Bad Data, Been There Done That

I read a piece in The Harvard Gazette which tries to explain the use of the Harvard herbarium, or plant collection, to try to validate global warming. They note:

With their records of flowering times and details on how plants have adapted to climate over more than a century, herbarium collections play a key role in understanding how climate change impacts the natural world and how those effects might be felt by humans.

Now I have been doing this for over a quarter of a Century and have a massive data base on flowering times and variances for a multiplicity of species. The problem is micro climate. Namely if there is a tree in front of the plants after twenty five years the tree can change the micro environment and thus alter bloom time. They continue:

“Plants are at the beginning of the food chain,” ..... “So if there is a disruption in flowering time, it effects everything that depends on that. It may be that 100 years ago bees came to pollinate plants in May, but now that flowering time has shifted to earlier, into April, then there is potentially a mismatch in terms of timing … and everything is affected downstream.”

A truism in part but it is a very complex issue. First is local variation. Second is seasonal impacts such as prior year water shortages, changes in soil texture, and so forth. Note that all herbaria are for single location and time samples. You really must sample over at least a quarter century and at multiple locations and record any micro environmental changes.  Frankly the study above is fatally flawed just for this reason. Just because a plant flowered on June 10th in 1875 but then on May 21st in 2017 means nothing! There are so many variables that it is truly meaningless. I have done this and still I wonder with almost 30 years of data what variables must be accounted for.

Junk in is junk out! Perhaps Harvard needs someone doing real field work.