Climate-change skeptic: ‘You should not be a skeptic.’
Richard Muller, a physics professor at Cal-Berkeley, has been a celebrated skeptic about the true extent of climate change.
Muller has questioned whether the data had been skewed by the “heat-island effect.” He has had his doubts about the so-called “hockey stick,” which shows global temperatures rising much faster since the early 19th century than at any point in the last thousand years. In the past, he has called the hockey stick “an incredible error” and “the artifact of poor mathematics.” And he has been quite harsh in his condemnation of fellow scientists involved in the s0-called ClimateGate scandal:
“I frankly as a scientist — I now have a list of people whose papers I’m won’t read anymore. You’re not allowed to do this in science. This is not up to our standards.”
So Muller, acting in the best traditions of science, decided to redo that work. He put together a top-notch team that included Saul Perlmutter, who just recently won the Nobel Prize in physics, and Judith Curry of Georgia Tech, another noted scientist who has been critical of some of the work of some of her peers. Their project — funded in part by a grant from the Charles M. Koch Foundation — just completed its two-year work.
Last week, Muller and the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature team released its findings (the results have yet to undergo peer review). As Muller described it:
Our biggest surprise was that the new results agreed so closely with the warming values published previously by other teams in the US and the UK. This confirms that these studies were done carefully and that potential biases identified by climate change skeptics did not seriously affect their conclusions.
As he wrote in the Wall Street Journal:
“When we began our study, we felt that skeptics had raised legitimate issues, and we didn’t know what we’d find. Our results turned out to be close to those published by prior groups. We think that means that those groups had truly been very careful in their work, despite their inability to convince some skeptics of that. They managed to avoid bias in their data selection, homogenization and other corrections.”
Here’s a chart produced by Muller’s team, documenting the findings of three other research teams as well as the BEST team. Note how closely the findings track each other.
This is how science works. It checks upon itself. And when the position that you had previously taken has been proved false, you do what Muller has done:
You change your position.
– Jay Bookman
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399 comments Add your comment
Joe COOL
October 24th, 2011
12:51 pm
1st?
Adam
October 24th, 2011
12:54 pm
wow. I am getting popcorn to watch the spin masters at work here.
Cue the “He was never a REAL skeptic” skeptical remarks, and other such useless and yet common nonsense.
Adam
October 24th, 2011
12:59 pm
Bruno: That is good data. It clearly shows that our current “cycle” is seeing a shift that is abnormal for the cyclical data. So thank you for showing that.
kitty
October 24th, 2011
1:00 pm
Adam, also cue, “well, he’s from Berkeley so what do you expect?” as well.
getalife
October 24th, 2011
1:00 pm
The bias is caused by big oil bribes.
I think our troops should be trained on helping after disasters in the world due to this issue.
Peadawg
October 24th, 2011
1:02 pm
“Climate-change skeptic: ‘You should not be a skeptic.’”
It’s the “man-made” part that people are skeptical about. Climate has changed for millions of years. Anyone who denies that is an idiot.
Man-assisted? Yes. Man-made? You should be on Comedy Central with that sh*t.
Road Scholar
October 24th, 2011
1:03 pm
Graphs in color…that will blow the conservative’s minds…esp in Celsius!
JF McNamara
October 24th, 2011
1:03 pm
He’s already done the harm to public perception. It doesn’t really matter if he changes his position, because less intelligent people won’t change their opinions.
As it turns out, he was an irresponsible scientist who got used as a pawn in a political game. He should be treated in the same regard treated his fellow scientists.
Adam
October 24th, 2011
1:04 pm
Peadawg: I think it’s pretty clear by now that most people who say “man made” know that there are ALSO forces other than man that alter climates. It’s a verbal gaffe at this point and if we’re really going to get that technical we should apply similar stringent logic to everyone who says anything even slightly off. That will surely get tiring.
getalife
October 24th, 2011
1:08 pm
I like when cons pretend to be scientists
Bruno
October 24th, 2011
1:11 pm
Oops: correction–The CO2 concentration now is higher than the historic spikes by 10-20%, thought the temperature spike is similar. Failing eyesight to blame there.
saywhat?
October 24th, 2011
1:11 pm
I bet they didn’t take into account sunspots, yeah, sunspots, and that in the seventies they thought there was global cooling, and um, um, it’s Al Gore just trying to make money. There. I just disproved 100 years of scientific research in 60 seconds from my computer and didn’t take a penny of oil company money.
Adam
October 24th, 2011
1:11 pm
Bruno: You didn’t look at the actual data as compared to levels found now. Our current CO2 levels have risen much faster than any time in the data that we can analyze (such as the 400k years you have presented) and are projected to continue to do so. The levels of CO2 that I last saw measured were of the 90s, and they MATCHED closely the highest point in those graphs. It is safe to assume the levels have risen since then, since very little has been done globally to reduce the CO2 output.
ty webb
October 24th, 2011
1:11 pm
can’t we just give more money to solyndra and be done with it?
Peadawg
October 24th, 2011
1:12 pm
Adam,
“Man-made” and “man-assisted” have 2 very distinct meanings. You should say what you mean and mean what you say. As precise as science is, you’d think we could use the correct terminology by now.
Adam
October 24th, 2011
1:12 pm
Bruno: I see your correction and raise you a “sorry I posted after your correction” correction
Daedalus
October 24th, 2011
1:12 pm
Science? Who cares what scientist think. As far as the GOP Presidential field cares, its what the Tea Party folks believe, and that ain’t global warming, evolution or any other trendy sciency stuff.
Did dinosaurs roam the earth 6,000 years ago? You betcha. Cause that’s what the creationists say.
The Scarlet A
October 24th, 2011
1:12 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGa70tVYVKo
Call it like it is
October 24th, 2011
1:13 pm
Whats your point Jay? When its a slow news day it seems like you alway go back to the old climate thing. Okay lets say this is all correct, what are we to do. Americans turn in their cars, all flights are cancled, China going to clean up their act, India will stop turning their rivers into cess pools. What do the scientists say we as humans need to do at this moment to stop the heating of the earth, and will the entire human race do it?
Surprised, you havent hit on Libya going over to Sharia Law yet.
Adam
October 24th, 2011
1:13 pm
Peadawg: It’s important to recognize what people actually mean. Call them out on it enough and I am sure you’ll see the wording change. But as precise as science is, public opinion is fickle. If you continue to make this call out, you get a bunch more people talking about how it’s OBVIOUS that we don’t know ANYTHING because we keep changing our minds, or something. Therefore, no Climate Change *sticks fingers in ears and blows a raspberry*
Adam
October 24th, 2011
1:15 pm
Call it like it is: Okay lets say this is all correct, what are we to do.
That is the proper conversation to have at this point, instead of “LALALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOU!” that we’ve been getting for the past few decades from skeptics.
What are we to do? Let’s think about it and talk about it so we come to a responsible choice on the matter.
Jay
October 24th, 2011
1:16 pm
Climate has changed for millions of years. Anyone who denies that is an idiot.
In other words, Peadawg, anybody who pushed that “ClimateGate” meme was an idiot?
The whole controversy focused on whether the earth was warming. The scientists in question said it was. Their critics said it wasn’t, that their numbers were fraudulant and cooked.
Now that the scientists have yet again been proved right, we’re seeing a spate of “well nobody really questioned whether the climate was warming anyway” talk, which is total BS.
Adam
October 24th, 2011
1:18 pm
Jay: “well nobody really questioned whether the climate was warming anyway”
*shovels down more popcorn*
Granny Godzilla
October 24th, 2011
1:18 pm
Call it like it is
What are we do do?
Well some can stand around wondering…but some of us are leading by example.
Together, each of us doing something, is better than standing around with the “duh” look on ones face.
Do not let “China won’t do it” be an excuse for you doing nothing.
(Or I suppose, YOU can continue to poop where you dine)
Adam
October 24th, 2011
1:18 pm
MEETING, then LUNCH
Libertarian
October 24th, 2011
1:18 pm
Yawn. No point in America worrying about global warming when China and India don’t give a crap about it.
Jefferson
October 24th, 2011
1:19 pm
Somebody will worry that their boss might tell them to ingor it.
Bruno
October 24th, 2011
1:19 pm
Bruno: I see your correction and raise you a “sorry I posted after your correction” correction
So, in the end, I think both “sides” are right: If we are to believe the Antarctic Ice Core data, there are naturally occurring spikes in both CO2 and temperature through history. The current spike is different insofar as the CO2 level is higher by say, 20%. Will the temperatures start falling again as they have in the past, or is this time different?? My feeling is that neither one of us will be alive long enough to find out.
Common Sense
October 24th, 2011
1:21 pm
And once again we just happened to live at the right times with the right temperatures out of millions of years of existence of this planet.
Weren’t we lucky?
stands for decibels
October 24th, 2011
1:22 pm
Jay, given the topic of discussion and the sort of comments generated on this subject in the past, at some point you might want to employ the services of the new website described here.
Jay
October 24th, 2011
1:23 pm
Not lucky at all, Common. It didn’t happen by chance: We evolved to match the climate, and so did every other living creature on this planet. Those that could not evolve to match the climate disappeared.
Jm
October 24th, 2011
1:23 pm
On topic: jay agree
And glad you could change your position on GSE’s role in the crisis and their oversight
Off topic
Republicans at the state level have been adding private sector jobs at a rate 0.18% faster than democrat governors
Over a decade, that’s an extra 2.6 million jobs
And that’s with a democrat in the whitehouse
Think what can be done if Obama is replaced….
Granny Godzilla
October 24th, 2011
1:23 pm
Libertarian
October 24th, 2011
1:18 pm
Yawn. No point in America worrying about global warming when China and India don’t give a crap about it.
Well isn’t THAT special
godless heathen
October 24th, 2011
1:25 pm
1 degree C rise in 200 years. OMG! Run for the hills. Stop driving, stop industry, stop everything! Especially stop those developing nations from doing any more developing.
Climate change is real. Constant climate is unrealistic.
Rapid climate change has been documented in the past and man has adapted (even flourished) as we (rather our descendents) will.
In only about 10,000 years humans spread out of Africa to every nook and cranny of the planet, cold and hot. In another few thousands of years, humans will inhabit other worlds. The exponential growth of technology will far outpace the threat of minor climatic fluctuations on earth.
Chill.
Bruno
October 24th, 2011
1:27 pm
Those that could not evolve to match the climate disappeared.
A tautology, Jay, same as the “survival of the fittest”.
We evolved to match the climate
The bigger question is do we “evolve” actively, intelligently, or is it all a random process, the luck of the draw kind of thing??
Jm
October 24th, 2011
1:27 pm
Carbon tax fixes pollution from Asia by charging them for their dirty ways
Cap and trade doesn’t nearly as well
Call it like it is
October 24th, 2011
1:27 pm
“Do not let “China won’t do it” be an excuse for you doing nothing”
No I’m not worried about China, but several of your here are touting the high road, are you willing at this moment to go without your car, no plane travel, give up AC in the summer time, quit wasting power on computer monitors by reading useless blogs, quit watching TV and on and on. See its real easy to say oh I have belived in global warming the whole time, I believe in it so much that I have done NOTHING to stop it. Beside changing out light bulbs have you really done anything to support your beliefs? Just by posting back to this, you will have proved my point.
Soothsayer
October 24th, 2011
1:28 pm
How do you like your crow: well-done or pan-seared?
AmVet
October 24th, 2011
1:28 pm
Bruno, the chart you linked, though hard to read accurately due to the huge time spans involved, indicates that those ’spikes’ in CO2 concentrations took thousands of years to manifest themselves.
The straight vertical line at the very end of that graph is even larger in magnitude and has apparently happened in a very few decades.
This corroborates all of the information I have read on this matter. The changes we see now have happened in the geological blink of any eye – NOT over millennium as all of the previous ones have.
THAT is the obvious red flag that so concerns the scientific experts. And the one that Libertarian and others driven by ideology dismiss…
getalife
October 24th, 2011
1:28 pm
Change is constant.
A do nothing obstructionist party is destined to fail.
Profits over the planet means our planet loses like the 99 %.
The 1 % should not be allowed to destroy our planet or our country.
Jm
October 24th, 2011
1:29 pm
Well, at least we’re now debating what, if anything to do now, and not the science itself
Jay
October 24th, 2011
1:29 pm
Wow jm. I didn’t know governors had the power to add private-sector jobs like that. Somebody ought to tell Nathan Deal, don’t you think?
And 0.18 percent, you say? I’m sure that’s a statistically significant number, after controlling for all the other variables at play in our 57 states. Right?
Oh, and by the way, over the past year the state to add the largest numbers of jobs was California, not Texas.
stands for decibels
October 24th, 2011
1:30 pm
For the innumerate among us– we need about 120K new jobs per month in order to tread water, and over over the course of a decade that’d be 14,400,000 total.
To tread water.
Over a decade, that’s an extra 2.6 million jobs
Yeah, that 2.6 million hypothetical jobs from your Gooper guvs, that’d be tres impressive.
Butch Cassidy
October 24th, 2011
1:30 pm
Libertarian – “Yawn. No point in America worrying about global warming when China and India don’t give a crap about it.”
Yawn, no point in America worrying about clean air and water, fair wages and labor laws, the denial of nuclear power to terrorist nations when China and India don’t give a crap about it.
Soothsayer
October 24th, 2011
1:31 pm
Jay, I done tried an tried and I cain’t git me and the Wife’s egos to fit in one of them “small cars.” So I guess we’re gonna have to keep the Excursion. So there.
King of ALL
October 24th, 2011
1:32 pm
He was a “Skeptic in name only”
Jm
October 24th, 2011
1:32 pm
Godless 1:25
U mean really over the last 50 years
And let’s keep in mind we weren’t burning the midnight oil all 50 of those years
There are good reasons to do what we can to fix it, within reason
A degree Celsius every 50 years and in 100 years we’ll be cooking and in 500 it will all be over
Paul
October 24th, 2011
1:32 pm
“This is how science works. It checks upon itself. And when the position that you had previously taken has been proved false, you do what Muller has done:
You change your position.”
Or you stick your fingers in your ears and cry “fake! fraud! Only dummies believe science!”
Hey, we oughta send this to Perry’s campaign!
Butch Cassidy
October 24th, 2011
1:33 pm
godless heathen – “Rapid climate change has been documented in the past and man has adapted (even flourished) as we (rather our descendents) will.”
Yeah, look how well we did last year when Atlanta turned in to a giant ice flow.
Granny Godzilla
October 24th, 2011
1:33 pm
Call it like it is
We cut our family’s use of fossil fuel by 50%
Looking forward to being able to do more.
What are YOU doing? Anything?
Anything at all?