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Meet the Critics (L-Z)
By Peter Beisner
Meet the Critics (A-K)
Have you ever been at a loss for words when challenged by the alarmist's claim of scientific "consensus," or that dissenting scientists are unqualified? Not only does consensus prove nothing, but the very idea of "consensus" among scientists on catastrophic manmade climate change is simply unfounded. A 2008 Senate Environment and Public Works Minority Report documents dissension around the world:More Than 700 International Scientists Dissent
Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims Some notable critics are:
Hans H. J. Labohm, Ph.D.
UN IPCC reviewer Dr. Hans H. J. Labohm is a lecturer at the Netherlands Defense Academy and has been a researcher and advisor for the board at the Netherlands Institute of International Relations. "I started as an anthropogenic global warming believer, then I read the [UN's IPCC] Summary for Policymakers and the research of prominent skeptics. After that, I changed my mind," Labohm reported. Co-author of Man-Made Global Warming: Unravelling a Dogma, Labohm has written numerous articles, including What Is Wrong With the IPCC?, What Will the Future Bring: Warming or Cooling?, The End Is Not Nigh, Kyoto and the Art of Political Backtracking, and Proliferation of Climate Scepticism in Europe.
David R. Legates, Ph.D.
Delaware State Climatologist David Legates is Director of the Delaware Environmental Observing System at the University of Delaware, a Senior Scientist for the Marshall Institute, a Fellow of the Independent Institute, and a Scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Mentioned on page 192 of the Senate report, Legates says that "the science does not support claims of drastic increases in global temperatures over the 21st century, nor does it support claims of human influence on weather events and other secondary effects of climate change." A few important articles and presentations by Legates, of which there have been hundreds, are Climate Science: Climate Change and Its Impacts, How Are the Occurrence of Floods, Droughts, and Storms Likely to Change?, A Scientific Stick Check, Cornwall's Manmade Warming On Hold, or Errant Alarmists Seeking Cover?, and (at Heartland's 2009 ICCC) Climate Change and Extreme Events.
Jay H. Lehr, Ph.D.
Jay Lehr, Senior Fellow and Science Director of the Heartland Institute, graduated from Princeton at the age of 20, earned a Ph.D. in environmental science, and, becoming a renowned lecturer, has dedicated much of his life to educating people on environmental science, even testifying before congress 36 times. Lehr observes, "In the 13th century we were probably 7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than we are now and it was a very prosperous time for mankind. If we go back to the revolutionary war, 300 years ago, it was very very cold--we've been warming out of that cold spell from the revolutionary war period and now we're back into a cooling cycle." Lehr has written many books on the environment along with over 900 journal articles. A sample of his work is his 2009 International Conference on Climate Change presentation, Green Energy Job Losses.
Richard S. Lindzen, Ph.D.
A former IPCC lead author, Richard Lindzen is Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Mentioned on page 189 of the Senate report, he compares the global warming alarm to "little kids locking themselves in dark closets to see how much they can scare each other and themselves." Among hundreds of his publications, two notable pieces are Why So Gloomy?, a Newsweek article refuting the claims of alarmists, and Climate Science: Is It Currently Designed to Answer Questions?, which reveals disturbing examples of ways in which climate science has been politicized, abused, and even suppressed.
Philip Lloyd, Ph.D.
Chemical engineer & nuclear physicist Philip Lloyd has overseen coal engineering projects, has been the president of the SAT Institution of Chemical Engineers, the Federation of Societies of Professional Engineers, and the Associated Scientific and Technical Societies of Southern Africa, has been a professor at University of the Witwatersrand, and is an honorary research fellow at the University of Cape Town's Energy Research Institute. "I am particularly concerned that the rigor of science seems to have been sacrificed on an altar of fundraising," said Lloyd, a UN IPCC coordinating lead author. "I am doing a detailed assessment of the IPCC reports and the Summaries for Policy Makers, identifying the way in which the Summaries have distorted the science. I have found examples of a Summary saying precisely the opposite of what the scientists said." After personal studies and experimentation, Lloyd noted that he has "grave difficulties in finding any but the most circumstantial evidence for any human impact on the climate."
Craig Loehle, Ph.D.
Principal scientist for the National Council for Air and Stream Improvement, Craig Loehle has been an environmental researcher at Argonne National Laboratory and Savannah River Laboratory. A member of multiple ecological societies, Loehle has done extensive research, notably reconfirming the Medieval Warm Period (see graph here), and has concluded "that recent warming is part of natural trend." Among Loehle's hundred plus peer-reviewed papers are Cooling of the Global Ocean Since 2003, A 2000-Year Global Temperature Reconstruction Based on Non-Treering Proxies, and A Mathematical Analysis of the Divergence Problem in Dendroclimatology, which join his 2009 International Conference on Climate Change presentation, 1,500-Year Climate Cycles, Broken Hockey Sticks, and Ocean Cooling as just a sample of his contribution to climate science.
Anthony R. Lupo, Ph.D.
IPCC & NIPCC contributor Anthony Lupo is professor and department chair of atmospheric science at the University of Missouri. Lupo reports that "there are abundant studies available in the literature to show there are no general trends toward increases in severe weather occurrences such as hurricanes or tornadoes." Lupo is the author or co-author of Anthropogenic Global Warming: A Skeptical Point of View (PDF), A Climatology of Northern Hemisphere Blocking, (at the 2009 ICCC) Inter-Annual Temperature Variations (MP3), and hundreds more publications, many of which are peer-reviewed.
Steve McIntyre
Author of the Climate Audit blog, Steve McIntyre is a top-notch mathematician and has worked in various projects, businesses, and government policy analysis positions, including being director of several small public mineral exploration companies. Mentioned on page 115 of the Senate report, McIntyre is especially equipped for his personal examination of climate data. Along with Ross McKitrick, McIntyre earned wide recognition for exposing the errors in the famous "hockey stick" graph in Corrections to the Mann et. al. (1998) Proxy Data Base and Northern Hemispheric Average Temperature Series, demonstrating that "four of the top ten hottest years in the U.S. were in the 1930's while only three of the hottest years occurred in the last decade." Some samples of his work on Climate Audit are IPCC Schedule: WG1 Report Available Only to Insiders Until May 2007, Does Hansen's Error "Matter"?, Al Gore and Dr. Thompson's Thermometer part #1 and part #2, and Southern Hemisphere Sea Ice Reaches "Unprecedented" Levels.
Ross McKitrick, Ph.D.
An IPCC expert reviewer, and author of dozens of peer-reviewed papers, Ross McKitrick is Associate Professor of Environmental Economics at the University of Guelph. McKitrick, mentioned on page 178 of the Senate report, states that the UN has made "false claims about the quality of its data," and that data contamination problems "account for about half the surface warming measured over land since 1980." A few notable pieces by McKitrick are Corrections to the Mann et. al. (1998) Proxy Data Base and Northern Hemispheric Average Temperature Series (this famous rebuttal of the hockey stick graph was co-authored with Steve McIntyre), Quantifying the Influence of Anthropogenic Surface Processes and Inhomogeneities on Gridded Global Climate Data (co-authored with Patrick J. Michaels), and Contaminated Data. McKitrick also co-authored (with Christopher Essex) the book, Taken by Storm: The Troubled Science, Policy, and Politics of Global Warming.
Patrick J. Michaels, Ph.D.
Once president of the American Association of State Climatologists and program chair for the Committee on Applied Climatology of the American Meteorological Society, Patrick Michaels is now a research professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, visiting scientist with the Marshall Institute in D.C., and Senior Fellow in Environmental Studies for the Cato Institute. Mentioned on page 176 of the Senate report, Michaels has produced hundreds of publications, including many articles, some recent notables being Our Climate Numbers Are a Big Old Mess, Hansen Unhinged, The Grand Exaggerator, Record Low for Climate Science, Will the U.N. Chill Out on Climate Change?, and Inclusive Science. Michaels recently added Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don't Want You to Know to his three other books, Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists Politicians, and the Media, The Satanic Gases: Clearing the Air about Global Warming, and Sound and Fury: The Science and Politics of Global Warming.
Lord Christopher Monckton
Once Special Advisor to UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Christopher Monckton, Third Viscount of Brenchley, is the Chief Policy Adviser for the Science & Public Policy Institute. Mentioned on page 123 of the Senate report, Monckton has called for the IPCC to be disbanded, stating that "it is too politicized and too incompetent to serve any useful purpose." Along with his Cambridge lecture video, Apocalypse? NO!, Monckton has published many helpful papers on the science of climate change. Some notable ones are Hockey Stick? What Hockey Stick?, 35 Inconvenient Truths: The Errors in Al Gore's Movie, and Errors Covertly Corrected by the I.P.C.C. After Publication and Uncorrected Errors by Al Gore.
Joanne Nova
A believer in catastrophic manmade global warming from 1990 to 2007, Joanne Nova has spoken out against the religion of blind climate alarmism, notably at the Bali UNFCCC. Intending to give people the necessary "strategies and tools" to defend true science against alarmist predictions, Nova produced The Skeptics Handbook, in which she explains how "the facts have changed since 2003, to the point where there is no evidence left." Nova frequently updates her skeptical website, is a partner of Science Speak with critical scientist David Evans, and is a frequent public science communicator, having recently spoken at the 2009 ICCC--How Science Journalists Pay Homage to Non-Science and Un-Reason.
Garth W. Paltridge, Ph.D.
Atmospheric physicist Garth Paltridge is an emeritus professor at the University of Tasmania, having taken the position of director at the University's Institute of Antarctic and Southern Ocean Studies in 1990, and has been the chief research scientist for the CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research and the CEO of the Antarctic Cooperative Research Center. Paltridge criticized global warming alarmists who "have been so successful with their message of greenhouse doom that, should one of them prove tomorrow that it is nonsense, the discovery would have to be suppressed for the sake of the overall reputation of science." Along with articles like The Over-Blown Science of Global Warming and A Short Primer on Climate Change and the Greenhouse Issue, Paltridge has the excellent book The Climate Caper.
Ian R. Plimer, Ph.D.
Award-winning geologist Ian Plimer is a professor at Australia's University of Adelaide and a fellow of multiple scientific societies. "We humans have experienced massive climate change--we've lived in glaciations, we've lived in times when it's been much warmer. So if you move from, say, Melbourne to Hong Kong, there's a huge temperature increase. You don't die because of that--you adapt," says Plimer in an interview with ABNNewswire, in which he also argues that "carbon dioxide is absolutely vital for living on earth; it's plant food, all of life lives off carbon dioxide. To demonise it shows that you don't understand school child science." Another interview of Plimer advertises his new book Heaven and Earth - Global Warming: The Missing Science. A sample of Plimer's work, viewable online, is his lecture entitled Human-Induced Climate Change: A Load of Hot Air.
Arthur B. Robinson, Ph.D.
Co-founder of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, laboratory researcher Art Robinson edits the Access to Energy newsletter, has directed the Global Warming Petition Project, and has developed the Robinson curriculum for home schoolers. "Carbon dioxide and methane," Robinson explains, are "greenhouse gases, but their physical properties render their greenhouse effects very weak. Neither warms the Earth significantly, and no greenhouse warming caused by these two substances has ever been unequivocally observed. The warming and cooling of the Earth is correlated most closely with fluctuations in solar activity and is entirely uncorrelated with human hydrocarbon use." A few publications of Robinson's are Nobel Prize for Death, The Virtues of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide, Yes to Energy Freedom - No to Cap-and-Trade, The Science of the UN, and the scientific study Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide.
Harrison H. Schmitt, Ph.D.
Former award-winning NASA astronaut and geologist Jack Schmitt is an NIPCC contributor, has taught at Harvard, and has served in the U.S. Senate. "The ‘global warming scare’ is being used as a political tool," writes Schmitt, "to increase government control over American lives, incomes and decision making. It has no place in the Society's activities." "As a geologist," he explains, "but, it is ridiculous to tie this objective to a 'consensus' that humans are causing global warming when human experience, geologic data and history, and current cooling can argue otherwise. ‘Consensus,’ as many have said, merely represents the absence of definitive science." Schmitt was a keynote speaker at the 2009 ICCC, where he gave a lecture entitled Climate Facts that Really Are Facts (MP3).
Tom V. Segalstad
IPCC expert reviewer Tom V. Segalstad has taught numerous environmental subjects at the University of Oslo and Pennsylvania State University and has headed the former's Geological Museum, Natural History Museum, and Botanical Garden. "All measurements of solar luminosity and 14C isotopes show that there is at present an increasing solar radiation which gives a warmer climate," says Segalstad. "Warmer climate was previously perceived as an optimum climate and not catastrophic." Some of the many pieces by Segalstad are Correct Timing Is Everything - Also for CO2 in the Air, Do Glaciers Tell a True Atmospheric CO2 Story?, What is CO2 - Friend or Foe?, and (at the 2009 ICCC) Carbon Isotope Mass Balance Modeling of Atmospheric vs. Oceanic CO2.
Nir Shaviv, Ph.D.
Award-winning astrophysicist Nir Shaviv is a member of the Racah Institute of Physics in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Mentioned on page 123 of the Senate report, Shaviv stated that "Even if we halved the CO2 output, and the CO2 increase by 2100 would be, say, a 50% increase relative to today instead of a doubled amount, the expected reduction in the rise of global temperature would be less than 0.5C. This is not significant." Just a few notable publications of Shaviv's, along with his scientific blog ScienceBits, are Carbon Dioxide or Solar Forcing?, Celestial Driver of Phanerozoic Climate?, On Climate Response to Changes in the Cosmic Ray Flux and Radiative Budget, and (at Heartland's 2009 ICCC) New Solar-Climate Link and Implications for Our Understanding of Climate Change.
Joanne Simpson, Ph.D.
Recipient of the Carl-Gustaf Rossby Award and the first woman ever to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, Joanne Simpson has served as NASA's chief meteorologist, the American Meteorological Society's president, a teacher at the University of Chicago, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. "There is no doubt that atmospheric greenhouse gases are rising rapidly and little doubt that some warming and bad ecological events are occurring. However, the main basis of the claim that man’s release of greenhouse gases is the cause of the warming is based almost entirely upon climate models. We all know the frailty of models concerning the air-surface system," said Simpson, author of close to 200 studies. "As a scientist, I remain skeptical."
S. Fred Singer, Ph.D.
Formerly serving as the first Director of the National Weather Satellite Service, along with various other governmental positions, Fred Singer is the founder and President of the Science & Environmental Policy Project. Mentioned on page 201 of the Senate report, Singer is also a Professor Emeritus of Environmental Science at the University of Virginia, and edited the Summary for Policymakers of the Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate. "Good evidence confirms that current warming is mostly part of a natural cycle, most likely driven by the sun," said Singer. "Trying to mitigate a natural warming (or cooling) is futile and a big waste of money better spent on real societal problems." A couple of many publications by Singer, co-author of Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years, are Sun Spot Frequency Has an Unexpectedly Strong Influence on Cloud Formation and Precipitation and The End of the IPCC.
Hajo Smit
Dutch meteorologist Hajo Smit is a forecaster and a former member of the Dutch IPCC committee who has lectured at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. A former alarmist, Smit thanks Al Gore for making him a skeptic. "[Gore] prompted me to start delving into the science again and I quickly found myself solidly in the skeptic camp." "I am troubled by the practices I had seen at work in GCM (global climate models), the whole field seemed highly suspicious to me, . . . Odd arbitrary parameterizations seemed the rule rather than the exception," he said. "The vast amount of new research since my graduation points to clear cut solarclimate coupling and to a very strong natural variability of climate on all historical time scales. Currently I hardly believe anymore that there is any relevant relationship between human CO2-emissions and climate change."
Willie Soon, Ph.D.
Willie Soon, a Harvard-Smithsonian physicist, is Chief Science Adviser for the Science & Public Policy Institute, Science Director for Tech Central Station, and a Senior Scientist at the George C. Marshall Institute. Mentioned on page 147 of the Senate report, Willie Soon is the co-author of Global Warming: A Guide to the Science and The Maunder Minimum and the Variable Sun-Earth Connection. A few important scientific studies on which Soon has worked are Implications of the Secondary Role of Carbon Dioxide and Methane Forcing in Climate Change: Past, Present, and Future (of which he is the sole author), Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide, and Polar Bear Population Forecasts: A Public-Policy Forecasting Audit.
Roy W. Spencer, Ph.D.
Previously a Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, where he was awarded NASA's Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal for work with global temperature monitoring, Roy Spencer is currently a Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, where he and Dr. John Christy (another critic) oversee the NASA satellite remote sensing program, the world's only truly comprehensive system for sensing atmospheric conditions of many kinds, including temperature. Mentioned on page 146 of the Senate report, Dr. Spencer recently released his books Climate Confusion: How Global Warming Hysteria Leads to Bad Science, Pandering Politicians and Misguided Policies That Hurt the Poor and The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World's Top Climate Scientists. Along with his Global Warming: Natural of Manmade?, various blog posts, research articles (such as Satellite and Climate Model Evidence Against Substantial Manmade Climate Change), recent temperature records, and more can be found at his website, www.drroyspencer.com.
Peter Stilbs, Ph.D.
Dr. Peter Stilbs chairs the Climate Seminar in the Department of Physical Chemistry at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and has authored over one-and-a-half hundred scientific papers. Having coordinated a meeting of international scientists, Stilbs announced that the scientists concluded: "There is no strong evidence to prove significant human influence on climate on a global basis. The global cooling trend from 1940 to 1970 is inconsistent with models based on anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. Actual claims put forward are that an observed global temperature increase of about 0.3 degrees C since 1970 exceeds what could be expected from natural variation. However, recent temperature data do not indicate any continued global warming since 1998." Elsewhere, Stilbs criticized the IPCC, stating, "These [IPCC] Summaries are prepared by a relatively small core writing team with the final drafts approved line-by-line by government representatives. The great majority of IPCC contributors and reviewers, and the tens of thousands of other scientists who are qualified to comment on these matters, are not involved in the preparation of these documents. The summaries therefore cannot properly be represented as a consensus view among experts."
Henrik Svensmark, Ph.D.
Award-winning physicist Henrik Svensmark is the director of the Center for Sun-Climate Research at the Danish National Space Institute and was a lead scientist for The Cloud Mystery project. Co-author of The Chilling Stars: A New Theory of Climate Change, Svensmark stated that "it was long thought that clouds were caused by climate change, but now we see that climate change is driven by clouds." Svensmark has defended his position that the earth's climate is controlled largely by drivers external to our atmosphere with extensive research and numerous papers, such as Cosmoclimatology: A New Theory Emerges, Imprint of Galactic Dynamics on Earth's Climate, and Solar Influence on Earth's Climate.
George H. Taylor
Recently retired Oregon State Climatologist at Oregon State University's College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences and past President of the American Association of State Climatologists, George Taylor is President of Applied Climate Services of Corvallis, Oregon, and is a member of both the Marshall Institute and the Independent Institute. Mentioned on page 186 of the Senate report, Taylor cautions, "The climate system is very, very complex, and the more we learn, the more we see that we really don't understand it." Yet, he says, "Most of the climate changes we have seen up until now have been a result of natural variations." A couple notable presentations by Taylor are What's Going On With the Arctic?, and (at Heartland's 2009 ICCC) The Pacific Decadal Oscillation: A Dominant Mode of Climate Variability.
Hendrik Tennekes
Atmospheric scientist Hendrik Tennekes was previously director of research at The Netherlands' Royal National Meteorological Institute and professor of Aeronautical Engineering at Pennsylvania State University but was largely forced into retirement due to his stance against global warming alarmism. Somewhat of a pioneer in the science of weather prediction, Tennekes insists that "there is no chance at all that the physical sciences can produce a universally accepted scientific basis for policy measures concerning climate change." "We only understand 10% of the climate issue," he says, and "that is not enough to wreck the world economy with Kyoto-like measures." A Skeptical View of Climate Models, A Personal Call for Modesty, Integrity, and Balance, A Revolution in Climate Prediction?, and RealClimate Suffers from Foggy Perception are a few of Tennekes's recently published articles.
John S. Theon, Ph.D.
John Theon, former senior atmospheric scientist at NASA, where he was chief of both the Climate Processes Research Program and the Atmospheric Dynamics & Radiation Branch, has won numerous awards and honors. When at NASA, Theon supervised global warming alarmist James Hansen, who champions absurd catastrophic manmade warming scenarios and claims to have been muzzled. But Theon denies catastrophic human-induced climate change and denies that Hansen was suppressed, saying that Hansen is an embarassment to NASA and should be fired for illegally endorsing John Kerry in 2004. "Some scientists have manipulated the observed data to justify their model results," says Theon. "There is no rational justification for using climate model forecasts to determine public policy." Theon has authored numerous reports and articles and recently delivered a speech entitled Is Climate Change Driven by Mankind: My Personal Journey (audio here) at the 2009 ICCC.
Anthony Watts
Formerly KHSL-TV's meteorologist, Anthony Watts leads an examination of official climatic weather stations, documented at surfacestation.org and explained in this slideshow. Having now examined 67% of the 1000+ stations, the project has found serious irresponsibility prevalent in the placement of thermometers, dramatically raising official temperature readings. Mentioned on page 152 of the Senate report, Watts was the 2008 weblog awards winner (best science blog), recognized for his site, Watts Up With That?, which includes, among hundreds of other notable posts, 3 of 4 global metrics show nearly flat temperature anomaly in the last decade, Hey kids! Be a "climate cop" - rat on your family, friends, and classmates, Gore demonstrates he doesn't understand basic meteorology, much less climate, and Correlation demonstrated between cosmic rays and temperature of the stratosphere.
Gerd-Rainer Weber, Ph.D.
Scientist for the German Coal Mining Association and member of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow's board, meteorologist Gerd Weber is an independent researcher and frequent speaker on climate issues and is responsible for scientific research, policy analysis, and consulting. Author of Global Warming: The Rest of the Story, Weber insists that "There is no convincing evidence that CO2 emissions from modern industrial activity has in the past, is now, or will in the future cause catastrophic climate change." "If you think weather forecasting is bad, you should try climate forecasting," he says elsewhere. "To presume that computer models can actually predict global climate to the year 2100 means we are basing our energy and economic policies--to say nothing of our children's futures--on a wild gamble." A couple of Weber's presentations are Inconsistencies in IPCC Predictions, delivered at the 2008 ICCC, and Key Elements of European Emission Trading Directive Implementation, delivered at AEI's Return to Rio
Bruce J. West, Ph.D.
Bruce West is the chief scientist for the US Army Research Office's mathematical and science directorate in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. Having written an article entitled Is Climate Sensitive to Solar Variability? with Nicola Scafetta, West reported: "Our own analysis of the total solar irradiance and the modeling of the Earth's climate response to changes in that irradiance lead us to conclude that the Earth's average surface temperature is directly linked to two distinctly different aspects of the sun's dynamics in marked contrast to the findings in the United Nations report." "While Dr. Scafetta and I disagree with this representation of scientific opinion," he noted, "that opinion is, in the end, irrelevant to the science. Science has never been a matter of consensus building. Science proceeds by what might be characterized as controversy and disagreement which is ultimately resolved by the interplay between experiment and theory and not by committee."
Meet the Critics (A-K)
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