What happens when you approach the anthropogenic global warming issue using ALL the data, instead of just a few handpicked points that can be made to appear to support AGW? The “evidence” for AGW does a disappearing act, that’s what,
A[s] WUWT readers know, the Briffa tree ring data that purports to show a “hockey stick” of warming in the late 20th century has now become highly suspect, and appears to have been the result of hand selected trees as opposed to using the larger data set available for the region.
OK, first the obligatory Briffa (Hadley Climate Research Unit) tree ring data versus Steve McIntyre’s plot of the recently available Schweingruber data from the same region.
Red = Briffa’s 12 hand picked trees Black = the other dataset NOT used
The Hantemirov- Shiyatov (HS) tree ring data that I downloaded from the NCDC is available from their FTP server here. I simply downloaded it and plotted it from the present back to the year 0AD (even though it extends much further back to the year 2067 BC) so that it would have a similar x scale to the Briffa data plot above for easy comparison. I also plotted a polynomial curve fit to the data to illustrate trend slope, plus a 30 year running average since 30 years is our currently accepted period for climate analysis.
Compare it to the Briffa (CRU) data above.
When I first saw this plot, I thought I had done something wrong. It was, well, just too flat. But I double checked my data import, the plot, the tools used to plot, and the output by running it 2 more times from scratch. Then I had Jeff Id over at the air vent take a look at it. He concurs that I’ve plotted the data correctly.
The trend is flat as road kill for the past 2000 years, though it does show an ever so slight cooling.
The first thing to note is that these data are not directly indexable to the set which Steve McIntyre used last week to demonstrate the non-existence of the “global warming hockey stick.” That being said, this data from 2002 is nevertheless relevant in addressing the evidence, if any, for warming from the tree ring data. Over 2000 data points went into this study, unlike the cherry-picked set used by Briffa in preparing his hockey stick graph. As can be seen from a non-cherry-picked data set, the plot of reconstructed temperature per year is essentially flat. What’s sad is that so would Briffa’s, if he had not artificially limited his data set.
Combine this with Steve McIntyre’s original decisive refutation of this latest “hockey stick” that the AGW cult had imagined it had found, and we see the case that can be made for AGW is quickly dissolving.
The second image below is, in my opinion, one of the most disquieting images ever presented at Climate Audit.
The image? The first one that is given above – the one showing how the reconstructed temperature plots differ, with and without all the extra data that Briffa lacked that allowed him to invent the hockey stick that supposedly proves global warming. The AGW collapse is happening so fast, in part, because so many of these proponents of AGW are being caught cooking the data. In other words, they’re being dishonest.
Frankly, it’s nearly to the point that if someone is really serious about arguing for AGW, they are either:
1) Astoundingly ignorant
2) On somebody’s payroll
3) Dating an environmentalist
Perhaps this is why over 31,000 American scientists have signed a petition stating,
We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.
There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.
And it has come to my attention that pro-AGW fanatics are relying on some “remix” put together by Peter Sinclair. As was demonstrated previously, relying on Sinclair as an authority on matters of climate change is ridiculous. He’s an independent filmmaker, not a scientist, for crying out loud.
Tags: Global Warming, Science
