This isn't evidence. It's a refutation of evidence. There's a difference.

It also sounds a bit unscientific itself. This isn't a courtroom drama.

The fact that Mann was unscientific is important. The fact that he resisted another man systematically discrediting his work is not evidence for or against the work itself.

I worry that most scientists are human and make mistakes. I feel we should fix those mistakes as soon as possible without making more mistakes. I also think some scientists will mislead data to reach their own conclusions, those scientists are bad scientists and should go to scientist jail(I'm pretty sure that means a liberal arts college with no tenure).

My views on global warming can be summed up thusly:

Without having read the book, this sounds like the scientific process (sexed up a bit for the purposes of actually getting people to buy it) to me.

Guy 1 interprets (as always imperfect) data to produce model A.
Guy 2 points out flaws in model A, proposes model B.
Guy 1 points out flaws in model B, proposes model A v2.
Guy 2 points out flaws in model A v2, proposes model B v2.

Wash, rinse and repeat for quite a while. Here, for example, is a comment on one of Macintyre's papers that indicates that while Macintyre correctly points out that the assumptions made in the original graph bias the curve, he overestimated the extent to which that occurs as a result of the assumptions that he made himself.

(I think. I'm not a climate guy nor do I have a good understanding of the algorithms they're using.)

It's nice to see that at least Macintyre is publishing papers and engaging in the process, though.

The problem with this is that it inevitably leads to model AvP. Once we're there, no matter who wins, we lose.

I kind of had thoughts like Robear. I always saw the graph more as a political shock tool. A shock tool very much needed as Bush and congress were undoing 40 years of environmental policy which had a vast ecological fallout, not just climate change but blast top mining of coal, toxins in the water and soil, and so forth.

We are about 20 years removed from that initial research. In that time Arctic and Antarctic research has been more refined, and there is greater international cooperation. To me it almost seems like attacking trait geneology and evolution in an era of genetics to refute the theory of evolution(which still goes on and ends up published).

Thanks for your comments, Robear, and thanks for that graphic, gravey!

Aaaaaand done

Seriously, while the book is still on my must-read list (it's important to read dissenting views, even if they're off-base), it's joined there by the Surface Temperature Reconstructions text.

And thanks for the chart, gravey - my google-fu must have been off yesterday, as I was actually looking for debunking (or an amended version of the chart) before coming here to post.

Also: color me surprised that we managed to have a climate change thread that didn't head to Cleveland.

This site may be of general interest on the topic, as is this one.

Alternatively: "Bad science is still science." Just because one thing was wrong doesn't mean everything was wrong--and both the good and the bad parts are excellent material to build off of (the good parts--particularly raw data--can provide fodder for a new analysis. The bad parts illustrate techniques that should not be used or should be used with great caution.)

In fact, getting things wrong is such a fundamental part of the scientific process that if something *can't* be wrong, it isn't science at all. (An idea that cannot be tested--an idea that cannot be *disproven*--isn't bad science. It's *not* science. The trusted ideas are the ones that people have been stomping on and beating with axes for years and years without being able to find a fatal flaw.)

This is one of the extraordinarily frustrating things about the "anti-science" positions some people take... "No, you're wrong" isn't science, and never will be no matter how many times you repeat it. "No, you're wrong, and here's why" most definitely *is* science, regardless of whether the next answer is "No, we were right in the first place, and here's why" or "Yes, you're right, we screwed up. Here's our new approach, and why we think it solves the problem."

It's all about the "why".

Hypatian, taken more basically, being contrarian is not scientific. And being contrarian about older research ignoring more current data even less so. Per my earlier point, there are still young earth creationists writing books and journals attacking Lemarkian inheritance as proof the theory of evolution is false. The last nail went into Lemark's coffin when we began mapping genomes close to 30 years ago.

Saying the hockey stick has mistakes says nothing about why the ice caps are melting.

And of course this past winter was the second warmest since 1880 (Dec-Feb) - except in the central and eastern US, and Siberia. There it was a 25 year low. The warmest winter so far? 2006-2007.

If the hockey stick is wrong, it's got a weird way of showing it.

I often get called pretty jaded and cynical, and I tend to agree with that assessment, though I don't much like it. I tell myself that I can't be shocked anymore, that my conception of the level of ignorance and anti-logic people are willing to display is so astoundingly low it has to be lower than the actual case...

...and then something like this comes along...

Or it could, dare I say it, be some High Sticking?

Bad hockey pun. I mostly don't make points, I watch and make smug asides. I'm a "color man".

The draft of a new James Hansen paper (NASA GISS) shows that warming continues, and the data produces the same sort of curve as the the tree ring hockey stick, despite being based on ground and satellite data. He also describes a recent hack into the GISS servers which resulted in the harvesting of entire directories of data. There have been several of these in the last few months.

Boom! Winner.