Climate Momentum Shifting: Prominent Scientists Reverse Belief in
Man-made Global Warming - Now Skeptics
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Growing Number of Scientists Convert to Skeptics After Reviewing New
Research

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

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
"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" citing Bryson: & see Newsweek's 1975 article "The
Cooling World" 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. "Before 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?" Bryson told the May 2007
issue of Energy Cooperative News. "All this argument is the
temperature going up or not, it's absurd. Of course it's going up. It
has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution,
because we're coming out of the Little Ice Age, not because we're
putting more carbon dioxide into the air," Bryson said. "You can go
outside and spit and have the same effect as doubling carbon dioxide,"
he added. "We cannot say what part of that warming was due to
mankind's addition of 'greenhouse gases' 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,"
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, "I
started as a anthropogenic global warming believer, then I read the
[UN's IPCC] Summary for Policymakers and the research of prominent
skeptics." "After that, I changed my mind," Labohn explained. Labohn
co-authored the 2004 book "Man-Made Global Warming: Unraveling a
Dogma," with chemical engineer ***** 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, "'Climate change is real' 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 'noise.'"

Paleoclimatologist Tim Patterson, of Carlton University in Ottawa
converted from believer in C02 driving the climate change to a
skeptic. "I taught my students that CO2 was the prime driver of
climate change," Patterson wrote on April 30, 2007. Patterson said
his "conversion" happened following his research on "the nature of
paleo-commercial fish populations in the NE Pacific." "[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)," Patterson explained. "Over
the course of about a year, I switched allegiances," he wrote. "As 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," Patterson noted. Patterson says his conversion "probably
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." 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," 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," Patterson said. In a separate interview on April 26, 2007
with a Canadian newspaper, Patterson explained that the scientific
proof favors skeptics. "I 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. "The 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 1970's all the way to converting to a skeptic of current
predictions of catastrophic man-made global warming. "At 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," Dr.
Jaworowski, wrote on August 17, 2006. "With 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," 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 "CO2: The Greatest Scientific Scandal of Our Time." "We 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,"
Jaworowski wrote. "For 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," Jaworowski wrote. "The
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," he added.
Jaworowski believes that cosmic rays and solar activity are major
drivers of the Earth's 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. "I 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," Clark said in a 2005 documentary "Climate
Catastrophe Cancelled: What You're Not Being Told About the Science of
Climate Change." "However, 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," Clark
explained. "Actually, many other leading climate researchers also have
serious concerns about the science underlying the [Kyoto] Protocol,"
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. "I simply accepted
the (global warming) theory as given," Veizer wrote on April 30, 2007
about predictions that increasing C02 in the atmosphere was leading to
a climate catastrophe. "The 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," Veizer
wrote. "It 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,"
Veizer explained. "The past record strongly favors the solar/cosmic
alternative as the principal climate driver," he added. Veizer
acknowledgez the Earth has been warming and he believes in the
scientific value of climate modeling. "The 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 'positive water vapor feedback',) Veizer
wrote. "Thus 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," he continued. "Note that it is not CO2 that is in
the models but its presumed energy equivalent (model language
'prescribed CO2'). 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," he wrote.

More to follow...


--
There may come a time when the CO2 police will wander the earth telling
the poor and the dispossed how many dung chips they can put on their
cook fires. -- Captain Compassion.

Wherever I go it will be well with me, for it was well with me here, not
on account of the place, but of my judgments which I shall carry away
with me, for no one can deprive me of these; on the contrary, they alone
are my property, and cannot be taken away, and to possess them suffices
me wherever I am or whatever I do. -- EPICTETUS

Celibacy in healthy human beings is a form of
insanity. -- Captain Compassion

"Civilization is the interval between Ice Ages." -- Will Durant.

Joseph R. Darancette
daranc@NOSPAMcharter.net