“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:
Based on Gina’s performance, it seems likely the EPA will face significant ongoing opposition to its request for a budget increase.
From the comments section of the video, a short, excellent paper that many here should acquaint themselves with: http://faculty.washington.edu/lynnhank/Popper-1.pdf
WHY?
Seriously?
At least EPA is establishing a treatise on what bad public policy looks like for all generations to see. This will not be some murky artifact of history like the causes of World War 1 when civilization looks back on the misspent resources and maligned science process.
Senator Sessions should have had some graphs pre-prepared. Apart from that he did a fine job.
R
That’s what I was thinking while watching! If when Gina asked “what models?” Jeff should have pulled out a n enlarged chart like Jimbo shows us -saying “like [u] this [/] one from the IPCC!”
GIna only has one job – the Left has a big pair of boots, and her job is to lick them constantly.
And she does that very well.
Somehow her boss who hired her is left out of the discussion. Obama hired her to continue his dirty work against the American people. The dirty work is to drive people into energy poverty and financial poverty. Of course the EPA should have its budget dramatically cut so as to limit the damage they inflict on the American people and beyond.
People such as McCarthy must continue playing for the CAGW opponent team. We then have a better chance of winning the game.
(Similar to thoughts I have about Vivienne Westwood being a major ‘player’ in UK anti-fracking campaigns).
Under Obummer protecting the environment is merely an excuse to implement policies of control over the economy. The policies being instituted actually have nothing to do with the environment — therefore knowledge about the environment is irrelevant.to the person implementing those policies. When you are installing socialist control over the economy you don’t want someone in charge who is actually concerned about the environment. She knows what her job actually is and she has been doing it. The existence or non-existence of global warming is irrelevant information.
To put it another way if your political job was to make make sure that all local police forces was under the strict control of the federal government would you be concerned about law and order in the streets? Loyal but dishonest cops would be far preferred to disloyal but honest cops. In fact the latter would soon get the ax. Such is how authoritarian government operates.
Eugene WR Gallun
Peter Principle
I thought a couple of comments above were too insulting to the lady.
Now I’ve watched it, … you have someone as clueless as her in charge of that organisation?
She must have been talking to Kevin Trenberth: http://blogs.nature.com/climatefeedback/2007/06/predictions_of_climate.html
“None of the models used by IPCC are initialized to the observed state and none of the climate states in the models correspond even remotely to the current observed climate.
In particular, the state of the oceans, sea ice, and soil moisture has no relationship to the observed state at any recent time in any of the IPCC models.
Moreover, the starting climate state in several of the models may depart significantly from the real climate owing to model errors.”
That was in June 2007, so it was funny how in February 2007, he had promoted the IPCC AR4 report conclusion to the Committee on Science and Technology of the United States House of Representatives, which said:
“The iconic summary statement of the observations section of the IPCC (2007) report is “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global mean sea level.”
I believe that we must now demonstrate that global temperature is:
a) man made
b) closely correlated to the budgets of governments.
Then sit back and just watch how fast they will be to point out the hiatus in temperature rise!
Senator Sessions must demand she re-appear and bring answers. Nothing of this importance should ever be left hanging like this.
Glad you posted this interview on WUWT. I posted this video in several places on my Facebook (and got some really negative feedback)
“They” should do more interviews of this woman, and maybe interview Richard Windsor also…
For those not familiar with Richard Windsor – Ref:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/02/19/breaking-richard-windsor-epa-scandal-spreads-epa-administrator-james-martin-resigns-over-hidden-email-accounts/
Another Richard Windsor Reference:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/04/richard-windsor-seems-to-be-a-governmental-everyman-issue/
Obviously it’s time to personally attack senator Sessions or have him “investigated” Isn’t that how this administration aswers reality?
Jenna Marbles (blogger / entertainer) should replace Gina McCarthy as head of the EPA.
Things Girls Lie About
She is NOT ignorant. She is avoiding contradicting Obama, Kerry and Holdren. Each has made statements that are inconsistent with observations McCarthy refers to. She doesn’t want to go on record as refuting what the President tells the world.
The evasion is significant. It says that at the highest levels of non-elected government, the divergence between modeling that underpins policy and commonsense observation is a huge problem. The EPA and other CAGW baded groups must avoid yes/no questions about climate change. A skillful debater could exploit this weakness and reveal the true inner thoughts of the agencies.
It would be wonderful if this interaction with Sessions could be repeated in all media outlets world wide. Unfortunately it’s appearance on sceptical web sites only reinforces what skeptics already know. The facts on climate change which Sessions blurted out in the 6 minutes shown are not widely known because Joe Average citizen gets his climate change knowledge from a complicit media. If this video somehow went ultra viral it would do much for our cause.
Gina McCarthy is a nice democrat, a nice liberal, that is one of the primary criteria for selection for democrat senior jobs. ‘Nice’ people vote for ‘nice’ parties. What is or is not ‘nice’ is defined by the party and does not change. Nice people vote based on gender of the person or race of the person, based on political correctness, rather than the most qualified person for the job. The green/liberal/democrat parties skip the stage of policy formation where there is first analysis and discussion of problems to determine what is or is not a problem and then the next logical stage which is to determine solutions that will or will not work when the problems are prioritized.
To question the party line is to be a ‘denier’, rather than ‘nice’. One of McCarthy primary job tasks is to defend the party line. It does not matter whether logic and reason contradicts the party line. i.e. It does not matter that the party policies do not work, nice people will continue to vote for the ‘nice’ party.
The problem is the democrat/liberal/green party line is the same as the EU party line, CAGW is the tool, the wedge, the magic wand that will ‘transform’ the world’s economy. The party line is even if there is no CAGW problem to solve, mandating that the developed countries and the developing countries spend trillions and trillions of dollars on green scams that do not work is a good thing (an investment opportunity), not a bad thing (an astonishing waste of money that does not work for fundamental engineering reasons, does not significantly reduce CO2 emissions, maximum reduction in CO2 emissions is around 15%, ignoring the energy input of installation of green scams, with 100% green scam and 100% fossil backup based on German’s experience without the use of nuclear power – and requires complete backup of ‘fossil’ fuel plants which will more than triple the cost of electrical power vs using just ‘natural’ gas or coal). Included with the green scams is the conversion of food to biofuel which is madness, not just a bad idea.
It is a fact (German provides the example) that the green scams do not work, do not significantly reduce anthropogenic CO2 emissions, not a theory. The only policy that will significantly reduce anthropogenic CO2 emissions (60% reduction, note goal is 0% which is ridiculous.) is a massive conversion to nuclear power and draconian policies such as the banning of air travel, private automobiles, and private homes.
And, as EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy testified before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on July 23, 2014:
At a news conference in early February, 2005 in Brussels, Christiana Figueres, admitted that the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity but to destroy capitalism.
Since the lady’s performance received such a disapproving rating here I wondered what the US news media made of it , especially , say Washington Post . The only reference I could find is this : ( I am not familiar with the paper):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/03/05/the-gops-climate-change-skepticism-in-one-groan-worthy-video/
They seemed to think that the Senator was basically play acting. The conclusions of the write-up , concerning McCarthy’s apparent lack of technical knowledge were:
“Of course, McCarthy could very well go back to her office and submit a scientifically detailed response rebutting all of Sessions’s points. And as our Fact Checker has noted, Sessions and his fellow Republicans aren’t on such solid ground when they say that the EPA rules would devastate the economy.
But that doesn’t matter, as Sessions wasn’t trying to disprove climate change. He was merely trying to sow doubt. This has been the GOP playbook on climate change for years now. Today, we’re seeing a slightly different version of it. In past years, Republicans sought to sow doubt on climate change science itself. But here, Sessions was trying to cast doubt on McCarthy’s scientific knowledge to call into question her agency’s policy response to climate change.
Still, there’s no guarantee that the doubt strategy will work this time. Previously, it worked well, given that many Americans still believe scientists are divided on climate change and that Congress ultimately killed various climate bills. Now, however, the policymaking ball is in the EPA’s court. Absent a party change in the White House or a court ruling against the EPA, there’s little Republicans can do right now to stop the rules, no matter how much doubt they try to sow.”
It will be a long time before any scepticism appears in the US media if this example is typical.
As a university graduate in economics, I would say it is screamingly obvious the that EPA’s actions are actually the very best way to devastate an economy. Look what happened to Greece and Spain who took EPA type policies too seriously.. Could California be next?
Cheers
Roger
http://www.rogerfromnewzealand.wordpress.com
“I do not know what the models actually are predicting that you are referring to“, good answer! /sarc
Very good answer since he never identified the models he was referring to, perhaps he meant the Monckton model.
Maybe she thought toy trains. Models, we were talking about climate science, right?
She did refute every example,
1. More frequent and extreme hurricanes.
2. More frequent and extreme droughts.
3. A significant rise in temperatures 1 F.
Don’t know who the IPCC is, but scientists say.
No need to talk about climate models any more. The logic goes like this:
1. If CO2 were not dangerous to public health and welfare, EPA would not be authorized either to regulate it or to classify it as a pollutant.
2. EPA does in fact regulate CO2 emissions and classifies it as a pollutant, even below concentrations of 0.1%, when it does not have any effect on humans or other beings whatsoever, except plants (when its concentration is too low, like 0.01% or something).
3. EPA was never ordered by either courts or Congress to stop this practice.
___________________________________________________________________
Therefore CO2 is a pollutant and as such, it is dangerous to public health and welfare, so EPA can’t help but regulate it.
That’s it.
sad to say but the maxim of this administration seems to be “the less you know the higher you go!” or perhaps “the more you lie the higher you’ll fly.” All headed by the president that doesn’t find anything out until he reads it in the press. Truly a sad state of affairs for America.
Cheers,
Joe
Sessions is an idiot, I’m surprised he didn’t ask her when she stopped beating her husband! Just a load of grandstanding, framing questions which are impossible to answer properly, and doesn’t really want the data!
One thing for sure is Sessions isn’t an idiot.
Which of Session’s questions do you find impossible to answer? The one about more frequent/severe droughts, floods, hurricanes, storms? The one about observed temps tracking well below model projections? These are both easily answered by looking at the data which apparently he did and she didn’t.
Sessions is a bit of a mean spirited District Court nomination reject. “I thought the KKK was a good idea until I found out they smoke pot.” So he became a politician. He supports big government, voting for all of the Bush big spending. And we know he supports big government in foreign policy, massive Pentagon spending.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Jeff_Sessions
Not only is her response clueless, she couldn’t even manage to respond to what he asked. Sessions’ question was past tense, specifically about the past 18 years and the models utter failure to even remotely match reality. She’s an idiot, she knows it, and her response was a feeble attempt at deflection.