Saturday
Jul282012
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill BEST guess is 1.5?
Jul 28, 2012 Climate: Surface This may be an indication of what is exercising Anthony Watts' mind: Ronald Bailey at Reason Magazine is reporting a rumour that the BEST project will next week report a 1.5°C temperature rise since 1750.
The rumors say that new BEST reanalysis will show that global average temperature has increased by 1.5 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times and will suggest that most of the warming since the 1950s is the result of increased greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.
Reader Comments (119)
Did anyone really expect Peter Muller to say anything other than the global mean temperature has increase and the greenhouse gases have played an important part? Whatever numbers he comes up with will not be worth anything.
We all know the instrumental temperature data is so uncertain you can come up with any old diddlysquat!
Isn't Anthony Watts entitled to spend some private time doing what he thinks is important? Whatever it is.
"In a study published today in IOP Publishing's journal Environmental Research Letters, researchers from the Carnegie Institution for Science have shown that pre-industrial emissions from land use changes are responsible for about nine per cent of the increase in today's global mean temperature since that era."
http://phys.org/news/2012-07-pre-industrial-emissions-temperatures.html
Ok ... first billion people = 9%
Logic: Next 6 billion = another 54%
Well its about time BEST got their act together, I wonder if a) it will beat their science by press release from months again and b) if we get to see the data the whole data and nothing but the whole data or will it be case of knowing getting to see 'what is good for us' and c) will the work stand up to checking outside of the happy little group of BEST and of course c) have they managed to avoided sticking in a load of hype which although good for further funding and for ego actual does not have much scientific value .
Sunday may see the rush to publicize....??
Dueling articles and PRs
Maybe Anthony will move up his release to early morning...... ha.
Hickman posted this (below) 7 hours ago, so it means Guardian has (or expects) something "significant" they can announce in next 17 to 29 hours (possibly giving too much credence to the specific time frame mentioned, which may be still a guesstimate). If it's in 17 hours that may mean they try to scoop Anthony, who is still 22 hours away from his 12 noon PDT. Assuming what Guardian has (BEST etc.?) bears any connection with what prompted Anthony to promise his announcement, which may or may not be about a different but related matter, ha ha.
"Significant climate-related news will be breaking on Guardian website in next 24-36 hours. Will post likely timing later..."
Which probably means the churnalists at the Guardian are waiting to rip off whatever AW puts up, with their own unique spin of course ...
Pointman
Ha! Nice one, Pielke Jr gets a plug in for his book during the speculation and why not? ;)
His latest tweet:
If Richard Muller is indeed just making some statement unambiguously placing himself within some orthodox AGW (possibly alarmist?) stance then I think A Watts may have done some service with his hyping his pre-counter blast (if it is that!).
The resultant speculation has help break the embargo (12 am PST Monday morn?) that maybe AW was beholden to ;)
Muller's temp may correlate with the increase in CO2 from 1750, but does it correlate with the temperature rise before then?
Jul 28, 2012 at 8:20 PM | jim2
Yeah but hasn't Muller shown us all his current work in the actual scientific realm? Isn't it just pending peer review?
How can this (alleged) Muller announcement be a whole new body of data/analysis when it hasn't been forshadowed? I thought Muller was adopting the stance of not playing games like this?
If it turns out he is actually playing some St Paul "road to Damascus" crap then I'll laugh my head off and give A Watts back some respect. Oh shit I said I wouldn't keep speculating ;)
I am really getting into the meta angle of this story :)
There is no new body of climate work being held in embargo till Monday morning. There! I'll look a fool now if there is.
I saw no reference to 1750. There is a reference to 1800 which is the last year of the 18th century, but for scientific analysis is unrepresentative of that century.
http://reason.com/blog/2012/07/28/new-global-temperature-data-reanlysis-co
The "converted sceptic" meme still doesn't sound convincing in the context of his climate business background and prior quotes.
Let's see if his work improves anything from the last piece, which includes the implausible UHI result, and the total neglect to explain deviation of land temperatures from ocean temoperatures and satellite data.
Most important is probably the last point, "I expect the rate of warming to proceed at a steady pace, about 1.5 degree F over land in the next 50 years".
That would just be about 2 degrees Celsius in a 100 years over land and much less over land and oceans combined, without doing anything and comes pretty close to sceptics estimations and is far off the IPCC estimate.
I wonder why he is talking in Fahrenheit, looks bigger that way...
Just a thought on timing and procedure, not substance..... If Muller et al were always aiming to have BEST with the latest ready for AR5 then perhaps they have completed a peer review cycle and are announcing publication(s) etc. I don't know but for anyone doing the kind of project they are doing (whatever one thinks about it) they would want to put out what they have for submission to AR5, which means a deadline of the end of this month. I have no idea what the backstory may be or if Anthony was caught off guard by something here, but I would assume that BEST would want to provide what they consider to be their latest in time for AR5.
Hickman tweets with link to new "Reason" article (not the one linked at top of this thread) which claims to quote extensively from forthcoming Muller op-ed in NY Times!
If quotes are accurate then Muller presents himself in a dubious "converted skeptic" meme:
link -- new Muller quotes from forthcoming NY Times op-ed??
So far I'm not seeing what would make a "lukewarmist" into an "alarmist" so I'm not sure it's any big deal except that alarmists will try to paint it as so.
Yep Skiphil, nice ref
Yep: I said it first and I think stating a pathological personality will make his future crimes be more understandable...
Bless the notorious Muller - he is having a science ego fit as we speak
.8C in 50 years past and future. Leo will never understand it, but Muller even if right has destroyed alarmism.
yes, the first rush this week will be alarmists trying to say Muller has destroyed "skeptics"
but over time, intelligent thoughtful people will understand that Muller has undermined catastrophic-AGW alarmism
0.8C in next 50 years??? I think we can take plenty of time and study to see what if any adaptations are needed.
"Which probably means the churnalists at the Guardian are waiting to rip off whatever AW puts up, with their own unique spin of course ..."
Probably not. Muller's press release has probably already gone out but is embargoed until noon Sunday is my guess.
Bless the perpetually confused Hickster
Leo tweets:
Come on?
If as a lot of idiots think - A scientist says it.?!
Remember where you were on that day that you heard that Leo Hickman was shocked by believing something that he already believed a minute ago.
I heard the news today oh boy
About a lucky man who made the grade ...
Stupid bloody Sunday, IPCC-shirt,
Man[n] you found a naughty boy
Who joined the Team today
If Muller has crossed the Rubicon into climate change nightmarism, long suspected anyway, it will only reflect poorly on him and change nothing. Time for another salutary thrashing by Judith Curry?
Seems that the Koch brothers may have been suckered. They will be more careful with their generosity the next time.
It's no rumor- Ridchard Muller has an op-ed in the works that comes straight to the point :
"Cll me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified scientific issues that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Now, after organizing an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I’ve concluded that global warming is real, that the prior estimates of the rate were correct, and that cause is human."
My turnaround is the result of the careful and objective analysis by the “Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature” team, founded by me and my daughter Elizabeth. Our results show that the average temperature of the Earth’s land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, and one and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase is due to the human emission of greenhouse gases.
These findings are stronger than those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations group that defines the scientific and diplomatic consensus on global warming."
Note that Richard earned his Nobel the old fashined way, by doing physics.
Jul 28, 2012 at 11:49 PM | Russell
Yep they all hate me here -- but you should know - please give us the Richard Muller Nobel prize reference
Russell Says: "Note that Richard earned his Nobel the old fashined way, by doing physics."
You will note, Russell, that Dr. Muller was never a skeptic, converted or otherwise, and his daughter even less so. Oh yeah, and, uhhh, when was that Nobel awarded?
There is some posturing by people going on - I like Russell's but it's silly
Where
is
this
going ?
It is fun... :)
Apologies from prematurely adding Richard to Paul, Herman and Herta.
Alvarez & Co. had so many students that Stockholm is still playing catch-up.
Jul 29, 2012 at 12:38 AM | Russell
Yeah, but your blatant cognitive blow out that you let us all observe should be described as how exactly?
"I have concluded..."
Cool. Nice to have that sorted out then.
No need to pursue this any further, sorry guys, I hear MacDonalds are hiring.
As alarmists jump on the Muller bandwagon to shout "see we're right" it's important to remind them that 0.8C in the next 50 years is nothing like the extreme scenarios CAGW projects based upon various claimed positive feedbacks.
Also, Muller does have a bunch of statements through the years expressing the extent of his concern about CO2 and human impacts upon the environment, so he was never some severe skeptic about all AGW who has suddenly changed his tune. What he objected to repeatedly was sloppy science from "The Team" that was muddying the waters for science as well as for public debate. I've not seen anything to indicate he takes back his contemptuous words toward Mann et al's work in MBH98/99.
Two pop articles from Muller in 2003/4 show his disdain for Mann et all in MBH98/99 and his acceptance of the McIntyre/McKittrick criticisms thereof. So one thing that needs to be said to the alarmists, repeatedly, if/when they celebrate Muller, is that he showed almost a decade ago why Mann et al were holding back the science. The Fact that so much time and energy of so many people has been squandered over a decade and more by the Manniacs is a disgrace. Had "science" including journal editors, colleagues, and vaunted peer review been able to clean up the Mann messes a decade ago, everyone would have been spared much nonsense.
It is no defense of Mann's PCA and "hockey stick" to say anything similar is reached by other studies, other routes. It does not serve science or intellectual integrity to approach even the "right" conclusion by incorrect methods and bad work.
Muller on Mann, a clear dismissal of MBH98/99:
Muller Dec. 2003 critizing Mann et al
Muller Oct. 2004 criticizing Mann et al
If BEST doesn't show a significant drop in temperature from 1998, it is outright fraud.
From the Alarmists' Holy Scriptures:
Team psyentists - brilliant Nobel laureates [even when they're not] and paragons of virtue
Actual Nobel laureates (e.g. Ivar Giaever) - evil deniers in the pay of Big Oil
pffft
Is Muller keen to get on the road to Damascus before it gets blown up?
Questions about data.
1. Un adjusted data was used.
2. yes there are more sources for early periods.
3. yes there was an LIA.
Folks should try to separate there objections in a logical fashion.
1. People objected to adjustments. so, raw data was used.
2. people objected to hansen and Jones invented methods. so, the optimal approach of KED was
used.
3. people objected to the great thermometer drop out. we added 24K more stations than CRU
4. Folks objected to UHI. ok, use the 15K rural stations
As far as objections to data and methods go, I've yet to see one that carries the day.
Now, I suppose folks can object to muller the man, or object to how he frames the results.
But, you asked for unadjusted data.. you got it. you asked for methods known to the world of statistics and you got it (Kriging) you complained about the drop in thermometers.. we added 24K.
complaints about UHI, the very rural stations we used have no population to speak of and no built area.
You complained about the calculation of errors. Thats been redone. Complaints about the anomaly method? we do a temperature feild.
At some point folks will agree that it is warmer now than in the LIA.
Why is it warmer? the same data is always explanable by multiple theories, including gremlins did it.
But, the task is to put numbers on that theory and se what you get.
We can always suppose it was somthing else. the bar has been raised. you gotta show that..
'At some point folks will agree that it is warmer now than in the LIA.'
Since WHEN did anyone ever say it has not gotten warmer since the LIA?
I am on the Pacific, it is Sunday and the time is 12:17 PM. Still nothing on the WUWT.
Oh, wait! We have to wait for the world to spin for 17 hours more. The early bird doesn't always get the worm.
The following is more of Muller's rather weak position as quoted on Reason:
"How definite is the attribution to humans? The carbon dioxide curve gives a better match than anything else we’ve tried. Its magnitude is consistent with the calculated greenhouse effect – extra warming from trapped heat radiation."
Well, you thought to try the CO2 curve against all other individual factors. Did you think to try some combination of other factors? No? You are in a hurry. Read Pielke Sr.
Is the match so good that temperature increase is a linear function of CO2 increase? No? Such an outcome in the statistics would falsify the underlying causal hypothesis, would it not?
"These facts don’t prove causality and they shouldn’t end skepticism, but they raise the bar: to be considered seriously, an alternative explanation must match the data at least as well as does carbon dioxide. ..."
Actually, if your CO2 curve proves to be baloney, the question of alternative explanations is moot. Have you removed the baloney? That is, do you have something to offer that speaks to phenomena observable by humans or does your case rest entirely on statistical theory and leaves us with a dispute among statisticians?
Because you have not tried combinations of other factors, why do you doubt that some such explanation is better?
Steven Mosher,
Thank you for that summary. Everyone seemed to be awfulizing this future announcement. It was nice to see your objective post.
Thank providence that the world is demonstratively warmer because the only other option is terrifying.
Is there anyone here who actually believed the world wasn't warmer than before?
To Jeff Norman: it's _anthropogenic_ global warming... Anthropomorphic global warming would mean that the atmosphere would be going around claiming to have invented the Internet.
David
the op-ed is out in the NY Times:
(h/t Hilary at CA)
it's dated July 28, but it wasn't out there all day I'm pretty certain, did they speed up the release or was it always dated July 28??
Muller, NY Times, "The Conversion of a Climate Change Skeptic"
fwiw, I don't get in what sense Muller was ever a "skeptic" about AGW, maybe about "catastrophic" AGW (which is where I am, a skeptic about the extreme scenarios, not about any AGW at all)..... yes, he criticized and questioned methods and quality of the science, but he's on record 10-12 yrs ago expressing his confidence that CO2 was most likely a very serious problem..... so it seems to me he's not really had this "conversion" experience (which has dubious religious overtones anyway), but rather has satisfied himself that a more rigorous analysis of land surface data shows a certain amount of AGW... but that's very different from "before I was with the skeptics but now I'm not"
Anyway, it seems that both Muller and Curry are in more of an in-between position, of good evidence for some AGW but not for all the extreme events attributions and extreme projections etc.
Jeff Norman, regarding awfulising, is this word in the dictionary yet? It should be.
"Teacher raps student twit 4 awfulising words."
How much time left before Godot gets here?
Godot is here already.
This part is slapping down a lot of the hysteria in the media and among green pressure groups, activist scientists like Mann et al, so of course it will be ignored by all who rush to say "Muller refutes climate skeptics" -- but this is a lot of what drives my own "skepticism" on climate issues -- the exaggerations, hype, and hysteria:
[Muller]
Steven Mosher
While I do not doubt your statistical and general number-crunching expertise (albeit arguably inferior to Steve Mac's, who was a mathematical prodigy in his youth) I do question your dubious (unhelpful?) role in this debate. As far as I can tell your Crutape Letters tome criticized the Team's behaviour, while you also conclude that it doesn't matter, since AGW is (very, very) real anyway. A classic "gotcha" scenario. If I have misrepresented your position, please enlighten me.
OK, I haven't looked at the online papers yet, but two immediate thoughts occur to me:
1. What about the CO2/temp time lag (varies from 800 to 400 years, depending on who last chipped in)?
2. How can a "hands off" computer algorithm, no matter how "sophisticated", reliably correct a temperature record that has been adjusted manually and with malicious intent?
I suppose Watts is giving himself a bit of time to ponder these and other issues before rejoining the fray.
We live in interesting times indeed.
Muller is absolutely dishonest. He was never a skeptic,
http://www.populartechnology.net/2012/06/truth-about-richard-muller.html
"I was never a skeptic" - Richard Muller, 2011
"If Al Gore reaches more people and convinces the world that global warming is real, even if he does it through exaggeration and distortion - which he does, but he’s very effective at it - then let him fly any plane he wants."
- Richard Muller, 2008
"There is a consensus that global warming is real. ...it’s going to get much, much worse." - Richard Muller, 2006
"Let me be clear. My own reading of the literature and study of paleoclimate suggests strongly that carbon dioxide from burning of fossil fuels will prove to be the greatest pollutant of human history. It is likely to have severe and detrimental effects on global climate." - Richard Muller, 2003
Mosher: "we added 24K"
How many of those have data from 1900 to 2012?
3?
Muller: "Our results show that the average temperature of the earth’s land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of one and a half degrees over the most recent 50 years."
HADCRUT3
1962 -0.022 (50 years ago)
2012 0.239 (so far)
.261 C over the last 50 years.
I think Muller is lying.
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/hadcrut3gl.txt
Bruce, about the figures from the HADCRUT3, are they just for land or land and ocean? Muller is talking about "Earth's land".
The new mosher strawman, skeptics are arguing over if it has warmed since the LIA.
I don't recall ever objecting to "Jones invented methods". He does a very simple averaging within a grid. The issue with Jones data is the reliance on urban centers and airports.
i would like to see some ground-truthing to show that the "rural" stations really are rural.
CRUTEM3
1962 0.001
2012 0.380 (so far)
.379C
Mann was furiously commenting on Facebook about Muller's OpEd. I left a message stating my view that the projected temps from Muller didn't seem that alarming. (written in my most tactful and polite manner)
Result? Comment deleted (no trace of it, even a "snip") and barred from commenting on his page.
I was a least hoping to claim "beetle larva" status.
The Truth about Richard Muller
http://www.populartechnology.net/2012/06/truth-about-richard-muller.html
"I was never a skeptic" - Richard Muller, 2011
"If Al Gore reaches more people and convinces the world that global warming is real, even if he does it through exaggeration and distortion - which he does, but he’s very effective at it - then let him fly any plane he wants." - Richard Muller, 2008
"There is a consensus that global warming is real. ...it’s going to get much, much worse." - Richard Muller, 2006
"Let me be clear. My own reading of the literature and study of paleoclimate suggests strongly that carbon dioxide from burning of fossil fuels will prove to be the greatest pollutant of human history. It is likely to have severe and detrimental effects on global climate." - Richard Muller, 2003