The Global Warming hearing today on C-SPAN included Dr. Richard Lindzen, Dr Judth Curry, Dr. Pat Michaels, Dr. Ben Santer, and Dr. Heidi Cullen, among others. Many didn’t get a chance to watch (to see if Ben Santer “beat the crap out of Pat Michaels“) but we have the video here.
C-SPAN: House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment heard from a dozen witnesses about how the public and private sectors are approaching climate change. Washington, DC : 3 hr. 47 min.
It is now online and can be watched in full at this link:
h/t to WUWT reader Rational Debate
RADM Titley’s testimony was quite disappointing. He seems to be in the camp forecasting the imminent loss of the polar icecap. He also insists the polar ice volume has decreased in an extent to support his conclusion the polar ice cap will soon melt and leave open water for navigation.
This indicates the reason for the change in the U.S. Congress: click
Hmm.. was paying more attention to …
HR 6416: The American Traveler Dignity Act
http://dailypaul.com/node/149693
Senate Bill S 510 Food Safety Modernization Act
http://naturalnews.com/030418_Food_Safety_Modernization_Act_seeds.html
Hum…. I can’t tell when Anthony posted this one, but I’d submitted it to tips & notes at 7:11 pm pacific and first comment here showing as 8:25. Do I get my first h/t, or should I be embarrassed that you’d found and posted it before I’d submitted and I didn’t realize it? :0)
REPLY: Most definitely you are the first to post it in Tips and Notes, so certainly you deserve a h/t – Anthony
Congreessman Baird has expressed his disdain for the blogosphere and its comments. Let’s review the testimonies line by line and record our evaluations.
This is this Congress’ last hurrah, you can bet the tone will be different next session.
And mostly to the better.
I watched much of it. [Santer, unlike the others, seemed very much on-edge; something to do with being seated next to Michaels?]
I thought the token critics got short shrift. Their was too much grandstanding by some committee members rather than an honest attempt to ‘debate’ the science.
The talk of ‘mitigation’ needs to be held up to the light with questions like, “If the US shut down completely, what effect would that have on climate change?”
[I would not take the admiral’s comments as ‘forecasting the imminent loss of the polar icecap.’ His remarks were to the probablility, in his view, of navigable waters during the summers.]
re:
Ah, the little pleasures in life! My first WUWT h/t. Thanks Anthony! :0)
Welcome to political hype.
This is the last chance that this House Subcommittee can trot out its favorite AGW promoters to create a new record on AGW scares and to congratulate each other lame duck Congressmen, for their great achievements during their rein. This format allows only one in four of the presenters to be independent and thus, in sum, appear unstable and over ruled by more knowledgeable scientists. Once again judged by the volume of debate versus its scientific value. Their cumulative ignorance is overwhelming, as is their hubris.
This is politics, not science.
Waste of f–kin’ time.
It saddens me to find that in order to get news about AGW and the alarmist agenda one has to wade through comments by people who think Ron Paul is sane, Sarah Palin is smart and the Tea Party represents “conservative thinking”.
Oh, well. No blog is perfect.
Inglis can’t even count What a [/snip]!
[Less spice on our words OK? Thanks… bl57~mod]
Dr Lindzen is the real life Dr Spock absolutely Logical without bias, emotion and alternative agenda A real scientist!.
Did Dr Cicerone say that the increase in atmo CO2 was 85% FF and 15% deforestation?
Not too scientific.
Dr Meehl WHAT ! so the Neanderthals are responsible for the Global Warming,
CO2 is everywhere YEAH right Parts PER MILLION What a Shill!.
Mark Twang says:
November 17, 2010 at 10:31 pm
Perhaps Climate Audit will work better for you.
RADM Tetley was saying the probability of open waters in the Arctic lasting weeks by 2030 and months by 2100 is “likely.”
Twang –
Ron Paul is 50% brilliant and 50% bat-guano crazy. Palin is brighter than 80% of those in government but – most importantly – she is not of the urban-ivy-league cognoscenti that drives so much of the disastrous policy agenda under which this country’s been suffocating. And the Tea Party folks represent a lot of things, some good, some bad, but if they at least kneecap the spenders of both parties in DC they’ll have done this country a great service.
But, of course, none of that’s really germane to this discussion. What is relevant is to note, relative to these hearings and the impending change of makeup of the Congress, is that one party is now for the most part a hostile place for a politician to be a warmist, while the other has become largely the party of those large urban pockets that still embrace warmism and still elect things like Henry Waxman.
It would be nice to be able to discuss the science, but an honest discussion would mean starting from square one and talking about data quality, which is something for which the AGW boosters have little enthusiasm.
Turned it off when Heidi Cullen (seriously?) said we should start taking global warming seriously because Warren Buffet says we should. Really?
Admittedly I only watched a half hour or so but when the pro-AGW guys stressed that that we’ve warmed in the past couple hundred years and that was somehow significant (Little Ice Age anyone?) as showing proof of manmade climate change I decided to go to bed.
@ Mark Twang. Ron Paul is sane and the best politician in the US. Palin is a clown but has a better grasp of climate than Gore. The tea party was first hijacked by democrats before the republicans moved in, being corrupted by two evil entities no less.
Although, I agree with you on WUWT. It is one of the best climate sites on the internet.
The basic science shows that phlogiston** is real and anyone who denies the reality of phlogiston just because there are a few anomalous results is flying in the face of the overwhelming scientific consensus.
**Phlogiston was the theory that burning involved the giving out of a substance called phlogiston rather than the absorption of oxygen and it was the prevalent scientific theory before careful experimentation showed the accepted science to be wrong.
re: post by: Mark Twang says: November 17, 2010 at 10:31 pm
Hum… well, let’s see, since no one on this comment thread even mentioned Sarah Palin, Ron Paul, the Tea Party, or conservative thinking, it would appear that what we’re all having to wade thru is your utterly off topic post. And now my reply to it.
“98 doctors agree on the way to treat the patient is this and 2 disagree” …
OK … I admit it, the doctors must be right … they are always right.
Like on the way to treat the swine flu pandemic, or the need to treat the common cold by paying them to tell us to go away and stop moaning or the way to treat childbirth is to let the doctors be in charge because midwives are rubbish, the way to treat the world economy is to put doctors in charge because most doctors think they could do a better job.
Let’s hand everything to the doctors because doctors believe everything is an illness needing treating by them!
I thought UK politicians were bad, but at least they don’t treat people like children like your politicians do!
Go on Twang – take up JEM’s little challenge:
Square 1: Data Quality –
Unimpeachable? Farcical?
What?
http://judithcurry.com/2010/11/17/uncertainty-gets-a-seat-at-the-big-table-part-iv/
Ah, I think I know what your problem is. You must be starting at the bottom of the thread and proceeding backwards from the Comments to the Article! Start at the top next time! 😉
TEA Parties. Taxed Enough Already. Note the plural because ‘it’ is not ‘a’ party at all.
What term did you have in mind then? Liberal/Progressive/Socialist/Communist? I recommend ditching the relative term Conservative and sticking with something like Constitutionalist, but if some comfortable familiar term is required I would say that Jeffersonian is the nearest descriptor that covers the folks I have dealt with and follow online (although personally I have long thought that resurrecting the Democratic-Republican party would solve many of the issues associated with current party politics, and as a bonus it would cause massive exploding head syndrome to the current faithful worshippers of either existing party).
P.S. Are you not Taxed Enough Already? 40 to 50% is not enough? You can pay more. Move to NY or CA for example. You can even write a check to the IRS and give them all your money.
[You did not start this track, but, for everyone. The TOPIC is: The House Hearing on Global Warming today. Lets try to stick with that and avoid the off-topic political spit-ball contests… K? .. bl57~mod]
OK. Done here.
Thank you, Dr Lindzen, for being the true scientist who answers loaded questions with straight answers. I would find it hard to maintain composure after an opening that invites the audience to feel that 98% of doctors are on side and 2% represent the minority. That opening was plain crooked.
Palin is brighter than 80% of those in government but – most importantly – she is not of the urban-ivy-league cognoscenti that drives so much of the disastrous policy agenda under which this country’s been suffocating.
I am an urban ivy leaguer. NYC, M.A., Columbia University.
If they spent a tenth the effort trying to make their students smart as they spend trying to make their students think everyone else is dumb . . .
(Well, I got better.)
Well that was some marathon to listen to 3 hours and 47 minutes, and at some time I made a note “god help America” if that is the the quality of those that make decisions on your behalf. You had a chairman that from the outset made it well understood what side he was on rather than exercise impartiality, and the treatment of Lindzen was quite different to the establishment. There was little attempt at balance and the ocean acidification expert could make huge generalised “its fact statements” continually well knowing that there was no other opinion but his coming before the committee.
I felt Pat Michaels did well to contain himself maintaining his dignity, in the face of the way the questioning was conducted, hardly a scientific process, no wonder Ben Santer was nervous but gained confidence with the progress of the proceeding.
Judith Curry spoke well, but let down a bit with the company and the end of debate attitude of the chairman. I know that HUD comes in for some criticism, but James Lopez seemed the most practical organisation in embracing adaptive planning for climate, events that may be in the future, much better than the biologist Mr Gear who was enthusiastic and attracted the attention of the chairman with his embracing of the actual effects of climate change, but loses something as you know his lobby is wanting -send more money with 1 to 3 billion needed for us hunters and fishers etc.
Not a very scientific event – not much interest in purity of science, guesswork and rhetoric will do.
Sorry guys, you might have got more joy out of that fest!! I felt the establishment science (AGW consensus) were pretty smug in the way others were treated.
Only one bright light was the oblique reference to getting better and more open data and a single data reference point, but not if the records are skewed by manipulation.
More Ron Paul Info;
Ron Paul: A New Hope
[/snip]
[Link removed. Stop with the OFF-TOPIC spamming with videos. … bl57~mod]
Better link to RP.
[/snip]
[Link removed. Stop with the OFF-TOPIC spamming with videos. … bl57~mod]
That would almost make you Obama’s classmate…???
I watched every minute of this “hearing”. None of my questions were addressed. The hearing was fully choreographed by the warmists. It was damage control due to public distrust of climate scientists since Climategate and their revealed information for policy makers . There was a strong shift from AGW to “we need to end our dependence on fossil fuels, whether climate science is accurate or not.” Curry discussed briefly the need to make data available to citizen scientists.
The biologist mentioned that hunters and fishers were a good source of information in the field. He was inaccurate about the tolerance of rainbow trout to water temperatures. Having fished for over 50 years and lived on a river for 20, I know the temperature range trout tolerate well is between the low 50s and high 60s. Contrary to what he said, a one degree change will not decimate them or cause spawning problems. Brook trout and browns tolerate water temperatures to the low 70s. Planted fish in trucks with water that is several degrees warmer or cooler than that of a river or lake, will die in minutes. In California, our DFG found that out one summer after killing thousands of plants. Why they didn’t know that would happen is a mystery to me. Oxygen and nitrogen levels in the water also have a huge impact, which he did not discuss.
I just couldn’t get over the whole tipping point analogy, with the baby pushing the car over the precipice. If you’re *really* at a tipping point, then frankly, nothing you possibly do will stop it, since there’s enough small change in the system that even if the baby started *pulling* the car, the baby would be overwhelmed by some other force that just decided to push the car over the cliff.
The constant drivel about how there are plenty of good reasons to advocate the same anti-CO2 policies without actually having the science settled also rang hollow -> reducing dependence on foreign oil by making our own energy more expensive only moves industry to the countries that continue to use the cheap energy, draining our economy at the expense of other countries that will continue to grow. The whole peak *whatever* problem solves itself in the most efficient way, all by itself – things finally get too expensive all on their own. Imagining that simple agreement on the problems means we must also all agree on the solutions is pure political grandstanding.
This hearing surely proves that the debate was not even close from beeing over.
Before startig the presentation, every person has to be asked the following questions:
– to the warmers:
If the problem of global warming would would be proven to be an absolute non problem, would you or your employer, university etc. or yourself lose any grants, payments, subsidies etc.?
– to the sceptics:
If the problem of global warming would would be proven to be absolute catastrophic, would you or your employer, university etc. or yourself lose any grants, payments, subsidies etc.? Do you get payment from any oil or oil relatet company??
Mikw Haseler, you owe me a keyboard clean! Your thinking that poltiticians here in the UK made burst out laughing with a mouthful of coffee, with predictable effects.
When I arrived here in the UK from NZ to spend my final years in the profession teaching in Comprehensive ( state high) schools a few years ago, my first discovery was that the politicians in charge of the Education portfolio at the time had no idea that half of all populations must be below average on any measure, and the other half must be above average. This led me to investigate the school examination system there and found that if the government of the day were raising livestock, they believed that weighing an animal every day makes it grow quicker.
I watched as much as I could of the first session of the enquiry without venting my frustration; American politicians seem pretty much like those from anywhere else and defintely don’t have a corner on stupidity, venality, self-interest or just plain old irritating, but they do have their share of all of the above. Dr Lindzen impressed, no-one else did and the chair made his astounding bias against CO2 quite clear from the outset. Did I miss something important?
Sorry about the typos, Mods – old, thick, clumsy fingers have done again!
Heidi Cullen seems to be the person in the debate class that talks a lot with no substance. She reminds me of Nancy Pelosi.
Sounds like a wasted four hours of my life, when I can guess the plot of the film and the out come I generally don’t bother watching it as sticking to script can be boring.
I thought the politics was summed up with the suggestion by the politician that the scientists should lie about the science and allow the three groups to link arms and drag the stupid public along with their energy suicide pact…. And then his colleague tried to save him by suggesting that is not what he meant… Please, your true colors couldn’t be clearer.
Dr. Richard Lindzen pure class.
So I’m already tired of watching. It’s turning out to be worse than I thought. In particular it was just great that when Richard Lindzen tried to explain something a politician said he wasn’t interested in hearing it.
The deck was stacked in this hearing. The most competent man in the room, Richard Lindzen, was marginalized. But that can be expected with the current crop of politicians. This hearing was probably a last ditch effort before politicians just elected are sworn in and the game is changed.
Mike Haseler 12:16
“I thought UK politicians were bad, but at least they don’t treat people like children like your politicians do.”
Try writing to your MP about about your concerns that the AGW theory might not be all it’s cracked up to be, and see what patronising twaddle you get back. Best wishes, Dave.
Laurie wrote: “There was a strong shift from AGW to “we need to end our dependence on fossil fuels, whether climate science is accurate or not.”
Did anyone else catch the Old NYTimes story on energy? “There Will Be Fuel”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/business/energy-environment/17FUEL.html?
It concludes wit the thoughts of an energy analyst at Credit Suisse: “When you add it up,” Mr. Morse noted, “you get something that very closely approximates energy independence [for the US].”
The politicians seem a little behind the learning curve – again.
Alexander K says:
November 18, 2010 at 2:52 am
“When I arrived here in the UK from NZ to spend my final years in the profession teaching in Comprehensive ( state high) schools a few years ago, my first discovery was that the politicians in charge of the Education portfolio at the time had no idea that half of all populations must be below average on any measure, and the other half must be above average. ”
Alexander,
It is rare in human behaviour that half the population is above average and half is below average. What you are describing is the median. Granted, sometimes the two are the same.
Congressman Baird and the others just blinked and handed you a huge opportunity to make a difference in this controversy. Heretofor, their policy was to deny skeptics of Global Warming, Climate Change, Climate Disruption or so forth any access to government or other opportunity to debate the existence of the phenomena in their own forums. Here and now they have inadvertently cracked the door open ever so slightly because of their confidence in their ability to stifle skeptical arguments. Cicerone, Santer, and others have gone on the Congressional with their testimonies. You now have a golden opportunity to demonstrate that the blogosphere, which they deem to be too vulgar and unworthy, is capable of rising to their challenge and contribute some worthy science and scientific debate in the form a public review of their testimonies in this Congressional Hearing.
The first step is to extract the key statements from the transcripts and undertake a collaborative public review of their validity or lack thereof.
Ref – D. Patterson says:
November 17, 2010 at 8:25 pm
“RADM Titley’s testimony was quite disappointing…”
____________________
Frankly, it was DOD tripe! (aka “Don’t Make Waves”.)
Ref – Policyguy says:
November 17, 2010 at 10:00 pm
“Welcome to political hype…. This is politics, not science.”
__________________
Some call it Political Science;-)
Ref – Mauibrad says:
November 17, 2010 at 10:26 pm
“Waste of f–kin’ time.”
___________________
Not to mention all that Chinese money for TDY and 1001 other things.
Ref – Freddie says:
November 18, 2010 at 2:49 am
“This hearing surely proves that the debate was not even close from beeing over….”
_________________
When the Chair put the gavel down at the end of the hearing the ‘debate’ was over. AGW is dead in the US Congress.
Dr Ciccerone stated, “The amounts of ice residing on land formations in Greenland and Antarctica are now being measured by independent instruments, vertical ranging devices on Earth-orbiting satellites, as well as instruments which measure the deviations of the Earth’s gravitational field from that of a perfect sphere and the rate at which those deviations are changing. In other words, the data from this instrument can be used to infer the rate of change of ice mass over those continents. Both kinds of data now show that over the last perhaps seven or eight years, that is the entire record of the measurements, that the masses of ice lodged on Greenland and Antarctica are both decreasing with time with a possibly accelerating rate.”
Your postings have shown that ice in Antarctica has been increasing. Is Dr. Ciccerone misrepresenting the issue or is he using selective data to show his point? Dr. Lindzen showed a chart showing ice in the southern hemisphere increasing, which. Who is correct?
The farcical presentation on ocean acidification contained so many half truhts and misconceptions that it was basically worthless.
I watched some of it. But turned the sound off so as not to be distracted. Most of the participants seemed fairly well dressed and coiffed. I did notice an awful lot of paper (deforestation), and quite a few of those plastic (petroleum based )water bottles, which I doubt will be recycled. And of course the lighting and other electrical equipment in use was probably in the megawatt range.
Anthony contributed an addendum to the following earlier post you may findd helpful. The ice mass balancs have been derived from gravity measurements by the GRACE satellites. Despite representation of the accuracy of the GRACE measurements, there do seem to be some problems with their accuracies.
GRACE under fire
Posted on September 6, 2010 by Anthony Watts
Question:
Simply can anyone explain why alarmism about a real or imagined threat has been based on TOY climate models? -And why humans beleive a computer?
Total Brainwashing, um sorry.
Alarmism is excessive or exaggerated.
IR absorbers depend on the number of atoms in the molecule?????? (CO2 has 3…..)
Dipole moments indeed! Lindzen schooled them and for PhDs, they clearly meant Piled higher and Deeper….
Also see:
Arctic Temperatures and Ice – Why it is Natural Variability
Posted on November 1, 2010 by Anthony Watts
By Joe D’Aleo, CCM
If those Alaskan glacirs are expanding for the first time in recordedd history, what has been the most recent effect upon the Greenland glaciers?
Mark Twang says:
November 17, 2010 at 10:31 pm
It saddens me to find that in order to get news about AGW and the alarmist agenda one has to wade through comments by people who think Ron Paul is sane, Sarah Palin is smart and the Tea Party represents “conservative thinking”.
Oh, well. No blog is perfect.
=======================================================
Well Mark, you sadden the rest of us.
It says a lot about someone when they mention Paul and Palin, the Tea Party etc
yet fail to mention Biden, Pelosi, Reid, Clinton, Kerry, Obama, socialists, etc
Listening to the anecdote at the very made me laugh. Having done a lot of hiking with topo maps and compasses, he obviously had no idea what he was talking about.
I wonder how the other people from that hike feel about him saying he saved everyone and how dumb they were.
With the exception of Michaels, Lindzen, and Curry, the rest boiled down to content-free delivery. Lots of “language”, little information, no knowledge.
I just watched the video.
In a first response I have two main comments and a few remarks:
Three major assessments have not been countered:
1. The alarmist report about our fossil fuel reserves from one of the Committee
Members (forgot his name but he was away for the Chevy Volt Presentation)
I have read other reports that sketch a totally different picture of our oil reserves.
Besides that we still have large amounts of shale gas, natural gas and coal to produce liquid fuels for a long time after oil (if ever) runs out. (abiotic origin of oil)
2. His assessment that we have to make a massive switch to electric cars.
If he thinks oil is a scarce commodity, wait what happens if we are going to produce electric cars in the millions. We simply don’t have the resources to pull that off, at least at acceptable prices.
3. The alarmist story about ocean acidification (Second expert round).
The guy spend a lot of time on the subject and the amount of hubris he spilled was mind boggling.
Lindzen left points to score when they talked about the ice caps and ocean level rise
a. without once mentioning the PDO/AMO/SO/ENSO cycles La Ninja and El Ninjo.
b. highly important for the discussion, the fact that the rate of warming when the previous cold period came to an end happened at the same rate as the latest warm period, just to debunk the “unprecedented
warming rate, ice melt and sea level rise as presented by the warmists at the table.
Yes, he told the commission there was no significant warming to be expected in the future but the opportunity to score went by.
I have missed Lord Monckton
What our side lacked was the “killer instinct” of Lord Monckton.
Nobody is safe for him and he wouldn’t have let them get away with so many false statements as the warmists did during this hearing.
No one challenged Lindzen’s data that outgoing radiation at top of atmosphere has increased whereas by AGW models with positive feedbacks it should decrease. Why no challenge? This sounds a pretty fundamental observation.
I listened to the first two panels. The last one seemed to be about commercial impact. Lindzen was by far the best witness there. Not because he was a skeptic. But because he was reasonable. The others were all trying to prove their own beliefs. Lindzen was taking a more precautionary approach toward interpretation of data.
I found that the other skeptics, as well as the skeptic on the committee, did not help anything. But no one was a bad as the alarmist lady on the second panel. Every time she spoke, I burst out laughing. Actually, the entire second panel was pretty bad. I just can’t really decide overall. Santer, the guy about ocean acidification or the ex weatherperson lady. That entire panel was a train wreck.
I was taken aback at how the committee seemed surprised at Lindzen’s assertion that catastrophic global warming can’t happen with CO2 alone. It’s the forcings and feedbacks that would cause it according to the models. How do they not know this?
Also, the chairman and his overly admiring friend sitting next to him were all about getting info that supported what they believed. It was appalling and disgusting behaviour.
bobbyj0708 says:
November 17, 2010 at 11:41 pm
“Turned it off when Heidi Cullen (seriously?) said we should start taking global warming seriously because Warren Buffet says we should. Really?”
Warren Buffet is buying up Munich Re shares since the deep point of the stock markets; the Munich Re is very active in pushing the IPCC agenda and one of the biggest fearmongers in Germany – fear enables rate hikes. Buffet has an agenda or at least a massive conflict of interest.
A positive feedback doesn’t mean that the radiation at TOA will decrease as the earth warms.
It will still decrease.
A positive feedback only means that the rate of decrease will be slower.
Well that was 3 hours of my life I’ll never get back.
I was impressed with Doctor Curry’s testimony (about the only brutally honest warmist testimony I heard). She just seems disgusted with the whole process and knows we don’t we don’t know enough to be making policy decisions at this point in time. As I recall it was she who made the point that China stands to benefit from global warming so they don’t give a fig about CO2 and that the only thing China is worried about are real pollutants that are poisoning their land, air, and water.
One of the congressman, a warmist, made a very good point. He admitted the most pressing problem is liquid fuels and he’s right. The United States absolutely needs an source of liquid fuel (eventually) to replace imported oil. There’s no way around it. I think he gave short shrift to biomass potential because he doesn’t understand the potential for GM organisms designed to sustainably produce liquid fuels in marginal environments. He also made the point that nothing in the aviation transportation sector can fly with electric motors.
What no one said was that imported liquid fossil fuels are the proverbial goose that lays the golden eggs. We need one of those eggs to be the technology that eliminates or at least drastically reduces the need for imported fossil fuels in the interest of national security and global competitiveness. All the proposals from the alarmists involve strangling the goose that lays the golden eggs before she’s had a chance to lay an egg that will hatch into another golden goose. We need our extant goose to be laying as many eggs as she can until we’ve hatched the one that can replace her.
Mark Twang says:
November 17, 2010 at 10:31 pm
You don’t have to read the comments–nobody is forcing you to do so, Mr. Twang. And certainly I wouldn’t recommend making biased, unfactual statements like yours.
While I can’t vouch for the sanity of Ron Paul or the intelligence quotient of Sarah Palin, I would much rather have people like these whom I believe to be honest and aggressive in rooting out corruption rather than someone like Charlie Rangle who is “smart” and a lier/thief/tax evader. But regarding Tea Party members, I can vouch for their character and their identity as true, US-constitutional conservatives, for I am one. And very proud of it.
I’d suggest you quit drinking the Kool Aid over at the DNC and do some original research.
I also thought Curry mentioning unintended consquences of rash policy decisions based on highly uncertain science.
She’s dead right. If we’re to believe some of the warmists who attribute the global cooling in the mid-20th century to sulfate emissions then it follows that an unintended consquence of limiting sulfate emissions is the cause of global warming. In the act of doing good we just leapt from the frying pan into the fire. A simple fix for global warming (if warming is an overal bad thing which is another discussion and one that should have had its own panel) would be to remove the sulfate filters that might have been rashly or excessively installed when acid rain and global cooling was the source of fear 40 years ago. That wouldn’t cost anything to do and would in fact be an economic benefit as those filters cost money to install and maintain. A hallmark of rash decisions is they often do more harm than good. Good for Curry to understand that. I’m heartened that there were a few pearls of wisdom brought to light.
One thing’s for sure and that was made evident by panel testimony – very little of the science is “settled”. Science isn’t “settled” by the weight of the scientists. It’s settled by the weight of the evidence and it only takes one scientist who happens to be weighing it correctly. As Albert Einstein remarked when 100 scientists joined to say his theories were wrong “If it were wrong it would only take one scientist to prove it”. When scientists start talking about consensus they are employing a logical fallacy (ad populum – appeal the the majority) to give weight to something which cannot stand on its own merit.
Wait’ll next year. (I hope.)
Well I watched the first panel of four explain the science. The only one I would pay a brass razoo to; to teach my kid anything about any kind of science would be Prof Lindzen. That’s a somewhat unscientific conclusion based entirely on the five minute dissertations of each; and the first couple of questions I heard the Chairman ask.
My first thought ; which included the members of the comittee who spoke, and the four members of the panel who spoke, is; are all of these people ESL students ? The Chairman could have brought in any reasonably intelligent fifth grader to simply read the papers that the committee members and the panel members read; and saved everybody a whole lot of money.
But I notice that seems to be a characteristic of C-SPAN presentations; we have a Congress full of people who don’t speak English well enough, to talk for five minutes without a paper or a teleprompter in front of them.
I got the feeling that Prof Lindzen figured out right from the start; that he was being ambushed by a bunch of boobs; and that he was simply trying to restrain himself.
Now Heidi, I’m sure could easily carry on a lively conversation with Paris Hilton; well so long as they gave her plenty of room to wave her hands around; but at least she could just talk; despite the fact that there was virtually no intelligence being conveyed.
Lindzen tried to make the point that the effect of cloud changes is vastly greater than the effect of CO2 changes; but that just went in one ear and out the other for all the rest of the participants. He did manage to get out the mandatory IPCC 3:1 “Climate sensitivity” uncertainty (+/- 50%) from 1.5 to 4.5 deg C.
Each of the four science panel members gave a totally different figure for the amount of warming over the last 50, 100, 150 years or whatever; and nobody called them on it.
And in particular nobody bothered to mention that that small 0.75 deg C in the last 100 yrs (Lindzen’s figure) is entirely inconsequential compared to a daily global spread of Temperature that is about 120 deg C on average, and can be as much as 150 deg C spread; and that whole range could occur simultaneously on earth on a typical midsummer (northern) day.
And if you were to join that daily low point (say somewhere in the Vostok highlands of Antarctica) to the daily high point (maybe a mid desert spot in Libya or Saudi Arabia) by a line; that’s ANY line, or ANY curve; somewhere along that line or curve you will find a spot that has a Temperature, at any Temperature you want to pick between the extreme high and the extreme low end points.
That means there are A WHOLE LOT OF PLACES with Temperatures wildly different from some mundane mean of about + 15 deg C each and every day of the year; and life goes on without any concern for that.
I thought the whole session was one gigantic farce; and if they can’t pick up the pace next year in a Republican dominated House Committee then the voters shoud sharpen up their brooms and get them ready to sweep a bunch more dunderheads out of the way. I don’t give a rat’s what party they belong to; if they are incompetent then get them the hell out of there.
Mr. Inglis said one true thing: that these hearings will be difficult ones for climate scientists in the upcoming Congress (but not for the reasons he thinks). He tells them, “but don’t come defensively”, but to “welcome them as fabulous opportunities to teach”, and to say “I’m glad you’re giving me an opportunity to explain the science of climate change”, and “I’m happy to educate you”, and that they should then “lead a tutorial for folks that are skeptics”.
Really? The man gives the word “hubris” new meaning.
He is also very glad that this will all be “on the record”, so that our children and grandchildren will be able to read it.
Yes indeed, only they won’t see what he in his koolaid deluded mind thinks they will see.
Thankfully that hack Rep. Inglis got blown out of his primary.
He talks about listening to only those with climate science credentials. Does he not realize the credentials of Dr. Lindzen and Dr. Michaels?
Richard S. Lindzen, A.B. Physics Magna Cum Laude, Harvard University (1960), S.M. Applied Mathematics, Harvard University (1961), Ph.D. Applied Mathematics, Harvard University (1964), Research Associate in Meteorology, University of Washington (1964-1965), NATO Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Institute for Theoretical Meteorology, University of Oslo (1965-1966), Research Scientist, National Center for Atmospheric Research (1966-1967), Visiting Lecturer in Meteorology, UCLA (1967), NCAR Outstanding Publication Award (1967), AMS Meisinger Award (1968), Associate Professor and Professor of Meteorology, University of Chicago (1968-1972), Summer Lecturer, NCAR Colloquium (1968, 1972, 1978), AGU Macelwane Award (1969), Visiting Professor, Department of Environmental Sciences, Tel Aviv University (1969), Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship (1970-1976), Gordon McKay Professor of Dynamic Meteorology, Harvard University (1972-1983), Visiting Professor of Dynamic Meteorology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1975), Lady Davis Visiting Professor, Department of Meteorology, The Hebrew University (1979), Director, Center for Earth and Planetary Physics, Harvard University (1980-1983), Robert P. Burden Professor of Dynamical Meteorology, Harvard University (1982-1983), AMS Charney Award (1985), Vikram Amblal Sarabhai Professor, Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, India (1985), Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science Fellowship (1986-1987), Distinguished Visiting Scientist, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA (1988-Present), Sackler Visiting Professor, Tel Aviv University (1992), Landsdowne Lecturer, University of Victoria (1993), Bernhard Haurwitz Memorial Lecturer, American Meteorological Society (1997), Fellow, American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Fellow, American Geophysical Union, Fellow, American Meteorological Society, Member, Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, Member, Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society, Member, National Academy of Sciences, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology, Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1983-Present), Lead Author, IPCC (2001)
Patrick J. Michaels, A.B. Biological Sciences, University of Chicago (1971), S.M. Biology, University of Chicago (1975), Ph.D. Ecological Climatology, University of Wisconsin-Madison (1979), Research and Project Assistant, Center for Climatic Research, University of Wisconsin (1976-1979), Assistant Professor of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia (1980-1986), Virginia State Climatologist (1980-2007), President, Central Virginia Chapter, American Meteorological Society (1986-1987), Executive Board, American Association of State Climatologists (1986-1989), Associate Professor of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia (1986-1995), President, American Association of State Climatologists (1987-1988), Chair, Committee on Applied Climatology, American Meteorological Society (1988-1999), Senior Fellow in Environmental Studies, Cato Institute (1992-Present), Visiting Scientist, Marshall Institute (1996-Present), Member, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Member, Association of American Geographers, Member, Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society, Professor of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia (1996-Present), Contributor and Expert Reviewer, IPCC (1990, 1992, 1995, 2001, 2007)
WHAT A WHOLE BIG LINE OF C R A P!
Really: C R A P.
I wasted FOUR hours of my life listening to a PACK OF AGW JERKS!
Geez!
Each panel was STACKED with 50% MORE liars than the last.
Is that considered ‘balance’?
BAH!
I had no idea there were two Subcommittees on Energy and Environment. Why did the Republicans allow Rep. Inglis and Rep. Bartlett on this committee? Those two have to be the absolute worst choices for a committee dealing with such prominent scientific issues. Inglis is clueless and Bartlett is a peak oil fanatic. I don’t get it why they are there.
Santer was nervous to the point of incoherence. His response to Michaels’ criticism of his 1998 paper was pitiful – and I would bet inaccurate wrt the change in dates of the period for which the data was analyzed. With Lindzen and Curry as the notable exceptions, all I could think of was pigs at a trough – the taxpayers’ trough.
Myth: The World is Running Out of Oil (Video) (5min) (ABC News)
If we do at some time the future, markets will determine what is the most economically viable on their own. As the price of oil rises, once it surpasses the next most economically viable liquid fuel, that will be adopted on it’s own. There was no peak whale oil crisis.
I think he gave short shrift to biomass potential because he doesn’t understand the potential for GM organisms designed to sustainably produce liquid fuels in marginal environments.
Any realistic potential investors will capitalize on, the fact that they are not is because these fuels have not been shown to be economically viable and cannot compete with oil.
This nonsense, nothing and I mean nothing can replace the energy density and efficiency from foreign sources of oil like Saudi Arabia. No such magic energy sources exists. Global Competitiveness means large quantities of economically viable sources of energy and for transportation that means oil.
5 Myths About Breaking Our Foreign Oil Habit (The Washington Post)
Jon Stewart Vivisects “Energy Independence” (Energy Tribune, June 29, 2010)
“98 doctors agree on the way to treat the patient is this and 2 disagree”
This statement was made by the “well informed” Congressman to show how silly it is to not conform with the 98% instead of the 2% in acting on scientific issues. Even granting the accuracy, or not, of his example, fast-back to the end of our first president’s life.
He was struck by a severe fever and, as prescribed by at least 98% of his doctor’s “well informed” community of doctors, he was bled at least twice. And died. It must have been the fever. Maybe they didn’t bleed him enough. Let’s hear it for the 98% rule of Lemming behavior.
A more bearable way to watch this,
Global Climate Change Panel 1 (Subcommittee on Energy & Environment, November 17, 2010)
Global Climate Change Panel 2 (Subcommittee on Energy & Environment, November 17, 2010)
Global Climate Change Panel 3 (Subcommittee on Energy & Environment, November 17, 2010)
Policyguy says:
November 18, 2010 at 9:06 pm
“98 doctors agree on the way to treat the patient is this and 2 disagree”
This statement was made by the “well informed” Congressman to show how silly it is to not conform with the 98% instead of the 2% in acting on scientific issues.
Two Australian scientists who upset medical dogma by discovering a bacterium that causes stomach inflammation, ulcers and cancer won the 2005 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine yesterday.
The winners were Dr. Barry J. Marshall, 54, a gastroenterologist from the University of Western Australia in Nedlands, and Dr. J. Robin Warren, 68, a retired pathologist from the Royal Perth Hospital.
Barry Marshall and Robin Warren, celebrating their Nobel Prize.
They won the Nobel Prize for medicine for their discovery of the bacterium Helicobacter pylori, above.
The findings by the Australians in the early 1980’s went so against medical thinking, which held that psychological stress caused stomach and duodenal ulcers, that it took many more years for an entrenched medical profession to accept it.
Ring any bells.
Well I noticed the bottled water in front of Heidi Cullen; or maybe it belonged to the chap next to her; Meehl or whatever his name was. Then I saw an indentical water bottole in Front of Professor Lindzen. and then it clicked; hey that’s exactly what I have been looking for.
So I fell off into a dream; that I was sitting on one of those panels; and somebody like Hansen or Mann; or more likely Dr Heidi was giving the committee a Jane Lubchenko style science demonstration of the greenhouse effect. You know; the one where you prepare two identical samples of dry air, in containers with masked thermometers; and you shine an ordinary incandescent light bulb equally on the two and show that they heat up a bit. Then you squirt a chip of dry ice into one to “double” the amount of CO2 (the only GHG present); and you repeat the demo with the lamp and after a while, the sample that you flooded with extra CO2 shows a 1 1/2 degree F Temperature increase over the other sample. Voilla !!! the green house effect is thus demonstrated.
At that point I would awaken from my slumber; and holler: “I object !” What could I possibly object to; the Science Guy; and Mythbusters have all done this experiment to show that it does work.
So I point out that the solar radiation spectrum is about like a 6,000 K black body radiation curve; but attenuated down to 1366 W/m^2 at the earth’s mean orbit; and its spectrum peak is at about 500 nm wavelength.
The earth emitted LWIR on the other hand corresponding to about 288 K equivalent BB radiation spectrum; emits about 390 W/m^2 and has a spectral peak at 10.1 microns; while CO2 absorbs strongly in the 13.5 to 16.5 micron band.
Now Heidi’s demonstration lamp IR source has about a 2800 K spectral Temperature; about half that of the sun; and also about ten times that of the actual real earth surface Temperature.
So their “IR emitting lamp” at about 2800 K has a peak wavelength of about 1.0 microns; about twice that of the sun; and H2O has significant absorption bands at 0.94 microns, and 1.1 microns, and then others at longer wavelength; so those wavelengths are strongly absorbed from the incandescent lamp by the water in the human body skin; which warms the skin; and registers itself on our senses as “HEAT”. That’s why it feels warm to us.
At 2800 K it is 10 times the Temperature of the real mean earth; so it is emitting 10,000 times the W/m^2 that a real earth surface would be emitting at 288 K. So with 10,000 times the irradiance; and a heap more CO2; they can actually get a 1 1/2 degree increment over the baseline sample.
So what I would do next, is to switch off their lamp and get it out of there and replace it with a near perfect 288 K or thereabouts black body radiation emitter at 390 w/m^2.
There it is sitting right in front of me; that damn bottle of water !.
So put that in front of your two air samples, and tell us how much Temperature rise you now get; and what the differential is between the two carefully prepared samples.
Yes what a dream; man would I like to make that dmonstration to that Congressional committee. I mean, they wouldn’t even let you in the building with a brick out of your garden; but they will actually provide the bottle of water for you, and we already know pretty well what its LWIR emissivity is. Absolutely perfect !
Being French Canadian sometime my English fails me.. Can someone explain what Dr Sanders graph at 1:36 means? ” In computer models of the climate system,the observed warming cannot be explained by natural causes” ????
ooops! should be Santer
George E. Smith says:
November 19, 2010 at 2:25 pm
Beautiful Demo!
Dr Lindzen is the real life Dr Spock absolutely Logical without bias, emotion and alternative agenda A real scientist!.
Yes, isn’t he remarkable for his apparent disinterest in whole thing. Wasn’t that Mr Spock ‘though, rather than the celebrated child psychologist :
Without Dr. Lindzen’s testimony and correction of dubious statements of other presenters the whole show would have been a dishonest mess.
I found Feely’s testimony very disturbing as I am not up to speed with the subject and there was no one to put what he was saying into context.
Is it possible for WUWT to have someone post his testimony and analyse what he was saying. According to him life in the ocean is going to collaspse (due to some of the small criters dying out) when CO2 reached approx. 500 ppm. He said it with a straight face and the congressmen on the panel looked quite stricken.
Ray Toster
Tatton says:
November 18, 2010 at 7:12 am
I only just got around to watching the whole video. (Wish I hadn’t!)
Bairds recounting of how he saved his party in a white-out was ridiculous! My understanding is that in a white-out, you stay put & make camp. Compass & a topo map just doesn’t cut it.
Clown
DaveE.