David Legates

Posted on 23rd Dec, 2009 in Scientists

h2o Legates ved tavle

David R. Legates is an Associate Professor and Director of the Center for Climatic Research at the University of Delaware and a Research Fellow at The Independent Institute in Oakland, California.
Legates is a signer of the Oregon Petition, which stated:
“There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth”.
Legates has along with his colleagues, Harvard astrophysicists Dr. Willie Soon and Dr. Sallie Baliunas, in strong terms criticised the validity of the  “hockey stick” by Michael Mann. The hockey stick were for many years the icon of manmade global warming. The pilar that the arguments were standing on. Michael Mann argued that the warming in the last 100 years were unpresidented and it was 98% likely that humans were to blame. His temperature grapfh completely deleted the Medieval Warm period and the Little Ice Age. But David Legates and his collegues refuted theese claims in a now famous article from 2003: RECONSTRUCTING CLIMATIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL
CHANGES OF THE PAST 1000 YEARS: A REAPPRAISAL
Part of the conclusion goes like this:
“After examining more than 240 individual proxy records analyzed by nearly 1000 researchers, we concluded that taken individually, proxy records offer strong support for the widespread existence of both a Medieval Warm Period (~A.D. 800 to 1300) and a Little Ice Age (~A.D. 1400 to 1850), undermining Mann’s conclusion that the climate of the 20th Century was unusual when compared to the variability over the last millennium. (Proxy records are secondary or inferred sources from which assumptions about air temperature may be drawn).”
You can read more of the work of David Legates here

David R. Legates is an Associate Professor and Director of the Center for Climatic Research at the University of Delaware and a Research Fellow at The Independent Institute in Oakland, California.

Legates is a signer of the Oregon Petition, which stated: ”There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth”.

Legates has along with his colleagues, Harvard astrophysicists Dr. Willie Soon and Dr. Sallie Baliunas, in strong terms criticised the validity of the  “hockey stick” by Michael Mann. The hockey stick were for many years the icon of manmade global warming. The pilar that the arguments were standing on. Michael Mann argued that the warming in the last 100 years were unpresidented and it was 98% likely that humans were to blame. His temperature grapfh completely deleted the Medieval Warm period and the Little Ice Age. But David Legates and his collegues refuted theese claims in a now famous article from 2003:

RECONSTRUCTING CLIMATIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGES OF THE PAST 1000 YEARS: A REAPPRAISAL

Part of the conclusion goes like this:

“After examining more than 240 individual proxy records analyzed by nearly 1000 researchers, we concluded that taken individually, proxy records offer strong support for the widespread existence of both a Medieval Warm Period (~A.D. 800 to 1300) and a Little Ice Age (~A.D. 1400 to 1850), undermining Mann’s conclusion that the climate of the 20th Century was unusual when compared to the variability over the last millennium. (Proxy records are secondary or inferred sources from which assumptions about air temperature may be drawn).” Find the full .pdf article here.

Since Legates, Baliunas and Soon criticized Michael Mann also Steve McIntyre a canadian mathematician has pointed to the scientific flaws in Michael Mann´s graph. Now The Mann Made Hockey-stick is deleted from the IPCC 2007 report.

You can read more of the work of David Legates here

You can watch a clip with David Legates here.

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