American Elephants


Dr. Roy Spencer’s Top 10 Climate Discoveries of 2014 by The Elephant's Child

The period between Christmas and New Years is kind of a dead time. Many take that week off, radio hosts have substitutes, and media people do lists: best of 2014, worst of 2014, most important events of 2014, best photos of 2014, sexiest women of 2014, worst policy moves, all written to give them some time off.

There are exceptions, and some are delightful. Dr. Roy Spencer is not only a stellar climate scientist at the University of Alabama at Huntsville,  but he has a great sense of humor.

Here are his Top 10 Climate Discoveries of 2014.  Bookmark his website for future reference, and read regularly. Do read his brief column on Global Warming 101.

10. Weather did not even occur before Henry Ford automated the production of the automobile. No, really, look it up.

9. Climate modelers discovered that the Earth is not warming nearly as fast as their models predicted. A multi-billion dollar effort is now underway to make the climate system warm even faster.

8. The Koch Brothers were discovered to be extraterrestrials out to destroy the Earth. If you haven’t heard that yet…you are one of the stupid people who were deemed to be not trustworthy enough with the information.

7. Global sea ice reached a near record maximum, due to a bust-gut effort by Exxon-Mobil which has been making ice cubes in China and shipping them to the poles.

6. Global warming causes cooling. This had always been expected, but it was finally proved by two French literature graduates who Googled it.

5. It’s Bush’s fault.

4. A viable replacement for fossil fuels was finally discovered: Solar Freakin’ Roadways. (If solar panels tilted toward the sun and kept clean are a good idea, then putting them on the ground and running over them with 10-ton trucks is even better!)

3. Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists surveyed agreed that if the global warming issue (and their government funding) went away, their careers would end.

2. The 420th U.N. climate meeting in Lima, Peru, was finally made carbon-neutral with jet travel fueled by methane gathered from unicorn herds, and carbon offsets purchased from Al Gore which will go toward planting of 5.3 billion trees which never die.

1. Carbon dioxide (necessary for life on Earth) was discovered to be different from carbon monoxide (a poisonous gas). The full implications of this finding are still being investigated, but are not expected to interfere with continuing plans to increase energy prices and keep Third World people from becoming First World.

All true!