re VA State Climatologist skeptical of global warming loses job after clash with Governor
Lets hope Exxon..Western Coal... ect.. are throwing you a banana
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."[18]. 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."[19]. The American Association of State Climatologists (AASC) lists Michaels as State Climatologist at the University of Virginia and its State Climatology Office.[20] 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. [21]
[edit] Critics
A number of prominent scientists have criticized Michaels' research conclusions. John Holdren of Harvard University 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." [22]
Climate scientist Tom Wigley, [23] a lead author of parts of the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is quoted in Ross Gelbspan's book The Heat is On[24]: "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."[25]
Peter Gleick, a conservation analyst and president of the Oakland-based Pacific Institute, said: "Pat Michaels is not one of the nation's leading researchers on climate change. On the contrary, he is one of a very small minority of nay-sayers who continue to dispute the facts and science about climate change in the face of compelling, overwhelming, and growing evidence."[26]
Attempted betting on global warming
Like global warming skeptics Richard Lindzen and William M. Gray, Michaels' World Climate Report offered in late 1998 "to wager that the 10-year period beginning in January 1998 and extending through December 2007 will show a statistically significant downward trend in the monthly satellite record of global temperatures."[13] After learning of the bet offer in 2005, climatologist James Annan attempted to accept World Climate Report's offer, but it was withdrawn.
See also: Global_warming_controversy#Betting.
[edit] CFCs and ozone
Michaels has also engaged in controversy regarding the impact of CFCs on the ozone layer. 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.
Although scientists generally considered the basis for the relationship between CFCs and the ozone layer to be 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, Michaels persisted in advocating against the CFC phaseout as late as 2001. [14][15][16]
[edit] 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. 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. [17] But Michaels has long been a skeptic of what he sees as environmental alarmism. He does not, however, deny the existence of anthropogenic global warming.
[edit] TASSC
Michaels was a member of the Advisory board of The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition, an organization later shown to have been founded by PR firm APCO Worldwide and funded by the Phillip Morris corporation to criticise scientific research inimical to the interests of tobacco companies and other corporations [1].
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