Physicist Richard Muller, leader of the Berkeley Earth Project at the University of California, Berkeley, has been a known critic of studies backing the conclusion that human activity is a prime driver of global warming. But after completing a new study that he spearheaded, which uses new methods and data to corroborate past studies, Muller has changed his stance—acknowledging publicly that the average temperature on Earth has indeed risen by 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years and that human activity is "the most straightforward explanation," BBC News reported.
“Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming,” Muller wrote in a New York Times editorial piece. "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."
Muller’s un-peer-reviewed study was made available online yesterday (July 30). The team submitted the study to the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmosphere.