Albert Einstein: “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”

At issue is the use of tree rings as a temperature proxy, or dendrochronology. Using statistical techniques, researchers take the ring data to create a “reconstruction” of historical temperature anomalies. But trees are a highly controversial indicator of temperature, since the rings principally record CO2, and also record humidity, rainfall, nutrient intake and other local factors. Picking a temperature signal out of all this noise is problematic, and a dendrochronology can differ significantly from instrumented data. In dendro jargon, this disparity is called “divergence”. The process of creating a raw data set also involves a selective use of samples - a choice open to a scientist’s biases.—by Andrew Orlowski, UK Register, September 29, 2009

Media reaction to the Yamal story has been rather limited so far. I’m not sure whether this is because people are trying to digest what it means or whether it’s “too hot to handle”. None of the global warming supporters in the mainstream media have gone near it. The reaction of the Guardian - to delete any mention of the affair from their comment threads - has been extraordinary.  --Bishop Hill, 1 October 2009

Read all the details of the Yamal issue from both sides in these links:

Yamal, A Divergence Problem by Steve McIntyre

YAD06 - the Most Influential Tree in the World by Steve McIntyre

Keith Briffa Responds by Steve McIntyre

Response from Briffa on the Yamal Tree Ring Affair Plus Rebuttal by Anthony Watts

See larger ones here.

Watts responds in part: “As McIntyre points out: “YAD061 reaches 8 sigma and is the most influential tree in the world.” Seems like an outlier to me when you have one tree that can skew the entire climate record. Explain yourself on why you failed to catch this. Why the hell did you wait 10 years to release the data? You did yourself no favors by deferring reasonable requests to archive data to enable replication. It was only when you became backed into a corner by The Royal Society that you made the data available. Your delays and roadblocks (such as providing an antique data format of the punched card era), plus refusing to provide metadata says more about your integrity than the data itself. Your actions make it appear that you did not want to release the data at all. Your actions are not consistent with the actions of the vast majority of scientists worldwide when asked for data for replication purposes. Making data available on paper publication for replication is the basis of proper science, which is why The Royal Society called you to task.”

Defects in Key Climate Data Detected by Ross McKitrick

The Yamal Implosion By Bishop Hill

Yamal, The Debate Continues by Bishop Hill

Treemometers by Andrew Orlowski, the UK Register

Hey Ya Mal by Real Climate

Hockey Stick Gets Personal: Lies from Real Climate by Roger Pielke Jr.

Mann Made Global Warming Confirmed by Chris Horner

What’s Revkin, Begley, Eilperin & Big MSM Outlets Have To Say About Massively Bogus Tree Ring Research/Hockey Stick? Nada! by C3 Headlines

Cherry Picking of Historic Proportions by Joanne Nova

UN Climate Reports: They Lie by Marc Sheppard