7/19/13, "Senate EPW Hearing: “Climate Change: It’s Happened Before,” by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
"OK, so yesterday’s hearing really was entitled, “Climate Change: It’s Happening Now”. I like my title better....From the opening remarks made by the Democrats on the Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee, apparently you can see climate change yourself just by looking in your backyard, or seeing how far from shore fishermen must go now to catch fish, or even (help me with the logic on this one) the fact that smoking causes cancer.
I just submitted my updated written testimony (Spencer_EPW_Written_Testimony_7_18_2013_updated) to include the following chart (Click for full size):
This chart illustrates that, yes, we are currently warm, but not significantly warmer than the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) or the Roman Warm Period (RWP). So how is it we know today’s warmth is human-caused, when the last two warm periods couldn’t have been caused by humans? Hmmm?
And if you want to hit me with a Hockey Stick, might I remind you that there are many more papers
supporting the MWP and RWP than there are supporting the Hockey Stick’s slick revision of history?
Or does “consensus” only count when it supports your side?
What’s that you say? The hockey stick is now the “new consensus”? So a scientific consensus can be wrong, after all? Hmmm.
Hearing Post Mortem
The advertised star of the show was Heidi Cullen (aka “de-certify all TV meteorologists who don’t toe the line on global warming Heidi”) who did an admirable job of presenting a litany of half-truths (hurricanes have increased [except in the last 7 years]; strong tornadoes have decreased [but she couldn't bring her self to actually say that]; wildfire acres burned have increased dramatically [but the number of wildfires have decreased dramatically...all consistent with the USFS "let it burn" policy]; droughts and floods have increased [except NOAA's charts say there is no change over the last 100 years], etc.).
Roger Pielke, Jr. was absolutely devastating in his testimony. Here’s a guy who claims to largely support the IPCC party line, even claiming increasing CO2 is having a “profound” effect on the climate system, yet he chides those who would try to use severe weather as evidence of climate change. The evidence simply isn’t there. Very Lomborgian, sans the sexy T-shirt.
During my testimony (in the Flash video, starting about 3:04 for my oral, and 3:23 for follow-up questions/interrogation) I decided to depart from my usual practice of reading of a prepared text to just winging it. There is VERY little you can cover in 5 minutes, and there were a number of things I would have liked to have said, but there simply isn’t time…that’s just the way committee hearings go.
All of the senators were moving in and out of the hearing room for a floor vote, so there were only 2-4 senators present at any given time.
Thanks to all of those who have posted and e-mailed supportive comments…I really appreciate it. Getting flogged in public by Sen. Boxer (last time I testified) and Sen. Whitehouse (this time) is not one of my favorite activities. But I warned the staffers I wasn’t going to be pushed around this time without some pushing back. I think we did OK for a hearing where the witness numbers were stacked against us." via Climate Depot
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Among comments:
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"I would love to get Whitehouse face to face in a debate. The guy should be next to the definition of clueless when it comes to the tropics, weather and climate. He seems oblivious to the fact that Sen TF Greene of RI helped sponsor the bill for the radar fence in 1961 cause he was sick of big hurricanes running the east coast, blasting his state, without warning. RI was devastated in 38 and 54, ( If Edna had come west 100 miles 11 days after Carol, it would have been a blow that would have taken years to recover from ..2 majors in 12 days..) they were hit hard in 44 and 60. The guy is a walking encyclopedia of weather/climate nonsense....
Roy sometimes being truthful means you cant be, as people would like everyone to be, nice. It goes double for people who are supposed to be looking out for the good of our nation, they have to have the truth and should be held accountable to it. There is nothing nice about ignorance or distortions and the continued attack on people searching for the truth. They should be treated with overwhelming factual force, letting no nonsensical comment go unchecked until they learn to look, or if they have, tell the truth.
I am amazed that its come to this. They have the nation's economic lifeline by its throat, and there is no excuse for the misery they are causing. Sacrifice without reason is stupidity.
What you tolerate you teach, and there is no reason to tolerate climatic ambulance chasers and the nonsense they leave spewed all over the highway of facts."
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Comment: Mr. Bastardi says he's "amazed it's come to this." It's come to this because the idea of non-existent CO2 terror progressed through the culture unimpeded for decades. The average person had no idea what was being done to him. By the time he got wind of it, he saw those who questioned it were ridiculed. It was sold in schools, by the media, Hollywood, and higher education. That doesn't even get into Goldman Sachs, the invention of "carbon trading," the UK monarchy, the UN, the EU, and organized crime. Both political parties like it because they don't give a damn about the country. George Bush #1 installed AGW terror in US government in 1990 across 13 federal agencies, and mandated that US taxpayers endlessly pay for worldwide research into problems of atmospheric and global change. George Bush #2 aggressively installed ethanol throughout the US at great damage to us and the rest of the world including starvation and death.
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Five climate lies told to the US Senate on August 1, 2012:
8/1/12, "IPCC Lead Author Misleads US Congress," RogerPielkeJr blog
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"The politicization of climate science is so complete that the lead author of the IPCC's Working Group II on climate impacts feels comfortable presenting testimony to the US Congress that fundamentally misrepresents what the IPCC has concluded. I am referring to testimony given today by Christopher Field, a professor at Stanford, to the US Senate.
This is not a particularly nuanced or complex issue. What Field says the IPCC says is blantantly wrong, often 180 degrees wrong. It is one thing to disagree about scientific questions, but it is altogether different to fundamentally misrepresent an IPCC report to the US Congress. Below are five instances in which Field's testimony today completely and unambiguously misrepresented IPCC findings to the Senate."...
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