Jul 30 2008
Monckton, Schmidt, and McIntyre (2008)
No, it’s not that collaboration we’ve all been waiting for. Instead, Monckton is at it again. Nothing new. Although one interesting tidbit is that he is still insisting that his article was peer-reviewed, even though it obviously wasn’t. In his response he writes:
Schmidt, unlike the Professor of Physics who peer-reviewed my paper, did not read Hansen’s paper with sufficient attention.
It is regrettable that Schmidt neither has his blogs scientifically reviewed as thoroughly as my paper was…
Unfortunately for him, the person who reviewed his article has already stated that it wasn’t peer-reviewed. New Scientist: Is climate scepticism the new flat Earth theory?
I spoke to Al Saperstein of Wayne State University in Michigan, one of two co-editors of Physics & Society, the offending newsletter.
He stressed that that the article was not sent to anyone for peer-reviewing. Saperstein himself edited it. “I’m a little ticked off that some people have claimed that this was peer-reviewed,” he said. “It was not.”
But reading through the comments on the New Scientist article was interesting. It was hard to tell if those posting them actually believed what they wrote or if it was parody. My favorite was
The Communist lie is exposed here by American Patriot and hero, Stephen McIntyre…
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47 Responses to “Monckton, Schmidt, and McIntyre (2008)”
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“Unfortunately for him, the person who reviewed his article has already stated that it wasn’t peer-reviewed.”
Uhhhh, cause the guy who took a look at it isn’t a PEER of Monckton?
SMIRK!
[Reply: You're right. The editor was clearly much more qualified, as he actually earned his honors instead of inheriting them.]
“The Communist lie is exposed here by American Patriot and hero, Stephen McIntyre…”
McI suffers from two probably related flaws. He seems to enjoy the adulation he gets on his blog. A lot. He also can’t keep from going out of his way to slight at virtually every opportunity a small group of scientists that outside of the denialosphere are highly respected members of their fields.
If he could get beyond both, or possibly even one or the other, he could probably make a name for himself as a legitimate contributor to the state of the science instead of the statistician equivalent of a concern troll.
After seeing Judy Curry on CA, I thought there was a chance that he would realize that if he put some of the nonsense behind him, he could actually be a positive influence. It seems that he would rather remain a large fish in a small pond than do so however.
The New Scientist article got it right.
Basically, APS Fellow and frequent past contributor Gerald Marsh gave the FPS editors a list of names to try (because they didn’t know who to ask, one might guess), and only Monckton was interested.
Nothing since has been a surprise, but I’d suggest digging deeper into Marsh’s actions,
at RC or at RC, with a few more references.
Nicely put, Jon. All I would add is that McI is indeed a Great American.
“All I would add is that McI is indeed a Great American.”
Don’t forget hero- I will be the first to acknowledge that he is as much a hero as he is an American Patriot.
Suppose one is:
a) A Canadian mining guy
b) Living in Ontario, i.e., not near the coasts, and not near the pine beetles in B.C., not in the far North, not involved in ice-road trucking
and knowing that the US buys a lot of minerals an fossil fuels from Canada
and knowing, that in the short term, it may well be a plus for the lower middle of Canada to warm up a few degrees
Is it *good* for one to let foolish Americans think that AGW might be bad for them?
Or should one fight that tooth and nail?
Suppose one is a Canadian mining guy, living in Ontario, i.e., not near the coasts, is it possible for one to have well founded and correct views on the derivation of historical temperatures from proxies?
I don’t think so. I think one would have to move to the coast. The only thing I’m not sure of, what happens to one’s previous views when he does that? Do they then become possibly true, or does that only apply to the views expressed after the move? And what if they are the same views?
I would also be interested in having the syndrome generalized. Like what other former professions and locations make it impossible or difficult to form correct views on what other aspects of AGW. Me, for instance, I’m a programmer living in Europe, writing mainly in Perl. Is that OK? Its important to me to know, because I might otherwise just have to go back to C++.
Seriously, I would just love to audit McI’s tax returns. IIRC on a couple of occasions in the past when this has been suggested it’s caused him to go into a paroxysm of indignation. That seems oddly inconsistent with the whole auditing meme.
I mention this since Canada seems to have rather more denialist astroturf per unit population than does the U.S., and an investment in McI by, say, the tar sands folks would make perfect sense. The tar sands operation is probably close to first on the chopping block once society starts to get serious about CO2 reductions.
My biggest clue about CA was the ululation I got when I suggested Stevie Mac go out and core his own trees to show everybody how its done. It is clear he would rather point fingers than do actual work.
And I was as surprised as anyone when Judy Curry
wastedspent time there. I wasn’t surprised at the treatment she got, as she was doinking their ideological foundations. But it sure clarified things, dinnit?Best,
D
[/s] tag not enabled. ‘Wasted’ should have a strikethrough.
D
[Reply: Fixed.]
Bloom,
Why aren’t you calling for an audit of Gore’s tax returns? His financial conflicts of interest are painfully obvious yet none of his supporters seem to care because he is doing it to ’save the planet’. Yet the same people make a point of slandering anyone who dares to dispute the “consensus” without considering the possibility that they honestly believe that some of the science behind AGW is junk. The hypocracy is appalling.
Dano,
Get your facts right. Steve Mc did go core some trees and has had them analyzed. He has posts up CA if you want to find out more.
Heaven help us, now I not only have to worry about am I using Tbe Wrong Programming Language, and whether I am living in The Wrong Place, I have to worry about my tax returns as well. Like, would they meet with the approval of this Bloom guy? They probably would not. Last year I did one piece of work for a Euro energy company. My largest client was a pan European media organization. Then I did some work for a drug company and a large Italian museum. Is this OK?
Does that mean that in addition to changing over to C++, moving from my present location in central Europe to one of the coasts, I now have to submit my tax return to Bloom in order to be qualified to have an opinion on AGW that people can assess on its merits? Bloom would then decide whether my income comes from permitted sources. I don’t know what we do if he says no. I guess I should give it back?
Would it not be simpler for Bloom to publish a list of companies and projects that you are not allowed to do work for, if you want to be permitted to have opinions on AGW? Then those of us wanting to have opinions could just decline the work?
After that we would finally get to look at my views on tree ring chronologies and PCA algorithms as they relate to MBH. I probably use a forbidden programming language here too - I am sure that R is totally politically incorrect. Please tell us right away if so, and tell us what you’d like used instead. Maybe, though I had no idea of this when I used it, R may be partially funded by Exxon, in which case its PCA package is probably deeply flawed. We should get the tax returns of the R team as well while we are at it.
It is amazing how complicated this is. I cannot think of any other area of science where one has personally to jump through so many hoops before one’s views can be considered on their merits. But hey, I’m up for it. The future of the planet is at stake after all.
Bloom,
BTW - Hell will freeze over before the Tar Sands are shutdown by CO2 regulations in Canada (If the federal government was crazy enough to try Alberta would likely seperate). There are already discussions about building a pipeline to the coast so the oil can be shipped to China and India if the Americans are dumb enough to stop buying it.
Just realized, I filled my car up at a Total station the other day. Is this all right? A narrow escape, that. If I had filled up at Exxon all that work on PCA in R would have been totally wasted. Well, unless it turns out that you can only use Matlab in climate science. Could be. Or maybe Mathematica.
I am sitting here hoping and praying that I am not instructed that we have to do stats in Excel. It can’t be that bad, can it?
Raven, lad:
Some guy went up to a place not far from where I go snowshoeing and cored a few trees in one place. Hardly a valid sample size to test a hypothesis.
Tell us again how many natural science classes you had after 8th grade? Zero? Are you old enough to be in college to take a class or two to expand your horizons?
Best,
D
Dano-boy whines:
“Some guy went up to a place not far from where I go snowshoeing and cored a few trees in one place. Hardly a valid sample size to test a hypothesis.”
IOW - you admit your previous post was a bunch a B.S.
What a bunch of idiots. McI hasn’t written a paper in 3.5 years. His hoi polloi gather around the most pretentious, pompous, stick up ass twits like this Moncton of Funkton.
Do some science, Atmoz. Collect some data. Do a regression. Let these morons jerk each other off in the chatrooms.
Fred:
whether one likes Perl or C++ is irrelevant [they're both distant descendants of work I had a hand in]. No one need to move to the coast.
However, if a particular person has
a) Numerous upsides to business-as-usual, regardless of CO2
b) and zero downsides
they might have other reasons for obfuscating science than improving science, and if you don’t for that, I can get you a gerat deal on any of several bridges. Just send a check.
There are plenty of people in Ontario who understand the science, so that’s not a direct impediment.
All the models expect southern Canada to get a bit warmer, which won’t bother most people living there, except:
a) Lumber and other people in B.C. and Alberta who are seeing the pine beetles massive damage to the forests.
b) Those who care about skiing and other winter sports
Unsurprisingly, B.C. folks have much more concern about AGW than Albertans as a group.
John Mashey says:
“Lumber and other people in B.C. and Alberta who are seeing the pine beetles massive damage to the forests.”
1) The pine beetle outbreak was largely a result of fire control policies which provided large tracts of mature pine - not warming.
2) The outbreak is largely over.
Also, BC is shipping as much coal as it can to China and India and shows to no sign of slowing down despite the anti-CO2 rhetoric spouted by some politicians.
Check out this interchange here. Steve won’t even answer why he included a picture and bolded text. What a coward. Won’t come clean.
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3362
Raven, you are so full of it. The beetles survived the cold winter even in *northern* Alberta (you know, a place where previously they couldn’t survive at all until things started warming up), and as of this year they’re officially established throughout the forested portions of the province. From there an ambitious young beetle can see all the way to Labrador.
Why just make stuff up that can be so easily checked?
Bloom,
My facts are right. The pine beetle spread was largely due to fire control and it will stop, as it has for millenia, when the beetle runs out food, although, drought stressed trees are more vulnerable. Cold winters only kill the beetles if the freeze up happens quickly before the beetles can hibernate.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2008/03/25/bc-pine-beetle.html
“The mountain pine beetle epidemic in British Columbia is coming to a close, but only because the pests are running out of food, a forestry representative says.
…
The spread has been attributed to the fact that B.C. is believed to have three times more mature lodgepole pine than it did 90 years ago, mainly because equipment and techniques for protecting forests against wildfire have greatly improved over time.”
Frankly, this game where alarmists try to blame everything bad on CO2 is getting quite silly and will ultimately undermine their objectives because people will simple tune out (it is already happening).
There is a common tactic in the AGW movement which is both illegitimate and counter productive.
Person A makes a technical argument of some sort. It could be Spencer on Climate Sensitivity, it could be McIntyre on dendro chronology or stats.
The tactic is assert or suggest that some personal characteristic of that person gives him/her a motive for either wanting not to believe AGW or for wanting others not to believe. Most of the time the connection asserted is tenuous. Often the personal characteristic is not even evidenced. Then, discussion of the argument on its merits is then simply dropped. It is implied or asserted that given the alleged motive, we don’t have to think about this any more. The tactic is familiar. It is the same one that was used, for example, against those who argued that the facts about Katyn indicated it was the Russians who did it. The facts were what they were, regardless of whether one of your grandparents was ‘bourgeois’. But if one was, well this was a reason why we did not have to think about any evidence you put forward.
It is quite wrong. Whatever Spencer believes in matters of religion, whatever motives he may have for wanting AGW to be false, his arguments on sensitivity have to be tackled on their merits. There’s no evidence whatever that McIntyre is funded by any energy interests. But even if he were, that would have no bearing on his remarks on dendro chronology and statistics.
The desire to see his income tax return in this connection is completely misplaced. It is as relevant to the merits of his views on dendro as the color of his underwear, or as relevant as my own use of Perl is to my views on climate.
You should think before making these sorts of innuendos, that there’s no end to this. We will start having slurs on Real Climate of the same sort regarding its funding. In fact, there are some of those in Monckton. Bloom will be asked to supply his tax returns. John Mashey will be asked where, exactly, he lives and when he moved there. The general public will rightly conclude that when the debate becomes so personalized and so empty of any content (because, remember, no-one has ever actually connected McIntyre to fossil fuel players) that perhaps the sceptics have a point which is not being answered.
Me, I think there is a serious question about climate sensitivity and feedback, but that Bloom at least has no understanding of it. Otherwise he would just argue his point, and not waste his time and ours on innuendo about McIntyre’s funding.
Let’s see, Raven, I was talking about Alberta, where the beetles have just now established themselves for the first time as an endemic population, and you quote a story about BC? Well, let’s have a look anyway:
First, the sole source of information is a forestry industry rep, which should have been a sign to proceed wth caution.
Second, the story notes that a little over half of the pines remain. That sounds like rather a lot of food to me. Of course, the story’s source only said the infestation “is coming to a close,” which is quite different from your “largely over.” A quick google finds a story on a large yet-to-be-eaten area of BC, so I would say “largely over” looks hard to support. It sounds to me as if the beetles are more or less finished with the plateaus and are working their way through the mountains now.
Third is the interesting claim that “the pine beetle populations are making their way across the Rocky Mountains into Alberta because the pine stands have collapsed in many areas of BC.” Really? This is actually a rather amazing assertion. Perhaps Dano can inform.
Fourth, notice that in the article I linked the quoted expert (with a degree and extensive experience in entomology rather than vice-presidency) refers to climate change as a factor in the spread.
Certainly it’s the case that fire suppression has made the situation worse in the beetle’s historic range, but it doesn’t explain their spread into areas previously too cold for them to survive. Can you guess what does?
Finally, let’s see what the BC provincial government has to say:
“The magnitude of the current outbreak has been attributed to two factors. First, BC has an exceptionally abundant supply of susceptible mature lodgepole pine, the beetle’s preferred host. The abundance of mature lodgepole pine is in large part due to the lack of natural disturbances like forest fire. Fire suppression in BC’s interior, while saving valuable timber assets, has also produced enormous, continuous stands of vulnerable mature lodgepole pine. In 2003, the total lodgepole pine stock (all ages) totaled 14.9 million hectares, a nearly sixfold stock increase since 1910.
“The second factor is climate change. Historically, beetle populations have been limited by cold winters; however, the absence of cold temperatures in the interior has allowed large populations of beetles to successfully survive the winter under the bark of the pine trees. Furthermore, the warming trend in the interior has produced ideal conditions for the mountain pine beetle. Hot, dry summers have allowed the beetle infestation to spread to higher elevations and more northern latitudes while producing drought-stressed trees which are more susceptible to attack.”
I think that ties up the package nicely, don’t you?
Nice try, Fred. I hope you convinced yourself. It would even make some sense were it not for the existence of a large, well-documented denial industry.
Funny that the mountain pine beetle epidemic in the Rockies is attributed to the main factors of warmer temps and drought, with minor factors being management (as the FRI in many areas is greater than suppression time). In my travels to eastern BC, the MPB epidemic there was attributed to the same factors.
Strange that some on this thread don’t know these basic facts.
And young Raven shows again why he can’t speak to the issues. Tell us, laddie, why someone who is NotSteve who cored one area has a representative sample.
We all wait the Galileo-like explanation from someone likely not old enough to attend college (judging from the simple arguments).
Best,
D
Dano says:
“Funny that the mountain pine beetle epidemic in the Rockies is attributed to the main factors of warmer temps and drought”
Funny that the people study the forests know the that the BC climate goes through dry cycles every 50 years or so and that the only unique thing about this particular cycle is the pine beetle had a lot more of its preferred food supply. Funny that the people who study the beetle know that cold winters help control the beetle but only if an early fall or late spring cold snap catches the critters by surprise. They can survive quite well if are buried under the snow.
I realize that blaming everything on CO2 seems to be the only argument that you are capable of comprehending, however, the limits of your understanding will not change the complex nature of the real world.
Raven, at this point you need to come up with some scientific sources to back your claims.
I don’t think there’s any dispute that there would have been a fairly bad outbreak in the beetle’s historic range due to forestry practices. Scientists studying the forests seem to think that it’s been made much worse by AGW, but eventually the forests will recover after the beetles eat all the mature pines. The larger problem is the establishment of a permanant beetle population in Alberta and the comcomitant exposure of the entire boreal forest to beetle infestation.
In future I suggest you take the time to double-check your facts before engaging in this sort of knee-jerk attack.
“Funny that the people who study the beetle know that cold winters help control the beetle but only if an early fall or late spring cold snap catches the critters by surprise.”
This is incorrect, BTW. Extended mid-winter cold periods of sufficent severity will also kill them off. Those sorts of winters used to be rather more common in Alberta.
Also, a fifty-year dry cycle in BC? Source for that?
To what was the extreme pine bark beetle outbreak of 1894-1905 in the Black Hills of SD attributed? And in 1945-1955? And in 1961-1965? And 1975-1978?
Was the last outbreak related to the extensive damage also present in Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana? Were any related to the extensive damage in Yellowstone National Park prior to the extreme fire of 1988?
Thanks
Link for your source on those, Dan? Regardless, I would observe that those locations are all within the normal range of the beetle and that (as Raven correctly pointed out) periodic outbreaks are part of the beetle’s normal life cycle. BTW, does your source indicate whether there was a past outbreak any where near as geographically extensive as the present one?
Google “pine bark beetles” outbreaks timeline
Steve Bloom,
There may be a large well funded denial industry. There may have been paid lobbying by the fossil fuel industry.
This has no bearing whatever, and you know it on the merits of (for example) McIntyre’s latest post on Brown’s Inconsistency Rb Statistic as applied to proxies, and particularly as applied to MBH99. Complete with R code.
If you cannot or will not discuss the validity of the arguments in this and similar postings on CA, then you should simply be quiet. Making false innuendos about M’s finances, and assertions about totally irrelevant topics, is making an idiot of yourself and discrediting the AGW movement.
Fred, sweetie, you know it’s false because…? And of course it has a lot to do with McI’s general approach and whether he should be granted an iota of respect.
Re the recent post, is what he’s saying endorsed by a paleolimnologist? No? In that case, I’d say he has a credibility problem.
Oh, yes: MBH is now 10 years old. Rehashing it now is important because…?
But I see that I’ve been mean to you. Here’s a cookie.
Steve, science doesn’t require credibility. Google Michael Faraday sometime….or maybe Rumanajan.
Science doesn’t care who says something, neither should you.
The messenger has ZERO bearing on the message. Disect the message, and get on with your life.
Wade, I would say that ignoring the existence of the denial industry is something that the denial industry would find to be very appealing.
More generally, one interesting thing about science crackpots is that they hardly ever have good qualifications (education, training, experiemnce, publications) in the field within which their crackpottery is being exercised.
For example, should the editors of Physics Today spend time examining and refuting the numerous submissions they receive overturning relativity, quantum theory, etc.? Nope, it’s into the the round file with them.
Google “pine bark beetles” outbreaks timeline
Google doesn’t have a ‘wisdom’ button. Nor does one get a denialist-industry filter there.
Instead, Google Scholar ‘mountain pine beetle’.
Let us ensure young, gullible, uneducated lads commenting in this thread note the third hit in the search return’s conclusion:
HTH.
Best,
D
I highly doubt thousands of amateurs are sitting around writing hundred page dissertations overturning quantum theory….feel free to have an editor at Physics Today refute, and I’ll believe you.
But I do know for a fact that every undergrad and most grad students *do* double check many of today’s theories regardless of how ingrained it is. Hell, Einstein himself wasn’t actively practicing physics for a university, but somehow you accept Relativity?
Again, it’s not your credentials, it’s not your title, it’s the work. I’m sorry, but laziness is not a reasonable defense. (i.e. I’m too tired to check this, so I’ll look at their credentials then trash it…. sorry Rumanajan…no formal education, to the trash bin for you!!!)
Edit: the “I do know for a fact….” should include the words “Physics majors”…. clearly not *everyone* at university is required to prove relativity or run the M&M experiments…
Age of a paper has no bearing on its importance. Jones 1990 is still important. Atmoz recently cited Cane, et al., (1997), which is also important.
MBH is still being used. It was in AR4. Its in the recent U.S. Climate Change Science Program report. Its rightly still being used, if its correct. It was a seminal paper in the field of proxy analysis and historical temperature series.
The field of proxy analysis is important. It is one of the few data series we have of this length. There probably is information about past climate in there. Its just not the ‘information’ which was portrayed in MBH. MBH has been discredited. That is one half of the task. The other half of the task is to get what we can out of the data.
MBH is only unimportant if you think the history of temperature is unimportant. That is a mistaken view.
Of course, what people really mean by remarks like that quoted is that they cannot or will not defend MBH on its merits, and would like us just to accept the HS and MBH as if nothing had happened. As in AR4 and as in the recent U.S. Climate Change Science Program report. Can’t be done. Either stop using it, or continue arguing about it.
“MBH has been discredited.” Yep, that scientists agree with this would explain why MBH continues to be referenced.
an ad hom negates attempts to impart wisdom.
Wisdom + ad hom = null
The Union of the set Wisdom with the set ad hom is the Null set.
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/ccr/ammann/millennium/AW_supplement.html
Its finally been published, and merits slow and careful reading. Particularly the significance tables.
Speaking of the HS and MBH and AR4, have you guys been to climateaudit today?
Looks pretty much as if Wahl and Ammann should be sent to climate scientist prison for their rebuttal of M&M’s work and their support of Mann’s HS.
They lied, plain and simple.
Interesting discussion here!
Dano, you’ve stated: “Tell us, laddie, why someone who is NotSteve who cored one area has a representative sample.”
Could it be because:
* The “one area” was actually several dozen trees in multiple sites
* The samples were collected using better methodology (multiples per tree) and better provenance data than the data that props up the MBH HS. (LTRR was delighted to receive our data as they had nothing similar. Not too surprising: the old data sets were not collected with climate in mind.)
Bottom line: The hockey stick is propped up by a tiny set of BCP data, data that’s no more representative than what we non-experts collected.
Yes, all we’ve proven to 95% is the Starbucks Hypothesis. However, we’ve also provided strong evidence that the data can’t be used validly to intuit historical climate.
You don’t need a big sample to do so. If it is shown that “temp sensitive” trees actually produce wildly varying results, even intra-tree, then a rather large hole is blown in the assumptions being currently used.
Enough from this corner. Sadly, I don’t have much time to wander the web these days commenting in various blogs :).
Steve Bloom writes:
“First, the sole source of information is a forestry industry rep, which should have been a sign to proceed wth caution.”
But Bloom is associated with the Sierra Club, so we should similarly proceed with caution? Perhaps he’s paid by the Sierra Club as an advocate? Want to post your tax returns, Steve?
I mean, really.
One difficulty in all these ad hom attacks and trying to defend practices that are at odds with the norms of good science (i.e., posting data and methods) is that it detracts from the possible truth content of other arguments. Similarly no matter how understandable Steve McIntyre’s frustration is with the way many dendros responded to his inquiries and operater in general, his snarks don’t help his stated objective of increasing the quality and transparency of paleoclimatology. I can’t speak for others but Steve and a number of other regular contributors at CA has motivated me to come to grips with a large number of climate databases, relearn multivariate and Bayesian statistics and to master R2. Many of the pro-CAGW sites - with the exception of Tamino - have not had a similar energizing effect on me.