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After almost two years and some false starts, BEST now has one paper that has finally passed peer review. The text below is from the email release sent late Saturday. It was previously submitted to JGR Atmospheres according to their July 8th draft last year, but appears to have been rejected as they now indicate it has been published in Geoinformatics and Geostatistics, a journal I’ve not heard of until now.
(Added note: commenter Michael D. Smith points out is it Volume 1 issue 1, so this appears to be a brand new journal. Also troubling, on their GIGS journal home page , the link to the PDF of their Journal Flier gives only a single page, the cover art. Download Journal Flier. With such a lack of description in the front and center CV, one wonders how good this journal is.)
Also notable, Dr. Judith Curry’s name is not on this paper, though she gets a mention in the acknowledgements (along with Mosher and Zeke). I have not done any detailed analysis yet of this paper, as this is simply an announcement of its existence. – Anthony
===============================================================
Berkeley Earth has today released a new set of materials, including gridded and more recent data, new analysis in the form of a series of short “memos”, and new and updated video animations of global warming. We are also pleased that the Berkeley Earth Results paper, “A New Estimate of the Average Earth Surface Land Temperature Spanning 1753 to 2011” has now been published by GIGS and is publicly available.
here: http://berkeleyearth.org/papers/.
The data update includes more recent data (through August 2012), gridded data, and data for States and Provinces. You can access the data here: http://berkeleyearth.org/data/.
The set of memos include:
- Two analyses of Hansen’s recent paper “Perception of Climate Change”
- A comparison of Berkeley Earth, NASA GISS, and Hadley CRU averaging techniques on ideal synthetic data
- Visualizing of Berkeley Earth, NASA GISS, and Hadley CRU averaging techniques
and are available here: http://berkeleyearth.org/available-resources/
==============================================================
A New Estimate of the Average Earth Surface Land Temperature Spanning 1753 to 2011
Abstract
We report an estimate of the Earth’s average land surface
temperature for the period 1753 to 2011. To address issues
of potential station selection bias, we used a larger sampling of
stations than had prior studies. For the period post 1880, our
estimate is similar to those previously reported by other groups,
although we report smaller uncertainties. The land temperature rise
from the 1950s decade to the 2000s decade is 0.90 ± 0.05°C (95%
confidence). Both maximum and minimum daily temperatures have
increased during the last century. Diurnal variations decreased
from 1900 to 1987, and then increased; this increase is significant
but not understood. The period of 1753 to 1850 is marked by
sudden drops in land surface temperature that are coincident
with known volcanism; the response function is approximately
1.5 ± 0.5°C per 100 Tg of atmospheric sulfate. This volcanism,
combined with a simple proxy for anthropogenic effects (logarithm
of the CO2 concentration), reproduces much of the variation in
the land surface temperature record; the fit is not improved by the
addition of a solar forcing term. Thus, for this very simple model,
solar forcing does not appear to contribute to the observed global
warming of the past 250 years; the entire change can be modeled
by a sum of volcanism and a single anthropogenic proxy. The
residual variations include interannual and multi-decadal variability
very similar to that of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO).
Full paper here: http://www.scitechnol.com/GIGS/GIGS-1-101.pdf
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An interview with OMICS Publishing Group’s Srinu Babu Gedela
http://www.richardpoynder.co.uk/OMICSb.pdf
Nevertheless, OMICS has published at least one article that even OMICS itself accepts should never have appeared in a peer-reviewed journal.
So we can now make that 2 articles.
Yes, OMICS operates an author-pays business model and authors are invoiced in relation to the funding available to them. In practice, this means that we provide complete waivers, or discounts of up to 90%, for some articles — depending on the request/research, and the effort the author has put into the respective article.
Right now out of every ten articles, two will get a waiver, and another four will get a discount.
Perhaps this is the answer to the question who paid and how it passed “peer” review having failed peer review in a real science journal
I wonder what cAGWers will make of this publication when they constantly claim sceptics can only publish in crap journals
janama says:
January 20, 2013 at 3:59 am
excellent – but why does it stop in the 1990’s – did the station move/cease?
But this is exactly why I’m calling Mosher on this issue – I would want to know – in detail – how the BEST process dealt with that data, and why – and I would want it demonstrated to such a level that I can accept it. Not by some specky-eyed spotty teenager computer data geek saying, ‘well, it didn’t look right, so I altered it!’ – yeah, in the AGW world, thats called ‘data quality checking’ !
Data quality – my ar$e!
sorry about the formatting of my comment 🙁
Reply: I prettied it up a bit for you 😉 -ModE]
If no journal of repute will publish you, then why not publish your own 😕
Let the paper stand or fall on its merits.
Can we cut back on insults? I know a lot of nice “leftist liberals” and hold some such attitudes myself. Calling them ‘psychopaths’ is, er, problematic. -ModE
As an Card Carrying Communist* from Old Europe, who seriously doubts that CO2 will have catastrophic effects on the climate, I am used to receiving insults both from the Green Alarmist side as well as from the Conservative/Free-Market/Libertarian/Neocon/Right-Wing/Reactionary/Whatever side.
Sure I don’t like being insulted (and sometimes it just makes me angry), but by now I simply to ignore these people and everything they say as best as I can.
I ignore any argument that starts with “Because of CO2 …” and I ignore anybody who’s main line of argument is “It’s because the [insert insult] lefties …”. It just makes it so much easier to ignore everything he says, if someone makes such stupid assertions. (And usually if one takes away the CO2 crap at the alarmist side, or the “lefties are evil” crap from the “Libertarian” side, nothing worthy to argue remains anyway).
If someone wants to preach only to “his” side: go ahead and insult the “other” side. However be ready to be ignored. And while we are at it: I don’t mind if you get snipped for your insults, as I wouldn’t read your crap anyway. Now go cry “Censorship!”
My two Euro-Cents
&
Have nice day
*And I want say: please stop lumping everybody together as “liberals” who disagrees with “the conservative” side. Liberalism is a political direction that is much more distinct than “everybody who is not conservative”. I am not an liberal, though I like some parts of liberalism. Same goes for the conservative side (or the libertarian, or any other political direction). It is simply not true that there are only two sets of political opinions, and you either have one or the other on any topic. It is like saying there are only two types of food: Hot and Cold. What utter BS.
And BTW forcing any discussion into a false dichotomy of “Conservatives vs. Liberals” or “Alarmists vs. Deniers” (or any other dichotomy) will hurt any discussion, as it mutes any differential appraisal of arguments, which we need to get a better understanding of reality.
More on OMICS owner of the journal:
http://www.jfdp.org/forum/forum_docs/1013jfdp1040_1_032912094346.pdf
OMICS offer a 21 day turn around, so it appears Muller used this journal to ensure publication will be in time for final submissions to the IPCC
“The quality of work in the OMICS journals appears to vary widely.
The company says that it rejects 30 percent of submissions due to
poor quality and that each article is reviewed by a minimum of two
reviewers, except for “rare cases” in which only one person reviews
an article.
But in some cases, that peer-review process does not appear to have
happened. Last year, for example, the company’s Journal of Earth
Science & Climatic Change published a paper that suggested a
causal link between Stonehenge and global climate change. The
paper was written by Otis D. Williams, a Detroit man with a
bachelor’s degree in criminal justice who says he taught himself
physics and biology in the past 10 years. In the published paper, Mr.
Williams posits that Earth is literally a living organism and that
Stonehenge is evidence of an infection on the European continent.
Global climate change, he argues, is Earth’s immune system
responding to the infection with “fever and chills.””
OMICS also publishes papers without permission.
No publications in well-known journals and now a publication in a brand new journal suggests very strongly that BEST is nothing more than a publicity or grant getting stunt. Wayne’s video link is laughable because it wasn’t a lecture on how to build your own greenhouse. I didn’t watch past covering the aquarium with saran wrap to show how CO2 works and beginning an explanation of how to control the climate. I’m pretty sure the climate has changed, is changing and will continue to change. My skepticism is significantly higher when folks like this tell me they can control the climate.
Ed MacAulay says:
January 19, 2013 at 6:55 pm
“..the entire change can be modeled by a sum of volcanism and a single anthropogenic proxy.”….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The key word is MODELED.
You can model the changes in the stock market based on the lengths of ladies skirts too…. What Skirt Lengths Tell You About The Stock Market
You could probably get a good correlation between climate and the lengths of ladies skirts or at least the number of days a year women bundle up in coats.
Back to CO2 as an indicator. The length of ladies skirts is an indicator of “an element of human behavior “ that effects both the length of the skirts AND the stock market. CO2 is such an indicator since the increase of TSI LEADS CO2 graph and TSI leads the temperature graph See Bob Tisdale: The Natural Warming of the Global Oceans – Videos – Parts 1 & 2 for how the TSI at the surface varies and changes the amount of energy entering the ocean.
CO2 reflects the temperature of the oceans link which reflects the amount of energy from the sun heating the ocean because CO2 out gases as the temperature of the oceans rise.
The oceans are not only 70% of the earth’s surface but they also directly effect the temperatures on land.
EXAMPLES:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/11/ocean-temperatures-can-predict-amazon-fire-season-severity/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/07/23/surge-in-global-temperatures-since-1977-can-be-attributed-to-a-1976-climate-shift-in-the-pacific-ocean/
By leaving out the link between solar energy input to ocean temperature and the link from the ocean temperature to the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, the entire Climastrologist Team™ misleads the public into thinking the minor addition of CO2 from human activity has some sort of effect on temperature.
This is why the assumptions:
1) TSI changes little and therefore the sun has no impact on climate change link
2) CO2 is well mixed in the atmosphere link and graph
3) C12/C13 ratio shows mankind is the criminal putting more CO2 in the atmosphere link
are defended to the death here on WUWT.
I think Berkley have been duped by OMICS, but then again surely they carried out due diligence on the publication before paying? You know, the same as when they carried out due diligence before their PR stunts
Ed MacAulay says:
January 19, 2013 at 6:55 pm
“..the entire change can be modeled by a sum of volcanism and a single anthropogenic proxy.”….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Joanne Nova showed how global warming was attributable to price rises in American Stamps:
http://joannenova.com.au/2009/05/shock-global-temperatures-driven-by-us-postal-charges/
bw says:
January 19, 2013 at 7:52 pm
Didn’t Muller say they “looked at” the UHI claims and dismissed them? How can temps from thermometers located in the path of air conditioner exhaust and over concrete runways be no different from pristine rural thermometers??? That doesn’t pass the sanity test.
……………
Why does the GHCN v3 data change from month to month? With each new data set showing the temps from the 1900s to 1930s becoming cooler while the data from the 1970s to now get warmer than ever. http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
………
Why did the data at Hansen’s GISS site show a massive alteration of data around December 2012 where about 10 percent of station data were altered to show much cooler temps in the early records. Meanwhile many other stations had recent years (2007 to 2012) of data deleted?? Interesting that those years had been showing an obvious cooling trend…..
I tend to very much agree with bw.
The way how historical data is being changed is far from being scientific, the adjustments – TOBS adjustment removed would almost completely cancel the results, in addition the huge variances seen in the 19th century which dissapeared in the 20th, the UHI being ignored make me doubt very strongly of the very validity of such reconstruction.
The explanation is not satisfactory.
I find it absurd to think that the thermometers placed around human activities centers are not influenced by those, that the 7 fold increase in human population and 100 fold increase in energy production concentrated in 1-3% of the surface of the planet, exactly in the area where those thermometers are, does not influence those, when each normal human can see this influence day by day with their simple car thermometers. Was the thermometer in Sydney in 1790 influenced the same way as now by the city? Take any other world location. Absurd.
Has this not changed the same as the temperature curve? (Human population increase, land usage, asphalt streets and concrete areas, etc?)
To me the Berkeley temperature curve is telling about the average temperature in the 1% human locations area and very few about the globe climate itself. The less huge variances in the 20th century may be explained through the fact that human locations ensure a more stable area, with bigger impact on the environment reducing the temperature variances within those.
The confidence interval is absurdly narrow and very often we see changes to past temperature values which move them out of previous confidence intervals.
Obviously the models have a systematic flaw in the way how they address the CO2 influence. Retrofitting the data to model results, overeliance on models for calculating the input data seem to be a major issue in the progress of science nowadays.
I find that Berkeley have missed an opportunity to add value to the climate discussion, pity. On the contrary I feel like they managed to increase suspicion and division.
As skeptics for the last 30 years we can rely on satellite measurements RSS, UAH, ocean surface which show small variations. This observations need to be continued and kept away from adjusters, raw data archived and analysed, we may learn something about climate out from there.
As the climate does not cooperate, the longer the time goes by, the weaker the warmista position is. The numbers are revised and revised down, and I am confident that this will continue.
The past adjustments continue but less and less people take this as serious indication of past temperature.
“Many of the changes in land-surface temperature can be explained by a combination of volcanoes and a proxy for human greenhouse gas emissions. Solar variation does not seem to impact the temperature trend.”
Oh really? If this is the Best they have to offer, I’d hate to see their Worst. This is simply pseudo-science, fit for the garbage bin only.
I appears at least that Mosher is carrying a lot of water for these guys but produces little in the way of links to the “raw” data or in other cases backs his various assertions in any other way.
oldfossil ^up thread^
I sympathize with your desire to hold a civilized dialogue with the plague victims. If I remember correctly you came to the game recently.
I felt like this for nearly the whole of the my first year of being called the most despicable names and having comments deleted/edited for daring to question the central tenets of the rigid dogma of the religion that ‘believes’ CO2 is bad or will be bad for the planet and it’s inhabitants (in the amounts that we will ever be capable of liberating), whilst ignoring the hi-jack of the entirety of environmentalism, the diversion of funding from truly worthy causes and widespread scientific malfeasance in the same watch.
For the last 11 years I have been of a different mind.
I want all of them to face criminal charges. All of them. They all get their day in court to explain why I/we should be hung/drawn/quartered/incarcerated/put on a list/spike etc for questioning their utter lack of evidential support for their smug conjecturing. Or their data-torture. Or their unmitigated sophistry and elitism. Or their abuse of peer-review. Or their ‘hiding’ … well, anything inconvenient. Or their pushing technologies out of the development phase into production decades early. Or their ignorance. Or their blind faith. I could go on.
No turning of the other cheek for me. A decade+ of abuse changes a person.
@ur momisugly oldfossil
When “Best” first started we (at least I) thought they were setting out to better quantify the warming since the LIA, instead they jump to the conclusion that it’s anthropogenic with much ado, fireworks, and fanfare.
Let’s say we have 3 equations with 4 unknowns, we can try different combinations of the variables and find one that works (“a” answer), in fact we could find several that work. The problem I have is they are presenting “a” answer as if it is “the” answer. This is so far from acceptable it is unfathomable that anyone with the credentials of the “Best” crew would present it as scientific.
Peter Maddock says:
January 20, 2013 at 2:05 am
…If they make no such statement we are probably correct in our first thoughts.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Do not forget a Shell Oil President, Marlan Downey, “Former President of the international subsidiary of Shell Oil” is now part of Muller’s privately held consulting firm….
Muller now claims in print to have been a “Climate Skeptic” who has been ‘reformed’ by the evidence but he never was a “Climate Skeptic” as his 2003 published comments show.
At this point I would not trust Muller or anything he touches. The fact that Judith Curry has no use for his work is also indicative. Observation-based (?) attribution by Judith Curry
I’m underimpressed that the journal is embedding advertising for its own services actually in the copy for the referenced paper. Here’s what it says:
‘Submit your next manuscript and get advantages of SciTechnol
submissions
50 Journals
21 Day rapid review process
1000 Editorial team
2 Million readers
More than 5000 Facebook
Publication immediately after acceptance
Quality and quick editorial, review processing
Submit your next manuscript at ● http://www.scitechnol.com/submission‘
Not that I’ve a huge amount of faith that traditional peer-review adds very much apart from gate-keeping, but surely this is scraping along as pretty much ‘vanity publishing’?
And I wonder if the journal will ever have a second edition?.Perhaps ‘Gergis et al’ is still looking for a final resting place…..?
If OMICS has a history of charging the authors after publication http://scholarlyoa.com/2012/05/05/omics-publishing-launches-new-brand-with-53-journal-titles/
have Mosher, Zeke and Judith Curry received / paid the charge? : > )
I liked this observation from the editor of the new journal (Mark Birkin, School of Geography, Leeds, UK)
‘
And although he was writing about social science, I’m sure his sentiment will find much resonance here.
‘Idealised toy systems’ will be a lasting image, I think.
Bill Illis says:
January 20, 2013 at 2:51 am
I would sure like to see the before and after of how the “scapel” method creating 179,000 new stations changed the overall trend over time….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Check out DiggingInTheClay, there are several posts on the WUWT: “march of the thermometers” there.
Look around this article: The ‘Station drop out’ problem
It wouldn’t surprise me that BEST had trouble publishing in standard journals for the same reasons skeptics have trouble. Remember, he POed Mann and Mann is likely one of the gatekeepers.
It would be interesting to know if any skeptical papers have been submitted to this journal and what happened.
@ur momisugly oldfossil
Let me put this another way; note this from the abstract:
“the entire change can be modeled by a sum of volcanism and a single anthropogenic proxy.”
Given enough time and resources I’m confident I could show:
The entire change can be modeled by a sum of volcanism and a single solar proxy.
The entire change can be modeled by a sum of radio transmissions and a single anthropogenic proxy.
The entire change can be modeled by a sum of international trade and a single cosmological proxy.
The entire change can be modeled by a sum of volcanism and a single witchcraft proxy.
This doesn’t even come close to “proving” anything; in fact it’s barely supporting evidence.
GIGS Editors & Editorial Board
Craig ZumBrunnen, PhD University of Washington, USA
Clifford J. Mugnier Louisiana State University, USA
Jeremy Dunning, PhD Indiana University Bloomington, USA
Daniel W. Goldberg, PhD University of Southern California, USA
Christopher Badurek, PhD Appalachian State University, USA
Yong Gang Li, PhD University of Southern California, USA
Yao-Yi Chiang, PhD University of Southern California, USA
Jixiang Wu, PhD South Dakota State University, USA
Darren M. Scott, PhD Mc master university, Canada
Dongmei Chen, PhD Queen’s University, Canada
Kip Jeffrey University Leicester, UK
Nicholas Tate, PhD University Leicester, UK
Mark Birkin, PhD university of leeds, UK
Chris Brunsdon, PhD University of Liverpool, UK
Martin Kappas, PhD Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany
Sandra de Iaco, PhD University of Salento, Italy
Jose-Maria Montero, PhD Castile-La Mancha University, Spain
S.M. de Jong, PhD Utrecht University, Netherlands
Fung Tung, PhD Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong kong
Abdulwahab A. Abokhodair, PhD King Fahd University, Saudi Arabia
Itzhak Benenson, PhD Tel Aviv University, Israel
Itzhak Omer, PhD Tel Aviv University, Israel
knr says:
January 20, 2013 at 3:48 am
…… And the worst part is the wall of silence from their fellows over this , which means that way AGW theory falls it will take much more with it .
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
You have got that right. I had little respect for the American Chemical Society (ACS) and dropped my membership after thirty years when they endorsed CAGW. What little respect I had left went down the tubes when I read:
Science, WHAT science? ACS is now a lobbying group lead by someone who does not even have a degree in science!
ACS is just one of the scientific societies that gave up the scientific method and critical thinking to climb on to the CAGW band wagon. With luck they will ALL crash and burn with the CAGW band wagon and true scientists will move on to establish different societies.
John Trigge (in Oz) says:
January 20, 2013 at 3:57 am
How do they get 95% confidence in figures to 5/100ths of a degree from measurements that are nowhere near this accuracy?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
They didn’t and they can not. In statistics if you had thirty thermometers reading simultaneously the same area at the same time you could do the statistics on the data to get a better estimate of the true value and get better precision than you had with one reading.
However this was not done. Instead they fake it by using anomalies. See link and link