Matthew Courtney,
We regret to announce that Richard S Courtney passed away on Monday, September 30, 2024, one day before his 78th birthday, at his home in Falmouth, Cornwall, England passed away. He has long suffered from the effects of cancer and its treatment. Coincidentally, this is the day the last coal-fired power station in the UK closes.
Due to his better health, he has been active on the site since its early days. He manages the full range of interactions, from writing articles to being banned for a period of time. Obviously there are a lot of people here who disagree with him, but he values debate and always enjoys positive interactions. I know he considered many here as a leaf on the internet and wanted everyone to be aware of his passing.
To those who visited the site after he became too ill to comment, he was AGW's first skeptic. The story behind the statement is as follows.
He rose through the ranks to become director of research at the British Coal Board. As early as the early 1980s, the European Economic Community pushed for heavy taxes on coal to combat acid rain. France, which owns nuclear power plants, believes this is fair and just and beneficial to its economy. Richard S Courtney first mapped prevailing winds and affected forests and determined that much of the acid rain in Europe is caused by fertilized runoff from river deltas, causing algae blooms that produce Sulfates. France did not want to upset the agricultural lobby, so the EU legislation was scrapped and called for tariffs to be replaced with sulfur oxide scrubbers.
The Coal Board then asked him what was the next green scare that could adversely affect the industry? He researched and discovered this obscure theory of Arrhenius, which had been rejected as of negligible influence for the better part of a century. But this could be the next acid rain. It's probably bigger than acid rain because everything produces carbon dioxide. Five years later, he was warning of the AGW scare, before the miners' strike, before Chernobyl, and before Mrs Thatcher had reason to promote an anti-fossil fuel (or rather anti-coal miner) movement.
He continues to contribute to reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and publishes papers on energy and the environment. and technical editor of Energy & Environment magazine.
He is survived by his children, grandchildren and great-granddaughter.
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