Can a group of scientists in California end the war on climate change?

[n2doc]

Ian Sample
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 27 February 2011 20.29 GMT


In 1964, Richard Muller, a 20-year-old graduate student with neat-cropped hair, walked into Sproul Hall at the University of California, Berkeley, and joined a mass protest of unprecedented scale. The activists, a few thousand strong, demanded that the university lift a ban on free speech and ease restrictions on academic freedom, while outside on the steps a young folk-singer called Joan Baez led supporters in a chorus of We Shall Overcome. The sit-in ended two days later when police stormed the building in the early hours and arrested hundreds of students. Muller was thrown into Oakland jail. The heavy-handedness sparked further unrest and, a month later, the university administration backed down. The protest was a pivotal moment for the civil liberties movement and marked Berkeley as a haven of free thinking and fierce independence.

Today, Muller is still on the Berkeley campus, probably the only member of the free speech movement arrested that night to end up with a faculty position there – as a professor of physics. His list of publications is testament to the free rein of tenure: he worked on the first light from the big bang, proposed a new theory of ice ages, and found evidence for an upturn in impact craters on the moon. His expertise is highly sought after. For more than 30 years, he was a member of the independent Jason group that advises the US government on defence; his college lecture series, Physics for Future Presidents was voted best class on campus, went stratospheric on YouTube and, in 2009, was turned into a bestseller.

For the past year, Muller has kept a low profile, working quietly on a new project with a team of academics hand-picked for their skills. They meet on campus regularly, to check progress, thrash out problems and hunt for oversights that might undermine their work. And for good reason. When Muller and his team go public with their findings in a few weeks, they will be muscling in on the ugliest and most hard-fought debate of modern times.

Muller calls his latest obsession the Berkeley Earth project. The aim is so simple that the complexity and magnitude of the undertaking is easy to miss. Starting from scratch, with new computer tools and more data than has ever been used, they will arrive at an independent assessment of global warming. The team will also make every piece of data it uses – 1.6bn data points – freely available on a website. It will post its workings alongside, including full information on how more than 100 years of data from thousands of instruments around the world are stitched together to give a historic record of the planet's temperature.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/feb/27/can-these-scientists-end-climate-change-war

He has no chance. You can't reason with folks whose paychecks and religion demand blind obedience.

[caraher]

1. Reminds me of the recent thread in Science on arrogance and physicists

Seems like this effort is based on the theory that we don't really get it right until the physicists redo everything.

I've used Muller's text in my own physics class pitched at non-scientists; one challenge using that text is that in the course of trying to clarify what the IPCC does and does not say Muller tends to inadvertently reinforce the views of students who come in as climate change skeptics (probably a majority of our students. He also has a mix of sound and oversimplified critiques of new energy technologies.

[wtmusic]

2. Of course - we're just not being thorough enough.

If we just provide more data points, the American Petroleum Institute will see the light.

Time to get down & dirty.

[joshcryer]

6. If someone like Muller comes up with yet another independent result it could throw a wrench into...

...things, since he is a "minimizer" and loves talking points.

His results will, if the science is proper, match the results of past records.

Then we can say "Hey there's another guy who agrees with us!"

I agree it won't have much of an impact on the politics of the thing, but it's still good to have another dataset.

[Barrett808]

8. But really, what could he come up with that hasn't been tried?

We match past records quite well already.

[Nederland]

10. Your certainty borders on religion

His results will, if the science is proper, match the results of past records.

Really? You are that certain that we've got every last little detail of climate science right? You actually think that there is absolutely no way someone could have missed something, or overestimated something, or gotten something wrong? Really?

If you want proof positive that AGW has left the realm of science and is now firmly a religious matter, here it is.

[joshcryer]

12. They are compiling temperature data, yes, I am 100% certain it will match the other records...

...if the science is sound. 100% certain. It can be noisy as all hell, it's going to match.

This is a "religious" matter in as much as me expecting gravity to work is a religious matter.

[Nederland]

13. My bad

I read the phrase "independent assessment of global warming" and took it to mean more than just an analysis of the temperature record. Given the narrow scope of what they are looking at, I agree, they are extremely unlikely to find anything new. Anything mistakes they do find will not be large enough to alter any conclusions already drawn about the record.

[Barrett808]

3. Koch-sponsored anti-science

Let’s say you’re a major national lab, affiliated with a major university, concerned about critiques of the global temperature record. Let’s say you get the bright idea to assemble some really smart scientists and statisticians “to resolve current criticism of the (global) temperature analyses, and to prepare an open record that will allow rapid response to further criticism or suggestions.”

Let’s set aside the fact that the various groups involved from NASA to NOAA to the Met Office have been undertaking their own reviews (see The deniers were half right: The Met Office Hadley Centre had flawed data — but it led them to UNDERestimate the rate of recent global warming and “Watts not to love: New study finds the poor weather stations tend to have a slight COOL bias, not a warm one“).

You know that because you are a prestigious, independent institution, you can bring fresh eyes and credibility to this supposed problem.

How would you go about killing this potentially not-bad idea? How about picking a co-chair whose knowledge of the subject has been widely criticized? How about including a bunch of prestigious scientists who know very little about the subject and who have little involvement in the actual study? How about having your only actual climate scientist — presumably chosen for extra credibility — be Judith Curry? How about having a family member of the ill-informed co-chair be project manager? How about taking money from one of the biggest funders of anti-science disinformation in the world? ...

Exclusive: Richard Muller, Charles Koch, Judith Curry and the implosion of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study

[kristopher]

4. Thank you. nt

[joshcryer]

5. ClimateProgress has a fundamental failure to understand what science is. Embarrassing.

It wouldn't matter if satan himself was funding the science, if it is science the results will speak for itself. As some of the comments point out, UCBs data will match the data we have now, just with more noise. I'm so tired of talking points without any indication of critical thought.

As yet, since they have not released anything, you cannot claim that their methods are unscientific.

[Barrett808]

7. I lived through l'affaire Curry on RealClimate

Putting her on an "authoritative" panel pretty much discredits it from the starting line.

[joshcryer]

11. We'll have to see what they come up with.

It's really hard to fuck up the data, the only way the idiots "get away with it" is by using short term trends, and squeezing the charts, they can't "hide the increase" very easily.

[cprise]

9. IOW, Muller took some early embarrassing pot shots at AGW

...and now he is going to use Koch money to try and get the rotting egg off his face.