U.S. House science committee tweets climate-change denying Breitbart article

[Who needs NASA scientists when you have misleading opinions from the platform of the fascist Right? –Des] By Phil McCausland
2 December 2016 (NBC News) – The House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology’s Twitter account retweeted a Breitbart News article that is unscientific and steeped in opinion on Thursday. The article claims the science behind global warming is “in its final death rattle.” An important committee in the United States House of Representatives, the committee’s 38 members are in charge of all energy, environmental, marine, civil aviation and astronautics research and development. This includes oversight of NASA, the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, FAA, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and FEMA. The committee is chaired by Rep. Lamar Smith, a Republican from Texas. […] Scientists were quick to take to Twitter to debunk Delingpole’s claim and share their dismay that the House committee would cite an organization like Breitbart. [more]

House Science Committee Tweets Climate-Change Denying Breitbart Article

By Phil Plait
2 December 2016 (Slate) – The House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology is, ironically but shocking to no one who understands the majority party, quite anti-science. For years now, the committee and its chairman, Lamar Smith (R-Texas), have been merciless in their attacks on both climate scientists and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Smith—who receives a large amount of funding from fossil fuel interests—has been subpoenaing NOAA staff and data repeatedly in what is a transparent attempt both to create a chilling effect and to directly prevent them from doing their very important research into human-generated global warming. The Committee’s Twitter account often reflects this ideology. And this afternoon, to the dismay of many, they tweeted a climate-denying “news” story from Breitbart. Yes, that Breitbart, the racist, misogynistic über-right-wing site that calls itself a voice for the “alt right” movement, which is—as my Slate colleague Jeremy Stahl says—composed of “Neo-Nazis in suits and ties.” The content of this tweet is the same sort of thing you’d get if you fed a bull 20 kilos of Ex-Lax and stood behind it for a while. Global warming, of course, is real. The Breitbart article in question is written by James Delingpole, a flat-out climate change denier who has a history of writing grossly misleading articles about global warming. He gets this information from yet another climate change denier, David Rose, who wrote an article for the execrable Daily Mail claiming that global temperatures have dropped by an entire degree Celsius since this summer. Contrary to what the Daily Mail might have to say, global temperature is indeed increasing. [more]

The House (Anti-)Science Committee Strikes Again