Earth Equity News

Physicist Turns Tables on Congressional Climate Deniers. By Margot Roosevelt, LATimes, 4/4/11. “A team of UC Berkeley physicists and statisticians that set out to challenge the scientific consensus on global warming is finding that its data-crunching effort is producing results nearly identical to those underlying the prevailing view. The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project was launched by physics professor Richard Muller, a longtime critic of government-led climate studies, to address what he called ‘the legitimate concerns’ of skeptics who believe that global warming is exaggerated. But Muller unexpectedly told a congressional hearing last week that the work of the three principal groups that have analyzed the temperature trends underlying climate science is ‘excellent... We see a global warming trend that is very similar to that previously reported by the other groups.’… Muller said his group was surprised by its findings, but he cautioned that the initial assessment is based on only 2% of the 1.6 billion measurements that will eventually be examined.

“Other scientists noted that temperature is only one factor in climate change. ‘Even if the thermometer had never been invented, the evidence is there from deep ocean changes, from receding glaciers, from rising sea levels and receding sea ice and spring snow cover,’ [Peter Thorne, a leading expert at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.] said. ‘All the physical indicators are consistent with a warming world. There is no doubt the trend of temperature is upwards since the early 20th century. And that trend is accelerating.’”