Climate Deniers Still Not Happy With Koch-Funded Climate Study

The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature team released a study showing that the earth’s surface has warmed 1 degree Centigrade (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1950, with the hopes that the study would address the critiques of climate deniers who continue to insist that the earth is not warming.

Even Richard Muller, Berkeley Earth’s scientific director who was notorious for not believing the conventional wisdom about climate change, said this study confirms global warming. Muller founded Berkeley Earth, to which the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation donated $150,000, to correct for factors like urban heat, which he said earlier studies had not considered. And yet Muller’s study still confirmed the earlier studies showing global warming.

But the deniers remain skeptical — including one denier who had said in March he would accept these results, according to the New York Times:

[Anthony] Watts, a former television meteorologist, contended that the study’s methodology was flawed because it examined data over a 60-year period instead of the 30-year-one that was the basis for his research and some other peer-reviewed studies. He also noted that the report had not yet been peer-reviewed and cited spelling errors as proof of sloppiness.

He said he was not backing away from the pledge he made but that he wanted corrections made first. “I’m still happy to accept the results, whatever they might be,” Mr. Watts said. ”All I’m asking for is an apples-to-apples comparison of data.”

As Joe Romm put it: “We were told these results would be accepted. [...] It goes to show there is nothing that will derail the deniers.”