THINKPROGRESS
CLIMATE PROGRESS
“The decadal land-surface average temperature using a 10-year
moving average of surface temperatures over land. Anomalies are relative
to the Jan 1950 – December 1979 mean. The grey band indicates 95%
statistical and spatial uncertainty interval.” A Koch-funded
reanalysis of 1.6 billion temperature reports finds that “essentially
all of this increase is due to the human emission of greenhouse gases.”
The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study (BEST) is poised to
release its findings next week on the cause of recent global warming. A
forthcoming
NY Times op-ed by Richard Muller, BEST’s Founder
and Scientific Director, has been excerpted on a conservative website
with the headline, “
New Global Temperature Data Reanalysis Confirms Warming, Blames CO2.”
I have spoken with scientists and journalists familiar with BEST’s
findings, and the excerpt appears genuine. Here is the money graf:
CALL me a converted skeptic. Three years
ago I identified scientific issues that, in my mind, threw doubt on the
very existence of global warming. Now, after organizing an intensive
research effort involving a dozen scientists, I’ve concluded that global warming is real, that the prior estimates of the rate were correct, and that cause is human.
Yes, yes, I know, the finding itself is “dog bites man.” What makes this “man bites dog” is that
Muller has been a skeptic of climate science, and the single biggest funder of this study is the “Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation ($150,000).” The Kochs are the
leading funder of climate disinformation in the world!
It gets better:
Our results show that the average temperature of the
Earth’s land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the
past 250 years, and one and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the most
recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase is due to the human emission of greenhouse gases.
These findings are stronger than those of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations group that
defines the scientific and diplomatic consensus on global warming.
In short, a Koch-funded study has found that the IPCC “consensus”
underestimated both the rate of surface warming and how much could be
attributed to human emissions!
Here is some background on BEST followed by a longer excerpt of the op-ed.
A group of scientists led by one well-known skeptic, Muller — and
whose only climatologist listed is Judith Curry, a well-known
confusionist [see
Schmidt and
Annan and
Steig and
Verheggen, and
CP]
— decided to reexamine all of the temperature data they could get their
hands on. I broke the story of their initial findings in March 2011
(with the help of climatologist Ken Caldeira) – see
Exclusive:
Berkeley temperature study results “confirm the reality of global
warming and support in all essential respects the historical temperature
analyses of the NOAA, NASA, and HadCRU.”
The top figure is an
updated chart of their findings from March of this year. They found a lot of warming.
Indeed, their key paper from 2011 found:
… our analysis suggests a degree of global
land-surface warming during the anthropogenic era that is consistent
with prior work (e.g. NOAA) but on the high end of the existing range of reconstructions.
So the only remaining question for BEST was: What is the cause of
that warming? Of course, those who read ClimateProgress or the
scientific literature already knew the answer to that question (see the
12/11 post,
It’s “Extremely Likely That at Least 74% of Observed Warming Since 1950″ Was Manmade; It’s Highly Likely All of It Was).
BEST is set to release those findings this week. The excellent UK
Guardian reporter,
Leo Hickman,
tweeted earlier today that “Significant climate-related news will be
breaking on Guardian website in next 24-36 hours” and then he tweeted an
hour ago the link to the excerpt of Muller’s op-ed. Here is the full
excerpt:
CALL me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified
scientific issues that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence
of global warming. Now, after organizing an intensive research effort
involving a dozen scientists, I’ve concluded that global warming is
real, that the prior estimates of the rate were correct, and that cause
is human.
My turnaround is the result of the careful and objective analysis by
the “Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature” team, founded by me and my
daughter Elizabeth. Our results show that the average temperature of the
Earth’s land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the
past 250 years, and one and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the most
recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of
this increase is due to the human emission of greenhouse gases.
These findings are stronger than those of the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change, the United Nations group that defines the scientific
and diplomatic consensus on global warming. In its 2007 report, the
IPCC concluded only that most of the warming of the prior 50 years could
be attributed to humans. It was possible, according to the IPCC
consensus statement, that the warming before to 1956 could be due to
changes in solar activity, and that even a substantial part of the more
recent warming could be natural.
Our Berkeley Earth approach used sophistical statistical methods
developed largely by our lead scientist Robert Rohde, and which allowed
us to determine earth land temperature much further back in time. We
carefully studied issues raised by skeptics: biases from urban heating
(we duplicated our results using rural data alone), data selection
(prior groups selected less than 20% of the available temperature
stations; we used virtually 100%), poor station quality (we separately
analyzed good stations and poor ones), and from human intervention and
data adjustment (our work is completely automated and hands-off). In
our papers we demonstrate that none of these potentially troublesome
effects unduly biased our conclusions. …
How definite is the attribution to humans? The carbon dioxide curve
gives a better match than anything else we’ve tried. Its magnitude is
consistent with the calculated greenhouse effect – extra warming from
trapped heat radiation. These facts don’t prove causality and they
shouldn’t end skepticism, but they raise the bar: to be considered
seriously, an alternative explanation must match the data at least as
well as does carbon dioxide. …
Well, in fact, to be seriously considered, an alternative explanation
must match the data at least as well as does CO2 — and it must offer
some mechanism that counteracts the well-known warming effect of CO2.
Not bloody likely.
What about the future? As carbon dioxide emissions
increase, the temperature should continue to rise. With a simple model
(no tipping points, no sudden increase in cloud cover, a response to
gases that is “logarithmic”) I expect the rate of warming to proceed at a
steady pace, about 1.5 degree F over land in the next 50 years, less if
the oceans are included. But if China continues its rapid growth (it
has averaged 10% per year over the last 20 years) and its vast use of
coal (typically adding one new gigawatt per month), then that same warming could take place in less than 20 years.
Ouch.
I asked Caldeira for a comment on Muller’s op-ed. He writes:
I am glad that Muller et al have taken a look at
the data and have come to essentially the same conclusion that nearly
everyone else had come to more than a decade ago.
The basic scientific results have been established for a long time now, so I do not see the results of Muller et al
as being scientifically important. However, their result may be
politically important. It shows that even people who suspect climate
scientists of being charlatans, when they take a hard look at the data,
see that the climate scientists have been right all along.
Who’d have thunk it? Not the Kochs….
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