KQED

While Richard Muller has come around on global warming, he remains skeptical toward many aspects of climate science.

The outcome of Richard Muller’s sweeping independent audit of temperature data surprised a lot of people — including him. Known as the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature study, or BEST, the project was rooted in Muller’s own skepticism toward some of the key data underlying conclusions that the UN’s influential climate panel has drawn about global warming.

The author of two books worth of science advice “for future presidents” now concedes that “global warming is real,” but he remains skeptical about a lot of things, like:

• The objectivity of some of his colleagues
• The link between climate change and severe weather
• The future of some renewable energy sources, like solar thermal and geothermal

In the video clip (below), Muller talks about the perils of accepting scientific findings at face value.

Here are some more excerpts from our recent conversation:

CM: Let’s clear the air. What are you convinced of now with respect to climate science that you weren’t, let’s say, two years ago?

RM: The estimate for how much global warming has taken place, that was done by the prior groups. We did that independently. We did it checking all the issues, the legitimate issues that had been raised, looking at them quantitatively and estimating how big an effect they were, subtracting them where we needed to. In the end we found that the prior groups had actually done a very good job.

CM: In terms of the big picture with the way the climate may be changing and what might be causing it, what have you changed your mind about, if anything?

RM: I didn’t really change my mind. Instead I developed a conclusion that I wasn’t sure of before. Global warming is real and over the last 50 years — that’s the period when the IPCC says the human component is evident — over that period it’s gone up about .9 degrees Celsius. That’s very close to what the other groups have said. Worldwide, if you include the oceans, it’s more like .6 degrees Celsius. But I now believe that land measurement has — warming has gone up.

CM: Do you agree with the UN’s climate panel that the majority of the warming going on is being caused by human activity, burning fossil fuels?

RM: We haven’t yet finished our work on the human component of this. It looks to me like we will be in agreement with that [Muller says he'll be publishing his conclusions in the next few weeks].

But I do agree that the global warming has gone up. That, I think, is the main, if you want to call it a change, it’s the main result that I will now stand behind as a scientist, using my scientific credentials, doing the work that we did very carefully, that six months ago or a year ago, I would not have been wanting to stand behind. It does agree with the previous groups. We have achieved a better precision than the other groups have achieved, but it is a real effect.

CM: The temperature study was at least partially funded by the Koch Brothers’ foundation. You must have known going in that that was going to be controversial.

RM: The foundation actually worried about that more than we did. They worried that our results would be looked at with a political light because of the fact that they had supported it. But they gave us an unrestricted educational grant and they made it clear to us that what they really wanted was to have the issue settled. They didn’t even indicate which side they hoped it would be settled on. My own suspicion is they don’t care. They just want this issue settled because it creates great uncertainty in future planning.

CM: So when your results ended up supporting the prevailing view that the climate was warming and you testified to that effect on Capitol Hill, did anyone from the Koch Foundation or any of your funders, or anyone from Washington come to you and express some disappointment or unhappiness with that?

RM: No, not at all. Just the opposite. They were delighted that we had come up with some solid results that we could defend scientifically.

CM: And do you think the results of that study moved the needle at all, outside of your own personal views?

RM: Yeah, I believe that a large number of skeptics were valid skeptics. That they recognized that there were legitimate questions about the prior work. They still have legitimate questions about claims made about hurricanes and tornadoes. And those are legitimate and often wrong. So you’ll still hear skeptics complaining about the exaggerators and the alarmers. But I do believe that many of the skeptics that have spoken to me, the people who were labeled skeptics, have said, well the issue is no longer whether the global warming has taken place, the issue now is how much is human.

Picking winners and losers in renewable energy

CM: You have some, some interesting views on the practicality of certain renewables: hydrogen, solar thermal, geothermal. No future, is what you’re saying.

RM: That’s right.

CM: Let’s start with geothermal. A lot of money’s going into trying to tap the natural heat that’s coming from the Earth’s core, percolating up.

RM: Compare geothermal to solar. The energy coming from below is three thousand times smaller than the energy coming from solar. I mean, it’s as competitive as solar if you can make it three thousand times cheaper. If the Earth concentrates it as it does in certain volcanic regions — The Geysers in California is a great place, Iceland is a great place — then that natural concentration makes it cost effective, but geothermal anywhere: no future.

CM: Have you talked to Google about that? They’ve put a lot of money into it because they think it’s one of the renewables that actually has the potential to be cost-competitive with coal.

RM: I expect them to back off from that in the near future.

CM: And solar thermal, these, as opposed to photovoltaic panels that you put on your roof and elsewhere. These big arrays in the desert that use mirrors to concentrate the solar energy to heat up something. No?

RM: It’s been working in California, in Spain, elsewhere. Only where it’s been heavily subsidized. It will not work in China where we really need solar. The reason is, it’s basically bricks and mortar. And where as the price of solar cells is dropping, the price of big, large-scale construction is not. I do not expect it to get cheap enough to be used without subsidies.

You can see more of my interview with Muller on KQED’s This Week in Northern California. His latest book, Energy for Future Presidents, is scheduled for publication this summer.

American Association of Physics Teachers

Richard Muller

Despite some well-publicized recent conversions on climate matters, Richard Muller’s reputation as a climate skeptic is well earned. In two books, one published and one forthcoming, the UC Berkeley physicist offers counsel on physics and Energy for Future Presidents.

One thing Muller is highly skeptical of is California’s legislated climate strategy, a perspective that he laid out for me in a recent interview at his home in the Berkeley Hils. What matters, he says, is what China does. And little else:

CM: The point here is, and you’ve written about this, is that California can’t save the world in terms of cutting emissions, that no matter what we do, what matters is what China’s doing.

RM: Certainly, California is far too small a part of the global warming problem that anything we do here cannot really help. Even setting an example is something that, I think, is not something we are going to do. But if we can develop an industry that lowers the price of solar cells that lowers the price of wind, that makes nuclear safe, if we can do those things, then that could have a real impact on the future.

According to most projections China will be producing most of the carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases that will cause global warming. People don’t like to say that because they say that the Chinese have a right to produce as much pollution per person as the U.S. has already [China has surpassed the U.S. in total emissions but not emissions per capita]. Unfortunately, global warming’s not caused by pollution per person, it’s caused by total pollution and China, by the end of this year, will be emitting twice the greenhouse gases of the United States. It’s growing very rapidly.

CM: You’ve calculated, I guess, that even if the entire U.S. reduced all of its greenhouse gas emissions to zero tomorrow, that China would erase that gain in five years?

RM: In four and a half years. What that means is that what the U.S. does is becoming irrelevant, except to the extent that what we do can be followed by China. Expensive approaches, expensive solar cells, expensive electric automobile deals, will have no effect unless China can afford that approach. So it’s really important that what we do be cheap green, not just green.

CM: And one of the points you’ve made about this is that while hydraulic fracturing of underground rock to release oil and gas remains controversial in this country, it could be a huge benefit in China.

RM: As I look towards solutions to global warming I conclude it has to be in China. And when I look at what China can afford to do, I conclude it has to be cheap, even profitable. There’s only one solution that has the order of magnitude of chance of working, and that is to get China to switch from its coal — it’s building one new gigawatt of coal every week. It’s been doing this now for six years — to have them switch to natural gas. And the only way they can do that is if they adopt our method of fracking. This is a conflict because so many people oppose fracking because of its local pollution. But I regard solving that pollution as far, far easier than coming up with inexpensive electric cars, inexpensive solar cells. We need to switch China from coal to natural gas.

CM: How practical is that, do you think, given the course that they’re on?

RM: I believe it’s very practical and easy and straightforward. They’re going to switch anyway. What we need to do is to expedite it and speed it up. We can do this by sharing our knowledge with them. It doesn’t cost money, it’s an education. We should have Chinese engineers come over here and study our methods so they can switch to natural gas as rapidly as possible. That’s far bigger than anything else that anybody else has suggested.

You can see a longer version of my interview with Richard Muller on KQED’s This Week in Northern California.