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Newsflash: Climate Scientists Knew What They Were Doing
The 'climategate' pseudo-scandal two years ago shook a lot of people's confidence in climate science--to the point that some skeptics questioned whether the instrumental record actually showed a warming trend. Occasionally someone would claim that the record had been fabricated, but more often suspicions were expressed that the data were manipulated to give a false warming trend.
Then there was Anthony Watts, who enlisted volunteers to find land temperature stations and made a big deal about how many of them were near asphalt, air conditioners, BBQ grills, and other warm objects. According to Watts, the warming trend is actually temperature contamination.
Enter physicist Richard Muller and the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature team, whose aim was to re-analyze the temperature records to find the true story. Today they announced their results.
On the basis of its analysis, according to Berkely Earth's founder and scientific director, Professor Richard A. Muller, the group concluded that earlier studies based on more limited data by teams in the United States and Britain had accurately estimated the extent of land surface warming.Well, OK then.
"Our biggest surprise was that the new results agreed so closely with the warming values published previously by other teams in the U.S. and the U.K.," Muller said. "This confirms that these studies were done carefully and that potential biases identified by climate change skeptics did not seriously affect their conclusions."
Previous studies, cared out by NOAA, NASA, and the Hadley Center, also found that land warming was approximately 1°C since the mid-1950s, and that the urban heat island effect and poor station quality did not bias the results. But their findings were criticized by skeptics who worried that they relied on ad-hoc techniques that meant that the findings could not be duplicated. Robert Rohde, lead scientist for Berkeley Earth, noted that "the Berkeley Earth analysis is the first study to address the issue of data selection bias, by using nearly all of the available data, which includes about 5 times as many station locations as were reviewed by prior groups."
(See also The Economist: The heat is on.)
10 comments:
It also makes me chuckle to know that the Koch brothers donated a few million to this study, so you know that it wasn't just somebody out there trying to validate global warming, but their aim was to discredit it.
Science wins yet again!
According to the website, Koch donated $150,000, but they were the biggest single contributor.
I don't think the study says anything conclusive about human activity. And I don't think it's even been reviewed yet, has it? They, more or less, just made an announcement.
Steve McIntyre has already found some problems with it -- for what that's worth. (I think he's pretty amazing -- for what that's worth)
Jack
This was rumored to be their result back in the spring. Give the guy kudos for being a skeptic who wanted to honestly look at things. I used to be a skeptic myself (largely moved into the skeptic camp in college after spending a day with Freeman Dyson). I think that if you want to be sure you are skeptical out of scientific honestly rather than political dogmatism the easiest thing to do is to ask what would change your mind. If you're open to changing your mind and honestly inquire I think the evidence will eventually lead you to accepting human caused global warming.
Jack,
You know all the buzz about neutrinos being detected going faster than the speed of light? That was prior to peer review as well. It seems to be more common in the physics world to make papers public for comment before publication.
Peer review is certainly important, and in this case I imagine there will be some focus on their statistical analysis, which they claim is novel. However, to the extent that their analysis agrees with others, I'm pretty comfortable accepting the basic claim even if it hasn't been published yet.
I know someone is going to read what I just wrote and accuse me of bias. "You're only skeptical when the results aren't what you want!" But that's the wrong way to look at this. It's already well established that the Earth is warming. This is simply another confirmation of what's already known.
It is true that they did not address human causation. That's a conclusion that comes from several lines of evidence. And you have to worry a little when people start going outside of their field of expertise. It is folly to think that physicists are somehow the arbiters of truth about climate science.
Really, the only reason this is newsworthy is because i) Watts and company have impugned the reliability of the temperature record, ii) that doubt has been widely spread, iii) and now someone who said they were skeptical has done their own analysis and come to the conclusion that the temperature record is reliable.
Good points, Clark. Skepticism is good, but it needs to be joined with competence (and of course honesty) to be of worth.
Jared,
There are always questions about data, but I don’t think there was any reasonable dispute that average temperature has increased about 1 degree Celsius over the past 150 years. The real question is human causation, and as you said, it didn’t address that at all.
What I would really like to see is evidence that the warming we have experienced over the past 150 years is significantly outside normal variability. If the increase has been within normal variability, I question how we can be sure that human activity is the primary cause this time when all prior ones have been natural. And if we ever do get indisputable evidence that human activity is the primary cause, what in the world would you realistically propose we do about it?
Matt, Lester Brown has a number of excellent suggestions in his book (that you can read online for free): Plan B. 4.0
Rich,
The link you provided takes me to a youtube video about Quantun Levitation.
Rich,
I did a little quick research on Lester Brown. He has obviously had a very distinguished career, and you have to like a guy who wears a bow tie, but, in all honesty, he appears to be a typical warmist. Here is a direct quote from him, “How much are you willing to spend to avoid a 23 foot rise in sea level?” That seriously damages his credibility with me. I wondered where Al Gore got that idea from. Lester brown appears to be your typical environmentalist crying wolf about population explosion, peak oil, anthropogenic global warming, etc. Fewer people are being buying into that craziness. I asked, what would you realistically do about anthropogenic global warming, if it ever becomes generally accepted.
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