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Monday, April 04, 2011

Early research by major skeptic of government-backed studies supports global warming

In the debate over global warming and climate change, it seems rare that one side manages to convince the other of anything, but now one skeptic of government-sponsored climate studies says his  preliminary research supports the prevailing view that the earth is warming.

University of California-Berkeley physics professor Richard Muller recently released data to support the prevailing global warming view. Muller started the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project "to address what he called 'the legitimate concerns' of skeptics who believe that global warming is exaggerated," Margot Roosevelt of the Los Angeles Times reports. That got him called to a Congressional hearing controlled by Republicans, at which Muller unexpectedly said his preliminary findings showed "a global warming trend that is very similar to that previously reported by the other groups."

While Muller's findings are based on just 2 percent of the total expected data, he called "excellent" the research "of the three principal groups that have analyzed the temperature trends underlying climate science," Roosevelt reports. "The Berkeley project's biggest private backer, at $150,000, is the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation," Roosevelt writes, noting "oil billionaires Charles and David Koch are the nation's most prominent funders of efforts to prevent curbs on the burning of fossil fuels." Muller told Congress that estimates of human-caused warming still need to be "improved" and further data-crunching "could bring our current agreement into disagreement." (Read more)

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