Hearing: Data or Dogma? Promoting Open Inquiry in the Debate over the Magnitude of Human Impact on Earth’s Climate
US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.
Dr. Curry ask to respond to “denier” charge from Sen. Markey, and cites IPCC in her testimony. Steyn spars with Sen. Markey while Markey acts like he’s an authoritarian on the issue.
More video to follow.
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If you have time, give it a read https://patriotpost.us/opinion/39418
I apologize if someone has already said what I am about to say but I got tired of reading comments about water temperature. The answer to senator Markey should have been that the fact that 2014 and 2015 were the warmest years on record is not significant. We are experiencing a pause in warming but it is a pause that is a plateau at the highest temperature levels since 1880. Therefore the warmest years during this pause will set records for the highest temperatures since 1880. But those high temperature years will be offset by cooler years forming our current temperature plateau and it is likely that the pause in continuous temperature rise will continue until around the year 2030. The current warming that Senator Markey refers to is no doubt caused by the existing El Nino effect which should be diminishing shortly. The argument that there is no pause and that continuous warming is occurring will be refuted by the temperature record of upcoming years providing there is no data manipulation by official temperature data sources. These temperature pauses are a dagger in the heart of the CO2 warming argument and adherents of that argument are frantic to deny the existence of periodic pauses in temperature rise.
Bingo
“10 of the last 15 years are the 10 hottest on record” means nothing when there is either no trend or an insignificant, easy to adapt to trend.
Even then, to say “easy to adapt to” is suggesting we as inhabitants of this awesome planet haven’t benefitted from what warming we’ve had in the last century.
Why does anyone call this a “debate”. It was a hearing, which in government, should mean to gather evidence, but which actually means to provide an opportunity for Senators to get their face on TV, demagogue, repeat the dogma of their particular ideological positions and that of their “tribe”. A debate operates by a different set of rules. So it is pointless to score who won, or didn’t, in this hearing. To get one’s particular point of view read into the record is enough.
What I got out of this, plus a piece at Mark Steyn’s website, was a feeling of utter contempt for the process. Not being an American, I had only a vague idea of how Senate hearings were conducted — from TV news clips, old footage from the McCarthy era, the Di Caprio bio of Howard Hughes and so on.
I’d been under the impression that a group of senators would assemble, the expert witnesses would appear and be questioned. There would be back-and-forth debate out of which something heading toward the truth would emerge.
Instead, a senator would take his place, read out a statement of his position, ask a Dorothy Dixer* and disappear. All the while the expert witnesses would have to sit there and cop it.
If this is a democratic process, then I’m the Queen of Sheba. What I saw and what Steyn describes is arrogance on an industrial scale.
Since the arrival of the internet, I’ve had quite a few political discussions with Americans. They have been invariably polite but always with an undertone of “our system is vastly superior to your system” because “we got rid of kings and princes and emperors and all the rest and we are all equal here” with the more ignorant adding that “you have to bow down to a queen”.
Well, that may be the theory but it sure ain’t the practice.
You have an emperor, he’s elected every four years, sometimes he hangs around for eight.
You have princes; they are called senators. Exactly what their day-to-day duties are I’m not sure but they, like princes of ancient times, spend a vast amount of effort jockeying for position in order to be the chosen one when the emperor is removed.
And you have lesser courtiers, known as congressmen. They also jockey for position for higher honours and act as spear throwers for the more exalted senators.
I’m just guessing, but no doubt this process is repeated on a smaller scale throughout the fifty states.
A couple of days ago I watched a parliamentary hearing from Westminster, where a professor of economics was giving evidence to a committee of MPs on the econoimic implications of the UK leaving the European Union. The MPs asked their questions (padded with opinion, I have to admit) and then sat and listened when the professor replied. What followed was a back and forth until the matter had been thoroughly thrashed out. Nobody made a statement then left the room, both sides heard the other out, the hearing was conducted under proper rules of committee.
In short, the US system of government has plenty to learn from Westminster.
I realise that this is not a political forum but this Senate hearing was, above all else, a political occasion and that needs to commented on.
The Steyn piece is here: http://www.steynonline.com/7351/markey-mark
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Dixer
Markey, Markey, Markey. It’s not nice to bait Curry and the others during their testimony. They will bait you back.
John
Well, apparently, this is a unique, or almost unique, happening in a Senate hearing. Left to her own devices, Curry would have taken Markey’s nonsense on the chin. But Steyn, someone with a working knowledge of the Westminster process, got on his hind legs and called the senator out. From what I understand, no native-born American would dare, on an occasion such as this, to question the motives of a senator, the bearer of an office that is beyond criticism.
Sen. Markey, what a bastard.
At the risk of being a Monday Morning Quarterback, it would have been nice for one of the panel to point out that his complete dismissal of the information presented and the qualifications of those present was a fine example of the Dogma side of the discussion. That said, I can see why it would have been difficult to respond without getting a bit hot under the collar to such drivel.
It’s been about 10 hours since I watched this, but didn’t the senator repeatedly say something about Galileo? As if the science world agreed with him in his day? He was against the consensus of his time and effectively one of the 17th centuries best analogues to Dr. Curry. He should be applauding her for standing up for what she believes is right by her own scientific inquiry, not beating her upon the head and shoulders with highlights from the work of someone else, who’s very title suggests he will act as commanded by his beurocratic superior.
I had never heard this senator speak before but what I witnessed was pointed out above. Here we had a lawyer talking over the other two and getting his talking points and zingers in before they could open their mouths. If you check out the actual face time, the senator dominated the clock by not letting anyone else speak. The ‘left’ uses this tactic very well.
Is that debate style effective? Apparently it is. Any neutral observer who witnessed the political debates leading up to the last Canadian election would think Mr. Trudeau was simply a puerile gasbag who wouldn’t let his opponents speak. We know how that turned out.
I listened to the whole thing, all 3 hours plus of the “hearing.” It certainly wasn’t a debate, and for the Democrats participating, there was little evidence of “Hearing.” Quite sadly, it seems they Markey (D-MA), Schatz (D-HI) and Nelson (D-FL) are incurious and ineducable. They queried only “their” man, whom they flattered to the point of embarrassment (Markey equated Titley to Galileo, as if he, Titley, were some kind of brave person standing up to power. I kept waiting (hoping) Titley would demonstrate the slightest iota of scientific integrity by clarifying the inapplicabilitiy of the “97% consensus” meme, which was the hook on which the Democrats – -majoritarians that they seem to be except when it comes to “hearing” from the people – – repeatedly, severally and collectively rested their closed-minded cases, and with such arrogant triumphalism.
Surely Titley knows what a fraud the “97% consensus” construct is, how non-science, but, in the moment he seems to have been too swimmy-headed with all the attention and plaudits to be an honest man. So Titley did a Gruber. Sad to think his is the only chorus the Democrats are capable of hearing. A sad, pitiful note. Alas, America.
He has a title they can understand: Admiral. His title effectively shows he can take orders and execute them extremely well which is exactly what those guys want.
Did my comment get lost? I don’t know if I can take it, it took so long to bake it. and I’ll never have that recipe again … oh no…. oh no
My answer to “warmest ever” would have been “No one knows that.” My answer to “warmest on record” would have been “So? Do you realize how incredibly short the record is?” or “Warmest where? Certainly not everywhere. An average temperature is meaningless.”