“I do not see the results of Muller et al as being scientifically important. However, their result may be politically important.” Ken Caldeira, AGW advocate
No other word can describe this article, presumably by Richard Black as it bears his inimitable style of half truths and missing information, other than FRAUD.
This is a deliberate attempt to mislead the readers and induce them into swallowing the man made global warming scam using the device of a fake conversion to the cause combined with dodgy, unproven ‘science’ and all wrapped up in half truths and half baked theories unsupported even by some of the scientists involved in the research.
It is quite evident that who ever authored this BBC article had a specific aim…to ‘sell’ AGW to us…they have ignored easily available information that shows clearly that Muller was never a Sceptic and that his ‘research’ is highly questionable and the conclusions drawn from it improbable.
None of this has stopped the BBC confidently asserting, and deliberately distorting the truth, that Muller is a convert from scepticism and that his work is a validation of other climate scientists who proclaim CO2 is the cause of climate change.
The BBC claims that Muller is a newly converted believer in global warming from having been a sceptic.
But has he ever been a sceptic? He certainly wasn’t a year ago when he said this in 2011 in an article for the Wall Street Journal. ‘The case against global warming scepticism……there were good reasons for doubt until now’
He’s always believed in global warming…and now declares it’s all definitely man made…..but he gives no proof…..the only ‘proof’ is that he claims CO2 rises in correlation with temperature….therefore must be the cause of warming.
Hang on….even Prof Phil Jones of the CRU admitted that temperatures rose up to 800 years before CO2 levels did…….and now we have increasing CO2 but no temperature rise for over a decade….explain that to me.
And it seems that Muller was in fact a fully paid up member of the man made global warming fraternity in 2004: (page 2)
“If you are concerned about global warming (as I am) and think that human-created carbon dioxide may contribute (as I do), then you still should agree that we are much better off having broken the hockey stick.”
“Let me be clear. My own reading of the literature and study of paleoclimate suggests strongly that carbon dioxide from burning of fossil fuels will prove to be the greatest pollutant of human history. It is likely to have severe and detrimental effects on global climate.” – Richard Muller, 2003
The BBC got its scoop from the New York Times….but it hasn’t told you everything that Muller said….you can believe or not what he claims for temperature rises over 250 years…Judith Curry herself is sceptical of his results and refuses to be associated with them (for more of her see later).
Odd that the BBC missed out this rather big paragraph from Muller:
‘It’s a scientist’s duty to be properly skeptical. I still find that much, if not most, of what is attributed to climate change is speculative, exaggerated or just plain wrong.
Hurricane Katrina cannot be attributed to global warming. The number of hurricanes hitting the United States has been going down, not up; likewise for intense tornadoes. Polar bears aren’t dying from receding ice, and the Himalayan glaciers aren’t going to melt by 2035. And it’s possible that we are currently no warmer than we were a thousand years ago, during the “Medieval Warm Period” or “Medieval Optimum,” an interval of warm conditions known from historical records and indirect evidence like tree rings. And the recent warm spell in the United States happens to be more than offset by cooling elsewhere in the world, so its link to “global” warming is weaker than tenuous.’
What other interesting and telling bits of information did the BBC miss out….as it would detract from the ‘truth’ of this story?
For a start it misses out this review of his work:
‘His latest BEST claims are, in my view, an embarrassment. The statement that he makes in his op-ed is easily refuted.’
The BBC mentions Judith Curry…but fails to say why she didn’t back Muller’s last effort at massaging the figures……
Here is the BBC:
‘However, one collaborator on the previous tranche of Berkeley Earth project papers, Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology, declined to be included as an author on the latest one.
Commenting on the paper, Prof Curry said: “Their latest paper on the 250-year record concludes that the best explanation for the observed warming is greenhouse gas emissions. Their analysis is way oversimplistic and not at all convincing in my opinion.”‘
And here is the original story in all its glory:
‘A leading member of Prof Muller’s team has accused him of trying to mislead the public by hiding the fact that BEST’s research shows global warming has stopped.
Prof Judith Curry, who chairs the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at America’s prestigious Georgia Institute of Technology, said that Prof Muller’s claim that he has proven global warming sceptics wrong was also a ‘huge mistake’, with no scientific basis.
Prof Curry is a distinguished climate researcher with more than 30 years experience and the second named co-author of the BEST project’s four research papers. Like the scientists exposed then by leaked emails from East Anglia University’s Climatic Research Unit, her colleagues from the BEST project seem to be trying to ‘hide the decline’ in rates of global warming.
A report to be published today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation includes a graph of world average temperatures over the past ten years, drawn from the BEST project’s data and revealed on its website.
This graph shows that the trend of the last decade is absolutely flat, with no increase at all – though the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have carried on rising relentlessly.
‘This is nowhere near what the climate models were predicting,’ Prof Curry said. ‘Whatever it is that’s going on here, it doesn’t look like it’s being dominated by CO2.’
In a 2004 Technology Review article,[9] Muller supported the findings of Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick in which they criticized the research, led by Michael E. Mann, which produced the so-called “hockey stick graph” of global temperatures over the past millennium, on the grounds that it did not do proper principal component analysis (PCA).[10] In the article, Richard Muller stated:
McIntyre and McKitrick obtained part of the program that Mann used, and they found serious problems. Not only does the program not do conventional PCA, but it handles data normalization in a way that can only be described as mistaken.
Now comes the real shocker. This improper normalization procedure tends to emphasize any data that do have the hockey stick shape, and to suppress all data that do not. To demonstrate this effect, McIntyre and McKitrick created some meaningless test data that had, on average, no trends. This method of generating random data is called “Monte Carlo” analysis, after the famous casino, and it is widely used in statistical analysis to test procedures. When McIntyre and McKitrick fed these random data into the Mann procedure, out popped a hockey stick shape!
That discovery hit me like a bombshell, and I suspect it is having the same effect on many others. Suddenly the hockey stick, the poster-child of the global warming community, turns out to be an artifact of poor mathematics. How could it happen?[9]
He went on to state “If you are concerned about global warming (as I am) and think that human-created carbon dioxide may contribute (as I do), then you still should agree that we are much better off having broken the hockey stick.’
One last thing about Muller….he has a dog in this fight….
‘Muller is President and Chief Scientist of Muller & Associates, an international consulting group specializing in energy-related issues
‘We know that in order to be effective, solutions must be sustainable… and we know that for businesses, sustainable solutions must be profitable as well.‘
Sustainable? We all know what that means…..wind turbines and solar power….all funded with heavy subsidies to the companies.
Odd that the BBC’s environmental correspondent doesn’t mention that Muller runs a company dependent on the energy sector…..as does Tim Yeo, as does Al Gore….funny how these climate crusaders all tell us how much we need to stop global warming by buying the very kit they just happen to sell.
Odd. Very odd.
Corrupt some might say.
Oh yes…how very funny that the Koch Foundation are funding this ‘research’……Black would have written that with gritted teeth!
Post Script:
Via WUWT:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/30/new-data-old-claims-about-volcanoes/#more-68323
Seems that BEST is short for ‘Best Guess’ when it comes to climate science.
I came here, hot foot from having just read that disgraceful piece of naked warmist propaganda on the BBC’s website, hoping you would have beaten me it and given it the fisking it deserves. I wasn’t disappointed.
What interests me is that it carries no byline, suggesting that whichever BBC eco-activist wrote it new damned well what he was doing and was ashamed to put his name to it for fear of the damage it would do to (what little remained of) his reputation.
This is the BBC at its worst. Lying by selectivity and attempting to skew public opinion and government policy by calculated misdirection.
There is no hope for this rotten body. It just has to go. It is beyond redemption.
There’s no byline because this was posted by a BBC News Online editor whose job it is to take copy provided to him/her by someone like Harrabin or Black and make a news brief from it. Standard practice on the website in all areas, I believe.
No necessarily, David. Some ‘news’ features on the website are bylined. For example http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-19019559
I’m still convinced this piece appeared anonymously so as not to draw hostile fire to an indidvidual.
My comment was based on what I’ve been told by a BBC line editor, and based on what we’ve heard in response to other complaints, as well as what a couple of Beeboids have told us here.
Not everything is produced this way, I know. Of course there are plenty of bylined pieces as well.
This is just the BBC leaping on the NY Times op-ed. They mention that one person was critical of it, but that hardly balances out the whole piece, especially with that quote from Michael “Is That a Discredited Hockey Stick in Your Pants or Are You Just Glad To See Me?” Mann about “a certain ironic satisfaction” in the fact the study in question was paid for by the evil Koch Bros. Sometimes, a study is not automatically discredited by the BBC when it comes from the other side of the political spectrum: when they agree with the results, of course. Sometimes the BBC doesn’t play the man instead of the ball. How curious.
The fact that they also don’t tell you the whole truth about Curry’s criticism speaks volumes as well. In fact, the NY Times’ “Dot Earth” blog has a full quote from her, as well as the Times blogger’s own opinion that she’s right. The BBC is hoping you won’t find out about this.
Anthony Watts, of course, has a new paper out based on a years-long study which directly contradicts Mueller’s conclusions. Half the warming claimed for the US is artificial. Which the BBC will never report.
Yes, don’t know how Black & Co get away with it…this is pure politics…it’s not journalism, it’s outright advocacy on behalf of the AGW team.
Mark Thompson asleep at the helm allowing this to go on…it’s so obvious and blatant. ‘Wilful blindness’?
They get away with it because they’re advocating the approved thoughts, based on the approved “facts”. The science is still “settled” in their minds, and there’s about as much chance of changing that as there is getting the Pope to stop believing in the divinity of Christ.
The ‘science’ is ‘settled’ because it’s bugger all to do with science. Man-made global warming is simply a pretence for a wider UN socialist agenda. So no matter how much sceptical scientists challenge the hypothesis, and no matter how strong the evidence against it is, its supporters will continue repeating their mantras – much as you would expect of any leftist ideologists – browbeating everybody into submission. Incontrevertible evidence, such as the flat temperatures of the last 10+ years matters not, it’s not up for discussion despite the fact it destroys the models and predictions the warmists keep selling to us as ‘settled science’ because, really, science doesn’t come into it.
Like the cherry-pickers who come on here from time to time, they will not engage in debate – they simply know they are right and we are wrong – full stop. End of.
The BBC and UN Agenda 21 – each and every day bringing a very scary world closer to you.
Don’t forget the beeboid pension fund!
I really can’t see the BBC giving any coverage to Anthony Watts’ new paper which pulls the rug from underneath Muller. Even so, the warmists are only interested in the headlines even if the paper has to be retracted in the future. There again, it’s never been about the science.
Ross McKitrick, who was a peer review referee for the BEST papers with the Journal of Geophysical Research got fed up with Muller’s media blitzing and tells his story…
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/29/why-the-best-papers-failed-to-pass-peer-review/
No sign of the BBC reporting this either!
I have been a daily visitor to Anthony Watts’ superb wattsupwiththat.com website for about 5 or 6 years now. Muller has acted throughout this process in an anti-scientific manner, has broken confidences, publicised other people’s embargoed work out of context and used this whole process of using flawed data to create PR for the alarmist “cause”.
Anthony Watts even accepts that Muller has come to the correct conclusions, considering the data and methodology used, but that is the problem.
Muller’s data and method is flawed, badly.
When analysed properly, Watts et al clearly shows that the data has overstated the measured warming by a factor of 2.
Yes there has been some warming from 1979, but only half of what is claimed and therefore it is a minimal amount with NO clear, discernible human fingerprint at all.
I am sure that the BBC will not cover this.
Hey, c’mon, now: you can’t hardly have a religion without some heart-warming conversion stories, right?
I’m just waiting for the full details of how he was checking his data when he suddenly saw a blinding light and a polar bear asked him ‘why persecutest thou me’?
Good one.
Good to see someone exposing the BBC… and backing it up with facts….. well done I am now a avid reader.
So, all you bigots and backwoodsmen who have posted above (including me) supporting Alan’s article, be prepared for a thorough scientific rogering from scottnickdez who will now tear your accusations of bias and dishonest reporting by the BBBC into tiny shreds, shrivelled by the heat of man-made global warming.
Over to you, boys…….
Hang on I will get a cool beer and some popcorn for their full out science based factually brilliant attack should be a game changer !
well once Dez has stopped playing the race hustler on the other post !
Should think you’re well hammered by now Mat.
Hopefully won’t be long now…..
CO2 has a correlation with temperature, but only if you cherry pick the 20th century. Members of Mensa have been complaining to the BBC Trust about its Climate Change coverage, the results have been a remarkable revelation for members of how bad things have got at the BBC.
They got their knickers in a twist, fearing that Mensa members could afford to spend money on taking legal action against the BBC, but after a most amazing excuse that although the evidence that the BBC is overtly biased was provided to members by the BBC in its communications, it was not mentioned or referred to in the BBC Trust Editorial Standards Committee’s findings. That was like saying we know we are biased but you can not take legal action against us because we will not include this in the monthly bulletin of the BBC Trusts Findings. So after this surreal delay, they then manufactured heavenly censored findings that did not uphold our complaint.
Here is a full explanation of the 20th Century warming from the Space Special Interest group of Mensa.
The speed of the centre of the Sun relative to the centre of mass or barycentre of the Solar System determines the length of the solar cycle, this in turn is caused by the orbits and masses of the Planets. Short Solar Cycles have higher Solar Magnetic activity due to the increase in the speed of plasma within the Sun, and therefore a larger number of Sun spots. Long Solar Cycles have lower Solar Magnetic activity and therefore a smaller number of Sun spots.
Between 1913 and 1996, only one of eight Solar Cycles was longer than the mean Solar Cycle length of 11.04 years, the last of these was the shortest Solar Cycle for more than 200 years, the strength of the Suns magnetic field more than doubled, the cosmic ray flux fell by 11 percent and there was a 8.6 percent reduction in clouds, cosmic ray flux since 2007 has been its highest since the 1930s.
When Solar magnetic activity is low, Cosmic Ray levels are able to rise, this causes an increase in low clouds and the Earths cloud albedo, which in turn reflects more Solar radiation, and therefore causes a cooling, and when Solar magnetic activity increases this in turn causes Global Warming. A 0.6 Kelvin fall in temperature for every extra year of Solar Cycle Length has been found (Solar Cycle 24: Expectations and Implications: D C. Archibald). The albedo of the Earth decreased from 0.32 in 1985 to 0.29 in 1997 showing a 6.5 percent decrease in cloud cover (Palle, E. (2004),) this produced the warming at the end of the last century.
Jo Nova gives Muller/BEST a right royal going over at http://joannenova.com.au/2012/07/muller-the-pretend-skeptic-makes-three-claims-hes-half-right-on-one/
I’ve also raised a bias complaint to the BBC that they covered Muller but not Watts. No doubt they will brush it under the carpet, but at least it’s another registered complaint. I’ll post their, no doubt lame-duck ‘editorial interpretation’, response here.
why can’t i share this with facebook, has it been blocked?