Couldn't find anything on "Reginal Newell" but Reginald Newell turned up quite a bit. Nothing about him getting fired for speaking up against global warming (still digging around for info on that, it's elusive) but he said this, and it's all over the denialists websites:
"My suspicion is that if you have a crisis like this, it's easier to gain funds for the profession as a whole."
And that's true, of course. If there weren't any climate problems or changes at all, then no one would be funding any climate research studies. Heck, if we didn't have technology that could monitor the weather to the extent that it does, there would be no climatology industry. Everyone from the meteorologists on your local TV station to the ivory tower guys at NOAA rely on the same technology to make their predictions, whether it's for two days or two hundred years.
If no one got sick, we wouldn't have to pay any doctors. If no one had to travel, we wouldn't have to give money to the automobile and oil industry. If the climate wasn't changing, we wouldn't have to fund any climate scientists. Duh.
Based on his
obituary, Newell's area of expertise was smog science. He told the MA state legislature that the amount of cars in Boston was going to cause a smog problem to rival that of LA, and suggested a train to NYC to alleviate some of the problem.