OPINION/COMMENTARY

Climate Scientist Quits IPCC, Blasts Politicized 'Preconceived Agendas'

Citing a politicized agenda and misrepresentations of climate science, prominent climate scientist Chris Landsea on January 17 resigned his post as a participant in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Landsea's announcement is the second recent major embarrassment for global warming alarmists, whose "hockey stick" representation of world temperatures during the past millennium was recently exposed as being based on faulty data and misleading statistical methods. (See "Climate Alarmists Playing Shell Game with Data," page 9.) Landsea is one of the world's leading hurricane researchers, specializing in seasonal and climatic relationships of Atlantic tropical cyclones. He served as chair of the American Meteorological Society's (AMS) Committee on Tropical Meteorology and Tropical Cyclones for the years 2000-2002. He was recipient of a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Climate and Global Change for the period 1995-1996. In his resignation letter, Landsea documented how the IPCC had sanctioned a "misrepresentation" of hurricane research and issued "unfounded pronouncements" to the media that "subverted and compromised" the scientific assessment of the IPCC's hurricane researchers. According to Landsea, statements made by the IPCC to the media demonstrated "preconceived agendas" that are "scientifically unsound."

The text of Landsea's letter is reproduced below....

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