The $620,000 project was launched by physics professor Richard Muller, a longtime critic of government-led climate studies, to address what he called “the legitimate concerns” of skeptics who believe that global warming is exaggerated.
But Muller unexpectedly told last week’s congressional hearing that previous groups who have documented rising temperature trends relied upon climate science that is “excellent…. We see a global warming trend that is very similar to that previously reported by the other groups.”
The hearing was called by leaders of the House Science & Technology Committee, who have expressed doubts about the integrity of climate science. It was one of several inquiries in recent weeks as the Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions from industrial plants and motor vehicles have come under strenuous attack in Congress.
Muller said his group was surprised by its findings, but he cautioned that the initial assessment is based on only 2% of the 1.6 billion measurements that will eventually be examined.
The Berkeley project’s biggest private backers, at $150,000, are the infamous oil billionaires Charles and David Koch. The Koch brothers are the nation’s most prominent funders of efforts to prevent curbs on the burning of fossil fuels, the largest contributor to planet-warming greenhouse gases. To read the full story, click here.
Say that again? Anti-global warming study inadvertently proves global warming
What happens when you launch an expensive study, funded by oil executives, that’s designed to prove global warming is a hoax — and the results prove the opposite?
I guess you lay low and hope no one notices.
Tally it up and the scientific team at University of California-Berkeley is 0 for 2.
In a lengthy story in the Los Angeles Times, the newspaper reports that the embarrassing outcome of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project came out at a congressional hearing where Republican lawmakers hoped to add ammunition for the global warming doubters.
The UC Berkeley physicists and statisticians set out to challenge the scientific consensus on global warming, but their data-crunching produced results nearly identical those underlying the prevailing view, according to the Times’ Margot Roosevelt.
