Apr 17, 2011
[Excerpt from:] The Foundation of Climate Science – Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming – 2010-05-06 – Even after months of personal attacks against climate scientists stemming from a manufactured scandal over stolen emails, the underlying science behind the need to stem the tide of heat-trapping emissions remains solid. To explain what we know about climate change, and why and how we know it, Chairman Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming hosted top-level American climate scientists at a congressional hearing on Thursday, May 6, 2010.
The scientists addressed the claims of deniers head-on. Thursday’s panel featured a member of the investigative panel convened by the University of East Anglia and led by Lord Ron Oxburgh to review the stolen emails from that school’s Climactic Research Unit. The “Oxburgh Inquiry” exonerated the scientists who were attacked following the emails, saying they “saw no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work.” The hearing also included three scientists involved in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, which have also been attacked by climate science deniers.
The Republican witness on the panel was Lord Christopher Walter Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley.
WITNESSES: Dr. Lisa Graumlich, Director, School of Natural Resources and the Environment, University of Arizona, and member of the “Oxburgh Inquiry” panel;
Dr. Chris Field, Director, Department of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution of Washington, and co-chair of “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability” portion of new IPCC report due in 2014;
Dr. James McCarthy, Professor of Biological Oceanography, Harvard University, past President and Chair of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, co-chair of “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability” portion of IPCC report published in 2001;
Dr. James Hurrell, Senior Scientist, National Center for Atmospheric Research, contributor to IPCC reports;
Lord Christopher Monckton, Chief Policy Adviser, Science and Public Policy Institute. Video provided by the U.S. House of Representatives.
Transition Studies 