Climate sceptic Richard Muller changes his mind, how many more do you think will be convinced by this study?

Sure, skeptics can and do change their minds when new evidence is discovered.

The problem is this is 2012. Global warming's old news. Most of the real skeptics have already adjusted their views to match the evidence by now.

So I don't see a lot of minds being changed. But that has nothing to do with the reliability of the evidence, which remains as overwhelming as ever. It's because real climate skeptics are a rare breed in 2012, vastly outnumbered by deniers, cranks, and conspiracy theorists who think they're skeptics.

Skeptics do change their minds, but denialists never do. Madd Maxx just calls Richard Muller a liar, just like he says about everyone who tells the truth. And what does his alter Ego, Sagebrush say?

<Next thing they will have Jesus converting.>

Jesus knows about global warming. He is the one who is testing us. (John 1:1-3)

<Look at the chart of the 1990 IPCC report Section 7 page 202.>

I thought that the IPCC was Satan. Anyway, why are you using a 22 year old schematic diagram of climate in central England. Since then, scientists have been studying global climate.( As tempting as it is to post a link to MBH-98 to piss off the denialists.)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb...

TEACHER: "What is 2+2?"

TOM: "4."

DICKIE (also known by his nickname, Richard): "Prove it!"

[ Tom holds up two fingers and then two more. Dickie mutters something about Tom hiding the decline of his finger size from index to pinkie. Two back-of-the-room F student bullies start a chant: "Math is a hoax, math is a hoax." The teacher cuts them off by calling on Harry who has had his hand up. ]

HARRY: "Watch!"

[With the teacher's permission, Harry rolls out the classroom tape measure, and walks from 1 foot to 2 to 3 to 4, while saying out loud, "1 and 2 and 1 and 2."]

DICKIE: "That's no proof. Tom and Harry have only shown that in two special cases 2+2=4. We can't trust that. They're alarmists, anyway. Remember when they said kids who jaywalked across the street, 'cause they were in a hurry 'cause they were late for school, might get hit by cars? Nobody's been hit by a car. I'm going to figure out now really and truly once and for all if 2+2=4, everywhere and always, or not."

[He swaggers to the front of the class, grabs a piece of chalk, and in great flourishing writing across the whole blackboard, proves that: two plus three cubed minus the square root of six hundred and twenty five equals four. The two backroom bullies applaud and hoist Dickie up on top of the teacher's desk.]

DICKE: "See! Much if not most of what we've heard about math before now has been speculative, exaggerated or just plain wrong. But my conclusions are totally different, and based on intensive sophisticated research that goes farther than Tom and Harry did. Obviously I know much more about this than anyone else, and I should be teaching this class!"

[In answer to the question: This classroom episode does not turn flunking students into passing students, or make them less likely to recite prefab bogus excuses whenever they get an F on a quiz.]

Here is the press release: http://berkeleyearth.org/pdf/berkeley-earth-press-...

I'll give you a list of what their probable excuses will be:

- 250 years? That was way before the industrial revolution began!

- They have been bought out by communists.

- It's just another ploy by the greenies to take more of our tax money! (Insert random out-of-context quotes)

I think that about sums it up. There is no dealing with these types of people. They will continue stating what they state regardless of what the evidence shows either because they are afraid that it may cost them money or their belief that "God will protect us."

Edit: And I'm sure every one of those that deny AGW is occurring would state these same arguments. There have been two thus far that have stated that this occurred before the industrial revolution began. When in reality the industrial revolution was a period in history that began in 1760. Apparently not only do they fail at science they also fail at history.

http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1981/2/...

Doubtful they'll accept this though claiming either that there was not enough CO2 to cause a spike in temperatures, though if you look at the graph there was no 'spike' at this time, or they will just state that universities and modern history was written by those in power and with agendas. There really is no reasoning with them.

deniers will find something to complain about, Muller is now part of the worldwide conspiracy.

there are some legitimate problems with some of the Muller paper

Real science is about weighing the evidence and form a conclusion, sometimes mistakes are made or better or improved evidence comes along.

Many thought the Neanderthal was extinct but Mr. Tzu provides credibly evidence otherwise, although really that is being a little unfair to Neanderthal who are now thought to have been quite intelligent.

Hard core denier experts are not motivated by science of facts but by cheques from the Heartland Institute as long as those keep coming they will continue to make their absurd statements.

Lord Moctingtone will continue to make up his ridiculous conspiracy theories blaming billionaires and nazi's or whatever else takes his fancy, calling young teens hitler youth for instance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdhI_ccw3_M

Richard Muller may have been a skeptic, but like a real skeptic he went with the evidence, denier are not the least bit interested in evidence and just try to dismiss any evidence as part of, whatever this weeks global conspiracy is, be it Gore , communists, greens, government or little green men from mars.

The fact remains when it comes to scientific position, deniers have not one science group that agree with them, they have a handful of "experts" like Lindzen and quite a few none experts like Watts and Mockingtone, they will make claims about petitions etc but ask them were these people are and you will get stony silence, as their fabled petition is over a decade old and they have never been able to get even a small portion of the numbers they claim to show up at any event, anywhere.

I've seen Watts perform live and it was pathetic, there were a number of young scientists in the audience and they picked his nonsense apart over a two hour period, he had no answer to real science, this is different to his own forum were he simply deletes responses that question his knowledge or show glaring mistakes he has made, he has done this to me several times.

Watts is also one of those who claimed for a long time to not be funded by groups like the Heartland Institute, although he often seemed to repeat their theories word for word, it of course now turns out he is indeed funded by Heartland. This came to light after someone from the 'alarmist side' rang and pretend to be someone else and requested some paperwork, which was promptly sent to them, this paperwork showed a number of lead denier "experts" were indeed funded some by the equivalent of a scientists yearly salary (but for part time work), it was almost comical to watch deniers claim dishonesty and fraud after their complete lack of interest in such things concerning the stolen email of real scientists. In that case as the issue related to public money, there was an inquiry, in which the scientists were cleared, but as Heartland is a private company they have chosen to hide behind their right to stay private, strange for a group who claim truth is what they are after.

I hain't convinsulated uno iddy-biddy bit.

I knows dat God isa gonna burn us fer lettin dem homoz get married.

@antarctice: "Real science is about weighing the evidence and form a conclusion, sometimes mistakes are made or better or improved evidence comes along."

That is obviously true. However, AGW alarmism science is about issuing press releases and making claims from scientific papers that have been rejected for publication: http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/07/29/even-more-exc...

So why would Muller issue such a press release before correcting his paper. Well, let's go to his wife Elizabeth for an explanation: "I believe the findings in our papers are too important to wait for the year or longer that it could take to complete the journal review process." http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/28/conve...

So basically the message is more important than waiting to get it right.

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Edit: From Michael Mann's Facebook Page: "Michael E. Mann-fair enough Dan. My view is that Muller's efforts to promote himself by belittling the collective efforts of the entire atmospheric/climate research community over several decades, though, really does the scientific community a disservice. Its great that he's reaffirmed what we already knew. But for him to pretend that we couldn't trust this entire scientific field until Richard Muller put his personal stamp of approval on their conclusions is, in my view, a very dangerously misguided philosophical take on how science works. It seems, in the end--quite sadly--that this is all really about Richard Muller's self-aggrandizement :(

Yesterday at 12:17am · Like · 21"

Lol...From one self-aggrandizer to another.

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Edit2: Doesn't this story seem like a rehash? http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-10-25/new...

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Edit3: Richard Muller, climate skeptic??? Richard Muller in 2003: "Let me be clear. My own reading of the literature and study of paleoclimate suggests strongly that carbon dioxide from burning of fossil fuels will prove to be the greatest pollutant of human history." http://www.technologyreview.com/news/402357/mediev...

Maybe the definition of "climate skeptic" has been changed without my knowledge?

250 years ???? that was before the industrial revolution started . If what you say is true then that confirms that the rise in temperature ( if it is true ) is due to natural causes .

This totally debunks your argument .

By the may what has been causing climate change for the last 4 billion years ????

THe study will only sway those denialists with functioning brain cell, which excludes m those on this forum