"You're bigoted against people whose families came from OK and AR"
I voted for a presidential candidate from Hope, Ark. I'm thinking about voting for his wife next year. If I don't it will be because she's too much of a corporatist war monger, not because she was the first lady of Arkansas.
OTH, here's an Okie...
Medieval Deception 2015: Inhofe Drags Senate Back To Dark Ages
On January 21, Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) again displayed the same deception/incompetence that pervaded his book, The Greatest Hoax (2012).
In this video segment (3:00-5:20), he presented a poster on the Senate floor that matches the image below from “Kyoto by Degrees,” an anonymous Wall Street Journal (WSJ) Opinion piece, June 21, 2005. Both contained claims plausibly called academic or journalistic deception, created for public confusion.
Regardless of ancient tempreatures, modern temperature rise is human-caused, not just natural variation: you damaged your furnace so it now ignores the thermostat. Heat varies erratically, room by room, and day by day, but each week the house is overall wamer than the last. Your attic Arctic fridge's ice cubes are melting and even the basement freezer is starting to struggle. The furnace will take months to fix, and you need to start, whether or not you believe rumors that some previous owner experienced warmer weather.
Following is the WSJ image Inhofe used without mentioning that source:
“ Trend in average” : Deception.
The original curve was sketched in 1965 by Hubert Lamb, who grafted estimates of 900-1680AD with 1680-1961AD measurements compiled by Gordon Manley. It covered a 21x34-mile patch of England.
“exactly as shown”: Falsification. false citation. Real science uses captions and caveats, ignored here by cherry-pickers who plucked the graph out of context and even altered the image.
“mean”: Fabrication. See below.
Lamb MWP curve never global, real science improvesThe attached 4-page excerpt from IPCC(1990) includes the real p.202 image in context, shown below for easy comparison with this altered version. Someone changed “Years before present” (sic) to “Year,” deleted (c), capitalized all words and converted sans-serif to serif font. The resulting image was copied along murky paths, including onto p.33 of Inhofe's Greatest Hoax book, where it is cited as “Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change, the IPCC Scientific Assessment 202 (1990). His story there is clearly refuted by IPCC's surrounding text pp.199-203. Perhaps he never read that.
 The real image was clearly captioned a schematic, i.e., a sketch. The 1990 scientists said the LIA was global, but they stated clear reservations about MWP as global and synchronous. IPCC(1992) had other curves, not this. By 1993 real reconstructions were being published, reservations had evolved into strong doubt, and leading experts explicitly disavowed the graph as anything broadly representative.
The dotted line “nominally represents” the start of the 20th century.
WSJ's “mean” was total fabrication to explain an unprovenanced image.
Jones, et al(2009) Appendix A, p.36 gave the long history behind Fig.7.1(c), and their p.34 Figure below is instructive. The blue line was an up-to-date Central England measured series. Lamb(1965, 1982) used rainfall and botanical information to estimate everything earlier (red), including all of the putative MWP. IPCC(1995) Fig.3.20, p.175 combined a much better 1993 reconstruction with modern measurements. It is good science to put both on a graph, clearly labeled, to compare overlaps, and it is done often. Inhofe(2012) p.32-33 fiercely denigrated Mann for it, while using a schematic that did the same thing, but with far less accuracy and no visual distinction. Lamb was clear in his texts, but obviously many people never read them. Even if his estimates were accurate … it is already now warmer in England, not that it actually matters to human causes of modern temperature rise.
Normal real science kept creating better approximations to reality. Reconstructing the past greatly helps scientists better understand climate processes and improve models, as per IPCC(1990), p.xxv. It helps bound climate sensitivity and improves insight into important regional variations. Regardless of 1000AD's temperatures, the human cause of modern warming is a fact, as per Stefan Rahmstorf or Gavin Schmidt. See also Skeptical Science list of commonly-repeated false memes, #2 (Climate's changed before), #18 (The hockey stick is broken), #56 (Medieval Warm Period was warmer). Actually, humans may well have been altering climate for thousands of years, as per Bill Ruddiman, but we are certainly doing it much faster now.
False narratives to be exposed in detailOver the same decades, climate deniers created a false narrative, often based around variants of this graph, 25 years after IPCC(1990) or 50 years after Lamb(1965), or as William Connolley calls it, Adoration of the Lamb.
This post starts a series (hashtag #MedievalDeception) to expose the decades of abuse of this graph, starting with Richard Lindzen (1991), John Daly (2001), Fred Singer and Dennis Avery (2007), Steven McIntyre and Ross McKitrick (2005, at least 3 times), Edward Wegman and Yasmin Said (2006), Andrew Montford (2010), and many others.
Even as they usually got the curve correct, the not-quite-right images are almost certainly false citations or misrepresentations, depending on the claims. Either they had no IPCC(1990) to copy, or they did and altered it, but ignored and thus misrepresented the surrounding text. For some, cherry-picking text or graphs seems a way of life, but it is not science.
John Daly(2001) even cited the same image as WSJ, but as IPCC(1995). So did McIntyre and McKitrick(2005, 3 times), showing none had either IPCC report. The latter's false 1995 date helped make a never-supported tale by David Deming(2005) slightly less silly, later involving Inhofe. Fred Singer and Dennis Avery(2007) invented a nonexistent IPCC(1995) Fig 22, copied but unattributed in books by Ralph B. Alexander(2009) and Steve Goreham(2010, 2013). This process illustrates the intellectual bankruptcy of pseudoskeptics who eagerly seek and repeat unchecked falsehoods that confirm their views. That brings us back to Inhofe's talk for a few more examples of such behavior.
More examples from Inhofe Senate Video03:20 Discusses hockey-stick, says “what they forgot was to put these two things (MWP and LIA) in the hockey stick, supposed to be level.” False.The hockey stick in Mann, Bradley and Hughes(1999) has a sloping regression line from warmer around 1000AD to cooler during LIA. It is not and never has been level, despite the false horizontal line on the cover of The Hockey Stick Illusion. There is good evidence for a warm MWP in a few areas, especially around the North Atlantic, a small fraction of Earth. Credible reconstructions of large areas usually show modest MWPs, unlike the Lamb(1965) curve. Conspiracy theorists not only cling to that curve, but decry any scientific progress as a plot to hide the truth. Anyone who actually studies IPCC(1990, 1992, 1995, 2001, 2007, 2013) knows better.
03:33 “Medieval Warming Period between 1000 and 1500. … left off the charts.” False. The hockey stick covered the Northern Hemisphere, rather more than Lamb's 1965 estimations for the rectangle below. Larger areas vary less quickly, because some local temperature changes are caused by ocean oscillations that just move heat around, warming and cooling different areas.
04:00 “This actually is IPCC's chart. …” False. This was WSJ's chart, they certainly did not scan it from IPCC(1990), and it likely passed through someone who couldn't recall where he got it, as will be seen later in this series. Inhofe made this long-obsolete, dubiously-provenanced graph the centerpiece of his Senate talk.
04:05 “They're (IPCC) the ones who dreamed up this whole idea.” False. Lamb considered the MWP issue decades earlier. I think Lamb(1965) was heroic work, and I own a copy of Lamb(1982), but I'd guess few deniers have studied either. Inhofe and many others have seriously misrepresented the work of this fine scientist, who was quite clear his curve described a small area of England. He may have thought the MWP to be more widespread, but was careful to report counter-examples to a global synchronous MWP. and explain how much was then unknown. Perhaps may be an accident of England's N. Atlantic location and leading early role in climate research.
Area for Central England Temperature series, the longest measured series in the world, but no earlier than 1659 at best. Gordon Manley updated this series for years.
Improved reconstruction of the world's temperature is a great scientific detective story. It is hard work by thousands.
It is much easier to invent deceptive stories.
The Lamb curve is a flat-Earth map, but some cling to it, without ever reading IPCC(1990) pp.199-203.Some actually cite p.202, but perhaps they copied the citation without reading it.
Even with acknowledged Medieval warmth around the North Atlantic, Vikings in Greenland and grapes in England (but not as far North as today), this rectangle is not the world or even the Northern Hemisphere, no matter what some Senators think. Why would Senator Inhofe spend so much time on this deception? Why does he promote an ill-informed anonymous WSJOpinion as though it were science? Why might he not want your furnace back in control, using less fuel?
Perhaps a hint is found at OpenSecrets' James Inhofe Career Funding:
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