Richard Alley

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Dr. Richard B. Alley (born 1957) is an American geologist and Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences at the Pennsylvania State University. He has authored more than 170 refereed scientific publications about the relationships between Earth's cryosphere and global climate change and is recognized by the Institute for Scientific Information as a "highly cited researcher." In 1999, Dr. Alley was invited to testify about climate change by Vice President Al Gore, in 2003 by the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, and again before the U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology in 2007.

Dr. Alley's most recent testimony was due to his current role as a lead author of "Chapter 4: Observations: Changes in Snow, Ice and Frozen Ground" for the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He has participated in the joint UN/WMO panel since 1992, having been a contributing author to both the second and third IPCC assessment reports.

Dr. Alley has written several papers in the journals Nature and Science, and chaired the National Research Council on Abrupt Climate Change. In 2000, he published the book The Two-Mile Time Machine: Ice Cores, Abrupt Climate Change, and Our Future. Although he fully agrees with the majority (IPCC) viewpoint that human activities have caused most of the observed global warming since the mid-20th century, Alley is also very candid about there being many things yet unknown about global warming and its effects, earning him respect from colleagues on both sides of the issue. He has appeared in numerous climate change-related television documentaries and has given many public presentations and media interviews about the subject.

Dr. Alley was awarded the Seligman Crystal in 2005 for his "prodigious contribution to our understanding of the stability of the ice sheets and glaciers of Antarctica and Greenland, and of erosion and sedimentation by this moving ice." [1]

In 2005 he was also awarded the first recipient of the Louis Agassiz Medal for his "outstanding and sustained contribution to glaciology and for his effective communication of important scientific issues in the public policy arena". His award citation stated "He is imaginative, sharp and humorous, and remains a thorn in the backside of the Bush administration." [2]

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