The original authors of the famous hockey stick graph have taken another look at the reconstruction of temperatures over the past thousand years. The best summary of the new findings (and how they relate to both the old paper and the controversy) is at Real Climate. More links at the end of this post.
One journalist who didn’t connect the HS with its history was (thanks to the Knight Science Tracker) Louise Gray, the environment correspondent of the Telegraph. In many ways it’s, for whatever reasons the history is omitted, refreshing to read a story of this reconstruction that is not mired in a stifling debate.
Gray does quote Michael Mann on the tree ring controversy:
“Some have argued that tree-ring data is unacceptable for this type of study,” said Michael Mann, who led the research team at Penn State’s Earth System Science Center. “Now we can eliminate tree rings and still have enough data from other so-called ‘proxies’ to derive a long-term Northern Hemisphere temperature record.”
But there’s no mention of the previous paper or the McIntyre criticisms and the papers that it spawned. Why not? Compare to the BBC’s lead with the history. Climate Audit is already critiqueing the proxies used by Mann et al (proxies are the ‘stand-ins’ for actually having records of temperature which are used in the reconstructions, the same way they drill for ice cores and take temperatures from these on the differences in composition of ice at different levels). Interestingly, not much on the supporting blogs around Climate Science yet.
I can’t see Charles Clover (the Telegraph’s Environment Editor) having written it in the same way as Louise Gray. (I know he’s written about it, because I’ve got the articles in a box, and they’re also on Google, but the links to the Telegraph are broken.)
What I can’t see him writing about, either, are the Climate Change talks in Accra, Ghana, that took place from 21-27 August. These are the warm-up negotiations for first Poznan, Poland, and then Copenhagen at the end of 2009, when the ‘son of Kyoto’ treaty with which the world will combat climate change at the international level will be agreed (or not).
These are critical formative negotiations. In the UK press, there was one mention, in the Guardian at the beginning of the talks:
The single article in the UK press (all press, regional and local) covering the talks. This is similar to coverage of the Bonn talks before. It’s not as if the wires were not covering the event, either: Reuters, for example, were putting out a number of stories, including this one, as to how to make the event run more efficiently. The coverage was left to the NGOs, such as Friends of the Earth, and the UN itself.
In an interview I conducted with Fred Pearce, New Scientist contributor and freelance author, who has been covering climate change for twenty years, Fred told me:
Negotiations are more fluid now. But there was no coverage [of these more minor negotiations] because it’s just too low a level. With an incremental policy process like this, you just can’t, and don’t want to, cover everything. Journalists will go to the annual meetings because that’s where the ministers show up—the journalists will show up when the ministers show up, not when they send the junior or middle-grade negotiators to do the work, because that’s when the big stuff happens, when the politicians are there to make the deals. I didn’t cover Bonn; I kept track of it, but no, it wasn’t something you could cover.
In many ways this makes sense, and is reiterated by jounalists across the industry who are covering climate change. Lewis Smith at the Times: “You can’t bore them, readers, or they just won’t engage.” And even Yvo de Boer, head of the climate talks for the UN, admitted that the success of the Accra talks had been in “providing the basis for real negotiations to begin in Poznań.” Which fully justifies Pearce and Smith; do the public want to hear about pre-real negotiations? And if they do, won’t it turn them off just when public support really needs to find some critical mass?
It depends on what your idea of ‘real’ negotiations are. If the UN’s remit to “compile proposals made so far and to be made in the coming weeks” in preparation for Poznan don’t amount to much, then what have the talks been for? The formative ideas are critical in shaping the later ideas, regardless of whether the ministers or ‘real’ negotiators are there. As Yvo de Boer says in the above video, the first draft will be on the table at the beginning of Poznan. So isn’t what goes forward to Poznan immensely world-changing if it forms the basis for negotiation? The ingredients we start with are what will make the cake, so to speak. At least to some degree. However, the question about media coverage hangs on what the public need to know. Pearce on this is both blunt and sensible:
At one level the public are pretty shrewd; they can sniff out lies and self-interest, and if they want a change then they can act on it. But regarding climate change, you can’t expect people to follow it in detail. You just can’t expect that. And I think given half-a-chance the public want something done on climate change, and they would reach some agreement, and that’s all you can expect. The public are entitled to turn round to the policy-makers and say “you go and sort it out” and come up with some half-way decent, reasonable answer to the whole thing. That’s how democracy is supposed to happen.
All of which I agree with. But when the politicians continue to fail to ‘sort it out’ as Zac Goldsmith argues today, that’s where, I believe, even at these formative discussions, coverage might turn up something important.
New hockey stick paper links
- Real Climate’s ‘what was needed’ in a new paleo-climate paper (a few months back)
- The paper, published in PNAS
- Link to data and code
And a couple of new blogs I came across, through reading the comments:
- Chris Colose (this one on is fairly mathematical)
- Western Strand (mainly Swedish, but also with some imp. English translations)
- Dan Bloom writing on Rush PR News
Popularity: 3% [?]
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You should know what Mann never mentions the words “McIntyre” or “McKitrick” and never quotes any of their works or papers.
Its the academic version of someone sticking their fingers in their ears and shouting “La la la! I can’t hear you!”