More on Global Warmiing

Professor Richard Muller of UCal Berkely made worldwide headlines recently when he announced that in spite of his previous skepticism on global warming, he has now determined that warming has happened for the past 250 years, and at a higher rate in the last 50 years.  Also, he concluded that no explanation other than man’s activities can account for this rise.  His findings are based on a study by the Berkely Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project which he founded.  Ironically, $150,000 of the funding for this project came from the Koch Brothers, foundation, well known for their denial of climate change.  Prof Muller’s op-ed in the New York Times on August 28 explains his results in layman terms.

How can this be—a tenured professor at one of the nation’s most respected universities flip-flopping?  Being upset about this revelation, I attempted to find some of Professor Muller’s earlier works.  I didn’t buy one of his books, self-proclaimed to his students as vital (at $49), but I read a couple of his earlier blog posts.  If I interpret correctly, he was not arguing about the existence of global warming, but was skeptical about the methodology other scientists used to process the millions of points in the temperature data sets to arrive at a conclusion.  So his “conversion” appears to be less spectacular than some reports in the media would indicate. 

As could be expected, Prof Muller has received criticism for his report.  (Seems that there is more hubris than humility in academia).  He has been criticized for not having subjected his analysis results to peer review.  One of his critics is Prof Judith Curry, a fellow member of the BEST project.  She claims that he has hidden the decline in warming measured in the past few years.  He counters saying these are not statistically significant data points.

What can we make of this controversy?  We would like to see scientific findings be truthful and separated from political pressures (from both sides).  When scientists disagree, we lay people are at their mercy.  We can only sort out as much as we can read or hear and make our best judgment.  Based on mountains of data and anecdotal observations, only the most obtuse could deny the existence of global warming.  But the future and what we can do to mitigate or adapt has scientific uncertainty.

A final thought:  If more people in 1999 had believed strongly in the validity of global warming, perhaps Al Gore would have won the election and Saddam Hussein would still be controlling Iraq.