.” [5]‘s General Manager Stan Lewandowski wrote. [97]
E&E News reported in the summer of 2019 that Michaels had joined the CO2 Coalition, a pro-CO2 group founded by William Happer. [111]‘s
December 8, 2016
“Probably the best solution is to do nothing, because doing nothing is doing something.” [90]
2016
.” [13]
2007
“It’s hardly news that human beings have had a hand in the planetary warming that began more than 30 years ago. For nearly a century, scientists have known that increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide would eventually result in warming that was most pronounced in winter, especially on winter’s coldest days, and a cooling of the stratosphere. All of these have been observed….
“… the best policy is to live with some modest climate change now and encourage economic development, which will generate the capital necessary for investment in the more efficient technologies of the future.” [14]
Key Quotes
October 22, 2018
During an episode of the Fox News program “Life, Liberty & Levin” with Mark Levin, Michaels declared: [108]
“The polar bears are saving themselves. They’re growing in numbers.” [108]
December 8, 2016
.” [90]
December, 2016
“[Trump’s] nomination of Scott Pruitt is further evidence that the president-elect is serious, and circumstantial evidence that the influence of Al Gore’s recent visit was of little consequence.” [83]
April 27, 2015
Patrick Michaels published a piece in the National Review one day prior to a meeting between Pope Francis and the Secretary-General at the Vatican to dicuss climate change. Michaels writes:
?” [15]
June 3, 2014
Patrick Michaels wrote an opinion piece in The Washington Times one day following the EPA‘s release of its Clean Power Plan Proposed Rule:
“The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) own computer model easily shows that President Obama’s proposed regulations would reduce global warming by around 0.02 of a degree Celsius by the year 2100. Actually, the true number is probably even smaller because that calculation assumes a future rate of warming — there hasn’t been any for 17 years now — quite a bit higher than it is likely to be.” ]
“Reports of rapid disintegration of Greenland’s ice ignore the fact that the region was warmer than it is now for several decades in the early 20th century, before humans could have had much influence on climate. Similar stories concerning Antarctica neglect the fact that the net temperature trend in recent decades is negative, or that warming the surrounding ocean can serve only to enhance snowfall, resulting in a gain in ice. Global warming affects hurricanes in both positive and negative fashions, and there is no relationship between the severity of storms and ocean-surface temperature, once a commonly exceeded threshold temperature is reached. Reports of massive species extinction also turn out to be impressively flawed.” [19]
-.”
Key Deeds
September 24, 2020
Appearing in Marc Morano’s 2020 film Climate Hustle 2: Rise of the Climate Monarchy, produced by the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), Michaels criticised renewable energy, stating: [120]
“The fact is a modern society requires dense energy. Solar energy is diverse and diffuse. Wind is diverse, diffuse, and ugly.” Michaels claimed renewable energy advocates live “in a fact-free environment.”
January 8, 2020
During bushfires in Australia, Michaels co-wrote an article entitled “Australian wildfires were caused by humans, not climate change” in the Washington Examiner with Myron Ebell, also of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. They said: “it’s very convenient for alarmist greens to blame the fires of Australia and California on global warming. In reality, the policies they themselves advocate are the culprits.” They argued that governments had been pressured into pursuing “bad [land] management policies” by environmental groups. [118], [119]
Claims that environmental policies and arson were to blame for the bushfires have been debunked, though they continue to be propagated by social media bots and fringe websites such as Alex Jones’s InfoWars. [118]
September 23, 2019
Michaels appeared at a Heartland Institute panel discussion in New York City also featuring David Legates and Willie Soon,?” [117]
During the discussion, Michaels said:
“What we have is a community that is extremely conformist. And certainly the pressures of monopoly funding provided by the federal government for essentially only one side of the issue will ensure that there’s a consensus. And someday something is going to happen to this and 97% of all scientists concerned are going to believe something else.” [117]
September 19, 2019
Michaels spoke at an event at Georgetown University designed to rebut a nearby official climate change debate forum for 2020 Democratic presidential candidates. [113]
The rebuttal forum, sponsored by the Georgetown University College Republicans, also featured Marc Morano, CFACT’s Paul Driessen, Kenny Stein of the Institute for Energy Research, and Caleb Rossiter of the CO2 Coalition. [114]
GUCR advertised the event on Facebook as “bringing five climate policy &[sic] climate science experts to provide an alternative perspective.” [114]
As the forum began, student protesters disrupted the proceedings, causing campus police to remove everyone from the room. The event resumed when college staff prohibited protesters from holding signs, and with the promise of removal if they continued to disrupt the speakers. [115], [116]
August 2019
E&E News reported Michaels had joined the CO2 Coalition as a full-time employee. Michaels told E&E News that he had been essentially forced out of his role at the Cato institute. As a senior fellow at the CO2 Coalition, Michaels will “contribute to the group’s effort to help members of Congress question climate science,” Scott Waldman reported at E&E News. [111]
“Obviously, it gives us a lot of credibility at least in the right-leaning space because he’s so prominent as a climatologist,” CO2 Coalition executive director Caleb Rossiter said of Michaels. [111]
May 2019
E&E News reported Michaels had left the Cato institute earlier in the year, following disagreements with officials in the organization. [110]
“They informed me that they didn’t think their vision of a think tank was in the science business, and so I said, ‘OK, bye,’” Michaels said in an interview with E&E News on May 28. “There had been some controversy going around the building for some time, so things got to a situation where they didn’t work out.” [110]
A spokeswoman said that the closing of the Center for the Study of Science did not signify a change in Cato’s views regarding climate change.
“While it is true that, with the departure of Pat Michaels, we have deactivated our Center for the Study of Science, we continue to work on science policy issues,” Khristine Brookes, the spokeswoman, wrote in an email to E&E News.
March 20, 2019
Michaels was a guest speaker at an event titled “Climate Change: An Alternative Perspective and Policy Implications of Uncertainty,” hosted by the Faith and Public Policy Group in McLean, VA. [109]
During the presentation he repeated many of his past assertions about the exaggeration of climate change warnings, the beneficial effects of increased CO2 and warming, and the ability of humans to adapt to a changing climate. [109]
Confronted by an audience member who claimed that Michaels worked for the Koch-funded Heartland Institute and was therefore compromised by fossil fuel money, Michaels was paraphrased as replying:
“No, I work at CATO. We’re quite different. You shouldn’t trust anything about science from Heartland.” [109]
October 22, 2018
Michaels appeared on the Fox News program “Life, Liberty & Levin” with Mark Levin to discuss “the truth about global warming.” Some notable quotes below (view full transcript at Fox News): [108]
LEVIN:. It’s not a lot. […] maybe half of that nine-tenths of the degree might be caused by greenhouse gases because when the planet warmed beginning in 1976, the temperature of the stratosphere started to drop and that’s the prediction of greenhouse theory that’s not intuitive.”
[…]
LEVIN: “The early 20th Century could not have produced this heat. So what did? Do we know?”
MICHAELS: “No. And you know, the three most important words in life may not be ‘I love you,’ It might be, ‘I don’t know.’ I don’t think anybody really knows what kicked off that warming. […]”
[…]
MICHAELS: “[The EPA].”
[…]
MICHAELS:  ‘Atlas Shrugged,’ it was the State Science Institute that destroyed the innovation of the society.”
[…]
MICHAELS:.”
[…]
“MICHAELS: The polar bears are saving themselves. They’re growing in numbers. […]”
September 28, 2018
As reported by the Climate Investigations Center (CIC) in a summary of Michaels’ “30 years of climate denial,” Michaels was scheduled to speak before the Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines regarding the impacts of climate change on