Science Committee Slams Industry-funded climate science attack

onMar 28, 2007 @ 16:00 PDT

Ah, a breath of fresh air on Capitol Hill today. Was it the spring air? Nope, it was a Congressional Subcommittee hearing today questioning industry efforts within science agencies, like NASA, NOAA and the EPA, to control federal scientists and confuse the public around the science of global warming. Check here for the RealPlayer webcast.

Choice quotes from Subcommitee Chairman Brad Miller:

“According to the New York Times, opponents of the Kyoto Protocol in 1998 began recruiting scientists who believed, or at least would say, that evidence of global warming was insubstantial and evidence that greenhouse gas emissions was the cause of global warming was especially dubious. Peer-reviewed studies by climate scientists were almost unanimous in finding that global warming was real and that greenhouse gas emissions were a measured part of it. But in the popular press the question was treated as controversial amongst scientists.”

“The [global warming] sceptics were in the indirect employ of the oil and gas industry and that obvious conflict of interest was rarely disclosed [in the popular press]. Few paid sceptics did any original research and many were not even trained in the fields in which they claimed expertise, and most simply specialized in attacking as junk science the careful legitimate research that was published in journals and tested by rigorous peer-review.”

“We need to rely on sound, dispassionate research to inform our decisions.”

Then we hear from Republican member Dana Rohrabacher who aks that we refer to his website for a list of “hundreds of prominent scientists from major universities who are not part of this so-called consensus.” Looking at Rohrabacher’s website under the global warming section you will find the who’s who of the global warming denial movement and the list of “prominent scientists” he refers to is none other than the laughable Oregon Institute Petition Project operated by Arthur Robinson.

Check here for the entire story of Robinson and the Oregon Petition.

Also listed as sources on global warming expertise on Rohrabacher’s site are The Friends of Science, the George C Marshall Institute, the Cato Institute and the Science and Envionmental Policy Project, whose Chair, Fred Seitz, is the former chief medical advisor for tobacco giant RJ reynolds.

By Kevin Grandia

Kevin is a contributor and strategic adviser to DeSmog. He runs the digital marketing agency Spake Media House. Named a “Green Hero” by Rolling Stone Magazine and one of the “Top 50 Tweeters” on climate change and environment issues, Kevin has appeared in major news media outlets around the world for his work on digital campaigning. Kevin has been involved in the public policy arena in both the United States and Canada for more than a decade. For five years he was the managing editor of DeSmogBlog.com. In this role, Kevin’s research into the “climate denial industry” and the right-wing think tank networks was featured in news media articles around the world. He is most well known for his ground-breaking research into David and Charles Koch’s massive financial investments in the Republican and tea party networks. Kevin is the first person to be designated a “Certified Expert” on the political and community organizing platform NationBuilder. Prior to DeSmog, Kevin worked in various political and government roles. He was Senior Advisor to the Minister of State for Multiculturalism and a Special Assistant to the Minister of State for Asia Pacific, Foreign Affairs for the Government of Canada. Kevin also worked in various roles in the British Columbia provincial government in the Office of the Premier and the Ministry of Health. In 2008 Kevin co-founded a groundbreaking new online election tool called Vote for Environment which was later nominated for a World Summit Award in recognition of the world’s best e-Content and innovative ICT applications. Kevin moved to Washington, DC in 2010 where he worked for two years as the Director of Online Strategy for Greenpeace USA and has since returned to his hometown of Vancouver, Canada.