Texas A&M Experts Among Perry’s Critics

The video above is a shortened clip from last week’s feature with Dessler being interviewed on a Houston TV station.
San Antonio Express-News:

When it comes to the science behind global warming, the Aggies are ganging up on one of their own.

Gov. Rick Perry‘s alma mater, Texas A&M University, boasts some of the world’s leading experts on climate change, and they’re at odds with their fellow Aggie on what the evidence shows — and not just a little.

Andrew Dessler, a professor of atmospheric sciences at A&M, took issue with the governor’s campaign-trail skepticism about whether the scientific evidence of warming is “settled” in an article in the Houston Chronicle.

And Gerald North, A&M’s distinguished professor of atmospheric sciences and oceanography, puts 35 years of experience behind the view that there’s no longer any doubt that the planet is warming.

“The evidence has been piling up for 30 years now.”
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A physicist by training, North began exploring the science behind global warming not because it was the sexy topic of the day but because it piqued his curiosity.

“I got interested in this problem 35 years ago because it’s such an interesting scientific problem,” he said. “The politics is really quite secondary.”

He tiptoed when I asked about Perry but still managed to convey what he thinks.

“I really don’t know what he believes,” North said. “What he says — I have to be careful here. Let’s take him at his word that he believes exactly what he says. Given that, I think he’s not listening to the right people.”

Back in July, two U.S. scientists published a paper in the journal Remote Sensing claiming that new data from NASA blew a hole in the science behind global warming.

According to The Guardian, the paper was downloaded 56,000 times within a month before other scientists began to challenge its conclusions. The media, including the Express-News, gave it a good ride.

Less publicized was the fact that the editor of the journal subsequently resigned, conceding that the science behind the paper was “fundamentally flawed and therefore wrongly accepted by the journal.”