(CNSNews.com) – Under questioning by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Sierra Club president Aaron Mair testified before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on Tuesday that despite satellite data to the contrary, “our planet is cooking up and heating and warming.”
Although last month was “the fifth warmest September in the satellite record” due to the effects of a “monster El Nino”, “the global climate trend since Nov. 16, 1978: +0.11 C per decade,” according to the latest report from the University of Alabama/Huntsville’s Earth System Science Center, which monitors advanced microwave sounding units installed on NOAA and NASA satellites.
“In the satellite data, there has been no significant warming for about 18 years or so,” center director John Christy told CNSNews.com.
But when Cruz asked Mair if the satellite data was correct, he answered: “No.”
“I’m curious. The Sierra Club, is this a frequent practice to declare areas of science not up for debate, not up for consideration of what the evidence and data show?” Cruz asked him.
“Based on the preponderance of evidence, the science [on global warming] is settled, but the thing is that anything is up for debate, senator,” Mair responded.
“How do you address the facts that in the last 18 years, the satellite data show no demonstrable warming whatsoever?” Cruz asked him.
“Sir, I would rely on the Union of Concerned Scientists and I would rely upon the evidence, again from our own NOAA officials, the data are there,” Mair replied.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report predicts that high concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (CO2) created by humans burning fossil fuels will cause catastrophic global warming, more intense storms, the loss of polar ice sheets and rising sea levels.
However, many of the UN’s past predictions have been proved wrong. And some climate scientists say the global warming issue is anything but “settled”.
Dr. David Evans, a former climate modeller for the Australian government’s Greenhouse Office, says he found two mathematical errors showing that the IPCC “over-estimated future global warming by as much as 10 times.”
“Yes, CO2 has an effect, but it’s about a fifth or tenth of what the IPCC says it is,” Evans is quoted as saying. “It caused less than 20 percent of the global warming in the last few decades.”
Dr. Wei-Hock “Willie” Soon, a solar physicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and his co-authors also discovered that the UN’s computer models greatly overstated the impact of CO2 on the climate.
“The impact of anthropogenic global warming over the next century… may be no more than one-third to one-half of the IPCC’s current projections," they wrote.
Related: Satellite Data: No Global Warming For Past 18 Years
Related: Climate Scientist: 73 UN Climate Models Wrong, No Global Warming in 17 Years