Tad S. Murty (1937 – 2018) was an Indian-Canadian

oceanographer Oceanography (), also known as oceanology, sea science, ocean science, and marine science, is the scientific study of the ocean, including its physics, chemistry, biology, and geology. It is an Earth science, which covers a wide range of top ...

and expert on

tsunami A tsunami ( ; from , ) is a series of waves in a water body caused by the displacement of a large volume of water, generally in an ocean or a large lake. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and underwater explosions (including detonations, ...

s. He was the former president of the Tsunami Society. He was an adjunct professor in the departments of

Civil Engineering Civil engineering is a regulation and licensure in engineering, professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction, and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment, including public works such as roads ...

and

Earth Sciences Earth science or geoscience includes all fields of natural science related to the planet Earth. This is a branch of science dealing with the physical, chemical, and biological complex constitutions and synergistic linkages of Earth's four spheres ...

at the

University of Ottawa The University of Ottawa (), often referred to as uOttawa or U of O, is a Official bilingualism in Canada, bilingual public research university in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is located on directly to the northeast of Downtown Ot ...

. Murty had a

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

degree in oceanography and

meteorology Meteorology is the scientific study of the Earth's atmosphere and short-term atmospheric phenomena (i.e. weather), with a focus on weather forecasting. It has applications in the military, aviation, energy production, transport, agricultur ...

from the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

. He was co-editor of the journal

Natural Hazards A natural disaster is the very harmful impact on a society or community brought by natural phenomenon or hazard. Some examples of natural hazards include avalanches, droughts, earthquakes, floods, heat waves, landslides - including submarin ...

with Tom Beer of

CSIRO The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is an Australian Government agency that is responsible for scientific research and its commercial and industrial applications. CSIRO works with leading organisations arou ...

and Vladimir Schenk of the Czech Republic.

Climate change

He had taken part in a review of the 2007

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an intergovernmental body of the United Nations. Its job is to "provide governments at all levels with scientific information that they can use to develop climate policies". The World Met ...

. Murty characterized himself as a global warming skeptic. In an August 17, 2006 interview, he stated that "I started with a firm belief about global warming, until I started working on it myself...I switched to the other side in the early 1990s when Fisheries and Oceans Canada asked me to prepare a position paper and I started to look into the problem seriously." Murty also stated that global warming is "the biggest scientific

hoax A hoax (plural: hoaxes) is a widely publicised falsehood created to deceive its audience with false and often astonishing information, with the either malicious or humorous intent of causing shock and interest in as many people as possible. S ...

being perpetrated on humanity. There is no global warming due to human anthropogenic activities." Murty was among the sixty scientists from climate research and related disciplines who authored a 2006 open letter to Canadian Prime Minister

Stephen Harper Stephen Joseph Harper (born April 30, 1959) is a Canadian politician who served as the 22nd prime minister of Canada from 2006 to 2015. He is to date the only prime minister to have come from the modern-day Conservative Party of Canada, ser ...

criticizing the

Kyoto Protocol The was an international treaty which extended the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that commits state parties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, based on the scientific consensus that global warming is oc ...

and the scientific basis of

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

global warming. He has never published a scientific study against

anthropogenic climate change Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its wider effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes ...

and has been accused of receiving fossil fuel money. Murty died on 2018, at the age of 80–81.

References

External links

Indo-Canada Award
Canadian oceanographers Indian oceanographers Indian emigrants to Canada University of Chicago alumni Academic staff of the University of Ottawa 1938 births 20th-century Indian earth scientists {{Canada-scientist-stub 2018 deaths