As seen at WUWT, finally a BEST paper got published! I don’t know how many times they were rejected before someone invented a journal for them to publish in. But, here it is in all of its glory! A New Estimate of the Average Earth Surface Land Temperature Spanning 1753 to 2011
There’s plenty of fun stuff to criticize this work about. The level of rationalization and sophistry is a bit overwhelming. But, this is something that has continually irked me since BEST first came out with their time series. It’s something BEST should have taken out if they were desiring to be taken seriously.
The early part of the record infers, as best as is possible, the
fluctuations in global land-only temperature from a sparse network
of primarily European and North American observations. This is possible, albeit with the relatively large uncertainties, because
the European and North American annual average anomalies are
observed to remain within ± 0.5°C of the global land average 95%
of the time during the 20th century. The Berkeley Average procedure
allows us to use the sparse network of observations from the very
longest monitoring stations (10, 25, 46, 101, and 186 sites in the years
1755, 1775, 1800, 1825, and 1850 respectfully) to place limited bounds
on the yearly average. These limits imply an Earth that was colder
than today during nearly all of the period since 1755. page 3.
On page two, they write this. And it is this that invalidates their own work.
Spatial sampling uncertainties were estimated by simulating poorly sampled periods (e.g. 1800 to 1850) with modern data (1960 to 2010) for which the Earth coverage was better than 97% complete, and measuring the departure from the full site average when using only the limited spatial regions available at early times. This empirical approach implicitly assumes that the spatial relationships between different climate regions remain largely unchanged, and it underestimates the uncertainties if that assumption is false. This could happen, for example, in the period 1750 to 1850 when our evidence shows a strong influence from large volcanic eruptions, a phenomenon for which there are only weak analogs in the 20th century. Thus, although we report “global” land surface results, it should not be forgotten that in the earliest periods
that we cover (especially prior to 1850) that sampling is poor, and
our results are accurate only to the extent that the spatial structure of temperature does not change significantly with time.
Did you catch that? They estimated the temps with poor spatial sampling by using modern data and assume that the spatial structure didn’t change with time. But, then, they point to that same period of time stating that things were different back then (attributing the difference to volcanoes). They assume things were the same but state that they were different.
10 whole thermometers in 1755 and they publish an estimate of our global temps. It’s absurd. Maybe if they colored even larger uncertainty estimates.
so much for UHI…but then they obviously adjusted up for UHI again…because they show a temp increase of a little over 1 1/2 degree….which is impossible
Yeh, but they colored large error estimates!!! So, it’s okay, or something.
Reblogged this on Climate Ponderings.
Looks like they stitched together a pretty ugly Frankenstein’s monster of invented temperatures.
On WUWT Mosher is currently insinuating everyone criticizing Muller is a moon landing conspirationalist. Not a pretty sight.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/19/berkeley-earth-finally-makes-peer-review/#comment-1204276
Watts protects Mosher as they are good friends. Mosher’s drunk the AGW kool-aid, and his comments reflect that opinion. I think AGW is nonsense, and I find the Moon landings highly credible. I also “believe” in Evolution, so there you go–I’m an enigma.
Jim
As an amusing sidebar, some acolyte of the church of AGW tried to tie skeptics to the Moon Landing as well. When I claimed there was no doubt of it , he switched and asked me to prove it!
Fortunately, since my cousin is Maxime Faget, that was not a difficult task to accomplish.
I saw that. I started to comment, but thought it a waste of time.
Yeah, I saw that too, I think he is drinking from the Lew!
It has been a waste of time trying to comment at WUWT for some time. I seldom visit the site any more.
I quit trying to discuss with Mosh years ago at CA.
However Mosh is CTM’s room mate
It seems that way lately now doesn’t it…….
They made up virtual temperature measurements across the globe in the 1800′s when there were only a few real thermometers in the US and Europe.
They used a GCM, I suspect. So whatever they made up there is GCM reality. In the end they find that the temperatures are perfectly in line with what one would expect compared to a GCM.
So BEST is a tautological exercise to give GCM’s credibility by comparing to a make believe past constructed by a GCM.
I see a credibility problem there.
A huge one.
Was is streach and seal over an aquarium tank with barbie dolls…..
What in the world?
Mueller! FOS as usual!
They let this idiot teach things when he does not know WTF he is talking about.
I am having a Heart attack and dying from laughing, When he said only experts need to know what the initials IPCC stand for. I just can not handle the next 6 minutes.
Mike, you lasted longer than I did!
does he really get paid for this?
….I’m in the wrong field
We all are!
He’s using an inappropriate experiment. Wait… does he tell the students that the experiment has nothing to do with nothing? No.
They have to pay tuition fees for that? That’s worse than the BBC. They had a fudged experiment as well but at least they used CO2.
Muller, BTW, earlier had a stab at science with the NEMESIS theory,
0:39:31 NEMESIS – planet orbiting a failed sun in the Oorth cloud, causing meteor rains and extinction events.
With Photo. Yes it’s that Muller.
Depending on how you count it, Mueller’s been studying climate intensively for “five years or fifteen years, maybe eighteen years.” What? Is Mueller for real?
Starting at 6 minutes Mueller claims he has analyzed more climate than anybody else in the world. There’s no modesty there.
The cellophane trick is how real greenhouses work, but not how greenhouse gases work. When are these nuts going to get the difference straight?
Jim
BTW, Linda got a box of Cracker Jacks and I found a PHD diploma in it. Now I can claim to have a PHD like Appell!
You should make a copy and post it on-line. Then we can all have Phd’s.
Jim
There was a crooked line, put on a crooked graph, by four crooked data smugger’s, The best that money could find.
Well, I know I’m only a dumb engineer, but expanding the error bars is the correct way to go. For example, GISTEMP makes up data points all the time. When they have a missing month, then they do a double interpolation to recreate that month. They even do it when there are several months missing. Yet their error bars don’t seem to be affected by this made-up data (assuming there are error bars around somewhere). Those made-up values should have pretty large error bars–humongous in fact.
The confidence level should go way down too. But this is climate science, and they don’t even care about preserving raw data.
If engineers played with their data and models the same way climate scientists played with theirs; then every bridge would collapse, and all the engineers would be strung up at the nearest convenient tree.
Jim
Right, and if this was any sort of real examination of data, I would agree with you. But, if one generates a margin of error this large, what is the value of such an examination? BEST is essentially saying they don’t have any idea what the temps were back in the 1700s, but they’re going to plot them on a graph anyway. Like you said, only in climate science……
I had an argument with a warmists about historical CO2 levels. I mentioned the stomata method for measuring past CO2 levels and he pointed to ice cores. He wanted to know the errors bars of the stomata method, and I said it’s about plus or minus 35 ppm. He said, “aha, the ice cores are more accurate” then stated some tiny, less than 1 ppm value.
I said there are two things wrong with your statement: 1) the errors bars represent precision of the measurement, not the accuracy, and 2) the ice core error bars are for the very last stage of a value measured in a test tube–it doesn’t represent the error possible in the entire sequence from original CO2 capture in the ice to the final measurement. He had no clue to what I was talking about. I also think that the stomata method may be more accurate than the ice core method, maybe not as precise.
Engineers and properly trained scientists (not climate scientists) understand what error bars mean. They don’t represent accuracy, because only God knows the true value.
As for the small number of past temperature samples I have a well-known saying: “A man with one watch always knows what time it is; a man with two watches never knows what time it is.”
The real problem is that averaging temperatures is nonsense physically. You can average energy, because there’s a concept of total energy that makes sense. What is a total temperature? In thermodynamics, you have extensive properties and intensive properties. Energy is an extensive property, and it can be averaged. Temperature is an intensive property, and averaging temperatures is nonsense.
Jim
Exactly true. I do, often times, incorrectly interchange precision with accuracy, but, yes that’s right. And yes, the average temp is an absurdity.
More error bars please!
“One, by John Kochendorfer of NOAA at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, is a direct test of the importance of siting. They’ve installed four temperature sensors at varying distances across a field from the laboratory complex. The experiment has only been running since October, but already they’ve found out a couple of interesting things. First, the nighttime temperatures are indeed higher closer to the laboratory. Second, this is true whether the wind is blowing toward or away from the laboratory.”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/20/noaa-establishes-a-fact-about-station-siting-nighttime-temperatures-are-indeed-higher-closer-to-the-laboratory/
Looks like it’s time for more adjustments.