Asmunn Moene

Asmunn Moene

Credentials

Background

In his signature to the 2006 open letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Moene’s title is the “Past Head of the Forecasting Centre, Meteorological Institute, Norway.”

However, when DeSmog contacted the Meteorological Institute, they said that Moene was “head of forecast division Norwegian Meteorological Institute for the region of South Eastern Norway from 1971 to 1988 … his main duty [was] administration of operational weather forecasting from 1 up to 5 days ahead. He [Moene] has not been involved in climate change research at the Norwegian Meteorological Institute.”

Moene’s name appears on Senator Inhofe‘s list of “prominent climate scientists” who refute the existence of man-made global warming.

Stance on Climate Change

Moene is a signatory to the Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change which states “That there is no convincing evidence that CO2 emissions from modern industrial activity has in the past, is now, or will in the future cause catastrophic climate change.”

Key Quotes

“Global mean temperature changes are unpredictable … There is no significant relationship between the IPCC predicted trend and the two other curves which are generated by random changes. The random updating is of fundamental importance…An increase of the CO2 – content in the atmosphere should create a greater warming trend in the lower troposphere i.e .a greenhouse effect. It is evident that this is actually not he case.”3“Prospectus for Synthesis and Assessment Product 1.1 Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere: Steps for Understanding and Reconciling Differences” (PDF), Public Review Comments, July 7, August 12, 2004. Accessed from climatescience.gov. Archived April 11, 2012. Archived .pdf on file at DeSmog.

Key Actions

March 4, 2008

Moene is listed as an “expert” who signed the Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change.4CLIMATE EXPERTS WHO SIGNED MANHATTAN DECLARATION,” International Climate Science Coalition. Accessed January, 2012.

The Manhattan Declaration was created by the International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC) and concludes that that “attempts by governments to legislate costly regulations on industry and individual citizens to encourage CO2 reduction will slow development while having no appreciable impact on the future trajectory of global climate change.”

December 13, 2007

Moene also signed a 2007 open letter to UN Secretary General Ban-Ki moon.5Open Letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations,” December 13, 2007. Republished by the Science and Public Policy Institute.

This letter describes global warming as a natural phenomenon, and expresses how carbon dioxide is a “non-polluting gas that is essential to plant photosynthesis.” It also claims that the IPCC reports are “inadequate as justification” for implementing climate change policy.

April 2006

Moene is a signatory to the 2006 open letter to Stephen Harper that denied the existence of man-made climate change while urging inaction on climate policy.

November 1995

Moene was a signatory to the Leipzig Declaration.6SIGNATORIES TO THE LEIPZIG DECLARATION,” Science and Environmental Policy Project. Archived March 2, 2008. WebCite URL: www.webcitation.org/6f6OofT56

The 1995 “Leipzig Declaration” was a project of Fred Singer’s Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) and a group called the European Academy of Environmental Affairs. The declaration states that “there does not exist today a general scientific consensus about the importance of greenhouse warming from rising levels of carbon dioxide.”

According to SourceWatch, when a Danish journalist attempted to contact the 33 European scientists listed on the petition, 12 denied signing the petition and some had not even heard of the Leipzig Declaration. The declaration was later revised and many names were removed.7THE LEIPZIG DECLARATION ON GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE (2005, revised),” Science and Environmental Policy Project. Archived September 28, 2006.

Affiliations

  • European Science and Environment Forum (ESEF) — Past “Academic Member”8“Facts versus Factions: the use and abuse of subjectivity in scientific research” (PDF), ESEF Working Paper, February 1998. See page 26., “Academic Members of ESEF, August 1998.” Accessed January, 2012, from hivskeptic.fils.wordpress.com.. ESEF is now defunct.

Publications

A search of Google Scholar lists only four articles written by Moene, two in 1954 and one in 1970. His most recent article appears to have been published in the journal Energy & Environment in 2002.

Energy & Environment is run by climate skeptic Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, and has been criticized for its peer review process in the past.

Other Resources

Resources

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