In the current Congress, weโve already seen one example of an โon the one hand, on the other handโ hearing about the science of climate change, courtesy of the House Energy and Commerceย Committee.
Now, get ready for another, courtesy of the House Science Committee.ย The broad strategy reflects what is sometimes called โagnotologyโโthe strategic sowing of doubt aboutย science.
Letโs run through the listed roster of those testifying at Thursdayโs hearing:
1. Dr. J. Scott Armstrong,ย Professor, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. A recent Armstrong paper on global warming is here.ย The first sentence begins, โWe summarize evidence showing that the global warming alarm movement has more of the character of a political movement than that of a scientificย controversyโฆโย
2. Dr. Richard Muller,ย Professor, University of California, Berkley and Faculty Senior Scientist, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. While Muller has been criticized in the past for supporting climate skeptics, more recently his Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Studyโwhich initially drew criticism and raised alarmsโapparently reconfirms the basic scientific consensus that global warming is happening and caused byย humans.
3. Dr. John Christy,ย Director, Earth System Science Center, University of Alabama in Huntsville. Christy is not a climate denier, or even a full-on โskepticโ of human caused climate changeโbut he is known for calling into question how serious the problem is and whether it will be aย โcatastrophe.โ
4. Mr. Peter Glaser,ย Partner, Troutman Sanders, LLP. Glaser has previously testified that the Clean Air Act should be amended so that the EPA is fully blocked from using it to regulate greenhouse gasย emissions.
There will presumably be other witnesses as wellโโminorityโ witnesses called by the Democratic side that represent the mainstream scientific/IPCC viewโbut they arenโt listedย yet.
What to make of this? On the one hand, and as Iโveย noted previously, House Republicans are no longer behaving as though theyโre 100 percent convinced that global warming is bunk. But it is only the barest of improvements for Congress to throw up its hands and construct a โdebateโ over where the science liesโperforming the legislative equivalent of โon the one hand, on the other handโ media coverage of globalย warming.
Actual press coverage of the upcoming hearing will surely do likewise. And citizens, weย now know, will respond to this approach by feeling defeated, deflated, uncertain where realityย lies.
This sort of thing has been going on in the US Congress for a long timeโfor over a decade. So in a sense, one more doubt-mongering hearing doesnโt move the cultural confusion needleย much.
The real problem, for me, is that our cultureโs outrage meter seems similarly calibrated. ย
