Statement by Climatologist Dr. Patrick J. Michaels of the Cato Institute.
Dr. Michaels comments about the claim from a Russian scientist that man-made global warming may have caused the crash of Air France plane: ( See: ‘Did global warming help bring down Air France flight 447?’ — ‘Russian climatologist believes global warming played a significant part.’ )
Dr. Michaels: “Perhaps someone should remind our Russian friend that computer models indicate that the upper tropoposphere should warm more than the surface there (the so-called upper tropopospheric hot spot). The last I heard that reduces the surface-upper air temperature gradient, which INCREASES stability, REDUCING convection.
The paper Douglass et al. couldn’t find the UTHS and so concluded the models were systematically flawed. Santer et al. tortured the data and claimed that Douglass couldn’t find it because his statistics were too straightforward. Santer’s study, amazingly, published in 2008, only used data through 1999, although it was readily available through 2007. Wonder why?
End Dr. Michaels Statement.
