Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-California) called upon an interesting source in the House Science Committee hearing on climate change Thursday morning -- the History Channel.
In an attempt to cast doubt on the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the most comprehensive and widely vetted scientific analysis of climate change to date, Rohrabacher said he had learned through a History Channel program about a mini ice age that ended in the mid-19th century.
The little ice age, as it is known, is a documented meteorological event, as any of the four government scientists at the witness table could have told Rohrabacher, who hoped to show that cooler temperatures in the 1850s might have skewed data on global warming.
The scientists, all of whom contributed to the recent IPCC report, may have been experts in various fields and as well-versed as anyone on the condition of our planet, but none of them knew how to answer Rohrabacher's next question:
"Were there really Vikings that were living at a higher temperature?'
This, apparently, is what passes for informed inquiry from skeptics on global warming in today's Congress. According to Susan Solomon, one of the witnesses and a chemist and senior scientist at NOAA, the IPCC report was more carefully reviewed than other scientific publications, with over 600 experts from dozens of countries participating in two rounds of open review that generated over 30,000 comments. To put those numbers in perspective, Solomon said, a typical research paper published in a scientific journal gets two or three expert comments.
Solomon, a researcher who has a glacier named after her and whose work on the ozone hole over Antarctica has won her a National Medal of Science award, seemed flustered by Rohrabacher's line of questioning.
"Is the glacier named after you?" Rohrabacher asked.
Solomon said it was.
"Is it melting?" Rohrabacher asked.
Solomon replied that her glacier was out of reach of global warming because it was at a high latitude. Rohrabacher later yelled at her and accused her of dishonesty over global warming.
But Solomon got the last laugh, although it came at the expense of another congressman. After hearing from the chemist that most methane gas today comes from agricultural sources, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin) quipped:
"Does that mean we better put catalytic converters on the back of cows? Now you're hitting the Wisconsin economy right between the horns."
Solomon didn't miss a beat: "I can only say that I love your cheese."
Photo: Joi Ito
