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).
John from CA says:
November 2, 2011 at 3:56 pm
Muller trashed Al Gore. I say we draw a line in the sand and give him a do over. He got that part right, maybe he can candid about the rest of the run away Global Warming scam.
_________________________________
No WAY!
Not with Muller’s Connections. Wolf in sheep’s clothing or a snake oil salesman.
See my comment on the firm Muller & Assoc.
at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/01/pre-prints-and-pre-data/#comment-784983
I think he made a bad move trying to blame the Wall Street Journal. That may come back to bite him.
I STRONGLY recommend we give Muller a Mulligan on this. It could pay off in the long run.
He is getting a sharp taste of how the media and the CAGW faithful will spin, amplify and distort his work. Yes he shot from the hip too quickly and should have been more careful and more politically savvy. But he is now getting taken to school rather brutally (and rapidly).
Muller is a potential ally. If we treat him decently (or even more than decently), he won’t forget it.
No one is perfect and he really is just being himself in the video.
He doesn’t appear to hold the same opinion from day to day or audience to audience.
Perhaps in his youth, Dr. Muller was inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson … a very little mind indeed … who said, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”
How long does a pattern have to exist before it is relevant? I believe to focus on whether or not 10 or 13 or 15 years is relevant may not get us very far. However I believe few would argue that 160 years is not long enough. See the following graph showing 160 years of temperatures. Note the 62 year cycle that is referred to: http://www.appinsys.com/globalwarming/SixtyYearCycle.htm
So if Richard Muller wishes to argue that 13 years is not relevant, I would suggest that a lack of warming over the last 13 years is totally consistent with being at the top of a 62 year sine curve on the site that shows the last 160 years.
Mr.Muller, if you read this,
You strike me as an activist. Global warming is from the left of politics (though oddly it started in the right with Margaret Thatcher, of all people). And I only see you being an activist for an issue from the left of politics. I see you have put politics over science. If science had truly been higher to you than politics you would have refused interviews about the paper before peer review had been done. You would have informed those requesting the interviews that the work was still in process and talk of it was not ready for the media. The media is ALWAYS anxious for any bad news it can put immediately into the eyes of the public. Manmade global warming has been bad news gold for them, and you gave them red meat—the reddest meat global warming has been able to produce in years. Your political views took precedence over science. And now there are technical issues, errors, being found in your paper. Will it even get through peer review! Odds of it are on your side though since peer review in the world of global warming is pal review and not peer review—all the global warming peers are pals.
I suppose it is fitting you are from Berkeley where irrational, immature political behavior is a norm.
But that’s just my opinion.
Muller hasn’t proved anything new. There isn’t a legitimate scientist that doesn’t agree the Earth’s average temperature hasn’t increased by about 0.7 C over the past century.
The real issue of GW is the “CA” part of CAGW. Muller freely admits his data addresses nothing about the CAUSES of GW, merely that GW has taken place. Duh…
What’s surprising is that Muller’s associate, Prof. Curry, clearly states that the BEST data shows no GW over the past 15 years. Muller, for apparent political reasons, avoids that issue by saying 15 years is too short of a time frame to make any assertions of a trend change.
What’s interesting is that since there hasn’t been any GW in 15 years, and CO2 levels have risen substantially over that time frame, it would tend to lessen the case for of the “Catastrophic Anthropogenic” theory of GW…
Statistics, damn statistics and politics…. Don’t you love it so…
juanslayton says:
November 2, 2011 at 5:00 pm
James Sexton: Well, we all lay in the bed we make.
Well, chickens do anyway. But then ‘lie’ might have an inconvenient connotation.
: > )
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Indeed! I had to re-word twice before it came out like so.
This guy seems a bit slippery.
Is he seriously trying to dodge the plain meaning oh his Wall Street Journal piece by claiming the reference to global warming was not also a reference to AGW?
If so, ok.
But is renders everything he has `said’ as trivial and relevant to nothing
But has he been living under a rock, to not understand that, in the public mind, a reference to global warming is usually taken as a reference to AGW. I do not belive Muller is ignorant of that.
Slippery. Really quite slippery …
Maybe Muller is trying to hard to be all things to all men, but I have yet to catch him in a deception, significant evasion, or unfounded claim.
And that in the world of climate scientists is a ringing endorsement.
Frederick Michael says:
November 2, 2011 at 7:04 pm
I STRONGLY recommend we give Muller a Mulligan on this. It could pay off in the long run.
He is getting a sharp taste of how the media and the CAGW faithful will spin, amplify and distort his work. Yes he shot from the hip too quickly and should have been more careful and more politically savvy. But he is now getting taken to school rather brutally (and rapidly).
Muller is a potential ally. If we treat him decently (or even more than decently), he won’t forget it.
================================================
I’m not sure we have time to get him up to speed. He certainly didn’t take the time to do so himself. As to whether or not he’ll forget it or not……. Today, I’d just assume that he’s an alarmist. But, I know they’d just assume he’d be considered a skeptic. He doesn’t know the issues. He’s not familiar with the dialogue. And his scientific approach is flawed. If he wanted to do anything other than get his name in the papers, he would have, at the very least, talked to Curry. But, he could have done something wild, like talk to Anthony or Steve Mc, to try and discern what the skeptic argument really was, as opposed to saying the earth has warmed and the skeptics are done.
I don’t give up on anyone. None of us should. But, damn…….. this ain’t figure skating. He should have kept his guard up. Yes, he’s getting schooled. If he’s an honest broker, I hope he can ride the storm out. But, either way he flops, he’s damaged goods. He is, BTW always invited to my blog. If he wishes to know who to talk to about the various thoughts and positions of the various skeptic camps, I’d be more than happy to give overviews and point him in the right directions to the people that can go into more detail.
I always hold a special bit of resentment for people such as him that would lump all of us together. It isn’t that I don’t hold skeptics in high regard, I do. (God knows many of us have been skewered much more than he’ll ever be.) I read and I learn. I get some of the posits made. I don’t get others. Others, still, I reject. But, I don’t have to be correct before the CAGW hypothesis is wrong.
I agree with Frederick. Better to ally with geo-engineers if it slows down the “action now!” crowd than to end up pedaling to power a computer to see what’s up @ur momisugly WUWT.
Frankly, I think the headline bit is a scapegoat of convenience for Muller. As Charlie Martin noted above, authors don’t have control over the headlines of their articles. In this instance the headline and sub-head need to be taken into account, and considering the content of the article I don’t even think he has grounds for complaint: He handed the sub-head to them …
…..right in the body of his article:
Of course he didn’t mention that part, during the interview, did he?! I wonder why!
I’d be more inclined to cut him some slack if, when concluding this carefully crafted opus, instead of writing:
… he had written:
“When we began our study, we didn’t know what we’d find. Our results turned out to be close to those published by prior groups. We think that means that those groups had been careful in their work.
“Of course, one of the major criticisms of the skeptics is that we do not know how much of the warming is due to human emissions of carbon dioxide, nor what the effects might be. We made no independent assessment of that.”
Now, that would represent a desire to “cool the debate” that I could believe in – and I think it would have gone a long way towards leading the WSJ in a different direction for their choice of headline. Don’t you?!
Nonetheless, this whole mess could have been avoided if Muller had heeded his own advice from December, 2003:
Physicist, heal thyself!
In the meantime, the most charitable description I can think of for Muller is that his choices of actions and words suggest that he’d make a very good “chameleon”.
When I read about the BEST project examination of rural stations and the definition of criteria for that selection.as well as the use to define UHI effects, My brain SHOUTED BS (bad science). This guy is too lazy to do real science.
Too bad that Anthony got snookered by this con man. We do not need to ignore this guys double talk. pg
Remember when scientists would do some research, get some results, and publish them regardless of political impact?
Good times, good times.
Doesn’t anyone get the impression of Muller as a scared man?
I think he wants to be a skeptic but is simply terrified of being mangled by the IPCC media machine, so he tries to be a sort of ‘skept-believer’ and please both sides at once, but just succeeds in talking such contradictory bullshit he looks like a jerk. Pity, because he was a good potential Voice of Reason.
In the Wall Street Journal piece Muller writes “But now let me explain why you should not be a skeptic, at least not any longer.” In the youtube video, he claims he never said that.
Faced with this kind of contradiction as a reader and viewer, you have two choices. Either believe he is a liar or believe that in his mind he believes he told the truth in both instances. I find myself vacillating between the two.
At times he seems incredibly Machiavellian. This view is supported by his praising Al Gore for his “exaggeration and distortion.” But at other times, I really think he does not see the contradiction between what he wrote and what he said. I think he meant to write “But now let me explain why you should not be a skeptic that the world is warming, at least not any longer.” Somehow, in his own mind, that is what he thinks he wrote – even though if he goes back and reads it he will see he didn’t. This view is supported by his public criticism of Al Gore.
I never had any doubt the UHI story was a red herring. We know a warming trend exists, on average, all over the US. There has never been a reason to suspect the trend did not also exist at stations subject to UHI. Madness to wonder otherwise, in fact. The problem then is to extract only the trend from these stations as is done with all stations. It seems daunting but I believe it is achievable. Perhaps easier is to simply remove the stations with UHI problems from the record. It won’t affect the trend. The trend is what it is.
So now we can get to work on what the trend means, and I think it doesn’t mean anything special and here’s why. If we look at ice core records we see thousands of years of continual variation. What we don’t see are even brief periods without change. So we can take away from that our climate is stable around a moving average that we can explain with celestial cycles, estimates of lag in ocean heat change, solar variations, volcanism, and flora and fauna response. If we dig deeper we can include krill, termite, bovine, and SUV farts. None of it compares to natural cycles that are celestial and solar in nature. We can look at the record and see equivalent changes in all the years prior to human development. The only trend is our aging star and changes in our galactic neighborhood. It isn’t us that’s doing it.
The good news is the trend does not indicate a changed climate since the current interglacial began. Neither did the LIA, for that matter. Perturbations, like weather, are not climate. Climate is the framework within which weather happens. There are sporadic extremes within any climate framework but we will not see massive glaciation in our current climate and we won’t see a cinder Earth, either. We are seeing minor climate variability. When real climate change happens we won’t need Yoda assuring us he is sincere about his data – we will see it on our lawns.
We have so many cycles within cycles, some of which repeat, some not, glaciation with attendant feedbacks, glacial lake floods that cool the oceans, massive seas of lava that flood our tectonic margins, undersea black smokers in numbers we can’t imagine, solar activity – it is no wonder our models predict nothing useful. And it doesn’t matter. We don’t have the multi-petawatt capacity needed to counter even one sunny day let alone continuously counter the complex heat engine that has broken our dawn through all eternity.
Stop the madness, invest in adaption studies because that is all we have, and if we allow the climate nutters access to our tax system, there will be revolt on a global scale like we’ve never seen. California and Oz have done the world a favor by taking themselves out of the market place. Nobody has to worry about business competition from either place. Even better they will become dependent states, needful of the productivity and economical stream of goods produced elsewhere. They will become net importers for as long as the madness lasts. Good for everyone but them. They chose badly.
Philip Bradley says:
November 2, 2011 at 8:51 pm
Maybe Muller is trying to hard to be all things to all men, but I have yet to catch him in a deception, significant evasion, or unfounded claim.
Then you are being willfully blind.
Deception – Claiming to be a sceptic, when he is not. Permitting and encouraging the media interpretation that he is a “prominent former sceptic” who has “seen the light” about global warming.
Claiming that he never said that “you should no longer be a sceptic” when that is precisely what he said in his Op Ed.
Claiming that he finds fault with Algore’s tactics, while extolling those same deceptive methods as acceptable if they make people believe in ‘global warming’ and effect policy change.
Pretending that he is an unbiased observer with no preconceived notions, while the record demonstrates that he is a True Believer in global warming and desires policy change.
Pretending that he is an unbiased observer with no preconceived notions, while actively marketing himself through his company as a provider of potential solutions to ‘global warming’.
significant evasion – Trying to draw attention away from the fact that he did say “you should no longer be a sceptic”, by blaming the media for using a headline that accurately reflected exactly what he did in fact say.
Pretending that the media blitz PR campaign that he kicked off on Oct 20 was the same as pre-publication open review.
Pretending that his media blitz PR campaign was necessary to draw the attention of the IPPC to his papers for inclusion in AR5 – while simultaneously claiming that the media blitz was necessary to prevent the IPCC from sweeping his papers under the rug.
unfounded claim – Pretending that they have ruled out problems with station siting, UHI, methodologic err, and illegitimate adjustment with their unreviewed, unpublished, undocumented, alleged ‘research’.
Muller is a True Believer in global warming and brags that he has been for 30 years. He has called CO2 the worst pollutant in the history of man, and demands policy changes to solve that ‘problem’. His little Berkeley Kabuki theater production is not about serious scientific investigation, it is 100% about whitewashing over the legitimate bases for refusing to buy into the ‘global warming by CO2’ paradigm that he believes in and profits from.
Muller/BEST is to scientific investigation as Muir-Russel/UEA is to scandal inquiry.
It is all about providing plausbile justification for disregarding and marginalizing sceptics.
He just got beaten senseless by some pro boxer by the name of Curry. Honest, I saw it on the Internet. You guys should cut him a little slack. Ok, a LOT of slack.
/sarc
“The BEST flavor of the day”
So, what would Ben and Jerry call their ice cream flavor with Muller’s face on it?
What would some less AGW-friendly ice cream maker call it?
Would it melt faster?
JJ says:
November 2, 2011 at 10:28 pm
Excellent summary.
This guy is under a lot of strain. And on weak ice. A bad combo.
I don’t think he can recover. Not even with Mann’s ignorant fool for a lawyer.
Latitude says:
November 2, 2011 at 4:41 pm
Is this what you were thinking of?
Robert McCloskey quotes:
“I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I’m not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.”
Frederick Michael says:
November 2, 2011 at 7:04 pm
“I STRONGLY recommend we give Muller a Mulligan on this. It could pay off in the long run.”
…
“Muller is a potential ally. If we treat him decently (or even more than decently), he won’t forget it.”
I respectfully disagree with Frederick Michael. To update an old saying:
With friends like Muller, who needs enemies?
Heaven help the poor fellow when he hears Sasano’s revelations about what the IBUKU satellite found. ( http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=025_1320063001 ) Meltdown alarm!