With its relatively long and even trend for 900 years and then sharp up-tick during the 20th Century, the "hockey stick" graph effectively undermined what had been the prevailing view that we had experienced periods of similar or even higher average temperatures in the past - such as when the Vikings inhabited Greenland.

The fact that the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, prominently relied upon the graph lent the graph its apparent authority. The IPCC is an influential international body that conducts scientific assessments for use by policymakers.

The graph offered a simple and powerful message for the public and policymakers to understand. It was also a message that some say may have been based on faulty methodology. The "hockey stick" studies formed the basis for the IPCC finding in 2001 that the 1990s were likely the warmest decade of the millennium and 1998 likely the warmest year during that time. Some of today's witnesses will describe in detail that the "hockey stick" studies were critically flawed and could not support the findings reached by these studies.

Had the 'hockey stick' studies remained in the niche of climate change journals, we would not be holding this hearing. Instead, we are here because the questions surrounding these studies relate directly to the strength of the findings in the first place. What does the "hockey stick" story say about the reliability of these studies for policymakers?

Last summer, Chairman Barton and I inquired into this matter after we learned that the lead author of these federally funded studies Dr. Michael Mann to share the computer code he used to generate his results with researchers who sought to replicate the result of Mann's studies. The researchers, one of whom will testify today, reportedly could not replicate his work based on what the study said. The researchers nevertheless identified several methodological and data problems with the work.

Were the

How critical were these problems identified by these researchers? problems undetected because Dr. Mann assessed his own work in an IPCC report?

These are serious questions, and the answers contain broad implications for global policy on climate change. We should ensure that science is providing us with reliable, balanced, well-considered, and unbiased answers.

Today, our witnesses will help us address these critical questions.

I want to welcome, especially, Dr. Edward Wegman, a statistician with George Mason University, who will lead off the first panel this morning. Dr. Wegman is Chairman of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics. At the Committee request, Dr. Wegman assembled an ad-hoc committee of statisticians to examine the hockey stick studies and related articles. His committee's report, prepared for Chairman Barton and me and publicly released this past Friday, provides important findings for Congress and the public to consider about the soundness and openness of climate change research and assessments. The Wegman Committee not only identified fundamental flaws in the "hockey stick" studies, it also addressed the larger point that climate change studies, like any work with potentially large policy implications, must be subject to careful and broad scrutiny.

Dr. Wegman and his team performed their work completely independent of the Committee and without charge. I believe Dr. Wegman's team has done a great public service and their work should help us improve how we discuss climate change when crafting policy.

Additionally, Dr. Gerald North, of Texas A&M University, will testify on the first panel about the current state of historical temperature understanding. Dr. North chaired a recent National Research Council panel on historical temperature reconstructions, and I look forward to hearing his perspective for improving climate change assessments.

To help us understand some particulars of the IPCC process, we'll hear testimony on the second panel from Dr. Thomas Karl, who was a coordinating author of the chapter

upon which Dr. Mann and his colleagues worked. Dr. Thomas Crowley, of Duke University, and Dr. Hans von Storch - who traveled from Germany to be with us this morning - both can provide their considered views concerning the questions about the "hockey stick" studies, as well as questions concerning data sharing, transparency, and the IPCC process.

Finally, I'd like to welcome Mr. Steven McIntyre. Mr. McIntyre will testify about attempting to understand just what was behind the hockey stick graphic promoted by the IPCC. His examination of the facts underlying the assessments' claims really initiated some of the important questions concerning the scrutiny provided by climate change assessments. His work is a testament to the value of open debate and scrutiny. His perseverance should be commended.

Let me add that we did invite Dr. Mann to this hearing, but his attorney explained that he was unavailable, on family vacation. Dr. Mann suggested Dr. Crowley could come in his place. We do hope to have Dr. Mann at a future hearing, however.

At the end of the day, the issues of climate change require open and objective discussion. Some of the work we'll consider today points to the value of policy decisions that are informed by sound science and objective advice.

I'll now yield to Mr. Stupak, our ranking member, for his opening statement.

MR. WHITFIELD. At this time, I would like to recognize Mr. Stupak of Michigan for his opening statement.

MR. STUPAK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

It is a little bewildering to me why the committee is holding its very first hearing on global warming to referee a dispute over a 1999 hockey stick graph of global temperatures for the past millennium. Mr. Chairman, in your opening statement you claim that Dr. Mann's hockey stick report of 1999 was the basis for the Kyoto Accord. According to my recollection, Kyoto was in 1997, so it could not have been the basis for the Kyoto Accord.

So as we will hear at this hearing today, global warming science has moved on since Dr. Mann put forth his study in 1999. Dr. Mann, who did this study, has made changes and even such diehard opponents as President Bush now actually admit that global warming exists and must be addressed. Congress is particularly ill-suited to decide scientific debates. There has been no attempt by this committee to obtain an unbiased view of the work done by Dr. Michael Mann, the author of the hockey stick research. Dr. Mann, who has done additional work with his methodology since 1999, is not even here to confront his critics because the Majority would not even postpone this hearing until Dr. Mann could be available. Moreover, it was known from the beginning that Dr. Mann used a new methodology and proxy material to reconstruct temperatures.

Paleoclimatologists, those who try to reconstruct ancient climates, are not working with instrumental measurements of temperature as we have today. Paleoclimatologists are looking at tree rings, ice cores, bore heads and historical records to attempt to determine what happened in an earlier time. That is all the research materials paleoclimatologists have and it is an admittedly imprecise science. It should not surprise us if the

initial work in a new field can be improved. What should surprise us is that Dr. Wegman's report focuses on critiques of Dr. Mann's first work in 1998 and 1999, even though the field of large-scale temperature reconstruction has advanced since that time.

The Majority paid for a report to independently verify the critiques of Dr. Mann's 1999 research by a statistician but without any input from a climatologist. The Majority left it to the Science Committee to ask the National Academy of Sciences to do a full review of all the science represented. The Majority made no effort to verify whether the patterns in global temperatures detected in the Mann study were valid or coincided with conclusions of other researchers in global warming.

It is now 7 years since the original work was published and much additional work has been done by Dr. Mann and others. As we will hear from Dr. North, who chaired the NAS study, the patterns were verified with certainty for recent years but less certain for the years 1000 to 1600 A.D. That is to be expected because there is less data from this long ago era. Dr. Wegman has an eminent background in statistics and he believes that statisticians should be included in the research teams of all these studies because statisticians can make studies better. Perhaps they can. Dr. Wegman says Dr. Mann didn't center his data properly. Perhaps he didn't. But we note that Dr. Wegman's work is not yet published or peer reviewed so it is very difficult for us to evaluate his work. Dr. Wegman's criticism of Dr. Mann should have been interdisciplinary and include a statistician can also be said of Dr. Wegman's work. Dr. Wegman did not have a climate scientist on his team. However, Dr. Wegman has decided to go beyond his statistical expertise to hypothesize that Dr. Mann was allowed to publish and defend his work because of the small "social network" of paleoclimatologists who work with each other and protect each other. I want to emphasize that this is simply a hypothesis. Mr. Chairman, whatever the purpose of this hearing is, it is not to hypothesize about the impact of professional scientific relationships on research unless we have some hard objective evidence.

We in Washington know all about undue influence on government scientists. A political appointee at NASA just recently tried to keep James Hanson, a veteran atmosphere scientist, from discussing the dire consequences of global warming by threatening dire consequences to Mr. Hanson's employment status. The science content has been changed on NASA and other government websites because it didn't fit the Administration's world view. This fact ought to be of much more interest to this committee, the Oversight and Investigations Committee,

And with that, Mr. Chairman, I would yield back the balance of my time.

MR. WHITFIELD. Mr. Stupak, thank you. I also want to thank you for pointing out an incorrect statement that I made. I said something about the hockey stick being the impetus for Kyoto. Kyoto certainly started way before the hockey stick but the hockey stick graph did add impetus to the argument for the adoption of Kyoto, so I want to thank you for that. Also, I would point out that the committee did not pay Mr. Wegman for this report, we simply contacted him asking him to review it.

At this time I recognize the full committee Chairman, Mr. Barton. CHAIRMAN BARTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a written statement, I am going to use some of it, but I want to speak extemporaneously briefly based on what my good friend from Michigan, Mr. Stupak, just said.

The purpose of oversight and investigation is to do exactly that, to oversee the jurisdictional issues before this committee and when it seems to be called for to investigate issues that arise because of the oversight. There has been a disagreement for a number of years in the community at large about the issue of global warming. In this Congress, there has been a disagreement between the Chairman of the Science Committee and myself about that issue. That is normal and that is not anything that is a negative. But there were some statements made about a specific report by a number of people that basically use that report to come to the conclusion that global warming was a fact and that the 1990s was the hottest decade on record and that one year, 1998, was the hottest year in the millennium. Now, a millennium is a thousand years. That is a pretty bold statement. So Chairman Whitfield and myself decided, let us take this report that is the basis for many of these conclusions and has been circulated widely and once it is in the mainstream, it is stipulated that because of that, everything else follows and let us see if it can be replicated. Let us see if in fact the facts as purported in that report are in truth the facts.

Now, I have not seen Dr. Wegman until I walked in this room. I have not talked to him on the phone or in person or any of his collaborators. I may have seen Dr. North at Texas A&M since I went to Texas A&M. I don't recall it but it is possible. He has got enough white in his hair that I could have been one of his students and I wouldn't remember it, so I can't stipulate that I have never met him but I can stipulate that I have never met Dr. Wegman. We asked to find some experts to try to replicate Dr. Mann's work. Now, to their credit, when Dr. Wegman agreed to do it, he asked for no compensation. I don't think we have even paid him for the fax paper that he has used. He picked

some eminent statisticians in his field and they studied this thing. Had their report said Dr. Mann's data can be replicated, his conclusions are right on point, he is totally correct, we would have reported that, but that is not what they said. Now, I took statistics at Texas A&M and I also took them in graduate school. I made A's and B's, but I really didn't understand it but I kind of understand it. And according to Dr. Wegman, Dr. Mann made a fundamental error. He decentered the data. Now, to the average person, that doesn't mean squat. What does "decentered the data" mean? What it means apparently is, he moved it off center a little bit by enough that it really makes a difference and then using some statistical techniques that instead of looking at all the variables and in a complex system like climate you are going to have lots of variables, he chose one or two as the principal variables and used those to explain everything else, and Dr. Wegman and his colleagues who as far as I know have got no axe to grind, have said the Mann study is flat wrong. Now, it may be wrong just kind of unintentionally. Dr. Wegman doesn't say there is any intent to deceive but he says it is flat wrong. Now, if that is not the purpose of the Oversight Subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee that has got jurisdiction over energy and environmental policy for the United States of America, then I don't know what this subcommittee should be doing.

So I want to thank Dr. Wegman and his colleagues for giving us an unvarnished, flat out non-political report. Now, admittedly, that report is going to be used probably for political purposes but that is not what he did, and I want to thank Dr. North for the work that he did in this document. Now, it is a lot thicker than Dr. Wegman's document, and Dr. North and his colleagues have kind of looked at the same subject and they have come to a somewhat little--they are little bit more, I don't want to use the technical term wishy-washy but they are kind of on both sides of it, but even Dr. North's report says that the absolute basic conclusion in Dr. Mann's work cannot be guaranteed. This report says it is plausible. Lots of things are plausible. Dr. Wegman's report says it is wrong.

Now, what we are going to do after today's hearing, we are going to take Dr. Wegman's report, and if my friends on the Minority want to shop it to their experts, so be it. We are going to put it up there, let everybody who wants to, take a shot at it. Now, my guess is that since Dr. Wegman came into this with no political axe to grind, that it is going to stand up pretty well. If Dr. Mann and his colleagues are right, their conclusion may be right--Dr. Mann's conclusion may be right but you can't verify it from his statistics in his model so if Dr. Mann's conclusion