“Climatologist, Dr. Roy Spencer.” Who is he? Well Rush Limbaugh likes him for starters. Now, it would be wrong of me to immediately dismiss anybody who Rush claims to be a scientist, as not actually being a scientist so I decided to look into this Dr. Roy Spencer.
“Roy W. Spencer is a principal research scientist for the University of Alabama in Huntsville and the U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR-E) on NASA’s Aqua satellite. He has served as senior scientist for climate studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
He is principally known for his satellite-based temperature monitoring work, for which he was awarded the American Meteorological Society's Special Award.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Spencer_(scientist)
Ok, so far so good. A credible scientist with a background in temperature monitoring and an award to back it all up, maybe Rush is on to something here? Or, maybe not, “Spencer suggests that climate sensitivity is lower than is currently believed, and that natural, chaotic variations in low cloud cover may account for most global warming” (Global Warming: Natural or Manmade? by Roy Spencer). Alright, Dr. Spencer is a climate sceptic, though he doesn’t sound like an outright denialist, I’d still be willing to show some respect for him, unfortunately that was before I read that, “Spencer is a proponent of intelligent design, and rejects evolution as the mechanism for the origin of species” (Faith-Based Evolution, Roy Spencer, TCS Daily, 08 August 2005). I strongly encourage you to read that article if you want to be both enraged and amused. I won’t discuss it here to avoid being sidetracked any further other than to say that it really hurts Dr. Spencer’s credibility as a scientist whose opinion should be respected.
Real Climate, does a good job of addressing Dr. Spencer’s claims here.
It really is a shame that a scientist like Dr. Spencer, who has no doubt published credible papers in the past has bought into climate change scepticism.
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