In a shocking development that may represent a singularity, I find myself in agreement* with parts of an opinion piece posted on Real Climate today called Berkeley Earthquake Called Off. Dr. Eric Steig writes:
Anybody expecting earthshaking news from Berkeley, now that the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature group being led by Richard Muller has released its results, had to be content with a barely perceptible quiver. As far as the basic science goes, the results could not have been less surprising if the press release had said “Man Finds Sun Rises At Dawn.” This must have been something of a disappointment for anyone hoping for something else.
True. As Maurizo pointed out in World is Warming. Pope Catholic, and as Dr. Roger Peilke said in No surprise about BEST.
Other excerpts: …
But Muller’s framing of the Berkeley results is still odd. His statement, that had they found no warming trend, this would have “ruled out anthropogenic global warming”, while true in a technical sense, would not have implied that we should not worry about human drivers of climate change. And it would not have overturned over a century of firmly established radiative-transfer and thermodynamics. Nor would it have overturned the basic chemistry which led Bolin and Eriksson (reprinted here) to predict in 1959 that fossil fuel burning would cause a significant increase in CO2 — long before the results of Keeling’s famous Mauna Loa observations were in. As a physicist, Muller knows that the reason for concern about increasing CO2 comes from the basic physics and chemistry, which was elucidated long before the warming trend was actually observable.
…
Muller’s other comments do very little to shed light on climate change, and continue to consist largely of putting down the work of others. “For Richard Muller,” writes Richard Black, “this free circulation also marks a return to how science should be done,” the clear insinuation being that CRU, GISS, and NOAA had all been doing something else. Whatever that “something else” is supposed to be completely eludes us, given that these groups all along have been publishing results in the peer-reviewed literature using methods that proved easy to reproduce using easily available data (and in the GISTEMP case, complete code). In one sense, though, we do agree with Muller’s quote: nobody has stolen his private emails and spun them out of context to make his research look bad.
…
Overall, we are underwhelmed by the quality of Berkeley effort so far — with the exception of the efforts made by Robert Rohde on the dataset agglomeration and the statistical approach. And we remain greatly disappointed by Muller’s public communications (e.g. his WSJ op-ed) which appear far more focused on raising his profile than enlightening the public about the state of the science.
It will be very interesting to see what happens to these papers as they go through peer review.
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* OK now for the asterisk. Like any opinion piece not everyone will agree with all of it. I’m no exception Steig writes about the station siting issue saying:
National Academy of Sciences study already concluded that the warming seen in the surface station record was “undoubtedly real,” that Menne et al showed that highly touted station siting issues did not in fact compromise the record…
I would point out to Dr. Steig, and to Dr. Muller, that science, by its very nature, is not a static enterprise. A second paper is in the works looking at the station siting issue from a much broader perspective will be sent for peer review (and hopefully publication) in the coming weeks. In the best tradition of Forest Gump I’ll borrow one of his famous lines:
“And that’s all I have to say about that”.
This guest post is an instructive read though: Unadjusted data of long period stations in GISS show a virtually flat century scale trend
[SNIP: Please check our policy page here. -REP]
John says:
“The two important things that BEST adds to the debate are:
1. A substantial part of the warming from 1975 — as much as 70% — may be due to natural forcings such as the AMO. ”
How can this be the case when the AMO lags both ENSO and Temp?
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2011/10/24/decadal-variations-and-amo-part-i/
To Rob Honeycutt (10:43 AM):
I don’t take anything at face value that I read in the mutually accusatory climate change blogs. I will wait for science to sort things out. Both WUWT and Real Climate have strong biases. I think they each serve as an important counter when the other side goes over the edge. So for now, I take the BEST results as the authors do, e.g., there appear to be natural forcings which cause ~ 30 year up, ~ 30 year down temperature cycles.
We had a sharp ramp up in warming from about 1915 through 1945, then a cool period from 1945 through 1975, then a warm period from then through the 1998 El Nino, and now a cool period which may last another 15 to 20 years. BEST, quite correctly, says that we need to look at the issue of natural forcings on multi-decadal cycles more closely. I agree.
But I don’t discount the possibility of these cycles driving temperatures, with man made influences added on. Nor do I discount the implications for temperature effects of GHGs.
John… I’m also curious how the AMO paper from BEST is going to play out in peer review. But it seems to me that it is pretty damning if it can be asserted that the AMO is actually a signal of AGW, which is what Tamino is suggesting. I also have to remind folks that the 30 year up and 30 year down both has existing explained forcings behind them. And prior to that the 30 year cycle breaks down, so you’re really only talking about one up and one down, followed by a clear CO2 driven forcing.
So the only person Steig sees fit to praise is renowned warmist Robert Rohde? Well what a surprise…
“surface temp series in the early 19th century throws a wrench into the works.”
As if the surface temp in early 19th century have anything near 0.x Cº accuracy!
[snip -if you want to insult me, and label me as a “cultist” do it at SkS, it is after all what they do BEST there. Read my policy about being a guest in my home. SkS had a link like everyone else until they started with the revisionism, and yes you and SkS are in fact “unreliable” when you do that sort of thing, but you are too blind to see it. – Anthony]
Yes, Muller dissed the surface records long before he did any work on them, and this website didn’t have a problem with that kind of press.
I don’t know if anyone has noted it, but there is a parallel here with Fall et al. Anthony and others are on record declaring the US temp record unreliable long before doing any proper number-crunching. Fall et al comes out, and it appears the average temps record is robust (but there are problems with min/max). Minus the pre-peer review fanfare and treatment on max/min, this is pretty much what has happened with BEST.
If the lesson here is to be cautious in your public announcements til you’ve done the work and had it checked, then I hope it sticks. On this there is agreement between realclimate and WUWT, at least regarding BEST.
REPLY: but science is not static, remember that – Anthony
Dogparliament: “I think this is all just part of the work of master manipulators. The recent papers and opinion pieces have both solidified the idea that the world is warming and got the ‘skeptics’ to vocally agree to this. Real Climate’s welcome opinion piece will be hailed through the skeptical blogs and a rare glimpse of sanity, if we are agreeing with the the rate of warming, which we will more redilly do because we are so pleased that it shows measure on the BEST results. I think the AGW movement is manipulating the skeptic community with a classic flattery con trick; also individual beleaguered skeptics will latch on to any sign of kindness and unconsciously sacrifice some of their beliefs.”
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Good lord. Oh yes, the IPCC overlords and mainstream climate scientists are out to manipulate some relatively obscure bloggers and forum posters into admitting things they don’t want to admit; aka the globe is warming consistent with temperature reconstructions by BEST, NASA, HadCrut, and NOAA.
Why don’t you just stick to and say what you actually believe, instead of imagining you’re being manipulated by a global cabal of devious scientists into moving your goals posts to agree with the consensus on the warming trend? Why on Earth would you even feel pressured to move your goal posts, if you have genuine confidence in some relatively obscure non-peer reviewed blog science?
Barry:
Drawing a parallel between initial informal comments made by Anthony on a blog like WUWT prior to a study and testifying before congress on preliminary results of a study funded by same as Dr. Muller did, doesn’t fly in my book. Muller knew full well the mainstream media would be all over the event as they are dying to prove that anyone who doesn’t go along with the entire AGW program is a “Neo-Luddite”(especially Republicans) which is exactly what Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson did in an article he wrote today. You can read it here and see what he did with Muller’s testimony:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/10/25/climate_change_just_got_hotter_111804.html
To others reading this if you wish to tell Mr. Robinson what you think of his article on “Neo-Luddites”, you can send a comment to his email:
eugenerobinson@Washpost.com
Doug Ferguson
As Willis points out in the previous post, Muller’s work simply shows the models to be wrong. The higher the ground temps, the further away from the correct tropospheric temperature profile we get. To show the water vapor feedback necessary for the Climate Alarmism (hot spot and cooling strat) the surface must be warming at a slower rate than the mid trop which warms slower than the upper trop. Right now we have the opposite and it is a TRAVESTY I tell you!!
Basically Muller is NOT a team player and apparently is trying to promote himself and not the team. He should get slapped down in the Review Process, although he will probably make it through eventually.
NotTheAussiePhilM says:
October 25, 2011 at 2:15 am
Robin Melville says:
“Oscillation” — which is often seen in climate phenomenology — implies negative feedback, not positive.
“Worryingly, ‘Oscillation’ implies positive feedback.
– the microphone/speaker ‘howl-round’ feedback is classic example of positive feedback …”
Guess again. The ‘howl-round’ is the result of runaway amplitude increase, not runaway frequency increase. So your implication falls flat, sorry.
SimonJ says:
October 25, 2011 at 4:26 am
‘Negative feedback does indeed produce an oscillation, a damped oscillation, where the rate of damping is a function of the feedback ‘strength’ (and here I can’t remember the correct word – transfer function??)’
SimonJ, in analog electronics the term is feedback factor.
Maybe it was a good thing it went to press review before pal review afterall… just imagine what the conclusions of the paper would have been if it had been been given the stamp of approval by the team before release.