Dr. Jim Buckee, PhD Astrophysics, University of Oxford
Dr. Jim Buckee says he feels like a heretic, persecuted for his views and treated like an outcast. His crime? Being a climate change sceptic. Next week the former chief executive of the oil and gas firm Talisman, who has a PhD in astrophysics from the University of Oxford, will try to convince others that climate change has nothing to do with human activity.
During a lecture at the University of Aberdeen he will argue that, far from warming, the Earth is set to enter a 20-year cooling period. Dr Buckee believes human behaviour has no effect on the climate and the vast sums spent by governments trying to promote renewable energy to cut greenhouse gas emissions are being wasted. Far from being a key cause of climate change, he says, carbon dioxide emissions have little or no impact. His views are contrary to those held by governments, the Royal Society - an independent science body - the Met Office and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Instead of human activities being responsible for the warming climate over the past 100 years, Dr Buckee insists there is a natural explanation, based on the activity of the Sun. Solar activity can affect the cosmic rays that reach the Earth’s atmosphere, and this in turn affects the climate, he says.
The “solar explanation” is one shared by many climate change sceptics. Dr Buckee says he is arguing against a tide of popular opinion which verges on the religious. “Any dissension is like a heresy,” he says. “People are stamped on so they can’t be heard. That has religious overtones.”
Dr Buckee believes his views are widespread although not always voiced. “I think it is the dominant view in professional science circles,” he says. “I know lots of people in universities and so on and quite often they have to retire before they can say what they want because it’s so frowned upon.”
Although he spent his career in the oil and gas industry, he denies having any vested interest. “A vested interest would make me shut up because it would drag up controversy,” he says. He adds that, while he was chief executive of Talisman, he did not make his views known, although he would explain them if asked. Dr Buckee’s belief in a solar explanation, a view expounded on a vast array of websites, is familiar to those in the climate change movement, who argue it has been discounted.
In the lecture, Dr Jim Buckee will put forward the idea that solar activity is responsible for changes to the climate. He will say the climate of the past few hundred years is a continuation of a normal process of gradual warming since the ice age 10,000 years ago. During that time, he argues, there have been constant fluctuations. He believes those fluctuations are caused by varying solar activity. When the sun is strong, it deflects cosmic rays from within and outside our galaxy. When the sun is weak, the rays enter the Earth’s atmosphere and cause low cloud, which has a cooling effect. He believes that, after a period of warming, the Earth is now entering a period of cooling that will last until 2030 or beyond. It is just one of the many theories put forward by sceptics, who argue that humans are not responsible for climate change. Read more here.