Claude Allègre
Encyclopedia
Claude Allègre (born 31 March 1937, Paris
) is a French
politician
and scientist
.
.
Claude Allègre is officially of retirement age, but continues to perform academic work at the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris
(Institute of Geophysics, Paris).
In 1976, Allègre and Haroun Tazieff
had an intense, public quarrel about whether inhabitants should evacuate the surroundings of the erupting volcano
la Soufrière
.
Allègre is an ISI highly cited researcher.
cabinet from 4 June 1997 to March 2000, when he was replaced by Jack Lang
. His outpourings of critiques against teaching personnel, as well as his reforms, made him increasingly unpopular in the teaching world.
In the run-up to the 2007 French presidential election, he endorsed Lionel Jospin, then Dominique Strauss-Kahn
, for the Socialist nomination, and finally sided with the ex-Socialist Jean-Pierre Chevènement
, against Ségolène Royal
. When Chevènement decided not to run, he publicly, and controversially, declined to support Royal's bid for the presidency, citing differences over nuclear energy
, GMO
s and stem-cell research.
In an article entitled "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" in l'Express
, a French weekly periodic, Allègre cited evidence that Antarctica's gaining ice and that Kilimanjaro's retreating snow caps, among other global-warming concerns, can come from natural causes. "The cause of this climate change is unknown", he states as matter of fact. For him, there is no basis for saying, as many do, that the "science is settled."
Allègre has accused proponents of anthropogenic, catastrophic global warming
of being motivated by money, commenting that “the ecology of helpless protesting has become a very lucrative business for some people!”
20 years ago in "Clés pour la géologie", he wrote "By burning fossil fuels, man increased the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which, for example, has raised the global mean temperature by half a degree in the last century".
In 2009, when it was suggested that Claude Allègre might be offered a position as minister in President Nicolas Sarkozy
's government, TV presenter Nicolas Hulot
stated:
In 2010, more than 500 French researchers asked Science Minister Valérie Pécresse to dismiss Allègre’s book L’imposture climatique, claiming the book is "full of factual mistakes, distortions of data, and plain lies". One researcher, Hakan Grudd, called the changes that Allegre made in hand-redrawing a graph of his misleading and unethical. Allegre described the petition as "useless and stupid".
from the Jussieu university campus in Paris, describing it as harmless and dismissing concerns about it as a form of "psychosis
created by leftists". The campus' asbestos is deemed to have killed 22 people and caused serious health problems in 130 others.
ball and a tennis ball at the same time from a tower, they will reach the ground at the same time. Allègre claimed that there was a popular misconception to the contrary, and that schoolchildren should be made to understand that two objects always fall at the same speed. The Canard responded that this was true only in a vacuum
, and not in all cases as Allègre had said. The latter responded in turn, maintaining his initial statement. Georges Charpak
, Nobel prize
for Physics, intervened to explain that Allègre was wrong; the latter maintained his statement yet again.
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
) is a French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
politician
Politician
A politician, political leader, or political figure is an individual who is involved in influencing public policy and decision making...
and scientist
Scientist
A scientist in a broad sense is one engaging in a systematic activity to acquire knowledge. In a more restricted sense, a scientist is an individual who uses the scientific method. The person may be an expert in one or more areas of science. This article focuses on the more restricted use of the word...
.
Scientific work
The main scientific area of Claude Allègre is geochemistryGeochemistry
The field of geochemistry involves study of the chemical composition of the Earth and other planets, chemical processes and reactions that govern the composition of rocks, water, and soils, and the cycles of matter and energy that transport the Earth's chemical components in time and space, and...
.
Claude Allègre is officially of retirement age, but continues to perform academic work at the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris
Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris
The Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris is a French governmental, non-profit research and higher education establishment located in Paris, dedicated to the study of earth and planetary sciences by combining observations, laboratory analysis and construction of conceptual analogical and...
(Institute of Geophysics, Paris).
In 1976, Allègre and Haroun Tazieff
Haroun Tazieff
Haroun Tazieff was a French volcanologist and geologist. He was a famous cinematographer of volcanic eruptions and lava flows, and the author of several books about volcanoes....
had an intense, public quarrel about whether inhabitants should evacuate the surroundings of the erupting volcano
Volcano
2. Bedrock3. Conduit 4. Base5. Sill6. Dike7. Layers of ash emitted by the volcano8. Flank| 9. Layers of lava emitted by the volcano10. Throat11. Parasitic cone12. Lava flow13. Vent14. Crater15...
la Soufrière
La Grande Soufrière
La Grande Soufrière, , is an active stratovolcano located on the French island of Basse-Terre, in Guadeloupe. It is the tallest mountain in the Lesser Antilles, and rises 1,467 m high....
.
Allègre is an ISI highly cited researcher.
Political career
A member of the French Socialist Party, Allègre is better known to the general public for his past political responsibilities, which include serving as Minister of Education of France in the JospinLionel Jospin
Lionel Jospin is a French politician, who served as Prime Minister of France from 1997 to 2002.Jospin was the Socialist Party candidate for President of France in the elections of 1995 and 2002. He was narrowly defeated in the final runoff election by Jacques Chirac in 1995...
cabinet from 4 June 1997 to March 2000, when he was replaced by Jack Lang
Jack Lang (French politician)
Jack Mathieu Émile Lang is a French politician. A member of the Socialist Party, he served as France's Minister of Culture from 1981 to 1986 and 1988 to 1992, and as Minister of Education from 1992 to 1993 and 2000 to 2002. He was also the Mayor of Blois from 1989 to 2000...
. His outpourings of critiques against teaching personnel, as well as his reforms, made him increasingly unpopular in the teaching world.
In the run-up to the 2007 French presidential election, he endorsed Lionel Jospin, then Dominique Strauss-Kahn
Dominique Strauss-Kahn
Dominique Gaston André Strauss-Kahn , often referred to in the media, and by himself, as DSK, is a French economist, lawyer, politician, and member of the French Socialist Party...
, for the Socialist nomination, and finally sided with the ex-Socialist Jean-Pierre Chevènement
Jean-Pierre Chevènement
Jean-Pierre Chevènement is a French politician. He was Minister of Defense from 1988 to 1991 and Minister of the Interior from 1997 to 2000. He was a presidential candidate in 2002 and since 2008 has been a member of the Senate....
, against Ségolène Royal
Ségolène Royal
Marie-Ségolène Royal , known as Ségolène Royal, is a French politician. She is the president of the Poitou-Charentes Regional Council, a former member of the National Assembly, a former government minister, and a prominent member of the French Socialist Party...
. When Chevènement decided not to run, he publicly, and controversially, declined to support Royal's bid for the presidency, citing differences over nuclear energy
Nuclear power
Nuclear power is the use of sustained nuclear fission to generate heat and electricity. Nuclear power plants provide about 6% of the world's energy and 13–14% of the world's electricity, with the U.S., France, and Japan together accounting for about 50% of nuclear generated electricity...
, GMO
GMO
A GMO is a genetically modified organism.GMO may also refer to:* Gell-Mann–Okubo mass formula in particle physics* General Medical Officer, a designation for United States Army soldiers* Generalised molecular orbital theory, in chemistry...
s and stem-cell research.
Global warming
Allègre thinks that the causes of climate change are unknown.In an article entitled "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" in l'Express
L'Express (France)
L'Express is a French weekly news magazine. When founded in 1953 during the First Indochina War, it was modelled on the US magazine TIME.-History:...
, a French weekly periodic, Allègre cited evidence that Antarctica's gaining ice and that Kilimanjaro's retreating snow caps, among other global-warming concerns, can come from natural causes. "The cause of this climate change is unknown", he states as matter of fact. For him, there is no basis for saying, as many do, that the "science is settled."
Allègre has accused proponents of anthropogenic, catastrophic global warming
Global warming
Global warming refers to the rising average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans and its projected continuation. In the last 100 years, Earth's average surface temperature increased by about with about two thirds of the increase occurring over just the last three decades...
of being motivated by money, commenting that “the ecology of helpless protesting has become a very lucrative business for some people!”
20 years ago in "Clés pour la géologie", he wrote "By burning fossil fuels, man increased the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which, for example, has raised the global mean temperature by half a degree in the last century".
In 2009, when it was suggested that Claude Allègre might be offered a position as minister in President Nicolas Sarkozy
Nicolas Sarkozy
Nicolas Sarkozy is the 23rd and current President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra. He assumed the office on 16 May 2007 after defeating the Socialist Party candidate Ségolène Royal 10 days earlier....
's government, TV presenter Nicolas Hulot
Nicolas Hulot
Nicolas Hulot is the founder and president of the Fondation Nicolas-Hulot, an environmental group first created in 1990....
stated:
- "He doesn't think the same as the 2,500 scientists of the IPCCIntergovernmental Panel on Climate ChangeThe Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a scientific intergovernmental body which provides comprehensive assessments of current scientific, technical and socio-economic information worldwide about the risk of climate change caused by human activity, its potential environmental and...
, who are warning the world about a disaster; that's his right. But if he were to be recruited in government, it would become policy, and it would be a bras d'honneurBras d'honneurA bras d'honneur is an obscene gesture. To form the gesture, an arm is bent to make an L-shape, while the other hand then grips the inner side of the bent arm's elbow, and the bent forearm is then raised vertically in a gesturing motion...
to those scientists. [...] [It] would be a tragic signal, six months before the Copenhagen Conference, and something incomprehensible coming from France, which has been a leading country for years in the fight against climate change!"
In 2010, more than 500 French researchers asked Science Minister Valérie Pécresse to dismiss Allègre’s book L’imposture climatique, claiming the book is "full of factual mistakes, distortions of data, and plain lies". One researcher, Hakan Grudd, called the changes that Allegre made in hand-redrawing a graph of his misleading and unethical. Allegre described the petition as "useless and stupid".
Asbestos
In 1996, Allègre opposed the removal of carcinogenic asbestosAsbestos
Asbestos is a set of six naturally occurring silicate minerals used commercially for their desirable physical properties. They all have in common their eponymous, asbestiform habit: long, thin fibrous crystals...
from the Jussieu university campus in Paris, describing it as harmless and dismissing concerns about it as a form of "psychosis
Psychosis
Psychosis means abnormal condition of the mind, and is a generic psychiatric term for a mental state often described as involving a "loss of contact with reality"...
created by leftists". The campus' asbestos is deemed to have killed 22 people and caused serious health problems in 130 others.
Gravity
In 1999, the Canard enchaîné, and subsequently several other media, published Allègre's claim, initially stated during a radio interview, that, if one drops a pétanquePétanque
Pétanque is a form of boules where the goal is, while standing inside a starting circle with both feet on the ground, to throw hollow metal balls as close as possible to a small wooden ball called a cochonnet or jack. It is also sometimes called a bouchon or le petit...
ball and a tennis ball at the same time from a tower, they will reach the ground at the same time. Allègre claimed that there was a popular misconception to the contrary, and that schoolchildren should be made to understand that two objects always fall at the same speed. The Canard responded that this was true only in a vacuum
Vacuum
In everyday usage, vacuum is a volume of space that is essentially empty of matter, such that its gaseous pressure is much less than atmospheric pressure. The word comes from the Latin term for "empty". A perfect vacuum would be one with no particles in it at all, which is impossible to achieve in...
, and not in all cases as Allègre had said. The latter responded in turn, maintaining his initial statement. Georges Charpak
Georges Charpak
Georges Charpak was a French physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1992.-Life:Georges Charpak was born to Jewish family in the village of Dąbrowica in Poland . Charpak's family moved from Poland to Paris when he was seven years old...
, Nobel prize
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
for Physics, intervened to explain that Allègre was wrong; the latter maintained his statement yet again.
Awards and honors
- Foreign Associate of the National Academy of SciencesUnited States National Academy of SciencesThe National Academy of Sciences is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine." As a national academy, new members of the organization are elected annually by current members, based on their distinguished and...
(1985) - Crafoord PrizeCrafoord PrizeThe Crafoord Prize is an annual science prize established in 1980 by Holger Crafoord, a Swedish industrialist, and his wife Anna-Greta Crafoord...
for geologyGeologyGeology is the science comprising the study of solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which it evolves. Geology gives insight into the history of the Earth, as it provides the primary evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life, and past climates...
along with Gerald J. WasserburgGerald J. WasserburgGerald J. Wasserburg is an American geologist. He is the John D. MacArthur Professor of Geology and Geophysics, Emeritus, at the California Institute of Technology...
, (1986) - Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and SciencesAmerican Academy of Arts and SciencesThe American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...
, (1987) - Wollaston MedalWollaston MedalThe Wollaston Medal is a scientific award for geology, the highest award granted by the Geological Society of London.The medal is named after William Hyde Wollaston, and was first awarded in 1831...
of the Geological Society of LondonGeological Society of LondonThe Geological Society of London is a learned society based in the United Kingdom with the aim of "investigating the mineral structure of the Earth"...
, (1987) - Gold Medal of the Centre National de la Recherche ScientifiqueCentre national de la recherche scientifiqueThe National Center of Scientific Research is the largest governmental research organization in France and the largest fundamental science agency in Europe....
, (1994) - French Academy of SciencesFrench Academy of SciencesThe French Academy of Sciences is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French scientific research...
, (1995)
See also
- Politics of FrancePolitics of FranceFrance is a semi-presidential representative democratic republic, in which the President of France is head of state and the Prime Minister of France is the head of government, and there is a pluriform, multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is...
- Scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming