Dr. John Christy, Alabama’s State Climatologist, Professor of
Atmospheric Science and Director of the Earth System Science Center at
the University of Alabama in Huntsville testified before the Senate
Committee on Environment and Public Works hearing on global warming and
stated:
“During the heat wave of late June and early July, high
temperature extremes became newsworthy. Claims that there were thousands
of records broken each day and that “this is what global warming looks
like” got a lot of attention.
However, these headlines were not based on climate science. As
shown in Figure 1.3 of my testimony it is scientifically more accurate
to say that this is what Mother Nature looks like, since events even
worse than these have happened in the past before greenhouse gases were
increasing like they are today.



Now, it gives some people great comfort to offer a quick and easy
answer when the weather strays from the average rather than to struggle
with the real truth, which is, we don’t know enough about the climate
to even predict events like this.
A climatologist looking at this heat wave would not be alarmed
because the number of daily high temperature records set in the most
recent decade was only about half the number set in the 1930s as shown
in my written testimony. I suppose most people have forgotten that
Oklahoma set a new record low temperature just last year of 31 below.
And in the past two years, towns from Alaska to my home state of
California established records for snowfall. The recent anomalous
weather can’t be blamed on carbon dioxide.