Climate Change Research Hearing 2/7 10 AM in commerce

[TayTay]

Climate Change Research and Scientific Integrity

Wednesday, February 7, 2007
10:00 AM
SR - 253
Webcast here when the hearing starts: http://commerce.senate.gov/public/

Witnesses

Opening Remarks
Mr. Bill Brennan
Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Affairs, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Acting Chairman, Climate Change Science Program

Dr. Richard Anthes
President
University Corporation for Atmospheric Research

Mr. Thomas R. Knutson
Research Meteorologist, Climate Dynamics and Prediction Group
Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Dr. James R. Mahoney
Environmental Consultant

Mr. Rick Piltz
Director
Climate Science Watch, Government Accountability Project

Dr. F. Sherwood Rowland
Bren Research Professor, Chemistry and Earth System
School of Physical Sciences, University of California

[MBS]

1. Rowland is a really big cheese

Nobel prize winner (I'm pretty sure: if not that, then he's for sure a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and has won lots of other awards) , one of first scientists to systematically study, and sound the alarm on, global warming.

[MH1]

2. You are right, it appears

according to wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._Sherwood_Rowland

[Mass]

3. Good hearing.

I missed the beginning - Heard a bit of McCain, who called for bipartisanship on the issue.

Kerry was very good, reminding the number of studies concerning global climate change and calling for something to be done very soon. He had the same type of indignation on this issue that he had earlier.

Kobluchar was after. She thanked McCain and Kerry for their leadership on the issue. It was good to hear that.

[karynnj]

4. Kerry said something about

having with Gore been involved with the earliest ("one of the earliest" ??) hearings on Global warming.

[Mass]

5. Kerry is probably going to be next.

Nelson offered to let him ask questions, then finish his own questionning. He told Nelson to finish.

It is amazing how everybody is respectuous of him these days!!! I think that some reporters who insist on the "unliked" should go see these hearings about global warmingEPW and now this one).

[Mass]

6. I am not sure who Kerry is interrogating now, but this is the prosecutor at work.

[karynnj]

9. This is wonderful

Both as a prosecutor and as an advocate and someone who listens to scienec.

Kerry: He doesn't care if people get tired of him ranting on this - it's the most important thing now - and he will continue ranting as long as he is here!

Nelson then asks Inohe to compell testimony of the administration people who didn't come - and he said some good stuff about Kerry.

[karynnj]

7. The chair (Inohe ?) introduced him as the expert

He is doing a great job.

Now asking where is the administration's plan to cap carbon? (admin - blah, blah
Kerry: "Just talk - There's no plan. None of which get you near the level you need."
(admin - we're producing something ...
Kerry: It's been 6 years
(admin - the reports are on aschedule
Kerry: (sounding smart as usual - about carbon dioxide. He's not a scientist, but he knows enough to connect the dots when scientists are yelling at him. Administration no responding.
(admin - we have same goal.)
Kerry: No we don't. You did nothing to help when McCain and he tried to fix CAFE standards. Speaking of his acid rain stuff - KERRY IS ON FIRE!!!!!)
We need this transcript here and in DU.

You're not doing your job. (short version: "you are destroying the world.")

[Mass]

8. Innouye. from Hawai (D)

[MarjorieG]

10. How do you access?

I try, and each time, I get an offer to make that particular service-Windows-Realtime-to be may default, and changing back when another is offered. Loading, and usually missing the program. I am not tekkie enough, and this session seems like a real loss for a Kerryphile.

[MBS]

14. you can download real media for free

from cspan. That should give you what you'll need to watch this broadcast. It's worth it! JK was fabulous, especially the way he tore the NOAA rep. to shreds.. in last 1/2 hour of the broadcast.

[TayTay]

11. Thanks for covering this

I am kind of down with this bad cold and not up to covering hearings. (Yeah, cold bad enough to keep me from a hearing. That's cuz I know they are archived, thank the goddess.)

You guys rock!

[karynnj]

12. Sorry to hear you are sick

There was a huge amount of good stuff - I couldn't keep up. Kerry went through the whole acid rain story - that he really should have told in 2004 - and he was really tough on the witness. His words were at least as tough as when he's gone after Rice.

He was very very clearly the expert on that committee. (So, in 2 days, he's the best on global warming in the Senate and the best on Iraq - but he's not a heavyweight like Obama and Edwards - the rest of the world has to think we are insane.)

[MBS]

13. your last paragraph says it all!

.. sigh.

[_dynamicdems]

26. Feel better!

The way things are going, you are going to need to keep your strength up to keep up with the good senator's activities.

[MBS]

15. Just watched it

Kerry was FANTASTIC. Highlight for me was the last 1/2 hour, when he tore the NOAA guy into shreds. Wowie-zowie

[karynnj]

16. That was something

I don't think I would have wanted to be an evil doer in Middlesex county in the late 70s!

[globalvillage]

17. The video of this is up

http://commerce.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.Hearing&Hearing_ID=1812

Kerry at 29:18, but watch McCain just before if you want to see a striking contrast.

edit also at 2:06:00

[Island Blue]

18. I need to do non-Kerry stuff tonight

I mean I REALLY need to, but I started watching this and now I can't stop. He's on fire. Oh, I'd really hate to be the guy he's grilling now. That would suck.

[globalvillage]

19. You must be watching the same part I am

Oh, man. I'd hate like hell to be that dude.

[Island Blue]

20. I'm watching the end part.

Man that was good.

[karynnj]

22. I agree - if he has a conscience, those words should really hurt

because they were true. Seeing this, you know what those debates would be like. Global warming is going to be a major issue in the primary - and the 3 "heavyweights" will learn their lines, but none of them have this degree of knowlege and Kerry's record.

After hearing Kerry, I understood the glowing introduction by the chair. McCain completely paled next to Kerry here.

[ProSense]

23. Definitely awesome!

The WH science and technology policy office didn't even show up, yet they're trying to say they're taking this seriously.

Very informative hearing.

[karynnj]

24. Did anyone put this in GD?

[globalvillage]

25. Good question

I don't see it.
Who is the dude whose ass Sen Kerry kicked at the end?

[TayTay]

27. I think was him

Mr. Bill Brennan
Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Affairs, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Acting Chairman, Climate Change Science Program

[globalvillage]

28. Done.

Everyone should watch this. Really, it was classic.

edit to remove n/t from post title, cause I really wasn't finished.

:-)

[TayTay]

21. That was awesome

Wow! Great, great job. I hope that Sen. Kerry starts to make some more speeches and appearances on global climate change and energy needs, as he obviously feels this is a cause that he needs to champion in his time in the Senate. Nice, nice job.

Okay, Sen. Kerry sort of dissed ethanol last week in the Environment and Public Works committee. Ah, ethanol from corn is the third rail of Iowa Presidential politics and I am relieved to hear him diss ethanol from that source. Now, I wonder if he is going to propose ideas that Brazil used and start to get ethanol from sugar, which has a far, far greater yield of energy used to produce versus energy achieved. The Sugar Lobby, oddly enough, is incredibly powerful in America and has blocked US development of energy from sugar. (BFEE alert. Look up money, Florida, sugar lobby and price supports. It's an eye-opener.) Senator Darlin, go ge 'em.

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/061127ta_talk_surowiecki

Unfortunately, the ethanol produced in the U.S. comes from a less-than-ideal source: corn. Corn ethanol’s “net energy balance”—the amount of energy it yields in proportion to how much energy goes into its production—is significantly lower than that of other alternatives, and modern corn farming isn’t easy on the land. By contrast, ethanol distilled from sugarcane is much cheaper to produce and generates far more energy per unit of input—eight times more, by most estimates—than corn does. In the nineteen-seventies, Brazil embarked on a program to substitute sugar ethanol for oil. Today, every gallon of gas in Brazil is blended with at least twenty per cent of ethanol, and many cars run on ethanol alone, at half the price of gasoline.

What’s stopping the U.S. from doing the same? In a word, politics. The favors granted to the sugar industry keep the price of domestic sugar so high that it’s not cost-effective to use it for ethanol. And the tariffs and quotas for imported sugar mean that no one can afford to import foreign sugar and turn it into ethanol, the way that oil refiners import crude from the Middle East to make gasoline. Americans now import eighty per cent less sugar than they did thirty years ago. So the prospects for a domestic-sugar ethanol industry are dim at best.