Brian P. Flannery

Last updated

Brian P. Flannery is a physicist who variously worked as an astrophysicist and as a climate modeller for ExxonMobil. He is known for being a co-author of Numerical Recipes, a widely used series of textbooks describing useful algorithms.

Flannery obtained his undergraduate degree in astrophysics from Princeton University in 1970 [1] and his doctorate from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1974, under the supervision of John Faulkner. [2] As an astrophysicist, he published work on cataclysmic variable stars and other interacting binaries until 1982.

In 1980, he joined ExxonMobil as a climate modeler and subsequently became a manager in 1998. [3] He previously participated in Working Group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [4] and continues to contribute to research on the mitigation of climate change. [5] He has at times been accused of participating in effort's by ExxonMobil to undermine action against climate change. [6]

Related Research Articles

Global warming controversy debate over global warming

The global warming controversy concerns the public debate over whether global warming is occurring, how much has occurred in modern times, what has caused it, what its effects will be, whether any action can or should be taken to curb it, and if so what that action should be. In the scientific literature, there is a strong consensus that global surface temperatures have increased in recent decades and that the trend is caused by human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases. No scientific body of national or international standing disagrees with this view, though a few organizations with members in extractive industries hold non-committal positions, and some have attempted to convince the public that climate change is not happening, or if the climate is changing it is not because of human influence, attempting to sow doubt in the scientific consensus.

Lee Raymond

Lee R. Raymond is an American businessman and the chief executive officer (CEO) and chairman of ExxonMobil from 1999 to 2005. He had previously been the CEO of Exxon since 1993. He joined the company in 1963 and served as president from 1987 and a director beginning in 1984.

American Geophysical Union Nonprofit organization of geophysicists

The American Geophysical Union (AGU) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization of Earth, atmospheric, ocean, hydrologic, space, and planetary scientists, consisting of over 62,000 members from 144 countries. AGU's activities are focused on the organization and dissemination of scientific information in the interdisciplinary and international fields within the Earth and space sciences. The geophysical sciences involve four fundamental areas: atmospheric and ocean sciences; solid-Earth sciences; hydrologic sciences; and space sciences. The organization's headquarters is located on Florida Avenue in Washington, D.C.

Willie Wei-Hock Soon is a Malaysian astrophysicist and aerospace engineer employed as a part-time researcher at the Solar and Stellar Physics (SSP) Division of the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Myron Ebell is an American climate change denier who serves as the Director of Global Warming and International Environmental Policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a libertarian advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. He is also the chairman of the Cooler Heads Coalition, a loose coalition formed in 1997 which presents itself as "focused on dispelling the myths of global warming by exposing flawed economic, scientific, and risk analysis". In September 2016, he was appointed by then Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump to lead his transition team for the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Climate change mitigation Actions to limit the magnitude of climate change and its impact on human activities

Climate change mitigation consists of actions to limit global warming and its related effects. This generally involves reductions in human emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs).

Intermediate polar

An Intermediate Polar is a type of cataclysmic variable binary star system with a white dwarf and a cool main-sequence secondary star. In most cataclysmic variables, matter from the companion star is gravitationally stripped by the compact star and forms an accretion disk around it. In intermediate polar systems, the same general scenario applies except that the inner disk is disrupted by the magnetic field of the white dwarf.

Fossil fuels lobby

"Fossil fuels lobby" is a term used to label the paid representatives of large fossil fuel and aviation corporations who attempt to influence governmental policy. Big Oil companies such as ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Total S.A., Chevron Corporation, and ConocoPhillips are among the largest corporations associated with the fossil fuels lobby.

Bob Ward has served as policy and communications director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics since 2008.

Flannery is a convention in the game of contract bridge.

<i>Kivalina v. ExxonMobil Corp.</i>

Kivalina v. ExxonMobil Corp., No. 4:08-cv-01138, is a lawsuit filed on February 26, 2008, in a United States district court. The suit, based on the common law theory of nuisance, claims monetary damages from the energy industry for the destruction of Kivalina, Alaska by flooding caused by climate change. The damage estimates made by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Government Accountability Office are placed between $95 million and $400 million. This lawsuit is an example of greenhouse gas emission liability.

ExxonMobil American multinational oil and gas corporation

Exxon Mobil Corporation, stylized as ExxonMobil, is an American multinational oil and gas corporation headquartered in Irving, Texas. It is the largest direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, and was formed on November 30, 1999 by the merger of Exxon and Mobil. ExxonMobil's primary brands are Exxon, Mobil, Esso, and ExxonMobil Chemical. ExxonMobil is incorporated in New Jersey.

Solar geoengineering Reflection of sunlight to reduce global warming

Solar radiation management (SRM), or solar geoengineering, is a type of climate engineering in which sunlight is reflected back to space to limit or reverse global warming. Proposed methods include increasing the planetary albedo (reflectivity), for example with stratospheric sulfate aerosol injection. Localised protective or restorative methods have also been proposed regarding the protection of natural heat reflectors including sea ice, snow, and glaciers. Their principal advantages as an approach to climate engineering is the speed with which they can be deployed and become fully active, their low financial cost, and the reversibility of their direct climatic effects.

The galactic ridge is a region of the inner galaxy that is coincident with the galactic plane of the Milky Way. It can be seen from Earth as a band of stars which is interrupted by 'dust lanes'. In these 'dust lanes' the dust in the gaseous galactic disk blocks the visible light of the background stars. Due to this, many of the most interesting features of the Milky Way can only be viewed in X-rays. Along with the point X-ray sources which populate the Milky Way, an apparently diffuse X-ray emission concentrated in the galactic plane is also observed. This is known as the galactic ridge X-ray emission (GRXE). These emissions were originally discovered by Diana Worrall and collaborators in 1982, and since then the origins of these emissions have puzzled astrophysicists around the globe.

David Beerling

David John Beerling is the Director of the Leverhulme Centre for Climate change mitigation and Sorby Professor of Natural Sciences in the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences (APS) at the University of Sheffield, UK. He is also Editor in Chief of the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.

The ExxonMobil climate change controversy concerns ExxonMobil's activities related to global warming, especially their opposition to established climate science. Since the 1970s, ExxonMobil engaged in climate research, and later began lobbying, advertising, and grant making, some of which were conducted with the purpose of delaying widespread acceptance and action on global warming.

SW Sextantis variable stars are a kind of cataclysmic variable star; they are double-star systems in which there is mass transfer from a red dwarf to a white dwarf forming a stable accretion disc around the latter. Unlike other non-magnetic cataclysmic variables, the emission lines from hydrogen and helium are not doubled, except briefly near phase 0.5. In eclipsing systems, the emission lines are scarcely detected at minimum light because the white dwarf and the central part of the accretion disc are hidden behind the red dwarf.

TV Corvi, also known as Tombaugh's Star, is a dwarf nova of the SU Ursae Majoris type in the constellation Corvus that was first discovered by accident as a mysterious 12th magnitude star on a plate by Clyde Tombaugh while looking for remote planets on May 25, 1932, before its identity was confirmed as a dwarf nova by David Levy in 1990.

Darren W. Woods is an American businessman, and the chief executive officer (CEO) and chairman of ExxonMobil since January 1, 2017.

SU Ursae Majoris, or SU UMa, is a close binary star in the northern circumpolar constellation of Ursa Major. It is a periodic cataclysmic variable that varies in magnitude from a peak of 10.8 down to a base of 14.96. The distance to this system, as determined from its annual parallax shift of 4.53 mas, is 719 light years. It is moving further from the Earth with a heliocentric radial velocity of +27 km/s.

References

  1. "Brian Flannery". Archived from the original on November 17, 2016. Retrieved November 16, 2016.
  2. Flannery, B. P. (1974). Gas flow in cataclysmic variable stars (PhD). University of California, Santa Cruz. Bibcode:1974PhDT.........4F.
  3. "Brian Flannery" . Retrieved November 16, 2016.
  4. "Working Group III: Mitigation. List of Authors and Reviewers" . Retrieved November 16, 2016.
  5. McJeon, Haewon; Edmonds, Jae; Bauer, Nico; Clarke, Leon; Fisher, Brian; Flannery, Brian P.; Hilaire, Jérôme; Krey, Volker; Marangoni, Giacomo; Mi, Raymond; Riahi, Keywan; Rogner, Holger; Tavoni, Massimo (15 October 2014), "Limited impact on decadal-scale climate change from increased use of natural gas" (PDF), Nature , 514 (7523): 482–485, Bibcode:2014Natur.514..482M, doi:10.1038/nature13837, PMID   25317557, S2CID   4454295
  6. Ward, Bob (July 1, 2009). "Why ExxonMobil must be taken to task over climate denial funding". The Guardian.