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.

The Inevitability of Radical Climate Change: A Short Assessment

   Among those who are professionally qualified to make such judgments, there is virtual unanimity that human activity causes the earth’s climate to increase to the point when it will make far larger and more devastating changes than warming has so far. Dissenters from these predictions don’t put forward evidence refuting those claims, but simply assert “I’m not a scientist,” as if that dubious status entitles them to disagree with those who have actually studied the mechanisms of climate change.  If things are left to go as they now are, the second half of the 21^st century will see extended droughts, vast increases in deaths caused by heat, devastating flooding in coastal areas that will not be respecters of important cities, and much more, including undesirable effects on virtually all living things on land and sea. I feel sorry for my grandchildren’s grandchildren who will be living during the period when things get really bad.    But surely, you say, these horrible effects can be forestalled. Just as it is known what horrors will be brought on by climate warming, it is known what needs to be done to sharply reduce if not eliminate it altogether. Moreover, that warming is not brought on by natural processes over which humans have no control, but by human activities that take place everywhere on the globe—to be sure to sharply varying degrees. Stop them or at least decrease them notably and those disasters won’t happen.

   But there is a fateful wrinkle. What needs to be done is costly and where they are enacted virtually everyone is affected either by increased living costs or decreased income or both. This dual effect of countermeasures makes me totally pessimistic that very much will be done until the worst effects of warming have begun to make their appearance and when its effects, moreover, have become irreversible.

  What is the basis of this gloomy prediction? To a greater or lesser degree—and nowhere to so small a degree that it can be ignored—those who rule are dependent on the good will of the populations over which they preside. How that is so in democracies—in Western Europe and the United States—is obvious. But it is equally true, just different, in China and Russia. Putin and Xi Jinping may certainly have considerably greater latitude than Obama in the treatment of the populations they govern, but they too must pay heed to the warning Machiavelli issues in The Prince: people will forgive you for killing their fathers, but they will not forgive you for taking their patrimony.

   To take effective measures against global warming is to making present sacrifices for a future goal, indeed a goal that lies considerably beyond the lifetimes of those who would be paying now. People, some anyway, may be willing to give up something for the benefit of their grandchildren, but the more remote they are from such family beneficiaries, the less inclined they will be to make sacrifices.

   Take just a single real life example. Mitch McConnell, a senator  from Kentucky for thirty years and now majority leader, surely smart, professes to hold that there is no global warming and if there is, human activities are not a cause. Of course I don’t know what he actually believes; but what I do know is that he is the senior senator of a coal-mining state and measures to reduce future global warming would, with certainty, have a negative effect on the economy of the senator’s state and its citizens.

   I’m pessimistic because today just about always trumps tomorrow and acting to save oneself surely trumps saving others—not to mention unknown others. In short, significant (and costly) measures will be taken when significant damage has already been done. I won’t be around when that happens.

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