Skeptic NOW Agrees That Global Warming IS Real

Skeptic finds he now agrees global warming is real

Of course our climate expert Glen Beck will label this guy as a "nut job" and the idiots who follow his discourses will agree....

WASHINGTON (AP) — The relentless, weather-gone-crazy type of heat that has blistered the United States and other parts of the world in recent years is so rare that it can't be anything but man-made global warming, says a new statistical analysis from a top government scientist.
The
research by a man often called the "godfather of global warming" says
that the likelihood of such temperatures occurring from the 1950s
through the 1980s was rarer than 1 in 300. Now, the odds are closer to 1
in 10, according to the study by NASA scientist James Hansen. He says that statistically what's happening is not random or normal, but pure and simple climate change.
"This is not some scientific theory. We are now experiencing scientific fact," Hansen told The Associated Press in an interview.
Hansen
is a scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New
York and a professor at Columbia University. But he is also a strident
activist who has called for government action to curb greenhouse gases
for years. While his study was published online Saturday in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, it is unlikely to sway
opinion among the remaining climate change skeptics.
However, several climate scientists praised the new work.
In
a blunt departure from most climate research, Hansen's study — based on
statistics, not the more typical climate modeling — blames these three
heat waves purely on global warming:
—Last year's devastating Texas-Oklahoma drought.
—The 2010 heat waves in Russia and the Middle East, which led to thousands of deaths.
—The 2003 European heat wave blamed for tens of thousands of deaths, especially among the elderly in France.
The
analysis was written before the current drought and record-breaking
temperatures that have seared much of the United States this year. But
Hansen believes this too is another prime example of global warming at
its worst.
The new research makes the case for the severity of
global warming in a different way than most scientific studies and uses
simple math instead of relying on complex climate models or an
understanding of atmospheric physics. It also doesn't bother with the
usual caveats about individual weather events having numerous causes.
The
increase in the chance of extreme heat, drought and heavy downpours in
certain regions is so huge that scientists should stop hemming and
hawing, Hansen said. "This is happening often enough, over a big enough
area that people can see it happening," he said.
Scientists
have generally responded that it's impossible to say whether single
events are caused by global warming, because of the influence of natural
weather variability.
However, that position has been shifting in
recent months, as other studies too have concluded climate change is
happening right before our eyes.
Hansen hopes his new study will
shift people's thinking about climate change and goad governments into
action. He wrote an op-ed piece that appeared online Friday in the
Washington Post.
"There is still time to act and avoid a worsening climate, but we are wasting precious time," he wrote.
The
science in Hansen's study is excellent "and reframes the question,"
said Andrew Weaver, a climate scientist at the University of Victoria in
British Columbia who was a member of the Nobel Prize-winning
international panel of climate scientists that issued a series of
reports on global warming.
"Rather than say, 'Is this because of
climate change?' That's the wrong question. What you can say is, 'How
likely is this to have occurred with the absence of global warming?'
It's so extraordinarily unlikely that it has to be due to global
warming," Weaver said.
For years scientists have run complex
computer models using combinations of various factors to see how likely a
weather event would happen without global warming and with it. About 25
different aspects of climate change have been formally attributed to
man-made greenhouse gases in dozens of formal studies. But these are
generally broad and non-specific, such as more heat waves in some
regions and heavy rainfall in others.
Another
upcoming study by Kevin Trenberth, climate analysis chief at the
National Center for Atmospheric Research, links the 2010 Russian heat
wave to global warming by looking at the underlying weather that caused
the heat wave. He called Hansen's paper an important one that helps
communicate the problem.
But
there is bound to be continued disagreement. Previous studies had been
unable to link the two, and one by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration concluded that the Russian drought, which also led to
devastating wildfires, was not related to global warming.
White
House science adviser John Holdren praised the paper's findings in a
statement. But he also said it is true that scientists can't blame
single events on global warming: "This work, which finds that extremely
hot summers are over 10 times more common than they used to be,
reinforces many other lines of evidence showing that climate change is occurring and that it is harmful."
Skeptical
scientist John Christy of the University of Alabama at Huntsville said
Hansen shouldn't have compared recent years to the 1950s-1980s time
period because he said that was a quiet time for extremes.
But
Derek Arndt, director of climate monitoring for the federal government's
National Climatic Data Center, said that range is a fair one and often
used because it is the "golden era" for good statistics.
Granger
Morgan, head of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon
University, called Hansen's study "an important next step in what I
expect will be a growing set of statistically-based arguments."
In
a landmark 1988 study, Hansen predicted that if greenhouse gas
emissions continue, which they have, Washington, D.C., would have about
nine days each year of 95 degrees or warmer in the decade of the 2010s.
So far this year, with about four more weeks of summer, the city has had
23 days with 95 degrees or hotter temperatures.
Hansen says now he underestimated how bad things would get.
And
while he hopes this will spur action including a tax on the burning of
fossil fuels, which emit carbon dioxide, a key greenhouse gas, others
doubt it.


By SETH BORENSTEIN - AP Science Writer



WASHINGTON (AP) — A prominent physicist and skeptic of global warming spent two years trying to find out if mainstream climate scientists were wrong. In the end, he determined they were right: Temperatures really are rising rapidly.

The study of the world's surface temperatures by Richard Muller was partially bankrolled by a foundation connected to global warming deniers. He pursued long-held skeptic theories in analyzing the data. He was spurred to action because of "Climategate," a British scandal involving hacked emails of scientists.

Yet he found that the land is 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) warmer than in the 1950s. Those numbers from Muller, who works at the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, match those by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA.

He said he went even further back, studying readings from Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. His ultimate finding of a warming world, to be presented at a conference Monday, is no different from what mainstream climate scientists have been saying for decades.

What's different, and why everyone from opinion columnists to cable TV 's satirical"The Daily Show" is paying attention is who is behind the study.

One-quarter of the $600,000 to do the research came from the Charles Koch Foundation, whose founder is a major funder of skeptic groups and the conservative tea party movement. The Koch brothers, Charles and David, run a large privately held company involved in oil and other industries, producing sizable greenhouse gas emissions.

Muller's research team carefully examined two chief criticisms by skeptics. One is that weather stations are unreliable; the other is that cities, which create heat islands, were skewing the temperature analysis.

"The skeptics raised valid points and everybody should have been a skeptic two years ago," Muller said in a telephone interview. "And now we have confidence that the temperature rise that had previously been reported had been done without bias."

Muller said that he came into the study "with a proper skepticism," something scientists "should always have. I was somewhat bothered by the fact that there was not enough skepticism" before.

There is no reason now to be a skeptic about steadily increasing temperatures, Muller wrote recently in The Wall Street Journal's editorial pages, a place friendly to climate change skeptics. Muller did not address in his research the cause of global warming. The overwhelming majority of climate scientists say it's man-made from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil. Nor did his study look at ocean warming, future warming and how much of a threat to mankind climate change might be.

Still, Muller said it makes sense to reduce the carbon dioxide created by fossil fuels.

"Greenhouse gases could have a disastrous impact on the world," he said. Still, he contends that threat is not as proven as the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says it is.

On Monday, Muller was taking his results — four separate papers that are not yet published or peer-reviewed, but will be, he says — to a conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico, expected to include many prominent skeptics as well as mainstream scientists.

"Of course he'll be welcome," said Petr Chylek of Los Alamos National Lab, a noted skeptic and the conference organizer. "The purpose of our conference is to bring people with different views on climate together, so they can talk and clarify things."

Shawn Lawrence Otto, author of the book "Fool Me Twice" that criticizes science skeptics, said Muller should expect to be harshly treated by global warming deniers. "Now he's considered a traitor. For the skeptic community, this isn't about data or fact. It's about team sports. He's been traded to the Indians. He's playing for the wrong team now."

And that started on Sunday, when a British newspaper said one of Muller's co-authors, Georgia Tech climate scientist Judith Curry, accused Muller of another Climategate-like scandal and trying to "hide the decline" of recent global temperatures.

The Associated Press contacted Curry on Sunday afternoon and she said in an email that Muller and colleagues "are not hiding any data or otherwise engaging in any scientifically questionable practice."

The Muller "results unambiguously show an increase in surface temperature since 1960," Curry wrote Sunday. She said she disagreed with Muller's public relations efforts and some public comments from Muller about there no longer being a need for skepticism.

Muller's study found that skeptics' concerns about poor weather station quality didn't skew the results of his analysis because temperature increases rose similarly in reliable and unreliable weather stations. He also found that while there is an urban heat island effect making cities warmer, rural areas, which are more abundant, are warming, too.

Among many climate scientists, the reaction was somewhat of a yawn.

"After lots of work he found exactly what was already known and accepted in the climate community," said Jerry North, a Texas A&M University atmospheric sciences professor who headed a National Academy of Sciences climate science review in 2006. "I am hoping their study will have a positive impact. But some folks will never change."

Chris Field, a Carnegie Institution scientist who is chief author of an upcoming intergovernmental climate change report, said Muller's study "may help the world's citizens focus less on whether climate change is real and more on smart options for addressing it."

Some of the most noted scientific skeptics are no longer saying the world isn't warming. Instead, they question how much of it is man-made, view it as less a threat and argue it's too expensive to do something about, Otto said.

Skeptical MIT scientist Richard Lindzen said it is a fact and nothing new that global average temperatures have been rising since 1950, as Muller shows. "It's hard to see how any serious scientist (skeptical, denier or believer — frequently depending on the exact question) will view it otherwise," he wrote in an email.

In a brief email statement, the Koch Foundation noted that Muller's team didn't examine ocean temperature or the cause of warming and said it will continue to fund such research. "The project is ongoing and entering peer review, and we're proud to support this strong, transparent research," said foundation spokeswoman Tonya Mullins.