When You Get Your Picture on the Cover of - The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars - page 96

Figure 9.3: Which Is Which?
Wahl and Ammann superimpose their analysis on the original MBH hockey stick reconstruction.
As for McIntyre and McKitrick's claim that our centering convention “manufactures Hockey
Sticks” out of noise, Wahl and Ammann showed that this too was false. 25 McIntyre and McKitrick had
inflated the amplitude of apparent long-term natural variations by using an inappropriate statistical
model for random noise. That made it deceptively easy for them to generate long-term trends
(including hockey stick-like structures) from what they claimed was standard “red noise” (the type of
noise that is characteristic of natural climate variations, which has more long-term variation than the
highly erratic “white noise” typically encountered in other branches of science; i.e., the wiggles look
smoother). In fact, what they had used was not simple red noise at all, but something that had far
greater long-term persistence (even smoother wiggles) than red noise, and that lacked any sound
scientific basis. 26 This inappropriate noise model allowed them both to greatly underestimate the
reliability of actual proxy reconstructions and to grossly overstate the potential for our statistical
conventions to “manufacture Hockey Sticks” from noise.
Other groups found fault with the McIntyre and McKitrick claims. In two separate comments on
the McIntyre and McKitrick paper published in Geophysical Research Letters , Hans Von Storch and
Eduardo Zorita of GKSS in Germany (using climate model simulations) 27 and Peter Huybers of
MIT/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (analyzing proxy records) 28 showed that PCA conventions
had nothing to do with the shape of the actual hockey stick reconstruction. Huybers provided an
additional demonstration that McIntyre's attempt to dismiss the reliability of our reconstruction was
flawed. 29 Other colleagues using different methods and data continued to produce independent
reconstructions that were broadly similar to that of the hockey stick. 30 All of these confirmations of
our findings took years to work their way through the system of scientific publication. In the
meantime, the McIntyre and McKitrick claims became a staple of denialists and contrarians.
One example was retired astrophysicist Richard Muller. 31 Muller used his column in MIT's
prominent journal Technology Review to defend the deeply flawed Soon and Baliunas medieval
climate study in late 2003. 32 A year later, 33 he echoed McIntyre and McKitrick's claim that the hockey