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Muller is still rubbish [Stoat]
When BEST first came out I said it was boring, because it just said what everyone knew already “Summary: the global temperature record is just what we thought it was”. There was some soap opera thrown in for fun, but that didn’t affect the science.
But now (New Global Temperature Data Reanalysis Confirms Warming, Blames CO2, Ronald Bailey at reason.com, h/t JB at RR) it seems that Muller is announcing his “new” findings via op-ed in the NYT [Important note: reason.com isn't exactly a brilliant source, but I can't see a good reason why they'd make this up]. Although I’m not really sure what the new findings are. They appear to be:
* the temperature record is, still, just as we thought it was, and
* it appears likely that essentially all of this increase is due to the human emission of greenhouse gases.
The first bit is, still, boring. The second bit is true, but isn’t a consequence of the study. Their work is (as far as I can tell) purely a matter of pulling together a temperature record. They’ve done none of the attribution work you’d expect, in order to talk about attribution. And what they say (How definite is the attribution to humans? The carbon dioxide curve gives a better match than anything else we’ve tried. Its magnitude is consistent with the calculated greenhouse effect – extra warming from trapped heat radiation) appears absurdly naive.
So I think my original contention – that Muller is rubbish – holds up remarkably well.
Muller also says These findings are stronger than those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations group that defines the scientific and diplomatic consensus on global warming. To which the answer is: no, your actual findings are simply the same as IPCC 2007: all the UHI stuff, and the data selection issues: its been done before. You’ve added a bit of extra data, which makes no difference post 1850, and you may have done better with the early record, though I imagine people will suspend belief until they actually see the proper results. [Update: on reflection, I'm being a bit unfair here. They have made some incremental improvements. But its nothing earth-shattering, and indeed arguably nothing terribly important; it certainly doesn't justify the attention the op-ed says that Muller thinks he deserves.]
But the bit that really annoys is:
CALL me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified scientific issues that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Now, after organizing an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I’ve concluded that global warming is real, that the prior estimates of the rate were correct…
All of that is bollocks. What Muller is saying is that he read a few septic blogs, didn’t bother read any of the scientific literature, and so decided to run his own project. So is that his model for converting septics? Everyone who has doubts gets to run their own re-analysis of the temperature reccord? Its going to be a pretty slow process at that rate. Wouldn’t it be quicker if people just read the existing literature? Of course, Muller is a prima donna and must invent his own wheel: as far as he is concerned, now that he believes, everyone else should, too. Idiot.
Refs
* QS on the rumour; and TP seems to believe it, too
* webcite of the reason.com article (I have learnt something over the years…)
* according to the BEST site their publication output is 4 papers, all still under review by JGR. If those, too, talk the same nonsense about attribution its no wonder they are coming out slowly.
2012-07-28 16:02:24
Source: http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2012/07/28/muller-is-still-rubbish/
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