Rick Perry and Al Franken exchange heated words on global warming

At a hearing on Thursday to discuss President Trump’s Department of Energy budget request, Energy Secretary Rick Perry took questions from the senators on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) took the opportunity to push Perry hard on climate science. It didn’t go entirely as Franken would have hoped.

Perry spent the past week making the case for increased skepticism about climate change — and Franken confronted him on it. But in the process, the senator made a series of small misstatements about what the science actually is.

The full exchange goes to show just how nuanced climate science is — and how counterproductive it is for public officials to argue over its veracity.

On Monday, Perry appeared on CNBC and said that carbon dioxide is not the primary driver of climate change, contradicting the very robust scientific evidence that it is. He went on to reassert Wednesday to the Senate Appropriations Committee his belief that man-made global warming “is not settled science.” Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) then asked him what would convince him on the scientific evidence, and Perry responded that he would like to see a “red-team approach,” where a group would systematically challenge what is taken for granted about climate science in an effort to make it more rigorous.

Franken pushed back on that argument Thursday. He tried to explain to Perry that a red-team approach is “exactly how science works.”

“Researchers collect data and make arguments, peer reviewers poke holes in the argument, the researchers respond, and it goes back and forth until consensus is reached. Every peer reviewed climate study goes through that red-team/blue-team treatment. And then thousands of studies are gathered into reports, and those reports themselves go through rigorous red team/blue team. And this is, that’s the scientific process.”

Franken’s pushback was less than perfect. He slightly overstated the scientific consensus on the matter, saying, “100 percent of peer-reviewed scientists have a consensus, and that is that this is happening.”

The actual number is 97 percent, though that hardly helps Perry’s case for skepticism.

Exchanges like this can be extremely infuriating for climate scientists to watch or read. Any small exaggeration can give the skeptics fodder to continue demanding more evidence for phenomena that are already known to exist.

Franken also wanted to make a point about the overwhelming extent to which humans are contributing to climate change, since Perry suggested multiple times this week that climate change is naturally occurring. But when Franken did so, he misquoted Dr. Richard Muller of the Berkeley Earth surface temperature project, leaving out the crucial word “almost” when he referenced Muller’s New York Times op-ed on the subject.

Franken said Muller wrote, “Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct, and I'm now going to step further: humans are entirely the cause.”

This allowed Perry to say that he didn’t believe it: "100 percent? Every bit of that global warming? I don't buy it. ... To stand up and say that 100 percent of global warming is because of human activity, I think on its face, is just indefensible."

What Muller actually wrote in 2012 was this: “Humans are almost entirely the cause,” emphasis mine.

Muller clarified to E&E News today that his team did, in fact, conclude that humans’ carbon emissions have caused “90 percent” of global warming since the Industrial Revolution. “We were a red team,” he said, “and we did good work."

This isn’t the first time, and it probably won’t be the last, that Franken and Perry have gotten into a heated back and forth about climate change. But as usual, Perry ended yesterday’s hearing just as firm in his views as he began it.

Their full exchange is below.

FRANKEN: I wanted to ask you about climate change.

Secretary Perry, at your confirmation hearing, you acknowledged that the climate is changing, but on Monday you were asked on CNBC, do you believe CO2 is the primary control knob for the temperature of the Earth and for the climate, and you answered no. So if the climate is changing, and if you disagree that CO2 is the primary driver, what do you think is driving the change?

PERRY: Yes, sir. And I’ll finish the rest of that interview for the public that may have not have gotten as much coverage as me saying that I did not think that CO2 was the primary knob that changes it. I don’t. I think that there are some other naturally occurring events — the warming and the cooling of our ocean waters and some other activities that occur.

I also said in the next breath that man’s impact does, in fact, have an impact on the climate, and the question is: What is going to be the economic impact for this country?

And I referred yesterday in a hearing in front of the Senate Appropriations [Committee] that even an individual as celebrated from the standpoint of his capabilities as the undersecretary of energy under the previous administration, Steven Koonin, he said that the science isn't settled yet. And I asked the committee, and I'll ask you: Don't you think it's okay to have this conversation about the science of climate change? And why don't we have a red-team approach and sit down — you know, get the politicians out of the room — and let the scientists, listen to what they have to say about it. I’m pretty comfortable —

What's wrong with being a skeptic about something that we're talking about that's going to have a massive impact on the American economy?

FRANKEN: Well, you said this thing, you told Sen. Coons that we need a red-team/blue-team exercise to establish climate change. It's my understanding that in a red-team/blue-team exercise, a blue team makes an argument, then a red team tries to knock it down. And the blue team then refines their argument and they go back and forth until consensus is reached. But that's exactly how science works. Including climate science.

Researchers collect data and make arguments, peer reviewers poke holes in the argument, the researchers respond, and it goes back and forth until consensus is reached. Every peer reviewed climate study goes through that red-team/blue-team treatment. And then thousands of studies are gathered into reports, and those reports themselves go through rigorous red team/blue team. And this is, that’s the scientific process.

You're not the first to do red team/blue team. The Koch brothers hired a red team of skeptics in 2012, in an effort to cast doubt on mainstream science. It was called the BEST Project, and much to the chagrin of their funders, the skeptical scientists found that mainstream climate science is correct.

To quote the scientific director of BEST, Dr. Richard Muller, “Call me a converted skeptic” — this was in 2013 or 2014 — “Last year following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct, and I'm now going to step further: humans are entirely the cause.”

Now if you say that this is caused by the warming of the oceans, the reason that the oceans are warming is because they absorb, water absorbs the heat. That's why sea level is rising, because when the water heats, it expands, and also because of the melting of the ice caps. There's no peer-reviewed study that doesn't say this is happening. And the biggest proponent of this is our military. And they, in their quadrennial review, say this is the biggest threat to our world.

The time for red team — I'm sorry — that's what we do every day, that's what scientists do every day. And 100 percent of peer-reviewed scientists have a consensus, and that is that this is happening.

PERRY: Senator, you said something that caught my attention in your remarks. That the person who had become a skeptic, that converted skeptic —

FRANKEN: Hmm-mmm [in the affirmative].

PERRY: — and you said that he made the statement that global warming was 100 percent due to human activity.

FRANKEN: Hmm-mmm [in the affirmative].

PERRY: I don't believe that. A hundred percent? Every bit of that global warming? I don't buy it.

FRANKEN: Well, I’d just like to respond to that. That was someone hired by the Koch brothers.

PERRY: Listen, everybody’s hired somebody that’s gotten something wrong from time to time. But to stand up and say that 100 percent of global warming is because of human activity, I think on its face, is just indefensible.