Conservative Republicans Wage War on Science

U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton (R-Tex.), who opposes mandatory curbs on greenhouse gas emissions and questions the science underlying such efforts, did not like a scientific report about global warming. So he did the current Republican thing: he put the three scientists who wrote the report under investigation.

The three scientists? Michael E. Mann will direct the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University as of next month; Raymond S. Bradley is a geosciences professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst; and Malcolm K. Hughes is a professor at the University of Arizona's Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research.

The scientists' findings (according to the WashPost): "Using climate records culled from tree rings, glacial-ice layers and coral-growth layers, the three professors -- whose research was funded in part by the federal government -- determined in 1998 that temperatures have skyrocketed in the past century compared with the 500 years preceding it. The three men put the figures in a graph now known as the 'hockey stick,' and their work helped prompt the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2001 to declare the 1990s as the warmest decade in the past 1,000 years."

Rep. Barton began investigating Mann, Bradley, and Hughes last month, demanding they "justify" their work.

Fellow scientists protested Barton's "probe." Some 20 "prominent climatologists" sent Barton a letter questioning why he would put these three scientists under pressure, when dozens of others have also contributed to the current thinking on climate change. "A congressional investigation, based on the authority of the House Commerce Committee, is probably not the best way to resolve a scientific issue, and a focus on individual scientists can be intimidating," National Academy of Sciences President Ralph J. Cicerone wrote Barton.

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), a senior Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee, also wrote Barton on July 1st that some might interpret the probe "as a transparent effort to bully and harass climate change experts who have reached conclusions with which you disagree."

And now, even fellow Republicans recognize the Barton bullying. House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood L. Boehlert (R-N.Y.) has demanded that Barton call off his "misguided and illegitimate investigation." Boehlert, who is probably the most "environmental" of any current Republican in Congress, wrote Barton, "My primary concern about your investigation is that its purpose seems to be to intimidate scientists rather than to learn from them, and to substitute congressional political review for scientific review."

So far, Barton is blowing off everybody in his lust to prove that no one need do anything to stop polluting the air and thereby raising global heat. He's from TEXAS, Bubba, don't you know?