So-called “climatologist” George Taylor has to go

George Taylor is a embarrassment to Oregon. He passes himself off as the official state climatologist even though Oregon doesn’t have such a position. Today an article in the Oregonian (“Experts square off over climate change”) quoted Governor Kulongoski:

"He's not the state climatologist," the governor said. "I never appointed him. I think I would know.”

Apparently Oregon State University’s College of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences gave Taylor this title, because the Oregonian story says that the position of state climatologist was dissolved by the legislature in 1989.

Regardless, Taylor loves to spout off about how humans really aren’t a big factor in causing global warming, an unscientific position that makes him a darling of big oil and conservative organizations like the Heartland Institute, which recently trotted Taylor out as among the serious scientists who are debunking scaremongering about climate change.

Yeah, right. You’d be hard pressed to find a truly serious scientist who doesn’t accept that human caused climate change is happening. Heck, Taylor’s own college admits this on its web site:

Climate change is happening globally and in the Pacific Northwest. Humans are contributing to global warming and climate change in a measurable way.

Willamette Week ran an expose on Taylor in August 2005. I’d been ranting about the absurdity of Oregon’s climatologist being a global warming denier for several months previous. It’s even more absurd now that we know he isn’t the climatologist.

But Taylor is still up to his old tricks. Just a few days ago (January 26) right-wing talk show host Lars Larson had Taylor as a guest. He introduced Taylor as the “official state climatologist.”

Taylor then proceeded to mangle facts and science. He said that the 1930s was the warmest decade in Oregon, which isn’t true: the 1990s was. He also claimed that 1917-42 saw the most melting of Oregon glaciers. Also not true, according to this Oregonian story.

"It's almost universal that all glaciers are retreating," said Peter Clark, a professor at Oregon State University and an international authority on glaciers. "The signs of retreat are dramatic and accelerating."

If Taylor simply went around speaking as an uninformed individual with views about global warming that aren’t shared by reputable scientists, that wouldn’t be so bad.

However, when he writes a letter to the editor as the state climatologist, passing along the untruth that the 1930s was the warmest decade on record in Oregon, that’s unconscionable.

Email the dean of George Taylor’s college at OSU, Mark Abbott. Tell him that Taylor needs to stop being called the state climatologist. And that Oregon deserves to have someone competent heading up the Oregon Climate Service.

Lars Larson asked Taylor whether, if we change our human activities enough, we can have an effect on human caused global warming. Taylor’s answer: “I don’t believe that’s true.”

Willamette Week said that Taylor’s critics call him one of the most dangerous men in Oregon. Could be an overstatement. But human caused global warming is real and deadly serious.

To have someone saying otherwise, who is passing himself off as Oregon’s climatologist, that is dangerous.

[Update: Advance reports of what will be in the soon to be released report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change feature headlines such as "World's scientists say climate change is much worse than they thought." But George Taylor feels that he knows more than the world's experts on climate change, because he continues to claim that humans are having a minimal effect on global warming.

The report supposedly will say: "It is virtually certain that human activity has played the dominant role in causing the increase of greenhouse gases over the past 250 years." But don't worry. George Taylor says it isn't so. And so long as Oregon State University continues to bestow upon him the title of "state climatologist," unfortunately some people are going to believe him.]

Comments

[tortdog]

This article is wrong. Taylor heads the "Oregon Climate Service," which was established in 1991 by the legislature to "disseminate and interpret climate data and information for the state." But now that the head of the Oregon Climate Service has scientific findings that differ from the governor's, the governor wants to change the rules.

Get your facts straight.

352.245. Establishment of the Oregon Climate Service; duties
Laws 1991, c. 727, § 1.

[Brian]

tortdog, I do have my facts straight. That's exactly what I've been saying: that Taylor is head of the Oregon Climate Service. I said that if he used this title, that'd be fine.

Instead, he keeps referring to himself as the "state climatologist," a position that doesn't exist in state statute and seems to be bestowed on him merely by the dean of his college.

An OSU media person says he's going to get back to me on the state climatologist position issue.

I appreciate your interest in my blog, but I don’t see how what I've been saying is wrong. This KGW news story, which I just ran across, says that a bill has been introduced in the state legislature that would prevent Taylor from falsely claiming he's the state climatologist. So I'm looking even more correct.
http://www.kgw.com/news-local/stories/kgw_020607_news_taylor_title.59f5d04a.html

[tortdog]

>This KGW news story, which I just ran across, says that a bill has been introduced in the state legislature that would prevent Taylor from falsely claiming he's the state climatologist. So I'm looking even more correct.

That's one legislator's spin on this story. Fact is that the American Association of State Climatologists recognizes Taylor as the state climatologist for Oregon, and the law gives to his office that he heads the sole right to "disseminate and interpret climate data and information for the state."

http://www.stateclimate.org/

So you go with the politicians. I'm going for the words of the law and the AASC.

So call him what you will, he's the guy who disseminates the information on climatology for the state of Oregon, and since at least 1994 he's been recognized as such by the AASC. If it quacks and walks like a duck, it's a duck.

Besides, your governor doesn't even know the difference between a weatherman and a climatologist. Not sure why you'd want this to be a political position.

[Brian]

tortdog, you're still missing the point (like you're probably missing the reality of global warming).

The fact that the dean of OSU's College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences calls Taylor the "state climatologist," and that this title is accepted by a national organization, doesn't mean that he is Oregon's official state climatologist.

That position doesn't exist in state statute. Which is why state Sen. Avakian wants to create the position. See:
http://www.blueoregon.com/2007/02/state_climatolo.html

Fact: Taylor isn't the official Oregon state climatologist, because this position isn't authorized in state law (only the head of the Oregon Climate Service is).

[Marilyn Odneal]

Who cares about the fellow's title? The important point is whether Oregonians choose to believe their scientist's view of global warmning or their government's view of global warming.

[torridjoe]

We don't have a scientist yet, we have Taylor. The gap between the two is enormous.

[OhmEye]

Greenhouse gases are a serious problem and are even threatening the Martian climate. If we don't get this pollution problem under control then our entire solar system will be one blazing inferno.

[OhmEye]

Check out this article:

http://www.enterprisemission.com/warming.htm

[CHAOtipper]

Brian,
I must express an affinity with the idea that humans play only a lesser part in Earth's climatic shifts. I haven't heard much of George Taylor, or evaluated the information surrounding his claim to title of "State Climatologist." To me, his political title seems irrelevant compared to how his climate theories polarize people regarding their beliefs. I have noticed humans strive to find scientific studies that justify our popular "truths," forgetting how fleeting the constructs of our political imaginations appear relative to the scale of our cosmos. To credit ourselves with more than is due regarding climate change, seems to me an invitation towards justifying conquering, rather than understanding nature. Perhaps an evaluation of Mr. Taylor's theories, rather than his political persona would serve well for a future article?

http://www.ocs.orst.edu/page_links/publications/taylor_response.html
...just a link to Taylor's rebuttal...

[Brian]

CHAOtipper, I'm not qualified to evaluate Taylor's theories, but the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change sure is. I included one link, among many on the Internet, in this post:
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/article2194298.ece

The panel's recent report reflects the consensus of the world's leading climate scientists. I'm not out to attack Taylor personally; I'm out to attack his unsubstantiated statements about climate change.

Taylor doesn't publish his maverick conclusions. He just spouts them. As a scientist, he should be presenting research to back up his theories. Which includes the notion that we don't know whether carbon dioxide causes warming of the atmosphere.

As I noted in another post, one of his (competent) colleagues says, "That's nonsense." See:
http://hinessight.blogs.com/hinessight/2007/02/oregons_state_c.html

When the state climatologist promulgates nonsense, that's ridiculous. Which is why Taylor either has to go, or stop his nonsense.

[Barry R]

Honestly - the greenhouse effect is GRADE 5 SCIENCE. The more greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, the more warming. Sure the relative %age of CO2 and methane in the atmosphere is relatively small, but that's all it takes to keep the Earth's surface temperature what it is, and any increase in these concentrations will increase the planets temperature.

How exactly this will impact weather and specific climates is the variable, and that's where paid climate skeptics like Taylor, Lintzen, Singer, Baliunas, etc get traction. They say - "they weather is too complex to predict, so you can't prove human induced climate change". The reality is that the underlying science of the greenhouse effect, and increased, human-induced global warming, is very simple, understandable and IRREFUTABLE.

[Mark Kraemer]

Although the politics seem irrefutable the science is still being done and very few scientists are as convinced as the activists. Keep an open mind. The recent data indicating that increases in atmospheric CO2 concentrations follow ocean warming rather than preceed it should give an open mind pause. One thing that climatologists agree on is that we are in an interglacial period and that global cooling is inevitable. I suggest that the current energy crisis is a far more critcal problem. We are at the "peak" of conventional cheap oil production and face huge increases in transportation and home heating costs. Society has major restructuring to do regardless of CO2 effects.

[Chris]

Go back to California you freaks or better yet go live on a commune you old ex hippie nuts.