Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey must have been a little shocked when climatologist Judith Curry demanded to be able to respond to his testimony trying to discredit her views on climate science.
“I did not ask you a question,” Markey, a Democrat, retorted when Curry asked if she could respond to his testimony during a Senate hearing Tuesday on the science behind global warming.
“Why can’t she respond senator?” Conservative author and columnist Mark Steyn shot back at Markey. “You impugned her integrity. I think she’s entitled to…”
“I was basically called a ‘denier’ — that I’m denying science,” said Curry, a climate scientist at Georgia Tech University. “Did you read my written testimony?”
Curry and Steyn are part of a panel for a hearing on climate science called by Texas Republican Sen. [crscore]Ted Cruz[/crscore] — who is also running for president. The hearing featured three prominent scientists who are skeptical of claims humans are causing dangerous global warming.
Markey sought to discredit Curry in his testimony by framing her as ignoring the evidence humans are putting the planet at risk. Curry was not happy with essentially being labelled a global warming “denier” and pushed back against the senator’s remarks.
“Are you aware the IPCC and the consensus has no explanation for the increase of ice in the Antarctic?” Curry said. “Are you aware that they have no explanation for the fact the rate of sea level rise from 1920 to 1950 was as large, if not larger, as it currently is?”
“Are you aware that temperatures have been warming for more than 200 years, and, that in the 20th Century, 40 percent of the warming occurred before 1950 when carbon dioxide was not a factor in the warming?” Curry continued.
Curry highlighted even more uncertainties among climate scientists many Democrats and environmentalists are loathe to admit. For example, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has trouble explaining the recent “hiatus” in warming as well as the warming trend before the 1950s.
“Doctor, as I just said in my testimony — corroborated by Dr. Titley [another witness on the panel] — this is the warmest year ever recorded,” Markey shot back. “Last year was the warmest year ever recorded until this year. This was the warmest November ever recorded. October… was the warmest ever recorded.”
“You do not have an answer for that,” Markey said before going on to site Galileo and claim Curry was relying on “something that is perhaps God-made rather than dependent upon something that is man-made” and backed by science.
“Are you saying there’s no natural variability senator?” Steyn cut in. “There were alligators at the North Pole. What was that? Was that you in your SUV?”
Markey was forced to acknowledge the planet does in fact warm and cool on its own, but said natural variability is regional and the warming trend “is straight up.”
“Do you know what the little ice age was senator?” Steyn said to which Markey responded by claiming Boston’s record levels of snow are a product of global warming.
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