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.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
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].
p.s. I do not know where the bold came from. Unintended. Geoff.
Pat Frank says:
February 19, 2011 at 5:39 pm
Nicely put Pat.
Bold fixed. Decline still broke.
The most significant aspect of the BEST project, as I see it, is their commitment to complete transparency. If they stick to that commitment, it matters not what the motives or biases of the participants are, because everyone will be able access and evaluate their data and methods with full knowledge and base their judgements of the final product on those evaluations without any need to rely on the participants claims. Certainly a superior situation to what we face at present.
Robert E. Phelan says:
February 19, 2011 at 10:45 pm
The whole point of my comment, Mosher’s and others is that “hide the decline” was not about a decline in temperature. All we are asking is that someone with Dr. Singer’s prominence and visibility keep the facts straight. Anything else just gives the alarmists fodder.
Who outside the Team actually knows what the Team meant by “Hide the Decline”? We have heard explanations put forward, but nothing says that the ClimateGate emails are a complete record. The Team may have invented the explanation to fit what was released, to hide the full facts of the matter.
Clearly there was an attempt to paint a false picture of past temperatures and except for the work of a few individuals this would have gone largely undetected. Trillions of dollars would have been diverted in the name of “saving the planet” and some very well connected people would have made out like bandits.
Even today the effort to hide the facts about past temperatures continues. The simple facts are that tree rings are not a good proxy for temperature. They are a better proxy for rainfall. The Team knows this yet they persist in their claims. This tells me they very likely have not come clean about the true meaning of “hide the decline”. Assuming that they have is likely a mistake.
Both high and low temperatures can result in slender tree rings. It is not a good proxy for temperature.
http://www.ehow.com/facts_7894222_tree-growth-rings-vs-rain.html
Influences
•A number of factors influence the appearance of the rings. A year with many stressors — such as extremely high heat, shorter or cooler summer or drought — will leave a slender ring. The tree put much of its efforts into surviving that year and did not grow much.
Thick Rings
•A thick ring indicates a good year with the proper growing conditions for the tree. Rainfall came at the proper time and amounts, the soil nutrition level was sufficient and the overall weather was acceptable.
“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.”
I don’t agree with that statement. That was just a symptom of a much larger problem. The real problem was the “one-party” state that had developed and the ensuing group-think. The group-think allowed them to believe it was right to “hide the decline”, it allowed them to believe it was right to prevent proper peer review (or as they saw it stop “evil” deniers getting a press), but the conditions that allowed that group-think was the development of this “one-party” state, whereby no opposition was either allowed or funded.
And the root cause of that is the failure of the funding bodies that funding in such a way as to create this one-party state in climate “science”.
To Gregg2213 and Latititude-
The virtue of not having skeptics doing this Temp data set, the BEST team, is to gain the respect of the Team’s allies and enablers, and perhaps any Team members with scientific integrity and standards remaining.
For the skeptic side, barriers to actual transparency – a constant source of aggravation and skullduggery – can finally be removed. With UAH and RSS, no one debates the satellite data anymore.
This means that following the release of the BEST work will come a time of interpretation and debate and revision – ie, actual science. The kind that the Team has prevented all along. This is what McIntyre has wanted forever, and will give researchers a new and better benchmark for weighing Temp change over time, and
get a proper handle on the much disputed degree of significance of it.
What isn’t “win-winhere?
FURTHERMORE, LET ME ECHO Pat Frank:
Fred Singer was dead-on right. He just wasn’t entirely explicit, contextually, thereby leaving a specious opening for diversionary dust-raisers. Fred’s been a friend of science all along. The pejoratives, smears, and calumnies heaped upon him before our’ Johnny come lately’ time are burdens we too ought to share – and live to see through into the light of Truth. That’s what good science means.
Scientists have only their credibility to support or defend them. Honesty must be expected. Tricks and hide are not words that can be allowed or accepted by science, end of story.
Smokey says:
February 19, 2011 at 6:28 pm
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.
Over 6 years ago, long before ‘climategate’, I challenged Michael Mann (on Realclimate) about the practice of ‘grafting’ the thermometer record on to proxy reconstuctions. I was well aware at the time that this disguised the failure of the proxies to simulate the temperature record. Aside from perhaps Steve McIntyre and one or two others I believe that I am better qualified than other “folks” to assess the “hide the decline” trick.
Steven Mosher is correct about Fred Singer. Fred is either not acquainted with the facts or is choosing to misrepresent them. The BBC are targetting Fred. He is regularly being asked to appear on GW ‘investigations’. The only reason for this is that it’s easy to show that he is mistaken and/or confused. Fred needs to bow out gracefully or “folks” will start to make
up their minds about the robustness of the sceptic argument – and it might not be in the way you hoped.
FWIW, I’ve found that comparing sites NOT in the GHCN with sites that are shows one trend (often flat or cooling) for the “remote” site and another (typically warming) in the GHCN sites. I think there is an opportunity to do this kind of “A/B” compare for the present surviving GHCN sites and show how they are biased. There is an on-line site that does a nice simple job of presenting trend charts for comparision:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/fun-data-temperature-site/
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/comparison-temperatures/
Personally, I dont care if they are pro CO2/AGW, Sceptics, luke warmers or Luke Skywalker.
If they are prepared to produce documented evidence, rationales , hypotheses and conclusions, make it all available for reproduction to all comers, what more can we ask for ?
EO
John Finn,
It’s amusing watching how apologists for the straightforward statement “Hide the decline” try to make it mean “Let’s not hide the decline.”
Who are you trying to fool?☺
sharper00,
As I have said before if tree rings were good prior to the decline then why were they no good after? If they were no good after the decline then why have any confidence in the results prior to the decline?
Hi Lucy!
Apropos hiding post 1960 temps: Here see how IPCC in their report shows old vs. new temperature graphs.
For some reason they have only chosen old series that ended around 1960 at the latest… They “forgot” a row of graphs showing a decline post 1960:
http://hidethedecline.eu/media/PERPLEX/fig2.jpg
In the IPCC graphics its mostly NH temperature data based graphs they show, as do I.
Taken from:
http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/the-perplexing-temperature-data-published-1974-84-and-recent-temperature-data-180.php
K.R. Frank
Lucy, addition:
Some important IPCC-used Tree temperature proxies are often NH – land too, so the idea that the falling tree praphs should be faulty is perhaps not that well supported by original pre 1984 temperature data graphs.
K.R. Frank
It is irrelevant whether temperatures actually declined after 1960, unless Phil Jones was referring to such a decline with his words “Mike’s Nature trick to hide the decline.” Unless Jones was doing so, Fred Singer is wrong. I think it’s obvious that Jones was not doing so, because: the trick in question is the substitution of the instrumented record for the proxies; the decline shown by the proxies is what the trick hides; surely, Jones believes that thermometers are a more reliable indication of actual temperatures than proxies are; it doesn’t matter whether the instrumented record is wrong, because that’s not what the trick hides.
Smoking Frog,
If we could trust the instrumental temperature record, there would be no need for this project. But we can’t….
Indeed, with this line:
> they tried to “hide the decline” in temperatures
Fred Singer basically skewers all criticism of, eg. the BBC Horizon program for attempting to address this misconception.
You can argue that all “real skeptics” understand it was all about proxy divergence all you like – the fact is that this understanding is restricted to a niche audience, while the “temperature” misconception was published far and wide.
Do you honestly think that the fallout from the CRU emails would have been anything like as severe had this particular untruth not been repeated ad nauseum through the popular media?
And now we see this from Dr Singer. If one the most prominent “skeptical” experts either does not understand this trivially simple point, then clearly something is very wrong.
By rights, Singer should be corrected with as much venom and vehemence as has been directed at those that have tried to refute this particular talking point in the past.
If hiding in plain sight is hiding, well that is a good trick indeed.
The use of thermometer data after 1960 was fully explained in the first paper that was published with it. All subsequent papers footnote the “trick” — so nothing at all was ever hidden.
I think that Richard Muller (in the youtube video above) was quite remiss in failing to mention this.
But let us suppose that tree-ring data is not a very good proxy for past temperatures.
There are plenty of other paleo-temperature proxies being used that are derived from sediment cores from around the world, and they pretty much agree with the tree ring data.
For example, there is the recent paper by Spielhagen et al., Science 28 (January 2011), “Enhanced Modern Heat Transfer to the Arctic by Warm Atlantic Water”: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/331/6016/450.short
The whole tree-ring thing is a continual beating of a dead horse.
David A. Evans says:
February 19, 2011 at 12:34 pm
sharper00 says:
February 19, 2011 at 12:00 pm
…..I’m not going to argue temps though as whatever they do, it’s irrelevant. Temps ain’t energy, end of argument.
DaveE.
It seems it is impossible to make people understand – after all they are Physicists . /sarc
It is perhaps unfortunate that it was decided to have physicists run this project and not metrologists (yes people with expertise in measurement). A metrologist would have asked what was to be measured. Answer ‘energy’.
A metrologist would then have told the physicists that measurements of atmospheric temperature are a very poor guide to atmospheric energy content.
The metrologist would then have pointed to a site like http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/extreme/gfs/current/pwat_max_swath.png
(which is in the reference section of WUWT) and asked the physicists if they noticed any difference in the amount of water in the atmosphere at the equator and near the poles. The metrologist could then have given the physicists a much needed lecture on enthalpy of volumes of air with varying amounts of water vapor and therefore the total unreliability of comparing air temperatures at sites near the pole with sites near the equator and the folly of averaging these values. More detailed issues like not even using averages for diurnal variables like this would probably be too complex for the physicists to follow.
/sarc? off
If it is the energy being retained in the Earth that is of concern then measure ocean heat content as it happens heat content and temperature are closely equivalent in water and the oceans cover 2/3 of the globe. Whereas atmospheric temperature gives almost no guide to heat content unless you know the water content of the volume of air being measured and work out its enthalpy and then convert to energy content.
Instead we get global averages of averages of the wrong metric.
Nevertheless, if this is exercise is going to be done using temperature at least follow an auditable Quality Management System ideally to ISO-9000. For each site document the details of the site the observation system, and its history, the raw readings and why particular observation times were chosen and the method used to collate the data. Document any variance or adjustment made, how it was made, why it was made, and on whose authority it was made. Provide documented source code for all collation algorithms to allow others to replicate the production of the final outputs. In other words complete transparency.
I have a feeling that this quality approach will not be followed as this is a university science exercise not an engineering exercise. It will be a huge disappointment if this is the case as literally inestimable amounts of money and even people’s lives could hinge on the output.
“There are plenty of other paleo-temperature proxies being used that are derived from sediment cores from around the world, and they pretty much agree with the tree ring data.”
No there are not, the only way to produce a hockey stick it to use tree rings or the Tiljander sediments. Not even the team defends the HS anymore. This thread is about Dr. Singer’s statement. He’s wrong it’s that simple, and us skeptics need to stop defending his statements as accurate.
I’m not a scientist but do wonder why there is little discussion of whether a single number average of temperatures has any real meaning.
I believe that cold dry air needs much less energy to warm it up than warm “wet” air, so averaging temps from different places is not going to mean much re energy gain/ loss/ distribution, surely?
Also, a single number blurs whether it is day time or night time or both that are changing (if they are), and seasonal effects.
Seems to me there are huge leaps of faith needed to go from single figure averages via simplified radiative physics ideas to it all being CO2.
I wish BEST well, but I’m not sure whether the results will help, unless some of the above is addressed.
Please tell me if I’m wrong. (I’ve learned quite a lot from WUWT comments and posts, useful in explaining that matters aren’t “settled”, so thanks Anthony and others)
Orson says:
February 20, 2011 at 2:22 am
To Gregg2213 and Latititude-
The virtue of not having skeptics doing this Temp data set, the BEST team, is to gain the respect of the Team’s allies and enablers, and perhaps any Team members with scientific integrity and standards remaining.
================
It seems to me that the real problem is that the Team’s allies and enablers have a vested interest in creating the alarmist nonsense that we’ve all come to know and “love.” I’m not sure it’s possible to gain their respect with a product that does not support that alarm. I think a good start would be to publicly throw Al Gore & Co under the bus, which would establish their positions on the “catastrophe,” but that’s just me.
Also, I am having difficulty imagining a product that the RC side and the WUWT side can both agree is “good stuff.” Again, that’s just my lack of imagination.
Your remark about openness is a good one. If BEST can be 100% open and if their work is bullet-proof enough that the skeptical side (eg: the Singers, Lindzens, McIntyres, & Co) can respect it, then yeah, it’s a BIG step forward. It can be a win-win, as you say, but they’ll have to both set some pretty high standards, and meet them, and carry some pretty thick skins. (Dr. Curry seems to have grown heavy armor-plate, so that’s good. 😉 )
@Doug
Actually, Doug, there are many studies. This link will have some you may not trust but others for which there is no reason to doubt (but does not include the study I linked to above):
http://www.skepticalscience.com/broken-hockey-stick.htm
Dr. Singer cannot be unaware of these studies. Dr. Muller may be unaware of them, which could be a lapse on his part since he speaks so emphatically on the matter.
Not meaning to bombard this thread with defenses of the hockey stick (which to me actually looks more like a bottle rocket these days), but this graph is self-explanatory and comes from South American data:
JGR: “The last decades of the past millennium are characterized again by warm temperatures that seem to be unprecedented in the context of the last 1,600 years.”
[figure at http://http://climateprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Hockey-SA-small1.gif%5D
“Reconstructed tropical South American temperature anomalies (normalized to the 1961–1990 AD average) for the last ∼1600 years (red curve, smoothed with a 39‐year Gaussian filter). The shaded region envelops the ±2s uncertainty as derived from the validation period. Poor core quality precluded any chemical analysis for the time interval between 1580 and 1640 AD.”