Lucia Liljegren is an American mechanical engineer who has worked at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is one of the United States Department of Energy National Laboratories, managed by the Department of Energy's Office of Science. The main campus of the laboratory is in Richland, Washington....

 (on projects related to remediation and storage of radioactive waste) and as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Iowa State University

Iowa State University

Iowa State University of Science and Technology, more commonly known as Iowa State University , is a public land-grant and space-grant research university located in Ames, Iowa, United States. Iowa State has produced astronauts, scientists, and Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners, along with a host of...

. She is best known (as Lucia) for her 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...

/climate change

Climate change

Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...

 blog The Blackboard (Where Climate Talk Gets Hot!), online since 2007. Professor Judith Curry

Judith Curry

Judith A. Curry is an American climatologist and chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her research interests include hurricanes, remote sensing, atmospheric modeling, polar climates, air-sea interactions, and the use of unmanned aerial...

, a climatologist at Georgia Tech, calls Lucia “probably the least controversial person in the climate blogosphere

Blogosphere

The blogosphere is made up of all blogs and their interconnections. The term implies that blogs exist together as a connected community or as a social network in which everyday authors can publish their opinions...

, because of her cheerfulness and sense of humor, honesty, and open mindedness.” And Thomas Fuller, who writes a popular column on a "liberal skeptic's view of environmental issues" for Examiner.com

Examiner.com

Examiner.com is a media company based in Denver, Colorado, that operates a network of local news websites, allowing "pro–am contributors" to share their city-based knowledge on a blog-like platform, in 238 markets throughout the United States and parts of Canada with two national editions, one for...

, says The Blackboard is one of the two places on the Internet where "qualified people from both sides of the debate on climate change can actually have a civil discussion about issues of scientific substance." He adds, "Lucia is impossible to dislike, I think."

In the climate change debate, Lucia classifies herself as a "lukewarmer": a person who recognizes 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...

, but doubts the severity of the problem, and the certainty of climate science predictions.

Lucia also blogs as "The Knitting Fiend," online since 2004.

External links

• The Blackboard: Where Climate Talk Gets Hot! by Lucia Liljegren
• The Knitting Fiend by Lucia Liljegren