The scientific finding that does not settle the climate-change debate
S. Fred Singer Letter to WashPost Oct 25, 2011**
Before you write off Bachmann, Cain, and Perry as cynical diehards, deniers, idiots, or whatever, [WashPost Oct 24] consider this:
Why are you surprised by the results of the Berkeley Climate Project? They used data from the same weather stations as the Climategate people, but reported that one-third showed cooling — not warming.
They covered the same land area – less than 30% of the Earth’s surface – with recording stations that are poorly distributed, mainly in US and Western Europe. They state that 70% of US stations are badly sited and don’t meet the standards set by government; the rest of the world is likely worse.
Unlike the land surface, the atmosphere showed no warming trend, either over land or over ocean — according to satellites and independent data from weather balloons. This indicates to me that there is something very wrong with the land surface data. And did you know that the climate models, run on super-computers, all show that the atmosphere must warm faster than the surface. What does this tell you?
And finally, we have non-thermometer temperature data from so-called “proxies”: tree rings, ice cores, ocean sediments, stalagmites. They don’t show any global warming since 1940!
The Berkeley results in no way confirm the scientifically discredited Hockeystick graph, which had been so eagerly adopted by climate alarmists. In fact, the Hockeystick authors have never published their temperature results after 1978. The reason for hiding them? It’s likely that their proxy data show no warming either.
One last word: In their scientific paper, submitted for peer review, the Berkeley scientists disclaim knowing the cause of the temperature increase reported by their project. However, their research paper comments: “The human component of global warming may be somewhat overestimated.” I commend them for their honesty and skepticism.
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S. Fred Singer is professor emeritus at the University of Virginia and director of the Science & Environmental Policy Project. He is a Senior Fellow of the Heartland Institute and of the Independent Institute. His specialty is atmospheric and space physics. An expert in remote sensing and satellites, he served as the founding director of the US Weather Satellite Service and, more recently, as vice chair of the US National Advisory Committee on Oceans & Atmosphere. He is co-author of Climate Change Reconsidered [2009 and 2011] and of Unstoppable Global Warming [2007]
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Just the facts, Dr. Singer, just the facts. Bravo!
Is BEST the open door in the corner for many alarmists to free themselves?
Very good explanation of his view of the Berkeley project “BEST” paper. pg
Science communication at its best [sorry, no pun intended]. Most helpful for us non-science graduates. Thank you, Dr Singer.
Beautifully summed up.
I am getting confused.
The MSM in the UK pounced on the BEST press release with crowing headlines such as “Climate skeptic now believes in global warming”, which seemed to me to be a free hit for the AGW alarmists.
Yet hard-core AGW types at RealClimate, and the Deltoids, are trashing the BEST results with a display of meanness they usually reserve for “deniers” such as “James Watt”.
What’s going on?
Very succinct…. Now, if only the WaPo could be so clear.
Thank you very much, Dr. Singer!
After reading that WaPo article, I asked myself wheather journalism can plummet farther.
This guy is not only no scientist, he is also no journalist. Simply a spin doctor! And a scientifically illiterate at that.
I’m really glad to have scientists like Dr. Singer on our side.
And of course Anthony for his permissive blog.
“Hmm – were there any other questions?”
Well done Dr. Fred, as usual nailed it in one!
It says its a letter to the WaPo. Did they actually print it?
Rick
The Climate Wars are not black and white. There are lots of variant positions out there on both AGW and sceptic sides.
Muller took a principled stand against the “Hide the Decline” tricks [‘this is not how science is done’] and will have a big black mark against his name with the blogs you mentioned.
They are also upset that the basic premise of BESt was to assume that the standard temperature series that they use were under a cloud. This was to start out by questioning rather than asserting that there was no debate. No doubt this is also considered poor form.
There are many things going on now days that make me think that the Star Wars series really was foreboding. How do you overcome an enemy and gain complete control? Make sure you start a war and then control all sides of it. People will surrender a lot in order to fight a perceived enemy – even if that enemy was a fabrication by the “good guys”.
Notice how the WaPo narrative on this is that BEST resulted in the dramatic conversion of one of the bad sceptic guys [Muller]. Some have already mentioned that this is a kind of infiltration of the sceptic camp in order to sweep the legs out from underneath this position.
But the little guys involved in the heat of the battle would not appreciate such a pincher movement. It would look like a game to get someone else in on their act.
None the less – I hope the proposed open data and methods advertised for this project are realised. The exploration of the fact that 1/3 of the global sites show cooling and that these sites are relatively evenly distributed amongst the warming sites is, I think, the most important result from the study and needs to be thoroughly explored – even if the end result is the discovery that local temperature readings are only useful at the local level and should never be used in agreggate to establish a global metric.
BEST science apparently falls rather short of being the best science.
Brian,
Thanks very much for the explanation.
Is Muller trying to carve out his own niche as the only reasonable and trustworthy voice in the climate debate, do you think?
Ron Paul doubts climate change, says global warming is a hoax and wants to end subsidizing any energy. He’s not perfection, but why leave him out? At least he talks MORE about CUTTING SPENDING than taxation strategy. Unlike everyone else. Like him, I’m more concerned with debt and downgrades right now leading to our currency being totally rejected by the world. Then there won’t be no printing & inflating our way out of trouble. I’m also more concerned about knee jerk reaction with disastrous results like the ’08 election all over again.
may Fred Singer live forever.
may the Durban PR spin which is in full gear fail forever.
may anthony and his family thrive and prosper.
Ok guys – beyond a joke now, you’re going to have to let this one go – BEST was on your side! And remember:
“I’m prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong.”
REPLY: Sure, no doubt. But then they threw out the promises and went for PR review instead of peer review. Is that science? Yes I was suckered by Richard Mulller into thinking they’d do it right, without politics and fanfare, stickign to science. Boy was I wrong, much has changed in the months since then. – Anthony
Ok, I agree with the thrust of the letter. BEST hasn’t changed anything. If Watts and Gavin Schmidt agree about it, that says all we need to know.
Cain, Bachmann, and Perry are still idiots, though.
REPLY: Sure, no doubt. But then they threw out the promises and went for PR review instead of peer review. Is that science? Yes I was suckered by Richard Mulller into thinking they’d do it right, without politics and fanfare, stickign to science. Boy was I wrong, much has changed in the months since then. – Anthony
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So when this study is published in a peer review then you’ll accept it?
“The Berkeley Earth team has now submitted four papers for peer review. We are making these preliminary results public, together with our programs and data set, in order to invite additional scrutiny. “
‘as the Climategate people’
I like that, perhaps building on that with the ‘Climategate Concensus Team’ or CCT, could be used in future with a definition of it’s participants and their effect on world politics, Wiki maybe, that everyone then could reference when talking about the ‘old’ concensus and the ‘science is settled’ dogma.
A sort of reminder to all of how much the science has moved on from that dark period and a reminder to future generations of scientists to do the science and not the dogma.
Dr Muller considers himself an honest man and as such considers himself the only scientist that could produce a credible paper on global warming and it will be the truth as he sees it. But it’s like the $1.47 question, do you round it up to $1.50 or down to $1.45. It would seem 1/3 of the time its down and 2/3 up. I’m still trying to work out how long wave radiation can produce more heat than shortwave and this is causing global warming?????
That one third of the stations shows a cooling trend, doesn’t say much to me, if I do not know for how long the stations were on duty. With short records, regression slopes vary wildly. Show me the global trend for (1) stations more than 50 years on duty, (2) stations 10-50 years, and (3) stations less than 10 years. This cannot be difficult if you have almost 40.000 stations in your data base. With that number you can also do a survival analysis: what determines the life time of a station?
Fred Singer’s letter is a thing of beauty. A model of clear exposition and confident but temperate tone. I had lost sight of the fact that BEST had found one-third of the stations showing a cooling trend. I suppose the alarmists would try to explain this by saying the CO2 is driving more temperature extremes (some few areas are getting somewhat cooler while most others are getting much hotter) but it seems implausible to me: how could that work over a long time series in a small region (commingled with or adjacent other regions where the temperature trend was upward)?
Excellent Sir.
But alarmists will continue as before. Convince a man against his will, he’s of the same opinion still.
Well said, Dr. Singer. Unfortunately, it’s unlikely, even with your authority, that your words will get past the “fingers in ears, la, la, la, we’re not listening” response from those with considerable financial interest in keeping the scam going. As a better quotesmith than me once said, you can lead a whore to culture, but you can’t make her think”.
I heard Dr. Singer and two other speakers from SEPP (including Dr. Haapala) give a presentation at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond VA last Saturday; all were excellent and very clear on the issues. As I expected, the presentation was all science; no gimmicks or sleight-of-hand. I must say, though, that the scientific matter was all familiar to me from reading WUWT, and I was grateful to you for that. The new element was the work of one of the speakers, who was able to get his county–ultra-liberal Albemarle County, where UVA is–to withdraw from its commitment to spend money and effort on false “green” measures, showing that, indeed, one well-informed and articulate citizen can help local government to see the truth and stop wasting taxpayers’ money.