Following in the footsteps of former Washington state climatologist Phil Mote and Stanford professor Stephen Schneider, another political-scientist is arguing that the release of the Climategate e-mails is much ado about nothing. Michael Mann, author of the "hockey stick" graph weighs in on what it means to use a "trick" to "hide the decline."
Specifically he addresses the e-mail from Phil Jones where we discusses using a "trick" to "hide the decline" in the temperatures projected by tree-ring data after 1960. Temperatures went up while the tree-ring data, on which the hockey stick projections are based, indicated that temperatures should go down. He writes in the Washington Post:
In the same e-mail, Jones uses the phrase "hide the decline" in reference to work by tree-ring expert Keith Briffa. Because tree-ring information has been found to correlate well with temperature readings, it is used to plot temperatures going back hundreds of years or more. Briffa described a phenomenon in which the density of wood exhibits an enigmatic decline in response to temperature after about 1960. This decline was the focus of Briffa's original article, and Briffa was clear that these data should not be used to represent temperatures after 1960. By saying "hide the decline," Jones meant that a diagram he was producing was not to show those data during the unreliable post-1960 period.
This is more of the semantic games we've experienced on this issue already. Mann argues that "tree-ring information has been found to correlate well with temperature readings" until about 1960. The divergence at that point is "enigmatic." What is interesting, however, is that Mann and others who parrot this line, don't explain why the data after 1960 is unreliable and should be ignored. The only indication that it is unreliable seems to be that it inconveniently deviates from what Briffa and Mann projected. Given a choice between empirical data and their theory, they chucked the data and kept the theory. This is the very antithesis of scientific inquiry.
Climate alarmists like Mote, Mann and others had two options when reacting to the Climategate e-mails. They could have expressed sincere disappointment, taken a step back and worked to ensure that there was an appropriate distance between science and politics. They chose the other option, to engage in a flurry of political and semantic contrivances in an effort to "hide the decline" of their own credibility. Those trying to understand the true meaning of the e-mails need only look at the highly political and misleading excuses made after-the-fact to determine whether the language in the documents were unfortunate misunderstandings or intentional efforts to hide and suppress inconvenient science.