Patrick Michaels Meets His Maker
Patrick J. Michaels, Ph.D., who spoke out often and brashly against the prevailing view that climate change needs urgent attention, thus becoming a favorite of climate change skeptics and a target of criticism by those advocating action on greenhouse gases and in other areas, died on July 15 at his home in Washington. He was 72. Unlike many climate change deniers, Dr. Michaels had sterling academic credentials; he held a doctorate in ecological climatology from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, was for decades a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and Virginia’s state climatologist, and had published in scientific journals. At the same time, he was a staunch libertarian who worked hand-in-glove with both the Cato Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute to spread the word that “The world is not coming to an end because of global warming. Further, we don’t really have the means to significantly alter the temperature trajectory of the planet.”
Michaels was the co-author of several books, including “Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians and the Media” (2004) Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don't Want You to Know (2009) and “Lukewarming: The New Climate Science That Changes Everything” (2016). Snippets from these books are frequently recited by climate-change deniers as “proof” that not everyone believes the earth is going to hell in a handbasket or that human beings are the proximate cause.
In short, Dr. Michael’s was to politically-charged climate change denial what such scientists as Dr. Paul R. Ehrlich and Rachael Carson were to such seminal climate change awareness works as The Population Bomb (1968) and Silent Spring (1962). One huge difference, of course, is that Ehrlich and Carson are still read and quoted by the masses [Dr. Ehrlich, BTW, just turned 90 this past May] while Dr. Michaels is read and quoted almost exclusively by movement conservatives. Ehrlich and Carson are recognized as experts in their field; Dr. Michaels is largely considered an outlier.
What follows, briefly, is an imagined conversation between the recently deceased Dr. Michaels and his maker . . . the Master of the Universe. In place of the term “G-d,” I have chosen to use the Divine Pronoun “CO,” which as longtime readers know is to be understood as “He/She” ).
CO: Well, well, as I eternally live and breath; it is you, Dear Dr. Michaels. So sorry to meet you under these circumstances. Please accept my deepest sympathies to your dear wife Rachael and your children, Erika and Robert. It’s been a most impactful and melodramatic three score and twelve.
PM: And whatever do you mean by that?
CO: Well, in a nutshell, that I fully expected far more from you. I mean, you started out your career in Climate science with so much promise, and then, as time went by, you kind of . . . sold out to the highest bidder and turned the pursuit of scientific truth into the divertissement of politics. I well remember that piece you published back in the late 1990s when you predicted that hybrid vehicles, such as Toyota’s Prius, “. . . were in the process of finding out that gas is so inexpensive in this country (despite its 40 cents per gallon tax) that no one except die-hard technophiles and hyper-greens are willing to shell out several thousand dollars extra for a hybrid.” I hope you will admit, Patrick, that you were wrong, wrong, wrong.
PM: With all due respect, I certainly will not! I was, am and will always be ahead of the scientific curve!
CO: Oh really? Then how do you account for the fact that the vast majority of your scientific colleagues find your conclusions on global warming to be sorely wanting, and accuse you of having sold out to petroleum-backed and financed interests like CATO and the Competitive Enterprise Institute CEI)? I well remember when you accepted a whopping $100,000 donation from a fossil-fuel interest, the Intermountain Rural Electric Association, back in the days when you first joined up with CTI. I will admit that science can and does include advocacy, but you somehow found a way to profit by it all, for which I find you guity.
PM: With all due respect, dear CO, there have long been scientists who have stood firmly in place against the majority of their so-called colleagues, and were eventually proven to be correct. Is that not so?”
CO: Are you really trying to compare yourself to Aristarchus, Copernicus, Kepler or Semmelweis? To misquote the late Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen, “Professor Michaels, I knew Aristarchus, Copernicus, Kepler and Semmelweis, and you, sir, are not they!” Being eternal, omniscient and omnipotent, I can tell you I really, truly had a Divine Plan in creating the universe. If you pay attention to the opening chapters of the Hebrew Bible (you called it the “Old Testament”), you will note, I hope, a certain unity of purpose spelled out in the creation the universe. To wit, the order in which I created it. I created the oceans before the seas, and the trees before the birds, and virtually everything else before humanity, Which is to make obvious that neither the seas need the fish nor the trees need the birds. Nothing which precedes depends on that which antecedes. And since humanity comes last - the so-called “Crown of Creation” - this obviously means that nothing depends upon humanity, but rather that humanity depends on virtually everything. In other words, dear Professor Michaels, you are wrong, wrong wrong . . . theologically, historically and scientifically.
PM: So what is it you’re trying to say?
CO: That you have placed a major - and G-d forbid fatal - stumbling block in the path toward saving the planet I created; that you have caused so many to ignore - or forget or misinterpret - my very First Commandment to “. . . be fruitful, multiply and act as responsible stewards of the good earth.” In the original, Dr. Michaels, this reads:
פְּר֥וּ וּרְב֛וּ וּמִלְא֥וּ אֶת־הָאָ֖רֶץ וְכִבְשֻׁ֑הָ (p’ru, u’revu, u’m’l’ooh et ha-aretz v’kheeb-shuah)
PM: I get the feeling that you aren’t terrible happy with me. Where do we go from here?
CO: See that elevator over there?
PM: Yes, what am I to do?
CO: Enter and wait for the doors to close . . . then press the button that takes you to the basement, where most regrettably, you will experience maximal universal warming . . .
Copyright©2022 Kurt F. Stone