Arizona Rep. Raúl Grijalva, the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, sparked the latest dispute by asking universities to turn over documents about grants, congressional testimony and other activities involving seven scientists who have testified at congressional climate hearings. POLITICO Pro Dems' climate probe brings 'witch hunt' accusations Arizona Rep. Raúl Grijalva is on a mission to expose climate skeptics. Some say he's going too far.

Now conservatives are the ones complaining about being the victims in a politically motivated “war on science.”

In a turnabout from years of debate about intrusion into scientific research, Democratic lawmakers launched investigations this week into the funding sources of several scientists whose work is popular with skeptics of manmade climate change. And that’s bringing a furious counterattack from congressional Republicans and right-wing pundits — including some who cheered on a past probe by former Republican Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli into a leading scientist whose research pointed to man-made causes of climate change.


Arizona Rep. Raúl Grijalva, the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, sparked the latest dispute by asking universities to turn over documents about grants, congressional testimony and other activities involving seven scientists who have testified at congressional climate hearings. Grijalva was following up on a New York Times story reporting that Wei-Hock “Willie” Soon, a researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, had gotten $1.25 million in undisclosed money from fossil fuel companies.

Three Democratic senators then took up the case, asking more than 100 energy companies and trade groups to provide details on their research spending.

Supporters of Soon’s research say it casts doubt on human activity being a major driver of global warming. That made the Times story a public relations coup for the green activists who originally uncovered the documents on his funding. But Grijalva’s broadened inquiry prompted conservatives to accuse him of staging an ideological witch hunt, and even one green-minded science group expressed qualms he may have gone too far. Eleven Republican senators rebuked both Democratic probes on Friday as “wholly inappropriate.”

Still, Democrats are undeterred, saying the two cases are in no way comparable. They note that a strong majority of climate scientists say climate change is real, is primarily driven by human-caused greenhouse gas pollution and poses a threat to civilization.

“Republicans went after amazing scientists doing honest and great work on climate change,” said a spokesman for Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who helped lead the Senate Democrats’ information request to the energy trade groups. Spokesman Eben Burnham-Snyder added, “What’s different here are some clear indications that the very same companies and trade groups who have been sowing doubt on climate change and stopping any sort of legislative action in Congress, also may have been participating in these ‘denial for hire’ operations where they would pay very specifically for results.”

Grijalva was unavailable to comment on the flap Thursday.

But critics of his document request were quick to liken it to McCarthyism — or worse.

“Are You Now or Have You Ever Been a Climate Skeptic?” asked a headline on the conservative blog Power Line, which appeared atop a post written by one of the researchers Grijalva is probing, Steven F. Hayward of Pepperdine University. The climate skeptic blog Junk Science alleged that Grijalva’s probe “closes in on 1933 Germany, and the Soviet Union.”

But Power Line had a different take on Cuccinelli’s climate probe five years ago, after the then-attorney general ordered the University of Virginia to turn over 11 years of emails and a raft of other documents involving former UVA scientist Michael Mann. Cuccinelli said he wanted to know whether Mann had manipulated data as part of his research, which included a now-famous “hockey stick” graphic showing a sharp increase in global temperatures linked to human activity.

“Cuccinelli’s subpoena has been greeted with howls and protests from warmists and others who view inquiry into a scientist’s work as an infringement of academic freedom — the freedom, that is, to make stuff up, hide or falsify data, and thereby impose trillions of dollars of costs on consumers, all while being supported by taxpayers,” Power Line’s John Hinderaker wrote in May 2010.

Similarly, JunkScience’s Steve Milloy wrote in The Washington Times five years ago that greens’ claims that Cuccinelli was threatening academic freedom were “so much rot.”

“A thorough investigation by someone not in cahoots with the climate mob is the only way to answer legitimate questions related to the expenditure of taxpayer money,” Milloy wrote at the time.

Much like Markey’s spokesman, Hinderaker said Thursday that the Cuccinelli and Grijalva probes are “completely different.”

“The Cuccinelli [document demand] related to the substance of work done by Michael Mann,” Hinderaker wrote in an email to POLITICO. He added: “The Grijalva ‘investigation’ is merely an attempt to smear scientists and others by claiming that they received funding from various private sources; it does not relate to the substance of anything they have written … As you know if you have read my posts, I believe that it is government money, not private money, that is corrupt, because government is the main party in interest in the global warming controversy.”

Cuccinelli’s probe fizzled after the Virginia Supreme Court ruled he did not have the power to demand the university records.

Unlike Cuccinelli, who sought the documents under Virginia’s Fraud Against Taxpayers Act, Grijalva and the other Democratic lawmakers don’t have subpoena power to back up their requests. But the Democrats are citing a motivation similar to what Cuccinelli had offered: protecting taxpayers from policy influenced by bad science.

“Companies with a direct financial interest in climate and air quality standards are funding environmental research that influences state and federal regulations and shapes public understanding of climate science,” Grijalva wrote in letters Tuesday to seven universities, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Colorado and Georgia Tech. “These conflicts should be clear to stakeholders, including policymakers who use scientific information to make decisions.”

Grijalva requested information dating back to 2007, including all drafts of the scientists’ testimony before government bodies, the researchers’ sources of external funding, their financial disclosure forms and “communications” regarding their testimony and funding sources.

Markey and Democratic Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Barbara Boxer of California followed up the next day by asking more than 100 energy companies and trade groups, including the American Petroleum Institute and the National Mining Association, to disclose details on their research funding over the past 10 years.

“This investigation will help to determine who is funding these denial-for-hire operations and whether those who are funded by these fossil fuel interests are keeping their funders’ identities secret from the public and legislators,” Markey said in a statement.

The mining association responded to POLITICO that it “has not financed scientific research on climate change,” although it has commissioned studies on topics including “the serious and far reaching economic consequences of proposed policies ostensibly advanced to address climate change.” API said it is looking into the matter.

Grijalva’s investigation and the Democratic senators’ questions got a rebuttal Friday from all 11 Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, who wrote to the same universities, energy groups and companies to tell them the inquiry was out of line. “We ask you to not be afraid of political repercussions or public attacks regardless of how you respond,” the Republicans wrote.

The scientists themselves were quick to denounce Grijalva’s probe.

“I know with complete certainty that this investigation is a politically motivated ‘witch hunt’ designed to intimidate me (and others) and to smear my name,” Roger Pielke Jr., a professor at the University of Colorado’s Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, wrote on his blog Tuesday under a photo of former Sen. Joe McCarthy.

“I have no funding, declared or undeclared, with any fossil fuel company or interest. I never have,” he added, a statement the university backed up.

Pielke rejects the label of climate skeptic but has questioned the notion that greenhouse gas emissions are connected to the increasing costs of natural disasters. He notes that he supports EPA’s climate regulations and has advocated a small tax on carbon emissions. Still, his views have made him a target for liberals, leading him to quickly part ways last year with the website FiveThirtyEight just a few months after its relaunch.

“Incessant attacks and smears are effective,” Pielke lamented this week.

Other researchers Grijalva is targeting include David Legates of the University of Delaware, John Christy of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Judith Curry of Georgia Tech and Richard Lindzen of MIT. Many of them reject the notion that they are climate change skeptics, although their work has drawn the attention of the skeptic camp. Christy, for example, testified before Congress that climate models overstate the atmosphere’s sensitivity to greenhouse gases, while Curry has maintained that forecasting the climate is more uncertain that many scientists admit.

Curry took to her own blog to blast Grijalva’s request.

“I don’t think anything good will come of this,” she wrote. “I anticipate that Grijalva will not find any kind of an undisclosed fossil fuel smoking gun from any of the 7 individuals under investigation.”

Hayward, from Pepperdine, wrote on Power Line that he has received “no grants, honoraria, consulting fees, good karma baubles, or even Christmas cards from any fossil fuel interest, though I’d be proud and open about it if I did.” He also questioned the wisdom of judging scientists’ work based on who pays for the research.

“Is the good congressman really telling us that he is incapable of assessing factual claims and judgments about the wisdom of policy on the merits alone?” he wrote. “That doesn’t speak well of his probity.”

Even some groups that support acting on climate change have expressed worries that Grijalva’s questions may intrude on academic freedom. Michael Halpern of the Union of Concerned Scientists wrote in a blog post that Grijalva’s questions about funding are appropriate, but said his request for drafts of congressional testimony amounts to an investigation into private communications.

“Just as I have supported universities’ efforts to protect communications among academics that constitute the research process, so, too, I see justification in protecting drafts of congressional testimony,” Halpern wrote.

The American Meteorological Society jumped into the fray Friday, writing to Grijalva that “publicly singling out specific researchers based on perspectives they have expressed … sends a chilling message to all academic researchers.”

Mann, the former University of Virginia scientist, told National Journal that Grijalva’s letter “does come across as sort of heavy handed and overly aggressive.”

Meanwhile, some climate-skeptic groups chose to mimic Grijalva’s probe by filing a similar request for information about University of Delaware climate scientist John Byrne.

“The sole distinctions are, first, that we far more narrowly tailor our request in comparison to Rep. Grijalva’s; second, our request is made pursuant to statutory authority,” wrote the Free Market Environmental Law Clinic, the Energy & Environment Legal Institute and the Caesar Rodney Institute.