Joe Barton

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I want to thank Congressman Scalise, Congressman Linder, and Congressman Shimkus for participating in this Special Order. What we are attempting to do is to actually use the scientific method to determine what steps, if any, the United States Government should take policy-wise if, in fact, climate change or global warming is a major problem that needs to be addressed. It does appear, in my opinion, that there is reasonable doubt about whether we should take some of the radical steps that have been espoused in the climate change bills which have passed the House and which are pending in the Senate. I want to take the remaining time and go through a series of emails that have just become public--we've alluded to them--and go into a little more depth. The first email which we have already alluded to is from Michael Mann. Michael Mann is a climatologist at Penn State University. He is one of the leading scientists in the IPCC. He is the author of the original hockey stick theory that is kind of the genesis, the seminal document, for the theory that manmade CO2 is the cause of the climate warming in the world. This is a document from him to Phil Jones, who was, until recently, the head of the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University in Great Britain. Now, Dr. Jones resigned in the last week or so, but in it, he says, Can you delete any emails that you've have had with Keith--Keith is Keith Briffa--regarding AR4? AR4 is a U.N. IPCC fourth assessment document from 2007. It's one of these policy documents that is used around the world. You can see that he says, I am going to contact Gene about this. Okay. Gene is actually Eugene Wahl. He is at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's office in Boulder, Colorado. That's with the U.S. Department of Commerce. He said, I am going to contact Gene about this. Can you delete any emails that you have? I'll get Caspar to do likewise. Caspar is Caspar Jones--I mean Caspar Ammann. He is at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, or NCAR, in Boulder, Colorado. It's a federally supported consortium. So, in this email, we have collaboration between NOAA, NCAR--both in the United States--the Climate Research Unit, which is CRU in East Anglia, Great Britain, and many prominent IPCC contributors coordinating document destruction. I think that is something that policymakers here in the United States should be concerned about. Now let's go to the next document, email No. 2. Now, the first one was from Michael Mann to Phil Jones. This is from Phil Jones to a gentleman named Tom Wigley. Its subject is: Schles suggestion. This is last year, December of 2008. It says, I am supposed to go through my emails, and he can get anything I've written about him. About 2 months ago, I deleted loads of emails, so we have very little, if anything, at all. So what this is showing is, or one could say, they have conspired to delete data. This is of Ben Santer, who is Santer 1, who is a prominent climate modeler at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and of Tom Wigley, who is a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. The gist of this is he has already deleted a lot of emails from 2 months ago. What are they trying to hide here? Now, let's go to email number 3. Email number 3 shows an unprecedented data purge at the CRU in East Anglia, Great Britain. Here is a public index of documents on one day and then here is the public index on the next, very quickly, after they have gone through and purged all, purged all of this. It says the next day, on July 28, Phil Jones deleted data from his public files, leaving online a variety of files from the 1990s. This morning, everything in Dr. Phil's directory had been removed. It's not just the emails that have been deleted, in a widely reported event. Steve McIntyre, who is a Canadian researcher who testified before Congress several years ago when I was chairman, and who has been attempting to get these data sets, to get these documents, he has been trying to get, through the Freedom of Information Act, the public documents that some of these studies are purported to be based upon. Instead of releasing them, they purged them. They took them away in what is reported to be an unprecedented data purge. They have deleted files pertaining to station data from the public directories. Why? Where are the data now if they are still in existence? What is it they are trying to hide? If the temperature data records really proved their theory, they would want to publicize them. At least I would think that they would. Let's go to number 4. This is an email from Phil Jones, who we know well now, to a gentleman named Neville Nicholls. Mr. Nicholls, let's see, Mr. Nicholls, I am not sure who Mr. Nicholls is, but here it says, I hope I don't get a call from Congress. I am hoping that no one there realizes I have a U.S. Department of Energy grant and have had this with Tom W. for the past 25 years. This is back in 2005. This is when I was chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and we were conducting the investigation into Dr. Mann's hockey stick proposal, hockey stick theory, and we had asked for some documents from Professor Mann, or Dr. Mann, and this gentleman is saying we hope the Congress doesn't realize that we are getting Federal money; we don't want them to be asking us about documents. Of course, as we now know, they have destroyed many of those documents or apparently have destroyed many of those documents. Let's go to number 5. Now, this documents shows the lengths to which they will go to suppress information, says if they ever hear that there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I will delete these rather than send them to anyone. Now, Congressman Markey, who is a good friend of mine and who is a believer, a proponent of manmade global warming, has got data sets that he says justify some of the policies that he supports. But here we see that some of these documents and some of these data sets that Mr. Markey and others have--who sincerely believe that there is a problem-- appear to be very suspect. In fact, they are so suspect that if they have to release them publicly, they would rather delete them than to comply with the Freedom of Information Act. Tom Wigley had sent me a worried email when he heard about it. He thought that people might ask him for his model code. My heavens, you know. Keep in mind that this theory that mankind-made CO2 emissions is driving the temperature upwards, it's just that; it's a theory. These researchers have built these models to try to replicate the planet's temperature mechanism, and all these models show the temperature going up. But that's the conclusion that the modelers want. It is not factually correct to say the temperature is going up; it's factually correct to say the modelers, who want to prove that the temperature is going up, are putting variables and assumptions in these models that drive them up, but they apparently don't have the data to back that up. Let's go to number 6. This is again from Mr. Jones, a gentleman named Gavin Schmidt, concerning the revised version of something called the Wengen paper, W-e-n-g-e-n. It says all of our Freedom of Information officers have been in discussions and are now using the same exceptions not to respond--the advice that they got from the information commissioner. The Freedom of Information line that we are using is that the IPCC--now keep in mind the IPCC is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change--is funded primarily by the U.S. taxpayer, not exclusively, but primarily, is exempt from any country's Freedom of Information, because the skeptics have been told this. Even though we possibly hold relevant information that the IPCC is not part of our remit, i.e., mission statement, therefore we don't have an obligation to pass it on. To me that's just irresponsible to say that the IPCC, which is a total governmental agency, admittedly through the U.N. and a large number of nations, but the U.S. as the primary funder, is above Federal Freedom of Information laws, not only in the United States but in every other country. This information that has been collected and paid for by U.S. taxpayers and funded by U.S. scientists is now out of reach of the U.S. taxpayer? I think that's just flat wrong, Madam Speaker. My last email is number 7, and this shows, while they accuse people like myself of trying to be bullies and to ostracize people, here is an email where again this Professor Mann, Michael, it's to Michael Mann from a gentleman named Malcolm Hughes, just a heads up; apparently the contrarians now have an in with GRL. GRL, which is the Geophysical Research Letters, a prominent climate journal--this guy Sayers has a prior connection with the University of Virginia Department of Environmental Sciences that causes me some unease. Then later on--this is truly awful. If you think that Sayers is in the greenhouse skeptics camp, then if we can find documentary evidence of this, we could go through official ATU channels to get him ousted. They are trying to ostracize those that are honest enough to say that they have some doubts about the theory. I will end with this: The theory of global warming caused by mankind is just that, it is a theory; it is not a fact. As U.S. taxpayers and as the guardians of the U.S. taxpayers, we should demand that the facts be made public so that we can make a relevant policy decision.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. We just said, We'll assume that, since Congressman Linder says he won, he did win.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. May I ask the Chair how much time we have remaining in our Special Order?

Mr. BARTON of Texas. But it would have been a little warmer than it is today. We might not have been comfortable wearing a woolen sweater back then.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I know it's dangerous for Congressmen to actually think. We are not accused of doing that very often, but there are sometimes some Congressmen, you and I, I think, are two, not that others don't, but we actually think. Now I want to build on what you just said. These ice core samples that you got the data that show temperature goes up, and then CO2 goes up. And if temperature were to go down, then CO2 would go down.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I agree. We want to now turn to the Congressman from New Orleans, Louisiana, a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Congressman Scalise.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. We are in a situation right now where it appears, it depends on the data that you believe; but if the data points that we think are correct are correct, we are in a cooling period. Temperature has gone down at least 8 years in a row and probably 12 years in a row, and we appear to be in a cooling period. But at the same time, we have to admit that CO2 concentrations are going up.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. So I would hypothesize that the CO2 concentrations going up are going to prevent as much cooling, and it will keep the planet warmer than it would be otherwise, but still cooler overall, which would be a good thing for mankind. We don't want another ice age, do we?

Mr. BARTON of Texas. The AR4 data set is the data set that was used in the IPCC report in 2007, so it's a seminal document that has been used for policymaking decisions, not just in the United States but all over the world.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. So that was 2 months ago.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. So Vice President Gore is only off by 180 degrees?

Mr. BARTON of Texas. And we believe that the Atlantic and Pacific are in a cooling period.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I'm told this, you probably know, that there are more glaciers in the world that are growing than there are that are in decline.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. All I know is when people retire, they move to Florida and Texas.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. There are 12 minutes. Okay. At about 10 minutes to go, I have got some documents I want to put in the Record.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Something called a PSO and an AMO or something?

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Then we want to go to Mr. Scalise.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. What you are saying is they went to some lengths to manipulate the data that that report is based on.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Well, one of the things that I hope we can agree, we can have different opinions, different views on issues, but between you as chairman of the Climate Committee and Mr. Waxman as chairman of the Energy Committee and Mr. Sensenbrenner, who is your ranking member, and myself, who is the ranking member on Energy, we should be able to get a data set that we both agree is what the facts are, and I would like your cooperation in doing that. Our data sets that I'm going to allude to are different. Now, I know enough to know what I don't know. And I don't know if that's a surface temperature, I don't know if that's a tropospheric temperature in the upper atmosphere, I don't know if that's a local temperature that's some sort of an annual mean. There are all kinds of different ways to describe it and to calculate it, but we ought to agree, as policy leaders, on a way to get a data set that everybody says, then we are going to debate the implications of that data set, whatever it is. And I hope that you and Mr. Waxman----

Mr. BARTON of Texas. We are going to introduce, in our Special Order, some serious concerns that some of the scientists that maintain these data sets manipulate, change and eliminate for their own conclusions. And again, it's very fair to have an opinion and have a scientific debate, but it shouldn't be fair to manipulate the data in a way that at best is disingenuous, or in some cases deceitful, and I hope you would agree with that.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. We can't both be telling the truth. We can't say the temperature has gone down 11 years in a row and you have data that says 2005 was the second hottest year on record and all of that. I mean, how do we reconcile these data points? I mean, is there a way, a methodology that we can supply our data and you can supply your data and we can try to reconcile them? I mean, the facts ought to be the facts. We can have different opinions, but we ought to agree on what the facts are.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Are those data points public?

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Markey, before you yield back, could you answer a question if you still have time?

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I encourage you to listen, and if you wish to stay and maybe participate in our Special Order, you would be welcome.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. We have a fundamental difference on the data, which is part of what our Special Order is going to be. We have verifiable data that the temperature has gone down the last 11 years in a row, and yet you alluded to some data points about the hottest years on record and stuff; I mean, how do we reconcile that?