The divergence problem is a physical phenomenon – tree growth has slowed or declined in the last few decades, mostly in high northern latitudes. The divergence problem is unprecedented, unique to the last few decades, indicating its cause may be anthropogenic. The cause is likely to be a combination of local and global factors such as warming-induced drought and global dimming. Tree-ring proxy reconstructions are reliable before 1960, tracking closely with the instrumental record and other independent proxies.
The cause is more likely to be a fanatical devotion to one of the most irrational and perverse religions ever invented.
“throw another log on the fire….”
Like this?
Hmmm. Global dimming. Could refer to the intellectual dimming of the indoctrinated ‘scientists’ pumped out by the AGW industry. As in dimwits.
The desperation is palpable in Cook’s risible and pathetic stab at salvaging tree ring proxies from the divergence problem. Can’t they just admit that trees make poor thermometers?
It’s not even unique to one study.
http://climateaudit.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/graybill_chron1.gif
Pretty well ran site. I visit there often.
You are known and respected by the company you keep!
I place the site in the same league as Rabbitrun and the rest of the CLB sites!
I have frequently had posts censored there. It appears Cook does not like inconvenient facts highlighting.
“Pretty well ran [sic]”? I see why you like it.
So to sum up Cook’s logic :-
1) Tree rings show some correlation with temperature for about 80 years.
2) They show absolutely no correlation for the last 40 years.
3) We have no scientifically quantifiable evidence of why they have diverged, just a few schoolboy theories.
4) Therefore we can calculate without any shadow of doubt what temperatures were 1000 years ago from tree rings.
Perhaps Brian can take this back to Head Office and ask if this is actually “proper science”.
Even your number one point is doubtful, The correlation over the calibration period could be spurious. Witness the long standing kerfuffle over the verification statistics in the various proxy reconstructions. “The Hockey Stick Illusion” gives a nice accounting of this can of worms.
I was being generous!!
I started at the oldest and followed it to the present. While I agree that Montford does a good job I prefer the longer version at CA.
http://climateaudit.org/?s=tree+rings
But then I have been following this for a day or two!
I have seen a few studies that arrived at the same conclusion as this…
“The growth of British trees appears to follow a cosmic pattern, with trees growing faster when high levels of cosmic radiation arrive from space.
Researchers made the discovery studying how growth rings of spruce trees have varied over the past half a century.
As yet, they cannot explain the pattern, but variation in cosmic rays impacted tree growth more than changes in temperature or precipitation.
The study is published in the scientific journal New Phytologist.
“We were originally interested in a different topic, the climatological factors influencing forest growth,” says Ms Sigrid Dengel a postgraduate researcher at the Institute of Atmospheric and Environmental Science at the University of Edinburgh.”
Cook is an idiot.