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This news from the Berkeley Earth Project should get more attention. Richard Muller, the head of the project, was a confirmed climate skeptic, and he got plenty of attention from the right side of the spectrum for his views. In fact he got funding, including $150,000 from the Koch Brothers, to study climate science and produce a set of conclusions. And after years of work, years of going through ice samples and carbon readings and all the rest, Muller determined that global warming does in fact exist:
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.
Muller’s findings, by the way, show a greater degree of warming than even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, largely seen as the consensus view of the scientific community.
You can read the paper here. Conservatives may want to banish their thoughts on Muller from the sands of time, but at one point he was considered a crucial expert for the proposition that global warming didn’t exist. Then he devoted himself to study and looked dispassionately at the data, and completely changed his view.
I don’t think every climate denialist is as open-minded as Muller. But the oil and gas industry made the mistake in this case of allowing Muller to pursue facts, rather than housing him inside one of their think tanks where they could control the data and the message.
More from Joe Romm and Kevin Drum, as well as Andrew Revkin of the New York Times. Muller has posted the study but it has not yet been peer-reviewed.
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Right. All you need to do is give the climate skeptics the facts and they will gradually understand, one skeptic at a time. At this rate we will have the Fox News viewers on board to deal with global warming at about the time that the Statue of Liberty is underwater. “Oh my god” – they will say – “It was earth all along.”
Muller was never a skeptic,
http://www.populartechnology.net/2012/06/truth-about-richard-muller.html
“I was never a skeptic” – Richard Muller, 2011
“If Al Gore reaches more people and convinces the world that global warming is real, even if he does it through exaggeration and distortion – which he does, but he’s very effective at it – then let him fly any plane he wants.” – Richard Muller, 2008
“There is a consensus that global warming is real. …it’s going to get much, much worse.” – Richard Muller, 2008
“Let me be clear. My own reading of the literature and study of paleoclimate suggests strongly that carbon dioxide from burning of fossil fuels will prove to be the greatest pollutant of human history. It is likely to have severe and detrimental effects on global climate.” – Richard Muller, 2003
Lung cancer is real and in many instances, its cause is man made. As in, chemicals added to a naturally grown substance to increase addictive qualities and addictive effects on nervous system. Nice business model. Gives new meaning to the term “needs based selling.” Real hard sell when your local addict is your customer and you have a monopoly? Oil a bunch of whoring liars just like tobacco executives pleading fifth Amendment. Servitude to a substance or interest, is slavery!
It won’t matter a bit to the right. Muller will just be ignored as will anyone else that gets in the way of their profits. When the warming starts harming their bottom lines then they’ll see it as an issue and a problem, not until then.
Myopic self interest? With all the negative effects that a drug addict (alcoholic) inflicts on a family, while feeding his addiction to a substance. Cash!
So he just pimped his expertise to the Koch Bros. for money. Is the quote that DD cited in which Muller states that he’s a “converted skeptic” inaccurate?
I think an honest study of the causes of all forms of cancer would trace the origins to industrial environmental pollution. Even if a cure for cancer was to be discovered, implementing it would destroy the factory medical industry and would probably never see the light of day.
From the statement on the study by the Charles Koch Foundation
Shorter Koch Bros: It didn’t look at the ocean. Doesn’t count. Doesn’t count!
Eventually the Kochs will be reduced to disregarding scientific research because it didn’t take into account their Aunt Matilda’s bunions.
Sad isn’t it?
This is such a decisively settled issue, it’s astounding that what this person says matters at all.
Only in our weird stumblebum world would this person’s research be any kind of news.
The right wingers have an unconscious death wish for them and the planet at large. The “planet” will be fine the humans, however, will be extinct. Is there a way to stop mass murderers before they kill another species?
The Koch Sucker brothers are major funders of “Nova” on PBS. Ever notice how Nova stays away from global climate change?
Not quite – it’s the Charlton Heston-like take on property – we’ll all die before I give up my takings.
Fucking capitalist drones.
At the end, the very end? They will claim the thing is reality. But, they will say Bill McKibbon caused all of it.
The Kochs made the mistake of allowing this guy to work the way scientists should be allowed to work: Independently. They didn’t herd him into one of their own “think tanks” and keep him on a tight leash, and so he wound up doing real research and in a scientific fashion.
Yes it is inaccurate he has never been a skeptic.
If you follow the link that DD provided, the quote is from an article written by Muller and is accurate. You are incorrect.
Yes I understand that his a recent quote but his past quotes clearly show he was never a skeptic.