Can I show it?

Mr. OLVER. I would be perfectly happy to have you show it, although it may be that

Dr. MICHAELS. I just have to find it first.

Mr. OLVER. I hope that will not confuse others.

[Pause.]

Dr. MICHAELS. Here it is. This is set up for my seminar this afternoon, and that is why I have got all these silly slides. Okay.

The top graph is the upper atmospheric temperature from the what we call 850 millibar to 300 millibar level. It is the level that the satellite corresponds to at 95 percent accuracy.

This is the global record. And you can see the warming in it. This is published by Oort et al.

Mr. ÓLVER. It is a weather satellite at what altitude?

Dr. MICHAELS. It corresponds to the satellite records that are taken out in space. These are weather balloon records from 5,000 to 30,000 feet, if you will, in the atmosphere. They are thought to be highly accurate.

And the top graph is the total record which begins in 1964. The middle graph is that same record.

Mr. OLVER. Are those yearly mean dates?

Dr. MICHAELS. Yearly averages, correct.

The middle graph is that same record from 1964 through 1976, and you can see there is no trend in it.

The bottom graph is that same record from 1977 to 1994. Which leads one to the conclusion that the entire warming in this record occurred in a jump that was almost 20 years ago.

I just bring this up to show you the complexity of the problems that Dr. Mahlman is dealing with. Because I have yet to see any model that would project that this type of thing would happen, and yet this is what has been going on with our climate.

That is fine. You can turn the lights on now.

Mr. OLVER. Now, let me

Okay. It is fairly difficult for everyone to see and read that, but the period of time in the first group of yours was a period when very little, at that point, very little intervention on the part of public bodies had occurred, I take it, in the, in other words there was a laissez-faire approach toward the growth of CO2. I take it that is what we are really trying to measure in the air, isn't it?

Dr. MICHAELS. We are just looking at a temperature and see how much it changed over time.

Mr. OLVER. Oh, it is just a temperature.

Well, okay. I can see now how reading the data that you have just shown on those graphs does lead to the point that you made. And I suspect that there is a balancing argument on the part, I suspect that a lot of different people in the scientific field of global warming would have a variety of explanations as to what it is that is going on there. And I guess since my time will have run out already, I suspect here, while I am musing about this

Mr. ROHRABACHER. You are free to ask another question.

Mr. OLVER. [continuing] I would just invite perhaps Dr. Mahlman to comment as to what you see in those data, and maybe others, because I would like to understand at least this one point before I leave here today.

Dr. MAHLMAN. Well, you perhaps did not ask the right person because I personally do not understand the logic behind Professor Michaels' arguments here.

I see the time series at the top. I see an increase. I see the sharp rebound of the cooling due to Mt. Pinatubo is not on his time series, and quite frankly I do not get his point.

Dr. MICHAELS. Mt. Pinatubo occurred in 1991. We are looking at 1977 through 1994, and there is no trend in the data.

Mr. OLVER. Well, what do you think did happen in that period? Dr. MICHAELS. Why is it flat? Why is there no trend? Good question. I think when we understand that, we are going to understand this issue.

Mr. OLVER. But if there is no trend, and what you have done, what has happened here, and I think it is an interesting look at the data, if the data are correct means for the whole year. Are these whole year means?

Dr. MICHAELS. Correct.

Mr. OLVER. For the temperature data?

Dr. MICHAELS. Yes.

Mr. OLVER. And so indeed, if you were to use any group of three or five of these points, and average those out, you would get a series of lines, and if you averaged the whole thing out, you have what is described as the grand trend line in this process.

And while I have not looked at these means, I do not know whether there is anybody that disagrees with the fundamental data there, whether there is a disagreement about that, but if you do that, if there is no disagreement there, then, yes, it looks as if you have got the possibility, if you take a particular group of years before and after the year 1976, that there are two possible straightline, virtually unchanged things.

But then how do you explain the difference?
Dr. MICHAELS. That is the point.

Mr. OLVER. What is your explanation for it?

Dr. MICHAELS. Nobody has an explanation for this. That is precisely my point. Nobody could explain why the mean upper air temperature would take this sharp jump 20 years ago. That is 20 years ago this happened. And that that is the only jump that explains the trend in the entire record.

Mr. OLVER. If you took three or four of your groups within this 20-year period, you might have a series of trend lines that went at quite sharp angles.

Dr. MICHAELS. Yes, but your sample design then is so small, you have destroyed a degree of freedom in the intercept and one in the slope. You just cannot do that.

Mr. OLVER. But you have concluded that you can cut it in half, certainly, but you cannot cut it in thirds?

Dr. MICHAELS. Its number of degrees of freedom of 18 is much more statistically robust than 2.

Mr. OLVER. I did not suggest 2. I suggested 3, or 4, or 5; but even if you cut it in 3 you would get a very different sort of a—

Dr. MICHAELS. Yes, you would. But the point in the argument is-and this is, by the way, not really too much of a matter of contention in the scientific literature; it was in Science Magazine; it

has been all over the place-but there was something that happened around 1976, some type of pattern change.

This is demonstrable of that. Nobody knows what it was. Nobody knows why it happened, and nobody knows what it can be related to. But unless we understand things like that which are responsible for the full power of the trend in that data, we do not really understand very much about this entire climate problem.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Olver, thank you very much. I think that-well, actually I would like to summarize a little bit first here. I personally-well, there were some things stated earlier on about what this subcommittee has been doing and some of the policy decisions that have been made.

And just to let you know, funding for NOAA and their satellite program was increased by this subcommittee in this current budget debate. And so we have not decreased the amount of satellites from this Committee, especially NOAA.

And also, Mr. Michaels' poignant comment about reading fine print is really true with many of the charges about whether or not scientific research has been cut. There are many things that have been classified by scientific research, for example, in the Solar Energy Program, where no research was cut but promotional activities were cut that sometimes are labeled by others, for whatever motive, as being cuts in scientific research.

One of the reasons that I personally am skeptical as the Chairman of the Subcommittee and as a Member of Congress and as a former journalist, is I remember very well being beaten up in 1980 by a group of people who held up a report, like the one you held up, that was called the "Global 2000 Report."

And I don't know if anybody in this room remembers the Global 2000 Report. But the Global 2000 Report told us that by now, all of our natural resources would be depleted. I mean, it was justan absolutely apocalyptic disaster is at hand, and any day now the gasoline prices are going to be up to ten dollars a gallon, and all the other natural resources will be depleted.

And that report in which some, you know, very respectable scientific minds were involved, was absolutely wrong. And had we based our policies on that, we would be worse off today because of it.

And so when we're talking about issues that deal with important global and environmental predictions, we've got to make sure that we're basing it on not just someone who's maybe perhaps more upset than we deserve to be upset.

I'd like to ask the panel one last group of questions, and this is concerning this. And we'll try to be done in the next five minutes, if we can. And I know Dr. Michaels has to leave.

And it goes to the heart of the issue as to what we should do. Because I understand that the IPCC has been very careful not to use the word "predictions" for the climate models. Instead, they use the word "projections."

Now this means something to you folks, because projections are based on unvalidated assumptions.

Now is this true?

Dr. MAHLMAN. Yes. I think that that is an appropriate distinction in this case because the climate model projections that we've

been talking about are making certain assumptions on the future of emissions of various things that affect the climate. And those are obviously, by definition, extraordinarily uncertain.

Scenario projections might even be more accurate because we're getting into two different things.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Well, we're talking about something that's either validated or unvalidated in terms of the actual assumptions. The reason I'm bringing this up, and let me put this to you, and that is that in articles in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, Washington Post, and all of these have been written in the last two months, but this is true before, as well, the word "prediction" is used.

Now isn't this misleading? Isn't this something-we, I've been reading all kinds of predictions, as I mentioned in the beginning of this hearing, that says that, "You know, we're going to be inundated with, our coast lines are going to be inundated," that people are going to be dying of malaria. I mean these were dire predictions.

After this testimony today, I am not leaving this hearing today feeling that those predictions were justified.

Dr. MAHLMAN. Well, I would argue that those are not "predictions;" that what they are is "projections" based upon current behavior.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. But they are using the word "predictions."

Dr. MAHLMAN. Well, all I can say is I agree with you. I would not use that word because there's a very uncertain sociological scenario that is implicitly wired into those kind of things, and what we in the climate modeling community are trying to do is to ask the most intelligent questions about how we understand the climate, and that's a very different thing than predictions.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I'll show you why this is important. In an editorial in the Atlanta Constitution on October 12th, this is one of the leading newspapers in the country, it's "predicted" that Savannah, Charleston and New Orleans will be inundated, you know, unless there is a massive seawall that's built.

Now if this society starts building seawalls, and then we find out and we spend hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars building seawalls, and they're not necessary, what we're not doing is using that money to build bridges and to build things that are, to build infrastructure that is absolutely necessary.

That's why the difference between "prediction" and "projection" is really important because it leads people to make policy decisions like that.

Dr. MICHAELS. Mr. Rohrabacher, I would submit that everybody who wrote the word "projection" knew that it would be turned into the word "prediction." I don't think people are that naive.

And, as a result, I would conclude, along with your scenario about seawall building in Savannah, that if we are not very, very careful on the issue of global warming, we are going to run the credibility of American science into the ground.

We have to be very, very careful about the difference between scenarios and forecasts, predictions and projections, and models and reality.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. One last note.

EPA recently released a report making new estimates in terms of sea level rise, which are considerably lower than the last estimates. And I understand that the EPA deliberately did not use models for this study.

And do we know anything about that, Dr. Guerrero?

Mr. GUERRERO. I'll take the doctor title, that's fine.

The EPA did not use, they started with the IPCC model ranges as essentially, my understanding is, as a strawman, to get a panel of experts to then come up with what they felt were the most likely kinds of scenarios that they could model.

And so the outcome was not indeed then, based on the models themselves, but based on expert judgment.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Because maybe they don't believe in the models?

Mr. GUERRERO. Well, they admit that the models have some limitations. It's not that they don't believe them so much is that they recognize their limitations, and the EPA felt that they needed to present the full range of probabilities associated with sea level rise. Which brings me to the earlier point that you were making, is that I think when the Atlanta Constitution and others called these kinds of estimates "predictions," they are indeed perhaps exaggerating the case because there's a high degree of uncertainty with all these events.

And presenting a probability range of events is more important, and that's what the EPA tried to do. And I think when they talk this afternoon on impacts, they'll explain why they chose that particular approach.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I'd like to thank all the members of our first panel, and let me just note just one little thing that Dr. Michaels said earlier might have escaped many of us in the room, but it didn't escape me.

And that is that if, a hundred years ago, we were actually trying to calculate what was going to happen in the future, we'd be calculating that Washington, D.C. would be, and all of our major cities would be destroyed by bacteria that was created by huge mounts of horse manure. And mankind has a way of adapting and has a way of developing new technologies that I believe may well, if there is a global warming problem, may well change the scenarios, even without massive government intervention in just the way things are made more efficient.

There are people today who are developing fuel additives that I know about, and that we will hold hearings on in this subcommittee that make the gasoline engine dramatically more efficient. And that in itself will have a major impact that will be calculated perhaps ten years down the road.

We're not sure if solar energy, and we've had some great research going into solar energy. And, again, this chairman has supported solar energy research, and we've seen some real progress in that in the last few years.

So just a bit of optimism. Quite often what I hear at the end of some of these hearings is that everybody should just give up and we might as well go home because the world is going to end. And there's a lot of reasons for optimism, as well. And we'll talk more about that with the next panel.