Author: Jonathan Cohler

Next, the PAGES2019 0-30N latband. Their CPS reconstruction (CPS) for the 0-30N latband (extracted from the global reconstruction) looks almost exactly the same as reconstructions for the 0-30S and 30-60S latbands. However, none of the actual proxies in this latband look remotely like the latband reconstruction, as I’ll show below. In the course of examining the proxies in this latband, I looked back at 0-30N latband in prior PAGES compilations (2013 and 2017) and Mann et al 2008. The evolution of the proxy network is quite fascinating: the most notable feature is the increasing dominance of short (1-200 year) coral series in a network supposedly reconstructing the past 2000 years.

PAGES2019 Proxies with Values Prior to AD1200

The primary purpose of “2000 year” proxy reconstructions of temperature is to compare modern temperature to estimates of medieval and first millennium temperatures. There are 41 proxies in the 0-30N network, but only…

In a Climategate email. Keith Briffa famously sneered at Michael Mann’s claim that a temperature reconstruction could represent a hemisphere, including the tropics, by regressing a “few poorly temperature respresentative tropical series” against “any other target series” – even the trend of Mann’s own “self-opinionated verbiage” as follows:

I am sick to death of Mann stating his reconstruction represents the tropical area just because it contains a few (poorly temperature representative ) tropical series. He is just as capable of regressing these data again any other “target” series , such as the increasing trend of self-opinionated verbage he has produced over the last few years , and … (better say no more)

People frequently say that the PAGES2K reconstruction has “vindicated” Mannian reconstructions – but neglect to mention that PAGES2K similarly regressed a “few poorly temperature representative tropical series” onto an increasing trend – thus, repeating, rather than vindicating, (one…

Although climate scientists keep telling that defects in their “hockey stick” proxy reconstructions don’t matter – that it doesn’t matter whether they use data upside down, that it doesn’t matter if they cherry pick individual series depending on whether they go up in the 20th century, that it doesn’t matter if they discard series that don’t go the “right” way (“hide the decline”), that it doesn’t matter if they used contaminated data or stripbark bristlecones, that such errors don’t matter because the hockey stick itself doesn’t matter – the IPCC remains addicted to hockey sticks: lo and behold, Figure 1a of its newly minted Summary for Policy-makers contains what else – a hockey stick diagram. If you thought Michael Mann’s hockey stick was bad, imagine a woke hockey stick by woke climate scientists. As the climate scientists say, it’s even worse that we thought.

Curiously, this leading diagram of the…

by Judith Curry

The concerning saga of the creation, enforcement and collapse of a ‘consensus’ on Covid-19 origins.

by Judith Curry

“Like a magnetic field that pulls iron filings into alignment, a powerful cultural belief is aligning multiple sources of scientific bias in the same direction. – policy scientist Daniel Sarewitz

By Nic Lewis

I thought it was time for an update of my original analysis of 28 June 2020. As I wrote then, the course of the COVID-19 pandemic in Sweden is of great interest, as it is one of very few advanced nations where no lockdown order that heavily restricted people’s movements and other basic freedoms was imposed.

by Judith Curry

An alternative assessment of U.S. Supreme Court Justice nominee Amy Coney Barrett’s statements on climate change.

The scientific method remains the best way to solve many problems, but bias, overconfidence and politics can sometimes lead scientists astray