Prominent Scientists Reverse Belief in Man-made Global Warming - Now Skeptics

EPW -Senator James Inhofe (Ranking Minority Member) ^ | 05/16/2007 | Marc Morano

[Lecie]

Climate Momentum Shifting: Prominent Scientists Reverse Belief in Man-made Global Warming - Now Skeptics

Growing Number of Scientists Convert to Skeptics After Reviewing New Research

Following the U.S. Senate's vote today on a global warming measure (see today's AP article: Senate Defeats Climate Change Measure ,) it is an opportune time to examine the recent and quite remarkable momentum shift taking place in climate science. Many former believers in catastrophic man-made global warming have recently reversed themselves and are now climate skeptics. The names included below are just a sampling of the prominent scientists who have spoken out recently to oppose former Vice President Al Gore, the United Nations, and the media driven “consensus” on man-made global warming.

The list below is just the tip of the iceberg. A more detailed and comprehensive sampling of scientists who have only recently spoken out against climate hysteria will be forthcoming in a soon to be released U.S. Senate report. Please stay tuned to this website, as this new government report is set to redefine the current climate debate.

In the meantime, please review the list of scientists below and ask yourself why the media is missing one of the biggest stories in climate of 2007. Feel free to distribute the partial list of scientists who recently converted to skeptics to your local schools and universities. The voices of rank and file scientists opposing climate doomsayers can serve as a counter to the alarmism that children are being exposed to on a daily basis. (See Washington Post April 16, 2007 article about kids fearing of a “climactic Armageddon” ) The media's climate fear factor seemingly grows louder even as the latest science grows less and less alarming by the day. (See Der Spiegel May 7, 2007 article: Not the End of the World as We Know It ) It is also worth noting that the proponents of climate fears are increasingly attempting to suppress dissent by skeptics. (See UPI May 10, 2007 article: U.N. official says it's 'completely immoral' to doubt global warming fears )

Geophysicist Dr. Claude Allegre, a top geophysicist and French Socialist who has authored more than 100 scientific articles and written 11 books and received numerous scientific awards including the Goldschmidt Medal from the Geochemical Society of the United States, converted from climate alarmist to skeptic in 2006. Allegre, who was one of the first scientists to sound global warming fears 20 years ago, now says the cause of climate change is "unknown" and accused the “prophets of doom of global warming” of being motivated by money, noting that "the ecology of helpless protesting has become a very lucrative business for some people!" “Glaciers’ chronicles or historical archives point to the fact that climate is a capricious phenomena. This fact is confirmed by mathematical meteorological theories. So, let us be cautious,” Allegre explained in a September 21, 2006 article in the French newspaper L'EXPRESS. The National Post in Canada also profiled Allegre on March 2, 2007, noting “Allegre has the highest environmental credentials. The author of early environmental books, he fought successful battles to protect the ozone layer from CFCs and public health from lead pollution.” Allegre now calls fears of a climate disaster "simplistic and obscuring the true dangers” mocks "the greenhouse-gas fanatics whose proclamations consist in denouncing man's role on the climate without doing anything about it except organizing conferences and preparing protocols that become dead letters." Allegre, a member of both the French and U.S. Academy of Sciences, had previously expressed concern about manmade global warming. "By burning fossil fuels, man enhanced the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which has raised the global mean temperature by half a degree in the last century," Allegre wrote 20 years ago. In addition, Allegre was one of 1500 scientists who signed a November 18, 1992 letter titled “World Scientists' Warning to Humanity” in which the scientists warned that global warming’s “potential risks are very great.”

Geologist Bruno Wiskel of the University of Alberta recently reversed his view of man-made climate change and instead became a global warming skeptic. Wiskel was once such a big believer in man-made global warming that he set out to build a “Kyoto house” in honor of the UN sanctioned Kyoto Protocol which was signed in 1997. Wiskel wanted to prove that the Kyoto Protocol’s goals were achievable by people making small changes in their lives. But after further examining the science behind Kyoto, Wiskel reversed his scientific views completely and became such a strong skeptic, that he recently wrote a book titled “The Emperor's New Climate: Debunking the Myth of Global Warming.” A November 15, 2006 Edmonton Sun article explains Wiskel’s conversion while building his “Kyoto house”: “Instead, he said he realized global warming theory was full of holes and ‘red flags,’ and became convinced that humans are not responsible for rising temperatures.” Wiskel now says “the truth has to start somewhere.” Noting that the Earth has been warming for 18,000 years, Wiskel told the Canadian newspaper, “If this happened once and we were the cause of it, that would be cause for concern. But glaciers have been coming and going for billions of years." Wiskel also said that global warming has gone "from a science to a religion” and noted that research money is being funneled into promoting climate alarmism instead of funding areas he considers more worthy. "If you funnel money into things that can't be changed, the money is not going into the places that it is needed,” he said.

Astrophysicist Dr. Nir Shaviv, one of Israel's top young award winning scientists , recanted his belief that manmade emissions were driving climate change. ""Like many others, I was personally sure that CO2 is the bad culprit in the story of global warming. But after carefully digging into the evidence, I realized that things are far more complicated than the story sold to us by many climate scientists or the stories regurgitated by the media. In fact, there is much more than meets the eye,” Shaviv said in February 2, 2007 Canadian National Post article. According to Shaviv, the C02 temperature link is only “incriminating circumstantial evidence.” "Solar activity can explain a large part of the 20th-century global warming" and "it is unlikely that [the solar climate link] does not exist,” Shaviv noted pointing to the impact cosmic- rays have on the atmosphere. According to the National Post, Shaviv believes that even a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere by 2100 "will not dramatically increase the global temperature." “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,” Shaviv explained. Shaviv also wrote on August 18, 2006 that a colleague of his believed that “CO2 should have a large effect on climate” so “he set out to reconstruct the phanerozoic temperature. He wanted to find the CO2 signature in the data, but since there was none, he slowly had to change his views.” Shaviv believes there will be more scientists converting to man-made global warming skepticism as they discover the dearth of evidence. “I think this is common to many of the scientists who think like us (that is, that CO2 is a secondary climate driver). Each one of us was working in his or her own niche. While working there, each one of us realized that things just don't add up to support the AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) picture. So many had to change their views,” he wrote. Mathematician & engineer Dr. David Evans, who did carbon accounting for the Australian Government, recently detailed his conversion to a skeptic. “I devoted six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian government to estimate carbon emissions from land use change and forestry. When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty conclusive, but since then new evidence has weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause. I am now skeptical,” Evans wrote in an April 30, 2007 blog. “But after 2000 the evidence for carbon emissions gradually got weaker -- better temperature data for the last century, more detailed ice core data, then laboratory evidence that cosmic rays precipitate low clouds,” Evans wrote. “As Lord Keynes famously said, ‘When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?’” he added. Evans noted how he benefited from climate fears as a scientist. “And the political realm in turn fed money back into the scientific community. By the late 1990's, lots of jobs depended on the idea that carbon emissions caused global warming. Many of them were bureaucratic, but there were a lot of science jobs created too. I was on that gravy train, making a high wage in a science job that would not have existed if we didn't believe carbon emissions caused global warming. And so were lots of people around me; and there were international conferences full of such people. And we had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet! But starting in about 2000, the last three of the four pieces of evidence outlined above fell away or reversed,” Evans wrote. “The pre-2000 ice core data was the central evidence for believing that atmospheric carbon caused temperature increases. The new ice core data shows that past warmings were *not* initially caused by rises in atmospheric carbon, and says nothing about the strength of any amplification. This piece of evidence casts reasonable doubt that atmospheric carbon had any role in past warmings, while still allowing the possibility that it had a supporting role,” he added. “Unfortunately politics and science have become even more entangled. The science of global warming has become a partisan political issue, so positions become more entrenched. Politicians and the public prefer simple and less-nuanced messages. At the moment the political climate strongly supports carbon emissions as the cause of global warming, to the point of sometimes rubbishing or silencing critics,” he concluded. (Evans bio link )

Climate researcher Dr. Tad Murty, former Senior Research Scientist for Fisheries and Oceans in Canada , also reversed himself from believer in man-made climate change to a skeptic. “I stated with a firm belief about global warming, until I started working on it myself,” Murty explained on August 17, 2006. “I switched to the other side in the early 1990's when Fisheries and Oceans Canada asked me to prepare a position paper and I started to look into the problem seriously,” Murty explained. Murty was one of the 60 scientists who wrote an April 6, 2006 letter urging withdrawal of Kyoto to Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper which stated in part, "If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary.”

Botanist Dr. David Bellamy, a famed UK environmental campaigner, former lecturer at Durham University and host of a popular UK TV series on wildlife , recently converted into a skeptic after reviewing the science and now calls global warming fears "poppycock." According to a May 15, 2005 article in the UK Sunday Times, Bellamy said “global warming is largely a natural phenomenon. The world is wasting stupendous amounts of money on trying to fix something that can’t be fixed.” “The climate-change people have no proof for their claims. They have computer models which do not prove anything,” Bellamy added. Bellamy’s conversion on global warming did not come without a sacrifice as several environmental groups have ended their association with him because of his views on climate change. The severing of relations came despite Bellamy’s long activism for green campaigns. The UK Times reported Bellamy “won respect from hardline environmentalists with his campaigns to save Britain’s peat bogs and other endangered habitats. In Tasmania he was arrested when he tried to prevent loggers cutting down a rainforest.”

Climate scientist Dr. Chris de Freitas of The University of Auckland, N.Z., also converted from a believer in man-made global warming to a skeptic. “At first I accepted that increases in human caused additions of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere would trigger changes in water vapor etc. and lead to dangerous ‘global warming,’ But with time and with the results of research, I formed the view that, although it makes for a good story, it is unlikely that the man-made changes are drivers of significant climate variation.” de Freitas wrote on August 17, 2006. “I accept there may be small changes. But I see the risk of anything serious to be minute,” he added. “One could reasonably argue that lack of evidence is not a good reason for complacency. But I believe the billions of dollars committed to GW research and lobbying for GW and for Kyoto treaties etc could be better spent on uncontroversial and very real environmental problems (such as air pollution, poor sanitation, provision of clean water and improved health services) that we know affect tens of millions of people,” de Freitas concluded. de Freitas was one of the 60 scientists who wrote an April 6, 2006 letter urging withdrawal of Kyoto to Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper which stated in part, “Significant [scientific] advances have been made since the [Kyoto] protocol was created, many of which are taking us away from a concern about increasing greenhouse gases.”

Meteorologist Dr. Reid Bryson, the founding chairman of the Department of Meteorology at University of Wisconsin (now the Department of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, was pivotal in promoting the coming ice age scare of the 1970’s ( See Time Magazine’s 1974 article “Another Ice Age”

[driftless2]

Cockburn is actually a fullbore socialist and not a mere parasitic liberal. Most American libs give lip service to the "ideals" of socialism without ever changing their behavior. They would actually hate having to live in a real socialist society, but it sounds good to voice support for it.

Real socialists like Cockburn would actually like to remake American into a large Cuba. But apparently even a stopped clock is right every now and then, since Cockburn has a screwy position on everything else except gw.

[Pentagon Leatherneck]

That would be a good one. But the flip side of that finding might lend credence to the AGW version; the “Intel community” has its fair share of liberal nutcases.

TC

[driftless2]

"Sheryl Crow"

Sheryl is in a real bind at the moment. She's in a stall somewhere needing another square, and she asked her neighbor if she could spare a square. Unfortunately her neighbor could not spare a square.

[AFPhys]

“I think we can thank the internet and forums like FreeRepublic” [for scientists coming around...]
-—<>-—<>-—<>-—<>-—<>-—

Don’t forget, now, the blogs.

One of the most effective charts I have seen recently depicting the actual DATA (I keep coming around to that) and comparing it to the “computer models” the IPCC and the alarmists so depend on to "Prove Man is Responsible for Global Warming/ Climate Change" was posted by “Climate Watcher”
http://climatewatcher.blogspot.com/

I have it below -— Briefly, one of the BEST “Models” was run for periods that we actually have decent DATA for, and the model’s expectations were compared to the actual DATA ... “Climate Watcher” did a great service with his graphical description, I think.

There is a passing similarity in some parts of the model’s predictions to the actual DATA, but anyone believing we ought to gamble on the order of 5% or more of the world’s economy based on this type of flimsy evidence “tilting at windmills” that won’t be built for many decades needs to have their head examined. SOMETHING is clearly not right with the way these models are now programmed. The fact that they only include about 15% of the Sun’s output that hits the earth as affecting temperatures, clearly to me, suggests that as highly likely be a fruitful avenue for further exploration.

“The upper left panel is from the NASA GISS model E output of temperatures from 1995 through 2006. The trends include known forcings to 2003 and follow the A1B scenario forcings after 2003.

“The upper right panel depicts observed temperatures since 1995 from the UAH MSU.
The lower right panel depicts observed temperature change from the RSS MSU record since 1995.
The lower left panel depicts temperature change in the radiosonde data (RATPAC) since 1979.”

Altitude (by pressure in millibars) is on the vertical scale.
Latitude (from equator - Arctic on the right) is on the horizontal scale.

[Joan Kerrey]

Why is this coming up again? The U.N. has determined that there is no longer any doubt. The issue is resolved. Rather than fighting consensus we should be buying boats, life rafts and houseboats. If anyone wants survival advice and you’re in the death valley area of California look for my houseboat (the one on 30 foot stilts) right outside of town. Come nude, it’s getting hotter out here.

[Gritty]

[AFPhys]

ROTFLMPO...

[rgboomers]

“To have Al Gore win an Oscar for a bogus documentary film about man-made global warming is the ultimate incarnation of bullshit.”

More true than you have said. I watched Al Gore win the oscar. It was not given to him by the Motion Picture Academy. Al Gore really did not even win the Oscar. Al Gore was in a movie that won an Oscar. There is a big difference between that and winning an Oscar for oneself.

What happened is that the producers of “An Inconvenient Truth” won the Oscar. One of them made a speech that they were going to share it with Al Gore and handed it to him. Then as they left the stage Al Gore gave the Oscar back to the people who really won it. Al Gore did not win an Oscar and does not have one to display or show to people. He did not even win an Oscar. The MSM is misreporting this. It really is BS.

[Chances Are]

Beatlemania????

While I, too, was going to cite Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, this is a little over the top...

CA....

[Red Badger]

I’m old enough to remember Beatlemania, and it was really a hysteria limited to the females’ segment of society. Guys didn’t care all that much.............

[UlmoLordOfWaters]

BUMP for later reading...

[Donald Rumsfeld Fan]

You know, I’ve been listening to Rush since early 1990 and I do believe that he was the first “major” media figure to discount global warming. I do not remember all the details but it seems like he has always used facts to back up his position. I wonder what the real reasons why all these people are coming around?

You don't have to have a PHD to smell bullsh*t.

What is bullshit?

[Donald Rumsfeld Fan]

Global Warming is a fact. It's Anthropogenic Global Warming that is nonsense. I know many posters on FR use GW rather than AGW as a form of shorthand. However the world really does seem to be in one of its periodic warming periods at the moment - so we should be careful to frame the debate on the correct grounds.

The climate is always changing. Global temperatures will either rise or fall. At any point in time there is a 50% probability that they will rise. And a 100% probability that they will either rise or fall.

This may come as a shock to the general public, but it's a fact.

[Paladin2]

I thought the peak was 1998.

[Just mythoughts]

Tell Rummy we miss him.

[Chances Are]

I'm old enough to remember it, too. My mother thought the en masse swooning by the girls, while interesting, was no worse than what happen to the young ladies when Frank Sinatra made the scene.

While neither one of us was around for tulipomania, it would be a mistake, a faux pas, if you will, to compare Beatlemania to what was genuinely an Extraordinary Popular Delusion.

CA....

[Red Badger]

Somehow I just can’t picture girls swooning over Frank Sinatra...........or Bing Crosby...........

[DungeonMaster]

There are people that don’t believe in evolution too, just don’t try to tell that to the media or the school system.

[lepton]

Need....more.....paragraphs. :)