Climate & Energy: The Case for Realism
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About the Authors
E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D. is Founder, President, and Chairman of The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, a network of Christian theologians, natural scientists, economists, and other scholars educating for Biblical Earth stewardship, economic development for the poor, and the proclamation and defense of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Dr. Beisner was associate professor of historical theology and social ethics at Knox Theological Seminary from 2000 to 2008, and of interdisciplinary studies at Covenant College from 1992 to 2000. He holds a B.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies with concentrations in Religion and Philosophy (University of Southern California, 1978), an M.A. in Society with Specialization in Economic Ethics (International College†, 1983), and a Ph.D. in Scottish History focused on the History of Political Thought (University of St. Andrews, 2003). His early childhood in Calcutta, India, where he observed both the beauties of creation and the tragedies of poverty, stimulated his later concerns for caring for both the natural world and the poor. He is the author of Prosperity and Poverty: The Compassionate Use of Resources in a World of Scarcity (1988); Prospects for Growth: A Biblical View of Population, Resources, and the Future (1990); Where Garden Meets Wilderness: Evangelical Entry into the Environmental Debate (1997); and more than a dozen other books. In 1999 he composed The Cornwall Declaration on Environmental Stewardship, endorsed by over 1,500 leaders from around the world and the founding document of The Cornwall Alliance. His work emphasizes the importance of responsible stewardship of the Earth and rigorous scientific inquiry, recognizing the complexity of climate systems, and evidence-based decision making. He has published hundreds of articles, popular and scholarly; lectured at universities, seminaries, conferences, and churches in North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia; testified as an expert witness before committees of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives; briefed the White House Council on Environmental Policy; presented an invited paper at a colloquium on climate change at the Vatican’s Pontifical Institute for Justice and Peace; and spoken for multiple meetings of the International Conferences on Climate Change. In 2014 the Heritage Foundation honored him with the Outstanding Spokesman for Faith, Science, and Stewardship Award.
John R. Christy, Ph.D. (who made final edits to chapter 4 after its author’s death) is the Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science and Director of the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville, where he began studying global climate issues in 1987. Since November 2000 he has been Alabama’s State Climatologist. In 1989 Dr. Roy W. Spencer (then a NASA/Marshall scientist and now a Principal Research Scientist at UAH) and Christy developed a global temperature data set from microwave data observed from satellites beginning in 1979. For this achievement, the Spencer-Christy team was awarded NASA’s Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement in 1991. In 1996, they were selected to receive a Special Award by the American Meteorological Society “for developing a global, precise record of earth’s temperature from operational polar-orbiting satellites, fundamentally advancing our ability to monitor climate.” In January 2002 Christy was inducted as a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society. He earned the B.A. in Mathematics at California State University in Fresno in 1973; the M.Div. at Golden State Baptist Theological Seminary in Mill Valley, CA, in 1978; the M.S. in Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Illinois in 1984; and the Ph.D. in Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Illinois in 1987. In 1973–1975, he served as a missionary teaching science in Nyeri, Kenya. He has testified as an expert witness on climate change over 20 times before committees of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. He has been an author or co-author of over 100 peer-reviewed publications in Nature, Science, Journal of Climate, Journal of Applied Meteorology, Geophysical Research Letters, and many other journals. He has been an expert contributor to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (1992, 1994, 1995, 2001, 2007, and 2013), the National Research Council Panel on Reconciling Observations of Global Temperature Change, and other governmental reports.
Michael Connolly, Ph.D. is an independent scientist based in Ireland. He obtained a B.Sc. (Hons.) in Chemistry with minor in Mathematics (University College Dublin, Ireland, 1971); a H.D.E. (University College Dublin, Ireland, 1972); a M.Sc. in Catalysis (Lakehead University, ON, Canada, 1974); a D.E.E. in Electronic Engineering (University College Dublin, Ireland, 1980) and a Ph.D. in Spectroscopy (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, 1989). He taught mathematics and science in high-school from 1971 until 1980 in Ottawa, ON, Canada, and Dublin, Ireland. He has worked as a lecturer and tutor in physics and chemistry (Lakehead University, ON, Canada), electronic engineering (at what is now Dublin City University, Ireland), computer science (at what is now Technical University Dublin, Ireland), and mathematics and statistics (at Trinity College Dublin). He also has considerable expertise in construction, qualifying as a plasterer in 1969 and an electrician in 1970 and building his first house on his own in 1975. Since then, he has designed and built hundreds of buildings and houses. He has been passionate about the environment since an early age. In 1975, he was a founding member of the Irish Solar Energy Society. From 1989 to 1996, together with his wife, Dr. Imelda Connolly, he built, operated, and owned the National Aquarium, which became the top privately owned tourist attraction in Ireland, where they succeeded in breeding over 800 species of fish—more, at the time, than all other aquariums in the world combined, and received international acclaim for rescuing, reviving, and rereleasing many distressed marine creatures. From 1991 to 1999, he was an expert participant in hundreds of nature and environmental radio and television programs and acted as an environmental consultant to several multinational corporations and on several large redevelopment projects. From 2000 to 2010, together with his family, he owned and operated three research farms, carrying out research in wastewater treatment and sustainable aquaculture in Union, Missouri, U.S.; Rathfarnham, Dublin, Ireland; and Offaly, Ireland. During this period, he was awarded several patents in sustainable aquaculture, wastewater treatment, and heat exchangers. Currently, he is continuing this research on the facility in Offaly, Ireland. Since 2018, he has also been actively researching climate change and other environmental issues at the Center for Environmental Research and Earth Sciences (CERES-science.com).
Ronan Connolly, Ph.D. is an independent scientist, environmentalist, and writer based in Dublin, Ireland. He has been actively researching climate change since 2009. In 2018, he began working full-time on his climate change and environmental research through the international research group, the Center for Environmental Research and Earth Sciences (CERES-Science.com). He has been interested in science since he was a teenager and received several awards in the Aer Lingus Young Scientists Exhibition for research into chloroplast migration in the Caulerpa floridana marine algae. He also was interested in mathematics (and competed in the Irish Mathematical Olympiad), and an avid computer programmer—in 1996, he came 4th in the Under-18 category of the IBM DCU All Ireland Schools Programming Competition and was awarded the Prof. Rykov Trophy for computer programming in 1994. His primary university degree was a B.Sc. in Chemistry with a minor in Mathematics (University College Dublin, 2000), and his Ph.D. (University College Dublin, 2003) was in computational chemistry/polymer physics. His Ph.D. thesis was “Conformations of branched polymers,” for which he was awarded the BOC Gases Award for best Ph.D. research in the department in 2003. In 2004, he shifted his primary research interests to environmentalism and began working with Dr. Michael Connolly (his father) developing sustainable methods of fish-farming, aquaponics, and waste-water treatment. Together they also carried out research into developing low-cost heat exchanger systems and new energy-efficient building materials and techniques. In 2009, they began systematically investigating climate change. After five years, they set up a website, OpenPeerReviewJournal.com, where they published their initial findings in eight scientific papers. Realizing that their findings could be of interest to the general public, they set up a separate website, Globalwarmingsolved.com, in which, with Dr. Imelda Connolly, they summarized their findings in a less technical format. Since then, they have met and discussed their findings with hundreds of scientists around the world. They have sought and received useful feedback on their research, and this has led to several useful scientific collaborations with other scientists, including Dr. Willie Soon. They have published the results of several of these collaborations in peer-reviewed journals.
Robert A. Hefner V is an entrepreneur, author, and speaker specializing in the global energy sector. His leadership, foresight, and innovative pursuits have profoundly impacted the fields of energy and technology. He has made significant strides toward the sustainable and responsible development of energy resources, ultimately aiming to alleviate poverty and contribute to global economic stability. In 2021, Hefner founded Hefner.Energy, which addresses the frequently destructive mischaracterizations of climate change while offering expert guidance on energy policy. The organization’s mission reflects Hefner’s commitment to balanced perspectives, recognizing the intricate link between environmental sustainability and global development. His nuanced understanding of the global climate extends beyond rhetoric, as evidenced by his accurate prediction of the global energy crisis in 2019 and his current insights into natural gas prices. Over his career, Hefner has committed more than $100 million to energy and technology businesses, including investments in minerals and royalties, privatizing water technology patents out of public companies, infrastructure, software, and bitcoin mining. This wide range of investments demonstrates his knack for identifying promising opportunities and aligning technology and energy towards a sustainable future. Hefner has been published across the ideological spectrum, transcending partisan boundaries and influencing energy politics at large. His influence has earned him the attention and respect of prominent figures in the energy field such as Marc Andreessen, Meredith Angwin, Alex Epstein, and Mark P. Mills. Above all, Hefner’s work is driven by a sense of adventure, with his passion for innovation and exploration propelling his efforts to shape the energy sector positively. His contributions have highlighted the nuanced complexities of global energy issues, providing both a realistic perspective and offering innovative solutions. He earned a B.B.A from the University of Oklahoma in Entrepreneurship and Venture Management, where he also did extensive studies in aviation, religion, philosophy, and meteorology. Hefner is a Contributing Writer for the Cornwall Alliance.
Vijay Jayaraj, M.Sci. is a multi-faceted professional with an interdisciplinary background, bringing the Renaissance era back to the professional marketplace in order to deliver beneficial contributions to global society. His expertise spans across multiple schools of thought, particularly climate science, philosophy of science, philosophy of religion, and engineering. He earned his M.Sci. in Environmental Science from the University of East Anglia and a B.S. in Engineering from Anna University in India. A prolific writer about CO2 benefits, energy, and climate science, most often from the viewpoint of the developing world, he is an environmental researcher currently serving as a Research Associate for the CO2 Coalition. Before joining the CO2 Coalition, he served as a Research Contributor for Developing Countries with the Cornwall Alliance. A former research assistant at the University of British Columbia, Canada, he has worked with nonprofits, policy think tanks, and consultancies in the spheres of climate change, energy, wildlife conservation, and public policy. His columns appear on RealClearEnergy, Townhall, WashingtonTimes, Daily Caller, Patriot Post, The Stream, and many others. Jayaraj is a third-world-culture Millennial who has lived and experienced social life in India, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Portugal. He currently resides in India.
David R. Legates, Ph.D. received a B.A. in Mathematics and Geography (double major) in 1982, a M.S. in Geography-Climatology in 1985, and a Ph.D. in Climatology in 1988, all from the University of Delaware. His expertise lies in hydroclimatology/surface water hydrology, precipitation and climate change, spatial analysis and spatial statistics, and statistical/numerical methods. Legates’s dissertation was entitled “A Climatology of Global Precipitation” and focused on obtaining a better picture of global precipitation by incorporating a high-resolution precipitation gage database that was adjusted for changes in instrumentation and biases associated with the precipitation gage measurement process. His climatology of precipitation continues to be widely used, as it is the only global climatology available that addresses the gage measurement bias problem. Upon receiving his Ph.D., Legates became an Assistant Professor in the College of Geosciences at the University of Oklahoma. He was granted tenure and promoted to Associate Professor in 1994. He became the Chief Research Scientist for the Center for Computational Geosciences at the University of Oklahoma in 1995. In 1998, Legates moved to Louisiana State University and became an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Anthropology as well as a research scientist with the Southern Regional Climate Center. Legates returned to the University of Delaware in 1999 as an Associate Professor and was promoted to Full Professor in 2010. While at Delaware, Legates served as the Delaware State Climatologist (2005–2011), Director of the Center for Climatic Research (2001–2007), founder and co-Director of the Delaware Environmental Observing System (2003–2011), and Coordinator of the Delaware Geographical Alliance, now known as the Delaware Center for Geographic Education (2005–2022). For the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, he was Assistant Deputy Secretary of Commerce for Environmental Observation and Prediction, detailed to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy as Executive Director of the United States Global Change Research Program. Legates has testified three times as an expert witness before the US Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works and before both Pennsylvania House and Senate Committee meetings on climate change. He participated in the historic joint USA-USSR protocol for the exchange of climate information in 1990, won the 2002 Boeing Autometric Award for the Best Paper in Image Analysis and Interpretation by the American Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, won First Place in the International Statistical Institute (ISI) and ESRI Paper Competition in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and was awarded the Courage in Defense of Science Award in 2015. In 2021, he was awarded the Frederick Seitz Memorial Award and the Petr Beckmann Award. He has received over $7M USD in grants over his career and has published more than 80 refereed articles. He has made more than 250 professional presentations. He is a Senior Fellow of the Cornwall Alliance and since early 2022 has served as its Director of Research and Education.
Anthony R. Lupo, Ph.D. is Professor of Atmospheric Sciences in the Atmospheric Science Program at the University of Missouri. He earned his BS in Meteorology from the State University of New York at Oswego in 1988, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Purdue University in 1991 and 1995, respectively. His research has been in the areas of large-scale atmospheric dynamics, climate dynamics, tropical meteorology, and climate change, including modeling, and he has more than 160 peer-reviewed publications across these areas. Additionally, he edited and contributed to three books on hurricanes, including Recent Hurricane Research: Climate, Dynamics, and Societal Impacts (published in 2011), and was the Lead Guest Editor of the publication Advances in Meteorology Special Issue: Large-Scale Dynamics, Anomalous Flows, and Teleconnections (2014, 2015, 2018). He has been a member of the American Meteorological Society since 1987 (Certified Consulting Meteorologist #660) and the National Weather Association since 1998. He was a Fulbright Scholar for the first time during the summer of 2004, studying atmospheric blocking at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. Additionally, he has served as an expert reviewer and/or contributing author to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (sponsored by the United Nations – World Meteorological Organization) and The Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) (sponsored by the Heartland Institute) Assessment Reports. His other professional associations include the Royal Meteorological Society (Fellow), American Geophysical Union, Sigma Xi, Gamma Sigma Delta, Phi Kappa Phi, and the Missouri Academy of Science (Fellow). He has won awards for teaching and advising at the University of Missouri, including the College of Agriculture, Food, and Natural Resources Senior Teaching Award (2006), the Outstanding Undergraduate advisor Award (April 2008), and the University of Missouri Kemper Foundation Award for Excellence in Teaching (April 2008). He was awarded the Most Distinguished Scientific Achievement Award by the Missouri Academy of Science (2009). He was the University of Missouri professor of the year (2010) and the MU submission for the SEC Professor of the Year (2020). In 2013, he was awarded by the Earth and Atmospheric Science Department at Purdue the outstanding Alum for the year. He won a second Fulbright to teach and research at Belgorod State National Research University in Russia for 2014–2015 and fall 2017 and was selected to be part of the Fulbright Specialist Roster (2016–2023). Prof. Lupo was part of the scientific committee for the First Conference on Atmospheric Blocking in Reading England (2014–2016). He was the third author of the book Hot Talk, Cold Science, 3rd ed., along with Professors Fred Singer and David Legates. Dr. Lupo is a Contributing Writer for the Cornwall Alliance.
Patrick J. Michaels, Ph.D. was best known for his work in climatology, where he shared his knowledge and expertise as a scientist, author, speaker, educator, expert witness, and public policy influencer. He held AB and SM degrees in biological sciences and plant ecology from the University of Chicago and a PhD in ecological climatology from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He was a research professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia for 30 years, actively engaging in groundbreaking research, focusing on the analysis of climate data and studying the natural and anthropogenic factors influencing global temperature trends. He was the author or editor of seven books and of articles published in leading scientific journals including Nature, Science, and Geophysical Research Letters as well as more popular outlets such as the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and USA Today. He was State Climatologist for Virginia from 1980 to 2007, monitoring and analyzing climate patterns within the state and contributing to the development of local climate policies and initiatives. He served as president of the American Association of State Climatologists in 1987–1988, program chair for the Committee on Applied Climatology of the American Meteorological Society, director of the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute, and contributing author and reviewer of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. His charisma and dynamic personality, coupled with his skills as a communicator and advocate for scientific accuracy, led to frequent appearances on television and radio news programs and as a speaker at science and policy conferences worldwide, in all of which he distilled complex scientific concepts into terms understandable to the general public. Michaels’s lifelong contributions made a lasting effect on the intersection of climate science and policy. He popularized the concept of “lukewarming”—a term he coined to illustrate his understanding that the climate was warming, humans had something to do with it, but public policy shouldn’t be led by climate models that tended to significantly exaggerate expected future warming. His dedication to scientific rigor made him a respected authority in the field of climate science where he played a vital role in advancing the understanding of climate change and its implications. His dedication to scientific rigor made him a respected authority in the field. At the time of his death shortly after writing his chapter for this book, Michaels was a Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the CO2 Coalition.
Bill Peacock has spent the last 30+ years working in and around the Texas Legislature fighting for liberty by combining his love for theology, economics, and public policy. He is the policy director for the Huffines Liberty Foundation and the Energy Alliance. He teaches high school government and economics and hosts ExcellentThought.net, where he writes about the intersection of faith, culture, and public policy. He also hosts the Liberty Cafe, a podcast on TexasScorecard.com. Bill engages in research on a variety of issues, including energy, economic, regulatory, and fiscal policy, property rights, natural resources, public education, and the relationship between faith, free markets, and economic prosperity. One of his primary areas of research is energy. Since 2005, Bill has written and edited dozens of research papers related to the electric grid. The papers have covered competition in the generation, transmission, and sale of electricity, the cost of renewable energy subsidies, the effects of renewable energy generation on grid reliability, emissions related to generation of electricity, and how the growth of capital and its deployment through capital markets has led to the development of modern energy sources, e.g., coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear fuel, and great prosperity in countries that have allowed this to take place. His research has shown that recent efforts to turn away from capital-driven energy markets to government mandates and subsidies is leading to reduced economic growth in developed countries that will eventually result in energy-poverty as is currently being experienced in most third-world countries. He has appeared and been quoted and published in numerous media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, the Dallas Morning News, The Houston Chronicle, RealClear Energy, Al Jazeera, The Hill, and the Power Hungry Podcast. He has a B.A. in History from the University of Northern Colorado and an M.B.A. with an emphasis in public finance from the University of Houston. Mr. Peacock is a Contributing Writer for the Cornwall Alliance.
Nicola Scafetta, Ph.D. Nicola Scafetta graduated in Physics at the University of Pisa and, in 2001, earned his Ph.D. in Physics at the University of North Texas. From 2002 to 2014 he worked as a research scientist at Duke University and taught astronomy and physics courses at the University of North Texas, Duke University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Elon University, and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. From 2010 to 2014 he also worked with the Active Cavity Radiometer Irradiance Monitor (ACRIM) Laboratory (linked to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory) on total solar irradiance satellite monitoring data. He is currently Professor of Atmospheric Physics and Oceanography at the University of Naples Federico II, Italy, where he teaches courses of Meteorology, Climatology, and Oceanography. In 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022, he was named in the Stanford University global list of the World’s Top 2% Scientists in various disciplines. Scafetta conducted interdisciplinary research in the areas of complex systems, astronomy and solar physics, solar-climate interactions, and climate change, and addressed a variety of issues related to climate prediction and weather-related environmental hazards. He developed novel statistical methodologies for the analysis of complex multifractal signals, with applications primarily in astrophysics, geophysics, and biophysics. His research primarily advanced the understanding of changes in solar activity and climate variability driven by natural (primarily solar and astronomical) and anthropogenic factors. In particular, he studied and identified several natural climate oscillations over timescales ranging from interannual to several thousands of years and used them to develop empirical climate prediction models. These oscillations appear to be synchronized with solar activity oscillations and are also found to be associated with major gravitational resonances in the solar system. Thus, both changes in solar activity and climate variability appear to be synchronized by astronomical oscillations and could theoretically be forecast by them. Climate models were found to contradict each other, and to fail to reproduce the identified natural climate oscillations, resulting in a significant overestimation of anthropogenic global warming while underestimating the solar and astronomical climate components. Dr. Scafetta has published several books and 153 papers in major peer-reviewed scientific journals. He has also presented his research at more than 170 international conferences, workshops, and seminars.
Willie Soon, Ph.D. an astrophysicist and geoscientist, is a leading authority on the relationship between solar phenomena and global climate. In his 32+ years of singular pursuit, he seeks to understand the Sun-Earth relations in terms not only of meteorology and climate but also orbital dynamics of Sun-Earth-other planets interactions, as well as magmatic (volcanoes) and tectonic (earthquakes) activities. His discoveries challenge computer modelers and advocates who consistently underestimate solar influences on cloud formation, ocean currents, and wind that cause climate to change. Though a target of unethical attacks on his research and character, he has become one of the world’s most respected and influential voices for climate realism. Dr. Soon was an astrophysicist at the Solar, Stellar and Planetary Sciences Division of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, from 1991–2022. He served as receiving editor for New Astronomy from 2002–2016 and astronomer at the Mount Wilson Observatory from 1992–2009. He is on the editorial board of Geoscience, an MDPI publication, since 2020, and has served as Review Editor of Frontiers in Earth Science since 2022. Dr. Soon has been a visiting professor at the University of Putra, Malaysia; Institute of Earth Environment of Xian, China; State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science at Xiamen University; and other institutions. Since September 2021, Dr. Soon has been affiliated with Hungary’s Institute of Earth Physics and Space Science. Dr. Soon earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in science and a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from the University of Southern California. His honors include a 1989 IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society Graduate Scholastic Award and a Rockwell Dennis Hunt Scholastic Award from the University of Southern California for the most representative Ph.D. research thesis of 1991. In 2003, Dr. Soon received the Smithsonian Institution (Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory) Award in official recognition of his high standard of accomplishment. In 2004, Doctors for Disaster Preparedness honored him with the Petr Beckmann award for courage and achievement in defense of scientific truth and freedom. In 2014, Dr. Soon received the Courage in Defense of Science Award from the George Marshall Institute, and in 2017 the Frederick Seitz Memorial Award from the Science and Environmental Policy Project. Dr. Soon is the author of The Maunder Minimum and the Variable Sun-Earth Connection (2004). He is the coauthor, with Sebastian Lüning, of “Chapter 2: Solar Forcing of Climate,” in Climate Change Reconsidered II: Physical Science (Heartland Institute, 2013); the author of “Sun Shunned” in Climate Change: The Facts 2014 (Public Affairs Institute: Melbourne, Australia); and coauthor, with S. Baliunas, of “A brief review of the sun-climate connection, with a new insight concerning water vapour” in Climate Change: The Facts 2017 (Public Affairs Institute: Melbourne, Australia). Dr. Soon has published 125 refereed papers and at least 37 book chapters and magazine articles and has given over 100 invited presentations at universities and international and national meetings.
Roy W. Spencer is a Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, where he performs weather and climate research sponsored by the U.S. Government and the State of Alabama. Previously he was a Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, where he worked on Earth observation missions for the Space Shuttle and International Space Station. Dr. Spencer has published numerous peer-reviewed articles on weather, climate, and satellite remote sensing techniques. Along with Dr. John Christy he is co-developer of the original method for monitoring global temperatures from satellites, is a recipient of NASA’s Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal, and has provided congressional testimony on climate issues. Dr. Spencer has served as the U.S. Science Team Leader for NASA’s Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for the Earth Observing System. He is the author of the New York Times best-selling books Climate Confusion: How Global Warming Hysteria Leads to Bad Science, Pandering Politicians and Misguided Policies that Hurt the Poor (2008), The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World’s Top Climate Scientists (2010), and more recently A Guide to Understanding Global Temperature Data (2016) and Global Warming Skepticism for Busy People (2018). Spencer’s current research includes analysis of satellite data and climate models to explore climate sensitivity, and developing a new technique for determining the extent to which global temperature trends have been spuriously inflated from the urban heat island effect. He has been a member of the Board of Advisors and a Senior Fellow of the Cornwall Alliance since its beginning in 2005 and currently serves on its board of directors.
Timothy D. Terrell, Ph.D. is T.B. Stackhouse Professor of Economics at Wofford College, a liberal arts college in South Carolina, where since 2000 he has taught courses on regulation, public finance, American economic history, and other subjects. Dr. Terrell completed his B.S. and M.A. in economics at Clemson University, going on to finish a Ph.D. in economics at Auburn University in 1998 with a focus on environmental regulation. He is Senior Fellow at the Mises Institute and serves as Senior Associate Editor of the Institute’s Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics and Associate Editor of the Journal of Libertarian Studies. His research includes work on environmental regulation, property rights, and the ethics of market systems, which has led to dozens of publications in academic journals, edited books, and policy papers on environmental economics and other public policy issues, and testimony on Capitol Hill on environmental regulation. Additionally, he is author of numerous op-eds on economics and environmental issues. Recent work includes a paper in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Policy, “Carbon Flux and N- and M-Shaped Environmental Kuznets Curves: Evidence from International Land Use Change.” He has given invited talks across the United States and at several universities in Europe and is a regular lecturer at the annual “Mises University” summer conference on Austrian economics. Dr. Terrell has also led several international study trips for students, including two to New Zealand that focused on environmental concerns such as invasive species and the littoral property rights of indigenous people. He blogs at MarketsWork (marketswork.com) and The Machen Seminar (jgmachen.org) and maintains a personal site at timothyterrell.net. A native of South Carolina, he spends his spare time hiking and camping in the nearby Blue Ridge mountains and elsewhere in the US. Dr. Terrell is a Senior Fellow, Contributing Writer, and member of the Board of Advisors of the Cornwall Alliance.
G. Cornelis van Kooten, Ph.D. received his Ph.D. in agricultural and resource economics from the University of Oregon. He has more than thirty-five years of experience in natural resource economics, including agricultural and forest economics, land-use management, mathematical programming, and the economics of renewable energy and climate. His interests range from agricultural and forest economics to development economics and computational economics. He has published more than 230 peer-reviewed journal articles and 50 book chapters. Former Professor of Economics and Research Chair in Environmental Studies and Climate at the University of Victoria, BC, he is the author or co-author of Climate Change, Climate Science and Economics: Prospects for an Alternative Energy Future (Springer, 2013) and Climate Change Economics: Why International Accords Fail (Edward Elgar, 2004), four books on natural resource economics, and two books on agricultural policy. He is also the co-editor of four books. His book with Erwin H. Bulte entitled The Economics of Nature (Blackwell, 2000) is considered a classic reference book for researchers in the field of wildlife and public land economics, and his 1995 paper in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics on the uptake of carbon in forest ecosystems is the standard reference for work in the field of terrestrial carbon offsets. Professor van Kooten has been a consultant to industry, various governments and government agencies, the United Nations, the World Bank, the European Union, and a variety of non-governmental organizations, including the International Fund for Animal Welfare and the WWF. His numerous graduate students have gone on to work in the private sector, academia, and government. He earned the Canadian Agricultural Economics Society’s Publication of Enduring Quality Award in 2011 and the Faculty of Social Sciences’ Research Excellence Award in 2014. He is a fellow of the Canadian Agricultural Economics Society, former editor of the Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics, a Senior Fellow of the Fraser Institute, and a Senior Fellow of the Cornwall Alliance.