Koch-Funded Researcher No Longer Climate Skeptic

Two years ago Richard Muller was a climate skeptic. He began a study, funded by the Koch brothers, to examine temperature data in a new way. The study is now complete, and Muller is no longer skeptical: he believes the the earth is warming as a result of human activity, pretty much exactly as other climate scientists have said it has.

Muller explains the reasons for his original skepticism in an article in the Wall Street Journal. Basically, he didn't feel that the data were of sufficiently high quality to support the kind of statements that climate scientists had been making about global warming. He thought the accuracy of the weather stations and their locations were not giving an accurate picture of temperature changes. Many weather stations had once been in rural areas, which had become urban areas. Cities retain more heat because they are paved with asphalt, have concrete buildings and lack trees (the "heat island" effect). He felt there was too much bad data, and didn't think the climate scientists had taken enough precautions to make sure that bad data didn't give the wrong conclusions.

Muller's new analysis, which hasn't yet been published in peer-reviewed journals, uses different statistical techniques to correct for errors he felt existed in previous studies. And he comes up with almost exactly the same results as his predecessors did, leading him to conclude that they had in fact taken the necessary steps to ensure the accuracy of their results.

Will this study change anyone's mind? That's highly doubtful. Muller never questioned the validity of the physics behind the carbon dioxide greenhouse effect, the mechanism causing anthropogenic climate change. He doubted the effect was real because many of the weather stations had margins of error greater than the amount of warming measured. Also, about a third of stations measured temperature decreases, while two-thirds measured increases.

That's completely in line with climate change predictions, because the theory predicts shifts in temperature in both directions. Some areas will dry out and get hotter, while other areas will get socked with more rain and snow and get cooler. But it's a possible indication of a huge problem with the theory if the data isn't accurate. Basically, if the area drying out and heating up is larger than the area getting wetter and cooler, there is net global warming. Muller's study finds that to be the case.

Human-caused global warming is no longer a scientific issue -- it's settled science. The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is going up about 0.5% every year because 7 billion people are burning billions of tons of coal, gas and oil, and deforesting huge swaths of six continents. But the right has made climate change into a political wedge, mostly because acknowledging its truth would mean significant costs for the moneybags that fund the Republican Party.

In 20 or 30 years Florida's coast will be seriously eroded by rising seas, Texas will be well on its way to becoming a fire-scorched desert, Arizona and Nevada will be a barren wasteland in the throes of a decades-long drought. On the plus side, we will probably have burned all the economically accessible oil and moved on to other sources of energy. I only hope that we manage to survive the drought, famine and wars that severe climate change has always caused.