Prominent AGW skeptic now says global warming is real

[Tiggy]

Looks like there is at least one honest global warming denier out there after all.

Skeptic finds he now agrees global warming is real

A prominent physicist and skeptic of global warming spent two years trying to find out if mainstream climate scientists were wrong. In the end, he determined they were right: Temperatures really are rising rapidly.

The study of the world's surface temperatures by Richard Muller was partially bankrolled by a foundation connected to global warming deniers. He pursued long-held skeptic theories in analyzing the data. He was spurred to action because of "Climategate," a British scandal involving hacked emails of scientists.

Yet he found that the land is 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) warmer than in the 1950s. Those numbers from Muller, who works at the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, match those by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA.

Still, Muller said it makes sense to reduce the carbon dioxide created by fossil fuels.

"Greenhouse gases could have a disastrous impact on the world," he said.

Whole story from AP

Reality wins out in the end...again.

- T

[phank]

There's a big difference, only occasionally illustrated in practice, between a denier and a skeptic. Muller didn't trust the numbers, so he went out to replicate them himself. He thought some of the anti-AGW allegations might have some merit, and he tested them directly. And this is just how good science should be done - consensus is reached when the evidence persuades the loyal opposition. Evidence can never persuade the DISloyal opposition, since their opposition does not rest on evidence.

Reality always wins, but there's always what's been called the Black Knight effect, after Monty Python. The Black Knight was chopped up until he consisted of nothing but separate arms, legs, head, torso. And the head STILL insisted it was winning, and wouldn't give up. The anti-AGW forces are like the YECs - they are the Black Knights Monty Python immortalized.

[seer]

Looks like there is at least one honest global warming denier out there after all.



Reality wins out in the end...again.

- T

To be fair T, he did not conclude that greenhouse gasses were the cause of GW. And you took his quote out of context:
“Greenhouse gases could have a disastrous impact on the world,” he said. Still, he contends that threat is not as proven as the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says it is.

[phank]

How can anyone "prove" a future projection? At most, one can say that IF a given model is sufficiently accurate, and IF future actions match what was fed into the model, THEN future results will probably match the model's predictions. Now, if the model's predictions are taken seriously, it's always possible that future actions will be modified accordingly.

[KBertsche]

Looks like there is at least one honest global warming denier out there after all.



Reality wins out in the end...again.

- T

I thought I had commented on this research somewhere on TWeb a few months ago (probably one of Glenn's threads) but I can't find it.

Rich was my thesis advisor (and the advisor for Saul Perlmutter, who just won a Nobel Prize). I wouldn't call him a "prominent AGW skeptic" or a "global warming denier". Rather, as the article says, he is a "prominent physicist" and he is a "skeptic of global warming". But his skepticism is simply the normal, healthy skepticism of a physicist (similar to Freeman Dyson, one of Rich's friends and heros). Rich had expressed some of this skepticism in his class and book "Physics for Future Presidents", where he pointed out some unsound global warming claims.

Rich is a good scientist. He tries to conform his views to scientific data, not to politics. He is somewhat of a maverick who is leery of "following the crowd", because he knows that the crowd is often not data-driven. He is not afraid to change his own views if the data demands it.