RELATED ARTICLES, highly suggested:
Clarification on BEST submitted to the House
Pielke Sr. on the Muller testimony
Independent company station siting analysis demonstrates the problem
Quote of the Week – other scientists weigh in
Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Well, I had hoped for the best from BEST, the new Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project looking at the global temperature record. I was disheartened, however, by the Congressional testimony of Dr. Richard Muller of BEST.
Photo Source He said (emphasis mine):
Global Warming
Prior groups at NOAA, NASA, and in the UK (HadCRU) estimate about a 1.2 degree C land temperature rise from the early 1900s to the present. This 1.2 degree rise is what we call global warming. Their work is excellent, and the Berkeley Earth project strives to build on it.
Human caused global warming is somewhat smaller. According to the most recent IPCC report (2007), the human component became apparent only after 1957, and it
amounts to “most” of the 0.7 degree rise since then. Let’s assume the human-caused warming is 0.6 degrees.
The magnitude of this temperature rise is a key scientific and public policy concern. A 0.2 degree uncertainty puts the human component between 0.4 and 0.8 degrees – a factor of two uncertainty. Policy depends on this number. It needs to be improved.
Why do I think his testimony doesn’t help in the slightest? Well, to start with, I’ve never heard anyone make the claim that the land surface air temperature (excluding oceans) of the earth has warmed 1.2°C since 1900.
He cites three land temperature datasets, NOAA , NASA (GISTEMP), and HadCRU (he presumably means CRUTEM, not HadCRU).
Here’s the problem. The actual land surface air temperature warming since 1900 according to the existing datasets is:
NASA GISTEMP: 0.72°C
NOAA NCDC: 0.86°C
CRUTEM: 0.92°C
So Dr. Muller, in his first and most public appearance on the subject, has made some of the more unusual claims about the existing temperature datasets I’ve heard to date.
1. Since the largest temperature rise in the three datasets is 30% greater than the smallest rise, their work is not “excellent” in any sense of the word. Nor should the BEST team “strive to build on it.” Instead, they should strive to understand why the three vary so widely. What decisions make the difference? Which decisions make little difference?
2. Not one of the three datasets shows a temperature rise anywhere near the 1.2°C rise Muller is claiming since 1900. The largest one shows only about 3/4 of his claimed rise.
3. He claims a “0.2 degree uncertainty”. But the difference between the largest and smallest calculated warming from the three datasets is 0.2°C, so the uncertainty has to be a lot more than that …
4. He says that the land warming since 1957 is 0.7°C. The records beg to differ. Here’s the land warming since 1957:
NASA GISTEMP: 0.83°C
NOAA NCDC: 1.10°C
CRUTEM: 0.93°C
Note that none of them are anywhere near 0.7°C. Note also the huge difference in the trends in these “excellent” datasets, a difference of half a degree per century.
5. He fails to distinguish CRUTEM (the land-only temperature record produced by the Climategate folks) from HadCRU (a land-ocean record produced jointly by the Hadley folks and the Climategate folks). A minor point to be sure, but one indicating his unfamiliarity with the underlying datasets he is discussing.
It can’t be a Celsius versus Fahrenheit error, because it goes both ways. He claims a larger rise 1900-present than the datasets show, and a smaller rise 1958-present than the datasets.
I must confess, I’m mystified by all of this. With his testimony, Dr. Muller has totally destroyed any credibility he might have had with me. He might be able to rebuild it by explaining his strange numbers. But to give that kind of erroneous testimony, not in a random paper he might written quickly, but to Congress itself, marks him to me as a man driven by a very serious agenda, a man who doesn’t check his work and who pays insufficient attention to facts in testimony. I had hoped we wouldn’t have another temperature record hag-ridden by people with an axe to grind … foolish me.
Perhaps someone who knows Dr. Muller could ask him to explain his cheerleading before Congress. I call it cheerleading because it certainly wasn’t scientific testimony of any kind I’m familiar with. I hear Dr. Muller is a good guy, and very popular with the students, but still … color me very disappointed.
w.
PS – Muller also said:
Let me now address the problem of
Poor Temperature Station Quality
Many temperature stations in the U.S. are located near buildings, in parking lots, or close to heat sources. Anthony Watts and his team has shown that most of the current stations in the US Historical Climatology Network would be ranked “poor” by NOAA’s own standards, with error uncertainties up to 5 degrees C.
Did such poor station quality exaggerate the estimates of global warming? We’ve studied this issue, and our preliminary answer is no.
The Berkeley Earth analysis shows that over the past 50 years the poor stations in the U.S. network do not show greater warming than do the good stations.
Thus, although poor station quality might affect absolute temperature, it does not appear to affect trends, and for global warming estimates, the trend is what is important.
Dr. Muller, I’m going to call foul on this one. For you to announce your pre-publication results on this issue is way, way out of line. You get to have your claim entered into the Congressional Record and you don’t even have to produce a single citation or publish a paper or show a scrap of data or code? That is scientific back-stabbing via Congressional testimony, and on my planet it is absolutely unacceptable.
That is taking unfair advantage of your fifteen minutes of fame. Show your work and numbers like anyone else and we’ll evaluate them. Then you may be able to crow, or not, before Congress.
But to stand up before Congress as an expert witness and refer solely to your own unpublished, uncited, and un-verifiable claims? Sorry, but if you want to make that most public scientific claim, that bad siting doesn’t affect temperature trends, you have to show your work just like anyone else. If you want to make that claim before Congress, then PUBLISH YOUR DATA AND CODE like the rest of us mortals. Put your results where your mouth is, or if not, leave it out of your Congressional testimony. Why is that not obvious?
Anthony’s unpublished and unverifiable claims are as strong as your similar claims. That is to say, neither have any strength or validity at all at this point … so how would you feel if Anthony trotted out his unverifiable claims before Congress to show that Dr. Richard Muller was wrong, and didn’t show his work?
Like I said … color me very disappointed, both scientifically and personally. Dr. Muller, I invite you to explain your Congressional testimony, because I certainly don’t understand it. I am totally confident that Anthony will be happy to publish your reply.
I also urge you to either a) publish the data and code that you think shows no difference in trends between good and poor stations, or b) publicly retract your premature and unverifiable claims. You don’t get to do one without the other, that’s not scientific in any sense of the word.
PPS – Does any of this mean that the BEST analysis is wrong or their numbers or data are wrong or that the BEST folks are fudging the results? ABSOLUTELY NOT. I am disappointed in Dr. Muller’s claims and his actions. The math and the data analysis is an entirely different question. Theirs may be flawless, we simply don’t know yet (nor would I expect to, it’s early days). I look forward to their results and their data and code, this kind of initiative is long overdue.
I want to be very clear than the validity of their actual methods depends only on the validity of their actual methods. The problem is, we don’t even know exactly what those methods are yet. We have rough descriptions, but not even any pseudocode, much less code. Which in part is why I find Dr. Muller’s testimony unsettling …
RELATED: See the rebuttal letter to congress:
Clarification on BEST submitted to the House
Pielke Sr. on the Muller testimony
=========================================================
UPDATE: in apparent response to Willis Eschenbach, BEST has added this below to their FAQs page. For fairness, I reproduce it here. – Anthony
NEW (4/1) – It appears that in Dr. Muller’s testimony he shows a temperature rise greater rise than others had previously published. Is this so? Can you explain?
The Berkeley Earth plot is for the land data only, since we have not yet begun analysis of ocean temperatures. Because we only analyze land, that was the fair comparison to make. The ocean temperature rise is less, and when included in, it reduces the value of the total temperature rise.
We started with the land data for several reasons:
- It is the data that is affected most by the most contentious issues: data selection bias, urban heat island, and station integrity issues. These are big concerns and we wanted to address them.
- The temperature rise on land is greater than on the oceans, mostly because the ocean distribute the heat over the mixed layer and thereby reduces the temperature rise. Land keeps the heat mostly on the surface. So the land temperature is actually more sensitive to greenhouse gases than is the world temperature.
- The land issue, with 1.6 billion measurements, was a huge one to tackle. It made sense to divide the effort into two stages.
The land only data for the other three groups are available on their websites, and agree with the plot provided in Dr. Richard Muller’s testimony.
Scholarly standards are in the tank, it seems.
pg, STRONGLY suggest you look up (or even Google) sight, site, and cite.
:pPpP
As for Dr. M., look at that mug? Does that look to you like the face of a man with spine, character, and high standards of personal integrity? Or the wishy-washy happy-face of a go-along-to-get-along libclone?
Just sayin’.
Thanks Willis, your usual clearly-expressed analysis.
I had an uneasy feeling about BEST from the get-go as even the acronym they chose for the enterprise has a smidgen of triumphalism about it. Muller’s ‘evidence’ is merely an opinion and pretty much on a par with what he accused the Hockey Team of; it is not science without supporting data and evidence of the proper aplication of scientific method. I feel very strongly that Anthony and his team of volunteers have been both conned and upstaged. Climate Science seems to be a very nasty sandpit.
I bet Dr Muller would be rather agrieved if his pay award recommendations varied by up to 30%!!!!! Especially if he got awarded the lowest! Tends to sharpen the mind in my view!
On the face of it Muller appears either fraudulent or incompetent. To be generous, let’s say the latter.
Josh should do a parody of Muller testifying before congress and tobacco company executives testifying before congress.
“There is
noconclusive evidence thatcigarette smokingfossil fuel use is linked withcancerglobal warming.”Or something like that…
Steven Mosher (31 March, 6.04pm):
“People should understand that UHI can’t possibly be a huge deal. .15C worst case. McKittrick would argue .3C, jones would say .05c. but the world is still warming, and C02 is responsible for a fair portion of that.”
I beg to differ.
People should understand that:
1. Average earth’s surface temperatures were rising over the 25 years or so period to 1998, since then pretty well flat.
2. Neither Steven Mosher nor anybody else knows what portion of the rise over that period is attributable to CO2.
The ironic part of this that I tend to agree with Muller except that he confused degress C with degrees F. The earth probably is, at this moment, 1.2F warmer than it was in 1880 and 0.7F of that probably is due to anthropogenic GHG emissions. I’m not certain but for the sake of argument I’m willing to concede the point. Where we likely part company is on the practical implications. First of all the earth is in an ice age and the current interglacial period is part of a cycle of glacial dominance and retreat. Furthermore the compartively warm interglacial is, according to climatology, overdue for an abrupt end. Carbon dioxide is plant food not a pollutant and levels have been far higher in the past. The current level is dangerously low compared to most of earth’s history bordering on the point where there isn’t enough for green plants to thrive. In addition green plants use less water per unit of growth as CO2 level rises and where fresh water for agriculture and sanitation is a dwindling resource more alarming than so-called peak oil. Agriculture has probably already passed the point of peak water! Thus I may only conclude that anthropogenic CO2 emission is of great benefit for its warming effect which gives us longer growing seasons, accelerated plant growth, more efficient fresh water utilization, and possibly delaying the imminent end of the Holocene interglacial period. What we should be doing in response to global warming and anthropogenic CO2 emission is figuring out how to get more of it not less of it and how to keep that trend going beyond the point where the supply of fossil fuels prohibits it.
So there.
So where does he get 1.2C from? Is he just making stuff up – as climatologists do?
Verity Jones says:
March 31, 2011 at 1:50 pm
“We all had high hopes for a thorough and transparent investigation from the BEST group”
“We all” certainly did not. In fact I’d venture to say a majority of WUWT commenters were BEST cynics from the word go. There was not a doubt in mind that BEST would produce results that aligned with the CAGW narrative in every way that mattered. The results were predetermined. The exercise was all about finding a more credible means of producing them. So now we know the results but have not yet been made privy to the new means of producing them. I seriously doubt there’s any credibility improvment – the king is dead, long live the king.
I am reminded of Schofield’s Sir Thomas More in ‘A Man For All Seasons’, when Richard Rich changes his testimony against him. More calls Rich over and asks him to explain the new chain of office around his neck. Rich explains it is for Secretary of State for Wales.
More’s response could have easily applied to Muller: “Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world… but for Wales?”
Willis –
Great post per usual. And – AMAZING commentary from Mosh, I’m stunned.
Testimony in front of Congress is a big, damned deal, reference Wegman & MBH98, MBH99 and ensuing kerfuffle. It DOES matter. We all know how this works, data and code nothwithstanding. Get real.
And given the ‘moral highroad’ apparently staked out by BEST (with Anthony’s imprimatur of credibility) – testimony and use of definitive statements (easily disputed) using incomplete techniques – has just completely TRASHED their credibility. If I were part of that team – I would say to the good Professor Doctor Muller, “with all due respect, dear sir – WTF?”.
I mean – really. The term Loose Cannon comes to mind – if not revealing the inherent bias of Dr Muller or the ease to which he can be distracted by the power of Washington (I’m a rock star now!). I guess its more fun to be an advisor to Vice Presidents, Princes and Congress (?!) than to adhere to ones’ ethics?
Follow the money. Good job, batheswithwhales. Good handle too by the way.
So man goes to stand infront of congress to testify about, one would assume, facts.
The man is supposed to be an expert on taking, collecting and manipulating data on temperatures, from almost forty thousand stations no less.
The man reports the facts from preliminary findings? The same preliminary findings that only constitute a couple of percentage of randomly chosen stations that has yet to go through even basic quality control, both for the stations themselves as well as the station data. Neither has any correction algorithms been applied to adjust for possible UHI.
Sure the medication work and is utterly safe, no worries, our preliminary findings say so. 0_O
I would be interested to hear Anthony’s comments about his face to face meeting with Professor Muller.
Presumably the good Prof. was rather more careful with his choice of words when speaking in private to Anthony, than when speaking on oath to Congress in the full glare of world publicity.
But then, perhaps not?
I too am surprised by steven mosher’s comments. I used to respect him highly as an advocate for transparency. Now he’s telling us, “This time doesn’t count.” Why do I have a depressing sense of deja vu? Why does “It doesn’t matter” keep echoing in my head? I don’t understand why Muller would squander his credibility by identifying himself with an outcome before the work is seriously under way. Now it seems steven mosher is headed down the same path of self-contradiction. Sad.
I recant my previous guess as to the origin of the 1.2 C figure.
here is my new guess:
I have prepared a pdf showing
1. Dr. Muller’s graph from Page 4.
2. A graph of HadCRUT3 from woodfortrees.org
3. My attempt to scale and superimpose the 2 graphs with Hadcrut3 now in orange
Here is the link:
http://tinyurl.com/3uw47uz
From Dr Mullers graph, right around 1900 there are huge swings in temperature anomaly, but it appears visually to average around -0.4 C. Hadcrut3 chart is also approximately -0.4.
The problem lies at the 2010 end of the graphs. In Dr. Muller’s graph, his black line obscures everything except NOAA’s red line which almost reaches +1 C anamoly.
This gives the impression the average for all 4 lines is about +0.8 C, giving a total change of 1.2 C from 1900.
As can be seen in the Hadcrut3 graph, and my composite graph, the Hadcrut3 value at 2010 is somewhere around +0.5 , or about +0.9 C. since 1900
I was thinking of getting into a whole can of agw spaghetti graphs about this , but I agree with todays post by Dr. Pielke Sr.; global temperature averages trends do not convey a lot of helpful information.
So one can take a bad data set and get the “right” answer? Guess I was absent that day.
Muller totally confuses me. Does he change his tune depending on who he thinks is listening?
To the Congressional Hearing he says:
“Prior groups at NOAA, NASA, and in the UK (HadCRU) estimate about a 1.2 degree C land temperature rise from the early 1900s to the present. This 1.2 degree rise is what we call global warming. Their work is excellent, and the Berkeley Earth project strives to build on it.”
But in his much watched video on “hide the decline” he is extremely dismissive of NASA and CRU. For example:
“Now here’s part of the problem. The temperature I showed you before – this one – of the three groups I picked the one I trusted the most. Guess which group this was. Yeah, the group that hid the decline. So we’ve Jim Hansen who predicts things ahead of time, what he’s going to find. We have the group here that feels it is legitimate to hide things. This is why I am now leading a study to redo all this in a totally transparent way.”
steven mosher says:
March 31, 2011 at 6:04 pm
“2. The special feature is called the scalpel. This approach add a novel twist that we
discussed a long while back on the airvent. basically, instead of adjusting a station
when the sensor changes or when it moves, you split or cut the time series. And you
create a new station. NO adjustments. the “adjustement” becomes part of the
least squares estimate. very slick.”
Please tell me where my reasoning is mistaken. Whenever you find a spike in temperature in a station record and that spike was caused by a station move, you treat the pre-spike station and the post-spike station as different stations. Then you look for a trend in each set of data and those trends are your evidence for changes in temperature. However, in treating the one station as two, you are reading out of your own data all the evidence for matters such as encroaching UHI, changes that cause a site to become a poor site, station moves, and similar matters. The problem of UHI strikes me at this time as the clearest. UHI encroaches. It grows outward from city centers. As UHI encroaches on a station, it creates a spike that is actually the first step onto a plateau. You want to treat that first step as the first reading for a new station and you want to do so because you believe that only the trend matters. Let’s identify the “old station” as measurements “A through B” and the “new station” as measurements “C through D.” If time proves that the two stations show the same trend, your data will show that nothing changed. But something did change. The measurements “A through D” do not have the same trend as the newly created “old station” and the newly created “new station.” So, this method corrupts the data and systematically so.
Seems like ‘BEST’ means ‘Worst,”
Dave Springer: “The earth probably is, at this moment, 1.2F warmer than it was in 1880 and 0.7F of that probably is due to anthropogenic GHG emissions. ”
IMHO, the earth is no warmer than it was in the 1930s/1940s and any perceived warming was caused by UHI and manipulation of past data.
dixonstalbert: ” Hadcrut3 value at 2010 is somewhere around +0.5 , or about +0.9 C. since 1900″
HADCRUT has 1900 = -0.225 and 2010 = .476 = .701C
OTOH, 1911 = -.582 and 1944 = .121 = .703C
CO2 warming can’t top natural warming, so how do you know there is any 20th century warming caused by CO2.
The HadCrut figures havew been heavily doctored here in WA.
It appears Phil Jones omitted most 1900-1940 temperatures and inserted late 1890’s temps from a different station.
E.G.
Geraldton he ignored the town record which went back to 1880 and inserted Hamelin pool for the 1890’s
http://members.westnet.com.au/rippersc/gerojones1999.jpg
Kalgoorlie He ignored the post office record except for 1941 and filled the grid with late 1890’s from Southern Cross 200km away
http://members.westnet.com.au/rippersc/kaljones1999sg.jpg
Halls Creek (which consists of two stations 12km apart and 63 metres difference in altitude) 1899 was cherry picked from the old record.
http://members.westnet.com.au/rippersc/hcjones1999.jpg
This is a station whose temperature is extrapolated over conservatively 1M sqr kilometres (aprox 15 % of Australia’s land mass).
Note the “adjustments” where not one station has been adjusted downwards but two in some cases and the effect on the 1961-1990 baseline.
Yet a single contiguous record form 1901 was ignored.
http://members.westnet.com.au/rippersc/mbar.jpg
In my humble opinion the only way to get an accurate land temp before the satelite record is to go back to basics and work off the original observer forms.
steven mosher says:
March 31, 2011 at 10:21 pm
Yeah, that’s the real truth about con men, they’re all innocent as the driven show. It’s not their fault that you take their opinion as fact. They’re just putting it out there. If you don’t dig under the surface to find out it’s a scam, way down to the bottom because you can’t see it from the top, then it’s your fault for getting fooled …
Steven, I hope you are kidding. If not, I sure hope you notice how patronizing your post sounds.
According to you, then, there’s no problem with misrepresenting the facts, because it is the responsibility of the person hearing the lie to determine if it is a lie … and if not, well, then as Mosh says “That’s their mistake.” According to you, it’s no problem that Muller gave incorrect information about the warming. After all, I noticed it was bad info, and if the Congressmen got fooled into thinking the globe warmed by 1.2°C, that’s their mistake …
Mosh, why do you think we have laws protecting people from con men? Why do you think we have laws protecting the consumer? As Steven McIntyre has pointed out, if the climate folks tried their tricks in the business world they’d be put in jail … but according to the “Mosher Rule”, it’s not their fault. They just put the misinformation out there, and if you take their expert scientific opinion as fact, well, that’s your mistake, it’s none of their business if you’re that dumb.
The principle is very clear. You can’t just say to the victims “that’s your mistake” in all situations and wash your hands of it. To me, testifying in front of Congress is one of those situations. People will believe that testimony, Mosh, and we have an obligation to see that it is right and not misleading.
Otherwise, under your logic, anyone can and should misrepresent their case to Congress to advance their causes, because if you believe their lies, hey, it’s not their fault. Under the Mosher Rule, it’s your fault for believing them, so they don’t even deserve a slap on the wrist for lying. As the Rule states, “That’s your mistake”, not theirs, so you get the slap on the wrist.
w.
Here’s an example of the problem, Mosh. Did Dr. Muller describe his results regarding Anthony’s work as “preliminary”, or not?
I bet not one person in ten who read Dr. Muller’s testimony can answer the question. I certainly don’t know the answer without going back to look … do you?
That’s the problem. Merely describing results as “preliminary” does nothing, people don’t remember that. So mentioning it is not a “get out of jail free” card as you seem to think. All that is is a fig leaf, like the AGW guy who says “well my report said ‘might’ and ‘could’ and ‘possibly’, surely you didn’t believe that”, and they wash their hands while their press release of impending Thermageddon is circling the world.
w.
PS – No, Dr. Muller did not say his conclusions about Anthony’s work were preliminary in any manner. He did make a general disclaimer, that all his results were preliminary … but that’s part of the mystery to me.
Why is Muller up there at all? He is clueless about the temperature records, he gives incorrect information about the simplest stuff, he presents no results of any type nor any data of any type … why is he up there?
The obvious answer is, somebody wants his “results” trumpeted to the world, despite the fact (and indeed perhaps because of the fact) that they are unsubstantiated and indeed unverifiable, … and you see no problem with that.
Me, I’m surprised you doesn’t see through this, Mosh. You’re a smart guy. Why would you call a guy up to give unverifiable results? Or more to the point, why are you so passionately defending the guy giving unverifiable results? Seems like the only reason for either would be to underhandedly promote your point of view … and here I thought we were talking about science.
There are interesting issues about the ways to eliminate mistakes in individual stations, their doubling etc. as well as the non-uniform density of the stations over the globe.
But when it comes to the question whether some “better fixes” of the surface record may substantially change the HadCRUT3 and other graphs and eliminate the warming – sending it to zero – please count me as a skeptic.
http://motls.blogspot.com/2011/04/best-surface-warming-since-1880-seems.html
It seems unthinkable to me that if the warming were an artifact of mistakes, one would get this precise agreement between HadCRUT3 and randomly selected 2 percent of the datasets in the BEST record. The agreement of the tiny selected subset shows that the errors of the surface-measured global mean temperature are really small.
So the 20th century warming on the lands where stations existed could have been 0.75 plus minus 0.15 degrees Celsius, so the probability that it was zero or negative, assuming a normal distribution, is a 5-sigma effect i.e. around 1 part per million.
I am also irritated by the completely absent transparency etc. but unless Muller is lying, the details of the methods do *not* matter for the key results about the 20th century temperature change.