With the end of the year, and the decade, fast approaching, deniers are struggling to find ways to respond to the fact that this was the warmest decade on record, and 2019 was one of the warmest years.
University of Alabama-Huntsville’s Roy Spencer, one of the only deniers with any real working knowledge of climate science, recently posted his attempt to convince followers that there’s no reason for worry.
At his blog, Spencer wrote that in the 41-year satellite record, “2019 will come in as 3rd least-chilly.” His reasoning for using the awkward “least-chilly” was to protest journalists using the term “hottest” to describe the year. Very mature and intelligent commentary here, folks.
Spencer’s post continues by downplaying the 0.15ºC (0.33ºF) of warming in the satellite record between 2010 and 2019 as something “no one would even notice over 10 years.”
Putting aside the fact that Spencer’s satellite record is notorious for lowballing warming, that third of a degree F of warming is still a big deal! It puts us easily on track to fail the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to 1.5ºC (3ºF) by the end of the century.
Spencer then trots out the old denier canard that since people experience “several tens of degrees of temperature change” throughout the year, this warming is no problem. But as even entry-level climate students would know, and that Dr. Spencer undoubtedly is aware of, small changes to the global average translate to large swings in temperatures locally.
From there, Spencer feigns outrage at the “click-bait journalism typified by terms like ‘hottest,’ ‘climate emergency’, and now ‘climate catastrophe,” which he bizarrely claims “explains why the public is largely indifferent to the global warming issue.”
We’re plenty used to deniers making asinine arguments, but this one isn’t even internally consistent! According to Spencer’s tortured logic, journalist’s attempts to get people to pay attention to climate change (using dramatic language) makes people not pay attention to climate change. (So... they should downplay the issue to make people aware of it?)
Spencer concludes his piece with a clarification “in case some new visitors” are reading, that he is “not a denier of human-caused climate change.” He writes that he believes there has been some warming due to carbon dioxide, but he considers “the fraction of warming attributable to humans to be uncertain, and probably largely benign.” He justifies that with a follow-up paragraph claiming that because human contribution to the atmospheric energy imbalance is “about 1 part in 250 of the natural energy flows… recent warming might well be mostly natural. We just don’t know.”
No Dr. Spencer, we all know. Even fossil fuel companies know, and have known, for decades. Which makes Spencer one of the biggest deniers on the planet.
But we know that’s not how he would phrase it, so instead we’ll just call him the least-truthful.