Derecho64, the Great Man focused on the infamous Hockey Stick graph. It claimed that temperatures over the past millennium were stable - effectively denying the existence of the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age - and that warming in recent decades (both actual temperature and rate of change) is unprecedented.

McIntyre showed this to be hogwash. Given the gigantic resource being deployed to combat this illusory threat, the crumbling of the rationale behind it has... er... repercussions.

The Watermelons who need to believe in this nonsense are very organized, with campaigns like 10:10 and the comical 350.org. I hope that sceptics will organize something called timerrrrr.org. We need to agree a date and time when millions of people yell "TIMBER!", commemorating the crashing down of the great rotten edifice of Anthropogenic Global Warming.

I have a doctorate in theoretical physics on complex systems and was a researcher for a number of years. I know something about physics and computer models of complex systems.

It has become increasingly clear to me since I started looking at the science that the evidence that all of the warming we have seen is due to man is far from certain.

Over this time I have become a huge admirer of what Steve has done. He has shed light on the murky incestuous world of Mann and co-workers which has been a low period for the scientific method.

By the way, your parting comment is cheap. His influence has been hugely positive and to suggest otherwise is a statement of your ignorance and a disgrace.

Not true,
jakerman
02 October 2010 at 03:46

From:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/false-...

"MM in their more recent rejected submission to Nature, instead filtered out the ‘hockey stick’ pattern of low-frequency variability in the North American ITRDB data through the incorrect PCA truncation described above, which censors this pattern by retaining too few Principal Components series in the data."

Well, the "truncation" was based on normal statistical rules for "normal" PCA's. Changing the rules after the fact to include the hockeystick shape is not really honest. And the hockeystick shape in PC #5 was entirely caused by the Bristlecone pines series, which shouldn't be used at all, according to the NAS panel...

Moberg, Esper, Ljungqvist, Loehle, even Mann08 are no hockeysticks in the shaft: they all show much more difference between the MWP and LIA than MBH'98/'99. Which is important, as that can't be caused by human emissions of CO2, thus entirely natural.

I don't give much value to the MWP-current difference, as the highest of the two can change simply by replacing one or two proxy series by some other cherry picks.

Further, putting instrumental records at the end of the graphs is intellectually dishonest, especially if in some series the diverging data are truncated or replaced by "better" data, to "hide the decline". If the proxies don't follow higher temperatures today, why should these have followed higher temperatures in the far past?

JBowers, thanks for the reference. It's clear from the document that it's not known whether it was a hack or a leak, although some in CRU lean towards a hack.

MR – Hack or a leak?
SM – the attack did look targeted. Police are looking at both options.
IR – highly skilled individual must have done this. Two options – simple attack by
internal person or sophisticated external attack.

Your other two links provide nothing extra other than speculation.

Whether externally hacked or leaked, emails like the 'trick .. to hide the decline' reveal an unscientific approach to what we are told is a serious global issue. Subterfuge is not part of the scientific method.

At last, the Independent is showing some independence of thought on Global Warming:

http://jeffreyhill.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341d417153ef01348991019d970c-popup