Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA), with some of the climate science literature.

This morning, top representatives of the scientific community tried in vain to reach fossil-fueled Republicans with the facts about the threat of global warming. In a hearing convened by the energy committee’s subcommittee on energy and power, chaired by Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-KY), climate scientists clearly explained how years of research involving thousands of scientists in dozens of fields of expertise have come to the ineluctable conclusion that fossil-fuel pollution is threatening humanity.

Dr. Christopher Field, the co-chair of IPCC Working Group 2, detailed how observed increases in temperature and changes in climate have already begun to decrease crop yields, with much worse to come as temperatures rise. Dr. Richard Somerville, an IPCC coordinating lead author, explained that “urgent action is needed if global warming is to be limited to moderate levels.” Dr. Knute Nadelhoffer, director of the University of Michigan Biological Station, described the disturbing changes to the Great Lakes and Arctic regions that are happening now. Dr. Francis Zwiers, another IPCC coordinating lead author, explained that it is very likely that human influence has doubled risks in extreme flooding events.

The response from the majority party was an embarrassment to the institution of Congress and to the American people. As if the hearing were a drinking game of debunked global warming myths, the Republicans on the committee uniformly pretended they were wading into some grand scientific debate, whose proponents just wanted to take America’s energy away. Rep. Lee Terry (R-NE) took a brave stand against the secret plot to ban nitrogen. Whitfield cited the canards of the Minoan warming period, the Medieval warming period, and growing Antarctic ice. Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-VA) competed with Whitfield, spinning tales of Vikings, global warming on Mars, and global cooling.

Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) baldly asserted, “There is dispute whether man is the cause of global warming.” However, not even the conservative climate scientists the Republicans called — Dr. John Christy and Dr. Roger Pielke, Sr. — dispute human influence on global warming. Their testimony consisted of misrepresenting the IPCC and making dire warnings of the economic consequences of reducing the United States’ dependence on coal and oil.

At the end of the hearing, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) gave Whitfield a chance to go back from the precipice of science denial. He asked Whitfield to delay consideration of the Upton-Inhofe bill to overturn the EPA climate rules, including the scientific finding that global warming pollution is a threat to public health. Whitfield rejected Waxman’s offer, saying that his subcommittee will markup the science-prevention act on Thursday.

Rainfall uncertainty imperils $1 trillion in U.S. GDP and 7 million American jobs by 2050 alone

We want to reemphasize that the methods of this study reveal how compelling risk derives from uncertainty, not certainty. The greater the uncertainty, the greater the risk. It is the uncertainty associated with climate change that validates the need to act protectively and proactively.

That’s from the conclusion of a 259-page study last year by Sandia National Laboratories, “Assessing the Near-Term Risk of Climate Uncertainty: Interdependencies among the U.S. States.”  The lead author, Dr. George Backus, works in Sandia’s Discrete Mathematics & Complex Systems Department.  He explains the results in this Science Progress cross-post.  Interspersed are some of my comments.

What we don’t know about climate science can really hurt us. So says a study conducted by researchers at Sandia National Laboratories.

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Plus Exelon’s John Rowe speaks at AEI

Your editorial “The EPA Permitorium” (Nov. 22) mischaracterizes the EPA’s air-quality regulations. These are required under the Clean Air Act, which a bipartisan Congress and a Republican president amended in 1990, and many are in response to court orders requiring the EPA to fix regulations that courts ruled invalid.

That’s the opening of a letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal, “We’re OK With the EPA’s New Air-Quality Regulations,” by the heads of several major electric utilities.  Below is the rest of the letter followed by a discussion of a speech given by one of those executives, Exelon’s John Rowe, at American Enterprise Institute.

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In a new report out today, Toxic Air: the Case for Cleaning Up Coal-Fired Power Plants, the American Lung Association finds that significant action now is needed to protect our public health.  The EPA needs to be allowed to do its job to safeguard us from the dangerous pollution from these plants.   CAP’s Susan Lyon has the story.

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House GOP budget bill aims to slash environmental regulation

The plan to cut $60 billion from the federal budget targets environmental programs so widely it appears to be as much an ideological gambit as a budgetary one. “The sheer scope of it is overwhelming,” a UCLA environmental law expert says.

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Well, the testimony of Pielke Sr. — a complex argument delivered in lightning speed — would have been nearly unintelligible to any non-scientist.  A lesson in what not to do when you have five minutes to talk to members of Congress.

Zwiers on the other hand spelled out the link between global warming and extreme weather very well.  His written testimony is very good.  I might do a separate post on it.

Donald Roberts DDT testimony — and his effort to connect his narrow knowledge base to the broader issue — gets a #FAIL.  Debunked here.

The webcast link is here.  Background on anti-science witnesses here.

I’ll do some live blogging.  I’ll also put some of the best comments here (and elsewhere) in the body of the post.

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Guest blogger Christy Goldfuss, CAPAF’s Public Lands Project Director, in a Wonk Room cross-post.

In a hearing on Thursday, Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT) claimed that the overwhelming majority of westerners oppose the administration’s recent work to protect wild lands, a responsibility illegally ignored by the Bush administration. As he was questioning Interior Secretary Ken Salazar at a budget hearing before the House Natural Resources Committee, Bishop held up a pile of letters and claimed that the people directly impacted by Secretarial Order 3310 are the ones complaining “time and time again”:

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To our dismay, and the nation’s detriment, self-described climate change deniers – strongly supported by fossil-fuel interests “” continue to mislead Congress and the public.

In late January, we joined 14 other leading scientists in writing a letter to every member of Congress, asking our elected representatives to separate science from policy. We called attention to the overwhelming scientific evidence of climate change, urging Congress to “address the challenge of climate change, and lead the national response”¦” We want Congress to understand that, with each passing day, the problem worsens.

Our letter was certainly not the first plea to Congress to address climate change, and it won’t be the last. An open letter just last May from 255 members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences urged similar actions. But the race to run away from the problem is nothing short of staggering.

So begins an excellent Politico op-ed by John Abraham,  associate professor of thermal sciences at the University of St.Thomas, Peter Gleick,  president of The Pacific Institute, Michael Mann,  director of the Earth Science Center at Penn State University, and Michael Oppenheimer,  professor of geosciences at Princeton University.

The NYT magazine published a piece last month  with a similar theme, “Fact-Free Science,” which noted:

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At the public dedication of MIT’s David H. Koch Integrative Cancer Institute last Friday, Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) effusively thanked conservative billionaire David Koch for supporting his election in 2010 and made a plea for help in his re-election campaign next year.  [JR:  Don't get me started on the MIT grant -- I'll post on it later.]  Brad Johnson has the Brown-Koch story.

David Koch directly gave the National Republican Senatorial Committee $30,400 in November 2009, and the Koch Industries PAC threw in $15,000 to NRSC plus $5,000 more directly to Brown right before Brown’s special election. In the following exchange, Brown thanks Koch and his wife Julia (off-camera) for their support, saying “I can certainly use it again”:

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