Prominent Scientists Reverse Belief in Man-made Global Warming

2007-05-17

Richard Moore

Original source URL:
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=927b9303-802a-23ad-494b-dccb00b51a12&Region_id=&Issue_id=

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

May 15, 2007

Posted by Marc Morano ­ •••@••.•••  - 9:14 PM ET

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 ³consensus² 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 ³climactic Armageddon² )

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 )

Once Believers, Now Skeptics ( Link to pdf version )

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 
³prophets of doom of global warming² of being motivated by money, noting that 
"the ecology of helpless protesting has become a very lucrative business for 
some people!" ³Glaciers¹ 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,² 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 ³Allegre 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.² Allegre now calls fears of a climate disaster "simplistic 
and obscuring the true dangers² 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 ³World Scientists' 
Warning to Humanity² in which the scientists warned that global warming¹s 
³potential risks are very great.²

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 ³Kyoto house² in honor of the UN sanctioned Kyoto Protocol which was signed in
1997.  Wiskel wanted to prove that the Kyoto Protocol¹s 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 ³The Emperor's New 
Climate: Debunking the Myth of Global Warming.²  A November 15, 2006 Edmonton 
Sun article explains Wiskel¹s conversion while building his ³Kyoto house²: 
³Instead, he said he realized global warming theory was full of holes and Œred 
flags,¹ and became convinced that humans are not responsible for rising 
temperatures.² Wiskel now says ³the truth has to start somewhere.²  Noting that 
the Earth has been warming for 18,000 years, Wiskel told the Canadian newspaper,
³If 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 religion² 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,² 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,² Shaviv said in February 2, 2007 Canadian National
Post article. According to Shaviv, the C02 temperature link is only 
³incriminating circumstantial evidence.² "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,² 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." ³Even 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,² Shaviv explained. Shaviv also wrote on 
August 18, 2006 that a colleague of his believed that ³CO2 should have a large 
effect on climate² so ³he 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.²  Shaviv believes there will be more scientists 
converting to man-made global warming skepticism as they discover the dearth of 
evidence. ³I 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,² he wrote.

Mathematician & engineer Dr. David Evans, who did carbon accounting for the 
Australian Government, recently detailed his conversion to a skeptic. ³I 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,² Evans wrote in an April 30, 
2007 blog. ³But 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,² Evans 
wrote.  ³As Lord Keynes famously said, ŒWhen the facts change, I change my mind.
What do you do, sir?¹² he added. Evans noted how he benefited from climate fears
as a scientist. ³And 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,² Evans wrote. ³The 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,² he added. ³Unfortunately 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,² 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.  ³I stated with a firm belief about global warming, until I
started working on it myself,² Murty explained on August 17, 2006.  ³I 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,² 
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.²

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 ³global warming is largely a natural phenomenon.  The world 
is wasting stupendous amounts of money on trying to fix something that can¹t be 
fixed.² ³The climate-change people have no proof for their claims. They have 
computer models which do not prove anything,² Bellamy added. Bellamy¹s 
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 Bellamy¹s long 
activism for green campaigns. The UK Times reported Bellamy ³won respect from 
hardline environmentalists with his campaigns to save Britain¹s peat bogs and 
other endangered habitats. In Tasmania he was arrested when he tried to prevent 
loggers cutting down a rainforest.²

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. ³At 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 Œglobal warming,¹ 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.² de Freitas 
wrote on August 17, 2006. ³I accept there may be small changes. But I see the 
risk of anything serious to be minute,² he added. ³One 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,² 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, ³Significant [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.²

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 
1970¹s ( See Time Magazine¹s 1974 article ³Another Ice Age² citing Bryson: & see
Newsweek¹s 1975 article ³The Cooling World² citing Bryson) has now converted 
into a leading global warming skeptic. In February 8, 2007 Bryson dismissed what
he terms "sky is falling" man-made global warming fears. Bryson, was on the 
United Nations Global 500 Roll of Honor and was identified by the British 
Institute of Geographers as the most frequently cited climatologist in the 
world. ³Before there were enough people to make any difference at all, two 
million years ago, nobody was changing the climate, yet the climate was 
changing, okay?² Bryson told the May 2007 issue of Energy Cooperative News. ³All
this argument is the temperature going up or not, it¹s absurd. Of course it¹s 
going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial 
Revolution, because we¹re coming out of the Little Ice Age, not because we¹re 
putting more carbon dioxide into the air,² Bryson said. ³You can go outside and 
spit and have the same effect as doubling carbon dioxide,² he added. ³We cannot 
say what part of that warming was due to mankind's addition of Œgreenhouse 
gases¹ until we consider the other possible factors, such as aerosols. The 
aerosol content of the atmosphere was measured during the past century, but to 
my knowledge this data was never used. We can say that the question of 
anthropogenic modification of the climate is an important question -- too 
important to ignore. However, it has now become a media free-for-all and a 
political issue more than a scientific problem,² Bryson explained in 2005.

Global warming author and economist Hans H.J. Labohm started out as a man-made 
global warming believer but he later switched his view after conducting climate 
research.  Labohm wrote on August 19, 2006, ³I started as a anthropogenic global
warming believer, then I read the [UN¹s IPCC] Summary for Policymakers and the 
research of prominent skeptics.²  ³After that, I changed my mind,² Labohn 
explained. Labohn co-authored the 2004 book ³Man-Made Global Warming: Unraveling
a Dogma,² with chemical engineer Dick Thoenes who was the former chairman of the
Royal Netherlands Chemical Society. Labohm 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, ³¹Climate change is real¹ is a 
meaningless phrase used repeatedly by activists to convince the public that a 
climate catastrophe is looming and humanity is the cause. Neither of these fears
is justified. Global climate changes all the time due to natural causes and the 
human impact still remains impossible to distinguish from this natural Œnoise.¹²

Paleoclimatologist Tim Patterson, of Carlton University in Ottawa converted from
believer in C02 driving the climate change to a skeptic. ³I taught my students 
that CO2 was the prime driver of climate change,² Patterson  wrote on April 30, 
2007. Patterson said his ³conversion² happened following his research on ³the 
nature of paleo-commercial fish populations in the NE Pacific.² ³[My conversion 
from believer to climate skeptic] came about approximately 5-6 years ago when 
results began to come in from a major NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering 
Research Council of Canada) Strategic Project Grant where I was PI (principle 
investigator),² Patterson explained. ³Over the course of about a year, I 
switched allegiances,² he wrote. ³As the proxy results began to come in, we were
astounded to find that paleoclimatic and paleoproductivity records were full of 
cycles that corresponded to various sun-spot cycles.  About that time, 
[geochemist] Jan Veizer and others began to publish reasonable hypotheses as to 
how solar signals could be amplified and control climate,² Patterson noted. 
Patterson says his conversion ³probably cost me a lot of grant money. However, 
as a scientist I go where the science takes me and not were activists want me to
go.² Patterson now asserts that more and more scientists are converting to 
climate skeptics.  "When I go to a scientific meeting, there's lots of opinion 
out there, there's lots of discussion (about climate change). I was at the 
Geological Society of America meeting in Philadelphia in the fall and I would 
say that people with my opinion were probably in the majority,² Patterson told 
the Winnipeg Sun on February 13, 2007. Patterson, who believes the sun is 
responsible for the recent warm up of the Earth, ridiculed the environmentalists
and the media for not reporting the truth. "But if you listen to [Canadian 
environmental activist David] Suzuki and the media, it's like a tiger chasing 
its tail. They try to outdo each other and all the while proclaiming that the 
debate is over but it isn't -- come out to a scientific meeting sometime,² 
Patterson said. In a separate interview on April 26, 2007 with a Canadian 
newspaper, Patterson explained that the scientific proof favors skeptics. ³I 
think the proof in the pudding, based on what (media and governments) are 
saying, (is) we're about three quarters of the way (to disaster) with the 
doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere," he said. ³The world should be heating up 
like crazy by now, and it's not. The temperatures match very closely with the 
solar cycles."

Physicist Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski, chairman of the Central Laboratory for the 
United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Radiological Protection in
Warsaw, took a scientific journey from a believer of man-made climate change in 
the form of global cooling in the 1970¹s all the way to converting to a skeptic 
of current predictions of catastrophic man-made global warming. ³At the 
beginning of the 1970s I believed in man-made climate cooling, and therefore I 
started a study on the effects of industrial pollution on the global atmosphere,
using glaciers as a history book on this pollution,² Dr. Jaworowski, wrote on 
August 17, 2006. ³With the advent of man-made warming political correctness in 
the beginning of 1980s, I already had a lot of experience with polar and high 
altitude ice, and I have serious problems in accepting the reliability of ice 
core CO2 studies,² Jaworowski added. Jaworowski, who has published many papers 
on climate with a focus on CO2 measurements in ice cores, also dismissed the UN 
IPCC summary and questioned what the actual level of C02 was in the atmosphere 
in a March 16, 2007 report in EIR science entitled ³CO2: The Greatest Scientific
Scandal of Our Time.² ³We thus find ourselves in the situation that the entire 
theory of man-made global warming‹with its repercussions in science, and its 
important consequences for politics and the global economy‹is based on ice core 
studies that provided a false picture of the atmospheric CO2 levels,² Jaworowski
wrote. ³For the past three decades, these well-known direct CO2 measurements, 
recently compiled and analyzed by Ernst-Georg Beck (Beck 2006a, Beck 2006b, Beck
2007), were completely ignored by climatologists‹and not because they were 
wrong. Indeed, these measurements were made by several Nobel Prize winners, 
using the techniques that are standard textbook procedures in chemistry, 
biochemistry, botany, hygiene, medicine, nutrition, and ecology. The only reason
for rejection was that these measurements did not fit the hypothesis of 
anthropogenic climatic warming. I regard this as perhaps the greatest scientific
scandal of our time,² Jaworowski wrote. ³The hypothesis, in vogue in the 1970s, 
stating that emissions of industrial dust will soon induce the new Ice Age, seem
now to be a conceited anthropocentric exaggeration, bringing into discredit the 
science of that time. The same fate awaits the present,² he added. Jaworowski 
believes that cosmic rays and solar activity are major drivers of the Earth¹s 
climate. Jaworowski 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: "It may be many years yet before we properly understand 
the Earth's climate system. Nevertheless, significant advances have been made 
since the protocol was created, many of which are taking us away from a concern 
about increasing greenhouse gases."

Paleoclimatologist Dr. Ian D. Clark, professor of the Department of Earth 
Sciences at University of Ottawa, reversed his views on man-made climate change 
after further examining the evidence. ³I used to agree with these dramatic 
warnings of climate disaster. I taught my students that most of the increase in 
temperature of the past century was due to human contribution of C02. The 
association seemed so clear and simple. Increases of greenhouse gases were 
driving us towards a climate catastrophe,² Clark said in a 2005 documentary 
"Climate Catastrophe Cancelled: What You're Not Being Told About the Science of 
Climate Change.² ³However, a few years ago, I decided to look more closely at 
the science and it astonished me. In fact there is no evidence of humans being 
the cause. There is, however, overwhelming evidence of natural causes such as 
changes in the output of the sun. This has completely reversed my views on the 
Kyoto protocol,² Clark explained. ³Actually, many other leading climate 
researchers also have serious concerns about the science underlying the [Kyoto] 
Protocol,² he added.

Environmental geochemist Dr. Jan Veizer, professor emeritus of University of 
Ottawa, converted from believer to skeptic after conducting scientific studies 
of climate history. ³I simply accepted the (global warming) theory as given,² 
Veizer wrote on April 30, 2007 about predictions that increasing C02 in the 
atmosphere was leading to a climate catastrophe. ³The final conversion came when
I realized that the solar/cosmic ray connection gave far more consistent picture
with climate, over many time scales, than did the CO2 scenario,² Veizer wrote. 
³It was the results of my work on past records, on geological time scales, that 
led me to realize the discrepancies with empirical observations. Trying to 
understand the background issues of modeling led to realization of the 
assumptions and uncertainties involved,² Veizer explained. ³The past record 
strongly favors the solar/cosmic alternative as the principal climate driver,² 
he added. Veizer acknowledgez the Earth has been warming and he believes in the 
scientific value of climate modeling. ³The major point where I diverge from the 
IPCC scenario is my belief that it underestimates the role of natural 
variability by proclaiming CO2 to be the only reasonable source of additional 
energy in the planetary balance. Such additional energy is needed to drive the 
climate. The point is that most of the temperature, in both nature and models, 
arises from the greenhouse of water vapor (model language Œpositive water vapor 
feedback¹,) Veizer wrote. ³Thus to get more temperature, more water vapor is 
needed. This is achieved by speeding up the water cycle by inputting more energy
into the system,² he continued. ³Note that it is not CO2 that is in the models 
but its presumed energy equivalent (model language Œprescribed CO2¹). Yet, the 
models (and climate) would generate a more or less similar outcome regardless 
where this additional energy is coming from. This is why the solar/cosmic 
connection is so strongly opposed, because it can influence the global energy 
budget which, in turn, diminishes the need for an energy input from the CO2 
greenhouse,² he wrote.

More to follow...
Related Links:

Senator Inhofe declares climate momentum shifting away from Gore (The Politico 
op ed)

Scientific Smackdown: Skeptics Voted The Clear Winners Against Global Warming 
Believers in Heated NYC Debate

Global Warming on Mars & Cosmic Ray Research Are Shattering Media Driven 
"Consensus¹

Global Warming: The Momentum has Shifted to Climate Skeptics

Prominent French Scientist Reverses Belief in Global Warming - Now a Skeptic

Top Israeli Astrophysicist Recants His Belief in Manmade Global Warming - Now 
Says Sun Biggest Factor in Warming

Warming On Jupiter, Mars, Pluto, Neptune's Moon & Earth Linked to Increased 
Solar Activity, Scientists Say

Panel of Broadcast Meteorologists Reject Man-Made Global Warming Fears- Claim 
95% of Weathermen Skeptical

MIT Climate Scientist Calls Fears of Global Warming 'Silly' - Equates Concerns 
to ŒLittle Kids¹ Attempting to "Scare Each Other"

Weather Channel TV Host Goes 'Political'- Stars in Global Warming Film Accusing 
U.S. Government of ŒCriminal Neglect¹

Weather Channel Climate Expert Calls for Decertifying Global Warming Skeptics

ABC-TV Meteorologist: I Don't Know A Single Weatherman Who Believes 'Man-Made 
Global Warming Hype'

The Weather Channel Climate Expert Refuses to Retract Call for Decertification 
for Global Warming Skeptics

Senator Inhofe Announces Public Release Of "Skeptic¹s Guide To Debunking Global 
Warming"
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