| Claude Allègre | |
|---|---|
| Born | 31 March 1937 Paris, France |
| Nationality | French |
Claude (Jean) Allègre (born 31 March 1937, Paris) is a French politician and scientist.
Contents |
Scientific work
The main scientific area of Claude Allègre is geochemistry.
Claude Allègre is officially of retirement age, but continues to perform academic work at the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris (Institute of Geophysics, Paris).
His important scientific work on geochemistry won him:
- the Crafoord Prize for geology in 1986, along with Gerald J. Wasserburg;
- the Wollaston Medal of the Geological Society of London;
- the Golden Medal of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
He is a member of:
- French Academy of Sciences, elected member on 6 November 1995
- United States National Academy of Sciences (foreign associate)
In 1976, Allègre and Haroun Tazieff had an intense, public quarrel about whether inhabitants should evacuate the surroundings of the erupting volcano la Soufrière.
Political career
A member of the French Socialist Party, Allègre is better known to the general public for his past political responsibilities, which include serving as Minister of Education of France in the Jospin cabinet from 4 June 1997 to March 2000, when he was replaced by Jack Lang. His outpourings of critiques against teaching personnel, as well as his reforms, made him increasingly unpopular in the teaching world.
In the run-up to the 2007 French presidential election, he endorsed Lionel Jospin, then Dominique Strauss-Kahn, for the Socialist nomination, and finally sided with the ex-Socialist Jean-Pierre Chevènement, against Ségolène Royal. When Chevènement decided not to run, he publicly, and controversially, declined to support Royal's bid for the presidency, citing differences over nuclear energy, GMO's and stem-cell research.
Controversies
Climate change and natural causes
Allègre thinks that the causes of climate change are unknown.
In an article entitled "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" in l'Express, a French weekly periodic, Allègre cited evidence that Antarctica's gaining ice and that Kilimanjaro's retreating snow caps, among other global-warming concerns, can come from natural causes. "The cause of this climate change is unknown", he states as matter of fact. For him, there is no basis for saying, as many do, that the "science is settled."[1]
Allègre has accused proponents of anthropogenic, catastrophic global warming of being motivated by money, commenting that “the ecology of helpless protesting has become a very lucrative business for some people!”[2]
20 years ago in "Clés pour la géologie", he wrote "By burning fossil fuels, man increased the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which, for example, has raised the global mean temperature by half a degree in the last century".
In 2009, when it was suggested that Claude Allègre might be offered a position as minister in President Nicolas Sarkozy's government, TV anchor Nicolas Hulot stated:
- "He doesn't think the same as the 2,500 scientists of the IPCC, who are warning the world about a disaster; that's his right. But if he were to be recruited in government, it would become policy, and it would be a bras d'honneur to those scientists. [...] [It] would be a tragic signal, six months before the Copenhagen Conference, and something incomprehensible coming from France, which has been a leading country for years in the fight against climate change!"[3]
Asbestos
In 1996, Allègre opposed the removing of carcinogenic asbestos from the Jussieu university campus in Paris, describing it as harmless and dismissing concerns about it as a form of "psychosis created by leftists".[4] The campus' asbestos is deemed to have killed 22 people and caused serious health problems in 130 others.[5]
Gravity
In 1999, the Canard enchaîné, and subsequently several other media, published Allègre's claim, initially stated during a radio interview, that, if one drops a pétanque ball and a tennis ball at the same time from a tower, they will reach the ground at the same time. Allègre claimed that there was a popular misconception to the contrary, and that schoolchildren should be made to understand that two objects always fall at the same speed. The Canard responded that this was true only in a vacuum, and not in all cases as Allègre had said. The latter responded in turn, maintaining his initial statement. Georges Charpak, Nobel prize for Physics, intervened to explain that Allègre was wrong; the latter maintained his statement yet again.[6] [7]
Notes
- ^ Neiges du Kilimandjaro – La cause de la modification climatique reste inconnue. Donc, prudence, L'Express, 2006
- ^ US Senate Environmental & Public Works Committee
- ^ "Pour Nicolas Hulot, Claude Allègre au gouvernement 'serait un signal tragique'", AFP, May 24, 2009
- ^ "Claude Allègre: Qui a peur du 'serial gaffeur'?", Marianne, May 30, 2009, p.48
- ^ "Déjà 22 morts et 130 malades: Les amiantes de jussieu", Nouvel Observateur, November 29, 2007
- ^ "Claude Allègre: Qui a peur du 'serial gaffeur'?", Marianne, May 30, 2009, p.48
- ^ Initial articles in Le Canard enchaîné, February 24, March 3, 10 and 17 1999
References
- Cl.J. Allègre, G. Michard, R.N. Varney (1974), Introduction to Geochemistry (Springer). ISBN 90-277-0497-X
See also
External links
| Preceded by François Bayrou |
Minister of Education 1997-2000 |
Succeeded by Jack Lang |
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