Tomorrow the National Research Council is going to release its report on the so-called “hockey stick” of global temperature trends that was emphasized in the most recent IPCC report. Not long ago we asked the principles involved in the debate to explain to those of us not involved why this debate matters. On the eve of the NRC report, we thought it might be worth revisiting some comments made by the principles in the debate.


According to Steve McIntyre:

So even if the Hockey Stick did not “matter” to the scientific case, it mattered to the promotion of the scientific case. Scientists may want to “move on”, but institutions cannot, if they want to maintain any credibility. If the Hockey Stick was wrong, it would be as embarrassing as the failure to find WMD in Iraq. In both cases, the policy might well be justified on alternative grounds, but the existence of the alternative grounds does not mean that responsible agencies should not try to isolate the causes of intelligence failure and try to avoid similar failures in the future.

Today, McIntyre provides some pre-release comments on the report.

According to Ross McKitrick:

It matters because it concerns the validity of an influential scientific paper. . .

It matters because it exposes the uncomfortable reality about journal peer review. . .

It matters because it exposes the uncomfortable reality about the IPCC. The IPCC’s use of the hockey stick was not incidental: it is prominent throughout the 2001 report. Yet they did not subject it to any independent checking: revealing an astonishingly cavalier attitude to the quality of their case. This raises the question of whether anything in the report was subject to serious, independent checking. . .

It matters because it exposes the uncomfortable reality about how governments use scientific information Canada (and many other countries) used the hockey stick heavily in their promotion of the Kyoto Accord. . .

It matters because it exposes an uncomfortable reality about the culture of climate science. . .

From Stefan Rahmsdorf and William Connolley of RealClimate:

SR: “The discussions about the past millennium are not discussions about whether humans are changing climate; neither do they affect our projections for the future.”

WC: “Why is this fight important to the rest of us? the answer is: you shouldn’t. It isn’t..”

And finally, here was my two cents of thoughts on the various “so what?” reactions.