Gavin Schmidt and Reference Period “Trickery”

In the past few weeks, I’ve been re-examining the long-standing dispute over the discrepancy between models and observations in the tropical troposphere.  My interest was prompted in part by Gavin Schmidt’s recent attack on a graphic used by John Christy in numerous presentations (see recent discussion here by Judy Curry).   Schmidt made the sort of offensive allegations that he makes far too often:

@curryja use of Christy’s misleading graph instead is the sign of partisan not a scientist. YMMV. tweet;

@curryja Hey, if you think it’s fine to hide uncertainties, error bars & exaggerate differences to make political points, go right ahead.  tweet.

As a result, Curry decided not to use Christy’s graphic in her recent presentation to a congressional committee.  In today’s post, I’ll examine the validity (or lack) of Schmidt’s critique.

Schmidt’s primary dispute, as best as I can understand it, was about…