Climate skeptics were hoping this study would debunk data proving the existence of the climate crisis -- instead it reaffirmed the science:
Back in 2010, Richard Muller, a Berkeley physicist and self-proclaimed climate skeptic, decided to launch the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project to review the temperature data that underpinned global-warming claims. Remember, this was not long after the Climategate affair had erupted, at a time when skeptics were griping that climatologists had based their claims on faulty temperature data.
Muller's stated aims were simple. He and his team would scour and re-analyze the climate data, putting all their calculations and methods online. Skeptics cheered the effort. "I'm prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong," wrote Anthony Watts, a blogger who has criticized the quality of the weather stations in the United States that provide temperature data. The Charles G. Koch Foundation even gave Muller's project $150,000 -- and the Koch brothers, recall, are hardly fans of mainstream climate science.
So what are the end results? Muller's team appears to have confirmed the basic tenets of climate science.
With the evidence reconfirmed (again), I would hope that skeptics would rethink their position and join me in pushing our government, and governments around the world, to take steps to solve the climate crisis.
Source: Washington Post's WonkBlog
Cross-posted from Al's Journal.