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

[Henk Elegeert]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

2010/3/13 Henk Elegeert <hmje at home.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*.
>
>

*Zelfs in 2003 blijkt men al twijfels te hebben gehad:*


"The IPCC, the "Hockey Stick" Curve, and the Illusion of
Experience<http://www.marshall.org/article.php?id=188>

*by Stephen McIntyre <http://www.marshall.org/experts.php?id=98> and Dr.
Ross McKitrick <http://www.marshall.org/experts.php?id=100>*
November 18, 2003

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change?s (IPCC) Third Assessment
Report concluded that "it is likely that the rate and duration of the
warming of the 20thcentury is larger than any other time during the last
1,000 years. The 1990s are likely to have been the warmest decade of the
millennium in the Northern Hemisphere, and 1998 is likely to have been the
warmest year."

The primary basis for this assertion was a climate reconstruction that
produced the so-called ?hockey stick? shaped graph, which shows that the
20th century was unusually warm compared to preceding centuries. A new
evaluation of the underlying data used to create that graph by Canadian
businessman Stephen McIntyre and economist Ross McKitrick raises serious
questions as to its validity.

McIntyre and McKitrick examined the construction and use of the data set of
proxies for past climate, which were used to estimate the temperature record
from 1400 to 1980. Their review found four categories of error: collation
errors, unjustified truncation and extrapolation, use of obsolete data, and
calculation mistakes. Correcting for these errors, they found that
temperature for the early 15th century was actually higher than the 20th
century.

The McIntyre-McKitrick findings challenge one of the most influential
aspects of the climate change debate. The ?hockey stick? graph has been
accepted as fact by the international community and many domestic interests
pushing the Kyoto Protocol and McCain-Lieberman.

See the original paper by Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, "Corrections
to the Mann et al (1998) Proxy Data Base and Northern Hemisphere Average
Temperature Series"
<http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/trc.html> *Energy
and Environment *14(6) 751-772.

<http://www.marshall.org/pdf/materials/188.pdf>*Full Text of "The IPCC, the
"Hockey Stick" Curve, and the Illusion of Experience" (PDF, 396
KB)<http://www.marshall.org/pdf/materials/188.pdf>
*
"

Henk Elegeert

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