Ed Markey (D-CT), chairman of the US House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming will be holding a hearing today (Thursday AM in the US) on the evidence supporting climate change.

The Foundation of Climate Science

IPCC Report Chairs, Member of Exculpatory Panel on Email Scandal Re-establish Climate Science’s Broad Knowledge, Urgency to Act

Even after months of personal attacks against climate scientists stemming from a manufactured scandal over stolen emails, the underlying science behind the need to stem the tide of heat-trapping emissions remains solid. To explain what we know about climate change, and why and how we know it, Chairman Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming will host top-level American climate scientists at a congressional hearing this Thursday, May 6, 2010.

The scientists will address the claims of deniers head-on. Thursday’s panel features a member of the investigative panel convened by the University of East Anglia and led by Lord Ron Oxburgh to review the stolen emails from that school’s Climactic Research Unit. The “Oxburgh Inquiry” exonerated the scientists who were attacked following the emails, saying they “saw no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work.”

The hearing also includes three scientists involved in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, which have also been attacked by climate science deniers.

The Republican witness on the panel will be Lord Christopher Walter Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley.

WHAT: Select Committee hearing, “The Foundation of Climate Science”

WHEN: Thursday, May 6, 2010, 9:30 AM

WHERE: 2237 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC, and on the web at globalwarming.house.gov

WHO:
Dr. Lisa Graumlich, Director, School of Natural Resources and the Environment, University of Arizona, and member of the “Oxburgh Inquiry” panel
Dr. Chris Field, Director, Department of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution of Washington, and co-chair of “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability” portion of new IPCC report due in 2014
Dr. James McCarthy, Professor of Biological Oceanography, Harvard University, past President and Chair of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, co-chair of “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability” portion of IPCC report published in 2001
Dr. James Hurrell, Senior Scientist, National Center for Atmospheric Research, contributor to IPCC reports
Lord Christopher Monckton, Chief Policy Adviser, Science and Public Policy Institute

And guess who is showing up as a witness for the denier defense?  Our old friend Christopher Walter Monckton. Read this nice piece on the hearing and Monkton by Brendan DeMelle on the Huff Post:

House Republicans have chosen Lord Christopher Monckton, a non-scientist with a penchant for outrageous remarks, as their sole witness at tomorrow’s hearing in front of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.

Rep. James Sensenbrenner, the Ranking Minority Member of the committee, chose Monckton as the Republican’s sole witness at the hearing.

Of all the people in the world the GOP could call to testify, they chose Christopher (not-really-a-Lord) Monckton, a non-scientist with a diploma in journalism studies and a knack for trampling Godwin’s Law of Nazi Analogies.

If I can stay awake, and if it is interesting, I’ll live blog the hearings in a few hours when they start.  In theory, the hearings will be broadcasted here