Senate Republicans plan to drop a report on Sen. Barbara Boxer’s (D-Calif.) climate change hearing Thursday highlighting flaws in the methodology used by the federal government to assert that the globe is catastrophically warming.
The Environment and Public Works Committee hearing titled “Climate Change: It’s Happening Now” includes two panels of research scientists and witnesses from environmental and industry groups.
The GOP report notes numerous examples of how actual temperatures have failed to meet the predictions put forth by models used by the president and his agencies to push climate-change policies. “The American public should be deeply troubled to learn that EPA is actively working to increase energy prices based on predicted global temperature increases without first undertaking efforts to determine if temperatures are actually increasing to the extent predicted by the climate models they are using,” the report states.
“If the computer models and predictions have been inaccurate, why is our federal government relying on these models to take unilateral action? If global warming has been ‘worse than predicted,’ why won’t the federal government provide the data supporting this claim? As it continues to be recognized that the Earth has not warmed for the past 15 years, will we see the term ‘global warming’ abandoned and replaced in its entirety by ‘climate change?’ Given that many of these models predicted warming trends well before China surpassed the United States as the largest GHG emitter, and given the fact that emissions continue to grow at a pace beyond what was originally incorporated into the models, shouldn’t the warming be far worse than what was predicted in the worst case scenarios rather than well below predictions?”
On rising sea levels, the report notes “the United Nations has already made their 2005 prediction disappear.”
“According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), data indicates that sea levels rose only 1.1 – 1.3 mm/year from 2005-2012,” the report continues. “A further review of the science shows that the rate of sea level change has been found to be larger in the early part of last century (2.03 ± 0.35 mm/yr 1904–1953), in comparison with the latter part (1.45 ± 0.34 mm/yr 1954–2003).”
This led the Senate EPW Republicans to ask, “What science did Al Gore use to come to the conclusion that the oceans would rise 20 feet or more?”
“If the present rate of sea level rise would put the world on pace to see an increase of less than 7 inches by the end of the century, then where are the data sets the IPCC and other advocates use to come up with estimates that are in feet and/or meters? …If empirical evidence indicates that the rate of sea level rise is decreasing, how does the IPCC claim that there definitively is a strong correlation between sea level rise and CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere? Doesn’t the science tend to indicate that there is a lack of correlation?”
The report also notes that wildfires have decreased by 15 percent globally since 1950, that there has been little change in the rate of drought over the past several decades, and that heat waves and hurricanes have not increased.
“When we are unable to predict extreme weather events, and empirical evidence does not show that extreme weather events are increasing, why would some scientists/activists claim that extreme weather events are the product of human activity?” asks the report. “…What is the level of confidence that extreme weather events won’t decrease in a warming climate? Is there evidence that colder climates can be harsher?”
The report quotes a claim from former Vice President Gore: “Humanity is sitting on a time bomb. If the vast majority of the world’s scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet’s climate system into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced—a catastrophe of our own making.”
The document goes on to detail factors that can influence the climate beyond government regulation and the United Nations: solar radiation, cosmic rays, supernovae, and ocean currents.
“Given the dynamic nature of our climate and the factors well outside of human control (many of which are not listed above), including lack of technology to govern these factors, is it possible to control and stop climate change through government regulations?”
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