Warmists bemoan Senate climate hearing thrashing:

forbes.com report: So Sorry Think-Less Progress:

Global Warming Alarmists Caught Doctoring '97-Percent Consensus' Claims: 


Global warming alarmists and their allies in the liberal media have been caught doctoring the results of a widely cited paper asserting there is a 97-percent scientific consensus regarding human-caused global warming. After taking a closer look at the paper, investigative journalists report the authors’ claims of a 97-pecent consensus relied on the authors misclassifying the papers of some of the world’s most prominent global warming skeptics. At the same time, the authors deliberately presented a meaningless survey question so they could twist the responses to fit their own preconceived global warming alarmism.



Global warming alarmist John Cook, founder of the misleadingly named blog site Skeptical Science, published a paper with several other global warming alarmists claiming they reviewed nearly 12,000 abstracts of studies published in the peer-reviewed climate literature. Cook reported that he and his colleagues found that 97 percent of the papers that expressed a position on human-caused global warming “endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.





All of the Republican members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee question the science behind climate change. Fueled by millions in donations from the fossil fuel industry, on Thursday, these Senators used the committee as a way to simply parrot the tired talking points of Koch funded organizations and industry leaders, denouncing what 97 percent of climate scientists have agreed on.
Titled “Climate Change: It’s Happening Now,” the hearing was the embodiment of the climate schizophrenia currently transfixing congress. A panelist representing the U.S. insurance industry informed Senators that the surge in weather-related catastrophes has forced billions in payouts and that climate change “increases the exposure of citizens and their property to extreme weather risk.” The GOP, on the other hand, outlined what they believe is a White House conspiracy designed to mislead the public on the threat of climate change.
Dr. Heidi Cullen, the chief Climatologist for Climate Central, warned of the hazards of ignoring climate change, reiterating that it’s “very clear global warming has not stopped.” But almost every Republican on the committee repeated the same talking point — that recent data somehow proves that climate change stopped 15 years ago. Here’s a breakdown some of the GOP talking points, followed by what the science actually says:


There were more national temperature records broken in the first decade of the 21st century than in any previous decade, according to areport by the World Meteorological Organization. The report also found that warming has sped up over the past 40 years and that nine of the 10 years between 2001 and 2010 were among the warmest 10 since “modern measurements” began in 1850. Dr. Cullen also pointed out during the hearing that heat is being transferred into other components of our climate system, such as the deep ocean.

that warming has sped up over the past 40 years
“The temperature around the globe is increasing faster than was predicted even 10 years ago.” 10 President Barack Obama, November 14, 2012

 Debunk! The Latest Science:

The predictions seem unlikely to come true, and the claims contradict the data, as noted by entities generally supportive of the Administration’s climate change policies. For instance, The Economist recently explained that “temperatures have not really risen over the past ten years”11 and that “[o]ver the past 15 years air temperatures at the Earth’s surface have been flat.”12 Last month, BBC News reported, “Since 1998, there has been an unexplained ‘standstill’ in the heating of the Earth's atmosphere.

 The actual temperature data show no significant change in global temperatures over the past decade and certainly less warming than the climate change models predicted.   At an August 1, 2012, hearing before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works…climatologist Dr. John Christy of the University of Alabama-Huntsville offered testimony demonstrating that the IPCC climate models, which have been relied upon by alarmists, vastly over-stated the degree of warming in comparison to actual temperature data observed by advanced satellites.

 http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/07/republican-report-critical-thinking-on.html


  • “Climate change is happening. It’s always happening. And there are many significant influences that are making it happen….major influences on climate include solar activity, solar cycles, ocean currents, cosmic rays, and greenhouse gases that occur naturally as well as those emitted from many countries including those who have no plans on regulatory change like China, India and Russia.” — Senator David Vitter (R-LA)
Many climate science deniers try to say that climate change is just a natural part of Earth’s history — that the climate is always changing and therefore there is no reason to worry. What they fail to point out is that greenhouse gas emissions have been dramatically increasing since the industrial revolution, when humans began burning the fossil fuels that heat up the atmosphere. The temperature is changing 50 times faster than it did prior to the industrial revolution and we are headed for 7 to 11°F warming this century on our current emissions path — increasing the rate of change 5-fold yet again.




  • Many senators expressed their concerns that climate change is not causing extreme weather patterns, including Senator Inhofe (R-OK), who said claiming global warming is causing extreme weather is just “wrong.”
Asking whether an event is caused by climate change is the wrong question. All weather events are affected by climate change because the environment in which they occur is warmer than it used to be. As Climate Progress has said before, extreme weather is more like a baseball player on steroids. These players do not always hit home runs, but on average they get more, and more powerful, hits. Climatologist Kevin Trenberth put it best, the “answer to the oft-asked question of whether an event is caused by climate change is that it is the wrong question. All weather events are affected by climate change because the environment in which they occur is warmer and moister than it used to be.” The United States has experienced an onslaught of extreme weather in the past few years with over 25 events that caused at least $1 billion in damage beginning in 2011. Combined, these storms cost our country $188 billion and took the lives of over 1,100 Americans. Most of these storms, floods, droughts, heat waves, and wildfires are fueled by climate change.

All weather events are affected by climate change because the environment:

Debunk: In a Senate hearing Thursday, environmental scientist Roger Pielke of the University of Colorado said it’s “incorrect” to claim that global warming is spurring more extreme weather disasters.
“It is misleading and just plain incorrect to claim that disasters associated with hurricanes, tornadoes, floods or droughts have increased on climate timescales either in the United States or globally,” Pielke said in his testimony before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. “It is further incorrect to associate the increasing costs of disasters with the emission of greenhouse gases.”
“Hurricanes have not increased in the U.S. in frequency, intensity or normalized damage since at least 1900,” Pielke added. “The same holds for tropical cyclones globally since at least 1970.”


Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/07/18/scientist-tells-senators-global-warming-not-causing-extreme-weather/#ixzz2ZtFsjDmS
While Senator Wicker (R-MS) asked for tolerance in the public discourse regarding the many scientific viewpoints on climate change, Chairman Boxer (D-CA) reminded the panel that only 2 percent of scientists support his views, and that there seems to be “endless money” funding the interests of the fossil fuel industry. Boxer went on to point out that even the panelists that were asked to appear at the hearing by the GOP were from companies that have received funding Big Oil in the past, including donations from the Koch brothers.
Responding to Senator Inhofe’s claims, Boxer lamented, “I don’t know what it will take to convince you, and the rest of the deniers, of what is going on outside the window.”

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