This latest news is just exactly as anyone who really read the Wegman report could have predicted. You can still read it in PDF form right here. That one report should have caused an absolute crisis of confidence and a scramble to reform themselves and make good on their commitment as researchers to be utterly honest to the data. Instead they obfuscated, pooh-pooh’d the report, yawned and said it was old news and moved on. I pretty much stopped taking the guys as “realclimate” seriously after that, and pretty much stopped taking seriously anyone who said that global warming was “proven science.”

This is a big mess that can’t be swept under the rug anymore. Too much of the supposed “science” behind global warming is simply garbage.

1) the original hockey stick with just the 12 cherry picked rings

2) one chart with ONLY the missing data

3) one combined chart with both the 12 cherry picked rings AND the missing data

This one has all three

The alternate collection of data from the same area produced the opposite direction during the calibration period. The Yamal trees appear to have been selected for matching the temperature data within the calibration period. That is no guarantee that they were temperature limited outside the calibration period. It’s outside the calaibration period where we care.

The biggest question that the historical reconstructions (including dendroclimatology) attempt to answer is how our current temperature compares with Medeival Warming Period (or if there was such a thing). The Yamal series does not provide a high quality answer to this question.

From what I understand, McIntyre actually replaced the original set of data with other points.

The political case is that the science is settled and there is no more debate. All the indicators point in the same direction and you’re a loon to suggest otherwise, Mr. Skeptic. With the bursting of one of the foundational papers, one that is relied on by a lot of others, the proper scientific response is to see:
1. Is it true.
2. How much does this foul up change the reliability of papers further on.
This is not what seems to be happening so far. Briffa’s response seems measured, if not exactly responsive. He demands methodology that he himself had been unwilling to provide for 7 years for his own work. Double standard much Dr. Briffa? Gavin’s response is snarky and mocking and completely unuseful in a scientific sense but great propaganda for the true believers.

If Briffa does fall, the scientific weight for AGW will change a bit but the political line of “the science is settled, there is consensus” will be decimated. This is why there is panic in the AGW camp because they’re worried much more about the politics. And that’s been the problem all along.

And we can name names, as for who gets the trillions: General Electric for one, who has been pushing AGW on its media outlets and lobbying fanatically for cap&trade for several years. If you want an honest-to-God example of a corporation pushing its requests for corporate welfare using its media outlets, GE and {C/MS}NBC are Exhibit A.

So much for the heroic narrative of starving, ragged scientists fighting The Good Fight against Big Oil and evil SUV-driving Americans.

The irony is I actually agree with much of what they’re pushing; we need to get beyond hydrocarbons, for numerous reasons that have nothing to do with glaciers or hockey sticks – and everything to do with telling the Saudis, Ahmadasahatter, and Der Hugofuehrer what to do with themselves and their oil.

But these goofballs are blowing any chance for reasoned policy discussions by turning it into a Cause, where you’re either one of the Elect of Gaia or you’re an evil tool of Big Oil.

In some ways, it is much worse than the famous stem cell fraud of 2006 . There, you had detectable, discreet fraud.

Here, you have an entire wave of bad, unscientific thinking affecting whole swaths ofthe population, and billions of dollars riding on the phony “green” revolution.

–HB

Actually, no they don’t. They give two proxies, and the surface record. Then they post a CO2 chart, which is irrelevant, then a chart of the name Gavin — haha, good one. Not.

Gavin’s just flailing around finding anything with a hockey stick, no matter how irrelevant, to the point of self-parody.

Meanwhile, there are dozens of proxies which do not show a hockey stick — including the full Yamal.

Furthermore, one doesn’t get to just say “Oh, sorry, some of our data was horribly flawed and probably handpicked — but hey, look at this other data over here!” and pretend the whole thing is a joke.

The article is also full of misattributions and smirky personal attacks on skeptics. Gavin Schmidt is not a scientist, he’s a propagandist and, frankly, a douchebag.