Climate skeptics admit: Our concerns were unfounded

In a series of major reports, the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) team, composed of noted climate skeptics Judith Curry and Richard Muller among others, has concluded that:

1. The world is warming as fast as mainstream climate scientists have always maintained.

2. Urban heat island effects have been accounted for about right by mainstream climate scientists.

3. Station siting has little if any effect on temperature trends, as mainstream climate scientists have long maintained.

and

4. Data selection bias does not affect the results, as mainstream climate scientists have long maintained.

All of the BEST data (1.6 billion temperature records, going back to 1800) and analysis programs are available online.

Story in The Economist.

 

...or even a high-school student who has taken a couple of semesters of AP programming can validate the global-average temperature results published by climate-scientists.

The only things that such a student needs are the *raw* temperature data/documentation and the appropriate software development tools, all of which are free for the downloading.

The basic procedure used to calculate global-average temperature anomalies from raw temperature data is quite straightforward; I could break the whole procedure up into a series of homework projects for a first-year programming student. This basic procedure, stripped of all the "adjustments"/"homogenization"/"data-manipulation" that professional climate-scientists employ, will generate global-average results amazingly close to what the climate-science community officially publishes.

Once this basic procedure is coded up, it is trivially easy to add code to allow one to compare rural vs. urban stations (demonstrating that the UHI effect is insignificant) and to verify that the deniers' claims about "dropped stations" are completely bogus. These coding exercises could also be incorporated into that first-year programming class.

But instead of performing some basic data analysis that I could teach a college freshman to do, analysis that would prove the deniers' claims to be completely wrong, the deniers who have been attacking the climate-scientists' global temperature work have instead spent a bunch of time taking pictures of air conditioners and BBQ grills (and spinning silly conspiracy theories). That's something that my 7-year-old nephew could do!

(I posted an earlier version of this elsewhere, but thought I'd update and repost it here since the topic came up).

 

"Scientists" can prove whatever they're paid to prove as Caerdonnog's post explains. Just last night I was listening to Old Time Radio and heard a scientist explain how smoking Chesterfiedls was good for your health. All that changes for those types of scientists is who is paying the bill.

FWIW, the weather station in my town recorded ever higher temperatures as its environment changed from open field to a asphalt parking lot surrounded by buildings.

 

The BEST group didn't receive a dime of government money. They raised funds privately, including from the uber-denier-friendly Koch foundation. In fact, that's one reason Anthony Watts said, when BEST got going, that "I’m prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong".

Now that the results are in and Watts doesn't like them, he's backpedalling. That's honesty for you.

Which is exactly why temperatures are adjusted to account for urbanization. And then the deniers complain that the temperatures are adjusted!

 

But doesn't this only show that the earth has been warming, not that man is the primary cause behind it? Were there many mainstream skeptics who denied that it was warming at all, aside from the very far end of the spectrum?

 

The "Best" sceptic figures confirm the warming at the higher end of the predictions. Those predictions are based on the premise that the main driver for the additional rise seen is anthropogenic in nature. (man made)

Deniers will persist but the actual sceptics have been refuted.

 

True. The BEST team did not address causes.

Just about everybody on the skeptical/denier side. Almost the only thing we've heard for the last two years is "climategate", "emails", along with allegations of fraud, data manipulation, etc. Since those scientists were involved in measuring surface temperature, the constant implication has been that surface temps are unreliable, i.e., that's it's not really warming.

And then there's the often heard old canard of "global warming stopped in ___ (fill in the year)", which has been used by almost everyone on the denier side, too.

So no, this wasn't just the far end of the spectrum. This was a stake right through the heart of climate denial.

 

Even more lies from the climate hysterics.

http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/archives/44855

"Brad Plumer of the Washington Post overlooked that rule in reporting that an alleged global warming skeptic is now a convert — because the “skeptic” in question — physicist Richard Muller of Berkeley — embraced the theory of man-made global warming 30 years ago. An online search easily disproved his claim of skepticism. He co-authored a book, “Physics For Future Presidents,” that explained climate change among other things. Now he has re-branded himself a former skeptic — the better to sell global warming."

Climate hysterics have no shame in promoting their political agenda. And, there's no shortage of decent though foolish people who buy their lies and distortions.

 

And your evidence for lying is ... they're Democrats? Got anything else?

 

No, my post demonstrates the absolute opposite!

What my post shows is that it is easy to replicate the scientists' global-average temperature results via a very straightforward averaging procedure that I could teach to an advanced high-school student. If the scientists' global-warming results relied on specialized data-manipulation trickery, this would not be possible.

The global-warming signal in the raw temperature data is so strong that any reasonable averaging procedure will show it. In fact, the only way to "hide" the global warming signal would be to screw up the math in the averaging. It is simply *not* possible for scientists to "prove whatever they're paid to prove".

For those here who haven't seen it already, here is a repost of a plot of my own results compared with NASA's official results:


This plot shows the output of a completely "vanilla" gridding/averaging procedure that I coded up in C++, applied to both the GHCN and CRU raw temperature data sets. The official NASA land-temperature results are also plotted for comparison. My GHCN results are plotted in dark blue. My CRU results are plotted in red. The official NASA results are plotted in yellow.

I should reiterate that the procedure that I coded up is a very simplified, "dumbed down" version of the CRU gridding/averaging procedure. It implements *none* of the data correction/homogenization/whatever steps that NASA/NOAA/CRU use. All I did was toss in the raw temperature data and perform some straightforward number crunching that an on-the-ball high-school student could understand. As anyone here can see, the results that popped out turned out to be very similar to the official NASA results. If climate-scientists had to resort to fancy data manipulation techniques to get their results, I would not have been able to do this.

 

obviously you haven't read anything about the berkeley team.

generally, if you don't want to look like a fool, you should familiarise yourself with current information.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15373071

 

So Muller and team admits the Earth revolves around the Sun. Not an interesting finding. What is interesting is watching deniers react to a conclusion reached by a Koch-funded study, lead by a guy who slandered climate scientists (and said a few bad things about Al Gore), one that they had such high hopes for.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/10/berkeley-earthquake-called-off/#more-9074

I'm not sure Muller would get Koch money to take part in something the equivalent of re-inventing the wheel if he hadn't said stupid things publicly and was promoted by deniers initially. The whole spin from Muller and co. was that there was something wrong with existing analysis, shady practices, blah blah, such that the scientific community was in need of his "independent" services. It's self-serving posturing.

 

Oh goody, the deniers are trounced, now all the MMGW crowds problems are solved.

Now what?

 

Now that the faux science debate is over, maybe we can have the really important debate: The political one. How to stop it?

 

I have tried to discuss that.

We have picked a lot of the low hanging fruit to increase efficiency. Each percent of improvement will cost more than the last. What is reasonable goals? What is the cost? Who sets the goals, the market, of central control?

With no cost effective alternative energy source in significant global use, or even on the horizon, do we just stop using energy completely?

The poor count on the low cost of food cheap energy provides, what price do they pay if we cut back on energy use?

How much have we spent on alternative energy? How much more are we willing to spend? Which alternatives? How do they fit into today's infrastructure? Or do we also add the cost of new infrastructure?

Most importantly, where exactly do the "deniers" stop alternative energy research, or deployment. That tends to be your fellow progressives. That being true, then all your effort to get the "denier" to believe has been completely wasted.

 

All good points to consider.

First, I favor a market-based approach with either a cap-and-trade system for fossil carbon emissions or a straight tax on fossil fuel. The former may lead to quicker innovation, while the latter is easier to administer and can be more broadly based.

Second, I'm a big supporter of modern nuclear power, especially LFTR (Liquid Fluouride Thorium Reactors) which cannot melt down, have no long-term waste, and would be much, much cheaper to build than current reactors.

Third, we do need to continue moving forward with renewables.

Fourth, we have only scratched the surface with what can be done on conservation. (And a fossil fuel tax would certainly encourage more in that direction.) See, e.g., this lecture by Amory Lovins of RMI.

 

A few decades ago..it was getting colder..

For all of you..climate can change on it's own because of factors beyond our control...and, we can affect our enviornment of course..

You do realize that many places on this planet that are now desert; were once covered with vast forests and/or water. And vice versa..we didn't do any of that. The climate changes in spite of us..and very little because of us.

This does not mean we should do nothing to help our enviornment..but I would be hesitant to do 'BIG' things..we just aren't as smart as we think we like to think we are..We are as capable of doing serious damage as we are of fixing anything..let alone the climate..

 

agreed.

and based on that reasoning - we shouldn't use modern medical technology to cure disease ... if we survive disease ... something else will kill us!

 

Do you realize that the Earth is rotating slower and slower every year? It could be because of all the nuclear weapons detonated by man. Makes about as much sense as global warming conspiracy.

 

do you have a link providing some evidence that this is somehow linked to nuclear weapons?

and how do you account for the slowing in the earth's rotation prior to the nuclear age?

 

Cute..I implied nothing of the sort...Drugs have been tested on some scale short of testing on the whole population and finding the drug does more harm than good. Is that what you suggest we do with our home?

As I said..we can and should make steps to save this planet..but going off half cocked is not the solution..nor, succumbing to high drama and scare tactics.

 

Many of the posters in this thread (you, not included) remind me of the dog barking agressively at someone outside the fence, but suddenly go quiet when the gate pops open.

As long as they can blame lack of progress on the "deniers", they are happy (and barking agressively). The minute the gate pops open (like I ask, what next), they can't seem to admit the deniers are doing very little to prevent alternative energy.

Amusing.

 

Very little, except voting Republican, working against cap-and-trade, supporting drill-baby-drill, trying to dismantle the EPA, etc, etc, etc.

 

What does the EPA do to support alternative energy (who know, it could pollute more than oil, then the EPA would another enemy).

What have the Democrats done to augment alternative energy?

"Drill baby drill" goes away as soon as there is a viable alternative.

How does opposing Cap and Tax prevent alternative energy? Lets look at a proposed plan:

ROTFL Not only reduce CO2 emissions, but sequester all the MMCO2 since 1800. CO2 is a persistant gas, zeroing out production today, isn't enough to meet this goal.

This statement is in conflict with the one above.

Even considering this statement as a stand alone - Cap & Tax would have to be far more severe than Europe's energy cost - they have only flattened increases. Europe hasn't reduced CO2 production, certainly not by 80%.

A lot of free market sounding words strung together to confuse the issue.

Cap & Tax will start with too few allowances, then reduce them. There is a limit to power plant efficiency (read up on Carnot), changing fuel from coal to methane would cut CO2 in half per KWH. But, there is another progressive think tank, that eliminate methane as viable because there is too much leakage. Maybe they convert coal plants to recycled paper and seaweed....

The cost of electricity will necessiarily skyrocket.

If companies are selling allowance to each other where does this $50B to $300B come from? I guess the government wants to get theirs (no big surprise).

At $300B / year, a family of 4 sees their energy cost go up by $333 a month just for the governments cut (conviently, no comment on how much energy costs will rise above that). But, no problem, the government will give half of that back.

The cost of electricity will necessiarily skyrocket.

Gee, what's not to love about Cap & Tax????

 

lols - its the constant "it won't work" and talking down new initiatives.

this will detract from these things being seen as worth investing in.

Here is an excerpt from an interview with some Australians whose discovery has had a huge impact in a whole range of applications - from plastic bank notes, paint, treatment of cancer .. and many more applications:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2011/3337046.htm

many denialists remind me of the American scientist they refer to.

there are always solutions to problems - thats what makes science so exciting.

but denialists can't see that.