The Irresponsible Leadership of the House Committee on Science and Technology

“More than 350 years after the Roman Catholic Church condemned Galileo, Pope John Paul II is poised to rectify one of the Church's most infamous wrongs -- the persecution of the Italian astronomer and physicist for proving the Earth moves around the Sun. With a formal statement at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on Saturday, Vatican officials said the Pope will formally close a 13-year investigation into the Church's condemnation of Galileo in 1633. The condemnation, which forced the astronomer and physicist to recant his discoveries, led to Galileo's house arrest for eight years before his death in 1642 at the age of 77.”

   Le plus ça change, le plus c’est la même chose. While it took the church more than three centuries to concede that they were not scientists, many leading members of the Republican party now say that of themselves with what I consider quite phony modesty. “I’m not a scientist” is phony, because they don’t take their non-scientific status as a profession of ignorance of climate science, but as the grounds for not accepting the conclusions reached by a broad consensus of relevant and qualified researchers: that significant global warming is ongoing, that it is caused by human activities, and that it will have disastrous results if not reined in.

   Lamar Smith, the chair of the House Committee on Science and Technology is not so modest. On the one hand, “[i]n2014, Smith got more money from fossil fuels than he did from any other industry.” On the other hand, “Smith is publicly skeptic of global warming. Under his leadership, the House Science committee has held hearings that feature the views of skeptics, subpoenaed the records and communications of scientists who published papers that Smith disapproved of, and attempted to cut NASA's earth sciences budget. He has been criticized for conducting "witch hunts" against climate scientists. In his capacity as Chair of his committee, “Smith issued more subpoenas in his first three years than the committee had for its entire 54 year history.”

   That the “skeptical” Congressman Smith has no scientific training—he is a lawyer—has been stated in more than one news article I have come across, tacitly attributing his skepticism to ignorance. That is not, however, the full story and not the most important part of it. Those news stories—at least the ones that I have read—do not also inform its readers that Mr. Smith is a Christian Scientist.

   That brings his rejection of climate science much closer to the Church’s rejection of Galileo’s heliocentric position. The earth is at the center of the universe, was the Church’s doctrine and not the sun. “Sickness is a mental error,” declared Mary Baker Eddy, and is cured by thought and prayer and not by physicians. The deepest skepticism vis-à-vis the medical establishment, indeed its rejection, is the correct attitude.

   It seems to me to be downright scandalous that the leadership of the United States House of Representatives entrusts the leadership of an important committee to someone who is not merely ignorant of its central concern—that has surely happened before—but actually committed to be hostile to it.

   If the Church could take 350 years to admit its error; the science of astronomy developed without its blessing. We cannot wait even a small fraction of such a period for the officers of our government to own up to the reality of global warming so as to abstain from actions that would reduce the probability of disastrous damage to the globe.