Let the Sun Shine on Politics of Global Warming

This week I threw a switch that activated California’s largest corporate solar power installation, a system that will provide 80 percent of the energy supply for the FedEx hub at Oakland International Airport.  FedEx’s system, designed by the PowerLight Corporation, will reduce the load on our power grid and is an important step in the struggle for energy independence and greenhouse gas reduction.

In Washington, of course, there is little urgency about either energy efficiency or global warming. Today’s automobile fuel efficiency has not improved in decades, nor has America lessened its dependency on foreign oil. Do the politicians in charge even care that California drivers are now paying 71 cents more per gallon than they were a year ago?

Despite the obvious dangers of foreign oil dependency, the possibility of irreversible climate disruption is even more ominous. Oil dependency can cripple our economy and plunge us into resource wars. Global warming can radically alter weather patterns with catastrophic consequences.

So what does Washington do? Launch a witch hunt, targeting scientists whose work demonstrates the factual basis of global warming.

House Energy Committee Chief Joe Barton, a Texas Republican, is leaving no stone unturned in his attempt to discredit three scientists who concluded in a 1998 paper that the Earth is warming dramatically. Barton has fired off official letters demanding the raw research data and financial information from the three distinguished scientists. He made similar requests to the National Science Foundation and a United Nations climate panel.

  His inquiry was inspired by two Canadians with no background in climatology who questioned the integrity of the scientists’ research. That’s all it took for Barton – a true nonbeliever in Global Warming – to spring into action.  Yet, his inquisition has now drawn the ire of even fellow Republican Rep. Sherman Boehlert, who wrote that Barton’s “purpose seems to be to intimidate scientists rather than learn from them.” Boehlert serves as chair of the House Science Committee.

Barton’s critics call him “Smoky Joe” due to his attempts to relax regulations on major polluters who contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaigns. It’s no surprise that he should end up at the forefront of this latest attack on science.

A recent investigation by Mother Jones magazine revealed that ExxonMobil has spent $8 million to fund a mercenary “think tank” army of anti-Global Warming ideologues whose purpose is to attack climate science. Their talking points dictate that “Victory will be achieved when…recognition of uncertainty becomes part of the “conventional wisdom.’” That’s a line from an American Petroleum Institute (API) document that was leaked to the New York Times in 1998.

“We’ve always wanted to get the science on trial,” says Myron Ebell, spokesman for an anti-Global Warming think tank known as the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI).

Rep. Barton’s scheme is part of a larger plan. He wants to undermine the credibility of serious climatologists while ignoring unsavory truths--like the fact that CEI has received over $1.3 million from ExxonMobil.  Sow doubt, reap profits–-and to hell with science.

We need more corporations to follow FedEx’s lead and do their part to reduce pollution and stave off dramatic climate change.