Environmental Talk

An assault on Reason …

In the ongoing media suck-up fest that has followed Al Gore around for the past year, you don’t often get to hear the other side of the story.

So, it was very interesting to catch the following excerpt from CNN’s Miles O’Brien’s interview with John Christy of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (co-recipient of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize) …

O’BRIEN: I assume you’re not happy about sharing this award with Al Gore. You going to renounce it in some way?

CHRISTY: Well, as a scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, I always thought that — I may sound like the Grinch who stole Christmas here — that prizes were given for performance, and not for promotional activities.

And, when I look at the world, I see that the carbon dioxide rate is increasing, and energy demand, of course, is increasing. And that’s because, without energy, life is brutal and short. So, I don’t see very much effect in trying to scare people into not using energy, when it is the very basis of how we can live in our society.

O’BRIEN: So, what about the movie [An Inconvenient Truth]; do you take issue with, then, Dr. Christy?

CHRISTY: Well, there’s any number of things.

I suppose, fundamentally, it’s the fact that someone is speaking about a science that I have been very heavily involved with and have labored so hard in, and been humiliated by, in the sense that the climate is so difficult to understand, Mother Nature is so complex, and so the uncertainties are great, and then to hear someone speak with such certainty and such confidence about what the climate is going to do is — well, I suppose I could be kind and say, it’s annoying to me.

O’BRIEN: But you just got through saying that the carbon dioxide levels are up. Temperatures are going up. There is a certain degree of certainty that goes along with that, right?

CHRISTY: Well, the carbon dioxide is going up. And remember that carbon dioxide is plant food in the fundamental sense. All of life depends on the fact carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere. So, we’re fortunate it’s not a toxic gas. But, on the other hand, what is the climate doing. And when we build — and I’m one of the few people in the world that actually builds these climate data sets — we don’t see the catastrophic changes that are being promoted all over the place.

For example, I suppose CNN did not announce two weeks ago when the Antarctic sea ice extent reached its all-time maximum, even though, in the Arctic in the North Pole, it reached its all-time minimum.

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“You believe me?! … you really believe me?!”
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FWIW, here are some of Christy’s credentials from Wikipedia:

John R. Christy is a climate scientist whose chief interests are global climate change, satellite sensing of global climate, and paleoclimate. He is best known, jointly with Roy Spencer, for his version of the satellite temperature record.

He is a professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). He was appointed Alabama’s State Climatologist in 2000. For his development of a global temperature data set from satellites he was awarded NASA’s Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement, and the American Meteorological Society’s “Special Award.”

Christy was a lead author for the 2001 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the US CCSP report Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere - Understanding and Reconciling Differences. He received his Ph. D degree in Atmospheric sciences from the University of Illinois.

global warming, climate change, Al Gore, Nobel Prize, John Christy, IPCC, United Nations, Academy Awards, devaluation