Tuesday
Sep242013
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Harrabin cites Marcott
Sep 24, 2013 BBC Climate: IPCC Climate: Sceptics It's hard to imagine a more thoroughly discredited scientific result than the Marcott graph, which must rank amongst climatology's most shameful moments. Nevertheless, the BBC's Roger Harrabin has given it the full-page treatment in his latest piece on the IPCC, as eye-candy to go alongside an interview of Rajendra Pachauri.
Meanwhile, Marcel Crok gets a mention in this Matt McGrath piece on the key questions facing the IPCC.
Reader Comments (49)
Roger seldom appreciates my sarchasm. This time around I suggested he may simply not know about the Marcott failures because he (Roger) just doesn't ever read whatever "contrarians" have to say.
In the same article Pachauri is declared as sharing the Nobel Peace Prize, and that's another famous lie that Roger's readings once again might have mislead him into believing.
Yes, that's professional environmental reporting at its best.
It is another example of this whole new method of scientific discourse that climate scientists and their pseudo scientist hanger-ons can be proud of.
I.e. The creation of papers that ostensibly can only show some shallow result that has no real innate novelty or drama, but then later can easily be finessed, by allowing friendly misrepresentations to build in the media, into being icons of something more.
Marcott certainly did this, Cook's 97% does it. The practice should be given a name I reckon. How about "Marcotting"?
Has anyone else noticed the disconnect between Harrabin, who is an untrammelled propagandist, and Shukman, who is professional, giving both sides of the argument?
Shukman is the guy from the Oryx scandal. He might have learned a thing or two on how to be a journalist.
A quick summary of the Marcott graph for the BBC:
Harrabin wouldn't buy a second hand car that was made from two insurance write-offs welded into one vehicle, and nor should he buy 'scientific data' that has been treated the same way.
Bish,
Could you pen a one page (max) summary of what is wrong with the Marcott graph, and publish it in a GWPF briefing note?
Yes, like Roger I was hoping for a link to information and criticism of the Marcott graph.
An interesting question is where Harrabin got that version of the Marcott graph from.
John Kennedy (Met Office) pointed out that it is worse than the original since it incorrectly labels as "observed temperature" a curve that goes back almost 2000 years.
Yesterday I asked Harrabin on twitter where he got that graph from. He didn't reply. In fact he never responds to any of my tweets, which is curious since back in 2010 he wrote to Anthony Watts saying
"I am trying to talk to UK scientists in current academic posts who are sceptical about AGW."
It's been pointed out on twitter by Paul Matthews, John Kennedy and Ruth Dixon that the graph used by Harrabin has been mislabeled. Mann's recon is labeled "observed temperatures".
Marcott is a good battleground to choose as it is easily understood by the layman, so I hope the Bish does take on Harribin over this.
The sleight of hand in the graph can be seen here:
Marcott graph deceit
and a previous post on the Met Office and Marcott is here:
Met Office and Marcott BH post
Shameful stuff by the BBC.
Harrabin also decides to award Pachauri, or should I say Prof Pachauri (? - what Universoty does he work at?) the Nobel Prize, underneath the photo:
'Prof Pachauri shared the 2007 Nobel peace prize for his work'
RETRACT BBC. RETRACT I SAY, you disseminators of, well, things that just aren't true.
Roger, Robinson, I wrote a brief online comment on Marcott et al that Science published at
http://comments.sciencemag.org/content/10.1126/science.1228026
(If that is paywalled let me know and I will post the text)
The authors did not respond, showing that they have no answers to the issues raised.
The simplest one-line argument is that Marcott's thesis analysed exactly the same data and produced a graph that has no upward spike at the end, see Roger Pielke and Steve McIntyre.
That chart plots a yellow line labelled "observed temperatures" which extends back maybe 1500 years.
WTF? Not only is it tosh, it is dishnoest or at the very least misleading tosh.
Heh, didn't see Paul's post before posting. Ruth Dixon pointed to graph S9b in this
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/suppl/2013/03/07/339.6124.1198.DC1/Marcott.SM.pdf
but I think it's actually S4b..
If all they’ve got left is the Marcott graph then it shows how desperate they are, my money is on an IPPC summary for policy makers that all out jumps the shark completely, showing it’s just been written by politicians and not scientists, queue deep ocean heat, drowned puppies, exploding school kids – the whole nine yards.
TLITB
'Cooking' is a bit obvious, I suppose...
An earlier comment suggests that our host should publish a briefing note on Harrabin's article at GWPF.
The BBC is bound to broadcast and publish lots of biased propaganda over the coming week. Most of the stories will probably be covered here. Surely that presents a great opportunity for Andrew to do an audit of the BBC coverage and produce a summary showing the blatant bias? If the write up is published here and at GWPF and other sceptical sites it could well be picked up by the MSM, particularly the Mail on Sunday.
The catalogue of bias could also form the basis of complaints by the rest of us to the BBC, the BBC Trust and the Minister in charge.
Paul, thanks for the link. I think it is worth posting here, which I will take the liberty of doing below. However, I think it needs re-writing for the layman, in a style that the Bish is clearly expert in.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This paper includes several graphs that show slow temperature variation over the last 10000 years followed by a rapid rise over the 20th century. This aspect of the paper has unsurprisingly been seized upon enthusiastically by climate activists and journalists. However it is clear that this result is spurious. Note the following points: 1. The proxy data in the accompanying Excel file show no dramatic increase in the 20th century. This can easily be checked simply by plotting the supplied data. 2. Figures S5 and S6 show no recent upturn at all. 3. The Phd thesis of the first author uses the same data sets and plots similar graphs, but with no trace of any sharp increase. This earlier contradictory work is not cited in the paper. 4. The supplementary material provides no explanation for how the graphs were constructed. Carrying out an averaging of the proxy data yields a graph similar to that in the thesis, quite different from that in the paper. Why was no detailed explanation of the procedure reported? Will the authors supply the code that was used?
Any one of these issues would raise serious questions about the validity of this work. Taken together they leave no doubt that the results presented are spurious and misleading. The paper should be withdrawn immediately. The fact that such an obviously flawed paper was published raises serious questions about the authors, the quality of the refereeing process and the handling of the paper by the editors of Science.
sue writes at 12.44pm:
Oops, yes, should have gone to Specsavers!
I have complained to the BBC about the award of the Nobel prize to the wrong recipient. I have complained only twice to the BBC - and the last time was about Harrabin too.
Do they not ever learn? It is just another hockey stick graph.
Please put your fingers in your ears when you read this. Rajendra K Pachauri was a director of Indian Oil Corp even during his time as head of the IPCC .
Wikipedia
On 20 April 2002, Pachauri was elected Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations panel established by the WMO and UNEP to assess information relevant for understanding climate change.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajendra_K._Pachauri
Sorry, full thing
Wikipedia
Pachauri was on the Board of Directors of the Indian Oil Corporation (January 1999 to September 2003).
On 20 April 2002, Pachauri was elected Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations panel established by the WMO and UNEP to assess information relevant for understanding climate change.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajendra_K._Pachauri
"I have complained only twice to the BBC - and the last time was about Harrabin too."
I estimate around 100 complaints ... but I can't remember the exact number so I thought about a clever way to find out and sent an FOI request for a list of climate related complaints.
The FOI was rejected because they (falsely) said it was covered by a journalistic exemption.
Sep 24, 2013 at 12:56 PM | Registered Commenterjamesp
Absolutely it is! Cook would get too much credit as well - I would say he is firmly at the pseudo end of the spectrum.
Besides, bit tired of all the ho, hum "Cook the books" yadda yadda, easy lines etc ;)
I think getting a more credible scientist (who could actually be shamed?) known for shonky PR finessing would be far more satisfying. ;)
I far prefer "Marcotting", I think that would sound intriguing to the uninitiated , "Ooh, "Marcotting"; what's that? ;)
Just realised "Marcotting" sounds a bit like "marketing" too. Maybe depends on pronunciation though? :)
As, I have no doubt, the Bish will soon enjoin you to not feed the troll, let me ask that its comments be left on, but ignored; the antics then become very amusing in its attempts to get a response, in its desperate attempts to get noticed.
paid lyers , lie , hardly news
eSmiff-
This is a HUGE story. Pachauri was a founder of GloriOil, now Glori Energy. The company motto is "Tomorrow's oil from yesterday's wells."
Tthis scumbag has no moral compass? Or is this just another one of his behaviors that, according to Pachauri, he will correct in his next life?
chris y
I got a text message from the supreme cosmic being, Lord Vishnu this morning. He informed me that Pachauri will be a virus in his next incarnation. The exact details are classified.
Marcott? I thought that lot had disappeared into fairytale folklore:
along with Gordon Brown's fiscal prudence,
faeries building HS2 at the bottom of the garden is a boon for mankind, the universe and Birmingham,
Ed Miliband can be a great PM,
oh and the heat has all disappeared into the ocean.............
Send in the clowns, here comes Roger or, is it the laughing gnome?
The bog-standard BBC environmental correspondent, the thing is, the taxpayer is obligated to boost his monthly bank account - and in the end; that is a great insult to an already heinous injury.
This link to Ross McKitrick's piece in the Financial Post sums up the latest on Marcott.
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2013/04/01/were-not-screwed/
After reading this one wonders how the whole thing got peer reviewed in the first place, considering that the authors said a few days after publication that ' “[The] 20th-century portion of our paleotemperature stack is not statistically robust, cannot be considered representative of global temperature changes, and therefore is not the basis of any of our conclusions.”
However the climb down from Marcott never hit the headlines and the dodgy graph sails on with hockey stick attachment...........
Jazznick
Agreed. A further "peer-reviewed" paper is not required to demonstrate that the uptick is artifactual. This is explicitly stated in Marcott et al. It should rest on their conscience that they wished to present it in that form.
They amplify on the point in their Real Climate FAQ, viz
A:
"(1) the different methods that we tested for generating a reconstruction produce different results in this youngest interval, whereas before this interval, the different methods of calculating the stacks are nearly identical (Figure 1D), (2) the median resolution of the datasets (120 years) is too low to statistically resolve such an event, (3) the smoothing presented in the online supplement results in variations shorter than 300 yrs not being interpretable, and (4) the small number of datasets that extend into the 20th century (Figure 1G) is insufficient to reconstruct a statistically robust global signal, showing that there is a considerable reduction in the correlation of Monte Carlo reconstructions with a known (synthetic) input global signal when the number of data series in the reconstruction is this small (Figure S13)."
B:
"Any small “upticks” or “downticks” in temperature that last less than several hundred years in our compilation of paleoclimate data are probably not robust, as stated in the paper."
alan kennedy
No. You're wrong. If Marcott wants to debunk his own work or retract any part of it then he has to do it in a peer-reviewed paper.
The fact that the original was misleading (either by accident or design) or that it might even have been total cobblers is irrelevant. If it appeared as a peer-reviewed paper it is gospel truth and not to be argued with.
Or so the Truro Troll would have us believe. So it must be right. Mustn't it?
Makes you wonder where some people keep their brains.
Omnologos (Sep 24, 2013 at 11:50 AM): “Sarchasm”? A bit deep, isn’t it?
BBC can do better than this.
Watching Milliband at the Labour Party Conference.
Keeps saying Britain can do better than this .BBC can do better than this but the sound keeps going up and down.
Milliband says he wants to freeze Energy Prices for 20 months.He just has to put Taxes to cover it.
Then he want a Carbon Free Energy sector by 2030 .Easy just buy more expensive French Nuclear power.
Poor Ed Milliband forget Wind Turbines Energy Prize Freezes the Next Looming Energy Crisis.
California seems they had Energy Price Freezing .Because the Energy companies were not allowed to make a profit and invest they withdrew the supply and there were Power Blackouts across California.
ooops
When Schwarzenegger became State Govenor he deregulated the whole Energy Sector went back normal service.
Why not forget Decarbonisation just deregulate the whole UK Energy, build what ever type power stations you what ever makes a profit.Get Nukes Get Shale get rid of Windfarms.
Poor Tamsin getting a serve for having the temerity to associate herself with denier like the Bishop. Even the Almighty Mann descended to unload his approbrium.
SimonW:
Placing curves with different frequency content (a smoothed versus an unsmoothed one) is only one of the three tricks played.
The other two tricks are to multiply the smoothed curve by a factor less than one (scaling bias associated with the reconstruction method) and then shift the smoothed curve down (offset bias associated with the method). When I say "tricks", I use that word tongue in cheek. I doubt that Marcott is even aware that these biases exist in his reconstruction, let alone knew that he should have corrected for them.
So many errors in the McGrath piece too.
The anomalous spike from Levitus occurs exactly at the splice of the older guesstimated data with the Argo float data. There is no spike in SST data and no rise in the accurate Argo data since launch. Ergo anyone believing that the spike is meaningful is either daft, misinformed or motivated to seek out sudden rises from whatever hokey source.
Three enquiries found no evidence of climategate malpractice because they didn't bother to pretend to look for any evidence. Apparently simply asking your pals if they were bad boys is what counts as an enquiry.
The idea that heat goes in the ocean or is hidden by aerosols are the 3rd and 2nd most plausible explanations. The most plausible explanation is that climate scientists don't know as much about natural variation as they'd like gullible journalists to believe.
Unlike mainstream scientists, climate skeptics or rather climate realists correctly predicted this pause along with correctly predicting the lack of trend in major climatic events and various other non-events. That makes them the real experts in this long-overdue debate. Why does getting things wrong all the time still qualify you as an expert?
The nonsense that wet places will get wetter and dry places will get drier is something that is endlessly repeated but which has no data or theory behind it. Some models predict this but others refute it. Nature utterly refutes it. Do they expect it to become true by repetition? The logical extension of this simplistic logic is that is that global cooling will be a jolly good thing.
And so on....
The BBC has sunk to several new lows over the last few years and Harrabin's continued employment will ensure their environmental reporting will never rise above the level of mere left wing propaganda. If Tony Hall has any hope, or even desire, of raising standards at the BBC Harrabin is exactly the type that needs to be shown the door, preferably without the bung from taxpayers funds.
In some ways it could be said it's good news that the BBC has continued his employment, because it will only hasten the day when the public will demand the end to their taxpayer funded lifestyle.
I have complained to the BBC about the Marcott graphic. It is false on at least three points:
1. Overlaying 300 year smoothed proxy estimates with temperatures
2. It has the spike on the end of the proxy, which by the authors own admission cannot be resolved and was no in the original thesis
3. The BBC appears to have overlaid "observed temperatures" covering a 1500 year period. That is so false it is beyond parody
I have saved the web page and will be writing to the Trust and to my MP next. This image is so blatant I cannot see how the BBC can keep it on the website.
Others, please complain so we can get it removed.
Horrorbin contacted me a couple of years ago to try and elicit why I was a "sceptic".
I sent him a load of peer-reviewed papers and basically said that the science was not "settled".
Needless to say that was the last I heard from him.
Horrorbin does a very good impression of the wise (or not so) 3 monkeys.
Gecko
Have you a link to Tamsin and the Mann comment?
I note that Richard Betts and Bob Ward were outraged by the David Rose piece in the DM a few days ago because it was false information. I don't suppose we we will see any comment whatsoever about the odious piece by Harrabin.
As I have commented before climate science is in a mess because climate scientists refuse to act responsibly and call out bullshit on BOTH sides of the argument.
fascinating twitter exchange here:
https://twitter.com/MichaelEMann/status/382242278116302848
michael mann pops up towards the end
For those not familiar with Twitter: you have to click on each tweet to get the full conversation. I was sending multiple responses to each tweet.
Mann's a bit 'Edna Cloud', isnt he? Couldn't I/D Peter G from Tamsin's msg. We knew instantly. As we recall his rage over Tamsin's Blog title.
The BBC itself had withdrawn a comment about the Marcott graph, but apparently Roger did not see that. :)
The Met Office's My Climate and Me website has removed a blog post about the Marcott Hockey Stick:
We previously posted an article entitled “New analysis suggests the Earth is warming at a rate unprecedented for 11,300 years” covering the paper by Marcott et al in Nature. The title of our article drew on the original press release for the paper. However, we note that authors of the paper have since issued an extensive response to media coverage
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2013/6/14/met-office-withdraws-article-about-marcotts-hockey-stick.html