Monday, August 18, 2008

Bishop Hill and the Jesus paper

I don't have a lot to say about "Bishop Hill's" alleged history of the Hockey Stick Affair.
  1. The first thing that jumps out at me is that Bishop Hill reconstructed his account from Climate Audit.
    It's a long tale - and the longest posting I think I've ever written and piecing it together from the individual CA postings has been a long, hard but fascinating struggle.
    Therefore it seems it must have an inherent bias. You just can't reply on a single source and expect to uncover the truth.
  2. I'm a journalist, not a historian, so I only write first drafts. But if reporting in the swamps of climate change science has taught me anything, it's that nothing is ever quite what it seems and there are always reasons on top of reasons and questions on top of questions. I suppose that's true of any good science story, or any good story at all. I'd need to spend weeks deconstructing this to be sure, for myself, that it was all real.
  3. There are just too many other reconstructions that give the hockey stick result.
  4. How can we take this "Bishop Hill" guy seriously if he won't even sign his real name to his work?
Those were fun times, huh! But life moves on.

4 comments:

charlesH said...

David,

As someone trained in physics you would find dendro (tree rings and temperature signal) to be a joke. Closer to a social science than physics.

Dano said...

you would find dendro (tree rings and temperature signal) to be a joke.

Charles H (aka Galileo of Dendro), I had an arrangement several years ago with the Chorus, Amen crowd to sign them in at the leading dendro forum so they can make those assertions to the people who know dendro (as opposed to, say, you). Sadly, everyone there was busy or had to wash their hair & couldn't correct the crackpot dendro people.

I would be willing to expend energy to request the forum administrator grant me access again to sign you in so you can defend "your" assertion there. I recently asked this of Mr Pete of vast, untrammelled Almagre fame - alas, to no avail as he must wash his hair too, so I have a slot ready to go for you.

Would you like to give 'er a go, Galileo...er...Charles? Go on to a dendro forum and make these unfounded assertions there, and defend them in front of people who have studied and done the work? Or is your hair dirty and you can't make the time?

Best,

D

Anonymous said...

There are just too many other reconstructions that give the hockey stick result.

1) All requiring dendrology to get the hockey stick.

2) All having the splice of modern temperature.

If you want to see how the proxy-based temperature reconstructions work.. you need to use them as reconstructions and not splice them. When you do that, you find that the majority of the reconstructions actually give a higher medieval temperature than a modern temperature.

I believe basic facts of the case are as laid out by the Bishop. If you find a fault with the facts, point that out, not what his source is.

Otherwise what you are doing amounts to name calling, not journalism.

Dano said...

1) All requiring dendrology to get the hockey stick.

Except for the other proxies that show recent warming.

Your FUD script doesn't work here.

Best,

D