Mustang
Gold Member
It's time to put an end to these silly political games of denying what everyone knows to be true and instead get serious about combating climate change. Everybody is going to have to give up something, including environmentalists who have been blocking power generation from nuclear power. That means we should stop burning coal and start building nuclear power plants ASAP. Everyone on our planet (especially the national gov'ts of the major industrial economies) needs to start working together instead of at cross purposes.
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Prominent climate change denier now admits he was wrong (+video)
Richard Muller, who directed a Koch-funded climate change project, has undergone a 'total turnaround' on his stance on global warming, which he now admits is caused by human activity.
Washington
The verdict is in: Global warming is real and greenhouse-gas emissions from human activity are the main cause.
This, according to Richard A. Muller, professor of physics at the University of California, Berkely, a MacArthur fellow and co-founder of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and hundreds of other climatologists around the world came to such conclusions years ago, but 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.
RELATED: Are you scientifically literate? Take our quiz!
In an opinion piece in Saturdays New York Times titled 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. Im now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.
The Berkeley projects research has shown, Muller says, that the average temperature of the earths land has risen by 2½ degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of 1½ 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 current stance a total turnaround.
Tonya Mullins, a spokeswoman for the Koch Foundation, said the support her foundation provided, along with others, has no bearing on results of the research.
Our grants are designed to promote independent research; as such, recipients hold full control over their findings, Mullins said in an email. In this support, we strive to benefit society by promoting discovery and informing public policy.
Some leading climate scientists said Mullers comments show that the science is so strong that even those inclined to reject it cannot once they examine it carefully.
Elizabeth Muller, co-founder and executive director of the Berkeley project and Richard Mullers daughter, said the papers had been peer-reviewed, but not yet published. But because of the long lead-up to publication, she said, the Berkeley team decided to place its papers online, in part to solicit comment from other scientists. The papers were posted on the BerkeleyEarth.org website on Sunday.
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.
Prominent climate change denier now admits he was wrong (+video) - CSMonitor.com
Home|Berkeley Earth
------------------------------------
Prominent climate change denier now admits he was wrong (+video)
Richard Muller, who directed a Koch-funded climate change project, has undergone a 'total turnaround' on his stance on global warming, which he now admits is caused by human activity.
Washington
The verdict is in: Global warming is real and greenhouse-gas emissions from human activity are the main cause.
This, according to Richard A. Muller, professor of physics at the University of California, Berkely, a MacArthur fellow and co-founder of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and hundreds of other climatologists around the world came to such conclusions years ago, but 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.
RELATED: Are you scientifically literate? Take our quiz!
In an opinion piece in Saturdays New York Times titled 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. Im now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.
The Berkeley projects research has shown, Muller says, that the average temperature of the earths land has risen by 2½ degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of 1½ 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 current stance a total turnaround.
Tonya Mullins, a spokeswoman for the Koch Foundation, said the support her foundation provided, along with others, has no bearing on results of the research.
Our grants are designed to promote independent research; as such, recipients hold full control over their findings, Mullins said in an email. In this support, we strive to benefit society by promoting discovery and informing public policy.
Some leading climate scientists said Mullers comments show that the science is so strong that even those inclined to reject it cannot once they examine it carefully.
Elizabeth Muller, co-founder and executive director of the Berkeley project and Richard Mullers daughter, said the papers had been peer-reviewed, but not yet published. But because of the long lead-up to publication, she said, the Berkeley team decided to place its papers online, in part to solicit comment from other scientists. The papers were posted on the BerkeleyEarth.org website on Sunday.
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.
Prominent climate change denier now admits he was wrong (+video) - CSMonitor.com
Home|Berkeley Earth