Science and Environmental Policy Project President Dr. Ken Haapala (right) presents the Frederick Seitz Memorial Award to Cornwall Alliance Senior Fellow Dr. Roy W. Spencer (left) at the America First Energy Conference August 7, 2018.

Cornwall Alliance Senior Fellow Dr. Roy W. Spencer received the Frederick Seitz Memorial Award, in recognition of his work, with colleague Dr. John Christy, on satellite monitoring of global temperature, and “the exceptional courage [he] has shown in the quest for knowledge and the great contribution he has made to science,” Tuesday, August 7.

The Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) gave Spencer the award at the America First Energy Conference, sponsored by The Heartland Institute, in New Orleans, LA. SEPP President Dr. Kenneth Haapala introduced the presentation, which you can watch here beginning at 5:42:29, with these remarks:

Greetings, carbon-based life forms! Each time you breathe, you increase the carbon dioxide concentration of the air you use by 100 times. Is your breathing polluting?

The EPA claims it does. Carbon dioxide endangers public health and welfare, because it will cause dangerous global warming.

Does your breath endanger human health?

We say to the EPA, “Bureaucratic Science! You have no hard evidence that carbon dioxide is causing dangerous global warming. We have hard science that it is not, and it is hard evidence that makes knowledge, not speculation.”

For almost a century, laboratories have tested how radiant energy passes through the atmospheric gases. Those gases that slow the flow of longwave outgoing radiation are called “greenhouse gases.” They warm the planet, particularly at night. Try sleeping outside in the desert, at night, without any blankets. The greatest greenhouse gas is water vapor, in both concentration and efficiency. Carbon dioxide is a minor player with limited ability, and even at preindustrial levels, it was approaching saturation, where the warming effect of an increase in carbon dioxide becomes insignificant.

So what happened? Why are we so fearful of carbon dioxide? In 1979, a group of distinguished scientists issued a report, called the Charney Report. It claimed water vapor greatly amplified any increase in warming from carbon dioxide. The report was based on the results of five models, not evidence. It was speculation.

Guess what? We did not know what was happening in the atmosphere. They didn’t know what was happening in the atmosphere. So they guessed. Nothing wrong with that. But where is the hard evidence?

In 1990, we had a breakthrough, a spectacular breakthrough. Roy Spencer and John Christy had a paper published demonstrating how we can calculate temperature trends from satellite data, which was being gathered since 1978. For their discovery, Spencer and Christy were at first honored—and then, shunned.

Their evidence did not support that greenhouse gases were causing dangerous global warming. The data did not support the guesses in the Charney Report. Their data are published monthly for all to see, and to criticize, which is as it should be. Small problems in the imperfect orbits of satellites was discovered and since corrected.

Their report this spring in the Journal of Remote Sensing showed that the models greatly overestimate warming.

If warming is caused by greenhouse gases, it is not dangerous. Based on a fear of greenhouse gases the United States government has spent over $40 billion on what government reports identify as climate science. But they have been unable to identify hard evidence that carbon dioxide is causing dangerous global warming.

On behalf of Fred Singer, the founder of SEPP, I am honored to present to Roy Spencer [the Frederick Seitz Memorial Award]. Roy, congratulations! The award is named in honor of Frederick Seitz, a brilliant physicist who was the first chairman of SEPP, and it includes a small, very small, unrestricted grant to Roy or a place of his choice. This is a small thing we can do to honor the exceptional courage that Roy Spencer has shown in the quest for knowledge and the great contributions he has made to science. Thank you, Roy.

Frederick Seitz (1911–2008), for whom the award was named, was founding Chairman of SEPP. He was President of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (1962–1969), to which he was elected in 1952. He received the Franklin Medal (1965), the National Medal of Science (1973), the United States Department of Defense Distinguished Service Award, NASA’s Distinguished Public Service Award, and the American Institute of Physics’s Compton Award, its highest honor, plus honorary degrees from 32 universities around the world.

We at the Cornwall Alliance congratulate Dr. Spencer on this well-deserved award and take this opportunity to thank Roy for his outstanding contributions to the Cornwall Alliance as a principal author of these historic papers, as well as many posts to our Stewards Blog and articles published elsewhere as a Cornwall Alliance Senior Fellow:

• An Examination of the Scientific, Ethical, and Theological Implications of Climate Change Policy (2005);
• A Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor: An Evangelical Response to Global Warming (2006);
• The Cornwall Stewardship Agenda (2008);
• A Renewed Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor: An Evangelical Examination of the Theology, Science, and Economics of Global Warming (2010).

In introducing Dr. Haapala, Heartland Institute spokesman Jim Lakely mentioned two other Cornwall Alliance scholars who have won awards at past Heartland Institute International Conferences on Climate Change: Senior Fellow Dr. David Legates, to whom the Texas Public Policy Foundation presented the Courage in Defense of Science Award in 2015, and Founder and National Spokesman Dr. E. Calvin Beisner, to whom the Heritage Foundation presented the Outstanding Spokesperson on Faith, Science, and Stewardship Award in 2014.