Anthony Lupo

Credentials  

• Ph.D., Atmospheric Science, Purdue University (1995). [1]
• M.S., Atmospheric Science, Purdue University (1991). [1]
• B.S., Meteorology, State University of New York at Oswego (1988). [1]
• A.S., Mathematics/Science, Cayuga County Community College (1986). [1]

Background

Anthony Lupo is a Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Missouri-Columbia. He has also been a speaker at the Heartland Institute‘s International Conference on Climate (ICCC).

According to leaked documents Anthony Lupo receives $750 per month from the Heartland Institute.

Stance on Climate Change

Lupo agrees that temperatures have been rising over the past thirty years, stating that “anyone who denies this [climate change] isn’t a very good scientist.”

But he has also said that “The Earth goes through phases of warming and cooling, and though all the computer models we have show that we are in a warming phase, there is no way to differentiate between a natural warming and one that is human-caused.” [2]

As an “expert reviewer” [3] of the most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Lupo disputed the report’s consensus that “the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.” [4]

Key Quotes

“’In my mind, I hope that I’m keeping those two things separate,’ he says. ‘But I’m a person like anyone else, and I think I wouldn’t be surprised if my thoughts are a little bit colored. But, you know, I try to keep my science independent of my politics as much as possible’.” [4]

Key Actions

February 16, 2021

The Independent Institute announced the release of an update to Fred Singer’s book, Hot Talk, Cold Science. “Dr. Singer passed away in April 2020, but not before updating and expanding his much-discussed book with the co-authors, and atmospheric scientist Anthony R. Lupo (University of Missouri) and climatologist David R. Legates (University of Delaware),” the press release noted. [33]

“In the new edition (twice the size of the previous edition) the authors explore the inaccuracies in historical climate data, the limitations on and failures of climate models, solar variability along with the effects of clouds, ocean currents, and sea levels on global climate, plus factors that could mitigate any human impact on world climate.

“‘Over the years and despite all the invectives poured upon him by climate alarmists, Dr. Singer has stood his ground for scientific integrity and adherence to the scientific method. For that, he is to be greatly commended,’ said climatologist David R. Legates.”

October 2019

Lupo signed the “Realist Catholic Climate Declaration,” drafted by Heartland Institute policy analyst William Briggs, which stated, “the earth’s climate has always changed, is changing now, and will never cease changing. The extent to which man is responsible for climate change is not known, only surmised. There is no earthly force capable of stopping climate change,” and that, “the salvation of souls is of more pressing concern than the air temperature. Pray to God and pray for your neighbor, not to the planet.” [29], [30]

The declaration was endorsed by Anthony Watts’ blog Watts Up With That, in a post by Charles Rotter, which stated, “please share this as widely as possible. With the concept of ‘eco-sins’ being bruited, and the return of paganism, this declaration is timely and important.” [31]

According to a post at William Briggs’s website: “This statement is to be in contradistinction to the hyperbolic and inaccurate ‘U.S. Catholic Climate Declaration’,” Briggs wrote of the draft. “The goal is to have something short, sweet, certain, and Catholic.” [32]

November 9, 2017

Lupo was a speaker at the Heartland Institute’s “America First Energy Conference” at the Marriott Hotel in Houston, Texas. Lupo’s speech, on the “Climate Science” panel, was titled “Climate, Climate Change, and Climate Modeling”: [28]

 The event description read as follows: [22]

“At the America First Energy Conference, we plan to examine—one year and one day after Trump’s shocking Election Day victory—the following:

“Where does Trump’s America First Energy Plan stand?

“How much progress has been made in implementing it, and what remains to be done?

“What scientific and economic evidence is there that the plan is putting the nation on the right path for economic growth, environmental protection, or both?” [22]

In a fundraising letter obtained by DeSmog, Fred Palmer had promoted the event as having the goal to “review the scientific and economic evidence that exposes the fraud inherent in the Obama-era regulation regime” while discussing “the overwhelming benefits of fossil fuels to us all.” [23]

Many of the other speakers have regularly spoken at the Heartland Institute’s past ICCCs. Notable speakers listed so far include Joe Bast, Fred Palmer, Roger Bezdek, H. Sterling Burnett, Hal Doiron, Paul Driessen, John Dale Dunn, Myron Ebell, Heartland’s new President Tim Huelskamp, Craig Idso, David Legates, Jay Lehr, Anthony Lupo, Ross McKitrick, Steve Milloy, Todd Myers, John Nothdurt, David Schnare, and numerous others. [24]

As reported at the Houston Chronicle, speakers notably included two Trump Administration officials: Richard W. Westerdale II of the State Department and Vincent DeVito of the Department of Interior. David Bernhardt, deputy secretary of the Interior Department, was also formerly listed as a Heartland conference speaker, but apparently withdrew. [25]

Scott Pruitt also addressed the conference in a recorded video, personally thanking Heartland for “what you’re doing to advance energy” and “for what you’re doing to advance natural resources. [26]

The Climate Investigations Center put up a parody of the America First Energy conference website, complete with profiles on the individual speakers and highlighting their corporate funding and ties to groups such as the Cooler Heads Coalition (CHC). [27]

January 5, 2017

Anthony Lupo was a signatory to a Cornwall Alliance open letter supporting Scott Pruitt for EPA Administrator under the Trump administration. [19]

“Mr. Pruitt has also demonstrated understanding of and open-mindedness toward scientific insights crucial to the formulation and implementation of environmental regulation. He is prepared to hear all sides in debates over the risks and benefits of various activities that come under the purview of the EPA,” reads the letter.

On January 12, 2017, Senate Democrats raised conflict of interest concerns regarding Scott Prutt’s fossil fuel ties. Pruitt had spent years working to combat the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan. [20]

In an open letter to the Office of Government Ethics, members of the Senate’s environmental panel commented:

“During his tenure as Attorney General of Oklahoma, Mr. Pruitt has blurred the distinction between official and political actions, often at the behest of corporations he will regulate if confirmed to lead EPA,” the letter said. “Public reporting based on documents produced by Freedom of Information Act requests illustrate how Mr. Pruitt and members of his staff have worked closely with fossil fuel lobbyists to craft his office’s official positions.”

Pruitt was further grilled on his fossil fuel ties at his confirmation hearing on January 18. [21]

Some notable signatories of the Cornwall Alliance letter, as of January 5, 2017, included:

• Tim Ball
• Charles G. Battig
• E. Calvin Beisner
• H. Sterling Burnett
• Kenneth Chilton
• Donn Dears
• John Droz
• James E. Enstrom
• Joseph Farah
• Steve Goreham
• Jay Grimstead
• William Happer
• Richard Land
• David Legates
• Richard S. Lindzen
• Anthony R. Lupo
• Rod D. Martin
• Anthony J. Sadar
• Willie Soon
• Roy W. Spencer
• David J. Theroux
• James A. Wanliss
• Anthony Watts
• Peter W. Wood
• Thomas H. Wysmuller
• Benjamin Zycher

August 2016

Anthony Lupo is listed as a “Founding Member” of group named Climate Exit (Clexit) led by climate change denier Christopher Monckton. According to Clexit’s founding statement (PDF), “The world must abandon this suicidal Global Warming crusade. Man does not and cannot control the climate.” [13], [14]

DeSmog reports on how the group grew in the wake of the UK‘s decision to leave the EU. A key member of Clexit’s “60 well-informed science, business and economic leaders” is Hugh Morgan, a former board member of the Reserve Bank of Australia and former CEO of Western Mining Corporation with close ties to Australia’s Liberal party. [15], [16]

According to Clexit’s founding statement: 

“If the Paris climate accord is ratified, or enforced locally by compliant governments, it will strangle the leading economies of the world with pointless carbon taxes and costly climate and energy policies, all with no sound basis in evidence or science […]” [14]

June 10, 2016

Anthony Lupo was a signatory to a Cornwall Alliance open letter written by Calvin Beisner and addressed to U.S. attorneys general about climate change. [9]

The letter responds to recent investigations by U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch and members of Attorneys General United for Clean Power into what ExxonMobil knew about climate change and when, started by a coalition of attorneys general in the US. [10], [11]

Calvin Beisner writes that the attorneys generals’ actions are “a dead giveaway that you’re ignorant about climate science and related climate and energy policy.” [11]

“[U]nlike in the case of tobacco’s health risks, there are innumerable and enormous holes in the case (not for human contribution to global warming but) for manmade global warming dangerous enough to justify spending trillions of dollars reinventing the world’s energy system to mitigate it, particularly when competing use of those trillions might bring far greater benefit,” Beisner addresses the attorneys general. And you, intelligent and learned all, are ignorant of those enormous holes.” [11]

The Cornwall Alliance lists the following signatories to its open letter: [11]

• E. Calvin Beisner
• Charles Clough
• Colonel John A. Eidsmoe
• Christopher Essex
• Neil L. Frank
• Victor Goldschmidt
• Rev. Peter Jones
• Madhav Khandekar
• Jamieson C. Keister
• Kevin Lewis
• Anthony R. Lupo
• Vishal Mangalwadi
• Tracy Miller
• Ben Phillips
• Shawn Ritenour
• Chris Skates
• Roy W. Spencer
• Timothy Terrell
• James Wanliss
• Anthony Watts

July 7 – 9, 2014

Anthony Lupo was a speaker at the Heartland Institute’s Ninth International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC9) in Las Vegas, Nevada. [8]

DeSmogBlog has done in-depth research on the other speakers and sponsors from Heartland’s ICCC9, which can be found here.

May 21–23, 2012

Anthony Lupo was a speaker at the Heartland Institute‘s 7th International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC7). [18]

DeSmogBlog researched the co-sponsors behind Heartland’s ICCC7 and found that they had collectively received over $67 million from ExxonMobil, the Koch Brothers and the conservative Scaife family foundations.

May 27, 2011

Anthony Lupo was one of fourteen Amici, described as “well-qualified climate scientists,” who claimed that the “EPA‘s endangerment finding is not ‘rational’ and therefore arbitrary and capricious.” [12]

According to the petitioners, representing the Coalition for Responsible Regulation, Inc.:  [12]

“[T]he Earth’s climate is not changing in an unusual or anomalous fashion. The EPA relied on instrumental data that were adjusted to exaggerate the increase in global temperatures.” [12]

Petitioners listed were:

• Timothy F. Ball
• Joseph S. D’Aleo
• Don J. Easterbrook
• Anthony Finizza
• William Happer
• Benjamin M. Herman
• Craig D. Idso
• Richard A. Keen
• Anthony R. Lupo
• Nicola Scafetta
• Roy W. Spencer
• George H. Taylor
• James P. Wallace III
• George T. Wolff

June 2009

Anthony R.  Lupo was a contributing author (chapter six) to the Heartland Institute’s report, “Climate Change Reconsidered: The Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC).” The report was edited by fellow skeptics Craig Idso and S. Fred Singer.

According to a description of the book at Amazon, “Chapter 6 investigates and debunks the widespread fears that global warming might cause more extreme weather.”

March 2009

Anthony R. Lupo was a speaker at the Heartland Institute‘s 2009 International Conference on Climate Change. [5] Lupo’s speech was titled “Inter-Annual Temperature Variations”: [17]

2005

Sent a letter to the The Kansas City Star in 2005 where he said that while “the climate is warming,” the hot and dry conditions the region was experiencing were “not unprecedented.” [4]

2000

Lupo sent a letter to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, noting that oceanographer Roger Reville was urging that we study the impacts of global warming before making drastic measures to counter it.  [4]

Don Wuebbles, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Illinois, pointed out in a rebuttal letter that Reville wasn’t in a position to make “recent statements” on climate change, having died in 1991.

1998

Back in 1998, he wrote a letter to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that claimed: “There is no scientific consensus whether global warming is a fact and is occurring.”

In another 1998 letter, this one to the Columbia Daily Tribune, he wrote that skeptics outnumbered believers of man-made climate change. Lupo says today that the numbers have shifted, but that in 1998 the statement was “probably true.” But this wasn’t the case, as by 1995, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had concluded that “the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.” [4]

Nov 16, 2004

Lupo was a signatory to a letter to senator John McCain (R-AZ).

According to the press release, “The signers of the letter point out that sediment and ice core samples show that the arctic has experienced past warming that can not be attributed to greenhouse gas concentrations.” [6]

Affiliations  

• The Heartland Institute — “Expert.” [7]
• Climate Exit (Clexit) — ”Founding Member.” [13]

Publications

The following is a sample of Lupo’s publications relating to climate. His full CV is available on his website.

• Lupo, A.R. (Contributing Author Ch 6 only), 2009: Heartland Institute, 2009: Climate Change Reconsidered: The Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), edited by Craig Idso and S. Fred Singer.
• Lupo, A.R., 2008. “Reply to: ‘In Defense of a Theory of Anthropogenic Global warming.’ Journal of Missouri Medicine, 105:3, 186.
• Lupo, A.R., 2008. “Anthropogenic Global Warming: A Skeptical point of view.” Journal of Missouri Medicine, 105:2, 22-26.
• J.C. Hagen, and A.R. Lupo, 2008. “Rebuttal Global Warming Landers.” American Medical News, in press.
• Hussain, A., and A.R. Lupo, 2009: Scale and Stability Analysis of Selected Atmospheric Blocking Events. The 21st Conference on Global Climate Change. 89th Annual Meeting of the American Meteorological Society. 14 – 19 January, 2009, Phoenix, AZ.
• Limpert, G.L., B.L. Perrin, and A.R. Lupo, 2009. “Simulating the effects of climate change on parameters for tropical cyclone development in the Atlantic basin.” The 21st Conference on Global Climate Change. 89th Annual Meeting of the American Meteorological Society. 14 – 19 January, 2009, Phoenix, AZ

Resources

1. “Anthony R. Lupo” (PDF), CV at the University of Missouri.
2. Michael Amantea, “Effects of Climate Change in Missouri Take Root,” Missourian Online, March 9, 2009.
3. “Annex III: Reviewers of the IPCC WGI Fourth Assessment Report,” Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Accessed January, 2012.
4. “Sure, global warming has skeptics. But how many teach science at Mizzou?“, The Pitch: Kansas City News, March 18, 2008.
5. “2009 International Conference on Climate Change,” The Heartland Institute, February 1, 2009. Republished by Instituto Liberdade.
6. “Climate Experts Respond to Arctic Climate Impact Assessment,” PR Newswire, November 16, 2004. Republished by the Frontier Center for Public Policy, November 20, 2004. Archived January 24, 2016. 
7. “Heartland Experts: Mr. Anthony R. Lupo,” The Heartland Institute. Archived January 24, 2016. WebCite URL: http://www.webcitation.org/6fCqZgUoZ
8. “Return of Climate Denial-a-Palooza: Heartland Institute Hitches Anti-Science Wagon to Vegas FreedomFest,” DeSmogBlog, July 7, 2014. Archived July 14, 2014.
9. E. Calvin Beisner. “Open Letter to Attorneys General about Climate Change,” Cornwall Alliance, June 10, 2016. Archived June 24, 2016. WebCite URL: http://www.webcitation.org/6iVmM7y0O
10. David Hasemyer. “Climate Fraud Investigation of Exxon Draws Attention of 17 Attorneys General,” InsideClimate News, March 30, 2016. Archived June 24, 2016. WebCite URL: http://www.webcitation.org/6iVncbdxJ
11. Ben Jervey. “State Investigations Into What Exxon Knew Double, and Exxon Gets Defensive,” Desmog, April 1, 2016.
12. COALITION FOR RESPONSIBLE REGULATION, INC., ET AL. (Petitioners) v. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY AND LISA P. JACKSON, ADMINISTRATOR, Respondents (PDF). Retrieved from World Climate Report. Archived.pdf on file at Desmog.
13. “The Clexit Committee comprises” (PDF), Clexit.net. Archived.pdf on file at Desmog.
14. “After Brexit, Clexit” (PDF), Clexit.net. Archived .pdf on file at Desmog.
15. Graham Readfearn. “After Brexit, Climate Science Denialists Form New Group to Call for a Clexit,” Desmog, August 3, 2016.
16. “Hugh Morgan AO,” Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Archived February 22, 2002. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/1ObOB
17. “Anthony Lupo, ICCC2,” International Conferences on Climate Change. Archived .mp4 on file at DeSmog. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/5ulDN
18. “Anthony Lupo, ICCC7,” International Conferences on Climate Change. Archived .mp4 on file at DeSmog. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/qjOoz
19. “Open Letter Supporting Scott Pruitt for EPA Administrator,” Cornwall Alliance, January 5, 2017. Archived January 19, 2017. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/xMash
20. Ben Jervey. “Mapping EPA Nominee Scott Pruitt’s Many Fossil Fuel Ties,” DeSmog, January 13, 2017.
21. Ben Jervey and Steve Horn. “EPA Nominee Scott Pruitt Gets Grilled on Fossil Fuel Ties at Confirmation Hearing,” DeSmog, January 18, 2017.
22. “About,” America First Energy. Archived October 11, 2017. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/8bTTJ
23. October 2017 Fundraising letter by Fred Palmer. On file at Desmog.
24. “SPEAKERS,” America First Energy. Archived October 10, 2017. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/OJWeX
25. James Osborne. “Trump officials to appear at Houston event hosted by climate skeptics,” Houston Chronicle, November 2, 2017. Archived November 20, 2017. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/XPtYc
26. “Scott Pruitt,” America First Energy Conference. Archived November 20, 2017. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/X4F6m
27. “America First Energy Conference Stacked with Climate Change Deniers,” Climate Investigations Center, November 6, 2017. Archived November 20, 2017. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/mISrd
28. “ANTHONY LUPO,” America First Energy Conference. Archived November 21, 2017. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/wIEXQ
29. ”The Declaration,” Realist Catholic Climate Declaration, Archived October 29, 2020. Archive URL: https://archive.is/O2m5D
30. ”William Briggs,”The Heartland Institute, Archived October 26, 2020. Archive URL: https://archive.vn/bDHXU
31. Charles Rotter,“Realist Catholic Climate Change Declaration,” Watts Up with That, October 13, 2019. Archived October 23, 2020. Archive. URL: https://archive.vn/aieXw
32. “Draft Realist Catholic Climate Declaration: Please Share!” William M. Briggs, October 7, 2019. Archived October 8, 2020. Archive URL: https://archive.vn/yveCN
33. (Press Release). “New Book Explores the Inaccuracies in Historical Climate Data,” The Independent Institute, February 16, 2021. Archived March 31, 2021. Archive URL: https://archive.ph/092wD

Other Resources

• “Anthony Lupo,” SourceWatch profile.
• “Anthony Lupo, PhD,” ExxonSecrets.

* Profile image a screenshot of Anthony Lupo speaking at the America First Energy Conference, November 9, 2017 via YouTube.