It was the publication that shook the world. Former Vice President and Nobel Prize Winner Al Gore included her work in An Inconvenient Truth, his Oscar-winning documentary. Sir David King, science advisor to then British Prime Minister Tony Blair, cited it as well.

Naomi Oreskes, one of the world’s leading historians of science, laid to rest the idea that there was a significant disagreement among scientists about the reality of global warming. Her essay, “The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change,” became the clarion call that the real science of climate change could not be debunked by governments, industries—or scientists hired by them.

Her latest book, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, details how the dangers of many issues in science have been masked by “scientific” efforts to confuse the public and our policy leaders.

“Naomi Oreskes has demonstrated what many of us have long suspected: that the ‘debate’ over the climate crisis--and many other environmental issues—was manufactured by the same people who brought you ‘safe cigarettes.’ Anyone concerned about the state of democracy in America should read her book,” said Gore.

Naomi was awarded the 2011 Climate Change Communicator of the Year in 2011 in an international election by the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication.

A Professor of History and Science at the University of California, San Diego, Oreskes has, for the past 20 years, studied the process of consensus and dissent in science: How do scientists decide when a fact is “established?” How do they judge how much evidence is sufficient to deem something scientifically demonstrated? And what happens when scientists can’t agree?

Her work on climate science has been widely reviewed in the media, including Newsweek, The Economist, The new Scientist, UPI, The Seattle Times, The New Yorker, USA Today, Parade Magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, La Recherché, Politiken (Copenhagen), Corrieree della Sera (Italy), The Irish Times, The Daily Telegraph, Reuters, The Guardian and The Times (London). Her expertise has been called on by the U.S. Senate, the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board and the California State Senate.

Once working herself as a geologist for a mining company in Australia, Oreskes has become a world renowned expert on history and science. She has received the Francis Bacon Award in the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, a Teacher of the Year finalist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a Lindgren Prize winner from the Society of Economic Geologists. Naomi is also on the Board of Directors of Protect Our Winters, an organization with a common goal of reducing climate change’s effects on winter sport and local mountain communitites.

Speaking Topics

• The American Denial of Global Warming
• Consensus in Science: How Do We Know We’re Not Wrong? What is a Scientific Revolution?
• Why Believe a Computer? What Computer Models Tell Us About the World (or Not)