Wider tree rings this year!
No wonder they had to “hide the decline”. It appears that trees are a proxy for just about everything, except ancient temperatures. Rings from a particular tree are more likely to tell you whether:
- it was wetter there;
- there was more CO2 in the atmosphere;
- the local bear population decided to use it as a shithouse.
And now it appears that trees actually grow less in warmer temperatures:
They found that a 2C (3.6F) increase resulted in the average maximum height of trees shrinking by 11%, while a 2C decrease in the nation’s average temperature saw a 13% increase in the predicted maximum height of trees. (source)
So I think we can consign tree rings and the whole dodgy discipline of dendrochronology to the dustbin of climatological history.
Australian Climate Madness 
Ah they make it all sound so plausable to the gullible…
no no no, this is natural and in balance….so its OK!. if it was a human taking a dump, then there would be a tipping point…
His face tells me he’d eaten a curry.
That picture of a polar bear having a crap is one of my favourites. Doesn’t (s)he look pleased with him or herself?
You mean the sky isn’t falling?
The IPCC even warns of this. And yet, they publish Mann’s use of tree-ring proxies when it suited their case.
Today, It takes dozens of carefully-monitored thermometers distributed throughout the world to have an accurate figure for our globally-averaged temperature; proxy sources can only provide a comparable resolution for about the past four centuries.
There are important caveats to keep in mind. First, inherent in each proxy technique are sources of uncertainty that limit its usefulness—and this uncertainty becomes more pronounced the further back in time we attempt to peer. Before around a.d. 1600, however, the errors compound so that any calculated measurement becomes suspect.
Claims that 1998 was the hottest year in “at least a millennium,” as made by climate researcher Michael E. Mann, or that “the world is now warmer than it’s been for 2,000 years,” as Philip Jones of the University of East Anglia claimed, exceed the resolution of the data and are, at best, imprudent.
Source: Jordan R. Raney – California Institute of Technology,
Is that poop endangered?
No, but it is protected—just try crossing the border with some!
So are they trying to disprove the bears in the woods thing, too?
brings a whole new meaning to the term busting seals!
And it’s worse than we thought!
Just wait for it. Now they’ll start saying trees are endangered because they wilt under intense anthropogenic warmning. This is global warming after all. Everything detected is only a different kind of confirmation that “its worse than we thought”.
What is wrong with you people. Please respect “the” science. Malcom Turnbull has spoken,
I wonder if Dr Rajendra Pachauri (IPCC Chairman), who celebrated the ‘hockey stick’ graph by giving it prominence in the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report (as evidence of dangerous anthropogenic global warming), would say that relying on tree ring proxies is “voodoo science”?
Had a look at the source document. Uh-oh. It’s a model … “Not that there’s anything wrong with that”. Done a fair amount myself, some valid, some not.
They seem to be using some sort of “standard tree” specification. And these are ecologists? How come they never heard of the gene pool effect? Same species, entirely different performance characteristics if planted in locations only a few km away?
Clearing 20 year old broken timber after Yasi, I have found the most recent rings are larger. No significant variation in sunlight, last 7 years precipitation only slightly above long-term average, no additional nutrients applied. I reckon its probably the CO2 level.
I think there could be a load of reasons for the height anomaly. More competition for light in temperate-climate “darker” years? Wind forces? Eg don’t grow too tall compared to your neighbours if there’s a strong wind every so often. Denser growth pushes the boundary layer up. Shed some leaves before storm season to reduce drag. Recognisable redundancy pattern in branches – some come off, some don’t.
I don’t have much more to add to this topic but the following link discusses some valid points about tree rings and their usefulness or otherwise.
http://williamsticker.blogspot.com/2009/09/i-talk-to-trees.html