Patrick Michaels

Patrick J. ("Pat") Michaels (born February 15, 1950) is an American climatologist. Michaels is a senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute. Until 2007 he was research professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, where he had worked from 1980.

A self-described skeptic on the issue of global warming, he is a past president of the American Association of State Climatologists. He has written a number of books and papers on climate change, including Sound and Fury: The Science and Politics of Global Warming (1992), The Satanic Gases (2000), and Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media (2004). He's also the co-author of Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don't Want You to Know (2009). Michaels' viewpoint, as argued in a 2002 article in the journal Climate Research, is that the planet will see "a warming range of 1.3–3.0°C, with a central value of 1.9°C" for the 1990 to 2100 period (an analysis far smaller than the IPCC's average predictions).