The Project on Climate Science

"We implore our elected leaders to abstain from subsuming science to special interest politics. Ignoring and obfuscating the overwhelming scientific evidence of human-induced climate change shows a disregard for the responsibilities entrusted Members of Congress by the American people."

The Project on Climate Science has issued the following press release (2-3-11):

Statement of the Project on Climate Science On an attack on the scientific basis for the Clean Air Act by the “The Energy Tax Prevention Act”

The Project on Climate Science finds it incomprehensible that, as they develop policy options to address our nation’s energy and climate challenges, some Members of Congress are seeking to turn science on its head by launching an assault on the Clean Air Act – the very law that protects us from the serious threat carbon pollution poses to our health and our national and economic security.

The draft legislation, “The Energy Tax Prevention Act,” would overturn the EPA’s 2009 scientific finding that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare – a finding that was reached after EPA scientists carefully reviewed the evidence.

Authored by Rep. Fred Upton, (R-MI), Sen. James Inhofe, (R-OK) and Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-KY), the bill ignores all scientific findings about carbon pollution, placing our health in great jeopardy. As noted today by the American Lung Association, the Clean Air Act guards the most vulnerable Americans – those with asthma and other lung diseases, children, older adults, and people with heart disease and diabetes. The association declared, “The protections against the health harm from carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas pollution are essential to public health and must be preserved.”

The bill, which refers to “possible climate change,” embodies a blatant disregard for scientific fact. No less than the prestigious National Academy of Sciences (NAS), along with all the major national academies of science from around the world, have concluded that human activity is dramatically affecting the climate. The NAS is unambiguous in advising Congress that, “Climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities . . . and in many cases is already affecting a broad range of human and natural systems.”

A letter from 18 distinguished scientists sent to every Member of Congress on Friday January 28, 2011, calls on Congress to separate policy from science:

“Political philosophy has a legitimate role in policy debates, but not in the underlying climate science. There are no Democratic or Republican carbon dioxide molecules; they are all invisible and they all trap heat.”

We implore our elected leaders to abstain from subsuming science to special interest politics. Ignoring and obfuscating the overwhelming scientific evidence of human-induced climate change shows a disregard for the responsibilities entrusted Members of Congress by the American people.