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
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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.