Fantastic to finally see real scientists get a voice in a considered, official forum. This should have happened 20 years ago. I expect only climate-tragics will watch a 2 hour dry Congressional testimony, but it is so very rare that both sides of the debate get questioned in the same forum and almost never that skeptical scientists outnumber the unskeptical ones. Michael Mann has little more than namecalling, unscientific social speculation, allusions about “motivations” and political labels. Improbably, Mann the media-climate-celebrity tries to make out he is the victim of bullying and silencing. At 1:10 Mann twists, exaggerates and abuses like a Greenpeace activist and Congressman Lamar Smith pulls him up…
Judith Curry talks about why she changed her mind starting at 20 minutes, and why she resigned.
“… I realized the premature consensus was harming the progress of science”
“Scientists who demonize opponents are behaving in a way that is antithetical to the scientific process. These are the tactics for enforcing a premature theory for political purpose.”
“…there is enormous pressure for scientists to conform to the so-called consensus…”
John Christy starts at 9:32
…the traditional scientific method has not been followed…
Discusses the missing hot spot, and trend predictions that the testable claim that we know has failed.
Michael Mann starts at 29 minutes
essentially: “consensus” “consensus” “consensus”
Complains that the balance of the panel is wrong. Makes no comment about the scientific method (someone should explain it to him).
“…wild fires are burning cattle alive…” [because that never happened before].
“Anti-science forces have launched … the contrarian myth de jour…. three warmest ever years… aided by contrarian bloggers…. the process of real science plays out in the scientific literature… it’s time to put aside the anti-science….
Pielke starts at 35 minutes:
Talks about the investigations against him, and how harmful they were to his ability to investigate…
… the pathological politicization of science…
Questions from Lamar Smith start at 39 minutes
Asks Curry about uncertainties — she lists the greatest uncertainty relate to the feedbacks related to clouds and water vapor (the hot spot); how the ocean transports heat and carbon; the long term ocean oscillations; the effects of the sun on climate.
To John Christy, why are both the satellites and surface temperature measurements so far below the model predictions — the models are too sensitive to greenhouse gases, the models tend to shrink clouds and let more sunlight in to heat earth…
Questions from Ms Johnson 44 minutes:
Mann goes on at length complaining about fossil fueled activists trying to silence scientists…as if his view hasn’t had constant and easy non-stop access to the media, and as if that was worse than the establishment sacking, evicting, name-calling, bullying and RICO investigations. Talks about Lysenko… (projection…).
Julie Kelly at National Review describes this moment …astonishingly, Mann was not talking about those scientists: He was talking about himself. In his alternative universe, he and other climate scientists are the martyrs, oppressed and silenced by the Politburo. Never mind that Mann — a tenured professor at one of the country’s top public universities — opened his testimony by reciting a prodigious list of awards he has won, books he has authored, scientific organizations he leads. He is celebrated by the media and environmental groups around the world, and yet in front of Congress he talked like a guy on his way to the Gulag. It takes a special blend of hubris, juvenility, and dishonesty to portray yourself as a victim when you are really the bully.
At some point Michael Mann goes on at length saying that he hasn’t called Judith Curry a denier, and she smacks it down with “it’s in your written testimony. Let me quote you… “. I’m not sure where that minute is…