And indeed, Lindzen chose to abandon what little is left of his professional reputation, as the astonishing report on the conference from Examiner.com makes clear:
The conference also featured Richard Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who said his colleagues endorse climate change to win acclaim.
“Most of the atmospheric scientists who I respect do endorse global warming,” Lindzen said. “The important point, however, is that the science that they do, that I respect, is not about global warming. Endorsing global warming just makes their lives easier.”
Yes, the atmospheric scientists Lindzen “respects” all lie to the public about what they believe just to make their lives easier. That doesn’t sound like a single scientist I have ever met in my life. I’d love to talk to some of those scientists and see if the single one of them respects Lindzen.
Lindzen called out colleagues such as Wallace Broecker, a geochemist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, whose work, Lindzen said, “clearly shows that sudden climate change occurs without anthropogenic influence, and is a property of cold rather than warm climates. However, he staunchly beats the drums for alarm and is richly rewarded for doing so.“
And so Richard Lindzen — a man who would be unknown to the public, with no “acclaim” whatsoever, if not for his denial of our basic understanding of climate science — accuses one of the nation’s preeminent climate scientists of lying to the public for fame and money. I’d also note that back in 1995, journalist Ross Gelbspan explained in Harpers that it is Lindzen who is far more richly rewarded for spreading anti-science than Broecker ever has been before explaining science:
“Lindzen, for his part, charges oil and coal interests $2,500 a day for his consulting services.”
