Patrick Michaels

Patrick J. Michaels (born c. 1942?) is a professor of environmental science at the University of Virginia, and the state climatologist for Virginia. His professional specialty was the influence of climate on agriculture. He is noted for his controversial views on climate change and global warming and frequently writes and speaks for popular audiences on these subjects. He is a fellow of the Cato Institute. He edits the World Climate Report, published by the Western Fuels Association through WFA's Greening Earth Society.

His last scientific publication was "Revised 21st century temperature projections" in Climate Research in 2002.

Although Michaels is a noted skeptic who estimates current and future warming at lower values than the IPCC assessments, he nonetheless accepts a human influence on warming the planet:

All this has to do with basic physics, which isn't real hard to understand. It has been known since 1872 that as we emit more and more carbon dioxide into our atmosphere, each increment results in less and less warming. In other words, the first changes produce the most warming, and subsequent ones produce a bit less, and so on. But we also assume carbon dioxide continues to go into the atmosphere at an ever-increasing rate. In other words, the increase from year-to-year isn't constant, but itself is increasing. The effect of increasing the rate of carbon dioxide emissions, coupled with the fact that more and more carbon dioxide produces less and less warming compels our climate projections for the future warming to be pretty much a straight line. Translation: Once human beings start to warm the climate, they do so at a constant rate. [1]

External links

• http://www.evsc.virginia.edu/faculty/people/michaels.shtml - page at U Virginia
• http://www.cato.org/people/michaels.html - Michaels page at the Cato Institute
• http://washingtontimes.com/commentary/20031015-085235-5134r.htm - "Posturing and reality on warming" - article by Michaels in the Washington Times