Quote:
Originally Posted by WT Sharpe
I doubt it. I always skeptical of science stories reported on non-science media sites. Too many newspapers and other news organizations have had to make fiscal cutbacks to stay afloat, and one of the first things to suffer under these cutbacks seems to be science reporting.
There was an article about Phil Jones published yesterday on Nature's website entitled "'Climategate' scientist speaks out: Climatologist Phil Jones answers his critics in an exclusive interview with Nature."
Here are some highlights:
Speaking exclusively to Nature, Jones is reluctant to discuss how the past few months have affected him personally, and says he cannot comment on allegations that freedom of information requests for raw climate data were mishandled by the university. But he is eager to set the record straight on the science.
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"The science still holds up"
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One of the most politically charged allegations is that Jones, together with scientific collaborators, tried to systematically downplay the importance of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), a brief phase of natural, pre-industrial warming that may have occurred around 1000 AD. But if the MWP was restricted to mild local warming, it would mean that present-day global warming is unprecedented for the past 1,000 years, as claimed by climatologist Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University, University Park, in his famous 'hockey stick' global temperature reconstruction. That claim, however, relies on controversial data from tree rings.
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Palaeoclimatologists are confident that the width of tree rings reliably represents real temperatures because they tally with data from thermometers and other instruments taken since the nineteenth century. After the 1960s, however, there is a divergence, with most tree-ring proxy temperatures seeming to be lower than those from instrumental records across the Northern Hemisphere. The exact cause of this problem is unknown, and is still being investigated by scientists.
Some argue that if the tree-ring data are unreliable for the recent past, including them in older temperature reconstructions is highly questionable, and could understate historic warming — including the MWP — relative to the present day. "It potentially does," admits Jones, but says that analyses using other methods — proxy temperature markers from ice core samples, for example — still show much the same temperature change over the past 1,000 years, backing up Mann's hockey stick.
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It is now essential for climate researchers to stand up for their science, he says. "[I'd] like to see the climate science community supporting the climate science more. Lots of them are trying but they're being drowned out." |
I wonder how the other proxy temperature markers were calibrated, as well. Were they correlated to existing markers, i.e. tree rings, or some form of direct measurement.