Back in November, I wrote a commentary contrasting two political inquiries on climate change. In Congress, Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, who chairs the Science, Space and Technology Committee and who has received generous support from oil and gas industries, is conducting an inquisition of researchers and administrators of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). He is trying to find information to support his claim that a study by Thomas Karl of NOAA was politically motivated. The Karl study found that there has been no hiatus in global warming in the first part of this century as climate change deniers have claimed.
Smith has continued with his inquisition, and in a recent hearing, he claimed that a new paper published in the journal Nature “confirms the halt in global warming.”
Actually, the paper did no such thing, at least according to John Fyfe, the lead author of the paper in an email to FactCheck.org. Michael Mann of Penn State University, another author on the Nature paper, said in an open letter to Representative Smith that the Nature paper “does NOT support the notion of a ‘pause’ in global warming, only a *temporary slowdown*, which was due to natural factors, and has now ended.” (In fact, last year was the warmest year on record, beating the record set just a year earlier by a considerable margin.)
These days, though, Congressional hearings are not meant to gather the best information to inform policies that will help our country solve its challenges. Committees invite witnesses who will support the political views of the committee chairman. These types of hearings have little shelf life beyond a news cycle.
While Representative Smith takes quotes out of context to support his climate change denial, New York State’s Attorney General Eric Schneiderman continues with his investigation into the energy giant Exxon. That investigation began after a series of articles published in the Los Angeles Times and Inside Climate News revealed that Exxon’s own scientists were aware of the impact of the burning of fossil fuels on the earth’s climate, but the company spent years sowing doubt about climate science. As I said in November, Schneiderman’s investigation might have more of an impact on the climate change debate than Mr. Smith’s little inquisition, especially if other states joined the effort. That collective effort appears to be underway.
Continue reading “Update: More States Join Lawsuit on Climate Deception”
Maurice Belanger Consulting 