JUST IN: Marcott et al. 2013 - Frequently Asked Questions and Answers

Shamelessly copied from RealClimate and reposted for wider circulation:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/03/response-by-marcott-et-al/

Response by Marcott et al.

Filed under:

• Climate Science
   
• Paleoclimate

 — group @ 31 March 2013

Readers will be aware of the paper by Shaun Marcott and colleagues, that they published a couple weeks ago in the journal Science. That paper sought to extend the global temperature record back over the entire Holocene period, i.e. just over 11 kyr back time, something that had not really been attempted before. The paper got a fair amount of media coverage (see e.g. this article by Justin Gillis in the New York Times). Since then, a number of accusations from the usual suspects have been leveled against the authors and their study, and most of it is characteristically misleading. We are pleased to provide the authors’ response, below. Our view is that the results of the paper will stand the test of time, particularly regarding the small global temperature variations in the Holocene. If anything, early Holocene warmth might be overestimated in this study.

Update: Tamino has three excellent posts in which he shows why the Holocene reconstruction is very unlikely to be affected by possible discrepancies in the most recent (20th century) part of the record. The figure showing Holocene changes by latitude is particularly informative.

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Summary and FAQ’s related to the study by Marcott et al. (2013, Science)

Prepared by Shaun A. Marcott, Jeremy D. Shakun, Peter U. Clark, and Alan C. Mix

Anthony, Watts Up With Those WUWT HotWhoppers? AN INDEX

Over the past few days I've been getting acquainted with the blog HotWhopper.com because it has done a good job of tracking Anthony Watts' increasingly irrational assault on the science of climatology.  She's only been at it for a few months, but has produced many posts worth sharing.

Since getting information out there to folks who are being lied to by the well oiled disinformation machine is my main goal ~ of which Anthony Watts is a leading light ~ I have compiled an index with short descriptive teaser quotes.  For your reference as well as for sharing with others.

Sou, at HotWhopper, I tip my hat to all the work you have put into your excellent blog.

{#2} Watts attacking Christian scientist Dr. Katharine Hayhoe

Being a regular working guy {respectable mastery of 2 trades}, but with a life long love for this planet, science and experiencing life, I've never developed the real scientist's discipline, extra gray-matter horsepower, nor that steely eyed focus, to say nothing of the required stick-to-itiveness.  That's one reason I respect them and listen to them, even when it means reevaluating, adjusting or even dumping previously trusted conceptions.

Together with that I've got a bit of  'over attention syndrome' and not near enough hours in the day.  So I do what I can with what I got.  I bring this up because this post is a detour  on the way to writing another post about Anthony Watts, this time his desperate and ridiculous attack on Dr. Katharine Hayhoe.  

You see I was following WUWT's link to an interview with Dr. Hayhoe, that turned out to be a most interesting interview and I thought she did a great job of explaining some important concepts.  Then I got to comments section and oy vey WUWT's troops have been having a field day, dishing out grade school misconceptions right and left.

So I wrote me a little letter that I hope get's through moderation 

Marcott et al. 2013 - A Collection of Examinations and Reviews

Recently one of the big issues du jour has been Marcott et al. 2013: 

Science 8 March 2013  ~  Vol. 339 no. 6124 pp. 1198-1201  ~  DOI: 10.1126/science.1228026 

A Reconstruction of Regional and Global Temperature for the Past 11,300 YearsShaun A. Marcott,  Jeremy D. Shakun,  Peter U. Clark,  Alan C. Mix

News Flash: Anthony Watts claims all Christians believe the Bible 100% Infallible

Title edit:  Over at CFI another gent has taken me to task about my title.  In fact, his complaints were fair... while replying... I better appreciated how sloppy my original title was.

I have corrected that error.

{edited... ironically, or not, April, 1st 2013}
=====================================

{Tip of the Hat to Sou and her HotWhopper.com for alerting me to this latest example of Watts deception.} {edited for typo and grammatical errors, last edit March 29, 2013 noon}
{It's also been pointed out that my original title was inaccurate, because it is possible to see creation behind the billions of years old process of physical creation our Universe has been evolving though.  I agree, so have corrected my title}
{At the end of this post, I have added portions of a couple interesting articles that support my labeling Dr. Spencer a "Young Earth Creationist" }
{And make another slight wording change 3/31/2013 pm}
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Here is an excellent example of the malicious rhetorical sleight of hand WUWT's Anthony Watts excels in:

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Anthony Watts asks: "A question for Dr. Michael Mann – Would a professional scientist behave this way?" 

Posted at WattsUpWithThat on March 25, 2013 by Anthony Watts 

Watts says: Some days you have to wonder how supposedly rational and intelligent people who are considered professional scientists allow themselves to behave like this.From Dr. Mann’s Twitter feed: 

Watts continues: A simple “no” would suffice, but Dr. Mann seems determined to denigrate people that have different views than him such as Dr. Spencer’s Christian faith. How unprofessional.It is yet another example of Climate Ugliness that pervades the mindset of AGW proponents.

==================================

Notice Mann said not one word about "Christian faith."

Please look at Michael Mann's words :"No, I'm not interested in "debating" climate change & evolution denier Roy Spencer on your "news" network."

Seems simple, straight forward and polite.
Roy Spencer rejects current climatological understanding.  
True, check out Roy's website.
Roy Spencer also believes the Bible is 100% perfect.  
{a notion that can not survive rational scrutiny}.

Follow the logic here, 
it is Watts who drew the direct line between "rejecting evolution" and Christianity.
Now, is it fair for Anthony to claim all who "reject evolution" are Christians?
Incidentally, Anthony Watts' own "update" reaffirms such an impression.
Raspberries may be fruit, but not all fruits are Raspberries.

Back to Anthony's complaint,

A closer look at McI/Watts' complaints re. Marcott et al - HotWhopper

Over the past few weeks the internet's climate science denying echo-chamber has gone into over-time churring out one piece of opinion and vacuum chamber science after another.  Unfortunately, it's another example of 'outcome focused' advocacy, rather than a serious dispassionate examination of the paper in question.

The problem with this approach is that McIntyre/Watts' 'science' is science in a vacuum chamber.  Unsurprisingly his 'reviewers' are his own audience, folks who desperately want to not accept what the science and Earth observations are telling us.  

And when actual scientists who understand this stuff point out errors, misconceptions and alteration of the facts ~ it get's written off... {or ridiculed to oblivion}... as part of the conspiracy.

Is this anyway to approach geophysical facts and the future that is barreling down on us?

~ ~ ~

In any event, Sou over at Hot Whopper.com has taken the time to put together an excellent critique of major flaws in the story-line the echo-chamber is putting out there, in their desperate struggle to discredit and out-scream the important lessons Marcott et al. 2013 has to offer.

If you are interested the questions raised by McIntyre and Watts, you owe it to yourself to read through this examination.

I thank Sou for her kind permission to copy and repost her article.

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SATURDAY, MARCH 9, 2013

Watts is Whopping Mad (Crazy) after Marcott et al - Must be the Heat!

Conspiracy Ideation . . . or a refusal to accept facts

Once again I'm going to repost an interesting article from the folks at SkepticalScience.com since it cuts to the core of what I'm appreciating more and more as the real issue we need to face today.  

You see, as the evidence get's more and more overwhelming, the obstinence of denialists has been getting more and more belligerent and below the belt. 

The debate has lost all pretense about struggling to better understand our global heat distribution engine (climate), and has turned into a 
no-holds-bared brawl by denialists within the blogosphere and other media outlets.

If you are interested in the human nature behind these dynamics, check out this article.

{Thank you SkepticalScience.com for allowing folks like me to repost your excellent and informative climate education articles ! }

Climate Science Denial Books Linked To Conservative Think Tanks - G. Readfearn

This seemed like a most interesting article and one that is definitely worth adding to my collection of information that exposes the nature of the Climate Change Science Skeptics political underpinning.  This is important because understand what society has done to it's global heat distribution engine, requires a dedication to the principles of honest curiosity and an ethical pursuit of learning - rather than the denialist's total dedication to winning a preconceived goal.  

In their paper Dr. Riley Dunlap, of Oklahoma State University, and Associate Professor Peter Jacques, of the University of Central Florida have detailed facts and confirmed what many of have suspected.  Namely that "society caused global warming" denial is the strategic effort of a small group of well funded individuals who are divorced from the usual checks and balances of the real scientific process.

Graham Readfearn has written a good summation of the study at DeSmogBlog.com
and I thank DesmogBlog for making their article available for reposting.

Climate Sensitivity less than 3° ??? . . . SO WHAT?

Time for a reality check to remind us of what the real issues are and what the continued disingenuous crazy-making of the like of LaFramboise, Watts, McIntyre is going to cost our children.

A Glimpse at Our Possible Future Climate, Best to Worst Case Scenarios (via Skeptical Science)

Posted on 13 February 2013 by dana1981 Recently there has been widespread discussion that perhaps the Earth's climate is not quite as sensitive to increasing atmospheric CO2 as climate scientists previously believed, which would be good news, because it would give us more time to reduce human greenhouse…

{#11c}LaFramboise- peer review / citations -The Delinquent Author

Oh my, just had a chance to read this tonight, for the first time in many months, and am quite embarrassed by all the typos I found.  What can I say, I was pretty burned out on the project by this point.  I'm no educated writer, journalist or scholar, I'm just a working guy who's been paying attention for a long time and I'm learning the writing as I'm going along.  In a way, I admit it's silly of me even tackling this, someone better skilled than me should be doing it… but, where are they?

I'm simply filling a vacuum so please be tolerant of my rough edges.  
And I invite anyone to copy any of this and do something better with it than I can.
edited 11/25/2013


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Other event's have overtaken this project.  And we only have so many hours in a day.  So for the time being this will be the last in this series looking at Donna LaFramboise's disingenuous crazy making.

This is the third and final installment on chapter 11 "The Peer Review Fairy Tale" looking at details of Donna's own Fairy Tales. 

From her manipulation of Pachauri quotes to her decidedly misleading presentation of what the IPCC promises, while giving a skewed description of what it produces.

Including a look at Donna's mistaken assumption that only peer reviewed literature is authoritative and that all else deserves an "F."

Chapter eleven of The Delinquent Teenager  "The Peer Review Fairy Tale".  

For an introduction explaining why I'm reviewing this piece of work, please click here.

{#11b}LaFramboise The Delinquent Author - Dr. Tol

It's looking like chapter 11 "The Peer Review Fairy Tale" is going to take some dissecting.  This installment was prompted by my researches into Professor Richard Tol the economists who's future-casts and hostility towards the IPCC LaFramboise embraces.  She presents him as a trustworthy, reliable source.  Yet, a closer looker reveals a very different image.

This thread is a side track, but I am going to look at these people Donna chooses to trust over and above the considered opinion of the greater community of experts.

Chapter eleven of The Delinquent Teenager  "The Peer Review Fairy Tale".  

For an introduction explaining why I'm reviewing this piece of work, please click here.

{Courier font identifies LaFramboise's words

Laframboise, (2011-10-09). T D T W W M W T C E (Kindle Locations 195-201). Ivy Avenue Press. Kindle Edition. }

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Pearls of Wisdom From Donna Laframboise Pt1: IPCC Authorship

I want to share an interesting video that was released today.

byMothIncarnate

:20  -  Complaint about 20ish graduate students working on the IPCC reports.

:50  -  "people who come from the right country or right gender."

1:20  -  "Professional activists"

             checking some qualifications

3:00  -  On being objective - having bias

3:30  -  Peer review

3:40  -  "Where are the open letters?"

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Upon examination turns out the IPCC represents what the current science is saying

{ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y34fr1_qg30 }

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