
Why climatologists used the tree-ring data ‘trick’ - MikeCapone
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/12/why_climatologists_used_the_tr.php
======
DanielBMarkham
I have spent some hundreds of hours listening to arguments for global warming,
er Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change or AGW or ACC (or whatever the PC
acronym is this week)

The problem that I keep getting back to is best phrased like this:
_archaeological climate record extrapolation is nowhere near as sure-fire as
supporters make it out to be._ I have many more problems, but this one
addresses the current article.

I understand these are honest, hard-working scientists, and they know a
heckuva lot more than I do about their particular area, but as an intelligent
person I can make fairly informed guesses based on the standards of proof
required and the types of phrases being used. There a lot of "it appears" and
"it seems" in there, phrases that mean that while consensus has been achieved
(we'll take that as a given for this comment) it's nowhere near a slam-dunk.
There's also quite a bit of ad-hominem character assassination going on, even
in this piece. I find that folks who have to result to labeling and name-
calling usually are insecure about their position.

Especially troubling is the way the current divergence is addressed. The
argument looks to me like "we can use this data as a proxy for all periods
except those where we have direct measurements to verify correlation" I find
that weak at best.

To me, the layman, tree-ring data is going to show you how well a certain tree
grew in a certain place over time. That might or might not have implications
for the larger area or the entire planet. Like so many other pieces of this
argument, it depends on having a control group and repeatable experiments --
none of which are doable. So it boils down to speculation. Speculation by
great, intelligent people, perhaps, but speculation nonetheless.

I know some folks will say "no matter what the proof you're never going to
believe" I don't know how to respond to that, except to point out that I've
always been more interested in the character of the debate around GW and the
political implications of letting scientific consensus drive public policy
more than I have the actual facts on the ground. I have no more emotion
invested in whether the planet is cooling or warming than I do variations of
the gravitational constant around the time of the big bang. Whichever way the
facts lead will not change my underlying concern. So I really don't have a dog
in this fight as far as the science goes, at least not to the degree that some
others do.

~~~
logjam
>The problem is....archaelogical climage record extrapolation is nowhere as
sure fire....

Then pray provide us with some _science_ supporting your point.

If you cannot, when you just keep bleating you are "troubled" over and over,
you really look like someone just pushing an agenda without any support
whatsoever.

And oh, what's needed now is a "slam-dunk" on the issue. A "slam-dunk", of
course, was never needed when any of the corporate interests (who are the ones
really astroturfing and dissembling on this issue) set out to basically rape
ecosystems for their stockholders. Do you also call for "slam-dunks" from
these corporate interests, or just when it's convenient for your political
ideology?

This whole discussion is reminiscent of the tobacco industries continual two-
faced insistence on "slam-dunks" when it came to any encroachment on their
ability to reap profit from suffering.

>I have no more emotion invested in whether the planet is cooling or warming
than I do variations of the gravitational constant around the time of the big
bang. Whichever way the facts lead will not change my underlying concern. So I
really don't have a dog in this fight as far as the science goes, at least not
to the degree that some others do.

Right. And in your disinterestedness you personally posted three anti-warming
editorials to Hacker News over the last three weeks. Not three science
articles - three editorials espousing a single view.

~~~
gloob
Paranoia and ad hominem don't do your argument much good.

~~~
logjam
Oh. Asking for someone to actually back up their emotional little assertions
with facts, and pointing out the hypocrisy of the obvious axe-grinding which
accompanies their fervent assertions that they are unbiased is...."paranoia
and ad hominem".

And your response was to add nothing except labeling "paranoia", right? Was
that before or after you mentioned "ad hominem". Or did you, like him, have
any actual science to cite here to support his assertions?

Your projection doesn't do your argument much good.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection>

~~~
gloob
_emotional little assertions_

The irony of your use of this phrase eludes you, evidently.

------
cwan
This is how science is supposed to work. Sure there are a few straw men/ad
hominem attacks peppered in the article but the proper response to criticism
isn't calling the other side "denialists" and feigning offense but to respond
with data and counter arguments.

The problem that many of these scientists have themselves compounded is the
shroud of secrecy they've put over their "normalized" and "value added" data
and methodologies. Painting Armageddon like scenarios and then obstructing
freedom of information act requests when people ask about how they came about
their conclusions is at best bizarre. Meanwhile we have a myriad of
rationalizations from their defenders that we should instead trust their peer
review which at the very least, the CRU/UEA emails show are suspect at least
in this field.

Instead we are bombarded by these scientists/politicians who are anything but
impartial who seem to present us with a binary choice that either we radically
change our way of life which has serious risks in making us and the rest of
the world significantly economically poorer or armageddon... and then they're
surprised at the resistance? (This also ignores the myriad of policy responses
like carbon trading being mired in corruption and leakages that are being
advocated by these very same people)

It would seem to me that there are two parts to the problem - first
understanding conclusively what has been happening and what will happen and
second deciding what the appropriate policy response will be. Personally, I
think AGW is likely but I also think that we are on the cusp of a massive
transition towards clean burning (and more importantly, cheap) natural gas and
alternative energies which makes at least the emissions as generated by much
of the Western world moot.

~~~
jacoblyles
It still doesn't give a scientific reason why it is okay to truncate the tree
ring temperature graph at 1960 and paste the real thermometer temperature
graphs on top of them, except for the fact that it makes one hell of a
picture. That's the "hiding the decline" that most people are concerned about.
This article completely dances around that.

------
lionhearted
I was going to comment that this borders on ad hominem:

> FoxNews.com tells us that we finally have a 'smoking gun'--proof that
> scientists are manufacturing a global warming crisis so that they can… they
> can…

You know, calling out political theater instead of acknowledging that
reasonable people are concerned when they see scientific misconduct. I was
going to explain that this sort of Fox News reference is not so good for the
discussion - let the points stand, noting that one critic of yours is abrasive
does not make the criticisms invalid.

But, then I came upon this a little lower, which is a bit less subtle about
it:

> It's interesting stuff ... not interesting in the way that the rabid anti-
> science fuckhead (pardon me!) reality-denying luddite denialsphere types are
> saying, though.

Why might the science be wrong? Because it's moved from science to an identity
issue. Us vs. them. This guy isn't helping.

~~~
slyn
"Why might the science be wrong? Because it's moved from science to an
identity issue. Us vs. them. This guy isn't helping."

This is exactly why I choose to avoid the whole global warming climate debate
thing. It is so hard to find any sort of unbiased information because everyone
who talks about it has an agenda and forces it in your face. An Inconvenient
Truth was actually gag worthy, an hour and fifteen minutes of Al Gore
masturbating his ego over his crusade, five minutes of ridiculous cartoons,
and maybe fifteen minutes of actual statistics. Obviously a station like Fox
News or a talking head like Sean Hannity is going to push a right wing
viewpoint to the death, so there is really no point bringing them up in any
serious debate about basically anything. Even this posting, I just have a hard
time taking this particular blog seriously given the "Evolution, development,
and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal", as the
description, whether it is intended to be humorous or not.

The whole global warming debate is not as clear cut (if you can call it that)
as something like stem cell research where the issue was basically science vs
morality/religion. Both sides have their own statistics, both sides try their
hardest to refute the other sides' science, and even the people who actually
agree with each other that there is global warming often have different
opinions on what can actually be done (if anything) to fix the problem. When
something like the climate-gate situation becomes public, it makes it even
harder to actually take any of the science seriously, because one can only
assume that the studies, experiments, and modeling is being done with the
intention of proving one side right or wrong, which will undoubtedly lead to
all sorts of unintended cognitive bias.

------
fauigerzigerk
It's interesting and important to read the comments below that article. What
this shows is that seeing a smoking gun in the "nature trick" email alone is
misplaced, but also that the interpretation of what's going on with those tree
rings is not nearly as clear or uncontroversial as the global warming
alarmists want us to believe.

------
brc
I've read through the article, and what it all says to me is that there are
more questions on answers, and a lot of speculation as to the divergence
problem. While there are some sound suggestions as to why, it would seem to me
that these are all enough to discount tree rings as a useful proxy until they
are better understood. To me, the use of statistical methods to blend out the
divergence from a specific date seems like a real fudge.

------
jellicle
Watching Hacker News argue about climate change is like watching the blind
argue about colors. Please stop. In general you have no idea what you are
talking about.

Again and again and again and again there are comments along the lines of, "I
did five minutes of Googling about this issue and I've come up with a fatal
flaw in climate science!" Do you _really_ think that the tens of thousands of
scientists who do their life's work in this area are all fucking idiots? Every
last one of them? You are _late to the party_. How greenhouse gases work has
been thoroughly explored. The science of _whether_ we'll get a substantial
human-caused climate change from increasing the amount of atmospheric CO2 by
35% is done. It's over. The science now is in determining/predicting just how
much it will be, and in predicting the effects.

Every thread about climate science on Hacker News is one giant facepalm. Every
thread. Please stop.

~~~
pg
Your comment has even less evidence or analysis than the comments you're
complaining about. It's just an angry assertion.

It's ok for people to who are not experts in a subject to explore it. If you
feel they're on the wrong track, help them by giving them information.

~~~
antonovka2
There's an over-abundance of information. All that's left for HN is angry,
emotional quibbling by those who lack the basic qualifications to evaluate the
data and science, even if they were interested in actually doing so.

~~~
Panoramix
The comments I've read so far present interesting POV's backed up by data and
observations. I don't see how that qualifies as "angry emotional quibbling".

I don't see the problem with discussing science either. Newton's law of
gravitation has been around fot 322 years, and it has been shown to be just a
very good approximation (like everything else in science). Also, it is still
an open question (AFAIK) whether it holds at very small distances. Climate
research is not physics. The number of variables and the complexity of the
system is of such magnitude that I am pretty sure there will plenty of room
for scientific discussion for years and years to come.

------
thaumaturgy
If anything, I would expect the relatively recent divergence of correlation
between tree-ring measurements and other climate measurements to _bolster_
claims of an unstable climate, rather than suggest cooling.

Here we have a situation where plant behavior closely follows other
measurements of the climate for a very long time, and then recently ... they
don't. The most likely explanation here -- still being studied, mind you -- is
that there has been a significant change in the interaction between trees and
environment in certain areas.

~~~
robotrout
Which "other measurements of the climate" are you referring to exactly? CO2
level is not a measurement of climate, of course. It seems to be correlated,
but it's unknown if its phase is leading or lagging. So, what measurements are
you referring to?

~~~
thaumaturgy
> _CO2 level is not a measurement of climate, of course._

LOL.

Well, that's it. I'm done. Have a nice weekend, folks.

~~~
robotrout
If you honestly think that CO2 is the one and only cause of climate, ignoring
solar cycles, and other effects, and furthermore, if you believe with
certainty, that the CO2 cycle is phase shifted ahead in time, compared to
temperature, when it's just as likely that it's lagging, than you're right, we
really have no point in talking.

Also based on your response, I think we now know what "other climate
measurements" you were referring to.

------
hga
Because otherwise people would have realized much earlier that their tree-ring
data is not a useful proxy for temperature?

~~~
bjelkeman-again
Do you have a good peer-reviewed article that shows that tree-ring data as a
proxy for temperature is a poor fit. I'd be interested in reading it.

~~~
robotrout
I don't have one. That's sort of the problem, though, isn't it?

With the climatologists interfering so strongly in the way this is supposed to
work, by selecting which peers do their reviews, and by applying political
pressure to the journals, the whole "look it up in the established body of
work" approach has been sabotaged.

EDIT: I forgot an important one. The collusion aspect that the emails
revealed. We're not going to put this result in our paper, even though we
believe it, because it messes up Scientist B's premise.

~~~
thaumaturgy
You're kidding, right?

Evidence of absence is not proof. Imagine if this argument were used in other
contexts: "there are no papers published in peer-reviewed journals about
intelligent design. This proves that there's a conspiracy in the biological
community!"

In fact: there are a few published papers which challenge popular
climatological measurements and papers, and they are cited as often as
possible by ... I don't want to call them denialists, but I'm not sure what
else to call them.

So, wrong on both counts.

~~~
robotrout
Reread my post. I didn't say that the absence of papers proved anything. I
said that the scientific process has been sabotaged in this instance, making
things more unclear than they should be.

You are slick though!

EDIT: Perhaps you're honestly confused. I'm a bit doubtful on that, but in
case you are. We know that the process has been sabotaged. Not because there
are no papers, but because many of the details of the sabotage were revealed
in the ClimateGate emails.

------
w00pla
Is anyone a little disturbed about that website? From the title "Evolution,
development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal".

On the sidebar: "The Rise of Atheism, Global Atheist Convention".

This guy is some type of Atheist cult member.

~~~
albemuth
> "Atheist cult" That's quite an oxymoron don't you think?

~~~
btilly
Not at all. Atheism is without God or gods. This is not the same as without
religion.

As an example some Buddhist sects are both atheistic and cults.

------
rms
If AGW is a vast scientific left-wing conspiracy, I think it's diabolically
brilliant. Surely everyone thinks reducing pollution and fossil fuel
dependency is important, right?

~~~
hga
_How_ important? Look at the arguments of Bjørn Lomborg, "The Skeptical
Environmentalist". He says e.g. there are far better ways to spend the world's
money to improve lives than e.g. what's being proposed WRT to AGW/CC.

~~~
rms
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1005924>

------
CamperBob
FTA: _The main cause seems to be increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide._

Call me when you're sure. Extraordinary calls to action require extraordinary
proof.

------
nice1
Another thing worth remembering in this context is that once people get used
to lying with a straight face it is a hell of a job to stop.

~~~
MikeCapone
Indeed. But at least that's more discouraged in scientific circles than in
think tanks and PR/astroturfing campaigns financed by those who want to
discredit science for financial gain.

~~~
cwan
And you don't think that the billions of dollars at stake in carbon trading
don't result in proponents attempting to discredit critics?

~~~
thaumaturgy
The current views in climatology were developed long before there were
"billions at stake".

Meanwhile, if there are "billions at stake" in the "green" industry, there are
trillions at stake in those industries that would like to not have to install
complicated and expensive filters for their manufacturing exhaust, and for the
automotive industry which would surely love not to have to meet quite so
stringent air quality standards.

Can we at least agree that arguing about monetary motivation is problematic at
best, and probably stupid, and stick to the actual science here?

~~~
cwan
Sure (though the millions at stake in academic research particularly given the
political climate as the leaked emails illustrate are also of significance) -
but let's first separate the conversation to understanding that (1) what's the
problem and (2) what we should do about it are two separate issues.

Let's also understand that much of the western world like the US are about to
show significant declines in carbon emissions irrespective of what Fox news or
any other polemics - pro or con say. (ref:
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/oct/15/us-
decline...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/oct/15/us-decline-
carbon-emissions))

~~~
hga
By my count of an enumeration in _The Wall Street Journal_ (in an OPED)
there's currently well over 5 billion in academic "research" at stake
annually. Paul Jones, the top dog in the CRUtape Letters, himself pulled in 22
million in the period in question.

------
sown
I love HN. Everyone here is an expert on anything.

~~~
vikram
Does one need to be an expert to follow the argument and form an opinion about
it? If that was the case then why don't we let the experts make decisions, not
just provide information.

