In an era when 97% of climate scientists believe that climate change is a serious problem, increasingly isolated scientific skeptics have turned to the skies to explain why the threat of global warming is much ado about nothing.

 

Richard S. Lindzen, professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is a leading voice among experts who disagree that the earth is going to heat up. Indeed, he has become a celebrity among climate change deniers because he is one of the few with legitimate academic credentials.

 

For Lindzen and climate change deniers, the answer is in the clouds. Literally.

 

Greenhouse gases may be increasing in quantity, Lindzen admits, but thanks to the absence of high clouds over the tropics, any increase in heat will escape into the upper atmosphere, he argues.

 

Other scientists say they don’t know for certain how clouds will behave in the future.

 

“Clouds really are the biggest uncertainty,” Andrew E. Dessler, a climate researcher at Texas A&M, told The New York Times. “If you listen to the credible climate skeptics, they’ve really pushed all their chips onto clouds.”

-Noel Brinkerhoff