On Mon, 30 Jul 2012 23:30:41 +0000 (UTC), Larry Blanchard
wrote:

On Mon, 30 Jul 2012 09:44:23 -0700, Larry Jaques wrote:

I'm sure you won't believe him either :-).

Geeze, Larry, we (Wreck) just had this discussion. Pay attention.

My bad - I clicked on the wrong reference. I'll try harder :-). Here's
the right reference:

http://www.spokesman.com/stories/201...hange-skeptic-
reverses-course/

The article is from today's newspaper. Here's the difference:

"Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen
scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior
estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step
further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.”

OK, I repeat:

Geeze, Larry, we (Wreck) just had this discussion. Pay attention.
deep sigh (Reread Swingy's earlier swat, too.)

So, Muller's report is due to be released today. Let's wait until
some folks (both Believers and Deniers) have a chance to take a closer
look and do peer reviews/critiques of it before we go anywhere with
it, eh?

The missing datasets (solar and oceanic?) bother me a whole lot. And
I'd like to see his temperature station list to see if he is accepting
the limited set now available which automatically skews the data
higher. BTW, this report is being released with an open request for
peer review. It's not a done deed until everyone has checked his
work, Mr. True Believer. I'm also iffy about the use of CO2 in ice
samples since there is still a good possibility that it follows warmth
rather than leading it.

Here's the text of Muller's NYT article, since, apparently, nobody but
Swingy and I have read it:
--snip--
July 28, 2012
The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic
By RICHARD A. MULLER

Berkeley, Calif.

CALL me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in
previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very
existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive
research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global
warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming
were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely
the cause.

My total turnaround, in such a short time, is the result of careful
and objective analysis by the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature
project, which I founded with my daughter Elizabeth. Our results show
that the average temperature of the earth’s land has risen by two and
a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an
increase of one and a half degrees over the most recent 50 years.
Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase
results from the human emission of greenhouse gases.

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. In its 2007
report, the I.P.C.C. concluded only that most of the warming of the
prior 50 years could be attributed to humans. It was possible,
according to the I.P.C.C. consensus statement, that the warming before
1956 could be because of changes in solar activity, and that even a
substantial part of the more recent warming could be natural.

Our Berkeley Earth approach used sophisticated statistical methods
developed largely by our lead scientist, Robert Rohde, which allowed
us to determine earth land temperature much further back in time. We
carefully studied issues raised by skeptics: biases from urban heating
(we duplicated our results using rural data alone), from data
selection (prior groups selected fewer than 20 percent of the
available temperature stations; we used virtually 100 percent), from
poor station quality (we separately analyzed good stations and poor
ones) and from human intervention and data adjustment (our work is
completely automated and hands-off). In our papers we demonstrate that
none of these potentially troublesome effects unduly biased our
conclusions.

The historic temperature pattern we observed has abrupt dips that
match the emissions of known explosive volcanic eruptions; the
particulates from such events reflect sunlight, make for beautiful
sunsets and cool the earth’s surface for a few years. There are small,
rapid variations attributable to El Niño and other ocean currents such
as the Gulf Stream; because of such oscillations, the “flattening” of
the recent temperature rise that some people claim is not, in our
view, statistically significant. What has caused the gradual but
systematic rise of two and a half degrees? We tried fitting the shape
to simple math functions (exponentials, polynomials), to solar
activity and even to rising functions like world population. By far
the best match was to the record of atmospheric carbon dioxide,
measured from atmospheric samples and air trapped in polar ice.

Just as important, our record is long enough that we could search for
the fingerprint of solar variability, based on the historical record
of sunspots. That fingerprint is absent. Although the I.P.C.C. allowed
for the possibility that variations in sunlight could have ended the
“Little Ice Age,” a period of cooling from the 14th century to about
1850, our data argues strongly that the temperature rise of the past
250 years cannot be attributed to solar changes. This conclusion is,
in retrospect, not too surprising; we’ve learned from satellite
measurements that solar activity changes the brightness of the sun
very little.

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. These facts don’t prove causality and they
shouldn’t end skepticism, but they raise the bar: to be considered
seriously, an alternative explanation must match the data at least as
well as carbon dioxide does. Adding methane, a second greenhouse gas,
to our analysis doesn’t change the results. Moreover, our analysis
does not depend on large, complex global climate models, the huge
computer programs that are notorious for their hidden assumptions and
adjustable parameters. Our result is based simply on the close
agreement between the shape of the observed temperature rise and the
known greenhouse gas increase.

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. I’ve analyzed some of
the most alarmist claims, and my skepticism about them hasn’t changed.

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.

The careful analysis by our team is laid out in five scientific papers
now online at BerkeleyEarth.org. That site also shows our chart of
temperature from 1753 to the present, with its clear fingerprint of
volcanoes and carbon dioxide, but containing no component that matches
solar activity. Four of our papers have undergone extensive scrutiny
by the scientific community, and the newest, a paper with the analysis
of the human component, is now posted, along with the data and
computer programs used. Such transparency is the heart of the
scientific method; if you find our conclusions implausible, tell us of
any errors of data or analysis.

What about the future? As carbon dioxide emissions increase, the
temperature should continue to rise. I expect the rate of warming to
proceed at a steady pace, about one and a half degrees over land in
the next 50 years, less if the oceans are included. But if China
continues its rapid economic growth (it has averaged 10 percent per
year over the last 20 years) and its vast use of coal (it typically
adds one new gigawatt per month), then that same warming could take
place in less than 20 years.

Science is that narrow realm of knowledge that, in principle, is
universally accepted. I embarked on this analysis to answer questions
that, to my mind, had not been answered. I hope that the Berkeley
Earth analysis will help settle the scientific debate regarding global
warming and its human causes. Then comes the difficult part: agreeing
across the political and diplomatic spectrum about what can and should
be done.

Richard A. Muller, a professor of physics at the University of
California, Berkeley, and a former MacArthur Foundation fellow, is the
author, most recently, of “Energy for Future Presidents: The Science
Behind the Headlines.”

( http://tinyurl.com/blvkg68 copyright New York Times newspaper)

--snip--

Two paragraphs are key, too. They begin with "It's a scientist's
duty" and "Hurricane Katrina". They show that his skepticism is still
with him for most things. Why don't you Libs ever read or research
_any_ of the articles you tout, anyway? Crikey!

--
When we are planning for posterity, we ought
to remember that virtue is not hereditary.
-- Thomas Paine

(comparing Paine to the current CONgress deep sigh)