Two decades ago this week a pair of colleagues and I published the original “hockey stick” graph in Nature, which happened to coincide with the Earth Day 1998 observances. The graph showed Earth’s temperature, relatively stable for 500 years, had spiked upward during the 20th century. A year later we would extend the graph back in time to A.D. 1000, demonstrating this rise was unprecedented over at least the past millennium—as far back as we could go with the data we had.

[…]

Yet, in the 20 years since the original hockey stick publication, independent studies again and again have overwhelmingly reaffirmed our findings, including the key conclusion: recent warming is unprecedented over at least the past millennium. The highest scientific body in the U.S., the National Academy of Sciences, affirmed our findings in an exhaustive independent review published in June 2006. Dozens of groups of scientists have independently reproduced, confirmed and extended our findings, including a team of nearly 80 scientists from around the world who in 2013 published their finding in the premier journal Nature Geoscience that recent warmth is unprecedented in at least the past 1,400 years.

The latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the most authoritative and exhaustive assessment of climate science on the planet, concluded recent warmth is likely unprecedented over an even longer time frame than we had concluded. There is tentative evidence, in fact, that the current warming spike is unprecedented in tens of thousands of years.

Of course, the hockey stick is only one of numerous lines of evidence that have led the world’s scientists to conclude climate change is (a) real, (b) caused by burning fossil fuels, along with other human activities and (c) a grave threat if we do nothing about it. There is no legitimate scientific debate on those points, despite the ongoing effort by some people and groups to convince the public otherwise.

Distinguished Professor Dr Michael Mann, writing in Sci Am.

From <https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/earth-day-and-the-hockey-stick-a-singular-message/>

It’s almost 20 years since the publication of the first hockey stick paper (Mann, Bradley & Hughes 1998). In case people don’t know, the hockey stick refers to millenial temperature reconstructions that look a bit like a hockey stick; a period of centuries during which temperatures appear reasonably flat, or cool slightly (the shaft), followed by a period of rapid warming starting in the mid-1800s (the blade). This rise also began at around the same time as we started using fossil fuels, providing evidence that our use of fossil fuels could be impacting our climate. The first reconstruction (MBH98) was Northern Hemisphere, relied mainly on tree-rings, and went back about 600 years. Later reconstructions are multi-proxy, global and extend back as far as 2000 years.

The hockey stick is rather iconic in the climate debate, with some going so far as to claim that it’s been debunked (it hasn’t) and others suggesting all sorts of nefarious intent. Michael Mann, one of the authors of the original hockey stick paper, has written a nice article about what’s happened since publishing the first paper, and about the need to speak out.

Of course, our understanding of millenial temperatures has improved greatly. The reconstructions extend further back than they did originally. The analysis methods have improved, so we have more confidence in the results. We can use many different proxies to reconstruct these temperatures, so have better spatial and temporal resolution. This allows for an improved understanding of variability and of the role of both internal and external perturbations. However, the big picture has changed little. A warm period about 1000 years ago, typically referred to as the Medieval Warm Period, a general cooling towards what is referred to as the Little Ice Age, and then the modern warm period, that appears unprecedented in the last 1000 years, or so.

ATTP.

From <https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/>

Apr 24, 2018 at 3:30 PM | Phil Clarke

How many Climate Scientists are prepared to confirm that they believe everything in that statement by Mann, and have full faith in the integrity of hi Hockey Stick?

Phil Clarke refused
Entropic Man refused
aTTP refused

hardly 97% confidence in the Consensus on the settled science

The Big Lie.
========

Heh, it's not the blade at the end, rather the straightness of the shaft. And that has not been very well reproduced in subsequent studies. But you know that, Phil; it's been pointed out repeatedly, you are bright enough to understand it, and yet you pretend not to do so. Transparent.

I doubt that the lack of adequate knowledge of paleo-climate led the alarmists into the trap, rather I suspect that overconfidence in the reliability of the climate models did; nonetheless, trapped they are. That the hockey stick had to be faked up is some evidence that they knew they didn't have a good handle on paleo-climate. Heh, their mothers must have held them by the heels to dip them in the protective cauldron of narrative.
================================

And you Kim, one hopes, are bright enough to understand error bars.

But I could be wrong.

They didn't understand nature, and bet that they did. Too bad they weren't the only ones damaged by losing the bet.
=====================================

Not sure anyone will place any great faith in Kim 'we are cooling', when it comes to understanding nature.

But hey, so it goes.

Apr 24, 2018 at 10:23 PM | Phil Clarke

You are not confident that Mann and his Hockey Stick will stand up in Court. Nor is Mann. But it was Peer Reviewed and accepted by the IPCC.

Should Trump disregard 97% of US funded Climate Science including the IPCC? Harvey et al (Peer Reviewed) is a handy reference guide .

"The highest scientific body in the U.S., the National Academy of Sciences, affirmed our findings in an exhaustive independent review published in June 2006. Dozens of groups of scientists have independently reproduced, confirmed and extended our findings, including a team of nearly 80 scientists from around the world who in 2013 published their finding in the premier journal Nature Geoscience that recent warmth is unprecedented in at least the past 1,400 years."
Apr 24, 2018 at 3:30 PM | Phil Clarke

Can this data really be produced now?

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/04/24/epa-to-end-secret-science-with-new-transparency-law/

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt signed a proposed rule on Tuesday to prevent the agency from relying on scientific studies that don’t publish the underlying data.

“The era of secret science at EPA is coming to an end,” Pruitt said in a statement. “The ability to test, authenticate, and reproduce scientific findings is vital for the integrity of rulemaking process.”

Mann won't have to keep delaying his Court Case, he can simply send all of his evidence, plus all the corroborating evidence for all of his corroborating evidence straight to the EPA, so Pruitt can have it Competently Reviewed.

Mann can also explain his understanding of ERROR BARS.

https://climateaudit.org/2018/04/24/the-impact-of-recent-forcing-and-ocean-heat-uptake-data-on-estimates-of-climate-sensitivity/

Ah! The Beatles.

The best things in life are free
But you can keep 'em for the birds and bees

Now give me money (that's what I want)
That's what I want (that's what I want)
That's what I want (that's what I want) yeah
That's what I want

Your loving give me a thrill,
But your loving don't pay my bills

Now give me money (that's what I want)
That's what I want (that's what I want)
That's what I want (that's what I want) yeah
That's what I want

Money don't get everything it's true
What it don't get I can't use

Now give me money (that's what I want)
That's what I want (that's what I want)
That's what I want (that's what I want) yeah
That's what I want

Well, now give me money (that's what I want)
Whole lot of money (that's what I want)
Whoah yeah, I wanna be free (that's what I want)
Oh, money (that's what I want)
That's what I want, yeah (that's what I want)
That's what I want

Well, now give me money (that's what I want)
Whole lot of money (that's what I want, whoo)
Whoah, yeah, you know I need money (that's what I want)
Now give me money (that's what I want, whoo)
That's what I want, yeah (that's what I want)
That's what I want

Did official climatology know its predictions were nonsense?

clipe

SOME of them MUST have known. It would be unfair if the blame wasn't shared.

Follow the money? Or to be more efficient, follow the US Taxpayer's Money. When they are allowed to work to protect the US Constitution and Taxpayers interests, AND have Presidential support, US Law Enforcement can be ruthlessly efficient.

For the Legal Record, this latest emission by Mann could prove toxic. He reiterates his claims that he is right, and has overwhelming support. John Cook now works in the US.

https://www.climatechangecommunication.org/portfolio-view/john-cook/

"John Cook is a research assistant professor at the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University, researching cognitive science. In 2007, he founded Skeptical Science, a website which won the 2011 Australian Museum Eureka Prize for the Advancement of Climate Change Knowledge and 2016 Friend of the Planet Award from the National Center for Science Education. John co-authored the college textbooks Climate Change: Examining the Facts with Weber State University professor Daniel Bedford. He was also a coauthor of the textbook Climate Change Science: A Modern Synthesis and the book Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand. In 2013, he published a paper analysing the scientific consensus on climate change that has been highlighted by President Obama and UK Prime Minister David Cameron. In 2015, he developed a Massive Open Online Course at the University of Queensland on climate science denial, that has received over 25,000 enrollments.

John earned his PhD in Cognitive Science at the University of Western Australia in 2016."

Does anyone know how many percent John Cook scored in his PhD in Cognitive Science?

US Law Enforcement might need some accommodation at George Mason University.

Monkers is bonkers.

HTH.

https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/09/29/the-letter-they-tried-to-hide/

The letter was addressed to President Obama, Loretta Lynch and John Holdren.

It was from Shukla, at George Mason University and others.

Here you go

The original northern hemisphere hockey stick graph of Mann, Bradley & Hughes 1999, smoothed curve shown in blue with its uncertainty range in light blue, overlaid with green dots showing the 30-year global average of the PAGES 2k Consortium 2013 reconstruction. The red curve shows measured global mean temperature, according to HadCRUT4 data from 1850 to 2013.

Monkers is bonkers.
HTH.
Apr 25, 2018 at 9:18 AM | Phil Clarke

Can you back that up with evidence?

Climate Science was very confident that "EXXON Knew" They lost. Monckton helped
Monckton is confident that Clmate Science knew their theories were wrong. Are you helping?

Gergis was paid to support Mann. Gergis was paid to support PAGES2K. You claim PAGES2K supports Mann.

Climate Science's Circular Firing Squad takes another few steps forward.

If Mann is so right and such a paragon of virtue - why hasn't he hammered the uppity liar Mark Steyn into the ground like the wooden tent peg that he is …

Well, I am no lawyer, but it seems to me a libel case is as much about what the defendant knew or believed at the time, as about the merits of the science. Mann is a public figure and so has to prove 'actual malice' and 'reckless disregard for the truth', which could be a high bar, I believe one defence could be simply that the defendant was just expressing an opinion he believed to be true.

But IANAL. Seems nuts that the case has taken years, and still has no court date, AFAIK.

Reasonable summary in the Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/12/22/making-defamation-law-great-again-michael-manns-suit-may-continue/

Reasonable summary in the Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/12/22/making-defamation-law-great-again-michael-manns-suit-may-continue/

Apr 25, 2018 at 1:46 PM | Phil Clarke

How do YOU know if it is a "reasonable" summary? When it comes to judging Climate Science, The Washington Post has not been reliable. The article dates from Dec 2016, and Climate Science has further retarded since.

Phil Clarke, Climate Models have failed to fabricate anything to match Mann. Planet Earth does not care for Climate Science either. Blame the Climate Scientists for Peer Reviewing each other.

"It is highly satisfying to see that climate modelers are now taking the quality checks of their models seriously. For the time before the Little Ice Age, the models unfortunately have practically no skill at all. With the effective use of quality checks, this quickly becomes clear."
http://notrickszone.com/#sthash.6XTzk7U4.nxE5MQZn.dpbs

Can you back that [Monkers is bonkers] up with evidence?

Well, once a year and every year from 2008-2013 Lord Monckton filed a patent for a 'Therapeutic Treatment' that will cure the common cold, flu, HIV and Multiple Sclerosis, inter alia. Every single application was allowed to elapse after a year, just before he would have had to pay the fees to proceed with the patent, but the serial applications meant His Lordship could claim 'patent pending …. '

Then there are his delusional claims to be a member of the House of Lords.

And, since 2006 he has made regular claims to have found a fatal flaw the mainstream climate science, somehow overlooked by all the professionals working in the field. For example he claimed global warming was due to global brightening - an observed decrease in cloud cover - and cited the work of Dr Rachel Pinker, and carried on doing so long after she pointed out he had misunderstood and missapplied her paper. Indeed, on examination, each of Monckton's claims has been found to be full of errors.

The most recent flaw identified by the peer is that climate science has made a 'gross error' in ignoring feedback from the emission temperature. This is obvious nonsense; the ET is unvarying, it makes no sense to talk of feedback to an unchanging quantity. However …

Some months ago, an outline of our result was sent – behind our backs – to a university long known for its unswerving adherence to the totalitarian Party Line on the climate question, and, indeed, on all questions. There is no Conservative Association on campus, not because there are no supporters of HM Government there, but because the “societies officer” at the students’ union has the right to decide what political societies may and may not be represented on campus, and he has deemed the nation’s governing party to be insufficiently totalitarian to provide a “safe space” for snowflake students. He has banned its supporters at the university from forming any association, holding meetings on or off campus or distributing party materials.

Freedom of speech, thought and political association, once guaranteed by Magna Carta, have been silently, stealthily taken away. How the snowflakes will blub when they learn of our result.

The vice-chancellor, on hearing of our result and on realizing that, when it is eventually published, it will cost the university hundreds of millions a year, summoned a meeting of the entire environmental-sciences faculty and yelled at them: “Monckton’s paper is a catastrophe for us.” He hollered at them that they should drop everything else they were doing and work full-time on trying to refute our result. Some weeks later, postgraduate students went on strike because the faculty were so busy trying to please the vice-chancellor by refuting the irrefutable that they were no longer providing the personal supervision that the postgrads were contractually entitled to expect.

Now I am going to stick my neck out and assert that none of the above actually occurred in the real world. (By the way Google tells me the images attached to the WUWT piece, of the University according to the captions, are actually of the German Finance Ministry and Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang. Some recherché joke, no doubt.)

By the way, the recent Nic Lewis paper on ECS also makes Monckton's 'gross error', so if you are a fan of that paper then logically you must dismiss Monckton's latest claim. They cannot both be right.

Personally, I think the claim is utter balony and the man himself entertaining, in a bonkers kind of a way. What do you think Clipe? After all, you linked to the article….

'We are cooling folks, for how long even kim doesn't know.

Well, certainly since the Holocene Optimum, and we'll not rise above that before re-glaciation.

But we may well be cooling now, and throughout the 20 year term of the Piltdown Mann's Crook't Stick. We don't know enough about the temperatures of the ocean to tell. Reliance upon temperatures in the atmosphere, which holds so little heat comparatively, is fraught with danger.
==========

Logically then, we must know temperatures 6-9,000 years ago with greater accuracy than we do present day sea temperatures. Yes, that makes perfect sense.

In summary, the mid-Holocene, roughly 6,000 years ago, was generally warmer than today during summer in the Northern Hemisphere. In some locations, this could be true for winter as well. Moreover, we clearly know the cause of this natural warming, and we know without doubt that this proven "astronomical" climate forcing mechanism cannot be responsible for the warming over the last 100 years.

US NOAA