The hearing has started, with Judith Curry, Roger Pielke, John Christy, and Michael Mann.
[Update about 10:32 EDT]
Mann uses the BS 97% number, and complains that he’s the only one on the panel “in the mainstream.”
[Update early afternoon]
Here is Judith Curry’s written testimony.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Here is all the written testimony. I’ll refrain from comment.
[Update a while later]
Here’s the story from Seth Borenstein:
At first Mann said he didn’t call Curry a denier. But in his written not oral testimony he called Curry “a climate science denier.” Mann said there’s a difference between denying climate change and “denying established science” on how much humans cause climate change, which he said Curry did.
But there’s this:
Former Georgia Tech climate scientist Judith Curry, who often clashes with mainstream science…
I don’t think she ever clashes with science, but I’m not sure what the hell “mainstream” is in this context.
[Monday-afternoon update]
The warm mongers’ five worst moments of that hearing.
[Bumped]
[Update a few minutes later]
Another point of view from an eyewitness:
The big obstacle: managing bodies of the NAS, formerly respected academic societies, and foreign national academies adopted statements that either outright support or do not contradict climatist pseudo-science. This is an important fact. Of course, there are two causes for that: internal corruption that has been happening over decades and pressure from the Obama administration and its counterparts in other Western countries. Democrat Congresspersons might congratulate themselves for their contribution to shutting up opposition views. But it is hard to convince Republicans that this happened in front of their eyes and under the watch of many of them.
The problem with the academia extends beyond the climate debate. My thoughts are that sometimes things are too broken for repair, and can be only replaced. A replacement should be built before the old thing is discarded.
Lawmakers should be aware that they might need to rebuild American scientific enterprise and academia almost from scratch: create new universities and national labs, extricate competent departments, teams, and individuals from the corrupt institutions, and let them to grow organically in the atmosphere free from the interference from the Leftist and hostile foreign bodies. This is where the federal research and education budgets should go, rather than on continuing support of morally, intellectually, and soon financially bankrupt institutions.
The small obstacle, limited to this panel, was a problematic panel of witnesses. From the outside, it seemed to consist of three skeptics and one “consensus scientist.” In fact, it consisted of Michael Mann, two lukewarmers, and respected Dr. John Christy who, nevertheless, shook hands with Michael Mann in front of my eyes. Thus, the climate alarmism was represented by its most extreme representative, while opposition to climate alarmism was hardly represented at all.
It’s long, but read the whole thing.
[Tuesday-morning update]
I considered going, but decided to watch it streaming. The only part of that decision I regret is not seeing all of Dana’s rant. My feed froze right after it became clear what he was about to do, and the YouTube video has it garbled and truncated.
Mann’s testimony and Q&A responses consisted of asserting conclusions, then “supporting” them by asserting that overwhelming numbers of scientists, scientific associations, boards, panels, teams, etc. worldwide agree with those conclusions completely. He dismissed any disagreement with ad hominem attacks. Any “scientist” who relies that much on two logical fallacies is not credible at all.
The Democrats on the Committee were otherworldly, asserting how everyone knows that climate change is real, because it is obvious to everyone that damage is occurring right now on a global scale. What damage? What suffering? What climate change is obvious to the average person? Without a small wiggle on a graph (greatly enlarged to look scary), there would be no indication to me. And I don’t believe that particular graph. What planet do they live on?
A couple of years ago I built a nice igloo in my back yard. It has since melted.
Last spring my decorative pond overflowed when it rained.
Last summer my tomato plants didn’t do well because it was too dry and I didn’t water them enough. My onions and garlic all died because of white blight.
My housemate’s Jeep top was damaged in storm because it wasn’t tied down.
Melting igloos, floods, droughts, blights, storms. What more proof do you need that we are suffering catastrophic damage from global warming?
In a week or two, hordes of young adults will be migrating north to escape the rising oceans and unseasonably warm weather. Many of them will be experiencing severe burns and peeling skin. A mass migration like this can only be explained by global warming.
The farce is strong with this one…
What more proof do you need that we are suffering catastrophic damage from global warming?
Trick question. Only the infidel asks for proof rather than accept the consensus!
He is one of four…I wonder how closely that percentage might match the percentage of climate scientists who would support Mann’s position in a survey that is more closely aligned with polling standards?
Whoa. Rand, you have company: http://althouse.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-two-antiabortion-activists-who.html
Will LA Times, WaPo etc. come out in favor of these two, as they came out in favor of you – since this is the kind of investigative journalism that they do all the time and indeed feel is essential to being able to do their jobs properly?
In Mann’s testimony, the only actual scientific argument he makes is another “lie”, being careful to not actually lie.
In Exhibit D, he presents to charts, one predicted in 1989, and one made from actual data in 2017. He then says “That pattern m
atches the observed pattern of warming that has ensued remarkably well”. Which, on first look, seems correct.
But then if you actually read the keys of the graphs, they are completely different scales! This is misleading enough to qualify as a lie! I can’t believe he has any credibility after doing things like this!
For those that don’t want to actually look, the predictions had the orange warming level as 4 degrees C, while in the actual data the orange was 1.4 degrees.
But both went up, and both moved inverse to the number of pirates.
But that suggests another exercise. Take the measured satellite warming and find a graph that matches it closer than climate model predictions. Perhaps obesity rates, cement production, or wheat prices. It would be trivial to find something that is a better predictor of Earth’s temperatures than climate models – because they are so very bad.
Did Michael Mann actually compare a model prediction from 1989 for a 4 C warming with an actual outcome of 1.4 degrees (that must be deg F and from a year 1900 baseline)?
I won’t say “unbelievable” because “you keep using that word, but I don’t think you know what it means”? But you think someone in Congress could have asked, “At long last, have you left no sense of decency”?
OK, this was a Trump-inspired set up.
Couldn’t they bring anyone on the “non-climate-denier” side with even a smidgen more gravitas than Michael Mann? Didn’t they ask Dr. Mann to come because they wanted to discredit the cause of Climate Change?
“But then if you actually read the keys of the graphs, they are completely different scales! This is misleading enough to qualify as a lie!”
The prediction from 1989 was for a doubling of CO2 with a period averaged over 60 – 80 years of warming, so more warming into the future than so far experienced. As Mann was only referring to the pattern of warming and not the amount of warming I’ll grant you that to draw the conclusion that he drew – that a graph showing the pattern of expected warming decades hence could be compared to warming to date was a stretch, I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a lie as the scales weren’t so relevant to the pattern of polar amplification of warming – something that is well established.
“As Mann was only referring to the pattern of warming and not the amount of warming ”
Yes, the hyperpartisan reaction is to call this a “lie.” The term-of-art to apply to this situation is being “coy.”
“I am way off in the magnitude of the change but at least I got the arithmetic sign of the effect right!”
“OK . . .”
The problem for me is the actual scientists are much too civil. To label someone a denier when the fundamental foundation of science is skepticism is the most profound outrage there can be.
Do the people that would make a ruling on this issue understand this?
It should be very easy to demonstrate the lack of predictive power in the models. As well as showing they are not based on actual physical parameters, but fudge factors that can only work if you work backwards which is exactly what bias is.
I should clarify… fudge factors can only work to an approximation in a narrow and selected range. They can always be made to seem to work, until you go beyond that range where the illusion is exposed.
You can always produce a bogus model that can be convincing.