You Ought to Have a Look: Dr. John Christy’s House Testimony

You Ought to Have a Look is a feature from the Center for the Study of Science posted by Patrick J. Michaels and Paul C. (“Chip”) Knappenberger. While this section will feature all of the areas of interest that we are emphasizing, the prominence of the climate issue is driving a tremendous amount of web traffic. Here we post a few of the best in recent days, along with our color commentary.


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If you read only one thing this week that falls within the realm of human‐​caused climate change, we strongly suggest this one — Dr. John Christy’s written testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space & Technology.


In it, he produces clear, strong evidence that the climate models are producing too much warming from greenhouse gas emissions and that there exists a concerted effort to try to downplay this fact to policymakers and the general public.


Christy’s Feb. 2nd testimony is an expansion of his earlier testimony Dec. 8th before the Senate’s Commerce, Science & Transportation’s Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness.


The central element of his December testimony was that climate models are failing miserably at simulating the actual temperature rise in the earth’s lower atmosphere. The models produce about 2.5 times as much warming from human greenhouse gas emissions than has actually been observed by satellites and weather‐​balloons.

This fact caught Senator (and current presidential hopeful) Ted Cruz’s fancy and he included it in several post‐​hearing communications on the topic of human‐​caused global warming — which of course got the global warming alarmist fanbase in a tizzy. So much so that they went so far as to produce a snazzy video aimed to shoot down Christy’s satellite observations as unreliable and untrustworthy.


In his testimony this week, Christy shoots back — with a big gun.


Here are some of his zingers.

“It is a bold strategy in my view to actively promote the output of theoretical climate models while attacking the multiple lines of evidence from observations.”

“Investigations of us by congress and the media are spurred by the idea that anyone who disagrees with the climate establishment’s view of dangerous climate change must be on the payroll of scurrilous organizations or otherwise mentally deficient.”

“[T]hese models failed at the simple test of telling us ‘what’ has already happened, and thus would not be in a position to give us a confident answer to ‘what’ may happen in the future and ‘why.’”

“The information in this figure provides clear evidence that the models have a strong tendency to over‐​warm the atmosphere relative to actual observations. On average the models warm the global atmosphere at a rate 2.5 times that of the real world.” 

“Because this result challenges the current theory of greenhouse warming in relatively straightforward fashion, there have been several well‐​funded attacks on those of us who build and use such datasets and on the datasets themselves. As a climate scientist I’ve found myself, along with fellow like‐​minded colleagues, tossed into a world more closely associated with character assassination and misdirection, found in Washington politics for example, rather than objective, dispassionate discourse commonly assumed for the scientific endeavor.”

And, these are just the tip of the iceberg, you really ought to have a look at Dr. Christy’s entire testimony in which he touches on topics that, in addition to the abject failure of climate models, include deficiencies in surface temperature compilations, problems with sea surface temperature observations, and the (non) impact of the Paris Climate Accord.


A highly informative, enlightening, and entertaining read!