Fears are growing for the long-term future of the satellite temperature record compiled by two former NASA scientists at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. The UAH record stretches back to 1979 and measures the lower troposphere. It is highly regarded in sceptical scientific circles, but it shows less warming than the adjusted, heat-corrupted and sometimes invented figures supplied by state-funded meteorological operations that help promote the Net Zero project. Funding is likely to stop when Professor John Christy retires in July 2026, bringing an end to an honest and it seems unwanted source of climate information.
The knives have been out for years. Christy’s partner Dr. Roy Spencer promotes a monthly update of the UAH record and in 2022 it was kicked off Google AdSense for publishing “unreliable and harmful claims”. Dr. Spencer notes that the UAH team has a Department of Energy contract, “but it is ending and we have very few friends in Washington since we remain on the ‘wrong side’ of the science”. Of course their luck could change with the Trump and Republican victories, but climate science funding is difficult for all but the true ‘settled’ believers. “The peer review process (which determines what proposals the government will fund) has been stacked against us for many years, making it almost impossible to get funded to investigate the issues we believe are important to the climate debate,” observes Spencer.
As the two scientists note, they are not getting any younger. New, young researchers would need the same federal contracts to continue the work. ”Unfortunately, any projects that smell like climate scepticism are generally not funded and young researchers will likely hurt their careers if they are considered to be replacements for John and me,” says Spencer. Advancing science that doesn’t support global warming being a ‘crisis’ remains an uphill battle, he adds.
What Spencer is talking about of course is free speech and the trashing of the scientific process by activists working in and out of science to brainwash and frighten populations into accepting the Net Zero fantasy. The disgraceful retraction of the Alimonti paper by Springer Nature lives in the memory. As readers will recall, a gang of journalists and activist scientists managed recently to cancel a group of Italian physicists who dared to state the data didn’t support a climate crisis. Commenting on the scandal, Francis Menton of the Manhattan Contrarian noted that “every once in a while something happens to bring aspects of the orthodoxy enforcement mechanism momentarily into the open”. “Climate sceptics can’t get jobs in academia, and go into other careers; when sceptics write papers, they get rejected and are never heard again,” he added.
The UAH record is obviously hated in alarmist circles. While state operations were retrospectively adding 30% extra recent warming to compiled and frequently adjusted global datasets, the UAH figures kept us informed of the temperature pause from 1998-2012. Of course, warming is shown since the start of the satellite record, but uncorrupted data from above the ground provides a reliable benchmark. The cynical might ask who knows what the temperature manglers would get up to without this watchful eye in space?
The biggest problem with the surface measurements is the corruption caused by urban heat. Christy and Spencer have been to the fore in attempting to measure the serious problems that pollute the surface temperature record. As the Daily Sceptic has reported on numerous occasions, many temperature stations are positioned in unsuitable sites near airport runways, car parks, electricity sub-stations and solar farms. Estimates of the corruption range from 20-50% extra warming. “Personally,” continues Spencer, “I would like to continue the work I have started – especially on urban heat islands (UHI) – if possible.”
In fact, Dr. Spencer has recently added to his urban heat island research by considering its effect on daily record high temperatures. This follows the declaration of an all-time record high temperature of 124°F recorded at Palm Springs Airport on July 5th this year. For those following the global warming narrative, it is noted that such records almost always mention climate change as a cause, “yet they have no way of knowing how much urbanisation has contributed to those record high temperatures”.
Spencer notes that there are 26 other daily temperature stations within 40 miles of the Californian desert town at various levels of urbanisation and elevation. Plotting the high temperatures as a function of station elevation, it turns out, claims Spencer, that Palm Springs is an “outlier” with 5°F extra warmth compared to nearby stations. In addition, that figure is likely to be an underestimate of how much urban warming contributed to the Palm Springs record.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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The attempt to suppress awkward evidence as “heresy” is a sign that 1) climate alarmism is a secular religion, and that 2) our universities are leading us into a New Dark Age.
Over to you, Elon . . .
We all know about the billionaire supporters of the green groups, so where are the wealthy individuals to support the truth rather than the fictional modelling and scare mongering? Anyone think Mr Musk could step in?
Well, me actually, and so far just a few others! Come on, folks – let’s hear it for Mr Musk!