The web has had stories recently about prominent physicist
and climate-change skeptic Richard Muller. Muller was skeptical that the global
temperature changes thus far were really anything more than natural variation,
so he launched a major study to review the best available data on past global temperatures,
a study funded in part by the Charles Koch Foundation, a major supporter of global-warming
deniers.
The study in fact did not show current warming was within
the limits of normal variation, but instead reinforced other studies that have
shown an abnormal warming trend. So he
did what a good scientist does – he publically changed his position on the
basis of the data.
This is actually the way science is supposed to work. Someone does a study that supports some
theory. They make all the details of their study public so their peers can examine
it in detail. Someone else is critical of the study because they hold a
different theory, so they do another study to test the theories again, perhaps
in a different way. When the results of
that study support the first theory, they abandon their own theory.
There have been some snide things written in the popular
press about (a) his original position questioning the climate-warming theory,
and (b) his change of mind. This is
unfair. Science depends (a) on people
who critically and skeptically examine and question and test other people’s
theories, and (b) on changing one’s views when one’s theories are disproved by
real-world tests and data. Richard Muller
provided an essential and important function by being skeptical of the
climate-warming theory and testing it again, and he showed himself a scientist
in the truest sense by being willing to change his mind on the basis of his test
and data.
If only we had more Richard Mullers in the world.
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