Ted Cruz fact check: which temperature data are the best? | Dana Nuccitelli
by Dana Nuccitelli from on (#1125A)
Ted Cruz's claim that satellite data are "the best" is unjustified and false
Satellites don't measure the Earth's temperature. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and his fellow climate contrarians love the satellite data, but as Carl Mears of the Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) satellite dataset and Ben Santer recently wrote,
they are not thermometers in space. The satellite [temperature] data ... were obtained from so-called Microwave Sounding Units (MSUs), which measure the microwave emissions of oxygen molecules from broad atmospheric layers. Converting this information to estimates of temperature trends has substantial uncertainties.
