WASHINGTON — Congressional Republicans yesterday used the red-hot scandal over hacked global-warming e-mails to attack climate researchers for “scientific McCarthyism” and cast doubt on the phenomenon.
During a House hearing, President Obama’s top science adviser took heat from GOP lawmakers demanding a probe of the e-mails from researchers at Britain’s University of East Anglia showing they manipulated information on climate data.
“These e-mails show a pattern of suppression, manipulation and secrecy that was inspired by ideology, condescension and profit,” fumed Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.).
He likened the scientists’ efforts to squelch dissent to the bullying tactics of infamous Sen. Joseph McCarthy, another Wisconsin Republican, who infamously lead a witch hunt for communists in the 1950s.
John Holdren, Obama’s science adviser, fired back, “The science is proper, and this is about a small fraction of research on the issue.”
Holdren’s 2003 online exchange with a global-warming skeptic is among the hacked e-mails. The controversy led to the resignation last week of Phil Jones, head of the university’s climate-research unit.
Skeptics say the e-mails show efforts to hit back at academics willing to air criticism of the consensus for global warming in the scientific community.
The furious charges and responses come in the run-up to an international conference on climate change in Copenhagen next week.
Obama will attend the opening of the conference, and will present a plan to cut US carbon emissions by 17 percent by 2020. Mayor Bloomberg, too, will attend.
At the same time, developing countries such as China and India are pushing for a plan that would force developed nations to cut back even more, while allowing their own emissions to rise in accordance with economic growth.
In the Senate, Republicans repeatedly forced EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to comment on the e-mail scandal, although she had come to Congress to testify about another topic.
Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.) called it “a pattern of egregious misbehavior by scientists.”
“If these e-mails show anything, they show scientists obstructing the scientific process,” said Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), who is calling for an investigation.
He also asked Jackson to suspend any government findings that might be based on the work of the British scientists.
Pressed again and again as senators read a series of e-mails out loud, Jackson acknowledged that such behavior wouldn’t be acceptable for federal government scientists.
“I would hope that EPA scientists would spend their time working on science and working in a more collegial manner,” she said, going further than any administration official yet in acknowledging that the e-mails were inappropriate.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), who listed several scientific groups that have concluded global warming is real, responded, “I would not want to have whatever this little e-mail squabble is about to distract from the relentlessly strong and unified scientific conclusion that climate change is occurring and human activities are the primary driver.”
Sen Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), in one of several unsuccessful attempts to cut off the attack, said, “It’s not appropriate for this committee hearing.”
Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said, “The e-mails do nothing to undermine the very strong scientific consensus . . . that tells us the Earth is warming, that warming is largely a result of human activity.”