A Climate Change Dissenter Who Has Left His Mark on U.S. Policy (Richard Lindzen)

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2011/07/06/06climatewire-a-climate-change-dissenter-who-has-left-his-76048.html

A Climate Change Dissenter Who Has Left His Mark on U.S. Policy

By JOHN J. FIALKA of ClimateWire
Published: July 6, 2011

BOSTON -- Richard Lindzen is 71. His career as professor of meteorology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology is winding down. The rumpled, bearded, soft-spoken scientist no longer teaches regular classes and looks forward to a quiet retirement a year from now, perhaps at his second home, in Paris.

…

In the 1990s, when a group of climate scientists using computer-driven climate models and environmental groups asserted that climate change caused by man-made greenhouse gases would dangerously warm the Earth, Lindzen set out to disprove them. He lost that battle. The message of the computer modelers is now the prevailing wisdom of the National Academy and other distinguished scientific bodies around the world.

But Lindzen hasn't given up. He became a major force in the political war that raged within the incoming George W. Bush Administration over what to do about global warming. After holding seminars with leading climate scientists, Bush rejected U.S. participation in the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Lindzen's message in these tutorials -- that man-caused global warming was real, but would hardly cause any change at all -- was the one that Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney appeared to favor the most. U.S. climate policy hasn't been the same since.

…

[SpiralHawk]

1. Yet another fallible scientists, choosing to align himself with the Know Nothing Party (R)

Such an ugly shame when dogma trumps data.

[damntexdem]

2. Sometimes I hope there really is a hell.

One with a very-hot place for douchebags like this.

[jimlup]

3. One of the old stalwarts

I glad to see these guys retiring. I think the current generation will be less dogmatic than this guy.