Shut-eyed denial . . . (The hockey stick illusion)

[Henk Elegeert]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

“Shut-eyed Denial” <http://climateaudit.org/2010/03/11/shut-eyed-denial/>

<http://www.amazon.com/Hockey-Stick-Illusion-Climategate-Independent/dp/1906768358/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1268345567&sr=8-1>A
shout-out for a review of Andrew Montford’s “The Hockey Stick
Illusion<http://www.amazon.co.uk/Illusion-Climategate-Corruption-Science-Independent/dp/1906768358>”
by Matt Ridley in Prospect Magazine.

Andrew Montford’s The Hockey Stick Illusion is one of the best science books
in years. It exposes in delicious detail, datum by datum, how a great
scientific mistake of immense political weight was perpetrated, defended and
camouflaged by a scientific establishment that should now be red with shame.
It is a book about principal components, data mining and confidence
intervals—subjects that have never before been made thrilling. It is the
biography of a graph.

I can remember when I first paid attention to the “hockey stick” graph at a
conference in Cambridge. The temperature line trundled along with little
change for centuries, then shot through the roof in the 20th century, like
the blade of an ice-hockey stick. I had become somewhat of a sceptic about
the science of climate change, but here was emphatic proof that the world
was much warmer today; and warming much faster than at any time in a
thousand years. I resolved to shed my doubts. I assumed that since it had
been published in Nature—the Canterbury Cathedral of scientific
literature—it was true.

I was not the only one who was impressed. The graph appeared six times in
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s third report in 2001.
It was on display as a backdrop at the press conference to launch that
report. James Lovelock pinned it to his wall. Al Gore used it in his film
(though describing it as something else and with the Y axis upside down).
Its author shot to scientific stardom. “It is hard to overestimate how
influential this study has been,” said the BBC. The hockey stick is to
global warming what St Paul was to Christianity.

The rest of the review is
here<http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2010/03/the-case-against-the-hockey-stick/>
.

(
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2010/03/the-case-against-the-hockey-stick/
)

Most tasty quote (my emphasis):

Well, it happens. People make mistakes in science. Corrections get made.
That’s how it works, is it not? Few papers get such scrutiny as this had.
But that is an even more worrying thought: how much dodgy science is being
published without the benefit of an audit by Mcintyre’s ilk? As a long-time
champion of science, I find the reaction of the scientific establishment
more

shocking than anything. The reaction was not even a shrug: *it was shut-eyed
denial*.

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