Climate skeptic admits he was wrong to doubt global-warming
gimmesometruth27
St. Fuckin Louis Posts: 23,303
this is an interesting development...i thought it deserves it's own thread..
Climate skeptic admits he was wrong to doubt global-warming data
http://www.bnd.com/2011/10/24/1913502/c ... e-was.html
Remember when scientists who had cast doubt on global temperature studies boldly embarked on an effort to "reconsider" the evidence?
They have. And they conclude that their doubt was misplaced.
UC Berkeley physicist Richard Muller and others were looking at the so-called urban heat island effect - the notion that because more urban temperature stations are included in global temperature data sets than are rural ones, the global average temperature was being skewed upward because these sites tend to retain more heat. Hence, global warming trends are exaggerated.
Using data from such urban heat islands as Tokyo, they hypothesized, could introduce "a severe warming bias in global averages using urban stations."
In fact, the data trend was "opposite in sign to that expected if the urban heat island effect was adding anomalous warming to the record. The small size, and its negative sign, supports the key conclusion of prior groups that urban warming does not unduly bias estimates of recent global temperature change."
Researchers conclude that "(t)he trend analysis also supports the view that the spurious contribution of urban heating to the global average, if present, is not a strong effect; this agrees with the conclusions in the literature that we cited previously."
The literature they cite is the basis for the conclusion that Earth has been warming in an unnatural way during the period of human industrialization.
The paper, made available Thursday, amounts to the second time that Muller et al have had to back away from a key plank of climate skeptics' argument that Earth is simply on a natural temperature path and man-made greenhouse gases are not warming the atmosphere.
Several months ago, when called before a congressional panel that likewise has been skeptical of climate research, Muller acknowledged that his team was finding no smoking gun to indict climate scientists.
At the time, Muller told the House Science Committee that the work of the three principal groups that have analyzed the temperature trends underlying climate science is "excellent .... We see a global warming trend that is very similar to that previously reported by the other groups."
Climate skeptic admits he was wrong to doubt global-warming data
http://www.bnd.com/2011/10/24/1913502/c ... e-was.html
Remember when scientists who had cast doubt on global temperature studies boldly embarked on an effort to "reconsider" the evidence?
They have. And they conclude that their doubt was misplaced.
UC Berkeley physicist Richard Muller and others were looking at the so-called urban heat island effect - the notion that because more urban temperature stations are included in global temperature data sets than are rural ones, the global average temperature was being skewed upward because these sites tend to retain more heat. Hence, global warming trends are exaggerated.
Using data from such urban heat islands as Tokyo, they hypothesized, could introduce "a severe warming bias in global averages using urban stations."
In fact, the data trend was "opposite in sign to that expected if the urban heat island effect was adding anomalous warming to the record. The small size, and its negative sign, supports the key conclusion of prior groups that urban warming does not unduly bias estimates of recent global temperature change."
Researchers conclude that "(t)he trend analysis also supports the view that the spurious contribution of urban heating to the global average, if present, is not a strong effect; this agrees with the conclusions in the literature that we cited previously."
The literature they cite is the basis for the conclusion that Earth has been warming in an unnatural way during the period of human industrialization.
The paper, made available Thursday, amounts to the second time that Muller et al have had to back away from a key plank of climate skeptics' argument that Earth is simply on a natural temperature path and man-made greenhouse gases are not warming the atmosphere.
Several months ago, when called before a congressional panel that likewise has been skeptical of climate research, Muller acknowledged that his team was finding no smoking gun to indict climate scientists.
At the time, Muller told the House Science Committee that the work of the three principal groups that have analyzed the temperature trends underlying climate science is "excellent .... We see a global warming trend that is very similar to that previously reported by the other groups."
"You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry." - Lincoln
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Watch Out for Science Reporting
The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project today released some information about their research. Judith Curry, one of the co-authors, reports this here. The BBC has a story here, and the Economist reports it here.
These stories both play out as “the CO2-forced AGW model is confirmed,” which is a whole lot stronger than the actual results.
The BEP papers say that by re-analyzing existing temperature records, they get a close match to other temperature analyses of global average surface temperature for the last 200 or so years. This isn’t a big surprise: that fits what Wegman and others reported — agreement on warming over the last 400 years, but less clarity on temperatures 1000 years ago or more.
This is not in itself a confirmation of AGW.
I know I’ve said this before, but let’s just repeat: to confirm the CO2-forced AGW hypothesis, you need several steps:
•There must have been warming.
•That warming must be unusual.
•There must be a mechanism proposed for that unusual warming, and there must be a falsifiable way of confirming that mechanism.
•That mechanism has to be the result of human action.
•That human action has to be unusual release of CO2.
All we have here is confirmation of warming, the first step. This has been by far the strongest part of this chain and has been for a long time. It’s already well established — as I’ve said before, we know there’s been warming since the Little Ice Age — that’s how we know it was the Little Ice Age.
There is one fairly unusual aspect to this, that the authors have put on a big PR effort for papers that haven’t been peer-reviewed or published in the formal literature. Here’s something I wrote on Google+:
You’d be better off reading Judith Curry (one of the co-authors) on her blog: http://judithcurry.com/2011/10/20/berke ... ent-124946
The press embargo on this lifts today at noon Pacific time. I suspect there will be pretty widespread media coverage on this, with both sides of the debate spinning this to suit their purposes. I have had queries from several journalists, to whom I probably did not provide any usable sound bites. Lets see how it plays out.
Roger PIelke Sr wonders about site selection:http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2011/10/20/comment-on-the-article-in-the-economist-on-rich-mullers-data-analysis/
Anthony Watts notes this is a PR press before peer-review, which is unusual: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/20/t ... er-review/
As I was invited by The Economist to comment publicly, I would recommend rejecting Muller et al in the current form and suggest that it be resubmitted with meaningful and appropriate 30 year comparisons for the same time periods used by the Menne et al and Fall et al cited papers. I would be happy to review the paper again at that time.
I also believe it would be premature and inappropriate to have a news article highlighting the conclusions of this paper until such time meaningful data comparisons are produced and the paper passes peer review. Given the new techniques from BEST, there may be much to gain from a rework of the analysis limited to identical thirty year periods used in Menne et al and Fall et al.
Watts had been asked to review one of the papers, which was a follow-on to the site quality work he’s led over the last several years. He found some significant errors, and submitted his reviews just a few days ago; those errors weren’t corrected before the PR push.
Lesson: Be cautious about the reporting of a scientific paper that hasn’t been published yet, and be doubly cautious about how a paper is reported when it’s a politically sensitive topic.
Update:
Doug Keenan responds with some technical issues that I think are significant: http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2011/10 ... paper.html
Also, the decadal-oscillations paper makes it clear that an interpretation of their data could imply the human contribution to warming has been overstated.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/21/s ... more-49700
Posted at 8:39 pm on October 20th, 2011 by
— Socrates
-Eddie Vedder, "Smile"
Agreed. I do think some deniers will actually wait to admit it when it's too late though. Like when our coasts start disappearing dramatically.
After years of studying this topic, I'm more and more convinced that in some ways we're already past the point at which we can prevent some of the harmful effects of global warming. But if my house were on fire and the back bedroom was already destroyed you can bet I wouldn't just stand around and watch the rest burn (or worse yet, throw gasoline on the fire). We need to focus our energies on doing what we can to reudce carbon in the atmosphere and slow the warming process as much as possible. This much we can do!
-Eddie Vedder, "Smile"
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/climate-change ... 09079.html
These are the primary arguments made against global warming. The large platform given to those who voice them — prominently by some media outlets — has had an astounding impact on public opinion in the United States. A May 2011 survey found that only 47 percent of Americans attribute global warming to human activities, while 36 percent blame it on natural causes. A staggering 95 percent of people who reported being "disengaged," "doubtful" or "dismissive" of global warming had no idea that 97 percent of publishing climate scientists believe global warming is happening and that it is caused by humans.
It seems the media has inaccurately portrayed the climate debate by paying disproportionate attention to many of the unscientific claims laid out here. Is the damage irreparable?
"Is the damage irreparable?"
The answer to this question appears to be yes, much of the damage incurred thus far is very possibly irreversible. Does that mean we should throw our hands up in the air and say "Too late! Nothing can be done! The end is near!" No. We can still reduce atmospheric carbon and slow the process and even reverse it if we work hard and make sacrifices. Do we really need more plastic disposable stuff? Do we really need to drive everyday? Do we really need NASCAR, more strip malls, or mega-star rock bands* that don't take responsibility for their carbon output? Why give up when there is so much good work to be done?
*Kudos to Pearl Jam for their tree planting program!
-Eddie Vedder, "Smile"
no disrespect but this is very sad ... profitability should not come at the expense of journalistic integrity ...
Journalistic integrity? What is that? We haven't had any of that in this country in about a decade and a half, as best I can determine.
Worst thing that ever happened to TV news is the 24-hour news day. The 'real' unbiased news takes about 1 hour a day to report...which leaves 23 hours for self-proclaimed 'pundits' to soap box us with their opinions, merely disguised as 'news'. And more and more people can no longer tell the difference between the two anymore.
Seriously - I really doubt many of the younger people in particular even know what real news is anymore, they have seen it so rarely.
Being in my mid-40's, I dimly remember the days when Walter Cronkite would relay the day's casualty report from Vietnam, while the cameras rolled on the coffins coming off the planes from Southeast Asia.
But when Dubya asked the news networks to not show the coffins coming off the planes from Afghanistan and Iraq, what did they do? Answer: They fucking FOLDED. Like the lily-livered weeners that they are. Like it meant absolutely nothing to them to report the frakkin' TRUTH.
Five or six years later, everyone finally wakes up and goes 'Hey! What about this war? It's, like, costing people their lives!! Wow! We had no frakkin' clue that people would actually, you know....DIE!!! Oh god! We gotta get the fuck OUT of there!!! Now!!!"
:roll: :roll: :roll:
Of course, if the news networks had done their frakkin' JOBS back in 2001 and 2002, we wouldn't have been having that conversation in 2007 and 2008, after 4,000 young men and woman had died. :roll:
Seriously - some days I think the only show on TV with a lick of journalistic integrity is The Daily Show. And it's a frakkin' COMEDY show, fer cryin out loud!
Is it any wonder that there are so may global-warming deniers out there? I mean, with a journalistic community full of weenies like the ones we have?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_Doctrine
Yeah...that 'Fairness Doctrine' thing was COMPLETELY unreasonable to maintain. I mean, why have a requirement for unbiased reporting when we can have outright political propaganda put forth by corporate America under the auspices of 'News' that we can leverage for personal and political gain 24/7/365????
:roll: :roll: :roll:
Whole country is going to hell...on the coattails of of a misguided attachment to an inaccurate definition of the term 'capitalism'.
...are those who've helped us.
Right 'round the corner could be bigger than ourselves.
I'd much rather have the private sector determine what is fair and unbiased than the government.
I dont agree
private sector is about profit
dont know what the answer is but private companies???? I dont think so
Exactly. Profits are the ultimate motivating factor, the private sector will deliver what the market wants. The dirty little secret is that the market doesn't want unbiased reporting. Republicans love FoxNews and democrats love MSNBC. The private sector is delivering exactly what the market wants. A perfect example would be in 2008 the New York Post's endorsement of Obama. Murdoch basically said it was his idea saying, "He's a rock star". I agree 100%, Obama was young and different, exactly the type of endorsement I would make.
Back to the subject at hand, people don't want to hear that 97% of climatologists think that AGW is actually happening. It's sad and pathetic, but NO government agency should be around to force them out of their delusion.
At the rate things are accelerating, soon no one will need to be forced to acknowledge anthropogenic global warming- the evidence will be all to clear.
-Eddie Vedder, "Smile"