Extreme in Temperature — and in the Handling and Use of Science

Ours is an age of unprecedented extremes — in the climate system and in politics.

Noah Diffenbaugh and colleagues’ carefully worded and nuanced 2017 PNAS paper “Quantifying the influence of global warming on unprecedented extreme climate events” develops methods to attribute heat waves, droughts, and high rainfall to climate change. Similarly, but perhaps counterintuitively, Judah Cohen and colleagues’ Nature Communications article from this year links recent increased snowfall and decreased winter temperatures in the eastern United States to a warming Arctic. The Earth’s climate is a complex system, and one’s simple intuition of cause and effect is not always correct. There are lots of subtleties.

A broad review of the science linking climate change and extremes in temperature, rainfall, and other weather may be found in the IPCC Special Report of Working Groups I and II. As scientists are wont to do, this technical literature linking increased atmospheric carbon dioxide to climate extremes seems to mostly discuss uncertainties, problems, and alternative analyses and interpretations, sometimes maddeningly so.

Yet, studies that attribute climate extremes to increased atmospheric carbon dioxide are on the cutting edge of scientific knowledge. It is inevitable that there will be uncertainties. Paradoxically, the honest and full disclosure of uncertainties is a great marker for scientific quality. Any study that fails to disclose its material uncertainties and problems is immediately suspect.

Which brings us to Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the chair of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology and a favorite of the oil and gas industry. Last year, he was quoted as saying “Likewise, extreme weather events are often falsely linked to increased carbon emissions. Historical data . . . demonstrate no discernible connections.” That is a baldly baseless assertion and demonstrates a complete failure to delve into the technical literature and present, point-by-point, whatever evidence he might conjure up supporting his position.

Before that, he attacked Katheryn Sullivan, then administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, when his office stated that “NOAA needs to come clean about why they altered the data.” Here Smith accused agency scientists of falsifying their data, with not a shred of evidence to back up his assertion.

Most recently, Smith introduced the Honest and Open New EPA Science Treatment Act — or HONEST Act. Therein, Smith advocates public release of the data that underlie the scientific papers cited in EPA rulemaking. That bill would “prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from proposing, finalizing, or disseminating a covered action unless all scientific . . . information relied on to support such action is . . . publicly available in a manner sufficient for independent analysis.” Moreover, EPA Administrator Scott Pruit is currently pursuing administrative actions in parallel with Smith’s bill.

The wording of the legislation seems rather bland, and under other political circumstances, it might well be innocuous. The rather ambiguous words in Smith’s bill together with Chevron deference could easily result in the legislation having little practical impact — if the EPA administrator were so inclined. But Pruit is clearly inclined to aggressive action on all fronts to undercut environmental regulations. Pruitt and Smith are using this dustup about public disclosure of scientific data that they themselves created to push their political agenda.

No amount of arguing with these gentlemen about climate science will get anywhere useful. I am struck by the comparison between the scientific papers that they dispute and the supposed facts they offer for policies that would hamstring rulemaking. Climate science papers contain literally page after page after page of carefully constructed nuanced sentences, where the authors lay out the limitations and problems with their own analysis, and where they oh so carefully explain exactly what the data show and do not show.

Despite offers of a “red team/blue team” debate on climate change, I think scientists would often be better off to simply decline offers to engage in public disputes with those who know nothing about the science. Inevitably, such debate will not concern science. And just as inevitably, scientists will lose.

A better solution is to have real scientists leading key congressional committees that oversee science. Yet of the 535 members in the U.S. Congress, only about 5 percent are doctors, dentists, veterinarians, psychologists, engineers, mathematicians, or scientists while about 40 percent are lawyers.