RELATED ARTICLES, highly suggested:
Clarification on BEST submitted to the House
Pielke Sr. on the Muller testimony
Independent company station siting analysis demonstrates the problem
Quote of the Week – other scientists weigh in
Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Well, I had hoped for the best from BEST, the new Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project looking at the global temperature record. I was disheartened, however, by the Congressional testimony of Dr. Richard Muller of BEST.
Photo Source He said (emphasis mine):
Global Warming
Prior groups at NOAA, NASA, and in the UK (HadCRU) estimate about a 1.2 degree C land temperature rise from the early 1900s to the present. This 1.2 degree rise is what we call global warming. Their work is excellent, and the Berkeley Earth project strives to build on it.
Human caused global warming is somewhat smaller. According to the most recent IPCC report (2007), the human component became apparent only after 1957, and it
amounts to “most” of the 0.7 degree rise since then. Let’s assume the human-caused warming is 0.6 degrees.
The magnitude of this temperature rise is a key scientific and public policy concern. A 0.2 degree uncertainty puts the human component between 0.4 and 0.8 degrees – a factor of two uncertainty. Policy depends on this number. It needs to be improved.
Why do I think his testimony doesn’t help in the slightest? Well, to start with, I’ve never heard anyone make the claim that the land surface air temperature (excluding oceans) of the earth has warmed 1.2°C since 1900.
He cites three land temperature datasets, NOAA , NASA (GISTEMP), and HadCRU (he presumably means CRUTEM, not HadCRU).
Here’s the problem. The actual land surface air temperature warming since 1900 according to the existing datasets is:
NASA GISTEMP: 0.72°C
NOAA NCDC: 0.86°C
CRUTEM: 0.92°C
So Dr. Muller, in his first and most public appearance on the subject, has made some of the more unusual claims about the existing temperature datasets I’ve heard to date.
1. Since the largest temperature rise in the three datasets is 30% greater than the smallest rise, their work is not “excellent” in any sense of the word. Nor should the BEST team “strive to build on it.” Instead, they should strive to understand why the three vary so widely. What decisions make the difference? Which decisions make little difference?
2. Not one of the three datasets shows a temperature rise anywhere near the 1.2°C rise Muller is claiming since 1900. The largest one shows only about 3/4 of his claimed rise.
3. He claims a “0.2 degree uncertainty”. But the difference between the largest and smallest calculated warming from the three datasets is 0.2°C, so the uncertainty has to be a lot more than that …
4. He says that the land warming since 1957 is 0.7°C. The records beg to differ. Here’s the land warming since 1957:
NASA GISTEMP: 0.83°C
NOAA NCDC: 1.10°C
CRUTEM: 0.93°C
Note that none of them are anywhere near 0.7°C. Note also the huge difference in the trends in these “excellent” datasets, a difference of half a degree per century.
5. He fails to distinguish CRUTEM (the land-only temperature record produced by the Climategate folks) from HadCRU (a land-ocean record produced jointly by the Hadley folks and the Climategate folks). A minor point to be sure, but one indicating his unfamiliarity with the underlying datasets he is discussing.
It can’t be a Celsius versus Fahrenheit error, because it goes both ways. He claims a larger rise 1900-present than the datasets show, and a smaller rise 1958-present than the datasets.
I must confess, I’m mystified by all of this. With his testimony, Dr. Muller has totally destroyed any credibility he might have had with me. He might be able to rebuild it by explaining his strange numbers. But to give that kind of erroneous testimony, not in a random paper he might written quickly, but to Congress itself, marks him to me as a man driven by a very serious agenda, a man who doesn’t check his work and who pays insufficient attention to facts in testimony. I had hoped we wouldn’t have another temperature record hag-ridden by people with an axe to grind … foolish me.
Perhaps someone who knows Dr. Muller could ask him to explain his cheerleading before Congress. I call it cheerleading because it certainly wasn’t scientific testimony of any kind I’m familiar with. I hear Dr. Muller is a good guy, and very popular with the students, but still … color me very disappointed.
w.
PS – Muller also said:
Let me now address the problem of
Poor Temperature Station Quality
Many temperature stations in the U.S. are located near buildings, in parking lots, or close to heat sources. Anthony Watts and his team has shown that most of the current stations in the US Historical Climatology Network would be ranked “poor” by NOAA’s own standards, with error uncertainties up to 5 degrees C.
Did such poor station quality exaggerate the estimates of global warming? We’ve studied this issue, and our preliminary answer is no.
The Berkeley Earth analysis shows that over the past 50 years the poor stations in the U.S. network do not show greater warming than do the good stations.
Thus, although poor station quality might affect absolute temperature, it does not appear to affect trends, and for global warming estimates, the trend is what is important.
Dr. Muller, I’m going to call foul on this one. For you to announce your pre-publication results on this issue is way, way out of line. You get to have your claim entered into the Congressional Record and you don’t even have to produce a single citation or publish a paper or show a scrap of data or code? That is scientific back-stabbing via Congressional testimony, and on my planet it is absolutely unacceptable.
That is taking unfair advantage of your fifteen minutes of fame. Show your work and numbers like anyone else and we’ll evaluate them. Then you may be able to crow, or not, before Congress.
But to stand up before Congress as an expert witness and refer solely to your own unpublished, uncited, and un-verifiable claims? Sorry, but if you want to make that most public scientific claim, that bad siting doesn’t affect temperature trends, you have to show your work just like anyone else. If you want to make that claim before Congress, then PUBLISH YOUR DATA AND CODE like the rest of us mortals. Put your results where your mouth is, or if not, leave it out of your Congressional testimony. Why is that not obvious?
Anthony’s unpublished and unverifiable claims are as strong as your similar claims. That is to say, neither have any strength or validity at all at this point … so how would you feel if Anthony trotted out his unverifiable claims before Congress to show that Dr. Richard Muller was wrong, and didn’t show his work?
Like I said … color me very disappointed, both scientifically and personally. Dr. Muller, I invite you to explain your Congressional testimony, because I certainly don’t understand it. I am totally confident that Anthony will be happy to publish your reply.
I also urge you to either a) publish the data and code that you think shows no difference in trends between good and poor stations, or b) publicly retract your premature and unverifiable claims. You don’t get to do one without the other, that’s not scientific in any sense of the word.
PPS – Does any of this mean that the BEST analysis is wrong or their numbers or data are wrong or that the BEST folks are fudging the results? ABSOLUTELY NOT. I am disappointed in Dr. Muller’s claims and his actions. The math and the data analysis is an entirely different question. Theirs may be flawless, we simply don’t know yet (nor would I expect to, it’s early days). I look forward to their results and their data and code, this kind of initiative is long overdue.
I want to be very clear than the validity of their actual methods depends only on the validity of their actual methods. The problem is, we don’t even know exactly what those methods are yet. We have rough descriptions, but not even any pseudocode, much less code. Which in part is why I find Dr. Muller’s testimony unsettling …
RELATED: See the rebuttal letter to congress:
Clarification on BEST submitted to the House
Pielke Sr. on the Muller testimony
=========================================================
UPDATE: in apparent response to Willis Eschenbach, BEST has added this below to their FAQs page. For fairness, I reproduce it here. – Anthony
NEW (4/1) – It appears that in Dr. Muller’s testimony he shows a temperature rise greater rise than others had previously published. Is this so? Can you explain?
The Berkeley Earth plot is for the land data only, since we have not yet begun analysis of ocean temperatures. Because we only analyze land, that was the fair comparison to make. The ocean temperature rise is less, and when included in, it reduces the value of the total temperature rise.
We started with the land data for several reasons:
- It is the data that is affected most by the most contentious issues: data selection bias, urban heat island, and station integrity issues. These are big concerns and we wanted to address them.
- The temperature rise on land is greater than on the oceans, mostly because the ocean distribute the heat over the mixed layer and thereby reduces the temperature rise. Land keeps the heat mostly on the surface. So the land temperature is actually more sensitive to greenhouse gases than is the world temperature.
- The land issue, with 1.6 billion measurements, was a huge one to tackle. It made sense to divide the effort into two stages.
The land only data for the other three groups are available on their websites, and agree with the plot provided in Dr. Richard Muller’s testimony.
Holy cow. I cant believe what I’m reading. Wasn’t the purpose of BEST to let only the data do the talking? What has happened here? Was there any indication at all that this Miller guy was going to pull a fast one?
Thanks Willis
“Does any of this mean that the BEST analysis is wrong or their numbers or data are wrong or that the BEST folks are fudging the results? ABSOLUTELY NOT.”
===================================================
Agreed. But, given his statements today, he’s destroyed the goodwill of the people giving him the benefit of doubt. Berkeley………… I never did have much optimism with that lot.
Willis,
Comparing NCDC, GISTemp, and Hadley land-only records is problematic, as they all use somewhat differing definitions of land areas.
Per chapter 3 of the AR4:
“Most of the differences arise from the diversity of spatial averaging techniques. The global average for CRUTEM3 is a land-area weighted sum (0.68 × NH + 0.32 × SH). For NCDC it is an area-weighted average of the grid-box anomalies where available worldwide. For GISS it is the average of the anomalies for the zones 90°N to 23.6°N, 23.6°N to 23.6°S and 23.6°S to 90°S with weightings 0.3, 0.4 and 0.3, respectively, proportional to their total areas. For Lugina et al. (2005) it is (NH + 0.866 × SH) / 1.866 because they excluded latitudes south of 60°S. As a result, the recent global trends are largest in CRUTEM3 and NCDC, which give more weight to the NH where recent trends have been greatest”
Most of the difference between land records lies in the way they are defined, not the underlying station data. Indeed, if you take GHCN data and use the GISTemp zonal weights, you get something effectively identical to GISTemp: http://rankexploits.com/musings/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Picture-9.png
If you do not apply zonal weights, and instead use simple gridding (with a land mask), you get something identical to NCDC: http://rankexploits.com/musings/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Picture-475.png
This post goes into a bit of detail about solving the land temp difference mystery: http://rankexploits.com/musings/2010/the-great-gistemp-mystery/
I’m not sure where Muller gets his 1.2 C numbers; my analysis of the data since 1900 gets trends similar to yours.
Willis,
Does it even make sense to be pushing temperature data of 110 years out of 4.5 billion years???
“Did such poor station quality exaggerate the estimates of global warming? We’ve studied this issue, and our preliminary answer is no.”
He is only talking about the 2% test BEST ran.
BEST’s website states pretty clearly that the 2% test is not to be taken very seriously:
“However, the preliminary analysis includes only a very small subset (2%) of randomly chosen data, and does not include any method for correcting for biases such as the urban heat island effect, the time of observation bias, etc. The Berkeley Earth team feels very strongly that no conclusions can yet be drawn from this preliminary analysis.”
WE: “…and on my planet it is absolutely unacceptable.” I always like your writing, and again here, but to my way of thinking you punted on that statement. It is not “unacceptable” (What a euphemism!), it is WRONG. I don’t think I am being over-the-top in saying that. Thank you for this enlightening post.
“The Berkeley Earth analysis shows that over the past 50 years the poor stations in the U.S. network do not show greater warming than do the good stations.”
Is this true of stations that were “good” in 1961 and “poor” now?
Has anyone from NASA or NOAA provided anything to either substantiate or refute the claim that they “estimate about a 1.2 degree C land temperature rise from the early 1900s to the present?”
That should be pretty straightforward to show, I would think.
The “B” in BEST should have been fair warning.
Berkley isn’t exactly known to be an apolitical town and most people are impacted by their surroundings. If the doctor’s study produces inconvenient results, nobody will invite him to dinner anymore.
Well said, Willis – this reeks of bias.
He also states in his testimony that their preliminary analysis did not include work to check for bias caused by UHI and other effects:
“Berkeley Earth hopes to complete its analysis including systematic bias avoidance in the next few weeks. We are now studying new approaches to reducing biases from:
1. Urban heat island effects. Some stations in cities show more rapid warming than
do stations in rural areas.
2. Time of observation bias. When the time of recording temperature is changed,
stations will typically show different mean temperatures than they did previously.
This is sometimes corrected in the processes used by existing groups. But this
cannot be done easily for remote stations or those that do not report times of
observations.
3. Station moves. If a station is relocated, this can cause a “jump” in its
temperatures. This is typically corrected in the adjustment process used by other
groups. Is the correction introducing another bias? The corrections are
sometimes done by hand, making replication difficult.
4. Change of instrumentation. When thermometer type is changed, there is often an
offset introduced, which must be corrected.”
When one looks at what he actually said it appears that you fears amount to not what he said but the fact that you do not like the way he said it.
You and Watts are blowing his testimony way out of proportion as well as missing some pretty important stuff.
Take a breath, relax…then go back and read what he actually said, rather then what you think he said.
Let’s assume the human-caused warming is 0.6 degrees.
Let’s assume the human-caused warming is -0.6 degrees. Fixed for the last 10-15 years.
Never assume, it makes an ass out of u and me
This time you are not going to make an ass out of me.
You (Dr. Richard Muller) took advantage of the good and trusting nature of Mr Watts. You should be ashamed. Truly, I am sick of all of this posturing.
I would love to see a reply here on WUWT (No1 Science blog on the internet) from Dr. Richard Muller and see how he copes with real Peer review.
@Dr. Richard Muller I dare you to come on this website and defend what you have said. You believe in it so strongly you should be able to defend it. Here. Not at Fake Climate.
If the “good” data and the “bad” data show the same thing – maybe we can just dispense with data altogether and call it as we want it!
Can someone explain what is going on at GISS. Just checked their global temp graph and it appears that there are 4 years warmer than 1998. Last time I checked GISS, 2005 was warmer and 2010 was as warm. I understand that 1998’s data was ‘cleaned up’ recently which resulted in a drop in mean temp but have 2007 and 2009 been adjusted.
I know they use a different method of obtained their temps but the other global monitors still show 1998 the warmest (2010 equal in some).
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.gif
Sorry for a second post, but after a fourth read it seems that Dr. Richard Muller is after more funding for more research into his assertions.
I still want him to come on here and defend his testimony.
The man is a charlatan and the worst type of plagiarist.
“Does any of this mean that the BEST analysis is wrong or their numbers or data are wrong or that the BEST folks are fudging the results? ABSOLUTELY NOT.”
actually the answer should be, DON’T KNOW … because you don’t … they haven’t published anything so you have no way of saying ABSOLUTELY NOT … that is not a yes, no question … it is a yes, no, don’t know …
Let me guess … the BEST result will be “worse than we thought “… or am I too much a sceptic ?
Even if Muller’s claim was right and it did not impact on trend but only on absolute temperature – would that not skew the total increase (depending on when the data quality decreased) and therefore overstate the size of the issue? So you would have a step jump at some point?
Temperatures have risen slightly since the end of the Little ice age. Who woud have thought it?
tonyb
I have never believed for a moment that BEST is anything but a prop to support the evidence-free belief that more CO2 is a problem. Note that Muller is already throwing out conclusions. That is not science, that is an agenda.
If they want credibility, they must have complete transparency, as the scientific method requires. That means publicly archiving all raw data, codes, methodologies and metadata in real time, starting right now.
The fact that they’re already playing their cards close to the vest indicates that they want to do the talking, instead of letting the data do the talking.
More smoke and mirrors.
Didn’t Muller also say the surface based temperature stations (USHCN network) not warm biased??? According to Anthony’s research, only 15% of the stations meet the NOAA specifications.
We all had high hopes for a thorough and transparent investigation from the BEST group and the most that can be said is that – so far – it is disappointing. Disappointing that anything has been said prior to completion.
Anomalies by year http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2011/03/31/an-indication-of-the-growth-of-station-bias/ show an intriguing shift over the century that suggests a proportion of stations is warming.
I’m not sure why anybody is surprised.
While I can appreciate that many had high hopes for this “revolutionary” new venture, the “leaks” and public statements should have sounded the alarm long ago. All we have now (without even a first run) is yet another “confirmation” of everybody else’s work. This time of course we can now claim that we have incorporated the sceptical POV into our analysis.
Bottom line… hands up anybody who thought BEST wouldn’t end up somewhere between CRU and GISS? Seems that Muller had stated this as “the outcome” long ago. Put another way, do you really think that they would have published anything if the result looked like being either -1C or +2C over the 1950-80 baseline? Too low, Too high…end of grant! It looks like science…..
“Scientific Back-stabbing”…and then some. It would appear to me the Muller is looking a gift horse in the mouth, and the prospects of losing a place at the research trough is too awful to bear. The man caved in to self-preservation and opportunistic, sideways self promotion, to a panel too far removed from the scientific method to notice. Sort of a perverted reverse sting. All the BEST, Dr. Muller.
Based on Dr. Muller’s quote above, he is clearly a Warmist.
“The magnitude of this temperature rise is a key scientific and public policy concern.”
“Public policy concern” as in “we must stop doing what we are doing” or as in “we should prepare for the weather change”?
If prepare, then why make statements such as he has. If “do something” (to include CO2 emission reduction), then his statements to Congress simply strengthen the position.
Sorry Anthony, I’m a tad confused. You say:
Here’s the problem. The actual land surface air temperature warming since 1900 according to the existing datasets is:
NASA GISTEMP: 0.72°C
NOAA NCDC: 0.86°C
CRUTEM: 0.92°C
But then later:
4. He says that the land warming since 1957 is 0.7°C. The records beg to differ. Here’s the land warming since 1957:
NASA GISTEMP: 0.83°C
NOAA NCDC: 1.10°C
CRUTEM: 0.93°C
Seems to be at odds with each other
Yours slightly mystified
Andy
The term “being sandbagged” comes to mind. Sorry Anthony, it looks like you’ve been had. In climate science “scientific integrity” appears to be an oxymoron, but then so does the term climate science.
Please…
“Did such poor station quality exaggerate the estimates of global warming? We’ve studied this issue, and our preliminary answer is no.
“The Berkeley Earth analysis shows that over the past 50 years the poor stations in the U.S. network do not show greater warming than do the good stations.”
-Such an analysis need to confirm that:
A) poor stations now was poor then and that good stations now was good then
B) Falsify the obvious null-hypothesis, that if temperature readings are affected by the use of energy and laying of asphalt etc now, we should expect that an INCREASE of energy use and road pavement INCREASES the effect it has on temperature readings.
C) Take account of all those remote stations that closed after the cold war
AndiC,
I think it depends on the starting year. Maybe this will help.
It’ll be difficult for him to back down even if he later realizes he made a misstep.
In these days of ever-increasing government budget cuts, dodgy science projects are at the top of the list of unnecessary funding to be culled.
If you are a dodgy scientist with iffy facts/statistics/models, your only recourse is to make the conclusions of your ‘research’ ever more scary.
Such is the reaction of climate ‘scientists’ to potential cuts in the size of government grant troughs.
IPCC Version 5 is destined to be the scariest document on global climate ever produced – sadly, there will be many who will believe its contents.
1.2C vs 0.7C …… 0.7C is approximately 1.2F do you think he may have “F-ed” up? For those who seek to be apologists or nuancers of the statement of Muller, if on his web he says … but oh, we have just looked at 2% of the record, why would he be so unequivocably supportive of the amount of warming and the good work of those that went before when the next 98% of the record might show the record wrong? There is only one answer to that question – he has already made up his mind. The uncompleted work of a fellow who has just joined the debate is about as valuable as the opinions of the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker. With the latter, we at least know how much weight to attach to their arguments.
There can be no question that this BEST is another clever stunt of the cornered AGW tricksters. Willis, you are too accommodating in your gentlemanly prose.
Um, “Berkeley”
Nuff said…..
Willis: The 1.2 deg C rise in global Land Surface Temperature since the early 1900s (not the year 1900) cannot be based on linear trends. It has to be a trough to peak value based on 2- or 3-year smoothing. In other words, it’s contrived.
You guys were very naive in expecting BEST would anyway answer the question as if this whole exercise had a climatological significance. Basically you just walked in the trap…
Keep the heat on.
WEll done Anthony I have changed my mind too. I don’t believe a word of this maybe we’ve been conned on purpose?
You’re conned.
I.M.O. BEST and Dr. Richard Muller just came out of the closet as a ‘Warmist Agenda Supporters’ pur sang.
I haven’t seen such an incredible act of back stabbing behavior since Mann’s ‘tricks’ and the white wash of Climate Gate.
Anthony, in my opinion these people knew you were on to something, and now they are in the process of marginalizing you. Because if you don’t go along with them, after they’ve bent over backwards to accommodate you, then you must be nothing more than a troublemaker. I’m pretty sure they’ve already done enough research to know that you are correct, and that badly-sited stations have contributed to the global warming statistics. That’s why this project was started in the first place, for no other reason than to take over your surface station project, and to interject a warm bias. I truly believed this from the very start, and I didn’t trust this guy any further than I could throw him, even if he is a runt and I could throw him further than the average.
Careful, here, Anthony, I believe you are about to be had.
Can we call it WORST now? Let’s find a backronym…
Wondrous Ongoing Relentless Scientific Travesty.
Academic trying to keep himself in a job.
Let’s see a bit more before we conclude anything significant.
I watched the hour-long lecture of Muller that contains his criticism of the Hockey Stick. What i found striking is that Muller talks freely about *all* the uncovered mistakes in the IPCC report, emphasizes that the uncertainty is much greater than they conclude yet still is convinced that his (the warmist) side has the basic science right – including the questionable, never observed global positive water vapor feedback.
I find his attitude wholly unconvincing… i got away with the feeling of watching an actor playing after a script with some gaping plotholes in it.
What I find even more disturbing than the bungled numbers is the utter lack of scientific insight into the crux of the issue: the secular bias of UHI and land-use changes manifest in the majority of station records, particularly outside the USA. Indiscriminantly throwing all records into the bin, calculating average anomalies, and fitting a linear trend just doe’nt cut it. But you’d never know it by that pixie smile on Muller’s face.
From AndiC on March 31, 2011 at 1:53 pm
From Stephan on March 31, 2011 at 2:18 pm:
Umm, this was a Willis post, not an Anthony post.
😉
mm…someone has been doling out the red meat tonight! Get real, guys! You can try to engage or just come across like rednecks….your choice
If Jim Hansen’s testimony before Congress was good, and Al Gore’s was better, than this is obviously BEST.
Muller has to hew to the party line. And that is, among other things, that the locations of those pesky poorly sited stations do not matter in analyzing the trends. This is the line out of NOAA/NWS and their Regional Climate Services Directors, as well. The way it was explained to me (by a Regional Climate Services Director), only trends matter, that is why they look only at anomalies, and those stations that do not behave the same way as nearby stations, well, they get dropped out as outliers. So apparently, a group of poorly sited stations (perhaps those that move from rural to urban or where urbanization is increasing) that all show an upward trend will be used to determine the validity of a single nearby well-placed station and the well placed station will be dropped from the dataset. They never actually look at the individual stations, because location doesn’t matter, only at the data they get from them. This is called “quality control.” Honestly, this is what he said. My jaw almost hit the floor.
Willis,
I, like AndiC’ at 1:53 pm, am confused by your numbers since 1957.
NASA GISTEMP: 0.83°C
NOAA NCDC: 1.10°C
CRUTEM: 0.93°C
Huh?
When the total warming since 1900 was…
NASA GISTEMP: 0.72°C
NOAA NCDC: 0.86°C
CRUTEM: 0.92°C
…how do the first numbers you quote make sense?
Did temps drop from 1900 to 1957 and then shoot up to make up the average?
Perhaps you’ve slipped in the wrong numbers for land temps since 1957?
The over all point of your post stands.
He seems to be very sure of a big increas before he has even seen the numbers.
Very discouraging indeed.
I don’t quite understand just what was stated.
It sounds like
“The actual land surface air temperature warming since 1900 according to the existing datasets is:
NASA GISTEMP: 0.72°C
NOAA NCDC: 0.86°C
CRUTEM: 0.92°C”
But …
“the land warming since 1957:
NASA GISTEMP: 0.83°C
NOAA NCDC: 1.10°C
CRUTEM: 0.93°C”
Was it cooler in 1957 than it was in 1900″ How can a 110 year increase be less than a 54 year increase (1/2 as long)?
” Hello ! Earth to Dr Muller: Station selection is BIAS; By DEFINITION !! ”
And you don’t have near enough stations to begin with; so you don’t have the luxury of not using all that you have. Mother Gaia has a thermometer in every molecule or atom; so she knows what the Temperature really is. Your puny list of stations may give you a consistent view of the average Temperature of your list of stations; but it can’t even come close to telling you what the earth’s average Temperature really is; or ever has been.
Gee, Pa, that man down at the girly show took my whole dollar and dint give me no change.
Willis, Anthony, et. al., it’s not all that surprising that we might not see the best from BEST. As I observed about a week ago professor Muller makes clear his views and conclusions but doesn’t provide much if any supporting evidence for those views and conclusions. A copy of the comment follows.
My comment from March 22:
While part of Professor Muller’s video takes the Team (Mann, Briffa, Jones, Wahl, et. al.) to task for stuff you can’t do in science, the longer version makes it clear that the Professor is biased towards the Catastrophic AGW hypothesis claims. Unfortunately the Professor doesn’t explain the reasoning behind his claims or his support for the CAGW claims.
The extract from the longer talk with Professor Muller taking the Team to task for what you can’t do in science and rebuking them by asserting that he now has a list of people whose papers he won’t read anymore. Ouch, cast them out of the science club. Three cheers for professor Muller for standing up for scientific integrity.
The full 52 minute talk where professor Muller makes clear his views and conclusions but doesn’t provide much if any supporting evidence for those views and conclusions (except for the portion where he takes the Team to task, that is explained very well, although he seems to let the Team off light).
I would really like to see professor Muller substantiate every Catastrophic AGW Hypothesis claim that he is supporting with direct hard evidence that can be openly verified by others along every step of the way from the assessment that the planet is warming (the BEST being a start) on through to every single conclusion that that is somehow “bad”. It’s not enough to simply assert that it’s the Green House Gases and we’re doomed, it needs to be substantiated with verifiable evidence – preferably experiments and direct observational data if possible – every step of the way on each and every doomsday claim [fully expanded upon in detail at how they arrived at such conclusions]. That would be something to see and review in depth.
The IPCC analysis that Muller cites as his authority on the extent of human-caused warming takes as its starting point the temperature records that Muller is supposedly questioning. Can he really be oblivious to the circularity, and to the larger problem of conflating temperature record issues with all of the other analytical travesties the IPCC is involved in.
The stated purpose of BEST is simply to establish a more reliable temperature record that can be used as an unbiased reference point for such questions as what what caused the warming. Any position on what caused warming is alien to the BEST project, and to be injecting it into testimony on BEST only introduces the reek of bias, contrary to the stated purpose.
Oops, the link to the earlier comment is “professor Muller makes clear his views and conclusions but doesn’t provide much if any supporting evidence for those views and conclusions.”
Richard Muller owes Anthony (& Willis & the rest of us) an explanation on here. Otherwise, he’s just more of the same from Bezerkley…
Maybe Babs made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.
Here is a quote with the words “ashamed” and “tricks” in it. Read it and see why I think Prof. Muller should have started out without a number already in his head.
“We have learned a lot from experience about how to handle some of
the ways we fool ourselves. One example: Millikan measured the
charge on an electron by an experiment with falling oil drops, and
got an answer which we now know not to be quite right. It’s a
little bit off, because he had the incorrect value for the
viscosity of air. It’s interesting to look at the history of
measurements of the charge of the electron, after Millikan. If you
plot them as a function of time, you find that one is a little
bigger than Millikan’s, and the next one’s a little bit bigger than
that, and the next one’s a little bit bigger than that, until
finally they settle down to a number which is higher.
Why didn’t they discover that the new number was higher right away?
It’s a thing that scientists are ashamed of–this history–because
it’s apparent that people did things like this: When they got a
number that was too high above Millikan’s, they thought something
must be wrong–and they would look for and find a reason why
something might be wrong. When they got a number closer to
Millikan’s value they didn’t look so hard. And so they eliminated
the numbers that were too far off, and did other things like that.
We’ve learned those tricks nowadays, and now we don’t have that
kind of a disease.
CARGO CULT SCIENCE by Richard Feynman
Adapted from the Caltech commencement address given in 1974.
http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm
Thus, although poor station quality might affect absolute temperature, it does not appear to affect trends, and for global warming estimates, the trend is what is important.
I have seen this behaviour before, ignore absolutes and how they are calculated (this is a deliberate put-down of the surface station project) and go for the trend. This comes across as a ‘reasonable’ assumption to a general non-scientific audience. But the ‘trend’ can go both ways, Dr Muller, and as Smokey says, watch those start dates.
Excuse me if I don’t get it – I have trouble keeping up but I do manage to at least check out headlines. I thought the BEST project was pretty new on the scene and, of course, the project was incomplete.
So why was he invited to testify? Would he have been anyway, before the project was announced or if it had never been undertaken in the first place?
Muller is quoted as saying:
“The Berkeley Earth analysis shows that over the past 50 years the poor stations in the U.S. network do not show greater warming than do the good stations.”
“Thus, although poor station quality might affect absolute temperature, it does not appear to affect trends, and for global warming estimates, the trend is what is important.”
This is nonsense on a stick. One of the great worries is about UHI effect and another is about change of station site. These factors can influence readings in steps that are not apparent in trends. For example, if a station is moved from grass to concrete then its temperature readings will take a step up that is caused by the move. That trends are not the only thing that matters is falling down easy to demonstrate. Suppose that a station shows the trend expected by Muller but in the data for that station there is a step-up that accounts for 99% of the upward trend. Then what is being measured is not a trend but an absolute step up. So, tell me again how absolute temperature does not matter. It damn well matters if it occurs as steps overlooked for the sake of the trend.
There is another crucial flaw. Muller assumes that the poorly sited stations do not present a problem if they trend up in the same way as the other stations. But what if the poor siting hides the fact that their trends would have been less, non-existent, or negative if they had not been poorly sited?
Clearly, Muller is another greedy ex-scientist on the make. You can’t overlook the 1 2 3’s and A B C’s without revealing an intent to mislead.
The problem Muller is has is doing enough enough boot-licking to keep his cred with the Warmist establishment and still offer well-grounded scientific criticism.
The problem BEST has always had is this: if you are going to authoritative, use open data and reproducable methods, then how can your revisions be released without a sound, comprehensive data base management plan? To date, I see no evidence of any “plan”~
DickH (above) says, after watching Muller’s November 2010 lecture:
“What i found striking is that Muller talks freely about *all* the uncovered mistakes in the IPCC report, emphasizes that the uncertainty is much greater than they conclude yet still is convinced that his (the warmist) side has the basic science right – including the questionable, never observed global positive water vapor feedback.”
Muller lays out evidence to indict the integrity of the players, yet choses not to exercise judgement. Is this a dodge or a deferral?
Maybe it is not his role to judge until the evidence fully supporting the conclusion is made available. The timeline for his BEST project was to take three years. I expected successive revisions of the data. However, how the releases will be managed has yet to be explained.
This maybe the Achilles heel of his hopes.
“Does any of this mean that the BEST analysis is wrong or their numbers or data are wrong or that the BEST folks are fudging the results? ABSOLUTELY NOT.”
No, but it means that they too are unwilling to discuss scientific method and unwilling to act in accordance with scientific method by making their work transparent. If you are not willing to discuss scientific method and your work is not transparent, then you are no better than a Mann, a Jones, or any other Climategater. You are not practicing science and the usual reason for that is that you are cheating.
Joshua Corning says:
March 31, 2011 at 1:31 pm
When one looks at what Anthony and I actually said it appears that your fears amount to not what we said but the fact that you do not like the way we said it.
You are blowing our testimony way out of proportion as well as missing some pretty important stuff.
Joshua, take a breath, relax … then go back and think about what Anthony and I said, rather than what you think we said.
I await your return. In the meantime, consider a) how condescending you sound, and b) how little actual content your post contains. You might want to fix both of those before exposing yourself to further laughter from the crowd.
w.
Pardon me for using this word but this is retarded.
While Muller claims that poor station quality did not exaggerate the estimates of global warming he exaggerates that the earth has warmed 1.2°C since 1900.
Conclusion: One doesn’t need poor station quality or any other poor data as an excuse or reason to exaggerate global warming.
You only have to be an unethical [snip].
It’s looking more and more like BEST is going to be a “Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown.” 🙁
Best stands for, at it’s start, BERKLEY. Berkley is chock full of socialists. This makes sense, Berkley is a college town, professors don’t have to actually interact with reality, and socialism looks good on paper, you only see it’s insolvable problems when you meet in in real life, which these people never do. AGW supports socialism (and then some!), and therefore Berkley people support AGW. AGW depends on warming, which is detected by temperature measurements.
Therefor, a Berkley temperature measurement team will be stuffed with people who very much want the temperature to be going UP. To do otherwise in that town would be to subject yourself to massive peer pressure to conform to everyone else there. This is not rocket science, if it has Berkley in it’s name,the chances of it NOT supporting AGW are slim. The reason anyone here believed otherwise is pure wishful thinking.
The claims made by these people of impartiality and such are pure propaganda, designed to make you believe, when they come out with their finding that “it’s worse than we thought” that they are presenting a mo’ better temperature record. They know that they must present a better seeming one because an increasing number of people don’t believe the ones associated with climategate. So, this team was chosen, they aren’t directly associated with climategate, thus, they can say the same ol’ thing over again but this time presented with an air of impartiality.
Plus they need to say good sounding things about what they are doing to get that grant money. The better it sounds, the more money they get.
Stop believing that they SAID, start believing what they DO.
@ Jit what he said was that while the good and bad stations DO show different temperatures, they show the same TREND – and that the absolute numbers are not important for the question of warming but the trend is. So irrespective of the numbers, it gets warmer, no matter what stations you are looking at. That’s what he said.
[snip – no WWII references]
The graph of “GISS”, “HadCRU”, “NOAA” and “Berkeley” on Pg 4 of Dr. Muller’s submission to the committee shows a warming of about 0.7 C from 1960-2010.
I believe Dr. Muller is saying that he estimates 0.6 C of this over the 50 year period is due to agw; or 1.2 degrees /century if the trend continues. This is where the 1.2 C figure comes from.
My impression is that BEST built an algorithm that they genuinely believed theoretically eliminated any local condition bias, ran it on 2% of the data, and it came back showing no significant difference with the current datasets.
As Dr. Muller states, they found this surprising but that was their result.
Personally, I have a hard time understanding how their process is any different than the other land records- they all are trying to correct for local warming by averaging it out over adjacent stations. How do you know you are not simply averaging stations with uhi bias with other stations with a greater uhi bias?
Badly Estimated Surface Temperatures. BEST.
Willis I think you are being too kind.
It sure looks like an attempt to marginalise Anthony’s SS project.
Very sad.
@ author
well, if I put “global warming 1.2 since 1900” into Google to satisfy my curiousity, I do get a number of clues as to where that figure might have come from instantly. One of them being the Environmental Protection Agency (in Fahrenheit); another states this to be the rise of temperature in the Arctic, etc.
‘…….The Berkeley Earth analysis shows that over the past 50 years the poor stations in the U.S. network do not show greater warming than do the good stations. – Muller
Makes me wonder what he saw in the first half of the 1900’s.
Is this post the first of many pre-emptive strikes against the BEST project just in case it does not show what was wanted from this site? Can another study showing significant warming be swept away with a wave of the hand?
There’s more to it than that.
There was an equipment switch. The newer equipment had a cool bias but was worse sited.
Until those factors are separated out, one cannot tell.
My guess is that in the last 30 years the errors canceled out, but prior to that the trend is exaggerated.
So what’s Muller’s motivation in making statements that contradict the policy of BEST? Was he on the spot because of the timing of the hearing and it just got away from him? Will this influence how the final analysis comes out?
Frankly, I think any statistical analysis will show pretty much the same story we’ve been hearing because the data collection has been faulty. No amount of computation can recover the actual record with enough certainty.
OK, I’m a bit relieved that I’m not the only one curious about why he was invited to testify, just read the “Clarification” thread and Theo Goodwin also brought it up.
Does anyone have an answer, I simply don’t see why Muller was invited in the first place!!!!!???
Prior groups at NOAA, NASA, and in the UK (HadCRU) estimate about a 1.2 degree C land temperature rise from the early 1900s to the present. This 1.2 degree rise is what we call global warming. Their work is excellent, and the Berkeley Earth project strives to build on it.
Human caused global warming is somewhat smaller. According to the most recent IPCC report (2007), the human component became apparent only after 1957, and it
amounts to “most” of the 0.7 degree rise since then. Let’s assume the human-caused warming is 0.6 degrees.
So, accepting these numbers, Muller really thinks there was natural warming of 0.5 deg. over the first ~50 yrs., then it conveniently just about stopped and AGW took over for a very similar 0.6 deg. contribution over the next 53 yrs.?
Regardless of any other issues, who can miss the utterly childish nature of this “just so” claim and that it involves what should be surprisingly small numbers to most people as yet unacquainted with global “warming”?
The comments by high level ‘green’ activists and other leaders listed at
http://www.green-agenda.com/
make it obvious that good faith cannot be expected from the AGW side. By now skeptics should see that this is not an academic dispute. It is a deliberate and organized attack on industrial civilization, and a pure fight. In the long run a developing Dalton Minimum analog and, perhaps, radical energy technologies will defeat AGW propaganda, but that will take several years.
In the meantime, skeptics should think about political and media tactics, such as the stings used against ACORN by James O’Keefe. I suggest a Watts-Breitbart alliance. Videos with the green-agenda comments might have some effect.
Sorry if this is a duplicate – my comment hasn’t appeared.
I just read the “Clarification” thread and Theo Goodwin also wonders why Muller testified. Does anyone know? I simply do not understand why he was there (completely aside from what his project eventually shows and his questionable behavior now).
It’s late here and this is gonna keep me awake – have to get up in 6 hrs. Help!
Willis, Anthony, et. al., strategesis has an interesting and very relevant comment that under cuts Dr. Muller’s testimony and unwise methodology that his comments suggest BEST is using. Quoting with my emphasis:
So how the math is done is most relevant.
Roger Pielke Sr. has a whole bunch to say about using temperatures alone as well. You can see that here.
Does it even make sense to “average” temperature data into one number for the whole planet. I’ve never seen any explanation of that that makes sense. Doesn’t it make more sense to monitor each station’s local temperatures and look for trends in that? Some will stay the same, some will have upward trends and some will have downwards trends. Having an average of the “anomaly” data doesn’t even make sense, at least I’ve never seen any good explanations as to why it makes any sense.
What say you?
Regarding:
pwl says:
March 31, 2011 at 2:58 pm….
What really struck me about Dr. Muller’s youtube lecture:
1. He says buying a Toyota Prius is environmentally foolish because if only the rich can afford the solution, it will never be widely implemented and will have no significant impact on carbon release.
2. He says buying a Toyota Prius is economically foolish because the battery which costs thousands of dollars will need replacing every few years and this will cost far more than the gas saved.
3. He says he is considered a hero at Berkeley because he bought a Toyota Prius.
I think a mental condition develops with people trying to please their peers and fit in with groups that they want to like them. Just like our senators and congressmen do when they start cozying up to media types and the so called elite class of people including the wealthy they are trying to please and be accepted by.
Dr. Muller seems to fit this. Oh, don’t forget the grants and money.
Of course the trend at each measurement site would need to be broken or stopped or started whenever there was a material change to the equipment or whenever there was a break in the record. Does it really make sense to compute a trend across a gap in the temperature record? Really? As was noted above by another the absolute temperature is significant since they are used in calculating the relative (anomaly) numbers for the trend computations. UHI effects will still impact the trend line slopes.
It looks like the game is on to slice and dice the best and worst of BEST. Can’t wait till their fully annotated alleged data and their source code is available.
Looks like Berkley went berserkly and perversely toward the warming and though charming and disarming, their dogma is alarming, claiming C02 is harming fragile Gaia who needs monies for the studies they maliciously invent, thus exposing all their ill intent which stains Science permanent…
Ellis,
Muller said,
“Prior groups at NOAA, NASA, and in the UK (HadCRU) estimate about a 1.2 degree C land temperature rise from the early 1900s to the present. This 1.2 degree rise is what we call global warming. Their work is excellent, and the Berkeley Earth project strives to build on it.”
OK. Let’s go with that and see where it takes us. 111 years and temp is up 1.2 degrees C.
Muller said,
“Human caused global warming is somewhat smaller. According to the most recent IPCC report (2007), the human component became apparent only after 1957, and it amounts to ‘most’ of the 0.7 degree rise since then. Let’s assume the human-caused warming is 0.6 degrees.”
54 years and temp is up 0.7 degrees C.
Is it my ignorance or has Dr. Muller just testified that, (although man caused CO2 has increased), the temp trend for the most recent 54 years is exactly identical to the temp trend for the 57 years starting at 1900?
Someone please help my poor mind!
Big Dave
sceptical says:
“Is this post the first of many pre-emptive strikes against the BEST project just in case it does not show what was wanted from this site? Can another study showing significant warming be swept away with a wave of the hand?”
No, Muller made the pre-emptive strike when he discussed conclusions showing a warming trend. And a o.7°C temperature rise over a century is not “significant warming.” Warming cycles like that have happened countless times over the Holocene. It looks, tastes and feels exactly like previous natural variability. Show us cause and effect; empirical, testable, measurable evidence that a given rise in CO2 causes a given rise in temperature. You’ll be the first if you can do it.
In fact, rises in CO2 follow temperature rises. Here’s a five month chart showing that, and here is a 30 year chart showing that CO2 lags temperature. And here’s a 400 thousand year chart showing that CO2 follows temperature.
There may be a warming trend, but it was clearly inappropriate to discuss it now, because there could just as well be a cooling trend instead. Muller has preconceived beliefs, no?
The central issue with BEST, to me anyway, is the fact that they promised transparency, but they had their fingers crossed behind their backs when they said it. It’s just more stonewalling by the gatekeepers of the information.
Nothing new here, move along. And plan for the worst.
Hmm, looks like the behavior of an academic looking to toe the line to get funding to me.
What we really need is a hosted Open Source project that holds all the data and permits the general public to go in and create and run models against it; i.e. a temperature ‘center of truth’ as it were. Basically get all the raw unadjusted data in one place with as a complete set of normalized meta data to go with it (i.e. environmental factors, technologies used, etc).
You could even go as far as having a ‘plug and play’ analysis framework; i.e. create modules you chain together that work off the attributes to find patterns or inconsistencies etc and ‘refine’ the raw data as an iterative process. You could even put in place the concept of module decoration and create processing ‘recipes’ out of reusable modules… Basically the system will keep track of what module(s) were used to produce said views at certain times. Hell, you could stick it on a journal file system and you would get most of the way to this.
its one of the amazing things I find with this whole area is that the quality of data processing and audit tracking coming out of academia is positively childish compared to the trust being placed in that processing and the actions forthcoming from it. Its like they haven’t really moved on since the days of paper tape and flashing blinking lights.
Today people have desktop computers that can crunch world spanning data sets in the time it takes to make a decent hot cup of tea – one would have thought this would have allowed the quality and integrity of said data processing to improve dramatically as you have so much more scope to put in checks and balances at little cost.
Anywhere I send a letter to ask for my tax dollars back please?
pwl said:
“I would really like to see professor Muller substantiate every Catastrophic AGW Hypothesis claim that he is supporting with direct hard evidence that can be openly verified by others along every step of the way from the assessment that the planet is warming (the BEST being a start) on through to every single conclusion that that is somehow “bad”. ”
I serioulsly doubt you will see even ONE paper that supports CAGW with direct hard evidence. I keep asking, and have not yet seen ONE. That’s why these guys have to keep using Orwellian words like “consensus,” “multiple lines of evidence” (none of which exist), “scientists say,” ad nauseum.
The institution is not called Berserkely by half the population for nothing!
In response to sceptical:
“Can another study showing significant warming be swept away with a wave of the hand?”
What study are you referring to, please?
Professor Mueller, Are you smarter than a 5th grader?
Bryan A: Was it cooler in 1957 than it was in 1900″ How can a 110 year increase be less than a 54 year increase (1/2 as long)?
On Monday it was 60 degrees. On Tuesday it was 80 degrees. On Wednesday it was 70 degrees. How can a two-day increase be less than a one-day increase?
The quality of stations don’t matter, it’s all about the trend?
Had to read this twice. It’s the nature of bad stations to show trends which are not and hide trends which are real.
So climate science uses sophisticated theories and supercomputer models to derive far-reaching conclusions, but doesn’t care of the underlying data?
They can’t be serious.
Agree with vboring and others who went right to the heart of the matter: How can you expect anyone from Berkeley of all places to contradict AGW orthodoxy?
Muller: ‘although poor station quality might affect absolute temperature, it does not appear to affect trends’.
Huh?
If poor station quality (e.g. surrounding a station with asphalt) increases absolute temperature reported by that station (which Muller says is true), and the amount of asphalt increases with time (which urbanization gives us, like it or not), then the result will be an increasing temperature trend.
What is Muller’s evidence for the statement ‘although poor station quality might affect absolute temperature, it does not appear to affect trends’?
Back in the old days, when logic was considered a foundation of scientific thought and discourse, we wouldn’t have given so much space talking about Dr Muller. Indeed Muller wouldn’t even be a Dr. How can you have a trend unchanged if city growth creates a growing uhi temp over and above global warming temp trends. Why do I have to ask this question? That I do shows the magnitude of the effort required to deal with the issues. Alternatively it shows that no amount of evidence or logical argument can change the agw belief system. I now understand the use of the term agw denier. It has nothing to do with science or logic, but rather is a matter of belief and faith in one’s peer-reviewed leaders. You don’t go into the temple and argue against dogma.
They cooked temps, then when this was queried, they cooked peer review to give it authority (the very peer review that is blocking Anthony’s paper while they scuttle it at Berkley) , and while they are arguing that poor station location doesn’t matter, they are quietly shutting down badly sited stations to make Anthony’s paper obsolete.
I said over a year ago that surfacestations.org had to set up a new independent network of stations (no small task – need chapters of s.stations across the country and a lot of donations).
To quote Dr. Muller and paraphrase: Dr. Muller is now on a list of scientists whose papers I won’t read.
I concur JAE, I was just being polite as we Great White Northers are reputed for being. [:)]. I also keep asking for the evidence and have yet to see even one paper presented that substantiates their doomsday claims.
Also, so what if the planet has warmed a bit? It has done that lots of times as the various ice core data shows. 9,100 of the last 10,500 years were warmer than any in the last 100 years by up to 2c or more, so I don’t get what the panic is all about.
1.2 degree C land temperature rise from the early 1900s to the present….the human component became apparent only after 1957, and it amounts to “most” of the 0.7 degree rise since then. Let’s assume the human-caused warming is 0.6 degrees.
So, he says that the .5 degree rise from ealy 1900s (1910? 1920? 1930?) to 1957… we’ll be generous and call it 50 years is natural. But during the next 50 years from 1957 to 2007, only .1 degree of warming is natural. Riiiiiiight.
I get to say “told you so” right now and I don’t mind saying it.
Even funnier, Muller thinks he can tell what caused the temperature rise just from the thermometer readings. That’s one good “trick”, innit?
The ‘fix’ was just put in. Unsubstantiated and even unsupported claims entered into the Congressional Record as ‘science’, by a person we can now see to be an advocate of AGW unrestrained by actual data, valid analyses, or facts.
How can anyone make the claim there has been 1.2 degrees C plus or minus 0.2 degrees C of warming since 1900, based on data from temperature monitors where 64.4% have error greater than 2.0 degrees C and 6.2% have error greater than 5.0 degrees C?
How do you (expletive deleted) do that? It must have been taught in a higher level of Statistics than the classes I had in college….. Or is there a new branch of Imagineering Statistics, just for AGW advocates?
Further, how can anyone with a shred of integrity or self respect state such (language sufficient to make a sailor blush deleted) rubbish as fact? Anybody?????????
Willis
Doing a very quick check of Mr. Watts clarification to the House Committee, I didn’t see any mention of the 1.2 C temperature discrepancy vs. the actuals cited here for the NOAA , NASA (GISTEMP), and HadCRU datasets. Nor this there mention that BEST analysis is only on a very preliminary evaluation on the only 2% of the data.
It would be nice to ensure this discrepancy was brought to the Committee’s attention. Perhaps, this would be an opportunity for Dr. Muller to directly amend his testimony or clarify where the 1.2 C figure came?
Slightly off subject, I did like Dr. Christy’s testimony. His formal text helped provide considerable historical context and insight to the hockey stick/IPPC/EPA controversies.
Havn’t had a chance to listen to the full testimony and committee questions. So am looking forward to doing so later.
Regards, Kforestcat
So someone is surprised that an employee of an institution that charges students to take classes in climate science…
…didn’t say it’s wrong
BTW it doesn’t matter if good stations or bad stations show the same warming…
…or trend
The issue is not really about current warming or what current stations show.
If it was, we would all go home, there’s nothing to see here.
The radical trend was established by adjusting past temperatures down.
There is no need to worry about this because unfortunately fot the AGW there is in fact NO AGW warming. This from a very pro-warmist site but at least he has not tried to adjust the data himself LOL
http://processtrends.com/images/RClimate_UAH_Ch5_latest.png
what exactly is the difference between publishing preliminary results on a blog
and testifying about preliminary results before congress? NOTHING.
We are quite proud of putting up preliminary posts here. I’ve asked for code on dozens of occassions. with very little success.
Don’t trust anything out of Berkeley — leftists from the ground up. You (all) never should have been given them the benefit of the doubt at the beginning. They needed to prove they were “doing science” before you praise them for doing something wonderful — the BEST BS. Eschenbach: “I want to be very clear tha[n] the validity of their actual methods depends only on the validity of their actual methods. The problem is, we don’t even know exactly what those methods are yet.” Methods, schmethods. No methods will give anything valid if the raw data has been fixed, cooked, adjusted, and whatever else they think they can get away with doing to it. Find some group that can agree on the raw data to be used by “valid methods” and then let’s give a look.
He might be able to rebuild it by explaining his strange numbers
He is from Berkeley. Explained.
dixonstalbert says:
March 31, 2011 at 3:35 pm
No, that’s not what he said. He said that he specifically hasn’t allowed for local conditions like UHI. At least that how I read it.
w.
@ Kendra – iirc from watching his lectures, he has given advise to the goverment on scientific issues in the past. Maybe that’s why he was invited ? He is not your random dude with an opionion…
steven mosher says:
March 31, 2011 at 5:19 pm
what exactly is the difference between publishing preliminary results on a blog
and testifying about preliminary results before congress? NOTHING.
============================================
8-/
I’m not passing judgment yet. I will wait until all the raw data is compiled—compared against the existing records, of course—and code is released. Then, we see if he weighs the same as a duck.
kcrucible says:
March 31, 2011 at 4:49 pm
1.2 degree C land temperature rise from the early 1900s to the present….the human component became apparent only after 1957, and it amounts to “most” of the 0.7 degree rise since then. Let’s assume the human-caused warming is 0.6 degrees.
So, he says that the .5 degree rise from ealy 1900s (1910? 1920? 1930?) to 1957… we’ll be generous and call it 50 years is natural. But during the next 50 years from 1957 to 2007, only .1 degree of warming is natural. Riiiiiiight.
_______________________________________
Thanks for saving me having to post that.
Yeah, somehow he knows that the baseline was going to do a dog leg and essentially plateau, in 1957.
How did you know that Dr. Muller ?? Or, more correctly, how did you surmise that, or invent that ?? Wouldn’t a better interpretation of the data be that human contributions to “global warming” cannot be greater that 0.2 degrees for the last 50 years ??
Answer: YES
My guess is that Dr. Muller is so deeply invested in substantiating AGW that it is simply impossible for him to prepare an analysis that is not also biased. Although he found serious problems with the hockey stickers, it appears his faith in AGW is unshaken. It also might be that he is investing time in BEST only to provide additional “proof” that all the previous temperature data, and therefore AGW, are still valid. A thorough temperature analysis, properly done, will probably take years and thousands of manhours. At a minimum, I would think that all station changes need to me identified so that a new series can be calculated for each data segment. Not doing so would defeat the whole endeavour, I would think. For him to announce his findings based on an untested preliminary and partial analysis is indeed unacceptable, and also unscientific.
Look at Mullers graph in the beginning of the video. The answer is cherry picking. Look how he draws the time boundaries where he gets the greatest graphic benefit.
Look at both ends, where is the data after 2000, where things are stable or declining?
And where is any sense of variability or trend before 1200? Why stop there, how was it in 1500 BC?
You slice the data how it looks best.
Early on I doubted this whole enterprise and started to investigate it http://jer-skepticscorner.blogspot.com/2011/02/who-is-novin-and-why-are-they-messing.html
simply because the group behind them was obviously vested in the warmist agenda.
Once Anthony mentioned he was involved I pretty much let it go. The one other reason that I had my doubts was that the so called lead scientist is Robert Rohde of Global Warming Art fame http://www.linkedin.com/pub/robert-rohde/4/700/646. Over the years I have seen enough of his art work to discern which side of the issue he endorses.
I suspect that as time goes on BEST will be used as a tool to discredit those who question catastrophic AGW and they will act the part of scientific integrity and moderation. There is far too much invested in this to let something like the truth get in the way.
Anyone that uses temperatures from 1900 and says that they show less than degrees of precision is indulging in witchcraft.
Let me see If I can clear a few things up for folks who dont understand the BEST algorithm.
1. It’s akin to the approach taken by RomanM and jeffid. Also by nick stokes and tamino.
that approach, has none of the kludges needed by CRU ( a common anomaly period) or by GISS reference station method. That is the code that was used to do the evaluations. the result is EXACTLY what I expect it to be. That is, it matches CRU and GISS, within reason.
2. The special feature is called the scalpel. This approach add a novel twist that we
discussed a long while back on the airvent. basically, instead of adjusting a station
when the sensor changes or when it moves, you split or cut the time series. And you
create a new station. NO adjustments. the “adjustement” becomes part of the
least squares estimate. very slick.
3. New UHI metadata.
So where does the project stand. #2 is still having final touches put on it. Data has not been run with the scalpel turned on. I do not expect the results will change, much.
3. they fixed a bug in the dataset they were using that I alerted them to. I havent got an update since then. it was a tiny bug not that important, but it was nice that they saw fit to fix it. My understanding is that they havent run any UHI tests. People should understand that UHI can’t possibly be a huge deal. .15C worst case. McKittrick would argue .3C, jones would say .05c. but the world is still warming, and C02 is responsible for a fair portion of that.
This Status is current as of a week ago or so.
REPLY: except that 2 and 3 were not applied to the data > conclusion > opinion presented to congress today, 4 was irrelevant to today. – Anthony
“Does any of this mean that the BEST analysis is wrong or their numbers or data are wrong or that the BEST folks are fudging the results? ABSOLUTELY NOT.”
===========================================================
Sorry, I’m sold, this is a bunch of crap and I for one, cannot trust anything that comes out of it. Game over, I’m done with it….
Oh, trust me. He has exposed his bias. There is no way in hell he will be willing to retract his statement in the congressional record. Modern day post-normal scientists, of which he appears to be a member of, have destroyed the very basis of scientific endeavors. Anthony has given pearls to swine.
Can I please ask a dumb layman’s question? (That’s a dumb question, not a dumb layman, I hope.) We all know about the UHI effect. That is greatest near the biggest urban centres. Urban centres are only a very small part of the overall surface area of the Earth. I suppose that some of the UHI effect is because of an insulating layer hovering over the cities and towns but surely some of it is simply because thousands of people are busily converting previously dormant carbon compounds into heat. And some are using uranium. We are doing this all around the world, to a greater or lesser extent, but obviously at an increasing rate. Surely this is adding to the overall “heat in the atmosphere” (sorry for using such a scientifically inelegant term, but I think you know what I mean). Is there any estimate of the overall effect of this activity on temperature, not taking into account any real or imagined greenhouse effect? In other words, if there were no greenhouse effect (or no alteration in the greenhouse effect), what would be the effect on temperature of all of this increased production of “heat”?
steven mosher says:
“2. The special feature is called the scalpel. This approach add a novel twist that we
discussed a long while back on the airvent. basically, instead of adjusting a station when the sensor changes or when it moves, you split or cut the time series. And you create a new station. NO adjustments. the “adjustement” becomes part of the least squares estimate. very slick.
3. …People should understand that UHI can’t possibly be a huge deal. .15C worst case. McKittrick would argue .3C, jones would say .05c. but the world is still warming, and C02 is responsible for a fair portion of that.”
* * *
Is that what your models tell you? Very slick. But what makes your models any better than Prof McKittrick’s empirical observations?
How do you define “fair” regarding the influence of human emissions? And, “…can’t possibly…” seems to be an inappropriate scientific term, no? Not very rigorous. But maybe robust, eh?☺
Finally, what is the empirical measurement that shows that human emitted CO2 is “responsible for a fair portion” of the current warming cycle?
Due to entrenched bias, research results can be very robust and easily duplicated across labs, which mistakenly leads scientists to the wrong conclusion: that the biased results are both reliable and valid. Many previously strongly held scientific beliefs have been made and maintained based on such conclusions, and later were uncovered to be what they were in the beginning: biased, and wrong.
Climate science is an area ripe for just such a history.
steven mosher says:
March 31, 2011 at 5:19 pm
For starters, the number of people invited to testify before Congress is severely constrained. This comes with an obligation to honestly and fairly represent the views of, oh, say, his BEST colleagues at the very least. I can’t reconcile his testimony with the very clear, compelling caveats expressed on the team web site. Since the preliminary results take no account of land use changes, I’d say his testimony is not only inappropriate, but runs a serious risk of future embarrassment, one way or the other.
At NOAA’s “Climate at a Glance” page, I found that annual mean temp for TEXAS has remained constant at 65 Deg F since 1895 and the “Annual 1895-2010 Trend” is 0.00 Deg F/Decade.
If there is no “warming” in TEXAS, there is no waming in the earth’s surface air!
steven mosher says:
March 31, 2011 at 6:04 pm
_________________________________
Steve, are you on some new medications or something ?? I know this is “ad hominem”, but I saw your odd response to Smokey on another thread on the null hypothesis of a fictitious planet as if it related to planet Earth and got to wondering.
Your posts have been getting more and more bizarre in the last few weeks. This one, like you’re some kind of insider into “scalpel”. Whooopi do.
Just my personal opinion, but I don’t think the world needs “novel twists” right about now. We’ve had twenty years of that shit. Most people would prefer solid data.
“what exactly is the difference between publishing preliminary results on a blog
and testifying about preliminary results before congress? NOTHING. ”
NOTHING? I am shocked, shocked! that YOU see no difference, sir!!!
Just a comment that the numbers are not much different than what we had before.
There is certainly not much transparency in how this data was presented (I absolutely hate it when 4 thick lines are produced on the same chart so one cannot visually tell the difference. Data is presented in charts (and I do this all the time) so that the reader can understand the data without having to run the numbers in their head, a table of 130 values cannot be understood by the human mind. It has to be presented in visual form so that it can be understood.
Warmists are known for how their charts are distorted to present a certain point of view which does not contribute to greater understanding on the part of the reader.
So in the interests of seeing things a little clearer in visual terms, this is Hadcrut3 separated into its two components – the Land temperatures (Crutem3) and the Ocean temperatures (HadSST2)).
It has been clear for awhile now that Land temperatures were rising faster than Ocean temperatures starting (ominously) in about 1988.
http://img508.imageshack.us/img508/9137/hadcrut3landoceancompon.png
Secondly, one cannot get to 1.2C of warming using Crutem3 Land temperatures. maybe 1.0C if you run smoothing parametres but here is a more accurate look at Crutem3 Land temperatures since 1880 (I note that it is mislabeled or misnamed in Muller’s presentation so that should raise a flag or two or 60 – there is no such thing as HadCRU).
http://img863.imageshack.us/img863/424/hadcrut3crutem3componen.png
It might turn out that the Berkeley numbers are right for the Land (take 0.2C or 0.3C out for the Oceans) but this is not a particularly good start given what they said they would do.
And I hate the crappy chart he produced which is not designed to add to greater understanding but is designed to impart an impression.
Mosher: You have NO EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FOR THIS PART OF YOUR COMMENT (only theoretical “calculations” which are the subject of a lot of debate):
“but the world is still warming, and C02 is responsible for a fair portion of that.”
Until you do have some real empirical evidence for your theory, you should be a little less certain and more scientific, no?
Mosher: I should have added to my last comment that ALL the EMPIRICAL evidence points to exactly the opposite to your (CAGW) theory. Like ice cores. Like the last 15 years. Like the RWP and MWP. Like the FACT that the 1930s are arguably still the warmest period in the USA.
WTF? (not Winning the Future).
Concerning the scalpel.
It’s purpose is to break what look like constant datasets into separate (independent?) series. The Key assumption here is the existance of a decision algorithm that will split the series equally between jump ups and jump downs.
Suppose you have a scalpel that identifies:
1. every jump down, such as a station movement from a class 5 to class 1 location, and
2. 80% of the jump ups, such as a degration of a station from class 1 to class 3 and a near by gravel road is paved or the parking lot expanded.
My hypothesis is such a non-symetric scalpel will find all the GW its creators want to find. Has anyone seen the scalpel in action, yet?
steven mosher says:
March 31, 2011 at 5:19 pm
what exactly is the difference between publishing preliminary results on a blog
and testifying about preliminary results before congress? NOTHING.
==========
One (guess which) affects Government policy.
sceptical says:
March 31, 2011 at 3:47 pm
If this were a “study showing significant warming” you’d be right … but it’s not, is it? It’s just unsubstantiated and unverifiable testimony. So far, it’s vapor-ware. Not only that, he’s wrong about the results of previous studies.
And not just wrong, but poke-you-in-the-eye wrong. As soon as you look at it, clearly wrong. Or at least as soon as I look at it, clearly wrong. I cracked up laughing when I saw it, I though “Oh, man, here we go again.” But if an error that is that obvious to me is invisible to Dr. Muller, it’s worrisome.
And when he foolishly uses his bully pulpit to push claims with no data and no code, sorry, that’s agenda driven.
But no, contrary to your speculation, I have said nothing against the BEST math or algorithms, nor is this a “pre-emptive strike”.
w.
You guys are going to get rolled by Judith Curry too. But here’s what I don’t understand: why didn’t they call you? You’ve cleared up the scientific misconduct pretty adequately. Don’t you think the congressional “conservatives” in your corner might be in on a little political theater? Did they have no power to select witnesses?
kforestcat says:
March 31, 2011 at 4:56 pm
Anthony posted his response to Dr. Muller’s testimony slightly before I posted mine. I had not seen his response before I posted my response, nor did either of us know the other one was working on the same topic.
As a result, each of us discussed the issues we found important.
As to whether Dr. Muller will respond, I’ve offered him the opportunity to set the record straight. We’ll see what the man is made of.
w.
What rise is BEST talking about again?
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/hadcrut3gl.txt
Jan 2011 = 0.206C anomaly
Jan 1983 = 0.386 anomaly
Jan 1958 = 0.244C anomaly
Jan 1944 = 0.224C anomaly
Jan 1942 = 0.205C anomaly
What warming are they talking about?
Even with UHI improperly accounted for, they couldn’t get Jan 2011 above a couple of January’s in the 1940s.
But lets look at yearly changes in HADCRUT
1911 = -.582 anomaly
1944 = .121 anomaly
Thats a .703C rise in 33 years WITHOUT CO2!!!!
1998 – .548 anomaly
1944 to 1998 = .427C rise in 44 years — only some of it because of CO2.
CO2 causes what?
The most troublesome aspect of Dr. Muller’s testimony before the US House subcommittee is it was not well managed by the BEST Project Team.
It looked like the BEST Project Team was just winging it on a national stage. Where was the professional handling of a serious scientific undertaking?
If this is an example of the BEST Project Team leadership, then we must reduce our expectations of the end product.
Elizabeth Muller is the BEST team’s project manager. It would be her responsibility to ensure a well-controlled process in dealing with the US House Subcommittee.
A statement from Elizabeth Muller would be helpful to understand what their plans and strategies are for delivering the BEST team product in manner that is more professional than the testimony at the US House Subcommittee hearing.
I ask Elizabeth Muller to see the testimony of Dr. John Christy of UAH at the same hearing that Dr. Muller attended. Christy’s testimony is an outstanding example of a professional scientific handling of testimony before the US House Subcommittee.
John
steven mosher says:
March 31, 2011 at 5:19 pm
Are you serious? So if you were offered the opportunity to either testify before Congress or write a blog post on the same subject, you’d flip a coin?
“Dozens” is at least 24. When you come up with citations that you have asked for (and been refused) code twenty-four times here on WUWT, I’ll believe you.
Until then … not so much …
w.
HADCRUT again
1858 = -.511 anomaly
1878 = .028 anomaly
.539C rise in 20 years WITHOUT CO2
1911 = -.582 anomaly
1938 = .009 anomaly
.591C rise in 27 years WITHOUT CO2.
1929 = -.376
1938 = .009 anomaly
.385C in 9 years WITHOUT CO2
Hey Mosher … why is CO2 so USELESS at causing temperature to rise quickly?
Harold Pierce Jr says:
March 31, 2011 at 7:00 pm
Yep. Texas, we are the straw that stirs the drink. I like that thought.
steven mosher says:
March 31, 2011 at 5:19 pm
what exactly is the difference between publishing preliminary results on a blog
and testifying about preliminary results before congress? NOTHING.
=//=//=//=//=
I thought I saw this idea behind one of your comments to Anthony’s post, and I thank you for making it explicit.
I disagree strenuously. I feel there are between three and five orders of magnitude in difference in the impact of the two. Just for starters, appearing before Congress gives testimony an enormous imprimatur of legitimacy that doesn’t come with blogs. Then there’s the size of the initial audience, and then the size of the audience that legislators will strut in front of without passing along the caveats of incompleteness and prematurity.
I also think it violates the promise of transparency to present such early preliminary results to Congress. If the presenters really do feel the results are preliminary, then Congress is much too gigantic of a venue for their presentation. Honestly, I don’t understand why scientists would want to expose premature conclusions in front of God and the world that way.
On the other hand, if they feel the early returns aren’t going to be significantly different from the end results – hence, why not publicize them to the world via Congress – then they’ve broken their promise to do things right (by not taking things all the way to the end before reaching final conclusions) as well as bypassed the transparency of showing the process while it was in progress.
Further, they’ve violated the terms under which they received Anthony’s data and, it seems to me, misused it as well. Again, on a very large stage.
I think it’s quite proper for Anthony, Willis, and even hangers-on such as myself to be outraged. Because the results aren’t what we want to see? No, because the absence of integrity isn’t what we want to see.
Why is anyone surprised at this? This was entirely predictable. The surface temperature record is sheer garbage and massaging the garbage won’t make it good.
This BEST project is just another warmist propaganda exercise which will be used to beat the skeptics over the head. “See we had somebody independent analyse the data and you rednecks still won’t believe.”
When will Anthony learn – this is not the first time he has been suckered by the klimate klub. Nobody wants to use his surfacestations data for any other purpose than to “prove” that the real data doesn’t matter. They do play dirty! And for the specific reason that there are billions of dollars (eventually) at stake. There is no further use for co-operation with them.
Willis, very interesting post, and if your concerns are substantiated, it is certainly worrisome. I can’t help thinking, however, that this is a bit hasty, particularly against Dr. Muller, who was at least complimentary in his speech about Anthony’s work and who has at least had the temerity to criticize some Team practices. I hope an opportunity to build bridges is not being lost . . .
First of all: are there conflicts of interest here?
Muller has a business: http://www.mullerandassociates.com which is a consulting company on energy and climate issues.
According to their website: “The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature study has been organized under the auspices of the non-profit Novim Group, and is not part of Muller & Associates. However, Richard Muller is leading the study, and several other principals of Muller & Associates are involved in the work.”
So what is the Novim group? http://www.novim.org
Well, they seem to be heavily into geoengineering as a solution to the “climate crisis”.
So is a consultancy business and a non-profit organization, both heavily invested in the climate crisis being real, the best platform to launch a so-called unbiased temperature record?
I don’t know, but I think it is a fair question.
Pamela Gray says:
March 31, 2011 at 6:49 pm
“Due to entrenched bias, research results can be very robust and easily duplicated across labs, which mistakenly leads scientists to the wrong conclusion: that the biased results are both reliable and valid. ”
Well said!
Lighten up on Muller. Yes, he thinks the cAGW predicting models are probably right, but he’s also clear that no Berkeley scientist (he hopes) would have pulled the hide-the-decline stunts, and he’s clear that the BEST project is a result of the shortcomings of the other datasets.
He’s also clear that the poor modeling of clouds is the weakest part of the current warming theory, and that only a 2% difference in cloud cover over the next 50 years would mean all the calculations are wrong and there will be no warming. That is an enormous escape hatch, and given it was gcr and cloud nucleation issues that turned me from lukewarmer to skeptic to scoffer in ’07, I think Muller may well have found an escape hatch that should open soon enough and that it will allow him to emerge unscathed.
The more warmists/lukewarmers look at clouds and say, hmmm, that uncertainty might blow the rest of the theory out of the water, the more they’ll have a chance of a soft landing if/when the rest of the story matches what I/we expect.
steven mosher,
Thanks for weighing in on the BEST status thus far. I have a great deal of respect for your views and measured position on most matters in this area, so it is definitely helpful to have your perspective. Hopefully we’ll have an opportunity to evaluate the BEST team’s approach and findings in a completely transparent manner as they continue to work through the project and make their approach and findings open.
“. . . and C02 is responsible for a fair portion of that [warming].” Well, this is OT and has been discussed in detail elsewhere so I won’t belabor it, but unfortunately this amounts to something of an a priori statement of belief, particularly since the only thing that has been shown for sure is that CO2 should contribute x amount of warming, all things being equal. We know, however, that all things in the climate system aren’t equal over the timeframes involved, so it seems way too early to be making a blanket statement of that nature.
Well, it is good to see that several eyes have been opened.
Anthony you have been fished.
Seems like I read somewhere that the esteemed herr
Viscount Moncton went on a rant and basically said that this group’s purpose was to validate the CRU data that had been tortured to death.
For a truly BEST global temperature trend, we should use the BEST data available.
Take the UAH satellite record and divide the trends by the BEST estimate climate models deliver, by 1.1 or so over land and by 1.6 over oceans.
Like this finding a lot:
Big Dave says:
… Is it my ignorance or has Dr. Muller just testified that … the temp trend for the most recent 54 years is exactly identical to the temp trend for the 57 years starting at 1900?
Think about it.
Eric Anderson says:
March 31, 2011 at 8:17 pm
Anthony has gone out of his way to build bridges. Dr. Muller has gone out of his way to misuse Anthony’s work and to make very public unsubstantiated and unverifiable claims that Anthony’s work shows nothing.
I don’t know what’s lost or not. I know I’m disappointed. And a few compliments from Dr. Muller make absolutely no difference in that.
w.
I recall the very subtle criticisms Chiefio (mostly) made here about the flaws in naively accepting uptrending statistics at face value, and the need for painstaking and sophisticated statistical analysis to see beneath the surface to what is really going on. It flumoxes me that Muller didn’t take this material seriously and “screw in his loupe,” but rather just gave his horseback opinion as though his impressionistic ‘take” on the data couldn’t possibly be far wrong.
This statistical naivety + arrogance is common among many groups of scientists, not just climatologists, it seems.
OTOH, if Muller and his bunch of merry men can be turned around by Our Side after putting their wrong foot forward, it’ll be doubly impressive.
Greg Goodknight says:
March 31, 2011 at 8:34 pm
Lighten up on Muller. Yes, he thinks the cAGW predicting models are probably right…
Since the “predicting models” haven’t got anything whatsoever “right”, by your own logic, Muller is a proven imbecile.
Eric Anderson says:
March 31, 2011 at 8:55 pm
steven mosher,
Thanks for weighing in on the BEST status thus far. I have a great deal of respect for your views and measured position on most matters in this area, so it is definitely helpful to have your perspective. Hopefully we’ll have an opportunity to evaluate the BEST team’s approach and findings in a completely transparent manner as they continue to work through the project and make their approach and findings open.
###########
Thanks eric.
I’m basically try to hold all people to the same standard. When they publish their results I expect the code or data to be made available. Ideally, even when somebody posts preliminary results I’d like to see their code and data, but its not always feasible.
I know this from my own work. Code that I can make run, may not be so clear to you.
So it takes some work on the maintainability and supportability side of things. The situation now is so much better than the one we had with GISS and CRU where they fought us tooth and nail. I can say from working with the team ( very limited basis I dont want joe romm going batshit on me) that they are generous with their time, open to suggestions, and forthcoming with information.
steven mosher says:
March 31, 2011 at 5:19 pm
Lwhat exactly is the difference between publishing preliminary results on a blog
and testifying about preliminary results before congress? NOTHING.
“Congressional Testimony = a blog post”? Why do you even talk here, so it will be entered into the Congressional Record? Really, Mosher, there’s a limit beyond which you make no sense. You need to deal with it. No one else can.
Ed Dahlgren says:
March 31, 2011 at 7:58 pm
steven mosher says:
March 31, 2011 at 5:19 pm
what exactly is the difference between publishing preliminary results on a blog
and testifying about preliminary results before congress? NOTHING.
=//=//=//=//=
I thought I saw this idea behind one of your comments to Anthony’s post, and I thank you for making it explicit.
I disagree strenuously. I feel there are between three and five orders of magnitude in difference in the impact of the two. Just for starters, appearing before Congress gives testimony an enormous imprimatur of legitimacy that doesn’t come with blogs
###########
maybe in your mind, but not in mind. let me be clear. Until I have the code and the data all results are rumours or advertisements of rumours. taken with a huge grain of salt. Zeke and I sat at Muller’s table and looked at many charts. I cared only about one thing: what was the analytical approach? not the result. The result is not science until I can reproduce it. preliminary results, un published, non replicatable results are nothing more than an adverstisment that you know how to do graphs. Period. You guys may think testifying before congress is a big deal. Personally, I don’t. Since I know the data and the math, my personal experience replicating the results is WAY more important to me than a blog post, science paper, or testimony before congress.
you might be impressed about what somebody said before congress. I’m not.
REPLY: except that 2 and 3 were not applied to the data > conclusion > opinion presented to congress today, 4 was irrelevant to today. – Anthony
#######
That’s correct. 2 and 3 were not applied. That’s why people should give no notice
to the results. Let me be perfectly clear. Preliminary results are pretty much worthless.
There is no point in getting wrapped around the axel about preliminary results. Its basically marketing the fact that work is progressing. I have no issue with Muller presenting his opinion to congress. He said it was preliminary, subject to change, I fail to see what all the fuss is about.
Other people may take that opinion as fact. That’s their mistake.
If you look at the graph in the testimony link, you can see where 1.2 C comes from. He said early 1900’s and for sure it is near -0.6 there, increasing to +0.6 currently. Willis started in 1900 which was a warm blip, so his number may be correct too, but Muller’s one looks more representative on that graph. This solves the mystery, unless the graph itself is in dispute, which I didn’t see anyone doing.
Lucky for us this group is connected with Berkley, that’s enough for most thinking people. It was a WTF moment for me when I read Anthony throwing out high hopes.
Jim D: “He said early 1900′s”
Using HADCRU.
1900 to 1957 = -.225 to -.075 which is .15C
1957 t0 2010 = -.075 to .476 which is .551C
Not 1.2C at all. .701C
Maybe he means 1911 to 1998 = -.582 to .548 = 1.13C
Close. But more obviously cherry picking.
Why not 1878 to 2008 = .028 to .325 = .297C
130 years for .297C
Now I’m panicking.
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/hadcrut3gl.txt
I smell Kool-Aid.
Berkeley? Hmmm!
It looks like they knew the result BEFORE they examined any data and found that its worse than they thought BEFORE they started to think about it? They must have found a new type computer model that allows them to predict the future without looking at any data at all, what a wondrous new modern age we live in eh?
Now lets suppose that a pro CAGW group knew the three temperature series had lots of errors and those errors could not be hidden and when those errors surface it would endanger the entire foundation for CAGW theology(IPCC). I think you know where I am going with this already dont you?
Its all a little too convenient isnt it? A new supposedly more accurate more impartial and all round better temperature series would effectively take the spotlight off the old error riddled GAT series and at the same time enabling the pro CAGW side to claim that with this new more accurate record having cleaned up the data and looked anew at the evidence and taken into account all the uncertainties brought to light by those interfering pesky ill informed trouble making climate denying big oil funded denialists the new BEST temperature series comes to the surprising and CAGW confirming conclusion that….wait for it…..drum roll…this is going to knock yer socks off…
IT REALLY IS WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT!
The conclusion is obvious from the start isnt it? After no deliberation and no effort and no hard work it is clear that the three main temperature series while suffering from a few tiny flaws were found to have underestimated global temperatures and the new series has found that its far worse than ‘anyone’ thought.
Now colour me sceptical but lets face it folks, we were never ever in a million years going to get a fair and impartial new temperature series were we? A great many people just have too much to lose, too many reputations down the pan, too many cosy sinecures at risk and to much grant cash on the line. All we were ever gong to get was a reconfirmation of the old series with a little bit more fake warming added just to get peoples attention and you just know that this series is being set up for inclusion in the next IPCC bag of lies.
steven mosher says:
March 31, 2011 at 6:04 pm
3. … People should understand that UHI can’t possibly be a huge deal. .15C worst case. McKittrick would argue .3C, jones would say .05c. but the world is still warming, and C02 is responsible for a fair portion of that.
————————————————————————-
Isn’t this a very unpleasant companion for a comparison after climategate ?
Didn’t you regularly ask others to take more time to write a comment ?
Where is substantial evidence speaking against McKittrick’s publications?
Additionally, no mention of land use changes, which contribute to McKittricks conclusions and further reduce greenhouse gas influence. Troposheric trends also confirm, that there are very substantial overstatements in ground based trends.
The BEST project will have merit or not, we will see, but the US House Committee performance was lacking.
But the problematic reasoning in the AGW-by-CO2 arguments will be the same after it is published, no matter what the findings are and whether the BEST process in open, transparent and all code/ data/ methodology is released.
The persistent problematic reasoning of AGW-by-CO2 supporters is shown in the following items #7 through #13; which are the common steps in the typical hanging reasoning we see in support of an AGW-by-CO2 position. These lines of reasoning in the AGW-by-CO2 arguments will not change with the BEST project’s finding. NOTE: It is a hanging line of reasoning because it starts in the middle of a longer chain of reasoning and ends long before a more complete logical chain of reasoning would end.
But being a hanging line of reasoning is just one of the major problems. Another is the reasoning is not valid in its claims.
Well here is the AGW-by-CO2 hanging line of reasoning:
7. the earth’s surface temperature was increasing over a past certain time period
8. the increase in the earth’s surface temperature over that past certain time period was not natural compared to variations in the earth’s surface temperature before (or since) that past certain time period
9. there must be something that caused the un-natural variation of the earth’s surface temperature over that past certain time period that needs to be discovered
10. human industrial civilization has, with year-by-year progressively increasing rates of CO2 release, caused critically significant increases in atmospheric CO2 levels during that past certain time period, but not before it
11. the increase in the earth’s surface temperature over that past certain time period is now known (IPCC) with enough certainly to have been caused by man’s increasingly released large scale CO2 during the same past certain time period
12. the observed impact on the earth system and on mankind of the man caused increases in the earth’s surface temperature over that past certain time period are significantly worse than the previous time periods
13. we need to stop the future increasing rate of CO2 release before it gets much worse than the current undesirable situation that occurred in that past certain time period
John
I think the skeptics should have been a lot more vigilant: About 6 months ago the AGW people decided to do a major effort to reverse the trend in surveys showing less and less people were believing in AGW. It is possible that Muller and Co were and pansy for this and we fell for it.
Muller openly admits he believes in AGW and that it is serious. I personally think Muller just trashed the TEAM in his video because the TEAM’s reputation was already trashed. By trashing them, he hopes to acquire credibility for himself (and thereby the BEST project) so he can ressurect the warmist’s beloved global warming data that is tarnished by association. In his mind, the TEAM was already lost, but the data could be saved if someone with “credibility” could vouch for it.
We’ve studied this issue, and our preliminary answer is no.
If it is true that their preliminary results do not yet try to correct for UHI, then that sentence is a plain lie to the congress. They have NOT studied the issue yet.
Dr Muller, an expert witness, has testified before Congress. That testimony is now a part of the Congressinal record and is a legal fact that will be sighted as scientific fact. Job done, no matter the outcome of the Berkley Project. pg
I also think before someone testifies before congress with respect to global warming they should be asked the following question.
What position best describes your view on Global Warming?
1) The amount of warming in recent decades is very worrisome and is most likely due in large part to CO2 emissions of human origin and mitigation needs to start now.
2) There has been significant warming recently, but scientists have not yet established whether it is mostly natural in origin or mostly human in origin. Until we know more it would be foolish to proceed with mitigation efforts.
3) I do not believe that AGW is a major concern. Most of the recent warming is likely due to natural causes.
Until they answer this question they aren’t allowed to testify. I think it is best if you know exactly where someone stands before you evaluate the testimony they are presenting.
A true AGW believer could answer anyway except 1). Thus you know they would always skew any evidence to support their belief and disregard (hide) any evidence that doesn’t. I seriously doubt that Muller would answer with a 2).
sorry…. “A true AGW believer could NOT answer anyway except 1). “
@ Kendra – iirc from watching his lectures, he has given advise to the goverment on scientific issues in the past. Maybe that’s why he was invited ? He is not your random dude with an opionion…
——-
Thanks, Matt, thought of that but didn’t know how to check. Nevertheless, it seems as if the BEST project was also a reason or why bring it up when it still all boils down to guesswork. I’d prefer he’d stuck to the tried and true, whatever he’d testified to in the past.
Contrary to Mosher and a few others, adding the weight of guesswork definitely will influence the take-away from the committee. And, sorry don’t remember who brought it up, but the time constraints involved do not justify any testimony whatsoever of this nature. That’s the “prerogative” of the politicians in their own deliberations and that’s already often pretty egregious, thank you very much.
Mosher, you are starting to scare me a bit (I’m only a Curry 3, so that probably doesn’t cut any ice with you).
simply go here:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1900/to
or here
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1900/to
exactly where does he get 1.2C – I suspect he blew it and meant 1.2F
Judith is on this panel – she moved into the sceptic territory very well, she took her time and evaluated before she stood on the stage and played a song and has been singing ever since.
This guy is up on the stage demanding to be heard but he doesn’t know any of the songs.
ATTN Larry in TEXAS
You all are the drink with branch water!
to steven mosher
re: March 31, 2011 at 10:09 pm
Thanks for your reply to my reply to your comment!
A good point and worth repeating.
In my newcomer eyes, you’re as entitled as anyone here to claim the honor of most sophisticated, but it’s not about you. The message was delivered to hundreds of millions of poor boobs, in this country and others, who believe something along the lines of, “What the U.S. Congress spends its time hearing about is more important than what passes down the great sewer drain of the blogosphere.”
A large subset of this group – a large majority, I’d bet – will also miss the significance of the information being preliminary and subject to a list of footnotes that they won’t pay attention to even if the warning is passed along by the politicians, reporters, bloggers, and co-workers who will be the secondary sources of the group’s information.
Well, I’m repeating my earlier reply. In my defense, though, you sidestepped the points that I raised there. Another shows up in your reply in passing,
To the extent that it was you and Zeke examining the process, and not everybody who got news of the Congressional session, BEST fails its transparency claim.
Other points concern the use of Anthony’s data.
I’ll finish by repeating one last thing. Good point:
We agree, I think, that transparency is or would be served by presenting such results in a way that doesn’t suggest that they’re final and doesn’t suggest that they’re big freakin’ news by themselves (and I would say, when the presentation is preceded by a disclosure and discussion of methodology and data quality).
BEST = Berkeley Enacts Societal Transformation. 😉
Scholarly standards are in the tank, it seems.
pg, STRONGLY suggest you look up (or even Google) sight, site, and cite.
:pPpP
As for Dr. M., look at that mug? Does that look to you like the face of a man with spine, character, and high standards of personal integrity? Or the wishy-washy happy-face of a go-along-to-get-along libclone?
Just sayin’.
Thanks Willis, your usual clearly-expressed analysis.
I had an uneasy feeling about BEST from the get-go as even the acronym they chose for the enterprise has a smidgen of triumphalism about it. Muller’s ‘evidence’ is merely an opinion and pretty much on a par with what he accused the Hockey Team of; it is not science without supporting data and evidence of the proper aplication of scientific method. I feel very strongly that Anthony and his team of volunteers have been both conned and upstaged. Climate Science seems to be a very nasty sandpit.
I bet Dr Muller would be rather agrieved if his pay award recommendations varied by up to 30%!!!!! Especially if he got awarded the lowest! Tends to sharpen the mind in my view!
On the face of it Muller appears either fraudulent or incompetent. To be generous, let’s say the latter.
Josh should do a parody of Muller testifying before congress and tobacco company executives testifying before congress.
“There is
noconclusive evidence thatcigarette smokingfossil fuel use is linked withcancerglobal warming.”Or something like that…
Steven Mosher (31 March, 6.04pm):
“People should understand that UHI can’t possibly be a huge deal. .15C worst case. McKittrick would argue .3C, jones would say .05c. but the world is still warming, and C02 is responsible for a fair portion of that.”
I beg to differ.
People should understand that:
1. Average earth’s surface temperatures were rising over the 25 years or so period to 1998, since then pretty well flat.
2. Neither Steven Mosher nor anybody else knows what portion of the rise over that period is attributable to CO2.
The ironic part of this that I tend to agree with Muller except that he confused degress C with degrees F. The earth probably is, at this moment, 1.2F warmer than it was in 1880 and 0.7F of that probably is due to anthropogenic GHG emissions. I’m not certain but for the sake of argument I’m willing to concede the point. Where we likely part company is on the practical implications. First of all the earth is in an ice age and the current interglacial period is part of a cycle of glacial dominance and retreat. Furthermore the compartively warm interglacial is, according to climatology, overdue for an abrupt end. Carbon dioxide is plant food not a pollutant and levels have been far higher in the past. The current level is dangerously low compared to most of earth’s history bordering on the point where there isn’t enough for green plants to thrive. In addition green plants use less water per unit of growth as CO2 level rises and where fresh water for agriculture and sanitation is a dwindling resource more alarming than so-called peak oil. Agriculture has probably already passed the point of peak water! Thus I may only conclude that anthropogenic CO2 emission is of great benefit for its warming effect which gives us longer growing seasons, accelerated plant growth, more efficient fresh water utilization, and possibly delaying the imminent end of the Holocene interglacial period. What we should be doing in response to global warming and anthropogenic CO2 emission is figuring out how to get more of it not less of it and how to keep that trend going beyond the point where the supply of fossil fuels prohibits it.
So there.
So where does he get 1.2C from? Is he just making stuff up – as climatologists do?
Verity Jones says:
March 31, 2011 at 1:50 pm
“We all had high hopes for a thorough and transparent investigation from the BEST group”
“We all” certainly did not. In fact I’d venture to say a majority of WUWT commenters were BEST cynics from the word go. There was not a doubt in mind that BEST would produce results that aligned with the CAGW narrative in every way that mattered. The results were predetermined. The exercise was all about finding a more credible means of producing them. So now we know the results but have not yet been made privy to the new means of producing them. I seriously doubt there’s any credibility improvment – the king is dead, long live the king.
I am reminded of Schofield’s Sir Thomas More in ‘A Man For All Seasons’, when Richard Rich changes his testimony against him. More calls Rich over and asks him to explain the new chain of office around his neck. Rich explains it is for Secretary of State for Wales.
More’s response could have easily applied to Muller: “Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world… but for Wales?”
Willis –
Great post per usual. And – AMAZING commentary from Mosh, I’m stunned.
Testimony in front of Congress is a big, damned deal, reference Wegman & MBH98, MBH99 and ensuing kerfuffle. It DOES matter. We all know how this works, data and code nothwithstanding. Get real.
And given the ‘moral highroad’ apparently staked out by BEST (with Anthony’s imprimatur of credibility) – testimony and use of definitive statements (easily disputed) using incomplete techniques – has just completely TRASHED their credibility. If I were part of that team – I would say to the good Professor Doctor Muller, “with all due respect, dear sir – WTF?”.
I mean – really. The term Loose Cannon comes to mind – if not revealing the inherent bias of Dr Muller or the ease to which he can be distracted by the power of Washington (I’m a rock star now!). I guess its more fun to be an advisor to Vice Presidents, Princes and Congress (?!) than to adhere to ones’ ethics?
Follow the money. Good job, batheswithwhales. Good handle too by the way.
So man goes to stand infront of congress to testify about, one would assume, facts.
The man is supposed to be an expert on taking, collecting and manipulating data on temperatures, from almost forty thousand stations no less.
The man reports the facts from preliminary findings? The same preliminary findings that only constitute a couple of percentage of randomly chosen stations that has yet to go through even basic quality control, both for the stations themselves as well as the station data. Neither has any correction algorithms been applied to adjust for possible UHI.
Sure the medication work and is utterly safe, no worries, our preliminary findings say so. 0_O
I would be interested to hear Anthony’s comments about his face to face meeting with Professor Muller.
Presumably the good Prof. was rather more careful with his choice of words when speaking in private to Anthony, than when speaking on oath to Congress in the full glare of world publicity.
But then, perhaps not?
I too am surprised by steven mosher’s comments. I used to respect him highly as an advocate for transparency. Now he’s telling us, “This time doesn’t count.” Why do I have a depressing sense of deja vu? Why does “It doesn’t matter” keep echoing in my head? I don’t understand why Muller would squander his credibility by identifying himself with an outcome before the work is seriously under way. Now it seems steven mosher is headed down the same path of self-contradiction. Sad.
I recant my previous guess as to the origin of the 1.2 C figure.
here is my new guess:
I have prepared a pdf showing
1. Dr. Muller’s graph from Page 4.
2. A graph of HadCRUT3 from woodfortrees.org
3. My attempt to scale and superimpose the 2 graphs with Hadcrut3 now in orange
Here is the link:
http://tinyurl.com/3uw47uz
From Dr Mullers graph, right around 1900 there are huge swings in temperature anomaly, but it appears visually to average around -0.4 C. Hadcrut3 chart is also approximately -0.4.
The problem lies at the 2010 end of the graphs. In Dr. Muller’s graph, his black line obscures everything except NOAA’s red line which almost reaches +1 C anamoly.
This gives the impression the average for all 4 lines is about +0.8 C, giving a total change of 1.2 C from 1900.
As can be seen in the Hadcrut3 graph, and my composite graph, the Hadcrut3 value at 2010 is somewhere around +0.5 , or about +0.9 C. since 1900
I was thinking of getting into a whole can of agw spaghetti graphs about this , but I agree with todays post by Dr. Pielke Sr.; global temperature averages trends do not convey a lot of helpful information.
So one can take a bad data set and get the “right” answer? Guess I was absent that day.
Muller totally confuses me. Does he change his tune depending on who he thinks is listening?
To the Congressional Hearing he says:
“Prior groups at NOAA, NASA, and in the UK (HadCRU) estimate about a 1.2 degree C land temperature rise from the early 1900s to the present. This 1.2 degree rise is what we call global warming. Their work is excellent, and the Berkeley Earth project strives to build on it.”
But in his much watched video on “hide the decline” he is extremely dismissive of NASA and CRU. For example:
“Now here’s part of the problem. The temperature I showed you before – this one – of the three groups I picked the one I trusted the most. Guess which group this was. Yeah, the group that hid the decline. So we’ve Jim Hansen who predicts things ahead of time, what he’s going to find. We have the group here that feels it is legitimate to hide things. This is why I am now leading a study to redo all this in a totally transparent way.”
steven mosher says:
March 31, 2011 at 6:04 pm
“2. The special feature is called the scalpel. This approach add a novel twist that we
discussed a long while back on the airvent. basically, instead of adjusting a station
when the sensor changes or when it moves, you split or cut the time series. And you
create a new station. NO adjustments. the “adjustement” becomes part of the
least squares estimate. very slick.”
Please tell me where my reasoning is mistaken. Whenever you find a spike in temperature in a station record and that spike was caused by a station move, you treat the pre-spike station and the post-spike station as different stations. Then you look for a trend in each set of data and those trends are your evidence for changes in temperature. However, in treating the one station as two, you are reading out of your own data all the evidence for matters such as encroaching UHI, changes that cause a site to become a poor site, station moves, and similar matters. The problem of UHI strikes me at this time as the clearest. UHI encroaches. It grows outward from city centers. As UHI encroaches on a station, it creates a spike that is actually the first step onto a plateau. You want to treat that first step as the first reading for a new station and you want to do so because you believe that only the trend matters. Let’s identify the “old station” as measurements “A through B” and the “new station” as measurements “C through D.” If time proves that the two stations show the same trend, your data will show that nothing changed. But something did change. The measurements “A through D” do not have the same trend as the newly created “old station” and the newly created “new station.” So, this method corrupts the data and systematically so.
Seems like ‘BEST’ means ‘Worst,”
Dave Springer: “The earth probably is, at this moment, 1.2F warmer than it was in 1880 and 0.7F of that probably is due to anthropogenic GHG emissions. ”
IMHO, the earth is no warmer than it was in the 1930s/1940s and any perceived warming was caused by UHI and manipulation of past data.
dixonstalbert: ” Hadcrut3 value at 2010 is somewhere around +0.5 , or about +0.9 C. since 1900″
HADCRUT has 1900 = -0.225 and 2010 = .476 = .701C
OTOH, 1911 = -.582 and 1944 = .121 = .703C
CO2 warming can’t top natural warming, so how do you know there is any 20th century warming caused by CO2.
The HadCrut figures havew been heavily doctored here in WA.
It appears Phil Jones omitted most 1900-1940 temperatures and inserted late 1890’s temps from a different station.
E.G.
Geraldton he ignored the town record which went back to 1880 and inserted Hamelin pool for the 1890’s
http://members.westnet.com.au/rippersc/gerojones1999.jpg
Kalgoorlie He ignored the post office record except for 1941 and filled the grid with late 1890’s from Southern Cross 200km away
http://members.westnet.com.au/rippersc/kaljones1999sg.jpg
Halls Creek (which consists of two stations 12km apart and 63 metres difference in altitude) 1899 was cherry picked from the old record.
http://members.westnet.com.au/rippersc/hcjones1999.jpg
This is a station whose temperature is extrapolated over conservatively 1M sqr kilometres (aprox 15 % of Australia’s land mass).
Note the “adjustments” where not one station has been adjusted downwards but two in some cases and the effect on the 1961-1990 baseline.
Yet a single contiguous record form 1901 was ignored.
http://members.westnet.com.au/rippersc/mbar.jpg
In my humble opinion the only way to get an accurate land temp before the satelite record is to go back to basics and work off the original observer forms.
steven mosher says:
March 31, 2011 at 10:21 pm
Yeah, that’s the real truth about con men, they’re all innocent as the driven show. It’s not their fault that you take their opinion as fact. They’re just putting it out there. If you don’t dig under the surface to find out it’s a scam, way down to the bottom because you can’t see it from the top, then it’s your fault for getting fooled …
Steven, I hope you are kidding. If not, I sure hope you notice how patronizing your post sounds.
According to you, then, there’s no problem with misrepresenting the facts, because it is the responsibility of the person hearing the lie to determine if it is a lie … and if not, well, then as Mosh says “That’s their mistake.” According to you, it’s no problem that Muller gave incorrect information about the warming. After all, I noticed it was bad info, and if the Congressmen got fooled into thinking the globe warmed by 1.2°C, that’s their mistake …
Mosh, why do you think we have laws protecting people from con men? Why do you think we have laws protecting the consumer? As Steven McIntyre has pointed out, if the climate folks tried their tricks in the business world they’d be put in jail … but according to the “Mosher Rule”, it’s not their fault. They just put the misinformation out there, and if you take their expert scientific opinion as fact, well, that’s your mistake, it’s none of their business if you’re that dumb.
The principle is very clear. You can’t just say to the victims “that’s your mistake” in all situations and wash your hands of it. To me, testifying in front of Congress is one of those situations. People will believe that testimony, Mosh, and we have an obligation to see that it is right and not misleading.
Otherwise, under your logic, anyone can and should misrepresent their case to Congress to advance their causes, because if you believe their lies, hey, it’s not their fault. Under the Mosher Rule, it’s your fault for believing them, so they don’t even deserve a slap on the wrist for lying. As the Rule states, “That’s your mistake”, not theirs, so you get the slap on the wrist.
w.
Here’s an example of the problem, Mosh. Did Dr. Muller describe his results regarding Anthony’s work as “preliminary”, or not?
I bet not one person in ten who read Dr. Muller’s testimony can answer the question. I certainly don’t know the answer without going back to look … do you?
That’s the problem. Merely describing results as “preliminary” does nothing, people don’t remember that. So mentioning it is not a “get out of jail free” card as you seem to think. All that is is a fig leaf, like the AGW guy who says “well my report said ‘might’ and ‘could’ and ‘possibly’, surely you didn’t believe that”, and they wash their hands while their press release of impending Thermageddon is circling the world.
w.
PS – No, Dr. Muller did not say his conclusions about Anthony’s work were preliminary in any manner. He did make a general disclaimer, that all his results were preliminary … but that’s part of the mystery to me.
Why is Muller up there at all? He is clueless about the temperature records, he gives incorrect information about the simplest stuff, he presents no results of any type nor any data of any type … why is he up there?
The obvious answer is, somebody wants his “results” trumpeted to the world, despite the fact (and indeed perhaps because of the fact) that they are unsubstantiated and indeed unverifiable, … and you see no problem with that.
Me, I’m surprised you doesn’t see through this, Mosh. You’re a smart guy. Why would you call a guy up to give unverifiable results? Or more to the point, why are you so passionately defending the guy giving unverifiable results? Seems like the only reason for either would be to underhandedly promote your point of view … and here I thought we were talking about science.
There are interesting issues about the ways to eliminate mistakes in individual stations, their doubling etc. as well as the non-uniform density of the stations over the globe.
But when it comes to the question whether some “better fixes” of the surface record may substantially change the HadCRUT3 and other graphs and eliminate the warming – sending it to zero – please count me as a skeptic.
http://motls.blogspot.com/2011/04/best-surface-warming-since-1880-seems.html
It seems unthinkable to me that if the warming were an artifact of mistakes, one would get this precise agreement between HadCRUT3 and randomly selected 2 percent of the datasets in the BEST record. The agreement of the tiny selected subset shows that the errors of the surface-measured global mean temperature are really small.
So the 20th century warming on the lands where stations existed could have been 0.75 plus minus 0.15 degrees Celsius, so the probability that it was zero or negative, assuming a normal distribution, is a 5-sigma effect i.e. around 1 part per million.
I am also irritated by the completely absent transparency etc. but unless Muller is lying, the details of the methods do *not* matter for the key results about the 20th century temperature change.
Willis Eschenbach says:
April 1, 2011 at 9:30 am
“Why is Muller up there at all? He is clueless about the temperature records, he gives incorrect information about the simplest stuff, he presents no results of any type nor any data of any type … why is he up there?”
Yep, that is the big question that came out of the hearing. Apparently, he was there to promote the AGW scam. He did nothing else. No one asked questions that required him to do something else. We must press our people in Congress to explain these matters. This is critical.
Baffling, given a recent video I posted on my site and saw on WUWT, where he took
apart the “hide the decline” crew showing how the data was manipulated.
check this out
Dave Springer says:
April 1, 2011 at 3:41 am
Dave, yours is an interesting analysis, except that’s not what Muller said. He said it was 1.2°C warmer than the start of the 20th century, and 0.7°C warmer than in 1958.
w.
Thinking in wargame terms it would be:
Step 0. AGW encircled in desperate situation, old team no longer credible, weak, outnumbered and out-gunned, skeptics in the offensive on all battlefields.
Step 1. Introduce new player in the game
Step 2. Let him criticise the old team, build up reputation, show the errors that are already known and announce the build-up of a new correct data set (open a new front, the old ones – the positions “hockey stick” are anyhow considered lost, as un-defendable). In this way build up reputation, ensure cooperation with the “enemy” and confuse them.
Step 3. Attack by surprise, with unpublished data and make the most possible damage. Nobody can yet comment on the data as nothing published yet, nothing analysed, nobody expected it. Defend the core of AGW (“earth has fever because of us”) and not the lost positions.
The skeptics are now confused, divided, unsure, in full retreat – and timing matters!
Overall feedback: masterfully executed kamikaze attack against the skeptic positions by the AGW team. Hats off!
Thanks Willis to put for us a line of defence 🙂 where we can retreat to.
Well, we are lucky we are not playing wargames, aren’t we?
Poor, poor Dr Muller and the BEST project….
Already he has been dismissed by the AGW warmists as a Koch shill, (OOh, that sounds good – I’ll be using that again-g-) see this article –
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-berkeley-climate-20110331,0,2472031.story
He certainly isn’t going to be part of any ‘team’…
Meanwhile he is getting shredded here because he has changed his mind in the light of his preliminary results –
“Despite potential biases in the data, methods of analysis can be used to reduce bias effects
well enough to enable us to measure long-term Earth temperature changes. Data integrity
is adequate. Based on our initial work at Berkeley Earth, I believe that some of the most
worrisome biases are less of a problem than I had previously thought.” -The summary from his testimony.
Of course he COULD have been ‘got at’ or ‘turned’, but not apparently to his advantage given he seems to be an anathema to both ‘sides’ now…!
Underlying all this is the reality that the instrumental land thermometer record is inherently inadequate if you want unequivocal observations of what the climate\te has done over the last century. The weather stations were originally set up to measure local weather fluctuations over days/weak or at most a few years. They are intended to measure temperature variations ten times the size of any predicted decadal term climate trend, with no attempt to make measurement consistent over decades.
ANY quantitative result will be a mathematical construct from the meta-data. It will always be open to methodological critique and alternative analysis.
As a measure of how the climate is changing the land thermometer record is only an indirect indicator beset with multiple sources of error and bias. The UHI effect is only one of these.
But it is a minor one. I know the host of the site, and probably many posters here have invested time and effort into grading the weather stations in the US for susceptibility to this effect, but given the rather small contribution the US record makes to the global average, and the smaller trend seen in the 48 states over the last 50+ years compared to the rest of the world the UHI effect on US records is NOT driving the trend that the big three and now apparently BEST find in the global record.
Given that there are a significant number of US48 records that show NO trend (one poster mentioned Texas) and most indicate that the 1930s were at least as warm as the present it is clearly impossible for there to be evidence that the UHI effect was imposing a warming trend on the land station data in the US.
Unless you are going to claim that it has ‘really’ COOLED since the 1930s!
But then you would need direct evidence from Nature, observations of physical processes that could not be influenced by measurement bias and were the ‘signal’ was not an order of magnitude smaller than the observational accuracy.
Or at least a robust (-g-) alternative methodology that showed clear cooling.
That is not the case.
Satellite observations, subject to their own independent biases, show warming.
Ice breakup on lakes and rivers shows warming. Global sea ice extent, glacier mass shrinkage and reductions in spring snow cover all indicate warming.
Then there are the earlier growing seasons, increased frost-free days and the change in migrations and range of various biological indicators.
Many of these are DIRECT ‘readouts’ of what the climate is doing. There is no erroneous mediation from instrumental measurement or meta-data bodging about when and how much ice melts. The triple point of water is a fixed physical constant. I understand it is nice for the mathematicians to be able to give numbers to these effects, and global temperature is a popular metric because it can be derived (with uncertainty!) from measurements and proxies – and then it can be compared with other calculations of how much it might change given the most likely physical causes. When those two numbers match, or at least are close all the mathematically inclined get that warm happy feeling….
But its all just maps of the territory, the direct observation of physical and biological changes is what matters. What Nature does is the final arbiter, not who can ‘BEST’ manipulate the numbers.
@ Matt
What I was trying to get at is this. UHI was originally modelled to have a log relationship with population. This may be inaccurate now, but probably a reasonable start point.
So, the biggest UHI *effect* is on small, growing communities. I would expect these to show a higher trend than stations that have been rural throughout the period. He mentioned no effect of UHI over 50 years. So I’m asking about stations that were rural 50 years ago and may be more developed now – i.e. ones that would have scored “good” back when and “bad” now.
If that makes any sense at all.
izen says:
April 1, 2011 at 10:57 am
Are you suggesting that the global temp sensors which show the greatest temp increase are better than those in the US which show a more modest warming at best. If you were a betting man and had to choose either the US or the ROW records as a proxy just before a magical correction of the world record takes place which would you choose to be the closest to the actual.
Jit: “So, the biggest UHI *effect* is on small, growing communities.”
4.0C in Singapore.
Data from Singapore suggests it is the amount of greenery.
http://www.bca.gov.sg/ResearchInnovation/others/UHI%20_2004-001_%20rev.pdf
UHI has to be determined for each urban area. There should be experiments done on each weather station. And trying to determine historical UHI without continuous updates of UHI measurements is impossible.
Coming up with one measure like .15C is totally silly. Unless the people who did the Singapore data are stupid (zero evidence).
Again, please be clear that I have said nothing about the BEST data or algorithms. No one can say much of anything about either one, because we haven’t seen them yet.
Which is why Dr. Muller’s “science by Congressional fiat” is so disturbing. If he had posted e.g. the data and code underlying his claim that Anthony is wrong, then no problem.
Do I think this is some kind of complex “war game” strategized by AGW folks? No way, that’s both not in their plans and beyond their abilities. Everything we’ve seen to date is adequately explained by hubris, foolishness, incompetence, and desire for power. Add to that the panic caused by sunlight, and you have the perfect Congressional storm …
w.
@ Mosher
I seriously hope you are not serious.
Will Congress know to take “preliminary” results with a grain of salt? Will they know it’s pointless to even talk about it (so why was he there?) and make policy and laws and economic decisions about it till the full and finalized data is out? Will people with an agenda keep their hands off such unverified statements, or will they use them to ram through regulations that affect the lives of everyone in this country?
This is Congress. These are the leaders of our country. Their decisions, their actions, and thus their opinions, affect the lives of everyone here. To go before them with flippant, unproven, incomplete data is a veritable sin.
You really don’t understand what manipulation is if you believe what you’ve said, that this was fine to do, that there’s no difference between doing this on a blog or BEFORE THE LEADERS OF A NATION. Leaders with the power to affect us all for decades to come, even if they are ousted at the next election.
To manipulate our leaders, be it intentional or completely not, our people, our future…
People will take what was said here as fact. Get your head back in the real world for a change. Those with agendas will be using this incorrectly, on purpose, to scare and manipulate and control those without the breadth or access to knowledge that you have.
The things you’ve said are a highly to everything that’s wrong with our current age, and why the system is in turmoil around the globe.
[snip – take your f-words elsewhere, opinion is not a scientific paper, happy to look at that]
izen says:
April 1, 2011 at 10:57 am
Thanks for making your unreasoned prejudices crystal clear. I am sure everyone will benefit from knowing how you FEEL. However, in the future, wait until we ask for them, ok?
Luboš Motl says:
“It seems unthinkable to me that if the warming were an artifact of mistakes, one would get this precise agreement between HadCRUT3 and randomly selected 2 percent of the datasets in the BEST record. The agreement of the tiny selected subset shows that the errors of the surface-measured global mean temperature are really small.”
How random was the random selection when a few points of noise is in agreement with a preferred presumption?
Essentially, choosing next to nothing of just random noise there shouldn’t be much agreement to the whole? Unless, of course, one makes a more or less perfect selection, but then one would need to question the randomness I think.
Another thing to note about randomly choosing a meagre 2% is that you might end up with choosing only stations located in one particular country. Or you might end up with 75% of those 2% being non-working so you end up with only the stations from New York. :p
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
What does the acronym BEST stand for, Big Ego of Scientist obscures Truth!
Luboš Motl says:
April 1, 2011 at 10:03 am
…So the 20th century warming on the lands where stations existed could have been 0.75 plus minus 0.15 degrees Celsius, so the probability that it was zero or negative, assuming a normal distribution, is a 5-sigma effect i.e. around 1 part per million.
—————————————————————————————
I assume the 5 sigma estimation is only valid for Gaussian, random errors.
UHI neglect is not an error of this type. Land use change as well, though this only affects the contribution attributable to greenhouse gases.
Perhaps even more important are the systematic changes in ocean temperature measurements.
izen says:
April 1, 2011 at 10:57 am
…That is not the case.
Satellite observations, subject to their own independent biases, show warming.
Ice breakup on lakes and rivers shows warming. Global sea ice extent, glacier mass shrinkage and reductions in spring snow cover all indicate warming.
————————————————————————————
Satellite observations divided by appropriate troposheric to ground based adjustment factors show no warming since the 1940s.
Global sea ice extent of the 1940s is not well known, though historic reports spoke about a 40% reduction in arctic ice volume then.
Glacier mass shrinkage has to be seen in the context of the built up during the little ice age.
Luboš Motl says:
April 1, 2011 at 10:03 am
“There are interesting issues about the ways to eliminate mistakes in individual stations, their doubling etc. as well as the non-uniform density of the stations over the globe.
But when it comes to the question whether some “better fixes” of the surface record may substantially change the HadCRUT3 and other graphs and eliminate the warming – sending it to zero – please count me as a skeptic.”
Indeed, data errors per se are not the major reason that the GHCN data base does not provide a reliable indication of the course of temperatures around the globe. Thermometers don’t lie. But what they measure at a particular station is the temperature of a small parcel of air, which is subject to a host of extraneous, nonclimatic factors. Given that the great majority of the station records come from urban sites world-wide, UHI is the major culprit. Contrary to what defenders of the “global temperature” indices claim, urban stations have manifest a rising trend of 0.5 to over 2.0 degrees C over the 20th century that does not appear in neighboring small-town records. Sadly, small-town records spanning the entire century, which can be corrupted no less by land-use changes, are very sparse in the GHCN data base outside the USA. Even in densely populated Europe, they are very few. Thus what we get in the indices is very unrepresentative coverage of the continents.
What the available small-town records do show is oscillatory temperature behavior, with swings usally greater than in the cities. But, unlike urban stations, they generally show very little secular trend. World-wide cooling was evident in them from the ’50s through the mid-70’s, followed by warming to the 1998 peak. Neither the cooling phase nor the warming one should be in dispute. The issue is the imputation of AGW to the latter phase, based largely upon UHI-afflicted station records world-wide.
Although some point to the fact that CET last year stood exactly where it started in 1659, that is simply one year in one region. What the ever-changing climate brings in future decades remains nature’s mystery.
It’s a goldmine of logical fallacies. Would be funny if it weren’t so scary.
ice9
Do we actually know the result of the vote yet? (I thought I read yesterday that they were voting “today”, yet I haven’t seen the result yet).
Greg (in Australia, and a very different timezone ;^)
The BEST project was set-up to construct a better temperature series.
Muller basically said the three existing series are already “excellent”.
Why then are they still wasting money. It is time to shut it down – mission accomplished. Everyone can start looking for another job. There is no need to set-up an even most costly ARPA-like agency that is just going to parrot the data from the NCDC like there is nothing wrong with it.
Technically, I don’t know how they could have used the “Raw data” with no adjustments and come up with exactly the same line as the other three which have at least 0.2C added for the Time of Observation Bias alone.
Willis is right about the effect of Muller’s testimony on useful idiots like Clan @ 12:24.
Clan claims Muller’s uninformed opinion is “proven” the AGW line which has “proven” to be a believer of the AGW faith and ignorant of the scientific method.
Moderator has some snipping to do.
I suggest we all send emails and letters to the members of the committee with our concerns. You know the warmists will.
Does anyone here have access to the addresses?
I don’t understand the feeling of being upset here. There was a lot of Kudos for Steve McIntyre, and Anthony Watts in that presentation. Furthermore, if I’m reading the proposal correctly, there is a goal to create a climate-ARPA which would include people like the aforementioned.
Given everything is open, the data sets, the algorithms, and apparently the openness to criticism, and reaction to criticism, I don’t understand what the big deal is. The numbers are what they are, the methodology can be examined, and will probably be trusted. Seems like good stuff to me.
@Theo Goodwin April 1, 2011 at 8:22 am
I agree with you. The Scalpel can be a huge source of bias. Consider my March 31, 7:27 pm.
It seems that it is only the slope of the regression they consider important. Finesse the UHI, the class rating of the surface stations. They say the absolute temperature does not matter, only the trend.
Ok, as long as the siting bias is a constant (which it isn’t).
Now, the use of the scalpel is to take one temperature stream between times A thru D. Then by some algorithm, that will someday be transparent, the scalpel will divide the series A-D into two series A-B, C-D.
So now you have three regressions f(A-B), f(C-D), f(A-D) [original]
the scalpel will have induced a bulk SHIFT(B) = f(C-D)@C minus f(A-B)@B.
SHIFT(B) will necessarily be non-zero, otherwise why split it?
Now we start slicing madly away (as only a computer can do) thousands of time series creating SHIFT(i) for each slice i. Lets find the SumShift = Sum(i)[SHIFT(i)], for i =1 to 10,000 time series.
SumShift might be 1000. Or -1000. Can everyone sleep at night with this result?
Even if SumShift = 0, do we know there is no bias? The time series are of unequal lenghts.
I sure hope there is something important I completely missed. It sounds like a numerical perpetual motion machine milking good data out of bad.
Put another way, isn’t the BEST project to come up with better estimates of the low frequence content of the timeseries data? Weather is high-frequency, Climate is low frequecy. Yet, isn’t the scalpel a LOW-CUT filter?
I’m surprised you didn’t just drop me in the memory hole. Give you credit for that at least, if nothing else. Though it does leave me wondering what excuse would you have used to snip me if I hadn’t used the, as you so quaintly refer to it, “f-word.”
My opinion remains the same. You’re not looking for evidence, Mr. Watts; you’re looking for confirmation. They’re not the same thing. Scientific? Perhaps not. But neither is denial.
REPLY: Any post using the f-word gets automatically snipped. And why is your IP address showing you to be from the New York Times? Is using the f-word what we are to expect from the NYT when an employee of NYT dons an anonymous fake persona and proceeds to act like an angry teenager? BEST made promises of scientific publications and full transparency that were completely unfulfilled in this congressional testimony. That and only that are the issue here. If those things were present, neither Willis or I could raise any issue. If they have a paper, and provide a way to replicate it, and passes peer review, then they have fulfilled the contract they made with the public and with me. – Anthony
Ed Barbar says:
April 1, 2011 at 2:12 pm
The reason I’m upset is contained in your next paragraph.
See, that’s the problem. Muller has done such a good job that you were totally taken in. Steven Mosher says that’s your fault if you got suckered. You’ll have to take that up with Steven. I say it’s Muller’s doing.
The truth is that right now there is zero publicly open data from BEST. There are no open datasets. There is zero publicly available code. We have nothing from Muller but generalities about the method, and erroneous claims about the temperature rise. There are glaring errors in his claims, errors instantly apparent to me and I presume to anyone familiar with the data. Land temperature rise over the century of 1.2°C … say what?
Given that he has not made public either his code or his data used for the analysis, it was highly improper to use his fifteen minutes of fame to attack Anthony’s work. It was shabby and mean-spirited. It was the act of a conniving bureaucrat, not a scientist, and certainly not a polite man.
His Congressional testimony was also colossally stupid public theater. Whoever he consulted regarding his testimony should be fired from the yardarm at sunrise. This was the public introduction of the project. There was no need for him to wade into the fray. He had a chance to be a hero, a neutral arbiter, someone whose word could be trusted. Instead, the first numbers out of his mouth are wrong, and he picks a totally un-necessary fight with Anthony without showing either his data or his code. How dumb is that?
Anyhow, Ed, that’s why I’m upset. Can’t say for the rest of the folks. I just hope Muller’s math is better than his opening moves.
w.
Bill Illis,
TOBs is only really applied to the U.S. at the moment (metadata is too poor in other places to know !), so globally it has little impact. Using raw GHCN data produces a curve very similar to NCDC’s record, so its no huge surprise that the BEST folks using GHCN + additional stations found something similar: http://rankexploits.com/musings/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Screen-shot-2011-03-31-at-2.56.34-PM.png
Willis,
I imagine that Mosh isn’t too concerned about the BEST folks announcing preliminary results because he has talked with them enough to get to know the team and their methodologies, and is confident that the results they announced are based on a rigorous and defendable approach. Of course, an evaluation of this will have to wait until the results (and code) are published. If I were Muller, I wouldn’t have announced the surface stations results (I have less issue with the 2% sample), but I find it hard to be too critical as Anthony (and others) have announced that station siting issue do bias temperature trends (e.g. in the SPPI paper).
I do think Muller needs to be a lot more careful in his public pronouncements, something I think will probably happen as a result if this little imbroglio.
I’m also somewhat puzzled by the 1.2 C number, as I mentioned over at the Blackboard, though I’m sure Muller and the BEST folks will clarify where it came from in the near future.
Stephen Rasey says:
April 1, 2011 at 2:15 pm
@Theo Goodwin April 1, 2011 at 8:22 am
“I agree with you. The Scalpel can be a huge source of bias. Consider my March 31, 7:27 pm.
…
Put another way, isn’t the BEST project to come up with better estimates of the low frequence content of the timeseries data? Weather is high-frequency, Climate is low frequecy. Yet, isn’t the scalpel a LOW-CUT filter?”
Very well said. And the scalpel removes all the temperature readings that begin plateaus and replaces them with gaps. In effect, the scalpel removes all the readings that are associated with UHI, site change, bad siting, and all similar matters. It leaves nothing but trends that have been gerrymandered to fit Warmista preconceptions. I cannot believe that Mosher could not see this. It is elementary graphing technique, elementary statistics, elementary math.
Zeke Hausfather says:
April 1, 2011 at 3:30 pm
Willis,
“I imagine that Mosh isn’t too concerned about the BEST folks announcing preliminary results because he has talked with them enough to get to know the team and their methodologies, and is confident that the results they announced are based on a rigorous and defendable approach.”
Well, if you read Mosher’s comments carefully, you will find that he has declared UHI unimportant. Excuse me, but that is a policy preference and there is no science to justify it. You might use “the scalpel” to partially justify it, but that is because “the scalpel” is designed to filter out the UHI transition points. That is cheating.
Did someone mention theater?
Kabuki?
Here is what I expected back in February – how’d I do?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/11/new-independent-surface-temperature-record-in-the-works/#comment-596522
Theo Goodwin says:
April 1, 2011 at 3:50 pm
“In effect, the scalpel removes all the readings that are associated with UHI, site change, bad siting, and all similar matters. It leaves nothing but trends that have been gerrymandered to fit Warmista preconceptions. ”
In combination with Roman M’s algorithm, the scalpel indeed gerrymanders the datum level, but in a way that defies analytic description as a low-cut filter. That’s why I refer to this approach as data sausage manufacture. The crucial low-frequency content is minced beyond redemption. The numbers produced are not the temperature of any particular parcel of air.
Is the “scalpel” a previously published peer-reviewed statistical procedure validated in the statistic literature? If so, I would like to read some of the references that show that this “operation” (forgive the pun) is valid and under what assumptions it has been tested. The use of ad-hoc statistical methodologies that don’t appear in the statistical literature permeates climate science. I had hoped that “BEST” would stick to statistical procedures that had been well tested in the statistical literature, econometrics, or similar disciplines and I will reserve judgment about the “scalpel” until I have read and studied the basis that justifies its use.
Zeke Hausfather says:
April 1, 2011 at 3:30 pm
——————
So you know what adjustments are applied to the adjusted GHCN/NCDC data versus the Raw data and it is just a minimal amount?
I ask because the rest of us do not know that.
I also think someone needs to look into what GHCN/NCDC holds as raw data. My initial impression of what BEST was doing is that they were getting the raw data through independent sources. If they were just using the GHCN database then someone else needs to start this “better temperature series” project all over again.
I emailed Dr. Muller with some specific questions and it seems that what he says to Congress and what he says to an individual are completely different. I specifically asked about bad station data and here was his response:
“Bob,
All the data I have ever used had systematic effects. The role of the scientist is to eliminate them when possible, and to estimate the error they introduce when they can’t be eliminated. That’s what we are doing.
We will be careful. I don’t know what we will find.
Richard Muller”
I don’t trust him.
Zeke, thanks as always for your thoughts. For those who do not know him, Zeke has done some very interesting work with the climate datasets.
Zeke Hausfather says:
April 1, 2011 at 3:30 pm
I, like you, have less issue with the 2% solution. But announcing the Surfacestation results, in front of Congress, without producing data or code? Sorry, but on my planet that’s a deliberate, ugly and very un-necessary slap in Anthony’s face. He had no reason to say a word about Surfacestations, he went out of his way to be a jerk. Maybe you find that acceptable. I think it sucks bigtime.
I also think that if you reconsidered your statement you would realize that it doesn’t work to equate a claim in an SPPI paper on the one hand, with expert testimony given publicly before Congress and immediately reported around the world on the other hand. They are not equal in any way. Nor was Anthony’s SPPI paper a direct attack on Muller’s work, while Muller took the offered Congressional microphone and used it to do a Kanye West attack on Anthony. Muller did it without offering us a scrap of code, a shred of data, or a hint of how he conducted his analysis … am I the only one who finds this behavior offensive and reprehensible?
Yeah, that’s a polite way to put it. I’d say he needs to learn when to keep his mouth shut, and stop hiding behind Congress’s skirts to attack people … but then I’m a reformed cowboy, so that’s likely too strong. He’s blown it bad with me, and from the sound of it he’s blown it with many others as well, so his lesson may be too little, too late. Right now, if he told me it was going to be sunny tomorrow, I’d take my umbrella.
I came into this fray on the side of BEST, and have stood up for them, and said that people should wait and see. I’ve said I thought it was a good thing that they were collating reanalyzing the data. I’ve discussed my theoretical difficulties with “homogenization”, but I made it clear that we hadn’t seen any results from BEST at that time. I’ve stated my support of Muller and the BEST process openly and publicly … stupid me, I guess.
Zeke, you seem to know these folks … I know nothing but what they’ve done to date. Maybe they’ll clarify the number, maybe not. But will Muller have the stones to apologize to Anthony? And is he as clueless about climate science as he appears to be? I know that when you read that 1.2°C number and the 0.7°C since 1957 number, your urban legend detector starting going off immediately, right? Because like me, you’re very familiar with and cognizant of the various temperature dataset numbers and their sizes. You knew immediately that 1.2°C was too large.
So where was the climate science knowledge of Muller and those around him? How good are they, if they prop him up in front of Congress with a paper full of those kinds of errors? Zeke, if you were invited to testify before Congress, would you a) be as impartial as possible and have your facts quintuple-checked by everyone you could enlist, or b) just grab some numbers and go pick a totally un-necessary fight?
I, like you, don’t expect the BEST results to be hugely different from one of the three datasets. But I had expected some vague pretense of neutrality. I thought at least Muller would try to fake some sincerity about the impartial scientific quest for knowledge.
Instead, he took the data Anthony and the volunteers had gathered, did his own top-secret analysis of which he has revealed nothing, and then crowed to Congress about how his results showed Anthony was wrong …
But I’m happy to be surprised. I’m waiting for Muller to speak out on this one. His continued silence does not improve things. I’ve invited him to at least post the code, so we can see how he is doing the Surfacestations analysis. If both he and his people can’t see a huge error, I certainly don’t trust their math for that type of analysis.
I can see that this might be just some huge dumb mistake on his part. It’s possible he didn’t realize that the media and the politicians have a hearing defect for the word “preliminary”, they just hear “results”. I don’t know why he did it. The true mystery to me is, why would anyone do such a foolish thing as pick an un-necessary public fight? That’s all downside, with no upside.
It’s just depressing that after all this time, what appear to be well-meaning but ineffectual and bumbling zealots are still using the results of their top-secret, can’t-be-shared-with-the-masses computer code to affect the political course of the US.
And true believers wonder why the public goes “Feh!”?
I don’t know, Zeke, I don’t. If you know him, could you ask him why he hasn’t posted the code for the Surfacestations analysis, and report back? I invited him to post at WUWT, I think he’d be mad not to take up the offer. At least he should explain to the volunteers who collected the data, just why he did what he did.
w.
IMO,
Mr. Muller may have underestimated his audience.
My guess, is that it won’t happen again.
Zeke
” I’m also somewhat puzzled by the 1.2 C number, as I mentioned over at the Blackboard, though I’m sure Muller and the BEST folks will clarify where it came from in the near future.”
Puzzled, you should be shocked. Even a kid knows that this is utter bollocks. How can he throw that number in a congressorial hearing without showing his work and methods? That is a serious error and completely unacceptable. If this is the level of due diligence shown by a scientist, he’s no scientist. No one cares abut BEST folks clarifying it at the near future as and when they feel like it. They had no business to throw that unverified and possibly false number in a congress hearing. That was a deliberate and calculated statement with intent to deceive.
I run a business and if tried any such tricks with any government department, especially the tax department, I’d be behind bars in a jiffy. That is the real world.
I’m surprised that such a behaviour is being defended.
Re: 1.2 degrees. Aren’t people seeing the cluster of lines around -0.5 to -0.6 in the early 1900’s and the one around +0.6 to +0.7 in the current day on Muller’s graph? Am I the only one that understands this Muller comment based on the graph he showed while making it? Did the congressmen question it at the time? I doubt it, or they would have looked mathematically challenged.
Will writes: “Whoever he consulted regarding his testimony should be fired from the yardarm at sunrise.”
And: “your urban legend detector”
You got style, Will. I continue to hang on the publication of your autobiography.
Richard Carr & Willis, I thought the phrase containing “yardarm”, referred to one being hung from same.
Willis Eschenbach says:
April 1, 2011 at 8:36 pm
What Willis said. In addition, if Mosher is correct in his description of “the scalpel” technique (a name worthy of Stone Cold Steve Austin) then Muller and crew are not serious by any stretch of the imagination. I believe that Muller has imploded totally and, given “the scalpel,” it appears that his entire team was dead on arrival. The people who suggest that BEST was designed just for the purpose of a media splash for misdirection are not paranoid by any means.
The Achilles Heel of the Warmista is that they do not respect the data, have a record of not respecting the data, and have a record of actively corrupting the data. This Heel is magnified by the fact that their cavalier attitude toward the data has produced less that one tenth of one degree of warming per decade over the last century, using thermometer data that was never intended to be accurate to one tenth of one degree. This Heel is again magnified by the fact that they fear to approach the data without a huge mesh of novel statistical technique to protect them.
The American public is aware of all this and has accepted the argument that Warmista data standards have shown a lack of professionalism, some mischief, and probably some noble-cause corruption. Muller’s behavior in the congressional hearing simply adds more of the same.
It is absolutely necessary that those who are in a position to give evidence regarding data integrity, people such as McIntyre through his own experience at IPCC and Watts through his analyses of surface stations, remain independent of Muller and other magical statisticians. Sooner or later, Anthony must pass judgement on Muller, on what he has done to this time, and I cannot see how a most harsh judgement can be avoided.
Thank you very much Willis!
Very good article, in my opinion.
But lets not forget that even if the north of the Earth shows more elevated land surface temperatures lately, we still don’t know that this increase is “anthropogenic”, nor that it has anything to do with CO2.
I am more interested in learning whether CO2 produces, or not, a “greenhouse effect”.
On this, I reading http://www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com/pdf/Understanding_the_Atmosphere_Effect.pdf
(Joseph E. Postma, M.Sc. Astrophysics, Honours B.Sc. Astronomy. March 2011, .pdf)
[a work in progress]
How many chances will you give these guys? Don’t be tempted by Lucy anymore. Just walk away.
http://img641.imageshack.us/i/lucycharliefootball.gif/
maybe in your mind, but not in mind. let me be clear. Until I have the code and the data all results are rumours or advertisements of rumours. taken with a huge grain of salt.
Except that the people testifying don’t give a damn about your opinion of their research. They’re attempting to influence congress with inadequate data and analysis. The PURPOSE of entering the testimony into the congressional record is so that congress can use it as a basis for future votes. These congressmen are not going to be reading blogs that may eventually disprove anything. This testimony is much more damaging than a blog post.
Regarding the congressional hearing in which Muller made highly questionable remarks, McIntyre observed that another person invited to testify, Prof. Emmanuel from MIT, made assertions that are untrue and very important. McIntyre calls upon his personal experience to offer overwhelming evidence that the statements are untrue. Check out McIntyre’s website climateaudit.org. I believe that the fact that more than one Warmista was invited to speak and made outrageous claims should be widely communicated to the public as yet another Warmista debacle.
Roger Carr says:
April 2, 2011 at 2:51 am
Well, thanks to the urging of the good folks here, I’m writing my autobiography now. I’ve got about 65,000 words written.
And yes, I was quite proud of “fired from the yardarm at sunrise”, I thought it a wonderful mashup, and I did wonder if anyone would notice. Many thanks for the comment.
w.
Time to stop playing their game (making stupid concessions like ” maybe Co2 warms the atmosphere a little?”) and back Dr. Tim Ball in his fight against Weaver and Mann. Co2 follows temperature. Show me anything that refutes this. How many times do these guys have to try and pull this crap before we wake up?
Has anyone here mentioned the NY Times article quoting Anthony on this whole BEST analysis:
http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2011/04/01/01climatewire-experts-heat-up-over-berkeley-lab-scientists-q-490.html?amp=&pagewanted=all
Sorry if this is a repeat from somewhere else…
Re the Scalpel and Low-Cut Filter.
The concept of the scalpel has a siren song to it. If you cut out all the bad stuff, then all you have left is good stuff. Splice them together and you have a long good thing. A whole bunch of short positive slopes will result in one long positive slopes. What could go wrong?
I have been recalling my college and graduate work that involved tensor analysis, coordinate systems and Fourier analysis. While the details are buried in the cobwebs of my mind, one point is clear: the deft use of the right coordinate system can make the math much easier.
Posit: The whole issue of Global Warming is to be found in the low frequency part of a temperature time series.
Convert the temperature records in to the Fourier space. The key theorem is that the frequency resolution dw/2pi Hz = 1/(N*dt) . (where dw is the frequency resolution and dt is time sample frequency) Usually we are interested in the high frequency stuff and aliasing. But this time, we are acutely interested in the very lowest frequency, the dw (which is in Hz, cycles/unit-time).
Let’s invert. We want resolution time per cycle (2pi/dw) = N*dt. And we want LONG time per cycle, like a cycle time > 100 years to confirm or disprove the GW hypothesis. Well it is staring us in the face: N*dt is the total length of the temperature record.
Suppose now that we take temperature records and using a scalpel of any kind, we take N*dt and make it into n1*dt and n2*dt were n1+n2 = N and n1 < N, n2 < N.
The each of the parts now have a LARGER dw, higher minimum frequency, which means a SHORTER resolution time per cycle than the original. The lowest dw from the original series is now in the bit bucket.
It is possible to stitch together the shorter fragments back into a longer time series. But since the fragments do not contain the lowest dw frequencies, those low frequencies cannot exist in the spliced time series. “Yeah. But there are now low frequencies to be seen in the spliced time series.”
The only low frequency data you see are purely contributed by the mental model of how you spliced them together. You have chased your tail. In the use of scalpel and suture you have thrown away the important stuff and substituted your preconceptions of how they should fit.
It is quite possible that BEST was in the best of intentions using human genome DNA mapping mathematical techniques. These have been quite successful in patching together small DNA sequences into a huge strand. But the DNA mapping is a high-frequency problem. It is great at eliminating errors at the base-pair level. But it is inappropriate for finding 100 year Global warming signal in daily temperature records.
Transforming the data into a Fourier space makes it clear that the scalpel is the wrong tool to analyze the problem.
Poetic justice is so sweet.
Off a link from Climate Etc., I found this letter from Muller to Marc Marano.
http://revkin.tumblr.com/post/4261516714/in-the-olden-days-people-would-have-checked-with
\\Muller’s full comment:
•Some of the bloggers seem to be confused between land temperature data (which shows a greater rise) and the World temperature data (which includes the oceans). It is remarkable how rapidly they accuse me of error or of lying. In the olden days, people would have checked with me before accusing me of wrongdoing. The pressure to be the first to blog is apparently winning. Rich //
(Cough!)
The pressure to be first in the Congressional Record seems to have won hands down.
Anthony and Willis and others have a very simple retort to Muller concerning his Congressional Testimony on data not yet shared for review, comment, or replication.
“You’re Not Allowed to Do This in Science”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/18/you%E2%80%99re-not-allowed-to-do-this-in-science/
(and many others via Google)
I contacted Dr. Muller again and this was his response.
“My statement says only that without corrections the data agree with the 1.2 increase. I did not say that our work supports the prior groups.”
I still don’t trust him
Stephen Rasey says:
April 2, 2011 at 11:58 am
Re the Scalpel and Low-Cut Filter.
Thanks so much for this valuable explanation. I hope everyone reads it. I hope Muller reads it.
In addition, I really like your statement to Muller:
“You’re Not Allowed to Do This in Science!”
Stephen Rasey says:
April 2, 2011 at 11:58 am
“Transforming the data into a Fourier space makes it clear that the scalpel is the wrong tool to analyze the problem.”
Amen! For many decades, I’ve used a panoply of proven spectral analyis techniques, including multi-dimesionmal ones, to analyze a great variety of geophysical time-series. Two observations about temperature records stand out on the basis of that experience: 1) data quality is very poor generally and particularly inconsistent at the lowest frequencies and 2) would-be climate scientists are woefully unaware of them and make amateurish mistakes in analyzing the data. They even seem unaware of the categorical difference between a genuine secular trend and low-frequency oscillations that appear trend-like in records of inadequate duration. Sound scientific inferences can be made only on the basis of analyzing long, intact records from a fixed set of stations at environmentally unchanged sites, instead of indiscriminately slicing and dicing measurements from an ever-changing set of stations into a data sausage that is falsely claimed to indicate the average temperature of the Earth’s surface.
I might add that data quality is as poor as my typing skills.
[Already fixed. ~dbs, mod.]
sky says:
April 2, 2011 at 2:17 pm
“Sound scientific inferences can be made only on the basis of analyzing long, intact records from a fixed set of stations at environmentally unchanged sites, instead of indiscriminately slicing and dicing measurements from an ever-changing set of stations into a data sausage that is falsely claimed to indicate the average temperature of the Earth’s surface.”
Take that, BEST! Climate scientists fear reality and will approach it only when protected by a huge mesh of novel statistical methods.
All datasets point to the same thing. So what’s the only possible conclusion? It’s a collusion to hide the non-warming we’ve never seen but we know it’s there!
@Michael Irwin. OK, I understand the preliminary data and algorithms were not shared, but weren’t these deemed as preliminary? He seems to be behind his timeline of algorithms and data posted by last year’s end, so perhaps he had to do something. There are many notes the results are preliminary:
We have done an initial study of the station selection issue.
Our key caveat is that our results are preliminary and have not yet been published in a peer reviewed journal.
Based on our initial work at Berkeley Earth, I believe that some of the most
worrisome biases are less of a problem than I had previously thought.
I see a reaffirmation of openness in the data:
Berkeley Earth has assembled 1.6 billion temperature measurements, and will soon make these publicly available in a relatively easy to use format.
I assume, as promised, the algorithms and code too will be open for analysis. It would look mighty foolish for Muller to make these claims and either not fulfill them or fulfill them with egregious errors in the algorithms or data.
I would recommend patience, while at the same time contacting Muller to understand why he has not posted the data and algorithms prior to giving the preliminary report. If there is a good reason, and the data, code, and algorithms will be forthcoming shortly, I say it’s OK. There are many outs for Muller in a final report. Yet he has to have the credence to continue the work too. It takes money, money I hope he obtains based on his promises to create an open system that anyone can review.
Alexandre says:
April 2, 2011 at 4:43 pm
“All datasets point to the same thing. ”
Rubbish! Vetted small-town station records with consistent low-frequency spectral content show a very much different picture than major city records. They agree only on the subdecadal temperature variations. It doesn’t even require any signal anlaysis expertise to see the difference in “trends”; a twelve-year old has posted a You Tube video on the stark discrepancy. The bureaucratic objective of using all scraps of variously corrupted data in the GHCN dataset only serves to obfuscate the issue.
The fact that a truly discerning study has never appeared in the peer-reviewed literature speaks volumes about the analytic skills of climate scientists. You have to be blind to reality to imply that it’s never been seen by experieced professionals. Academics are good at making such presumptions.
Steve Keohane says (April 2, 2011 at 4:51 am)
Richard Carr & Willis, I thought the phrase containing “yardarm”, referred to one being hung from same.
And the twist, or “mashup” of the conventional was the creatively clever wordsmithing I was congratulating Willis for, Steve.
Desperate people do desperate things. That includes PhDs. This admittedly trite slogan may well explain all the contortions we are observing from the “Berserkely brains.” The noble CAGW crowd has been crowded out of most folks minds by REAL issues, like a paycheck. But these elitists still don’t get it. It is actually very funny, if you sit back and watch from “afar!”
Thanks, Willis, for highlighting this latest episode of CAGWology!
Anyone interested in contacting the David H. Koch Foundation.
It seems like a different independent organization needs to be set-up which is composed of sceptics this time.
For posterity, in 2040, someone needs to have gathered up all the Raw data before it is adjusted out of existence.
With the adjustments made to date, it was so cold in Europe in 1900 (and 1957) that no agricultural crop should have been able to grow. No Wheat was grown in Western Canada then (which is still to this day after all this warming, just barely on the precipace of being able to produce a crop despite intensive selective breeding which has produced more hardy varieties – without a hot October this year, production would have been half of normal – There is no way it was that cold in 1900. The farmers would have been wiped out – along with the rest of our great-grandparents).
I nominate Willis, Ross McKittrick, Steve McIntyre, Roger Pielke Sr., and Anthony to be on the board.
First of all, the raw data needs to be collected from independent sources before it is gone.
Willis,
Simply eyeballing the chart does make it look like the rise was 1.2 C. In fact, its a bit less, though some specific start dates could result in a 1.2 C rise, just not 1900 (or 1880 for that matter). As I mentioned in my post over at Lucia’s, one should be a bit more careful in congressional testimony, but I’d consider this something of a nit-pick that will mostly be problematic to those of us who work with the temperature record than the average observer (who has little frame of reference to figure out how a specific rise in the land temperature record relates to the larger issue).
I think Muller’s mention of his results analyzing Anthony’s data set was poorly done. It is worth noting, however, that they are somewhat consistent with the statement in Anthony’s abstract that “the overall mean temperature trends are nearly identical across site classifications”. Menne (and myself and JohnV) came to similar conclusions using a portion of the data. Of course, this is not the complete story, and there is plenty of interesting aspects of the min and max temps to dive into.
Bill Illis,
For the most part (at least pre-1992), GHCN data is the most raw data that is available for those stations. However, they supplement GHCN with 28000 additional stations or so.
They probably mistakenly used 1.2°C, when they meant 1.2°F.
Roger Carr says: April 2, 2011 at 6:37 pm Thanks Roger, I could only think of silly cartoons, eg. using the yardarm as a catapult.
Bob says:
April 2, 2011 at 1:59 pm
I, on the other hand, don’t understand the response. He said:
That was the statement with the problematic claim of 1.2°C. The other one is the claim of a “0.7 degree rise since” 1957.
His answer is about the agreement of his data with one of those two claims … but says nothing about the incorrect claim.
What am I missing here?
w.
Zeke Hausfather says:
April 2, 2011 at 7:16 pm
“Eyeballing the chart”? I posted the links to all the relevant datasets, and gave the results. I don’t find anything like that, unless he’s using °F … but then the other error, the post 1957 error, is clearly not °F.
“Poorly done?” If you had shared some information in confidence with Mullen and he had used it to attack you, with no supporting data, code, or even general description in Congressional testimony that was immediately reported around the planet, I doubt you’d be so blasé about it … so when anyone googled your name, it comes up with “Mullen tells Congress Zeke is Wrong”, you’d say it was “poorly done”? Somehow I don’t think so.
To me, Zeke, that’s underhanded and deceptive and bad behaviour on a host of counts, personal and professional.
w.
@Michael Irwin. One thing that may be missing is that the target dates for the data and time lines for the completion are past due.
There are two possibilities:
a) Muller lied about his objectives. I refuse to believe this without further evidence.
b) Muller is trying to continue his work that will provide a real, open platform to examine surface temperatures.
I like to think b) is the most likely. Unfortunately, a lot of funding seems controlled by a group of people who want to guilt American society into things that don’t make sense. They seem more related to personal enrichment and political goals than actually solving social problems. that’s why I really appreciated Muller’s talk.
I was so irritated by Al Gore and lemming like response to him that I decided to educate myself with what was actually going on. I probably as guilty as Phil Jones, in that I DON’T want global warming to be real if only to smash the smuggies! But until there are good measuring sticks (I think this particular site focuses on the measurement problem), I don’t know what to think. And even then, I don’t know what to think because there is so much money to be made during any proposed change.
I think the best approach is to assume Muller is a person who really does want to get the measurement part of it right, and to try to work with him. If he opens the Camino, we will know he is honest. If he doesn’t, then we will continue on our way with innuendo and garbage. He seems like the real McCoy, let’s trust he delivers.
I’ve read the previous 272 responses (well, there were 272 when I started). Several things stand out. Several of the responders have no statistical knowledge whatsoever. My favorite:
The more substantial cries were over Muller’s lack of EVIDENCE! Where’s the data? Where’s the code? You sniveling, backstabbing librul! And then dozens and dozens of criticisms of his methodology and data. Rather pointless conjecturing since BEST hasn’t yet released their dataset and code. I especially liked the refutations of the ‘scalpel’ – since none of the commenters actually know the implementing code their criticisms are really the most trenchant. Yeah, that’s sarcasm.
And this whole, “How could he go in front of Congress …. blah, blah” schtick is particularly amusing. One does not just show up in Washington, knock on the Capitol door and say, “I’d like to testify at your hearing today.” Well, one can I suppose, but there’s a glacier’s chance in Glacier National Park of surviving the 21st century that you’ll be ushered in the door. You are requested/invited to testify. It’s an honor, a privilege, and not one easily turned down. Congresscritters don’t take ‘no’ for an answer very well.
Given that, Muller did the best he could do: state his research is not finished, that they’ve done some preliminary sampling (with caveats) and report that the results are in broad agreement with previous studies. The only way he could have pleased most of the commenters here would have been to LIE and say the preliminary data disagreed with previous studies.
That then is the crux of the matter. It isn’t rigorous and accurate science performed to the best of the scientist’s abilities that you’re after – all you want is an end result that agrees with your beliefs. Muller didn’t provide that, therefor he’s fair game to be trashed, pilloried, insulted, demonized, whatever. And the odd thing is I came here not to praise Muller – cuz the last blog comment I wrote (several hours ago) was castigating him on a related but different matter.
I’d like to thank izen and Zeke Hausfather for interjecting a moment or two of sanity into the last hour and a half of my life.
Kevin, you don’t need statistical knowledge to spot BS and false statements. Willis clearly stated where all Dr.Muller was wrong. He went before congress and testified on a 1.2 degrees C rise from 1900, stating it is as per HADCRUT. It is not. If it is land data alone, it should be CRUTEMP. And if you don’t know the difference between these two, you have no business to open your mouth in the first place, that too, in front of Congress, where your testimony is being placed on record.
Second, he underhandedly dissed Anthony’s work given to him in confidence and trust, without showing any methods, data or code, which is dishonest.
These are the crux of Willis’ and many others’ comments. Those are in plain english and anybody with knowledge of english, common sense and a sense of fairness can see that. Which part of those didn’t you get?
Kevin O’Neill says:
April 3, 2011 at 1:41 am
Muller had no reason at all to start a fight. He had no reason to say a word about Anthony’s data, which he had accepted in confidence. He could have said nothing about Anthony’s work. Which would have been appropriate, given that he has presented no code, data, or even a simple explanation of his claimed research that he said shows Anthony is wrong.
Your claim that he had no options is just a sad attempt to rescue him from his own stupidity. He opened Pandora’s box, when there was no need to touch it at all. And while you might think that’s appropriate, I find it a massively stupid action that has come back to bite him savagely. Google his name today, you won’t find folks patting him on the back.
So no, Muller didn’t do “the best he could”. He could have shut his mouth about Anthony and and done much better. He should have waited until his results were published before publicly using them to attack someone, that’s just dirty and sleazy.
w.
PS – you say:
Bullshit. What I want is for Muller to act like a scientist, and publish his work before he stands up in public and attacks someone with it. The fact that you clearly don’t understand either that Muller has done anything wrong, or why people around the globe are objecting to what he did, should give you serious pause, my friend …
\\ I especially liked the refutations of the ‘scalpel’ – since none of the commenters actually know the implementing code their criticisms are really the most trenchant. Yeah, that’s sarcasm. //
You got me there. The scalpel and suture processes are not yet in the transparent window. So we can only take little snipets of information and splice them together in a way that makes sense to us, to conjecture to a bigger picture and review its worth. It’s not the best way, but it is what we have today. Ironically, that seems to be what BEST is doing; taking little snipets of temperature streams, splicing them together in a way that makes sense to them. Is that the best way? I guess peer-review will answer that.
Assuming we all want to see the best science done, which approach would be the better path toward acceptance of the result?
A. Release the code for the scalpel and suture at the same time the analysis is final and we can see the result and the tool(s) used to achieve it.
B. Release the code for the scalpel and suture at the time they are being tested, BEFORE being used on the body of temperature data so that we can evaluate the tool before knowing the result.
@Michael Irwin: Bullshit. What I want is for Muller to act like a scientist, and publish his work before he stands up in public and attacks someone with it.
I didn’t get the feeling there were any attacks in the paper whatsoever.
It also seems to me Muller is dealing with something that should be, but is no longer entirely science. The whole AGW thing has become highly politicized, and the rules are different. What Muller promised was a return to science. It is probably a tortuous path to get there. It needs some time.
I continue to think the primary reason for the preliminary results is that a lot of money was poured into the BEST program, and there was a political requirement to publish some results, to ensure the continuation of the research.
If Muller doesn’t live up to his promises, then its simply more of the same, and it will be easy to show the deception.
Regarding use of Anthony’s data, let’s hear from him.
Ed Barbar,
BEST is infested with the same cast of characters we find in the Climategate emails. If Muller wants credibility, he needs to begin publicly archiving everything BEST is doing right now. That’s science. Falsification is crucial, and there can be no falsification without complete transparency. Anything left standing after all attempts at falsification can be accepted for the time being. By still not publicly archiving BEST’s methods, data, code, metadata, etc., it is deliberately ignoring the scientific method, and showing that it has a preconceived agenda.
BEST also needs to put at least half a dozen prominent CAGW skeptic scientists on staff, with a voice and equal input to Phil Jones and his pals. Otherwise, BEST is just the newest propaganda incarnation, created to give its holy imprimatur to the pseudo-scientific “carbon” agenda.
For GISS at least I come up with the following:
1904 – 2010: 1.2C — .83 – (-.37)
1957 – 2010: .73C — .83 – .1
So for GISS at least the numbers are accurate. Some might ask why I chose 1904 as the starting point. Muller did not specify 1900 as the starting point in his testimony he said “early 1900’s” so I took the coolest year of the 1st decade of the 20th century to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Oops, I misread the table and crossed 57 and 58 anomalies. The correct anomaly for 1957 is .08 so the number should be .75.
From Willis: “Bullshit. What I want is for Muller to act like a scientist, and publish his work before he stands up in public and attacks someone with it.”
LOL. What did Watts do with his surfacestation data? Don’t I remember a publication attacking NASA and NOAA etc with no publication of his data? This whole attack is based on the bad feelings that you shared the surfacestation data with Dr. Muller and then he went and made statements that don’t agree with your prejudice.
This whole comment thread is full of laughs… “Berkley”, “socialists”, the idea that Muller has to toe the “Beserkly” party line or he won’t be invited to dinner. The people claiming to be statistics experts claiming that “fourier analysis” proves the scalpel destroys low-frequency data. The list goes on.
Dr. Muller is a genius. He set up a personal business, with the project led by his daughter. Staffed the project with people with no previous climate science experience. Got money from the Koch brothers! Got all of you denialistas on his side. Here is finally a scientist clearly in it for the money, and all of you line up with him at first. Then you act all sad and hurt and fling insults like a jilted lover. Sorry your man isn’t what you first thought.
Kevin O’Neill says:
April 3, 2011 at 1:41 am
“And then dozens and dozens of criticisms of his methodology and data. Rather pointless conjecturing since BEST hasn’t yet released their dataset and code. I especially liked the refutations of the ‘scalpel’ – since none of the commenters actually know the implementing code their criticisms are really the most trenchant. Yeah, that’s sarcasm.”
The GHCN data base is publicly available. The code for Roman M’s algorithm, which BEST apparently used to synthesize the GST from a small preliminary sample of their expanded data base, was published by him on-line. Though it may do a good job of estimating the local mean temperature from noisy data and in spotting step discontinuities in a homogenous spatial field, it is incapable in principle of eliminating gradual time varying systematic biases (e.g., growing UHI ) in a field that is intrinsically heterogeneous. Not all of us are as naive as would-be climate scientists about what well-founded signal extraction techniques can and cannot do with variously corrupted station records. No statistical “scalpel” can substitute for lack of reliable measurement. The superficiality of your supercilious, sarcastic judgement is breathtaking. It’s truly in the entrenched tradition of “climate science.”
No matter. The “anomaly” and that upon which it is based is pretty meaningless.
@Smokey: If Muller wants credibility, he needs to begin publicly archiving everything BEST is doing right now. That’s science.
I tend to agree, with the caveat that Muller ought to be given the opportunity to state WHY he does not want to publish the data/algorithms/code at this instant, and given the opportunity state WHEN he will. If WHEN isn’t too far away, no harm, no foul, provided there is a good WHY.
If WHY isn’t very good, then the data should be published immediately.
John T says:
April 3, 2011 at 12:33 pm
Now that you have had your say about us, do you have anything to say about science? I didn’t think so.
Kevin O’Neill says:
April 3, 2011 at 1:41 am
“The more substantial cries were over Muller’s lack of EVIDENCE! Where’s the data? Where’s the code? You sniveling, backstabbing librul! And then dozens and dozens of criticisms of his methodology and data. Rather pointless conjecturing since BEST hasn’t yet released their dataset and code.”
Kevin, Muller signed on to BEST with the promise to the public and the private promise to Anthony that he would release the data, code, and everything along with the results. He lied. He broke his promises. Now you are the sort of person who does not care about those matters. Just hope and pray that someone enters your life who does not share your beliefs and attitudes. Otherwise, you can look forward to a life of lies and broken promises.
This, as if there were ever any doubts, is how these “preliminary” results are being interpreted.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/03/climate_change&fsrc=nwl
I know The Economist ain’t what it used to be, but it is still influential enough…. ugh.
After thinking about this Muller business for a bit it has occurred to me that his testimony is going to make it very difficult for Anthony to find a publisher for any planned book that presents the mess he’s discovered in the temperature stations. This is now second hand and pre-refuted before the congress of the USA kind of information. That alone is reason enough for exploring a lawsuit. If Muller released privileged information that was under NDA with Anthony then somebody needs a good ass kicking, too.
@DP. I was thinking the same thing last night. If the journal that Anthony has submitted his paper now rejects it, Anthony could and should sue under “Tortuous Interference”
Muller has harmed Anthony in more was than one. Muller called Anthony in front of Congress an “amateur scientist.” AMATEUR! How about “freelance”, “private sector”, or even “skeptical”. Anthony may or may not have a government or university grant, but this work is a significant part of his present and future livelihood. It was a “backhanded” compliment delivered with force.
Muller’s preemption was in effect, “Thanks, son, for pointing out our mistakes. Now run along and let us do some real science. Your intellectual property and rights of first publication be damned.”
Muller, you are not allowed to do this in science.
Stephen Rasey says:
April 4, 2011 at 7:36 am
Spot on. Muller’s behavior toward Anthony falls in the range of reckless to malicious. He should be sued. (Of course, if you view yourself as a climate scientist, or even as a retired Berkeley physicist, you view yourself as God. This behavior is pervasive in the pro-AGW community.)
[Reply: Contribute something worthwhile to the conversation or leave. Gratuitously insulting the internet’s Best Science site is not appreciated by this moderator. ~dbs, mod.]
the internet’s Best Science site
Ah hubris! Ah humour!
[Reply: It is based on reader preference. There is always the alternative of realclimate. ~dbs, mod.]
It is based on reader preference. There is always the alternative of realclimate. ~dbs, mod.
Ah, so along the lines of “8 out of 10 readers prefer our Science to our nearest commercial rival”.
There was me thinking that some accreditation was involved…
Eamon,
If you’re looking for accreditation rather than popularity, look at the Alexa rankings. By any measure, realclimate trails far behind WUWT. People want to read both sides of an issue and make up their own minds, and they know that RC heavily censors scientific skeptics’ comments. RC is a propaganda blog, not a science site, and people know it. That’s why it follows up the rear.
Any questions?
Muller took money from the Koch’s right? And we all know you get what you pay for. So what’s with these Koch’s that they’re interfering in science by funding blatantly warmist
studiespropaganda? Al Gore must have gotten to them.One Anonymous Bloke,
Another likely possibility is that the Koch’s were deceived by Muller.
Integrating the preceding responses one must conclude that , apart from delegating its fact checking to The Onion, WUWT offers the gibberings of amateur statisticians and the grotesqueries of K-Street shills modulated with hypocrisy of an amperage Al Gore might envy.
It has the SNL original beat by a country mile.
REPLY: Ah, yes… let’s see which one of you is this from Harvard University that has used this IP address in the past? Russell or Dacron? Yes, it appears you can always tell a Harvard man (even if he is too much of a wimp to use his real name to take cheap potshots from the comfort on anonymity). – Anthony
REPLY: The beauty of these kind of guys is that they studied in the Institute of Global Warming, and as a result, none of their statements are falsifiable … just like the statements made by the real mainstream AGW climate scientists. – w.