David Deming (born 1954), is an American former geology professor and self-proclaimed climate change denier and "conversative polemicist" who is an associate professor of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oklahoma in Norman. He graduated from North Central High School in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1972. He then attended Indiana University Bloomington, graduating in 1983 with a BS degree in geology, and received a Ph.D. in geophysics from the University of Utah in 1988. Prior to his arrival at the University of Oklahoma in 1992, Deming held a National Research Council postdoctoral fellowship at the U.S. Geological Survey in California. From 1992 through 2003, Deming was an assistant and associate professor in the School of Geology and GeophysicsConocoPhillips School of Geology and Geophysics | University of Oklahoma at the University of Oklahoma. Known for his climate change denial and outspoken conservative views on social issues, Deming was involved in two major disputes with the OU administration, one leading to a lawsuit. Deming is the author of more than thirty research papers and the textbook Introduction to Hydrogeology. He is an associate editor for the academic journals Petroleum Geoscience and was an adjunct faculty member at two conservative think tanks, the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs and the National Center for Policy Analysis
Views on issues
Energy and the environment
Deming has identified himself with the Cornucopian school of environmental thought, and has consistently criticized Malthusian theory. In 1998, he wrote "although world population has increased by more than a factor of six over the last 200 years, we are all aware that the average standard of living has risen dramatically—in direct contradiction to Malthusian theory." Deming considers the "fundamental flaw" in Malthusian theory to be that "it fails to take into account the exponential growth in resources that occurs through technological advances." He has questioned if Malthus' hypothesis is scientific as it resists empirical falsification.
In a letter published in the American Association of Petroleum Geologists magazine, the Explorer, in 2002, Deming wrote that "prior to World War II, the central principle upon which our civilization was ordered was progress - the idea that the application of scientific knowledge results in improved standards of living," but "in the latter half of the 20th century, the idea of progress was replaced by an anti-scientific environmentalism based on a mythological primitive harmony that has never existed."
Deming has criticized "sustainability" as a misleading concept, a chimera," at least as far as it pertains to technology, pointing out that "present day technologies and practices are never sustainable, nor should we expect them to be . . . . [P]rojections of current technology into the future are always invalid because technology does not stand still . . . . [T]echnological progress is our birthright and destiny." In 2003, speaking at a meeting of the Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association, Deming said, "I think it would be foolish to try to predict what our technological capabilities will be [100 years from now], just as it would have been foolish for someone from the 19th century to try to predict what we could do today."
Deming does not believe in Peak Oil theories and has pointed out that "predictions of imminent oil shortages have been made throughout the twentieth century . . . [but] all previous predictions have been false." He has criticized the Hubbert model of peak oil production as flawed because "Hubbert-type analyses . . . depend on an estimate of the total resource size . . . [but] the history of resources assessments shows that in the last 50 years, estimates of oil reserves have risen as fast or faster than cumulative oil production."
Deming believes that alternative energy technologies are not sufficiently evolved to add significantly to the world energy budget in the immediate future, arguing that "wind and solar power are . . . intermittent, expensive, unreliable, and incompatible with the existing power grid infrastructure . . . [and cannot] be used directly for transportation. In contrast, fossil fuels are abundant, reliable, and inexpensive energy sources." He believes "the largest mistake would be to start to move away from petroleum, a proven and economic energy source, to more speculative and expensive sources," pointing out that "natural gas is . . . abundant, relatively inexpensive and environmentally benign," and that "nuclear power has the potential to provide large amounts of power for very long periods of time if low-grade uranium is used in breeder reactors."
Writing in The Washington Times in 2003, Deming claimed that "the seminal event that transformed the United States into an industrial and technological powerhouse" was the discovery of oil at Spindletop, Texas, in 1901. He argued that "the cheap energy provided by abundant oil allowed the U.S. to transform itself from a rural, agrarian country into an urban, industrialized nation," and maintained that "petroleum continues to be the lifeblood of our technological civilization." Deming has stated, "human progress depends on abundant and inexpensive energy from fossil fuels, including petroleum," and that "human progress is sustainable only if we maintain an optimistic attitude, continue to increase our prosperity and energy utilization, and invest in education and research." He maintains that "the greatest danger to human civilization today is not environmental degradation, but a return to the ancient plague of pessimism."
Global warming and climate change
Deming has criticized global warming predictions, citing "media hysteria . . . generated by journalists who don't understand the provisional and uncertain nature of scientific knowledge."
In a 1995 opinion piece published in the "Perspective" section of Science, Deming reviewed published analyses of borehole temperature data in North America and concluded "the magnitude of the observed warning . . . is still within the range of estimated natural variability . . . a cause and effect relationship between anthropogenic activities and climatic warming cannot be demonstrated unambiguously at the present time."
In 1998, Deming wrote an editorial where he said that the worldwide borehole temperature record indicated present day temperatures were not anomalously warm: "when compared to the period of time over which human civilization rose, present day temperatures are colder than average. Even if mean global temperature were to rise another degree, it would still be colder than it has been for much of the last 10,000 years."
In a March 2005, editorial in Investor's Business Daily, Deming compared Naomi Oreskes' claim of 100 percent scientific consensus on global warming to "the October 2002 election in Iraq, where Saddam Hussein received 100% of the vote." Criticizing a December 26, 2004, The Washington Post editorial by Oreskes where she wrote "we need to stop repeating nonsense about the uncertainty of global warming," Deming quoted Francis Bacon's admonition, "if we begin in certainty, we will end in doubts."
On December 6, 2006, Deming testified before the US Senate committee on the Environmental and Public Works, concluding that The amount of climatic warming that has taken place in the past 150 years is poorly constrained, and its cause--human or natural--is unknown. There is no sound scientific basis for predicting future climate change with any degree of certainty. If the climate does warm, it is likely to be beneficial to humanity rather than harmful. In my opinion, it would be foolish to establish national energy policy on the basis of misinformation and irrational hysteria.
Deming was quoted in The Christian Science Monitor as stating "too little is known about how the climate system works to overhaul economies in an effort to affect it." According to the Oklahoma Daily, he argued "there is not one person on Earth who has ever been killed or harmed by global warming."
On March 1, 2007, Deming debated David Karoly, then a climatology professor at the University of Oklahoma, on global warming. Deming stated, "[S]ome people want to enlist science in a moral crusade." Continuing, he claimed "science is a disinterested search for truth" and warned against anyone claiming a monopoly on evidence over any scientific subject.Debate on Global Warming at OU, 2007 Following this line of reasoning, Deming further emphasized that "global warming is a scientific question, not a moral one," and argued that "the projection that the temperatures are becoming warmer is nothing more than speculation." According to an Associated Press report, Deming also objected to the fact that China and India are exempt from the Kyoto Protocol.
Deming has described the film An Inconvenient Truth as "an artful and deceptive propaganda film" and stated that "the claims made in An Inconvenient Truth are either wrong, disingenuous, or misleading." He has called carbon taxes "stupidity taxes" and argued that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant and that warm temperatures are generally beneficial for human beings.
In December 2007, Deming published an editorial in The Washington Times ("Year of Global Cooling") where he stated that "in 2007, hundreds of people died, not from global warming, but from cold weather hazards." Deming stated that "the mean planetary temperature hasn't increased significantly for nearly nine years," and concluded that "global warming has long since passed from scientific hypothesis to pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo."
In 2009, Deming published a pair of editorials to the paleoconservative website LewRockwell.com entitled "Why I Deny Global Warming" and "Global Warming Is a Fraud". In them, Deming advances arguments, among others, that it is effectively impossible to measure global surface temperatures. Intelligent design
In an article published in Earth-Science Reviews, titled "Design, Science and Naturalism" (2008, vol. 90, p. 49-70), Deming concluded that intelligent design cannot be formulated as a scientific hypothesis. In 2011, he published an article on the Paleoconservative blog LewRockwell.com titled "Doubting Darwin". In it, he defends his decision to sign the Discovery Institute's "Dissent from Darwinism" statement. He complains that "Darwin is a sacred cow that cannot be questioned" to a "fanatical core of atheists and materialists" in the biological sciences, especially singling out Zoology for criticism. While he rejects the creationist label, he repeats well-trodden creationist arguments, including falsely asserting a paucity of transitional fossils.
In 2026, he published a piece advancing the view that the Cambrian explosion was caused by directed panspermia. The piece was published on the Journal of Cosmology, a pro-panspermia website presenting described by Jeffrey Beale as a predatory journal.
Affirmative action
Deming has consistently opposed affirmative action for women, arguing that inequalities in employment statistics do not necessarily arise from discriminatory practices.
As early as 1995, Deming suggested that "it is entirely plausible that a substantial portion of sex-based cognitive differences may be biological in origin." However, he noted that "individual variations within each gender are greater than differences between genders" and that "discrimination against individuals . . . arises from ignorance and should be condemned."