“U. of Delaware Refuses to Disclose Funding Sources of Its Climate Contrarian,” read the headline from Inside Climate News. “Citing academic freedom, the president and provost decline a congressional request for funding disclosures surrounding the work of Professor David Legates.”

That would seem to be good news … until the next paragraph ominously refers to Legates as “a known climate contrarian” (known, no less). The piece continues:

Legates previously served as Delaware’s state climatologist, a role he said he was fired from in 2011 after refusing to resign. Three years earlier he was asked by then-Gov. Ruth Ann Minner to stop using his official title while espousing climate denial. “Your views on climate change, as I understand them, are not aligned with those of my administration,” Minner wrote to Legates at the time.

 “With the exception of EPA’s Dr. Allan Carlin, I have never encountered a published view of a federal employee questioning that catastrophic climate change is caused by carbon dioxide.  The penalties from this conflict are too severe of loss of pay increases, promotions, or dismissal.”

In the past few weeks, statements of scientists challenging the hypothesis that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels is causing catastrophic global warming are being criticized on ad hominem grounds. The charge is that there exists an inherent conflict-of-interest, owingto their sources of income, specifically income from fossil-fuel companies or pro-fossil-fuel organizations otherwise.

The starting point (it was surely orchestrated) was the attack on Dr. Willie Soon by the February 21, 2015 New York Times article, “Deeper Ties to Corporate Cash for Doubtful Climate Researcher,” by Justin Gillis and John Schwartz.…

“In light of adjustments to global temperature data that allowed some reporters to cite 2014 as the warmest year in recorded history, it is fitting reporter Seth Borenstein be nominated for the inaugural Brian Williams Award For Science Reporting.”

On January 16, 2015, Associated Press Science Writer Seth Borenstein published “The heat is on; NOAA, NASA say 2014 warmest year on record.” Within days of this publication information was cited that NASA and NOAA data showed 2014 global temperatures weren’t statistically different from the years 2005 and 2010.

The land surface temperature data used by NOAA and NASA is subject to errors in measurements at temperature stations that were rural 100 years ago and are now in urban areas due to population growth. This is called the Urban Heat Island Effect (UHIE), which results in local temperature increases due to accumulations of concrete and asphalt.…

The Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions (AWED) is an informal coalition of individuals and organizations interested in improving national, state, and local energy & environmental policies. Our basic position is that technical matters like these should be addressed by using Real Science.

 It’s all spelled out at WiseEnergy.org, which is a wealth of energy and environmental resources.

A key element of AWED’s efforts is public education. Towards that end, every 3 weeks we put together a newsletter to balance what is found in the mainstream media about energy and environmental matters. We appreciate MasterResource for their assistance in publishing this information.

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