TGGWS / IPCC ’90 fig 7.1.c

Posted by William M. Connolley on May 9, 2007
(13)
More »

There is a curious post over at CA about yet more TGGWS tedia… read on if you can bear it. This time the issue is the 1990 IPCC graph, which McI seems to accept uncritically despite its lack of good source (see wiki for more). TGGWS used the old graph uncritically; this is obviously wrong.

This looks like becoming the latest septic tactic: we must return to the Age Of Gold: in the Good Old Days there were graphs like IPCC ’90 fig 7.1.c (see the wiki link above) which, despite having no source at all, were Wot People Thought and therefore Must Be Good. Of course, if McI didn’t like the IPCC ’90 fig, he would be ripping into it as sourceless. But he likes it, for the obvious reasons, and so is kind to it (echoes of this).

(13)
More »

Comments

  1. #1 MarkH
    2007/05/09

    Nah, this is the oldest skeptic tactic. Cherry picking.

  2. #2 Steve McIntyre
    2007/05/10

    William, where in this post (or elsewhere) have I said that I accept this graphic? Read what I wrote rather than what you assume that I wrote. I observed only that this is what specialists thought in 1990 (as evidenced by its use in IPCC) before the Stick got oversold.

    [You seem very accepting of it to me. Was is what the specialists thought then? We don't know. You are curiously uninterested in its source, or lack thereof -W]

  3. #3 Steve McIntyre
    2007/05/10

    Speaking of cherry picking, there was an amusing exchange at the NAS Panel hearings last year. Rosanne D’Arrigo was asked about cherry picking in proxy selection – she said that you have to pick cherries if you want to make cherry pie.

    Selection protocols is a real problem in the proxy reconstructions, because the typical recent reconstruction makes a small collection of proxies, knowing in advance what they look like. So one ends up with an almost total overlap of proxy selections between Osborn and Briffa 2006 and Hegerl et al 2006.

  4. #4 Munin
    2007/05/10

    Steve, which thousand year temperature reconstruction do you have most faith in?

  5. #5 Steve McIntyre
    2007/05/10

    #1. William, you say: “You seem very accepting of it to me.” What have I said that indicates that I am “accepting” of it?
    IPCC 1990 used it so I take that as evidence that it reflected some sort of “consensus” at the time. If you have reason to think otherwise, let me know. I’d rather describe the situation accurately.

    [Your general tone. Do keep ignoring the issue re sourcing of the graph, though, I'd hate to see you interested in "auditing" it -W]

    #4. I don’t have “faith” in any of them. The problem is that the “proxies” aren’t very good and thus your results are very sensitive to picking. The multiproxy authors are like dogs on a bone with bristlecones/foxtails. Even those these have been identified for years as problematic, they have a distinctive HS shape, authors know this and they are a reliable component of a good Hockey Stick. The substitution of Yamal for Polar URals is the other variation that marks a Hockey Stick. If your view on medieval-modern relations depends on whether you use a Yamal or a Polar Urals chronology, it’s obviously not a stable result. I’m not saying that Polar Urals is right and Yamal is wrong. I’m saying that it’s a dog’s breakfast.

  6. #6 Heiko Gerhauser
    2007/05/10

    Where does the 1990 graph come from then?

    I presume the IPCC author didn’t just hand draw it?

    Who is the IPCC lead author responsible, and if he is still alive, couldn’t one just ask?

    [AFAIK it was hand drawn - it looks like it was. Its certainly not a computer plot. Things were free-and-easy back in '90 I suppose (thought as far as I know this is the only graph from the '90 report that does not have a good source) -W]

  7. #7 Munin
    2007/05/10

    Thanks Steve, I think I understand some of the issues you have with proxies. However, I’d be interested to know your opinion on which – if any – global temperature reconstruction for the last 1000 years comes closest to the mark.

  8. #8 Dano
    2007/05/11

    Steve’s bulldog-like ripping at the cuffs of truth has yet to shake loose his own gathering of data to show: 1) how true professionals do it and 2) how wrong the alarmists are.

    Let me guess: Steve won’t be blogging this field season and the estimable JohnA will be driving the ponderous CA boat whilst the hockey stick-crushing data are collected and analyzed…

    Best,

    D

  9. #9 mugwump
    2007/05/17

    “This looks like becoming the latest septic tactic: we must return to the Age Of Gold: in the Good Old Days there were graphs like [...] which, despite having no source at all, were Wot People Thought and therefore Must Be Good.”

    Sadly, this kind of attitude seems commonplace amongst climate scientists: never admit you were wrong; never concede data may have been fabricated; just “move on”.

    Any other scientific field would be mortified to learn of such fraud by their colleagues; yet here we have prominent climate scientists such as William breezily dismissing it as no big deal and somehow trying to make it into an issue about McIntyre himself.

    [You've confused me now. I'm admitting that the IPCC '90 fig is wrong, and you're accusing me of never admitting to error. That doesn't make sense -W]

  10. #10 Mark
    2008/05/09

    “Cherry Picking” wouldn’t be possible if the science behind AGW was 100% sound and correct.

  11. #11 cce
    2008/05/09

    (cross post from CA)

    Here’s a few uses of Lamb’s graph, starting with Biological Significance of Climatic Changes in Britain (1965), Climate, Past Present & Future, Vol 1 (1972), Climatic History & the Future Vol 2 (1977) (uses “upper” values), an unknown (to me) publication from 1981 (Lamb had several publications that year — don’t know which one this is), and the First Assessment Report (1990) which incorrectly labeled it “global temperature variations” and thus started this whole thing.

    http://cce.890m.com/lamb.pdf

    Except for the 1981 source (which was given to me), these can be found by tracing back from the FAR, which cited “Climatic History & the Future” (volume 2 of Climate, Past, Present & Future). There is another Lamb citation in the FAR, “Climate and life during the Middle Ages, studied especially in the mountains of Europe,” in Weather, Climate and Human Affairs (1988), but the library didn’t have it. All of these are books. None of them are papers.

    Unless the IPCC used a version from the 1988 book, Connolley’s description that it “had no clear source” is obviously correct, and even if it is in the ’88 book, they don’t cite the source directly. You have to know in advance that it came from Lamb, and then which version (the ’77 version clearly isn’t it).

  12. #12 TCO
    2008/05/10

    McI has been completely tendentious and irresponsible in pushing this gawdawful cartoon forward as the consensus view of 1990 and saying that some big work needed to be done to resolve the shift. Well, it isn’t even sourced. It looks like a hand-drawn cartoon. What a fucking joke. I’ve told him this before. Now, he says that he’s not really behind it. He plays this game all the time. What a weasely sophist. No wonder he loves Bill Clinton. They were both equiovacators.

  13. #13 TCO
    2008/05/10

    cce: nice set of pdfs. When I read the TEXT of IPCC describing that figure, it has the COMMENT that it’s not known if the changes are world-wide or regional! Has McI ever noted this comment in all his blog posts citing that figure? What a little…stoat.