4 Favorite Climate Change Deniers

On of the pillars of the case for the case for acting climate change in policy circles is that the science on the subject is settled and the scientists are all in basic agreement.

It's the argument the coal and oil industry has had the toughest time refuting despite mighty and repeated attempts. In fact, most skepticism has now moved from claiming the climate isn't changing to claiming that human activity isn't causing the change.

Anyone who has ever written about climate change has, however, almost certainly received at least 10 lists pointing to "real scientists" who oppose climate change.

Every now and again I look up a few and find out who they are. Now, I'm the first to say that all the science around climate change is not settled. It's just that the overriding principles are irrefutable (more CO2=more heat eventually) and it's hard to find a reasonable denier at climate conferences.

And not everybody who opposes major tenets of prevailing climate theories is either corrupt or a total nutcase. Just, you know, a lot of them. Here are my four favorites, so far.

Fred Singer

Climate change denial's big gun. The patron saint and father figure of the movement. And it's true, this guy was a scientific heavy hitter, sat on powerful panels, and published many important papers ... under the Eisenhower Administration. Fifty years ago, he was the go-to guy for questions about cosmic dust and other cool astronomical phenomena.  He had 200 publications - including several in the uberjournals Science and Nature - but they just trailed off in the early 70s. What's he been doing since then? Well, somewhere along the way he simply checked out of science and became a well-paid consultant for GE, Ford, Lockeed Martin, Shell, ARCO, Unocal, and Sun Oil, and Exxon (who once gave him a $10,000 check for no apparent reason).

His first target was the "supposed" hole in the ozone layer. For a decade he fought tooth and nail against any notion that the ozone layer was suffering. That stopped in 1985 when an actual hole was measured above the South Pole. Without missing a beat, Singer skipped over to denying climate change, which he still does to this day.

David Archibald

This guy is on James Inhofe's list of 400 scientists that challenge climate change. He is referenced on numerous denier blogs as an Australian geologist and he may even have written a book (though I can't find it). However, neither I nor the magazine New Scientist can find any online trace of his company (which he alternatively lists as his "academic affiliation") Summa Development, Ltd.

What I did find was this, a newsletter for a prostate cancer awareness group in Australia. Apparently, as of 2006 David Archibald of Summa Development was moonlighting selling chili powder to people afflicted with a horribly debilitating disease. Chili powder, while good on tacos, has been shown to have no effect on cancer of any kind. Not that a geologist would be able to evaluate that, of course.

There is an old business maxim that goes, "If selling snake oil doesn't work out, you can always try climate denial." If there's not, well then there should be.

Roger Pielke Jr.

This one isn't really fair. Pielke, a science policy scholar from the University of Colorado, appears on several lists as a climate change denier, but from all I can tell, it's not really true. In fact, in one article he wrote, “Leaders around the world have come to agree that the continuing accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere poses risks requiring action.”

The truth is, Roger Pielke Jr. (his dad was an atmospheric scientist) sees complexities in these questions and enjoys probing them. His specialty is policy and human endeavor, rather than the science itself. He has been critical of the IPCC but stresses the important role that it plays.

Oftentimes, it seems climate deniers see someone who isn't waving the IPCC flag and assume he/she is on their side. As a journalist, it's my job to boil off complexities and give the basic essence to my readers. But that doesn't mean I can't like a guy who loves ambiguity.

Pielke wouldn't return my calls, so I can't verify any of this. But who can blame him? From his blog, I imagine he avoids journalists who want to put him in a neat box. I respect his academic rigor, but, even so, I'm officially taking him out of the "climate denier" category.

Freeman Dyson

Another heavyweight, but I gotta say I love this guy. Dyson is a world renowned quantum physicist and nuclear scientist. His best known work is something called quantum electrodynamics, which is way above my pay grade.

He's also known for his wacked out ideas about aliens and space travel. The "Dyson sphere" is a theoretical sphere that totally encompasses a sun in order to absorb all of it's energy. The "Dyson tree" is a plant that can live on a comet. Clearly, Dyson likes to challenge people to think broadly and out of the box.

And yet, an iconoclastic theoretical mathematician isn't exactly my go-to guy for climate issues. I understand he has some interesting critiques of climate model math and even castigated the IPCC for being to dogmatic. He does not, however, argue against climate change. In fact, he believes it is human driven and real, but would rather spend money fighting poverty (or colonizing Mars). This has not prevented people from putting him on denier lists.

Photo credit: Karen Elliot