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Provo » The Utah Farm Bureau opposes the notion that humans are responsible for climate change, and this week at its midyear convention, the state's largest agricultural group is making its case through the words of keynote speaker Tom Tripp.
The bureau, in promoting the event, described Tripp as a Nobel Peace Prize winner, elevating him to that status because he is one of several thousand members of a U.N. panel that shared the prize with former Vice President Al Gore, even though Tripp disagreed with the panel's position that human actions are causing the planet to warm.
Tripp, a metallurgical engineer for U.S. Magnesium and Grantsville city councilman, is a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, which shared the Nobel Prize with Gore in 2007.
Another of the panel's members and others question whether it is appropriate for Tripp to be identified as a Nobel winner, given his tangential connection to the honor.
David Randall, an atmospheric scientist at Colorado State University and a coordinating lead author for the IPCC, said Thursday it is inaccurate to call any of its members Nobel winners. "It is a fact that the prize was awarded to the IPCC organization, not to individuals. I would never call myself a Nobel Peace Prize winner."
Tripp, a member of the IPCC since 2004, is listed as one of 450 IPCC "lead authors" who reviewed reports from 800 contributing
Scientists, industry experts and public officials from more than 130 countries contributed to the 2007 report, said Brenda Ekwurzel with the Massachusetts-based Union of Concerned Scientists. That comprehensive body of work was the latest of five climate change reports dating to 1988 recognized by the Norwegian Nobel Committee.
On Thursday at the convention, a bureau official said it was appropriate to invite Tripp to speak and label him a Nobel winner, even though he disagrees with the panel's findings. "It shows what the IPCC touts as a consensus is less than a consensus. Even within that group not everyone is in total agreement," said bureau CEO Randy Parker.
On Tripp being a prize winner: "He is. The prize was given to Al Gore and 2,000 IPCC members."
For his part, Tripp said the label is "technically correct," adding that the IPCC chairman and others in the organization have said all IPCC members were awarded the prize.
At Thursday's convention, Tripp found a receptive audience among the 250 people attending the conference. He said there is so much of a natural variability in weather it makes it difficult to come to a scientifically valid conclusion that global warming is man made. "It well may be, but we're not scientifically there yet."
He also criticized modeling schemes to evaluate global warming, but stopped short of commenting on climate modeling used by the IPCC, saying "I don't have the expertise."
But meteorologist Thomas Reichler did just that. He was involved in a University of Utah study that the IPCC models "are quite accurate and can be valuable tools for those seeking solutions on reversing global warming trends."
Neal Briggs, who farms nearly 300 acres in Syracuse, said he's comfortable that the Farm Bureau presents only one side of the climate debate because "the science behind it isn't sound. From what I've researched, we are not a large contributor to global warming."
Utah Farm Bureau CEO Randy Parker » In his latest column before this week's conference, he blasted NASA scientist James Hansen as a radical seeking to control the issue. "This is the same James Hansen who in 2008 called for trials of climate skeptics for 'high crimes against humanity.' "
Hansen said Thursday in an e-mail » "I have never said any such thing about 'climate skeptics,' who, by the way, are more accurately termed 'contrarians,' as they simply state a position inconsistent with what the relevant scientific community (e.g., the National Academy of Sciences) has concluded."
