AUSTRALIA'S climate change sceptics remain defiant following the self-described ''conversion'' of the prominent sceptic scientist Richard Muller, who had led a vast international research effort to debunk global warming science.
Professor Muller's team, partly funded by US fossil fuel interests, has now made public its findings and concluded that human emissions are driving climate change at a slightly faster rate than that asserted by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Professor Muller, a physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, said the results had prompted a ''total turnaround'' in his views. ''We were not expecting this, but as scientists, it is our duty to let the evidence change our minds,'' he said.
The results were obtained by re-examining more than 14 million temperature records at thousands of sites around the world, and excluding those that sceptics had believed were artificially enhancing global warming data.
Australian climate change sceptics were largely unmoved.
''I'm not convinced that [Professor Muller] was ever a sceptic although, of people I respect, there is a couple who do have a decent opinion of him,'' said blogger Jo Nova in Perth, the author of The Skeptic's Handbook.
Ms Nova said she did not expect climate change sceptics to change their minds because there were still potential flaws in Professor Muller's work.
''If [Professor Muller's study] removed stations that are near concrete, car parks, airports and airconditioners, and used only the best data we have, I'd be open to accept their warming trend calculations,'' she said. ''But even so, it's another leap entirely to say that just because the world has warmed that it's man-made.''
The ''urban heat island effect'' is real - it has been documented by meteorologists for decades - but the Bureau of Meteorology removes suspect thermometer sites from its climate change measurements. The two groups of data - one for weather forecasting and one for climate - are available for scrutiny on its website.
Another prominent sceptic group, the Galileo Movement, said its views would not change because of Professor Muller's study. The group includes broadcaster Alan Jones as its patron, and Ian Plimer, Bob Carter and Andrew Bolt as advisers.
''We've based our views on empirical science, and there's nothing in the Muller study to undercut that,'' said the Galileo Movement's manager, Malcolm Roberts, a former mining engineer and company director.
Mr Roberts said climate change science had been captured by ''some of the major banking families in the world'' who form a ''tight-knit cabal''.
He said he understood that the group's views might sound strange, but claimed they were becoming increasingly popular.
''It does sound outlandish,'' Mr Roberts said. ''I, like you, was reluctant to believe it [but] there are significant things going on in Australia that people are waking up to. The UN's climate front is just a part of the overall UN 'Agenda 21', which is the sustainability program and the biodiversity program … But the biggest one's the UN agenda for global governance.''
