nuclear-news

Conservative USA think tank finds that human changed climate is real!

Climate results turn sceptic: ‘let the evidence change our minds’ The Age July 30, 2012,  Leo Hickman THE Earth’s land has warmed by 1.5 degrees Celsius in the past 250 years and ”humans are almost entirely the cause”, according to a scientific study set up to address climate sceptic concerns about whether human-induced global warming is occurring. Richard Muller, a climate sceptic physicist who founded the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project, said he was ”surprised” by the findings. ”We were not expecting this, but as scientists, it is our duty to let the evidence change our minds.”

He said he considered himself a ”converted sceptic” and his views had received a ”total turnaround” in a short space of time. ”Our results show that the average temperature of the Earth’s land has risen by 2½ degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of 1½ degrees over the most recent 50 years.

Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases,”Professor Muller wrote in an opinion piece for The New York Times.

The team of scientists based at the University of California, Berkeley, gathered and merged 14.4 million land temperature observations from 44,455 sites across the world dating back to 1753. Previous datasets created by NASA, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Britain’s Meteorological Office and the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit had gone back only to the mid-1800s and used five times fewer weather station records.

The funding for the project included $US150,000 from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, set up by the billionaire US coal magnate who is a key backer of the climate sceptic Heartland Institute think tank.  http://www.theage.com.au/environment/climate-change/climate-results-turn-sceptic-let-the-evidence-change-our-minds-20120730-23769.html#ixzz229AhMmUv

July 30, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change, USA