The researchers
examined various reconstructions of past temperatures and CO2 levels to determine how the climate system has responded to previous changes in its energy balance.
I understand that you don't agree with the interpretation that these statisticians have on the results and uncertainties
in various reconstructions.
Generally,
the various reconstructions show the same long term trends but don't always agree over short periods.
That understanding will be advanced by new and more extensive data collection efforts, improvements to methods used to synthesise that data, and more extensive and collaborative use of climate model simulations over this period — both to understand the forcing / response of the climate, but also to serve as testbed for
the various reconstruction methodologies.
[Response: You appear to be misreading Figure 1 of our post which shows the instrumental series in black, and
the various reconstructions as coloured curves.
- If
the various reconstructions use a common core of proxies, they wouldnt seem to be statistically independent to me - not that I am a statistician.
[UPDATE, 11/17: An editorial writer for The Wall Street Journal has lionized Mr. McIntyre and taken a hatchet to
various reconstructions of climate patterns.
Given that
the various reconstructions are the same on the important points, it seeems that the major conclusions are robust.
Several people have expressed interest in seeing how
the various reconstructions compare to current temperatures (from the instrumental record).
The various reconstructions of BHMF are however discordant both in strength and trend.
With this in mind, in version 0.2 of our article, we propose inserting a new section between Sections 2.1 and 2.2 briefly comparing and contrasting
the various reconstruction methods used.
My analysis of
the various reconstructions indicates his number of 1 full Watt / m2 increase in TSI in the period of interest is too high, even his first statement on 0.5 W / m2 increase in the period looks high.
Generally,
the various reconstructions show the same long term trends but don't always agree over short periods.
The use of different statistical scaling approaches (including whether the data are smoothed prior to scaling, and differences in the period over which this scaling is carried out) also influences the apparent spread between
the various reconstructions.
Figure 9 - 3 gives some examples of a hypothetical temperature series and several reconstruction series, where the black line is the actual temperatures and the colored lines are
various reconstructions.