The Sea Change

The most dramatic consequence of this year's election exhibited so far is the changeover on the Senate committee on the environment from Climate Crisis Denier, James Inofe, who spent his last hours upon the stage railing against media alarmism over global heating, to Senator Barbara Boxer, who said:

"Any kind of weakening of environmental laws or secrecy or changes in the dead of night - it's over. We're going to for once, finally, make this committee an environment committee, not an anti-environment committee. ... This is a sea change that is coming to this committee."

One of many articles reproducing this statement, in Forbes, went on to add:

Boxer's first hearing next month also will be devoted to global warming, but from an opposite point of view from Inhofe's. "This is a potential crisis of a magnitude we've never seen," she said Tuesday, explaining that her goal is to impose mandatory caps on carbon dioxide, a step vehemently opposed by Bush's top environmental advisers.

Nonetheless, she promised to hear from all sides before trying to move a bill to Senate passage. "I very much want the environment to go back to being a nonpartisan issue," she said. She said her model will be a new California law that imposes the first statewide limit on greenhouse gases and seeks to cut emissions by 25 percent, dropping them to 1990 levels by 2020. "Real goals, real percentages," she said.

"We want to send a signal to the world," Boxer said, complaining the United States now lags behind more than 50 other countries addressing global warming. She said she has received calls from several foreign leaders expressing hope for a new U.S. environmental policy.

All of that sounds promising and exciting, but the very fact of the change from Inofe to Boxer is certain to have positive effects on Climate Crisis science, regardless of the outcome of those hearings. In "State of Denial," a special report in the November 4 issue of New Scientist, Fred Pearce outlines the efforts of Inhofe and others to intimidate scientists whose conclusions on global heating run contrary to the Deniers' agenda, and the threat to withdraw federal funding.

Inhofe was conducting "investigations" into agencies conducting research he considered hostile, including demands for documents and financial records. All of this was happening as climate scientists are finishing the next report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Its 1995 and 2001 reports provided overwhelming scientific support for the reality of the human- induced Climate Crisis. The new report is due in February 2007.

Of Inhofe's investigation, the magazine wrote: "many climate scientists contacted by New Scientist regard it as a tactic designed to intimidate those working on the IPCC report. "Inhofe's actions appear to be an effort to discourage leading US scientists from being involved in international scientific assessment processes such as the IPCC," Mann says.

This is potentially disastrous for the IPCC. Out of 168 scientists listed as lead authors or reviewers involved in assessing the science of climate change, 38 are from the US - more than twice as many as the second-largest national grouping, the British.

IPCC scientists who spoke to New Scientist insist they are not trying to turn science into politics or to shut down genuine debate. They do, however, worry that their conclusions might be drowned out by some politically motivated and industry-funded sceptics. "I'd hate to see hundreds of people putting years of their lives into producing a report that is then trashed by these people for political ends," says Santer. "That is what happened in my case, and I felt very bad about it."

But Inhofe's McCarthyistic investigations are over: the Boxer Rebellion has begun. Her first Climate Crisis hearings should be happening as the IPCC report is issued, and instead of a hostile Congress, it will find a larger stage than it has ever had. The Deniers are still around, and are still well-funded, but they are about to learn what difference a Senate committee chairperson can make, especially when the whole world and most of the country is ready to hear the truth, and getting ready to act on it.