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:
woodfortrees (Paul Clark) says:
October 30, 2011 at 9:10 am
Donald: I started where you are and created WoodForTrees.org to do exactly the same kind of thing. You might find it does what you want anyway, or you can get any of the data from the ‘data’ link at the bottom of the graph pages.
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Donald,
The woodfortrees.org data goes back to 1800 for the BEST preliminary. If Paul Clark started WoodForTrees.org then thank-you Paul. I have two wood stoves 😉 and I appreciate your site.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/best/from:1600
Steve From Rockwood: Tom P – you are full of crap.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/best/last:120
If you honestly believe there is a trend in the last 10 years of BEST data, then congratulations – you are a climate scientist.
OLS produces a positive trend line over the last 10 years, despite an enormous negative outlier. If you eyeball it the data look flat, and the variance is great, nevertheless the trend is positive.
This episode shows again that if you talk to the press the resultant story will misquote you and the headline will be extravagant and totally unreliable.
James Sexton says:
October 30, 2011 at 9:11 am
….. UHI verified? Oceans notably cooling? So much…… And I just don’t have time today….http://suyts.wordpress.com/2011/10/30/new-plots-from-wood-for-trees/
================================================
You think……….
They’ve verified UHI…while temps are going up on only 30% of the planet…and temps are crashing on 70%
Then blame ENSO, ocean temps, hiding the heat in the water, etc etc as the excuse……
http://suyts.wordpress.com/2011/10/30/new-plots-from-wood-for-trees/
I remember when BEST was being proposed or first talked about. I remember the hopes many here put into them coming up with a close to unbiased report on the truth about Earth temperatures. I said back then, although I cannot find the story I wrote it in, that BEST would be just like all the other institutional climate organizations and power would gravitate to those with an agenda and come out as biased as every other study.
Urban heat island significantly under “corrected” for, check.
Old temperatures “corrected” downwards, check.
Recent temperatures “corrected” upwards, check.
Science by press release, check.
Pretty much eery single aspect of BEST has proven to be for the propagandizing of global warming. Suckering the skeptic blogs into supporting and adding reputation to themselves. I understand that you cannot stop them from being biased, particularly if you are not involved, This was never about creating a more reliable and honest temperature record, it was about increasing the credibility of the global warming mantra. I am certainly disappointed that I was right. BESTer luck next time in getting a heavily funded group of people together to actually tell the truth, and not the “truth” that gets the more funding…
Latitude says:
October 30, 2011 at 7:30 am
“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”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303627104576411850666582080.html
__________________________________________________
You can add to that from an attorney’s blog site:
Drug testing firm faked documents, says FDA
“……A significant number of falsified records were uncovered in the investigation. According to the FDA, in at least 1,900 studies conducted between April 2005 and June 2009 the laboratory technicians named as conducting the studies were not actually present at the time of the study. The FDA believes that Cetero may have “fixed” those studies in order to get the results that support the drug companies’ agendas.
The concerns raised by the investigation are so substantial that the FDA has actually told drug manufacturers that they may need to confirm results of any studies completed by Cetero between April 2005 and June 2010. Depending on the “true” results of these drug studies, some drugs may be found to be defective and have to be removed from the market…..”
Now doesn’t that give you the warm fuzzies about honor and integrity and science????
Professor Curry is not to be trifled with. Just the data please.No need for unproven dicta and keep your politics at home.
Hmm, this is a somewhat different result that the one that I got when I plotted the data. I started my plot at the beginning of 1998 and I plotted all the remaining data that I had. The data that I downloaded originally only went through May of 2010. The value that I have for March is 0.859. The GWPF chart looks like it has roughly a -1.0 for the same month. The trend that I have for the entire period is 0.228. That was a bigger trend than any of the other instrument records. And it was right in line with the IPCC prediction. So now I will have to go back and check their data again to see what changed. Off hand, however, it strikes me that a data point that is about 1.75 C cooler than the surrounding data is most likely an error. I hate to say that, because I would much rather that the March data point in the GWPF study be true. But I rather doubt it.
Let me say also, that from the time that Judith put the BEST information on her site, she did nothing to defend the BEST results. I put dozens of posts up at her site making the case that the BEST UHI study was completely incapable of isolating or determining the magnitude of any UHI effect. The study was mis-designed from the beginning. From her comment above, it sounds like she agrees.
Donald
There is no such thing as a ‘global’ average for the period 1750 to 1880.
Giss started recording from 1880 and Hadley cru from 1850.
It is often said that Central England Temperature (CET) maintained by the UK Met office is a good proxy for Northern hemispheric temperatures and also for global ones.
This is the preferred Met office CET measurement back to 1772
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/
However, the record goes all the way back to 1650 and this is one of the graphs of it I use.
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0120a7c87805970b-pi
If you want to graph it yourself the data is on the Met office site. I am currently working on my own reconstruction to take CET back to 1550.
This is my site where I keep individual historic temperature records-there are also lots of articles on it.
http://climatereason.com/LittleIceAgeThermometers/
If you are looking for more specific information please email me at tonyATclimatereasonDOt com and I will try to help
tonyb
I should have guessed that the Mail overstated Curry’s views. Now that I’ve read Curry’s new post at her blog, it all “boggles the mind” somewhat less, though it still deserves a “wow!”.
She didn’t and doesn’t liken the current matter to Climategate, and she thinks that it is some tarnish but not a scandal. For my lack of due skepticism about a newspaper report, I’ll eat humble pie (the fallibilism-rewarding kind: toasted bagel sandwich of scrambled egg, melted cheese, grilled bacon, ham, sausage). Judith says that Muller’s graph does “hide the decline” but she affirms commendable transparency about methods and data by Muller et al at the BEST project. I’d guess that, to the Mail reporter David Rose, “hide the decline” and “Climategate” were interchangeable classifications. I still think that the original “hide the decline” was some serious “tarnish,” really a permanent dent in one’s trust, but indeed Climategate was major-league, an outright scandal.
She also says that the quoted statements directly attributed to her by the Mail are accurately quoted. Now, those quotes include: “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.”.She thinks that the preliminary results were oversold and adds that her most important statement in the Mail was “‘To say that there is detracts from the credibility of the data, which is very unfortunate” (following on her previous quoted statement “There is no scientific basis for saying that warming hasn’t stopped,”), and that the point should have been the superior quality of BEST data – “the best we currently have available for land surface temperatures,” she says at her blog.
Muller still has some splainin to do. If he’s really that much more familiar with the BEST data than Curry is, then it’s a second helping of humble pie for me, with an added dash of habanero sauce. Okay, make that three dashes. Yum!
Note on getting BEST’s data: Motl has links.
Julian Williams in Wales says:
October 30, 2011 at 8:46 am
“I always poo-poo the word conspiracy, because I do not believe in them. But in this case I am not sure what word I should substitute? ”
Yes, that is an interesting dilemma. If an organisation has an objective paragraph saying something like ” We will look for all proof that the warming lately is due to burning fossil fuels”…..and if that organisation is trying to get governments all over the world to sign a paper in Copenhagen which in effect turns over the control over power-consumption in all those countries to the said organisation….
And then some people say; Look what they are doing! They are trying to take over the control over these countries!
Are they pin-pointing a conspiracy? I dont know…..
If someone else is at work hiding data, keeping others out of the loop, selecting lead authors from groups like the WWF or Greenpeace….putting a strangely high weight on models, looking the other way when it comes to real life data….pal review…..going on like this for years, and finally summing all this up in a big climate-bible, and then saying; Look, we need to control the power consumption in all countries NOW.
And we need a police force with near anti-terrorist powers to upheld our new LAW.
Is it a conspiracy?
And if you discover that they intend to use secret communication channels, and that all government organisations should be allowed to LIE when asked for information……
Is it a conspiracy?
I dont know….maybe it is just government at work?
Donald says:
October 30, 2011 at 8:07 am
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
____________________________________________-
Donald, there in lies one of the major concerns of Skeptics! The data was NOT available.
ICO Orders UEA to Produce CRUTEM Station Data
Breaking news: Today probably marks the closing chapter of the longstanding FOI request for CRUTEM station data. The UK Information Commissioner (ICO) has rendered a decision (see here) on Jonathan Jones’ appeal of the UEA’s refusal to provide Prof J. Jones with the CRUTEM station data that they had previously provided to Georgia Tech. The decision that can only be characterized as a total thrashing of the University of East Anglia.
Professor Jonathan Jones of Oxford University (like me, an alumnus of Corpus Christi, Oxford), is a Bishop Hill and CA reader and was one of several CA readers who requested the CRUTEM version sent to Georgia Tech earlier that year….
[J.] Jones’ request for CRUTEM data, like mine, was refused by UEA. Like me, [J.] Jones appealed the refusal at UEA (the first stage). On Oct 23, 2009, UEA rejected his appeal. (My appeal was rejected about 3 weeks later on the very eve of Climategate.) While I didn’t pursue the appeal to the ICO, Prof [J] Jones did appeal and the present decision is the result of this appeal. I was unaware that this appeal was pending and the decision came as a surprise to me. Since the story started at CA, Andrew Montford and Prof [J] Jones decided that news of the decision should also be broken here…..” Climate Audit by Steve McIntyre: http://climateaudit.org/2011/06/27/ico-orders-uea-to-produce-crutem-station-data/
Steve McIntyre/Climate Audit is the one you should make your request to.
Stevo,
Stop your trolling.
you state “Jeremy: I do not throw out any data. What made you think that I did?”
Above you dismiss the recent lack of warming over the past decade as statistically insignificant – this is clearly “throwing out data” which does not fit your meme. Stop wasting everyone’s time with your puerile trolls and pretense – you know exactly what you are doing and pretending otherwise is behaving like a troll.
woodfortrees (Paul Clark) says:
October 30, 2011 at 9:10 am
Can you answer a couple of questions for me.
Is the data that you analyzed Actual Max Min Daily values or the TAve values supplied by BEST?
Did you see the TMax data that they originally posted?
Are you aware that there appears to be other errors (apart form April) in the data, like higher averages in Dec/jan than in June/July etc?
@richard Verney
“Lets hope that South Africa is in for a cold and wet summer.”
++++
Southern Africa, the summer rainfall region of it, is at the wet end of its 19 year drought cycle so it is going to be very wet and probably cooler than ‘normal’ for the COP17 meeting in Durban, though that is perfectly normal for the wet end of the drought cycle. This is the peak year, with rainfall going to decline from now until 2021. The next peak wet will be in 2030. It is a very good year to plant long season, high yielding maize at +45k plants/ha.
There is a caveat from history which is that any year could be a spuriously hot or dry one, but generally the rainfall plot shows a perfect sinewave and appears to be related to lunar position.
Cape Town and the area immediately around it (the winter rainlfall region) has a 10 year drought cycle and is also a sinewave which can be shown by plotting the 400 years of rainfall data on a 10 year time series.
HADCET – 1926 – 2nd warmest summer ever.
BEST – +6C rise from 1809 to 1922 – http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/best/from:1809/to:1823
Isn’t boring NOW better?
I’ve always got the impression from Muller that he’s a duplicitious publicity hound so I’m not too surprised with his handling of the announcement of the results. I do feel sorry for Dr. Curry though. He obviously didn’t consult her about much while being happy to add her (still) good name under his.
Pointman
Donald says: [David, woodfortrees, . . .]
October 30, 2011 at 8:52 am
“ . . a link to the global average temperature for 1750 to 1880?”
I have to say that your request and the exchanges with others has me baffled. Over the past several years, on WUWT and other sites, numerous postings and discussions have worked on this topic.
Folks have questioned the existence of something called a “global average temperature.” Lack of and changing number of reporting stations, both land and water, is cited as a problem. Glass thermometers physically change as they age. They break and are replaced with nothing to show how the old and the new compare. Locations (and elevations) of stations change. Stations once rural become surrounded by urban development.
Folks have tried many times to make some sense of these records of temperature – equating the result with climate. That equivalence has also been questioned. The current kerfulle shows, again, that the problems with the temperature record will not be resolved.
I’ve read 3+ years of these postings. Search this and related sites for postings – many giving links to the data sets. Try Climate Audit (CA) also. After about 100 hours of reading you may find your answer but I doubt it. Be prepared to NOT find a link to a “global average temperature” (past or present) that will satisfy you.
Perhaps more problematic is that such information, if found, will not answer the question about whether or not human induced CO2 contributions will bring about catastrophic environmental problems.
————– One interesting series:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/
Bruce,
The difference between the 2006 (positive) and 2010 (negative) spikes is:
1) 2010 is much bigger
2) 2010 is flagged as uncertain in the data
3) 2006 matches other datasets, 2010 doesn’t
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/best/from:2006/plot/best-upper/from:2006/plot/best-lower/from:2006/plot/crutem3vgl/from:2006
It’s clearly an outlier caused by incomplete data and we really didn’t ought to be including it in trends
Well, I found my own problem. The difference was not in March. My March number of 0.859 was correct. The problem was April. When I used MS Word to cut the anomaly column out of their download, I ended up cutting off the minus sign for April. I wasn’t clued in because the value without the minus sign fit perfectly with the months around it.
The 2010 values look like this.
1.135
1.086
0.859
-1.035
1.098
This still leaves me wondering about the April value. It’s actually 2C cooler that the other months around it. Anyone want to place a bet about that value being changed in the future?
“stevo says:
October 30, 2011 at 8:10 am
old construction worker: “What the last 10yrs have shown us is CO2 has had little effect if any since 2000.”
Interesting. As I remember, the “hypothesis” or “theory” goes something like this: the more CO2 in the atmosphere the warmer the our World will become. and to prove the point computer generated climate model were developed to show “CO2 drives the Climate” Over the last ten years, the level of CO2 has increased, has it not? Over the same time period the “world temperature” has either been flat or has decline, has it not? So, we are told is “aerosols” are masking the effect of CO2 on “world temperature”. Therefore “aerosols” must have a stronger influence on our “temperature/climate” than CO2 over the last ten years. If “aerosol” has a stronger effect than CO2 from 2000 to 2011, then “aerosol” must have played bigger part than CO2 in our “temperature/ climate” from 1990 to 2000. If not why not? The next thing you know scientist will be tell us that clouds and cloud formation has a stronger effect on “temperature/ climate” than both “aerosol” and “CO2” combined which “I feel” would be closer to the “truth” after having worked outside in our “temperature/climate” for over the last 45 years. So, stop talking out of both sides of your mouth.
Smokey says:
October 30, 2011 at 8:44 am
stevo will never understand. All he does is cherry-pick. Here is a wide range of time scales:
_________________________
Stevo understands perfectly well but it clashes with “THE MESSAGE”
The message is:
1. Watts is a liar.
2. Skeptics are liars.
Those two messages are needed to advance the “Agenda” Money and power for the few and abject poverty and suffering for the rest of us. Stevo is hoping he is in the first group but history shows the intellectuals get stomped after the revolution.
Attacks on Intelligentsia
Chinas Massacre in Tiananmen Square
Pol Pot and the Killing Fields of Cambodia needs no link.
A.C.Osborne: I’m just using the analysis data from http://berkeleyearth.org/analysis.php
Well,
People wanted more data. ha. There are a few points that everyone is missing.
1. RomanM and JeffId also created a method a while ago. That method also showed more warming in recent years.
2. Why does more data show more warming?
The was a huge amount of misunderstanding around the great dying of thermometers. Without actually looking at data people concluded that there was some sort of conspiracy to remove stations that were cooler– that is stations at more extreme latitudes and stations at higher altitude. In looking through datasets you will find that some datasets have series that start 10 years ago. This is data that will be dropped from CRU. It tends to be data that warms. With the improved methods ( Romans and BEST) you now get to use that data. You now get to see that with more data and better methods you show more warming.
If BEST were cooler, nobody here would call it an outlier.
When JeffId and Roman showed warmer.. nobody here called it an outlier.
gotta love selective skepticism.
REPLY: Tsk Mosh, be sure to attribute appropriately. Note that “outlier” was Paul Clark’s description, and he’s hardly a skeptic, nor selective, since he makes all the data available- Anthony
@stevo
I thought you would be hanging around grasping at straws and here you are. How is it going with your attempts to label Anthony a liar because he says the contents of the BEST pre-release is a crock? Even Muller’s co-author thinks it is a crock! Ha ha ha ha! Woo-hoo this is Prime Time entertainment.
The Mail and Guardian is caught in a blatant lie attempting to present the real decline in temperatures as a rise. How Monbiotian. Remember Monbiot? He is the one who made several videos (at public BBC expense) ‘showing’ that the rapidly melting glaciers in the Himalayas would lead to the drying up of the Mekong River.
And now the CRUTEM data has been ordered released – we will get to see even greater perfidy than before committed by the UEA (if that is possible). These days I am beginning to think anything is!