Ed. note: Paul C. “Chip” Knappenberger was a longtime colleague and friend of Patrick Michaels (1950–2022). Knappenberger was co-author (with Michaels) of Lukewarming: The New Climate Science that Changes Everything (Cato Institute: 2016)
It was during the Fall of 1984 that I first met Pat Michaels. He was the professor of my Applied Climatology course during the first semester of my junior year at the University of Virginia. He entered class carrying a 3-ring binder over-stuffed with papers sticking out on all sides, pouring a Dr. Pepper over ice that was overflowing onto his khakis and sneakers, while fiddling with his tie and pushing in the tails of his button-down shirt.
He was brash and entertaining, but personable and approachable—qualities unlike any other professor I had experienced during my first two years at UVa.…
“But what is lost in simplistic news stories announcing each new record, or worse, ignored in lurid stories casting these records as indicators of future climate catastrophe (and oftentimes promoting efforts to mitigate future trends through federal efforts to regulate energy choice), is that the on-going temperature rise is proceeding much more slowly than has been anticipated.”
It’s been eight years since I wrote this piece critical of the exaggerated “concern” that the Houston Chronicle showed in its coverage of climate change and its causes and implications. How has my critique held up?
Back in January of 2009, the Chronicle was touting yet another “warmest year on record.” This is was true then, just as it is true today (regarding 2016). The earth is warming up, and humans play a role in this trend.…
About a week ago, a strong winter storm, known as a nor’easter, was making its way, hit and miss, up the Northeastern seaboard. While forecasts of two feet or more in New York City were busts, forecasts of near three feet in the Boston environs were right on.
As almost goes without saying nowadays, speculation as to the influence of human-caused global warming on the behavior of the snowstorm are rife. Any by “speculation,” I mean blaming global warming for the storm’s ferocity.
And, as also goes without saying, the actual science behind such speculation is both slim and countered by a large body of confounding evidence.
But the number of stories in the mainstream media that hyped the former greatly outnumbered any that even bothered to mention the latter.
Below is reprinted a blog post that I co-authored with Patrick Michaels for the Cato Institute in the hours leading up to the storm trying to tamp down the global warming hype.…