Patrick Michaels

Patrick J. Michaels, Ph.D., (born February 15, 1950) is a Research Professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia. He has been the university's Climatologist for Virginia since 1980 . His professional specialty was the influence of climate on agriculture. 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 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.

According to his bio on the Cato Institute website, for whom he is a Senior Fellow in Environmental Studies:

He is a past president of the American Association of State Climatologists and was program chair for the Committee on Applied Climatology of the American Meteorological Society. Michaels is a contributing author and reviewer of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He was an author of the 2003 climate science "Paper of the Year" awarded by the Association of American Geographers, for the demonstration that urban heat-related mortality declined significantly as cities became warmer. His writing has been published in the major scientific journals, including Climate Research, Climatic Change, Geophysical Research Letters, Journal of Climate, Nature, and Science; and his articles have appeared also in the Washington Post, the Washington Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Houston Chronicle, and the Journal of Commerce. He has appeared on ABC, NPR's All Things Considered, PBS, Fox News Channel, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, BBC and Voice of America.

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

He has received financial support in research funding and consulting fees from the fossil-fuel energy industry. He is a fellow of the 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.

View on 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.

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." Climatologist James Annan, who has offered multiple bets that global temperatures will increase, learned of the offer in 2005 and contacted the Report to arrange a bet. An editor from World Climate Report responded, reneging on the original bet offer and declining to make a new bet starting from the present.

December 2007 has yet to arrive but average global temperatures have risen since January 1998. . While 1998 was an exceptionally hot year owing to the strongest El Niño event in the instrumental record (a fact known when the bet was offered), the stated terms mean that the relevant comparison is between the end of 1997 and the end of 2007.

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 1987 required such a phaseout.

The scientific controversy over the relationship between CFCs and the ozone layer was resolved 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. However, Michaels continued to criticise the CFC phaseout as late as 2001.

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. 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.

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.". 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.". The American Association of State Climatologists (AASC) lists Michaels as State Climatologist at the University of Virginia and its State Climatology Office.

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."

Tom Wigley, lead author of parts of the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and one of the world's leading climate scientists, was quoted in the book The Heat is On: "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."

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."

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
• Michaels, Patrick J.; Knappenberger, Paul C. (1996), Human effect on global climate?, vol. 384, pp. 522–523, doi:10.1038/384522b0 {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |jounal= ignored (help)
• 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, ISSN 0936-577X
• 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, ISSN 0936-577X

Books

• Michaels, Patrick J. (October 1992). Sound and Fury: The Science and Politics of Global Warming. Cato Institute. p. 196. ISBN 0932790895.
• Michaels, Patrick J. (May 15, 2000). The Satanic Gases. Cato Institute. p. 224. ISBN 1882577922. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
• Michaels (October 25, 2005). Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media. Cato Institute. p. 280. ISBN 1930865791. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Unknown parameter |fist= ignored (help)
• Michaels, Patrick J. (December 28, 2005). Shattered Consensus: The True State of Global Warming. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 304. ISBN 0742549232. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

External links

• World Climate Report Patrick Michael's blog
• Making Money and Feeding Confusion About Global Warming ABC News
• Associated Press: "Utilities Give Warming Skeptic Big Bucks" 27 July 2006
• U. of Virginia bio
• Cato Institute bio
• Sourcewatch: Sourcewatch bio
• Science, Climate Change, and Censorship
• Posturing and reality on warming, Washington Times commentary by Michaels
• On The Environmental Science and Policy Institute website, Justin Lancaster claims that Michaels participated with Fred Singer in crafting and executing a strategy to discredit Al Gore through the use of Roger Revelle's name and reputation. No evidence appears to be provided that Michaels participated knowingly, however. Fred Singer has denied the allegations.