Waxman's Having One Hell of a Hearing

Where's the ship's captain -- Marburger? Hiding in the galley? (or is he hiding in the life boat, ready to cut the ropes and shove off for the nearby tropical island?)

George Deutsch has the guts* to appear but Marburger does not?

*presuming he has not been served a subpoena, that is.

When arguing with "sound science" conservatives has anyone used any hindsight modeling using the "conservative sound science regulatory standers" before the contrarian doubt spinning practice was in vogue?

For example: What would our nuclear testing policy be if it were based on today's conservative standards of sound science. Apply this to the Bikini bomb experiment, Agent Orange, or the regulation of the blood supply. I suspect this may be quite revealing and hopefully publicly compelling having had more information come to light since the events. The "err on the side of caution" attitude has served humanity quite well I should think.

I am sure there are many circumstances that would apply where policy was changed based on good science in the past that could be modeled against self-interested and arbitrary industry standards of today and make a bold presentation of the comparison.

This is an idea I have not seen before.
Respectfully
Todd

Douche? Spencer? Wow Henry Waxman is is preparing quite a show. (Roy Spencer was the guy I mentioned yesterday that said that we need 50 more years of data to say anything about global warming. All I can say is, awfully convenient for someone who won't even be alive at that time.

Why be more concerned about Marburger's absence from this discussion than Michael Griffin's (NASA Administrator) absence? Both men report directly to the President, so I think Griffin bears more responsibility here.

"Why be more concerned about Marburger's absence from this discussion than Michael Griffin's (NASA Administrator) absence?"

Two straightforward reasons:

1) Marburger has been Captain of the wayward ship "Dubya" much (years) longer than Griffin has been the First Mate at NASA (In fact, Marburger has been captain almost since Bush first hit the iceberg)

2) First Mate Griffin actually did something ("Believe it or not, Ripley") about the problem at NASA after Hansen complained to the media. Marburger has had lots of complaints from scientists (amply documented by UCS, Rick Piltz and others) and lots of opportunities to address them, but he has not done so with anything near the attention (ie, investigation) that they demanded (indeed, in some cases he has dismissed them with little more than a cursory consideration)

I've just been listening to the committee hearings on C-SPAN radio and I have to say, with all due respect to Dr. Hansen as a scientist, he did a very poor job at explaining scientific uncertainty with regards to the NAS report in 2001 about the IPCC. (Note: I may have missed part of the testimony, so I could be wrong.)

There is always uncertainty with science. There are no absolute and exact answers when dealing with climate change. The contrarians and denialists always use this point to their advantage (like Cooney did today) but where Hansen completely missed the mark was in directly addressing this issue of uncertainty. Yes...there's always uncertainty associated with this issue but the degree of uncertainty is the critical issue. It is very clear (in all of the recent NAS and IPCC reports) that the degree of certainty with regard to human-induced climate change is very high (the recent IPCC report quantified this as 90% certainty).

We all make decisions everyday based on somewhat uncertain data (<100% certainty). But that doesn't freeze us from making informed decisions. The same should be true for much larger policy issues such as climate change. It drives me absolutely crazy that people like Hansen couldn't make this point today. This was an excellent opportunity to make this point and it was completely missed.

>>Where's the ship's captain -- Marburger? Hiding in the galley?

Marburger has been on extended sick leave from OSTP (or at least reduced duty) for quite a while - I heard something about cancer or another illness.

Fair point regarding Griffin's actions. I think it's wildly optimistic to think the OSTP is going to investigate anything, regardless of who is in charge of the office, or whoever is President. It's not part of their makeup. They are at best a coordinating body, and a loose one at that. Better focus on individual agencies than a small office that has little power and less influence.

Another question I wish that they would have asked James Connaughton is:

"You've been painting such a rosy picture of the Bush administration's policies on climate change (i.e., attribution to humans, funding advances in technology to reduce CO2 emissions, etc.) but how can you explain Bush and Cheney both commenting over the last 6 years (and Cheney as recently as last month) that there is no scientific consensus as to whether global warming is caused by humans?"

I love how the administration is trying to do a complete about-face after the IPCC report came out regarding human attribution. Only, Cheney didn't get the memo, yet.

"Marburger has been on extended sick leave from OSTP (or at least reduced duty) for quite a while - I heard something about cancer or another illness."

I am sorry to hear that Marburger may be sick, but the fact remains, he has been there for almost 5 years and has been asked to testify on at least one other occasion and declined. He has also consistently avoided properly addressing the politicization charges made by scientists time and again.

If he has been sick for some time, why has he not stepped down? Why didn't he send someone to testify in his place? Surely, there must be many people in his office who have the experience and knowledge of what has gone over the past few years to do so.

I'm sorry, but I think it's high time that people within our government started taking some responsibility for their actions -- for which they are getting paid good money, I might add.

I wish I made Marburger's salary ($137,000 per year) and I am sure a lot of other people do as well. There are a lot of public servants (teachers, for example) who get a lot less to do their job than he does -- many of whom do a much better, more conscientious job, as far as I am concerned.

But that's just my opinion, which matters not, at any rate.

marburger slated to be a keynote at a conference next wknd:
http://stglobal.org/
and agreed, if he's very ill, it would be nice for his leave to be covered by another appointment, or simply to see his staff take more rein.

per the role of an unfortunate number of advisors surrounding bush, NYTimes quotes Cooney as saying, "when I came to the White House...my sole loyalties were to the president and his administration." telling, no?
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/washington/20climate.html?_r=1&ref=sc…

they'd do well to take egbooth's insightful comment to heart, as it's refreshingly simplistic - the degree of uncertainty in science, not whether it exists or not, is the matter at hand. science does not include "proof", but theories supported by a mass of evidence - that's the nature of the beast, and they can't pretend it's otherwise.

Kate, thanks for pointing that out. I find it interesting, if nothing else. It says nothing about whether he is sick, of course, but does indicate that he'd rather speak at a friendly conference than before a potentially hostile Congressional committee about his job performance. But hey, Who can blame him?

Unfortunately, I think many of the Bushies have taken the idea of scientific uncertainty to heart -- but not in the way you indicate.

They have played up "uncertainty" to achieve their own ends: in the case of global warming to delay action, saying "we are uncertain whether and how much humans are affecting climate and need more research before we can say for sure whether humans are are causing it".

This at the same time that the vast majority of real climate scientists at IPCC and elsewhere (as opposed to science fantasy writers, industry shills and other hacks) have been telling them for several years now that global warming is real and humans are causing most of it.

Exploiting uncertainty in such a case is a form of abuse/misuse of science. It exploits the inability of the public to differentiate between a climate scientist's statement that "There remain uncertainties about the science of global warming" and the idea that "we just don't know" (ie, we're completely in the dark on this one).