Following revelations last week that Patrick Michaels has taken $100,000 from power companies to debunk prevailing opinions regarding global warming, climatology has suddenly become a hot topic in Virginia. Now the editorial pundits are taking after the University of Virginia professor, who doubles as Virginia’s state climatologist.
“Students at Thomas Jefferson’s school in Charlottesville set high standards of honorable behavior. Too bad their code does not apply to faculty. Perhaps then Patrick Michaels, a professor of environmental sciences, would not have shamefully sold his academic credibility, embarrassing all Virginians in the process,” the Roanoke Times high-mindedly declared Monday, in effect calling Michaels either a liar or cheater. “Michaels’ shameful actions disqualify him from speaking for Virginia. Let him spread his industry-funded message without the title of state climatologist.”
The Free Lance-Star piled on yesterday: “There are still climate-change deniers or near-deniers around, as Virginians were reminded upon learning last week that Pat Michaels, a U.Va. professor who functions as the state climatologist and libertarian-think-tank beau ideal, was taking money from utilities to pick apart global-warming studies.” Added the editorial writer: “The rightist line on the issue–i.e., global warming is a myth created by evil one-worlders and embraced by ninnies–has been wavering for a while.”
Makes me wonder… have any of these people ever bothered to read Michaels’ work? I doubt it. It’s a lot easier to dismiss him as a paid goon of the Fossil Fuel Industry than to grapple with his arguments.
As I recall from what I’ve read, Michaels does not deny that global warming is occurring, although he debates the extent to which it is taking place. He also places that warming in the context of the fact that temperatures now are about the same as they were in the Medieval Warm Period, some of the warmest centuries in the previous 8,000 years. That warm period, presumably not caused by industrial carbon dioxide emissions, was followed by what historians labeled the Little Ice Age, which led most notoriously to the extinction of the Norse settlements in Greenland. In turn, the Little Ice Age yielded to the current warming trend, which began around 1800.
Michaels also concedes that human activity contributes to global warming. What he disputes is the extent to which human activity is responsible, in particular the degree to which rising temperatures are directly related to the level of CO2 greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. He notes, for instance, that CO2 emissions were increasingly steadily between 1940 and 1970, when average temperatures were falling — prompting worries at the time of an impending ice age. (He also offers a lot of arguments too technical to go into here.)
Finally, as I recall, Michaels questions the usefulness of the Kyoto Treaty in addressing global warming. Fulfilling the objectives of that treaty, at the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars to the United States economy, would impact global temperatures by a tiny fraction of one degree decades out. Would it not be more economically rational, he asks, to adapt to climate change rather than try to halt it?
I don’t know the answers. I don’t know if Michaels is right or wrong. But I do know one thing: When a consensus in the elite media, not necessary the scientific community, is driving climate research and policy, it’s a good thing to have skeptical voices challenging the received wisdom — regardless of where their funding comes from. Sometimes the received wisdom is right. Sometimes it’s not.
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