Bishop Hill Rand Simberg reviews the Yamal story
May 18, 2012 Climate: MWP Rand Simberg at PJ Media reviews the Yamal story, quoting extensively from yours truly.
But at a minimum [Yamal] should be the final blow to the hockey stick, and perhaps to the very notion that bristlecone pines and larches are accurate thermometers. It should also be a final blow to the credibility of many of the leading lights of climate “science,” but based on history, it probably won’t be, at least among the political class. What it really should be is the beginning of the major housecleaning necessary if the field is to have any scientific credibility, but that may have to await a general reformation of academia itself. It would help, though, if we get a new government next year that cuts off funding to such charlatans, and the institutions that whitewash their unscientific behavior.
Reader Comments (62)
Link to Muller comments (5-min. video) re "Hide the Decline":
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2011/03/hide-decline-in-5-minutes.html
Can I ask question about a subject which I am completely ignorant of now that we've been swamped by tree-ring guys?
Is there any experimental laboratory work currently underway to resolve the divergence problem and to find out how trees have responded to the recent warming?
The 'lab work' I am talking about will be similar to the work that's carried out to find how plants respond to increased CO2. This experiment will seek to find out how tree ring growth is affected by the elements; temperature, nutrient, precipitation, etc. What I'd like to know is whether two trees of the same species planted side by side and given the same amount of water and nutrients will develop tree rings with the same temperature signal, and whether the temp signals in the rings match up with the local instrumental record.
Naturally, I am not talking about a thousand-year-experiment involving bristlecones, but a multi-year or multi-decadal experiment with fast growing trees.
Greetings All,
First thanks to some of the SA 4th year students who dipped in when they should have been revising for their LAST exam today. Pure procrastination!!!
Many of the criticisms to dendro I think (hope) I can quite easily address and will try to do this over the coming months. I do not BELIEVE that tree-rings are a valid proxy for past climate – faith is not needed here - I KNOW that in many situations, tree-rings can be used to study past climate. I look forward to trying to bring the facts and evidence across. As my local sceptical blog, I hope Andrew does not mind me using this as a forum for this.
A couple of quick points:
1. The early results (unpublished) of my long Scottish pine chronology for chronology hints at a warmer and longer medieval period than the Sunart record. However, I would not trust one single tree-ring record due to site specific issues (ecology, management etc), so be careful about one marine record from a complex fjordic environment.
2. Oak cannot be used for temperatures in England. I have just had a paper published using Oak for precipitation as that is the main limiting factor. There are however many problems in these data. It is the best we can do at this time when using just ring-width.
Wilson, R.J.S, Miles, D., Loader, N., Melvin, T.M., Cunningham, L., Cooper, R.J., Briffa, K.R. 2012. A millennial long March-July precipitation reconstruction for southern-central England. Climate Dynamics doi:10.1007/s00382-012-1318-z
If anybody is interested, I can send a PDF of the paper next week.
Anyway – am off to the Highlands to spend 2 days looking for sub-fossil pines in lochs. If anybody is a keen walker or runner in the Scottish Highlands and have seen locations with lots of remnant woody material, I am all ears.
Rob, I have seen remnant pines in the peat along the north-west shore of Loch Laidon, (towards the south-end of the loch). Also in upper Glen Affric, though in both instances I'd say these more like roots rather than trunks (assuming that is what you need). It is a lot easier to get into the heart of Rannoch Moor than it used to be as the forestry road into the 1970s Laidon plantation has been extended about 3 miles. Only 25 mins on a mountain bike now. Open canoe still the best if you are setting up a camp and planning to take lots of samples out. There are some great wee beaches along Loch Laidon. I would have thought that there would be plenty of remnant pines further north on Rannoch Moor also - e.g. on the hills between Rannoch Station and Corrour. Your best bet would be to speak to one of the local keepers - they will know the ground best. I don't know any of the keepers but Rob who owns the hotel at Rannoch Station should be able to give you some names. Please send the oak precipitation pdf - I will pass on to my Professor neighbour who I am sure will be interested, thanks. The Bish has my email address. Good pine hunting, now the miserably cold rain has stopped and the sun has returned, I envy you.
p.s. don't be confused by the chunks of mahogany still littering the moor beside the railway line - the Victorians built the snow fences to last and only used the best hard wood!
update - if you are going on foot you will be best to follow the shore of Loch Laidon, there is a rough path in places it was the original route of the Right of Way, but few people use it nowadays as the forestry road is quicker. There are a couple of burns to cross but nothing difficult. It was along this shore where I remember seeing quite large pieces of pine in the peat. (the banks of the burn may be a good place to look?) Lots of peat hags further into the moor.
"First thanks to some of the SA 4th year students who dipped in when they should have been revising for their LAST exam today. Pure procrastination!!!"
Can't speak for his science but his sense of humour gets a pass from me.
Bish,
Apologies, now that others have posted comments which show the arrogance of Rob Wilson's statement in regard to the MWP I'll now (attempt) to moderate my tone.
Firstly Spacey and 4th year student. Please 'wake up and smell the roses' while you still have some time i.e please save the UK taxpayer some money at least and go and change you degree/postgrad course so that you study a subject which will ultimately make a positive contribution to improving our society rather than one that can be so easily warped by politicised activist and used as a tool to society's detriment.
Shub
I totally agree with your entire post in regard to the whole spatial homegeneous/heterogeneuous debate when it comes to the MWP (and LIA). Rob Wilson IMO first insults our inteliigence by first denying that he knows anything about the Demming and 'Peck' incident and then proceeds to make an unjustifiable statement on this issue (MWP versus late 20th century spatial warming homegeneity) and then pops back to tell us that he'll be educating us on why he KNOWS that tree rings can tells us valuable information (worthy of the money spent on his research by UK taxpayers) about past climate at a later date. IMO only someone who is arrogant would even attempt to make such a self-serving over confident statement as in reality we just don't have sufficiently accurate data to be able to compare 'apples with oranges'. Indeed why are we even attempting to do so and it is patently clear to anyone who has studied history that the MWP (and the Minoan and Roman Warm Periods before it) was a significant climatic period which helped to shape the history of Europe in particular.
What data (modern instrumental temperature record) we do have gives us no reason to be concerned about the late 20th century warming period and certainly in no way proves that it was 'unprecedented in the last 1000 years'. In fact what data we do have doesn't even show that it was statistically any different to the early 20th century warming period i.e. from 1910 to 1940, let alone to teh Minoan,Roman and Medieval Warm Periods.
Since Rob Wilson is allowed to quote his own (unpublished) work to justify his statements then perhaps I am able to do so as well.
http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2010/01/18/mapping-global-warming/
in particular take a look at Figure 2 which shows that lack of homogeneous warming over the 1880 to 2010 period that we are all supposed to be concerned about and then Figures 7,8,9 and 10 which show the alternating cooling (1880 to 1910), followed by warming (1910 to 1940), followed by cooling (1940 to 1970) followed by warming (1970 to 2010) periods. Do any of those maps show 'homogeneity' in regard to warming or cooling across the globe during any of those periods? No! What they do show is that its perfectly possible for parts of the world to warm at the same time as other parts are cooling and vice versa. In other words they demonstrate clear, unambigious significant spatial natural climatic variability.
KevinUK
@Rob "Many of the criticisms to dendro I think (hope) I can quite easily address and will try to do this over the coming months."
This would be helpful. Here are 3 for starters.
1) Given that plant growth follows an inverted "U" shape with respect to temperature- i.e. has an optimum, how do you dinstinguish sub-optimal temperatures from supra-optimal?
2) No one has provided a credible answer for the "divergence" problem. Why should we believe that trees which currently correlate with moderm temperatures did so in the past and vice-versa?
3) How do you avoid type 1 statistical errors when you "optimise" your treering records, i.e. "cherry picking?
Have a good time in the Highlands:-)
@Rob - May 19, 2012 at 9:13 AM
"If anybody is a keen walker or runner in the Scottish Highlands and have seen locations with lots of remnant woody material, I am all ears."
sounds like a good project for interested people, any tips for finding remnant woody material, do you use a preferred (treeline) map for scotland to help your search?
ps. although Scottish i now live in IOM, so doubt i can help :-(
Good list, Don Keiller. (I presume you are reciting from what Craig Loehle posted/published somewhere.)
I am wary of the whole notion of a limiting growth factor.
I do understand that the mission is to find trees in environments where the temperature is overwhelmingly the greatest limit to growth. Hence finding trees near the “tree line”, whether high altitude (Colorado mountains?) or high latitude (Yamal?) Thus in theory a beaver pond or river course change should only affect growth by moderating temperature, as the tree cannot make use of more water if temperature is low? (Rivers change course, especially in non-rocky geography as they erode one bank more than the other.)
And if temperature is overwhelmingly the limiting factor cloudiness or forest density won’t affect growth much. Similarly while density might affect the amount of CO2 available that won’t affect growth much because temperature is overwhelmingly limiting.
I do understand that the limiting-growth theory is hotly debated by botanists, though agricultural people think in terms of “degree-days” (days above a threshold temperature, which sounds approximate to me as it does not reflect higher temps).
Oh, there’s also the question of regional climate variation, perhaps decades long, as ocean currents vary.
BTW, there is a long tree line on the other side of the earth – in Canada. (Its latitude varies from west to east, as weather is more severe the closer one gets to the water between Canada and Greenland – I don’t know about Alaska near the Bering Strait, perhaps mountains are a major factor in latitude variation of the line in Canada.) Perhaps someone could do more tree-ring research in Canada. (Though verification of the physical limit to the effect CO2 can have, on top of the failure of alarmist theories to match reality of current climate performance, makes the whole debate go back to simply plodding science – if humans cannot have much effect on climate the political debate doesn’t exist.)
I do challenge Rob Wilson to clarify his claim that screening out a change in response to temperature over a long period of time can be achieved by comparing to other independent proxy records. What do those records actually show, compared to tree-ring analyses favoured by climate alarmists? Solid exposition of that is what I expect from the “paleoclimate community”.
“lapogus” makes a very good point about the growing season being short anyway, so growth only measures summer temperatures. I like looking at variation in the tree line, but that has the same problem. Many people are focusing on high temperatures, but it is low temperatures that kill our food source – plants. (I’m tired of alarmists publishing glossy documents full of photos of parched earth, instead of lush jungles enabled by high temperatures in the tropics – the crucial difference is distribution of precipitation.)
Some clarification/correction to my comments on the effect of water and density:
- Don Keiller’s point about a beaver dam was that it would create too much water for good growth. I don’t know much about that, my experience in NE B.C. with small swamps supports that point, whereas trees beside water seem to grow fine (flying over NE MB and NW ON in Canada is over water and trees, not much else, not much elevation change). Some trees do better than others near moving water – Cottonwood/Black Poplar for example rather than regular poplar/trembling aspen, though soil porosity may be different as well.
- The moderating influence on temperature of a beaver dam’s reservoir might reduce or increase growth by limiting daytime temperature when growth might occur, depending on how hot the air would otherwise get (I’m just pointing to things to investigate). However, a vegetable garden might benefit from the extended growing season due prevention of frost at night. Water may help prevent damage to fruit trees in some areas of the world, but Yamal gets quite cold in winter, freeze-tolerant fruit species there more likely resemble blueberry, cranberry, gooseberry, saskatoon berry, wild rose and such as seen in northern Canada.
- Crowding may affect availability of nutrients, if the soil is weak in certain ones. (Perhaps levels of different nutrients as well as pH of soil is a major factor in which tree species populate an area in the long term.)
Insect attacks and death of some trees for other reasons are good points.
(I understand that here on the wet coast of North America individual trees often die in mature forests – perhaps for the reason given in Don’s Case 4. Tree ring analysis as a proxy over hundreds of years requires a stable forest, as I understand Douglas Fir provides on the wet coast of North America. (It supplants earlier-growing species like Garry Oak, forest practice here is to replant with the desired species after logging. Similarly I understand that birch is often short lived – colonizes early but does not live for centuries.)
Sounds like a complex field that needs the expertise of tree botanists to make use of data.