Too Fat to Fly?; World Not Warming?
CHETRY: Back to the Most News in the Morning. Can you really be too fat to fly? The question people are asking after the news that film director Kevin Smith was thrown off of a Southwest Airlines flight because of his size. Smith has since launched a one-man assault against the airline with Twitter as his weapon of choice. CNN's Mary Snow is following developments for us.</s>MARY SNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT: John and Kiran, some are calling this a Twitter time bomb that's unleashed a debate over airline policies that are considered sensitive not in the forefront but need to be addressed, and Kevin Smith isn't shying away from it.</s>KEVIN SMITH, ACTOR/DIRECTOR: If I have to, I could fly one seat in Southwest.</s>SNOW: I'm aware.</s>SMITH: I just opt not to because it's way more comfortable, and I got enough money to do it.</s>SNOW: So who decides when someone is too big for one's seat? Basically the airlines. The FAA requires passengers to be able to sit with seat belts and both armrests down, but the airlines make the judgment call.</s>RICK SEANEY, CEO, FARECOMPARE.COM: I think they need to look at the policies really close and hopefully maybe get an agency to define it so that they are more transparent and somebody above the airlines who really don't want to touch it with a ten-foot pole can make the policy.</s>SNOW: But one group that does want to talk about is the Association for Airline Passengers Rights, an advocacy group. With more than one-third of Americans considered obese, Brandon Macsata advocates adding bigger seats in one row of the plane.</s>BRANDON MACSATA, ASSOC. FOR AIRLINE PASSENGER RIGHTS: This happens to people every single day. And we don't think it's the size of a person's rear-end, that's the issue. Rather, we think it should be the size of the seat.</s>SNOW: Southwest isn't alone in requiring larger passengers to purchase a second seat. Southwest says it will refund the passenger for that seat if the flight isn't fully booked -- John and Kiran.</s>CHETRY: Still ridiculous, though. The seats -- it's so cramped, right? I'm flying coach. It doesn't matter how big you are. You're -- you don't fit.</s>ROBERTS: Yes. I never find that the problem is this way, it's this way.</s>CHETRY: I know.</s>ROBERTS: You're knees are up here.</s>CHETRY: Exactly.</s>ROBERTS: Trying to eat your peanuts like this. The whole thing is...</s>CHETRY: If you've paid for them. Yes, you can eat your peanuts.</s>ROBERTS: I still get free peanuts.</s>CHETRY: You do?</s>ROBERTS: Yes.</s>CHETRY: They must really like you. Maybe -- maybe you have the gold card.</s>ROBERTS: I fly a lot, though.</s>CHETRY: Thirty minutes past the hour right now. It means it's time for other stories new this morning. The Taliban is now denying it, but U.S. officials tell CNN they've captured the Taliban's number two and that he's talking to investigators. Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar is said to have been nabbed several days ago in Karachi, Pakistan. Officials say are hoping that the capture will lead them to the Taliban's spiritual leader, Mullah Omar, or even give them clues as to the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. Rescue crews waiting for the sun to come up and the extreme conditions to wind down on Mount Saint Helens so they can go back in to try to rescue a hiker who fell 1,500 feet into the crater. They came within 15 feet of reaching the man yesterday, but because of the high winds and falling rocks, they had to turn back. Also, today, President Obama is turning his attention to you and your job. This morning, he's touring a training facility for electrical workers in Maryland and will also give a short speech on jobs in the energy sector. He's trying to get lawmakers on Capitol Hill to move quicker on a jobs bill. Right now, the national unemployment rate stands at 9.7 percent -- John.</s>ROBERTS: All right, Kiran. Last week's record snowfall is giving new ammunition to skeptics of global warming. Also heating up the debate, new research that raises doubts about a United Nations report that found that climate change is, quote, "unequivocal" and that man is to blame for it. John Christy is one of the researchers challenging the U.N.'s findings. He's a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama at Huntsville. He joins us now live this morning from Huntsville. John, great to see you this morning. Thanks so much for coming in.</s>JOHN CHRISTY, PROFESSOR, ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCE, UNIV. OF ALABAMA- HUNTSVILLE: Good morning.</s>ROBERTS: Let's talk first of all about what we see now. The record amounts of snowfall that we're seeing in places like Washington, D.C., other parts of the Mid-Atlantic region, snowing this morning here in New York City. Skeptics are saying, OK, where's the global warming since there's all this snow? Supporters of global warming are saying, hey, it's a change in weather patterns, we're seeing more severe snow. At the same time, we had the warmest January in 30 years. What's going on?</s>CHRISTY: Well, blizzards, droughts, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes -- when you look at the long-term record, those things are not changing at all in terms of the long term. And so, they've happened before, and they will happen again. It's really not an indication that climate is changing in terms of man causing any of these things.</s>ROBERTS: Right. So, you think that this is all part of a natural cycle? Are you one of the people that's in that camp?</s>CHRISTY: Well, I'm one of the people that looks very hard at data. I actually build these data sets from scratch. And we simply don't see any long-term changes in these kinds of events.</s>ROBERTS: You know, we mentioned the intergovernmental panel on climate change, the United Nations report in 2007, which said that climate change, global warming is, quote, "unequivocal" and also stated that man is to blame for most if not all of it. You were a lead author on a 2001 IPCC report. So, you've been involved in the whole process. When you look at that 2007 report, you are now saying that the data that was used to build this consensus in this report is flawed. What's wrong with it?</s>CHRISTY: Well, I wasn't saying the data are flawed, they're just being misinterpreted. The surface temperatures that show the warming, they're telling us that something is warming but not because of the greenhouse effect by and large. What we find is that it's the development of the surface by human habitation and building of farms and so on like this that really is affecting the temperature record, not the greenhouse effect.</s>ROBERTS: So, you're saying that, I guess, since the 1800s when they really started looking very closely at this, that development has changed the temperature readings that we get on the surface, but that's not an indication that the climate is actually changing?</s>CHRISTY: No. That kind of measurement doesn't really tell us about the greenhouse effect about human-caused climate change of the global atmosphere. You want to look at other kinds of indicators like the temperature of the deep layer of the atmosphere, say the lowest 30,000 feet of the atmosphere.</s>ROBERTS: So, what you do is you use satellites to measure that distance between the earth's surface and the height of about 30,000 feet to read temperatures as opposed to reporting from surface stations? How do -- how does that differ in terms of the data set?</s>CHRISTY: Well, because we're looking at the deep layer of the atmosphere, we're not contaminated by the buildings and roads and farms, and so on, that are built at the surface. And so, we see a true picture of what the global bulk atmosphere is doing. It is warming in the past 30 years, but that rate is quite a bit less than what climate models are indicating, and so that the greenhouse effect, as we understand it, is overstated, I think, in the IPCC report.</s>ROBERTS: So, what -- but if you talk to people like Michael Mann, climate researcher of Penn State University, the man who is responsible for the so-called "hockey stick" graph, that shows temperatures fairly steady throughout the last, oh, I guess, 800, 900 years, and then suddenly increasing the middle of last century. He says scientists are taking into this account this development. They're ruling it out. They're adjusting for it -- and that what you're saying just isn't the case.</s>CHRISTY: Well, I beg to differ. My publications specifically show that these things are not taken into account. And in terms of the hockey stick, I was the lead author with Mike back in 2001. And I complained about that quite a bit. And it turns out that my complaints were really founded because the information used in that is not really good for taking temperatures over 1,000 years.</s>ROBERTS: There's also something else that's out there. Phil Jones from the University of East Anglia, the climate research unit, the guy that was at the center of this recent e-mail controversy late last year, has said in an interview with the BBC that he has not seen any, quote, "statistically significant warming since 1995," though he says he still believes that the earth's temperature has warmed. And he also said that he might be missing some of the data that is responsible for his climate models. Of course, skeptics are jumping all over this, saying the whole thing is a farce. Global warming doesn't exist. What do you think of the Professor Jones situation, the lack of statistically significant warming, and the fact that he may have misplaced some of the records?</s>CHRISTY: Well, I think what Phil Jones is saying is that Mother Nature is perfectly capable of making the temperature rise and fall through the past several hundred years. And in terms of the data problems, well, we do have to be careful when we're talking about public policy, that means trillions of dollars, and we haven't had that very hard and critical situation where you take care of data and make it publicly available to everyone. And that needs to be done now.</s>ROBERTS: So, Jeff, final point here. Who's in control of the global temperature, man or Mother Nature?</s>CHRISTY: Well, I think Mother Nature is mostly in charge. And she is -- she's showing us what she can do this winter, that's for sure.</s>ROBERTS: All right. John Christy from the University of Alabama at Huntsville -- good to catch up with you this morning. Another voice in the debate here this morning about global climate change -- appreciate your time, sir. Good to talk to you.</s>CHRISTY: Thank you.</s>ROBERTS: All right. And we got 38 minutes after the hour. Stay with us.