Christopher Rhodes de Freitas (1948 – 5 July 2017) was a New Zealand climate scientist. He was an associate professor in the School of Environment at the

University of Auckland , mottoeng = By natural ability and hard work , established = 1883; years ago , endowment = NZD $293 million (31 December 2021) , budget = NZD $1.281 billion (31 December 2021) , chancellor = Cecilia Tarrant , vice_chancellor = Dawn F ...

Education and professional career

De Freitas, born in

Trinidad Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands of Trinidad and Tobago. The island lies off the northeastern coast of Venezuela and sits on the continental shelf of South America. It is often referred to as the southernmos ...

, received both his Bachelor's and his Master's at the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution ...

, Canada, after which he earned his PhD as a Commonwealth Scholar from the

University of Queensland , mottoeng = By means of knowledge and hard work , established = , endowment = A$224.3 million , budget = A$2.1 billion , type = Public research university , chancellor = Peter Varghese , vice_chancellor = Deborah Terry , city = B ...

, Australia. During his time at the University of Auckland, he served as deputy dean of science, head of science and technology, and for four years as pro vice-chancellor. He also served as vice-president of the Meteorological Society of New Zealand and was a founding member of the Australia–New Zealand Climate Forum as well as serving on the executive board of the International Society of Biometeorology from 1999 to 2001. He wrote extensively in popular media on an array of environmental and

climate Climate is the long-term weather pattern in an area, typically averaged over 30 years. More rigorously, it is the mean and variability of meteorological variables over a time spanning from months to millions of years. Some of the meteorologic ...

-related issues. In 2001, he won the

New Zealand Association of Scientists The New Zealand Association of Scientists is an independent association for scientists in New Zealand. It was founded in 1941 as the New Zealand Association of Scientific Workers, and renamed in 1954Gregory, G., 2013. Not to be forgotten: New Ze ...

' science communicator award, now known as the

Cranwell Medal The Cranwell Medal, previously the Science Communicator Medal, is awarded by the New Zealand Association of Scientists The New Zealand Association of Scientists is an independent association for scientists in New Zealand. It was founded in 194 ...

. He died of cancer in July 2017, having retired shortly beforehand.

Global warming and scepticism about anthropogenic causes

De Freitas has questioned

anthropogenic Anthropogenic ("human" + "generating") is an adjective that may refer to: * Anthropogeny, the study of the origins of humanity Counterintuitively, anthropogenic may also refer to things that have been generated by humans, as follows: * Human im ...

global warming In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...

, and the way information is received and interpreted. He has written that

carbon dioxide emissions Greenhouse gas emissions from human activities strengthen the greenhouse effect, contributing to climate change. Most is carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels: coal, oil, and natural gas. The largest emitters include coal in China and lar ...

themselves may not necessarily be the source of recent increases in

global temperature The global temperature record shows the fluctuations of the temperature of the atmosphere and the oceans through various spans of time. There are numerous estimates of temperatures since the end of the Pleistocene glaciation, particularly dur ...

. In the ''New Zealand Herald'' (9 May 2006), he wrote: : "There is evidence of global warming. The climate has warmed about 0.6 °C in the past 100 years, but most of that warming occurred prior to 1940, before the post World War II industrialisation that led to an increase in carbon dioxide emissions. But warming does not confirm that carbon dioxide is causing it. Climate is always warming or cooling. There are natural variability theories of warming." As an editor for the journal ''Climate Research'' he had responsibility for sending papers out for review. In four instances, questions were raised about the review process of papers he had handled. The last of these led to the

Soon and Baliunas controversy The Soon and Baliunas controversy involved the publication in 2003 of a review study written by the aerospace engineer Willie Soon and astronomer Sallie Baliunas in the journal ''Climate Research'', which was quickly taken up by the George W. Bu ...

, in which a flawed paper was published under his editorial responsibility. The publisher,

Otto Kinne Otto Kinne (30 August 1923 – 3 March 2015) was a German marine biologist. He was director of Germany's Biologische Anstalt Helgoland from 1962 to 1984. From 1967 he was a professor at the University of Kiel. He established the Inter-Research S ...

, subsequently conceded that the conclusions of the paper were not supported by the evidence, and appropriate revisions of the manuscript should have been requested prior to publication.

Selected publications

*Carter, R.M., de Freitas, C.R., Goklany, I.M., Holland, D. and Lindzen, R.S., 2007. Climate Science and the Stern Review. World Economics, 8 (2), 161–182. *Khan, B.A., C.R. de Freitas and D. Shooter, 2007. Application of synoptic weather typing to an investigation of Nocturnal ozone concentration at a maritime location, New Zealand, Atmospheric Environment, 41, 5636–5646. *Carter, R.M., de Freitas, C.R., Goklany, I.M., Holland, D. and Lindzen, R.S., 2006. The Stern Review: A Dual Critique. Part I: The Science. World Economics, 7 (4), 165–232. *De Freitas, C.R., 2003: Tourism climatology: evaluating environmental information for decision making and business planning in the recreation and tourism sector. International Journal of Biometeorology, 48 (1), 45–54. *De Freitas, C.R. and A.A. Schmekal, 2003: Condensation as a microclimate process: Measurement, numerical simulation and prediction in the Glowworm Tourist Cave, New Zealand. International Journal of Climatology, 23 (5), 557–575.

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:De Freitas, Chris 1948 births 2017 deaths New Zealand climatologists Academic staff of the University of Auckland University of Queensland alumni University of Toronto alumni

Education and professional career

Global warming and scepticism about anthropogenic causes

Selected publications

Further reading

References