“I do not know what the models actually are predicting that you are referring to”
Story submitted by Eric Worrall
EPA Chief Gina McCarthy struggled to answer questions, at a recent Senate Environment and Public Works committee hearing, refusing to provide immediate answers even to basic questions, such as whether IPCC climate models were skilful at forecasting global temperature. The EPA is seeking an inflation busting 6% increase to their budget.
According to Yellow Hammer News (video below)
“Would you acknowledge that over the last 18 years,” Sessions asked, “that the increase in temperature has been very little, and that it is well below, matter of fact 90 percent below most of the environmental models that showed how fast temperature would increase?”
“I do not know what the models actually are predicting that you are referring to,” McCarthy responded.
“This is a stunning development,” Sessions shot back, “that the head of the Environmental Protection Agency—who should know more than anybody else in the world, who is imposing hundreds of billions of dollars in cost to prevent this climate temperature increase—doesn’t know whether their projections have been right or wrong.”
A video of the question and answer session between McCarthy and Sessions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24DP1uG-MEM
Based on Gina’s performance, it seems likely the EPA will face significant ongoing opposition to its request for a budget increase.
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How do such people get to hold such positions of power? She actually looks like she is one of the bluntest knives in the drawer. Thick-skinned perhaps?
Philip.
It seems to happen in all walks of life, bankers with a track record of failure keep getting employed, heads of Child Protection Agencies that fail get jobs doing the same thing elsewhere, sports coaches with a record of unmitigated failure get employed and named the best of their generation.
I wish I knew the secret.
Sandy – the secret is really quite simple.
All you have to be able to accomplish in any position of power is (1) to know where the bodies are buried, and (2) to have the ability to articulate that you KNOW where the bodies are buried, even if you do not.
Obviously, you haven’t been climbing the greasy pole of commerce lately, have you?
Projections V Observations
http://www.energyadvocate.com/gc1.jpg
Here are the various failed methane projections from the IPCC. Observations – black dotted line.
Sandy, you should talk to Dan Savage … he may have some answers. 😉
Jimbo,
All these fun graphs, thanks, but often it’d be nice to see the source (who made the graph and when) and even more often it would be nice to see an updated graph with the recent data.
In this particular CH4 case, it is very interesting that the most recent data is so difficult to google up. Could I draw the conclusion that nobody in the world is interested enough? What that tells about the issue?
“Idiot, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling. The Idiot’s activity is not confined to any special field of thought or action, but “pervades and regulates the whole.” He has the last word in everything; his decision is unappealable. He sets the fashions and opinion of taste, dictates the limitations of speech and circumscribes conduct with a dead-line.” Ambrose Bierce
Hugh
Here s a couple of Graphs that include the information up to 2014
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Ou2rIzzX2qM/Us0fTjhuPHI/AAAAAAAAMcs/FxJTrYypHoo/s1600/idl-sep-2013.png
http://www.mfe.govt.nz/sites/default/files/environmental-reporting/atmosphere/greenhouse-gases/images/ch4-baring.jpg
How do such people get to hold such positions of power?
It’s WHO you know, not WHAT you know.
And often, its WHAT you know about WHO you know…
It’s called being a professional BS-artist. “Professional” in this case (as most) means “doing it for a living”, rather than being good at it.
no mate; it’s not what you know, it’s who you blow.
Olaf,
Would that be a Stand-up Philosopher?
Well worn political kneepads.
Close. Boot polish is a food group.
Actually it is easy. First you have to “buy in” to whatever the “crisis de jour” is in the sense that you know what “the people that drive the world” want you to believe. Then, like a good little soldier, you take your orders and soldier on, no matter how stupid you look. As long as you can vocally, to borrow from Muhammad Ali, “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee,” you will be promoted upwards. Judging by THIS performance, however, McCarthy seems to have lost that ability since she couldn’t put real sentences together that could explain anything other than quote the party line. Unfortunately, this display of ignorance seems to be actually “in step” with this administration’s policies, so she probably is safe from being sacked. But to rise to this level only takes knowing how to graciously kiss gluteals, and smile while doing it. It normally takes some sense of articulation, but it doesn’t take knowledge.
The Peter Principle: rise to your level of incompetence.
I doubt whether they’ve even been asked whether their forecasts actually work.
Most politicians have lapped up the this or that “could happen” and forecast to ask the straightforward question “did anything you say would happen actually did happen?”
Climatological models don’t make forecasts. They make “projections.” Projections exhibit error but do not have truth-values. Thus, a projection is insusceptible to being falsified by the evidence.
Her skills are in politics, not science. That is she is an expert at following the herd and kissing the right butts. Independent thought is neither desired or appreciated.
She is very smart and knows exactly what she is doing. She doesn’t want to flat out say the models are wrong, that would be a BIG headline. She feigns ignorance — says that the models are real complicated, I’m not a modeller, I don’t really know what you are referring to — so that people won’t be able to say, “The head of EPA acknowledges that the models are wrong.”
She may come across here as not quite up to the task, but that is because it is best for someone in her position not to publicly acknowledge that the models have significantly overpredicted warming.
It is a headline if she were to say that; but if Sen. Sessions says that, it’s just because he is a Republican denier.
+1 … She couldn’t admit that the models are wrong, else she wouldn’t be asking for more money. The models are wrong, but the 6% increase is real.
Better to look like a fool than to contradict Obama’s ideology.
Lysenko used the same tactic and kept his job under Stalin as a result.
McCathy is no different.
Missing the “r”. There’s no republican “R” in McCathy.
And by how much will they cut her budget after this – 0%, 10%, 20%? Fingers crossed…
I would like to suggest 100% but I know that won’t happen.
Any just why cannot the Federal Government get out of the environmental business and let the States deal with it?(except for Federal lands)
ECB, pollution isn’t necessarily local. Industrial crud from Augusta, GA, winds up in South Carolina.
Because many of the states won’t deal with it – too close to big vested interests who don’t want to clean up their acts. That’s why the FedGov took it on in the first place. People tend to forget, or have never known because they weren’t around back then, how bad environmental pollution used to be. I’m not so opposed to them dealing with air (CO2 excepted) and water standards and such but I’d surely like to get them out of the AGW business. Maybe a 50% reduction in budget for starters to force some rational prioritization? And stop them doling out billions to the green blob.
All government coercion, without exception, faces the problem of diminishing returns. Successive doublings of the military, or number of policemen, or number of prisons, produces a smaller and smaller benefit in law and order despite the at least linear increase in costs. At some point, an additional increment of government coercion always makes things worse and not better. This is the root argument for liberty and limited government.
Environmental law is certainly not an exception to this general principle. Back in the 1960s and 70s, there was a lot of pollution and the environmental laws of that time almost certainly yielded substantial net benefits. However, the problem of diminishing returns has long since kicked in. It is insane that the EPA is destroying the coal industry without any new legislation passed by Congress. The agency is out of control.
EPA is out of control. Agreed – and has been for a long time.
Don’t you get it, we had this with the IRS and Lois Learner’s Emails they said they needed a budget increase so they could find them. The EPA needs a budget increase so she can find out what the models say, or in her case what models are.
Not only does McCarthy not know how accurate the models are, but she thinks its warmed 1 deg in the last 18 years, and that severe weather events have increased.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/03/06/jeff-sessions-leaves-epa-chief-unable-to-justify-money-grab/
In other words, she is utterly clueless. If, in the private sector, I had a budget request based on this level of knowledge, the budget would be decreased by at least her salary. And probably her bosses salary as well.
My guess is that after this embarrassing episode she will want to take a look at the various projections since the first assessment report.. She may also want to see them compared to observations. If she does these things she must harbor doubts about dangerous warming but won’t tell a soul.
PS she should know as well that the models don’t make predictions!
Right on.
Jimbo,
Please send her a copy of Dr. Spencer’s spaghetti graph. No discussion is needed. Maybe even include the one in the leading post here so as to show her the IPCC’s take on it. Then at least she can’t claim ignorance in a legit manner.
Your post made me curious, so I looked up her bio. She has a degree in Social Anthropology, whatever that is, and has never held a job of any consequence outside government. Wikipedia proclaims she is an environmental expert (meaning she is 50 miles from home), and the face of Obama’s Global Warming initiative (translation, she is a priest in the church of AGW). She wouldn’t rise above the level of administrative assistant in a typical corporation.
Social Anthropology? And she was vetted by the President and Congress?
My dad loved that definition of an expert. Plain old person out of state.
That should have been …plain ordinary person out of state.
“She has a degree in Social Anthropology, whatever that is”: is the scientific study of humans, past and present, that draws and builds upon knowledge from the social sciences, life sciences, and humanities.
However based on her handling of the senator, I was say that she didn’t learn much from her course work. Perhaps in her case we should redefine “Social Anthropology” as having done work similar to Dian Fossey and Jane Goodall.
Expert – an old drip under pressure (as in ex-spurt)
My favourite definition of and expert is to break the word down: An “Ex” is a has been; and a (s)pert is a drip under pressure. Certainly fits the video.
Why would a person with a degree in social sciences be selected to head an organization whose role is ostensibly scientific? I’d think someone with a management, accounting or science background would be more appropriate. Then again, if social and/or behavioural change is the true aim of the organization, great choice!
@BFL, ““Social Anthropology” as having done work similar to Dian Fossey and Jane Goodall.”
Can you rethink that one please to me that is an insult, at least they lived their studies.
I thought Obama knew some scientists at the EPA
I want to puke, and I don’t even pay American taxes. She has to be run off. If she is not then all I can say is God help America, and I’m not even religious.
Hilarious, 4 eyes. Thank you for the laugh. I needed that.
4 eyes, did you see who (and what) the president of the US is?
I think these 2 are quite a match, don’t they?
I suspect she knew the answers and just chose dumb as that was the less damaging ploy than stepping in the truth…
Or bait so that republicans naively walk into “denier” territory…
Worse, she knowingly chose “wrong”.
We used to call that lying.
Why didn’t John Boehner leave the EPA defunded back in November instead of Homeland Security? Few Americans would care if they shut down the EPA in a funding fight. But then it would not have given him the excuse he wanted to surrender to minority Democrats. I think he was planning to do that from the beginning.
Louis: The Senate Environment and Public Works committee should call John Boehner to testify and reply to your question!!!
You know the EPA has no specific congressional oversight. Let me ask: Which congressional committee has oversight authority over the EPA? The EPA was created, not by Congress, but by Richard Nixon through an Executive Order.
Gina McCarthy twice did not even know who or what the IPCC is. As Sen’ Sessions said, here answers were “stunning”.
If Boehner were to do as you suggest, the media would go completely berserk and begin bouncing off the walls. “Republicans are anti-science.” “Republicans want you to drink dirty water and breath dirty air.” “Republicans are owned by evil corporations.”
The MSM scream would go on at full volume indefinitely. The Low Info voters, who like the rest of us are fond of clean air and water, would respond to poll questions and show the Republican position to be overwhelmingly unpopular. Boehner is a politician, and he and his caucus, like all other politicians, want to be re-elected. He would therefore cave, and the MSM will triumphantly proclaim the collapse.
If he did not cave, then he and his caucus are likely to be replaced by the Low Info voters, with politicians who “want to preserve our clean air and water”.
How do you prevent that scenario from playing out? Certainly it is the scenario that has frightened Boehner et al from doing as you suggest.
Actually its the Democrats who are anti-science. They succeed in making it sound as though it is the Republicans through artful applications of the equivocation fallacy. Gina McCarthy gave us a lesson on how to do this in the Senate hearing and none of the Republican Senators picked up on it.
“The danger to America is not Barack Obama, but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the Presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America. Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The Republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools, such as those who made him their president.”
http://www.bernardgoldberg.com/this-pretty-much-sums-it-up/?utm_source=BernardGoldberg.com+Newsletter&utm_campaign=6908f45b9c-NEWSLETTER&utm_medium=email#sthash.3YiL6Zxe.dpuf
TYoke – Bernie hit the nail on the head! In 2007 I gave out bumper snickers “Monica Lewinsky’s ex boyfriends wife for President”. Not sure after watching Hillary speak about emails it would have made much difference which one won then. But I’m sure after watching results in Pennsylvania from the past 4 Pres elections that the rural old white guys not voting will continue to allow the Democrats to occupy the White House. Is there Latin similar to caveat emptor about voter apathy/ignorance? Looking for another good bumper snicker.
If you think it’s bad now, wait until Obama starts playing the second string bench warmers next year.
Marie Harf would be perfect.
Perhaps Senator Sessions deserves a medal.
He seems to have been well briefed.
McCarthy looked like a complete fool during the Senate Environmental hearings.
All she could do was regurgitate the some vague notion that “scientists” believe in “climate change”…
McCarthy didn’t have a clue that global temp trends over the past 18 years have been flat as a board:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1996.6/plot/rss/from:1996.6/trend/plot/esrl-co2/from:1996.6/normalise/trend/plot/esrl-co2/from:1996.6/normalise
McCarthy was clueless that CAGW CMIP5 climate model projection averages now exceed reality by 2 standard deviations:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/CMIP5-73-models-vs-obs-20N-20S-MT-5-yr-means1.png
McCarthy wasn’t aware the IPCC’s AR5 report concluded that over the past 50~100 years, there hasn’t been ANY global increasing trends in severe weather frequency nor intensity for: hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones, droughts, tornadoes, floods, thunderstorms, tropical storms and extratropical storms:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/03/pielke-jr-agrees-extreme-weather-to-climate-connection-is-a-dead-issue/
McCarthy is either a liar or is completely unaware of the dismal state the CAGW hypothesis now finds itself in. Virtually NONE of CAGW’s dire predictions are coming even close to reflecting reality.
In 5~7 years, there is a very high probability CAGW model-mean temp projections may well exceed satellite observations by 3 standard deviations, and that a flat/falling global temp trend may be approaching a 25-year duration…
Under the rules of the Scientific Method, such huge discrepancies between hypothetical projections vs. observations is sufficient empirical evidence to disconfirm the CAGW hypothesis and finally end all the wasteful CO2 sequestration spending.
McCarthy’s job isn’t about protecting the environment or establishing the truth, it’s about increasing EPA’s budget, control and power to avoid a CAGW “crisis” that clearly does not exist.
A chimp is running the EPA !
That is unecessary
Isn’t that derogatory to chimps?
EPA = a backward APE
I think the ugly old cow is just plain stupid and has been promoted way above her abilities through mandated affirmative action policies in government. And being female I’m allowed to say it.
And is your model from which you derive this conclusion accurate?
Is it really necessary to comment on something so superficial as a person’s looks?
Hey, go easy on her; she’s a lot better looking than Rajendra Pachauri.
You made my day, Antonia. I’ve always been a supporter of a hypothesis that there is significant amount of hidden intelligence among female population, you are a proof of it…
:):)
Scottish Sceptic: “And is your model from which you derive this conclusion accurate?”
It doesn’t have to be accurate, it is precise … it gives the same answer every time so it must be right.
Well now, don’t forget – the EPA didn’t rely on the IPCC reports, instead it conducted its own, independent, scientific analysis of the data and…
Oh, wait,
never mind.
/grin
Forget how many standard deviations from reality those projections are, they are all 100% wrong, end of argument. If it was a horse race you have done your dough.
Unbelievable!
There is nothing stunning or unusual about this witness’ testimony. This is a common sort of performance that I have been seeing since CSPAN first let us watch some of this sort of thing in live action on TV way back in the 1980s. This is political theater.
The EPA is not in business to protect the environment. It might protect the environment on accident as it pursues its main bureaucratic mission — to increase its own size and importance — but most often the EPA hurts people in the general public and their own employees enjoy doing so. These words are not an indictment of the EPA only, they are just like all the other agencies of the central government. I hope my skeptical friends someday come to realize that the government is not your friend. As Murray N. Rothbard famously said, ” the state is a gang of thieves writ large”.
Markstoval– Murray N. Rothbard was a great man! Unfortunately, too few people are aware of his writings.
After watching this video, I beginning to understand why Rothbard came to the ultimate conclusion that anarcho-capitalism seems to be the only viable alternative to avoid government tyranny from government hacks like McCarthy:
http://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism
Well the EPA used to have honest goals. For example I can remember flying into the red haze in Los Angeles in the 1970’s and immediately noticing the stink. While L.A. still has issues, it is not nearly what it used to be. However, starting with the super fund & sites, bad law just gave the lawyers a life time of income and did little about the sites. Then the EPA decided on site designation on a whim (much like today) and that process is ongoing as with CO2 and fine particulates. A lot of these organizations have become entities unto themselves (FDA, NIH, FTC, FCC, EPA) without much effective oversight (except by corporate lobbyists through congress). Then there are those that probably are just too dangerous to provide real oversight for obvious reasons (FBI, CIA, NSA, DEA possibly some of the military). It would appear that it’s been all downhill for sometime now. Hoover (FBI) taught them all well.
http://perc.org/articles/superfund-1
I have been searching for a appropriate location to insert this link – see for yourself what I receive almost daily in my work email in-box (my job requires I subscribe to EPA & OSHA updates as well as local environmental & workplace issues). Here is the link for all EPA “News Releases”, where they extoll thier efforts and intiatives (to include grants):
http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/2015%20Press%20Releases!OpenView
Most include a nod to “the President’s Climate Action Plan” (read: reduction of atmospheric CO2 through efforts of the EPA). If you have not seen these before, I find them a daily infuriance.
MCR
Thanks Michael and here I thought it was really really bad, (sarc)
Political appointees get their jobs not because of expertise but because of idealogical purity as judged by those in power.
Those who believe in the Cause have to be very vague about the facts, as it is all a matter of faith, not science.
Rule Number 1 is: Don’t debate with the infidels, as you should never speak to unbelievers, as they will put your faith in doubt. Put another way, this is just another case of:
“Don’t try and confuse me with the facts, my mind is made up!”
The less you know about climate, the higher you rise in the alarmist hierarchy and the more money you can make from your ignorance; McCathy and Gore are great examples of this.
The automated rhetoric generator kicked in as soon as she was asked the first simple question – and they pay people like her real money when “goober peas” would be lot cheaper and far more appropriate. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eu67jBGFUn0
Maybe I’m being paranoid but this looks to me like a careful and deliberate ploy to avoid answering questions based on a Clinton-esque muddying of the definitions of basic English language words.
Call me cynical but…
You’re a ‘cynical butt’……..well you did ask !!!
TYVM. Lols. +1
Hey, leave this ditz where she is… just more interviews and questioning.
The damage she is doing to the alarmista agenda is UNPRECEDENTED. !!
Why is it that every warmista mouthpiece is so incredibly IGNORANT. !!
(mosh will be here soon !)
the words ‘promoted well above their pay grade ‘ have never be better applied.
Not to mention “depriving a village somewhere of it’s idiot”
The “Peter Principle” I think this is called.
How sad!
When was the last time a government department head anywhere was fired for incompetence. My guess is never.
As I have been saying for quite some time now….
this is not about science anymore, this is policy through Ex Cathedra by idiots, misanthropic social engineers, and communists (by communist, I mean, people who think they and only they should decide what other people should do or behave like, for communism is about a the specially choosen decide for the rest).
Why is everybody bringing up charts and data to counter argue these people. For get about the data and charts! This is more of a battle about fighting communists who want to change and rule the world, than it is about science and facts.
AS I HAVE TOLD YOU All MANY TIMES BEFORE, facts, science, truth, data are irrelevant. You can’t fight againts people who are in positions of power, like the delusional heads of the EPA, corrupt professors who run Universities departments, dishonest editors and reviewers of journals, corrupt scientists, and gullible and foolish students who only want to be part of the science in-crowd, all working together to protect their careers, salaries and over hyped egos, with just arguments and counter-arguments.
The Scientific System and Establishment is irreparably broken. Thanks to Social Entropy:
Dorian’s Maxim of Desystemization: Centralized controlled systems which constantly grow, even linearly, when embedded, in situ, with elements of corruption, will be overcome and collapse, for eventually corruption will always end up out growing faster than the proper functional system.
This is why all things fall apart as they grow, including, economies, governments, corporations, or even technical projects, via their budgets. No human being or group of human beings can manage a system growing ever larger for all time. Corruption, errors, poor planning, complexity, greed, dishonest legislating and policing, it matters not, as systems grow, even linearly, these uncontrollable negative forces of entropy, will destroy the system, and always at a faster, exponential rate. This is why collapses occur faster than rises; entropy, including social entropy (i.e. entropy inflicted by human sinful mischeviousness) is always working and eventually faster, against you and the functional system.
Brilliant, history repeating itself ad infinitum.
Dorian
Centralized controlled systems which constantly grow, even linearly, when embedded, in situ, with elements of corruption, will be overcome and collapse, for eventually corruption will always end up out growing faster than the proper functional system.
________________________________
Certainly true of the USSR, when I was there in 1990. Nothing worked, but everyone pretended it worked – because to say it was not working was disloyal and would bring a ‘detention’ (not the schoolboy variety).
I see the same today, especially with the BBC which is becoming ever more detached from reality as the years pass. And those who deny this manufactured reality are vilified and ostracised, by using every weapon in the BBC’s arsenal. Pure Orwellian 1984.
Mind you, it is easier than ever to determine the true truth – listen to the BBC, assume a 180º reversal of what they say, and voila – the truth.
R
Particularly when the only trick this pony has is to destroy the wealth production that they need to live off of.
Parasites frequently end up killing their host, and then they all die.
Speaking of clueless and models, there was a Jeopardy clue on the show last night in the category of ‘Security’ that was as follows (I’m going by memory) :
What is Laurence Livermore’s super computer working on that John Kerry says is the most important security problem in the world today?
Not a single contestant hazarded a guess. I of course had the correct expected answer of “Climate Change”.
You mean, “what is climate change”? Right? 🙂
@garymount
I saw it. Subject was The Science of Security. The video was of the computers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The clue was, “The lab’s high performance computing, with the capacity of 20 quadrillion operations per second, is not just helping to build weapons systems but to model this, which Secretary of State Kerry in 2014 called directly related to the potential of greater conflict.”
Of all days I had it recorded. I played it a few times to get the correct wording. I posted about it at Real Science. Loved the contestant silence.
Is there a link for that Jeopardy question (video anywhere of it)?
Funny I couldn’t find any reference to climate change at the LLNL website. Maybe they have real scientists there.
Thanks for the effort to transcribe the video. I tried searching for that clue but came up empty. I could have hit the record button when I caught it live, but I had no idea that I would be needing a reference to it a few hours later, and besides, if I recorded everything that mentioned CC, I would quickly run out of room on my DVR as it only holds 300 hours of HD (500 SD).
You may all think this is a pathetic performance on her part. It was, but that is not the point: she still has her job and her budget demands are expensive, not to mention the deliberate damage the EPA is currently and intends to further wreak on the USA and its economy.
Surely her department warned her what to expect? Were these the best answers they could come up with, was she fed to the wolves or was she using a tried and tested climate change formula that will get her the 6% she wants? Mantra is the new obfuscation perhaps?
Utterly bizarre that she would be so badly briefed that she could demonstrate such abject lack of knowledge.
ImranCan, it matters not. The totalitarians in charge have seemingly reached a point where no justification for anything is needed other than their own say-so. There’ll always be a useful idiot to explain it, and the explanation doesn’t even need to be good.
It is not so hard to understand, for the past 25 years all that was required for blind acceptance was a ludicrous claim followed by a statement about saving the planet, any questions were dismissed out of hand and the media acted like good little lapdogs.
If you were briefing her wouldn’t the brief contain just two words: “say nothing”?
Anxiously awaiting her defenders to come and explain to us why she’s right and we’re wrong.
None so far, I see.
You’re just not looking in the right place. Tons of disgust how us idiot, Cro-magnon, knuckle dragging “climate change deniers” can so misunderstand something – as usual – over at the Puffington Host.
It was smart of the Senator to not let her suggest he didn’t believe Climate is changing. To ask her about hurricanes and have her throw that barb in and make sure he squashed it was probably the most important thing he did there.
I disagree it was a pathetic performance, she accomplished exactly what she was sent there to accomplish, that is to stonewall the committee and regurgitate the talking points that;
1. the sequester cuts were wrong so she should get her 6% budget increase, and
2. climate change is happening now – and she wasn’t going to admit anything to the contrary.
“Climate change is happenening now” is the same talking point Obama has stressed in order to try and build some momentum for taking all of his economy destroying actions.
So she was forced to appear clueless to toe the WH line and hide behind her “our scientists tell me” excuse.
yep… it was sh1tty theatre.