More on Joe Barton's (Tex.) witch hunt

We discussed Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton's witch hunt investigation of three scientists who have charted Earth's rapid warming in recent decades here. The Washington Post has an editorial on Barton's outrageous actions this morning, Hunting Witches. The title is appropriate since it is very similar to the intimidation of Galileo by the Catholic Church when his sound science didn't fit the views of the church. This time the powerful organization isn't a church but the number one energy company Exxon.

"THIS IS HIGHLY usual," declared a spokesman for the House Energy and Commerce Committee when asked this week whether the request by committee Chairman Joe Barton (R-Tex.) for information from three climate scientists was out of the ordinary. He and his boss are alone in that view. Many scientists and some of Mr. Barton's Republican colleagues say they were stunned by the manner in which the committee, whose chairman rejects the existence of climate change, demanded personal and private information last month from researchers whose work supports a contrary conclusion. The scientists, co-authors of an influential 1999 study showing a dramatic increase in global warming over the past millennium, were told to hand over not only raw data but personal financial information, information on grants received and distributed, and computer codes.

[.....]

Mr. Barton's attempt to dismiss all this as turf-battling on the part of Mr. Boehlert, like his spokesman's claim that such demands for data are normal, is disingenuous. While the Energy and Commerce Committee does sometimes ask for raw data when it looks at regulatory decisions or particular government technology purchases, there is no precedent for congressional intervention in a scientific debate. As Mr. Bradley pointed out in his response to Mr. Barton, scientific progress is incremental: "We publish a paper, and others may point out why its conclusions or methods might be wrong. We publish the results of additional studies . . . as time goes on robust results generally become accepted." Science moves forward following these "well-established procedures," and not through the intervention of a congressional committee that is partial to one side of the argument.

Mr Barton is obviously representing his real constituency, the Board Room of Exxon-Mobile, the very same Board Room that is now coming under attack from other world energy giants for ignoring the science of global warming.

Update
MEJ's Bill in DC points out this editorial in The New York Times indicating that the Senate seems to have a more reality based view on global warming.

Mr. Barton's antics make one all the more grateful for the more responsible attitude displayed in the Senate, particularly by Pete Domenici, a conservative senator from New Mexico. A longtime global warming skeptic, Mr. Domenici has been open to new information, read the literature on the subject and accepted the need for mandatory controls on greenhouse gas emissions. On Thursday, Mr. Domenici took time out from the energy bill negotiations to hold the first in a series of hearings intended to lead to meaningful and politically acceptable emissions controls.