It grew out of a set of meetings last year that aimed at a more public process of assessment than most academy reports involve. (dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com)
Spencer does this by both mis - characterizing the recent National Academies Report on the subject which indeed pointed out that there are numerous lines of evidence for precisely this conclusion, and by completely ignoring the recently - released IPCC Fourth Assessment report, which draws the stronger conclusion that the warmth of recent decades is likely anomalous in at least the past 1300 years. (realclimate.org)
A 2005 U.S. National Academies report recommended increasing the number of scientists America produces, but not everyone agreed with their assessment (sciencemag.org)