The forecast of global warming provided to Congress a decade ago by NASA scientist James Hanson "was an astounding failure" and the statement two years later by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) about the "realistic nature of these objections was simply wrong," climatologist Patrick J. Michaels recently told a congressional committee. Michaels, senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute and professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, testified before the House of Committee on Small Business. He further said that the Kyoto Protocol is "useless appendage to an irrelevant treaty".