A good friend of mine who I respect a great deal gave me an article that discussed the growing number of scientists who reject the global warming hysteria that is sweeping the globe. It included a statement about the first woman to get a Ph.D. in meteorology. Her name is Dr. Joanne Simpson, and she is truly remarkable. Her 54-year career was capped off with a 24-year stint at NASA, where she was a team leader for the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission. At the occasion of her retirement, NASA couldn’t say enough good things about her:
In addition to being the first female meteorologist with a Ph.D., she’s been granted membership to the National Academy of Engineering, awarded the Carl-Gustaf Rossby Award (the highest honor bestowed by the American Meteorological Society), presented with a Guggenheim Fellowship, and served as President of the American Meteorological Society. Although Simpson’s praises have been sung publicly as an example of a woman who has defied the odds and the male chauvinism of her profession, surprisingly few people outside of meteorology know precisely what she did for the science. Simpson’s scientific endeavors, aside from being exciting, have had a tremendous impact on meteorology over the years… With both her mind and her desire to work as sharp as ever, Simpson will undoubtedly continue to make important contributions to the study of the atmosphere. 1
So now that she’s retired from NASA, what does she have to say? Well…something I am sure NASA is not too happy about:
Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receive any funding, I can speak quite frankly. For more than a decade now “global warming” and its impacts has become the primary interface between our science and society. A large group of earth scientists, voiced in an IPCC statement, have reached what they claim is a consensus of nearly all atmospheric scientists that man-released greenhouse gases are causing increasing harm to our planet…However, the main basis of the claim…is based almost entirely upon climate models. We all know the frailty of models concerning the air-surface system…The term “global warming” itself is very vague. Where and what scales of response are measurable?… as a scientist I remain skeptical. 2
So now that Dr. Simpson has left NASA she can speak “frankly.” You see, if you don’t “toe the party line” at NASA, you get in big trouble. Dr. Roy Spencer used to work for NASA, but he was essentially forced to resign because he was a global warming skeptic, and NASA does not allow such things. In fact, he used to post the NASA satellite data on global temperature on one of NASA’s websites. However, it was taken down because the satellite data do not support the idea of global warming. You now have to go to junkscience.com to get that same data.
Now that Dr. Simpson is speaking “frankly,” she is not advocating that we ignore rising greenhouse gases. She calls the information that we have now “incomplete” and thinks we must act on the information we currently have. Thus, she says we should try to reduce carbon dioxide emissions because if the models are right, bad things will happen. However, at the same time, she is advocating what should be common in science: rigorous debate based on the data. It is unfortunate that Dr. Simpson had to leave NASA before she could become an advocate for good science!
REFERENCES
1. http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Simpson/simpson.php
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