For people who really want to understand the details of the emails stolen from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, the Christian Science Monitor has an excellent analysis of the tree ring “divergence” phenomenon that gave rise to the now-infamous line: “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.”
Democracy is utterly dependent upon an electorate that is accurately informed. In promoting climate change denial (and often denying their responsibility for doing so) industry has done more than endanger the environment. It has undermined democracy.
There is a vast difference between putting forth a point of view, honestly held, and intentionally sowing the seeds of confusion. Free speech does not include the right to deceive. Deception is not a point of view. And the right to disagree does not include a right to intentionally subvert the public awareness.
Hiding the truth
The article's author does not get it. The issue was hiding the facts from readers of the IPCC documents.. ie, if you delete data, you MUST tell the reader that you have done so, and why.
Not Hiding the truth
You are wrong they did not hide anything.
Considering one of the first published papers on the divergence problem was in June 1995 and has been on subsequent Journal publications. Also in the IPPC third assessment mentions it (a little odd how they knew about something they didn't know about ) also noticed that they openly state that nonclimatic growth trends in trees should be removed. Page 131 (CH-2)
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/pdf/TAR-02.pdf
And also
"...Thus climate reconstructions based entirely on tree-ring data are susceptible to several sources of contamination or non-stationarity of response. For these reasons, investigators have increasingly found tree-ring data most useful when supplemented by other types of proxy information in “multi-proxy” estimates of past temperature change (Overpeck et al., 1997; Jones et al., 1998; Mann et al., 1998; 1999; 2000a; 2000b; Crowley and Lowery, 2000)."
Hide the Decline
Ed is correct. The question you have to ask yourself is why would unbiased scientists feel the need to hide anything from anybody? When you read further into the e-mails they explain how they don't want to create unnessecary distractions for policy makers. Combining two sets of data and then presenting them to policy makers without mention is certainly not honest and is a clear attempt to manipulate public policy.
Coming back and saying oh but this issue was discussed years earlier in a paper is a canard. Was this paper delivered to policy makers and those reading the IPCC report? No and why not? Because we we're trying to be deceptive and hide the decline.
However, the christian science monitor is a valuable source for information and enters the scientific field with clean hands. I would urge desmog to cite them more often.
THis issue goes to the heart of the perversion of science that has been revelaed. Scientists engaging in politics and finding data to fit their political ideals, rather than getting their theories from the data. Not credible science at all.
"Because we we're trying to be deceptive and hide the decline"
If they hid it, why is it in the IPPC? How is publishing hiding?
You gotta think like a
You gotta think like a denialist AT. Not hiding is actually hiding, just as warming is cooling, opinion is science and fabrication is fact. It's simple really when you get the hang of it.
Is the fine print in a
Is the fine print in a product guarantee being published or hidden?
both
Yes, you actually have to read the material!
So now all scientific papers and the IPCC reports are to be considered "fine print?" LOL. You know, you actually have to read all those words printed in those publications the charts appear in. Reports don't appear in charts; charts appear in reports.
What we are really seeing is just how ignorant many people are of not only the details of the science they criticize, but on how to self-educate and to think critically in a neutral manner.
The Fine Print.
Let me throw out some wild guesses
I speculate that out of the general public:
80% have seen a hockey stick chart
10% have seen a chart outside of an Al Gore movie or trailer of his movie.
4% have read about charts and considered various argumentation in blogs.
1% have had a very brief look at a scientific paper
.3% have read through 1 or more climate science papers from front to back
.1% have a solid grasp of and are reasonably conversant with the scientific literature.
So, I'm in the 4%, you may be in the .1, but to 99.9% of the general public, the scientific papers will always be fine print.
Rick, How does your example
Rick,
How does your example make the science illegitimate?
What you are really saying is that most people don't understand all this. Well then, maybe before engaging in so much absurd speculation about private email between scientists who are quite aware of what each other knows, people should spend more time learning the science and underlying issues.
They don't write their papers at the Grade 8 level, nor should they or even could they. I don't recall being taught linear regression methodology in Grade 8 for example. I was taught basic chart plotting and smoothing, and most people don't even get that right.
The judgment of all the science? The tree ring data from 1960 onwards in the northern hemisphere is not reliable, but it is for years previous, within a good level of confidence.
Trusting the Science Won't Happen
We've established that a large number (perhaps 99%) of the general public is in no position to analyze the science. They must choose either to trust it completely or to hang on to some doubt.
Indications are they will always have a tendency towards the second option.
For example:
I'm a western medicine guy. Basically I believe in what my family doctor says. He has the superior education. However there is an increasing trend away from western medicine. There is a trend to homeopathy, home remedy, herbal medicine, acupuncture, etc, even among well educated westerners.
There are 1001 sources that will tell you western scientific medicine is a big scam or that it is in some way harmful. These sources have their own convincing "science".
My basic argument here is that educating or convincing the public of the science will not be especially effective now and when it all starts hitting their pocketbooks it will be a complete failure.
People can't tell good science from bad
It's an argument. And it's what the negative PR campaigns aim at exploting.
But...
The Montreal protocol got banged through. Higher prices on smokes and liquor are maintained. Higher prices on cars are there as a result of pollution controls and safety features.
So there's a partial list opposing your conclusion.
Only time will tell.
Next, there's also the variable of the effects of global warming. If the minority is right, and there's a lot of negative effects sooner rather than later, disputes over parsing of emails won't matter.
If even modest effects are believed, or effects believed to be related to AGW which maybe aren't, the public will respond to that as well.
So far, policy pushes favour AGW belief. Implementation, not so much.
I'm working under the assumption that not enough will be done in time.
Please read what you criticize
Cam,
As I have indicated twice in this thread, the papers presented to the IPCC for both the 2001 and 2007 reports contained this information, and the IPCC in both the 2001 and 2007 reports discussed the issue.
The Christian Science Monitor article also pointed this out.
I even pointed to denialist propaganda discussing the issue back in 2004, based upon those same papers.
Both IPCC reports covered it
As I posted above, it is explicitly menationed in the lats IPCC report, and is also brought up in the IPCC 2001 report:
The IPCC Third Assessemnt Report (TAR) also mentions the divergence (2.3.2.1 Palaeoclimate proxy indicators):
"There is evidence, for example, that high latitude tree-ring density variations have changed in their response to temperature in recent decades, associated with possible non-climatic factors (Briffa et al., 1998a). By contrast, Vaganov et al. (1999) have presented evidence that such changes may actually be climatic and result from the effects of increasing winter precipitation on the starting date of the growing season (see Section 2.7.2.2). Carbon dioxide fertilization may also have an influence, particularly on high-elevation drought-sensitive tree species, although attempts have been made to correct for this effect where appropriate (Mann et al., 1999). Thus climate reconstructions based entirely on tree-ring data are susceptible to several sources of contamination or non-stationarity of response. For these reasons, investigators have increasingly found tree-ring data most useful when supplemented by other types of proxy information in "multi-proxy" estimates of past temperature change (Overpeck et al., 1997; Jones et al., 1998; Mann et al., 1998; 1999; 2000a; 2000b; Crowley and Lowery, 2000)."
Furthermore, it is brought up in the papers the IPCC reviewed for both IPCC reports.
This is an unremarkable matter.
Despite it being demonstrated repeatedly
that no facts were hidden from readers of the IPCC reports, you nutters continue your mantra that facts were hidden, thus demonstrating that it is reality itself that you are in denial of.
The divergence problem is old news
Great find!
Heck, the last IPCC report talks about it at length on pages 472-473, and explicitly explains that some data is excluded:
"...In their large-scale reconstructions based on tree ring density data, Briffa et al. (2001) specifically excluded the post-1960 data in their calibration against instrumental records, to avoid biasing the estimation of the earlier reconstructions (hence they are not shown in Figure 6.10), implicitly assuming that the ‘divergence’ was a uniquely recent phenomenon, as has also been argued by Cook et al. (2004a)."
Even this piece of denialist propaganda (CO2 science is a front) from 2004 discusses the issue:
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V7/N41/EDIT.php
Hardly new news.
You have to wonder how it is all these scientist skeptics didn't seem to know this while running around screaming "they hide the decline!". McIntyre has been all over this issue since 2005, claiming the omission of the data after 1960 to be a mystery. He seems to have never read the papers he is critical of.
Or maybe he's just full of it.
global dimming
"Global dimming". That's the first time I've heard that offered as a possible explanation of the unexplained modern change in tree growth.
I suppose it's a variable to add in to all the other variables.
The fall back explanation is that there are other ancient proxies - and so the tree rings are not so important. In that case perhaps the tree rings should be dropped altogether, but that can't be done because the tree ring record is needed to bolster the other proxies.
Are the other proxies not all that robust either?
I don't think the extended explanation helps anything. The tree ring proxy is going to continue to be a point of contention.
Science has contention
Contention is scientific circles is fine, but it doesn't render the tree rings science useless. Having a series of data from different sources in general agreement, which is known to follow the instrumental record in most cases bolsters the case that the tree ring results are reliable, within an accepted margin of error, unless violating more reliable data, which we only see in the recent record.
We trust that this was not an issue, say, 1,000 years ago because we do not see the pattern of divergence between north hemisphere trees and southern ones then, like we do know.
These temperature proxies are rated as 'reliable', but not as 'highly reliable.' When you consider that without them we have no data, you can see why they are used. The point to all this is that the issue is well known and under investigation. A few weeks ago the conspiratorial-minded denialists were claiming that this was all improper and unknown, some big secret of a cabal to hide data contradicting global warming.
We, of course, now see that it is widely published and discussed. The tree ring data from the northern hemisphere 1960+ are outliers which are also unreliable.
All this being said, global warming theory does not rest on paleoclimatology.
global warming theory does not rest on paleoclimatology.
It absolutely does. Without checking what is happening today with the past, there is no way to know if what is happening today is beyond normal variation. Which is the case, what is happening today is not beyond normal variation.
They had tailpipes in the
They had tailpipes in the past which kept pumping more and more CO2 into the air without end? No, there were natural processes, which we are subverting.
Ice ages are within normal variation a well. If we were causing one instead of global warming, would you just sit back and shrug and keep going along as you were?
We watch global warming induced by CO2 live, via satellites. We actually see the CO2 blocking radiant heat in increasing amounts. We know how much radiance is coming from the sun into the Earth system, and we know how much goes back into space. It is not looking good.