My previous post, titled "Steven Mosher: even Fuller of it" was, as the title suggests, focused on a claim by Steven Mosher, made in a comment at the website "Scholars and Rogues" and apparently also in his book about "climategate" co-authored with Tom Fuller. One should be able to tell that the post is about Mosher since I refer to his name 16 times in the article, not to mention the title and tags. The fact that I refer to the IPCC at least 20 times (and AR4 10 times) is an indication that my concern was with content of the IPCC reports and specifically the most recent one, AR4. If Mosher was right, IPCC had made a (not large, but verifiable) error in the latest WG1 report. It turned out Mosher was wrong.
Brian Angliss' article at "Scholars and Rogues" was more about claims made at the website "ClimateAudit" by Steve McIntyre. I have not investigated any of Angliss' claims or found anything presented at ClimateAudit to be wrong, although I frequently find McIntyre's posts quite confusing - the narrative thread at least is hard to follow, and there is a lot of non-scientific "jargon" (like "team") that seems to mean something to him but means nothing to me. Since the background of my post on Mosher was Angliss' article, I mentioned ClimateAudit (5 times) and McIntyre (3 times) while reviewing the context - but in what I considered both positive and neutral terms. I certainly had no intention of claiming that anything at ClimateAudit was wrong, since I had not investigated anything there at that point.
I also have not investigated anything about the tree ring data itself. Whether what Briffa did in truncating his series at 1960 was scientifically valid or not is something that requires some sort of scientific judgment and knowledge of the field, which I certainly do not have. I do know there are occasions where, as a scientist, you just know some of your data is tainted in some way and has to be discarded. This happened to me in one of my earliest publications, where I produced a graph of a theoretical curve regarding behavior of electrons in a quasicrystal, and then realized that the portion of the graph close to zero was meaningless because of an approximation I had made. So that portion is "shaded out" in the published article - I dropped the data because I knew it was not valid. Perhaps what Briffa did with his data was similarly justified, I just don't know enough to comment one way or the other on that.
In any case, perhaps my posts are hard to follow too. McIntyre has now posted something that is indeed very wrong - about me. He refuses to correct his post, despite my repeated clarifications in comments on his site about what he got wrong. Here's the full list of what is wrong with his latest post - so now, I *am* criticizing a post at ClimateAudit by McIntyre. Nevertheless, we appear to agree on the IPCC AR4 graph, which is good news. Mosher was indeed wrong about it.
(1)
Arthur Smith makes strong and untrue allegations against Climate Audit
I did not make any allegations about Climate Audit, strong or not, true or not.
(2)
Smith does not bother to link to the ClimateAudit discussion
I did link to one ClimateAudit discussion discussing the TAR at the appropriate point – but I was never claiming it was wrong, it was a reference point.
(3)
Arthur Smith has gotten a little punch drunk from different versions of tricks from the Team and has incorrectly presumed that I have been wrongfooted by the Team.
The psychological analysis is amusing but completely false. I am perfectly aware of discussion of many different “tricks”. I was investigating a very specific claim of what “the trick” was, as put forth by Steven Mosher. Mosher’s statement was clear, and I was extremely clear-headed in my discussion and analysis of his claim. I did not presume any “wrongfootedness” on the part of McIntyre, nor did I investigate any specific claim or statement by him (until now).
(4)
I haven’t fallen prey to any of the errors alleged by Arthur Smith.
I never alleged McIntyre had fallen prey to an error. Until now.
(5)
With this in mind, let’s turn to spitballs from the confused Arthur Smith.
Again with the psychology. I was, in the quoted paragraph, paraphrasing Angliss with a few side comments. That paragraph was never the central content of my post which was clearly about Mosher and IPCC AR4, not Climate Audit.
(6)
However, the fact that Team supporters are unoffended does not show that any actual Climate Audit statement was unfounded.
I am not a “Team supporter” whatever that is supposed to mean. As I said at the start, I half-expected Mosher to be right and this to uncover a serious (though nitpicky) error by the IPCC. I was very disappointed at the waste of time the effort to verify Mosher turned into. And again, I never said any climate audit statement was unfounded.
(7)
obviously do not agree that Smith has presented any examples or evidence of this occurring at Climate Audit.
I never claimed to be presenting any examples or evidence of it at Climate Audit. The investigation was of the IPCC (and Mosher’s claim regarding those figures), not Climate Audit!!
(8)
He demonstrated precisely nothing about statements made by me at Climate Audit.
And I never intended to!
(9)
Smith’s insinuation that Climate Audit had somehow been associated with “presenting a graph that is specifically stated to be showing one thing, but actually showing another” is totally unjustified.
Once again, I did not insinuate any such thing.
I hope that helps clarify matters!
