A profile of Richard Lindzen...

One of the best climate change skeptics...

In recent months, Lindzen's circle of allies has appeared to be expanding rather than shrinking. In late May, Michael Griffin, administrator of NASA, which conducts considerable amounts of climate research, told National Public Radio that he was not sure climate change was "a problem we must wrestle with" and that it was "rather arrogant" to suggest that the climate we have now represents the best possible set of conditions. Alexander Cockburn, a maverick journalist who leans left on most topics, lambasted the global-warming consensus last spring on the political Web site CounterPunch.org, arguing that there's no evidence yet that humans are causing the rise in global temperature. Other skeptics include Czech Republic president Václav Klaus; Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville; and Patrick J. Michaels, a senior fellow in environmental studies at the libertarian Cato Institute.

Cockburn based much of his article on the work of Martin Hertzberg, a consultant from Copper Mountain, Colorado, who worked as a U.S. Navy meteorologist for three years. According to Hertzberg, the increase in CO2 is happening because the world's oceans are warming up—a natural process that's been occurring since the end of the most recent ice age, 12,000 years ago—and in doing so they're releasing their dissolved carbon into the atmosphere.