Finally, a scientist gets it, speaks out about it, and a reporter in a major media outlet publishes the words that say in even stronger terms what I said last Thursday about Dr. Richard Muller’s testimony before Congress.
From the Los Angeles Times, the last place I’d expect to see this:
Thorne said scientists who contributed to the three main studies — by NOAA, NASA and Britain’s Met Office — welcome new peer-reviewed research. But he said the Berkeley team had been “seriously compromised” by publicizing its work before publishing any vetted papers.
– Peter Thorne, National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.
Here’s the full article at the LA Times
Even Trenberth isn’t too sure about it:
Kevin Trenberth, who heads the Climate Analysis Section of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a university consortium, said he was “highly skeptical of the hype and claims” surrounding the Berkeley effort. “The team has some good people,” he said, “but not the expertise required in certain areas, and purely statistical approaches are naive.”
Dr. Roger Pielke Senior has this to say about the article:
There is an informative article in the Los Angeles Times by Margot Roosevelt titled
Critics’ review unexpectedly supports scientific consensus on global warming.
While the title of the article does not indicate it [headlines are usually not chosen by the reporter], the article itself is quite interesting.
Severl issues with the preliminary presentation of results by Richard Muller are brought out, even by Richard, but also by others in climate science. These include the following excerpts from the article.
“Thorne said scientists who contributed to the three main studies — by NOAA, NASA and Britain’s Met Office — welcome new peer-reviewed research. But he said the Berkeley team had been “seriously compromised” by publicizing its work before publishing any vetted papers.”
Kevin Trenberth, who heads the Climate Analysis Section of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a university consortium, said he was “highly skeptical of the hype and claims” surrounding the Berkeley effort. “The team has some good people,” he said, “but not the expertise required in certain areas, and purely statistical approaches are naive.”
Even Richard Muller was quoted as
“Although in his testimony Muller praised the “integrity” of previous studies, he said estimates of human-caused warming need to be “improved.” And despite his preliminary praise for earlier studies, he said further data-crunching “could bring our current agreement into disagreement.”
The one issue with the article, however, is that it ends with erroneous information on other climate metrics by Peter Thorne [see my experiences [documented on my weblog] with Peter Thorne to get an idea of his biases). Peter Thorne was quoted as saying
Other scientists noted that temperature is only one factor in climate change. “Even if the thermometer had never been invented, the evidence is there from deep ocean changes, from receding glaciers, from rising sea levels and receding sea ice and spring snow cover,” Thorne said.
“All the physical indicators are consistent with a warming world. There is no doubt the trend of temperature is upwards since the early 20th century. And that trend is accelerating.”
I will use just one example from his list of climate metrics to show that Peter Thorne is misleading the reporter, I have reproduced below the current plots of lower tropospheric temperature anomalies. The trend of temperatures using that climate metric is NOT accelerating, and, indeed, has not even been positive for over 12 years!
From http://www.ssmi.com/msu/msu_data_description.html.
Peter Thorne now works with Tom Karl and Tom Peterson at NCDC so we can expect more such disinformation on climate metrics from him in coming weeks and months. The rest of the article by Margot Roosevelt is quite informative.
The planet is warming. The only plausible cause is the rise of net GHG emissions from human activities. The only real question is what should we do?
REPLY: So natural variation and other human effects such as UHI (whcih BEST agreed to study and correct for but didn’t yet) are totally implausible to you?
Also is your email address valid, or just made up on the spot? -A
I just started doing a study. Wanna know how it came out?
Mike says:
April 4, 2011 at 7:19 am
“The planet is warming. The only plausible cause is the rise of net GHG emissions from human activities….”
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HAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! Yeh, no other possible explanation. I would start by listing the plethora of other very reasonable explanations, but you must be living in a cave not to know them.
BTW, what part of “The trend of temperatures using that climate metric is NOT accelerating, and, indeed, has not even been positive for over 12 years!” Given this fact, don’t you think it a bit disingenuous to describe the planet as “warming”? How about was warming and may warm again? That seems a bit more honest.
Yes, Mike, the planet has been warming for the last 300 years, or so. Open minded people think the sun has had something to do with it.
http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/keeping-open-mind-about-sun
As the French scientist whose video has been making the rounds has pointed out, the proper analysis of the data shows step changes. It’s easy to see a step in 1998. Looking for trends is liking looking for keys under the streetlight when you lost them back in the dark parking lot.
When I was a kid during the 60s we used to refer to Berkeley as Bezerkeley.
Nice to know some things don’t change.
The LA Times headline is misleading!
REPLY: Reporters don’t get to write the headlines, copy editors do. – Anthony
It is interesting watching those scientists who are already on the CAGW gravy-train take a ‘principled’ stand against another gravy train. They’re clearly protecting their own turf in the federal
budgetbond-mill.At a time when we have so many real problems facing us–many of great consequence like high unemployment, an overwhelming national debt and endless war entanglements sapping our military–I’ve come across another impassioned plea, oh yeah, to spend more money to adjust our climate.
Forget about the folly of worrying about that instead of our mortgage mess and the mountain of foreclosed homes. Yet, authors love to sell their books and a long inflammatory op-ed piece by Mark Hertsgaard in the Fredericksburg (Va) Free Lance-Star is another example of the warming hysteria.
He attacks Republicans in Congress for keeping the nation from blowing more money on studies of global warming. Doesn’t that seem old-hat nowadays? That was the last decade’s hot topic. Now if anyone wants to worry about nature’s effects on us, I would suggest more study of consequential impacts, like earthquakes.
Anyhow, I agree with non-politicians like Tim Patterson, a Canadian climatologist who claims, quite logically, that the sun drives the earth’s climate changes–and that the current global warming is a direct result of a long, moderate 1,500-year cycle in the sun’s irradiance.
Warming alarmists can’t stomach such blasphemy, mainly I suspect, because we can do little about the sun. Or our own climate for that matter, other than to waste government money that is today increasingly precious.
There is some evidence to suggest that there have been more sunshine hours these past 50 or so years and if so, this could explain the ‘observed’ warming. If back radiation from CO2 cannot warm the oceans (as many consider to be the case due to the wavelength of this radiation and the fact that it can penetrate no more than a few microns) and if the oceans have been warming, this in itself suggests that a reduction in cloud cover (more sunshine hours) is a probable candidate for the observed warming of the oceans.
The extent of cloud cover is likely a natural phenomenon and may in part be caused by cosmic rays or may simply be nothing more than a trend in a non linear chaotic system. A trend of 50 or so years is like a blink of the eye in the geological time frame by which the Earth must be judged, It is no more than tossing a coin and it coming up heads twice in a row.
Mike, it is interesting, in a morbidly fascinating way, what you find plausible and what you apparently find implausible. I have read your comments on WUWT many times and it is clear that you do not think much about what you write, you just keep repeating in various forms that, ‘it must be the rise in human-sourced GHG emissions’ that causes the planet to warm. You repeat that even as the Earth fails to warm and fails to accelerate its warming, and even if it manifestly fails support any of the many forms of global warming hype.
If you deny the basic climate facts, what is the point of continuing to bore us with this repetition? Droning on will not change the facts nor ‘keep us on hold’ while you wait for someone to magically supply the missing formula that pins everything on human emissions. It is not going to happen. There is no ‘First Coming’.
Anthony, it really is amazing how the copy-paste people offer no response to really basic questions like, ‘How do AGW gases warm the oceans?’ and ‘Why do the oceans cool when the atmosphere warms?’ and ‘Why does cloud cover change precede temperature change from Nino events?’ and ‘Why, on a decadal basis, doesn’t the change in the CO2 level consistently match the global temperature if it is so powerful?’ Obviously the list of relevant questions is longer.
Mike, you really gotta get a life that involves keeping up. Several contributors have suggested to you that your comments on articles indicate you don’t actually read or understand them. I tend to agree: your comments do not appear informed, which greatly weakens your position. Why then continue to pretend to make substantive input to a consultation you are not prepared for? A good education is easily available on the internet. It is obvious you have read the RC-based materials. Now is it time to get some balance.
The planet is not warming. Everyone who can read thermometers agrees. It is not ‘continuing to increase’ either. Would that it were so, as Gavin’s sales efforts would be much easier. It isn’t, and there is no need to ‘explain’ non-warming with fake claims about what the cause is. Even the rate of sea level rise is tapering off. It is not getting warmer. Face it.
Today you again repeat your ‘explanation’ of something that is not happening. This strikes me as motivated by a strange, even inexplicable devotion to a CO2-based CAGW cause. And by ’cause’ I don’t mean the cause of warming – there isn’t any, and has not been any for about 16 years. I mean the ’cause’ that is filled with money for bent research and the hiding of declines. Do you know what it means when Phil Jones says, ‘no statistically significant warming’ has occurred? Do you know who Phil Jones is and why his statement carries weight? What does ‘statistically significant’ means? Do you know what a -0.02 temperature anomaly means? Look it up, it won’t take long.
This anthropogenic CO2 pseudo-quasi-para-religion is not a worthy cause. Once it held promise, and we love to be promised things, especially of the eschatological type (it seems to give us hope). Its priests are trimming or even dropping their haughty intellectual rainment, or being involuntarily defrocked. Now that we understand a lot more about the climate, it is becoming a nearly worthless cause – not worth the money being devoted to its devotees. Being a devotee is praiseworthy. Taking our poor-money at the door using false pretences is not. We need to convert the enthusiasm to ‘do something’ from ‘energy-self-extinction’ into a devotion to uplift a human family groaning under the yoke of poverty, deprivation and the misapplication of the creative genius of which we are history’s fortunate inheritors.
The silly games must stop and the real work begin. There is a lot to do.
The Ancients all had sun gods. This is the first generation to ever have a CO2 god.
Trend lines can be such nonsense. Often, all depends on the starting and ending years chosen. Here, the years are not shown, but what I see is a flat no-trend for the first half of the data, then a short spike upward about .3 degrees followed by flat again at the higher temperature.
While nature can do that, I consider it much more plausible that this is a systematic error–especially since we saw that precise effect here on WUWT a couple of months ago in the graph of number of weather stations versus reported temperature.
I know the CAGW cultists are not renowned for their grasp of the concept of irony but here we have comrade Trenberth coming out with this gem, ’tis a travesty so it is!
“but not the expertise required in certain areas, and purely statistical approaches are naive.”
Oh dear that’s computer modelling out, then?
Peter Thorne from NCDC? Well if the facts don’t fit then why not just lie then, its not as though the reporter is going to ask any searching questions or fire off a contradictory response. I think scientists have become so used to dealing with mentally challenged MSM droids they have acquired the well founded belief that they can tell them anything they please.
Thorne states: “All the physical indicators are consistent with a warming world. There is no doubt the trend of temperature is upwards since the early 20th century. And that trend is accelerating.”
Now this statement by any measure is a pack of lies, not mistaken assumptions btw because he is in possession of all the relevant facts, the only possible conclusion we could draw is that of contempt, the man is showing classic symptoms of contempt for the person he is talking to.
Our Mr Thorne is of the opinion that MSM reporters are there to receive his scientific ‘wisdom’ which they then must pass on to the unwashed uneducated proles ‘as is’. And here, right here is the problem as I see it. For far too long scientists have not been cross examined and made to answer at the time for lies and deceptions by MSM representatives.
The MSM has failed us all utterly in this and other respects because the MSM has not employed near enough reporters with any kind of understanding of science. The BBC science reporters for instance have no actual scientific qualifications at all, they rely entirely on contacts within the eco/green industry and within climate science which they take in as gospel and spread as undeniable fact. MSM reporters treat establishment scientists as though they were the priesthood of a middle ages religion, and as nobody is challenging these new priests of the new cult these priests have become arrogant.
Unless scientists are challenged as to the veracity of their claims at the time, they will feel that they can say anything they please and that is not healthy for us or indeed them. As we have seen with the climategate scandal scientists are totally unused to having their work scrutinised by ordinary people and their mistakes and errors placed before the world for all to see. Its a doozy of a problem isnt it my friends and quite how we are going to overcome it is beyond my limited intellect.
the NYTimes has an op-ed that had me seeing red! saying berkeley has proved agw is real.
I deleted the paper from inbox so folks will have to go find it, but it’s pure warmist palaver, as ever with nyt.
they are as bad as ABC in aus
Mike says:
April 4, 2011 at 7:19 am
“The planet is warming. The only plausible cause is the rise of net GHG emissions from human activities. The only real question is what should we do?”
Enjoy the milder winters, of course. By the way, my region of the world has not warmed. Guess who agrees with me? Muller. Watch his Youtube video again and you will see that he says that the Southeast of the US has not warmed. Cool, huh?
Actually, I do not believe for one minute that any part of the world that we actually care about has warmed. The people who provide the data, such as NOAA, find the warming in places where there are no thermometers and no humans. Well, OK, also in more latent heat in the evenings, but all of that is UHI.
Nope, I do not believe for one minute that there has been warming that humans should care about and I certainly do not believe that anyone has anything approaching reliable data to show that someplace where people live has been warming. It does not exist.
Blind adherance has its supporters! The broken-record (more like a skipping CD now) of parroted AGW platitudes should be graphed statistically. Another, and likely more valid, hockey stick is in the making.
Mike says:
April 4, 2011 at 7:19 am
The planet is warming. The only plausible cause is the rise of net GHG emissions from human activities. The only real question is what should we do?
As I have pointed out before here, (ad nauseum for some). The IPCC openly admits, without directly saying so of course, that they (allegedly) have a very high level of scientific undertanding of CO2 & its affects on the atmosphere, yet they also confess that the have a very low to low level of scientific understanding of Solar Variability & its effects upon the Earth. Therefore they have openly admitted that they don’t know what effect element A (the Sun), has on element B (the climate), but they know for a fact that element C (carbon dioxide), overpowers element A! Sheer lunacy!
Lady Life Grows says:
April 4, 2011 at 8:08 am
“what I see is a flat no-trend for the first half of the data, then a short spike upward about .3 degrees followed by flat again at the higher temperature”
I hadn’t seen that relationship but, what would cause the stutter-step to the higher level within a short period of time?
It is a bit like me telling you what the exact grade my new students will end up with in three years time, and I haven’t even finished interviewing them all yet, so I’m not really certain who they’ll be!
If fact that’s a damned good analogy.
Crispin in Waterloo says:
April 4, 2011 at 8:06 am
Well said, Crispin, especially
We need to convert the enthusiasm to ‘do something’ from ‘energy-self-extinction’ into a devotion to uplift a human family groaning under the yoke of poverty, deprivation and the misapplication of the creative genius of which we are history’s fortunate inheritors.
Mike says:
April 4, 2011 at 7:19 am
Isnt it funny how the warmistas DENY natural variations?
http://www.sciencebits.com/ice-ages
In reading Muller’s testimony, I got the distinct impression that what his team has been working towards all along was not the validation/invalidation of temperature trends, but rather reducing the degree of statistical uncertainty around these trends. Unfortunately, as we have seen, results can be molded to a preconceived outcome depending on the statistical approach.
Contrary to general thought, science is not a neutral endeavor. The results of scientific inquiry are determined by how scientists ask their questions.
“The Ancients all had sun gods. This is the first generation to ever have a CO2 god.”
I think you mean a CO2 Devil . Now picture the Church-lady saying …
Lady Life Grows says:
April 4, 2011 at 8:08 am
Trend lines can be such nonsense. Often, all depends on the starting and ending years chosen. Here, the years are not shown,…..”
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No need, even if Anthony didn’t provide the link, we know it is satellite derived temps.(particularly RSS) Years start at 1979. Big spike towards the middle is El Nino year of ’98.
But, yes, trend lines can be very deceptive.