Climategate II? ‘Science-Settling’ Study ‘Proving’ Global Warming Allegedly Shows None (See Update: ‘Hide the Lack of Increase’)
A week ago (at BizzyBlog; at NewsBusters), I noted how Charleston Daily Mail blogger Don Surber quickly determined through all of a few minutes of Internet research that Berkeley professor Robert Muller, who convinced Washington Post Plumline blogger Brad Plumer that he was a “climate skeptic,” has been a believer in human-caused global warming since the early 1980s.
Muller’s pretense to have held beliefs differing from his true past may be the least of his problems. A story breaking in the UK contends that results obtained by the prof’s BEST (Berkeley Earth Surface Temperatures) project team, instead of “settling the debate” in favor of warmists, showed that global warming “has stopped.” If so, this is potentially as explosive as the “hide the decline” conspiracy uncovered almost two years ago when the Climategate emails surfaced.
The bombshell arrives via David Rose at the UK Daily Mail (HT to Benny Peiser’s indispensable daily CCNet email from the Global Warming Policy Foundation [GWPF]; internal BBC link added by me; bolds are mine):
Scientist who said climate change sceptics had been proved wrong accused of hiding truth by colleague
Professor Richard Muller, of Berkeley University in California, and his colleagues from the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperatures project team (BEST) claimed to have shown that the planet has warmed by almost a degree centigrade since 1950 and is warming continually.
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.
It was cited uncritically by, among others, reporters and commentators from the BBC, The Independent, The Guardian, The Economist and numerous media outlets in America.
The Washington Post said the BEST study had ‘settled the climate change debate’ and showed that anyone who remained a sceptic was committing a ‘cynical fraud’.
But today 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.
In fact, Prof Curry said, the project’s research data show there has been no increase in world temperatures since the end of the Nineties – a fact confirmed by a new analysis that The Mail on Sunday has obtained.
David Whitehouse at the GWPF (“BEST Confirms Global Temperature Standstill”) elaborates:
Professor Richard Muller, leader of the initiative, said (to the BBC) that the global temperature standstill of the past decade was not present in their data.
“In our data, which is only on the land we see no evidence of it having slowed down. Now the evidence which shows that it has been stopped is a combination of land and ocean data. The oceans do not heat as much as the land because it absorbs more of the heat and when the data are combined with the land data then the other groups have shown that when it does seem to be leveling off. We have not seen that in the land data.”
My first though would be that it would be remarkable if it was. The global temperature standstill of the past decade is obvious in HadCrut3 data which is a combination of land and sea surface data. Best is only land data from nearly 40,000 weather stations. Professor Muller says they “really get a good coverage of the globe.” The land is expected to have a fast response to the warming of the lower atmosphere caused by greenhouse gas forcing, unlike the oceans with their high thermal capacity and their decadal timescales for heating and cooling, though not forgetting the ENSO and la Nina.
Fig 1 shows the past ten years plotted from the monthly data from Best’s archives. (Click on the graphic to enlarge it in a new tab or window — Ed.)
It is a statistically perfect straight line of zero gradient. Indeed, most of the largest variations in it can be attributed to ENSO and la Nina effects. It is impossible to reconcile this with Professor Muller’s statement. Could it really be the case that Professor Muller has not looked at the data in an appropriate way to see the last ten years clearly?
Indeed Best seems to have worked hard to obscure it.
Read the whole thing.
So what will come first — Christmas Day or the “numerous media outlets in America” noting that, at a minimum, Muller’s work “settles” nothing, and at worst is a fraudulent as the “hide the decline” enterprise known as Climategate?
Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.
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UPDATE: Prof. Curry has a blog post which appears to have gone up just before this post was drafted (but before graphics were completed). Excerpts –
“Hiding the truth” in the title is definitely misleading, I made it pretty clear that there was uncertainty in the data itself, but the bigger issues are to analyze the data and interpret it. I made it clear that this was not a straightforward and simple thing to do.
I told Rose that I was puzzled my Muller’s statements, particularly about “end of skepticism” and also “We see no evidence of global warming slowing down.”
I did not say that “the affair had to be compared to the notorious Climategate scandal two years ago,” this is indirectly attributed to me. … There is NO comparison of this situation to Climategate. Muller et al. have been very transparent in their methods and in making their data publicly available, which is highly commendable.
That still leaves Whitehouse’s assertion: “It is impossible to reconcile this (graph of the past decade above) with Professor Muller’s statement (‘we see no evidence of it having slowed down’).”
No, it’s not “hide the decline,” but it’s definitely “obscure the lack of increase.”
You can find out more about the Climategate fraud here: http://www.stopcp.com/cpclimategate.php
Comment by AGW is a fraud — October 30, 2011 @ 9:19 am
Which means water vapor not CO2 is what determines whether the temperature goes up or down. Given that water vapor is even a bigger green house gas than CO2 both by effect and quantity, periodic global warming is strictly a temporary NATURAL effect.
Comment by dscott — October 30, 2011 @ 9:30 am
#2, I’d love to see the EPA and Obama/libs try to “regulate” water vapor. Now that would be funny.
Of course, considering the stupidity and stubbornness of this admin I wouldn’t put it past them to give it a try!
Comment by zf — October 30, 2011 @ 1:37 pm
And they’d fine God for noncompliance.
Comment by TBlumer — October 30, 2011 @ 1:54 pm
Climate science is hard. Reading is not. So to support this claim that someone is disputing the BEST conclusions, all you offer is this:
“In our data, which is only on the land we see no evidence of it having slowed down”
This is the quote you’re using to suggest this person is disputing the report. A statement that the report shows exactly what it conclusions state.
Let’s skip the part where the only story here is that a woman has made some explosive statement….. just not in a way that’s worth anyone’s time quoting or reading, LMAO
Why don’t you just write your own quote. You’ll be no more dishonest and it might actually support your claims, unlike this.
Then again, the spectacular gullibility of your readers might allow you to just keep describing quotes of black as white. Hasn’t seemed to have bothered them so far. Science!
Comment by Christian J — October 30, 2011 @ 5:15 pm
Hey Christian, reading may not be hard, but you don’t seem to be particularly good at it — at least not the comprehension part.
MULLER is the guy who is saying, “In our data, which is only on the land we see no evidence of it having slowed down.”
Robert Whitehouse is the guy who says that the graph “is impossible to reconcile this with Professor Muller’s statement” I just cited.
Zheesh. I’ll be nice and not LMAO. Other commenters may not be so kind, justifiably.
Comment by TBlumer — October 30, 2011 @ 5:59 pm
#5, Why is it for years we were told about how straightforward the climate science is and how obvious it was that CAGW was occurring and that there was “consensus” and now whenever things don’t go the alarmists way even on the most simple and straightforward data, all we hear is about how “complex” “climate science” is and how supposedly gosh darn hard it is to come to any conclusions. Bullcrap.
Anyway, I also call bullcrap on Curry’s post. I think she is covering her behind so she is not kicked out of the lucrative pro-CAGW racket. Not only does she engage in the inane agnostic gymnastics of falling back on how analyzing and interpreting data us so gosh darn hard but she has the nerve to claim about how “transparent” Muller is.
Transparent? How is it transparent to misrepresent both yourself and your data? For all their making their data and methods “publicly available” they have made much more publicly available lies and distortions about what they actually found. Muller knows full well that people are going to take what they say as definitive and not even bother to hunt down and look at the charts and data. The WaPo sure as heck didn’t for one. That fact makes whatever transparency there was in presenting the actual data and methods meaningless. It’s an old trick. The truth *was hid* behind a slick PR campaign and Curry’s words confirmed that, whether she wants to admit it or not, as the only way you can interpret what she said is that Muller was lying, and no after the fact attempts at word parsing can change that fact.
And let’s not forget that Muller didn’t himself said nothing about the data being hard to interpret and whatnot, he came out and flat out said that the data showed definitive conclusions. Once cannot reconcile this whole defending Muller because analyzing data is “not a straightforward and simple thing to do” with his bold assertions that made it sound like that not only is easy and straightforward but it *definitely* proves one side of an argument over another. No matter how you look at it, Muller lied.
Comment by zf — October 31, 2011 @ 12:02 pm
Also, “Best is only land data from nearly 40,000 weather stations. Professor Muller says they “really get a good coverage of the globe.””
That right there is a clear cut example of being very non transparent about ones methods. They cut out a large section of the picture and then misrepresent their picture as “really good coverage of the globe.”
Contrary to what Professor Curry says, Muller et al. have been very far from being transparent about their methods and data.
Interesting how Muller and crew didn’t go public with their data until they had time to create both a narrative and obfuscation surrounding their “work.”
Comment by zf — October 31, 2011 @ 12:11 pm