Climate Scientist Faces Off With the Virulently Anti-Science House Science Committee
At a congressional hearing on climate science Wednesday, Michael Mann lamented that he was the only witness representing the overwhelming scientific consensus that manmade global warming poses a major threat.
“We find ourselves at this hearing today, with three individuals who represent that tiny minority that reject this consensus or downplay its significance, and only one—myself—who is in the mainstream,” he said in his opening testimony.
Sitting on either side of Mann were the other three witnesses: Judith Curry, John Christy, and Roger Pielke, Jr.—scientists who have clashed with Mann in the past and are frequently sought after by Republican politicians who reject mainstream climate science. Curry recently defended EPA chief Scott Pruitt’s statement that scientists don’t know whether human activity is “a primary contributor” to global warming. Christy claims that climate models overstate the role of human activity. Pielke accepts the role greenhouse gasses play in warming but has drawn criticism for arguing that links between extreme weather and climate change have been overstated.
The whole charade reminded me of Bill Nye debating Ken Ham, a fruitless exercise. But this is a hearing at the United States House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology with much wider and devastating implications. The shamelessness of these Republican pols* in denying the science behind climate change and dooming future generations of humans to catastrophic disasters boggles the mind. Dr. Michael E. Mann (@MichaelEMann) from Penn State has to be commended for undergoing two hours of hostile questioning, sitting between the GOP’s go-to climate science deniers, and a mind-numbing denial of science from members of the top science committee in Congress.
Watch the whole horrifying hearing.
*The chairperson of the United States House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology is congressman Lamar S. Smith (R-TX). He’s not even a scientist, he’s a lawyer.
