Talk:Hockey stick controversy/Archive 9

Paywalled, but could be of interest
. . dave souza, talk 22:39, 29 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Anything in particular you might looking for in that article? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:47, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
 * This came up in the context of Talk:Michael Crichton; that bio has severe pov problems, and Michael Crichton gives an uncritical mention without any weight to the mainstream context. The Science abstract suggests both that it's a useful source on the first Wegman hearing, and that we should mention Crichton's testimony. As John Mashey notes above, there are issues about the hearings that should be covered. . . dave souza, talk 10:00, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
 * But: that article doesn't mention Crichton. I believe there are a lot of aspects of the hearing that could (should?) be covered, but Kerr's newsy highlights are more flash than light. I wonder if Weart covers that better. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:01, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Crichton was quoted by Inhofe at an earlier hearing, which we note, and appeared as a "scientific" witness for Inhofe at a Senate hearing on 28 September 2005. Have found a couple of sources about that, and the hearing is covered in Mann's book. So that's worth a mention. There are aspects of the Wegman hearings to cover, including the short notice to Mann so that he couldn't attend the hearing but a second hearing was then arranged. My aim is to completely revamp the Wegman coverage as Wegman report, and have a concise summary here. There are still points which appear to have been added to promote contrarian views, so improvements are needed. . dave souza, talk 22:22, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Plagiarism charge section; corrections from recent FOIAs
'George Mason University provost Peter Stearns announced on 22 February 2012 that charges of scientific misconduct had been investigated by two separate faculty committees: the one investigating the 2006 Wegman Report gave a unanimous finding that "no misconduct was involved". Stearns stated that "Extensive paraphrasing of another work did occur, in a background section, but the work was repeatedly referenced and the committee found that the paraphrasing did not constitute misconduct". The 2008 social network analysis paper was investigated by a separate committee which unanimously found "that plagiarism occurred in contextual sections of the (CSDA) article, as a result of poor judgment for which Professor Wegman, as team leader, must bear responsibility", and Wegman was to receive an "official letter of reprimand".'

From FOIAs, Stearns wrote untruths to his faculty. See [| Edward Wegman Talk Page section: Wegman and Said no longer editors; FOIAs show Stearns wrote untruths to GMU faculty; Retaliation?] There was only one investigation committee (3 people) and it ruled no plagiarism in the 5.5-page social networks material in the Wegman Report, while admitting to plagiarism in the 1.5-page subset in the retracted article.

For an integrated discussion, see (non-RS) PDF attached here and then check the RS FOIAs done by Dan Vergano, FOIA#1 and FOIA#2. The FOIAs sometimes contradicted emails to Bradley or public statements.

"On 16 March 2011, Wegman sent an email to the journal saying that a student "had basically copied and pasted" work by other authors into the Wegman Report, and this text had been used in the journal paper without acknowledgement. He said that "We would never knowingly publish plagiarized material". The email said also that "She provided that within a few days, which I of course took to be her original work." However, she was neither a coauthor nor even acknowledged on the retracted paper.  It is hard to see how using her "original" work was not plagiarism.  Some of the same material showed up in 2 PhD dissertations, for which one must dig very deep to the actual texts to find an RS source.

Finally, see Ed Wegman Promised Data to Rep. Henry Waxman Six Years Ago - Where Is It?, which is a non-RS narrative describing the RS FOIA, linked. Wegman promised code to Waxman, but claimed a delay due to Navy release processes. This was false, as the code people wanted (time series) had zero Navy involvement.

As usual, one can study the non-RS reports to understand obscured sequences, then cite any chosen RS.

Editors might want check the Wegman page and consider where topics should be discussed or at least be made consistent.JohnMashey (talk) 07:03, 21 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Ah, what is your point? Are there specific points in this article you think need improvement? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk)
 * The paragraph starting "George Mason University provost..." is a problem. As per FOIA, there was only one committee. Not only was Stearns' claim of separate committees false, but stating it as a fact (as opposed to a quote of Stearns) is also false, i.e.: 'The 2008 social network...'
 * One might take this out, or quote it correctly and cite the FOIAs for accuracy.  The detail is for context, and to help editors think bout the never-ending task of figuring out which stories belong where among web pages, in this case between this one or the Wegman page.  They at least should be consistent.JohnMashey (talk) 22:35, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
 * There's a good case for a detailed Wegman report article, with only a summary here. That article will have to summarise the context including MBH99 and MM05, my recent edits have been working towards clarifying coverage of the MM papers. John, the added info you suggest still seems to lack enough published secondary analysis to be featured here, but as WMC indicates below the section can be updated. . . dave souza, talk 10:08, 23 September 2012 (UTC)
 * It seems Stearns' letter to faculty can be quoted because it was mentioned in a secondary RS, but the archived FOIA replies cannot be quoted, because they have not been, although they straightforwardly contradict Stearns' claims, as in 04/26/11 FOIA reply from Phil Hunt (Bold) to Dan Vergano, which shows there was only one investigation committee, not two:
 * 'Q5.1: Including the chair, how many people were on the investigation committee(s) (After any challenges.) 3
 * Q5.2: What were the departmental affiliations of the committee(s)+chair? School of Public Policy, Provost Office and Physics Department
 * I understand:
 * 04/27/11 2nd meeting of investigation committee
 * 06/10/11 3rd meeting of investigation committee, to interview Dr. Wegman
 * 09/30/11 4th meeting of investigation committee ...
 * Q6.2 What was the date of the final investigation report? August 11, 2011
 * Q6.3 How many pages long was it? 9 pages
 * This is why my first alternative suggestion was of taking it out, since Stearns' quoted claim is falsified by a primary source that Wikipedia might not use. Of course, the fact that a Provost of large school would make such statements is interesting in its own right, and if some RS ever writes of this, that ought to be there.  Finally, as noted over at [|Wegman talk page] &#91;Wegman talk page -JJ &#93;, that related discussion has an additional problem, if it turns out that Stearns' comments ever rise to retaliation.  In any case, given suggestions for revisions, there is no rush, but editors should at least understand contextual background.JohnMashey (talk) 20:59, 23 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I believe any discussion of Wegman or his report would at the pertinent talk pages. As to this discussion: you are concerned about a certain assertion of fact? (That's a little muddled by the rest of the commentary.) Could you perhaps state that a little more specifically? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:33, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

The section needs revision to remove stuff that must have been written while it was ongoing. It presently says "The investigation was still at the preliminary "inquiry" stage rather than being a full investigation, according to a 26 May 2011 clarification from a George Mason University spokesman..."; and "Wegman responded that he was "very well aware of the report", but at the university's request would not comment further until all issues were settled" William M. Connolley (talk) 07:44, 23 September 2012 (UTC)
 * The whole section eventually needs revision which you know more about than me, could you make these immediate corrections? Watch out for an inuse templates when JJ is editing, to avoid problems with edit conflicts. . dave souza, talk 10:08, 23 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Ok, have trimmed it a bit and made it clear that these are statements by Stearns. Am uncomfortable with using the FOIA statements without an analysis of them published by Vergano or some other reliable secondary source, will await developments. . dave souza, talk 12:13, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

McKitrick APEC
'In a presentation to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Study Centre on 4 April 2005, McKitrick said that the prominence given to the hockey stick graph in the TAR "was deliberate editorial sleight-of-hand" to trick readers into thinking it was more important than the graph of satellite-measured tropospheric data by Christy and Spencer.'

It is correct that he said this, in a non-peer-reviewed presentation to non-climate scientists. Of course, the 1979- satellite data had nothing to do with the MBH reconstruction interval, people had good reason to trust ground stations more, and within a few months, the article in Science by Mears and Wentz forced Spencer and Christy to redo their calculations again.

The page cites a version of the talk that had been edited later, not the original version, archived here. The original ascribes Figure 3 to IPCC in 1995 (fixed in July 2005). The 1995 date was false, but the change to 1990 causes consistency problems with the Deming(2005) quote. The only similar graph was found in IPCC(1990), Fig 7.1(c), on p.202. However, the image McKitrick used was not actually from IPCC(1990) either. Finally, Figure 4 (borehole chart derived from data by Huang, first used in Essex&McKitrick(2002)) was already obsoleted by Huang's research group in papers in 1998 and 2000.

These topics are discussed in blog posts here (search for 'Back to McIntyre post and talk') and here and here. Those are obviously not RS, but they have links to RS sources. Of course, most are to primary sources, but as best I can tell, McKitrick's presentation was a primary source also, that contains several clear misrepresentations. Among other things, (1995 and wrong image) are evidence that McKitrick had not actually read IPCC(1990) pp.199-203, as the words tell a different story than the schematic alone. The same (wrong) image got used in more talks, in the Wall Street Journal in June 2005, and even this year in Inhofe(2012) "The Greatest Hoax."

Editors might want to review some of this and think about what this section ought to say. As it stands,the presentation to APEC is presented as credible, despite relying on an unsupported quote not even yet published in a dubious journal, a wrongly-attributed schematic, and an obsoleted borehole graph. People might either want to delete the APEC comment or else augment it with additional facts to balance the story.JohnMashey (talk) 02:07, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Good point that the paragraph gave undue weight to McK's arguments without showing adequate context for this primary source. I've trimmed it back to basics, essentially noting that he gave the talk to APEC and raised arguments. There's a question mark over the publication, as there seem to be two versions: the one you've linked above is http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/APEC-hockey.pdf and was first crawled by Wayback on September 19, 2006. The link in the article is to http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/McKitrick-hockeystick.pdf which the Wayback Machine crawled back to May 7, 2006, which shows the correct year in the top right header, and correctly attributes the schematic to IPCC 1990. All rather odd, it suggests the one you've found was a rough draft which for some odd reason seems to appear on the internet later than the corrected version. Both of them show the same schematic, which is not the one that appeared in the IPCC report as available online. As you say, McI's report has subtle misrepresentations and we really need a reliable secondary source discussing them. My aim is to get round to revamping this section considerably, we need to outline the MM03 arguments and show the mainstream response to them. . dave souza, talk 20:49, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Both versions claim to be April, but the later one has the note at bottom of the first page noting updates. They were using the 1995 date in April and May (as seen in the presentations), and then it seems that McIntyre actually finally read IPCC(1990) in late June, and then McKitrick updated his paper in July 2005. Their May 11 PPT deck that P.Spencer gave Wegman in September 2005 still had IPCC 1995, so it almost certainly was a copy fo the talk in May.  By the time George Marshall Institute created the annotated version, they fixed it to 1990.  The real point is that the original APEC talk and key May presentations seem to have been done without having read IPCC(1990).  Of course, the story with Deming does not work very well with the right date, especially if anyone reads IPCC(1990) pp.199-203 around the real Fig 7.1(c).JohnMashey (talk) 06:08, 20 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Oops, didn't notice that note, worth clarifying that point. It may also be of interest that in the November 2003 presentation a question about there being several studies showing various hockey sticks was answered by Myron Ebell: "Could I respond to that first? It is well established in the lit- erature for decades from Hubert H. Lamb on that there was a Medieval Warm Period and a Little Ice Age." . . . dave souza, talk 15:53, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Relative not absolute temperature
98.155.19.136 (talk) 08:04, 27 October 2012 (UTC) In the section: Borehole climate reconstructions in a paper by Pollack and Smerdon, published in June 2004, supported estimates of a surface warming of around 1 °C (34 °F) over the period from 1500 to 2000.[91]

It appears that this is referencing a relative not an absolute temperature so shouldn't this say "1 °C (1.8 °F)"?
 * Someone made a mistake in using Template:convert. It's fixed, thanks! --Stephan Schulz (talk) 08:11, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

To split? Or not to split?
At one point I was inclined to favor separate articles on the scientific and political controversy over the "hockey stick". However, as I have dipped (admittedly quite shallowly) into the topic I am finding them less separable. There are claims made (such as scientists being dependent on the government dole and therefore saying what ever "the government" makes them say) which have no scientific counterpart, but regarding the hockey stick it seems to me that the political controversy was pretty much about the interpretation of the scientific issues, and that much of the scientific controversy was driven by the politics. I think these two aspects are so closely intertwined that to examine them separately would make each more baffling for being only half of a story. I think they need to be treated together.

The hockey stick controversy seems to be the quintessential AGW controversy, and perhaps the clearest example of how the deniers tried to undermine some of the key data. I am starting to think that the article would be better having a tight focus on the linkage between the scientific and political aspects. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:55, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

"Deniers" offensive to many

 * JJ: please avoid using the incendiary and derogative term "deniers" for CC skeptics. Thanks, Pete Tillman (talk) 23:00, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
 * That there are deniers is undeniable. How do you know who exactly JJ has in mind? If you're going to be picky over words, anyway, its best to avoid using the word "skeptic" for those who credulously accept anything-except-IPCC William M. Connolley (talk) 23:22, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, I've never understood quite how "deniers" is derogatory. Would you be so kind as to explain? Would "affirmers" be equally derogatory? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:39, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Perhaps it's the 30 pieces of silver some have taken for being Merchants of Doubt. RDBrown (talk) 02:24, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Perhaps you could refer to Holocaust deniers for a reason? This is the source of this pejorative analogy, via Hansen & Ellen Goodman ims. It's truly offensive. Please avoid using it here. Thanks, Pete Tillman (talk) 04:18, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
 * "Several commentators, including Goodman, have also compared climate change denial with Holocaust denial.... --Pete Tillman (talk) 18:34, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
 * That's nonsense. "Denier" is a normal English word in wide use, and quite useful, too. The "they say I deny AGW, therefore they call me a Nazi" spiel is carefully and elaborately constructed by the "victims". --Stephan Schulz (talk) 09:05, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Who said anything about Holocaust deniers? That's not an explanation, and you still have not answered my question: Would "affirmers" be equally derogatory?
 * I suspect that "climate denier" is derogatory because of the deniers own contemptuous dismissal of solid science, which gives them about as much intellectual credibility as a flat-earth affirmer. In short, if you don't want to be tagged as (e.g.) an idiot, the solution is to don't act like an idiot. Not make the rest of us redefine idiocy. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:41, 24 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Shall we start using "warmists" or "alarmists" for folks who think AGW is a big problem? Give this a moment's thought, JJ.... Why use names others consider pejorative? And now you're calling me an idiot? Please see Civility and stop this. -- Pete Tillman (talk) 16:01, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Pete, you're trolling and acting in a disruptive manner, please desist. You're clearly offtopic on this page, have a look at denial, with particular reference to The Politics of Denial. . . dave souza, talk 17:24, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
 * No I'm not, Dave -- and please see your "blatantly false denialist misinformation" diff business, in the context of a pop-sci article you (app) don't like -- if you want offensive words. Shall we go on? --Pete Tillman (talk) 18:34, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I've asked you not to go on, so don't. This article deals with people who explicitly deny the findings of mainstream science on climate change,for example, and it's appropriate to discuss that sort of thing on the talk page in relation to article improvements. This is not the page for you to cherry pick items from another article and try to make a conduct issue out of them. So, no more feeding your trolling. . dave souza, talk 19:15, 25 November 2012 (UTC)


 * You have not explained why you deem "denier" to be perjorative. Or why "affirmer" is not perjorative Is it not because one of those positions is ridiculous, and the other is not?
 * Nor did I call you an idiot, my "you" being meant rhetorically. (Did you not assume good faith?) As you seem to have misunderstood, allow me to clarify. The essence of what I said is that if "some person" voluntarily engages in "some behavior X" — substitute as you will idiocy, GW denial, GW affirmation, whatever — and that person does not care for the presumed perjorative aspects of that behavior, then the proper solution is to not make the rest of us exalt that behavior, but to not engage in such behavior. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:07, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Controversy source
Several aspects of controversy covered in Some Like It Hot | Mother Jones By Chris Mooney | May/June 2005 Issue. . dave souza, talk 10:06, 22 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Nice work on the red noise stuff. I think I understand more of it than I used think I understood.
 * Though I wonder if the third sentence of the first paragraph in "Principal components analysis methodology" perhaps does not adequately convey the significance the deniers attributed to the supposed production of "similar" hockey stick graphs from red noise. There is a little bit of a POV consideration here. Even though M&M were shown to be wrong, and MBH correct, I think it helps to explain the story better to give insight into why this was such a big deal in some quarters. (Well, one hemi-demi-semi-quarter? :) ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:41, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks, hope it makes things clearer. Mann's book gives a good simple explanation for non-statisticians, I've tried to condense the main points very concisely. Good point about the first para, having read through Pearce he does cover the "random data" point and notes the use for political spin attacking the Kyoto Protocol, specifically commenting that "it allowed the Bush administration, which had reneged on the protocol after coming into office, to claim the deal had been discredited." Ignoring, of course, the temporal inconsistency that the deal had preceded the 1998 study. So have modified the wording to cover these issues. . . dave souza, talk 23:19, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Citation tail ends
Hi Dave, I haven't totally forgotten this. And even found a few free minutes!! (As everyone else hides at the mall.)

I am still trying to sort out how to format the Appell-Quark Soup cite (currently n77). This seems to be in support of how the MM03 paper developed, but I don't see it supporting "following further corrections". Perhaps regarding Sonja Boehmer, two sentences earlier? At any rate, I think that paragraph could use a review of what point it is trying to establish, and how that relates to the topic. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:51, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Hi again, the first part of the paragraph was unsupported as I'd forgotten to add the McIntyre ref, done that now. The Appell ref. describes the sequence from McIntyre's draft, giving the date of his meeting with McKitrick, and the timing of their submissions to E&E. Appell quotes Sonja B-C writing "According to my records the paper [M&M] was submitted on 2nd October, resubmitted on October 14th after review. Corrections were made several times and the paper then went on the web", so that covers the further corrections. I've left unstated Appell's comment "So M&M was in peer-review for about three-and-a-half weeks." Both the timing and quality of peer review at E&E are questionable, perhaps the paragraph at present includes excessive detail. Will aim to think that over, am rather slow at present. . dave souza, talk 22:59, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
 * It isn't really clear to me what the detail is driving it. Like, the source certainly supports that the editor was prompting the authors, which might bear on a question of partisanship — if that was raised. But the placement of the citation has it supporting "following further corrections", as if that was in issue. Or the exact date the paper first appeared. In short, I think that section needs a definite statement as to what the controversy was with this paper. Or how it tied in the the broader controversy. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:21, 23 December 2012 (UTC)
 * You do ask the most awkward questions, this is covered in various sources which I've now cited. Hope that clarifies things a bit, have left in the detail of to and fro about corrections but put it in context. . dave souza, talk 17:07, 24 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Better that I ask them than some yahoo? :-)
 * The text looks much better. I'll take another whack ("soon"?) at revising the Appell quote. Oh, by the way, it seems to me that E&E is not exactly a "social science" journal. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:07, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Good stuff, that's me done for tonight. Several sources describe E&E as a "social science" journal, Thacker says rather more about it here but in that article he doesn't mention MM03. Anyway, the next task is to show how MBH was a landmark, as the first climate field reconstruction at a time when other reconstructions used a composite and scale technique. . . dave souza, talk 22:25, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Many authors in 'citation': use 'coauthors'
Hi Dave. I see you were trying to put "many" (in this case, 15) authors in a citation template. (I think there is generally little point in doing so, though on occasion I have done so myself.) You undoubtably have noticed that after eight {citation} truncates the displayed list to "et al." If you want to actually display the full list, you need to use the coauthors parameter for the overage. Note that it does not get formatted: you need to arrange the names as they are to be. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:59, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

P.s. Note that for the IPCC AR chapters I have cited only the lead author. I reckoned that was sufficient, and improved clarity in that a complete list of authors/editors is essentially more clutter than useful. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:06, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I was trying to get "Bradley et al." but since 4 authors didn't force that, I just put all the names in. Not sure if the behaviour of the template has changed, your way of putting in "name et al." is an elegant alternative so will follow that. While the list of names is quite interesting, it makes more sense to mention the notable scientists in the article so will do that. Thanks for the advice, . dave souza, talk 01:18, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
 * You're welcome. (That's easier than doing it my self. :-) You might try playing around with display-authors; setting it to 1 should get what you want. Note that affects only the display of the reference; Harv and Citation still have agree on the first four authors to get the link right. Specifying the citeref explicitly (like I did) is basically being too lazy to run the harv templates out to four authors every time. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:07, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Minor cleanup of lede
I cleaned up the lede a bit: diff -- I think these will be uncontroversial. --Pete Tillman (talk) 20:19, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Regarding just one point, changing "errors" to "what they saw as errors" casts serious doubt over their findings. Do you have a reference for that? I know that many readers never get past the lede, and looking further down to where Huybers (2005) and Wahl & Ammann (2007) are actually discussed, your new version does not seem to summarise the body of the article. I'm sure people who know the topic well will be able to help you with the other points you raise in that edit. --Nigelj (talk) 21:00, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, I've removed this "what they saw as errors" as going against peer reviewed papers as well as the sources cited in the body of the article. Please discuss that if you think we've not yet gone into enough detail about M&M's errors. . . dave souza, talk 22:11, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Too long
This article is kind of ridiculously long. A five paragraph lead? 16 sections? The status of being the 56th longest article on Wikipedia? We should all chip in and condense this article. Revolution1221 (talk) 22:28, 24 March 2013 (UTC)
 * You mean there are 55 articles that are even longer? I've been working away to move the detail relating specifically to hockey stick graph to a new article covering that topic, and have now had a first go at trimming surplus detail from this article. The trouble is that a lot of it is the subject of claims in the "controversy", so adequate coverage has to be retained, and some details may have to be re-included. I've also thought of moving #List of reconstructions in order of publication into a new list article, but am not sure about the formatting of such lists. . dave souza, talk 14:46, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Controversy over Bradley and Jones 1993
This section seems odd to me. Is this really notable? I don't recall it. It seems to rely rather heavily on taking Michaels seriously William M. Connolley (talk) 21:35, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Clearly Michaels was commenting unfavourably on this early hockey stick graph, and he was at the House hearing but so far I've not found an alternative account. The arguments are remarkably similar to more recent contrarian claims. The main significance is that these arguments in 2006 in 1996 predated MBH98, even though they gained less prominence as far as we can tell from info available on the internets. . dave souza, talk 22:44, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * That was very confusing, until I realised you mean 1996, not 2006 William M. Connolley (talk) 14:08, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Thinking about this... you're right that this is interesting as the "first palaeo 'controversy'", if that's what it was. But its also interesting that it gained no traction; I think we should point that out. Also I think it gained no traction in either direction - the palaeo record wasn't used for much, and the objections weren't noticed. But that rather brings me back full circle to arguing there is too much of it in the article. Perhaps I should just blog it and find out what people think William M. Connolley (talk) 14:12, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Oops re '96, perhaps not immediate traction but there was that surge of public interest in MBH98 just a couple of years later, then oddly enough less initial interest in MBH99. My approach is that it's important to realise that "the controversy" goes back to when Reagan formed the IPCC, and that Michaels was disputing palaeo in the politicking after SAR 1996. It's interesting to see Fred in 2000 repeating Michaels' argument that there's been no global warming since around 1940, adding "if one ignores the unusual El Nino year of 1998, one sees a cooling trend". Origin of the down escalator? Must get back to summarising Wegman, and think North would be a sensible split.  .  . dave souza, talk 14:51, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Broken refs
Currently "House Committee on Energy and Commerce (19 and 27 July 2006)" has red lettering "Unknown parameter |serial= ignored ", and "Pearce, Fred (9 February 2010), "Part three" has in red "Text " Environment &#124; Environment.. ignored" so I must have broken something, haven't noticed other refs affected by problems. The harvnb cite links incorrectly show all the "House Committee on Energy and Commerce" references as 19 July, it's probably not worth trying to divide testimony on that date from testimony at the 27 July hearing as there is also undated "Additional material submitted for the record". Assistance in fixing these refs will be much appreciated. . dave souza, talk 08:03, 14 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Okay, those shouldn't be too hard; I'll take a look. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:21, 14 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Severely distracted, but haven't forgotten you! ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:29, 17 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Okay, I found two cases where "|serial=" was rejected; I replaced them with "journal" and it seems to be okay. (And might want to consider whether we need to specify the GPO as "publisher" for the Congressional Record.) Also removed some garbage, and the Pearce 2010 problem was fixed. The only other redlinks now are where an author is wikilinked.  Any other problems? Oh, I also restored "reflist|2" instead of the the "30 em" business as I find single column real annoying, and I don't like having to futz around with my window width. I can hardly wait to see who pops out of the woodwork to "fix" this. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:26, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Many thanks, I've had a few distractions myself but will be back to tighten this article up, hope you're happy with the trimming so far. . dave souza, talk 06:08, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I've been kind of scared to look at the trimming. It seems to me that the article should be as long as suitable to cover the topic, and I would hate see stuff trimmed just for the sake of length. The lede, though, that definitely should be more summary ("summary" as adjective?). I am sort of tempted to whack at that, but it really should follow the article. So best to wait till the article is more settled. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:35, 20 April 2013 (UTC)

History of variants of IPCC(1990) Fig 7.1(c), p.202 ... falsely claimed to be that, or even from 1995, plus the Deming tale
Following are a few examples where images were claimed to be from IPCC(1990 or 1995) and claimed to show strong support from climate science for a big MWP on Earth (or at least NH), a stance which was not true even in 1990, and has been explicitly deprecated by 1993-1994. Much of this has been mentioned before, but is consolidated here into a cleaner chronology for reference, not intended for addition to the already-long article.

These graphs were attributed directly or indirectly to IPCC(1990 or even 1995). None were actual images of  With the exception of the distorted version in the Wegman Report and its use in Solomon’s book, the curves are about right, but the images differ in font, capitalization, title, text placement, etc. Normal scholarship requires either copying an crediting an image, or saying “adapted from” or equivalent. People’s comments proved they either hadn’t read pp.199-203 or had simply ignored the caveats there. At least some obviously copied the graph from someone else. I have seen at least 7 variants (A-G). The not-quite-Fig.7(c) variants seemed to start with John Daly, a Tasmanian schoolteacher and "science advisor" for the Western Fuels Association (WORTH PERUSAL) and its front group Greening Earth Society, with a cast of the usual advisors. Christopher Essex and Ross McKitrick’s 2002 “Taken by Storm” spent several pages on Daly, so they knew of him. Most stories tried to portray Fig 7.1(c) as Truth needing to be hidden, so that the IPCC seized upon MBH99. That barely made sense if that Fig. was in IPCC(1995), and made no sense at all given real history. N Year 199X Source A 2000.08.22 1995 John Daly, Greening Earth Society Fig. 14

A 2001.04.14 1995 John Daly The 'Hockey Stick': A New Low in Climate Science.

A 2003.06.26 1990 John Daly as above, but fixed 1995 problem, while keeping the same message. (Apparently forgotten, until resurrected):

A 2005.03.16 1995 Steve McIntyre, The Significance of the Hockey Stick. Links twice to quote from Deming, via a copy at Fred Singer's SEPP website, 3 months before actual publication at my favorite publisher of dog astrology, JSE.   The Deming quote was: from an essay that would appear in an issue whose other articles were on crop circles, reincarnation, UFOs and ESP: ‘With the publication of the article in Science, I gained significant credibility in the community of scientists working on climate change. They thought I was one of them, someone who would pervert science in the service of social and political causes. So one of them let his guard down. A major person working in the area of climate change and global warming sent me an astonishing email that said "We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period."

Of course, given the real history, this makes no sense at all given Fig 7.1(c) in IPCC(1990). McIntyre claimed the 1995 date, although Daly had fixed that 2 years earlier. By July, someone had noticed, McKitrick fixed his paper, but the 1995 date persisted for years here. See Deming comments elsewhere about this time.

A 2005.04.04 1995 p.5 Ross McKitrick, APEC Australia paper, What is the ‘Hockey Stick’ Debate About?" He cited JSE, although it wasn’t published yet.

A 2005.05.11 1995 p.10 McIntyre&McKitrick talk in Washington, The Hockey Stick Debate: Lessons in Disclosure and Due Diligence. Ed Wegman got the actual PPT (not the resulting PDF) from Joe Barton’s (R-TX) staffer Peter Spencer in Fall 2005,  and sent it to Dan Vergano in reply to a FOIA in Fall 2010. This was the "blueprint" for the Wegman Report, and almost certainly the source of the image for its similar, but distorted graph. p.12 quoted Deming, but for the Washington audience, they changed JSE to Science, a journal of rather higher credibility.

A 2005.06.21 1990 Wall Street Journal, "Kyoto by Degrees" "exactly as shown" in the 1990 report of the IPCC. That of course was a false statement.

D 2006.07.14 1990 p.34, Wegman Report, distorted version. Wegman admitted he had no access to IPCC(1990) but no one asked where he got the image to digitize, and it was strongly distorted, amplifying the swings.

B 2007.xx.xx 1995 p.119, Christopher Horner, "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism". p.119: Deming quote, cited both JSE and SEPP as sources.

C 2007.xx.xx 1995 p.68, Singer&Avery, "Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1,500 years", labeled as (non-existent) Figure 22 in IPCC(1995). Although Singer was the first publisher of Deming’s essay (against JSE’s publication rules), this book doesn’t seem to mention it.

D 2007.xx.xx 1990 p.12 Lawrence Solomon, "The Deniers" Solomon discussed IPCC(1990), then the (exaggerated) Wegman graph, labeled "widely accepted pre-hockey stick view of global temperature ... adapted from"  Wegman Report. He thus copied a falsified graph, while writing of IPCC(1990).

C 2009.xx.xx 1995 p.27 Ralph Alexander, "Global Warming False Alarm" Labeled as (non-existent) Figure 22 in IPCC(1995). I wonder where he got that? :-) p.31 quoted Deming, citing JSE.

E 2009.xx.xx 1990 p.80 Christopher Booker, "The Real Global Warming Disaster" This one actually looks scanned from IPCC(1990),but chopping Years before present, inserting IPCC(1990), and amusingly converting (c) to a copyright symbol. p.81 quoted Deming, and then Booker goes on to sway “The identity of this scientist was later revealed to be Jon Overpeck.” I’d put it differently: certain people decided it was Overpeck, with zero proof, and as seen alter, no sense. Apparently that was good enough for Booker.

C 2010.xx.xx 1995 p.149 Steve Goreham, "Climatism" Graph labeled as (non-existent) Figure 22 in IPCC(1995). Here it is again. p.148 quoted Deming, but in this case, from the 2006 Senate hearing for Inhofe.

F 2010.xx.xx 1990 p.25 Andrew Montford, "The Hockey Stick Illusion," This version has a different aspect ratio, compressed horizontally. Also, as noted in Wikipedia talk page in 2010, Montford wrote falsehood about Lindzen's paper at arXiv, which Lindzen had to sort-of-fix later, Montford also quoted Deming, from SEPP, not from JSE itself.

G 2010.xx.xx 1990 p.10 Brian Sussman, "Climategate". This one is really amusing, because it cites '1990 IPCC Assessment Report graph, "Kyoto by Degrees," Wall Street Journal June 21, 2005, A16.' However, the image is neither that graph (fonts and capitalization changed) nor the real Fig. 7.1(c). p.31- He not only quoted Deming, praised him strongly as “a gentleman and a principled scientist – a real class act” but in 2008 interviewed him. McIntyre had apparently earlier decided that the unknown emailer was Jon Overpeck, or here who was one of two Coordinating Lead Authors for the Paleoclimate section of AR4, i.e. he was a major person in 2005, when the Deming essay appeared.

Sussman (p.33) asked Deming “Did you know the emailer?” Deming: “No.”

Sussman(p.34): “Back to the email. Many of us have heard the rumor that it was Jonathan Overpeck, who has been on a tear for years to rid the books of the Medieval Warm Period, but I’ve been unable to find a record of you publicly admitting as such. Was it Overpeck?” Deming: “It’s been many years, and I’ve long since deleted the email, but to the best of my recollection it was sent by an Overpeck.”

Climate change was not Deming’s field, but he claimed in 2005 to have gotten a 1995 email from someone he recognized as a “major person,” (how did he know?) and the first mention of all this appeared at SEPP, i.e., Deming and Singer were in communication. However, Overpeck was not a contributor to IPCC(1990, 1992), was one of 29 contributors to a different section of IPCC(1995), but not one of the 97 for paleoclimate. For IPCC(2001), he was one of 140 contributors to paleoclimate. So, why was he a major person in 1995? No one has ever presented the slightest evidence that this email ever happened, that if it did it was a correct interpretation by Deming or that Overpeck had anything to do with it. Deming wasn't willing to name Overpeck under oath for the Senate a few years before.

A 2012.xx.xx 1990 p.33 James Inhofe, "The Greatest Hoax." This has a somewhat fuzzy image otherwise identical to the other "A" cases, but at least gave the correct page number, p.202.

C 2012.08.31 1995 p.65 Goreham tries again, in this case labeling the graph as ""Temperature history from the 1995 IPCC 2nd Assessment Report." In April 2013, the Heartland Institute did a mass mailing of copies to academics at many schools, a few of whom posted reviews. Update JohnMashey (talk) 21:51, 22 April 2013 (UTC)  Amusingly, on p.64, he firmly states that the TAR graph was from a 1998 paper by Michael Mann, and his notes indeed reference the 1998 paper, which of course only goes back to 1400AD. JohnMashey (talk) 18:25, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Again, in academe, this sort of thing is called false citation, misrepresentation, falsification/fabrication. I'd guess almost no one actually looked at the issue of JSE in which Deming's essay appeared. If anyone ever looked at IPCC(1990), pp.199-203, they ignored the caveats, i.e.e., misrepresentation. Then, many accused IPCC and climate scientists of rewriting history.JohnMashey (talk) 04:56, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks John, a lot of good stuff there. Although the "2001.04.14 1995 John Daly" version was web archived on that date, there's no indication in it that he'd seen the extensive publicity on 22 January 2001 over the launch of the IPCC report: his comments are about the 2000 draft. is there an online source giving the date of the "A 2005.05.11 1995 p.10 McIntyre&McKitrick talk in Washington," as the presentation has been (automatically) dated September 4, 2012. Will aim to go through these in more detail, though my first priority should be condensing the article a bit. . dave souza, talk 18:10, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
 * On Daly's graph: I just cited that and the 2003 version as the earliest instance of the graph I could find and the earliest date with the 1990-misattribution was fixed to 1995. You might rummage at Daly's website, still there.  I notice that in 203 version, fn33 specifies p.202 of IPCC(1990), so he at least knew where it came from, whether he actually had a copy of not.  Fred Singer did have a copy, since the 1999 edition of Hot Talk, Cold Science quoted a few parts of pp.199-203.
 * As for May 11 2005, the history is:
 * 2005.04.04 McKitrick APEC talk, in paper referenced above, but no PPT or PDF known.
 * 2005.05.07 McIntyre mentions 2 talks to be given in Washington on May 11.
 * 2005.05.11 MM05x - PPT Talk for GMU and Cooler Heads, i.e., CEI.
 * 2005.08.30 MM05y This was the earliest version (unchanged 2006.02.22-2008.11.27) archived by Wayback, but the file was created 08/30/05 8:06PM by Mark Herlong (GMI), originally titled "Microsoft PowerPoint - M&M.May11". MM05x (PPT) was converted to MM05y (PDF), the evening of the day before Jerry Coffey contacted Wegman.  The plausible inference is that Herlong had made a PDF to give to Coffey to use with Wegman.  Within a week, Barton staffer met with Wegman and sometime gave him the actual PPT, not the PDF.  It is unknown when the PDF first went online before 2006, but Spencer clearly had access to the PPT, either from GMI or from M&M, as GMI generally didn't put PPTs online.
 * 2009.06.17 MM05z text Although the same pathname as MM05y, it was an annotated falsification was fixed, although not the Deming Science falsification.  Obviously Wegman was using the content of MM05x=MM05y, since MM05z didn't yet exist. This was nontrivial to figure out, because the Wegman report vaguely referenced ‘McIntyre, Stephen and McKitrick, Ross (2005) “The Hockey Stick Debate: Lessons in Disclosure and Due Diligence,” September 7, 2005.'  Either Wegman got the PPT that day, or they converted it to PDF then, at which point the PDF had a frozen date.
 * They never actually cited MM05x, although quite obviously, many ideas and much material was taken from it, which is why I call it the "blueprint." Wegman's reply to Vergano FOIA provided 14 files, of which 10 {14, 10 (12, 23, 41, 42, 43, 47, 48, 49, 54, 59 (not relevant), using numbering in Strange Scholarship, were included in the 17 labeled Important and summarized (well, mostly plagiarized). The other 3 were (33, 64 (IPCC TAR Ch 2), and 78 (MM05x). Another 5 Important papers were found in MM05x (and obvious, 37, 38, 44, 45, 46). The remaining 2 of 17 Important Papers (36, 59) were irrelevant.  The choice of Important papers was almost entirely determined by the set Spencer gave to Wegman, which he said was not “coaching.”JohnMashey (talk) 21:05, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Removal of IPCC graphs
July 15, 3 IPCC graphs were deleted from WikiCommons for copyright issues, not unreasonably.

' 06:43, 15 July 2013‎ CommonsDelinker (talk | contribs)‎ m. . (218,394 bytes) (-209)‎. . (Removing "IPCC_2001_TAR_Figure_2.20.png", it has been deleted from Commons by Fastily because: Copyright violation: If you are the copyright holder/author and/or have authorization to upload the file, email [[...)

(cur | prev) 06:42, 15 July 2013‎ CommonsDelinker (talk | contribs)‎ m. . (218,603 bytes) (-310)‎. . (Removing "IPCC_2007_AR4_Figure_6.10_(b)_(c).png", it has been deleted from Commons by Fastily because: Copyright violation: If you are the copyright holder/author and/or have authorization to upload the file, ...)

(cur | prev) 06:42, 15 July 2013‎ CommonsDelinker (talk | contribs)‎ m. . (218,913 bytes) (-491)‎. . (Removing "IPCC_2001_TAR_Figure_2.21.png", it has been deleted from Commons by Fastily because: Copyright violation: If you are the copyright holder/author and/or have authorization to upload the file, email [[...)'

All these graphs can be linked to directly:

http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/images/fig2-20.gif

http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-6-10.html

http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/images/fig2-21.gif

JohnMashey (talk) 19:32, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Poor choice for leading chart
This is a poor choice, as the controversy was sparked by the MBH 98 (et seq) chart:

I'll flip them shortly, unless there's an objection. --Pete Tillman (talk) 02:08, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I object, as it's misleading. The controversy predated that chart, and the term has been applied to multiple charts. dave souza, talk 04:14, 27 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes, I also object. However much MBH 98 and their chart are central, the lead is clear that this article is about the general concept of the "hockey stick" trend, and the temperature reconstructions on which these charts are based.  The current chart also communicates quite well that reconstructions vary (that the science is not clear cut), and could an excellent basis for discussing why they vary. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:26, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

I haven't checked out the details of this chart, but I have a long-running objection to spaghetti charts that show curves for different fractions of the NH, for example, without making that absolutely clear and explaining why it matters. See Comment at RC. Without care, spaghetti charts mislead the casual reader into thinking that the lines are *supposed* to be reconstructing the same geography.JohnMashey (talk) 07:56, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Oh dear. I agree with PT, and disagree with DS. I think we should have both charts in the intro: the "original" from IPCC TAR and the sphagetti version. The sphag version (a) postdates most of the controversy and (b) buried MBH in a host of lines. That the controversy has been over many charts doesn't affect that its been mostly over a few; and even if the version above isn't MBH '99 its pretty similar (no?). Or we could use MBH '99 if we can find it William M. Connolley (talk) 20:28, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Actually, the spag version we use is at the peak of the "controversy" in 2005, after publication of MM05 and before the NRC and Wegman reports. This comes back to the article covering both the hockey stick graph with relevant scientific debates, and the hockey stick controversy which is essentially political, ideological and economic. In relation to the controversy itself, I'll agree that the TAR chart is iconic, though the relatively neglected TAR spaghetti graph is more representative of research at the time. Focussing on the political IPCC aspects, we could always show the TAR chart above the AR4 spaghetti and density graphs. Thus giving attention to John's very valid point. The AR4 instrumental chart is rather offtopic, so could probably be cropped. The licence suggests public domain, though the NOAA attribution is rather flaky and we should get a copy of the IPCC published version. The GRL graph Fig 3 (a) of MBH99 is rather lurid in red and yellow, possibly worth making a fair use copy for the relevant chapter but AGU clearly claim copyright. . . dave souza, talk 21:26, 14 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I'm happy with WMC's suggestion to use both graphs to lead. The TAR one should be first -- it's iconic, as others have noted. And it looks like a hockey stick, an important factor to draw in the general reader Would this plan suit the group?


 * I'd be happy to see the AR4 chart added as well -- assuming the licensing issue is worked out. Pete Tillman (talk) 19:58, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

At some point,on Fig. 7.l1(c), the comment "was later cited by contrarians as showing established climate history." should be fixed. Actually, the real image on IPCC(1990) p.202 was almost never shown, because IPCC(1990) was not scanned and put online until 2010. Many people copied some variant of it, without giving the actual source and obviously without ever reading pp.199-203 of IPCC(1990), or if they did, ignoring the caveats and misrepresenting it. As best as I can figure, the first such image started with Western Fuels Association "science advisor" Tasmanian schoolteacher John Daly in 2001,http://web.archive.org/web/20010414035835/http://www.john-daly.com/hockey/hockey.htm. It seemed to have been forgotten until it reappeared at Climate Audit in March 2005, http://www.webcitation.org/6Apedzido. In both cases, the exact image was not from IPCC(1990), and is actually ascribed to IPCC(1995). In academe, this is usually called false citation, falsification or misrepresentation. Daly died in 2004, so it is unknown whether he created that image or got it from someone else. The "Daly" image used by McIntyre&McKitrick also appeared on 06/21/05 in the Wall Street Journal,http://sg.wsj.net/public/resources/images/ED-AD065A_1warm06202005202215.gif, which got IPCC(1990) right, but made false claim. Of course, the real 1990 date wrecked the Deming story used by McIntyre. Offhand, I know of at least 7 different variant images, all claimed to be from IPCC(1990 or 1995), but all slightly different, although the curve is generally the same. Wegman admitted in testiomony he didn't have IPCC(1990), and his curve was distorted, too. Singer and Avery(2007) not only claimed it was IPCC(1995), but also said it was (non-existent) Fig.22. amusingly copied, with the same false attribution to IPCC, in Alexander(2009) and Goreham(2010). The problem was not the curve, which was usually right, but that people took images of unknown or hidden provenance, wrote strong claims counter to real history, and obvious never consulted the real source, or else did, and then misrepresented it.JohnMashey (talk) 04:56, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
 * These are good points. I've reworked the Daly section a bit, and moved it earlier as it mentions the TAR draft but not the TAR launch in January 2001. Have also found info on the NACC report of 2000 which involved HS controversy. Having tried rewording the "schematic" caption, it wasn't really working so have moved it here: it wasn't part of the controversy until the TAR draft of 2000, so was out of sequence. . dave souza, talk 12:44, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks. One note: I'm not sure Fig 7.1(c) was really part of the controversy until Spring 2005, i.e., Daly used it, but nobody seemed to notice.  Singer's "Hot Talk, Cold Science" (1999 edition) quoted some text from IPCC(1990), but didn't use the figure, and Essex&McKitrick's "Taken by Storm" (2002 edition) mentioned Daly, pp.262-264, but didn't have the graph, either.  They used (p.169) a version of Huang(1997), which had been deprecated much earlier by Huang as being unusable for such long time periods.  Anyway, other than Daly, who fixed the 1995 error by June 2003, I have not been able to find any uses of Fig 7.1(c) until McIntyre's in March 2005.  Does anyone else have an example?JohnMashey (talk) 20:32, 8 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks, unless there's some objection the issue is moot now as I've removed that graph from the lead. Will add in a brief mention of McI's posting on Daly's chart, but would not want to get into dog astrology without first finding a good secondary source analysing the twists and evasions in that piece. . dave souza, talk 21:55, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

So what we have is a massive, boring article with no representation of the actual Hockey Stick chart in question, the Mann-made chart made famous in Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth: http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/images/fig2-20.gif Typical. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.38.195.61 (talk) 18:26, 31 August 2013 (UTC)
 * You're wrong about Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, it did not show the TAR figure best known as Mann's graph (actually based on MBH99), though it did show a graph from a figure by Lonnie Thompson showing temps from ice core data. As for the pretty graphs, I've written to the IPCC and regrettably they are unable to release them under an open license. Probably the best option is to upload figures to enWP under fair use, which involves tedious form -filling and I've not had time yet. Perhaps you could help? You'll need an established account to upload files. . dave souza, talk 06:24, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

== The Pollack, Huang & Shen 1998 reconstruction covering the past 500 years gave independent support for this conclusion, which was compared against the independent (extra-tropical, warm-season) tree-ri ==

This line is completely false, Huang completely disproved the hockey stick!

"The Pollack, Huang & Shen 1998 reconstruction covering the past 500 years gave independent support for this conclusion, which was compared against the independent (extra-tropical, warm-season) tree-ring density NH temperature reconstruction of Briffa 2000.[6"

Huang completely differs from the hockey stick chart.

http://www.c3headlines.com/2010/05/peerreviewed-research-unprecedented-global-warming-during-medieval-period-boreholes-reveal.html

Peer-Reviewed Research: Unprecedented Global Warming During Medieval Period, Boreholes Reveal Read here, PDF, here, here and here. Way back in 1997, researchers published a paper that was based on data from 6,000 plus borehole sites from all the continents. The reconstructed temperatures clearly showed a Medieval Period warming that was, and is, unprecedented. The data also makes clear that subsequent warming began well before the growth of human CO2 emissions and this natural rebound would obviously lead to temperatures similar to the Medieval Period.

A year later, the infamous Mann hockey-stick temperature chart was published to wild acclaim by the IPCC and AGW-centric activists. So popular did the Mann chart become, the 6,000+ borehole chart was completely ignored since its data refuted the Mann study. The borehole scientists then decided to re-publish their study with primarily only the blue-side (the typical AGW-favored data cherry-picking) of the chart below. This repackaged borehole study became accepted by the AGW-centric scientists as it seemed to support their cause and the Mann's hockey-stick. (click on image to enlarge)

"The authors searched the large database of terrestrial heat flow measurements compiled by the International Heat Flow Commission of the International Association of Seismology and Physics of the Earth's Interior for measurements suitable for reconstructing an average ground surface temperature history...Based on a total of 6,144 qualifying sets of heat flow measurements obtained from every continent of the globe, they produced a global climate reconstruction, which, they state, is "independent of other proxy interpretations [and] of any preconceptions or biases as to the nature of the actual climate history."...From their reconstruction of "a global climate history from worldwide observations," the authors found strong evidence that the Medieval Warm Period was indeed warmer than it is now."

"Quite suddenly, the same borehole authors - Pollack, Huang, Shen published a new, two-page-long paper in Nature: it appeared in October 1998. The paper contained a rather different graph than the graph from 1997...The new paper was using temperatures and 358 sites only instead of the 6000 sites used in 1997 (94 percent of sites eliminated) and it has erased 19,500 years out of 20,000 years (97.5 percent of the time interval eliminated) from the paper written in 1997 in order not to contradict Mann et al....That's what they call "independence". Moreover, if someone wanted to extend the record as far as possible while avoiding any hints of a warmer period in the past such as the medieval warm period, he would have made the same cut: 500 years ago. What a coincidence — Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.213.209.31 (talk) 20:02, 14 November 2013 (UTC)


 * http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2007/03/24/the-borehole-mystery/ William M. Connolley (talk) 22:08, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Proposing minor change in Harv template usage
To accommodate the use of full (mdy) dates with the Harv templates I used a two argument style. Subsequent experience suggests that a single argument style would be better. (E.g., "{Harvnb|Mooney, 11 Jan. 2005}" rather than "{Harvnb|Mooney, 11 Jan.|2005}".) I am considering revising those. Any questions or objections? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:48, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
 * No objection, not sure if it's necessary but you're welcome to go ahead. . . dave souza, talk 10:03, 1 May 2014 (UTC)


 * An okay from you is good enough to proceed! What this does is avoid a wrinkle in the CITEREF that results from how Harv joins arguments together. I'm going to go through the CITEREFS in References first, then fix Harv; there will be a short period where the links break. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:39, 1 May 2014 (UTC)


 * In the middle of doing this I convinced myself to do it differently. When day and month are used in a citation, just put them in with the year (which both Harv and Citation handle just fine) instead of merging it with the author: {Harv|Mooney|11 Jan. 2005}. This maintains orthogonality with conventional usage (e.g.: {Harvnb|Johnson|Naik|24 Nov. 2009}), and if the date string used in Harv is the same as in the citation template (e.g., is not abbreviated) then the normal CITEREF construction works, and an explicit "ref=CITEREF..." is not required.
 * I also corrected some other problems, and will check all these links tonight. And will do some more cleanup tomoorow(?). ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:01, 1 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Done. However, I noticed some other problems. E.g., notes 63-65 have cites (McCain 2000, Singer, 2000, and NACC 2000) with no corresponding references. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:24, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Mann claim about outcome of controversy
"The original 1999 Hockey Stick study (and the 2001 Third IPCC Assessment report) concluded that recent northern hemisphere average warmth was likely unprecedented for only the past 1,000 years. The 2007 IPCC Fourth Assessment extended that conclusion back further, over the past 1,300 years (and it raised the confidence to "very likely" for the past 400 years). The new, Fifth IPCC Assessment has now extended the conclusion back over the past 1,400 years. By any honest reading, the IPCC has thus now substantially strengthened and extended the original 1999 Hockey Stick conclusions." - Mann in The Guardian, September 2013

This apparently was the last word on the subject as only dedicated paid denialists like Richard Tol,Daniel Botkin, Roger Pielke Sr. seem to still pretend there is a "controversy

Perhaps a better name for this article is "hockey stick fraud" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.212.125.185 (talk) 00:59, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Yep, Mann's clearly a topic expert, and that's a good source for his views on attempts to claim "controversy" after the release of AR5. As an opinion piece, inline attribution will be appropriate. The US political pantomime is less relevant, with the usual suspects telling the Republican majority what deniers want to hear. Your link is to a blog post with links to other fringe blogs, clearly not suitable as a source. . dave souza, talk 10:11, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 22 June 2014
The link to the pdf of Wahl and Ammann's 2007 paper ("Robustness of the Mann, Bradley, Hughes reconstruction...") is broken, I'd like to suggest a new link for the pdf:

The old link is: http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/ccr/ammann/millennium/refs/Wahl_ClimChange2007.pdf

The suggested new link is: http://nldr.library.ucar.edu/repository/assets/osgc/OSGC-000-000-011-900.pdf

Joe deniable (talk) 15:07, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
 * ✅ Thank you for your helpful suggestion! Sailsbystars (talk) 15:17, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

Link to book section re HS controversy

 * Science and Public Policy: The Virtuous Corruption of Virtual Environmental ... By Aynsley J. Kellow, pp. 62-63. This 2007 book by a NZ/Oz political scientist, has a lucid explication of M&M's work on the MBH hockey stick. I'll get back to it later. --Pete Tillman (talk) 22:44, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Lucid as opposed to factual. — ArtifexMayhem (talk) 01:40, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

Regarding Continuing Research
Forgive me for not using an formal procedures but I'd like to point out the section regarding Mann at el 2008 and Ljungqvist 2010. Modern temperatures are shown to be greater than the past, however Mann's earlier work shows a significantly smaller difference in temperature during the MWP and the LIA. As noted by Ljungvist 2010 Mann 2003 has a difference of .35C and .89 for their own. I believe this calls for greater emphasis on which conclusion is correct. Also, Ljungvist 2010 also found norther hemisphere temperatures seemed to have exceeded 1998 mean NH instrumental temperatures in Mann 2008. If Ljungvist is said to agree with Mann 2008 these critical finds should also be mentioned. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.215.73.222 (talk • contribs) 23:06, 14 April 2015‎
 * The abstract of Ljungvist 2010 says "Our reconstruction agrees well with the reconstructions by Moberg et al. (2005) and Mann et al. (2008) with regard to the amplitude of the variability as well as the timing of warm and cold periods, except for the period c. ad 300–800, despite significant differences in both data coverage and methodology.", as quoted in Hockey stick graph which this article was briefly summarising. I don't see they point you're making in their abstract. Note that Ljungvist 2010 is NH extratropical, so would differ from a NH reconstruction, hence their note about data coverage. Did you mean Mann & Jones 2003? . . dave souza, talk 08:19, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Time to Update the Graph?
Since IPCC AR5 now includes 'hockey stick' graphs that reconstitute the MWP, and the last 18 years have been flat, shouldn't the graphs be updated to at least reflect the current science? (i.e. the IPCC now admits the MWP existed and was global, why doesn't this page?) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.18.28.141 (talk • contribs) 21:46, 12 March 2015‎
 * Eh? The first graph on this page shows the 30-year global average of the PAGES 2k Consortium 2013 reconstruction, if you've got a newer reconstruction graph available on a free license please show it! The discussions of the MWP in IPCC reports from the first to fourth are covered, don't think there's any great change in AR5 but will try to update that when time permits. Your statement that "the IPCC now admits the MWP existed and was global" says more about your POV than about the IPCC or the MWP. Do please link to sources to support any change you want made. . . dave souza, talk 22:15, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Taking a 30-year average over two periods with very different rates of change is faulty science. It could be viewed as a form of cherry-picking, since by adjusting the length of the average it will almost always be possible to produce the result you want to show, and hide the result you don't want seen. What's more, the fact that this kind of thing is going on speaks volumes for the lack of trustworthiness of the data publishers. I recall when BEST first published their findings, and the graphs omitted the recent section showing no warming, although this was present in their textual data. There is a clear political motive here to present the data in a way which proves a point of predetermined dogma, rather than exploring the science with an open mind. This is not good for the credibility of scientists in general, and it should not be tolerated. In fact, if this was any other discipline than climate science, then it would NOT be tolerated. --Anteaus (talk) 21:56, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't follow. 30 years has been a standard period for meaningful statements about climate for a long time - it is long enough to average out some smaller fluctuations like the 11/22 year solar cycle. Now you claim that using the same smoothing over the whole period is cherry picking? What would be the alternative? Using different smoothing algorithms? How would that be better? --Stephan Schulz (talk) 22:30, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 2 May 2015
Hi there, the word "methords" appears on this page; should read "methods". Aloha.

BrianReallyMany (talk) 01:12, 2 May 2015 (UTC)''
 * ✅ --I am  k6ka  Talk to me!   See what I have done  01:59, 2 May 2015 (UTC)