Roy Spencer in the U.S. Senate

(See also Anthony Watts' comments.)

I think his testimony was extremely good. You can see the anonymous faces around who don't want to hear any rational things about the climate, its sensitivity, the natural effects, and the sensible strategies to organize the scientific research in order to find the correct and important insights about the climate.

When Spencer was finished, the only thing that Barbara Boxer was able to say was to congratulate that Spencer was jokingly named Rush Limbaugh's official climatologist. She just wanted to "point it out for people to understand". She apparently thinks that this comment should settle the debate. Well, among the [unflattering word] who vote for her, it probably does.



I have great news for you, Ms Boxer. You have been named the official clown of Rush Limbaugh's show which is a higher rank than the official climatologist. Congratulations! I hope that the next time, you won't be hiding your own title, either. :-)

150 minutes of video

A more complete video from the hearings is here. At the beginning, Boxer enumerates millions of catastrophes that are caused by warming, an effect that hasn't existed at least for ten years. As her following comments reveal, her support for this fashionable nonsense is mostly motivated by her desire to spit on Bush's administration. Mr Lautenberg blames global warming and George Bush for a disease of his grandkid: quite incredible. Testimonies and questions follow. You may also go to 1:01:40 where Frank Trautenberg or Lautenberg or what is the name of the old man (D - New Jersey) asks some questions to Spencer.

See also: a 30-minute scientific talk by Spencer

I must say that these arrogant political fools drive me up the wall and sometimes I must pause the video every 10 seconds to avoid overdosing. They don't know 1% of Spencer's knowledge about the climate but they still indicate that they don't have to listen.




Spencer says a lot of key things, for example that the humans obviously have some impact on the climate - for example, they influence the area of forests - which doesn't mean that they can stop using fossil fuels. Whether the carbon technologies can be replaced by something else in the future will depend on technological breakthroughs and you can't legislate new technologies into the existence. In fact, billions have already been spent and nothing that could be called a breakthrough has emerged.

But those political faces simply don't want to hear anything that makes sense. Instead, they want to tell Spencer and real scientists in general that they are putting children at risk. And they want to listen to bought scientists such as Kevin Trenberth to say things that the politicians pay them for saying. In his speech, Spencer recalls that Robert Watson, the 1997-2002 chairman of the IPCC, told Spencer 20 years ago that CO2 should be regulated (much like freons), years before a scientific "justification" was on the table.

It's a very sad tragicomedy - a great example how the active [unflattering word] such as Boxer and Lautenberg "naturally" get to the top of political affairs in every country that suddenly allows its government to decide about things that should only be decided by the free individuals. At this point, science is completely irrelevant. Science was only good in its manipulated, corrupt form to help the morons to get to their chairs and gain the power.

Frankly speaking, I found even comments by some Republicans, such as Larry Craig (around 56:00), who is a semi-skeptic, insulting, e.g. when he called Spencer "outsider" in the climate science. What the [intercourse] does it mean? By all objective criteria, Spencer is an achieved scientist at the center of his discipline.



Stephen Colbert with Sierra Club's Carl Pope - funny.

Incidentally, Antarctica was about 17 °C warmer 14 million years ago than it is today: ostracods have spoken.