Friday
Jul152011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Hockey Sticks in the wild
Jul 15, 2011 Climate: MWP Donna Laframboise is looking for sightings of the Hockey Stick in the wild. There is a category on Climate Audit for this kind of thing which has some early examples, but if anyone has any other suggestions, do drop Donna a line.
Reader Comments (13)
It does not seem to have appeared recently at RealClimate.
Perhaps Donna might also like to examine the places where it seems to have become extinct, due to a change in the "climate"
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/07/14/well-theres-your-problem-fed-spending-299-home-income-27/
Well it looks like one to me, either way you want to look at it.
Still being used by the Beeb in July 2008:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7517444.stm
The CA category (mostly early posts) is http://climateaudit.org/category/mbh98/spot-the-hockey-stick/ . I emailed this to Donna.
I had a quick surf looking for hockey sticks and was disturbed how many of them are aimed at kids.
Here’s a particularly inexcusable one from a geography course set by the Royal Geographical Society.
http://www.geographyteachingtoday.org.uk/images/activities/temperatures.html
No error bars, no explanation of the spliced data. It comes from this site.
http://www.geographyteachingtoday.org.uk/ks3-resources/online-cpd/climate-change/
More
http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/exploringclimatechange/thebasics/index.asp
http://hdgc.epp.cmu.edu/teachersguide/teachersguide.htm
http://www.windows2universe.org/earth/climate/medieval_warm_period.html
http://see-the-sea.org/topics/pollution/air/man-made/man_made_global_warming.htm
http://www.insights.co.nz/change.aspx#
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GlobalWarming/page3.php
http://www.truthmove.org/content/global-warming/
I suppose it gives rise to:-
How do you convince a child to believe in AGW? Apply a hockey stick where it will do most good.
Headmaster with hockey stick - "Bend over Smedley. This is for your own good. Global warming is going to hurt you much more than it's going to hurt me."
TinyCO2, I had a look at the NZ site and was so annoyed by the unscourced nonsense there I left a very grumpy comment. I was doubly annoyed by the fact that some group has done a terrific job of building a very attractive site with lots of excellent educational stuff, then they ruin it with rubbish that is pure alarmism and nothing to do with reality.
Thanks for the input TinyCO2. Struck a raw nerve or two with me.
Reminded me of those Larkin Lines
"They fu** you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do"
I'm sure that Auntie Bee, Uncle August Authority and Cousins Consensus are as well meaning as mater and pater were but now that they have 'robust science' behind them isn't it the case that that they've become more patronising than hitherto?
I still love my relatives and value their advice but why can't I shift my suspicion that they may have been gulled?
Thanks so much for the suggestions, everyone. The Spot-the-Hockey-Stick section at ClimateAudit is a great stroll down memory lane of which I'd been previously unaware.
I'm especially interested in knowing whether that graph showed up in textbooks aimed at elementary or high school students - or was the cycle too short between when it was everywhere and when it became suspect?
Cheers!
Well if we're not limited to temperature hockey sticks, the latest Kemp, Mann et al paper on sea level over the las 2000 years does a good one.
The article from July 16th titled 'De Frietas Profile' is worth a look. The news item it references suggests that the hockey stick is being used in NZ universities (though not be De Freita).
This is well and truly embarrassing. The e-mail address I provided at the bottom of my blog post asking for help contained an error. If you went to the trouble of sending me a note on this matter and haven't yet received a response, perhaps you'd be kind enough to resend it to the correct e-mail address: NOconsensus.org AT gmail.com.
Abject apologies.