The House Science Committee held a historic hearing on the IPCC report and the status of climate change (link to RealPlayer video of the hearing). It was especially historic because Speaker Pelosi made it the first committee she testified before as Speaker. She expressed her concerns about climate change, and the concerns she's heard from many others.
The hearing continued for over three hours, with a panel of experts occupying most of the time. The panel consisted of climate scientists who had contributed and edited portions of the IPCC report and the Summary for Policy Makers recently released. Chris Mooney covered the hearing for Seed magazine.
But what I want to talk about is not the excellent testimony offered, but the concluding remarks by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher. He had aggressively questioned on witness, pushing a fairly irrelevant question about what fraction of carbon dioxide in the air comes from natural sources, then ignoring the answers he got. In his concluding remarks, he observed that carbon dioxide levels have fluctuated throughout the Earth's history.
"We don't know what those other cycles were caused by in the past," Representative Rohrabacher speculated, "it could be dinosaur flatulence."
No one laughed. Rohrabacher was unable to bring any witnesses who could defend that claim, or indeed any climate change deniers at all.
If only someone had the gonads to say "The only flatulance around here is coming from you lips, Dana". I would say it, but of course that is why I am proabably not electable..
Does this mean "Rohrabacher was not allowed to bring climate change deniers as witnesses" or "Rohrabacher did not bother attempting to call any climate change deniers as witnesses"?
He had the opportunity, but either couldn't get his crap together, or didn't want to.
Apparently he thought about inviting someone from the Chamber of Commerce, but realized it would look silly seating a businessman next to several climate scientists.
Apparently he doesn't know the difference between carbon dioxide and methane, either. Dino farts, indeed.
So, can we say that redneck farts are the current cause of global climate change?
Looks like Rohrabacher might have been correct in his comment about dinosaur gas becuase a scientist at this year's American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting has suggested just such a thing:
newsminer.com/bookmark/10721028-Gaseous-dinosaurs-that-âmight-have-contributedâ-to-global-warming
And why isn't it funny when greens say cow flatulence could be contributing to AGW?