Scientific climate
- Nature 478, 428 (27 October 2011) doi:10.1038/478428a
Results confirming climate change are welcome, even when released before peer review.
excerpts:
…
Of course, reproduction of existing results is a valid contribution, and the statistical methods developed by the BEST team could be useful additions to climate science. But valid contributions and useful additions alone do not generate worldwide headlines, so the mas-sive publicity associated with the release of the papers (which were simultaneously submitted to the Journal of Geophysical Research) is a curious affair.
There was predictable grumbling at the media coverage from within the scientific community, which saw it as publicity in lieu of peer review. Reporters are more than happy to cover the story now, while it’s sexy, but will they cover it later, when the results are confirmed, adjusted or corrected in accordance with a thorough vetting? The short answer is no, many of them will not. Barring an extraordinary reversal of message, the wave of press coverage is likely to be only a ripple when the papers are finally published. And this is what upsets the purists: the communication of science in this case comes before the scientific process has run its course.
Members of the Berkeley team revelled in their role as scientific renegades. Richard Muller, the physicist in charge, even told the BBC: “That is the way I practised science for decades; it was the way every-one practised it until some magazines — particularly Science and Nature — forbade it.”
This is both wrong and unhelpful. It is wrong because for years Nature has explicitly endorsed the use of preprint servers and confer-ences as important avenues for scientific discussion ahead of submis-sion to this journal, or other Nature titles. For example, on page 493 this week we publish a paper that discusses the dwarf planet Eris, based on results that the lead author presented (with Nature‘s knowledge and consent) at a conference several weeks ago. Journalists are, of course, welcome to report what they come across in such venues — as several did on Eris. What Nature discourages is authors specifically promoting their work to the media before a peer-reviewed paper is available for others in the field to read and evaluate.
Muller’s statement is unhelpful because such inflammatory claims can only fuel the heated but misguided debate on climate-sceptic blogs and elsewhere about the way science works and how it treats those who insist on viewing themselves as outsiders.
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Nature printed this letter from Dr. Fred Singer, which I was also given a copy of via email:
- Fred Singer said:
- Dear Editors of Nature:
What a curious editorial [p.428, Oct.26} ? and how revealing of yr bias!
“Results confirming climate change are welcome, even when released before peer review.”
(emphasis added)
You imply that contrary results are not welcomed by Nature. But this has been obvious for many years.
Why are you so jubilant about the findings of the Berkeley Climate Project that you can hardly contain yourself? What do you think they proved? They certainly added little to the ongoing debate on human causes of climate change.
They included data from the same weather stations as the Climategate people, but reported that one-third showed cooling — not warming. They covered the same land area ” less than 30% of the Earth?s surface ” housing recording stations that are poorly distributed, mainly in the US and Western Europe. They state that 70% of US stations are badly sited and don’t meet the standards set by government; the rest of the world is likely worse.
But unlike the land surface, the atmosphere has shown no warming trend, either over land or over ocean — according to satellites and independent data from weather balloons. This indicates to me that there is something very wrong with the land surface data. And did you know that climate models, run on super-computers, all insist that the atmosphere must warm faster than the surface? And so does theory.
And finally, we have non-thermometer temperature data from so-called “proxies”: tree rings, ice cores, ocean sediments, stalagmites. They don’t show any global warming since 1940!
The BEST (Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature) results in no way confirm the scientifically discredited Hockeystick graph, which had been so eagerly adopted by climate alarmists. In fact, the Hockeystick authors never published their post-1978 temperatures in their 1998 paper in Nature ? or since. The reason for hiding them? It’s likely that those proxy data show no warming either. Why don’t you ask them?
One last word: You evidently haven’t read the four scientific BEST papers, submitted for peer review. There, the Berkeley scientists disclaim knowing the cause of the temperature increase reported by their project. They conclude, however: “The human component of global warming may be somewhat overestimated.” I commend them for their honesty and skepticism.
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S. Fred Singer is professor emeritus at the University of Virginia and director of the Science & Environmental Policy Project. His specialty is atmospheric and space physics. An expert in remote sensing and satellites, he served as the founding director of the US Weather Satellite Service and, more recently, as vice chair of the US National Advisory Committee on Oceans & Atmosphere. He is co-author of Climate Change Reconsidered [2009 and 2011] and of Unstoppable Global Warming 2007.
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“And this is what upsets the purists: ”
Only purists think it is important to actually follow the scientific process?
Tom says:
October 27, 2011 at 2:05 am
It’s alright for you Americans; your world is still rational. The Australian parliament has recently voted for an assault of $23 per tonne of carbon dioxide emissions on our economy based on the IPCC’s evidence-free suppositions about climate. A chorus of chanting hippies is our new ruling class; a quirk in our constitution means we cannot vote down this madness for another two years. As in World War II, we desperately require your ingenuity in defence of our liberty and will reward you with a renewed commitment to our defence of yours. God bless America!
__________________________________________
How about several large ships to transfer our nutters, Al Gore, Obama, most of Congress, Uni Proffs et al to Nullarbor and transports your realists to the USA.
Confiscation of all assets prior to relocation in Nullarbor of course is mandatory. Those assets will be used to pay of foreign US debts.
The CBC Radio 1 program “The Current” interviews the Canadian (federal) environment minister, Peter Kent, at 0900 local time Thursday. Canucks in western regions can hear it live. For others, the program will be available via their website (cbc.ca) as long as there is a live broadcast in one of our timezones. It will also be available as a podcast through cbc.ca within a day or two.The interview is a sad thing from start to finish. If Kent is talking straight and not concealling an opposite government policy with soothing (to the warmists) words, he is completely in thrall to the warmist hypothesis, referring to the “cataclysmic” future results if we do not meet the UN target of no more than 2°C temperature rise and talking constantly of meeting our obligations, etc. Thoroughly sickening.
IanM
“Nature”, “Science”, science “hoity toits” and what the British call “Prigs” (look it up).
I Note this comment:
“Muller’s statement is unhelpful because such inflammatory claims can only fuel the heated but misguided debate on climate-sceptic blogs and elsewhere about the way science works and how it treats those who insist on viewing themselves as outsiders.”
OK, guys, consider this – LOADED LANGUAGE and “prejudice” are not becoming of REAL “scientists”.
Misguided? How misguided? Finding out the errors in analysis (Hockey Sticks anyone, or the pentalty for “high sticking”?
And why the specific mention of “climate-sceptic blogs”? (This is really an oblique reference to WUWT. If we want to get into “EMOTION”, hey I can play that game too. You “hoity toits” are scared out of your WITS by WUWT, too bad.)
Frankly, I see the coming DEMISE of the hoity toit Journals. Eventually people will realize that instead of “cutting edge”, they now represent the equivalent of the “inquisitor”.If you are not within “orthadoxy” you are to be banned, punished, imprisoned, mocked, or all of the above.
OK, OK…I guess being critical of the “Science by Newspaper” is a good start. Also, publishing Singer’s letter is primo. But really, what drives HUMANS to the frailty of existance such that the above quote is considered necessary or proper? (And do the people that wrote it have any concept of the “irony” that they promote themselves as “objective scientists” and then write using “loaded” language.)
stevo says:
October 27, 2011 at 3:50 am
“I’m prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong”
“What a surprise that turned out not to be true.”
BEST played Bait and Switch on Anthony. He expected a 30 year period. Without consultation, they substituted a 60 year period.
Tom “It’s alright for you Americans; your world is still rational.”
Sorry mate, you clearly don’t know much about America.
“stevo says:
October 27, 2011 at 3:50 am
“I’m prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong”
What a surprise that turned out not to be true.”
Stevo old chap, I don’t think Anthony was referring to results that have not been peer reviewed. Furthermore he has not questioned the results as much as he is questioning the releasing of the paper to the press before it is reviewed. In any case there is nothing wrong with what Antony and other posters here have done, which is to question the methods that they used to produce the results. What type of superstitious age of science world do we live in where it is illegitimate to question the methods used to get scientific results? Surely analyzing methods is part of the scientific method.
Theo Goodwin says:
October 27, 2011 at 6:39 am
BEST played Bait and Switch on Anthony. He expected a 30 year period. Without consultation, they substituted a 60 year period.
Has BEST documented why they did this? The reason for choosing 60 years when there is only 30 years of data doesn’t make statistical sense, unless you are trying to prove something that is not supported by the data.
As I understand the situation they came to Anthony for his data on station siting, which covers a 30 year period. Outside this period, there is no data. The two other papers that have recently dealt with this both use the 30 year period.
Thus, by going for a 60 year period, it would appear that BEST has no data on which to base any conclusions that relate temperature to station siting, which would by necessity include the UHI analysis.
I have just read a piece in
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2011/10/27/candid-comments-from-global-warming-climate-scientists/
Entitled: Candid Comments From Global Warming Climate Scientists
Which goes as follows:
Earlier in the article:
>>Where was the heat going? Trenberth repeated the question time and again.
Recently, working with Gerald Meehl and others, Trenberth proposed one answer. In a paper published last month, they put forward a climate model showing that decade-long pauses in temperature rise, and its attendant missing energy, could arise by the heat sinking into the deep, frigid ocean waters, more than 2,000 feet down. The team used a new model, one prepared for the next U.N. climate assessment; unlike past models, it handles the Pacific’s variability well, which ”seems to be important,” Trenberth said.<>Trenberth questions whether the Argo measurements are mature enough to tell as definite a story as Hansen lays out. He has seen many discrepancies among analyses of the data, and there are still “issues of missing and erroneous data and calibration,” he said. The Argo floats are valuable, he added, but “they’re not there yet.”<<
So, first Trenberth hails his computer model to high heaven, then, because the Argo measurements show a completely different reality tah his models, he, Trenberth, does not question his computer model(s), no, but he goes and questions the calibration of the Argo floats, which measure temperatures from the surface of the oceans deep down to 700 meters. This is the 'science' we are getting today. But it is more close to a séance than science.
If we have to question the accuracy of the Argo floats, machines that were built recently with the most modern of technologies, diving deep down into the oceans getting a profile at every level of the oceans, integrating all the energy down there. What should we base our climate science on? Is it on the Argo floats or on land based weather stations prone to all the UHI and human induced errors that come with them? Or should we base our science on computer models that have to be continuously correcetd so as to make them approach reality. That same reality which proves the models wrong, always?
One other point: The BEST report is based only on land-based station records, that is, measurements of atmospheric temperatures. Now, the atmosphere is only 1/270th the mass of the oceans. Now, if the atmosphere has warmed by say 0.6C while the oceans are found to have cooled by say 0.1C, then the net result would be a cooling of 0.1 C less a bit of the planet, and not a warming.
Conclusion: BEST was a useless exercise at best. A WORST study most probably.
Has anyone actually tried to access the published ‘raw’ BEST data? I have. First of all its not raw data, its Monthly averages. These are the first 5 lines of ‘data.txt’:
% File Generated: 04-Feb-2011 13:56:55
% Dataset Collection: Berkeley Earth Merged Dataset – version 1
% Type: TAVG – Monthly
% Version: LATEST – Detrended
% Dataset Hash: 2d3b328547f21959cc751d402ed2a426
Secondly, what does ‘Detrended’ refer to and why does it need a ‘Latest’ version?
Thirdly, we are told mankind is doomed if AGW is true so why does Nature ‘welcome’ this apparently bad news from Best? Would they jump for joy if someone confirmed an asteroid was heading for Earth?
Finally, why on earth would Best publish this data in a file of size 600MB? Too big for Excel, Word and only barely able to open in Wordpad? So no one would bother to read it perhaps?
TomT says:
October 27, 2011 at 6:55 am
Surely analyzing methods is part of the scientific method.
Not when the conclusion of the study is written first, and the data then chosen to support this conclusion. If 30 years of data doesn’t show what you want, increase it to 60 and see if this will deliver the results you seek.
One of the criteria for any valid statistical studies is that you define the parameters of the study before you begin the study. Otherwise there is always the temptation to change the parameters midway through the study to deliver the results you expect.
If station siting and UHI have no effect on temperature, then why is there a divergence between the temperature records and the long standing station records? The longest standing stations should most closely follow the temperature records if the records are accurate. However, if the records are changing as stations are added and removed, then temperature is driven by station siting.
For example, say I have a station that has been continuously recording for 100 years that shows no warming. If I now site another station close by that station, next to a heated building, and average the two readings, it will now appear that the temperature is increasing.
Similarly, if I have two stations close to each other. One is next to a heated building, the other is on a hillside and consistently shows lower temperatures. If I now remove the station on the hillside, because it is remote and expensive to maintain, the temperatures will now show an increase in this area.
Thus when studying UHI you should not ONLY be analyzing temperature as BEST has done, rather analyzing if urbanization is influencing the choice of site selection. If the number of stations in urban areas is increasing as a percentage of stations overall over time, then this factor in itself can skew the results.
stevo says:
October 27, 2011 at 3:50 am
“I’m prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong”
What a surprise that turned out not to be true.
__________________________________________
stevo- keep up!
Are your reading comprehension skills lacking, or are you just another flamer/propagandist?
Alex the skeptic says:
October 27, 2011 at 7:10 am
Trenberth questions whether the Argo measurements are mature enough to tell as definite a story as Hansen lays out.
Because Trenberth proposes that the heat is moving from the atmosphere (surface) to the oceans below 2000 meters. He knows it is true because his model (oracle of trenberth) says it is true.
The problem for Trenberth is that the Argo floats are not showing any heat moving from the surface downwards, so it must be the Argo floats that are wrong.
Argo is perhaps the most comprehensive temperature measuring device every created. It was intended to prove the case for AGW. Every expectation was that it would provide the evidence and a very large amount was invested by many nations to create the system.
The problem for climate science is that Argo is showing the unthinkable. It shows that the planet is not warming. Therefore, Argo must be wrong.
Folks there is a new argument in town relating to AGW and it aint about warmists v deniers. Everything discussed in this thread and on this blog is really interesting but in terms of helping governments decide on energy policy it is irrelevant.
The truth is that if you ask an honest scientist how much of “all there is to know about his field of knowledge” the human race currently knows or understands, the answer will be less than 1%.
Take the subject popularly known as Climate Science ; in reality this includes physics, mathematics, geology, meteorolgy, chemistry and some others.
There are many branches of scientific research where each new discovery is valuable. If medical research makes a new discovery about our DNA, it could result in a new cure for one type of cancer and lives would be saved. There are other areas of research where only total knowledge and understanding has any value and one of these is climate science.
What do we need to understand/know in order to predict how, when and why our climate will change?
We need to know exactly how many factors affect our climate and we need to understand exactly how each of those factors works.
Let us enter the silly season and say we know there are only 10 factors that affect our climate. Extending the sillyness let us say that we totally understand 9 of those factors and can predict with total confidence and to the nth degree exactly how our climate will react to each of them. Then we know absolutely nothing about how our climate will change.
We do not know how big the 10th factor will be, we do not know whether it is warming or cooling, we do not know if it is constant or cyclic or random.
If only there were only 10 factors.
You only need read the IPCC reports to see how many known factors we have no clue about and who knows how many factors influence our climate that we are not yet aware of?
It would be polite to say that the scientists who are currently advising world governments on how the activities of the human race are affecting our climate might be described as disingenuous. I can think of much more accurate but unprintable explanations.
stevo says:
October 27, 2011 at 3:50 am
“I’m prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong”
What a surprise that turned out not to be true.
++++++
Yeah, you said that already and no one cares. Are you hoping it will fly this time?
What result did they provide that proved any one of his premises wrong? BEST says the bulk of the stations are not sited properly, that world is been warming and that the human contribution has been over-estimated. So? What of it? We at WUWT know that already because we discuss it endlessly.
Is the world warming at the moment? If so, can you prove it? The US thermometers prove it is not, and in fact the temp is dropping in winter at 3.8 Deg F per decade (over the past decade). But is this reliable? They are not sited correctly, remember? BEST confirms it. What’s not to like: a reanalysis that shows the data is not reliable, but if treated as if it is, 2/3 confirm warming (over a long period) and 1/3 saying ‘cooling’. None of it reports what is happening now (last 10 years). Not very helpful.
All 14 years that Beavis and Butthead were on the air, the crime rate in the US went down and the economy improved. Correlation or causation? They are back tonight so let’s see what happens. As soon as the new series is broadcast, I confidently predict that the economy and the crime statistics will change, and you can hold me to that prophecy. When they do change, I want a grant to study the phenomenon because I am obviously onto something.
Douglas Dc says:
October 26, 2011 at 7:29 pm
Help Over at Don Surber’s blog, he’s getting attacked by Warmists for being an unbeliever!
Willis? Joe B. Anthony,? Seems they are really upset at the BEST criticism..
Having some firepower might help, As this bunch is the “SEE the science is SETTLED!”
Here’s the link:
http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/archives/45086#comments
From tips and notes post yesterday..
I agree with Al Gored, not with Al Gore; Jon Stewart was idiotic on The Daily Show last night.
Why does Trenberth say that heat is accumulating below 2000 meters?
From the Argo website:
What is Argo?
Argo is a global array of 3,000 free-drifting profiling floats that measures the temperature and salinity of the upper 2000 m of the ocean.
http://www.argo.ucsd.edu/
Of course the heat is accumulating below 2000 meters – the reason is that Argo doesn’t measure that part of the ocean. What a coincidence – not.
Re: Trenberth and the heat that “must be down there” in the ocean, below the ARGO measurement horizon. Is that thermodynamically plausible? Heat diffuses. In all directions. How can it end up “down there” in a discrete volume, without leaving a signature for ARGO to read? I recognize that there are thermoclines and currents and so forth: could they possibly achieve this remarkable result? (I say nothing about the silliness of ignoring the ARGO data in order to pursue the preferred picture generated inside a computer with cherrypicked data).
If he wasn’t going to accept the results, he shouldn’t have said he would do. He’s going to quite some lengths to rubbish them, even before they are published. You can argue that they have somehow misbehaved. Maybe that could even be true. But the fact remains that he said he would accept the results, and now does not. Why did he say he would?
Unless I’m mistaken, the BEST temperature reconstruction for the US shows that the LIA did indeed exist, and was fairly deep. If the temperatures in England and Europe also have the LIA in their records (and they do) then we need to also check Asia. Unless the South Hemisphere showed warming of more than a degree C, from 1600 to 1900, then the LIA affected the temperature of then entire globe, and the Mann hockey stick graph is completely refuted.
This means that the BEST data will help to show that our current “man made” temperature is more likely simply a rebound from the LIA to temperatures very close to what we had before. If we assume that the current temps (0.4 above an arbitrary zero line) are the result of all of that horrible man made CO2 warming, then we’ve got very little to worry about. After all, that’s less than a degree per century of warming, even after all of the extra “forcings.” With the logarithmic nature of CO2 based warming, more of the same would equal less than a full degree of warming by 2100, not the 3 to 6 degrees they are forecasting. This is good news.
It also shows that we had more than a degree of warming in the last 200 years that were completely natural (since we’ve more or less ruled out any AGM affect prior to 1957, right)? Every time I hear that we’ve warmed 1.2 degrees since 1860, I think “so what? it was 100% natural warming for the most part, and welcome warming at that.”
If even half of the current warming is natural, then the CO2 effect is completely harmless. I suspect we’ll discover that more than half of what we’ve seen in the 19th and 20th century is natural, and we will discover that the 21st century will show us no warming at all, despite ever climbing CO2 levels. If this is so, then we’ve been mislead by the “thousands of concerned scientists” and they should all be prevented from using their degrees to claim any special knowledge or authority in the future.
How about a pledge from all “climate scientists” who hawk man made global warming to renounce their degrees should CAGW turn out to be false? If we don’t have significant warming by 2025, anyone who claimed that we will should turn in their Ph.D.s and retire in shame.
crosspatch says:
October 27, 2011 at 12:50 am
Implied? They came right out and said it in plain English here:
the heated but misguided debate on climate-sceptic blogs
So “climate sceptic” blogs are “misguided” according to Nature. An interesting position for a “science” journal to take. Again, nobody has disputed that climate changes, we are disputing the NATURE of the change and if humans have any significant impact or if it is natural variation.
Nature has just made fools of themselves in my opinion.
—————————————-
I agree but, I also have a real problem with the “C” in CAGW.
That’s the real exaggeration and that’s where everyone admits to the lie. Even Al Gore thinks it’s acceptable to lie for this important crusade to save the world and line his pockets.
Whether or not man is the cause of a few degree change in temperature doesn’t mean much if negative effects can be overcome over time.
^^Agreed. Watts did say that, on this very blog. And also I love how ‘left a comment on the internet’ is equated to ‘Nature prints letter’. Amusing.
I don’t think you understand how silly that statement sounds in context of what happened immediately BEFORE that warming. The Earth had just undergone cooling unprecedented since the Younger Dryas. From the MWP to the bottom of the LIA, the Earth had undergone dramatic cooling. The coldest portion of the LIA was the coldest period in the Holocene since the Younger Dryas. What was witnessed was the recovery from that extreme cold to more normal temperatures. We have still not recovered to temperatures seen in the MWP.
So yes, your statement is true, but in context with the cooling that happened before the warming, it looks completely expected. Most of the warming in the recovery from the LIA happened from the late 1800’s to the 1930’s. From the 1940’s to the middle 1970’s temperatures cooled. This is the period when CO2 emissions ramped up the most. There has been no warming globally since the early 2000’s.
But the odd thing is how one side of a curve is pointed to yet the other side is ignored. We had unprecedented cooling followed by unprecedented warming. What is unusual about that?
stevo says:
October 27, 2011 at 3:50 am
“I’m prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong”
What a surprise that turned out not to be true.
“I know you are but what am I?” “I know you are but what am I?” “I know you are but….
…………………………………………………..
“stevo says:
October 27, 2011 at 8:22 am”
I know you are but what am I.
SteveO doesn’t want to understand that I accept much of what was written, but not everything. See here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/21/best-what-i-agree-with-and-what-i-disagree-with-plus-a-call-for-additional-transparency-to-preven-pal-review/
He’s conveniently missed this article so he can have a snarkfest in the comfort of anonymity, which is what people with his MO typically do. All the denigration, none of the risk.
He’s also missing that it isn’t just me panning BEST; when Nature and RealClimate does it, you know there are problems. But I *have to accept it uncritically*, because I made the mistake of trusting them once when I visited them personally and they told me their plan.
Had I known they were going to make a media blitz like this, skipping peer review before announcing, and told me they’d do a 60 year study on my 30 year metadata, I never would have made that statement.
If that makes me gullible for trusting Dr. Richard Muller, so be it. – Anthony