Climate Scientist Accused By Colleague of Hiding Truth

Richard Muller, left, and his daughter, Elizabeth Muller, hold a globe as they talk about their study on climate at their home in Berkeley, Calif. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)

Now who's in hot water?

A scientist and former global warming skeptic made international headlines with a study that claimed to prove the existence of global warming conclusively. Until his own colleagues accused the research team of hiding the truth.

Professor Richard Muller of Berkeley University in California and his team members from the Berkeley Earth Surface and Temperatures program (BEST) released a study that illustrated continual warming since 1950 -- making the planet almost 1.6 degrees warmer overall, they claim.

“The skeptics raised valid points and everybody should have been a skeptic two years ago,” Muller told the Associated Press. “And now we have confidence that the temperature rise that had previously been reported had been done without bias.”

Not so fast.

The results of the study are now being called into question not just by climate skeptics but by a leading member of Muller’s own team. Prof. Judith Curry, head of the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said Muller’s findings were a “huge mistake” with no scientific basis.

“There is no scientific basis for saying that warming [continues],” Curry, who is listed as a co-author on the BEST reports, told The Daily Mail. “To say that there is detracts from the credibility of the data, which is very unfortunate.”

Though Curry admits some temperature gain since the 50s, she suggests it’s impossible to ignore the relative warming standstill we experienced in the 90s when BEST data reveals little change.

“This is nowhere near what the climate models were predicting,” Curry told the Daily Mail. “Whatever it is that’s going on here, it doesn’t look like it’s being dominated by CO2.”

Muller believes recent inconsistencies in the data might not be “statistically significant,” as his team examines the bigger picture, a response that left Curry deeply unsatisfied.

“I am baffled as to what he’s trying to do,” she said.

Read more about this global warming controversy at the Daily Mail.