As a U.S. Senate committee begins hearings to examine recent developments in the science of global warming, the Independent Institute offers a new study to fill in the significant scientific gaps in widely cited reports by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The study, "New Perspectives in Climate Science: What the EPA Isn’t Telling Us," draws on new research in three key areas.

      1. The global surface temperature record. Were global mean temperatures relatively flat until the twentieth century? A widely cited 1999 study suggested that temperatures were relatively flat for the past millennium -- until the rapid growth in the release of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels. However, a new study by Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of Harvard University shows that temperatures were higher during the Middle Ages than today, suggesting that human activity isn't the only phenomenon that can drive global climate change. Their report -- and dozens of others that detect a Medieval Warming Period -- can be reconciled with the 1999 study, because the 1999 study left a very large expected error range.

      2. Satellite and balloon-measured temperature. A recent study by John Christy of the University of Alabama at Huntsville and his colleagues has reconciled these data sources. This is a significant scientific advancement that increases "confidence in a modest warming, while undermining the credibility of climate models predicting dramatic warming."

      3. Warming and urban mortality. Reports by the EPA and the IPCC suggest that the warming of U.S. cities would lead to an increase of heat-related deaths. However, a recent study by Robert E. Davis and colleagues examined temperature and mortality in 28 cities in recent decades and "found that heat-related mortality rates declined" in 22 of them. "During the 1980s, many cities, particularly those in the southern United States, exhibited no excess mortality. In the 1990s, this effected spread northward across interior cities."

Global warming is hardly the mother of all environmental catastrophes as some environmentalists and members of the media have depicted.  "Together, these studies increasingly integrate the notion that climate change will be modest and easily adopted by free and vibrant economies," the report states.

The report also touches on the political climate that has led to strained inferences and substantive omissions in reports by the EPA and the IPCC.

"As shown in this paper, critical portions of science in all of these reports are misleading, inaccurate, unreliable, or simply wrong.  However, that is not an indictment of the individuals involved, but is rather more symptomatic of the nature of science when funded by a government leviathan."

The Independent Institute also held a related news conference today at  the National Press Club, featuring noted scientists John Christy,  Robert Davis, David Legates, Wendy Novicoff and S. Fred Singer  (research fellow, The Independent Institute), and economist Alexander  Tabarrok (research director, The Independent Institute).