Posted: 08/05/2003
Scientists Targeted for Scorn for Questioning Global Warming Orthodoxy
August 5, 2003 – Global warming activists have attacked two prominent scientists for pointing out serious flaws in the science behind the theory of human-caused climate change, according to National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) Adjunct Scholar David R. Legates. In testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works (EPW) and several news accounts including an article this week in the New York Times, Drs. Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas, both astrophysicists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, have been wrongly-described as fringe scientists whose work should be ignored.
The issue focuses on a paper by Drs. Soon and Baliunas that supports the widely held view that the climate of the last millennium has been quite variable and includes a Medieval Warm Period and subsequent Little Ice Age. This study and the wider body of scientific literature that exists directly contradicts recent research by Dr. Michael Mann, a leading global warming theorist, which now argues global air temperatures have been constant over the last 2,000 years, with the exception of the last 100.
“Soon and Baliunas are being smeared because they had the audacity to pull back the curtain on the wizard of global warming,” said Legates. “Scientists argue all the time – such is the hallmark of scientific inquiry. Yet instead of eliciting debate, global warming activists have chosen to attack them personally and formally discredit their peer-reviewed paper solely by editorial decree.”
Dr. Mann testified before the Senate committee that his research is the “mainstream view” because it is featured prominently in a chapter of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report of which Dr. Mann was also the lead author. Soon and Baliunas challenged Mann’s claim by reviewing the large body of literature that shows his claims to be unsubstantiated. Further, their report pointed out the several significant methodological flaws in his study. For example:
- In an attempt to determine the past climate history of the Northern Hemisphere before 1400 AD, Mann used data from nine locations that were added to statistical summaries derived from data for North America only. Four of these are in the Southern Hemisphere.
“Soon and Baliunas’ paper agrees with the conventional wisdom and the voluminous scientific literature,” said Legates. “Alternately, it is Mann’s work that is the one study that does not fit with the wealth of scientific evidence.” Legates is an associate professor and director of the Center for Climatic Research at the University of Delaware. He also serves as a review editor for the journal Climate Research.
For more information on this controversy or other environmental issues, contact the NCPA’s E-Team at 800-859-1154.