GRAPH THAT FOOLED THE WORLD

On Sunday, October 30, the London Daily Mail published the following two graphs.

The first graph labeled “Graph That Fooled The World” came from the BEST study that was released prior to peer review and publication.    The lead author Professor Richard Muller and his team from Berkley (University of California) Earth Surface Team (BEST) claimed that the chart showed that–the planet has warmed by almost a degree centigrade since 1950 and is warming continuously.  He said according to the Mail that the research: “proved you should not be a sceptic, at least not any longer.”  This graph was presented to the MSM over a week ago.  It was reprinted for today’s edition along with the second graph which is new.

From the Mail:

It was cited uncritically by, among others, reporters and commentators from the BBC, The Independent, The Guardian, The Economist and numerous media outlets in America.

The Washington Post said the BEST study had ‘settled the climate change debate’ and showed that anyone who remained a sceptic was committing a ‘cynical fraud’.

But today The Mail on Sunday can reveal that a leading member of Prof Muller’s team has accused him of trying to mislead the public by hiding the fact that BEST’s research shows global warming has stopped.

Prof Judith Curry, who chairs the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at America’s prestigious Georgia Institute of Technology, said that Prof Muller’s claim that he has proven global warming sceptics wrong was also a ‘huge mistake’, with no scientific basis.

The second graph titled The Inconvenient Truth uses the BEST data that show global temperatures at a standstill.  This Graph was not sent to the media by Muller.

The Mail adds these comments by Professor Curry:

As for the graph disseminated to the media, she said: ‘This is “hide the decline” stuff. Our data show the pause, just as the other sets of data do. Muller is hiding the decline.

‘To say this is the end of scepticism is misleading, as is the statement that warming hasn’t paused. It is also misleading to say, as he has, that the issue of heat islands has been settled.’

Yesterday Prof Muller insisted that neither his claims that there has not been a standstill, nor the graph, were misleading because the project had made its raw data available on its website, enabling others to draw their own graphs.

However, he admitted it was true that the BEST data suggested that world temperatures have not risen for about 13 years. But in his view, this might not be ‘statistically significant’, although, he added, it was equally possible that it was – a statement which left other scientists mystified. (added emphasis)

And you should probably not hold your breath waiting for a mea culpa from the MSM  for their jumping on a story that was at a minimum misleading if not intentionally wrong.

There is another posting  that Greenwire  titled “Provoked scientists try to explain lag in global warming.”  The expert warmer scientists, in their own words, can not answer this question.  Interestingly, they have many theories but no CONSENSUS.   Obivouly nothing any of them say can possibly be correct if there is no CONSENSUS.   I will comment on that posting next.

For a full reading of the Mail story, click here.

cbdakota