Monday, July 31, 2006
Editorial: State climatologist or company man?
A University of Virginia professor dishonors himself and all of Virginia by shilling for polluters.
From the RoundTable blog
Read the latest entries
"The Honor System at the University of Virginia exists to foster a cohesive bond of trust among all members of the university community and to instill in all students a mutual reverence for the ideal of honorable behavior."
-- University of Virginia Honor Committee bylaws
Students at Thomas Jefferson's school in Charlottesville set high standards of honorable behavior. Too bad their code does not apply to faculty. Perhaps then Patrick Michaels, a professor of environmental sciences, would not have shamefully sold his academic credibility, embarrassing all Virginians in the process.
Michaels has made a name for himself as one of the lonely few scientists who still resist the overwhelming evidence for human-caused global warming.
Maybe the facts persuaded him. Then again, maybe it was the gobs of money polluters pay him to raise public doubt.
The Intermountain Rural Electric Association, a Colorado electric cooperative that relies heavily on coal-burning plants, admitted in a document obtained by ABC News that it paid Michaels $100,000 to spread his anti-global warming message.
The co-op also organized contributions and financial pledges from other polluting power companies.
Accepting a pile of cash to shill for industry neither fosters a cohesive bond of trust nor counts as honorable behavior.
Michaels demonstrated no qualms about using his position as a supposedly neutral academic in a contentious debate even though there were more than 100,000 reasons to question his credibility.
Normally that would be between him, his conscience and the university, but Michaels is not just any professor. He speaks about the weather for all Virginians as the state climatologist.
Residents of the commonwealth deserve untainted analysis from their chief weather researcher. Michaels cannot work for both the public and industry.
He has allied himself with a group that -- and we are not making this up -- names plate tectonics a primary cause of global warming.
It also cautions that those who warn of catastrophic environmental changes do so only because they want to "develop renewable resources [and] discontinue the use of fossil fuels, especially coal."
Yet most Americans support reducing the nation's dependence on fossil fuels, and even President Bush, hardly an environmental crusader, pays lip service to the development of renewable resources.
Michaels' shameful actions disqualify him from speaking for Virginia. Let him spread his industry-funded message without the title of state climatologist.
