By Anthony Watts, WUWT
Just when you think the bottom of the Hockey Stick rabbit hole has been reached, Steve McIntyre finds yet more evidence of misconduct by the Team.
The research was from Briffa and Osborn (1999) published in Science magazine and purported to show the consistency of the reconstruction of past climate using tree rings with other reconstructions including the Mann Hockey Stick. But the trick was exposed in the Climategate dossier, which also included code segments and datasets.
In the next picture, Steve shows what Briffa and Osborn did - not only did they truncate their reconstruction to hide a steep decline in the late 20th Century but also a substantial early segment from 1402-1550:
As I’ve written elsewhere, this sort of truncation can be characterized as research misconduct - specifically falsification. But where are the academic cops? Any comment from Science magazine?
Steve also discusses the code underlying the plot and you can see how the truncation is a clear deliberate choice - not something that falls out of poorly understood analysis or poor programming.
In the comments, Kip Hansen posts the following:
In reference to Mann’s Trick....obliquely, yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling on Zicam (a homeopathic nasal spray) ruled in part:
The Supreme Court has said that companies may be sued under the securities law for making statements that omit material information, and it has defined material information as the sort of thing that reasonable investors would believe significantly alters the ‘total mix’ of available information.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing for the court on Tuesday, roundly rejected Matrixx’s proposal that information can be material only if it meets standards of statistical significance.
“Given that medical professionals and regulators act on the basis of evidence of causation that is not statistically significant,” she wrote, “it stands to reason that in certain cases reasonable investors would as well.”
Thus, hiding or omitting information, even if one feels it is ‘erroneous’ or ‘outlying’ (or whatever they claim) is still possibly fraudulent ( or in this case, scientifically improper) if it would ‘add to the total mix of available information’. Statistical significance is not to be the deciding factor.
In the case of Briffa and Osborn, no statistical fig leaf was applied that justified the truncation of data, so far as I can see. See post and comments.
IBD Editorial
Energy Policy: While leaving U.S. oil and jobs in the ground, our itinerant president tells a South American neighbor that we’ll help it develop its offshore resources so we can one day import its oil. WHAT?!?
With Japan staggered by a natural disaster and a nuclear crisis, cruise missiles launched against Libya in our third Middle East conflict and a majority of U.S. senators complaining about a lack of leadership on the budget, President Obama decided it would be a good time to schmooze with Brazilians.
His “What, me worry?” presidency has given both Americans and our allies plenty to worry about. But in the process of making nice with Brazil, Obama made a mind-boggling announcement that should make even his most loyal supporter cringe:
We will help Brazil develop its offshore oil so we can one day import it.
We have noted this double standard before, particularly when - at a time when the president was railing against tax incentives for U.S. oil companies - we supported the U.S. Export-Import Bank’s plan to lend $2 billion to Brazil’s state-run Petrobras with the promise of more to follow.
Now, with a seven-year offshore drilling ban in effect off of both coasts, on Alaska’s continental shelf and in much of the Gulf of Mexico - and a de facto moratorium covering the rest - Obama tells the Brazilians:
“We want to help you with the technology and support to develop these oil reserves safely. And when you’re ready to start selling, we want to be one of your best customers.”
Obama wants to develop Brazilian offshore oil to help the Brazilian economy create jobs for Brazilian workers while Americans are left unemployed in the face of skyrocketing energy prices by an administration that despises fossil fuels as a threat to the environment and wants to increase our dependency on foreign oil.
Obama said he chose Brazil to kick off his first-ever visit to South America in recognition of that country’s ascendancy. He has also highlighted one of the reasons for America’s decline - an energy policy that through the creation of an artificial shortage of fossil fuels makes prices “necessarily skyrocket” to foster his green energy agenda.
In an op-ed in USA Today explaining his trip, Obama opined: “Brazil holds recently discovered oil reserves that could be far larger than ours. And as we seek to increase secure-energy supplies, we look forward to developing a strategic energy partnership.”
Yet in his alleged quest for “secure-energy supplies,” he refuses to develop oil and natural gas resources in U.S. waters. His administration has locked up areas in the West where oil shale reserves are estimated to be triple Saudi Arabia’s reserves of crude. His administration is even stalling on plans to build a pipeline to deliver oil from Canada’s tar sands to the U.S. market.
That project would build a 1,661-mile pipeline from the tar sands of Alberta to U.S. refineries near Houston. It would create 13,000 “shovel-ready” jobs and provide 500,000 more barrels of oil per day from an ally.
Yet it’s now being held up by the State Department because it crosses an international border, on the grounds that it needs further environmental review. Shipping oil by tanker from Brazil is safer and more secure?
If Brazil had copied our current energy policy, it wouldn’t have discovered in December 2007 the Tupi field, estimated to contain 5 billion to 8 billon barrels of crude, or its Carioca offshore oilfield that may hold up to 33 billion barrels.
Haroldo Lima, head of Brazil’s National Oil Agency, estimates that Carioca might hold as much as five times the reserves of Tupi. Somehow the Brazilians aren’t too worried about oil spoiling the pristine beaches of nearby Sao Paulo or Rio de Janeiro in the tourist season.
We suggest that President Obama return home and start worrying about an unapologetic American renaissance in which we focus more on American energy and American jobs and less on mythical environmental hazards and foreign accolades. See post and comments.
By Anthony Watts
From the LA Times, some “climate justice” for the poor:
The California lawsuit was filed by six environmental groups that represent low-income communities, including the Association of Irritated Residents, based in the San Joaquin Valley, and Communities for A Better Environment, which fights pollution around the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
The groups contend that a cap-and-trade program would allow refineries, power plants and other big facilities in poor neighborhoods to avoid cutting emissions of both greenhouse gases and traditional air pollutants.
Anthony’s post here.
Full story here.