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).
Warming, Oscillating and heavy weather, maybe he is not a RINO but a NINO
seriously though, the fellow needs to understand that communication and PR are skills. Skills he lacks
The “skeptic” label for Muller at most only could apply to his opinion about The Team. “What they did was shameful” – and that’s the sum total and the end of where his “skepticism” takes him.. It’s not skepticism about the temp records, and never was.He never stopped believing that CO2- driven AGW disaster is history that hasn’t happened yet..
I’ve looked at both videos and read the WSJ article and feel the inconsistencies have been exaggerated. When he says “you should not be a skeptic” he is referring to his own area of study – the temperature record, though he does not make this clear. But few sceptics have doubted that temperatures have risen – the debate concerning the record was the extent to which the published record was in error due to artefacts in the selection and processing of the data. To some extent the BEST scientist have a slain a dragon that, if not dead, was clearly dying.
The other big topics are whether the increase in temperature is anthropogenic and whether the effect will harmful or beneficent. On these issues Muller is clear that scepticism has a valid contribution to make. This is a position few scientists in the climate debate are prepared to take.
I welcome his contribution.
This man Muller is giving himself wedgies from all different directions, that usually results in being snookered in a corner with no way out but up. The only person that I have heard about that up is an option is Superman. The Ibuku satellite puts paid to all this CO2 none sense, it proves that it is not our fault.
But was he ever skeptical about the temperature rising ? Not at all. He was always convinced – in fact, action against it has been his business.
One could hope that he did not found the business based on what he thought was possibly untrue ?
A. Weasel.
Responding to Allencic:
Because there is so much govt. funding at stake. Literally billions. For most of the rent seeking scientists out there, that is worth lying for. And because there is so much A list social acclaim and media acclaim at stake….
Muller’s skepticism, is that he doubts that The Team has adequately explained things to the real skeptics.That’s his skepticism on the subject of AGW.
Steve C says:
November 2, 2011 at 11:44 pm
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!
Thanks for the link. This sounds almost unbelievable, but if it holds up it could be a real game changer. It should be very interesting to watch as this develops.
Mods; you might want to alert Anthony to this link. It seems well worth a post of it’s own.
It looks as if Muller had forgotten the first law of holes!
I cannot know Muller’s intentions.
I do know that the statement trashing climate change skepticism was delivered into a very loud PA system turned up to MAX and that the statements indicating that he would “never” trash climate change skepticism were made into a little tiny PA system with the volume set to 1.
Maybe intentions don’t matter.
Dave Wendt, the video might be misleading in that it zooms a graph showing all the green are for one season, while discussing overall results in an ambiguous way.
Does Muller have a memory problem?
Dave Wendt says:
November 3, 2011 at 3:24 am
Steve C says:
November 2, 2011 at 11:44 pm
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!
Thanks for the link. This sounds almost unbelievable, but if it holds up it could be a real game changer. It should be very interesting to watch as this develops.
Mods; you might want to alert Anthony to this link. It seems well worth a post of it’s own.
He’s been aware of it for a few days – it was posted in the “Tips & Notes” section.
The actual paper mentioned in the article is here: (pdf)
http://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/sola/7/0/161/_pdf
As a WSJ subscriber, I don’t see that at all. What makes you believe the WSJ has a vested interested as an AGW trade journal?
“But now let me explain why you should not be a skeptic, at least not any longer.” Richard Muller.
When asked about this statement, Muller replies
“I never said you shouldn’t be a skeptic. I never said that.”
Oh, yes you did. You wrote the Op-Ed piece in the WSJ – they are your words. To try to distinguish between reasons why one should not be a skeptic and the suggestion that one shouldn’t be a skeptic (an ethical statement) is as bad as the worst examples of Jesuitical casuistry I’ve ever seen.
Steve C says:
November 2, 2011 at 11:44 pm
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!
————–
I don’t see any ‘colorful maps’.
I can’t find a link to anything but the story but no pix.
Samurai November 2, 2011 at 8:12 pm
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.
No. The 1979-2011 trend is less positive than the (say) 1979-2001 trend, so there has been a trend change. I’d be amazed if Muller would disagree with this. When he or any other scientist says that the past 10-15 years are “not enough,” he means that they haven’t changed the trend by enough to make for a strong challenge to the claim that the globe is warming over the long term. See the difference?
I wouldn’t be harsh on Muller. I’d just be appropriately cautious about what he says. You could ask for a less flappable character, but you have to take into account that global warming is hard to talk about for a person who thinks both sides have good points.
Not wishing to get embroiled in the warming has stalled argument, I point out that La Nina continues to bite.and according to the stellite data the October anomaly is 0.11degC. That is a big reduction over the September anomaly which was 0,29degC. If this fall in temperatures continues it will not be long before the anomaly is close to zero. It will be interesting to see the November data when this is out in early December.
As I’ve said previously, the man is a vile hypocrite. He’s been caught spouting outrageously obviously contradictions.
Aside from his hypocrisy, he has proven that he’s dishonest: 1) the way he treated Anthony in violating the process they agreed to, 2) going to press before completion of peer review, 3) his backdated “pre-print library” rationalization nonsense, 4) refusal to release final data, 5) stating he went to only one media outlet, while orchestrating an entire media campaign.
He’s also biased: 1) his use of “anthropogenic era” in the paper, 2) his statement about this work being included by the IPCC, 3) his flagrant failure to issue a statement of full disclosure regarding the work his company does and it’s vested interest in a finding supportive of AGW, 4) his failure to disclose his association and collaboration with his activist daughter in coordinating the media campaign.
This is not merely a singular indiscretion. It is a whole series of flagrantly dishonest acts and violations of scientific norms.
If a grad student or entry-level professor had done any one of these things, his career would be over.
Personally, at this point, I would absolutely not cut him a break or give him yet another chance, nor collaborate with him in any way. Even if he were to issue an apology, I’d would not believe for a second that it was sincere. He’s dishonest.
What I just said leaves out the matter of what he did with Anthony’s data – I mean, the premature publicizing or whatever. For that, maybe, it’s legitimate to be harsh on him.
There’s also the fact that the body of his op-ed (as opposed to the title) says that you shouldn’t be a skeptic any longer, but I’m willing to attribute his contradiction of that in the interview to confusion.
Chuck Nolan says:
November 3, 2011 at 6:20 am
Steve C says:
November 2, 2011 at 11:44 pm
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!
————–
I don’t see any ‘colorful maps’.
I can’t find a link to anything but the story but no pix.
Chuck –
I provided a link to the actual paper, above.
Enjoy.
If J Curry is simply unable to process the facts here, she is sinking herself.
My take on it is that she felt guilty, after coming down hard.
Then she was far far too giving, and damaged herself by way of repair, in offering an unconditional approval of Muller and of Best.
It looks like she had zero control and never even got to read the manuscript before release.
Ron Manley says:
“I’ve looked at both videos and read the WSJ article and feel the inconsistencies have been exaggerated. When he says “you should not be a skeptic” he is referring to his own area of study – the temperature record, though he does not make this clear.”
If he had merely had a slip of the pen, and failed to explain himself adequately in his Op Ed, then when that was pointed out he he would have dealt with the issue by
1) Saying “I misspoke”, and apologizing
2) re-running his media blitz list, issuing a retraction, and actively countering the “misperception” that his “misstatements” had made. He would also take that opportunity to clear up the “inadvertant confusion” the media has over his status as a sceptic, and retract some of the “accidental overstatements” regarding the conclusions of his “research”.
He did not do that.
1) Instead of saying “I misspoke”, he lied and said “I never said that.”
2) Instead of saying issuing a retraction and clarification for all of the “misstatements”, “misperceptions”, and “indavertant overstatements” that are all over every headline and article of every media outlet used by his PR campaign, he has he spun the issue by blaming the problem on the WSJ. He did this by calling attention to the WSJ headline and claiming that they wrote it without his knowledge or consent, and telling the lie that the headline doesnt reflect what he said. He did that, rather than acknowledging that the issue was with the words that HE WROTE, that the WSJ got it right, and so did the hundreds of other media outlets that accurately interpreted his media blitz message the exact same way.
This man is not confused. He is not making errors. He is playing politics. His goal is not science, his goal is countering scientific objection to ‘global warming’ theology.
Ron Cram says:
November 2, 2011 at 10:08 pm
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…..
_________________________________
There is no doubt but that He IS Machiavellian if you research him.
This guy is as innocent as a fox with feathers and blood all over his face. He just made a miscalculation in how FAST and how FAR the blog-o-sphere would carry word of his unscrupulous behavior and that Dr. Curry would do a bit of waffling.
He expected the print media and TV to be the overwhelming news carrier and he miscalculate, that is all. Now he is trying to back pedal a bit.
He is President and his daughter is CEO of Muller & Assoc. (Do not forget private corporations are a perfect cover for bribes as “Consulting fees”.)
From Muller & Assoc.