Environment: The narrative says we're living in dangerous times as man's carbon dioxide emissions heat Earth. But a scientist testifying before Congress showed that the temperature record telling that story can't be trusted.
When the media reported -- gleefully because it allowed them to advance their agenda -- that 2015 was the hottest year on record, the temperature data that supposedly proved this was collected from surface-based measurements. Is this data trustworthy? Not according to John Christy, distinguished professor of atmospheric science, Alabama’s state climatologist and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.
Christy is a co-author of a paper that showed that about two-thirds of 1,218 government weather stations in the continental U.S. were located on sites that distort readings. These stations fix gauges near heat sources, such as air conditioner exhausts, urban structures that give off heat, and other objects "with unnatural thermal mass." Christy told the House Science Committee on Wednesday that "it is difficult to adjust for these contaminating factors to extract a pure dataset for greenhouse detection because often the non-climatic influence comes along very gradually just as is expected of the response to the enhanced greenhouse effect."
Other factors that "render surface temperature datasets to be of low effectiveness," said Christy, include "lack of systematic geographical coverage in time, unsystematic measuring methods and instrumentation in time and space, the point measurement represents at best a tiny, local area, and is easily impacted by slight changes in the surroundings, which can occur for example when a station moves."
Sea surface data also appear to be unreliable. Christy said water temperature trends at a 1-meter depth "do not track well with those of the air temperature just above the water (3m), even if both are measured on the same buoy over 20 years."
Christy believes the more accurate gauge of global temperature is found by satellites and balloons, which measure atmospheric temperatures. It is "much more coherent in space and time in terms of its variations. It is not affected by human development at the surface. It is measured systematically," he said.
Though satellite and balloon measurements provide a different temperature record than surface-based data, they are consistent with each other. Does this mean we should trust them more? That's a logical judgment.
Satellite and balloon measurements differ, as well, from the climate change models that predict catastrophic warming. While the average of 102 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change climate models project sharply climbing temperatures, the observed temperatures from balloon and satellite measurements move largely sideways.
"The models overwarm the atmosphere by a factor of about 2.5," Christy told the committee, "indicating the current theory is at odds with the facts."
Christy said the discrepancy "is not a short-term, specially selected episode, but represents the past 37 years," more than a third of a century.
"This is also the period with the highest concentration of greenhouse gases and thus the period in which the response should be of largest magnitude," he added.
Christy also told House members that climate change is still not well understood -- the uncertainties are many -- and that the impact of regulations on climate, such as those that are implemented in compliance with the Paris agreement, "will not be attributable or detectable."
Despite the work of Christy and others, we will continue to hear about 2015 being the hottest year ever. The howls will be unrelenting, the demands that we do more to stop climate change more desperate.
But the only fever will be on the brows of those who are obsessed with continuing the narrative.