Note: I spent the day with the BEST team yesterday at Lawrence Livermore Berkeley Laboratories and I’ll have a report on it soon, but here in the meantime is what Fred Singer has to say about it, via Climate Realists. – Anthony
By Dr. Fred Singer
The e-mails leaked from the University of East Anglia in November 2009 produced what is popularly called “Climategate.” They exposed the thoroughly unethical behavior of a group of climate scientists, mainly in the UK and US, involved in producing the global surface temperature record used and relied on by governments.
Not only did these climate scientists hide their raw data and their methodology of selection and adjustment of temperature data, but they fought hard against all attempts by independent outside scientists to replicate their results. They also undermined the peer-review system and tried to make it impossible for skeptical scientists to publish their work in scientific journals. There is voluminous evidence in the e-mails to this effect. In the process, they damaged not only the science enterprise — full publication of data and methods, replication of results, open debate, etc — but they also undermined the public credibility of all scientists.
However, the most serious revelation from the e-mails is that they tried to “hide the decline” in temperatures, using various “tricks” in order to keep alive a myth of rising temperatures in support of the dogma of anthropogenic global warming. There have now been a number of investigations of the activities of this group, mainly in the UK. These have all turned out to be complete whitewashes, aimed to exonerate the scientists involved. None of these investigations has even attempted to learn how and in what way the data might have been manipulated.
Much of this is described in the “Hockey Stick Illusion: Climategate and the corruption of science” by A. W. Montford. Meteorologist Joseph D’Aleo and others have made a commendable effort to show how data might have been altered. But an independent effort to reconstruct the global temperature results of the past century really demands a dedicated project with proper resources.
The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) Project aims to do what needs to be done: That is, to develop an independent analysis of the data from land stations, which would include many more stations than had been considered by the Global Historic Climatology Network. The Project is in the hands of a group of recognized scientists, who are not at all “climate skeptics” — which should enhance their credibility. The Project is mainly directed by physicists, chaired by Professor Richard Muller (UC Berkeley), with a steering group that includes Professor Judith Curry (Georgia Tech) and Arthur Rosenfeld (UC Santa Barbara and Georgia Tech).
I applaud and support what is being done by the Project — a very difficult but important undertaking. I personally have little faith in the quality of the surface data, having been exposed to the revealing work by Anthony Watts and others. However, I have an open mind on the issue and look forward to seeing the results of the Project in their forthcoming publications.
As far as I know, no government or industry funds are involved — at least at this stage. According to the Project’s website www.berkeleyearth.org, support comes mostly from a group of charitable foundations.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Atmospheric physicist S. Fred Singer is Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia and former director of the US weather satellite service. He is a Senior Fellow of the Independent Institute and the Heartland Institute. He is the author or co-author of Unstoppable Global Warming [2007], Nature not Human Activity Rules the Climate [2008], and Climate Change Reconsidered [2009].
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I hope they have “GREAT” success in their quest for the “TRUTH”!!!!
Sorry about the weather……..we usually offer better than this for visitors.
This is absolutely what must be done immediately in climate science if it is to regain any credibility whatsoever. However, I do wish that a larger body of scientists, including sceptics, had been involved in setting out the details. The project should not be limited to land surface measurements and, most important of all, the project should introduce entirely new systems of measurement based on the best technologies but especially to include continuous recording through fail-safe computer networks. This project is worthy of serious funding.
“However, the most serious revelation from the e-mails is that they tried to “hide the decline” in temperatures, using various “tricks” in order to keep alive a myth of rising temperatures in support of the dogma of anthropogenic global warming.”
I’m pretty sure that anyone even remotely familiar with the climategate emails, even people who think everyone involved should be stuffed into a cannon and fired into the sun, knows this claim is simply not correct.
What worries me about this project is that it’s being done at UC Berkeley. That town is practically Moscow west.
I hope this project finds out and reports on how the temp adjustments are done and what the warming trend has been using strictly unadjusted rural data.
Until they properly address the actual required method for averaging temperatures, I hold little hope this will produce anything worthwhile. By giving them credence now, we will ultimately be forced to accept their version which is likely to be as broken as other versions.
Mark
sharper00 says:
February 19, 2011 at 12:00 pm (Edit)
“However, the most serious revelation from the e-mails is that they tried to “hide the decline” in temperatures, using various “tricks” in order to keep alive a myth of rising temperatures in support of the dogma of anthropogenic global warming.”
I’m pretty sure that anyone even remotely familiar with the climategate emails, even people who think everyone involved should be stuffed into a cannon and fired into the sun, knows this claim is simply not correct.
So you think Mann’s treemometer proxy reconstruction was more flawed than the surface data presumably?
I’m still concerned by the primary support of the Project by the Novim Group.
Again, from their website (www.novim.org), the Novim Overview pdf:
Introduction
Coordinated global action is needed to address major interrelated issues such as climate change, renewable energy, and fresh water.
While the intellectual resources and the will to generate and implement action plans exist, most efforts have been impeded by political conflict, slow bureaucratic processes, media inaccuracies and a lack of effective public education on complex scientific issues.
Further reading of their website shows that they seem to be in support of the AGW by CO2 concept.
Can we get a truly unbiased view of the temps from such an overtly pro-“Climate Change by CO2” organization?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Im curious to see if BEST might give a NH that resembles the original collection of temperature sets:
http://hidethedecline.eu/media/PERPLEX/fig52.jpg
(fig 52 of http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/the-perplexing-temperature-data-published-1974-84-and-recent-temperature-data-180.php)
K.R. Frank
Mod –
Perhaps I wasn’t clear. My bad.
The embedded link in this paragraph at the end of the OP: “As far as I know, no government or industry funds are involved — at least at this stage. According to the Project’s website http://www.berkeleyearth.org, support comes mostly from a group of charitable foundations.”
is for a WUWT link that is a “dead end”.
The text “www.berkeleyearth.org” is OK, just not the embedded link.
John
I am encouraged to see that private investors will be having a major part in this process. Science, art, and charity are all persuits for free individuals.
I personally would not donate to this venture; I am not interested in transforming local temperature measurements into a global climate record and basing policy on it. I am interested in the earth’s weather systems and a space age understanding of what powers the weather events I experience every day. We do know that other planets experience extreme electrical storms, planetwide dust storms, twisters the size of Mt Everest, enormous auroras and windspeeds, and that electrical currents ripple our own magnetosphere, discharge through our upper and lower atmospheres to the ground, and flow through the earth’s crust. Electricity always moves in a circuit.
There are wonderful opportunities to support scientific research all around us. Anthony Watts’ work is one.
[snip – Mr. Adler when you go and visit, ask questions, examining data and methods, getting facts firsthand, then you can have an informed opinion about it. As it stands, I’m growing tired of your constant thread bombing on every topic here, many of which you know nothing about, but you simply parrot. Your trolling is getting tiresome. Take a 48 hour timeout. – Anthony]
sharper00 says:
February 19, 2011 at 12:00 pm
Much as I hate to admit it. I agree. The trick was to hide the decline in the proxy data, not the adjusted LIG thermometer record.
Wouldn’t it be interesting if the proxies were right & the adjustments made to thermometers were wrong?
I’m not going to argue temps though as whatever they do, it’s irrelevant. Temps ain’t energy, end of argument.
DaveE.
Sharper00, evidently you and a few others are the only ones who believe the teams explanation for “hide the decline” and “nature trick”, the rest of the thinking world know it is bulls%$t. My hope is whoever funds them does just that, fund them and have no say in what they do and how they go about it. I know it will take a while to do and i look forward to thier progress reports and final paper>
“However, the most serious revelation from the e-mails is that they tried to “hide the decline” in temperatures, using various “tricks” in order to keep alive a myth of rising temperatures in support of the dogma of anthropogenic global warming. ”
Yikes!!! that is just so wrong!!!!!!!
The decline was in tree temperature data. This followed thermometer readings until the 60s then started falling. There are papers written by UEA that query why this happened.
The thermometer temperature has been rising since the late 60s. the tree data is therefore in error. after this time.
The HIDE part refers to a leaflet written by the WMO where a graph was provided that appended the valid thermometer readings to the possibly valid tree readings calculated berfore the 60s. The decline in tree temperatures were therefore hidden.
Dr. Fred Singer should be ashamed of his distortion of reality
As has been pointed out above, “Hide the Decline” relates to the proxies, and does not refer to temperature only if you believe that proxies don’t refer to temperature.
Tallbloke:
You know perfectly well that the “hide the decline” scandal was to hide the lack of agreement since 1960 between the proxies and the instrumental temperature record, calling into question the use of these proxies to depict the temperatures before the instrumental era. Much as I hate to, I agree with sharper00 on this point: Dr. Singer, at best, misspoke. Whether the instrumental record is in fact reliable is still another question. My own semi-educated guess is that it is not, but the evidence is still not in. It would be really ironic if the treemometers really were accurate proxies for temperature…
Grayman and Walt:
I think Fred does know exactly what the Team mean, but likes to court controversy by saying something ambiguous.
The good thing about Dr Singer’s pieces is that the sheer shrillness of the tone should immediately tick off thinking readers that something is afoot (special marks for the “myth of rising temperatures” bit).
More seriously: I can’t find any Arthur Rosenfeld at UCSB or GATech. Presumably this is not Arthur H. Rosenfeld from the California Energy Commission /UC Berkeley?
Having spent some time on Novim’s website , I agree with John Who – they look a little suspicious . BTW , I had problems with the link in the article as well . It works in the same article at American Thinker – I would provide a link , but my links to AT haven’t been working recently .
“tallbloke says: February 19, 2011 at 12:44 pm
I think Fred does know exactly what the Team mean, but likes to court controversy by saying something ambiguous.”
That has to be a quote of the week
Keep on defending, It gives me a laugh!
walt man says:
February 19, 2011 at 12:37 pm
“However, the most serious revelation from the e-mails is that they tried to “hide the decline” in temperatures, using various “tricks” in order to keep alive a myth of rising temperatures in support of the dogma of anthropogenic global warming. ”
Yikes!!! that is just so wrong!!!!!!!
The decline was in tree temperature data. This followed thermometer readings until the 60s then started falling. There are papers written by UEA that query why this happened.
The thermometer temperature has been rising since the late 60s. the tree data is therefore in error. after this time.
Dear walt man:
I am curious why the trees are reporting lower temperatures, than the thermometers since the 1960s – this seems to be an anomaly that needs more research. Simply stating that well, the trees are wrong now, does little to inspire the assumption that the trees were right before. Or are the tree rings simply coincidental in their relationship to (pre)historical temperature data and people are reluctant to explore this? This coincidental relationship error seems to be widespread in the data vs proxies in other areas too, leading one to suspect that the proxies are not so viable as a source for prehistorical data interpretation when they fail historical validation at random points as the tree rings do.
Carbon 14 dating had this problem (dates failing to match), I do not think it has been resolved to the satisfaction of researchers either…
This may fit in with the budding general chaos theory of the universe. Science is fun!
@tallbloke
“I think Fred does know exactly what the Team mean, but likes to court controversy by saying something ambiguous.”
There’s nothing ambiguous here, the statement is completely wrong and strongly suggests Fred Singer either can’t get basic facts right or doesn’t let basic facts get in the way of his argument.
Unless everyone wants to argue that temperatures have actually declined since 1960 and tree proxies are the only reliable measurement of this then scientists did not ” keep alive a myth of rising temperatures in support of the dogma of anthropogenic global warming.” as alleged.
walt man says:
“Dr. Fred Singer should be ashamed of his distortion of reality”
Why? Anyone paying attention knows “hide the decline” refers to the proxy curve hidden beneath the instrument curve from the same timeframe on the same graphic.
The perpetrators of the “hockey stick” should be the ones who are ashamed. Since the proxy temp study diverges substantially from the instrument record, it renders the pre-instrument portion unusable and the whole graphic is questionable at best.
Why do they keep using it?
If the current bit of warming is nothing unusual in this interglacial, then increasing atmospheric CO2 is a non-issue.
That’s why.
I hope more funding is forthcoming – maybe shut down the half dozen redundant government weather/climate watchers and fund an independent group. This is because more than just working out what the temps have been, there should be more thermometers out there in places where there are few.
And Sharperoo – you are revealing that you bought into the rationalizations after the fact and the ugly whitewashes. Re the “decline” shown in the tree rings. You are probably an intelligent fellow – how can we put any confidence in the millennial record these rings show if they aren’t relevant to climate since the 1960s because they diverge in the opposite direction to the thermometric record of the last 40+years. Do you accept that in the past millennium, that this most incovenient period to diverge in was the only one in history. To a scientist, this recent divergence destroys the value of these tree rings to tell us what the Middle Warming Period was like, or the Little Ice Age. Especially since we learned from horticulturists after all this that the variations in nutrients and water availability can give the same results in terms of ring thicknesses. Re the whitewashes, an intelligent person doesn’t have to be a scientist to see that these were egregious, non independent, self-serving exercises. As the AGW theory falls into tatters be sure to get out before the unethical proponents have left and remade themselves. Hey, I was prepared to believe until I saw what sordid lengths the players were prepared to go to in the service of this theory.