So what does one have to do the be called a ‘denier?’

McIntyre to Mann, December 2003 cc NSF (from the Climate Audit mirror site):

In MBH98 and MBH99, you refer to analyses of residuals carried out in these studies. Could you please provide me with (a) preferably, a FTP location for the residual series, together an FTP reference for the program generating the residuals; or, (b) in the absence of such FTP location, an email enclosing this information. Your analysis of these residuals was used to estimate confidence intervals in an influential scientific paper.

David Verardo Director, Paleoclimate Program, US National Science Foundation, Dec. 17, 2003 (preemptively permitting Mann not to disclose his “dirty laundry”):

Dr. Mann and his other US colleagues are under no obligation to provide you with any additional data beyond the extensive data sets they have already made available. He is not required to provide you with computer programs, codes, etc. His research is published in the peer-reviewed literature which has passed muster with the editors of those journals and other scientists who have reviewed his manuscripts. You are free to your analysis of climate data and he is free to his.

McIntyre to Ziemelis of Nature, August 2004:

we are writing to reiterate long-standing requests for data and results from MBH98, which we have already communicated on several occasions. You had stated that these requests would be resolved in the new SI, but unfortunately this is not the case. While you are undoubtedly weary of this correspondence, our original request for disclosure was reasonable and remains reasonable. It is only the unresponsiveness of the original authors that is placing a burden on you and your associates. Some of these items have been outstanding for 7 months. They were not attended to in the new SI and need to be dealt with promptly. … In particular, we still seek … the results of the 11 “experiments” referred to in MBH98, including: (b) the NH temperature reconstruction (11 series from the start of each calculation step to 1980); (c) the residuals (11 series from the start of each calculation step to 1980)… Since their claims of skill in reconstructing past climates depend on these “experiments” and their estimation of confidence intervals is based on the residual series, it is unnecessary to explain why these data are of interest. Again, we have repeatedly requested this data.

Ziemelis of Nature to McIntyre, Sept 2004:

And with regard to the additional experimental results that you request, our view is that this too goes beyond an obligation on the part of the authors, given that the full listing of the source data and documentation of the procedures used to generate the final findings are provided in the corrected Supplementary Information. (This is the most that we would normally require of any author.)

What do the leaked CRU emails reveal?

Michael Mann to Tim Osborn, CRU, July 2003:

Attached are the calibration residual series for experiments based on available networks back to: AD 1000, AD 1400, AD 1600… You only want to look at the first column (year) and second column (residual) of the files. I can’t even remember what the other columns are! mike
p.s. I know I probably don’t need to mention this, but just to insure absolutely clarify on this, I’m providing these for your own personal use, since you’re a trusted colleague. So please don’t pass this along to others without checking w/ me first. This is the sort of “dirty laundry” one doesn’t want to fall into the hands of those who might potentially try to distort things…

Nature seems to have no problem with no one being allowed to try and independently replicate Mann’s results. If all the data was archived and publicly available, as it should be but isn’t, then there would be no need to repeatedly ask for it. Nothing to hide, nothing to fear! We know that the ‘Hockey Team’ paleoclimate studies share methodology and data, The 43 person plus ‘team’ identified in the Wegman Report can hardly be described as ‘independent.’ The NAS panel confirmed the finding of Wegman. Here’s Gerry North of the NAS panel under oath:

CHAIRMAN BARTON  Dr. North, do you dispute the conclusions or the methodology of Dr. Wegman’s report?

DR. NORTH  No, we don’t. We don’t disagree with their criticism. In fact, pretty much the same thing is said in our report.

Barton then asked North’s colleague on the NAS panel, Peter Bloomfield, a similar question. Bloomfield’s reply: “Our committee reviewed the methodology used by Dr. Mann and his co-workers and we felt that some of the choices they made were inappropriate. We had much the same misgivings about his work that was documented at much greater length by Dr. Wegman.”

The multi-proxy ‘Team’ studies illustrated in the NAS panel to support the hockey stick as being ‘plausible,’ and their relevant flaws were:

Mann and Jones 03 (bristlecones)
Moberg el al (Use of grey data, bristlecones, hilarious use of G. bulloides proxy)
Hegerl et al (Cherrypicked data, secret data)
Esper et al(bristlecones/foxtails, use of dodgy Polar Urals site, cherrypicked data, secret data)
Osborn & Briffa (Uses the hockey stick itself, naked cherrypicking of hockey stick shaped series).

The NAS panel never explained how they could condemn the use of bristlecone pines as proxies but still cite studies based on them in support of the hockey stick.

Nature also describes the ‘trick,’ mentioned in a leaked email, as “slang for a clever (and legitimate) technique.” Steve McIntyre has a different description: “The “problem” arises because Briffa reconstruction goes down from 1940 to 1994 instead of up. Jones deleted the post-1960 values of the Briffa reconstruction, replaced them with instrumental values, smoothed the spliced series (see posts by both Jean S and myself proving this) and ended up with a reconstruction that looked like an accurate reconstruction of late 20th century temperatures.”

No matter how much Nature kicks and screams, there are substantial issues raised by the CRU emails including the ‘knobbling’ of the peer review process that leaves alternative views stuck between a rock and a hard place i.e. being criticised for not publishing peer reviewed papers or comments, whilst at the same time being actively prevented from doing so.

At least ‘consensus’ scientist Judith Curry, interviewed in the National Journal, talks some good sense on the politicisation of climate science that puts the writer of the Nature editorial to shame. Here are some excerpts: Curry says, “We need climate glasnost: openness, transparency, and freedom of information. Scientists who engage in advocacy activities generate lack of confidence in their science, both from within the scientific community and from the public. The public should expect accountability from our major institutions, particularly the IPCC.”

and:

“Scrutiny from scientific skeptics makes the science stronger, either by identifying problems that can be addressed or by increasing confidence when problems and errors are not found.  The scientists involved in the CRU emails are dismissing certain people as skeptics, assuming that they all have political motivations. Well, the motivation of the skeptic isn’t really the point. The point is whether or not they have a valid argument.”

and:

“I staunchly support the IPCC, but when [chairman] Rajendra Pachauri comes out making all these really strong policy statements, such as the developed world has to cut back its energy use… and stop putting ice cubes in their water, and other crazy stuff… I don’t like that. These guys should pick people who don’t want to be advocates and will shut their mouths about advocating for policies. Otherwise, we don’t look credible.”

A breath of fresh air from Judith Curry, which points a way forward as opposed to Nature’s refusal to be objective about the implications of Climategate.

The elements that give seawater its distinctive saltiness are mostly supplied in dissolved form by rivers. Rivers, in turn, receive these elements from runoff that has reacted with and partially dissolved rocks, a process known as chemical weathering. Another major source of dissolved material to seawater is submarine “black smoker” hydrothermal systems. Movement of seawater through young, hot rocks at the mid-ocean ridges causes leaching of some elements from sea-floor basalts, as well as the precipitation out of solution of some constituents of seawater. Thus, these hydrothermal systems are both a source of dissolved material to the oceans and also a means by which some others are lost. The other major output of dissolved material from the oceans is to marine sediments, which are principally made up of the shells of dead marine organisms. Imbalances in these inputs and outputs cause changes in the chemical make-up of the oceans through time.

The team, led by Dr. Derek Vance of the University of Bristol, draws on records of past ocean chemistry preserved in deep-sea sediments to point out that some aspects of the chemistry of seawater have been changing too slowly over the past 2-3 million years given what is known about the sizes of the inputs and outputs to the oceans. The paper challenges the prevailing notion that this inconsistency is caused by inaccuracies in estimates of the impact of submarine hydrothermal systems on ocean chemistry, or that we don’t have accurate measurements of river chemistry and run off. Instead, they point to changes in continental chemical weathering rates caused by profound climate change operating over the past 2-3 million years. Dr Vance explains, “Chemical weathering rates have been periodically perturbed in recent Earth history because the ice-sheets and glaciers produced during the great ice ages have physically ground rock up to smaller and smaller grain sizes. In the succeeding hotter and wetter ‘interglacial’ periods, this ground up rock is very susceptible to chemical weathering.” All chemical reactions occur faster if the substrate is finer grained because there is more surface area for reaction to take place – this is why school chemical experiments use iron filings instead of a block of steel!

One of the main conclusions is that in the instant of geological time represented by, say, the last 100 years, landscapes remain significantly perturbed by this process. Co-author Professor Damon Teagle, of the University of Southampton’s School of Ocean and Earth Science, based at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, explains, “The Earth emerged from the last Ice Age only 10,000 years ago, and chemical weathering is still playing ‘catch-up’ with the massive production of reactive, fine-grained particles produced during the last Ice Age.” As a result the measurements of the chemistry of rivers that scientists are currently making, although an accurate estimation of the modern Earth, are not representative of the past few million years.

The team conclude the paper by assessing some of the implications. One of these is the potential impact on the natural greenhouse effect on planet Earth. Chemical weathering not only dissolves rocks, it reacts atmospheric CO2 with those rocks and takes CO2 out of the atmosphere. This carbon is also washed into the oceans in dissolved form, where it is incorporated into the calcium carbonate shells of marine organisms, which in turn die and accumulate in deep ocean sediment.

On very long timescales – longer than hundreds of thousands of years – the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere represents a balance between that emitted as volcanic gases versus that the amount taken up by chemical weathering. The conventional view of the long-term evolution of Earth’s climate is that chemical weathering and CO2 act together to thermostatically regulate the Earth’s surface temperature. If for some reason atmospheric CO2 increases, the resulting higher temperatures cause greater chemical weathering, which acts to reduce the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere.

The team further suggest that during Ice Ages, this thermostat could be over-ridden due to glaciers grinding up much greater quantities of rock, which results in much higher rates of chemical weathering, leading to increased removal of CO2 from the atmosphere. Bristol’s Gavin Foster remarks “this means that in periods like the last 2-3 million years, higher chemical weathering rates could act to maintain ‘icehouse’ conditions once they have started”. However, no one should make the mistake of thinking that these processes could extract us from the modern predicament of high and rising atmospheric CO2. The natural processes discussed in this article are slow and, although crucial on geological timescales of hundreds of thousands to millions of years, are not relevant to the short span of modern industrialised society.

Link to full paper here:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v458/n7237/full/nature07828.html

Titanoboa was 13m (42ft) long – about the length of a bus – and lived in the rainforest of north-east Colombia 58-60 million years ago.

Assuming the Earth today was not particularly unusual, the researchers calculated that a snake of Titanoboa’s size would have required an average annual temperature of 30C to 34C (86F to 93F) to survive.

By comparison, the average yearly temperature of today’s Cartagena, a Colombian coastal city, is about 28C.

BBC News website: Largest snake ‘as long as a bus’

Interestingly, atmospheric CO2 concentrations 60 million years ago were about 2000 ppmv compared to around 380 ppmv today. The world didn’t end, nor was there ‘runaway’ warming, irreversible tipping points or irreversible global warming.