It seems to me that debate is an important part of science. Putting "debate" in quotation marks tells me one of two things:

1) This person does not view climate studies as a science.
2) This person does not believe that debate is an important part of science.

I can sympathise with the first point of view. Science typically involves competing theories, one of which eventually wins out on its merits. It seems to me that climate advocates want to silence critics, because their "science" can't win on its merits. Time and again, I seem them dodging questions and dismissing critics. This does not give me confidence in their methods.

I can't agree with the second. We always think we know the facts, then something comes along which shows us we were wrong all along. It's happened again and again in physics, chemistry, biology - all branches of science. To close your mind to the idea that some theories can be wrong is to close your mind to science.

There is one added fact that seems to be ignored - Greenland today remains much colder than what it was in the MWP.

The Vikings had large farms, ran cattle pigs, frew crops etc etc.

Today they can only grow the hardiest of crops, and small flocks of goats, sheep etc extreme south. Modern day Greenlanders cannot achieve agriculturally what the Vikings did from 900 to 1200 AD.

Hence the MWP was warmer then as it is now, and what is happening now is a return to the temperatures of the MWP.

Louis, I agree that that's a tough one for AGW proponents to explain, but I've mentioned this before - you have to give a suggestion how you extend the case of Greenland globally if you're going to claim this is proof of a global effect (or lack of one). It certainly seems to extend to Western Europe also, and I've seen substantial evidence of similar situations on other continents. But until you give some justifications, your argument can always be dismissed as "oh, that's just a local effect" (even if there's no evidence/explanation of how that is the case given).

Heh, slightly unrelated this article I came across is pretty amusing. Gotta love the contradictory headlines/changing tune. Even "Nature" gets in on the act.

Oops, forgot to put the link, or else it got stripped out. Article is http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2005/05/27/antarctic-ice-a-global-warming-snow-job/.

By the way, relating to my initial point. Lindzen is dismissed as a "sceptic" but most people who don't agree with him. I would be more impressed if they could engage him on his scientific arguments, rather than just dismiss them, personally.

Nicholas - sigh - that's the press. Don't confuse the press and science. We have discussed as this prior on this blog and there is nothing new nor contradictory in the Antarctica issues.

And the justifications you seek are in the Osborn & Briffa paper - be worthwhile reading it first. It's not just another hockey stick analysis and goes to the heart of the matter that's been there all along - the spatial extent of the pre 20th century warmings and coolings.

Phil, what is your summary of the new paper w.r.t. Linzen's second point? As I have written before at this blog .. I find the 'hockey stick' debate one of the hardest to get my mind around and have not taken the time to understand the models and data input.

Nicholas,

The MWP was indeed global. The only reason there is so much emphasis is because of the existing documentary records. There wasn't much civilisation in the southern hemisphere, remember.

Some evidence for this is from Korea http://plaza.snu.ac.kr/~tjyi/library/meteor.htm, for example, describing the LIA.

Southern hemisphere? GRL paper: http://www.cosis.net/abstracts/EAE03/03382/EAE03-J-03382.pdf though coming ice cores the dating could be considered problematical.

As for 20th century warming - this plot of the absolute global mean temperature shows that there isn't. http://lhcrazyworld.blogspot.com/2006_02_01_lhcrazyworld_archive.html

The graph frequently used is a temperature anomaly display of the data which is a method of data manipulation to hence low level signals in the overall signal.

Remember that the hockey stick analysis is invalid from first principles because Mann et al used principal component analysis, a form of linear algebra applied to statistical data and applied it to grossly non-linear data.

And in any case McIntyre has analysed Osborn and Briffa's paper http http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=524#comments

Nicholas

a better link to the graph is this
http://lhcrazyworld.blogspot.com/2006/02/absolute-global-mean-temperature.html

Unfortunately the link to the raw data no longer works, or it did not work on Saturday 11 Feb

Nicholas - I am unsure what point Lindzen is making as the analyses shown here do show changes in the global mean temperature associated with Little Ice Age and MWP.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:1000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png

The global extent of warmings/coolings seem to have always been an issue. The Osborn and Briffa paper do point to the current warming as anomalous globally. And this is but one piece of evidence for a human effect on temperature.

McIntyre may be a genius (he certainly is rather clever) but one wonders how quickly such a complex paper as Osborn and Briffa's released on Feb 10 2006 has been re-analysed.

Louis's temperature graph has completely dazzled me - I suggest he immediately submit it to Nature or Science as breakthrough research.

Phil

The graph referenced in Wikipedia is NOT of the global mean temperature, it is a temperature anomaly graph in which the mean global temperature has been removed. It displays variation of temperature around that mean.

It exaggerates very low level signals. This is essentially a misprepresentation of the data.

Secondly it is a calculation of temperature using proxies, and there are inherent errors in that process which McIntyre is slowly but surely revealing with his statistical work.

The reason he cottoned onto Osborn and Briffa is because they used most of the proxies Mann et al used, and as you can see on Climate Audit, McIntyre is still unravelling it.

My graph, which dazzles you, is of the absolute global mean temperature from 1880 to 2005. It is not a temperature anomaly graph. It flatly contradicts your AGW assertion.

You forget that Osborn and Briffa are not papers outlining the trend of measured temperature but are computed temperature trends using proxy data.

One cannot compare the two graphs, as it would be a case of apples and oranges.

So explain why these Wiki graphics are mathematically incorrect?

Phil

I never said they were mathematically incorrect.

You obviously don't understand what a temperature anomaly is or how it is computed, do you.

Take my NCDC absolute global mean graph - flat as a pancake because all the variation is within a small +/- 0.5 deg C range and I am showing the temperature in true scale.

Now if you then took the mean of all the yearly means, you will obtain a value that divides the dataset into two groups, 50% above and 50% below the overall mean. Subtract each yearly mean from the overall mean and you get a small residual.

Say the overall mean temperature is 14.4 dC and for 1880 the mean is 13.76 dC, the the temperature anomaly for 1880 is 14.4-13.76 = 0.64.

Repeat this for each year and then plot the data.

The data range is now, eg, - 0.5 to +-.5 centred on zero. Scale the Y axis appropriately and you can create a significant warming and cooling visually, but if you look at the y Axis it's only fractions of a degree Celsius.

This is what Richard Lindzten is on about - this hubbub over miniscule temperature variations at the limit of instrumental detection.

I can make my NCDC plot jump all over the place simply by removing the overall mean from the data, and rescaling the y axis to suit.

Easily done in a spreadsheet.

Incidentally the link to the data is ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/anomalies/

AND a READ ME file that says:

"In February, 2006 NCDC transitioned to the use of an improved Global Land and Ocean data set, the Smith and Reynolds analysis (2005), which incorporates new algorithms that better account for factors such as changes in spatial coverage and evolving observing methods. There will be updated files submitted to this directory on a monthly basis around the 15th every month.

Ticket #NCDC-2006-02-06-476: pls remove directory from ftp0

An "improved Global Land and ocean data set"? No wonder January was declared the hottest in history!

And you wonder why we climate sceptics are so cynical and scathing of AGW scares.

Phil,

second point - the mathematics - if the temperatures are derived from proxies (usually tree ring data) and PCA analysis is used, then that is a no no.

PCA analysis is essentially linear algebra applied to statistical data and assumes the data are linear. If the data are not, then you cannot use PCA. Period. No one yet has figured out how to handle non-linear data. I am very familiar with it because in my heavy mineral studies in rivers showing turbulent flow, the maths become intractable. We just don't.

It can be shown that tree rings as an indicator of plant growth and thus temperature, (hence its use a proxy) is strongly non-linear. Thuis type of data cannot be subject to PCA analysis because the assumption of linearity is absent.

This is the whole crux of the Mann et al Hockey Stick process - they used incorrect statistical methods. In fact if you spend some time reading Rob Wilson's comments (he is a dendronologist) on the Osborn and Briffa threads on Climate Audit, you will see that there is a real chance that they will never be able to find a linear proxy from tree rings. At the moment they are looking at O18 in the tree rings as a potential proxy, but that is at least 4 years away.

Louis - "My graph, which dazzles you, is of the absolute global mean temperature from 1880 to 2005. It is not a temperature anomaly graph. It flatly contradicts your AGW assertion."

So where did you get the data?

More problems remain - despite what Louis says there is NO evidence that the MWP was global. Greenland has only one small fertile area that was depleted by the Vikings, modern farming there is possible only with imported artificial fertiliser something the Vikings did not have.

It also really does not matter if the MWP was as warm as today. You are assuming that tatmospheric warming only has one cause. Today the warming is caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gases the MWP could have been confined to Northern Europe and been caused by a strengthening of the ocean circulation etc. As can be clearly seen from the real temperature graphs the greenhouse gas warming is overwhelming more natural causes.
http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Climate/Climate_Science/VariationsSurfaceTemp.html

Ender the data WERE here

ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/anomalies/

I reproduce the email I got from Barry Hearne directing me to it.

See NCDC's absolute global mean: http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/NCDCabs1880.htm derived from ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/anomalies/global_meanT_C.all

Ender you obviously have not studies the links I referred to in my reply to Nicholas above.

I am not assuming atmospheric warming has one cause at all - you are CO2. Your reference to Schneider is disengenuous, he publicly stated climate alarmists had to lie to get their view across, for heaven's sake. Can't you find a more reliable source for your beliefs?

Ender,

Looks like you and Phil both do not understand the difference between Temperature Anomalies and Mean Temperatures.

Schneider's graphs are temperature anomalies, and they are NOT real temperature graphs. The top one is a simple temperature anomaly plot and the lower Mann's Hockey Stick.

They are not real temperature graphs. If you think they are, then it becomes understandable why you assume the position you do.

If you want the NCDC data I will gladly send you the spreadsheet so you can see for yourself. I even computed a temp. anomaly plot.

Now Ender, surely you are not suggesting that the medieval warming was limited to Greenland, are you? Of even more interest is the reported claim that the mediteranean region circa 500BC was considerably warmer than today. This data if it were available may have quite an impact on the means used in temperature anomaly analysis.

Louis pls reprint the full Schneider quote !

In any case the graphs are the ye olde well known ex-IPCC.

Ender - I think we should relabel Louis's site as The Shonk File. The greatest collection of AGW porkies on the planet.

Tut tut Feelin down;

From Wiki World;

"readily confess a lingering frustration: uncertainties so infuse the issue of climate change that it is still impossible to rule out either mild or catastrophic outcomes, let alone provide confident probabilities for all the claims and counterclaims made about environmental problems. Even the most credible international assessment body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has refused to attempt subjective probabilistic estimates of future temperatures. This has forced politicians to make their own guesses about the likelihood of various degrees of global warming."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Schneider

From his own site;
On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but – which means that we must include all doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change. To do that we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, means getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This “double ethical bind” we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both

http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Mediarology/MediarologyFrameset.html

Interesting that Scheider claims he has been misquoted on his warning of a coming ice age, I guess it is open to a myriad of interpretations;

"WHAT WERE MY VIEWS in the 1970s? I opposed those arguing that a new ice age was imminent, and instead argued forcibly in my first book, The Genesis Strategy that society needed to be prepared to deal with climatic variability in both directions, I called it the “genesis strategy” after Joseph’s advice to the Pharaoh to store grain in the seven fat years for the seven lean years. Thus, The News’ premise of my “hot or cold, who cares” is blatantly false.

http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/DetroitNews.pdf

However he did publish a paper indicating that an Ice Age was most possible, and that CO2 was not an issue;

Schneider S. & Rasool S., "Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Aerosols - Effects of Large Increases on Global Climate", Science, vol.173, 9 July 1971, p.138-141

Here are the opening paragraphs of that paper -

ATMOSPHERIC CARBON DIOXIDE AND AEROSOLS:
Effects of Large Increases on Global Climate.

Abstract. Effects on the global temperature of large increases in carbon dioxide and aerosol densities in the atmosphere of Earth have been computed. It is found that, although the addition of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does increase the surface temperature, the rate of temperature increase diminishes with increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. For aerosols, however, the net effect of increase in density is to reduce the surface temperature of Earth. Becuase of the exponential dependence of the backscattering, the rate of temperature decrease is augmented with increasing aerosol content. An increase by only a factor of 4 in global aerosol background concentration may be sufficient to reduce the surface temperature by as much as 3.5 deg.K. If sustained over a period of several years, such a temperature decrease over the whole globe is believed to be sufficient to trigger an ice age.

The rate at which human activities may be inadvertently modifying the climate of Earth has become a problem of serious concern 1 . In the last few decades the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere appears to have increased by 7 percent 2 . During the same period, the aerosol content of the lower atmosphere may have been augmented by as much as 100 percent 3 .

How have these changes in the composition of the atmosphere affected the climate of the globe? More importantly, is it possible that a continued increase in the CO2 and dust content of the atmosphere at the present rate will produce such large-scale effects on the global temperature that the process may run away, with the planet Earth eventually becoming as hot as Venus (700 deg. K.) or as cold as Mars (230 deg. K.)?

We report here on the first results of a calculation in which separate estimates were made of the effects on global temperature of large increases in the amount of CO2 and dust in the atmosphere. It is found that even an increase by a factor of 8 in the amount of CO2, which is highly unlikely in the next several thousand years, will produce an increase in the surface temperature of less than 2 deg. K.

However, the effect on surface temperature of an increase in the aerosol content of the atmosphere is found to be quite significant. An increase by a factor of 4 in the equilibrium dust concentration in the global atmosphere, which cannot be ruled out as a possibility within the next century, could decrease the mean surface temperature by as much as 3.5 deg. K. If sustained over a period of several years, such a temperature decrease could be sufficient to trigger an ice age!

>1. There is no doubt that Europe and the North Atlantic were warmer than they are today for several centuries during the high middle ages. This is more than enough information to tell us that major climate changes can occur without the present level of industrialization -- regardless of what happened to the global mean temperature.

Where is the evidence? Even if this were the case, Europe/North Atlantic is say 5% of the globe? Where is Dick's global, hemispheric or regional scale analysis? All large scale scientific analyses contradict this view, with the exception of Soon and Ballunis who mix precip and temperature anomalies and are incapable of capturing the last ~50 years of warming any way. M&M's analysis is irrelevant; they truncated their PC too earlier.

>2. Indeed, if the global mean temperature did not change while Europe and the North Atlantic underwent very substantial warming, this would imply a major change in the geographic pattern of
temperature. However, a major assumption in the hockey stick is that the patterns remain fixed. One is then left with the paradoxical conclusion that if the hockey results are right, the hockey stick analysis is wrong.

This is part wrong and a straw man argument.

I wish I was suprised that people's views stay fixed despite the continuous stream of evidence which contradicts their views but I am not. It is called confirmation bias and is rampant in the sceptic community.

Regardles, global temperatures are now rising at 0.2C/decade which means we will very soon be globally warmer than any time is the past 5,000 millenia.

David

Oddly enough in 1990 Schneider admits to holding the cooling view whilst in 1989 he says that he opposed those views, just trying to find some consistency.. .. ..

INTERVIEWER: You say you didn't believe in global cooling but in your first book you said, 'I have cited many examples of recent climatic variability and repeated the warnings of several well-known climatologists that a cooling trend has set in, perhaps one akin to the Little Ice Age. Well, that was just fourteen years ago.

DR STEPHEN SCHNEIDER: I said that because at the time it was true. But you've got to be honest, you've got to tell things the way they are. I don't mind people quoting what I said in the 1970s.

INTERVIEWER: Doesn't all of that add up to saying that you're asking governments to spend billions of dollars on a view which is different from one you held a decade ago?

DR STEPHEN SCHNEIDER: I don't see any problem in saying that people learn. I'm not embarrassed about a view I held a decade ago.

http://web.ukonline.co.uk/Members/ad.johnson/text/grnhscon.htm

Schneider's book 'The Genesis Strategy (1976) gives the lie to claims recently made on this site (I think by Phil?) that it was only the media that was predicting an imminent ice age, not scientists. Here's what Schneider wrote in 1976:

'I have cited many examples of recent climatic variability and repeated the warnings of several well-known climatologists that a cooling trend has set in - perhaps one akin to the Little Ice Age - and that climatic variability, which is the bane of reliable food production, can be expected to increase along with the cooling.'

Louis could you be honest enough (1) to additionally fit a simple non linear function to your time series and recalculate warming, (2)show the Y residuals, (3) plot your graph at scale where you can see the data, it might improve your site.

Richard

1) Which non linear function should I use? and why should I use one at all? What is the physical basis for using a non-linear function? I should use an exponential function?

Herein we have one of the problems - the assumption that temperature is a function of time. It isn't - what these graphs show is what has happened to temperature over time.

To fit a non-linear function to the data therefore assumes there is some functional relationship between temperature and time, to wit that the temperature depends on where the earth is along its orbit around the sun.

This is crass nonesense.

Next thing is that the price of coffee is dependent on where the earth is around the sun.

2) Y residuals? Of which graph?

3) Since no one knows which graph you are talking about, this is somewhat difficult.

Phil,

Yes ye older IPCC graphs which have now been thoroughly discredited.

You should visit Real Climate - Mann et al are now starting to feel some heat as their commentators are starting to ask some revealing questions which, from what I gather on McIntyres blog, are being deftlyn deflected with diversions. This is in connection with the Osborn and Briffa paper.

As for the rest of your commentary, well, your choice of course.

Rog has quoted Schneider:-

"It is found that, although the addition of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does increase the surface temperature, the rate of temperature increase diminishes with increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere."

So Ender, Phil, and whoever, this clearly shows that as CO2 keeps increasing, the surface temperature actually starts decellerating.

Do any of you actually read and think about what you have read?

Then increased CO2 causes cooling.
Now it is supposed to cause warming but the physics has not changed in the meantime.

How can CO2 have such flexible physical properties?

If Scheider then opts for, if the facts change, so does my opinion, then I would start questioning the science behind this CO2 paranoia.

David, I'd say that your generalised allegation of 'confirmation bias' against Richard Lindzen (which you then generalise to the whole sceptic community) is rather a striking example of the pot calling the kettle black.

Five years ago the IPCC Third Assessment Report proclaimed to the world that the 1990s was the warmest decade in the millennium and 1998 the warmest year. Robert Watson, the then-chair of the Panel (he says he's still the Chair in his personal page on the World Bank Experts website, but some people's views do stay fixed despite the stream of evidence to the contrary) leaked the news to the UNFCCC meeting in the Hague and said that the findings were 'indisputable'.

Now we have Ulrich Cubasch, a lead author of Chapter 1 of the IPCC's next assessment, as co-author of a paper in Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) that includes the following:

'Any robust, regression-based method of deriving past climatic variations from proxies is therefore inherently trapped by variations seen at the training stage, that is, in the instrumental period. The more one leaves that scale and the farther the estimated regression laws are extrapolated the less robust the method is. The described error growth is particularly critical for parameter-intensive, multi-proxy climate field reconstructions of the MBH98 type. Here, for example, colinearity and overfitting induce considerable error already in the estimation phase. To salvage such methods, two things are required: First, a sound mathematical derivation of the model error and, second, perhaps more sophisticated regularization schemes that can keep this error small. This might help to select the best among the 64, and certainly many more possible variants. In view of the relatively short verifiable period not much room is left� (Buerger, G., and U. Cubasch (2005), Are multiproxy climate reconstructions robust?, Geophys. Res. Lett., 32, L23711).

And, just last week, GRL published a paper by D�Arrigo, Wilson and Jacoby (leading dendrochronologists who were co-authors of several papers cited in the IPCC�s last report) which concluded as follows:

�Therefore we stress that presently available paleoclimatic reconstructions are inadequate for making specific inferences, at hemispheric scales, about MWP warmth relative to the present anthropogenic period and that such comparisons can only still be made at the local/regional scale.'

Then there are the many papers by McIntyre & McKitrick, three of which were published last year in GRL. Several of their points of criticism are sufficient in themselves to invalidate the conclusions of the papers upon which the IPCC reached the conclusions in its 2001 report, but the authors of those papers have yet to acknowledge the M&M work, let alone respond to their serious criticisms. I don't think they've acknowledged Buerger & Cubasch either, but Mann has made a patronising comment on D"Arrigo et al on the real climate site.

Perhaps the hockey team don�t need to respond to the criticisms: once governments have accepted IPCC findings, they may be permanently immune from challenge.

In the �Supplementary Notes and References� that CSIRO Publishing has recently published on its website in support of Barrie Pittock�s �Climate Change, Turning Up the Heat�, Dr Pittock gives the following account of M&M�s work and its significance:

�There is a further attack on the temperature reconstructions in Figure 1 by McIntyre and McKitrick in the journal Energy and Environment, 14, 751-771 (2003). The argument centres on the different selection and correction of data. Mann and co-authors are the recognised experts in the field, and thus best qualified to make the expert judgments on data quality and representativeness needed. Mann and Jones in Geophysical Research Letters, 30 (15), 1820-1823 (2003) have extended their temperature reconstructions back to 2000 years. See other discussions on www.greenhouse.gov.au/science/hottopics/.�

These �hot topics� discussions were prepared by the CSIRO and are posted on the Australian Greenhouse Office website as �information�. Dr Pittock�s book carries a Foreword that was contributed (quite improperly) by Dr Rajendra Pachauri, Chairman of the IPCC (he replaced Dr. Watson in April 2002). The book is being promoted by the London-based Earthscan as a �major new textbook� (but it has no footnotes, so anyone wanting to chase up sources gets directed to Dr Pittock�s Notes, and thence to material such as the tendentious �hot topics� on the AGO website). Dr. Pittock completely ignored the three M&M papers that had been published in GRL, and described M&M�s original paper as an �attack� on the temperature reconstructions. In my view this is simply bad science, but the 'recognised experts' always get support from the IPCC milieu (except in the case of economists, where on many points the Panel denigrates or ignores the recognised experts).

My position is that I don�t know whether or not mean global temperatures in the MWP were warmer than at present, and I don�t know whether it matters. It;s not my field.

But it certainly does matter that the IPCC promoted the �hockey stick� graph as a major element, if not the centrepiece, of its 2001 report - and that the IPCC milieu then hounds and villifies those who seek to question aspects of the �consensus�. This too is bad for science.

Ian - that was scientists - plural - a number or body of scientists. What desperate contrarianism. Where is the science literature suggesting an ice age, as opposed to popular magazines and trade press. "Lie" Ian ? - and I thought you were a scholar and a gentleman.

Isn't Schneider at great rabbit - look at em' go. Should we chase the rabbit or not - I think not. I think in military terms it's called "a diversionary tactic".

Louis your site is the biggest load of drivel and codswallop ever writen. You are a shonk ! Your graphs are an example for any stats class in duplicity with statistics. (Don't believe me - get a review from someone with some ability). And Rog by his silence is obviously in complete agreement. Shonks together. And you guys are lecturing Schneider - ha - ROTFL and can't stop.

Keep going in your confirmation bias guys - keep humming that mantra as the world changes around you. Ummmmmm .. .. ummmm .. .

Louis - "See NCDC's absolute global mean: http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/NCDCabs1880.htm derived from ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/anomalies/global_meanT_C.all"

So how did they derive them?

I did not suggest that the MWP was confined to Greenland I suggested that it was not a global event which you cannot show any objective evidence that it was.

Not getting into of that other BS that you insist on posting.

Phil,

I don't think any one believes you do they? Most of your posts are rants and raves directed at climate sceptics by the use of ad hominems and any other rhetorical device you stumble over.

But I suppose its all part and parcel of the herd mentality.

At least your well reasoned replies are an exemplar to the rest of us as en example of unbiassed, polite discourse.

Phil, You're missing the point. I wasn't suggesting that Schneider was lying - I assumed that he was telling the truth and that when he referred to the views of 'several well-known climatologists' he was referring to 'scientists - plural - a number or body of scientists'. Are you saying that he wasn't?

The chapter on climate change in the 'Global Report to the President' (1980) gave just as much weight to the view that the world had entered a cooling phase as to the opposite view. Please refer to that report for the scientific literature which supported the cooling view - it certainly wasn't confined to popular magazines and the trade press.

Ender,

There has been a rather drastic change in data at the NCDC site.

If you read the README file:

"In February, 2006 NCDC transitioned to the use of an improved Global Land and Ocean data set, the Smith and Reynolds analysis (2005), which incorporates new algorithms that better account for factors such as changes in spatial coverage and evolving observing methods. There will be updated files submitted to this directory on a monthly basis around the 15th every month. Ticket #NCDC-2006-02-06-476: pls remove directory from ftp0."

You will find that methodology has changed.

Previously Junkscience plotted the monthly absolute global means directly as temperature versus time. They are now rescripting their programs to take account of all the new file names and cgange in data.

All I did was calculate the mean global absolute temperatures of the 112 monthly figures to come up with one mean absolute global temperature per year. This is what I have plotted on my blog.

As for the MWP being global Ender, the evidence has been posted in the reply to Nicholas above, which I repeat here from a paper submitted to GRL:

http://www.cosis.net/abstracts/EAE03/03382/EAE03-J-03382.pdf

I will scour the web for more evidence of global MWP evidence since you seem unable to see it.

Ender, You suggested that the MWP was not a global event, but you did not put forward any evidence that it was not. The consensus among paleoclimatologists until very recently was that the MWP probably WAS a global phenomenon. In 'The Early Medieval Warm Period and its sequel' (Paleoecology 1, 1965), H H Lamb wrote that 'Multifarious evidence of a meteorological nature from historical records, as well as archaeological, botanical and glaciological evidence in various parts of the world from the Arctic to New Zealand has been found to suggest a warmer epich lasting several centuries between about AD 900 or 1000 and about 1200 to 1300.'

Mann, Bradley and Hughes (GRL, 1999) said that 'Lamb, examining evidence mostly from western Europe, never suggested this was a global phenomenon.' MB&H were either very poorly informed about what the leading scholar in their field had written, or were being deliberately misleading.

Phil, I forgot to comment on your suggestion that my comments on Schneider are a 'diversionary tactic', implying that he's a lone and unrepresentative figure. Nothing could be further from the truth.

For decades, Schneider and his colleague at Stanford, Paul Ehrlich, have led the pack in heaping personal denigration and abuse on scholars with whom they disagree. Schneider was I think the first to condemn Cambridge University Press for publishing Bjorn Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist, alleging (apparently without bothering to inquire) that the book had not been peer reviewed by scientists.

Schneider was the climate scientist who was chosen by 'Scientific American' for their notorious 'hatchet job' on 'The Skeptical Environmentalist in the 'Scientific American' of January 2002. Then he harangued me at the IPCC Experts Meeting in Amsterdam a year later for my temerity in writing to the IPCC Chair Dr Pachauri (who'd invited me to set down my criticisms in writing to him).

Fortified by this evidence of Schneider's soundness and objectivity, the IPCC selected him as coordinating lead author of the key chapter in the contribution of Working Group II (Vulnerability and Adaptation) of the forthcoming Assessment Report.

POSTED FOR LOUIS:

Ender,

this url links to one resource http://
www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/ice_ages.html#anchor2117056

Note that the graph showing unprecedented warming during the holocene, a geologically global period, followed by the MWP then the LIA was derived from the 1990 IPCC document as referenced:

Compiled by R.S. Bradley and J.A. Eddy based on J.T. Houghton et al., Climate Change: The IPCC Assessment, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1990 and published in EarthQuest, vo. 1, 1991. Courtesy of Thomas Crowley, Remembrance of Things Past: Greenhouse Lessons from the Geologic Record.

So your precious Climate Bible even states it.

I have noticed that the MWP period has "disappeared" as a global event as most references to it track back to the Hockey Team and climate alarmist brigade.

I will post more references at a later date since there is little point in flooding Jen's comments with such data.

Of course we all know you regard all and any contrary evidence as BS, but others are a little more open minded and perhaps may be interested in references that have not been censored by the climate alarmists.

And don't worry, it is exhausting countering them with their own weapons, irrational as they are, so there is no fear of me overdoing it. I wish to remain sane a while longer.

Best

Louis

The most recent hemispheric reconstruction by Osborn and Briffa (2006) makes no use of the PC based multiproxy methods previously debated and yet it arrives at the same result - a hockey stick.

M&M's critique has two main points. 1) the couldn't reproduce the origional Mann et al. work (this was largely because they used a different centering period, and subsequently prematurely truncated their PCs) and 2) the first PC has a tendency to be Hockey stick like (this might be so but the reconstructons use more than one PC and this slight bias is not sufficient to drive the observed results).

Isn't it time for the sceptic community to put up a reconstruction using what-ever technique they want which survives peer review, rather than pot-shotting the published scientific literature and then using single proxy series as some evidence of past global climate anomalies?

David

David

Do you read any of the scientific criticisms of these papers?

"Osborn and Briffa [2006] , published today in Science, cannot be considered as an “independent” validation of Hockey Stick climate theories, because it simply re-cycles 14 proxies, some of them very questionable, which have been repeatedly used in other “Hockey Team” studies, including, remarkably, 2 separate uses of the controversial bristlecone/foxtail tree ring data.

Also even more remarkably, they have perpetuated the use of Mann’s erroneous principal components method in one of their key proxies.

Peer reviewers and editors at Science have failed to ensure compliance by Osborn and Briffa with journal data archiving policies, a frequent defect in paleoclimate reviewers for Science, as data for the study is not archived, nor is much of the source data.

McIntyre has quickly found they did use PCA and they basically used the same proxies as Mann et al.

Hence your statement is wrong.

As for your assertion that the sceptic community put up a reconstruction for peer review, would you offer us a clue how this is to be funded?

Criticism of science is part of the process but it seems climate alarmists are exceedingly sensitive of any criticism of their science.

Now why would that be I wonder.

The sheer gall of many in the mainstream climate change community never ceases to amaze me. Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick have received no funding from any source for work over the past three years that has raised the most serious questions about the well-funded proxy reconstructions upon which the IPCC relied for several key conclusions in its last assessment. If a lone health researcher identifies dangerous side effects in a drug that has been developed in a large research institution, is it her responsibility to develop a safe drug rather than to report her findings?

Similarly, David Henderson and I have received no funding from any source for our critique of the IPCC's economic and statistical work. We suggested that the Panel seek assistance from national statistical offices, but they spurned our proposal and issued a press statement attacking us for "questioning" the scenarios and accusing us of spreading 'disinformation.' Then Professor Nakicenovic, the coordinating lead author of the 53-member team that produced the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios told the House of Lords Committee that it was 'simply not possible' to develop new scenarios for the next assessment 'because the process takes a lot of time and requires a large effort' (Evidence, p. 136). Finally, on the realclimate site William Connelley says that it's about time that Castles and Henderson got off their bums and produced their own scenarios!

A postscript. If I'd had made available to me a fraction of the funds that NASA have put into developing the worse-than-useless database at http://beta.ciesin.columbia.edu/datasets/downscaled/ , I would have been glad to arrange for a set of scenarios (including downscaled GDP projections) to be prepared for the IPCC's use which would have been of a far higher professional standard than those that are currently being used by the Panel. Whether they would have been as useful for the political purposes to which the IPCC's findings are put is a different question.

Louis - The only one I could find from 1990 was this one as the 1990 assesment was published in 3 volumes - now you reference is entitled

"J.T. Houghton et al., Climate Change: The IPCC Assessment, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1990"

IPCC First Assessment Report.1990
It was published in three volumes, each with a Summary for Policymakers

Scientific Assessment of Climate change – Report of Working Group I
JT Houghton, GJ Jenkins and JJ Ephraums (Eds)
Cambridge University Press, UK. pp 365
Available from Cambridge University Press, The Edinburgh Building, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge, CB2 2RU (or good bookshops)

Ender,

Yes that is the reference.

In the 1990 transcript the case for greenhouse theory was outlined and "four pillars" were identified as supporting the case. These four pillars were then demolished to which Schneider did not resile and added:

"DR STEPHEN SCHNEIDER: The reason I believe there is a high probability of unprecedented change in the next century is not based on the performance of the planet in the last one hundred years - there are just too many unknown and unknowable factors. It's based on the greenhouse physics."

I know many sites where criticism of Schneider for that famous quote is not permitted - because it's supposedly always taken out of context.
Phil/Ender , as intellectually honest participants , you'd surely have to acknowledge the damage someone like Schneider does to the cause?
I've stated previously that I accept the AGW position simply because the majority of qualified experts do so. This isn't to denigrate someone like Ian Castles who obviously has tremendous credibility.
However , any reasonable person would have to be suspicious of Schneider - his proposition seems to be that telling children stories of the bogeymen so they'll eat their pumpkin is fine because in the end it's good for them.
Or is propaganda OK in the end because it's for a good cause?

Funding: Ring up Exxon Louis !

Yep - bet Schneider wishes he had never said it. It was for some magazine interview as I recall. He does the formally in the transcript - and says it's difficult to balance getting media attention with 100% acknowledging of every uncertainty. My reaction would be look further and judge his wider career and contribution.

But here's his reflection on those oft quoted lines.

http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/APS.pdf

In November, 1995, I debated Simon on Lateline, the Australian TV equivalent of the US Nightline
program, on the issue of the Chronicle bet. In a segment they did not air, Simon charged that I advocate
exaggerating science to enhance the appearance of environmental threats. To bolster this charge he
resurrected an oft-quoted, but usually out of context partial quote, from a Discover Magazine interview (2)
in 1989 in which I decried soundbite science and journalism by pointing out that nobody gets enough time
in the media either to cover all the caveats in depth, (i.e., "being honest") or to present all the plausible
threats (i.e., "being effective"). During the TV debate, months before Simon's APS News article appeared,
I pointed out that he was taking only part of the full quote and that part was seriously out of context - this
is the same source he "quoted" in APS News. The full quote follows, where I have italicized what portions
of it Simon quoted and bracketed what I did not say but he attributed to me in the APS News article:
"On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell
the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but—which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats,
the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like
most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into working to
reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that, we need, [Scientist should consider
stretching the truth] to get some broad base support, to capture the public's imagination. That, of course,
entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified,
dramatic statements, and make little mention about any doubts we might have. This “double ethical bind”
we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right
balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both."
Vested interests have repeatedly claimed I advocate exaggerating threats. Their "evidence" comes from
partially quoting my Discover interview, almost always -like Simon - omitting the last line and the phrase
"double ethical bind." They also omit my solutions to the double ethical bind: (a) use metaphors that
succinctly convey both urgency and uncertainty (pg. xi of Ref. 3) and (b) produce an inventory of written
products from editorials to articles to books, so that those who want to know more about an author's
views on both the caveats and the risks have a hierarchy of detailed written sources to which they can
turn. (3,4,5) What I was telling the Discover interviewer, of course, was my disdain for a soundbitecommunications
process that imposes the double ethical bind on all who venture into the popular media.
To twist my openly stated and serious objections to the soundbite process into some kind of advocacy of
exaggeration is a clear distortion. Moreover, not only do I disapprove of the "ends justify the means"
philosophy of which I am accused, but, in fact have actively campaigned against it in myriad speeches
and writings. Instead, I repeatedly advocate that scientists explicitly warn their audiences that "what to
do" is a value choice as opposed to "what can happen" and "what are the odds," which are scientific
issues (e.g. p. 213 of Ref. 3). I also urge that scientists, when they offer probabilities, work hard to
distinguish which are objective and which are subjective, as well as what is the scientific basis for any
probability offered. For such reasons I was honored to receive, in 1991, the AAAS/Westinghouse Award
for the Public Understanding of Science.
If the readers of APS News are confused by all this rancor and want a fair and balanced treatment of
environmental scientific and policy debates, they can turn to the several National Research Council or
IPCC assessments, (6) in which words like "any," "all," "every," and "entirely" are scarce, and citations
are quoted or paraphrased in their proper context.

Ian you have us at a disadvanatge with your select 1980 Global Report reference. Would you care to furnish us with a pertinent phrase or two and the authors attributed.

Phil,

That would logical but if I did, and the research, had it peer reviewed and published, you would still reject the paper by virtue that it was funded by Big Oil.

I notice Scheider continues the party line:-

"Vested interests have repeatedly claimed I advocate exaggerating threats. Their "evidence" comes from partially quoting my Discover interview, almost always -like Simon - omitting the last line and the phrase "double ethical bind."

None of Schneiders critics have vested interests, so it's not a good look Phil, is it.

Schneider impartial? No, not on this evidence.

Blah blah blah Phil, what you have quoted further indicates that Schneider changes his mind frequently and his opinons cannot be taken literally. Anyway I have already linked his opinions so it proves you just shoot from the lip without reading the texts.

He claims he is misquoted, but the records show him as saying the stuff, doing the talk, then he says he is taken out of context.. .. ..

Says Mr 4 x 2 and Louis the Shonky Shonk withe the BIG Shonky web site. Look at them play that diversion.

Meanwhile back at the warming temperature curve.

Ian - "Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick have received no funding from any source for work over the past three years that has raised the most serious questions about the well-funded proxy reconstructions upon which the IPCC relied for several key conclusions in its last assessment."

That is not entirely true.

"Stephen McIntyre

Contributing Writer
The George C. Marshall Institute

The George C. Marshall Institute received $185,000 from ExxonMobil for "Climate Change Public Information and Policy Research" in 2002-2003.

Ross McKitrick

Senior Fellow
Fraser Institute (Canada)

Writer
techcentralstation.com

Contributing Writer
The George C. Marshall Institute

The Fraser Institute received $60,000 from ExxonMobil in 2003.

The Tech Central Station Science Foundation received $95,000 from ExxonMobil for "Climate Change Support" in 2003.

The George C. Marshall Institute received $185,000 from ExxonMobil for "Climate Change Public Information and Policy Research" in 2002-2003. "

It is really a stretch to claim that these organisations did not help M&M in any way. If M&M would like to claim that they are completely independant then it would be in their interest to not be involved with such think tanks supported by ExxonMobil who are the biggest funders of climate change skeptics. That way there could be absolutely no doubt that they do not receive any money from them.

Louis - if you get a paper to an accepted stage by any mainstream climate journal, Science or Nature on your theories of CO2 and/or global temperature - I'll be shipping you a bottle of the best booze and will write "Phillis is a ninny" every day for a month on this blog !

Phil, I read the long quote from Stephen Schneider and would be interested to know when Schneider said all of this. The reason that I ask is that Julian Simon quoted every single word of the quote as given above in his 'The Ultimate Resource 2', published in 1996 (p. 574). So if, at some time after 1996, Schneider said that 'Their 'evidence' comes from partially quoting my Discover interview, almost always -LIKE SIMON - omitting the last line and the phrase
'double ethical bind', he was one again being economical with the truth. Simon DIDN'T give the partial quote in his book: he quoted every word. and this appeared in the same year as the APS article. I'm not impressed by Schneider's failure to mention this.

The late Julian Simon would not have been so foolish as to deliberately misrepresent Schneider's 1989 statement when he knew that the full text was on the public record. And in any case Simon's treatment of others was mild compared with the relentless attacks that he endured for decades. On Earth Day 1990, in front of a cheering audience of 200,000 and countless more on television, Paul Ehrlich alluded to the title of Simon's book mentioned above ('The Ultimate Resource') and went on:

'The ultimate resource - the one thing we'll never run out of - is imbeciles."

When asked later about his opinion of Simon, Ehrlich said 'that's like asking a nuclear physicist about horoscopes.'

POSTED FOR ENDER.

Louis - I just searched Cambridge University Press and
got the following result:

"You searched on the following criteria..
Criteria: Climate Change: The IPCC Assessment
No records were found to match your search

To try another search click here"

Your source would not be embellishing the truth here
would they?

from Ender.

Phil,

I doubt it would be in your lifetime know the editorial policies of both Science and Nature. Another instance of asking one's debaters to do the impossible.

However I have shown some very shonky climate data http://lhcrazyworld.blogspot.com/2006/02/shonky-climate-data.html

Ender,

I suggest you check the site - I did supply you with a url. And as it is on the public domain, and has not been contradicted, one must assume the citation is accurate.

Ian - published in American Physical Society News, August/September 1996 Edition

Ender your sources are mischievous and quite inaccurate. Again you do not substantiate your allegations with fact.

Steve McIntyre.

"I have no appointment or office with the George Marshall Institute, either as a “contributing writer” or otherwise. I have made two presentations in Washington at a meeting room on Capitol Hill in Washington co-sponsored by the George Marshall Institute (one of which was attended by David Appell). My travel expenses were paid, but I did not receive an honorarium or fee for the presentation."

" have no objection to being paid and would prefer to be paid rather than to be doing this gratis. Throughout my life, I’ve made a living by earning money. However, my climate research has been done at a very considerable financial sacrifice because I could otherwise be making money. I notice that lots of academics funded by NSF are doing very nicely, thank you very much."

"hile I have made the financial sacrifice, I don’t believe that I have an obligation to do so. If, in the future, someone believes that it’s worthwhile to fund this research, it would not be “bought” research. I’d still say what I thought. If someone paid me some money for a presentation, it in no way begins to compensate me for the cost of not being at the table to do mining deals in what’s been a great market for speculative stock."

Source http://www.climateaudit.org/wp-trackback.php?p=400

The rest of your diatribe can be dismissed for what it is, as your other assertions made here – unsubstantiated statements.

Ender, First, my statement that McIntyre and McKitrick have received no funding for their work on climate change in the past three years is absolutely correct. In a footnote to his invited keynote address at the International Policy Forum on Greenhouse Gas Management at the University of Victoria, British Columbia on 28 April 2005 (subsequently published in the Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics) Ross McKitrick wrote:
'And lest the reader wonder: neither McIntyre nor me are paid for this research. My day job is as an economics professor. Steve left his job in 2003 and has been working on this project full time for two years now, completely unpaid.'

If you have any evidence that Ross was not telling the truth, please present it.

You say that 'It is really a stretch to claim that these organisations did not help M&M in any way. If M&M would like to claim that they are completely independant then it would be in their interest to not be involved with such think tanks supported by ExxonMobil who are the biggest funders of climate change skeptics. That way there could be absolutely no doubt that they do not receive any money from them.'

Well, Esso funds the Brookings Institution too. So no one who wants to be independent should be 'involved' with them either? That way, according to your argument, there would be 'absolutely no doubt that they do not receive any money from them.'

To me, it's not a stretch at all to believe that McIntyre and Mckitrick have not been helped by the George C Marshall and Simon Fraser Institutes. When somebody taxed Steve McIntyre on his website about a report that he'd been 'flown to Washington' by the George C Marshall Institute, he replied that he'd actually been flown from Toronto to Washington by Air Canada: 'I didn't pilot the plane myself.'

McIntyre also pointed out that he'd received nothing for his presentation to the forum that he'd attended, and that most of the participants who'd presented views opposed to his were paid for their time by the research institutions that employed them.

McIntyre is a mining engineer who obviously has exceptional abilities. He could easily have used them to earn himself a very substantial income over the past few years. Instead he has chosen to pursue an interest that earns him nothing at all, and that leads to all of these malicious things being said about him.

As for McKitrick, he told the HoL Committee that:

'In Canada there is a large community of academic economists, many with an international reputation, working in the fields of natural resource, energy and environmental economics. None of the particants in our annual research study group, numbering close to one hundred members drawn from universities across Canada and the US, is involved with the IPCC or had any hand in the SRES report.'

I'm reminded of a comment made by the eminent economist Wilfred Beckerman when he was told that the membership of the Club of Rome was limited to 100: 'How stupid do you have to be to join?'

Ian - Connolley is essentially asking where the SRES scenario debate is heading in terms of range of coverage. See:

http://www.inkstain.net/fleck/?p=1338

Louis - so what further checking would you like. The reference at the bottom of the diagram is to a document that does not exist. If I tried to check it I could not as I could not buy it from Cambridge press. I suggest that the URL that you supplied is incorrect as possibly the graph as well.

Louis - "nder your sources are mischievous and quite inaccurate. Again you do not substantiate your allegations with fact."

No they are correct as ExxonMobil has to report such donations as a part of their tax and that information is on public record.

Ian - so why would such independant knights of the climate audit be associated with organisations that receive money from ExxonMobil. The only evidence that they do not receive money is statements by the people themselves. Perhaps an audit of M&Ms finances should be in order to make sure.

Ender

http://www.gcrio.org/CONSEQUENCES/winter96/article1-fig3.html

Is another reference, to which a reference to EartQuest journal is made. And of course another graph of utility to this debate.

Louis - you really need to do a stats course don't you.

So how many times did the random hockey stick appear - what was the probability of generating a random hockey stick.

Which is part of the whole issue - what's probability of getting it by chance?

Ender,

I am not debating whether Exxon donates funds to the Marshall institute.

I am emphatically rejecting your assertion that Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick are under the pay of those institutes, especially when both individuals have categorically denied it publicly.

They are not associated with those institutions Ender.

Good grief, you saying that if CSIRO asked me to present a paper contradicting AGW, pay my airfare, then I am, according to your logic, a paid agent of CSIRO. Because that is essentially the argument you are using.

The classic ad hominem of guilt by association.

Phil,

I am hampered by a MSc in geostatistical analysis.

100 random data sets yielded 100 hockey sticks from the MBH98 methodology.

This is impossible if MBH98 was unbiassed.

As I wrote "Then there was a miracle". That is how MBH98 manage to get hockey sticks from random data. It's inbuilt into the code, which no one has been allowed to see either. Your support of such dishonesty does you no credit.

Phil,

I do this separately since we need to keep things simple.

100 results from 100 tries produced a hockey stick.

The probability is therefore 1.

Not one of the random data sets produced a random output. All produced a hockey stick.

Next you will demanding I do a coin toss to see if the sun is present in the sky.

Phil, Am I allowed point out that I was the Australian member of the United Nations Statistical Commission when the Commission unanimously welcomed and endorsed the 'System of National Accounts' at its session in New York in 1993? And that this System was published with a Foreword personally signed by the Secretary-General of the United Nations and the heads of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the OECD and the Commission of the European Communities? And that that Foreword said that the System had been 'a major exercise in cooperation conducted at a world level between national and international statistical agencies' which 'serves as a model for future collaborative work on the development of improved statistical systems and standards, including national accounts'? And that my co-author, David Henderson, in his capacity as head of the Economics and Statistics Division of the OECD, made Peter Hill available to produce for the Inter-Secretariat Working Group on National Accounts the key chapter (Chapter 16) on 'Price and Volume Measures', which explicitly rejects the procedure for the measurement of GDP that was adopted by the SRES authors; and that the Economic and Social Council of the UN, in its resolution 1993/5 of 12 July 1993, recommended 'that international organisations consider the 1993 SNA and endeavour to achieve consistency with the 1993 SNA'; and that the IPCC has never done so; and that, since the publication of the SRES, many of its lead authors have worked on the Scenarios volume of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, and have mucked that up just as comprehensively as they mucked up the report for the IPCC?

By ignoring the international recommendations on the measurement of GDP, the IPCC has created a dreadful mess. The UNFCCC expert reports on meeting Kyoto commitments are gloriously fiddled: Germany's emissions intensity is reported in relation to GDP at market exchange rates, whereas the Europeean Union's report relates the EU's emissions to GDP at purchasing power parities. I've become convinced that the IPCC milieu thrives on confusion and doesn't want to fix this up: they'd prefer to be able to move from one GDP definition to another, depending on the context.

Phil, I know very little about the Fraser Institute, but all that I do know is good. In December 2002 their monthly journal published an article by Ross McKitrick which referred to the Castles & Henderson critique of the SRES and urged the IPCC to give it proper consideration. It wouldn't concern me in the least if Ross McKitrick was paid for that article or anything else that he's done for the Institute, but I've no reason to doubt his assurance that he hasn't been.

I know a lot more about the IPCC and a surprising amount of it is bad. I won't go into all of the details here, but it's on the public record that the organisation's only press statement in a period of more than two years was solely devoted to brushing aside the Castles & Henderson critique, accusing us of spreading 'disinformation' and impugning our integrity by questioning our independence.

Phil (jumping back a bit) , the info you posted doesn't really extenuate the key problem - Schneider is a scientist ; making value judgements about a better or worse world and then deciding what facts support his judgement and releasing only ( or mostly only) those, is spin or propaganda completely the opposite to a scientific approach. If enough of his colleagues believed that the scary scenarios being "offer(ed) up" ( interesting choice of words) had a reasonable degree of probability they would surely say so.
He seems to have been pretty extreme not to mention incorrect and isolated in his projections.
Ender , there is evidence that the Soviet Union covertly funded/resourced Green and pacifist groups during the Cold War.
Should the views of all Greens and pacifists at the time be disregarded because of the conflict?
If the petroleum companies fund research in their field and release it to the scientific community then it should be evaluated on it's merits not just dismissed out of hand wouldn't you agree?

Yes you'd better flip the coin Louis to make sure.

And given your own stated abilities with high level statistical mathematics you can explain to us why this refutation accepted by Nature does not dispense with your recycled hack criticism at Shonkyworld's Home of Mischief and Sophistry.

.. .. to MM's claim that the "Hockey Stick" arises simply from the application of non-centered PCA to red noise. Given a large enough "fishing expedition" analysis, it is of course possible to find "Hockey-Stick like" PC series out of red noise. But this is a meaningless exercise. Given a large enough number of analyses, one can of course produce a series that is arbitrarily close to just about any chosen reference series via application of PCA to random red noise. The more meaningful statistical question, however is this one: Given the "null hypothesis" of red noise with the same statistical attributes (i.e., variance and lag-one autocorrelation coefficients) as the actual North American ITRDB series, and applying the MBH98 (non-centered) PCA convention, how likely is one to produce the "Hockey Stick" pattern from chance alone. Precisely that question was addressed by Mann and coworkers in their response to the rejected MM comment through the use of so-called "Monte Carlo" simulations that generate an ensemble of realizations of the random process in question (see here) to determine the "null" eigenvalue spectrum that would be expected from simple red noise with the statistical attributes of the North American ITRDB data. The Monte Carlo experiments were performed for both the MBH98 (non-centered) and MM (centered) PCA conventions. This analysis showed that the "Hockey Stick" pattern is highly significant in comparison with the expectations from random (red) noise for both the MBH98 and MM conventions. In the MBH98 convention, the "Hockey Stick" pattern corresponds to PC#1 , and the variance carried by that pattern (blue circle at x=1: y=0.38) is more than 5 times what would be expected from chance alone under the null hypothesis of red noise (blue curve at x=1: y = 0.07), significant well above the 99% confidence level (the first 2 PCs are statistically significant at the 95% level in this case). For comparison, in the MM convention, the "Hockey Stick" pattern corresponds to PC#4, and the variance carried by that pattern (red '+" at x=4: y=0.07) is about 2 times what would be expected from chance alone (red curve at x=4: y=0.035), and still clearly significant (the first 5 PCs are statistically significant at the 95% level in this case).

(Nighty night and sleep tight !)

Link for Phils cut-n-paste;

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=98

Ian - we have all sorts of interesting personalities and personality cults in the climate game (pro and anti-AGW or should I say AGW sympathetic and anti-AGW) - I don't mind if Exxon fund research if they do it fairly and at some arm's length from influencing results.

In the end it's the scientific dialectic and international peer review process that should settle on the basis on logical analysis from the best science. I'm not swayed in my views by what Schneider says or not. My suspicions go up when the usual suspects here use someone like this as a wedge. It's a diversion from Osborn & Briffa.

Seems like some serious mediation is required between the economists and the IPCC. Can only suggest you use your highest level UN connections to affect some productive engagement. Get inside the tent !

Gosh what fun. Some comments:

Firstly, Schneider and Rasool isn't. Getting them the wrong way round is always a bit of a tell-tale of a cp from a sketpic source. Its Rasool and Schneider; more here: http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/

As for the Genesis Strategy predicting cooling, this is obviously wrong, if you actually read the book: http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/schneider-genesis.html

Somewhere in here your content filters kicked in, so there is more at http://mustelid.blogspot.com/2006/02/your-comment-was-denied-for.html

Castles quotes "Finally, on the realclimate site William Connelley says that it's about time that Castles and Henderson got off their bums and produced their own scenarios!". Yes indeed. In fact even people like Tol admit that using your assumptions makes essentially no difference to the end product.

Comment deleted by Jennifer at 10.55pm. Enough 'flaming' (or whatever it is called) for one night.

Louis - "I am emphatically rejecting your assertion that Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick are under the pay of those institutes, especially when both individuals have categorically denied it publicly.

They are not associated with those institutions Ender. "

I said no such thing. Aren't you defensive about it. You can slag down Dr Mann et al and accuse them of the most heinous crime a scientist can commit, falsifying results, and thats OK however to say that M&M are on the take is out of order.

However as I said before I did not say that. I said that M&M, to prove their independance, should publically renounce any association and publish their financial details for everyone to see that they never accepted any money from these institutions. Failure to do this would of course mean that they did take money from them as they should have nothing to hide.

BTW if MBH could get a hockey stick from truly random data then the NSA or DSD, I think, would be very interested.

Jim - "Ender , there is evidence that the Soviet Union covertly funded/resourced Green and pacifist groups during the Cold War."

1. where is the evidence?

2. Yes that would be a conflict if the desire of the Soviet Union was to promote the idea of AGW.

This is slightly different. ExxonMobil is quite well known for funding AGW contrarian groups such as the Marshall Institute. This corporation, that makes mosts of its profits from fossil fuels, ExxonMobil can be clearly seen to be acting in its own interests as acceptance of AGW and reducing use os fossil fuels would reduce their profits. ExxonMobil is the last of the oil companies to move into alternative energy and is possibly the most exposed.

Ender,
I posted some links but they were denied for " questionable content" - don't know why.
However , I don't believe you are unaware that this has been a pretty widely accepted premise.
But lets assume it's entirely hypothetical - should we exclude the views of those promoting unilateral disarmament from the fact that a funder of their organisation would gain enormously from such a policy being adopted?
It can't be that the source is more important than the evidence?
If the conclusions of an industry funded study are flawed then this should be clearly demonstrated and THEN the motivation questioned.
Isn't research commissioned by Greenpeace ( for example) just as suspect ?

William Connelley: 'In fact even people like Tol admit that using your assumptions makes essentially no difference to the end product.'

Tol admits no such thing. The following extracts are from his written and oral evidence to the House of Lords Committee:

'The choice of exchange rates does matter for assumed development pathways, and hence vulnerability to climate change, and for the distribution of carbon dioxide emissions, and hence the distribution of mitigation costs and responsibilities.'

'Castles and Henderson are very right to criticise those scenarios because they essentially assume convergence based on market exchange rates, which is ludicrous I think.'

'The real contribution of Castles and Henderson [is] that they held the community that has developed these scenarios up to the light. They point out a gross weakness in what has been done in the IPCC but also in other corners of the climate and energy community.'

You seem to be having difficulty understanding what the 'end product' of the SRES was meant to be. It is clearly stated in the terms of reference that the scenarios 'were intended to have broader uses than simply a set of emissions trajectories to drive climate models.' It's understandable that an intergovernmental panel should want the scenarios to serve these broader uses. But as I've pointed out it 's also understandable that some parties have a vested interest in perpetuating confusion.

Oh Ender, Jim Cairns was head of World Peace Council whilst deputy PM of Australia, WPC was/is a Soviet/KGB front

http://www.country-data.com/cgi-bin/query/r-12916.html

Him, Prof. Castles, it appears to me that Dr. Connolley is exactly correct when he says that using your assumptions make absolutely no difference with respect to the science as described in the WGI report of the TAR and the AR4 to come. They may make some difference with respect to WG3. OTOH, the House of Lords report appears to have been drafted by the Fraser Institute, so I would put no particular trust in it.

Ian Castles comes the raw prawn with us again. Professor Tol continued: “It does not stop there. Castles and Henderson in their critique unfortunately forgot that there is another convergence assumption . .. these two convergence estimates, and convergence from market to purchasing power exchange rates actually offset one another[2]. . . . I think that Henderson and Castles overstated that bias”.

[2] I should have said: If one switches from market exchange rates to purchasing power parity, convergence of per capita income as well as convergence of emission intensity change, and these two changes offset one another.

“The switch from market exchange to purchasing power exchange rate makes a relatively small difference in global emissions”
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldselect/ldeconaf/12/5020108.htm

Ian himself agreed on Quiggin's blog that his assumptions make essentially no difference:
Ian clarifies that he and Henderson object to MER conversion factors, but not because they bias projections of emissions, saying “I agree that these arguments (about the errors in GDP growth and emissions intensity reductions cancelling one another out) are sound as a first approximation.”
http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2006/01/27/castles-and-henderson-again/

Castles: "If one were interested in climate change alone, then the details of the underlying economic scenarios do not matter much" (Tol, pers comm). Climate change is what we're discussing here. And: I wonder if you'll ever manage to spell my name correctly?

Do you agree with Tol, as I've quoted him here?

As for the house of lords: http://mustelid.blogspot.com/2005/07/house-of-lords-subverted-by-skeptics.html

Ender,

I have not slagged Mann et al, no one has accused him falsifying results, just using the wrong statistical techniques. Actually no one knows what Mann et did because his original code and data remain secret.

We criticise the science Ender, not the practitioners, and the science appears shonky.

But you obviusly don't understand what you write yourself - you stated explicitly that McIntyre and McKitrick were contributing writers to the Marshall Institute when you first raised the issue, which means they were employed by them.

Rog - have you got any evidence of that?

Jim - "should we exclude the views of those promoting unilateral disarmament from the fact that a funder of their organisation would gain enormously from such a policy being adopted?"

Possibly where the funder would gain financially.

"It can't be that the source is more important than the evidence?
If the conclusions of an industry funded study are flawed then this should be clearly demonstrated and THEN the motivation questioned.
Isn't research commissioned by Greenpeace ( for example) just as suspect ?"

Again possibly however my question to you is why MBH98. Of all the studies that M&M could have audited like billion dollar drug studies, of disease studies that involve millions of lives M&M chose MBH98 that just happened to be the perfect wedge issue to discredit AGW. Also have they done any other 'audits' like the exposing flawed studies in medicine. No that one was exposed by peer review not M&M. Now these 2 just happen to be contributing writers to think tanks funded by ExxonMobil. Whats the saying - 2 or more co-incidences and it is a conspiracy.

Thanks William. I apologise for misspelling your name - it was getting late when I wrote.

Richard Tol sends pers comms to me too. On 19 September he wrote 'I am not sure whether you have been invited to review the first order draft of the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report. I have just been through the Working Group 2 report. It is full of glowing references to SRES. I protested at every point, but a lone voice does not convince the IPCC.'

And on 3 December he wrote 'I'm reviewing the first draft of the IPCC WG3 4AR. As a referee, one cannot tell others what is in the draft. However, I can urge you to register as a reviewer, if not in the current round, then in the government review. This nonsense can't go on.'

It seems that the WG2 and WG3 Contributions to the next IPCC Assessment will be even worse than the last, and that the Panel will again ignore reviewer comments that challenge the party line.

If you post the full text of Tol's comments to you on the IPCC emissions scenario, I'll be happy to say whether or not I agree with his view.

Thanks for posting the link to your comment on the House of Lords Committee report. This deserves the widest possible circulation.

Phil,

It is difficult to find a kernel of your own reasoning among the barrage of 'quotes' which you think justifies the Hockey Stick camp that MBH98 used correct methodoloy.

I won't bother with references to others who confirmed the MM analysis etc. It is all there in the literature.

That said, what have you said? not much I start to realise.

Louis - "I have not slagged Mann et al, no one has accused him falsifying results, just using the wrong statistical techniques. Actually no one knows what Mann et did because his original code and data remain secret."

You may not have personally however MBHs reputation has been called into question many times in this rubbish one issue debate. Also PCA was the correct technique for getting the trend out of noisy data.
http://www.pfc.forestry.ca/profiles/wulder/mvstats/pca_fa_e.html

"We criticise the science Ender, not the practitioners, and the science appears shonky."

Oh thats rich from you the king of shonky science.

"But you obviusly don't understand what you write yourself - you stated explicitly that McIntyre and McKitrick were contributing writers to the Marshall Institute when you first raised the issue, which means they were employed by them."

So you think all contributing writers are employed . I really do not think that this is the case.

Ender,
This is ground that's been covered here ( I think) previously.
Why limit the potential corruption to purely financial outcomes?
The funder might be seeking
benefits other than financial.

Eli Rabett, With respect to your view that the House of Lords report was apparently drafted by the Fraser Institute, do you have any thoughts about why the report was unanimous agreed to by the Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat and non-aligned members of the Committee? Also, Lord May (President of the Royal Society, 2000-2005) praised the report in his contribution to debate in the House of Lords. Perhaps he didn't realise that their Lordships had rubber-stamped a Fraser Institute draft?

OK Louis - My answer from RC was not frivilous. The answer is that the patterns generated by the analysis are highly significant to what you would expect with red noise. M&M's criticism was formally rejected. As a student of statistics you would appreciate statistical significance. The reasons for the technique are well justified in the literature. Now doing a runner exposes that you just recycling old arguments previously dispensed with. Louis you are totally uncritical in what you post - you don't even check if there's another position. Dust off those stats books !

Thinksy, In your posting at 9.32 pm on 10 February on the 'Proof the world is getting warmer' thread on this site, you promised that you would take note of my views only if and when I discover the honest ability to state my position clearly and concisely in straightforward terms.

Now, at 7.28 am on 13 February, you quote my clear, concise and straightforward statement ('I agree that these arguments (about the errors in GDP growth and emissions intensity reductions cancelling one another out) are sound as a first approximation') , and claim that I agreed that 'my assumptions make essentially no difference.'

I didn't agree anything of the sort. I support the position stated clearly concisely and straightforwardly by David Henderson that the fact that the IPCC procedure 'yields incorrect measures of energy intensity and emissions intensity, as well as of GDP per head, IS NOT SO MUCH A REDEEMING FEATURE AS A FURTHER CAUSE FOR CONCERN.'

That's MY view, Thinksy. You're free to think otherwise if you want, but you're not entitled to mislead readers of this blog by telling them that I agree with you. I don't.

Ian I didn't allege that you agreed with me. I realise how horribly distasteful it would be for you to stoop so low. Rather, I was quoting from Quiggin where in essence you agreed that the above mentioned factors cancel each other out, thereby supporting William's claim that "using your assumptions makes essentially no difference to the end product".

A "further cause for concern" as you quote, particularly when cancelled out by other factors, does not amount to a material challenge. However if you do have a material challenge of real substance, perhaps you'd be kind enough to enlighten us?

Thinksy, please. Your exact words were 'Ian himself agreed on Quiggin's blog that his assumptions make essentially no difference.' I didn't.

Phil

"The answer is that the patterns generated by the analysis are highly significant to what you would expect with red noise"

Random data are by definition structureless data, patternless. "Red noise" is filtered "White Noise" with the higher frquencies attenuated, usually by applying a -6db/octave filter.

That said, it is still structureless random data and any processing technique which extracts a signal from this data is effectively creating the signal via the code, as by definition the signal is not in the data in the first place.

This is the essence of the M&M criticism.

Anyone who reckons they can extract signals from random noise, whether white, pink or red, has deluded themselves.

Ender,

"Louis you may have not personally".

Exactly, but you accused me of it.

Nobody is talking about extracting signals from random noise. Re-read the explanation above.

I enjoyed Shonkyworld this morning for my daily giggle.
http://lhcrazyworld.blogspot.com/
What a riot. Who needs Dilbert.

Ian now you're quibbling, for a lack of a substantial response. Ok let's flog your dead horse then: on http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2006/01/27/castles-and-henderson-again/
you said “I agree that these arguments (about the errors in GDP growth and emissions intensity reductions cancelling one another out) are sound as a first approximation.” This was agreement (provisionally, of course, because it's harder to pin a fluttering moth) that the conversion items on which you objected were cancelled out. In essence you were acknowledging, in line with William's claim, that these assumptions make no difference. Now you are being extremely pedantic by trying to argue that you did not explicitly say so in those precise words. Trivial, highly pedantic objections.

Do you disagree with Tol that If one switches from market exchange rates to purchasing power parity, convergence of per capita income as well as convergence of emission intensity change, and these two changes offset one another, and “The switch from market exchange to purchasing power exchange rate makes a relatively small difference in global emissions”?

Quiggin emphasised, without your disagreement, that "the widely-repeated claims that IPCC projections of emissions are fundamentally erroneous because of the choice of exchange rate are not supported by careful analysis". Do you disagree? Do you have a material challenge of real substance that you're prepared to outline?

Jim - "Ender,
This is ground that's been covered here ( I think) previously.
Why limit the potential corruption to purely financial outcomes?"

Yes and so has this issue of MBH98. Despite it being independantly confirmed six ways from Sunday this wedge issue of the Hockey Stick keeps being brought up. As I said in a very early post move on. The climate world is moveing to the issue of tipping points and the danger that they pose.

Finally for Louis et al I am sure that you actually have said much of the sort in previous arguments though I cannot find them at present. However your argument that the MWP was warmer than today and that there was no large output of CO2 then therefore the present warming cannot be due to CO2 is bogus. As has been mentioned there are many reasons for changing climate, greenhouse gas changes, solar insolation changes and airborne aerosol changes amongst others.

The evidence that PRESENT warming is due anthropogenic greenhouse gases and human land use changes is overwhelming and not confined to one hockey stick study. What happened in the MWP was different and does not preclude the present warming being from a different cause.

The existence of a medieval warm period and little ice age as global climatic phenomena has been repeatedly indicated by numerous studies from all continents. These have been widely published in the peer reviewed primary literature and stem from a broad spectrum of mainstream scientific institutions. On the other hand, the statistical treatment used by Mann et al. in creating the hockey stick graph has been demonstrated to produce the same shape when applied to multiple sets of randomly distributed data. That the HS graph has become such an icon and has been so vigorously defended in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary is revealing. The GW hypothesis does not really depend upon the validity of the HS graph and at this point good science would indicate simply acknowledging it as probably wrong and moving on. Choosing to defend it and dismiss the numerous other studies that belie it shows more a desire to believe than to discover truth.

A couple of weeks ago the CO2 Science website began an effort to compile a listing of studies that confirm the global existence of a medieval warm period. Although there are only about 15 references thus far I know from my own sporadic reading on the subject that at least 5 times that number exist and probably many more. The medieval warm period reference web page may be found at:
http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/data/mwp/mwpp.jsp

Thinksy, The Castles & Henderson 'challenge of real substance' has been outlined in a series of papers and in our submissions to the Inquiry into The Economics of Climate Change by the Committee on Economic Affairs of the House of Lords. After examining these papers and the related literature, that Committee identified seven major issues that have emerged, in support of their recommendation that there is 'an urgent need for a wholesale reappraisal of the emissions scenarios exercise'.

Of these seven issues, five had been explicitly raised and discussed in the C&H papers: 'the credibility of the IPCC's insistence that no one scenario is any more likely than any other'? 'the compatibility of the economic growth assumptions embodied in the scenarios with historical experience, and the credibility of the world economic growth rates embodied in the scenarios in a resource-limited world'; 'the assumption in the IPCC scenarios of convergence of per capita incomes between rich and poor countries'; 'the MER versus PPP debate itself'; and 'the compatibility of IPCC's overall emissions and concentration trajectories with past experience.'

You are focusing on one aspect of the fourth of these reasons, and in my opinion you are drawing a false conclusion even there. So with the respect that I'd pay to your views if I knew who you were (and that would depend on the strength of your arguments and not on whether you are an expert), could I suggest that you focus some of your attention on the other four reasons?

With respect to the IPCC's convergence assumptions, it is worth noting that Warwick McKibbin and Alison Stegman of the ANU (M&S) published a paper after the Lords Committee report had been drafted, which focuses specifically on per capita carbon emissions from fossil fuel use. They found 'strong evidence that the wide variety of assumptions about convergence commonly used in emissions projections are not based on empirically observed phenomena. I would have thought that scientists, of all people, would want to check whether or not the emissions projections they've fed into their climate models were based on empirically observed phenomena. If they were not (and M&S found strong evidence that they were not) it would appear that the GIGO ('Garbage in, garbage out') principle will come into play.

Perhaps that is why the Lords Committee concluded (even without the benefit of the M&S paper) that 'There is a need to reconsider the economic basis on which the scenarios are constructed.'

Walter - various reconstructions do show bumps and through where there was a Medieval warm period or Little Ice Age. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png
The argument is about the spatial extent of such phenomena, statistical techniques and choice of proxies.

It's now up the opposition here to put up there reconstruction and defend it - we're waiting.

Not at all Phil. The IPCC made an assessment, based on the published peer-reviewed literature, that it was likely that the 1990s was the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, of the millennium. If the papers upon which that assessment was based are shown to be fatally flawed, the assessment must be discarded. Full stop. Future reconstructions might show that the assessment published in 2001 was correct, or they might show that it was incorrect. Either way, I assume that the scientists who've produced the reconstruction would defend it.

WHAT a try-on. Just because it's Monday too.
Paper(s) flawed now. And fatally - argh .. . ugh -"Et tu Castles" - IPCC dies to sceptics applause (coal price firms on news).

We ain't conceded anything is flawed.

And so your mates aren't really interested in furthering science by publishing anything - just defending the fossil fuel industry by ragging - as we suspected.

Ian I thought you were far dinkum but you're starting to sound just like another sceptic humming that confirmation mantra :-)

Walter - "The existence of a medieval warm period and little ice age as global climatic phenomena has been repeatedly indicated by numerous studies from all continents"

Show us the evidence - there is no evidence as far as I am aware that the MWP was anything more that an Northern European/Atlantic event. You will have to post references to the contrary.

"On the other hand, the statistical treatment used by Mann et al. in creating the hockey stick graph has been demonstrated to produce the same shape when applied to multiple sets of randomly distributed data"

This is absolute BS and is an indication of how well this wedge idea has got into the mainstream. If PCA analysis could produce a shape out of truly random data then every cryptanalyst in the world would be using it to break codes. Truly random data to be random has no pattern. M&M have NEVER demonstrated a pattern from random data. Modern encryption relies on random numbers being as random as possible - if it was subject to an easy attack as PCA then it could not be used.

Perhaps you should read this:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=121

The responses to my post seem to confirm my point about this being more a matter of defending belief than any pursuit of understanding. The response to my link to some 15 peer reviewed references on a MWP has been ignored and the analysis by McIntyre and McKitrick dismissed with a comment which indicates that either they haven't been read or they haven't been understood.

This debate is beginning to give me a deja vu feeling of a discussion I once had with some fundamentalist missionaries who told me there was no evidence for evolution or an earth older than 6000 years. I pointed out that they were standing on about a hundred million tons of such evidence. We were on a raised coral island which was comprised of an entire pleistocene coral reef.

Phil, You really should read more carefully. I said that 'IF' the studies upon which the 2001 assessment was based are shown to be fatally flawed that assessment must be discarded. Do you disagree with this?

There is at least a possible that the impending study by a high-level panel appointed by the US National Research Council will reach the view that the studies are indeed fatally flawed. As the identity of the members of the panel and their qualifications are publicly known, I would be inclined to give weight to their views. I'm confident that the panel will not be influenced in its assessment by the possible impact on the price of coal. I'm equally sure that they would recognise that the availability or otherwise of an alternative reconstruction is irrelevant to the question of whether the conclusions of the IPCC 2001 assessment remain valid.

If by my 'mates' you mean those that have published papers in the peer-reviewed literature that are critical of the studies upon which the 2001 assessment relied, in most cases I simply don't know whether it is their intention to attempt reconstructions or not. Those that work in large research institutions may well try to do so. Unfortunately, it seems that the self-styled 'hockey team' are more interested in defending their turf than in advancing knowledge. In this respect, it is particularly disappointing to learn from Rob Wilson, a co-author of the paleo-climate research paper that was published in Geophysical Research Letters last week, that Briffa (of Osborn and Briffa fame) had refused to provide him with information that he had sought to assist the work of the Lamont-Doherty team.

Walter - thank you for post, yes very interesting url and am taking you seriously. (am digesting and have seen some before)

Just had to play with Ian's leg first. Yes Ian - look forward to the review and obviously distrust between teams seems to be running at an all-time high.

POSTED FOR ENDER
......................................

Walter - I had a look at your source.

Ok here is the refernce for Aust/NZ
"Reference
Wilson, A.T., Hendy, C.H. and Reynolds, C.P. 1979.
Short-term climate change and New Zealand temperatures during the last millennium. Nature 279: 315-317.

Description
Temperatures derived from an 18O/16O profile through a stalagmite found in a New Zealand cave (40.67°S,
172.43°E) revealed the Medieval Warm Period to have occurred between AD 1050 and 1400 and to have been 0.75°C warmer than the Current Warm Period."

Now here is another one:
"Reference
Williams, P.W., King, D.N.T., Zhao, J.-X. and Collerson, K.D. 2004. Speleothem master
chronologies: combined Holocene 18O and 13C records from the North Island of New Zealand and their palaeoenvironmental interpretation. The Holocene 14:
194-208.

Description
Temperatures were inferred from δ18O data obtained from four stalagmites found in caves at Waitomo (38.3°S, 175.1°E) on New Zealand's North Island for which 19 TIMS uranium series ages were measured. The Medieval Warm Period occurred between AD 1100 and 1400 and was warmer than the Current Warm Period."

Note the similarity.

Now here is the abstract from the first paper cited:
"MANY theories have been proposed to explain the climatic fluctuations which produced the sequence of glacial−interglacial periods of the order of tens of thousands of years which have occurred throughout the Quaternary. These fluctuations represent temperature changes in the temperate regions of about 6 °C between a glacial and an interglacial situation. There are also climatic fluctuations with a period of the order of about a thousand years representing temperature changes of about 2 °C. These changes are believed to have had an important bearing on human history, but have been little studied because it is difficult to obtain accurate temperature records for past periods. Shorter temperature fluctuations of the order of a few decades, and representing temperature changes of perhaps as much as one degree, are of considerable economic importance and merge into the developing field of long-term meteorological forecasting. Considerable interest has recently developed in short-term climate changes. If detailed long-term climatic records could be obtained for extended periods in the past it might be possible to determine the causes for the climatic variation, and hence predict future climate trends. Even a knowledge of how hot/cold or dry/wet a particular region's climate could become, and with what probability, would be of considerable economic value to planners involved in hydroelectric development, irrigation schemes, snow clearance and the development of arid and polar regions. At present instrumental records have existed only since the mid-seventeenth century for central England, and for most other areas only over a little more than a century. Cave deposits (speleothems) provide stratigraphy which has a high inherent time resolution. Data for studying short-term temperature fluctuations can be obtained by measuring the 18O/16O ratio of suitable stalagmites1. This technique should enable a high resolution temperature curve to be produced for many regions of the globe. We report here an investigation on the 18O/16O profile through a New Zealand stalagmite which was undertaken partly to evaluate the feasibility of obtaining high time resolution data from speleothem material and partly to compare the temperature record from New Zealand (in the Southern Hemisphere and a region meteorologically unrelated to Europe) with the English climate curve, which is the most firmly established climate curve for the last millennium. Such proxy data given us the possibility of obtaining long-term high resolution temperature records from some of the critical regions of the world where meteorological records either do not exist or are of very short duration."

No mention of the MWP

Here is the part of the abstract of the second:

"ncreasingly negative delta18O values after 7.5 ka BP indicate that temperatures declined to a late mid-Holocene minimum centred around 3 ka BP, but more positive values followed to mark a warm peak about 750 years ago which coincided with the 'Mediaeval Warm Period' of Europe. Low delta18O values at 325 years BP suggest cooling coincident with the 'Little Ice Age'.
"

Does mention the MWP but no mention of the MWP being warmer that today as is detailed in the description.

How about this description:
Description
Maximum annual air temperatures in the vicinity of Cold Air Cave (24°1'S, 29°11'E) in the Makapansgat Valley of South Africa were inferred from a relationship between color variations in banded growth-layer laminations of a well-dated stalagmite and the air temperature of a surrounding 49-station climatological network developed over the period 1981-1995, as well as from a quasi-decadal-resolution record of oxygen and carbon stable isotopes. The Medieval Warm Period (AD 1000-1325) was as much as 3-4°C warmer than the Current Warm Period (AD 1961-1990 mean).

However this is not what the abstract says:

....experiencing above-average warming and high variability, may be the regional expression of the medieval warming. Other cool, dry spells prevailed from around ad 800 to 900 and from about ad 440 to 520. The most prolonged warm, wet period occurred from ad 40 to 400. Some extreme events are shown to correspond well with similar events determined from the Greenland GISP2 ice-core record and elsewhere.
Distinct periodicities occur within the record at around 120, 200–300, 500–600 and at about 800 years BP."

Finally