MIT professor Richard Lindzen is a man of dubious intellectual veracity. He’s been shilling for big oil companies for quite some time now. He is now a “distinguished senior fellow” at the Cato Institute, a conservative think tank where “thoughts” are made out of the fossil fuel industry’s agenda. Last month he sent a letter to unpopular new President Donald Trump telling him to have the United States leave the United Nations’ climate change initiatives. The letter got big headlines about “hundreds of scientists” signing a letter to Trump, especially from right-wing rags.
In a Thursday letter to the president, MIT professor emeritus Richard Lindzen called on the United States and other nations to “change course on an outdated international agreement that targets minor greenhouse gases,” starting with carbon dioxide.
“Since 2009, the US and other governments have undertaken actions with respect to global climate that are not scientifically justified and that already have, and will continue to cause serious social and economic harm — with no environmental benefits,” said Mr. Lindzen, a prominent atmospheric physicist.
Some of Lindzen’s MIT colleagues saw this letter and decided to give Lindzen something that climate “skeptics” never get—a little peer review of their work. As Inside Climate News explains, amongst the many things that Lindzen’s letter offered up was a petition including hundreds of names of other “scientists.”
A petition accompanying Lindzen's letter was signed by 300 other people. Lindzen described the signatories as "eminent scientists and other qualified individuals" in his letter. A review of the names by the Guardian, however, reveals few biology, chemistry, climate, earth and physics scientists. Many are well-known climate contrarians and deniers. They include Willie Soon, an aerospace engineer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics; Steve Goreham of the Heartland Institute, an industry backed organization that denies climate science; and William Briggs, a statistician at Cornell University who questions climate models.
"In stark contrast to Lindzen's letter, ours was signed only by those who know something about the climate system," said Kerry Emanuel, an MIT professor of atmospheric sciences who signed the letter opposing Lindzen.
Not only are our domestic and economic policies being driven by the swamp, our intellectual pursuits are being soaked in crude.