The Muller's Tale

 -- by Horatio Algeranon

Many folks no longer worry

About the global warming story.

They simply don't believe a word

Of climate scientists they have heard

They think those chaps exaggerate
Boast certainty and overstate.

The "experts" claim that they have proof

But listen to me, I speak The Truth:

Not a single polar bear has died
Because the sea-ice did subside.

My climate data is simply the "BEST"

Superior to all the rest

From Berkeley scientists' climate data review puts them at center of national debate (LA Times) 

"Global warming is a serious problem," [Dr. Richard] Muller [head of what he has humbly called the "BEST" climate data project] said in a lecture at UC Berkeley last week. "But people simply don't believe the story anymore because the story was exaggerated.... Not a single polar bear has died because of receding ice." 

From The Daily Californian: "Professor Counters Global Warming Myths With Data [and myths...and hype]"

"Some scientists who fear that their results will be misinterpreted as proof that global warming is not urgent, such as in the case of Climategate, fall into a similar trap of exaggeration." -- Richard Muller

"Without the thermometer and the temperature data that it provides, Muller said it was probable that no one would have noticed global warming yet" [No one would even have noticed the melting sea ice in the arctic??]

"The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study was conducted with the intention of becoming the new, irrefutable consensus, simply by providing the most complete set of historical and modern temperature data yet made publicly available, so deniers and exaggerators alike can see the numbers." [You gotta just love "irrefutable consensus" which implies absolute, incontrovertible certainty]

"We just create a methodology that will then have no human interaction to pick or choose data" --  Elizabeth Muller, Richard Muller's daughter and project manager of the study. [What comes up with the "methodology" that ultimately makes the data choices and/or manipulations? A computer?]

Horatio agrees that scientists should not exaggerate and overstate their case (eg, claim absolute certainty)  -- and the much maligned peer review process helps to ensure that they do not, at least not in the scientific journals where it counts.

But by and large, it's not the climate scientists who are exaggerating.

If many people don't believe the global warming "story", it is largely because the (supposed) "problems" with climate science have been greatly exaggerated (or invented outright) by those who are not themselves climate scientists. *

*Some of the exaggerations and outright lies have been funded by industries and individuals -- eg, Koch  (one of the funders of the BEST project) -- to create doubt about climate science and thereby derail efforts to mitigate future climate change. (Added April 6:  Koch's web of influence )

Take Muller's claim about polar bears, for example. How can Muller (a physicist by expertise) be certain that "Not a single polar bear has died because of receding ice"?

He can't. If it is certain, it isn't science and if it is science, it isn't certain.

The reality is that Muller does not know what he is talking about. Scientific studies on polar bears actually cast doubt on Muller's claim. See "Polar bear's epic swim seen as harbinger of Arctic future: With no ice to crawl onto, female swam 426 miles, lost cub." (Dan Joling, The Associated Press)

"A paper on the bear, published last month in the journal Polar Biology by U.S. Geological Survey and University of Wyoming researchers, concludes that polar bears can respond to a changing Arctic, said USGS research zoologist George Durner, but that there are limits to that ability as sea ice diminishes.

"If we continue to see declines in the extent of Arctic sea ice, it's hard to imagine that a bear would be capable of swimming much farther than that," Durner said. "I'm not saying that's the limit, but it just boggles my mind."

See also Polar bears drown as ice shelf melts (Sunday Times):

“Mortalities due to offshore swimming may be a relatively important and unaccounted source of natural mortality given the energetic demands placed on individual bears engaged in long-distance swimming,” says the research led by Dr Charles Monnett, marine ecologist at the American government’s Minerals Management Service. “Drowning-related deaths of polar bears may increase in the future if the observed trend of regression of pack ice continues.”

Of course, such studies are not "proof" that polar bears died because of receding sea ice, but, at a minimum they cast doubt on Muller's claim that "Not a single polar bear has died because of receding ice".

Basic common sense would indicate that as the sea ice becomes more scarce (and sparse) as ice extent and thickness decreases, the chance of mortality among bears swimming long distances in frigid waters to reach such ice increases. But hey, what's common sense got to do with it?

As far as Muller's implication that his climate data and methods are somehow the "BEST", we'll just have to wait and see. Hype has a way of getting deflated (or simply rejected) by most scientific journals.