Well, this must not have gone according to script.

A scientist testified before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee last week that global warming isn’t all it’s been cracked up to be.

Speaking at a Senate hearing on Thursday, atmospheric scientist Roger Pielke of the University of Colorado left a royal big one in liberal alarmists’ communal punch bowl by telling Senators it’s folly to believe that an increase in weather-related catastrophes is connected to global warming caused by humans.

The biggest problem with believing that all the thoroughly reported tornadoes, fires and floods owe their surging frequency to global warming is that… well, their frequency isn’t surging.

In fact, said Pielke, catastrophic weather events are actually on the decline — especially over the period of time liberal policymakers often point to as demonstrative of how global warming is accelerating the Earth toward a man-made climatic Armageddon.

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“It is misleading and just plain incorrect to claim that disasters associated with hurricanes, tornadoes, floods or droughts have increased on climate timescales either in the United States or globally,” Pielke said. “It is further incorrect to associate the increasing costs of disasters with the emission of greenhouse gases. Hurricanes have not increased in the U.S. in frequency, intensity or normalized damage since at least 1900. The same holds for tropical cyclones globally since at least 1970.”

Pielke added that weather-related disasters are likely to exact an increasing economic burden on the United States, but not because they’re becoming more common. Rather, he said, it’s because urban populations are increasing and the level of development around population centers will continue to reflect more spending and, thus, more damage done whenever a populated area experiences a natural disaster.

“The absolute costs of disasters will increase significantly in coming years due to greater wealth and populations in locations exposed to extremes,” he said. “Consequent, disasters will continue to be an important focus of policy, irrespective of the exact future course of climate change.”

Republicans at the hearing made note of the fact that the Administration of President Barack Obama offered no testimony at the hearing, less than a month after the President announced an ambitious plan to combat man-made climate change in a speech in which he dismissed skeptics as “Flat Earth Society” cretins.

Count Pielke, an accomplished researcher who holds three college degrees and Germany’s Eduard Bruckner Prize for outstanding achievement in interdisciplinary climate research, among the flat earthers.