Not One, But TWO Climate Hack Appointments To NOAA: Some Details On Both

[hatrack]

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David Legates: NOAA’s New Discredited Climate-Denying Deputy Assistant

David Legates is an academic at the University of Delaware, where he obtained a Ph.D in climatology. He was formerly Delaware’s state climatologist before being asked to formally step down in 2011. Four years prior, then-Delaware governor Ruth Ann Minner asked Legates to stop using the title of “State Climatologist” as his “views on climate change … are not aligned with those of [Minner’s] administration.” Legates has a long track record of casting doubt on climate science. An infamous 2007 paper he co-authored with astrophysicist Wei Hock “Willie” Soon questioned the impacts of climate change on polar bear survival. The paper, which has been roundly debunked, was partially funded by grants from major fossil fuel interests like ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute, and the Charles G. Koch Foundation.

Legates has co-authored several other papers espousing climate denial with Soon, including at least three that were listed as “deliverables” for a grant from Southern Company, the coal-reliant electric utility. He has taken numerous actions and positions that align with the interests of the fossil fuel industry. Legates was a signer of a 2017 petition urging President Trump to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. In 2018 he signed onto a friend of the court brief that was backing oil companies ahead of a climate science tutorial as part of a climate liability lawsuit. That suit was filed by the cities of Oakland and San Francisco against major petroleum producers including Exxon and Chevron.

Legates is affiliated with the notorious climate denial organization the Heartland Institute; he collaborates with other climate science–denying researchers on papers promoted by Heartland and has spoken at Heartland climate and energy conferences. Steve Milloy, another climate denier who is on the board of Heartland, applauded Legates’ appointment to NOAA and told NPR: “David Legates is a true climate scientist and will bring a great deal of much-needed science to NOAA.”

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Ryan Maue is a meteorologist who routinely questions the links between extreme weather events and climate change. While Maue does not dispute that human activities are contributing to climate change, he criticizes what he views as climate activists’ and Democrats’ “alarmism” on climate, and recently has attacked California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom for linking the West's destructive wildfires to the climate crisis. Though his training is as a meteorologist and not a climate scientist, he often disputes climatologists’ findings. As the Washington Post reported, Maue has “spoken out against scientists who link rapid Arctic climate change to weather extremes taking place outside the Arctic.”

He is a former adjunct scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute, the think tank co-founded by Charles Koch, where Maue frequently collaborated with Patrick Michaels, who has said of climate change that the “best solution is to do nothing.” Maue and Michaels worked together at Cato’s “Center for the Study of Science,” which “sought to raise uncertainty about climate science,” before the program was shuttered in 2019 and both men severed ties with Cato, according to E&E News. Notably, Maue has criticized the White House and NOAA in the recent past, calling out the agency for “throwing your ‘Alabama’ NWS [National Weather Service] office under the bus” after President Trump erroneously warned that Hurricane Dorian would impact Alabama, an incident that has been dubbed “Sharpiegate.” After being appointed to NOAA, Maue deleted his tweets criticizing the agency and the President.

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https://www.desmogblog.com/2020/09/24/trump-noaa-david-legates-ryan-maue-climate-denial

[NoRoadUntravelled]

1. I wonder if the White House has requested weather maps and Magic Markers be sent

to the Oval Office yet.