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).
The man comes across as very frenetic/ borderline psychopathic
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!
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Chuck Nolan says:
November 3, 2011 at 6:20 am
I don’t see any ‘colorful maps’.
I can’t find a link to anything but the story but no pix.
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CheifIO (E. M Smith) has a very good write up: http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/10/31/japanese-satellites-say-3rd-world-owes-co2-reparations-to-the-west/
Perhaps he can repost it here since Anthony is very busy..Hint, Hint
“But now let me explain why you should not be a skeptic, at least not any longer.”
Okay, he says “you should’nt be sceptic that the planet has warmed lately”?
He seems to imply that he was sceptic to this, but not anymore?
Wow, so he was among those that deny that the planet has warmed (by natural causes, and perhaps slightly, maybe 0.2 degees or so, nobody really knows, by manmade actions) , and now he isnt anymore?
Hmmmm. Strange. A very sceptical man, in other words. Denying natural climate change like that!
Can someone take that shovel away from him? I have not heard anyone twist and turn like that since my engineering days when someone had messed up!
Anthony/Judith, why get involved with a land only measurement? I honestly want to know! I still fail to see what the BEST paper can bring to a debate that is about Global Temperatures. Its simply muddying the waters and Muller certainly seems to have the rubber boots on.
Others seem to have the same opinion!
Steven McIntyre reports that “649 Berkeley stations lack information on latitude and longitude, including 145 BOGUS stations. 453 stations lack not only latitude and longitude, but even a name. Many such stations are located in the country “[Missing]“, but a large fraction are located in “United States”. Steve says: “I’m pondering how one goes about calculating spatial autocorrelation between two BOGUS stations with unknown locations.”
Now, this is simply land stations. Imagine where the BEST team would be had they also added in the spatial autocorrelation with the Ocean/Sea readings, that have appeared to have problems!
Brings to mind “The rain in……………” post
I think one thing that is being confused is thermal emissions and land use change. The only way to possibly separate such changes is to find out if the maximums and minimums have both gone up or only the maximum. Both will indicate urbanisation (thermal emissions and land use change) and maximums only would usually indicate land use change or deforestation in rural areas. Of course this may not always be the case as intensely farmed areas for examply would have irrigation which changes things yet again. Another point is that 60% plus of thermal emissions take place at the power source and this will often be rural.
Some here may be holding on to this too closely. I got about 20 or so comments into it and quit reading because the majority were making personal comments against Richard Muller. Perhaps your mothers never taught you about not saying anything about a person if you couldn’t find anything nice to say. If Dr Muller is flip flopping around with his story when speaking to the press or to a group, it will become self evident. It will be his reputation that suffers. If he is a publicity seeker, in the end, his own goals for BEST will be what suffer.
Another thing my mom tried to teach us was not to sweat the small stuff. When it comes right down to it, Dr Muller’s BEST press release and his WSJ article are nothing more than small stuff. So how about we let the Michael Mann’s of the world be the small, mean spirited ones.
James Sexton says:
November 2, 2011 at 8:53 pm
I’m not sure we have time to get him up to speed.
How we treat Muller will become part of the permanent record. Muller should appreciate it but, as many have pointed out, that may not amount to much. But our reputation for civility is, and always will be, a stark contrast with the alarmists. in the very long run, I expect the civility contrast to be part of the historians’ narrative.
I have a deep desire to see scientific debate handled more professionally, and not just with the AGW issue. All science would be better for it. Good science is often interdicted by scientists’ emotional baggage. There seems to be a correlation between being uncivil and being wrong. If future students are made aware of this correlation, they will become better scientists.
“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” – Max Planck
JohnWho says:
November 3, 2011 at 5:28 am
Thanks for the the link to the real paper. I’ve only had time for a quick scan but it looks like the liveleaks story was kind of an Emily Litella moment. The paper seems to be all about reducing the uncertainty of the emission estimates and not much about what the estimates actually are.
Oh, good heavens. Muller, before the study, proclaimed himself skeptical that the planet was warming. He is no longer skeptical about that, but reserves judgment about how much (not whether) human activity has to do with it. Then he hedges on that, saying that “well, the U.S. is not a big player in greenhouse gas emission compared to China and India,” That may be true, but is both an admission that greenhouse gas emissions play a role–and a convenient (kind of) defense for the anti-regulatory right. Real science always considers its positions “falsifiable” but the odds here are increasingly big that humans should cool it by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
[snip. No denigrating of our host. Further such references will get your entire comment deleted. ~dbs, mod.]
Not at all. He thinks some things are doubtful and others are not. He has been consistent about that.
Muller says, “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.”
He means there are good reason why you should not be skeptical tat the globe has warmed – that’s the direct quote (“global-warming skeptic”), and that’s what he goes on to explain in the part that follows.
There is a fundamental flaw in this rebranding of Muller as a pretend skeptic – the implication is that unless you agree with positions x y and z, you cannot be a true skeptic. But that’s tribalism, not skepticism. Muller finds some components of the debate dubious but not others. Muller thinks the hockey stick in broken. He pans Michael Mann. He discredited the official temp records and maligned the motives and competence of those who compile them. On other matters he is closer to Pielke Snrs position. For instance, he doesn’t doubt there is an atmospheric ‘greenhouse’ effect and that human activity can contribute to it (same with Spencer and Lindzen). He also says that hopw much humans contribute to that effect is more uncertain than the IPCC give out, but that notkbnowing doesn’t automate a complacent attitude (same view as Pielke Snr).
Skepticism on AGW is not an all or nothing proposal, and if one is to criticise Muller on it, then refer to precisely what he is/isn’t skeptical about, otherwise you are not being a good skeptic!
[MODERATOR’S NOTE: Barry, please check your e-mail. -REP]
Dr Muller does seem way over his head. Others are trading off on his reputation to interpret anything they want out of BEST. Dr. Muller does not help the situation in that he says that that isn’t what he said, but he doesn’t really seem upset that others used his words that way. When the stakes are so high, including spending trillions of dollars world wide, bankrupting nations, and keeping the third world away from modern “conveniences” such as refrigeration and clean water, this passivity does not help. The end Part 2 is the key to everything, where he says that whatever the US does in CO2 reduction basically doesn’t matter, because most of the CO2 will be produced by China and India.
As an aside, I downloaded the Professor’s course “Physics for Future Presidents” and listened to it on my iPod. Actually, it was fun to listen to with my 15 year old son, on long driving trips, and have discussions after. Whatever his screw up in dealing with the AGW crowd, I will always have a soft spot in my heart for him and the gift he gave me in this connection with my son.
This nonsense will not stop until the flow of money to it stops. The politicians will continue to throw taxpayers money at it as long as they think they can gain more power and tax us more. The UN has an agenda, the EU has an agenda and then British elite have an agenda.
However there are signs that the public in liberal democracies have begun to realize that their lives are being ruined by this and are getting angry. At least the British government is beginning to change direction on climate (catching up with some others perhaps?). This Muller thing can only help.