Oops, Antarctic Warming Study is Flawed

[Gill]

There was much fanfare recently about a new paper published in Nature, Warming of the Antarctic ice-sheet surface since the 1957 International Geophysical Year by Eric J. Steig, David P. Schneider, Scott D. Rutherford, Michael E. Mann, Josefino C. Comiso & Drew T. Shindell.

The paper was discussed here at DP a this thread.URL="http://www.debatepolitics.com/Environment/42777-antarctica-getting-warmer-after-all.html"].[/URL]

The usual group of alarmists kept themselves busy with "I told you so" for several days.

Now it has surfaced that the paper is seriously flawed. It seems that the primary Antarctic weather stations that the paper relied on had mixed up data. The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) has two weather stations, Harry and Gill (no pun intended) that were used in the study. The data from Harry exhibited extraordinary warming (0.81 C) and was the primary source of the claim that the entire Antarctic continent is warming, not cooling as has been thought for years.

Harry was installed in 1994, yet the paper referred to temperature data before that time. The Harry data used in the paper is actually a splice of Harry and Gill temperature data. If Gill data alone is examined, the temp trend is slightly down. Only when splicing the two data sets together does warming mysteriously appear.

Perhaps the reason that Harry shows warming is that it became buried in snow after it was installed. The sensor being buried under snow likely insulated it from the colder air temperatures.

BAS had incorrect data posted for at least a year now. Steig, et al (including Michael Mann) wrote the paper on Antarctic warming without ever realizing their data was wrong. The peer reviewers at Nature did not catch the error.

So who found the error? Once again, it was Steve McIntyre and his readers at Climate Audit. SM found two errors for Hansen, debunked the Mann hockey stick, and reported problems with some dendro (tree core) data. No wonder the "peer reviewed climate scientists" hate Steve so much, he makes them look foolish and incompetent.

Full story here.

 

[RedAkston]

Eagerly awaiting a "Yes, but..."

BTW, linky no worky

 

[Gill]

Eagerly awaiting a "Yes, but..."

BTW, linky no worky

The Climate Audit site is very slow right now. Whenever Steve McIntyre finds something like this, his site gets slammed.

I screwed up the DP link when I edited it. Should be:

www.debatepolitics.com/Environment/42777-antarctica-getting-warmer-after-all.html

Sorry about that.

 

[livefree]

Oops, Antarctic Warming Study is Confirmed

There was much fanfare recently about a new paper published in Nature, Warming of the Antarctic ice-sheet surface since the 1957 International Geophysical Year by Eric J. Steig, David P. Schneider, Scott D. Rutherford, Michael E. Mann, Josefino C. Comiso & Drew T. Shindell.

The paper was discussed here at DP a this thread.URL="http://www.debatepolitics.com/Environment/42777-antarctica-getting-warmer-after-all.html"].[/URL]

The usual group of alarmists kept themselves busy with "I told you so" for several days.

Now it has surfaced that the paper is seriously flawed. It seems that the primary Antarctic weather stations that the paper relied on had mixed up data. The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) has two weather stations, Harry and Gill (no pun intended) that were used in the study. The data from Harry exhibited extraordinary warming (0.81 C) and was the primary source of the claim that the entire Antarctic continent is warming, not cooling as has been thought for years.

When I watch you denier cultists being so eager to believe anything from a fellow cultist but so resistant to actual science from real scientists, it is both hilarious and pathetic. World renowned climate scientists spend several years on a study of Antarctic temperatures and get it published in a major scientific journal, 'Nature', after extensive peer review by other working climate scientists but you would rather believe Steve McIntyre, who is not a climate scientist but rather a small business Conservative with interests in the petroleum industry, who "publishes" his nitpicking little trivial distractions on his own blog. He lies to you about just about everything. For example, you repeat his claim that "the data from Harry exhibited extraordinary warming (0.81 C) and was the primary source of the claim that the entire Antarctic continent is warming" but that is a lie. As the paper you deride plainly states, they were primarily using satellite data. Here's the facts from an actual working climate scientist:

Antarctic warming is robust

Dr. Gavin Schmidt
RealClimate
4 February 2009
RealClimate

The difference between a single calculation and a solid paper in the technical literature is vast. A good paper examines a question from multiple angles and find ways to assess the robustness of its conclusions to all sorts of possible sources of error — in input data, in assumptions, and even occasionally in programming. If a conclusion is robust over as much of this as can be tested (and the good peer reviewers generally insist that this be shown), then the paper is likely to last the test of time. Although science proceeds by making use of the work that others have done before, it is not based on the assumption that everything that went before is correct. It is precisely because that there is always the possibility of errors that so much is based on 'balance of evidence' arguments' that are mutually reinforcing.

So it is with the Steig et al paper published last week. Their conclusions that West Antarctica is warming quite strongly and that even Antarctica as a whole is warming since 1957 (the start of systematic measurements) were based on extending the long term manned weather station data (42 stations) using two different methodologies (RegEM and PCA) to interpolate to undersampled regions using correlations from two independent data sources (satellite AVHRR and the Automated Weather Stations (AWS) ), and validations based on subsets of the stations (15 vs 42 of them) etc. The answers in each of these cases are pretty much the same; thus the issues that undoubtedly exist (and that were raised in the paper) — with satellite data only being valid on clear days, with the spottiness of the AWS data, with the fundamental limits of the long term manned weather station data itself - aren't that important to the basic conclusion.

One quick point about the reconstruction methodology. These methods are designed to fill in missing data points using as much information as possible concerning how the existing data at that point connects to the data that exists elsewhere. To give a simple example, if one station gave readings that were always the average of two other stations when it was working, then a good estimate of the value at that station when it wasn't working, would simply be the average of the two other stations. Thus it is always the missing data points that are reconstructed; the process doesn't affect the original input data.

This paper clearly increased the scrutiny of the various Antarctic data sources, and indeed the week, errors were found in the record from the AWS sites 'Harry' (West Antarctica) and 'Racer Rock' (Antarctic Peninsula) stored at the SCAR READER database. (There was a coincidental typo in the listing of Harry's location in Table S2 in the supplemental information to the paper, but a trivial examination of the online resources — or the paper itself, in which Harry is shown in the correct location (Fig. S4b) — would have indicated that this was indeed only a typo). Those errors have now been fixed by the database managers at the British Antarctic Survey.

Naturally, people are interested on what affect these corrections will have on the analysis of the Steig et al paper. But before we get to that, we can think about some 'Bayesian priors'. Specifically, given that the results using the satellite data (the main reconstruction and source of the Nature cover image) were very similar to that using the AWS data, it is highly unlikely that a single station revision will have much of an effect on the conclusions (and clearly none at all on the main reconstruction which didn't use AWS data). Additionally, the quality of the AWS data, particularly any trends, has been frequently questioned. The main issue is that since they are automatic and not manned, individual stations can be buried in snow, drift with the ice, fall over etc. and not be immediately fixed. Thus one of the tests Steig et al. did was a variation of the AWS reconstruction that detrended the AWS data before using them - any trend in the reconstruction would then come solely from the higher quality manned weather stations. The nature of the error in the Harry data record gave an erroneous positive trend, but this wouldn't have affected the trend in the AWS-detrended based reconstruction.

Given all of the above, the Bayesian prior would therefore lean towards the expectation that the data corrections will not have much effect.

The trends in the AWS reconstruction in the paper are shown above. This is for the full period 1957-2006 and the dots are scaled a little smaller than they were in the paper for clarity. The biggest dot (on the Peninsula) represents about 0.5ºC/dec. The difference that you get if you use detrended data is shown next.

As we anticipated, the detrending the Harry data affects the reconstruction at Harry itself (the big blue dot in West Antarctica) reducing the trend there to about 0.2°C/dec, but there is no other significant effect (a couple of stations on the Antarctica Peninsula show small differences). (Note the scale change from the preceding figure — the blue dot represents a change of 0.2ºC/dec).

Now that we know that the trend (and much of the data) at Harry was in fact erroneous, it's useful to see what happens when you don't use Harry at all. The differences with the original results (at each of the other points) are almost undetectable. (Same scale as immediately above; if the scale in the first figure were used, you couldn't see the dots at all!).

In summary, speculation that the erroneous trend at Harry was the basis of the Antarctic temperature trends reported by Steig et al. is completely specious, and could have been dismissed by even a cursory reading of the paper.

However, we are not yet done. There was erroneous input data used in the AWS reconstruction part of the study, and so it's important to know what impact the corrections will have. Eric managed to do some of the preliminary tests on his way to the airport for his Antarctic sojourn and the trend results are as follows:

There is a big difference at Harry of course - a reduction of the trend by about half, and an increase of the trend at Racer Rock (the error there had given an erroneous cooling), but the other points are pretty much unaffected. The differences in the mean trends for Antarctica, or WAIS are very small (around 0.01ºC/decade), and the resulting new reconstruction is actually in slightly better agreement with the satellite-based reconstruction than before (which is pleasing of course).

 

[livefree]

Oops, Hockey stick graph is confirmed

So who found the error? Once again, it was Steve McIntyre and his readers at Climate Audit. SM found two errors for Hansen, debunked the Mann hockey stick, and reported problems with some dendro (tree core) data. No wonder the "peer reviewed climate scientists" hate Steve so much, he makes them look foolish and incompetent.

More denier cultist myths. "Debunked the Mann hockey stick"? In your dreams, deniers. Not in the real world.


Hockey Stick Rises Again

Richard Littlemore
2 September 08
Richard Littlemore | Hockey Stick Rises Again

The fabled "hockey stick" - Michael Mann's graph showing the last decade to be the warmest in a 1,000 years - has re-emerged, stronger and longer than ever.

In a peer-reviewed paper published today in the online version of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Mann and six other scientists show that current warming is the most severe in more than 1,300 years - 1,700 if you accept still-controversial data drawns from tree rings.

The hockey stick, a graph featured prominently in the 2001 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has been under near constant attack since 2003, when economist Ross McKitrick and retired mining promoter Steve McIntyre wrote a paper in the journal Energy and Environment criticizing Mann's statistical method and his use of tree rings as a means to infer past temperatures.

But the stick has shown remarkable resilience: the accuracy of its representation has been corroborated again and again, by other researchers and with other proxies. Now, Mann, et al, have returned with an even more compelling version.

Be assured that the people who want to argue about this graph will go back to criticizing the 2001 version or will bicker over details of the debate since. But the venerable stick, the shape that appears in every climate reconstruction, is unbroken.

This is NOT a Hockey Stick

Richard Littlemore
13 August 08
Richard Littlemore | This is NOT a Hockey Stick

In a desperate effort to distract attention from the real issue, Steve McIntyre and one of his more loquacious acolytes have renewed their attack on the fabled hockey stick - cheering themselves hoarse over their one, small "victory" in climate science debate, even while the science itself continues to pass them by.

Mann's Hockey Stick Graph

Michael Mann's Hockey Stick graph, above, was placed prominently in the Third Assessment Review of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in part because it showed so clearly how temperatures over the last millennium rode along fairly steadily for hundreds of years and then spiked in the latter part of the 20th century (approximating the shape of a hockey stick).

Steve McIntyre, an amateur statistician and retired mining stock promoter found in Mann's work what he argued was a statistical anomaly, challenged Mann and was actually successful in getting Mann to submit a correction to the journal (I think it was Science) that originally published the graph. The excited chorus of "Ah ha!" rang through the deniersphere. Mann, they said, had "admitted he was wrong" (albeit on one small detail). And therefore, we could all go home and stop worrying about climate change.

This is stupid for a host of reasons. First, even Edward Wegman, the statistician who the (anti-climate change policy) Republicans "invited" to critique the "stick" agreed that Mann's original conclusions were reasonable, even if not absolutely verifiable beyond about 400 years.

But more obviously, the stick has been replicated time and again, using different termperature proxies and different methodologies. And guess what? In every instance, the image looks like a hockey stick. And in NO instance has McIntyre or any of his cronies so much as peeped about the credibility of these pieces of research.

So, even if you wanted to walk away from Mann's work (and we don't; it was good work overall), there is still an overwhelming body of evidence that the deniers fear or fail to recognize.

To whit: the image at the top is from a paper by Jones, et al , that appeared in the journal Science in 2001. It's based on multiple proxies, including tree rings, ice cores, corals and historical records, and like the Wegman-approved Mann hockey stick, goes back 400 years.

D'Arrigio, et al

But don't stop there. What about the next image above. It's from a paper by D'Ariggo, et al, published in the Joutrnal of Geophysical Atmospheres in 2006, also uses tree rings, but extends for the full thousand years.

Briffa, et al

Or the next thousand-year image (above), from a paper by Briffa, et al, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research in 2001 and based again on tree rings.

Oerlemans

Then there's the image (above) from a paper by Oerlemans, based on glacier records and published in the April 2005 issue of Science.

(continued)

 

[livefree]

Oops, Hockey stick graph is confirmed

So who found the error? Once again, it was Steve McIntyre and his readers at Climate Audit. SM found two errors for Hansen, debunked the Mann hockey stick, and reported problems with some dendro (tree core) data. No wonder the "peer reviewed climate scientists" hate Steve so much, he makes them look foolish and incompetent.

(continued from previous post)

Hockey stick graph confirmed.

Jansen, et al

But let's not stop there. What about the next graph (above) from Jansen, et al, published in the Fourth IPCC Review in 2007.

Moberg, et al

And as we're on a role, why not also look at the next graph, from Moberg, et al, based on tree rings and lake and ocean sediment and published in Nature in 2005.

Wilson, et al

Then, we might reasonably consider the next graph, from Wilson, et al, more tree rings, different methodology, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research - Atmospheres in 2007.

Jouzan, et al

Finally, why not look at Jouzel, et al, (Note that this graph goes in the other direction) which covers not 1,000 years but 800,000, and which seems to show a hockey stick shape for about 110,000 years. Oh yeah, this was published in Science in August of 2007, ample time for the climate "experts" at ClimateAudit to use their vast statistical skills to identify an anomalies or debunk that which bears debunking.

Alas, no. Despite it's quite pleasing new design, ClimateAudit is silent on all but the Mann graph and really has had NOTHING NEW TO SAY since 2003.

So, what do you say, Steve McIntyre, Bishop Hill, Chris Monckton and all the others who love to hold so closely to the Hockey Stick. Have you any legitimate criticism of all the other science that supports Mann's work? Any criticism at all?

Or would you prefer to huddle about like has-been high school football stars, forever reliving that one great play - imagining, even today, that it made a difference?

 

[Gill]

When I watch you denier cultists being so eager to believe anything from a fellow cultist but so resistant to actual science from real scientists, it is both hilarious and pathetic. World renowned climate scientists spend several years on a study of Antarctic temperatures and get it published in a major scientific journal, 'Nature', after extensive peer review by other working climate scientists but you would rather believe Steve McIntyre, who is not a climate scientist but rather a small business Conservative with interests in the petroleum industry, who "publishes" his nitpicking little trivial distractions on his own blog. He lies to you about just about everything. For example, you repeat his claim that "the data from Harry exhibited extraordinary warming (0.81 C) and was the primary source of the claim that the entire Antarctic continent is warming" but that is a lie. As the paper you deride plainly states, they were primarily using satellite data. Here's the facts from an actual working climate scientist:

I knew an alarmist cultist would run to Realclimate to get their talking points as soon as they saw my thread. Thanks for not disappointing.

After spending "years" on the Steig et al paper, then going through the "extensive" peer review process at Nature, wouldn't you think that someone would have caught the error SM and his readers found regarding AWS Harry? Hmmm?

I don't have time to address your (Realclimate's) points right now, but I'll ask you a couple of questions regarding your slam at Climate Audit and Steve McIntyre.

1. Did SM find a mistake in James Hansens and Gavin Schmidt's temperature data that lead to a significant reorder of the U.S. temperature history, the Y2K mistake?

2. Did SM find an error last October in the temperature data published by Hansen and Schmidt due to their using the same Russian temperature data for two months in a row?

3. Did the Wegman report vindicate SM's paper refuting Mann's hockey stick?

4. Did the National Academy of Science agree with the Wegman Report and state that Mann was incorrect in his use of statistics, among many others, as claimed by M & M in their peer reviewed paper?

Of course you can't refute the above because they are all true.

Now run over to RC for some more talking points.

 

[Gill]

Two quick comments:

Steve McIntyre, an amateur statistician and retired mining stock promoter found in Mann's work what he argued was a statistical anomaly, challenged Mann and was actually successful in getting Mann to submit a correction to the journal (I think it was Science) that originally published the graph. The excited chorus of "Ah ha!" rang through the deniersphere. Mann, they said, had "admitted he was wrong" (albeit on one small detail). And therefore, we could all go home and stop worrying about climate change.

Mann is not even an "amateur" statistician. His degree is in geology. McIntyre's degree is mathematics.

This is stupid for a host of reasons. First, even Edward Wegman, the statistician who the (anti-climate change policy) Republicans "invited" to critique the "stick" agreed that Mann's original conclusions were reasonable, even if not absolutely verifiable beyond about 400 years.

An outright lie.

 

[Renae]

RealClimate.org owned by an environmental activist group, created to counter M. C.'s "State of Fear".... going there for objective facts is like hitting the Marlboro website for lung cancer and smoking news...

 

[Gill]

Re: Oops, Antarctic Warming Study is Confirmed

W

Antarctic warming is robust

Dr. Gavin Schmidt
RealClimate
4 February 2009

Your buddy, Gavin Schmidt, has really stepped into it this time.

From a "real scientist", Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr.:

Due to an inadvertent release of information, NASA’s Gavin Schmidt (a “real scientist” of the Real Climate blog) admits to stealing a scientific idea from his arch-nemesis, Steve McIntyre (not a “real scientist” of the Climate Audit blog) and then representing it as his own idea, and getting credit for it. (Details here and here.)

In his explanation why this is OK, Gavin explains that he did some work on his own after getting the idea from Steve’s blog, and so it was OK to take full credit for the idea. I am sure that there are legions of graduate students and other scientific support staff who do a lot of work on a project, only to find their sponsor or advisor, who initially proposed the idea, as first author on the resulting paper, who might have empathy for Gavin’s logic. And of course researchers in many fields try to keep their work secret lest an unscrupulous colleague steal the idea. You just don’t get to see such things in action when you are outside of the academy. Well through the magic of the internet everyone can see the less than noble side of scientific practice.

But lets be clear, in science, the ethical thing to do is to give full credit to the origination of an idea, even if it comes from your arch-enemy. Gavin’s outing is remarkable because it shows him not only stealing an idea, but stealing from someone who he and his colleagues routinely criticize as being wrong, corrupt, and a fraud. Does anyone wonder why skepticism flourishes? When evaluations of expertise hinge on trust, stealing someone’s ideas and taking credit for them does not help.

and from another real scientist, Dr. Craig Loehle:

How am I supposed to get any work done when I am laughing so hard?

Schmidt get caught with his pants down once again. Now he's stuttering and stammering over at RealClimate trying to get himself out of the mess he created. Steve M. found the error, Gavin Schmidt tried to take credit for finding it. I think there's a word for that in academia.

 

[Renae]

Re: Oops, Antarctic Warming Study is Confirmed

Links gill LINKS!

 

[Gill]

Re: Oops, Antarctic Warming Study is Confirmed

Links gill LINKS!

Sorry about that. The temp got up to 30 here yesterday and I got so excited I had to run out and look at a project in the field.

Most of what I posted can be found on the Climate Audit website I linked to in the OP. The link again is:

http://www.climateaudit.org/

Comments and posts by Dr. Pielke can be found on his website, Prometheus at:

Prometheus

For a complete and honest overview of the Mann/hockey stick/Wegman Report/NAS report, go here:

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2322

If you were unable to access Climate Audit yesterday, it's because their server got slammed after the word got out that Steve had found another significant error in a paper that the media had trumpeted just a few weeks ago as supporting AGW. It should be better now.

It seems that BAS (British Antarctic Survey) posted a list of errors that came to light thanks to Steve McIntyre. No less than four AWS (automatic weather stations) were found to be incorrect. Since there are very few weather stations in Antarctica, this will undoubtedly affect the Stieg et al papers outcome and conclusions.

his is a list of corrections that have been made to the AWS data tables and a link to the table before the corrections were applied, any suspected errors should be reported to Steve Colwell

(2/2/09)The AWS data for Harry have been corrected after is was reported by Gavin Schmidt that data from Gill had been added where data for Harry did not exist. The incorrect data file for Harry temperatures can be accessed here

(4/2/09)The AWS data for Racer Rock since April 2004 have been removed from the READER website as the values appear to come from a different station even though they were transmitted on the GTS (Global Telecommunications System) as 89261 which the WMO (World Meteorological Organization) still list as being Racer Rock. The incorrect data file for Racer Rock temperatures can be accessed here

(4/2/09)The AWS data for Penguin Point since January 2007 have been removed from the READER website as the values received on the GTS appear to come from a different station and this AWS is reported as being removed at the start of 2007. The incorrect data file for Penguin Point temperatures can be accessed here

(4/2/09)The AWS data for Clean Air since January 2005 have been removed from the READER website as the values received on the GTS appear to come from a different station and this AWS is reported as being removed at the start of 2005. The incorrect data file for Clean Air temperatures can be accessed here

http://www.climateaudit.org/

 

[livefree]

Oops, your sources are Flawed

1. Did SM find a mistake in James Hansens and Gavin Schmidt's temperature data that lead to a significant reorder of the U.S. temperature history, the Y2K mistake?

No they didn't. No significant reordering at all. A tiny difference of several one hundredths of a degree that only applied to US temperature records and did not change the world (global) records at all.

2. Did SM find an error last October in the temperature data published by Hansen and Schmidt due to their using the same Russian temperature data for two months in a row?

It had nothing to do with Hansen and Schmidt. Nor did it have any effect on the evidence for global warming.

3. Did the Wegman report vindicate SM's paper refuting Mann's hockey stick?

No it didn't. Irrelevant in any case. Wegman was a mathematician, not a climate scientist.

4. Did the National Academy of Science agree with the Wegman Report and state that Mann was incorrect in his use of statistics, among many others, as claimed by M & M in their peer reviewed paper?

No they didn't. More denier myths.

"US National Academy of Science affirms hockey-stick graph but it criticizes the way the controversial climate result was used.

"We roughly agree with the substance of their findings," says Gerald North, the committee's chair and a climate scientist at Texas A&M University in College Station. In particular, he says, the committee has a "high level of confidence" that the second half of the twentieth century was warmer than any other period in the past four centuries. But, he adds, claims for the earlier period covered by the study, from AD 900 to 1600, are less certain. This earlier period is particularly important because global-warming sceptics claim that the current warming trend is a rebound from a 'little ice age' around 1600. Overall, the committee thought the temperature reconstructions from that era had only a two-to-one chance of being right.

The graph arose from the work of Michael Mann, a climatologist now at Pennsylvania State University in University Park, and two colleagues. In two papers published in 1998 and 1999, Mann's team examined tree rings, ice cores and other 'proxies' of past climate, and used them to reconstruct the Northern Hemisphere's temperature over the past millennium.

The academy essentially upholds Mann's findings, although the panel concluded that systematic uncertainties in climate records from before 1600 were not communicated as clearly as they could have been. The NAS also confirmed some problems with the statistics. But the mistakes had a relatively minor impact on the overall finding, says Peter Bloomfield, a statistician at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, who was involved in the latest report. This study was the first of its kind, and they had to make choices at various stages about how the data were processed, he says, adding that he would not be embarrassed to have been involved in the work."

Of course you can't refute the above because they are all true.

No they are not true, you are just confused by all of the lies and propaganda that the denial machine pours into your gullible mind.

 

[Khayembii Communique]

The Antarctic warming study? You mean the one that you claimed "proved that GHG's don't cause global warming"? The one that you were using as support for your argument?

You just undermined your own argument (not that we needed you to point out its flaws).:doh

 

[Gill]

The Antarctic warming study? You mean the one that you claimed "proved that GHG's don't cause global warming"? The one that you were using as support for your argument?

You just undermined your own argument (not that we needed you to point out its flaws).:doh

What the hell are you talking about????

 

[Gill]

Re: Oops, your sources are Flawed

No it didn't. Irrelevant in any case. Wegman was a mathematician, not a climate scientist.

Dr. Wegman is a statistician, one of the foremost in the world. He wasn't asked to evaluate the climate aspects of Mann's paper, he was tasked with reviewing the statistical analysis used by Mann and his coauthors. You speak as though Wegman is not capable of evaluating the Mann paper because he's not a climate scientist. I look at the other way, Mann used statistical analysis as the basis of the paper, yet he's not a statistician and neither were any of this coauthors.

Here's a brief comment from the Wegman Report:

In general, we found MBH98 and MBH99 to be somewhat obscure and incomplete and the criticisms of MM03/05a/05b to be valid and compelling. We also comment that they were attempting to draw attention to the discrepancies in MBH98 and MBH99, and not to do paleoclimatic temperature reconstruction. Normally, one would try to select a calibration dataset that is representative of the entire dataset. The 1902-1995 data is not fully appropriate for calibration and leads to a misuse in principal component analysis. However, the reasons for setting 1902-1995 as the calibration point presented in the narrative of MBH98 sounds reasonable, and the error may be easily overlooked by someone not trained in statistical methodology. We note that there is no evidence that Dr.
Mann or any of the other authors in paleoclimatology studies have had significant interactions with mainstream statisticians.
…
Overall, our committee believes that Mann’s assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade of the millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year of the millennium cannot be supported by his analysis.

http://www.climateaudit.org/pdf/others/07142006_Wegman_Report.pdf

No they didn't. More denier myths.

Really? Here is the testimony under oath of Dr. Gerald North and other authors of the NAS paper on Mann's hockey stick paper:

CHAIRMAN BARTON. I understand that. It looks like my time is expired, so I want to ask one more question. Dr. North, do you dispute the conclusions or the methodology of Dr. Wegman's report?

DR. NORTH. No, we don't. We don't disagree with their criticism. In fact, pretty much the same thing is said in our report. But again, just because the claims are made, doesn't mean they are false.

CHAIRMAN BARTON. I understand that you can have the right conclusion and that it not be–

DR. NORTH. It happens all the time in science.

CHAIRMAN BARTON. Yes, and not be substantiated by what you purport to be the facts but have we established–we know that Dr. Wegman has said that Dr. Mann's methodology is incorrect. Do you agree with that? I mean, it doesn't mean Dr. Mann's conclusions are wrong, but we can stipulate now that we have–and if you want to ask your statistician expert from North Carolina that Dr. Mann's methodology cannot be documented and cannot be verified by independent review.

DR. NORTH. Do you mind if he speaks?

CHAIRMAN BARTON. Yes, if he would like to come to the microphone.

MR. BLOOMFIELD. Thank you. Yes, Peter Bloomfield. Our committee reviewed the methodology used by Dr. Mann and his coworkers and we felt that some of the choices they made were inappropriate. We had much the same misgivings about his work that was documented at much greater length by Dr. Wegman.
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=109_house_hearings&docid=f:31362.wais

Sounds like they agree with Wegman to me, or were they lying under oath??

 

[danarhea]

There was much fanfare recently about a new paper published in Nature, Warming of the Antarctic ice-sheet surface since the 1957 International Geophysical Year by Eric J. Steig, David P. Schneider, Scott D. Rutherford, Michael E. Mann, Josefino C. Comiso & Drew T. Shindell.

The paper was discussed here at DP a this thread.URL="http://www.debatepolitics.com/Environment/42777-antarctica-getting-warmer-after-all.html"].[/url]

The usual group of alarmists kept themselves busy with "I told you so" for several days.

Now it has surfaced that the paper is seriously flawed. It seems that the primary Antarctic weather stations that the paper relied on had mixed up data. The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) has two weather stations, Harry and Gill (no pun intended) that were used in the study. The data from Harry exhibited extraordinary warming (0.81 C) and was the primary source of the claim that the entire Antarctic continent is warming, not cooling as has been thought for years.

Harry was installed in 1994, yet the paper referred to temperature data before that time. The Harry data used in the paper is actually a splice of Harry and Gill temperature data. If Gill data alone is examined, the temp trend is slightly down. Only when splicing the two data sets together does warming mysteriously appear.

Perhaps the reason that Harry shows warming is that it became buried in snow after it was installed. The sensor being buried under snow likely insulated it from the colder air temperatures.

BAS had incorrect data posted for at least a year now. Steig, et al (including Michael Mann) wrote the paper on Antarctic warming without ever realizing their data was wrong. The peer reviewers at Nature did not catch the error.

So who found the error? Once again, it was Steve McIntyre and his readers at Climate Audit. SM found two errors for Hansen, debunked the Mann hockey stick, and reported problems with some dendro (tree core) data. No wonder the "peer reviewed climate scientists" hate Steve so much, he makes them look foolish and incompetent.

Full story here.

The same people who rant about there being no such thing as global warming are the very same people who would take THIS study seriously.

 

[Renae]

The same people who rant about there being no such thing as global warming are the very same people who would take THIS study seriously.

Whose saying there isn't climate change?

I'd like to meet those folks... I like this forum, and I haven't met anyone saying "There is no change in climate!"

THERE ARE people who say that man isn't having any discernible impact to the climate...

THERE ARE people that believe that the Anthropomorphic Global Warming movement is politically based, for monetary and political gain...

But no one I know posting with any regularity is claiming there is no change to climate...

 

[jfuh]

Conspiracy theorists still at it

:lamo the conspiracy theorists lol
No there was never a moon landing!!!!! NASA LIED/S!!!!

 

[Renae]

Re: Conspiracy theorists still at it

:lamo the conspiracy theorists lol
No there was never a moon landing!!!!! NASA LIED/S!!!!

Oh hey. it's mr. called out for lying about the GISS images affair:
http://www.debatepolitics.com/Environment/40805-new-paper-co2-not-source-recent-warming-18.html

But won't admit he was wrong...

so Jfuh, you gonna admit you were wrong yet? I doubt it, you seem to disappear every time I call you out on this.

 

[Gill]

The same people who rant about there being no such thing as global warming are the very same people who would take THIS study seriously.

I normally enjoy your posts dan, but this one is sadly lacking any forethought.

 

[American]

There was much fanfare recently about a new paper published in Nature, Warming of the Antarctic ice-sheet surface since the 1957 International Geophysical Year by Eric J. Steig, David P. Schneider, Scott D. Rutherford, Michael E. Mann, Josefino C. Comiso & Drew T. Shindell.

The paper was discussed here at DP a this thread.URL="http://www.debatepolitics.com/Environment/42777-antarctica-getting-warmer-after-all.html"].[/url]

The usual group of alarmists kept themselves busy with "I told you so" for several days.

Now it has surfaced that the paper is seriously flawed. It seems that the primary Antarctic weather stations that the paper relied on had mixed up data. The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) has two weather stations, Harry and Gill (no pun intended) that were used in the study. The data from Harry exhibited extraordinary warming (0.81 C) and was the primary source of the claim that the entire Antarctic continent is warming, not cooling as has been thought for years.

Harry was installed in 1994, yet the paper referred to temperature data before that time. The Harry data used in the paper is actually a splice of Harry and Gill temperature data. If Gill data alone is examined, the temp trend is slightly down. Only when splicing the two data sets together does warming mysteriously appear.

Perhaps the reason that Harry shows warming is that it became buried in snow after it was installed. The sensor being buried under snow likely insulated it from the colder air temperatures.

BAS had incorrect data posted for at least a year now. Steig, et al (including Michael Mann) wrote the paper on Antarctic warming without ever realizing their data was wrong. The peer reviewers at Nature did not catch the error.

So who found the error? Once again, it was Steve McIntyre and his readers at Climate Audit. SM found two errors for Hansen, debunked the Mann hockey stick, and reported problems with some dendro (tree core) data. No wonder the "peer reviewed climate scientists" hate Steve so much, he makes them look foolish and incompetent.

Full story here.

I thought penquins were eating grass down there these days. How could a thermometer get covered up with snow. Something fishy is going on here.