Congressional Memo
More Talking Than Listening in the Senate Debate About Climate Change
WASHINGTON — About a day into the debate over legislation to combat global warming but before Republicans brought the discourse to a stop on Wednesday by insisting that the clerk read every word of the 492-page bill, Senator James M. Inhofe decided to get a few things off his chest.
Mr. Inhofe, who believes that fears of catastrophic climate change are hugely overblown, has insisted that there is no need to get into a scientific argument because there are enough other reasons to oppose the Senate bill, which would cap the production of heat-trapping gases and force polluters to buy permits to emit carbon dioxide.
Still, for a guy who said he did not want to talk about science, Mr. Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, was the only senator to utter the phrase “anthropogenic gases.” He also wanted to talk about the recent cold winter in his home state and mention a few small points of disagreement with Al Gore and Mr. Gore’s co-recipients of the Nobel Prize, the roughly 2,000 scientists who are part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change sponsored by the United Nations.
“We in the state of Oklahoma have had the worst cold spell during this last winter than we have in 30 years,” Mr. Inhofe said. “I find this to be true all over the country. You just can’t have it both ways.” (Most scientists say year-to-year weather changes are irrelevant to the clear, long-term warming trend.)
“One of the good things about this discussion and this debate is we are not going to be discussing the science,” Mr. Inhofe continued. Then, he unleashed an attack on the United Nations climate panel.
“We talked about 2,000 scientists,” he said. “We have a list of 30,000 scientists who said, ‘Yes, there can be a relationship between CO2 and a warming condition but it’s not major.’ ”
Next, he turned to Mr. Gore, the former vice president. “Al Gore has done his movie. Almost everything in his movie, in fact, everything has been refuted. Interestingly enough, the I.P.C.C. — on sea levels and other scare tactics used in that science fiction movie — it really has been totally refuted and refuted many times.”
Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, wanted to challenge Mr. Inhofe. “Will the senator yield?” Mr. Kerry asked.
“No I will not,” Mr. Inhofe replied.
Moments later, Mr. Kerry tried again. “Will the senator yield for a question?”
“No. I will not. Not now,” Mr. Inhofe declared, shifting his speech into the need for expanding nuclear power.
After being rebuffed a fourth time, Mr. Kerry was exasperated. “With all due respect,” he said, “we are here to have a debate. It is hard to have a debate when you are talking all by yourself.”
Even for the Senate, where members are well-known to prefer talking to listening, the amount of unilateral jabbering on the climate bill has been remarkable, with lawmakers both for and against it arguing repeatedly over how much time was allotted for them to speak.
It was also hard to keep track of who was on which side. The bill’s main sponsors are Senators Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, and Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California.
Typically, the floor debate is divided evenly between the two parties, but there has been constant confusion about whose time was being used.
At one point Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, was struggling to get his turn. “It’s my understanding that I have 15 minutes at 12:15 which I have been waiting for all morning,” he said.
A short argument followed — involving Mr. Specter, Senator Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, Mrs. Boxer and Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee — over who should speak and for how long. As they bickered, Senator Jon Tester, Democrat of Montana, who was serving as the president pro tempore, made an announcement: “The time of the senator from Tennessee, three and a half minutes, has expired.”
Mr. Domenici was perplexed. “How did his time expire?” he asked.
“Through this conversation,” Mr. Tester explained.
To help give everybody time on center-stage, the senators on Tuesday proposed delaying the weekly party lunches by 10 minutes. The majority leader, Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, said that was all right, but he also urged senators to be back in time for their official portrait.
“I hope people can come,” Mr. Reid said. “I know comparing it to global warming, it is not a very important issue. Staff has worked some six weeks to set up this place to take the picture at 2:15.”
The Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, has expressed glee that the Democrats chose to bring up the climate bill. Mr. McConnell, like many of the bill’s critics, said it would raise oil prices at a time when Americans were already furious at the high cost of gasoline.
And though it was Mr. McConnell who insisted that the entire bill be read aloud (as punishment, he said, for Mr. Reid’s breaking a deal on judicial nominees) the Republican leader also said he hoped for a lengthy, perhaps weeks-long, debate on the climate change measure to highlight its flaws.
In response to the required read-aloud, which ended before 10 p.m., Mr. Reid requested a late-night quorum call, summoning senators back to the Capitol as Washington was being hit by scattered thunderstorms.
Mrs. Boxer, the main Democratic proponent of the bill, accused the Republicans of stalling and refusing to address global warming in part to support big oil companies. She repeatedly invoked support from religious leaders and scientists.
“Here, as shown in this picture, is a beautiful creature, the polar bear,” she said in a speech on the Senate floor. “And people say, ‘Oh, is this all about saving the polar bear?’ It’s about saving us. It’s about saving our future. It’s about saving the life on planet Earth. And, yes, it is about saving God’s creatures.”
Republicans, however, accused Democrats of putting on political theater at a time when they know the bill has no chance of being approved let alone signed into law by President Bush.
“This bill is going down in flames, as it should,” Mr. Corker “And we’ll have a real debate about this next year.”
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I’m glad you acknowledge that CO2 has some sort of effect. I, however, side with the IPCC Fourth Assessment Working Group I’s analysis that CO2 is the root cause of our current warming trend, and that there are many compounding feedback loops which, through the coordination of their amplifications/inhibitions, are currently affecting a change on our climate. They are dead wrong, counters, and you are a fool to believe what is ultimately a political group which simply assumes that AGW is true. For some actual science about C02 try this site: Editorial: The Great Global Warming Hoax?
James:
I don’t think CO2 was THAT high. It was c. 3000 ppmv so far as we can tell. 7000 ppmv in the early Paleozoic (it dropped to today’s levels, then took off again to the 3000 ppmv level), after which it dropped steadily.
CO2 does not correspond terribly well with temperature in the overall paleo record, however.
Stan: Hullo. Long time no see.
counter: We get acerbic because we have been put down so hard. I think you are less polemic than most. But we do try to be honest. And. let’s face it, there are “religious types” on both sides; I have heard them both go at it.
But stick around; maybe we-all can learn from each other.
I don’t buy the “extremes” theory. We all know about ENSO. It seems that the “extremes” theory just ditches falsifiability, and it was one of the “early, old” theories you are mentioned. (And it seems to me to be an attempt to dodge “falsifiability”.)
The crux of the matter rests on CO2 positive feedback loops theory. That’s the cornerstone of the IPCC argument. If it’s true, than AGW is true and a “tipping point” is not at all out of the question. But if it ain’t so, then it ain’t so.
The current point we are at in this point in the debate is:
1.) The Aqua Satellite indicates negative feedbacks and homeostasis from CO2, not positive feedback loops. (This explains the flatness of the last decade.)
2.) The Argo Buoys indicate slight ocean cooling at all depths. So the “trapped heat” isn’t being “stashed”.
3.) The “hypotheical” PDO has flipped to cool (kicked off by a big La Nina, same as in 1951). The AMO, NOA, AO, and AAO are still running warm, but are due to flip before long.
4.) Disturbing solar trends (which I’m sure you know about.
counters:
A bit reminiscent of M. Mann and many of the other paleoclimatological endeavors, no? You can’t have it both ways.
To keep away from 1998, let’s start three years later at 2001. Here’s a graph with a fit (red line) from 2001/1 to 2008/5 — a space of 7.3 years. The blue line is the fit from 1979 which includes the “anomaly” you want to avoid. The 2001-2008 period is very different from all preceding changes on the graph. The drop off is not a sudden one year change followed by a rebound. It’s the longest downtrend in the whole graph. It looks very much like we’ve crested a hill and have started down the other side.
counters:
Thanks for the response.
I think you’re trying to duck the politics. Can’t say I blame you, it’s a bottomless pit full of recriminations, etc. But your profession is in a crisis and it’s getting deeper. The activists want to hijack the profession in pursuit of a cause and its tarnishing the science. May your position and research funding be secure as you go through life! 🙂
WRT to plotting temperature trends & throwing out the ’98 el Nino outlying trend. Nobody throws out that data point, not AGWers, not skeptics. When they do, it’s the use of 20 yr running avg or other smoothings. That’s what running avgs are for….
What’s tremendously fascinating is to see professors explaining AGW using smoothed HadCrut data from 1880 to 2005 such that there’s barely an el Nino. Guess what? The trend still levels off relative to the CO2 level. http://i32.tinypic.com/28h3dqh.jpg
Isn’t that what CO2 is supposed to do? Saturate slowly as its absorption spectra get soaked up? I’ve compared the baseline logarithmic CO2 temperature curve against NASA/GISS (by many accounts an outlying dataset) and this is what I got: http://i28.tinypic.com/1zlcbpd.jpg
The longer temperatures remain stable (even with the slight negative solar forcing of -0.1 degrC / .33 W/m-2 since 1990), the more exaggerated the “feedback curve” would have to be to catch up to rising CO2 levels.
Blame natural variations for abating the warming trend? With what, a negative PDO or ENSO? This has been modeled and the signal from the PDO does not appear to be dominant globally: http://users.telenet.be/j.janssens/Climate2007/Climatereconstruction.html
(by Janssens’ analysis the AMO is the big climate player)
I can digest and follow his stacked trend analysis. Why don’t we see this from the IPCC? Why don’t we see this at Real Climate?
Feel free to post & show us the derived CO2 signal, please, we want to see what you have. We’re not here to argue crap politics. Really all we want are data & methods.
As for my misapprehension about when the IPCC finally conceded soot/black carbon was different from aerosols and the rest, I have seen so many cites of AR4 where BC was forgotten, omitted or subsumed anyway that it aggravated me to the extreme. There is a REAL BIAS against publishing IPCC reports that portray SOOT as having an significant influence. Just Google around for AR4 charts, the “BC” column is either labeled poorly or omitted. I understand AR5 will finally make it far more prominent, but I’ve since run out of patience for the IPCC to amend their presentation. Scientists were pointing to the Brown Cloud heating at least since 2001. That’ll have been eight years ….
There’s a trend here that needs to be acknowledged. The same sort of activist subterfuge is being done WRT the boreal thaw. The whole thing stinks and if we can’t inject some independent rationalism into the vast debate it may come to nobody being able to do independent, politics-free science.
It’s a real threat to your profession, I’ve never seen anything like this before. It’s so much worse than the 20th century fads and crazes in medicine and psychiatry. The news headlines are endless: Everything now causes global warming! Groovy wymyn aborting their babies for Gaia. Global warming causes everything!
Your honest appraisal of the “tipping point” rhetoric is appreciated. What can I say? The public is being beset by activists who want to create and control polities. I find it hard to filter out b/c I’m a taxpayer and I’m trying to evaluate the whole problem.
Really? Not mainstream science? The “tipping point” phrase comes directly out of James Hansen’s mouth. So if he’s not a mainstream scientist, why is he in charge of GISS? And why do his statements have ANY weight in mainstream science?
[…] sure you read the rest of it…it’s good stuff. « Bus […]
Hi Angry Chinese Driver,
Why don’t you get angry with the government of your parent country and get them to spend a few bucks to build schools that will not collapse due to earthquakes. That way you may get your brothers and sisters children to survive a schoolday.
This seems to be more of a priority than you worrying about some fairy story about climate.
In reply to the request in my earlier post:
Sorry for implying that any commentors here were dishonest. I apologize, and I’ll clarify myself in a post a bit later on during the day (something popped up at work and I’ll have to finish writing several of my replies to new comments here later in the day)
Beano:
Why would the Chinese communists every want to become accountable when they have everything to gain from the West & Japan cutting our own throats via carbon taxes?
Counters:
> Sorry for implying that any commentors here were dishonest
Hard to keep bias out of the discussion, ainnit? Welcome to the odd fellows club.
“First, 1998 record anomaly is easily explained by the incredibly strong El Nino experienced that year.”
Can someone please explain to me where all the extra heat energy came from in that year? You say it came from the El Nino, but where did the El Nino get it from? Shifting ocean currents can conceivably cause localized warming, but global? Is there some as-yet undiscovered source of heat energy?
So I’ll start in reverse order.
Peter:
Don’t think about it as “extra heat energy.” The heat is always in the system, and we have an open system to boot, so it would be much to complicated to try to keep track of every last joule of heat. The El Nino pattern shifts heat around the system, so some areas warm and some cool. If you were to look at the system as a whole, then everything would theoretically work out proportionally. However, we can’t, and our limited observational capacity is bound to systematically bias the measurements. That is one explanation, but a more likely one is the strong upwelling and turning of the eastern Pacific associated with an El Nino could possibly account for your “extra heat energy.”
Simply put, it is likely a result of stronger access to stored heat and a bias in measurements.
leebert (08:46:31):
(leebert, you have another longer post which I’ll respond to separately if that’s okay.)
It’s not bias, I just chose my words poorly. The issue here (and I’ll address it since several posters seem to have brought it up) is that the methodology used for calculating the trend is flawed. It makes no sense to start your trend on a year that has a strong outlier. Why is there no discussion paid to the incredibly different results yielded when the data set is lengthened or shortened by a single year? This is the “dishonesty” I was referencing – I merely meant that the experiment was fundamentally biased, and it seemed to serve only a single purpose (to prove a pre-conceived notion about data set/trend discrepancies).
Jeff Alberts:
Just because Hansen is a “mainstream scientist” doesn’t mean all of his ideas are mainstream. There is no consensus among the scientific community about so-called “tipping points.” Hansen’s most recent paper (I’m sorry I don’t have a link handy, it was something I read on a professor’s desk a month or two ago while I was waiting to meet with him), the one where he claims that something like 550 was the “tipping point” concentration, is pretty far-fetched and has a wide field of uncertainty.
The “tipping point” idea is not mainstream because it is not widely accepted and it is merely a hypothesis; there is nothing to suggest that our atmosphere has a “tipping point” after which an uncontrolled greenhouse effect will occur. That Hansen believes there is does not make it mainstream.
leebert (18:26:04) :
Thanks for the supportive comments! I’m going to stand by the IPCC analysis, so let me address your comments in two parts: first, we’ll talk about the IPCC, then, since the IPCC report is widely available, I’ll comment on the analyses you posted.
It’s patent misrepresentation of the data when current AGW speakers forget to amend the IPCC presentations of various aerosol behaviors. They should be called out on. However, it’s unreasonable to expect the IPCC to go in and amend all of its work when the deadlines are fast approaching for the 5th Assessment. If it’s any consolation, I haven’t been to any presentation recently where aerosols weren’t their own, separate topic from everything else, and their unique natures addressed individually.
I understand your frustration on how global warming is portrayed in the media; it annoys me, too. But we need to remember that the media’s reporting on science is total crap. They’re simply trying to sell a story, and by adopting the fringe AGW “doom and gloom” scenario, they can move newspapers, magazines, and attract viewers. Unfortunate, yes, but that’s our society and there’s not a lot we can do about it.
On to trends…
Professors often used the smoothed averages as an illustrating tool, not a scientific tool. They’re good for digesting the overall, generalized picture. But smoothing the data inherently biases the data set – the number of points you choose to use, the location of the points, and other factors all systematically bias the resulting trendline. Honest scientists clarify this by discussing the error on the trend; when it’s left out, it’s typically because it’s meant to be illustrative only, not analytical.
Your first graph is a cool summary. But I fail to see the “leveling off” that you implicate. As for why the trends between temperature and CO2 don’t precisely correlate, there are several plausible reasons. The most important one is the intrinsic lag time between the CO2 increase and the resulting temperature increase. That the temperature signal and CO2 signal both increase exponentially (logarithmic is concave down, not concave up) is important evidence which deserves its own comment: this correlates well with the physical mechanism by which CO2 increases temperature.
In addition to natural cycles, remember also that there are a mix of positive and negative feedbacks. You mention the “diminishing returns” which we expect as the atmosphere becomes saturated with CO2, but this is just a portion of the picture. There is much interesting research into whether warming is causing certain cloud trends which might inhibit warming, and this is a key example of some of the other possible reasons why the temperature signal and CO2 signal aren’t shaped exactly the same.
I don’t want to sound like I’m excusing the apparent mismatch in Hansen’s trends and your calculated one, but it’s still well within the error bars at this point in time. Hansen’s trend is obviously likely not to be correct, but our understanding of some newer cloud feedbacks and other mechanisms can probably account for this. Science is a process; Hansen obviously needs to update things. Since the long-term trend in temperature is exponential, it’s no surpirse that a linear regression based on a 20 yr running average will intersect it – that’s just algebra.
The reconstruction reference is a good read, but it’s logic in the argument here is flawed. For starters, it would be more convincing to publish peer-reviewed research, or work from someone widely known such as McIntyre. The big deal is that it addresses a strawman: The argument is not that CO2 is driving climate change. It’s that CO2 and implicit feedbacks are driving the climate. The feedbacks are where the bulk of the warming will come, but the CO2 is necessary to instigate those feedbacks.
This can be confirmed with Attribution modeling experiments. You’re likely familiar with the seminal chart (http://www.pewclimate.org/docUploads/images/meehl-attribution.gif) which summarizes the difference between anthro and antrho+natural. This remains the strongest evidence, and just because some reconstructions don’t match precisely (they are more often than not with the error bars) is not saying much.
If you have any comments we should probably take this to a newer thread.
Counters wrote:
I’d like to see you post this over at RealClimate and see what kind of response you get.
I agree completely that there is no evidence to suggest there is or even can be a “tipping point”. As to whether the concept is mainstream, well, Hansen (for someone who is supposedly being censored) gets a LOT of print and air time, thereby inserting his ideas into the mainstream. Either many more scientists than just Hansen believe it, or they don’t say anything because he’s a buddy, and keeper of the GISS temperature series.
My point is, why aren’t “mainstream” scientists speaking out against the idea of a “tipping point” if it’s not mainstream?
DAV:
I have not yet commented on Mann. I don’t know why you assume that I dismiss the obvious errors in his reconstruction.
The graph you posted is a good one, but my comments still apply. Let’s remember rule one with statistics – you gotta use your eyeballs before a calculator! Just by eyeballing it, we can see that yes, a distinct trend might be shifting right now. But that trend isn’t a decrease – it’s a leveling off with a HUGE increase in the variance. Furthermore, throughout the entire graph, there seems to be a strong 4 year “up and down” cycle.
It’s simply too early to claim there is a “new trend.” What happens if later this year the temperature sky rockets upwards? If you insist on claiming a new trend is occuring, you need to show some error bars; they’re going to be giant for the past two years.
James:
I’m sorry, but if you’re going to insist that AGW is some sort of cult, then I’m not going to bother arguing with you. It’s counterproductive, and frankly, it’s more fun debating with leebert and some of the others who provide interesting arguments which I have to think about before responding.
Bruce Cobb:
For actual science, I’ll stick with BAMS, Nature, and other reputable journals, thanks. I’m not interested in what either liberal or conservative op-ed writers have to say.
Okay, I’m done here… on to a newer thread, shall we?
The “tipping point” all the alarmists should be worried about is the backlash of the American people to being misled.
“If you were to look at the system as a whole, then everything would theoretically work out proportionally. However, we can’t, and our limited observational capacity is bound to systematically bias the measurements.”
If that were so then it would not have shown up as a global anomaly in the satellite records
“…but a more likely one is the strong upwelling and turning of the eastern Pacific…”
I presume you mean a strong upwelling of warm water. But how does a huge body of warm water come to be stored in the ocean depths when warm water is less dense than cold water?
It makes no sense to start your trend on a year that has a strong outlier.
Well, it’s followed the next year by a La Nina cool outlier, so the trends balance out very nicely.
If you wait until the back-and-forth stops and look at it from 2002, you have a slight decline in temperatures in spite of a triple (but milder) set of El Nino and only one La Nina.
There has been a 4% increase in atmospheric CO2 accumulation during the last decade.
I wonder how much of the public’s willingness to believe it is warmer than in years’ past is due to those ubiquitous bank thermometers. Our local ones show some unbelievable highs during the summer, reporting temperatures more typical of Phoenix than the foothills of Montana. Bank thermometers, though, could serve as proxies for some of those lousy temperature stations that Anthony and his cohorts have been showing us. They are both housed in very warm surroundings and guaranteed to read warmer than nearby rural settings.
Haha oh Beano, my “parent country” is Canada and not that you really deserve to know, but my parents are from Hong Kong (which is culturally different from Mainland). And I care more about the state of affairs in my country and North America (let’s be general…the WEST) than what’s going on halfway across the world.
______________
Anyway, so let’s put everything out of the table and assume (whether it’s a correct assumption or not) that I’m complete wrong about so-called “global warming”. Despite some of you automatically labeling me as a hypocritical energy killer because I follow the AGW “religion”, I still believe in reducing energy usage and the pollution we emit, as well as finding sustainable alternatives and fostering a “green” economy — I haven’t for a second claimed to be perfect, though, so don’t call me a hypocrite for not being so. But that and AGW are different things.
I did believe in AGW previously because, like most people, I haven’t really bothered to research rebuttals yet I’ve begun to experience new rash climate changes in the past few years. So now my question is (and it’s mostly directed to counters, the only person who actually come up arguments from a purely scientific point of view)…does man-made global warming/climate change exist, or is it 100% natural to the planet? Does the amount of CO2/greenhouse gases etc. etc. we emit actually affect the Earth? Simply…what is the TRUTH?
Not to say that if AGW is accurately proven as a lie that I’m going to put a Hummer on my Visa and leave it idling in my driveway, but the truth is important regardless of whether it’s politically-correct or not.
For actual science, I’ll stick with BAMS, Nature, and other reputable journals, thanks. I’m not interested in what either liberal or conservative op-ed writers have to say.
Can’t say I’m surprised, counters. You have no idea what he has to say and don’t care, so simply come up with a convenient excuse (not interested in conservative/liberal views, blah blah). Jim Peden is a scientist, something you claim to be, but which I can see now you aren’t. You obviously prefer your pathetic AGW pseudoscience.
counters:
Hmmm… Why is it that I never see error bars on any of the AGW charts and instead see something like the blue line on my chart? Is it because it isn’t a “new” trend?
Anyway, you don’t think that’s being just a bit disingenuous? The data have an inherent cyclical nature. A linear fit of a sine wave will have wide error bars depending on the wave amplitude but that doesn’t mean all lines within are equally possible. As for eyeballing it, the trend appears steeper than what the linear fit says, IMO. Actually, what I see is the top of a hill. Just from looking at the halfway points between the peaks and the overall trend of the peaks. Look at years 14-16 for an obvious upswing.
I doubt that I’m seeing this because I want to. Mostly, because I really could care less. There have been huge overall peaks and troughs for the last 11000 years of fairly long period (centuries) further modulated by higher frequency cycles and with a general upward trend. I think what’s happening today fits that picture quite well. What I don’t see is any evidence that we have a noticeable effect on it.
The cooling period from the 40’s-80’s is sufficient IMO to discredit the CO2 Causes Warming claim. Sure, there was that aerosol thing but that suddenly appeared after the Hey-what-about-the-midcentury-cooling question was raised. Struck me as ad hoc handwaving (aerosols? Yeah! Yeah! That’s it: aerosols!) and, considering the sparsity of the data, it’s mostly conjecture.
However, there appears to also be a 20-30 year cycle of warming/cooling that couldn’t possibly be represented by this graph. If that cycle is real, this is around the time the turn around would start. So, is that what has been happening the last decade? Sure looks like it but only time will tell.
And I don’t think any of the so-called “deniers” would either. The fallacy that those who dispute AGW are out to destroy the planet is just that, fallacy. For example, I work from home most days, so my “carbon footprint”, for all its worth, is less than if I had driven to work.
Our minds can be changed, but not with computer models or garbage data.
OK, kids, let’s tone it down.
There *is* a religiosity to the activist side of the AGW debate, but let’s give counters his due, he comes here w/out expectation on how we’re going to behave toward him.
If we can avoid polemics he won’t be tempted to any himself.