Excellent and mostly balanced article Unity.

One point on the divergence, which really is key.

the data is entirely at odds with the real world evidence from surface, sea and atmospheric temperature records collected by meteorologists in considerable detail over this same period, but of the impact of a range of other, non-temperature related, confounding factors.

As I understand it the theory is that the tree ring data became unreliable after 1960 because of the impact of CO2 on the trees.

So are we not, then, saying that there can be a number of factors that can affect the tree ring evidence?

And if we are saying that, why are we saying that tree rings are a reliable source of data on temperature at all?

Is it not common sense that there could be many factors at work in the speed of growth of a tree?

Temperature, but also moisture, sunlight, air quality etc.

As I understand it the theory is that the tree ring data became unreliable after 1960 because of the impact of CO2 on the trees.

It’s rather more complicated than that as there are a range of factors that came into play from the 1950’s onwards that contribute to the divergence problem.

why are we saying that tree rings are a reliable source of data on temperature at all?

Because many of the factors that lie behind the divergence problem are related to industrialisation and are therefore not a factor in tree ring data from the pre-industrial period.

Dendroclimatology is a very new field and got pushed into the limelight because AGW before it was really ready.

So what we have is tree ring data which correlates to temperature patterns well enough to be considered a viable proxy but which is also subject to a number of potential confounding factors that require more work to quantify accurately in order to ensure that any adjustments to the raw data are within reasonable parameters.

As such, its useful as an indicator of long-term trends but not for making definitive statements about the precise temperature in a particular year or over a short-medium term period. That said, as more data is added to models and the science is refined, the accuracy should improve significantly.

the factors that lie behind the divergence problem are related to industrialisation and are therefore not a factor in tree ring data from the pre-industrial period.

My history books tell me that the industrial revolution and the large scale burning of fossil fuels began in the early 19th century.

What happened in 1960 to make the trees stop growing so quickly?

@3 – indeed

Another excellent piece from Unity, fine stuff indeed.

“This is complex, fascinating and legitimate area of scientific debate, but not I’d recommend you get into unless you have a decent grasp of thermodynamics and non-linear physics because it is frightening complex.”

Weeellll….this speaks directly to the CRU thing. Essentially, we’ve decided that it really is too complex to be done from the ground up. Very much like economic models in fact. So we’re left with only the option of trying to look back into the past and seeing what did happen when temperature varied in the past.

Which is really what the shouting over the M Warm Period is. If it was warmer then that it is now and then it cooled down again, maybe the balance of feedbacks is negative. If it wasn’t as warm then (globally that is) then we can’t be that confident about the balance of feedbacks.

“What is climate sensitivity?” is the big question we want to know the answer to.

“The heart of this debate tends to revolve around the relative economic merits of measures to limit emissions of greenhouse gases against the development of technological solutions, such as geoengineering.”

Again, weeeellll…..no, it starts with the idea that we want to maximise human utility over time. So the first question is should we do anything at all? Maybe the costs of doing something are higher than the costs of adapting? To be absurd, we could go and kill 5.5 billion people and this would solve the climate change problem. Probably too high a price to avoid a 20 foot sea level rise in 400 years time.

Once we’ve said (as we generally do) that we should do some things to reduce future warming, and we’ve decided what cost would be approporiate for us to bear to do so (as we also roughly have. Do note that no one, not even Hansen et al, is saying we should stop emissions today, that would be too costly) *then* we get to your point.

But glad to see that my wibblings are still on hte legitimate side of scepticism at least.

Of course your last two paras are spot on – though even if the earth is not cooling it has not recently (10 year view) been warming, for which the failure of the “consensus” models to account is the “travesty” referred to in the Climategate emails.

I have a £1000 bet with Sunny that the world will not warm (on linear trend) over the (ludicrous) “100 months to save the world” period!

I went to The Wave climate change protest in London yesterday.

Number of people who turned up demanding action on climate change: 40,000.

Number of Ayn Rand bloggertarians and conspiracy freaks who turned up for the denialist counter-demo: 4

I know it doesn’t prove anything either way, but it made me snigger nonetheless.

“with many being firmly of the belief that the earth’s climate is, in fact, currently cooling and that this being covered up by a global conspiracy involving politicians, scientists, industrialists, climate change activists and their lizard overlords, or some other bullshit to that effect”.

But doesn’t this go to the heart of the email debate which said, and I paraphrase loosely from the BBC “the absence of warming……cannot be explained… where has all the heat gone ” ? Suggesting that if not actually cooling, the rate of warming has fallen below that predicted by the model. It’s a basic principle of modelling that if results fall outside those which were predicted, the model should be modified….

Also, I don’t think deniers believe that there is a conspiracy in the organised sense, more like a loose collective of vested interest.

Apart from that a good analysis, puts me in sceptic camp, despite somne of the abuse on LC meted out to anyone who refuses to swallow whole “the problem”, as defined by the left, and “the solution”, as defined by the left.

‘Number of people who turned up demanding action on climate change: 40,000.

Number of Ayn Rand bloggertarians and conspiracy freaks who turned up for the denialist counter-demo: 4′

Maybe the deniers didn’t turn up because it was too flipping cold?

Excellent article and one I’ve bookmarked for future use. The CRU emails were a bit of an embarassment to be honest and put me on the defensive with a couple of skeptics at work; this’ll be useful tomorrow. Far better than just shouting ‘denier!’

Suggesting that if not actually cooling, the rate of warming has fallen below that predicted by the model. It’s a basic principle of modelling that if results fall outside those which were predicted, the model should be modified….

Temperatures over the last few years are perfectly consistent with the models and are within the range of the known natural variability of surface temperatures. Changes in surface temperature are not the only way of measuring if the earth is warming.

See

http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-stopped-in-1998.htm

Tim W.

I agree that climate sensitivity is an important question but there has been an enormous amount of work on this and as discussed before the lowest estimate generally now thought possible is about 2o with the likeliest value at around 3o and possibly as high as 4.5o.
I don’t know of any reconstruction using any kind of proxy which puts temperatures during the MWP as warm as they are now and even if they were that would not neccessarily prove that feedbacks are negative, in fact that’s considered pretty much an impossibility – otherwise we would still be in an ice age.

Also regarding feedbacks, I would add a caveat to Unity’s point 1. about scientific sceptics. The prospect of “runaway” global warming is not, I believe, considered a serious possibility by climate scientists – if climate sensitivity is at the upper end of the estimated scale or proves to be slightly higher and no mitigating steps are taken that would be serious enough in itself.

Tim:

Weeellll….this speaks directly to the CRU thing. Essentially, we’ve decided that it really is too complex to be done from the ground up.

Not as far as I’m concerned. I’m just warning people not to expect to make too much headway into the feedback debate without putting some effort into developing a basic grasp of the scientific principles that underpin atmospheric physics.

In short, if you want to offer an opinion, make the effort and ensure that its an informed one.

Nowt wrong with that, as far as I’m concerned.

I’m no economist, but I’ve taken the time to try and understand the core principles, with a fair a bit of help along the way from your own material, along with that of Chris Dillow, D-Squared and a few others.

What happened in 1960 to make the trees stop growing so quickly?

The cumulative effect of rapid industrial growth in the 1950’s, particularly in terms of power generation, motor vehicle emissions and the much wider range of chemicals being released into the atmosphere, much of which stemmed from the use of a much wider range of hydrocarbon derivatives than during the 19th century.

In short, we developed plastics, CFC’s, PCBs and whole bunch of other chemicals that the Victorians didn’t have and even at the peak of industrial development in the 19th, the level of emissions was much less than that of the 1950’s, not least because the global population and, therefore, global demand for energy and consumer products was considerably higher.

This seems like a fairly informed opinion http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/06/american-thinker-understanding-climategates-hidden-decline/#more-13783 – any thoughts?

My thoughts on this piece are that the conspiracy of a small but very influential group of scientists has been to cover up the medieval warming period and little ice age because it was ‘inconvenient’ to their agenda. Not that any of this matters, of course, because Copenhagen is clearly a ‘done deal’ otherwise Obama wouldn’t be arriving just in time for the signing. After a lifetime in engineering and research where verifiable facts are paramount, and no decision is taken if ‘feet of clay’ are suspected, I despair.

Chris,

Some of it is entirely consistent with what Unity posted above regarding the divergence problem for recent years with some sets of tree ring data (it is fair to point out that in the CRU email it is Briffa 1999 which is being referred to not MBH 98). This is the so-called “hidden decline” which they were so intent on hiding they, er, published it in Nature and has been a well known issue since.
When it came to producing a chart for the WMO showing temperature changes over the last 1,000 years they replaced the post-1960 data (which was known to be wrong) with the instrumental records (which was known to be correct). The authors of this piece seem to think this was in some way sinister but of course all they were doing was using the best available data for the period concerned. What they maybe should have done was shown the modern instrumental record separately alongside the (incorrect) proxy records as in the graph shown with the additional black line but it is hard to see how this can be described as “fraud” as the authors do.

@ Unity

The cumulative effect of rapid industrial growth in the 1950’s, particularly in terms of power generation, motor vehicle emissions and the much wider range of chemicals being released into the atmosphere, much of which stemmed from the use of a much wider range of hydrocarbon derivatives than during the 19th century.

In short, we developed plastics, CFC’s, PCBs and whole bunch of other chemicals that the Victorians didn’t have and even at the peak of industrial development in the 19th, the level of emissions was much less than that of the 1950’s, not least because the global population and, therefore, global demand for energy and consumer products was considerably higher.

Let’s be clear here. That’s a guess.

The fact is that the assumed temperatures from tree rings corresponded pretty well with the known measured temperatures from about 1880 to 1960. That’s 80 years. Since then, for 50 years, they haven’t.

Why?

One possibility is that something man-made has thrown out the correlation- that seems a fairly logical theory (as does the theory something man is doing is causing the planet to warm). But there must be other possibilities and the truth is that nobody knows.

What we do know is that when a scientist finds that a proxy he has been using to extrapolate data into the past is at such variance with the verifiable evidence, one of the courses of action he should at least consider is to abandon the proxy data.

To instead attempt to “hide” the fact of the divergence from the interested onlooker by means of a “trick” was entirely unacceptable.

Don’t you agree?

Chris, regarding the MWP the article pulls the usual denialists’ trick of picking a single paper (in this case Moberg et al*) which appears to support their POV and claim that this is an “honest” piece of research which somehow overturns all previous research which doesn’t support their case.
There are two basic problems with their case – firstly the Moberg paper states there is

no evidence for any earlier periods in the last millennium with warmer conditions than the post-1990 period – in agreement with previous similar studies (1-4,7)

where (1)is MBH98 and (2) is MBH99.

Secondly even if it is ultimately proved that the MWP was warmer than previously believed it does not alter the case for AGW.

*AFAIK Moberg et al is a perfectly respectable piece of reseach, I don’t mean to imply otherwise

@Andrew

What they maybe should have done was shown the modern instrumental record separately alongside the (incorrect) proxy records as in the graph shown with the additional black line but it is hard to see how this can be described as “fraud”

Or maybe just drawn one graph from the tree ring data and another from the measured data?

Only problem is, if they had done that, they wouldn’t have scared anyone.

Unity,

You miss the point with the hockey stick. The point is that Briffa took an ever decreasing sample of trees from a region of Northern Europe. The selectivity of data was all Briffa’s, he cherry-picked only the trees that saw a temperature increase.

He was pressed by a gentleman called Steve McIntyre and once he finally got the data after a four years wait, it was very clear that Briffa only selected the trees that showed an uplift in temperature. Once McIntyre plotted the entire sample of trees, the upturn disappeared and the temps returned to the long-term trend.

Google Yamal Hockey Stick.

That is the issue with the hockey stick. To label that as part of the ‘denier’ camp does you no justice. You are putting very fine and eminent climatologists like Lamb and Lindzen into that camp.

The hockey stick is incredibly flawed to the point that some of the constituent data from other parts of the ’stick’ presented by Mann is actually plotted upside down. Mann has recently tried to republish this to cover up past misdemeanours; the most glaring is the Middle Age Warm Period.

Of course McIntyre published his original work for peer review and CRU and its acolytes tried to subvert it. Hence the Wegman Report.

This was all pre-CRU hack so when that stuff was released into the public domain CRU et al. already had a lot of form for this kind of behaviour. To the likes of Steve McIntyre and Anthony Watts, it was nothing new.

As for cooling temperature, satellite recording have shown a decline since 2003. This is also borne out by ocean heat flow in decline. It is not ‘noise’ as the numbers are simply far too big to be ‘noise’. In terms of satellite obs and also ocean obs, these are accurate modern instruments. Not chunks of wood or lumps of ice.

Why ClimateGate really matters is the satellite observations are calibrated against HADCRUT, the temperature dataset that CRU manage.

If HADCRUT has been doctored then the satellite obs have also been tarnished.

The Met Office (which funds CRU and the Hadley Centre) is seeking to obtain the raw data from the 1,400 sources and also reconstruct the base data is most concerning. Clearly, they feel there is a need to do this, if they were rock solid sure on the HADCRUT set they could prove it and this would go away.

It isn’t going away.

News that NASA GISS has delayed and batted away FOIA requests for two years also isn’t very reassuring either. GISS data has been found to have been in error before – twice.

Incidentally, the reason scientific method defined in this modern era by the likes of Popper exists, is because that is the best way to come up with the right answer.

Hiding data, subverting the peer review process, trashing journal editors and asking to delete e-mails flies in the face of that method. Bad method, bad science.

Bad science…. usually bad results.

And calling people names…. usually a sign of losing any argument.

Call me what you like, my interest is seeing scientific method coming up with the right answer because the cost-benefit analysis is huge either way it turns out.

Getting all prissy is losing perspective somewhat.

Pagar,

Or maybe just drawn one graph from the tree ring data and another from the measured data?

That’s what the graph I mentioned does – it shows both, although the instrumental records obviously don’t do back nearly as far.

Only problem is, if they had done that, they wouldn’t have scared anyone.

I don’t see why – it would still show that the instrumental data shows rapid warming in recent decades and we know that the data from the instrumental records is the correct data for the that period.

Of course your last two paras are spot on – though even if the earth is not cooling it has not recently (10 year view) been warming, for which the failure of the “consensus” models to account is the “travesty” referred to in the Climategate emails.

I even posted a video to illustrate why this was a load of bollocks cjcjc, but it looks like you’re joining the conspiracy loons with your selective memory.

You miss the point with the hockey stick. The point is that Briffa took an ever decreasing sample of trees from a region of Northern Europe. The selectivity of data was all Briffa’s, he cherry-picked only the trees that saw a temperature increase.

Even McIntyre has said that he does not believe Briffa cherry-picked any data. And of course he didn’t. Briffa was right all along and McIntyre has frankly made an arse of himself over this. There is a very good and detailed explanation here –

http://deepclimate.org/2009/10/30/briffa-teaches-but-will-mcintyre-ever-learn/

Why ClimateGate really matters is the satellite observations are calibrated against HADCRUT, the temperature dataset that CRU manage.

No they are not, the satellite observations are entirely independent. Unless you are calling Gavin Schmidt of NASA a liar.

I’m calling no one a liar. Isn’t that the crux of the FOIA matter that has taken two years so far?

As for Briffa v MacIntyre, I commend the Wegman report… using only just over a dozen trees out of 150-odd is what exactly?

Not to mention countless other trees all with well established temperature records not a few miles from Yamal?

Please… do keep going…

Incidentally, following the deep climate story, Briffa made a counter to McIntyre’s analysis.

It would seem that CRU have pulled it citing “heavy traffic”.

Now there’s a conviction scientist for you.

Let’s be clear here. That’s a guess.

Err… no. I read the literature – in fact I posted the relevant link to the review paper by D’Arrigo et al on an earlier post, but to save time and mucking about it’s here…

http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~liepert/pdf/DArrigo_etal.pdf

You need to start on page 11 where is says “4. Possible causes of tree growth divergence”.

Incidentally, the reason scientific method defined in this modern era by the likes of Popper exists, is because that is the best way to come up with the right answer.

Actually, Popper’s work is a bit less significant than it used to be, given that a fair portion of his analysis in The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1934 in German, republished in English in 1959) has been superseded by Kuhn’s notion of paradigm shifts, which first appeared The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962).

As you cited Popper, I think it only fair to ask whether you’ve actually read ‘The Logic of Scientific Discovery’ and understand what exactly it is you’re citing?

I have, in fact I can see my copy from where I’m sitting.

It would seem that CRU have pulled it citing “heavy traffic”.

Now there’s a conviction scientist for you.

Looking at the metrics for UEA’s website, traffic levels quadrupled in two weeks following the hack and have been running at about twice that of Guido (who uses blogger) and one and half times that of the Spectator.

At that level, you’d expect the extra traffic to play merry hell with UEA’s site.

@28

But that paper basically says that they haven’t a clue why the trees have stopped growing as quickly as they should be.

They suspect it may be due to an increase in ozone and it may well be.

But that conclusion is not verifiable. It is….in fact…a guess.

No, Pagar, that paper sets out the current lines of inquiry and indicates the relative strengths of the evidence for each of the possible causes, remembering, of course, that this is going to be a multi-factoral issue so the answer is going to come down to quantifying the extent to which each of the factors makes a contribution to the observable trend. and the conditions under which each of the factors is active.

Its not a guess, its science in progress – that’s what most actual science looks like. a collection of partial theories in various stages of development with supporting evidence of varying strengths.

The difference between climate deniers and sceptics to me is that there are those who are manic for this subjet (and who might be totally right) and others who find it all bewildering. And who (the latter group) might sometimes wonder how so many people of their childrens age (the climate camp activists) are so clever and know-it-alls.
They were discussing this on The Moral Maze last week.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qk11

I have no better idea than Michael Portillo who @ 2miutes in, where he says that scientists persue reserch and become single issue lobbyists.

Or where Claire Fox says just after that, ”evidence based reserch is about politicians abdocating responsibility for persuading us politically or morally of certain desisions and hiding behind the science and saying ‘the evidence shows’ which closes down the debate and we’re not meant to argue with them.”

Unity

“its not a guess, its science in progress”

How can something be in “progress” and be “settled” at the same time?

How can something be in “progress” and be “settled” at the same time?

a) Because I was referring there specifically to dendroclimatology, which is still a developing field, not to the wider issue of AGW, and

b) Because science is invariably ‘in progress’. Evolution is a fact and Darwinian theory is ‘ settled’ in the sense that its buttresses by such an overwhelming weight of evidence that its undoubtedly the case that natural selection is the primary mechanism that drives evolution. Nevertheless, the field still spawns ream of research directed towards the further investigations of evolution because there’s still a lot of details we’ve yet to uncover.

I guess that ‘conspiracy theorists’ falls into the extreme end of the deniers camp? As I am not quite as articulate or as well versed with the facts as many of the contributors above, I found this useful link to provide a more balanced position on the hacked emails.

Incidentally, I was also at the Wave on Saturday. The official figures were 40k but I can’t believe it. I’d have said there were more than 100k.

My link is not working, so try going to youtube and searching for potholer54 and 6. Climate Change — those emails

Unity . You are ignoring the report by Wegman , Mason and Said which criticised
MBH98 and MBH 99 for their poor understanding of principals component analysis whichis the key statitistical method used to create the hockey stick. Wegman et al criticised MBH for not using statistitians. Wegman et al also criticised the palaeoclimate community for not using statistitians and the lack of independence between reviewers. Wegman et al suggested the same level of statistical input as required by the FDA when assessing drugs.

The fact that the MBH 98 and MBH99 papers were used so prominently used in the IPCC Report suggests peer review is not as rigorous as it should be. The Wegman report was only commissioned due to extensive criticisms of the statistics used MBH98 and MBH99 and the unwillingness of Mann to reveal his computer code.

I have, in fact I can see my copy from where I’m sitting.

So can I…if I squint a bit, anyway.

Though the far more relevant volume is Charles Mackay:
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, which is on the shelf below.

Though the far more relevant volume is Charles Mackay:
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, which is on the shelf below.

A bit middlebrow for my tastes… now if we’re talking Baudrillard’s ‘System of Objects’ and Debord’s ‘Society of the Spectacle’ then we’re getting there.

My thoughts on this piece are that the conspiracy of a small but very influential group of scientists has been to cover up the medieval warming period and little ice age because it was ‘inconvenient’ to their agenda.

Um, I was aware of both of these through general reading. This implies either a the most ineffective conspiracy of all time or that I am an influential scientist who is a member of the cabal. Given my O Level results in Physics and Chemistry I am going to have to plump for the former option.

Though the far more relevant volume is Charles Mackay:
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, which is on the shelf below.

Not really an apt analogy. There are really two options. Either global warming is a myth and those who believe in it are subject to a popular delusion or global warming is a verifiable fact and people who disbelieve in it are subject to a popular delusion. The people who believe in global warming tend to be climate scientists the people who disbelieve in it tend to be the right blogosphere. Now climate science is subject to something called peer review which means that before you publish your findings a senior colleague does his or her best to demolish them. Consequently papers submitted to scientific journals tend to be pretty rigorous because there is no way you want to do all that work before someone gets to send it back with ‘could do better’ scibbled over it by the red biro of doom. Now I’m pretty sure that similar constraints don’t operate as far as the pronouncements of Mad Mel and her ilk are concerned. So it’s overwhelmingly more likely that the denialists are mistaken than the scientists because the scientists have to persuade a pretty hard nosed bunch of people that they are on the money whereas the denialists can publish any old rubbish to rapturous applause from people who like having their prejudices confirmed.

You are ignoring the report by Wegman , Mason and Said

Not really…

While the email hack appears to vindicate some of Wegman’s criticisms as regards the paleoclimatologists being rather isolated and only grudgingly sharing data – in fact there appears to be nothing in the emails that Wegman hasn’t already covered – it remains the case that

a) MBH98 and 99 are, themselves, no long in use, and

b) both models are now ten years old and have been superseded by newer models/research of which all but one appear to vindicate the hockey stick graph within standard margins of error.

You need to be reading the paleoclimatology chapter in the 2007 IPCC report (AR4) not banging on continually about AR3, the 2001 report, because things have moved on.

I’m calling no one a liar. Isn’t that the crux of the FOIA matter that has taken two years so far?

But this has been explained many many times. They can’t release the data without permission from the met services which provided it.

As for Briffa v MacIntyre, I commend the Wegman report… using only just over a dozen trees out of 150-odd is what exactly?

The selection of the data was made by the Russians who provided it, not by Briffa.This is their explanation –

Low number of used for reconstruction subfossil series is explained by standardisation method (“corridor method”). We had to select the longest series. The same concerns to living trees. There are not much old living trees in this area (in contrast to Polar Urals), therefore we used only 17 (not 12) samples from living trees. At that time we had close collaboration with CRU and I sent to Keith Briffa these raw data.

So, selection of samples has been made by me taking into account length of individual series as well as common requirements to increment cores (exclusion samples with compression wood, rotten wood etc.).

For a technical discussion of the issues involved by someone who does this stuff professionally see here

http://delayedoscillator.wordpress.com/2009/10/05/yamal-emulation-i/

(see also follow up post)

Now there are clearly open issues regarding the divergence problem and the use of particular tree ring data but there is not a shred of evidence of any wrongdong by Briffa.

Unity,

I think that if anything you are being a bit hard on Mann. Wegman is not the definitive opinion on the subject – the NAS report broadly vindicated Mann and of course the validity of a particular piece of research does not rest solely on government sponsored reports. Also, whenever genuine problems have been found in his work he has corrected them, with no substantial change to the outcome.

Andrew – but didn’t they release the data to some researchers?
They just happened to be the “friendly” ones…

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6623

They just happened to be the “friendly” ones…

‘Friendly’, in this case, means a professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences with a Ph.D from MIT who specialises in atmospheric dynamics and ocean-atmosphere interactions, i.e. a bona fide academic collaborator.

Here is a slightly less technical discussion of the issues involved by someone who does this stuff professionally, paleoclimatologist Ed Crook sent in an email to Keith Briffa:

“The results of this study will show that we can probably say a fair bit about 100 year variability was like with any certainty (i.e. we know with certainty that we know fuck-all).”

Why can’t scientists write so pithily for public consimption?

Hmm, the quote from Ed Crook got garbled, perhaps because of the rude words. Here it is again (I hope):

“he results of this study will show that we can probably say a fair bit about [smaller than] 100 year extra-tropical NH temperature variability (at least as far as we believe the proxy estimates), but honestly know f**k-all about what the [greater than]100 year variability was like with any certainty (i.e. we know with certainty that we know f**k-all).”

In the Stupack Committee Report ( The Reposne of Dr Wegman to the Questions posed By The Honorable Bart Stupack in Connection with Testimony to the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations), Wegman has said is the need for statisticians to be included in the reasearch and the design of the experiments and the reviewers to be fully independent. Wegman goes on to say” the atmospheric science community, while heavily using statistical methods , is remarkably disconnected from the statistics community, that is not true of the medical or pharmaceutical communities “.

Wegman has said there is a need for an improved levels of statistical input in palaeoclimate reserach as it places so much emphasis on this skill and greater independence between reviewers. As so much money is to be based on palaeoclimate science, then the the statistics should be of the highest possible standard and beyond repute.