"Review of methane mitigation technologies with application to rapid release of methane from the Arctic," by J. K. Stolaroff et al., Environ. Sci. & Technol., 46 (2012)

Environment Science & Technology, 46(12) (June 19, 2012) 6455-6469; Epub 2012 Jun 7.

Review of methane mitigation technologies with application to rapid release of methane from the Arctic

J. K. Stolaroff, S. Bhattacharyya, C. A. Smith, W. L. Bourcier, P. J. Cameron-Smith and R. D. Aines

Source

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory , Livermore, CA, U.S.A.

Abstract

Methane is the most important greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide, with particular influence on near-term climate change. It poses increasing risk in the future from both direct anthropogenic sources and potential rapid release from the Arctic. A range of mitigation (emissions control) technologies have been developed for anthropogenic sources that can be developed for further application, including to Arctic sources. Significant gaps in understanding remain of the mechanisms, magnitude, and likelihood of rapid methane release from the Arctic. Methane may be released by several pathways, including lakes, wetlands, and oceans, and may be either uniform over large areas or concentrated in patches. Across Arctic sources, bubbles originating in the sediment are the most important mechanism for methane to reach the atmosphere. Most known technologies operate on confined gas streams of 0.1% methane or more, and may be applicable to limited Arctic sources where methane is concentrated in pockets. However, some mitigation strategies developed for rice paddies and agricultural soils are promising for Arctic wetlands and thawing permafrost. Other mitigation strategies specific to the Arctic have been proposed but have yet to be studied. Overall, we identify four avenues of research and development that can serve the dual purposes of addressing current methane sources and potential Arctic sources: (1) methane release detection and quantification, (2) mitigation units for small and remote methane streams, (3) mitigation methods for dilute (<1000 ppm) methane streams, and (4) understanding methanotroph and methanogen ecology.

PMID:

 

22594483

 

[PubMed - in process]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22594483

Peter Sinclair: Update on U.S. drought, end of July 2012

Leo Hickman: What evidence will it take to convince climate sceptics? Prof Richard Muller's research showing the world is warming and humans are largely to blame is being rejected by climate sceptics

Earth surface temperatures graph

by Leo Hickman, The Guardian, July 30, 2012

So, that's it then. The climate wars are over. Climate sceptics have accepted the main tenets of climate science – that the world is warming and that humans are largely to blame – and we can all now get on to debating the real issue at hand: what, if anything, do we do about it?

If only. Yesterday's announcement by Prof Richard Muller that, as a result of his Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project's research, he had undergone a "total turnaround" in his views on climate science and now accepted that the Earth's land has warmed by 1.5 C over the past 250 years and that "humans are almost entirely the cause," might be seen by many as a watershed moment in this long, often bitter debate. But not, it would appear, for climate sceptics – the very people he designed his project to please.

Rather than join Muller on his road to Damascus, many climate sceptics have predictably been tempted by the neon signs directing them to turn back instead. Muller, as a result of his "conversion," is now being painted as a figure of distrust and scorn, in much the same way that they have viewed many climate scientists over the years. His research methodologies and results are being mocked and slammed for being simplistic and "agenda driven."

Climate sceptics know better, of course, and are heralding (at first, via a bizarrely histrionic preview) a conveniently timed piece of research of their own, which they say, "devastatingly" undermines all other known work in this field. The tills at Hubris 'R Us have certainly been ringing loudly over the past few days.

In one sense, you could say all of this is symptomatic of healthy scientific enquiry. Claim and counter claim are being tested, reviewed and published online to allow full transparency and scrutiny. There are no hiding places. Our scientific understanding of the planet's climate – and the forces that drive it – are advancing incrementally, yet assuredly. The truth will out.

I would like to hug this idealistic vision tightly to my chest, but I know – as the saying goes – it's a bit more complicated than that. There are far more factors at play (on both "sides" of the debate) than mere "science" and that murky soup includes – to name just a few ingredients – ideology, vested interest, confirmation bias and a suite of formal and informal fallacies. I can't comment on either of the latest results being presented by both Muller and Watts et al. (who claim that U.S. temperature trends over the past few decades have been "spuriously doubled"). Neither has been peer-reviewed or published in an academic journal so any conclusions seem premature.

What is clear, though, is that Muller's results are largely symbolic, as opposed to representing a genuine leap forward in scientific understanding. His team's results are broadly in synch with what mainstream climate science has been claiming for well over a decade.

The power of his findings lay in the journey he has undertaken to arrive at his conclusions. He has sought to address key concerns of climate sceptics about temperature reconstructions (many of which he had himself), as well as investigate why the world has warmed in the way it has over the past couple of centuries. In effect, he has laid down a challenge to climate sceptics (who, I admit, come in many flavours) to come up with a better-evidenced theory than mankind's emissions being the key reason why temperatures have risen. As he himself says: "To be considered seriously, an alternative explanation must match the data at least as well as carbon dioxide does."

The key question for me is whether climate sceptics actually want to tackle that all-important question. What evidence will it take to convince them? Are they forever destined to keep saying "it's not enough for us"? When does the balance of risk tip over in favour of them accepting that pumping ever more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is not a wise thing to keep on doing?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/jul/30/what-evidence-take-convince-climate-sceptics

James Samenow, WaPo: So-called blockbuster climate change studies by Richard Muller and Anthony Watts prove little

So-called blockbuster climate change studies prove little

by Jason Samenow, The Washington Post, July 30, 2012

Over the weekend, two groups released so-called “game-changing” climate change studies.

The first, led by “converted skeptic” University of California-Berkeley professor Richard Muller, claims almost all of the warming observed in modern times is due to human activities. The second, led by blogger Anthony Watts, in an apparent attempt to diminish the impact of the Muller paper, argues warming in the U.S. since 1979 is about half the amount calculated by NOAA.

Both studies staged high-profile releases and represent concerted efforts to influence public perception about what we know about climate science. But neither has been published in a peer-reviewed publication, and there is cause to question their legitimacy.

Muller summarized the results of his group’s study in an exclusive op-ed in The New York Times. Consider these key excerpts:

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.

and...

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.

and...

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.

Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann said Muller’s work essentially confirmed results from existing studies, adding little new to our state of knowledge. The Muller study results, Mann said (on his Facebook page): “...demonstrate what scientists have known with some degree of confidence for nearly two decades: that the globe is indeed warming, and that this warming can only be explained by human-caused increases in greenhouse gas concentrations.”

Similarly, Stanford climate scientist Ken Caldeira told Climate Progress: “I am glad that Muller et al have taken a look at the data and have come to essentially the same conclusion that nearly everyone else had come to more than a decade ago.”

Mann and Caldeira’s colleague, Ben Santer, a climate scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, was less kind, arguing Muller’s tactic of releasing his study’s results before acceptance into a peer-reviewed journal could backfire. He told The Los Angeles Times:

“I think [Muller] can do great harm to the broader debate. Imagine this scenario: that he makes these great claims and the papers aren’t published? This (op-ed) is in the spirit of publicity, not the spirit of science.”

Regarding this claim that the release of results prior to official publication was an act of showmanship rather than science, Elizabeth Muller -- co-founder and executive director of the Berkeley project and Richard Muller’s daughter -- responded that the results were too important to withold and that the pre-release invites greater opportunity for constructive feedback from colleagues. She offered this defense to The Los Angeles Times:

I believe the findings in our papers are too important to wait for the year or longer that it could take to complete the journal review process. We believe in traditional peer review; we welcome feedback [from] the public and any scientists who are interested in taking the time to make thoughtful comments. Our papers have received scrutiny by dozens of top scientists, not just the two or three that typically are called upon by journalists.

But this defense rings hollow. The only difference between Muller’s results and the conclusions of the existing scientific assessment literature (such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) is that Muller asserts “nearly all” of the recent warming is due to human activities over a longer timeframe whereas existing literature says “most” over a shorter timeframe. The claim that this single study was “too important” to hold back -- especially in light of scores of other important studies which received no such pre-publication fanfare -- reeks of arrogance on the part of the author team.

Just as the process for releasing the Muller et al. results was challenged, so too was the substance. Georgia Tech atmospheric science professor Judith Curry, who characterizes herself as a “lukewarmer” (someone who believes humans are warming the climate but to an uncertain degree), was not at all swayed by Muller’s analysis. She wrote in her blog:

In my opinion, their analysis is way over simplistic and not at all convincing . There is broad agreement that greenhouse gas emissions have contributed to the warming in the latter half of the 20th century; the big question is how much of this warming can be attributed to greenhouse gas emissions. I dont think this question can be answered by the simple curve fitting used in this paper...

Irrespective of the flaws in Muller’s analysis or its merits -- grabbing headlines in The New York Times prior to peer review represents an enormous tactical mistake. Peer review is the primary pillar of scientific legitimacy. Without it, a study has little to support it -- which brings us to the Watts study.

Watts justified the release of his team’s new study prior to peer review -- not coincidentally -- using Muller’s rationale that pre-publication would attract more critical eyeballs to help bulletproof his work. But like Muller, Watts’ actions speak more to a publicity-motivated intent. On Friday, Watts halted all publication on his high-traffic [no, it is not high traffic] blog Friday pending a “major announcement” Sunday afternoon presumably to build suspense ahead of the study’s release.

And no doubt the timing of the release of the Watts paper -- the same day Muller’s New York Times op-ed ran -- was purposeful to divert attention from Muller’s study. (Watts admits as much on his blog: “About a week ago I learned Muller was going to release and do the media blitz...Added anxiety.”)

So what was the message of the Watts et al. study? Here’s what the press release says:

The new analysis demonstrates that reported 1979-2008 U.S. temperature trends are spuriously doubled, with 92% of that over-estimation resulting from erroneous NOAA adjustments...

In other words, Watts is asserting the U.S. temperature trends you’ve seen reported from NOAA about warming in the last few decades are inflated due to flawed adjustments made to temperature records. The unadjusted highest quality temperature records in the U.S., Watts claims, demonstrate about half the warming as NOAA’s adjusted data.

Roger Pielke, Sr., a Colorado State climate scientist who has expressed skepticism about NOAA’s temperature records, showered the Watts analysis with praise:

“This paper is a game changer, in my view, with respect to the use of the land surface temperature anomalies as part of the diagnosis of global warming,” he blogged.

If it seems surprising Pielke, Sr., would offer such unqualified praise before this work had been peer reviewed, it turns out he was not an impartial player. Watts acknowledges Pielke, Sr., for help “with edits and citations.”

Science blogger David Appell had it exactly right when he said the Watts paper is “exactly the kind of paper that most needs peer review: based on a lot of judgements and classifications and nitty gritty details...”

Furthermore, given the serious accusations Watts et al. make about the integrity of NOAA’s temperature analysis, it’s critical NOAA be given the opportunity to respond just as they did the last time Watts issued such a challenge in 2009. NOAA’s U.S. temperature record has been painstakingly constructed by many scientists over many years and many peer-reviewed publications support its methodologies.

The Muller and Watts studies no doubt represent a lot of hard work and may eventually prove to be valuable contributions to science. But we should reserve judgment on their significance.

And this new effort by these scientists to grab attention for studies that have not yet been vetted by other, independent scientists is disturbing and unproductive. It’s a disingenuous attempt to score points on a highly polarized scientific issue.

My advice? Ignore these publicity stunts and pay no attention to these studies until they have passed peer review. And even studies that have been peer reviewed should be viewed with a certain amount of skepticism until they have been confirmed in multiple subsequent studies and stood the test of time.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/post/so-called-blockbuster-climate-change-studies-prove-little/2012/07/30/gJQAZZNMKX_blog.html

RAMPS: Daring protesters shut down Obama-backed Hobet 45 mountaintop removal strip mine in West Virginia

by Jeff Biggers, Huffington Post, July 28, 2012

Ramping up renewed efforts to end mountaintop removal mining in central Appalachia, scores of protesters staged a daring action at the controversial Hobet strip mine today in Lincoln County, West Virginia, shutting down operations through a series of coordinated lock downs, tree-sits and banner drops. In a symbolic challenge to the Obama administration's failed regulatory policies, the protest targeted the Hobet 45 mountaintop removal mine, which had been granted a widely denounced permit over two years ago.

According to RAMPS, a West Virginia-based grassroots groups that organized the "mountain mobilization" protest as part of a nationwide summer of actions against devastating extraction industry operations, St. Louis-based mine owner Patriot Coal has left behind a legacy of destruction in coal country for both area residents and miners. Patriot filed for bankruptcy earlier this month, which could also affect pension and United Mine Workers of America union contracts.

"The government has aided and abetted the coal industry in evading environmental and mine safety regulations. We are here today to demand that the government and coal industry end strip mining, repay their debt to Appalachia, and secure a just transition for this region," said Dustin Steele of Matewan, West Virginia, in a released statement. The son and grandson of union coal miners, Steele took part in one of the truck lockdowns.

Protesters at Hobet mine in Lincoln County. Photo courtesy of RAMPS campaign.

Citing the mounting evidence of the health and humanitarian crises in the coalfields from toxic mining fallout, including a rise in black lung disease and links to birth defects and cancer, the protesters also stationed banners on the mine site: "Coal Leaves, Cancer Stays."

"The coal companies are poisoning our water and air, and they're treating the workers no better than the land -- fighting workplace health and safety protections to get the most out of labor as they can," said Junior Walk, a former coal company employee from nearby Whitesville, West Virginia, who won the 2011 Brower Youth Award for his environmental activism.

Protesters also called on the Obama administration and regional politicians to launch more sustainable job training and coalfield regeneration projects.

Coal mining residents have pleaded for basic civil rights and environmental protection for years, with more than 20 peer-reviewed studies suggesting higher risks and links between reckless strip mining and devastating health impacts, including birth defects, cancer and chronic heart, lung and kidney disease. (A recent report noted that strip miners are even subjected to unacceptable levels of black lung disease.)

A bill, the ACHE Act, calling for an emergency moratorium on mountaintop removal mining was recently introduced into Congress.

For updates on the protests and arrests, follow RAMPS campaign.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-biggers/ramps-campaign_b_1714569.html

Neela Banerjee, LA Times: Koch-funded climate change skeptic Richard Muller reverses stance

Koch-funded climate change skeptic reverses course

Former climate change skeptic Richard A. Muller, in a New York Times op-ed, stepped back from his earlier dismissal of global warming. (Los Angeles Times / March 30, 2011)

by Neela Banerjee, The Los Angeles Times, July 29, 2012

WASHINGTON – The verdict is in: Global warming is occurring and emissions of greenhouse gases caused by human activity are the main cause.

This, according to Richard A. Muller, professor of physics at UC Berkeley, MacArthur Fellow and co-founder of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project. Never mind that the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and hundreds of other climatologists around the world came to such conclusions years ago. The difference now is the source: Muller is a long-standing, colorful critic of prevailing climate science, and the Berkeley project was heavily funded by the Charles Koch Charitable Foundation, which, along with its libertarian petrochemical billionaire founder Charles G. Koch, has a considerable history of backing groups that deny climate change. 

In an opinion piece in Saturday’s New York Times entitled “The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic,” Muller writes: “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.”

The Berkeley project’s research has shown, Muller says, “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.”

He calls his stance now “a total turnaround.”

Some leading climate scientists welcomed Muller’s comments, proof, they argued, that the science is so strong that even those inclined to reject it cannot once they examine it carefully.  Michael E. Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, said that Muller’s conversion might help shape the thinking of the “reasonable middle” of the population “who are genuinely confused and have been honestly taken in” by attacks on climate science.

On his Facebook page, Mann wrote: “There is a certain ironic satisfaction in seeing a study funded by the Koch Brothers – the greatest funders of climate change denial and disinformation on the planet – demonstrate what scientists have known with some degree of confidence for nearly two decades: that the globe is indeed warming, and that this warming can only be explained by human-caused increases in greenhouse gas concentrations. I applaud Muller and his colleagues for acting as any good scientists would, following where their analyses led them, without regard for the possible political repercussions.”

Muller’s conclusions, however, failed to sway the most ardent climate contrarians, like Marc Morano, a former top producer for Rush Limbaugh and communications director for the Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee who now runs the website climatedepot.com.  “Muller will be remembered as a befuddled professor who has yet to figure out how to separate climate science from his media antics. His latest claims provide no new insight into the climate science debate,” Morano said in an email.

Muller’s New York Times commentary follows research he did last year that confirmed the work of scientists who found the Earth’s temperature was rising. In the past, Muller had criticized which global temperatures were used in such research, contending that some monitoring stations provided inaccurate data.  Now, Berkeley’s research has weighed in on the causes of the temperature rise, testing arguments climate contrarians have used.

“What has caused the gradual but systematic rise of two and a half degrees?” Muller writes. “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.”

Muller asserted that his findings were ‘stronger’ than those of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental  panel. Yet,  neither Berkeley’s research from last year or the new findings on causality have been published in peer-reviewed journals, which has raised criticism and concerns among climatologists and contrarians alike.

Benjamin D. Santer, a climate researcher at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and a lead author of the 1995 U.N. climate report, said he welcomed the involvement of another research group into “detection and attribution” of climate change and its causes. But he also said he found it troubling that Muller claimed such definitive results without his work undergoing peer-review.

“If you go into public arena and claim to have generated evidence that is stronger than the IPCC, where is the detailed, scientific evidence? Has he used fundamental new data sets?” Santer said. “Publish the science and report on it after it’s done.”

He added: “I think you can do great harm to the broader debate. Imagine this scenario: that he makes these great claims and the papers aren't published? This (op-ed) is in the spirit of publicity, not the spirit of science.”

Elizabeth Muller, co-founder and executive director of the Berkeley project and Richard Muller’s daughter, said the papers had been peer-reviewed, but not yet published. But because of the long lead-up to publication, the Berkeley team decided to place its papers online, in part to solicit comment from other scientists. She said all the papers, including the latest, would be on the BerkeleyEarth.org website by Sunday evening.

“I believe the findings in our papers are too important to wait for the year or longer that it could take to complete the journal review process,” Elizabeth Muller wrote in an email. “We believe in traditional peer review; we welcome feedback [from] the public and any scientists who are interested in taking the time to make thoughtful comments. Our papers have received scrutiny by dozens of top scientists, not just the two or three that typically are called upon by journalists.”

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-kochfunded-climate-change-skeptic-reverses-course-20120729,0,7372823.story

Leo Hickman: BEST climate change study forces sceptical scientists to change minds

Climate change study forces sceptical scientists to change minds

Earth's land shown to have warmed by 1.5 C over past 250 years, with humans being almost entirely responsible

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• by Leo Hickman, guardian.co.uk, July 29, 2012

Prof Richard Muller considers himself a converted sceptic following the study's surprise results. Photograph: Dan Tuffs for the Guardian

The Earth's land has warmed by 1.5 C over the past 250 years and "humans are almost entirely the cause," according to a scientific study set up to address climate change sceptics' concerns about whether human-induced global warming is occurring.

Prof Richard Muller, a physicist and climate change sceptic who founded the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project, said he was surprised by the findings. "We were not expecting this, but as scientists, it is our duty to let the evidence change our minds." He added that he now considers himself a "converted sceptic" and his views had undergone a "total turnaround" in a short space of time.

"Our results show that the average temperature of the Earth's land has risen by 2.5 F over the past 250 years, including an increase of 1.5 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," Muller wrote in an opinion piece for the New York Times.

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The team of scientists based at the University of California, Berkeley, gathered and merged a collection of 14.4m land temperature observations from 44,455 sites across the world dating back to 1753. Previous data sets created by NASA, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Met Office and the University of East Anglia's climate research unit only went back to the mid-1800s and used a fifth as many weather station records.

The funding for the project included $150,000 from the Charles G Koch Charitable Foundation, set up by the billionaire US coal magnate and key backer of the climate-sceptic Heartland Institute thinktank. The research also received $100,000 from the Fund for Innovative Climate and Energy Research, which was created by Bill Gates.

Unlike previous efforts, the temperature data from various sources was not homogenised by hand – a key criticism by climate sceptics. Instead, the statistical analysis was "completely automated to reduce human bias." The BEST team concluded that, despite their deeper analysis, their own findings closely matched the previous temperature reconstructions, "but with reduced uncertainty."

Last October, the BEST team published results that showed the average global land temperature has risen by about 1 C since the mid-1950s. But the team did not look for possible fingerprints to explain this warming. The latest data analysis reached much further back in time but, crucially, also searched for the most likely cause of the rise by plotting the upward temperature curve against suspected "forcings." It analysed the warming impact of solar activity – a popular theory among climate sceptics – but found that, over the past 250 years, the contribution of the sun has been "consistent with zero." Volcanic eruptions were found to have caused short dips in the temperature rise in the period 1750–1850, but "only weak analogues" in the 20th century.

"Much to my surprise, by far the best match came to the record of atmospheric carbon dioxide, measured from atmospheric samples and air trapped in polar ice," said Muller. "While this doesn't prove that global warming is caused by human greenhouse gases, it is currently the best explanation we have found, and sets the bar for alternative explanations."

Muller said his team's findings went further and were stronger than the latest report published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

In an unconventional move aimed at appeasing climate sceptics by allowing "full transparency," the results have been publicly released before being peer reviewed by the Journal of Geophysical Research. All the data and analysis is now available to be freely scrutinised at the BEST website. This follows the pattern of previous BEST results, none of which have yet been published in peer-reviewed journals.

When the BEST project was announced last year, the prominent climate sceptic blogger Anthony Watts was consulted on the methodology. He stated at the time: "I'm prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong." However, tensions have since arisen between Watts and Muller.

Early indications suggest that climate sceptics are unlikely to fully accept BEST's latest results. Prof Judith Curry, a climatologist at the Georgia Institute of Technology who runs a blog popular with climate sceptics and who is a consulting member of the BEST team, told The Guardian that the method used to attribute the warming to human emissions was "way over-simplistic and not at all convincing in my opinion." She added: "I don't think this question can be answered by the simple curve fitting used in this paper, and I don't see that their paper adds anything to our understanding of the causes of the recent warming."

Prof Michael Mann, the Penn State palaeoclimatologist who has faced hostility from climate sceptics for his famous "hockey stick" graph showing a rapid rise in temperatures during the 20th century, said he welcomed the BEST results as they "demonstrated once again what scientists have known with some degree of certainty for nearly two decades." He added: "I applaud Muller and his colleagues for acting as any good scientists would, following where their analyses led them, without regard for the possible political repercussions. They are certain to be attacked by the professional climate change denial crowd for their findings."

Muller said his team's analysis suggested there would be 1.5 degrees of warming over land in the next 50 years, but if China continues its rapid economic growth and its vast use of coal 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," wrote Muller. "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."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jul/29/climate-change-sceptics-change-mind

Richard Muller, NYT op-ed: The Conversion of a Climate Change Skeptic

The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic

By RICHARD A. MULLER, op-ed, The New York Times, July28, 2012

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. [Guess he isn't going to apologize for his unfounded smears on real climatologists doing good science.]

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 [the hell they aren't!], and the Himalayan glaciers aren’t going to melt by 2035 [nope but they are melting a lot faster than anyone thought they would]. And it’s possible that we are currently no warmer than we were a thousand years ago [and what does he found this statement on???], 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% 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.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/opinion/the-conversion-of-a-climate-change-skeptic.html

Joe Romm: Bombshell -- Koch-Funded Study Finds ‘Global Warming Is Real’, ‘On The High End’ And ‘Essentially All’ Due To Carbon Pollution

Bombshell: Koch-Funded Study Finds ‘Global Warming Is Real’, ‘On The High End’ And ‘Essentially All’ Due To Carbon Pollution

by Joe Romm, Climate Progress, July 28, 2012

“The decadal land-surface average temperature using a 10-year moving average of surface temperatures over land. Anomalies are relative to the Jan 1950 – December 1979 mean. The grey band indicates 95% statistical and spatial uncertainty interval.” A Koch-funded reanalysis of 1.6 billion temperature reports finds that “essentially all of this increase is due to the human emission of greenhouse gases.”

The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study (BEST) is poised to release its findings next week on the cause of recent global warming. A forthcoming NY Times op-ed by Richard Muller, BEST’s Founder and Scientific Director, has been excerpted on a conservative website with the headline, “New Global Temperature Data Reanalysis Confirms Warming, Blames CO2.”

I have spoken with scientists and journalists familiar with BEST’s findings, and the excerpt appears genuine. Here is the money graf:

CALL me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified scientific issues that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Now, after organizing an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I’ve concluded that global warming is real, that the prior estimates of the rate were correct, and that cause is human.

Yes, yes, I know, the finding itself is “dog bites man.” What makes this “man bites dog” is thatMuller has been a skeptic of climate science, and the single biggest funder of this study is the “Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation ($150,000).” The Kochs are the leading funder of climate disinformation in the world!

It gets better:

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, and one and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase is due to 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 short, a Koch-funded study has found that the IPCC “consensus” underestimated both the rate of surface warming and how much could be attributed to human emissions!

Here is some background on BEST followed by a longer excerpt of the op-ed.

A group of scientists led by one well-known skeptic, Muller — and whose only climatologist listed is Judith Curry, a well-known confusionist [see Schmidt and Annan and Steig andVerheggen, and CP] — decided to reexamine all of the temperature data they could get their hands on. I broke the story of their initial findings in March 2011 (with the help of climatologist Ken Caldeira) – see Exclusive: Berkeley temperature study results “confirm the reality of global warming and support in all essential respects the historical temperature analyses of the NOAA, NASA, and HadCRU.”

The top figure is an updated chart of their findings from March of this year. They found a lot of warming.

Indeed, their key paper from 2011 found:

… our analysis suggests a degree of global land-surface warming during the anthropogenic era that is consistent with prior work (e.g. NOAA) but on the high end of the existing range of reconstructions.

So the only remaining question for BEST was: What is the cause of that warming? Of course, those who read ClimateProgress or the scientific literature already knew the answer to that question (see the 12/11 post, It’s “Extremely Likely That at Least 74% of Observed Warming Since 1950″ Was Manmade; It’s Highly Likely All of It Was).

BEST is set to release those findings this week. The excellent UK Guardian reporter, Leo Hickman, tweeted earlier today that “Significant climate-related news will be breaking on Guardian website in next 24-36 hours” and then he tweeted an hour ago the link to the excerpt of Muller’s op-ed. Here is the full excerpt:

CALL me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified scientific issues that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Now, after organizing an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I’ve concluded that global warming is real, that the prior estimates of the rate were correct, and that cause is human.

My turnaround is the result of the careful and objective analysis by the “Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature” team, founded by me and 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, and one and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase is due to 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 IPCC concluded only that most of the warming of the prior 50 years could be attributed to humans. It was possible, according to the IPCC consensus statement, that the warming before to 1956 could be due to changes in solar activity, and that even a substantial part of the more recent warming could be natural.

Our Berkeley Earth approach used sophistical statistical methods developed largely by our lead scientist Robert Rohde, and 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), data selection (prior groups selected less than 20% of the available temperature stations; we used virtually 100%), 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. …

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 does carbon dioxide. …

Well, in fact, to be seriously considered, an alternative explanation must match the data at least as well as does CO2 — and it must offer some mechanism that counteracts the well-known warming effect of CO2. Not bloody likely.

What about the future?  As carbon dioxide emissions increase, the temperature should continue to rise.  With a simple model (no tipping points, no sudden increase in cloud cover, a response to gases that is “logarithmic”) I expect the rate of warming to proceed at a steady pace, about 1.5 degree F over land in the next 50 years, less if the oceans are included.  But if China continues its rapid growth (it has averaged 10% per year over the last 20 years) and its vast use of coal (typically adding one new gigawatt per month), then that same warming could take place in less than 20 years.

Ouch.

I asked Caldeira for a comment on Muller’s op-ed. He writes:

I am glad that Muller et al have taken a look at the data and have come to essentially the same conclusion that nearly  everyone else had come to more than a decade ago.

The basic scientific results have been established for a long time now, so I do not see the results of Muller et al as being scientifically important.  However, their result may be politically important.  It shows that even people who suspect climate scientists of being charlatans, when they take a hard look at the data, see that the climate scientists have been right all along.

Who’d have thunk it? Not the Kochs….

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/07/28/602151/bombshell-koch-funded-study-finds-global-warming-is-real-on-the-high-end-and-essentially-all-due-to-carbon-pollution/