He is rather like an angler who at last succeeds in making a catch, albeit of a tiddly fish and proceeds to describe his exploit again and again, the fish getting bigger with every telling.
The main reason is that most scientists are not statisticians and get into trouble.
This is so not only in climate science, but many health studies as well.
Steve is not debunking climate science, his is simply pointing out that the statistics used in many studies are flawed.
I think it is an underestimation to call McIntyre an amateur statistician, although technically it may be true. I am a geologist and in a similar field but fortunately for me I didn't need that much statistics (well I hate statistics). In his job, he had to help determine flaws in various ore assays when groups tended to try to exaggerate their new finds to sell them to investors. He was positioned and experienced almost perfectly to discover the exaggerations coming from Mann et al IMO. Montford discussed that briefly in his Hockey Stick Illusion.
I think McIntyre probably didn't know the difference between a Bristlecone and an ice core but he did know statistics and in his job he apparently encountered numerous efforts to exaggerate the value of mining claims by misusing statistics. I think he largely understood what was acceptable and what wasn't. That was why he was able to debunk much of Mann's work IMO even if he wasn't a climate scientist.
Note: I agree. It wasn't a criticism to your use of the word amateur. I was just trying to make the point that McIntyre was unusually good at statistics and he used it for his profession.
Climate Realist, your contention that McIntyre merely detected flaws in MBH99 is like suggesting paleoanthropologists in the 1950s merely found flaws with the Piltdown Man. I would suggest you avoid Wikipedia if you hope to find unbiased information for AGW.
Often the case with individual thinkers to go outside the realm of dogma. http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/defini...
The thing I notice most about him. He ask more questions then most references are willing to give. Uses the same sources, and cites the same peer reviews. But isn't given credit for factuality. One of the reasons I question the prognostic crowd.
In the skeptical science secret forum for insiders, one of the authors WAY of a recent study adjusting HADCRUT, had said of McIntyre
The fact of the matter is that a lot of the points he [McIntyre] brings up are valid
To answer your question as to why, it is simple. Because he is looking for errors. For climate scientists, they are more likely to find errors in skeptic papers but with papers whose results agree with their thinking, they are less likely to look. Confirmation bias. That is why when there is a pause in temperatures they look for an explanation to the pause, but when there are high temperatures they do not look for alternative explanations. It is why when there is hot we are told it is a sign of global warming, but when there is cold we are told it is just weather.
I've been going through this http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabled... and am wondering how they came up with their actual temperature readings. I find it hard to understand how the global average temperature can fall 0.52C in one month after it rises 0.56C in 9 months as it did in 1939 -'40.
How does climate science explain a 0.5C rise or drop in 1 month? It seems that would be a very noticeable change and clearly shows how IN-sensitive the Planet really is.
The "Global Warming " question is all about sensitivity. Producing information on this matter is also sensitive and should be accurately produced. Statistical flaws are very relevant.
It just shows how biased science journals are, if it goes against the establishment view it is rejected, if it agrees with the establishment view it is accepted even if it is incorrect, I suspect they do not look to closely at any article they like.
He might be considered to be an amateur statistician in that he does not have a doctorate in statistics, but that does not mean that he doesn't understand statistics.
Regarding his work on the "Hockey Stick" he did not prove that the Medieval Warm Period was at least as warm as the present time, but merely detected a flaw in the statistical algorithm used in MBH99. But what matters regarding whether his results are valid are whether they could be reproduced by other researchers using their own data and statistical algorithms.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/co...
Actually, compared with subsequent studies, Michael Mann seems to have underestimated the cooling in the Little Ice Age, but not the warming in the Medieval Warm Period.
Note that unlike denialists, when they talk about climatologists like James Hansen and Michael Mann, I did not resort to ad homs or videos of graphs taped to see-saws.
You don't have to be a scientist to see the criminal flaws in what climate "scientists" publish
Skeptic Steve McIntyre has been derided as not being a climate scientist (among other things). Yet, he has picked up errors in numerous climate studies. In some cases, the authors write back and the exchange results in the study being modified. Sometimes, a study is even withdrawn after it is clearly shown by McIntyre that there was a fatal flaw(s) (e.g. Karoly and Gergis).
Does anyone wonder how a mining engineer and amateur statistician is able to point out errors that make it through top end peer reviewed journals? And what about the thousands of other mainstream climate scientists who should know more that a mining engineer? Why aren't they picking out the errors as well.
(Note: I've used McIntyre since he has carefully documented all his work and is one of the more prominent skeptics. But there are plenty of other "non-climate scientists" like Nic Lewis are are doing the job that I would see would be primarily that of journal editors and other peers in climate science.)
