Good news travels fast. I’m a bit surprised to see this get some early coverage, as the project isn’t ready yet. However since it has been announced by press, I can tell you that this project is partly a reaction and result of what we’ve learned in the surfacesations project, but mostly, this project is a reaction to many of the things we have been saying time and again, only to have NOAA and NASA ignore our concerns, or create responses designed to protect their ideas, rather than consider if their ideas were valid in the first place. I have been corresponding with Dr. Muller, invited to participate with my data, and when I am able, I will say more about it. In the meantime, you can visit the newly minted web page here. I highly recommend reading the section on methodology here. Longtime students of the surface temperature record will recognize some of the issues being addressed. I urge readers not to bombard these guys with questions. Let’s “git ‘er done” first.
Note: since there’s been some concern in comments, I’m adding this: Here’s the thing, the final output isn’t known yet. There’s been no “peeking” at the answer, mainly due to a desire not to let preliminary results bias the method. It may very well turn out to agree with the NOAA surface temperature record, or it may diverge positive or negative. We just don’t know yet.
Professor Counters Global Warming Myths With Data
By Claire Perlman
Daily Cal Senior Staff Writer
Global warming is the favored scapegoat for any seemingly strange occurrence in nature, from dying frogs to hurricanes to drowning polar bears. But according to a Berkeley group of scientists, global warming does not deserve all these attributions. Rather, they say global warming is responsible for one thing: the rising temperature.
However, global warming has become a politicized issue, largely becoming disconnected from science in favor of inflammatory headlines and heated debates that are rarely based on any science at all, according to Richard Muller, a UC Berkeley physics professor and member of the team.
“There is so much politics involved, more so than in any other field I’ve been in,” Muller said. “People would write their articles with a spin on them. The people in this field were obviously very genuinely concerned about what was happening … But it made it difficult for a scientist to go in and figure out that what they were saying was solid science.”
Muller came to the conclusion that temperature data – which, in the United States, began in the late 18th century when Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin made the first thermometer measurements – was the only truly scientifically accurate way of studying global warming.
Without the thermometer and the temperature data that it provides, Muller said it was probable that no one would have noticed global warming yet. In fact, in the period where rising temperatures can be attributed to human activity, the temperature has only risen a little more than half a degree Celsius, and sea levels, which are directly affected by the temperature, have increased by eight inches.
To that end, he formed the Berkeley Earth group with 10 other highly acclaimed scientists, including physicists, climatologists and statisticians. Before the group joined in the study of the warming world, there were three major groups that had released analysis of historical temperature data. But each has come under attack from climate skeptics, Muller said.
In the group’s new study, which will be released in about a month, the scientists hope to address the doubts that skeptics have raised. They are using data from all 39,390 available temperature stations around the world – more than five times the number of stations that the next most thorough group, the Global Historical Climatology Network, used in its data set.
Other groups were concerned with the quality of the stations’ data, which becomes less reliable the earlier it was measured. Another decision to be made was whether to include data from cities, which are known to be warmer than suburbs and rural areas, said team member Art Rosenfeld, a professor emeritus of physics at UC Berkeley and former California Energy Commissioner.
“One of the problems in sorting out lots of weather stations is do you drop the data from urban centers, or do you down-weight the data,” he said. “That’s sort of the main physical question.”
Global warming is real, Muller said, but both its deniers and exaggerators ignore the science in order to make their point.
“There are the skeptics – they’re not the consensus,” Muller explained. “There are the exaggerators, like Al Gore and Tom Friedman who tell you things that are not part of the consensus … (which) goes largely off of thermometer records.”
Some scientists who fear that their results will be misinterpreted as proof that global warming is not urgent, such as in the case of Climategate, fall into a similar trap of exaggeration.
The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study was conducted with the intention of becoming the new, irrefutable consensus, simply by providing the most complete set of historical and modern temperature data yet made publicly available, so deniers and exaggerators alike can see the numbers.
“We believed that if we brought in the best of the best in terms of statistics, we could use methods that would be easier to understand and not as open to actual manipulation,” said Elizabeth Muller, Richard Muller’s daughter and project manager of the study. “We just create a methodology that will then have no human interaction to pick or choose data.”
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Anthony,
I have my doubts too. With words like ‘consensus’ and ‘denier’ along with phrases like “global warming is real”, its hard for me to be optimistic even if they are offering you a seat at the table so to speak.
As Steve McIntyre would say; Watch the pea under the thimble (very – VERY closely!!!!)
It could simply be that language like this was used to get the attention from a biased media and scientific community but whatever you do, don’t let your guard down.
REPLY: The word “deniers” was added by the reporter. And global warming “is” real. We expect some warming, my view is that it is exaggerated for political purposes. The key is find out what the true signal is. – Anthony
Once the “deniers” are aboard, take them for a ride through the bushes and back to the “consensus”.
In reading the methodology material I was unable to determine how the Urban Heat Island (UHI) impacts are going to be addressed in this study. I would hope that this critical issue is to be evaluated in this independent temperature data study.
Is that the case? If so can someone please explain where this issue is addressed in the methodology. Thanks.
Conclusions about bias must be drawn until the report is published. This article was published in The Daily Californian, not written by the researchers. The fact that these researchers will publish all of their data and code and, as well, attempt to resolve issues uncovered in surface stations project is a good start. Rather than criticize this attempt at objective scientific inquiry, the sceptics’ job is to later critique their methodology.
Re:Feynman says:
February 11, 2011 at 8:46 am
“…it seems that they ‘know’ in advance what the result will be….”
That one jumped out at me as well. I was feeling really good about the prospects for “truth”, whatever it may be, coming out of this exercise until the professor made is “warming is a fact” statement. Hopefully, the mechanisms promised for removing the biases of the observer from the results will serve to make the professor’s stated bias irrelevant.
I think this is fantastic. The data will be collected openly we hope and anyone who wants access will have it, allowing them to spin it anyway they want (as expected). At least it will be available. The problem here though is the same problem that has always existed, thermometers will provide evidence that the climate changes, they will not be able to show that CO2 is the cause. It’s good though.
So what’s new here? Apparently the globe is warming and the seas have risen and neither of those is what the fight is about anyway.
“There are the skeptics – they’re not the consensus,” Muller explained. “There are the exaggerators, like Al Gore and Tom Friedman who tell you things that are not part of the consensus … (which) goes largely off of thermometer records.”
What science is going to be done when the top dog is already using “consensus” twice in one paragraph?
BS
If any trusted “denier or “skeptic” is receiving any sort of grant or “compensation” for participating in a project such as this, it should be publicly declared beforehand.
Otherwise we will have “Deniergate” next.
Choose your friends well, brothers and sisters of “denialism”.
I suggest that there will be at least 4 factors that will determine whether or not this new effort will have any merit:
1/ How will the UHI effect be handled for cities? UHI “corrections” present a prime opportunity to introduce fudge factors to get the results one would like to see.
2/ Will so-called homogenization be used allowing temperature to differ from the actual measurements made at specific sites? The correct approach would be to constrain any fit to reproduce temperatures actually measured at all input sites.
3/ Will the data be interpolated over vast regions for which there is no site data? Integrating over such regions to calculate a “global temperature” can result in large systematic biases.
3/ Will the global heat content [the moist enthalpy as Espen pointed out above quoting Dr. Pielke] be reported along with the global temperature?
I propose Scam Scoffers.
I’ve read Muller’s book “Physics for Future Presidents” and I enjoyed it quite a bit, that is until I got to the chapter on global warming. Up to that point the book had been a fine presentation on our abilities and limitations in energy, space, terrorism, etc based upon actual physics but when I got to the global warming chapter it was “AGW is real, trust me I know what I’m talking about”.
Color me skeptical on Muller’s ability to remain impartial and not be swayed toward the AGW corner.
But there is a youtube video showing a lecture from Muller where he talks about how the Hockey Team lied and he seemed to be quite disgusted with them and that he’d relied upon what they said to form his opinions on AGW so maybe he has turned a corner. But he also starts the lecture with a bunch of AGW stuff so who knows…
As discussed many times previously surely ocean heat content is the key metric not surface temperatures.
RickA says:
February 11, 2011 at 8:09 am
Personally, I think we should also be setting up new automated stations to obtain more uniform coverage, which we can use to build 30-60 years worth of high quality new data.
I agree completely Rick. Individuals have the ability today to have a home weather station feeding data into their home computers that could be feeding data to a commingled base elsewhere, freely accessible by all. Ten years from now and beyond, we would have some serious raw data that would be very useful in establishing trends and verifying current projections.
If the database is open for anyone to read (maybe a small fee), then it the raw data can be checked.
And if anyone then can write a program to plot the data, then why not?
And if that organisation wants to do their own plots, and their software for doing so is accessible for all to compile and run, then I’d say, this is good news.
What is there not to like? The language above is just to be accepted by today’s AGW camp, me thinks.
They are in the same situation as being a Darwinian scientist under Lysenko.
How to get a plan approved, with the whole apparatcnik watching you?
sharper00
Your comments to Anthony Watts at February 11, 2011 at 8:15 am and February 11, 2011 at 8:39 am are offensive in the extreme. You owe him an apology.
Your first post questioned why Anthony Watts’ paper on the NASA and NOAA global temperature data sets had yet to be published. And he answered that completely. I copy that answer here in full to save others the task of finding it: his reply said;
“We have a paper in peer review, note the difficulties encountered by O’Donnell et al with a hostile reviewer, Steig, and perhaps then you’ll understand why skeptical papers can take much longer to run the gauntlet. Besides, it took us three years with volunteers to get a large enough sample. Menne used preliminary data (mine against my protests), and a sample that was not spatially representative nor contained enough class1-2 stations. That paper was pure politics.
If you can do a better job with zero budget, herding volunteers, in your spare time, for no pay, against a well funded government sponsored consensus, by all means do it. Otherwise wait for our paper. – Anthony”
Your second post ignored that and complained at Anthony Watts by saying;
“To go back to your initial complaint about NASA and NOAA – the publication of your analysis showing there’s a problem for them to be concerned about is the starting point to them addressing it. It seems unreasonable to me to criticise them for not fixing a problem you (or anyone else) have yet to demonstrate.”
Say what!?
Anthony Watts had told you that “We have a paper in peer review”. In other words, his demonstration of the “problem” is submitted for publication, so he HAS demonstrated a “problem”. Furthermore, he has repeatedly presented aspects of the “problem” on this blog and a few minutes search would have shown them to you. And if you were to accept his words you would wait for the submitted paper to be published and then – in the unlikely event that you were capable – you could dispute it.
Put another way, you are calling Anthony Watts a liar by claiming he has “yet to demonstrate” a “problem” when he told you he has demonstrated it.
To use your words, It seems unreasonable to me for you to criticise him for your unjustified and unjustifiable refusal to believe his veracity, and your public statement that you do not believe him castes aspersions on his veracity. To my mind that means your behaviour is despicable.
Richard
Sheesh people! You’re reacting to a media article written by a non-scientist with some rhetorical flair. What did you expect from her?
Let’s give our colleagues the time to report on the results of their work. Then we can unleash our examination of the science.
A cautious welcome, but I still have my doubts, because garbage in, garbage out, and if the global temperature station network still is full of unknown errors, it will not be reliable, and there’s no sign of validating the effects of e.g. manual -> automation when a lot of stations were moved closer to power source and therefore closer to heat.
On the good side: An institution like Berkeley can’t afford to get it wrong (unlike the UEA)
On the bad side: so many other institutions who ought to have known better have just fluffed the science, so what’s to stop this being another one?
I didn’t see how the urban heat island effect was to be addressed. Was it there somewhere? Also I think that avoiding all gridding removes some problems but creates a whole lot of others.
Still at least if they publish their raw data and tell us exactly what they have done with it, they are way ahead of most of the others in this field.
*****
“We believed that if we brought in the best of the best in terms of statistics, we could use methods that would be easier to understand and not as open to actual manipulation,” said Elizabeth Muller, Richard Muller’s daughter and project manager of the study. “We just create a methodology that will then have no human interaction to pick or choose data.”
*****
Lofty goals — I hope they try to fulfill them. The devil will be in the details.
One wonders, tho, if the cultural-conformity conditions at Berkeley U (or most any other university) would permit this. Any results other than the party-line would stir up a green-hornet’s nest.
Kwik:
What is “raw data” anyway?
Who reads thermometers, and in what way? Who gathers the results, who plots them, who sends them over to CRU and NOOA?
In Mozambique: how hard is it to let it shine through that you implicitly would like to see warming, and that a certain small grant depends on fulfilling a few simple expectations?
Afterall: most of the warming seems to happen where there is a) few people living or b) poor people living.
Is this a coincidence?
I’m sorry, but why is NASA doing climate change measurements and Muslim outreach? Looks to me like an expensive duplication of efforts that already occur at NOAA and the State Department: let me guess, Bizerkley is now getting in on the climate change gravy train too? No wonder we’re not getting more bang for the buck and going to the moon where the climate never measurably changes.
I already have my doubts about the project based on my reading of their methodology found here:
http://www.berkeleyearth.org/methodology
http://www.berkeleyearth.org/Resources/Berkeley_Earth_Summary.pdf
No discussion on UHIE that I can find.
Also Judith Curry is named as a member of their team.
Wether they are biased or not, as long as their data, code and methodology is made public, it will be possible to determine the validity of their result, and even (from those that have the time and will) to come up with alternatives that addresses concerns that might have been missed. That would be a big step forward indeed.
Minor typo:
“I can tell you that this project is partly a reaction and result of what we’ve learned in the surfacesations project” – should be “surfacestations project”.
Moderator: This note may be deleted.
IanM
“There are the skeptics – they’re not the consensus,” Muller explained. “There are the exaggerators, like Al Gore and Tom Friedman who tell you things that are not part of the consensus … (which) goes largely off of thermometer records.”
OK, if this is an accurate quote then I’m also very concerned.
“There are the skeptics – they’re not the consensus,” ???
Huh? Is this implying that “the skeptics”, one of which I believe I am, do not accept the “consensus” that the globe has been warming since the end of the LIA?
I believe the majority of skeptics agree with the following (which we’ve all seen from here – http://www.petitionproject.org/ ) :
“There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmsopheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth. ”
We’ve run into one of those define “skeptic” and “warmist” problems again. In my opinion, only a non-skeptic states or implies that skeptics do not beleive that the planet has been warming. What we deny is that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are the primary cause and may not even be a minor contributor.
Good, meaningful global temperature data will show what we skeptics have somewhat consensually agreed – that the planet is warming as it recovers from the LIA and has been doing so in a very natural manner.