I found a great article on one of the blogs I read a few days ago. It was the first time I’d heard of the story, and it made me so mad that I knew I had to share it on ClimateSight. But this article was so well-written that I doubted I could come up with anything better.
In a nutshell…..an old paper that didn’t pass through the peer-review process of the EPA contained all sorts of climate-denial “evidence” which has been proven wrong countless times. The peer-review panel wasn’t trying to suppress contradictory evidence – in fact, publishing contradictory evidence would be great for the journal and the advancement of science – the paper was just utter nonsense!
But the Republicans threw a fit when they discovered that a paper questioning anthropogenic climate change was deliberately suppressed so the EPA could begin a communist takeover….or something like that. They want a criminal investigation. As David from Through a Green Lens writes,
“The irony is that these people watched calmly as the Bush-Cheney Administration suppressed global warming science. Now, the party that supposedly promotes “fiscal responsibility” would like to spend millions of dollars on an investigation into why faulty science was not included in an EPA decision.”
Read the rest of his post here.
PS: A number of you have brought it to my attention that the ever-narrowing nested comments get very hard to read. I went to go check it out (I usually view comments from my WordPress dashboard) and my goodness, one word per line…..no wonder you were complaining!
I played around with the discussion settings, and I think I’ve fixed it as much as I can. Replies to comments will no longer appear indented below the original comment, but I’ve placed the oldest first, instead of the newest first, so that it makes more chronological sense. Unless there’s multiple discussions going on at once, I think it’s okay.
Let me know what you think, and if you have any more suggestions.
ClimateSight 
There’s more detail on this at Greenfyre’s, which deals with climate denialism rather exhaustively. Mike (its author) has been away for a few months, which may explain why it slipped under your radar. You’re absolutely right that this is a tempest in a teapot – and the story of Phillip Cooney is something that should continue to be spread.
Thanks for the comment revision, by the way.
I did not observe any comment narrowing. Was that in the RSS feed? Because I don’t read the RSS.
Thanks for the hat tip. :)
This story is just an example of how desperate deniers are getting. I would have so much more respect for the Republicans if they put more effort into an alternative (i.e., not cap-and-trade) plan to cut emissions. But that’s politics.
The important thing is that the “report” was largely populated with plagiarized material.
This is the best they can do – tout a plagiarized paper.
Best,
D
Heres a picture of the poor, repressed fellow. The denialists continue to tap a rich vein
of skeptics from unrelated fields and retirement villages.