Broken Hockey Sticks

This is one of those articles I occasionally write where I know nothing about the subject. I am not a scientist, but I do have a fairly effective truth alarm. The source of this story is reliable, and I trust the judgment of the author.

John Hinderaker at Power Line posted an article today about the latest global warming panic. A group of climate alarmists headed by geologist Shaun Marcott has tried to resurrect Michael Mann’s discredited hockey stick and has.sounded the alarm that the temperature of the oceans is rising at an alarming rate.

The article at Power Line reports:

Now Steve McIntyre, who was principally responsible for showing that Mann’s original hockey stick was a fraud, has gone over Marcott’s data on the key proxies he uses for 20th century temperatures, ocean cores. McIntyre found that Marcott and his colleagues used previously published ocean core data, but have altered the dates represented by the cores, in some cases by as much as 1,000 years.

Statistics are amazing things, and by making minor changes in them, you can get them to tell any story you choose to tell.

This is the graph from the article:

I will make no attempt to explain the graph, but strongly suggest that you follow the link to the Power Line article to read John Hinderaker’s explanation. Mr. Hinderaker also relies on my favorite site for any real information on climate change, wattsupwiththat.

The bottom line here is simple. The numbers are being fudged. The obvious questions are, “Who is fudging the numbers?” and “Why are the numbers being fudged?” What do the scientific community and the politicians gain by convincing us we are doomed unless we listen to them and do exactly what they say (I think I just answered my own question)? Do we really want to give that kind of control to anyone? I would be a whole lot more impressed by their insistence that we listen to them if they were practicing what they preach. Has anyone calculated Al Gore or Barack Obama’s carbon footprints lately?

Enhanced by Zemanta