BEST and a growing controvery.

Some time ago it appeared that the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) Study was going to be a new review, critically supported by both those that believe in Anthropogenic Global Warming and those more dubious about the quality of the data that had led to that conclusion. The first papers have been released, and the controversy over what they found, which seemed relatively minor at the beginning, is now starting to get some notice.

Bishop Hill has drawn attention to an article in the London Mail on line in which Dr. Judith Curry voices concern about the papers and the way the information was released. Up in Canada, Steve McIntyre is raising more points of concern in successive posts at Climate Audit. And within the comments at both sites there are further growing areas of contention being identified.

I have, as those who read the individual state reviews that have been posted here over the last two years (and which are listed down the left side of the page) my own concerns. I have sent these to the attention of the BEST Executive Director. To validate their reality I went back to each of the data tables used to generate the graphs for each state, and checked them for correctness. I found that at the beginning the curves for temperature variance with latitude, longitude , elevation and population had included the temperatures for the GISS stations in a state as well as the USHCN station data. This is a mistake, as the continuing study showed how different the two sets of data are. I have thus re-plotted the data using only temperatures for the USHCN set (both homogenized and for the TOBS data).

I will now go back and change the plotted graphs for each state to make sure that they are the correct ones, but this may take a few days, so in the mean time, please be patient.

In the meanwhile you might ponder this plot which is figure 4 from their paper on the Urban Heat Island Effect.

Map of stations in and near the United States with at least 70 years of measurements; red stations are those with positive trends and blue stations are those with negative trends. (The BEST Project).

Distortion and Defamation - not what Science should be about

I was planning on writing a little about the way in which carbon dioxide is absorbed into the ocean today, but a couple of things continue to niggle in my mind. To begin, of you go back and look at the comment that Stuart posted to my post last week on the Popular Mechanics article you might note that it begins with “You are spouting obvious nonsense.” It is, I suppose this immediate, derogatory and insulting approach that I have found so prevalent among those who advocate the case that the world is warming due to greenhouse gas effects. As has been clear these distorters of the true data and their supporters have a problem with defending the actual data that is out there, and the tales that it tells, and so resort to derogation, distraction and the consistent lack of discussion of the actual data.

Immediately after the Climate-gate literature hit the internet, George Mombiot wrote a piece in the Guardian recognizing the damage that the release had done to science. And yet, having done that, and rather than go on to investigate some of the implications from that release, he has gone back to attacking those who are skeptical of some of the data and conclusions by those who, for this article, I will continue to refer to as the “distorters.”

However rather than an investigation, he has turned to praise of the book “Climate Cover-up” by James Hoggan. Having read it just recently I had debated whether to review it and decided initially not to. (Oh, and if you are wondering why George Monbiot might have reviewed it – well it does say some very nice things about him on page 162 – 164. (And to digress a minute that is about Monbiot’s research to discredit a statement made by David Bellamy that 555 of the 625 glaciers monitored by the World Glacier Monitoring service were growing, which was wrong, but – as a side consequence I am not expecting there to be much reporting in the Guardian of the Indian Government report that glaciers in the Himalayas are growing, and why. It is in an area where the WGMS admits to having insufficient data).

The reason I decided initially not to write about the book is that it is some 235 pages of what are really ad hominem attacks against those who have spoken up against the Global Warming machine. Oh, and lest you think it is a disinterested report, it is written by a PR firm president, who is the chair of Al Gore’s The Climate Project in Canada. Much of the information in the book apparently comes from the blogsite Desmogblog. whose major reason for being is apparently to trash those who would dispute our distorters message. As innumerable folks have said over this whole discussion, “If you can’t attack the science, attack those who tell it.” There is virtually no fact in the book, and, naturally, the judgment of the British Court in allowing Al Gore’s movie to be shown in British classrooms is distorted.

Which gets me to my big disappointment of the week. There are two science journals, Science and Nature which are considered by most to be prestigious, and of sterling reputation. The original paper by Mann, Bradley and Hughes describing “The Hockey Stick” was published in Nature in 1998. One of the clear stories from the release of the Climate-gate e-mails was the way in which the cabal of scientists at its heart worked to restrict the publication of views other than their own. It is this corruption of science that George Monbiot found inexcusable.

But here is the sad thing. Given the opportunity to recognize that there might have been problems in the peer-review process for papers dealing with climate change, did the management of these two journals recognize the issue. Did they acknowledge a problem, open the problem to public purview and comment, and promise to ensure the journal integrity?

Well, no, actually neither of them did. Nature had an editorial supporting those caught up in the scandal, and the executive publisher of Science wrote a supportive opinion for the Washington Post. So if you have some data that argues against the continued warming of the Earth, or the disastrous consequences that might occur if that warming should accelerate, don’t bother sending it to a prestigious journal for publication. The distorters have them clearly under their control and you might as well quit and go grow cabbages.

The “sale” of the AGW argument has required a very significant public relations campaign. Part of the strategy has continuously been to downplay the credentials and credibility of those who would question (often with facts) the message that had to convince the public. The amount of money now being spent in grants on this topic around the world is staggering. The degree of orchestration that it has required to achieve this is similarly large, and has been dramatically helped by the Internet.

This became clear this week in the comments to the EPA ruling on GHG emissions. As was noted in my earlier review, the 380,000-dd comments that the EPA had received on the proposed ruling, were described.

A majority of the comments (approximately 370,000) were the result of mass mail campaigns, which are defined as groups of comments that are identical or very similar in form and content. Overall, about two-thirds of the mass mail comments received are supportive of the Findings and generally encouraged the Administrator both to make a positive endangerment determination and implement greenhouse gas emission regulations.

Of the mass mail campaigns in disagreement with the Proposed Findings most either oppose the proposal on economic grounds (e.g., due to concern for regulatory measures following an endangerment finding) or take issue with the proposed finding that atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations endanger public health and welfare.

So roughly 2/3 of the 380,000 comments were from supportive organizations with co-ordinated mass mail campaigns. When folk complain that those who are skeptical of the AGW arguments that are being used, are the only ones engaged in trying to manipulate public opinion, those numbers clearly show that the record is being distorted and that it is they, themselves, who are the most active. Tsk!

Popular Mechanics is wrong!

Hmm! Incited, I must admit, by a comment the Advocate made on his web-site, in which, via Andrew Sullivan, he approves of the “dispassionate” review of Climategate given in the last edition of Popular Mechanics – I am going to try and explain why that article is, in fact, almost totally wrong. (And incidentally did you know that Dr Kelemen, who wrote it, shares a department at Columbia University with Dr James Hansen - he who is one of the strongest advocates of AGW on the planet. Sigh!)

The article states, in its summary

A good-faith effort has been made to determine average global temperature using the instrumental record, with increasing accuracy and precision as the data become more comprehensive. For sure, the average temperature of the atmosphere has been rising for most of the last 50 years. This is consistent with the greenhouse theory, though one cannot rule out with complete certainty that other factors—variation due to sunspot activity, or the last gasp of a long warming trend caused by variation in the Earth's orbit—might also be contributing to temperature change.

OK, let’s start there and progress, because the e-mails and sections of code that are being revealed show that the “good-faith” bit is already somewhat of a stretch. But before I get there let me explain a couple of things that may not be that well known. To begin with there are not that many places that actually monitor the temperature of the globe, or are used as the sources of record. The two that have been most consistently used are that run by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and that of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (CRU) affiliated with the British Met Office, though there is a third at the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) which is part of NOAA. (This last tends to run very close to the GISS values). The British Met Office, in trying to ameliorate the mess that has suddenly been dumped in their lap has tried to explain how these records are made.

However, at the moment, having (I suspect) taken a look at the reality of mess that was the code that was being used at CRU the Met Office has decided to clean its slate and start over, which is a commentary in itself.

The Met Office plans to re-examine 160 years of temperature data after admitting that public confidence in the science on man-made global warming has been shattered by leaked e-mails.

The new analysis of the data will take three years, meaning that the Met Office will not be able to state with absolute confidence the extent of the warming trend until the end of 2012.

Unfortunately this does not address the underlying issue – and which Peter Kelemen fails to grasp. It is this. There has been a clear pattern of global warming and cooling in about 1,000 to 1,500 year cycles for some millennia. From about 1350 to about 1850 the globe was in a period called a Little Ice Age. There are literally hundreds of scientific documents that record this. The ones that I am more often prone to quote are collected in Jean Grove’s Book The Little Ice Age. The world started coming out of this colder time about 160 years ago, so the Met Office survey is going to show that the globe has, yes indeed, been warming over that time frame.

But the question that gets neglected in that reaffirmation is based on the reason for the warming. Because if indeed the world is naturally going through this cycle, then the Anthropogenic part of AGW becomes questionable. Carbon dioxide levels were not changing as this part of the cycle started – they are not thought to have been a significant factor until around 1980, by which time the globe had been warming for over a hundred years. (And in the 1960’s – which is where Peter would have us consider that greenhouse effects started to have an impact - the world was apparently (according to the now questionable record) in the midst of a cooling period that lasted from about 1940 to about 1970).

Further, before the Little Ice Age there is considerable evidence that the globe was warmer, on average, than it is now. And in that period life did not come to an end. There was no great invasion of the sea over vast areas of land. Yes, there were droughts in places such as Southern California but there was no great eruption of methane from the melting tundra, as has been prophesied as an example by many of those now writing about the terrors that Global Warming will bring. The period was known as the Medieval Warming Period, and even Dr. Mann, in a paper published last week, has finally admitted to its existence.

The implication in the statement in Popular Mechanics is that it is the greenhouse effect that is driving climate change, and that the natural effects are merely assisting in encouraging the change. In reality it is the other way around. As lots of scientists have pointed out, over most of the history of the Earth it is only after the temperature has risen that carbon dioxide levels rise, not, as many AGW proponents would have it, the other way around.

The recent halt in the rapid rate of global warming that we saw until 1998 points out the errors in accepting the arguments of advocates of AGW such as Dr Hansen, whose predictions had the average temperature increase due to the greenhouse effect already over 1.1 degrees C, when in fact it is around 0.5 degrees C, below the level that Dr Hansen had predicted it would reach only if carbon dioxide levels were dramatically reduced in 2000, which they were not.

I suspect that we will see many similar articles by apologists for the AGW crowd of the ilk of the Popular Mechanics article in the coming weeks. We can only hope that those reporting on the issue become a little more dispassionate in their reporting. Unfortunately based on the record to date I would not place any money on it happening – but regrettably, with the money being committed to the climate change business, the world is not likely to have that luxury.

Dr Hansen was wrong - let's change the subject

I have pointed out in recent remarks, that if the debate on climate change were being conducted under normal scientific conventions, then the predictions that were made by Dr. Hansen back in 1988 would, by now, be considered to have been proved false, since the predictions that he made on global temperature rise, and the path that temperature would take, have not followed his models. His predictions were based upon:

Scenario A assumes continued exponential trace gas growth, scenario B assumes a reduced linear growth of trace gases, and scenario C assumes a rapid curtailment of trace gas emissions such that the net climate forcing ceases to increase after the year 2000.

The carbon dioxide path has continued to move along the path predicted for scenario A, yet the temperature rise through today has not only failed to accelerate with it, as Dr Hansen predicted, but instead is much closer to following along the temperature curve predicted for scenario C.

Comparison of Dr Hansen’s scenario predictions against actual temperature anomalies (deg C) (prediction here and actual temp from GISS) Baseline 1951-1980 mean.

I took the data from the plot of temperature predictions that Dr Hansen provided, since it allows me to easily read the predicted temperatures, and I then re-plotted the data with the actual temperatures from the GISS website as the black lines, since the original plot only went as far as 2005. I did note that the tabulated data were slightly different from those of the actual temp data plotted in the 2005 curve, and used the more up to date ones for the entire series.

If one looks at the above comparison that Dr Hansen which is extended from the one made in 2005 the difference between the actual temperature and his predictions clearly show that the actual (black) temperatures are falling away from all but the C scenario (blue) a predictive future which was only supposed to occur if we did ameliorate carbon dioxide emissions. There is no accelerated warming, and there was no amelioration of the rising carbon levels, and so his predictions fail.

However, rather than discuss this rather interesting fact, the global “warming” community has managed, yet again, to divert discussion by dragging debate over a different topic of their choosing, so that this primary point can be hidden from public debate. Their topic centers on whether the globe has been warming at all, an issue that depends very much on where your temperature starts. They might have been somewhat embarrassed to begin with 1998 (as some more realistic of the proponents recognize, following their earlier use of that temperature to show how fast the temperature was going up). However the commentators have chosen, very carefully, to attack the suggestion that the temperature might be cooling, rather than the more relevant issue that the global temperature is not following the models. When you can’t argue, then change the subject.

Now, for what it is worth I have made clear that I am more convinced by the hundreds of peer-reviewed publications (such as those referenced by Jean Grove in The Little Ice Age, or by Brian Fagan in his books) that document the Medieval Warming Period and its predecessors and the intervening cold periods, such as those of the Dark Ages and the Little Ice Age. Thus the fact that the present warming period has not reached the extent of the last warming period, let alone those before it, does not unduly disturb me. (That is evidenced by the ground conditions – such as permafrost - in the Arctic inter alia, and the positions of the ecotones in Europe). Yet it is sadly a denigration of true scientific debate to see how vociferously those arguing for AGW change the topic, or readjust the data whenever they seem at the stage of losing a point in the debate.

If one accepts that we are in this cyclic series then arguments about whether by some fraction of a degree or other the temperature was warmer in 1934 than 2005 in the United States become significantly less critical. The question then becomes whether this Warming Period is significantly less warm than the last, or the one before that. The Roman period was apparently warmer than the Medieval one (the evidence coming among other things from the Roman ruins appearing out of the ice in the Alps), and both were warmer than we are now. But we also need to go back to those periods and see what the conditions were that developed in different parts of the globe (such as the extended droughts in what is now California) and learn from that information, and take precautions accordingly, recognizing what we might be facing as the climate changes. For if we do not learn from history, then we are bound to repeat it - as once was said.

The question as to why these periods existed – or whether the intervening cooling periods are the anomalies – is probably a much more worthwhile study, but given the urge that folk have to change the way in which energy is produced, and the vast fortunes that hang on the changes in policy that are being debated, somehow I don’t see much attention being given to those questions soon.

If you claim to be scientific, then be so

When I was taught basic science and engineering it was understood that if you proposed a hypothesis, or theory, and ran an experiment where the results went against the theory, then the theory was wrong. It is a precept I have used all my professional life to help lead a technology from being some lab curiosity to the point where it is a multi-billion dollar industry, with still more potential applications poised to move it into a second generation of growth. We did this by getting some ideas, and then running experiments to see if they worked, and then, when the results showed the original idea wrong, modifying our ideas, and then trying another experiment.

Under the modern penchant for description it is a process that is being referred to as the “scientific method,” albeit to us it was just a logical way of making progress. To make progress one must constantly be willing to look at the data, and re-analyze the underlying concept you have been applying as more data becomes available. Sounds logical doesn’t it. And yet that is not what one has seen, or is likely to see in the future, when folk discuss the drivers for what may, or may not be, the warming of our planet.

Back 20 years ago Dr Hansen of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) gave testimony before Congress that suggested, given the increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, that the world temperature would continue to rise, as this gas forced retention of a greater percentage of the solar radiation that the Earth was receiving. Spring forward a decade and that warming is no longer occurring. Proponents of the idea have gone from touting each year as being hotter than the last, to muttering that the last 10 years have been the hottest on record (while failing to mention how short that record really is) and with global temperatures falling even that “ten-year” ploy is likely soon to be no longer accurate. But does that cause the world to pause and consider that, perhaps, the global warming theory is wrong. Not at all, suddenly scientific thinking on the subject is closed. That step, and the unwillingness of the AGW proponents to engage in open rational debate, with all relevant data available for public scrutiny, should begin to get you worried.

Just this last week there are reports of an EPA official suggesting that perhaps the EPA should consider what has happened in the last three years, not just the information available from before that time. And, in the mode of the Administration practice, he was of course quietly told to shut up and get on board with the plan. How easily we slip from outrage when this was suggested to be done to Dr Hansen, to accepting when it is done, and apparently got away with by the current EPA Administration.

The argument that is made at the “Real Climate” types of website is that all these issues have been raised and answered before, and that therefore, inter alia, no new information, except that supporting their arguments will be tolerated. And yet there is no scientific rebuttal given, no “here is the graph that proves you wrong!” No instead there are the ad hominem attacks that the proponent of this new question is not a “climate scientist.” The Wegman report noted how small the group of climate scientists are that seem to control the literature, and how incestuously they have interacted in writing papers and conducting research. Heaven forbid, apparently that anyone with an ounce of scientific training be able to look at a graph and determine whether it is rising or falling. We are however, literate and can read graphs that show among other things that Alaskan glaciers are advancing, but discussion of that is improper apparently without the right qualification.

But even with the right qualification, if your ideas on global warming are incorrect, then regardless of qualification and the knowledge that you have, your presence is unwelcome in the company of your peers. So it appears is the case of an expert on polar bears.

But one of the world’s leading experts on polar bears has been told to stay away from this week’s meeting, specifically because his views on global warming do not accord with the views of the rest of the group.

Dr Mitchell Taylor has been researching into the status and management of polar bears in Canada and around the Arctic Circle for 30 years, as both an academic and a government employee. More than once since 2006 he has made headlines by insisting that polar bear numbers, far from decreasing, are much higher than they were 30 years ago. Of the 19 different bear populations, almost all are increasing or at optimum levels, only two have for local reasons modestly declined.

Dr Taylor agrees that the Arctic has been warming in the past 30 years. But he ascribes this not to rising levels of CO2 – as is dictated by the computer models of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and believed by his PBSG colleagues – but to currents bringing warm water into the Arctic from the Pacific and the effect of winds blowing in from the Bering Sea.

I begin to become quite concerned that we are starting to see the deliberate suppression of scientific views and information, a deliberate withholding of information from the public on the realities of climate change, as opposed to what those now in power want us to believe, regardless of fact. There is a denial of the latest information, and a distortion of the record, such that folk don’t have to face the reality that the original hypothesis, that increased carbon dioxide levels produce accelerating global warming, is wrong.

We have just seen the Waxman:Markey bill pass the House with the prospect of a myriad regulations that will likely, despite the claims of the legislation, likely reduce employment in the county. Why, because as the regulation forces renewable energy sources not just to supply an increased demand for energy but to displace existing energy sources then we lay off those now working to supply that energy. Once a wind turbine is erected it does not take a climate scientist to realize that the number of folks employed from that point in feeding that power into the grid is close to zero. Contrast that with the miners who mined the coal, the railway workers who transported it, and the power station employees that ran the plant that converted it into electricity, all of whom now get laid off. Common sense tells you that this is a job reduction program, but then who said this whole effort was about logic and rational discussion?

Growing AGW skepticism is not denied by ad hominem attacks

Given that this is Valentine’s Day, and that there have been no new posts at Real Climate, and only one (other than showing how good Steve is at squash) over at Climate Audit, I am going to combine the comment post and the blog review (Saturday Pick Points) into a single post today. In part this is because of an item in the Guardian this past week, that Anthony Watts picked up at Watt’s Up With That . The title of the article is “ ‘Apocalyptic Climate predictions’ mislead public, say experts,” and it leads back to an article on the Guardian Website by Dr Vicky Pope, who is the head of climate change advice at the Met Office Hadley Centre in the United Kingdom (Hadley), where one of the leading advocates of AGM has just about had enough with some of the rest of the brigade.

Part of the problem has been that, in order to get media space, any projected change in climate is often exaggerated to make a dramatic headline. And while neither Guardian piece is that explicit, in the WUWT post there are the following examples:

During the past few weeks, there have been several warnings of apocalypse from noted scientists. Dr. Hansen warned in The Guardian that President Obama has “four years to save the planet.” James McCarthy, head of the American Association for The Advancement of Science (AAAS) made a similar statement. Nobel Prize winning scientist Al Gore is going to take it a step further at next week’s AAAS meeting. Steven Chu, President Obama’s Secretary of Energy, warned that California will no longer be able to support agriculture or cities due to drought caused by global warming.

All of these use highly dramatic statements in trying to get the public’s attention. The particular articles that seem to have grabbed Hadley’s attention deal more with the Arctic Ice Cap and Greenland, and the first is directly aimed back at Dr. Hansen, though it doesn’t actually name him. Specifically

Recent headlines have proclaimed that Arctic summer sea ice has decreased so much in the past few years that it has reached a tipping point (this was Hansen) and will disappear very quickly. The truth is that there is little evidence to support this. Indeed, the record-breaking losses in the past couple of years could easily be due to natural fluctuations in the weather, with summer sea ice increasing again over the next few years.

And then in regard to Greenland:

The most recent example of this sequence of claim and counter-claim focused on the Greenland ice sheet. The melting of ice around south-east Greenland accelerated in the early part of this decade, leading to reports that scientists had underestimated the speed of warming in this region. Recent measurements, reported in Science magazine last week, show that the speed-up has stopped across the region. This has been picked up on the climate sceptics' websites. Again, natural variability has been ignored in order to support a particular point of view, with climate change advocates leaping on the acceleration to further their cause and the climate change sceptics now using the slowing down to their own benefit.

And today the Guardian has a story by Patrick Michaels about the Eric Steig paper on the Antarctic that I have been commenting about for the last two Saturdays. His piece, rather than focusing on the errors that WUWT and CA have found, looks at the data and notes that it really doesn’t show anything remarkable, despite the hype that it received from Nature (being used as the lead article, with a front cover).

The response from Guardian readers to the latter post has been the usual spate of ad hominem attacks, that make scientific discussion of these stories more difficult. But one thing of note is this spate of less than adulatory stories of AGW proponents. This was foreseen in an article in Politico last November. The story began

Climate change skeptics on Capitol Hill are quietly watching a growing accumulation of global cooling science and other findings that could signal that the science behind global warming may still be too shaky to warrant cap-and-trade legislation.

This, at the time, engendered an excoriating comment from the Washington Monthly, which was again, sadly focused more on ad Hominem attack

The Politico did some solid campaign reporting this year. Here's hoping Lovley's articles are an aberration, and not the kind of "journalism" readers can expect as the political world transitions from campaign mode to governing.

and in comments

It's Politico. They have about as much journalistic credibility as Faux News. My advice Steve is to stop using them as sources or even posting about them.

People just need to stop paying attention to groups like them who are consistently wrong about everything important in life - kind of like people need to stop paying attention to Bill. Kristol.

And if you wonder where they get an example from that leads them down this route, consider the letter from Dr. Mann about Larry Solomon’s comments on the Antarctic story

How ironic that Mr Lawrence uses the word "shame" in his disinformation piece. For he is perhaps the most shameful and dishonest actors in the climate change disinformation machine. Some people indeed have no shame. Nonetheless, in Mr Solomon's case, the judgment of history will be his condemnation.

Not exactly encouraging the furthering of scientific debate are they. (Lawrence had a video comment on this and how the press has been taken in) However that particular controversy continues with comments both by Gerald North and by Lawrence Solomon.

WUMT has another example of the ad hominem nature of the AGW approach this week. Out in Columbus, Ohio, the NBC4 chief meteorologist Jym Ganahl had given a local talk on the myths of global warming. Daily Kos was not amused, and again there was no thought given to a look at the scientific evidence that was in the talk, but rather just a whole series of snide remarks about meteorologists in the comments section.

You can see that it can be quite easy to get lost in the facts, as the insults trot around the internet. But rather than leave the post with that, I did put a couple of things together about the end of the Medieval Warming Period this week. When I first started commenting on Jean Grove’s book on the Little Ice Age I commented on the movement of the fish shoals away from Greenland as the glaciers advanced to the coast. Well now the situation is reversed, as the warmer seas change the pattern of migration.

“The Cod are coming back to Greenland strong,” he says. I find it ironic that global warming and the melting of the Greenland ice cap that threatens the world ecology has also meant that cod have started to move north into Greenland’s warmer waters and their numbers are growing. 


They left at the start of the Little Ice Age, and now they are coming back. Which might be a comment on how warm it was back in 1300, but then that would be data and not opinion. (grin)

Happy Valentine’s Day!
.