Here ye! Here ye! Bring your torches and stacks of wood. The practitioners of the dark arts of science will be harassed by an angry mob, defamed, and driven to their knees to confess their lack of respect for our beloved corporate overlords.
In June, Darrell Issa announced that he planned to hire dozens of subpoena-wielding investigators to target the Obama administration if the Republicans regain control of the House. Yesterday, he announced that he also planned to apply the proverbial thumbscrews, strappado, and iron maiden to climate scientists.
From Climate Progress:
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the ranking member of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said a probe of the “Climategate” scandal will top his environmental agenda if the Republicans take over the House next year and he gets the chairmanship.
Never mind that investigation after investigation after investigation has exonerated the climate scientists whose emails were stolen. Poor Darrell can be forgiven if he did not get the news. The Fox Republican Network only reports that the scientists were being investigated, but never reported that they were cleared of any wrong-doing.
But Issa's promised witch hunt is not about the science. It is about the politics. This is a chance to grandstand before the cameras and play clever word games. Here is one example of Inquisitor-to-be Issa as cunning linguist.
“I believe that we are in a warming cycle,” Issa said. “I have insufficient [scientific] knowledge myself by far to really know how much we’re contributing, how much is going in from other sources, how much small changes in the ocean may or may not be helpful or hurtful. And so I very much want to have an honest scientific process, and our committee will limit itself to making sure that that occurs.
The Hill, Sept 23, article by Darren Goode
Darrell claims he does not understand the science and merely wants to be be sure the process is honest. Yet, in the very same interview, he proclaims the scientists guilty.
“It could be happening faster or slower,” he added, “but it’s very clear that those people played fast and loose with both the truth and our money.”
The Hill, Sept 23, article by Darren Goode
It is amusing to hear someone like Darrell Issa claim that someone has "played fast and loose" with the truth. In the same interview Issa repeats a known lie about Dr. James Hansen.
“I won’t accept anything as settled science because in the 1970s remember you had Jim Hansen talking about global cooling,” Issa said, referring to the head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and outspoken advocate of efforts to mandate reduction in man-made greenhouse gas emissions.
The Hill, Sept 23, article by Darren Goode
That allegation appeared in the Washington Republican Times in an article by John McCaslin. Typical of publications that cater to conservatives, it made liberal use of innuendo and six degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon reasoning. I will let Dr. Hansen explain the swiftboating.
First on 19 September 2007 a Washington Times article by John McCaslin reported that a 9 July 1971 article by Victor Cohn in the Washington Post had been discovered with the title “U.S. Scientist Sees New Ice Age Coming”. The scientist, S.I. Rasool, is reported as saying that the world “could be as little as 50 or 60 years away from a disastrous new ice age”.
This is an old story: Rasool and (Steve) Schneider published a paper in Science on that day noting that if human-made aerosols (small particles in the air) increased by a factor of four, other things being equal, they could cause massive global cooling. At Steve’s 60th birthday celebration I argued that the Rasool and Schneider paper was a useful scientific paper, an example of hypothesis testing, in the spirit of good science. But what is the news today?
Mr. McCaslin reported that Rasool and Hansen were colleagues at NASA and “Mr. Rasool came to his chilling conclusions by resorting in part to a new computer program developed by Mr. Hansen that studied clouds above Venus.”
So two scientists, one of whom worked with Hansen at NASA, used Hansen's program in their study of the effects of aerosols. Their study indicated that particulate emissions, if not controlled, could trigger massive global cooling. Hansen was not even an author on the paper. He never claimed in his publications or to the media that an ice age was in the offing.
With logic like that, it is small wonder that Republicans believe that Obama is a socialist Nazi born in Kenya that has pledged loyalty to bin Laden to conduct a jihad against white Christian Americans.
I am sure Issa intends to keep his pledge to barbeque climate scientists and fiddle while earth burns. Welcome to the Dark Ages 2.0. Fortunately, the rest of the world is passing us by on clean energy and related job creation. Here are few stories from yesterday.
The United States, once the world's leader in energy innovation, is now also "challenged and threatened" by India, South Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines, because it is not providing enough incentives to fund development of alternative energy and to increase demand, Ravi Viswanathan, a partner at New Enterprise Associates told a hearing chaired by U.S. Representative Ed Markey.
[snip]
Germany, Japan, and China have dedicated funds to develop domestic alternative energy technologies, but the United States has only just begun this effort, the experts said.
Reuters, Sept 22, reporting by Timothy Gardner
Speaking of Japan, they just bought controlling interest in one of the United States' largest developers of solar energy.
(Reuters) - Japan's Sharp Corp said on Wednesday it will buy U.S.-based developer of solar power systems Recurrent Energy for up to $305 million, stepping up efforts to expand into building solar plants.
Meanwhile our former colonial masters announced a major success in wind energy deployment.
(Reuters) - Britain's offshore wind capacity leapfrogged that of the rest of the world combined on Thursday as the largest offshore wind park came into operation off the coast of Kent.
The UK's total offshore capacity thus rose to 1,341 megawatt (MW) on Thursday, compared with 1,100 MW installed in the rest of the world, according to statistics published by RenewableUK, Britain's wind and marine renewables industries association.
I particularly enjoyed this paragraph in the article on wind power in the UK.
"In the face of the worst recession in living memory, the UK wind energy industry has once again shown its strength and resilience by racing ahead to deliver another GW of installed capacity in less than 12 months," said RenewableUK chief executive Maria McCaffery.
The UK now gets 9% of its energy from renewable sources. I wonder if they would consider taking us back? We seem to have developed a climate zombie virus.