Obama's Science Czar on the Hot Seat at Global Warming Hearing

Wow. Simply wow. Hat tip to Gateway Pundit.

Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R., Wisconsin) slammed Science Czar John Holdren today at the Global Warming hearings before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. John Holdren, for those who may not know, is the same clown who once said that forced abortions are needed to save the planet. As the Congressman says, Holdren is right in the middle of this ClimateFraud mess.

Here's the video. I only wish the video showed the entire Q/A, but I guess this is the bulk of it.



Here's a transcript of the video Q/A between Sensenbrenner and Holdren.

Sensenbrenner: Back to the emails that ended up being placed in the public record. And I don’t want to get to whether or not they were legally placed in the public record. The question is whether or not they were accurate. Because if they were accurate, it’s profoundly disturbing. And it does end up putting into question all of the science of Climate Change.

Now, the data from the Climate Research Unit at the UEA [University of East Anglia] and England is one of only three major data sets, but they considerably overlap, and they’ve been used as a basis for the IPCC report as well as the U.S. Global Change Research Program. And that means that these two booklets that were passed out this morning, you know, at best need to have a thorough review in the light of this information that has been disclosed. And at worst, it’s junk science, and it’s a part of a massive international scientific fraud.

Now Dr. Holdren, you’ve been in the middle of a lot of this, and I’ve got a couple of questions, based upon your statements before you joined the Obama administration.

You gave an interview in August of 2006 with the BBC News in the UK, and you said that a sea level rise of up to thirteen feet was in the realm of possibility. However, that’s eleven feet higher than what the IPPC has estimated over this period of time, which is somewhere between seven and 23 inches.

Now with respect to the hockey stick theory, which the Chairman has referred to, um, that’s been pretty much discredited in the scientific community, and yet in your October 13 email, which is now in the public record, you aggressively attacked the two scientists that put this together, a Dr. Willie Soon and a Dr. Sallie Baliunas.

[Soon and Baliunas were solar physicists, scientists of world rank, authors of work confirming the existence of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) from a multitude of sources. Their work challenged attempts to get rid of the MWP because it contradicted the claim by the proponents of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). Several scientists challenged the claim that the latter part of the 20th century was the warmest ever. They knew the claim was false, many warmer periods occurred in the past. Michael Mann ‘got rid’ of the MWP with his production of the hockey stick, but Soon and Baliunas were problematic--so Holdren set out, in his emails, to discredit them.]

Now, I think it’s pretty clear that in both cases you were wrong, and I guess I’d like to know if you’re concerned now that you’re in the White House and representing all of the public, uh, whether you’re concerned about the misrepresentation of the state of science with respect to Global Warming, and I’d also like to know if you still support the principal critic of the, of those who trash the hockey stick theory, that is a Dr. Michael Mann, knowing of his efforts now to hide his data and to encourage his colleagues to shut out journals like Climate Research to publish works contrary to his own bias.

Holdren. Congressman, let me try to take those in the order you asked them. And the very first part of your statement, with respect, I would disagree with you that this current uproar calls into question all of climate science. I do not believe that it remotely. . .

Sensenbrenner. Well, sir, I didn’t say that. I said that it ought to be looked at again. And you know that there’s increasing evidence of scientific fascism that’s going on, and I think as policy makers who are making decisions about the state of the American economy for the next several generations that we ought to have accurate science. It appears that there’s enough question on whether the science we have is accurate. That’s got to be resolved, and I wish we could have done it in this hearing, but the Chairman wouldn’t let us. But go ahead.

Holdren. I very much agree that we need to resolve the current issue. It’s important to understand what has really gone on here, to get at the bottom of it. As I indicated before, that’s been one of the strengths of science over the years, the capacity to get to the bottom of the controversies that emerge, and I believe we’ll get to the bottom of this one. But the key point, is, however this particular controversy comes out, the result will not call into the question the bulk of our understanding of how the climate works or how humans are affecting it.

Uh, you mentioned, um, an interview of mine, uh, a few years ago, in which I talked about the possibility of a sea level rise in this century, as much as 13 feet. That was based on scientific peer-reviewed publications that appeared in the early 2000s, that indicated that over geologic time in periods of natural climate change, there had been episodes in which the rate of sea level rise increased as much as two to five meters per century, and that this could not be ruled out if the temperatures for which we were heading in the 21st century as a result of our activity. . .

Sensenbrenner. You’re still 11 feet above what the IPCC was recommending.

My time is almost up, and I’d just like to say that there’s an awful lot of scientific McCarthyism, meaning name calling, going on. As I quote from your email of October 13, 2003, saying doing this will reveal that Soon and Baliunas are essentially amateurs in the interpretation of historical and paleoclimatology records of climate change. You know, you’re not dealing with their issue, you’re calling them names. And I think we ought to get to the bottom of this without having the name-calling, and I wish that you as the President’s science advisor, a former employee of one of the most distinguished universities in the world, would be able to get beyond the name-calling and get to it. My time is up.

Update. This is what Holdren said on Monday: “I’m happy to stand by my contribution to this exchange. I think anybody who reads what I wrote in its entirety will find it a serious and balanced treatment of the question of ‘burden of proof’ in situations where science germane to public policy is in dispute.”

Thanks. We'll be the judge of that.