Patrick Michaels

Patrick J. Michaels (born February 15, 1950) is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and a former Professor of Environmental Sciences from the University of Virginia where he worked from 1980-2007.^[1] He is a former state climatologist for Virginia, a position he was appointed to in 1980^[2] and resigned from in 2007 amid uncertainty over whether he still officially retained the position.^[3] He gained a Ph.D. in ecological climatology from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1979.^[4]

In interviews Michaels has said that he does not contest the basic scientific principles behind greenhouse warming and acknowledges that global mean temperature has increased in recent decades, though he is widely regarded in the media as a global warming skeptic^{[5][6][7][8][9]} who contends that the changes will be minor, not catastrophic, and even beneficial in many cases. He has written extensive editorials on this topic for the mass media, and for think tanks and their publications such as Regulation.^[10]

He is the author of several books including: Sound and Fury: The Science and Politics of Global Warming (1992), Satanic Gases (2002; as coauthor), Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians and the Media (2004), published by the Cato Institute, and Shattered Consensus: The True State of Global Warming (2005; as editor and coauthor).

He is a fellow of the libertarian think tank Cato Institute and edits the World Climate Report, published and funded by the not-for-profit organization Greening Earth Society created by the Western Fuels Association.^[11]

Climate change

Michaels maintains that current and future warming will occur at the low end of the range IPCC assessments:

[S]cientists know quite precisely how much the planet will warm in the foreseeable future, a modest three-quarters of a degree (C) [in 50 years]

All this has to do with basic physics, which isn't real hard to understand. It has been known since 1872 that as we emit more and more carbon dioxide into our atmosphere, each increment results in less and less warming. In other words, the first changes produce the most warming, and subsequent ones produce a bit less, and so on. But we also assume carbon dioxide continues to go into the atmosphere at an ever-increasing rate. In other words, the increase from year-to-year isn't constant, but itself is increasing. The effect of increasing the rate of carbon dioxide emissions, coupled with the fact that more and more carbon dioxide produces less and less warming compels our climate projections for the future warming to be pretty much a straight line. Translation: Once human beings start to warm the climate, they do so at a constant rate. ^[12]

Michaels asks:

Why is the news on global warming always bad? Perhaps because there's little incentive to look at things the other way. If you do, you're liable to be pilloried by your colleagues. If global warming isn't such a threat, who needs all that funding? ^[13]

Michaels' statements on climate change have attracted criticism.^[14]

OSTP director, John Holdren,^[15] told the U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee, "Michaels is another of the handful of U.S. climate-change contrarians … He has published little if anything of distinction in the professional literature, being noted rather for his shrill op-ed pieces and indiscriminate denunciations of virtually every finding of mainstream climate science".^[16] Climate scientist Tom Wigley,^[17] a lead author of parts of the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has stated that "Michaels' statements on the subject of computer models are a catalog of misrepresentation and misinterpretation … Many of the supposedly factual statements made in Michaels' testimony are either inaccurate or are seriously misleading".^[18]

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, Michaels deliberately misrepresented the facts about the stolen emails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, blaming comments in stolen emails for resignations at Climate Science Journal.^[19]

CFCs and ozone

Michaels has also engaged in the controversy concerning whether CFCs are a cause of ozone depletion in the stratosphere. In particular, he has criticised predictions of thinning of the ozone layer over the Arctic, and of increasing ultraviolet radiation reaching the surface of the earth, in the absence of a phaseout CFC emissions. The Montreal Protocol of 1989 required such a phaseout.

Michaels persisted in advocating against the CFC phaseout as late as 2001,^[20][21][22] while scientists generally considered the basis for the relationship between CFCs and the ozone layer to be entirely settled by 1995, when the Nobel Prize for Chemistry was awarded to Paul Crutzen , Mario Molina, and Sherwood Rowland for their work that demonstrated physical mechanisms for the effects of CFCs on ozone depletion.^[23]

Intermountain Rural Electric Association controversy

In a July 27, 2006 ABC News report, it was revealed that a Colorado energy cooperative, the Intermountain Rural Electric Association, had given Michaels $100,000.^[24] The report noted that the cooperative has a vested interest in opposing mandatory carbon dioxide caps. The wider context of the report concerned entities within the fossil fuel industry giving money to scientists in an effort to create a perception that there is a lack of consensus in the scientific community regarding global warming.^[25]

State climatologist

In 2006 the Governor of Virginia, Timothy M. Kaine, clarified that Virginia does not have an official state climatologist. Former Gov. John Dalton had appointed Michaels to the position in 1980, but in 2000 the University of Virginia (rather than the state government) assumed responsibility for certification through the American Association of State Climatologists. A letter sent to the University of Virginia by Secretary of the Commonwealth Katherine Hanley clarified that the Code of Virginia "does not provide for the governor to appoint a state climatologist."^[26] Hanley made it clear that Michaels works for the university, not the state government. Michaels was asked to "avoid any conflict of interest or appearance thereof by scrupulously avoiding the use of the title of 'state climatologist' in connection with any outside activities or private consulting endeavors."^[27] In late September 2007, Michaels and the head of the Environmental Sciences Department, Jay Zieman, confirmed that Michaels officially resigned as state climatologist, but remains on the faculty of the University of Virginia as a part time research professor on leave.^[1]

Selected publications

Science papers

• Michaels, P.J.; Singer, S.F.; Knappenberger, P.C.; Kerr, J.B.; McElroy, C.T. (1994). "Analyzing ultraviolet-B radiation--is there a trend?". Science 264 (5163): 1341–1343. doi:10.1126/science.264.5163.1341. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1994Sci...264.1341M. 
• Michaels, Patrick J.; Knappenberger, Paul C. (1996). "Human effect on global climate?". Nature 384 (6609): 522–523. doi:10.1038/384522b0. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1996Natur.384..522M. 
• Michaels, Patrick J.; Balling Jr., Robert C.; Knappenberger, Paul C. (1998). "Analysis of trends in the variability of daily and monthly historical temperature measurements" (PDF). Climate Research 10: 27–33. doi:10.3354/cr010027. ISSN 0936-577X. http://www.int-res.com/articles/cr/10/c010p027.pdf. 
• Davis, Robert E.; Knappenberger, Paul C.; Novicoff, Wendy M.; Michaels, Patrick J. (2002). "Decadal changes in heat-related human mortality in the eastern United States" (PDF). Climate Research 22: 175–184. doi:10.3354/cr022175. ISSN 0936-577X. http://www.int-res.com/articles/cr2002/22/c022p175.pdf. 
• Davies, R.E.; Knappenberger, P.C.; Michaels, P.J.; Novicoff, W.M. (2003). "Changing Heat-Related Mortality in the United States". Environmental Health Perspectives 111. doi:10.1289/ehp.6336. http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst;jsessionid=HcpdyVcwTRZJMpLn3MGvnh0Lmj4W4XJcz11zwCyZnGvRZkCyxc5y!-249801798?docId=5002058308. 

Books

• Michaels, Patrick J. (October 1992). Sound and Fury: The Science and Politics of Global Warming. Cato Institute. pp. 196. ISBN 0932790895. 
• Michaels, Patrick J. (May 15, 2000). The Satanic Gases. Cato Institute. pp. 224. ISBN 1882577922. 
• Michaels, Patrick J. (October 25, 2005). Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media. Cato Institute. pp. 280. ISBN 1930865791. 
• Michaels, Patrick J. (December 28, 2005). Shattered Consensus: The True State of Global Warming. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 304. ISBN 0742549232. 
• Michaels, Patrick J. (January 25, 2009). Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don't Want You to Know. Cato Institute. pp. 250. ISBN 1933995238. 

See also

• Global warming controversy#Betting

References

External links

• Chief Editor profile, World Climate Report
• Biography^{[dead link]}, University of Virginia
• Biography, Cato Institute
• "Science, Climate Change, and Censorship", commentary about Michaels published by the Pacific Institute from scientists.
• "How to Manufacture a Climate Consensus", op-ed by Michaels at the Wall Street Journal, published 12/17/2009