For those that don’t remember, Richard Muller is the UC Berkeley physicist, who became, briefly, a darling of climate denialdom, after saying a bunch of nasty things about climate scientists and their research.
With money from the Koch Brothers, Muller formed a new research team, determined, he said, to get to the truth of the temp record.
Funny thing, he confirmed what all those crazy climate scientists had been saying all along.
A little context below.
I rarely watch videos. They waste too much time. Reading is much faster and unless these sites provide written material, I will not know what points they are attempting to make.
I agree wholeheartedly.
Muller is especially frustrating to listen to, the aura of self-aggrandizement is palpable. Nowhere does he mention that the original papers actually did a good job on this subject and his johnny-come-lately opportunity to cut his losses short with marquee names to splash around the media, was unnecessary.
I disagree with the others here – you get a much better feel for the mindset and orientation of the authors by listening to a video. I like to put these on while I’m fixing dinner or working offscreen on another project. I like the videos – keep ’em coming.
Love your site but I agree that you should provide stand alone text for the video based posts. I’ll always read the text but may or may not sit through the video.
Keep up the good work.
I’m the same way.
I only occasionally view a video. It’s OK to have videos, but there should also be written text for those of us who usually will not take the time to watch a video.
When there are videos, they should be as brief and to the point as possible. Fancy introductions which do not add to the content and which are accompanied by music cause many of us to abort the video.
Many of us receive news-type emails from several different sources. Reading them and their links is very time-consuming and we want to get real information as quickly as possible. It is good to have adequate background information to put information into a context that enables people to understand it, but every effort should be made to convey information as efficiently as possible.
This site does provide good information and many of us greatly appreciate its goals. But again, unless the information is provided efficiently, many of us will not access it.
I made the error of starting to read a few of the comments on that video 🙁
Always a bad mistake on YouTube, no matter what the subject matter.
Many of the comments on YouTube are complete rubbish, but not all of them. In fact, some of them provide good information.
It is important to know what other people are thinking, regardless of whether we agree with them. For that reason I do read many comments on YouTube. Even the rubbish comments can provide insight into how some people think and it is important to know that.
I have no problem with listening to or engaging with people with whom I disagree with if:
1. They are being intellectually honest
2. They are respectful in their disagreement
3. They engage with and consider the evidence put forth to them
4. They avoid fallacious reasoning such as ad hominem attacks, cherry picking stats, genetic fallacy, etc.
That is a basic but not exhaustive list that any well meaning person should follow at a minimum in order to engage in a debate.
Through the last 8 years of my encounters with people on the so called ‘skeptical’ side of the AGW issue, I have seen almost none of that from people in the comments section of blogs and online articles, and most assuredly not from people in YouTube comments. I have no time for that kind of nonsense. If you do, then good luck to you.
I’ve been following some of Muller’s explanations over on Quora and this video confirmed my belief that he is a hero. We need more folk like him.
It is poetic that he got at least some of the funding to study climate change from the Koch Bros and a mark of his integrity that when he came up with the “wrong” answers, he stuck by the results, even if I suspect he won’t see any contributions from that source again. It’s a pity more politicians don’t have that sort of backbone.