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Search for richard muller

Comments matching the search richard muller:

2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory

scaddenp at 12:12 PM on 13 June, 2023

Likeitwarm, your link to temperature.global does point to what interests me most. There are numerous global temperature records (eg HadCrut, GISS) which have peer-reviewed methodologies, public source code and validation by hostile review (eg Muller's BEST project). Instead you are giving credence to a site with short time frame, no review and refusing to reveal their methodology.

That to my mind means you have very different priors to me, different biases, and that is what interests me most. Different priors is normal and we all have different biases. What I am asking is whether you can remember what switched you into looking for sites like CO2Science or temperature.global? Was it just disbelief about trace gases or were there other considerations?

2022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #7

Philippe Chantreau at 10:14 AM on 27 February, 2022

"the content at WUWT seems to be better researched."

That is the funniest thing I have read in a while. People like me who have been following this non-debate for a long time know better.

WUWT is the site where the superbly absurd idea that excess CO2 fell back on Antarctica as carbonic snow was presented, and bitterly defended by the peanut gallery, even after multiple posts showing the phase diagram of CO2 and emphasizing the importance of partial pressure. Finally, someone could beat some sense into Anthony Watts' head, and made him realize that he had better take this off the site if he wanted any appearance of credibility. It is still accessible through the wayback machine, I believe.

The very premise of WUWT existence was the following: there is no warming, it is all an artefact of poorly designed temperature reporting stations, and the whole thing might even be intentional (insert ominous music).

This theory was successfully challenged on multiple occasions: first by a John V, who did a quick analysis of the high quality stations showing no significant difference with the major other datasets. Then, there was the BEST project, led by Richard Muller, who somehow lent credence to the concerns of some so-called "skeptics." At the time this effort was launched, Watts solemnly swore that he woud accept the conclusions. That enthusiasm evaporated (another feedback perhaps?) when the conclusions were released, confirming what the other datasets were already showing. Then, some NOAA researchers published a paper reaching, again, the same conclusions. Then, after much, much time, Watts himself participated in a research paper that essentially redid what the NOAA researchers had done, and reached the same conclusions again, but he pulled a "Spencer" by still making some vacuous argument that, in some way, he could still be right.

Over time, of course, the continued warming forced it to go silent about the very hypothesis that caused its existence in the first place, but there was never any shortage of new spots where other goal posts could be moved. It has now evolved and received help from people who managed to give it a better appearance. Nonetheless, it is still the same motivated reasoning machine that it always was.

Next self-paced run of Denial101x starts on March 5

Philippe Chantreau at 04:36 AM on 7 March, 2019

Your post is full of ideology and every bit as biased as you suggest others are. I personally trust the government for protecting the public's interest far more than I trust corporations, or any other organization, except those specifically created to protect the public's interest. Not only because it is the logical thing to do considering where their interest truly is, but because of their respective records. I hear all this distrust about the government, and very little to back it up. In fact, most of the stuff that would back it up is what happens when the government is corrupted by private interests for the furtherance of their profits. It's funny how the government gets so much scrutiny and so much bad press every time one little thing goes wrong, but the private sector gets a passs by default even when they commit the most massive screw ups.

Private banks came close to tanking the World economy in 2008, because the entire financial system had become fraudulent. Hardly anyone went to jail. A few years later they're already complaining against regulations put in place to prevent them from doing it again. Last December, Century Link had a giant screw-up that rendered 911 inoperative in hundreds of counties throughout the nation, and it was barely even mentioned; I don't want to even imagine the uproar if it was a government service. In 2017, Equifax essentially opened the doors and let their commercial base free for the taking, namely the private information of 143 million Americans, and everyone just shrugged their shoulders. No consequence whatsoever. I never hear anything from the "government is bad" types about these problems, which reveals a double standard large enough to invalidate anything they say that includes the word bias.

Even you Prometheus trust the government far more than you think: I bet that you have no problem taking an airplane to cross the country without doubting that Air Traffic Control will do its job. Think about this: if ATC had a 99.99% success rate in their handling of flights all over the nation, you would see about 50 ATC-caused crashes per day. Instead, you see exactly zero, because the FAA achieves 100% success rate every day and has done so for years. As for the airlines, they achieve their success largely by complying with all these pesky regulations fort maintenance and operation that are there so our butts get from A to B safely every time. That's government work right there, so much a part of the landscape that people don't even realize it's serving them. This lack of perception and of recognition applies to pretty much everything that the government does right, which is vastly more than anyone in the US realizes.

You're talking about NASA and NOAA as if they were shady organizations bent on deceiving the public. That is total nonsense. Not only they are open to scrutiny and far more transparent than many private organizations, but their existence and their funding depends on them doing their job right. These administrations are full of highly educated, dedicated scientific experts, who often could make far more money in the private sector but they want to serve the public. Over the years, NOAA has refined their understanding of hurricanes and can now give 72 hours of notice within a very well defined geographical area so that evacuations can take place before a storm strikes. They save lives that way, and businesses too. Of course, some work at NASA has very strong implications with national defense and military applications, so the apropriate secrecy applies; usually the military is the darling of the "bad governement" types of ideologues so perhaps you don't mind that part.

So-called skeptics, led by the Fossil Fuel funded McIntyre, started whining about NASA Goddard not releasing the code for their climate models some years back (a number of years, I've followed this for a while). The argument from Gavin Schmidt at the time for not giving the code was perfectly reasonable because the algorithm had been released, but McIntyre went on a full blown mind manipulation campaign that was quite successful with his gullible followers. So NASA released the code, and of course, nothing happened. Zip. Why? Because none of these self professed skeptics had the expertise or were willing to put in the effort to examine the code. The demands to release information were nothing but a campaign to spread doubt in the integrity of NASA. Once the code was released, the pseudo-skeptics moved on to other things.

Another governement disliker and skeptic was Richard Muller. He did not believe NASA and NOAA either, so decided to examine global temperatures on his own by forming an independent team at Berkeley. He was hailed as a hero at the time by Anthony Watts. After quite a bit of painstaking dedicated work, they came to pretty much the same conclusion as NASA and NOAA. Anthony Watts didn't like him any more. You can find the BEST stuff along with the other sources regularly updated on the Real Climate site: NOAA, HADCRUT etc...

I've had conversations on this site before with skeptics strongly animated by anti-governement ideology, sometimes on the subject of MODTRAN, the line by line atmospheric radiative transfer model. They argue that it's just a model and it's a government thing, whatever. Yes, it's a model, developed by the Air Force for infrared weapon guidance, you really think it's inaccurate?

After years of following this pseudo-debate, it turns out to be really simple. Science aims at understanding the world. The quality, sincere science in the case of climate change overhwelmingly points in a certain direction. Fossil fuel interests have billions of dollars of profit per quarter at stake. Who do I trust? Seriously? What a joke.

How to Change Your Mind About Climate Change

nigelj at 15:49 PM on 15 February, 2018

Alchemyst @21

Richard Muller didn't do the calculations for the global temperature record himself. He was part of a large team of scientists called the BEST project as below.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Earth

So this is not so different from other research teams, or even the IPCC in principle.

I know thats not your point, and its good to check things yourself where possible. But its not always going to be possible, because some issues are too large. So we have to have faith in other people at some level I think.

Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible

JWRebel at 04:28 AM on 7 July, 2017

1. The only honest climate "sceptics" are those who are rather unfamiliar with the material: people who out of some sort of misguided ideological loyalty to their group or tribe think that it is another left-wing progressive government ploy, out to destroy traditional values, work, and families. The rest are being disingenuous at best. Those who are taking a group position may be open to changing their minds under the right circumstances, probably not by learning about IR-bands and CO² molecules, but by appeals to their loyalty and conservatism which mandate not running down the farm before handing it over to their children.
The others are not well-intentioned or well-meaning people.

2. Just because 97% of [climate] scientists have stated that anthropogenic climate change is real does not mean that the other 3% have good theories and other data sets showing the opposite. Far from it. That would mean there are a lot of bona fide scientists with reasonable alternate theories whose research and credentials are impeccable. That is not true: finding sceptics that you can parade around as "real" scientists is like searching for a needle in a hay stack. That is why you keep meeting the same very small handful of star-status sceptics, none of whom are close to producing some synthesis of theoretical grounds on why the data has not been interpreted correctly and can be better explained by their alternative.

3. Staffing a red team (Richard Muller is no longer a candidate) with qualified specialists is therefore pretty much mission impossible. It's like equipping moderate "rebels". After ½ a $billion there were 5 rebels, who immediately passed their equipment on to the other side to which they defected at the first encounter. Educating new candidates for your red team would be like cupping some sea water and crossing the entire beach — they would be convinced by the material as soon as they started understanding the efforts and results undertaken so far.

4. If there were qualified scientists with convincing alternate explanations of the facts, they could make a killing$. Such a person would be herded into every studio and corporate office around.

5. The whole sceptical delusion is a disorder that only seems to occur in a select group of Anglo-Saxon countries, much like an infection, mainly due to patterns of media ownership and corporate funded think tanks and lobbyists.

>> Only rhetorical and political considerations remain. It is time for investments in energy alternative and research in the same order of magnitude as military spending: this is one war we cannot afford to lose. People on the wrong side of this issue have to be outed as dummies, fakes, mercenaries, nincompoops, malevolent charlatans, hired ideologues, whores. None of the talking points are remotely plausible for anybody who takes the time to look into the actual science and responses by scientists. People who raise the "talking points" need to be pointed in the right direction once or twice, but any sign of perseverance means it is willful stupidity.
Against the foolhardy even the gods contend in vain.

Temp record is unreliable

HK at 22:10 PM on 20 May, 2017

NOAAs conclusions about the non-existing "hiatus" have been confirmed by other studies using independent data. Zeke Hausfather from Berkeley Earth explains how they did it here and here.

BTW, the Berkeley Earth surface temperature project was founded by physicist and former climate skeptic Richard Muller to address the most important objections the deniers had to the "official" temperature records. They constructed their own temperature record, which turned out to be very similar to the ones from NOAA, NASA and the British HadCRUT4.

Climate Change – What We Knew and When We Knew It

shoyemore at 01:04 AM on 23 February, 2017

Richard Muller has a record of conflict with climate scientists and for many, many years he was a soulmate of deniers like Anthony Watts. In the end, he stood up to be counted when he was confronted with the evidence.

Whatever about the past, he is very, very good in this video, quite the star in fact.

Trump begins filling environmental posts with clowns

Daniel Mocsny at 12:59 PM on 19 November, 2016

Just sometimes there's a place for anger and bluntness, without being nasty and I think you would know the difference. I repeat, just sometimes. A clown is a clown for example.

I would know the difference, but would the clowns? If you can change Myron Ebell's mind by calling him a clown, then great. I've never met the guy so I have no idea what might get through to him. Maybe a sit-down with Richard Muller or some other denier-turncoat who still has right-wing cred.

One imagines that it's harder to get through to the professional deniers than to the rank-and-file. You probably won't find too many Trump voters who can mount anything like a coherent defense of climate science denialism. Not that anyone can, of course, but the professional deniers at least know how to avoid breaking character when you stump them.

I could add that individual action eliminates the standard libertarian objection to coercive policy. If we can persuade people to want to destroy the climate less, then any true libertarian would defend their right to act according to their conscience.

Thus the environmental movement's nearly exclusive focus on government action makes natural enemies of people we don't need to be our enemies at all.

There is nothing inherently leftist about environmentalism. It just worked out for some reason that leftists tended to embrace environmental values first. Conservatives could easily develop an environmental ethic based around core conservative values of modesty, thrift, and personal moral responsibility. Kind of like what I'm doing, not because I'm terribly conservative but because I'm nearly certain it's the only approach that can work, for all the reasons I outlined in my comments in this thread.

Trump begins filling environmental posts with clowns

nigelj at 10:45 AM on 19 November, 2016

Daniel Mocnsy @21, yes all thats possible, it occured to me, and I hope you are right. Richard Muller did change his criticism of the surface temperature data and concede NASA were right all along, once he came face to face with the "nitty gritty" real science. You can make silly climate denialist statements on websites, but its not so easy face to face with real scientists in a meeting where decisions have to be made. People don't take bulldust in those situations. It's interesting how at least some sceptics change their stance when serving on the IPCC.

However here are a couple of points. Group think will pervade Trump and his inner circle. Thats not healthy at all.

And the new climate denialist will be head of the EPA. His employees will explain some realities to him, but employees have to be careful how far they push things. Myron Ebell is the boss, and the guy is clearly badly informed on climate and worse is driven by strong ideological convictions of a libertarian leaning, as opposed to more evidence based leadership.

Trump begins filling environmental posts with clowns

Daniel Mocsny at 09:44 AM on 19 November, 2016

By flooding their ranks with such same minded people, like the appointment of Myron Ebell, they will generate the most destructive form of group think imaginable.

That's certainly a possibility, maybe even a solid bet. But let's take a deep breath first and consider that until now, the response of the scientific community to deniers like Myron Ebell has often been to marginalize rather than engage them. In my experience with science deniers (albeit of lower rank), their denial has always been tightly bound with ignorance. None of them seems to have read a single book containing actual climate science. All of them continue to restate the climate myths so thoroughly debunked right here on Skeptical Science, as if they are playing a game of chess where the opponent has not already made a dozen moves past them.

Well, there's no getting around engaging with them now. There are still some Democrats in office. Hillary won the popular vote. The scientific community hasn't gone away or become any less critical to increasing prosperity and maintaining the modern way of life. People like Myron Ebell who have lived comfortably in their echo chamber with no real challenge to their views will now get to spend time directly engaging with the world's leading actual scientists. It's one thing to dupe Trump's beloved "poorly educated voters" and another thing entirely to face the tough crowd of science.

Climate change skeptics/contrarians/deniers can change their minds, for example Richard Muller. Since we can no longer pretend we have the option of just shoving the deniers aside, it's time to study every available case of belief change and try to get the remaining deniers onto the same trajectories.

1934 - hottest year on record

Tom Curtis at 12:14 PM on 29 August, 2016

DarkMath @48, if you don't like NOAA, you can always use the AGW denier funded Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project results:

Technically, the BEST data series make no adjustments. Instead, when there is a known, or reasonably inferred change of equipment, location, or time of observations they treat the data as coming from two distinct stations - a proceedure which Anthony Watts endorsed as having his full confidence (until he saw the results). It is certainly a proceedure that has the full confidence of Judith Curry (denier enabler), Richard Muller (temperature series skeptic), Zeke Hausfather (luke warmer) and Steven Mosher (Luke Warmer), not to mention three independent scientists selected by at the time, climate skeptic Richard Muller.

For the record, the highest ranked running 12 month mean temperature in the 1930s according to BEST ranks 23rd. In contrast, eight of the 12 highest ranked 12 month running mean temperatures are in 2012, with another three in the last three months of 2011.

But you want to cherry pick just July temperatures. However, the highest ranked July temperature in the 1930s is 1936 (ranked 3rd) followed by 1934 (ranked 6th). In contrast, in the 21st century the highest ranked are 2012 (1st), 2006 (2nd), 2011 (4th), and 2002 (5th). The average July temperature across the 1930s was 0.66 C. Across the 21st century (to 2012) it was 0.85 C.

And if you are wondering, BEST uses approximately 8 times as many stations as does the USHCN, with an increasing number in time over the 20th and 21st century.

In short, your cherry pick of the cherry pick still does not give you the conclusion you desire.

Your only refuge is to insist that when a station changes its instrument entirely, or its time of day for observations, or is moved to a new location, it should be treated as the same station with no adjustments for differences in recorded temperature between the new and the old; and to take meaningless arithmetic means that do not care that the station density in New York is far higher than that in Nevada, thereby giving more importance to North Eastern state temperatures than to those in the mid-west or west:

Your bias in favour of rich, Democratic eastern states is noted.

Hockey stick is broken

dvaytw at 00:11 AM on 8 November, 2015

This comment will start a bit off-topic and then quickly make its way back, I promise.

As an introduction, I posted a response to Dr. Richard Muller's response to the following question on Quora:

Why do people say "the science is settled" when it comes to climate change? Isn't the point of science that nothing is "settled?"

It may interest people to know that Dr. Muller basically rules that forum when it comes to questions about climate change impacts, and IMHO, he's running amok. I don't think it comes from the usual ideological motivators; rather, I think it's the hubris that physicists tend to get that leads them to distrust the work of any scientists other than physicists. That and maybe some misunderstanding with regard to philosophy of science. In any case, here's where I get back on topic.

In my response to Dr. Muller, I quoted Wikipedia to him, pointing out that he'd been wrong in his opinion piece about Dr. Mann's Hockey Stick.

The quote stated that subsequent analyses had refuted McIntyre and McKitrick and upheld Mann's paper; further, that the Hockey Stick has been replicated numerous times using other methods.

It's a bit lengthy, but I'd like to post his last response to this exchange in full, as I found it very interesting and troubling:

First, let me say some words about the IPCC report.
To be considered a scientific conclusion, the rule of thumb amount scientists is that the probability of being wrong should be 5% or less. In particle physics, the standard is even higher, generally a fraction of 1%.
The IPCC defines something as "likely" if the probability of it being wrong is 33%. That is very far from a scientific standard. Sometimes politicians need to make decisions and they base them on less than scientific evidence, but 33% chance of being wrong would never be accepted as a scientific conclusion in any major scientific journal. When scientists say that their result is statistically consistent to 1 standard deviation (that's about the same as "likely") the conclusion in their paper is stated as follows: "No statistically significant effect was seen." I can show you one of my papers in which, for a 2-standard-deviation effect, that is a "2-sigma" effect, with only a 5%b chance of being wrong, I and my coauthors said that the effect was "statistically insignificant." Those are the standards of science.
The IPCC is also very clear that their assessments were never intended to be considered a scientific report.
Your quote about the NAS report, despite the usual reliability of Wikipedia, is mistaken. As I mentioned, I was a named scientific referee on the NAS report, and the report said clearly that there was no evidence that the current temperature is the warmest in 1,000 years.
Don't get me wrong. Global warming is real, about 1.5C over the past 250 years, and it is caused by humans. But the work of Michael Mann on the hockey stick was incorrect, and the errors were correctly pointed out by Macintyre and McKitrick, and the NAS concluded that the evidence could not be used to conclude on a scientific basis that we are now experiencing the highest temperature in the last 1000 years.

I'm curious what y'all's take on this is. It strikes me as, well, quite odd. I feel like, about the question of the use of the IPCC's uncertainty terminology, there's a deep misunderstanding here. Without having read much, I'm quite sure that climate research uses the same Frequentist standards that Dr. Muller is used to and that, if the IPCC is assessing likelihood based on a large number of such pieces of research, all of which purport to be showing statistically significant results, then in fact the IPCC is being even more conservative with its use of such terminology and not less.

Watts' New Paper - Analysis and Critique

Evan Jones at 14:01 PM on 3 July, 2015

If you have a paper where you're looking for independent public review, then you should state as much up front! That's not what Tony did. He posted it making wildly unsubstantiated claims about it being something important, influential and about to be published. It strikes me as being supremely self-deluded to suggest posting it before publication was for the purposes of review.

But we did.

The pre-release of this paper follows the practice embraced by Dr. Richard Muller, of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project in a June 2011 interview with Scientific American’s Michael Lemonick in “Science Talk”, said:

I know that is prior to acceptance, but in the tradition that I grew up in (under Nobel Laureate Luis Alvarez) we always widely distributed “preprints” of papers prior to their publication or even submission. That guaranteed a much wider peer review than we obtained from mere referees.

That is exactly what our "purposes" were, and that is exactly what we did. And I have been addressing the resulting (exraordinarily valuable) independent review ever since. It takes time.

How we discovered the 97% scientific consensus on man-made global warming

Stranger8170 at 03:44 AM on 5 February, 2015

Thanks Rob.

I know that the deniers using newspaper blogs will never be convinced. I know there are people who read the blogs who might not have strong opinions. We have a university bio chemist and a philosopher of science taking part in some of our discussions. I think that people who read the blog but have no strong opinion would find the AGW side on our blog much more credible just by the way they conduct their arguments. I think that might a benefit but I have to say I've no way of knowing. I'm probably wasing time.

I have have asked, even on this website why deniers wouldn't fund their own survery since it would only cost the Koch brothers of some other organization chump change to do it. I figured they were afraid of the Richard Muller effect.

I want to avoid being repetitious but I'm still bothered by the Mike Hulme thing. As a layman I just don't know what to think about his comments concerning the survey. It may be something I should let go of but I'd like to get in inkling of where he's coming from because if he’s so concerned about the huge amounts of carbon going into the atmosphere he sure doesn’t seem to be helping the cause. Just the opposite.

The 97% v the 3% – just how much global warming are humans causing?

Stranger8170 at 00:54 AM on 18 September, 2014

I don't know if anybody asked jwalsh why the skeptics don't do their own survey and present it for peer review? It seems like the Koch brothers or some other benefactor could come up with a little chump change to find out. They helped fund Richard Muller’s historical temperature reconstructions. Of course it didn't pan out for the skeptics since Mueller found out the Hockey Stick was the real McCoy. I wonder if that’s the reason they haven't made an attempt to shoot down Cook et el by doing their own research? Obfuscation may be the only arrow left in their quiver.

Global warming is being caused by humans, not the sun, and is highly sensitive to CO2, new research shows

grindupBaker at 05:28 AM on 12 January, 2014

davidsanger #18 Prof. Richard Muller Berkeley Earth web site has an analysis of land-only measurements from 36,000 temperature stations 1750-2000 showing +1.5C (+0.9C over the past 50 years) with a graph of a fit to measurements that's a near-perfect smooth exponential curve punctuated only by a dozen or so very sharp downward spikes of which the 7 largest are volcano-named on the graph Laki, Tambora, Cosiguina, Krakatoa, Agung, Chichon & Pinatubo. Land MST is slightly depressed following each spike, proportional to the spike height, then moves back to the original land MST curve. Data & fitting software are available for download and they invite comment on both.

Why trust climate models? It’s a matter of simple science

MA Rodger at 18:12 PM on 26 October, 2013

Ironbark @13.
Your request that I ease up on the 'denialist' trigger would be more likely heeded if you ease up on the denialist argumentation. This you singlularly fail to do. In the very same paragraph as your request you tell us Richard Muller describes that the e-mail hacks from CRU demonstrated 'scientific malpractice' (he may well have done, he has a history of denial) and you then intimate that "the graph" (presumably the "hockey stick" from Mann et al 1999) used by the IPCC and Al Gore was also show after 10 years to be wrong. You cannot be serious!

I do not know where you get such deluded ideas from. Mann et al 1999 featured in IPCC TAR of 2001 and along with a whole bag full of other 'hockeysticks', also in IPCC AR4 of 2007. And if you bother to examine the final draft of IPCC AR5 WG1 Chapter 5 figure 5.7 you will see that Mann et al 1999 is now replaced by Mann et al 2008, within which the work of Mann et al 1999 remains all correct and ship shape being presented within figure 3(b) of that paper. There was no error, no malpractice attached to the 'hockeystick'.
Do you deny this to be so? Or will you accept that 'climategate' had zero impact on the science.
(Note. There is somewhere on video a UK climatologist (?) who delights in pointing to some minor adjustment to a global temperature record for part of a decade of the 19th century that was the sum total scientific impact of 'climategate', so perhaps "zero impact" is not entirely correct.)

Of course (as pointed out @24) this is off topic here. Indeed, to remain on topic, please do not present your detailed thoughts concerning a different SkS post in this comment thread. That other SkS post does have a comment thread of its own which is provided for such a purpose.

Why trust climate models? It’s a matter of simple science

Ironbark at 09:14 AM on 26 October, 2013

At Moderator - understood, appreciate the feedback and thanks for the link. I don't agree with one of it's conclusion though that 'we can’t wait for 30 years to see if a model is any good or not' - that is an opinion that people are allowed to have regarding their own perceptions of the costs vs benefits. That is a subjective comment though - I don't believe it's a scientific comment. Being subjective, my own perception is that there will be lots of needless suffering on the poorest if we are incorrect in regulating CO2 footprints (i.e. if CO2 footprints are to blame, we can't address the issue without preventing poor countries from improving their quality of life, since improved quality of life comes from fossil fuels). Is there a scientific position as to how long model predictions can deviate from observations without questioning the underlining inputs and assumptions?

At 12, MA Rodger - easy on the 'denialist' trigger. My conclusions on Glimategate correspond with Prof Richard Muller's lecture on youtube, who for what I can make out, appears to think that all the warming we've seen is caused by humans, yet says Climategate was 'scientific malpractice'. My point is that if it takes a decade for that to come out from the original papers, after the graph was used by the IPCC and Al Gore, what hope now do ordinary people have to take any study that's not older than 10 years on face value?

The link you've provided helps, though I'm not sure it gets to the crux of the question. The essence of the 'Does the global warming 'pause' mean what you think it means' thread, appears to be that there is no pause over a longer period. Whilst this is interesting and I would agree that to discern overall trends needs long time frames, the context of my question was that of someone who just wants to look at how predictions have gone against observations to make a decision. Why - because the reason to regulate CO2 footprints now is predicated on the assumption that we have no time to lose. Since models weren't making predictions 30 years ago, their performance over that time period isn't relevant to that question. The relevant time period is to match when models were predicting the future, against those now historical observations. From what I can make out those predictions appeared to start in the late 1990's (please correct me if I'm wrong). The link talks about the oceans switching to another warming cycle - how long would this be, if it's long, can that not support the position that we don't have to act imminently? How many years of no warming from when models started making predictions would it take for ordinary people to be able to say that there might be more going on here that we don't understand?

As an aside, I don't think the graph on that page comparing how 'realists' and 'skeptics' view climate doesn't helps the case. I haven't seen anything said by skeptics which would support such a graph - their overall argument in fact appears to be the opposite, that even 30 years is to short a trend - some are saying we need to look a trends over thousands of years. I don't know which one is right, other then that graph characterising the 'skeptics' view, doesn't correspond with anything I've read from them. Obviously it's up to this site to determine how it wants to reflect opposing viewpoints, however IMO I think it detracts from great work that's being done here as opposed to helping it.

IPCC model global warming projections have done much better than you think

grindupBaker at 13:04 PM on 3 October, 2013

@sereniac #73 There are numerous lectures on internet video if you are interested such as:

---science only---

David Randall: The Role of Clouds and Water Vapor in Climate Change - Simon Fraser University Kevin Trenberth: The Role of the Oceans in Climate - Simon Fraser University Sarah Gille : Long-term Temperature Change in the Southern Ocean - Perspectives - University of California Television climate modelling lectures by Prof Inez Fung (she has several, they all hurt my brain) Prof Inez Fung: Anatomy of a Climate Model: How Robust are Climate Projections? Professor Ted Shepherd: Understanding uncertainty in climate models

-- science & activism --

The Scientific Case for Urgent Action to Limit Climate Change - Richard Somerville Berkeley University: Dan Miller Extreme Climate Change Catastrophic Climate Change & Runaway Global Warming - David Wasdell

David Wasdell: various

Richard Muller: various

Media Overlooking 90% of Global Warming

grindupBaker at 11:15 AM on 27 June, 2013

WebHubTelescope @#25 Also there's Prof. Richard Muller's land surface only AST since 1753 from 36,000 temperature stations at Berkeley Earth.

Debunking Climate Myths from Politicians

TomPainInTheAsk at 22:33 PM on 29 September, 2012

CBDunkerson, thanks for the link! I'll check it out.

Gore's film is “largely accurate”? Debatable. I thought it was 85% accurate when I saw it in 2006. Over time I've revised that estimate down. “Richard Muller on Climate One” (search for it on You Tube) gives it only 50% - the other half = wrong, misleading, or alarmist. Muller is a harsh critic, but many of the best scientists are.

On Yahoo News comments, it seems more knowledgeable posters are Gore-averse.

85% accurate was a poor grade for a film of Gore's budget and influence. His star has fallen in the U.S.

PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?

JohnMashey at 03:48 AM on 20 September, 2012

It might be worth comparing Muller @ PBS with Muller at CBC.
Deep Climate discusses the latter, in Richard Muller Radio Rambles, part 1: Kochs “very deep”, “very thoughtful” and “properly skeptical”.

PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?

David Lewis at 23:56 PM on 19 September, 2012

When Richard Muller appeared in March 2011 before the House Committee on Science (his full statement is here) he had one recommendation for what the Committee could do in the way of legislation to "advance our knowledge of climate change".

He called for the creation of a Climate Advanced Research Project Agency, or Climate-ARPA, saying it "could help".

He went on:

"Without the efforts of Anthony Watts and his team, we would have only a series of anecdotal images of poor temperature stations, and we would not be able to evaluate the integrity of the data. This is a case in which scientists receiving no government funding did work crucial to our understanding climate change. Similarly for the work done by Steve McIntyre. Their "amateur" science is not amateur in quality; it is true science, conducted with integrity and high standards. Government policy needs to encourage such work. Climate-ARPA could be an organization that provides quick funding to worthwhile projects whether they support or challenge current understanding"

PBS could have asked Muller what he thinks of "true" scientists of "integrity" who have such "high standards", eg Watts, now.

PBS False Balance Hour - What's Up With That?

dana1981 at 12:05 PM on 19 September, 2012

Albatross @1 - fair point about the false equivalence, putting up blogger Watts alongside scientist Richard Muller.

Teaching Climate Change in Schools

monkeyorchid at 18:04 PM on 17 August, 2012

4. ubrew12,
Very good comments - as I wrote this, I felt that bright kids would keep asking valid questions like these, forcing teachers to keep expanding on the topic. "Why do otherwise sensible people say it isn't happening?" is a very likely question. Hence it may be necessary to equip teachers with an understanding of the causes of denial. I tend to think that there are three basic causes: Fear, Ideology and Profit. The man on the street doesn't want something so scary to be real (who can blame him?!); a lot of right-wingers hate the political consequences of climate change being real, so they pretend it isn't; a small but hugely influential group of people spew out disinformation to earn money or protect their profits. To really understand climate change, possibly children need to understand these motivators, too.

6. calyptorhynchus
True, though the topics overlap. Ideal would be if science and sociology teachers could teach classes on this together, or at least collaborate closely over lesson plans. At very least, the sociology teachers would need a decent grasp of the science to deal with any awkward questions coming along. Of course, really teacher of every subject should understand the science, in an ideal world!

8. michael sweet
The grant money question is a popular denialist myth precisely because of the difficulty you mention, which stems from most folk knowing so little about how science and its funding operates. Perhaps classes on critical thinking need to expand to how research is funded? Of course, you can point to the massive amounts of money paid to people specifically to deny the reality of climate change, and to Richard Muller, whose BEST work was only funded because the funders expected the opposite result to what he provided. Perhaps a case study of BEST would help address these points?
Also you might ask why, if it really were a myth, politicians would continue paying scientists to talk about a problem that politicians are abjectly failing to solve!

BEST Results Consistent with Human-Caused Global Warming

Tor B at 00:17 AM on 4 August, 2012

George Marshall (of the British Climate Outreach and Information Network, not of George C. Marshall Inst.) identifies in his Irresistible Story of Richard Muller post that Dr. Muller's change of heart is a cultural transformation, not a scientific one, dispite what Dr. Muller writes.

BEST Results Consistent with Human-Caused Global Warming

Trent1492 at 07:04 AM on 3 August, 2012

I think this is the appropriate topic to remind everyone that Anthony Watts once
endorsed Richard Muller's BEST project

Some excerpts from the article:

But here’s the thing: I have no certainty nor expectations in the results. Like them, I have no idea whether it will show more warming, about the same, no change, or cooling in the land surface temperature record they are analyzing. Neither do they, as they have not run the full data set, only small test runs on certain areas to evaluate the code. However, I can say that having examined the method, on the surface it seems to be a novel approach that handles many of the issues that have been raised.

So he claims to have looked at Muller's methods and approves. Next:

And, I’m prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong. I’m taking this bold step because the method has promise.

Caught in the net of his own weaving. Poetic.

Watts' New Paper - Analysis and Critique

Martin Lack at 05:52 AM on 3 August, 2012

Thanks Kevin. I am really glad to see someone offering Watts et al some constructive criticism, which might help them eventually climb out of the hole they have dug themselves in recent years... If Richard A Muller can do it, then so can they (we can but hope)...

Typo alert: "It would be surprising is" should I think be "It would be surprising if"... (i.e. end of penultimate paragraph in the 'Adjustments Make Little Difference Globally' section).

Mann Fights Back Against Denialist Abuse

Tor B at 22:15 PM on 1 August, 2012

In line with Michael Mann's comment that Richard Muller has a ways to go to catch up with mainstream climate science, I was interested in George Marshall's (not of George C. Marshall Inst.) Irresistible Story of Richard Muller post. It identifies the Dr. Muller's change of heart as being a cultural transformation, not a scientific one, dispite what Dr. Muller writes. (I don't see a Muller thread, so I'm putting this comment here.)

What is the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund?

dubious at 03:40 AM on 17 July, 2012

Without question, undeniably, replication is the essence of science. But replication is also the process of falsification - trying to prove something wrong, not trying to prove it right.

(-Snip-)

(-Snip-)

KR: "Reanalysis of raw data and "audits" are usually the work of the lazy."

The reviewers of the Gergis article (-Snip-)

The first notice time anybody suggested publicly that the article did not do what it said (which was before the article was withdrawn) came from people reanalysing what raw data had been made available.

People here might not consider that role to be important, but I'm happy that there are people who are willing to actually go to those efforts.

What is the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund?

skywatcher at 17:17 PM on 16 July, 2012

When does Joe Public get to see the data that he paid for?

Interesting question. A more interesting question is this: What would Joe Public do with such raw data? Joe Public gets to see the results, as published in the scientific journals. Depending on access, they can get articles for free, bought from publisher, or for a small fee through their local library. These articles will digest the data, methods used, and results into a format accessible to many. If Joe Public does not understand the journal articles, then Joe is not going to be in a position to perform their own analysis on the data. They will not realise or understand the elementary methods, and elementary errors to avoid, in analysing such data. If there are errors in the paper, Joe Public is not going to know what they are, or whether they are important. Joe has a lot of learning to do! This sort of process is painfully evident with many of the self-styled 'auditors' of climate data who, being charitable, make dreaful errors in reanalysing the copious quantities of raw data they have ample access to.

But alternatively, if Joe Public really thinks he can understand the science and the methodology, why does Joe Public not do something much more powerful? In science, replication is a hundred times better than repetition. Joe can see if he gets the same result, using a different dataset, different methods, or both. Of course the key results in climate science have been replicated many times over, including those favourites of the skeptics, the Hockey Stick and the surface temperature record, so this is actually a rather fruitless exercise.

But maybe you can find an oil company with massive daily profits who would fund such a venture? After all, it's in their interests! Of course Richard Muller already did that with BEST, and replicated the existing results on the surface temperature dataset! Key datasets are already freely available online. Where are the skeptics' own dendrochronology datasets, or surface temperature analyses, that are both robust and in conflict with the accepted science? Has Steve McIntyre gone to the remote forests of the world and done the hard work collecting, analysing, interpreting and publishing his own dendrochronology record? He hasn't. Why not? Is he afraid of replicating the currently-accepted science?

Congressional Climate Briefing - The End of Climate Skepticism?

John Hartz at 07:38 AM on 20 November, 2011

THE PAST MONTH hasn’t been good for climate-change skeptics. At a congressional hearing Monday, Richard Muller, a former global-warming skeptic at the University of California, Berkeley, told lawmakers that, after a two-year review of historical world temperature data, he has verified the scientific consensus that the earth is warming — by about 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 50 years. This is not surprising; as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported last year, the warming of the planet, detected in multiple, independent lines of evidence, is “unequivocal.”

Source: “A bad month for climate-change skeptics” Washington Post Editorial Board. Nov 18, 2011

To access this editorial in its entirety, click here.

Congressional Climate Briefing - The End of Climate Skepticism?

shoyemore at 05:14 AM on 19 November, 2011

The fact that no Republican Congressmen attended this hearing is depressing, and indicative.

What are they afraid of? It is not long since Dr Richard Muller was the "Great White Hope" of denialism.

Here is a short clip of Muller's testimony from Huffpost - he draws a clear distinction between "scepticism" and "denialism". However, it is clear he classes Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre as "sceptics". He is in for a shock.

He also appeared on US TV, where he admitted blogosphere reaction was "volatile", something which got a laugh.

Richard Muller at Congress Clip

Richard Muller on "Morning, Joe" US TV

The BEST Summary

dorlomin at 00:41 AM on 13 November, 2011

"and involved Richard Muller and Judith Curry, two scientists quite skeptical of the global warming theory."
I think this is a mischaracterisation. I think they are both convinced that CO2 increases temperatures and that the feedbacks will be generally positive, however they both seem to hold the idea that uncertainties are under estimated and take on board the Climate Audit type criticisms of the last 1000s years of paleo.

Bad, Badder, BEST

Tom Dayton at 23:13 PM on 31 October, 2011

Refreshingly, at least one newspaper called it squarely: The San Francisco Chronicle's editor yesterday wrote in the editorial page:

Richard Muller, UC Berkeley physicist:
He believed: The science behind climate change was shoddy and politically driven.
He discovered: He was wrong.

Continued Lower Atmosphere Warming

Bernard J. at 15:41 PM on 29 October, 2011

In a world where stupidity trumps parody, I might as well pre-empt the inevitable bastardisation of the WfT option for the BEST [sic] data...

Et voilà!

(-snip-)Richard Muller's data show that there has been no warming since 1970; only a series of stable temperature periods, until 2005, since which there has been precipitous cooling. (-snip-).

You saw it first on Skeptical Science.

Climate's changed before

lancelot at 01:40 AM on 25 October, 2011

Sphaerica thanks. I was not expecting to find precise 'hindcasts', just quantification of trends. But I appreciate that setting precise start conditions are vital to run a non-linear model, hence the difficulties.

My next question would have arisen from the last, but maybe is off topic. How confident are you that all natural forcings have been accurately estimated in the late 20th century? However I see from other parts of this site that this has been addressed. eg Hansen 1988 and subsequent studies seem to give broad agreement that since 1900, natural forcing is estimated as about 0.2 deg c, so the rest 'must be' CO2. I have an innate skeptical difficulty with accepting the simple logic of 'must be CO2', (there can be, and are, other suspects) but I do concede that the greenhouse effect of CO2 is the only mechanism proposed to date which is backed up by both evidence and modelled predictions. So by far the most likely. And the data since 1970 fits very well with the AGW predictions.

If it is of any interest, I suppose I would be called a skeptic until a few days ago.

In view of Richard Muller's release of the results of the Berkley Earth (BEST) study on October 22, I have significantly reviewed my attitude to the AGW debate.

My skepticism of the 'dangerous AGW' theory was based on the following:

1. Distrust (whether right or wrong) of the quality and integrity of evidence of global temperature (GT) increases as presented by NASA/GISS, Hadley CRU, NOAA.

2 Belief, as evidenced by proxy records for last 1100 years, that the current GT was probably not much more than 0.5 deg C above the historic average.

3 Evidence from proxy records that 0.5 deg C was within the range of historic natural variations, and thus plausibly explained as part of natural forcings.

4 Suspicion that the extent of natural forcing may have been under-estimated, and thus the effect of CO2 forcing over-estimated, due to lack of accuracy or completeness of the models.

However:

1 I have no reason to doubt that Richard Muller and his team have done a very thorough job.
2 The BEST study indicates a rise of 1.25 deg C from what seems to be the historic mean level over the last 1100 years, at around 1900 AD.
3 1.25 deg C is well above the historic range of proxy natural variation estimates of +/- 0.5 deg C, even at peaks.
4 The rise post-1970 correlates well with the predictions of the IPCC and of Hansen 1988.
5 Therefore, in the absence of any evidence for abnormally high solar forcings, galactic cosmic ray activity, or other natural events, it is no longer plausible to suggest that warming to date is wholly or mainly natural.
6 The greenhouse effect of CO2 is the only mechanism proposed to date which is backed up by evidence and modelled predictions.

As a result, on the basis of that evidence, I am bound to say I now give much more credence to the IPCC presentations of the effects of CO2 as a significant greenhouse gas, creating warming well in excess of natural warming, and likely to increase with increasing levels of CO2.

From what you say, my logic may be based on seeing too much 'precision' in the proxy records. But that is what it was based on. If you have any more comments I would of course be very pleased to hear them.

Thanks for the help in understanding.

The BEST Kind of Skepticism

PeterS at 11:56 AM on 24 October, 2011

Dale,

The leader of the BEST project, Richard Muller said this at a speech a few weeks ago:

"Global warming in my evaluation is real and much of it, if not most of it, is caused by humans,"

--Richard Muller, Sept. 28, 2011

http://wsutoday.wsu.edu/pages/Publications.asp?Action=Detail&PublicationID=27853&PageID=21

Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study: “The effect of urban heating on the global trends is nearly negligible”

JMurphy at 18:32 PM on 21 October, 2011

Watts is not happy and is now trying to weasel out of his previous support for the study. This is final proof that (alongside his site's constant references to cold records and general lack of credible scepticism) he is indeed one of those whose doubt about global warming this project's results should silence - if he were truly sceptical. Reading him and his followers over on WUWT is to see the sort of hurt incomprehension evident from similar supporters of creationism. If Watts can't now accept reality, he deserves to be side-lined as an irrelevant anti-science pervayer.
Pielke Sr isn't happy either, surpisingly enough...not.
And Judith Curry is still trying to work out how to spin the results so she can still argue one way while trying to appear neutral, i.e. friendly to the so-called skeptics.

"My hope is that this will win over those people who are properly sceptical," Richard Muller, a physicist and head of the project, said.
"Some people lump the properly sceptical in with the deniers and that makes it easy to dismiss them, because the deniers pay no attention to science. But there have been people out there who have raised legitimate issues."

Are any of those I have named "properly sceptical" ?

A new SkS resource: climate skeptics and their myths

skywatcher at 09:11 AM on 19 August, 2011

On the topic of these skeptics disagreeing with each other, this post by MediaMatters has emails from Richard Muller and Judith Curry throwing Bastardi under the bus. Muller also explicitly debunks Murry Salby in his email to MediaMatters. Oh yeah, Judith Curry may be worth considering for the roll-call?

#10 Les - I agree with you, in that it is a very fine line between calling out skeptics for their BS and a witch-hunt. However, unlike witches, these people have earned their right to be on this dunce's list, and the more these people are shown to be spouting garbage, the better.

A new SkS resource: climate skeptics and their myths

shoyemore at 04:29 AM on 19 August, 2011

Addendum: The response to Richard Muller's comment on An Inconvenient Truth refers to it as a book rather than a film. Minor nit.

A new SkS resource: climate skeptics and their myths

shoyemore at 04:25 AM on 19 August, 2011

Is it fair to put Richard Muller on there? I know he was been idiotically repeating denialist talking points, but his science has so far been confirmatory of climate change.

There is a bit of hope for Muller ... he does not seem to have yet totally sacrificed his scientific integrity like some of the others.

Thinning on top and bulging at the waist: symptoms of an ailing planet

Leland Palmer at 01:08 AM on 16 July, 2011

I've wondered about this movement of mass from the poles to the equator, and due to conservation of angular momentum, it seems likely that the rotation of the earth will slow, somewhat. More importantly, though, how will the stresses due to conservation of angular momentum be transmitted from the oceans and crust to the mantle and core? Could we be triggering a geomagnetic reversal, changing the relative rotation rates of the mantle and core?

Googling around, I found this old paper by Berkeley's controversial Richard Muller, unfortunately hidden behind a pay wall:

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/1986/GL013i011p01177.shtml

The impact of a large extraterrestrial object on the Earth can produce a geomagnetic reversal through the following mechanism: dust from the impact crater and soot from fires trigger a climate change and the beginning of a little ice age. The redistribution of water near the equator to ice at high latitudes alters the rotation rate of the crust and mantle of the Earth. If the sea‐level change is sufficiently large (>10 meters) and rapid (in a few hundred years), then the velocity shear in the liquid core disrupts the convective cells that drive the dynamo. The new convective cells that subsequently form distort and tangle the previous field, reducing the dipole component near to zero while increasing the energy in multipole components. Eventually a dipole is rebuilt by dynamo action, and the event is seen either as a geomagnetic reversal or as an excursion.

What we're doing by AGW is rapidly shifting mass from the poles to the equator, the opposite of Muller's hypothesis, which shifts mass rapidly from the equatorial regions to the poles. But the geomagnetic disruption due to conservation of angular momentum may be the same in each case.

The greenhouse effect is real: here's why

Chris G at 02:00 AM on 18 June, 2011

MoreCarbonOK,

Aside from the other faults of your argument, your first premiss is wrong; randomly selected stations show a similar rate of rise as those stations selected for the longevity of their records. At least, those are the results of the data so far.

"Rather than pick stations with long records (as done by the prior groups) we picked stations randomly from the complete set. This approach eliminates station selection bias. Our results are shown in the Figure; we see a global warming trend that is very similar to that previously reported by the other groups"

Richard Muller's Statement to Congress about Climate Change

Pretty sure "prior groups" refers to Hansen, et al.

You are being played. If the world is not warming, what is causing the change in the seasons? The physics of the GHE have been established for about 100 years; what makes you think you or Henry know more than everyone else? Global warming has already had its Galileo, his name was Arrhenius, or Tyndall, if you prefer.

There is no consensus

CBDunkerson at 03:40 AM on 6 April, 2011

Neo: "Would you please list just one study that is accepted by the consensus that contradicts AGW."

Sure. Angstrom 1900.

Of course, it has since been proven wrong... but it was accepted at the time.

You won't find any recent 'accepted studies' which contradict AGW because AGW is an observed reality. It would be like having studies showing that water always runs uphill. Even 'skeptic' scientists like Richard Muller and Roy Spencer acknowledge that AGW is happening... they just question how much the total impact will be and/or the best way to handle it.

That you think AGW is somehow in question, despite the fact that even 'skeptic' scientists will no longer make that claim, shows just how little you really know about the subject.

Climate myths at the U.S. House Hearing on climate change

shoyemore at 16:52 PM on 5 April, 2011

Richard Muller must be surprised to find that the deniers are treating him ... well, like a climate scientist. I thought Judith Curry had a aggrieved "Et tu, Anthony?" air about her blog.

One can only wonder how Muller got himself into the position of taking denialism seriously.

Andy Revkin has another take here:

Revkin on Congressional Hearings

Climate myths at the U.S. House Hearing on climate change

chris1204 at 11:52 AM on 5 April, 2011

Interestingly, Judith Curry just now happened to give a much more nuanced dissection of Richard Muller's position and evidence at these hearings. Dividing the world into "true believers" and "deniers" is fraught with limitations, impedes communication, and ultimately risks generating coherent responses to the challenges of climate change.

There is no consensus

IanC at 06:51 AM on 5 April, 2011

Neo,

I think you are misinformed on a few of the topics.

Regarding you issue with "hide the decline", the decline is not in the temperature record but rather in the divergence in the tree ring record. You'll find a good summary of the issue here The temperature record using modern instruments have shown very good agreement, and have with stood independent reconstructions. See here for details. In fact recently the BEST project ran by Richard Muller, who is hardly pro-AGW, showed agreement with the other temperature series.

"The East Anglia emails show the extent that pro-AGW group will go to hide dissent. (The application of pressure on journals to fire editors who dare to publish contrary opinions: the modern day equivalent of burning heretics at the stake)."
Here is a good summary of the issue surrounding the allegation.

"Look folks it is so complicated that only the truly smart can understand climate change."
This cannot be farther from the truth. While some aspects are no doubt highly technical, the theory on the whole is very approachable. What is required is the patience to go though all the details, because a LOT has been done. Most of the skeptics "objections" you hear nowadays is nothing new, and they all have been considered at some point (some long time ago).

Debunking Climate Myths from Politicians

chrisd3 at 04:05 AM on 1 April, 2011

@Michael Sweet #18:

Berkely Physicist Richard Muller, who has been hired to disparage the surface temperature record.

That may be a problem for Dr Muller. Apparently his own forthcoming temperature study (Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature, or BEST) is going to say that the reconstructions by NOAA, NASA, etc., are right on the money.

Debunking Climate Myths from Politicians

michael sweet at 01:44 AM on 1 April, 2011

The Koch's have hired a new physicist who is willing to say the climate problem does not exist. The Los Angeles Times had a story today about Berkely Physicist Richard Muller, who has been hired to disparage the surface temperature record. He will testify in congress next week, even though he has not yet published anything on climate science. Among his other claims is that "Not a single polar bear has died because of receding ice." Apparently he has not read this article Record Polar bear swim where the cub drowned as the mother searched for food.

It is certainly easier to find an expert when they do not have to publish a single paper or read the background information! Does he count as a scientist or a politician?

Preference for Mild Curry

Tom Curtis at 14:32 PM on 28 February, 2011

Stephen Leahy @15, a team headed by Richard Müller (see 13 above) and with Judith Curry as the only climatologist, in a research project partially funded by the Koch brothers? I can hardly wait.

Climate Change and the Integrity of Science: a letter to Science

Rob Honeycutt at 08:25 AM on 11 May, 2010

@Geo Guy... Just checked out your link to the 2004 Richard Muller article regarding McIntyre and McKitrick's critique of Mann's hockey stick. You need to do a little more research here. There are a lot of critiques of the Mc&Mc critique. And this is all older information. There are a long series of papers that have used other measures to come to similar conclusions as Mann (including Huang 2004, Oerlemans 2005, Moberg 2005, Esper 2002, Briffa 2001 and others).

Climate's changed before

Quietman at 06:54 AM on 3 March, 2009

I did not copy the link but I did keep the article:

With surprising and mysterious regularity, life on Earth has flourished and vanished in cycles of mass extinction every 62 million years, say two UC Berkeley scientists who discovered the pattern after a painstaking computer study of fossil records going back for more than 500 million years. Their findings are certain to generate a renewed burst of speculation among scientists who study the history and evolution of life. Each period of abundant life and each mass extinction has itself covered at least a few million years — and the trend of biodiversity has been rising steadily ever since the last mass extinction, when dinosaurs and millions of other life forms went extinct about 65 million years ago.

The Berkeley researchers are physicists, not biologists or geologists or paleontologists, but they have analyzed the most exhaustive compendium of fossil records that exists — data that cover the first and last known appearances of no fewer than 36,380 separate marine genera, including millions of species that once thrived in the world’s seas, later virtually disappeared, and in many cases returned. Richard Muller and his graduate student, Robert Rohde, are publishing a report on their exhaustive study in the journal Nature today, and in interviews this week, the two men said they have been working on the surprising evidence for about four years. “We’ve tried everything we can think of to find an explanation for these weird cycles of biodiversity and extinction,” Muller said, “and so far, we’ve failed.” But the cycles are so clear that the evidence “simply jumps out of the data,” said James Kirchner, a professor of earth and planetary sciences on the Berkeley campus who was not involved in the research but who has written a commentary on the report that is also appearing in Nature today. “Their discovery is exciting, it’s unexpected and it’s unexplained,” Kirchner said. And it is certain, he added, to send other scientists in many disciplines seeking explanations for the strange cycles. “Everyone and his brother will be proposing an explanation — and eventually, at least one or two will turn out to be right while all the others will be wrong.”

Muller and Rohde conceded that they have puzzled through every conceivable phenomenon in nature in search of an explanation: “We’ve had to think about solar system dynamics, about the causes of comet showers, about how the galaxy works, and how volcanoes work, but nothing explains what we’ve discovered,” Muller said. The evidence of strange extinction cycles that first drew Rohde’s attention emerged from an elaborate computer database he developed from the largest compendium of fossil data ever created. It was a 560-page list of marine organisms developed 14 years ago by the late J. John Sepkoski Jr., a famed paleobiologist at the University of Chicago who died at the age of 50 nearly five years ago. Sepkoski himself had suggested that marine life appeared to have its ups and downs in cycles every 26 million years, but to Rohde and Muller, the longer cycle is strikingly more evident, although they have also seen the suggestion of even longer cycles that seem to recur every 140 million years. Sepkoski’s fossil record of marine life extends back for 540 million years to the time of the great “Cambrian Explosion,” when almost all the ancestral forms of multicellular life emerged, and Muller and Rohde built on it for their computer version. Muller has long been known as an unconventional and imaginative physicist on the Berkeley campus and at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. It was he, for example, who suggested more than 20 years ago that an undiscovered faraway dwarf star — which he named “Nemesis” — was orbiting the sun and might have steered a huge asteroid into the collision with Earth that drove the dinosaurs to extinction. “I’ve given up on Nemesis,” Muller said this week, “but then I thought there might be two stars somewhere out there, but I’ve given them both up now.” He and Rohde have considered many other possible causes for the 62- million-year cycles, they said. Perhaps, they suggested, there’s an unknown “Planet X” somewhere far out beyond the solar system that’s disturbing the comets in the distant region called the Oort Cloud — where they exist by the millions — to the point that they shower the Earth and cause extinctions in regular cycles. Daniel Whitmire and John Matese of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette proposed that idea as a cause of major comet showers in 1985, but no one except UFO believers has ever discovered a sign of it. Or perhaps there’s some kind of “natural timetable” deep inside the Earth that triggers cycles of massive volcanism, Rohde has thought. There’s even a bit of evidence: A huge slab of volcanic basalt known as the Deccan Traps in India has been dated to 65 million years ago — just when the dinosaurs died, he noted. And the similar basaltic Siberian Traps were formed by volcanism about 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period, when the greatest of all mass extinctions drove more than 70 percent of all the world’s marine life to death, Rohde said.

The two scientists proposed more far-out ideas in their report in Nature, but only to indicate the possibilities they considered. Muller’s favorite explanation, he said informally, is that the solar system passes through an exceptionally massive arm of our own spiral Milky Way galaxy every 62 million years, and that that increase in galactic gravity might set off a hugely destructive comet shower that would drive cycles of mass extinction on Earth. Rohde, however, prefers periodic surges of volcanism on Earth as the least implausible explanation for the cycles, he said — although it’s only a tentative one, he conceded. Said Muller: “We’re getting frustrated and we need help. All I can say is that we’re confident the cycles exist, and I cannot come up with any possible explanation that won’t turn out to be fascinating. There’s something going on in the fossil record, and we just don’t know what it is.”

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