It should be apparent that I’m an independent thinker and that, as a scientist, I stick up for the interests of scientists when they are being shamed and harassed by political leaders and activists. That is why I called out progressive groups that are uninvolved in (and, I suspect, uninformed of) the extreme difficulties of acquiring funding for research and conferences when they attacked the American Geophysical Union for accepting a small amount of ExxonMobil money to help pay for its annual conference. There undoubtedly are instances for which ExxonMobil, and others in the fossil fuel industry, can be attacked—for actually influencing research in an improper fashion—but that is not one of them.
That said, I also have mixed feelings about the large legal case that involves ExxonMobil potentially defrauding its investors and the public about climate change, because it also involves atmospheric scientists at certain institutions who are climate skeptics and have apparently been funded by the fossil fuel industry. In the first place, as a scientist, there’s a part of me that is troubled by the thought of the legal system being involved in matters of scientific misconduct rather than the scientific peer process. I realize that this case involves much more than that, and that ExxonMobil is the party actually in the hot seat, but this is a visceral “do not like” moment nonetheless.
I also don’t like the implication that any scientific researcher who takes money from certain industry sources is automatically suspect. I was funded by the fossil fuel industry. While working on my Master’s degree, I did a side project that was funded by money from BP in the Gulf oil spill aftermath. The purpose was to determine the atmospheric impact, if any, of the oil spill along the coastal wetlands. I was unable to find an effect. I suspect now that the reason for this is that the dataset we had available was grossly insufficient for the purpose, and that we simply didn’t have enough money to set up a new, high-resolution network of sensors along the wetland areas. Detecting atmospheric boundary layer changes in a small area is virtually impossible without a high-resolution sensor network, not that I knew that as a beginning Master’s student. The work was “put in the file drawer.” Is it possible that BP knew that we wouldn’t be able to find anything without that superior sensor network that we didn’t have? I suppose it is, in retrospect. However, if such a thing is the case, that does not implicate me or any other person working on the project. I had no correspondence from anyone in BP and no pressure from anybody to find a negative result. It is possible for someone to have funding from a “suspect” source and come up with negative outcomes and yet for no research fraud whatsoever to have taken place.
If I hadn’t had the BP money, I wouldn’t have been able to get my Master’s degree—or begin a doctorate. (Although it didn’t fund any part of my doctoral research, without an existing degree, I wouldn’t have been eligible for the Ph. D. program.) This is the part that, I think, many political activists don’t get. Funding is hard to come by and we take it where it is to be found. The overwhelming majority of atmospheric scientists do not allow their funding source to hurt their integrity.
So this is why I have misgivings about political figures questioning scientists about scientific research outcomes that they don’t care for, even when the scientists being questioned are diametrically opposed to me on an important research and policy issue. I’m not going to comment on the substance of this court case, because I trust that the court can handle it, but if I didn’t have a visceral concern about a court case that involves climate-skeptic atmospheric scientists, I would have to consider myself the worst sort of hypocrite to object to what is being done to non-skeptic climate scientists by the Republican majority of the House Subcommittee on Science.
And that is the actual topic of this piece.
Atmospheric scientists who are not aware of what is going on should be, because it is chilling and could very easily involve them at some point. There aren’t that many places that will employ atmospheric scientists to work in their actual field of study, but NOAA is one of them. And the Chairman of the House Committee, Lamar Smith (R-TX), has been doing nothing short of libeling the agency, threatening its employees, and impugning the scientific integrity of every climate scientist who works for it. That is not an exaggeration.
Last year, Smith sent threatening letters to NOAA Administrator Dr. Kathryn Sullivan. He has also gone to right-wing media outlets such as Breitbart and claimed that NOAA climatologists tampered with temperature data, presumably at Dr. Sullivan’s behest, to advance the Obama administration’s, quote, “extreme climate agenda” (his words). Scientists have all sorts of valid reasons to revise early data, especially from sources such as satellites. Satellite data calibration is literally an entire sub-field of meteorology, not that Smith understands or cares to understand that. Needless to say, this despicable assertion places him in the category of climate skeptic that I can have no respect for whatever: those who think that scientists are engaged in a conspiracy to commit research fraud. Like most making this baseless, slanderous assertion, Smith seems to either have no concept of the gravity of his accusation (proven research fraud is a career-ender in science), or he simply doesn’t care.
I suspect it’s the latter. Extreme climate-change deniers actually do want to put every scientist who disagrees with them out of a job and destroy them personally. It’s gotten to that point.
Smith has also seen fit to insert himself into the aforementioned court case involving ExxonMobil, which is a state-level matter and over which the House has no jurisdiction. He has demanded communications from state attorneys general that consulted with environmental and climate-realist nonprofit organizations (as if it’s somehow unusual or corrupt for political figures to talk to nonprofits), as well as from employees at the nonprofits themselves. He has demanded communication from climate scientists. For two years he has been conducting his own little version of the Benghazi Committee’s unending witch-hunt, but instead of it being about an event in which a United States ambassador was killed, he has been abusing his position to harass climate scientists—most of whom have had no involvement whatever in policymaking (not that that is an indicator of lack of integrity)—who produced research that has a conclusion he and some of his Committee majority don’t care for.
Think about that. A Member of Congress who heads up a committee has been summoning scientists to testify and provide him with e-mail correspondence, simply because his committee oversees NOAA and he doesn’t like the conclusions that researchers within NOAA have been finding. He apparently believes that his role includes making sure that NOAA produces data that the current Congressional majority likes.
If that doesn’t horrify you, it should. And he is not the only politician to conduct himself like this and abuse his authority. The former Attorney General of Virginia, Ken Cuccinelli, did the same thing to climatologists at the University of Virginia while he was in office.
It’s pretty apparent why climate-change deniers don’t talk about the sun anymore, and don’t usually talk much about nebulous and undefined “natural cycles,” but instead accuse climatologists of producing fraudulent data to further a political agenda. The thought process, such as it is, seems to go like this:
- Scientists receive salary and/or research funding from the government.
- NOAA is part of the Department of Commerce, which is in the executive branch.
- The President accepts the science of climate change and has promoted emissions reduction and clean energy throughout his term of office.
- Therefore, all climate science conducted by governmental agencies must be done expressly and exclusively to promote the President’s policy agenda.
- Corollary: Therefore, the only reason the scientists could possibly have to revise early data must be political pressure.
Obviously, the fallacy is in drawing a link between a source of funding and the outcome of a scientific research project (or, for that matter, its purpose). This is why I don’t like it when activists from any side go after scientists’ integrity because of who pays their expenses. If it seems that I go after my own side harder than I do my opponents, that is because I am more disappointed when my own side engages in shaming, and also because I know that people who already think my field is fraudulent aren’t going to listen to anything I say in defense of it. Those who are indeed defending scientists from people like Lamar Smith might be willing to hear a scientist’s perspective.
Not all scientists are going to have the stomach for jumping into the maelstrom of politics. I get that. I get that viscerally. It’s actually been a source of—not alienation, exactly, but something close to it, between me and many fellow doctoral students in my department. They’re pure researchers who don’t want anything to do with politics or policy, while I am not. But there is another class of scientists out there, scientists who do have an interest in the policy implications of their work, but who think that somehow it undermines their integrity as scientists—or that it presents a conflict of interest—to jump into the fray.
It doesn’t. An opinion is not a conflict of interest (or if it is, then everyone has one), and an actual conflict of interest does not mean fraud. Climate scientists who do want to have a say in this sort of thing need to stand up and be heard. Their 3% of colleagues who are climate-change skeptics may largely be polite and respectful (or passive-aggressive, at worst—and scientists of all stripes have refined that into a fine art). They may propose some combination of natural climatic cycles that partially account for one source of temperature data, while not really attempting to challenge the enormous mass of data supporting anthropogenic climate change. But their adversaries in politics are not going to play nice.
They are going to disgrace the dignity of their offices by going to racist conspiracy-theorist media outlets, and baselessly accuse entire governmental agencies—and every scientist in them—of making up data, the very worst thing one could say about a scientist in the professional sphere.
They are going to demand private correspondence from government scientists for open-ended witch-hunts.
They are going to inject themselves into legal cases over which they have no jurisdiction and demand private correspondence from attorneys general and nonprofit organizations.
They are going to call scientists up to Congress and harass them for hours about their research findings.
And sitting back and hoping that they won’t touch you because you’re a pure researcher, not involved in policy, no “conflict of interest”—so very good—won’t stop them from doing it. It just tells them you won’t fight back.