On 04/12/2011 23:42, Terry Fields wrote:

It's a simple enough concept: the models have been built on data, and
then along comes some more data that disagrees with the results from
the first lot. Since the first lot is more extensive than the second,
I called the first lot the 'main data set'.

So 'main data set' is part of your private world view and not a concept
I should have been familiar with particularly as I would characterise
the data used in climate change models as a collection of specific data
sets rather than just one data set part of which is accessed for the
purpose of climate modelling.

Now you're just being ridiculous.

There is nothing ridiculous in that statement. What is ridiculous is
that you expect me to understand very general terms in the way you use
them to to make a narrow and irrelevant point.

Tree ring data has no part to play in modelling climate when actual
temperature records are available.

It's got everything to do with it - it's called 'verification', and
tests the hypothesis (that the models are right) against real data.
The only conclusion to draw, because the trees are not wrong, is that
the models are flawed.

The trees are a proxy (or should that be a poxy) way of measuring
temperature. Since the actual measured temperature is available the
derived less accurate information is not needed to test the model. nThe
measured temperature is the real data and no amount of saying otherwise
is going to alter that fact.

Climate change models don't tell you anything directly about what
happens to trees. Their purpose is to model the the climate, not the way
trees respond to it. It is fallacious to make the link you are
attempting to justify.

If that is the case, then eminent scientists working on the issue
would have said so, and not tried to 'hide the decline' with 'a
trick'. They thought it was important enough to pursue, until the data
didn't fit the model.

You seem to have swallowed the deniers line, hook, line and sinker.

"The final analyses from various subsequent inquiries concluded that in
this context 'trick' was normal scientific or mathematical jargon for a
neat way of handling data, in this case a statistical method used to
bring two or more different kinds of data sets together in a legitimate
fashion.[35][36] The EPA notes that in fact, the evidence shows that the
research community was fully aware of these issues and was not hiding or
concealing them.[37]"

--
Roger Chapman