Posted by Tina
Those interested in the ongoing argument about man made global warming will want to plow through this article from the UK:
“Treemometers: A new scientific scandal – If a peer review fails in the woods…” By Andrew Orlowski – The Register (UK)
A scientific scandal is casting a shadow over a number of recent peer-reviewed climate papers. ** At least eight papers purporting to reconstruct the historical temperature record times may need to be revisited, with significant implications for contemporary climate studies, the basis of the IPCC’s assessments. A number of these involve senior climatologists at the British climate research centre CRU at the University East Anglia. In every case, peer review failed to pick up the errors. ** 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. ** Yet none of this has stopped paleoclimataologists from making bold claims using tree ring data. ** In particular, since 2000, a large number of peer-reviewed climate papers have incorporated data from trees at the Yamal Peninsula in Siberia. This dataset gained favour, curiously superseding a newer and larger data set from nearby. The older Yamal trees indicated pronounced and dramatic uptick in temperatures. ** How could this be? Scientists have ensured much of the measurement data used in the reconstructions remains a secret – failing to fulfill procedures to archive the raw data. Without the raw data, other scientists could not reproduce the results. The most prestigious peer reviewed journals, including Nature and Science, were reluctant to demand the data from contributors. Until now, that is.
At the insistence of editors of the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions B the data has leaked into the open – and Yamal’s mystery is no more. ** From this we know that the Yamal data set uses just 12 trees from a larger set to produce its dramatic recent trend. Yet many more were cored, and a larger data set (of 34) from the vicinity shows no dramatic recent warming, and warmer temperatures in the middle ages.(emphasis mine)
This is a long article complete with graphs. It contains strong implications that there has been an effort to deceive the public. Has this been a conscious effort? that is something that deserves closer scrutiny as our representatives propose to change laws, restrict industry and impose harmful taxes.