Finally, a scientist gets it, speaks out about it, and a reporter in a major media outlet publishes the words that say in even stronger terms what I said last Thursday about Dr. Richard Muller’s testimony before Congress.
From the Los Angeles Times, the last place I’d expect to see this:
Thorne said scientists who contributed to the three main studies — by NOAA, NASA and Britain’s Met Office — welcome new peer-reviewed research. But he said the Berkeley team had been “seriously compromised” by publicizing its work before publishing any vetted papers.
– Peter Thorne, National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.
Here’s the full article at the LA Times
Even Trenberth isn’t too sure about it:
Kevin Trenberth, who heads the Climate Analysis Section of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a university consortium, said he was “highly skeptical of the hype and claims” surrounding the Berkeley effort. “The team has some good people,” he said, “but not the expertise required in certain areas, and purely statistical approaches are naive.”
Dr. Roger Pielke Senior has this to say about the article:
There is an informative article in the Los Angeles Times by Margot Roosevelt titled
Critics’ review unexpectedly supports scientific consensus on global warming.
While the title of the article does not indicate it [headlines are usually not chosen by the reporter], the article itself is quite interesting.
Severl issues with the preliminary presentation of results by Richard Muller are brought out, even by Richard, but also by others in climate science. These include the following excerpts from the article.
“Thorne said scientists who contributed to the three main studies — by NOAA, NASA and Britain’s Met Office — welcome new peer-reviewed research. But he said the Berkeley team had been “seriously compromised” by publicizing its work before publishing any vetted papers.”
Kevin Trenberth, who heads the Climate Analysis Section of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a university consortium, said he was “highly skeptical of the hype and claims” surrounding the Berkeley effort. “The team has some good people,” he said, “but not the expertise required in certain areas, and purely statistical approaches are naive.”
Even Richard Muller was quoted as
“Although in his testimony Muller praised the “integrity” of previous studies, he said estimates of human-caused warming need to be “improved.” And despite his preliminary praise for earlier studies, he said further data-crunching “could bring our current agreement into disagreement.”
The one issue with the article, however, is that it ends with erroneous information on other climate metrics by Peter Thorne [see my experiences [documented on my weblog] with Peter Thorne to get an idea of his biases). Peter Thorne was quoted as saying
Other scientists noted that temperature is only one factor in climate change. “Even if the thermometer had never been invented, the evidence is there from deep ocean changes, from receding glaciers, from rising sea levels and receding sea ice and spring snow cover,” Thorne said.
“All the physical indicators are consistent with a warming world. There is no doubt the trend of temperature is upwards since the early 20th century. And that trend is accelerating.”
I will use just one example from his list of climate metrics to show that Peter Thorne is misleading the reporter, I have reproduced below the current plots of lower tropospheric temperature anomalies. The trend of temperatures using that climate metric is NOT accelerating, and, indeed, has not even been positive for over 12 years!
From http://www.ssmi.com/msu/msu_data_description.html.
Peter Thorne now works with Tom Karl and Tom Peterson at NCDC so we can expect more such disinformation on climate metrics from him in coming weeks and months. The rest of the article by Margot Roosevelt is quite informative.
Circa 1000 BC – The crops have failed! The only possible cause is that the gods are angry at us! The only real question is what should we do? (their answer was to sacrafice another virgin).
Well if this is the quote of the week, this next one is the quote of the 1,000 y by Herr Doktor Schellnhuber:
“The German Advisory Council on Global Change, which I chair, will soon unveil a master plan for a transformation of society. Precisely because of Fukushima, we believe that a new basis of our coexistence is needed.”
Does this remind anything to anyone?
http://notrickszone.com/2011/03/29/another-german-will-soon-unveil-a-master-plan-for-a-transformation-of-society/
http://motls.blogspot.com/2011/03/herr-schellnhuber-has-master-plan.html
Here are the right links (pun intended).
“Mike” was trying, as most true believers do when confronted with complex issues, to simplify the issue to inanity and hijack the conversation.
The issue is not if the planet has warmed.
The issue is not even if CO2 has caused the warming.
The issue is: was Muller practicing good science in making a massive claim basedon a 2% sample?
The answer is, from many qualified observers and workers, “no”.
As to our friend’s concerns:
– the planet has warmed a bit. So what?
-CO2 is a forcing like many others. So what?
Are people dying or thriving?
Is the Earth’s biomass increasing or decreasing?
So to answer “Mike’s” question, the answer would be for a rational person: Nothing much.
Now Krugman has weighed in. Now that Olby is gone, does being named by Krugman qualify in the same league as “worst person in the world” ?
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/04/opinion/04krugman.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
Krugman must have received his daily orders from Climate Progress.
This project seemed so hopeful initially, but now it looks like it is going to unravel before it really takes off.
One problem is that the source data just doesn’t cut it. Station data is nice, but covers such a limited portion of the Earth that no matter how much it gets re-evaluated or how it is done the results are still not useful for global data.
http://theinconvenientskeptic.com/2011/03/why-satellites-are-better-at-measuring-global-temperature/
Some breakdowns of the warming would be more useful. What percent of stations are showing warming. What percentage are neutral and what percentage are cooling. Global temperatures from a method that has 80% of the data coming from 20% of the planet is absurd. Far too much of the Earth is not properly measured for the station data to truly represent the Earth’s dynamic temperature properly.
Kojiro Vance, that’s why the NYT can put their stuff behind a paywall anytime they wish…
I’d change that ending to “… a dioxide devil.”
Mike… I don’t know what to say… how about, come back when you make more sense?
I love how this whole squall has come up; if I were Dr. Muller I’d surely not be spending much time talking to the media or Congress anymore. It was definitely a mistake to give any sort of conclusion from what he has seen so far, especially since the major presumed biases haven’t even been looked at yet. It’s right there in his written statement to the House, the list of goodies that the group still has to tackle:
1) Urban Heat Island effects;
2) Time of observation bias;
3) Station moves;
4) Change of instrumentation.
Basically, shall we conclude for now that the consensus data matches raw station data?
I think a good rewind is in order, while the statisticians get back to their number crunching.
In the meantime, we’re still waiting for the white smoke…. Or was it the fat lady singing?
Glaciers have been receding since the middle of the 19th century.
Sea level rise has been on the rise for thousands of years with no sign of acceleration detected.
Spring snow cover receding?
“Declining Snow Cover – Above Normal Every Day This Year”
http://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/screenhunter_87-apr-03-08-40.gif
Mike says:
April 4, 2011 at 7:19 am
The planet is warming. The only plausible cause is the rise of net GHG emissions from human activities. The only real question is what should we do?
The “planet”? In case you don’t get it, Mike, I’m criticizing your totally non-specific, inexact terminology, and it’s not just nitpicking. For example, do people understand “planet” to include the surrounding “atmosphere”? Or do they take it as meaning only the atmosphere and oceans? What exactly are you talking about? It’s not up to anyone else to clarify your terms.
Therefore, as such, none of your statements make any sense yet, which means they can be neither correct nor incorrect.
But that’s just what the CO2=CAGW, “Climate Change”, “Anthropogenic Climate Disruption”, “Post Normal” Climate Science Propaganda Op. wants from you, Mike: a non-sensical, purely emotional response to its demonizing and disasterizing psy-op, which then leads you to succumb to and support the would-be Totalitarians’ looting and controlling of as much of the World’s people and their “wealth” as possible – as much of the “planet” as possible.
No, sorry warmistas, the planet is NOT warming. I suppose it depends on what the definition of “is” is, but if you assume “is” means the present, or at least the immediate past, such as the last 15 years for instance, then the planet isn’t warming.
Not warming at all. Seems to be cooling, as a matter of fact. Which is a major bummer because warmer is better.
And we also seem to be drowning in a miasma of cognitive dissonance, with university professors whose integrity is zero, whose promises cannot be trusted as far as one can spit, whose prance and preen on stage while emanating charm and jocularity, but who in fact are liars and frauds of the first order.
Yes, we have many things to be concerned about these days, but glooobal waaarming isn’t one of them. The utter collapse of institutional science and its failure to pursue truth; the tentacles of corrupt kleptocracy dismembering economies; and the wholesale abuse of human rights, liberties, and justice are a few of our more important worries. We should concentrate on those.
I occasionally run into people like Mike in my daily travels, when and if the water-cooler discussion turns to AGW. My favorite question to them illustrates two things for them and for the intelligent ones, actually gets them thinking about their position. “Do you still believe that the proxy data used by Michael Mann in developing his Hockey-stick graph is scientifically valid?” Virtually 100% of the lay-people I talk with have no idea what I am talking about. So as I said, this simple question illustrates 2 things: 1) that they themselves are ignorant of the facts and lack any supporting information for their position, and 2) that the skeptic they are talking to is infinitely better informed!
Finally, when I tell them exactly how Michael Mann determined historic temperature data and how others have documented that the tree rings don’t corroborate known temperature data, the typical response is “Oh my God! I didn’t know that”. Some have even said “I feel so stupid”. At least these people exhibit an open mind.
That there appears to be a trend is something, I think most people would agree with. Even allowing for for fudged temperature data, there are enough other indicators to confirm a warming trend since the little ice age.
The real questions are to do with the adjustments of data. Why have there been adjustments downwards of mid twentieth century temperatures? Is the treatment of UHI correct? What would the temperature records show if all the dropped stations were reinstated? What is the correct result of the Chinese UHI study conducted by Jones and Wang? What are the margins of error and statistical significance?
Which among these questions, if any, will be studied, remains to be seen.
This is way OT, but it was posted in Tips and Notes 2 days ago and I believe it deserves much wider circulation. A public health scientist at UCLA has been fired after challenging CARB’s deisel particulate regulations by pointing out that CARB’s lead author on the subject had a phony PhD purchased from an online diploma mill and that persons were being retained in CARB positions far beyond legal limits of required turnover, including a senior member of his own department who was at CARB for 28 years. His final appeal hearing is today
Tom Rude; thanks for those links. Schellnhuber sounds really REALLY spooky. Especially since he’s the chief climate advisor in Germany.
“…purely statistical approaches are naive.”
What is needed is something more visual… I know… something hockey-stick shaped. Nothing naive about that.
In fairness though – what other approach is there but a statistical one?
@Crispin, Cassandra:
Well put.
Kojiro Vance – Thanks for the NYT link . It’s amusing that an economist who has pontificated ad nauseum on the subject of climate change considers economists unfit to comment on climate change . Krugman is a hack .
@Dave Wendt,
thanks for posting that, its absolutely disgraceful but unfortunately typical of enviromenalist tactics.
The first comment is a perfect example of everything that is wrong with climate science. I can take incomplete models. I can take bad measurements. If you understand the quality of your data, you can adjust or ignore it. However, the problem with climate science is the overuse of argument-to-ignorance and proof-by-exhaustion.
You cannot say “we don’t know of anything else that could have this effect”, or “nothing else exists that could have this effect” in a system like climate. CO2-based warming is of the same magnitude (or less) as other variables, and we do not know all of the data to a precision that would allow us to properly calculate this, even if we know all the data!
I remember one story by my reactor’s professor. Dr. Lucifer (as we called him, his tests were that bad) was working on a fluidized bed reactor. Sometimes it got 90% conversion, and other times, it got 95%. He couldn’t figure out what it was until weeks into the project, an old operator told him that it was how sticky the catalyst was. The stickiness varied from batch to batch, and if it was too sticky, the reactor didn’t like it. Turns out that old man was right. Now, you will never find stickiness of a catalyst on any data sheet, but checking for stickiness turned a struggling plant into a big moneymaker. The lesson here is that in a complex system, you NEVER know everything, and you definitely should never assume that you aren’t missing something of importance.
Again, doctorate-holding “scientists” are failing to understand principles that engineers have drilled into them as undergrads.
Kojiro Vance says:
April 4, 2011 at 9:30 am
Now Krugman has weighed in. Now that Olby is gone, does being named by Krugman qualify in the same league as “worst person in the world” ?
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/04/opinion/04krugman.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
Krugman’s “worst person in the world” equivalent:
Just a few weeks ago Anthony Watts, who runs a prominent climate denialist Web site….….also, “climate deniers”.
Apart from their use in constituting a strictly emotive appeal to the persistently infantile, Krugman’s self-gratifying, name calling terms make no sense in the real world – a fact itself which obviously doesn’t bother Krugman in the least. But it didn’t bother him at all, either, that in immediately conjuring up a purely non-evidence based, self-gratifying mechanism to explain Jarred Lochner’s Tuscon, Arizona, attack, he appeared to be as delusionally psychotic as Lochner was quickly proven to be, again on the basis of actual evidence.
So it’s no surprise that Krugman also appears to fall prey to the CO2=CAGW Climate Science Propaganda Operation, or at least wants to promote it.
Therefore, if in response to him calling us “climate deniers” we in turn conclude that Krugman is a “climate believer” or even a “Climate Scientist”, there’s almost no doubt that he would be extremely flattered.
Mike’s contribution to the debate may be seen in a different light if he had sensibly added ‘Aged 5 and 3/4’ after his name.
That temperature trend plot at the bottom shows an interesting nature.
It is one that stock traders get well trained to spot (as it costs you a lot of money if you do not spot it…). The trend line is “up”, but the actual rise is more of a ‘step function near the middle’. Look at the early section, and you see the trend line going upward across a mostly flat set of data (with ripple). About at the word “trend” a “regime change” happens and the data shift up. Then stays substantially flat again to the end point.
I note this often in work by folks trained in sciences. They plot a trend line, but via an average over all of the data. Stock traders use more of a “connect the tops” and “connect the bottoms” method. This spots inflections MUCH better…
So draw a line connecting the peaks from the start to just about the word Trend.
Basically flat.
Do the same thing with the bottoms. Still flat.
You then get a ‘regime change’ with an ‘overshoot’. Classical in stock movements. Some news hits or some major economic climate shift happens. Prices shoot up but overshoot into a “blow off top”, that peak. Notice that after that peak, a ‘connect the tops’ and ‘connect the bottoms’ gives a set of two flat trend lines… ( it would help to do this as a least squares fit of the inflection points on each ripple… but for now, just imagine a line ‘fit’ to those excursion limits.)
So what is the trend? That fit to the total of all data? Or those two flat segments with an offset? For most markets, you don’t want to buy that “blow of top” and you also don’t want to buy that ‘no longer extant trend’ as you will not make any money. You want to spot a ‘regime change’ and hop on it, but get off at the first reversal…
My point? In many ways The Worst Possible method of understanding what is going on in data subject to ‘regime changes’ is to fit a trend line to all the data… and climate is very much subject to ‘regime changes’ such as the PDO shift; yet ‘climate science’ with great regularity fits a Least Squares Trend Line and calls it truth…
E.M.Smith says:
April 4, 2011 at 12:25 pm
and climate is very much subject to ‘regime changes’ such as the PDO shift; yet ‘climate science’ with great regularity fits a Least Squares Trend Line and calls it truth…
…and if that were the worst of the sins then it would not be that bad would it?