Hacked e-mails about Climate Change Data has caused heated debate among Scientists and u.S. Congressional Members.
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Cautious optimism precedes Climate Summit. Over the next two weeks in Copenhagen, 192 nations will try to find common ground on how to reduce global warming. NBC’s Anne Thompson examines what’s at stake.
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Republicans push on "Climategate"
A series of embarrassing e-mails stolen from a British climate research center last month has wreaked havoc in the obscure academic circles of climate science.
Now Republicans hope the "Climategate" e-mail scandal will do the same to the Obama Administration’s Environmental Agenda.
Global warming skeptics believe that the correspondence, which shows scientists debating whether to manipulate scientific data to strengthen the case for man-made global warming, is a smoking gun that will change the dynamics of the climate debate. Activists also hope the purloined e-mails will derail Democratic climate negotiations on Capitol Hill and the upcoming International Talks in Copenhagen.
“The elephant in the room is the questions raised by the e-mails which have been made public,” said Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.) on Wednesday. “Anyone who thinks that the e-mails are insignificant, that they don’t damage the credibility of the entire movement, is naive.”
The controversy has rallied and outraged conservative activists who believe the exchanges stolen from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit prove that climate scientists colluded to suppress data on how humans have affected climate change.
They’re pointing to comments that show scientists using a science journal “trick” to manipulate data, vowing to keep challenging studies out of journals even if “we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is” and deriding questions from climate skeptics as “crap criticisms from the idiots.”
“This is a sea change in our culture,” said Marc Morano, a former Republican staffer turned prominent climate change skeptic. “Wait until January or February; you’re going to see numbers [on belief in global warming] that have dropped through the floor.”
The scandal thus far has not gained significant traction with voters beyond the conservative base, given that a majority of Americans — and most policymakers — still believe global warming to be a scientific fact. But Republicans hope that their ongoing investigation will push the issue into the mainstream.
On Friday, a top official at the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change promised to investigate claims that the scientists purposely manipulated their data.
And Republicans know that the issue will continue to energize their base as they move toward the 2010 elections. Support for curbing greenhouse gases has become toxic among conservatives, who have made opposition to cap-and-trade proposals a key tenet of their party purity test. Recent polling has also shown a dramatic drop in the number of Republicans who believe in man-made global warming.
Republican Senate candidate Carly Fiorina has already jumped on the scandal as a way to attack Sen. Barbara Boxer, her liberal Democratic opponent in environmentally friendly California.
The Fiorina campaign slammed Boxer for focusing on the legal questions surrounding the stolen information instead of the validity of the science.
“While the legal issues in this case merit a full investigation, Americans also deserve to know the truth, especially as Boxer continues to force job-killing ‘cap-and-trade’ legislation through the Senate,” Fiorina’s deputy campaign manager for communications Julie Soderlund said in an e-mail.
Boxer, who’s known as one of the most outspoken environmentalists in Congress, called for the prosecution of the hackers who stole the e-mails on Wednesday.
“You call it Climategate; I call it e-mail-theft-gate,” she said Wednesday. “It seems to me they must have been hacking this for years, and just before Copenhagen, they came out with them.”
Boxer’s comments echo those of other Democratic climate supporters, who say that skeptics are taking passages from the more than 1,000 e-mails out of context to undermine public confidence in climate science.
“The key point is, however this particular controversy comes out, the result will not call into question the bulk of our understanding about how the climate works or how humans are affecting it,” top White House top science adviser John Holdren said in testimony before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming on Wednesday.
Democrats have largely dismissed the whole controversy; Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse described it Wednesday as a “little e-mail squabble.”
“While I would absolutely agree that these e-mails show a lack of interpersonal skills,” said Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson, “I have not heard anything that causes me not to believe that the overwhelming consensus [is] that climate change is happening and that man-made emissions are contributing to it.”
But Democratic dismissals haven’t stopped Republican climate skeptics from hoping that climategate will do everything from kill the cap-and-trade bill to derail the international negotiations in Copenhagen.
Republicans used several congressional hearings this week to question top White House officials about the controversy.
Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), in a hearing before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, said the e-mails could suggest “a massive scientific international fraud.”
“The scientists may be able to change their story and do more research, but once Congress passes a law, it will be as difficult to undo the consequences of that law as putting milk back in the cow,” he said.
In the Senate, Republican members of the Environment and Public Works Committee turned a hearing on the Federal Toxic Substances Control Act into a referendum on the e-mails.
“The allegedly unethical and potentially illegal behavior by climate scientists may undermine the legality of the EPA actions,” said Missouri Sen. Kit Bond.
Republicans in the House and Senate have called for a Congressional investigation into the dispute.
Reps. Joe Barton of Texas and Greg Walden of Oregon sent letters to Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke on Wednesday asking the administration officials to disclose any role their agencies played in funding or data sharing with the climate scientists exposed in the e-mails.
“Whatever one’s position on the science of global warming,” said Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe, the top GOP member on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. “One cannot deny that the e-mails raised fundamental questions: among other things, transparency and openness in science.”
But not all Republicans see the e-mails as quite as big a crisis for climate science.
Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) dismissed the controversy as more of a public relations problem than a serious scientific meltdown.
“There’s always been some skepticism about some of that,” he said. “I think that from a public relations view, that’s not really the best way to go to Copenhagen, very frankly.”
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Sources: Politico, MSNBC, Daily Mail, BBC, The Daily Beast, Wikipedia, Google Maps
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