of carbon dioxide is too small to have any effect, and that warming is caused by sunspots and exchange with warmer oceans. He argues in his columns that extreme weather events occur naturally and that there is not enough evidence to state that such events are unusual. In 2011, Bastardi wrote that, as he had predicted three years earlier, global average temperature was falling, and by 2030 would return to levels seen in the late 1970s due to the "triple-crown of cooling" comprising oceanic temperature cycles, solar radiation cycles, and volcanic activity. Bastardi asserts that the changes due to carbon dioxide are tiny compared to other factors so it cannot cause global warming. He writes "In the entire geological history of the planet, there has been no known linkage between and temperatures." Bastardi also states that carbon dioxide cannot cause global warming because this would violate the first law of thermodynamics. He has further explained: cannot cause global warming. I'll tell you why. It doesn't mix well with the atmosphere, for one. For two, its specific gravity is 1 1/2 times that of the rest of the atmosphere. It heats and cools much quicker. Its radiative processes are much different. So it cannot -- it literally cannot cause global warming. --- Joe Bastardi, Fox Business, March 9, 2012. Bastardi is a signatory to the Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change, which asserts "there is no convincing evidence that emissions from modern industrial activity has in the past, is now, or will in the future cause catastrophic climate change." Physicist Richard A. Muller states that Bastardi's explanation of is "completely wrong" and "even skeptics of global warming, if they know physics, would disagree with him." Bastardi and science popularizer Bill Nye have clashed over climate change. In 2010 they debated on Fox TV. In 2015–2016 Bastardi and Nye publicly challenged each other with predictions of mean global surface temperature in the near term. References External links Facebook page 1955 births Living people American television meteorologists Penn State College of Earth and Mineral Sciences alumni People from Providence, Rhode Island People from Somers Point, New Jersey