[unsamiSlini]

Global warming is due to humans: US ex-skeptic (Update)
July 30, 2012



A prominent US skeptic of the human causes of climate change, Richard Muller, has reversed course and said on Monday that he now believes greenhouse gases are responsible for global warming.





I was not expecting this, but as a scientist, I feel it is my duty to let the evidence change my mind," Muller, a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, said in a statement.

Muller is part of a group of more than a dozen scientists on the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature team studying how temperature changes may relate to human activity, or to natural events such as solar and volcanic activity.


The average temperature of the Earth's land has risen 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.5 degrees Fahrenheit) over the past 250 years, and "the most straightforward explanation for this warming is human greenhouse gas emissions," the team said in a report posted online Monday.



The analysis goes 100 years further back than previous research, and takes an even stronger stance than the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which said in 2007 that "most" of the warming of the past 50 years could be attributed to human activity, and that higher solar activity prior to 1956 might have fueled some of the warming the Earth has experienced.


The Berkeley team's analysis said "the contribution of solar activity to global warming is negligible.


" It added that its finding does not rely on climate models, which critics say have the potential for inaccuracies.


Instead, it is based "simply on the close agreement between the shape of the observed temperature rise and the known greenhouse gas increase.

" Further research will factor in ocean temperatures, which are not included in the latest report, it said.

In an op-ed in the New York Times over the weekend, Muller explained his transformation from being a scientist who doubted the "very existence of global warming" to one who now sides with the majority of the scientific community.


"Call me a converted skeptic," wrote Muller.

"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."




http://phys.org/news/2012-07-global-...ic.html#ajTabs

[tearidrusydet]

[...]
Instead, it is based "simply on the close agreement between the shape of the observed temperature rise and the known greenhouse gas increase.

[...] The old problem of correlation equalling causation?

[leacturavar]

Jim, It's worse than that, it's dead
it is based "simply on the close agreement between the shape of the observed temperature rise and the known greenhouse gas increase.

" Further research will factor in ocean temperatures, which are not included in the latest report, it said. see also UK weather....
http://www.metro.co.uk/news/54615-re...#ixzz22YBEvFNU
and of course the Oz weather....etc

and of course the Global Weather Reversal

However I am sure that this abomination will be used in peer review to validate something more far fetched

[ZenDers]

Why the BEST papers failed to pass peer review

BERKELEY EARTH STUDY REFEREE REPORTS: On September 8 2011 I was asked by Journal of Geophysical Research to be a reviewer for a paper by Charlotte Wickham et al. presenting the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (“BEST”) analysis of the effect of urbanization on land surface temperatures. This work is mainly associated with Richard Muller and his various coauthors. I submitted my review just before the end of September 2011, outlining what I saw were serious shortcomings in their methods and arguing that their analysis does not establish valid grounds for the conclusions they assert. I suggested the authors be asked to undertake a major revision. In October 2011, despite the papers not being accepted, Richard Muller launched a major international publicity blitz announcing the results of the “BEST” project.

Later, when the journal turned the paper down and asked for major revisions, I sought permission from Richard to release my review. He requested that I post it without indicating I was a reviewer for JGR. Since that was not feasible I simply kept it confidential.

On March 8 2012 I was asked by JGR to review a revised version of the Wickham et al. paper. I submitted my review at the end of March. The authors had made very few changes and had not addressed any of the methodological problems, so I recommended the paper not be published. I do not know what the journal’s decision was, but it is 4 months later and I can find no evidence on the BEST website that this or any other BEST project paper has been accepted for publication. On July 29 2012 Richard Muller launched another publicity blitz (e.g. here and here) claiming, among other things, that “In our papers we demonstrate that none of these potentially troublesome effects unduly biased our conclusions.” Their failure to provide a proper demonstration of this point had led me to recommend against publishing their paper. This places me in an awkward position since I made an undertaking to JGR to respect the confidentiality of the peer review process, but I have reason to believe Muller et al.'s analysis does not support the conclusions he is now asserting in the press. I take the journal peer review process seriously and I dislike being placed in the position of having to break a commitment I made to JGR, but the “BEST” team’s decision to launch another publicity blitz effectively nullifies any right they might have had to confidentiality in this matter. So I am herewith releasing my referee reports. The first, from September 2011, is here and the second, from March 2012 is here.

http://www.rossmckitrick.com/

[ZenDers]

From Muller’s Op-Ed in the NYT –’'While this doesn’t prove (his temp reconstruction) that global warming is caused by human greenhouse gases”

AND – 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.

[amagmasia]

> A prominent US skeptic of the human causes of climate change, Richard Muller, has reversed course and said on Monday that he now believes greenhouse gases are responsible for global warming. ... I'm now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.

Good, though he should have stopped being a climate skeptic when I stopped being a climate skeptic. Circa 1990, the evidence by then was overwhelming.

[SeelaypeKet]

Can we stop calling them climate sceptics please.


They are unsceptical climate change doubter alarmists.

[ZenDers]

Can we stop calling them climate sceptics please.


They are unsceptical climate change doubter alarmists.


wow, how unusual, ad hominem, & childish to boot.

[ZenDers]

Muller’s efforts in his temp reconstruction are best summed up by Pielk Snr.

http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.co…e-trends-by-w/


within his comments on a new paper – An area and distance weighted analysis of the impacts of station exposure on the U.S. Historical Climatology Network temperatures and temperature trends . – press release – http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/2…-2/#more-68286

“In direct contradiction to Richard Muller’s BEST study, the new Watts et al 2012 paper has very effectively shown that a substantive warm bias exists even in the mean temperature trends. This type of bias certainly exists throughout the Global Historical Climate Network, as well as what Anthony has documented for the US Historical Climate Reference Network.

Anthony’s new results also undermine the latest claims by Richard Muller of BEST, as not only is Muller extracting data from mostly the same geographic areas as for the NCDC, GISS and CRU analyses, but he is accepting an older assessment of station siting quality as it affects the trends.

Indeed, since he accepted the Fall et al 2011 study in reporting his latest findings, he now needs to retrench and re-compute his trends. Of course, for the non-USHCN sites, he must bin those sites as performed by Anthony’s research group. If he does not, his study should be relegated to a footnote of a out-of-date analysis.

In Richard Muller’s Op-Ed in the New York Times (see The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic), he makes far-reaching conclusions based on his sparse knowledge of the uncertainties in multi-decadal land surface temperature record. His comments show what occurs when a scientist, with excellent research credentials within their area of scientific expertise, go outside of their area of knowledge.
His latest BEST claims are, in my view, an embarrassment. The statement that he makes in his op-ed are easily refuted.

It certainly appears that Richard Muller is an attention-getter, which he has succeeded at, but, unfortunately, he has demonstrated a remarkable lack of knowledge concerning the uncertainties in quantifying the actual long-term surface temperature trend, as well as a seriously incomplete knowledge of the climate system.

[ZenDers]

Climate change science is a load of hot air and warmists are wrong
August 2, 2012 – - – - – - – - – - – - –
Dr David M. W. Evans is a mathematician and engineer who consulted full-time for the Australian Greenhouse Office (now the Department of Climate Change) from 1999 to 2005. He says he changed from being a warmist to a sceptic after ''evidence supporting the idea that CO2 emissions were the main cause of global warming reversed itself from 1998 to 2006’'. – - – - – - – - – - – - –
IN THE theory of man-made climate change, two-thirds of the predicted warming comes from changes in humidity and clouds, and only one-third comes directly from the extra carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases.
The theory assumes humidity and clouds amplify the warming directly due to CO2 by a factor of three: extra CO2 warms the ocean surface, causing more evaporation and extra humidity. Water vapour, or humidity, is the main greenhouse gas, so this causes even more surface warming.
Not many people know that. It is the most important feature of the debate, and goes a long way to explaining why warmists and sceptics both insist they are right.
The warmists are correct that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and it causes warming, that CO2 levels have been rising, and that it has been warming.
Serious sceptics agree with all that, but point out that it does not prove that something else isn’t causing most of the warming. By way of illustration, if the main cause of warming was actually Venusians with ray guns, then all those things would still be true.
There is no observational evidence for this amplification, but it is nonetheless built into all the models. Sceptics point out that if the extra humidity simply forms extra clouds, then there would be no amplification.
If the CO2 theory of global warming is right, the climate models should predict the climate fairly well. If the CO2 theory is wrong, because there is another, larger driver of the temperature, then the climate models will perform indifferently.
According to the latest data from mankind’s best and latest instruments, from impeccable sources, the climate models are doing poorly.
The first Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report in 1990 predicted air temperatures would increase by 0.30 degrees per decade, and by 0.20 degrees to 0.50 degrees per decade at the outside. But according to NASA satellites that measure almost the entire planet constantly, the trend since then has been 0.17 degrees per decade at most. The climate scientists ignore these awkward results and instead only quote temperatures from land thermometers, half of which are at airports where they are artificially warmed by jet engines and hot tarmac, while most of the rest are in warming micro-climates such as near air conditioner outlets, at sewage plants or in car parks. Obviously the data from these corrupted thermometers should not be used.
Ocean temperatures have only been measured properly since 2003 when the Argo program became operational. Some 3000 Argo buoys roam the oceans, measuring temperatures on each 10-day dive into the depths. Before Argo, we used sporadic sampling with buckets and diving darts along a few commercial shipping lanes. But these measurements have such massively high uncertainties as to be useless. Since Argo started, the ocean temperatures have been flat, no warming at all.
The assumed temperature amplification due to changes in humidity and clouds exhibits itself in all the models as prominent warming about 10 kilometres up over the tropics. We have been measuring the atmospheric warming pattern since the 1960s using weather balloons, released twice a day from 900 locations around the planet, many millions of them in total, and no such ''hot spot’' has been detected. This is direct observational proof that the amplification is missing.
The climate models predict that the outgoing radiation from the earth decreases in the weeks following a rise in the surface temperature, due to aggressive heat-trapping by extra humidity. But analysis of the outgoing radiation measured by NASA satellites for the last two decades shows the opposite occurs: the earth gives off more heat after the surface temperature rises. Again, this suggests that the amplification assumed in the models simply does not occur in reality.
Government climate scientists tend to excuse away these failings, often blaming unmeasured aerosols whose effects are only dimly understood. These excuses wear ever thinner as the CO2 level continues to rise but the temperature plateau of the last 12 years persists.
There are huge vested interests in the theory of man-made climate change. They will soon have to face up to the fact that they have been unwittingly relying on assumed amplification by humidity for most of the predicted temperature increases, and that the amplification is not there in reality.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/climat...#ixzz22R3AgVRn

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/climat...#ixzz22R3AgVRn

[SeelaypeKet]

wow, how unusual, ad hominem, & childish to boot.

No, simply accurate. They automatically reject any evidence that suggests that human sourced GHG emissions are causing climate change, and they automatically accept any evidence that suggests that they are not. This is the very opposite of scepticism.

As for alarmists. possibly not all of the unsceptical climate change doubters are alarmists, but certainly all the prominent ones are extremely alarmist about the effects of any proposed measures to reduce emissions.

Also it is very hypocritical of you to complain about ad-hominem remarks when you are always ready to apply them yourself to anyone who disagrees with you.

[leacturavar]

THE theory of man-made climate change, two-thirds of the predicted warming comes from changes in humidity and clouds, and only one-third comes directly from the extra carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/climat...#ixzz22dYqP7Z2 My view is that climate change is MAN MADE
but the cause is not carbon dioxide emissions
but petroleum oil spewed into the greater environment... namely the oceans.

The warming phase was due to dehydration of the atmosphere
now this next phase (cooling phase) is ruled by Ice Clouds.

The last phase will be an Ice Age.

From Article
The theory assumes humidity and clouds amplify the warming directly due to CO2 by a factor of three: extra CO2 warms the ocean surface, causing more evaporation and extra humidity. Fact: Drought is galloping in many part of the world

The chronic drought that hit western North America from 2000 to 2004 left dying forests and depleted river basins in its wake and was the strongest in 800 years, scientists have concluded, but they say those conditions will become the "new normal" for most of the coming century.

Such climatic extremes have increased as a result of global warming, a group of 10 researchers reported today in Nature Geoscience. And as bad as conditions were during the 2000-04 drought, they may eventually be seen as the good old days. Climate models and precipitation projections indicate this period will actually be closer to the "wet end" of a drier hydroclimate during the last half of the 21st century, scientists said.

During the 2000-04 drought, runoff in the upper Colorado River basin was cut in half. Crop productivity in much of the West fell 5 percent. The productivity of forests and grasslands declined, along with snowpacks. Evapotranspiration decreased the most in evergreen needleleaf forests, about 33 percent.

The effects are driven by human-caused increases in temperature, with associated lower soil moisture and decreased runoff in all major water basins of the western U.S., researchers said in the study.
http://phys.org/news/2012-07-chronic...years.html#jCp and NOW
"What I'm seeing here is a total crop failure. There is no grain out here to harvest." Two thirds of the continental United States is now suffering from the most widespread drought since the 1950s.

And the drought in America's breadbasket is intensifying at an unprecedented rate, driving concern food prices could soar if crops in the world's key producer are decimated.

[unsamiSlini]

Fact: Drought is galloping in many part of the world
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>



Not on Australia's East coast...

[ZenDers]

No, simply accurate. They automatically reject any evidence that suggests that human sourced GHG emissions are causing climate change, and they automatically accept any evidence that suggests that they are not. This is the very opposite of scepticism.
Rev, as usual your argument is utterly biased & infinitely hypocritical.

>You< automatically accept any evidence that suggests human sourced GHG emissions are causing climate change, and automatically reject any evidence that suggests that they are not.

You are not sceptical, you are an alarmist, you have an agenda, & you are politically motivated



Also it is very hypocritical of you to complain about ad-hominem remarks when you are always ready to apply them yourself to anyone who disagrees with you. Rev, you repeatedly raise this issue but you have never answered my question; Why do you never chastise others who insult me?

A. because you are a hypocrite.

[ZenDers]

Good, though he should have stopped being a climate skeptic when I stopped being a climate skeptic. Circa 1990, the evidence by then was overwhelming.
That’s interesting Mollwolfumble. I’d agree that the hypothesis of strongly net positive feedback to a forcing was plausible back 22 years ago. But I cannot comprehend how you could consider observations at that time to be accurate or detailed or extensive or sophisticated enough, or anything enough to come to a conclusion they even amounted to evidence, let alone overwhelming evidence.

One only has to look at model projections from that era to see how they overstated positive feedback. And besides the fact that mean temps are far below the predictions of those models, present observation show that the negative lapse rate feedback that was supposed to accompany the positive water vapour feedback (according to all IPCC models) hasn’t occurred. Neither has.

[SeelaypeKet]

Rev, as usual your argument is utterly biased & infinitely hypocritical.

>You< automatically accept any evidence that suggests human sourced GHG emissions are causing climate change, and automatically reject any evidence that suggests that they are not.

You are not sceptical, you are an alarmist, you have an agenda, & you are politically motivated

No, I'm afraid you are wrong. I don't automatically accept any of the evidence, and I don't automatically reject any of the evidence. The point is, as you have been told many times, but have never once given any reasoned response to, the possibility that GHG emissions will have serious adverse effects is unacceptably high.

Rev, you repeatedly raise this issue but you have never answered my question; Why do you never chastise others who insult me?

A. because you are a hypocrite.

No, the answer is that I don't interfere in other people's squabbles. I neither chastise others who insult you, nor chastise you for insulting others.

If you insult me, that is another matter.

[ZenDers]

No, I'm afraid you are wrong. No, all the evidence from these forums proves me 100% correct



The point is, as you have been told many times, the possibility that GHG emissions will have serious adverse effects is unacceptably high. That is a political slogan that makes absolutely no sense at all but does confirm a terrible lack of evidence.



No, the answer is that I don't interfere in other people's squabbles. I neither chastise others who insult you, nor chastise you for insulting others. Well that’s an open faced outright lie

[SeelaypeKet]

That is a political slogan that makes absolutely no sense at all but does confirm a terrible lack of evidence.

The old Creationist's tactic; pretend the strongest arguments of your opponents have no basis, and can be dismissed without discussion.


As for the rest, I can't be bothered.

[ZenDers]

>> "That is a political slogan that makes absolutely no sense at all but does confirm a terrible lack of evidence"

[SeelaypeKet]

Quote -
"The point is, the possibility that GHG emissions will have serious adverse effects is unacceptably high".[/COLOR]


Makes no sense & confirms a terrible lack of evidence.

Please explain why you think this statement is non-sensical, and why you think it confirms lack of evidence.

And on "dismissed without discussion",,,,, you have got to be joking

Just saying something makes no sense is not a discussion. The same statement could be applied to absolutely any argument that you don't want to discuss.

If you do want to discuss it, please provide your evidence (preferably without the usual recourse to insults when you know your arguments are weak).

If you don't, others can draw their own conclusions.