The GOP's Coming Climate Witch Hunt

Last Tuesday, as Americans across the country headed to the polls, a group of climate scientists gathered in Denver to discuss strategies for fighting back against right-wing attacks on global warming science. Their timing couldn't have been better. With the ascent of the Republicans, climate science—and scientists—will be a major target for the new House majority.

The ramifications of the vote didn't go unnoticed among the scientists gathered at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America. The crowd was asked multiple times whether they'd sent in their absentee ballots. One of the coordinators of the event was Michael Mann, the head of Pennsylvania State University's Earth System Science Center and public enemy number one in the eyes of climate-change skeptics. His presentation at the event outlined some of the major tactics of science deniers—particularly those in Congress. "What's troubling is that these politicians could be controlling major committees in the House and Senate depending on what happens today," Mann told the crowd. And come January, they will be, at least in the House.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the incoming head of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has pledged to hold hearings on the "Politicization of Science," which will consist of a rehashing of the so-called ClimateGate "scandal." He's also called for greater oversight of the Environmental Protection Agency's coming regulations of greenhouse gases. With Issa in charge, the oversight committee will devote a good deal of time to hauling government and university climate scientists before Congress.

Last November's release of thousands of emails stolen from a web server at University of East Anglia in the UK only added fuel to the fire. The emails showed climate scientists on the defensive about attacks from climate deniers, and sometimes acting a bit catty. But selected portions of them were spun in the denialist world as evidence that climate change is actually a giant hoax perpetrated by evil scientists.

For the past year, the story has been blown up by deniers inside and outside of Congress, despite numerous investigations on the part of universities and independent commissions that found no evidence of wrongdoing or fraud. And nothing said in the emails could change the fact that thousands of studies have validated the fact that carbon emissions from human activity are causing the planet to warm. If climate change were a hoax, that would mean that more than 97 percent of scientists in the world who agree with the consensus are party to the conspiracy.

Issa says he just wants a "careful relook" at the science. But that's hardly the tack that he's likely to take, given that he's argued that it's "very clear that [climate scientists] played fast and loose with both the truth and our money." He also indicated that he plans to trot out the same climate deniers that the Republicans have relied on for years—most of whom aren't scientists at all and have been widely discredited. "I think science should always be filled with skeptics, and I want to make sure the skeptics are heard," Issa told The Hill in September.

Republicans are also mulling whether to keep the Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming, formed when Nancy Pelosi assumed the role of Speaker in 2007, for the sole purpose of using it as a launching pad for climate investigation. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), a climate denier who has served as the ranking minority member of the panel since its creation, has said he wants to use the panel to probe what he has called a "massive international scientific fraud." Other Republicans have chafed at the idea of keeping the panel alive, but its fate remains undecided at this point. "I have not heard any discussion on that issue," Michael Steel, spokesman for likely Speaker John Boehner, told Mother Jones.