Al Gore and An Old Friend

The newest Nobel Laureate was asked about an op-ed by one of his critics, climate-change skeptic John Christy, on the Today Show yesterday and turned the question back to Meredith Viera. Amanda Terkel has more at ThinkProgress:

As Gore noted, scientists such as Christy are outliers, yet the media continue to give them an overblown amount of airtime. Last month, for example, Colorado State University professor Dr. William Gray sharply criticized Gore, saying that he is “brainwashing our children” on global warming. His comments were covered by multiple major cable networks and newspapers (with no mention that he also once compared Gore to Hilter).

Our immediate reaction (aside from general agreement with Gore) was to scratch our heads, wondering where we'd heard Christy's name before.  A quick trip to the Warming Law archives reveals the answer-- he was a last-minute replacement witness on behalf of the auto industry's lawsuit against Vermont, filling in for Pat Michaels, who pulled out rather than risking the revelation of his corporate funding sources.  Aside from being the sort of connection that the media should be aware of before presenting him as just a former IPCC member, Christy's involvement was noted somewhat cryptically in Judge Sessions' final opinion in that case:  

Sessions further writes that allowing Christy's substitution for Michaels posed difficulty for the state because Christy, in addition to having a differing opinion "on some details," also "...had different qualifications, publications, and connections than Michaels, which counsel for Defendants had to explore prior to his testimony  (pg. 85)" (emphasis added). This pointed statement leaves us wondering whether Sessions is referring to possible financial connections that Christy might have, or simply referring sardonically to the financial concerns that did Michaels in...

We're still wondering...

Comments

[Brian Schmidt]

The other place you may have heard of Christy is being the guy, along with Roy Spencer, who for years screwed up the analysis of satellite data to find no measurable warming. Eventually some other scientists figured out their math error.

Even Christy and Spencer have walked away from the "satellites show no warming" claim, although I don't think they have admitted their mistake, either.