On Wednesday at 10AM ET (7AM PT) the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will conduct a hearing on (take your pick) global warming climate change climate disruption. Dr. John Christy will be there, but it is confirmed that Dr. Richard Muller of BEST will NOT be testifying. From what I hear it will be webcast, details below.
It is called: “Update on the Latest Climate Change Science and Local Adaptation Measures.”
You can watch the webcast at http://www.epw.senate.gov
Full Committee hearing:
Update on the Latest Climate Change Science and Local Adaptation Measures.
Wednesday, August 1, 2012 10:00 AM EDT EPW Hearing Room – 406 Dirksen
Witnesses
Opening Remarks
Panel 1
Dr. Christopher B. Field
Director, Department of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution for Science; Professor of Biology and Environmental Earth Science
Stanford University
Dr. John R. Christy
Distinguished Professor, Director of Earth System Science Center, Department of Atmospheric Science
University of Alabama in Huntsville
Dr. James J. McCarthy
Alexander Agassiz Professor of Biological Oceanography, Museum of Comparative Zoology
Harvard University
Panel 2
Secretary John R. Griffin
Maryland Department of Natural Resources
Dr. Margo Thorning
Senior Vice President and Chief Economist
American Council for Capital Formation
Dr. Jonathan Fielding
Director, Los Angeles County Department of Health
National Association of County & City Health Officials
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Yep, sad and painful is right. Christy’s amused by Boxer’s pathetic nature. She needs to be “tossed” like an Olympic Badminton player.
Andrew Newberg says:
August 1, 2012 at 7:40 am
It is painful to watch our elected officials regurgitate some of the debunked talking points. Chairwoman Boxer (D-CA) just insisted on putting in the record that 97-98% of climate scientists agree that on AGW. Now Sen. Cardin (D-MD) is blaming the drought and derecho’s on AGW.
It is rather sad…
****************************************************************
It is their right to speak, however that does not impose an obligation on me (or anyone else) to listen, much less agree.
From what I saw and heard during the first hour of the hearing,
Dr. Richard Muller might as well have been sitting there bloviating
about his newfound/recently disavowed skepticism during each
Senator’s opening, closing, and after each witness. Barb Boxer is making
sure his write ups are spread across the record like mustard on a hot dog.
Nobody seems willing to challenge the “97% of scientists agree” that orginally
came from that flawed master’s thesis of couple years ago.
Barb had to have the hearing NOW before IPCC submission deadlines kick in.
With regards to these type of meetings where only one “token” skeptic is presented, there is only one truth and it only needs to be spoken once. On the other hand propaganda needs to be pitched six ways to Sunday.
Tucci78 says:
August 1, 2012 at 5:05 am
At 12:20 AM on 1 August, Volker Doormann had asked of the hearing:
Are there astronomers present?
No, that would be inconceivable. There is absolutely no possibility of a ginormous mass of fusing hydrogen 93 million miles away having any influence on the earths climate at all.Or of the elected thugs making up our federal government acknowledging such a possibility.
No, it’s got to be the “little clique of quacks who proclaim themselves the Consensus on Climate, guardians of the vault of exclusive knowledge,” and it’s something of a miracle that Dr. Christy is being allowed to present.
I expect him to have microphone trouble. Unless, of course, they manage to slip him a Mickey Finn beforehand.
Nothing is inconceivable. Looking to the solar neutrino capture rate vs the hadcrut3(2) temperatures over 5 years there is weak correlation between. Moreover the astronomical heliocentric functions of 11 solar tide functions have a positive correlation with the hadrut3 temeperatures.
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/ghi_23_snu_ghi8.gif
or
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/ghi_sst_snu_ghi8.gif
We can see that the 11 solar tide functions agree with a lot of global temperature anomalies what is in contradiction to the CO2 prognostic heard by the governments. In a broader scope there is no increasing of the global temperature since ten years.
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/ghi_vs_hadcrut3_1980.gif
Don’t care on Jukebox Joes in the scene of climate and their Hollywood speech; you can learn to discriminate true arguments from false argument.
V.
Keith Pearson – I think you mean Daniel Hannan.
Christy’s testimony refers to the new Watts et al study (not surprising since he is an author).
“Watts et al. demonstrate that when humans alter the immediate landscape around the thermometer stations, there is a clear warming signal due simply to those alterations, especially at night. An even more worrisome result is that the adjustment procedure for one of the popular surface temperature datasets actually increases the temperature of the rural (i.e. best) stations to match and even exceed the more urbanized (i.e. poor) stations. This is a case where it appears the adjustment process took the spurious warming of the poorer stations and spread it throughout the entire set of stations and even magnified it.”
See curryja’s comment for the link to Christy’s testimony.
His other points include that the models overestimate the warming, and that most of the US heat records were set in the 1930s.
OT
Just in case anyone might be interested, the SIDC sunspot number for July is only 2 points above June at SSN = 66.5
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SSN.htm
Volker Doormann says:
August 1, 2012 at 3:37 am
In Germany we have a fundamental law politicians have to take an oath on, to recognize the articles in the law.
Our pols in the US take an oath to uphold and defend the US Constitution — unfortunately, many of them do not feel any compelling obligation to adhere to it.
Just finished watching the circus. Anthony Watts is now a part of the official congressional record.
Also it was really wonderful watching Barbara Boxer attempt to discredit Christy on an mistake within the margin of error, that was corrected, in a way to defame the UAH reports. It is simply amazing CA elected such a low quality person to the Senate.
Tsk. Having earlier asked “Are there astronomers present?” at this Democrat-dominated U.S. Senate pseudoscientific political Warmerfest and gotten from me the response that such would be inconceivable, at 8:38 AM on 1 August, Volker Doormann comes back with:
It’s not “inconceivable” that there should ever be the employment of sound scientific method – or even the faintest intimation of intellectual honesty – among modern American “Liberals”?
Professional career “Liberals”?
Mr. Doormann, surely you jest!
We have a ‘science problem’ because we have a political problem, which creates the Faux Science funding for fraud. We have a political problem because we have a monopolist owned, Faux Monetary system in control of not just goverment, but media and education. AGW is a symptom, the disease is monopolism, see “Fractional Reserve Banking Begat Faux Reality” and support universal freedom.
Data trumps opinion every time, they should use more. Shameful display of dancing semantics and political wrestling.
At about 11:45am EDT, Christy answered a question from Sen. Lautenberg with a claim that I have heard before and that I think is not correct. The question was in regards to the Spencer and Christy satellite record of the warming and how their trend estimate has changed over time as errors have been corrected. Christy claimed that the errors found were within their original error bars.
The facts are these:
(1) In their 1998 paper they said, “The combination of these changes causes the 18+ year trend of T2LT to be warmer by +0.03C / decade (-0.076 to -0.046 C /decade for January 1979–April 1997). We estimate the precision of the overall trend as +/- .05 C / decade.”
(2) As of Jan 2009 when I did the analysis (and I don’t think changes in the UAH dataset have significantly changed trends since then), the trend in the UAH data set through December 2008 was +0.127 C / decade.
(3) Clearly, +0.127 C / decade is well outside of error bars of +/- .05 C / decade around central estimates of -0.076 or -0.046 C / decade.
(4) Admittedly, the difference in trend is due only partly to corrections to their analysis. The rest is due to the longer data record. It is unclear from Spencer and Christy’s wording whether the uncertainty estimate in their trend included uncertainties due to the short length of the data record or only uncertainties in their analysis over the period in question. To consider the extent to which each effect contributes to the change in trend from -0.076 C / decade to +0.127 C / decade, one can look simply at the January 1979-April 1997 trend in the “current” (again, as of Jan 2009) version of the analysis. This gives a trend of +0.029 C / decade.
(5) Hence, we can see that corrections to the data set alone changed the trend from -0.076 C / decade to +0.029 C / decade, a change of +0.105 C / decade, which is larger than the error bars, at least as quoted in their 1998 paper. The availability of a longer temperature record produced an additional change from +0.029 C / decade to +0.127 C / decade, a change of +0.098 C / decade.
In light of these dramatic changes, it seems that Spencer and Christy claim that the change in their trend estimates are within error bars is incorrect no matter how you interpret it.
Perhaps Anthony can prevail on either Roy Spencer or John Christy to directly respond to my calculation and analysis, which are easily done with their data set?
I find myself having no patience to watch that insanity. Do those politicians really believe what they are saying?
The fact that politicians are so determined to perpetuate nonsense should tell us all something.
Ed Barbar says:
…Except that it wasn’t within the margin of error, no matter how you slice it, as I have explained in my last comment.
Andrew says:
I rather doubt the majority invited either John Christy or Dr. Margo Thorning (American Council for Capital Formation, see http://accf.org/publications#second ). I imagine both of these were invited by the minority.
I got to the hearing late, but the questions and testimony by Senators Sessions and Inhofe have been great, especially when questioning Dr. Margo Thorning. I think the “consensus” is falling apart.
GeoLurking
July 31, 2012 at 10:38 pm
###
It has been a stated goal of Marxist, to take over BOTH parties. They only have enough difference to keep the rope taught as they move in the same direction, dragging the unaware with it along a path to slavery.
Well, the hearing was a far cry from . . .
and followup . . .
By the way, the error bars in Christy et al 1995 are even smaller. There, they say:
Here, the error bars clearly reflect the trend over that specific time period and thus should be compared to the value for the trend over the time period with the current algorithm of about +0.03 degC per decade. Still, the current analysis results are far outside those error bars. (I’m taking the time period to be through April 1997 because I couldn’t find the end date for the data in 1995 paper…and the -0.07 degC /decade is very close to the quoted -0.076 degC / decade in the 1998 paper for the algorithm before the 1998 correction over the period through April 1997.)
I just don’t see any justification whatsoever for Christy’s claim that the errors found were within the error bars.
Volker;
You’ve made many interesting observations; I just wish your English were better so I could understand more of them! The one I’d especially like you to reword and try again is “All Germans have the privilege for the resistance to anybody, who remove this order, if other remedy is not possible.” If possible, give the original German, too. That translation is almost incoherent.
That first link should be . . .
http://youtu.be/ze3GB_b7Nuo
EPA Official: EPAs “philosophy” is to “crucify” and “make examples” of US energy producers
sorry bout that . . .
Laurie Bowen says:
While his word choice might not have been totally appropriate, his point was simply that the EPA does not have enough manpower to find all the violators of the law but his hope was that those violators who are found and penalized for not complying will serve as enough of an example to prevent others from violating the law.
I suppose you and Inhofe are in favor of having enforcement so lax that even violators of the laws that are caught go unpunished and there is no incentive whatsoever for companies to comply with the law?