Did anybody notice Dr Richard Muller as a climate sceptic?

I see the NY Times Op-Ed “The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic” by RICHARD A. MULLER July 28, 2012

Dr Muller starts out –

“CALL me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming.”

Maybe I missed something – have any readers noticed Dr Richard Muller speaking out as a climate sceptic?

13 thoughts on “Did anybody notice Dr Richard Muller as a climate sceptic?”

  1. Muller is overstating – he was never a skeptic,

    www.populartechnology.net/2012/06/truth-about-richard-muller.html

    “I was never a skeptic” – Richard Muller, 2011

    “If Al Gore reaches more people and convinces the world that global warming is real, even if he does it through exaggeration and distortion – which he does, but he’s very effective at it – then let him fly any plane he wants.”
    – Richard Muller, 2008

    “There is a consensus that global warming is real. …it’s going to get much, much worse.” – Richard Muller, 2006

    “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. It is likely to have severe and detrimental effects on global climate.” – Richard Muller, 2003

  2. Have to report in all my years of reading greenhouse and climate change news, trying to keep up with utterances of the IPCC etc, I have not been aware that Dr Muller was what I would term a “climate sceptic”. That is somebody sceptical of the IPCC doctrines.

  3. Marc Morano at Climate Depot goes into the issue of Dr Richard Muller’s claims better than I can.
    Fascinating to read what the Warmists are saying about Muller too.

  4. From a 2008 Grist interview of Richard Muller:

    Do you consider yourself an environmentalist?

    Oh yes. [Laughs.] In fact, back in the early ’80s, I resigned from the Sierra Club over the issue of global warming. At that time, they were opposing nuclear power. What I wrote them in my letter of resignation was that, if you oppose nuclear power, the U.S. will become much more heavily dependent on fossil fuels, and that this is a pollutant to the atmosphere that is very likely to lead to global warming.

    grist.org/article/lets-get-physical/

    So, he has NEVER been a sceptic. Makes him a blatant liar and propagandist who apparently is also doing it to line his own pockets. Here is one of his companies:

    mullerandassociates.com/

  5. As far as I can tell, the only climate relate thing that Muller has displayed any degree of skepticism of has nothing to do with AGW. He has been a skeptic of the Milankovitch hypothesis. Given that there appears to be pretty good evidence that the Milankovitch hypothesis works quite well over the last about 750 thousand years (eg Roe 2006) Muller’s alternative theory for the origin of the 100 ky time scale of glaciation cycles seems less credible. I humbly suggets Muller is wrong presently about AGW, as well.

  6. It takes the Oz

    and this is in breaking news:

    THE verdict is in: Global warming is real and greenhouse-gas emissions from human activity are the main cause.

    This, according to Richard A. Muller, professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, a MacArthur fellow and co-founder of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project.

    The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and hundreds of other climatologists around the world came to such conclusions years ago.

    However, the difference now is the source: Muller is a longstanding, colourful critic of prevailing climate science, and the Berkeley project was heavily funded by the Charles Koch Charitable Foundation, which, along with its libertarian petrochemical billionaire founder Charles G Koch, has a considerable history of backing groups that deny climate change.

    Do these journos ever read past the press release?

  7. The last sentence of that article says ‘Some leading climate scientists said Muller’s comments show that the science is so strong that even those inclined to reject it cannot once they examine it carefully.’

    I haven’t read one climate scientist who has said that; Muller’s paper is receiving criticism from inter alia Judith Curry and Roger Pielke Snr and others headlined on Climate Depot. The Guardian www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jul/29/climate-change-sceptics-change-mind has a positive article headlined Climate change study forces sceptical scientists to change minds. But the article itself refers to criticism by Mann and Curry. No idea whose minds have been changed other than Muller’s but the headline is possibly where the Oz journo got that sentence from but you’d have to say sloppy journalism

  8. Never knew that he was a skeptic.

    Great article at WUWT New Data, Old Claims About Volcanoes – Posted on July 30, 2012 by Willis Eschenbach
    which skewers him. Willis apparently doesn’t believe that volcanos can cause cooling, before they explode.

    What with that and the lead article, it seems WUWT are having their BEST shot at rubbishing him.

  9. Muller was sceptical of Mann’s Hockey Stick, but he was hardly alone in that. Otherwise he is a self-aggrandizing propagandist, who is not above telling untruths. Media reporting is the usual meme regurgitation, but then it is on most subjects. I am reminded of the old saw, ‘If you want the truth, read the sports pages’.

  10. Muller & Associates provides expertise for energy challenges that deserve the best minds in the world. Our senior-level team includes Nobel Laureates, MacArthur Geniuses, and recognized global leaders with experience in over 30 countries.

    Isn’t Muller modest? He decided MacArthur Fellowship didn’t have the right panache so he changes it to MacArthur Geniuses.

    Here’s some other “geniuses” who were awarded enough money to keep their mental swill solvent.

    John P. Holdren, arms control and energy analyse
    Tina Rosenberg, journalist
    Paul R. Ehrlich, population biologist
    Stephen Schneider, climatologist
    Jane Lubchenco, marine biologist
    Benjamin D. Santer, atmospheric scientist

    I wonder if it would be possible to sue the foundation for damage?

  11. As Philip Bradley says, Muller was sceptical of the hockey stick. Maybe a bit more than sceptical actually – he said it was “an artifact of poor mathematics”, and backed up McIntyre and McKitrick’s criticisms here.

    Muller also got stuck into Jones et al. over “hide the decline”. See Muller’s video on this here.

    So, if you take the real meaning of sceptic, Muller can claim to have been sceptical – he was on the record as doubting some of the evidence being put forward. On the other hand, that evidence was so bad that no one in his right mind would have failed to doubt it, and the faults were already on the record before Muller piped up. What Muller has never been is an opponent of the standard global warming narrative. He has never said he does not believe global warming is a big worry, and he has many times indicated that thinks it is.

  12. Anybody who read his book “Physics for Future Presidents” published in 2008, would be aware that he has been critical of much that passes for “evidence” of Global Warming peddled by Warmenistas.
    Chapter 22 of his book is titled “Evidence” and is an attack on the alarmism of the AGW crowd. He highlights distortion, exaggeration, cherry picking, news bias, the hockey stick and propaganda masked as science which are used to push the AGW agenda.
    Chapter 23 is an analysis of the knee-jerk “solutions” to the AGW problem. He refers to them as “non solutions” eg Hydrogen hype, Electric cars, Solar PV, Fusion, Recycling, Re-afforestation, Kyoto. These he calls “symbolic gestures”, so beloved of our former PM Kevin Rudd.
    His position is nuanced. From chapter 21: “Global warming is real. Since 1957 the average temperature of the globe has risen 1ºF and it is very likely that humans are responsible for at least part of that increase“.
    His passion is Physics and its application in policy formulation. Five chapters deal with GW the other twenty deal with terrorism, energy, space and nuclear power.

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