Articles by Andrew Dessler
Andrew Dessler is an associate professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A&M University; his research focuses on the physics of climate change, climate feedbacks in particular.
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Gwyn Prins and Steve Rayner on climate change
Today's members of the "Inhofe 400," Gwyn Prins and Steve Rayner, do appear to have expertise on climate change policy. Prins is the professor and director of the Mackinder Centre for the Study of Long Wave Events at the London School of Economics, while Rayner is professor and director of the James Martin Institute for Science and Civilization at the University of Oxford.
As such, they are different from those that I have previously highlighted (here and here), who were true skeptics of human-induced climate change, but didn't have the credentials or credibility in the climate change arena to be considered "experts."
So Prins and Rayner have credibility in their area of expertise, but are they actually skeptics? The first sentence of the executive summary of their report, "The Wrong Trousers," (PDF) says:
We face a problem of anthropogenic climate change, but the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 has failed to tackle it.
I would say that Prins and Rayner do not doubt the reality of human-induced climate change.
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Today: Chris Allen
Today's member of the "Inhofe 400" truly epitomizes the expertise and credibility of the group of experts that the good senator has assembled to demonstrate the obvious flaws in the theory of human-induced global warming.
He is Chris Allen, weather director at WBKO, the ABC affiliate for south-central Kentucky. On his blog, Chris says this about global warming:
My biggest argument against putting the primary blame on humans for climate change is that it completely takes God out of the picture. It must have slipped these people's minds that God created the heavens and the earth and has control over what's going on. (Dear Lord Jesus...did I just open a new pandora's box?) Yeah, I said it. Do you honestly believe God would allow humans to destroy the earth He created? Of course, if you don't believe in God and creationism then I can see why you would easily buy into the whole global warming fanfare. I think in many ways that's what this movement is ultimately out to do - rid the mere mention of God in any context. What these environmentalists are actually saying is "we know more than God - we're bigger than God - God is just a fantasy - science is real...He isn't...listen to US!" I have a huge problem with that.
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Today: Thomas Ring
Recently, Senator James Inhofe published a list of 400 "prominent scientists" who have recently voiced significant objections mainstream climate science. In response to this list, I recently blogged that many of those listed lacked qualifications (see also here).
I'm betting that Sen. Inhofe doesn't want you to actually read the list of skeptics, but just read the headline and accept their conclusion. Here at Grist, however, we don't do what the good senator wants us to do very often. So in the spirit of non-compliance, I'm going to institute a semi-regular series where I examine the qualifications of some of the "experts" on the Inhofe 400 list.
