A standing committee of the U.S. House of Representatives has formally written to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) questioning the integrity of the Third Assessment Report and asking nine specific questions.
The letter from Committee Chairman, begins:
Questions have been raised, according to a February 14, 2005 article in The Wall Street Journal, about the significance of methodological flaws and data errors in studies by Dr. Michael Mann and co-authors of the historical record of temperatures and climate change. We understand that these studies of temperature proxies (tree rings, ice cores, corals, etc.) formed the basis for a new finding in the 2001 United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Third Assessment Report (TAR). This finding – that the increase in 20th century northern hemisphere temperatures is “likely to have been the largest of any century during the past 1,000 years” and that the “1990s was the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year” – has since been referenced widely and has become a prominent feature of the public debate surrounding climate change policy.
However, in recent peer-reviewed articles in Science, Geophysical Research Letters, Energy & Environment, among others, researchers question the results of this work. As these researchers find, based on the available information, the conclusions concerning temperature histories – and hence whether warming in the 20th century is actually unprecedented – cannot be supported by the Mann et. al. studies. In addition, we understand from the February 14 Journal and these other reports that researchers have failed to replicate the findings of these studies, in part because of problems with the underlying data and the calculations used to reach the conclusions. Questions have also been raised concerning the sharing and dissemination of the data and methods used to perform the studies. For example, according to the January 2005 Energy & Environment, the information necessary to replicate the analyses in the studies has not been made fully available to researchers upon request.
The concerns surrounding these studies reflect upon the quality and transparency of federally funded research and of the IPCC review process – two matters of particular interest to the Committee. For example, one concern relates to whether IPCC review has been sufficiently robust and independent. We understand that Dr. Michael Mann, the lead author of the studies in question, was also a lead author of the IPCC chapter that assessed and reported this very same work, and that two co-authors of the studies were also contributing authors to the same chapter. Given the prominence these studies were accorded in the IPCC TAR, we seek to learn more about the facts and circumstances that led to acceptance and prominent use of this work in the IPCC TAR and to understand what this controversy indicates about the data quality of key IPCC studies.
For complete letter and questions click here:
http://energycommerce.house.gov/108/Letters/06232005_1570.htm
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
The famous graph known as the Hockey Stick graphs temperature anomaly versus time from various temperature proxies and raw data.
However, temperature anomalies are simply the mean for one particular year compared to the running average mean computed from a 30 year period.
Hence the temperature anomaly value is not temperature per se, but a measure of the variability of the mean around the moving average.
Put more simply, it graphs the magnitude of the variance from the mean over time. It does not unde rany circumstance show the variation of the mean temperature over time.
In statistical parlance, the temperature anomaly process has reduced the mean temperature to zero, and what has been analysed is the departure from that baseline.
In this case it merely shows that during the MWP or LIA temperatures fluctuated more during these periods, then compared to other periods.
There are lies, statistics and damned statistics – in this case here damnedly damned statistics.
Dr Manns work is not at the centre of the global warming case. Read these to see where it fits.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=114
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=11
The other is the totally flawed M & M analysis. When it was critisised M & M tried to claim that Dr Mann did not release the data when he actually did.
Yet another case of the Bush Administration trying to bend research to its own agenda.
It is not just the letter to the Chairman of the IPCC but the letters to Mann,Bradly and Hughes are also very interesting, and should set the cat amongst the pidgeons.Long overdue.
If only our own Parliament would ask the CSIRO/DAR and others, similiar searching questions.
Funny that they refer to “researchers”. There were only two guys – McKitrick and McIntyre, easy to refer to them by name. These two have been hammered repeatedly, and in my eyes suffer a far greater credibility problem than the IPCC or Mann et al.
Mann’s papers have been updated and defended. On top of that, a number of other research groups have similar results to Mann et al.
If there is a problem with Mann et als paper, then I think there will need to be a lot more evidence than a single published paper by two guys who have been criticised as much as M&M have.
http://www.realclimate.org and http://www.timlambert.org have plenty on Mann et al and M&M if you want to read about the views that support Mann and the IPCC. If you hang around this blog a few days, then I’m sure Louis will pop in to give you the other view that supports M&M.
Fair enough questions, I would have thought standard, with the amounts of monies and future economic and scientific direction of all human kind in the balance.
Of course we will hear the political and the religious ranting, but this is a scientific discussion and after other failed research leading into human disasters of Tsunami like devastation, one have thought this request actually should be a demand by all of the scientic community in the Warming/Cooling debate.
No emotional hubris but research and fact checking is important with such large decisions to be made The environment isn’t a political issue it’s a real issue for every person.
In case anyone is wondering why Joe Barton is writing these letters, read http://www.publicintegrity.org/oil/report.aspx?aid=345&sid=100
McKitrick – oh no – that guy really murders science. When working out a temperature trend he replaced missing temperatures with zero and ended up with a cooling trend because there was more missing data points towards the end. Oh yeah then there’s the mix up between radians and degrees. And…
Gee thanks Steve, or is it Ender?
Most of us have enough trouble posting under one name – so the onerous task of managing two identies is something most of us have, unfortunately, not experienced.
Mann et al are much like the Adminral Belgrano.
Um…. bad move by the sceptics I believe. The work of Mann has been repeatedly and independently verified, and this letter will be hit for six by the mainstream science. As for M&M, didn’t they find the warmest period in the last Millenium occured during the middle of the little ice age???
Interesting guess Louis, but incorrect I’m afraid. You’ll have to get used to the idea that more than one person disagrees with you.
Loius I only post under Ender. Sometimes when I make a mistake you will get Stephen Gloor as the poster. I make no attempt to conceal my identity, Ender is just a posting name I have used for years and I am attached to it. Steve is a different person.
Now the person who has sent the letters, Joe Barton, chair of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, has in a total coincidence received:
“When it came to tapping the oil industry for campaign dollars, no one has come close to former Texas oilman George W. Bush. The president has received $1.7 million in campaign cash from the oil and gas industry.
That was more than three times the amount given to the next biggest recipient of the industry’s largesse, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman and fellow Texan Joe Barton, who collected $574,000. Next came another Texas Republican, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who took in just under $500,000.”
This information is part of the public record and is available at http://www.publicintegrity.org/oil/report.aspx?aid=345&sid=100
Perhaps letters should be sent to Mcintyre and McKitrick’s disclosing where their money comes from and why they made so many errors.
Louis,
From what I’ve read there are very few science questions in the letters and most of the answers have already been dealt with in the IPCC document itself and by responses by Mann, etc in print. The letters are pretty obviously political documents.
I’m surprised that Jennifier hasn’t critised at least some of the questions – especially those about Mann’s funding. Hasn’t Jennifier written before criticising those who critise others on the basis of their funding as opposed to the science that they produce?
Ender – I have worked out who is whom. Apologies for the confusion.
The primary issue is that if Mann is practicing science, then his algorthims and data have to be publicly archived for all to either agree or disagree with. You cannot hide your data or computer code in science – it has to be capable of being peer reviewed.
As for the reproducibility of his data, European Climate scientists tried and could not. On the record. Hans Storsch etc.
His reluctance to do so implies that the data might not stand the light of day, and as both he and Jones refuse to make taxpayer funded data publicly available, one starts to wonder what it going on.
As for the Senate Inquiry, they are the one’s footing the bill, so they have everyright to ask anything they want from these scientists.
As the for the letters, they are sent on behalf of the Senate Committee, under the signature of, one presumes, the committee chair. Someone has to sign off on the letters!
As for Mann’s funding, if it is good enough for the climate changers to question our sceptic funding sources, then it has to work the other way too.
Mann et al are not involved in commercial science but in publicly funded science – so there is no excuse to hide data.
Unless there is something to hide, so far this seems to be the case.
Steve,
I am quite aware that many disagree with me, but it isn’t on the basis of science.
Scientific correction!
“As for the reproducibility of his data, European Climate scientists tried and could not. On the record. Hans Storsch etc.”
I have erred (again) and meant that Mann’s conclusions from his published methodology, could not be replicated.
Apologies
I have read the Public Integrity document which supposedly is meant to show that because Joe Barton signed the letters and he is connected with the oil industry then it is a con job. But if the oil industry is so powerful then why are the Americans spending $4bn a year on climate based research.
The real answer is that Climate based research funding is now an industry in its own right,and its self serving rip-offs are as bad as those of the oil industry. The only suckers in all of this nonsense are the tax payers ..just like it is in Australia.
The sooner we learn the lessons and develop better ways of funding science, and the means by which it is reviewed and validated the better.
Hi Malcolm could you be more specific on what ‘the lessons’ we must learn are, and what your problem is with the way science is ‘reviewed and validated’.
>As for the reproducibility of his data, European Climate scientists tried and could not. On the record. Hans Storsch etc.
Wrong answer Louis. Han’s actually found, as was well known, that statistical reconstruction lead to an underestimate of variance. This is statistics 101… I pressume you did statistics?
Loius I looked at a Von Storsch article and found this:
http://stevegloor.typepad.com/sgloor/2005/05/a_funny_thing_t.html
Hill Billy,
I have a MSC, and the dissertation was the statistical analysis of the geochemistry of the Juan Main Shoot at Kambalda Nickel Operations, Kambalda, West Australia.
Ender,
You references seem very interesting. One conspicously intrepreted, according to the non fossil fuelers, that oil comes from magma.
Such a profound fundamental error leads one to regard any further citation of yours as equally problematical.
Hill Billy,
Actually you cannot do a statistical reconstruction.
And then variance of what? Little data, if any to work on.
In the immortal words of Rove – what the!!!!!!!
I must have a problem with my browser Loius – your last post was completely garbled. Can you please repost it in English.
Ender,
Get a more intelligent browser.
Ender, wait!
A statistical resconstruction! No less. If one has some statistics, presumably derived from a sampled population of data, that implies you have lost the data, and are only left with the statistics.
This suggests that having the statistics derived from a sample of human beings, say mean height = 0.74 metres, with SD of .2 metres, one could reconstruct a human being from these statistics.
Loius – do you really have to display your total ignorance in such a public manner? The historical climate record only goes back about 150 years as this is as long as accurate record keeping has been done.
What Dr Mann did was analyse proxy data using a standard statisical tool called Principle Component Analysis. This proxy data is just about only for the Northern Hemisphere and consists of tree ring data amongst others.
His study has been confirmed many times and only forms a very small part of the the overall global warming evidence. It is not central to it. The central pieces of Global Warming are
1. The basic and undisputed scientific fact, proved by experiment, that certain gases change the radiation characteristics of a gas mixture and
2. That the sun is emits large amounts of energy.
The proxy data analysis neither proves or disproves either of these two premises or tries to prove or disprove these premises. Dr Manns study simply tries to set the present warming in historical context – nothing more. Now try to disprove either of these two Louis and see how you go.
Ender,
concerning your point 1, … “certain gases change the radiation characteristics of a gas mixture”….is er, basicically incomprehensible.
This is much like stating that salt in seawater changes the composition of of seawater.
As for warming, those are only inferred from computer models, not from observed fact.
Louis – salt in water does change the characteristics of water. The conductivity, the boiling point and melting point. Haven’t you ever seen people putting salt on ice to melt it? Certain gases including CO2, CH4 and water vapour change the long wave radiation characteristics of a gas mixture such as Nitrogen and Oxygen. Again you would have to go a long way back in science history to dispute this. Also the observed fact that the Earth is over 30 degrees warmer than if it did not have an atmosphere of greenhouse gases confirms this fact by direct observation.
The observed fact is that surface temperatures have risen by 0.6 degrees. This is also confirmed by recent satellite measurements. It would have been more except for the soot particles from coal etc lowering the amount of the suns energy reaching the surface.
You really really do not have a leg to stand on disputing these proven and observed scientific facts so I suggest you give up unless you have some research or measurements into the behaviour of gases that proves otherwise.
Ender,
the crucial fact is the concentrations of the added substance. 1 gram of salt added to 1 trillion tonnes of water would not make much of an effect on its “saltiness”.
As for the surface temperature having risen by 0.6 degrees, this is less than the resolution of the standard mercury thermometers, and is more like a mathematical artefact. If you argue that doing A will result in temperature rising B, make sure we can actually measure it.
Your temperature predictions are less than the resolution of our instruments, and probably far less than the errors associated with those measurements.
Loius – here we go again on the same old tired arguments that have been debunked over and over again.
Do you really think that competant scientists would produce a paper and not take into account the error of their instruments? Would you?
Concentration depends on the effect that small concentrations can have. CO2 in small concentrations alters the heat transferrence characteristics of the gas mixture we call the atmosphere out of all proportion to its concentration. This is because the suns energy output is so large trapping even a small extra amount of it leads to a large amount of extra heat in the atmoshere.
What that heat will do is anybodys guess. Work with models suggests that it will lead to climate change.