Re Keith Briffa (tree ring hugger)...and IPCC assumptions...

...regarding the ongoing saga of corrupted data, and the significant influence this has had on alarmist assumptions made by the IPCC and their much beloved catastrophic global warming; Jennifer Marohasy observes...

...THE IPCC and most others who believe in anthropogenic global warming (AGW), have been influenced by the work of climatologists relying on tree-ring data to reconstruct past climate because the thermometer record only goes back to about 1850. The claim that there has been an unprecedented upswing in temperatures over the last 100 years making 1998 the hottest year of the last thousand years, has for example, been based on reconstructions from tree-ring data.

...In response to recent suggestions by Canadian statistician Steve McIntyre that the official reconstructions may have been fudged, Keith Briffa (right) from the Climate Research Unit associated with the UK Met. Office, has responded explaining that there was no cherry picking of data in the development of the reconstructions used by the IPCC and others, rather, the methodology is not yet robust.
Given this admission from a leading UK climate scientist, it would perhaps be appropriate for the head of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, to now advise world leaders that there are potential problems with the methodology used in the develop of key assumptions underpining the consensus view on anthropogenic global warming and that until further notice, the big meeting in Copenhagen should be postponed...

...Dr Briffa responds...We have not yet had a chance to explore the details of McIntyre’s analysis or its implication for temperature reconstruction at Yamal but we have done considerably more analyses exploring chronology production and temperature calibration that have relevance to this issue but they are not yet published. I do not believe that McIntyre’s preliminary post provides sufficient evidence to doubt the reality of unusually high summer temperatures in the last decades of the 20th century...We will expand on this initial comment on the McIntyre posting when we have had a chance to review the details of his work...more here...

...the battle is on, and the eventual outcome of Dr Briffa's work will help settle the whole issue...

...and meanwhile, a possible reaction from the financial markets ?...We knew this was coming. Carbon Financial Instruments are now trading for 10 cents per metric tonne on the Chicago Climate Exchange. I wonder if the investors are reacting to the Hockey Stick Implosion news? As reported on WUWT, less than one month ago it was 25 cents a tonne, and a year ago it was over 1 dollar. The all time high was May 2008 at over 7 dollars a tonne. Today: poof...more here...

...the new authors used trees from the Yamal Peninsula, Northern Siberia, so their hockey stick was supposed to be an "Arctic hockey stick". Yamal means the "end of the world" in the local native language of the "Nenets" tribes ...spoooky...more here...

...AND, off topic, but fun...The Scottish brewer BrewDog, of Fraserburgh was criticised for an 18.2% alcohol content beer. So it has now produced a 1.1% alcohol beer and given it a label of “Nanny State Beer” ...H/T Kiwiblog...