The Truth about Richard Muller

Richard Muller teaching class, circa 2008.
Credit: Wikimedia CommonsRichard Muller has never been a skeptic, at best he had a moment of intellectual honesty towards skeptics when he acknowledged Steve McIntyre's debunking of Mann's Hockey Stick, only to later dismiss this as irrelevant to the global warming debate, "This result should not affect any of our thinking on global warming".

Hardly surprising, as Muller considers the carbon dioxide produced from burning fossil fuels to be, "the greatest pollutant in human history" and likely to have, "severe and detrimental effects on global climate". The future outlook for global warming according to Muller is that, "it’s going to get much, much worse" and thus advocates that the United States immediately pay China and India hundreds of billions of dollars to cut back their carbon emissions or, "it'll be too late".

No wonder he endorsed "The Earth is the Great Ship Titanic", Steven Chu as "perfect" for U.S. Energy Secretary and Al Gore's hypocritical alarmism,

"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, 2008

"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

References:
Medieval Global Warming (MIT Technology Review, December 17, 2003)
Global Warming Bombshell (MIT Technology Review, October 15, 2004)
Author and physicist Richard A. Muller chats with Grist about getting science back in the White House (Grist, October 7, 2008)
Physics the Next President Needs to Know (Wired, November 2, 2008)
Steven Chu named U.S. Energy Secretary (KGO-TV, December 15, 2008)
Physics for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines (Richard Muller, 2009)
‘In the Great Ship Titanic’ (The Daily Beast, April 10, 2009)
Richard Muller, Climate Researcher, Navigates The Volatile Line Between Science And Skepticism (The Huffington Post, November 3, 2011)

Update:
Clarification on Koch Funding for Muller's BEST project,

"The research examined recent global surface temperature trends. It did not examine ocean temperature data or the cause of warming on our climate, as some have claimed" - Tonya Mullins, Director of Communications, Charles Koch Foundation

Foundation statement on Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project (Charles Koch Foundation, October 27, 2011)

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