Dawn House
Salt Lake Tribune
Friday, July 17, 2009
The Utah Farm Bureau opposes the notion that humans are responsible for climate change, and this week at its midyear convention, the state’s largest agricultural group is making its case through the words of keynote speaker Tom Tripp.
The bureau, in promoting the event, described Tripp as a Nobel Peace Prize winner, elevating him to that status because he is one of several thousand members of a U.N. panel that shared the prize with former Vice President Al Gore, even though Tripp disagreed with the panel’s position that human actions are causing the planet to warm.
Tripp, a metallurgical engineer for U.S. Magnesium and Grantsville city councilman, is a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, which shared the Nobel Prize with Gore in 2007.
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Another of the panel’s members and others question whether it is appropriate for Tripp to be identified as a Nobel winner, given his tangential connection to the honor.
David Randall, an atmospheric scientist at Colorado State University and a coordinating lead author for the IPCC, said Thursday it is inaccurate to call any of its members Nobel winners. “It is a fact that the prize was awarded to the IPCC organization, not to individuals. I would never call myself a Nobel Peace Prize winner.”
At Thursday’s convention, Tripp found a receptive audience among the 250 people attending the conference. He said there is so much of a natural variability in weather it makes it difficult to come to a scientifically valid conclusion that global warming is man made. “It well may be, but we’re not scientifically there yet.”
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