TESTIMONY 2

3/17 see main

see freq flyer turley shillenberger

SEE TT WHITE PAPER BOGUS STUDY CITED

CPI 2015

...

Congress takes notice

Congress is also paying more attention to the Mercatus Center, which from 1999 to 2008 was mentioned by name 32 times in either the Congressional Record or congressional committee reports. Since 2009, it’s been mentioned 93 times, often in reference to Mercatus Center faculty who were testifying before Congress.

2015]

This year, Congress even cited Mercatus Center research in the text of budget bills. House Concurrent Resolution 27 and Senate Concurrent Resolution 11 note that a Mercatus Center study “estimates that Obamacare will reduce employment by up to 3 percent, or about 4 million full-time equivalent workers.”

Mercatus Center Vice President Carrie Conko, while declining to address critics’ “ad hominem attacks” of Charles Koch, stressed the institution’s work is the product of hard work and high standards — not the whims of some patron puppet master.

“As a university research center, our scholarship is independent and subjected to rigorous peer review,” Conko said. “Our researchers are interested in understanding what shapes societies and economies and that covers a spectrum of research from the history of economic thought to the application of economics to questions of public policy.”

Conko also noted that the Mercatus Center abides by a strong conflict of interest and research independence policy, which she described as “stronger than those of most found with typical academic centers or departments.”

Mercatus Center officials note that the center isn’t part of George Mason University the same way as, say, its chemistry or psychology departments. Instead, it’s organized as a stand-alone nonprofit, and as such, George Mason University isn’t directly responsible for it.

The Mercatus Center doesn’t receive direct funding from George Mason University, Conko said.

But George Mason University and its students do receive millions of dollars in annual financial benefit from the Mercatus Center, according to federal tax filings.

That alone is a major incentive for a public university in Virginia, where state funding of higher education is dwindling, to host a privately funded operation on its campus — today, a fairly common practice among public schools.

The Mercatus Center spent $3.64 million during that time to “support graduate students at George Mason University” by “training future scholars and decision-makers to advance and apply a research agenda for understanding institutions and change,” according to a tax filing.

The Mercatus Center helped fund $1.82 million worth of communication efforts that included promoting its research and ideas “to the media and opinion shapers.”

And it made a $10,000 grant to the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, which operates a “global network of more than 400 free market organizations.” They include several Koch-backed nonprofit groups such as Americans for Prosperity, the American Legislative Exchange Council and Americans for Tax Reform.

McAuliffe mum?

Study finds over 33 million Instagram, TikTok posts promoting harmful content to kids - Alternet.org

zuck apologiz fam testiony 1 31

an 6 25

Government watchdog Congressional Integrity Project (CIP) is slamming the new Delivering on Government Efficiency (DOGE) subcommittee under U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). The group calls the subcommittee a “rogues" gallery of extremists, conspiracy theorists and C-team political operatives” promoting President Donald Trump’s clampdown on certain non-government organizations (NGOs).

The Guardian reports far-right firebrand Greene will launch hearings this week on “Public Funds, Private Agendas: NGOs Gone Wild”, purporting to expose the use of federal funds by NGOs to advance “radical” agendas such as “open borders and the Green New Deal scam.”

But a (CIP) memo condemns the hearing as “political theater” and “weaponized government oversight.” The memo also describes the hearing as extreme hypocrisy considering the substantial federal funding Republican allies and rightwing groups receive.

“Their own networks have systematically benefited from government contracts, subsidies, and loans worth billions of dollars,” the memo states, according to the Guardian.

IFrame Content

Personalities contributing to the committee display this week on Capitol Hill include personalities such as Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which the Southern Poverty Law Center designates a hate group. Krikorian has made statements that Haiti’s problems today stem from the nation being one of the first in recent history to throw off the yoke of slavery and not be.” VID]

The memo adds that CIS received more than $700,000 in PPP loans and is now under investigation by the justice department for potentially lying to obtain at least one of them.

“That’s right, Republicans chose as their star witness on government waste someone who may have committed fraud to secure government money for his organization,” the memo claims.

Another participant is Power the Future founder and Executive Director Daniel Turner, who the CIP describes as a career political operative who worked for the Charles Koch Institute before founding Power the Future. Power the Future is a climate-denial organization that attacks environmental groups for receiving federal grants, says CIP. It added that Turner’s former employer, billionaire Charles Koch, has received more than $750 million in government subsidies, even as Greene claims to be rooting out government waste.

“Turner … represents everything wrong with this sham hearing,” CIP told the Guardian. “He’s a junior varsity Republican operative masquerading as an objective analyst while advancing the financial interests of the fossil fuel industry – the same interests that have systematically profited from the very government largesse he now pretends to oppose.”

Read the full Guardian report at this link.

REF

The far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has assembled a “rogues’ gallery of extremists, conspiracy theorists and C-team political operatives” to promote Donald Trump’s crackdown on non-government organisations (NGOs), a congressional watchdog has claimed.

The House of Representatives’ Delivering on Government Efficiency (Doge) subcommittee, chaired by Greene, is due to hold a hearing on Wednesday entitled “Public Funds, Private Agendas: NGOs Gone Wild”.

The subcommittee said in a press release that the hearing will “expose” the use of federal funds by NGOs to advance “radical” agendas such as “open borders and the Green New Deal scam”. It frames its work as an investigation of the alleged funneling of taxpayer dollars to politically motivated groups while “lining the pockets of their friends and allies”.

But a memo from the Congressional Integrity Project (CIP), obtained by the Guardian, condemns the hearing as “political theater”, “weaponized government oversight” and an exercise in hypocrisy, given the substantial federal funding received by Republican allies and rightwing groups.

While attacking civil society organisations for receiving federal grants, the memo says, “their own networks have systematically benefited from government contracts, subsidies, and loans worth billions of dollars”.

Wednesday’s hearing on Capitol Hill will feature witnesses Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies; Daniel Turner, founder and executive director of Power the Future; and Scott Walter, president of the Capital Research Center.

The CIP describes Greene’s lineup as “rogues’ gallery of extremists, conspiracy theorists and C-team political operatives masquerading as government watchdogs”.

It notes that the Center for Immigration Studies has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and regularly circulates content from “white nationalist and antisemitic writers”.

Krikorian has made statements including that Haiti’s problems stem from not being “colonised long enough”.

The memo adds that CIS received more than $700,000 in PPP loans and is now under investigation by the justice department for potentially lying to obtain at least one of them. “That’s right, Republicans chose as their star witness on government waste someone who may have committed fraud to secure government money for his organization.”

The CIP describes Turner as a career political operative who worked for the Charles Koch Institute before founding Power the Future, a climate-denial organisation that attacks environmental groups for receiving federal grants. Yet Turner’s former employer, Charles Koch, has received more than $750m in government subsidies.

The memo states: “Turner, who calls ‘climate change the slippery slope to socialism’ and promotes conspiracy theories about climate science, represents everything wrong with this sham hearing.

“He’s a junior varsity Republican operative masquerading as an objective analyst while advancing the financial interests of the fossil fuel industry – the same interests that have systematically profited from the very government largesse he now pretends to oppose.”

Walter leads the Capital Research Center, “a secretive organization that won’t disclose its donors while attacking others for lacking transparency”, the CIP alleges.

“His organization’s fiscal arrangements appear designed to shield activities from public scrutiny, yet he positions himself as a watchdog exposing liberal ‘dark money’.”

In 2023, according to the memo, Walter helped funnel nearly $600,000 in anonymous donations to supreme court justice Clarence Thomas’s wife Ginni Thomas’s group while his organisation had business before the supreme court, creating conflicts of interest.

Walter also has a history of making or defending offensive statements about race, gender and sexual orientation. He publicly defended a university professor accused of making racist statements, said average Americans have “disgust at homosexual practice” and in the 1990s mused that one good thing from the Monica Lewinsky scandal might be “that feminism will die, that sexual harassment laws will fizzle”.

The memo adds: “This hearing represents weaponized government oversight at its worst, with Chairwoman Marjorie Taylor Greene assembling hate group leaders, conspiracy theorists, and dark money operatives to attack civil society organizations while the very people crying about government waste have pocketed billions in federal contracts and subsidies.”

---

whelan ross e cig NY testimony 2013? enstrom on ltrhead

https://www.nysenate.gov/sites/default/files/American%20Council%20on%20Science%20and%20Health%20testimony%20e-cigarette.pdf

https://www.newsweek.com/who-dr-jane-m-orient-doctor-opposed-mandatory-vaccinations-testify-before-senate-committee-1552734

1220 dn

On Capitol Hill, the Senate Homeland Security Committee chair, Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson, has invited members of a fringe medical association to testify on the coronavirus pandemic. The lead witness, Dr. Jane M. Orient, has expressed anti-vaccine views and has pushed the use of hydroxychloroquine — an antimalarial drug once promoted by President Trump, which can cause heart rhythm problems and showed no benefit in treating COVID-19. Another witness testifying today, Dr. Ramin Oskoui, has falsely claimed that masks and social distancing don’t work at combating the spread of coronavirus.

https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/06/10/rod-schoonover-trump-attempted-suppress-state-dept-analyst-testimony-climate-crisis

The Trump administration issued one of its most blatant attacks on climate science this past week when it tried to stop a State Department employee from testifying on the climate crisis, reports showed on Saturday.

As the Washington Post reported, intelligence analyst Rod Schoonover's testimony was submitted to the White House for approval ahead of his planned appearance before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. His remarks focused on the national security risks posed by the climate crisis.

The Trump administration refused to approve the testimony for entry into the congressional record, noting that the data Schoonover planned to present—drawing from top government scientists' research and peer-reviewed scientific reports—did not align with the executive branch's views.

[pix]

National Security Council advisers wrote a number of comments on Schoonover's draft, saying the testimony was “not objective.”

The testimony “includes lots of climate alarm propaganda that is not science at all,” wrote William Happer,a senior member of the National Security Council who has sought to create a federal task force to challenge the consensus reached by 97 percentof peer-reviewed climate scientists who say humans are contributing to the climate crisis.

“I am embarrassed to have this go out on behalf of the executive branch of the federal government,” Happer added, noting a particular objection to Schoonover's use of the term “tipping point” in reference to possible devastating, irreversible effects of the climate crisis.

“'Tipping points' is a propaganda slogan for the scientifically illiterate,” Happer wrote.

Related: Get the background from DeSmog on climate science denier William Happer, and read: Physicist William Happer, the 'Unmoored' Climate Science Denier Heading a White House Climate Probe

Schoonover was ultimately permitted to testify before the committee, but his testimony was not submitted into the record because, the Office of Legislative Affairs said, it did not “jibe” with the Trump administration's views on the climate.

President Donald Trump and many of his appointeesdenythat human activity like the extraction of fossil fuels are contributing to the warming of the globe, which scientists warn is already causing extreme weather events like hurricanes and wildfires, rising sea levels, and melting glaciers. As Schoonover mentioned in his testimony, the last five years have been the warmest on record according to NASA.

Although Schoonover was able to testify, climate action advocates decried the White House's attempt to stifle the information he eventually shared with the committee.

“Any attempt to suppress information on the security risks of climate change threatens to leave the American public vulnerable and unsafe,” Francesco Femia, chief executive of the Council on Strategic Risks and co-founder of the Center for Climate and Security, told the Post.

...

the gift that keeps giving

https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/05/23/climate-science-deniers-marc-morano-patrick-moore-biodiversity-report

many lnx graf

First, Climate Change, Now the Global Extinction Crisis: Industry-Paid Hacks Deny Science to Congress

Read time: 5 mins

By Justin Mikulka • Thursday, May 23, 2019 - 16:18

Patrick Moore, Marc Morano, Robert Watson]

In this week’s Congressional hearing on the recent (and dire) UN Global Assessment of Biodiversity, conservation scientist Dr. Jacob Malcom did not mince words as he explained the report's startling findings that one million species are at risk of extinction.

“We are, as you have heard, losing species faster than ever in human history, tens to hundreds of times faster than the background rate of extinction,” the Defenders of Wildlife scientist told the Congressional House Water, Oceans, and Wildlife Subcommittee. “We are in the middle of the sixth mass extinction, where the last time this happened it was because an asteroid hit the planet. Today we are that asteroid.”

Such a massive loss of plants, animals, and other species would also, quite naturally, affect human life on earth. But just as they have with hearings on the climate crisis, Congressional Republicans and their witnesses used this opportunity to attack the well-documented scientific evidence of a far-reaching global threat to life. And they even used some of the same climate science deniers and tired arguments to do it.

The comprehensive report they attacked gathers even more evidence that human activities are having a significant effect on global biodiversity, just as the scientific consensus shows humans are driving rapid changes in the climate.

“The evidence is crystal clear: Nature is in trouble. Therefore we are in trouble,” Sandra Díaz, one of the co-chairs of the UN Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, told National Geographic.

Business as Usual With Republican Science Denial

Marc Morano isn’t a scientist but does make his money attacking scientists. From 2006 to 2009, Morano was the communications director for Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), who will be remembered for his stunt of throwing a snowball in Congress as he tried to discredit climate science.

Morano moved on from politics to working for organizations funded by oil companies, and he currently runs the website ClimateDepot.com, a project funded by the climate science-denying Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), a conservative think tank which has received funding from ExxonMobil, Chevron, and the Koch brothers.

This week, Morano wasted no time in attacking some of the actual scientists on the hearing's panel, specifically Sir Robert T. Watson, who heads the UN agency that produced the biodiversity report. These attacks on fellow witnesses resulted in hearing Chairman Jared Huffman (D-CA) twice reprimanding Morano.

Rep. Huffman had to ask that Morano “show respect for your fellow panelists.”

[vid]

However, oil industry-funded attacks on climate science, and even Robert Watson, are nothing new. In 2001 a memo to the Bush administration from Exxon lobbyist Randy Randol specifically requests that Watson be removed as head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a position he held at the time.

And Morano, a notorious climate science denier, is continuing this long tradition of groups funded by Exxon attacking Watson. Exxon has donated heavily to CFACT and was also involved in the infamous “Victory Will Be Achieved” memo. This memo, assembled by Randol and the American Petroleum Institute, declared in 1998 that “Victory will be achieved when average citizens 'understand' (recognize) uncertainties in climate science.”

The other climate science denier on the witness panel this week was Dr. Patrick Moore, current head of the CO2 Coalition, an organization that grew out of a now-defunct group heavily funded by Exxon.

What did the leader of an organization called “the CO2 Coalition” have to say about carbon dioxide?

“There is no hard evidence that CO2 has anything to do with the change in temperature of the earth’s climate,” Moore told the committee.

In fact, Exxon’s own research accurately predicted the rise in CO2 and temperature which the world has been experiencing.

However, Moore not only made the claim that CO2 doesn’t contribute to atmospheric warming — a concept first demonstrated by Eunice Foote in 1856 — but also said that because humans have been increasing the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, they were actually the “salvation of life on earth.” And while plants do use carbon dioxide, more CO2 is not necessarily good for plants.

Not everyone in the hearing seemed interested in the blatantly false statements coming from these industry-backed science deniers. Chairman Huffman noted that the efforts came from the “shadowy corners of these junior varsity think tanks.”

Solutions Amid the Attacks and Noise

Due to the format of Congressional hearings and the general GOP policy of climate science denial, these hearings typically offer very little in the way of solutions or actual debate. However, two of the panelists did speak about the threats to biodiversity and comment on solutions.

Malcom, the scientist from Defenders of Wildlife, called out the success of the U.S. Endangered Species Act.“We have forty some odd years showing that the Endangered Species Act has worked incredibly well and as we all know the American economy has continued to grow throughout that entire time,” he said.

Notably, the Trump administration currently is attempting to weaken the scope and effectiveness of the Endangered Species Act.

Perhaps the most concrete recommendation of the day came from Watson, who recommended that governments stop subsidizing industries that are causing harm to the climate and global species.

“One should get rid of many of these environmentally harmful subsidies in agriculture, energy, and transportation,” Watson told the committee.

With suggestions like these, Watson was an obvious target for industry-funded science deniers like Morano and Moore.

ctt koch-ademic

The practice of individuals who are funded by special interests representing themselves as independent scholars has the potential to deceive lawmakers and other public officials. U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) put forth legislation in the last Congress that would require disclosure of the sponsors of some research that is submitted as part of public comments.[[17]](https://www.citizen.org/article/koch-cog-rsc/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=ab4a011e-a30b-428d-805a-411de0805c8e#_ftn17) Proposals such as this might provide a guide to Congress, as well as state and local governments, for ways to unmask the special interests that lurk behind purported independent scholarship.

https://naturalresources.house.gov/subcommittees/water-oceans-and-wildlife

DEMOCRATS 519

May 22 House committee hearing on the extinction crisis devolved into a spectacle resembling a Fox News segment, thanks to two frequent Fox guests who were invited by Republicans to testify.

The House Subcommittee on Water, Oceans, and Wildlife held a hearing on the recent summary report from the United Nations that warned human activity is leading to the possible extinction of up to 1 million plant and animal species. The Democratic majority invited expert scientists as witnesses, including Robert Watson, who led the U.N. team that wrote the biodiversity report, and two of the other scientists who worked on it. The Republican minority invited two of Fox News’ favorite climate deniers, Marc Morano and Patrick Moore, who only downplayed the report's findings and cast doubt on climate science.

Morano and Moore have appeared on Fox multiple times in 2019

Morano, a notorious, polluter-backed climate denier, is a Fox News favorite, regularly invited on-air to discuss environmental topics despite the fact that he has no scientific credentials. So far in 2019, Morano has appeared on Fox News shows at least 10 times. His most recent appearances were on May 6 when he commented on the U.N. biodiversity report on two of Fox's “news”-side shows, Shepard Smith Reporting and Special Report with Bret Baier. Both shows aired footage of Morano trying to undermine the report:

MARC MORANO: This is politics, not science. The U.N. is trying to expand its base to include climate and species. They are looking for more treaties, more regulation. They have identified a problem, they've juiced it up, and they put themselves in charge of solving the problem. That's called a self-interested lobbying organization.

Morano has also appeared three times this year on President Donald Trump's favorite show, Fox & Friends: on April 30, when he claimed that carbon dioxide is not pollution; on February 12,when he called efforts to reduce climate change "medieval witchcraft"; and on February 8, when he lied about what's in the Green New Deal and called it "a big bowl of crazy."

Morano has also repeatedly appeared on Infowars, the far-right outlet run by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. And he recently attacked a young climate activist online, which led to trolls threatening her.

Moore is another Fox News favorite who is frequently invited on the network to downplay environmental issues or to deny that climate change is happening, despite also having no background as a climate scientist and raking in money from polluting industries. So far in 2019, he has appeared on Fox News shows at least five times, all in mid-March. One notable appearance came on the March 12 episode of Fox & Friends, during which he claimed that "the whole climate crisis, as they call it, is not only fake news, it's fake science." This appearance caught the eye of another climate denier, Trump, who approvingly tweeted out a quote from Moore. Moore tries to appear credible by claiming that he was a co-founder of Greenpeace, but this is not true.

Morano and Moore made a mockery of the House hearing, and that’s exactly what Republicans wanted

The May 22 House hearing was supposed to be about the U.N.'s new extinction report, but Morano and Moore made a mockery of this occasion by accusing the scientists who wrote the report of having a political agenda and by downplaying the effects of climate change.

In his written testimony, Morano claimed that his political science background is “an ideal background for examining the latest round of UN environmental claims” and argued that the U.N. “twists and hypes and distorts science in order to push a political agenda.” During the hearing, he also wrongly the 97% scientific consensus on human-caused climate change. Subcommittee Chair Jared Huffman (D-CA) called Morano outfor "trolling" climate scientists, saying he came from the "shadowy corners of these junior varsity think tanks."

In Moore’s written testimony, he called the U.N. report's findings “highly exaggerated” and made reference to the “manufactured ‘climate crisis.’” He also falsely that without rising CO2 levels, plants would be much worse off. Moore often sings the praises of pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere, despite the fact that it is definitely not good.

Morano and Moore also got more time at the hearing than the four scientists invited by the Democrats, according to Public Citizen.

Fox News has helped to put Morano and Moore in the public eye by giving them a platform to sow doubt about climate change and other serious environmental issues, and now the two men’s latest Fox-worthy rants are part of the congressional record. The vicious cycle continues.

mma

testimony

Gun violence researcher and National Rifle Association (NRA) favorite John Lott Jr. will testify as a witness in a congressional hearing on gun violence -- even though his work has been repeatedly debunked and discredited.

On March 7, the House Appropriations Committee will hold a hearing to address “the public health emergency of gun violence.” In addition to Lott, other witnesses will include Ronald Stewart from the American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma, Andrew Morral from the Rand Corp., and leading gun violence researcher Daniel Webster from Johns Hopkins University.

Lott is the founder and president of the conservative Crime Prevention Research Center and a frequent guest on NRATV, the media platform of NRA. Though he has made many attempts to position himself as a leading gun rights researcher, they have been unsuccessful as his work has been routinely discredited. For example, in his book *More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws*, Lott pushed the myth that increased gun ownership, especially increased concealed weapons permits, results in fewer incidents of violent crime. The book was widely criticized, and the Stanford Law Review said Lott made his central claim “without credible statistical support.” Lott’s premise was in fact proved to be patently false; states with right-to-carry concealed handgun laws have higher rates of violent crime than states with no such laws.

Lott was also a subject of an ethics inquiry in 2003, after he claimed in the second edition of his book that he had conducted a survey that showed that 98 percent of defensive gun uses involved people only brandishing a weapon. Lott couldn’t provide any evidence that he had conducted such a study and later claimed he lost the data in a computer crash.

In response to widespread criticism of Lott's book, Mary Rosh, who claimed to be an old student of Lott’s, frequently defended him online for three years. In 2003, Lott admitted that Rosh was actually a pseudonym he had used to defend himself. According to The Washington Post, “The name is an amalgam of the first two letters of his four sons’ first names.”

In 2014, Lott ghostwrote an op-ed for a female victim of stalking who advocated for campus carry. The piece was published on FoxNews.com, and the woman later told BuzzFeed that Lott pressured her into allowing him to submit a piece he had written.

Most recently, Lott elevated a fringe conspiracy theory that bombs sent to prominent Democrats and media figures were false flags.

Lott has long dismissed the fact that gun violence is a public health issue -- the same topic the upcoming congressional hearing will examine. He told CBS Evening News in 2015, “Every country in the world, or place in the world that has banned guns, has seen an increase in murder rates.” This claim falls apart when one looks at Australia’s homicide rate after the country’s lawmakers enacted sweeping gun safety legislation in 1996 -- the gun homicide rate fell by 59 percent and gun suicide rate by 65 percent in the decade after the laws were introduced.

Lott made a similarly false statement after the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting that left 59 dead and hundreds wounded. In an opinion piece on FoxNews.com, he attacked the gun safety regulations that were proposed following the massacre, writing, “Europe, which has all the gun controls that are being pushed in the aftermath of the Las Vegas carnage, has actually suffered more bloodshed from these types of attacks than the U.S.”

Lott also wrote in his piece that though countries in Europe have banned semi-automatic weapons, people have used automatic machine guns to commit murder, and pointed out that the Las Vegas massacre was the first mass shooting in the U.S. with an automatic weapon. This comparison is based on the very narrow subset of gun violence involving machine guns which intentionally ignores a number of attacks in the U.S. in which a semi-automatic rifle was used, such as the mass shootings in Newtown, CT, Orlando, FL, Sutherland Springs, TX and Parkland, FL. Lott also failed to mention that countries in Europe with much stronger gun laws than the U.S. have much lower homicide rates.

Lott’s history of flawed research and multiple ethical controversies shows why he should not be considered a credible source on gun violence.

https://www.inverse.com/article/27842-climate-change-denier-nasa-congressional-hearing-harrison-schmitt

2017 no lnx

...

in 2008, Schmitt resigned from space exploration nonprofit The Planetary Society, as a result of the group saying that climate change is a result of human activity. In 2013, he co-wrote a commentary piece in the Wall Street Journal saying carbon dioxide has little to do with climate change.

Although scientific experts from all over the world have concluded that there’s over a 95 percent probability that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases have caused the increase in Earth’s temperature in the past 50 years, Schmitt wrote, “There isn’t the slightest evidence that more carbon dioxide has caused more extreme weather.”

He’s also presented incorrect facts about Earth’s climate trends. In a paper he sent to NASA, he wrote, “How long this cooling trend will persist remains to be seen,” saying that Greenland glaciers and Arctic sea ice have been increasing. This piece’s assertions have since been debunked by many academics, as Earth is actually in a warming trend, and both Greenland and the Arctic are losing — not gaining — ice.

Schmitt’s credentials as a NASA astronaut are impressive, but he has significantly less experience in energy and climate science. He’s advocated mining Helium-3 on the moon and using it to fuel fusion reactors — a costly source of energy.

Schmitt has not only repeatedly denied climate change, he’s disparaged leaders of the environmental movement as well. In an interview with right-wing radio host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, Schmitt said, “I think the whole trend really began with the fall of the Soviet Union. Because the great champion of the opponents of liberty, namely communism, had to find some other place to go and they basically went into the environmental movement.” As evidence against climate change being impacted by human activities, he said, “If you want to read some of the history of the American Revolutionary War, you will realize how damn cold it was back then.”

Trump himself has repeatedly denied climate change, calling it a Chinese hoax. And Texas Republican Lamar S. Smith is a top pick for NASA administrator. Smith isn’t a climate change denier, but he’s skeptical about the consensus that human activities have led to climate change.

If NASA’s programs on climate change and earth science are defunded, the U.S. will see the elimination of research on global temperatures, ice, and other climate phenomena. This likely won’t be the only move to downplay climate change in the upcoming years.

Climate Change-Denying Astronaut to Testify in Front of Congress

Schmitt Next to Big Boulder

By Rosalie Chan on February 14, 2017

Filed Under Science, Earth Science, NASA & Space Policy

NASA plays a crucial role in observing and tracking the global effects of climate change — employing a myriad of satellites to study atmospheric changes, melting ice, and ocean patterns. The first congressional committee hearing on NASA’s future will be held on Thursday this week, and it’s set to feature Harrison Schmitt — a former astronaut who walked on the moon as part of the Apollo 17 mission, a former U.S. senator from New Mexico, and a long-time denier of climate change.

Although Thursday’s hearing may focus more on space exploration, President Donald Trump is poised to eliminate NASA’s climate change research efforts and defund NASA’s earth science division. If Schmitt is asked to give his thoughts on what the future of NASA’s Earth science research ought to be, he will likely use his influence and status to voice a negative assessment. If Trump is serious about downsizing research on climate change, having Schmitt speak at the upcoming NASA hearing is likely an optical move to show people affiliated with NASA that don’t see the need for Earth science research programs.

NASA has accrued a vast plethora of evidence, which shows that the planet has warmed at an unprecedented rate in the past 1,300 years. Over 97 percent of actively publishing climate scientists agree that this is extremely likely due to human activities.

In the past, rather than acknowledging the scientific consensus based on evidence, Schmitt has called it a “political tool.”

https://www.inverse.com/article/27842-climate-change-denier-nasa-congressional-hearing-harrison-schmitt

2017 no lnx

NaSA plays a crucial role in observing and tracking the global effects of climate change — employing a myriad of satellites to study atmospheric changes, melting ice, and ocean patterns. The first congressional committee hearing on NASA’s future will be held on Thursday this week, and it’s set to feature Harrison Schmitt — a former astronaut who walked on the moon as part of the Apollo 17 mission, a former U.S. senator from New Mexico, and a long-time denier of climate change.

Although Thursday’s hearing may focus more on space exploration, President Donald Trump is poised to eliminate NASA’s climate change research efforts and defund NASA’s earth science division. If Schmitt is asked to give his thoughts on what the future of NASA’s Earth science research ought to be, he will likely use his influence and status to voice a negative assessment. If Trump is serious about downsizing research on climate change, having Schmitt speak at the upcoming NASA hearing is likely an optical move to show people affiliated with NASA that don’t see the need for Earth science research programs.

NASA has accrued a vast plethora of evidence, which shows that the planet has warmed at an unprecedented rate in the past 1,300 years. Over 97 percent of actively publishing climate scientists agree that this is extremely likely due to human activities.

In the past, rather than acknowledging the scientific consensus based on evidence, Schmitt has called it a “political tool.”

...

Climate Change-Denying Astronaut to Testify in Front of Congress

Schmitt Next to Big Boulder

By Rosalie Chan on February 14, 2017

http://www.ecowatch.com/lamar-smith-climate-science-2336435692.html

Climate Deniers' Big Day on Capitol Hill

No one thought that Lamar "my career has been funded by fossil fuels" Smith was going to put on an unbiased hearing on climate science. After all, the minority Democrats on Smith's House Committee on Science, Space, & Technology published a report this month, *Much Ado About Nothing*, which details Smith's "crusade to attempt to undermine and invalidate" Tom Karl's pause-buster study. (Yet Smith still can't get NOAA's name right)!

Although little was said about Karl, Wednesday's House Science Committee hearing with Drs. Michael Mann, John Christy, Judith Curry and Roger Pielke Jr. was a quite a circus. Which is exactly why someone who's been through Smith's nonsense, Dr. David Titley, wrote for the Washington Post that scientists should boycott these biased hearings.

That would be nice, if that meant that Smith would stop holding them. But since he shows no sign of slowing his inquisition, someone needs to show up to set the record straight and push back on all the denial packed into the hearing like so many clowns in a tiny car.

And that's exactly what Dr. Mann did, successfully walking the tight-rope between correcting other witnesses and coming off as a jerk. Most notably and most clearly getting under Smith's skin, Mann cited a recent Science Magazine articledescribing Smith's comments at the Heartland conference. Mann read the killer quote about how Smith "acknowledged that the committee is now a tool to advance his political agenda rather than a forum to examine important issues facing the U.S. research community."

In response,Lamar Smith, the esteemed media critic who cited the Daily Mail's bogus Bates story, who has written for Breitbart and said that people should get their news directly from Trump, claimed that Science Magazine is "not known as an objective magazine." As Emily Atkin of the New Republic aptly put it, "The fact that the chairman of the House Science committee doesn't consider that source 'objective' is ACTUALLY MIND BLOWING."

Smith, with pie on his face, also demonstrated his media savvy by citing the never-correct editorial page of the Wall Street Journal on heat records. This opinion is about as solid as cotton candy and has been contradicted by the paper's own reporting.

[img]

Speaking of dumb Wall Street Journal opinions, Mann also did a nice job of calling out Pielke's hypocrisy for whining in the Journal about being harassed, after sending threatening letters to Mann and Kevin Trenberth's bosses when they criticized his awful FiveThirtyEight piece that needed correction.

Also needing correction was John Christy, who trotted out his error-laden graph of models and observations. Again, Mann highlighted the foolishness of his fellow witnesses by pointing out how others have corrected Christy many times on the satellite record vs. the thermometer record. And more importantly, he cited the recent research that totally debunks Christy's false contention that models overestimate warming.

And then there's Judith Curry who, true to form, was there to talk about uncertainty (inappropriately). Again Mann was prepared, pointing out that uncertainty is actually a reason to take stronger action sooner. Uncertainty cuts both ways: while Curry and the GOP would have you believe maybe warming won't be so bad, it could actually be much worse than we fear.

Curry also bristled at being referred to as a "climate science denier" in Mann's written testimony. That's silly: She's teamed up with the Kochs, questioned the validity of the endangerment finding and said in her opening statement that it's time to "make the debate about climate change great again." So it is safe to say that "Judith Curry is absolutely a climate denier."

And she proved it in the hearing, denying the science and claiming we don't know how much is human versus natural. In 2014, NASA's Gavin Schmidt laid out the case for Curry that our best estimate is that humans are causing 110 percent of warming. (It's more than 100 percent because natural forces and particulate pollution cause cooling, which CO2 is overcoming to cause warming).

Curry also questioned ocean acidification science, in a way that Brian Kahn noted "is way out of step with most ocean scientists" that he's talked with.

Other odds and ends that made an appearance include the 1998 documents showing Big Oil's plan to inject uncertainty into the climate debate, the long-debunked 70s cooling myth and Smith's tired denial of the consensus.

So like any good circus, there were plenty of clowns, people lion, tired grr-causing myths and bear-ly believable statements.

Oh my.

Here's the full hearing: