Yesterday, I posted on the March 8 2011 House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee Hearing “Climate Science and EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Regulation”;
Today, I want to present a few comments on the process. First, as has been written elsewhere (e.g. see) the Hearing was political theater, including props (such as the stack of books presented by Congressman Inslee) .
There were only a few questions/comments directed to the witnesses of the opposing sides and these were usually confrontational, and not designed to effectively explore the areas of disagreements and, of equal or even more importance, of agreement. The introduction of DDT by one of the Republican witnesses and of tobacco smoke effects by Congressman Jay Inslee of Washington was completely irrelevant to the science issues of climate.
There were some exceptions. For example, Morgan Griffith of Virginia asked a series of excellent science questions which he said will be sent to us for answers. Pete Olson of Texas, Steve Scalise of Louisiana, Jay Inslee of Washington, Henry Waxman of California and Bobby Rush of Illinois were clearly passionate about the subject, and a number of their questions were very good (but generally also directed to their invitees).
I have a recommendation to the Chair of the Committee Congressman Ed Whitfield of Kentucky for future Hearings of this type. Rather than adopt the standard Hearing format, it would be more informative for him to invite 6 scientists (3 witnesses each selected by the Republicans and Democrats) and pose a set of several questions, such as
1. Is CO2 the dominant human climate forcing?
2. What observational evidence is available to bolster or refute the predictions of the climate model multi-decadal predictions of climate change and of extreme weather?
3. What certainty is there in the skill of regional and local predictions of societally and environmentally important climate for the coming decades?
Then permit each witness, in sequence, 5 minutes to answer one of the questions followed on by 5 minutes of further comment by each witness. Then the second question can be addressed.
In this format, the House members would listen and would wait until the witnesses have cycled through each question before asking their questions on the science. The Members might be quite surprised regarding the degree of agreement among the climate scientists, as well as see major areas of disagreement (as well as how these disagreements can be resolved).
I recognize that this is not the way formal Hearings are conducted and my request is unrealistic. However, until there is a venue to properly discuss and assess the diversity of perspectives regarding climate science issues (and the National Research Council has not properly done this in the last few years), we are going to continue in the same polarized framework where scientifically unsubstantiated claims (on both sides) are being make.
An NRC panel, which is inclusive of climate scientists of all viewpoints, that is convened to report on areas of agreement and disagreement, would be very valuable to everyone.
Read Dr. Pielke’s presentation here:
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You mean politicians listen to commoners! “Watch you smoking there Piellke?”
I love this debate. It is based on tax money, yet the money is not mentioned. The demon CO2 is a vehical for profiteers. I must go with Geoff’s set of questions, yet we have no clear minded thinkers asking clear minded questions at the table: WUWT?
eadler, I typically chalk your assinine comments up to ideologocal nonsense but your latest makes me wonder the depths to which your ignorance extends… Do people like you really think Republicans want to get rid of the government? Wow, lay off the dope and stop reading the Daily Kos because you clearly no longer possess the tools necessary to understand the world around you. I suppose the path you are on, however, will fulfill the “ignorance is bliss” creede, however, if that is your goal.
Mark
Noelle says:
March 14, 2011 at 12:22 pm
So, you define peer reviewed scientific literature as a “prop?” I would like to see the climate scientists who disagree with the findings in those stacks of studies sit down and write their own peer-reviewed scientific papers which refute the findings in them.
—————————————————
Instead of your appeal to a big stack of books, why don’t you extract, from the big stack of books, the scientific data that you believe proves that anthropogenic CO2 causes global warming, climate change, climate disruption, climate crisis, whatever.
Our stack is bigger than your stack won’t cut it on here.
You have a strong opinion. Back it up with science.
Inslee said, “the Republicans would not accept their views until all the Arctic ice has melted and hell has frozen over, whichever comes first.”
================================================
I don’t see anything wrong with either of those………………..
Agree w/Latitude. And IANAR. Far from it.
Also, the gov’t should pay attention to the latest Gallup poll.
Precautionary Principle?
By contrasting the experiences of floods in Queensland and Pakistan it is clear that prosperity is the best protection against ‘extreme climate events’.
In my previous post: in my previous post:
eadler says:
March 14, 2011 at 4:11 pm
I accidentally omitted the following link, which discusses the relationship between political ideology, knowledge of politics and positions on global warming in different countries:
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/2011/03/public-opinion-and-elite-signalling/
Oakden Wolf says: March 14, 2011 at 5:22 pm
Why are we so concerned with global warming (we are in an interglacial warming period) when 85% of the last 450,000 years, the Earth has been in an ice age?
[————————————-Wonderful current example: the die-0ff of whitebark pine trees in the American West, caused by infestations of pinebark beetles enabled by warmer winter temperatures.
—————————————————————————-
But is this truly the case?
My understanding is that the increase of pine bark beetle infesting Pinus contorta and other spp. is due (in part) to the restriction on burn off as a management tool in these forests. Pine bark beetle thrives on old trees.
Also control efforts on certain National Forests are now routinely hampered by environmental activists who effectively use legal appeals and lawsuits to halt or delay suppression activities. The Four Notch experience in East Texas provides testimony to the destructive potential of SPB if no control is taken. Due to actions by environmentalists that caused delays in direct control, SPB infestations on this proposed wilderness area killed more than 2,000 acres of sawtimber in less than one year, drastically increased the frequency and severity of timber losses on adjacent commercial forest lands, and eliminated several colonies of the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker (Miles, 1987).
Historically the first attempts to control bark beetles were probably European. Disastrous bark beetle outbreaks occurred in Germany during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. So severe was the problem that a special prayer for the protection of forests from wind and insects was included in a prayer book printed in 1705. Gmelin (1787) reported that over a million-and-a-half trees were killed in the Hercynian Mountains alone between 1781 and 1787.
So this is not new.
Gmelin collected data from these seventeenth and eighteenth century outbreaks and in 1787 published a treatise on bark beetles. In addition to biological data, the treatise contained comprehensive detection and control recommendations. As a first step, Gmelin recommended an intensive survey to locate infested trees.
His major recommendation for beetle control was prompt salvage or burning of infested trees. Emphasis was placed on selecting trees still containing brood and ignoring trees from which beetles had already emerged. After trees were salvaged, bark removed from trees during the milling process was burned.
It seems to me that like so many other insect infestation, there are several conditions that lead to these periodic events – certainly not confined to a short term fluctuations of climate conditions,
Douglas
eadler says:
March 14, 2011 at 4:11 pm
[It is clear that the hearings—– etc]
——————————————
You don’t seem to have any powers of reason or logic.
Douglas
Geoff March 14, 2011 at 12:13 pm,
“How is it possible that the dinosaur period supported such a diversity of life when atmospheric CO2 levels were 20 times greater than today?’
You just gave another reason to cap CO2 levels at the current low levels. It is widely known that earthquakes, tsunamis, disease, hurricanes, and drought are all caused by increasing CO2. It is not yet widely known that increased CO2 will allow birds to transform back to the dinosaurs they evolved from.
/sarc off
It seems that a fairly decent plurality exists to at least carry on a discussion with some important legislators. I think some patience is in order here. Of course the hard liners on the left are going to fight tooth and nail to hold on to even a small part of what they gained–and have lost really– under this administration. The “Global Warming and Climate Change Pandemonium Medicine Show™:” is sputtering on 3 cylinders. They are looking for a place to land. I say turn out the runway lights!
“Is CO2 the dominant human climate forcing?”
Humans can not affect the earth’s climate. If you study a recent atlas of earth, you will conclude the following:
1. There are few humans on the earth and they occupy a small fraction of the earth’s surface.
2. Humans have permanently modified an even smaller fraction of the earth’s surface by construction of cities and towns, highways, airfields, etc.
3. About 50% of humans live in cities and urban areas.
4. Most major cities are located near sea coasts or large bodies of water.
5. Humans are moving in ever in increasing numbers to urban areas.
Humans might regional climate due the billions (and billlions and billions!) pounds of rubber, asphalt and brake dust emitted into the enviroment from the reansporation system.
How come Rep Inslee did not bring stack of books on the impending doom and gloom of the Y2K programming shortcuts? It could make presentation balanced. Besides, the Y2K projections would be more relevant to computer models as basis for decison making.
How about “where’s the original data”?
I’ve designed, run and participated in many hearings of this sort to know that Dr. Pielke knows what he’s talking about and commenter Noelle hasn’t a clue. Like I said I have set the agenda on sensitive topics and invited participants, knowing full well what each would say. Its part of the political game, and it doesn’t have to be partisan to still be political. When it comes to hearings, unfortunately, its all political theater. Where I might differ with the good Dr. is in the format of the discussion. It doesn’t have to be a hearing. It could be called a workshop or a working session etc. Something less formal and dogmatic than a hearing.
As to Noelle’s comment. How naive can one be to not understand that “Piles” of anything are props in the context of a hearing.
But that’s not the whole story:
Oakden Wolf says:
March 14, 2011 at 5:22 pm
“Wonderful current example: the die-0ff of whitebark pine trees in the American West, caused by infestations of pinebark beetles enabled by warmer winter temperatures.”
If you mean a wonderful example of a false AGW poster child based on a half-truth and a consistent omission of the whole story, you are absolutely correct.
Piled Higher & Deeper.
Gored, Knights, & Douglas:
You make good points. But I think temperature is still a vital variable.
Backing:
http://www.usu.edu/beetle/documents/Logan_Powell01.pdf
Relevant section:
“As temperatures warm, the thermal environment actually would become less
favorable for the mountain pine beetle until a threshold was reached, at which point the thermal environment suddenly would become dramatically more favorable for the beetle. This prediction is ominous in that increasing temperatures could unexpectedly release an endemic or invading mountain pine beetle population in whitebark pine with little or no warning.”
They compare models with actual observations and it works out nicely. Gored, I think the whole story is well-covered here.
Geoff says:
“Ice can only grow in volume if temperatures are getting colder.”
I don’t agree. Plots of the amount of ice accumulated in Vostok per thousand years clearly shows that more ice accumulates when the climate is warmer. This is explained by a cold planet increasing the size of the ice desert surrounding Antarctica and reducing the ice accumulation. The same association is visible in the Greenland cores.
This is one of the obvious failings of “climate scientists” – they think that rising temperatures will cause the amount of ice to shrink. However, after many plots, and lots of analysis, it is clear high temperatures produce more ice in environments where it is too cold to melt the ice. In temperate environments, this may be reversed.
Hey ask if the decline is hidden in that prop stack? Hey maybe Phil Jones’ original data set without all that added value is in there too?
Heads up to WUWT readers: the new end around for a carbon tax by the policy wonks is creeping up in Low Carbon Fuel Standards and Renewable Portfolio Standards: coming soon to a state run agency in a liberal state near you. With all the favorable tax treatment, ratepayer funds, tax credits and rebates we will be paying in excess of $250 per MTCO2(e) to save the planet. All under a different name so we won’t notice.
You guys in the US may have some issues about how the hearings are being conducted but at least you’re having them. Here in the UK where all 3 major political parties have sold their souls (and probably everything else too) to the CAGW camp, we have nothing at all. According to our feeble minded politicians, the science is indeed settled and we are going to be paying dearly for the scam for decades to come.
Oh, and Noelle, I too have taken piles into formal hearings from time to time.
It didn’t add anything to the matter at hand but it was jolly painful.
“As temperatures warm, the thermal environment actually would become less
favorable for the mountain pine beetle until a threshold was reached, at which point the thermal environment suddenly would become dramatically more favorable for the beetle.”
Oh good god please visit a brothel.
Eadler, what’s amazing to me is someone who considers themselves enlightened cannot see the pure awkward prejudice written down on that link. It’s not surprising. I’ve been around a lot of tragically internally deceived people in my lifetime but it is still amazing each time I am witness to it. That entire article is saying that educated people turn away and cover their ears because of a political stance. What is being implied is that the pull of the republican party line is so powerful that humans will self-deceive about a supposed worldwide catastrophe and their childrens deaths. As I’m sure you’ve likely seen the video of Senator Inhofe getting ambushed by some well-meaning people, how can any rational person behave as if all republicans are robotic uncaring atomatons with no children, no family, and no concern for the future of their nation or humanity at large? It seems to me quite irrational to conclude that the opposing party is anything less than human like yourself. Yet that link makes just that inference. It’s leaving the reader with no option but to believe that Republicans simply don’t care about anyone, they only care about the party line. The blog entry says that the old Republican elites used to believe in CAGW, but do not now because of the party line. So what it’s really saying is that they’re all committing mass family suicide for a party line.
So that article is basically inferring that the republicans want worldwide death and destruction simply to adhere to a political strategy. That writer is doing this because the absurd left has painted itself into a corner with a belief system in catastrophic human-induced global warming that SIMPLY ISN’T OCCURRING. So instead of FACING THE FACT that the world climate isn’t following YOUR PARTY LINE, you infer that everyone else is CRAZY.
I submit that you’re crazy.