Nation’s Scientists Protest House Science Chairman’s Mission to Discredit NOAA Global Warming Report

Friday, November 27, 2015
Rep. Lamar Smith

Seven organizations representing hundreds of thousands of scientists are fighting a Texas Republican congressman’s effort to refute a federal agency’s report on climate change.

 

Representative Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, has subpoenaed scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), demanding they provide copies of internal emails related to their research. Smith claims the NOAA scientists have manipulated their findings in a paper published in the June issue of Science that said there has not been a pause in the increase in worldwide temperatures. He even alleged that researchers manipulated data to promote President Obama’s agenda on climate change, according to The Washington Post.

 

Smith, a climate change skeptic, has not only subpoenaed agency researchers, who have refused to comply, but has warned he will subpoena Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker,

who oversees the NOAA.

 

Pritzker and seven scientific organizations have not backed down in the face of Smith’s threats, going so far as to accuse the congressman of conducting “a partisan witch hunt” and “inquests.”

 

“The repercussions of the committee’s actions could go well beyond climate science, setting a precedent to question other topics such as genetically modified organisms and vaccines that have controversial regulatory and policy implications,” the groups wrote in a letter (pdf) to Smith.

 

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the country’s oldest and largest general scientific society, was the lead signatory, followed by the American Chemical Society, American Geophysical Union, American Meteorological Society, American Statistical Association, Ecological Society of America and Geological Society of America.

 

“This is not just a few scientists grousing about somebody besmirching the work of a group of scientists,” Rush Holt, chief executive officer of the AAAS, told the Post. “It’s an affront to the scientific process.”

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

To Learn More:

Standoff over Government Climate Study Provokes National Uproar by Scientists (by Lisa Rein, Washington Post)

America’s Scientists to House Science Committee: Go Away (by Samantha Page, ThinkProgress)

Science Group’s Letter to Rep. Lamar Smith

Florida Environmental Dept. Employees Told to not use Terms “Climate Change” and “Global Warming” (by Danny Biederman and Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)

Chevron Lobbyist Lands Job with House Science Committee (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)

Comments

anonamouse 8 years ago
Smith may be a running dog lackey of the neo-conman wing of the wingnut party, but his inquiry into climate science, so-called, is actually a good thing: For how can it be a bad thing to ask science to defend itself? If some scientifically illiterate congressional clown, representing a constituency of faith-based morons, needs a demonstration that 2 plus 2 equals 4, why the hue and outcry? Won't he get his comeuppance in the most public possible venue? Real science is based on reproducible theory --- something is considered "true" only if it can be proven by multiple, independent researchers. Furthermore, that "truth" is, ultimately, provisional; it is always subject to change upon the arrival of contradictory information. What Smith is calling for is simply a defense of a theory; this push back by a cabal of pal-reviewed, state-funded, agenda-driven researchers shows a certain ... insecurity.... over the prospect of having to defend their "science." (Actually, their insecurity is NOT about the science --- the basic physics --- but about their manipulation, sorry, adjustment of the historic temperature record.) These scientists are not, like Galileo or Bruno, or Alger Hiss for that matter, facing an Inquisition. They seem to welcome publicity for their cause. So what's their problem with testifying about it under oath? Their problem is, "climate science" is "settled." In that respect it is indistinguishable from religion; its canon is immutable, eternal, subject to question only by deluded deniers of the true faith. "Climate science" has become a dogma. Asking these climate jesuits to defend their faith must seem to them like demanding that the pope appear before Congress to debate Catholicism. Let Smith do his damnedest for his Big Oil backers to skewer the science, there can be no harm in that. And who knows? Perhaps some truth will leak out.

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