Jolly Hockey Sticks

[DimPrawn]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/env...aggerated.html

The 'hockey stick' that became emblematic of the threat posed by climate change exaggerated the rise in temperature because it was created using 'inappropriate' methods, according to the head of the Royal Statistical Society.


Lies, damend lies, and climate change statistics.

[pjclarke]

and later on ...

Prof Mann, who is Professor of Earth System Science at the Pennsylvania State University, said the statistics used in his graph were correct.

"I would note that our '98 article was reviewed by the US National Academy of Sciences, the highest scientific authority in the United States, and given a clean bill of health," he said. "In fact, the statistician on the panel, Peter Bloomfield, a member of the Royal Statistical Society, came to the opposite conclusion of Prof Hand.

97.8% of all statisticians disagree with each other. Incidentally the trigger for the Telegraph's feeble quote-mining was the publication of yet another report exonerating the East Anglia climate scientists.

We saw no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit and had it been there we believe that it is likely that we would have detected it. Rather we found a small group of dedicated if slightly disorganised researchers who were ill-prepared for being the focus of public attention. As with many small research groups their internal procedures were rather informal.

Translation: the international scientific panel of 7 Professors from Cambridge, ICL, MIT etc found a group of scientists doing science.

In the NY Times

"The fact is we found them absolutely squeaky clean," the head of the panel, Ron Oxburgh, a geologist and former government advisor, told the BBC. He added that some of the criticism by skeptics, who pointed to the hacked e-mails as proof of a massive scientific cover-up, was "just plain nasty and ill-informed."

Quite. Here are the panel members. Let the accusations of whitewash commence!

Chair: Prof Ron Oxburgh FRS (Lord Oxburgh of Liverpool)
Prof Huw Davies, ETH Zürich
Prof Kerry Emanuel, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Prof Lisa Graumlich, University of Arizona.
Prof David Hand FBA, Imperial College, London.
Prof Herbert Huppert FRS, University of Cambridge
Prof Michael Kelly FRS, University of Cambridge

[NickFitz]

The 'hockey stick' that became emblematic of the threat posed by climate change exaggerated the rise in temperature because it was created using 'inappropriate' methods, according to the head of the Royal Statistical Society.

Ooh goody, it's selective quotation time

From the story you link to:

Prof Hand singled out a 1998 paper by Prof Mann of Pennsylvania State University, a constant target for climate change sceptics, as an example of this.

He said the graph, that showed global temperature records going back 1,000 years, was exaggerated - although any reproduction using improved techniques is likely to also show a sharp rise in global warming. He agreed the graph would be more like a field hockey stick than the ice hockey blade it was originally compared to.

Sounds like the evidence still suggests "a sharp rise in global warming", but that the shape of the graph would be different. Surprising as this may be to you, the shape of one graph isn't the important point here.

The graph used data from hundreds of studies of past temperatures using tree rings, lake sediment, and glacier ice cores and then merged these with more reliable recent temperature records.

Prof Hand said many of the reproductions of the graph do not make clear when these different sets of data are used.

"It is only misleading in the sense they merged two different things," he said.

So he doesn't suggest that the conclusions drawn from the body of data are incorrect, just that one representation of multiple data sets was badly constructed.

Let's go back a bit towards the top of the article - maybe something that would have had greater prominence in the conclusion of the article, if it hadn't been written in such a manner as to pander to the prejudices of its expected readers rather than to inform:

Lord Oxburgh said the scientists at the research unit arrived at their conclusions ''honestly and sensibly''.

But the reviewers found that the scientists could have used better statistical methods in analysing some of their data, although it was unlikely to have made much difference to their results.

So, some poorly-chosen analyses, representations, and conflations of the data - but there was no intent to deceive, and these flaws are unlikely to have affected the validity of the conclusions reached.

Seriously DP, if you want to drivel about climate change you should go back to confusing climate with weather and claiming that having to put the central heating on in December is proof of something.

Citing an article that says your opinion is wrong as proof that your opinion is correct is - well, it's beyond imbecilic.

Next time you cite something, make sure it says what you think it says, rather than what you want to think it says

[Drewster]

Next time you cite something, make sure it says what you think it says, rather than what you want to think it says

I think I understand what you thought he thinks he meant.

[minestrone]

Not this tulip again.

[expat]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/env...aggerated.html

The 'hockey stick' that became emblematic of the threat posed by climate change exaggerated the rise in temperature because it was created using 'inappropriate' methods, according to the head of the Royal Statistical Society.


Lies, damend lies, and climate change statistics.

This is a genuine disaster for the human race. Climate change is a correctable danger, but we are now going to ignore it. And it won't go away.

OK, some scientists stuck their feet in politics and some media got manipulated by some seriously interested parties and/or their own stupidity.

The result is that while climate change is happening, is probably largely man-made, is very damaging, and is probably still fixable but won't be fixable forever; a few errors and a lot of noise have persuaded most people that it's safe to ignore it, and even fun to scoff at it.

[threaded]

This is a genuine disaster for the human race. Climate change is a correctable danger, but we are now going to ignore it. And it won't go away.

OK, some scientists stuck their feet in politics and some media got manipulated by some seriously interested parties and/or their own stupidity.

The result is that while climate change is happening, is probably largely man-made, is very damaging, and is probably still fixable but won't be fixable forever; a few errors and a lot of noise have persuaded most people that it's safe to ignore it, and even fun to scoff at it.

If the changes they say are really happening then it is way too late to fix it. We should be arming up to take over countries to the south.

[BlasterBates]

The sun has so far been excluded by climate scientists:

But this seems a turn about face:

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/42298

There is the caveat, there's still global warming.

But lets face it it is a pretty fundamental shift in thinking.

So the cold weather in 2009/2010 is now being attributed to climate change by the sun.

...and it wasn't just Britain was it.

It was China, the US, mainland Europe, most of Asia

The question is, if they were so fundamentally wrong on the sun, what else is wrong?

oh and there's a wiggly line on the arctic extent which is getting bigger every year since 2007.

ah yes since the sun went quiet.

[expat]

If the changes they say are really happening then it is way too late to fix it. We should be arming up to take over countries to the south.

China is already doing futures deals with most of Africa and a few other places for their minerals. The West hasn't cottoned on yet because business doesn't buy what it doesn't need. By the time we do need it the price will be high.

[shaunbhoy]

Translation: the international scientific panel of 7 Professors from Cambridge, ICL, MIT etc found a group of scientists doing science.

Via an investigation that ran for all of a month, the report of which extended to a mind-boggling 5 pages.