Bill Clinton Praises His New Climate Change Hero
Excerpt:
I happened to be sitting next to Dr. Muller last week, and although he was whisked backstage by some big secret service staffers after Clinton’s speech, he agreed to answer a few Fresh Dialogues questions by email about his research and how he feels about hero worship by number 42.
You might be surprised to learn three things about Dr. Muller:
1. He says Hurricane Sandy cannot be attributed to climate change.
2. He suggests individually reducing our carbon footprint is pointless — we need to “think globally and act globally,” by encouraging the switch from coal to gas power in China and developing nations. He’s a fan of “clean fracking.”
3. He says climate skeptics deserve our respect, not our ridicule.
Muller said he hopes that Berkeley Earth will be able to coordinate with the Clinton Foundation on their mutual goal of mitigating global warming.
h/t to Marc Morano. Full story here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/blackberry/p.html?id=2278509
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I can’t say I disagree with his points. While we’ve had our issues, it is nice to see #3 pointed out. – Anthony
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Interesting and a bit unexpected.
Either, “Truth to power,” or his daughter’s business is in for big money.
Is Muller’s middle name ‘Sybil’?
What part of pulling another BEST practices double cross isn’t blindingly obvious in this latest “outreach?”
Dr. Muller is being a politician and protecting his organization and his job. Notice he still haven’t moderated the AGW mantra just altered the message to make it more palatable.
Definitely a climate science, half assed effort and suck up power to get to the trough.
A shining example of the ethics of climatology.
It looks like he saved the “BEST” for Last.
Just discovered this: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/02/alarmist-fact-checking-street-lights-dont-melt-at-115f/
OK. You got me. I was wrong and silly. D’oh.
But here’s the question – what’s good for the goose, and what’s good for the gander?
“He says climate skeptics deserve our respect, not our ridicule.”
Sure, respect when you’re being genuinely skeptical, and not when you are being ridiculous.
Perhaps he’s noticed that we’ve noticed and that others have noticed that we’ve noticed.
Is that clear? 😉
Muller said he hopes that Berkeley Earth will be able to coordinate with the Clinton Foundation on their mutual goal of mitigating global warming.
It is time for a new goal. That one has been taken care of already.
Here is what has happened with RSS lately:
The negative slope for RSS is since January 1997 or 15 years, 11 months (goes to November).
However in view of the significance of the 16 years lately, I would like to elaborate on RSS. The slope for 15 years and 11 months from January 1997 on RSS is -4.1 x 10^-4. But the slope for 16 years and 0 months from December 1996 is +1.3 x 10^-4. So since the magnitude of the negative slope since January 1997 is 3 times than the magnitude of the positive slope since December 1996, I believe I can say that since a quarter of the way through December 1996, in other words from December 8, 1996 to December 7, 2012, the slope is 0. This is 16 years. Therefor RSS is 192/204 or 94% of the way to Santer’s 17 years.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1996.9/plot/rss/from:1997/trend/plot/rss/from:1996.9/trend
“mutual goal of mitigating global warming.”
Uh Huh, as if we can do that any way.
Is Muller hinting he will be flip-flopping soon? Or is he just keeping his options open?
You got to be really shifty these days, if you want to keep the funding coming in.
One day lapping up to Koch, the next day lapping up to Clinton.
Tomorrow, a tour with Madonna??
“The temperature of the Earth has been rising in a way that closely matches the rise in carbon dioxide. The history of solar activity does not match the data at all.”
Ok, I’d agree that the stratospheric cooling suggests that some of the warming is due to CO2 increase but to claim there’s no correlation to solar activity is absurd. Why has it always got to be all or nothing? Muller talks about objectivity but doesn’t display much.
ok but… 2. He suggests individually reducing our carbon footprint is pointless…
So what’s that about? Does he mean it’s too hard to convice individuals to choose the “correct” thing to do and that it’s easier to force them to do it by global/government directive?
I appreciate the 3rd point, but he still sounds like a statist to me; intent on seeing his “reduced carbon footprint” future implemented regardless of the science and regardless of what is best for humanity.
Slightly OT, but speaking of temperature series, where are the November 2012 numbers from UAH and RSS?
Today he is skeptical about Sandy.
He’ll convert when the time is ripe.
Sorry, I don’t buy it. Something is up. Their push to tackle the problem “globally” is still on. They’ll still be pushing for a centralized government and for the UN to take over.
Someone pointed out the other day (sorry, I forget who) that the IPCC were backing down ONLY to appear more “reasonable” and to tone down their show of alarmism. I think this display is more of the same.
So: WARNING. Watch your backs. I mean it. In the days or weeks to come, the extremists on this issue will be waving around whatever evidence they can pounce on – or make up – proclaiming that we are the unreasonable ones and that the world, therefore, should listen to them.
I realize that, given Hillary’s postion, the Clinton’s investment portfolio is probably in a blind trust but I am curious about whether or not they have followed any investment advice from his green Veep and put money in to “green” companies or funds.
This is not actually any different from what Muller states in his recent book Energy for Future Presidents. Here is his self-described “Executive summary” of what a president needs to know about global warming:
“1. Most of the evidence, as presented to the public, is exaggerated or distorted.
2. Global warming is indeed real and dangerous, and it is worthy of serious effort to stop.
3. Assuming the theory is correct (it may not be), none of the well-known proposals to stop global warming that have been made have any realistic chance of working, even if they are fully implemented.”
Note that his willingness to allow that the theory may be wrong rather vitiates his second point–how would we know it is dangerous if the theory is wrong?
He also points out that by 2040, “China could be the most economically powerful nation on earth, by far”–at which point, “the United States and the rest of the wealthy world are no longer in control.”
He concludes that “the best bet… might be to encourage a worldwide shift from coal to natural gas.”
He took a few shots at the Hockey Stick, Al Gore, and 350.org as well, stating about the latter “It is ironic that a movement named after a number actually ignores the numbers.”
All in all, if he could replace a few of Obama’s advisers, it would be a change for the better.
Nir Shaviv has a post on BEST up: http://sciencebits.com/WorstBEST
Given that Muller is a smart guy, and having met him, I know that he is an honest scientist (and an original one too), all I can say is that he is not aware of this data which unequivocally proves that the sun has a large effect on the climate.
But this however doesn’t explain why the Berkeley group didn’t see any correlation. So why didn’t they?
…
Given the above, it is clear why the Berkeley group obtain a high climate sensitivity. If all they have is just CO2, then yeah, you need a high sensitivity which is about 3°C per CO2 doubling in order to explain 20th century warming. However, they are missing other forcings. For example, the indirect aerosol effect can increase their sensitivity (because it cools, but nobody knows by how much), while if you take the sun into account, the models prefer smaller sensitivities. Moreover, if one takes a real model which includes the diffusive components (and thus produce the lags/low pass filter behavior) one finds an even better fit with a preferentially low sensitivity. Now I must say that they did point out in their paper that they only used CO2 to proxy all the anthropogenic activity and therefore the sensitivity should be modified, however, I am quite sure that people will start quoting their number as the real climate sensitivity with the ridiculously small error that they obtained. You have been warned.
To summarize, I think the BEST methodology towards reconstructing the temperature has its merits. However, the conclusions from their follow up analyses are unfounded. This is primarily because they used modeling which is too simple (and with it they killed the solar effect) and unphysical (response to volcanic forcing is much smaller than the response to CO2 forcing).
Don’t get me wrong. I do think it is good that independent analyses are done to reconstruct the temperature. The response in the climate community was luke warm at best, partially because an “outsider” group came an entered their own territory. This just proves that independent analyses are important.
Ohoh.Either his off sprongs business needs more money,or he is angling for an Amassadorship when Hillary gets in. I trust this guy about as far as I can spit into a hundred knot headwind.He’s TOO namby-pamby on the fence.
In my opinion Muller is a charlatan from the get go. His game is feed off the climate change industry by appearing to be “reasonable” but he has always been in it for the cash. Don’t be surprised when he begins to promote “reasonable” geoengineering solutions. http://jer-skepticscorner.blogspot.com/2011/04/best-novim-and-other-solution.html
If you think Bill Clinton is committed to climate change then you’ll think Richard Muller is committed to climate change.
Michael Cohen says:
December 11, 2012 at 6:31 pm
Slightly OT, but speaking of temperature series, where are the November 2012 numbers from UAH and RSS?
Just RSS and GISS have the November numbers up. But why is WFT down?
For more details:
With the GISS anomaly for November at 0.68, the average for the first eleven months of the year is (0.32 + 0.37 + 0.45 + 0.54 + 0.67 + 0.56 + 0.46 + 0.58 + 0.62 + 0.68 + 0.68)/11 = 0.54. This would rank 9th if it stayed this way. 2010 was the warmest at 0.63. The highest ever monthly anomalies were in March of 2002 and January of 2007 when it reached 0.89.
With the RSS anomaly for November at 0.195, the average for the first eleven months of the year is (-0.060 -0.123 + 0.071 + 0.330 + 0.231 + 0.337 + 0.290 + 0.255 + 0.383 + 0.294 + 0.195)/11 = 0.200. This would rank 11th if it stayed this way. 1998 was the warmest at 0.55. The highest ever monthly anomaly was in April of 1998 when it reached 0.857.
Clinton and Muller: Fabians to the Bolsheviks. Both want us in the same place, just have differing paths to get us there. Funny, I was quite literally just pondering such matters. Call me a skeptic, or a cynic, but this type has a track record.