Former NASA Scientist Dispels Notion Global Warming Is ‘Settled’ Science
By Paul Homewood
From the Daily Caller:
A former NASA climate scientist has put out a new report criticizing the argument that global warming is settled science.
“It should be clear that the science of global warming is far from settled,” said Dr. Roy Spencer, a former NASA scientist who now co-runs a major satellite temperature dataset at the University of Alabama-Huntsville.
“Uncertainties in the adjustments to our global temperature datasets, the small amount of warming those datasets have measured compared to what climate models expect, and uncertainties over the possible role of Mother Nature in recent warming, all combine to make climate change beliefs as much faith-based as science-based,” Spencer wrote in a report published by the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation.
“Until climate science is funded independent of desired energy policy outcomes, we can continue to expect climate research results to be heavily biased in the direction of catastrophic outcomes,” Spencer wrote.
Spencer’s report covers a wide swath of climate science topics from the factors behind global warming, to how scientists make adjustments to climate data, to the “97 percent” consensus figure often cited by politicians and environmentalists.
“Besides, if global warming is settled science, like gravity or the Earth not being flat, why isn’t the agreement 100 percent?” Spencer asked. “And since when is science settled by a survey or a poll? The hallmark of a good scientific theory is its ability to make good predictions.”
“From what we’ve seen, global warming theory is definitely lacking in this regard,” Spencer wrote.
Spencer also explained why climate models tend to over-predict how much warming will occur as greenhouse gas emissions rise. Spencer argues a warming bias is built into the models themselves.
“Since climate models can be ‘tuned’ to produce a rather arbitrary amount of warming, they were tuned to be ‘sensitive’ enough so increasing carbon dioxide alone was sufficient to cause the observed warming,” he wrote.
“It was assumed that there was no natural component of the warming, since we really don’t know the causes of natural climate variations,” he wrote. “As a result, none of the models were prepared for the global warming “hiatus” we have experienced since about 1997, because their climate sensitivity was set too high. The models continued to warm after 2000, while the real climate system essentially stopped warming.”
Indeed, Spencer’s satellite data, which measures the average temperature of the lowest few miles of the atmosphere, showed no significant global warming trend for more than 21 years before an incredibly powerful El Nino warming event hit late last year.
El Nino is a naturally occurring warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean and tends to warm the planet. Satellite temperatures are extremely sensitive to El Ninos (and La Nina cooling events), so mid-tropospheric readings spiked in early 2016.
But temperatures have come down after El Nino faded, and now it looks like a La Nina is setting in. Some even expect the so-called “hiatus” in global warming to return after this year’s La Nina ends.
Roy Spencer’s full report, “A Guide to Understanding Global Temperature Data” can be seen here:
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
this is a scientist
How exactly have temperatures come down when we keep breaking heat records every month? El Nino stopped and temperature records continue to get broken. Notice how this guy is a former NASA scientist. Maybe there’s a good reason for that.
It would be difficult to fit so much crap into one paragraph!
1) Heat records do not keep being broken. This year is running close to 1998, and last month was well below June 1998.
2) There is always a lag of between 3 and 6 months between El Nino changes and the effect on atmospheric temperatures. Thus current temperatures still reflect the strong El Nino conditions at the start of the year.
We won’t see the effect of La Nina till the end of the year.
3) Roy Spencer’s work with UAH is still funded by NASA and NOAA – maybe there’s a good reason for that!
Check out the video I posted a couple of comments down. You will learn how you have been duped.
The US is not the world, but this is interesting….
Of the 50 USA state maximum temperature records, 36 were set prior to 1940.
http://ggweather.com/climate/extremes_us.htm
“How exactly have temperatures come down when we keep breaking heat records every month”
Because they haven’t.
Well Dr. Spencer has always been an implacable climate realist – you know one of those denier people who insists on using science and empirical data to come to a view, rather than develop a religious belief based on very little.
BUT like most of us he is probably fighting the wrong fight. It doesn’t seem to matter now how many times people like Dr. Roy and Paul Homewood (whoever he is?) point out the truth and reality, the alarmists will just up their game of BS.
Like most climate realists I expect the “science” to be modified by later outcomes, but as the IPCC reports get less certain in the guts of the report, they get ever more certain of man’s dominant effect.
BUT it has gone way beyond that situation now – even the IPCC has been left behind in the alarmist scramble to get their desired political outcomes while they can. Larry Kummer of Fabius Maximus puts it well recently, mirrored here at WUWT
I suspect that many in the climate science field do not agree with much of what you read in the MSM – but they will stay quiet, if they know what’s good for them (and they do). Many are getting their concerns out there – you know, doing proper science, but does it ever reach the MSM? (rhetorical question)
http://notrickszone.com/2016/07/03/already-240-published-papers-in-2016-alone-show-agw-consensus-is-a-fantasy/
The better link to support my comment should have been –
Steve Goddard does a fantastic job of showing very clearly how NOAA and NASA have altered the climate data to show historical temperatures that just coincidentally have a 95% correlation with the increase in atmospheric CO@. Here’s the link to his video:
“Until climate science is funded independent of desired energy policy outcomes, we can continue to expect climate research results to be heavily biased in the direction of catastrophic outcomes,” Spencer wrote.
I would add that it is necessary to have scientists with personal moral integrity. Were that so, their results could be trusted no matter the funding source. You simply cannot deal with those who do not tell the truth. There is no substance in them which allows for meaningful interaction.
The AGW scam is only the latest part of the seventy year (1946-2016) effort by frightened world leaders to hide the source of energy that destroyed Hiroshima: NEUTRON REPULSION in the cores of
1. Heavy atoms like Uranium
2. Some planets like Jupiter
3. Ordinary stars like the Sun
4. Galaxies like the Milky Way
5. The expanding Universe !
The information they seek to hide from the public is indelibly recorded in precise rest masses of the ~3,000 types of atoms that compromise all matter.
They cannot deny the information, once it gets out. These actions denied the public access to the message:
ResearchGate and Disqus accounts locked
Blocked from commenting on PhysOrg.com
Blocked from commenting on Nature papers
Etc., etc., etc. in a futile attempt to hide reality
Reblogged this on Climatism and commented:
shock news…