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For a short time during the 1970s, a number of climatologists theorized that the Earth was heading towards an ice-age. Leading this group was Reid Bryson, whose work was the primary inspiration for a number of CIA reports and the book The Weather Conspiracy. At one point, Mr. Bryson wrote that:

“There is very important climatic change going on right now, and it’s not
merely something of academic interest.” Bryson warned, “It is something that, if it continues, will affect the whole human occupation of the earth – like a billion people starving. The effects are already showing up in a rather drastic way.”

However, this theory was soon abandoned. Bryson recanted his earlier warnings and eventually retired (in 1986, by my calculations). Meanwhile, the above quote became fodder for a million GW Denier websites, evidence that scientists "can’t decide whether we face an ice age or warming".

And then, just last week, Reid Bryson pops up in the "Wisconsin Energy Cooperative News" , the magazine of the Wisconsin Energy Cooperative, an association of Wisconsin energy producers. In "The Faithful Heretic", he spends a several pages trash-talking the science behind anthropogenic Global Warming, employing most of the standard skeptical talking points.

And suddenly, the guy once ridiculed for being wrong about Global Cooling has become a prophet for GW Deniers everywhere!

McKinley is a fool, unless he's coming up on his tenure decision in the next year or so. If he's a baby (i.e., a starting ass prof), he's just bet his academic career on a fad that will be an embarrassment by the time tenure-time rolls around. It's kind of like working on cold fusion, polywater, or other intellectual Ponzi schemes; get in and out before everyone realizes it's crap.

If McKinley doesn't come up for tenure within the next two years, he should save time and put in his application to Burger King right now.

It's so funny to me that people have to give labels like "GW Deniers", to put us in our place. hahaha...

I guess you told us.

Just sit tight, little man, when you grow up I think you'll have seen your fair share of political b.s. and not be so gullible for everything your dear old professor told you that first semester in college.

Why haven't the alarmist begun drawing up plans to relocate cities (New York, San Francisco, etc) from low lying areas?

I mean if GW is real and GW alarmists take themselves seriously - they'd better get cracking, right?

As for Galen McKinley, he (she?) hasn't noticed the smoke on Mars?

Brewski, first, Bryson is NOT the only scientist who does not believe in AGW. There are many others.
Second, global cooling is not entirely out of the question. At least one scientist says there is reason to believe that it could happen
There is just so much that we do not know for sure. As R. Timothy Patterson said, the science of climate change is still in its infancy.

Graduate students DO NOT ANSWER PHONE CALLS from the media. Talk to any department anywhere. It simply doesn't happen. Just because Bryson says it, doesn't mean it's true. University departments have excellent support staff that answer phones (try calling the department of AOS's phone number at UW and see who you get), and they would never transfer the media to a grad student's office. It's a blatant lie.

Graduate students are also not clueless. They know a hell of a lot more than you do about this and most issues. 6-12 years of professional education tends to have that effect.

Bryson loved to talk to the press back then, almost every article on climate trends seem to quote him. This continued for years to the point I wondered who else was in the field. He was an early and vocal proponent of the idea that humans could change climate.

Others scientists came to agree, but no one knew what the bottom line would be. Two opposing effects were at work. The relative importance of dust and aerosols (cooling) vs. CO2 (warming) was not well understood. That was a big impetus to built climate models. Bryson has always believed the former were more important and IMO can't bring himself to admit that his favorite theory has been eclipsed.

That is not something new for him. Here's a quote about this bull-headedness from historian Spencer Weart's book - The Discovery of Global Warming, (available online too). It was sponsored by the American Institute for Physics and published by Harvard U. Press in 2003, long before Bryson decided to break his self-imposed silence.

Aerosols: Effects of Haze and Cloud
"Bryson and his co-workers continued to insist that smoke from burning fossil fuels and forest clearing had a powerful cooling effect. After all, the haze visibly dimmed the solar radiation that reaches the surface. They expected pollution would more than balance the effects of increased CO2 (since the more fuel humanity burned, the more aerosols were emitted along with the gas). Taking everything into account, they calculated that "an expected slight decrease in surface temperature" was already underway.(38) Bryson would not concede that his group's observations, analysis of data, and theoretical understanding were too uncertain to produce a definitive answer. The real value of this work was not in the purported findings, but in the way it forced scientists to pay attention to a topic that was indeed highly important, although in ways that they would not work out reliably for decades more."