The verdict is within: Global warming is real as well as greenhouse-gas emissions from human activity are the main cause.
This, according to Richard A. Muller, professor of physics at the actual University of California, Berkely, a MacArthur fellow and co-founder with the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature undertaking.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Cell on Climate Change and hundreds of other climatologists around the world came to such conclusions in years past, but the difference now may be the source: Muller is a long-standing, colorful critic of prevailing environment science, and the Berkeley project was heavily funded through the Charles Koch Charitable Foundation, which, along with its libertarian petrochemical billionaire inventor Charles G. Koch, has a considerable history connected with backing groups that deny climate change.
In an opinion piece in Saturday’s The big apple Times titled “The Conversion of any Climate-Change Skeptic, ” Muller writes:
“Three years ago I acknowledged problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the really existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving twelve scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the particular rate of warming were accurate. I’m now going a phase further: Humans are almost entirely the main cause. ”
The Berkeley project’s research has shown, Muller says, “that the average temperature of the earth’s land has risen by 21/2 degrees Fahrenheit in the last 250 years, including an increase of 11/2 degrees over the modern 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially involves increase results from the human being emission of greenhouse gases. ”
He calls his current stance “a total turnaround. ”
Tonya Mullins, a spokeswoman for the Koch Footing, said the support her foundation provided, along with others, has no bearing on link between the research.
“Our grants are designed in promoting independent research; as such, recipients hold full control over their findings, ” Mullins said in an email. “In this support, we strive to benefit community by promoting discovery and informing public policy. ”
Some leading climate scientists said Muller’s comments show the science is so strong that even those inclined to reject it cannot when they examine it carefully.
Michael E. Mann, director of the Earth Process Science Center at Pennsylvania Condition University, said Muller’s conversion might help shape the contemplating the “reasonable middle” of the population “who are genuinely confused and have absolutely been honestly taken in” through attacks on climate science.
On his Facebook page, Mann wrote: “There is a certain ironic satisfaction in seeing a work funded by the Koch Brothers – the maximum funders of climate change denial and disinformation on the planet – demonstrate what scientists have known with some degree of confidence for nearly 2 decades: that the globe is certainly warming, and that this warming can easily only be explained by human-caused will increase in greenhouse gas concentrations. I applaud Muller and his colleagues for acting as worthwhile scientists would, following where their analyses brought them, without regard for the achievable political repercussions. ”
Muller’s conclusions, however, did not sway the most ardent climate contrarians, like Marc Morano, a former producer for Speed Limbaugh and former communications director for your Republicans on the Senate Surroundings and Public Works Committee.
“Muller will be remembered as a befuddled professor who has yet to learn how to separate climate science from the media antics. His latest claims provide no new insight in the climate science debate, ” Morano said in a contact.
Muller’s New York Times commentary follows research he did last year that confirmed the work of scientists who found that the Earth’s temperature was rising. In the past, Muller had criticized which global temperatures had been used in such research, contending that some monitoring stations provided inaccurate data. Now, Berkeley’s research has weighed in on what may cause the temperature rise, testing arguments that climate contrarians have used.