[Vision2020] Four Separate Climate Surveys Agree of Global Warming

[Ted Moffett]

I read in full the "Economist" article you posted, "A Record Making
Effort" on the
Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature programme.

While it may seem at first this article is supported by a
comprehensive unbiased knowledge of climate science, a careful reading
reveals otherwise...

The conclusions of this supposedly independent effort to study the
global instrumental temperature record are not significant except in
the context of a politicized polarized public discussion imbued with
junk climate science (coming from Anthony Watts, for example, which
the article features prominently), partly fossil fuel corporate
funded, with absurdly broad ad hominem hyperbolic attacks on the
integrity of climate scientists in general.

There is little serious debate among competent climate scientists,
even among some who question the contribution of human impacts on
rising temperatures (such as Dr. Roy Spencer:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/ ), that the instrumental record reveals
increasing average global temperatures.

The article references the global temperature records of GISS, NCDC
and Met Office Hadley Center, ignoring the Japan Meteorological Agency
record ( http://www.jma.go.jp/jma/indexe.html  temperature record ),
all of which extend back to 1880, suggesting the author has not done
his homework, as simple as researching climate science on the NASA
website!   That NASA includes the JMA temperature record back to 1880
on its website, along with GISS, NCDC and Met Office Hadley Center, is
a validation of its significance.

The NASA graph combining GISS, NCDC, Met Office Hadley Center, and JMA
global instrumental temperature record from 1880 to 2010 is at this
website, posted Jan. 14, 2011:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/48000/48574/adjusted_annual_temperature_anomalies.pdf

Some reference the global temperature record of John Christy and Roy
Spencer from UAH as shown at websites below, that starts in 1979.
Interestingly, if I understand correctly, their data is entirely
satellite based, no ground temperature thermometers.  Spencer is a
well known skeptic of human influence on global temperature, but his
temperature record nonetheless reveals, if I understand correctly, the
two warmest years since 1979 are 1998 and 2010... Goddard Institute
for Space Studies finds 2005 and 2010 statistically tied for the two
warmest years since 1880,  Either way, so much for the global cooling
predictions of just a few years ago coming from some skeptics of a
warming climate, at least for now, given the very warm 2010:
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt
http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/

Also of significance is the Remote Sensing Systems temperature data,
though I do not think they offer temperature data over the whole time
span of what is considered the instrumental record period, from the
late 1800s.  I just surveyed some of their data, and found data that
indicate one of the unique signatures of greenhouse gas forcing on
rising Earth temperatures, a signature that does not fit ocean current
or solar forcing causes of warming: troposphere warming coupled with
stratosphere cooling (so much for Dr. Roy Spencer's ocean current
theory to explain long term warming, some climate scientists insist)
http://www.ssmi.com/msu/msu_data_description.html#msu_amsu_time_series

But back to the "Economist" article... It is typical of much
journalism regarding climate science, exagerating uncertainties in
climate science, and the astonishing revelation that some climate
scientists are not saints, to consciously or not assist political and
economic interests who wish to plant unwarranted doubt in the public,
rather than uncover what an objective pursuit of scientific truth
reveals.

For example, it suggests a high level of scientific uncertainty for
paleoclimate temperature reconstructions before the modern
instrumental record, while framing the discussion with hyperbolic
demands.  Why must all relevant questions be answered before the
temperature reconstructions are of value, when some relevant questions
can be answered?  And why state it may be impossible to answer the
relevant questions, when it very well may be possible, without even
clarifying what the most relevant questions are?  To quote:
"Another reason is that mediaeval data (from tree rings and the like)
at issue in the hockey stick debate are necessarily sparse and patchy,
and coming up with really robust answers to all the relevant questions
on the basis of them may well prove impossible."

I refer anyone interested in determining if temperature reconstruction
before the instrumental record is valid, as it relates to the so
called "Hockey Stick" temperature graph, to a science book which can
be read in total online, published by the National Academies Press,
"Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years":
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11676&page=R1

The problem with my recommendation is that very few people will read
this book, even among so called science writers in journalism, who
sometimes do not conduct in-depth study of the climate science
literature on the subjects they address.  I suspect that the writer of
this "Economist" article has not read the very important book I just
referenced, as they pontificated on the uncertainties of the
paleoclimate temperature data.  So as the media and science
journalists promote incomplete and misleading statements on climate
science, the public is left scientifically misinformed.

Also, trotting out pseudo-scientist Anthony Watts and his junk climate
science blog "Watts Up With That's" attacks on climate science
temperature data, as though he contributes credibly to scientific
debate on climate science, is similar to referencing Velikovsky in a
serious discussion of planetary astronomy: laughable!  I call Watts a
"pseudo-scientist" just as Velikovsky's work is called
"pseudo-science" at the following source:
"Astronomical Pseudo-Science: A Skeptic's Resource List"
http://www.astrosociety.org/education/resources/pseudobib04.html

It is no surprize Watts' claims of errors in the temperature record
were not found to be valid, by the analysis of temperature data by the
Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature programme.  As Dr. Mark Serreze,
director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center said,
"I have yet to lose any sleep over what is talked about in
"WattsUpWithThat" or any other similar blog that insists on arguing
from a viewpoint of breathtaking ignorance."
http://climateprogress.org/2009/06/05/nsidc-director-serreze-death-spiral-arctic-ice-wattsupwiththat/

Futhermore, singling out climate science in the following statement,
as if numerous other fields of science do not also matter to expensive
policy decisions, is also typical of the bias climate science faces
frequently, implying climate science is somehow not as objective as
other fields of science: "But there are many ways in which climate
science is not normal, one of which is that it matters a great deal
with respect to some very expensive policy decisions."

Scientific research that relates to military applications (huge
corporate financial interests in military hardware contracts),
medicine (FDA drug appproval, connected to billions in pharmaceutical
profits), agriculture (corn based ethanol and ag. giant ADM, Monsanto
and genetically modified crops), and energy technologies subsidies,
are also subject to the same questions regarding bias because of
"expensive policy decisions."  What other "many ways" is climate
science is "not normal," the reader must wonder; but climate science
apparently is in need of "normalization" of some sort, given this
article's slant.

Another peculiar claim is that "fearless physicists" involved in the
Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature programme might somehow offer a
scientific perspective not available among professional climate
scientists, as the following quote reveals:
"The Berkeley approach seems based on the idea that coming out of
physics, not climate science, was going to be a strength not a
weakness."

Yet physicists and principles of physics have been an essential
scientific foundation of climate science (American Insitute of Physics
on global warming:  http://www.aip.org/history/climate/Radmath.htm ),
extending back to Arrhenius in 1896 (though Arrhenius received his
Nobel Prize in chemistry:
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1903/ ), when
he did his analysis on climate sensitivity for the global temperature
change from doubling atmospheric CO2 level, which some climate
scientists consider the begining of modern climate science. Without
the work of physicists on the radiative forcing of CO2 in Earth's
atmosphere, there would be no modern climate science.
------------------------------------------
Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett

On 4/1/11, nickgier at roadrunner.com <nickgier at roadrunner.com> wrote:
> Climate change: A record-making effort
> Mar 31st 2011, 23:20 by O.M. The Economist
>
> Graph is attached
>
> ON THURSDAY March 31st Richard Muller [formerly a climate skeptic]of
> Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory gave evidence to the energy and commerce
> committee of America’s House of Representatives on the surface temperature
> record. Without having yet bothered to check, Babbage can say with some
> certainty that this event will be much discussed in the blogosphere—as,
> oddly enough, it should be.
>
> Here’s the short version of the reason why: a new and methodologically
> interesting study, carried out by people some of whom might have been
> expected to take a somewhat sceptical view on the issue, seems essentially
> to have confirmed the results of earlier work on the rate at which the
> earth’s temperature is rising. This makes suggestions that this rise is an
> artefact of bad measurement, or indeed a conspiracy of climatologists, even
> less credible than they were before.
>
> Now here’s the much longer version.
>
> There are two topics which, more than any other, can be guaranteed to set
> off arguments between those convinced of the reality and importance of
> humanity’s impact on the climate and those not so convinced. One revolves
> around the question of how reliable, if at all, statements about average
> global temperatures before about 1500 AD are. This is the so-called “hockey
> stick” debate. The amount of computer processing power and data storage
> capacity devoted to endless online discussions of the hockey stick— the
> subject featured in a great deal of the brouhaha over the “climategate”
> e-mails—must, by now, have the carbon footprint of a fair-sized Canadian
> city, which of course would worry one side of the argument not a whit.
>
> The second touchy topic is the instrumental record of the world’s
> temperature over the past 100 years or so. This is a more genuinely
> interesting subject, for two reasons. First: Consider a person who looks at
> all the non-hockey-stick evidence and arguments for thinking people are
> changing the climate (we won’t rehearse them now, but here’s a relevant
> article from The Economist last year). Imagine this person then saying “you
> know, that radiation balance and basic physics and ocean heat content and
> all the rest of that stuff looks pretty conclusive—but because I can’t say
> for sure whether it was warmer in 1388 than it was in 1988 or the other way
> round I’m going to ignore it all.” This would probably not be a person you
> would take very seriously.
>
> More at http://news.economist.com/cgi-bin1/DM/t/eCYik0Yv8At0Mo0UoLR0E4