[Mb-civic] Republicans Accused of Witch-Hunt Against Climate Change Scientists

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0830-03.htm

Published on Tuesday, August 30, 2005 by the Guardian
Republicans Accused of Witch-Hunt Against Climate 
Change Scientists
By Paul Brown
 
Some of America's leading scientists have accused Republican 
politicians of intimidating climate-change experts by placing them 
under unprecedented scrutiny.

A far-reaching inquiry into the careers of three of the US's most senior 
climate specialists has been launched by Joe Barton, the chairman of 
the House of Representatives committee on energy and commerce. 
He has demanded details of all their sources of funding, methods and 
everything they have ever published.

Mr Barton, a Texan closely associated with the fossil-fuel lobby, has 
spent his 11 years as chairman opposing every piece of legislation 
designed to combat climate change.

He is using the wide powers of his committee to force the scientists to 
produce great quantities of material after alleging flaws and lack of 
transparency in their research. He is working with Ed Whitfield, the 
chairman of the sub-committee on oversight and investigations.

The scientific work they are investigating was important in establishing 
that man-made carbon emissions were at least partly responsible for 
global warming, and formed part of the 2001 report of the 
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which convinced most 
world leaders - George Bush was a notable exception - that urgent 
action was needed to curb greenhouse gases.

The demands in letters sent to the scientists have been compared by 
some US media commentators to the anti-communist "witch-hunts" 
pursued by Joe McCarthy in the 1950s.

The three US climate scientists - Michael Mann, the director of the 
Earth System Science Centre at Pennsylvania State University; 
Raymond Bradley, the director of the Climate System Research Centre 
at the University of Massachusetts; and Malcolm Hughes, the former 
director of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of 
Arizona - have been told to send large volumes of material.

A letter demanding information on the three and their work has also 
gone to Arden Bement, the director of the US National Science 
Foundation.

Mr Barton's inquiry was launched after an article in the Wall Street 
Journal quoted an economist and a statistician, neither of them from a 
climate science background, saying there were methodological flaws 
and data errors in the three scientists' calculations. It accused the trio 
of refusing to make their original material available to be cross-
checked.

Mr Barton then asked for everything the scientists had ever published 
and all baseline data. He said the information was necessary because 
Congress was going to make policy decisions drawing on their work, 
and his committee needed to check its validity.

There followed a demand for details of everything they had done since 
their careers began, funding received and procedures for data 
disclosure.

The inquiry has sent shockwaves through the US scientific 
establishment, already under pressure from the Bush administration, 
which links funding to policy objectives.

Eighteen of the country's most influential scientists from Princeton and 
Harvard have written to Mr Barton and Mr Whitfield expressing "deep 
concern". Their letter says much of the information requested is 
unrelated to climate science.

It says: "Requests to provide all working materials related to hundreds 
of publications stretching back decades can be seen as intimidation - 
intentional or not - and thereby risks compromising the independence 
of scientific opinion that is vital to the pre-eminence of American 
science as well as to the flow of objective science to the government."

Alan Leshner protested on behalf of the American Association for the 
Advancement of Science, expressing "deep concern" about the inquiry, 
which appeared to be "a search for a basis to discredit the particular 
scientists rather than a search for understanding".

Political reaction has been stronger. Henry Waxman, a senior 
Californian Democrat, wrote complaining that this was a "dubious" 
inquiry which many viewed as a "transparent effort to bully and harass 
climate-change experts who have reached conclusions with which you 
disagree".

But the strongest language came from another Republican, Sherwood 
Boehlert, the chairman of the house science committee. He wrote to 
"express my strenuous objections to what I see as the misguided and 
illegitimate investigation".

He said it was pernicious to substitute political review for scientific peer 
review and the precedent was "truly chilling". He said the inquiry 
"seeks to erase the line between science and politics" and should be 
reconsidered.

A spokeswoman for Mr Barton said yesterday that all the required 
written evidence had been collected.

"The committee will review everything we have and decided how best 
to proceed. No decision has yet been made whether to have public 
hearings to investigate the validity of the scientists' findings, but that 
could be the next step for this autumn," she said.

© 2005 Guardian Newspapers Ltd. (UK)

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