On this day, February 21 1995, eminent climate scientist Tom Wigley tried (for the second time) to get Pat Michaels, climate “contrarian,” to engage in the IPCC review process for the second assessment report.
… Patrick Michaels was invited to contribute to Chapter 8. He declined to do so. One of the lead authors of Chapter 8, Tom Wigley, wrote to Pat Michaels on November 21, 1994, and on February 21, 1995, soliciting comments on the portrayal of Michaels’s Franklin Institute paper in a December 8, 1994 version of Chapter 8. Prof. Michaels did not respond to these requests. Gelbspan, R. (1998) Page 235
Michaels who’s still alive, so I have to be careful about what I say, declined.
There was no margin in it for him. It’s easier to be lobbing bricks from the outside, and not having to actually engage with the reality of what’s being said, rather than a straw man you’ve created.
Wigley had been working on climate change for decades, is he still alive and kicking. A few years earlier he had led on a day-long briefing of Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet, which I may cover in April…
What happened next
The second Assessment Report of the IPCC got viciously attacked because it said that there was a discernible influence of human activity. Ultimately, the ferocity of the attacks made it impossible for some corporate members of the Global Climate Coalition to stay on board. And you see this, the attack dogs don’t realise that by barking and snarling as loud as they are ultimately making it difficult for their owners to keep feeding them