From Talking Points Memo:
Climate change deniers thought they had an ally in Richard Muller, a popular physics professor at UC Berkeley.The website for the Berkeley study is here. And from the FAQ found at that website, BEST describes itself as:
Muller didn’t reject climate science per se, but he was a skeptic, and a convenient one for big polluters and conservative anti-environmentalists — until Muller put their money where his mouth was, and launched the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, in part with a grant from the Charles G. Koch foundation.
After extensive study, he’s concluded that the existing science was right all along — that the earth’s surface is warming, at an accelerating rate.
Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature aims to contribute to a clearer understanding of global warming based on a more extensive and rigorous analysis of available historical data. The study has reviewed data from over 39,000 temperature measurement stations across the globe. This is more than five times the 7,280 stations found in the Global Historical Climatology Network Monthly data set (GHCN-M) that has served as the focus of many climate studies to date.And what did it find?
From the summary:
Global warming is real, according to a major study released today. Despite issues raised by climate change skeptics, the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature study finds reliable evidence of a rise in the average world land temperature of approximately 1° C since the mid-1950s.According to the FAQ, they hope to do a similar study on ocean temperature.
Happy Monday!
Berkeley Professor Swindles Kochs Out of $150,000 for Global Warming Project"
ReplyDeleteHTTT, that was a good catch by Don Surber to dig up the Grist interview. Apparently Muller has/had been slamming climate scientists, including members of the IPCC, on their credentials (something about not trusting them if they aren't physicists), but that Grist article is a red flag. One point others have raised is that Muller's study says nothing about the cause of the current warming, so it supports no particular policy prescription. As for the Koch Brothers, if they happen to be be unhappy with Muller's results, I have no sympathy. If you invest in basic research, you kinda have to live with the results. That Muller's results match other scientific studies on Climate Change is not a big surprise (what would have been a surprise is if he found no warming, or false warming results caused by urban heat islands).
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