-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
B.E.S.T., Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature, is the organization, formed by Richard Muller, Professor of Physics at the University of California at Berkeley and self-proclaimed climate skeptic, to analyze temperature data. B.E.S.T. has received a total of $623,087 in financial support, with the largest contribution, $150,000, coming from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. B.E.S.T. directly addressed concerns including urban heat island effect, poor station quality, and data selection bias.
Their results: “Global warming is real.” Before the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, Muller testified that “we see a global warming trend that is very similar to that previously reported by the other groups.” That similarity can be seen in the graphs below.
The issue of temperature stations in the U.S. located near buildings, in parking lots, or close to other heat sources has been raised by climate change skeptics such as Anthony Watts. Muller testified:
Did such poor station quality exaggerate the estimates of global warming? We’ve studied this issue, and our preliminary answer is no.
The Berkeley Earth analysis shows that over the past 50 years the poor stations in the U.S. network do not show greater warming than do the good stations.
Thus, although poor station quality might affect absolute temperature, it does not appear to affect trends, and for global warming estimates, the trend is what is important.
Regarding the urban heat island effect, the study concludes that:
The urban heat island effect is locally large and real, but does not contribute significantly to the average land temperature rise. That’s because the urban region of the Earth amount to less than 1% of the land area.
Anthony Watts is a weather-caster turned global warming skeptic who stated, “I’m prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong.” That was in March. Now, Watts “consider[s] the paper fatally flawed.” Watts’ reaction moves him from the category of global warming skeptic to global warming denier. Watts has gained a certain amount of fame by claiming that the temperature data was flawed. If he had accepted the B.E.S.T. results as promised, his celebrity status would be lost.
H/T: Zingularity, LA Times, Brad Plumer, Ron Chusid.
I’ll dedicate this one to myself 🙂
Too bad for you that Richard Mueller isn’t the final arbiter of science either.
BUELLER
Ladies and gentlemen, you are such a wonderful crowd, we’d like to play a little tune for you. It’s one of my personal favorites and I’d like to dedicate it to a young man who doesn’t think he’s seen anything good today – Gene Howington, this one’s for you. Your a
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZW8TlrYhBxk
SING ALONG
you dramatically increase the probability of fooling yourself!
and in honor of Nal live from St Louis we bring you Styx go CARDS !!!!!!!
Too bad for you that Judith Curry isn’t the final arbiter of science.
Slartibartfast could you please tell us who Doug Keenan is and how he is wrong. You being the famed mathematician and statistician your are 😉
The Economist asked me to comment on four research papers from the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project. The four papers, which have not been published, are as follows.
Decadal variations in the global atmospheric land temperatures
Influence of urban heating on the global temperature land average using rural sites identified from MODIS classifications
Berkeley Earth temperature averaging process
Earth atmospheric land surface temperature and station quality
Below is some of the correspondence that we had. (Note: my comments were written under time pressure, and are unpolished.)
Unless the data is measured with error, you never, ever, for no reason, under no threat, SMOOTH the series! And if for some bizarre reason you do smooth it, you absolutely on pain of death do NOT use the smoothed series as input for other analyses!
If, in a moment of insanity, you do smooth time series data and you do use it as input to other analyses, you dramatically increase the probability of fooling yourself! T
http://www.informath.org/apprise/a5700.htm
but yet
The world’s ten deadliest floods occurred when CO2 was below 350 ppm.
24 of the deadliest tornado’s happened when CO2 was below 350 ppm.
The strongest and deadliest US hurricanes occurred when CO2 was below 350 ppm.
Nine of the world’s ten deadliest hurricanes and typhoons occurred when CO2 was below 350 ppm.
In the worlds history CO2 has been higher up to 20 times of what it is today but we are all still here.
Roger Lambert
based on our current CO2 levels vs the 1800′s
350 is the number that leading scientists say is the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide—measured in “Parts Per Million” in our atmosphere. 350 PPM—it’s the number humanity needs to get back to as soon as possible to avoid runaway climate change.
Dr. James Hansen, of NASA, the United States’ space agency, has been researching global warming longer than just about anyone else. He was the first to publicly testify before the U.S. Congress, in June of 1988, that global warming was real. He and his colleagues have used both real-world observation, computer simulation, and mountains of data about ancient climates to calculate what constitutes dangerous quantities of carbon in the atmosphere. The Bush Administration has tried to keep Hansen and his team from speaking publicly, but their analysis has been widely praised by other scientists, and by experts like Nobel Prize winner Al Gore. The full text of James Hansen’s paper about 350 can be found here.
http://arxiv.org/abs/0804.1126
Make no mistake—getting back to 350 means transforming our world.
http://www.350.org/en/understanding-350
350 is a very important number according to the experts.
Too bad you didn’t bother to read (let alone understand)
That Judith Curry disputes what Mueller is saying.
Roger Lambert
based on our current CO2 levels vs the 1800′s
The world’s ten deadliest floods occurred when CO2 was below 350 ppm.
24 of the deadliest tornado’s happened when CO2 was below 350 ppm.
The strongest and deadliest US hurricanes occurred when CO2 was below 350 ppm.
Nine of the world’s ten deadliest hurricanes and typhoons occurred when CO2 was below 350 ppm.
In the worlds history CO2 has been higher up to 20 times of what it is today but we are all still here.
Too bad you didn’t bother to read (let alone understand) some of the other posts, Bdaman.
Then you might realize how foolishly desperate your protestations look.
‘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.
Now lets jump to CO2 shall we. It is claimed that 350 ppm is the “safe zone”
If we have no statistical warming in the last 15 years how can it be that the temperature is not rising in lock step with the increase in CO2.
How is it that most of the worlds natural disasters occured below 350 ppm but yet 350 is the “safe zone”
As I said many times before the Earth does not have a thermostat to which you can control the earths temperature. If you wish to TRY and do this you must control solar radiation. This is being looked at as a viable way to control the Earths temperature as we speak.
Jones and Trenberth now gives credence to what Judith Curry has said.
“in the wake of the unexpected global warming standstill, many climate scientists who had previously rejected sceptics’ arguments were now taking them much more seriously.”
Kevin Trenberth to Michael Mann
From: Kevin Trenberth
To: Michael Mann
Subject: Re: BBC U-turn on climate
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:57:37 -0600
Cc: Stephen H Schneider , Myles Allen , peter stott , “Philip D. Jones” , Benjamin Santer , Tom Wigley , Thomas R Karl , Gavin Schmidt , James Hansen , Michael Oppenheimer
Hi all
Well I have my own article on where the heck is global warming ? We are asking that here in Boulder where we have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on record. We had 4 inches of snow. The high the last 2 days was below 30F and the normal is 69F, and it smashed the previous records for these days by 10F. The low was about 18F and also a record low, well below the previous record low.
This is January weather (see the Rockies baseball playoff game was canceled on saturday and then played last night in below freezing weather).
Trenberth, K. E., 2009: An imperative for climate change planning: tracking Earth’s global energy. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 1, 19-27, doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2009.06.001. [1][PDF] (A PDF of the published version can be obtained from the author.)
***
The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.***
” in the wake of the unexpected global warming standstill ”
Phil Jones further admitted that in the last 15 years there had been no ‘statistically significant’ warming, although he argued this was a blip rather than the long-term trend.
He also agreed that there had been two periods which experienced similar warming, from 1910 to 1940 and from 1975 to 1998, but said these could be explained by natural phenomena whereas more recent warming could not.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1250872/Climategate-U-turn-Astonishment-scientist-centre-global-warming-email-row-admits-data-organised.html#ixzz1cGLRe900
” in the wake of the unexpected global warming standstill ”
Phil Jones the climate expert at the centre of a media storm over the release of emails onto the internet has admitted that he did not follow correct procedures over a key scientific paper.
In an interview with the science journal Nature, Phil Jones, the head of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University East Anglia, admitted it was “not acceptable” that records underpinning a 1990 global warming study have been lost.
The missing records make it impossible to verify claims that rural weather stations in developing China were not significantly moved, as it states in the 1990 paper, which was published in Nature. “It’s not acceptable … [it’s] not best practice,” Jones said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/15/phil-jones-lost-weather-data
Sometimes people can tell you there motives while tryimg to defend themselves.
He said his decision to publish was completely unrelated to the forthcoming United Nations climate conference.
This, he said, was ‘irrelevant’, insisting that nothing could have been further from his mind than trying to influence it.
Yes professor we believe you.
as I said earlier wait til you find out what Mrs Mueller has been doing.
In fact, she added, in the wake of the unexpected global warming standstill, many climate scientists who had previously rejected sceptics’ arguments were now taking them much more seriously.
They were finally addressing questions such as the influence of clouds, natural temperature cycles and solar radiation – as they should have done, she said, a long time ago.
Maybe this is why they couldn’t wait for the normal peer review process.
Published last week ahead of a major United Nations climate summit in Durban, South Africa, next month, their work was cited around the world as irrefutable evidence that only the most stringent measures to reduce carbon dioxide emissions can save civilisation as we know it.
Sorry don’t have time to read everyone comments my head hurts really bad.
After you read this yours will be too. Note : not from Briepart
The Mail on Sunday can reveal that a leading member of Prof Muller’s team has accused him of trying to mislead the public by hiding the fact that BEST’s research shows global warming has stopped.
Prof Judith Curry, who chairs the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at America’s prestigious Georgia Institute of Technology, said that Prof Muller’s claim that he has proven global warming sceptics wrong was also a ‘huge mistake’, with no scientific basis.
Prof Curry is a distinguished climate researcher with more than 30 years experience and the second named co-author of the BEST project’s four research papers.
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.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2055191/Scientists-said-climate-change-sceptics-proved-wrong-accused-hiding-truth-colleague.html#ixzz1cG9AySjf