Bernie burns House Science Committee after devastating Breitbart tweet
The House of Representatives' Committee on Science, Space and Technology sent a tweet on Thursday linking to an article on the conservative media outlet Breitbart, saying that Earth's temperatures are in a "plunge."
Judging from reactions on Twitter -- one of which was a stinging burn tweeted by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont -- many are finding it deeply and sadly ironic that the Science Committee doesn't recognize the overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is real and influenced by human activity.
As Mashable reported today, for example, November was so warm in the U.S. that record daily highs outnumbered record lows by about 51-to-1. This year is likely to go down as the hottest ever on record.
Yet the tweet only barely touches on just how anti-science the Science Committee actually is.
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The committee's chairman, Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, has spent much of the past two years defending one of his donors -- oil giant ExxonMobil Corp -- from allegations that it misled investors about the risks that global warming poses to its business.
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Smith and other Republican members of the committee have turned what used to be a quiet committee assignment dealing with weighty and geeky subjects, like NASA's space exploration plans, into another investigative panel within Congress, which is unprecedented in the panel's history.
In a statement on Nov. 4, Smith reacted to the enactment of the Paris Climate Agreement by referring to climate change as “science fiction.”
In 2015, Smith issued a wide-ranging subpoena to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), asking for all correspondence regarding particular climate research the agency produced. The Committee spent more than a year locked in a battle with NOAA's administrator, Kathryn Sullivan, a former NASA astronaut, over this subpoena.
Smith has received a total of about $700,000 in campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry since 2008, of which at least $19,500 came from Exxon.
The Twitter account that came to people's attention on Thursday often reads more like that of a think tank or activist organization, spreading often misleading information about climate trends. The Breitbart link is particularly interesting, considering that the former leader of that media company, Steve Bannon, is now President-elect Donald J. Trump chief strategist.
Given Trump's harsh view of mainstream climate science findings, it's possible that Rep. Smith will be even more influential in the next few years.
In other words, look for more tweets like this one, and more subpoenas.
Andrew Freedman is Mashable's Senior Editor for Science and Special Projects. Prior to working at Mashable, Freedman was a Senior Science writer for Climate Central. He has also worked as a reporter for Congressional Quarterly and Greenwire/E&E Daily. His writing has also appeared in the Washington Post, online at The Weather Channel, and washingtonpost.com, where he wrote a weekly climate science column for the "Capital Weather Gang" blog. He has provided commentary on climate science and policy for Sky News, CBC Radio, NPR, Al Jazeera, Sirius XM Radio, PBS NewsHour, and other national and international outlets. He holds a Masters in Climate and Society from Columbia University, and a Masters in Law and Diplomacy from The Fletcher School at Tufts University.
