Andrew Dessler

Andrew Emory Dessler (born 1964) is a climate scientist.

He is Professor of Atmospheric Sciences and holder of the Reta A. Haynes Chair in Geoscience at Texas A&M University.

He is also the Director of the Texas Center for Climate Studies.

His research subject areas include climate impacts, global climate physics, atmospheric chemistry, climate change and climate change policy.

Dessler was born in 1964, in Houston, Texas to Alex Dessler and Lorraine Barbara Dessler.

Dessler worked in the energy group at The First Boston Corporation doing mergers and acquisitions analysis in the mid-1980s.

He received a B.A. in physics from Rice University in 1986 and an M.A. and Ph.D in chemistry from Harvard University in 1990 and 1994.

His doctoral thesis was titled In situ stratospheric ozone measurements.

He left his job as an investment banker on Wall Street in 1988 to go to graduate school in chemistry.

After receiving his Ph.D. in 1994, Dessler did two years of Postdoctoral research at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and then spent nine years on the research faculty of the University of Maryland from 1996 to 2005.

He served as an editor for the American Geophysical Union Books Board from 1997 to 2002, and an associate editor for the Journal of Geophysical Research in 2002.

Dessler also served as a Senior Policy Analyst in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy for the last year of the Clinton administration.

That experience was the basis for the book he co-authored, The Science and Politics of Global Climate Change: A Guide to the Debate.

The New York Times said the results of his 2004 article in the Journal of Climate written with Ken Minschwaner placed them, "in the middle between the skeptics and those who argue that warming caused by burning of fossil fuels could be extremely severe."

The authors wrote a joint letter to the editor in response objecting to the impression given by the article that their "research goes against the consensus scientific view that global warming is a serious concern."

They went on to state their work did not argue against the seriousness of the problem and that the potential effects were so serious "that slight overestimates of this warming make little difference -- just as reducing the size of a firing squad from 10 shooters to nine makes little difference to the person being executed."

Dessler went on to become an Associate Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A&M University from 2005 to 2007 and has been a tenured Professor of Atmospheric Sciences there since 2007.

He also published a blog for Grist magazine from 2006 to 2009.

He later stated, "At first, I was enamoured with blogging, until I realized how repetitive it was to keep answering the same questions. I decided I wanted a more high-impact way to spend my time."

Dessler and Edward Parson co-authored, The Science and Politics of Global Climate Change: A Guide to the Debate in 2006 (2nd ed. 2009).

Writing in New Scientist in 2006 Adrian Barnett said, "Free copies should be shipped to anyone who doubts the reality of climate change, starting with presidents in denial."

The book also received very positive reviews in Chromatographia, the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) and Environmental Sciences.

It was described as, "a fascinating hybrid of science and policy directed at a broad or nonspecialist audience" by Wendy Gordon in a 2008 review in Eos.

Gordon's review was positive concluding, "I could comfortably recommend this book to friend and colleagues."

and that it would be "an excellent resource for a high school of college-level survey course in either environmental studies or public policy."

It also received a favorable review in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society by Paul Higgins.

Higgins noted the book's, "careful reasoning and thoughtful presentation" and stated it was a sound guide to the climate change debate.

Concluding a generally positive review Randall Wigle writing in Canadian Public Policy stated, "...I believe it is a good candidate for a primer for multidisciplinary classes devoted to climate change policy, but it would have been an even better one with less advocacy of one side of the argument."

Maria Ivanova wrote in Global Environmental Politics that the book's scholarly value was indisputable.

A 2009 article in Science showed "warming from rising carbon dioxide should also lead to increased water vapor and additional warming, doubling the warming effect of the carbon dioxide."

according to Kenneth Chang of The New York Times.

Currently, Dessler is an editor of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society and president-elect of the Global Environmental Change section of the American Geophysical Union.

He is also the Director of the Texas Center for Climate Studies and holder of the Rita A. Haynes Chair in Geosciences at Texas A&M University.

In 2012 Dessler wrote Introduction to Modern Climate Change "a textbook for non-science majors that uniquely immerses the reader in the science, impacts, economics, policies and political debate associated with climate change."

It received an award from the American Meteorological Society in 2014.

It was favorably reviewed by Cameron Reed in Physics & Society who said, "The writing is clear, has a nice balance of formal and informal prose, and includes occasional elements of dry humor to lighten discussions of otherwise very serious issues."

It is used in classes in environmental sciences and the science and policy of climate change.

Dessler has been consulted by newspapers and has given talks on climate change and government policy.

On January 16, 2014 he testified before the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

He stated that with almost 200 years of study by the scientific community of the climate system a robust understanding has emerged.