Bishop Hill Yup
Sep 19, 2011 Climate: MWP In the past I've told people that I reckon much will be made of the Salzer et al. paper in the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report. The paper purported to find that bristlecones were in fact reliable proxies, despite everyone previously having agreed that they were contaminated with a non-climatic signal.
I'm therefore not very surprised to see this report in the New York Times today.
A study published in 2009 — with Matthew Salzer of the Laboratory for Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona as the lead author — found bristlecone ring-growth rates in the second half of the 20th century to be higher than in any other 50-year period in the last 3,700 years.
“The accelerated growth is suggestive of an environmental change unprecedented in millennia,” the report states. As a result, the bristlecone pine is considered by many dendrochronologists to be an “indicator species” for climate change.
With this, and the fact that CRU's own Tim Osborn has been lined up as a lead author, my prediction is that the Fifth Assessment Report will major on the millennial temperature reconstructions like its predecessors.
Reader Comments (40)
Will the AR5 have anymore scientific credibility than a horoscope?
Does the public listen to these climate loons anymore?
Not only will they call it an indicator species for climate change, I predict they will claim it is teleconnected to global climate and therefore is the most appropriate species to use in reconstructions.
The authors can satisfy the critics by producing the physical hypotheses which explain the behavior of these trees in the environment studied. Those physical hypotheses would refer to each and every factor that has an effect on the rate of growth of this kind of tree ring. No one has done that. In any other branch of science, this fact alone would make the work unpublishable in a scientific journal.
"accelerated growth"
Whence came the decline, then?
Bish, I've been reading "Past Climates (Tree Thermometers, Commodities, and People)" (1983) by Leona Marshall Libby. She pioneered the use of isotope variations in tree rings as a climate indicator. To quote from chapter 2 "The Experimental Approach" (p29):- "The next problem concerned which trees to measure.......But, to prove our hypothesis that trees are, themometers, we needed to compare stable isotope ratios in the tree rings with mercury themometer records near where the trees grew. Thus we could not use bristlecone pines, because there is no lengthy temperature records near their home in the White Mountains of California (nevertheless, some measurements of D/H in bristlecone pines have been published; se Epstein and Yapp 1976)." Here's an newspaper article about her weather/climate predictions from 1979:- http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=aJpjAAAAIBAJ&sjid=N3wDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6824,139587&dq=global+warming&hl=en
A researcher at the Laboratory for Tree-Ring Research has found evidence that laboratory tree-ring research is valuable.
Who'd a thunk it?
who can possibly be against more plant growth ?
=> the new york times.
it took them until 1965 before they acknowledged the holocaust.
Why shouldn't the Fifth Assessment Report major on the millennial temperature reconstructions like its predecessors ?
There are at least 13 global temperature reconstructions pointing to warming, a change in the climate. Whilst skepticism covers a wide range of views I think it's fair to say that most AGW skeptics are arguing 'it's not that bad' rather than its just not happening. But AGW skeptics havent produced a millennial temperature reconstruction of their own to counter the warmist narrative. Has there been any discussion amongst skeptics as to whether a global millennial temperature reconstruction is needed? I don't think so, we have a vague assurance that Mr McIntyre doesnt feel that he should do one , but surely somebody should. The planet has a global mean surface temperature and the warmists have the initiative on reconstructing it. Surely contrarian researchers can produce their own graph saying what temperatures have been over the last 1000 years.
It is as if AR5 has already been completed and someone is going through the varios papers and making sure that all the otherwise loose enda are tidied up. This is happening whilst ignoring the fact that the IPCC has been totally discredited and recomendations for it's improvement have been quietly shelved or deemed to be irrelevent.
The mind boggles.
Hengist you are quite right. If Mann, Bradley, Briffa and co can generate global temperature data for the last 1000 years from a few tree rings and have it accurate to within 1ºC without any coherent physical theory to explain how this could happen, then the burden of proof must be reversed and it must be treated as settled science and used as a basis for policy unless and until their opponents can produce a competing fiction.
@ Hengist Surely contrarian researchers can produce their own graph saying what temperatures have been over the last 1000 years.
I am not sure if Patterson is a contrarian but his March 2010 paper based on chemical analysis of O18 isotope ratios in Icelandic mollusc shells clearly showed the RWP, MWP, LIA etc.
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100308/full/news.2010.110/box/1.html
I recall the paper being discussed over at Anthony's, here is the link:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/10/paleo-clamatology/
I suppose that there is no truth the rumour that AR5 will be distributed with a free knitting pattern for a DIY straitjacket?
Has anyone here actually passed a Hengist Mcstone?
If so, how dose it equate to the symbols on the Bristol Stool Chart?
Hengist, when there was no politicisation to the issue, there was a graph of temperatures generally considered acceptable. This included a medieval warm period. This was considered acceptable at the time the IPCC
It was only when the medieval warm period became a problem, that a new science evolved, dedicated to eradicating the mwp.
By some miracle. there was research money for this work. What had the mwp done to harm anybody? There was no money to defend the existence of the mwp, and it was hunted down and attacked, everywhere around the world where it dared to demonstate its modest rise in temperatures
There is a very good book about it called "The Hockey Stick Illusion". It will enable you to answer some of your queries posted above
"But AGW skeptics havent produced a millennial temperature reconstruction of their own to counter the warmist narrative."
An amusing comment. While it is tempting to point out that they have produced several, it's far funnier to offer the one in the BACKTO_1400-CENSORED directory. :-)
(Of course, many skeptics would doubt whether a millenial reconstruction to any useful accuracy is even possible, so this objection makes no sense. It is like a believer in horoscopes demanding the skeptic give a better prediction of the future based on a person's birth date as the only way 'to counter the astrological narrative'. But pointing that out would spoil the joke.)
The link to the actual paper is:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/03/02/0902522107.full.pdf+html
I liked Cris's comment on the WUWT thread:
"Error bars! What are these . . . error bars?!"
I love these little discussions.
'Where's the contrarian data'
'We don't need to produce any'
Then a bit of name-calling - comparing one poster to a kidney stone. how droll, how adult.
Not one of the best comment threads. I didn't know that much about bristlecone pines as historical thermometers before, and I sure as hell don't know any more now. The signal to noise ratio on this blog's comment threads is getting ridiculous.
lapogus,
You may also be interested in Loehle 2008, or Ljungqvist 2010. Or there's the classic McIntyre & McKittrick 2003 where he corrected the errors and extrapolations in MBH98 to get a version with no hockeystick. But of course, McIntyre was very careful to emphasise that it was *not* being proposed as a reconstruction, as there was no evidence offered that temperatures could be reconstructed from proxies in the first place.
ScotsRenewables
With such a positive contribution, what is the point in having your PC switched on?
Renewables are under enough pressure as it is, why are you wasting them?
ScotsRenewables
Would it not be more intelligent to post something along the lines of
"I do not know what the issue is with bristlecone pines, could someone please post some links"
rather than your post at 11:04?
@scotsrenewaballs
Not about "kidney stones"
It was about poetry in a motion
I also reserve the right to maintain my childish approach to life.
ScotsRenewables
Where is the AGW data?
"We are not going to reveal anything to anybody"
Then a bit of name calling "skeptics" ,"Deniers". "Flatearthers"
Not one of the best methods of developing a scientific arguement.
Signal to noise ratio? Loads of noise and still no sign of the missing heat?
(sorry are you aware of the missing heat issue?)
I think you'll find, Hengist, that the alternative temperature history you'll looking for is called the null hypothesis and states that the temperature continues to experience unexceptional trivial variations.
I beg pardon to repeat my comment in a slightly different way. What peer reviewed paper has clearly explained the physical science necessary to show that something, say bristlecone pines, are reliable proxies for temperature? There is not one.
Must we repeat the story of poor old Briffa, the paleoclimatologist with no scientific instincts? He discovered 40 years of data showing that the tree rings used in his Yamal study are unreliable as proxies for temperature. What did he do? He went along with Jones and others who "hid the decline." That is the reliability of proxies and no one has shown differently. Briffa never returned to the Yamal study to do the actual empirical research that would produce the physical hypotheses that explain the behavior of the tree rings under the conditions in Yamal. No one in paleoclimatology is interested in the physics of tree ring growth. No one has done the work or is planning to do the work. Everything they say about the reliability of their proxies is pure hype.
3700 years of Bristlecone rings. Is this a recent revelation?
Surely they are joking? I suspect that what actually happened is they discovered a new hallucinogenic drug in the bark of the trees and they weren't wearing gloves while handling it.
Ababneh Ho!
========
O/T but too cute to ignore. i've long noticed that, when a pollie is about to get the boot, the media forgets how to spell or pronounce their name, as if they are already forgotten. if u r lucky, that's what's happening here:
19 Sept: Daily Mail: David Wilkes: It's a nightmare conference for Chris Huhne as both his wife AND his mistress turn up
Photo caption: Chris Huhme was forced to endure a living nightmare...
Mr Hulne, who, in 2007, came within 511 votes, out of 41,000, from becoming leader of the Lib Dems instead of Nick Clegg, announced last June he was leaving his wife of 26 years for his allegedly bisexual lover...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2039233/Lib-Dem-Conference-2011-Chris-Huhnes-wife-mistress-Birmingham.html
Hen gist, please be assured that there are over 1000 papers with temperature reproductions of the last millennium, written by 549 scientists (I don't know if they would describe themselves as contrarian, they're probably just people studying the topic), yet the IPCC concentrates on a handful of reconstructions from less than 20 scientists, I suppose it would given the handful of scientists are themselves the Ippc. You should get yourself more informed if you want to contribute meaningfully to the discussions on these threads.
Have a look, inform yourself.
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php
I too support Anoneumous in his/her pursuit of maintaining childishness.
To serious, is just that.
I didn't know that much about bristlecone pines as historical thermometers before, and I sure as hell don't know any more now.
Sep 19, 2011 at 11:04 PM ScotsRenewables
In that case you do not know much about this site, the "Hockey Stick" or the so called "Climate research, so, before you jump in again maybe you should go and read earlier posts, Also try S.M's site. I understand he did quite a lot of work on the subject. Even better, put your hand in your pocket and buy the Hockey Stick Illusion. That book covered the issue in quite some depth.
You could also look at the right hand side bar at the top and try clicking "Key Posts" ...The Yamal Implosion or Caspar and the Jesus Paper would be good starters.
We do understand the newcomers have some catching up to do so feel free to pop back when you know more.
Some decades ago, when I began labouring on farms, my older fellow workers,, most of whom had survived active military service during WW2 and knew BS when they saw it, would discuss the latest pronouncements in the newspapers ('the meeja' hadn't been invented then) and decide for themselves, using their own experiences and knowledge, whether or not the reports were believable.
Sadly, that critical facility seems to have been lost.
Having read the Bish's excellent tome and familiarised myself with the major aspects of dendrothermometry through various sources, I can hear my old workmates laughing heartily at the gullibility of 21st century Man.
Purported remarks at a Bilderberg Group meeting in Baden-Baden, Germany in June 1991 by David Rockefeller:
When I visited the famous Bristlecone Pine at Bryce Canyon a couple of years ago, I was struck by the basic lack of symmetry of the tree - it looks deformed. (You can google for images.) If they were anything like the one I saw, it is hard to figure out how a core could be used at all. Presumably the ones that were cored were more symmetrical and conducive to taking cores. (for example, http://www.terragalleria.com/pictures-subjects/bristlecone-pine/bristlecone-pine.all.html) From these images and if I understand the term correctly, it appears that strip barked is the more usual status.
@Iapogus, thanks its on my reading list. FWIW I dont doubt there was an MWP and a RWP
@golf charley
Ive got the Hockey Stick Illusion. There is a brief unfootnoted reference on p212 that McIntyre was not offering up an alternative reconstruction but there is no discussion in HSI of whether an alternative reconstruction would be necessary to inform public debate.
@geronimo
The link you have given me is to a site funded by Exxon and Scaife and a think tank called American Legislative Exchange Council. Its not a reliable source for science . I doubt very much your claim "there are over 1000 papers with temperature reproductions of the last millennium" , the link you have given me is to a portal not to a single scientific paper.
who bothers disowning the oh so trustable Scots..
Should they not be busy help Meghrani to die?
The short annotated history of the IPCC's working definition of 'climate science' follows:
John
The link you have given me is to a site funded by Exxon and Scaife and a think tank called American Legislative Exchange Council. Its not a reliable source for science . I doubt very much your claim "there are over 1000 papers with temperature reproductions of the last millennium" , the link you have given me is to a portal not to a single scientific paper.
This pseudo-sophistication regarding funding sources is always amusing. It is especially so when juxtaposed with your...um...unsophistication about reading and navigating an overview page that exists to help organize the large number of scientific papers you claim don't exist.
Let's try this in small steps:
1) Start with geronimos link:
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php
2) See the list of regions. Click on one..."Europe", for example
3) Observe list of ~90 links, each to a published study
4) Scroll to one..."Tornetrask Area of Northern Sweden", for example, and click the link.
5) Observe reference to paper from Climate Dynamics and key quote from paper
6) Return to step (1) and repeat until persuaded that many papers suggest the MWP was very real
After that, you may also wish to re-read your petulant and incorrect comment to geronimo and consider writing a different note.
Does the bristlecone grow in the southern hemisphere?
According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristlecone_pine it grows only along a narrow coastal strip on one continent. How can that tell us anything useful about millenial global average temperature anomalies?
And how does the pine's temp profile 1950-2000 compare with instrumental records in rural California during the same period?