Select Committee On Global Warming Declared Dead

Mother Jones:

The Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming, created by Nancy Pelosi in 2006, has been shuttered under the new Republican leadership. In the final days of the committee, staffers released a report on what the committee accomplished in its brief tenure--an epitaph of sorts.

Read the whole story: Mother Jones

Comments

[ObjectiveRealist]

02:09 PM on 01/17/2011

Considering who the GOPee invited to testify -- as an EXPERT! -- perhaps it's better that they shut it down until Democrats retake the House majority in 2012.
http://c-spanvideo.org/program/293366-1

I'm serious. Better no committee, than a committee controlled by Republicans.

[texfly]

02:46 PM on 01/11/2011

When you get a chance. Go here and see/hear a climate scientist speak:

http://fora.tv/2010/03/17/Meeting_the_Energy_Challenge#Too_Much_Noise_How_Misleading_Data_Warps_Climate_Debate

[texfly]

01:05 PM on 01/11/2011

I'm glad that science is science and not politics nor religion. They can shut down whatever they want, and the science will move forward. Perhaps not here in the US, if they really get nasty, but it won't stop.

[Overtone]

08:50 PM on 01/09/2011

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[Richard2]

04:13 PM on 01/09/2011

This committee was a dinosaur, whose time has passed.

There is plenty of hard evidence that since 1998 the earth hasn't warmed as fast as it did previously in the recent past. The oceans are cooling, per the ARGO data. The rate of sea level rise is slowing down, per the tide station data. 1998 was still the warmest year in the last 50 years. The list of scientists who think the next 20 or 30 years will be cooler continues to grow, month by month. And the northern hemisphere is facing winters similar to those in a Charles Dickens novel.

So what was the purpose of a select committee focused on the narrow topic of possible future "Global Warming" when hard data indicates we are more likely to face problems from cooling in the near future? Maybe someone needs to fund the expansion of "de-icing" storage at major airports, for example.

[DocSkull]

08:23 AM on 01/11/2011

"There is plenty of hard evidence that since 1998 the earth hasn't warmed as fast as it did previously in the recent past."

So now you agree that the earth has warmed since 1998! That flies in the face of your posts in the past where you've denied that fact. Have we actually changed your mind about something?

[texfly]

01:16 PM on 01/11/2011

When will you learn that

CLIMATE ≠ WEATHER !

You never show any evidence to support you assertion. Here is mine. Take any file and plot it out and look at it from 1880 to 2010.

ftp://eclipse.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/ersstv3b/pdo


Then go to the Vostok Antarctica temperature records:

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=700896060008&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1

Note: The outside temperatue is showing warming there, quite continuously.

[The last sane American]

07:25 AM on 01/09/2011

If you wonder why this panel was shuttered, you do not have to dig deep. This story was run by 'Mother Jones' and elicited few, but one telling comment.

"There are at present insufficient data on many weather risks and regions to permit statistically backed assertions regarding the link with climate change. However,"

That, my friend, is not the beginning of a scientific debate. If the data is not there, gather it. And please do not disregard historical data on climate, just because there were not satellites to observe it and computers to store it.

[texfly]

04:26 PM on 01/11/2011

Interesting how you conveniently left out what followed the "However. "

"However, there is evidence that, as a result of warming, events associated with severe windstorms, such as thunderstorms, hail and cloudbursts, have become more frequent in parts of the USA, southwest Germany and other regions. The number of very severe tropical cyclones is also increasing. One direct result of warming is an increase in heatwaves such as that experienced in Russia this summer. There are also indications of a higher incidence of atmospheric conditions causing air mass formation on the north side of the Alps and low-lying mountain ranges, a phenomenon which can result in floods. Heavy rain and flash floods are affecting not only people living close to rivers but also those who live well away from traditionally flood-prone areas. Although climate change can no longer be halted, even with the help of very ambitious schemes, it can still be curbed."

Besides what do you mean by 'not the beginning of a scientific debate"? Anyone knowledgeable in climate science knows that it can only predict probabilites of types of events, not the events themselves. Climate science can predcit probabilities that certain regions will be affected more than other, but not by how much. The science is quite uncertain in about future specifics, but it does supply enough framewok for risk analysis and policy makers to remove their blinders.

[The last sane American]

06:52 PM on 01/11/2011

I did not go on as that is speculation.

Why do you use the caveat "The science is quite uncertain"?

I think that tells all why I stopped at "however". Speculation is exactly that speculation. ;

[Kenz300]

06:53 PM on 01/08/2011

The best congress that oil, coal and billionaire money could buy.

Looks like the oil and coal lobby got what they paid for.

[rustysc]

02:13 PM on 01/08/2011

True to form, the teapublicans are dismantling all the good government agencies in an effort to keep the dumbies in the dark and increase profits for their supporters, big business.

[dragonmaster]

07:41 AM on 01/08/2011

It seems that our Government has been hijacked by fools. Power in the hands of such Fools inevitably leads to disaster. Which is what we will have. Americans sadly, have always learned too late- in this case with AGW- their fate is just about sealed- and learning at this point seems futile if not impossible before the storm engulfs them.

[TheQuestion]

08:58 PM on 01/07/2011

The Republicans seem to me to be insane. It's like living in backwards land. In fact it's in the direction of a backwards country that they are taking us.

[esquilax]

08:47 PM on 01/07/2011

USofA; head long into the valley of death.