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:
The Mail on Sunday is a dreadful rag, and will place anything in a context calculated to make a sensation out of a hiccup. Even when it doesn’t actually misquote its interviewees. Anything for circulation.
But I suppose it can’t be all wrong all of the time…
“The number of retracted studies in peer-reviewed scientific journals skyrocketed from 22 in 2001 to 339 last year. according to an analysis commissioned by The Wall Street Journal…..
…more than a quarter of the retractions were due to fraud rather than innocent mistakes”
Discover
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303627104576411850666582080.html
If you notice, none of the trolls today have anything substantial or sensible to say and so are trying to diver the thread topic to irrelevant alleyways. Do not feed the trolls and just ignore them.
In the words of contemporaries from my generation: Oh snap!
Anthony,
Thanks for the link. To be clear, I believe I have identified a specific mathematical error which will require a re-write of the CI portion of the methods paper.
Smokey says:
October 30, 2011 at 7:18 am
Speaking of tedious hardheads, Mikael Pihlström just doesn’t understand.
There is no real argument against warming since the global LIA.
——–
I have to correct you. There SHOULD not be any argument. But, the argument
‘it’s not warming’ is amply documented in your own sources (e.g. WUWT blogs,
SEPP reports etc.), even quite recently, and to deny that fact is ridiculous.
The reluctance of sceptics to throw out anything from your disinformation tools set
has destroyed your credibility as an intellectual movement, an outcome I am not
too sorry about.
Donald says:
October 30, 2011 at 7:17 am
Yes, that is the problem. Charts and graphs. Wow.
Dr Curry states “I did not say that “the affair had to be compared to the notorious Climategate scandal two years ago,” ” at Climate Etc.
It seems that the Mail on Sunday has misrepresented her view yet it is the first paragraph repeated from the Mail article at the beginning of this post. Perhaps it should be noted at that point in the post that she denies having said this?
@ur momisugly Donald:
Are you serious? The problem is the charts and graphs? And all you need is two-hundred years of measurement based global averages?
“stevo says:
October 30, 2011 at 5:05 am
My word, you really still haven’t got this? You can’t measure ANY trend over the last ten years, the time period is TOO SHORT for any kind of statistical significance. It’s a very, very simple concept, but much, much too difficult for some people to understand. It would be remarkable if they were not capable of understanding it – more likely they just don’t want to understand it. Which is it for you, can’t understand or won’t understand?”
From an old construction worker who has worked outside for over 45 years, I agree with your statement. I would also say that 100yrs, 200yrs, 1,000yrs or 2,000yrs are too short of time as well. I believe you need to go back to the beginning of our interglacial warm period to figure of trends.
What the last 10yrs have shown us is CO2 has had little effect if any since 2000. If that is true, then CO2 has had little or no effect from 1990 to 2000.
So there must stronger “temperature/climate” “drivers” than CO2. As soon as you Academic guys and gals start being honest with yourself and the public, the sooner guys and gals like me can prepair us for the next little ice age or ice age. Windmills and solar panels “ain’t goina get it.”
Stevo noted that 10 years was too short a time on which to base conclusions. Maybe that’s true, but it’s not too short to raise concerns among even committed proponents of CAGW (covered in a recent post here and on JC’s climate etc). What it means is that in the past 10 years something other than carbon dioxide is driving global temperature. Importantly, we do not know what that something is. Wouldn’t the reasonable conclusion be that maybe we really don’t know what has been driving temperature all along and particularly we don’t know enough about feedbacks to make any type of predictions? Unfortunately, too many people in climate science have too much time, money, prestige, pride, etc. invested in carbon dioxide-driven CAGW to be reasonable. Thankfully, there are a few like Judith Curry who do speak out.
David Falkner – Is that such a hard ask?
It seems obvious to me that without those numbers none of the charts and graphs on this site, or any other AGW/GW site for that matter, would exist, after all … what did they use to make them with? the numbers must exist somewhere. I just need them, that’s all.
I’m not asking for you to write them all, I just want the link to where such data may be found, I can do the rest of the work on my own.
———————
That statement has the perspective that I agree with.
First, BEST is a new comprehensive data set. That is important and it is completely independent of the BEST’s bizarre pre-peer review PR campaign. It appears that Muller’s daughter (manager of the BEST project) has had lead responsibility in the overselling PR program; she is not a climate scientist.
Second, BEST is a private effort which shows alternate approaches are possible to the potential for confirmation bias in governmental grant processes for climate science. The questionable PR strategy by BEST’s manager detracts from the science of the project.
Third, I see no problem with sharing the preliminary results and data before either submittal to a paper or after submittal but before pee review. That is completely open. The BEST mistake was that instead of orchestrating a circus-like PR frenzy, they simply should have posted the preliminary results and data on their website.
Finally, I find Judith Curry a credible leader who is vitally helping to open up a broad skeptical era in climate science; she exposes the myopic restriction of the last 25+ yrs from IPCC centered advocates of alarming AGW by CO2 from fossil fuel.
John
PS – David Falkner
Truth is I happen to be very good with numbers and I can fiddle any graph you give me, that is why I rely only on numbers, then I do my own models.
Here take a look at how easy I fiddle prediction (by many scientists) for 530ppm for 2050 and lowered them to 427 just by fiddling with them (without cheating)
http://wisdomblogsdotcom1.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/co2-levels.png
I only want the links
old construction worker: “What the last 10yrs have shown us is CO2 has had little effect if any since 2000.”
Incorrect conclusion. Internal variations dominate on this timescale and you cannot say anything about the effect of CO2 since 2000.
“If that is true, then CO2 has had little or no effect from 1990 to 2000.”
It is not true, and this wouldn’t even follow if it was.
Stephen Pruett: “What it means is that in the past 10 years something other than carbon dioxide is driving global temperature”
Internal variations dominate on this timescale. You can derive nothing at all about the longer term drivers of climate change.
Mikael Pihlström says:
“…the argument ‘it’s not warming’ is amply documented in your own sources…”
Amply documented?? So “amply” document your charge. In particular, I challenge you to show where I have ever said “it’s not warming.”
You live in your own fantasy world, Mikael.
Correction to an embarrassing misspelling in my comment at October 30, 2011 at 8:04 am.
I should have said, “Third, I see no problem with sharing the preliminary results and data before either submittal to a paper or after submittal but before
peepeer review.”Though ‘pee review’ is a comical thought, n’est ce pas?
John
Scientist who said climate change sceptics had been proved wrong accused of hiding truth by colleague
By David RoseI
It was hailed as the scientific study that ended the global warming debate once and for all – the research that, in the words of its director, ‘proved you should not be a sceptic, at least not any longer’.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2055191/Scientists-said-climate-change-sceptics-proved-wrong-accused-hiding-truth-colleague.html#ixzz1cHJpUhtW
Perhaps it is just a communication problem, acronym-wise?
Alternately, they might have named the project: Berkeley Adjusted Data…
😉
stevo says:
October 30, 2011 at 5:05 am
My word, you really still haven’t got this? You can’t measure ANY trend over the last ten years, the time period is TOO SHORT for any kind of statistical significance….
_____________________________________________
THE TREND IS A CYCLE. It is not a line. Nature hates lines and that is one of the major CAGW fallacies. They take SELECTED data do a line fit and IGNORE the curves. This means that their “projections” had straight off the chart when the true projection should be an oscillation.
The “trend” has flattened because it has hit the top of the curve in the oscillation. If you are looking at multiple oscillations then the ten years are part of a CURVE and not a straight line.
This is from a NASA report (California Institute of Technology): http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/features.cfm?feature=1319
“…The researchers found some clear links between the sun’s activity and climate variations. The Nile water levels and aurora records had two somewhat regularly occurring variations in common – one with a period of about 88 years and the second with a period of about 200 years.
….Alexander Ruzmaikin and Joan Feynman of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., together with Dr. Yuk Yung of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif., have analyzed Egyptian records of annual Nile water levels collected between 622 and 1470 A.D. at Rawdah Island in Cairo. These records were then compared to another well-documented human record from the same time period: observations of the number of auroras reported per decade in the Northern Hemisphere. Auroras are bright glows in the night sky that happen when mass is rapidly ejected from the sun’s corona, or following solar flares. They are an excellent means of tracking variations in the sun’s activity.
Feynman said that while ancient Nile and auroral records are generally “spotty,” that was not the case for the particular 850-year period they studied…..
So what causes these cyclical links between solar variability and the Nile? The authors suggest that variations in the sun’s ultraviolet energy cause adjustments in a climate pattern called the Northern Annular Mode, which affects climate in the atmosphere of the Northern Hemisphere during the winter. At sea level, this mode becomes the North Atlantic Oscillation, a large-scale seesaw in atmospheric mass that affects how air circulates over the Atlantic Ocean. During periods of high solar activity, the North Atlantic Oscillation’s influence extends to the Indian Ocean. These adjustments may affect the distribution of air temperatures, which subsequently influence air circulation and rainfall at the Nile River’s sources in eastern equatorial Africa. When solar activity is high, conditions are drier, and when it is low, conditions are wetter.
Study findings were recently published in the Journal of Geophysical Research. “
So if you want to get snarky we should look at time periods of over 400 Years!
Sixty years is way too short, it does not even cover two complete ~ 70 yr ocean oscillations!!!
“This is nowhere near what the climate models were predicting,’ Prof Curry said. ‘Whatever it is that’s going on here, it doesn’t look like it’s being dominated by CO2.”
She stands by this point, which is the whole crux of the issue. No reasonable researcher claims there has been no warming, and the media blitz Muller set off used a giant strawman in claiming they had.
Alex Heyworth says:
October 30, 2011 at 5:23 am
Judging by what Prof Curry has said on her blog, my feeling is that the Mail has decided the story is in the conflict between different interpretations of the data, and they have decided to highlight the differences to the max. possible. This includes putting the most contrarian spin they can on Prof Curry’s comments. On the other hand, although Prof Curry is trying to be diplomatic about it, it is clear that she strongly disapproves of the BEST team PR strategy.
_________________________________________
Of course the NEWS is the cat & dog fight between Muller and Curry. Now if only we can get the major news media to publish it.
This sort of thing kills the “Consensus” myth.
Crosspatch wrote: “I have a feeling this will get absolutely zero notice in the US print and broadcast media.”
Maybe, but I wouldn’t bet on it. This was clearly an attempt to sucker that same media, and they bit hard on the bait. This could be one of those times when payback is due. And, unlike the hockey stick, this one is easy to explain. Presenting a graph using 10-year averaging to obscure the last 10 years of data can be explained to a sixth grader…the average reading age most news stories are presented at, I believe. In other words, even the reporters who were suckered can understand this scam. Indeed, this could be the final nail in the AGW coffin, especially since both sides will soon be solidly on record stating that the BEST data is the best land temperature record available. (Granted, the AGW crowd might be considering how to retract their initial praise of the data…)
Truly a boon to the popcorn industry, as Anthony indicated at the outset.
Donald says:
October 30, 2011 at 8:03 am
I’m not asking for you to write them all, I just want the link to where such data may be found, I can do the rest of the work on my own.
You can get that data by doing the work on your own, also. What would you consider a reliable thermometer?
stevo will never understand. All he does is cherry-pick. Here is a wide range of time scales:
http://img856.imageshack.us/img856/2403/dailyuahtempsmar92010.png
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/8YearTemps.jpg
http://oi52.tinypic.com/2agnous.jpg
http://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Bastardi-HadCrut15-years.gif
http://butnowyouknow.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/globa-mean-temp.gif?w=469&h=427
http://justdata.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/continuitybysectors1900-2009.jpg
http://www.climate4you.com/images/HadCRUT3%20GlobalMonthlyTempSince1958%20AndCO2.gif
http://www.drroyspencer.com/library/pics/2000-years-of-global-temperature.jpg
From two years to 2,000 years — and no evidence that CO2 has any significant effect.