So, there really hasn’t been much global warming lately. Scientists have debunked a controversial government climate report from last year claiming the 15-year “hiatus” in global warming never actually existed.
A new paper put out by a group of scientists — including Michael Mann of “hockey stick” curve fame — has debunked a controversial National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) report from last year claiming global warming has accelerated faster than surface temperature readings have shown.
“Overall, there is compelling evidence that there has been a temporary slowdown in observed global surface warming,” Ed Hawkins, a climate scientist at the University of Reading and co-author of the paper, wrote in a blog post on the new research.
Hawkins noted that “the most recent observed 15-year trends are all positive, but lower than most previous similar trends in the past few decades” which is a “clear demonstration that the rate of change has slowed since its peak.”
The debunking comes as congressional investigators demand government climate bureaucrats turn over emails and documents related to the “hiatus”-busting study. House science committee Republicans sent a letter to NOAA, slamming the agency for dragging its feet and trying to skirt transparency.
“While I appreciate that NOAA has started to comply in part with the Committee’s lawful subpoena, I am disappointed with the slow pace and limited scope of the Agency’s production,” Texas Republican Rep. [crscore]Lamar Smith[/crscore] wrote in a letter to NOAA Monday obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation.
Smith, who chairs the House science committee, has for months been seeking documents related to NOAA’s 2015 study claiming to have eliminated the global warming “hiatus” from the temperature record. The study was highly controversial and immediately criticized for making drastic adjustments to surface temperature data.
But NOAA has not been forthcoming with all the information Smith’s office has requested from the agency regarding the study. At first, NOAA claimed it would not release any emails from scientists, trying to create a narrative that Smith’s aim was to basically harass government researchers.
Smith fired back and continued to press the agency for documents, eventually getting them to agree to have political staff and scientists be interviewed by congressional investigators. Then things heated up when a whistleblower told Smith the study in question was “rushed” and was published “before all appropriate reviews of the underlying science.”
In light of this, NOAA agreed to hand over emails from non-scientists to the committee. But even now, Smith is worried NOAA’s allowing of employees to search their own emails for records under narrow guidelines is hampering his investigation.
“On numerous occasions, NOAA has miscommunicated delivery dates of document productions and has seemingly stalled its efforts to comply with the Committee’s subpoena,” Smith wrote.
The NOAA study published last year by climate scientist Tom Karl, argued “[n]ewly corrected and updated global surface temperature data from NOAA’s do not support the notion of a global warming ‘hiatus.’”
Now, scientists have published work calling into question Karl’s research.
“We’re presenting results to support previous findings of reduced rates of surface warming,” John Fyfe, a climate scientist with the Canadian government who worked on the paper, told Climate Central. “That essentially refutes the Karl et al. paper.”
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