(Justin Merriman/Getty Images)In a sign of growing tensions between scientists and the Trump administration, researchers published a scientific paper Wednesday that was conceived and written as an explicit refutation to an assertion by Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt about climate change. Santer co-authored the study with three Livermore colleagues and scientists from MIT, the University of Washington in Seattle and Remote Sensing Systems, which keeps one of the three satellite temperature data sets. The study further examined whether any shorter temperature trend in these data sets could be described as a “leveling off,” as Pruitt had put it. It did so by examining 20-year periods in the data sets and comparing those with the predictions of climate simulations that reflected the natural variations of the climate but excluded human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. Christy also argued that the other two data sets, which are warmer than his, are “outliers regarding the magnitude.”“I wouldn’t get too excited about this study,” Christy said.

Source: Washington Post May 24, 2017 17:52 UTC