We were circulated a list published in Wikipedia of scientists sceptical of the IPCC version of dangerous anthropogenic global warming (DAGW). The list has been published and updated since 2005 and it appears still to be provoking discussion.
On seeing the list yesterday, a sceptical scientist offered some wry observations:
Unintentionally by the writers, this is actually quite an amusing list, despite it managing to omit more than a few known sceptics of standing.
The quality, if not quite the number, of the scientists on this list is more than a match for the wet and wan yes-men (Phil Jones, Mike Hulme) and evangelistic zealots (Mann, Schmidt) that the IPCC puts forward as its “best” scientists.
But obsessed as they are with pursuing denigration, that wonderful irony will be completely lost on the compilers of the list.
So, amusing, yes, and quite interesting. I looked through the list. I know many of the names and the people are described with simple dignity, such as Richard Lindzen, Tim Ball, Bob Carter and Chris de Freitas. Nothing wrong with any of them.
Then I found Vincent Gray:
Vincent R. Gray, New Zealander physical chemist with expertise in coal ashes.
Maybe just a slip of the list, but disdainful and insulting. Dear old Vincent, he’s 92 and still active as hell. Probably at the 9th International Climate Conference in Las Vegas right now. We can do better than this for Vincent, I thought. I looked him up (in Wikipedia, of course) to get the details.
Gray has a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Cambridge University after studies on incendiary bomb fluids made from aluminium soaps. He has had a long scientific career in the UK, France, Canada and China working on petroleum, plastics, gelatin, timber, paint, adhesives and adhesion, coal, and building materials with well over 100 scientific and technical articles, patents and chapters in books. In New Zealand, he was the first Director of Building Research and later, Chief Chemist of the Coal Research Association.[1][2] He has also published many articles and reports, seven in peer-reviewed journals. After retirement, he had four and a half years in China and when he returned became a climate specialist who rapidly became a critic of the claim that climate was harmed by human emissions of greenhouse gases.
Unless I’ve missed something, that carries more gravitas than ‘expert in coal ashes’ and paints a picture of a distinguished scientific career, not just a gravely misleading fragment of it. Dingbats.
Views: 112