A skeptical physicist ends up confirming climate data

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 Statse 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. Back in March, Muller told the House Science and Technology Committee that, contrary to what he expected, the existing temperature data was “excellent.” He went on: “We see a global warming trend that is very similar to that previously reported by the other groups.” And, today, the BEST team has released a flurry of new papers that confirm that the planet is getting hotter. As the team’s two-page summary flatly concludes, “Global warming is real.”Here’s a chart comparing their findings with existing data:

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Ha! I love this story!

Financed by the Koch brothers but defeated by science! Here is the whole story: http://x.co/abxt

I wanted to comment on something I hear Thom say frequently but I disagree with and that is that specifically Walmart stocks their shelves with Chinese products because they are victims of the Free Trade policies and Tariffs etc enacted by our poiticians.

While this may strictly be true it is important to know that Walmart along with dozens of other corporations are in fact the ones that are responsible along with our politicians for enacting these very legislative policies through various think tanks, organizations, PACS and of course funding. In fact these corporations are responsible for writing much of this legislation and submitting it to our politicians for passage.

There are many reasons for wanting to do this but specifically as an overall policy Walmart and these other huge corporations push these Free Trade Agreements with lower tariffs in an effort to ship American jobs overseas thus actually reducing the amount of available jobs here in this country. Right now the real unemployment number is around 20%. That's 1 out of 5 people out of work. Now corporate board members and executives can effectively reduce wages to the lowest amount possible as well as reducing or eliminating benefits. Workers wont dare strike or organize and bosses can be abusive and demand that workers do two or three or four peoples jobs and work very long hours for no overtime etc. because if anyone does complain or try to organize or demand better conditions, wages, etc., there are hundreds or thousands of people ready and willing to replace them.

This has all been done before by these huge companies. Jefferson warned that corporations were one of the biggest threats to our democracy and that we should've guarded against allowing them to get a foothold in this country.

Reagan was a corporate puppet who fired the striking air traffic controllers not for safety reasons, safety was actually the reason they were striking. Reagan was an anti-union shill for the corporations before he became President so the firing of the ATC's was purely an anti-union/pro-corporate move. We've seen mostly pro-corporate, anti-worker/mass populace politicians since Reagan, and significant percentages of the legislation that has been passed has been directly written by representatives/lawyers employed by these corporations and given to our elected representatives to pass.