Koch Brothers Climate Skeptic Now Says Climate Change Is Happening
Says Bill Muller, in a stunning turnaround:
"Humans are almost entirely the cause."
And calls for a reduction of greenhouse emissions, though Koch interests are heavily-involved in fossil-fuel industries:
Here's how Muller put it in a New York Times op-ed:Richard Muller, a physicist who spent two years trying to see if mainstream climate scientists were wrong about the earth's climate changes, determined that they were right, the Associated Press reported.His findings showed the temperature had risen about 1.6 degrees since the 1950s."The skeptics raised valid points and everybody should have been a skeptic two years ago," Muller told the AP. "And now we have confidence that the temperature rise that had previously been reported had been done without bias."
Rather amazing that Muller and long-time global warming writer Bill McKibben find common ground.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.These findings are stronger than those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations group that defines the scientific and diplomatic consensus on global warming.
16 comments:
Probably the most widely read global warming denier, Anthony Watts, of WattsUpWithThat.com, had publically announced that he vowed to accept as valid whatever conclusion Muller and his team reached. Do you think he lived up to that expectation? Of course not.
Wow, it MUST be true then.
Still waiting for someone to explain what man-made activity caused the glaciers to melt?
Decades and decades of burning coal and other fossil fuels releases gases into the atmosphere that trap heat. As temperatures, the ice melts.
Are you talking about Richard Muller? Whose conclusions were proven wrong by Anthony Watts on the same day his op-ed appeared? Muller is probably not as nutty as McKibben, but then again, who could be? You should really take a serious look at the global warming scam, and perhaps you wouldn’t be so paranoid about it.
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2012/07/29/comments-on-the-game-changer-new-paper-an-area-and-distance-weighted-analysis-of-the-impacts-of-station-exposure-on-the-u-s-historical-climatology-network-temperatures-and-temperature-trends-by-w/
Gawd Rayguns! Do you need a picture???
You take 'intentionally dense' to a whole new lower level.
Besides that, I recall (still lovin' that word) you recently told another commenter that you weren't going to do his research for him--and then referred him to the right wing rag you get all your "info" from.
Why don't you crawl back under your geologically ancient rock and leave the evolved world to continue evolving. Yer only draggin' down the rest of us anyway.
Certainly you are not that foolish?
The glaciers were around 1000s of years ago and melted long before people were burning fossil fuels and burning coal.
Perhaps I should draw a timeline that shows modern industrial progressions since about 1600 so you can see they don't intersect with the glaciers that once covered our state.
and some here want to talk about taking "intentionally dense" to a new level?
@anon.
What do you "love" about the word "recall."
Wasting lots of money, or getting your tail handed to you, AGAIN, in the Governor's election.
To RD re 8:52 AM comment:
Another false equivalency from you. I have to hand it to you: it's the one thing you excel at.
NO ONE EXCEPT YOU and that all-caps-multiple-exclamation-point-misspelling-meth-addicted-screecher calling himself AL GORE IS RIGHT!!!!! is saying that industrial pollution from the 19th**and 20th** centuries caused the Ice Age glaciers to retreat.
I think your creationist timeline is confusing you again. You must be thinking of the time period when Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs to church.
**You seem to be a bit off on the start of the industrial revolution as well. It didn't really begin until the 18th century (you do know the 18th century begins in 1701, do you not?) and didn't aggregate to the large scale coal-smoke belching into our America the Beautiful skies until the 19th century (the one beginning in 1801.)
Perhaps you should draw a timeline--for yourself--and refer to it often before commenting here, thus revealing the extent of your ignorance and self-deceptive belief that allows you to will away science . . . and now history, too. Happy timeline drawing ! (Include lots of pictures of dinosaurs for fun!)
To RD re 8:55 AM comment:
I seem to recall that your side indulged in playing of the recall game in a few instances as well (and achieved even less success than our total recall efforts). To say nothing of the fake Democrats you ran against the recall candidates.
So you hardly have any cause to get up on your high horse about it.
Whether it was a waste of money, time or effort is one for the ages. But for the party that whines about voter fraud--so often that it's now background noise--every election, ad nauseum, you sure are quick to turn a blind eye to your own party's dirty tricks, election manipulation, voter disenfranchisement, and misinformation campaigns. You'd have more credibility when accusing us of voter fraud, if you'd at least acknowledge the dirty tricks your side serves up. But you'll never do that because it would mean that you'd then have to acknowledge that the alleging of "widespread voter fraud" is one of those dirty tricks. The reason you can't prove it (it being widespread voter fraud, or any voter fraud) is that it was created in the minds of GOP campaign strategists, and spread to minds of deniers and willing lappers such as yourself.
Sorry all. That Anonymous July 30, 2012 8:39 PM comment was mine. I must have not checked the Boxer box and the little men inside the Blogger logo automatically assigned me as Anonymous.
Boxer,
If you can read, and or comprehend...
I never made any mention of the "industrial revolution." I merely stated that maybe a timeline of industrial progressions was needed.
For even the most simple minded child can see and understand the difference between the words "Progression" and "Revolution"
Even so, to respond to your incorrect point, it is generally accepted that the "Industrial Revolution" started in the late 1700s (1760-70), but the foundation and inventions used in the Industrial Revolution started decades and even centuries before that which is why 1600 was chosen.
In fact, it was James himself who stated 7/30 @ 4:35 that it was the burning of coal and fossil fuels that caused the glaciers to melt.
Don't let the facts get in your way
Boxer,
Hilarious...
Now you say...
The reason you can't prove it (it being widespread voter fraud, or any voter fraud) is that it was created in the minds of GOP campaign strategists
Tell that to the people arrested and charged with voting twice.
So we have Welfare, foodstamp, check, wire, mail, insurance, internet, credit card, business, tax, mortgage, telemarketing, ponzi schemes, identity theft and many more frauds.
But... You say think there is absolutely no voter fraud, nothing to see here and it is a made up issue by "strategist."
Your position is laughable and naive.
It is time to pull your head out of the sand... or wherever you have it stuck.
Please feel free to expand on your election manipulation, disenfranchisement and misinformation complaints if they at all differ from what the Democrat party does.
You said, "In fact, it was James himself who stated 7/30 @ 4:35 that it was the burning of coal and fossil fuels that caused the glaciers to melt."
James wasn't referring to the Ice Age, or Glacial Age glaciers, but the modern day or current glaciers in the arctic regions of the planet. You conflated this to a straw man argument that James was wrong because the Industrial Age began thousands of years after the Ice Age glaciers had retreated. Again, the creationist timeline trips you up.
BTW: How are you coming on your own timeline, so that you don't get too confused again?
Rayguns,
How many people were arrested and charged with voting twice? This does not equal "widespread voter fraud" or even enough of this crime to influence any election, even very small local ones.
You're delusional, as per usual. Or maybe you're demented, like your hero and namesake.
How many people are arrested for those other frauds?
That doesn't mean they are not much bigger problems than the number of arrests indicate.
Boxer,
No confusion here at all. This is despite your continued need to support your personal lack of self confidence with your own insistence that you are somehow educationally superior to other people who comment here. Really quite sad, and revealing.
If you follow the other posts on this subject, as you have, James knows I always ask about the glaciers that covered WI and North America.
Those are the glaciers that were being referenced and if you think otherwise, please refer to the comments at 7:39 by YEs I am... where he talks about being "intentionally dense."
You should audition for the role, because you are playing the part incredibly well.
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