Peter Doran is an associate professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago and his writings have been used by global warming critics to `prove' that global warming doesn't exist. However, in this op-ed in the
New York Times, he chastises those, such as Michael Crichton and Ann Coulter for misrepresenting his studies to forward their agenda.
Cold, Hard Facts
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My research colleagues and I found that from 1996 to 2000, one small, ice-free area of the Antarctic mainland had actually cooled. Our report also analyzed temperatures for the mainland in such a way as to remove the influence of the peninsula warming and found that, from 1966 to 2000, more of the continent had cooled than had warmed.
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Newspaper and television reports focused on this part of the paper. And many news and opinion writers linked our study with another bit of polar research published that month, in Science, showing that part of Antarctica's ice sheet had been thickening -- and erroneously concluded that the earth was not warming at all. "Scientific findings run counter to theory of global warming," said a headline on an editorial in The San Diego Union-Tribune.
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In a rebuttal in The Providence Journal, in Rhode Island, the lead author of the Science paper and I explained that our studies offered no evidence that the earth was cooling. But the misinterpretation had already become legend, and in the four and half years since, it has only grown.
Our results have been misused as "evidence" against global warming by Michael Crichton in his novel "State of Fear" and by Ann Coulter in her latest book, "Godless: The Church of Liberalism." Search my name on the Web, and you will find pages of links to everything from climate discussion groups to Senate policy committee documents -- all citing my 2002 study as reason to doubt that the earth is warming.
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Our study did find that 58 percent of Antarctica cooled from 1966 to 2000. But during that period, the rest of the continent was warming. And climate models created since our paper was published have suggested a link between the lack of significant warming in Antarctica and the ozone hole over that continent. These models, conspicuously missing from the warming-skeptic literature, suggest that as the ozone hole heals -- thanks to worldwide bans on ozone-destroying chemicals -- all of Antarctica is likely to warm with the rest of the planet. An inconvenient truth?
...I would like to remove my name from the list of scientists who dispute global warming. I know my coauthors would as well.