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Congressional Testimony: A Surprising Consensus On Climate

Lasrick writes: Many legislators regularly deny that there is a scientific consensus, or even broad scientific support, for government action to address climate change. Researchers recently assessed the content of congressional testimony related to either global warming or climate change from 1969 to 2007. For each piece of testimony, they recorded several characteristics about how the testimony discussed climate. For instance, noting whether the testimony indicated that global warming or climate change was happening and whether any climate change was attributable (in part) to anthropogenic sources. The results: Testimony to Congress—even under Republican reign—reflects the scientific consensus that humans are changing our planet's climate.

7 of 370 comments (clear)

  1. 100% Consensus among scientific organizations by Layzej · · Score: 4, Informative
    It's probably a skewed result because half of the testimonies will have been selected by republicans because they are reject the mainstream science. This makes the finding even more surprising. For a more balanced view you can look to the statements made by scientific organizations.

    Statements by scientific organizations of national or international standing - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    Concurring:

    over 50 organizations including the Royal Society, American Chemical Society, American Institute of Physics, American Physical Society, Australian Institute of Physics, European Physical Society, etc, etc, etc.

    Dissenting:

    NONE

    1. Re:100% Consensus among scientific organizations by l0n3s0m3phr34k · · Score: 4, Informative

      I honestly think that, on a personal level, they do believe it. But when it comes to their base and who actually pays for their campaigns (Koch brothers, oil money, etc) then they will vote as they have been told to do by their paymasters.

    2. Re:100% Consensus among scientific organizations by dywolf · · Score: 2, Informative

      Look, a troll talking about a troll bill.

      --
      The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
    3. Re:100% Consensus among scientific organizations by khelms · · Score: 3, Informative

      "Open and Reproducible" is a nice phrase. It sounds so sensible, how could anyone be against it.? If you read the articles linked to, you find the bill requires EPA to jump through hoops and obtain the raw data that went into third-party peer-reviewed studies. Often times, that raw data contains names and facts about individuals and releasing it would have privacy concerns.

      This bill is about adding extra, unnecessary work in an attempt to slow down and hobble the EPA, not about "open science".

  2. LBJ on Global Warming - 50 years ago. by Layzej · · Score: 1, Informative

    http://davidappell.blogspot.ca... "Johnson's remarks arose from a 1965 report to his Administration, “Restoring the Quality of Our Environment,” by the Environmental Pollution Panel of the President’s Science Advisory Committee, which had a chapter on CO2’s potential to cause warming.

  3. Re:Government flip-flop from the 1970s by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 3, Informative

    Exactly. In the news. Not in peer reviewed scientific papers.

    You know what else was in the news? UFOs. Bigfoot. Lassie.

  4. Re:100% Consensus on WHAT? by BCGlorfindel · · Score: 3, Informative

    It's probably a skewed result because half of the testimonies will have been selected by republicans because they are reject the mainstream science. This makes the finding even more surprising. For a more balanced view you can look to the statements made by scientific organizations.

    Statements by scientific organizations of national or international standing - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    Concurring:

    over 50 organizations including the Royal Society, American Chemical Society, American Institute of Physics, American Physical Society, Australian Institute of Physics, European Physical Society, etc, etc, etc.

    Dissenting:

    NONE

    You are missing what parts scientists are well agreed upon:
    1.The instrumental record, which spans about 100 years, shows a clear warming trend.
    2. CO2 is a greenhouse gas and increasing it's concentration will increase heat storage.
    3. CO2 concentrations as observed for about the last 60ish years have been increasing.
    4. Humans have been steadily contributing CO2 to the atmosphere for about the last 100 years.
    5. The above points clearly are strong evidence that the recent warming has been influenced by human behaviour.

    That about encompasses the consensus. 90% of everything that everyone is talking about though does NOT have a broad consensus and is still being actively studied, things like:
    1.What quantitative relationship do our CO2 emissions have to future temperature change?
    2. What cost is there to us from future temperature change.
    3. What cost is there to us for reducing our CO2 emissions by a set factor.

    Climate models are one of the key parts to answering these questions, and they are getting better at helping us study our theories on how climate works. Regrettably, the reality is that climate models still do NOT accurately predict or model global Top Of Atmosphere energy imbalance. One of the key tuning processes in model development is still adjusting loosely bound or poorly understood parameters, like clouds, to force a reasonable behaviour of global TOA energy. I hate to have to point it out, but long term predictions of climate, are pretty much entirely driven by TOA energy imbalance as it IS the entirety of the greenhouse effect.