[2] He retired from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 2021 and is now a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

[1] In 1998 Santer was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship for research supporting the finding that human activity contributes to global warming.

[8] Santer was the convening Lead Author of Chapter 8 of 1995 IPCC Working Group I Report (AR2 WGI), which addressed the global warming issue.

[1] In a June 12, 1996 editorial-page piece in The Wall Street Journal, Frederick Seitz, chair of the George C. Marshall Institute and Science and Environmental Policy Project, claimed that alterations made to Chapter 8 of the 1995 IPCC report were made to "deceive policy makers and the public into believing that the scientific evidence shows human activities are causing global warming."

Similar charges were made by the Global Climate Coalition (GCC), a consortium of industry interests; specifically, they accused Santer of "scientific cleansing.