Dendrochronology scuppered by guy on a blog
Posted by Andrew Adams on December 15, 2009
Filed Under Climate change, Science |
The world of climate science was dealt a stunning blow today when the world’s dendrochronologists, who study past temperatures by analysing tree rings, issued a collective statement announcing that they were abandoning their studies and declaring the discipline of dendrochronology itself to be invalid. Although no reason was officially given, an insider revealed the background to this astonishing event.
“I was idly surfing the net during my lunch hour and I came across a discussion on climate change. I was stunned to see some guy in the comments proclaim that due to the post 1960 divergence problem in certain sets of tree ring data the entire science of dendrochronology must therefore be bogus and any pretence to be able to produce meaningful reconstructions of past temperatures through the study of tree rings must be abandoned.
Well obviously I was shocked to discover that I had spent the last decade engaged in intense and painstaking work to try and get a real understanding of a complex but fascinating discipline in the hope that it could give us an insight into the natural history of the world around us, only to find out that after all it is in fact just a load of bull, but what could I do in the face of such an argument?
Imagine how stupid we felt - after all, we had known about the divergence problem for ten years and none of us had drawn this obvious and inescapable conclusion until this guy on a blog pointed it out! Admittedly a couple of my colleagues did protest, suggesting that this person did not have any apparent qualification to pronounce on the subject, or on any question of science for that matter, but he was so obviously sure of his opinion and sounded so authoritative, who were we to argue?
Still, it’s not all bad news - I will now have time to apply myself to studying the only proxies which are known to give an entirely accurate and reliable indication of past temperatures - the migratory patterns of Vikings and viticulture in Roman times”.
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