Ah, politics, the stench of spin is strong here. Note the picture below. Left to right are Dr. John Christy, Dr. David Titley, and Dr. Roger Pielke Jr..
In the text, Christy and Pielke don’t even exist, because, well, this was “A Factual Look at the Relationship between Climate and Weather.” and we can’t have factual testimony we don’t like in the press release, can we?
Really, if you are going to disappear people in your press releases, at least be savvy enough to use a photo only showing your man giving testimony. Idiots.
From the House Committee on Science Space, and Technology
Subcommittee Discusses Climate Change Impacts on Severe Weather
(Washington, DC) – Today, the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology Subcommittee on Environment held a hearing entitled “A Factual Look at the Relationship between Climate and Weather.” The stated purpose of the hearing was to examine the relationship between climate change and extreme weather events.
Members emphasized the prevailing scientific consensus that anthropogenic climate change is real, and discussed the need to better understand the relationship between severe weather events and climate to better manage the risks associated with a changing climate.
Ranking Member Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR) said in her opening statement, “The lesson of this hearing cannot be that a potential link between climate change and severe weather is too difficult to determine or understand, and therefore we should stop trying. It should not be controversial to examine if the weather will change as a consequence of global warming. Scientific projections from the IPCC make it apparent that we will live in a hotter world–we already have a warmer world than that of our grandparents. In many of our districts, residents will experience drier environments with more drought. Those of us who represent particularly wet areas may find that precipitation arriving in more intense storms. The oceans will be warmer and that may well produce stronger or more frequent tropical storms. To focus only on the question of whether there will be more extreme events misses the point that by the end of this century much of the world as we know it, in our districts and states, will be considerably altered by the weather effects of climate change.”
Minority witness Dr. David Titley (USN Rear Admiral, retired) said in his testimony, “Our country is dealing with a significant change in the world’s climate; it is a large challenge. Saying we don’t know today the impact of climate change on [weather] phenomena is very different than stating that climate change has no impact on typhoons and hurricanes. What we do know is that these storms are forming in a warmer, moister environment and above a warmer ocean. We also know that current research indicates our future may include more intense, and possibly more frequent, storms. That is a risk not to be summarily discounted.”
Earlier this week, the Reinsurance Association of America sent a letter to the committee stating their support for close examination of the critical issues of extreme weather and climate. “As the scientific community’s knowledge of changes in our climate and the resulting weather continue to develop, it is important for our communities to incorporate that information into the exposure and risk assessment process, and that it be conveyed to stakeholders, policyholders, the public and public officials that can, or should, address adaptation and mitigation alternatives. Developing an understanding about climate and its impacts on droughts, heat waves, the frequency and intensity of tropical hurricanes, thunderstorms and convective events, rising sea levels and storm surge, more extreme precipitation events and flooding is critical to our role in translating the interdependencies of weather, climate risk assessment and pricing.” The full letter can be found here.
In Response to a question by Rep. Mark Takano (D-CA) regarding the claims made that incidents of extreme weather are not increasing, Dr. Titley responded, “One of the main definitions of ‘extreme’ is ‘away from the center.’ Again, just take the basic data. We have had for the last 36 years above normal temperatures, that is away from the center, and they are getting further and further away. A record like that is equivalent to flipping a coin and getting ‘heads’ 36 consecutive times. The chances of that happening with an un-weighted coin: 1 in 68 billion. Put another way, you are almost 400 times more likely to win the Powerball jackpot than you are to see this temperature record if the climate was not changing. I would say that is extreme. And the ice in the Arctic, that is extreme. We have seen geologic changes in less than 10 years.”
Dr. Titley’s presentation slides can be seen here.
Downloads
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Source: http://democrats.science.house.gov/press-release/subcommittee-discusses-climate-change-impacts-severe-weather
You can read Pielke’s take on the event here and you can be sure he doesn’t leave out anybody. His written testimony can be downloaded here
Video of the hearing is here:
http://science.edgeboss.net/wmedia/science/sst2013/EV121113.wvx
Hate to go all political, but here goes; Imagine what would happen if the DNC gets control of the House again? What is more concerning is that few republicans understand the science or accurately debate the real issues. They get their floor wiped by democrats who are indoctrinated by the religion of environmentalists, but buy in completely by that religion. The people in congress who we have on our “side” of this debate are poorly equipped to defend the points.
said in her opening statement, “The lesson of this hearing cannot be that a potential link between climate change and severe weather is too difficult to determine or understand, and therefore we should stop trying.
Surely you have a hearing and listen to evidence and come to a conclusion. Ruling out an outcome (that the drivers are too complex and we should just adapt to whatever happens) before the talking starts is crazy.
It’s almost like saying we know what outcome we want so any other evidence will be ignored…oh, wait…
Just a comment on the coin flip analogy. The probability of any given sequence is precisely the same as the probability of any other given sequence. That said, here the analogy fails as coin flips are independent of each other, and temperatures from one year to the next are not.
Another reason congress often has a single digit approval rating.
“Pro and con are opposites, that fact is clearly seen. If progress means to move forward, then what does congress mean?”
― Nipsey Russell
The “Reinsurance Association of America” is another non-profit trade organization like the “National Green Buildings Council” that masquerades as a government entity. From their site, “The RAA is a nonprofit trade association of reinsurers established in 1968. The association is headquartered in Washington, D.C. The primary purpose of the RAA is to advance the interests of the U.S. property and casualty reinsurance industry through effective government relations with state and federal lawmakers and regulatory agencies and representation before judicial bodies.”
So, they are a lobbying firm that is pushing global warming policy.
Roger is a class act and he went out of his way to thank congress for allowing him to testify. Apparently, some animals are more equal than others. A very sad state of affairs!
Flip a coin 36 times… They forgot to metion how the determination of that probability changes given a natural uptrend in temperature during the 36 coin flips.
Then there’s this…
Cairo (AFP) – A regional cold snap spread to Egypt on Friday, with some Cairo suburbs seeing snowfall for the first time in years, a weather official said.
http://weather.yahoo.com/cairo-sees-first-snow-years-cold-snap-hits-142519974.html
I hate politics mixed with science, but this is solely a political thread and posting. I don’t think Americans are connecting the dots on a number of issues. Looking at things from the Great White North the following add up. The top military person in the U.S. has declared climate change the number one “national security” threat to the U.S. Your President has great personal (office) power regarding national security, and can bypass Congress with executive privilege. The Senate has passed the “nuclear option” and is stacking the only court that can over-rule your President. The President has made it clear that he will pursue a radical climate change agenda. The U.S. climate agenda is therefore set- rules will be set by the administration and enforced by the bureaucratic structure. It won’t matter what happens in the next election because these moves are coming soon to a country near you. I’m not much for conspiracy theories, and don’t see this as a conspiracy. It is too “overt”, and your elected officials are simply using the system to force an agenda. I’m glad I live in Canada, but we will be impacted by what happens.
theBuckWheat says:
December 13, 2013 at 5:43 am
Especially when those $Trillions are borrowed from a private institution, the Fed, that has no collateral whatsoever so turns pure Monopoly Money into real Dollars–for which taxpayers are on the hook for the principle AND the interest.
Talk about a scam…
It’s unprecedented in world history!
(And it’s the main reason why the income gap continues to expand. Everything the government does pushes this monetary theft–even “climate science”.)
Also with the coin flip, why do they get to choose which coin flips to choose? 36 flips out of 5.4 billion?
mwhite says:
December 13, 2013 at 12:44 am
In Britain if a committee produces a report that is disputed, the minority sometimes produce a report of their own.
Okay, I scanned all of the comments so far and didn’t notice anyone making the following point, so I will: This is the minority for gosh sakes. The House majority is Republican.
Two points: First: What would you expect a Democrat press release to say? Global warming has gone by the wayside? Get real.
Second Point: Where’s the GOP press release, one issued not by the ranking member of the minority, but by the Chairman appointed by the majority.
This is an overreaction to the obvious. Instead of all the effort being put into dissecting this report, someone should be contacting the committee in search of the majority report. Then give that some publicity, not this tripe.
This air brush truth fits well with air brush politicized science. And we have always been at war with Oceana.
I see Dr. Titley had no problem telling flat out lies. Many of them. His comment about the Arctic sea ice being more important was a perfect example and it was nice to see Dr. Christy correct him. When you see people like this telling porkers before Congress with absolutely no fear of being held accountable it really demonstrates the current state of affairs.
vor ward says:
December 12, 2013 at 11:53 pm
Even when they listen to the truth they are determined not to hear it.
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people only hear what they want to hear.
What on Earth has tossing coins got to do with climate data/statistics? This is now purely a political issue, where the facts must not get in the way of a scary, vote-winning story.
theBuckWheat says:
December 13, 2013 at 5:43 am
I am still waiting for research on what, exactly, the ideal climate is.
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Environmentalism would have us believe that if temperatures get colder, more plants and animals will die, and on the flip side, if temperatures get warmer, more plants and animals will die.
So, wherever you are, no matter what temperature, any change up or down is bad. Unless of course you take a look at the real world. In which case you will find that many lifeforms have adapted to take advantage of change.
For example, forest fires in Pacific Northwest. Smokey tells us they are bad. But, if you are a Douglas Fir, they are good. In mature, old growth forests, you find mostly hemlocks. Brittle, full of knots, and subject to rot, these are an inferior tree for construction. However, they grow well in established low-light forests. Douglas fir on the other hand do not grow well in low light. They need open spaces to grow. As a result they are adapted to survive and germinate after forest fires. The end result of fire is a stand of new growth Douglas firs, with their superior qualities for construction.
If you allow the warmists to control the language, you certainly add to the difficulty of refuting their arguments in public. This press release was never intended to be about an inquiry into the science, it is nothing more than propaganda, despite Dr. Pielke’s nice comments about congressional hearings.
The press release is about “climate change” and “extreme” weather. Who doesn’t believe the climate has changed, is changing and will change in the future? But they really mean “global warming.” Someone ought to ask these learned leaders if they have a consensus of thousands of scientists that will sign on to the climate ought to be unchanging and constant or that they can control the climate.
Extreme weather seems to mean “not normal.” What the heck is normal? The first couple years I lived in Michigan I kept hearing “this is not a normal….” I finally decided that the normal weather was “not normal” because we never had any normal weather. Thunderstorms and tornados seem to me to be normal weather events. We seem to have them every year, some years worse than others. Hurricanes are normal weather events including more some years and none some years.
Someone ought to liken their squawking about man creating bad weather to primitive beliefs in the gods punishing us for our sins and we should atone. We’d probably get as much climate control with roving bands of flagelants as with their hocus pocus.
And, to the comment about recent colder periods. How about a response called winter?
Rep. Mark Takano(D-CA] said “One of the main definitions of ‘extreme’ is ‘away from the center.’ Again, just take the basic data. We have had for the last 36 years above normal temperatures, that is away from the center, and they are getting further and further away. ”
This is dumb . The center shifts as the climate seasons shift and they shift again as we move through a 60 year climate cycle . We just came through a 30 year warm phase of the climate cycle and are heading for the 30 year cool phase . Each climate phase has a different center and spread .The problem is that they think the we are further away from the center during last 30 years is an indication of extreme weather . This is nonsense . You cannot just look at the last 30 years only .
Ahh the D.C. I knew so well a decade ago.
Still smells like ‘Teen Spirit’ is ridding the bus.
pat,
Regarding the CNN debate with Marc Morano and the other 3 guys making spewing the false rhetoric and lies: There is nobody better than Marc in communicating the authentic science and facts well but when 3 other guys state lies and make completely misleading statements, the viewer doesn’t hear the truth…………as CNN intended.
Here’s one of dozens of misleading quotes:
“A great example, $18 billion a year is spent dealing with the impacts of asthma in this country, largely from outdoor air pollution”
CO2 is colorless, odorless and up to more than triple the current level, has no effect on animal respiration.
In the last 100 years, as CO2 increased there have been 0(zero) humans adversely effected from breathing ambient atmospheric carbon dioxide. If we weren’t flushing so much money down the toilet chasing this beneficial gas, we would have more resources to fight all the real pollution in our water, soils and air.
CO2 is like the guy that has been helping old ladies across the street his entire life, being falsely accused of beating and robbing them. A high paid team of corrupt prosecutors using paid off people to falsely testify, with a handpicked jury told to disregard anything the defense attorney says because he is in denial of his clients many crimes.
rogerknights says:
December 13, 2013 at 2:47 am
2.5 years ago (it seems like yesterday), in a guest thread, Steve Goddard rebutted the coin flip analogy thusly:
““The coin flip analogy assumes that each iteration is independent of the others, which is not the case with climate.””
And how many politicians, or the public for that matter, do you suppose understand the concept of independent events in the probabilistic context? The strategy of telling a lie over and over, which is a mainstay of the left, works quite well, particularly with issues requiring more than a room temperature IQ.
It’s long past time in this country to aggressively pin the AGW tail on the Democrat donkeys who own it and shame them with everything they deserve.
In Oregon they are imposing layers of ridiculous nonsense upon every aspect of our lives.
Bonamici is as daft a rep as there is . Her entire grasp of all issues is limited to the party input.
She just reproduces it like an old mimeograph machine.
Their emissions reduction mission is a festering sore of dysfunction with everyone in sight just following orders.
Google this “climate smart communities scenarios project”
to see what the parasite looks like.
That is reminiscent of the best USSR photo crops… Big Green is getting desperate to enforce their totalitarism.
“CO2 is colorless, odorless and up to more than triple the current level, has no effect on animal respiration”
I should have stated “no significant negative consequences on animal respiration.”
Remember that the wise and good people of the United States have elected these equally wise and good people.