Another confounding factor?

This is a week or so old now, but this Mother Jones article looks at a new paper which reports the effect of livestock on tree rings. The study is focused on birch, so it's not directly relevant to the paleo studies, but the McIntyre and McKitrick paper in E&E in 2005 discussed the possibility of the introduction of livestock having brought about the twentieth century spike in bristlecone growth that underpins the hockey-stick shape of so many of the millennial temperature reconstructions.

Interestingly, the new paper's conclusion is that livestock can reduce tree ring widths by a factor of three or so, but according to the press release, "past densities of herbivores can be estimated from historic records, and from the fossilised remains of spores from fungi that live on dung". In other words, you can control for the effect. As the paper's authors say in their press release:

This study does not mean that using tree rings to infer past climate is flawed as we can still see the effect of temperatures on the rings, and in lowland regions tree rings are less likely to have been affected by herbivores because they can grow out of reach faster.

Somebody needs to repeat this study on the bristlecones.

A quote for Paul Nurse

I came across this quote in the transcript of the Guardian Climategate debate last year. It's McIntyre's summing up of the importance of the failure of the inquiries to address the allegations made about the CRU scientists.

If climate scientists are unoffended by the failure to disclose adverse data, unoffended by the `trick' and not committed to the principles of full, true, plain disclosure, the public will react, as they have, by placing less reliance on the pronouncements from the entire field.

The thought struck me that you could delete the word "climate" at the start and the whole thing would stand quite nicely as a message for Paul Nurse, spelling out his responsibilities to science as a whole.

Guardian debate transcript

TonyN and Alex Cull have posted a full transcript of last year's Guardian debate featuring McIntyre, Keenan, Fred Pearce, Trevor Davies and Bob Watson, and all overseen by George Monbiot.

On the front Lynas - Josh 105

More eyes opening up? Looks like it!

Cartoons by Josh

The Beddington challenge

Judith Curry has taken up Sir John Beddington's challenge to scientists to stand up and be counted in the battle against pseudoscience, with a long post on the subject of the Trick to Hide the Decline.

It is obvious that there has been deletion of adverse data in figures shown IPCC AR3 and AR4, and the 1999 WMO document.  Not only is this misleading, but it is dishonest (I agree with Muller on this one).  The authors defend themselves by stating that there has been no attempt to hide the divergence problem in the literature, and that the relevant paper was referenced.  I infer then that there is something in the IPCC process or the authors’ interpretation of the IPCC process  (i.e. don’t dilute the message) that corrupted the scientists into deleting the adverse data in these diagrams.

McIntyre’s analysis is sufficiently well documented that it is difficult to imagine that his analysis is incorrect in any significant way.  If his analysis is incorrect, it should be refuted.  I would like to know what the heck Mann, Briffa, Jones et al. were thinking when they did this and why they did this, and how they can defend this, although the emails provide pretty strong clues. Does the IPCC regard this as acceptable?  I sure don’t.

It's pretty interesting to see Sir John Beddington, Sir Paul Nurse and rest of the scientific establishment, as well as most of the sci-bloggers in the UK, all lining themselves up on the side of pseudoscience on the Climategate issue and Hide the Decline in particular. I wonder how long they can sustain the charade that everything is well in UK climatology?

Comments

Has anyone else noticed the first two comments under Steve M's post on the New Statesman 50? Made me laugh anyway...

Making an impact

Congratulations to Steve McIntyre, who is included in the New Statesman's list of "50 people who matter".  The campaign to have Steve elected a fellow of the Royal Society starts here. :-)

M&M honoured by CEI

Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick have been honoured with this year's Julian Simon Memorial Award by the Competitive Enterprise Institute. The Hockey Stick Illusion gets a mention in the press release too.

Anthony Watts has the story.

IAC blanks M&M

The Interacademies Panel - the one that is investigating IPCC process and procedures as a result of Climategate - is going to be holding hearings in Montreal.

Great, I hear you say. That means that they'll be able to invite McIntyre and McKitrick.

'fraid not.

The invited speakers do include a sceptic, in the shape of John Christy. They are even flying in Bob Watson from the UK and Hans von Storch from Germany. But will they invite the two people who have been at the centre of criticisms of the IPCC, who know more about the breaches of rules and procedure that went on ahead of Climategate, and who live, if not just round the corner, then at least handily close?

Don't be silly.

The IAC is inviting comments on its website. I think this omission is worthy of (polite) comment, don't you?

American Spectator on McIntyre

The American Spectator has picked up on the Heartland conference's muted reaction to Steve McIntyre's keynote presentation.

...it was an extremely odd audience reaction: McIntyre received a standing ovation upon his introduction, thanks to his dogged research and unrelenting demand for information and accountability, but then his blase' attitude about scientists' behavior -- particularly Mann's -- left most of the audience cold and some even angry. The applause for McIntyre was tepid upon the conclusion of his remarks. I don't think I've ever seen that before.

As Roger Pielke Jnr has explained, the Nature trick doesn't seem to amount to fraud "as it is defined in the academy". I must say, I'm not sure I understand how the academy defines such things, but there are clearly many who would apply real world definitions in these circumstances rather than one used solely in academic circles. The question is, who is right?

More on policing and sceptics

Some interesting developments on the involvement of various high-powered police units in the UEA investigation.

First up, Steve McIntyre reports in the comments to the earlier thread that he has been approached by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police:

Click to read more ...

Stephen who?

Has anybody noticed how little attention the committee gave to Steve McIntyre's evidence? I said at the time that their failure to invite him to give evidence smacked of not wanting to know the truth. In particular, SM's evidence put the Nature trick in clear perspective, but despite that the committee concluded there was no case to answer.

It looks as though my original surmise was correct.

Josh 12

McIntyre and Harrison

One of my favourite political bloggers, "Tom Paine", says some nice things about the Hockey Stick Illusion in an interesting essay charting the parallels between Steve McIntyre's experiences at the hands of the scientific establishment and those of John Harrison, the man who solved the problem of longitude.

Smearing at long range

A few days back I mentioned the attempts to connect Steve McIntyre to big oil by pointing out that he had once given a talk at a think tank that had once received a donation from an oil company.

I'm not sure everyone believed me, but there's another hilarious example of the same thing today, with a connection being "revealed" between McIntyre and the Russians. Speaking of James Delingpole's story about the Institute of Economic Analysis, who have accused the Met Office of cooking the temperature books, Unity has this to say.

What Delingpole failed to disclose was the series of connections linking the Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) to a number of Western right-wing economic think tanks and, through those think-tanks, to a number of high profile global warming deniers and, through one of these, directly to Steve McIntyre.

I can't help but be reminded of the old saw about everyone being connected to  everyone else in the world by no more than seven links of association.

(Declaration of interest - I know a guy who works on an oil rig. That's my credibility shot then.)