Sceptics make BEST U-turn as study indicates warming
Angry climate sceptic bloggers have hit back at the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project, after its chair Professor Richard Muller gave evidence to a House of Representatives Committee last week.
The BEST project is intended to reanalyse the world’s temperature records, taking into account all of the critiques of climate data made by climate sceptics in the wake of the “Climategate” controversy.
Anthony Watts, who runs the Watts Up With That website, was originally hugely supportive of the project, visiting the BEST team at Berkeley and helping them select which of the temperature stations around the world should be included in the study. Watts has long argued that the use of data from poorer stations had skewed the global temperature record, but he stated of BEST that he was
“prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong.”
But then the author of liberal US blog Climate Progress, Joe Romm, leaked the initial results of the BEST project. Romm quoted Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist and funder of BEST, who was among the first to see a preliminary publication based on two percent of temperature stations. Caldeira stated:
“Their results confirm the reality of global warming and support in all essential respects the historical temperature analyses of the NOAA, NASA, and HadCRU.”
Watts was apparently furious that Romm was trying to preempt the BEST study. Watts attacked Romm’s post on the basis that the preliminary results were based only on temperature stations based in Japan. But this claim was inaccurate – the BEST early results were based on a random selection of weather stations around the world. Watts was forced to apologise for his mistake.
The humiliation only worsened for Watts when Richard Muller gave evidence to the House of Representatives committee on science, space and technology last Thursday. Muller said results from “poor” and “good” temperature stations were very similar and both confirmed the significant rise in global temperatures. He told the Committee
“We see a global warming trend that is very similar to that previously reported by the other groups.”
Today, Watts is top lining a quote from Peter Thorne of the National Climatic Data Centre, in which he says the BEST project is”seriously compromised” by seeking publicity before its work has been peer reviewed.
The latest twist in this tale of hubris took place over the weekend when the sceptic blog Climate Depot – run by Mark Marano, who once worked for the vociferous sceptic Senator James Inhofe – started dumping articles online under the title: “Richard Muller Stands Accused”.
Muller now finds himself in a situation where Watts and other sceptics are withdrawing support and launching attacks after they see that his results, based on new, independent statistical analysis, appear to confirm that global warming is taking place.
The BEST project has been criticised because it accepted $150,000 in funding from the Charles G Koch Foundation – and because the only climate scientist taking part is Judith Curry, who has become a hero to sceptics after attacking the “consensus” on global warming.
But the current complications result from the simple fact that Muller has reached the same conclusion as the CRU – despite taking on board all the allegations made by sceptics about the recent temperature record since the “Climategate” fiasco began.