As usual, Chris Mooney has more - this time a letter to Barton from Henry Waxman which makes a very reasonable suggestion, that Barton withdraw the letters and instead hold a public hearing on the subject of global warming. Tim Lambert has rounded up other links to related comentary from around the blogosphere, including my previous post. Note in particular this post by Coturnix about the Lysenkoism, i.e., "science" under Stalin. I'm not sure science is the right word for conclusions that are dictated by policy. This calls for a serious discussion of data quality issues, but I'm not going to go there right now. Then, for a real diatribe, see this post by Coeruleus, who also contrasts the Barton letters to statements made by the Vatican in the trial against Galileo. Not to be overly dramatic, but being half Pisan, I can't resist putting up a picture of the steps that go up the Leaning Tower, that must have been taken by Galileo himself, who is said to have conducted experiments that involved dropping different sizes of weights to make a point about the laws of gravity. Of course, if gravity were the only factor in play, that tower would have fallen a long time ago. If Barton refuses to hold public hearings on global warming, and does not allow the use of committee hearing rooms for Waxman to do it, the Leaning Tower would be a good place...

To it's credit, the White House has finally conceded that humans are contributing to global warming - or has decided to avoid further challenges to the science, and claims to be making accelerated progress, but lets not confuse reduction of the intensity of greenhouse gas emissions per unit of economic output with actual reduction of emissions. Or any elimination of funding for scientific research and monitoring with elimination of the problem - Barton's letters do more than question scientific conclusions. In not unrelated developments, Senator Larry Craig is reported to be trying to undo the Endangered Species Act by seeking to eliminate programs that gather scientific data used to support decisions to list Columbia river salmon species as endangered. There are many more examples of this behavior, about which entire reports and books have been written. Now that we know the planet is warming, we need all the science we can get to understand and respond to the consequences that are already occurring, which could require an emergency evacuation of, say, Southern Louisiana, for example, or just paralyze shipping in the Great Lakes...