The Daily Signal - Climate Series Part 3: Should We Be Concerned Over Climate Change?

Episode Date: January 5, 2024

The climate is changing, but is the change cause for concern?  “There are natural climate cycles, which are normal,” research scientist Roy Spencer says, adding that “If you move beyond the temperature to things like storminess, you know, hurricane activity, there have been no demonstrable, long-term changes in anything other than a modest, relatively benign increase in temperature." When it comes to climate change, Spencer, a meteorologist and research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, says he's “been hearing the rhetoric and the fearmongering since the 1970s.” Asked if he personally worries about climate change, Spencer says: “No, if I was seriously worried about it, you know, I'd be worried for my children's future and my grandchildren's future. And I'm not.”  “I'm more worried about what our government is doing on a number of fronts, including regulatory mandates, which is going to make life much more expensive for them and therefore reduce their standard of living,” adds Spencer, who has researched climate change for 40 years.  The “natural fluctuations in weather are normal,” argues Spencer, currently a visiting fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s news outlet.) Spencer joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” for the final episode of a three-part series on climate change. In it, he explains what we know and don't know about the root causes of climate change and the appropriate response to a changing climate. Spencer also provides insight into how the climate may change in coming years. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today is Friday, January 5th. I'm Virginia Allen. And this is our final episode of our three-part climate change podcast series here at The Daily Signal. We have devoted the past two days to first discussing the history of climate change and then the causes of climate change. We're talking a little bit more about the causes today, but also getting into one of the most important questions that can be asked around this topic. And that is, should we be concerned? about climate change? Does a changing climate mean catastrophe? While climate expert Roy Spencer is joining us in just a moment to answer that question. Stay tuned. Conservative women are problematic women. Why? Because we don't adhere to the agenda of the radical left. Every Thursday morning on the Problematic Women podcast, Kristen I, Cammer, Lauren Evans, and me, Virginia Allen, are joined by other conservative women to break down the big issues and news you care about. Whether you're interested in hot takes and conversations on pop culture or what Congress is up to, problematic women has you covered.

We sort through the news to keep you up to date on the issues that are of particular interest to conservative leaning, that is problematic women. Find problematic women wherever you like to listen to podcasts and follow the show on Instagram. It is my pleasure today to welcome to the show. Roy Spencer, Mr. Spencer, serves as a visiting fellow in the Heritage Foundation's Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment. Mr. Spencer, thank you so much for being with us today. Good to be with you, Virginia. Well, before we dive into our last conversation in this climate series, I want to ask you to share a little bit of your own background and how you first started working in the issue of climate and writing about and researching on the topic of climate.

climate change? Well, I've been working in climate change for about 40 years when I got out of college. This is where the money was 40 years ago. And those of us that are in research, you need to find money to support your research activities. So climate was a natural connection, although I also worked on satellite systems for NASA because the shuttle was a big deal back then, too, the space shuttle. But anyway, John Christie at UAH, University of Alabama here, Alabama in Huntsville, here where I work, he and I came up with a way of monitoring global temperatures from satellites, which is still used today. And we've been updating that data set every month for the last, I don't know, 35 years or more.

And then also we got into other kinds of climate research along the way, you know, depending on what seemed to be interesting to the field at the time. Interesting. Well, I'm so glad that we have you with us today to close out this series. We have your expertise to weigh in on both some of the core causes of climate change and also to offer a little bit of hope, a little bit of optimism as it relates to climate change, maybe combating some of those narratives we hear. Now, we had Mr. Willey Soon on the show yesterday, and Mr. Soon explained the role that his research has shown that the sun plays in climate change specifically. And I know that you have a little bit of a different opinion when we look at what the root causes are that are creating changes and fluctuations in the climate. So if you were asked, what are the core elements? What are the core causes of climate change? How would you respond to that question? Well, I guess I would say we really don't know for sure. Okay. That's fair. And the way I phrase this is, the way I try to explain it to people is the temperature change in anything. I mean, global warming and all of the associated supposed change in storminess and all of that.

It's all related to a change in global temperatures. Okay. So what causes a change in global temperature? Well, fundamentally, it's the same thing that causes a change in a pot of water sitting on the stove when you turn the heat on or when you turn the heat off. temperature change in anything is related to how fast energy is being absorbed by, let's say, the pot of water versus how fast it's being lost by the pot of water. And if there's an imbalance between energy gain and energy loss, the temperature changes. Now, this is base, you know, this is climate change 101.

Okay. There's nothing controversial or skeptical or denialist about what I'm telling you. It's what every physicist understands. Climate change is related to an imbalance between energy gained and energy lost by the system. Now, the point I try to make to people is that theoretically, the amount of energy imbalance in the climate system due to adding CO2 to the atmosphere, which is supposedly the primary driver of anthropogenic climate change, that amount of imbalance is about one or two watts per square meter. It's basically less than 1% of the average energy flows in and out of the climate

system. And we don't know any of the natural energy flows or the things that change those energy flows naturally to within 1%. We don't know any of the natural energy flows in the climate system to better than about 5 watts per square meter. Yet it's a 1 or 2 watt per square meter. energy imbalance this causing global warming. So the point of all this is, if you didn't follow that, anthropogenic climate change is as much a matter of faith as it is of science. Now, yes, it could be that most of the warming we've seen in recent decades, because that's about the only period that we've had to any substantial warming is in the last, let's say, 50 or 60 years. It could be that is mostly due to human activities. We don't know. But that's,

then you get into the other issue of so what? Because the amount of change we've been seen either in temperature or in storminess is nowhere near what we're being told through the mainstream media. Okay, well, that's the part that we need to talk about today that I want to lean into is the so what question. Because like you've just demonstrated, even among many scientists, clientologists who work together, there's disagreement over the, core causes of the climate changing. But it's important to have the conversation of how concerned should we be over the fact that the climate is changing. Pew Research Center found in a recent study that young Republicans and those who describe their views as moderate or liberal are much

more likely than older or more conservative Republicans to describe climate change as at least a somewhat serious problem and to say that human activity plays a role. So is climate change a somewhat serious problem that we should be concerned about? Okay, a somewhat serious problem. Now, I think that's overstating it, you know, based on my experience in this and monitoring global temperatures that we've been doing and then also storming us. I mean, my original expertise is as a meteorologist, I'm a PhD in meteorology. So I know weather more than anything. And natural fluctuations in weather are normal. There are natural climate cycles, which are normal. These things dominate what we see in nature. So what can we be concerned about? Well, global temperatures have gone up about one degree C, you know, close to two degrees Fahrenheit, maybe in the last 50 to 100 years.

It's not enough for anybody in their lifetimes to notice, really, because weather dominates what we experience, not climate change. And if you move beyond the temperature to things like storminess, you know, hurricane activity, there have been no demonstrable long-term changes in anything other than a modest, relatively benign increase in temperature, which in case we don't get a chance to mention it before. before the end of the podcast, is possibly due to increasing CO2, which has had a multi-trillion dollar benefit to global agricultural productivity. Can you speak a little bit to that? Because that is also something that Mr. Soon brought up the positives that we've seen. And of course, media talks a lot about the negatives from CO2, but no one's talking about the positives.

Yeah, it reminds me of an old expression, which probably young people don't have never heard before, is you don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. I mean, even if there is a small negative impact of global warming, the benefits of the changes in weather that would go along with it are more likely to be positive than negative. And then you've got, like Willie Soon mentioned, which I agree with because a lot of research has been done. done on it. Increasing CO2 is good for life on earth. All life on earth depends on CO2. If you don't have enough CO2, you don't have life on earth because it is necessary at the beginning of the food chain on both land and in the ocean. Fascinating. Okay. So then if we shouldn't be fearful of these things, how should we think about and talk about issues like climate change, specifically with the younger generation? Because we've seen studies have proven that there is increasing anxiety

specifically among young people over the topic of climate change. And I think, you know, you just look at the way that media talks about it and people really making pretty doomsday projections as to, you know, if we don't shift something, if humans don't shift something in our activity, you know, where the planet will be in 10, 20, 100 years. How do we respond to those kinds of claims? I honestly don't know, Virginia. I've been hearing the rhetoric and the fear mongering since the 1970s. Since the first Earth day, this has been going on. It is more of a religious belief than anything. And it's very difficult to argue people out of their religious beliefs. So I'm not hopeful that that's going to happen.

My prediction of what's going to happen is we go along for enough time and people realize that bad things really aren't happening in the weather and climate system, at least not compared to what has happened in past decades or even past centuries. And then when the bill comes due for what it costs to try to. fix quote unquote the problem. Hopefully people are going to realize, huh, you know, I don't know whether this is worth the money. Have you personally ever felt nervous about climate change or the state of the climate changing? No, if I was seriously worried about it, you know, I'd be worried for my children's future and my grandchildren's future. And I'm not, I'm not worried about climate change in their future. I'm more worried about what our government is doing on a number of fronts, including regulatory mandates, which is going to make life much more expensive for them

and therefore reduce their standard of living. So then when we talk about the climate and what might happen in 50, 100 years, do we have any sense, from the research that you've done, do we have sense of will the climate still be in a state of warming in 50 years or will we maybe have now entered a state of cooling? Do we have a sense? That's a good question. That's a really good question because this is where we get into the fact that I'm not a climate change denier. I'm what's called a lukewarmer. And it sort of puts me at odds with both the alarmists and with the skeptics because I'm sort of middle of the road, which I'm not politically, but in the science on this. I am sort of middle of the road. I think I can't prove it. I think most of the

warming we've seen is due to increasing CO2 because we don't have any really good explanations otherwise. There are possibilities. You know, it could be partly due to the sun like Willie Soon says. That's still sort of, you know, a speculative explanation. It could be natural climate cycles. We know that natural climate cycles occur. So it's a. you know, it could be that it's mostly due to warming. That's sort of what I go with now, but the warming is fairly benign. It's not as bad as people are saying it is. And for projected warming, most of what we hear in the news comes out of the United Nations-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change. And what they like to point out are these extreme

scenarios where CO2 increases really rapidly in the future, which would necessarily cause. more warming of some amount, okay? But they have to use these extreme scenarios, which we now know are not going to happen. Nature is extremely efficient at removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Okay. And even with China and India, ramping up their CO2 emissions, you know, we're pretty much stabilized our CO2 emissions now in the United States. Even with that, you know, the projections are that we may not even reach a doubling of atmospheric CO2, that is doubling above pre-industrial levels by the end of this century. And if we don't, you know, we might only have two or three degrees of warming. And in which case that, you know, and I think that's the upper limit of what we're going to see. I think it's going to be

closer to two degrees. And we published a paper, a peer-reviewed paper on that a couple of months ago. where we came up with, for a doubling of atmospheric CO2, we came up with a net warming of like 1.8 or 1.9 degrees, which is well below what the United Nations is promoting and well even farther below what we hear from the media because they use the most extreme scenarios that United Nations scientists talk about, but don't promote. Okay.

And so an increase that small, that's not a cause, for concern. That's not going to cause. I think so because so far we've had, you know, at least a degree C of warming and and there hasn't been any noticeable change in weather, hurricane activity, maybe there's been a somewhat, a small increase in total precipitation. We would expect with any kind of warming, no matter the cause, that there should be an increase in the global hydrologic cycle. In other words, you know, evaporation should increase a couple of percent. Therefore, precipitation has to increase a couple of percent

because the atmosphere can't hold all the water favor. So that's sort of, that's increasing the hydrologic cycle and increasing more, more precipitation. You know, it's questionable whether that's happened, but that's what we expect theoretically. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. probably isn't a bad thing. Where would you recommend people get their news on this topic?

Because like we've talked about, there's a lot of loud voices out there and a lot of agendas. Where can we go to find information about what is happening on the climate that is just fact-based, neutral, not fear-mongering? Well, I don't know whether any news sources. I mean, I'm not familiar with all of the news sources. So I'm not a good one to ask about that. You know, there's several of us that are fairly even handed on this issue, I think, have our own blogs.

Judith Curry has her own blog called Climate, et cetera. And that's very good. It shows both sides of the issue, you know, sort of getting more of the skeptic side in there than you'll ever hear through the Main Street media. You know, I have a blog, DRR.R.R.R.R. Spencer. That's mainly more about my research and what I learn, you know, because I let people kind of follow along with what I'm learning lately. It's been on the urban heat island effect and how much that has inflated land-based temperatures, which, you know, of course, since everyone lives on land, they're concerned with how much it's

warmed over land. And we're finding, depending on where you live, you know, 30 to 80, percent of the warming you've heard about that we've had in the last hundred years is just due to urbanization. It's a local effect. It's not global warming. So that's sort of what I do. And then, you know, the most popular website on this subject, which has a wide range of the opinions, I'll warn you, is Anthony Watts's website, WhatsApp Up With That, W-A-T-T-S, what's up with that, what's up with that.com, which has a lot of information. on a wide range of subjects.

This is really, really helpful. Mr. Spencer, thank you. I want to encourage all of our listeners to check out, again, your blog that you mentioned, d.R.royspenser.com, as well as to follow your work at the Heritage Foundation website, heritage.org. But we really appreciate your expertise. Appreciate your honesty today. This has been very helpful, very insightful.

Just a great way to end this conversation, this series, as we talk about climate change. Thank you for your time. Good to talk to you, Virginia. Thank you so much for joining us for this three-part Daily Signal podcast series on climate change. If you learn something from this series, if you found it helpful, would you take just a minute to leave the Daily Signal podcast a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you like to listen? It really helps us to spread the word to new listeners, and especially right here at the top of the year as we jump into 2024. It's so helpful to have your feedback and to know what you think about the show. Thank you to those who have already taken the time to leave those ratings and reviews.

And if you want more of The Daily Signal, make sure you check out our evening edition, our Top News edition, where we bring you the top five or so news stories of the day. We will see you right back here for Top News at 5 p.m. In the meantime, have a great rest of your Friday. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. Executive producers are Rob Luey and Kate Shrinco. Producers are Virginia Allen and Samantha Asheris.

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