No attempt to even listen to science

Obviously there is a huge disconnect between the science coming in (“what’s happening, why, what will it mean?”), and the policy coming out (“burn more coal!”). We can look into some of the details of our government ‘at work’ to identify some of the causes for that. Looking at the details of a couple of science briefings to Republican representatives, we see that science seems to have no place in this administration.

House of Representatives SST Committee Briefing May 2018

The first instance, that made the news, is a briefing to the U.S. House of Representatives Science, Space and Technology Committee May 2018. The hearing was to focus on how technology could be deployed for climate change adaptation. But Republicans kept turning the hearing to the basics of climate science, many of the questions directed at scientist Philip Duffy, former senior adviser to the U.S. Global Change Research Program.

Mo Brooks (Republican, AL) was one of those Republicans, often talking to Duffy in an aggressive and condescending manner. For example, saying “Let’s just assume that what you are talking about has some rational basis for it” - that to someone with a Stanford PhD.

After Duffy made the statement that sea level rises were due to melting ice, Brooks makes his point. I’m sure you’ve already heard about it but I recommend watching the actual video. (The transcript below I made myself. I have tried to be accurate, but there might be small mistakes, as honestly there was a limit to how often I could listen to this without getting more and more upset!)

[1:46] BROOKS: I’m asking another question. What other factors have caused the sea levels to rise relative to dry land? Does anyone else have any (pauses)? I mean...

DUFFY [ tries to answer]:

BROOKS [immediately cutting off]: In particular Dr Duffy, you said that there is going to be a massive sea level rises….isn’t that the word you used in your remarks.. massive. Don’t you think that if you are going to have that kind of statement you ought to have some kind of idea as to what all the causes of sea level rises have been?

DUFFY: Sure, if you are referring to ground subsidence, that has been a factor in some regions ...

BROOKS [ interrupting]: Ok, what else? That’s one. So now we’ve gotten two. What else?

DUFFY [Trying to explain why even the secondary factor is very small]: Ground subsidence is not going to cause the levels of sea level rise that….

BROOKS [interrupting]: I’m was not asking for your prioritizing of one over the other [comment:though that is exactly what such science needs to do - separate the important factors from the irrelevant] ...but you’ve mentioned two, what else?

DUFFY: Those are all that I know of.

BROOKS [incredulously]: What about erosion? Every single year that we are on earth you have huge tons of silt deposited by the Mississippi River, by the Amazon river, by the Nile…. Every time you have that soil or rock deposited into the sea it causes the sea levels to rise because now you have less space in those oceans, because the bottom is moving up.

DUFFY [trying to answer, and make clear the effect would be insignificant]: I’m pretty sure…

BROOKS [interrupting]: What about the White Cliffs of Dover, California where you have the waves crashing against the shoreline and time and time again you’re having the cliffs crash into the sea and all of that displaces water that forces it to rise, does it not?

DUFFY: I’m pretty sure that on human timescales those are minuscule effects [comment:Kudos to Dr Duffy that his reply was not more along the lines of “Don’t be so f***-ing stupid”]

Brooks then moves the discussion onto a different area, around sea ice, preceding the remarks with “if global temperatures are rising, assuming for a moment that they are”. This is 2018 - the warming trend is settled science - and a congressman on the Science committee is still talking about “if... assuming for a moment...” - unforgivable.

So first, is Brooks here actually making a valid point, highlighting the scientist’s negligence or a conspiracy-like hiding of information by them? It is undeniably true that every rock falling or tossed in the ocean causes the levels to rise, as does every boat launched, and every meteorite from space that lands in the Pacific - but given how big the ocean is, it doesn’t seem at all plausible this would register as a factor. But let’s run some numbers: after all the White Cliffs of Dover are apparently eroding at an alarming rate of 2 inches per year. So given their height (350 feet) and length (8 miles), and how really big the ocean is, that means that every year the chalk crumbling off the cliffs raise the level of the ocean by….. about 2 atoms worth. Put another way, in 10 million years of this, the oceans would rise 1/10th of an inch. It is therefore unsurprising then that the scientists giving the briefing wouldn’t even consider offering it up as a factor that caused sea level rises of 7 inches since 1900! There is no reason for suggesting this anymore than dozens of other equally negligible effects. Throwing the other things Brooks mentioned into the mix doesn’t change the absurdity - if 40% of England, and 15% of California, had utterly eroded into the ocean since 1990, you start to match the data. The internet already contains lots of mocking of Mo Brooks - my contribution is below (possibly Mr Brooks misunderstood the recent Brexit news with regard to the UK leaving Europe):

It’s worth asking why is melting ice so different? - because the ice sheets, like the oceans, are also very large, and because they melt across their entirety. If the ice of Antarctica were to fully melt, sea levels would rise 180+ ft!

But my anger at this is not because I think Mr Brooks is stupid. Far from it. I think his intent was to talk rather than to listen, and to detract from the actual facts, and to do his best to spread doubt and uncertainty. You can tell this more if you listen to the actual recording, with his hectoring, disrespect, and constant interrupting.

Brooks Press Release from Feb 2019 briefing

This is even more apparent in a more recent hearing he attended. For this I did not have to create the transcript myself, as it is part of a press release his office released [1] as he seems quite proud of it.

Remember, Brook is attending this as part of his duties on the Science Committee, to learn about the research, including asking clarifying and probing questions for sure, and then help bridge from science into policy. The press release is titled

Under Brook’s examination, Liberal Climate Change “expect” admits ….

and begins;

Wednesday, in the Science, Space, and Technology Committee hearing on climate change, Socialist Democrats called climate change “expert” Dr. Robert Kopp as a witness.

So right out the gate “Socialist Democrats” seems the wrong tone, as does the quoting of “expert” (Dr Kopp has written numerous peer reviewed papers on the topic, so I think he deserves more respect). And it appears that you cannot be just a “scientist” anymore, just as you can’t be just a “judge”. You are a “Liberal scientist” or a “Republican Judge” (and I suspect that 99+% of climate change scientists would be branded a Liberal Scientist by Mo Brooks, as they all seem to say it’s happening, and it’s bad!).

The press release goes on:

Under examination by Congressman Mo Brooks (AL-05), Dr. Kopp conceded three startling things:

1. … (I will come back to 1 & 2, and the full title in a minute - not trying to hide anything)
2. ...
3. That raising American gasoline prices to $8.70/gallon is one partial solution to global warming!

Good God, you are kidding! You mean that to account for externalities, and the fact that the artificially cheap price of gasoline does not reflect the cost to be paid later, one of the policies that could be applied out of the toolbox of taxes, or regulations, or incentives, is higher taxes on gas!!!!! Something that my 18 year old son understands having done High School economics?

Of course I’m being sarcastic here. Brooks I’m sure knows this perfectly well. It seems he has no interest in hearing the science (despite it being his job and his duty), else why is he even asking this question of a scientist? A scientist can tell him the earth is warming, and that’s because of CO2, where the CO2 is predominantly coming from (human activity), and what will probably happen, and even about technologies to reduce/capture etc. It is not a scientist’s job to decide or provide advice on which of the numerous policy options to apply. European countries have, by and large, sensibly decided to use the policy of gas taxes, leading to the lowering of emissions.

Here’s the piece of the transcript where Brook’s insightful questioning was able to extract the dreadful admission that this could be part of the US approach!

BROOKS: Now, let’s talk about the remedy for a second. You may recall that in 2008 Dr. Steven Chu, who later became President Obama’s secretary of energy, stated that to combat climate change, [quote] “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe, [end quote] which was about $8.70 cents per gallon. Do you agree with Steven Chu that that is a remedy that the United States should implement?

KOPP: Well, there’s lots of policy solutions….

BROOKS [presumably interrupting again]: I’m asking about this one. Yes or no?

KOPP: We are dumping CO2 into the atmosphere. One way of dealing with the problem would be to put a price on carbon that reflects the cost of that carbon dioxide is imposing on the world.

BROOKS: Is that a yes or a no?

KOPP: I’m going to give you the scientific answer and say it depends. It is one of the solutions that would work.

Brooks [ Having got what he wanted]: Alright, thank you Madam Chairman. Appreciate the time.

And straight from there to the politicization:

“Most importantly, despite the uncertainty and inadequacy of our climate change knowledge, Socialist Democrats insist on raising gasoline coasts to at least $8.70 per gallon!! Perhaps I am in the minority, but I adamantly oppose raising gasoline prices to an exorbitant $8.70 per gallon that erodes the ability of Americans to pay for their families’ food, clothing, health care, home and education costs.”

This paragraph is astounding. Again the talk of “the uncertainty and inadequacy of our climate change knowledge”, where, for the relevant part of that knowledge being covered here, there is no remaining uncertainty that should be preventing us taking action. But secondly for referencing a potential solution in this manner in a Science Committee hearing. This seems akin to going to the doctors and being told that you have cancer, and that you will need chemotherapy. Then, as chemotherapy is a very unpleasant treatment, concluding that you cannot possibly have cancer!

As an aside, a couple of things on this horror of taxes. Firstly, it’s not as if in Europe that tax money gets burnt - it pays for public services, and reduces the need for taxes elsewhere (duh!). Secondly, a better way of thinking about it is that when you fill up your 15 mpg truck with 5 gallons of $3 gas, you’re going to create $75 worth of future damage to the US, and you’ll leave it to your kid to pick up that tab. Except they won’t be paying it as $75 - they might be paying it by living in a world of food and water shortages.

Now to cover the other part of the press release (points #1 and #2), regarding the rate of sea level rise. This is just more of what we have already seen - bogus science proposed by Brooks, correctly dismissed by the scientist to the extent that Brooks allows them to, and then turned into political statements. You can skip this if you want, as it’s largely more of the same, but I wanted to quickly cover so it doesn’t look like I’m ignoring it.

You can again read the transcript on Brooks website [2] but it broadly goes:

• Confirming the sea level rise of 8” since 1900 (that scientists overwhelmingly contribute to a warming planet, due to greenhouse gas emissions from human factors.
• Confirmation that there were other primary factors leading to the warming that lead to the end of the last ice age 21,000 years ago e.g. precession of the earth, and that human activity was obviously not a factor that far in the past.
• Discussion that since the end of the last ice age there has been an average of about 2 ft per century sea level rise, but mostly before 7,000 years ago, due to the melting of massive ice sheets at the end of the ice age.
• Discussion that generally it’s good for Canadians that their country is not still buried in ice like it was during the last ice age.

[So far, so good, though slightly uninteresting, and odd - scientists obviously don’t say that the only factor that have EVER resulted in changes to global temperatures in Earth’s 4.5 billion year history are humans - the Earth did after all start out as a molten ball of rock (even hotter than Australia in 2019!). What they say is simply that in the most recent period, the factor that most accurately accounts for what we are seeing is greenhouse gases from humans (the other factors that were dominant in the past are not having a large contributing effect now). They certainly don’t say that the Earth has always been better for humans in the past - so unsurprisingly they don’t claim it was better with an ice age, nor when it was a molten ball of rock!

Brook’s conclusion from this, as included in his press release:

‘The one thing every climate scientist should admit is that humanity does not know nearly as much about climate change as some like to claim they know. The only certainty is that the Earth’s climate is always changing, either cooling or warming. Rarely is the Earth’s climate constant. Earth climate data suggests Earth was once ‘planet snowball,’ where all or almost all of Earth was covered by ice, and, in other periods, has been far warmer than it is today.”

“Today’s SST Committee hearing on climate change was just the ‘tip of the iceberg.’ The truth is that the Earth’s sea levels have averaged rising two feet per century over the past 21,000 years. That average long-term sea level rise rate is THREE TIMES greater than the eight inch sea level rise the Earth has seen over the past 120 years. Not surprisingly, climate change alarmists, aid and abetted by a partisan media, NEVER share this historical scientific data with the public!”

It is just grossly negligent, to sit on a science committee and make such a statement. To conflate what happened 21,000 years ago for totally different reasons, with what has happened over the last 100 years with totally different facts at play, is irrational. To further act as if this a great cover up by the conspiracy between the scientific community and the world’s media is close to insane, and clear evidence that Brooks cares not one iota for science, and everything for re-election and earning his PAC contributions.

Hopefully by now the ridiculousness of such a statement is clear. If not, here is an analogy: say you were trying to understand why the world is warming (when humans are emitting so much CO2) and also trying to understand why you have a headache (when you are smashing our head repeatedly with a hammer), and you consulted Mo Brooks in both cases:

Summary

In summary, I don’t think it is at all acceptable that any elected official, being paid by US taxpayers to represent them, who is given the important role of understanding the science and turning that into appropriate policy, should so blatantly have no interest in the science, but clearly be trying to immediately spin such hearings for political gain. Yet Brooks is not the only example of Republican representatives doing this, and it appears systemic in this administration.