Physicist Richard Muller was skeptical of the whole climate change claim, but unlike most skeptics who are content to be just armchair critics, he did something about it.
In 2010, Muller and a team of scientists started the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST), a project to rigorously review more than 39,000 temperature measurement stations across the globe (in a way that addressed the main criticism of climate sceptics, namely that the data are homogenized or adjusted. Muller's method, on the other hand, relies on raw data).
Last week, BEST released its latest paper concluding that not only is climate change real, it's also caused by humans. Muller wrote in The New York Times:
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.
Climate change skeptics, however, remain unmoved.
You might also be surprised about China. It's not as strong as it is in the US, but there's a growing environmental movement there. As their middle class grows, they've begun to realize that prosperity is useless if you're too sick to enjoy it due to a toxic environment. They're actually investing far more than the US in renewable energy sources. Really, we're playing a global game of the prisoners dilemma, where doing nothing is the equivalent of ratting out your neighbor. It also explains why inaction is the likely outcome.....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jul/29/climate-change-sceptics-change-mind
That doesn't quite fit the narrative, does it?
And to respond to timothyemerson, the first thing we can do about global warming is to get non-scientists to acknowledge it exists. Although I do know how hard it is for people to stop foaming at the mouth about taxes (even though raising taxes need not be a part of the solution.)
Like the stealth funding of the tea-party, follow the money. Don't vote against your own best interests.
You are absolutely right about China, not only are they NOT going to stop but they are making new deals right now to ship even more coal from Wyoming all the way to Oregon, down the Columbia River and straight to China! (Wonder what that will do to the cost of coal for Americans?)
Fossil fuels will be used and burned, bought and sold, no matter how many global warming studies are done. Period. LOL!
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html
Do you really think China is going to reduce the amount of fossil fuels that they use because some people claim that the planet is being heated up by Man? Do you?
LOL
Timothy, let not your heart be troubled. The AGW bleating is not worth a cup of warm spit. Nothing will be done because nothing will happen.
Global Warming alarmists, however, remain unmoved.
Check out this link:
http://www.populartechnology.net/2012/06/truth-about-richard-muller.html
From the wikipedia entry on skepticism:
"A scientific (or empirical) skeptic is one who questions beliefs on the basis of scientific understanding. Most scientists, being scientific skeptics, test the reliability of certain kinds of claims by subjecting them to a systematic investigation using some form of the scientific method."
This is exactly what Muller did, which resulted in him changing his mind. This is also exactly what other so-called climate "skeptics" do not do. Calling them skeptics is a huge compliment they don't deserve. They are simply deniers, and denying doesn't require any work.