Wrong, Mainstream Media, Tree Rings Aren’t Reliable Indicators of Past Temperatures
By
Anthony Watts
May 16, 2024
Dozens of media outlets such as ABC News, The BBC, The New York Times, and many more, hyped a study that claims summer temperatures in 2023 were unprecedented over the past 2000 years. This claim, in fact, can’t be verified by tree ring data, which isn’t that precise. Researchers are falsely assuming tree rings are reliable temperature indicators when in fact tree rings can indicate a multitude of different conditions, not just temperature.
Further, the study, Esper, J. et al., Nature, 2024, is using an old trick, pioneered by Michael Mann, Ph.D. in his controversial hockey stick graph, where estimated temperatures from select tree rings and other proxies far into the past are grafted onto more reliable temperatures, measured in the present, and presented as one unified dataset, when in fact they are radically different.
For example, the BBC’s article about the study presented this graph, which is highly reminiscent of Mann’s original “hockey stick” graph.
https://climaterealism.com/2024/05/wrong-mainstream-media-tree-rings-arent-reliable-indicators-of-past-temperatures/
