Another week, another legal hassle from House “science committee” Republicans aimed at scientists and anyone else who questions the sacred dogma of climate change denial. Up on deck this time: Attorneys investigating the energy industry’s alleged decades long effort to downplay the dangers of fossil fuels:
In an escalating political fight over global warming, the chairman of the House Science Committee is pursuing records from New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, along with nine environmental, scientific and philanthropic organizations.
In a reply Tuesday to Texas GOP Rep. Lamar Smith, Schneiderman’s lawyer called the July 13 subpoena “an unprecedented effort” bringing them “closer to a protracted, unnecessary legal confrontation.” Counsel Leslie Dubeck wrote that enforcing the subpoena will interfere with Schneiderman’s investigation into whether Dallas-based Exxon violated New York fraud statutes. They have objections challenging the subpoena’s validity and “cannot and will not comply with it,” he wrote.
- New evidence from Antarctic remains that dinosaurs got hit with not one, but two extinction events a couple of hundred thousand years apart:
Two University of Michigan researchers and a Florida colleague found two abrupt warming spikes in ocean temperatures that coincide with two previously documented extinction pulses near the end of the Cretaceous Period. The first extinction pulse has been tied to massive volcanic eruptions in India, the second to the impact of an asteroid or comet on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.
- I have a half-assed plan … to publish one and possibly two e-books later this year. My goal is to offer them super cheap, just a few bucks. One under consideration is on space exploration, the other a fun little review of the Strong Robot Economy. Then, if there’s any actual interest beyond a few dozen copies sold, traditional publishers will come to me -- that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Help me decide by taking the poll below.