Tomorrow at 10am, the House Science Space and Technology and the Oversight committees will hold a joint hearing on the Social Cost of Carbon (SCC). With two “so-called” experts from Koch-funded organizations on the panel - Pat Michaels of the Cato Institute and Kevin Dayaratna of the Heritage Foundation - the presence of climate-denying industry groups will be strong. Fortunately, the other two panelists, Dr. Ted Gayer of Brookings Institute and Dr. Michael Greenstone of the University of Chicago, should be able to hold their own against this false “balance” of “experts”.
As one of the leads who integrated the policy into the federal government’s rulemaking, Dr Greenstone probably knows as much about the SCC as anyone. His December New York Times op-ed provides a useful context for tomorrow’s hearing. (Some other useful resources for those looking to brush up on SCC are Carbon Brief’s recent lengthy and deep Q and A on the SCC, and Climate Nexus’s quick-and-dirty guide for swift factchecking/tweeting.)
Though we don’t know what exactly will happen tomorrow (and the Oversight subcommittee presence is interesting) we do have a sense of what should happen to update the SCC to reflect what science demands.
Last month, The National Academies released a report on how the SCC should be updated to reflect the advance of peer-reviewed science. This lays out the legitimate pathway the Trump administration would need to use if it wanted an honest assessment of the cost of carbon.
Which means we can be fairly sure that what actually happens will deviate greatly from the plan laid out in the report. At which point those in the scientific community should work hand in hand with media to explain how and why the figure is being influenced by political motivations instead of the scientific process.
And with the GOP starting to pay the price of their anti-EPA stance in town halls, perhaps they’ll also be forced to pay a price for politicizing the price of carbon.
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