UEA folks on "Real"Climate: Of *course* old tree trunks can be used as reliable thermometers, accurate to a fraction of a degree

By the way, tree-ring controversies should be a prime example of what Richard Lindzen was talking about in his "ordinary people see through this, but educated people are very vulnerable" quote.  

While many educated people might tend to defer to the alleged "experts" on whether a tree functions as a thermometer, I think ordinary people with common sense tend to scoff at that idea.

RealClimate: Yamal and Polar Urals: a research update

Guest commentary from Tim Osborn, Tom Melvin and Keith Briffa, Climatic Research Unit, UEA
...
That the critics have promoted a series of results that have turned out to be flawed is unfortunate but not in itself reason to complain – as science progresses it is usual for results to be improved and superseded. What can be condemned, however, is the long campaign of allegations of dishonesty and scientific fraud made against us on the basis of these false claims. That is the most disquieting legacy of Steve McIntyre and ClimateAudit. The real Yamal deception is their attempt to damage public confidence in science by making speculative and scandalous claims about the actions and motivations of scientists while cloaked them in a pretense of advancing scientific knowledge.

Flashback: Priceless ClimateGate email 682: Tom Wigley tells Michael Mann that his son did a tree ring science fair project (using trees behind NCAR) that invalidated the centerpiece of Mann's work

A few years back, my son Eirik did a tree ring science fair project using trees behind NCAR. He found that widths correlated with both temp and precip. However, temp and precip also correlate. There is much other evidence that it is precip that is the driver, and that the temp/width correlation arises via the temp/precip correlation. Interestingly, the temp correlations are much more ephemeral, so the complexities conspire to make this linkage nonstationary. I have not seen any papers in the literature demonstrating this -- but, as you point out Mike, it is a crucial issue.