Tree Ring Circus
Sunday, July 31, 2005
By Steven Milloy

We may finally learn the answer, thanks to the efforts of Congressman Joe Barton, R-Texas -- who has had everything but the kitchen sink thrown at him by the global warming lobby in its fierce opposition to his recent inquiry.

On June 23, Rep. Barton, chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, sent letters to the climate researchers responsible for developing the notorious “hockey stick” graph, which purports to show a dramatic rise in global temperatures during the 20th century after a millennium of supposedly little change in global temperature.

The hockey stick graph has been key weapon in the arsenal of the global warming alarmists in their efforts to scare the U.S. into signing the Kyoto Protocol and clamping down on greenhouse gas emissions and energy use.

The graph has been criticized for many reasons, including its reliance on dubious estimates of historic temperatures based on the size of tree rings. Not only is temperature merely one factor that contributes to tree growth (as evidenced by the ring size), but a 15th century portion of the hockey stick graph is based on tree ring measurements from a single tree.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,163999,00.html

sorry bub, much more than tree rings were used to establish historical temperatures.

Another silly and weak attempt to ingore reality melts-down :eek:

sorry bub, much more than tree rings were used to establish historical temperatures.

Another silly and weak attempt to ingore reality melts-down :eek:

Mann used tree ring data, from one tree to model the entire 15th century.

sorry bub, much more than tree rings were used to establish historical temperatures.

Another silly and weak attempt to ingore reality melts-down :eek:

I'll just take a left-wing extremist's word for it...yea right. :rolleyes:

rubicon, for curiosity's sake, how many left-wing people are on this site are not extremist in your view?
Lets have some names.

Hey, there's global warming, I have my AC on IN *****ING DECEMBER!

Know where Hurricane Rita came ashore, I'm 30 miles from there.

rubicon, for curiosity's sake, how many left-wing people are on this site are not extremist in your view?
Lets have some names.

Off topic. :rolleyes: PM if you want.

First ... lets look at the contributors to Joe Barton's texas campaign

1 Anadarko Petroleum $102,500
2 National Cable & Telecommunications Assn $83,849
3 Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp $79,561
4 Lockheed Martin $77,950
5 TXU Corp $77,450
6 National Auto Dealers Assn $72,600
7 National Assn of Realtors $60,550
8 BP $59,350
9 Textron Inc $51,900
10 SBC Communications $51,109
11 Lyondell Chemical $48,750
12 National Rifle Assn $46,898
13 American Medical Assn $46,817
14 United Parcel Service $45,390
15 American Institute of CPAs $44,499
16 Texas Industries $43,750
17 National Assn of Broadcasters $40,550
18 Comcast Corp $40,500
19 Exxon Mobil $38,750
20 National Assn of Home Builders $37,800
20 Valero Energy $37,800

Next ... a letter to Barton


The Honorable Joe Barton, Chairman
Committee on Energy and Commerce
The Honorable Ed Whitfield, Chairman
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
2125 Rayburn House Office Building
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515
Friday, July 15, 2005

Dear Chairman Barton and Chairman Whitfield,

As scientists with expertise relevant to the understanding of Earth’s changing climate, we are writing to help inform the inquiry you are conducting on the work of Drs. Michael Mann, Ray Bradley, and Malcolm Hughes. We understand that as a representative of the American people, you have a responsibility to inform yourself and your colleagues about scientific knowledge that is relevant to policy decisions. However, we are deeply concerned about your approach and we respectfully submit the following clarifying context.
In your letters of June 23, 2005, to these scientists, you state, “We open this review because this dispute surrounding your studies bears directly on important questions about the federally funded work upon which climate studies rely.” In fact, the specific findings of Mann et al. constitute only one item among literally thousands of pieces of evidence that have contributed to the present consensus on the serious nature of climate change. While the 2001 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) highlighted this work as a useful illustration of our understanding of the impact of fossil fuel-related emissions on climate change, in no way does the report suggest that it is an essential element of that understanding. This understanding has been developed over many years from many diverse lines of inquiry.
There are legitimate areas of scientific debate over the best methodologies to apply in reconstructing historic temperatures, as there are in many topics of current scientific interest. However, the essential points of the Mann et al. studythat the late twentieth century likely included the warmest decades in the last millenniumare supported by numerous other studies. We refer the committee to the full reports by the IPCC, the 2001 review of the Third Assessment report by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and the June 7 statement from the NAS and other leading science academies for balanced assessments of the current state of the science.
We also note that much of the information that you have requested from the scientists involved is unrelated to the stated purpose of your investigation. Requests to provide all working materials related to hundreds of publications stretching back decades can be seen as intimidationintentional or notand thereby risks compromising the independence of scientific opinion that is vital to the preeminence of American science as well as to the flow of objective advice to the government.
Letter to Chairman Barton and Chairman Whitfield 2 7/15/2005 We welcome your interest in the science of climate change and hope that as a community, we can help your committee shape public policy in the light of the best available scientific knowledge.
Respectfully,

(signed by 20 top climatologists and earth scientists)



This is nothing more than a blatant and transparent attempt by a Texas congressman , who is virtually owned by the oil and engergy industry , to bully and harrass scientists using the power of his office.

This type of disgusting political and media manipulation by elected representatives is all too common to the Bush white house and his political ilk.

The American Petroleum Institute has a financial interest in maintaining the status quo of massive fossil fuel consumption. This cheap political stunt and the press releases are just one piece of a larger disinformation campaign being waged by the API against legitimate science in the name of petro-profits

Now ... the tree-ring data

Mann used tree ring data, from one tree to model the entire 15th century.

oh reeeealllly ?

I tried to post the list of proxy data used to establish the temperatures used in the hockey stick graph, but it exceeded the character limit ... so here is a linky instead

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/ei/data_supp.html

EDIT

Oh yeah ... there are 130+ tree-ring specimens from the 15th century ... never forget the BA motto ... If your gonna lie ... lie BIG

Next ... the results

This is the summary of various studies based on calibrated proxy data from tree rings, glacier cores, bore holes, coral and other sources

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/1000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png

(dark blue 1000-1991): P.D. Jones, K.R. Briffa, T.P. Barnett, and S.F.B. Tett (1998). High-resolution Palaeoclimatic Records for the last Millennium: Interpretation, Integration and Comparison with General Circulation Model Control-run Temperatures, The Holocene, 8: 455-471.

(blue 1000-1980): M.E. Mann, R.S. Bradley, and M.K. Hughes (1999). Northern Hemisphere Temperatures During the Past Millennium: Inferences, Uncertainties, and Limitations, Geophysical Research Letters, 26(6): 759-762.

(light blue 1000-1965): Crowley and Lowery (2000). Northern Hemisphere Temperature Reconstruction, Ambio, 29: 51-54. Modified as published in Crowley (2000). Causes of Climate Change Over the Past 1000 Years, Science, 289: 270-277.

(lightest blue 1402-1960): K.R. Briffa, T.J. Osborn, F.H. Schweingruber, I.C. Harris, P.D. Jones, S.G. Shiyatov, S.G. and E.A. Vaganov (2001). Low-frequency temperature variations from a northern tree-ring density network, J. Geophys. Res., 106: 2929-2941.

(light green 831-1992): J. Esper, E.R. Cook, and F.H. Schweingruber (2002). Low-Frequency Signals in Long Tree-Ring Chronologies for Reconstructing Past Temperature Variability, Science, 295(5563): 2250-2253.

(yellow 200-1980): M.E. Mann and P.D. Jones (2003). Global Surface Temperatures over the Past Two Millennia, Geophysical Research Letters, 30(15): 1820. DOI:10.1029/2003GL017814.

(orange 200-1995): P.D. Jones and M.E. Mann (2004). Climate Over Past Millennia, Reviews of Geophysics, 42: RG2002. DOI:10.1029/2003RG000143

(red-orange 1500-1980): S. Huang (2004). Merging Information from Different Resources for New Insights into Climate Change in the Past and Future, Geophys. Res Lett., 31: L13205. DOI:10.1029/2004GL019781

(red 1-1979): A. Moberg, D.M. Sonechkin, K. Holmgren, N.M. Datsenko and W. Karlén (2005). Highly variable Northern Hemisphere temperatures reconstructed from low- and high-resolution proxy data, Nature, 443: 613-617. DOI:10.1038/nature03265

(dark red 1600-1990): J.H. Oerlemans (2005). Extracting a Climate Signal from 169 Glacier Records, Science, 308: 675-677. DOI:10.1126/science.1107046



And instrumental data from the last 150 years



http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png

These instrumental data are used to calibrate the proxy data so other variations like rainfall can be adjusted for

Finally ... the big Con

The author Steven J. Milloy is a shill and fraud paid for by none other than ... Exxon Mobil ... whadda surprise ! ;)

Milloy the lobbyist
He has spent his life as a lobbyist for major corporations and trade organisations which have poisioning or polluting problems. He originally ran NEPI (National Environmental Policy Institute) which was founded by Republican Rep Don Ritter (who tried to get tobacco industry funding) using oil and gas industry funding. NEPI was dedicated to transforming both the EPA and the FDA, and challenging the cost of Superfund toxic cleanups by these large corporations.

NEPI was also associated with the AQSC (Air Quality Standards Coalition) which was devoted to emasculating Clean Air laws. This organisation took up the cry of "we need sound science" from the chemical industry as a way to counter claims of pollution -- and Milloy became involved in what became known as the "sound-science" movement. Its most effective ploy was to label science not beneficial to the large funding corporations as "junk" -- and Milloy was one of its most effective lobbyists because he wrote well, and used humour (PJ O'Rourke was another -- but better!)

He joined Philip Morris's specialist-science/PR company APCO & Associates in 1992, working behind the scenes on a business venture known as "Issues Watch". By this time, APCO had been taken over and become a part of the world-wide Grey Marketing organisation, and so Milloy was able to use the international organisation as a feed source for services to corporations who had international problems.

Issues Watch bulletins were only given out to paying customers, so Milloy started for APCO the "Junkscience.com" web site, which gave him an outlet to attack health and environmental activists, and scientists who published findings not supportive of his client's businesses. Like most good PR it mixes some good, general criticism of science and science-reporting, with some outright distorted and manipulative pieces.

The Junkscience web site was supposedly run by a pseudo-grassroots organisation called TASSC (The Advancement for Sound Science Coalition), which initially paid ex-Governor Curruthers of New Mexico as a front. Milloy actually ran it from the back-room, and issued the press releases. Then when Curruthers resigned, Milloy started to call himself "Director" (Bonner Cohen - another of the same ilk also working for APCO - became "President")

Initially all of this was funded by Philip Morris, as part of their contributions to the distortion of tobacco science, but later they widened out the focus and introduced even more funding by establishing a coalition -- with energy, pharmaceutical, chemical companies. TASSC's funders include 3M, Amoco, Chevron, Dow Chemical, Exxon, General Motors, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Lorillard Tobacco, Louisiana Chemical Association, National Pest Control Association, Occidental Petroleum, Philip Morris Companies, Procter & Gamble, Santa Fe Pacific Gold, and W.R. Grace, the asbestos and pesticide manufacturers.

TASSC was then exposed publicly as a fraud. And so Milloy established the "Citizens for the Integrity of Science" to take over the running of the Junkscience.com web site.

[edit]Radioactive Junk
In August 2005 Media Matters for America reported that Milloy (who is not a scientist himself) had self-published a deceptive "study" purporting to show that radiation levels at the U.S. Capitol Building were 65 times higher than the proposed standards for the federal government's planned high-level radioactive waste storage dump at Yucca Mountain. [2] (http://mediamatters.org/items/200508120001)

[edit]Funding
Milloy also runs the Advancement of Sound Science Center and the Free Enterprise Action Institute. Those two groups—apparently run out of Milloy’s home—received $90,000 from ExxonMobil. Key quote: The date of Kyoto’s implementation will "live in scientific and economic infamy." Connections to ExxonMobil-funded groups: at least five. [3] (http://www.motherjones.com/news/featurex/2005/05/exxon_chart.html)


http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Steve_Milloy

The angry, unprovoked and obscenity-laced PM I just received from contra-dazen-rubicon proves that, once again, he/she/it has been pwned :nice:

I guess I won't PM him for that list of non-radical DA leftists then :|.

bump happy new year bump

can't speak for others, but i don't know of anyone who denies that the climate is changing. i just haven't seen a single shred of proof that man has caused it. to me this all falls into the crap they taught us in school about how the ozone would be gone in 15 years, and the oil would be gone by 1994. all that crap that was spewed in the 80s.

Does it matter what the cause is? The consequences will be terrible no matter the cause...

Does it matter what the cause is? The consequences will be terrible no matter the cause...

It's important to understand the cause, because if it's part of a natural cycle that has occurred many times before, we would waste tremendous amounts of money and effort trying to stop something that's far too big for us to stop.

It's important to understand the cause, because if it's part of a natural cycle that has occurred many times before, we would waste tremendous amounts of money and effort trying to stop something that's far too big for us to stop.

Global warming has both natural and human originating causes. Man has contributed a significant amount to this problem. Fatalism never solved anything.

It is a cyclical process but human activities are making the current cycle higher at every point than the corrosponding points on previous cycles.

It is a cyclical process but human activities are making the current cycle higher at every point than the corrosponding points on previous cycles.

So the choice comes to what alternatives? In either scenario, the climate changes, and there's squat we can do to prevent it. It would be better to put our efforts into preparing to deal with the inevitable. Get ready for Canada and Siberia to become the world's breadbasket. Stock up on DDT to fight mosquito-borne diseases in the tropics, that sort of thing.

Global warming has both natural and human originating causes. Man has contributed a significant amount to this problem. Fatalism never solved anything.

And if there's nothing we can do to stop it, even if we bankrupt the planet? Then what?

And if there's nothing we can do to stop it, even if we bankrupt the planet? Then what?

We are bankrupting the planet, environmentally. There is no need to (financially) backrupt the planet, some companies may suffer but others will start up to take advantage of new opportunities. Humanity and the Earth are worth more than the bank accounts of some billionaires.

We are bankrupting the planet, environmentally. There is no need to (financially) backrupt the planet, some companies may suffer but others will start up to take advantage of new opportunities. Humanity and the Earth are worth more than the bank accounts of some billionaires.

I don't think you understand. Bankrupt those billionaires and you bankrupt the thousands they employ. Bankrupt them and you bankrupt the retailers that depend on them. The environment is better now than it was 100 years ago, and will continue improving as we gain a better understanding of how to manage it.

The changes to law would be gradually implemented, the energy companies would have time to adapt or die. Survival of the financially fittest, I thought you liked that kind of stuff. I fully understand what you are saying but think you exaggerate and also my priorities do not revolve around money.

And if there's nothing we can do to stop it, even if we bankrupt the planet? Then what?

'bankrupting the planet' ?? says who ?

Exxon ≠ The Planet

The best thing we can do is reduce fossil fuel consuption and develop alternative primary energy sources

And how do you explain the fact that virtually every report and analysis from global warming deniers were funded by exxon-mobil or other fossil fuel concerns ?

Global warming has both natural and human originating causes. Man has contributed a significant amount to this problem. Fatalism never solved anything.you know this for a fact? how? all i've ever seen is speculation on this matter.

you know this for a fact? how? all i've ever seen is speculation on this matter.

I read an article a month or two back that was convincing but I can't remember where I read it. We should take responsibility for our impact on the Earth, it is our only home currently and the home of our children and childrens children.

I read an article a month or two back that was convincing but I can't remember where I read it. We should take responsibility for our impact on the Earth, it is our only home currently and the home of our children and childrens children.i agree. now all you have to do is prove that we have a major impact on the planet and i'll be right beside you.