Guest post by Maurizio Morabito
Quite an effort has been made by many people (including Dr Richard Muller) to portray the BEST pre-pre-pre-papers as some kind of death blow against climate skepticism, as if the whole debate had been a sports match with everybody pigeonholed in two opposite camps: here, the noble scientists finding out the world is warming; there, the ignoble skeptics pretending the world is not warming.
Needless to say, it’s all the usual crass, outdated lie.
How do I know? I know it from the About page at [my] blog. Why? Because that page does not contain just a text by Yours Truly, rather a large quote by Willis Eschenbach. [Who is a major essay contributor here at WUWT.]
It was simply such an appropriate, informed, short and straight argument, I knew it was going to describe pretty much all my future efforts at the blog.
Original publication place & date? The ClimateSceptics yahoo group, Mon Oct 22, 2007, 12:22pm:
I also think that increasing GHGs will warm the earth … but that is not the real question to me. The real question is, how much it will warm the earth. To date, I have not seen any “useful quantative results” regarding that question either …
Once those quantitative results are in, we can proceed to the next question — is a warmer earth better or worse on balance? The globe has warmed quite a bit since the 1600s, and in general this has been of benefit to humans. The sea level rise from the historical warming has not been a significant problem. In addition, a warmer world is predicted to be a wetter world, which overall can only be a good thing. So, will warming be a problem, or a benefit? This is a very open question, and one which will be difficult to answer as some areas will win and some will lose. To date, however, recent warming seems to be occuring outside the tropics, in the night-time, in the winter … this does not seem like a bad thing.
And at some future date when those questions are answered, we can proceed to the final question, viz:
If GHGs are determined to be a major cause of the warming (as opposed to landuse changes, or black carbon on snow, or dark colored aerosols, etc) and if we determine that the warming will be on balance a negative occurrence, is there a cost-effective way to reduce the GHGs, or are we better off putting our money into adaptation?
Until we can answer all of those questions, we should restrict ourselves to actions which will be of value whether or not there is future warming. The key is to realize that all of the problems that Al Gore is so shrill about are here now with us today — floods, heat waves, famine, rising sea levels, droughts, cold spells, and all of the apocalyptic catalog are occuring as I write this. Anything we can do to insulate the world’s population from these climate problems will be of use to everyone no matter what the future climate holds […]
sharper00 says:
October 22, 2011 at 1:06 pm
From Watts’ introduction of the BEST project February 2011
“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.”
That is what Anthony expected. What he got was Bait and Switch. BEST substituted a 60 year period for the 30 year period that Anthony wanted and expected. There is no siting data for the first 30 years of the 60 year period so BEST chose not to address Anthony’s concerns with poor siting.
Adam R. says:
October 22, 2011 at 12:52 pm
“Now that it has been clearly shown (again) it WASN’T a siting problem, a new “skeptic” meme must be created, as we see in this post.”
BEST substituted a 60 year period for the 30 year period that Anthony wanted and expected. There is no siting data for the first 30 years of the 60 year period so BEST chose not to address Anthony’s concerns with poor siting. BEST did this without consulting Anthony and so practiced Bait and Switch. BEST had a moral duty to inform the media about how they mistreated Anthony.
Theo Goodwin [reply to sharperoo] That is what Anthony expected. What he got was Bait and Switch. BEST substituted a 60 year period for the 30 year period that Anthony wanted and expected. There is no siting data for the first 30 years of the 60 year period so BEST chose not to address Anthony’s concerns with poor siting.
Bait-and-switch. Of course
sharper00..uhm…not by a long shot.
Hugh Pepper says:
October 22, 2011 at 11:31 am
“You can easily find the answer to your question regarding how much warming can be expected. Check out Dr. Santer’s lecture on this Blog.”
__________________
Yes, I agree. It is an 1.5 hours, but well done, plus a question from Anthony Watts. Link here.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/21/dr-ben-santer-speaks-on-climate-modeling-and-everything-else/
The BEST acryonym was a warning flag from the beginning. Truly honest folks are reluctant to claim the label: they’re too honest. So you just KNOW if you shop at Honest Al’s you’re going to be robbed …
Brian H – in politics, it is well known that chosen names indicate the opposite of any group’s true intentions. So the Democrats aren’t democratic, and the Republicans aren’t federalists. ThinkProgress doesn’t think and leads to no progress, Fox News is not fair and balanced. MoveOn is a bastion of reactionary conservatism, CFACT cares about today. And so on and so forth. It is a phenomenon that applies more or less everywhere in the world, akin to the Communist “Democratic Republics” of old.
So I am not surprised if PR-obsessed BEST isn’t.
Paradoxically, the best party to vote for should be called “Stupid heartless visionless dishonest losers”. They’d be brilliant, caring, honest, forward-thinking winners, for sure.
The UHE is well established and has consistently been used to exaggerate temperatures. Usually by dropping rural readings that would have showed far less warming than was wanted by the Warmists. Many of us remember the Honolulu weather station head laughingly telling a reporter that record highs were being reported by a single site, the Honolulu International Airport, and that another site half a mile away was far cooler. But the HIC report was the one that would be official.
“That being said, Muller’s behavior is a fine example of the effects of testosterone poisoning.”
Interesting……when women on “The View” shriek and threaten to pull each other’s blonde hair out by its black roots, would you call that “estrogen poisoning”?
IOW, please retire your witless and sexist cliché.
I think “estrogen poisoning” is commonly known as “hysteria“.
I also doubt Anna Lemma is a female member of the human species, otherwise she would have known about the stigma of hysteria.
That reminds me, Durban, perhaps now we know why BEST is rushing out to the media, and planned to long in advance, because they knew the date of Durban. The idea, discredite the skeptics and neutralized and co-opt them before Durban, so that they will not weaken it. yet another peice of data that makes it look more and more like a false flag operation (prentending to be skeptics as a plan to ally with, neutralise, and finally, destroy them).
….nobody nails it quite like Prof. Richard Lindzen IMHO:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/17/richard-lindzen-a-case-against-precipitous-climate-action/
Is the Catholic pope really Catholic after exclaiming that Catholics should start to believe in something else altogether?
I thought the pope was Polish. Gotta upgrade my 286.
1DandyTroll says:
October 22, 2011 at 5:53 pm
Is the Catholic pope really Catholic after exclaiming that Catholics should start to believe in something else altogether?
Could you provide evidence of this above statement?
The pope has never spoken these words from the chair…Anthropogenic Climate Change – AGW – Man Made Climate.
He has asked for good stewardship for natural climate changes.
Steve from Rockwood says:
October 22, 2011 at 7:40 pm
I thought the pope was Polish.
German 🙂
No Frakking Consensus, Laframbroise’ recent book references p 68-71 Anthony McMichael, public health specialist (Australian National University).
Further sourcing of McMichael’s work –
Andreae, M, Confalonieri, U, McMichael, A et al 2006, ‘Global Environmental Change and Human Health’, in P J Crutzen (ed.), Interactions Between Global Change and Human Health, The Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Vatican City pp. 213-29 AND also p374- 394 is authored by an AJ McMichael.
Working Group October-November 2004
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_academies/acdscien/documents/newpdf/sv106.pdf
3.4MB
‘…… At the most fundamental level, the pervasive improvement in public health in the 19th and 20th centuries has ultimately made possible the massive global change that the world is experiencing at present. Improvements in health care, urban sanitation, domestic hygiene, nutrition, and literacy have resulted in greatly reduced infant/child mortality and have facilitated rapid growth in the human population. By reducing costs associated with mortality and disease, they have also allowed increasing accumulation of wealth into the hands of individuals, enabling the development of a consumer society. This, together with an increasingly energy-intensive and carbon-intensive economy over the past century, has caused the rapid build up of anthropogenic greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere…..
I = P A T
I is environmental impact
The product of human population size (P)
Level of affluence (A)
Type of technology (T)
p382-383
Noting her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II is visiting Australia this week http://www.norepublic.com.au/ and lunched today with
Muriel Porter & Dr Catherine Hamlin. Also Geoffrey Rush (movie the The Kings Speech).
Dr Hamlin has worked in Ethiopia since 1954, where she and her husband opened ‘The Fistula Hospital’.
A remarkable documentary well worth watching (50 mins) portraying the lives of country women and the men and women who provide surgery and care to these women & children.
<A Walk to Beautiful
http://www.youtube.com/verify_age?next_url=http%3A//www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3D3w-fOmovijc
Also http://www.smh.com.au/interactive/2008/world/addis-ababa-fistula-hospital/index.html
McMichael and his colleagues would do well to consider the energy-intensive but short lives of women & children in the Asia-Pacific region, in light of Dr Hamlin and staff’ work and the documentary A Walk to Beautiful.
Hugh Pepper. Please repeat after me:
GCMs are not evidence for AGW. There are only evidence that the modellers have no idea how climate works.
Is it the case the BEST has looked at siting issues? If not, then in what way have they concluded that the surface temperature record is correct?
If the global climate temperature trend is positive, as one might expect during the warming phase of an interglacial period, then humankind will be best served by adapting as the alternative would seem to be unrealistic.
If we are able to reduce the global average yearly temperature to a single value, a value that is accurate to +/- .1 degree C, over a period of 150 years and that indicates an increase of somewhat less than a degree C, what does that mean? It could mean that we are actually in the warming phase of the current interglacial or that we are on the leading edge of a positive “noise” artifact within a long-term either positive, negative, or neutral trend.
At any rate, as winter approaches upstate New York (my home for over a half-century), I do what I have done all my life – pray for a warmer winter. If the temp trend is up, it has had no noticeable effect on my life. It is still way too cold for way too long each year.
My adaptation to global warming would be to wear shorts for a larger part of the year, shop the farm markets for fresh produce for a larger part of the year, spend thousands less per year heating my home, not have to spend most of the spring and half of the summer recovering from winter, not have to spend half of the summer and most of the fall preparing for winter, and well, you get the picture.
Maybe the idea of fighting what has occurred in cycle after glacial cycle with or without the interference of humanity is colossal hubris. Maybe we should reap the benefit, however small it might be, of our possibly warming earth and hope for more.
Here are a few things to think about, whether or not it is warming or not due to greenhouse gases:
1. Don’t live on the banks of rivers which flood. Nature thinks that rivers flooding is a good thing: it replenishes land with sediments. It’s just a silly place to build houses.
2. If you live in places where droughts of several years occur repeatedly, it’s a good idea to have good water management strategies, rather than letting all the excess water when it DOES rain flow back into the sea.
3. If you live in places where it can be cold in winter, its a good idea to build houses properly.
4. It’s probably a good idea to plan agricultural needs assuming that La Ninas and El Ninos will be with us, which implies that different places on earth will have different needs to over-produce depending on which regions are having a good year for crops.
5. It’s probably a good idea for deserts to be used for solar power generation. They are hot, sunny and with low population density.
Thanks Maurizio, good post.
I have updated my pages to include links to your Omniclimate. (Willis is a genius)
I consider AGW an extraordinary hypothesis in need of extraordinary proof, and until such proof comes forth, I’ll suspend belief.
On the other hand, SKY and CLOUD are quite extraordinary, I think.
“World is warming. Pope is Catholic.”
I’m astonished at the belated certainty from skeptics that the “knew all along” that the BEST results would confirm global warming, and would be entirely consistent with the HadCrut, NASA, and NOAA temperature reconstructions.
At the outset of the BEST project, A.W. said he wasn’t sure if the BEST reconstruction would show warming, cooling, or no change, as shown below. A cursory review of this blog and other skeptic blogs easily show routine and frequent comment threads and posts yucking it up about “global cooling”. There was widespread speculation among skeptics that the existing temperature reconstructions were bogus and were based on manipulation, fraud, and deceptions. So how exactly is is that skeptics somehow knew all along that the BEST project would confirm the global warming that had been established in the NASA, NOAA and HadCrut temperature reconstructions? And if skeptics “only” concern about global warming was the attribution of sources, why all the ruckus about allegedly manipulated and fraudulent temperature datasets from existing sources? Finally, A.W. said he would accept “whatever” results BEST produced. There were no caveats, or provisional implications in the statement. Consequently, I don’t get the firestorm of comments downplaying the BEST results.
*******************************************************************************************************************
A. W. Re: the BEST Project: “I have no certainty nor expectations in the results. Like them, I have no idea whether it will show more warming, about the same, no change, or cooling in the land surface temperature record they are analyzing”….
“And, I’m prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong. I’m taking this bold step because the method has promise…. Climate related website owners, I give you carte blanche to repost this.”
REPLY: And I’d have no problem at all if they kept their word given to me when I visited a full day that they would do this per the scientific method. Instead they went for a media PR blitz before science had a chance to speak. If they had done peer review first, then issued PR, like we see daily from other scientists on Eurekalert.com I’d have no reason for taking an issue with it.
But they changed the game from one of scientific method to one of media blitz. The papers have not completed peer review, and they have not been accepted by a science journal. If I had done the same thing, I’d be excoriated by people just like yourself.
But you seem OK with this PR before peer review method, so I think that says more about you than me. – Anthony
peter stone – I’m astonished at the belated certainty from skeptics that the “knew all along” that the BEST results would confirm global warming, and would be entirely consistent with the HadCrut, NASA, and NOAA temperature reconstructions
This is what I wrote at Omniclimate on Feb 28, 2011:
The argument that humans should adapt to climate change rather than try and change the climate is supported by the evidence in BC.
Our Carbon Tax was intended to reduce carbon emissions. Under the Law schools and hospitals must be carbon neutral, which is basically impossible because they have no carbon neutral source of energy they can purchase. So, the schools and hospitals must purchase carbon offsets from Pacific Carbon Exchange.
As a result, taxpayer money that could be used to insulate these schools and hospitals, and to purchase more efficient boilers, that money is instead being removed from schools and hospitals to purchase carbon credits. In the end the result is that schools and hospitals create more CO2 as a result of the law than if they were allowed to instead use the money to improve efficiency.
The problem is that well meaning politicians forget that money is not infinite. We cannot afford to do everything at the same time. If we are going to tax carbon, that money must come from somewhere else, which means giving up something else.
In the case of hospitals and schools the carbon tax means that schools and hospitals can pay the tax, or make improvements, but they cannot afford to do both. The law says they must pay the tax. The law doesn’t say they must make improvements, so they pay the tax and the improvements don’t get made. The very problem the tax was intended to correct is made worse by the tax.
Rhys Jaggar says:
October 23, 2011 at 7:03 am
5. It’s probably a good idea for deserts to be used for solar power generation. They are hot, sunny and with low population density.
California has huge desserts with a very large population close at hand eager to purchase power. They have a larger economy than most of the countries of the world.
Yet when you look at the history of solar power in California it is a history of failure after failure. The issue is price: Energy wholesales for about $0.03 cents per kWh. The cost of solar power installed is about $ 10.00 per watt (http://www.californiasolarstatistics.ca.gov/reports/cost_per_watt/)
This works out to $10,000 / kW. You will need to generate at a minimum 10% ROI cost per year to pay for the investment and maintenance. More realistically you should shoot for 20-25% to allow for contingencies, opportunity cost (what else could you have done with the money) and heaven forbid, profit. Let us 10% as this is our minimum.
$10k / kw * 10% = $ 1k worth of power per year minimum return required.
On average you get 2-3 k hours of sunshine a year in a good location. Lets use 3k hours the best case.
3k hours * 0.03 per hour = $90 per year actual return
So, on an investment where we need to make $1000 per year, we are going to make $90 per year best case, when solar power goes head to head with traditional power generation.
In other words, for California to switch to solar power, electricity rates would have to go up by a factor of 10 minimum, and likely a lot more. This is in California, which is perhaps one of the best locations on earth for solar power.
Jessie says:
October 23, 2011 at 4:25 am
“No Frakking Consensus, Laframbroise’ recent book references p 68-71 Anthony McMichael, public health specialist (Australian National University).
Further sourcing of McMichael’s work –
Andreae, M, Confalonieri, U, McMichael, A et al 2006, ‘Global Environmental Change and Human Health’, in P J Crutzen (ed.), Interactions Between Global Change and Human Health, The Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Vatican City pp. 213-29 AND also p374- 394 is authored by an AJ McMichael.
Working Group October-November 2004
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_academies/acdscien/documents/newpdf/sv106.pdf
3.4MB ”
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I can only assume that you are trying to make a point with this.
Just what it is…………….
If you are Catholic and think that the Pontifical Academy of Science [ OR a “working group” ] speaks for the Pope – Shame on you…… If not – you are excused. 🙂
In fact, a “working group” doesn’t even speak for the whole of the academy.
[ As witnessed within your PDF on page 3 ]
Quote:
[ “The opinions expressed with absolute freedom during the presentation of
the papers of this meeting, although published by the Academy, represent
only the points of view of the participants and not those of the Academy.”]
The Pontifical Academy of Science is comprised of scientists whose backgrounds are from Atheists, Agnostics, Christians, – Some even very anti-Catholic / Christian [ Paul J. Crutzen The lead Author of this group – Signed The Humanist Manifesto. ]
[ http://www.americanhumanist.org/Who_We_Are/About_Humanism/Humanist_Manifesto_III ]
[ http://www.americanhumanist.org/Who_We_Are/About_Humanism/Humanist_Manifesto_III/Notable_Signers
[“Located in the heart of Washington D.C., the AHA brings together humanists and nontheists of all stripes together toward the cause of progressive social change” ]
[ http://www.americanhumanist.org/What_We_Do/Overview ]
You will note, many members of The Pontifical Academy of Science here – Are well known scientists – few are Catholic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Members_of_the_Pontifical_Academy_of_Sciences
The important part: They are a body of scientists – FREE to report on scientific opinions.
Surely, you don’t think Atheists are the Voice of Catholicism? They are no more a voice of Catholicism – as is the CRU the voice of Congress… or the President.
I repeat: “The Pope has never spoken these words from the chair…Anthropogenic Climate Change – AGW – Man Made Climate.
He has asked for good stewardship for natural climate changes.”
To UKSceptic. Please check out the lecture given by Dr Ben Santer, a real expert on the subject of global warming and climate change. You can find it elsewhere on this BLog site. Dr Santer addresses the issue you raise and cites evidence based on observation. Your skepticism might be alleviated by this information.