Climate Depot
The Washington Post is touting a
new study purporting to show an Arctic temperature "Hockey Stick." But the study appears to contradict numerous previous Arctic studies and scientists are already challenging the premise and claims of the new study. The study in under fire for basing key results and conclusions on Penn State Professor Michael Mann's
discredited "Hockey Stick" temperature graph. (Editor's Note: Mann just recently attempted to invent a
hurricane "Hockey Stick" as well. )
The new study claims to show "human-generated greenhouse gas emissions have helped reverse a 2,000-year trend of cooling in the Arctic, prompting warmer average temperatures in the past decade that now rank higher than at any time since 1 B.C.," according to a
September 3, 2009 article by the Washington Post's Juliet Eilperin. The study will appear in the September 3, 2009 online version of the journal Science. The lead author was Northern Arizona University professor Darrell S. Kaufman.
The Washington Post also saw fit to gave prominent play to the environmental group World Wildlife Fund's new dire Arctic study claiming a scary global warming caused "transformation" of the Arctic. The Post article on the new Arctic "Hockey Stick" completely glossed over
years of contrary data and instead mostly gave the authors a scrutiny free ride. (Eilperin also misspelled the name of one scientist she quoted.)
MIT climate scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen told
Climate Depot, "This looks like this week's "Hockey Stick" including many of Mann's collaborators." [
Editor's Note: Mann's has attempted multiple "Hockey Stick" inventions and his newest creation is the Hurricane "Hockey Stick.".]
'Closely matches the Mann version'
Climate data analyst Steve McIntyre who publishes
Climate Audit and is known for his research discrediting Mann's original "Hockey Stick" temperature graph, weighed in on the new Arctic study. "Amusingly, the [Arctic study's lead author] Kaufman Team perpetuates Mann's upside down use of the Tiljander proxy," McIntyre
wrote on September 3, 2009. "You can readily see that this closely matches the Mann version," McIntyre noted. "The most cursory examination [of the study] shows the usual problem of seemingly biased picking of proxies without any attempt to reconcile proxy conflicts," McIntryre wrote.
'Several things wrong'
Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Fred Singer, former director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service, also critiqued the study, telling
Climate Depot, "There are several things wrong with this paper."
"The study's Abstract mentions the [warm] 'Middle Ages' and the [cold] 'Little Ice Age.' Both are well established; for example, C
. Loehle (and many other researchers) show the Medieval Warm Period with higher temperatures than even the past 30 years. But Fig 3 of this paper doesn't show these; it goes back to the discredited 'Hockey-Stick' temp curve of Mann (which even the IPCC no longer uses) that shows no Medieval Warm Period (MWP) or Little Ice Age (LIA)," Singer said. [
Editor's Note: In addition, a 2006 peer-reviewed analysis showed the 20th century was not unusually warm.]
Singer also noted, "Actual thermometer data (Polyakov et al) are available for the 20th century; there is no need for indirect proxy data. They show the warmest years in the Arctic around 1935. This can also seen clearly in the CRUTEM data of their Fig 2 (black curve)."
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