Not Settled Science - UAH Climate expert John Christy to Congress: 'I would not trust model proj
- "We don't know how CO2 is affecting the climate"
- Says Obama Administration is using flawed models to show dangerous rise in temperatures
By Paul Gattis | pgattis@al.com The Huntsville Times /storypackage /#article_inset Article
Climate expert John Christy of Huntsville testified before at a Congressional hearing on Tuesday about the Paris climate deal. Paul Gattis | pgattis@al.com
Testifying at a Congressional hearing on Tuesday, climate expert John Christy of Huntsville told the panel that models depicting a dangerous climb in temperature are flawed.
And it's on those flawed models, Christy said, that the Obama administration is basing policy.
"I would not trust model projections on which all policy is based here because they just don't match facts," said Christy, director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.
Christy – a frequent invitee to testify at Congressional hearings -- appeared before the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. The hearing at the GOP-controlled committee sought to undermine arrangements Obama made during the Paris conference in December.
The title of the hearing: Paris Climate Promise: A Bad Deal for America.
Watch the full hearing below or click here.
In his testimony, Christy focused on the science of his research at UAH and did not delve into policy. He displayed what's become a familiar graph that illustrates climate model projections overstating rising temperatures alongside data UAH has collected from satellites.
"I want to begin with the chart on display," Christy said in his opening statement. "This particular chart has caused considerable anxiety for the climate establishment who want to believe the climate system is overheating according the theory of how extra greenhouse gases are supposed to affect it.
"The message here is very simple – the theory does not match the observations as measured independently by both satellites and balloons."
The models need to go back to the drawing board.
Projected findings are a poor substitute for actual findings, Christy told the committee.
"It is a bold strategy on the part of many in the climate establishment to put one's confidence in theoretical models and to attack the observed data," he said. "To a scientist, this just doesn't make sense."
Christy closed his opening statement with his oft-repeated description of removing the United States from the earth altogether and the impact it would have on the climate.
"If the United States had disappeared in 2015, no more people, no cars, no industry, the impact on the climate system would be a tiny few hundredths of a degree over 50 years – and that's if you believe climate models," Christy said.
Asked during the hearings about rising sea levels and droughts that have been connected with climate change, Christy dismissed the singular events as adequate testimony.
"There's a little bit of hyperbole in things that people see changing right now," Christy said. "They've always changed, I suspect."
Christy also defended using satellite data to measure temperatures in the atmosphere as a more accurate measure of climate change rather than surface temperatures – which is what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration uses.
More study is needed to better understand the science of climate change, Christy said.
"The key metric, the bulk atmospheric temperature, is not obeying what climate models say," he said. "The real world is not going along with that rapid warming. So that should tell us our understanding is not sufficient to explain what is happening. In the real world, we don't know how CO2 (carbon dioxide) is affecting the climate.
"The models need to go back to the drawing board."