Lamar Smith: Harassment of scientists continues.

So there really is no easy way to introduce the brouhaha that is fomenting between science and the idiots that make up the GOTP.  But it is important to highlight the situation not just because of climate change but science in general.  

,,,what good is it to have a mechanism to uncover the truth, if the truth is twisted into a lie, and unabashedly used to damage the credibility, reputation, and careers of scientists that simply defend science and teach inconvenient facts?  When scientists are guilty until proven innocent, and written realities are manipulated to create false narratives from public records, how do we stand a chance?

Lamar Smith is not qualified to pick lint from my ass let alone assess a well documented scientific paper.

As Plait notes, the gist of the situation is this ."Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas—chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee—doesn’t think global warming is real. He thinks it’s a huge conspiracy by climate scientists who fudge the data to make it look like the planet is heating up, because Obama."

Over the course of four articles, Plait delves into the nitty gritty of just how stoopid the Reich is being.  Part four being the most recent issue that has hit the mainstream, that "a paper was published in Science showing that the global warming “pause” so lauded by climate change deniers didn’t, in fact, exist."  And, "[t]hat the NOAA Science paper in question was rushed into publication, and that Smith has “whistleblowers” who will attest to it."

What strikes me though, is the tactics that science denialists (organizations such as US Right to Know; individuals such as Mike Adams, Andrew Wakefield, and Stanislaw Burzynski) are now engaging in.  And I am not talking "denying the established scientific consensus despite overwhelming evidence."  I'm talking the fifth grade tactics present in Climategate, the attacks against Dr. Paul Offit, writers Jon Entine and Emily Willingham, Dr. Dorit Reiss, Senator Richard Pan (SB 277) and Kevin Folta.  The play by our rules or else.

This mentality is now infiltrating a place it doesn't belong.  Science has no political ideology:

I strongly urge you to read Johnson’s letter; it really shows that Smith’s actions are the results of political grandstanding. NOAA had been complying with his requests, as silly and wasteful as those requests were, but Smith ignored this and kept making more and more unreasonable demands. Finally, NOAA put its foot down; NOAA Administrator Sullivan has refused to comply any further.

I’ve been saying that Smith is harassing scientists, and he’s abusing his power of congressional subpoena. Now we have even more evidence: He’s been pressuring Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker over all this, trying to get her to in turn pressure NOAA to turn over the scientists’ emails.* If NOAA doesn’t comply, he’s threatened to subpoena the secretary herself.
,,,
Smith is out of control. I earlier likened him to Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who, in the 1950s, went on a huge and reckless witch hunt, looking for Communists in government, ruining people’s careers and lives in the process. That likeness grows ever clearer into focus.

I don’t see any reason to change my assessment of Smith now. He is a demagogue, using and abusing his power to stifle scientific research, to create a climate of fear and pressure for those scientists, and to obfuscate and further cast doubt in the public’s mind about the reality of climate change and its effects (an effort that has of course found purchase with the usual right-wing media suspects).

Lamar Smith: Harassment of scientists continues.