…it continues to fall apart, as do most activist studies. And, it is an activist study, with such prognostication as “Over the coming decades (temperatures) are likely to surpass levels not seen on the planet since before the last ice age.†That’s part of the “reproduction.” Shaun Marcott, the study author, referred to “skeptics” as a “troll army.” Obviously, like most Climate Astrologers, he’s not happy about seeing his work put under a microscope. You know, which is what science is about.
Anyhow, here’s Dr. Don Easterbrook at Watts Up With That?
As in Part I, this segment analyzes the Marcott et al. conclusions using the scientific method of Feynman in which conclusions are checked against well-established data from other sources,. As Feynman points out, if a hypothesis (conclusion) disagrees with observations and data, it is wrong. It doesn’t make any difference how beautiful the hypothesis (conclusion) is, how smart the author is, or what the author’s name is, if it disagrees with data or observations, it is wrong.
Dr. Easterbrook compares the Marcott “data” to all the existing real world data, and finds
The Marcott et al. conclusion that “Global temperatures are warmer than at any time in at least 4,000 years†is clearly contrary to measured real-time data and thus fails the Feynman test, i.e., it is are wrong.
And
The Marcott et al. conclusion that “Global temperature….. has risen from near the coldest to the warmest levels of the Holocene within the past century.†A heat spike like this has never happened before, at least not in the last 11,300 years†is clearly contrary to measured real-time data and thus fails the Feynman test, i.e., their conclusion is wrong.
All you Believers can certainly attack Dr. Easterbrook personally, but the data is the data. But, but, but, Easterbrook is a “denier”!!!! What about Warmist Steve McIntyre?
Marcott et al 2013 has received lots of publicity, mainly because of its supposed vindication of the Stick. A number of commenters have observed that they are unable to figure out how Marcott got the Stick portion of his graph from his data set. Add me to that group.
The uptick occurs in the final plot-point of his graphic (1940) and is a singleton. I wrote to Marcott asking him for further details of how he actually obtained the uptick, noting that the enormous 1920-to-1940 uptick is not characteristic of the underlying data. Marcott’s response was unhelpful: instead of explaining how he got the result, Marcott stated that they had “clearly†stated that the 1890-on portion of their reconstruction was “not robustâ€. I agree that the 20th century portion of their reconstruction is “not robustâ€, but do not feel that merely describing the recent portion as “not robust†does full justice to the issues. Nor does it provide an explanation.
Virtually everything about the study is completely different from hundreds of other reconstructions (which all tend to be close to each other) based on real world data. Even NY Times Warmist Andrew Revkin wrote “This work is complicated, involving lots of statistical methods in extrapolating from scattered sites to a global picture, which means that there’s abundant uncertainty”. In other words, the science can’t stand under the sunshine of reality.
