Mark Steyn’s description of events before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation really needs to be read to get some idea of just how dense our political class is and especially in the US. You get a better idea of where a Donald Trump comes from by reading his entire post since it must be as close to impossible for virtually anyone to have an impact on their government especially if they are as dense as this chap. Here we have Steyn’s description of how he and Judith Curry took on the US Senate in which its rudeness, not to mention their profound ignorance, is the issue that he finds the most incredible and despicable.

There is another kind of basic rudeness, which I have never experienced in a real parliament. If you’re moderating a panel discussion on C-SPAN with five panelists, it’s generally considered polite to distribute the questions broadly. In this case, the Democrats asked no questions of anyone other than their guy – Rear Admiral Titley. For example, there was some extensive discussion of the satellite record: They have the scientist who created and developed the satellite temperature record sitting at one end of the table: John Christy. This is a remarkable scientific accomplishment. Yet they directed all their questions on the subject to the bloke down the other end – Rear Admiral Titley, who knows no more about the satellite record than I do. This is like inviting Sir Isaac Newton to a hearing on gravity and then only asking questions of Mr Timeserver sitting next to him. It may represent the “decorum” of the Senate but in any other area of life it would be regarded as insufferably ill-mannered.

So by the time Senator Ed Markey turned up, I’d had enough of it. Markey is the Massachusetts guy (whom I discussed on the radio with Howie Carr yesterday afternoon) and he began by comparing Rear Admiral Titley to Galileo – at which point I threw up my arms. I would have let this twaddle go, except that Markey then went on to insult the three scientists on my right. And, as with so many of the staffer-insulated ignorant bullies of the Senate, he did so with no intention of letting them respond. Dr Judith Curry is a very brave woman who has withstood an extraordinary onslaught from the ugly misogynist types that climate alarmism attracts. She was not cowed by this know-nothing senator and she wished to respond, as she indicated discreetly.

Markey ignored her. Again, we’re way beyond the rules of the Senate here. In the rules of life, a gentleman does not insult a woman and then stand on parliamentary dignity to deny her a reply. If that’s the “decorum of the Senate”, then Senator Markey puts the dick in decorum. Nevertheless, with characteristic pomposity, he sought to use the Senate’s crappy rules to prevent those he’d abused from responding to his crude insults:

Markey must have been a little shocked when climatologist Judith Curry demanded to be able to respond to his testimony trying to discredit her views on climate science.

“I did not ask you a question,” Markey, a Democrat, retorted when Curry asked if she could respond to his testimony during a Senate hearing Tuesday on the science behind global warming.

“Why can’t she respond senator?” Conservative author and columnist Mark Steyn shot back at Markey. “You impugned her integrity. I think she’s entitled to…”

“I was basically called a ‘denier’ — that I’m denying science,” said Curry, a climate scientist at Georgia Tech University. “Did you read my written testimony?”

Markey sought to discredit Curry in his testimony by framing her as ignoring the evidence humans are putting the planet at risk. Curry was not happy with essentially being labelled a global warming “denier” and pushed back against the senator’s remarks.

“Are you aware the IPCC and the consensus has no explanation for the increase of ice in the Antarctic?” Curry said. “Are you aware that they have no explanation for the fact the rate of sea level rise from 1920 to 1950 was as large, if not larger, as it currently is?”

“Are you aware that temperatures have been warming for more than 200 years, and, that in the 20th Century, 40 percent of the warming occurred before 1950 when carbon dioxide was not a factor in the warming?” Curry continued.

Curry highlighted even more uncertainties among climate scientists many Democrats and environmentalists are loathe to admit. For example, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has trouble explaining the recent “hiatus” in warming as well as the warming trend before the 1950s.

“Doctor, as I just said in my testimony — corroborated by Dr. Titley [another witness on the panel] — this is the warmest year ever recorded,” Markey shot back. “Last year was the warmest year ever recorded until this year. This was the warmest November ever recorded. October… was the warmest ever recorded.”

“You do not have an answer for that,” Markey said before going on to site Galileo and claim Curry was relying on “something that is perhaps God-made rather than dependent upon something that is man-made” and backed by science.

“Are you saying there’s no natural variability senator?” Steyn cut in. “There were alligators at the North Pole. What was that? Was that you in your SUV?”

Markey was forced to acknowledge the planet does in fact warm and cool on its own, but said natural variability is regional and the warming trend “is straight up.”

“Do you know what the little ice age was senator?” Steyn said to which Markey responded by claiming Boston’s record levels of snow are a product of global warming.

Perhaps it was ever thus, but then again, perhaps it was never before like this and we are the maddest generation who have ever lived.