AGW's Death Knell?

I don't know if this has made the MSM news reports this week, I plumb refuse to watch any of the news shows any more, but the "Mann hockey stick" graph that was being touted as absolute proof of Anthropogenic Global Warming has taken some solid hits. Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit finally got his hands on the raw data and discovered that it had been cherry-picked, i.e. only 12 trees of many, many more available were used to produce the graph the authors wanted. That is NOT how real science is supposed to work.

Anyway...the folks at Watts Up With That have been doing a running commentary on McIntyre's trials and tribulations in getting the data in the first place and then the startling (or maybe "predictable" would be a better word) find that the books were cooked, so to speak.

Seems that real science was never settled at all. Seems to be scientific malpractice has been foisted upon the world. Could it have been all that grant money to prove AGW spurred Mann and company to *gasp* CHEAT? Might go a long way toward explaining why it took Steve McIntyre 10 years to finally get the freakin' raw data used in the study. (And that's not how "peer review" is supposed to work, either!)

I would hope that this would cause some in the political sphere to stop screwing around with legislation to fix what isn't broken, but it was never about climate, was it. It's all about control. And the possibility of additional filthy lucre lining the pockets of the connected.

Besides, Kerry and Boxer presented their legislative framework today--a framework with more holes than a fine Swizz cheese--and the EPA believes CO2 is a "pollutant" This juggernaut that will further destroy our economy is going to be a bitch to derail when "top" minds are closed to anything like the real workings of science, not to mention the flaws in the "research" and models that are being used to justify another government grab.



For further reading:

From Watts Up With That

Antony Watts' intro to the exposure: Quote of the week #20 – ding dong the stick is dead

A mirror posting of Steve McIntyre's article: MIRROR POSTING of Climate Audit Article on Yamal a “Divergence” problem

An UPDATE to the above: Update: A zoomed look at the broken hockey stick

A primer of the story in easier to understand language (Go to the Bishop Hill link. The formulas, which can get distracting have been removed.): A must read: The Yamal Hockey Stick Implosion in laymans terms


Why tree rings make lousy indicators of temperatures on a global basis: A look at treemometers and tree ring growth (Hint: Too many stinking variables! It's not just the temperature.)

What? You want corroboration? How about from the American Geophysical Union Conference in 2008. Where "In the hallway poster for their AGU presentation, they have this graph, with the caption saying a “nearly flat temperature trend” for Yamal, especially for the late 20th century period where the “hockey stick” from those 12 trees emerges."