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Manne and ordinary people

By Anthony Cox - posted Tuesday, 7 August 2012


Let me be clear. My own reading of the literature and study of paleoclimate suggests strongly that carbon dioxide from burning of fossil fuels will prove to be the greatest pollutant of human history. It is likely to have severe and detrimental effects on global climate. I would love to believe that the results of Mann et al. are correct, and that the last few years have been the warmest in a millennium.

These are not the words of a sceptic. Muller's real position is probably summed up by this lecture which was used as an example of Muller's supposed skepticism by such AGW supporters as Andrew Revkin. What Muller's speech shows is that he doesn't doubt AGW but thinks he could do better in proving it than the other pro-AGW scientists, including Michael Mann and his faulty Hockey-stick. This is competitive rivalry not skepticism.

Readfearn has completely missed this point about Muller and proceeds to describe Muller's paper, which is the second of Muller's BEST analyses of the world's land temperatures, as though it were gospel. In the first BEST study completed in 2011 the temperature records of the world land areas over the 20th century were examined and found to be consistent with AGW. In BEST 2 the temperature records back to 1750 were studied and also found to be consistent with AGW, with no other factor including the sun having any major contribution to temperature. In fact, in BEST 2 Muller is even more emphatic in concluding that "Solar variation does not seem to impact the temperature trend".

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This is an astounding finding which is contradicted by contrary evidence from NASA scientists that the sun has played a major role in temperature trends, especially at regional levels.

Again, Readfearn has either ignored this crucial fact or not understood it. Readfearn also does not refer to several other disquieting aspects of both the BEST studies.

Firstly, neither BEST 1 nor 2 have been published. In fact the process by which BEST 1 was rejected by peer review should have placed the keen intelligence of AGW supporters on alert. This is what one of the reviewers of BEST 1 says about it:

On March 8 2012 I was asked by JGR to review a revised version of the Wickham et al. Paper [BEST 1]. I submitted my review at the end of March. The authors had made very few changes and had not addressed any of the methodological problems, so I recommended the paper not be published. I do not know what the journal's decision was, but it is 4 months later and I can find no evidence on the BEST website that this or any other BEST project paper has been accepted for publication. [Update July 30: JGR told me, "This paper was rejected and the editor recommended that the author resubmit it as a new paper."]
On July 29 2012 Richard Muller launched another publicity blitz (e.g. here and here) claiming, among other things, that "In our papers we demonstrate that none of these potentially troublesome effects [including those related to urbanization and land surface changes] unduly biased our conclusions." Their failure to provide a proper demonstration of this point had led me to recommend against publishing their paper. This places me in an awkward position since I made an undertaking to JGR to respect the confidentiality of the peer review process, but I have reason to believe Muller et al.'s analysis does not support the conclusions he is now asserting in the press.

Other critiques of the BEST papers note basic flaws in the statistical analysis of the temperature data and the conclusion that Urban Heat Island Effect (UHIE) was not present in the temperature record.

The reason why UHIE was not found in BEST 1 & 2 is because it is deliberately removed by the BEST statistical methodology. As 'ordinary person' and blogger BobC notes:

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BEST eliminates UHIE from consideration by the very construction of their "New Mathematical Framework" for analyzing temperature data (Described here in their methodology document "Berkeley Earth Temperature Averaging Process").When you look at equations 1 and 2 (on page 7) of the linked document, you see that the only non stationary effect acknowledged on a temperature series is defined as Global Temperature Change. That is, any effect that doesn't average to zero over a few years is defined as a change in Global Temperature. Since, in the real world, UHIE is non-stationary (populations continue to grow), the "New Mathematical Framework" guarantees that UHIE will be considered to be "Global Warming".

That is not just bad science; it is also the science which Readfearn, as Manne's proxy, uses to prove the quality of the scientific evidence supporting AGW which supposedly only the elite people can appreciate.

The Muller BEST studies of temperature stand in stark contrast to another study released simultaneously with BEST 2. Readfearn and Manne have ignored this study which is by Anthony Watts, who runs a blog site. Watts had previously written a paper looking at UHIE and how a warming bias may be in land based temperatures. Unlike Muller's paper, this first paper by Watts was published. This first paper did not find a clear manifestation of UHIE although significant problems with the siting of temperature recorders were still noted.

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About the Author

Anthony Cox is a lawyer and secretary of The Climate Sceptics.

Other articles by this Author

All articles by Anthony Cox

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