Patrick Michaels

This article is part of the Climate project of Spinwatch.

Patrick Michaels is a Cato Institute scholar who asserts that global warming is a ‘myth’. Michaels bases his opinion on evidence from the work of Noah Keenlyside and his team from the Leipzig Institute of Marine Science. According to their paper, the Earth’s oceans have a natural variability which will ‘temporarily offset’ global warming from carbon dioxide. The argument is that the Earth’s surface is 70% oceanic, therefore significantly influences global temperature, this means that ‘Both Atlantic and Pacific temperatures can get “stuck” for a decade or longer, in relatively warm or cool patterns.’ Michaels also criticises legislative efforts to control climate change, stating, ‘Science no longer provides justification for any rush to pass drastic global warming legislation’.

Michaels described the Climate Security Act, which aimed to cut emissions of carbon dioxide by 66% over the next 42 years, sponsored by Joe Lieberman and John Warner as ‘impossible to achieve’, and he called the Interior Department’s intent on naming the polar bear an endangered species as a ‘political stunt’ because they were, according to Michaels, near record-high population levels.

Funding

A leaked memo from the Intermountain Rural Electric Association shows that they paid Michaels $100,000 in February 2006.

Criticism

Michaels was accused of altering the evidence James Hansen gave for his Congressional testimony on global warming in June 1988. .

External Resources

• Union of Concerned Scientists, Scientists' Report Documents ExxonMobil’s Tobacco-like Disinformation Campaign on Global Warming Science , 3 January 2007.