Global Warming 'Confirmed' By Independent Study 967
chrb writes "The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project — an independent study of Earth's historical temperature record partly funded by climate skeptics, including the Koch brothers — has released preliminary results that show the same warming trend as previous research. Project leader and physics professor Richard Muller, of the University of California, has stated that he was 'surprised' at the close agreement, and it 'confirms that these studies were done carefully.' The study also found that warming in the temperature record was not caused by poor quality weather monitoring stations — thus rejecting a frequent claim of skeptics. Climate skeptic Stephen McIntyre has previously said 'anything that [Muller] does will be well done.'"
Re:Did it "confirm" it was caused by man? (Score:5, Funny)
As I sit in my electrically lit office, using my table top computation device, drinking water delivered from the ground after being treated with sanitizing chemicals to make it safe to drink, sitting in a chair composed of materials derived from multi-step chemical synthesis and processing, reading your electronically delivered tripe sent from hundreds of miles or more away, I can see how the misconception that science works could be so common. Thanks for informing me.
Re:Did it "confirm" it was caused by man? (Score:3, Funny)
There needs to be an option to mod a post -1 "Doesn't understand how science works".
And just in case you are still confused, I'm talking about ALL science. The way modeling is handled in climate science is exactly the same way it's handled in all other sciences. Feel free to claim that the modern scientific method doesn't work. But you'll sound even more like an idiot than you already do.
No peer review, not "science" yet (Score:4, Funny)
It is inappropriate to draw any conclusions from this research because it has not yet been peer reviewed. Watts of wattsupwiththat.com fame was shown a draft, and found some problems with the study, specifically with the selection of weather siting data. No doubt there will be other issues that need to be corrected, that's the whole point of having peer reviews. Everybody wants to skip to the end, but we need to let the process work.
You'd think that the /. crowd would be a little more sophisticated about this kind of thing than the average MSM reader, but apparently not in this case, given the comments I've read thus far.
Re:Did it "confirm" it was caused by man? (Score:5, Funny)
Is it perhaps because they feel that the remedial actions required to address the findings could potentially negatively impact their lifestyles?
A rise in sea levels will affect their 'lifestyles' a couple of orders of magnitude more. It might even shut down Slashdot, the Cheeto factory and the WOW servers...think of that!
(And I'm not even joking...)