<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1">
<title></title>
</head>
<body text="#000000" bgcolor="#ffffff">
Interesting WSJ editorial today, apropos of recent discussion of the
politics of science. By way of disclosure, I am highly skeptical of
global warming but still open minded enough to dialog and learn. <br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110006314">http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110006314</a><br>
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2"><font
face="Garamond, Times" size="5"><b>Hockey Stick on Ice</b></font>
<br>
<font face="Garamond, Times" size="4">Politicizing the science of
global warming.</font>
<br>
<font face="Verdana, Times" size="2"><br>
<i>Friday, February 18, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST</i>
</font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2"><font
face="Verdana, Times" size="2">On
Wednesday National Hockey League Commissioner Gary Bettman canceled the
season, and we guess that's a loss. But this week also brought news of
something else that's been put on ice. We're talking about the "hockey
stick."</font></font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2"><font
face="Verdana, Times" size="2">Just
so we're clear, this hockey stick isn't a sports implement; it's a
scientific graph. Back in the late 1990s, American geoscientist Michael
Mann published a chart that purported to show average surface
temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere over the past 1,000 years. The
chart showed relatively minor fluctuations in temperature over the
first 900 years, then a sharp and continuous rise over the past
century, giving it a hockey-stick shape.</font></font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2"><font
face="Verdana, Times" size="2">Mr.
Mann's chart was both a scientific and political sensation. It
contradicted a body of scientific work suggesting a warm period early
in the second millennium, followed by a "Little Ice Age" starting in
the 14th century. It also provided some visually arresting scientific
support for the contention that fossil-fuel emissions were the cause of
higher temperatures. Little wonder, then, that Mr. Mann's hockey stick
appears five times in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's
landmark 2001 report on global warming, which paved the way to this
week's global ratification--sans the U.S., Australia and China--of the
Kyoto Protocol.</font></font></p>
<p></p>
<p align="center"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2"><font
face="Verdana, Times" size="2"><img
src="cid:part1.07020407.02040900@solution-consulting.com" alt=""
width="88" height="6" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0" align="middle"></font></font></p>
<p></p>
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2"><font
face="Verdana, Times" size="2">Yet
there were doubts about Mr. Mann's methods and analysis from the start.
In 1998, Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian
Center for Astrophysics published a paper in the journal Climate
Research, arguing that there really had been a Medieval warm period.
The result: Messrs. Soon and Baliunas were treated as heretics and six
editors at Climate Research were made to resign.</font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2"><font
face="Verdana, Times" size="2">Still,
questions persisted. In 2003, Stephen McIntyre, a Toronto minerals
consultant and amateur mathematician, and Ross McKitrick, an economist
at Canada's University of Guelph, jointly published a critique of the
hockey stick analysis. Their conclusion: Mr. Mann's work was riddled
with "collation errors, unjustifiable truncations of extrapolation of
source data, obsolete data, geographical location errors, incorrect
calculations of principal components, and other quality control
defects." Once these were corrected, the Medieval warm period showed up
again in the data. </font></font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2"><font
face="Verdana, Times" size="2">This
should have produced a healthy scientific debate. Instead, as the
Journal's Antonio Regalado reported Monday, Mr. Mann tried to shut down
debate by refusing to disclose the mathematical algorithm by which he
arrived at his conclusions. All the same, Mr. Mann was forced to
publish a retraction of some of his initial data, and doubts about his
statistical methods have since grown. Statistician Francis Zwiers of
Environment Canada (a government agency) notes that Mr. Mann's method
"preferentially produces hockey sticks when there are none in the
data." Other reputable scientists such as Berkeley's Richard Muller and
Hans von Storch of Germany's GKSS Center essentially agree.</font></font></p>
<p></p>
<p align="center"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2"><font
face="Verdana, Times" size="2"><img
src="cid:part1.07020407.02040900@solution-consulting.com" alt=""
width="88" height="6" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0" align="middle"></font></font></p>
<p></p>
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2"><font
face="Verdana, Times" size="2">We
realize this may all seem like so much academic nonsense. Yet if there
really was a Medieval warm period (we draw no conclusions), it would
cast some doubt on the contention that our SUVs and air conditioners,
rather than natural causes, are to blame for apparent global warming.</font></font>
<p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2"><font
face="Verdana, Times" size="2">There
is also the not-so-small matter of the politicization of science: If
climate scientists feel their careers might be put at risk by
questioning some orthodoxy, the inevitable result will be bad science.
It says something that it took two non-climate scientists to bring Mr.
Mann's errors to light.</font></font></p>
<p><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2"><font
face="Verdana, Times" size="2">But
the important point is this: The world is being lobbied to place a huge
economic bet--as much as $150 billion a year--on the notion that
man-made global warming is real. Businesses are gearing up, at
considerable cost, to deal with a new regulatory environment; complex
carbon-trading schemes are in the making. Shouldn't everyone look very
carefully, and honestly, at the science before we jump off this
particular cliff?</font></font></p>
<br>
</body>
</html>