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Ärende: Global warming
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Climate Momentum Shifting: Prominent Scientists Reverse Belief in Man-
made Global Warming - Now Skeptics

Growing Number of Scientists Convert to Skeptics After Reviewing New 
Research 

Following the U.S. Senate's vote today on a global warming measure (see 
today's AP article: Senate Defeats Climate Change Measure,) it is an 
opportune time to examine the recent and quite remarkable momentum shift 
taking place in climate science. Many former believers in catastrophic 
man-made global warming have recently reversed themselves and are now 
climate skeptics.  The names included below are just a sampling of the 
prominent scientists who have spoken out recently to oppose former Vice 
President Al Gore, the United Nations, and the media driven “consensusö 
on man-made global warming.  

The list below is just the tip of the iceberg.  A more detailed and 
comprehensive sampling of scientists who have only recently spoken out 
against climate hysteria will be forthcoming in a soon to be released 
U.S. Senate report. Please stay tuned to this website, as this new 
government report is set to redefine the current climate debate. 

In the meantime, please review the list of scientists below and ask 
yourself why the media is missing one of the biggest stories in climate 
of 2007.  Feel free to distribute the partial list of scientists who 
recently converted to skeptics to your local schools and universities. 
The voices of rank and file scientists opposing climate doomsayers can 
serve as a counter to the alarmism that children are being exposed to on 
a daily basis. (See Washington Post April 16, 2007 article about kids 
fearing of a “climactic Armageddonö ) 

The media's climate fear factor seemingly grows louder even as the 
latest science grows less and less alarming by the day. (See Der Spiegel 
May 7, 2007 article: Not the End of the World as We Know It ) It is also 
worth noting that the proponents of climate fears are increasingly 
attempting to suppress dissent by skeptics. (See UPI May 10, 2007 
article: U.N. official says it's 'completely immoral' to doubt global 
warming fears ) 

Once Believers, Now Skeptics ( Link to pdf version )  


Geophysicist Dr. Claude Allegre, a top geophysicist and French Socialist 
who has authored more than 100 scientific articles and written 11 books 
and received numerous scientific awards including the Goldschmidt Medal 
from the Geochemical Society of the United States, converted from 
climate alarmist to skeptic in 2006. Allegre, who was one of the first 
scientists to sound global warming fears 20 years ago, now says the 
cause of climate change is "unknown" and accused the “prophets of doom 
of global warmingö of being motivated by money, noting that "the ecology 
of helpless protesting has become a very lucrative business for some 
people!" “Glaciers’ chronicles or historical archives point to the fact 
that climate is a capricious phenomena. This fact is confirmed by 
mathematical meteorological theories. So, let us be cautious,ö Allegre 
explained in a September 21, 2006 article in the French newspaper 
L'EXPRESS. The National Post in Canada also profiled Allegre on March 2, 
2007, noting “Allegre has the highest environmental credentials. The 
author of early environmental books, he fought successful battles to 
protect the ozone layer from CFCs and public health from lead 
pollution.ö Allegre now calls fears of a climate disaster "simplistic 
and obscuring the true dangersö mocks "the greenhouse-gas fanatics whose 
proclamations consist in denouncing man's role on the climate without 
doing anything about it except organizing conferences and preparing 
protocols that become dead letters." Allegre, a member of both the 
French and U.S. Academy of Sciences, had previously expressed concern 
about manmade global warming. "By burning fossil fuels, man enhanced the 
concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which has raised the 
global mean temperature by half a degree in the last century," Allegre 
wrote 20 years ago. In addition, Allegre was one of 1500 scientists who 
signed a November 18, 1992 letter titled “World Scientists' Warning to 
Humanityö in which the scientists warned that global warming’s 
“potential risks are very great.ö

Geologist Bruno Wiskel of the University of Alberta recently reversed 
his view of man-made climate change and instead became a global warming 
skeptic. Wiskel was once such a big believer in man-made global warming 
that he set out to build a “Kyoto houseö in honor of the UN sanctioned 
Kyoto Protocol which was signed in 1997.  Wiskel wanted to prove that 
the Kyoto Protocol’s goals were achievable by people making small 
changes in their lives. But after further examining the science behind 
Kyoto, Wiskel reversed his scientific views completely and became such a 
strong skeptic, that he recently wrote a book titled “The Emperor's New 
Climate: Debunking the Myth of Global Warming.ö  A November 15, 2006 
Edmonton Sun article explains Wiskel’s conversion while building his 
“Kyoto houseö: “Instead, he said he realized global warming theory was 
full of holes and ‘red flags,’ and became convinced that humans are not 
responsible for rising temperatures.ö Wiskel now says “the truth has to 
start somewhere.ö  Noting that the Earth has been warming for 18,000 
years, Wiskel told the Canadian newspaper, “If this happened once and we 
were the cause of it, that would be cause for concern. But glaciers have 
been coming and going for billions of years."  Wiskel also said that 
global warming has gone "from a science to a religionö and noted that 
research money is being funneled into promoting climate alarmism instead 
of funding areas he considers more worthy. "If you funnel money into 
things that can't be changed, the money is not going into the places 
that it is needed,ö he said. 

Astrophysicist Dr. Nir Shaviv, one of Israel's top young award winning 
scientists, recanted his belief that manmade emissions were driving 
climate change. ""Like many others, I was personally sure that CO2 is 
the bad culprit in the story of global warming. But after carefully 
digging into the evidence, I realized that things are far more 
complicated than the story sold to us by many climate scientists or the 
stories regurgitated by the media. In fact, there is much more than 
meets the eye,ö Shaviv said in February 2, 2007 Canadian National Post 
article. According to Shaviv, the C02 temperature link is only 
“incriminating circumstantial evidence.ö "Solar activity can explain a 
large part of the 20th-century global warming" and "it is unlikely that 
[the solar climate link] does not exist,ö Shaviv noted pointing to the 
impact cosmic- rays have on the atmosphere. According to the National 
Post, Shaviv believes that even a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere by 
2100 "will not dramatically increase the global temperature." “Even if 
we halved the CO2 output, and the CO2 increase by 2100 would be, say, a 
50% increase relative to today instead of a doubled amount, the expected 
reduction in the rise of global temperature would be less than 0.5C. 
This is not significant,ö Shaviv explained. Shaviv also wrote on August 
18, 2006 that a colleague of his believed that “CO2 should have a large 
effect on climateö so “he set out to reconstruct the phanerozoic 
temperature. He wanted to find the CO2 signature in the data, but since 
there was none, he slowly had to change his views.ö  Shaviv believes 
there will be more scientists converting to man-made global warming 
skepticism as they discover the dearth of evidence. “I think this is 
common to many of the scientists who think like us (that is, that CO2 is 
a secondary climate driver). Each one of us was working in his or her 
own niche. While working there, each one of us realized that things just 
don't add up to support the AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) picture. 
So many had to change their views,ö he wrote. 

Mathematician & engineer Dr. David Evans, who did carbon accounting for 
the Australian Government, recently detailed his conversion to a 
skeptic. “I devoted six years to carbon accounting, building models for 
the Australian government to estimate carbon emissions from land use 
change and forestry. When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that 
carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty conclusive, but 
since then new evidence has weakened the case that carbon emissions are 
the main cause. I am now skeptical,ö Evans wrote in an April 30, 2007 
blog. “But after 2000 the evidence for carbon emissions gradually got 
weaker -- better temperature data for the last century, more detailed 
ice core data, then laboratory evidence that cosmic rays precipitate low 
clouds,ö Evans wrote.  “As Lord Keynes famously said, ‘When the facts 
change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?’ö he added. Evans noted 
how he benefited from climate fears as a scientist. “And the political 
realm in turn fed money back into the scientific community. By the late 
1990's, lots of jobs depended on the idea that carbon emissions caused 
global warming. Many of them were bureaucratic, but there were a lot of 
science jobs created too. I was on that gravy train, making a high wage 
in a science job that would not have existed if we didn't believe carbon 
emissions caused global warming. And so were lots of people around me; 
and there were international conferences full of such people. And we had 
political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt 
fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were 
working to save the planet!  But starting in about 2000, the last three 
of the four pieces of evidence outlined above fell away or reversed,ö 
Evans wrote. “The pre-2000 ice core data was the central evidence for 
believing that atmospheric carbon caused temperature increases. The new 
ice core data shows that past warmings were *not* initially caused by 
rises in atmospheric carbon, and says nothing about the strength of any 
amplification. This piece of evidence casts reasonable doubt that 
atmospheric carbon had any role in past warmings, while still allowing 
the possibility that it had a supporting role,ö he added. “Unfortunately 
politics and science have become even more entangled. The science of 
global warming has become a partisan political issue, so positions 
become more entrenched. Politicians and the public prefer simple and 
less-nuanced messages. At the moment the political climate strongly 
supports carbon emissions as the cause of global warming, to the point 
of sometimes rubbishing or silencing critics,ö he concluded. (Evans bio 
link )  

Climate researcher Dr. Tad Murty, former Senior Research Scientist for 
Fisheries and Oceans in Canada, also reversed himself from believer in 
man-made climate change to a skeptic.  “I stated with a firm belief 
about global warming, until I started working on it myself,ö Murty 
explained on August 17, 2006.  “I switched to the other side in the 
early 1990's when Fisheries and Oceans Canada asked me to prepare a 
position paper and I started to look into the problem seriously,ö Murty 
explained. Murty was one of the 60 scientists who wrote an April 6, 2006 
letter urging withdrawal of Kyoto to Canadian prime minister Stephen 
Harper which stated in part, "If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we 
know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, 
because we would have concluded it was not necessary.ö  

Botanist Dr. David Bellamy, a famed UK environmental campaigner, former 
lecturer at Durham University and host of a popular UK TV series on 
wildlife, recently converted into a skeptic after reviewing the science 
and now calls global warming fears "poppycock." According to a May 15, 
2005 article in the UK Sunday Times, Bellamy said “global warming is 
largely a natural phenomenon.  The world is wasting stupendous amounts 
of money on trying to fix something that can’t be fixed.ö “The climate-
change people have no proof for their claims. They have computer models 
which do not prove anything,ö Bellamy added. Bellamy’s conversion on 
global warming did not come without a sacrifice as several environmental 
groups have ended their association with him because of his views on 
climate change. The severing of relations came despite Bellamy’s long 
activism for green campaigns. The UK Times reported Bellamy “won respect 
from hardline environmentalists with his campaigns to save Britain’s 
peat bogs and other endangered habitats. In Tasmania he was arrested 
when he tried to prevent loggers cutting down a rainforest.ö 
 
Climate scientist Dr. Chris de Freitas of The University of Auckland, 
N.Z., also converted from a believer in man-made global warming to a 
skeptic. “At first I accepted that increases in human caused additions 
of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere would trigger changes in 
water vapor etc. and lead to dangerous ‘global warming,’ But with time 
and with the results of research, I formed the view that, although it 
makes for a good story, it is unlikely that the man-made changes are 
drivers of significant climate variation.ö de Freitas wrote on August 
17, 2006. “I accept there may be small changes. But I see the risk of 
anything serious to be minute,ö he added. “One could reasonably argue 
that lack of evidence is not a good reason for complacency. But I 
believe the billions of dollars committed to GW research and lobbying 
for GW and for Kyoto treaties etc could be better spent on 
uncontroversial and very real environmental problems (such as air 
pollution, poor sanitation, provision of clean water and improved health 
services) that we know affect tens of millions of people,ö de Freitas 
concluded. de Freitas was one of the 60 scientists who wrote an April 6, 
2006 letter urging withdrawal of Kyoto to Canadian prime minister 
Stephen Harper which stated in part, “Significant [scientific] advances 
have been made since the [Kyoto] protocol was created, many of which are 
taking us away from a concern about increasing greenhouse gases.ö 

Meteorologist Dr. Reid Bryson, the founding chairman of the Department 
of Meteorology at University of Wisconsin (now the Department of Oceanic 
and Atmospheric Sciences, was pivotal in promoting the coming ice age 
scare of the 1970’s ( See Time Magazine’s 1974 article “Another Ice Ageö 
citing Bryson: & see Newsweek’s 1975 article “The Cooling Worldö citing 
Bryson) has now converted into a leading global warming skeptic. In 
February 8, 2007 Bryson dismissed what he terms "sky is falling" man-
made global warming fears. Bryson, was on the United Nations Global 500 
Roll of Honor and was identified by the British Institute of Geographers 
as the most frequently cited climatologist in the world. “Before there 
were enough people to make any difference at all, two million years ago, 
nobody was changing the climate, yet the climate was changing, okay?ö 
Bryson told the May 2007 issue of Energy Cooperative News. “All this 
argument is the temperature going up or not, it’s absurd. Of course it’s 
going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial 
Revolution, because we’re coming out of the Little Ice Age, not because 
we’re putting more carbon dioxide into the air,ö Bryson said. “You can 
go outside and spit and have the same effect as doubling carbon 
dioxide,ö he added. “We cannot say what part of that warming was due to 
mankind's addition of ‘greenhouse gases’ until we consider the other 
possible factors, such as aerosols. The aerosol content of the 
atmosphere was measured during the past century, but to my knowledge 
this data was never used. We can say that the question of anthropogenic 
modification of the climate is an important question -- too important to 
ignore. However, it has now become a media free-for-all and a political 
issue more than a scientific problem,ö Bryson explained in 2005. 

Global warming author and economist Hans H.J. Labohm started out as a 
man-made global warming believer but he later switched his view after 
conducting climate research.  Labohm wrote on August 19, 2006, “I 
started as a anthropogenic global warming believer, then I read the 
[UN’s IPCC] Summary for Policymakers and the research of prominent 
skeptics.ö  “After that, I changed my mind,ö Labohn explained. Labohn co-
authored the 2004 book “Man-Made Global Warming: Unraveling a Dogma,ö 
with chemical engineer Dick Thoenes who was the former chairman of the 
Royal Netherlands Chemical Society. Labohm was one of the 60 scientists 
who wrote an April 6, 2006 letter urging withdrawal of Kyoto to Canadian 
prime minister Stephen Harper which stated in part, “’Climate change is 
real’ is a meaningless phrase used repeatedly by activists to convince 
the public that a climate catastrophe is looming and humanity is the 
cause. Neither of these fears is justified. Global climate changes all 
the time due to natural causes and the human impact still remains 
impossible to distinguish from this natural ‘noise.’ö 


Paleoclimatologist Tim Patterson, of Carlton University in Ottawa 
converted from believer in C02 driving the climate change to a skeptic. 
“I taught my students that CO2 was the prime driver of climate change,ö 
Patterson  wrote on April 30, 2007. Patterson said his “conversionö 
happened following his research on “the nature of paleo-commercial fish 
populations in the NE Pacific.ö “[My conversion from believer to climate 
skeptic] came about approximately 5-6 years ago when results began to 
come in from a major NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research 
Council of Canada) Strategic Project Grant where I was PI (principle 
investigator),ö Patterson explained. “Over the course of about a year, I 
switched allegiances,ö he wrote. “As the proxy results began to come in, 
we were astounded to find that paleoclimatic and paleoproductivity 
records were full of cycles that corresponded to various sun-spot 
cycles.  About that time, [geochemist] Jan Veizer and others began to 
publish reasonable hypotheses as to how solar signals could be amplified 
and control climate,ö Patterson noted. Patterson says his conversion 
“probably cost me a lot of grant money. However, as a scientist I go 
where the science takes me and not were activists want me to go.ö 
Patterson now asserts that more and more scientists are converting to 
climate skeptics.  "When I go to a scientific meeting, there's lots of 
opinion out there, there's lots of discussion (about climate change). I 
was at the Geological Society of America meeting in Philadelphia in the 
fall and I would say that people with my opinion were probably in the 
majority,ö Patterson told the Winnipeg Sun on February 13, 2007. 
Patterson, who believes the sun is responsible for the recent warm up of 
the Earth, ridiculed the environmentalists and the media for not 
reporting the truth. "But if you listen to [Canadian environmental 
activist David] Suzuki and the media, it's like a tiger chasing its 
tail. They try to outdo each other and all the while proclaiming that 
the debate is over but it isn't -- come out to a scientific meeting 
sometime,ö Patterson said. In a separate interview on April 26, 2007 
with a Canadian newspaper, Patterson explained that the scientific proof 
favors skeptics. “I think the proof in the pudding, based on what (media 
and governments) are saying, (is) we're about three quarters of the way 
(to disaster) with the doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere," he said. “The 
world should be heating up like crazy by now, and it's not. The 
temperatures match very closely with the solar cycles."   

Physicist Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski, chairman of the Central Laboratory 
for the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of 
Radiological Protection in Warsaw, took a scientific journey from a 
believer of man-made climate change in the form of global cooling in the 
1970’s all the way to converting to a skeptic of current predictions of 
catastrophic man-made global warming. “At the beginning of the 1970s I 
believed in man-made climate cooling, and therefore I started a study on 
the effects of industrial pollution on the global atmosphere, using 
glaciers as a history book on this pollution,ö Dr. Jaworowski, wrote on 
August 17, 2006. “With the advent of man-made warming political 
correctness in the beginning of 1980s, I already had a lot of experience 
with polar and high altitude ice, and I have serious problems in 
accepting the reliability of ice core CO2 studies,ö Jaworowski added. 
Jaworowski, who has published many papers on climate with a focus on CO2 
measurements in ice cores, also dismissed the UN IPCC summary and 
questioned what the actual level of C02 was in the atmosphere in a March 
16, 2007 report in EIR science entitled “CO2: The Greatest Scientific 
Scandal of Our Time.ö “We thus find ourselves in the situation that the 
entire theory of man-made global warming—with its repercussions in 
science, and its important consequences for politics and the global 
economy—is based on ice core studies that provided a false picture of 
the atmospheric CO2 levels,ö Jaworowski wrote. “For the past three 
decades, these well-known direct CO2 measurements, recently compiled and 
analyzed by Ernst-Georg Beck (Beck 2006a, Beck 2006b, Beck 2007), were 
completely ignored by climatologists—and not because they were wrong. 
Indeed, these measurements were made by several Nobel Prize winners, 
using the techniques that are standard textbook procedures in chemistry, 
biochemistry, botany, hygiene, medicine, nutrition, and ecology. The 
only reason for rejection was that these measurements did not fit the 
hypothesis of anthropogenic climatic warming. I regard this as perhaps 
the greatest scientific scandal of our time,ö Jaworowski wrote. “The 
hypothesis, in vogue in the 1970s, stating that emissions of industrial 
dust will soon induce the new Ice Age, seem now to be a conceited 
anthropocentric exaggeration, bringing into discredit the science of 
that time. The same fate awaits the present,ö he added. Jaworowski 
believes that cosmic rays and solar activity are major drivers of the 
Earth’s climate. Jaworowski was one of the 60 scientists who wrote an 
April 6, 2006 letter urging withdrawal of Kyoto to Canadian prime 
minister Stephen Harper which stated in part: "It may be many years yet 
before we properly understand the Earth's climate system. Nevertheless, 
significant advances have been made since the protocol was created, many 
of which are taking us away from a concern about increasing greenhouse 
gases."

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