I thought about not posting this but there is some interesting points in it. There are very strong statements regarding the climate of climate science including blackmail, collusion and corruption. In his post, Zorita makes an open effort to separate certain scientists from the chaff and get rid of them while propping up others. This seems like a political move to me with all the nonsensical trappings that go along with politics. Still he openly admits to the broken nature of the scientific process and is one of the first scientists so far to do so.
For a short background from my perspective, Dr Zorita, co-authored a paper in 2004 which pointed out the loss in variance created by methods used in Michael Mann’s hockey stick as demonstrated in the hockey stick posts linked above. The VonStorch and Zorita paper had a mistake in replicating Mann’s results in that they did the math correctly whereas Mann had it wrong so they were in the odd situation of correcting a correct paper to make it match an incorrect paper. All that aside, they demonstrate that Mann’s hockey stick handles are mathematically inclined to be straight.
Today, Zorita has issued a statement regarding a few of the scientists involved. In the middle of it he oddly gives thanks to those who are directly responsible for the “hiding the decline data” so that is difficult to grasp. Since Keith Briffa’s hidden decline was not properly disclosed in the IPCC chapter, and efforts to show the decline by some were blocked by IPCC scientists, I cannot agree with his exculpatory statements about Briffa and Osborn. Perhaps it’s an effort to separate the worst and chuck them while saving the very poor quality and highly biased paleo chapter of the IPCC reports which he also off handedly compliments. I suppose it is his field though.
Here’s where Steve McIntyre tried to get the data shown and was rejected by IPCC authors in the same chapter Zorita speaks well of.
![showthedecline[1]](https://noconsensus.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/showthedecline1.gif?w=505&h=99)
Click to Expand
Junk is junk in my opinion, but then again I’m no polypaleoscienticianator ist.
Thanks to reader Alberto for providing the heads up. Alberto also points out that Zorita has done a post on Climate Audit in 2006. If you’re interested, you can get a perspective on his take of proxy papers.
———-
Why I think that Michael Mann, Phil Jones and Stefan Rahmstorf should be barred from the IPCC process
Eduardo Zorita, November 2009
Read the rest of this entry »