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Report: Issa ‘passionate’ about climate probe
Will incoming House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) investigate climate change science or not?
The New Yorker magazine’s big new profile of Issa published Monday includes this tidbit:
“Issa seems unconvinced about the science behind climate change, and the investigation that he seemed most passionate about when we spoke involved U.S. government funding for the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit. This is the organization behind the so-called Climategate controversy, in which a batch of e-mails were published, showing, Issa claimed, that there had been fraud involving ‘the base numbers’ underlying our understanding of climate change.”
But Issa, speaking to The Hill and other outlets in mid-November, had downplayed the prospect of a probe without quite ruling it out, telling reporters, “I will have limited resources and limited time.”
Issa spokesman Kurt Bardella on Monday pushed back against the depiction of Issa’s climate plans in The New Yorker piece, claiming that Issa had been asked about the issue rather than raising it as a priority.
“We are not pursuing a Climategate probe,” Bardella told The Hill on Monday morning.
Issa is among the Republicans who have called attention to e-mails among climate scientists associated with the Climatic Research Unit — a prominent U.K. institute — that were made public in late 2009.
Climate skeptics — including a host of GOP lawmakers — have alleged the messages revealed efforts to squelch information that undercuts evidence of human-induced climate change.
Issa in late 2009 slammed what he called a White House refusal to investigate the matter and called for inquiries.
However, multiple probes of the researchers and their correspondence later concluded the scientists did not seek to manipulate or suppress data, which The New Yorker's story notes as well.
