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noting that Wegman would have come to precisely the same conclusion had he done a similar analysis
of any one of these great scientists. Yet in reality, North explained, these individuals were fiercely
competitive and disagreed intensely with each other on key scientific matters.
31
As North put it later:
“They [Wegman and Barton] make it sound like a love nest—well, it isn't. If you know anything about
science, it's more like a contact sport.”
32
Wegman didn't help his own credibility with his testimony. He became flustered when asked
repeatedly by ranking member Bart Stupak (D-MI) why his analysis focused only on a set of North
American tree ring data, while the actual MBH analyses involved a global proxy data-set. He
committed gaffes that called into question his basic understanding of the central topic at hand. As
reported by Richard Harris of NPR, “[T]he limits of Wegman's expertise became painfully clear
when he tried to answer a question from Illinois Democrat Jan Schakowsky about the well known
quoted Wegman's revealing response, “Carbon dioxide is heavier than air. Where it sits in the
atmospheric profile, I don't know. I'm 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's not reflecting a lot of
infrared back.” The greenhouse effect, however, has nothing to do with “reflecting” radiation. And it
is well known to atmospheric scientists that CO
2
is well mixed in the atmosphere by the same
turbulent motions that keep the major atmospheric constituents (oxygen, nitrogen) at constant ratios.
The atmospheric CO
2
concentration today is 390 ppm not only at the surface, but also at five and
fifteen kilometers above the ground.
Wegman wasn't the only one generating gaffes at the hearing. Whit-field, in his opening remarks,
repeated the self-evidently preposterous claim that the 1997 Kyoto Accord was based on the 1998
hockey stick paper.
34
In the end, there had been much political theater, but very little scientific
substance at the hearing that day. As Richard Harris put it, “if anyone showed up at this hearing room
to hear a true scientific debate on global warming they ended up instead with just a political debate
often far afield from the facts.” It was a poor enough showing by Barton and his supporters that the
Democrats on the committee smelled blood. They would readily agree to a follow-up hearing with me
testifying, as Barton had originally requested, in the hope that they could turn the tide on the
Republicans, making the topic of human-caused climate change, which the committee had for so long
avoided under Barton's chairmanship, front and center in the discussion.
present. Three other scientists were also invited to testify: Ralph Cicerone, the newly minted
president of the National Academy of Sciences; Jay Gulledge of the Pew Center on Global Change;
and John Christy. Ranking member Stupak used his opening statement to point out that Barton, having
failed to discredit our work the previous week, appeared now to be trying to change the topic: “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.”
36
Stupak then went
on offense: “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.” Henry Waxman (D-CA)
then pounced, accusing Barton of trying to use very same Serengeti strategy deployed by the fossil
fuel industry against Ben Santer in the mid1990s against me: “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.”
