Followed the climate change congressional hearing yesterday. Cost of Energy links to this. My favourite quote:

Witnesses invited by Republicans tried to compare their cause to that of famous dissenters – such as Galileo – who were eventually proved right. But that rationale brought ridicule from Richard Somerville of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography who noted that Einstein had almost immediately been accepted by his peers.

Quite. It's a telling comparison though: there's the implicit suggestion that climate science is some massively powerful church bent on twisting the world to fit its views. The Einstein example is perfect: several hundred years of very well-established theory, with only the tiniest glitches, existed at the time. (There's an excellent lecture by Richard Feynman on 'the character of physical law', looking at the history of gravity, which is great for getting a sense of the sweep and power of the original theory.) Yet Einstein and Edison succeed in overturning it in a (ahem) relatively short time - because, of course, it proved itself against reality (using 'proof' loosely here!)

Elected politicians don't need to accept scientific findings, or indeed basic standards of evidence, as Ben Goldacre points out (link and link):

... it's fine to make policy based on ideology, whim, faith, principles, and all the other things we're used to. It’s also fine for evidence to be mixed. And it's absolutely fine if your reforms aren't supported by existing evidence: you just shouldn’t claim that they are.

Covering your ideological modesty with the figleaf of science is, of course, a popular thing to do, since people believe it makes you appear more robust, more truthy. (Although, thanks to the current anti-science drive, perhaps it will become less so as trust in scientists is further undermined.) So it's probably no surprise that, rather than argue against science generally, Republican congressmen should turn to what science they can find.

Yet anyone playing the "old and well-refuted ideas purporting to challenge established climate science" drinking game yesterday would have fallen off their chairs before the end. Again, I'm massively confused. An elected congressman brings up the 'Mars getting hotter' meme (really a proxy for 'its the sun'). Haven't they heard of google? Would it be too much to ask some relevant scientists? I imagine they're allowed to talk to them outside of congressional hearings.

That's not how it works I guess. People are still publishing books hoping to slay the sky dragon and others are still - having yet to run out of nails - hammering the final ones into the (probably now more nail than wood) coffin of climate science. Nuh huh. Here's Watts:

If true, the disclosure may possibly derail last-ditch attempts at a binding international treaty to 'halt man-made global warming.' At minimum the story will be sure to trigger a fresh scandal for the beleaguered United Nations body.

Indeed, and as several people have pointed out, they could probably expect a nobel prize. Yet despite Watts himself noting that one of the authors believes in the `nutty' iron sun theory, and despite the fact that even Monckton has the decency not to question basic radiative physics, here we are, hammers at the ready. It's as if the weight alone of alternative theories should somehow overturn reality.

In the end, the fact that it comes down to a democratic fight may turn out to be a good thing. I'm reminded of the 10:10 exploding children video. I have great trouble understanding how, if even a single person in that team had been plugged into the struggle actually taking place over climate policy, it could have even got past someone suggesting it. Their opponents couldn't have designed a more perfect ecofascism cosh to beat them with. In an open fight over the direction we're going in, that sort of insular worldview quickly melts away.

So that's the positive message I'm getting from this. Now excuse me while I curl up into a foetal ball and gently rock back and forth.

Footnote: the skeptical science link above graphs solar irradiance and temperature. Something I don't understand: there's a delay, I think, in the output of heat from the oceans. Might a warmer sun take time to equilibriate in the climate system? So, previous stored heat explains global warming.

I reckon there's probably scope for working up another final nail there, isn't there? Scientists have somehow managed to entirely miss this factor... or perhaps they haven't? If one is genuinely interested in learning, they're a congenial bunch, so I reckon I could probably ask around.