Climate Change – News and Comments
Nice research, curious rhetoric
Just dis-embargoed at noon PST (8 pm BST) on 20 October are a press release and associated papers from the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperatures (BEST) project. A team led by Richard A. Muller has been asking whether the histories of land surface temperatures from the likes of NOAA, NASA and the Hadley Centre are to be trusted. Clever statistics glean and process raw data from 39,000 weather stations world wide – more than five times as many as used by other analysts.
The short answer is that the other histories are broadly validated, as seen in this graph from one of the new papers.
- If your eye can trace the black line of the BEST study, based on a random selection of weather stations, you’ll see that the average temperatures of the land correspond quite well with the other series.
What’s very odd is the rhetoric of the press release. It begins:
Global warming is real, according to a major study released today. Despite issues raised by climate change skeptics, the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature study finds reliable evidence of a rise in the average world land temperature of approximately 1°C since the mid-1950s.
Global warming real? Not recently, folks. The black curve in the graph confirms what experts have known for years, that warming stopped in the mid-1990s, when the Sun was switching from a manic to a depressive phase.
Elsewhere the press release first begs the question by calling the past 50 years “the period during which the human effect on temperatures is discernible” and then contradicts this by saying, “What Berkeley Earth has not done is make an independent assessment of how much of the observed warming is due to human actions, Richard Muller acknowledged.”
Let me say there is interesting stuff in the material released today, particularly in the paper on Decadal Variations, tracing links with El Niño and other regional temperature oscillations” — a subject I may return to when I have more time.
It hasn’t escaped my attention that BEST is today gunning mainly for Anthony Watts and his Surface Stations project in the USA, but he’s well capable of answering for himself. See wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/20/the-berkeley-earth-surface-temperature-project-puts-pr-before-peer-review/
Added 21 October: See this rather uneasy comment from Judith Curry, a member of the Berkeley teamhttp://judithcurry.com/2011/10/20/berkeley-surface-temperatures-released/
And later: New Scientist quotes me saying something similar to what’s above – followed of course by the usual grossly biased and poorly informed attempt at a put-down http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21074-sceptical-climate-scientists-concede-earth-has-warmed.html
References
The BEST home page, with downloadable press release and papers, is here www.BerkeleyEarth.org
The graph shown above is Fig. 1 in “Decadal Variations in the Global Atmospheric Land Temperatures,” Richard A. Muller et al., unpublished
Calder's Updates 
Nigel, I recently did some analysis of some antismoking research that was based on graphs as “complicated looking” as the one in your figure here and discovered that a very basic “simplification” achieved by converting 60 monthly points to 20 quarterly points produced a graph that was MUCH easier to understand and which told a much different story than the more complicated one which outfitted the 60 points with some weird higher level statistically produced uber-jagged line. You might want to try such a thing (maybe one point for every five years?) just to see what it produces.
Also: just eyeballing the figure a bit brought me to notice something. If you examine the graph from 1950ish to 1985ish it would appear that the trend is nearly flat. The increase since 1985 seems real enough, but then we need to think about the reasoning behind the analysis: what changed so much in the period after 1985 that had not been changing in the period of 1950 to 1985? Industrial production and automobile use certainly increased enormously in the first period. Did the rate of increase and the quantity of increase really change substantially after 1985?
Heh, If I was a Marxist I could blame global warming on the fall of the Berlin Wall!
Michael J. McFadden
Author of “Dissecting Antismokers’ Brains” (And no, despite the putative quote from Al Gore to the contrary, smoking is NOT a significant factor in Global Warming.)
Are you sure your data-reduced graph didn’t show you artefacts you introduced by involuntary violation of the Nyquist theorem? Just pointing out the possibility…
My statistical innocence is shown by my lack of acquaintance with Mr. or Ms. Nyquist. :> However I was not sampling the 60 points to get my 20, but rather averaging the 60 in groups of three. I.E. Instead of three points for Jan, Feb, Mar, I had one point for “1st Quarter.”
Would that still fit Nyquist’s clothing?
– MJM
Michael: smoking is NOT a significant factor in Global Warming.)
Reply: Michael, depends what one smokes; most of the smokers of ”wacky tobacy” believe in GLOBAL warming – should be for real, at-least for them. They will rebuild the Berlin Wall with carbon tax.
Nuclear winter for year 2000 . then Global warming of 5-6C by 2060 was promoted by few desperate shonky experts, for grants and funds; until 1990 / few hippies were supporting them. Then the Berlin Wall collapsed… the western Reds realised that they will not succeed to concur democratic west with Kalashnikovs – instantly they put a Green topcoat on = instant population explosion in PHONY global Warmist. They will put any colour, as long as gives them execs to taxpayers pockets and royal power.
Happy new year
But … but … Stefan, Global Warming is Bad, Smoking is Bad. Therefore they HAVE to be connected! It’s Scientifickal isn’t it? :>
Actually there’s a four million dollar grant hanging out there in the breeze at the moment for any intrepid researchers willing to try to prove that thirdhand smoke and cigarette butts are going to destroy the world as we know it. Just apply to the Tobacco Related Disease Research Program (TRDRP) of the University of California and line yer pockets with gold.
Re the hippies: I remember feeling disheartened by the defection of so many of the anti-war folks over into the Green camp. At the time I felt the Green argument was a lot more valid than I feel it is overall today, but the defection was definitely going on in some force while the Berlin Wall was still in place. The Greenies grew from the bottom up: not the top down. I can say that with some confidence (though obviously not total certainty) because I was there in the middle of the debates during that switchover, basically arguing that we needed to continue putting our energies into keeping the world from gettin’ all burned up before worrying about whether it got just got warmed up.
– MJM
Michael, hippies were harming few farmers, and they were mostly harming themselves, full stop. Anti war wasn’t a bad thing – I’m surprised that NOBODY TALKS NOW, HOW MUCH FUEL .the tanks ans supersonic jets use.
The stench started when the former communist hijacked the green movement in 1990. Hippies were never interested in controlling nations, it’s the former western Reds that are trying to rebuild the Berlin Wall in every democratic country..
This graph lacks credibility on the face of it. Note that the time between 1945 and 1975 was a time in which there was great concern about global cooling. To choose on average between 1950 and 1980 as the base time of reference exaggerates the relative warming. It seems to me that the authors of this paper achieved what they wanted.
John, ”Nuclear Winter for year 2000” was promoted by some, up to mid 80’s – before you even defrosted from their Nuclear Winter – they got stuck into GLOBAL warming; for the simple reason; because the countdown for nuclear winter had started. If the original Swindlers predicted Nuclear Winter for 2100; same scientists that are discovering now phony proofs about GLOBAL warming; today they would have being left no stone unturned for discovering that the whole planet is getting colder. That’s why the Warmist are now using ”the Nosthardamus trick” -predict for after he / she is dead and money squandered. I will predict that the moon will crush into the earth on the 6 /4 / 2099, for a carton of beer – prove me wrong!
Well, I have proven them wrong; that is not going to be GLOBAL warming in 2100, because then will be the same laws of physics as today. They didn’t expect that proof. Laws of physics say: oxygen + nitrogen regulate the temperature in the atmosphere,
not CO2! O+N expand when get warmer – intercept extra coldness and equalize in a jiffy. Part of the planet can get warmer, only if other part gets colder simultaneously, to accommodate for the extra volume of air that increased, where it is warming. That’s what the laws of physics and my formula say; do you want to argue against ”me and the laws of physics?!”
John, I don’t have it at hand, but somewhere on the net there’s a wonderful collage of scanned news stories from the late 1800s through the present, alternately, every 20 years or so, switching from warning about cooling to warming and vice-versa. Of course the stories may have simply been cherry-picked, but it made for a strong collage!
– MJM
A complete list of things already caused by global warming, that suppose to happen, with 90% posability, in 100 years
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
There is no pause in warming. Only the heat has mowed to other places; where is less monitoring – OR WHERE IS NO MONITORING. What was the temperature yesterday, 123miles NE of Fiji, 789feet altitude? If you don’t know that, where is more atmosphere than in Europe / USA – how can one tell the temperature for the whole atmosphere? The laws of physics say: there is no warmer or colder years – only warmth and coldness change places / altitude/ latitude / longitude. Same as dollar coins shifting from one pocket to other = doesn’t make you richer or poorer. You want real proofs: http://globalwarmingdenier.wordpress.com The only reason 98 was warmer – it was year after Kyoto conference – to scare the hell out of the Urban Sheep
[…] The long pause in warming confirmed – Nice research, curious rhetoric Just dis-embargoed at noon PST (8 pm BST) on 20 October are a press release and associated papers from the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperatures (BEST) project. A team led by Richard A. Muller has been asking whether the histories of land surface temperatures from the likes of NOAA, NASA and the Hadley Centre are to be trusted. Clever statistics glean and process raw data from 39,000 weather stations world wide – more than five times as many as used by other analysts. The short answer is that the other histories are broadly validated, as seen in this graph from one of the new papers. (Calder’s Updates) […]
[…] is the puzzle, as noted by Nigel Calder and others: how can BEST insist that a modicum of additional evidence of late 20th century warming […]
[…] is the puzzle, as noted by Nigel Calder and others: how can BEST insist that a modicum of additional evidence of late 20th century warming […]
[…] is the puzzle, as noted by Nigel Calder and others: how can BEST insist that a modicum of additional evidence of late 20th century warming […]
read alternative news…
[…]The long pause in warming confirmed « Calder's Updates[…]…
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Can someone explain why Nigel Calder says the graph shows global warming stopped in the 1990’s? It looks like it stopped rising in 2005 to me. Im not a CO2 fan either – I just dont understand the comment….
By the way – just reading NC’s book “The Manic Sun” – I thought Hannes Alfven was one of the first physicists to explain cosmic rays and their impact on the earth, yet he is not mentioned – ?
Have a look, Ian, at 4 graphs recently shown in http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/11/01/global-temperature-update-september-2012/#more-73494
Wiggles in RSS come back to current values matching 1995, in HADCRU matching 1997, UAH matching 1991 and in GISS matching 1997.
As for Alfven, his contributions to the subject concerned the motions of cosmic rays in the wide Galaxy and in the close vicinity of the Sun, and were not directly relevant to the story in The Manic Sun.
But thank you for your interest.
Nigel