Indur M. Goklany

Last updated

Indur M. Goklany
EducationB.Tech. (1968), M.S. (1969), PhD (1973)
Alma mater Indian Institutes of Technology, Michigan State University
Occupation(s)Science and technology policy analyst
EmployerUnited States Department of the Interior
Notable work The Improving State of the World
Website goklany.org

Indur M. Goklany is a science policy advisor in the United States Department of the Interior (DOI). [1] [2] Trained as an electrical engineer, he has often promoted views at odds with the scientific consensus on climate change, falsely asserting that there is a lack of agreement among scientists and arguing that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide has various beneficial effects. [1] [3] [4]

Contents

In 2017, the Trump administration promoted him to a position charged with reviewing climate policy. In 2020, it was revealed he had repeatedly tried to insert misleading language on climate change into the agency's scientific reports. [1] He has also worked with several organisations known for promoting climate change denial, including the Heartland Institute, the Cato Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the Global Warming Policy Foundation. [1] [3] [4]

Education

Goklany has a B. Tech degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institutes of Technology and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees, also in electrical engineering, from Michigan State University. [5]

Views on climate change

In 2017, Goklany was promoted to the position of Assistant Director of Programs, Science and Technology Policy at the Department of the Interior. In that role he was responsible for reviewing climate policies. He has repeatedly inserted climate change denial language into DOI’s scientific reports, which are used to make decisions on matters like water and mineral rights. The wording includes claims that there is a lack of consensus for global warming among scientists and that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is beneficial. [1]

He took part in the making of Policy Peril: Why Global Warming Policies are More Dangerous than Global Warming Itself, a film created by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a right-wing think tank engaged in manufacturing climate change denialism. [1] He has also written papers for the Heartland Institute, who paid him $1,000 a month in 2012 for writing a chapter in their book. [3] [1] At a Heartland-organised conference in 2017, he posited a correlation between rising CO2 levels and life expectancy and GDP, saying "we’re actually living in the best of times, and carbon dioxide and fossils fuels are a good part of that." [3]

Goklany has argued that while "hysteria over global warming" is fueled by concerns of increased worldwide hunger and driving species to extinction, the proposed use biofuels and ethanol would only make both issues worse. [6] He has also been critical of the World Wide Fund for Nature and the United Nations Population Fund over their stance on population growth saying, "For many groups like the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), World Population Day, which fell on July 11, is another chance to bemoan 'the relentless growth in human population,' while the United Nations Population Fund says 'stabilizing population would help sustain the planet.' The problem, however, is not population but poverty." [7]

In 2021, Climate Feedback fact-checked an article by Breitbart which repeated inaccurate and misleading claims made by Goklany in a post for the Global Warming Policy Foundation. [4] The reviewers noted that Goklany is "an electrical engineer, not a climate scientist, who hasn’t published any peer-reviewed research in at least the past decade on the topics he wrote about". [4]

Works

Books
Papers

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fred Singer</span> Austrian-born American physicist (1924–2020)

Siegfried Fred Singer was an Austrian-born American physicist and emeritus professor of environmental science at the University of Virginia, trained as an atmospheric physicist. He was known for rejecting the scientific consensus on several issues, including climate change, the connection between UV-B exposure and melanoma rates, stratospheric ozone loss being caused by chlorofluoro compounds, often used as refrigerants, and the health risks of passive smoking.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Patrick Michaels</span> American climatologist (1950–2022)

Patrick J. Michaels was an American agricultural climatologist. Michaels was a senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute until 2019. Until 2007, he was research professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, where he had worked from 1980.

The Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization based in Tempe, Arizona. It is seen as a front group for the fossil fuel industry, and as promoting climate change denial. The Center produces a weekly online newsletter called CO2Science.

The Global Warming Petition Project, also known as the Oregon Petition, is a group which urges the United States government to reject the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 and similar policies. Their petition challenges the scientific consensus on climate change. Though the group claims more than thirty-thousand signatories across various scientific fields, the authenticity and methods of the petitioners as well as the signatories' credentials have been questioned, and the project has been characterized as a disinformation campaign engaged in climate change denial.

Craig D. Idso is the founder, president and current chairman of the board of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, a group which receives funding from ExxonMobil and Peabody Energy and which promotes climate change denial. He is the brother of Keith E. Idso and son of Sherwood B. Idso.

Sherwood B. Idso is the president of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, which rejects the scientific consensus on climate change. Previously he was a Research Physicist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service at the U.S. Water Conservation Laboratory in Phoenix, Arizona, where he worked since June 1967. He was also closely associated with Arizona State University over most of this period, serving as an adjunct professor in the Departments of Geology, Geography, and Botany and Microbiology. His two sons, Craig and Keith, are, respectively, the founder and vice president of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George C. Marshall Institute</span> Former American nonprofit conservative think tank

The George C. Marshall Institute (GMI) was a nonprofit conservative think tank in the United States. It was established in 1984 with a focus on science and public policy issues and had an initial focus in defense policy. Starting in the late 1980s, the institute advocated for views in line with environmental skepticism, most notably climate change denial. The think tank received extensive financial support from the fossil fuel industry.

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

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Heartland Institute</span> Conservative and libertarian American think tank

The Heartland Institute is an American conservative and libertarian 501(c)(3) nonprofit public policy think tank known for its rejection of both the scientific consensus on climate change and the negative health impacts of smoking.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert M. Carter</span>

Robert Merlin Carter was an English palaeontologist, stratigrapher and marine geologist. He was professor and head of the School of Earth Sciences at James Cook University in Australia from 1981 to 1998, and was prominent in promoting anthropogenic climate change denial.

David Russell Legates is a former professor of geography at the University of Delaware. He is the former Director of the Center for Climatic Research at the same university and a former Delaware state climatologist. In September 2020, the Trump administration appointed him as deputy assistant secretary of commerce for observation and prediction at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Friends of Science(FoS) is a non-profit advocacy organization based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The organization rejects the established scientific consensus that humans are largely responsible for the currently observed global warming. Rather, they propose that "the Sun is the main direct and indirect driver of climate change," not human activity. They argued against the Kyoto Protocol. The society was founded in 2002 and launched its website in October of that year. They are largely funded by the fossil fuel industry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Climate change denial</span> Denial of the scientific consensus on climate change

Climate change denial is a form of science denial characterized by rejecting, refusing to acknowledge, disputing, or fighting the scientific consensus on climate change. Those promoting denial commonly use rhetorical tactics to give the appearance of a scientific controversy where there is none. Climate change denial includes unreasonable doubts about the extent to which climate change is caused by humans, its effects on nature and human society, and the potential of adaptation to global warming by human actions. To a lesser extent, climate change denial can also be implicit when people accept the science but fail to reconcile it with their belief or action. Several studies have analyzed these positions as forms of denialism, pseudoscience, or propaganda.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anthony Watts (blogger)</span> American blogger (born 1958)

Willard Anthony Watts is an American blogger who runs Watts Up With That?, a climate change denial blog that opposes the scientific consensus on climate change. A former television meteorologist and current radio meteorologist, he is also founder of the Surface Stations project, a volunteer initiative to document the condition of U.S. weather stations. The Heartland Institute helped fund some of Watts' projects, including publishing a report on the Surface Stations project, and invited him to be a paid speaker at its International Conference on Climate Change from 2008 to 2014.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">International Conference on Climate Change</span> The Heartland Institute annual conference

The International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC) is a conference series organized and sponsored by The Heartland Institute which aims to bring together those who "dispute that the science is settled on the causes, consequences, and policy implications of climate change." The first conference took place in 2008.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Happer</span> American physicist (born 1939)

William Happer is an American physicist who has specialized in the study of atomic physics, optics and spectroscopy. He is the Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics, emeritus, at Princeton University, and a long-term member of the JASON advisory group, where he pioneered the development of adaptive optics. From 1991 to 1993, Happer served as director of the Department of Energy's Office of Science as part of the George H.W. Bush administration. He was dismissed from the Department of Energy in 1993 by the Clinton Administration after disagreements on the ozone hole.

Timothy Francis Ball was a British-born Canadian public speaker and writer who was a professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Winnipeg from 1971 until his retirement in 1996. Subsequently Ball became active in promoting rejection of the scientific consensus on global warming, giving public talks and writing opinion pieces and letters to the editor for Canadian newspapers.

The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) is a climate change denial advocacy organisation set up by S. Fred Singer's Science & Environmental Policy Project, and later supported by the Heartland Institute lobbying group, in opposition to the assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on the issue of global warming.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ExxonMobil climate change denial</span> Overview of climate-related ExxonMobil controversies

From the 1980s to mid 2000s, ExxonMobil was a leader in climate change denial, opposing regulations to curtail global warming. For example, ExxonMobil was a significant influence in preventing ratification of the Kyoto Protocol by the United States. ExxonMobil funded organizations critical of the Kyoto Protocol and seeking to undermine public opinion about the scientific consensus that global warming is caused by the burning of fossil fuels. Of the major oil corporations, ExxonMobil has been the most active in the debate surrounding climate change. According to a 2007 analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists, the company used many of the same strategies, tactics, organizations, and personnel the tobacco industry used in its denials of the link between lung cancer and smoking.

The CO2 Coalition is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit advocacy organization in the United States founded in 2015. Its climate change denialist claims conflict with the scientific consensus on climate change.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Tabuchi, Hiroko (March 2, 2020). "A Trump Insider Embeds Climate Denial in Scientific Research". The New York Times. Archived from the original on February 4, 2021. Retrieved March 7, 2020.
  2. ↑ "Staff Directory". Department of the Interior. Archived from the original on October 19, 2011. Retrieved May 23, 2010.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Eilperin, Juliet; Grandoni, Dino (March 9, 2018). "How a climate skeptic marginalized for years at the Interior Dept. rose to prominence under Trump". Washington Post . Archived from the original on February 15, 2021.
  4. 1 2 3 4 "Breitbart article makes numerous false claims about the impacts of climate change, based on Global Warming Policy Foundation post". Climate Feedback . February 12, 2021.
  5. ↑ "Indur M. Goklany". World Economic Journal . Retrieved May 23, 2010.
  6. ↑ Goklany, Indur M. (April 23, 2007). "Unintended consequences". The New York Times . Retrieved May 23, 2010.
  7. ↑ Goklany, Indur M. (July 15, 2009). "Apocalypse When?". The Korea Times . Retrieved May 23, 2010.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.