"[10] The New York Times said the results of his 2004 article in the Journal of Climate written with Ken Minschwaner placed them, "in the middle between the skeptics and those who argue that warming caused by burning of fossil fuels could be extremely severe.
"[11] The authors wrote a joint letter to the editor in response objecting to the impression given by the article that their "research goes against the consensus scientific view that global warming is a serious concern."
[17] Dessler and Edward Parson co-authored, The Science and Politics of Global Climate Change: A Guide to the Debate in 2006 (2nd ed.
Higgins noted the book's, "careful reasoning and thoughtful presentation" and stated it was a sound guide to the climate change debate.
[21] Writing in New Scientist in 2006 Adrian Barnett said, "Free copies should be shipped to anyone who doubts the reality of climate change, starting with presidents in denial.
[26] It was favorably reviewed by Cameron Reed in Physics & Society who said, "The writing is clear, has a nice balance of formal and informal prose, and includes occasional elements of dry humor to lighten discussions of otherwise very serious issues.
"[34] In 2010 when US Senator James Inhofe attempted to block the US Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, Dessler told reporters he was confident that individual errors don't invalidate the scientific consensus that global temperature is rising stating, "That's not how science works."
He asserted his confidence that the climate is warming due to human activity and that this will have "catastrophic impacts" stating, "The evidence includes a mountain of data."
[37][38] He had received support from Scott Mandia of the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund, the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and the Union of Concerned Scientists.
[37] When then presidential candidate Rick Perry suggested that scientists were frequently questioning "that manmade global warming is what is causing the climate to change."
[39] With Perry's home state suffering a severe drought, Dessler (a native Texan) did not attribute the extreme weather that year (2011) to climate change, but he said, "We can be confident we’ve made this hellish summer worse than it would have been.
"[40] A front page article in The New York Times examining the theory that clouds might offset the effects of increased greenhouse gasses found that his analysis in a 2011 article in Geophysical Research Letters "offered some evidence that clouds will exacerbate the long-term planetary warming"[41][42] Following the publication of the New York Times article "Dessler became a target of climate science critics" and was interviewed on the PBS show Frontline for the episode "Climate of Doubt" which explored "the massive shift in public opinion on climate change.
"[37][43] As a visiting fellow at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences in 2013 and 2014 he is undertaking a project titled, "Understanding long-term variations in stratospheric water vapor.
"[44] In a November 2013 article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America Dessler and colleagues provide observational evidence of a positive feedback effect of stratospheric water vapor and global warming.