David Legates

David Russell Legates is a former professor of geography at the University of Delaware. He is the former Director of the Center for Climatic Research at the same university and a former Delaware state climatologist. In September 2020, the Trump administration appointed him as deputy assistant secretary of commerce for observation and prediction at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration where he served until January, 2021. He is affiliated with the Heartland Institute, a think tank that promotes climate change denial. Legates' viewpoint, as stated in a 2015 study that he co-authored, is that the Earth will experience about 1.0 °C (1.8 °F) warming over the 2000 to 2100 period.

Legates is a research fellow at the Independent Institute.

Early life and education Legates received a bachelor's degree in 1982, a master's degree in 1985, and a Ph.D. in climatology in 1988, all from the University of Delaware.

Scientific career

Legates was a professor of geography

Legates's research has been funded by Koch Industries, the American Petroleum Institute, and ExxonMobil.

In his testimony to the United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works regarding the Mann, Bradley and Hughes hockey stick graph, Legates summed up his position as: "Where we differ with Dr. Mann and his colleagues is in their construction of the hemispheric averaged time-series, their assertion that the 1990s are the warmest decade of the last millennium, and that human influences appear to be the only significant factor on globally averaged air temperature."

In his lectures, Legates has acknowledged that humans have a direct impact on the environment. However he has disputed large scale climatological studies where he claims that researchers fail to incorporate sufficient data involving increased solar activity, water vapor as a greenhouse gas, data contamination through expansion of the urban heat island effect surrounding data collection points, and many other key variables in addition to the human chemical emissions that are the sole focus of many climatological studies.

In October 2009, Dr. Legates and 34 cosigners submitted a letter to the EPA outlining specific objections to the proposed endangerment rule.

Legates is a signatory of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation's "An Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming".

In February 2007, Delaware governor Ruth Ann Minner wrote a letter to Legates, then Delaware's state climatologist, stating, "Your views on climate change, as I understand them, are not aligned with those of my administration."

Legates continued to serve as Delaware's climatologist until 2011. and an adjunct scholar of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Trump administration In September 2020, Legates was appointed as deputy assistant secretary of commerce for observation and prediction at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the Trump administration.

While detailed to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Legates commissioned a set of nine briefs known as the "Climate Change Fliers," released in January 2021. The briefs attacked the consensus on climate change, many were written by prominent climate change deniers. The briefs were not vetted and not issued by OSTP. Nevertheless, they were published with an Executive Office of the President seal and bore a White House OSTP copyright. The head of the agency ordered the documents withdrawn and terminated Legates from his OSTP position.