Breaking hockey stick

I was just informed about a new article by Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick (MM) that will be published in Geophysical Research Letters, the same journal in which Michael Mann et al. published an early version of their paper about the "hockey stick graph" that claimed that they had evidence that the 20th century was the warmest century in this millenium. Read e.g. the story at

• Canada.com about MM I
• Canada.com about MM II
• Canada.com about MM III
• Canada.com about MM IV
  
• Roy Spencer about MM
• McIntyre's web page
• McKitrick's web page

Despite the authors' and alarmists' claims, everyone seems to agree that these papers by Mann et al. were the most influential - and essentially unique - articles that support the statements that the human activity is causing an unprecedented warming trend above the natural variations - and they were the main papers that supported the Kyoto protocol. The most politically controversial question turned out to be the 15th century weather. ;-)

Of course, only Nature knows for sure what the climate looked like - but the advocates of Kyoto (such as Mann et al.) would prefer if the 15th century were cooler than the present while the skeptics are skeptical, as usual.



Two years ago or so, my feeling was that MM had a much more rational and scientific approach to the questions about the global climate than Mann et al., but I could see some minor errors in their analysis of the data. Meanwhile, they have improved their knowledge and abilities. They showed that the statistical method by Mann et al. effectively picks the data that lead to the hockey stick shape. Even if one inserts "red noise" as input, the result is a hockey stick graph in 99 percent of cases. They also learned which data sets are the dominant contributors to the conclusions by Mann et al.

I apologize for the wording, but there now seems to be a consensus that the papers by Mann et al. were flawed, and that there exists no evidence that the 15th century was cooler than the 20th century. On the contrary, it's pretty likely that the 15th century was warmer. Another recent criticism by von Storch et al. was published in Science. Von Storch as well as other leading climate scientists and statisticians confirm the findings of MM.

The Dutch National Science Foundation (NOW, not to be confused with the U.S. feminist organization) and the Dutch National Meteorological Agency (KNMI) will convene a special conference within the next month to assess the implications of the findings. Various key members of IPCC (the international climate panel) agree that the image of IPCC will be seriously damaged when the findings are published. A purely political comment: MM can no longer be considered to be cranks and outsiders - they publish in the same journals as the "official" climate scientists, and moreover, there is a growing consensus that MM are the more correct ones.

Also, the alarmists' propagandistic website

• RealClimate.ORG

is already preparing its readers for the fact that the papers by Mann et al. are flawed (the article is called "What if the hockey stick were wrong?"). The alarmists essentially argue that it does not matter whether the science behind the claims is correct or wrong. Even when the paper is proved wrong, there is still a consensus among the "Hockey Team" (the other papers), they say. They can still play ice-hockey once the goalie is shot, they think. There are other papers independent (...) from Mann et al.: for example Mann and Jones, Jones and Mann, Crowley and Lowery based on data from Jones, Jones and Briffa, Briffa and Jones, and so on. ;-)

Well, I am quite skeptical, especially because the rest of the "Hockey Team" either shares the same authors (Mann, Bradley, Hughes, or Jones), and/or the same data, and/or the same methods - and moreover, the rest of the "team" are even less controllable papers than Mann et al. The global warming activists among the scientists will be in deep trouble since February 2005.