Review of Chapter 1, The Hockey Stick Illusion by A. W. Montford

In an attempt to see both sides of the debate in the question of human caused climate change, I am starting to read this book: The Hockey Stick Illusion: Climategate and the Corruption of Science (Independent Minds) by Andrew Montford

 As I read it, I will give a chapter by chapter review comprising quotes and commentary. So, if this is an area of interest, keep a watch.

My primary purpose in reading and reviewing this book is to critically assess the arguments against the theory that humans are the primary cause of climate change over the past 100 years. Since this book is often cited as the primary and best case against the status quo among climate researchers, I chose to read it.

That this is the best case against human caused climate change seems somewhat surprising, in that the author is not a trained climate researcher. In fact, he only has an undergraduate degree in chemistry, and is a chartered accountant in the UK. His entire qualification that gives him credence is that he has followed the controversy and written on it extensively. Since he has apparently not written anything in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, he does not seem to be very well qualified to enter the debate. Still, since his work is so often cited by climate change critics in their defense, I will try and keep an open mind.

All material quoted from the book is in italics. My comments are in plain text in brackets.

The conference was instructed to review the state of knowledge of climatic change and variability, due both to natural and anthropogenic causes, and also to assess what this meant for humankind. In the way that bureaucracies sometimes do, however, the scientists actually did something slightly but tellingly different to what they had been asked to do. Rather than simply assess the state of scientific knowledge and consider what might happen in the future, they set out the steps they thought policy makers should take in a ‘Call to Nations’ that was issued at the end of the conference. This statement called for full advantage to be taken of man’s knowledge of climate, for steps to be taken to improve that knowledge, and for potential manmade changes to climate to be foreseen and prevented. This then was not merely a call for more research, but also a demand for a particular policy outcome – prevention rather than adaptation. One can almost detect the germ of a idea forming in the minds of the scientists and bureaucrats assembled in Geneva: here, potentially, was a source of funding and influence without end. Where might it lead?

[Right at the outset Montford is already assuming the motives of the climate research community is greed. Not a good sign of objectivity. Climate research will not stand to gain more by finding human activity as a major contributor to climate change. In fact, if they really wanted to maximize the money they could get, they should keep calling for more study because their results are so uncertain. Nudging society to assess the sociological and economic consequences of climate change would hardly seem like a way to get more funds. In fact, it would more likely dilute what funds they were getting, because policy studies would require funds too, and climate scientists themselves would not be the one to reap those “benefits.”]

The exact origins of the chart presented by the IPCC were, at the time, obscure; rather strangely, the report did not contain a citation or other indication of its authorship. Although it appeared to be a schematic or cartoon rather than a proper graph, it must have had some basis in scientific research, but quite what this basis was not discovered until many years later when it was shown to be derived from the work of a British climatologist called Hubert Lamb.8 Lamb, while an important scientist, was born in 1913 and the chart turns out to have been based on work he did in the 1960s. The relative antiquity of this climate history might explain the reluctance of the IPCC to explain its provenance. What was still more surprising was that Lamb’s work turned out to be largely based on the Central England Temperature Record, a long series of instrumental readings, which dated back to the mid-seventeenth century. In other words, the understanding of world climate history propagated to the public by the IPCC was based, not on any understanding of global climate, but on the records for just one part of England: an odd situation to say the least.

[This seems a really odd admission when on the very page in the IPCC report has the figure in question, there is a reference to Lamb (1988) when there is mention of the Medieval Warm Period. If Montford had bothered to simply look at that reference he would have found several figures by Lamb that are clearly the basis for the figure. He could also have simply contacted one of the authors of the chapter in question. One wonders why he, or some other climate contrarian didn’t just ask.]

A few months after Deming’s revelations about the fate of Huang’s paper, the second IPCC report picked up on the changing attitudes towards the Medieval Warm Period. The report’s authors noted that:

Based on the incomplete observations and paleoclimatic evidence available, it seems unlikely that global mean temperatures have increased by 1°C or more in a century at any time during the last 10,000 years.

and went on,

The limited available evidence from proxy climate indicators suggests that the 20th century global mean temperature is at least as warm as any other century since at least 1400 AD. Data prior to 1400 are too sparse to allow the reliable estimation of global mean temperature.

This represented a significant change in emphasis by the IPCC. The story in the FAR, of a pronounced Medieval Warm Period with temperatures exceeding modern ones, had been replaced by a new narrative, in which it was said that modern warmth was probably unprecedented – or at least as high as anything seen in the last six hundred years. And if anyone were to question how all the historical records of warm temperatures in the medieval period could be wrong, it was explained that these were a regional phenomenon and that overall, the globe appeared to have been no warmer back then than it was at present.

[Uh, not sure where to start here. The IPCC are being very candid and transparent here by saying that current temperatures (late 20^th century) are “at least as warm” as any other time after 1400. They could have easily been less equivocal, as the data were pretty strong that current temperatures were higher, but as scientists, they were typically being conservative in their conclusions. It also needs to be noted that they are not even commenting on how current temperatures relate to the Medieval Warm Period, as they felt the data for that period were too unreliable. Montford claims this is because the work of Huang (1997) had originally been rejected by Nature. Having a paper get rejected by Nature is no great accomplishment, it happens all the time. Thus, it is rather unfair to fault the IPCC 2^nd Report, released in 1995, for not taking into account data from a paper that was not actually published till 1997.]

What then of the findings? The abstract of the paper explained that Mann and his team had been able to reconstruct temperatures since the year 1400 and that recent temperatures were warmer than any other year since the start of their records. In the remainder of the paper, they went on to assess possible reasons for the dramatic change in temperatures by testing how the graph of their reconstruction correlated against possible causes (‘forcings’ in the jargon), such as atmospheric dust, solar irradiance and carbon dioxide. It will be no surprise to anyone that their conclusion was that the only potential culprit was carbon dioxide. The implications were once again clear: mankind was warming the globe. Here then was the beginning of the end of the process of getting rid of the Medieval Warm Period. All that was lacking was a degree of publicity, something that was to be dealt with in fairly short order, as we will see.

[Montford is confounding the argument. The IPCC made no judgments about the Medieval Warm Period, so how can they be blamed for getting rid of it? This is a dishonest way of telling the history of the hockey stick and the IPCC. I am pretty well acquainted with the reports over the years, and the Medieval Warm Period has n3ever been “done away with.” In fact, very little about it except for more accurate data than that of Lamb being applied to the phenomenon. All that aside, warming now is clearly unprecedented compared to the Medieval Warm Period. Also, a lot more study has gone into the causes of that period, since it does stand out as a unique phenomenon from the “recent” past. What Montford forgets to say is that the factors that are now assumed to have caused the Medieval Warm Period are not even present during the warming over the last 30 years. It seems that Montford hopes that just casting baseless doubt will cast doubt on the hockey stick itself.]

It was a startling change and it was this that made the Hockey Stick such an effective promotional tool, although to watching scientists, the remarkable thing about the Hockey Stick was not what was happening in the twentieth century portion – that temperatures were rising was clear from the instrumental record – but the long flat handle. The Medieval Warm Period had completely vanished. Even the previously acknowledged ‘regional effect’ now left no trace in the record. The conclusions were stark: current temperatures were unprecedented.

[Wow, way to mischaracterize the initial paper. The results remain as true now as they were then, and have been corroborated independently more than a dozen times. Also, as already noted, this paper did not do away with the Medieval Warm Period, it didn’t even cover the part of the record that included it.]

Interestingly, beneath the headline, much of the article was actually taken up with discussing doubts about the reliability of the study. One scientist quoted in the New York Times article wondered if it would ever be possible to get a temperature reconstruction that was reliable enough to tell if the current warming was unprecedented or not. Even Mann himself was quoted as saying that there was quite a bit of work to be done in reducing the uncertainties.

[Exactly, the scientists themselves were very conservative in their assessment of the meaning of their results, so why is Montford faulting them? He seems to be upset that the results were taken too seriously, and blames the scientists for a conspiracy. You can’t have it both ways. If they were part of a climate change conspiracy, why would they be so careful about stating their case too strongly. The media may have overstated the case, but you can hardly blame Mann and colleagues.]

Again, we can only stand back in admiration that someone who had published his PhD a matter of a year or so earlier could be invited to head the team writing one of the most critical chapters in one of the most important scientific reports written for decades. Mann had certainly made an impact in the climate world.

There was one major problem with the case for the Medieval Warm Period having been an insignificant regional phenomenon though. This was the paucity of hard data to support the case – the ‘limited available evidence’ referred to above. It was simple for critics to point out that any conclusions drawn from this data would have to be highly speculative at best. Climate science wanted big funding and big political action and that was going to require definitive evidence. In order to strengthen the arguments for the current warming being unprecedented, there was going to have to be a major study, presenting unimpeachable evidence that the Medieval Warm Period was a chimera.

[This paragraph betrays Montford’s lack of scientific literacy in two ways. Firstly, and most blatantly, he shows a complete lack of understanding about the way academia works. Although Mann’s rise in prestige and accomplishment was rapid, it was by no means unheard of. His rise is not due to some conspiracy that wants to elevate him for loyalty, as Montford seems to insinuate, he was just a very driven researcher, and he just happened to be working on the right stuff at the right time. Mann is also a good writer, a definite asset for someone who rises quickly through the ranks. The second thing that betrays his lack of scientific literacy may seem a bit nitpicky, but no scientist worth his salt would use the word “data” in a grammatically incorrect way. Data is a plural noun. Montford has treated the word in this paragraph as singular, i.e. “this data.” Maybe he just has a poor editor. If this is the only place where he does this I might be inclined to accept that, but I will be keeping my eyes open to see if he uses “data” correctly elsewhere in the book.]