Posted on 07/22/2008 9:40:36 AM PDT by EPW Comm Team
U.S. Senate Hearing on Climate Science - Study Finds 'Mostly Natural' Warming
[Note: Below is testimony from todays hearing Full Committee hearing entitled, An Update on the Science of Global Warming and its Implications. Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Roy Spencer was one of the scientists testifying and deatlied new studies showing mostly natural climate influences. ]
Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Roy Spencer, formerly of NASA:
New Study Finds warming we have experienced in the last 100 years is mostly natural (Spencer is currently Principal Research Scientist, Earth System Science Center University of Alabama in Huntsville
Spencers Testimony Excerpt: On the subject of the Administrations involvement in policy-relevant scientific work performed by government employees in the EPA, NASA, and other agencies, I can provide some perspective based upon my previous experiences as a NASA employee. For example, during the Clinton-Gore Administration I was told what I could and could not say during congressional testimony. Since it was well known that I am skeptical of the view that mankinds greenhouse gas emissions are mostly responsible for global warming, I assumed that this advice was to help protect Vice President Gores agenda on the subject. [ ]
Regarding the currently popular theory that mankind is responsible for global warming, I am very pleased to deliver good news from the front lines of climate change research. Our latest research results, which I am about to describe, could have an enormous impact on policy decisions regarding greenhouse gas emissions. Despite decades of persistent uncertainty over how sensitive the climate system is to increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels, we now have new satellite evidence which strongly suggests that the climate system is much less sensitive than is claimed by the U.N.s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. [ ]
If true, an insensitive climate system would mean that we have little to worry about in the way of manmade global warming and associated climate change. And, as we will see, it would also mean that the warming we have experienced in the last 100 years is mostly natural. Of course, if climate change is mostly natural then it is largely out of our control, and is likely to end -- if it has not ended already, since satellite-measured global temperatures have not warmed for at least seven years now. [ ]
Based upon global oceanic climate variations measured by a variety of NASA and NOAA satellites during the period 2000 through 2005 we have found a signature of climate sensitivity so low that it would reduce future global warming projections to below 1 deg. C by the year 2100. [ ]
Obviously, what I am claiming today is of great importance to the global warming debate and related policy decisions, and it will surely be controversial. These results are not totally unprecedented, though, as other recently published research6 has also led to the conclusion that the real climate system does not exhibit net positive feedback. [ ]
I hope that the Committee realizes that, if true, these new results mean that humanity will be largely spared the negative consequences of human-induced climate change. This would be good news that should be celebrated -- not attacked and maligned. And given that virtually no research into possible natural explanations for global warming has been performed, it is time for scientific objectivity and integrity to be restored to the field of global warming research. This Committee could, at a minimum, make a statement that encourages that goal.
To see Dr. Spencer's full testimony see:
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=e12b56cb-4c7b-4c21-bd4a-7afbc4ee72f3
Weather happens?
Algore wept.
The denier movement seems to be growing. It must be stopped at all costs!
You know Spencer works for Rush don’t you.../sarc...
I’m surprised that his testimony wasn’t SHOUTED DOWN by all the Rat kool-aid drinkers.
True, Spencer doesn’t the same credentials as the music and sociology professors the UN included as “climate experts” in their panel findings but his opinion will just have to do I guess.
well duh! but do you really think that is going to stop all the greenies?
Humanity is so minute within the scope of the Universe.
And if they're so worried about "Our Lives" and if life is so precious, how can people like Gore and Obama...say..."Kill The Children"....It's a good thing??
THE AUDACITY OF IT ALL!!
Rush just played an audio clip of one of the vapid air-heads at the hearing attempting to denigrate Spencer’s testimony on the premise that he couldn’t be credible because Rush called him “the official meterologist of the EIB network”.
Does anyone think she’d say that James Hansen’s testimony couldn’t be credible because he gives campaign contributions to DemocRATS, uses stagecraft to mislead people in his congressional testimony, and was in cohoots with Enron, et.al., to hype the anthropogenic GW hoax?
Riiiight.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2048577/posts?page=13#13
The vapid airhead in question was Barbara Boxer.
Thanks for the name. There are so many of them in Congress, they’re impossible to keep track of.
No no no no....Spencer works for Big Oil....so does Rush....so do I.
No one expects the Environmental Inquisition!
This scientist is suggesting that common sense rule the day. Unfortunately, he's speaking to a Senate committee chaired by Democrats who wouldn't know common sense if it walked up and slapped them in the face.
Climate hearing ping
bttt
The primary evidence that CO2 and the greenhouse effect have anything to do with raising global temperature is missing entirely. It isn't there.
No Smoking Hot Spot (The Australian)
This is a short and easily understandable article showing the plain truth. The hinge pin that links global temperature to the greenhouse effect is missing. It is easily measurable and hundreds of probes have done so.

The Sky Is Falling On Gore Again
No Smoking Hot Spot (Scientist recants on global warming)
Global Warming on Free Republic
The Gorwellian Concensus continues to crumble, as it should.
I thought it was COMMON knowledge not to listen to anything the UN say?
your comment is redundant.
Tennecide or Tennicide I think.
Shudder! Shudder!
To Gulag XVII?
ping
ping


Click on POGW graphic for full GW rundown
New!!: Dr. John Ray's
GREENIE WATCH
The Great Global Warming Swindle Video - back on the net!! (click here)
Ping me if you find one I've missed.
Personally, I am sticking very close to Al Gore. When the ice caps melt, he should float pretty good.
Excellent report - spread the news - Globaloney is..,.,.well...,Globaloney!
We need a ticker tape parade!!!!
When you describe Babs as a "vapid airhead," you assign her more "gravitas" than she merits. In college, I used to date vapid airheads. They've got much more on the ball than Babs.
But, but, but...
I thought that only St James Hansen was censored when he was only quoted 14,000 times about being censored.
but, but, the un says p-ss on the facts, so line up to get pissed on
Did they break him on the rack, dismember his body and send the parts to various offices as a sign of what happens to heretics of the religion of global warming?
The warming might be due to spurious readings from light pollution. It is so light around population centers that the residents rarely achieve dark adaptation at night during their entire lives, cannot see any but the brightest stellar objects, and do not know where to look for the moon.
IOWs he takes greenhouse theory at face value and finding no objective evidence of greenhouse warming based on the foundation of the theory itself he comes to a logical conclusion. How he belittles the work of scientists by noting that they use state of the art instruments and have deployed them profusely searching everywhere they can to verify their data only you would know. lol
Logical but incorrect, because he is not considering the reasons that bias corrections are necessary. The scientists actually working with the data do understand this.
"He concludes: "The new analysis adds to the growing body of evidence suggesting that these discrepancies are most likely the result of inaccuracies in the observed temperature record rather than fundamental model errors."
"these discrepancies" is the supposed lack of a global warming signal in the tropics.
Evans is using a rather standard argumentative device, which is to state that the unadjusted data indicates a certain conclusion, without pursuing why adjustments are necessary.
Some points about his article:
"Yet hundreds of radiosondes have given the same answer, so statistically it is not possible that they missed the hot spot." (does not discuss the paucity of radiosonde measurement stations in the tropics compared to mid-latitudes)
"Recently the alarmists have suggested we ignore the radiosonde thermometers, but instead take the radiosonde wind measurements, apply a theory about wind shear, and run the results through their computers to estimate the temperatures. They then say that the results show that we cannot rule out the presence of a hot spot. If you believe that you'd believe anything." (Actual process: "Sherwood et al (pdf) take a different, iterative, approach that involves using the wind shear measurements (taken at the same time as the temperatures) as a consistency check. These measurements can be linked (via the thermal wind equation to temperature gradients) but are not subject to the same problems in instrumentation. They specifically avoid using the satellite data in the process, so that this can serve as a check on the final product."
That's what scientists do. They come up with ways to check to see if observational data is accurate. They don't assume it's accurate (a very bad, fundamental mistake). If observations don't agree with theory, then either theory is wrong or the the data is wrong. Amazingly enough, scientists actually check both, repeatedly, to keep refining their understanding. And this is the process that Evans belittles.
That statement doesn't appear anywhere in the article. Try again, Algore.
It’s in the linked article in my first reply.
Then it’s not relevant to the article I linked is it?
Looks like they adjusted the data to fit the model; the uncertainty allows the speculation.
To say that the sonde box is being heated by the sun and influencing the thermometers is misleading as the boxes have always been made with as high an albedo as possible to guard against this very sort of thing; to use wind as a correlation to the levels where changes should occur is further to accept the raw data that fits and throw out the data that doesn’t.
Admittedly there are not enough sounding stations but currently the trend is to reduce observation points on a huge scale with no plans to increase them in the tropics or elsewhere to my knowledge.
Monkeying with the data only makes monkeys of the turkeys doing so.
This issue has been seething below the surface for a while now, the business of how much adjusting and homogenization is prudent or at what point we enter the realm of the made-up.
It would be better to throw out the radiosonde data and go with the satellite data if we are going to concentrate on the 1979-present era than to keep massaging the air soundings until they are so far apart from any observed data as to be starkly separate.
cogitator means well, he’s just a scaredy-cat. :>)
</sarcasm>
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