Friday
Jun082012
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Gergis paper disappears
Jun 8, 2012 Climate: MWP Paul Matthews has just drawn my attention to the page for the Gergis et al paper at the AMS Journal website, which now displays a notice as follows:
The requested article is not currently available on this site.
Is this significant I wonder?
Update on Jun 9, 2012 by
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill
Steve M reports that the paper has been "put on hold".
Reader Comments (279)
Jun 10, 2012 at 5:25 PM | geronimo
I did say "very short range". The reason I emphasised the "very" was not just because their daily forecasts can sometimes be next to useless but because I am particularly agrieved at the ability to predict the important facets of weather. For instance, they very often predict what they say is the predominant weather of the day. So if the sun is likely to shine for more than half a day it becomes a sunny day. However, if you are out picnicing because of their sunny day and it drops dogs and cats you will not be impressed. Also, as someone has already commented, they announced with great fanfare their super-duper computer and model which was going to provide accurate precipitation amounts 12hours in advance, as well as 10 year forecasts, and climate change forecasts, all for sale to major businesses (supermarkets, etc) at a cost of £30m to the UK taxpayer which has never forecast accurately (not once) the severe precipitation for which their country is famous. They stole taxpayer's money on that basis and they have just done it again only this time it is double (£60M), and then they don't understand why people get so annoyed at their stupidity.
Quote from Alan Titchmarsh a famous gardener in the UK "This is the wettest drought I'v seen". They are a laughing stock and rightly so ( but an expensive one).
Jun 10, 2012 at 7:01 PM | Skiphil
There is the sad participation of Ailie Gallant in that execrable rap video "I'm a Client Scientist" taking shots at critics like Andrew Bolt by boasting that "our work is peer reviewed."
I find it hard to imagine why any sane researcher would want to come within a million miles of such a moronic act.
The participants need to be named and shamed if their name ever appears as an author of a paper.
Well done for spotting 'Dr Ailie Gallant'; maybe she'll grow up one day when she's got over being inept.
Shub - check out subversion or cvs. They are easy to configure and save a lot of hassle in recording change histories for general research files. Climatology data and programs could particularly benefit from the use of such tools...
Billy Liar
re: the rap video, I for one would have been cutting them lots of slack if it had merely been fun, humorous, light hearted ..... if they had simply done some "hey we're human, we're cool, we can laugh" type of thing then I would laugh and leave it alone. It might have been sophomoric yet I would not comment upon it. But that vid is really vile, nasty, hostile, obnoxious. It polarizes without providing any helpful content. It does not build any bridges, it burns them.
True confession: hers was the only scientist name I recall from that vid, I'm sure it's because I thought she was cute in a nerdy kinda way. See, I'm human and very male.....
[and if scientists do not want to be noticed for their physical appearance, if they want to be viewed as serious sober experts and remain above the fray, then they should not appear in crude rap music videos or engage in political propaganda...... can't have it both ways, Ailie dear.... do you want to be respected as a scientist? Then behave as a respectable scientist....]
Mike Jackson, I was joking. I have no doubts you understand the difference between weathe and climate, a nice climate is always associated with good weather, so there must be some link.
RE: Skiphill
"True confession: hers was the only scientist name I recall from that vid, I'm sure it's because I thought she was cute in a nerdy kinda way. See, I'm human and very male....."
Personally I am rather more impressed with Victoria Cohen, not only attractive but a huge poker winner, first lady to win a major tournament (prize money £500,000). She obviously has a serious brain and can understand risk and probabilty.
@Richard Betts.
"Incidentally, Don, can I have one last attempt to get you to register as a reviewer for the WG2 First Order Draft, which comes out for review tomorrow? "
I appreciate the offer, Richard, which I am sure is meant in all sincerity.
Unfortunately I must decline as I do not wish to be associated with a process that I do not believe looks beyond the increased CO2 = catastrophic climate change paradigm.
There have been comments on a variety of threads (here and at CA, WUWT etc.) wondering about both funding sponsorship for this Gergis study and also about media impact and hype etc. May I call attention to the opening and closing slides of their media presentation on May 17, 2012 (and I urge all to review these slides since there may be info of significance that doesn't jump out at me):
AUS2K Briefing Slides for News Media_May 12 2012_for Gergis et al 2012 paper
[their 4th slide for NH reconstructions is apparently from AR4 and still uses MBH99 and a dramatic hockey stick]
The title page of their Powerpoint media presentation on the paper (May 17, 2012) lists the following at the bottom, seemingly as sponsors or affiliates:
===================================================================
Australian Government, Dept. of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency
PAGES: Past Global Changes: AUS2K
Australian Government: Australian Research Council
==================================================================
This is the final "Summary" slide with the take-away "talking points" for the news media:
==================================================================
Summary
•First large scale study of Australasia’s natural climate records covering the last 1000 years
•Post 1950 temperatures in the Australasian region are very likely the warmest of the last 1000 years
•Developed 3000 reconstructions to improve our confidence in the results: 95% of the reconstructions show that the post-1950 warming observed in our region is unprecedented in the context of the last millennium
•Model comparison shows that the post-1950 warming cannot be explained by natural variability alone, suggesting a strong influence of greenhouse gases in the Australasian region
Buried in the mists of time is the admission by Sir John Beddington , the last of an unrelenting 17 year long succession of climate alarmist environmental advocacy Chief Scientists, is the admission that climate scientists exaggerated the impact of global warming. His admission was only forthcoming in the immediate aftermath of the Climategate revelations.
Prof John Beddington admitted the impact of global warming had been exaggerated by some scientists and condemned climate researchers who refused to publish data which formed the basis of their reports into global warming. In an interview, Prof Beddington, called for a new era of honesty and responsibility from the environmental community and said scientists should be less hostile to sceptics who questioned man-made global warming. His words were refected in a New Scientist editorial that also argued that climate scientists should "welcome in the outside world" for more scrutiny. Prof Beddington also said public confidence in climate science would be boosted by greater honesty about its uncertainties. ''I don't think it's healthy to dismiss proper scepticism,” he said. “Science grows and improves in the light of criticism. "There is a fundamental uncertainty about climate change prediction that can't be changed.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7081039/John-Beddington-chief-scientist-says-climate-change-sceptics-should-not-be-dismissed.html
Sadly, the newfound humility and honesty did not last long. Within months, the BBC propaganda was back, Climategate was whitewashed, and the bandwagon rolled on once more.
Richard Betts
You know its all smoke and mirrors really.
But we like you.
"[Gavin] said "real" scientits only care about finding the errors and then moving on and learning about what the data show us after the corrections are made."
Jun 10, 2012 at 6:30 PM | Mickey Reno
So presumably Gavin concurs with the opinion that 'Prof' Phil "You can't have my data 'cos you just want to find something wrong with it" Jones isn't a real scientist. Nice to see that confirmed.
And perhaps 'scientit' is an appropriate term for such people;-)
I have just listened to the 30 min. audio of the May 17, 2012 media presentation by Karoly, Gergis, and Phipps.
If it's ok with our host I am going to post two comments with some of my notes and observations. While this is not the "formal" presentation of the academic paper, these are the public remarks to a media event announcing publication of the study. I think it is (potentially) important for what the co-authors want the media to emphasize as talking points. I think there were some remarkable statements even IF the study were accepted as reliable (and of course to the extent that the study results may be modified or withdrawn then these statements become ever more tenuous).
First, I want to jump to the end, where David Karoly makes a final statement and claims the study simply abolishes any idea of a MWP for Australia (he sometimes is not consistent about when he uses "Australia" vs. "Australasia" but in the final remarks he keeps referring to "Australia").
At 26:07 to 27:33 there are some statements by Karoly that seem extraordinary even IF the study results were accepted as correct:
====================================================================
David Karoly gets rid of the Medieval Warm Period for Australasia
Karoly: their study "shows for the first time that there was no substantial MWP in the
Australian region."
Karoly: "so there wasn't a MWP affecting Australia"
Karoly: "and there has been no period in at least the last thousand years which as been as warm as the past fifty years, with a very high probability"
edit: somehow copy and paste broke the hyperlink above, here it is repaired:
David Karoly gets rid of the Medieval Warm Period for Australasia
These are more of my notes and quotes from the May 17, 2012 press event which featured Karoly, Gergis, and Phipps. Both Gergis and Karoly emphasized no MWP for Australasia, although it's hard to conclude that even from their data as presented. Does a MWP have to be ABOVE today's temps to be significant? They seem to be assuming that!
A few things that jumped out at me:
[comments in brackets like this are my own remarks and questions; quotations are as I heard and transcribed them although I don't claim to be a courtroom recorder]
1) Karoyly credits "all of the members of the Aus2K working group" of the international PAGES project.
[so more than the 5 co-authors were involved although not necessarily in the statistical analysis]
2) Karoly claims 0.8C "warming" in the temp record in the past century.
[Orally he SAID "since 1950" although the slide he was showing clearly depicted that change since 1910, a piece of careless speaking that no one else picked up on]
3) Gergis said the point of the project was "to extend the instrumental climate record centuries back into the past."
[this strikes me as a curious way to refer to paleo records, as though they are perfectly settled as comparable to the modern "instrumental" records.... although a remark of hers at the end in response to a question brushed aside any concern about tree rings as thermometors]
4) Gergis shows slide #6 with geographical distribution of the proxy records used
[the white box on her 6th slide depicting locations of proxies used seems much too small to encompass a couple of the proxies they used, such as Palmyra.... this has been discussed on CA although not in reference to this media slide I don't think]
5) Gergis emphasized her claim that there is no "divergence problem" at all with tree rings and temperatures for the SH within the scope of this study
[although she did not really offer any argument or evidence. Simply dismissed it as an issue for their study.]
6) Gergis: "we've used state of the art statistical techniques"
7) Gergis (and also later Karoly): notes that they found max. medieval temp. for 1238-1267 was 0.09C below 1961-1990.
[Both Gergis and Karoly stated that this eliminates all concern about a MWP as indicating present is still within range of natural variability, although it's hard to see how less than 1/10 of a degree (when the error range is much larger) can provide such confidence.]
8) Phipps: discussed using "natural variability" in the models and said of NV "which is a random process" varying no more than one degree up or down from the mean
[ME: how can they possibly KNOW that (a) natural variability is random, and (b) that it varies no more than one degree C up or down??? this seems like a circular method of analysis, assume that you already know that NV is both random and limited to one degree of amplitude!!!]
9) Phipps: discussed the models tested and asserted "the reconstruction and the climate modeling reinforce each other."
10) Phipps: refers to "greenhouse gases" and says "this study demonstrates a strong human influence"
====================================================================
only a couple of questions were asked by journalists
[I don't know if few were present in this online meeting or if most simply didn't engage]
To one about tree rings as reliable for temp. Gergis merely arm waved and said there's no issue, that it might be debated for NH but that their study doesn't show it etc. Gergis just completely dismissed any significance to even raising the issue.
At 26:07 to 27:33 there are some statements by Karoly that seem extraordinary even IF the study
results were accepted as correct:
David Karoly gets rid of the Medieval Warm Period for Australasia
Karoly: their study "shows for the first time that there was no substantial MWP in the
Australian region."
Karoly: "so there wasn't a MWP affecting Australia"
Karoly: "and there has been no period in at least the last thousand years which as been as warm
as the past fifty years, with a very high probability"
The Bishop retweeted this earlier today but it sorely needs posting on this thread- devastating critique from Germany
http://notrickszone.com/2012/06/10/german-scientists-joelle-gergis-has-lost-all-critical-distance-to-her-research-results/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
Jun 10, 2012 at 1:24 PM | Foxgoose
As the effects of "boomerangate" reverberate around the world there's little doubt that, deep in the bowels of a climate science lab somewhere down under this weekend, Joelle Gergis, Dave Karoly, Ailie Gallant (et al) are sweating over their PC's as they torture their data for the MK 2 version.
-----------------
This came to mind ... http://youtu.be/ZAYmk9Qb9Dc
There's a bit of background to the NZ tree ring work at NIWA's website
There are some familiar names in this article
Thanks for the Subversion reference, ZT. Though I am not sure whether it would be useful to less intensive applications, as with a single user, for example.
We have an under recognized blogger in Australia, a Professor Bunyip, who previously gave his take on the Gallant-Gergis Murray river paper. The ye olde tongue can make reading somewhat of a strain but worth the effort,
http://bunyipitude.blogspot.com.au/2011/05/insane-clown-posse-part-ii.html
(start about 1/3 in if the intro passages prove too painful ;-) )
It's safe to assume that the authors have known for the last few days how properly following their stated method changes the graph and impacts their conclusions. With some of the proxies not public and requests being ignored or denied who wants to guess at how long it will be before we find out?
Maybe it makes no difference, or maybe instead of a hockey stick we get a MWP style boomerang :)
Clearly, Gergis has "Gleicked" her data.
While perusing online info about the Gergis et al team I came upon this. Pitman (co-author of the article linked below but NOT one of the Gergis co-authors) is the Director of the ARC's Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, which lists Karoly as a Chief Investigator. Considering that Gergis referred to the ARC's "linkage" grant and that this ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science seems to be well funded by the ARC ($21.4 million for 7 years), it may well be that her project was funded somewhere within this umbrella project (though I haven't seen anything about that yet).
Pitman and Karoly on team for ARC's Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science
An interesting little aside from 2010:
Newell and Pitman on The Psychology of Global Warming
"On the perception side, climate scientists must
strive to be trusted, credible sources of information
without, if possible, engaging in advocacy and divisive
rhetoric. In short, try to let the science speak for itself
in a clear, comprehensible manner (Fischhoff 2007)."
I'd say that the Gergis deleted blog and the Gallant rap video do not quite meet this goal of avoiding "advocacy and divisive rhetoric."
I appreciate the offer, Richard, which I am sure is meant in all sincerity.
Unfortunately I must decline as I do not wish to be associated with a process that I do not believe looks beyond the increased CO2 = catastrophic climate change paradigm.
Jun 10, 2012 at 8:59 PM | Don Keiller
Don, You were already very high in my estime but this takes you over the top. Richard, you will note, has no problem with the lies, deceit and down right fraud inherent in the IPCC process.
AR5 will be a doozy. :))
Revkin's blog and the Retraction Watch blog have picked it up:
Revkin in NY Times blog on Gergis et al 2012 paper
Retraction Watch on the Gergis et al 2012 paper
Stephen Richards: "Don, You were already very high in my estime but this takes you over the top."
...following Don Keiller's rejection of Richard Betts' request: "Incidentally, Don, can I have one last attempt to get you to register as a reviewer for the WG2 First Order Draft, which comes out for review tomorrow?"
I add my endorsement and sentiments to yours, Stephen Richards.
Admirable, Don.
Jun 11, 2012 at 8:01 PM | stephen richards
Jun 12, 2012 at 6:00 AM | Roger Carr
Well, it's easy to just sit on the sidelines and make snidey comments, but the other approach is to put your money where your mouth is and actually subject the IPCC to some real scrutiny.
Anthony Watts reviewed the Working Group 1 report, and Vincent Gray made lots of comments in AR4, many of which were acted on.
Steve McIntyre's engagement with the palaeo chapter in the Working Group 1 report appears to have served a useful purpose in highlighting a problem with one of the papers being cited (Gergis et al) - without his involvement, this may not have happened.
Jun 11, 2012 at 8:01 PM | stephen richards
Jun 12, 2012 at 6:00 AM | Roger Carr
Well, it's easy to just sit on the sidelines and make snidey comments, but the other approach is to put your money where your mouth is and actually subject the IPCC to some real scrutiny.
Anthony Watts reviewed the Working Group 1 report, and Vincent Gray made lots of comments in AR4, many of which were acted on.
Steve McIntyre's engagement with the palaeo chapter in the Working Group 1 report appears to have served a useful purpose in highlighting a problem with one of the papers being cited (Gergis et al) - without his involvement, this may not have happened.
Jun 12, 2012 at 11:58 AM | Richard Betts
I don't consider those as snidey but can well imagine that you would. Steve McIntyre has suffered ignominy, insults and ignorance from Chapter Managers and other reviewers at the IPCC. I suggest you go back and read his site from start to finish before making silly statements such as this.
If you and your Met Off had 10% of his integrity, honesty and mathematical ability you and your colleagues would not face such anger netwide. Steve's comments to past ARs were ignored and derided as I'm sure you have read in the climategate emails.
Incidently, I am waiting with baited breath for the final passwords which will come to be sure. They will be even more revealing than the previos two, I'm sure.
Lastly, if Steve Mc cannot move the IPCC process and the UK government cannot move the IPCC process and the UN cannot move the IPCC process what chance does a single Physicist have except to stand on the sidelines and prode those of you that are part of the corrupt system that we are all trying to change. You could start by calling for the dismissal of Patchy, the biggest fraud of them all.
Steve McIntyre's engagement with the palaeo chapter in the Working Group 1 report appears to have served a useful purpose in highlighting a problem with one of the papers being cited (Gergis et al) - without his involvement, this may not have happened.
Jun 12, 2012 at 11:58 AM | Richard Betts
You got that just a little wrong RICHARD. Perhaps you read that article with the same eye as all of Steve's previous. It was Jean S that prompted the review. Roman and Steve took up his analysis, as Jean requested, and found that Jean was correct. Steve requested the data previously and the reply was very similar as mine to you. Touché.
You will note that Steve's involvement has been somewhat reduced since the first (AR1).
Jun 12, 2012 at 1:01 PM | stephen richards
Maybe I've remembered it wrong or mis-read, but didn't this all start because Steve saw something in the AR5 First Order Draft that prompted him to ask for the Gergis et al paper (which was still unpublished at the time) and then ask for the data?
Happy to be corrected if I've got that wrong.
Richard Betts
Yes and no, and I think there are multiple aspects to how it came to be discussed at Climate Audit. Steve seemed to first focus in upon Gergis et al (2012) both because of the first draft of AR5 and because of the May 22 article on Real Climate. I don't know whether he requested the paper before May 17 (when the authors announced online publication and posted the link) or before May 22 (when RC posted their article with a link), but somewhere in that time period he becomes concerned with trying to access the proxy data and analyses for that work. On May 31 (first comment I recall from Steve M) he said this on a Myles Allen thread (quote is hyper-linked):
Steve McIntyre on May 31, 2012 re Gergis et al (2012), "...By coincidence, Myles’ comments come in the midst of another data non-archiving incident that I haven’t reported on."
"Real Climate recently praised a new multiproxy study (Gergis et al 2012). Gergis et al is the fourth or so multiproxy article co-authored primarily by Raphael Neukom and Joelle Gergis. Several articles in this corpus are cited prominently in AR5...."
So far as I can tell that is the beginning of the "public" discussion on CA that led to Jean S making the June 5 comment etc. It may be speculative to try to say whether Steve M. would have focused on the Gergis et al (2012) anyway due to the Real Climate emphasis upon it, but he does mention his interest in references to four or so studies in the Neukom/Gergis corpus in the first draft of AR5.
To clarify my remark since I'm beyond the edit period for post above:
Clearly Steve M's attention was drawn to Gergis et al (2012) by knowledge that their series of articles was playing a role in AR5 First Order Draft. He also cites the Real Climate article of May 22, so he might have "gone there" anyway, even had he not been involved in the AR5 review process. He had been seeking proxy data from Neukom long before. Steve was focused upon Neukom et al and data archiving issues with them at least back to Jan. 2011:
Neukom et al and data archiving issues, Jan. 2011