Climate Science Denier Richard Lindzen's List of 300 "Scientists" Sent to Trump Is the Usual Parade of Non-Experts

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Beware climate science deniers bearing gifts or, in the case before us right now, bearing open letters claiming to have hundreds of signatures from โ€œeminentโ€ย scientists.

Last week, long-time climate science contrarian and retired MIT professor Richard Lindzen dusted off his contacts book one moreย time.

Lindzen, who is withย the conservative think tank the Cato Institute, sent a letter to President Donald Trump urging him to pull the United States entirely from the United Nations international convention on climate change, known as the UNFCCC.

Trump has previously promised to pull the U.S. from the deal signed by almost 200ย countries in Paris in late 2015 as part of thatย convention.

โ€œIn just a few weeks, more than 300 eminent scientists and other qualified individuals from around the world have signed the petition below,โ€ wroteย Lindzen.

Carbon dioxide, wrote the petitioners, โ€œis not a pollutant but a major benefit to agriculture and other life on Earthโ€ โ€” a statement at odds with every major science academy around theย world.

Media outlets including Fox News, The Hill, and Daily Caller took Lindzenโ€™s word that the list did indeed have โ€œeminent scientistsโ€ and โ€œqualified individualsโ€ without bothering to check, or even ask if thisย qualified asย news.

Because in reality, Lindzenโ€™s list is a rehash of previous โ€œopen lettersโ€ and petitions going back almost a decade, carrying many of the same names and making the same worn-out arguments that CO2 is good for theย planet.

What Kind of Who’sย Who?

So who is on the list? Who are these โ€œqualified individualsโ€ and โ€œeminent scientistsโ€ who have suddenly scrambled to make their voicesย heard?

There are medical doctors, mystery men, coal executives, petroleum engineers, economists, and think tank members. Only a small handful could be considered even remotely โ€œqualifiedโ€ or โ€œeminentโ€ โ€” but not in the field of climateย science.

According to the list, there are people who are โ€œinterested in climateโ€ and one resident of Sweden who is identified only as an โ€œemailer who wished to sign the petitionโ€ which, judging by the quality of the rest of the list, is totally goodย enough.

Some signers have no affiliation or address whatsoever (please step forward, Roger Bee, Barry Beetham, Geoffrey Billard, David Boothby, Claude Brasseur, Simon Breeze, Ray Cullen, Joan Gorner, Kurt Granberg and at least a dozen other mystery people, whoever youย are).

Dozens of people on Lindzenโ€™s list seem to act like central casting for these PR stunts, lending their names to many โ€œopen lettersโ€ and petitions over theย years.

Names like William Happer (reported to be in the running as Trump’s science adviser), Tim Ball, Viv Forbes, and Heartland Instituteโ€“affiliate Madhav Khandekar will, it seems, sign anything that comes across theirย mailbox.

When they sense a political moment, climate science deniers are nothing if notย opportunistic.

For example, shortly after the UK had voted to leave the European Union in 2016, one group of climate science deniers called for a โ€œClexitโ€ โ€” declaring โ€œman does not and cannot control theย climate.โ€ (Manย does.)

More than half of the signers of that Clexit declaration also appear on Lindzenโ€™s latest warmed-up list of โ€œeminentย scientists.โ€

Back in 2009, Lindzen, Happer, and other โ€œskepticsโ€ were trying to pressure the American Physical Society (APS) to change its position statement on climateย change.

At least 15 on Lindzenโ€™s new list also signed a petition sent to the APS (there could have been more, as this archived list only goes up to the letterย L).

Two years earlier the APS had updated its position statement on climate change. Lindzen and others were not happy, and wanted the APS to instead declare the recent changes to the Earthโ€™s climate were โ€œneither exceptional nor persistentโ€ and that there was โ€œan extensive scientific literature that examines beneficial effects of increased levels of carbon dioxide for both plants andย animals.โ€

Later in 2009 in the run-up to the failed UN climate talks in Copenhagen, the deniers were again checkingย their contactsย to come up with a petition to do nothing. Some 30 of those signers back in 2009, which included Lindzen himself, also appear on Lindzenโ€™s list eight yearsย later.

There are several Australians on Lindzenโ€™s new list, including former coal miner and now One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts, coal company director Viv Forbes,ย and blogger and gold trader David Evans, who is part of efforts to start up the โ€œworldโ€™s first anti-global warming hedge fund.โ€

Thereโ€™s a Colin Brooks who, it turns out, joined The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy in 1955. Thereโ€™s Reg Brownell, an anti-wind farm activist, and Alan Moran, an economist who used to be with the โ€œfree marketโ€ Institute of Public Affairs think tank until someone read his Twitter feed.

Dr. Wes Allen is a family doctor from northern New South Wales.

Lindzenโ€™s list also includes several members of Principia Scientific International โ€” a UK-based group that has claimed carbon dioxide is not even a greenhouseย gas.ย 

Climate science denier and British peer Lord Christopher Monckton once described a founder of that group, John Sullivan, as โ€œconfused and scientificallyย illiterate.โ€ย 

This is terrifically ironic because Monckton is also on Lindzenโ€™s latest list, exceptย his name is spelledย โ€œMockton.โ€

Given what we now know about Lindzenโ€™s list, that typo is a thing ofย beauty.

Main image: From left, Willie Soon, Christopher Monckton, Richard Lindzen and Fred Singer. All appear on Richard Lindzen’s list of โ€œeminent scientists.โ€ย Credit: Greenpeace USA

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