House climate science showdown set
A House Energy and Commerce Committee panel will wade into climate science Tuesday against the backdrop of accelerating GOP efforts to scuttle Environmental Protection Agency regulation of greenhouse gases.
The committee released details Friday of the March 8 Energy and Power Subcommittee hearing on climate science and EPA rules, a session that committee Democrats requested.
Witnesses invited by the Democrats include Richard Somerville, who is an emeritus professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California-San Diego.
…
More recently, he published an essay in the journal Climatic Change late last year that called for scientists to offer the public “guidelines” on climate.
Among them: “The essential findings of mainstream climate change science are firm. The world is warming. There are many kinds of evidence: air temperatures, ocean temperatures, melting ice, rising sea levels, and much more. Human activities are the main cause,” he writes.
Witnesses invited by committee Republicans include researchers who have criticized mainstream scientific views on climate change and proposals to require carbon emissions cuts.
One is the University of Colorado’s Roger Pielke, Sr. He agrees that humans are having a significant effect on the climate, but claims there’s an overemphasis on the role carbon emissions among the various human “climate forcings.”
Also testifying is John Christy, director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama-Huntsville. He told the House Ways and Means Committee in 2009 that models and data showing warming are off-base.
“We have found that climate models and popular surface temperature data sets overstate the changes in the real atmosphere and that actual changes are not alarming,” he said in testimony submitted to that panel.
The names are familiar in climate policy circles. “Climate change deniers have a short bench, so we were not surprised at their witnesses,” said a Democratic aide.
Full story here:
http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/677-e2-wire/147729-climate-science-showdown-set
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I should mention that our own Willis Eschenbach had been considered to testify, but he choice ultimately went to Dr. John Christy. Willis would have been an excellent choice, and I could see him picking apart Waxman, who wouldn’t know what hit him.
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Skeptics have always “gotten a seat”. The problem is the best they could offer are the likes of Christopher Monckton (see this detailed sham-revealing evisceration of Monckton’s May 2010 testimony by climate scientists => http://www.skepticalscience.com/Monckton-response.pdf BTW, this is a “must read” as I’m convinced that some here at WUWT do not understand the position of climate scientists on individual climate issues) and bought-and-paid-for lobbyist Pat Michaels (view his intentionally misleading Nov 2010 testimony, along with Dr. Santer realizing his “temptation”, here => http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-a4R1bKGsN8&feature=related )
… now we have the likes Sen. Inhofe and Rep. Hall playing significant roles on key congressional committees, with support by the likes of Rep. Rohrabacher. (view how Rep. Rohrabacher fared in his Nov 2010 challenge of Dr. Alley’s testimony, here => http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2m9SNzxJJA )
… Good luck, and may our very best understanding of climate science rise to inform our national policy …. on this, color me skeptical.
As G. Beck says, Truth Has No Agenda.
Unfortunately, the Democrats, especially those at the EPA, do!
Unfortunately, these hearings are likely to be meaningless.
The MSM will only show the general public one side of the debate and ignore the other side, just as they have a along.
Beyond that, this administration seems to think it’s part of a Monarchy, they can just do as they please ignoring court orders or the publics desires.
And just cutting off EPA funding may not help. It appears that after FL turned down the $2.4 BILLION for high speed rail, the administration is going to shovel those funds to other states. Since the administration doesn’t seem concerned that the funds were to be spent on FL, and not elsewhere, who knows, they may funnel those funds to the EPA. The rule of law does not seem to get in their way.
Why not Monckton?
It is like trying to discuss the issues with a barroom brawler. While the Republicans witnesses are knowledgeable they should have at least one knowledgeable outspoken witness willing to speak as unreservedly as the Democrats witnesses. There is such a thing as being too reserved with the facts considering the audience.
Smokey says:
March 7, 2011 at 7:31 am
On a related note, the 3 children of the head of the OISM Petition project are being threatened with expulsion, organized by Democrat Party officials:
click
———
I clicked.
Quite a story! Sure shows their lack of ethics. There may be some help.
Both democrats and republicans have already decided how they are going to vote and this hearing has little to do with science but more about EPA not following Clean-Air-Act procedures in finding CO2 as a pollutant that could harm health and welfare. CO2 is not a health hazard and welfare effects are required by the act to be evaluated with respect to both costs and benefits, including control costs. This was not done and by using the IPCC report as justification, they did not do what the law requires. Let’s hope the republicans know the right questions to ask the “experts”.
They should have called Alan Carlin.
Smokey, was just reading your (jaw dropping) link when Anthony, thankfully, published a full post about this.
This crap has to stop.
The current administration is working a lot like the early Caesars. Lots of edicts to end-run the legislature.
w.r.t. OSU, this echos of the 60s/70s in the Eastern Block. When members of a family succeeded in fleeing to the West via Yugoslavia in 1970, their siblings were immediately expelled from the University. It happened to close friends from Czechoslovakia. This puts the Stalinistic/Statistic nature of the “Liberal Left” in sharp relief. NoCal & Oregon are fully functioning dictatorships of the proletariat. I suspect they will shortly rethink their stand on capital punishment for heretics.
Smokey says:
March 7, 2011 at 7:31 am
On a related note, the 3 children of the head of the OISM Petition project are being threatened with expulsion, organized by Democrat Party officials: click
I don’t see the relationship at all. The story was written by Art Robinson, a candidate who lost an election for HR. in Oregon, claiming that his kids had their graduate studies cut short at OSU by the actions of two professors there.
http://www.aipnews.com/talk/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=19658&posts=1
Where is the relationship to climate change or even the Oregon petition. Neither of these are mentioned in Robinson’s story.
I haven’t seen any independent confirmation of this story by any real journalists yet. Robinson is planning to run again in 2012.
REPLY: Eadler, clueless as usual, political retribution is real. $27 million gravy or boot kids of your opponent. Do the math – Anthony
Dr. Christy is one of the best choices with impeccable credentials,
John R. Christy, B.A. Mathematics, California State University (1973), M.S. Atmospheric Science, University of Illinois (1984), Ph.D. Atmospheric Science, University of Illinois (1987), NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal (1991), American Meteorological Society’s Special Award (1996), Member, Committee on Earth Studies, Space Studies Board (1998-2001), Alabama State Climatologist (2000-Present), Fellow, American Meteorological Society (2002), Panel Member, Official Statement on Climate Change, American Geophysical Union (2003), Member, Committee on Environmental Satellite Data Utilization, Space Studies Board (2003-2004), Member, Committee on Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the last 2,000 years, National Research Council (2006), Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science, University of Alabama in Huntsville (1991-Present), Director of the Earth System Science Center, University of Alabama in Huntsville (2000-Present), Contributor, IPCC (1992, 1994, 1996, 2007), Lead Author, IPCC (2001)
“I’m sure the majority (but not all) of my IPCC colleagues cringe when I say this, but I see neither the developing catastrophe nor the smoking gun proving that human activity is to blame for most of the warming we see.” – John R. Christy
You can hear his position on climate change in this presentation,
Global Warming where is the alarm? (Video) (36min)
I am very relieved to hear that him and Pielke Sr. will be there.
I don’t see the point of these hearings. Both sides already know how it’s going to go.
Politicians like to run in circles. How about if the stop the money printing presses that will be running until we run out of trees? Or how about they begin cutting spending? America will fall into a greater depression than 1929-34 if Washington stays on this path. But maybe there are people that want that.
But they aren’t focusing on that. Instead they hold more meetings where the outcome is inevitable. What will be next, more baseball players talking about how they never used steroids?
There’s nothing to deny. No warming the last 10 years, no massive sea level rise, no extraordinary temperature rises, no catastrophic melting of sea ice or glaciers.
The Arctic and the Antarctic are still as uninhabitably cold as they ever were. Greenland is popsickleland. The Northern Hemisphere had a very cold & rough winter, as S. Hemisphere had an Antarctic blast get loose up S. America. Hurricanes are conspicuously thin.
Nothing to deny.
So, what is this big shindig all about?
Roy Spencer has complained that warmist climatologists have a habit of ignoring skeptical papers, and that he hasn’t been able to get them to notice his recent paper about the negative-feedback role of clouds. So here’s a suggestion: The GOP should ask the alarmist scientists what their defense is against a it and a dozen other (say) scorcher-scoffer critiques of the case for CACA (Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Alarmism). Since the warmist cult is rather ingrown and hasn’t engaged in debates or discussion with the other side, it’s possible that some of them haven’t heard of some of these criticisms and would be baffled for an answer, or could provide only a feeble response. That would show that the consensus is not robust. It might embarrass the other side, the way an EPA official was recently embarrassed by a question she couldn’t answer.
Let’s be generous and say that there are 400 PPM of CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere. That means that there are 40 CO2 molecules per 100,000 molecules of other gases, almost all oxygen and nitrogen. Of those 40 molecules of CO2, being generous again, 2 molecules are human-caused. 2 molecules of CO2 among 100,000 other molecules, how dreadful – NOT.
Instead of these philosophers, who obviously have little knowledge of the fundamentals of chemistry, have a few professional chemical engineers testify, people who know how to “do the calcs”. I am not exactly a “skeptic”, but one who knows the fundamentals of both chemistry and physics and how to do the calcs, and the philosophy that human-caused CO2 is harmful in the least, or that human-caused CO2 has any significant effect on either weather or climate is pure bilge.
Circa 1950, a bumper crop of corn in NW Iowa was a yield of 60 bushels per acre. If planted in a modern way, could be 90 bushels per acre. Presently, a yield of 140 bushels per acre is common, due to increased levels of CO2. I guess all that extra food is harmful to health.
Environmentalists have unfortunately undermined the case against real, smog-creating pollution by equating it to benign (or at least completely different in nature) CO2 emisions.
Fred Singer would be a great choice. I like a lot of what Willis writes, but Singer has the credentials. Richard Lindzen would also be excellent.
Steve McIntyre would also be a logical choice as a reasoned, published critic, plus Anthony for his work on Surface Stations and WUWT.
Both the Labour Government and Liberal opposition, in AUS, tell us that they believe in man made climate change and that they can control climate using tax dollars.
The first independent that disagrees with this, will get an enormous amount of support from the electorate.
“Climate change deniers have a short bench, so we were not surprised at their witnesses,” said a Democratic aide.
Doubtful a “short [sceptic] bench” having an implied ~ “uncredible or few witnesses”, since it appears that the, ergo, Climate change “believers” ride only on the Short Bus; because by way of their brilliant Climate Science Propaganda Op., they have likewise finally managed to define “climate change” as something which has never happened before and can’t happen unless it’s caused by Humans, because according to them, “climate change” = “CO2=CAGW”.
This is a House Committee, so the Chair is now a Republican. The Chair controls the number of witnesses, etc., and so it is quite odd that only John Christie and Pielke Sr are called. Both are well-published/credentialled and good presenters, but RP Sr (like son Jr) is too quick to talk about “decarbonization” of the economy. I don’t doubt the Pielkes’ sincerity but I think their concern over the logarithmic absorption effects of a trace gas is misplaced. Just a geologist speaking here.
RP Sr is not the preferred voice of the skeptical side when the matter of EPA control of carbon emissions is on the table. Roy Spencer would be more effective – he’s got the testable hypothesis (negative cloud feedback) that puts the AGW house-of-cards right in the cross-hairs.
Saving energy is good conservative strategy, whether household or national in scope.
Stopping carbon emissions to Save The Planet is stupid and economically disastrous.
Jack Greer says:
March 7, 2011 at 7:46 am
Skeptics have always “gotten a seat”. The problem is the best they could offer are the likes of Christopher Monckton (see this detailed sham-revealing evisceration of Monckton’s May 2010 testimony by climate scientists => http://www.skepticalscience.com/Monckton-response.pdf
Detailed–yes–it was far far longer than I have time to read. Evisceration it was not. I was struck by the total lack of scientific references.
Highly intelligent people can abuse their minds to create reasons for believing anything, so yeah, there were some smart statements. But reliable or believeable, it was not.
Monckton wins again.
Poptech says:
March 7, 2011 at 9:58 am
“Dr. Christy is one of the best choices…”
Best choices if you intend on selecting a scientist who built much of his career on screwing up UAH’s analysis. Left it for mears et al and santer et al to clean up his mess. How hard is it to check one’s data for a simple sign error?
As usual, Republicans are going to put on a bit of a show for their base, but, afraid of being called “mean” by the MSM, are going to back down from their position. Nothing will change.
First the CAGW warmers said snow will be a thing of the past, and earlier Springs, too. Then we had heavy snows, and some CAGWs said
global warmingclimate change caused the snows.Now, I expect the CAGW warmers, maybe even those testifying to the Congressional committees, that the late Springs we’re having are
global warmingclimate change, too.I wonder how many gaffes will be said under oath?