"HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — John Christy, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama here, says he remembers the morning he spotted a well-known colleague at a gathering of climate experts.

'I walked over and held out my hand to greet him,' Dr. Christy recalled. 'He looked me in the eye and he said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘Come on, shake hands with me.’ And he said, ‘No.'  '

Dr. Christy is an outlier on what the vast majority of his colleagues consider to be a matter of consensus: that global warming is both settled science and a dire threat. He regards it as neither. Not that the earth is not heating up. It is, he says, and carbon dioxide spewed from power plants, automobiles and other sources is at least partly responsible."

Michael Wines reports for the New York Times July 15, 2014. [2]