In February, when leaving the chairmanship of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri declared, “For me the protection of planet Earth, the survival of all species and sustainability of our ecosystems is more than my mission, it is my religion.”
In March, a New Republic headline charged, “Republicans are attacking climate change science by comparing it to religion.” Illustrating that the charge isn’t new, the Wall Street Journal’s opinion page recalled the late climate-engaged novelist Michael Crichton’s 2003 assertion that “one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism.”
In April, the celebrated physicist Freeman Dyson told the New York Times, “The reason why climate science is controversial is that it is both a science and a religion. Belief is strong, even when scientific evidence is weak.”
Now the chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, Texas Republican Lamar Smith, has used the religion-climate charge as the basis for a scathing attack on scientists’ climate consensus and on Obama administration climate policy. His op-ed, illustrated with a photo of President Obama speaking on Earth Day, dominates the top of the 24 April Wall Street Journal opinion page.
He repeats scoffers’ 15-year-warming-hiatus argument, asserts “that the worsening-storms scenario has been widely debunked,” adduces Pachauri’s religion statement, and declares, “Instead of letting political ideology or climate ‘religion’ guide government policy, we should focus on good science.”
He joins political conservatives at the Daily Caller (which calls itself “founded in 2010 by Tucker Carlson ... and Neil Patel, former chief policy advisor to Vice President Cheney”), Investor’s Business Daily, and a Fox News blog in spotlighting a February statement from a UN climate official:
Climate reports from the U.N.—which the Obama administration consistently embraces—are designed to provide scientific cover for a preordained policy. This is not good science. Christiana Figueres, the official leading the U.N.’s effort to forge a new international climate treaty later this year in Paris, told reporters in February that the real goal is “to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years.”
Smith then offers this interpretation: “In other words, a central objective of these negotiations is the redistribution of wealth among nations. It is apparent that President Obama shares this vision.” Later in the piece he condemns the politicization of UN public climate-science documents.
He deplores economic effects of US efforts to reduce greenhouse gases and denies that they can accomplish anything. To support the point, he cites the view of a former Energy Department official that requiring the states to meet carbon-emission-reduction targets “would reduce a sea-level increase by less than half the thickness of a dime.” He also invokes climate scientist Judith Curry of Georgia Tech, who testified that “the president’s U.N. pledge is estimated to prevent only a 0.03 Celsius temperature rise.” Curry participated in the American Physical Society’s formal reconsideration of its climate-change statement of 2007, which famously emphasized the adjective incontrovertible. She recently quoted APS’s draft statement revision on her blog. At the end she pronounced it an embarrassment to APS members.
Congressman Smith criticizes most energetically but often drifts away from the sensational religion comparison, including in this ending:
Yet those who raise valid questions about the very real uncertainties surrounding the understanding of climate change have their motives attacked, reputations savaged and livelihoods threatened. This happens even though challenging prevailing beliefs through open debate and critical thinking is fundamental to the scientific process.
The intellectual dishonesty of senior administration officials who are unwilling to admit when they are wrong is astounding. When assessing climate change, we should focus on good science, not politically correct science.
Whatever else is to be said about his views on climate science and climate policy, they matter. It might be instructive to end by quoting the jurisdiction statement from his committee’s website:
The Committee on Science, Space, and Technology has jurisdiction over all energy research, development, and demonstration, and projects therefor, and all federally owned or operated non-military energy laboratories; astronautical research and development, including resources, personnel, equipment, and facilities; civil aviation research and development; environmental research and development; marine research; commercial application of energy technology; National Institute of Standards and Technology, standardization of weights and measures and the metric system; National Aeronautics and Space Administration; National Science Foundation; National Weather Service; outer space, including exploration and control thereof; science scholarships; scientific research, development, and demonstration, and projects therefor.
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Steven T. Corneliussen, a media analyst for the American Institute of Physics, monitors three national newspapers, the weeklies Nature and Science, and occasionally other publications. He has published op-eds in the Washington Post and other newspapers, has written for NASA's history program, and is a science writer at a particle-accelerator laboratory.
