3 Responses to “Cheat Codes Farmville”

1. Richard S Courtney
   6:58 pm on September 11th, 2010

   barry: I am now convinced that your arguments are an attempt to deflect this thread from a comment that I made and onto a tangent. So, I shall address the pertinent parts of your post at August 18, 2010 at 7:00 pm and touch on the tangential issue after that. The part of your paper that is directly pertinent to this thread says:“There is an excellent paper that examines many of the thorny issues with millennial reconstructions. Therein a good number of studies, including MBH are considered and combined. As part of the testing, the controversial US tree proxies are discarded, the Yamal series, Mann’s PC analysis eschewed, and other methods and proxies are either reworked or left out, or retained if they are considered all of Mann’s studies were discarded, the story generally told by other, multi-proxy, millennial reconstructions matches that which appears in the IPCC.That is, the MWP seems to have been as warm as the mean of the 20th century, but probably not as warm as the last few decades of the 20th century.With that in mind, I cannot fathom why there is such triumphalism surrounding criticism of Mann’s 12 year-old papers.”THAT IS NOT TRUE.The paper you cite is NOT “an excellent paper that examines many of the thorny issues with millennial reconstructions”. It is – as its title says – an intercomparison of some proxy studies. Which ones? Well that paper says;“This paper reviews reconstructions of past temperature, on the global, hemispheric, or near hemispheric scale, by Jones et al. (1998) [JBB1998], Mann et al. (1998) [MBH1998], Mann et al. (1999) [MBH1999], Huang et al. (2000) [HPS2000], Crowley and Lowery (2000) [CL2000], Briffa et al. (2001) [BOS2001], Esper et al. (2002) [ECS2002], Mann and Jones (2003) [MJ2003], Moberg et al. (2005) [MSH2005], Oerlemans (2005) [OER2005], and Hegerl et al. (2007a) [HCA2007].”So, that paper is an intercomparison of the studies which used the flawed statistical analysis method adopted by MBH. The paper of McS&W proves that analysis method provides worthless results so it disproves the indications of ALL those studies. Therefore, it is disingenuous for you to assert that ;“If all of Mann’s studies were discarded, the story generally told by other, multi-proxy, millennial reconstructions matches that which appears in the IPCC.”The paper of McS&W proves their “story” is a fairy tale.So, you are plain wrong when, on the basis of those discredited studies, you assert; “the MWP seems to have been as warm as the mean of the 20th century, but probably not as warm as the last few decades of the 20th century.”The individual proxy studies of individual proxies (e.g. stalagtites) from around the show a general picture of the world being warmer than now in the MWP. And those studies do not suffer from the same statistical defect as the MBH and similar studies which you proclaim. Indeed, the studies from single locations cannot suffer from the assumption of ‘teleconnections’ that is used by MBH and similar studies because they do not use any such assumption. And the paper by McS&M proves that assumption adds great inherent error to the results of the MBH analysis method.And you say;“With that in mind, I cannot fathom why there is such triumphalism surrounding criticism of Mann’s 12 year-old papers.”This seems to be a meme that has been generated since the McS&M paper was submitted for publication. Even Michael Mann has been saying that he thinks his ‘hockey stick’ should not have been used as a “poster child” of AGW. This seems to be a policy of tactical retreat.But there is no ”triumphalism” over the retreat. There is only proclamation and despair.The ‘hockey stick’ is a zombie. It has been repeatedly destroyed by M&M, Wegman, North, and etc. but it keeps on having a life of its own by being promulgated by AGW supporters as having some validity. Indeed, you try to continue it when you assert:“If all of Mann’s studies were discarded, the story generally told by other, multi-proxy, millennial reconstructions matches that which appears in the IPCC.”But ,ALL THOSE RECONSTRUCTIONS HAVE BEEN SHOWN TO BE WORTHLESS BY THE McS&M PAPER.The hope is that the McS&M paper is the ‘silver bullet’ that will finally get rid of the zombie. And that is why it is being proclaimed (n.b. not triumphed).You make an Orwellian assertion that;“In fact, in the rest of the world, very few people read the IPCC TAR Summary for Policy Makers, very few people would have known what the graph was had it been given to them unlabeled, and the only reason it has emerged into the worldwide public sphere is because of the repeated attempts to portray it as the central pillar of the AGW argument.” Do you really think that anybody here has so imperfect a memory that they do not know the ‘hockey stick’ was the “proof” of AGW which was presented in thr SPM of IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR)?And you follow that with ad hom and falsehood when you conclude saying;“That the argument is basically political is apparent in how critics generally do not discuss the findings of MBH 99 from the text of that paper, or even know what they are. It’s all about the graph and perceptions arising from it. As it is for you. Which is why you mistakenly repeat that MBH did away with the MWP and LIA. You would do well to read the paper.”Your insinuation that I have not read MBH98 and MBH99 is unfounded and silly. But your claim that the “argument is basically political” is correct because that is why the IPCC proclaimed it in their Summary For Policymakers. However, your assertion that my opposition to that piece of psudo-science is an unfounded insult. My opposition to it is summarised in a peer review comment I provided IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4): that said;Page 1-13 Chapter 1 Section 1.5.2 Line 36 For accuracy and completeness, after “(IPCC, 2001a)” it is very, very important to add: “However, since the TAR several studies have provided doubt to that work of Mann et al.. Many studies provide data that conflict with the findings of that work of Mann et al. (e.g. Beltrami et al) (ref. Beltrami et al “Long-term tracking of climate change by underground temperatures”, Geophysical Research Letters v.12 (2005) ). In 2005 McIntyre and McKitrick published two papers that together provide a complete refutation of that work of Mann et al. (ref. McIntyre S & McKitrick R, Energy & Environment, v 16, no.1 (2005)) (2005), Geophysical Research Letters Vol. 32, No. 3, (2005)). But, perhaps the most important of their studies of that work of Mann et al. was their publication in 2003 (ref. McIntyre S & McKitrick R, Energy & Environment, v 24, pp 751-771 (2003)) that showed it is not possible to replicate the work of Mann et al. There are several reasons for the inability to replicate this work of Mann et al.; not least that Mann refuses to reveal his source codes. The inability to replicate this work of Mann et al. means it has no scientific worth: i.e. this work of Mann et al. is anecdote of similar kind to a report of a ghost sighting. Hence, the IPCC now apologises for including it in the TAR. The IPCC will now disregard this work of Mann et al. and recommends that all others should also disregard it until it can be – and has been – independently replicated.”But my recommendation was ignored and the AR4 only made a bland comment that natural variability has been found to be greater than indicated in the TAR. THAT IS POLITICAL.I conclude by addressing the tangential issue. Your post at August 18, 2010 at 7:00 pm asserts that you have not tried to dispute the existence of the MWP. In that case, I fail to understand the point of your post at August 18, 2010 at 6:56 am that claims some individual proxy studies show warming and cooling that are out of phase with the bulk of studies which show the MWP.Richard

2. rascalrascal
   7:18 am on December 28th, 2010

   in a fiction movie it could appear as an alien message!

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   4:31 pm on April 2nd, 2011

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