Note: I spent the day with the BEST team yesterday at Lawrence Livermore Berkeley Laboratories and I’ll have a report on it soon, but here in the meantime is what Fred Singer has to say about it, via Climate Realists. – Anthony
By Dr. Fred Singer
The e-mails leaked from the University of East Anglia in November 2009 produced what is popularly called “Climategate.” They exposed the thoroughly unethical behavior of a group of climate scientists, mainly in the UK and US, involved in producing the global surface temperature record used and relied on by governments.
Not only did these climate scientists hide their raw data and their methodology of selection and adjustment of temperature data, but they fought hard against all attempts by independent outside scientists to replicate their results. They also undermined the peer-review system and tried to make it impossible for skeptical scientists to publish their work in scientific journals. There is voluminous evidence in the e-mails to this effect. In the process, they damaged not only the science enterprise — full publication of data and methods, replication of results, open debate, etc — but they also undermined the public credibility of all scientists.
However, the most serious revelation from the e-mails is that they tried to “hide the decline” in temperatures, using various “tricks” in order to keep alive a myth of rising temperatures in support of the dogma of anthropogenic global warming. There have now been a number of investigations of the activities of this group, mainly in the UK. These have all turned out to be complete whitewashes, aimed to exonerate the scientists involved. None of these investigations has even attempted to learn how and in what way the data might have been manipulated.
Much of this is described in the “Hockey Stick Illusion: Climategate and the corruption of science” by A. W. Montford. Meteorologist Joseph D’Aleo and others have made a commendable effort to show how data might have been altered. But an independent effort to reconstruct the global temperature results of the past century really demands a dedicated project with proper resources.
The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) Project aims to do what needs to be done: That is, to develop an independent analysis of the data from land stations, which would include many more stations than had been considered by the Global Historic Climatology Network. The Project is in the hands of a group of recognized scientists, who are not at all “climate skeptics” — which should enhance their credibility. The Project is mainly directed by physicists, chaired by Professor Richard Muller (UC Berkeley), with a steering group that includes Professor Judith Curry (Georgia Tech) and Arthur Rosenfeld (UC Santa Barbara and Georgia Tech).
I applaud and support what is being done by the Project — a very difficult but important undertaking. I personally have little faith in the quality of the surface data, having been exposed to the revealing work by Anthony Watts and others. However, I have an open mind on the issue and look forward to seeing the results of the Project in their forthcoming publications.
As far as I know, no government or industry funds are involved — at least at this stage. According to the Project’s website www.berkeleyearth.org, support comes mostly from a group of charitable foundations.
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Atmospheric physicist S. Fred Singer is Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia and former director of the US weather satellite service. He is a Senior Fellow of the Independent Institute and the Heartland Institute. He is the author or co-author of Unstoppable Global Warming [2007], Nature not Human Activity Rules the Climate [2008], and Climate Change Reconsidered [2009].
I welcome a more complete review of the temperature record. It may show that the temperatures in the 1930s were not statistically different than the temperatures now. This effort cannot be the arbiter of the CAGW meme though. I believe they will find that the earth’s surface temperature has increased about a degree but SO WHAT.
This will tell us nothing about attribution or feedbacks, and as others have said temperature is not energy. The idea that we can pedantically discuss one metric, global temperature anomaly, that is changing in tenths of a degree every 50 years to prove or disprove CAGW is ludicrous. I just hope it doesn’t become a rallying cry for alarmists……………”See we told you, the earth is warming.” Reply: No #$%^, who cares, we already knew that!!!!!!!!
In my view both MBH ’98 and S’09 were marketing tools, I hope this doesn’t become one also.
I have heard Richard Muller interviewed many times. He has become rather well known recently for his book, “Physics for Future Presidents”. He seems to me a straight shooter, someone interested in the truth. He does not seem particulary political, is pro nuclear power and has no problem shooting down popular urban myths when they run counter to scientific fact.
The lectures from his class “Physics for Future Presidents” (voted most popular class at Cal many times) can be found on Youtube if you want to learn more about him.
Not everybody at Berkeley drinks the Cool-aid and I think that the findings of this group should be taken very seriously by anyone interested at getting to the bottom of this matter. And with the checks of the steering group, it sounds like they are going out of their way to give us all confidence in the veracity of the project. So I’m with Dr. Singer
“Hide The Decline” is a poster phrase. It is at least possible that Fred Singer used it to neatly characterise up to SIX “tricks” the Team have done:
(1) hiding the “temperature” decline in the post-1960 treering proxy record
(2) hiding the decline in correspondence of treering with temperature post-1960
(3) hiding the decline of max temperatures since MWP – the one basic reason for the creation of the Hockey Stick
(4) hiding the decline of correspondence post-1960 between issued global temperature trends and rural temperature trends (see my article here)
(5) hiding the decline of the last decade of temperatures
(6) hiding the declining link with reality as suggested by multiple temperature record problems particularly associated with GISS
Of course this is speculation, putting words in Singer’s mouth, making his statement more a “gotcha” than a scientific statement. But IMHO Hoser has it also dead right when he comments on our collective forgetting and blurring of history; sometimes a not-quite-technically-accurate statement is what one does in the attempt to state what one knows is true because one has seen the evidence and knows it was correct, but one does not have the means or energy right now to get the detail quite right. I’ve caught myself guilty of this one, and it is a big reason behind many ping-pong arguments where there is actually truth on BOTH sides.
Note what I’ve said about the collective forgetting and blurring of history. I shall return to this issue again later. Hint: why we still need a wiki.
Thanks D King
Everyone should watch the Dr. Muller video. Watch the whole thing it’s only 11 minutes long.
“The Project is in the hands of a group of recognized scientists, who are not at all “climate skeptics” — which should enhance their credibility.”
——–
Why would this enhance their credibility?
And enhance their credibility with whom? Al Gore & Co? We The People? The IPCC? The people who will provide continuing grant funding? The skeptical community?
How do we know that any new information produced by these people will be “unadjusted” and something we can trust as accurate? How many of them have the “right stuff” to go against the alarm machine if that’s what the data shows (and I think it will.) If the data shows significant warming will they be able to do work that’s bullet-proof enough for skeptics to respect?
It’s nice that Dr. Curry is part of this group. Maybe that means they won’t spit in the eyes of the
hereticsskeptics. /sarc_offI’m also looking forward to any results that come from this and my apologies for sounding cynical, but given this report it sounds a bit like the climategate whitewashes. It sounds good and their website says all the right things, so we’ll see.
Any response from Real Climate? After all, for those that believe in the Hansen tale, the GISTemp is solid, if not solidly gold.
If the BEST group drops with reasons stations and data, that would be a slap at many people. Be interesting.
D King and will1be
thanks for pointing towards Prof Muller of Berkeley – especially that video. Ah, he seems like Fortinbras coming in to clean up the usurpation and corruption of kingship that Hamlet exposes, and all the tragedy and dead bodies that ensued there. The real post-Copenhagen, as I seem to remember ruefully thinking about at the time.
Sleepalot says:
February 19, 2011 at 2:01 pm
John Robertson says:
“The thermometer temperature has been rising since the late 60s. the tree data is therefore in error. after this time. ”
Lol. Brilliant deduction, sir! How, pray tell, did the trees learn to lie ?
Imo, the mistake the Team made was to get their trees from the wilds: if they’d
got them from urban sites, they might’ve shown the same warming that urban
thermometers do.
The problem here is I was actually quoting ‘walt man’ for the line you attributed to me. Unfortunately I had neglected to italicize the quote (my bad – I don’t know the cite attributes and must read up on them!) and that led to the confusion. I agree that the fact that the trees diverged from the temperature data in the 1960s is quite interesting and (to me at least) makes any tree ring data suspect for (pre) historical times until that discrepancy is explained by something other than ‘anomalous behaviour’ which only means ‘haven’t a clue’.
Greg2213 says:
February 19, 2011 at 5:09 pm
“The Project is in the hands of a group of recognized scientists, who are not at all “climate skeptics” — which should enhance their credibility.”
=========================================
I agree Greg, this sounds like some bad dream or joke.
I would prefer skeptical scientists, the ones that are not at all skeptical have had the first go round…………….
So if this new project is in the hands of scientists that are not at all skeptical, it’s just the same old same old………….
…….Hiding the problem of divergence was the “trick” used to keep the “myth” of rising temperatures alive……
Fred’s correct………….
Fred Singer and the heartland institute are 2 good reasons skeptics get called “deniers”… Skeptics should distance themselves from their nonsense to maintain any credibility…
= = = = = =
Sharper00,
Your omniscience is remarkable deficient.
John
Robb876 says:
February 19, 2011 at 5:24 pm
Fred Singer and the heartland institute are 2 good reasons skeptics get called “deniers”… Skeptics should distance themselves from their nonsense to maintain any credibility…
=====================================
Robb, would you like a list of the people the true believers should distance themselves from……..should we start at 10,000 and work our way back
A lot of comments on here about the proxy vs the instrumental temperature record overlook the fact that there is legitimate and much talked about dispute of the temperature record, too.
Sharper00, “Unless everyone wants to argue that temperatures have actually declined since 1960 and tree proxies are the only reliable measurement of this then scientists did not ” keep alive a myth of rising temperatures in support of the dogma of anthropogenic global warming.” as alleged.”
The decline was hidden to keep alive the myth that tree rings are an accurate representation of temperature. The decline was hidden to preserve the double myth that the Hockey Stick of MBH98/99, and allied spuriosities, represented 1ky of global average temperature. The decline was hidden to keep alive the myth that 20th century temperatures are “unprecedented” in 1000 years.
The decline was hidden, in short, to preserve “the myth of rising temperatures in support of the dogma of anthropogenic global warming.” The context of “rising temperatures” is 1000 years, not 60 years.
There’d be nothing at all to the AGW claim if one could only argue that temperatures have risen since 1880. No big deal, that. To make any impression at all, one must argue that recent temperatures have departed suddenly from a long-term trend. Evidence of the sudden arrival of that ole demon, LuCO2fer
That’s the myth hide the decline was meant to preserve: the rhetorical/political/Fentonian spin-purity of the long term, 1ky, (crock of a) temperature trend. Restricting your argument to the last 60 years is a complete miscarriage of context.
Fred Singer was dead-on right. He just wasn’t entirely explicit, contextually, thereby leaving a specious opening for diversionary dust-raisers.
steven mosher says:
February 19, 2011 at 1:30 pm
“However, the most serious revelation from the e-mails is that they tried to “hide the decline” in temperatures, using various “tricks” in order to keep alive a myth of rising temperatures in support of the dogma of anthropogenic global warming. ”
Fred singer. Try to be more careful explaining the mails you probably never read.
Your statement is wrong. Those of us who dedicated months to investigating the mails, years to investigating tree rings and temperatures deserve better. At this stage you should know better.
Please.
Spot on, Steve. No wonder the BBC are keen to quote Fred as a “leading sceptic”.
lawrie says:
February 19, 2011 at 3:32 pm
Why on earth try to make a new record of a very dubious record. The satellite record is the best so far so why not stick with it? Rehashing the land temp record is no different to going back to ships taking temps from buckets and ignoring ARGO. Wasted effort. Just make sure the IPCC can’t adjust the satellite and ARGO data.
Three cheers!
Anthony,
I suggest that the BEST project processes be virtually transparent and continuously interactive with the broad blog community.
Given your participation already in the BEST project, can you advise how I can input such recommendations to them?
John
I now have more ‘faith’ (is that the right word?) that something good may come out of this after reviewing the video of one of Richard Muller’s talks. It appears that he is at least sceptical to the correctness of the temperature record as presently compiled by the Team. If he is a key player and if he approaches this with an open mind, perhaps a more ‘accurate’ temperature record will be achieved.
Of course, there will always be the problem with error bars, the problem that a global record is instrinsically absurd and measuring temperature is not a measurement of energy. All of these failings will mean that caution will alwasys need to be applied when considering the relevance of the temperature record.
The methods used by the BEST analysis are, at present, unknown to the general public. I look forward to hearing about their methodology and seeing their results.
Here is how I would utilize modern computers to estimate mean global temperature changes over the period 1880 to present, minimizing systematic and random error as well as biased “adjustments” by the official climate Team or others who have a political agenda in either direction:
1) Take the available temperature record from each and every station world-wide and split it into a number of shorter series by discarding the year before and the year after any known or reasonably suspected disruption and starting a new series. Disruptions would include a) Known change in location, b) Known change in measuring equipment or shelters, c) Known change in time of observation or other protocol, d) Excessive amount of missing-day data, and, e) based on the actual data, any short-term step change over a given amount that would indicate a suspected change in local environment, such as newly laid asphalt, new air conditioning, etc.
2) Discard any series shorter than ten years. Break up any series longer than 30 years into two or more separate series.
3) Compute the mean of each series and determine the daily anomaly (that day’s reading minus the mean). This will minimize any systematic bias due to equipment calibration or nearby UHI, etc.
4) Group all world wide anomaly data by date and discard the “outliers” (top and bottom 10%). Then take the mean and publish that as an estimate of the global anomaly for that date. The mean of a large number of data points will minimize random error.
The above could be done totally automatically, with no need for human intervention and (possibly biased) adjustment. It would eliminate any need to extend temperature readings for a given grid location to nearby grid locations that lack measurement stations. Each series would be long enough (at least ten years) to capture relative changes even if that station was near a UHI and short enough (no more than 30 years) to minimize the effect of slowly changing development. By discarding data within a year of known or suspected disruptions, the effects of station relocation or nearby development would be minimized. By discarding the outliers, most unknown unusual events would be eliminated.
The strongest advantage of the above scheme is that it is totally transparent and understandable.
I wish the BEST team “the best”!
Ira Glickstein
JPeden says:
February 19, 2011 at 5:50 pm
“Just make sure the IPCC can’t adjust the satellite and ARGO data.”
Well said.
Beware sensor calibrations!
Steven mosher is a grumpy bugger. And that’s not ad hominem because I didn’t try and disprove anything he said.
But I do think people are being a bit nasty with Fred singer who may have left out the word proxies but we knew what he meant.
The real issue is that tree ring proxies for past climate are probably crap.
This thread is becoming decidedly surreal – as if I’d fallen into Alice’s rabbit hole and found myself looking at Real Climate (TM) through some looking glass, with Tall Bloke playing the part of Don Baccus and sharper00 coming across as Roger Tattersall. Over at Steve M’s place we have the skeptics excoriating Dr. Steig for his disengenuousness, lambasted Dr. Schneider for his scary scenarios, then over here we are defending with definitions of “is” not dissimilar actions by Dr. Singer. Whether he didn’t know, misspoke, or was being provocative, he was wrong and we are wrong to excuse it. People are not as stupid as you may think and do not need things “simplified”. Let Real Climate deal in soundbites, let us stick to the unvarnished, cumbersome facts.
And Troll, I did not state indirectly that the hide the decline was just that to hide the declining temperatures … to the best of our knowledge, the temperatures from the Little Ice Age on have generally increased, and the correspondence between the instrumental and proxy records was close until 1960 when they began to diverge. To state anything else is just not factual and makes us look bad. I would not be really surprised to discover that the instrumental record had been adjusted and biased to show higher temperatures, but that evidence just isn’t in yet…
and just as an aside, both the treemometers and the mechanical instruments of the industrial age are “proxies”. Don’t mistake the map for the territory.
Yes, Dr. Singer cited the wrong email for surface temperatures. But certain emails do indicate ad hoc adjustments, massaging and finagling of surface temps (esp sea surface temps). Dr. Singer just picked the wrong example.
John Finn,
Let’s allow folks to make their own judgements of the infamous “hide the decline” email.
And lest we forget the context of Climategate.
Correction Note:
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory is spread mostly up the hill behind (east) of the main UC Berkeley campus while Lawrence Livermore Laboratory is in the city of Livermore about 50 miles east of Berkeley and, as I understand, is the stamping ground of Ben Santer.
Professor is a Senior Faculty Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory.