"BEST" temperature record study surprises skeptics
Last month, a team of scientists from Berkeley called the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) group released results from research they did on the Earth surface temperature record. Though there have been numerous studies and time series created on surface temperature, they wanted to take an independent look at the data and create a new temperature record. What they found was surprising to some in the "skeptic" community, though not surprising to most climate scientists.
Dr. Richard Muller is the founder and scientific director of the BEST group, which is made up of physicists, statisticians, and climatologists. Though Dr. Muller has been described as a climate change "skeptic" and "denialist," he has an impressive and extensive curriculum vitae in physics, including being a consultant for the U.S. Department of Defense, and a MacArther Foundation Fellow, and the recipient of the National Science Foundation Alan T. Altman Award. His skepticism is evidenced most frequently in the press by his funding from the Koch brothers, who have made billions of dollars in the oil industry. The BEST project also accepted funding from Koch, among many other organizations, though the funders had no influence over methodology or results, which is almost always the case in peer reviewed science. The BEST group also includes Dr. Judith Curry, the chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech, who has recently been vocal about the need for a more transparent scientific process, and more eyes on the data, especially when it comes to research on man-made global warming and the temperature record.
The BEST team was open with their hypothesis: they expected to find that, when using temperature stations that other organizations failed to include, the warming trend wouldn't be present, or at least not as dramatic. Their objectives are listed on their website (which also includes access to data and submitted papers), which include:
-- Merging land surface data into a raw dataset that's in a common format and easy to use
-- Developing new and potentially better ways of processing, average, and merging the data
-- Creating a new global temperature record
-- To provide not only the raw data and the resulting record, but also the code and tools used to get there, making the process as transparent as possible
Figure 1. Locations of the the 39,028 temperature stations in the Berkeley Earth data set (blue). Stations classified as rural are plotted on top in black.
The BEST project collaborators combined data from 15 sources that, wherever possible, did not include the tried and true data that the "big three" (NASA, NOAA, or HadCRU) used in their analyses, mainly the GHCN Monthly dataset, which is widely used because of its requirements that the each station in the data set have plenty of observations, no gaps, and no erroneous data. However, the BEST project was born to create a new global surface temperature record, and to "see what you get" if you use observations that other institutions have weeded out. BEST looked at data from 39,028 different temperature measurement stations from around the globe (Figure 1), and developed an averaging process to merge the stations into one record, which you see below in comparison to previous records that have been constructed.
Figure 2. Temperature time series from the big three: NASA Goddard Institute for Space Science (NASA GISS, blue), NOAA (green), and the Hadley Centre and Climate Research Unit of East Anglia (HadCRU, red) along with the results from the BEST project (black).
The result was a new land surface temperature series to be added to the well-cited records of NOAA, NASA, and HadCRU, in addition to some truly independent, amateur compilations. The new temperature record agrees with the records from "the big three," and agrees with them on a warming of 1°C since 1950. BEST also addressed concerns raised by the skeptic community about station bias and urban heat island effect. They conclude that the urban heat island effect does not contribute significantly to the land temperature rise, given that urban area is only 1% of the land area in the record. Also, they looked at the stations that Anthony Watts has reported as "poor" quality, and have found that they also showed the same warming as the stations that were reported as "OK." This helps to show that temperature stations were not "cherry picked" in previous studies for warming trends, but for honest station quality.
The addition of another (eventually) peer-reviewed temperature series is good, and more eyes looking at the data is good, but the result is not surprising. However, it might have changed the minds of some skeptics who have been wanting to see an analysis from scientists that they find trustworthy. I think Dr. Muller sums their results up nicely in his Wall Street Journal opinion article:
When we began our study, we felt that skeptics had raised legitimate issues, and we didn't know what we'd find. Our results turned out to be close to those published by prior groups. We think that means that those groups had truly been very careful in their work, despite their inability to convince some skeptics of that.
The BEST project has four papers out for review in various journals. Having released the results to the public eye before undergoing the scrutiny of peer review, they've also made some updates to the analysis since these papers were submitted, thanks to a peer review process of its own: the internet.
Links and references:
Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature
BEST FAQ
BEST Press Release
Angela
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National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
National Climatic Data Center
Your question could be answered in several different ways and using a single sentence to do so and still satisfy the question. Which specific answer you are looking for does escape me, for I have no idea as to which answer you would want to hear. No matter which answer I could give you, it would be quite easy for you to say, "Yes, but ...." or, "that is not the answer I was looking for". Any answer I could give would have the same chance of being both correct and incorrect at the same time. ASK a real question that only has one answer.
My question, on the other hand, has a straight forward answer and there is only one correct answer. Even though you suggest that the answer for the past does not apply today. Yes, it does still apply today. Corporations do more to stifle innovation and new companies than any civil liberties union could possibly do. You are worried about lawsuits? Try to market a new product and there are corporations that have purchased 1,000s of vaguely worded patents and will sue you out of existence for patent infringements. When we allow corporations to patent the human genome then we have killed any innovation beyond what that corporation will innovate OR innovation will come at a much higher price when companies must purchase patent rights from these corporations. Corporations also will make a modest adjustment to their existing patents and have their patent rights extended. Modest adjustments that have nothing to do with the performance of the product. Pharmaceutical corporations do this on a regular basis to keep the generic drugs off the market and to extend their patent rights on a drug where the patent was about to expire. Corporations will be the downfall of Capitalism, not its savior! Yes! Capitalism would survive just fine without corporations. Yes!, is the ONLY correct answer to my question.
Since you say that Miss Manners is a Liberal hack, perhaps you would benefit by becoming more a of Liberal hack yourself. At least when it comes to showing some manners.
Yes. Three syllable words do have their tripping points - Subjective - "However, the manner in which the senses and the mind are used depends upon the individual using them. It is this variable, necessarily individual process that we refer to as "subjective"."
Since there is no definitive answer to your question (left to interpretation), then yes, it is subjective.
Does Capitalism desire or need corporations in order to survive? The definitive answer is, NO. You may be able to show how some companies may prefer to operate under corporations but, NO. Capitalism never has and never will need corporations in order for Capitalism to survive. I have, in fact, shown you examples of how corporations can stifle Capitalism.
Governments of the world's richest countries have given up on forging a new treaty on climate change to take effect this decade, with potentially disastrous consequences for the environment through global warming.
Ahead of critical talks starting next week, most of the world's leading economies now privately admit that no new global climate agreement will be reached before 2016 at the earliest, and that even if it were negotiated by then, they would stipulate it could not come into force until 2020.
Postponing an operational agreement until 2020 would be fatal to hopes of avoiding catastrophic climate change, according to scientists, economists and green campaigners.
Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency (IEA), and one of the world's foremost authorities on climate economics, told the Guardian: "If we do not have an international agreement whose effect is put in place by 2017, then the door to [holding temperatures below 2C] will be closed forever."
Detta är inte goda nyheter. Som ordspråket säger, "game over!".
1) Enforce it through government
.. This is where you tax your people or force them to fund a safety net for the poorest and unemployed.
2) Improve your technology and planning
.. This is where the COST of living goes down in response to things like better policy, better understanding of behavior and better technology. Even our poorest and most desperate people are still better off than many of our ancestors, whom had to work hard for the bare minimum of what we now enjoy today.
I prefer option (2). But we have to be careful that we don't invest too much in technology and planning. For example, if my new heating system saves the company $400/month then I must decide whether to reinvest that in further research/development, my employees (their wages), my income (my pocket) and so on. If I ignore my employees, their wages will go down as the efficiency of the business goes up. The predictable result is the employees will either protest or they'll just simply be layed off as efficiency improvements make them obsolete. If I put that money in my own pocket, I risk losing efficiency and/or angering my employees. The question is what ratio should go into technology and planning?
So how do we improve our technology and planning?
Well, we need an economy and government that can facilitate these things.
The role of government is to protect the commons (the people, principally) and to pool the wisdom of its citizens into usable form for this purpose. This ensures that we can live on our planet and use its resources without breaching the rights of others. As we all know, we share atoms and air and water and the space around us in a dynamic chaos of equilibrium. Nothing we do is in isolation and everything, one way or another, impacts the lives of others. This is why our government, composed of the people, must preside over it (lawfully). Only by having everyone together in a peaceable assembly can we grasp at the combined wisdom and strike a balance for freedom and fairness, acceptable to all.
The role of economy is to move services and goods effectively here and there so that the society can function. If I have a skill or a talent then I need a method to market it. If I want a skill or a talent then I need a method to get access to it. And so on. All of these energies are spinning everywhere and roads and highways must be there to guide them.
How the government and economy combine with each other is probably something way above my head. But one thing is sure: if you don't win the people's hearts and minds, then it's game over and you won't get better technology or planning.
These ramblings are subject to my own unique ignorance. Forgive me.
PS: I know this isn't entirely on-topic, but many members have brought up topics that're related to this. And in a small way, my post does relate to this whole AGW thing because government is a big factor in it. For example, AGW is government thing because it deals with the commons. We all share this climate, see? Climate is part of the commons. The actions of people impact the climate, as is argued. And the climate impacts people. So the government does what it has always done: attempts to protect the commons (to protect the people), assuming that those who have assembled can agree.
I would say that you are right on topic.
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