Alternate title: Something wonky this way comes
I try to get away to work on my paper and the climate world explodes, pulling me back in. Strange things are happening related to the BEST data and co-authors Richard Muller and Judith Curry. Implosion might be a good word.
Popcorn futures are soaring. BEST Co-author Judith Curry drops a bombshell:
Her comments, in an exclusive interview with The Mail on Sunday, seem certain to ignite a furious academic row. She said this affair had to be compared to the notorious ‘Climategate’ scandal two years ago.
Here’s the short timeline.
1. The GWPF plots a flat 10 year graph using BEST data:
2. The Mail on Sunday runs a scathing article comparing BEST’s data plotted by GWPF and the data presented in papers. They print this comparison graph:
Note: timescales don’t match on graphs above, 200 years/10 years. A bit naughty on the part of the Sunday Mail to put them together as many readers won’t notice.
3. Dr. Judith Curry, BEST co-author, turns on Muller, in the Mail on Sunday article citing “hide the decline”:
In Prof Curry’s view, two of the papers were not ready to be published, in part because they did not properly address the arguments of climate sceptics.
As for the graph disseminated to the media, she said: ‘This is “hide the decline” stuff. Our data show the pause, just as the other sets of data do. Muller is hiding the decline.
‘To say this is the end of scepticism is misleading, as is the statement that warming hasn’t paused. It is also misleading to say, as he has, that the issue of heat islands has been settled.’
Prof Muller said she was ‘out of the loop’. He added: ‘I wasn’t even sent the press release before it was issued.’
…
But although Prof Curry is the second named author of all four papers, Prof Muller failed to consult her before deciding to put them on the internet earlier this month, when the peer review process had barely started, and to issue a detailed press release at the same time.
He also briefed selected journalists individually. ‘It is not how I would have played it,’ Prof Curry said. ‘I was informed only when I got a group email. I think they have made errors and I distance myself from what they did.
‘It would have been smart to consult me.’ She said it was unfortunate that although the Journal of Geophysical Research had allowed Prof Muller to issue the papers, the reviewers were, under the journal’s policy, forbidden from public comment.
4. Ross McKittrick unloads:
Prof McKittrick added: ‘The fact is that many of the people who are in a position to provide informed criticism of this work are currently bound by confidentiality agreements.
‘For the Berkeley team to have chosen this particular moment to launch a major international publicity blitz is a highly unethical sabotage of the peer review process.’
5. According to BEST’s own data, Los Angeles is cooling, fast:
Muller is one scientist whose papers I won’t read anymore. I can’t say the same for Dr. Curry whose integrity is arching over the team of jackals that dominate this sport. I don’t envy her for the calamity now headed her way but she now has a special and unique place in climatology called the high ground.
Ryan Maue says:
October 29, 2011 at 9:39 pm
I will now summarize the follow up stories by the liberal media including the UK Guardian, Washington Post, NY Times, etc. concerning this little bit of criticism of the veracity of the BEST study and the methods of the scientists involved.
_____________.
There you have it.
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IDK, Ryan, it’s going to be hard for some of them. I don’t think Muller let them in on this little game he was playing. And, while I doubt that child writer for HuffPo (that kept deleting my profile) will back track, others may be a bit miffed. We’ll see.
I posted earlier that Dr.Curry would be wise to disassociate herself from Muller as her reputation would get spoiled if she stood with these liars. I’m glad she has come out and denounced Muller’s chicanery. It’s time that Muller gets his comeuppance and I hope that the papers get rejected in peer review.
A simple equation based on the physical phenomena involved, with inputs of only sunspot number and ppmv CO2, calculates the average global temperatures (agt) since 1895 with 88.4% accuracy (87.9% if CO2 is assumed to have no influence). The equation, links to the source data, an eye-opening graph of the results and how they are derived are in the pdfs at http://climaterealists.com/index.php?tid=145&linkbox=true (see especially the pdfs made public on 4/10/10, 3/10/11 and 9/24/11).
As shown in the 9/24/11 pdf, the equation accurately predicted the temperature trends for the last 20 years.
The future average global temperature trend that this equation calculates is down. The huge effective thermal capacitance of the oceans (about 30 times everything else) will cause the decline to be only about 0.13°C per decade. The decline may be as much as 0.22°C per decade if the sun goes really quiet.
This trend is corroborated by the growing separation between the rising CO2 and not-rising agt. From 2001 through September, 2011 the atmospheric CO2 increased by 23.7% of the total increase from 1800 to 2001 while the average global temperature has not increased. The 23.7% CO2 increase is the significant measurement, not the comparatively brief time period.
Without human caused global warming there can be no human caused climate change.
Wow! LA has cooled 3C since the mid-80’s. I believe it; our daughter was born in 1984 and it was the hottest year anyone could remember (the BEST LA data confirms it). Some anecdotal memories:
It was so hot in late September 1984 my wife and I drove one night from Tustin to Laguna Beach to get get relief from the hot weather. Didn’t help, it was 102F (39C) on the beach at midnight. She broke down in tears because it was as hot at the beach as it was at home. I remember people flocking to grocery stores and congregating in the frozen foods aisles to get relief from the heat outside.
Our daughter was born on Sept 23 ’84 and the climate here has been on a downhill slide since then. We have had year after year of progressively more “years without a summer”. Normally the LA area has an overcast and cool May and June locally called “June Gloom” where for weeks the sun doesn’t shine and temperatures are in the low ’60s (17C). Normally July brings an end to the cool marine overcast and brings sunny, hot days that last through October. The kind of weather Southern California is famous for.
Instead, “June Gloom” increasingly stretches into July, August and even September now. Temperatures are well below the climatic norms, -3C fits with my memories of summers gone by.
If the HADCRUT3 data is to believed, it is a world-wide phenomena and not just here in SoCal. The climate has cooled this century. It certainly has cooled a lot here in California since my now 27 year-old daughter was born.
“to have chosen this particular moment to launch a major international publicity blitz is a highly unethical sabotage of the peer review process.’
With the best informed critics gagged, “unethical”barely describes it.
Who would buy a used car from such people, let alone a used climate theory?
Judith Curry is a hero.
Must have been a large window in Mullers office for all that credibility to fly out at once, ……..
Malice or incompetence, neither is acceptable.
By the way, did anyone see Muller on Bill Shatner’s show, Weird or What?
Well, this seems to me to be an attempt on the part of Muller to “get ahead of the story”. Had the data been released without comment and coaching, the story would eventually have been “no global warming for the past decade”. To minimize that happening, you play a very well-known propaganda game.
What you do is widely disseminate information very early that says the study basically “confirms” global warming and you do that to very powerful media outlets. So everyone hears on the news at the top of the hour on the local traffic report station during their drive in to work that the BEST study “confirms” global warming. Now this comes out. It, of course, will get zero media attention or it might be buried on page 63 of a paper. It will not be broadcast on the top of the hour news broadcast during commute hour on the traffic report station. So if you ask someone six months from now what the BEST study showed, if they remember, they will say it “confirmed” global warming when in fact it did the opposite.
It looks to me like Muller knew what was in those data and consulted with someone on how to game the media to minimize the impact of it. I wonder who he consulted with as this is a fairly slick game that most academics wouldn’t know how to play. He was coached on exactly how to do this, in my opinion, and coached by someone with a lot of media savvy and connections with all the “right” people. I smell a rat.
The fact that the second lead author claims the lead author is – well – fabricating the results – tends to destroy the consensus.
Plus 0ne for Judith.
Nope. I doubt there will be any discernible sound at all in the major US media. They will be dead silent on this discovery because it is counter to their agenda.
I believe I already pointed to the site of Muller & Associates , which will make money if AGW is true and lose it if it is false, and then there is this post showing that Muller is not now and never has been a “skeptic” (titled “WaPo’s “skeptic” actually has backed global warming for 30 years”). Then there is this from the site you pointed to “The BEST project, which has been lavishly funded”.
Follow the benjamins.
I suspect Muller didn’t miss the lack of trend over the last 10 years.
I also suspect he is playing a clever game with the press. And perhaps even testing the skeptics. Not sure what games are being played, but I think it is interesting that the RC crowd is moving quickly away from him.
I think we need to sit back and wait a while longer before this plays out.
Dr. Curry has guts and integrity. I extend a grateful congratulations for her courage. She must have been embarrassed by this skullduggery to say the least.
“The oceans do not heat as much as the land because it absorbs more of the heat
Is he saying that the oceans are cooler because they “absorb” more heat (and therefore remove it)?
We are saved! We have solved global warming! Don’t mind us as we tramp through your house at all hours focusing all kinds of annoying scientifical(ish) instruments on your diughter to see exactly how she does it. Or may she doesn’t, maybe it’s you.
Heck, now we can make all the CO2 we want! Weee!
Ventner said:
You misspelled pal review.
dp says:
October 29, 2011 at 9:51 pm
Muller is one scientist whose papers I won’t read anymore. I can’t say the same for Dr. Curry whose integrity is arching over the team of jackals that dominate this sport. I don’t envy her for the calamity now headed her way but she now has a special and unique place in climatology called the high ground.
Imo, Dr. Curry is saving her self! In a good way. I was trying to tell her here way back when she first came on WUWT that she had a choice and to make this kind of choice, if she was capable of perceiving it, and for her own good, but have no idea how it actually happened. But you could see it happening! Starting her own blog and persisting was big. I do think her interaction here with Willis was very important and with Steve McIntyre going further back. High quality, straight shooters.
Now this! She was obviously already out of the fold, but Muller thought he could sucker her. Wrong!
There is nothing inappropriate about the graphs printed by the Mail
They were illustrating what BEST hid. BEST printed the 100 yr timeline graph in their paper. The Mail replicated that graph. With the second graph, the Mail is showing the inconvenient truth that is hidden by BEST’s choosing to only display the data at that scale. The Mail demonstrates that by showing the detail of the last ten years. This is no different than showing a blow-up of the post 1960 period on Mann’s graphs, to demonstrate how “Mike’s Nature Trick” worked to hide the decline by tucking a truncation behind small scale spaghetti.
Oh No, it’s worse than I thought…for Prof. Muller that is!
Andy Revkin ran a thread cheering on the BEST papers on his NYTimes Dot Earth blog. I posted notice of the Mail interview with Judith Curry and challenged him to contact her and start a separate thread based on her comments. It has not cleared moderation yet but it is very early in the morning where he lives. IIRC, he lives in a semi-rural area outside of NYC and is probably experiencing some mid-fall global warming.
Rearcher bias is alive and well.
You’ve got to love the introductory paragraph from Muller & Associates home page:
“Muller & Associates bridges knowledge gaps to demystify complex technical issues so that clients can make educated decisions. We are able to quickly cut through the “sales talk” and help our clients select the best option for their specific needs.”
( http://www.mullerandassociates.com/ )
Enough said!!!!!!!!!!!
I suggested the lag time effect of solar cycles on planetary climate what seems a lifetime ago, but I was wondering, how is that study going?
The recent early snow storms in the North East seem to be evidence of it.
Sanity at last.
Now I wonder if the world will ever hear it.
The framers of our Constitution missed an item. We have separation of Church and State, they needed to add Separation of Science and State.