Global Warming Real After All, Says Former Scientific Skeptic

Global warming is a contentious issue these days. Is it real?

Richard A. Muller

Richard A. Muller is a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, who chaired the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project over the last two years. The BEST Project's results are now in, and Muller recently reported on them in The Wall Street Journal, in "The Case Against Global-Warming Skepticism: There were good reasons for doubt, until now."

Muller was a climate skeptic going into the project, for reasons he elaborates in the article. After the careful study made by his team, he's changed his mind:

We discovered that about one-third of the world's [land-based surface] temperature stations have recorded cooling temperatures, and about two-thirds have recorded warming. The two-to-one ratio reflects global warming ... Global warming is real. Perhaps our results will help cool this portion of the climate debate.

How much warming has taken place?

The changes at the locations that showed warming were typically between 1-2ºC [Celsius], much greater than the IPCC's average of 0.64ºC.

(A 1° Celsius rise is equal to 1.8° Fahrenheit. A 2° Celsius rise is equal to 3.6° Fahrenheit. A 0.64° Celsius rise is equal to 1.152° Fahrenheit.)

The IPCC is the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Muller says it ...

... estimates an average global 0.64ºC temperature rise in the past 50 years, "most" of which the IPCC says is due to humans.

How much of the rise is manmade? Muller does not commit:

How much of the warming is due to humans and what will be the likely effects? We made no independent assessment of that.

A well-stated, liberal reaction to Muller's article comes from op-ed columnist Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post. In "The scientific finding that settles the climate-change debate," Robinson writes:

Muller’s plain-spoken admonition that “you should not be a skeptic, at least not any longer” has reduced many [climate-change] deniers to incoherent grumbling or stunned silence.

As for the is-it-manmade issue, Robinson says:

... the Berkeley group’s work should help lead all but the dimmest policymakers to the overwhelmingly probable answer. We know that the rise in temperatures over the past five decades is abrupt and very large. We know it is consistent with models developed by other climate researchers that posit greenhouse gas emissions — the burning of fossil fuels by humans — as the cause. And now we know, thanks to Muller, that those other scientists have been both careful and honorable in their work.

My opinion: we need to get serious about addressing global warming now!