July 2006 Archives

The House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations will hold its second hearing in two weeks on the so-called "hockey stick" temperature studies at 2 PM Eastern today. A live feed is promised.

The hearing has attracted considerable interest among those who follow global warming, as the hearing will feature Dr. Michael Mann, father of the hockey stick, facing off against Steve McIntyre, breaker of said stick, and Dr. Edward Wegman, the eminent statistician who demonstrated significant statistical weaknesses in the hockey stick study in last week's hearing (archived webcast available here).

According to Congressmen at last week's hearing, Dr. Mann had been invited to participate last week, but declined, reportedly because he was on "vacation." More than a few observers supposed Dr. Mann preferred not to appear at a hearing with Steve McIntyre and/or Dr. Wegman (who is said to be an Al Gore voter, ironically), but that rumor, while plausible, is unconfirmed.

Other scheduled witnesses (according to a ClimateAudit report here) are to include president of the National Academy of Sciences/atmospheric scientist Ralph J. Cicerone and a biological scientist, Jay Gulledge, from the Pew Center on Global Climate Change (which calls global warming "the most pressing global environmental problem"). Dr. Gulledge will not, presumably, be sitting in the skeptics' chair.

Dr. James Hansen is not on the witness list. Could that be because Dr. Dr. John Christy is?

Scientists will tell you there's no "facing off" in science, but don't believe a word of it. These guys just use bigger words than most of us when they argue. (In my experience, the best two places to find a truly artful insult is in 1) the pages of a Jane Austen novel, or 2) an argument on a scientists' blog.)

The main protaganists in this debate have blogs. RealClimate is Michael Mann's; ClimateAudit is Steve McIntyre's. Don't skip the comments sections. Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr.'s Prometheus blog will offer a more neutral view.

The mainstream press has been ignoring the demise of the hockey stick, preferring to cover stories like the predicted impact of global warming on poison ivy (darn critical, to be sure), but this is an important conversation. Not only was the hockey stick theory held up as substantial evidence of the global warming theory among pro-Kyoto cataclysmic-warming-is-upon-us lobbyists, but it has been promoted by quite a few oft-quoted scientists in non-peer reviewed (whatever peer review really means) articles as well. Furthermore, there are a few issues -- hence the hearing being held by the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations -- of interest to taxpayers who don't give a fig about global warming that may come up today as well.

Cross-posted on the National Center Blog.

Next time you hear U.S. government physicist James Hansen claim the government is trying to censor him, consider this (paid subscription required) from Environment & Energy Daily (7/21/06):

A chronic illness only partly explains why James Hansen decided to skip the House Government Reform Committee's on global warming in seven years. The embattled NASA scientist also passed on yesterday's event because lawmakers are "still in denial" about the reasons for dramatic changes in the Earth's climate, he said last night in an e-mail.

In the message Hansen sent to reporters to explain his absence from yesterday's hearing, the director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies said he had a conflicting doctor appointment to deal with a cold that interacts with his asthma... But he also indicated he would have adjusted his schedule if the witness list did not also include skeptical points of view.

"I would get out of my sickbed to testify to Congress on global warming, if they were ready to deal responsibly with the matter," Hansen wrote. "But obviously they are still in denial, inviting contrarians to 'balance' the science of global warming."

Hansen apparently was objecting to the House panel's late addition of John Christy, a professor and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. In his testimony yesterday, Christy told lawmakers that scientists "cannot reliably project the trajectory of the climate" for large regions of the United States.

Christy also said it would be a "far more difficult task" to predict the effects should the United States adopt a mandatory greenhouse gas policy.

Hansen's e-mail said skeptical points of view cloud the climate debate rather than enlighten it. "The function of the contrarians is to obfuscate what is known, so as to keep the public confused and allow special interests to continue to reap short-term profits, to the detriment of the long-term economic well-being of the nation," he said.

Hansen said Congress should direct the National Academy of Sciences to update its 2001 report to President Bush on the state of the science surrounding global warming. "Until then, it is just a charade," he wrote...

Perhaps he meant it to be perceived differently, but Dr. Hansen's actions fit the description of a hissy fit. If Hansen disagrees with Dr. John Christy (whose testimony to the commitee can be found in pdf form here), why not participate in the hearing and explain why?

Science is supposed to be about considering all points of view and then rejecting those that cannot be proven valid, not about throwing hissy fits because alternative points of view are under consideration.

Had the House Government Reform Committee taken a page from Dr. Hansen's playbook and refused to invite Dr. Christy solely because of Christy's views, it would have been censorship.

Cross-posted at National Center for Public Policy Research blog

The popular belief that a century of wildfire suppression caused a build-up of fuels in western forests that increased fire risks led Congress to pass the Healthy Forests Restoration Act in 2003. This expensive program gives the Forest Service and USDI agencies hundreds of millions of dollars to reduce fuels.

Now a new study published by Science magazine finds that fuels were not the cause of recent large wildfires. Instead, it was changes in the weather, namely longer drier summers since the mid 1980s.

While some say that the study demonstrates some of the potential effects of global warming, the authors admit that they offer no evidence that global climate change is the cause of the changes in weather patterns (which in fact are a repetition of weather patterns in the 1930s). The real significance of the study is that it demonstrates that the Healthy Forests Restoration Act is a waste of money.

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From Grampa Tumblebug, aka, Wayne Kerns. Deserves an FME Gammy.