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 |
“Leif Svalgaard says:
July 20, 2013 at 8:39 am”
You know and understand *ALL* variables in the earth climate system including the single major source of energy input to the Earth system as a whole, the Sun, and yet you exclude it outright as having any influence at all? Patrick Moore would be tuning in his recent grave!
Is it possible to create a video with the ability to increase the volume a significant amount.
It’s a shame to have a full audio like this and then have such a pitifully inadequate audio, that is hard to hear, via a normal computer output.
Perhaps those with additional speakers don’t have a problem. But maxing out the audio on this “HD” video and the computer audio, this is very hard to hear.
Thanks for anyone who can jack up the volume.
Discussion in these comments addresses the problem of finding good spokesmen for CACCA skepticism. Whatever vulnerability, real or putative, that adepts of the orthodox consensus can find or manufacture in opponents will be ruthlessly, shamelessly exploited.
Skeptics are painted as tools of Big Oil, not versed in the occult arcana of “climate science” (TM), religious whackjobs, Right Wing fanatics, etc, whatever ad hominem slurs it takes to discredit them before the godless, Left Wing, anti-business MSM. And the few “journalists” who are well-educated & independent-minded enough to challenge the orthodoxy, dare not for fear of their own careers.
OTOH skeptics, as good scientists ought, tend to couch their conclusions in judicious, circumspect, tentative language, leaving the publicity field clear for unprincipled, fire-breathing, apocalyptic profits of doom like Hansen, a certified loon.
Many skeptics with sound scientific credentials are old, white men, no longer living & working in fear of academic retribution. They’re dying off. Judith Curry is a rare example of a younger, still active certified climate scientist brave enough publicly to state her position after changing her mind on the issue, to whatever extent she has done so. Most young & newly minted PhDs in relevant fields have to tow the Party line, or perish from never publishing.
Yet from among the thousands (at least) of sufficiently credentialed (for media purposes) skeptics, some of whom have already lost their jobs, there must be suitable candidates to defend science from corrupting influence of the “settled, consensus” scam.
While many here are pleased with Drs. Spencer & Pielke’s performances in the hearings, I’m sorry to say that I think we can do better. “Science communication” needs effective communicators with unassailable professional & personal authority. While Sen. Whitehouse’s attack on Dr. Spencer’s religious beliefs was slimy, it was only to be expected from no-holds-barred gaseous CACCActivists. Commentators here have offered IMO excellent suggestions as to how to handle such diversionary tactics.
Patrick says:
July 20, 2013 at 10:53 am
yet you exclude it outright as having any influence at all?
No, i point out that no matter which variable you select, none of them show any compelling effect. As I said, if the sun were a major driver [including any and all of the variables you can think of] the effect would be obvious and accepted as a fact and good science would ensue from it [as with evolution or plate tectonics], but this is not happening [much to my chagrin as it would vastly increase the significance of my own field with attendant increased flow of funding]. None of the speakers at the hearing [even Roy Spencer] presented ANY evidence that the Sun is important [for good reason: there aren’t any]
Volker Doormann says:
July 20, 2013 at 5:01 am
Do you seriously expect us to believe that the ‘tidal functions’ from two trans-Neptunian objects 45 AU from the sun with a combined mass of 0.2% of earth’s mass are going to affect the weather on earth via their gravitational effect on the sun?
I am talking about the PL/QU couple in your second link. You are just wiggle matching using these concocted ‘couples’ to give you harmonics close the ones you need for the matching exercise.
Why not come clean and just do the wiggle matching without dressing it up as ‘tidal functions’.
I thought Sen Sessions was brilliant in the way he used his Southern charm to basically insinuate that Whitehouse and the others have deluded themselves with the climate hubris. Whitehouse was trying to argue with facts like the heating of the Gulf of Mexico without actually mentioning that you can’t just assume it’s CO2 because you don’t actually know why.
I’m a bit disappointed that no-one asked if any emprical measurements of “forcing” had been done. When Roy Spencer mentioned that water vapour feedback doesn’t appear to exist that would have a nice time to mention “well we don’t really understand how efficient Co2 forcing actually is…because we’ve never done the experiments”. That would have been a clanger.
If you watch the coverage on vidio …. go to about the 3 hour time when Roger starts his talk ….. WHERE ARE ALL THE SENATORS …… MOST OF THE SEATS ARE EMPTY !!!!!!!!!!
at rpSorry, it took me until today to have time to watch the portion of the video at the very end in which Pielke and Spencer appear.
I thought Pielke’s testimony was very strong. He remained narrowly focused on extreme weather events, which was good. He also indicated why they are a poor thing to focus on — even if there were a positive signal to detect there, it will be lost in the noise for decades if not a century or more.
Poor responses in general were made to the question about whether or not warmer oceans will generate more or more violent storms. Ocean storms (weather in general, in fact) is indeed a heat-driven phenomenon, but heat engines run between a warm reservoir and a cold reservoir. Global warming largely occurs because of a REDUCTION in temperature extremes — because the Stefan-Boltzmann equation scales like temperature to the fourth power, all that it takes to cause warming is better/faster global atmospheric mixing and all that it takes to cause cooling is a reduction of global atmospheric mixing (e.g. confinement of tropical heat to the tropics). [Parentheically, it is entirely possible for CO_2 to increase and the globe to cool (on average); all it takes is a diversion in the Gulf Stream or alteration in the decadal oscillations or Hadley circulation patters that inhibits the convection of tropical heat northward. The tropics would warm a little, but a little warming to the fourth power equals a lot more radiative heat loss from the largest single band of the Earth’s surface area, and the temperate zone and poles would cool much more than the tropics warmed. Similarly, it is entirely possible for CO_2 levels to go down or remain flat and for it to warm, all that it takes is an alteration of global circulation patterns (which are chaotic, very likely not stable at all on long time scales) that increases tropical convection to the temperate and polar regions.]
It is therefore by no means clear that a reduction of the temperature differential between the tropics and poles would result in an increase in the number or frequency of extreme weather events ever, even theoretically. If we could precisely model the climate, we might well find that they should decrease. But as Pielke noted, detecting any change at all is a matter of decades the centuries, as there is no detectable signal here across a time span that includes a fairly non-controversial increase in global average temperature of at least 0.5 C.
Spencer’s testimony was strong, but sadly he failed to make certain points that IMO should have been made (Pielke missed this too; I think one question on the point might have been addressed to him). The most important point concerns the interpretation of the GCM spaghetti curves, and the validity of the IPCC AR4 GCM “average” that (as Spencer DID point out) it uses as the suggested basis for policy making in its summary for policy makers.
No opportunity should ever be missed for pointing out that this curve is a horrendous abuse of every scientific principle I know of, and that the correct application of statistics to these curves should be, as Spencer pointed out but failed to articulate, the rejection of the GCMs one at a time on the basis of failing elementary hypothesis testing and the rejection of the “average” of these failed models as having the slightest meaning whatsoever in any statistical sense.
In particular, the average of the GCMs is meaningless. The standard deviation of the distribution of GCM results about this average is meaningless, except as evidence that the GCMs collectively suck. The “fit” of GCMs to the period pre-1990 or thereabouts is not evidence that they are predictive as they were initialized TO fit that period — they can no more hindcast the curve Spencer held up presenting global temperatures over the last 2000 years than they can predict the stock market ten years from today.
Finally, and most damning — the application of hypothesis testing methodology in a statistically permissible way to each GCM, one at a time, to the actual climate data under the null hypothesis “this is a perfect climate model whose results can be trusted” consists of looking at the range of the Monte Carlo results that do form an ensemble and noting what fraction of the individual trajectories match the actual climate. When this is done, the number is very, very small, for nearly every GCM. Indeed, we would be entirely justified in rejecting this null hypothesis for nearly all if not all of the GCMs.
This makes the AR4 summary for policy makers even worse than a mere abuse of statistics. It’s one thing to average over twenty models each one of which is individually in pretty good agreement with the data and hence passes a basic sanity check as being a valid model and then arguing that the mean “could” — “not has according to the theorems of statistics” to but could somehow average over irrelevant but small errors in the details in the implementation of the same basic physics and hence yield a better average than any single model alone. It’s another to average over twenty models that individually fail a basic internal hypothesis test when compared to reality and worse all fail in the same way, consistently coming in far too hot and then assert that the average is meaningful and that the standard deviation of that average is a valid measure of the probable bounds of the future climate.
Even small things should have been called. Pielke let pass the assertion that one of the warmist testifiers made that the average temperature of the US isn’t what is important it is the extremes in temperature, that some places are far too hot and others too cold to compensate. First of all, she should have been accused on the spot of cherrypicking and data dredging, and the obligatory reference to the xkcd comic titled “Green Jelly Beans Cause Acne” should have been inserted into the Congressional Record as mandator reading by all congresspersons. Second, Pielke in particular must have studied the second cumululant of temperature distributions (which is basically the variance and/or standard deviation and should have been prepared to point out on the spot that if one cannot detect a signal in the mean, it is quadratically more difficult to detect it in the variance and that in any event there is no statistically defensible observation of greater temperature variability in the weather records of the US or the globe.
Yes, we have the warmest global temperatures of the last 150 years right now, or at least it is plausible that we do if one buys error estimates on global temperatures from a period when the entire continent of Antarctica and much of the Australian outback and a goodly chunk of Africa and South America and almost all of the world’s oceans were either terra incognita or infrequently sampled with poor equipment and indifferent techniques, or buys the proposition that temperatures in the parts of the globe that were better sampled were proxies for global temperature with some sort of knowable/predictable variation and hence possible error. However, we aren’t getting hotter hots and colder colds or greater variability around/relative to the mean, again no more so than we observed in e.g. the Dust Bowl pre-CO_2.
Finally, why didn’t any of them call the Rhode Island senator on his concern for the oceans and sinking Rhode Island and point out that whatever is happening to the shoreline in Rhode Island, it is a simple matter of fact that the total SLR from 1870 to the present, inclusive, is 9 whole inches, so his assertions that Rhode Island has suffered from 10 inches of higher ocean levels (if true!) has absolutely nothing to do with actual sea level rise. The ocean is isostatic, is rising currently at somewhere between 2 and 3.5 mm/year, period, and not even Trenberth is asserting that it is going to rise more than a whole foot by the end of the century, and that is predicated on it maintaining at least the same level of rise in the face of at best relatively slowly rising temperatures.
I didn’t consider either Spencer’s or Pielke’s testimony to be a “home run” for skeptics. They did a good job, of course, but the deck was stacked against them. They went dead last in the progression of events, attendance at their session was poor, most viewers no doubt had long since tuned out with the crap that they (eventually) refuted firmly fixed in their minds. If they had been among the first testifiers their testimony would have had a much greater impact and indeed would have refuted a priori a lot of the crap that preceded them. But they left far too much unsaid.
What was sorely missed at the hearings was a statistician. In fact, a statistician with a big red button marked “Bullshit!” that goes “Baaaaaaa” when you press it, overriding any speaker, to call each and every testifier when they made a statistically indefensible or misleading statement, such as the implication that the sea has risen 10 inches in 30 years, or that the IPCCs average over GCMs is somehow meaningful or that it is somehow surprising that predictive models fit data from the immediate past of the time the models were built and that it could hardly be so if the models were not valid.
As Nicholas Nassim Taleb and countless market plungers that lost their shirt on precisely that sort of model would testify (if given the chance), not so. Show me a model built to fit only the data from (say) 1960 to 1990 that predicts the MWP and LIA — then we’ll talk.
rgb
Dr. Spencer should emphasize that he has chosen the tropical troposphere to illustrate the difference between the models and measurements BECAUSE that is where the theory of greenhouse warming via CO2 is shown to be wrong (or at least incomplete). By not stating that, he is left open to the charge of cherry picking and loses credibility.
Whitehouse throws GCM’s and atmosphere/surface temperature measurements under the bus, retreats to oceans. Fun! Last resort of the common warmist. Trenberth’s Heat Hideout.
I’m not sure I understand the argument that the Sun can have no effect. We’d be a frozen ice-ball without it. All temperature we are concerned with comes from it. A tiny variation in its output would make a tiny difference in our temperature, moderated and smoothed by the climate cycle.
It’s massive. It’s not going to fluctuate up and down daily in its output. Any variation in how much energy it releases is going to be in long cycles. They are so slow that they are hard to observe. After all, we’ve only been watching it with instruments that can really measure it for a very few years.
So, I don’t really understand how you can unequivocally claim it has no effect on us at all.
Quite right, Anthony, argue the science, not the Mann.
Don’t miss the testimony of Robert P. Murphy, Senior Economist, Institute for Energy Research.
His evidence that the auditor’s advice was ignored is a political scandal. If the committee does not demand that the studies are repeated with the conditions requested by the auditor then… well.
Heads have rolled for less!
Your US EPA has adopted policies on incomplete evidence. That is legally vulnerable. If you do not know about something you should have known about then you are still culpable under US law.
Wilful stupidity is no defence.
Leif Svalgaard says:
July 20, 2013 at 11:03 am
While perhaps not obvious, IMO there is a variable trait of TSI, as opposed to solar magnetic effects so often cited & studied, that arguably does affect climate. The fact that the spectral composition, ie share of UV vs. visible & IR radiation, of TSI fluctuates by a factor of two IMO does & must affect ocean heat content.
Depending of course upon sea water clarity & precise wavelength, IR normally penetrates no farther than about a meter into open ocean. UV-A (380nm) however in the West Pacific at 30 degrees S penetrates 25 meters at the Z10 level, ie 10% irradiance. UV-B (340nm) reaches about eight meters, IIRC.
Relatively little UV reaches the oceanic surface relative to IR & visible light, even at the height of the UV cycle, so the differential effect may be small. Yet it still could be significant, since oceanic oscillations appear to modulate climate to some substantial degree.
You may recall this discussion:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/02/12/uv-shift-in-the-leaked-ipcc-report-more-inversion-of-the-scientific-method/
Suppose for purposes of argument, the excess energy from the earth’s postulated GHG-driven energy imbalance actually is going into the oceans, and that the current pause in the historical rise of global mean temperature is thus properly explained.
Has a peer-reviewed narrative been published which plausibly explains in reasonably good detail just how that excess heat will eventually be transferred from the ocean into the atmosphere, thus ending the current pause in the historical rise of global mean temperature?
Is there any kind of discussion currently underway within the climate science community as to how specifically the general circulation models (GCMs) ought to be revised in order to accurately account for the excess heat now postulated to be going into the oceans?
Professor Brown for Leader!
The funniest part was at the final summing up, in which the democrats tried to reframe the hearing as an “ocean effects” hearing, and complained that Republicans hadn’t invited enough ocean experts.
If they wanted a conference on “ocean effects”, they should have said so!
What else could they do though, after the Republican witnesses demolished the warming arguments…
What is interesting is that Sen. Whitehouse keeps referring to the rising level of the oceans. Since Geology is constantly changing (as is climate), sea level is a relative term. Is the water rising or is the land subsiding? I would think more involved GPS measurements may be in order.
Climate sensitivity, in a centuries time will we still have no idea? Many of the “hot topics” around climate change always seem to be those questions that could in fact be impossible to answer in the near future, if ever..
The greatest weakness in the AGW argument IMO is water vapor feedback. I think the key is the overlap between co2 and water vapor. Arguing that co2, because of its long residence time, keeps the planet from freezing over, is drawing a long bow, since while the impact of net co2 is theoretically significant, when overlapping water vapor is taken in to account, co2 is minimal, hence the unquestioning faith in positive feedback by AGW advocates is not only needed to produce catastrophic warming scenarios, but also to give co2 it’s “net impact” without water vapor feedback, since the water vapor is dependent on co2.
A precarious position.
@X Anomaly
Well the CO2 IR absorption bands, may be overlapped by the water bands. That does not mean that the individual lines overlap.
As for “residence” time; that is a red herring. CO2 and H2O are PERMANENT components of the earth atmosphere. It matters not a jot, that one CO2 molecule goes and sits down on the bench, while another takes its place.
And in most places, there is always more water in the atmosphere than CO2..
The feedback comes from the fact, that H2O, and also CO2, to a lesser extent, also absorb incoming radiant energy from the sun; in the case of H2O, starting around 700 nm wavelength; and that solar spectrum energy NEVER reaches the ocean surface to be stored deep in the ocean.
So more water cools rather than warms. 24 hours a day, water vapor, and clouds continually scatter/reflect incoming solar energy falling on half of the earth surface at all times.
The above is in reply to Blackadderthe4th.
And it got next to no media coverage at all.
peter says:
July 20, 2013 at 12:20 pm
I’m not sure I understand the argument that the Sun can have no effect. We’d be a frozen ice-ball without it. All temperature we are concerned with comes from it.
What is important is the variation with solar activity of the solar output, and that is tiny [1/1000 of the whole], so the there an effect, but tiny.
milodonharlani says:
July 20, 2013 at 1:01 pm
The fact that the spectral composition, ie share of UV vs. visible & IR radiation, of TSI fluctuates by a factor of two IMO does & must affect ocean heat content.
UV is but a small part of TSI [The ‘T’ means ‘Total’] so the variation of the energy of UV is mush smaller than that of TSI.
peter says:
July 20, 2013 at 12:20 pm
I’m not sure I understand the argument that the Sun can have no effect. We’d be a frozen ice-ball without it. All temperature we are concerned with comes from it.
What is important is the variation with solar activity of the solar output, and that is tiny [1/1000 of the whole], so there an effect, but tiny.
Discovery has taken on a bad name, since the “science is settled” argument.
How would one, even begin, to back out of such a statement ?
Here we go…..