HOUSTON – Speaking today to Houston business leaders, renowned climate scientist Dr. Roy Spencer said that new data collected from NASA satellites show that there are significant errors in the climate models used by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Dr. Spencer – published author, principal research scientist for the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and the U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer on NASA’s Aqua satellite – presented his latest climate research at the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Global Warming Policy Breakfast this morning at the Houston City Club.
The IPCC science is the driver behind national and international programs to mandate reduction of carbon dioxide. “The major climate models used by global warming advocates all assume a far greater sensitivity to atmospheric carbon dioxide changes than what we observe in the empirical satellite data,” Dr. Spencer said. “That’s why all of these scenarios produce such outlandishly high forecasts about future global temperatures.”
Spencer said that manmade global warming proponents had confused cause and effect. “Al Gore’s apocalyptic temperature scenario assumes that carbon dioxide causes temperature changes,” Spencer continued. “Except there is one problem – global temperatures precede carbon dioxide levels by approximately 800 years. Ice core data reveals the opposite of what Gore claims.”
“When politicians and activists claim that the manmade global warming debate is ‘settled,’ they point to these IPCC climate models as their proof,” said Kathleen Hartnett White, Director of the Center for Natural Resources at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. “Dr. Spencer’s empirical research contradicts the assumptions in those models.”
White urged policymakers to reassess onerous carbon reduction schemes because they are no longer supported by this far more substantial science based on the actual measurement of climate dynamics in the upper atmosphere. “Genuine science is never settled but always evolving, as Dr. Spencer’s work powerfully demonstrates,” White concluded.
The Texas Public Policy Foundation is a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin, Texas.
Dr. Roy Spencer is the author of “Climate Confusion: How Global Warming Hysteria Leads to Bad Science, Pandering Politicians and Misguided Policies that Hurt the Poor.” He is a principal research scientist for the University of Alabama in Huntsville, the U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer on NASA’s Aqua satellite, and the former senior scientist for climate studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville.
Kathleen Hartnett White is Director of the Center for Natural Resources at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. She is the former Chair of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
– 30 –