Science and politics

What’s happening, depending on the point of view, is an attempt to expose funding of anti-scientific climate-change deniers or to “silence legitimate intellectual and scientific inquiry.”

Three Democratic members of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works asked the John Locke Foundation and more than 100 other organizations for a list of research efforts related to climate change they’ve funded over the past 10 years.

Committee Republicans, including Chairman James Inhofe, followed with their own letter to the same groups, calling the Democrats’ request “wholly inappropriate.” It added: “We ask you to not be afraid of political repercussions or public attacks regardless of how you respond. Above all, we ask that you continue to support scientific inquiry and discovery, and protect academic freedom despite efforts to chill free speech.”

There’s little chance the John Locke Foundation will be chilled. Through its publications, it often expresses doubts about global warming research and proposals to curb climate change. However, it doesn’t fund climate-model research, John Hood, president of the John William Pope Foundation, said in an email this week, which makes the Democrats’ demand “silly. But even if it weren’t silly, it would be ignored.”

The Pope Foundation provides most of the funding for the Locke Foundation. Both organizations have been part of a climate-change counter-movement, according to Drexel University environmental sociologist Robert J. Brulle. He published a study in the December 2013 edition of the journal Climatic Change that traced funds supporting efforts to deny climate change. From 2003 to 2010, he found, the Pope Foundation gave more than $21 million to climate-change counter-movement organizations, including the Locke Foundation.

Brulle noted that, while the scientific consensus about climate change is strong, the public is divided. “A number of analyses have shown that one major factor driving this misunderstanding and an overall lack of legislative action is a deliberate and organized effort to misdirect the public discussion and distort the public’s understanding of climate change,” he wrote.

That may be, but it’s a political argument. And the request from Democratic Sens. Edward Markey, Barbara Boxer and Sheldon Whitehouse was an overreach.

Conversations about climate change should focus on science, but conservative groups are entitled to their opinions, as are liberal organizations. While scientists supported by conservative groups or the oil industry may be expected to produce findings that cast doubts on mainstream climate science, their work ultimately has to stand up to scientific scrutiny. Policy makers should heed good science, but there’s no guarantee — as Inhofe demonstrated recently when he produced a snowball on the Senate floor to show how cold it is.

Senators should debate among themselves but leave the John Locke Foundation out of it.