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:4, Interesting)
[Did it "confirm" it was caused by man?] Because that's the real issue that most skeptics have been questioning of late.
If the question of whether or not the warming is anthropogenic, then why the Climategate stink? The researchers involved in those studies (as referenced here) had no skin in the anthropogeny game, they were merely reporting on collected warming/cooling data. If self-proclaimed "skeptics" were not contentious about warming and instead only worried about the cause, there would not have been a scandal at all...
But there was.
A real important thing to note... (Score:3, Interesting)
A real important thing to note was that this was paid for privately- with a large chunk of that capital coming from Climate-change-deniers who wanted to prove that climate change wasn't happening.
Climate-change-deniers often say that government paid studies are fake because governments are encouraging the scientists to come back with fake positives to promote various policies... ... they can't say that anymore.
The debate of man's involvement will still go on- but STOP DENYING THE PROBLEM! Let's put that to bed now.
Finally. (Score:3, Interesting)
"But for Richard Muller, this free circulation also marks a return to how science should be done."
I've long been sceptical of 'man made global warming' because of the science involved. It didn't help that people would say, "Only university-trained scientists can understand the data", either. (Obviously an idiotic claim. Anyone with a brain can learn, and Universities are not a requirement for learning.)
But this is the moment I've been waiting for. Someone finally did the science openly and put all their cards on the table. They aren't hiding anything, including their funding sources. They even used new data that wasn't tainted and made sure to watch for the things sceptics have been critical of.
So, as a long-time AGW sceptic, I'm saying: Thank you for finally proving it.
Now if we can only find ways to counter or offset it that don't hurt the environment even more than we already are, we'll be in good shape.
Re:Did it "confirm" it was caused by man? (Score:2, Interesting)
the warming we see is consistent with anthropogenic climate change models
There is no such thing as an "anthropogenic climate change model". Either you are working with real data or you are not. Therefore it should not be a surprise that a study that looks at real data correlates strongly with another study that looks at real data. The whole "anthropogenic" question is a side-issue and has nothing to do with real world data. It's more what that data implies. However the implication has not been proven. In fact the only real proof we are likely to see is when all our steps to correct our anthropogenic causes fail miserably - then we will know that we were not to blame.
Re:Weather stations (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually that's one of the key issues addressed by the study. Climate scientists have been accounting for that effect pretty much forever, but the authors of the new study were dubious about the way it was handled, so they did their own treatment. They found it was insignificant.
Re:Points that need to be addressed (Score:3, Interesting)
Finally, I think it's important to note that if this study had come to the opposite conclusion, it would have been derided as quack science and laughed off of Slashdot.
Because for it to come to the opposite conclusion, it would probably have had to have been quack science. And before you accuse me of not wanting to challenge my "religion" of AGW, a couple of months ago when a report came out that claimed that warming was basically not happening, the first thing I thought was "wow, that's fantastic news. I hope they're right and not just partisan quacks." In case you missed that one, I'll leave it to you to guess if they were right or not.
Furthermore, the fact that the Koch brothers funded an apparently legitimate scientific study is unlikely to challenge the conception of most on this forum that they are a bunch of purely evil monsters, but it should.
Good on them. Now let's see if they're willing to act responsibly based on the results of the study they paid for.
--Jeremy