A team of UC Berkeley physicists and statisticians led by global warming “skeptic” Richard Muller launched a project recently to analyze the scientific data on temperature trends. They were apparently fairly certain they’d find evidence to prove that climate change is not happening.

Imagine my surprise to discover that the initial results of their project fully support the scientific consenus.

Actually, I’m not the least bit surprised by the findings. But I am surprised that Muller and his team, financed by far right oil billionaires Charles and David Koch, are being honest about it.

The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project was launched by physics professor Richard Muller, a longtime critic of government-led climate studies, to address what he called “the legitimate concerns” of skeptics who believe that global warming is exaggerated.

But Muller unexpectedly told a congressional hearing last week that the work of the three principal groups that have analyzed the temperature trends underlying climate science is “excellent…. We see a global warming trend that is very similar to that previously reported by the other groups.” …

Muller said his group was surprised by its findings, but he cautioned that the initial assessment is based on only 2% of the 1.6 billion measurements that will eventually be examined.

The Berkeley project’s biggest private backer, at $150,000, is the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. Oil billionaires Charles and David Koch are the nation’s most prominent funders of efforts to prevent curbs on the burning of fossil fuels, the largest contributor to planet-warming greenhouse gases.

Global warming denier Anthony Watts, the hero of the ignorant anti-science right wing, is greatly disappointed in reality. Again.

But conservative critics who had expected Muller’s group to demonstrate a bias among climate scientists reacted with disappointment.

Anthony Watts, a former TV weatherman who runs the skeptic blog WattsUpWithThat.com, wrote that the Berkeley group is releasing results that are not “fully working and debugged yet…. But, post normal science political theater is like that.”

Expect them to now start smearing and attacking their former ally Richard Muller.