New Report Challenges Veracity of Climate Models

A new report released on Thursday is calling into question the ability of climate models to accurately predict the warming of the Earth theorized by climate alarmists. Dr. Roy Spencer, the principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, issued the report disputing the notion that any observed warming in the Earth’s vast climate system must be attributed solely to human activity via greenhouse gas emissions from the use of fossil fuels.

Furthermore, Spencer’s research finds that the climate models that governments use to promote the use of renewable energy sources instead of the more reliable fossil fuels are inherently flawed and vastly overestimate the role of mankind’s fossil fuel emissions. According to Spencer, actual observed warming of the atmosphere averages 43 percent less than computer models predict.

For example, Spencer notes that in temperature trend observations of the 12-state U.S. Corn Belt from 1973 until 2022, actual observations ran cooler than 36 climate models predicting temperatures for the same area.

“The observed warming is much weaker than that produced by all 36 climate models surveyed here,” Spencer’s report noted. “While the cause of this relatively benign warming could theoretically be entirely due to humanity’s production of carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel burning, this claim cannot be demonstrated through science. At least some of the measured warming could be natural.”

By the way, the observed warming for that period was less than 0.2° Celsius — models had predicted warming as high as 0.8° Celsius.

Among the key takeaways from Spencer’s report:

The observed rate of global warming over the past 50 years has been weaker than that predicted by almost all computerized climate models.

Climate models that guide energy policy do not even conserve energy, a necessary condition for any physically based model of the climate system.

Public policy should be based on climate observations—which are rather unremarkable—rather than climate models that exaggerate climate impacts.

Members of the climate cult prefer attacking Spencer’s character, calling him a “climate denier,” among other things, rather than looking at the data. Meanwhile, fellow climate scientists are praising his work.

“Nothing in Dr. Spencer’s analysis surprises me,” said Dr. H. Sterling Burnett, director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy for the Heartland Institute. “It has long been clear that the climate models don’t accurately reflect reality. Even the scientists and modelers most involved in them have been forced to admit in the past that they run way too hot. Dr. Spencer’s work forcefully confirms this.”

In Burnett’s view, it isn’t only that the climate models are flawed, but that they fail to accurately portray the one thing they are meant to — climate sensitivity to mankind’s emissions.

“The key takeaway is not just that the models are flawed,” Burnett told The New American, “but that since they don’t accurately account for the single metric they are supposed to be modeling and forecasting, global average temperature’s response to additional greenhouse gasses, known as climate sensitivity, modeling of climate feedbacks, and their forecasts and projections of ancillary climate impacts on extreme weather events, sea levels, human health, food production, ocean acidification, forced migrations, etc, are even less trustworthy and should not be referenced as scientific, or used to shape public policies.”

Today’s climate scientists are blaming mankind’s emissions for warming phenomena that have occurred before in history, prior to mankind reasonably having any role in such warming.

“This is important because it means that some portion of recent warming could be natural,” Spencer’s report points out. “But since climate researchers do not understand natural sources of climate change, such as those that caused the Roman Warm Period of about 2,000 years ago, the Medieval Warm Period of about 1,000 years ago, and the Little Ice Age several centuries ago, most climate researchers simply assume that a similar event is not happening today.”

Instead, the researchers of today assume that climate is static, unchangeable except for mankind’s intervention via emissions.

“Instead of admitting that natural processes could be at work in causing climate change, ‘energy equilibrium’ is what is assumed by the mainstream climate research community for the natural state of climate system unaffected by humans,” Spencer writes. “But this energy balance assumption for the Earth is a statement of faith, not science. As mentioned, a natural state of global energy balance cannot be demonstrated.”

A “statement of faith” on the part of the climate hysteria movement? More indication that climate change as posited by the UN’s IPCC and other mainstream sources is more akin to religion than science.