More scientists and experts that the liberal-left never quote…
An ongoing story with a Canadian connection (here’s another reason to be ProudToBeCanadian!) helps debunk the pseudo-science (or should I call it what it is: political science?) of the mind-numb global warming lefty automatons in the environmentalist industry, which includes every liberal-left politician and their flock. Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick (read about their study below) both hail from Canada. And coincidentally, the so-called scientific data being touted by the U.N.-backed godfathers of the man-made global warming fears—forms the shape of a hockey stick when plotted on a graph.
And I use the term “environmentalist industry” advisedly. It’s a huge industry. Huge profits are being made. There are billions being absconded by individuals, non-profits and for-profit companies in the environmentalist industry, not to mention huge organizations like the U.N. and universities. Huge political scores are also being tallied in the “you gotta believe us, for the love of, well, sumthin’ ‘r other” world of the fear-mongering and pessimistic global warming (and man is responsible) set.
A science article that has been accepted by Geophysical Research Letters casts serious doubt on the oft-cited claim that global temperatures are warmer now than they have been anytime in the last 1,000 years.
Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick examined the methodology that led Mann et al. (1998) to publish in the popular science journal Nature the famous “hockey stick” shaped temperature curve, which was a centerpiece of the Third Assessment Report of the U.N.‘s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2001. The hockey stick curve showed a gradual cooling since around 1400 A.D. (the hockey stick handle) then a sharp warming since about 1900 (the blade of the stick). This was taken as proof that the major climatic event of the last 1,000 years was the influence of humans in the 20th century.
As you might imagine, it’s a little difficult to construct a temperature history for a period of record that, for the most part, had no reliable thermometer measurements. Since good thermometer measurements extend back to only around the mid-1800’s, “proxy” measurements, primarily tree ring data, have been used to extend the temperature record back additional centuries.
McIntyre & McKitrick found that the Mann et al. methodology included a data pre-processing step, one which was not reported in the original study, that essentially guaranteed that a hockey stick curve would result from their analysis. They demonstrated this by applying the same methodology to many synthetic temperature records that were constructed with random noise. In almost every case, a hockey stick curve resulted. The claim of unprecedented warmth and the hockey stick shape appear to hinge on the treatment of one species of tree, the bristlecone pine, from North America in the 1400’s. Further statistical tests showed that this critical signal in the early 15th century lacked statistical significance. This suggests that the results of Mann et al. were simply a statistical fluke, which greatly exaggerated a characteristic of the bristlecone pines, which may or may not be related to global temperatures.
The new article, like so much published science, simply points out errors in previously published science, which is the way science should work. So why should there be so much fuss this time? Because the original Mann et al. article has had huge repercussions. The hockey stick, along with the “warmest in 1,000 years” argument, has become a central theme of debates over the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty to limit emissions of greenhouse gases, in governments around the world. The question begging to be answered is: Why did the IPCC so quickly and uncritically accept the Mann et al hockey stick analysis when it first appeared? I cannot help but conclude that it’s because they wanted to believe it. […read the rest…]
This is not a particularly new story, which lends further credibility to this “they wanted to believe it” theory—it’s just that their research has recently been published in another journal which gives us another opportunity to *think*. As this article ends, “As it stands now, however, today’s article by McIntyre and McKitrick will only further damage the reputation of the IPCC leadership and call into question its objectivity.”
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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