‘Scientists were right’ says independent study

In a stunning own goal for their financial backers, an independent study on the veracity of global warming by a group called the Berkeley Earth Project has found that their results tie in perfectly with the results of the 3 main climate records including those of UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU).

The project was launched as a result of the ‘Climategate’ scandal in which several climate scientists were alleged to have been fudging the data to show greater warming than was the case. The study also looked at other debated points, such as the effect of the urban heat island on weather stations and some of the impacts of circulation patterns like El Nino.

The project has received backing from US industrials the Koch brothers, who have supported various anti-climate change campaigns over the years. The group of scientists involved in the research featured 7 physicists, including Nobel Prize winner Saul Perlmutter.

Richard Muller, the Californian physicist who led the research said "I was deeply concerned that the group [at UEA] had concealed discordant data."

He went on to say however, "Our biggest surprise was that the new results agreed so closely with the warming values published previously by other teams in the US and the UK," in fact the graphs are almost identical. "This confirms that these studies were done carefully and that potential biases identified by climate change sceptics did not seriously affect their conclusions."

The group took 40,000 weather stations with digital outputs and interpreted them using independent analysis techniques. They confirmed that the urban heat island was present, but that it had no significant impact on their results, something CRU has reiterated in their studies.

Professor Phil Jones, who was at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ saga has reserved opinion until after the study is officially published but says, “These initial findings are very encouraging, and echo our own results and our conclusion that the impact of urban heat islands on the overall global temperature is minimal."

Muller now feels it is time for the sceptics to own up and admit that climate change is happening, "So-called 'sceptics' should now drop their thoroughly discredited claims that the increase in global average temperature could be attributed to the impact of growing cities," he said.

"More broadly, this study also proves once again how false it was for 'sceptics' to allege that the e-mails hacked from UEA proved that the CRU land temperature record had been doctored. It is now time for an apology from all those, including US presidential hopeful Rick Perry, who have made false claims that the evidence for global warming has been faked by climate scientists."