“Much Ado About Nothing” A Minority Review of the Majority’s Climate Science Investigation
(Washington, DC) – Today, during the Full Committee hearing, “Climate Science: Assumptions, Policy Implications, and the Scientific Method,” Ranking Member Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) released a Minority staff report on the Majority’s nearly two year-long fruitless investigation of a key climate science study co-authored by nine NOAA scientists.
The Majority has made multiple false claims and unsupported allegations during their investigation of this study, which appeared in the prestigious journal Science in June 2015. The study, known as the “Karl study” for lead author Thomas Karl, found that the rate of global warming during the last 15 years has been as fast as or faster than that seen during the latter half of the 20th Century. The study also refuted the notion that there has been a “hiatus” in the rate of global warming in recent years. The Majority was quick to condemn the study, making unsubstantiated allegations that the NOAA scientists manipulated data for political reasons and rushed the study to publication at the behest of the Obama Administration. The Majority has never provided any evidence to support these allegations and many of their statements have proven to be false.
The staff report released today, “Much Ado About Nothing” - A Minority Review of the Majority’s Climate Science Investigation,” details the Majority’s efforts to undermine and invalidate the Karl study. The report provides background on the Majority’s unsubstantiated claims about the Karl study and their lengthy, politically motivated investigation into this climate science paper. It also includes summaries and links to other scientific papers that have supported the methodologies used in the Karl study and corroborated the study’s findings that the global warming “hiatus” never actually occurred. Those findings were published in eight separate articles, in seven different scientific journals, co-authored by 35 individual scientists from six countries (including the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Norway, and Switzerland). These climate scientists reached the same basic conclusion of the Karl study’s co-authors that the planet has continued to warm over the past few decades unabated. Investigations launched by the Majority, no matter how aggressive, forceful or persistent, will not change the scientific reality of climate change.
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