In the end, it may not matter much as to why Briffa only selected 12. Even if he meant well or had what he thought was a valid reason to reject the evidence from the rest of the data sets. The fact of limiting to just some of the data from some of the 12 trees is suspect in itself. Let me explain with an example of weather extremes where I live.

I live in north Texas, about 60 miles generally north of Dallas. In March 2006, I was working in McKinney and we had a 100 F day, in spite of the general flat line of the Earth’s global temp. In March 2008, we had two snow blizzards in one week. Each one dumping 8 inches of snow. I have lived in Texas since 1974 and that is the first time I remember seeing that much snow in March. Neither event, in and of itself is a sign of warming or cooling, necessarily. But each should be added into the weather variations to come up with whatever average we have. I also have a hard time remembering any March before 2006 that had a 100 F day. But a true scientist will collect all the evidence to make an average, which may turn out to show a net increase or decrease of zero, and that’s fine, too. An average is just that, a collection of data, some at extreme ends of the spectrum and usually a whole bunch clustered around the middle. But even a collection of extremes will have an apparent average between them.

The more data you have, the more accurate your average is. We normally get a lot of tornados. This season has been drastically down in counts. Even though we had two in my county this year. On average, we don’t get tornados in my county very often but we had two this year. It’s a local event but the greater average is down. Why? We have a large data set every year. What do tornados have to to with climate change or global warming? Not much. What makes a tornado is the meeting of a cold front, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico, and a dry line from the west Texas desert meeting and creating a tall enough storm in a low pressure area that it rises up to near the jet stream. If the jet stream is changing directions (has a bend in it) which it usually does in Texas and Oklahoma, voila, tornado. And temp differentials have nothing to do with global average temp.

And that is some serious paneling, my friend.thank u post…..

I think you hit the problem on the head here.

The problem SM faces is far harder to over come than just publishing his data. The real problem is that humans are involved. These “scientists” have invested enourmous amounts of energy, time, effort, money in to proving global warming ™ is man made! These same people arent just going to roll over and accept SM’s information without a fight.

Yes SM maybe right, however human nature dictates that these so called scientists will fight him tooth and nail to protect their reputations!

After all, their reputations are far more important than the science itself!

Mailman

“If Steve has discovered a smoking gun, then I’d expect Nature and Science to both be candidate publications. And I would really hope that some of those members of the relevant expert community who (I know) frequent his blog would join with him, perhaps as co-authors, to help bring the new analysis into the mainstream scientific discussion. That is how science moves forward.”

http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/

I agree with Pielke. Publication in Science or Nature would get the attention of the larger scientific community and hopefully the mainstream press. Is it the tipping point? If Steve McIntyre can get this published in one of those two journals, it might be. It would, at very least, be very hard to ignore.

this just in from “tamino”:

“As for Steve McIntyre’s latest: I’m really not that interested. He just doesn’t have the credibility to merit attention. I have way better things to do.”

nice to see ad hominem alive and well.

watts linking to an AGU presentation confirming SM’s results.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/30/agu-presentation-backs-up-mcintyres-findings-that-there-is-no-hockey-stick-in-yamal/#more-11328

It was deleted.

I refuse to have major parts of my life dictated by people who abuse science by dismissing inquiry.