When it comes to climate change, I’m prepared to accept that some people have differing views on why the earth might be warming. Those that hold out that the earth hasn’t warmed are a different matter. Plenty of such people exist, and many of them justify their views with criticisms of the data sources that are generally used by climate scientists, such as NASA and Hadley CRU. In particular, there are complaints that weather stations are badly placed, that they do not take the urban heat island effect into consideration, and that scientists are selective in their use of data.
In response to these sorts of questions, the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project (BEST) set out to consolidate the land temperature record once and for all. It’s a major undertaking, incorporating results from over 39,000 weather stations – 5 times as many as previous studies, and comprising 1.6 billion measurements of land temperatures. BEST uses a very broad set of temperature records, and for the first time, includes analysis of weather station quality. It is independent, transparent, and ground-breaking in its scope and methodology.
Because it so directly addresses the concerns of skeptics, BEST has attracted considerable attention from those who dispute global warming. The Koch Foundation helped to fund the project, and skeptic author Fred Singer endorsed it. Meterologist Anthony Watts contributed data and was confident enough to nail his colours to the mast: “I’m prepared to accept whatever result they produce,” he wrote in March, “even if it proves my premise wrong.”
Last week, the results were released for peer review. “The BEST study finds reliable evidence of a rise in average world land temperature of approximately 1 degree C since the mid 1950s.” If you’ve been paying attention, that’s exactly what previous studies showed.
What of the station quality? Stations rated ‘poor’ showed exactly the same trends as those rated ‘ok’ by Watt’s team. (This should be obvious: a weather station in a car park may be recording higher temperatures than one in a field, but it will do so consistently. The individual readings will be too high, but the change in temperatures over decades would be the same and the trend would still be visible.)
As for the urban heat island effect, the study found that it is real, but since less than 1% of the earth’s surface is built on, it “does not contribute significantly” to average land temperatures.
In other words, what we have in BEST is a rigorous study that directly and transparently addresses the concerns of some of the world’s most prominent climate skeptics, that uses their own research data and consulted them on methodology, that enjoyed their full blessing, and then systematically proved their concerns to be misplaced. Has Watts acknowledged the results, as he said he would? Of course not.
But for the rest of us, we can have confidence in the temperature record. The earth has warmed.
The Earthbound Report 
Well spotted and very good that you’ve drawn attention to this; –
I asked Fred whether he would accept the BEST results.
But by the look of it, ‘ol Fred ain’t giving up any time soon.
He said “stop digging” and sent me this –
Click to access Santa_Fe_Conference_Oct_31_2011.pdf
Well done for pushing him to back up his previous endorsement. But then Fred is the go-to guy for all your denial needs, so I wouldn’t expect him to change his mind anytime soon.
My guess is if Fred is right [i.e. the temperature is shown and proven not to be rising] then the entire case for C&C as a pratical necessity fails.
However, if he is wrong [i.e. the temperature is shown and proven to be rising] then the entire case for C&C as a pratical necessity succeeds and Fred’s resistance fails.
The evidence gathered over the last forty-plus years for rising temperature shows [what to me is] a trend that it is rising and that trend is up-dated, developed and presented with increasing ‘confidence’.
Previously Fred Singer expressed reluctant views about C&C in his book as follows: –
“A new climate treaty would at least pay lip service to the obligations of developing nations, although it could probably not require them to reduce emissions. Instead, a new Kyoto might be shaped by the notion of “Contraction and Convergence” [C&C – Meyer, 2000] now popular in European environmental circles.”
Unstoppable Global Warming
Fred Singer & Dennis Avery
Fred Singer has more recently expressed negative views about C&C on American Thinker as follows: –
“Among the worst policies being pushed with the help of Sustainable Development is a scheme called Contraction and Convergence (C&C). The idea is that every human is entitled to emit the same amount of CO2. This of course translates into every being on earth using the same amount of energy — and, by inference, having the same income. In other words, C&C is basically a policy for a giant global income redistribution.”
A reply to him about this saying that: –
“C&C is not about ‘global income re-distribution’ it is about ‘global emissions *pre*-distribution’ subject to the limit that achieves compliance with the objective of the UN Climate Change Convention. In other words it is a logical proposition to which there have [inevitably] been a range of ideological reactions [of which yours is one and to which you are entitled].” met with the rather random reply, “stop digging, the world is getting cooler.”
I’d be interested to see whether Fred Singer endorses Lord Monkton. His anti-warmist views border on ideological hysteria [its actually quite sadly funny] and I wonder whether Singer will fall into that trap. I am reluctant to ask as I’m in his cross-hairs now and I think I’ll just get the usual knee-jerk reaction to stop digging . . . .
His email address is “S. Fred Singer” if you are tempted . . . .
Unfortunately a fairly classic train of thought to a certain type of American – to read talk of fairness and equal rights, and hear communism. “By inference”, equality of income? Where does that inference come from?
It’s tempting to write and ask about Berkeley’s findings, but with a website called Make Wealth History to my name, I suspect I would only confirm his worst suspicions.