No increased tree growth variability due to global warming

This dataset contains R scripts and pre-processed files to reconstruct the analyses made in the technical note submitted to Ecology Letters as a response to Li & He (2026, https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.70326). In short, I show that the claims made by LH26 (variation in tree growth has increased due to global warming, and that the power exponent between growth variance and mean is b=1.4) are questionable. I show that the reported variance increase in ring widths is an artefact caused by division-based detrending. The reported exponent of 1.4 reflects systematic underestimation, not biological reality of a steep variance-mean scaling. The ecological interpretations built on these foundations cannot be considered reliable.