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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Here’s the archive of the testimony video:
http://energycommerce.edgeboss.net/wmedia/energycommerce/energy/ep030811.cut.wvx
I should also have mentioned the list, maintained originally by Inhofe, of hundreds of papers whose findings cast doubt, to some extent, on various aspects of Warmism. (I can’t find the link–maybe someone will post it. It’s probably on Morano’s site.)
Our side isn’t organized, as I’ve mentioned in my little article, “Notes from Skull Island,” here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/17/climate-debate-rages-in-the-australian/#comment-556455
We ought to have a site that is a counterpoint to the Skepticalscience site, containing bite-sized summaries of our position, supplemented by links. I.e., a sort of giant FAQ. Lucy Skywalker has been pleading for support for such a venture for years, but her check from Big Oil keeps getting lost in the mail.
Roger Knights, that list of papers is maintained by poptech who posted above. I agree that a counterpoint to SS would be useful to debunk the CAGW pseudoscience. But it’s a big task and it’s hard to get agreement of principles among skeptics. Some will want to critique GW or AGW instead of properly focusing on CAGW.
Eric (skeptic) said March 9, 2011 at 9:29 am:
“Roger Knights, that list of papers is maintained by poptech who posted above. I agree that a counterpoint to SS would be useful to debunk the CAGW pseudoscience. But it’s a big task and it’s hard to get agreement of principles among skeptics. Some will want to critique GW or AGW instead of properly focusing on CAGW.”
Exactly! Y’all look like a bunch of Keystone Cops individually flinging spaghetti against a wall, much of it very petty spaghetti (e.g. local/regional weather reports) … scientifically, it ain’t stickin’.
citizenschallenge says:
March 7, 2011 at 7:32 pm
Theo Goodwin says:
March 7, 2011 at 3:26 pm
citizenschallenge says:
March 7, 2011 at 2:04 pm
“And I presented factual evidence that all of his three items are indeed heading the wrong direction. What’s wrong with looking at evidence?”
Please learn the English language. You presented TESTIMONY. Testimony is all the Warmista know. Not one of them has EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE. Don’t know the difference do you? Testimony is a report by another person of their experiences that you are using because you have not experienced the phenomena in question. When you report your own experiences, you are reporting empirical evidence.
citizenschallenge:
At March 7, 2011 at 2:09 pm you ask;
“ Could you give a list of these criticisms, the ones backed up with science?”
A list is not necessary because only one significant item of empirical evidence is sufficient to disprove a scientific hypothesis. So, I will provide one such item.
The ‘hot spot’ is a unique effect of global warming from increased atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. This ‘hot spot’ is a rate of warming at altitude in the tropics that is between 2 and 3 times the warming at the surface in the tropics.
The fact that the ‘hot spot’ is a unique effect of global warming from increased atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations is clearly stated in the most recent report of the Scientific Working Group (WG1) of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The matter is explained in Chapter 9 of their Fourth Report (AR4). The entire Chapter can be read at
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch9.html
The explanation is spelt out in Section 9.2.2 of the Chapter which is titled “Spatial and Temporal Patterns of the Response to Different Forcings and their Uncertainties” and is at
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch9s9-2-2.html
The explanation is summarised by Figure 9.1 of that Section. Its title is
Figure 9.1.
Zonal mean atmospheric temperature change from 1890 to 1999 (°C per century) as simulated by the PCM model from
(a) solar forcing,
(b) volcanoes,
(c) well-mixed greenhouse gases,
(d) tropospheric and stratospheric ozone changes,
(e) direct sulphate aerosol forcing and
(f) the sum of all forcings.
Plot is from 1,000 hPa to 10 hPa (shown on left scale) and from 0 km to 30 km (shown on right). See Appendix 9.C for additional information. Based on Santer et al. (2003a).
Only Figures 9.1(c) and 9.1(f) show the ‘hot spot’. So, according to the IPCC,
1.
the ‘hot spot’ is a unique ‘fingerprint’ of warming from “well-mixed greenhouse gases”(see Figure 9.1 (c))
and
2.
the warming from “well-mixed greenhouse gases” is so strong an effect that it overwhelms the combined effects of all other forcings ”(see Figure 9.1 (f)).
But the direct empirical evidence shows the ‘hot spot’ has not occurred: it is missing. The greater warming at altitude than at the surface in the tropics. Indeed, measurements indicate slightly less warming at altitude than at the surface in the tropics.
The missing ‘hot spot’ is indicated by the independent measurements from radiosondes on weather balloons conducted since 1958 and by microwave sounding units mounted on satellites since 1979. Please note that the IPCC Figure 9.1 provides estimates for the period from 1890 to 1999 but more than 80% of the increase in “well-mixed greenhouse gases” was after 1940 and, therefore, the measurements should have detected a greater ‘hot spot’ than was predicted by the IPCC.
Hence, the empirical evidence disproves the anthropogenic (i.e. man-made) global warming (AGW) hypothesis promoted by the IPCC.
Richard
Richard S Courtney is right.
From Ross McKittrick’s peer reviewed paper: click
How do you explain that, citizenschallenge?