Del. professor caught in climate change controversy

Jeff Montgomery | The (Wilmington, Del.) News Journal

WILMINGTON, Del. — A University of Delaware professor is entangled in a controversy over possible undisclosed industry support for attacks on reports about human-caused global warming.

David Legates, a professor in the geography department and a former state climatologist, was included in a congressman's request this week for details on grants and support provided to those who have testified in Congress on the issue.

Rep. Raul M. Grijalva, D-Ariz., sent a letter to University of Delaware President Patrick T. Harker this week noting recent reports that Willie Soon, a professor with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, had received funding from the conservative Koch Foundation that was not disclosed when he testified before a House science committee, with other fossil fuel industry-related ties also unreported.

Andrea Boyle Tippett, a spokeswoman for the University of Delaware, said the school would have no comment.

She confirmed that Legates is a tenured faculty member, and she provided a copy of the university's research policies. The document is designed to avoid conflicts of interest and requires disclosure of significant financial interests, payment for consulting fees and a variety of funding scenarios.

The disclosure forms are not public, she said.

In his letter to Harker, Grijalva wrote: "I am hopeful that disclosure of a few key pieces of information will establish the impartiality of climate research and policy recommendations published in your institution's name and assist me and my colleagues in making better law."

Grijalva is ranking member of the House Committee on Natural Resources. He sought drafts of Legates' testimony and details on his sources of external funding, including grant receipts and proposals. Legates could not be reached Thursday morning.

In June 2014, Legates testified at the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee about droughts and agriculture.

"My overall conclusion is that droughts in the United States are more frequent and more intense during colder periods. Thus, the historical record does not warrant a claim that global warming is likely to negatively impact agricultural activities," he testified.

He went on to tell the committee about efforts to silence climate change dissenters.

This is not the first time Legates has been questioned about research funding. In 2009, the environmental group Greenpeace requested his financial and conflict-of-interest disclosures. Legates told the senators he was instructed by university legal counsel to comply with the request.

Just prior to this, Legates was directed by Gov. Ruth Ann Minner in 2007 to stop using his state climatologist title in statements challenging climate change science after he co-wrote a legal brief opposing federal regulation of greenhouse gases after Delaware joined in a multistate lawsuit pressing for federal action.

"Your views, as I understand them, are not aligned with those of my administration," Minner said.

He stepped down as state climatologist in 2011.

He told the Senate committee he "was removed as co-director of the Delaware Environmental Observing System (an observational network I had spent nearly a decade to develop), as faculty adviser to the Student Chapter of the American Meteorological Society, and from all my committee assignments within my department."

Legates and the University of Delaware aren't the only faculty or institution under scrutiny.

Letters also were sent to the presidents of MIT, Georgia Tech, Pepperdine, Arizona State and universities of Alabama and Colorado. All of the schools have had a researcher appear before Congress.

Legates' UD page notes a focus on hydroclimatology, precipitation and climate change.

In 2013, he and Soon were featured speakers at an annual meeting of the Positive Growth Alliance in Georgetown, a state group that has focused on a range of issues involving landowner rights limits and limits on government, including in areas of environmental regulation.

At that meeting, Soon said "sick science," "agenda-driven science results" and "scare tactics" were being used by those seeking to curb greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, adding at one point: "They're a very sick group."

Legates, at the same session, said that "there is no clear signal of sea-level rise in Delaware," referring to reports about risks to coastal areas from accelerating sea-level rise, triggered by a warming atmosphere, warming ocean and the melting of global ice sheets.

The two researchers were part of a controversial report in 2007 disputing claims that polar bears were threatened by Arctic climate change.

Soon has promoted for years a controversial view that attributes recent warming not to carbon emissions but to fluctuations in solar intensity. But documents from his institute show that his research was underwritten almost entirely by fossil-fuel interests, including the Koch Foundation and the Southern Co.

Grijalva said Soon failed to properly disclose Big Oil's support for his work when he testified to Congress and at the state legislature of Kansas – testimony that downplayed the seriousness of manmade climate change.

Some of Legates' work likewise had ties to organizations supported by Koch and oil industry interests.

Contributing: The Associated Press