This now includes the suggestions below. Thanks to those who made suggestions. Inevitably it is still going to have missed people like e.g. the journalist Delingpole and the many contributors in WUWT – sorry if you are one. Please add suggestions to the comments.
| Year | Greatest Contribution | Worst Contribution |
| 2012 | Peter Gleick for showing the true nature of climate science Svensmark, Martin Enghoff and Jens Olaf Pedersen for their paper: “Response of Cloud Condensation Nuclei (> 50 nm) to changes in ion-nucleation“ |
Peter Gleick for shooting himself in the foot. |
| 2011 | Jasper Kirkby: for his work linking cloud formation to cosmic rays Roy Spencer: On the Misdiagnosis of Surface Temperature Feedbacks from Variations in Earth’s Radiant Energy Balance |
BBC for Meet The Sceptics another BBC stitch-up Wolfgang Wagner for resigning as Editor-in-chief of Remote Sensing over Spencer & Braswell paper. Kevin Trenberth for advocating reversing the ‘null hypothesis’ |
| 2010 | Andrew Montford for the Hockey Stick Illusion |
Oxburgh & Muir Russell for the appalling climategate inquiries |
| 2009 | Climategate leaker(s) | Phil Jones |
| 2008 | Lord Monckton for his numerous tours, speaking engagements and for taking the BBC to court Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change Christopher Booker – for his article: 2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved |
Maggie Kendall Zimmerman for her paper which manufactured the overwhelming consensus of 97%** **(97% thought it had warmed since the little ice age) |
| 2007 | Anthony Watts for: SurfaceStations.org project Martin Durkin for: The Great Global Warming Swindle |
Fourth IPCC report Nobel Committee for giving Gore a prize |
| 2006 | Anthony Watts for establishing WUWT Nir Shaviv for his paper “Celestial Driver of Phanerozoic Climate” |
Al Gore’s for his fiction: An Inconvenient Truth. Stern & his Report |
| 2005 | McIntyre for starting ClimateAudit.org | Kyoto Treaty Hurricane Katrina |
| 2004 | Travis, Carleton, Lauritsen, for investigation the effects of no contrails after 911 (Regional Variations in U.S. Diurnal Temperature Range for the 11–14 September 2001Aircraft Groundings: Evidence of Jet Contrail Influence on Climate) | Naomi Oreskes – For manufacturing the myth of a global warming consensus: “Not one of the papers refuted the claim that human activities are affecting Earth’s climate” |
| 2003 | Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick on “Corrections to the Mann et al. (1998) Proxy Data Base and Northern Hemisphere Average Temperature Series” Fred Singer for the: Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change Sen James M. Inhofe for his statement on climate change. |
The European Heat Wave, which scared the pants of Europeans. |
| 2002 | Michael Roderick Graham Farquhar. For his investigation of global Dimming as a climate driver in: The cause of decreased pan evaporation over the past 50 years | Parliaments in the European Union, Japan and others for ratifying Kyoto The Larson B ice shelf in Antarctica for collapsing & losing about 3250 square kilometres and scaring everyone. |
| 2001 | Planet Earth – for not warming since. Arthur B. Robinson for the Oregon Petition (currently has 31,000 signatures) |
Everyone in the IPCC Harries JE, Brindley HE, Sagoo PJ For comparing two satellites 27 years apart and saying it “proves unequivocally that global warming is real. “ |
| 2000 | S. Fred Singer for his Testimony before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation on Climate Change Richard S. Lindzen for his paper: Does the Earth Have an Adaptive Infrared Iris? |
The Millennium – for being a time which seems to engender hysteria. |
| pre 2000 | 1998: Svensmark for his work: Influence of cosmic rays on earth’s climate. 1995: Richard Lindzen for his essay “Science and Politics: Global Warming and Eugenics” 1990: UK Channel 4 for The Greenhouse Conspiracy 1975: Wallace S. Broecker for his paper: Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming? which correctly identified the evidence against global cooling and the likely warming effect of rising CO2. |
1998: Mann for the fabrication of the hockey Stick 1988: James Hansen for turning off the air conditioning before the Energy and Natural Resources Committee of the United States Senate |
John Harrison, was the person who created the modern world, almost literally. He is the person who invented a clock that was accurate enough to measure longitude (distance West-East). It was accurate enough to map the globe. Better still, the royal society hated him. They wanted this other person who was using the small change in position of the moon to get the prize. But just like the climate, they might have believed in the theory, but it would not work in practice.
Didn’t Hansen sabotage the air-conditioning in 1988 (not 1998) ?
1990 Good: “The Greenhouse Conspiracy”
1988 Bad: Hansen Testimony
RE:” John Harrison. . . the person who invented a clock that was accurate enough to measure longitude. . . ”
I recall watching the TV series about this topic on A&E (I believe) here in Ontario CA. Quite fascinating how it took almost a lifetime for recognition of his achievement. Particularly since all the while the ‘census’ was ag’n him; altho (from the TV series) the Navy was more inclined to use the practical (eg: his clock) than the theoretical (eg: the consensus).
Alan D McIntire.
You left off Nir Shaviv, the Israeli astrophysicist. Here’s a link to a 2006 paper
“Celestial Driver of Phanerozoic Climate”
http://www.phys.huji.ac.il/~shaviv/Ice-ages/GSAToday.pdf
which he links from his blog.
http://www.sciencebits.com/
Best contribution 1995: Richard Lindzen for his essay “Science and Politics: Global Warming and Eugenics”
“The issue of global warming has been one of the more confusing and misleading issues to be presented to the public. Despite the absence of a significant scientific basis for most predictions, the public has been led to believe that there is an overwhelming scientific consensus that the issue is a matter of immediate urgency requiring massive control of energy usage. The first part of this paper will briefly describe this situation. The thought that scientists would allow such an abuse of science is difficult for most laymen to believe. However, I suggest that what is happening may, in fact, be the normal behavior to be expected from the interaction of science, advocacy groups, and politics.
A study of an earlier example of such an interaction, the interaction of genetics, eugenics and immigration law during the early part of this century, reveals almost analogous behavior.”
Lots of good points in this essay, here’s one:
“(…) the difference between a natural consensus arising in a field and a forged consensus.”
It’s a “must read” that still holds up today, even if it was written 17 years ago.
http://www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/180_Eugenics.pdf
… and thank you for a fine blog and this great post!
Best regards, Bjørn from Bergen – Norway
aargh and the PDF carriage returns. Sh?te. 🙂
I know what you mean.
Article has been updated to include the above.
I’ve collected together some early contributions, here is a draft:
350BC: Aristotle for Meterology in which he identifies the hydrologic cycle.
25AD: Pomponius Mela who formalizes the climatic zone system
1643: Evangelista Torricelli for inventing the mercury barometer
1686: Edmund Halley, who published a map of the trade winds in 1686
1724: Gabriel Fahrenheit for creating a reliable scale for measuring temperature with a mercury-type thermometer.
1735: George Hadley who recognised that the direction of trade winds was affected by earth’s rotation
1802-1803: Luke Howard writes On the Modification of Clouds in which he assigns cloud types Latin names.
1806: Francis Beaufort introduces his system for classifying wind speeds.
1840: Elias Loomis the first person known to attempt to devise a theory on frontal zones, and prepared some of the first known weather maps.
1846: Dr. John Thomas Romney Robinson invents Cup anemometer
1850: Rankine uses his vortex theory to establish accurate relationships between the temperature, pressure, and density of gases,
1852: Joule and Thomson demonstrate that a rapidly expanding gas cools, later named the Joule-Thomson effect.
1860: Robert FitzRoy uses the new telegraph system to gather daily observations from across England and produces the first synoptic charts. He also coined the term “weather forecast” and his were the first ever daily weather forecasts to be published in this year.
1875: Francis Galton prepared the first weather map published in The Times (also invented term anti-cyclone)
1919: Norwegian Cyclone Model introduced for the first time in meteorological literature. Marks a revolution in the way the atmosphere is conceived and immediately starts leading to improved forecasts
1920: Milutin Milanković proposes that long term climatic cycles may be due to changes in the eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit and changes in the Earth’s obliquity.
1924: Gilbert Walker first coined the term “Southern Oscillation”.
1938/70: Helmut Landsberg for his work on cloud condensation nuclei & urban climate “Variability of the Precipitaton Proces in Time and Space”
1948: Robert C. Miller and E. J. Fawbush for first correct tornado prediction in Oklahoma.
1950: Princeton University for first successful numerical weather prediction experiment.
1955: Norman Phillips at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, runs first Atmospheric General Circulation Model.
1960: The first weather satellite to be considered a success was TIROS-1
1961: Edward Lorenz accidentally discovers Chaos theory when working on numerical weather prediction.