Talk about a 'bust'...after 3 years of counting how many angels fit on a pinhead, to the 4th decimal point, Richard Muller announces to the world, via the NY Times, that he's done another flip-flop on global warming and then essentially contradicts himself about being a "skeptic" within the same freaking article. Color me unimpressed by this rambling, self-promoting op-ed.
So, let's review what Muller has actually said, per Steve Goddard and the NY Times:
December 17, 2003 - "Let me be clear. My own reading of the literature and study of paleoclimate suggests strongly that carbon dioxide from burning of fossil fuels will prove to be the greatest pollutant of human history. It is likely to have severe and detrimental effects on global climate."
November 3, 2011 - "It is ironic if some people treat me as a traitor, since I was never a skeptic — only a scientific skeptic,”..."But I never felt that pointing out mistakes qualified me to be called a climate skeptic.”
July 28, 2012 - "CALL me a converted skeptic."..."I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause."
July 28, 2012 - "My total turnaround, in such a short time, is the result of careful and objective analysis by the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, which I founded..."
July 28, 2012 - "These facts don’t prove causality and they shouldn’t end skepticism..."
July 28, 2102 - "Moreover, our analysis does not depend on large, complex global climate models, the huge computer programs that are notorious for their hidden assumptions and adjustable parameters."
July 28, 2012 - "Our result is based simply on the close agreement between the shape of the observed temperature rise and the known greenhouse gas increase."
July 28, 2012 - "It’s a scientist’s duty to be properly skeptical. I still find that much, if not most, of what is attributed to climate change is speculative, exaggerated or just plain wrong."
July 28, 2012 - "I’ve analyzed some of the most alarmist claims, and my skepticism about them hasn’t changed."
July 28, 2012 - "And it’s possible that we are currently no warmer than we were a thousand years ago, during the “Medieval Warm Period” or “Medieval Optimum,” an interval of warm conditions known from historical records and indirect evidence like tree rings."
July 28, 2012 - "And the recent warm spell in the United States happens to be more than offset by cooling elsewhere in the world, so its link to “global” warming is weaker than tenuous."
And here's what climate expert, Judith Curry, thinks of Muller's latest promotion:
"re’s Curry’s reply:
I was invited to be a coauthor on the new paper. I declined. I gave them my review of the paper, which was highly critical. I don’t think this new paper adds anything to our understanding of attribution of the warming….
...[Curry in another note] Their analysis is way oversimplistic and not at all convincing in my opinion"
Finally, the Muller op-ed resembles something that Ferris Bueller might have written on his day off - slightly incoherent, contradictory, smug and self-serving, all at the same time. Not what one would expect from a scientist that teaches presidents.
And btw, why are scientists so enamored with those ludicrous spaghetti graphs? The below chart is one of two that are on the 'BEST' site. Supposedly this chart "clearly" shows how 'BEST' is best. Objectively, it is a totally worthless chart that masks the BEST results. Tip to the BEST site manager: put up a chart with only the BEST curve with a link to the actual data used to plot the curve (i.e., not the station data, the actual final summary anomalies).
