Dr. John Christy, climatologist, was a  contributor or lead author on every major report of the IPCC. “The solutions being offered,” he warns, “don’t provide any detectable relief from this so-called catastrophe.”

As estimates of the cost of cap and trade soared this week (the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office scores the current bill at $973 billion), some experts are beginning to ask what we’re getting for such a hefty price.

Climatologist John Christy, distinguished professor of Atmospheric Science and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, recently said he thinks legislation to reduce global warming is “all cost and no benefit” and that as more economic studies drive home that point, “some of the people will take one step backward and say, Let me investigate the science a little more closely.”

When they do that, Christy believes, they’ll find that human influence on climate change is much smaller than even the moderate forecasts by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, let alone the catastrophic predictions driving much of the current discussion.

An ordained Baptist pastor and former missionary teacher in Kenya, Christy is a voice to be reckoned with in the field. The award-winning and widely published climatologist was contributor or lead author on every major report of the IPCC and a co-author of the 2003 American Geophysical Union report, which, he said, made no claims “about disaster or catastrophe.”

Christy believes surface temperature data are biased upward by poor placement and maintenance of temperature stations. Satellites and weather balloons give more reliable results–showing much less warming. He also points out that computer models, like those done by NASA scientist and leading global warming alarmist James Hansen, have grossly overestimated the warming that’s occurred and should not be trusted for the future.

Asked whether we should still take action just in case the extreme models turn out right, he replied, “The solutions being offered don’t provide any detectable relief from this so-called catastrophe. Congress is now discussing an 80% reduction in U.S. greenhouse emissions by 2050. That’s basically the equivalent of building 1,000 new nuclear power plants all operating by 2020. Now I’m all in favor of nuclear energy, but that would affect the global temperature by only seven-hundredths of a degree by 2050 and fifteen hundredths by 2100.

“We wouldn’t even notice it.”