This summer, as energy demands skyrocket in the face of a deadly heat wave,
Congress has passed a national energy bill. A flurry of discussions and compromises
on aspects of the bill included a level of activity on climate change that has
never been seen before in Congress, including a confrontation in the House on
specific science results that has brought scientific peer review to the forefront
of the debate.
Scientific consensus that human-made carbon dioxide emissions have caused global
warming has been growing for many years. Two studies published in 2004, the
Arctic Climate Impact Assessment and the Pew Center on Global Climate Change
report, as well as a host of other studies, continue to support this view. With
Russia signing the Kyoto Protocol in 2004, 123 countries now agree that power
generation is causing global warming, and they are reducing their carbon dioxide
emissions to combat the problem. While the Bush administration and the majority
in Congress continue to reject the Kyoto treaty, both branches of the federal
government remain concerned about climate change. The Bush administration has
called for more study and started several research initiatives, with congressional
support, such as the Climate Change Study Program and the Global Earth Observing
System of Systems.
Although the issue of climate change rarely surfaced in the four-year effort
to draft comprehensive energy legislation, the Senate did hold floor debates
for one week this summer to discuss climate, with consideration of three pieces
of legislation related to carbon dioxide reductions. The McCain-Lieberman Climate
Stewardship Act of 2005 was rejected, as was a similar but slightly weaker reductions
proposal offered by Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.). An amendment by Sen. Chuck
Hagel (R-Neb.) to provide financial incentives for the development of new emission-reducing
technology was accepted. In addition to these votes, the Senate adopted a “sense
of the Senate” resolution that says its members agree that greenhouse gas
emissions are causing global warming.
By contrast, the House held no hearings, debates or legislation related to reducing
carbon dioxide emissions. Instead, the hot and sticky summer months yielded
heated controversy over the quality of science, the peer-review process, the
dissemination of data and who has jurisdiction to judge these issues. Rep. Joe
Barton (R-Texas), the chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and
Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.), the chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and
Investigation, sent letters to three climate scientists — Michael Mann,
Ray Bradley and Malcolm Hughes. They were co-authors of research papers that
showed a large rise in northern hemisphere temperatures in the 20th century,
a graphed trend called the hockey stick.
In the letters, the representatives cited errors in the papers based on a Wall
Street Journal report and requested the data, source codes, other studies,
records of all financial support, and details about all of the scientists’
responses to anyone who requested their data or questioned their results. The
letters also cited a paper by Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick in Energy
and Environment that reported errors and omissions in studies by Mann et al.,
published first in 1998 in Nature, and subsequently in other journals,
including Science and Geophysical Research Letters.
The representatives’ letters requested a detailed explanation of these
alleged errors and how these errors might affect the results. They also requested
information about the role of each of the three authors in the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Third Assessment Report (TAR) and the identities
and roles of other scientists who worked on a specific section of TAR. Similar
letters were also sent to Arden Bement, director of the National Science Foundation
(NSF), which funded the research of Mann’s team, and to Rajendra Pachauri,
chairman of the IPCC. The representatives asked NSF and the IPCC to explain
how they judged the quality and accuracy of Mann et al.’s work and other
studies, and what policies they have regarding the dissemination of data.
The letters, which are posted on the Energy and Commerce Web site, have drawn
condemnation from some members of Congress and the scientific community. In
a letter to Barton, Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.), the chairman of the House
Committee on Science, called the investigation illegitimate and indicated the
purposes of the letters were to “intimidate scientists” and “substitute
Congressional political review for scientific peer review.” Boehlert said:
“The precedent your investigation sets is truly chilling.” The National
Academy of Sciences (NAS), the American Association for the Advancement of Science
and 20 climate researchers have also written letters to Barton, which are available
on the House science committee’s Web site.
The scientific community has and should continue to scrutinize Mann’s team’s
studies, as well as others’; science advances by building and improving
on the work of previous studies. It does not seem beneficial, however, for Congress
to engage in a detailed investigation of a few specific papers, especially through
the politicized tone of the Barton and Whitfield letters. Congress can call
on the objective expertise of NAS, the Congressional Research Services or the
General Accounting Office to investigate the quality and accountability of federally
funded research, so that its members can focus on policy-making. Likewise, no
policy can be decided on an investigation of a few studies or only the research
of the scientific community, when many other stakeholders are involved.
Hopefully the House will follow the Senate’s lead on climate change and
engage in public hearings and briefings, floor debates and ultimately political
compromises. In the end, any legislation needs to consider all of the science
and all of the citizens of the United States and the world, who will be affected
by federal policy action or inaction.
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