James L. Powell

James Lawrence Powell (born July 17, 1936 in Berea, Kentucky) is an American geologist. He was the chairman of the geology department at Oberlin College from 1965 to 1973, and served as its provost from 1975 to 1981. From 1983 to 1988, Powell was the president of Franklin and Marshall College. He served as the president of Reed College from 1988 to 1991, after which he became the president of the Franklin Institute, and has also served on the National Science Board for 12 years. He was formerly the director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, and is currently the executive director of the National Physical Science Consortium. The minor planet 9739 Powell, discovered by C. S. Shoemaker in 1987, is named after him. In 2010, Powell wrote a book entitled Dead Pool, which detailed the history of water supply shortages in the Western United States.

In 2012, Powell conducted a survey of scientific papers regarding the topic of anthropogenic global warming by searching Web of Science for scientific papers published from 1991 to 2012. He identified 13,950 papers, but only 24 which argued that humans were not the primary cause of global warming. He updated his survey in 2014 to include 2,258 studies published from November 12, 2012, to December 21, 2013, and identified only one study published during this time that argued that global warming was not caused by human activity.
In 2015, Powell was elected a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.