    [House Hearing, 109 Congress]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

    QUESTIONS SURROUNDING THE 'HOCKEY STICK' TEMPERATURE STUDIES:
    IMPLICATIONS FOR CLIMATE CHANGE ASSESSMENTS

    HEARINGS

    BEFORE THE

    SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS

    OF THE

    COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND
    COMMERCE
    HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

    ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

    SECOND SESSION

    JULY 19 AND JULY 27, 2006

    Serial No. 109-128

    Printed for the use of the Committee on Energy and Commerce

    Available via the World Wide Web:  http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/house

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                         COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE
                           Joe Barton, Texas, Chairman
    Ralph M. Hall, Texas                       John D. Dingell, Michigan
    Michael Bilirakis, Florida                  Ranking Member
      Vice Chairman                            Henry A. Waxman, California
    Fred Upton, Michigan                       Edward J. Markey, Massachusetts
    Cliff Stearns, Florida                     Rick Boucher, Virginia
    Paul E. Gillmor, Ohio                      Edolphus Towns, New York
    Nathan Deal, Georgia                       Frank Pallone, Jr., New Jersey
    Ed Whitfield, Kentucky                     Sherrod Brown, Ohio
    Charlie Norwood, Georgia                   Bart Gordon, Tennessee
    Barbara Cubin, Wyoming                     Bobby L. Rush, Illinois
    John Shimkus, Illinois                     Anna G. Eshoo, California
    Heather Wilson, New Mexico                 Bart Stupak, Michigan
    John B. Shadegg, Arizona                   Eliot L. Engel, New York
    Charles W. "Chip" Pickering,  Mississippi  Albert R. Wynn, Maryland
      Vice Chairman                             Gene Green, Texas
    Vito Fossella, New York                    Ted Strickland, Ohio
    Roy Blunt, Missouri                        Diana DeGette, Colorado
    Steve Buyer, Indiana                       Lois Capps, California
    George Radanovich, California              Mike Doyle, Pennsylvania
    Charles F. Bass, New Hampshire             Tom Allen, Maine
    Joseph R. Pitts, Pennsylvania              Jim Davis, Florida
    Mary Bono, California                      Jan Schakowsky, Illinois
    Greg Walden, Oregon                        Hilda L. Solis, California
    Lee Terry, Nebraska                        Charles A. Gonzalez, Texas
    Mike Ferguson, New Jersey                  Jay Inslee, Washington
    Mike Rogers, Michigan                      Tammy Baldwin, Wisconsin
    C.L. "Butch" Otter, Idaho                  Mike Ross, Arkansas
    Sue Myrick, North Carolina
    John Sullivan, Oklahoma
    Tim Murphy, Pennsylvania
    Michael C. Burgess, Texas
    Marsha Blackburn, Tennessee
                              Bud Albright, Staff Director
                             David Cavicke, General Counsel
                Reid P. F. Stuntz, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel
                                   __________

                      SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS
                            Ed Whitfield, Kentucky, Chairman
    Cliff Stearns, Florida                       Bart Stupak, Michigan
    Charles W. "Chip" Pickering,  Mississippi     Ranking Member
    Charles F. Bass, New Hampshire               Diana DeGette, Colorado
    Greg Walden, Oregon                          Jan Schakowsky, Illinois
    Mike Ferguson, New Jersey                    Jay Inslee, Washington
    Michael C. Burgess, Texas                    Tammy Baldwin, Wisconsin
    Marsha Blackburn, Tennessee                  Henry A. Waxman, California
    Joe Barton, Texas                            John D. Dingell, Michigan
      (Ex Officio)                                (Ex Officio)

                                     II

                                        CONTENTS

                                                                  Page
    Hearings held:

       July 19, 2006.........................................        1
       July 27, 2006.........................................      603
    Testimony of:
       Wegman, Dr. Edward J., Center for Computational
        Statistics, George Mason University..................       39
       North, Dr. Gerald R., Department of Atmospheric
        Sciences, Texas A&M University.......................       52
       Karl, Dr. Thomas R., Director, National Climatic
        Data Center, National Oceanic and Atmospheric
        Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce..........      127
       Crowley, Dr. Thomas J., Nicholas Professor of Earth
        Science, Duke University.............................      138
       von Storch, Dr. Hans, Director of Institute for Coastal
        Research, GKSS Research Center, Germany..............      215
       McIntyre, Stephen, Toronto, Ontario, Canada...........      236
       Mann, Dr. Michael E., Associate Professor and
        Director, Earth System Science Center, The
        Pennsylvania State University........................      640
       Christy, Dr. John R., Professor and Director, Earth
       System Science Center, NSSTC, University of Alabama
        in Huntsville........................................      654
       Cicerone, Dr. Ralph J., President, National Academy
       of Sciences...........................................      674
       McIntyre, Stephen, Toronto, Ontario, Canada...........      682
       Gulledge, Dr. Jay, Senior Research Fellow, Pew Center
        on Global Climate Change.............................      696
       Wegman, Dr. Edward J., Center for Computational
        Statistics, George Mason University..................      705
    Additional material submitted for the record:
       North, Dr. Gerald R., Department of Atmospheric
        Sciences, Texas A&M University, response for the
        record...............................................      586
       Crowley, Dr. Thomas J., Nicholas Professor of Earth
        Science, Duke University, response for the record....      585
       Mann, Dr. Michael E., Associate Professor and Director,
        Earth System Science Center, The Pennsylvania State
        University, response for the record..................      764
       Christy, Dr. John R., Professor and Director, Earth
        System Science Center, NSSTC, University of Alabama
        in Huntsville, response for the record...............      770
       Cicerone, Dr. Ralph J., President, National Academy
        of Sciences, response for the record.................      780
       McIntyre, Stephen, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, response
        for the record.......................................      784
       Wegman, Dr. Edward J., Center for Computational
        Statistics, George Mason University, response for
        the record...........................................      829

    QUESTIONS SURROUNDING THE 'HOCKEY STICK' TEMPERATURE STUDIES:
    IMPLICATIONS FOR CLIMATE CHANGE ASSESSMENTS

    WEDNESDAY, JULY 19, 2006

    HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
    COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE,
    SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS,
    Washington, DC.

    The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:07 a.m., in Room 2123
    of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Ed Whitfield (Chairman)
    presiding.
    	Members present:  Representatives Walden, Bass, Stearns,
    Burgess, Blackburn, Barton (ex officio), Stupak, Schakowsky, Inslee,
    Baldwin, Waxman, and Whitfield.
    	Staff present:  Mark Paoletta, Chief Counsel for Oversight and
     Investigations; Peter Spencer, Professional Staff Member; Tom Feddo,
    Counsel; Matt Johnson, Legislative Clerk; Mike Abraham, Legislative
    Clerk; Ryan Ambrose, Legislative Clerk; David Vogel, Minority Research
    Assistant; Chris Knauer, Minority Investigator; Lorie Schmidt, Minority
     Counsel; and Edith Holleman, Minority Counsel.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  I call this hearing to order this morning.
    	Albert Gore's first movie, or documentary, entitled "An
    Inconvenient Truth" is the most recent of many topics in years and
    years of focus on the subject of global warming, and 95 percent of the
     American people certainly are familiar with the term "global warming"
    and they know basically what it means, I would think.  However, 95
    percent of the American people and certainly 95 percent of the Members
     of the U.S. Congress have not had the time to examine the data used by
     scientists, paleoclimatologists, and statisticians nor do they have
    the inclination to do so, to look at that data that is used to predict
     the probability that the temperature of one century is warmer or
    cooler than that of another century.
    	Now, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
    Change is the world body with most of the interest and does focus on
    this subject of global warming.  And it is the body that most people
    look to on this subject.  Now, for many years the Intergovernmental
    Panel on Climate Change used a chart that clearly shows the
    temperature from 1000 A.D. to about 1450 A.D., that the temperatures
    during that period were significantly warmer than the latter part of
    the 20th Century, or the late 1990s.  Now, in 1998 and 1999, a
     paleoclimatologist, Dr. Michael Mann, with Raymond Bradley and
    Dr. Malcolm Hughes, introduced a new technique to develop more
    quantitative estimates of the nature of climate change since 1000
    A.D. and concluded that the late 20th Century was the warmest in
    1,000 years, that the warming during the late 1990s was the warmest
    in over 1,000 years.  Now, as a result of that report, the IPCC
    incorporated the study with other data which eliminated the warming
    period for 1000 A.D. to 1450 A.D. and incorporated a new graph
    referred to as the "hockey stick" graph, which shows remarkable
     warming in the late 1990s.  Now, when Chairman Barton and I wrote a
    letter asking that the Mann report be reviewed by some statisticians,
    there was a hue and cry around the country among many people in the
    news media that we were being totally political, that all we were
    trying to do was gut this issue that global warming is occurring.
    But I think quite sincerely that we have a responsibility when public
    policy decisions being made on reports like the Mann report and others
    have such a broad impact on so much of our society and certainly the
    Kyoto arguments were primarily based on this new chart, that the U.S.
    should be part of Kyoto.  That was an important part of that.  And so
    what we did was, we asked that Dr. Wegman and a team that he had review
    these data.  Now, when we did that, Sherry Boehlert, who is a good
    Republican friend of ours and is Chairman of the Science Committee,
    was quite upset about it and he said I think you all are being
    political also, and he asked that we ask Dr. North, who is going to
    be a witness, and would like for him to be involved in this data
    analysis, and he is going to be a witness today also.  But the real
    purpose of this is that this issue is so important that I think it
    is imperative that we hear from all sides and try to get some real
     understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of these reports.
    	Now, Dr. Wegman is going to testify today that the mathematics
    used by Mann is incorrect and wrong.  Dr. North, I think on page five
    of his testimony, says that they have some concerns about it, the
    math.  But the first witness today is going to be Dr. Edward Wegman,
    a statistician from George Mason University, and on his team was Dr.
    David Scott from Rice University and Dr. Yasmin Said from Johns
    Hopkins, and she is sitting behind him there.  Dr. Wegman is Chairman
    of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Applied and
    Theoretical Statistics, and at the committee's request he assembled
    this ad hoc committee of statisticians to examine the hockey stick
    studies and related articles and his committee report prepared for
    Chairman Barton and me and the committee and publicly released this
    Friday provides important findings for Congress and the public to
    consider about the soundness and openness of climate change research
    and assessment and I can tell you right now that his document has
    been peer reviewed also, and we will get into that later.
    	In addition to Dr. Wegman, we have Dr. Gerald North of
     Texas A&M University, who will testify on the first panel about
    the current state of historical temperature understanding.  Dr.
    North chaired a recent National Research Council panel on
    historical temperature reconstructions and we look forward to
    hearing his perspective for improving climate change assessments.
    And to help us understand some particulars of the IPCC process, we
     will hear testimony on the second panel from Dr. Thomas Karl, who
    is a coordinating author of the chapter upon which Dr. Mann and his
     colleagues worked.  Dr. Thomas Crowley of Duke University will be
    here and Dr. Hans von Storch, who traveled from Germany to be with
    us this morning.  Both will provide their views concerning the
    questions about the hockey stick study as well as questions
    concerning data sharing, transparency and the IPCC process.
    	Finally, I would like to welcome Mr. Stephen McIntyre, who
    will testify about attempting to understanding just what was behind
    the hockey stick graphic promoted by the IPCC.  His work is a
    testament to the value of open debate and scrutiny.
    	Now, I have talked about Dr. Mann and we invited Dr. Mann to
    be here today and he was unable to be here.  We are extending another
     invitation for him to come and hope that maybe he will be here next
    week.  Now, even though Dr. Mann could not come, he specifically
    asked us to request Dr. Crowley to testify on his behalf and Dr.
    Crowley is with us today from Duke University, and we look forward
    to his testimony.  But as I said, the real purpose of this hearing
    is, let us just open the book.  Let us look at everything.  Let us
    look at the criticisms of all parties and see exactly where we are
    on this important issue of global climate change.
    	[The prepared statement of Hon. Ed Whitfield follows:]

    PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HON. ED WHITFIELD, CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE
    ON OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS

    Good morning and welcome. We convene this hearing today to consider
    questions that begin with and surround the reliability of two
     particular studies of historical temperatures that gained an
    extraordinary level of public prominence a few years ago, and
    recently featured in former Vice President Al Gore's motion
    picture, "An Inconvenient Truth."
    In 2001, the results of these studies were used to promote the view
    that the very recent average temperatures of the northern hemisphere
    were likely the warmest in 1,000 years.   The temperature history
    results were portrayed in what is widely known as the 'hockey stick'
    graph, for its resemblance to the shape of a hockey stick.  As a
    result, these studies are known as the "hockey stick" studies.
    With its relatively long and even trend for 900 years and then sharp
    up-tick during the 20th Century, the "hockey stick" graph effectively
     undermined what had been the prevailing view that we had experienced
    periods of similar or even higher average temperatures in the past -
     such as when the Vikings inhabited Greenland.
    The fact that the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
    Change, or IPCC, prominently relied upon the graph lent the graph its
    apparent authority.  The IPCC is an influential international body
    that conducts scientific assessments for use by policymakers.
    The graph offered a simple and powerful message for the public
    and policymakers to understand.  It was also a message that some say
     may have been based on faulty methodology.  The "hockey stick"
    studies formed the basis for the IPCC finding in 2001 that the
    1990s were likely the warmest decade of the millennium and 1998
    likely the warmest year during that time. Some of today's witnesses
    will describe in detail that the "hockey stick" studies were
    critically flawed and could not support the findings reached by
    these studies.
    Had the 'hockey stick' studies remained in the niche of climate
    change journals, we would not be holding this hearing.  Instead, we
    are here because the questions surrounding these studies relate
    directly to the strength of the findings in the first place.  What
    does the "hockey stick" story say about the reliability of these
    studies for policymakers?
    Last summer, Chairman Barton and I inquired into this matter after
    we learned that the lead author of these federally funded studies -
    Dr. Michael Mann -- to share the computer code he used to generate
    his results with researchers who sought to replicate the result of
    Mann's studies.  The researchers, one of whom will testify today,
    reportedly could not replicate his work based on what the study
    said. The researchers nevertheless identified several methodological
    and data problems with the work.
    How critical were these problems identified by these researchers?
    Were the problems undetected because Dr. Mann assessed his own work
    in an IPCC report?
    These are serious questions, and the answers contain broad
    implications for global policy on climate change. We should ensure
    that science is providing us with reliable, balanced, well-
    considered, and unbiased answers.
    Today, our witnesses will help us address these critical questions.
    I want to welcome, especially, Dr. Edward Wegman, a statistician
    with George Mason University, who will lead off the first panel this
    morning.  Dr. Wegman is Chairman of the National Academy of Sciences
    Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics. At the Committee
    request, Dr. Wegman assembled an ad-hoc committee of statisticians
    to examine the hockey stick studies and related articles.  His
    committee's report, prepared for Chairman Barton and me and publicly
    released this past Friday, provides important findings for Congress -
    and the public - to consider about the soundness and openness of
    climate change research and assessments.   The Wegman Committee not
    only identified fundamental flaws in the "hockey stick" studies, it
    also addressed the larger point that climate change studies, like
    any work with potentially large policy implications, must be subject
    to careful and broad scrutiny.
    Dr. Wegman and his team performed their work completely independent
    of the Committee and without charge.  I believe Dr. Wegman's team has
    done a great public service and their work should help us improve how
    we discuss climate change when crafting policy.
    Additionally, Dr. Gerald North, of Texas A&M University, will testify
    on the first panel about the current state of historical temperature
     understanding. Dr. North chaired a recent National Research Council
    panel on historical temperature reconstructions, and I look forward to
    hearing his perspective for improving climate change assessments.
    To help us understand some particulars of the IPCC process, we'll
    hear testimony on the second panel from Dr. Thomas Karl, who was a
     coordinating author of the chapter upon which Dr. Mann and his
    colleagues worked.  Dr. Thomas Crowley, of Duke University, and
    Dr. Hans von Storch - who traveled from Germany to be with us this
    morning - both can provide their considered views concerning the
    questions about the "hockey stick" studies, as well as questions
    concerning data sharing, transparency, and the IPCC process.
    Finally, I'd like to welcome Mr. Steven McIntyre.  Mr. McIntyre will
     testify about attempting to understand just what was behind the
    hockey stick graphic promoted by the IPCC.  His examination of the
    facts underlying the assessments' claims really initiated some of
    the important questions concerning the scrutiny provided by climate
    change assessments.  His work is a testament to the value of open
    debate and scrutiny.  His perseverance should be commended.
    Let me add that we did invite Dr. Mann to this hearing, but his
    attorney explained that he was unavailable, on family vacation.
    Dr. Mann suggested Dr. Crowley could come in his place.   We do
    hope to have Dr. Mann at a future hearing, however.
    At the end of the day, the issues of climate change require open
    and objective discussion.  Some of the work we'll consider today
    points to the value of policy decisions that are informed by sound
    science and objective advice.
    I'll now yield to Mr. Stupak, our ranking member, for his opening
    statement.

    	MR. WHITFIELD.  At this time, I would like to recognize
    Mr. Stupak of Michigan for his opening statement.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    	It is a little bewildering to me why the committee is holding
    its very first hearing on global warming to referee a dispute over a
    1999 hockey stick graph of global temperatures for the past
    millennium.  Mr. Chairman, in your opening statement you claim that
     Dr. Mann's hockey stick report of 1999 was the basis for the Kyoto
    Accord.  According to my recollection, Kyoto was in 1997, so it could
    not have been the basis for the Kyoto Accord.
    	So as we will hear at this hearing today, global warming
    science has moved on since Dr. Mann put forth his study in 1999.
    Dr. Mann, who did this study, has made changes and even such diehard
    opponents as President Bush now actually admit that global warming
    exists and must be addressed.  Congress is particularly ill-suited
    to decide scientific debates.  There has been no attempt by this
    committee to obtain an unbiased view of the work done by Dr. Michael
    Mann, the author of the hockey stick research.  Dr. Mann, who has
    done additional work with his methodology since 1999, is not even
    here to confront his critics because the Majority would not even
    postpone this hearing until Dr. Mann could be available.  Moreover,
    it was known from the beginning that Dr. Mann used a new methodology
    and proxy material to reconstruct temperatures.
    	Paleoclimatologists, those who try to reconstruct ancient
    climates, are not working with instrumental measurements of
    temperature as we have today.  Paleoclimatologists are looking at
    tree rings, ice cores, bore heads and historical records to attempt
    to determine what happened in an earlier time.  That is all the
    research materials paleoclimatologists have and it is an admittedly
    imprecise science.  It should not surprise us if the initial work in
    a new field can be improved.  What should surprise us is that
    Dr. Wegman's report focuses on critiques of Dr. Mann's first work
    in 1998 and 1999, even though the field of large-scale temperature
     reconstruction has advanced since that time.
    	The Majority paid for a report to independently verify the
    critiques of Dr. Mann's 1999 research by a statistician but without
    any input from a climatologist.  The Majority left it to the Science
     Committee to ask the National Academy of Sciences to do a full
    review of all the science represented.  The Majority made no effort
    to verify whether the patterns in global temperatures detected in
    the Mann study were valid or coincided with conclusions of other
    researchers in global warming.
    	It is now 7 years since the original work was published and
    much additional work has been done by Dr. Mann and others.  As we
    will hear from Dr. North, who chaired the NAS study, the patterns
    were verified with certainty for recent years but less certain for
    the years 1000 to 1600 A.D.  That is to be expected because there is
    less data from this long ago era.  Dr. Wegman has an eminent
    background in statistics and he believes that statisticians should
    be included in the research teams of all these studies because
    statisticians can make studies better.  Perhaps they can.
    Dr. Wegman says Dr. Mann didn't center his data properly.  Perhaps he
    didn't.  But we note that Dr. Wegman's work is not yet published or
    peer reviewed so it is very difficult for us to evaluate his work.
    Dr. Wegman's criticism of Dr. Mann should have been interdisciplinary
    and include a statistician can also be said of Dr. Wegman's work.
    Dr. Wegman did not have a climate scientist on his team.  However,
    Dr. Wegman has decided to go beyond his statistical expertise to
    hypothesize that Dr. Mann was allowed to publish and defend his work
    because of the small "social network" of paleoclimatologists who
    work with each other and protect each other.  I want to emphasize
    that this is simply a hypothesis.  Mr. Chairman, whatever the purpose
    of this hearing is, it is not to hypothesize about the impact of
    professional scientific relationships on research unless we have
    some hard objective evidence.
    	We in Washington know all about undue influence on government
     scientists.  A political appointee at NASA just recently tried to
    keep James Hanson, a veteran atmosphere scientist, from discussing
    the dire consequences of global warming by threatening dire
    consequences to Mr. Hanson's employment status.  The science content
    has been changed on NASA and other government websites because it
    didn't fit the Administration's world view.  This fact ought to be
    of much more interest to this committee, the Oversight and
    Investigations Committee, than hypothesis about scientific social
    networking.
    	And with that, Mr. Chairman, I would yield back the balance
    of my time.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Mr. Stupak, thank you.  I also want to thank
    you for pointing out an incorrect statement that I made.  I said
    something about the hockey stick being the impetus for Kyoto.  Kyoto
    certainly started way before the hockey stick but the hockey stick
    graph did add impetus to the argument for the adoption of Kyoto, so I
    want to thank you for that.  Also, I would point out that the committee
    did not pay Mr. Wegman for this report, we simply contacted him asking
    him to review it.
    	At this time I recognize the full committee Chairman, Mr. Barton.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  I have a written
     statement, I am going to use some of it, but I want to speak
    extemporaneously briefly based on what my good friend from Michigan,
    Mr. Stupak, just said.
    	The purpose of oversight and investigation is to do exactly
    that, to oversee the jurisdictional issues before this committee and
    when it seems to be called for to investigate issues that arise because
    of the oversight.  There has been a disagreement for a number of years
    in the community at large about the issue of global warming.  In this
     Congress, there has been a disagreement between the Chairman of the
     Science Committee and myself about that issue.  That is normal and
    that is not anything that is a negative.  But there were some
    statements made about a specific report by a number of people that
    basically use that report to come to the conclusion that global
    warming was a fact and that the 1990s was the hottest decade on
    record and that one year, 1998, was the hottest year in the
    millennium.  Now, a millennium is a thousand years.  That is a pretty
    bold statement.  So Chairman Whitfield and myself decided, let us take
    this report that is the basis for many of these conclusions and has
    been circulated widely and once it is in the mainstream, it is
    stipulated that because of that, everything else follows and let us
    see if it can be replicated.  Let us see if in fact the facts as
    purported in that report are in truth the facts.
    	Now, I have not seen Dr. Wegman until I walked in this room.
    I have not talked to him on the phone or in person or any of his
     collaborators.  I may have seen Dr. North at Texas A&M since I went
    to Texas A&M.  I don't recall it but it is possible.  He has got
    enough white in his hair that I could have been one of his students
    and I wouldn't remember it, so I can't stipulate that I have never met
    him but I can stipulate that I have never met Dr. Wegman.  We asked to
    find some experts to try to replicate Dr. Mann's work.  Now, to their
    credit, when Dr. Wegman agreed to do it, he asked for no
    compensation.  I don't think we have even paid him for the fax paper
    that he has used.  He picked some eminent statisticians in his field
    and they studied this thing.  Had their report said Dr. Mann's data
    can be replicated, his conclusions are right on point, he is totally
    correct, we would have reported that, but that is not what they said.
     Now, I took statistics at Texas A&M and I also took them in graduate
    school.  I made A's and B's, but I really didn't understand it but I
    kind of understand it.  And according to Dr. Wegman, Dr. Mann made a
     fundamental error.  He decentered the data.  Now, to the average
    person, that doesn't mean squat.  What does "decentered the data"
    mean?  What it means apparently is, he moved it off center a little
    bit by enough that it really makes a difference and then using some
     statistical techniques that instead of looking at all the variables
    and in a complex system like climate you are going to have lots of
    variables, he chose one or two as the principal variables and used
    those to explain everything else, and Dr. Wegman and his colleagues
    who as far as I know have got no axe to grind, have said the Mann
    study is flat wrong.  Now, it may be wrong just kind of
    unintentionally.  Dr. Wegman doesn't say there is any intent to
    deceive but he says it is flat wrong.  Now, if that is not the
    purpose of the Oversight Subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce
    Committee that has got jurisdiction over energy and environmental
    policy for the United States of America, then I don't know what
    this subcommittee should be doing.
    	So I want to thank Dr. Wegman and his colleagues for giving
    us an unvarnished, flat out non-political report.  Now, admittedly,
    that report is going to be used probably for political purposes but
    that is not what he did, and I want to thank Dr. North for the work
    that he did in this document.  Now, it is a lot thicker than
    Dr. Wegman's document, and Dr. North and his colleagues have kind of
    looked at the same subject and they have come to a somewhat little--
    they are little bit more, I don't want to use the technical term
    wishy-washy but they are kind of on both sides of it, but even
     Dr. North's report says that the absolute basic conclusion in
    Dr. Mann's work cannot be guaranteed.  This report says it is
    plausible.  Lots of things are plausible.  Dr. Wegman's report says
    it is wrong.
    	Now, what we are going to do after today's hearing, we are
    going to take Dr. Wegman's report, and if my friends on the Minority
    want to shop it to their experts, so be it.  We are going to put it up
    there, let everybody who wants to, take a shot at it.  Now, my guess
    is that since Dr. Wegman came into this with no political axe to
    grind, that it is going to stand up pretty well.  If Dr. Mann and
    his colleagues are right, their conclusion may be right--Dr. Mann's
    conclusion may be right but you can't verify it from his statistics
    in his model so if Dr. Mann's conclusion is right, it is incumbent
    upon him and his colleagues to go back, get the math right, get the
    data points right, get the modeling right.  That is what science is
    about.
    	So I want to thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this
    hearing.  I am planning to participate fully and extensively.  I have
    got a whole series of questions.  I stayed up half the night studying
    all the various documents so I hope that by the end of today we can
    shed some light on a subject that is very, very important to the
    future economic and health consequences for this country.  Thank
    you, sir.
    	[The prepared statement of Hon. Joe Barton follows:]

    PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HON. JOE BARTON, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON
    ENERGY AND COMMERCE

    Thank you, Chairman Whitfield.  Today's hearing on the hockey stick
     temperature studies will show why we need to question the quality
    of climate assessments for policy makers.
    This Committee frequently confronts some of our Nation's most
    consequential public policy questions affecting the quality of
    human health, our economy, and our environment.  However, no issue
    we deal with has more potential to affect the American people than
    climate change.
    Meanwhile, the compounding costs to the U.S. economy posed by some
    proposals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions could rock our economy,
    drive manufacturing off-shore, and spike domestic consumer energy costs.
    That is why we need to be sure that we have a solid factual basis for
    whatever decisions we make in this area.
    The report we are about to receive indicates that the social and
    statistical underpinnings of key climate-change work are prone to
    produce error.
    I look forward to hearing from all of our witnesses because we have
    important work to accomplish today.  I would especially like to thank
    Dr. Edward Wegman who, on his own time and his own expense, assembled
    a pro bono committee of statisticians to provide us with independent
    and expert guidance concerning the hockey stick studies and the
    process for vetting this work.
    Dr. Wegman and his committee have done a great public service.  Their
    report, with clear writing and measured tone, has identified
    significant issues concerning the reliability of some of the climate
    change work that is transmitted to policymakers and characterized as
    well scrutinized.  The Wegman Committee report will be the centerpiece
    of today's hearing.
    These 'hockey stick' studies were the linchpin for what became widely
     acclaimed as the consensus view of the earth's temperature history
    during the past thousand years.  It was presented as part of the
    leading climate assessment for public policy makers around the
    world - the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
    Change, or IPCC.
    Both good science and good public policymaking demand that scientific
    work withstand independent and impartial scrutiny. Information that is
    not scientifically sound is just not acceptable.  Indeed, it appears
    that some of the authors of the IPCC assessment dealing with global
     temperature history were not independent or impartial. They also
    happened to be the authors of the hockey stick studies, themselves.
    The researchers then declined to provide the information necessary
    to replicate their work, a fundamental failure in reliable science.
    The "hockey stick" studies were supported by Federal grants and were
    central to a prominent finding in an influential assessment.  In my
    view, if Congress is going to make policy decisions based on the
    authority of climate change assessments, we cannot fail to wonder how
    they have been formulated.   Asking questions is at the core of what
    we do.
    Our central question is: Can we count on hockey stick studies?  That
    answer from Dr. Wegman and his panel appears to be, "No."  And it
    doesn't appear to be a matter of overlooking the researchers' written
    caveats about their particular work; rather, the Wegman panel has
    identified a fundamental error of methodology.  If that finding holds
    up, it will highlight a mistake that lay dormant for years as a closed
    network of supportive colleagues saw and heard what it wanted. It took
     scientists outside the network to identify the core problems, both in
     the studies and in the IPCC assessment.
    Congress is in the business of making policy decisions that affect
    the lives of real people.  Science provides us with the answers to
    many policy questions, and we need to trust it.  I do trust science,
    and I trust it most when it is transparent, open to question, and
    eager to explain.  When research is secretive, automatically and
    aggressively defensive, and self-reinforcing, it becomes easy to
    distrust.
    As Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, which holds a key
    role in any policy making relating to climate change, I believe it
    is incumbent on this Committee must ensure that the very best
    information is available to make its decisions.
    Caveats and uncertainty are facts of life, and not only in science. We
    deal with complicated science and research-based decisions and
    uncertainty in every area of our jurisdiction.  Some of the most
    troubling work we confront - on bioterror or radiological risks for
    example - present very tough and complicated issues for us to assess.
    Good science is built on healthy skepticism, and good scientists don't
    hide from questions. They invite them. Asking questions to establish
    the validity of scientific studies - especially those with enormous
    policy implications - is why we are here today.  The caveats and
    uncertainty are never going to be eliminated, but we would like to
    know whether the facts or caveats contained in these sophisticated
    climate assessments have been adequately and independently
    scrutinized.
    Heads-I-win, tails-you-lose science can produce any answer that is
    desired, but that's hardly the way to make multi-billion-dollar
    decisions.   This is a vitally important matter.  When we deal with
    global warming, we need to know that the underlying studies
    constitute reliable science.  The taxpayers depend on it.  My
    grandchildren depend on it.  The planet depends on it.
    I want to extend my thanks to all the witnesses for appearing today,
    and I look forward to their testimony.

    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  At this time I
    recognize Mr. Inslee of Washington.
    	MR. INSLEE.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    	America is fully capable of dealing with global warming but
    not if Congress engages in snipe hunts, arguments about how many
    statisticians can dance on the head of a pin rather than figuring out
    what our energy policy should be to get a handle on global warming.
    	Now, why are we in this exercise for doubt?  I refer you to the
    first slide I have, which is a memo from the tobacco industry when they
    were fighting the clear, unalloyed science that tobacco was bad for
    you.  Here is a memo from one of their people:  "Doubt is our
     product."  And those who decide that America should stay quiescent,
     do nothing about global warming, doubt is their product.

    	Next slide.

    Why should we deal with this?  What we are going to find out today, I
    hope, we can spend weeks debating the statistics behind one particular
    study but what we will find is that every single study ever that has
    looked at proxy data for temperature has indicated we are in a unique
     circumstance and carbon dioxide is going through the roof which you
    will see from these studies, multiple of which are on this slide.
    Next slide.

    	What we find now is that CO2 is going through the roof.  No
    one in this room will say otherwise.  The first bottom circle is
    where we are today.  It is higher CO2 levels than any time in the
    last 160,000 years.  Every single scientist in the world agrees to
    that fact, and by 2100 the circle on top, it will be almost twice as
    it has ever been in the last 200,000 years.  Every single scientist
    in the world agrees to that fact, and because CO2 drives climate,
    because it drives temperature, we ought to get out of this posture
    of the ostrich and assume the posture of the eagle to do something
    about global warming.  Next slide, please.

    	I want to point out something that is very important in today's
     discussion.  We can spend years debating what the temperature was on
    July 18, 972, but what we ought to know is that our putting CO2 into
    the atmosphere is destroying the world's oceans regardless of the
    temperature.  The new science shows that the CO2 that we put in the
    atmosphere is acidifying the oceans.  The oceans have 23 percent more
    hydrogen ions that create acidic conditions than any time ever that
    we know of in human history, at least.  Next slide, please.

    	The result of that is that when the oceans become more acidic,
    it becomes much more difficult for any life including plankton, coral
    reefs, clams, oysters, you name it to form shells including plankton,
    which is the basis of the entire food chain of all the protein we get
    out of the oceans.  Next slide, please.

    	What this shows is the pH level of acidity is changing.  Next
    slide, please.

    So that by the year 2099, conditions in the ocean may not support any
    coral reefs healthy anywhere in the world.  This doesn't have anything
    to do with Dr. Mann's report.  Even if temperatures did not change
    one-half a degree, the oceans are becoming acidic that may not support
    the protein that we depend on in the world if we don't act and if
    this committee continues to act like an ostrich.  Next slide, please.

    	Why are Americans rejecting this doubt they see with their
    own eyes?  Polar icecaps shrunk in density--next slide, please--in the
    last 12 years.

    Greenland is melting at unprecedented rates.  Next slide, please.

    The polar icecap has shrunk 20 percent in the summer.  The red line
    shows where it used to be.  The white is where it is now.  Next
    slide, please.  We have run out of slides.  Well, maybe I ought to
    talk then.
    	This is very disturbing to me that when the entire world
    scientific community has reached a conclusion with high levels of
    certainty that carbon dioxide is going to astrospheric levels,
    unprecedented in world history, and that when we know beyond a shadow
    of a doubt the levels of carbon dioxide ultimately will drive
     temperature changes to areas we do not want to see, that instead of
    really engaging Congressional talent in figuring out how to deal with
    this problem, we try to poke little pinholes in one particular
    statistical conclusion of one particular study where the overwhelming
    evidence is that we have to act to deal with this global challenge.
    	It is not fitting for this Congress, America that should lead
    the technology that drives the energy future of the world, to sit here
    to ask these fine statisticians to go into mind-numbing detail about
    whether this particular year was hotter than it was in 980.  I don't
    care whether this year or yesterday was the hottest day.  It was
    pretty hot here yesterday, but I don't care whether it may have been
    hotter in 980.  What I care about is whether there will be snow in
    the mountains for my kids and grandkids to ski on 50 years from now,
    and there is not going to be unless this Congress pulls its head out
    of the sand and acts.
    	So I look forward to the day that we have a Congress that will
     adopt the position that we need to deal with technology rather than
     statistical recreations of the tobacco industry's effort to create
    doubt.  Thank you.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Mr. Bass.
    	MR. BASS.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for holding
    this hearing.
    	I want to start by saying that in my opinion, there is
    absolutely nothing inappropriate about the subject of this hearing,
    and although the data may be mind-numbing, nonetheless there are
    those--I am probably not one of them--who really get into going
    through the data and the details and so forth to try to figure out
    what the problem is.  Ultimately, the issue underlying the hearing
    today and any others that we have is not going to be about math, it
    is going to be about the effect of the extraction of enormous
    quantities of hydrocarbons from the middle of the Earth and from
    underground and the combustion of those hydrocarbons and the
    resultant impact that that has, if any, on the climate of the world.
    	Now, in another life when I used to sell architectural panel
    products for buildings, I was often asked by a customer whether or
    not the panel that I was trying to sell passed the ASTM, American
    Society for Testing Materials, E84 test, and I always used to respond
    because, of course, we couldn't afford to have that test conducted, I
    used to say well, it hasn't but I subjected it to what I called the
    elephant foot test and I built--every fall I burned a huge pile of
    brush in my field on the farm I live on and one year I just took one
    of the panels that I planned to sell and I threw it on top of the pile
    and it sat there for 30 minutes and nothing happened.  Is that
    satisfactory?  Well, we can spend I think a productive period of time
    talking about the basis upon which the data was developed to determine
    the Mann report or the Wegman report or Dr. North's report and so
    forth, but ultimately I think we need to recognize that there is a
    problem and anyone who denies the existence of any problem associated
    with the release of these hydrocarbons I think really needs--I want to
    be friendly about this--really needs to rethink that premise.  There
    is something going on and I think finding out what that something is
    and then trying to debate a policy whereby we address that issue is
     constructive.
    	So I want to thank my friend from Kentucky for holding this
    hearing and I look forward to hearing the witnesses' testimony, and I
    yield back.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Thank you, Mr. Bass.  At this time I recognize
    Mr. Waxman of California.
    	MR. WAXMAN.  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    	The party that is in the majority selects the Chairman of the
    committees and the subcommittees and they can decide what priorities
    ought to be given to different issues and what hearings are to be
    called.  Now, in the past 12 years, we have had study after study
    after study raising genuine concern about global warming and climate
    change.  The Energy and Commerce Committee is a committee that has
    legislative jurisdiction over this issue.  So for the past 12 years
    this committee has a very amazing record on this issue.  This is only
    the second hearing in 12 years.  The first one was to look at the very
     intricate issue of modeling on predictions of climate change and this
    one is to look at studies from 1998 and 1999 to see whether those
    studies are refuted by the work of the two gentlemen before us today.
    We have not held a hearing looking at what is the overwhelming
    scientific consensus that global warming is real and is caused by
    humans.  We have not focused on some of the important recent
    scientific news on global warming such as a study showing that climate
    change is causing increased wildfires in the American West or the recent
     studies that show that global warming is leading to more intense
    hurricanes.
    	The committee could go a step further by examining the practical
     solutions that could begin to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, and
    if the committee leadership wanted to conduct important and nonpartisan
     oversight, it could investigate why a former employee of ExxonMobil
    operated out of the Bush White House to sow doubt in government
    publications on global warming.  Instead, this committee is doing what
    the deniers of global warming would have us do, ignore all the important
     questions and divert ourselves to a ridiculous effort to discredit a
    climate scientist and two studies he published eight years ago.
    	Chairman Barton began this dubious investigation in June of
    2005 when he sent a letter demanding the funding for every study that
    had ever been conducted by Dr. Michael Mann, demanding he turn over all
    of the data for all their research and made over burdensome and
    intrusive requests.  The Washington Post accused our Chairman of
    conducting a witch hunt.  The Chairman of the Science Committee,
    Sherwood Boehlert, called the investigation "misguided" and
    "illegitimate."  Well, oftentimes when we have scientific disputes we
    ask the National Academy of Sciences to review the matter.  Instead of
    asking them--even though they offered their services to help resolve
     controversy--the Academy wasn't called on by this committee but by
     Representative Boehlert's committee and the Academy issued its
    report last month and they found that they largely upheld the
    findings of Dr. Mann.
    	So I have to submit that I don't find this hearing to be one
    about truth.  It is about sowing doubt and spreading disinformation,
    and I chaired all those committees over the years where I heard from
    tobacco executives who always insisted on having their scientists come
    in and say it is only coincidental that more cancers and other
    diseases seem to afflict smokers but there is no causal relationship.
    Not only is this hearing not legit in trying to deal with an important
    issue, it isn't even fair.  We are going to hear people attacking
    Dr. Mann but we are not going to have Dr. Mann here to confront the
     accusations against him.  That is not science where you hear only one
    side.  Science is hearing both sides, looking at the evidence, reaching
     conclusions based on the evidence.  Dr. Mann was willing to testify
    before the committee but his schedule would not be accommodated.
    Global warming is an incredibly serious problem and this is not a
    serious hearing.
    	I would submit that if you have doubts, fine, but prudent
    people would start doing something in case your doubts on the
    Republican side of the aisle are wrong.  We would start taking
    measures to reduce these greenhouse gas emissions that seem to be
     causing enormous damage to our planet and a threat to human life.
    Instead, we are looking at reports from 8 years ago and trying to
    debunk them.  That is not an indication to me, that and the 12 years
    of inaction by this committee, that there is any interest on behalf
    of the Republican leadership to come to terms with what is not a
    partisan issue at all but one that is a very important issue for us
    to address.
    	[The prepared statement of Hon. Henry Waxman follows:]

    THE PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HON. HENRY WAXMAN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
    CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

    Today, the Subcommittee holds only the second hearing on global
    warming in the Energy and Commerce Committee since the Republicans
    took over the House of Representatives in 1995.  With so many
    important aspects to global warming and twelve years of virtual
    inaction, there's a lot of important work for the Committee to do.
     	It could start by highlighting the overwhelming scientific
    consensus that global warming is real and is caused by humans.  Or
    it could focus on some of the important recent scientific news on
    global warming, such as the study showing that climate change is
    causing increased wildfires in the American West or the recent
    studies that show that global warming is leading to more intense
    hurricanes.
     	The Committee could go a step further by examining the
    practical solutions that can begin to reduce our green house gas
    emissions.  And if it wanted to conduct important and non-partisan
    oversight, it could investigate why a former employee of ExxonMobil
    operated out of the Bush White House to sow doubt in government
    publications on global warming.
     	Instead, the Committee is doing exactly what the big oil
    companies hope for it to do...it ignores the important questions
    and diverts to a ridiculous effort to discredit a climate scientist
    and a study he published eight years ago.
    Chairman Barton began this dubious investigation when he wrote
    Dr. Michael Mann and several other researchers in June 2005.  He
    demanded to know the source of funding for every study they had
    ever conducted, demanded they turnover all of the data for all of
    their research, and made other burdensome and intrusive requests.
    The Washington Post accused Chairman Barton of conducting a witch
    hunt.  The Chairman of the House Science Committee Sherwood
    Boehlert called the investigation "misguided" and "illegitimate."
    And the nation's premiere science organizations quickly condemned the
     investigation.  The American Association for the Advancement of
    Science wrote to Chairman Barton stating that his letters "give the
    impression of a search for some basis on which to discredit these
    particular scientists and findings, rather than a search for
    understanding."
    The National Academy of Sciences also weighed in, stating that
    Chairman Barton's approach was "intimidating" to researchers and
    offering the services of the Academy to help resolve the controversy.
    Ironically, it wasn't Chairman Barton who took the Academy up on its
    offer.  Instead, Rep. Boehlert requested the Academy report that was
    released last month.  The Academy largely upheld the findings of
    Dr. Mann.
    This hearing isn't about finding the truth.  It's about sowing doubt
    and spreading disinformation.  The closest parallel is the decades-
    long campaign of the tobacco industry to deny that nicotine is
    addictive and cigarettes cause cancer.
    And the hearing isn't even fair.  Today we're going to attack the
    work of Dr. Mann, but we're not going to give Dr. Mann a chance to
    confront the accusations against him.  Dr. Mann was willing to
    testify before the Committee, but his schedule was not accommodated
    and so he is going to be tried in absentia.
    Global warming is an incredibly serious problem, but this is not a
    serious hearing.  It's a diversion and a delaying tactic.  And -
    worst of all - it is a missed opportunity to begin the process of
    protecting our children from the catastrophic effects of global
    warming.
    I know that the Chairman of this Subcommittee has never accepted the
    science about global warming.  To bolster his argument over the years,
    he has repeatedly brought to the attention of the Committee, the views
    of Gregg Easterbrook and his book, "A Moment on the Earth."
    So, I just want to make sure that the Chairman is aware of
    Mr. Easterbrook's op-ed from May 26, 2006, in which Mr. Easterbrook
    announces that he has changed from "a skeptic to a convert."  He says
    that it is "case closed," and that a strong scientific consensus shows
    that global warming "is a real phenomenon posing real danger."
    I am glad that Mr. Easterbrook has revisited his views and corrected
    them accordingly.  I hope the Chairman is willing to do the same.

    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Dr. Burgess, you are recognized.
    	MR. BURGESS.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the recognition.
    I thank the Ranking Member for pointing out that partisanship has no
    place in this debate and I hope we won't see it again this morning.
    	I will point out just for the record that Dr. Mann has been
    invited to appear before this committee before this hearing this
    morning.  He couldn't be here.  Apparently he is on vacation that
    couldn't be interrupted and maybe he can be here next week, and if
    he can be here next week, we will certainly be grateful to hear from
    him, but fortunately we do have his number one colleague, Dr. Crowley,
    on our second panel and I am grateful for that as I am sure the
    Minority is as well.
    	Again, I thank the Chairman for the recognition and I want to
    thank all of our witnesses for taking their valuable time to be with
    us here today.  I know there are many other productive activities you
    could have been doing.  And we have already heard from our friends on
    the other side of the room that there does indeed currently exist an
     international consensus that global warming exists and that human
    beings have caused it.  They didn't say so but I would further
    extrapolate that it is Americans that have caused it and it is
    probably one American in particular and he lives in the White House.
    But I think it is fair to point out that no such consensus exists.
    	The Earth has been heating and cooling for millions of
    years.  There have been big ice ages, little ice ages and it is fair
    to say that in between those two cooling events it probably even got
    a little warm.  The Earth's climate is cyclical and we have only been
    paying attention during the past few hundred years.  With the cyclical
    nature of the Earth's climate, it is plausible to say that the Earth's
     temperatures would be on the rise today regardless of what humans did
     or didn't do.  Thirty-five years ago, I was a freshman in a geology
    class and we learned how the Earth itself was spun off as a hot ball
    of gases and gradually cooled and it was postulated that the Earth had
    been cooling ever since and indeed perhaps Armageddon would come one
    day not as a fire or as a flood but as we cooled into that last ice
    age.  Now we have global warming staring us in the face.
    	I am not saying we should completely dismiss fears of global
    warming as an inaccurate science.  I think that it merits thoughtful
    and serious debate and we owe the subject matter thoughtful and
    serious debate.  Part of my problem with the whole process is, that
    it seems that the cleaner we make our energy generation capability,
    and indeed we have cleaned our energy generation capability over the
    years, and the Ranking Member can take considerable credit for that
    with legislation that he has passed, but now we want to come up
    against an obstacle that nothing can come out of those pipes, we
    have already taken out the VOX, the NOX, the SOX, the POX, the TOX.
    Now it is the carbon dioxide and water that are coming out of those
     smokestacks that has to be stopped, and it is interesting that later
    today--we have a mechanism to stop the carbon dioxide from coming out
    of those stacks and later today we are having a hearing in the Energy
    and Air Quality Subcommittee of this same Energy and Commerce
    Committee on the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.  One of the
    reasons why Yucca Mountain is so important is because of the increasing
     importance of nuclear power in our national fuel mix as an
    emissions-free, carbon-free-emissions source of power.
    	In fact, I would submit that along with the passage of the Clean
     Air Act in the past few decades, perhaps one of the greatest missed
     opportunities--if the Clean Air Act was an enacted opportunity, one
    of the great missed opportunities was abandonment of nuclear power in
    the late 1970s and allowing other countries to get ahead of us in that
    regard so now that our dependence on foreign oil--and we knew in the
    1974 embargo that dependence on foreign oil was not a good foreign
    policy strategy and yet for whatever reason we have lagged with
    development of nuclear fuel, so I am grateful we are having that
    hearing later on today.
    	It is false to presume that a consensus exists today or that
    human activity has been proven to cause global warming, and that is
    the crux of this hearing.  What we are here today to discuss is the
    broader issue of the use of sound statistical analysis and the peer
    review process through the lens of the hockey stick temperature
    studies, but the focus of our hearing today is to examine the
    statistical analysis and methodology used when evaluating the
    influential report on global warming written by Dr. Mann.  As the
    U.S. Congress and even the international policymaking bodies look
    to the scientific community to provide information and analysis, it
    is especially important to make certain that the processes are in
    place to ensure that we are using sound and unbiased science that
    has undergone rigorous peer review process.
    	I would point out that simply turning off the electrical
    generation plants that provide the air conditioning back in my
    district would not be a viable option.  I would submit that the good
    people of California got upset when some people in Texas turned off
    their electrical generation plants a few years ago. I don't see that
    as a viable option.  Should we move to other methods?  Perhaps, but
    we need to do so in a sound and scientific manner.
    	With that, Mr. Chairman, I will yield back.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  At this time I recognize Ms. Baldwin of--
    okay, Ms. Schakowsky.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Mr. Chairman, before we do that, if I may, I
    would like to put into the record a letter from Georgetown University
     Law Center Institute for Public Representation explaining why
    Dr. Mann cannot be here on such short notice from the committee and
    other dates he was available to testify.  I would like to put that
    in the record, a follow-up of the statements that he is on vacation,
    which is not true.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  We would be happy to do so unless--
    	MR. STUPAK.  Thank you.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  --there is objection.  Is there objection to
    this going in?  Thank you.
    	MR. STUPAK.  This letter of July 19 was provided actually by
    fax to Mr. Spencer and Mr. Paoletta.
    	[The information follows:]
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Ms. Schakowsky.
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    	I am glad that we are holding a hearing on global climate
    change although I am disappointed in the actual substance of this, and
    I have a statement for the record that is prepared but I would like to
    just say a couple of things extemporaneously about this issue which I
    care so much about.
    	I guess I would ask about this particular hearing in some ways
    is, what is the point?  I think that there are certain agreements that
    all of the scientific community would adhere to, and one is that
    climate change, the question being how much does human activity
    contribute to that, but the climate change is definitely happening,
    that the Earth is warming right now and there is a large and robust
    body of science that documents that, that even in the Middle Ages it
    could have been as warm as now although that is not clear at all, that
    the temperature is going up and that climate change impacts are being
    observed now and are projected to be of enormous consequence, enormous
     consequence.  If the snow in the Himalayas melts, which provides
    water for I think close to a billion people, this is of great concern.
    	As a grandmother, I am concerned that my grandchildren may
    never see or know about a polar bear in the wild and that the coral
    reefs are disappearing.  The fact that we are seeing stronger
    hurricanes and tornadoes and that there is drought and flood and
    hunger and displacement as a consequence, these are things that we
    know about, and so the question is, even if human activity is not
    the principal cause of global warming, which most scientists do
    believe that is the case, but even if it weren't but we are simply
     contributing to it, why wouldn't we be focusing on now how human
    activity could reduce the impact of global warming, how we could help
    to stem the tide of these devastating consequences that will hurt all
    of humanity.  Why wouldn't we be focusing on that instead of trying
    to discredit a report that is only one piece of the evidence that
    establishes that we are in the midst of a tremendous change that is
    going to impact the possibility of life as we know it on this planet.
    	We don't have to be talking about the kinds of devastating
    changes in lifestyle that Americans won't accept.  Instead, because
    of our ingenuity, always being on the cutting edge of technology and
    change, we can manage the changes that are needed in order to sustain
    life on this planet.  It just makes no sense to me--I mean, we will
    talk about it and we will get into it how the Mann statistics that
    are going to be discredited actually weren't used in his final report
    and we can go into all the details back and forth about the scientific
     evidence but it seems to me that this is a waste of time, that what
     we ought to be talking about is how are we going to confront what
    everyone knows is a real problem, and if human activity can be changed
    in some way to ameliorate that problem, for the life of me I can't
    understand why all of us together in a bipartisan way wouldn't want
    to do that.
    	I have a young person in my district who really is absolutely
    obsessed with the issue of global warming.  He is a junior high school
     student.  His mother is worried about him because he worries about
    it so much.  To me, the answer isn't explaining to him oh, be happy,
    don't worry, this isn't really an issue, there is nothing you can do
    about it.  The answer is, we need to tell young people, the next
    generation, my grandchildren, that there are things that we can do
    today, and so I plead with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle,
    let us get down to solutions, not discrediting one tiny piece of the
    mass of evidence that says that we are in trouble right now and that
    literally billions of people, all the people are on our plant, will
    suffer if we don't get down to the business of finding a solution,
    so I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the time.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Thank you.  Mr. Stearns, you are recognized
    for 5 minutes.
    	MR. STEARNS.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  I think Mr. Stupak put
    in the letter of July 14 from Mr. Mann's lawyer.  I would like
    unanimous consent to put in the letter of July 13 that preceded that,
    which if without objection I would like that--
    	MR. STUPAK.  Well, I guess I will have to object until we see
    it.  Can we at least see it?
    	MR. STEARNS.  Oh, sure, sure.  Yes.  You put a letter that came
    after the first letter and I thought it would be appropriate if we
    include that letter too since that is a day earlier in which he said he
    could not make our committee and for whatever reason he couldn't make
    it and in fact he suggested that if we do have this hearing, that we
    should have Dr. Thomas J. Crowley, and indeed we took his advice and
    we got Dr. Crowley.  He is going to be on the second panel, so we
    took Dr. Mann's advice, we got the people he wanted, and I am sure,
    Mr. Chairman, other people had to cut their vacation short to be here,
    perhaps even Dr. North did.  This is a time when a lot of us are taking
     vacations, not necessarily Members of Congress who are into a
    campaign mode but the rest of you perhaps are doing that, and I can
    understand that, but the letter Mr. Stupak put in said that he would
    not even show up on the 27th.  The letter I am putting in says he won't
    show up today.  Unfortunately, his lawyer from the Georgetown
    University Law Center keeps talking about July--I think in his letter--
    I don't have it in front of me but he has a typographical error in
    both letters in which he cites Friday, July 9.  In all calendars,
    July 9 is not a Friday.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  They are not objecting to the letter.
    	[The information follows:]

    	MR. STEARNS.  Okay.  Good.  All right.  Well, I was just
    talking to make sure Mr. Stupak had plenty of time to read it so that
    I could go forward.
    	You know, I think almost everybody in this room and perhaps
    everybody on this oversight committee would agree that there is global
    warming of some kind.  The question is, is it sinusoidal, that is, are
    we looking at warming today in which there was warming like this or
    similar to this in the Middle Ages and have we seen a warming and a
    cooling much like a sinusoidal wave, and so we are trying to look at
    Dr. Mann's analysis and we are trying to say, is he absolutely right
    that we have this hockey stick effect that is just flat and then
    suddenly comes up.
    	Now, we have Dr. Wegman's analysis concludes that Dr. Mann's
    work cannot support the claim that the 1990s were the warmest decade
    in the millennium.  I mean, that is what he is saying.  Some people
    are questioning Dr. Mann, his quantitative analysis, and that is fine.
    He could be right, he could be wrong.  Now, Dr. North, in looking
    through his testimony which he is going to give, he sort of confirms
    what I think is possible, that this warming and cooling is a sinusoidal
    wave and that in fact, let me just read what Dr. North says in his
    testimony.  He says that it is plausible that the Northern Hemisphere
    was warmer during the last few decades of the 20th Century than during
    any comparable period over the preceding millennium.  That is what he
    says.  However, the substantial uncertainties currently present in
    the quantitative assessment, same thing that Dr. Wegman says, of
    large-scale surface temperature changes prior to about 1600 A.D.
    lower our confidence in this conclusion compared to the high level
    of confidence we place in the Little Ice Age cooling and 20th Century
    warming.  So we have two distinguished individuals who are
    professionals in their fields indicating that it is not absolutely
    true that Dr. Mann is correct in his analysis and Dr. North went on
    to say even less confidence can be placed in the original conclusions
     by Dr. Mann.
    	So, I mean, for anybody on the other side to say this not a
    legitimate hearing is incorrect.  We have taken people that Dr. Mann
    wanted and we put them on here as witnesses.  We have asked Dr. Mann
    to come to this hearing.  We have asked him to come to the 27th.  He
    won't come. He has hired a lawyer to spar with our people to say why
    he won't come.  By golly, if he really is interested in solving this
    problem, I would cut my vacation short and whatever he is doing to say
    I will be here because I think in the interest of science, I would
    like to have an open hearing and talk about it.  So I think, one, it
    is a legitimate hearing.  Two, we have offered Dr. Mann two
    opportunities and yet his lawyer has indicated he won't show up.  So
    this is a very important issue but I think overall, all of us here
    are trying to understand this and we would agree that there is
    probably global warming.  What we want to know is, is this sinusoidal
    or is this something that is aberrational.
    	Let me conclude by saying that yes, we should have further
    inquiries into this matter.  Perhaps as a result of this hearing we
    will.  Temperature studies and the effect of climate change, all these
     are very important to our very existence.  So Mr. Chairman, I commend
    what you are doing and I commend the other side too to keep an open
    mind here and to hear Dr. Wegman and to hear Dr. North and to read
    their opening statements where you will see they have less confidence
    and they certainly have as much credibility on this matter as
    Dr. Mann, and I am just so sorry, so sorry that Dr. Mann is not
    showing up today, he is not showing up on the 27th, and at this
    point I am not clear, Mr. Chairman, when you will get him.  Thank
    you.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Ms. Baldwin, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Mr. Chairman, may I ask unanimous consent that
    the letter that we received from Dr. Mann's lawyer indicating he would
    like to come at the same time these witnesses are here be entered into
    the record.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  It has been.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Oh, it has been?  Oh, okay.  Thank you.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  We have had two letters introduced into the
    record from his lawyer, both.
    	MS. BALDWIN.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  It doesn't take much
    more than a quick walk outside today to know that the thermometer has
    reached dangerously high levels and government heat alerts are
    abounding these days but this summer is not unique.  Each year
    summers are growing warmer and warmer and so are the winters, falls,
     and springs.  Of the 20 hottest years on record, 19 have occurred in
    the 1980s or later.  2005 was one of the hottest years on records and
    so far 2006 has set record levels for its high temperatures.
    	Unfortunately, despite overwhelming scientific evidence that
     our planet is warming at dramatic rates, no political consensus for
    bold action has followed and that is the problem.  Politicians ignore
    sound science showing evidence that the Earth is warming at an
    unprecedented rate, that carbon dioxide levels are rising, and that
    human activities are largely the cause.  But beyond ignoring sound
    science, they are doing other disturbing things.  I see political
    interference in science these days.  In fact, time after time, sound
    science has been censored in order to maintain a political agenda.
    Here are just a few examples.
    	In 2003, the EPA was ordered by the White House to delete
    critical sections relating to climate change from its report on the
     environment.  In 2005, the White House insisted upon weakening
    language relating to the impact of global climate change in a
    document that served as the basis of negotiations during the G8
    Summit, and just a few months ago the Administration tried to silence
    a NASA scientist from talking about the need to reduce greenhouse
    gases linked to global warming.  I could point to many other examples,
    some on this topic, some outside, but it is a disturbing trend indeed.
    	With all these examples, it only becomes more clear that false
    logic will not bring us closer to an understanding of the scientific
    truth.  The truth is alarming.  Sea levels are rising.  Glaciers are
    melting and storms are becoming more intense, and the result is the
    near extinction of animals such as polar bears, the compromising of
    coastal ecosystems, and the threatening of human life as heat waves
    become prevalent and disease-carrying insects grow more abundant.
    	Mr. Chairman, I often speak about America's need to take bold
    action and the importance of us leading the world on environmental
    issues.  Now is the time for us to show our commitment for if we do
    nothing, we risk an uncertain and unstable future.  So I ask, what
    are the consequences if the cynics and naysayers and keepers of the
    status quo are wrong?  We have a moral and an ethical obligation to
    act and I just hope that today we will take some steps in that right
     direction.
    	Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  I yield back the balance of my time.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Thank you, Ms. Baldwin.  At this time I
    recognize Mrs. Blackburn.
    	MRS. BLACKBURN.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  Thank you for
    holding the hearing.  Thank you to the staff for the preparation work
    they have done and to our witnesses appearing before us to comment
    on the matter.  We thank you for being here.  We are concerned about
    it.  I do think it is prudent to address the issue and we are seeking
     information.  We thank you for being here to supply some.
    	The ability to obtain and analyze the data and the methods
    that a scientist uses to form a theory about the universe is central
     to science.  For hundreds of years society has placed the utmost
    importance on the scientific method to validate theories which is
    predicated on the ability to replicate and verify a scientist's work.
    If the work cannot be replicated and verified by independent experts,
    then that work's conclusions become more speculation and possibly
    some will say it should be open to classification as outright
    scientific dishonesty.
    	Last year Chairman Barton inquired into the background of
    some recent climate change studies that had been held by scientific
    portions of the scientific community as proof of drastic global
    warming.  Now, I am old enough to remember that as a teen in the
    late 1960s, I sat in science classes and in a geology class and I
    was warned of a returning and impending ice age.  By the time I
    reached my current age, the world was going to be covered in ice,
    North America would have a 9-month winter, our food supplies would
    be short, and I would be freezing to death all the time.  Well, I
    guess times changed or maybe that old group of scientists had some
    kind of political interference in favor of the new group of
    scientists who now want the Earth to warm up.
    	Now, after some independent analysis it seems that all
    scientists could possibly be misled on some of their issues.  Both
    the National Academy of Sciences and Dr. Wegman's committee analyzed
    the hockey stick report by Dr. Mann that has become the poster child
    for proof of global warming.  The committees came to the conclusion
    that Dr. Mann's hockey stick report failed verification tests and did
    not employ proper statistical methods.  Also, it appears that Dr. Mann
    is part of a social network or could be part of a social network of
    climate scientists who almost always use the same data sets and review
    each other's works.  There is a contention that they would dismiss
    critics who had legitimate concerns, rarely used statistical experts
    for the data they used in their reports, and make it very difficult
    for reviewers to obtain background data and analysis.  These
    revelations point to the lack of independent peer review and how it
    is practically impossible to replicate or verify Dr. Mann's work by
    those not affiliated with the network of scientists, so we are looking
    forward to hearing about that work today.  Could it be that this
    particular work violates the principles of the scientific method
    and should be dismissed until it meets the basic qualifications?
    Could that have been some of what happened to the Ice Age return
    theory of the 1960s?
    	Climate is affected by numerous causes that interact with
    each other.  When a scientific paper comes to a conclusion about
    climate, its results must be able to be replicated and shown to
    have direct causation and not merely correlation.  If these steps
    cannot be done, then making conclusive statements of how one cause
     changes the climate is unwarranted and not real science.
    	Now, there is strong evidence that the Earth has warmed
     about half a degree Fahrenheit from 1900 to 1940 but this is
    widely attributed to an increase in solar activity during those
    years and there are indications that the Earth warmed another
    half degree Fahrenheit from 1940 until the present but that much of
    this warming occurred in the past 7 years, and if you look at the
    surface record in the satellite data, it is pretty clear and
    possible that this warming is mostly due to the 1998 El Nino, so
    for the past hundred years the Earth has warmed about one degree
    and you can make the cause that it was not caused by human activity
    but by natural events.  Possibly that is what happened to the return
    of that old Ice Age.
    	Mr. Chairman, if one looks at the data in an objective
    manner, I believe that one would conclude that the Earth's climate
    is not in serious danger or not standing at the edge of a precipice.
      Maybe our focus should be first on getting the information.  Maybe
    our focus should not be on environmentalism.  Maybe the focus should
     be on common-sense conservatism.  I would challenge my colleagues
    on the other side to approach this issue to learn the truth about
    the Earth's climate, not to form an agenda.
    	I am looking forward to our witnesses in the hearing today.
    I yield back.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Thank you, Mrs. Blackburn.  I think that
    concludes the opening statements so we will proceed to the first
    panel of witnesses, and I would say to you, Dr. North and Dr. Wegman,
     that this committee is holding an investigative hearing, and when
    doing so we do have the practice of taking testimony under oath,
    and I would ask you, do either of you have any objection to
    testifying under oath?
    Now, Dr. Wegman, accompanying you today is one of the statisticians
    that worked with your three-person panel, and would you introduce
    her?  Although it is my understanding she is not going to be
    testifying but she is from Johns Hopkins, I believe.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  That is correct.  It is Dr. Yasmin Said.
    Dr. Said actually did a tour at Johns Hopkins but has just won a
    very prestigious National Institutes of Health postdoctoral
    fellowship and she will be with us in George Mason for the next
    3 years.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  And although she is not going to testify,
    you may consult with her.  Dr. Wegman, if you and Dr. North would
    stand up, I would like to swear you in.  Of course, under the rules
    of the House and the rules of the committee, you are also entitled
    to legal counsel and I am assuming you don't need legal counsel
    today, but if you do--
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Hopefully not.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  If you would raise your right hand.
    	[Witnesses sworn.]
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Thank you, very much.  You are now both under
    oath, and Dr. Wegman, you are recognized for your opening statement,
    and I would say to both of you, I know both of you have rather
    lengthy documents that we appreciate your preparing and those will
    be entered into the record in their entirety, and if you all could
    keep your statements to 5 to 7 minutes or so, we would appreciate
    that.  Dr. Wegman, you are recognized.

    STATEMENTS OF DR. EDWARD J. WEGMAN, CENTER FOR COMPUTATIONAL
    STATISTICS, GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY; AND DR. GERALD R. NORTH,
    DEPARTMENT OF ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES, TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY

    	DR. WEGMAN.  Thank you, sir.  I would like to begin by
    circumscribing the substance of our report.  We were asked to
     provide independent verification by statisticians of the critiques
    of the statistical methodology found in the papers of Drs. Michael
    Mann, Raymond Bradley, and Malcolm Hughes published respectively in
    Nature in 1998 and in Geophysical Research Letters in 1999.  These
    two papers have commonly been referred to as MBH98 and MBH99.  The
    critiques have been made by Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick
    published in Energy and Environment in 2003 and again in Energy and
     Environment and in Geophysical Research Letters in 2005.  We refer
    to these are MM02, 05a and 05b, respectively.
    	We were also asked about the implications of our assessment.
     We were not asked to assess the reality of global warming and indeed
    this is not an area of our expertise.  We do not assume any position
    with respect to global warming except to note in our report that the
     instrumented record of global average temperature has risen since
    1850 according to the MBH99 chart by about 1.2 degrees Centigrade,
    and in the NAS panel report chaired by Dr. North, about six-tenths
    of a degree Centigrade in several places in that report.
    	Our panel is composed of myself, Edward Wegman at George
    Mason University, David W. Scott at Rice University, and as
    mentioned, Yasmin Said at the Johns Hopkins University.  This ad
     hoc panel has worked on a pro bono basis.  We have received no
    compensation, not even taxi fare, and no financial interest and
    we have no financial interest in this.
    	Can we see slide one, please?  In figure 1, we have a
    document, a chart that came out of Dr. Bradley's book on
    paleoclimatology, and sort of indicates the kind of things that
     are used as proxy data in paleoclimatology.  One thing I would
    like to point out in particular that is important I think for
    understanding this area is the things that are indicated--if you
    look--
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Dr. Wegman, we need for you to use your mic.
    I know it is going to be difficult but we could not hear you when
    you turned around there.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  I will refrain from doing that.  The point of
    this graphic is that there are many factors that affect all of the
    proxies that are used in paleoclimate temperature reconstruction,
    and without carefully teasing out those effects, the tree rings,
    the ice cores, and so on, are not by, in and of themselves totally
    temperature records.
    	So MBH98 and 99 use several proxy indicators to measure
    global climate change.  Primarily these include historical records,
    tree rings, ice cores, and coral reefs.  More details of the proxies
    are given in our report and mentioned in the written testimony.
    	Could we go to figure 2, please?  Some examples of tree ring
    proxy series are given in figure 2.  Most of the proxy series for
    these tree rings show little structure but the last two show the
     characteristic hockey stick shape.  The principal component-like
    methodology in MBH98 and 99 preferentially emphasizes these shapes as
    we shall see.  Principal component analysis methodology is at the
     core of the MBH98 and 99 analysis methodology.  Principal component
     analysis is a statistical methodology often used for reducing data
    sets with many variables into data sets with fewer but composite
    variables.  The time series proxy data involved are transformed
    into their principal components where the first principal component
    is intended to explain most of the variation present in the data
    variables.  Each of the subsequent principal components explains
    less and less of the variation.  In the methodology of MBH98 and
    99, the first principal component is used in the temperature
    reconstruction.
    	Could we have figure 3, please?  The two principal methods
    for temperature reconstructions have been used. CFR, climate field
     construction is used in MBH98/99 although that terminology was
    not used formally until 2005, I believe, and the other is CPS,
    climate-plus-scale methodology.  The CFR is essentially the
    principal component-based analysis and the CPS is a simple
    averaging of climate proxies.  The controversy of the MBH98/99
     method lies in that the proxies are incorrectly centered on the
    mean period of 1902 to 1995, rather than on the whole time period.
      The proxy data exhibiting the hockey stick are actually
    decentered low.  The updated MBH98/99 reconstruction is given in
    figure 3.  This fact that the proxies are centered low is apparent
    in figure 3 because for most of the thousand years the
    reconstruction is below zero.  This is temperature anomaly. Because
    the hockey stick proxies are centered too low, they will exhibit a
    large effective variance, allowing the method to exhibit a
    preference for selecting them as the first principal component.
    The net effect of decentering the proxy data in MBH98 and MBH99
    is to produce the hockey stick shape.  Centering on the overall
    mean is a critical factor in using principal component methodology
     properly.
    	Could we have figure 4, please?  To illustrate this, we
    consider the North American tree series and apply the MBH98
    methodology.  The top panel shows the result from decentering.  The
    bottom panel shows the result when the principal components are
    properly centered.  The centering does make a significant
    difference in the reconstruction, and as you see, while the top
     panel illustrates the temperature rise or purported temperature
    rise in the last 100 years or so, the bottom panel when properly
    centered does not have this temperature rise.
    	Could we go to figure 5?  To further illustrate this, we
    digitized the temperature profile published in the IPCC 1990 report
    and we did apply both the CFR and the CPS methods to them.  The data
    used here are 69 unstructured noise pseudo-proxy series with only
    one copy of the 1990 profile.  The upper left panel illustrates the
    PC1 with proper centering.  In other words, no structure is shown.
    The other three panels indicate what happens when using principal
    components with an increasing amount of decentering.  Again, the
    single series begins to overwhelm the 69 other pure noise series.
    Cleary, this decentering has a big effect.
    	It is not clear that Dr. Mann and his associates realized
    the error in their methodology at the time of publication but our
    re-creation supports the critique of the MBH99 methods.
    	As commentary, in general we found the writing in MBH98 and
    99 to be somewhat obscure and incomplete and the criticisms by
    MM03/05a and 05b to be valid.  The reasons for setting 1902-1995 as
    the calibration period presented in the narrative of MBH98 sounds
    plausible on the surface and the error may be easily overlooked by
    someone not trained in statistical methodology.  We note that there
    is no evidence that Dr. Mann or any of the other authors in the
    paleoclimate studies have significant interactions with mainstream
     statisticians.
    	Because of this apparent isolation, we decided to attempt
    to understand the paleoclimate community by exploring the social
    network of authorships in the temperature reconstruction area.  We
    found that at least 43 authors have direct ties to Dr. Mann--and
    this should be figure 6, please; thank you--have direct ties to
    Dr. Mann by virtue of coauthored papers with him.  Our findings
    from this analysis suggest that authors in this area of the
    relatively narrow field of paleoclimate studies are closely
    connected.  Dr. Mann has an unusually large reach in terms of
    influence.  He is the coauthor with every one of these people
    which are indicated by the black edge borders on the top and the
    side of this graph.  In particular, he has a close connection with
    Drs. Jones, Bradley, Hughes, Briffa, Rutherford, and Osborne and
    those are indicated by the solid block on the upper left-hand
    corner.
    	This area of social networks is based off a graph theoretic
     representation, and if we go to figure 7, we can see the graph
    theoretic representation.  Because of these close connections,
    independent studies may not be as independent as they appear to be
     on the surface.  Although we have no direct data on the functioning
     of peer review within the paleoclimate community but, with me having
    35 years of experience with peer review in both journals as well as
    evaluation of research proposals, peer review may not have been as
    independent as would generally be desirable.
    	Could we have figure 8, please?  Figure 8 is a graphic that
    depicts a number of papers in the paleoclimate reconstruction area
    together with some of the proxies used.  We note that many of the
    proxies are shared.  Some of the same data also suggests a lack of
     independence.
    The MBH98/99 work has been sufficiently politicized that this
    committee can hardly reassess their public positions without losing
     credibility.  Overall, our community believes that the MBH98/99
    assessment that the decade of the 1990s was likely the hottest
    decade in the millennium and that 1998 was likely the hottest year
    in the millennium cannot be supported by their analysis because of
    the mathematical flaws.
    	We have some recommendations which flowed out of our
    analysis. Recommendation one:  Especially when massive amounts of
    public monies and human lives are at stake, academic work should
    have a more intense level of scrutiny and review.  It is especially
    the case that authors of policy-related documents like the IPCC
     report should not be the same people as those that constructed
    the academic papers.
    	We believe that federally funded research agencies should
    develop a more comprehensive and concise policy on disclosure.
    All of us writing this report have been federally funded.  Our
    experience with Federal funding agencies has been that they do
    not generally articulate clear guidelines to the investigators as
     to what must be disclosed.  Federally funded work, including code,
    should be made available to other researchers upon reasonable
    request, especially if the intellectual property has no commercial
    value.  Some consideration should be granted to the data collectors
    to have exclusive use of their data for 1 or 2 years prior to
    publication but data collected under Federal support should be made
    publicly available.
    	Recommendation three:  With clinical trials for drugs and
    devices to be approved for human use by the FDA, review and
    consultation with statisticians is expected.  Indeed, it is standard
    practice to include statisticians in the application for approval
    process.  We judge this to be a good policy when public health and
    also when substantial amounts of monies are involved--for example,
    when there are major policy decisions to be made based on statistical
     assessments.  In such cases, evaluation by statisticians should be
    standard practice.  The evaluation phase should be a mandatory part
    of all grant applications and funded accordingly.
    	Finally, recommendation four; emphasis should be placed on
    the Federal funding of research related to a fundamental understanding
    of the mechanisms of climate change.  Funding should focus on
     interdisciplinary teams and avoid narrowly focused disciple
    research.  That is a general comment and by interdisciplinary
    teams, I mean including teams that involve what I like to call the
     enabling sciences such as mathematics, computer science, and
    statistics.  Thank you, sir.
    	[The prepared statement of Dr. Edward J. Wegman follows:]

    PREPARED STATEMENT OF DR. EDWARD J. WEGMAN, CENTER FOR COMPUTATIONAL
     STATISTICS, GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY

    I would like to begin by circumscribing the substance of our report.
    We were asked to provide an independent verification by statisticians
    of the critiques of the statistical methodology found in the papers
    of Drs. Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes published
     respectively in Nature in 1998 and in Geophysical Research Letters
    in 1999. These two papers have commonly been referred to as MBH98 and
    MBH99. The critiques have been made by Stephen McIntyre and Ross
    McKitrick published in Energy and Environment in 2003 and in Energy
    and Environment and in Geophysical Research Letters in 2005. We refer
     to these as MM03, MM05a, and MM05b respectively. We were also asked
    about the implications of our assessment. We were not asked to assess
    the reality of global warming and indeed this is not an area of our
    expertise. We do not assume any position with respect to global
    warming except to note in our report that the instrumented record of
    global average temperature has risen since 1850 according to the MBH
    99 chart by about 1.2� centigrade. In the NAS panel Report chaired by
    Dr. North, .6� centigrade is mentioned in several places.
    Our panel is composed of Edward J. Wegman (George Mason University),
    David W. Scott (Rice University), and Yasmin H. Said (The Johns
    Hopkins University). This Ad Hoc Panel has worked pro bono, has
    received no compensation, and has no financial interest in the
    outcome of the report.

    MBH98, MBH99 use several proxy indicators to measure global climate
    change. Primarily, these include historical records, tree rings, ice
    cores, and coral reefs. More details of proxies are given in the
    report and mentioned in the written testimony. [The width and density
    of tree rings vary with climatic conditions (sunlight, precipitation,
     temperature, humidity, and carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides
    availability), soil conditions, tree species, tree age, and stored
     carbohydrates in the trees. The width and density of tree rings are
    dependent on many confounding factors, making isolation of the
    climatic temperature signal uncertain. It is usually the case that
    width and density of tree rings are monitored in conjunction in order
    to more accurately use them as climate proxies. Ice cores are the
    accumulation of snow and ice over many years that have recrystallized
    and have trapped air bubbles from previous time periods. The
    composition of these ice cores, especially the presence of hydrogen
    and oxygen isotopes, provides a picture of the climate at the time.
    The relative concentrations of the heavier isotopes in the condensate
    indicate the temperature of condensation, allowing for ice cores to be
    used in global temperature reconstruction. In addition to the isotope
     concentration, the air bubbles trapped in the ice cores allow for
    measurement of the atmospheric concentrations of trace gases,
    including greenhouse gases carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous
     oxide.]

    Some examples of tree ring proxy series are given in Figure 2. Most of
    the proxy series show little structure, but the last two show the
     characteristic 'hockey stick' shape. The principal component-like
    methodology in MBH 98/99 preferentially emphasizes these shapes as
    we shall see.
    Principal component analysis methodology is at the core of the
    MBH98/99 analysis methodology. Principal component analysis is a
    statistical methodology often used for reducing datasets with many
    variables into datasets with fewer, but composite variables. The
    time series proxy data involved are transformed into their principal
     components, where the first principal component is intended to
    explain most of the variation present in the data variables. Each
    subsequent principal component explains less and less of the
    variation. In the methodology of MBH98/99, the first principal
     component is used in the temperature reconstruction.

    Two principal methods for temperature reconstructions have been used;
    CFR (climate field construction used in MBH98/99) and CPS (climate-
    plus-scale). The CFR is essentially the principal component based
    analysis and the CPS is a simple averaging of climate proxies. The
    controversy of the MBH98/99 methods lies in that the proxies are
    incorrectly centered on the mean of the period 1902-1995, rather
    than on the whole time period. The proxy data exhibiting the hockey
    stick shape are actually decentered low. The updated MBH99
    reconstruction is given in Figure 3. This fact that the proxies are
    centered low is apparent in Figure 3 because for most of the 1000
    years, the reconstruction is below zero. Because the 'hockey stick'
    proxies are centered too low, they will exhibit a larger effective
    'variance', allowing the method to exhibit a preference for
    selecting them as the first principal component. The net effect of
    this decentering using the proxy data in MBH98 and MBH99 is to
    produce a 'hockey stick' shape. Centering on the overall mean is a
     critical factor in using the principal component methodology
     properly.

    To illustrate this, we consider the North America Tree series and
    apply the MBH98 methodology. The top panel shows the result from the
    de-centering. The bottom panel shows the result when the principal
    components are properly centered. Thus the centering does make a
    significant difference to the reconstruction.

    To further illustrate this, we digitized the temperature profile
    published in the IPCC 1990 report and applied both the CFR and the
    CPS methods to them. The data used here are 69 unstructured noise
    pseudo-proxy series and only one copy of the 1990 profile. The upper
    left panel illustrates the PC1 with proper centering. In other words,
    no structure is shown. The other 3 panels indicate what happens using
     principal components with an increasing amount of de-centering.
    Again, the single series begins to overwhelm the other 69 pure noise
    series. Clearly, these have a big effect.
    It is not clear that Mann and associates realized the error in their
     methodology at the time of publication. Our re-creation supports the
    critique of the MBH98 methods.
    In general, we found the writing in MBH98 and MBH99 to be somewhat
    obscure and incomplete and the criticisms by MM03/05a/05b to be valid.
    The reasons for setting 1902-1995 as the calibration period presented
    in the narrative of MBH98 sounds plausible, and the error may be easily
     overlooked by someone not trained in statistical methodology. We note
    that there is no evidence that Dr. Mann or any of the other authors in
     paleoclimate studies have had significant interactions with
    mainstream statisticians.
    Because of this apparent isolation, we decided to attempt to
    understand the paleoclimate community by exploring the social
    network of authorships in temperature reconstruction.

    We found that at least 43 authors have direct ties to Dr. Mann by
    virtue of coauthored papers with him. Our findings from this analysis
    suggest that authors in the area of this relatively narrow field of
     paleoclimate studies are closely connected. Dr. Mann has an
    unusually large reach in terms of influence and in particular
    Drs. Jones, Bradley, Hughes, Briffa, Rutherford and Osborn.

    Because of these close connections, independent studies may not be
    as independent as they might appear on the surface. Although we have
    no direct data on the functioning of peer review within the
    paleoclimate community, but with 35 years of experience with peer
    review in both journals as well as evaluation of research proposals,
    peer review may not have been as independent as would generally be
    desirable.

    Figure 8 is a graphic that depicts a number of papers in the
    paleoclimate reconstruction area together with some of the proxies
    used. We note that many of the proxies are shared. Using the same
    data also suggests a lack of independence.
    The MBH98/99 work has been sufficiently politicized that this
    community can hardly reassess their public positions without losing
     credibility. Overall, our committee believes that the MBH99
    assessment that the decade of the 1990s was the likely the hottest
    decade of the millennium and that 1998 was likely the hottest year
    of the millennium cannot be supported by their analysis.

    Recommendations
    Recommendation 1. Especially when massive amounts of public monies
     and human lives are at stake, academic work should have a more
    intense level of scrutiny and review. It is especially the case
    that authors of policy-related documents like the IPCC report,
    Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis, should not be the same
    people as those that constructed the academic papers.
    Recommendation 2. We believe that federally funded research agencies
    should develop a more comprehensive and concise policy on
    disclosure. All of us writing this report have been federally
     funded. Our experience with funding agencies has been that they do
    not in general articulate clear guidelines to the investigators as
    to what must be disclosed. Federally funded work including code
    should be made available to other researchers upon reasonable
    request, especially if the intellectual property has no commercial
    value. Some consideration should be granted to data collectors to
    have exclusive use of their data for one or two years, prior to
    publication. But data collected under federal support should be
    made publicly available.
    Recommendation 3. With clinical trials for drugs and devices to be
    approved for human use by the FDA, review and consultation with
    statisticians is expected. Indeed, it is standard practice to
    include statisticians in the application-for-approval process. We
    judge this to be a good policy when public health and also when
    substantial amounts of monies are involved, for example, when there
    are major policy decisions to be made based on statistical
    assessments. In such cases, evaluation by statisticians should be
    standard practice. This evaluation phase should be a mandatory
    part of all grant applications and funded accordingly.
    Recommendation 4. Emphasis should be placed on the Federal funding
     of research related to fundamental understanding of the mechanisms
    of climate change. Funding should focus on interdisciplinary teams
    and avoid narrowly focused discipline research.

    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Thank you, Dr. Wegman, and Dr. North, you
    are recognized for your opening statement.
    	DR. NORTH.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  Before I begin, I would
    like to introduce Peter Bloomfield from North Carolina State
    University, who is a professor of statistics there, and he was on
    our committee, the NAS committee, and so I will use him if I need to
    during the course of--
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Welcome, Dr. Bloomfield.
    	DR. NORTH.  Good morning, Mr. Chairman, and members of the
     committee.  My name is Jerry North.  I am a professor of atmospheric
    sciences at Texas A&M University and it is nice to see one Aggie here.
      He said he took some statistics there and I suspect he knows more
    than he is letting on today.  And I served as the Chairman of the
    National Research Council's committee on surface temperature
    reconstruction for the last 2,000 years.
    	My comments today will highlight the findings of our
    committee's recently released report.  Its aim was to asses the
    state of scientific efforts to reconstruct surface temperature
    records for the Earth over the last few thousand years, and to
    comment on the implications of these efforts for our understanding
    of global climate change.  Surface temperature reconstructions are
    only one of many lines of evidence supporting the conclusion that
    the climate is warming in response to human activities.  These long
    records give context and perspective to the issue but they are not
    the primary evidence.  In fact, human-induced climate change is
    quite real.
    	First some background.  Widespread thermometer records only
    the last 150 years or so.  To extrapolate deeper into the past,
    scientists have learned to use proxy evidence such as tree rings,
    corals, ocean and lake sediments, ice cores, glacier records,
    boreholes, and historical documents.  To give one example, the
    advances and retreats of glaciers can tell us whether the climate
    has been warmer or cooler on the average at that location.  Starting
    in the 1990s, scientists began combining proxy evidence for many
    locations in an effort to estimate temperature changes averaged
    over broad geographic regions for the last few thousand years.
    	Much attention has been concentrated on papers published by
    Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley, and Malcolm Hughes in 1998 and 1999.
    This is partly because the authors concluded that the Northern
    Hemisphere was warmer during the late 20th Century than at any time
    during the past millennium.  In addition, it was illustrated with a
    simple graphic, the so-called hockey stick curve, that was featured
     prominently in the 2001 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
    report, and you have seen that graphic.
    	Our committee examined the scientific literature in great
    depth, considered written and oral remarks from experts representing
    a broad range of perspectives.  We reached five major conclusions.
    Number one, the warming of about one degree Fahrenheit during the
    20th Century is real.  No one doubts it.
    	Number two:  Besides the rapid warming in the 20th Century,
    two other features appear to be common in the records, a cool period
    centered in A.D. 1700 called the Little Ice Age and a warm period
    around 1000 known as the Medieval Warm Period, details about the
    latter being much less certain.
    	Number three:  It can be said with a high level of
    confidence that global mean surface temperature was higher during
    the last few decades of the 20th Century than during any comparable
    period since 1600.  This statement is justified by the consistency
    of the evidence from a wide variety of geographically diverse
    proxies.  If we could put that graphic up.  That one.  That is
    the only one I will show.  So here is the kind of diverse evidence
    that I would like to just mention.  These are different curves from
    different investigators.  Most of them have come out after the Mann
    et al. work, and some of them don't rely on the statistical
    techniques at all.  The boreholes, for example, come from the
    direct physics, no calibration with the instrumental temperatures,
    and the same is true for the glacier length records.
    	Number four:  Less confidence can be placed in large-scale
    surface temperature reconstructions from A.D. 900 to 1600.  We find
    that temperatures at many, but not all, locations were higher during
    the last 25 years than during any period of comparable length since
    A.D. 900, but the uncertainties increase substantially as one moves
    backward in time through this period and are not yet fully
    quantified.  Now, the way we tried to illustrate that on this
    graphic is by showing a sort of darkening graying as you go back,
    and one of my colleagues on the committee says well, as you go back
    beyond the year 1600, things get a little murkier, so the amount of
    the kinds of data that we have and so on are much less certain.  We
    don't understand all of the interrelations and so forth, so I can go
    into that in more detail if you need it.
    	And number five, very little confidence can be assigned to
    statements concerning the average surface temperatures prior to about
    A.D. 900, so we just don't know enough about that period.
    	Now, the basic conclusion of the 1999 paper by Mann and his
    colleagues was that the late 20th Century warmth in the Northern
    Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1,000 years.
    This conclusion has substantially been supported by an array of
    evidence, but substantial uncertainties remain for the period before
    about 1600, and I can give you some illustrations of other ways of
    looking at the problem later if that should come up in questions.
    Our main disagreements with the Mann 98/99 papers are related to
    the assertions about warmth of individual decades and individual
    years.  We don't subscribe to that kind of definition of the
    problem.  We also question some of their statistical methodology,
    in fact, some of the same claims that were put forward by
    Dr. Wegman and you will hear some later as well.
    	However, our reservations with some aspects of the original
     papers by Mann and colleagues should not undermine the fact that
    the climate is warming and will continue to warm as a result of
    human activities.  In fact, the scientific consensus regarding
    human-induced climate warming, global warming, would not be
    substantively altered if the global mean surface temperature
    1,000 years ago was found to be as warm as it is today although
    there is evidence that this really is a very exceptional period
    that we are in now, and again, I can come back to that during
    questions.  This is because we don't know enough about the driving
    forces of the climate over that long period.
    	During the last 150 years, we have considerable evidence
    about the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and we know a
    lot about the other things that tend to nudge the climate system
    as well.  By the way, a lot has been learned about climate in the
    last 30 or 40 years.  I mean, it is a very rapidly changing field
    and we have all the giant computers and satellites now at our
    disposal to help us.  So we know a lot more about this than we
    did 30 years ago.  And in the last quarter century, when warming
    was particularly steep, we also have good data on the sun because
    for the last 25 years we have been measuring the sun very, very
    accurately from outside the atmosphere using satellites.
    Aerosols--we have a very good idea of how the dust and tiny
    particles in the atmosphere have been changing over the last
    25 years and probably 50, both of which--both of these two
    drivers of climate change, the sun and the aerosols, really are
     negligible compared to the forcing from greenhouse gases.
    	Moreover, climate models can only reproduce the warming of
    the 20th Century when greenhouse gases are included.  Our knowledge
    of the driving forces over the last several thousands of years is
    not yet good enough to go back beyond this recent period, so that
    is the reason that that early data doesn't really close or finish
    off the story.
    	So now in conclusion, our committee finds that large-scale
    surface temperature reconstructions contribute to climate research,
    they are important, and that they contain meaningful climate
    signals.  Our confidence in the reconstructions becomes stronger
    when multiple independent lines of evidence point to the same
    general result such as the warmth of the last few decades of the
    20th Century relative to the last 400 years.  Further research,
    especially in the collection of additional proxy evidence, would
    help to reduce the uncertainties and allow us to make more
    definitive conclusions over longer time periods.
    	I thank you for your attention, and I would be happy to
    answer any questions, and I may call on Dr. Bloomfield to help me.
    	[The prepared statement of Dr. Gerald R. North follows:]

    PREPARED STATEMENT OF DR. GERALD R. NORTH, DEPARTMENT OF ATMOSPHERIC
    SCIENCES, TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY

    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Dr. North, thank you and Dr. Wegman both
    for your testimony, and Dr. North, now, you are a Ph.D.  Are you
    a climatologist or--
    	DR. NORTH.  I have a Ph.D. in physics from the University
    of Wisconsin.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  From the University of Wisconsin.
    	DR. NORTH.  Yes.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  A wonderful school.
    	DR. NORTH.  Yes.  It is a wonderful school.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Almost as good as Texas A&M.
    	DR. NORTH.  Well, comparable.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Now, have you had the opportunity to review
    Dr. Wegman's and his associates--
    	DR. NORTH.  Yes, I did receive it a few days ago so I don't
    think I have read it in the detail that I should but I have been able
    to look through it.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  And you all don't know each other?  You are
    not friends or--
    	DR. NORTH.  No, I met him at our briefing a couple of weeks
    ago just for a handshake.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Well, I was wondering if you might just take
    a minute or two to summarize your--as a professional in this area
    and your experience in this area.  What is your reaction to their
    report?
    	DR. NORTH.  Well, I think that on many things we are in
    agreement.  The studies that--I mean, the examination they did of
    the statistical procedures and the Mann et al. papers is not the
    way we would--that I would have done it in hindsight, especially
    now looking back.  It is not the way I would have done it.  I don't
    think there is anything dishonest about it or anything like that,
    but I think that the analyses that the Wegman group did really
    were--some of those were examined by the statisticians on our
    committee and I don't think that we are in any great disagreement
    about it.  Let me just mention this, that the criticisms don't mean
    that the MBH claims were wrong.  They just mean that the MBH claims
    are not convincing by themselves.  So if you pull together other
    information, then that does change the view a bit.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Now, Dr. Wegman, I am not a statistician
    but obviously a statistician is where you look at data and from
    that data you try to look at the probability of something happening
    or not happening and whatever.  Is that just in a rough layman's
    term what statistics is all about, or give me your definition of
    statistics or a statistician.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Well, I think a statistician generally tries
    to look at data and represent the meaning, the inferences that are
    available from that data as straightforwardly and honestly as
    possible.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Now, Dr. North said that his group had
    reviewed your document and that they agreed with much of what you
    said and you have indicated that one of your primary concerns about
    the Mann document is the center point that was utilized in his
    hockey stick graph.  Would you elaborate on that a little bit?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Yes.  They used the period from 1902 to 1995,
    which was the instrumented temperature record that they used, so
    they used that period to calibrate the proxy data.  They centered
    their overall proxy data on that period, 1902 to 1995, and of
    course temperature was rising in that period, so when you center
    on that period, you push the rest of the proxy data below the
    axis.  That has, as I mentioned, the net effect of increasing the
    variance and making the principal component methodology pick out
    that kind of shape.  So it preferentially attempts to fit those
    kind of shapes in the first principal component.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  And it does establish this hockey stick
    showing a rapidly increasing--
    	DR. WEGMAN.  That is essentially the mechanism that creates
    the hockey stick.  If you do the--as I showed in the one graph, if
    you do the centering properly, the hockey stick disappears.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Now--
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Would the Chairman yield on that point?
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Yes.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Dr. Wegman, you say when you center it
    properly.  Put in layman's terms that those of us that are not
    statisticians, what does that mean, centering it properly?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Thank you for asking.  The principal components
    analysis methodology requires that the data be centered on the mean
    of the overall series, so if you are doing reconstructions, let us
    say, back to year 1000, 1000 to 2000, then you should center on
    the average value of the proxy series for the period 1902 to--
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  In which there is better data.  I mean,
    they--there could be a plausible reason why they did what they did,
    the more accurate data, they are more certain of it?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Well, they are more certain of the temperature
    data but the net effect of the decentering is to preferentially
    pick out these--
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  But what they should have done was if they
    are going to measure from one 1000 to 2000, they should have used
    all the data points and came up with the mean and centered wherever
    that mean was?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  That is correct, yes.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Thank you.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  And I think the reason that is important is
    that when you make a categorical statement that the 1990s were the
    warmest decade in a millennium and that 1998 was the warmest year
    in the 1,000, I mean, it is difficult to make a statement like that
     categorically if the centering is not correct.  Would you agree
    with that?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Yes, I agree.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  And I think that is the whole basis of this
    hearing because this hockey stick--all of us are concerned about
    global warming but I do think we have an obligation and
    responsibility--everyone has latched onto this hockey stick and
    almost created a panic in a way, and maybe we should be panicked,
    but I think it is important that we understand how the hockey stick
    came about, and that is what we are talking about today.  Now,
    Dr. North, do you agree with Dr. Wegman's centering analysis or not?
    	DR. NORTH.  I do.  I think that he is right about that.
    However, you know, we have to be careful here and not throw the
    baby out with the water.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Right.
    	DR. NORTH.  Because there have been other analyses, papers
     published after the Mann papers in which people just took a simple
    average.  Dr. Crowley wrote a paper just a short time after that in
    which he didn't use the principal component analysis at all.  He got
     essentially the same answer.  And so--
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Is that what we refer to as the CPS analysis?
    	DR. NORTH.  I don't know what the initials--but he just took
    the average instead of dealing with the data the way one does it in
    the principal component analysis, so what I am arguing, and some
    other people have also done this same, there have been many studies
    later that don't use principal component analysis and the ones that
    I showed you, it is not there now--
    	MR. WAXMAN.  Mr. Chairman.
    	DR. NORTH.  They don't all use principal component analysis.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Yes?
    	MR. WAXMAN.  Will you yield to me?   I am just wondering if
    Dr. Wegman is familiar with Dr. Crowley's way of handling the
    statistics and if he thinks that the conclusions are suspect in the
    Crowley study.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Well, let me say that simple averaging of
    proxies, depending on how the proxies are selected, can yield the
    same kind of results.  In fact, if--I don't know if you can put up
    my backup slide, backup figure number 2, the backup figure number
    2 shows--
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Well, are we putting this graph up?  Where
    is this graph?  Okay.  There we go.  Okay.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  This is using the CPS, simple averaging proxy
     methodology, just like the principal components, and by doing the
    simple averaging of proxies appropriately selected, you can
    reconstruct the same shape that you had with the principal
    component-type methodology.  So it is possible depending on how
    you approach this.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  So you can do a lot of things, just
    depending upon what data you use, what the centering is and so
    forth?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Exactly.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Now, let me just ask both of you one question
    quickly.  My time has been used by other people.
    	MR. WAXMAN.  I would like to ask unanimous consent that the
    chairman be given two additional minutes, but are you critical--
    because that was my question--are you critical of his methodology in
    reaching the same conclusion?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  I am saying that it is quite possible to use the
    CPS, the averaging methodology, and come to the same conclusion that
    Dr. Mann had.  I am not saying he did that because I haven't studied
    his paper in such detail as to be willing to say that.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Well, let me just ask you on this whole
    issue of scientific analysis and scientific collaboration and so
    forth, you mentioned this social networking, for lack of a better
    term.  I mean, like any other profession, scientists, statisticians,
    they deal with each other, they know each other, they write articles
     together and so forth.  But how serious is this issue of bodies
    making scientific reports and getting into a pattern of talking to
    the same people all the time about the same thing and they all have
    the same views?  Is that a significant problem or not?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  I think it potentially can be.  It would be
    naive to think that there are not competing social networks within
    a discipline area.  Sometimes the competing social networks keep each
    other in check.  In the statistical arena, for example, there is a
    group of people who view themselves as classical statisticians.
    There is a group of people who view themselves as Bayesian
    statisticians.  As one of our reviewers said, Heaven help you if
    you get a reviewer from a competing social network.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Okay.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  And I think it would be naive to think that
    these things don't exist.  They exist in peer review journals,
    they exist in reviews of proposals submitted to the NSF and other
     organizations.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Would you like to make a comment about this
    whole issue, Dr. North?
    	DR. NORTH.  Well, I would be pleased to.  There are several
    matters here.  Social networking, it does seem to me to be a little
    bit of a problem to pick out that this young scientist got busy and
    found himself 43 coauthors.  I think a lot of us would look at that
    and say my, he is quite a charismatic young man who has gone out and
    found himself 43 collaborators.  That is something that I would
    probably look very favorable on if I were considering him for
    tenure.  And so there is that.  Now, do people collaborate and
    think similarly?  Of course they do.  But, you know, if you look
    back at the history of, say, quantum mechanics in the early 1920s,
    it was Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, all these people.  I am sure if
    you did a similar analysis, you would probably find something very
    like that, but in fact these guys hated each other.  I mean, they
    were very, very competitive.  And if you look at the 43 authors,
    I am sure that not all of them like to go out and have a beer
    together.  This is pretty competitive business, and I will tell
    you, if somebody can find a way to knock down someone else's theory,
    that is their road to recognition and fame.  We all do that.  That
    is part of the game and we really enjoy that part of the game.  So
    yes and no.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  All right.  Thank you.  My time has expired
    and I will recognize Mr. Stupak.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Mr. Chairman, because of time constraints, I
    am letting Mr. Waxman go now and I will catch the next round.
    	MR. WAXMAN.  Thank you very much, Mr. Stupak and Mr.
    Chairman.  That was an interesting analysis, Dr. North.  We are
     sometimes sheltered by our own politics but it looks like
    academics have their politics.
    	DR. NORTH.  They do.
    	MR. WAXMAN.  And I guess we should take that into
    consideration, but I don't think we doubt all science because
    experts agree with each other or that they are competing with
    each other.  Is that--
    	DR. NORTH.  That is correct.  You know, the process works.
    You know, as they say, it is a little like making sausage.  You
    have heard that one.
    	MR. WAXMAN.  On June 7, 2005, 11 National Science academies
    issued a joint statement calling on world leaders "to acknowledge
    that the threat of climate change is clear and increasing" and in
    their joint statement, the science academies of Brazil, Canada,
    China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United
    Kingdom, and the United States declared, "There is now strong
    evidence that significant global warming is occurring."  They
    also stated that it is likely that most of the warming in recent
    decades can be attributed to human activities.  Mr. Chairman, I
    would like to ask unanimous consent that this statement from the
    premiere scientific institutions be placed in the record.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Without objection.
    	[The information follows:]

    MR. WAXMAN.  Dr. North, I would like to begin with you.  Do you agree
    with the statement of these premiere institutions that there is now
    strong evidence that significant global warming is occurring and
    that it is likely that most of the warming can be attributed to
    human activities?
    	DR. NORTH.  Yes, I do.
    	MR. WAXMAN.  And Dr. North, the national science academies
    also state that the scientific understanding of climate change is
    sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action.  They
    say it is important that we take cost-effective steps now to reduce
    our emissions or else it will be more costly to act in the future.
    Again, do you agree with that statement?
    	DR. NORTH.  Well, now you are stepping a little bit beyond
    my role here.  I will talk about the science but what we ought to
    do is somebody else's business.
    	MR. WAXMAN.  I am concerned that some are going to hear about
    Dr. Wegman's statistical criticism of the early Mann study and
    somehow conclude that global warming is still an open question.  In
    order to put the overall importance of this issue in context, I
    would like to ask you about some of the other evidence of global
    warming.  Are the Mann studies the basis for the ice core studies
    that give us data going back hundreds of thousands of years?
    	DR. NORTH.  No.
    	MR. WAXMAN.  Are the Mann studies the basis for the recorded
     atmospheric temperature records that we have maintained for the
    last 150 years?
    	DR. NORTH.  No.
    	MR. WAXMAN.  Dr. Crowley is going to testify later today
    that although the Mann study was influential in the IPCC's 2001
    assessment, the studies, which demonstrated that the instrumental
    record and the models could not be reconciled without an
    anthropogenic greenhouse influence, were even more influential.
    Were those studies based on the Mann studies?
    	DR. NORTH.  I don't think so.  I am sorry.  I didn't hear
    everything you said.
    	MR. WAXMAN.  Well, Dr. Crowley is going to tell us that--
    	DR. NORTH.  He will talk about that, sure.
    	MR. WAXMAN.  --although the Mann study was influential with
    the IPCC's 2001--
    	DR. NORTH.  Well, it was part of the report.  It was a part
    of the report.
    	MR. WAXMAN.  Right.
    	DR. NORTH.  But as I have said, it is only one of several
    lines of evidence that are used in drawing those conclusions.
    	MR. WAXMAN.  And so therefore you have further studies that
    seem to come to similar conclusions?
    	DR. NORTH.  There are other studies, and they were shown
    on the graphic that I showed you.
    	MR. WAXMAN.  And they weren't based on the Mann studies,
    were they?
    	DR. NORTH.  They were not based on the Mann studies.  Now,
    there are cases where they use the same data so there is some
    correlation and that is what I think Dr. Wegman referred to and
    that is correct.  See, there is only a limited amount of data,
    so--
    	MR. WAXMAN.  In 2005, two research teams led by scientists
    at the Scripps Institution for Oceanography and NASA's Goddard
    Institute for Space Studies published studies in Science magazine
    that concluded that not only is the Earth's air and land warming,
    but the oceans are warming as well and that heating has penetrated
    more than 1,000 feet into the ocean's depth.  Jim Hanson, director
    of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the lead author
    of one of the studies, called these findings "the smoking gun of
    global warming."  Dr. North, are these studies in any way based on
    the Mann 1998 and 1999 studies?
    	DR. NORTH.  No, not at all.
    	MR. WAXMAN.  In July 2005, Nature magazine published a study
    by Dr. Kerry Emanuel of M.I.T. who found that the destructive power
    of hurricanes is increasing along with ocean temperatures.  Dr.
    Emanuel found that the total destructive potential of hurricanes has
    increased markedly during the last 30 years.  While natural cycles
    in the pattern of ocean circulation likely played a role,
    Dr. Emanuel attributes at least part of the increase to global
    warming.  Just last month the publication Geophysical Research
    Letters published a new study by Dr. Kevin Trenberth and Dr. Dennis
    Shea of the National Center for Atmospheric Research which concludes
    that global warming fueled hurricane intensity in the waters of the
    tropical North Atlantic in 2005, while natural cycles were only a
    minor factor.  Dr. North, are these papers by Dr. Emanuel,
    Dr. Trenberth, and Dr. Shea in any way based upon Mann's 1998 and
    1999 studies?
    	DR. NORTH.  No, no.
    	MR. WAXMAN.  Drs. Mears and Wentz published an article in
    Science magazine in August 2005 that resolves a longstanding conflict
    in the global warming debate.  For years global warming naysayers,
    based on the work of Dr. John Christy at the University of Alabama,
    have argued that satellite data showed that the Earth's atmosphere
    was warming far slower than the Earth's surface.  These scientists
    reanalyzed the raw satellite data and found that the lower atmosphere
    is actually warming slightly faster than the surface in agreement
    with the theory and models.  These scientists found that the
    previous analysis of the satellite data had inaccurately corrected
     for changes in the satellite's measurement time resulting from the
    decay of their orbit.  Dr. Christy has now acknowledged his mistake
    and has adjusted his data series, making it much more consistent
    with other results.  Dr. North, is the Mears and Wentz study in any
    way based on Mann's 1998 and 1999 studies?
    	DR. NORTH.  Absolutely not.  Dr. Christy was actually on our
     committee, by the way.
    	MR. WAXMAN.  He was on--
    	DR. NORTH.  He was on the NAS committee.
    	MR. WAXMAN.  Finally, if we were to--
    	DR. NORTH.  If I may just add one thing.  You know, just
    because a paper is published, it goes out for the community.
    People--the wolves attack, and this particular study by Spencer and
    Christy took many years before the error was finally found.  It
    doesn't mean these guys are villains.  It is just that--
    	MR. WAXMAN.  If you knew that Dr. Mears--
    	DR. NORTH.  --they did their best.  It took years to find
    that mistake.
    	MR. WAXMAN.  If you knew that those two scientists were
    friends with--
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Would the gentleman excuse me one minute?
    Did you say it took many years before the error was discovered?
    	DR. NORTH.  Before the error in the Spencer-Christy study
    using satellite data was found.  It was a good-faith effort on their
    part but it turned out to be wrong.
    	MR. WAXMAN.  If you knew that these gentlemen were friends
    with Dr. Mann, would that make you suspect their work?
    	DR. NORTH.  I have no idea whether they know him.
    	MR. WAXMAN.  Finally, if we were to sweep away the Mann
    studies and forget that they existed, would that in any way erode
    the validity of any of the studies I just mentioned?
    	DR. NORTH.  I do not think it would.
    	MR. WAXMAN.  Would there still be--
    	DR. NORTH.  We wouldn't--
    	MR. WAXMAN.  Would there still be a scientific consensus
    that global warming is happening, it is being caused by humans and
    that some people think it is time to act now?
    	DR. NORTH.  Yes, I think there would be.
    	MR. WAXMAN.  And Dr. North, my point in asking you about
    these other studies is simply to illustrate how wrong it would be
    for anyone to draw sweeping conclusions from a statistical criticism
    of one or two studies from 8 years ago.  Unfortunately, the Republican
     majority on this committee has been completely content to sit back
    and ignore global warming.  They ignored it while President Bush
    frayed our relationships with our international allies over global
    warming.  They ignored it while the committee crafted an energy
    policy that exacerbates global warming and they continue to ignore
    it as evidence piles up about the severity of the situation.
    Instead, we spend our time attacking climate researchers who have
    infuriated the oil lobby by contributing to our knowledge of this
    issue, and apparently that is the one thing that the Majority
    simply cannot ignore.  My time is just about expired, and we have a
    vote on the House floor.  I thank the witnesses for their testimony
    and Dr. North for responding to my questions.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Mr. Chairman, we have 8 minutes to vote on
    the floor.  Would you like to start your questions and come--
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  I would recommend that we recess and let
    us go vote, give our witnesses a chance to have a personal convenience
    break and then come back.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  We have two votes on the floor.  The first
    vote will be over in about 10 minutes and then we will have another
    one, so we will reconvene at about 12:15.
    	[Recess.]
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  At this time I recognize the Chairman for
    his 10 minutes of questions.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  I appreciate the
    courtesy and I appreciate our witnesses here today.  My first
    question is a personal question to you, Dr. Wegman, and it is not
    normally one that I would even think about asking but there has
    been some attempt to portray you as a pawn of this committee or me
     personally.  I am told that you voted for Vice President Gore for
    president in the year 2000.  Is that correct?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  That is correct.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  So you are by no means a radical, wild-
    eyed, hard core, right wing Republican?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  No, sir.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Okay.  How often, if ever, have you been
    in Texas?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  I was in Texas in hill country a few weeks ago
    but I have been to Houston a few times, interacting in my social
    network with David Scott.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  But you are not--you and I until this
    morning have had no phone calls, no e-mails, no--
    	DR. WEGMAN.  I didn't even know what you looked like until--
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Which is a blessing for you, right?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  No, sir.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  All right.  Now, let me ask you, Dr. North,
     obviously you and I went to--I attended the school where you have
    been an illustrious professor for a number of years and I asked you
    during the break if you and I had met and you said that we had met
    on an airplane once.
    	DR. NORTH.  We had a 2-minute--a 30-second conversation.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  So you and I have had some personal
    interaction, but that is it.  Again, there is no real association in
    terms of continuing basis or anything.  When Mr. Waxman was here, he
    was asking some questions of you, Dr. North, about headlines that had
    occurred and papers that had been issued that state the possibility
    or the probability that global warming is real and it is caused by
    humans, and it is your personal opinion that global warming is real
    and that a large part of the reason it is real is because of human
    emissions of greenhouse gases.  That is a fair statement of yours?
    You need to push that button, put your microphone on.  Let the record
    show that he said yes.  But we have some headlines here that have
    been purported to be because of global warming.  Dr. North, one of
    them is that more frogs are dying as the planet warms.  Are you aware
    of that?
    	DR. NORTH.  I have heard of it.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  You have heard of that.  How about because
    of global warming, irrigation fuels warmer temperatures in
    California's central valley, are you aware of that?
    	DR. NORTH.  I have not heard of that one.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Okay.  How about the irony of global
    warming, more rain, less water?
    	DR. NORTH.  I am familiar with that idea.  I don't know if
    I have seen that headline.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Global warming could sour the wine
    industry?
    	DR. NORTH.  I don't--
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Poison ivy grows faster, bigger, more
    irritating?
    	DR. NORTH.  No, I don't--
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Global warming weakens trade winds.
    Global warming's next casualty, igloo.  Global warming could
    overwhelm storm drains.  Strange things happening to Pacific
    coast marine life.  Global warming might create lopsided planet.
    Global warming makes seas less salty.  Space ring could shade
    Earth and stop global warming.  My point is, a lot of people are
    jumping on the global warming bandwagon and there is no question it
    is serious, there is no question that eminent people like yourself
    believe the causality of human emissions.  I don't have a problem
    with that.  I mean, you pointed out in your testimony what science
    is supposed to be about.  My problem is that everybody seems to
    think that it is automatically a given and that we shouldn't even
    debate the possibility of it and we probably shouldn't debate the
    causes of it, and I think that is wrong.  That is one of the reasons
    that we are holding this hearing.
    I want to put up the digitized temperature curve number 2 that
    Dr. Wegman was referring to.  We determined that you couldn't prove
    the hockey stick by using the data points, Dr. Wegman concluded that,
    and so Mr. Waxman said well, that is okay but there are other studies
    and one of them is the study of a methodology that was not using the
     methodology that Dr. Mann used, and that is--it is kind of an S
    curve and--that is not?
    	DR. NORTH.  Figure number 2 is the one that--
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  That one right there.  Now, in that curve
    there, Dr. North, the highest point looks to me to be about the year
    1300.  Would you agree with that?
    	DR. NORTH.  Well, that is what it shows on that graphic.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Okay.  But it is definitely higher than
    the 1900s.
    	DR. NORTH.  Higher than--I think that curve goes up to the
    middle of the 20th Century although I am not sure.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  But it is obvious--I am not saying that
    is the truth, okay, but I am saying, if that is a justification for
    global warming in that particular study, which I believe is
    purported to be a Crowley study, that is using average temperatures,
    that that particular graph shows the warmest period was somewhere
    between 1100 and 1400.  Is that correct?
    	DR. NORTH.  Well, that is what the curve shows.  I cannot
    tell you where that one actually came from.  We used a graphic like
    that in our report just to give some perspective about how people
    thought the curve looked 15 year ago, 16 years ago, so we used a
    graphic like that.  I believe you have replotted it here.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Now--
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Let me be precise.  This is a curve from the
    IPCC 1990 report.
    	DR. NORTH.  Sixteen years ago.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Okay.  And let us go to the study--there
    is a comparison in Dr. Wegman's testimony of the Mann report and I
    believe this curve.  There are two--keep going.  There are two
    documents--yes--no, not that one.
    	DR. NORTH.  Number 4 and 5, I think.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Well, my question is, something happened
    between the chart that we up here that showed the early 1300s being
    the warmest period and Dr. Mann's study that obviously shows the
    20th Century, and my question is, what changed in the modeling or
    the methodology or the data set?  Because Dr. Mann wipes out that
    early warming period.  It is just not there.
    	DR. NORTH.  Is that for me?
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  It could be for either one of you.
    	DR. NORTH.  Well, there is more data available 10 years later
    than there was in that first report.  In fact, I have a feeling that
    that first report--I hope you will ask Crowley that later because I
    think he will know more about it than--
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Well, is it now the consensus of the
    majority of the scientific community that this early warming period
    just didn't exist?
    	DR. NORTH.  No, I think that there is good evidence that such
    a medieval warm period did exist, however, it may not have existed at
    the same time at different locations on the Earth, and I could give
    you some information about that.  For example, if you look in
    Greenland, there was a very distinct warming period in that time
    around--between 1000 and 1200.  In fact, there were colonies of
    people who lived there from Denmark and their civilization
    disappeared there.  They went back to Denmark or died out, I am not
    sure which.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  But I mean, it is striking--
    	DR. NORTH.  So there is evidence, historical and so on, that--
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  It is on page 15 of your report, and I have
    the prepublication copy.  You have the figure 03 at the top and then
    you have the figure 04 at the bottom.  Oh three is a schematic
    description of global warming that is the IPCC report of 1990 and
    then the 04 figure is the Mann graph, and it is just striking to me
    that there is no correlation between the two, or very little.
    	DR. NORTH.  Oh, actually, if you look at the gray area in
    the Mann graph, that is the area where the curve could fall with
    some reasonable probability.  That is their error margin.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Let me ask you--
    	DR. NORTH.  If you look at the family of our curves that I
    showed in our graphic, the family of curves that were derived by
    using several different methods and different sources, you find that
     that family of curves really does fall pretty close to where the
    gray is here, especially if you put margins of error on each of
    those comparable to these.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Let me ask you--
    	DR. NORTH.  And we would dispute how accurately Mann and
    company did that.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  I understand that.
    	DR. NORTH.  That is another matter.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  I understand that.  It looks like my time
    is expired, so I want to ask one more question.  Dr. North, do you
    dispute the conclusions or the methodology of Dr. Wegman's report?
    	DR. NORTH.  No, we don't.  We don't disagree with their
    criticism.  In fact, pretty much the same thing is said in our
    report.  But again, just because the claims are made, doesn't
    mean they are false.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  I understand that you can have the right
    conclusion and that it not be--
    	DR. NORTH.  It happens all the time in science.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Yes, and not be substantiated by what you
    purport to be the facts but have we established--we know that
    Dr. Wegman has said that Dr. Mann's methodology is incorrect.  Do
    you agree with that?  I mean, it doesn't mean Dr. Mann's
    conclusions are wrong, but we can stipulate now that we have--and if
    you want to ask your statistician expert from North Carolina that
    Dr. Mann's methodology cannot be documented and cannot be verified
    by independent review.
    	DR. NORTH.  Do you mind if he speaks?
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Yes, if he would like to come to the
    microphone.
    	MR. BLOOMFIELD.  Thank you.  Yes, Peter Bloomfield.  Our
    committee reviewed the methodology used by Dr. Mann and his coworkers
    and we felt that some of the choices they made were inappropriate.
    We had much the same misgivings about his work that was documented
    at much greater length by Dr. Wegman.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  If I may interrupt just one minute.  We
    didn't swear you in so I want you to swear now that the testimony you
    gave was the truth.
    	[Witness sworn]
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Thank you.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  I would like to submit for our record an
    e-mail that was received, and I would be more than willing to share
    it with the Minority if they have not seen it before.  They have it?
     It is an e-mail from Yasmin Said to Peter Spencer and it says, "To
    whom it may concern:  I have read the reports of Chairman Barton and
    Chairman Whitfield entitled "ad hoc committee report on the hockey
    stick global climate reconstruction by Edward J. Wegman, David Scott,
    and Yasmin H. Said" and what follows this work of Wegman, Scott, and
    Said is simply referred to as Report.  The assessment of previous
    results given in the Report is correct.  The Report is entirely
    correct in stating that the most rudimentary additive model, the
    model of a simple temperature signal with superimposed noise, is
    not adequate to describe the complex relationships involved in
    climate dynamics.  There is no physical process found in nature
    that does not involve feedback in one form or another to regulate
     the action of the system.  The statistical methods and models
    described in the report use more variables and make possible the
    construction of more elaborate reconstructions that allow feedback
    and interactions.  The report represents the correct way to proceed.
     It is especially important to bring the professional statistical
    community into the picture in order to assure that a sound
    analytical foundation is secured in the continuing development of
    this program.  Sincerely, Enders A. Robinson, member of the National
    Academy of the USA, fellow of the European Academy of Scientists,
    professor emeritus and the Maurice Ewing and J. Lamar Rozelle,
    Chair, Department of Earth and Environment, Columbia University."
    And I yield back.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Thank you.  At this time I recognize Mr. Inslee.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Wait a minute.  Did we accept this e-mail that
    was read into the record, or what?
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Well, he asked for unanimous consent if you
    all--do you have an objection to it?
    	MR. STUPAK.  Well, let us object for now.  We will ask some
    questions of it later.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  They object to it being entered until they
    clarify a few things with that.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  But they had the document.  I don't want
    them to accept it if they have not seen it.  I was told that they had
    seen it.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  We were told that you all had it last night
    but is that not--
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  But certainly we don't want to put anything
    in that hadn't been cleared.  Mr. Chairman, they have every right to
    object if they haven't seen it.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Well, while they are discussing it,
    Mr. Inslee, why don't you proceed with your questions.
    	MR. INSLEE.  Thank you.  Dr. Wegman, can you cite to us the
    first three laws of thermodynamics?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Probably not.
    	MR. INSLEE.  And you shouldn't be ashamed of that because you
    are a statistician, not a physicist.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  That is correct.
    	MR. INSLEE.  But it is important for us to talk about that
    in the context of some things I want to ask you.  Because I believe
    reviewing the literature, and I spent some time doing this, it is
    beyond any reasonable doubt that there is a strong worldwide
    scientific consensus that human activities are putting carbon
    dioxide and other global warming pollutants in the air in a way
    that is changing our climate in fundamental ways.  I want to ask
    you some questions about your testimony here today.  I want to
    refer you to a chart that is up on the screen to your left, and it
    shows concentrations of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere
    going back 160,000 years and basically what it shows is that the
     concentrations now which are in the lower right-hand circle are
    higher than they have been in any time in the last 160,000 years.
    They also show that those concentrations of carbon dioxide will go
    up approximately doubling in the next century by the year 2100
    unless this Congress pulls its head out of the sand and does
    something about it.  Now, the question I want to ask you, these
    carbon dioxide samples are beyond dispute because of direct
    physical measurement of old air trapped in glaciers and that they
    are not subject to any scientific doubt whatsoever.  Neither as far
    as I know is there any question but that the carbon dioxide levels
    will significantly increase in the order of doubling of pre-
    industrial times in the next century if we do not act.  So the
    question I ask you, is anything in your criticism of the Mann
    report in any way suggests that those conclusions I just stated to
    you that are reflected on this graph regarding carbon dioxide levels
    are faulty?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  No, I don't believe they are.
    	MR. INSLEE.  So if you accept the first three laws of
    thermodynamics and basic chemistry and our ability to judge CO2
    levels and if you accept the premise that carbon dioxide in the
    atmosphere has the capacity of essentially trapping heat in the
    energy system of the Earth--by the way, do you accept that
    proposition?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  I don't know about the second proposition.  I do
    not know the mechanisms for trapping heat.
    	MR. INSLEE.  Well, I will just tell you, the mechanisms of
    carbon dioxide essentially traps heat in infrared range of a
    frequency.  Light comes in an ultraviolet range, it bounces back in
    an--not really bounces back but emitted in an infrared range and
    carbon dioxide traps it.  It traps it like a blanket, as a crude
    metaphor.  Now, what we know beyond a shadow of a doubt is that
    carbon dioxide in the next century is going to be at levels double
    any time in the last 160,000 years and double what it was in pre-
    industrial times.  Now, does your criticism of Dr. Mann's research
    in any way suggest that it would not be a good idea to reduce our
    carbon dioxide loading into the atmosphere?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  My expertise does not extend to global warming
    and I have no position on this.
    	MR. INSLEE.  Well, I think that is important for you to say
    that because what we are finding here is that there is this enormous
    worldwide consensus.  I look at the joint academy statement--this is
    a joint academy statement of every science academy in the
    industrialized world and every single one of them state that it is
    a consensus that human activity is causing changes to the climate.
    I will just read directly.  "It is likely that most of the warming
    in recent decades can be attributed to human activities.  This
    warming has already led to changes in the Earth's climate."  It is
    signed by Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom,
    Russia, China, Brazil, and the National Academy of Sciences under
    the administration of George Bush.  Now, I guess the question to
    you is, do you have any reason to believe all those academies should
    change their conclusion because of your criticism of one report?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Of course not.
    	MR. INSLEE.  Why not?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Because my report was very specific on a very
    specific issue that was asked of me and we answered that very
    specific question.
    	MR. INSLEE.  Well, let me suggest another reason.  The
    reason you don't suggest these academies are wrong is because they
    have a mountain of evidence from ice core data, through glacier
    data, to ocean acidification, to radar data, to surface and deep
    ocean temperature data that indicate that this world is changing
    because we are putting too much carbon dioxide in it.  Isn't that
    right?  That is why you are not suggesting they change their report.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Well, there is the old statistical process that
    says association does not mean causation.
    	MR. INSLEE.  Well, there is another statistical by Mark
    Twain is that there are three kinds of lies:  lies, damn lies, and
    statistics, but I won't bring that one up.  I want to ask--
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Of course, he is not a statistician either.
    	MR. INSLEE.  Dr. North, I want to quote--in your testimony
    you said, "However, our reservations with some aspects of the
    original papers by Mann et al. should not be construed as evidence
     that our committee does not believe that the climate is warming and
    will continue to warm as a result of human activities."  You go on
    to say, "The scientific consensus regarding human-induced global
     warming would not be substantively altered if for example the
    global mean surface temperature 1,000 years ago was found to be was
    warm as it is today."  Now, in listening to your testimony, what I
    take from this is that even if we were to conclude that Dr. Mann
    had never been born, the study had never been done, conclude even
    if there was a medieval warming period that approximated
    temperatures today, even if we were to accept that as a verity,
    even if we knew that today, what I am hearing your testimony tell
    us is that there is enough evidence of other methods and other
    dynamics at work in the climate today that we can with a reasonable
    degree of assurance conclude that humans are responsible for at
    least a portion of the changes in temperatures.  Is that a fair
    statement?
    	DR. NORTH.  Well, let me separate myself from the report
    now.  I believe that is true but we didn't address that issue in
    the report.
    	MR. INSLEE.  And could you at least in summary fashion tell
    us about the other evidence that leads to your conclusion other than
    Dr. Mann's?
    	DR. NORTH.  Well, let me mention a few things that my
    colleague on the committee, Kurt Cuffey from the University of
    California-Berkeley sent.  So this is a little about the medieval
    warm period.  It takes a couple minutes so I apologize for that.
    So Greenland shows a clear signal of both medieval warmth and 20th
    Century warming.  These are recorded unambiguously in isotopes and
    boreholes, nothing to do with this extrapolation method.  The
    medieval was warmer than the 20th Century up to about 1990, but you
     know it has warmed quite a bit in the last 15 years, so another
    piece of evidence is Ellesmere Island.  This is in the Canadian
    Arctic and there is an icecap there.  It also shows evidence of a
    medieval warm period and 20th Century warming and the isotopes and
    melt records.  The melt in particular shows summertime warmth in
    the 20th Century was greater than the medieval warm period, so
    there is that one.  The composite of all available low latitude--
    this is Tibet and the Andes and there is things in Africa,
    Kilimanjaro.  Ice core, isotope records show the 20th Century
    climate is truly anomalous on the time scale of 2,000 years.  This
    is an objective quantitative measure of climate arising from
    physical processes.  We cannot, however, separate a pure
    temperature signal from it because these glaciers are influenced
    by both moisture availability and temperature because hydrology is
    important too.  All we can say is that the sum of the climate
    processes determining the isotope records have reached an anomalous
    state.  One more--two more.  Melt at the summit of Quelccaya--this
    is a big icecap in the Andes, the largest Andean icecap--was strong
    enough in the late 20th Century to destroy annual layering of
    isotopes which did not happen during the medieval period. Now, the
     tropics are a very interesting place to look at climate.  They are
    probably a little more representative of the global average, not
    as much natural variability in the tropics.  So we had melting
    recently in the Quelccaya glacier but it didn't happen in the
    medieval warm period.
    	MR. INSLEE.  Doctor, I want to ask one quick question. My
    time is almost up.
    	DR. NORTH.  I am sorry.
    	MR. INSLEE.  Put the slide up on the acidification, Tracy,
    that one right there if I can.  Doctor, I made reference to
    acidification that is taking place in our oceans as a result of
    carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere, then going into solution
     in the oceans.  Could you briefly summarize that dynamic and what
    the state of our knowledge is about that?
    	DR. NORTH.  I am not an expert on this.  I have seen the
    report and the essence is that as we increase carbon dioxide in the
     atmosphere, the carbon dioxide of course dissolves in seawater
    just as it does in Pepsi-Cola, so the greater the partial pressure
    of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the more that will be
    dissolved in the ocean and then you wind up with--by combining with
     other things, you wind up with a more acidic ocean so the pH of the
    ocean goes down, becomes more acidic.  This attacks the corals and
    other things.  So there could be something going on with aquatic
    life.  Again, we are really pretty far away from--
    	MR. INSLEE.  And is that independent of temperature issues?
    	DR. NORTH.  That is independent of temperature.
    	MR. INSLEE.  So even if temperature doesn't go up, this
    dynamic can acidify the ocean?
    	DR. NORTH.  That has been happening and I presume will
    continue to happen.
    	MR. INSLEE.  Thank you.  Well, we would like to change that
    actually.  Some of us have ideas about that.
    	DR. NORTH.  That is not my job.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Mrs. Blackburn, you are recognized for
    10 minutes.
    	MRS. BLACKBURN.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you all
    for your patience as we work through our votes today.  Dr. Wegman,
    I have got three quick questions for you and Dr. North, I have got,
    I think one probably for you and I am going to try to finish so
    everyone gets their questions in before the next vote.  But
    Dr. Wegman, you said in your testimony that Dr. Mann's data is very
    obscure, incomplete, and disorganized, and I wanted you to expand
    on that and give us an example of how that data should have been
    presented, if you have something tangible.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Well, I had two things in mind.  First of all,
    when I read the paper originally, it took me probably 10 times to
    read it to really understand what he was trying to say.  He uses
    phrases that are not standard in the literature I am familiar
    with.  He uses, for example, the phrase "statistical skill" and I
    floated that phrase by a lot of my statistical colleagues and
    nobody had ever heard of that phrase, statistical skill.  He uses
    measures of quality of fit that are not focused on the kind of
    things typically we do.  We went to his website to try and figure
    out where his data was.  He has a website at the University of
    Virginia.  We basically downloaded everything that was in his
    FTP website to try and gather together--try and understand what
    was going on.  The materials tended to be very cryptic.  When we
    looked at the Fortran code that he wrote, it was very difficult
    to understand how you could, in the Fortran code you read in the
    data, but it was unclear where the data was and how you could
    actually read it in and the coding of the data, so all those
    things tended to make it very difficult to try and replicate anything
    that he did.  Ultimately, I believe it was in 2004, he published a
    corrigendum and it showed that some of the data that he used in
    the 1998 paper was not referenced in the 1998 paper and other
    material that he did reference in the 1998 paper was not actually
    used.  So there was a lack of clarity in both the archived data as
    well as the writing of the appear itself that I found difficult to
    decipher.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Will the gentlelady yield just for--
    	MRS. BLACKBURN.  I will yield.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  When you said his data was in Fortran
    	code, what is Fortran code?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Fortran is a computer programming language that
    	was invented in 1957.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  And when was the last time anybody else
    	than Dr. Mann used that code?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Well, I suspect--
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  I knew it at Texas A&M in the 1960s and I
    	had not heard the term and I wanted to make sure we were
    	talking the same--
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Well, certainly programming languages have
    	evolved dramatically over the years.  Most of my colleagues
    	use a software package called RS Plus.  Many people use Mat
    	Lab these days.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  The Fortran code is not something that
    	would be normally used today by too many people?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  I would think in certain circles it might be
    	but it is reflective of the notion that there aren't--
    	DR. NORTH.  Most climate models do use Fortran code.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Oh, they do?
    	DR. NORTH.  Yes.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  So that is standard?
    	DR. NORTH.  It is standard in mathematical solution of these
    	kinds of problems, not statistics.  He is right about that.
    	So Mat Lab is coming on but Fortran is very commonly used
    	in large climate model work.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Well, then I should be able to do some of
    	this because I can code in Fortran.  I yield back.
    	MRS. BLACKBURN.  Dr. Wegman, I still want to come to you.
    	So what you are saying is that he--I want to go back to one
    	thing on the data that he chose to input on the website, he
    	was selective in the nature of what he chose to put in there
    	and I guess that is much like what we saw with the
    	calibration issue over the years that he used in that--
    	DR. WEGMAN.  There were a large number of proxies that were
    	used in the 1998 and 1999 papers.  As a matter of fact, it
    	probably wasn't very selective.  He essentially threw
    	everything including the kitchen sink into this data set.
    	MRS. BLACKBURN.  I want to ask you a question that Dr. Crowley
    	makes a statement in his testimony that was submitted to us,
    	that the data is reused, Dr. Mann's data is reused because
    	it is the best data.  But you say that other papers cannot
    	claim to be independent verification if they reuse the same
    	data.  So I would like for you to speak to that and kind of
    	reconcile the differing views.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Well, in one of our plots we had a plot that
    	showed the data that was being used as the proxies versus
    	the 11 or 12 papers that had been published since 1998 and
    	the striking thing is, I think, that essentially there are
    	two methodologies that we talked about, the CPS methodology
    	and the CFR methodology, and my contention is that if you
    	use the same data and the same basic methodology, you can--
    		MRS. BLACKBURN.  Then following on with that, if you
    		were to structure an external statistical review for
    		climate papers that would guarantee to be an
    		independent verification of methods used, how would
    		you structure this?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Well, I think there are a couple of approaches.
    	One of the analogies I kind of liked was that the folks that
    	do the hockey stick kind of thing call themselves--I think
    	they call themselves the hockey team and when games are
    	being played, you also need referees, so I think it would
    	be a good idea to have referees for the hockey games.  My
    	own feeling is that it would be useful as we said in one of
    	our recommendations that there be an external review and
    	that it be funded as part of this kind of activity.  If you
    	have significant statistical methodology being used in a
    	scientific study, then you really ought to have statistical
    	review as well as the peer paleoclimate review.  I think
    	this extends beyond just paleoclimate stuff.  It is true,
    	for example, in biostatistics, biological science, medical
    	science, that there is typically a heavy involvement with
    	statistical review.  I think in terms of things like
    	sociology, psychology, there is heavy involvement with
    	statisticians in this kind of framework.  It appears to me
    	that in the physical sciences, the same mental set is not
    	typically done.
    	MRS. BLACKBURN.  Thank you.  Dr. North, I have got a couple
    	of quick questions on surface records and satellite
    	measurements that I want to give to you but I have only got
    	a minute and a half left and I think I will submit these to
    	you and then ask for your response, and Mr. Chairman, I
    	will yield back so somebody else can get their questions on
    	the record before we go for another vote.
    	MR. WHITFIELD. Thank you, Mrs. Blackburn.  At this time I
    	recognize Mr. Stupak.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  Dr. Wegman, in your
    	report you criticized Dr. Mann for not obtaining any
    	feedback or review from mainstream statisticians.  In
    	compiling your report, did you obtain any feedback or
    	review from paleoclimatologists?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  No, of course not, but we weren't addressing
    	paleoclimate issues.  We were addressing--
    	MR. STUPAK.  But you said you had difficulty understanding
    	some of the terms of art that Dr. Mann used and you had to
    	call your social network to figure it out so wouldn't it
    	have been helpful to have paleoclimatologists?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  To say that I didn't contact any climate
    	people is not entirely accurate.  We have--
    	MR. STUPAK.  But they weren't used in compiling your
    	report--that was the question--correct?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Well, I am not sure how to answer that.  I
    	certainly--
    	MR. STUPAK.  Well, yes or no is probably the best way.
    	Did you have any paleoclimatologists when you compiled
    	your report?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Not on our team, but that doesn't mean I
    	didn't talk to any.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Did anyone outside your social network peer
    	review your report?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Yes.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Who was that?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Well, Enders Robinson.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Is that the e-mail we were talking about
    	earlier?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Pardon?
    	MR. STUPAK.  Is that the e-mail that was--
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Yes.  So--
    	MR. STUPAK.  When you do peer review--
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Let me answer the question.  Enders Robinson,
    	Grace Waba, who is a member of the National Academy, Noel
    	Cressy, who is at the Ohio State University, Bill Wasorik,
    	who is at Buffalo State SUNY, David Banks, who is at Duke
    	University, Rich Schareen is the immediate past president
    	of the American Statistical--
    	MR. STUPAK.  Let me ask you this question.  If you had a
    	peer review, when are peer reviews usually done?  Before
    	a report is finalized or after?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  We had submitted this and had feedback from-
    	-
    	MR. STUPAK.  No, no, I am talking about general peer
    	review.  If you are going to have a peer review, don't
    	you usually do it before you finalize your report?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Yes.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Well, your peer review was after you
    	finalized it?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  No, it was before.  We submitted this long
    	before.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Well, when was your report finalized?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  I think we dated the final copy about
    	4 days ago.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Four days ago, so that would be about
    	July 15.  This e-mail sort of indicates it is July 17
    	that you asked for this peer review.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  I had feedback from Enders much earlier
    	han that.  We had asked him to send material to us for
    	purposes of coming here.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Well, the e-mail read into the record is
    	Tuesday, July 18, so that would be 3 days after you
    	finalized your report.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  I am sorry.  We--
    	MR. STUPAK.  Have you seen this e-mail, the one that--
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Yes, of course I have.  Dr. Robinson saw
    	our material before the 18th, before the 17th, before
    	the 16th.  He gave us feedback.  We incorporated that.
    	He gave us feedback verbally.  We incorporated that
    	because there was some interest in getting this report
    	to the committee.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Would my friend from Michigan yield
    	for one simple question on this same point?
    	MR. STUPAK.  Sure.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Dr. Wegman, do you object to
    	Mr. Stupak or anybody in the Minority submitting your
    	report for a peer review as long as the peers are
    	qualified in statistical analysis?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Not at all.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Thank you.
    	MR. STUPAK.  In doing peer reviews, do scientists who
    	do the report, do they usually submit to people they
    	want to do the peer review?  Isn't that sort of an
    	independent review?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  This is basically the same mechanism that
    	was used at the National Academy.  The national--you
    	know, this is not a--
    	MR. STUPAK.  Did you ask these people to do your peer
    	review?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Yes.
    	MR. STUPAK.  So would they be part of your social
    	network?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  No.  When I talk about social network, I am
    	talking about people with whom I have actively
    	collaborated in writing research papers.
    	MR. STUPAK.  It sounds--
    	DR. WEGMAN.  None of these people have actively
    	collaborated with me in writing research papers.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Isn't the same kind of social network you
    	criticized Dr. Mann on because the people that reviewed
    	his were paleoclimatologists?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Were the people that had actually worked with
    	and published papers with.
    	MR. STUPAK.  And you have published papers with some of these
    	people that peer reviewed your report?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  No.  I just told you no, I haven't.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Let me ask you this.  Page 34 of your report, I
    	think you have it in front of you, your 52-page summary there,
    	you have a figure that you say is a digitized version of the
    	temperature profile in the IPCC assessment report of 1990.  I
    	take it you read the 1990 IPCC report?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  I am sorry.  What page was it?
    	MR. STUPAK.  Page 34 of your report.  It is figure 4-5.  It
    	is this one right here.  We have had some--it has been
    	referred to as figure 2 on the screen a couple times today.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  No, I have not been able to obtain a copy of the
    	1990 report.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Well, then you must have at least discussed this
    	temperature profile.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  The temperature profile that was published in
    	1990 I believe was related to the European temperatures and
    	was a cartoon--essentially a cartoon.  The point of our
    	discussion here was not that we were trying to say that this
    	was what happened in 1990.  The point of our discussion was
    	that you could reproduce this shape from the CPF, CFP and the
    	climate plus--whatever--CPS methodology so we are not
    	endorsing that this was the temperature that was thought of
    	in 1990.  We are simply using this as an example.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Were you endorsing 1300 as being a real high
    	temperature time?  Were you endorsing it in your report?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  No, we have not said that.
    	MR. STUPAK.  What was the 1990 IPCC temperature profile based
    	on?  Basically what was this based on?  You are a statistician.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  This--
    	MR. STUPAK.  Was this based on data?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  As I just said moments ago, this was a cartoon I
    	believe that was supposed to be representing a consensus
    	opinion of what global temperature was like in 1990 as
    	published by the IPCC.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Well, is this cartoon then--again, I am on page
    	34, I am reading now from your report, discussion you have
    	underneath this cartoon.  Last line:  "The 1990 report was
    	not predicated on global warming scenario.  It is clear at
    	least in 1990 the medieval warm period was thought to have
    	temperatures considerably warmer than the present era."  Is
    	that your discussion?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Yes.
    	MR. STUPAK.  So we should not believe that statement then?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  No, I said--I didn't say I believed it was.  I
    	said they believed it was.  The IPCC gave that report in 1990.
    	MR. STUPAK.  All right.  This chart--
    	DR. WEGMAN.  I didn't--
    	MR. STUPAK.  This is in your executive summary, right, page 34,
    	and what I read was correct?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Yes.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Okay.  Let me ask you this question.  Have you
    	reviewed any of Mr. Mann's later refinements of his 1999
    	report?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  I have reviewed some level of detail, not in
    	intense level of detail, the continuing papers, most of which
    	are referenced--in fact, the ones that are referenced--
    	MR. STUPAK.  Did he refine his data and his methodology?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  My take on the situation is that rather than accept
    	the criticism that was leveled, he rallied the wagons around
    	and tried to defend this incorrect methodology.
    	MR. STUPAK.  But did he refine his methods in later studies
    	that he conducted, not whether he rallied the troops?  Did
    	he refine his methods?  Was his job more accurate as he went
    	on with later reports?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  I believe that he does not acknowledge his
    	fundamental mistake and that he has developed additional
    	papers with himself and his colleagues that try and defend
    	the original hockey stick shape.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Do you know that or are you just guessing?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  I am guessing that.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Okay.  Statisticians, should they guess or
    	should they have facts to--
    	DR. WEGMAN.  That is called statistical estimation, yes.
    	MR. STUPAK.  I see.  Or a cartoon.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  The cartoon is IPCC's cartoon, not mine.
    	MR. STUPAK.  You relied upon it though in your executive
    	summary.  So I am looking at the cartoon.  There is no
    	data, is there, to say that around 1300 it warmer than it
    	is in the latter half of--
    	DR. WEGMAN.  I think that is an inaccurate statement.  I think
    	there is data.  I think the data--
    	MR. STUPAK.  Do you have any of it?  Can you show us where any
    	of that is?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  No, I don't have it.  I take no responsibility for
    	what IPCC did in 1990.  There is no way I could do that.  Their
    	data is not available to me.  In fact, the reason it was
    	digitized was that I had to go back and construct it from their
    	picture.  That doesn't mean no data exist.  And in fact, as far
    	as I know, it was based on European and Asian temperature
    	profiles that were available in the 1990s.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Sure, and in that, it was thought--it was still not
    	clear that all the fluctuations indicated were truly global.
    	In fact, I think some of the testimony earlier said that parts
    	of western Europe, China, Japan, and eastern U.S.A. were a few
    	degrees warmer in July than other parts of the world.  Parts of
    	Australia, Chile, and I think Greenland were actually cooler,
    	they said, and China was actually colder than at any other time.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Yes, I don't dispute that.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  The gentleman's time has expired.  I recognize
    	Mr. Bass.
    	MR. BASS.  And I thank the gentleman for recognizing me.  Before
    	I start my questions, I just want to mention that there is a
    	considerable amount of climate change work going underway in
    	New Hampshire, my home state of New Hampshire, the Cold Research
    	Laboratory which is run by the Army Corps of Engineers.  They
    	are studying ice core samples from both the Arctic and the
    	Antarctic icecaps and also at the University of New Hampshire.
    	NOAA, National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration is
    	conducting ongoing longitudinal studies on the North Atlantic,
    	air, water temperatures.  And thirdly, at Hubbard Brook which
    	is another research lab, they are studying climate change
    	effect on trees and plants and other organic matter.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Could the gentleman yield while--
    	MR. BASS.  Yes.  Sure.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Dr. North, Mr. Stupak just went to some
    	lengths discussing this chart on page 34 of Dr. Wegman's report
    	that is from the IPCC assessment report of 1990.  Can you tell
    	us what the IPCC assessment report of 1990 was?
    	DR. NORTH.  The IPCC is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
    	Change.  It is under the auspices of the United Nations and I
    	don't know the network all the way down to this group but this
    	is a group that meets and is tasked to come up with a report
    	every 5 years approximately.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  But in layman's terms, could we say that
    	the IPPC--
    	DR. NORTH.  No, IPCC.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  IPCC is the technical working group for
    	the United Nations council of parties that ultimately
    	drafted the Kyoto Accords?
    	DR. NORTH.  I don't know if there is a connection. I just
    	don't know that.  I am sorry.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  It is my understanding that the IPCC is
    	the group that prepared all the analytical materials and
    	forwarded them on--
    	DR. NORTH.  They may have used their information.  The
    	IPCC, their job is to provide assessments, so Congress,
    	political bodies go to them and ask for an assessment of
    	the state of the art or the state of the science at the
    	particular time as it is seen at that time.  Of course, it
    	changes so they came out again in 1995 and again in 2000
    	and there will soon be another one issued.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  But in 1990 when these scientists produced
    	that report, this was their assessment of temperatures between
    	the year 1000 and the mid-1950s?
    	DR. NORTH.  That is what they thought at that time.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  It doesn't mean they were right, it doesn't
    	mean that they haven't changed their mind.
    	DR. NORTH.  That is why--
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  But in 1990 the state of the art was,
    	that is what--
    	DR. NORTH.  That is what they thought.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  That is what it was.  I yield back.
    	MR. BASS.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  Dr. Karl is going to
    	follow you in the second panel and I will read a sentence out
    	of his testimony and ask you a question about it, the last
    	page.  "At the present time there is no formal process whereby
    	federally funded scientists must submit their data to a
    	long-term data archive facility for use by others.  The
    	submission of data to institutions like NOAA's, national
    	climatic data center, the world's paleoclimatic data center,
    	requires significant investment of time by the principal
    	investigators who collected the data to provide the useful
    	information about the proxy data to the receiving data center.
    	In addition, if such data are submitted, a significant
    	investment by the data center would need to be made to ensure
    	that the data is usable by others in perpetuity and safeguards
    	for future generations," and then he goes on about
    	discussions.  Dr. North, do you think this is an appropriate
    	priority, and if so, do you think it would require any
    	legislative action?  What are your observations about Dr.
    	Karl?  And I think Dr. Wegman made the same contention.  How
    	do you feel about it, Dr. North?
    	DR. NORTH.  Before I say anything, I should say that I know
    	Dr. Karl and I have actually collaborated with him on some
    	things, so that is a fact.  I visited his laboratory, his
    	center in Asheville, which is a very nice operation there.
    	So I do think it is a good idea.  I think it is something
    	that the Government through a national laboratory like his
    	should take on.  I think this is too much for the little
    	principal investigator out at your university or mine to
    	deal with.  So this is a way that data like this can be
    	archived in a nice, clean environment.  At Texas A&M, for
    	example, we have the ocean drilling program and so we store
    	these cores there that have been dug and they are carefully
    	archived and protected and so I think that different
    	laboratories should be charged with that kind of duty instead
    	of having every little PI's home base, so I do think it is a
    	good idea.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Would the gentleman yield on that?
    	MR. BASS.  Certainly.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  I just think the record should show that
    	when I was Congressman for Texas A&M, I helped get the money
    	to establish that program and I am responsible for some of
    	those core samples.
    	DR. NORTH.  And I work with some of those people--
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  I want the record to show that.
    	MR. BASS.  Reclaiming my time.  I might suggest that this
    	concept might be a starting point for some bipartisan
    	cooperation legislatively if necessary to achieve this
    	objective which would move the issue forward.  Dr. Wegman,
    	there has been some discussion about the network issues
    	associated with paleoclimatologists.  Is it substantially
    	different than--you know, the incestuous nature of the
    	relationships between the paleoclimatologists.  Do you think
    	that it is the same or is different from other academic
    	subjects?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  I don't know all of the academic subjects.  What
    	is true, I believe, is that in less focused activities,
    	there are probably more competing social networks which
    	even the playing field a little bit more than it appears
    	to be in the paleoclimatology area.  As mentioned earlier,
    	I think for one person to have 43 coauthors is an unusually
    	large number of coauthors.  I personally believe that I
    	probably have maybe 15 people that I have worked with over
    	the years.
    	MR. BASS.  Fair enough.  Would you take--is it appropriate
    	to take into account in that analysis the size of the
    	entire climatic science community or is paleoclimatology
    	so specialized that you couldn't?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Yes.  I think one of the interesting things
    	that we will probably hear later on is the notion that
    	this paleoclimatology is really an interdisciplinary area
    	so it involves dendrology, it involves people that work
    	with trees, with ice cores and so on and so forth.  So it
    	is not totally insular in the sense that it doesn't
    	involve people from other parts of this arena.  What is
    	insular though I think is that it doesn't really involve
    	people from the areas that I call the enabling sciences
    	such as mathematics, computer science, and so on.  But I
    	think if you sort of followed the second order, third
    	order, fourth order links, you would probably get a more
    	interesting social network as well.
    	MR. BASS.  One last question, Dr. Wegman.  The National
    	Academy of Science report that was released last month
    	states the following:  "It can be said with a high level
    	of confidence that the global mean surface temperature
    	was higher during the last few decades of the 20th Century
    	than during any comparable"--during, I don't know, there
    	must be a typo here-"during the preceding four centuries."
    	Now, I understand from your testimony on the first page
    	that you want to distance yourself from the issue of
    	global warming, its causes, and its solutions, but would
    	you agree with that statement?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Yes.  I think that is a reasonably cautious
    	verifiable statement that in terms of--and I speak now not
    	as a professional statistician but as a citizen of this
    	country.  It seems to me that it is entirely reasonable to
    	say that Dr. North and his panel made an accurate
    	assessment, but it must be understood in the context which
    	is that we have relatively speaking a Little Ice Age,
    	which everybody seems to acknowledge, and so it is not so
    	surprising that it is warming if we are coming out of a
    	Little Ice Age.
    	MR. BASS.  I want to thank both of you gentlemen for your
    	testimony today and I yield back.
    	MR. WALDEN.  [Presiding]  The gentleman yields back his
    	time.  The gentlelady from Illinois, Ms. Schakowsky, is
    	recognized for 10 minutes.
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  I have so
    	many things I want to ask here.  Let me start again.
    	Dr. North, I want to confirm what I think you already said.
    	Is Dr. Mann's hockey stick study considered to be the
    	foundation on which all climate change science is based?
    	DR. NORTH.  No.
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  It isn't.  And again I want to say, if
    	it never were, if the study simply--the hockey stick, the
    	original and there was a revised in 2003-2004, right, my
    	understanding is, which I guess you disagree, Dr. Wegman,
    	acknowledged some of the mistakes and made some changes
    	but if it never did, would most scientists essentially
    	arrive at the same conclusion as we are seeing, that we
    	are engaged--that this is a time of global warming
    	attributable in large part to human activity?
    	DR. NORTH.  Yes, I think that is true.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  By the way, for what it is worth, I think it
    	is true although I would caution you to not say most
    	scientists.  Most climate scientists would probably--
    	DR. NORTH.  That is better.  Thank you.  I appreciate
    	that.
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  Okay, most climate scientists.  Should we
    	not rely on climate scientists for our information about
    	the climate?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  The point I was making was that you are saying
    	most scientists, so the testimony--
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  Well, let me ask--
    	DR. WEGMAN.  --of a chemist is irrelevant to--
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  Exactly.  So would you agree then that
    	climate scientists are those that we should primarily refer
    	to when we are asking questions about climate?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Certainly.
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  So you would agree that human activities
    	are not only increasing atmosphere greenhouse gases but that
    	it is attribute would you say in large part mostly in terms
    	of your understanding as not a climate scientist to human
    	activity?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  I am in no position to say--
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  Well, what did you say you did agree with
    	earlier?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  I said I agree that it is warming.  That is what
    	I agreed to.  I mean, I said it several times now that the
    	temperature record from 1850 onwards indicate that it is
    	warming.
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  I also had said earlier that in my question
    	to Dr. North and that most scientists agree that in large
    	part or for your purposes I will say in some part
    	attributable to human activity.  Would you agree with that?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  I don't know that for a fact.
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  Okay.  You don't know that.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Again, it is the connection between carbon
    	dioxide and temperature increase.  Now, Mr. Inslee pointed
    	out that he thinks there is a physical explanation based
    	on a blanket of carbon dioxide in the reflection.  Carbon
    	dioxide is heavier than air.  Where it sits in the
    	atmospheric profile, I don't know.  I am not an atmospheric
    	scientist to know that but presumably if the atmospheric--
    	if the carbon dioxide is close to the surface of the Earth,
    	it is not reflecting a lot of infrared back.
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  Okay.  But are you not really qualified
    	to--
    	DR. WEGMAN.  No, of course not.
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  --comment on that.  I think since we are
    	talking about scientific data, statistics, let us be clear,
    	and you are challenging a report which form what I
    	understand as Dr. North in some part at least you agree
    	with the critique of the Mann data, so--and I am certainly--
    	I am neither, but we are policymakers here so what I--do you
    	believe that your report disproves that climate change is
    	manmade in any way?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  No.
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  And since you think that you are not in a
    	position to make a decision on global warming, are you
    	uncomfortable at all, Dr. Wegman, that the consequences of
    	what you are saying today to policymakers, I think most of
    	whom, if not all of them, are neither statisticians or climate
    	scientists, could have the impact of saying we don't need to
    	do anything.  Does that make you uncomfortable at all?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  I would hope that our legislators are smarter
    	than that to know that when somebody says that they are using
    	wrong methodology, that does not imply that some fact is not
    	true.  I would hope that you would take my testimony with the
    	idea that if something is wrong with this piece of work, it
    	ought to be discarded as a policy tool, and that is precisely
    	what I am saying.
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  Well, let me ask you this.  Dr. Mann has
    	published dozens of study since the original hockey stick
    	study and as I said earlier, beginning in 2003 he reformulated
    	the statistical methods.  Do you take into account these later
    	studies in your report?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  I have read his later studies. I was not asked
    	about his later studies.  I think as science iterates, things
    	do get better, but as I indicated before, one of the
    	unfortunate aspects of this overall situation with Dr. Mann
    	and his colleagues, my attack is not an attack at all.  It
    	is simply trying to lay out what I perceive to be a true
    	statement.  I think it is unfortunate that rather than moving
    	on and saying gosh, I made a mistake and here is the better
    	situation, here is a better approach, there continues to be
    	a defense which is captured in his web log called
    	realclimate.org.
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  And I understand that there are these
    	battles and sort of the academic politics and scientific
    	politics, et cetera, but do you disagree with Dr. North that
    	even without Dr. Mann altogether or are you using these
    	social--what do you call it--to say that everything now has
    	to be discredited?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  No, I don't think everything at all has to be
    	discredited, and I think the things that do not use the
    	techniques, the flawed methodology with respect to principal
    	components, anything that doesn't use those, I have no
    	position on.
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  And you talked about the cartoon that was
    	in the Wall Street Journal article and then my understanding
    	that the graph or whatever you call this, this drawing that
    	it in your report, is it not true that it ends in 1975?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  I think that is approximately accurate.  But
    	again, I--this also appears in the National Academy report
    	as well as the Wall Street Journal.  I did not have the
    	original data for that cartoon, for that graph, and so I had
    	no way of knowing what the full range of the time frame was
    	for that.
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  And would you confirm that, Dr. North, that
    	it goes approximately or maybe exactly to 1975?
    	DR. NORTH.  It is 1975.  That is correct.
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  I am trying very hard to understand the
    	point of this hearing and this conflict because if we are
    	through many studies come to the conclusion that there is
    	such a thing is global warming, which is hard to deny on a
    	day like today and yesterday, et cetera, although I am not
    	the scientist, and that it at least in some part is caused
    	by human activity, then why we are doing this really does
    	escape me.  I can understand why in academia you may have
    	an interest in discrediting Mann and back and forth, but I
    	am very concerned that this is being used in a way to
    	discredit the whole notion that our country and the rest of
    	the industrialized and developing ought to do anything
    	about global warming, and that is why I asked you that
    	question, Dr. Wegman, if this does not make you somewhat
    	uncomfortable.  Can you see in any way how this is being
    	used and does it bother you?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Well, I can understand that it is your job to
    	sort out the political ramifications of what I have said.
    	In some sense it is not fair for you to say well, gee, you
    	have reported on some fact and that is going to be used in
    	a bad way.  The other side of the coin is that, you have
    	tried to get me to say that manmade carbon dioxide emissions
    	are associated with the global warming.
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  Which you can't, right, because you are not
    	a climate scientist.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  I cannot say that, but what I can say is that
    	from 1850 to the present time, the global temperature rise
    	is about 1.2 degrees Centigrade according to the Mann chart.
    	One point two degrees Centigrade translates to about two
    	degrees Fahrenheit.  I challenge anybody to go out and tell
    	the difference between 72 and 74 degrees Fahrenheit.  What
    	I do say and what I have said repeatedly is that you need
    	to focus on the basic science.  You need to understand what
    	the transfer of heat from the ocean to the atmosphere, how
    	that dynamic works, how the climate is going to change
    	based on the physical mechanisms, a fundamental understanding
    	of the physical mechanisms, not on some statistical
    	estimation of those signals.
    	MR. WALDEN.  The gentlelady's time has expired.  The gentleman
    	from Florida, Mr. Stearns, for 10.
    	MR. STEARNS.  I thank you, Mr. Chairman.  Let me thank both of
    	you for your patience here and how long you have been sitting.
    	We have been changing chairmen here.  They get to go but you
    	don't so we are very appreciative of what you are doing here.
    	I think you aptly replied to Ms. Schakowsky's comment that
    	basically we are trying to look at the science of this.
    	Mr. Chairman, I think it would be appropriate to put by
    	unanimous consent this Wall Street Journal article, if you
    	don't mind to put this in.  It is--
    	MR. WALDEN.  Without objection.
    	[The information follows:]

    	MR. STEARNS.  Thank you.  It talked about the hockey stick
    	hokum and it goes on to talk a little bit about Mr. Mann and
    	we all talked about it all morning but it says in 2001 the
    	IPCC replaced the first graph with a second in its third
    	report on climate change and since then this graph has cropped
    	up all over the place.  In fact, I think it is in Vice
    	President Gore's movie and I believe it is in his book,
    	"Inconvenient Truth."  On page 65 he has got the source as
    	the IPCC and then a little bit above it he talks about the
    	hockey stick, a graphic image representing the research of
    	climate scientist Michael Mann and his colleagues.  So I
    	would just say to my colleagues and Ms. Schakowsky to that it
    	is important that if a graph suddenly becomes a significant
    	graph in all these publications and shows up everywhere and
    	is used in debate to make argument, I think it is important
    	for all of us to look at this graph and I think that is all
    	Dr. Wegman is doing is to say we are looking at this graph
    	and as it turns out in this book, "An Inconvenient Truth" by
    	Vice President Gore that he is using a graph as I understand
    	it that has been established this morning that the
    	methodology and the statistical analysis of it is incorrect
    	and--
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  No, that is not--will the gentleman yield
    	for a second?
    	MR. STEARNS.  Well, let me ask--
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  Just for one second.
    	MR. WALDEN.  Just regular order.
    	MR. STEARNS.  I will be glad to do that.  Let me just ask
    	Dr. Wegman, if I have in his book the reference to the
    	hockey stick and I have reference to the IPCC, then we have
    	here a graph that you in fact are disputing because of its
    	methodology and the statistics.  Would that be a fair
    	statement?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Well, I would like to be careful in that
    	regard.
    	MR. STEARNS.  Sure.  I know.  Do you want me to bring the
    	book down and have the staff bring the book to you?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  I have one.
    	MR. STEARNS.  Oh, you have it.
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  Would the gentleman yield--
    	MR. STUPAK.  Would the gentleman yield on that point
    	then?
    	MR. STEARNS.  Well, let me just finish with my question
    	here because what I am trying to understand is, you have
    	a graph that suddenly goes everywhere and we have
    	established today that the methodology for Dr. Mann's graph
    	is questionable, so the question is, if it shows up
    	everywhere, shouldn't the American people understand that
    	some of the reference here in the book, the methodology is
    	in question?  That is all I am asking.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Would the gentleman yield on that point?
    	MR. STEARNS.  Well, let me ask--
    	MR. STUPAK.  Because if you are going to ask the
    	question--
    	MR. WALDEN.  Regular order, please.  It is the gentleman's
    	time--
    	MR. STEARNS.  I am not asking the question to you.  I am
    	asking it to Dr. Wegman, so I think, Mr. Chairman, I would
    	like to have the question asked to him and not to my fellow
    	colleagues.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Let me be precise on the statement.  There is
    	some ambiguity in this book because it talks about ice
    	cores and as I understand it, this particular--
    	MR. STEARNS.  This is on page 65.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  This particular picture--
    	MR. STEARNS.  Yeah, that is right, the same one.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  --was based on ice core studies--
    	MR. STEARNS.  But it says below, it says source, IPCC, at
    	the very little, small little note there.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Right.
    	MR. STEARNS.  Okay.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Higher on the same page in the text it talks
    	about Mann but I believe if one is going to be precise,
    	this is a piece of study based on ice cores, not on the
    	temperature reconstruction.
    	MR. STEARNS.  So we just don't know, and I think that is
    	accurate.  I am glad you pointed that out so that the reader
    	or anybody looking at this would not necessarily say that the
    	source of the IPCC is indeed Dr. Mann's hockey stick--
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  Would the gentleman yield for just a minute?
    	MR. STEARNS.  No, I am just asking Dr. Wegman--
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  Please, I can read from--I am looking at the
    	same--
    	MR. STEARNS.  You folks had your time.  I am just--
    	MR. WALDEN.  Regular order.
    	MR. STEARNS.  When I complete my thing.  So the question is,
    	he says IPCC here and he has got this graph that looks like a
    	hockey stick, you are saying that you cannot correlate that to
    	mean that it is Dr. Mann's graph?  That is what you are saying?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  I believe that is true.
    	MR. STEARNS.  Okay.  All right.  Yes, I will be glad to yield
    	to Ms. Schakowsky.
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  Thank you.  I just want to read to you from
    	that same--it says "But as Dr. Thompson's thermometer show,"
    	and so it is not based on Dr. Mann.  This is a different source
    	which our staff had confirmed with Al Gore.  I just want to
    	make--
    	MR. STEARNS.  I respect that.
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  --that point.  I know, but your question wanted
    	to reinforce the notion that this was based on this false or
    	inaccurate Dr. Mann study--
    	MR. STEARNS.  Well, I think--
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  --and it is not.
    	MR. STEARNS.  Okay.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  And I responded that it was not.
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  No, I--
    	MR. STEARNS.  Go ahead.  You respond to that.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  I responded exactly the same way you just did.
    	MR. STEARNS.  And I think that is important to realize because
    	it is showing up not just here but it is showing everywhere
    	and so it is not precise that that is Dr. Mann's graph here,
    	and that is what you have confirmed.  Now, I think the other
    	real big question that we sometimes forget is, what effect does
    	this have?  I mean, what is--you mentioned here that it could
    	be two degrees Fahrenheit from 1850 to 2006 and you say how
    	many people could know the difference between 72 degrees and
    	74.  That was your words.  The Competitive Enterprise Institute
    	put out a report and let me just read from that.  Dr. James
    	Hanson of NASA, the father of the greenhouse theory, and
    	Richard Linzen of MIT, both of them are renowned climatologists
    	in the world, agree that if nothing is done to restrict
    	greenhouse gases, the world will see a global temperature
    	increase of about one degree Centigrade in the next 50 to 100
    	years.  Hanson and his colleagues predict additional warming
    	in the next 50 years of .5 degrees Centigrade.  A warming rate
    	of .1, tenth of a percent Centigrade per decade, does that
    	seem like an accurate statistic to you?  Would you generally
    	agree with that or disagree?  I know it is difficult but--
    	DR. WEGMAN.  I have no way of truly knowing.
    	MR. STEARNS.  But I mean, if you say in the last 156 years we
    	have only had two degrees Fahrenheit, I mean, this would
    	confirm that this is not something that is out of control.
    	Wouldn't you say that basically--my point I am trying to
    	establish is, that the estimates of this future warming should
    	not get us into a hysterical mode.  I know--
    	DR. WEGMAN.  I would tend to concur but what I would also say
    	is that the global average temperature is probably not a very
    	good measure of global warming in the sense that, as I said
    	before, ocean circulation, salinity, how the Gulf current
    	subducts when it gives up its heat in the Northern Hemisphere,
    	understanding the coupling of that to the atmosphere seems to
    	me to be the scientific issue at hand that really ought to be
    	investigated more thoroughly.
    	MR. STEARNS.  Also in this Competitive Enterprise Institute,
    	the question came up, and Mr. Waxman mentioned a whole group
    	of scientists, renowned scientists, that said that we are into
    	a global warming and in this report it says, "What do
    	scientists agree on and they agree that global average
    	temperature is about .6 degrees Celsius or just over one degree
    	Fahrenheit higher than it was a century ago.  Atmospheric
    	levels of carbon dioxide have risen by about 30 percent over
    	the 200 years and carbon dioxide like water vapor is a
    	greenhouse gas whose increase is likely to warm the Earth's
    	atmosphere."  Is that generally you think accurate?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  As far I know, yes.
    	MR. STEARNS.  But is there in your opinion a scientific
    	consensus that global warming is real and bad for us?  Could
    	you say categorically, both you and Dr. North today, that
    	there is a scientific consensus and evidence that global warming
    	is bad and we should be very concerned about it?  That is a
    	tough question, I know.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  I believe there is a consensus that global
    	warming is real.  My friends in Finland think it is a great
    	thing.
    	MR. STEARNS.  And your friends here in the United States
    	don't.  Would that be fair to say?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Well--
    	MR. STEARNS.  I mean, that it is occurring but it is not as
    	significant the people that are out there saying we have
    	got to do something tomorrow, we have got to do something,
    	do something.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  I think it is probably less urgent than some
    	would have it be.
    	MR. STEARNS.  Dr. North, I am going to give you a few
    	moments, unless you want to--you don't have to say anything.
    	DR. NORTH.  Well, my feeling is that it is happening but I
    	don't do good or bad.
    	MR. STEARNS.  Let me just conclude, Mr. Chairman, just by
    	saying that Dr. Wegman said that in the last 156 years it
    	has gone up just about two degrees Fahrenheit and so I don't
    	really think we are into a very, very serious concern that
    	we all should be worried about getting overly hot tomorrow.
    	MR. WALDEN.  The gentleman's time has expired.  The
    	gentlelady from Wisconsin, Ms. Baldwin, for 10 minutes.
    	MS. BALDWIN.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  Dr. Wegman, your
    	report includes a social networking analysis of the
    	authorship in temperature reconstruction, and to your
    	knowledge, has this type of social network analysis ever
    	been done before to look at an academic field?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  No, and in fact, based on reactions to this, I
    	think it is probably a good idea that we do this more
    	broadly.
    	MS. BALDWIN.  And am I correct in understanding that your
    	analysis did not include talking to the paleoclimatologists
    	to get their perspective on how they interact nor did it
    	include substantively analyzing their interactions?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  No.  We simply looked at their connection in
    	terms of, based on engineering compendics, based on their
    	coauthorship.
    	MS. BALDWIN.  In your report, you state that, and I quote,
    	"Our findings from this analysis suggest authors in the
    	area of paleoclimate studies are closely connected and thus
    	independent studies may not be as independent as they might
    	appear on the surface."  Are you saying that based on your
    	social network analysis, that you are concluding that
    	independent studies may not be independent or are you saying
    	that your network analysis suggests a lack of independence
    	as a hypothesis that one would need to investigate further
    	before one could draw a conclusion?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  I think one should take our social network
    	analysis with a grain of salt to understand that this is an
    	unusual configuration of people with a highly central person
    	involved in this.  It is no surprise to any working scientist
    	that there are groups of statisticians, groups of
    	mathematicians, groups of paleoclimate scientists, groups of
    	physicists that work together closely and that there are
    	competing social networks.  I would hasten to add that social
    	networks doesn't mean I go out and drink a beer with somebody.
    	It doesn't mean I am a buddy of theirs.  It means that I work
    	with them, that I think like they do, that we have similar
    	approaches.  Now, if the group of people operating in this
    	area is relatively small, as I believe it is in the
    	paleoclimate area, then I think there is some evidence that
    	probably should be investigated more clearly, that these
    	people are refereeing their own papers.  After all, Michael
    	Mann was an editor of the Journal of Climate and he
    	publishes a lot of his papers in the Journal of Climate.  It
    	is pretty hard to say well, I am going to take this guy who
    	is well known and I am going to start rejecting his papers.
    	That is a pretty hard thing to do.
    	MS. BALDWIN.  Well, Dr. Wegman, my question was, is this a
    	hypothesis or is it a conclusion that you have drawn?  If
    	it is a hypothesis that would need to be investigated
    	further and of course earlier we heard Dr. North's response
    	to a question about what this--how fiercely competitive
    	people early in their scientific careers, late in their
    	scientific careers are.  I am a granddaughter and a niece of
    	two researchers and I feel like I have had a lifelong sense
    	of how competitive these things, even if you have a very
    	narrow perspective.  But are you reaching a conclusion or
    	a hypothesis?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  No, this is a hypothesis.
    	MS. BALDWIN.  Okay.  Then if I understand you correctly,
    	there are at least two problems with the Wall Street
    	Journal's statement in an editorial last week that your
    	"conclusion is that the coterie of the most frequently
    	published climatologists is so insular and so close-knit
    	that no effective independent review of the work of
    	Mr. Mann is likely," because first your social network
    	analysis wasn't of climatologists but a much narrower
    	group of temperature reconstructionists, and second,
    	your social network analysis did not allow you to reach
    	a conclusion about the independence of review of
    	Dr. Mann's work.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  I think that there is--you know, in some
    	sense you are putting words in my mouth but I think
    	there is evidence--
    	MS. BALDWIN.  Well, the Wall Street Journal--
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Let me finish.  I think there is evidence
    	based on this social network analysis, based on the real
    	climate.org web log, based on the general reaction of
    	Dr. Mann and, for that matter, Dr. Bradley and Dr. Hughes
    	to the initial inquiries to the committee that there is a
    	tight-knit group of people who are interacting with each
    	other and who frankly don't seem to like to be criticized.
    	MS. BALDWIN.  Dr. Wegman, I have an additional question.
    	I think it has been touched on before but I just want to
    	get some real clarity on this.  I understand that the data
    	that you used is based on Mann's 1998 and 1999 studies.
    	In the recent years Dr. Mann has altered his
    	reconstructions using different methods and proxies.  Each
    	time he has been able to reach virtually the same
    	conclusions.  Did you analyze any data from Mann's later
    	studies or those from other reputable climate scientists
    	who have reached similar conclusions?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  We did not attempt to reproduce any of the
    	later material.  However, what we did do was look at the
    	proxies that were used and we looked at the series of
    	papers beginning actually with Jones and Bradley, I think
    	it was, in 1993 and compared the proxies that they were
    	using and the methodologies that they were using.
    	Basically Mann articulates I believe in his 2005 paper
    	the set of papers that used the climate field
    	reconstruction, the CFR methodology, and also uses the
    	CPS methodology.  Those are articulated by Mann, not by
    	me.
    	MS. BALDWIN.  But you used the 1998 and 1999 studies?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  We were asked to address the issues in 1998
    	and 1999, yes.
    	MS. BALDWIN.  I would now yield my remaining time to
    	Mr. Inslee, who requested that.
    	MR. INSLEE.  Thank you.  Doctor, I have been trying to figure
    	out how to characterize the situation, and the best I can do
    	is to say that we don't debate gravity anymore and we should
    	not debate whether there is a human contribution to global
    	warming anymore, and the way I look at this is sort of like
    	if you had reviewed Newton's Principia where he laid out the
    	basic laws of physics that we have now based, until quantum
    	mechanics came around, most of our science, if you found a
    	statistical flaw, which I will bet you could if you looked
    	at the whole Principia that didn't meet sort of regular
    	statistical proofs right now, you might come into Congress,
    	if the Republicans controlled Congress in 1695, anyway, and
    	say, you know, I found this statistical flaw in this one
    	little piece of Newton's theory, even after we have a
    	mountain of evidence that gravity is a fact, not a theory,
    	upon which we base our science, and that is the reason that
    	you are not urging, as I understand it, us to reject
    	Dr. Mann and his group's conclusion, that humans are a
    	causative factor for global warming.  The reason you are
    	not asking us to reject that conclusion is that you
    	recognize that you have found what you believe is a
    	statistical flaw in one study but it does not contravene
    	the mountain of evidence that says global warming is
    	caused a not insignificant part by human activity.  Is
    	that a pretty fair metaphor for this?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Well, I--you know, the issue is, I was asked
    	a very specific question.  I came here to testify on a
    	very specific question.  And you are asking me to testify
    	off of my level expertise and I--
    	MR. INSLEE.  Well, let me just ask you--
    	DR. WEGMAN.  --am not going to do that.
    	MR. INSLEE.  Let me ask you a quick question.  If you
    	found a statistical flaw in the Principia published by
    	Sir Isaac Newton in 16 whenever it was, would you suggest
    	that we reject the theory of gravity?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  I would not suggest anything because that was
    	not the question I was asked and that is not the reason I
    	am here.
    	MR. INSLEE.  Well, unfortunately, this is the reason--
    	DR. WEGMAN.  I mean, if you are asking me as an ordinary
    	citizen--
    	MR. INSLEE.  No, I want you to make sure you understand
    	the reality of the situation.  I am giving you all the
    	sincerity that I can give to you.  But the reason you are
    	here is not why you think you are here, okay.  The reason
    	you are here is to try to win a debate with some industries
    	in this country who are afraid to look forward to a new
    	energy future for this Nation, and the reason you are here
    	is to try to create doubt about whether this country should
    	move forward with a new technological clean energy future
    	or whether we should remain addicted to fossil fuels.  That
    	is the reason you are here.  Now, that is not the reason
    	individually why you came but that is the reason you are
    	here.  Thank you very much.
    	MR. WALDEN.  The gentleman's time has expired, which is
    	the reason I am here to keep control of this.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  But I didn't get to answer.
    	MR. WALDEN.  Well, I will just give Dr. North a question.
    	Does anybody still study gravitational theory in the
    	scientific community?
    	DR. NORTH.  Yes, they do.
    	MR. WALDEN.  If you find--
    	DR. NORTH.  It is a very active field in physics.
    	MR. WALDEN.  Do you ever learn anything new?
    	Dr. North.  Absolutely.  Things are being learned all
    	the time.
    	MR. WALDEN.  And are you allowed then to publish new
    	findings that might contradict old findings?
    	DR. NORTH.  Absolutely.
    	MR. WALDEN.  Okay.  Good.  Science moves forward.  Now,
    	I have to apologize.  I was in another markup earlier
    	and so I missed some of the questions and some of the
    	opening statements although I am familiar with both of
    	your gentlemen's testimony.  But I just want to make
    	sure I understand one sort of underlying piece, and
    	that is, did you both indicate that Dr. Mann's
    	underlying statistical analysis was incorrect?
    	Dr. Wegman?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Yes.
    	MR. WALDEN.  Dr. North?
    	DR. NORTH.  Well, we found that it is not--there were
    	many choices to make.  They probably didn't make the best
    	choice when they did the analysis the way they did.
    	MR. WALDEN.  What do you when--
    	DR. NORTH.  When their claims are wrong, it just means they
    	are not very convincing because of the way they did it.
    	MR. WALDEN.  Okay.  Now, I am not a scientist so tell me--
    	DR. NORTH.  That was nuanced.  I apologize.
    	MR. WALDEN.  No, no.  Tell me what that means as a
    	layperson, as a lawmaker, when you say they made choices
    	in their--
    	DR. NORTH.  Well, when you approach a problem like this,
    	there are many choices when you try to do a statistical
    	analysis and so there are many choices as to should you
    	deter in the data in the 20th Century or should you not.
    	Should you use this kind of validation procedure or a
    	different one.
    	MR. WALDEN.  Right.
    	DR. NORTH.  And in fact, one series of papers by Burger
    	and Cubasch actually looked at the situation and decided
    	there were 64 different ways you could have done it, and
    	had you chosen--and so they actually showed us a family of
    	extrapolations you would have gotten using all of those
    	different--
    	MR. WALDEN.  And did they all look like a hockey stick?
    	DR. NORTH.  They all--well, I mean, to me they do.  But,
    	it is a bit curved.  It is not exactly like the hockey
    	stick but within the error bars, and by the way, in the
    	Wall Street Journal article, there is really a mistake
    	made in that graphic, and that has to do with the error
    	bars.  It does show--these two graphics are in our
    	reports, the same ones that are in the Wall Street
    	Journal report, and if you look at the Wall Street Journal
    	article, they don't put the margin of error in there, which
    	is really important.
    	MR. WALDEN.  What is the margin--
    	DR. NORTH.  I mean, it is totally irresponsible to do this
    	without the margin of error.
    	MR. WALDEN.  Okay.  Can I ask you, what should that be so
    	we clarify the record, the margin of error?
    	DR. NORTH.  The margin of error is the plus-minus 95 percent
    	confidence interval.
    	MR. WALDEN.  And that is what it should have been here?
    	DR. NORTH.  That is right.
    	MR. WALDEN.  The plus or minus--
    	DR. NORTH.  And so when you look at the family of curves,
    	they all fall pretty close to that gray area in this graphic
    	but in the Wall Street Journal article, the gray is removed.
    	MR. WALDEN.  Now, in the Wall Street Journal article too,
    	they make a reference to a McIntyre and McKitrick critique,
    	and I guess, have you reviewed that one, Dr. North
    	DR. NORTH.  Oh, I am familiar with their work and, in fact,
    	Mr. McIntyre is here.  He will be testifying later.
    	MR. WALDEN.  Did he present to your panel?
    	DR. NORTH.  Yes, he did.  And in fact--
    	MR. WALDEN.  Can their data be replicated or the results
    	be replicated?
    	DR. NORTH.  Well, what they did was a critical study,
    	somewhat like the Wegman report, and I think they did an
    	honest job.  It was a nice piece of work.
    	MR. WALDEN.  Dr. Wegman--
    	DR. NORTH.  I have no complaint about what they did.
    	MR. WALDEN.  In terms of replicating data or replicating
    	studies, my understanding is, it is difficult to replicate
    	the Mann study but it was possible to replicate the
    	McIntyre and McKitrick study.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Yes, that is correct, and we did so.
    	MR. WALDEN.  I want to move on to a little different topic
    	and that is related to data sharing because I have run into
    	this in another committee where I am a subcommittee chair
    	on science and that was, there was a dispute--imagine that--
    	over a report that was run out and published and somebody
    	else tried to get the data to see if they could replicate it
    	and there was a long delay and it was a real problem, and I
    	know Dr. North, in your report, you say--page 112 of the
    	surface temperature reconstructions the past 2,000 years,
    	you make a comment that says, "Our view is that all research
    	benefits from full and open access to published data sets
    	and the clear explanation of analytical methods is mandatory.
    	Peers should have access to the information needed to
    	reproduce published results so that increased confidence in
    	the outcome of the study can be generated inside and outside
    	the scientific community," and you make that comment.  Then
    	I note--
    	DR. NORTH.  I was about to read it to you.
    	MR. WALDEN.  What is that?
    	Dr. North.  I was about to read it to you.
    	MR. WALDEN.  Well, we can do it in the key of C next time
    	together.  Then Dr. Wegman, on page 4 of your testimony,
    	you say, "Additionally, we judge that sharing research
    	materials, data, and results was haphazardly and grudgingly
    	done," and further I believe it on page 66, there is a
    	reference--there is a question, "Has the information needed
    	to replicate their work been available, and the answer is,
    	in our opinion, no.  As mentioned earlier, there were gaps
    	in MBH98."  Do we have a situation here where it was very
    	difficult to get the data to do replication, and if so,
    	why, do you think?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  As I mentioned earlier, we did download the
    	data.  We have seen the letter that Dr. Mann replied to the
    	committee which basically took the position that this is my
    	intellectual property and I don't have to share it and the
    	National Science Foundation tells me so.
    	MR. WALDEN.  Is that the case, Dr. North?  Do you speak for
    	the National Academy of Science?
    	Dr. North.  No, no.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  But the issue is that if there is free and open
    	access to the data and the materials that are associated
    	with the data, it makes the policing of this kind of
    	activity, the referees for the hockey game as I said earlier,
    	it makes it so much easier to be able to do that, and we
    	think that that is an important aspect of the scientific
    	enterprise.
    	MR. WALDEN.  How do statisticians do these sorts of
    	evaluations?  Do you share data among yourselves?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Typically in terms of computer code, there are
    	two places that people typically go to.  There is an
    	electronic journal called the Journal of Statistical
    	Software which is a refereed journal.  People submit their
    	code to that journal.  There is also a website that people
    	submit both data and code to.
    	MR. WALDEN.  I don't know if you have had a chance to see
    	Mr. Crowley's testimony whom we will hear from later today
    	but he has some rather unflattering statements about your
    	report.  I know it is shocking that different scientists
    	have different views of different scientists and their
    	reports.  He says that there are a number of flaws in your
    	report and goes on to list some.  Do you have any comment
    	on the testimony we are going to hear later since you
    	won't be back at--
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Well, I probably will be here but not sworn
    	in or at least--
    	MR. WALDEN.  Right.  You will still be under oath, they
    	inform me.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  I understand where Dr. Crowley is coming
    	from.  He is in a relatively awkward position of having
    	to defend the position that Dr. Mann had taken.
    	MR. WALDEN.  Why?  Why is that an awkward position?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Well, because you have heard from both of
    	us this morning that there are fundamental flaws in the
    	Mann work and to come and have to defend that is an
    	awkward situation, I think.  Frankly, I would not have wanted
    	to get the letter that Dr. Mann got and the other coauthors
    	because that is kind of not on the radar screen of typical
    	scientists.  You know, you write a paper and you have a
    	file somewhere and right now my dean is telling me that we
    	should throw everything that is more than 3 years old, we
    	shouldn't keep it in the file drawers because we have space
    	considerations, we have to keep space, but I--you know, I
    	think I jotted down the phrases he used about me which is
    	that I am naive and--I think it was naive and uninformed.
    	I don't think those are accurate statements because he has
    	never talked to me either.  He has only read what we wrote
    	and he has read it without the interaction with us as
    	statisticians so we will see what happens this afternoon.
    	MR. WALDEN.  Is he a statistician, do you know?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Not that I know of.
    	MR. WALDEN.  You made a comment about the potential
    	conflict with Dr. Mann being an editor of a journal and
    	also submitting work to that journal.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Yes.
    	MR. WALDEN.  Do you know if he proofs his own work or does
    	he hold himself--
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Generally the process is that an editor of a
    	journal will submit it, pass on the material to an associate
    	editor who will in turn select some referees.  That process
    	is typically what happens in a journal.  When I was editor
    	of a journal, I refrained from submitting anything to the
    	same journal that I was editor of simply because it puts
    	pressure on the associate editors and referees to approve.
    	MR. WALDEN.  Gentlemen, we appreciate your testimony and I
    	will go to the full committee Chairman, Mr. Barton.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Well, I don't want to do a second round
    	because we have subjected these two gentlemen to close to--
    	what is it--four hours of dialog.  I would want to--I want
    	to ask unanimous consent to ask Dr. North to comment on the
    	recommendations that Dr. Wegman gave and I also want to
    	renew my request that the Enders Robinson e-mail be put
    	into the official record.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Mr. Chairman, as to the e-mail of Robinson, I
    	have no problem with that being entered in the record, but
    	if you are going to ask further follow-up questions, I know
    	there is one two further follow-up questions on this side
    	we would like to ask.
    	[The information follows:]

    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  I am sorry.  I got the first part.  I
    	didn't get your second part.
    	MR. STUPAK.  I said there are one or two follow-up
    	questions--
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Oh, you all have some follow-up?  Okay.
    	Could I be recognized then for 5 minutes?  Could we do the
    	second--
    	MR. STUPAK.  No objection.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Five minutes so that we can let this
    	panel go.
    	MR. WALDEN.  The Chairman is recognized for 5 minutes.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Thank you.  Dr. North, Dr. Wegman makes
    	four recommendations on page 6 of his testimony.  Do you
    	have that in front of you?
    	DR. NORTH.  I think I have copied them out of there so I
    	think I have them here, yes.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Could you comment on each recommendation,
    	whether you think his recommendations have merit?
    	DR. NORTH.  Let--I will try to do that.  So recommendation
    	one was when massive amounts of public monies and so forth
    	are at stake, academic work should have more intense level
    	of scrutiny and review.  Well, nobody would argue with
    	that, of course.  It is especially the--we always want to
    	do things better.  It is especially the case that authors
    	of policy-related documents like IPCC and so forth should
    	be--
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  He says the review should not be the same
    	people that constructed the academic paper.
    	DR. NORTH.  So that is a really very interesting question and
    	subject.  You know, when you ask for an expert scientific
    	review of the state of art or the science and you go to the
    	world experts, and that is what the IPCC tries to, you will
    	find authors of the chapters who have also coauthored some of
    	the papers involved and indeed I think sometimes they do
    	promote their own work.  That is human nature.  We all know
    	how that works.  So that process isn't exactly perfect, but
    	I cannot imagine a better, more efficient way to pull
    	several thousand scientists together and they have to meet
    	repeatedly several times over the course of a year, over
    	the course of a couple of years.  One time we actually had
    	one of the meetings in College Station some years ago and
    	so people get tired of this.  It is really hard to work.
    	I mean, it sounds like it is fun but--
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  To the largest extent possible, if you
    	can--
    	DR. NORTH.  So it is very, very hard to--
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Sometimes there is not but two experts
    	in the world and so, you know--
    	Dr. North.  That is right.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  But if it possible--
    	Dr. North.  So, you know, you could go another way and
    	ask a situation like the academy did.  We had a small
    	committee of 12 people who were picked on the basis that
    	they were not connected with any of the--I mean, as
    	little as we could possibly do, connected with any of
    	the principals and the problem, so--
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  But what about his recommendation
    	number two that there should be a more comprehensive and
    	concise policy on disclosure and that data collected under
    	Federal support should be made publicly available?
    	DR. NORTH.  This is not a bad idea, and in fact, I think
    	Tom Karl is going to address that.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  And then his recommendation number three
    	is that if you are doing review and doing studies that
    	include some sort of a statistical approach on which your
    	conclusions are based, that there should be statistical
    	evaluation of the statistical practices.  He says it
    	should be a mandatory part of all grant applications.
    	DR. NORTH.  I think that is a little over the top.  I
    	think--
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  A little over--
    	DR. NORTH.  I think carrying this to the Federal drug
    	approval process is--
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  So you would--
    	DR. NORTH.  It is not a good analogy.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Well, what about his last one, that
    	emphasis should be placed on the Federal funding of
    	research related to fundamental understanding of the
    	mechanisms of climate change.  I think you would accept
    	that.  And that the funding should focus on
    	interdisciplinary teams and avoid narrowly focused
    	discipline research, and he is trying to broaden the
    	field so that it is not the same group of people talking
    	to the same group of people.
    	DR. NORTH.  Well, it seems to me the two statements are
    	contradictory.  The first one says you should narrow the
    	field and the second one says you should broaden the
    	field, so, I mean--
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  You are not real fired up about--
    	DR. NORTH.  I want to see more money come into the field.
    	I think we all would like to see that.  That is great.
    	But I am not sure that one was very well formed out.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Well, let me before I yield back my 52
    	seconds say why we are doing this hearing, because I have
    	been here almost the entire time for every question and
    	every statement.  I missed a little bit but not much.  I
    	don't disagree fundamentally with some of what my friends
    	on the minority side have stated.  There is no question
    	that the temperature is warmer today than it was in 1850.
    	I think there still is a question about the cause of that,
    	and some of these reports and studies that purport not
    	only to state the fact of the warming but the consequences
    	of it, I think should be open to honest public debate
    	without challenging the merits.  Where I disagree with
    	some of my friends on the minority side is that before
    	we make massive public policy changes that affect every
    	American citizen in this country, we need to have with
    	the highest degree of certainty that the facts really are
    	the facts.  Now, I have right here a magazine article from
    	Newsweek April 28, 1975, that is talking about the
    	cataclysmic consequences of global cooling.  Now, that is
    	30 years ago and the science has changed.  Now we are
    	talking about the cataclysmic consequences of global
    	warming.  If the United States has ratified Kyoto and if
    	the United States Congress working with the Administration
    	had begun to implement Kyoto, it requires a reduction in
    	CO2, I believe about 30 to 40 percent, and that means you
    	are not going to have coal-fired power plant combustion
    	in many parts of this country.  It means that you are
    	going to have to reduce the automobile emissions of the
    	vehicles that are made in Michigan.  And before we go
    	down that trail, I think it is imperative that we do the
    	oversight and do the science and talk--I am not opposed
    	to talking to the climatologists but I agree with
    	Dr. Wegman that we need to make sure that it is an
    	interdisciplinary approach so that we really get everything
    	on the table.  If that shows that the human correlation is
    	beyond dispute, then I believe we do have an obligation to
    	take what steps we can to remedy that but I don't believe
    	that science yet shows that.  With that I yield back,
    	Mr. Chairman.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  At this time I
    	recognize Mr. Stupak for--
    	MR. STUPAK.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  Chairman Barton,
    	and I take it, that means we are going to have a lot more
    	hearings on global warming because there are a lot more
    	reports than just Dr. Mann's 1998-1999 report, so if we
    	are going to come to those policy decisions, I would hope
    	we would have more than just one hearing about one report
    	and look at the whole spectrum of reports on global
    	warming.  Dr. North, if I may, the IPCC process, is that
    	based upon sound science, sound methodology?
    	DR. NORTH.  In my opinion, when you go out and ask the
    	active scientists in the field to give you an assessment,
    	they select themselves and it has been my experience in
    	the three that have been produced that they do just that.
    	I had very little to do with the last one.  I served a
    	referee on--
    	MR. STUPAK.  Sure.
    	DR. NORTH.  But the one before, I had a little bit more
    	to do with it, but I think the process is pretty good.
    	You know, it is human.  It has some flaws in it but I
    	think I--it is probably the most massive assessment of
    	this kind that has ever been made.  It is remarkable
    	that you get people to do that.  And I will tell you this,
    	people are tired of participating.  It is a lot of work.
    	Traveling to these countries and having these workshops
    	and meetings, it is a lot of work and so to actually ask
    	people who are not experts to come in and read all of
    	those papers that they weren't involved in, that is asking
    	a lot of people and you won't get anybody to do it because
    	there is no money for this.  There is no pay for this.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Okay.
    	DR. NORTH.  Incidentally, the academy report people didn't
    	get paid anything either.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Dr. North, you also mentioned the hockey stick
    	hokum that was in the Wall Street Journal last Friday in
    	which they claimed that the graph from 1990 that we have
    	talked a lot about today showing the warming period in the
    	Middle Ages, the Wall Street Journal goes on to say that in
    	1990 the consensus "held that the medieval warm period was
    	considerably warmer than the present day."  It has been a
    	long hearing here today but is there any scientific
    	evidence from anyone that supports the claim that
    	temperatures in the Middle Ages were higher than they are
    	today?
    	DR. NORTH.  There may be some locations on the Earth but so
    	why do we care about the global average?  You know, that
    	has come up a couple of times.  Because if CO2 is the
    	reason, it is a global forcing so you expect the response
    	to be at the global scale.  This is really important.
    	That is why--I mean, nobody takes a picnic at the global
    	scale but the scientists are very interested in what
    	happens to the global average because that is what is being
    	forced by the CO2.  So that is why we are so fixated on the
    	global average and getting large-scale averages.  It is
    	easier to measure it because when make measurements at a lot
    	of locations, a lot of the random errors cancel out.  That
    	is good.  The same thing happens with our models.  They do
    	that better than anything else.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Dr. Wegman, I thought I heard you say, and
    	correct me if I am wrong, when you are making comparisons
    	you are saying that you used--I think it was figure 4 on
    	your chart--that you used North American factors in your
    	analysis with Dr. Mann's?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Dr. Mann himself used North American--what he
    	called the North American PC1 proxy which was a composite
    	based on the principal of component methodology of North
    	American tree rings.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Sure.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  And that is what--we replicated that, yes.
    	MR. STUPAK.  So in your analysis, you used just North
    	American, right?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  We used the North America proxy.
    	MR. STUPAK.  The P1, the P2--
    	DR. WEGMAN.  The PC1--
    	MR. STUPAK.  --and the P3?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Yes.
    	MR. STUPAK.  PC.  I am sorry.  PC1, PC2.  But didn't really
    	Dr. Mann use 12 proxy indicators from all over the world?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  We were not trying to do paleoclimate
    	reconstruction.  We were trying to illustrate what happened
    	if you did--
    	MR. STUPAK.  Sure.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  --the principal component--
    	MR. STUPAK.  Dr. Mann used 12 proxies to come up with his
    	analysis.  You took three from North America.  Is it fair
    	to say then that using from throughout the world would have
    	a different result than if you just looked at the three in
    	North America?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Let us be clear.  He was doing Northern
    	Hemisphere, NH, reconstruction.  He wasn't doing global
    	reconstruction in--
    	MR. STUPAK.  But if you take a look at his report, and I
    	know you did, they talk about Tasmania, taking tree rings
    	from there, Morocco, tree rings from there, France, the
    	Greenland stack core which we talked about, the ice core,
    	polar Urals, again, the tree ring density.  It seemed to
    	me he took them from all over the world where your focus
    	is only on North America.  So how could you make the
    	comparison then when you use global statistics as opposed
    	to just one part of the world in doing your measurements?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Well, I am not sure I understand what you
    	are getting at.  The--
    	MR. STUPAK.  From a layperson who is not a statistician,
    	I would think if you are going to compare Dr. Mann's
    	statistics, if you will, you would use all of them as
    	opposed to--
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Our discussion--
    	MR. STUPAK.  --just three of them.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Our discussion is on Dr. Mann's methodology,
    	not his conclusions in terms of paleoclimate--
    	MR. STUPAK.  But you charted, did you not?  Didn't you
    	use X axis, Y axis and chart it all out and that is why
    	you got different than the hockey stick?  You only used
    	three where he used 12.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  No, no, no.  We used the same data to get the
    	hockey stick in that one figure--
    	MR. STUPAK.  From North America?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  From North America.
    	MR. STUPAK.  And he took his from the worldwide.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  No, no, no.
    	MR. STUPAK.  That is not what table one says.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  What we said was that we used that comparison
    	chart that we had that showed the hockey stick.  The
    	comparison was meant to show that if--
    	MR. STUPAK.  Right here, yes?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  That is it.  If you go to the top chart by
    	using his methodology on the same set of data and the
    	bottom chart is what you would get if you did the centered
    	data, if you did it properly mathematically.  So the point--
    	MR. STUPAK.  But yours is only on PC1, PC2--
    	DR. WEGMAN.  So is his--
    	MR. STUPAK.  --and PC3.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  --in that picture.
    	MR. STUPAK.  So you are saying that picture was only PC1,
    	PC2--
    	DR. WEGMAN.  That is--
    	MR. STUPAK.  --PC3 from Mann.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  We are using exactly the same data in the top
    	picture and the bottom picture.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Okay.  Thank you.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  The gentleman's time has expired.  Dr. North,
    	in the testimony today, there seems to be universal agreement
    	that the temperature is going up and in the last century it
    	went up about one degree Fahrenheit, I believe is what most
    	people have agreed to, and there has also been a lot of
    	testimony that for a period of time between 1500 to 1800,
    	whatever, that there was a period in which there was a
    	cooling off.  So I just want to zero in on this.  You have
    	said and others have said and I think there is universal
    	agreement that we are going through a warming trend, and it
    	has been said by some people that that might not be
    	surprising coming from a cooling off period that you would
    	normally get warmer going through a warming trend.  So the
    	question that I would ask, as you look into the future, how
    	much warmer can it become before it is something that we
    	should really be alarmed about from your viewpoint, from
    	experiences?
    	Dr. North.  Well, I will say this--well, two things.  One
    	is about the Little Ice Age and is it simply a recovery.
    	In other words, is the Earth's temperature a kind of
    	oscillating thing and that the slope upward now is just
    	recovery from a Little Ice Age which was apparently maybe
    	some natural phenomenon.  Well, I am not sure that that is
    	actually the right picture.  We don't know exactly the true
    	origins of the Little Ice Age but some studies, in fact, a
    	very good one by Tom Crowley, who will be speaking later,
    	suggests that this is due to a series of volcanoes during
    	that period which caused a cooling.  It was not a great
    	cooling but some cooling.  So now it is--you know, now
    	that we are going through a period when they are not as
    	frequent as they were at that time, the Earth is simply
    	warming back toward equilibrium from that.  But now we
    	are also forcing the warming with the CO2 and other
    	greenhouse gases that are being emitted into the
    	atmosphere.  So while if we look at the future, what we
    	might think is that by the end of this century the
    	warming, if it continues and we do nothing about it, will
    	probably be somewhere between about three degrees
    	Fahrenheit and about eight degrees Fahrenheit.  Well,
    	three may not be so bad.  Eight would be pretty bad,
    	pretty bad.  And so in fact, even three is not as benign
    	as you might think.  You know, you can look at--for us in
    	our everyday life, three degrees Fahrenheit doesn't seem
    	to mean anything.  People after all live in Minneapolis
    	and they live in Houston.  But it really does affect
    	conditions.  Tree lines move.  There is a tree line that
    	runs right up the center of the United States along I-35
    	between Austin and Minneapolis.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Right.
    	DR. NORTH.  That tree line can move hundreds of miles
    	depending on just a couple of degrees or changes in
    	moisture.  So what looks like to us in our everyday life
    	not very much, if these things persist for a long time,
    	there are broader ecological responses at these kind of
    	low frequencies that are important.  So, I don't know all
    	of the bad or good things that might happen.  I mean,
    	there would probably be some winners and losers in a
    	situation like this.  And I have to confess to you, I don't
    	know enough about it.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  But you know as we grapple with this, we
    	have like a 250-year reserve of coal in America.  We all
    	want to be less dependent on foreign oil.  There are some
    	people that don't want to use fossil fuel at all, it would
    	be better to come up with new innovation, new technology
    	and move on to something cleaner and that can be a goal of
    	ours.  In representing a coal area of the country, I have
    	a lot of constituents who come up to me and they will say
    	well, sure, there is some carbon dioxide caused by human
    	beings but there is more carbon dioxide emissions caused
    	by natural processes.  Now, I would just like to get your
    	views on that comment.  Is there any basis for that or is
    	that just somebody--
    	DR. NORTH.  There is a lot of carbon dioxide emitted into
    	the atmosphere every year and a lot of absorbed back into
    	the system every year, in fact, many times what humans put
    	in.  The problem is this.  There was an equilibrium
    	established between what is going out and what is drawn
    	back down every year by the system.  The oceans and the
    	biosphere, there is this exchange that goes on all the
    	time.  The problem with this is that the time scale, the
    	time constant, as we say, is quite long.  It takes a
    	couple of hundred years for these adjustments to
    	re-establish themselves, so if you dump in the carbon
    	dioxide much more rapidly than the system can accommodate,
    	it builds up in the atmosphere.  If we were to wait several
    	hundred years, then things may come back down, but we
    	don't have that luxury.  So the fact is, we are pouring it
    	in there faster than the system can dispose of it.  That
    	is the way--
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Thank you very much.  Who is next over
    	here?  Mr. Inslee.
    	MR. INSLEE.  Thank you.  Just on that note, Dr. North, I
    	have heard the CO2 that we put in today in the atmosphere
    	could be there as long as 100 years?
    	DR. NORTH.  A couple of hundred years.
    	MR. INSLEE.  I want to use Dr. Wegman's expertise to try to
    	understand an interesting phenomenon.  You talked about
    	social networking.  I thought you could give us some insights
    	about that.  Dr. Naomi Oresky of the University of California
    	at San Diego published a study in Science magazine some time
    	ago.  She and her team selected a large random sampling of
    	928 articles about global warming that have been published
    	in peer-reviewed scientific journals and she wanted to look
    	at what they said, these 928 randomly selected peer-reviewed
    	articles about whether they accept or reject or question the
    	idea that humans are contributing to global warming.  Of 928
    	studies, what do you think percentage questioned the
    	proposition or rejected or even cast doubt on the proposition
    	that humans were causing global warming?  What do you think,
    	Dr. Wegman?  What percentage?  Zero.  Zero percentage of the
    	scientifically peer-reviewed articles drew the same conclusion
    	that my good friend Joe Barton drew, that there is doubt about
    	this.  Zero.  Now, my question is, another study looked at 636
    	randomly selected articles about global warming chosen from
    	the New York Times, the Washington Post, the L.A. Times, and
    	the Wall Street Journal.  Of those randomly selected
    	publications and those well-respected publications, what
    	percent cast doubt as to the cause of global warming?  What
    	do you think?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Probably about 50 percent.
    	MR. INSLEE.  Fifty-three percent.  You win the prize for the
    	day of closest guess, or as you say, estimation.  Over half
    	of the popular articles suggested there is a significant
    	question as to whether or not humans are contributing to
    	global warming but zero percentage of the peer-reviewed
    	science.  Now, I believe that is one of the reasons that
    	Congress has not acted on this because frankly, the press is
    	creating doubt where there isn't any.  So the question of a
    	social scientist, the social networks, do we have a problem
    	with the press that are hanging out in the bars all together
    	too much too like the climatologists or what is your
    	explanation for this huge anomaly?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Well, there is no doubt in my mind that there
    	are two camps in the publication literature as well in the
    	popular press and, they are competing just like I suggested
    	that academics compete in social science that there is two
    	networks that are trying to promote different agendas.
    	MR. INSLEE.  Well, my point is, I hope the press starts to
    	get off the story of doubt and get on the story of a
    	scientific consensus which exists in those 900 articles, and
    	no one should report this hearing unless they say that
    	because both you and Dr. North and every single person who
    	is going to testify today is going to say that there is a
    	scientific consensus that humans are responsible for at least
    	a portion of the global warming that is taking place.  Now, I
    	want to ask Dr. North if we can put this slide up here about
    	the CO2 and go back to the one he had there just a moment
    	ago.  Dr. North, I gave some of a very inarticulate
    	description of how carbon dioxide works to trap energy in the
    	planetary system.  Could you give a little better
    	explanation?  We will see that all the scientists, everybody
    	has projected levels of approximating double of pre-industrial
    	times if we don't change our course.  Could you explain in a
    	little better way how carbon dioxide affects the energy
    	balance of the Earth?
    	DR. NORTH.  I will try.  First of all, carbon dioxide is well
    	mixed in the atmosphere so it isn't just lying down on the
    	surface.  It is very well mixed.  This process takes a few
    	months but--and in fact, if you emit it in one hemisphere of
    	the Earth, it takes about a year or two before it homogenizes
    	throughout the world.  So whether you emit your gas, your CO2
    	in Texas or anywhere else, it doesn't make any difference.
    	It winds up homogeneous throughout the world.  So what
    	happens now?  So the sunlight comes in, passes right through
    	the CO2 and warms the ground.  The ground in contact with
    	the atmosphere through latent heat release, that is,
    	evaporation from the surface and just sensible heat convection
    	to the surface warms the atmosphere.  So and then we establish
    	an equilibrium because the radiation going out to space
    	matches exactly what comes in over a long-term average.  So
    	that is the energy balance of the Earth.  Now, suppose you
    	turn up the carbon dioxide a little bit in the atmosphere.
    	Well, one thing that happens is, since the gas homogenizes
    	all through the planet, all around the planet.  The level up
    	in the atmosphere where the CO2 emits to space goes up a
    	little bit and higher in the atmosphere, 50 meters or
    	something like that if you double it.  That means it emits
    	from a cooler place in the atmosphere once you have doubled
    	it.  That means the amount going out isn't as much as it was
    	before.  So what happens is, you have to warm the surface in
    	order to regain the equilibrium.  That is a complicated
    	explanation.  But in the process right in the middle of this,
    	you warm the planet a little bit, more water comes into the
    	atmosphere from the oceans and other wet surfaces.  Water
    	vapor is also a greenhouse gas so this process gets amplified
    	maybe a factor of two.  So basically, I mean, what you said
    	about the blanket is more or less right.  A slightly more
    	technical discussion is well, when you put in more of this
    	stuff, it now emits from a higher place from a cooler surface
    	rather than a warm surface so the radiation out to space is
    	less, you have got to warm up the planet to match again.
    	Sorry for such a long-winded answer.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Thank you.  The gentleman's time has expired.
    	Mr. Walden.
    	MR. WALDEN.  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.  Dr. North,
    	what are some of the biggest natural emitters of CO2?
    	DR. NORTH.  Well, there are many.  Decaying biological matter
    	is one, so rotting, decaying at the floor of the great forests
    	and all over the planet, respiring animals and so forth.  So
    	there are many--
    	MR. WALDEN.  What about forest fires?
    	DR. NORTH.  Forest fires contribute but not nearly as
    	significant as these other natural products, and also volcanoes
    	of course emit CO2 but on our scale, I mean, that is sporadic.
    	It does happen from time to time and of course it is the
    	historical origin of CO2 in our atmosphere but--
    	MR. WALDEN.  And what consumes--
    	DR. NORTH.  --it is not important.
    	MR. WALDEN.  What consumes CO2?
    	DR. NORTH.  So what consumes CO2 is the biological matter, the
    	photosynthesis process, so sunlight is combined with--
    	MR. WALDEN.  Plant matter--
    	DR. NORTH.  --chlorophyll in the plant leaves and that is
    	converted to--so it removes CO2.
    	MR. WALDEN.  So younger, healthier plants and trees consume
    	more CO2 than older, dying--
    	DR. NORTH.  As they grow, they consume.  Right.  You are
    	making wood with the carbon.
    	MR. WALDEN.  Because I also in my other part in the Congress
    	chair the Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health and we
    	see--
    	DR. NORTH.  That is very important.
    	MR. WALDEN.  --these overgrown, decaying and dying forests.
    	We see fires occur that emit far more than CO2.  They emit a
    	lot of other noxious gases.  They have--
    	DR. NORTH.  Sure.
    	MR. WALDEN.  You know, the smoke will settle on the valleys.
    	I mean, it causes all kinds of problems and then the decaying
    	matter sits there for 3 or 4 years rather than being processed
    	and a new forest planted sooner.  Are you aware of any research
    	that would indicate that by planting sooner, getting a healthy
    	forest a start faster, you might begin consuming carbon quicker
    	than just leaving it to regenerate naturally?
    	DR. NORTH.  Well, you are getting way off from my field but,
    	intuitively, yes.
    	MR. WALDEN.  All right.  Dr. Wegman, in your report, it is
    	page 27, you say a common phrase among statisticians is
    	correlation does not imply causation, and you go on to say the
    	variables affecting Earth's climate and atmosphere are most
    	likely to be numerous and confounding, making conclusive
    	statements without specific findings with regard to atmospheric
    	forcings suggests a lack of scientific rigor and possibly an
    	agenda.  What do you mean by that?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Well, as we--when we were talking about tree ring
    	growth, for example--
    	MR. WALDEN.  Right.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  --there are many, many factors.  Moisture as
    	well as--
    	MR. WALDEN.  Carbohydrates.  Right.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  And nitrates, for example, that are emitted into
    	the atmosphere.  All of those affect tree ring growth.
    	MR. WALDEN.  Can you pinpoint temperature in a tree ring?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Well, presumably there is some element of that.
    	I am not an expert on tree ring dendrology but presumably all
    	other factors being equal, if things are warmer, there is
    	more sunlight, there is a longer growing season, presumably
    	the trees are going to have wider tree rings.  So the issue
    	though is the confounding factors.  If you simply say that
    	this tree ring growth, what is called the late wood density,
    	is higher, that means the temperature is higher and ignore
    	all the confounding factors, you are certainly not teasing
    	out what really is the temperature.
    	MR. WALDEN.  Now, we have seen the slide a couple of times
    	from my colleague from Washington, Mr. Inslee, that shows
    	CO2 levels back 160,000 years.  Can either of you tell me,
    	how do we know with precision what happened 160,000 years
    	ago?
    	DR. NORTH.  Would you like me to--
    	MR. WALDEN.  Sure.  Maybe from you, Dr. Wegman,
    	statistically, what does that mean and how do you evaluate
    	it, and Dr. North, from you maybe, the science behind--
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Well, we have read actually Bradley's work on
    	this material so essentially when snow gets deposited, it
    	gets compressed, ultimately it becomes a second layer
    	called a firn, f-i-r-n, and then ultimately ice and when
    	the snow gets compressed it has ice, so it has bubbles of
    	air in there and presumably what is happening is that as
    	they drill ice cores down and go further into the past,
    	presumably 160,000 years of ice, they can look at these
    	microscopic bubbles of air and get the greenhouse gas
    	composition associated with that.  So that is again a
    	statistical estimation process--
    	MR. WALDEN.  Are you comfortable with that process as a
    	statistician, not as a--
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Well, presumably that curve that we have
    	seen a couple of times from Congressman Inslee should
    	have error bars as well associated with it.
    	MR. WALDEN.  Should have what?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Error bars associated with it, imprecision,
    	how much variability there is.
    	MR. WALDEN.  And do we know what that would be?  I guess
    	he has left.  So we are--it is much like the criticism
    	Dr. North had of the Wall Street Journal report where
    	it lacked the 95 percent--
    	DR. NORTH.  Yes, we would like to see those error bars.
    	That is very--
    	MR. WALDEN.  Yes, we would like to see it as politicians
    	in our polls too to know, what plus or minus are we
    	dealing with here.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  Thank you,
    	gentlemen.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Ms. Schakowsky.
    	DR. NORTH.  I would like to point out that we now
    	actually can go back 650,000 years.  Six hundred and
    	fifty thousand years in Antarctica in the past year.
    	MR. WALDEN.  With precision?
    	DR. NORTH.  Just not 150 but 650,000 years, still no
    	CO2 at this level.
    	MR. WALDEN.  There is still no what?
    	DR. NORTH.  No CO2 at this same concentration.
    	MR. WALDEN.  I see.  Thank you.
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  I wanted to explore a little bit the
    	statement that Chairman Barton made.  He was referring to,
    	I think it was 1975 or sometime in the 1970s when
    	apparently there was a prediction of cooling, that actually
    	the planet was getting cooler, and here is my question,
    	and maybe I am not asking the right one and you could fill
    	me in on that.  But could not--and he used it, I thought,
    	as making the point that science is not conclusive.  But I
    	am wondering if one could not also see it as a confirmation
    	that human activity is in fact causing fairly dramatic
    	change in the climate, something that may not have been
    	factored in in 1975 but the science based on sort of older
    	predictors.  So I just wanted to ask how to interpret--and
    	first of all, is that the case that it was predicted to be
    	a cooling period?  Let me ask Dr. North, the climate
    	scientist, first.
    	DR. NORTH.  Yes, there was a prediction made in the 1970s by
    	Reed Bryson, a professor at Madison.  He probably gave us all
    	a hard time about this because I have heard this a thousand
    	times in the last year or so, few years.  So but, there are
    	two competing factors.  There is the dust in the atmosphere,
    	the tiny aerosols, tiny droplets of water and they come from
    	air pollution and volcanoes and other things but mainly air
    	pollution in our urban areas, manufacturing processes and so
    	on.  So out come these tiny droplets.  Well, they scatter
    	the sunlight back to space and therefore tend to cool the
    	planet a little bit.  The other competing factor is the
    	greenhouse gases.  They have been rising, and especially
    	during the war when there was a lot of energy produced and
    	not very much regulation on what was allowed to go into the
    	atmosphere.  At that time there was actually--the aerosols
    	were kind of winning the war, winning the war of balancing
    	the heat in the atmosphere, so there was a cooling that did
    	occur and probably Reed Bryson was right and that that was
    	probably the dominant effect.  But it didn't take very long
    	the way we are putting the greenhouse gases in exponentially.
    	The greenhouse gas is increasing roughly a percent per year
    	all together, so this is an enormous rise in the other
    	competing factor which causes the warming.  So the thinking
    	is that the warming has now become much greater than the
    	cooling due to the aerosols.
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  And haven't we--because of the hole in the
    	ozone layer, haven't we reduced aerosols or--
    	DR. NORTH.  Well, the ozone layer, I would give--that is a
    	completely different story, so I would rather we not get off
    	to that.
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  Okay.  There was another scientific question
    	I wanted to ask you and again I am not sure how to phrase
    	it.  There was something about variability, and isn't there
    	a conclusion that could be made that if there is a great
    	variability, that that might be something that we really need
    	to worry about in fact that the effects of carbon dioxide in
    	the atmosphere in fact may be worse than we thought if we
    	are--
    	DR. NORTH.  Yes.  There are natural fluctuations in the
    	system just as weather tickles the whole system and the whole
    	thing rumbles.  I mean, we have a climate system that sort of
    	rattles around, so this is the part that we call natural
    	variability.  It is a kind of noise in the system.  But then
    	when we apply these nudges that are continuous, then we get
    	a secular trend and the noise on top of it.  And by the way,
    	that does tend to be a linear process.  There have been many,
    	many studies with climate models, and while of course they
    	are not perfect, they do imitate the atmospheric climate
    	system quite well, and for small nudges like the ones we are
    	talking about, I mean, they seem to us to be quite big but
    	in fact, in that system, they are tiny.  We are changing the
    	temperature a degree or two Kelvin compared to 300, so they
    	are tiny.  So this is actually a fairly linear process.  The
    	signals that we see in the system from warming and cooling
    	and other things, pretty linear, not that nonlinear.  So
    	natural variability is there and we worry that we don't
    	understand every bit of it.  For example, it could be that
    	there are slow processes in the climate system such as the
    	deep oceans, the overturning and so on of the deep oceans,
    	and it could be that that is the underlying reason for
    	whatever this medieval warm period was.  We are not sure
    	about that.  It could be that some warm water surfaced.
    	What we know now though is that that is not the cause of
    	the warming in the last 50 years.  The warming in the last
    	50 years could not have been because of--we now have data.
    	We know that is not the reason.  In fact, if we look at the
    	map of warming, we see that it is warming more over the
    	continents than it is over the oceans.  They are being
    	pulled along because they are not as heavy, they are not
    	as inertial.  So the fingerprints of the warming are
    	exactly what we would expect if carbon dioxide were the
    	reason.
    	Now, as we go back 1,000 years, we don't have all that
    	information to put in there to check it out so we don't
    	know exactly why that might have happened then but we
    	have a very good idea of what has been going on the last
    	100 years.
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  Thank you.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  The gentlelady's time has expired, and
    	Ms. Baldwin, you are recognized.
    	MS. BALDWIN.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  As has been
    	referenced earlier in several opening statements and some
    	questions, we know how the tobacco industry wanting to keep
    	doubt in the public mind and in fact in 1993 the Wall Street
    	Journal published a front-page expos� on how the tobacco
    	industry had kept the public doubt alive about whether
    	smoking caused cancer.  For four decades the big tobacco
    	companies funded a sham research organization to feed the
    	public doubt about the health effects of smoking, and
    	despite smoking being responsible for over 400,000 deaths
    	a year, that strategy worked tremendously well for decades.
    	The Wall Street Journal quoted one big tobacco employee who
    	said, and I quote, "The scientists can come from Mars but no
    	matter how obscure or misbegotten, as long as they are
    	willing to tell the scientific lie that it is not proven,
    	the tobacco industry is off the hook."  In May of this year,
    	we learned that some of the same people who worked on tobacco
    	also worked to confuse the consensus on global warming.
    	Mark Hurtsgard reported in Vanity Fair that for 20 years
    	Dr. Frederick Siete directed $45 million in medical research
    	for R.J. Reynolds to maintain a hint of doubt about the
    	hazards of smoking.  In the 1990s Sietes turned his attention
    	to global warming.  Dr. Sietes assaulted the integrity of the
    	Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on the op-ed page
    	of the Wall Street Journal.  He accused the Clinton
    	Administration of misrepresenting the science and authored a
    	paper which said that global warming was an exaggerated
    	threat.
    	These people have a plan.  They want this hearing to stand
    	for the proposition that there is not a consensus on global
    	warming and they have stalled action for a decade or two and
    	they think they can drag it out even longer.  So Dr. North,
    	I am wondering if you can help put this in context.
    	Dr. Mann had concluded that the late 20th Century warmth in
    	the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during the last
    	1,000 years.  You said very clearly in your testimony that
    	Dr. Mann's conclusion has been subsequently supported by an
    	array of evidence.  We have a high level of confidence that
    	late 20th Century is the warmest period the planet has seen
    	in the last 400 years and you found it was plausible that
    	the planet is warmer than it has been in 1,000 years.  Is
    	that a fair summary?
    	DR. NORTH.  Yes.
    	MS. BALDWIN.  You said it was plausible that the planet is
    	warmer now than it has been any time in the last 1,000 years.
    	Has anyone provided affirmative evidence that there has been
    	a warmer period in the last 1,000 years?
    	DR. NORTH.  No, we have not.  That is what we mean by
    	plausible, that there just doesn't seem to be any counter
    	information, so it is a reasonable thing to--
    	MS. BALDWIN.  Is it plausible that human beings have caused
    	greenhouse gas emissions that are contributing--I am sorry.
    	Let me put it in the negative.  Is it plausible that
    	human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are not contributing
    	to global warming?
    	DR. NORTH.  It is not plausible.
    	MS. BALDWIN.  How confident is the scientific community that
    	human emissions are contributing to global warming?
    	Seventy-five percent, 80 percent?
    	DR. NORTH.  In the scientific--in the climate science
    	community, I think that Mr. Inslee's quote about the number
    	of papers and who says yes and who says no tells the story.
    	MS. BALDWIN.  Okay.
    	DR. NORTH.  It is hard to find anyone who works in this
    	field who is opposed.  I mean, if somebody can come up with
    	a really good physical explanation for why this is false,
    	they will win the Nobel Prize.  So there are a lot of people
    	who might be attracted to the idea but we can't find any.
    	MS. BALDWIN.  Well, finally, I just want to ask you about
    	the IPCC report since we have been hearing a lot about it.
    	Does the NRC report in any way discredit the IPCC's 2001
    	third assessment report?
    	DR. NORTH.  Well, we have some differences with the details
    	of the hockey stick curve and we said that.  We are a
    	little less confident.  I mean, our error bars as we have
    	been saying, our margin of error is a little larger than
    	what was stated in that report and that is natural.  As we
    	go on and learn more, we adjust and adapt.  So, no, we
    	don't believe individual years--Dr. Wegman said this, and
    	we agree.  We don't trust individual years, the 1998 or
    	2006 or something as being the warmest of any time period
    	because we can't state things to that degree.
    	MS. BALDWIN.  Just to clarify, my question was, did your
    	report in any way discredit the IPCC's 2001 third assessment
    	report?  Would you view--
    	DR. NORTH.  No, we wouldn't--
    	MS. BALDWIN.  --what you are describing as discrediting
    	that report?
    	DR. NORTH.  No, it doesn't discredit it.
    	MS. BALDWIN.  Okay.  Thank you.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Thank you, and after almost 5 hours, that
    	concludes the first panel, so we should be through with
    	the second panel in about 10 hours.  Dr. Wegman, I want to
    	thank you very much and Dr. North for your testimony and
    	obviously this is a subject matter of great interest and
    	importance and we thank you for your testimony, and now I
    	look forward to the second panel and so I will release you
    	all.  And on the second panel we have another distinguished
    	group of individuals.  Mr. Thomas Karl is director of the
    	National Climatic Data Center from Asheville, North Carolina.
    	Dr. Thomas Crowley is the Nicholas Professor of Earth System
    	Science at Duke University.  Mr. Stephen McIntyre of Playter
    	Boulevard in Toronto Canada, and then Dr. Hans von Storch,
    	who is the director of the Institute for Coastal Research
    	who flew to this meeting from Germany exclusively for this
    	meeting, and Dr. Storch, how do I pronounce the name of
    	your town in Germany where you are from?  On here it says
    	G-e-e-s-t-h-a-c-h-t.
    	DR. VON STORCH.  Geesthacht.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Geesthacht.  Okay.  Anyway, we welcome all
    	of you, and as you know, this is an Oversight and
    	Investigations hearing and it is our customary manner to
    	take this testimony under oath and I would ask you, do any
    	of you have objection to testifying under oath?  And I am
    	assuming you do not need legal counsel.  So if you would
    	please raise your right hand.
    	[Witnesses sworn.]
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Thank you very much.  You all are now under
    	oath, and Mr. Karl, we will start with you and we will
    	recognize you for your 5-minute opening statement.

    STATEMENTS OF DR. THOMAS R. KARL, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL CLIMATIC DATA
    CENTER; DR. THOMAS J. CROWLEY, NICHOLAS PROFESSOR OF EARTH SYSTEM
    SCIENCE; DR. HANS VON STORCH, DIRECTOR OF INSTITUTE FOR COASTAL
    RESEARCH; AND MR. STEPHEN MCINTYRE, TORONTO, ONTARIO

    	DR. KARL.  Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, I am
    	pleased to have the opportunity to testify before you
    	today.  I am the Director of NOAA's National Climatic Data
    	Center.  The National Climatic Data Center houses the World
    	Data Center for Paleoclimatology, which includes the data
    	sets that have been used to reconstruct temperatures for
    	the past 1,000 years or more.
    	I was one of the two coordinating lead authors for chapter
    	2 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the
    	IPCC 2001 assessment.  The primary intent of the IPCC
    	periodic assessments is to provide government policymakers
    	with the latest and most comprehensive scientific
    	information possible about the human influences on our
    	global climate in a language that has meaning and relevance
    	to government policymakers.  Our responsibility as
    	coordinating lead author was to act as co-chair during the
    	lead author chapter meetings.  Each chapter has multiple
    	lead authors and chapter 2 had 10 lead authors.  Chapter 2
    	was to assess the data for changes and variations in
    	climate.  Coordinating lead authors are ultimately
    	responsible for ensuring that the final version of the
    	chapter is delivered to the IPCC bureau on schedule.  Each
    	chapter is agreed to by all lead authors and discussed and
    	reviewed with other chapter lead authors.  There is a very
    	lengthy review process which includes review editors to
    	oversee the review process.  In 2001 the IPCC report
    	concluded, and I quote, "New analyses indicate that the
    	magnitude of the warming over the 20th Century is likely to
    	have been the largest of any century in the last 1,000
    	years," and I emphasize warming here, the magnitude of the
    	warming.  Those are my words.  "The 1990s are likely to have
    	been the warmest decade of the millennium in the Northern
    	Hemisphere and 1998 is likely to have been the warmest year."
    	These findings were developed after careful consideration of
    	the published literature on this topic in 2001.
    	The IPCC lead authors considered uncertainties related to
    	two types of temperature reconstruction errors.  Such errors
    	can be thought of as having two fundamentally different
    	sources.  I will use some technical terms.  Parametric and
    	structural, but I will define these.  Parametric uncertainty,
    	which results from finite sample sizes to estimate
    	coefficients of a statistical model, is much less important
    	than structural uncertainty.  Human decisions that underlie
    	the development of the reconstructed time series may be
    	thought of as forming a structure depicting both real and
    	artificial behavior in paleoclimatic data.  Assumptions
    	that guide the decisions made by the experts may not be
    	correct.  More important factors may have been ignored.
    	These possibilities lead to structural uncertainty.
    	Structural uncertainty can only be estimated by comparing
    	the differences of equally plausible reconstruction
    	methods.  The IPCC 2001 lead authors were able to estimate
    	structural uncertainty associated with the IPCC findings
    	because of the availability of several reconstructed time
    	series.
    	It is important to note the language used by IPCC in the
    	2001 assessment included an expert assessment of the
    	certainty of various findings.  The IPCC reported findings
    	when the probability of being true reflected certainty
    	between 66 and 90 percent, or in odds terms, better than
    	two to one.  Lead authors were asked to develop findings
    	based on at least three levels of certainty, likely,
    	better than two to one odds of being correct, very likely,
    	better than nine to one odds, and virtually certain,
    	better than 99 to one.  These odds of probability were
    	based on the lead author's assessment of the published
    	literature and in consideration of thousands of expert
    	review comments.  I note that such expert assessments in
    	related fields such as the probability of precipitation
    	forecasting have proven to be quite reliable.
    	Several research teams have challenged the reconstructed
    	temperatures featured in IPCC.  These challenges are not
    	without validity.  But now each of the challenges have
    	been assessed in a variety of new analyses.  For the
    	past several years there have been at least half a dozen
    	new analyses using many of the same paleoclimatic data
    	featured in IPCC 2001 as well as new data covering longer
    	time periods or slightly expanded geographic coverage.
    	Of all these analyses, none show temperatures during the
    	past 1,000 years higher than the last few decades of the
    	20th Century and into the 21st Century.  These analyses
    	used different statistical methods, various types of
    	paleoclimatic data and different temperature calibration
    	approaches.
    	In June, the National Research Council reassessed the
    	1,000-year reconstructed time series.  The NRC not only
    	assessed the paleoclimatic data but considered how well
    	the data stands up to our ability to simulate the temperature
    	record of the past 1,000 years.  The NRC found that for the
    	most part, climate model simulations are consistent with
    	reconstructed paleoclimatic data of the Northern
    	Hemisphere.  The NRC report indicates it is plausible, as
    	we heard, that the last few decades of the 20th Century
    	were warmer than any other time during the past 1,000
    	years.   I note the NRC does not define the odds of
    	probability associated with the term "plausible."  In
    	contrast to IPCC 2001, the recent NRC report did not
    	highlight the rate of temperature increase during the
    	20th Century compared to the previous 10 centuries.  I
    	note the rate of temperature increase is also relevant
    	to our ability to adapt to changes in both our society
    	as well as the planet's ecosystems.
    	In order to improve our estimates of reconstructed
    	temperature, more proxy records await our extraction.
    	Setting out to extract and calibrate proxy paleoclimatic
    	data is necessary but not sufficient to reduce further
    	uncertainty.  The data from proxies must also be accessible
    	by the broader science community for analysis.  At the
    	present time there is no formal process whereby federally
    	funded scientists must submit their data to a long-term
    	data archive facility for use by the general community.
    	In conclusion, considering the additional evidence since
    	the IPCC 2001 assessment, I would extend the IPCC 2001
    	statement about the Northern Hemisphere temperatures in
    	the 1990s being higher than any other decade during the
    	past 1,000 years with probability of better than two to
    	one to include the most recent two decades.
    	Thank you, Mr. Chairman and committee members, for
    	allowing me the opportunity to discuss and inform the
    	committee.
    	[The prepared statement of Dr. Thomas R. Karl follows:]

    PREPARED STATEMENT OF DR. THOMAS R. KARL, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL
    CLIMATIC DATA CENTER, NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC
    ADMINISTRATION, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE

    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Thank you, Mr. Karl, and Dr. Crowley, you
    	are recognized for your 5-minute opening statement.
    DR. CROWLEY.  Thank you very much for the opportunity to present
    my testimony.  I will briefly state my credentials and give a
    short history of the Mann et al. paper with respect to the
    Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change report.
    	As background, I received a Ph.D. in marine geology from
    	Brown University and I specialized in study of the
    	Earth's past climates.  Over the last few years I have
    	spent part of my time working on climate change over the
    	last 1,000 to 2,000 years.  You have gone over some
    	aspects of the Mann et al. paper ad nauseum so I am going
    	to skip over some elements of what I am going to say and
    	then discuss aspects of how I perceived the Mann et al.
    	report was included in the IPCC, okay.  I was not part of
    	IPCC but I am familiar enough with some of the science
    	that was going on that I thought it might be useful.  But
    	it is my perception of it, okay.
    	So with respect to the inclusion of the Mann et al. report,
    	especially into the summary for policymakers, at that time
    	there were three reconstructions that went back 1,000
    	years, okay, at the time of the IPCC 3, so back to the
    	Middle Ages.  Now, one of the reconstructions--Mann et al.
    	was the second to come along.  One of the reconstructions
    	uses completely different methodology from Mann et al.,
    	and if I could have the second figure there, okay, and I
    	can't read that very well. Really focus on, if you can
    	even read, the right axis, okay.  That is temperature
    	variations.  Forget the left axis there, and that is time
    	over the last 1,000 years, and the Mann et al.
    	reconstruction is in green.  That is decadally smooth Mann
    	et al., reconstruction, okay.  And this other
    	reconstruction which I was involved in really stemmed from
    	a discussion I had at a meeting where people say well, I
    	don't believe Mann, and there was nothing written about
    	it.  They just say they don't believe Mann.  And so out
    	of this grew, I said okay, I got so exasperated.  We
    	just--I will go analyze some data myself and just see
    	what it looks like, and we deliberately took a very
    	different approach rather than using what they call the
    	sealed method for reconstructing a temperature.  We took
    	this other methodology which has the scientific term
    	"bonehead" associated with it in which we just added up
    	all the individual curves and took the average, okay.
    	And the reason we do that in part is so we can see
    	exactly in the terms of the curve here, you can
    	understand exactly how your composite curve originates
    	from the nature of the raw data, okay, and that is real
    	easy.  If there is a bump, you can go back to the raw
    	data and see where it came from, okay.  And the other
    	reason for doing that is geological data is by
    	definition dirty data and sometimes it is very helpful
    	sometimes to be somewhat conservative in the statistical
    	methodologies you employ.  So what we did is, the bonehead
    	approach using some of the data from Mann et al. but
    	other records also, some of which have been cited as
    	indicative of a medieval warm period, and even though some
    	of these records locally clearly show temperatures locally
    	warmer than 20th Century during the Middle Ages, when we
    	summed up all the different records, we got a pattern that
    	was surprisingly similar to what Mann had gotten as you
    	can see from the red curve there.  Yes, there are some
    	differences there but the similarities look a lot more--
    	you know, a lot--there are more similarities than there
    	are differences there.  We stopped our analysis in 1960,
    	okay, so that is why we don't get this big tail at the
    	end.  But over most of it is pretty similar.  So this was
    	in some way was a very--it was a surprise.  I had no idea
    	what it would look like, but it suggested that the Mann
    	et al. result might be robust in terms of its pattern
    	about the relative magnitude of warmth in the Middle Ages
    	and what was happening there, when you go back to the raw
    	data which you can easily do with this type of
    	reconstruction, the reason we didn't get a very warm
    	medieval warm period was that whereas some places were
    	warm, others were cold at the same time so when you
    	averaged them, it came out to some value in between.  So
    	we understood then why that happened, why we were getting
    	that result.
    	Now, there is a follow-up to that.  Our reconstruction,
    	we weren't trying to say it was better than Mann or
    	anything.  We were just trying to do what is called a
    	sensitivity test on the Mann et al. result, okay.  Now, the
    	Mann et al. result was the only paper that actually
    	estimated the sensitivities, the uncertainties of your
    	conclusion which Dr. North has emphasized is very
    	important, and for that reason, I believe it was legitimate
    	to include that, to select that as the paper that would go
    	in to highlight the millennial perspective for IPCC
    	because it was the one that had the objectively determined
    	uncertainties in the reconstruction, okay.  So that is
    	how it wound up in IPCC and they had some additional
    	information that it might be okay.
    	Now, science progresses and sometimes past conclusions
    	have to be modified.  A notable example with respect to
    	IPCC involves this significance of satellite upper air
    	data that previously had not agreed with model
    	predictions.  Now they seem to, okay.  That is just the
    	way science goes.  Similarly, some papers have been
    	published since the IPCC suggesting greater variability
    	than Mann et al., and contrary to claims of the Wegman
    	report, and again, I should point out here, I apologize
    	for the sometimes poor use of terms that I have used to
    	describe Dr. Wegman and I apologize to Dr. Wegman for
    	that.  But contrary to the claims in that report, one of
    	these reconstructions used a completely independent data
    	set for verification.
    	Can we have the next figure, please?  And I was hoping
    	to have a pointer, but the main point here is what you
    	see here is--I just want to spend a little bit of time
    	on this because you are seeing basically the same net
    	conclusion as you see from Mann et al. even though we
    	had greater variability that Mann et al. in this
    	reconstruction, and again, this is sort of a slightly
    	sophisticated update of the bonehead methodology, okay.
    	So it is bonehead squared or something.  But what you
    	see here is we have reconstructions here in blue and red
    	and yellow, different length of time series, but it goes
    	back to about 500 A.D., and we have uncertainties
    	assigned to these reconstructions based on the uncertainty
    	in the overlap interval with the instrumental record here.
    	But the difference we get is that we have a completely
    	independent validation based on the methodology data from
    	borehole measurements of heat flow in the Earth's interior,
    	okay.  That is completely independent from the data we
    	use.  And statistically, we actually have two borehole
    	scientists on our team for that paper plus two sets of
    	statistical climatologists, I might add, that the
    	relationship between this low resolution borehole record
    	and this higher resolution surface reconstruction are
    	indistinguishable and yet the variations you see here are
    	much greater than what you see in Mann et al., okay, the
    	variability.  We have a slightly warmer medieval warm
    	period than Mann et al. but even there if you take decadal
    	smoothing there, that peak value here in the medieval
    	warm period really at best approximates what happens in
    	the mid-20th Century, all right?  And again, because of
    	the nature of the way we combine the data, we understand
    	exactly why it doesn't get really warm, okay.  And so
    	this is a paper that is coming out--well, it has actually
    	been accepted by the Journal of Climate and will be out
    	sometime later this year.  So this is one of the things
    	we don't agree with Mann in terms of variability.  Others,
    	Mann has updated his reconstruction and he still believes
    	that it is the same.  So there are still differences in
    	the field but a number of other studies show higher
    	variability at that time.
    	The interesting point about the higher variability and you
    	have to be really aware of this is that it is not--some
    	people may--it almost seems sometimes in reading papers
    	that people enjoy disproving Mann, okay, but one of the
    	things you have to be aware of, you have a reconstruction
    	that has higher variability and greater warming in the
    	Middle Ages.  What it means is, your climate system has
    	higher sensitivity, okay, than the Mann et al.
    	reconstruction which has only small wiggles, okay, and
    	high climate sensitivity carries over to what the
    	implications are for carbon dioxide forcing because the
    	only--sensitivity means that if you have a certain amount
    	of forcing, you either get a small response or a big
    	response, okay.  You have a system with low sensitivity,
    	then it doesn't wiggle much.  If that was true for
    	carbon dioxide, you wouldn't have to worry about it.
    	You just close the door and throw away the key and keep
    	burning oil until you want.  If it has a high
    	sensitivity though, you have to start worrying, and the
    	implication of this result is that climate sensitivity
    	is much higher than before, okay.
    	So now, I may be almost out of time here, okay, because
    	I have spent a lot of time on this.  I have a few
    	comments--
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Dr. Crowley, you are about 4 minutes
    	over your time, but if you want to summarize, then there
    	will be plenty of questions for you as well.
    	DR. CROWLEY.  Okay.  I just wanted to highlight a couple
    	points on the Wegman report.  I am not going to talk
    	about their assessment of the Mann et al. thing.  That is
    	really--I disagree with them with respect to their
    	recommendations and I will just summarize these
    	disagreements, one being that the interactions with the
    	statistics community have really increased very
    	significantly and I think that Dr. Wegman and his
    	colleagues may have been working with--had a small sample
    	problem just looking at some of the paleoclimate papers
    	because in fact it is a rather substantial improvement
    	in the interactions between real statisticians and the
    	climate--and percolating down into the paleoclimate
    	community, and that is true even for the IPCC.  The key
    	chapter in the new IPCC report actually has a
    	statistician and a statistical climatologist as co-lead
    	authors of this chapter, okay.  So they are being well
    	integrated into the process.
    	And finally, with respect to authors should not assess
    	their own work, this sounds fine in theory but in
    	practice it seems almost unworkable because who else
    	but experts can produce an expert report.  And with
    	respect to the IPCC, I think it is a marvelous document.
    	It involves hundreds of scientists, reviews of thousands
    	of papers, and received on the order of 10,000 comments
    	for each of the earlier drafts.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Are you about ready to conclude,
    	Dr. Crowley?
    	DR. CROWLEY.  So my feeling is that it is a very, very
    	thoroughly reviewed and vetted manuscript and I think
    	it is just about the best thing we have.
    	[The prepared statement of Dr. Thomas J. Crowley
    	follows:]

    PREPARED STATEMENT OF DR. THOMAS J. CROWLEY, NICHOLAS
    PROFESSOR OF EARTH SCIENCE SYSTEM, DUKE UNIVERSITY

    I thank the committee for the opportunity to submit my response
    to the findings of the NRC and Wegman Reports.  As background
    to my testimony, I will briefly state my credentials.  I
    received a Ph.D. in marine geology from Brown University and
    have a long interest in the history of the Earth's past
    climates, both from a modeling and observational viewpoint.  I
    have published about 100 peer-reviewed papers and have
    co-authored a book on the subject.  I have worked in academia,
    the private sector, and at two government agencies - at NSF as
    a program director in climate and at NASA/Goddard Space Flight
    Center as a National Research Council senior fellow.  I am
    presently the Nicholas Professor of Earth Systems Science in
    the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University.
    Because this hearing has been called to better understand the
    influence of the much-discussed 1998 and 1999 papers by
    Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley, and Malcolm Hughes, I think it
    would be useful to provide a brief scientific background to
    the subject.  Prior to 1998 there had been only one attempt
    to summarize the various types of data from past climate to
    get a broader picture as to how it has changed over the last
    few centuries.  In 1998 Mann et al. introduced a new
    technique to develop more quantitative estimates of the
    nature of climate change since AD 1400 for the northern
    hemisphere, and in 1999 the group extended that record back
    to AD 1000 and concluded that the late 20th century warming
    was the largest in the last 1000 years.   This report was
    among a number of scientific studies highlighted in the IPCC
    Third Assessment Report (TAR) to conclude that "there is new
    and stronger evidence that most of the observed warming over
    the last fifty years is attributable to human activities".
    With respect to the committee's interests in whether the
    objectivity of the IPCC with respect to the Mann et al.
    studies I elaborate on several points below.  At the time of
    IPCC TAR it represented the best estimate of past millennial
    temperatures and their uncertainties, and that the most
    important conclusion from IPCC (stated above) does not depend
    on the Mann et al. papers for its credibility, and are even
    more robust today than they were in 2001.
    The final part of my presentation involves a number of
    objections, both major and minor, to the Wegman Report.
    I have five main points to make concerning the following
    subjects:
    (1) The relation between the Mann et al paper and the IPCC
    Third Report in 2001. The Mann et al paper was certainly
    influential in the IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR), but
    so were many other papers.  But the papers that made the
    biggest difference were the ones focusing on the instrumental
    record in which it was shown that models and data could not
    be reconciled unless an anthropogenic greenhouse influence
    was invoked. The most compelling driver of all was the fact
    that global temperatures kept going up and up since the
    1996 report, and meltback of glaciers increased in many
    parts of the world.  I might add that this trend has only
    accelerated since 2001, with melting in the Arctic and on
    Greenland reaching alarming levels.
    (2) The Mann et al paper in and of itself. At the time of
    IPCC TAR there were two other reconstructions going back
    to the Middle Ages, with decadally smoothed data showing,
    at best, past millennial temperatures comparable to the
    mid-20th century warm interval.  One reconstruction
    (Crowley and Lowery, attached) using a completely different
    methodology agreed with Mann et al. quite well (Fig. 2).
    However, Mann et al. was the only paper of the three that
    estimated uncertainties, and it is no surprise that this
    paper was the one chosen to highlight the millennial
    perspective for IPCC.  The significant criticisms of the
    Mann et al. paper that have been published since 2001 are
    by definition after the fact with respect to IPCC TAR.
    (3) The present state of our knowledge on millennial
    changes Science always progresses and sometimes past
    conclusons have to be modified. A notable example with
    respect to IPCC involves the significant reassessment of
    satellite upper air data that previously had not agreed
    with model predictions of increasing air temperatures in
    that region; new assessments indicated that the models and
    data were now in approximate agreement.  Similarly, some
    papers have been published in the last five years suggesting
    greater variability than Mann et al.  Contrary to the
    claims of the Wegman Report, one of these reconstructions
    (Hegerl et al., attachment 2) uses a completely independent
    data set from borehole measurements (fig. 3) of the
    effects of air temperature change on heat flow in the upper
    part of the Earth's crust.
    	Because Mann et al. have more recently obtained
    	results similar to their earlier work, but now using
    	a different methodology, it continues to be necessary
    	to understand the causes of differences among the
    	different reconstructions before the estimates of
    	higher temperature variability can be accepted.
    	Even if the latter estimates ultimately prove to be
    	more accurate, there is no room for gloating (as
    	sometimes seems evident in discussion of the newer
    	results), for the higher variability inevitably
    	implies a higher climate sensitivity, which is a
    	cause of much more serious concern for either the
    	committee, or society at large.  By this I mean
    	that for any given level of climate forcing from
    	carbon dioxide, the expected temperature response
    	would be larger than it would if the Mann et al.
    	reconstruction was ultimately deemed to be the
    	"final word" on the magnitude of past climate
    	change (see Hegerl et al., third attachment).
    (4) The claim of unusual level of warmth for the late
    20th century is still valid for all but one of the new
    reconstructions.  Contrary to the conclusions of the
    the Wegman report, there is reason to believe in the
    unique nature of late 20th century warmth (this is the
    only major point in which I differ from the NRC report).
    Although the early millennium records are small in
    number, the composite reconstruction agrees in the
    overlap interval (A.D.  1500-1960) with reconstructions
    using more extensive data sets.  Furthermore,
    examination of the raw data indicates that even in the
    high latitude northern hemisphere they show regional
    variations in the timing of warmth that is much greater
    than in the late 20th century.  In other words, some
    regions are warm and some cold - a very different
    pattern from the late 20th century, where almost every
    region has warmed over the last 100 years.  It is
    therefore no surprise that, when these records are
    composited, the sum value is smaller than for the late
    20th century.
    (5) The conclusions and recommendations of the Wegman
    Report have some serious flaws.   In addition to a
    number of technical errors, large and small, the
    following comments can be made in the bullets on page
    two of the committee's summary of findings (fact sheet):
    (a) bullet one (concerning specifics of Mann et al.) -
    responses discussed above
    (b) bullet two - "many of the proxies are reused in
    most of the papers....it is not surprising that would
    obtain similar results..."  This almost sounds as if
    it is wrong for everyone to use the best existing data!
    The more important point, and one not stated, is that
    different methodologies are employed by each of the
    investigators.  Furthermore, there is nothing wrong
    with talking to or even collaborating with someone else
    in a field that you respect, and has expertise that you
    don't have.  The Wegman Report almost seems to imply
    that collaboration is equivalent to collusion, a result
    that would apply to the Wegman Report itself if that
    were always true.
    The inference in the same bullet concerning the failure
    of the peer review statement is an oversimplification.
    The anonymity of peer review still allows papers to be
    rejected, as almost any scientist can testify.     As a
    former NSF program director, I have had significant
    opportunity to evaluate the peer-review system.  It is
    not perfect but in general the best work gets funded.  For
    publications, editors usually select a variety of reviewers
    who cover the different expertises in the study.  But it is
    just not practical to expand the number of peer reviews for
    many publications - the work load is just too onerous for
    the reviewing pool, and most people will simply decline the
    request to review the papers.  Finally, I would like to
    comment that the Wegman Report now before the committee has
    not undergone any extensive peer review from anyone in the
    climate community prior to its submission to the committee
    for inclusion into the record and, most problematically,
    possible use as a guide to further recommendations by the
    committee.
    (c) Bullet three - the researchers do not seem to be interacting
    with the statistical community.  This statement is based on a
    small subsample of paleoclimate papers.  Overall, there is
    increasingly strong incorporation of statistical methodologies
    in the climate sciences, including increased interactions with
    statisticians.  For example, the National Center for
    Atmospheric Research has had a postdoctoral program for
    statisticians for thirteen years.  A key project jointly funded
    by DOE and NOAA for detection and attribution of climate change
    involves not only several statistical climatologists but also
    explicitly seeks out input from statisticians.  The present
    (and key) IPCC Fourth assessment chapter on detection and
    attribution of climate change has a statistician and statistical
    climatologist (with a training in applied mathematics) as
    co-lead authors.  Statisticians are welcome to respond to any of
    the chapters in the review process.  From these statements it is
    clear that the Wegman Report is somewhat uninformed with respect
    to the effort to include statisticians in the IPCC review process.
    I might add that interactions between geoscientists and
    statisticians have long been hampered by what can only be described
    by some as a condescending attitude from some statisticians that
    geoscientists were not employing the most recent, state of the art
    statistical methods.  Such attitudes almost guarantee subsequent
    poor communication and fail to recognize the unusual nature of
    "field laboratory" geoscience data, which are very different than
    "closed laboratories" where the conditions of an experiment are
    well controlled. The latter types of data require an intimate
    understanding of the raw data and simpler, more robust statistical
    methodologies that recognize the limitations of such data.
    (d) Bullet four - authors of policy assessment should not assess
    their own work.  This statement may sound fine but in practice but
    seems almost totally workable.  Who else but experts should
    produce an expert report?  The third and fourth IPCC reports
    involved hundreds of scientists around the world, a review of
    thousands of papers, and received on the order of 10,000 comments
    in the early stages of drafts.  The final summary for policymakers
    requires a vote - by government representatives of the signatory
    nations -- on every single sentence before it is accepted!   I can
    attest from personal experience that the resultant high quality of
    the IPCC documents make them ideal choices for teaching graduate
    and professional courses because they are by definition our best
    statement on the present state of knowledge of the climate system.
    It is inconceivable to me that a report of this quality could be
    produced by a group of nonspecialists.
    (e) Bullet five - paleoclimate data does not provide insight into
    physical processes   The statement on physical processes is
    completely wrong.  In fact, paleoclimate modeling results indicate
    that about half of the decadally scaled variance between 1270 and
    1850 can be explained by natural variations in solar and
    (primarily) volcanic forcing.  When these forcings are carried
    over into the 20th century, they cannot explain the 20th
    temperature rise.  Only greenhouse gases can explain the rise,
    not only for the late 20th century, but also in part for the
    mid-20th century.
    In this same bullet the Wegman Report recommends that federal
    research should emphasize fundamental understanding of the
    mechanisms of climate change and should focus on interdisciplinary
    teams to avoid narrowly focused discipline research.  I find this
    to be an extremely na�ve statement.  Climate studies are among the
    most interdisciplinary field that one can imagine - as just one
    example I submit a copy of a paper (attachment four) on causes of
    climate change over the last millennium that discusses changes in
    solar output, volcanism, trace gas variations in climate, tree
    rings, ice cores, climate models, impact of vegetation, etc etc.
    There are many other examples of interdisciplinary activities.
    As a former program director at the National Science Foundation,
    I think I can also speak for many present program managers in
    federal agencies concerning the lack of interdisciplinary
    activities on different projects.  This interdisciplinary is
    the core concept of terms such as "Global Change" and "Earth
    Systems Science" and as such the agencies have made a great
    effort at supporting interdisciplinary research.  Furthermore,
    every major modeling group in IPCC addresses a host of
    interdisciplinary science.
    But it would be a big mistake to forget the lone investigator.
    Sometimes the most fundamental findings in a field come from
    these lone investigators (who may nevertheless have much
    contact with many others).  There must be room for individual
    creative science in climate science.

    Summary and Concluding Remarks    In my view the debate over
    the Mann et al paper is a tempest in a teapot.  It is
    legitimate material for scientific discussion but the
    implications with respect to the operations of the IPCC are
    unproven and seemingly based, in my opinion, much more on
    repetition of innuendo than on any real facts.  Although
    there is always a need for enhanced interaction with the
    statistics community, the lack of communication is seriously
    misrepresented in the Wegman Reprot.  I believe that this
    report should not be used as either a legitimate assessment
    of the science or as a guide to policy modification.
    Finally, I believe it is time to stop using Michael Mann as
    a whipping post and to start directing attention to the more
    important matters of whether anything should be done about
    global warming, and if so, what?

    Attachments:

    1. Crowley, T.J., and Lowery, T.S., 2000.  How warm was the
    Medieval Warm Period?  Ambio  (publication of the Royal
    Swedish Academy of Sciences), v. 29, no. 1, pp 51-54.
    2. Hegerl, G.C., Crowley, T.J., Allen, M., Hyde, W.T.,
    Pollack, H.N., Smerdon, J., and Zorita, E., 2006.  Detection
    of human influence on a new, validated, 1500 year temperature
    reconstruction, Journal of Climate (accepted).
    3. Hegerl, G.C., Crowley, T.J., Hyde, W.T., and Frame, D.J.,
    2006.  Climate sensitivity constrained by temperature
    reconstructions of the past seven centuries.  Nature, v.
    440, 1029-1032.
    4. Crowley, T.J., Causes of climate change over the last
    1000 years.  Science, v. 289, 270-277.

    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Thank you.  Dr. von Storch, you are
    	recognized for 5 minutes.
    DR. VON STORCH.  Thank you very much for inviting me here.
    I just wanted to mention that I am joined here by my
    colleague, Eduardo Zorito, from the same laboratory sitting
    there in the back.
    	Next transparency, please.  So I am just summarizing
    	my paper here.  So first scientific aspects.  So the
    	progression-type methods of the so-called hockey
    	stick studies of Mann, Bradley, and Hughes suffer from
    	a number of problems which should have been addressed
    	before the hockey stick was elevated to an
    	authoritative description of the temperature history
    	of the past 1,000 years.  It says 1,000 to 2,000 years
    	but that is an error.
    	Second, the claim by the IPCC third assessment report,
    	that is the 2001, that there is reliable evidence that
    	climate is beginning to change due to human action was
    	based on a number of different lines of argument which
    	are insensitive to the validity of the MBH studies, that
    	is, the present debate about the validity of the hockey
    	stick is of marginal relevance for the detection of
    	present anthropogenic climate change.  I claim the
    	major problems are not of a statistical nature but are
    	related to the social practice of climate change studies.
    	Next transparency, please.  In the Wegman report, let me
    	say a few words about the Wegman report.  We have in our
    	working group examined how serious the error of biased
    	centering would be on the overall results given a
    	temperature history reminiscent of the IPCC 1990 version.
    	The paper has been published and the effect is very minor.
    	It does not mean that it is not a glitch but it really
    	doesn't matter here, at least to the extent we could test
    	it.
    	There are other aspects which are much more relevant I
    	would have hoped that Dr. Wegman would have taken this up,
    	that is, the usage of the trend as a key element for
    	training the progression model.  It is a bit funny to use
    	the trend to train something and I will show you in a
    	second what that means.
    	And second, the method of something, what is called scaling,
    	that is, that you artificially make sure that the variance
    	of the predictor, that is, the temperature, equals the
    	variance of the predicted temperature, the derived
    	temperature.  So you multiply it by a number so that it
    	just comes out as if you could explain the total variance
    	by the proxy.  You cannot.  You know that you cannot do it
    	and therefore you introduce an error which you cannot avoid.
    	Third, we welcome the suggestion by Wegman and his
    	colleagues to invest much more effort to examine the error
    	structure in deriving temperature data from proxies.
    	There are two main issues.  First is the homogeneity of
    	proxies.  If in the year 1960 the tree ring means something
    	for temperature--no, I mean--yes, it does not mean that this
    	is the same information in the year 1200.  It could be that
    	the process to get out the information from a 1200 tree ring
    	is different from the 1960.  Second, the instationarities of
    	the late proxy and temperature.  We know that there are some
    	problems at least that has been explained at the Academy
    	hearing that nowadays the link between temperature and CO2
    	seems to be damaged.  When Hughes was asked what the reason
    	could be, he gave three different hypotheses, and when he was
    	asked, do you think it could have happened in the past, the
    	answer was yes.  So it could be that the link which we see
    	now these days in the past 100 years or so would be different
    	than previous times.  We cannot know that and we have to think
    	about how to model this effect.
    	The next transparency, please.  That shows the danger of
    	relying on trends.  So you see here, a times series throughout
    	the instrumental period, that is, the period when we think we
    	have enough data to derive Northern Hemisphere mean annual
    	temperature from instrumental data, and you see in yellow, that
    	is the area when the method has been trained and then we see
    	it has been trained from 1910--well, it has been trained for
    	a longer time showing a 21-year running means.  And the red
    	curve is what the MBH method was indicating the temperature
    	variation should have been in this period and the black is a
    	new analysis of the climate research unit.  It was produced
    	after that was done, and now what you see here is that the
    	green and the black curve are very nicely coincident during
    	the trend but nothing else.  Nothing else is reproduced and
    	so it is just what this method is fixing up is the trend and
    	nothing else, or it may be so.  One should check that out.
    	And so this is a bit dubious.
    	Next transparency, please.  Understand that you are concerned
    	about the quality control process of climate change science,
    	and I would claim that parts of climate change science, in
    	particular paleoclimatic reconstructions have suffered from
    	gatekeeping and insistence usage of reviewers.  I myself can
    	say that they were always the same type of reviews we got,
    	the same style and I am sure that it was the same person and
    	I am sure it was the person we have spoken about here quite
    	a bit.
    	And I also claim that editors in science magazines have
    	failed to ensure the reproducibility of key results.  The
    	methods have not been described properly and their data one
    	could not access.  Part of the mess here is due to the
    	practice of Nature and Science that they have a bias towards
    	interesting results.  I mean, they have--their way of
    	operating is not only that the results are innovative and
    	valid but they must also be interesting.  Then what I think
    	is really not good that in the IPCC process experts assess
    	their own work.
    	That is, to conclude this, climate change science has
    	suffered from limiting action of gatekeepers and the public
    	preference for interesting results.  Climate change science
    	should provide stakeholders with a broad range of options
    	and not narrow this range to reduce numbers of options
    	preferred for certain world use.
    	I was a bit disappointed about the comment from the lady
    	from Illinois who said aren't you afraid if you say this
    	that this would have negative implications for the policy
    	process.  I mean, is that really--I mean, I was kind of
    	shocked.  I mean, should we really adopt what we say if
    	that is useful for the policy process?  Is that what you
    	expect from science?  If we give advice, that we first think
    	is it useful for something.  I think that is not the way we
    	should operate, or if we do that, you should not listen to
    	us.
    	Next transparency.  This is not to please the people on the
    	right-hand side.  The acceptance of the IPCC in the community,
    	this is actually--it is very well accepted and it is very hard
    	to see this but it is the result of a survey which was asking
    	to what extent do you agree or disagree that the IPCC report
    	is of great use of the advancement of science.  That is on
    	the left-hand side.  And then you see a statistical
    	description of the responses.  At the bottom they would say
    	strongly agree.  At the top they would say strongly
    	disagree.  And then there are--on the left-hand side there
    	are results from 1996 and on the right-hand side 2003, one
    	block for U.S., the other for E.U., and you see in 1996
    	there was a median of three.  That means people, most said
    	well, it is useful.  In 2003 the median was two, so they
    	are much more convinced that this is done well.  And the
    	same result is with a question to what extent do you agree
    	or disagree that the IPCC reports accurately reflect the
    	consensus of thought within the scientific community.  So
    	there is broader agreement that the community is doing
    	right even though I don't think that the Oreskes study was
    	done well and there have been numerous responses on that
    	which have not been accepted by science for whatever
    	reasons.
    	The last transparency, please.  We have to keep in mind
    	that climate change science takes place in a cultural
    	context.  It has something to do with what we think we have
    	been trained at and a possibly remarkable result is that
    	the concept of anthropogenic climate change is not new in
    	Western culture.  This is not a new invention in the
    	history of this.  We have documented very many cases and
    	the first scientific publication we have on that is from
    	1781 by a physician named Williamson from Philadelphia
    	who was speaking about the changing climate due to human
    	action.  At that time the weather in this part of the
    	world was greatly improved because of taking away forests.
    	Second, climate change science is something what we call
    	post-mormal, that means it goes along with high
    	uncertainties and high relevance.  In that case, it is
    	quite normal that the boundaries between value-driven
    	agendas and curiosity-driven science get blurred and we
    	should admit that there is a considerable influence of
    	extrascientific agendas on the scientific process of
    	climate change studies.  I think we have seen that today
    	also.  The processes of climate change studies need to be
    	analyzed and accompanied by social and policy scientists.
    	So this process we are seeing here, how we argue, we
    	should be something like--yes, always an analysis by
    	social scientists and I think what Dr. Wegman and his
    	colleagues started to do was quite useful in this respect,
    	that we understand to what extent we are driven by
    	non-scientific motives, and this ends my presentation
    	here.
    	[The prepared statement of Dr. Hans von Storch follows:]

    PREPARED STATEMENT OF DR. HANS VON STORCH, DIRECTOR OF INSTITUTE
    FOR COAST RESEARCH, GKSS-RESEARCH CENTER, GERMANY

    Introduction of person
    I, Hans von Storch, have been actively involved in climate
    science since the early 1980s. I have held positions with the
    Meteorological Institute of the University of Hamburg and at
    the Max-Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg. At the
    present time, I am a director of the Institute for Coastal
    Research of the GKSS Research Center in Germany. I have
    co-authored more than 120 peer-reviewed articles on various
    issues of climate dynamics, climate statistics, climate change
    and climate impact as well as the  textbook "Statistical
    Analysis in Climate Research" (together with Francis Zwiers)
    published by Cambridge University Press. I was a lead author
    of Chapter 10 of the Third Assessment Report of the IPCC, but
    I am not involved in the Fourth Assessment Report of the
    IPCC.
    Based on the scientific evidence, I am convinced that we are
    facing anthropogenic climate change brought about by the
    emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
    For further personal details please refer to my web-page:
    http://w3g.gkss.de/staff/storch.
    Hans von Storch
    Director of Institute for Coastal Research, GKSS Research
    Center, Geesthacht, Germany
    Professor at Meteorological Institute, University of Hamburg,
    Hamburg, Germany
    e-mail: hvonstorch@web.de, mobile +49 171 212 2046

    Outline
    I briefly address three aspects of the hockey-stick issue,
    namely
    1. Scientific aspects:
    - How valid are the regression-type methodologies for
    reconstruction historical climates?
    - How relevant are these reconstructions for claims that we
    presently experience a climate change outside the range of
    what we consider as "normal" (no human interference).
    2. The process of achieving success of a scientific knowledg
    e claims in the climate science community:
    - Independence of the review process or presence of
    gatekeepers.
    - Reproducibility
    - Selection process by Nature & Science.
    - Acceptance by IPCC assessment process.
    3. The social conditioning of climate science:
    - The history of perceived anthropogenic climate changes.
    - Post-normal science.

    On the basis of my analysis I draw a couple of conclusions,
    chief being that the process of climate science must be
    organized in a sustainable manner. This means that climate
    science should be conducted with a low sense of subjective
    passion; that climate science provides "if-then" answers to
    questions society poses; that it presents to the society a
    broad range of possible policy responses and does not restrict
    the range of policy options to a small corridor that appeals
    to certain value-driven agendas.
    The conditioning of science by the culture of its actors and
    society is unavoidable. However, the scientists can attempt
    to make such influences explicit by acknowledging and explicitly
    reflecting on such influences, especially by engaging social
    scientists in the process of critical self-reflection. The
    Wegman-report claims that a major problem in studies such as
    MBH would be an insufficient engagement by mainstream
    statisticians. I think a major problem with this study and its
    transformation into a policy-relevant issue is an insufficient
    comprehension of the social dynamics of the post-normal
    process of (not only) climate science.
    There are three appendices to this document:
    1. My responses to the "Boehlert"-questions given at the NRC
    hearing on March 2, 2006 in Washington.
    2. A contribution to the debate about the "Barton-letters" on
    the "Prometheus"-weblog http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/
    dated July 8, 2005
    (http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/climate_
    change/000486hans_von_storch_on_b.html)
    3. An English translation of an article published in the German
    weekly "DER SPIEGEL" (4/2005): von Storch and Stehr: A climate of
    staged angst.
    (http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/climate_
    change/000343a_climate_of_staged_.html)

    Scientific aspects

    How valid are the regression-type methodologies for reconstruction
    historical climates?
    The key statistical assumption of any of such methods is the
    uniformity of informational content in the proxies which are
    regressed on the climate variables (mostly temperature). In other
    words, are these data influenced by non-climatic variable factors
    (inhomogeneity), is the transfer function linking proxies and
    temperature constant in time (stationarity)? Likely, most if not
    all proxy data (tree rings, coral rings, vine harvests) suffer from
    some inhomogeneities and instationarities. This is unavoidable and
    has to be dealt with by using additional insight into the system,
    e.g. by data assimilation approaches combining limited theoretical
    (models) and empirical knowledge (uncertain data).
    Regression-type models are designed so that they return only part
    of the full variability of the variable of interest, namely that
    part which can be traced back to the proxies. Not all of the
    variability can be accounted for in this way. The difference in
    variability of temperature and of proxy-derived temperature is
    dealt with by "scaling", i.e., by applying a suitable normalization.
    If "scaling" is used, then the basic principle of regression is
    violated, as the part of variability in the predictand (temperature),
    which can not statistically traced back to the predictor (proxy), is
    nevertheless related to predictor-variability. Scaling is useful,
    when the transfer function is not regression (screening of
    co-variability of two variables) but based on physical arguments.
    Nevertheless, attempts like those by MBH are useful and should be
    explored. They may provide useful estimates. The problem with MBH
    was that the result was presented by the IPCC and others in a manner
    so that one could believe a realistic description of historical
    temperature variations had successfully been achieved. The NRC report
    published in June 2006 has made clear that such a belief was incorrect.

    How relevant are these reconstructions for claims that we presently
    experience a climate change outside the range of what we consider as
    "normal"
    Whether the present climate is influenced by non-natural factors is
    answered through "detection" studies. Such studies are based on the
    insight that the predicted signal of human-caused climate change
    should emerge in most recent times from the natural variability.
    Second, one would expect it to manifest itself with a higher "than
    normal" rate of change. Thus, the signal is expected to be a rapid
    warming in the most recent past. The method to test this hypothesis
    is to find out if we have a "steeper-than-normal" recent upward
    temperature trend. The hypothesis is not "we have a period which is
    warmer than ever in historical times". In that sense the claim
    whether the last decade is the warmest of the past millennium is not
    relevant to detection; the question is whether the recent rate of
    warming is markedly stronger than what has happened in the past.
    The hypothesis is tested by framing the problem as a statistical
    test of a null hypothesis. The null hypothesis reads "the present
    trend is of natural origin". Then, one determines the range of
    trends consistent with natural variability - and rejects the null
    hypothesis (and accepts the hypothesis that the trends is not of
    natural origins) if the present trend is larger than, say, 97.5%
    of trends originating entirely from natural variability.
    The crux of this approach is of course the determination of the
    range of trends which are observable under natural conditions. To
    do so, one may rely only on the instrumental period, which is
    contaminated by the expected signal and rather short, on
    multi-century reconstructions as MBH and on extended model
    simulations of undisturbed conditions. Obviously the determination
    of the range of "normal" trends is uncertain and absolute certainty
    can not be attained within a reasonable time.
    We1 have examined which range the different historical
    reconstructions suggest. To do so, the time series of reconstructions
    have been "modelled" as a long-memory process, and standard
    deviations of trends are derived. Here, the trend is defined as the
    difference of two 30 years means 100 years apart. Then these trends
    are determined from the instrumental record as given as multiples
    of the standard deviations derived from the different reconstructions.

    The result is given in the diagram; the curves are all the same, but
    they differ in scale because of the unit of different standard
    deviations derived from the reconstructions given at the figure
    caption. The horizontal dashed lines mark 2, 2.5 and 3 standard
    deviations. Two standard deviations correspond to a risk of false
    rejection of the null hypothesis of 2.5%.
    Obviously, in all cases, the critical 2-standard deviation mark is
    passed sometimes in the past decades; in case of MBH this happens
    very early, while in Moberg's more variable reconstruction at about
    1980.
    I conclude that the claim of "detection of anthropogenic climate
    change" is valid independently of which historical temperature
    reconstruction one chooses to believe in.
    It should also been taken notice that the claims of successful
    detection on non-natural warming trends and its attribution to
    chiefly elevated greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere
    in the Third Assessment report were not based on the historical
    reconstructions but on the analysis of the instrumental temperature
    record as well as on numerical experiments with climate models.

    The process of achieving success of a scientific knowledge claim
    in the climate science community
    A normal condition in the progress of science is that knowledge
    claims are accepted only after a "peer-review" process. The
    peer-review process attempts to assure that knowledge claims are
    consistent with the empirical evidence, and properly related to
    contemporary accepted knowledge claims, and that the methods are
    sound and are reproducibly described.  The "peer-review" process
    does not eliminate the possibility that new ideas are rejected
    since they may contradict contemporary, powerful but possibly
    false knowledge claims (see Ludwik Fleck's seminal book on
    "Generation of a Scientific Fact"). In order to minimize such a
    danger, the verdict of peer-reviewers should, to first order
    approximation, be independent of the persons involved in the
    review process. Nonetheless, the danger is that a few scholars
    may become powerful gatekeepers, for example as reviewers who
    are regularly called upon or as editors of scientific journals.
    The primary goal of such gatekeepers is to fend off publications
    which may contradict their own thinking, and not to ensure that
    only internally consistent and plausible publications reach the
    market of knowledge claims (i.e. scientific journals).
    Unfortunately this seems to have happened in the field of
    historical global climate reconstructions, where a small group of
    scientists has exerted an undue control of the entire field.
    Usually, a further mechanism more closely tied to the substance
    of research is used to quality-control scientific knowledge
    claims, namely reproducibility. This mechanism has ceased to
    operate in some quarters of paleo-climate science, since some
    scientists consider "their" data as their personal property and
    not that of the scientific community, so that others are unable
    to challenge conclusions drawn from these data by analysing the
    raw data in their own manner. Although such secrecy is a very
    human trait it violates the norms of science. Even hostile
    competitors should have an opportunity to independently re-examine
    the empirical evidence for conclusions drawn by others, in
    particular when they become relevant for the policy domain. Data
    must be become public; the methods employed must be described in
    algorithmic detail.
    Another relevant aspect is the functioning of the two prestigious
    journals "Science" and "Nature". The journals enjoy high esteem
    within and outside of the scientific community as having the
    highest scientific standards, which is not always the case. The
    contents of Nature and Science also receive exceptional attention
    in the media world-wide. However, different from "normal"
    scientific journals, the editorial decision to accept a
    scientist's contribution to Science or Nature is also based on
    the newsworthiness of the research contribution. The presented
    results must not only be valid and innovative but must also be
    of interest for a wider community of readers. Such a criterion
    is reasonable from a economic point-of-view, but it clearly
    introduces a filter in what is reaching the public is not solely
    based on the scientific merit of research. Research results with
    stronger media appeal fare better in this competition of
    scientific findings; results biased towards higher sensitivity
    to human interference are more interesting to a broad audience
    than findings that report low sensitivities. In addition, there
    may also be a bias towards certain authors, who are well known,
    because they enjoy public visibility, or command appealing
    writing skills, "sell" well. Sometimes such contributions are
    invited.
    Another problem with the same journals is that their articles
    must be relatively short so that technical aspects cannot be
    described in any detail; indeed, the MBH publication was cursory
    on the methodical side - thus the statistical method, the
    validation and the reproducibility, have not been seriously
    subject to the review process. Ironically, after publication in
    "Nature" the method was considered "peer-reviewed" and thus
    valid. However, this was not the case, as the method had not
    been properly described.
    The IPCC has different levels of operation - the generation of
    the technical chapters, which is done by a group of "lead
    authors", headed by "convening lead authors", and the process
    of arriving at a SPM (Summary for policymakers) and other
    overall assessment documents, which is done by the convening
    lead authors and representatives of the countries.
    How the selection process of lead and convening lead authors
    is done, I do not know - but it is clear that the "lead
    authors" are supposed to be experts in the field. This leads
    to the situation that the IPCC chapters are dominated by the
    authors of the most influential articles in their respective
    fields of research. Participation as a lead or convening lead
    author has the advantage that one can make sure that one's own
    work is positively covered in the IPCC report. However, most
    lead and convening lead author excel as honest brokers, but
    some level of gatekeeping may prevail. Indeed, the reputation
    of the IPCC among scientist has increased to very high levels
    in the past years.
    The IPCC procedure differs markedly from the procedure adopted
    by the National Research Council assessment. In that case, a
    group of eminent scientists was chosen, who have contributed
    to the issue only little or not at all, but have a god
    understanding of the field as a whole. These scientists then
    invited a group of experts to present the different angles
    and knowledge claims. I consider the NRC procedure better in
    assessing the field of knowledge than the IPCC approach. It
    may be, however, that the NRC approach can not be used for
    such a complex and large field, which the IPCC is covering.
    In case of the MBH temperature reconstruction one should note
    that in the technical chapter of the TAR different
    reconstructions had been presented; it was the SPM and the
    synthesis report, where the range of reconstructions was
    reduced to just one, the MBH. It would be interesting to learn
    how this could have happened.

    The social conditioning of climate science
    Science is a social process, which, as all social processes, is
    conditioned by the culture of the actors. This does not mean
    that scientists would do their analysis irrationally or in a
    biased manner, but it means that our questioning may by guided
    by culturally constructed concerns and interests. Also, we may
    be convinced of the validity of some findings more easily if
    these findings are consistent with our prior lay-knowledge.

    The history of perceived anthropogenic climate changes
    It has often been claimed that anthropogenic climate change is
    a recent concept. This is incorrect. In the history of ideas of
    the past 1000 years, we2 have found a number of occasions when
    (western) people have used the concept to explain observed
    changes:
    "During the last 20 years the concept of anthropogenic climate
    change has left academic circles and become a major public
    concern. Some people consider 'global warming' as the major
    environmental threat to the planet. Even though mostly
    considered a novel threat, a look into history tells us that
    claims of humans deliberately or unintentionally changing
    climate is a frequent phenomenon in Western culture. Climate
    change, due to natural and anthropogenic causes, has often
    been discussed since classical times. Environmental change
    including climate change was seen by some as a biblical mandate,
    to 'complete the Creation'. In line with this view, the prospect
    of climate change was considered as a promising challenge in
    more modern times. Only since the middle of the 20th century,
    has anthropogenic climate change become a menacing prospect.
    The concept of anthropogenic climate change seems to be deeply
    embedded in popular thinking, at least in Europe, which
    resurfaces every now and then after scientific discoveries.
    Also, extreme weather phenomena have in the past often been
    explained by adverse human interference."3

    This finding is insofar relevant as it points out that we, as
    members of the western culture, are somehow prepared to accept
    "anthropogenic influence" as an explanation for otherwise
    unexplainable events, such as a cluster of extreme events. Our
    common understanding is that such a human influence would be
    associated with negative impacts. This pre-conditioning may
    influence our process of drawing conclusions, in particular
    when we (scientists) deal with the problem of transferring
    scientific findings into the political arena.

    Post-normal science.
    Most of environmental science is what sociologists call
    "post-normal", i.e., loaded with high uncertainty on an
    issue of great practical importance. Climate change science
    is an example of such post-normal science.4
    A characteristic of post-normal science is that the
    boundaries between science and value-driven agendas get
    blurred; that representatives of NGOs are considered to
    know better about the functioning and dynamics of systems
    than scientists; that parliamentarian committees delve
    into the technicalities of science; that amateurs engage
    in the technical debate: and that some scientist try to
    force "solutions" upon policymakers and the public. In
    such a situation it becomes entirely possible that
    individual scientists emphasize those insights which are
    assumed to influence certain policy decisions more
    forcefully, while downplaying others.
    Typical for such a post-normal situation is the flooding
    of the media with books and movies which dramatize the
    issue. Recent examples include: The Day After Tomorrow,
    State of Fear, Satanic Gases, The Revenge of Gaia, and An
    Inconvenient Truth.
    In this situation we need a discussion, not only among
    scientists about the role of science for the public,
    which must be the provisions of options for policy, not
    the narrowing of the range of options to satisfy different
    worldviews. To limit the influence of non- or pre-scientific
    knowledge claims, social and policy scientists need to
    analyse the different processes in climate science, and the
    interdependence of culture, policy, politics, media and
    climate science. Even if science can never be fully
    "objective", it may nevertheless be possible to make climate
    science a considerably more objective practice than what we
    have in these days.

    Appendices

    (a) My answers to Chairman Boehlerts questions, given at the
    NRC hearing
    What is the current scientific consensus on the temperature
    record of the last 1,000 or 2,000 years? What are the main
    areas of uncertainty and how significant are they?
      There is consensus on the "blade", but the claimed
    smoothness of the shaft is likely false.
      The main problem is the loss of information encoded in
    the proxy data and the shortness of the instrumental record
    for training the statistical models.
    What is the current scientific consensus on the conclusions
    reached by Drs. Mann, Bradley and Hughes? What are principal
    scientific criticism of their work and how significant are
    they?
    Has the information needed to replicate their work been
    available? Have other scientists been able to replicate their
    work?
      There is no consensus on the claims (which?) made by MBH. The
      main critique is that the method is suffering from a too large
      loss of variability on long time scales.
      No, the information required for replication was not made
      available in a suitable manner. The original publication in
      "nature" did not provide this information and was obviously
      published without careful review of the methodology.
      Yes, the details of the method were finally determined, among
      others by B�rger et al., who checked a wide range of
      combinations of details - which all gave widely different
      results.
    How central is the debate over the paleoclimate temperature
    record to the overall consensus on global climate change? How
    central is the work of Drs. Mann, Bradley and Hughes to the
    consensus on the temperature record?
      The main conclusions about "detection and attribution" are
      drawn from the instrumental record and models; the different
      reconstructions do not contradict "detection".
      The MBH work is widely accepted as truth outside of people
      directly engaged in the issue, because of a less than
      satisfactory marketing by the IPCC.

    (b) My posting on weblog "Prometheus" July 08, 2005 on the
    "Barton letters"
    My reaction to Rep. Barton's requests is split. In his five
    letters, he is asking for information from two different groups,
    namely institutions with reviewing responsibilities (IPCC, NSF)
    and individuals with scientific responsibilities (M, B and H).
    I find his inquiry of the performance of the institutions IPCC
    and NSF valid, but the interrogative questioning of the
    individual scientists is inadequate.
    a) Scientists. The scientists have the task to be innovative,
    creative, to try new avenues of analysis and the like. They
    have the right to err, the right to suggest explanations and
    interpretations which may need to be revised at a later time.
    They should document what they have done, so that others can
    replicate.
    However, this documentation often can not take the form of
    keeping runnable old codes of the applied algorithms, simply
    because the software is no longer consistent with quickly
    replaced hardware. For instance, most of the state-of-the-art
    coupled AOGCMs used in the mid 1990s are simply no longer
    available and running at, for instance, the German Climate
    Computer Center. After replacing a high performance computer
    with a new system, the standard model codes, including community
    models, need to be adapted to the requirements and possibilities
    of the new system, and the old code will often no longer run.
    This has nothing to do with the norms of the community but simply
    with technological progress. Also specific commercial libraries of
    specialized algorithms may no longer be accessible. Data and codes
    written on old magnetic tapes or even floppies are usually no
    longer readable.
    Therefore the documentation must take the form of a mathematical
    description of the algorithms used. This is in many if not most
    cases sufficient for replication. Also, the intention of
    replicability is not to exactly redo somebody's simulation and
    analysis, but to find the same result with a similar code and
    different but statistical equivalent samples. The problem is usually
    not that the codes contain errors (even if many of the more complex
    ones likely contain minor, mostly insignificant errors), but that
    specific elements of implementation and specific aspects of the
    considered sample of evidence will lead to conclusions, which do not
    hold if another sample is considered or a different but equally good
    algorithm is employed. The reason is that we want to learn about the
    dynamics of the real world, and these insights should not depend on
    random choices in sampling and implementation. We generally do not
    expect scientists to manufacture results, or that unintended but
    significant errors will affect the eventually published conclusions.
    Having this situation in mind, I consider Rep. Barton's requests to
    the three scientists as inadequate and out-of-scale. However, the
    language used by Rep. Barton makes me perceiving this request as
    aggressive and on the verge of threatening.
    The situation is different with the second groups of recipients,
    the:
    b) "Reviewers". Reviewers have a different role, namely they shall
    make sure that the standards of scientific reporting are held up.
    They have to ensure that the proposed explanations are considered
    by independent experts as to whether the presented analysis seems
    valid and in principle reproducible. "Independent" means that the
    reviewers have no vested interests for or against the case
    presented. In the conventional set-up these interests usually
    refer to academic schools of thought, but in the unfortunate,
    post-normal case of climate science independence from the
    political utility of the case should be established.
    In this case, I find the inquiry of Rep. Barton to be valid. The
    IPCC has failed to ensure that the assessment reports, which
    shall review the existing published knowledge and knowledge
    claims, should have been prepared by scientists not significantly
    involved in the research themselves. Instead, the IPCC has chosen
    to invite scientists, who dominate the debate about the considered
    issues, to participate in the assessment. This was already in the
    Second Assessment Report a contested problem, and the IPCC would
    have done better in inviting other, considerably more independent
    scientists for this task. Instead, the IPCC has asked scientists
    like Professor Mann to review his own work. This does not represent
    an "independent" review.
    The NSF seems to have failed to ensure that sufficient information
    is provided about work done under its auspices.
    Rep. Barton should also have asked the editors of "Nature", why
    the original manuscript was accepted for publication even though
    the key aspect of replicability was obviously not met by the MBH
    manuscript. Actually, MBH could not meet this condition because
    of the strict length limitation of that journal (nowadays one
    would ask for extensive Supplementary Online Material). One
    should ask why the manuscript was accepted nevertheless - and
    not, as in many other cases, the manuscript was recommended to
    be published in a "normal" journal without the severe length
    limitations. I believe the reasons for Nature were the journalistic
    reasons - namely the expected broad interest in the subject. One
    should also ask why after the critique von McIntyre and McKitrik
    only MBH got the opportunity for a correction of his paper, whereas
    the short manuscript of their opponents was rejected.
    To conclude - the requests to M, B and H are not fair but may
    unfortunately lead to a repressive atmosphere within climate
    science; the requests to NSF and the IPCC, however, are
    appropriate, as these institutions may have failed in a primary
    task, namely to guarantee an open scientific discourse. And,
    Rep. Barton should have included the editors of Nature in his
    analysis.

    A Climate of Staged Angst

    By Hans von Storch and Nico Stehr

    The days are gone when climate researchers sat in their ivory
    towers packed to the rafters with supercomputers. Nowadays
    their field has become the stuff of thrillers, and they
    themselves have risen to take on the leading roles. The topic is
    so hotly contested, the prognoses so spectacular, that they are
    no longer merely the subject of media reports; now the
    specialists in staged apocalypse have moved in. Last year Roland
    Emmerich depicted a climatic collapse provoked by humankind in
    his film "The Day After Tomorrow." Since last week the
    belletristic counterpart has been available in German bookstores:
    the novel "State of Fear," by the best-selling author Michael
    Crichton.
    The thriller is about the violent conflict between sober
    environmental realists and radical environmental idealists. For
    the idealists, the organized fear of abrupt climate change serves
    as a handy weapon. They interpret every somehow unusual weather
    event as proof of anthropogenic global warming. "You have to
    structure your information so that it's always confirmed, no
    matter what kind of weather we have," the P.R. consultant for
    the environmentalist organization advises. The realists, who
    protest that the evidence that human activity has increased
    meteorological extremes is thin, are fighting a losing battle.
    Their dry scientific arguments are unable to gain any ground
    against the colorful, horrific visions of the climate idealists.
    Film and novel have certain aspects in common. Where Emmerich
    holds out the prospect of a threatening climate catastrophe, the
    book prophesies an economic collapse. In both cases, greenhouse
    gases produced by humankind are the culprit - in the film,
    because the emissions themselves are too much; in the book,
    because the fear of them is. The idealists are so obsessed with
    their mission that ultimately, in order to rouse the public, they
    themselves bring about the foretold catastrophes.
    Despite a good deal of factually untrue - and thus all the more
    striking - compression, Crichton has quite correctly observed the
    dynamic of the paths of communication among scientists,
    environmentalist organizations, the state and the civilian
    population. For there is indeed a serious problem for the natural
    sciences: namely, the public depiction and perception of climate
    change. Research has landed in a crisis because its public actors
    assert themselves on the saturated market of discussion by
    overselling the topic.
    Climate change of man-made origin is an important subject. But
    is it truly the "most important problem on the planet," as an
    American senator claims? Are world peace, or the conquest of
    poverty, not similarly daunting challenges? And what about
    population growth, demographic change or quite normal natural
    disasters?
    In the U.S., only a very few remain interested in the greenhouse
    effect. At the end of the 1980s, the situation was still different.
    That was the era of the great drought of 1988, the Mississippi
    flood of 1993, and the climate capers ought by rights to have taken
    off in earnest from that point. But that never happened in the U.S.,
    and interest petered out. According to a survey by the CBS television
    network in May 2003, environmental problems were no longer ranked
    among the six most important subjects; and even within environmental
    problems, the topic of climate came in only in seventh place. In
    Germany, so far, things are still seen differently. But for how much
    longer?
    In order to keep the topic of "climate catastrophe" - a concept
    nonexistent outside the German-speaking world, by the way -
    continually in the public eye, the media feel obligated, exactly
    like the protagonists in Crichton's thriller, to keep framing the
    topic "a bit more attractively." At the beginning of the 1990s -
    severe storms had just swept through the country - one could read and
    hear in the German media that storms were due to become ever more
    severe. Since then, storms have become rarer in northern Europe. But
    no notice is taken of this. The fact that barometric fluctuations in
    Stockholm have shown no systematic change in the frequency and
    severity of storms since Napoleon's time is passed over in silence.
    Instead, there is now talk of heat waves and floods. Very much in
    the style of Crichton's instigators of fear, the story is now that
    all manner of extreme events are on the increase. Thus even drought
    in Brandenburg and deluge on the Oder fit the picture without
    apparent contradiction.
    Add to this - besides normal floods and storms - other, more
    dramatically threatening, scenarios: the reversal of the Gulf
    Stream and the resultant cooling of large areas of Europe, for
    instance, or even the rapid melting of the Greenland ice pack.
    The question has already been publicly raised whether perhaps even
    the Asian tsunami can be attributed to the disastrous effects of
    human activity.
    This will not be able to hold the public's attention for long. Soon
    people will have become accustomed to these warnings, and will
    return to the topics of the day: unemployment and Hartz IV, Turkey's
    entry to the E.U. or whether Borussia Dortmund can avert disaster on
    the soccer field and in the boardroom. Thus we will see firsthand
    how the prophets of doom will draw the climatic dangers in even more
    garish colours. The terrifying visions to haunt the future can
    already be guessed at: the breakup of the west Antarctic shelf ice,
    which will cause the water level to rise much more rapidly, and after
    a few decades of uncontrolled carbon dioxide emissions, an abrupt rise
    in temperatures, giving us a deadly atmosphere like that of Venus.
    Prospects such as these have long been in the public eye; can they not
    compete effortlessly with Emmerich's Hollywood images?
    The costs of stirring up fear are high. It sacrifices the otherwise
    so highly valued principle of sustainability. A scarce resource -
    public attention and trust in the reliability of science - is used up
    without being renewed by the practice of positive examples.
    But what do climate researchers themselves think, how do they deal
    with the media and the population?
    Public statements by noted German climate researchers give the
    impression that the scientific bases of the climate problem have
    essentially been solved. Thus science has provided the prerequisites
    for us now to react appropriately to the goal; meaning, in this case,
    to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as much as possible.
    This does not at all reflect the situation in the scientific
    community. A considerable number of climatologists are still by no
    means convinced that the fundamental questions have been adequately
    dealt with. Thus, in the last year a survey among climate
    researchers throughout the world found that a quarter of the
    respondents still harbor doubts about the human origin of the most
    recent climatic changes.
    The majority of researchers are indeed of the opinion that global
    climate change caused by human activity is occurring, that it
    will accelerate in the future, and that it will thus become more
    readily apparent. This change will be accompanied by warmer
    temperatures and a higher water level. In the more distant future,
    that is, in about 100 years, a considerable increase of atmospheric
    greenhouse gases is foreseen, together with an increase in heavy
    precipitation in our latitudes; in some regions there could be
    more powerful storms, in others weaker ones.
    But again and again, there are scientists to whom, true to the
    alarmists' maxim in Crichton's book, this does not sound dramatic
    enough. Thus, more and more often they connect current extreme
    weather events with anthropogenic climate change. To be sure, this
    is usually carefully formulated; interviews sound something like
    this: "Is the flooding of the Elbe, the hurricane in Florida, this
    year's mild winter evidence for the climate catastrophe?" Answer:
    "That's scientifically unproven. But many people see it that way."
    Neither of these statements is false. In combination, however,
    they suggest the conclusion: Of course these weather events are
    evidence. Only no one dares to say this explicitly either.
    The pattern is always the same: the significance of individual
    events is processed to suit the media and cleverly dramatized;
    when prognoses for the future are cited, among all the possible
    scenarios it is regularly the one with the highest rates of
    increase in greenhouse gas emissions - and thus with the most
    drastic climatic consequences - that is chosen; equally plausible
    variations with significantly lower emission increases go unmentioned.
    Whom does this serve? It is assumed that fear can motivate listeners,
    but it is forgotten that it mobilizes them only in the short term.
    Climatic changes, however, demand long-term reactions. The effect on
    public opinion in the short view may indeed be "better," and thus may
    also have a positive effect on reputation and research funding. But
    in order for this to function in the long run, each most recent claim
    about the future of the climate and of the planet must be ever more
    dramatic than the previous one. Once apocalyptic heat waves have been
    predicted, the climate-based extinction of animal species no longer
    attracts attention. Time to move on to the reversal of the Gulf
    Stream. Thus there arises a spiral of exaggeration. Each individual
    step may appear to be harmless; in total, however, the knowledge
    about climate, climate fluctuations, climate change and climatic
    effects that is transferred to the public becomes dramatically
    distorted.
    Sadly, the mechanisms for correction within science itself have
    failed. Within the sciences, openly expressed doubts about the
    current evidence for climatic catastrophe are often seen as
    inconvenient, because they damage the "good cause," particularly
    since they could be "misused by skeptics." The incremental
    dramatization comes to be accepted, while any correction of the
    exaggeration is regarded as dangerous, because it is politically
    inopportune. Doubts are not made public; rather, people are led
    to believe in a solid edifice of knowledge that needs only to be
    completed at the outer edges.
    The result of this self-censorship in scientists' minds is a deaf
    ear for new and surprising ideas that compete with or even
    contradict conventional patterns of explanation; science
    degenerates into being a repair shop for popular, politically
    opportune claims to knowledge. Thus it not only becomes sterile;
    it also loses its ability to advise the public objectively.
    One example of this is the discussion of the so-called "hockey
    stick," a temperature curve that allegedly depicts the development
    over the last 1000 years, and whose shape resembles that of a
    hockey stick. In 2001 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
    Change, the committee of climate researchers appointed by UNO,
    rashly institutionalized this curve as the iconic symbol for
    anthropogenic climate change: At the end of a centuries-long
    period of stable temperatures, the upward-bent blade of the
    hockey stick represents the human influence.
    In October 2004, we were able to demonstrate in the scientific
    journal "Science" that the methodological bases that led to this
    hockey-stick curve are mistaken. We wanted to reverse the spiral
    of exaggeration somewhat, without also relativizing the central
    message - that climate change caused by human activity does indeed
    exist. Prominent representatives of climate research, however, did
    not respond by taking issue with the facts. Instead, they worried
    that the noble cause of protecting the climate might have been
    done harm.
    Other scientists lapse into a zeal reminiscent of nothing so much
    as the McCarthy era. For them, methodological criticism is the
    spawn of "conservative think tanks and propagandists for the oil
    and coal lobby," which they believe they must expose; dramatizing
    climate change, on the other hand, is defended as a sensible means
    of educating society.
    What is true for other sciences should also hold for climate
    research: Dissent is the motor of further development, Differences
    of opinion are not an unpleasant family affair. The concealment of
    dissent and uncertainty in favor of a politically good cause takes
    its toll on credibility, for the public is more intelligent than
    is usually assumed. In the long term, these allegedly so helpful
    dramatizations achieve the opposite of that which they wish to
    achieve.
    By doing so, however, both science and society will have wasted
    an opportunity.

    Hans von Storch, 55, heads the Coastal Research Institute of the
    GKSS Research Centre in Geesthacht, Germany; he is considered
    leading experts statistical analysis of climatological data and
    simulations. Together with Nico Stehr, 62, sociologist at the
    Zeppelin University in Friedrichshafen, Germany he has conducted
    ongoing research into the public perception of climate change.

    Translated by Paul Malone

    First published in Der Spiegel No. 4, 2005.

    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Thank you, Dr. von Storch, and
    	Mr. McIntyre, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
    MR. MCINTYRE.  Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and members of the
    committee.  My name is Steve McIntyre.  I appreciate the
    invitation to appear today to discuss my research coauthored with
    Ross McKitrick of the University of Guelph which in part led to
    today's meeting.
    	I have three main messages.  First, little reliance can
    	be placed not only the original Mann reconstruction,
    	various efforts to salvage it, or similar multi-proxy
    	studies even ones which did not use Mann's methodology.
    	Second, peer review as practiced by academic journals is
    	not an audit but something much more limited. In turn,
    	scientific overviews such as the ones produced by IPCC or
    	even by the NAS panel are based almost entirely on
    	literature review rather than independent testing.  Third,
    	there is already an existing data archive which is
    	excellent, but in order to make it work scientists actually
    	have to archive their data and code.  This is not done
    	consistently in the paleoclimate community and it makes
    	replication virtually impossible in many cases.  Much of
    	this work is funded by the U.S. Federal government and
    	some very simple administrative measures under existing
    	policies could alleviate many of the problems.
    	In the two reports, only one topic was specifically
    	audited in the sense of independent testing as opposed to
    	literature review, and that was simply whether Mann's
    	method was biased towards producing hockey stick-shaped
    	series.  Both reports verified this hotly contested result.
    	Both panels agreed with varying emphasis that no confidence
    	could be placed on reconstructions prior to 1600 and that
    	Mann's statistical methods were unsatisfactory.  The Wegman
    	report considered how such an error could have remained
    	undetected.  In addition to their comments, an important
    	reason that the IPCC does not carry out independent tests.
    	Some comments of Dr. Bloomfield's at the NAS press conference
    	may lead people to believe that a hockey stick could be
    	obtained from a simple average of all MBH proxies.  This is
    	simply not the case as you see by the graph on both screens.
    	The NAS panel illustrated several other reconstructions but
    	their consideration was merely a literature review.  They
    	did not attempt to replicate or audit these other studies as
    	I have tried to do.  Each one has replication problems.  One
    	of the criticisms of the Mann study recognized by the NAS
    	panel was its use of bristle cones and closely related
    	foxtails, a flawed proxy which the panel said should be
    	avoided.  However, they did not assess this.  The impact of
    	not using bristle cones can be substantial.  Removal of merely
    	two bristle cone series changes relative medieval modern levels
    	in the Crowley and Lowery reconstruction that was shown to you
    	earlier.  The panel noted the so-called divergence problem in
    	which temperatures in the last half of the 20th Century
    	increase while tree ring widths and densities decrease.  They
    	offered no solution other than reduced confidence, but the
    	problem is worse.  How can we even trust the shape of the
    	curve in previous warm periods if they miss the present one?
    	Bias sampling can arise not simply from Mann's principal
    	component methods, but by non-random and biased selection of
    	small samples.  In this graph shown here, even the selection
    	of a single site, of a different version from a single site
    	can have a dramatic impact on a worldwide reconstruction.
    	Here different versions impact the Briffa 2000 reconstruction
    	and all but one subsequent reconstruction shown in the
    	various spaghetti graphs.  The issue of the polar Urals is
    	substantive.  Naurzbaev et al., which included Mann's coauthor
    	Hughes, whose methods were cited by the NAS panel with a
    	approval, concluded that medieval summer temperatures in this
    	area were over 2.3 degrees Centigrade warmer than at present.
    	The Wegman reported noted pervasive problems in paleoclimate
    	research practices.  A simple policy shown here already in
    	existence at the American Economic Review and other journals
    	and in fact a policy introduced by Dr. Bernanke, presently
    	Chairman of the Federal Reserve System, would alleviate many
    	of these problems.  There is no reason for journals not to
    	adopt similar rules for paleoclimatology where data sets are
    	similar in size and scale to many econometric studies.  In
    	fact, the 1991 policy statement of the U.S. global change
    	research program already requires data archiving and many
    	agencies such as NASA have complied with these policies.
    	However, the National Science Foundation does not and a senior
    	NSF official wrote to me saying that dissemination of data was
    	merely up to the professional judgment of the researchers.
    	Ironically, even the NAS panel relied heavily on unarchived
    	data.  The Department of Energy itself does not comply.  It
    	funded the development of the well-known CRU temperature series
    	used by IPCC but their agreements failed to ensure that even
    	DOE has access to the supporting data.
    	Nothing that I say here should be construed as diminishing the
    	seriousness of climate change as public issue.  It is precisely
    	because it is a serious issue that policymakers are entitled to
    	the best possible information.  You should not receive incorrect
    	confidence assessments as happened with the hockey stick.  You
    	should discourage practices that interfere with efforts to
    	verify results.
    	Finally, at the NAS press conference, when asked about
    	overselling of the hockey stick, panelist Cuffy said that the
    	IPCC sent a very misleading message through its prominent use.
    	Yet IPCC procedures which permitted this remain unchanged for
    	the upcoming fourth assessment report.
    	Thank you very much.
    	[The prepared statement of Mr. Stephen McIntyre follows:]

    PREPARED STATEMENT OF STEPHEN MCINTYRE, TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA

    SUMMARY

    1. little reliance can be placed on the original MBH reconstruction,
    various efforts to salvage it or similar multiproxy studies, even
    ones which do not use Mann's principal components methodology;
    2. peer review as practiced by academic journals is not an audit,
    but something much more limited. Scientific overviews, such as
    ones produced by IPCC or the NAS panel, are nearly entirely based
    on literature review rather than independent due diligence.
    3. much work in dispute is funded by the U.S. federal government.
    Some very simple administrative measures under existing policies
    could alleviate many of the replication problems that plague
    paleoclimate.

    TESTIMONY
    Good morning, Mr Chairman and members of the Committee.
    My name is Stephen McIntyre. I appreciate the invitation to appear
    today to discuss my research, coauthored with Ross McKitrick of the
    University of Guelph. Our publications led in part to the reports of
    the NAS panel and the Wegman committee.
    A year ago, the University Corporation of Atmospheric Research (UCAR)
    issued a national news release stating that our "highly publicized
    criticisms of the MBH graph are unfounded." Sir John Houghton,
    co-chair of IPCC, gave evidence to a Senate committee, stating that
    our results had been shown to be "largely false". The situation today
    is different as both the NAS and Wegman reports have recognized our
    major findings while drawing different conclusions on their impact.
    I would like to convey three main messages today:
    1. little reliance can be placed on the original MBH reconstruction,
    various efforts to salvage it or similar multiproxy studies, even ones
    which do not use Mann's principal components methodology;
    2. peer review as practiced by academic journals is not an audit, but
    something much more limited. Scientific overviews, such as ones
    produced by IPCC or the NAS panel, are nearly entirely based on
    literature review rather than independent due diligence.
    3. much work in dispute is funded by the U.S. federal government. Some
    very simple administrative measures under existing policies could
    alleviate many of the replication problems that plague paleoclimate.
    In the NAS and Wegman reports, only one topic has been specifically
    "audited" - in the sense of carrying out independent simulations as
    opposed to review of previous literature:
    * Mann's principal component method is biased towards producing
    hockey stick shaped series.
    Both audits verified this result, first published by us, but hotly
    contested for the past two years. Both panels agreed (with varying
    emphasis) that MBH confidence claims were incorrectly calculated,
    indeed that no confidence intervals prior to 1600 could be calculated
    and that MBH statistical methods were unsatisfactory.
    The Wegman report considered why such an error could have remained
    undetected in such a prominent study, an issue not considered by
    the NAS panel. In addition to their comments, I note that IPCC does
    not verify information from the scientific literature.
    The NAS panel also endorsed our important criticism of MBH dependence
    on proxies known not to be temperature proxies, agreeing that
    bristlecones should be avoided.
    The NAS panel cited several other reconstructions, but their
    consideration was merely a literature review. They did not attempt to
    replicate or audit these other studies and cannot vouch for them.
    Having examined most of them closely, I do not believe that any of
    them provide robust or reliable information on relative medieval-
    modern levels.
    For example, some comments of Dr Bloomfield's at the NAS press
    conference may lead people to believe that a hockey stick could be
    obtained from a simple average of all 415 MBH proxies. This is not
    the case, as shown in Figure 1 below.

    Figure 1. Top - Average of all 415 MBH proxies; bottom - MBH
    reconstruction.

    The NAS panel illustrated four other multiproxy studies, as shown in
    Figure 2 below.  However, all four use bristlecones or closely-related
    foxtails. The panel did not analyse the impact on each study of
    avoiding bristlecones, as they elsewhere recommended.

    Figure 2. Excerpt from figure S-1 of NAS panel report

    The impact of avoiding bristlecones in accordance with the NAS
    recommendation can be substantial - as shown in Figure 3 for Crowley
    and Lowery 2000, where the removal of two bristlecone series changes
    relative medieval-modern levels.

    Figure 3. Left - Excerpt from Crowley (2000); right - replication
    with red showing effect without bristlecones and without instrumental
    splicing.

    The NAS panel noted the so-called "Divergence Problem", in which
    temperatures in the last half of the 20th century increase, while
    tree ring widths and densities decrease, demonstrated here for a
    rare large-sample (387) study of "temperature-sensitive" sites
    [Briffa et al 1998]. NAS offered no solution other than reduced
    confidence. But the problem is worse: how can we even trust the
    shape of the curve in previous warm intervals, if they miss the
    present one?

    Figure 4. Ring widths and density from Briffa et al 1988.

    Biased sampling can arise not simply from Mann's principal
    component methods, but from non-random and biased selection of
    small samples. If you "mine" or "snoop" a network of red noise
    looking for what appear to be "temperature-sensitive" trends,
    an average of the picks will also yield a hockey stick shaped
    series. The Wegman report shows evidence of non-random picking.
    While the NAS panel noted the potential impact of inclusion/
    exclusion of even individual series, they did not investigate it.
    Here is an important example that affects multiple studies. The
    first Briffa version of the Polar Urals series said that the
    early 11th century was among the coldest of the millennium;
    updated sampling in 1998 showed the opposite, but Briffa did not
    report it. Instead he substituted another series from a site 70
    miles away with a hockey stick shape. This substitution had a
    dramatic impact on the medieval-modern relationship in the Briffa
    (2000) reconstruction and nearly all other subsequent studies.

    Figure 5. Left - three different versions of Polar Urals series.
    Top - from Briffa et al 1995; middle - from Esper et al 2002 (the
    only use of this version); bottom - the version in Briffa (2000)
    and subsequent studies other than Esper et al 2002.  Right: the
    impact on the reconstruction in Briffa (2000). Black - Briffa
    (2000) version; red - using Polar Urals update. . All series in
    standard deviation units and 21-year gaussian smooth.

    In our NAS presentation, we cited Naurzbaev et al 2004 (including
    MBH co-author Hughes) as offering a promising new line of handling
    tree ring data. NAS cited this with approval, but did not report
    their conclusion that medieval summer temperatures were over 2.3
    deg C warmer or that medieval treelines in the Polar Urals (and
    elsewhere) were higher than modern treelines.

    Figure 6. Treelines at Polar Urals site (Shiyatov 1995).

    While the NAS panel did not address the issue of archiving, other
    than in generalities, the Wegman report noted pervasive problems
    in paleoclimate research practices. A simple policy - already in
    existence at the American Economic Review and other journals -
    would alleviate many of these problems.  There is no reason not
    to require similar rules for paleoclimatology, where data sets and
    code are similar in size and scale.
    Submitters should be aware that the Editors now routinely require,
    as a condition of publication, that authors of papers including
    empirical results (including simulations) provide to this office,
    in electronic form, data and code sufficient to permit replication.

    To the extent that senior policy-makers have previously turned
    their attention to the matter, the 1991 Policy Statement of the
    U.S Global Change Research Program already requires data archiving
    after a limited period of exclusive use and, in 1997, provided
    recommended language for agencies to implement in grant agreements.
    Many agencies (e.g. NASA) have complied with these policies.
    The overall purpose of these policy statements is to facilitate
    full and open access to quality data for global change research.
    They ...represent the U.S. Government's position on the access to
    global change research data....
    For those programs in which selected principal investigators have
    initial periods of exclusive data use, data should be made openly
    available as soon as they become widely useful. In each case the
    funding agency should explicitly define the duration of any
    exclusive use period.

    Yet when I copied NSF on a request for data necessary to replicate
    key MBH results, a program officer not only refused to support the
    request, but intervened to counsel Mann against supplying the data.
    Dr. Mann and his other US colleagues are under no obligation to
    provide you with any additional data ... His research is published
    in the peer-reviewed literature which has passed muster with the
    editors of those journals and other scientists who have reviewed
    his manuscripts.  You are free to your analysis of climate data
    and he is free to his.

     Subsequently, a senior NSF official said that dissemination of
     data was merely up to the "professional judgement" of the
     researchers. Ironically, the NAS panel relied heavily on
     unarchived data.
    In general, we allow researchers the freedom to convey their
    scientific results in a manner consistent with their professional
    judgement...

    The Department of Energy funded the development of the well-known
    CRU instrumental temperature series, used by IPCC and others.  In
    response to a request for supporting data, Philip Jones, a prominent
    researcher said:
    We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the
    data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something
    wrong with it?

    Although DOE had funded the collection, their past and present grant
    agreements had not ensured that even DOE had access to the supporting
    data and they said that they were unable to assist.
    Phil [is] not obligated under the conditions of past or present DOE
    proposal awards to provide these items to CDIAC.  I regret we cannot
    furnish the materials you seek

    In conclusion, I re-iterate that you can place little reliance on any
    existing multiproxy study; that you need to distinguish between the
    limited due diligence of journal peer review and the substantive due
    diligence of an audit; and that simple administrative measures can
    substantially improve paleoclimate research practices.
    Both the NAS report and Wegman reports are valuable studies by
    accomplished authors. Nothing that I say here should be construed as
    diminishing the seriousness of climate change as a public issue. It
    is precisely because it is a serious issue that policy-makers are
    entitled to the best possible information and should ensure that data,
    code and methods be accurately and completely archived and discourage
    practices that interfere with scientific reproducibility.

    References:
    See NAS Panel report.

    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Thank you, Mr. McIntyre, and at this time I
    	am going to recognize the full committee Chairman, Mr. Barton,
    	for 10 minutes.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Thank you.  I want--let me thank Ms. Baldwin
    	before she leaves.  She and Mr. Inslee and Mr. Stupak have been
    	here the entire time and I think they need to be given
    	accolades.  Mr. Whitfield and I almost have to be here but
    	they don't, so we appreciate you all's attendance.  I want to
    	thank these witnesses for waiting 5 hours to testify.  That
    	shows a little bit of fortitude on your part.
    	My first question goes to you, Dr. Karl.  Talking about the
    	peer review and the acceptance, if I were to ask Mr. Inslee and
    	Mr. Stupak and Ms. Baldwin to review the work of this committee
    	in this Congress and then turn around and ask Mr. Whitfield and
    	Mr. Walden and Mr. Shimkus, I would probably get two radically
    	different assessments.  Same body of work but my friends on the
    	Democrat side would view the accomplishments in all probability
    	substantially different than my colleagues on the Republican
    	side because both are biased in an open and honest way and have
    	a different worldview on some issues, not on all issues.  So it
    	shouldn't be surprising if the same people that Dr. Wegman calls
    	a social network and are interacting all the time that they view
    	positively the output, should it?
    	DR. KARL.  Are you asking about whether or not the review
    	process is skewed?
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  No, I am just asking you to comment because I
    	will stipulate that everybody in the climatology community, the
    	environmental community, have got good faith and are trying to
    	do what they think is right for the world.  I am not--but there
    	are biases on both sides, and one of Dr. Wegman's criticisms,
    	and Dr. McIntyre reinforces it, is that you are not really
    	getting independent review, and there are cases, as Dr. Crowley
    	pointed out, there may not be anybody that can be independent
    	because they don't understand it.  If I want somebody to
    	interview Albert Einstein's work in the 1930s, there probably
    	weren't two or three people in the world that even knew what
    	he was talking about, so you do get that, but what happened
    	with Dr. Mann's study in 1998 was that it was accepted very
    	quickly as kind of the gold standard and it was given a
    	literary review, but it really wasn't given an independent
    	scientific statistical review.  It was just accepted.  And
    	unless Dr. McIntyre is not being true, some of these other
    	studies that have come out that Dr. Crowley referred to, he
    	used the same data sets and the same modeling or something
    	that is very close to it.  So how can us poor mortals that
    	have to make the policy decisions know what to believe when
    	the so-called scientific community could be portrayed as
    	scratching each other's back?  I mean, I am not trying to be
    	mean about it.  You know, I just am kind of puzzled.
    	DR. KARL.  I mean, I can tell you the process that we use in
    	IPCC.  It may shed some light on it.  In the IPCC report,
    	each of the lead authors are asked to assess the published
    	literature up until a certain time after which no more new
    	material can be considered and what lead authors do is take a
    	look at that material and try to write up their consistencies
    	among what has been published, inconsistencies, what is
    	available today compared to what was available during either
    	the previous IPCC report or previous to that.  Having done
    	that, those writings then are subjected to international
    	review.  Anyone and everybody is open to review to report and
    	the process takes place over several years.  So there is ample
    	time, ample review time--
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  But do they really review it?  Again, I am
    	not saying that your folks don't make a good-faith effort, but
    	it is just like my analogy.  If I asked Mr. Whitfield, who is
    	a subcommittee Chairman because I appointed him subcommittee
    	Chairman as Chairman, if I say Ed, could you review my
    	performance as chairman of the full committee, I bet he is
    	going to give me a pretty high performance rating.  Now, on
    	the other hand, if I asked Mr. Inslee to review my performance
    	as full committee Chairman, and I have consistently opposed
    	his amendments and I have consistently made life difficult for
    	him, which is not true but let us assume that it is true, he
    	is not going to rate me the same.  In all probability, Jay
    	Inslee is going to be more independent and objective than
    	Ed Whitfield, and they are both good people.  But one of them
    	is more dependent on me, interacts more, benefits more with
    	that interaction than the other and it appears to me that what
    	Dr. Wegman and Mr. McIntyre are saying is, it may be because
    	there are just not enough experts, it may be for any number of
    	reasons, but a very small set of people review each other's
    	work and lo and behold, they all come to the same conclusions.
    	Now, we didn't put it into the record, but in 1975 we have the
    	Newsweek story about the meteorologists all being unanimously
    	in agreement that the world is in a world-cooling period and
    	it has catastrophic consequences and there was unanimous
    	agreement.  It was la di la di da.  Those were meteorologists.
    	Now, that is 31 years ago.  The world has changed.  We are
    	now worried about global warming but it the same thing.  You
    	know, I am not qualified to say whether the conclusions are
    	right or wrong.  I agree with what Dr. Wegman said and
    	Dr. North said, that--I can't conclusively say what is causing
    	it.  I can admit that the statistical record in the last 150
    	years that the temperature is going up, but I would like to
    	see the scientific community self-regulate itself a little bit
    	better so that when you have these statements like Dr. Mann
    	made that the 1990s were the warmest period in 1,000 years and
    	1998 is the warmest year in 1,000 years, that you can replicate
    	that with statistically valid modeling technique that is open
    	to the public and everybody takes their shot at.  I think we
    	have pretty conclusively proven today that that is not the
    	case, at least in that study.  That is not the case.  So that
    	is my question to you, what can the scientific community do
    	to give us more certainty or more reliability that the
    	conclusions of these studies are really based on fact and not
    	on opinion.
    	DR. KARL.  I suspect, and I don't know for sure, but if you
    	request the records from the IPCC Bureau, for example, you
    	could--because it is public--you could get available the
    	disciplines of the individuals who commented on that report
    	and I note there is an IPCC report going on now, and that may
    	be a way for this committee to try and see the breadth and
    	scope of--
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Well, are you willing to recommend that--one
    	of the recommendations of Dr. Wegman is that the data be
    	publicly available?  Is that something that you would
    	support?  Because we have apparently had a real problem with
    	Dr. Mann, getting his data and, it has been federally
    	funded.  I think it should be available, that anybody who
    	has the scientific ability and the mathematical ability to
    	study it, study it.  Do you agree with that?
    	DR. KARL.  Yes.  Our Center actually houses the Paleoclimate
    	World Data Center and we actually encourage researchers to
    	archive their data, not the actual proxy itself like the
    	tree ring or the ice core but the data from which they are
    	derived.  We are fairly successful in many instances, but I
    	am sure there is a number of instances where we don't have
    	data simply because of its significant investment on both
    	the PI's time and--
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  And either Dr. North--I think Dr. North's
    	report, or it may have been Dr. Wegman's, says there are
    	only 30 of these data sets in existence right now, that
    	there are a fairly limited number of data sets.  So we are
    	basing a lot of decisions on a fairly narrow band.
    	Let me ask you something, Mr. McIntyre.  Since you had the
    	gumption to criticize Dr. Mann, how have you been received
    	in this community.  Are people patting you on the back and
    	inviting you to their Christmas party and saying right on,
    	way to go, we really appreciate it, or are they kind of
    	giving you the cold shoulder and ask why the hell you did
    	what you did?
    	MR. MCINTYRE.  I would say cold shoulder would be
    	overstating the friendliness of it.  I would say that I
    	have been reviled and--
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  And so your skepticism for scientific
    	truth has not been welcomed with open warms.  Is that a
    	fair statement?
    	MR. MCINTYRE.  I would say it has been an uphill fight.
    	Having said that one finds certain allies and certain
    	moments of comfort.  I mean, quite frankly I could
    	understand why there would be some reluctance to take the
    	claims seriously at the beginning.  That is one of the
    	reasons why I archived the source code and calculations
    	so that people could replicate it.  Aside from the fact
    	that I think it is something that should be done anyway,
    	but my position was if anybody thinks that my results are
    	wrong, then I would like to know.  I would like to be the
    	first person to know rather than the last person to know,
    	and--but I--for example, the University Corporation of
    	Atmospheric Research put out a national press release
    	saying that all our claims are unfounded.  Sir John
    	Houghton, co-chair of IPCC, testified to a Senate
    	committee that our claims were false.  So while I would
    	say not all of our claims have been acknowledged, some of
    	them have.  Both of these reports have certainly endorsed
    	a finding on methodology that surprised people and so, I
    	feel a little more comfortable now.  Also, some people have
    	been very generous and welcoming.  Dr. von Storch has
    	encouraged me both publicly and privately.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Dr. Crowley, this might be my last
    	question.  You mentioned in your oral statement--I didn't
    	see it in your written statement but it may have been
    	there--that there have been problems in the past with
    	correlation of current temperature readings and their
    	consequences with satellite readings and that those
    	correlations are much better today.  Is that true?  Did I--
    	DR. CROWLEY.  Yes, that is true.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Now, my understanding is that what
    	changed is that we have gone back and reprogrammed the
    	software on the satellites so that they will conform with
    	the model predictions.  Do you agree or disagree with that?
    	DR. CROWLEY.  I completely disagree with that.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Can you push your--I don't know that your
    	microphone is on.  You said--I think you said--
    	DR. CROWLEY.  I disagree with you.  It is not the case of
    	trying to get it to conform to model predictions.  In fact,
    	it stuck out like sore thumb for 10 years.  The climate
    	community took it very seriously as a disagreement and
    	pondered over it and there was eventually a comparison
    	between two different groups of satellite analysts in
    	which they found a programming error in one of the
    	algorithms for reducing the data that gave the differences
    	in the trends because this other group actually had gotten
    	a bigger trend in the satellite data than the one that
    	John Christy at University--
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Do you think that that disagreement is
    	worthy of being pursued by this subcommittee?
    	DR. CROWLEY.  Well, what has happened is that the
    	disagreement has diminished to the point where I am not
    	sure it is worth the subcommittee's effort to inquire.
    	It has been found to be a programming error, and an
    	innocent one but that happens when you are working with
    	satellite or any other thing.  It just took a long time--
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Do you consider Dr. Mann's methodology
    	a programming error?  If you were Dr. Mann and--
    	DR. CROWLEY.  No, because I don't think he actually
    	wrote--I don't think his programs--when it is a programming
    	error, it is like a coding error or something.  I think
    	that there is a methodological error, okay.  There is a
    	difference between, as you know, since you took programming,
    	between the--you can program a methodology that could be
    	wrong, okay.  So I don't think it was programming.  I
    	think it was a methodological error.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Well, my time--
    	DR. CROWLEY.  Not a--yeah, a methodological.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Mr. Inslee, you are recognized for
    	10 minutes.
    	MR. INSLEE.  Thank you.  I wanted to ask Mr. Karl about the
    	conclusions, if I can find them here.  In your testimony you
    	talked about reviewing a variety of papers and you said of
    	all the analysis, only one shows temperatures during medieval
    	times higher than those of the early 20th Century and none of
    	the analyses show temperatures higher than the last few
    	decades of the 20th Century and into the 21st Century.  So I
    	take it that means that none of the analyses that have been
    	done have shown temperatures at any point higher than the
    	last few decades and into this century. Is that an exhaustive
    	review of the analyses or is there something you might have
    	missed or is that pretty much a total review of the
    	literature on this?
    	DR. KARL.  There is always a danger one could have missed a
    	report but none of the reports I looked at, which probably
    	seven or eight reports using the approaches from as been
    	discussed here.  I think "bonehead" is a term and RPG and
    	various terms have been given to these things, but I don't
    	think any of them show temperatures, except for one, that
    	were as warm as what we saw in the mid part of the 20th
    	Century, none of them as warm as the late part of the 20th
    	Century and the early part of the 21st century, and in
    	addition, I might add the error bars are frequently being
    	discussed.  If you look at the error bars, the wide error
    	bars, the 95 percent confidence error bars, it is even hard
    	to find in those error bars in those reports to come up to
    	the levels as high as we see in the last couple decades.
    	MR. INSLEE.  So is it a fair synopsis here that today we
    	have heard some criticism of one report that suggested that
    	these are higher temperatures we are experiencing now than
    	we have at any time in the last 1,000 years and multiple
    	reports that have reached the conclusion that it is likely
    	we are having higher temperatures right now than we did at
    	any time in the last 1,000 years.  Is that sort of a fair
    	statement of what we are hearing?
    	DR. KARL.  I think so, and again, the word "likely" you
    	know, I point out, we use the word "likely" with better
    	than two to one odds and so with that kind of a caveat, I
    	feel quite comfortable in saying that.
    	MR. INSLEE.  Well, the way I look at this, just so you
    	know, is that you have got about six studies showing that
    	gravity exists and you have got one study questioning the
    	statistical mechanisms used in one of those six studies,
    	and I sort of conclude that both gravity and global
    	warming due to human activity exist, and that is just how
    	I look at it.  I want to refer--you also concluded,
    	"These analyses indicated that the later half of the 20th
    	Century is certainly warmer than any time during the past
    	several hundred years, parentheses, based on the length of
    	the borehole and glacial length proxies, paren, and the
    	past 1,200 years based on isotopic ice core records."  So
    	you indicated that these are warmer during the past
    	several years and you say based on the length of the
    	borehole and glacial length proxies.  What are those two
    	proxies?
    	DR. KARL.  Those are proxies that are completely independent
    	of the tree ring analysis which is heavily used in some of
    	these multi-proxy reconstructions.  But the borehole
    	measurements are--there is probably about--I think the
    	academy actually gave a number of about 679 different
    	boreholes where the conduction of heat from the atmosphere
    	is constantly conducting into the Earth's surface and you
    	can go back in time to try and deduce what the actual
    	temperatures were in the lower parts of the atmosphere.  Now,
    	you have to be careful which boreholes you look at but
    	nonetheless, with current methods, you can go back to about
    	400 or more years.  That was an important piece of evidence
    	that when we did the IPCC in 2001 we intercompared those
    	borehole measurements with the Mann record, for example.
    	MR. INSLEE.  So as I take it then, we have got totally
    	independent results independent from the Mann analysis that
    	is consistent with the conclusion that it is likely that we
    	are in warmer temperatures now than we have been in the
    	last several hundred years.  Now, you made reference to
    	glacial length proxies.  What are those?
    	DR. KARL.  Now, the glacial length proxies, this is where a
    	model was used to try and look at the ablation of glaciers
    	across primarily the Northern Hemisphere and a model has
    	been shown to be able to reproduce approximately the
    	temperatures that would be needed to cause those glaciers to
    	melt.  Again, you have to be careful about what glaciers you
    	select.  Some of them are more sensitive to precipitation but
    	nonetheless another independent method, and again, it shows
    	that the later part of the 20th Century is warmer than
    	anything we have seen in the last several hundred years.
    	MR. INSLEE.  Now, you also reported that these analyses
    	indicated that these temperatures we are now experiencing are
    	warmer than in the past 1,200 years based on isotopic core
    	records.  Are the isotopic core records independent of the
    	Mann research and could you describe what they are?
    	DR. KARL.  Yes.  They are independent as well.  The difference
    	is, they are far fewer in terms of geographic coverage.  So
    	what you are actually looking at here is the isotopic decay
    	within these records, the same kind of records that are looked
    	at for the air bubbles that are trapped in the ice.  Now you
    	try to relate through isotopic decay to temperatures and there
    	are some relationships that have been developed and again you
    	see some significant warming in the latter part of the 20th
    	Century compared to what we saw earlier.
    	MR. INSLEE.  So we have multiple independent scientifically
    	sound measures to conclude these are the likeliest warmest
    	temperatures we have had in 1,000 years independent of the
    	Mann report.  Is that correct?
    	DR. KARL.  That is correct.
    	MR. INSLEE.  Dr. Crowley, you talked about something that I
    	had heard and I appreciate you talking about it, about
    	amplitude, about the effect of how much amplitude there is in
    	the system, how sensitive the system it is to CO2 forcing, and
    	I think this is interesting because basically the Wall Street
    	Journal editorial staff has done everything they can to suggest
    	this is not a problem and they have attacked the Mann research
    	effectively saying that, but is it fair to say that actually if
    	one would want to debunk the idea of global warming, if one
    	would want to say we shouldn't worry about global warming, if
    	one would want to say that we should really just continue on
    	our path of putting megatons of CO2 in the air without change,
    	if one really wanted to argue that, one would really want to
    	argue that Mann was right because Mann had a conclusion that
    	there was less effect on temperature by CO2 changes than some
    	of the other studies.  Is that right?
    	DR. CROWLEY.  That is true.  Another way of putting it is that
    	those who love to hate Mann should learn to hate to love him.
    	MR. INSLEE.  Well, that will take us about 8 minutes to figure
    	out up here on this panel.  But could you explain why that is?
    	I just heard this yesterday for the first time.  It is an
    	intriguing thought, that this could be a reversal of approaches
    	here, but why is it important to know how much CO2 can affect
    	temperature and what does the Mann research indicate versus
    	other research?
    	DR. CROWLEY.  Well, it is like pushing on a string.  Jerry
    	North explained this to me years ago.  Suppose you have two
    	strings, one that is very thick, coiled spring, and then
    	another one that is very thin and weak.  You push on the thick
    	coiled spring, it is not going to move very much whereas one
    	that is very flexible is going to move a lot, and that is
    	really like pushing is like the climate forcing the responses
    	to climate system, so if you have a system that has a very
    	low sensitivity, it is not going to respond much, like the
    	thickly coiled spring.  You have one that is less thickly
    	coiled, it is going to respond more and you are going to get
    	bigger temperature changes and that is the thing we worry
    	about, is whether the temperature change is being large, and
    	the study came out recently in Nature where we tried to
    	quantify that and that at least with respect to the
    	paleoclimate records and showed objectively what I was saying--
    	MR. INSLEE.  So if Mann was wrong, this problem that we are
    	going to be at in 2100 when CO2 levels are twice the rate of
    	pre-industrial times--
    	DR. CROWLEY.  We are going to have larger temperature
    	variability.
    	MR. INSLEE.  So if Mann is wrong, that means we are going to
    	have greater increases in temperature once this CO2 levels
    	skyrocket like this and even some of the other researchers
    	have predicted.  Is that the situation?
    	DR. CROWLEY.  Right.
    	MR. INSLEE.  That will news to the Wall Street Journal
    	editorial board.
    	DR. CROWLEY.  Sure.
    	MR. INSLEE.  Thank you.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Thank you, Mr. Inslee.  Dr. von Storch, in your
    	presentation you made the comment that parts of climate change
    	science, in particular paleoclimatic reconstructions have
    	suffered from gatekeeping and incestuous usage of reviewers and
    	then you talked about they have a bias toward interesting
    	results, and we have a lot of testimony today about the Wall
    	Street Journal and the oil industry and the coal industry love
    	to debunk all of this science about global warming, which may
    	be true, but I was interestingly reading an article the other
    	day about a gentleman named Chris Landsea, who was on the IPCC
    	panel and was an expert in hurricanes.  And we heard testimony
    	today in some of the opening statements that global warming is
    	causing more hurricanes, stronger hurricanes and it is a
    	serious problem.  Henry Waxman is the one that made that comment
    	and there was another person that made that comment.  And
    	Chris Landsea was asked by a gentleman named Dr. Kevin Trenberth
    	to provide the write-up for the AR4 assessment, the fourth
    	assessment report of the IPCC.  He was asked to do the write-up
    	for the Atlantic Hurricanes, and soon after he was asked,
    	Dr. Trinberth went to Harvard University and participated in a
    	program entitled on the topic: "experts to warn global warming
    	likely to continue spurring more outbreaks and intense hurricane
    	activity."  And there was big press about it and there were all
    	sorts of articles written about it.  And Landsea was so upset
    	about this as they were just getting ready to do this assessment
    	that he submitted his resignation.  And he said, "It is beyond
    	me why my colleagues would utilize the media to push an
    	unsupported agenda that recenty hurricane activity has been
    	due to global warming.  Given Dr. Trenberth's role as the
    	IPCC's lead author responsible for preparing the text on
    	hurricanes, his public statements are so far outside of any
    	scientific understanding led me to concern that it would be
    	very difficult for the IPCC process to proceed objectively
    	with regards to the assessment on hurricane activity."  Now,
    	we are all human beings, we make a lot of mistakes.  We are
    	biased.  We do this, we do that.  But is that something that
    	happens in the IPCC frequently or infrequently or do you have
    	any comment about it?
    	DR. VON STORCH.  Only through the media, and I had the
    	impression that this was not very helpful, what has happened
    	there, but I don't know the details, and this would be an
    	example where I would ask some social scientists to really go
    	after this, what really has happened here.  I think it would
    	be worth doing it.  But when we speak about this storm
    	business, I would like to tell a little story, namely in the
    	early 1990s we had the press in northern Europe full of
    	messages that we would have more storms, and these storms
    	would be proof or would be a result of global warming going
    	on.  And you have to know that when people think about
    	climate change, anthropogenic climate change in the past, it
    	always is associated with more storms.  So if you read about
    	the cooling in the 1970s, what the response would be, it was
    	cooler and more stormy, so it seems that it is part of our
    	cultural heritage that whenever we think we change climate
    	to the worse, then we have more storms.  Later on it turned
    	out that we actually have less storms now in northern
    	Europe.  And if we believe our climate change models, and I
    	do believe them and I am sincerely convinced that we see
    	global warming happening.  If we believe these models then
    	we should have an intensification of storms in our part of
    	the world with stronger wind speeds of the order of 10 percent
    	of the end of the century, that would be a signal which cannot
    	be detected.  While if you go into the details, then you find
    	out that several aspects are rather similar to the ongoing
    	hurricane debate, namely that good data exists only for a
    	short time.  Satellites are flying only since the 1970s or
    	so, and observing this, and you have decades with strong
    	activity and decades with less strong activity.  It is the
    	same with the storms in our part of the world.  And so I
    	would say in this case one should be very careful in making
    	definite conclusions about that.  And if we believe our
    	models, and I am not sure if we should believe in this
    	respect our models, then we also should have a signal which
    	is much weaker now, hardly detectable at this time.  So in
    	this case with the hurricanes, I would advise to wait a
    	little bit before definite conclusions are drawn.  And this
    	would be an example that somehow this preconception that
    	storms are getting worse when climate is changing is somehow
    	controlling what we think.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Mr. McIntyre, I know that you and
    	Mr. McKitrick were the ones that first started looking at
    	the Mann study or report.  How did that come about?  Was
    	this just an area of interest that you have had, or what?
    	MR. MCINTYRE.  Well, that is actually a fairly long story
    	but I was just--at that time I was just a private citizen.
    	The study was being--we were told in Canada that 1998 was
    	the warmest year of the millennium.  I have worked in the
    	mineral exploration business for many years.  I deal with
    	geologists who were unimpressed by that statement and I
    	just wondered one day how they knew that.  When I looked
    	at the IPCC report as somebody that is in the mineral
    	exploration business, which is a very promotional business,
    	I was struck at how promotional many of the statements
    	were and particular how promotional the hockey stick graph
    	was.  I thought actually sort of in a professional way,
    	I thought it was well designed, well presented.  It was
    	there to convey a message but I certainly felt like I was
    	being sold when I saw that.  Some months later, business
    	was slow.  I thought I would be interested in looking at
    	the data.  I assumed there was some kind of due diligence
    	package like you would see in a business thing that they
    	had prepared for the IPCC auditors.  At that time I had no
    	idea that such things didn't typically exist in the
    	academic community so I e-mailed Dr. Mann out of the blue
    	and asked him where the data was and just for the location
    	of the data of this which I assumed to be part of the due
    	diligence package and he said he had forgotten where the
    	data was.  So I was astonished as there had been so much
    	publicity.  He said he would have an associate locate it
    	for me.  The associate said that it wasn't in any one
    	place, but he would get it together for me so I thought that
    	was nice of him but just, it seemed an odd situation and I
    	just thought well, nobody has ever looked at this and if
    	nobody has ever looked at it, well, I will do it, so I didn't
    	expect to be the center of an academic debate or any furor,
    	but when I looked at it, I started finding problems and here
    	we are today.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  And I would ask Dr. Crowley and Mr. McIntyre
    	or anybody else that wants to comment: the Wall Street
    	Journal that has been referred to many times today says that
    	Dr. Mann's methodology could produce hockey sticks from
    	random trendless data.  Is that a correct statement or is
    	that incorrect statement?
    	MR. MCINTYRE.  Well, let me answer that.  That is true, and
    	that is the one specific item that was verified by both
    	panels, and both the NAS panel and the Wegman report
    	specifically confirm that his methodology would produce a
    	hockey stick from random data.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Okay.  Dr. Crowley, did you want to comment
    	on that?
    	DR. CROWLEY.  I am not an expert in statistics so I just
    	have to defer from that answer.  All I can say is that when
    	we took a completely different approach with the very simple
    	averaging, we got an answer that was pretty similar.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Dr. von Storch?
    	DR. VON STORCH.  I think I have a bit of reputation in
    	studies of climatology as I am the coauthor of I would say
    	the leading statistics book in that field.  So first of all,
    	what Mr. McIntyre is saying is correct.  You can get that.
    	But this requires that you have no other significant signals
    	in the field, in particular no correlation in space, and
    	this is not the case in climatological variables and so I
    	would say even if it is entirely true what he said and I
    	would include it in the next version of this book we have
    	written.  I would say in very many practical situations it
    	would not show up.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Thank you.  My time has expired.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Has Mr. Stupak not gone yet?
    	MR. STUPAK.  No.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Well, then let us get Mr. Stupak.  He has
    	waited patiently all afternoon.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Dr. Karl, if I may, Dr. von Storch says that
    	the reputation of the IPCC has increased to very high levels
    	in the past years, that most lead authors are honest brokers
    	of the work they review and that perhaps in such a complex
    	and large field as the IPCC is addressing, it may not be
    	possible to have lead authors who have not contributed to
    	the field.  But then Dr. von Storch concludes that an
    	independent review by the IPCC is not possible under the
    	current system.  How would you respond to that?
    	DR. KARL.  Again, no human-conceived system is perfect.  I
    	don't know how you might improve it in terms of the way it
    	operates today.  The peer review process really is driven by
    	others' availability to comment and the IPCC documents are
    	open for everyone from every discipline to comment on
    	including the governments of the world.  I think one of the
    	issues that has been discussed in the hearing today is one
    	that is typical of science where you can publish something
    	but sometimes it takes a period of years to try and come up
    	with a different analysis, technique, or to explore the
    	decisions that are made in a particular analysis technique.
    	The IPCC process right now is over a period of 2 years.  I
    	don't see how you could actually open up a process more
    	and I don't see how you could actually have a process
    	whereby every piece of information is going to be evaluated
    	in terms of a new analysis, and that is the reason it is
    	done every 5 or 6 years to update, see if there are
    	differences.  So, for example, I am sure all the work being
    	done since the 2001 IPCC assessment and the next one that is
    	coming out next year will be included and assessed.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Well, the 2001 IPCC report really referenced
    	other studies other than the 1998 and 1999 Mann hockey stick
    	study, right?
    	DR. KARL.  Yes.  In fact, as I said, it would have been--I
    	hate to use the words "very unlikely" because those are
    	like the words that are used in the IPCC but I don't think
    	IPCC would have actually made a statement about the 1990s
    	had it only been based on one article.  If it was just the
    	Mann work, I just don't think we would have had the
    	confidence to say anything.
    	MR. STUPAK.  I am looking at your 2001 report here, and I
    	am on page--and in there it says new analysis of proxy
    	data for the Northern Hemisphere indicate that the increase
    	in temperature in the 20th Century is likely to have been
    	the largest of any century during the past 1,000 years.  It
    	is also likely that in the Northern Hemisphere the 1990s
    	was the warmest decade and 1998 was the warmest year.  That
    	was the conclusion of 2001 and that is based upon more than
    	just the Mann study.  Isn't that correct?
    	DR. KARL.  That is correct.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Okay.  You used the word "likely."  I know
    	today especially when the Chairman asked questions it was
    	like absolute based upon the Mann study and that is not the
    	case, it based upon--your 2001 report takes some other
    	things other than the Mann hockey stick study, right?
    	DR. KARL.  That is correct.
    	MR. STUPAK.  What is the significance of the word "likely"?
    	Not working in your field, I may have a different view of
    	"likely" but you use it twice.  Can you give any further
    	explanation of that?
    	DR. KARL.  What we tried to do is clarify what we meant by
    	the word "likely" because it can be taken all different
    	ways because it is used frequently in the literature.  We
    	define "likely" as a probability of the statement being
    	true between 66 and 90 percent of the time.  That means
    	slightly better than two to one odds at the low end, and
    	at the high end close to nine to one odds.
    	MR. STUPAK.  You have been here all day.  Is there anything
    	you have heard today which would make you change your mind
    	about the conclusions of the 2001 IPCC report?
    	DR. KARL.  No.  If you ask me to give qualifications about
    	the findings in the 2001 report with the same caveat in
    	terms of defining likelihood, I personally would not
    	change anything.
    	MR. STUPAK.  And going further in this, your 2001 report,
    	the IPCC report, they talk about the Jones et al., about
    	having the warmest year of the past millennium in the
    	Northern Hemisphere, Jones et al. in 1998 came to a
    	similar conclusion from largely independent data and
    	entirely independent methodology.  Crowley and Lowery in
    	2000 reach a similar conclusion.  Borehole data, Pollick,
    	et cetera, in 1998 independently support this conclusion
    	for the past 500 years.  So there is plenty of other
    	things to base that conclusion upon and not just the
    	Mann--
    	DR. KARL.  That is correct.
    	MR. STUPAK.  And somewhere today someone said something
    	like there is over 900 reports or studies on global
    	warming.  Is that correct?
    	DR. KARL.  I am sure there is even more than that.  I
    	think that was a random sample, so there is probably in
    	the tens of thousands.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Okay.  Thank you.  Dr. Crowley, if I may,
    	when I was asking Dr. Wegman about this chart here,
    	which was showing the warm age there in around 1300 or
    	so, I think he called it the cartoon graph, was his word.
    	Is that based on any set of data or anything or--
    	DR. CROWLEY.  That is pretty much a cartoon graph
    	ctually.  This is really in the first round of IPCC.
    	Nobody ever felt there was a need to--had thought of
    	whether there should be a need to have a quantitative
    	estimate of climate for the last 1,000 years.  They
    	wanted to try to provide a perspective and they didn't
    	realize they didn't have one and they basically talked
    	to some people and there was a lot of anecdotal
    	evidence for medieval warm period, that people said it
    	was warmer than the present roughly during these years,
    	you know, so it was really pretty much of a guesstimate,
    	and it was only when we started looking at a number of
    	sites that had a very good chronology so we knew where
    	they were in time and that we realized that the timing of
    	the warmth was not the same in different regions, that
    	that peak collapsed.
    	MR. STUPAK.  So it is not fair to compare this cartoon
    	graph with Dr. Mann's hockey stick?
    	DR. CROWLEY.  No, I don't think that was intention of
    	Dr. Wegman.  I think he was just--
    	MR. STUPAK.  No, I guess the Wall Street Journal used
    	it more as one of those.  You said the Wegman report
    	should not be a legitimate assessment of the science of
    	global warming or as a guide to policy modification.
    	Can you elaborate a little bit on that?
    	DR. CROWLEY.  Well, I felt that--again, I have to--I
    	can't remember exactly where--do you have it listed where
    	I said that so I can--
    	MR. STUPAK.  Let me find it here.
    	DR. CROWLEY.  Last page.  So what I said is I disagree
    	with many in the fact sheet and also in the report itself.
    	It is not like I disagreed with what he was saying about
    	his analysis of the Mann et al. record there but some of
    	the recommendations that he was making I think that I
    	felt there was a need---I just disagreed with him and so
    	I was concerned that in terms of recommending any changes.
    	I am not saying that interaction with statisticians is bad.
    	I strongly favor very enhanced interaction but a lot of
    	that is already happening.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Mr. McIntyre, you are not a
    	paleoclimatologist, right?
    	MR. MCINTYRE.  No.
    	MR. STUPAK.  And you are not a statistician?
    	MR. MCINTYRE.  I studied mathematics and statistics at
    	university.
    	MR. STUPAK.  So are you a statistician then?
    	MR. MCINTYRE.  I have not practiced as a statistician, but
    	this is what I have been doing for the last few years.  I
    	think that--
    	MR. STUPAK.  You have been doing statistics the last
    	2 years then?
    	MR. MCINTYRE.  I have been working at statistical analysis
    	of multi-proxy studies for the last 3 years.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Three years.  Okay.
    	MR. MCINTYRE.  I note that my findings have been endorsed
    	by both the NAS panel and the Wegman report.
    	MR. STUPAK.  In this--again, reading the Wall Street Journal
    	editorial.  I am not sure how accurate this is but it say
    	you and Mr. McKitrick published an article in a peer review
    	journal.  What discipline did the peer review?
    	MR. MCINTYRE.  We have published articles in two journals,
    	Geophysical Research Letters, which is the same journal
    	that published the original Mann article, and Energy and
    	Environment.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Let me ask Dr. Crowley if I can.  Both you
    	and Dr. Karl and the National Research Council have stated
    	that the Mann study was not the most influential work in
    	the IPCC 2001 report.  You testified that the papers that
    	made the biggest differences were ones that said the
    	influence of greenhouse gases had to be used to reconcile
    	the data and the models and the most compelling driver was
    	the fact that global temperatures kept going up and glacier
    	melt was increasing.  Why then is there so much emphasis on
    	the Mann report?
    	DR. CROWLEY.  Well, there has been this discussion before
    	about it being used as an icon, okay, and people say well,
    	if it is not right, then is IPCC wrong, so there has then
    	been that connection drawn.  So I think for rightly or
    	wrongly, I am not sure if IPCC is the only one responsible
    	for broad--for using that as an icon but it has effectively
    	become one and I think that is really the--what the--I
    	guess the argument settles down to.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Thank you.  I guess my time is up.  We have
    	got 3 minutes to go vote.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  I want to thank all of you on the panel,
    	one, for being here, two, for being so patient, and three,
    	for what you do and the contributions that all of you are
    	making.  We may or may not have some more hearings on this.
    	I know we do have an invitation out to Dr. Mann and we
    	will see if he is going to come or not.  But I want to
    	ask unanimous consent that the document binder be submitted
    	into the record of this hearing, unanimous consent that the
    	document in Newsweek that Chairman Barton referred to about
    	the cooling world be entered into the record and then I
    	would like to keep the record open for 30 days for any
    	follow-up questions we may have.  So without objection, so
    	ordered and this hearing is concluded, and thank you all
    	again for being with us.  We genuinely appreciate it.
    	[The information follows:]

    	[Whereupon, at 4:12 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

    RESPONSE FOR THE RECORD OF DR. GERALD R. NORTH, DEPARTMENT OF
    ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES, TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY

    The Honorable Ed Whitfield

    1. As you chaired the National Research Council panel that
    recently issued the report on millennial temperature
    reconstructions:
    a. Where in the report did the panel describe "plausible" as
    suggesting roughly a 2/3rds probability of being correct?

    In the report we shunned the use of numerical probability
    assessments in favor of descriptive statements (e.g., "high
    confidence") and statements that describe our relative confidence
    in different conclusions (e.g. "less confidence").  I may have
    mistakenly mentioned the "two to one odds" figure in the oral
    press release of the report, and it may also have appeared in
    some press accounts, but it does not appear in the report, and
    I avoided using it in my sworn testimony.

    b. In the report, did the panel attach probability estimates to
    the term "plausible"?

    No. The committee avoided numerical probability estimates because
    many of the uncertainties associated with reconstructing surface
    temperatures are not purely statistical in nature, but rather
    arise from physical factors associated with each proxy that
    are simply unquantifiable at this time.  In our view it is not
    possible to quantify all of the inherent uncertainties
    associated with reconstructing surface temperatures from proxy
    data, which in turn precludes assigning numerical probabilities
    to statements regarding the unique nature of recent warmth.

    c. Why did the panel choose to use the term "plausible," as
    opposed for example to terms such as "likely," to describe
    confidence in millennial temperature reconstructions?

    In the IPCC reports, the term "likely" is used to indicate an
    estimated probability of between 66% and 90%, i.e. greater
    than two-thirds odds but less than nine-in-ten chances.  We
    avoided numerical estimates such as these because we did not
    want to imply that we had performed a rigorous probability
    assessment.  Instead, we tried to express our collective
    confidence in different conclusions using descriptive
    language.

    2. When considering the panel's findings that it is "plausible"
    that recent decades were the warmest in a millennium, is that
    correct to interpret that to mean the panel's consensus view
    was that plausible means roughly a 2/3rds probability of being
    correct, as was suggested in news reports following the press
    conference releasing the report?

    Our working definition of "plausible" was that the assertion
    is reasonable, or in other words there is not a convincing
    argument to refute the assertion. We used this term to describe
    our assessment of the statement that "the last few decades of
    the 20th century were warmer than any comparable period over
    the last millennium" because none of the available evidence to
    date contradicts this assertion. In our view it is not
    currently possible to perform a quantitative evaluation of
    recent warmth relative to the past 1,000 years that includes
    all of the inherent uncertainties associated with reconstructing
    surface temperatures from proxy data.  This precludes stronger
    statements of confidence, but it does not mean that the
    assertion is false.  In fact, all of the large-scale surface
    temperature reconstructions that we examined support the
    assertion that global-mean temperatures during the last few
    decades of the 20th century were unprecedented over at least
    the past 1,000 years, and a larger fraction of geographically
    diverse proxy records experienced exceptional warmth during
    the late 20th century than during any other extended period
    from 900 A.D. onward.

    3. Did the panel perform its own, in-depth technical analysis
    of the methods and procedures-- such as checking the underlying
    data sets or attempting to replicate the findings - used in the
    various temperature reconstruction articles and presentations
    it considered in formulating its report?

    Our committee relied on the published, refereed scientific
    literature to reach its conclusions.  We did not attempt to
    replicate the work of any previous author, with the lone
    exception of a simple computer program (reproduced in Appendix B
    of our report) that was used to illustrate an interesting
    artifact of the principal components methodology first noted by
    McIntyre and McKitrick.  When evaluating the results of different
    studies, we placed higher confidence in those results that were
    reproduced in several different studies--for instance a number
    of independent lines of evidence indicate that the late 20th
    century warmth was unprecedented in at least the last 400 years,
    giving us high confidence in this conclusion.  Less confidence
    can be placed in conclusions regarding large-scale surface
    temperatures prior to about 1600 A.D. because there are simply
    fewer independent lines of evidence to consider, although the
    evidence that does exist indicates that the late 20th century
    warmth is unprecedented for at least the last 1,000 years.

    4. The NRC panel made specific reference to ice borehole studies
    in Greenland by Dahl-Jensen, which suggest warmer temperatures
    in that region during the Medieval Warm Period than today. Please
    explain the value of regional temperature measurements such as
    this for understanding the potential effects of recent warming
    trends?

    There are two main reasons for using large-scale averages rather
    than individual regional measurements to evaluate global
    environmental changes: 1) Random measurement errors and climate
    fluctuations tend to cancel out when spatial averages are
    performed, allowing researchers to obtain a more reliable
    estimate than is possible for a local or a regional average;
    2) The greenhouse effect operates at the global scale, hence
    large-scale averages are the best way to evaluate the response
    of the climate to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations.
    Current climate models also are better at computing large-scale
    averages than regional-scale values.

    Of course in order to detect large-scale climate anomalies,
    either in the modern temperature record or in proxy-based
    temperature reconstructions, it helps to have a large network of
    high quality measurements for geographically-diverse regions.
    The main reason that we have high confidence in the temperature
    increase over the past 100 years and in the statement that
    temperatures are warmer now than at any other time over the last
    400 years is because we have a sufficiently large number of
    well-characterized local measurements to calculate a reliable
    large-scale average.  Several proxies (including historical and
    archeological evidence as well as quantitative temperature
    estimates from ice cores and boreholes) indicate that the area
    around Greenland was warmer between about 1000 and 1200 A.D.
    than it is today.  There is also evidence for warm temperatures
    during medieval times from other regions of the world.  However,
    studies suggest that these warm anomalies appear to have occurred
    at different times at different places rather than being globally
    synchronous, and also appear to have been offset by cold
    anomalies in other regions.  The few large-scale surface
    temperature reconstructions that extend back far enough to
    rigorously compare large-scale medieval temperatures to modern
    warmth suggest that the medieval period was, at most, comparable
    in warmth to the first half of the 20th century.  However, as
    noted above in response to question (4), it is difficult to
    quantify the full uncertainty associated with estimates of
    surface temperature prior to about 1600 A.D.

    The Honorable Bart Stupak

    1. In the study performed by a special committee of the National
    Academy of Sciences (NAS) on surface temperature reconstructions
    over the past 2,000 years, it was stated that, for the time prior
    to 1600 A.D., scientists are less certain about the actual
    average northern hemispheric surface temperatures. The Medieval
    Warm Period (MWP) occurred prior to 1600.  How certain are
    climatologists that there was a globally or even hemispherically
    MWP that was warmer than the past several decades?

    Indeed, the paucity of proxy data for periods prior to about
    1600 A.D., especially in the tropics and the Southern Hemisphere,
    limits our confidence in statements regarding the global mean
    temperature of the past few decades compared to medieval times.
    Several proxies indicate that the area around Greenland was
    warmer between about 1000 and 1200 A.D. than it is today.  There
    is also evidence for warm temperatures during medieval times
    from other regions of the world.  However, studies suggest that
    these warm anomalies appear to have occurred at different times
    at different places rather than being hemispherically or globally
    synchronous, and also appear to have been offset by cold anomalies
    in other regions.  Although it is difficult to quantify the full
    uncertainty associated with estimates of surface temperature prior
    to about 1600 A.D., all of the large-scale surface temperature
    reconstructions that we examined support the assertion that
    global-mean temperatures during the last few decades of the
    20th century were unprecedented over at least the past 1,000
    years, and a larger fraction of geographically diverse proxy
    records experienced exceptional warmth during the late 20th
    century than during any other extended period from 900 A.D.
    onward.  Hence we find it plausible (or in other words, no
    evidence exists to refute the claim) that "the last few decades
    of the 20th century were warmer than any comparable period over
    the last millennium."  This statement can be more strongly
    applied to the Northern Hemisphere than to the globe because
    there is very little proxy data from the Southern Hemisphere
    before about 1600 A.D.

    2. The 1990 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
    Report contains a "schematic diagram" that shows temperature
    changes for 900 A.D. through 1975, but does not give specific
    temperatures. The text of the report notes, "it is still not
    clear whether all the fluctuations indicated were truly global."
    Am I correct in my understanding that this schematic diagram is
    not a graph of specific data points consisting of global
    temperature for particular years or time periods? Am I also
    correct that the scientific consensus at the time was that
    there was significant uncertainty about whether the diagram
    accurately portrayed the global temperature profile over the
    last 1,000 years?

    Yes, the schematic diagram that appeared in the 1990 IPCC
    Report was simply a qualitative depiction of how scientists
    thought that large-scale temperatures may have evolved from
    900 A.D. to about 1975. There was very little proxy data
    available at that time, and the data that did exist tended to
    be concentrated in just a few geographical regions, such as
    Greenland.  The lack of a temperature scale and supporting
    documentation strongly suggests that the diagram was not
    based on a quantitative analysis, and also implies that
    there was considerable uncertainty about the magnitude and
    timing of the indicated fluctuations.  As stated in our
    report, there is still considerable uncertainty about the
    exact timing and magnitude of past temperature fluctuations,
    especially prior to about 1600 A.D., but our knowledge has
    advanced considerably since 1990.  Figure S-1 from our
    report illustrates the current state of the science in
    large-scale surface temperature reconstructions for the
    last 1,000 years.

    3. What level of certainty is there that the temperature ranges
    for the period of 900 through 1975 A.D. schematically displayed
    in the 1990 IPCC report are accurate? Prior to Dr. Mann's work,
    had anyone attempted to attach a level of certainty to the data
    relating to surface temperature reconstruction?

    There were no uncertainty assessments attached to the 1990 IPCC
    diagram.  As discussed in response to question (2) above, this
    diagram was simply a qualitative depiction of how scientists
    thought that large-scale temperatures may have evolved from
    900 A.D. to about 1975.  The papers by Dr. Mann and his
    colleagues in 1998 and 1999 were, to my knowledge, the first
    attempts to assign statistical error bars to a large-scale
    surface temperature reconstruction. As noted in our report,
    these error bars provide an indication of how well the
    reconstructed temperatures match observations during the
    "calibration period," but they do not represent all of
    uncertainties inherent in reconstructing surface temperature
    from proxy data.  The actual uncertainties in the
    reconstruction would be somewhat larger, and difficult to
    quantify.

    4. Mr. McIntyre has testified that the NAS report stated that
    the bristlecone pine proxy used by Dr. Mann in his original
    work should not have been used. Was that the conclusion of the
    panel? Please describe the conclusion and provide citations.

    Let me quote directly from page 50 of the prepublication
    version of our report:

    The possibility that increasing tree ring widths in modern
    times might be driven by increasing atmospheric carbon
    dioxide (CO2) concentrations, rather than increasing
    temperatures, was first proposed by LaMarche et al. (1984) for
    bristlecone pines (Pinus longaeva) in the White Mountains of
    California. In old age, these trees can assume a "stripbark"
    form, characterized by a band of trunk that remains alive and
    continues to grow after the rest of the stem has died. Such
    trees are sensitive to higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations
    (Graybill and Idso 1993), possibly because of greater water-use
    efficiency (Knapp et al. 2001, Bunn et al. 2003) or different
    carbon partitioning among tree parts (Tang et al. 1999). Support
    for a direct CO2 influence on tree ring records extracted from
    "full-bark" trees is less conclusive. Increasing mean ring width
    was reported for Pinus cembra from the central Alps growing well
    below treeline (Nicolussi et al. 1995). Free-Air CO2 Enrichment
    (FACE) data for conifer plantations in the Duke Forest (Hamilton
    et al. 2002) and at the alpine treeline (H�ttenschwiler et al.
    2002) also showed increased tree growth after exposure to
    atmospheric CO2 concentrations about 50 percent greater than
    present. On the other hand, no convincing evidence for such
    effect was found in conifer tree ring records from the Sierra
    Nevada in California (Graumlich 1991) or the Rocky Mountains in
    Colorado (Kienast and Luxmoore 1988). Further evidence comes
    from a recent review of data for mature trees in four climatic
    zones, which concluded that pine growth at treeline is limited
    by factors other than carbon (K�rner 2003). While 'strip-bark'
    samples should be avoided for temperature reconstructions,
    attention should also be paid to the confounding effects of
    nthropogenic nitrogen deposition (Vitousek et al. 1997), since
    the nutrient conditions of the soil determine wood growth
    response to increased atmospheric CO2 (Kostiainen et al. 2004).
    However, in forest areas below treeline where modern nitrogen
    input could be expected to influence dendroclimatic records,
    such as Scotland (Hughes et al. 1984) and Maine (Conkey 1986),
    the relationship between temperature and tree ring parameters
    was stable over time.

    In summary, it appears that there is a carbon dioxide
    fertilization effect in some trees, but not in all the places
    where the samples used in the Mann et al studies were taken.
    Also note that this section of the report discusses the
    calibration of tree-ring records since atmospheric carbon dioxide
    levels started to increase around 150 years ago.  Hence, in
    context, what the clause "strip-bark samples should be avoided
    for temperature reconstructions" was intended to convey is that
    strip-bark samples from the mid-19th century to the present are
    very difficult to calibrate against instrumental records of
    temperature, and the easiest solution is therefore not to use
    them.  However, strip-bark data are considered suspect only after
    the modern increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations.
    This is why other studies that rely on strip-bark pine records
    only use them to infer past temperatures prior to 1850 (e.g.,
    Biondi et al. 1999).  This reference, and all of those cited in
    the above quote, can be found in the reference section of our
    report.

    5. The recent work by Wahl & Amman redid Dr. Mann's original
    work, but recentered it as Mr. Mcintyre suggested. Wahl and
    Amman's work, however, resulted in the same "hockey stick"
    distribution. Please explain why this work was not fully
    considered and evaluated in the NAS study.

    We did consider the Wahl and Ammann paper that was accepted for
    publication in the journal Climatic Change on February 28th of
    this year, in which they found that decentering has only a
    relatively minor influence on the shape of the final
    reconstruction. This paper was one of many that influenced our
    evaluation of the Mann et al. (1998, 1999) papers and the
    robustness of surface temperature reconstructions in general.
    The effects of decentering are described explicitly in Chapter
    9 of our report, and our conclusions regarding how decentering
    influences surface temperature reconstructions can be found in
    the following excerpt from page 106 of the prepublication
    version of the report:

    As part of their statistical methods, Mann et al. used a type
    of principal component analysis that tends to bias the shape of
    the reconstructions.  A description of this effect is given in
    Chapter 9.  In practice, this method, though not recommended,
    does not appear to unduly influence reconstructions of
    hemispheric mean temperature; reconstructions performed without
    using principal component analysis are qualitatively similar
    to the original curves presented by Mann et al. (Crowley and
    Lowry 2000, Huybers 2005, D'Arrigo et al. 2006, Hegerl et al.
    2006, Wahl and Ammann in press).

    Drs. Wahl and Ammann (along with Dr. Ritson) also authored a
    paper that appeared in Science magazine on April 28th of this
    year alongside a response written by Drs. von Storch and
    Zorita.  These papers were under embargo during our
    deliberations, and thus we were not able to consider them
    during our deliberations, although we did note (on page 105)
    that "the...debate in the scientific literature continues even
    as this report goes to press (von Storch et al. 2006, Wahl et
    al. 2006)."  These papers address a separate statistical issue
    than the one discussed above, in particular the issue of
    detrending the data prior to performing principal components
    analysis.  My personal impression of these two papers is that
    the quote cited above still applies, that is, none of the
    statistical criticisms that have been raised by various authors
    unduly influence the shape of the final reconstruction. This is
    attested to by the fact that reconstructions performed without
    using principal components yield similar results.

    6. In the hearing, Dr. Wegman challenged "anybody" to tell him
    the difference between 72 and 74 degrees Fahrenheit. Please
    describe the climatic and other changes that can result from a
    global increase in temperature of 2 degrees Fahrenheit.

    As context, let me first point out that the difference in
    global-mean temperature between today and the height of the
    last Ice Age, when New York and Seattle were covered with over
    a kilometer of ice, is estimated to be only about 10 degrees
    Fahrenheit.  Hence, a change in global-mean temperature of two
    degrees would represent a considerable perturbation to the
    global climate system.  Small changes in local temperatures
    can also be associated with large impacts. For example, for
    every degree Fahrenheit increase in mean annual temperature
    near Greenland, the rate of sea level rise is projected to
    increase by 10%. Snowpacks on mountains in the western U.S.,
    which millions of people depend on for drinking water and
    other uses, is likewise extremely sensitive to small
    temperature changes.  Natural ecosystems are also vulnerable
    to changes in temperature--in the Midwest, a one degree
    change in annual mean temperature might translate into
    several hundred miles in the ecological distribution of
    certain plants and grasses, and a warming of just a few
    degrees could have devastating impacts on New England's maple
    syrup industry and California's vineyards. Many parts of
    the climate system are already feeling the impacts of the
    one degree rise in global-mean temperature observed during
    the 20th century. As we noted on page 27 of the prepublication
    version of our report: "glaciers are retreating, permafrost
    is melting, snowcover is decreasing, Arctic sea ice is
    thinning, rivers and lakes are melting earlier and freezing
    later, bird migration and nesting dates are changing, flowers
    are blooming earlier, and the ranges of many insect and plant
    species are spreading to higher latitudes and higher elevations
    (e.g., ACIA 2001, Parmesan and Yohe 2003, Root et al. 2003,
    Bertaux et al. 2004, Bradshaw and Holzapfel 2006)."

    7. Dr. Von Storch testified that the effect of the "decentering"
    error in the Mann study, which was the basis of the McIntyre and
    Wegman criticisms, was "very minor." The NAS study did not refer
    to "decentering." How significant was the analysis of "decentering"
    to the NAS conclusions?

    I believe Dr. von Storch was referring to the same phenomenon that
    I described in my response to your question #5.  Our committee
    did consider the effects of decentering, along with other
    criticisms of the Mann et al methodology, and found that it
    "does not appear to unduly influence reconstructions of
    hemispheric mean temperature."

    8. At the hearing you were asked if you disputed the conclusions
    or the methodology of Dr. Wegman's report, and you stated that
    you did not. Were you referring solely to Dr. Wegman's criticism
    of the statistical approach of Dr. Mann, or were you also
    referring to Dr. Wegman's social network analysis and conclusions?

    Dr. Wegman's criticisms of the statistical methodology in the
    papers by Mann et al were consistent with our findings.  Our
    committee did not consider any social network analyses and we
    did not have access to Dr. Wegman's report during our
    deliberations so we did not have an opportunity to discuss his
    conclusions.  Personally, I was not impressed by the social
    network analysis in the Wegman report, nor did I agree with most
    of the report's conclusions on this subject. As I stated in my
    testimony, one might erroneously conclude, based on a social
    network analysis analogous to the one performed on Dr. Mann, that
    a very active and charismatic scientist is somehow guilty of
    conspiring or being inside a closed community or 'mutual
    admiration society'.  I would expect that a social network
    analysis of Enrico Fermi or any of the other scientists
    involved with the development of modern physics would yield a
    similar pattern of connections, yet there is no reason to
    believe that theoretical physics has suffered from being a
    tight-knit community.  Moreover, as far as I can tell the only
    data that went into Dr. Wegman's analysis was a list of
    individuals that Dr. Mann has co-authored papers with.  It is
    difficult to see how this data has any bearing on the
    peer-review process, the need to include statisticians on every
    team that engages in climate research (which in my view is a
    particularly unrealistic and unnecessary recommendation), or
    any of the other findings and recommendations in Dr. Wegman's
    report.  I was also somewhat taken aback by the tone of the
    Wegman Report, which seems overly accusatory towards Dr. Mann
    and his colleagues, rather than being a neutral, impartial
    assessment of the techniques used in his research. In my
    opinion, while the techniques used in the original Mann et al
    papers may have been slightly flawed, the work was the first
    of its kind and deserves considerable credit for moving the
    field of paleoclimate research forward. It is also important
    to note that the main conclusions of the Mann et al studies
    have been supported by subsequent research. Finally, while our
    committee would agree with Dr. Wegman that access to research
    data could and should be improved, as discussed on page 23 of
    the prepublication version of our report, we also acknowledge
    the complicated nature of such mandates, especially in areas
    such as computer code where intellectual property rights need
    to be considered.

    The Honorable Marsha Blackburn

    1. Dr. Mann used many temperature measurements from different
    sources to produce his graph. In your opinion, how much
    emphasis or reliance did he place on surface records and
    satellite measurements?

    To perform their surface temperature reconstruction, Dr. Mann
    and his colleagues made use of proxy data derived primarily
    from tree rings, ice cores, and documentary sources.  Tree
    rings and ice cores, like other natural proxies, do not record
    temperature directly, but are correlated with local temperatures
    through physical and physiological mechanisms.  They also
    made use of surface thermometer records from the last 150
    years, which were used to calibrate the reconstruction (i.e.
    translate the proxy data into a record of temperature) and to
    validate their results (i.e. test whether the reconstructed
    temperatures match a portion of the observations reserved for
    this purpose).  All paleoclimate reconstructions use a similar
    methodology, with the exception of reconstructions based on
    borehole temperature measurements and glacier length records,
    which are translated directly into temperature time series
    using models based on the laws of physics. Satellite measurements
    are not used in any paleoclimate reconstructions because they
    only go back about 30 years, which is much too short for this
    application.

    a. How much weight do you think should be given to these
    measurements?

    Dr. Mann and his colleagues used all of the quality-controlled
    proxy data that they had at their disposal at the time. As we
    indicated in our report, the available proxy data are plentiful
    and geographically diverse for the last 400 years, but decrease
    in number and become subject to increasing uncertainties going
    back further into the past. Hence, we have high confidence in
    the surface temperature reconstructions based on these data for
    the last 400 years, but less confidence in reconstructions for
    the period from 900 to 1600 A.D.  This increasing uncertainty
    moving back in time is reflected, in part, by the increasing
    size of the error bars prior to 1600 A.D. in the original
    'hockey stick' curve, although these error bars do not accoun
    t for all of the uncertainties inherent in the reconstruction.

    2. The surface record and the satellite measurements indicate
    that if maybe natural warming and not human-induced warming.
    Yet, in your testimony, you say that increasing concentrations
    of greenhouse gases caused the warming. How do we reconcile
    your statement with the historical record?

    The temperature record alone cannot tell us the difference
    between 'natural' and 'human-induced' temperature changes. One
    has to try to explain the observed warming using the laws of
    physics. During the last 100 years, the global-mean temperature
    first increased strongly, then remained constant or decreased
    slightly, then increased strongly again.  Simple radiative
    transfer calculations and sophistical climate models both show
    that the total amount of warming observed over the 20th
    century is consistent with the observed increases in greenhouse
    gas concentrations in the atmosphere, which are undeniably the
    result of human activities. Changes in solar output can also
    influence the climate system.  However, satellite measurements
    show that the sun has not increased in luminosity over the
    last 30 years, and estimates based on terrestrial measurements
    show only a modest increase in solar output during the first
    half of the 20th century.  A third factor that may have had a
    significant influence on global-mean climate during the 20th
    century is atmospheric aerosols. These are the tiny particles
    that, like greenhouse gases, are emitted from volcanoes and
    other natural sources as well as from anthropogenic sources,
    but have been increasing in concentration in the atmosphere over
    the past century mainly due to the burning of fossil fuels and
    other human activities.  Aerosols influence climate in a variety
    of ways, some of which are well known and others of which are
    active areas of research, but in general they have a cooling
    influence on climate.  There is some evidence that suggests that
    aerosols may be primarily responsible for the slight decrease in
    global-mean temperature observed during the middle of the 20th
    century, and they might also be offsetting some of the warming
    due to greenhouse gases.

    a. Also, the historical record indicates that in the past 100
    years, the Earth's global temperature warmed and cooled
    significantly while the concentrations of carbon dioxide
    increased. Would this not also indicate that the level of carbon
    dioxide in the atmosphere has had little effect on the warming
    of the atmosphere?

    No. The Earth's temperature over the past 100 years was
    influenced by increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse
    gases, which have a warming effect, by changes in aerosols, which
    generally cool the climate, and by other climate forcings.
    Thus, the observed temperature variations reflect the net effect
    of these different forcings.

    We have a very good understanding of the direct impact of carbon
    dioxide and other greenhouse gases on global temperature.
    Straightforward radiative transfer calculations tell us that
    carbon dioxide has a significant influence on global climate.
    Sophisticated climate models also show that the observed
    temperature changes during the 20th century cannot be reproduced
    unless greenhouse gases increases are included. There are also
    other lines of evidence indicating that carbon dioxide and other
    greenhouse gases have a strong influence on global climate.  For
    example, models cannot reproduce the global-mean cooling that
    occurred during the last Ice Age without incorporating the reduced
    levels of greenhouse gases that prevailed during that time.

    3. You also state in your testimony that even if it was as warm
    or warmer 1000 years ago than today that it would not effect
    today's consensus on global warming. That seems to not be logical
    because if the Earth goes through natural cycles of warming and
    cooling, then would not the warming and cooling cycles over the
    past 60 and 500 years be a similar indication of phenomenon?

    It is true that the Earth has experienced natural cycles of
    warming and cooling over its history, however natural climate
    forcings (solar activity, changes in natural aerosols) observed
    over the last century are not large enough to produce the
    observed warming, especially for the last 30 years. There is a
    large and compelling body of evidence indicating that human-
    induced greenhouse gas increases are responsible for at least
    part of the total warming over the 20th century, and most of
    the warming over the last 30 years.  Over the last 100 years
    and especially the last 30 years, we have very good data for
    both temperature and all of the major climate forcings
    (greenhouse gases, solar activity, and aerosols).  Analyses of
    these data indicate that human-induced greenhouse gases appear
    to be responsible for much of the warming over the last 30
    years and at least part of the total warming over the last
    century. Reconstructions of surface temperature over the past
    1,000 years are one piece of the scientific evidence, but
    these reconstructions are sufficiently uncertain, especially
    prior to 1600 A.D., that they are not usually considered to be
    among the primary evidence for human-induced global warming.
    In addition, temperature data alone do not tell us anything
    about cause and effect.

    In contrast, we know that greenhouse gases did not vary much
    during the 1,000 years prior to the industrial revolution,
    but we have very little data about how solar output and
    aerosols varied over this period.  Moreover, what little
    evidence we do have shows only small variations in climate
    forcing due to natural causes. Hence, if we were to find
    out that the global-mean temperature 1,000 years ago was
    warmer than today, this would mean that the Earth's climate
    is even more sensitive to small forcings than we thought,
    which would mean that projections of future warming may be
    overly conservative.

    RESPONSE FOR THE  RECORD OF DR. THOMAS J. CROWLEY, NICHOLAS
    PROFESSOR OF EARTH SCIENCE SYSTEM, DUKE UNIVERSITY

    Response by T. Crowley to Followup Questions on July 19
    Testimony

    The Honorable Marsha Blackburn:

    1. Do you agree or disagree with the surface record and
    satellite data which indicate that global temperatures did not
    start to rise significantly until the 1998 El Nino?

    I emphatically disagree with this statement.  The surface
    temperature record clearly shows very substantial warming
    before 1998.  Recent work furthermore indicates that the
    satellite observations are close to being reconciled with these
    surface observations - and that the prior differences between
    the two was to a coding error in the analysis of the satellite
    data, not a problem with the surface data.   Congresswoman
    Blackburn, anyone who tries to tell you that the warming did
    not occur until 1998 is seriously misleading you.

    2. Do you believe the available data shows a global Little
    Ice Age and/or Medieval Warm Period?

    It is not easy to give an unequivocal answer to this, because
    southern hemisphere data are considerably more spotty than
    northern hemisphere data.  The available data suggest that
    the southern hemisphere did indeed have a cold period about
    the same time as the northern hemisphere.  There are some
    indications of warmth in the southern hemisphere prior to
    that time, but it is not clear whether the timing of that
    warmth was the same as in the northern hemisphere. Although
    some northern hemisphere places during the Middle Ages were
    locally warmer than they are today, in the best-dated records
    the timing of Medieval warmth varied in different places.
    This is why composite reconstructions almost always show that
    the mean warmth for the Middle Ages is usually comparable to
    the mid-20th century but not the late 20th century.

    3.  Do you agree or disagree with the statement that warming
    from  1900 to 1940 was caused by increase of solar activity
    or the warming of the Sun?

    I disagree with the statement because it is too categorical.
    There are some indications that changes in solar behavior may
    have contributed to the mid-20th century warming.  But when
    this "solar connection"is tested by going farther back in time
    the conclusions become much more equivocal.  The most methodical
    analysis (see Attachment #1 - Hegerl et al. 2003) provides at
    best weak support for the long-term role of solar variability.
    Furthermore, the magnitude of past solar variations is very
    uncertain - even optimistic estimates indicate it is only a
    fraction of present greenhouse gas forcing.   The present
    thinking is that the mid-20th century warming was due to a
    combination of weakened volcanic cooling, greenhouse warming,
    "natural variability", and perhaps a modest contribution from
    solar output changes.

    4.  What is your opinion on the effect of the 1998 El Nino on
    the recent rise in temperatures?

    The 1998 El Nino certainly contributed to the (at that time)
    record global temperatures but I don't think anyone seriously
    thinks it has a long term effect on global temperature - the
    heat just dissipates too quickly in the atmosphere to have
    such an effect.  I might add that it has taken less than a
    decade for the continually rising temperatures to approach or
    equal the 1998 temperatures.  This increase is very
    disconcerting in terms of how fast the planet is warming.

    End of reply to the Honorable Marsha Blackburn

    The Honorable Bart Stupak:

    1. In the hearing, Dr. Wegman testified that your 2000 published
    work, which used a simple averaging proxy methodology, obtained
    the same "hockey stick" configuration as Dr. Mann's original
    work did.  Dr. Wegman blames this conclusion on "proxies
    appropriately selected" apparently because of use of the
    bristlecone pine proxy.

    Please explain if and why your work also used the bristlecone
    pine proxy and respond to Dr. Wegman's criticisms of its use.

    I do not recall Dr. Wegman making this testimony but will a
    ccept your claim.  Actually the purpose of the Crowley-Lowery
    2000 study (ms. submitted as hard copy during testimony) was
    not to reproduce Mann et al. with a different methodology but
    just to determine what would happen if we took a broad swath
    of data and just summed them up.  I was as surprised as anyone
    that the result was as close to Mann et al. as it was - bristlecone
    pine or no bristlecone pine (the one we used was different than
    Mann et al's).  The principal significance of our finding was that
    the Mann et al. result appeared to be robust because it could be
    reproduced with a different methodology - a standard approach in
    science.

    The bristlecone pine business is a red herring.  If the bristlecone
    pine record is removed from the composite of a dozen or so records,
    it will show slightly greater warming in the Middle Ages.  But one
    record can only make so much a difference when it is averaged among
    a dozen, especially since the general shape of the bristlecone pine
    record is comparable to the other records.

    A more important objection to the bristlecone pine argument is that
    it should not be included.  Why not?  In statistics anyone can use
    something as a predictor or something else.  The question is how
    could a predictor is it?  Some have claimed that it should not be
    included because it is more affected by some other process (for
    example, precipitation).  But a principal assumption of regression
    based prediction approaches is that the variables used for making
    predictions are linearly correlated with the variable they are
    predicting (in this theoretical case, precipitation with temperature).
    The degree of skill in the predictor can be tested by its correlation
    with temperature.  If it has a poor correlation, it has little skill.
    This is an approach we have adopted in later papers, but the purpose
    of the original study was to just take as simple as an approach as
    possible.

    2. There were numerous references in the hearing to a schematic
    drawing of what scientists supposed surface temperatures might have
    been from 1000 A.D. to 1975 in the 1990 report of the
    Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) .  You stated in
    your testimony that Dr. Mann's study represented the first attempt
    to estimate the uncertainties for surface temperature reconstructions
    prior to the instrumental period.  Can you describe what level of
    uncertainty would have been placed on the 1990 schematic drawing,
    and what level of uncertainty Dr. Mann established for the period
    prior to 1600 A.D.

    This is a good question!  But before answering it I have to explain
    what happened during the formulation of the 1990 figure.   At that
    time we really did not have any hemispheric estimates of temperature.
    What IPCC did in 1990 was informally poll various experts for a
    "guesstimate" of what the temperatures were like (I vaguely recall
    being asked by someone around that time, but I do not know if it was
    related to the IPCC figure).  Many scientists had heard of the
    "Medieval Warm Period" and stories of warmth greater than the
    present.  Despite warnings from a prominent Chinese scientist, and
    a prominent English scientist, that the timing of warmth in the
    Middle Ages was not the same in all places, many people (including
    some still now) assumed that the Medieval Warmth was globally
    synchronous.  Thus the 1990 figure - entirely schematic and left
    standing until it could be replaced by an alternate quantitative
    estimate, with meaningful uncertainty estimates (i.e., the Mann
    et al. paper, and others that have followed).

    Now for the uncertainty estimates.  One would have to be very wary
    to apply uncertainty estimates to a qualitative figure, but if one
    were to do so, then maybe a "ball park" 0.5 �C (about 1.0 �F)
    uncertainty might be applied.   If so, then one would have to
    conclude that is not possible to make a robust statement that the
    Middle Ages were warmer than the present, because the original
    estimate likely did not exceed 0.5�C above "present" (which at
    the time of writing of the report was about seventeen years ago).
    [Note that I cannot find my copy of the original figure, so I
    would have to doublecheck the 0.5*C peak, but because the
    uncertainty estimate is also uncertain, I still stand by my
    conclusion about "inability to make a robust statement"

    With respect to the uncertainty estimates prior to 1600 in the
    Mann et al. paper,  the most that can be stated is the estimates
    are substantially larger than for the later period just because
    there are much fewer records.  The uncertainties for estimates
    of annual temperature are about 0.5�C in Mann et al. (1999).
    However, the degree of uncertainty would decrease as records
    are smoothed.  For example, forty year smoothing of the Mann
    et al. record yields uncertainties of about 0.4�C.  Smoothing
    comparable to the very smoothed 1990 IPCC figure has not, to my
    knowledge, been computed, but a reasonable guess would be that
    it would be in the range of 0.2-0.3�C.

    3. Please describe the peer review process for your most
    recent publications.

    The peer review process has been pretty similar for my entire
    scientific career.  The paper goes out to 2-3 reviewers, who
    almost always provide anonymous peer reviews (i.e., they can
    say anything they want about it!).  If the reviewers like the
    paper but have questions, the editor will request that a
    revised manuscript be prepared that takes into account reviewer
    concerns, and that a separate accounting be made to the editor
    and reviewer about how specifically we addressed those concerned.
    Depending on the seriousness of the concerns, the editors will
    then either review the response themselves, or send it back to
    the reviewers (if the concerns are minor he or she would
    probably not sent it back to the reviewers).  In some cases the
    reviewer may still be dissatisfied, in which case the authors
    would have to reiterate, but in many cases the reviewers will be
    satisfied.  In some cases an editor might decide that if a
    reviewer is still dissatisfied, then the editor may choose to
    reject the paper.  Only after the editor is fully satisfied that
    reviewers and reconciled will the editor accept the paper.  In
    some cases the editor may accept a paper even if there are
    disagreements with reviewers, because a subject matter may be
    controversial and an editor may feel that all sides of an issue
    deserve a public airing.  In that case an editor may still
    accept a paper that has been opposed by a reviewer.

    End of reply to the Honorable Bart Stupak

    The Honorable Henry A. Waxman:

    1. You were added to the witness list for this hearing on short
    notice, and therefore had very little time to prepare your
    testimony.  In reviewing your previously submitted testimony, is
    there anything you would like to clarify or supplement for the
    record.

    Thank you for the opportunity to respond to this.  I am satisfied
    with most of the document but there are a few typos and
    grammatical mishaps I would like to correct.  I am also chagrined
    by the choice of words I sometimes used to describe some of
    Dr. Wegman's report, and would like to change those.   I will
    therefore send you a slightly revised version of the original
    document that makes such changes.  If it is not possible to
    replace the original with the revision, then my statement
    herein is all I would like to add as a supplement.

    End of Reply to the Honorable Henry A. Waxman

    QUESTIONS SURROUNDING THE 'HOCKEY STICK' TEMPERATURE STUDIES:
    IMPLICATIONS FOR CLIMATE CHANGE ASSESSMENTS

    THURSDAY, JULY 27, 2006

    HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
    COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE,
    SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS,
    Washington, DC.

    	The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:00 p.m.,
    	in Room 2322 of the Rayburn House Office Building,
    	Hon. Ed Whitfield (Chairman) presiding.
    	Members present: Representatives Stearns, Pickering, Bass,
    	Blackburn, Barton (ex officio), Stupak, Schakowsky, Inslee,
    	Baldwin, Waxman, and Whitfield.
    	Staff present: Mark Paoletta, Chief Counsel for Oversight
    	and Investigations; Peter Spencer, Professional Staff Member;
    	Tom Feddo, Counsel; Matt Johnson, Legislative Clerk;
    	John Halliwell, Policy Coordinator; Clayton Matheson,
    	Analyst; Mike Abraham, Legislative Clerk; Edith Holleman,
    	Minority Counsel; David Vogel, Minority Research Assistant;
    	Chris Knauer, Minority Investigator; and Lorie Schmidt,
    	Minority Counsel.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  This hearing will come to order, and I
    	want to certainly welcome everyone to today's hearing.
    	This is the second day of our hearing regarding questions
    	about what we popularly call the hockey stick temperature
    	studies and the implications for climate change assessments.
    	We have reconvened this hearing to accommodate a key person
    	in the matters before us, and that is Dr. Michael Mann of
    	Penn State University.  Dr. Mann was unable to attend the
    	session on the subject last week, and we are looking
    	forward to his testimony.
    	As you know, he was one of the leaders in the methodology
    	of developing the methodology that developed the hockey
    	stick graph, and we hope we can continue to explore some
    	of the broader questions surrounding temperature
    	reconstruction findings, their use in the IPCC assessment,
    	and other issues that prompted our inquiry into this
    	matter last year.  Now the hockey stick graphic and the
    	underlying studies were influential in a prominent set of
    	findings by the IPCC, and really the hockey stick graphic
    	has become an icon for all those concerned about global
    	warming.
    	In point of fact, from the very first set of findings on
    	the very first page of discussion in its 2001 summary for
    	policy makers the IPCC states that 20th Century temperature
    	increases were likely the largest in 1000 years, and it was
    	likely that in the Northern Hemisphere the 1990s was the
    	warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year, a phrase that is
    	almost verbatim what Dr. Mann and his colleagues wrote in
    	their 1999 paper.  Next to these findings the IPCC summary
    	then displays Dr. Mann and his colleagues' hockey stick
    	shaped temperature graph which helped this work prominently
    	and moved it into the public eye.
    	Now let me just take a moment and make a few observations
    	about last week's hearing.  First, through our discussion
    	of both the National Research Council report and the Wegman
    	report the original studies by Mann and his co-authors
    	appeared to be flawed, and cannot support the related
    	findings of the 2001 IPCC assessment.  Dr. Wegman's
    	independent committee found and reported that Dr. Mann and
    	his co-authors incorrectly applied a statistical methodology
    	that would preferentially create hockey stick shapes.
    	Dr. Wegman also found that more recent methodologies used in
    	temperature reconstruction studies may also generate
    	problematic biases when determining temperature histories.
    	Now the National Research Council based on the Mann analysis
    	and newer supporting evidence finds that it is plausible that
    	the Northern Hemisphere was warmer during the last few
    	decades of the 20th Century than during any period comparable
    	in the preceding millennium.  Even less confidence, and I am
    	quoting from their report, even less confidence can be placed
    	in the original conclusion by Mann that the 1990s are likely
    	the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year.
    	The NRC's panel review determined that Dr. Mann made in the
    	words of the NRC witnesses inappropriate choices and that
    	the panel had much the same misgivings about Dr. Mann's work,
    	That was documented at much greater length by Dr. Wegman.
    	Moreover, both the NRC and Wegman reports essentially
    	corroborated the main criticisms raised by the McIntyre-McKitrick
    	studies about Dr. Mann's initial hockey stick studies.  Now
    	while much attention was given to Dr. Wegman's social network
    	analysis, I think it is only fair to observe the limits of what
    	he was trying to illustrate as he himself explained.
    	Dr. Wegman was not seeking to impugn the integrity of any of
    	the scientists who work in the area, but it is clear that peer
    	review somehow failed to pick up the flaws in the hockey stick
    	studies.  Dr. Wegman simply raises the possibilities that given
    	the evident publishing relationship among the authors of many of
    	the relevant works combined with the failure to involve
    	statisticians that Dr. Manns' peers may have been too close to
    	the topic to scrutinize the studies as rigorously as they might
    	have.
    	Whatever the case, Dr. Manns' peers failed to catch the errors
    	that Wegman, the NRC and McIntyre identified.  Now this failure
    	as Dr. von Storch suggested last week may be less an issue with
    	the community of paleoclimatologists than with the journal
    	editors themselves.  Now finally I think it is important to
    	note that virtually everyone at the hearing last week, both
    	members and witnesses, took the view that criticisms of the
    	hockey stick studies or of the peer review and assessment
    	process should not be considered as a judgment about the
    	changes in global temperature, but rather the issues at
    	hand concern legitimate questions about the rigor of
    	scientific analysis, the results of which ultimately reach
    	policy makers and that is what we base our decision-making
    	decisions on.
    	So the hockey stick story provides a clear case study into
    	what may be the lack of proper scrutiny, and the questions
    	last week about the independence of peer review or the gate
    	keeping issues in my mind are legitimate.  And I think that
    	everyone would agree that we must be very careful and make
    	sure that when we do these analyses and they receive the
    	publicity that they do that they be scientifically based and
    	as close to accurate as possible.
    	Now in addition to Dr. Mann, both Dr. Wegman and
    	Dr. McIntyre are returning to recap their testimony and to
    	answer any questions related to their work, and certainly
    	Dr. Mann may want to raise some issues regarding what you
    	all said.  We have a few additional panelists as well.  As
    	we were preparing this panel, some have been suggested by
    	the minority side, and I am not sure which ones, but I want
    	to welcome Dr. John Christy, the Director of the Earth
    	System Science Center, and an Alabama State climatologist at
    	the University of Alabama, Huntsville, and Dr. Gulledge of
    	the Pew Center for Climate Change.  And then finally I would
    	like to recognize Dr. Ralph Cicerone, who is the President
    	of the National Academy of Sciences, and happened to be in
    	the same fraternity that I was, so, Dr. Cicerone, welcome.
    	And he has been instrumental in the National Academy's focus
    	on climate change research in recent years.  Indeed, he
    	chaired the National Research Council's 2001 report for
    	President Bush that helped pave the way for the United States
    	to conduct its own climate change assessment.  I want to
    	welcome all of you.  Thank you for your time.  We look
    	forward to your testimony.  And I yield and recognize the
    	distinguished ranking member, Mr. Stupak.
    	[The prepared statement of Hon. Ed Whitfield follows:]

    PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HON. ED WHITFIELD, CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE
    ON OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS

    Good afternoon and welcome to a second day of our hearing regarding
    questions about what we popularly call the "hockey stick" temperature
    studies and the implications for climate change assessments.
    We've reconvened this hearing to accommodate a key person in the
    matters before us, Dr. Michael Mann, of Penn State University.
    Dr. Mann was unable to attend the informative session on this subject
    last week. Although Dr. Thomas Crowley - Dr. Mann's personally
    recommended replacement - did testify, we are providing Dr. Mann the
    opportunity to discuss his work and respond to some of the views
    expressed about his work.
    Welcome Dr. Mann, I'm looking forward to your testimony and
    participation.  I hope we can continue to explore some of the broader
    questions surrounding temperature reconstruction findings, their use
    in the IPCC assessment, and other issues that prompted our inquiry
    into this matter last year.
     	The hockey stick graphic and the underlying studies were
     	influential in a prominent set of findings by the IPCC.  In
     	point of fact, from the very first set of findings on the
     	very first page of discussion in its 2001 Summary for
     	Policymakers, the IPCC states that 20th Century temperature
     	increases were likely the largest in 1,000 years and it was
     	[quote] "likely that, in the Northern Hemisphere, the 1990s
     	was the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year," a phrase
     	that is almost verbatim what Dr. Mann and his colleagues
     	wrote in their 1999 paper. Next to these findings, the IPCC
     	Summary then displays Dr. Mann and his colleagues' hockey
     	stick-shaped temperature graph, which helped this work
     	prominently into the public eye.
    Let me take a moment and make few observations about last week's
    hearing.
    First, through our discussion of both the National Research Council
    report and the Wegman report, we established that the original
    studies by Mann and his coauthors were flawed, and could not support
    the related findings of the 2001 IPCC assessment.  Dr. Wegman's
    independent committee found and reported that Dr. Mann and his
    coauthors incorrectly applied a statistical methodology that would
    preferentially create hockey stick shapes.  Dr. Wegman also found
    that more recent methodologies used in temperature reconstruction
    studies may also generate problematic biases when determining
    temperature histories.
    The National Research Council, upon its review of the current state
    of science on this subject, likewise found that the hockey stick
    studies could not support the 2001 IPCC finding drawn from them.
    The NRC panel's review determined that Dr. Mann made, in the words
    of the NRC witnesses, "inappropriate" choices, and that the panel
    had "much the same misgivings about [Dr. Mann's] work that was
    documented at much greater length by Dr. Wegman."
    Moreover, both the NRC and Wegman reports essentially corroborated
    the main criticisms raised by the McIntyre-McKitrick studies about
    Dr. Mann's initial hockey stick studies.
    While much attention was given to Dr. Wegman's social network
    analysis, I think it is only fair to observe the limits of what he
    was trying to illustrate, as he himself tried to explain.
    Dr. Wegman was not seeking to impugn the integrity of any of the
    scientists who work in this area, but it is clear that peer review
    somehow failed to pick up the flaws in the hockey stick studies.
    Dr. Wegman simply raises the possibility that, given the evident
    publishing relationship among the authors of many of the relevant
    works, combined with the failure to involve statisticians,
    Dr. Mann's peers may have been too close to the topic to
    scrutinize the studies as rigorously as they might have. Whatever
    the case, Dr. Mann's peers failed to catch the errors Wegman, the
    NRC, and McIntyre identified.
    This failure, as Dr. von Storch suggested last week, may be less
    an issue with the community of paleoclimatologists, than with the
    journal editors themselves.  The Committee can remain cautious
    about Dr. Wegman's social network analysis, as he is, and still
    legitimately raise the broader question about the rigor of review
    and breadth of reviewers in this field.
    Finally, I think it is important to note that virtually everyone
    at the hearing last week - both members and witnesses - took the
    view that criticisms of the hockey stick studies or of the
    peer-review and assessment process should not be construed as a
    judgment about the changes in global temperatures.
    Rather, the issues at hand concern legitimate questions about the
    rigor of scientific analysis, the results of which ultimately reach
    policy makers.  The hockey stick story provides a clear case study
    into the lack of proper scrutiny, and the questions last week about
    the independence of peer-review, or the "gate keeping" issues, were
    entirely legitimate.  I hope that as we proceed today, we keep this
    in mind.  And I hope that we can all reach agreement on ways to
    improve the process.
    Let me note that we have, in addition to Dr. Mann, both Dr. Wegman
    and Mr. McIntyre returning to recap their testimony and to answer
    questions related to their work, if necessary.  Both of them
    graciously agreed to adjust their busy schedules, including family
    and work obligations, to return today at our request so that
    Dr. Mann could confront his critics.  Thank you very much for
    coming back.
    We have a few additional panelists as well.  As we were preparing
    this panel, our minority counterparts requested an additional
    witness.  In the event, we accommodated their requests so that we
    could have as informative and balanced a panel as possible.
    So let me welcome Dr. John Christy, the Director of the Earth System
    Science Center and Alabama State Climatologist at the University of
    Alabama, Huntsville and Dr. Jay Gulledge, of the Pew Center for
    Climate Change.
    Finally, I'd like to recognize a most-distinguished witness,
    Dr. Ralph Cicerone [sisserone], President of the National Academy
    of Sciences.  Dr. Cicerone has been instrumental in the National
    Academies' focus on climate change research in recent years. Indeed,
    he chaired the National Research Council's 2001 report for President
    Bush that helped pave the way for the United States to conduct its
    own climate change assessments.
    Welcome Dr. Cicerone, and welcome all the witnesses, I look forward
    to another informative panel.
    I now yield to my distinguished Ranking Member, Mr. Stupak.

    	MR. STUPAK.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  Today we are holding
    	a very strange hearing.  Originally scheduled to give
    	Dr. Michael Mann a chance to respond to critics who provided
    	testimony to this committee last week, this hearing has now
    	expanded to allow these critics to attack the very science
    	of global warming.  Witnesses reappearing in the committee
    	today, once commissioned by the Majority to do a very limited
    	and biased review, had attempted to discredit Dr. Mann's
    	8-year old study on reconstruction of surface temperatures
    	over the last thousand years, and his conclusion that the
    	earth is warming at an unprecedented rate.
    	However, as Dr. North testified last week, a comprehensive
    	review of temperature reconstruction research by the National
    	Academy of Science at the request of the Science Committee
    	found that there were numerous other studies concluding that
    	the Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate.  Now instead
    	of allowing Dr. Mann to respond to last week's allegations,
    	two of our witnesses, apparently unhappy with the outcome of
    	last week's hearing have decided to rewrite and expand their
    	testimony to raise new issues, new complaints, and new
    	questions.
    	This re-written testimony is no longer limited to Dr. Mann's
    	statistical methods and their own work, but also includes
    	areas of climatology totally outside their expertise.  As a
    	result, it appears that these critics have lost interest in
    	simply attacking Dr. Mann's work.  Now the purpose of today's
    	hearing is to cast doubt on all scientific evidence of global
    	warming.  Mr. Chairman, if we are going to discuss the larger
    	issue of global warming, which many of us on this side would
    	be happy to do, we need to put more time and effort into
    	putting together a series of well thought out hearings with
    	adequate time for witnesses and staff to prepare.
    	If the Majority were truly interested only in temperature
    	reconstruction over the past thousand years we could have heard
    	from all of the scientists who have worked on this topic both
    	before and after Dr. Mann's original 1998 and 1999 publications.
    	Instead, the Majority asked Dr. Wegman, a statistician with no
    	expertise in paleoclimatology, to verify only Mr. McIntyre's
    	critique of Dr. Mann's initial work.  Dr. Wegman was not even
    	asked if Dr. Mann's conclusions would change if the criticisms
    	were incorporated and the analysis were re-created, nor did he
    	volunteer to do that.
    	Other climatologists have recreated Dr. Mann's work and have
    	come to the same conclusions using both similar and different
    	data sets and methodologies.  Dr. Wegman, who has not reviewed
    	this work and did not discuss any of the studies in his
    	testimony last week, will try to discredit all of these
    	studies with an unsupported hypothesis questioning the
    	independence of a large group of scientists work.
    	Another witness we will hear from today, Dr. Christy, has
    	supported the science behind global warming but will argue
    	that by acting to curb global warming we may deny the poor
    	in other countries the advantages that we have here in America.
    	This is also the argument of a new group, the Interfaith
    	Stewardship Alliance, but we have not heard from the alliance
    	when trying to provide low-income emergency assistance for
    	people in my district.
    	However, the threat of rising temperatures and the negative
    	results of them, including diminished agricultural production,
    	and quite possibly the flooding of vast heavily populated
    	coastal areas due to the melting of the polar ice caps, can
    	be far more of a threat to developing countries than efforts
    	to limit harmful industrial emissions.  The National Climatic
    	Data Center has recently confirmed that the first half of
    	2006 was the warmest first half of any year in the United
    	States since 1895.  This warming trend is continuing.
    	Today's headline in the Washington Post, I should say
    	Tuesday's headline in the Washington Post, "Deadly Heat
    	Continues in California."  The morgue in Fresno, California
    	has many bodies of elderly people overcome by heat.
    	Unprecedented temperatures have been recorded recently in
    	Oregon and South Dakota, among other places.  Forty-five
    	percent of the United States is in moderate to extreme
    	drought conditions.  These conditions have spawned more than
    	50,000 wildfires burning approximately 4 million acres.
    	Congress is not particularly capable to judge science that
    	deals with linear regressions, Pearson's R square, centering
    	and de-centering, or regulized expectation maximization.  As
    	Dr. Cicerone will remind us, that is why Congress created the
    	National Academy of Science.  We are, however, able to
    	understand the strategy of Exxon Mobil, outlined in their
    	1998 action plan.  This plan argued, and I quote, "victory
    	will be achieved when average citizens understand, recognize
    	uncertainties in climate science."  This appears to be the
    	focus of today's hearing, to confuse and complicate the
    	findings of climate scientists, and Dr. Mann is unfortunately
    	in the crosshairs.  I yield back the balance of my time.
    	[Additional information submitted for the record follows:]

    	MR. WHITFIELD.  The chair recognizes the chairman of the Energy
    	and Commerce Committee, Mr. Barton of Texas.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for
    	this hearing.  I want to thank our witnesses for being here,
    	some of them for the second time.  We are obviously glad to
    	have Dr. Mann here.  We appreciate you being able to join
    	us.  It is clear from last week's hearing on global climate
    	temperature studies that we face issues involving more than
    	the particulars of Dr. Mann's specific hockey stick study.
    	However, it is the particulars of these studies and how
    	the existing climate assessment process has dealt with
    	them that got us here today.
    	I appreciate the participation of this panel.  I am glad
    	that Dr. Ralph Cicerone is here.  He is the President of
    	the National Academy of Sciences.  I think he is going to
    	add significant weight and gravitus to the hearing today.
    	As you noted in your statement, Chairman Whitfield, last
    	week's hearing demonstrated why we as policymakers need to
    	understand the quality and the reliability of the science
    	on which we are urged to base public policy that is both
    	sweeping and costly.  Some very respected and authoritative
    	sources testified last week that Dr. Mann's studies were
    	flawed.  They couldn't support the findings for which they
    	were used in the United Nations Climate Change Assessment,
    	the IPCC.  Today I hope that we are going to examine some of
    	these issues in more detail.
    	I recognize that additional work has been published that
    	supports the broad outline of some of those conclusions in
    	Dr. Mann's initial hockey stick study, but according to the
    	National Research Council even that subsequent work cannot
    	provide the level of confidence that IPCC placed upon the
    	original hockey stick analysis.  Nothing about the process
    	of turning observations into accepted theory is smooth.  It
    	has been said that the politics of small towns and big
    	universities are brutal.  They make us look amateurs by
    	comparison.  Looking at what is happening in this issue, I
    	think that might well be true.  Unfortunately, that is the
    	way this science progresses.
    	I not only accept it, bumps included, but, believe it or not,
    	I support it.  What I can't accept is the improbable notion
    	that this committee may not ask science or research-related
    	questions that bear on policy making when the answers could
    	improve the information we use to reach the policy decisions
    	that we are elected to make.  It is just wrong to say that
    	questions are not permitted, free debate is improper or
    	that anyone who wonders if the scientific establishment
    	really has it right should be dismissed as anti-science or
    	oblivious to the real risk of man-made climate change.
    	This committee holds a very key role in any policy-making
    	decision related to climate change.  As its Chairman, I
    	have an obligation to be cognizant of that and to do
    	everything possible to get a fair record but also get into
    	the details of some of the theories that the policies, the
    	recommended policies, are supposedly based upon.  We are
    	interested in Dr. Mann's work, not because of Dr. Mann, as
    	nice a fellow as he may or may not be; we are interested
    	in Dr. Mann's work because it was the original.  It was
    	seminal.  It is referred to.
    	I haven't seen Vice President Gore's movie, but I am told
    	in that movie Dr. Mann's hockey stick diagram is shown
    	repeatedly.  It is only fair to take a look at the original
    	seminal work to see if it really lives up to what it claims
    	to be.  During our last hearing, we were shrugged at for
    	asking about that particular study saying it was too early,
    	too distant, but the fact is that that particular study is
    	the study that much of the latter conclusions have been
    	based upon.  It is only common sense to take a look at
    	it.  We are going to work on the issue, and if it turns
    	out that that study is not the right study and if there
    	are more current studies that are more correct, we will
    	take a look at those too and we will find out what the
    	truth is.  The truth is the truth.  The truth may be
    	inconvenient.  It may be politically incorrect, but the
    	truth is the truth.
    	A couple of months ago Chairman Whitfield and I asked
    	the U.S. Government Accountability Office to help us
    	examine Federal data sharing policies especially as they
    	related to climate change research.  This work will help
    	our efforts to improve the exchange of scientific data
    	and other essential information, which as we have seen
    	has been a particular problem in the climate change
    	arena.  When the dust settles on these hearings, I am
    	going to prepare a request to the National Research
    	Council, which Dr. Cicerone who is with us today
    	chairs, to take some of the issues that Dr. Wegman and
    	others have raised and take a look at it.
    	I am going to ask for a study to assess how to include
    	a wider spectrum of scientific disciplines in climate
    	change research so that we can be enlightened by the
    	very best work across the field of scientific
    	research.  I am going to ask that this study be
    	coordinated and run though the NRC's Division on
    	Engineering and Physical Sciences so that we can
    	ensure that the disciplines like mathematics and
    	physics and statistics participate up front.  I would
    	be happy to hear any of Dr. Cicerone's comments on
    	that today as we go forward.
    	Letting a wider scientific community address questions
    	about climate change assessments can only help the
    	process and improve the results.  We have an obligation
    	on this committee on behalf of the American people to
    	ensure that the decision makers have the best
    	information possible, not just the politically correct
    	information.  I want to thank again our panel for
    	coming.  I want to especially thank Dr. Mann for
    	changing his schedule to be here.  I look forward to a
    	very productive exchange of views as we go forward
    	today.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    	[The prepared statement of Hon. Joe Barton follows:]

    PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HON. JOE BARTON, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE
    ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE

    Thank you, Chairman Whitfield.  It is clear from last week's
    hearing on global climate temperature studies that we face
    issues involving much more than the particulars of Dr. Mann's
    "hockey stick" studies.  However, it is the particulars of
    these studies - and how the existing climate assessment process
    dealt with them - that got us here today.  And so I appreciate
    that Dr. Mann accepted our invitation to lay out his important
    work on global temperature reconstruction, as well as to answer
    our broader questions concerning climate change assessments.
    I also appreciate the participation and perspective of our
    distinguished panelists today, including Dr. Ralph Cicerone,
    the President of the National Academy of Sciences.  Let me also
    welcome back Dr. Wegman and Mr. McIntyre, who testified last
    week.
      	As you noted, Chairman Whitfield, last week's hearing
      	demonstrated why we as policymakers need to understand
      	the quality and reliability of the science on which
      	we are urged to base policy that is both sweeping
      	and costly.  Some very respected and authoritative
      	sources testified last week that Dr. Mann's studies
      	were flawed, and that they couldn't support the
      	findings for which they were used by the United
      	Nation's climate change assessment, the IPCC.
      	Today I hope we can examine some of these issues a
      	bit more.
    I do recognize that additional work has been published that
    supports in broad outline some of the conclusions of
    Dr. Mann's initial "hockey stick" studies.  But according to
    the National Research Council, even that subsequent work
    cannot provide the level of confidence that IPCC placed upon
    the hockey stick studies.
    Nothing about the process of turning observations into
    accepted theories is smooth.  It has been said that the
    politics of small towns and big universities are brutal
    enough to make our kind look amateurish by comparison, and I
    think that might be true.   In any case, that's the way
    science progresses.  I not only accept it -- bumps
    included -- but I support it.
    What I can't accept is the improbable notion that this
    committee may not ask science- or research-related questions
    that bear on policymaking when the answers could improve the
    information we use to reach those policy decisions.  It is
    just wrong to say that questions are not permitted, or that
    free debate is improper, or that anyone who wonders if the
    scientific establishment really has it right should be
    dismissed as anti-science or oblivious to the real risks of
    manmade climate change.  Because this Committee holds a key
    role in any policymaking relating to climate change, as its
    Chairman I will do everything I can to ensure that the very
    best information on these issues is available to us.
    We're interested in Dr. Mann's work because it is seminal.
    During our last hearing, some shrugged at it as distant and
    early, but the fact is that Dr. Mann's conclusions influence
    both current research and global policy.  As we try to close
    the loop on our concerns, I also want to emphasize that this
    Committee will continue to work on the issues raised here,
    to help ensure the reliability of future scientific assessments.
    A couple of months ago, Chairman Whitfield and I asked the
    U.S. Government Accountability Office to help us examine
    federal data sharing policies, especially as they related to
    climate change research.  This work will help our efforts to
    improve the exchange of scientific data and other essential
    information - which as we have seen has been a particular
    problem in this climate change arena.
    Also, when the dust settles on these hearings, I'm going to
    prepare a request to the National Research Council, which
    Dr. Cicerone chairs, to take on some of the issues that
    Dr. Wegman and others have raised for us.  I will ask for a
    study that assesses how to include a wider spectrum of
    scientific disciplines in climate change research so that we
    can be enlightened by the very best work that our scientists
    conduct, all of them.  I'll ask that this study be coordinated
    and run though the NRC's Division on Engineering and Physical
    Sciences, so that we can ensure that disciplines like
    mathematics, physics, and statistics participate up front.
    I'll welcome Dr. Cicerone's perspective on this today, so that
    we can formulate an effective request.
    Letting a wider scientific community address questions about
    climate change assessments can only help the process and
    improve the results.  We have an obligation on this Committee
    to ensure that America's decision-makers have the best
    information possible.
    Thank you all for coming to testify today.  I yield back the
    remainder of my time.

    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Mr. Waxman of California is recognized.
    	MR. WAXMAN.  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.  The
    	magnitude of global warming and the crisis that we are
    	facing on this planet demands a serious response from
    	this body. We should be holding hearings to understand
    	the ramifications of recent studies detailing the
    	harmful effects of global warming that we are seeing
    	all around us from increased wildfires in the west to
    	more intense hurricanes, more acidic oceans.  We should
    	examine practical steps this Congress and the
    	Administration must take to reduce global warming
    	pollution.  We should explore how best to re-engage
    	with the international community on addressing this
    	problem because this is going to require all countries
    	to do their part.
    	We should investigate the well-funded effort by certain
    	oil companies to manufacture controversy and cast doubt
    	on the reality of global warming and the human
    	contribution to it.  This hearing today is the third
    	that this committee has held on the issue of global
    	warming.  We are the committee that would move
    	legislation forward on this subject, and this is really
    	a continuation of the second one, which was last week.
    	In that hearing, the Republican majority attempted to
    	discredit a respected climate scientist and a study
    	he published 8 years ago.  Well, not only is this use of
    	the subcommittee ridiculous and unfair, it is also a
    	waste.  Yet, despite its intended focus, today's hearing
    	does give us the opportunity to learn more about the
    	current state of climate science, and I am looking
    	forward to hearing the views of Dr. Ralph Cicerone, who
    	is the President of the National Academy of Sciences,
    	and the Chairman of the National Research Council and a
    	fraternity brother of the Chairman of this subcommittee,
    	and he is an eminent climate scientist.
    	I am also very pleased we are going to hear from
    	Dr. Mann, who is one of the world's most distinguished
    	paleoclimatologists.  Eight years ago, Dr. Mann and his
    	colleagues published a groundbreaking study that
    	reconstructed the temperature of the Earth over the past
    	600 years using proxy data such as tree rings.  Since
    	2002, Dr. Mann has published another half dozen papers
    	revising and building on his work.  These latter studies,
    	as well as many independent paleoclimate reconstructions
    	by other scientists continue to find the same thing.  The
    	warmer temperatures in the last few decades are
    	unprecedented compared to anything we have experienced in
    	the last thousand years.
    	Now the Majority, the Republicans, won't use this hearing
    	to examine Dr. Mann's recent studies or the independent
    	confirmation of its work.  Instead, they want to focus
    	exclusively on his original work in 1998 and 1999 because
    	they think they can find a statistical flaw.  So what?
    	The strategy is not a subtle one.  Because they think they
    	found a flaw in one study out of thousands the Majority
    	wants to build the one study into the pillar of the
    	scientific case for global warming.  The Chairman seems
    	to think that if he can discredit one climate scientist,
    	Dr. Mann, he can cast doubt on all the climate change
    	research.  In effect, it is back to the tactics of the
    	tobacco industry.
    	I remember well when they would send their scientists to
    	come in and just cast a little doubt about whether
    	smoking cigarettes really do cause cancer, whether there
    	is really a medical problem.  I think intimidation is
    	part of the strategy we are seeing.  This subcommittee
    	launched this campaign against Dr. Mann and several of
    	his colleagues last year by demanding to know the source
    	of funding for every study they had ever conducted and
    	demanding that they turn over all the data for all their
    	research.  These are bullying tactics and they drew highly
    	unusual protests from the American Association for the
    	Advancement of Science, the National Academy of Sciences,
    	and the Republican Chairman of the House Science Committee,
    	among others.
    	Well, we are having Dr. Mann here today.  It is important
    	that he be here.  Last week we held a hearing where he was
    	criticized.  Now he has got his accusers back again.  They
    	couldn't wait to have the hearing where all of them were
    	together.  But this subcommittee will hear about Dr. Mann's
    	work from him and those who criticize him.  The subcommittee
    	will hear the many other completely independent lines of
    	evidence that support the reality of global warming and the
    	role of humans in causing it.
    	The scientific evidence of human contribution to global
    	warming is clear and compelling.  The only open question is
    	how long members of this subcommittee will keep pretending
    	that it doesn't exist.  I don't know how many hearings we
    	are going to have on the subject of Dr. Mann's one study in
    	1998, but it seems to me that as we look around this country
    	and in in fact all around the world just today we are seeing
    	a continuation of some of the highest temperatures on
    	record.  We ought to get serious about this matter of
    	global warming and climate change.  We ought to be holding
    	hearings about the important issues that relate to it and
    	not this one issue over and over again.  I yield back the
    	balance of my time.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  I would point out that even though
    	Dr. Mann was not here last week, he did suggest that
    	Dr. Crowley come on his behalf, and Dr. Crowley did
    	testify.  I recognize the gentleman from Mississippi for
    	an opening statement.
    	MR. PICKERING.  Mr. Chairman, I thank you for this hearing,
    	and I yield back my time.  I want to get to the panel as
    	quickly as possible.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Mrs. Blackburn, you are recognized.
    	MRS. BLACKBURN.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  I do want to
    	thank you for the hearing, and I want to welcome all of our
    	witnesses.  I want to thank you for being patient with us
    	and allowing us some more time to visit with you.  At last
    	week's hearing we did hear testimony regarding errors in
    	Dr. Mann's 1998 and 1999 hockey stick report, and today we
    	are going to be able to hear Dr. Mann's response to that.
    	We are pleased to have him join us and are looking forward
    	to that response.
    	I do still have some questions, and I find some of the
    	circumstances involving Dr. Mann's paper a little bit
    	disconcerting.  It seems that it could only be corroborated
    	by a social network and that seems to be a problem.  It is
    	difficult for me to see how scientists and policy makers
    	could agree with and legislate anything based on research
    	which by all appearances cannot be corroborated by
    	independent review.  Second, it is apparent that until now
    	no independent experts have examined Dr. Mann's data and
    	statistical procedures.
    	Again, it is difficult to rely on data that has not been
    	rigorously examined for consistency and validity.  I am
    	looking forward to some answers on that, and I would not
    	say that it is intimidation that has brought questions
    	forward.  I would say it really is curiosity and a desire
    	to know answers.  Finally, I have noticed a trend, and this
    	trend raises questions, and it is that trend by where a close
    	group of scientists who support climate change theory tend to
    	be serving as the primary peer reviewers and the lack of that
    	independent review, and those reviewers are checking one
    	another's work.  And it may be strictly coincidence but again
    	it does not lead me to believe these papers are being as
    	thoroughly examined as they might by those that are
    	independent, and the public is not being as well served as
    	they should of what they are told is scientific proof.
    	It is critical that even if we should discount the 1990 IPCC
    	report, recent analysis of over 250 climate studies and
    	historical records showed that the medieval warm period was
    	global and higher than present day temperature, and they both
    	concurred that the little Ice Age occurred worldwide and
    	produced a substantial drop in the average temperature.  Also,
    	satellite data and the U.S. surface record indicate that the
    	Earth's temperature in the past 100 years has undergone both
    	warming and cooling trends.
    	Last week I mentioned in 1960 when I was in high school there
    	was a commonly held premise that we were returning to the Ice
    	Age and by the time I reached my current age and a new
    	millennium dawned we would be in a perpetual winter with food
    	shortages, et cetera.  So we had that, that we were dealing
    	with in a cooling trend and that we were being taught as
    	high schoolers in the '60s, but recent trends seemed to be
    	caused by solar activity in the 1990 El Nino, not necessarily
    	by the increase of green house gas emissions.
    	Mr. Chairman, policy makers depend on the integrity of data.
    	The public depends on the integrity of data.  Educational
    	institutions depend on the integrity of data and results,
    	and I believe it is necessary and proper for us to set
    	quality standards for data release and verification for any
    	research that receives Federal funds.  Thank you, and I yield
    	back.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Thank you.  I recognize Ms. Baldwin of
    	Wisconsin for her opening statement.
    	MS. BALDWIN.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  Again, we are here
    	discussing global warming, and again I think our focus is off
    	target.  Rather than addressing action steps to address global
    	warming in a bipartisan coordinated and effective manner, we
    	are covering up the real issues with irrelevant chatter about
    	the basis of a study that was released almost a decade ago, a
    	study that has been updated, revised, reviewed, and validated
    	time and time again in recent years.  Unfortunately, the goal
    	of these hearings is not to show that there is an abundance
    	of science demonstrating that the Earth is warming at an
    	unprecedented rate, that carbon dioxide levels are rising,
    	and that human activities are largely the cause.  Rather it
    	is an attempt to poke holes in an old study and divert
    	attention away from the decisions that we as policy makers
    	often have to make.
    	Decisions like should we let big business profits override
    	human interests or should our policy time horizon be a few
    	short years or should we be thinking about protecting
    	generations yet to come.  For if this hearing and even
    	Dr. Wegman's analysis were not commissioned for political
    	reasons but rather out of a concern that study after study
    	shows the Earth is warming, sea levels rising and snow caps
    	melting, then we would be focusing on current information.
    	The committee would have asked Dr. Wegman to review
    	Dr. Mann's and other reputable scientists' work that has
    	been published in recent years.  But this is not what the
    	committee requested nor what Dr. Wegman studied.
    	Instead, the focus is on Dr. Mann's 1998 and 1999 study that
    	contains acknowledged flaws.  The argument made over the
    	last week against Dr. Mann's early work are old and tired
    	and really I believe their desperate attempts to divert
    	attention away from what countless experts agree, that
    	climate change is happening, the global warming is
    	happening, and that our actions, things we as humans do
    	each and every day, contribute to this crisis.  It is
    	troubling that the United States appears to be alone on this
    	island of skeptics.  More troubling is that we are virtually
    	alone and are inaction.
    	Despite being the largest consumer of electricity, oil, and
    	natural gas, we refuse to take bold steps that will allow us
    	to lead the world on environmental issues, yet countries with
    	significantly smaller footprints on the world are making
    	incredible advances that improve the quality of the air they
    	breathe, the food and water they consume, and the lifestyles
    	they lead.  Let me just give a couple of examples.  China's
    	fuel economy standards are more stringent than those in
    	Australia, Canada, California, and the United States.
    	Meanwhile, we haven't increased our fuel economy standards in
    	over 20 years.
    	Brazil's ethanol program, the largest in the world, has
    	created rural jobs, reduced air pollution, and reduced
    	Brazil's green house gas emissions while reducing its
    	dependence on imported oil, yet we refuse to take necessary
    	steps to reduce our dependence on foreign energy.  Denmark
    	has the highest utilization rate of wind energy in the world
    	with wind producing approximately 20 percent of Danish
    	electrical consumption.  Meanwhile, our government has issued
    	notices of presumed hazard to wind developers in the Midwest
    	halting and threatening to permanently derail wind production.
    	And just yesterday Northern Ireland announced that all new
    	homes built starting in 2008 must have solar roof panels. In
    	this country, I look forward to the day when we take this bold
    	step.  Mr. Chairman, we could spend the next few hours
    	discussing the fine points of Dr. Mann's 1998 and 1999 study,
    	and Dr. Wegman's analysis of it, or we could focus on what is
    	really going on.  The Earth's temperature is rising and has
    	reached levels higher than ever recorded.  It is true
    	regardless of whether you center, de-center, or average the
    	data each and every way you read it the conclusion is the
    	same.
    	False logic will not bring us closer to an understanding of
    	the scientific truth, so let's stop politicizing science.
    	Rather, let's show our commitment to our environment which
    	we have a moral and ethical obligation to protect.  I hope
    	that today we will take steps in that right direction but I
    	fear we will not.  I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Thank you, Ms. Baldwin.  I recognize
    	Mr. Stearns of Florida.
    	MR. STEARNS.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank you for
    	having this hearing.  Listening to the folks on the other
    	side, I would say to my colleague from California asking why
    	aren't we spending our time developing legislation, I would
    	say it is probably incumbent upon us as Chairman Barton
    	pointed out to find out if the facts are correct.  We have
    	from the last hearing some inquiry that shows there
    	potentially exists some dubious research particularly embodied
    	on the hockey stick effect that shows a huge global warning
    	in our period.
    	Now if you look at the data and you go to the recent release
    	from the National Research Council, Thursday, June 22, 2006,
    	it shows that from the period 1400 A.D. to 1900 A.D. were in
    	a little Ice Age, but when you go back further back to 1000
    	A.D. to 1400 A.D. we were in a warm period, so is it possible
    	that what we are seeing here is sinusoidal and that perhaps
    	we should inquire if this hockey stick graph is the basis for
    	this alarm that we should start developing legislation
    	immediately.  Obviously, it is the centerpiece of movies.
    	It is the centerpiece of documents that have been popular,
    	but what it shows is that the temperatures were stable in
    	other parts of our period and were much higher in the
    	medieval and obviously there was not the human population,
    	there was not the gasoline that supposedly is driving this
    	warming period now.
    	So I think we owe it to our constituents.  We owe it to
    	all the Americans to find out if the policy decision for
    	this hockey stick is accurate so I think what we are doing
    	today, Mr. Chairman, is just simply trying to develop an
    	accurate understanding of what is out there.  Now we had the
    	hearing last week and we heard from Dr. Wegman.  This report
    	provided an independent critique of the statistical method
    	of Dr. Mann, which shows that his information basically
    	produced the hockey stick.  Dr. Mann asserted that the
    	increase in the temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere in
    	the 20th Century is likely to have been the largest of any
    	century during the past 1,000 years.
    	The report also found that 1990 was the warmest decade and
    	1998 the warmest year of the millennium.  Dr. Mann's claims
    	are repeated so often they are now considered facts, but as
    	often the case with statistics, a deeper look at some of
    	these claims show that perhaps there is more than meets the
    	eye.  Dr. Wegman's final report found that Dr. Mann misused
    	certain statistical methods in his studies which
    	inappropriately selected hockey stick shapes in the
    	temperature history.  Dr. Wegman concludes that Dr. Mann's
    	work cannot support the claim that the 1990s were the warmest
    	decade of the millennium.
    	Specifically, Dr. Wegman found that the temperature proxies
    	used by Dr. Mann are incorrectly centered on the mean of the
    	period 1902 to 1995 rather than on the whole time period.
    	Because the hockey stick proxies are centered too low, they
    	will exhibit a larger affected variance allowing the graph
    	to exhibit a much more dramatic jump in average temperature.
    	The net effect of de-centering in Dr. Mann's study is to
    	produce this hockey stick shape.  Centering on the overall
    	mean is a critical factor in using the principal component
    	of methodology properly according to Dr. Wegman.
    	So that is sort of in a nutshell what we have here so by
    	golly, I think it is worthwhile to have a second hearing on
    	this, Mr. Chairman, and to try to understand what is
    	happening here, and at the same time not be overly critical
    	of anybody because in the end all we want is the truth, and
    	to understand if we are in an emergency situation or
    	basically we are in a period where there are highs and lows
    	in this earth temperature.  And, in fact, in the report that
    	has come out with the working group of the Intergovernmental
    	Panel on Climate Change, which was used in many reports, it
    	shows the last 140 years the temperature of the Earth has
    	gone up 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit, so that is 140 years.  Now
    	that could be coming off a cold cycle which means 1.5
    	degrees Fahrenheit is even more negligible.
    	So the question of global warming is something we should
    	look at, and I think before we pass legislation or as
    	Ms. Baldwin talked about this chattering irrelevance, we
    	should find out what is relevant to the studies and if they
    	make sense before we pass legislation.  I yield back,
    	Mr. Chairman.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Thank you.  The chair recognizes
    	s. Schakowsky of Illinois.
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  I find this
    	hearing really depressing among other things.  There is a
    	sense that somehow there is a pretense that what we are
    	engaged in here is some sort of scientific-like inquiry
    	but the fact of the matter is that the scientific
    	community has reached consensus.  You can say anything
    	you want at this hearing but that is simply the truth.
    	I want to read something from Al Gore's book but lest you
    	think it is Al Gore's words it is a statement of 48 Nobel
    	Prize winning scientists.  It says, "By ignoring scientific
    	consensus on critical issues such as global climate change
    	President Bush and his Administration are threatening the
    	Earth's future."
    	I am not so upset about a waste of time.  We do plenty of
    	that around here.  But I am depressed about it because that
    	is what is at stake here, the time that we are spending
    	here.  I also just want to say since we are getting into
    	this petty he said, you said, back and forth, the charts that
    	Al Gore said--he talked about this teacher of his,
    	Dr. Roger Ravelle.  It was his chart that he first
    	presented.  When he showed a chart that looks very similar
    	to our hockey stick it was Dr. Lonnie Thompson's study that
    	he was talking about.  These have been repeated over and
    	over again.  How many times, 928 peer reviewed articles
    	dealing with climate change published in scientific journals
    	during the previous 10 years, percentage in doubt as to the
    	cause of global warming, 0 percent.
    	The answer is in.  And so it seems to me unless somewhere
    	there, and Dr. Wegman already has told us over and over
    	again, he is nearly a paleoclimatologist, he is not a
    	climate scientist of any sort, unless someone can tell us
    	that the planet is not warming and that it is not that the
    	warming, I am sure no one would do that, that the warming
    	is not at least in part attributable to human activity then
    	what we should be talking about is what we are going to do
    	to address the problem.  What do we know?  We know Greenland
    	is melting.  We know that some of our districts could be
    	under water.  We know that human life as we know it could be
    	unsustainable in many ways on this planet.  Drought, more
    	severe storms, flooding, all the things, not to mention for
    	my littler grandchildren that polar bears are drowning and
    	different species of trees aren't going to be there.
    	Look in magazines, the old National Geographics, to look at
    	the changing of the trees in the north.  This is happening.
    	So why we would be spending our time in what may be--fight
    	about it.  Fine.  Let the scientific community do whatever it
    	wants, Dr. Mann and his old study, and let Dr. Mann defend
    	himself, but what we should be sitting down and doing, what
    	are those strategies that we can employ to decrease the
    	effects of global warming so that life as we know--so what
    	if it is normal?  So what if--but if human activity is
    	contributing to a greater than normal warming or even an
    	upswing right now and the life that we have established on
    	this planet is in danger then we ought to be thinking about
    	the ways that we address this problem.
    	And Mr. Waxman talked about the tobacco companies.  Well,
    	we have now here on July 27, 2006, ABC News--ever wonder
    	why so many people still seem confused about global
    	warming?  This is a quote from the--the answer appears to
    	be that confusion leads to profit especially if you are in
    	some parts of the energy business.  One Colorado electric
    	cooperative has openly admitted that it has paid $100,000
    	to a university academic who prides himself on being a
    	global warming skeptic.  Intermountain Rural Electric
    	Association is heavily invested in power plants that burn
    	coal, one of the chief sources of greenhouse gases that
    	scientists agree is quickly pushing Earth's average
    	temperature to dangerous levels.
    	Scientists and consumer advocates say the co-op is trying
    	to confuse its clients about the virtually total
    	scientific consensus on the causes of global warming.  Now
    	virtually totally scientific consensus.  Well, maybe we
    	can find one or two more.  Maybe we could have a dozen
    	more hearings of individuals who want to come in and
    	challenge what is the scientific consensus.  But I am
    	depressed about it and I am worried about it because time
    	is wasting for us to do something constructive about this.
    	I thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Thank you.  Mr. Bass of New Hampshire.
    	MR. BASS.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  I wasn't planning to
    	give an opening statement but I am kind of warming up to
    	it here.  I have been somewhat amused listening to these
    	opening statements going back and forth like a ping pong
    	ball across the table, and I just have to observe that
    	we could sort of divide this debate into four different
    	categories.  We have the don't worry, be happy crowd.
    	We have the crowd that believes that the world is warming
    	but because we can't agree on what to do, we might as well
    	let the good times roll while we can.  Then there is the
    	for want of a better word the political crowd that
    	maintains that this whole issue is the fault of George
    	Bush, Halliburton, the tobacco companies, tax cuts, and
    	failure to raise the minimum wage.
    	Frankly, Mr. Chairman, I think these hearings have been
    	constructive.  I think they have been logical.  I think
    	Dr. Wegman's testimony's last week was dispassionate,
    	scientific, interesting.  I think it is great that we have
    	Dr. Mann here today to present another point of view.  I
    	happen to believe personally that there is a problem of
    	global warming in the world and there is a pretty good
    	possibility that that may have been caused by the excessive
    	growth of the use of hydrocarbons over the last century.  I
    	don't blame Republicans or Democrats or tobacco companies
    	or any other entity for it.  I think it is an issue that
    	we need to address, and we need to address it in a logical
    	fashion, and this is the beginning of that process.
    	Now I think if I were a member of the general public I
    	would want to have a few questions answered ultimately as
    	a result of this debate.  Number one, is there a warming
    	trend going on?  Number two, is it caused by natural
    	sources or by man?  Are the oceans getting warmer?  Are
    	hurricanes getting stronger?  Is global warming the reason
    	why hurricanes might be getting stronger?  The oceans are
    	a CO2 sink.  Is global warming affecting the ability of
    	the oceans to absorb CO2 and so forth?  I think that is
    	the logical progression that a hearing such as the one
    	that we had last week and what we have today leads to--we
    	don't need to have a hearing that deals with the
    	conclusions before we build the evidence.
    	So I want to thank you, Mr. Chairman, for this hearing and
    	as one who supports the concept that we need to address
    	this problem I think we are moving in the right direction.
    	I yield back.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Thank you.  At this time I recognize
    	Mr. Inslee of Washington.
    	MR. INSLEE.  This really is pathetically unworthy of
    	America, the most technologically oriented society in human
    	history, and we are here debating the equivalent of
    	gravity.  Literally while America literally burns we
    	fiddle.  This hearing makes Nero look like a responsible
    	Roman citizen.  And we have got to pull our heads out of
    	the sand in that regard.  Now the reason is--and I am not
    	depressed like Ms. Schakowsky.  I am enraged.  Since the
    	last hearing if anybody bothers to read the newspapers an
    	article comes out showing that 80 percent of the mass of
    	the glaciers in my state in North Cascades National Park,
    	one of the jewels in the crown, melted.  A study comes
    	out yesterday.  Highest heat loss, 50 deaths in
    	California, and we are sitting here fiddling around.
    	Article comes out yesterday.  We have a dead zone in the
    	North Pacific where fish are dying because of change in
    	the circulation patterns in our oceans.  And we sit here
    	and fiddle around.  This would be the equivalent after
    	the Titanic of the oversight committee having a hearing
    	on how they arranged the deck chairs back in that good
    	old day.  Now why is this so ridiculous?  It is
    	ridiculous because there is total scientific consensus
    	not only in American but in the world that we are
    	responsible in part for the change in the climatic
    	systems of the globe.  I would refer to a science article
    	that studied 928 peer reviewed articles and not a single
    	one of those peer review articles said anything that most
    	of the folks on the Majority side want them to say.
    	They all said that every single association in the world
    	that has studied this have concluded the climate is
    	changing and humans are partially responsible.  That
    	includes the American Meteorological Society, the
    	American Geo-Physical Unit, the Advancement of Science
    	Association, the American Academy of Sciences, and the
    	International Panel of Climate Change.  And you know what
    	they got here?  They got nothing.  They got nothing to
    	say that those things are not true.  We are sitting here
    	trying to poke holes in an 8-year old study.  You know
    	what it is like to me?  It is like at the soccer final
    	championship, and you saw the head butt by Zidane.  He
    	head butted, and everybody says he butted him.  And they
    	would argue but there was a guy up there in section 23B
    	and it didn't look like a head butt to him, and maybe
    	his eyesight was a little bad.
    	The world knows what is going on here, and it is a sham.
    	I want to refer to some of the science of this.  They
    	know it is a sham if you look at this graph up here.
    	Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide are going
    	up unassailable.
    	Next slide, please.

    	Our contributions are going up from fossil fuel burning.
    	No question about that.  Next slide, please.
    	We see the contributions, the CO2 levels globally over
    	the last 400,000 years on the top and the temperature at
    	the bottom.  What you see is that they are very, very
    	closely related.  It is an amazing relationship.  And
    	what you will see at the top if I can get a laser pointer
    	to show right up here were 370 PPM.  That is higher than
    	any time in the last 400,000 years, and what is scary is
    	it is going through the roof.  It will be double
    	preindustrial times in my lifetime and my children's
    	lifetime.
    	None of this is arguable.  All of this is known.  And we
    	are going to hear discussion today that we have ice core
    	data that I will talk about that is independent of
    	Dr. Mann's research.  We have physical evidence of changes
    	of oxygen isotopes that prove what is going on, which is
    	we are changing the climate of the United States and the
    	world.  Next slide, please.

    I just want to show you, this is Antarctic ice core data.  The
    blue showing, if I can get my facts straight here, the blue
    showing temperature, the red showing CO2 variations.  The
    relationship is incredibly similar.
    	And again if you look where we are going to be during my
    	lifetime and my children's lifetime, we will be right
    	here.  We will be almost off the charts, and we will be
    	double what we were in preindustrial times.  I challenge
    	anyone here at this table, and I got an outstanding
    	question for all of you in this hearing, you tell me if
    	you double CO2 levels for preindustrial levels if you
    	think that is a good idea for America.  I want all of
    	you tell me if you think that is a good idea.  I think it
    	is a really bad idea.  We ought to start being more the
    	American eagle and less the ostrich and we ought to fly
    	with new technology instead of putting our head under
    	the sand on this issue and then this commerce committee
    	will start helping America.
    	Next slide, please, if I can just show you one more
    	thing.

    This is a picture of ice core.  We are sitting here talking about
    some paleoclimatic proxy data, and we are going to spend hours
    talking about it, but the fingerprints, the DNA evidence, is in
    the air in that core picture I am showing you because it is
    400,000 year old air.  We can directly measure the oxygen isotopes
    that is a direct measurement of the temperature.  We know what is
    going on and it is not a pretty picture.  And I look forward to
    the day that we start doing something about this instead of just
    having these ridiculous examples and arguing gravity.  Thank you,
    Mr. Chairman.
    	One more comment too before I leave just briefly.  I
    	noted Mr. Barton, my good friend, I congratulate him on
    	the baseball game this year, they whooped us again, and I
    	notice he hadn't seen this movie about climate change.  I
    	am going to invite Mr. Barton to go see this movie with
    	me.  I am going to buy him as much popcorn as he wants,
    	and I am going to agree to go to any movie he wants to go
    	to from Zorba the Greek to Lawrence of Arabia, anything
    	he wants me to see.  I think it would be good for both of
    	us.  Thanks very much.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Thank you very much.  You can see we are a
    	very social group.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  If I go he is going to have to pay.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Obviously this is a subject that people
    	feel very strongly about, and we are delighted with our
    	witnesses on the first panel today.  Now it is your turn
    	to talk, and we appreciate you being so patient while we
    	talked.  Our first witness, and I will introduce all of
    	you, Dr. Michael Mann who is the Associate Professor and
    	Director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State
    	University, University Park, Pennsylvania; Dr. John Christy,
    	Professor and Director of Earth System Science Center,
    	University of Alabama in Huntsville; Dr. Ralph Cicerone,
    	President of the National Academy of Sciences; Mr. Stephen
    	McIntyre of Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Dr. Jay Gulledge,
    	Senior Research Fellow, Pew Center on Global Climate
    	Change; and Dr. Edward Wegman, Director, Center for
    	Computational Statistics at George Mason University.
    	We welcome all of you.  As you know, this is an Oversight
    	and Investigations hearing, and we do take our testimony
    	under oath, and I would ask any of you do you have any
    	objection to testifying under oath?  Under the rules of the
    	House and rules of the committee you also are entitled to
    	legal counsel.  I am assuming that none of you have legal
    	counsel with you today, but do any of you have legal counsel
    	today?  Okay.  Then if you would stand and raise your right
    	hand, I would like to swear you in.
    	[Witnesses sworn.]
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Thank you very much.  All of you are now
    	under oath.  And, Dr. Mann, we will recognize you for
    	5 minutes for your opening statement.

    TESTIMONY OF DR. MICHAEL E. MANN, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR AND DIRECTOR,
    EARTH SYSTEM SCIENCE CENTER, THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY;
    DR. JOHN R. CHRISTY, PROFESSOR AND DIRECTOR, EARTH SYSTEM SCIENCE
    CENTER, NSSTC, UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA IN HUNTSVILLE; DR. RALPH J.
    CICERONE, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES; MR. STEPHEN
    MCINTYRE, TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA; DR. JAY GULLEDGE, SENIOR
    RESEARCH FELLOW, PEW CENTER ON GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE; AND DR.
    EDWARD J. WEGMAN, DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR COMPUTATIONAL STATISTICS,
    GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY

    DR. MANN.  Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, thank you for
    inviting me here to appear before you today.  I became a climate
    scientist because the Earth's climate is a fascinating and complex
    system and understanding how it works is so important.  Part of my
    research has involved examining preindustrial climate history in
    order to learn about the natural variations in the Earth's climate.
    My research in this field, not just the initial work that my
    colleagues and I published in the late 1990s, but my recent research
    as well suggests late 20th Century Northern Hemisphere average
    temperatures are unprecedented over at least the past 1,000 years.
    	Of course, we have accurate thermometer measurements only
    	back about 100 years, and so we estimate climate prior to
    	that period from indirect sources called climate proxies
    	such as tree rings, corals, and ice cores.  This work
    	involves many uncertainties and there are numerous judgment
    	calls that must be made.  For that reason we are rarely
    	categorical in the conclusions that we reach.  What is
    	important, however, is that the scientific community has
    	reached consensus that recent northern hemispheric average
    	warmth appears to be unprecedented over at least the past
    	1,000 years, and that this warmth can only be explained by
    	anthropogenic or human influences on the climate.
    	This conclusion is not based on single studies or isolated
    	research but is confirmed by many studies using different
    	sets of data and independent statistical methods and indeed
    	this conclusion was just echoed weeks ago by a report of
    	the National Academy of Sciences, the most prestigious
    	nonpartisan scientific body in the Nation.  So where does
    	my research fit into this?  Taken as a whole my own
    	research is in accord with the scientific mainstream
    	reflected in the National Academy report and elsewhere that
    	there has been unprecedented warming in the Northern
    	Hemisphere over the past 100 years.
    	Exhibit A, if you can take a look at Exhibit A there, that
    	shows that this conclusion is common to a number of similar
    	studies including two I was involved with.  This committee
    	is not looking at my work on the whole or on the larger
    	body of science on this issue.  It is instead focusing on
    	the first study of this type my colleagues and I published
    	and undertook in 1996 while I was still a graduate student.
    	While there were previous reconstructions based on proxy
    	data our study was the first to estimate global patterns
    	of past temperature change and the first to estimate
    	uncertainties.  Our initial study published in the journal,
    	Nature, in 1998 was followed by an additional study in the
    	journal, Geophysical Research Letters, in 1999.  The main
    	conclusion of the 1998 study was that there had been
    	unprecedented warming in the Northern Hemisphere in recent
    	decades.  The 1999 study reinforced this conclusion but
    	also reassessed and expanded the uncertainties and added
    	he tentative conclusion that it was likely that the 1990s
    	were the warmest decade over that thousand year time period
    	and that 1998 was the warmest year.
    	The 1999 study included a graphic depiction of the
    	temperature history over the last millennium, which
    	demonstrated an unprecedented rise during the 20th Century.
    	Some have dubbed this graphic the hockey stick.  If the
    	question this committee seeks to answer is whether knowing
    	what I know today, a decade after starting the original
    	study, my colleagues and I would conduct it in exactly the
    	same way, the answer is plainly no.  The field of
    	paleoclimate reconstruction has evolved tremendously over
    	the past decade.
    	Important new proxy data have been developed.
    	Reconstructions have been compared with independent
    	estimates from climate model simulations and confirmed by
    	those simulations.  Statistical methods for reconstructing
    	climate from proxy data have been refined and rigorously
    	tested, and I have been actively working in each of these
    	areas.  This is important because all the focus of criticism
    	on our work in the late 1990s has been on the statistical
    	conventions we used.  My co-authors and I have not used those
    	conventions in our later work.
    	The critique goes only to our first reconstruction effort.  It
    	does not apply to our more recent studies all of which
    	indicate the same basic hockey stick result.  Exhibit B
    	demonstrates this point.  The green reconstruction does not
    	use principal component analysis at all so the statistical
    	conventions being discussed here have no relevance, and it is
    	the same basic reconstruction, if you will, essentially the
    	same "hockey stick."  Now our critics do not confront the
    	fact that our basic conclusion is not an isolated or
    	aberrational finding reached only in one study.  Every
    	climate scientist who has performed a detailed reconstruction
    	of the climate of the past 1,000 years using different proxy
    	data and different statistical methods has come up with the
    	same basic hockey stick pattern, that is to say a
    	reconstruction that agrees with our original reconstruction
    	within its estimates uncertainties.
    	My critics also fail to recognize that even if their
    	criticisms are accepted it has no bearing on the outcome.
    	Dr. Wegman's report argues that the hockey stick pattern
    	derives from the statistical conventions used in our 1998
    	and 1999 studies.  However, using alternative statistical
    	conventions yields the same hockey stick pattern.  The
    	hockey stick pattern is intrinsic to the data.  That was
    	the conclusion of the National Academy.  Page 116 of the
    	National Academy report says the statistical convention my
    	colleagues and I used "does not appear to unduly influence
    	reconstructions of hemispheric mean temperature;
    	reconstructions performed without using principal component
    	analysis are qualitatively similar to the original curves
    	presented by Mann et al."
    	This was also the conclusion reached by Dr. Hans von Storch
    	who testified here last week, and by four independent teams
    	of scientists who published peer reviewed articles
    	considering and rejecting the conclusion that the statistical
    	methods used in our early studies were responsible for the
    	hockey stick result.  Finally, my critics ignore the fact
    	that other scientists have repeated original results using
    	the centered PCA analysis that Dr. Wegman favors and have
    	concluded that the result is basically the same as we
    	originally reported.  This is summarized in Exhibit C.
    	So even if one accepts as valid the criticisms about the
    	statistical conventions used in our early work our results are
    	essentially unaffected.  As you can see, the two curves are
    	barely distinguishable within the width of the lines that are
    	shown.  And as I have said before our key conclusion that
    	recent hemispheric warmth appears unprecedented over at least
    	the past millennium has been confirmed by every study that
    	has examined the same question.
    	Finally, it is worth expressing again that paleoclimate
    	reconstructions represent just one of many independent lines
    	of evidence that support the conclusion that human activity
    	is already having a substantial impact on global climate.
    	I appreciate this opportunity to answer the committee's
    	questions.  I am sorry I could not be here last week but
    	as I had explained to committee staff, I had to take care
    	of my infant daughter while my wife was attending a
    	conference.
    	[The prepared statement of Dr. Michael E. Mann follows:]

    PREPARED STATEMENT OF DR. MICHAEL E. MANN, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR AND
    DIRECTOR, EARTH SYSTEM SCIENCE CENTER, THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE
    UNIVERSITY

    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Dr. Mann, thank you.  You have heard all
    	the bells going off.  We do have a series of four votes on
    	the floor but before we go, Dr. Christy, I am going to ask
    	you to give your opening statement.  Then we will recess for
    	probably about 30 minutes and we will come back and take the
    	rest of the testimony.
    DR. CHRISTY.  Thank you.  Chairman Whitfield, Ranking Member Stupak,
    and committee members, I am John Christy, Director of the Earth System
    Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and the
    Alabama state climatologist.  I served as a lead author of IPCC 2002
    chapter on observations with Dr. Mann, and as panelist on the NAS
    report on temperature reconstructions.  As the lead author of the
    IPCC, I helped craft the now infamous statement about the 1990s and
    1998 being the warmest decade and year.
    	Our confidence was described as likely rather than very
    	likely or virtually certain.  In other words, we chose a
    	relatively low level of confidence because of the following
    	concerns known at that time.  First, that the hockey stick
    	was new and had not had time for independent analysis for
    	confirmation or revision.  Two, a key factor or a key anchor
    	for that early part of the record was a western tree ring
    	series that explained only about 5 percent of the overall
    	variability.  And, three, that the unavoidable constraints
    	on the length of the calibration and validation periods
    	really prevented confident knowledge of the relative warmth
    	of different centuries.
    	A more disappointing aspect of the IPCC regarding temperatures
    	over the last millennium was that some important work was not
    	included, specifically the work of Dahl-Jensen et al., 1998,
    	which I recommended for inclusion many times, was completely
    	missing from this section.  These borehole temperatures from
    	Greenland represented probably the most reliable regional
    	temperatures over the last millennium.  Thus, in at least
    	one location we had high confidence that it was warmer 1,000
    	years ago, and though Greenland's temperature may not be
    	tightly connected to hemispheric averages, Greenland is
    	important for sea level averages.  If Greenland were warmer
    	in the relatively recent past were its edges also melting
    	as they appear to be now under cooler conditions?  I believe
    	the IPCC missed an opportunity to demonstrate climate
    	complexity by excluding this information in 2001.
    Dr. Roy Spencer and I created the first satellite-based data set
    temperature back in 1990.  We are now working on improvements to the
    8th revision brought about by the divergence of the two most recent
    satellites.
    	When asked by others, we provided sections of our code and
    	relevant data files.  By sharing this information, we opened
    	ourselves up to exposure or a possible problem which we had
    	somehow missed, and frankly this was not personally easy.  On
    	the other hand, if there was a mistake we wanted it fixed.
    	Not knowing the outcome of the work done by scientists at
    	Remote Sensing Systems they asked if they could publish what
    	we had sent them.  In my formal scientific response, I wrote,
    	"Oh, what the heck.  I think it would be fine to use and
    	critique, that is sort of what science is all about."
    	And so it was that in August 2005 RSS published a clear
    	example of an artifact which created errors in the tropics in
    	our data.  In Science magazine the following November we
    	published the information about our now-corrected
    	temperatures and expressed our gratitude to RSS for
    	discovering our error.  While a bit painful, this process as
    	recommended in the National Academy's report, resulted in
    	progress and better scientific information.
    	Finally, greenhouse gas concentrations are increasing, and
    	therefore the radiation budget of the atmosphere will be
    	altered.  In response, the surface temperatures will or
    	should rise.  Our observational work, however, has not been
    	able to show clear support for the manner or magnitude of
    	this response as depicted by current climate models.  For
    	policy makers this is important.  For example, we cannot
    	reliably reproduce or predict the climate for large regions
    	within the United States.  It would be a far more difficult
    	task to reliably predict the effects of a policy that reduce
    	greenhouse gas emissions.
    	Simply put, we cannot say with any confidence to you or to
    	the American taxpayer that by adopting policy X we will cause
    	an impact Y on the weather of the climate system.
    What I really find disturbing today is the demonization of energy and
    its most common byproduct, carbon dioxide, CO2.  I cannot call CO2 a
    pollutant when it is a source of life on the planet.  CO2 is plant
    food.  But, as importantly, the extra CO2 we have put in the air
    represents astounding improvements in the health, longevity, and
    quality of human life.  I suspect half of us in this hearing room
    would not be here but for the benefits wrought by affordable energy.
    Energy use is not evil.
    	I believe my experience in Africa is important in this whole
    	discussion of energy and climate.  In the 1970s I taught
    	science and math as a missionary teacher, and I saw the
    	energy system there.  The energy source was wood chopped
    	from the forest.  The energy transmission system was the
    	backs of women and girls hauling wood an average of three
    	miles each day.  The energy use system was burning the
    	wood in an open fire indoors for heat and light.  The
    	consequence of that energy system was deforestation and
    	habitat loss while for people it was poor respiratory
    	and eye health.  The U.N. estimates 1.6 million women
    	and children die each year from the effects of this
    	indoor smoke.
    	Energy demand will grow, as it should, to allow these
    	people to experience the advances in health and quality
    	of life that we enjoy.  They are far more vulnerable to
    	the impacts of poverty, water pollution, and political
    	strife than whatever the climate does.  I simply close
    	with a plea, please remember the needs and aspirations
    	of the poorest among us when energy policy is made.
    	Thank you very much.
    	[The prepared statement of Dr. John R. Christy follows:]

    PREPARED STATEMENT OF DR. JOHN R. CHRISTY, PROFESSOR AND DIRECTOR,
    EARTH SYSTEM SCIENCE CENTER, NSSTC, UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA IN
    HUNTSVILLE

    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Dr. Christy, thank you.  We are going to
    	go vote.  It is now 15 after 3:00 so we will reconvene
    	about 15 till 4:00.  Down in the basement there is a
    	little snack center and if you go out the main first floor
    	of the Rayburn Building and walk over to Longworth there
    	is a wonderful ice cream shop so whatever you decide to do.
    	[Recess.]
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  The hearing will reconvene, and we apologize
    	for the delay.  We are about 35 minutes later than we said.
    	But, Dr. Cicerone, you are recognized for your 5-minute
    	opening statement.
    DR. CICERONE.  Thank you, Chairman Whitfield and members of the
    committee.  My name is Ralph Cicerone.  I am President of the National
    Academy of Sciences and Chairman of the National Research Council.
    Prior to this year, I was Chancellor of the University of California at
    Irvine where I was Aldrich professor in Earth System Science and also
    professor of chemistry.  This afternoon I will summarize the state of
    scientific understanding on climate change very briefly, based on
    findings and recommendations in NAS and NRC reports and in some recent
    refereed publications.  Our reports, quite often written with the
    National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine, go
    through a peer review process and although we are not part of the
    Government, we were chartered by Congress and President Lincoln to
    provide advice on matters of science and technology.
    	I would like to first start with how is it that humans can
    	influence the climate of an entire planet.  The strongest
    	answer is the greenhouse effect which is a natural
    	phenomenon.  Without the natural greenhouse effect, the
    	Earth would be much colder than it is right now.  We can
    	test that prediction by looking at Mars and Venus, for
    	example.  Now humans are amplifying the natural greenhouse
    	effect.  Just to give you one major, the extra energy
    	trapped near the earth's surface by a variety of greenhouse
    	gases is about 2-1/2 watts per square meter now, which is
    	about 100 times larger than all the energy usage by humans
    	worldwide on the entire planet from all sources, fossil
    	fuels, nuclear wind, hypothermal, you name it.  It is a big
    	number.  This is what gives humans leverage to influence an
    	entire planetary climate.
    	There is no doubt that the Earth is warming.  Weather station
    	records and ship-based observations show that the global
    	average surface temperature in the air has increased by about
    	1.2 degrees Fahrenheit since the beginning of the last
    	century, more than half of the increase since 1975.  Scientists
    	have also measured upward temperature trends in the lower
    	atmosphere and in the upper oceans, and this continuing warming
    	has been accompanied by worldwide changes and many other
    	indicators, such as decreases in Arctic sea ice thickness and
    	extent, and shifts in ecosystems.
    	What is the primary evidence for this widely accepted view
    	that global warming is occurring, that human beings are
    	responsible at least in part for the warming and that the
    	Earth's climate will continue to change during this current
    	century.  There are many lines of evidence.  Let me summarize
    	them briefly.  First, measurements show large increases in
    	carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, such as methane and
    	nitrous oxide, beginning in the middle of the 19th Century.
    	These increases in greenhouse gases are due to human
    	activities such as burning fossil fuel for energy,
    	agricultural and industrial processes, and so forth.  The
    	concentration of carbon dioxide is now at its highest level
    	shown by actual measurements in the last 650,000 years.  The
    	record has been extended back that far now.
    	Second, we understand how carbon dioxide and other greenhouse
    	gases physically affect global temperature.  Rigorous
    	radioactive transfer calculations of the temperature changes
    	due to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations, together
    	with reasonable assumptions about climate feedbacks provide a
    	physically based mathematically sound explanation for the
    	observed warming.
    	Third, state-of-the-art mathematical climate models are able
    	to reproduce the warming of the past century, but only if
    	human-caused greenhouse gases are included.  Fourth, and I
    	did not have this in my written testimony, but simulations
    	of the stratospheric penetrating volcano, Mount Penatubo, in
    	mid-June 1991 were able to show the exact timing of the cooling
    	that took place afterwards based on the sulphate particles and
    	got the magnitude of the cooling almost right.  And these were
    	primitive models at the time.  Models have improved a great
    	deal since.
    	Fifth, analysis of high-quality, precise measurements of the
    	sun's total brightness over the past 25 years show little, if
    	any, change in the long-term average of solar output over this
    	time period.  Thus, changes in the sun, the best explanation
    	for a natural explanation cannot explain the warming over the
    	past 25 years.
    Six, the oceans have warmed in recent decades and the stratosphere
    has cooled.  Land masses north of the tropical region in the Northern
    Hemisphere have warmed even more than the oceans.  All of these large
    scale changes, their sizes and patterns are consistent with the
    predicted geographical and temporal pattern of greenhouse surface
    warming.
    	Seventh, ice covered regions of the Earth have experienced
    	significant melting.  For example, the average annual sea
    	ice extent of the Artic has decreased by about 8 percent
    	or nearly a million square kilometers over the past 30
    	years.  Sea ice thickness measured, for example, by the
    	United States Navy has decreased over the period.
    	Measurements from Earth orbiting satellites from synthetic
    	aperture radars and from Earth's gravity sensors over the
    	last few years have shown that both Greenland and West
    	Antarctic ice sheets are losing ice.
    	Eighth, several publications in the last 2 years show that
    	hurricane intensities have increased in some parts of the
    	world in lock step with sea surface temperatures.
    While we are quite certain that the Earth's surface has heated up
    during the last 30 years, and that it is hotter now than at any
    time during the last 400 years, predicting what will happen to
    important climate variables besides temperature is more difficult.
    	As we stated in our 2001 report climate change simulations
    	yield a globally averaged surface temperature increase by
    	the end of this century of maybe 2-1/2 to 10 degrees
    	Fahrenheit.  As I said, temperature is easier to predict
    	than other changes such as rainfall, storm patterns, and
    	ecosystems, and the prediction of extreme events, which is
    	what probably humans and other biological creatures respond
    	to the most are very difficult.
    	While these future climate changes and their impacts are
    	inherently uncertain, they are far from unknown.  We can
    	paint useful broad brush pictures now of how global warming
    	may affect certain regions of the world.  For example, these
    	mathematical models generally project more warming in
    	continental regions than over the oceans and in polar regions
    	rather than near the equator.  Precipitation is expected to
    	increase in the tropics, decrease in the subtropics, and
    	increase in the midlatitudes.  Rainfall is expected to
    	increase in monsoon regimes.  We can give a lot of broad brush
    	predictions like that that are difficult to prove, but that is
    	the state of the science now.
    	Even if no further increases in the atmospheric concentrations
    	of greenhouse gases occur, which would be a difficult to
    	achieve scenario, we are very likely to experience additional
    	warming of about 7/10ths of a degree Fahrenheit in the coming
    	decades.  In colder climates such warming could bring less
    	severe winters and longer growing seasons if soil moisture is
    	adequate.  Several studies, quite credible, have projected
    	that summertime ice in the Arctic could disappear in this
    	century, the end of the century.
    	The combined effects of ice melting and sea water expansion
    	from ocean warming will likely cause the global average sea
    	level to rise by anywhere between 1/10th and 9/10ths of a
    	meter in this century.  So coastal communities will experience
    	increased flooding due to seal level rise and are likely to
    	experience more severe storms and storm surges.  And of
    	course increased acidification of the surface ocean due to
    	the added carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is occurring.
    	It will continue and it will harm marine organisms such as
    	corals and some plankton species.
    	In summary, there are multiple lines of evidence supporting
    	the reality of and human roles in global climate change.  I
    	think I will stop there to be as brief as possible.  With
    	your permission, Mr. Chairman, I have submitted two
    	appendices.
    	[The prepared statement of Dr. Ralph J. Cicerone
    	follows:]

    PREPARED STATEMENT OF DR. RALPH J. CICERONE, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL
    ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Well, thank you so much, and your entire
    	statement is part of the record, and we appreciate your
    	being here.  Mr. McIntyre, you are recognized for
    	5 minutes.

    MR. MCINTYRE.  Thank you. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, and
    members of the committee.  My name is Stephen McIntyre.  I
    appreciate the invitation to appear before you once again.  I will
    recap my testimony from last week, referring to the NAS and Wegman
    reports.  The Wegman report drew attention to a remarkable lack of
    independence in data used in supposedly independent studies.  Some
    proxies are used in nearly every such study.  This raises the
    spectre that problems in one proxy can spill over to multiple
    reconstructions.
    	One such problem has already been identified.  The NAS panel
    	agreed that strip bark bristlecones should be avoided in
    	temperature reconstructions but they did not assess the
    	potential impact of this conclusion.  Last week I showed that
    	this recommendation reversed the estimates of medieval modern
    	levels in the Crowley and Lowery reconstruction.  Here we
    	show the impact of this on the Mann study, where the
    	conclusion of 20th Century uniqueness does not withstand
    	removing the bristlecones.  Every reconstruction using
    	bristlecones will have to be reconsidered in the light of
    	thee NAS recommendation.
    	By coincidence the key bristlecone sites are located in an
    	area recently studied by Dr. Christy where he recompiled
    	high altitude temperature data.  There is actually a slight
    	negative correlation between Christy's temperature data and
    	Mann's key principal component series.  You can readily see
    	why the NAS panel said that bristlecones should be avoided
    	as a temperature proxy.  Further grounds for concern about
    	the use of this data comes from fossil trees located well
    	above modern tree lines in this area, dated to the Medieval
    	Warm Period.  Recent ecological niche studies have concluded
    	that the annual minimum temperatures in this area were 3.2
    	degrees Centigrade warmer, that is 6 degrees Fahrenheit
    	warmer, than at present.
    	Dr. Mann likes to say that any problems do not arise
    	simply, and I emphasize simply, from the flawed PC method.
    	If the proxies were ideal, such as the synthetic data
    	studied by von Storch and Zorita, the bad method may not
    	make a difference.  But in such circumstances a simple
    	average would also have a hockey stick shape which were not
    	observed in the simple average of the Mann proxies.  The
    	real problem, and the one observed by Wegman, is that the
    	PC method as applied to low quality data caused a minor
    	pattern, in this case bristlecones, to be exaggerated as
    	a dominant pattern in worldwide climate.
    	Notably, Dr. Mann's testimony does not mention
    	bristlecones but in his data, the hockey stick shape is
    	dependent on them.  The graph here shows in red the
    	contribution to his reconstruction for bristlecones.  The
    	other colors show the contribution from other classes of
    	proxies.  As you can see, there is very little information
    	from the other proxies.
    	Dr. Mann has also said that he can get a hockey stick
    	shape in another way.  There are many ways of processing
    	Mann'a data set.  Some result in hockey stick shape
    	series, some do not.  Burger and Cubasch in 2005 showed a
    	bewildering variety of outcomes based on a slight
    	variation in methodology.  Sometimes you are told that
    	scientists have moved on, and that the criticized methods
    	are no longer used.  This is not the case.  All of
    	Dr. Mann's more recent work used his disputed PC1.  Mann's
    	PC1 was used in the prominent article, Osborne and Briffa
    	2006, and even occurs illustrated as a temperature proxy
    	in one of the NAS illustrations.
    	An important control on any statistical study is reporting
    	of adverse results.  The verification r2 statistic is
    	commonly used in paleoclimate studies and was said in the
    	original article to have been considered.  However, early
    	periods of the reconstruction failed the significance test,
    	a fact which was never reported.  At the NAS press
    	conference, Dr. Bloomfield said that he found nothing
    	unusual about MBH reporting.  If paleoclimate research
    	practices do not require scientists to disclose results
    	adverse to their claims, then this reduces the ability of
    	policy makers to rely on these studies.
    	Last week I pointed out many problems with data and code
    	access.  Much relevant Mann data did not become available
    	until 2004, 6 years after the original study, and then
    	only after a formal complaint to Nature.  Mann's archiving
    	practices are by no means the worse in the community.
    	Much of Lonnie Thompson's data remains unarchived 20 years
    	after it was collected.  The efforts of your committee led
    	to Dr. Mann disclosing a considerable amount of source
    	code.  Unfortunately, the source code does not operate
    	with the data as archived and it does not include code for
    	important steps such as the calculation of confidence
    	intervals or PC retention rules.
    	Wahl and Ammann have been described as independent studies
    	but they are co-authors and collaborators with Dr. Mann
    	and their efforts, whatever their merit, can hardly be
    	described as independent.  To the credit of Wahl and
    	Ammann, they have archived their code for their study
    	following a practice that we followed.  Their code
    	reconciles to ours and any differences between the studies
    	do not arise from differing arithmetic.
    	The interest of this committee in reconstruction seems to
    	have been prompted in part when Dr. Mann was quoted by
    	the Wall Street Journal as saying that he would "not be
    	intimidated into disclosing his algorithm."  Such
    	attitudes are inconsistent with the requirement of policy
    	makers if they are to rely on such studies.  If you are
    	to rely on paleoclimate studies you should be concerned
    	about disclosure, data access, and replication because,
    	first, peer review at journals is very limited and does
    	not constitute sufficient due diligence for policy
    	reliance.
    	Second, IPCC does not carry out independent testing or
    	verification.  Third, to enable and facilitate independent
    	testing, paleoclimate research needs to achieve
    	dramatically improved standards for archiving data and
    	code.  Fourth, because much of the work is funded by the
    	U.S. Federal government, improved administrative practices
    	by NSF and DOE could make a direct and immediate impact
    	and improvement.  Thank you.
    	[The prepared statement of Stephen McIntyre follows:]

    PREPARED STATEMENT OF STEPHEN MCINTYRE, TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA

    SUMMARY

    1. little reliance can be placed on the original MBH reconstruction,
    various efforts to salvage it or similar multiproxy studies, even
    ones which do not use Mann's principal components methodology;
    2. peer review as practiced by academic journals is insufficient
    due diligence for policy reliance. IPCC reports are only a literature
    review rather than independent due diligence.
    3. to enable and facilitate independent testing, paleoclimate research
    practices need to achieve dramatically improved standards for
    archiving data and code.
    4. administrative policies governing work directly funded by the
    U.S. government can make a direct and immediate difference.

    Good morning, Mr Chairman and members of the Committee.
    My name is Stephen McIntyre. I appreciate the invitation to appear
    before you once again. I will recapitulate my testimony from last
    week, making further reference to the NAS and Wegman reports.
    The Wegman report drew attention to a remarkable lack of
    independence in the proxies used in supposedly "independent"
    studies. Some sites are used in nearly every study. This
    raises the spectre that problems with one proxy can spill over
    to multiple studies. One such situation has already been
    identified. The NAS panel agreed that strip-bark bristlecones
    should be "avoided in temperature reconstructions".  Last week,
    we showed that this reversed medieval-modern levels in the
    Crowley and Lowery 2000 reconstruction. Figure 1 below shows
    the impact on MBH, where conclusions of 20th century uniqueness
    do not withstand removing the bristlecones. Wegman showed that
    bristlecones were used in multiple studies and each one will
    have to be reconsidered in light of the NAS recommendation.

    Figure 1. MBH99 reconstruction and estimate of MBH99-type
    reconstruction without bristlecones. 20-year gaussian smooth.

    By coincidence, the key bristlecone and foxtail proxies that
    establish the pattern in Mann's critical PC series are located
    in almost the exact area studied by Christy, as shown in the
    location map on the left. As you see, there is little correlation
    on either a smoothed or unsmoothed basis  - actually a slight
    negative correlation - between  temperature and Mann's PC1. You
    can readily see why the NAS panel said that this data should be
    avoided as a temperature proxy.

    Figure 2. Left - location of foxtail and bristlecone sites in
    the Sierra Nevada and White Mountains. Right - Black - annual
    mean of maximum and minimum temperatures (data, Christy, pers.
    comm.); red - MBH98 NOAMER PC1.

    Further grounds for concern about using Mann's PC1 as a
    temperature proxy comes from the evidence of fossil trees well
    above modern tree lines, dated to the Medieval Warm Period.
    Millar et al. 2006 concluded that annual minimum temperatures in
    this area were then significantly warmer (+3.2 �C) than at
    present.

    Figure 3. A dead trunk above current treeline from a foxtail pine
    that lived about 1000 years ago near Bighorn Plateau in Sequoia
    National Park.

    Dr Mann likes to say that any problems do not arise simply from
    the flawed PC method. However, it's not true that the flawed PC
    method has nothing to do with the problems. A simple average of
    Mann's proxies does not yield a hockey stick shaped series, as
    shown in Figure 4 below. If you have proxies of ideal quality,
    even a bad PC method can yield meaningful results - which is
    what von Storch and Zorita observed, using idealized data
    generated in a climate model. However, the problem is that
    Mann's PC method was applied to low-quality data, where the
    flawed method caused a minor pattern in bristlecones to be
    exaggerated as a "dominant pattern" in worldwide climate.

    Figure 4. Left: Top - Average of all 415 MBH proxies; bottom -
    MBH reconstruction. Both in standard deviation units.

    In the MBH data set, the hockey stick shape is dependent on the
    bristlecones. All the statistical salvage jobs Dr. Mann cites
    are variations on schemes to load the final weight on the very
    data the NAS panel said should not be used.

    Figure 5.  Top - Contribution (deg C) of proxy groups (proxy
    type x continent e.g. Asian tree rings; South American ice
    cores) to the MBH reconstruction, with bristlecones and foxtails
    in red. Bottom - Same series in standard deviation units. The
    bristlecone contribution closely matches the final MBH
    reconstruction.

    There are many ways of processing the MBH data - some result in
    hockey-stick shaped series; some do not. B�rger and Cubasch 2005
    showed a bewildering variety of outcomes based on slight
    variations in MBH methodology.

    Figure 6: Different MBH-type results from slight methodological
    differences from Burger and Cubasch [2005] SI Figure 1.

    Sometimes you're told that scientists have "moved on" and that
    the methods criticized by Wegman and the NAS panel are no
    longer used. However, this is not the case. Rutherford et al.,
    coauthored by Dr Mann and published in late 2005, used the
    identical PC method as the 1998 paper.
    Although 415 individual proxy series were used, data reduction
    by using leading PCs of tree-ring networks results in a
    smaller set of 112 indicators in the multiproxy-PC network
    available back to 1820 (Fig. 1a), with a decreasing number of
    indicators available progressively further back in time.
    Twenty-two of the indicators (representing 95 individual proxy
    series) extend back to at least A.D. 1400.

    Mann's PC1 was also used in Osborn and Briffa 2006. And
    despite criticisms of the PC methodology by the NAS panel,
    they themselves used it, perhaps inadvertently, in one of
    their illustrations as a temperature proxy - see the top panel
    of Figure 6 of the NAS report.
    An important control on any statistical study is reporting of
    adverse results. The verification r2 statistic is commonly used
    in paleoclimate studies and was said to have been considered in
    MBH98. However, its early periods had insignificant values of
    this statistic, a fact that was never reported. At the NAS
    press conference, Dr Bloomfield said that he found nothing
    unusual about reporting of results in MBH. If paleoclimate
    research practices do not require scientists to disclose
    results adverse to their claims, then this reduces the ability
    of policy-makers to rely on these studies.

    Source: Wahl and Ammann 2006.

    Last week, we pointed out many problems with data and code
    access in paleoclimate. In the MBH case, much relevant data
    did not become available until the 2004 corrigendum, 6 years
    after the original study, and only then after a formal
    complaint to Nature. The efforts of your committee led to
    Dr Mann disclosing a considerable amount of source code.
    Unfortunately, as Dr Wegman reported to you, the source code
    does not work with any data sets presently archived and is
    inoperable. It also does not include code for some important
    steps, such as MBH99 confidence intervals or PC retention
    rules, which neither ourselves nor Wahl and Ammann have been
    able to replicate. Since Wahl and Ammann are recent coauthors
    and collaborators with Mann, their efforts hardly can be
    described as "independent" replication.
    Dr Mann and his associates are by no means the worst in the
    paleoclimate field in archiving data. It is undoubtedly
    frustrating for Dr Mann to be the center of attention when
    many of his colleagues are much worse. For example, despite
    over 2 years of effort, I have been unsuccessful in learning
    what sites were used in one of three paleoclimate studies
    illustrated in the IPCC Third Assessment Report (Briffa et
    al 2001). These sites were recently been used by Mann and
    coauthors, who have also failed to even disclose the location
    of the sites.
    The reason why data access and replication should be of
    concern to you is that:
    (1) peer review at journals is very limited and does not
    constitute sufficient due diligence for policy reliance;
    (2) IPCC does not carry out due diligence on articles.
    (3) In order to properly assess a study, it needs to be
    replicated. Placing obstacles in the way of access to data
    and code makes this either impossible or simply impractical for
    people with less than infinite patience.
    (4) Because much of the work is funded by the U.S. federal
    government, there are direct and practical steps that can be
    taken with NSF and DOE that would have an immediate impact
    in improving the quality of due diligence in this field.

    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Thank you.  Dr. Gulledge, you are recognized
    	for 5 minutes.
    DR. GULLEDGE.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, and members
    of the committee.  I am Jay Gulledge.  I am a Senior Research Fellow
    with the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, and an Adjunct
    Assistant Professor at the University of Louisville, where I
    conduct research on the carbon cycling.  I just want to try to
    provide a little bit of context here today.  I am not a
    paleoclimatologist or a statistician, but I am a professional
    scientist observing--I am a generalistic climate change scientist
    through my duties at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.
    	[Slide]
    	Next slide, please.  I just want to reiterate, now
    	Dr. Cicerone mentioned most of these things, but this is not
    	about the fundamentals of climate change science and the
    	hockey stick reconstruction is not a foundation.  Chain
    	activities are increasing greenhouse gases.  The Earth is
    	warming.  These are unequivocal facts.  The warming over the
    	past 5 decades has been attributed through sound science to
    	human activities associated with greenhouse gases.  The
    	effects of warming are being seen today all over the globe,
    	and this warming is going to continue for a long time even if
    	we stabilize greenhouse gases in the atmosphere today.  Next
    	slide.
    	[Slide]
    	Now the main points I want to make today, the so-called
    	hockey stick controversy is not a scientific construct.  The
    	controversy is in science and that is because debate is
    	normal in science and people re-examine each other's methods
    	and so forth.  This is not controversial.  It is just not
    	controversial in science.  The criticisms of the hockey stick
    	scientifically speaking do not undermine the climate, the
    	science of climate change.  It is just not central to our
    	understanding of it.
    	The results of the hockey stick actually represent a
    	gradual development in the understanding in the paleoclimate
    	community of past climate, not any kind of step change in
    	the understanding.  This is readily demonstrated from the
    	scientific literature over the past 20 years.  And in my
    	opinion climate change assessments are working well under
    	the supervision of climatologists.
    	[Slide]
    	The next slide, I just want to point out the bottom quote
    	here from the NAS report that says the surface temperature
    	reconstructions I have included such as the hockey stick
    	are consistent with other evidence of global climate change
    	and can be considered, and this is the operational phrase
    	here, my point, as additional supporting evidence.  It is
    	not central to climate science.  Next slide.
    	[Slide]
    	This is the hockey stick as presented in the 2001 IPCC.  It
    	is a reconstruction of the average northern hemispheric
    	temperature over the last thousand years.  Next slide.
    	[Slide]
    	And the main conclusions as you have heard over and over
    	again the 20th Century is the warmest in the past thousand
    	years.  The 1990s were the warmest decade, and even 1998
    	being the warmest year as represented by the blade of the
    	hockey stick here.  Next slide.
    	[Slide]
    	Now the criticisms that have been discussed in this hearing
    	as leveled by McIntyre and McKitrick have to do with
    	statistical methodology and whether they were applied properly,
    	inappropriate use of data, and a general complaint that this
    	has resulted in an incorrect elimination of the Medieval Warm
    	Period which would show where the red oval is here.  Next
    	slide.
    	[Slide]
    	Now as a result of these criticisms this committee has asked
    	Mr. Wegman to produce a report along with his colleagues to
    	examine these criticisms.  And the primary objective of this
    	report, as quoted from the report, is to "reproduce the
    	results of McIntyre-McKitrick nor to determine whether the
    	criticisms were valid and have merit."  I put in red the
    	last phrase.  I think this has not been accomplished by the
    	Wegman report at all, and I will illustrate why.  Next
    	slide.
    	[Slide]
    	It just seems reasonable that you got to look at what has
    	happened since this because you are trying to find out the
    	reliability of the science here.  Second, Mann's claims
    	that McIntyre and McKitrick didn't apply his method
    	correctly are not addressed in the Wegman report at all but
    	they certainly are germane.  If those criticisms are being
    	used to question the work then that has to be examined.
    	Corroborating evidence wasn't looked at.  That was the
    	strength of the NAS report, I would say.  And finally in red
    	here a very important report with regard to the questions of
    	this committee was really overlooked by this report showing
    	up only in a footnote on a later page or on a middle page.
    	But this thing, this study by Wahl and Ammann from the
    	National Center of Atmospheric Research, actually looked at
    	all the main criticisms of the McIntyre-McKitrick papers,
    	and whether they are correct or not, this should have been
    	examined by any investigation wanting to look into the
    	merits of the McIntyre-McKitrick criticisms.  Next slide.
    	[Slide]
    	Now what they are showing is that they are able to reproduce
    	extremely closely the original Mann 1998 hockey stick.  Here
    	in gray is the original Mann result, and if you can't see
    	it it is because it is under the red line, which is their
    	emulation.  They did this writing their own code in the R
    	programming language, and they made a very faithful
    	reproduction. Next.
    	[Slide]
    	Now using their reproduction they then tested whether or not
    	the McIntyre-McKitrick criticisms had an effect on the
    	result of the reconstruction.  In this figure they have
    	corrected for the de-centering problem prior to the PC
    	analysis, and also they removed the gaspe tree ring series
    	that was questioned by McIntyre and McKitrick.  And the
    	result is the only change that occurred that has any
    	significance is in the 14th Century.  You see the red line
    	is their emulation of Mann and the blue, which is sticking
    	up a little bit on the very left hand of the graph, is
    	the effect of the corrections.
    	Now this really just doesn't change--and these green and
    	magenta are the 95 percent confidence intervals.  This
    	really just doesn't change the picture of the 20th Century
    	being unique.  Now it does leave the impression that
    	perhaps there is a trajectory of warming as you move back
    	in time.  Maybe that continues to go up and the Medieval
    	Warm Period, which isn't even shown here, maybe got warm.
    	Next slide, please.
    	[Slide]
    	I asked Dr. Ammann yesterday whether or not he had used
    	these corrections and taken them back in time.  He said
    	that he had, that he has a paper that is submitted for
    	review on this, and I want to make clear that this hasn't
    	been peer reviewed yet.  It is the same correction applied
    	to the data going back a thousand years, and this is the
    	result.  The blue line is the emulation of Mann 1999.  The
    	red line is the result.  And in fact it does not continue
    	to go up.  And this is going to be my last slide so don't
    	be concerned.  There are a lot more slides in your
    	handout.  I want to point out here that if you look at
    	the medieval times here which would be the first couple
    	of frames from the left in that graph it is warmer than
    	what you see to the right of that.  There is a Medieval
    	Warm Period on this graph.  It is just weak, and that
    	is completely consistent with the scientific examination
    	of paleoclimate over the last 20 years. There has been
    	a consistent trajectory and this is completely consistent
    	with that.  Thank you.
    	[The prepared statement of Dr. Jay Gulledge follows:]

    PREPARED STATEMENT OF DR. JAY GULLEDGE, SENIOR RESEARCH FELLOW,
    PEW CENTER ON GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE

    Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, and Members of the Committee:
    Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I am Jay Gulledge,
    Ph.D., Senior Research Fellow for Science and Impacts at the Pew
    Center on Global Climate Change.  I am also an Adjunct Assistant
    Professor at the University of Louisville, which houses my academic
    research program on carbon cycling.
    The Pew Center on Global Climate Change is a non-profit,
    non-partisan and independent organization dedicated to providing
    credible information, straight answers and innovative solutions in
    the effort to address global climate change.  In our eight years of
    existence, we have published almost seventy reports by experts in
    climate science, economics, policy and solutions, all of which have
    been peer-reviewed and reviewed as well by the companies with which
    we work.
    Forty-one major companies sit on the Pew Center's Business
    Environmental Leadership Council, spanning a range of sectors,
    including oil and gas (BP, Shell), transportation (Boeing, Toyota),
    utilities (PG&E, Duke Energy, Entergy), high technology (IBM, Intel,
    HP), diversified manufacturing (GE, United Technologies), and
    chemicals (DuPont, Rohm and Haas).  Collectively, the 41 companies
    represent two trillion dollars in market capitalization and three
    million employees.  The members of the Council work with the Pew
    Center to educate the public on the risks, challenges and solutions
    to climate change.
    If you take nothing else from my testimony, please take these three
    points:
    1.  The scientific evidence of significant human influence on
    climate is strong and would in no way be weakened if there were no
    Mann hockey stick.
    2.  The scientific debate over the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) has
    been gradually evolving for at least 20 years.  The results of the
    Mann hockey stick simply reflect the gradual development of thought
    on the issue over time.
    3.  The impact of the McIntyre and McKitrick critique on the
    original Mann paper, after being scrutinized by the National Academy
    of Science, the Wegman panel and a number of meticulous individual
    research groups, is essentially nil with regard to the conclusions
    of the Mann paper and the 2001 IPCC assessment.
    The science of climate change is an extraordinary example of a
    theory-driven, data-rich scientific paradigm, the likes of which,
    arguably, has not occurred since the development of quantum
    mechanics in the first half of the twentieth century. The product
    of this strong scientific framework is a body of strong,
    multifaceted evidence that man-made greenhouse gases are causing
    contemporary global warming, and that this warming trend is
    inducing large-scale changes in global climate. The primary evidence
    is based on physical principles and observational and experimental
    analysis of contemporary climate dynamics, as opposed to analyses
    of past climates, which are the subject of this hearing. We can
    now say with confidence that the evidence of human influence on
    climate is strong, as described by Dr. Cicerone.
    Although paleoclimatology - the study of ancient climates - is an
    important part of the climate science frame work, reconstructions
    of temperature over the past millennium play a secondary,
    expendable role in the larger body of evidence, as stated in the
    recent NAS report titled, Surface Temperature Reconstructions for
    the Last 2,000 Years: "Surface temperature reconstructions are
    consistent with other evidence of global climate change and can
    be considered as additional supporting evidence" (National
    Research Council 2006, p. 23; hereafter referred to as the NAS
    report). Dispensing with such reconstructions entirely or
    proving them fundamentally flawed would have little, if any,
    impact on our understanding of contemporary climate change. This
    statement does not imply that millennial climate reconstructions
    are unimportant, but their main influence will be in the future,
    when their potential to reveal how climate varied across the
    earth's surface from year-to-year in the past (i.e. an annual
    record of spatially explicit climate dynamics) is fully realized.
    At that point, such reconstructions will be used in a manner
    parallel to thermometer records today. This capability would
    contribute significantly to resolving the current genuine debate
    in climate science, which is not about whether humans are
    changing the climate-a point over which there is no scientific
    controversy-but is about how much human influences will change
    the climate in the future as a result of greenhouse gas
    accumulation and other forcings we apply to the climate system.
    In other words, the goal of spatially explicit paleoclimate
    reconstructions is to help climatologists determine how
    physical forcings, such as solar radiation, volcanic eruptions,
    land-use changes, and changes in atmospheric greenhouse gases,
    have affected the planet in the past, so that we can improve
    estimates of how they will do so in the future.
    The early MBH reconstructions (Mann et al. 1998; Mann et
    al. 1999; hereafter referred to as MBH98 or MBH99 or,
    collectively, MBH) were the first to offer spatially explicit
    climate reconstructions and therefore represented a
    breakthrough in climate change science that continues to
    develop and promises to further our understanding of climate
    physics in the future. The Wegman report's conclusion that
    paleoclimatology "does not provide insight and understanding
    of the physical mechanisms of climate change" (p. 52), fails
    to appreciate that the purpose of Dr. Mann's research is to
    improve our knowledge of physical mechanisms of climate
    change by examining how they operated in the past.
    Turning our attention to the methodological issues this
    hearing seeks to investigate, in my opinion, the Wegman
    report failed to accomplish its primary objective, which
    was "to reproduce the results of [McIntyre & McKitrick] in
    order to determine whether their criticisms are valid and
    have merit" (p. 7). Although the panel reproduced MM's
    work-verbatim-it only partially assessed the validity, and
    did not at all assess the merits, of the criticisms
    directed toward the MBH reconstructions. For instance,
    MM (McIntyre and McKitrick 2003; McIntyre and McKitrick
    2005; heafter referred to collectively as MM) allege that
    the so-called MBH "hockey stick" result is biased by
    methodological errors that undermine the conclusion that
    the late 20th century was uniquely warm relative to the
    past 1000 years. This critique only has merit if, after
    correcting for the errors pointed out by MM, the resulting
    reconstruction yields results significantly different from
    the original result that can no longer support the claim
    of unusual late 20th century warmth. However, the Wegman
    Report takes no steps to make such a determination.
    Fortunately, a different group, one well qualified both
    statistically and climatologically to tackle this question
    of merit, had already performed the task several months
    before the Wegman Report was released. The study by Wahl &
    Ammann (In press; hereafter referred to as WA06), was
    peer-reviewed and accepted for publication in the journal,
    Climatic Change, early last spring, and has been publicly
    available in accepted form since last March
    (http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/ccr/ammann/millennium/refs/
    WahlAmmann_ClimChange2006.html). This study, titled,
    Robustness of the Mann, Bradley, Hughes Reconstruction of
    Northern Hemisphere Surface Temperatures:  Examination of
    Criticisms Based on the Nature and Processing of Proxy
    Climate Evidence, carefully reproduced the MBH98
    reconstruction and then used their faithful reproduction
    to test MM's suggested corrections. They tested each of
    the criticisms raised by MM in all of their published
    papers, including both the peer-reviewed and non-peer-
    reviewed papers. Given that this report specifically
    examined MM's criticisms, including the decentering issue
    that was the main focus of the Wegman report, it is
    unfortunate that the Wegman report dismissed it in a
    footnote (p. 48) as "not to the point."
    WA06 have performed a meticulous and thorough evaluation
    of MBH98, and the answers that this committee seeks about
    the MBH reconstructions are to be found within this report.
    After examining each of MM's three methodological
    criticisms, WA06 accepted two of them as valid, and have
    used them to correct the MBH98 reconstruction. I will now
    show you what effect these corrections have on the MBH98
    reconstruction, and then reconsider the uniqueness of the
    late 20th-century warming trend in the light of these
    corrections.

    The original MBH98 "hockey stick" is shown as a gray line
    (Fig. 1). The WA06 reproduction of MBH98 is shown in red
    (Fig. 1). Except for a couple of minor simplifications,
    WA06 remained faithful to the original MBH method and
    retained all of the original MBH data, including the original
    instrumental temperature series from 1992. They wrote their
    own computer code to perform the calculations, using the R
    programming language, as recommended by the MM and the Wegman
    report, rather than the original Fortran language used by
    Dr. Mann. As you can see, the two reconstructions are
    materially the same. This result demonstrates that MBH98 can
    be reproduced based on information available in the original
    MBH papers and supplemental information and data available
    on the Internet.

    Fig. 2. WA06 corrections of MBH98 for accepted MM corrections.
    The left frame shows original WA06 emulation of MBH in red
    and the corrected reconstruction accounting for decentering
    and excluding the Gaspe tree-ring series in blue. The right
    frame shows the same but with the bristle cone pine series
    removed (green line). Instrumental data are shown in black.

    With this successful reproduction in hand, WA06 were able to
    test the effects of each of MM's criticisms on the outcome
    of the MBH98 reconstruction. After carefully considering the
    validity of MM's three criticisms of MBH's reconstruction
    methodology, WA06 agreed that 1) decentering the proxy data
    prior to Principle Component analysis and 2) including the
    poorly replicated North American Gasp� tree-ring series from
    1400-1449 both affected the MBH results. After correcting for
    these effects, WA06 obtained the results shown in blue
    (Fig. 2, left frame). The result is a slightly warmer (0.1
    �C) early 15th century, with no other time period affected.
    MM's third methodological criticism surrounding the inclusion
    of the bristlecone/foxtail pine series was rejected for
    several reasons. The right frame in Fig. 2 illustrates that
    excluding these series has little effect on the MBH98
    reconstruction, except to force it to begin in 1450 instead of
    1400, because of lack of a data. Since the exclusion had
    little effect, and losing these data series would hinder
    reconstructions of earlier climate, WA06 rejected this
    criticism.

    Fig. 3. Wahl-Ammann corrections of the MBH99 reconstruction
    (Ammann & Wahl, submitted). The original MBH99 reconstruction
    is shown in blue and the corrected WA version is shown in red.
    Corrections were made for the decentering issue and the Gaspe
    tree-ring series. Instrumental data are in black.

    The additional 15th-century warmth revealed by making the
    valid MM corrections still does not approach the warmth of
    the late 20th century, so MM's critique cannot yet be said
    to have merit. However, the corrected result creates the
    impression of an upward temperature trend backward in time
    before 1400, begging the question of what would happen to
    the Middle Ages in the 1000-year MBH99 reconstruction if it
    were also corrected? Answering that question is requisite for
    determining the merit of MM's critique of MBH. The original
    1000-year MBH99 reconstruction is shown in blue and the
    corrected version is shown in red (Fig. 3; Ammann & Wahl,
    submitted). Carrying the correction back to the full
    millennium reveals that the largest effects remain in the
    early 15th century, and both earlier and later periods were
    less affected. Therefore, there is very little difference
    between the corrected MBH98 and MBH99 reconstructions and the
    originals, and the original observation that the late 20th
    century is uniquely warm in the context of the past 1000 years
    is not affected. Hence, the valid methodological caveats that
    MM pointed out do not undermine the main conclusions of the
    original MBH papers or the conclusion of the 2001 IPCC
    assessment.
    The scientific debate over the Medieval Warming Period (MWP)
    has been on the same trajectory for at least 20 years, with
    early indications that the MWP was not a globally coherent
    event becoming more solid over time. The MBH99 reconstruction
    represented an evolutionary step-not a revolutionary change-in
    this established trajectory. The 1990 IPCC figure that
    Mr. McIntyre, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, and
    Dr. Wegman have used in their own assessment of past climate
    is a cartoon, as stated by Dr. Wegman in his testimony last
    week. I have confirmed this with a number of individuals who
    were involved with the 1990 IPCC report or with versions of
    the schematic that pre-dated the 1990 IPCC report. The
    schematic is not a plot of data and is inappropriate as a
    comparison to MBH. The text of the 1990 IPCC report clearly
    states that the figure is a "schematic diagram" and that "it
    is still not clear whether all the fluctuations indicated
    were truly global" (p. 202). Furthermore, only three sources
    of information were cited and those sources conflicted on
    whether the Northern Hemisphere was warm or cold:  "The late
    tenth to early thirteenth centuries... appear to have been
    exceptionally warm in parts of western Europe, Iceland and
    Greenland... China was, however, cold at this time, but South
    Japan was warm..." Clearly, this report certainly did not
    paint a picture of any consensus regarding a Medieval Warm
    Period as a hemisphere-wide phenomenon and characterizing it
    as such reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of climate
    science.
    The 1992 and 1995 IPCC reports continued this same trajectory
    of thought. Four years before MBH99, citing 6 papers-still a
    very limited number by twice as many as were cited in 1990-the
    1995 report stated:
    There are, for this last millennium, two periods which have
    received special attention, the Medieval Warm Period and the
    Little Ice Age. These have been interpreted, at times, as
    period of global warmth and coolness, respectively. Recent
    studies have re-evaluated the interval commonly known as the
    Medieval Warm Period to assess the magnitude and geographical
    extent of any prolonged warm interval between the 9th and
    14th centuries... The available evidence is limited
    (geographically) and is equivocal. ...a clearer picture may
    emerge as more and better calibrated proxy records are produced.
    However, at this point, it is not yet possible to say whether,
    at a hemispheric scale, temperatures declined from the 11-12th
    to the 16-17th century. Nor, therefore, is it possible to
    conclude that the global temperatures in the Medieval Warm
    Period were comparable to the warm decades of the late 20th
    century" (p. 174).
    Remember that this was written by a team of climatologists as a
    consensus statement. The consensus at this time, as in 1990,
    was that there was no strong evidence of a hemisphere-wide MWP.
    Continuing the same trajectory, the 2001 IPCC Third Assessment
    Report examined evidence from 10 cited sources for the MWP.
    The consensus at this point seemed to be turning to the
    conclusion that the there actually  was a generally warm
    Northern Hemisphere  during the Middle Ages, but that it was
    not a strong, coherent pattern of warming:
    It is likely that temperatures were relatively warm in the
    Northern Hemisphere as a whole during the earlier centuries
    of the millennium, but it is much less likely that a
    globally-synchronous, well defined interval of "Medieval
    warmth" existed, comparable to the near global warmth of the
    late 20th century... Marked warmth seems to have been confined
    to Europe and regions neighboring the North Atlantic.
    Since the MBH reconstructions were hemisphere-wide, and the
    MWP probably was not, it should not surprise us that the
    reconstructions lack a strong MWP (MBH99 does show slightly
    warmer temperatures in the 9th to 14th centuries than in the
    15th to 19th centuries).
    All available evidence indicates that the situation during the
    Middle Ages was fundamentally different that what is happening
    with climate today, which is a well-documented, globally
    coherent warming trend that is happening North, South, East,
    and West; at low latitudes and high latitudes; over land and
    over-and into-the sea. There are new data, published earlier
    this year, indicating that the atmosphere above Antarctica has
    warmed dramatically in recent decades (Turner et al. 2006).
    There is no large region on Earth where large-scale 20th century
    warming has not been detected, which simply cannot be said of
    the MWP.
    Wahl and Ammann (2006) have demonstrated that the results of
    MBH are robust "down in the weeds":
    Our examination does suggest that a slight modification to the
    original Mann et al. reconstruction is justifiable for the
    first half of the 15th century (~ +0.05�), which leaves entirely
    unaltered the primary conclusion of Mann et al. (as well as many
    other reconstructions) that both the 20th century upward trend
    and high late-20th century hemispheric surface temperatures are
    anomalous over at least the last 600 years.

    The NAS has affirmed the MBH results are also robust in the
    bigger picture, as well:
    The basic conclusion of MBH99 was that the late 20th century
    warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at
    least the last 1,000 years. This conclusion has subsequently
    been supported by an array of evidence that includes both
    additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions and
    pronounced changes in a variety of local proxy indicators,
    such as melting on icecaps and the retreat of glaciers around
    the world, which in many cases appear to be unprecedented
    during at least the last 2,000 years. Not all individual proxy
    records indicate that the recent warmth is unprecedented,
    although a larger fraction of geographically diverse sites
    experienced exceptional warmth during the late 20th century than
    during any other extended period from A.D. 900 onward. (p. 3)

    Examination of the IPCC reports through time, as well as the
    primary scientific literature, reveals why the MBH results are
    so robust-MBH simply assimilated all the available evidence into
    a quantitative reconstruction-evidence that had already been
    evaluated qualitatively as lacking a coherent MWP.
    This committee is seeking to know the significance of the
    criticisms leveled at the MBH reconstruction for climate change
    assessments. The significance is that these criticisms have
    resulted in the most thoroughly vetted single climate study in
    the history of climate change research. Dr. Tom Karl summarized
    the impact most succinctly in his testimony to this committee
    last week when he said that he would stand by the IPCC's
    original assessment:  "If you ask me to give qualifications
    about the findings in the 2001 report with the same caveat in
    terms of defining likelihood, I personally would not change
    anything." Hence, the impact of the MM critique, after being
    scrutinized by the NAS, the Wegman panel, and a number of
    meticulous individual research groups, is essentially nil with
    regard to the conclusions of MBH and the 2001 IPCC assessment.
    Also relevant to this committee's questions about climate
    change assessments is the revelation that climate scientists
    do know their business, and that a lack of knowledge of
    geophysics is a genuine handicap to those who would seek to
    provide what they deem "independent review." If the assessment
    of climate science presented in Mr. McIntyre's presentation to
    the NAS committee, the Wegman Report, and the WSJ is an example
    of what can be expected from those who have not conducted
    climate research, then the investigation launched by this
    committee has demonstrated clearly that "independent review"
    by non-climate scientists is an exceedingly ineffective way to
    make climate change assessments.

    References
    Mann, M E, R S Bradley and M K Hughes (1998). "Global-scale
    temperature patterns and climate forcing over the past six
    centuries." Nature 392(6678): 779-787.
    Mann, M E, R S Bradley and M K Hughes (1999). "Northern hemisphere
    temperatures during the past millennium: Inferences, uncertainties,
    and limitations." Geophysical Research Letters 26(6): 759-762.
    McIntyre, S and R McKitrick (2003). "Corrections to the Mann et
    al. (1998) proxy data base and northern hemisphere average
    temperature series." Energy & Environment 14(6): 751-771.
    McIntyre, S and R McKitrick (2005). "Hockey sticks, principal
    components, and spurious significance." Geophysical Research
    Letters 32(3).
    National Research Council, C O S T R F T L, 000 Years. (2006).
    "Surface temperature reconstructions for the last 2,000 years."
    from http://www.nap.edu/catalog/ 11676.html.
    Turner, J, T a Lachlan-Cope, S Colwell, et al. (2006).
    "Significant warming of the Antarctic winter troposphere."
    Science 311: 1914-1917.
    Wahl, E and C Ammann (In press). "Robustness of the Mann,
    Bradley, Hughes reconstruction of northern hemisphere surface
    temperatures:  Examination of criticisms based on the nature
    and processing of proxy climate evidence." Climatic Change
    (accepted).

    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Dr. Wegman, you are recognized for
    	5 minutes.
    DR. WEGMAN.  Thank you.  Good afternoon.  I would like to begin
    by summarizing our previous testimony.  Let me first begin by
    circumscribing the substance of our report.  As you know, we
    were asked to provide an independent verification by
    statisticians of the critiques of the statistical methodology
    found in the papers of Dr. Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley, and
    Malcolm Hughes, published respectively in Nature and Geophysical
    Review Letters.  These two papers have commonly been referred
    to MBH98 and 99.  The critiques have been made by Stephen
    McIntyre and Ross McKitrick published in Energy and Environment
    in 2003, and in that same journal and also in Geophysics Research
    Letters in 2005.  We refer to these as MM03, 05A, 05B, respectively.
    	We were also asked about the implications of our assessment.
    	We were not asked to assess the reality of global warming,
    	and indeed this is not an area of our expertise.  Our panel
    	was composed of myself from George Mason University,
    	Dr. David W. Scott from Rice University, and Yasmin Said,
    	Dr. Said, from the Johns Hopkins.  This ad hoc panel has
    	worked pro bono, has received no compensation, and has no
    	financial interest in the outcome.
    	The debate over Dr. Mann's principal components methodology
    	has been going on for nearly 3 years.  When we got involved,
    	there was no evidence that a single issue was resolved or
    	even nearing resolution.  Dr. Mann's RealClimate.org website
    	said that all of Mr. McIntyre and Dr. McKitrick claims had
    	been discredited.  UCAR had issued a news release saying that
    	all their claims were unfounded, by the way, based on the
    	Ammann paper just referred to.
    	The situation was ripe for a third party review of the types
    	that we and Dr. North's NRC panel have done.  Because of the
    	very high visibility of the original study, we see no harm
    	and much advantage of having two independent analyses of the
    	situation, from quite different perspectives.
    	While the two studies overlap on the important topic of
    	Mann's principal components methodology, Dr. North's NRC
    	panel considers topics that were outside the scope of our
    	study, such as other temperature reconstructions.  Where
    	we have commonality, I believe our report and the NRC
    	panel essentially agree.  The error in the use of principal
    	components methodology, the NRC panel reported under some
    	conditions, the leading principal component can exhibit a
    	spurious trend in the proxy-based reconstruction.
    	The NRC panel illustrated this with their own spurious
    	hockey stick in Figure 9-2 on page 87 of the report.  Our
    	explanation of this phenomenon was similar, the authors
    	make the seemingly innocuous and somewhat obscure
    	calibration assumption.  Because the instrumental temperature
    	records are only available for a limited window, they use
    	instrumental temperature data from 1902-1995 to calibrate
    	the proxy data set.  This would seem reasonable except for
    	the fact that temperatures were rising during this period.
    	So that centering on this period has the effect of making
    	the mean value for any proxy series exhibiting the same
    	increasing trend to be decentered low.
    	Because the proxy series exhibiting the rising trend are
    	decentered, the calculated variance will be larger than
    	their normal variance when calculated based on centered
    	data, and hence they will tend to be selected
    	preferentially as the first principal component.  The
    	centering of the proxy data is a critical factor in using
    	principal components methodology.
    	The effect of decentering was illustrated by us in
    	Figure 2, which is Figure 4.3 in our report.  The top panel
    	represents the North American Tree Ring PC1 as calculated
    	based on the MBH98 methodology.  The bottom panel illustrates
    	the PC1 based on the same set of tree ring proxies with the
    	centered PCA computation.  We believe that our discussion,
    	together with the discussion from the NRC report should take
    	the centering issue off the table.  The decentering
    	methodology is simply incorrect mathematics as was
    	illustrated in our Appendix A as well as with ample
    	simulation evidence in both our report and that of the
    	NRC report.
    	I am baffled by the claim that incorrect method doesn't
    	matter because the answer is correct anyway.  The method
    	wrong plus answer correct is just bad science.  But with
    	the centering issue off the table, the question then
    	shifts from principal component analysis to which proxies
    	exhibit the hockey stick shape and whether these proxies
    	contain valid temperature signals.  We agree with Dr. Mann
    	that the hockey stick shape is in some proxies.
    	Figure 4 is an image that I showed in our previous
    	testimony showing just six bristlecone pine proxies used
    	in the construction of the North American PC1 series.  The
    	hockey stick shapes are clearly visible in the last two
    	proxies.  Given our discussion, it is clear how the
    	decentering methodology will select these and give them
    	prominence in PC1.  So the question is are these valid
    	temperature proxies.  I quote from our report, "Graybill
    	and Idso, 1993, specifically sought to show that
    	bristlecone pines were CO2 fertilized.  Bondi et al.,
    	1999, suggest bristlecones are not reliable temperature
    	proxy for the last 150 years as it shows an increasing
    	trend in about 1850 that has been attributed to
    	atmospheric CO2 fertilization."  We also know that IPCC
    	1996 report stated that the possible confounding effects
    	of carbon dioxide fertilization need to be taken into
    	account when calibrating tree ring data against climate
    	variations.  At the very least, the effect of these
    	proxies on temperature reconstruction should be examined.
    	Figure 5 shows Dr. Mann's own illustration, MBH, Internet,
    	2003, of the direct effect of North American tree ring
    	data on reconstruction results in the 15th century.
    	Indeed, it is our understanding as outsiders that all
    	parties agree as to the significance of this tree ring
    	network to final results, and that has made the use of
    	the tree ring network a disputed issue as Mr. McIntyre has
    	just pointed out.
    	Figure 6 is also a repeat graphic from my previous
    	testimony.  Please note that the Bristlecone/Foxtail PC1
    	proxy is used not only in MBH, but in virtually every
    	subsequent reconstruction.  We do not claim to be experts
    	in dendrology either but it seems to us as outsiders that
    	there are sufficient confounding factors that proxies based
    	on bristlecones should be avoided.  We should add that we
    	were specifically asked to resolve the differences between
    	MPH98/99 and the McIntyre and McKitrick papers.  There is
    	a bewildering array of subsequent work that we were not
    	asked to consider, but which probably deserves much more
    	intense scrutiny.  We would include such refereed papers
    	as Rutherford et al., 2005, and Wahl and Ammann, 2006,
    	which are purported to be written by independent teams,
    	but which are co-authored by Dr. Mann himself in Rutherford
    	et al. and by Dr. Mann's student Dr. Ammann in Wahl and
    	Ammann.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Dr. Wegman, excuse me for interrupting.  You
    	are about 3 minutes over on the testimony, and we did hear
    	your testimony last week and we have it in the record.  And
    	we genuinely appreciate your being back here today, and I
    	am sure we will have some questions for you.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Thank you, sir.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  And you adequately covered last week also
    	the social network and which we appreciate very much.
    	[The prepared statement of Dr. Edward J. Wegman follows:]

    PREPARED STATEMENT OF DR. EDWARD J. WEGMAN, DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR
    COMPUTATIONAL STATISTICS

    Good morning. I would like to begin by summarizing our previous
    testimony. The debate over Dr. Mann's principal components
    methodology has been going on for nearly three years. When we got
    involved, there was no evidence that a single issue was resolved
    or even nearing resolution. Dr. Mann's RealClimate.org website
    said that all of the Mr. McIntyre and Dr. McKitrick claims had
    been "discredited". UCAR1 had issued a news release saying that
    all their claims were "unfounded". Mr. McIntyre replied on the
    ClimateAudit.org website. The climate science community seemed
    unable to either refute McIntyre's claims or accept them. The
    situation was ripe for a third-party review of the types that we
    and Dr. North's NRC panel have done. Because of the very high
    visibility of the original study, we see no harm and much
    advantage of having two independent analyses of the situation,
    from quite different perspectives.
    While the two studies overlap on the important topic of Mann's
    principal components methodology, the Dr. North's NRC panel
    considers topics that were outside the scope of our study, such
    as other temperature reconstructions. Where we have commonality,
    I believe our report and the NRC panel essentially agree. On the
    error in the use of principal components methodology, the NRC
    panel reported, "...under some conditions, the leading principal
    component can exhibit a spurious trend in the proxy-based
    reconstruction. To see how this can happen, suppose that instead
    of proxy climate data, one simply used a random sample of
    autocorrelated time series that did not contain a coherent signal.
    If these simulated proxies are standardized as anomalies with
    respect to a calibration period and used to form principal
    components, the first component tends to exhibit a trend, even
    though the proxies themselves have no common trend. Essentially,
    the first component tends to capture those proxies that, by
    chance, show different values between the calibration period and
    the remainder of the data."

    The NRC panel illustrated this with their own spurious hockey
    stick in Figure 9-2 on page 87. Our explanation of this
    phenomenon is similar. "... the authors make a seemingly innocuous
    and somewhat obscure calibration assumption. Because the
    instrumental temperature records are only available for a limited
    window, they use instrumental temperature data from 1902-1995 to
    calibrate the proxy data set. This would seem reasonable except
    for the fact that temperatures were rising during this period.
    So that centering on this period has the effect of making the
    mean value for any proxy series exhibiting the same increasing
    trend to be decentered low. Because the proxy series exhibiting
    the rising trend are decentered, the calculated variance will be
    larger than their normal variance when calculated based on
    centered data, and hence they will tend to be selected
    preferentially as the first principal component. ... The centering
    of the proxy series is a critical factor in using principal
    components methodology."

    The effect of decentering was illustrated by us in Figure 2, which
    is Figure 4.3 in our report. The top panel represents the North
    American Tree Ring PC1 as calculated based on the MBH98
    methodology. The bottom panel illustrates the PC1 based on the
    same set of tree ring proxies with the centered PCA computation.

    To illustrate that this spurious decentering effect is not limited
    to just hockey sticks we created an additional illustration based
    on the IPCC 1990 temperature curve. With 69 uncorrelated white
    noise proxies and one IPCC 1990 curve, it is clear that decentering
    can overwhelm the remaining proxies and preferentially select the
    one anomalous one.
    We believe that our discussion together with the discussion from
    the NRC report should take the "centering" issue off the table. The
    decentered methodology is simply incorrect mathematics as was
    illustrated in our Appendix A as well as with ample simulation
    evidence in both our report and that of the NRC report. I am baffled
    by the claim that the incorrect method doesn't matter because the
    answer is correct anyway. Method Wrong + Answer Correct = Bad Science.
    But with the centering issue off the table, the question then shifts
    from principal component analysis to which proxies exhibit the hockey
    stick shape and whether these proxies contain valid temperature
    signals. We agree with Dr. Mann that the hockey stick shape is in
    some proxies.

    Figure 4 is an image that I showed in our previous testimony showing
    just six sample Bristlecone pine proxies used in the construction of
    the North American PC1 series. The hockey stick shapes are clearly
    visible in the last two proxies. Given our discussion, it is clear
    how the decentering methodology will select these and give them
    prominence in PC1. Are these valid temperature proxies? I quote from
    our report, "Graybill and Idso (1993) specifically sought to show that
    Bristlecone Pines were CO2 fertilized. Bondi et al. (1999) suggest
    [Bristlecones] 'are not a reliable temperature proxy for the last
    150 years as it shows an increasing trend in about 1850 that has been
    attributed to atmospheric CO2 fertilization.' ... We also note that
    IPCC 1996 report stated that 'the possible confounding effects of
    carbon dioxide fertilization need to be taken into account when
    calibrating tree ring data against climate variations.'" At the very
    least, the effect of these proxies on temperature reconstruction
    should be examined.

    Figure 5 shows Dr. Mann's own illustration (MBH, Internet, 2003) of
    the direct effect of North American tree ring data on reconstruction
    results in the 15th century. Indeed, it is our understanding as
    outsiders that all parties agree as to the significance of this tree
    ring network to final results. And that has made the use of the tree
    ring network a disputed issue.

    Figure 6 is also a repeat graphic from my previous testimony. Please
    note that the Bristlecone/Foxtail PC1 proxy is used not only in MBH,
    but also in virtually every subsequent reconstruction. We do not
    claim to be experts in dendrology, but it seems to us as outsiders
    that there are sufficient confounding factors that proxies based on
    Bristlecones should be avoided. We should add that we were specifically
    asked to resolve the differences between MBH98/99 and MM03/05a/05b.
    There is a bewildering array of subsequent work that we were not asked
    to consider, but which probably deserves much more intense scrutiny. We
    would include such refereed papers as Rutherford et al. (2005) and Wahl
    and Ammann (2006), which are purported to be written by independent
    teams, but which are co-authored by Dr. Mann himself in Rutherford et
    al. and by Dr. Mann's student Dr. Ammann in Wahl and Ammann.

    Indeed, far from there being uniform agreement on the hockey stick
    shape, B�rger and Cubasch (2005) have reported that a discomforting
    array of different results can be obtained from MBH proxies under
    minor methodological differences. Figure 7 illustrates that while
    there may be reasonable consensus on warming since 1900, i.e. the
    calibration period, as the NRC report suggests, paleoclimate
    temperature reconstruction past 1600 is much more problematic.
    Indeed, on the matter of consensus, the NOAA website titled A Paleo
    Perspective ... on Global Warming has the following contradictory
    statements: "The latest peer-reviewed paleoclimatic studies appear
    to confirm that the global warmth of the 20th century may not
    necessarily be the warmest time in Earth's history, what is unique
    is that the warmth is global and cannot be explained by natural
    forcing mechanisms."
     From http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/paleobefore.html
    Also from the same website: "In summary, it appears that the 20th
    century, and in particular the late 20th century, is likely the
    warmest the Earth has seen in at least 1200 years."
    From http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/medieval.html

    We do agree with Dr. Mann on one key point: that MBH98/99 were not
    the only evidence of global warming. As we said in our report, "In
    a real sense the paleoclimate results of MBH98/99 are essentially
    irrelevant to the consensus on climate change. The instrumented
    temperature record since 1850 clearly indicates an increase in
    temperature." We certainly agree that modern global warming is
    real. We have never disputed this point. We think it is time to
    put the 'hockey stick' controversy behind us and move on.
    I would like to make it clear that our role as statisticians in
    the hockey stick game is not as players in the hockey game, but
    as referees. What we have seen and continue to see is that, not
    withstanding the efforts by Dr. Nychka and others at NCAR, there
    is relatively little interaction between the statistical community
    and the climate science/meteorology communities although the
    latter frequently use statistical techniques. Statisticians in
    general have to pay their mortgages just like everyone else and
    in general cannot afford to do pro bono work such as we have been
    doing. We advocated in our report that if statistical methods are
    being used, then statisticians ought to be funded partners engaged
    in the research to insure as best we possibly can that the best
    quality science is being done. Drs. Nychka and Bloomfield, the
    statisticians involved with the NRC report, raise other issues on
    calibration, validation, and full quantification of uncertainty in
    these studies. Indeed there are a host of fundamental statistical
    questions that beg answers in understanding climate dynamics.

    Sampling
    How were the 70 trees in NOAMER 1400 selected?
     4 Arkansas
     4 Arizona
     13 California
     12 Colorado
     3 Georgia
     1 Louisiana
     1 Montana
     1 North Carolina
     5 New Mexico
     14 Nevada
     3 Oregon
     1 South Dakota
     3 Utah
     1 Virginia
     4 Wyoming

    How representative are these trees of the population of trees
    that grew from 1400-2000? In terms of geography, altitude, and
    type. If these trees seemed "interesting" to various individuals
    who took the core samples, do you believe those trees can/should
    be treated as a "random sample"? Are there biases in the selection
    of these trees? Presumably many trees could not be sampled because
    they had died or been harvested. What is the effect of this
    "censoring" on your data (and your analysis)? Similar questions
    exist about ice cores and how representative such data might be.
    What are the effects of gas diffusion in the ice core layers?

    Analysis
    What is the correlation between temperature and tree ring growth?
    What calibration studies have been performed? The rescaling steps
    taken seem to suggest that the correlation must be near 100%. Is
    that the case? The temperature proxy search is a regression
    problem. Why did you choose to use principal components (not
    appropriate for finding a nonstationary mean)? What weights do you
    use to combine different proxy types? Why? If the data are not a
    random sample, then what confidence can be given to any modeling
    and to any "error bars"?

    Forecasting and Modeling
    CO2 modeling shows a rapid increase in the near term. What do the
    models show in the longer term? Given the apparent high
    correlation between CO2 and temperature in the model outputs, how
    direct is the link in the model itself? What is the difference
    between a true forecast and a "model run"? Do you believe your
    model runs have any statistical validity? The output looks like
    a Taylor series with no higher order terms?

    Planning Experiments
    What data should be collected that would be most cost-effective in
    increasing our understanding of the climatic models and the
    underlying physics (and statistics)? Is all data valuable? How does
    one avoid the desire to collect data at sites that appear
    "interesting" beforehand? What are the parallels between modern
    experimental science and experimental medical research of the 1960's?
    How many surgeons were "certain" their treatments were superior or
    that drugs were safe and found out otherwise with carefully designed
    and controlled studies? Is the risk of global warming so acute that
    such studies are deemed unwise?
    Our report is not aimed at criticizing Dr. Mann or his colleagues,
    but in outlining a path for doing the science better.  We note that
    the American Meteorological Society has a Committee on Probability
    and Statistics. I believe it is amazing for a committee whose focus
    is on statistics and probability that of the nine members only two
    are also members of the American Statistical Association, the premier
    statistical association in the United States, and one of those is a
    recent Ph.D. with an assistant professor appointment in a medical
    school. The American Meteorological Association recently held the
    18th Conference on Probability and Statistics in the Atmospheric
    Sciences (January, 2006). Of the 62 presenters at a conference with
    a focus on statistics and probability, only 8 (12.9%) are members of
    the American Statistical Association. I believe these two communities
    should be more engaged and if nothing else our report should highlight
    to both communities a need for additional cross-disciplinary ties.

    	MR. WHITFIELD.  So at this time I will start off the questions,
    	and I would direct my first question to Dr. Mann and
    	Dr. Christy and Dr. Cicerone.  If you look at the 1990 U.N.
    	report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, it
    	is quite pronounced the so-called Medieval Warming Period.
    	And so the first question I would ask was there a Medieval
    	Warming Period, Dr. Mann?
    	DR. MANN.  Let me tackle that first.  Actually the graphic
    	you are referring to in the 1990 report was not an actual
    	numerical estimate.  It was a schematic based on very limited
    	evidence in some parts of the globe, and that was actually
    	emphasized in the report that they based that schematic on very
    	limited information.  Another interesting thing about that
    	plot is that it actually ends in 1975.  Now there has been
    	roughly .5 degrees C of additional warming in the climate in
    	the Northern Hemisphere since 1975.  And if you superimpose--
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  How much since then?
    	DR. MANN.  Point 5 degrees C additional warming since 1975.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Point 5 degrees.  Okay.
    	DR. MANN.  Yes.  So if you superimpose that on the end of
    	that 1990 curve where it stops in 1975 actually the modern
    	warmth is above the medieval peak.  So it actually reinforces
    	the later conclusions shown in the 1996 report and the 2001
    	report.
    	But we have learned a lot since then.  For example, we know
    	that the so-called Medieval Warm Period was actually fairly
    	cold in the tropical Pacific.  There is coral data that tell
    	us that it was a La Nina like period.  Now that means that
    	there were large parts of the global surface that were cold
    	at that time.  As we learn more about the regional detail,
    	we realize that it is incorrect to simply label that period
    	as the Medieval Warm Period, and that is why most scientists
    	now call it the Medieval Climate Anomaly.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Okay.  Dr. Christy, would you make comment
    	about it?
    	DR. CHRISTY.  Yes.  Regarding the 1990 picture--
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  The Medieval Warming Period.
    	DR. CHRISTY.  Some places were obviously warm, other places
    	weren't, and it is one that doesn't look like it has a warm
    	period at that time but there were other places that were
    	warmer than today, I think.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Okay.  And Dr. Cicerone.
    	DR. CICERONE.  I have nothing to add.  I went back and looked
    	at the cartoon after last week's hearing and read all the
    	surrounding pages and I have nothing to add.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Okay.  Now Mr.--
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Mr. Whitfield, could I--
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Yes, sir.  Yes, sir.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Why do we call that a cartoon and these
    	others something different?  I know the methodology is
    	different but I would assume that the 1990 graphic was based
    	on some mathematical evidence.  It may not have been as
    	complicated with as many variables as Dr. Mann's later work,
    	but I don't think they just pulled that out of the air, did
    	they?
    	DR. MANN.  Let me comment.  Actually it is a schematic.  It
    	is a cartoon.  It was not a numerical estimate.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  They threw spaghetti up on the wall and
    	wherever it stuck is what they put in the chart.
    	DR. MANN.  Guided by some qualitative interpretations of
    	historical climate records in a few locations in the Northern
    	Hemisphere.  It was not a quantitative estimate of climate.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  There is no averaging, there is no data to
    	back it up?
    	DR. MANN.  There is no numerical estimate that I am familiar
    	with that went into that calculation that went into that
    	graphic.  There was no calculation.
    	DR. GULLEDGE.  Mr. Barton, I have some--if you please.  I
    	actually spoke to some scientists who a couple have actually
    	retired now who were involved in a 1975 NAS report on climate
    	change that actually used a figure like this.  And I spoke to
    	Dr. Tom Webb who remembers the development of this figure and
    	it actually originated from somebody's lecture notes at one
    	time from the early '70s.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  There is no data set?
    	DR. GULLEDGE.  That is correct.  There is no data set that is
    	used in the production of this plot.  There were studies where
    	they said it looks like the north Atlantic was warm.  There
    	are studies that say China was cold.  You know, we are
    	proposing that there may have been a warm period in the Middle
    	Ages, and to quote from the 1990 IPCC report in reference to
    	this figure it says specifically, "It is still not clear
    	whether all the fluctuations indicated in the diagram were
    	truly global."  And that is directly from the report referring
    	to this diagram.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Thank you, Mr. Whitfield.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Yes, sir.  Just referring to Mr. Inslee's chart
    	about CO2 concentration levels and temperatures going back
    	400,000 years, it is constantly up and down, constantly up and
    	down.  Now is that something that we normally expect that CO2
    	emissions constantly go up and down for 400,000 years?  Would
    	someone reply to that?
    	DR. CICERONE.  May I respond?
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Yes, sir.
    	DR. CICERONE.  The CO2 data comes from extracting gas
    	dissolved in ice as was explained last week.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  And where is the Vostock ice core, where is
    	that?
    	DR. CICERONE.  It is at a particular region in Antarctica
    	where the ice is so thick that you can actually go back that
    	many years and do reasonable dating.  It doesn't mean that
    	every year is exactly one year but it is pretty good resolution
    	so they crush the ice or melt it.  The problem with melting is
    	some of the gas can dissolve in liquid so probably the safest
    	technique is to crush the ice and extract the air.  The CO2
    	record is absolutely quantitative.  It shows that through the
    	last four ice ages if you go back to 650 or 700,000 years when
    	the Earth was cold the CO2 amounts were low.
    	When the Earth was warm in between the ice ages the CO2 got
    	higher, and the range was about 180 to 280 parts per million.
    	Those are the natural cycles of the Earth.  People have tried
    	very hard to say did the CO2 increase cause the warming or the
    	cooling or did the warming and cooling cause the CO2.  The only
    	evidence that seems clear is that there were times when the
    	warming preceded the CO2 and the cooling preceded the loss in
    	CO2 but they are nearly linked in time.  So people are
    	scratching their heads, what are the feedbacks that cause this?
    	How did these ice ages start?  What triggered them?  How do we
    	get out of them?
    	Methane amounts also track perfectly.  When Earth was warm
    	methane was two-thirds of a part per million.  When it was
    	cold it was one third of a part per million.  Now we are at
    	five-thirds of a part per million so we are out of that range.
    	That is about all I can say.  So the biological process that
    	release CO2 and methane were probably responsible.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  So it is continually going up and down.  Would
    	you anticipate that it would go down at some point in the
    	future or do you feel like it is going to continue to go up?
    	DR. CICERONE.  Well, the CO2 that is in the air now is 385
    	parts per million, which is 200 parts per million larger than
    	the 180 minimum at cold times and 100 larger than the CO2
    	maximum at hot times.  It is going to take 200 years for that
    	CO2--if we quit putting CO2 in the atmosphere today and all
    	the plants decomposed, it would take a couple hundred years
    	for the CO2 to fall back to that region.  It is not going to
    	happen.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  And what percent of all the CO2 being emitted
    	today would you say is man-made and what percent is natural?
    	DR. CICERONE.  Well, the decay in biota and respiration and
    	geological processes put 100 gigatons of CO2 carbon in the
    	air each year.  Combustion of fossil fuels puts in 6 or 7.
    	So the natural inputs are larger by far but the equilibrium
    	of the system as established as Professor North mentioned last
    	week is the processes that suck it up are about 100, so the
    	imbalance is the 6 or 7 and about half of that shows up in
    	the air and the other half seems to go in the oceans every
    	year.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  But the natural emissions are overwhelmingly
    	larger than man made but the man-made part is what messes up
    	the equilibrium.
    	DR. CICERONE.  Well, numerically they are overwhelmingly
    	larger but the atmosphere seems to think otherwise because
    	the atmosphere is responding to the increase.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Right.  Now, Dr. Christy, you have done some
    	work on satellites, observations of the Earth's surface, and
    	I read a book a number of years ago entitled "A Moment on the
    	Earth" by a guy named Greg Easterbrook, and there was some
    	part of that where he talked a lot about the satellites were
    	not--the models being used to project global warming and the
    	satellite observations were not in sync.  I am sure I am not
    	expressing it in the proper scientific way but hopefully you
    	may know what I am referring to.
    	And I know that some of the work that you did, you received a
    	lot of criticism or not criticism, but people were taking
    	shots at you also because you had an error in your work
    	relating to satellites and you were off like .035 percent of
    	one degree or something.  But would you elaborate a little bit
    	about the satellite observations today and how that matches up
    	with the global warming that we hear about from a scientific
    	standpoint?
    	DR. CHRISTY.  Yeah, it is curious.  I have a couple papers
    	coming out this year, in fact, in which we show that the
    	evidence indicates the atmosphere is not warming as fast as
    	it is typically thought from enhanced greenhouse gases
    	particularly in the tropics, so that is the short answer.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Okay.  And these papers will be coming out
    	when?
    	DR. CHRISTY.  I turned the page proofs back for one yesterday
    	so it is probably a couple months.  The other one will
    	probably be about 3 months.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Okay.  My time has expired.  Mr. Stupak.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Mr. Chairman, as a courtesy to Mr. Waxman I am
    	going to yield my time to Mr. Waxman, and I will assume his
    	time when his time comes.
    	MR. WAXMAN.  Thank you very much, Mr. Stupak.  Mr. Chairman,
    	it is interesting that you are citing Gregg Easterbrook as
    	someone who in the past had been a skeptic, and he recently
    	wrote where he said "as an environmental commentator, I have
    	a long record of opposing alarmism.  But based on the data I
    	am now switching sides regarding global warming, from skeptic
    	to convert."
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Well, I mentioned his name so you could bring
    	that up, Mr. Waxman.
    	MR. WAXMAN.  All right.  Dr. Mann, your work was extensively
    	criticized by Dr. Wegman last week.  He criticized certain
    	statistical aspects of your work and provided testimony on
    	global warming more generally.  However, Dr. Wegman isn't a
    	climatologist, and I would like to give you the opportunity
    	to respond to some of his statements from last week's hearing.
    	He stated, "Carbon dioxide is heavier than air." And "if the
    	carbon dioxide is close to the surface of the Earth it is
    	not reflecting a lot of infrared back."  Would you care to
    	respond to that statement?
    	DR. MANN.  Yes.  It is a somewhat problematic statement on
    	a couple levels.  First of all, of course the greenhouse
    	effect is not based on the reflection of radiation, it is
    	based on the absorption of outgoing radiation. Rather than
    	escaping to space it is radiated back towards the surface
    	and the surface has to warm up in response to that.  So
    	reflections isn't involved at all.  It is the process of
    	absorption, selective absorption.
    	The other problem with that statement is that the well
    	mixed atmospheric constituents, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon
    	dioxide, their distribution, their vertical distribution
    	in the atmosphere doesn't have to do with their weight or
    	their relative masses.  It just has to do with the basic
    	force balances that act in the atmosphere.  There is gravity
    	and then there are gradients due to the pressure of the
    	atmosphere and these two things have to balance out.  And it
    	turns out that all of the well-mixed gases decay with the
    	same vertical profile falling to about one-third of their
    	surface concentration at roughly eight kilometers up in the
    	atmosphere.  And that is true for CO2 as well as oxygen.
    	MR. WAXMAN.  I thought that at the time, and I am glad to
    	hear your response because I knew there was something wrong
    	with that statement.  When Dr. Wegman was asked about your
    	research since 1999 he stated that you had circled your
    	wagons "and tried to defend this incorrect methodology."  I
    	would like to know if this is true.  Did you continue to
    	use the same methodology or have you worked to improve your
    	approach since 1998?
    	DR. MANN.  Thanks for the question.  It is another troubling
    	statement that you quote there because of course my
    	collaborators and I have far from circling our wagons, we
    	have been spearheading efforts to develop more sophisticated
    	statistical methodologies for reconstructing climate and
    	rigorously testing those methods using climate model
    	simulation.  We published a number of papers that show that
    	the methods we used performed very well in the context of
    	climate model simulations where we know the answer.  We
    	don't have to guess because we have the simulation.  There
    	were some other statements--
    	MR. WAXMAN.  Well, let me asks you about some of the other
    	statements because he attempted to impeach your statistical
    	background by complaining that you used non-standard
    	statistical phrases in your research like "statistical
    	skill."  Can you help us understand?  Is this an unusual
    	phrase as Dr. Wegman suggests?
    	DR. MANN.  That was another very odd statement on his part,
    	and I found his lack of familiarity with that term somewhat
    	astonishing.  The American Meteorological Society considers
    	it such an important term in the context of statistical
    	weather forecasting verification that they specifically
    	define that term on their website and in their official
    	literature.  And in fact it is defined by the American
    	Meteorological Society in the following manner: "A
    	statistical evaluation of the accuracy of forecasts or the
    	effectiveness of detection techniques."  Several simple
    	formulations are commonly used in meteorology.  The skill
    	score is useful for evaluating predictions of temperatures,
    	pressures, et cetera, et cetera, so I was very surprised
    	by that statement.
    	MR. WAXMAN.  Dr. Wegman testified he thought global
    	warming "is probably less urgent than some would have it
    	be."  He also discounted the impact of increasing the
    	planet's temperature by 2 degrees testifying that he would
    	"challenge anybody to go out and tell the difference
    	between 72 and 74 degrees Fahrenheit."  Dr. Mann, the
    	impacts of climate changes are a well studied area.  Does
    	Dr. Wegman have any basis for being so cavalier about
    	global warming?
    	DR. MANN.  Well, just to provide some context.  The
    	difference between the height of the last glacial period
    	when there was more than a kilometer of ice sitting above
    	New York City global temperatures were probably only about
    	4 degrees colder than they are today so that gives you
    	some idea of the dramatic nature of climate associated
    	with fairly moderate changes in global mean temperature.
    	Those changes in global mean temperature are often
    	associated with much larger changes in certain very
    	important regions like the Arctic where the warming over
    	the last century is much greater than the global mean,
    	and we have seen melting of perma frost and other impacts
    	of that.
    	MR. WAXMAN.  He also said that global warming "must be
    	understood in the context which is that we have relatively
    	speaking a Little Ice Age, which everybody seems to
    	acknowledge, and so it is not so surprising that it is
    	warming if we are coming out of a Little Ice Age."  Does
    	Dr. Wegman's statement accurately reflect the scientific
    	consensus?
    	DR. MANN.  No.  In fact, the implications are just about
    	the opposite of what he had stated.  In fact, we know with
    	the climate models that we have today that embody the
    	basic physics of the atmosphere and the ocean and the
    	interactions between them, actually we can describe, we
    	can predict and explain the factors that underlied the
    	Little Ice Age and the fact that certain regions like
    	Europe cooled somewhat more dramatically than the rest of
    	the globe some time between the 17th and 19th Century.
    	It turns out that that is the response of the climate to
    	the changes in natural factors like explosive volcanic
    	eruptions and small changes in solar radiants that were
    	relevant to the past.  Those same models that so successfully
    	describe the Little Ice Age tell us that there is no way to
    	explain the warming of the last century without the influence
    	of human beings on concentration of greenhouse gases in the
    	atmosphere.
    	MR. WAXMAN.  So I shouldn't be nostalgic for that Little Ice
    	Age.
    	DR. MANN.  Perhaps not.
    	MR. WAXMAN.  Did Dr. Wegman ever contact you to talk about
    	your work or ask for any further explanation from you about it?
    	DR. MANN.  No.
    	MR. WAXMAN.  Some have criticized you for lack of willingness
    	to disclose your data and computer code.  Could you briefly
    	tell us how you have handled the availability of your research?
    	DR. MANN.  Well, first of all I would like to draw a
    	distinction between data and code.  The statement was made
    	earlier here that I didn't make my data available until 2004,
    	and that is simply incorrect.  Our entire data set was
    	available on the worldwide web several years before that.  Now
    	a code, well, that is a different sort of thing.  It is a
    	matter of intellectual property because it takes a lot of work
    	to implement the algorithm that one might be using to perform
    	a certain sort of operation, but as long as the algorithm is
    	available then other people can independently reproduce your
    	work without having the actual physical code.
    	And, in fact, that is what Dr. Wahl and Dr. Ammann have shown.
    	They have independently implemented our algorithm in a
    	different programming language that is available to anybody
    	who wants to go to their website to access it.  As a matter
    	of fact, over the past few years we have been making all of
    	our codes available for all of the calculations that we do,
    	and that is actually a standard that many others in our
    	community, the climate research community, haven't really
    	followed, so we are sort of leading the way there.
    	MR. WAXMAN.  Thank you.  I want to ask Dr. Christy about this
    	because you stated that you provided your computer code to
    	other researchers when it has been requested, and you
    	specifically mentioned providing your code to Remote Sensing
    	Systems or RSS.  Is that accurate?
    	DR. CHRISTY.  We provide the part of the code that was in
    	question.
    	MR. WAXMAN.  Well, I contacted RSS about your testimony and
    	Mr. Frank Wentz sent me a letter last night, and he wrote to
    	say, "Dr. Christy has never been willing to share his
    	computer code in a substantial way," and he provides the text
    	of a 2002 e-mail exchange between RSS and yourself.  And
    	according to this letter when asked for your code, you replied
    	"I don't see how sharing code would be helpful because there
    	are at least seven programs that are executed (several
    	thousands lines of code) and we would be forced to spend a
    	considerable amount of time trying to explain coding issues
    	of the spaghetti we wrote."  In light of this letter,
    	Dr. Christy, I would be interested if you care to clarify your
    	testimony because Mr. Wentz wrote further, "I think the
    	complexity issue was a red herring.  My interpretation of
    	Dr. Christy's response is he simply didn't want us looking over
    	his shoulder, possibly discovering errors in his work.  So we
    	had to take a more tedious trial-and-error approach to
    	uncovering the errors in his methods."
    	And then he went on to explain "RSS manages data software from
    	a large array of climate satellites."  What do you say about
    	that?  That sounds inconsistent with what you have told us.
    	DR. CHRISTY.  We shared with them the parts of the code that
    	they were most concerned about.  What is called the drift
    	effect was one of them.  Because ours were machine dependent
    	and so on like that but we did share not only that but we
    	also shared the intermediate data to say, okay, if you
    	implement this code this is the intermediate data you should
    	get, and that is what they published.
    	MR. WAXMAN.  I must say I am a politician as all the people
    	here at our dais are and all of us engage in politics as we
    	know it, but here is a session with scientists, and you went
    	ahead and attacked Dr. Mann, who is an accomplished and
    	respected climate researcher.  I think you and Dr. Wegman
    	attempted to smear his good name.  Now I just got a letter
    	from another person--
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  The gentleman's time has expired.
    	MR. WAXMAN.  --in your field who says that you haven't been
    	forthcoming, so I just want to point out to all of you, we
    	don't do the back biting as frequently as it seems to me that
    	some of you scientists seem to do to each other.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  But Dr. Christy did say that he shared part of
    	the code that he asked for.
    	DR. CHRISTY.  Yes.  They got what they wanted.
    	MR. WAXMAN.  May I ask unanimous consent to put the letter
    	from Dr. Wentz in the record?
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Without objection.
    	MR. STEARNS.  I would object, Mr. Chairman.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Okay.  Objection.
    	MR. STEARNS.  I object just because I think staff should have
    	an opportunity to see the letter first.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Okay.
    	MR. WAXMAN.  I certainly would share it with staff.  Assuming
    	staff sees no objection from the letter that I received last
    	night, I would like to--
    	MR. STEARNS.  Mr. Chairman, you remember last time that I asked
    	a letter to be submitted to the record and they objected until
    	they saw it--
    	MR. STUPAK.  But we put the letter in.
    	MR. STEARNS.  I know, but I produced a letter for the gentleman.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  If I could have order a minute.  We will look at
    	the letter.  We will have staff look at the letter.  In the
    	meantime I recognize the Chairman of the full committee for
    	10 minutes.
    	[The information follows:]

    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  We are about truth, and my guess is
    	Mr. Waxman's letter helps the truth so we will almost
    	certainly put that in the record.  Dr. Mann, I read your
    	prepared testimony and I have listened to your synopsis, and
    	you said something that I didn't see in the prepared testimony.
    	Maybe it was there.  You talked about scientists trying to
    	make certain they don't make categorical statements.  I don't
    	know exactly but it sounded, to coin a phrase, plausible what
    	you said.  Now in our opening statements my friends on the
    	other side, and they really are my friends.  We get along a
    	lot better off camera than we do on camera.
    	Their opening statements seem pretty categorical to me.
    	Their minds seem to me to be pretty made up, that this is a
    	major problem and it is time to stop foot dragging and let's get
    	on and fix it.  I don't quite have that religion yet.  I haven't
    	been born again quite yet.  And that is what this is all about.
    	If in fact all these things that my friends, Mr. Inslee and
    	Ms. Schakowsky and Mr. Waxman, believe so fervently are
    	literally factually true without question then we need to move
    	to problem solution.
    	But I look at these data sets, I look at these data points, I
    	look at these theories and things, and I see a sign curve
    	phenomenon where the Earth gets warmer, the Earth gets cooler,
    	the Earth gets warmer the Earth gets cooler.  It certainly
    	appears that it is getting warmer faster in this century.  It
    	is certainly plausible that it has got to be partially caused
    	by man-made emissions.  But I think it is a little early to
    	categorically make some of the statements that my friends on
    	the Minority side are making.
    	And the reason that we asked you to try to provide your data
    	sets and your codes and stuff is because yours was the very
    	first one and it is referred to.  Now there may be a hundred
    	since then and maybe we ought to look at all hundred of them
    	, but yours is the one even in the National--the science
    	review--Research Council review.  It talks about that in the
    	executive summary. So do you feel--from everything I can
    	find out about you is that you are a very fine person and an
    	excellent scientist and totally dedicated to your work, but
    	do you think it is fair to ask you to try to let other people
    	verify that first study since it seemed to have such an
    	impact on the community?
    	DR. MANN.  Well, no, I don't think it is unfair at all to
    	expect the scientific community to validate previous results
    	and to refine them, and that process has been occurring over
    	the past 10 years since our work was begun.  I think the
    	National Academy members at their press conference said
    	something to the effect that they felt that the scientific
    	process had worked quite well in this area in that methods
    	have been refined, new proxy data have become available.
    	Multiple estimates are now available where there were three
    	at the time of the IPCC 2001 report.  There are now more
    	than a dozen different estimates.  There are also independent
    	model simulations--
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  You don't think it is unfair to have a
    	little scrutiny to the--if it is a conclusion, anybody has a
    	right to a conclusion and an opinion but when it gets into
    	the mainstream that it is just a given that is what I take a
    	little exception to even today.  Now I want to ask a
    	follow-up question.  Dr. Wegman said when he tried to get
    	enough information to try to verify the model, verify the
    	algorithm, he says he had some trouble getting that.  Now you
    	talked about codes and algorithms.  What is the difference,
    	and I am not a statistician and I am not a climatologist or a
    	paleoclimatologist.  What is the difference between a code
    	and an algorithm?
    	DR. MANN.  Okay.  Let me try to use an analogy.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Use a simple one.
    	DR. MANN.  I will do my best.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  The simpler, the better.
    	DR. MANN.  Well, let's think of an algorithm is--suppose you
    	were trying to build a house.  And you wanted to build a house
    	and the data would be the materials you need to build the
    	house, the nails, the wood, et cetera.  The algorithm would be
    	the architectural plan.  Now what would the code be?  Well,
    	imagine that instead of builders you had a computer to make your
    	house for you.  Well, the code would be implementing the
    	architectural plan by telling the computer to pick up the
    	hammer, pick up the nail, hammer it in.  And so the code is
    	simply implementing the algorithm but the real scientific
    	process is embodied within the algorithm, and the algorithm is
    	what has been independently reproduced.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  What is proprietary about a formula or
    	mathematical model that tries to compute something as
    	gargantuan as world climate over 2,000 years?  I don't see
    	anybody making any money on that.  I mean if you put it out
    	there and said this is what is happening and try to predict
    	the future, why should that not all be made available in some
    	public way that independent reviewers can try to replicate it?
    	DR. MANN.  Well, let me preface this by putting out that we
    	now as a matter of course do make available our codes that we
    	have written to implement these different methods and so the
    	Rutherford et al. paper that was shown earlier reproduces
    	essentially the original reconstruction, that entire code can
    	be downloaded from our website.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  If we asked, which we are going to, asked
    	Dr. Cicerone--we are going to ask him to review some of these
    	recommendations that Mr. McIntyre and Dr. Wegman and others
    	have made, but one of them is going to be that because the
    	stakes are so big and the consequences are so big that these
    	models and data sets and things be made available in some way
    	that they can be verified.  Do you have a problem with that?
    	DR. MANN.  No.  I think this is a bigger question than one
    	that should be asked of me.   There are bigger questions about
    	intellectual property rights, and people--the scientific
    	community and the policy makers need to work that out, what
    	is the balance between making sure that scientists are
    	allowed to write a code, spend a whole lot of time doing it
    	and be able to implement it and use it without immediately
    	having to turn it over to somebody else who suddenly then
    	gets all of their intellectual contributions over a several
    	year period.  So I think there is a balance there.  I don't
    	disagree with the premise of what you are saying.
    	And I think there is the issue that Dr. Christy brought up
    	earlier, if you take, for example, our 1998 work, well, that
    	was a program, I think you alluded to this last week, it was
    	written in Fortran and a fairly--
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  I was stunned to know that that program
    	was still in existence.
    	DR. MANN.  It is still more widespread than you might think
    	actually.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  What generation is it now because I was
    	up to Fortran 4.
    	DR. MANN.  It was 90 and then--and we were back in F77,
    	Fortran 77 is what we wrote this program in.  So there is the
    	issue of platform dependence.  And now we are getting away
    	from that.  For example, we write all of our codes now in MAT
    	Lab, which is a portable programming language and anybody who
    	has MAT Lab can implement it.  And that is the direction
    	things are moving but to apply the standard to work that was
    	done 10 years ago may be unfair because the standards have
    	changed.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Dr. Christy, I read your testimony, and I
    	want to compliment you on its preparation and your
    	forthrightness.  On page 11 you talk about, in the second
    	paragraph, that the issue of climate model evaluation has
    	been performed mostly by the modelers themselves.  It is
    	my view, this is you speaking here, and recommendation that
    	policy makers would learn much from independent hard-nosed
    	assessments of these model simulations by those who are not
    	directly vested in the outcome.  Some of this is going on
    	but the level of support is minimal.  Do you still stand by
    	that?
    	DR. CHRISTY.  Yes, I do.  I think probably any scientific
    	endeavor could stand with independent eyes looking over it.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Dr. Cicerone, do you agree with that
    	statement?
    	DR. CICERONE.  The more the merrier.  I have done a lot of
    	mathematical modeling maybe 15 or 20 years ago, and I
    	remember efforts to try to compare models where
    	unfortunately what happened was everybody said, well,
    	let's put the same assumptions in the models and see how
    	they do.  And I think it worked against the science because
    	it created less independence.  So to do this kind of
    	exercise I think we have to take everything into account but
    	generally it is a good idea in my opinion.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  I know I am over time.  I want to read one
    	more paragraph in Dr. Christy's testimony because it kind of
    	encapsulates the policy dilemma that we are faced with and
    	ask the panel to comment on it.  And I am quoting, "To
    	understand the scale of what we are dealing with this serves
    	as a rough example.  We know that we on Earth benefit from
    	10 terawatts of energy production today.  To achieve a
    	reduction of the CO2 representing 10 percent, 1 terawatt, of
    	that production we need 1,000 nuclear power plants at 1,000
    	megawatts each.  Massive implementation of wind and solar
    	does not achieve this result and would not provide the
    	baseload power needed by the economies today in any case.
    	Thus, to have a 10 percent impact on emissions from energy,
    	that is growing at the same time, will require a tremendous
    	and difficult and expensive restructuring of energy supplies."
    	So even if we accept the problem and move to solution to get
    	a 10 percent reduction in CO2 takes 1,000 megawatt nuclear
    	power plants and it probably doesn't have any impact for 50
    	to 100 years.  Do you all want to comment on that, anybody,
    	other than Dr. Christy, which you can.  It is your statement.
    	DR. CHRISTY.  I would just say the energy committee is where
    	a lot of this is going to be done and that is just to give
    	you an idea of the scale of what you are going to be
    	tackling, I think, in the next few years.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  That is why I am still a skeptic.  I don't
    	want to jump in there especially if this is a naturally
    	reoccurring phenomenon that is exacerbated by human emissions
    	but it is going to happen regardless of what we do.
    	Dr. Cicerone.
    	DR. CICERONE.  The numbers that you just summarized from
    	Dr. Christy are really intimidating.  I agree with you.  I
    	would like to see us all get together with the elements of a
    	win-win strategy.  There are some actions we can take as
    	first steps, I think, which are truly win-win, and they have
    	to do with energy efficiency.  Just look at it from the
    	United States point of view.  If we could decrease our
    	dependence on foreign energy we would improve national
    	security, we would decrease the trade deficit, we would, I
    	think, stabilize geo politics a little, we would increase
    	national competitiveness by making our manufactured products
    	cheaper.
    	When energy prices are high you know better than I our
    	manufactured products have to bear that increase.  We could
    	develop new products which would create new world markets
    	and we could be leaders.  We would decrease the energy costs
    	for households and incidentally slow down the emissions of
    	CO2.  So I think we need a win-win strategy and we can take
    	a bite out of that 1,000 gigawatts with energy efficiency.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  My time has more than expired so I
    	apologize.  Thank you all for being here.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  I recognize Mr. Stupak of Michigan.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Thank you.  We were talking about that Fortran
    	4 program, and I was just wondering was that during the
    	Medieval Warming Period we have been talking about?  If I
    	may, Mr. Chairman, when I gave my opening statement I had a
    	couple of exhibits.  I should have asked at that time that
    	they be made part of the record with my opening statement.
    	It is the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance that I mentioned
    	and how they were funded by ExxonMobil, so if I may without
    	objection put that as part of my opening statement.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  And we have a copy of it.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Yes.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Thank you.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Dr. Cicerone, just speaking of the Medieval
    	Warming Period as it was described in the Wall Street
    	Journal.  We talked a little bit about it earlier.  In
    	fact, are we even sure that even happened in the Northern
    	Hemisphere, that Medieval Warming Period that the Wall
    	Street Journal talked about, that was that chart there,
    	the 1990 chart that we had some discussion about earlier.
    	DR. CICERONE.  I am sorry.  Were you addressing that to
    	me, sir?
    	MR. STUPAK.  Yes, sir.
    	DR. CICERONE.  Okay.  There were certainly records of
    	warm places in that period of time.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Warm places and cold places.
    	DR. CICERONE.  The question continues to be how extensive
    	was it, how long did it last, and how solid is the
    	evidence.  But, yes, there is evidence of a Medieval Warm
    	Period, but no one can sit here and tell you how
    	geographically extensive it was with strong evidence and
    	how long it lasted.  But, yes, there was a Medieval Warm
    	Period.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Dr. Crowley says that even though it was
    	difficult to unequivocally assert that the current warming
    	period is significantly greater than the peak warmth of
    	the Medieval Warm Period there is even less justification
    	for saying that the medieval period was warmer than it
    	is today, is that correct?
    	DR. CICERONE.  The committee that Professor North
    	reported on, Professor North from Texas A&M, last week
    	representing the National Research Council, I am pretty
    	sure what they concluded was there was no evidence that
    	that period was warmer than say the year--the decade of
    	the 1990s through 2006.
    	MR. STUPAK.  But were considerably warmer?
    	DR. CICERONE.  They could not say with strong evidence
    	that each year in the 1990s was warmer than then but there
    	was no evidence that the Medieval Warm Period over an
    	extensive geographical region was as warm as the Northern
    	Hemisphere is now.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Is it fair to say then that neither the
    	pro-hockey stick researchers or the anti-hockey stick
    	researchers can talk with scientific certainty about this
    	medieval period, would that be correct?
    	DR. CICERONE.  In certain locations they can where there
    	were records kept, but the question again is how does one
    	location compare with all the others.  For example, some
    	proxy indicators from China inferred what the temperatures
    	were from agricultural crops and stream flows and so
    	forth, which are pretty extensive, but it is hard to
    	compare the timing of those with other strong proxies
    	from elsewhere.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Let me ask you this question then.  This is the
    	second hearing we have had on this hockey stick theory, but
    	you were on the National Academy of Science panel that looked
    	at these studies.  Are you telling us basically forget the
    	hockey stick and the Medieval Warm Period, it is a
    	diversion?  Is it your position that global warming is
    	occurring now in the 20th and 21st Century?  Human beings are
    	at least partially responsible.  Our climate will continue to
    	change during the next century and we ought to pay attention
    	to it today.  Is that fair to say?
    	DR. CICERONE.  Well, I wouldn't say forget the hockey stick
    	and efforts to reconstruct because what we can learn, and if
    	we work harder we might be able to learn some more about the
    	context, it is still important, but, yes, all the other
    	evidence shows us that the climate is changing and that the
    	human hand is there causing at least part of the warming and
    	that everything we know from physics and chemistry and
    	mathematics is that it is going to continue as long as we
    	continue to load up the atmosphere with greenhouse gases.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Do you think it is useful then, Doctor, for us
    	policy makers to hold hearings on just one 8-year old study,
    	Dr. Mann's study, that your committee found was not even the
    	principal evidence for the conclusion about current warming
    	period?
    	DR. CICERONE.  I hope that it has been useful.  I have
    	never seen this kind of interest before.  I think a couple--
    	I have forgotten who said it earlier on about that this
    	could be--perhaps it was Mr. Bass, who said this could be
    	the beginning of even more serious interest.  So I guess I
    	will wait and see what happens.
    	MR. STUPAK.  If there is so much interest in this one and if
    	in the Vice President's book he talks about 928 more peer
    	reviewed articles, so that means if we have two hearings for
    	every one of these we would have about 1,800 hearings just
    	on global warming.  I guess that would be a sufficient
    	amount to get everyone's attention.  Let me ask this
    	question if I can.  There has been a lot of discussion about
    	social networking, and I think it is a practice that is not
    	utilized, should not be utilized.  Peer review and whether
    	it is an accepted practice, isn't it, in paleoclimatology
    	field, social networking, Dr. Cicerone?
    	DR. CICERONE.  No.  No, that was I guess kind of an original
    	piece work.  It is not common.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Have you looked at or have you reviewed
    	Dr. Wegman's social network analysis of the paleoclimatology
    	field?
    	DR. CICERONE.  Last week at the time of the hearing I got a
    	copy and I read it.
    	MR. STUPAK.  I know that the National Academy of Science
    	has done research of social networking analysis.  Do you
    	have any views you would care to share with us about the
    	field of research?
    	DR. CICERONE.  Not today.  I think there is probably some
    	developments that have taken place in the classified arena
    	that I am not totally up on that I would like to find out
    	earlier before I would comment.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Is it a relatively new field?
    	DR. CICERONE.  Graph theory, the kind of statistical
    	patterns, I think so.  I haven't seen it applied to this
    	kind of a field of study before.
    	MR. STUPAK.  What do you think of Dr. Mann's social network
    	analysis of the paleoclimatology field?  Dr. Wegman's.  I am
    	sorry.  I said Dr. Mann's.  Dr. Wegman's.
    	DR. CICERONE.  I have no further comment.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Okay.  Dr. Wegman, in looking at your report
    	here today and your testimony, I am on page 6, if you would,
    	sir, and I am looking at the paleo perspective on global
    	warming.  And you say these are contradictory statements, and
    	I guess I am a little confused on it and maybe you could help
    	us out.  It says the latest--and I am quoting the first here,
    	the first paragraph on page six.  You got it there?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Yes.
    MR. STUPAK.  "The latest peer-reviewed paleoclimatic studies appear
    to confirm that the global warmth of the 20th Century may not
    necessarily be the warmest time in Earth's history, what is unique is
    that the warmth is global and cannot be explained by natural forcing
    mechanisms."  And it says also from the same website, and this is a
    NOAA website, "In summary, it appears that the 20th Century, and in
    particular the late 20th Century, is likely the warmest the Earth has
    seen in at least 1,200 years."  How is that inconsistent?  You said
    contradictory statements.  How is that contradicting?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Well, at one stage people are suggesting that
    	it is the warmest and another stage it is saying it not
    	necessarily the warmest.  Being likely is a phrase that has
    	been bandied about quite a bit.
    	MR. STUPAK.  But aren't those really different time frames?
    	One is talking about 1,200 years, the other one is talking
    	about the 20th Century and Earth's history, it seems like,
    	because one says the 20th Century and particularly the late
    	20th Century is likely the warmest, and the other one is
    	talking about the earth's history.  So that is why I didn't
    	see it as inconsistent.  One is talking about 20th Century,
    	late 20th Century, and the other one is talking about all of
    	Earth's history, so that is why I didn't see the
    	inconsistency.  Do you see what I am saying, those two
    	statements?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Yes, sir, I see what you are saying.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Dr. Mann, if I may ask you a question.  I want
    	to go back to this social network.  Dr. Wegman has
    	hypothesized that you have a social network of 42 other
    	scientists and that they cannot independently evaluate your
    	work because they have at various times co-authored work
    	with you.  This may be based on his belief that people who
    	interact regularly will foster a common attitude or
    	identity.  What is your response to that?
    	DR. MANN.  Well, frankly, I was a bit baffled by that
    	finding.  My profession is highly competitive.  We often
    	disagree publicly.  Scientists disagree publicly and in
    	our articles, with each other on certain matters, and yet
    	we can co-author on other areas where we agree so there is
    	no contradiction in--
    	MR. STUPAK.  Well, do you have peer review of your articles
    	by people who don't agree with you?
    	DR. MANN.  I have probably had articles rejected because of
    	reviews by people who were co-authors with me on other
    	articles.  In fact, I am quite certain that is the case.  Of
    	course, Dr. Christy and I are co-authors and yet there are a
    	lot of issues in the science that we don't agree on.  So I
    	was very surprised by that.  I was flattered by that.  The
    	implication that as a post doc when I started this work back
    	in the late 1990s that I was sort of the center of the entire
    	field of climate research but it is as incorrect as it is
    	flattering.
    	MR. STUPAK.  You don't dominate the thinking of the entire
    	paleoclimatology community, do you?
    	DR. MANN.  Well, I don't know if I do now but I am sure I
    	didn't back in the late 1990s.
    	MR. STUPAK.  My time is up.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Thank you.  At this time I recognize
    	Mr. Stearns of Florida.
    	MR. STEARNS.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  Mr. McIntyre, you
    	are the only one who doesn't have a Ph.D. here on the table
    	so I thought I would ask you this question.  As I understand
    	your background, your undergraduate degree is mathematics.
    	Is that from Oxford?
    	MR. MCINTYRE.  My degree in mathematics was from the
    	University of Toronto but I attended Oxford subsequently.  I
    	think my stay there probably overlapped with that of
    	President Clinton's.
    	MR. STEARNS.  Oh, good.
    	MR. MCINTYRE.  I think we might have played rugby against
    	one another.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  We hope you did a little more studying than
    	he did.
    	MR. STEARNS.  Well, you know, I just want to give you your
    	due here.  We have heard in testimony that Drs. Wahl and
    	Ammann have reproduced Dr. Mann's work and shown your
    	criticism to be invalid, and I guess--is this true and were
    	your criticism erroneous?  I will give you an opportunity to
    	respond to that.
    	MR. MCINTYRE.  Well, a couple of points.  First of all, the
    	code that we used to emulate Dr. Mann's work reconciles
    	almost exactly with that of Wahl and Ammann. And so any
    	conclusions that differ are not because of differences in
    	how we have emulated the reconstruction.  They think that
    	certain steps are fine, we don't.  They have in my opinion
    	not carefully considered the implication of bristlecones.
    	Our codes reconcile so right now I am confident in our
    	conclusions that if you remove the bristlecones you have a
    	major impact on the final results.
    	Last December, I met with Ammann in San Francisco and
    	suggested to him that since our codes reconciled so closely
    	that it would make sense if we co-authored a paper in which
    	we set down the points that we agreed on, set down the
    	points we disagreed on in an objective way so that we didn't
    	seem to be launching missiles at one another and creating
    	more controversy.  I said that we could declare an armistice
    	for 6 weeks until we accomplished this, and if we didn't get
    	to conclusion everybody would go back to square one and that
    	each of us could write separate appendices, say where we
    	disagreed.
    	I formally sent e-mails to him suggesting that.  He told me
    	in San Francisco that if he did that that that would
    	interfere with his career advancement.
    	MR. STEARNS.  Dr. Wegman, I am going to give you an
    	opportunity to respond to some of the testimony today.  The
    	testimony of both Dr. Gulledge and Dr. Mann draw upon the
    	findings of Dr. Wahl and Ammann to suggest your work
    	doesn't matter.  Let me give you an opportunity to respond
    	to that.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Well, I think although the social network
    	analysis has been sort of dismissed the amazing thing to me
    	is that these supposed independent replications of the
    	original Mann work are done by Rutherford et al., which
    	includes the top seven people in the social network that we
    	identified last week.  Every one of them is in there, and
    	they are frequent co-authors with Dr. Mann.  So I can
    	hardly see how that is an independent replication of his
    	original work.
    	Secondly, on Dr. Mann's r�sum� he lists Dr. Ammann as one
    	of his students as a co-advisor to him although Dr. Ammann
    	does not list him as an advisor.  But it is clear to me
    	that Wahl and Ammann are not independent agents as well.
    	MR. STEARNS.  And that goes to this idea of the social
    	network you are talking about?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Yes.  We never claimed, by the way, that
    	Dr. Mann was, in 1998 as a post doc was the center of the
    	social network.  What we are saying is that subsequently
    	he has 42 co-authors many of whom, particularly the top
    	seven in the block we identified, who are frequent
    	co-authors with him and co-authors with each other, and
    	there is some element of thinking that if they are frequent
    	co-authors they are thinking the same way.
    	MR. STEARNS.  Is there anything else that you have heard
    	Dr. Mann say earlier that you would like to comment on?
    	You are welcome to go across the spectrum.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Well, first of all, in the question that
    	Mr. Waxman mentioned about the carbon dioxide distribution,
    	that was prefaced by a comment by me that I didn't know
    	anything about this but I suppose, for example, that carbon
    	dioxide, so that was purely a hypothetical conjecture which I
    	did not mean to be taken as testimony.  It was also clear in
    	the discussion that even Dr. North talked about a barrier of
    	carbon dioxide at high levels of the atmosphere so he gave in
    	his diagram an illustration that carbon dioxide was not mixed
    	so that certainly is something that should be clarified.  I
    	did not mean to testify that carbon dioxide sat at the ground
    	level.  That certainly was not what I was saying.
    	MR. STEARNS.  Any other thing that has come up that you wish
    	to comment on either that Dr. Mann or others have spoken on
    	or perhaps we as members have spoken on you would like to--
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Well, I stand by the statements that I have made
    	and particularly in the written testimony that I didn't get a
    	chance to comment on.   My own sense is that if you look at,
    	for example, this matter of statistical skill, it doesn't
    	matter that the American Meteorological Society says what
    	statistical skill is.  Statisticians do not recognize that
    	term.  I went around to a whole dozen or so of my
    	statisticians network and asked them if they knew what they
    	were talking about.  It is my contention that there is a gulf
    	between the meteorological community and the statistical
    	community.
    	We examined, for example, this committee that is on
    	probability and statistics of the American Meteorological
    	Society.  We found only two of the nine people in that
    	committee are actually members of the American Statistical
    	Association, and in fact one of those people is an assistant
    	professor in the medical school whose specialty is
    	bio-statistics.  The assertion I have been making is that
    	although this community, the meteorological community in
    	general and the paleoclimate community in particular, used
    	statistical methods.  They are substantially isolated.  They
    	are using our methods but not talking to us.  In contrast,
    	we are not doing meteorology and--
    	MR. STEARNS.  You are talking to them.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  We are talking to them.
    	MR. STEARNS.  I understand.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Would the gentleman yield just for
    	clarification, please?  Dr. Mann in his testimony referred to
    	this Dr. Ammann and Wahl study who said they have recentered
    	the data and the conclusion is the same if I understood him
    	correctly.  Could you comment on that because one of your
    	points was when you center it correctly the conclusions don't
    	follow.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  The studies are done in different ways.  There
    	is the so-called CFR methodology, the CPS methodology, and in
    	I believe it was Dr. Mann's 2005 report he illustrates several
    	different studies that do this.  One of the things that is
    	critical is the set of proxy data that you use when you are
    	trying to replicate these studies.  And in fact if you use a
    	nice set of proxies that all have the same signal in them
    	then it really doesn't matter a whole lot what methodology you
    	use.  If you use a very mixed set of proxies that have some
    	noise and different kinds of structure in it then it does
    	matter what kind of--
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  It goes to Mr. McIntyre's point that
    	depending on the data set you use it is the result you are
    	going to get.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  That is right.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  If I understood him correctly.
    	MR. STEARNS.  Reclaiming my time.  Mr. Christy, Dr. Christy,
    	have you read Dr. Wegman's report, and, if so, what is your
    	opinion of his working conclusion?  I understand you are one
    	of the individuals that was in the group that developed the
    	National Research Council on surface temperature
    	reconstruction of the last 2,000 years, so I would
    	appreciate, Dr. Christy, your comment.
    	DR. CHRISTY.  This is the short answer.  I have not read
    	the report.
    	MR. STEARNS.  You have not read the report?
    	DR. CHRISTY.  No, I am sorry.
    	MR. STEARNS.  Okay.  Dr. Cicerone, you are the President of
    	the National Academy of Science.  Dr. Wegman is an appointed
    	member of the National Academy of Science Board of
    	Mathematical Sciences and Their Application.  He is chair
    	of the NAS Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics,
    	highly credentialed in math and statistics, wouldn't you
    	say?  Shouldn't we take his judgments on statistical matters
    	very seriously, and don't they carry significant weight?
    	Would you say his judgment about statistical matters is
    	important and that he has credibility based upon those
    	credentials?
    	DR. CICERONE.  Yes.
    	MR. STEARNS.  So there is some attempt by some folks to make
    	some of his findings not correct but based upon what you just
    	said this man is highly credible in math and statistics and
    	we should take his judgment particularly on statistical
    	matters with a high credibility?
    	DR. CICERONE.  Yes, but not on the mixing of gases.
    	MR. STEARNS.  Not on the mixing of gases.  All right.  Thank
    	you, Mr. Chairman.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  The chair recognizes Mr. Inslee.  Oh, no,
    	Ms. Schakowsky.  I am sorry.  Ms. Schakowsky.
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  I want to begin
    	by referring to the end of Dr. Christy's testimony where you
    	drew on a certain kind of expertise where you were a
    	missionary in Africa, and you end with a plea.  And I just
    	want to quote from the testimony.  It says, speaking of the
    	people in Africa you say, "They are far more vulnerable to
    	the impacts of poverty, water, and air pollution, and
    	political strife than whatever the climate does." I actually
    	found that to be a pretty strange comment from someone who
    	is the chair of the Earth System Science Center and deal
    	with climate.
    	And I wanted to actually ask Dr. Cicerone don't those issues
    	of certainly of water and air pollution, et cetera, are they
    	unrelated entirely to issues of climate?
    	DR. CICERONE.  No.  Of course they are related.  I don't
    	know what Dr. Christy would answer to the question of what
    	he meant, but, yes, it is clearly related.
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  So I was really confused by that because,
    	first of all, I have to tell you I resented that a little
    	bit.  I close with a plea to remember the needs and
    	aspirations of the poorest amongst us when energy policy is
    	made as if to say that those of us who would ask for some
    	changes in business as usual and energy as usual somehow
    	are not taking into consideration the poor people of Africa.
    	So I found that a condescending remark, I have to tell you.
    	But are not those things--because I have to tell you,
    	Dr. Christy, that precisely for the reasons of the kind of
    	impact it will have on human life including drought and
    	exacerbating poverty and even you mention political strife,
    	war water actually do worry me a bit.  So how do you
    	segregate that from climate issues?
    	DR. CHRISTY.  Was that water wars?
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  You said political strife.  I would say
    	that if we end up with a situation where people are fighting
    	over water or limited food supplies because of drought that
    	that could be related to the climate, could it not?
    	DR. CHRISTY.  We don't know what is going to happen, for
    	example, with the water cycle as the climate evolves so--
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  The overall statement about water and air
    	pollution, are they unrelated to climate?
    	DR. CHRISTY.  We know today that people die because of water
    	pollution, air pollution and those other things.  Those are
    	issues that we know today and can assess and determine how
    	answers and solutions can be found.  So those are critical
    	things to do today.  And I am sorry if that last line came
    	across condescendingly.  When you live with the people as I
    	did you know that they don't have much of an advocacy in
    	places.
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  Actually in the Congress they do have a
    	number of people who care and advocate on their behalf.  I
    	wanted to get to that and it is a perfect lead into the
    	Chairman's question, and what do we know, this was his
    	question, and so I wanted to look at Dr. Gulledge's materials
    	that he provided.  And again I would like to ask him or
    	anyone, it says in your presentation, Dr. Gulledge, human
    	activities are increasing atmospheric greenhouse gases, that
    	that is unequivocally agreed to in the scientific community.
    	The Earth is warming unequivocal at an unprecedented rate,
    	confident, so somewhat less.
    	Warming over past five decades caused primarily by man-made
    	greenhouse gases, confident.  So let me add one more preface
    	to this question that I would like to put to the panel, first
    	of all, the question of agreement.  We have a panel here
    	where it is three and three, so if there is a reporter
    	looking at this they would say, well, there is three people
    	who agree with this, three that don't, so there is a split
    	here.  So part of my question is does the disagreement over
    	your unequivocal, unequivocal, confident on this panel
    	reflect the scientific community in any kind of accuracy.
    	And I would like to just question these unequivocal and
    	confident ratings.
    	DR. GULLEDGE.  Well, I am not sure if you are describing the
    	panel as being three against three on whether they agree with
    	these statements or not, but I suspect that it might not
    	fall out exactly that way.
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  Okay.
    	DR. GULLEDGE.  It might vary among some of the lower
    	statements and then--
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  Then let me ask this, let me ask the
    	panel.  Is there anyone who disagrees with the
    	unequivocal--that it is unequivocal that human activities
    	are increasing atmospheric greenhouse gases?  Is there
    	anybody?  Okay, good.  That the Earth is warming?  Okay.
    	And at an unprecedented rate?
    	DR. CHRISTY.  What is the confidence level on that?
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  Confident.
    	MR. MCINTYRE.  I don't know that it is unprecedented.
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  Actually I wanted to ask you--I hope you
    	don't think this sounds rude but when I looked at the
    	witness list I see, you know, everyone has got kind of a
    	credential and then it just says your name, so I wanted
    	to ask you about your credentials, Mr. McIntyre, and
    	perhaps it gets into social networks because when I asked
    	for your resume what I found was: for the last 16 years I
    	have been an officer and director of several small public
    	mineral exploration companies, previous to that I worked
    	for a large international mining company, and that mainly
    	it is your experience in mineral exploration industry that
    	you tout in your resume and your background.  I don't know
    	if that gets to social networks or not.
    	MR. MCINTYRE.  Well, in this case this has nothing to do
    	with any work that I have ever done.  I just became
    	interested in it as a citizen when I read the studies, and
    	I thought that politicians were facing difficult policy
    	decisions so I thought that it would be interesting to
    	examine one particular paper which was being cited by the
    	Canadian government.  It wasn't clear to me how people
    	knew that 1998 was the warmest year in the millennium, and
    	I was just interested in how--
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  So are you qualified to make a judgment
    	on whether or not the Earth is warming at an unprecedented
    	rate?
    	MR. MCINTYRE.  For the things that I have published on, my
    	statistical and mathematical skills are adequate for what
    	I have published on.  The findings that we have had about
    	principal components have been--
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  But are you qualified to comment on whether
    	or not the Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate?
    	MR. MCINTYRE.  Well, you asked whether the people knew or
    	didn't know.  I am just saying I didn't know.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Will the gentlelady yield?
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  Yes.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  That group is much more qualified than I am
    	to comment on these things, and yet I have the responsibility
    	as Chairman of the committee to put the bill together to
    	change the way Americans work every day if we decide to do
    	something about it.
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  Absolutely.  Absolutely.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  The least qualified--I will stipulate--
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  And me too.  I am with you.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  The quality of the commenters is more on
    	that side of the dais than at least it is in the Chairman's
    	chair.  I am not going to comment on anybody else's
    	qualifications but in a democracy anybody with an opinion is
    	entitled to express that opinion and some are more qualified
    	than others obviously because of their credentials, but I
    	don't think we have a standard of witnesses that says unless
    	you have a Ph.D. you cannot testify before--
    	MS. SCHAKOWSKY.  Well, actually we are having a--reclaiming
    	my time.  Actually we are having a conversation today about
    	the science here so it is not just about opinion, and it is
    	relevant, I think, to talk about.  And Dr. Wegman has been
    	pretty up front about what he is qualified to testify to and
    	what he is not, and I think that that is fair and it is fair
    	to ask for individual's backgrounds and what their connections
    	or interests might be.  That is the kind of conversation that
    	we are having.
    	But what I really wanted to get to was your question about
    	what is it that we know, and if there is pretty wide agreement
    	or no comment because you don't know that human activity is
    	increasing atmospheric greenhouse gases and that the Earth is
    	warming and that it has certain consequences.  Mr. Chairman,
    	when you said that you are a skeptic the difficulty of the
    	task at hand to me is not a reason to be a skeptic about the
    	science.
    	Admittedly, this is a daunting task, and we heard about the
    	1,000 nuclear power plants or whatever it could take, but we
    	also heard practical suggestions from Dr. Cicerone about
    	energy efficiency that we could make a start on this.  And
    	so if there is widespread agreement that human activity is
    	contributing to this that this climate--that the warming of
    	the climate is happening, that it can have very detrimental
    	effects.  I am anxious to understand why we don't just move
    	toward solution at this point, and that is what I really was
    	getting to so I have over stepped my time, and I thank you,
    	Mr. Chairman.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Thank you.  And at this time I will recognize
    	Mrs. Blackburn of Tennessee.
    	MRS. BLACKBURN.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and you all are
    	very patient with us.  As I said in my opening remarks, I
    	think a lot of this is born out of curiosity of knowing what
    	the truth is and being able to have some answers.  And I will
    	tell you one of the reasons I have such an interest in this.
    	I have a mom who is 81 years old who has been very involved
    	in conservation efforts all of her life.  She won the Keep
    	America Beautiful Lifetime Achievement Award here about 15
    	years ago, and she is very careful in her instruction to her
    	children and her grandchildren that one of the things we
    	have to be very careful about is environmental extremism
    	which many times hurts our argument for actually being good
    	conservationists and leaving this Earth in better shape than
    	we have found it.
    	And so when we have studies that seem to go around the horn
    	and then they can't be substantiated and they are coming out
    	as government proof as something it does cause us questions.
    	And as I mentioned, we have been through this thing and we
    	have talked about it and I have talked about how when I was
    	growing up in the 60s that, the thing was that it was going--
    	we were going to be in an ice age or have a return of the
    	ice age.  And then I guess that there were some schooled
    	scientists, if you will, some of your colleagues maybe who
    	found that that was not going to be so.
    	So I think it is important that we have the opportunity to
    	visit with you and find out what is an item of agreement
    	and what is not an item of agreement.  And, Dr. Mann, if I
    	could have your attention for just a few moments if you
    	don't mind, I would like to direct my question, my opening
    	question, to you.  You have said that other studies have
    	confirmed your results, but it does not appear that their
    	statistical analysis has been thoroughly examined, and I
    	wanted to know if you would be open to a review by an
    	independent team of top statisticians of climate change
    	papers before those papers get published.
    	You know, I think Dr. Christy had mentioned that in some of
    	his work there were some flaws that were found.  He mentioned
    	that in his testimony and then they submitted to that.  So if
    	we are going to put government money into papers should they
    	be reviewed by others other than your social network before
    	they are published with government funds and considered to be
    	the truth?
    	DR. MANN.  Well, I think there is a misunderstanding about
    	the nature of peer review as it currently exists with
    	scientific journals, and there have been some misstatements
    	along these lines in the previous comments by some of the
    	others on this panel.  For example, two of the studies that
    	have shown that the centering convention in PCA doesn't
    	make a difference in the reconstruction as shown also by
    	Dr. Gulledge were done by groups that are entirely
    	independent of me and my collaborators, von Storch and
    	Zorita.  In fact, von Storch and Zorita and I and my
    	collaborators have had vigorous disagreements in the peer
    	reviewed literature.
    	So one of the studies that actually validated our approach
    	in showing that the centering convention doesn't make a
    	difference was by that group.  Another scientist at Woods
    	Hole, Peter Huybers, if I could finish that, also came up
    	with the same result so there are four different studies,
    	only one of which I was connected with that came to that
    	conclusion so the peer review process is actually working
    	quite well.
    	MRS. BLACKBURN.  My question to you is do you think that
    	they should be submitted for independent review before they
    	get published?
    	DR. MANN.  Well, that goes on so again it requires an
    	understanding of what the peer review process at the major
    	scientific journals actually is.  For example, with Nature
    	and Science when they receive a paper that involves both
    	statistics and climatology you can be certain that they
    	will seek out leaders in the world's scientific community
    	in all of the relevant areas before they make a decision
    	about the publication of that paper, and that is standard
    	in most of the leading journals.
    	MRS. BLACKBURN.  Now let me ask you this then.  If your
    	work were submitted to an independent group and they had
    	questions or found items that needed to be changed would
    	you be willing to make those changes prior to that work
    	being published?
    	DR. MANN.  Again, as I have tried to convey to this
    	committee in my earlier testimony and some of my earlier
    	responses to questions, in fact, that has been going on for
    	more than 10 years now.  My collaborators and I have been
    	re-examining the data.  Other groups have been re-examining
    	the data, testing different methods, testing the methods
    	with climate models simulations, figuring out which methods
    	perform well, which methods don't perform so that process
    	is ongoing.  It has been going on for more than a decade
    	now and that is how scientific progress works.
    	MRS. BLACKBURN.  Thank you.  Dr. Wegman, your thoughts on
    	those questions?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Well, I think, first of all, we disagree on,
    	you know--Dr. Mann did not answer your question which was
    	if--
    	MRS. BLACKBURN.  Absolutely he did not answer my question.
    	DR. WEGMAN.  If you would submit to a statistical review
    	panel, would you be willing to do that.  He did not answer
    	that question.  And one of the troubling aspects of this
    	paleoclimate and the meteorological community in general
    	is that they don't have interaction with statistical
    	people even though they used statistical methods heavily.
    	We have examined this group in general as I mentioned
    	before with Mr. Stearns.  We have tried to examine this
    	to see the engagement of the meteorological community,
    	the paleoclimatology community with the statistical
    	community, and it is almost non-existent, so they are not
    	interacting with our group although they are using methods
    	that are based in the statistical literature.
    	I would like to see, frankly, I would like them to be
    	engaged with us.  I think it would be a good idea.  What we
    	were trying to do in our testimony was create a path to a
    	better way of doing the science essentially saying that
    	these are two groups that should be interacting and in some
    	sense it behooves the meteorological community to be
    	interacting with us.  They are using our methods.  We are
    	not using their methods.  So I think it would be an
    	important thing to do and I--
    	MRS. BLACKBURN.  Let me ask you very quickly too, I had
    	Michael Crichton's testimony that he had before the
    	Senate.  Let's see, I think this was in '05.  And he was
    	talking about having a--that government grants should
    	require a replication package which would provide some
    	transparency as part of their funding where posting that
    	package online so that saying that if it is funded with
    	government money there is no reason to exclude anyone from
    	reviewing the data that is found in research.  Is that the
    	type thing that you think would be appropriate for
    	transparency?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  As I said last week in one of our conclusions,
    	basically when there is important public policy and human
    	health implications this stuff ought to be subject to
    	exceptionally more intensive review.  We drew the NIH model
    	out last time talking about the FDA and how the FDA requires
    	some statistical consultation just to that the drug issue,
    	and it seems to me that in this climate arena this has
    	incredibly important implications for society in general,
    	the world in general, and I think it ought to be carefully
    	reviewed.  The fact is Dr. Mann continues to appeal to
    	peer review but the fact is the peer review process
    	failed in the 1998 paper.
    	MRS. BLACKBURN.  And you would say that was primarily
    	because it was not an independent and separate review
    	outside of that social network?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  I believe that is the case.
    	MRS. BLACKBURN.  Okay.  Thank you very much.  Dr. Christy,
    	let me ask you this.  There is an article we have gone to
    	a couple different times in my office, Energy, Environment
    	and Economics.  It was Dr. Soon wrote an article, Ten
    	Myths of Global Warming.  I don't know if you have seen
    	that or not.  Are you--
    	DR. CHRISTY.  Sorry, ma'am.  I haven't seen it.
    	MRS. BLACKBURN.  Okay.  I know there is so much here that
    	has been written.  We have killed a lot of trees using
    	all this paper, haven't we?  Okay.  And he talks about
    	showing the Medieval Warm Period, and I was going to ask
    	you to comment on this but since you have not and my time
    	has basically expired I will just let that pass.  And I
    	thank you.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Thank you.  At this time I recognize
    	Mr. Inslee for 10 minutes.
    	MR. INSLEE.  Thank you.  I think this really is an amazing
    	hearing.  It is amazing because all six people at this
    	table have all agreed on the fundamental thing that this
    	Congress has got to figure out, and that is whether CO2
    	is going up, whether humans are partially responsible for
    	that, and whether that is part of the reason the Earth is
    	getting warmer.  That is the fundamental issue that
    	Congress faces.  And all six people at this table agree
    	with those propositions so I have been asking myself why
    	if we have unanimity on the fundamental question that we
    	got to ask, has Congress not done diddley to do anything
    	about this, and I think the answer is fear, because we
    	fear our inability to deal with it we blind ourselves to
    	the science.
    	And I think it is a little bit like a person who is shown
    	an X-ray of their lung cancer, refusing to believe it
    	because they don't want to deal with it.  And I think that
    	is a pretty good metaphor of what is going on right
    	here.  I want to ask Dr. Cicerone, because I think he
    	represents President of the National Academy of Science,
    	how many scientists are involved in that organization, by the
    	way?
    	DR. CICERONE.  About 2,000 members, but our work is done
    	largely by another 6,000 people who are chosen from
    	expertise from different fields who are non-members.
    	MR. INSLEE.  So I figure there is somewhere between 6,000
    	and 8,000 scientists that you represent here today, and I
    	am impressed by that.  The consensus as I understand it
    	in the scientific community is that smoking causes lung
    	cancer on a more probable than not basis in certain
    	instances.  Is it the scientific consensus now on a more
    	probable than not basis that increasing CO2 is associated
    	with global climate change and that humans are responsible
    	for increasing CO2?
    	DR. CICERONE.  Yes.
    	MR. INSLEE.  So we can say that we have the same level of
    	probability in our belief as to what humans are doing to
    	raise temperatures or at least that both are above
    	50 percent as we do about lung cancer, is that a fair
    	statement?
    	DR. CICERONE.  I think we understand the mechanics of
    	CO2 and climate better than we do of what causes lung cancer.
    	MR. INSLEE.  So here we as a country have decided to try to
    	limit and reduce the tremendous damage that is done by lung
    	cancer, but we have got as good or better science on a
    	global cancer and this Congress hasn't done a single thing
    	to deal with that, and I think that is very, very
    	disturbing.  Now could I put a slide up here, please,
    	gentlemen, if we can?  I want to ask Dr. Cicerone to explain
    	something to us.
    	If we look at this slide it is going to show the cyclical
    	nature--that is not actually the one I want.  Yes.  If we
    	look at this slide here it shows the cyclical nature. It
    	is from Dr. Gulledge's slides.  It will show the cyclical
    	nature going back 450,000 years ago moving forward to
    	today.  We also see CO2 going down, back up, down, back
    	up, down, back up, and we show a natural variability that
    	has occurred before the industrial age of from about 190
    	parts per million to about 290 parts per million, and I
    	think that is what Dr. Cicerone referred to as the natural
    	variability that has occurred before we started burning
    	coal, oil, gas, and wood.
    	Now what I see since the industrial period I have seen
    	this vertical curve go up, and it is vertical since the
    	beginning of the industrial period, so that now we are
    	at a level, this says about 372.  I actually think it is
    	about 382 today.  And as I understand it, it is bound
    	again on about a vertical curve on this scale to levels
    	of about 550 PPM double, double the highest level of CO2
    	in pre-industrial ages back 450,000 years.
    	So is my understanding of that, Dr. Cicerone, basically
    	accurate that we have an accelerated rate of CO2 that will
    	end up about twice as high carbon dioxide, which is a
    	known heat trapping gas in our atmosphere that is
    	occasioned since the dawn of the pre-industrial age?
    	DR. CICERONE.  Yes, although I don't think it is necessary
    	that we will end up at double CO2.  And then also we don't
    	know for sure what happened before this time.  This is the
    	longest instrumental record we have of real data.
    	MR. INSLEE.  So this is going back as far as we can with
    	real data.  We are at higher levels by about 130--excuse
    	me, more than that, about 170 parts per million, is that a
    	fair statement?
    	DR. CICERONE.  Above the minimum, yes.
    	MR. INSLEE.  Now the projections I have seen would suggest
    	that if we continue to spew carbon dioxide and methane into
    	the air or carbon dioxide into the air the best assessments
    	I have seen we will end about double pre-industrial levels
    	by the end of the century.  Could you give us your best
    	estimate of that or comment on that at all?
    	DR. CICERONE.  Oh, by the end of the century.  It depends
    	on human population.  It depends on our energy usage and
    	what technologies we are using to produce the energy so you
    	have to make assumptions about human population, how much
    	energy we will use, and what the technologies will be.
    	Double CO2 is certainly plausible.  It really depends on
    	what humans do.
    	MR. INSLEE.  And it depends on what this Congress does, and
    	what Congress should do is what British Petroleum has
    	done.  British Petroleum 7 or 8 years ago decided they were
    	going to meet Kyoto targets.  Maybe it was 5 years ago.
    	And in 3 years they met their Kyoto targets in their
    	internal operations.  They reduced their CO2 as much in
    	their internal operations as the Kyoto targets would
    	require.  You know what they did?  They saved $350 million
    	in wasted energy when they decided to adopt efficiencies of
    	the type that Dr. Cicerone talked about.
    	The other thing we will do is try to get these plants
    	started.  Right down the hallway here yesterday I met with
    	these guys, Iogen Corporation.  They are going to open up
    	the first cellulosic ethanol plant in southeastern Idaho.
    	When they do that, we will power our cars on E-85
    	ethanol.  We will reduce our CO2 emissions per mile by
    	80 percent or more.  They actually think it may actually
    	be negative because of some of the stuff you grow actually
    	takes carbon out of the air and puts it into the soil.  It
    	might actually be negative.
    	This is the kind of thing we need to do, and we are not
    	going to do that until we come to grasp what this science
    	really is.  I want to ask--I think there is just such an
    	overwhelming consensus of--I will just read the Academy of
    	Science report.  "The IPCC's conclusion that most of the
    	observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have
    	been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations
    	accurately reflects the current thinking of the scientific
    	community on this issue."  That is a direct quote from the
    	National Academy of Science.  Now there has been some
    	issues brought about Dr. Mann's studies.  There has been
    	some questions about Dr. Christy's studies.  I frankly
    	think there are some legitimate questions about the
    	statistical assessments, and the first one Dr. Mann did, I
    	think they have been changed a little bit since then, I
    	think the same could be said for Dr. Christy, but I guess
    	the question I have, Dr. Cicerone, if Mr. and Mrs. Mann
    	had never met and we never had the services of Dr. Mann,
    	would that have varied the conclusion of the National
    	Academy of Sciences on these fundamental questions?
    	DR. CICERONE.  You must be referring to his parents and
    	not his wife.
    	MR. INSLEE.  I am indeed.
    	DR. CICERONE.  I don't think so.
    	MR. INSLEE.  And why do you say that?  In other words, if
    	Dr. Mann's work had just never appeared, and, by the way,
    	I respect it and I think it has added to the debate but if
    	his work had never occurred why do you think the Academy
    	of Science would still reach the same fundamental
    	conclusions?
    	DR. CICERONE.  Because of the blending of the physical
    	evidence, the mathematical rigor and the comparisons that
    	can be made now with the predictions and the actual
    	records of the last 30 years especially.
    	MR. INSLEE.  And I have a chart here, gentlemen, if you
    	can put it up here of ice core data.  I think it might be
    	the last slide on the series that I had introduced.  If
    	you have the groupings of the one that I had brought
    	today.  This is just another representation of the CO2.
    	There should be one more slide.  You are not finding it
    	right now.  Let's keep going.  Just go through these
    	quickly.  Right there.  Okay.  This is a slide basically
    	showing ice core data and we show CO2, and if I can read
    	this basically this is methane at the top, carbon dioxide
    	here, from ice core data showing these levels, only it
    	goes backwards.  These are today's dates.  This goes back
    	400,000 years.  These are today's dates showing CO2 levels
    	higher in ice core data than at any time in the last I
    	believe it is 400,000 years.  It should be 600,000 years.
    	If you can, Dr. Cicerone, can you describe how that ice
    	core data work through the deuterium isotopes, if you can
    	just give us a quick description.
    	DR. CICERONE.  I mentioned earlier the way the gases are
    	pulled out of these dated ice cores.  With CO2 you can do
    	it two ways.  With methane you can do it two ways.  With
    	nitros oxide you get similar results, low when it was
    	cold, high when it was warm.  The deduction of temperatures
    	at the same time depends on the different isotopes, the
    	different forms of the same chemical like carbon, the same
    	element in carbon, in this case oxygen and hydrogen where
    	because the way they evaporate a gas like water evaporates
    	differently if it has heavy hydrogen in it, deuterium, for
    	example, or oxygen 18 instead of O-16.
    	We can go back and infer what the temperature was in the
    	vicinity of the ice when it formed or the snow in this case
    	which later becomes ice.  These records are pretty widely
    	used now, and under certain circumstances they are
    	absolutely the best we can do.  They are very
    	quantitative.  The statistics are clear.  There is some
    	concern over whether the temperature at which the snow
    	formed that made the ice was really a global or a
    	hemispherically average temperature or did it just reflect
    	what was happening regionally, but there you can go into
    	how much O-18 was in the oceans and the changes are big
    	enough that you can infer a pretty good geographical
    	validity of these temperature deductions as well as the
    	carbon dioxide.
    	MR. INSLEE.  Thank you, and thank you all for your
    	testimony today.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  We may just have a short second round
    	here.  I am going to recognize the Chairman of the full
    	committee for 5 minutes.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Yeah, and I have to go so I apologize
    	for going out of order.  This is today's USA Today
    	newspaper, the temperature map on the back.  It shows
    	the high temperature was 126 degrees Fahrenheit and the
    	low temperature was 43 degrees Fahrenheit.  That is
    	yesterday.  Is there a model in existence that can
    	replicate this with any degree of accuracy?  This is
    	yesterday's temperature.  Dr. Mann, do you have a model
    	that can do that?  This is just one country.
    	DR. MANN.  I personally do not.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  We have got an 83 degree difference
    	on one day out of 365 days in one country.
    	DR. MANN.  If I can just talk a little bit to that.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  I only have 4 minutes and--
    	DR. MANN.  I will make it quick.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Dr. Christy, you are the meteorologist,
    	I think, for Alabama.  Do you have a model that could
    	even do this in Alabama?
    	DR. CHRISTY.  No, sir, we wish we did.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Okay.  Now did you want to comment,
    	Dr. Cicerone?
    	DR. CICERONE.  I would.  Chairman Barton, you said any
    	degree of accuracy.  That gives us some room.  The
    	British meteorological office is probably the world's
    	best.  They are in the Ministry of Defense in England.
    	Their models have pretty good predictive capability.
    	If you average over a few days and you say let's not
    	argue about the difference between San Francisco and
    	Marin County or San Antonio and El Paso.  If you average
    	over enough space in time they can hit that.  The models
    	at Penn State University are excellent.  The National
    	Weather Service can give you some degree of accuracy and
    	predictability, and they can reproduce a lot of those
    	patterns.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  Well, my point is, and I am not trying to
    	be cute about this, in preparing for last week's hearing I
    	read the summary and I read most of the report of the
    	National Academy of Sciences here, the National Research
    	Council.  I read Dr. Wegman's report.  And somewhere in
    	those two reports it said the data sets they use to base
    	all these models on in the whole world there are like 60
    	or less data sets.  There are just not a lot of data, and
    	we are trying to make predictions over thousands of
    	years.  Even where we have really good records for the
    	last hundred years, and some of the most advanced
    	satellites and smart people that put these computer models
    	together with hundreds of variables, we can't really
    	predict after the fact yesterday's weather with too much
    	accuracy, and yet to go to Dr. Christy's point if we
    	accept Congressman Inslee's point that we need to be in
    	solution mode a thousand nuclear power plants by themselves
    	is a trillion and a half dollars, and that will get you a
    	CO2 reduction of 10 percent.
    	There are somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 power plants in
    	this country.  Now I don't know exactly but I know there
    	are only 100--I think 112 operating nuclear plants of those
    	between 5,000 and 10,000.  And that is just one part of the
    	economy.  We have got 300 million cars and trucks.  We have
    	a lot.  I mean, it is not scientifically accurate but we have
    	got a boon' doggle worth of economic consequences if we
    	really go where Mr. Inslee says we ought to be going.  And
    	I am not dogmatic about it.  I am concerned when I hear
    	Dr. Cicerone say that the parts per billion of CO2 in the
    	atmosphere is 100 parts per million higher than it ever has
    	been.
    	Now that has got to give anybody pause to think, but I look
    	at all these charts and all these data sets and I can't back
    	it up, but it would certainly appear to me to be plausible,
    	to use that term again, that the Earth is always changing
    	temperature.  It is either in a warming period or a cooling
    	period.  It appears that it is a curve function.  It
    	appears that it is over the same general period of time and
    	it certainly appears that in the last 100 years that the
    	upward curve has accelerated at a more rapid rate than say
    	a thousand years ago.  But it is not clear what, if
    	anything, we can do to change that basic system.  And so
    	before we go off the deep end I really do want to make sure
    	that these models are independently reviewed and really are
    	scientifically accurate and really can be replicated.  And
    	I really do want to know what the confidence levels are.
    	We are going to get to problem solution, and we are going
    	to have a huge debate about that.  But since we can't even
    	predict with much accuracy what yesterday's temperature was,
    	it is a little bit much to ask us to make multi-trillion
    	dollar decisions on models that 10 years ago when Dr. Mann
    	put out his report, he was the first one, and even today
    	most of the people that are doing the modeling are some
    	part of his network, which is not a bad thing.  It shows you
    	operate with a lot of smart people that care a lot about
    	the environment.
    	But it doesn't mean that the United States government
    	makes trillion dollar changes in public policy until we
    	get a little bit more information about that, and that is
    	why we are doing these hearings.  And so I apologize for
    	going another minute over but I thank you, Mr. Chairman,
    	for holding this, and I thank the members, Mr. Inslee and
    	Mr. Stupak and Mrs. Blackburn for being here.  I wish every
    	member of the Oversight Subcommittee was here.  I wish we
    	had more intensity on this so that we could get more
    	involved.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Thank you.  Dr. Mann, did you want to make
    	a comment?
    	DR. MANN.  I just wanted to clarify a distinction here in
    	this discussion.  On the one hand we are talking about
    	weather, and that is the day-to-day fluctuations and the
    	character of the atmosphere, and in the other cases we are
    	talking about climate and there is a very important
    	distinction between the two.  Climate is the statistics,
    	the long-term statistics of the weather, and there are
    	certain things that we can say very well about climate.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  But your model is predicting temperature
    	change.
    	DR. MANN.  It is not a model.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  That may be the variable but that is the
    	variable, and we are talking about catastrophic consequences
    	with 3 to 4 degree Fahrenheit changes.
    	DR. MANN.  That is the point.  It is not a model.  A model
    	is a set of numerical equations that we try to solve the
    	equations that describe the atmosphere and the ocean.  Our
    	reconstructions aren't that.  They are not a model.  The
    	models are a completely different thing, and there are
    	weather forecasting models as well as climate models, and in
    	certain things the climate models are quite good.  We are
    	doing very well now in predicting El Ninos.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  What term should I be using?  Not model.
    	Program, algorithm?
    	DR. MANN.  They are statistical reconstructions and data and
    	then there are the models, and I just wanted to make that
    	distinction.
    	CHAIRMAN BARTON.  I stand corrected.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  I just have one other question I would like
    	to ask because we have heard a lot today about core samples,
    	and I have been sort of interested in this chart that
    	Mr. Inslee brought in showing CO2 concentrations and from
    	that extrapolating temperatures.  And I would just ask Mann
    	and Christy and Cicerone once again, I didn't really ask
    	this question before, but I would like for you to tell us
    	the facts about the reliability of the ice core samples.
    	And we have heard a lot of comments about using that to
    	determine CO2 and then the question is using ice core
    	samples as historical thermometers.  Can they really be
    	considered accurate thermometers.  Can you take those
    	CO2 levels from ice cores and extrapolate in an accurate
    	way?
    	DR. MANN.  I will take the first stab at that.  There are
    	certain physical processes and there are basic physical
    	processes that control the ratio of different isotopes,
    	of oxygen in the ice, the water that is in solid form, it
    	is ice trapped in those ice cores, and so it is on a
    	somewhat different footing from some of the other sorts
    	of proxies like tree rings that we use where we are
    	relying on some biological relationship.
    	In the case of ice core isotopes it is really physics.
    	It is physics that is controlling the ratio of the different
    	isotopes of oxygen and that is telling us something about
    	the sea surface temperatures when the water evaporated from
    	the ocean because the ice that is deposited at some point
    	had to evaporate from the ocean surface.  It also tells us
    	something about the local conditions when the ice was
    	deposited.  Both the evaporation and the deposition depend--
    	they influence the ratio of those isotopes.
    	DR. CHRISTY.  Just in terms of the temperatures, reproducing
    	temperatures from them?
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Yes.
    	DR. CHRISTY.  The closer you get to the poles, the better the
    	temperature relationship is.  I think in the NAS report we
    	show six tropical and Tibetan ice cores and they are all
    	different.  All six of them are different.  But the closer
    	you get to the poles the relationship looks a lot better
    	there.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Okay.  Do you have anything to add,
    	Dr. Cicerone?  Okay.  Yes.  Mr. Waxman had asked we enter
    	into the record the remote sensing system letter which we
    	will do and you asked about the interface stewardship
    	alliance which we will do.  And then we are going to keep the
    	record open for 30 days.  And does anyone else have any
    	comments?
    	MR. STUPAK.  If I may, Mr. Chairman.  We were talking
    	earlier, I was going to start off my questioning and we were
    	talking about the Fortran, and I was joking with the
    	Chairman so I forgot to ask these questions.  Dr. Wegman,
    	in your report you state that, and I am quoting now, "We
    	judge that the sharing of research materials data and results
    	by Dr. Mann was haphazardly and grudgingly done."  You also
    	go on to state that Dr. Mann--you had trouble reading
    	Dr. Mann's code in part because it was in Fortran and that
    	you had trouble understanding some of the data that
    	Dr. Mann used.
    	Did you or your co-authors contact Mr. McIntyre and get his
    	help in replicating his work?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Actually, no.  What I did do was I called
    	Mr. McIntyre and said that when we downloaded his code we
    	could not get it to work either, and it was unfortunate that
    	he was criticizing Dr. Mann when in fact he was in exactly
    	the same situation.  Subsequently, he reposted his code to
    	make it more user friendly and we did download it
    	subsequently and verified that it would work.
    	MR. STUPAK.  And then after you re-downloaded and verified
    	it worked, did you have any further contact with
    	Mr. McIntyre then?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  Well, as I testified last week, Dr. Said and
    	myself had gone to one of the meetings where he was talking,
    	and we spoke with him but did not identify who we were at
    	the time.  This was early in the phase.  Subsequently, I had
    	had no contact with him until basically last week.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Okay.  Any of your co-authors that you know of,
    	Dr. Said or any others, have contact with Mr. McIntyre other
    	than that one time at this convention or wherever he was
    	speaking?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  One of my graduate students, John Rigsby, who
    	did the code for us, worked the code for us, did have some
    	interaction with him in order to verify some of the details
    	of the code.
    	MR. STUPAK.  So you, Dr. Said and this Mr. Rigsby would be
    	the people who had contact with Mr. McIntyre then?
    	DR. WEGMAN.  That is correct, yes.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Thank you.  Nothing further.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Mr. Inslee, do you have any--
    	MR. INSLEE.  I just want to comment in response to Chairman
    	Barton's comment about the 1,000 or 10,000 nuclear plants
    	he posited might be necessary.  I really--and I don't want
    	to get in debate about nuclear but I am really much more
    	optimistic about that, and the reason I say that is that we
    	have been so successful in improving the efficiency of our
    	economy because of the intellectual capital of men and women
    	like you who have helped us develop technologies to be much
    	more efficient.  Let me give you an example.
    	We actually per unit of gross domestic product use almost
    	half as much energy as we did in 1973.  You think about
    	that.  Since 1973 our economy produces twice as much
    	domestic product with the same amount of energy that it did
    	in 1973, and there is just no reason on this green Earth
    	that all of a sudden we got stupid, that we are not going
    	to be able to continue as the most brilliant society on
    	Earth and innovation to continue those efficiency
    	innovations.
    	And they are not rocket science.  Three of my neighbors
    	drive cars that have already reduced their transportation
    	related CO2 by 50 percent.  The Chairman talked about the
    	need to reduce our emissions by 40 percent to meet Kyoto.
    	Three of my neighbors and myself, I may add, have already
    	reduced ours by 50 percent in our transportation sector.
    	Simple.  They are on the lots today.  This is no new
    	technology.  So I just want to say in partial closing
    	that I am a person, as my comments have indicated, who
    	believe this is a major challenge for us and that we have
    	to act, and it is well past the date where we need to
    	move to solutions rather than debating the problem.
    	But I also believe that I am an optimist because I totally
    	believe it is in the human--it is capable because of our
    	intellectual ability to invent our way out of this
    	pickle.  And those who are people of great faith, because
    	the faith community is now becoming engaged in this debate,
    	because we are stewards of God's creation, and they are
    	starting to urge Congress to act as well.  We also ought
    	to be optimists and believe we can do it.
    	And I got to tell you, in the last 3 weeks I have met five
    	people, one in cellulosic ethanol, one in wave power, one
    	in efficiency in cars, one in efficiency in airplanes the
    	Boeing 787 we are building in Seattle is going to get
    	20 percent better fuel mileage than their last model.
    	These are the kind of things that America is going to do
    	when we tackle this.  So I just hope that this is a first
    	step toward moving just one quick question, Dr. Cicerone.
    	I have heard there has been some new evidence about
    	finding large amounts of energy in the ocean that has
    	suggested that this is sort of new research to indicate
    	in the last 12 months.  Is this something I am dreaming or
    	is there new research in that regard?
    	DR. CICERONE.  Maybe methane clath rates would be the only
    	thing I am--
    	MR. INSLEE.  I am sorry.  What I mean is as far as we found
    	temperature increases in the oceans that have--
    	DR. CICERONE.  Oh, yeah.  The result was reported about a
    	year and a half ago about over the last 40 or 45 years the
    	oceans, the upper 700 meters or so have warmed up, and I
    	summarize it very briefly in my testimony, yes.
    	MR. INSLEE.  And I will put in the record a study called
    	Penetration of Human-Induced Warming into the World's
    	Oceans.  It is published in Science in July, 2005.  Many
    	people thought this was sort of the nail in the coffin of
    	skeptics about global warming.  And again thank you for
    	your testimony.
    [The information follows:]
    	DR. GULLEDGE.  Mr. Inslee, if I may just may make a
    	comment.  Also regarding Mr. Barton's comments, I realize
    	he is gone.  I am also from Texas and I use scientific terms
    	from down there.  There are whole passels of money to be
    	made on alternative energy, and it is not just about being
    	expensive.  Also, there are real serious costs to inaction
    	that have not been figured into this equation here.
    	MR. INSLEE.  And I just want to compliment the Chairman's
    	humor about this.  As I was walking off the field at the
    	baseball game this year and he was at third base, and I
    	just pulled my hamstring.  As I was walking by he says,
    	well, Inslee, I suppose that was because of global warming
    	too.  So he has a great finely tuned sense of humor and we
    	will look forward to using it as the debate goes on.
    	Thank you.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Thank you, Mr. Inslee.  I would like to
    	stipulate that in my district we just opened up two new
    	ethanol plants as well.  So I want to thank you all very
    	much for your patience.  We got documents to enter here.
    	MR. STUPAK.  Mr. Chairman, that is a request to put in an
    	abstract of an article.  I would suggest we just get the
    	whole article, put it in there, and then we have the
    	complete article for everyone to see.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Okay.  Without objection.
    	MR. STUPAK.  That can serve as a place holder until I get
    	the whole article.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  So ordered.  And then we will keep the
    	record open.  Mr. Inslee.
    	[The information follows:]

    MR. INSLEE.  Mr. Chairman, I would like to submit an essay.  It is
    published in Science called the Scientific Consensus of Climate
    Change.  It relates to that 928 papers as well as the article I
    ust made reference to.  Thank you.
    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Okay.  Without objection.  And we will
    	keep the record open for 30 days.
    	[The information follows:]

    	MR. WHITFIELD.  Thank you all again for your testimony.  We
    	look forward to working with you as we move forward.  That
    	concludes today's hearing.
    	[Whereupon, at 6:48 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

    RESPONSE FOR THE RECORD OF DR. MICHAEL E. MANN, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR
    AND DIRECTOR, EARTH SYSTEM SCIENCE CENTER

    Question No. 1.  I understand that although your current practice
    is to make your computer code available publicly, many researchers
    in your field do not do so. Although computer code may not have
    commercial value, why would a researcher not want to release his
    code?

    Answer:
    	This is a question that my colleagues and I have wrestled
    	with over the years.  As the question acknowledges, for the
    	past five years or more, my colleagues and I have made
    	public our computer codes, just as we made public our code
    	for the 1998 study last year.   Our decision to make our
    	code public comes at a time when there is increased
    	standardization in codes, and the need to tailor codes to
    	accommodate the various and often idiosyncratic computer
    	systems that were used in the 1990s has diminished.  But
    	even today, many, perhaps most, climate scientists do not
    	share their codes.  In my view, there are legitimate
    	reasons for reaching that decision, even though it is not
    	the decision my colleagues and I have made.
    	For one thing, most code is written to enable scientists
    	to perform specific functions, and thus code is generally
    	written in a form of short-hand that is not easily
    	understood by others.  To make code usable by other
    	researchers, the code writer has to undertake significant
    	additional work, in the form of documentation, testing for
    	potential platform dependence, tidying, and so forth, that
    	places a significant burden on the code writer.  Many
    	scientists do not think that undertaking that additional
    	burden is worth it.
    	Second, access to computer codes is not necessary to
    	replicate a study.  I realize that some of my critics have
    	argued otherwise, but it is just not the case that
    	scientists need access to computer codes to replicate
    	studies.  As I tried to make clear in my testimony before
    	the Committee, a study may be replicated if the scientists
    	conducting the initial study make available both the
    	underlying research data and an algorithm that gives a
    	step-by-step account of how that data was analyzed.  As my
    	testimony pointed out, the 1998 and 1999 work by my
    	colleagues and me was recently replicated by a team of
    	scientists (Wahl and Ammann) who did not have access to our
    	codes, but who were able to replicate our work without
    	difficulty.  So replication does not depend on access to
    	computer codes.
    	Moreover, scientists, like entrepreneurs, corporations, and
    	others engaged in the production of intellectual capital,
    	are competitive, and rightly so.  Competition in the
    	marketplace of ideas is what science is all about.  We would
    	all like to make our greatest possible contributions to
    	advancing the forefront of our scientific disciplines.
    	Indeed, we are rewarded (in terms of grants, promotions,
    	academic recognition, and do forth) in proportion to the
    	contributions we make in the advancement of science.  Asking
    	scientists to release their codes before they have had an
    	opportunity to apply them to a number of potential
    	interesting problems is asking them to sacrifice their
    	competitive advantage. This would be no different than
    	asking Microsoft to release the code for its latest
    	operating system as soon as it reaches the market.  Microsoft
    	is not about to do that, and most people would consider a
    	requirement that Microsoft freely dispense its intellectual
    	property --- its codes --- as antithetical to the principles
    	of a free market.  The argument is no different in the case
    	of scientists and their computer codes or other tools of
    	their trade.

    Question No. 2.  Dr. Wegman states that paleoclimatologists do not
    interact with statisticians.  Do you have any response to that
    statement? What steps, if any, is the paleoclimatology field taking
    to ensure that it is using appropriate statistical methodologies?
    Answer:
    	Unfortunately, Dr. Wegman made this claim without engaging
    	in any effort to ascertain the extent to which climate
    	scientists interact with statisticians.  To the contrary,
    	Dr. Wegman simply assumed --- without data, indeed, without
    	any basis at all --- that climate scientists, and
    	paleoclimatologists in particular, do not interact with
    	statisticians.
    	Dr. Wegman's accusation could not be further from the truth.
    	The participation of statisticians in climate science has
    	become so routine that there is an entire field of climate
    	research known as "statistical climatology," which involves
    	the collaboration of large numbers of statisticians and
    	climate scientists.  There are even textbooks dedicated to
    	the study of statistical climatology.  In his testimony
    	before the Committee, Dr. Hans Von Storch found it necessary
    	to inform Dr. Wegman of this fact.  And Dr. Von Storch
    	should know; he and Dr.  Francis Zwiers (a Ph.D. statistician
    	specializing in climate applications) have written one widely
    	used textbook on statistics and its applications to climate
    	studies.  Another statistician, Professor Dan Wilks of
    	Cornell University, has written an additional textbook on
    	statistics and its applications to the atmospheric sciences.
    	The extensive collaboration between climate scientists and
    	statisticians is also reflected in the academic literature.
    	Hundreds of papers have been published in the climate and
    	paleoclimate literature involving the collaboration of
    	statisticians and climate scientists.   These are all
    	publicly available and could have been identified by
    	Dr. Wegman in a few hours of research.  Two members of the
    	NRC committee that reviewed paleoclimate reconstructions
    	in its recent report (Dr. Douglas Nychka and Dr. Peter
    	Bloomfield) are statisticians (both of their doctorates are
    	in statistics) who have published in the climate literature
    	and who have actively collaborated with climate scientists.
    Had Dr. Wegman bothered to make even the slightest inquiry, he would
    have found that there are in fact many statisticians (that is,
    individuals with doctorates in statistics) who have been and remain
    active members of the community of researchers in the areas of
    atmospheric science and climate research.  Even a cursory review of
    the structure of our community reveals this readily.  I have been
    informed that many of my statistical climatologist colleagues are
    deeply offended by Dr. Wegman's unfounded pronouncements to this
    Committee, pronouncements which effectively deny their contribution
    to the advancement of science.
    	Moreover, the American Meteorological Society --- the
    	leading professional organization of atmospheric
    	scientists --- has a Committee on Probability and
    	Statistics, and members of the committee are drawn from
    	both atmospheric/ocean/climate scientists and
    	statisticians.  I was a member of that committee for a
    	3-year term (2003-2005) that recently ended.  The
    	committee's website can be found here:
    http://www.isse.ucar.edu/ams/ams_ps.html, and the committee
    members' biographies are available here:
    http://www.isse.ucar.edu/ams/ams_ps.html#members.   The chair of
    the committee, Dr. Rick Katz is a statistician (with his
    doctorate in statistics from Penn State University) and senior
    scientist at NCAR.  Other statisticians on the committee include
    Dr. Tilmann Gneiting (Department of Statistics, University of
    Washington), and Dr. William Briggs (Adjunct Assistant Professor of
    Statistical Science, Cornell University). These statisticians are
    active members of the climate research community.
    	Equally important, one of the primary centers for climate
    	research in the U.S., NCAR, has maintained a thriving
    	Geophysical Statistics Project ("GSP"), which was founded
    	more than a decade ago. This program has been funded by
    	the National Science Foundation's Division of Mathematical
    	Sciences, which has recognized for some time the importance
    	of encouraging statisticians to collaborate actively with
    	atmospheric scientists/climate scientists.   I participated
    	as a graduate student in GSP's inaugural workshop in 1994.
    	Many leading statisticians (e.g., Dr. Grace Wahba,
    	Dr. Arthur Dempster, and Dr. Noal Cressie) were
    	participants.  The GSP has since thrived, providing an
    	important opportunity for collaboration between
    	statisticians and climate researchers.  More information
    	can be found at the GSP webpage: http://www.image.ucar.edu/GSP/.
    	It bears noting that the project has now produced more than
    	two dozen Ph.D. statisticians who have become active
    	researchers in the atmospheric, oceanographic, and
    	climate sciences.  Its members and visitors have included
    	dozens of statisticians who have worked collaboratively
    	with atmospheric scientists and climate researchers. The
    	leader of the project, Dr. Douglass Nychka, was one of
    	the members of the aforementioned NRC panel.  He was also
    	a consultant in the recent paper by Wahl and Ammann that
    	refutes the oft-cited criticisms of the Mann et al. work
    	by McIntyre and McKitrick.

    Question No. 3. Dr. Wegman has hypothesized that the peer review
    process failed and allowed publication of your 1998 and 1999
    studies without adequate vetting of the study.  This was based in
    part on his social network analysis that showed you have
    connections with 42 other authors in paleoclimatology.  Of the
    42 co-authors identified by Dr. Wegman, how many of them were
    co-authors with you in or before 1999?

    Answer:
    	Dr. Wegman's accusations are so riddled with flaws that
    	it's hard to know where to begin in response.  But let me
    	first address the specious accusation by Wegman that the
    	peer-review process somehow "failed" with respect to our
    	'98 and '99 studies.  It is bewildering that Dr. Wegman
    	(who has no expertise in the area of atmospheric
    	science/climate, and indeed was wholly unable to correctly
    	answer some of the most basic questions about climate
    	science during the hearings) would characterize the
    	publication of our work as a "failure."   One would
    	assume that an academic would avoid rendering judgments
    	in fields in which he is demonstrably unknowledgeable.
    	Certainly the scientific community has reached the
    	precisely the opposite conclusion.  Our 1998 and 1999
    	studies are widely cited, and the conclusions stated in
    	them have been repeatedly reaffirmed.   Just one example
    	of the scientific support for these works should
    	suffice:  The National Research Council panel in their
    	recent Report characterized our study as
    	"groundbreaking", and the panel concluded that its key
    	conclusions have held up over nearly a decade of
    	exhaustive and independent follow-up research.  That is
    	a pretty good track record by any standard.  Thus,
    	judged by experts who understand climate studies,
    	Wegman's efforts to disparage our work as "failed" are
    	nothing short of silly.
    	Let me next address Wegman's equally specious and
    	unsupported claim that scientists who work in a given
    	field cannot objectively review the work of their
    	colleagues and competitors in that field.  By way of
    	illustration, I have attached (as Attachment 1 to these
    	Responses) the famous 1927 photograph of attendees of the
    	Solvay Physics meeting in Brussels.  It shows a group of
    	29 physicists engaged in a collegial, small conference.
    	Virtually every attendee was a driving figure behind our
    	understanding of modern physics.  Appearing in the photograph
    	are Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr, Fermi, Dirac, de Broglie,
    	Born, Pauli, Langmuir, Planck, Curie, Compton, Ehrenfest,
    	Lengevin, and others of equal prominence.  The members of this
    	group all knew each other, worked with each other,
    	collaborated on research with one another, visited each other,
    	went mountain-climbing together, and so forth.  Familiarity
    	did not compromise their contributions to science.  While I
    	do not claim that the group I collaborate with is likely to
    	duplicate the feats of the scientists who gathered in Brussels
    	80 years ago, the point remains --- scientific collaboration
    	does not turn scientists into timid lapdogs unwilling to
    	criticize the work of their colleagues.
    	Let me turn now to the specifics of the question.  It is
    	baffling how Dr. Wegman arrived at the number (42) he used to
    	describe my co-authors.  One would think that a statistician
    	could do simple arithmetic.  My curricular vitae (CV) is
    	available on the internet, and it is clear that Wegman consulted
    	it (but not me) in the preparation of his paper.  Nonetheless,
    	none of the numbers he uses add up.  Part of the problem may
    	stem from Wegman's ill-advised effort to distinguish between
    	authors engaged in "paleoclimatology" and "climatology," since
    	most climate researchers have worked, in some manner, on some
    	aspect of paleoclimate.   So the distinction he attempts to
    	draw between "paleoclimatologists" and "climatologists" is
    	illusory at best.  This too underscores the hazards of an
    	amateur seeking to draw conclusions in a field in which he
    	has no expertise.
    	But to answer the question Wegman poses, let us consider the
    	correct numbers (see Attachment 2 to these Reponses) which
    	are based on all of my peer-reviewed journal publications as
    	listed on my CV (and not including "gray literature" such as
    	book chapters, encyclopedia pieces, reports, conference
    	proceedings, letters to editors, opinion pieces).  I published
    	with 10 co-authors prior to 1993 based on my undergraduate
    	research in solid state physics.  These publications are
    	unrelated to climate research, and are not included.
    	So let us consider just my climate-related papers (i.e., post
    	1993), as Wegman purports to do.   In climate research, I had
    	14 co-authors through the year 1999.  I had 101 co-authors
    	through the end of 2005.   So Wegman's calculations, based on
    	42 co-authors, are off-base by more than a factor of two.
    	Wegman also appears to have made even more fundamental errors
    	in his review of the science (a point I address below).
    	But I believe the question goes to how influential I was in
    	the field, in a relative sense, at the time of publication of
    	my '98 and '99 studies.   After all, Wegman claims that there
    	is, in essence, an almost sinister conspiracy of like-minded
    	climate scientists who act as a cartel to control the published
    	literature in climate studies.  And his "proof" is the fact
    	that I have published with many prominent scientists who, in
    	Wegman's view, would be unwilling to criticize my 1998 and 1999
    	work even if it were seriously flawed.  But this theory does
    	not wash.  Apart from the fact that even my closest
    	collaborators are perfectly willing to criticize my work when
    	they think it is flawed, Wegman's math just does not support
    	his theory.  As indicated above, the vast majority (86%) of
    	my co-authorships occurred after my 1998/1999 studies.  So
    	Wegman's effort to suggest that I was influential in the
    	field at the time these studies were published, or in the
    	aftermath of their publication, cannot be squared with the
    	data, and is, in fact, nothing short of absurd.

    Question No. 4.  Does the scientific community rely exclusively or
    primarily on the peer review process conducted before an article
    is published to test the robustness and validity of new scientific
    discoveries or theories? Or does the development of science depend
    on an iterative process that involves not only peer review before
    publication, but also review and competing research and analysis
    by other scientists after publication?

    Answer:
    	This question raises an important issue that was
    	unfortunately not adequately aired at the hearing.
    	Dr. Wegman and others have expressed the view that the
    	scientific community somehow places exclusive reliance on
    	the peer review process as the determinant of scientific
    	truth.  But the peer review process is hardly the only, let
    	alone most important, way that the scientific community
    	tests the accuracy and reliability of scientific papers.
    	Indeed, Wegman's contention reflects a fundamental lack of
    	understanding of the basic principles that govern the
    	scientific discipline.  Science progresses through an
    	open, self-correcting process whereby scientists place
    	their ideas in the marketplace, typically by publishing
    	articles in peer review journals.  The peer review process
    	ensures only that basic mistakes are not made, that the
    	article acknowledges the existing literature on the subject,
    	and that it contributes in some way to the exploration of
    	important scientific issues.  But peer review does not and
    	cannot vouch for the accuracy of the paper.  That is the
    	function of the scientific process, by which other scientists
    	test out and question the work of their peers.  Some ideas
    	stand the test of time; others do not.  Copernicus was proven
    	right over time; Ptolemy's conception that the Earth forms
    	the center of the universe was proven wrong.   Much of
    	Einstein's work has stood up to reevaluation, but some of
    	his theories have been proven to be incorrect as well.
    	It is relevant in this context to again emphasize that the
    	key conclusion that my colleagues and I drew tentatively in
    	our work in the late '90s --- that late 20th century Northern
    	Hemisphere average warmth was likely unprecedented in at least
    	the past 1000 years --- has held up for more than a decade,
    	after dozens of independent studies have reexamined that
    	claim.  So it has passed this important test of time.  The
    	peer-review process is simply a quality control process to
    	make sure that claims, theories, and ideas that are self-
    	evidently flawed from the beginning do not clutter the pages
    	of the legitimate peer-reviewed scientific journals, that is,
    	to ensure that published papers have potential merit.  Peer
    	review is a simple first step at quality control.  It does
    	not, nor should it, be considered evidence that the
    	conclusions of a particular published paper are accurate or
    	not.  No single paper should ever be used to establish the
    	validity of a particular hypothesis or conclusion.  The
    	accuracy of claims, hypotheses, conclusions, indeed theories,
    	can only be established by examining the collective body of
    	peer-reviewed research to date on any particular topic, and
    	the overall thrust of that body of research.  Indeed, the
    	importance of broad-based scientific assessments (such as
    	those provided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
    	Change or "IPCC") is to evaluate the entire body of peer-
    	reviewed literature on a particular topic and to determine
    	the consensus, if there is one, that emerges in that body
    	of literature.

    Question No.  5.  Should all scientific papers be withheld from
    publication until the results are independently replicated?

    Answer:
    	This question also raises an important issue that was not
    	adequately aired at the hearing.   Once again, Dr. Wegman
    	and others suggested at the hearing that scientific pa
    	pers
    	be shelved for the time it takes for the results to be
    	verified independently.  This view is misguided, and, if
    	followed, would seriously undermine the development of
    	scientific knowledge.   It takes considerable time to
    	replicate a study.  Meanwhile, important findings that
    	would be unavailable to other scholars.  Such a requirement
    	would dangerously slow the progress of science.
    	As I explained above, in my view development of scientific
    	knowledge can take place only through an open, self-
    	correcting process whereby scientists put out ideas, other
    	scientists test them, and those ideas which stand up to
    	future tests survive while those that do not are ultimately
    	rejected.  It is important in this context that ideas with
    	potential merit be placed in the scientific discourse in a
    	timely manner, so that they can be followed up in a timely
    	manner by the entire scientific community and not just a few
    	researchers engaged in replication, and the scientific
    	process can proceed at an appropriate pace.  Were the
    	suggested requirement to be followed where all papers
    	required independent replication before publication, this
    	would bog down the scientific process to a near standstill.
    In data-poor areas of science such as paleoclimatology, the added
    benefit of new data is much more valuable than the pure replication
    of a past study.  "Replication" in a pure sense provides very poor
    value for money.  A good example would be the now- famous GRIP and
    GISP2 ice cores from Greenland.  These are two different Greenland
    ice cores that were drilled at two nearby but distinct locations
    by two different (one U.S. and one European) teams.  Had the total
    available funding simply been used for both teams to drill cores
    at the same site, and thereby replicate each other's work, only the
    technical accuracy of the coring would have been validated.
    Instead, the reproduction of a record that was nearby but separate
    gave both support to the main results, but also allowed the groups
    to discover a mix-up in dating prior to 100,000 years ago in one
    of the two cores.  So drilling two different ice cores, rather than
    drilling from the same source twice, proved to be a far more
    valuable use of the available funding and resources.
    	The proponents of this idea also ignore the near-
    	impossibility of its implementation.  How would scientists
    	be persuaded to replicate the unpublished work of others?
    	What would their incentives be to conduct this work quickly,
    	especially if it meant sacrificing the time researchers
    	would prefer to spend on their own work?  Would every study
    	be subject to replication?  Or only important studies?  And
    	who would decide which studies required replication prior to
    	publication?  Who would pay for these replications?  Would
    	the government pay for them?  Is Congress prepared to double
    	the size of research budgets for all of the major scientific
    	funding agencies (e.g. NSF, NIH, NOAA, etc.)?  And these
    	practical problems are only the tip of the iceberg.
    	My essential plea here is that Congress should not fix that
    	which is not broken.  Since Copernicus' time the scientific
    	process has successfully weeded out the wheat from the
    	chaff.    It would be dangerous for Congress or any
    	government body to tamper with that process.
    	There is another element of this question which raises a
    	deeply troubling matter with regard to Dr. Wegman's
    	failure to subject his work to peer review, and Wegman's
    	apparent refusal to let other scientists try to replicate
    	his work.   Professor David Ritson, Emeritus Professor of
    	Physics, Stanford University, has found error in the way
    	that Dr. Wegman models the "persistence" of climate proxy
    	data.  Interestingly, this is the same error Steven
    	McIntyre committed in his work, which was recently refuted
    	in the paper by Wahl and Ammann, which was in turn vetted
    	by Dr. Douglass Nychka, an eminent statistician.
    	Dr. Ritson has determined that that the calculations that
    	underlie the conclusions that Dr. Wegman advanced in his
    	report are likely flawed.  Although Dr. Ritson has been
    	unable to reproduce, even qualitatively, the results
    	claimed by Dr. Wegman, he has been able to isolate the
    	likely source of Wegman's errors.  What is so troubling is
    	that Dr. Wegman and his co-authors have ignored repeated
    	collegial inquiries by Dr. Ritson and apparently are
    	refusing to provide any basic details about the
    	calculations for the report (see Attachments 3 and 4 to
    	this Response).   It would appear that Dr. Wegman has
    	completely failed to live up to the very standards he
    	has publicly demanded of others.
    	Moreover, the errors that Dr. Ritson has identified in
    	Dr. Wegman's calculations appear so basic that they would
    	almost certainly have been detected in a standard peer
    	review.   In other words, had Dr. Wegman's report been
    	properly peer-reviewed in a rigorous process where peer-
    	reviewers were selected anonymously, it likely would not
    	have seen the light of day.   Dr. Wegman has thus
    	unwittingly provided us with a prime example of the
    	importance of the peer review process as a basic first
    	step in quality control.

    RESPONSE FOR THE RECORD OF DR. JOHN R. CHRISTY, PROFESSOR AND
    DIRECTOR, EARTH SYSTEM SCIENCE CENTER, NSSTC, UNIVERSITY OF
    ALABAMA IN HUNTSVILLE

    28 August 2006

    Hon. Ed Whitfield
    Chairman
    Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
    Committee on Energy and Commerce
    2125 Rayburn House Office Building
    Washington DC  20515-6115

    Dear Rep. Whitfield,

    Thank you for the opportunity to appear before your Subcommittee
    to address issues of global climate change.  I especially thank
    you for the opportunity to clarify some of the material that was
    entered into the official record which appeared to contradict my
    testimony.  I assure you that what I presented was accurate as
    to my experiences and understanding of climate change in general
    and dataset construction in particular.

    I will be happy and available to answer any further questions
    regarding my appearance.

    Sincerely,

    John R. Christy
    Director, Earth System Science Center
    Alabama State Climatologist
    University of Alabama in Huntsville

    Questions from Rep. Whitfield for John R. Christy

    (1) During the hearing, Mr. Waxman introduced into the hearing
    record a letter from Frank J. Wentz regarding your sharing of
    code with Remote Sensing Systems 9RSS).  Please explain your
    interactions with RSS (and Mr. Wentz) and subsequent interactions
    with Dr. Mann, as mentioned in your testimony.

    (1) Answer

    In the Hearing before the Subcommittee on Oversight and
    Investigations of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce on
    27 July 2006, I testified about our cooperation with Remote
    Sensing Systems (RSS) regarding sharing of satellite data and
    code.
    Mr. Waxman introduced into the record a letter from Mr. Frank
    Wentz of RSS which included an email from me to Mr. Wentz, over
    4 years old, implying an apparent lack of cooperation.  The
    problems here are (a) that this March 2002 email to Mr. Wentz
    from me was simply the first in a long series of emails in
    which we indeed cooperated, and (b) that this exchange related
    to a different dataset than the one I was speaking of in my
    testimony.  The following discussion describes the way these
    two datasets were examined by RSS.

    Mid-Tropospheric (MT) Temperature Product
    Another RSS Scientist, Dr. Carl Mears (not Dr. Mann), began
    constructing an MT product from the raw microwave digital
    counts in early 2002, following much of our published
    methodology.  There were some discrepancies between our two
    results.  Mr. Wentz asked for the code with which we
    constructed our MT data so as to resolve these differences.
    As stated in my first email on the subject, shared by
    Mr. Waxman in Mr. Wentz's letter, I declined to send the code
    for the reasons given.  However, there were many further
    exchanges of information (in terms of the Hearing language:
    there were discussions about the "algorithms") to the point
    that RSS understood the three main differences between our
    two datasets.  Mr. Wentz's description of "trial and error"
    in his letter in this process left out the important point
    that we were in constant communication on the details and
    subtleties of the dataset construction process.
    During this time, we discussed at great length matters
    concerning (1) the methodology of calculating the strength
    of the target-temperature effect, (2) the methodology of
    determining intersatellite biases and to a lesser extent (3)
    the adjustments for the satellites' east-west drifting
    (diurnal effect.)
    At a conference in Asheville NC, (Oct. 2003) Dr. Mears
    presented a talk entitled "Understanding the difference
    between the UAH and RSS retrievals of satellite-based
    tropospheric temperature estimate" and stated he was
    satisfied as to having understood the main reasons for the
    differences between our two datasets.  Indeed in this
    presentation, Dr. Mears used some of the adjustment files
    we had provided to them to help answer questions of how our
    adjustment process worked (i.e. diurnal drift files.)  He
    also displayed our target factor calculations, again provided
    to RSS, along with a detailed description of their
    computation.  It was clear we had provided information to
    understand the discrepancies.
    RSS was also able to publish these findings and results
    (Mears et al. 2003).  I was a reviewer of that paper and
    recommended publication. In my view, this closed the episode
    on this dataset.

    Lower Tropospheric (LT) Temperature Product
    In 2005, Dr. Mears also led in the development of a different
    temperature product, LT, which UAH had been producing since
    1992.   He addressed the issues of hot target calibration
    coefficients and intersatellite biases to his satisfaction but
    was unable to replicate our diurnal effect.  He asked for more
    information and we supplied the appropriate section of the
    code and intermediate adjustment files so he could test the
    code against the output.  With these in hand he was able to
    discover the artifact in the algebra which created the error
    most visible in the tropics.
    That we supplied these items is inarguable as the paper
    published by Mears and Wentz (2005) in Science displays the
    UAH adjustment files.  Additionally, even though we did not
    know the outcome of their study at the time, I granted
    permission to publish our files as shown by this following
    exchange between Dr. Mears and myself on 13 May 2005 in which
    he responds to me for being open in this way.

    13 May 2005  8:41 p.m.

    Hi Carl:

    Anyway, something jogged my memory this morning that you had
    asked about using the UAH diurnal adjustments in a paper, and
    I didn't respond with a firm answer.  Sorry.  I think it would
    be fine to use and critique ... that's sort of what science is
    all about.

    [John Christy]

    13 May 2005  1:58 p.m.

    Hi John

    Thanks for permission -- I strongly approve of your view of
    science expressed [above].  I think that things that aren't
    nutty or poorly explained should be published in the open
    literature without too much fuss, so that they can then be
    commented on.....  Of course, different people have different
    opinions about what constitutes nutty.

    You[r] global diurnal effect agree[s] pretty much with mine,
    but it's the *opposite* sign.  The real difference is in the
    tropics.  I suspect the same calculation for 20S to 20N will
    show a much larger effect.  With the model-based diurnal
    correction, the big disagreement with the surface in the tropics
    goes away.

    [Carl Mears  Remote Sensing System]

    So, the apparent contradiction between my testimony and the
    letter from Mr. Wentz sprang from a misunderstanding of how
    two different datasets were being addressed.  One (MT) was
    solved without sharing the specific code but for which we did
    supply ancillary data files and considerable information.  The
    other (LT) needed parts of the code to resolve the discrepancy.
    In the Hearing, Mr. Waxman dealt with the former while I dealt
    with the latter.  In both cases, however, UAH did cooperate
    with RSS.

    Mears, C.A., M.C. Schabel, and F.J. Wentz, 2003:  A reanalysis
    of the MSU channel 2 tropospheric temperature record.
    J. Climate, 16, 3650-3664.

    Mears, C.A. and F.J. Wentz, 2005:  The effect of diurnal
    correction on satellite-derived lower tropospheric temperature.
    Science, 309, 1538-1551.
    (2) As you were a member of the National Research Council
    panel that recently issued the report on millennial temperature
    reconstructions:

    (a) Where in the report did the panel describe "plausible" as
    suggesting roughly a 2/3rds probability of being correct.
    (b) In the report, did the panel attach probability estimates
    to the term "plausible"?
    (c) Why did the panel choose to use the term "plausible," as
    opposed for example to terms such as "likely", to describe
    confidence in millennial temperature reconstructions?

    (2a) Answer

    The report did not intend for "plausible" to be equated with
    "2/3rds" probability of being correct.  My view ,as a panel
    member, is that "plausible" was chosen to indicate a lack of
    quantifiability in describing confidence in pre-1600 temperatures.

    (2b) Answer

    "Plausible" was chosen precisely because it implied that
    probability estimates could not be assigned to pre-1600
    temperature estimates due to (a) the limited amount of proxy
    information available and (b) the unknown confidence with which
    these proxy records may determine temperature.  The current proxies
    are mostly consistent with the notion that pre-1600 temperatures
    were cooler than late 20th century temperatures, but the evidence
    is still too meager and uncertain.

    (2c) Answer

    As a member of the IPCC 2001 Lead Author team I outlined in my
    testimony why the word "likely" was chosen in that document.
    "Likely" in the IPCC 2001 terminology had an estimated likelihood
    defined as being at least 2/3rds probable.  The NRC panel chose
    "plausible" for reasons given in (2b) above.  My view of the NRC
    report is that our IPCC statement was inadequate in that the IPCC
    should have separated the last millennium into two periods with
    higher than "likely" confidence for post-1600 and lower than
    "likely" confidence for pre-1600 estimates.

    (3) When considering the panel's findings that it is "plausible"
    that recent decades were the warmest in a millennium, is it
    correct to interpret that to mean the panel's consensus view was
    that plausible means roughly 2/3rds probability of being correct,
    as was suggested in the news reports following the press
    conference releasing the report?

    (3) Answer

    I was disturbed when reading the press reports that implied the
    panel had endorsed with "likely" confidence statements about the
    pre-1600 temperatures. The panel did not conclude that there was
    a 2/3rds probability that late 20th century warmth was greater
    than at anytime prior to 1600.  As noted above, there are
    indications that such is the case, but the data do not allow
    statements of quantifiable confidence to be made at this point.

    (4) In your testimony, you mention your recent study relating to
    California regional temperature trends and human influences on
    those trends (Christy et al. 2006a).  Please describe the purpose
    and conclusions of that study.

    (4) Answer

    As a native of Fresno and an avid weather observer since being a
    teenager there, I had an abiding interest in determining the extent
    of temperature changes in the Valley.  This eventually led to a
    study funded by the National Science Foundation.  The first part
    of the study was a data gathering effort in which every available
    long-term dataset for the Valley and nearby Sierras was acquired,
    many by manual digitization from paper records.  The second part
    was the development of a means to merge all of these data into a
    regional time series of temperature for daytime and nighttime
    temperatures separately, for each season separately and for the
    Valley and Sierras separately.
    We discovered that Valley nighttime temperatures were rising
    rapidly while daytime temperatures were generally falling slightly.
    In the Sierras however, there were no real significant trends,
    with perhaps a suggestion of nighttime cooling in summer and fall.
    This result suggests that the significant changes in the land
    surface of the Valley (irrigation and perhaps urbanization) are
    causing the changes in the Valley.  The fact there were no
    long-term changes in the Sierras for this period suggests that
    the enhanced greenhouse effect has not been a significant factor
    in Central California in terms of temperature changes.  (For
    regions this small, one must always consider the natural variations
    of climate as also being an issue with which to deal, but such
    variations should have affected both Valley and Sierra in the
    same way.)

    (5) Please explain why the measurement of average global (or
    average hemispheric) temperature change does or does not represent
    an adequate metric for understanding or predicting the risks of
    potential climate change impacts.

    (5) Answer

    Thermometers near the surface will respond to all of the forcing
    processes that act upon them.  Thus, surface temperature over
    land will show responses to changes such as urbanization and other
    land-use changes in addition to that of atmospheric forcing from
    aerosols or greenhouse gases.   As a result, it is difficult to
    extract out the impacts of one particular forcing on surface
    temperature with high confidence.
    Daily temperature is commonly reported as two values, the maximum
    and minimum, from which the daily average is calculated.  Maximum
    temperature is more relevant for climate change as it occurs when
    the surface and upper atmosphere are more closely connected
    through vertical mixing and thus will give a better idea of what
    the general climate system as a whole is doing.  Minimum
    temperature is more closely related to a shallow layer near the
    ground and is thus impacted more by urbanization, aerosol pollution
    and other land-use changes.  Thus, daily average temperature is
    partially dependent on processes that impact minima.
    Theoretically, the temperature of the ocean surface is a better
    quantity to measure in terms of observing a variable that has a
    more direct relationship to a forcing such as greenhouse gases.
    However, there are large areas of the ocean that have never been
    systematically observed over long-periods, and the manner by which
    ocean temperatures have been taken and the associated biases
    contain a certain level of uncertainty, especially in the earliest
    years.
    Surface temperature is one metric for assessing climate variations
    and change, but is less informative than others.  Indeed the ability
    of model simulations to depict surface temperature distributions is
    quite primitive at this stage.  Focusing on the global average
    surface temperature also circumvents the fact that the spatial
    distribution of those changes is more important than the overall
    average in terms of risk and impact. For example, our work in
    California, the SE USA and preliminary work in East Africa indicate
    models are not able to replicate what the observations since 1900
    have shown, though for the global average they are not in great
    error.  Additionally, the lowest layer (or boundary layer) of the
    atmosphere in which these surface thermometers are positioned, is
    an extremely complicated part of the climate system which is not
    well-represented in climate models. Average surface temperature,
    while valuable in local terms to humans who live on the surface,
    is a rather limited and complicated variable, compounding its
    lack of utility in providing a high level of understanding about
    greenhouse-gas induced climate change.
    A much more fundamental measurement needed to assess how various
    forcing mechanisms are affecting the planet is the heat content,
    which is essentially the number of joules of energy in the
    system.  So, by counting the number of joules of energy in the
    deep atmosphere, ocean (mainly upper ocean), and other components
    such as ice caps, one has access to a better metric for
    understanding how much extra energy is (or is not) being trapped
    in the climate system. Knowing the number of joules, however,
    is still a step removed from knowing whether particular
    components of the Earth (and human) system might be at "risk"
    for a significant impact.
    It is a very subjective task to address the idea of "risk" of
    potential impacts of a changing climate (either natural or
    human-induced) from surface temperature considerations, and
    as important, the possible impact of specific policies.  The
    various processes that affect surface temperature render it a
    less-than-optimal gauge of human-induced climate change
    impacts, even if concentrating on the better measure - daily
    maximum temperature.  Thus, it is even more difficult to
    assign an observed change in surface temperature to a
    particular cause.

    Questions from Rep. Supak for John R. Christy

    (1) In your written testimony, you stated that the poor of
    the world are more vulnerable to the impacts of poverty,
    water and air pollution, and political strife (sic) than to
    whatever the climate does.  You also made a plea that the
    poor of the world not be denied the use of energy.  A recent
    article in the Washington Post recorded the tremendous cost
    of subsistence farmers and urban dwellers in Peru because of
    the melting of the glaciers that has caused a water crisis.
    The loss of glacial ice in the Himalayas will affect 300
    million people relying on snowmelt for the water supply.
    (See attached, "On the roof of Peru, Omens in the Ice;
    Retreat of Once-Mighty Glacier signals Water Crisis, Mirroring
    Worldwide Trend," July 29, 2006, A1.)

    (a) Is it your position that nothing should be done in the
    developed world to control its fossil fuel energy use while
    we wait for development to reach these poor people who are
    directly suffering today from the effects of climate change?
    (b) What do you propose to protect the poor people of the world
    today from the effects of climate change, particularly as it
    relates to their water supply and ability to raise crops to feed
    their families?

    This is an important issue to me and I will strive to provide a
    policy-relevant answer.  Thank you for addressing an issue that
    has considerable import to millions.
    The questions above are introduced with a Washington Post news
    article describing the apparent plight of Peruvians who depend
    on annual snow/glacial melting for a portion of their water
    needs.  These types of articles generally present dramatic
    assertions and tend to highlight whatever is alarmist and
    attention-grabbing.  After all, the ability of the media to
    survive is dependent on how many people's attention may be
    grabbed.  Assertions are not science.  Science is numbers
    (as Lord Kelvin said.)
    Tropical glaciers have been advancing and retreating for thousands
    of years, and are not exceptionally good indicators of
    temperature.  (Note for example: Scientists Unravel Mystery of
    Growing Glaciers, 24 Aug 2006, Guardian Unlimited, describing the
    growth of glaciers in the western Himalaya, Karakoram and Hindu
    Kush mountains.)   In Fig. 6.1 of the NRC Surface Temperature
    Reconstruction Report (2006 of which I was a co-author), ice
    cores of three glaciers are shown for South America and three
    for the Tibetan Plateau.  Two of the 6 show an increase in the
    proxy temperature since 1000 A.D. while the other 4 show level or
    declining trends.  In particular, the glacier identified in the
    Post article (Quelccaya) shows a long decline (cooling) to about
    1800 with a rise to about 1950 and fairly level since then which
    doesn't match human-induced climate change theories well at all.
    Dr. Lonnie Thompson, who studies this glacier more than anyone,
    indicated to me that he believed this glacier was about 1,500
    years old.  Thus, it appears that these glaciers advance and
    retreat on many time scales and should not be depended upon for
    the long term.  This is what the numbers suggest.
    A society which depends on the annual melting of "glacial" ice
    is therefore dependent on an erratic system.  The following
    letter to the editor addresses the problems of the Peruvian water
    situation, noting that ineffective water management rather than
    global warming is the problem.

    Peru Shows Why Water Privatization Is Needed

    Washington Post
    Sunday, August 6, 2006; B06

    Doug Struck reported on the water crisis in Lima, Peru, and on the
    role that accelerated glacier melting has played in recent years
    ["On the Roof of Peru, Omens in the Ice," front page, July 29].
    But more than a billion people throughout the developing world
    lack access to clean water, and that is largely due to the dismal
    performance of the public sector, which is in charge of 97 percent
    of formal water distribution in poor countries. Water shortages
    are even common in Cherrapunji, India, which has been described
    as the wettest place on Earth.

    In Lima, a quarter of the city's 8 million people don't have
    piped water. The article quotes an engineer at Peru's public
    monopoly who suggests that if the utility did connect those
    2 million people, there would not be enough water to serve them.
    The article does not mention that some 40 percent of the water
    piped through the public utility is lost to leakages and otherwise
    unaccounted for.

    Peru's public water utility has failed to serve a huge percentage
    of the population for decades. Privatization would increase
    access to water, reduce death and diseases, and introduce
    accountability and rational pricing, as countless cases of
    successful water privatization around the world have shown. The
    first to benefit would be Lima's poor, who currently pay
    exorbitant black-market prices for water.

    IAN V�SQUEZ

    Director
    Project on Global Economic Liberty
    Cato Institute
    Washington

    The main problem in poor agricultural societies like Peru is that
    the country's institutions and regulations encourage wasteful
    water usage in rural areas that particularly harm the poor.
    Agricultural productivity is mainly undermined by major factors
    (lack of property rights, closed economies, civil wars, state
    marketing boards, erratic macroeconomic policy, low growth, bad
    infrastructure, etc.) that have nothing whatsoever to do with
    global warming. In areas like Peru where glacier melting seems
    to have reduced water supply, it would be far cheaper to pay for
    a range of solutions (a system of dams and irrigation, relocation
    of some vulnerable citizens, etc.) than it would to implement
    alternatives that would reduce growth in both rich and poor
    countries and in the end have no impact on the problem.  So the
    better approach is to encourage locally-focused solutions at a
    far smaller cost than top-down energy suppression measures which
    in reality will not impact the climate.
    In summary, alarmist articles, such as was as attached with these
    questions, are not designed to give hard scientific information
    from which policy can be made.  The real issues in this arena
    often boil down to how public water management entities have
    failed to store, allocate and distribute water effectively,
    efficiently and sustainably.

    (1a) Answer

    As indicated in my testimony, it is my view that people should be
    given greater access to energy produced by the most efficient
    and clean means possible because energy provides longer and better
    lives.  At present, much of the poor's energy is produced from
    biomass burning (wood, dung) which destroys habitat and fouls the
    air with toxic smoke.  In that context, energy from fossil fuels
    can be an environmental and humanitarian step forward.  Though
    expensive and intermittent, other sources, such as solar or wind,
    could help fill part of the gap.  However, cost, reliability and
    base-load power requirements are three factors that must be
    considered and which tend to work against solar and wind.
    I do not subscribe to the notion that climate change (about which
    we can do anything about) is causing these people serious problems
    today.  Tropical glaciers are known to have advanced and retreated
    many times in the past.  People who are dependent on a particular
    status quo of a dynamical system like mountain glaciers are
    operating in a belief-system that the actual climate cannot
    guarantee.  The present retreat of several of the glaciers in this
    part of the tropics leads one to hope these people can adapt to
    such variability.  (But note above the growth of glaciers in South
    Asia.)  Their water still falls as rain and snow, and capturing
    that water for dry spells is a prudent plan to pursue.  The issue
    of water policy goes far beyond Peru and the impacts of climate
    change (see below).

    (1b) Answer

    Let me first say that the future distribution and quantity of
    rainfall is unknown.  Rainfall patterns have been notoriously
    variable over the centuries as evidenced by paleo-climate research
    during the period when no human-influence on climate was possible.
    Additionally, rainfall in general is more important than temperature
    for sustaining life.
    Climate models are unable to confidently predict where the rain may
    increase, decrease or stay the same.  Further, efforts to "control"
    climate change are misguided as we have no way to confidently
    determine how a particular policy for controlling greenhouse gases
    will impact precipitation.
    Water policy is a vast and complex issue with climate variability
    being only one component.  The political aspects of water
    availability are significant and the growth of water-dependent
    systems (human and agricultural) in desert areas is going to be
    a challenge to sustain whatever the climate does (see introductory
    comments to these answers).  In the U.S. for example, we know that
    creating the availability and performance of an acre-foot of fresh
    water in California (where over 80% goes to irrigation) costs about
    15 times that of creating the same acre-foot in Alabama.  Where
    then should the country invest its funds for the most benefit, both
    financially and environmentally?
    The policy-relevant issues for a political body are to determine
    (1) where and how much water there is, (2) who owns the water and
    therefore who controls its use, (3) what uses are sustainable
    environmentally, financially and politically, (4) what
    infrastructure may be built to use the available water efficiently,
    confidently and sustainably, and (5) what incentives are available
    to pay for (4).
    I suspect water will become more and more commoditized in the
    future, so that some investment will come from the commercial
    sector to store and distribute water.  How governments, especially
    poor governments, take advantage of such investments to provide
    clean water for human consumption (and a great leap forward in
    health care) will be done on a country-by-country basis, but I
    cannot predict how effective that process will be.  U.S. policymakers
    could facilitate the reduction of water crises by helping governments
    answer these 5 questions.

    (2) Your published work on satellite-derived lower tropospheric
    temperature data was used for several years as evidence that there
    is no global warming, since it appeared to show that the
    temperatures in the tropics were actually cooling.  In 2005,
    Dr. Carl Mears and Dr. Frank Wentz of Remote Sensing Systems in
    Santa Rosa, California, published an article in Science magazine
    showing that, because of orbital drift and decay that was not
    controlled for in your study, the temperature measurements were
    gradually taken later and later in the day when temperatures
    were cooling.  The article also found a mathematical error in
    your work.  When corrected, the data pointed to an increase in
    tropical temperatures, not a decrease.

    Is you original work still being used as evidence that there is
    no global warming?  Have you corrected this work?

    There are a number of issues intermingled in these comments and
    questions that need clarification.  Beginning in June 1998 and
    for every month since then, the University of Alabama in
    Huntsville (UAH) global temperature measurements reported positive
    global trends for all versions of the lower tropospheric (LT)
    temperature dataset.  The tropical trends were not different from
    a zero trend when Mears and Wentz began looking at the methodology
    of our version 5.1 (v5.1).  As noted in my testimony they
    discovered an artifact of our adjustments for satellite drift which
    created a cooling error in the tropics for LT.  (We produce other
    temperature products which used the same methodology to account
    for this drift but which were not affected by this artifact.)
    A fair bit of confusion arose when Mears and Wentz published the
    discovery of this error in August 2005 and in the same
    publication introduced a new LT dataset of their own.  The
    implication of this publication was that the error they found
    was the difference between our old dataset and their new dataset
    which was significant, about 0.10 �C/decade. In other words, the
    impression given in the article was that their new dataset
    represented a corrected version of our old dataset.  Unfortunately,
    this was not the case.  The actual impact of the error in UAH's
    v5.1 was not addressed in their paper.  As Roy Spencer and I
    published in Science magazine later in 2005, the effect of that
    error was small, +0.035 �C/decade (at that time from +0.090 to
    +0.125 �C/decade), being within our originally published error
    margin assigned to v5.1.  In the tropics, the effect was to
    increase the trend from  +0.00 to +0.05 �C/decade.
    We corrected the error in May 2005 and with the publication of
    Mears and Wentz put the data on a public website in August 2005,
    though it was provided to several scientists before that date.
    This new version, v5.2, has been publicly available since that
    time.  So there are two LT datasets with somewhat differing trends,
    UAH's and RSS's.
    Of interest to the committee is the fact I will have two papers to
    be published shortly which indicate UAH v5.2 is highly consistent
    with independent temperature measurements of the LT layer.  These
    papers show that it is very likely that the tropical atmosphere
    is warming at a rate equal to or less than that of the surface, a
    characteristic no climate model that we have examined replicates.
    Thus, there is evidence that the theoretical ideas of how the
    large-scale atmosphere should be responding to the enhanced
    greenhouse effect, as embodied in climate models, still have
    shortcomings.
    As to the first question, we provide only the latest version of
    our data to the public.  And, since 1998 any version of our lower
    tropospheric dataset would have shown a positive global trend.
    Thus, if someone is using UAH data to claim no global warming, I
    would speculate they are likely using pre-1998 data or are somehow
    altering the data to make that conclusion.  I don't know of any
    current claims to that effect, and UAH has been forthright in
    reporting positive trends (and the likelihood that at least part
    of that positive trend is due to enhanced greenhouse gases) these
    past 8 years.
    In answering the second question, the discussion above describes
    the events that led to the correction of the drift error and UAH's
    corrected data have been publicly available since August 2005.
    However, one should be aware that datasets are always subject to
    revision, and we look forward to v6.0 of our current dataset, though
    there will be little change in the outcome relative to v5.2.