Sir Alan Walter RudgeCBE, FREng,[1]FRS (born 17 October 1937 London) is a British electrical engineer. He was Chairman of the ERA Foundation from its formation until December 2012, after which he was appointed as the Foundation's President.[2] In 2012 he also stepped down as Chairman of the Board of Management of the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851, a position he had held for eleven years; he had succeeded Sir Denis Rooke and was himself succeeded by Bernard Taylor.[3]
In 2010 he organized a petition of 43 denialists (about 3% of the membership) challenging the Royal Society's "unnecessarily alarmist position" on climate change. He told The Times that "there is a lot of science to be done before we can be certain about climate change and before we impose upon ourselves the huge economic burden of cutting emissions."[10] The revised guidance was published in September 2010[11] and its lead conclusion was "There is strong evidence that changes in greenhouse gas concentrations due to human activity are the dominant cause of the global warming that has taken place over the last half century".[12]