradley and Mann are revealed in possession of the mirage.
I'd want to make as little of it as possible, too.
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"We were emphasising the uncertain nature of the problem."
But no one knows how the uncertainties were calculated. Uncertain uncertainties.
Like a pre-nup, Bradley appears to be bargaining before embracing uncertainty.
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Is anyone taking bets on Bradley mentioning "McIntyre" in his book?
A timely op-ed in the New York Times: "It’s Science, but Not Necessarily Right"
"We were emphasising the uncertain nature of the problem"
"Simply put, the “hockey stick” is bomb-proof."
So, is it uncertain or bomb-proof?
"No amount of data manipulation will make it go away."
Upside down Tiljander and the lonesome pine when removed, do just that. Looks like Bradley's new book is somewhat behind the times.
"But nevertheless, when it got picked up by the summary for policymakers of the third Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, important caveats were left out."
Has anybody got a link which shows either M, B or H drawing the attention of policymakers to this ommission, say, as an erratum to the summary?
I am not holding my breath.
Kim asked re Malcolm Hughes, "Is he incompetent or disingenuous?"
Another data-point is Hughes evasiveness regarding the Ababneh reanalyses of the White Mtn (CA) bristlecones -- which doesn't show the hockey-stick shape that the earlier strip-bark Graybill samples displayed. Hughes was Ababneh's Ph.D. advisor, so it's not like he hasn't seen the data.
I've personally asked Hughes re this at least twice, and written to his dean as well. No reply, no response whatsoever. Pure stonewall, to multiple polite, professional colleague-to-colleague requests. You be the judge, if this is normal, professional behavior.
Peter D. Tillman
Consulting Geologist, Arizona and New Mexico (USA)
Whatever happened to Dr. Linah Ababneh?
She moved to Virginia - William and Mary IIRC.
Is that the equivalent of a nunnery? Just a thought that she might be doing penance for producing the wrong type of data, you know the stuff that doesn't agree with the models....
Google is your friend (Well, at least as far as Dr Ababneh's whereabouts are concerned!)
http://independent.academia.edu/LinahAbabneh
She's still looking at tree rings.
http://arizona.academia.edu/LinahAbabneh/Papers
Doesn't score well here!
http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=1162202
I received an email a few years ago from a friend of Linah Ababneh, himself an experienced forest scientist, stating that she is a fine woman and scientist, who has not had an easy time.
I don't think I've ever read such a stomach-churning exercise in "revisionist scholarship" (not to mention classic psychological projection) as can be found in this Bradley interview - since the virtual eons ago, when I was in the trenches of the newsgroup alt.revisionism, combatting those "voices of reason and seekers of truth", more commonly known as ... Holocaust deniers. Even to the extent of putting forth implausible scenarios, in which they portray themselves as "victims" - just as the major Holocaust deniers did (and for all I know, continue to do)!
But that aside, you'd think that Mann, Bradley and their buddies would have been smart enough to figure out that the world has changed. And that their pattern of smear 'n sneer is a highly counter-productive behaviour. Not to mention that such blatantly self-serving ... uh ... creative re-alignment of the facts can be so much more readily checked and countered.
Years ago I met a brilliant scientist with innovative thoughts in the controversial (NOT!) field of magnetoencephalography, living in an old mobile home to save money attending an international conference.
His troubles had started when his innovative thoughts had rattled a few influential people, all of them scientists of course. Another very bright researcher had been forced to abandon the USA and move to a Scandinavian country, again for her inability to toe the party line.
All of that, in a field whose policy and political implications were close to nil. I can just imagine what kind of hell-on-earth any newly-minted Ph.D in a climate-related science would have to go through for merely having tried to replicate anything remotely connected to the work of Michael "the Bully" Mann.
Has this man read any of the critical literature? His claim is absolutely false. Figure 2 on page 4 of our submission to the National Academy of Science panel shows the simple average of all the proxy data, compared to the hockey stick graph itself (http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/NAS.M&M.pdf). It is not a hockey stick shape, not even close. The HS only shows up with just the right data manipulation. The idea that it is a robust feature of all the proxy data was blown aside more than 5 years ago. If he knows so little about the issue he should have kept his mouth shut.
@Jun 30, 2011 at 2:34 PM Jean S
Now look what you have done with your link Sean! Coincidence?
"Site Temporarily Unavailable
Please check back shortly or choose one of the links above to go directly to your destination. "
Its now back up!
It was the publication of the hockey stick graph in the Sydney Morning Herald that first drew my attention to the climate change issue. I thought "holy shit" and started googling. That led me to M&M's first paper, which grabbed my attention as I was expert in PCA in a different field.
And then I went down the rabbit hole.
A question for His Grace:
It is quite often claimed that while Mann's hockey stick may be flawed, this is now moot, since various other studies using other proxies yield the same result.
True, false, or what ?
Punksta - Hockey Stick Illusion Ch10. The other studies use the same dodgy proxies as the Hockey Stick.