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Climate-change critic finds data confirm warming

Some folks make a political game of denying that climate change is real. Some of the leaders of the U.S. House Science and Technology Committee have said they doubt the integrity of some climate research.

A couple of weeks ago, the committee invited Professor Richard Muller of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperatures project to testify. Muller, a longtime critic of government-led climate studies, had initiated the project at the University of California, Berkeley, expecting to cast scientific doubt on those government sponsored studies.

According to the McClatchy News Service, the Berkeley project's biggest private backer is the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. Oil billionaires Charles and David Koch are the nation's most prominent funders of efforts to prevent curbs on the burning of fossil fuels.

Muller, however, unexpectedly told the congressional hearing that the work of the three principal groups that have analyzed temperature trends underlying climate science is "excellent... We see a global warming trend that is very similar to that previously reported by the other groups."

In other words, his team of physicists and statisticians that set out to challenge the scientific consensus on global warming is finding that the data look about the same, no matter who's paying to keep track. Happily, Muller was honest about his findings. Science won over political doctrine in this case.

Even though March 2010 gave us some very warm days, while April 2011 left us with more snow than usual, our planet is warming up, a fact with which Muller concurred.

We really do need to reduce carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere before it's too late. More solar power, more wind power and geo-thermal power; less planet-heating emissions from industrial plants and motor vehicles -- this strategy is vital to our future.

Craigen Healy

New Vineyard