House Science Committee under fire for tweeting climate change denial article

The House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology is under fire from scientists after retweeting a controversial article which challenges the validity of climate change and mocks “alarmists” who cite corroborated, peer-reviewed data regarding the matter.

The committee, which is comprised of 38 members, oversees energy, environmental, aviation and space-travel research in development in the lower house of Congress and is chaired by Rep. Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican. Among the agencies it oversees are the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Science Foundation, and NASA.

The article in question was published on Breitbart News and written by James Delingpole, who is an UK-based columnist and novelist who, according to NBC News , “does not have a science degree and is not a scientist.” His article, which the website called “unscientific  and “steeped in opinion,” declares that the science behind global climate change is “in its final death rattle.”

.@BreitbartNews: Global Temperatures Plunge. Icy Silence from Climate Alarmists https://t.co/uLUPW4o93V

— Sci,Space,&Tech Cmte (@HouseScience) December 1, 2016

Furthermore, Delingpole’s article uses “cherry-picked data” to make it appear as though global temperatures are on the decline, according to Live Science. Previous research has shown that this year is on pace to be the hottest in recorded history, with NASA data showing that all but one of the 12 months from Oct. 2015 through Sept. 2016 had seen record-breaking heat.

Based on their analysis of global temperatures, scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) determined that 2016 would almost certainly go down as the hottest since at least 1880. In a statement released in October, GISS director Gavin Schmidt emphasized that although “monthly rankings are newsworthy, they are not nearly as important as long-term trends.”

Climate scientists, researchers weigh in with the facts

Nonetheless, Delingpole wrote that “global land temperatures have plummeted by one degree Celsius since the middle of the year – the biggest and steepest fall on record” and a phenomenon which he said was triggered by “a La Nina event following in the wake of an unusually strong El Nino.” Karen James of the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory in Maine called the story “heinously misleading” and said that it “mutilated” the work of climate scientists.

James was far from the only expert weighing in on the matter. Michael Mann, a distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Pennsylvania State University, told Live Science that the article was guilty of ignoring the “deleterious impact that our profligate burning of fossil fuels is having on the planet.” In light of the GISS data, he said, “For anyone, least of all the House Committee on Science, to… be promoting fake news aimed at fooling the public into thinking otherwise, can only be interpreted as a deliberate effort to distract and fool the public.”

So what are the facts regarding the issue of climate change? According to NASA, at least 97% of papers published in peer-reviewed scientific journals confirms that climate warming trends in the last century are real, and are “extremely likely due to human activities.” Likewise, the American Association for the Advancement of Science said in 2006 said that the evidence was “clear” that “global climate change caused by human activities is… a growing threat to society.”

Another issue with the Breitbart story, Kevin Trenberth, a distinguished senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, said to Live Science, is that it uses the term “global temperatures” in its headline while the actual article text refers to “land temperatures” only. The classification is important, he noted, because land temperatures fluctuate more than ocean temperatures. However, Trenberth said, combining land and ocean temperatures clearly demonstrates that overall global temperatures are indeed on the rise.

“If the temperature changes from one year to the next year, so what? That’s natural variability, or something else that’s not global warming,” added Tim Barnett, a research marine physicist at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. As he told Live Science, “People really need to stand back and look at the record from a 20-year period to get a good feel. And when you do that, it’s very clear that there’s an upward trend.”

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Image credit: Thinkstock

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