obama climate

President Barack Obama wipes his face as he speaks about climate change, Tuesday, June 25, 2013, at Georgetown University in Washington. The president is proposing sweeping steps to limit heat-trapping pollution from coal-fired power plants and to boost renewable energy production on federal property, resorting to his executive powers to tackle climate change and sidestepping the partisan gridlock in Congress. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

UAH climate expert John Christy, who is also the state climatologist, said severe weather events are not on the increase, disputing comments made Tuesday by President Obama as he announced plans to reduce the impact of humans on climate change. (The Huntsville Times file photo)

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama - The proposals to address climate change made Tuesday by President Obama have no merit and will accomplish nothing, according to two climate experts at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

John Christy, director of UAH's Earth System Science Center, and Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the ESSC, also said they took issue with the derogatory tone Obama took toward scientists who disagree that humans are the primary cause of global warming.

In a speech Tuesday at Georgetown University, Obama said, "I don't have much patience for anyone who denies this challenge is real. We don't have time for a meeting of the flat-earth society."

Both Christy and Spencer have long been known in climate circles as questioning the impact humans have on climate change and have voiced their opinions in testimony given before Congress.

"That was just a mean statement," said Christy, who also serves as the state climatologist. "I can't imagine why a president would dignify the office by making a statement like that when real, award-winning, highly-regarded scientists are working hard on this problem. To demean them that way is just beneath the office."

Spencer said Obama's speechwriters don't understand the argument that global warming has contributing factors beyond human pollution.

"We don't say there hasn't been warming and we don't say that humans haven't caused some of it," Spencer said. "And that's what they think we say. They think we say there's no such thing as global warming and humans can't affect the climate at all.

"Well, nobody I know of says that. But that's what they think we say. If we believe something like that, then maybe you could consider us flat-earthers - sort of ignoring what's obviously true. But the things we dispute are not obviously true. The things that they say that we dispute, they're not obviously true from a science standpoint."

The biggest takeaway Christy had from the speech, he said, was Obama's assertion that severe weather events are happening more often and pointing to global warming as the reason.

"It just surprises me that speechwriters would allow the president to say things that can be demonstrated to be false when he spoke of extreme weather events increasing," Christy said. "Well, we actually keep track of those things and they have not been increasing in frequency or intensity. Yet that seems to be a motivating factor in trying to scare people about climate change."

Christy referred to a presentation he made last month to U.S. Rep. David McKinley, R-W. Va., that tracked the activity of hurricanes, tornadoes and extreme temperatures and reflected there has been little change over several decades.

"You can see that hurricanes are not increasing," Christy said, "tornadoes are not increasing, droughts and floods are not increasing, snow cover is still around - in fact, last winter, the northern hemisphere had its largest extent of snow cover measure."

Christy also said that while 2012 was an abnormally warm year in the U.S. (the warmest on record, according to the White House), it wasn't the same worldwide.

"(Obama) didn't mention what happened in Australia," Christy said. "It was below average in 2012 and 2011. And that's another country about the size of our country, yet that is not mentioned."

Christy also questioned the methods by which the White House compiled its data.

"In terms of record-high temperatures they like to brag about, what they do is a bit of sleight of hand," he said. "What they do is use a lot of stations that only have 30 years of records. If you use stations that go back to the 1930s, you get a completely different picture. 1934 and 1936 were much worse than 2012."

Spencer described the increase in severe weather events as an "urban myth."

Roy Spencer, a researcher in the UAH Earth System Science Center and an expert on climate change, said Obama's proposals have no merit. (UAH photo)

"(Obama's) allusion to severe weather - there is no increase in severe weather events," he said. "That's an urban myth that's perpetuated by people who start saying things like that and it gets repeated in the media. But there's no objective evidence that it's true.

"And yet he uses it in his speech. It's just silliness. It feeds the public's tendency to think that things are getting worse."

Both Christy and Spencer also pointed to data that indicates, in a contradiction to global warming theories, that global temperature has been flat for 15 years.

"I guess the earth itself is part of the flat-earth society," Christy joked.

While Christy disagreed with most of Obama's proposals, preparing for the next weather disaster is commendable.

"You can build up your infrastructure along the coastlines to make them withstand the next hurricane because the next hurricane is going to come," Christy said. "And making water more available, as we promoted here in Alabama, to overcome the problems of drought."

Ultimately, though, the bulk of the measures proposed by Obama won't make a difference on affecting climate change, Christy and Spencer said.

"These regulations that he hoped to have adopted will not do anything to change whatever the climate is going to do," Christy said. "I've testified in federal court and before Congress -- and this is in un-rebutted testimony where the other side agreed -- that these regulations will not affect whatever the climate is going to do.

"It's motivated on one end by some pretty improper statements and it will have no effect on whatever the climate is going to do anyway."

Spencer pointed to the minimal impact of efforts to make appliances more energy efficient.

"I don't think there was anything there that had any merit," he said of Obama's proposals. "Not even the efficiency standards for appliances. We've already gone through this whole exercise of trying to make appliances more efficient. It doesn't make much difference because people don't buy new appliances very often. It doesn't represent that big of a fraction of our energy use. And you can't make them much more efficient than they already are unless you make them smaller.

"That's just feel-good nonsense. It's fluff. It doesn't really mean anything. Some of what he said was fairly innocuous because it's not really going to have any impact anyway."