Black_And_Blue wrote:Basically, only the cooked up data points remain which renders their value meaningless. I don't think you could get a passing grade on a high school lab report if you couldn't prove the results.
F- you fail.
Unfortunately not everyone is held to the same standard. I don't expect Penn State is going to be too critical. Looking at
**Broken Link(s) Removed** ... tement.pdf
I see, "The resulting 2006 report of the NAS panel (
http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11676) concluded that Mann’s results were sound and has been subsequently supported by an array of evidence that includes additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions."
Going to that link I found on page 4
"Based on the analyses presented in the original papers by Mann et al. and this newer supporting evidence, the committee finds it plausible that the Northern Hemisphere was warmer during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period over the preceding millennium. The substantial uncertainties currently present in the quantitative assessment of large-scale surface temperature changes prior to about A.D. 1600 lower our confidence in this conclusion compared to the high level of confidence we place in the Little Ice Age cooling and 20th century warming. Even less confidence can be placed in the original conclusions by Mann et al. (1999) that “the 1990s are likely the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, in at least a millennium” because the uncertainties inherent in temperature reconstructions for individual years and decades are larger than those for longer time periods and because not all of the available proxies record temperature information on such short timescales."
IOW they aren't calling it total BS but they sure wouldn't bet the farm on it either. That was good enough for Penn State.