Brian P. Flannery

{{Short description|American physicist}}

Brian P. Flannery is a physicist who variously worked as an astrophysicist and as a climate modeller for ExxonMobil. He is known for being a co-author of Numerical Recipes, a widely used series of textbooks describing useful algorithms.

Flannery obtained his undergraduate degree in astrophysics from Princeton University in 1970{{Cite web | url=http://www.rff.org/people/profile/brian-flannery | title=Brian Flannery | access-date=November 16, 2016 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161117063027/http://www.rff.org/people/profile/brian-flannery | archive-date=November 17, 2016 | url-status=dead }} and his doctorate from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1974, under the supervision of John Faulkner.{{Cite thesis | last1 = Flannery | first1 = B. P. | title = Gas flow in cataclysmic variable stars | date = 1974 | bibcode = 1974PhDT.........4F | type = PhD | publisher = University of California, Santa Cruz}} As an astrophysicist, he published work on cataclysmic variable stars and other interacting binaries until 1982.

In 1980, he joined ExxonMobil as a climate modeler and subsequently became a manager in 1998.{{cite web|url=https://insideclimatenews.org/news/15092015/brian-flannery|title=Brian Flannery|date=15 September 2015 |access-date=November 16, 2016}} He previously participated in Working Group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change{{cite web|url=http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg3/index.php?idp=452|title=Working Group III: Mitigation. List of Authors and Reviewers|access-date=November 16, 2016}} and continues to contribute to research on the mitigation of climate change.{{citation | first1 = Haewon | last1 = McJeon | first2 = Jae | last2 = Edmonds | first3 = Nico | last3 = Bauer | first4 = Leon | last4 = Clarke | first5 = Brian | last5 = Fisher | first6 = Brian P. | last6 = Flannery | first7 = Jérôme | last7 = Hilaire | first8 = Volker | last8 = Krey | first9 = Giacomo | last9 = Marangoni | first10 = Raymond | last10 = Mi | first11 = Keywan | last11 = Riahi | first12 = Holger | last12 = Rogner | first13 = Massimo | last13 = Tavoni | journal=Nature | title=Limited impact on decadal-scale climate change from increased use of natural gas | volume=514|pages=482–485|doi=10.1038/nature13837|date=15 October 2014 | issue = 7523 | pmid=25317557| bibcode = 2014Natur.514..482M | s2cid = 4454295 | url = https://re.public.polimi.it/bitstream/11311/961655/2/McJeon%20et%20al_2014_Limited%20impact%20on%20decadal-scale%20climate%20change%20from%20increased%20use%20of%20natural%20gas.pdf | hdl = 11311/961655 | hdl-access = free }} He has at times been accused of participating in effort's by ExxonMobil to undermine action against climate change.{{cite news | newspaper=The Guardian|first=Bob|last=Ward|url=https://www.theguardian.com/environment/cif-green/2009/jul/01/bob-ward-exxon-mobil-climate | title=Why ExxonMobil must be taken to task over climate denial funding|date=July 1, 2009}} Jeremy Leggett recounts a conversation with Flannery in his book, The Carbon War, in which the physicist claimed that if most of the recoverable oil and gas on the planet were to be burnt there would be no noticeable effect on the climate.{{Cite book |last=Leggett |first=Jeremy |title=The Carbon War: Dispatches from the End of the Oil Century |publisher=Allen Lane |year=1999 |location=London |pages=173 |language=English}}