RIP – Dr. Patrick Michaels, 1950-2022

I’m sorry to inform the climate realist community of the passing of friend and colleague, Dr. Patrick Michaels. I worked on several projects with Pat, and I was always impressed with his depth of knowledge, quick wit, and character. For example, he often wore green tennis shoes to climate conferences because he said the oddity would engage people in conversations he might not have had otherwise.

He once said to me that his only regret was hiring/promoting Michael Mann while he was at the University of Virginia.

From Greg Wrightstone by email:

Patrick Michaels obtained an A.B. in biological science in 1971 and an M.S. in biology in 1975 from the University of Chicago, and in 1979 he obtained his Ph.D. in ecological climatology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His doctoral thesis was titled Atmospheric anomalies and crop yields in North America.

Patrick J. Michaels was a past president of the American Association of State Climatologists and was program chair for the Committee on Applied Climatology of the American Meteorological Society. He was a research professor of Environmental Sciences at University of Virginia for 30 years. Michaels was a contributing author and is a reviewer of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

His writing was been published in the major scientific journals, including Climate Research, Climatic Change, Geophysical Research Letters, Journal of Climate, Nature, and Science, as well as in popular serials worldwide. He was the author or editor of Nine books on climate and its impact, and he was an author of the climate “paper of the year” awarded by the Association of American Geographers in 2004. He appeared on most of the worldwide major media.

Dr. Michaels was Senior Fellow at the CO2 Coalition and the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

He remained very active up to his last days. He had just completed his review and comments on the USGCR decadal plan and filed them on Thursday. He and I met just Thursday to discuss his next venture looking at regional assessments of changing climate/CO2 on the Midwest.

He leaves a legacy of sound science and dedication to the scientific process. He will be missed terribly.