Friday, popular national conservative talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh praised Congressman Mo Brooks R-Huntsville, as “brilliant” on air. Limbaugh called Congressman Brooks’ questioning of a panel of scientists in Thursday’s House Science, Space, and Technology hearing on climate change “one of the best attempts at persuasion I have seen.”
“So, yesterday, there was a hearing in Congress. Mo Brooks, Congressman Mo Brooks, issued a press release yesterday— bipartisan panel of scientists confirms humans not responsible for the past 20,000 years of global warming,” Limbaugh said. “This is not a spoof; this is not a joke, it’s brilliant. It is one of the best attempts at knocking sense into people I have ever heard. It is one of the best attempts at persuasion I have seen.”
“In a House Science, Space, and Technology Committee hearing on climate change, under questioning by Mo Brooks, Alabama District Five, four members of a bipartisan panel of climate science experts all admitted that humans are not responsible for the Earth’s global warming that has occurred over the past 20,000 years,” Limbaugh stated. “Why the past twenty thousand years? Because that is when the Earth’s last glacial maximum occurred. The point is… well the points are these: average global temperatures were roughly eleven degrees Fahrenheit colder than they are today, 20,000 years ago. Stated differently, global temperatures have risen on average, one half a degree Fahrenheit every one hundred years for the past twenty thousand years. Sea levels, sea levels were roughly four hundred and ten feet lower 20,000 years ago than they are today. This is according to the United States Geological Survey, which the global warming crowd loves and cites often. Stating this a different way, sea levels have risen on average roughly two feet per century over the past 20,000 years— roughly double the global warming advocates’ claimed average sea level rise of one foot per century since 1993.”
“Almost all of Canada, almost all of Northern Europe, and almost all of America, north of the Missouri and Ohio rivers, east of New York City, were under glacial ice and uninhabitable 20,000 years ago.” Limbaugh continued. “The gist of the experts’ opinions is that the Earth was too lightly populated by humans to make humanity responsible for the warming that has been going on for 20,000 years. This is one of the most brilliant ways of nuking this entire silly notion that man is destroying the planet that I have ever seen.”
“20,000 years, that is a long time, people can’t comprehend it because the life span is eighty-five. 20,000 years. But the fact of the matter is that the Earth has been warming for 20,000 years and man has had nothing to do with it,” Limbaugh said. “Now all of a sudden, the warming continues as it has been, and here comes a bunch of left-wing liberal Democrat partisans and charlatans who want to now claim that at all of this is the result of manmade activity, going back to the industrial age, it’s bogus. I love this way that Mo Brooks did this to illustrate this.”
“If the Earth has been in a warming trend, and it has obviously been in one, if we had the last glacial maxim 20,000 years ago and we are not under ice now we have obviously been dealing with a lot of warming,” Brooks asked.
Dr. W. Ted Pfeffer from the University of Colorado said, “So, the examples from 20,000 years ago that Mr. Brooks gave us, are excellent examples of the kind of natural variability that the Earth experiences. There is no question that in the past there have been changes in temperature, and sea-level rise and weather patterns and climate generally as dramatic or more dramatic than what you may be experiencing in the future and of course they weren’t human caused 20,000 years ago or the last million years. All of these variable events have been occurring throughout the Earth’s modern history.”
Brooks followed, “Well my first question was, in your judgment, did human beings cause the global warming that began 20,000 years ago during the last glacial maximum?”
Pfeffer responded: “No. No. Absolutory not. It is an example of spontaneous natural variability— one of the many ways that this whole system was— whether you look at it in terms of sea levels rise, temperature, storms— can be varied.”
Brooks asked: “Are you familiar with the phrase: snowball Earth, or slush ball-Earth? Roughly 600 million years ago, when we were almost entirely ice or slush.”
Pfeffer answered: “Entirely natural variation.”
Brooks: continued, “Versus, the Paleocene and Eocene, thermal maximum of about 55-56 million years ago when the average temperature was roughly 73 degrees Fahrenheit which is 14 degrees warmer than what we are experiencing now? If you don’t mind, Dr. Wolkon lets go to you. Did human beings cause global warming that began 20,000 years ago?”
Dr. Gabriel Wolkon with the Alaska Department of Natural Resources answered: “No, absolutely not. That was a product of natural variability in the climate system. Yeah.”
Brooks asked: “Dr. Moon?”
Dr. Twilla Moon answered: “Humans weren’t around in nearly the numbers we are today, so we certainly were not available to be combusting fossil fuels at the rate we are today are putting emissions into the atmosphere. You can consider, we have built America in the last 243 years and we’re changing things at a much more rapid rate.”
Brooks followed: “So, you also agree then that the global warming that has occurred over the last 20,000 years at 11 degrees Fahrenheit increase in temperature, was not human caused, at least, when it began 20,000 years ago?”
Moon responded: “So, I would agree that when it began 20,000 years ago when we were coming out of the last glacial that was not caused by humans. The warming of the last 100 years, most certainly was.”
Brooks asked: “Out of curiosity, why do you or how do you explain that the sea level rise average of the last 20,000 years has been 2 feet per century, yet we are down to 1 foot per century?”
Moon answered: “So, much of our rise in sea levels that you are talking about came earlier in that 20,000 years.”
Brooks asked: “Over six or seven thousand years?”
Moon answered: “Over this last 10,000 years, we have been sitting with vary stable sea levels and those stable sea levels have allowed us to develop the coast of the world.”
Brooks continued: “Okay, thank you, Dr. Moon. And I only have about 30 seconds left for Dr. Bell. Dr. Bell, in your judgment, 20,000 years ago when it began, was it caused by humans?”
Dr. Robin Bell with Columbia University answered: “In my judgment, the variation that we were seeing 20,000 years ago was part of the pulse of the planet— it pulses at about 100,000 years, glacial or interglacial. When I started graduate school, we were expecting to go into the next glacial period, except that we as human beings in the last 100 years— and you can see the pick-up since we invented the steam engine— you can see the temperature moving up.”
