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.

No change ... Australian climate change sceptics have been largely unmoved by Muller's research. Credit:Michele Mossop

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.