Has the 'hockey stick' criticism become a moot point?

Question

The NAS confirmed the general accuracy of the so-called 'hockey stick', and several subsequent temperature reconstructions have shown similar results.

In 2006, the National Research Council recommended that Mann's 'hockey stick' be improved by using more types of proxies and a better statistical analysis method. Mann's group has done this, and obtained essentially the same result.

http://climateprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/mann1.jpg

The paper can be downloaded here (top link):

http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/Mann/articles/articles.html

Proxies used include “the growth patterns of trees and coral, the contents of ice cores and sediments, and temperature fluctuations in boreholes.”

http://climateprogress.org/2008/09/03/sorry-deniers-hockey-stick-gets-longer-stronger-earth-hotter-now-than-in-past-2000-years/

“To satisfy the critics, we now have enough other sources that we can achieve meaningful reconstructions back a thousand years without tree ring data, and we get more or less the same answer...The burst of warming over the past one to two decades takes us out of the envelope of natural variability."

"Being able to get essentially [the] same result without tree ring data shows that what we are seeing is not something specific to tree rings," Hegerl [climatologist at the University of Edinburgh] said, "but a real temperature response."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/09/080902-hottest-earth.html

Does this new study improving on the initial 'hockey stick' combined with the NAS conclusion and other subsequent reconstructions showing similar results make the 'hockey stick' controversy moot?

Answer 1

Even in studies that are suppposedly multi-proxy, it's SOLELY the tree rings that reduce or eliminate the MWP signature and that is based on an assumption that the tree rings just keep getting wider with temperature beyond any limit, which we now know to be false because the tree rings didn't get any wider from 1980-2000.

'Sides - the coral reefs are only 700 years old.    They date back to the end of the last warm period.   Ok it's warmer now than it was in the LIA.   Big deal.

And not a single shred of the physical evidence of warmer temperatures during the MWP has ever been explained.    I.e., the "what grew when and where" evidence.  Such evidence cannot legitimately be dismissed as "anecdotal" - it's not from a story, it's a matter of physical evidence.  Around the world species thrived where they don't now because it's too cold.   Melting glaciers in the Alps are revealing archaeological finds from past periods that you now deny were as warm as or warmer than today.    Droughts were far worse in the 1100s-1200s than they were in the 1900s.    Lakes that support far greater populations now and have not dried up yet did dry up during the 1100s-1200s.

Such evidence is "multifarious" and comes "from the arctic to New Zealand."    Not a single example has EVER been explained.

There is minimal evidence that the few areas from which there isn't evidence of warmth were colder - and they would have to be much colder to offset warming elsewhere for the global average temps to not have been as warm or warmer than today - for two centuries straight.   It's not even likely that the areas from which there is no evidence either way could have been substantially colder if the climate worked then the way it does now.

So, the physical evidence of warmer temperatures has not been explained away and really can't be.

If you're going to contend based upon a model that it was scientifically not possible for Washington and his men to have crossed the Delaware, I will believe you when you explain to me how then they appeared the next morning on the other side.

You need to understand that the MWP isn't something that pre-determined skeptics point to to support their skepticism - it's the other way around: the rewriting of the climate history by the AGW proponents is the source of much of the skepticism.

The history books said X.   X was deemed to be potentially at odds with an agenda, and then the history books said Y.

That is Orwellian.

The Hockey Stick is the climate science equivalent of Piltdown Man.

Answer 2

Only to those who can read and compute. Those who rely on AM radio and chain email for their news will not be convinced by science.

Answer 3

Good stuff and supports Mann's previous work, along with the NAS conclusion. I bet the doubters hate that!

Answer 4

Massaging the data to match Mann's graph sounds like..... I'm trying to think of the term..... Oh yeah ..... VooDoo Science.

Mann is not going to get the egg off of his face on this one ..... no matter how much he and his ilk try to corrupt the so-called data going into the so-called model.

Answer 5

i thought a moot was a kind of duck....

thanks for the links. i am getting so fed up with all the grapes/vikings etc arguments, here's one more nail.

Answer 6

There is nothing you could present to the hardened skeptics you find on the internet that would persuade them that anthropogenic CO2 is affecting climate.  You're going to receive a bunch of replies saying one or more of the following:  Mann is lying (again), proxies are a bad way to model past temperatures, it's all solar, CO2 doesn't affect temperature, it's natural variability, CO2 lags temperature during the end of an ice age.  I probably forgot one or two.

Answer 7

Anyway you slice it appending the modern instrumental globally averaged temperature record on a proxy dataset is amateurish, and shows a general lack of scientific discipline, unless your goal is to be an alarmist.

Edit Ken:

I did not say that all scientist that use proxy data are amateurish, I said the act of comparing the Hadcrut or GISS to a proxy dataset and reaching the conclusion that the recent warming is out of bounds with natural climate variability is an alarmist stradegy and lacks scientific discipline. The proxy data does not have the resolving power to be calibrated to within .5 degrees of what modern global temperatures are  computed to be. In fact, how does one estimate global temperatures, by adding the daily high temp plus the daily low temp and dividing by two? Is that anything remotely similar to measuring tree ring growth? What elevation should the temperature by measured from the surface? 5 feet, 10 feet or 50 feet? There are so many things wrong with comparing the GISS to a proxy dataset in absolute terms it is pathetic!!!!

You do not need proxy data to determine that the warming is anything out of the ordinary, borehole measurements explain clearly why the Vikings were able to colonize Greenland.

http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/studi...

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Answer 8

You mean, of course, that when scientists manipulate the data and or do incorrect calculations ---------- we should just ignore it?

Answer 9

Dana, thank you for the information. It's obvious none of the deniers here will support actual science. They like to think the numbers were just "massaged," but ignore the fact that more proxy data were used compared to the original. That's not massaging, that's updating  existing work and what science is supposed to do. It throws them deeper into denial, because it just so happens it follows the original outcome.  

Answer 10

Hey Dana, can you say, "Madam President?"

might want to start learning it.

and BTW, yeah its a moot point.

Answer 11

Mann is allowed to correct his flawed original analysis?  Don't you see a problem with this?  This is kind of like letting money counterfeiters have another shot at making a better bill.   Using coral and tree rings as proxies doesn't show much.  Trees for example can do well in climates that are colder and wetter.

Answer 12

Tomcat - Amateurish?  Wow, that's quite a statement to categorize all the scientists in all the fields who use proxy data.  

Let's all agree with Tomcat and throw-out all proxy data. That will eliminate the MWP nonsense, the CO2 lag nonsense, and virtually every other doubter myth used to try and discredit AGW.  If we only look at the instrumentation temperature record and the measured CO2 rise, AGW looks even more convincing.