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Utah lawmakers continued their fact-finding exploration of climate change on Wednesday.
They heard from a metals scientist, a lawyer, a politician, businessmen and more -- a chorus of critics who decried the heavy price they say Utahns will pay in lost jobs and high energy costs for Washington's climate change policy. They also heard how the science behind the policy is dubious.
But, in the hours of testimony on Wednesday, one voice was notably absent: that of an actual climate scientist.
Rep. Mike Noel, an ardent climate change skeptic and co-chairman of the Interim Public Utilities and Technology Committee, said it was no problem; his panel has heard from lots of scientists.
"We've had some that had fairly good credentials" appear before the committee, said the Kanab Republican. He could not recall any of them by name and noted no scientist has stepped up " to refute the data I've seen."
"What we are able to do in this forum is bring a little bit more reason and rationality to the process" than the media, he added. "I think we've had both sides."
Sarah Wright, executive director of Utah Clean Energy, noted that lawmakers dwell on just one end of the debate although related policy decisions are on their agenda more and more.
"You need to understand the science if it is going to help you make decisions," she said.
Arnold Reitze, a veteran environmental lawyer who Wednesday addressed the Interim Committee on Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment, agreed in an interview that lawmakers need input even from experts they disagree with.
He compared the situation to being sick and getting the advice of 100 experts who agree on a cure. Four might suggest peach pits as a cure. "Which would you chose if it was your life on the line?"
"You can rant about it all you want," Reitze added, "but the reality is that the state of Utah is going to face a carbon dioxide limit in the not-so-distant future."
Utah has no shortage of experts ready and willing to help policy makers sort through climate change implications.
One is Rob Gillies, who heads up the Utah Climate Center at Utah State University. Although he has been asked to present the latest climate data available for Utah in legal, academic and other policy-making forums, he has never been invited to speak at the Legislature.
"We're learning an awful lot very quickly," said Gillies, whose center tallies and interprets climate data that is used by agriculture, water managers and others whose livelihoods depend on climate information.
That data increasingly suggests that Utah will become warmer and more likely to suffer deep droughts even if, as some climate models predict, more water falls.
Another knowledgeable source is Jim Steenburgh, professor and chair of atmospheric sciences at the University of Utah. Although he led the team that developed the 2007 science report on former Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.'s Blue Ribbon Advisory Commission on climate change, he has not been tapped by the Legislature.
"We're here; we're available," he said in a telephone interview.
Noel on Wednesday reprised the Utah Farm Bureau appearance in July of Tom Tripp, a metallurgist from US Magnesium, a company that mines and processes magnesium from the Great Salt Lake. Noel introduced him as a Nobel Prize winner, a recipient of the Peace Prize awarded to Al Gore and the IPCC last year for its work on climate change science.
Tripp told Noel's committee how he provided to the climate modelers estimates of the greenhouse gas pollution that can be attributed to metals-melting processes worldwide. Although he acknowledges he has no training in reading climate models, he told legislators that scientific evidence does not support the idea of man-made climate change. In fact, he assured them, global cooling is under way.
Robert Davies, a Utah State University physicist and climate scientist, said treating Tripp as a climate change authority is misleading.
"It's beyond me," he said, "to understand why the Utah Legislature would want to hear from this man on these topics."
Rep. Lynn Hemingway, a Holladay Democrat on the committee, said he had thought about raising objections to the one-sided presentations the panel gets, but didn't.
He said: "I think a lot of people in the room had made their mind up."
While many critics of climate change science and policy contend there's flimsy evidence global warming is happening and humans are behind it, that's not the conclusion of a broad range of professionals who have weighed in. They include: the National Academies of Science; the American Geophysical Union, the world?s largest organization of Earth scientists; the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world?s most prestigious science organization; the American Meteorological Association; the American Physical Society, the world?s largest society of physicists; and the American Chemical Association, the world?s largest association of chemists. The list continues to grow, with a report issued by the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies this month that called climate change a profound threat to U.S. security. And, in the May British medical journal, Lancet, medical scientists called climate change "the biggest global health threat of the 21st century."