Global Warming Skepticism for Busy People Quotes

“Rampant “fake news,”
― Roy W. Spencer, Global Warming Skepticism for Busy People

“Europe has implemented rather stringent goals for renewable energy in recent years, such as for wind and solar power. Partly as a result, the average annual electricity bill in the UK rose by over 50% from 2003 to 2012. Another estimate (Eurostat and U.S. Energy Information Administration data) put the increase between 2005 and 2014 at 133% for the UK. On April 30, 2015, the UK’s Independent reported that fuel poverty killed 15,000 people during the winter of 2014–15.”
― Roy W. Spencer, Global Warming Skepticism for Busy People

“Thus, in a very real sense, catastrophic climate change is a matter of faith—not science. Another way to phrase it is, the scientific support for a small portion of predicted warming is pretty good, while for strong warming it is extremely speculative. Over the years”
― Roy Spencer, Global Warming Skepticism for Busy People

“Apparently, fake science is acceptable as long as it supports a politically correct point of view.”
― Roy Spencer, Global Warming Skepticism for Busy People

“we do not know the physics of climate system responses to warming well enough to blame most of the warming on human activities. Human causation is simply assumed. The models are designed with the assumption that the climate system was in natural balance before the Industrial Revolution, despite historical evidence to the contrary. They only produce human-caused climate change because that is the way they are designed. This is in spite of abundant evidence of past warm episodes, such as 1,000- to 2,000-year-old tree stumps being uncovered by receding glaciers; temperature proxy evidence for the Roman and Medieval Warm Periods covering that same time frame; and Arctic sea ice proxy evidence for a natural decrease in sea ice starting well before humans could be blamed. Natural warming since the Little Ice Age of a few hundred years ago is simply ignored in the design of climate models, since we do not know what caused it. Simply put, the computerized climate models support human causation of climate change because that’s what they assume from the outset. They are an example of circular reasoning. There is little to no evidence of long-term increases in heat waves, droughts, or floods. Wildfire activity has, if anything, decreased, even though poor land management practices are now making some areas more vulnerable to wildfires even without climate change. Contrary to popular perception and new reports, there is little to no evidence of increased storminess resulting from climate change. This includes tornadoes and hurricanes. Long-term increases in monetary storm damages have indeed occurred, but are due to increasing development, not worsening weather. Sea level has been rising naturally since at least the mid-1800s, well before humans could be blamed. Land subsidence in some areas (e.g. Norfolk, Miami, Galveston-Houston, New Orleans) would result in increasing flooding problems even without any sea-level rise, let alone human-induced sea-level rise causing thermal expansion of the oceans. Some evidence for recent acceleration of sea-level rise might support human causation, but the magnitude of the human component since 1950 has been only 1 inch every 30 years. Ocean acidification is now looking like a non-problem, as the evidence builds that sea life prefers somewhat more CO2, just as vegetation on land does. Given that CO2 is necessary for life on Earth, yet had been at dangerously low levels for thousands of years, the scientific community needs to stop accepting the premise that more CO2 in the atmosphere is necessarily a bad thing. Global greening has been observed by satellites over the last few decades, which is during the period of most rapid rises in atmospheric CO2. The benefits of increasing CO2 to agriculture have been calculated to be in the trillions of dollars. Crop yields continue to break records around the world, due to a combination of human ingenuity and the direct effects of CO2 on plant growth and water use efficiency. Much of this evidence is not known by our citizens, who are largely misinformed by a news media that favors alarmist stories. The scientific community is, in general, biased toward alarmism in order to maintain careers and support desired governmental energy policies. Only when the public becomes informed based upon evidence from both sides of the debate can we expect to make rational policy decisions. I hope my brief treatment of these subjects provides a step in that direction. THE END”
― Roy Spencer, Global Warming Skepticism for Busy People

“the Arctic sea ice changes which are reported in the news media since 1979 represent a very brief period of time (40 years) compared to the 1,200 years of sea ice variations in the above graph.  During that time, the available evidence suggests large natural variations in Arctic sea ice, with a peak roughly coinciding with the start of the Industrial Revolution and the end of the Little Ice Age. So, once again, we see that what is claimed to be evidence of a human impact on climate is much less obvious when we examine the historical evidence of natural fluctuations in the climate system. This does not actually prove that humans are not the cause of recent warmth, but it certainly reduces confidence in claims of human causation for the changes we see today.”
― Roy Spencer, Global Warming Skepticism for Busy People