Reposted from Dr. Judith Curry’s Climate Etc.
Posted on June 23, 2019 by curryja |
by Judith Curry
On Tuesday June 25, I will be testifying before the House Oversight and Reform Environmental Subcommittee in a Hearing on Recovery, Resilience and Readiness – Contending with Natural Disasters in the Wake of Climate Change.
The announcement for the Hearing is posted [here]. The Hearing starts at 2 pm EDT. Based on previous Hearings from the Committee, live streaming should be available at the above link (also link to the written testimonies), and also a podcast for later viewing.
From the Hearing announcement:
PURPOSE
- The Subcommittee will examine federal, state, and local preparations for the 2019 hurricane and wildfire season and assess the status of recoveries from the Southern California wildfires of 2017-2018 and Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria in Houston, Texas, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico.
- The hearing will also highlight the fundamental challenges that climate change poses to federal disaster preparedness and recovery, including the link between warmer global temperatures and more intense hurricane and wildfire seasons.
BACKGROUND
- Due to climate change, “the number of hurricanes that reach Categories 4 and 5 in strength has roughly doubled” since the 1970s and “there are no longer distinct wildfire ‘seasons’—there are just wildfires all the time.”
- In March 2018, FEMA removed all references to “climate change” from its strategic plans for the next four years.
- Nearly two years after Hurricane Maria and Irma, millions of Americans in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands are still living in dire conditions. For example, the island of Vieques, where approximately 9,000 Americans reside, had one main hospital that was destroyed by Maria, but the hospital has yet to be rebuilt. Mental health problems have also increased dramatically as suicide crisis hotlines in Puerto Rico “reported a 246 percent increase in suicide attempts from November 2017 through January 2018, compared with the numbers from the same time last year.”
- The Governmental Accountability Office’s (GAO) audits related to the 2017 natural disaster season uncovered logistical problems with resource distribution, lack of training of responders in local customs and traditions, and insufficient coordination and information sharing between federal agencies and non-governmental organizations such as the Red Cross and local community groups.
Note: I did not see the BACKGROUND write up until Saturday (yesterday), where I spotted the ‘“the number of hurricanes that reach Categories 4 and 5 in strength has roughly doubled” since the 1970s. I did testify to this effect in 2006, when I testified before the same committee [link to my 2006 testimony]. I can already predict one of the questions that I will get asked in the Hearing.
WITNESSES
Mr. Stephen Costello
Chief Recovery Officer, City of Houston
Mr. Wade Crowfoot
Secretary of Natural Resources, State of California
Mr. Christopher Currie
Director, Emergency Management, Disaster Recovery & DHS Management Issues, on behalf of U.S. Government Accountability Office
Dr. Judith Curry
President, Climate Forecast Applications Network
Dr. Daniel Kaniewski
Deputy Administrator for Resilience, Acting Deputy Administrator, on behalf of Federal Emergency Management Agency
Dr. Michael Mann
Distinguished Professor of Meteorology, Director, Earth System Science Center, on behalf of The Pennsylvania State University
Mr. Omar Marrero
Executive Director, Central Office of Recovery and Reconstruction of Puerto Rico
Adrienne Williams-Octablien
Director, Office of Disaster Recovery, on behalf of Virgin Islands Public Finance Authority
You can see that most of the witnesses are on the front lines of resilience and recovery from disasters. And then there is moi and Michael Mann.
SUBCOMMITTEE MEMBERS
The list of Subcommittee members is [here]. Most of these names are unfamiliar to me. Three of the Democratic members are from California. Two of the members are associated with the Green New Deal:
- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
- Rashida Tlaib
Often at these hearings, only a small subset of the members actually show up. This is never predictable (at least from where I sit).
STAY TUNED
On the day of the Hearing, my testimony and text of my verbal remarks will be posted in a blog post at 1:30 pm EDT on Jun 25.
I rolled my eyes looking at Mikes title “Distinguished Professor of Meteorology”
Okay someone enlighten me how do you become a “Distinguished Professor” as opposed to just a normal “Professor”.
In my mind I was thinking does that mean he wears a suit?
He looks like “Bozo” the clown so that may be considered a suit.
Every time I see him I think of the inflatable clown weighted at the bottom so that when you kick it it just returns upright. I’ll spare the readers a pic but you may have punched one when you were a kid!
No doubt he will introduce himself as distinguished as he has done before. A person might introduce you to another as distinguished if they have that level of respect for you, but to introduce yourself as such is equivalent to the pope introducing himself as “My Holiness” or the queen as “My Majesty”. He just makes himself look like a dick.
Sorry, confirms that he’s a dick.
LOL …. and so true!
Climategate was in November 2009. A lot has changed since Dr. Curry’s 2006 testimony. Almost 10 years since the eye opening climategate has led to a serious review of the earlier narrative and the assorted blogs such as WUWT has offered a venue into the circus called Global Warming and it’s derivatives.
“On Tuesday June 25, I will be testifying before the House Oversight and Reform Environmental Subcommittee in a Hearing on Recovery, Resilience and Readiness – Contending with Natural Disasters in the Wake of Climate Change.”
Good luck Judith but there’s a well worn old adage in the public circus- Never hold an enquiry that you don’t already have the answers for. The fix is already in-
https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/scientists-give-the-thumbs-up-for-anthropocene-epoch/article27279092.ece
Hmmm. Wish the correction to Curry (et al.) 2005 article weren’t paywalled! Interesting that in the original article, of the regions studied, the North Atlantic saw the lowest increase in high-intensity (cat. 4/5) as a percentage of all hurricanes, while the AR5 suggests it’s “virtually certain” that intense hurricanes in the North Atlantic have become proportionally more common since 1970. “Virtually certain” is pretty strong wording for the IPCC! However, attribution is a different story.
Unlike some here, I hope not that Curry “gives them he11,” but that she strives to provide dispassionate, unbiased, evidence-based testimony.
All scientists, regardless of their perspective, ought to act professionally, providing evidence rather than attacks and innuendo about those with whom they disagree. Those who haven’t have done a disservice to the profession and to the people who rely on it for their decision-making…though that doesn’t necessarily mean their research is faulty.
For a political committee, … dispassionate, unbiased, evidence-based testimony. is hell…..
“All scientists, regardless of their perspective, ought to act professionally, providing evidence rather than attacks and innuendo about those with whom they disagree.”
Maybe you can send a stack of “thank you” cards to Mann with that embossed onto them. Maybe he’ll get the message.
Pfft! Who am I kidding??
They certainly should hold a hearing on “Recovery, Resilience and Readiness – Contending with Natural Disasters”, because Congress could help with all of those things and actually do some good. But when the add “In the wake of Climate Change” to the title, it suddenly becomes all about climate change fear mongering. The truth is that the spending on climate change reduces the available funds for recovery, resilience and readiness, which have always been underfunded as it is.
My best to you entering that cesspool of ignorance and political agendas that characterize Democratic House Committees.
GL, Don’t hold anything back !!! What are they going to do – fire you ?
Remember Michael Mann is the “Hide the Decline” climategate guy – you might point that out if he says something nasty about you…!!!
I suspect it’s not the numbers of emergencies that are FEMA’s problems but this. Since FEMA, before 2017, including it’s former IG, has been burying FEMAs gross failures and, instead, providing itself with glowing reports, it’s likely a large portion of their failures were due to corruption and incompetency.
As for Puerto Rico, it’s their corrupt, utterly incompetent government, the lack of a reliable electric grid long before the hurricane and the lack of a disaster plan that caused their problems. They recently found a large quantity of water and food that was never distributed.
Also, since when have Cat 4 and 5 hurricanes increased? Everything I’ve seen says they’ve decreased.
Retraction of 13 ‘Glowing’ Disaster Reports Throws Light on Dysfunction of Bureaucracy
June 24, 2019
https://dailysign.al/2X54rA9
Re. why do the models run hot.
That’s easy, because they are set up to run hot.
MJE VK5ELL
It’s because of the clothes they wear.
Is there a single conservative scientist anywhere in the group?
I would rather there just be an unbiased scientist. His or her politics shouldn’t enter into it.
Wildfires are mostly caused by human behavior – the big news one last year was caused by electric company malfeasance. others have been caused by people cutting the grass, or by other human behaviors.
California’s population has soared in recent decades, so more humans in a dry area = more severe wildfires, and the worst ones every year happen in California. Remember Smokey the bear? Only you can prevent forest fires?
At any rate I’ve lived on the Gulf coast my entire life and hurricanes aren’t worse now. There is an interesting thing I have noticed though, where they have started naming storms they wouldn’t have named in the past. The first named storm this year was a subtropical storm that only went across Bermuda. I’m not sure why they began giving those names, but it inflates the number and makes it appear there are more storms than there used to be. In the past that would have merely been called “a tropical disturbance”.
That’s a topical disturbance to you.
Dr. Curry,
I wish you continued strength of character and determination to speak the truth, in the withering face of the biased subcommittee attacks. Thank You for your continued fidelity to honest science!
Live stream of the Committee hearing on Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IBa6xdae-o
If your browser, like mine, will not take that Youtube site, the hearing is playing live right now on CSPAN3.
MODS: Hearing is airing at the moment on CSPAN 3. This note will be stale in a few minutes.
[CSPAN repeats hearings regularly at later times and dates. .mod]
WOW, I missed the beginning, but the lies produced by Michael Mann were just too many to count….Almost every proclamation about climate change and extreme weather were just out and out lies…
They never Gave Dr Judith Curry almost any time to answer in the segment I watched live:
Maybe look at some of these data/observations:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/extreme-weather-page/
Too bad displays seemed not to be allowed………JPP