<http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/2/8/94837/59227> Thursday 2/8: House Committee on Science and Technology<http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/House_Committee_on_Science_and_Technology> *IPCC Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis of Climate Change*
Global Warming Science Testimony<http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/2/8/94837/59227> Bart Gordon, chair *Witnesses:* *Nancy Pelosi*, Speaker of the House *Dr. Susan Solomon*, Co-Chair, IPCC, Working Group I: The Physical Basis of Climate Change *Dr. Kevin Trenberth*, Chapter 3: Observations: Surface and Atmospheric Climate Change *Dr. Richard Alley*, Chapter 4: Observations: Changes in Snow, Ice and Frozen Ground *Dr. Gerald Meehl*, Chapter 10: Global Climate Projections Rep Ralph Hall (R-TX): mandatory carbon caps TAKE AMERICAN JOBS, but technology subsidies are Great! 10:17 am: Sensenbrenner demands time to question Nancy Pelosi. Former Sci. Committee member Wayne Gilchrist (R-MD) is getting to particpate on the panel. Nancy Pelosi is presenting now.... 10:21 am: Pelosi -- Sea level rises, etc. environmental refugees. "We hold our children's future in our hands; not just our grandchildren or greatgrandchildren, but our own children." "I respectfully disagree with the ranking member [Hall]." We need to halve carbon emissions by 2050. Policy recommendations: caps, tech research, land-use management, working with China & India. She has asked all the relevant committees for bipartisan energy legislation by June 1 for passage by July 4. She commends the committee for already getting a bill on the floor. The Select Committee on Global Warming will not produce legislation but will make findings and will "make a special effort to communicate with young Americans by using cutting-edge technology." 10:28 Quoting the evangelical position on why to fight global warming. Promises bipartisan effort. Rep. Bart Gordon: First time the Speaker has been before this committee. Sensenbrenner (who looks and sounds exactly like the Family Guy) is on! "In 1998 and 1999 we had a series of hearings on the Kyoto Protocol..." Ah, those were the days. Attacking Kyoto. CAPS WILL SEND AMERICAN JOBS TO CHINA. "What are you planning to do ...that will guarantee we don't wreck the American economy and kill American jobs?" 10:32 Pelosi: "Green can be gold." We want to have as much unity as possible. Sensenbrenner is complaining that a hearing on the science only has scientists. The chair: the minority had the right to submit witnesses. They did not. Gordon asks Pelosi about the select committee. Pelosi: International Relations, Ways & Means, Science committees, etc. all have jurisdiction. The Select Committee will work with mayors, governors, EU, UN. The EU "sees this as an economic issue, Mr. Sensenbrenner." "I could have done it as a task force within the Democratic Party, but I wanted this to be bipartisan." The committee is about communication. 10:38: Todd Akin (R-MO): If you believe burning hydrocarbons are at fault for global warming, are you willing to support nuclear? Pelosi: I was an early opponent, but I'm open to it now. "If not this, then what?" Akin: I think this is going to make fixing Social Security easy. "Is it so bad that the world is getting warmer?" 10:43 Now Hall is at it. Gordon is doing a terrible job maintaining this panel. He's too excitable. 10:44 Costello (D-IL) I'm very disappointed that we have not extended the courtesy of allowing Speaker Pelosi the chance to submit her testimony and go, as we have done with our colleagues over and over again. Gordon (chair): The good news is we have a great speaker who can handle herself very well. The room bursts into applause. He calls a recess. 10:54 Rep. Udall (D-CA) introducing the panel. Susan Solomon. "She has a glacier named after her." Kevin Trenberth heading climate analysis at NCAR. He's one of the top 20 authors in all citations in geophysics. Gerald Meehl is a NCAR modeler, and has worked with IPCC since its conception. Ocean-atmosphere model expert (and pretty much everything else). Gordon: you have five minutes, but please take all the time you need. 10:59 Solomon's summarizing the IPCC report process. There's new scientists on each report. Peer-reviewed papers usually reviewed by 2 people; the IPCC report reviewed by panels of dozens. The other working groups deal with adaptation (effects) and mitigation (policy). We are committed to further warming. Expected effects in the 21st century include more rain, more heat waves, more drought, sea level rise. 11:03 Trenberth. The official report statement is: Warming is unequivocal. Very likely anthropogenic. Observed changes include: Increases in global average air temperature. Tropospheric temperature. Surface and subsurface ocean temperature. Decrease in snow cover, glaciers, ice sheets. Less frost. Changes in precipitation: more rain but also more drought. Increases in hurricane intensity, changes in wind patterns. The straight-line fit of the 150, 100, 50, 25 year temperature record is steepening: world is getting warmer and it's getting warmer faster. 11:11 Richard Alley is great. He's got a nutty-professor voice and broad hand gestures. Ice sheets are just a two mile high continent-wide pile of snow that has compressed to ice under its own weight. If I were to pour pancake batter onto a griddle in front of you it would spread out and drip off the edges. Ice sheets do the same thing, dripping of icebergs. 11:15 It's fun how obviously smarter these scientists are than most of the pols. Gerald Meehl is extremely well-spoken. He's describing the advances in modeling. About 0.2 C per decade is the consensus estimate. If CO2 had been held at 2000 levels we would have been committed to 0.1 C per decade for the entire century. Best estimates for 2100 likely 1-4 C rise depending on future action. Sea level rise estimates, ignoring ice sheet instability, are pretty well fixed. Sea-ice-free arctic, permafrost thaw, etc. The future appears bleak, but it is not hopeless. The longer we wait, the worse it will be. 11:20 Gordon's questions. Solomon, is this report conservative? Solomon: Not particularly. Alley, was recent research cut off? Alley: some was. The melting of Alpine glaciers is taken account of. The changes of snowfall on Greenland and Antarctica is taken into account. But the accelerated flow of the ice sheets is not. We don't understand it well. We're rather desperately trying to understand it. Give us five years. 11:23 Rohrabacher (R-CA) is being a total prick to Solomon. "Is the glacier named after you melting?" Solomon: "It's out of reach.." Rohrabacher interrupts, "It's not melting." Rohrabacher doesn't want the US to do anything because of China. Rohrabacher brings up his confused version of the Little Ice Age; Trenberth tries to correct him, is interrupted. Rohrabacher: "Do we need to put catalytic converters on the back of cows?" Trenberth gives a serious response, pointing out he was from New Zealand; they have more methane emmissions than CO2 and are looking at changing feed to reduce methane emmissions by their herds. After talking about sunspots, he asks the question, "What percentage of CO2 is caused by humans?" Solomon begins by describing how we know that the solar impact of the past few decades is very small. Rohrbacher interrupts, says he controls time. won't let her answer. Says she's *dishonest*. Wants to know percentage. Solomon: 90% of the increase in carbon dioxide is human caused. Admittedly, she doesn't quite answer Rohrabacher's question, which is odd, since it's not that complicated. 11:30 Mark Udall points out that a future witness, Dr. Bartlett, traveled to China and had "very interesting dicussions" with them. Says he'll cue Bartlett, when he testifies, to talk about what the Chinese are doing, to bring Sensenbrenner up to date He asks Kevin Trenberth about mitigating effects of coming changes, and points out that he just introduced HR906 (with Inglis) Global Climate Change Research and Data Management Act yesterday, which reorients the research program to be more user driven. Trenberth: The mitigation report due in May, but says he's not waiting; he's put solar panels on his house. Udall talks again about methane, calls humans: temporary carbon sinks. Never seen a study on us as carbon sinks vs. the methane we emit (laughter). Asks Solomon what surprised her out of the IPCC process. Reply: "Interesting question" (think she's still shaken by being called a liar by Rohrbacher). Was suprised by how much progress they made due to improvements in observations and advancements in modeling. 11:38 Calvert R-CA is up. "Climate Change IS taking place." He suggests it may require regulating industries, and defends Rohrbacher's question about wanting to know what percentages by country. He asks if all four witnesses agree that 90% of change is by humans. They agree. If that's correct, how do we tackle it? Mandatory caps? Speaker's choice. Incentives? Calvert's choice. He brings up that China is opening a new coal plant less than every three days. The largest energy source in the United States is still coal. Is it possible to get to clean coal tech? Trenberth: Not an expert. Potential vs. cost. Needs to be done, because cost of not doing it is high, as well. Calvert: Can we have a sustainable economy without coal and nuclear power? Solomon: The four testifying are physical scientists, not economists. 12:20 Lipinski (D-IL) up, asks Treberth about precipitation. Trenberth: water-holding capacity goes up 4 percent per degree F. You expect heavier rainfall and snowfall, but less often. Why the ice sheet flow unexpected? Alley: most of the time ice sheets are boring, sometimes very interesting. The expectation has been that they would be boring, but they're interesting. The quality of the science in other aspects is really impressive. 12:24 Inglis (R-SC) I used to pooh-pooh global warming. It's not likely to hurt to take action, as long as it's in balance with other things. The Speaker's openness to nuclear power is significant. I learned a lot when Boehlert took us down to Antarctica. Can you review the science of ice cores? Alley: it's like a really fancy drill like when you put in a doorknob, until you have a two-mile length, and you look at the little bubbles trapped inside. The record of CO2 levels etc. over 650,000 is very good. Oil companies, coal companies are quite good, they know how to find the fuel. We know how much CO2 is going into the air, we know where it's going. Stable carbon, radioactive carbon, oxygen levels all support the assertion that the carbon budget is being transformed by people. 12:32 Chandler (D-KY) also went to Antarctica. Meehl: until 2030 we're trapped in a determined path. After that our choices now make a difference. Either a lot more warming or less. Chandler compliments Alley. "You made a comment about the ice sheets being boring. The same certainly cannot be said of you." (Alley is genuinely entertaining.) Alley on the Arctic sea ice: some of the models have no sea ice at all in the late summer. Meehl: Greenland melt may slow down overturning circulation (Gulf Stream) but sea level rise is the big issue. 12:37 Diaz-Balart (R-FL) is a recovering skeptic. As well as he should be, because he's from Florida. But he's quoting 1970s articles about global cooling. He wants reassurance that we've learned something in the last 30 years. He resents Alley's pancake analogies making him hungry. Alley: Global cooling was bubbled up in discussion and a huge amount of press, but did the National Academy come out with a global cooling warning? You won't find it. The IPCC exists and does the National Academies to take all this excitement and froth (wild gesticulation) and present it to you in a serious manner. Gilchrist (R-MD) interjects that there was no consensus in the 1970s. Diaz-Balart is "shocked" to hear that the press exaggerates issues. 12:43 Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ): In our district, we've been having a 8-9 year drought. Weevil infestations, unusually hot wildfires. Asking question that's really the purview of the second working group (local effects). Trenberth: One of the consequences of the combination of heat and drought is increased wildfires. A quarter-billion spent just on fighting the fires. Meehl: The SW US showed interesting results in the models for extreme events. Increased dry spells, increased torrential rainfall, less rainfall overall. Giffords asks about regional vs. global models. Meehl: you can embed local models in the global models and get more information about places like Colorado, where mountain ranges have strong climatic effects. The quality of the results of the local models is dependent on the quality of the global models. 12:48 Gingrey (R-GA) is saying that this hearing that is very interesting. You play this tape before middle school students and you'd get more kids going into science. The good news is that God has given us a lot more time than he gave Noah. (Dr. Solomon, not your NOAA.) He also went to Antarctica trip. He's grateful for the panel and the Speaker. He's pro-nuke, throws in a Yucca Mt. plug. He too is a recovering skeptic. If the US takes action but China doesn't, will it still have a positive effect? Trenberth: It'll set a good example. It is a global problem. 12:54 Gilchrist (R-MD) not on the committee now but welcomed to participate. He has four questions. One: we've released in a few decades what took millions of years to lock up. He's rehashing the question about isotopic markers that Alley already hit on. Two: another softball about melt from the ice sheets. Solomon: Concentrations were at 180 ppm not 10,000 but 20,000 years ago; out of the ice age: 270 ppm; in the last 100 years it's gone up to 380. Alley: From satellite data we see the movement and accumulation. 12:59 Rohrabacher about to blather. He claims that there are hundreds of scientists that don't believe humans cause global warming. "I do have very serious disagreement." C-SPAN shows Solomon with a beautiful expression on her face. He's just making up shit now. All of his factual claims are complete nonsense. He's a Limbaugh clone, looks and sounds a lot like him. He claims that there are scientists whose funding was cut off for disputing global warming. "I think honest people can disagree." He just raised the specter of "dinosaur flatulence." That said: he agrees with clean energy independence. "I'm sorry for pontificating too long." "We shouldn't be basing it on the idea that global warming is as big an issue as human health." Gordon smacks him down. "I thank Mr. Rohrabacher, I hope you feel better." Gordon thanks the panel -- "It's sometimes difficult to be a messenger.... Thank you very much." --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of global environmental change. Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not gratuitously rude. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
