THE HOCKEY STICK IS DEAD. LONG LIVE THE HOCKEY STICK!

NATIONAL REVIEW ON LINE

HTTP://CORNER.NATIONALREVIEW.COM/POST/?Q=ODQ5MWZLM2FHNJG4ZTQXNME1ZWYXZGQXY2ZHNGFMM2U=

by Iain Murray

The National Academy of Sciences has reported on its investigation into the "hockey stick."  That was the controversial reconstruction of temperatures over the past thousand years that said there was very little variation in those temperatures until the last century and that the 1990s were probably the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year in the past thousand years.  The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change relied heavily on the "hockey stick" graph in its 2001 report.  Governments around the world have used it in pressing their case for Kyoto.  Al Gore champions it in his movie (as I mention in my  HYPERLINK "http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YmFiZDAyMWFhMGIxNTgwNGIyMjVkZjQ4OGFiZjFlNjc" article today). 

So what did the NAS find?  They found that current temperatures are almost certainly the warmest since 1600.  No argument there - they also find convincing evidence for the Little Ice Age, which the hockey stick wrote out of history.  They find that temperatures dating back to AD 900 are more difficult to reconstruct and that there may well have been a Medieval Warm Period, but the data there are unreliable.  So they are less certain that current temperatures are warmer than any time in the last 100 years, although they find this contention "plausible."  They have even less certainty that the 1990s were the warmest decade or that 1998 was the warmest year in 1000 years.  We just don't know for sure beyond 1600, is what they are saying.

Of course, the use of the word "plausible" is already morphing into stronger terms, with one scientist on the panel calling it " HYPERLINK "http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/06/22/D8IDB6500.html" likely."  This will be spun as complete vindication for the hockey stick by its supporters, when it has in fact been consigned to oblivion.  The graph in the  HYPERLINK "http://www.nap.edu/execsumm_pdf/11676.pdf" executive summary (PDF download) looks nothing like the original "hockey stick" nor Gore's version of it.

The panel also has some things to say about data access and other scientific methods.  Steve McIntyre has commentary for the technically-minded  HYPERLINK "http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=715" \l "more-715" here.