This should be Headline News, emblazoned across the National Agenda ...
The Climate Deniers -- got Denied!
The Planet is indeed warming due to human influence ... who knew?
Huge Blow to Science Deniers: Koch Funded Researchers Confirm Global Warming
alternet.org -- October 25, 2011; by Kevin Drum -- Mother Jones
[...] [University of California-Berkeley physicist Richard] Muller has criticized Al Gore in the past as an "exaggerator," has spoken warmly of climate skeptic Anthony Watts, and has said that Steve McIntyre's famous takedown of the "hockey stick" climate graph made him "uncomfortable" with the paper the hockey stick was originally based on.
[...]
So in 2010 he started up the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project (BEST) to show the world how to do climate analysis right. Who better, after all? "Muller's views on climate have made him a darling of skeptics," said Scientific American, "and newly elected Republicans in the House of Representatives, who invited him to testify to the Committee on Science, Space and Technology about his preliminary results." The Koch Foundation, founded by the billionaire oil brothers who have been major funders of the climate-denial machine, gave BEST a $150,000 grant.
Using a novel statistical methodology that incorporates more data than other climate models and requires less human judgment about how to handle it (summarized by the Economist here), the BEST team drew several conclusions:
* The earth is indeed getting warmer. Global average land temperatures have risen 0.91 degrees Celsius over the past 50 years. This is "on the high end of the existing range of reconstructions."
* The rate of increase on land is accelerating. Warming for the entire 20th century clocks in at 0.73 degrees C per century. But over the most recent 40 years, the globe has warmed at a rate of 2.76 degrees C per century.
* Warming has not abated since 1998. The rise in average temperature over the period 1998-2010 is 2.84 degrees C per century [5.11 degrees F].
[...]
* The urban heat island effect -- i.e., the theory that rising temperatures around cities might be corrupting the global data -- is very small.
In the press release announcing the results, Muller said, "Our biggest surprise was that the new results agreed so closely with the warming values published previously by other teams in the US and the UK." In other words, climate scientists know what they're doing after all.
What's that you say Dr Muller? You know your conclusions really don't follow Koch Industry's script ...
"Our biggest surprise was that the new results agreed so closely with the warming values published previously by other teams ..."
Surprise, surprise!
Haven't 99% of the world's Climate Scientists been telling us this -- for years?
The heat is on
A new analysis of the temperature record leaves little room for the doubters. The world is warming
The Economist -- Oct 22 2011
Inconvenient data
Marshalled by an astrophysicist, Richard Muller, this group, which calls itself the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature, is notable in several ways. When embarking on the project 18 months ago, its members (including Saul Perlmutter, who won the Nobel prize for physics this month for his work on dark energy) were mostly new to climate science. And Dr Muller, for one, was mildly skeptical of its findings. This was partly, he says, because of “climategate”: the 2009 revelation of e-mails from scientists at CRU which suggested they had sometimes taken steps to disguise their adjustments of inconvenient palaeo-data. With this reputation, the Berkeley Earth team found it unusually easy to attract sponsors, including a donation of $150,000 from the Koch Foundation.
Yet Berkeley Earth’s results, as described in four papers currently undergoing peer review, but which were nonetheless released on October 20th, offer strong support to the existing temperature compilations. The group estimates that over the past 50 years the land surface warmed by 0.911°C [1.639°F]: a mere 2% less than NOAA’s estimate. That is despite its use of a novel methodology -- designed, at least in part, to address the concerns of what Dr Muller terms “legitimate skeptics”.
[...]
Yet the Berkeley Earth study promises to be valuable. It is due to be published online with a vast trove of supporting data, merged from 15 separate sources, with duplications and other errors clearly signalled. At a time of exaggerated doubts about the instrumental temperature record, this should help promulgate its main conclusion: that the existing mean estimates are in the right ballpark. That means the world is warming fast.
And what did Dr Muller recommend to a skeptical Congress?
STATEMENT TO THE COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE AND TECHNOLOGY OF THE UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Richard A. Muller, Professor of Physics University of California, Berkeley
Chair, Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project [BEST]
31 March 2011 -- Executive Summary
[... Richard A. Muller:]
I begin by talking about
Global Warming
Prior groups at NOAA, NASA, and in the UK (HadCRU) estimate about a 1.2 degree C land temperature rise from the early 1900s to the present. This 1.2 degree rise is what we call global warming. Their work is excellent, and the Berkeley Earth project strives to build on it.
Human caused global warming is somewhat smaller. According to the most recent IPCC report (2007), the human component became apparent only after 1957, and it amounts to “most” of the 0.7 degree rise since then. Let’s assume the human-caused warming is 0.6 degrees.
The magnitude of this temperature rise is a key scientific and public policy concern.
[...]
Potential Legislation
I was asked what legislation could advance our knowledge of climate change. After some consideration, I felt that the creation of a Climate Advanced Research Project Agency, or Climate-ARPA, could help.
[...]
Government policy needs to encourage such work. Climate-ARPA could be an organization that provides quick funding to worthwhile projects without regard to whether they support or challenge current understanding.
In Summary
Despite potential biases in the data, methods of analysis can be used to reduce bias effects well enough to enable us to measure long-term Earth temperature changes. Data integrity is adequate. Based on our initial work at Berkeley Earth, I believe that some of the most worrisome biases are less of a problem than I had previously thought.
Imagine it. A big-bucks Research Agency dedicated to saving the Planet, not militarizing it, as its forerunner has spent untold billions doing:
DARPA Project List (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency)
DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) was established 1958 in response to the Soviet launch of Sputnik. DARPA reports directly to the Secretary of Defense; however, it operates independently of the rest of military research and development.
Imagine it. In-depth discussion panels. A call for a new Apollo Project, for the 21st Century.
Imagine it. Banner headlines:
Skeptic recants.
Climate Deniers -- denied!
Climate Change is Real.
Where are the Headlines? Where is the call to Action? I must have been working late that day ...
Where is the Advanced Research Projects Agency committed to minimizing this very real problem of Climate Change?
How many more states need to burn down, have their crops fail, have their roads and homes flooded out, have their power blacked-out for weeks?
-- before America (and Congress) finally gets a clue. This problem is Real. This problem is happening -- NOW.
This Climate Change reality cannot be denied. They tried.
They gave it their BEST shot, but the facts were irrefutable.