Local scientist calls global warming theory 'hooey'

Samara Kalk Derby
June 18, 2007

Reid Bryson, known as the father of scientific climatology, considers global warming a bunch of hooey.

The UW-Madison professor emeritus, who stands against the scientific consensus on this issue, is referred to as a global warming skeptic. But he is not skeptical that global warming exists, he is just doubtful that humans are the cause of it.

There is no question the earth has been warming. It is coming out of the "Little Ice Age," he said in an interview this week.

"However, there is no credible evidence that it is due to mankind and carbon dioxide. We've been coming out of a Little Ice Age for 300 years. We have not been making very much carbon dioxide for 300 years. It's been warming up for a long time," Bryson said.

The Little Ice Age was driven by volcanic activity. That settled down so it is getting warmer, he said.

Humans are polluting the air and adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, but the effect is tiny, Bryson said.

"It's like there is an elephant charging in and you worry about the fact that there is a fly sitting on its head. It's just a total misplacement of emphasis," he said. "It really isn't science because there's no really good scientific evidence."

Just because almost all of the scientific community believes in man-made global warming proves absolutely nothing, Bryson said. "Consensus doesn't prove anything, in science or anywhere else, except in democracy, maybe."

Bryson, 87, was the founding chairman of the department of meteorology at UW-Madison and of the Institute for Environmental Studies, now known as the Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. He retired in 1985, but has gone into the office almost every day since. He does it without pay.

"I have now worked for zero dollars since I retired, long enough that I have paid back the people of Wisconsin every cent they paid me to give me a wonderful, wonderful career. So we are even now. And I feel good about that," said Bryson.

So, if global warming isn't such a burning issue, why are thousands of scientists so concerned about it?

"Why are so many thousands not concerned about it?" Bryson shot back.

"There is a lot of money to be made in this," he added. "If you want to be an eminent scientist you have to have a lot of grad students and a lot of grants. You can't get grants unless you say, 'Oh global warming, yes, yes, carbon dioxide.'"

Speaking out against global warming is like being a heretic, Bryson noted.

And it's not something that he does regularly.

"I can't waste my time on that, I have too many other things to do," he said.

But if somebody asks him for his opinion on global warming, he'll give it. "And I think I know about as much about it as anybody does."

Up against his students' students: Reporters will often call the meteorology building seeking the opinion of a scientist and some beginning graduate student will pick up the phone and say he or she is a meteorologist, Bryson said. "And that goes in the paper as 'scientists say.'"

The word of this young graduate student then trumps the views of someone like Bryson, who has been working in the field for more than 50 years, he said. "It is sort of a smear."

Bryson said he recently wrote something on the subject and two graduate students told him he was wrong, citing research done by one of their professors. That professor, Bryson noted, is probably the student of one of his students.

"Well, that professor happened to be wrong," he said.

"There is very little truth to what is being said and an awful lot of religion. It's almost a religion. Where you have to believe in anthropogenic (or man-made) global warming or else you are nuts."

While Bryson doesn't think that global warming is man-made, he said there is some evidence of an effect from mankind, but not an effect of carbon dioxide.

For example, in Wisconsin in the last 100 years the biggest heating has been around Madison, Milwaukee and in the Southeast, where the cities are. There was a slight change in the Green Bay area, he said. The rest of the state shows no warming at all.

"The growth of cities makes it hotter, but that was true back in the 1930s, too," Bryson said. "Big cities were hotter than the surrounding countryside because you concentrate the traffic and you concentrate the home heating. And you modify the surface, you pave a lot of it."

Bryson didn't see Al Gore's movie about global warming, "An Inconvenient Truth."

"Don't make me throw up," he said. "It is not science. It is not true." .......

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So all you Gore "Jamestown" Koolaid drinkers there you have it, either Gore is insane (which I believe) or he's a charlatan and fraud. Your pick!

"hooey"? "puke"? Now there's an intelligent response.

IT took me less than 30 seconds to trace the connections between Bryson and the grants he has recieved from Exxon/Mobil, as have most of the rest of the global warming rent a skeptics that the hard right likes to quote.

How did we know that was coming?

You could be one of the greatest scientists in your field, but if you have Exxon/mobil anywhere in your resume, your word isn't worth a crap.

It's the only way that you idiots can justify ignoring the tons of mounting evidence that the global warming movement is nothing but a religion based on scientific fiction.

He's now retired, a professor emeritus, goes to his campus office every day and works for free.

However he got his money in the past is now in the bank thus there are no strings on him as there are on the other current grant funding needy marionettes supporting the CO2 GHG nonsense.

Drink some more Koolaid!

The taliban wing of the global warming movement, like Tom, don't care about science or the truth. They want there to be global warming so as to justify their world view.

It helps validate their hatred of mankind in general.

emeriti, especially those in the field of natural science, to see what they think of this fellow's bloviations. And no.....I'm not suggesting that we ask them about the specifics of his conclusions regarding the global warming consensus. What I'm wondering is what they'd think of some old scientists.....and his "followers" for that matter, who would presume to bray his judgement on this quickly and constantly evolving science over that of the hundreds of thousands of scientists who're currently ACTIVE in the field.

I think most would suggest, perhaps wistfully so, that their age, experience, qualifications and plaudits alas.....have no necessary bearing on the scientific reality.

Especially when there is grant money involved.

It's a tad naive to suggest that "grant money" has resulted in the current global warming consensus. As a matter of undeniable fact, the scientific/academic mileui is competitive beyond anything Tiger Woods and Angel Cabrerra could imagine. Not only is each individual academician intent upon proving herself right and every other one wrong, it's her solemn scientific duty to do exactly that. And of course, it would be naive too, to suggest that the dream of personal fame AND enrichment, isn't at the root of many scientist's endeavors. Given that though, one can only imagine the incredible pot of gold that would come due the scientists or team of scientists that offer up the first peer-reviewed work that actually countered the global warming consensus.

Ahhhhh, the confluence of our quest for knowledge AND profit, serves us well. Whenever we're inclined to doubting whether or not the science on this issue is be conducted as completely and as objectively as possible, we need only remind ourselves of the billions upon billions of dollars that would be available to who actually DISproved the global warming consensus!

I gotta say too...as to the actual science.... in traditional, scientific, definitional terms, the "score" is 928-0 in favor of the current consensus. YET...with apparently straight faces, the flatearthers have tried to frame the consenus as the own rooted in "faith". What are we looking at here? Is this what they call, "projection"?

The first "peer reviewed work that actually counted the global warming consensus" will never exist, just as the peer reviewed work that proves global warming will never exist.

Global warming, or to be more exact, the theory that global warming is man made, is based on a series of observations, most of which being non, or in some cases, even counter-scientific. Such as the CO2 levels, which, as more and more scientists are trying to tell people, have little or nothing to do with global warming.

Which is one of the many reasons I have come to the conclusion that global warming is more of a religion than actual science. And anyone who dares to point that out is treated as a heretic in the science community. Which is another reason I believe that global warming is more of a religion than actual science.

The definition of "science" is remarkably simple. But, your comments regarding "consensus" and "peer review" suggest that it may escape you. Nonetheless, the fact that you've created your own personal construct to dispute the science is your "right", I'm afraid though, that your reply, apparently unbeknownst to you, affirms my premise.

And your ad hominen post just goes to confirm my views.

Thank you.

I pick an option you didn't offer: you are an ignoramus on a computer terminal

Gore wants you to drink another glass of Koolaid!

Actually, the peer reviewed body of work supporting the idea that man made global warming is real is voluminous.

There is not one single peer reviewed study challenging the theory in existance.

As I said, there is a well funded minority of global warming skeptics, all of whom seem to be on the payroll of Exxon Mobil or the American Enterprise Institute (essentially the same thing).

As I said, it took me less then 30 seconds to establish the link between Exxon and Bryson.

And as for just going to his office every day. He must be one of those grant writers the right likes to rant about regarding global warming, because he got $180,000 from Exxon last year alone!