June 14, 2010 
McI has a new post up about the “trick”.
You’d think he’d develop some different material — this bleating on about the “trick” is getting pretty old, but I guess if it feeds the audience (and tip jar) well, why do real science? Besides, there is another trick being played on us all right now — the trick of diversion.
This newest post is all about reputations and damages to them, in which McI defends himself from what he terms “false information”. It’s all about splitting hairs over terminology and semantics. It’s not of any real consequence, but I guess it keeps the troops riled up, angry and willing to fill the tip jar. It keeps people focused on the shells instead of the hand that moves them.
Probably the most quoted email arising from the CRU Hack is the “trick” to “hide the decline” email, which I quote below:
From: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
To: ray bradley <rbradley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>,mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, mhughes@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000
Cc: k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,t.osborn@xxxxxxxxx.xxxDear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,
Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or
first thing tomorrow.
I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps
to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from
1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual
land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land
N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999
for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with
data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.
Thanks for the comments, Ray.Cheers
PhilProf. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090
School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784
University of East Anglia
Norwich Email p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
NR4 7TJ
UK
As I have said previously, if the email read:
I’ve just completed using Mike’s really neato method from his article in Nature of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to ensure that data from the divergence period is not included.
this whole debate might not be taking place. Heh — who am I kidding — a different one would. 🙂
Those four words “trick” and “hide the decline” have been used to smear scientists and call into question the science itself. IMO, disingenuinely.
You and I and everyone else familiar with this field know about the divergence phenomenon, and realize that if Jones was to include this data in the WMO table, people not in the know would think it showed the temperature decreasing, which we know it didn’t! I could just see the headlines — “Scientists from WMO show that temperatures decreased after 1960! A New Ice Age Approaches!”
Until rsearchers have completely sorted out the cause of the divergence in proxy records in the last few decades of the 20th C, the data for that period probably should not be included as it will cause more heat than light on this matter. We do know that the proxy records for the period prior to the 1960s accurately tracks the instrumental temperature record, so I suspect that there is something specific to the post-1960 era, and probably, from the literature, the effect of ozone depletion or aerosols, drought, to account for the divergence.
This has to be supported by further evidence, but given that the divergent trees do track the instrumental temperature record well prior to this period, there seems to be something unique about the current period — and ozone depletion sticks out — to account for it.
This is a sticky issue and a tough decision for those tasked with presenting this data for public consumption, but for the sake of clarity, it seems best not to include this data, and this document Jones was preparing was for public consumption.
Look, the fact is this: policy makers — and most of the public — don’t want long drawn out debates about data and methodology — it’s too complicated for them. They just want the key messages and the short answer from the experts so they can make a decision. Problem is that scientists don’t tend to work in sound bites and key messages. They tend to want to qualify everything, to point out uncertainty, and possible sources of bias and error. In fact, they are trained to do so. Yet, a public policy response to urgent issues requires just that — key messages and sound bites. That’s a reality of the policy process and political process. It conflicts with that of the science process. Climate skeptics are — in a disingenuous manner — using this fact to their advantage but they are being deceptive by not acknowledging it.
From my reading of the literature, I feel pretty confident in the instrumental record and so while the divergence issue is a problem that must be solved in the long term when looking at proxy records and reconstructions, it doesn’t negate the fact that the temperature has been increasing in the past half century in lockstep with CO2.
Bad language choice aside, I am not concerned about the “decline” or the “trick” as much as I am concerned about rising CO2 and its impact on global temperature. The paleoclimate recons are interesting but if you look at the width of the error bars as we go further back in time, its clear that we can be less certain about the temperatures, and it is entirely possible for temps to be both lower and higher than the mean.
Look at the graphic below for the NH:
Look at the width of the error bars — the real temp could be just as easily far below as far above the average, from what I understand of statistics, meaning that past temps during the Medieval Warm Period could be close to what they were in the 1960s but also, they could be much below the average for the LIA. It’s suggestive but it is not certain, just as the NAS report found.
What seems certain is that temps today and since the 1970s are much higher relative to the past several hundred years, just at a time when we have been pumping GHGs into the atmosphere in record amounts due to our fossil fuel-fed industrial revolution. The physics of the greenhouse system are unaffected by the question of whether the proxy records diverge in the 1960s and why. This bashing on about the trick and decline is all a big diversion, a sleight of hand to keep people’s eyes focused on the magician’s other hand so he can prestidigitate us into addressing the wrong issue.
That’s what McI and other climate skeptics and deniers are all about.
Diversion. Obfuscation. Disinformation.
Diversion from the real issue of the relationship between CO2 and temperature increase.
Obfuscation of the business aka fossil fuel interests that are funding them.
Disinformation derived from taking emails and single words out of context and twisting them to cast doubt over the science, confusing issues in the public mind so policy makers won’t act.
Thats the real trick of climate change / global warming deniers.
The Policy Lass 
SteveMc documents how climate scientists attempted to deceive the public, get caught, then lie about it – all with the full support of universities, funding agencies and government bodies that are supposed to be ensuring the quality/integrity of science. Yet you think that should be ignored because the real issue is CO2?
The fact is there is no evidence – none – nada – that conclusively shows that CO2 will lead to a catastrophe. The only thing we have a slight temperature rise that has a caused no particular problems. Yet you seem to think that we should impose harm and suffering on billions by denying them access to energy? All based on the word of scientists who have already resorted to deception in order to push their political agenda? It makes no sense.
No, Tim, I must disagree with your interpretation In this particular case, Prof Jones had to design a graphic that showed the proxy evidence and instrumental temperature record as part of a public pamphlet to report on the work of the WMO for the previous year. They knew if they included the “divergence” data, it would confuse and lead to misunderstanding. If the past few decades have taught us anything it is that once a bit of misinformation is out there, no matter how much you try to counter it, it persists like athletes foot. If the graphic had included the data post-1960, there would be people who read it as showing the temperature “decreased” after 1960 — look at Sarah “Drill baby drill” Palin said about the whole business for an example of how this can occur. Here’s the brilliant Ms. Palin:
Here’s woman who was a candidate for Vice President and possibly in the future — God forbid — the Presidency, who can’t even get it right.
The real issue is that despite the fact that the scientific consensus concludes that increasing CO2 levels from fossil fuel use threatens the climate through global warming, possibly leading to between 2 – 6C degrees of warming by the end of the century — or even more, with unknown consequences, nothing is being done. The real issue is that those who benefit from this unregulated emission of CO2 and other GHGs into the atmosphere, whether they are directly benefitting or indirectly, or are politically opposed to government regulation of business, are trying to smear scientists so they can raise doubt about the science and thus delay action long enough to keep making $$$. Those, to me, are the real issues. All this focus on words like “trick” and “hide the decline” are diverting focus off the real issues. Whether this is because those doing the diverting are driven by ego, ideology or filling tip jars and bank accounts, the fact remains that we are diverted.
I find it interesting that you berate McIntyre for continuing the discussion about paleoclimatic displays when in fact he was just responding to attacks by Brian Angliss.
This seems to be McIntyre’s raison d’etre now — banging the denialist drum about the “trick” and “hide the decline” in order to keep the fires burning.
Don’t forget the old adage — no publicity is bad publicity. I imagine that a blog owner who has a tip jar relishes when they can discuss a controversy, drumming up sympathy among their supporters, helping to fill the coffers.
I’m impressed with the consistency – dogged skepticism to anything pronounced by someone with letters after their name, but blind acceptance of the meme that decarbonization will “impose harm and suffering on billions by denying them access to energy.”
I am amazed that people who claim to care about science choose to beleive in a fantasy world when it comes to alternative energy sources. The are all uneconomic jokes with exception of nuclear. In the case of wind power it actually increases CO2 emissions because of the backup power required.
World CO2 emissionz are going to continue to rise for the foreseeable future. Some countries with stable populations will likely see a decline but that will be more than offset by rapid increases in china and other places. If you really believe that CO2 is a catastrophe then you better prepare because there is nothing that can be done about it. Any money waste on anti-CO2 measures will simply drive even more business and jobs to china/india.
Here’s a hint: an assertion can’t be backed up by another, stronger assertion. You actually need information to make a strong case.
I basically agree with you about alternative energy sources. There is one “alternative energy source” with a proven track record of success, though: conservation. Improved efficiency, combined with a shift from dirtier energy sources to cleaner ones, provides a practical path to reduce GHG emissions over the long term, at a reasonable cost. Look at the studies that economists from McKinsey – a white-shoe consultancy, the furthest thing from an environmental advocacy group – have done. There are ways of improving the current situation without returning us to the Stone Age. It’s not going to get us to 350 ppm any time soon, but that train has long since left the station.
I don’t know a single serious voice calling for an immediate shift away from fossil fuels. The discussion about the pace of the switchover, the right mix of renewables and nuclear, technology transfer to poorer countries and how to pay for it all is one that absolutely needs to be had. Interesting, isn’t it, that one side seems more interested in tossing out straw men than actually engaging in a reasonable exchange of ideas?
> The fact is there is no evidence – none – nada – that conclusively shows that CO2 will lead to a catastrophe.
This assertion perform lots of interesting twists, by:
– Undefining that “CO2” beast one is supposed to talk about.
– Armwaving that there are no evidence for that “CO2” beast.
– Including the concept of catastrophe as a scientific term.
– Assuming that it is possible to conclude a catastrophe from evidence.
– Presuming that one needs to conclude positively to a catastrophe to do something.
– Stating all this statement as a “fact”.
We can observe that this sentence has more tricks than parts. We can conclude that it is a very efficient sentence. Compare to an even more efficient sentence, where one would say “I tell you so!” while hitting on a table very hard.
Your obsession with Steve McIntyre is unhealthy. Take a walk. Or a sedative.
It is not an obsession. He’s a principal player in the climate wars, responsible for much of the debate, and I have a policy interest in the climate wars, ergo I examine his blog and comments to see what the state of thought is in his part of the denialosphere.
So Al Gore and Jim Hansen are not serious voices in your mind?
I have read McKinsey reports before and they have some stuff right such as the need to streamline regulations, however, most of their measures seek create an even more Byzantine regulatory problem by having bureaucrats micromanage the economy by proving ‘incentives’ to deploy technologies that are not economic by traditional measures. I find it ironic that the report writers do not see the inherent contradiction in their arguments.
Personally, I think $200 oil will do more for CO2 reductions than anything a government could possibly do and I am fine letting the market sort things out when that day comes. Until then the government should focus on getting the deficit under control.
McIntyre has given up “auditing”. How long has he had temperature data and code available to “audit”. How much has he used it.
His current blog is a sad slug-fest.
^ yet you post there every day.
$200 oil is not a policy imposed by the government. It is the inevitable consequence of supply and demand. When the crunch comes humans will adapt but it be based on what makes economic sense – not based on who is financing a politician or what some wannbe social engineer decides.
There is no difference between my argument and yours on that front. You are the type of person who believes that governments can micromanage society. That is an ideological belief – not a rational one. I don’t share your beliefs.
Tim: “Personally, I think $200 oil will do more for CO2 reductions than anything a government could possibly do and I am fine letting the market sort things out when that day comes.”
I wholeheartedly agree with you, so I’m sure you’d agree with me that one thing government can do is to end oil subsidies. Guess who else thinks this? Barack Obama:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6103RM20100201
Actually, Tim. That idea of yours to end oil subsidies is brilliant.
500 billion dollars of annual subsidies going back to the world’s taxpayers. That surely fits with even the most extreme libertarian stance, doesn’t it? No more false propping up of markets with taxpayer cash.
As Pointer says, well done, Tim.
Ending oil subsidies sounds great, it might add about 5 cents to a gallon of gas. Remember, the gas you buy already has about $1.00 in taxes per gallon. Perhaps all we need to do is put another $1.00 per gallon in new taxes, and consumption will fall. The people the most hurt by this tax would be the poorest of course, but why would you care? Won’t bother you any, they can sleep under the overpass. Look at Canada, they have about $2 in taxes on their gas already, and it hasn’t slowed them down much. In the EU they pay about $8 per gallon, with about $6 in taxes per gallon. They still drive like lunatics on the Autobahns and they don’t conserve anything. Only the poor need to take public transit. This talk about fuel subsidies and taxes is crap.
And also though you write about subterfuge from the denialists, you still have not stated the simple truth; no one has been able to show how CO2 controls the climate. They have lots of images of melting glaciers, but this is merely evidence of climate change, it is not evidence that CO2 is the cause. All they really have is a correlation, that’s all. Corelation is not causation and you know it. This is your own brand of subterfuge.
I’ve seen this complaint numerous times from skeptics, and I really don’t understand it. I wonder if those who voice it understand it themselves.
What would this “evidence” look like? You will never find a CO2 molecule with a gun in its hand, or detect its fingerprints on a melting glacier. Unless you can describe the “evidence,” you can hardly complain about its absence.
The climate is a dynamic system. It has a number of inputs, all understood to a greater or lesser degree. CO2 is rising sharply, (even Willis Eschenbach agrees!) as a result of human activity. Satellite and surface measurements show that energy is being retained in the atmosphere, corresponding to the absorption wavelengths of CO2. This accumulated energy is showing up as increased heat content in the ocean and in the atmosphere. Temperatures are rising.
These converging lines of evidence support a finding that warming is occurring due to anthropogenic GHGs, mainly CO2.
No, this all started when you went off the rails and couldn’t stay on topic at Climate Audit, and had some of your posts edited. From that day on you’ve been trying to get even with McIntyre.
I just checked, and I was right — your very first post on this blog was about your posts being edited at Climate Audit. This whole blog is based on a childish personal vendetta.
Let it go.
“Like, that’s your opinion, man.”
The Dude
Sent from my iPhone
LOL. You talking about Climate Audit?
It’s as well to recognise that when you write about Climate Audit inevitably you will attract some of the more unhinged, more science-challenged contributors or apologists here to say that all the scientists are lying.
Personally I would be in favor of just ignoring, let them bleat their little hearts out, for there is nothing they could say that would change the science and nothing anybody here could say that would make them sit up straight and examine the scientific case.
But it isn’t my blog.
Not my blog, either, and if Shewonk wanted me to lay off then I would in no way take offence.
Words are powerful weapons though, and the less they go unchallenged the more they are accepted as a given simply because they are left unchallenged. The assumption is they must be right.
You will find McIntyre popping up to defend himself again (along with some of his acolytes) on Andy Russell’s blog.
Some of them posting on there just LOVE Wegman and Bishop Hill – who also puts in an appearance. They all seem to be bigging up Hill’s book – is it not selling well ?
I don’t think any of them are. Montford’s is ranked #120,599, and Mosher & Fuller’s is ranked #151,141, on Amazon.
“Legends in their own lunchtimes” as we say here.
Montford doesn’t seem to have a US publisher which may have hit his amazon.com sales ranking; in the UK at the time of writing, he is ranked #4667 of all books on amazon.co.uk, and #1 bestselling book on global warming on amazon.co.uk. I don’t think he’ll make his fortune from this book, but then I don’t think he is in it for the money.
As for our hosts suggestion, had Phil Jones made it clear what the trick was, there may have been less confusion, but the core of the complaint would be the same. In science, you do not delete data just because it doesn’t fit your views unless you have a sound a priori reason to do so. Post hoc deletion of inconvenient data is a big no-no. Splicing different data sets together and not mentioning the splice is a big no-no in science as well. And that applies whether the data are being presented in the peer review literature, or in a document summarising the literature.
Policy wonks may not understand this, but the vast majority of scientists do.
Splicing? Can you elaborate exactly how he did this? Didn’t Oxburgh cover this and came up with no evidence of wrongdoing or malpractice?
J Bowers: the various tricks are well documented on the web (although there is a lot of confusion on both sides of the debate over exactly what was done)
The most extreme form of the trick (which included the truncation, splice, smooth and plot beyond the truncation end point) was in the WMO status document. Jean S and UC at CA carefully documented this. These graphs were generated by Phil Jones.
The splice is not mentioned anywhere in the document. A reference is made to the long instrumental records incorporated into MBH, but not the splice of instrumental records into the data set.
Mann was pointedly asked about this graph, and he quickly distanced himself from it, stressing that Phil Jones’ “trick” was not the same as his own “trick”.
Unfortunately it is difficult to know why Oxburgh did not address this issue, at first glance it does not appear to have been included in the limited set of papers that were selected for analysis by the enquiry. The original enquiry had virtually no transparency so it is very difficult to tell why they ignored this fairly obvious and well known splice. The FOI requests are beginning to eke out some indications, but it will take time to piece together the full story of what went on.
Hold on. Stop there. You don’t even know how the “trick” was done, but there are a number of versions of how people think it might have been done? Doesn’t sound like the most rock solid of cases to me, especially when there’s a simpler explanation.
Why do all of these versions of how the “trick” was done exist? Or could it just be something as simple as “trick of the trade”? Nothing dishonest, nothing magic, and an age old phrase from since lord knows when.
The Divergence Problem was published openly in the literature over a decade before the hacked emails were released, and there have been hundreds of papers published on the subject. It’s a known problem. Mann described his “trick” in the documentation of his paper quite clearly. Jones just decided to do something similar as the purpose of his work was to show the actual temperature, and if there’s an exogenous anomaly from the well known and discussed Divergence Problem, then replacing the problem data with what we know to be accurate data that reflects the true temperatures is more applicable to the aims of the project. Mann may not have dropped ‘divergent’ data, but Jones simply followed his lead (that’s why the term “trick”). It’s not as if Mann hasn’t innovated before. Think on why we see so many graphs with error bars these days. We didn’t before MBH.
We know! It’s never been a secret has it? Distanced himself? Or maybe he just figured it’s for Jones to explain, and it would be improper for him to comment in any detail. It’s what I’d do, and it certainly is what he seems to be doing in this interview:
http://climateprogress.org/2009/11/28/climategate-michael-mann-hockey-stick-copenhagen-diagnosis/
In short, all I see from you guys is, “We think it’s this, we think it’s that, we think it’s the other,… ummm… it’s anything but the straightforward explanation that Jones gave… the obvious explanation.”
What next? Obama’s not an American… ummm… even though we’ve seen his birth certificate?
Spence_UK:
The WMO document is not a scientific document. It is meant to give a quick overview of the status of the science, at best a review for interested laymen. Long discussions on the figures are simply not appropriate(!).
The WMO is an official publication produced by scientists. There is an obligation to get things right. There is no request for a long discussion: there is a request not to be deceitful in the document. Just present the data as it is.
But you are suggesting it is okay to deceive in documents that are designed to be read by the general public, policymakers, and other people who are unlikely to be familiar with the peer review literature?
A report on the science should not be deceitful in its presentation, whether it is part of the peer review literature or not. Even more so when that report is an official report from a supposedly prestigious organisation.
Given the hysteria we see here about accurate claims made by Steve Mc on a blog, there is a more than a hint of irony when you excuse mainstream climate scientists from producing deceitful graphs in official publications, because it is not part of the peer reviewed literature. But I suppose cognitive dissonance has to find some way of squaring this circle for you.
Spence,
Jones admits openly that is what he did with the WMO graph. There is no intent to deceive. It merely a simplification giving the best approximation of all the combined data. UC is categorically wrong about the IPCC graphs using the same ‘trick’.
In contrast, Steve McIntyre is being disingenuous both in his over-simplification that the divergence problem absolutely means that tree-rings are bad proxies, and his overly complicated ambiguous dog back and forth about the WMO and IPCC graphs.
Spence_UK: there’s absolute zilch evidence that the ‘trick’ was to deceive. The evidence actually shows it was an honest simplification of the graph in order NOT to deceive. The decline post 1960 in some treerings would deceive people into thinking the temperature was going down. In fact, we already have had a former VP candidate touting the nonsense that the ‘trick’ was to hide that temperatures were going down.
It isn’t much different from the left-censoring often applied in the medical sciences, in order to remove those parts that are giving a deceitful impression of changes in recent history. *Non*-left-censored graphs have been used by the anti-vaccination crowd as evidence that vaccines cause autism. What *you* would likely consider the ‘honest’ depiction, was used to deceive the general population!