The Berkeley Earth Project - Global Warming Confirmed By "Independent" Group of Scientists

[C. Flower]

This appears to be an important study. Broadly accepting at least that there was a high risk of man's activities causing global warming, I was not happy by the evident fudging done by some scientists looking to tweak their results.

This study appears to be independent and unbiased.

http://berkeleyearth.org/

Funders include people like the Kochs who have previously funded sceptical studies.

It has tested out criticisms of the IPCC work, for example the locations of weather stations in urban areas.

The results it has come up with are very similar to the IPCCs.

The Berkeley Earth Project has used new methods and some new data, but finds the same warming trend seen by groups such as the UK Met Office and Nasa.


The project received funds from sources that back organisations lobbying against action on climate change.
"Climategate", in 2009, involved claims global warming had been exaggerated. Emails of University of East Anglia (UEA) climate scientists were hacked, posted online and used by critics to allege manipulation of climate change data.



The Berkeley group says it has also found evidence that changing sea temperatures in the north Atlantic may be a major reason why the Earth's average temperature varies globally from year to year.
The group includes physicist Saul Perlmutter, a Nobel Prize winner this year
The project was established by University of California physics professor Richard Muller, who was concerned by claims that established teams of climate researchers had not been entirely open with their data.
He gathered a team of 10 scientists, mostly physicists, including such luminaries as Saul Perlmutter, winner of this year's Nobel Physics Prize for research showing the Universe's expansion is accelerating.
Funding came from a number of sources, including charitable foundations maintained by the Koch brothers, the billionaire US industrialists, who have also donated large sums to organisations lobbying against acceptance of man-made global warming.

"I was deeply concerned that the group [at UEA] had concealed discordant data," Prof Muller told BBC News.
"Science is best done when the problems with the analysis are candidly shared."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15373071

[sinsin]

They changed the time period.

[C. Flower]

They changed the time period.

They extended it. I can't see how that changes the conclusions.

[sinsin]

http://www.economist.com/node/21533360

Apparently, Astill has never heard of the UAH and RSS Global Temperature records, nor does he apparently know that all the surface temperature records come from one source, NCDC.

The issue of “the world is warming” is not one that climate skeptics question, it is the magnitude and causes.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/2...e-peer-review/

[sinsin]

This appears to be an important study. Broadly accepting at least that there was a high risk of man's activities causing global warming, I was not happy by the evident fudging done by some scientists looking to tweak their results.

This study appears to be independent and unbiased.

http://berkeleyearth.org/

Funders include people like the Kochs who have previously funded sceptical studies.

It has tested out criticisms of the IPCC work, for example the locations of weather stations in urban areas.

The results it has come up with are very similar to the IPCCs.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15373071

The problem has to do with the time period of the data used, a time period which is inconsistent with two prior papers cited as this Muller et al paper being in agreement with. They are:

Fall et al (2011), Analysis of the impacts of station exposure on the U.S. Historical Climatology Network temperatures and temperature trends J. Geophys. Res.

http://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpr...1/07/r-367.pdf

and

Menne et al (2010), On the reliability of the U.S. surface temperature record, J. Geophys. Res.

Both papers listed above (and cited by Muller et al) do an analysis over a thirty year time period while the Muller et al paper uses data for comparison from 1950 – 2010 as stated on lines 142-143:

“We calculated the mean temperature from 1950 to the present for each of these sites, and subtracted the mean of the poor sites from the OK sites.”

I see this as a basic failure in understanding the limitations of the siting survey we conducted on the USHCN, rendering the Muller et al paper conclusions highly uncertain, if not erroneous.