Press Regularly Misses Most Important Point About Alarming Climate Projections

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H. Sterling Burnett

Managing Editor, Environment & Climate News at The Heartland Institute

H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D. is managing editor of Environment & Climate News and a research fellow for environment and energy policy at The Heartland Institute. Burnett worked at the National Center for Policy Analysis for 18 years, most recently as a senior fellow in charge of NCPA’s environmental policy program. He has held various positions in professional and public policy organizations, including serving as a member of the Environment and Natural Resources Task Force in the Texas Comptroller’s e-Texas commission.

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Major news outlets provide prominent coverage to nearly every study or claim humans are causing dangerous warming, no matter what kind of torture, fiddling, and machinations the researchers making the claim have to put the data through to come to that conclusion. At they same time, they ignore studies, and they are numerous — and their research methods sound and verifiable — that show climate models grossly overstate the amount of warming the earth has experienced, which is why I regularly highlight such studies.

Most recently, a new study in the Asia-Pacific Journal of Atmospheric Sciences confirms what dozens of other studies have shown: Earth’s temperature is warming significantly more slowly than climate models project, due likely to the fact Earth’s atmosphere is less sensitive to changing carbon dioxide levels than climate models assume.

To correct for errors made by some other studies and climate models, this study’s authors use only satellite data, the most comprehensive and accurate data available, and removed the impacts of volcanic eruptions and El Niño and La Niña oceanic shifts, both temporary but significant climate events. Once the effects of these natural events are removed, the researchers found Earth’s rate of warming was 0.096 degrees Celsius per decade.

Based on the average rate of warming assumed by climate models, the difference between the actual rise in temperatures since 1880, 2 degrees Fahrenheit, and the model projections of nearly 4.1 degrees Fahrenheit, is more than 2 degrees, well outside the margin of error and range of uncertainty for climate models. Climate model temperature projections are neither robust nor valid, and as such should not be used as a basis for making public policy.

Where’s the media coverage for this quality study and studies like it that don’t make claims disaster is in the offing, inquiring minds want to know?