Quite a performance yesterday. Steve Milloy is calling it the “Zapruder film” implying it was the day the AGW agenda got shot down. While that might not be a good choice of words, you have to admit they did a fantastic job of shooting down some of the ridiculous claims made by panelists prior to them. While this may not be a Zapruder moment, I’d say that it represented a major turning point.
Give props to both Roger and Roy.
Marc Morano reported:
‘Senate global warming hearing backfires on Democrats’ — Boxer’s Own Experts Contradict Obama! — ‘Skeptics & Roger Pielke Jr. totally dismantled warmism (scientifically, economically, rhetorically) — Climate Depot Round Up
‘Sen. Boxer’s Own Experts Contradict Obama on Climate Change’ — Warmists Asked: ‘Can any witnesses say they agree with Obama’s statement that warming has accelerated during the past 10 years?’ For several seconds, nobody said a word. Sitting just a few rows behind the expert witnesses, I thought I might have heard a few crickets chirping’
Video link and links to PDF of testimonies follow.
Here is the video link, in full HD:
http://www.senate.gov/isvp/?type=live&comm=epw&filename=epw071813
Dr. Spencer writes about his experience here and flips the title back at them:
The PDF’s of each person’s testimony can be accessed by click on their names below:
Panel 1
| Dr. Heidi Cullen
Chief Climatologist Climate Central |
| Mr. Frank Nutter
President Reinsurance Association of America |
| Mr. KC Golden
Policy Director Climate Solutions |
| Ms. Diana Furchtgott-Roth
Senior Fellow Manhattan Institute for Policy Research |
| Dr. Robert P. Murphy
Senior Economist Institute for Energy Research |
Panel 2
| Dr. Jennifer Francis
Research Professor Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences, Rutgers University |
| Dr. Scott Doney
Director, Ocean and Climate Change Institute Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution |
| Dr. Margaret Leinin
Executive Director, Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute Florida Atlantic University |
| Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr.
Professor, Center for Science and Technology Policy Research University of Colorado |
| Dr. Roy Spencer
Principal Research Scientist IV University of Alabama, Huntsville |
[snip]
[ok thats enough -mod]
Gene Selkov says:
July 19, 2013 at 8:02 pm
###
How about if you keep your blind atheism to yourself?
Excellent testimony from Spencer. He didn’t read from a script but (in his words) ‘winged it’ Demonstrated mastery of his subject, cool under pressure and handled objections well. A few devastating put downs too.
Dr Pielke also knew his subject and made some good points, but his formal piece would have been even better if he’d been a little less rigid in just reading from his script. His answers to real-time questions was much more persuasive
It’s called a ‘hearing’ not a ‘reading’. There is an element of theatre involved. Otherwise it could be all done as background reading. Spencer grasped this truth and benefited from it. Other academics should take note.
Sen. Whithouse should read Feser’s -The Last Superstition, before he attempts to character assassinate Spencer. I don’t believe I heard Spencer say that he believes in creationism, but rather, that nature contains causes. Contingency is a seriously important stumbling block for science, in explaining materialism. But there is no tension between science and theism as Whitehouse infers. His question was merely an artifice.
I wouldn’t drink that Diet Coke in front of him. It has Aspartame made from excrement of e-coli bacteria.
milodonharlani,
Given your views on ID as “total, complete, utter garbage” and therefore your opinion that anyone espousing its possibility is not a credible scientist, or worthy of debate with the warmists, why did you just put forward Dr. Spencer’s very coherent and compelling essay on “Faith Based Evolution?” Too bad Dr. Spencer didn’t have the time to properly explain his very defensible views on ID and evolution at the hearing with it.
Dr Spencer definitely does not come across as a lunatic in his essay at all.
It seems you just fueled the counter- arguement to your point of view, sir.
Read Stephen Meyer’s new book on the Cambrian explosion of animal forms, “Darwin’s Doubt”, if you’d like a scientific demolition of neo-Darwinism’s ability to explain the sudden appearance of the information necessary (in proteins, enzymes, genes, sugar code on cell membranes, developmental regulatory genes, hierarchical control systems, epigenetics, etc) to create what we observe in the fossil record. He goes on to use the same principles that Darwin used, citing a cause (intelligence) known to produce the effect (complex specified functional information). Random variation & natural selection fail miserably to do so.
And intelligent design ain’t creationism. ID cites scientific findings, not scripture, and does not argue for a young earth. Indeed, Meyer assumes standard geological timescales throughout.
Darwin explained stuff like antibiotic resistance and industrial melanism in peppered moths brilliantly. But new animal forms? Not so much.
Spencer,and Pielke said nothing interesting. The guys are clowns repeating the same old show.
More interesting was testimony of Robert P. Murphy:
“Clearly, the public and policymakers have not been fully informed on what the
economics profession actually has to say about climate change. Before justifying
economically damaging regulations by reference to “the” social cost of carbon,
policymakers must realize the dubious nature of this concept.”
and even more drastic:
“In particular, if the White House Working Group had followed OMB
guidance on either the choice of discount rate or reporting from a domestic perspective,
then the official estimates of the current SCC would probably be close to zero, or
possibly even negative—a situation meaning that (within this context) the federal
government should be subsidizing coal-fired power plants because their activities confer
external benefits on humanity.”
————-
Yet, all this is irrelevant for the White House.
The only important thing for them is how much tax they can raise on fuel now.
Lots of “snips’.
Don’t let Whitehouse’s attempt to threadjack Dr. Spencer jack this thread.
WUWT has a sometimes fuzzy line that’s been crossed here.
Whichever side of the “fuzz” you’re on, stick to the topic of the hearing.
(PS I’m glad I got to read the comment where someone posted the article by Dr. Spencer before it was snipped but I’m sure you can find it elsewhere if you want to read it.)
yeah alex, Murphy is great, and a serious critic of government planning.
Is it an infraction of blog policy to link to his site? Mainly free-market economics:
http://consultingbyrpm.com/
Anthropoid
As a counterbalance to Meyer, try Why Evolution Is True by Jerry Coyne. Then try his website for more on evolution.
Gunga Din says:
July 19, 2013 at 11:35 pm
Lots of “snips’.
Yeah, I’m still waiting for my latest comment to be approved. No disrespect to Anthony. No matter what you do to my comment, in my book you’re still the greatest.
Purely a scientific observation pertaining to the lead picture in this thread, may I modify;
I wouldn’t drink that Diet Coke in front of Dr Roger Pielke. It has Aspartame made from excrement of genetically modified e.coli bacteria. Google my claim if you don’t believe me.
[snip -juvenile language -mod]
I don’t understand the moderation policy.
“RoHa says:
July 19, 2013 at 5:53 pm”
Of course there is no coverage here in Australia. What we get here is coverage on the fires, mostly started by arsonists, in the UK and the summer warm weather in the UK and US. Anything that throws doubt on AGW is actively discouraged.
Like Intelligent Design, the CAGW hypotheses is a teleological argument.
Although not necessarily agreeing with Tim Flannery’s bizarre statement (particularly for a palaeontologist) viz.: “… Gaia is life working as a whole to maintain the atmosphere as it is, so that life can go on …”, climate alarmists generally worry that human CO2 emissions are upsetting a delicate balance that until the last 50 years has been kept ‘just so’.
Pielke jnr is a warmist and always has been. The only scientist there was Roy Spencer and he doesn’t have the forthright character to shoot the idiots down. Sadly it was all just another monkey’s tea party.
Senator Whitehouse appeared to have conceded he lost the atmospheric battle, without saying so, when he shifted to the oceans in his concluding statement.
Does anyone realise that the title of the debate is deliberately misleading?
I mean – ‘Climate Change – It’s happening now.’ – would be a perfectly valid title for a debate 5, 50, 500, 50000 or 500000 million years ago! Climate is always changing. This is an undisputed fact!
ALL, and I mean ALL, the real scientists in the debate should have pointed this out at the start of their testimonies to at least demonstrate that they understood the misdirection of trying to imply (via the title) that current climate change is abnormal and may or may not be due to humans.
As long as the science is allowed to be by-passed due to such deliberate misrepresentation within the political arena – the policymakers will never have the correct ‘start’ point to ask questions and make decisions.
Kev-in-Uk, Spencer did point that out.
I thought the comment by Jennifer Francis was interesting. When talking about floods, droughts and wildfires etc: she said that this was merely taking an average across all of the United States, and thus smearing out the data, and so the result was meaningless. (see 3:21:45)
Uhhh, and this is someone who supports a pseudo-scientific scare-story that is based upon one single temperature for the whole Earth, and for the whole Year? Hey, darrlin’, get your story straight before you testify.
And while we are on that topic, I am surprised that someone has not produced a 3-D full-colour image of temperature that encompasses all latitudes, and all seasons. I’m sure it could be done, and I’m sure it would give us a better picture of climate. And since they have this kind of CGI expertise, perhaps they should enroll Hollywood to make it. Actually, considering the departure from reality that we see in these models – perhaps they already have…..
.
Patrick says: July 20, 2013 at 12:57 am
Of course there is no coverage here in Australia. What we get here is … the summer warm weather in the UK and US.
__________________________________
Did they also report our coldest spring in 2 generations?
.
SamG says:
July 20, 2013 at 1:42 am
yeah I know – see my comment upthread somewhere. My point is that any genuine and thinking scientist or person working in the climate field would know full well that the title was deliberately misleading (to ordinary folk) and should have said so. Climate change is as reliable as the sun rising and setting (and it’s been doing that on earth for 4.6 billion years).
The skeptic position (well, mine, anyway) is mostly about scale, cause and effect, and in the end, potential mitigation.
I wonder, if you put Spencers graph on the front page of every newspaper, with a poll to ask for readers to place an ‘imaginary bet’ on the future climate trend – how many would mentally predict the risk of cooling as higher than the risk of warming.
I would also like to point out that Whitehouse’ closing statement about Nasa and the last 12 out of 15 years have been the warmest or whatever is also TOTAL bunkum in consideration of Spencers graph. Anyone with half a braincell can work out that if we are at the top of warming cycle, the most recent years will be the warmest (Duh!) – anyone using this argument within the climate change debate is either an idiot, or deliberately trying to obfuscate the issue – personally, that particular line of claims annoys the feck out of me!
“ralfellis says:
July 20, 2013 at 1:46 am”
Any weather event that can be labelled extreme, uncommon or otherwise, is reported. Coldest cold, wettest wet, snowiest snow, frostiest frost, driest dry, windiest wind etc etc…the subtext, as always, being AGW driven climate change. Here in Sydney we’ve had a couple of days of 8c or so above average (There’s that comparing an absolute with an average again!), the warmest July since 1922. So it was warmer in 1922?