Cornwall Alliance Senior Fellow Dr. Roy Spencer testified July 18 before the Senate Subcommittee on Environment and Public Works in a hearing on global warming.

“The lack of statistically significant warming in the last 15 years,” Spencer told the committee via his written testimony,

“… is sometimes glossed over with the claim that the global temperature record has a number of examples of no warming (or even cooling) over fifteen year periods. But this claim is disingenuous, because the IPCC-presumed radiative forcing of the climate system from increasing CO2 has been at its supposed maximum value only in the last 15 years. In other words, when the climate ‘stove’ has been turned up the most (the last 15 years) is also when you least expect a lack of warming.

“It is time for scientists to entertain the possibility that there is something wrong with the assumptions built into their climate models. The fact that all of the models have been peer reviewed does not mean that any of them have been deemed to have any skill for predicting future temperatures. In the parlance of the Daubert standard for rules of scientific evidence, the models have not been successfully field tested for predicting climate change, and so far their error rate should preclude their use for predicting future climate change.”

Criticizing claims that recent global warming has made severe weather events more frequent or more intense, Spencer testified,

“The most indefensible claim regarding climate change from an observational point of view is that severe weather has increased. Meteorologists like me have long known that public perception of weather is skewed by short memories and increasing media sensationalizing of weather disasters.

“There is little or no observational evidence that severe weather of any type has worsened over the last 30, 50, or 100 years, irrespective of whether any such changes could be blamed on human activities, anyway. Long-term measurements of droughts, floods, strong tornadoes, hurricanes, severe thunderstorms etc. all show no obvious trends, but do show large variability from one decade to the next, or even one year to the next. While the 2003 heat wave in France and the 2010 heat wave in Russia were exceptional, so were the heat waves of the 1930s in the U.S., which cannot be blamed on our greenhouse gas emissions.”

Climate scientist Roger Pielke Jr. also testified, about the reality of warming and its effect on population, weather, and economy.

Spencer, who is a Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a member of the Global Hydrology and Climate Center of the National Space Science and Technology Center, U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-E flying on NASA’s Earth-observation satellite Aqua, and a recipient of NASA’s Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement, also gave a public presentation on global warming in Sault, MI, July 2.

James Taylor reported on the EPW hearing, “Sen. David Vitter asked a panel of experts, including experts selected by Boxer, ‘Can any witnesses say they agree with Obama’s statement that warming has accelerated during the past 10 years?’” None did. “After several seconds of deafening silence, global warming activist Heidi Cullen … contradicted Obama’s central assertion and said warming has slowed, not accelerated.”

Dr. John Dale Dunn, a member of the Science and Policy Advisory Board of the American Council on Science and Health, commented via email, “Steve Milloy tells me that Roy Spencer … during the Senate hearing on climate today hammered the ball into the deep outfield alleys and even up into the upper decks. He left his opponents in blubbering disarray.”

Spencer’s video testimony (allow lots of time for buffering) starts at 3:04 (that’s 3 hours and 4 minutes), and his part of the question-and-answer period starts at 3:23. His own report on the hearing is online at Senate EPW Hearing: “Climate Change: It’s Happened Before”.

The Cornwall Alliance is honored to have had Dr. Spencer’s assistance since we began our work in 2005 and is grateful for his co-authoring three of our major studies:

• A Renewed Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor: An Evangelical Examination of the Theology, Science, and Economics of Global Warming (2009)
• A Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor: An Evangelical Response to Global Warming (2006)
• An Examination of the Scientific, Ethical, and Theological Implications of Climate Change Policy (2005)

Image courtesy of Evgeni Dinev / FreeDigitalPhotos.net