What difference does it make anyway?

In the previous two post I looked at the original hockey stick and its very last incarnation. Both hockey stick shapes seemed to be artifacts of the methods used, not of the underlying data. But, you could say, “Even if this uptick doesn’t follow from the data in those two graphs, we measure surface temperatures more than a century and the way the temperatures go is up. If the hockey stick graph doesn’t tell the story, the measurement data surely do! So what difference does it make anyway?”.
I seen this remark popping up at several discussions. At first I was puzzled by such statements, but now I think it fails to take into account what is really at issue. Let’s look into it in more detail.

There are two data sets in play here. The first is the proxy data set, which consists of proxy data like tree rings (Mann’s hockey stick) or ocean sediment core data (Marcott’s hockey stick). The second set is the instrumental record which consists of temperature measurements with thermometers.

Proxy data is NOT real temperature data. Previously I assumed it was, because I knew that for example in a good year the rings of a tree will be wider than in a colder year. Although this is definitely true, it is also true that there are other influences on tree rings like moisture, nutrition, diseases, pests, competition with other plants/trees, interactions with wildlife, weather events and who know how many other elements that are important in the health of that tree. In that sense, the width of the tree ring is not only dependent on temperature, but also on these other influences. This means the temperature signal is diluted in the proxy data and not directly comparable with real temperature data. What could be said is that the conditions for that tree were better or worse during time, not necessarily that temperatures went up or down. This proxy data will consist of a temperature signal, but it will be noisy data (the temperature signal probably is a big part of it, not necessarily a constant part).

Thermometers on the other side have a very good temperature signal. When the temperature goes up, the substance they contain (alcohol, mercury, metal) will expand. When they cool, that substance will contract. The higher the temperature, the bigger the expansion. The lower the temperature, the bigger the contraction.
After the measurements, it becomes more complicated with issues like the UHI (Urban Heat Island) effect on the measurements and the further processing of this data (do they really are representative for global or Northern Hemisphere temperatures), but that is a different story altogether.

Another issue in this comparison is the resolution. For example, the Marcott hockey stick has a resolution of more than 300 years. The instrumental record has a resolution that is much higher and could be described with a resolution of one day. Even if we bring that to a year, even 10 or 20 years, it is a much higher resolution than the proxy data set. If the instrumental record data were somehow put behind the proxy data and treated the same way as the proxy data, it would been barely 1 (one) measly point and probably not even placed high in the graph either.

As far as I know, there is no dispute that the world has being warming since 160 years. Temperatures are being measured for some time now and although we are now in a flat-lined region, generally the trend since 1850 was upwards. But that is not what these two hockey stick graphs were trying to say here. The issue they want to prove is that the last century is unusually warm compared to previous eras. According to their statements it hasn’t happened in let’s say the last 1,000 (Mann’s hockey stick) or 11,300 years (the Marcott hockey stick) and therefor it has the human fingerprint all over (because of humans emitting more and more CO₂ into the atmosphere).

Let’s keep focus on what is really being said here. At issue in the hockey sticks is the uniqueness of the warming, not the fact that it warmed. We already know it warmed, but we don’t know if this didn’t happen before and the data given by these two studies are not sufficient to base that conclusion on. Even if it would have happened in the past, these methods will not be able to show this. When this uniqueness within the long time frame doesn’t follow from the data, it makes no sense to prove this with the incredibly short data set we have with the instrumental record.

Another issue that came to light with the Marcott paper: making the claim that the last 100 years are unprecedented (in the press release) and later saying the non-robustness of the last 100 years doesn’t matter because the instrumental record could well prove it (in the FAQ), is not really honest. The claim made was exactly about that non-robust data, when in reality the data of the graph was not saying much about the last 100 years, even seem to conclude that this data is useless for this current period. If the available evidence doesn’t support a claim, then one shouldn’t make that claim.

Returning from this to the initial question: what difference does the non-correctness of the last part of the hockey stick graphs make, because we know the earth has warmed the last 160 years anyway? As seen above, that is a false premise because that was not the thing that the hockey sticks wanted to prove anyway. But there is more to it than that and it was the statements about the Marcott paper that let me to notice this. The initial question diverts the attention from the strong statements that were made in the press. Just let me turn the question around: if the proxy data has to be tortured in order to get it into a hockey stick shape, how much signal of our current temperatures is there really in the proxy data set? To put it in other words: how much really is this an “independent” confirmation of our current temperatures anyway?

In the end, does it matter? For those who have read the papers, probably not. If they saw the articles in the press, they could put this into context. But it does matter for the laymen who only got to see the articles in the press and were yet again confirmed in their beliefs, without realizing that the papers themselves didn’t warrant those conclusions at all.

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