GOP Senators Blame Nature for Climate Change: "Senator James Inhofe today told colleagues of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that the science shows natural variability, not human activity, is the 'overwhelming factor' influencing climate change.
Inhofe cited findings of a study by Drs. Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics that determined the 20th century was neither the warmest nor the century with the most extreme weather within the past millennium.
But a climate expert at today's hearing told Inhofe that the mainstream climate research community believes the Soon and Baliunas study is "nonsense."
The study is "fundamentally unsound," testified Michael Mann, University of Virginia environmental sciences professor and a lead author of the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Third Assessment Report.
Natural variability is a large factor in climate change, Mann said, but it can not explain the warming of the past two decades. "
- posted by geoff @ #