Via Tom Nelson:
Muller: “I never said you shouldn’t be a skeptic. I never said that.”
Richard Muller interview, Part 1 – YouTube
Interviewed by Rob Nikolewski of Capitol Report New Mexico, 10/31/11.
Around the 2:45 mark of Part 1, referring to his recent Wall Street Journal article, Muller says “I never said you shouldn’t be a skeptic. I never said that.”
It is a big contrast from what he said in his Wall Street Journal article:
Without good answers to all these complaints, global-warming skepticism seems sensible. But now let me explain why you should not be a skeptic, at least not any longer.
Just before the 5-minute mark, Muller is asked if he’s in the Al Gore camp. Muller: “Al Gore camp? That’s ridiculous…what I point out is that most of what appears in An Inconvenient Truth is absolutely either wrong, exaggerated, or misleading.”
At the 8:45 mark, he says scientists will “endorse Al Gore, even though they know what he’s saying is exaggerated and misleading. He’ll talk about polar bears dying even though we know they’re not dying…”.
In Part 2, he’s asked about Eugene Robinson’s Washington Post piece.
[Q] It says “What Dr Muller says proves that the skeptics are wrong and they’ve got to get on the cap and trade train”.
Muller: “That’s ridiculous. I mean, some people say I proved that there was no ClimateGate. No. NO! The ClimateGate thing was a scandal. It’s terrible what they did. It’s shameful the way they hid the data.”
UPDATE:
Over at Newsbusters.com Noel Sheppard has more on the debacle, including this direct link to the news story from CRNM that is titled: EXCLUSIVE: Author of controversial climate change article said Wall Street Journal changed the headline: “I don’t think I would have done it if they had told me”
Turnabout is fair play. Now Dr. Muller knows what I feel like after giving him my data, and getting a promise not to use it except to publish results, then he touts results in front of congress with no publication to show for it. Had I known that, I never would have given it to him.
Sheppard said one thing in his article that hit home with me: “In politics, he’d be called a RINO.”
Watching the video and seeing how he’s got different position for each media outlet, we may have witnessed the birth of the first global scale SINO (Skeptic In Name Only).
For some reason, this reminds me of one of Mark Russell’s jokes about Ronald Reagan’s changing story during Iran/Contra.
Recalling Nixon’s problem during Watergate, Russell quipped “In this case, it’s not ‘what did he know and when did he know it?’ or even ‘what didn’t he know and why didn’t he know it?’ but rather ‘what does he know and does he know that he knows it?'”
Guys, here’s a rule of thumb: never hold someone responsible for the headline on an article. They don’t control it. I say this having published something over 150 paid-for articles since Jan 2008, and having edited maybe 3 times that many when I was editing at PJM. The author doesn’t have any control, the author doesn’t have any say, the author won’t have seen the headline before his copy arrives in the mail/email/rss feed, and even the person who edits the article may look with horror on what actually gets published, because the headlines get looked over by the managing editor or the like as well.
DocMartyn says:
November 2, 2011 at 2:52 pm
He has managed to burn his bridges with all sides.
==================================
That’s what happens when you try to please both sides…
Dr. Muller seems more concerned with making friends…and people that do this tend to end up with no friends
babbling on…then claiming he didn’t say that, or didn’t mean it that way, or meant it another way
Talk about burning your bridges at both ends before you come to them!
Actually his position is quite consistent … as long as no one person ever watches more than one media source or one media source on more than one occasion…
I hope Dr. Curry sees this….
..maybe she will realize that what she thought she heard him say was not really what he said
or what he said to her was not really what he meant
…or what he told her was not necessarily what he told someone else
something like that……….
As a research engineer, I now have Muller’s name to add to my list of scientists whose papers I won’t read anymore.
To say explicitly what others have implied:
The statement that it was OK before to be a doubter but not OK anymore, was not from the headline but in the body of the WSJ opinion piece that “Muller” wrote. Is his next explanation “I didn’t write that, my daughter did!?”
James Sexton: Well, we all lay in the bed we make.
Well, chickens do anyway. But then ‘lie’ might have an inconvenient connotation.
: > )
So Muller says that we should not be a global warming skeptic, but its fine to be a anthropogenic global warming skeptic.
Thanks, that was helpful.
“kuhnkat says:
November 2, 2011 at 3:31 pm
Phillip Bradley,
do you also like his statements that if Gore and similar types actually get people motivated with their wrong science and misrepresentations it is OK for them to do what they are doing and should be allowed to fly whatever plane they want??
(I haven’t watched the video, but, this is from a previous print interview)”
For the printed version of the interview, see
http://www.capitolreportnewmexico.com/?p=6691
With regards to your point above, Muller says that this is what others do:
“So at this point they say, ‘The public’s not listening. I know this is urgent. Therefore I have to say things that the public will understand.’ And they will then endorse Al Gore even though they know what he’s saying is exaggerated and misleading. He’ll talk about polar bears dying and we know they’re not dying. And I feel scientists, unfortunately, too many of them have abandoned the scientific method precisely because the problem is so important. And I feel exactly the opposite. I feel when the problem is really important, then we have to hunker down and really use the best methods of science.”
Are you sure the guy in the video is the same guy as in the articles?
So he is lying, and accepts it as his duty .. or what? … maybe it is necessary to keep the funds coming his way……???
[snip]
The article that appeared in our part of the country was written by Seth Borenstein of Associated Press . It was entitled SKEPTIC’S OWN STUDY FINDS CLIMATE CHANGE IS REAL, BUT SCIENTISTS SHOULD BE MORE CRITICAL. In the article the author said that ” There is no reason now to be skeptic about steadily rising temperatures ” [I don’t think he meant not be a skeptic, period .. ]This is a strange comment for Muller as most skeptics are not disputing that global temperatures have not been rising but that they have not been rising since 1998 and have actually been slightly cooling during the last 1o years and this rising is not due man generated green house gases
How in the world did anyone agree to work with this imbecile. What little esteem I held for Judith Curry has completely evaporated.
[snip – off color -AW]
Many people have commented on the fact that Muller apparently denies that his data shows that warming has stopped over the past decade. From the interview, I get the sense that he does not deny it, but rather says you cannot say warming has stopped since the time period is too short to say such a thing. If this point is to be debated with him, we need to know exactly what he agrees with and what he does not agree with.
“..produces a graph that — rather than showing increased global warming — shows that warming has stalled over the last decade.
“That’s incorrect,”
…..”And so when they take 13 years, and they say based on that they can reach a conclusion based on our data set, I think they’re playing that same game”
For the complete paragraph (and interview), see http://www.capitolreportnewmexico.com/?p=6691
Maurizio Morabito (omnologos) said @ur momisugly November 2, 2011 at 2:39 pm
He’s the Postnormal Renaissance Man: instead of holding an opinion on many things, Muller holds many opinions on one thing.
No, he holds one opinion on one thing .. The Thing That Is More Important Than Anyother Thing .. his bank account
Indeed he has managed to create and foster a complete debacle. There are so many statements he makes which can be attacked from sop many angles it s difficult to know where to start. The good news is that this is just another crack in the edifice. I do not honestly think the MMGW scare can survive another cold winter.
Phillip Bradely says:
“Muller goes up in my estimation with his criticism of Gore.”
You mean this criticism of Al Gore?
Al Gore flies around in a jet plane — absolutely fine with me. The important thing is not getting Al Gore out of his jet plane; the important thing is solving the world’s problem. What we really need are policies around the world that address the problem, not feel-good measures. If [Al Gore] reaches more people and convinces the world that global warming is real, even if he does it through exaggeration and distortion — which he does, but he’s very effective at it — then let him fly any plane he wants. – Richard “Two Face” Muller, October 6, 2008.
He thinks that what Algore says is “either wrong, exaggerated, or misleading.” He thinks it is just fine that Algore tells exaggerations and distortions, if it makes the sheople believe. He clearly practices this convenient deception himself, pretending to be a sceptic when he is not and never ever was.
This @ur momisugly#$%tard is a pathalogical liar. He is nothing more or less than a warmist propaganda tool. He is personally, emotionally, and financially invested in the ‘global warming’ scam. He has an agenda, and that agenda is to discredit legitimate scepticism of ‘global warming’, by whatever means he finds convenient.
It is time to call the spade a spade.
I don’t like trashing anyone one unless they do things like Mann did & does. Muller has pulled a PR boner, fair enough. He has messed up or apparently so the science process by premature release. He is being castigated for that too. We all know this climatology business is complex and complicated. Given that we also know no one has a lock on the truth of anything I suspect it is best to give Muller and some other sufficient latitude to show their true colors.
When Rick Mercer says “Politics” think “Science”.
“…our opinion of climate science and the people who practice the art, is now so low, that no matter what the behaviour, we’re no longer surprised. I
t’s like …it’s like going to a family wedding; Why bother getting upset because Uncle Rich has too much to drink and makes a holy show of himself out on the dance floor? It’s Uncle Rich. That’s what he DOES”
In fairness to him, I thought that he gave a good interview, although I would join issue with some of the points that he made during the last couple of minutes of part 2, After all most people accept that the globe has been warming and the real issue is by how much and to what extent (if any at all) this is caused and/or contributed to by man. The BEST data set merely confiirms that there has been some warming, and does nothing to establish the cause still less the extent to which man may have played a role. The data set should not be elevated to something that it is not. The headline in the WSJ sought to elevate it into something that it is not.
I personally consider that it is appropriate to cherry pick extracts of a data set. The issue is what is the significance if any of any cherry picked extract. It ought to be a simple and uncontentious question of fact whether temperatures have flat lined over any given period. The contentious issue is whether this is significant or not. That is where the debate should lie.
The unfortunate problem is that what length of period is reqiuired before one can be confident of a significant trend is akin to how long is a piece of string. Given the variability in climate, it may be that periods in excess of 100 years is required.
Whilts the recent hiatus to the warming may not be over a period that is statistically significant to conclude that warming has halted, it is significant to the question of the urgency of action. The effect of this hiatus is that there is now more time to save the world (if indeed it needs saving) and this enables us to take a more considered opportunity to more thoroughly examine and ascertain the underlying cause of any past warming and means that there is no need for any knee jerk reaction to controlling/mitigating the warming. I was pleased to hear Prof Muller clearly state that any action that the US might take would be futile unless all countries are on board.
Maurizio Morabito (omnologos) says: “…He’s the Postnormal Renaissance Man: instead of holding an opinion on many things, Muller holds many opinions on one thing.”
Well said. But anyone who thinks Al Gore is an ass can’t be all bad. I think Muller (or Mole-er) is trying too hard to be, as St. Paul said, “All things to all people.” The result is that he speaks out of both sides of his mouth. I find it hard to believe his skeptic side, Muller having said things like
“The bottom line is that there is a consensus — the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] — and the president needs to know what the IPCC says. Second, they say that most of the warming of the last 50 years is probably due to humans.”–Richard A. Muller [http://www.grist.org/article/lets-get-physical]
Omnologos wrote: “He’s the Postnormal Renaissance Man: instead of holding an opinion on many things, Muller holds many opinions on one thing.”
Beautiful. Worthy of Oscar Wilde. Meanwhile, can someone explain how Muller can make definitive claims about GLOBAL warming when they’ve got data (flawed at that) on (at most) 30 percent of the earth’s surface.
It’s undeniable that Muller speaks out of both sides of his mouth, depending on who he’s talking to. it’s really rather pathetic.
Allencic says:
November 2, 2011 at 3:12 pm
No matter how long this idiotic AGW goes on, I simply can’t understand why there are so many people, genuine scientists, environmentalists, average Joes on the street….
__________________________________
Scientist = Grant $$$$$$ politics
Environmentalists = Grant $$$$$ hatred of human species, politics
average Joes = brain washed and the ghoulish love of disaster. Think of all the rubberneckers at auto accidents.